Recognized as one of the most influential studies of memory in the late twentieth century, Pierre Nora's monumental project Les Lieux de memoire has been celebrated for its elaboration of a ground-breaking paradigm for rethinking the relationship between the nation, territory, history and memory. It has also, however, been criticized for implying a narrow perception of national memory from which the legacy of colonialism was excluded. Driven by an increasingly critical postcolonial discourse on French historiography and fuelled by the will to acknowledge the relevance of the colonial in the making of modern and contemporary France, the present volume intends to address in a collective and sustained manner this critical gap by postcolonializing the French Republic's lieux de memoire. The various chapters discern and explore an initial repertoire of realms and sites in France and the so-called Outremer that crystalize traces of colonial memory, while highlighting its inherent dialectical relationship with firmly instituted national memory. By making visible the invisible thread that links the colonial to various manifestations of French heritage, the objective is to bring to the fore the need to anchor the colonial in a collective memory that has often silenced it, and to foster new readings of the past as it is represented, remembered and inscribed in the nation's collective imaginary.

What does it mean to be an African writer or a Francophone African writer at the beginning of the twenty first century? How are history, time and the body represented in contemporary Francophone African fiction? How are authors working with, changing and subverting the French language? How is 'Africa' represented in the literary imagination? What discourses on Africa arise from literary texts? This study takes stock of Francophone African literary production at the end of the twentieth century, proposing that the literatures are characterised by a remarkable vitality and diversity. The work also introduces the new literary texts of the 1980s and 1990s, which have enriched world literature, and considers how new subjects and thematic continuities are giving rise to changing critical approaches and methodologies. (In French)