The Bagne as Memory Site: From Colonial Reportage to Postcolonial Traces-Mémoires

Abstract

This chapter explores the contested place of the bagne—or penal colony —in the postcolonial memoryscapes of the Francosphere. It outlines the history of the institution, presented as one of geographical displacement of places of incarceration originally towards a colonial periphery. Focusing on the case of French Guiana, the chapter then studies the role of literature in creating specific meanings for the prison colony. It draws on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century travel writing by authors including Frédéric Bouyer and Albert Londres, and contrasts these with accounts by Caribbean authors such as Léon-Gontran Damas. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the photo-essay about the bagne by Patrick Chamoiseau and Rodolphe Hammadi, and detects in this the emergence of new practices and poetics of memory.