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9780822322948 Academic Inspection Copy

Monsters and Revolutionaries

Colonial Family Romance and Metissage
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The author analyzes the complex relationship between the coloniser and colonized on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. Through novels, iconography, and texts from various disciplines including law, medicine and psychology, she constructs a political and cultural history of the island's relations with France. The text argues that the central dynamic in the colonial family romance is that of debt and dependence. Following a 17th-century French colonial decree, Reunion abolished slavery in 1848, and Verges explains how the republican ideals of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment are seen as gifts that can never be repaid. This dynamic is complicated by the presence of Metissage, a source of anxiety to the colonizer in its refutation of the "purity" of racial bloodlines. Woven throughout is Verges's own family history, which is intimately tied to the history of Reunion itself.
FranCoise VergEs is a Lecturer at the School of European Studies at the University of Sussex. She recently collaborated with Isaac Julien on a film about Frantz Fanon.
Illustrations ix Preface: Bitter Sugar's Island xi Acknowledgments xix The Family Romance of French Colonialism and MEtissage 1 Contested Family Romances: Slaves, Workers, Children 22 Blood Politics and Political Assimilation 72 "OtE DebrE, rouver la port lenfer, Diab kominis i sa rentrE": Cold War Demonology in the Postcolony 123 Single Mothers, Missing Fathers, and French Psychiatrists 185 Epilogue: A Small Island 246 Notes 251 Bibliography 353 Index 389
"[Verges's] richly textured exploration of 'metissage' as a discursive strategy of identification, assimilation and resistance is driven by a fluent engagement with concepts drawn from contemporary criticism, history, psychoanalysis and philosophy and has the broadest implications right across the postcolonial world. A major and innovative study that will shape the field" Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor, The Open University and Goldsmith's College, University of London "A brilliant piece of work... Monsters and Revolutionaries promises to be an important intervention in the fields of political history and postcolonial discourse." Ali Behdad, University of California at Los Angeles
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