La violence coloniale. Enjeux d’une description et choix d’écriture

• Main Author: Raphaëlle Branche
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: ENS Éditions 2010-11-01
• Series: Tracés
• Subjects: colonial violence; historian; language; quotation; sources
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/traces/4866

This paper deals with choices that historians make in their work and their writing. It asserts the need for historical work that inserts violence in a broader social, political and cultural context. The identification of a specific form of violence called « colonial violence » leads to a reflection on the nature of the colonial situation and on how the original violence of the conquest still impacts on everybody. However, pointing out the specificities of colonial violence does not mean suggesting there are specificities in the way one writes about it. The description of colonial violence has to do with the selection of words and the organisation of evidence. The author details the choices she usually makes regarding these two aspects, thereby outlining what is at stake in such a description.