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So it would seem that these interventions have no legitimacy and a campaign is launched to maintain an interpretation of history that seeks to preserve an image of France to guarantee national unity (a national conception of history shared by Left and Right alike). In this narrative, the entire colonial experience is part of a linear progression in which history is apparently divided into “pages of light and shadow”, a meaningless expression that transforms it into a landscape darkened by occasional patches of cloud. But these shadowy areas, to pursue the metaphor a little further, are inhabited not just by the ghosts of the dead but by the living as well. They are not empty spaces where a little light is all it takes to liven up the landscape. These ghosts and living beings do not exist “outside” the national territory; they are just as entitled to live there as those who declare themselves official citizens. It will not be enough simply to expose these shadowy areas to the light: we need to understand how they have been constituted, how and why their inhabitants came to live there, how and why their inhabitants have got to a point where they are demanding the right to return to the metropolis, or to build a new one.
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