The Postcolonial Question in Contemporary France: Immigration, Islam and Identity

(2.5-3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Since the 1983s March for equality and against racism (Marche des Beurs), up until the current debates on islamist separatism, the French public sphere is struggling with a new intellectual debate, which can be described as the postcolonial question. By defining and questioning this phrasing, this lecture will first try to establish a political history of immigration in France, and how it has deeply defined and redefined the definitions of social progress. Through the issues of colonial historiography, but also the evolution in France of generations of immigrants and their political behavior, the rise of islam as both a religious and social phenomenon, have deeply transformed the country the resurgence of the Empire questions the very nature of the Republic.