The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France
Elizabeth EzraIn her lively book, Elizabeth Ezra interprets a fascinating array of cultural products to uncover what she terms the colonial unconscious of the Jazz Age--the simultaneous attraction & repulsion of exoticism & the double bind of a colonial discourse that foreclosed the possibility of the very assimilation it invited.Ezra situates the apotheosis of French colonialism in relation to both the internal tensions of the colonial project & the competing imperialisms of Great Britain & the United States.
Examining both the uses & the limits of psychoanalytic theories of empire, she proposes a reading of French colonialism which, while historically specific, also contributes to our understanding of contemporary culture. The enduring legacy of empire is felt to this day, as Ezra demonstrates in a provocative epilogue on the remarkable similarities between the rhetoric of colonial France & accounts of the French victory in the 1998 World Cup.