By Sabine CessouPosted on 13-10-2019Modified on 13-10-2019 at 10:58

It is one of the most critical voices, in France, on the question of the colonial past, but not necessarily one of the most listened to. His latest book, Deadly Enemies, returns to the construction of the pejorative images of Islam and Muslims.

A bombshell ? This is not really the effect sought by the French political scientist Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison with his new book, Deadly Enemies, Representations of Islam and Muslim Policies in France in the Colonial Period , to be released October 17 at La Découverte . This book is timely, yet there are so many polemics, especially about the hate speech of columnist and essayist Eric Zemmour .

Away from yet another essay written in a hurry, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison wants on the contrary "to take as much time as possible to reflect on subjects that are the subject of prejudices, opinions and gossip provided by those who do not know much about Islam or the origins of learned French Islamophobia ". His book opens with the words of a renowned historian Ernest Renan, one of the many men to have shaped a collective imagination.

The heavy toll of a country "in peace" after 1945

Born in 1960, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison is a regular of robust debates. He takes part through his blog on the Mediapart website, or sometimes by petition, as the call he launched in 2017 for the recognition of all the colonial crimes committed by France. It was signed by 3,250 people, including Achille Mbembe, with no concrete result. " We were expecting it ," says Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison. We do not engage in a fight because we will win, but because we think it is necessary at a given moment. Resistance is important because it calls into question the national mythology of the Republic, like that of great men and partisan mythologies of certain political formations. "

It often reminds him: France is not at peace after 1945. At the Sétif massacre are added those of Madagascar in 1947, the beginning of the Algerian war in 1954 and the Indochina war. He does accounts that should be known, but still are not. " The toll of massacres and colonial wars after 1945, 1 million deaths, exceeds that of the Second World War in France, 600,000 dead, military, resistant and civilians. To say that France is at peace after 1945 is a partial, partial and partly obscene proposition .

Committed, he considers being as a citizen, first and foremost. " The objects of my commitments are often related to research objects and not the other way around, " he says. After a thesis on citizenship issues under the French Revolution, he first taught constitutional and public law at the University of Maine (Le Mans). For the past ten years, he has directed the Master's degree " International Cooperation and Solidarity " at the University of Evry-Val d'Essonne. He has also directed and participated in several seminars on political philosophy at the International Philosophical College (IPHC) in Paris.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a Pandora's Box

How did he fall into the colonial cauldron? The study of the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, written between 1837 and 1847 on Algeria, led him to open a Pandora's box. " Like many of his contemporaries, Tocqueville has defended the particularly brutal methods of war that he deems essential to overcome the" Arabs, "said Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison. I thought I would write an article about these little studied aspects of his work and his activities. Because of the breadth of the subject, several books have been published. "

The first, colonizing, exterminating: On War and the Colonial State (Fayard, 2005), has been well received by many historians and jurists, but also polemics that the author did not expect. " I naively thought I had taken all the methodological and literary precautions to avoid them as much as possible. It was partly unsuccessful. "Target of personal attacks, it commits the wrong to tackle the" unthought colonial "- this story is not taught and so little known in France. His second book, The Imperial Republic: Politics and State Racism (Fayard, 2009), retraces how, between 1885 and 1913, the Third Republic made France the second colonial power in the world and one of the first " powers at the time, because of his possessions in the Maghreb, French West Africa (AOF) and his mandate in Syria and Lebanon instituted by the League of Nations in 1920.

Detractors among historians

With De l'indigénat, anatomy of a juridical "monster": colonial law in Algeria and in the French empire (La Découverte, 2010), it highlights " the differentiated, even racist, law practiced by the Third Republic in colonies where the exception is the rule, in contradiction with republican principles . Once again, he is criticized by some, who reproach him half-heartedly for not having a training of historian, but also to debase the republican dream of France. According to the historian Isabelle Merle, quoted in the Wikipédia fact sheet largely dependent on Olivier the Court Grandmaison, the " expeditious nature " of the analysis passes " in silence the contradictions, disputes, tensions that also characterized this colonial regime ." His answer: " A number of historians have a mentality of customs, not to say policeman. You have to present your historian's passport. I have the weakness to believe that the colonial past is a historical object, which does not belong only to historians and that it must be approached with the concern to make history, certainly, but also history of law and political categories. "

Straight in his boots, he persists and signs with L'empire des hygiénistes. Living in the colonies (Fayard, 2014), then his latest work, Ennemis mortals , which came to him in a logical way, like the others, after having touched whole areas of the past, which he then seeks to better search. "The more I advanced in my research to understand the imperial policy of France, the more it seemed to me indispensable to integrate the religious variable. Especially since the contemporaries of colonization have given an important place to Islam, in the way they thought the colonized societies .

The author believes that the debates in France are " behind " compared to the United States and the United Kingdom, because of the " political uses of colonial history ". He explained: " France is the only country where a majority, right in this case, has seen fit to vote a law establishing an official and apologetic interpretation of this story. It is the law of February 23, 2005. Act rogue, because, except to disregard the democratic principles that are his, the state can not intervene in this area, and whatever the subjects. This law is still in force! In addition, the right-wing leaders are engaged in a kind of overbidding determined by electoral considerations in a context of radicalization on the right and return of the great national novel. All with the support of several intellectuals and media essayists like Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Zemmour and Pascal Bruckner. "

    On the same subject

    The colonial past is still under debate in the Netherlands

    UN suggests Belgium apologize for its colonial past

    comments