Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies (Jul 2021)
Europe in Front of its Colonial Past. The Question of Historiography
Abstract
This paper employs Paul Ricœur’s insights to examine how European states should approach their colonial past. First, I explore the significance of historical knowledge for people from formerly colonized countries through the views of several anti-colonial thinkers. Then, referring to Ricoeur’s analyses in History and Truth, Time and Narrative and Memory, History, Forgetting, I examine the grounds and the legitimacy, of a historiography of colonization. I argue that European states should make the history of colonization part of their school curricula, as an expression of Europeans’ debt to the victims of the colonial past, and as a way to prevent the repetition of the colonial crimes.
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