The French Imperial Nation-State
Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars
Gary Wilder develops a sophisticated account of the contradictory character of colonial government and examines the cultural nationalism of Negritude as a multifaceted movement rooted in an alternative black public sphere. He argues that interwar France must be understood as an imperial nation-state—an integrated sociopolitical system that linked a parliamentary republic to an administrative empire. An interdisciplinary study of colonial modernity combining French history, colonial studies, and social theory, The French Imperial Nation-State will compel readers to revise conventional assumptions about the distinctions between republicanism and racism, metropolitan and colonial societies, and national and transnational processes.
“In this strikingly original work, Gary Wilder combines archival research, political theory, and literary analysis to issue a decisive challenge to reigning approaches to the study of French history. The result is a book remarkable both for its far-reaching theoretical implications in colonial studies and for the humane way it illuminates the dilemmas and engagements of a fascinating generation of thinkers.”--Laurent Dubois, Michigan State University
“Wilder accomplishes what is rare enough in the new imperial history: he deftly illustrates both the constitutive impact of colonial modernity on metropolitan forms and the centrality of people of African descent to the story of European political and cultural development. His emphasis on the disjointed character of the imperial nation-state is as provocative as it is original, making this book a must-read for students of national, colonial, and postcolonial histories."--Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“An exemplary piece of scholarship. Starting from an interest in French colonial history, Wilder seeks to reframe the way we think about the history of modern France as a whole. The author lays out a sophisticated theoretical framework that is both original and well grounded in several intellectual fields.”--Tyler Stovall, University of California, Berkeley
“Gary Wilder’s historical anthropology of the French imperial nation-state is the work of a truly gifted scholar. It evinces quite an extraordinary mix of imagination, critical acuity, theoretical subtlety, and empirical depth. It is, in short, a fine history and an exceptional anthropology that is highly relevant to our understanding of both European nation-states and the U.S. imperium at the dawn of the twenty-first century.”--John Comaroff, University of Chicago
“This highly original book is a major intervention on the scholarship of empire, race, colonialism, nationhood, and modernity. Meticulous in its detail, provocative, and imaginative in its interpretations, it identifies the key issues of administration, government, and citizenship to illuminate the cross-cutting currents that shaped both France and her African colonial empire.”
Part 1: The Imperial Nation-State
1. Introduction: Working through the Imperial Nation-State
2. Framing Greater France: A Real Abstraction
Part 2: Colonial Humanism
3. Toward a New Colonial Rationality: Welfare, Science, Administration
4. A Doubled and Contradictory Form of Government
5. Temporality, Nationality, Citizenship
Part 3: African Humanism
6. Negritude I: Practicing Citizenship in Imperial Paris
7. Negritude II: Cultural Nationalism
8. Negritude III: Critique of (Colonial) Reason
Conclusion: Legacies of the Imperial Nation-State
Notes
Bibliography
Index
History: African History | European History
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