Memory and influence on the Web: French colonial repatriates from 1950 to the present

Abstract

The conception of historical time is currently undergoing a profound shift owing to recent innovations in communication technology. By becoming familiar to 21st-century man, the Internet has accompanied the assertion of ‘an era of memories’, which, since the beginning of the 1990s, has directly opposed the production of historical knowledge. The analysis and mapping of websites of repatriates from territories formerly under French colonial rule, including sites of French repatriates from Algeria, offers a unique perspective on the memorial forms of activism and the exploitation of political powers that has taken place as a result of this technological shift. This article describes the actions of these ‘entrepreneurs of memory’, who, despite their significant differences, nevertheless exploit the government and impose a partisan narrative. This deconstructionist approach to the Web allows historians, on the one hand, to understand the modes of memorial activism that frame a subject of study and, on the other, to analyse their subject of study without facing media constraints.