Heidi Bojsen  (Roskilde University)
Burning Paris and Boycotting Denmark: On colonial pasts, postcolonial presents and the prospects of a performative and contrapuntal postcolonial historiography

In the article "DissemiNation" (1990) Homi Bhabha invites the reader to consider the nation as a sign. Rather than discussing what the concept of the nation may refer to, the transferral into a sign allows for a closer semiotic scrutiny of how 'nation' acquires its meaning in text, speech and through political, social and cultural practice. This paper will discuss in which way Bhabha's notion of disjunctive temporality (the performative and the pedagogical) may be useful as an analytical tool for those sections of postcolonial scholarly work that try to re-narrate colonial history and its repercussions in contemporary conceptualisations of the nation. I will be referring to two very distinct examples. Both reveal how conceptualisations of the 'nation and of colonial legacy are very much influenced by globalising processes.

At first, I will discuss some of the arguments that have been presented by French historians and political scientists in the ongoing debate about colonial heritage, postcolonial issues and the conceptualisation of the French national (republican?) identity (L'esclavage, la colonisation et après. (2005) La fracture coloniale (2005) and others).

My argument will be while much brilliant work is drawing on knowledge about colonial history in the attempt to scrutinize contemporary postcolonial predicaments, it still follows historiographic approaches that largely rely on the logics of cause and consequence. One may say that this work is post-colonial in the sense that it stays within a linear chronological order. While such an approach certainly has its assets, I will argue that postcolonial theory (without the hyphan) - represented in this paper by Bhabha's 'semiotic twist' or 'contained deconstruction' as well as a discussion of Edward Said's contrapuntal reading (Culture and Imperialism) - may add productively to the investigation of immigration and postcolonial issues that are being carried out by historians and political scientists.

My second example refers to the Danish colonial history and the ongoing debate on immigration and Danish national identity. Despite the fact that Greenland and the Ferry Islands are still under Danish rule, the impact of Danish colonial history has been safely contained in national historiography as one of the exotic curious institutions of the past. Using the current stir about the satirical drawings of the Prophet Mohammed that were published in an important Danish newspaper in September 2005, I will be applying the notions of 'disjunctive temporality' and 'contrapuntal reading' first, to establish the link between 'Danish national amnesia' on colonial history and the satirical representation in the newspaper; next, to discuss the reactions to the drawings in Denmark, France and the Middle East.