The commemoration of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas in Paris offers a striking lens through which to examine the intersection of history, memory, and the ongoing reckoning with colonial legacies. Focusing on three key phases of his memorialization – from the 1912 ghostly statue, melted during the Occupation, to the 2009 towering shackles, and finally, to the forthcoming resurrection of the military officer – this study explores how these shifts reflect the complexities of public memory, emphasizing the broader societal and political tensions inherent in the selective commemorative process. By analyzing the semiotics and artistic choices behind these monuments, the article argues that the 2009 statue, while engaging with postcolonial discourse, confines Dumas’s legacy to a reductive narrative of victimhood, raising concerns about how Black and Brown figures are often commemorated in ways that highlight their suffering rather than their contributions. Ultimately, this analysis underscores the power of public monuments in shaping collective historical memory and exposes how contemporary needs often influence the representation of historical figures and their impact on national consciousness.
This article offers a novel intervention in decolonial museology by foregrounding animal representation and natural history collections as critical yet overlooked sites of epistemological violence in Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA). Drawing on interdisciplinary methods, including site visits, digital analysis, and theoretical frameworks from Critical Animal Studies, colonial historiography, and decolonial thought, it demonstrates how the RMCA's post-renovation exhibitions continue to reproduce colonial logics through the curatorial treatment of animal bodies. By extending decolonial critique beyond anthropocentric frameworks, this article challenges prevailing approaches to institutional decolonization and expands the conversation to include multispecies colonial entanglements. Cet article constitue une intervention originale en mus & eacute;ologie d & eacute;coloniale en mettant en lumi & egrave;re la repr & eacute;sentation animale et les collections d'histoire naturelle comme sites critiques, mais largement n & eacute;glig & eacute;s, de violence & eacute;pist & eacute;mologique au sein du Mus & eacute;e royal de l'Afrique centrale (MRAC) en Belgique. En mobilisant une m & eacute;thodologie interdisciplinaire incluant des visites de terrain, l'analyse des dispositifs num & eacute;riques, et des cadres th & eacute;oriques issus des & eacute;tudes animales critiques, de l'historiographie coloniale et de la pens & eacute;e d & eacute;coloniale, l'& eacute;tude montre comment les expositions post-r & eacute;novation du MRAC continuent de reproduire des logiques coloniales & agrave; travers le traitement mus & eacute;al des corps animaux. En d & eacute;passant les approches anthropocentriques, cet article appelle & agrave; repenser la d & eacute;colonisation institutionnelle en y int & eacute;grant les dimensions multispecies des h & eacute;ritages coloniaux.
Fatima Daas’s debut novel, La Petite Dernière ( The Last One ), has been both lauded and attacked for its autofictional representation of a Muslim lesbian growing up in Paris’s marginalized suburbs. Analyses of this work have focused on the protagonist Fatima’s multi-faceted identity as a young woman struggling to reconcile her faith and sexuality. This article shifts the focus from identity to affect by putting La Petite Dernière in dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s theorization of emotion’s social functions. The novel’s reception showcases the limited cultural narratives available to queer Muslim subjects: either reject faith and find fulfillment in individual freedom or reconcile it harmoniously with queerness. Daas expands these possibilities through a “poetics of ambivalence” that exposes the complexity and discomfort of Fatima’s feelings without offering tidy resolutions. Fatima discovers that ambivalence, when shared with a partner, is more than a mere cause of social isolation, and can become the basis of a meaningful relationship. Ultimately, literary explorations of bad feelings can provide minoritized authors with a subtle form of resistance to the affective demands of sexual nationalisms.
