Persistance du lien colonial français depuis l’abolition de l’esclavage à La Réunion et critique des figures de l’émancipation

The aim of this article is to locate the continuity and transformation of the ongoing relationship beyond the formal decolonization laid down in the ‘departmentalisation’ of 1946 in France. Observers were already talking of the ambiguities of development back in the 1960s in France, while the effects of departmentalization in economic terms were already being felt in the 1970s. This article aims to present a critical genealogy through the study of ‘emancipatory’ discourses since 1848 (the year of the second abolition of slavery by France), and, in particular, by analysing different political arrangements. It also puts forward an analysis based on class, gender and race of the ways in which the subjectification of contemporary politics takes place in La Réunion.