Black Lives Matter in Paris 1771 and 2021 Monuments Made, Unmade, and Not Made

This article reads the contemporary monument conflicts connected to the Black Lives Matter movement in France alongside the erection and destruction of fictional monuments in a bestselling utopian novel from three centuries ago: Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rêve s’...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRepresentations (Berkeley, Calif.) Vol. 167; no. 1; pp. 127 - 154
Main Author Anna Jörngården Galili
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berkeley University of California Press Books Division 01.08.2024
Subjects
Black Lives Matter movement
Colonialism
Nationalism
Novels
Slavery
France
Paris France
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Summary:This article reads the contemporary monument conflicts connected to the Black Lives Matter movement in France alongside the erection and destruction of fictional monuments in a bestselling utopian novel from three centuries ago: Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rêve s’il en fût jamais (1771). The article throws light on how contemporary BLM interventions in the cityscape respond to still unresolved issues regarding the meaning of liberté, egalité, and fraternité in relation to colonialism, nationalism, and race; examines the discursive mechanisms behind the history of slavery becoming notoriously unremembered in France; and, in conclusion, considers the unrealized utopian potentiality of Mercier’s novel in relation to the most recent projects to memorialize slavery in Paris.
ISSN:0734-6018
1533-855X
DOI:10.1525/rep.2024.167.5.127