Memory at Issue: On Slavery and the Slave Trade among Black French

The issue of memory has drawn a great deal of attention in the social sciences. In France, in keeping with a sociological tradition that deems the nation-state and the dominant groups to be those worthy of study, the literature is essentially made up of studies of either national memory or of the memories of people of European descent. Perhaps the memory of black French people, especially in the emblematic issue of the slave trade and slavery, is the least investigated among studies of memory in France. Yet, concurrently with the recent effort of black French to appropriate this chapter of their past, beginning in 1998 with their commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the second abolition of slavery in territories under French jurisdiction, social scientists have begun to reflect on this commemorative dynamic. This article examines the mnemonic entrepreneurship and discourses of people of African descent in mainland France through the remembrance of slavery and the slave trade. The author argues that the memory claims of black French are part of an autonomous political entrepreneurship whose ultimate objective is the recovery of humanity for black people.