Rather than dismantling the statues of controversial historical figures or renaming the streets, it would be better to erect on the same places, in response, monuments dedicated to other figures in order to "look History in the face". This was suggested on Monday by the entourage of Emmanuel Macron.
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The president's advisers were asked about the words of government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye, who wanted to "ask the question" to rename Avenue Bugeaud in Paris, which bears the name of the French general responsible for the massacre of many Algerians in XIXth century.
Need to "recontextualize"
"It is not a question of renaming the avenue Bugeaud but why not a monument addressed to the emir Abdelkader - whom Bugeaud fought - who was detained at the castle of Amboise", commented an adviser. "Why not a statue of Emile Zola in front of that of Paul Déroulède", founder in 1882 of the Ligue des Patriotes, anti-Dreyfus movement. "It is necessary to seize the memory of these characters, it is not a question of erasing what they were but of recontextualizing", one explains from the same source.
"Extremist groups try to impose a binary vision of Puritan history and attack republican symbols and the values of the Republic. This attempt to import an intersectional vision of memory cannot be compatible with a Republican memory shared by all, "say relatives of the president, worried about the deterioration this weekend of statues of General de Gaulle and Gambetta.
A bust of Charles de Gaulle vandalized
A bust of Charles de Gaulle was vandalized in Hautmont, in the North, with the word "slavery" inscribed in red paint, reported Hauts-de-France region president Xavier Bertrand on Twitter. Last Saturday, during the demonstration in memory of Adama Traoré, demonstrators wanted to target the statue installed in front of the Assembly of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, author of the Code noir.
Emmanuel Macron had already declared Sunday that it would be "intractable in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination" but that "this noble fight is misused when it turns into communitarianism, into hateful or false rewriting of the past".
"The Republic will not erase any trace or any name from its History. The Republic will not unbolt a statue. We should rather lucidly look together at all of our History, all of our memories," he had declared.