Agostino Brunias, Free Women of Color with their Children and Servants in a Landscap, Dominica.
Oil on canvas. c. 1770s
France’s History of Slavery
and its Postcolonial Legacies in
Politics , Literature and Film
A lecture by professor
Madeleine Dobie
Associate Professor of French,
Columbia University
Tuesday, April 3, at 5:30 pm
Sanders Classroom 212
Spitzer Auditorium
Sponsors- Department of French and Francophone Studies, Office of the Dean
of Faculty, History Department and the C. Mildred Thompson fund, Political Science
Department, The Africana Studies Program
The practice of slavery was subject to repression in seventeenth/eighteenth-century French culture, and
this repression (or displacement onto adjacent subjects) has had enduring repercussions. Only since
1998 has the history of slavery become a topic of public debate in France, even though many aspects of
the relationship between France and the French Caribbean today reflect past configurations, e.g. the
oscillation between mercantilism and Liberalism in economic policy. The distinctive French republican
take on race, claimed as a legitimate contestation of the existence of race, can also be regarded as a denial
of the history of racism, and especially of slavery. This talk will present various commemorative events/
debates that have unfolded over the last 15 years, as well as the political platforms of several new Antillean
associations based in France. It will also consider the belated return to slavery in French mass media,
notably the tv miniseries Tropiques amers (Bitter Tropics, 2007) (the first French tv show to address the
history of slavery, some 20 years after Roots aired in the US), and the feature film Case départ (2011).
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact the
Campus Activities Office, 845 437-5370.