Saaz Taher (Université du Québec à Montréal), former postdoctoral student at the CRÉ, publishes a new article entitled “Memory Politics and Stories of Erasure: Studying the Debates on Switzerland’s Colonial Heritage”. The article is part of a special issue of the journal Sociologie et Sociétés titled “Approches critiques de la diversité en éducation: regards transnationaux” and is available in open-access.

Abstract

In 2020, in the wake of the antiracist movement, several western countries saw public critiques of statues of historical figures linked to the slave trade, colonialism and racism. Some groups called for their removal, believing that it was necessary to question this colonial heritage, while others saw such a choice as erasing history and spoke out against the imposition of “woke” ideology. What ideological framework is shaping debate on memory and colonial heritage in Switzerland ? Who holds the authority to validate or challenge this heritage, and under what conditions ? Using the concepts of white ignorance and the epistemology of resistance (Mills, 1997 ; Medina, 2013), this analysis studies public discourse on the removal of statues in two French-speaking Swiss cantons between 2020 and 2022. It shows how this discourse generates epistemological violence, invisibilizing the voices of Black communities and marginalizing anti-racist perspectives on colonial memory.