Creole Citizens of France: The Trans-Atlantic Politics of Antillean Education and the Creole Movement since 1945.

[摘要] This dissertation explores the debates about Creole’s place in the French nation and public education in late twentieth-century France.In 1946, Antilleans became French citizens when the French government decided to change Guadeloupe and Martinique’s political status from colonies to overseas departments (DOM).Republican education and the dissemination of French was the means through which DOM and education officials sought to protect France’s national culture and assimilate Antilleans’ Creole culture and language into the nation.In contrast, Antillean Creole activists envisioned a culturally diverse France.They struggled to reshape the national curriculum, and ultimately the French nation, so that it included their Creole culture and language. Through an examination of Antilleans’ specific case and how they used the Creole debates to argue for the right to difference, this dissertation explores the complexities of the discussions about diversity in France.Recently, historians have challenged the myth of a colorblind Republic, arguing that questions of race and ethnicity have shaped the French nation.While one group of scholars argues that exclusion occurred from the failure of state officials to live up to the lofty ideals of republican equality, the other group claims that inequality and exclusion developed as a part of republicanism. This dissertation argues that republican assimilation was not a monolithic policy that either entirely included or excluded difference from the nation.Rather, Antillean activists and the Ministries of the DOM and Education negotiated the terms of Antilleans’ assimilation and the extent to which the Creole culture and language was included in public classrooms and the nation.Antilleans’ demands for cultural inclusion forced DOM and education officials to carve out a space for difference, and more specifically, Creole, in the nation.I argue that it was these debates about the ;;Creole question” that challenged the republican definition of a French citizen as an individual divested of all particular and group affiliations. In highlighting Antilleans’ struggle to be both French and Creole, I contend that government policies concerning the right to difference were not only shaped by state ministries, but also by the actions of Antilleans on both sides of the Atlantic.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Antillean Migration

[关键词] Postcolonial France;Antillean Migration;Creole Movement;Postcolonial Immigration;History (General);Humanities;History