As part of the Thursday lectures series, Jean Moomou, University Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, will give a lecture entitled "Discordance of colonial memory in the public arena: the limits of decolonial thinking". Organised by the University of Guyana's Culture Commission and the MINEA laboratory, the lecture will take place on Thursday 24 November 2022 at 6pm in Amphithéâtre A.
The emergence of "counter-memory", observed from the 1970s onwards, has certainly found legitimacy in the public arena since 1998, in the same way as monuments and odonyms glorifying the colonial period. However, it has given rise to competition, mistrust and even conflict between those responsible for this remembrance. In addition, colonial memory and "counter-memory" have been joined by new expressions from the socio-cultural groups living in these territories, who sometimes have no direct links with colonial memory or with each other (themselves), and whose exchanges often remain difficult. Acts of vandalism in public places bear witness to this.
However, this appropriation or reappropriation of memory by Afro-descendants, as an element of identity construction, has its limits. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate this.
Presentation of the speaker
Jean Moomou holds a doctorate in history and civilisation from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and is a university professor of modern and contemporary history at the INSPE in French Guiana, specialising in the Amazonian and Caribbean world. He works mainly on the Maroon societies of the Americas, particularly the Maroons of Surinam (the Boni), and more recently on the Creole societies of French Guiana and the French West Indies.