Recycling Recognition The Monument as Objet Trouvé of the Postcolony

This article examines the recycling of a colonial memorial to African veterans in Dakar, Senegal. This act of appropriation by the Senegalese government radically transformed the significance of the memorial and reconfigured the city's memoryscape. Whilst the Senegalese government thus reclaime...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of material culture Vol. 13; no. 2; pp. 195 - 214
Main Author De Jong, Ferdinand
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2008
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Colonial history
Cultural heritage
Culture
Memorials
Memory
Monuments
Past
Political History
Postcolonialism
Senegal
Urban areas
Veterans
Africa
monuments
Senegal
Tirailleurs sénégalais
recognition
recyclia
memoryscapes
postcolony
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This article examines the recycling of a colonial memorial to African veterans in Dakar, Senegal. This act of appropriation by the Senegalese government radically transformed the significance of the memorial and reconfigured the city's memoryscape. Whilst the Senegalese government thus reclaimed colonial history as constitutive for the postcolony, it simultaneously underwrote a postcolonial claim for recognition. The article examines this case as indicative for a wider trend to claims for recognition for which recyclia seem to lend themselves par excellence. As objects of mimetic appropriation, colonial memorials can be seen as the objets trouvés of the postcolony.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:1359-1835
1460-3586
DOI:10.1177/1359183508090897