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Prologue

Faidherbe Must Fall

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2022

Ferdinand De Jong
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin
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Summary

The Prologue discusses the fall of the statue of General Louis Faidherbe in Saint-Louis, Senegal. The statue was placed in the main square of Saint-Louis in 1886 but was toppled in 2017. Although the perpetrators of this act of iconoclasm were unknown, the toppling of the statue was acclaimed by some of the town’s population. The mayor of Saint-Louis nonetheless restored the statue to its former position, defending the colonial heritage of a city that owes its existence to the French empire. However, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the statue of Faidherbe once again became the subject of heated debates in the national media. Considered by some as the founder of modern Senegal, others denounce Faidherbe as a perpetrator of colonial violence. The Prologue examines how the legacy of this key figure in the history of colonialism is assessed today. Considering the question of responsibility as key to this debate, the Prologue questions the usefulness of the categories of perpetrators and victims in the history of colonialism. Following Michael Rothberg, it studies the decolonization of heritage using his concept of implicated subjects.

Type
Chapter
Information
Decolonizing Heritage
Time to Repair in Senegal
, pp. 1 - 12
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Prologue
  • Ferdinand De Jong, Freie Universität Berlin
  • Book: Decolonizing Heritage
  • Online publication: 10 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086189.001
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  • Prologue
  • Ferdinand De Jong, Freie Universität Berlin
  • Book: Decolonizing Heritage
  • Online publication: 10 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086189.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Prologue
  • Ferdinand De Jong, Freie Universität Berlin
  • Book: Decolonizing Heritage
  • Online publication: 10 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009086189.001
Available formats
×