Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Program/Concentration

International Studies

Committee Director

Angelica Huizar

Committee Member

Peter Schulman

Committee Member

Annette Finley-Croswhite

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, how are former colonial powers addressing colonial legacies? Amidst the massive social movements of the pandemic years and greater representations of a new generation of politicians in major elections, the global zeitgeist was increasingly characterized by representation of disenfranchised and previously silenced memories and narratives. These shifts, especially in France, are a sharp contrast to the unofficial historic policy of amnesia maintained regarding traumatic legacies and build on movements that began at the turn of the century. The environment has facilitated an increased ability for cultural products to create, shape, and sustain cultural memories of colonial legacies, specifically those related to Algeria and the three post-colonial diasporic groups living in France, the harkis, the beurs, and the pieds-noirs. Using a constructivist approach informed by memory studies theories, this study proposes that the pandemic era of 2017-2024 is a turning point in France regarding cultural memories of colonial legacies and assesses and compares the ways that political cultural products and literary cultural products create, shape, and sustain cultural memories of the three post-colonial groups. A methodological framework informed by the cultural memory theories of Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, John Czaplicka, and Ann Rigney is employed to evaluate political products and literary products related to the harkis, the beurs, and the pieds-noirs produced in the pandemic era, the ways that the cultural memory specialists that create them use fixed points to create, shape, and sustain cultural memory, and the ability of memory to become more firmly rooted in society in ways that make it more influential. Conclusions drawn from the analysis indicate that, in France, the combination of archival memory and an active memory focus on colonial legacies has created conditions that equip cultural memory specialists to make progress in reclaiming cultural memories, but progress is measured. Political products have a wider reach but are still limited in their ability to supersede the constraints that typically structure cultural memory production. Literary products represent more unrestrained cultural memory reclamation in the three groups but tend to have a smaller audience than political products. I propose that enduring memories are more likely to be those charged with emotion that are represented in both political and literary products. The persistence of fully reclaimed cultural memories and, in turn, their ability to influence policy, norms, and many parts of society, is still hindered. The pandemic era is a turning point in the reclamation of cultural memories in France of the harkis, the beurs, and the pieds-noirs, but reclamation of cultural memories that will further recognition, reconciliation, and healing continues to be a measured process.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.25777/3k4f-h390

ISBN

9798197810540

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