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Volume 25, Issue 1-2
  • ISSN: 1368-2679
  • E-ISSN: 1758-9142

Abstract

The former French India has held a distinctive place in metropolitan French discourses and sentiments of colonial nostalgia which have been subject to sustained analysis. French India is thus part of a larger body of research exploring colonial nostalgia both as a general phenomenon and in a specific regional context. However, the corresponding imaginaries in what after its decolonization became the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry have remained marginalized in research. Yet regardless of the frequently naturalized expectation that the colonial metropoles should be its natural habitat, colonial nostalgia is not something that only occurs among the former colonial powers, and colonial nostalgia is in fact expressed in many ways in present-day Puducherry. This ethnographic study shows that if we are to understand the production and roles of colonial nostalgia we need to analyse it not merely from the perspective of the former colonial powers, but also as it occurs in the former colonies. Indeed, we should question how separate such discourses, imaginaries and sentiments of colonial nostalgia are, and redirect our attention to interrogating how they interact and may be coproduced in a broader, often ambiguous post/colonial field where postcolonial interests in the former colony are equally at stake.

Résumé

L’Inde française d’antan, a joué un rôle très particulier, et dans le discours de l’Hexagone concernant l’Inde, et au sein d’une sensibilité de nostalgie coloniale. Ces deux phénomènes ont déjà fait l’objet de maintes études scientifiques. L’Inde française fait donc partie d’un corpus de recherches plus important qui analyse la nostalgie coloniale et comme un acquis général et comme un fait lié à un contexte géographique bien localisé. Cependant, en matière pistes de recherche, les imaginaires de Puducherry, comme ancienne colonie, restent marginalisés. Malgré l’idée reçu que l’Hexagone devrait être sa terre de souches, il s’avère que la nostalgie coloniale se pointe non seulement sur le sol des anciens pays colonisateurs, mais, en l’occurrence, elle se manifeste en plusieurs formes dans le Puducherry actuel. Cette enquête ethnographique montre que, pour éclairer la production de la nostalgie coloniale et les rôles qu’elle impose, il faudrait l’analyser, non seulement du point de vue des anciens pouvoir coloniaux, mais également à travers sa manifestation actuelle dans les anciennes colonies. Il s’agit, en fait, de mettre en question la séparation entre ce discours, ces imaginaires et cette sensibilité de la nostalgie coloniale et de se refaire une idée concernant leur interaction et co-production dans une mentalité post/colonial plus large, et souvent plus ambigu, où les nombreux partis pris postcoloniaux de l’ancienne colonie sont à l’ordre du jour.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • British Academy Leverhulme Small Grants (Award SG162732)
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2022-09-01
2023-06-05
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‘Out through the door and in through the window?’: Positioning colonial nostalgia for French India in Puducherry
International Journal of Francophone Studies 25, 59 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfs_00045_1
/content/journals/10.1386/ijfs_00045_1
/content/journals/10.1386/ijfs_00045_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): colonial heritage; Pondicherry; postcolonial critique; postcolonial development; postcolonial imaginaries; social memory

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