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The past as it lives now: an anthropology of colonial legacies1

2008; Wiley; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1469-8676.2008.00050.x

1469-8676

Benoît de L’Estoile,

African Studies and Ethnography

The past as it lives now: an anthropology of colonial legacies 1Notre héritage n'est précédé d'aucun testament.(René Char)The colonial past is present in our world in many ways, some conspicuous, some unnoticed.In Europe, as in formerly colonised countries around the globe, it is embodied in material culture, in monuments, architecture, libraries, archives and museum collections, in alimentary diet, dress and music, but also in continuing flows of commodities, images and people.In perhaps less tangible but no less crucial ways, it shapes politics, economics, artistic and intellectual life, linguistic practices, forms of belonging or international relations.It informs the rhetoric and the categories mobilised when Europeans deal with migrants from other continents, define standards of good governance or conceive development projects, or when people outside Europe deal with European tourists, businessmen, NGO workers or anthropologists.The presence of the past is also a field of contest.Far from there having today a shared vision of the colonial past, conflicting memories and narratives divide scholars, but also those who somehow define themselves in relationship to the colonial moment. 2 Exploring this double mode of presence of the past offers anthropologists a wide field of inquiry.The articles brought together in this issue may be seen as contributions to an anthropology of colonial legacies, which I will try to outline here.3 In a recent overview by a political scientist (Chevallier, 2007) 'héritage colonial' is used as a synonym to 'séquelles coloniales' (sequel in the medical sense of long-term after-effects of a pathology).4 Imperialism was of course not a uniquely European feature.Empire has been a very common form of rule, from the Roman to the Aztec, from Russia to the Mali, to the Ottoman or Chinese.Comparing these various imperial experiences is fascinating, but I want to concentrate here on the relations of Europe and other continents.