Recycling Recognition

The Monument as Objet Trouvé of the Postcolony

Bibliographic Data

ID2390910
AuthorsFerdinand De Jong (0000-0001-9499-2546, University of East Anglia, UK, f.jong @uea.ac.uk, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume13
Issue2
Pages195-214
Publication date2008-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183508090897
OpenAlexW2135617019
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited25

This article examines the recycling of a colonial memorial to African veterans in Dakar, Senegal. This act of appropriation by the Senegalese government radically transformed the significance of the memorial and reconfigured the city's memoryscape. Whilst the Senegalese government thus reclaimed colonial history as constitutive for the postcolony, it simultaneously underwrote a postcolonial claim for recognition. The article examines this case as indicative for a wider trend to claims for recognition for which recyclia seem to lend themselves par excellence. As objects of mimetic appropriation, colonial memorials can be seen as the objets trouvés of the postcolony

Appropriation · Archaeology · Colonialism · Epistemology · Excellence · Government (linguistics · Linguistics · Political science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Identity and Heritage · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy