This text is a multi-faceted analysis – economic, symbolic, and ideological – of the destruction of monuments commemorating white historical figures such as Josephine de Beauharnais and Victor Schœlcher in the summer of 2020 in French overseas departments. Violence, racism, the logics of repentance, and revolutionary elements indicate the existence of a significant crisis in the Fifth Republic and, perhaps, announce a new order. The text also contains the hypothesis that acts of vandalism are part of the global tendency to reject the colonial past.
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.