INTERVIEW
Statues of King Leopold II in Belgium, others of Winston Churchill and even Edward Colston in the United Kingdom have been debunked or vandalized in recent days. A phenomenon also observed in the United States during the anti-racism demonstrations that have spread since the death of George Floyd, smothered by a police officer on May 25. A phenomenon "shocking" for the historian Jean-Pierre Guéno, according to which it is not the good solution even even "a negation of the history very clumsy". "We summon history, we manipulate it, we tamper with it and we erase it. And that is not doing us a service because history lights up the present and the future."
>> Find all of Raphaëlle Duchemin's programs in replay and podcast here
The debunking of the statue of Edward Colston by anti-racist activists in Bristol, England on June 7 has been widely commented. Some accuse the demonstrators of intolerance, while others praise a militant act making history. For Jean-Pierre Guéno, we should not hide the story of these characters: "Edward Colston, it's Doctor Jeykill and Mister Hide. We know the slave trader who made his fortune with the transport of 80,000 slaves from Africa But he is also a great patron who was the benefactor of the city of Bristol ", certainly with" very dirty "money. Same observation for Winston Churchill, on the front line against the German invasion during the Second World War but which "was not very clear during the colonial wars".
"Jules Ferry wrote horrors but we must not erase them"
Jean-Pierre Guéno also takes the example of Jules Ferry, instigator of compulsory schooling for all in France, but also theorist of raciology in the 1970s. "He wrote horrors, but it is important not to delete, "he says. "We have made tons of them about decolonization, it remains to bear the memory of colonization, which is something terrible." Jean-Pierre Guéno presents an alternative to these acts of vandalism against statues: "It would be enough to move them, to put them in museums. Even those of monstrous people like Hitler or Stalin deserve to be put in museums. publish Hitler's monstrous works like Mein Kampf . "
"It is better to burst abscesses"
Everything is ultimately a question of contextualization for the historian who explains that "if we take the characters out of their context we no longer understand anything and we mix everything". The historian's work then takes on its full meaning by playing its role of memory and decryption for the next generations. "It is better to burst abscesses. In France, we are not very good at that. There are points in history that bother us. The word 'war' is always taboo about Algeria for example. We're still talking about a pacification operation. "