ANNA MADOEUF ACROSS THE CITY READING THE MÛLID-S IN EGYPT

published or not. The documents may come

Across the City. Reading the mûlid-s in Egypt

series of places that assume innovative functions. In this multiplied landscape, sketches and realisations reveal the practices of the participants that share the same places, in a subtle game of proximity and distance, vicinity and separation. In these events, different possible readings of the nature of public space are possible, especially with reference to the practice of a crowded common space. Yet, the mawlids are not at the core of the city's life, neither symbolically nor politically. Instead, they may be read for their multiple social, spatial, temporal and symbolic marginality.

Unofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in:

BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62 The mûlid (an Egyptian word corresponding to mawlid-mawalid, in Arabic: "anniversary") is a celebration in honour of a saint, organized around the mausoleum devoted to him every year1 . Mûlid literally means "celebration". However, in the common sense, the word also reminds of a big crowd of people in the same place.

The analogy and the reference in the newspaper al-Dostûr do not seem illogical (Mehrez, 2012) in suggesting a comparison between the unprecedented revolutionary protest that was upsetting the square in Egypt and the celebrations traditionally held in the Mûlid.

During the XX century, though being different, the Egyptian governments have shared the common feature of declaring illegal any form of protest. In this context, the mûlids have always represented rare and recurring legal opportunities of gathering crowds, even if these have often been authorized subject to the constant control of the authorities and, in some cases, even forbidden nonetheless 2 . In agreement with Hannah Arendt's clue (1989), according to which the public space can be considered as a «potential space of appearance gathering men in speech and action», we can see these events as forms of public space: a short lived but -given the cyclic nature of these celebrations-also recurrent one. It is definitely for their subtle and public feature that authorities (even the governmental and religious ones) have always carefully dealt with the mûlids, if not with sheer suspicion.

The impossibility to banish or abolish pilgrimages and feasts like the mûlids has not prevented authorities from trying to control, thwart, canalize, elude, censure or minimize them so drastically as to get to their complete suppression. Chronologically, the last of these numberless attempts to control this phenomenon -increased in the last period of Mubarak's regime (Singerman, Amar, 2006; Schielke, 2009) -was reported in the measures taken by the government in 2009, during the avian influenza (H1N1); measures explicitly forbidding the mûlids, among which the Zaynab's in Cairo, being organized just at the time.

Although the prohibition was apparently justified by sanitary reasons, the result was that, for the repressive Mubarak's regime, the risk of an "epidemic" represented mostly an excuse to banish gatherings that could raise much more than a simple fear of a mere contagion.

The mûlids are feasts and pilgrimages at the same time; a single word that reminds hybrid and manifold situations, reassembled in a uniquely signifying concept. The mûlids are moments of excitement and representation; events that put together pilgrims coming from the interior and inhabitants of the capital city, onlookers and worshippers, and offer endless chances to mix different social classes. The city space, transfigured, multiplied, overexposed, crammed with people, gets a new look for these rare events, a renewed urban space, almost an unprecedented one, that offers new opportunities of action. The mûlids contribute to organize the city and make it a lively space and, at the same time, a space for life; a spiritually and symbolically charged one, but also a space full of a material and tangible presence: the one given by the decorations, the people and the objects. In a public space characterized by the overlapping of practices, the different "ways of doing" of the people taking part in the feast become evident through subtle games of proximity and distance, of nearness and separation, in situations that can be called "commonality" ones.

This peculiarity becomes interesting for its plainness, but also for its ambiguous nature, since what is between two things becomes shared, common to either of them 3, a "commonality" that, at a more complicated level seems to include an oxymoron, since it refers to the simultaneity in separating and unifying, that is to the coexistence of the two poles making up their staying together.

3 Le Robert dictionary

The mûlids and their marginalization. -Although some are held in the centre of the ancient part of the capital city (especially Huseiyn and Zaynab's, located around the big eponym mosques), attended by crowds of aficionados (two or three million people every year for the big celebrations in Cairo, according to the local press, very likely to exaggerate it) and included in the Egyptian context for a long time 4 , as an expression not only of religious practices but also of a national and traditional culture 5 , the mûlids are not at the centre of 2 The state of emergency was uninterruptedly kept during Mubarak's regime, when only governmental demonstrations were permitted.

Unofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in:

BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62 the city life. As a topic for surveys, the mûlids can also be considered for their marginalization. They actually include different elements of marginality: the social, the spatial, the temporal and the significance one.

From a cultural and social point of view, the mûlids are considered "popular feasts"; they reveal a stratified and fairly unequal society, where the subtle differences of class emerge right from the definition of a "basic population" that, though a major one in numbers, can be a comparing criterion to be socially distinguished from, and a condition to stigmatize.

The mûlid is thus an expression of "ordinary people", used to give little importance to their own practice and, after all, rarely taken into consideration by the public opinion. For this reason, carrying out a mûlid is a relatively meaningless fact in the common rhythm of the city life, and is quoted in some local newspaper articles at the best. Moreover, the places where the feasts can be carried out are often circumscribed and kept under strict control by the authorities 6 . Even when the celebrations are held in the central districts, these are somehow isolated from the rest of the city, as if in that moment they were places lying in a parallel dimension. The spaces for the mûlid are difficult to reach because of the traffic and the fuss created, and they can also be conceived, in the representations of the people who do not take part in it, as fairly repulsive times/spaces, because of the crowd of visitors coming from the outer city, of the transgressions, of the informal, illegal, and marginal practices that are expressed or feared to take place in them. For the Egyptians belonging to mid-high social classes, the mûlids often appear as exuberant and socially deplorable practices.

______________________________________ 4 The worship of Muslim saints was probably established in Egypt by the Fatimid dynasty 5 The mûlids are not only typical Islamic celebrations, also Egyptian Christians have their mûlids 6 The realization of a mûlid must be previously authorized and authorities also deal with the areas occupied by the ceremonial tents of the several Sufi brotherhoods (Gilsenan, 1973; Luizard, 1991; Chih, 2000) Unofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in: BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62

These events can be considered from two different points of view: the one of the people taking part in the celebration, and the one of the people who reject it -which makes the definition of a single perspective for the analysis really difficult. As a destination for pilgrims, the mûlids attract visitors from the other towns and provinces7 , pilgrims who fill the space, who settle and camp there, messing it up much more than usual. As a feast, the mûlids are occasions for fun, for upsetting rules, for inhibited behaviors (Goerg, 1999; Di Méo, 2002; Fournier, 2009). Furthermore, even if some districts have been dignified by the venerable and venerated saints worshipped there during the mûlids, many celebrations are held along the city border (in the necropolis, in the poor districts, in the places attended exclusively by residents). Besides, these events take place in an ephemeral and fleeting time, just one night for the poorest events, more frequently some days and up to a week for the most important ones. Moreover, since their date is determined by the Egira calendar, they involve a period of time that -apart from the month of the Ramadan and the one of the big celebrations in Islam -appears as a "minor", "subordinate", "hidden" one. Even the reasons for the mûlid existence have been debated, questioning the historical truth about the presence of the saints' relics and denouncing the apocryphal features of some tombs,8 .

Since the Muslim Reformism in the XIX century, these festive commemorations have been violently attacked and blamed as archaic practices, expressions of a religiosity linked to obscurantism. Such an interpretation is still rather popular and has even grown worse in the name of the orthodox Islam.

Over history, the mûlids have increasingly aroused the British authorities' suspicion, they symbolized underdevelopment in the Socialist period, they were connected to poverty at the advent of Liberalism and, finally, they have always been considered by the mid-high classes as the reflection of the unpleasant and underdeveloped image of the Egyptian society.

___________________________________ Unofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in:

BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62

Moreover, the scientific research has shown some interest in them quite late and not very often. Among the reasons of this delay there is the fact that the mûlids, affected by the modernization of Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s seemed doomed to disappear as residual expressions and, as such, quite uninteresting ones. After all, in the following years, the favour of scientific literature for political Islam has further reduced, if not hidden, the whole of the ordinary and common practices of religiosity, above all the ones connected to the most popular Islam. When unable to forbid them, the power has tried to take profit of these manifestations. The mûlid in Luxor, for instance, has been folklorized and advertised as the remains of ancient feasts, a sort of carnival attracting tourists. The mûlid in Tanta has been presented by the national press as a "big demonstration supporting the government".

In Cairo, the Sayyda Zaynab's mûlid has been used as a means of propaganda of the DNP (the Democratic National Party, the presidential party of Mubarak's Egypt) during the political campaigns and the celebrations for the electoral victories, while Husayn's mûlid has been spatially fragmented by the several architectural-urban projects that make it difficult, if not impossible, the organization and the participation in the feast

The mûlid, staggered places and moments.-The mûlids are all very similar and, at the same time, different events: they overlap the pre-existing space, take it up and create a unique and common climate, an uncommon context made up of successive memories. There are several possible combinations, both in the place and the setting for the feast, but in any case the landscape results "familiarly strange". Even if it can be described as a "general one", this is not a fixed landscape but goes on changing, it is never closed neither realized.

The feast is like a rhapsody, a landscape tale that starts from a single common theme and from endless varieties of it.

The mûlids can be included among the heterotopies suggested by Michael Foucault (2001), counter-spaces of the otherness. After all, it is no accident that analyzing the different forms of these close "elsewhere", Foucault quotes fairs and theme parks that he considers like "chronic" heterotopies.

A arranging and decorating all the elements that characterize the staging of the feast, the mûlid eurythmically turns into a real stylistic exercise. Decorations are based on a recurring theme of colours and multicoloured lights.; rings of light bulbs decorate buildings, cross the roads and, flashing, climb to the tops of the minarets of the main mosque; stalls offer pyramids of sweets and dried legumes, orderly and finely arranged; on the moving carts, cornered hats, masks and gadgets pile up, as well as glittering pendants, jewels and amulets; some stalls sell toys and music instruments; swings, shooting galleries, shows and attractions complete the animation. Big tents on wooden frames, made with a thick material and decorated with geometrical patterns, are taken up starting from the sides and the yard of the mosques and the mausoleums, till the web of alleys in the surrounding area.

The biggest and most beautiful tents, equipped with lamps and carpets, where their members are hosted and the rites are held, belong to the richest brotherhoods 10 . More informally, simple cloth canopies are unfurled, in order to provide accommodation for the pilgrims and the families camping on the pavements, on the embankments, round the corners of the street, etc.

The feast does not interrupt everyday life, neither breaks it, but highlights it, sometimes in an odd and contradicting way. The urban landscape, being embellished, appears like a continuum, a visual sequence, a circular and permanent universe. The continuity is temporal as well: though characterized by contrasts, rhythms and the routines of the different characters, day and night are equally animated and seem to have a mutual The big Zaynab and Huseyn's mûlid in Cairo last about a week, starting in a rather undefined way and inevitably finishing at the dawn of the last night, marking the end of the celebration and representing its triumph. The length of the feast is thus defined and determined, and the awareness of its end turns into a sort of collective impetuousness and excitation, that testify the (implicit) obligation of enjoying the mûlid at the best before the announced dissolution.

The feast is unsteady, based on an endless and incessant movement. Its fast rhythm, however, tends to decline by the mid of the last night, starting from a particular moment when the general rhythm, led and driven to the top, is reversed and inverted. This fleeting moment, this elusive minute, cannot be identified in real time, it can be guessed only later on. At the end of the last night, the mûlid ends abruptly: it disappears without any chaos neither latent symptoms of decay, and ends up in a sort of general collapse. we laugh, we march, you speak, they pray, etc.). The protagonists of the mûlid are acrobats, tactile beings, who are able to become fluid, shading off their visibility, passing through or brushing a dimension or a scene.

Thus, at the end of the feast, the city easily gets back to normal, and in the last night everyday life starts again at dawn almost on tiptoe (Qassem, 1998). Modesty, responsiveness, initiative, as well as creativity and care for the others and for the places: the mûlids, though marginal to the day-to-day life of the city are the opportunity to meet all the ways of living it in a full range, through a combination of urban quality and citizenship.

  Introduction. -At the beginning of February 2011, while President Mubarak's opponents were occupying Tahrir Square in Cairo, the Egyptian newspaper al-Dostûr titled: Mûlid alhurriya midan Tahrir [Mûlid for freedom in Tahrir Square].

  BIBLIOGRAPHY ARENDT H., La crise de la culture, Paris, Gallimard, 1989. BIEGMAN N.H., Egypt. Moulids Saints Sufis, La Haye, Gary Schwartz-SDU, 1990. CHIFFOLEAU S. e A. MADOEUF, Les pèlerinages au Maghreb et au Moyen-Orient. Espaces publics, espaces du public, Beyrouth, Institut Français du Proche-Orient, 2005. CHIH R., Le soufisme au quotidien. Confréries d'Égypte au XXe siècle, Paris, Sindbad, 2000. DI MÉO G. (dir.), La géographie en fêtes, Paris, Ophrys, 2002.

  mûlid affects the whole environment, giving the involved area a new look. While Unofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in: BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62

  connection. The mûlid appears like a hybrid feast, where it is impossible to isolate what involves religion and the holy sphere, and what simply belongs to the joyful and festive one: an urban metamorphosis is what results from these combined elements. The atmosphere of general excitement is highly fervid and exciting, religious and playful at the same time. This is why the mûlid does not appear as a chaotic or confused system, but as a work of "spatial redesigning". Similarly, the mûlid is ambivalent, because it includes closed and open spaces, noisy places and places for meditation, empty spaces and full ones, lighted areas and shadowed ones. The mûlid moulds a territory, whose core is near the mosquesUnofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in:BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62while at the borders it gathers the districts nearby. During the mûlids, the participants follow some routes inside the town, in a context of orientation and disorientation at the same time, in an incessant reshaping of aspirations and drives, in a state of endless unpredictability. The common space is crammed with presences, objects, sensations, shocks, sounds, smells and appeals. But it is empty as well, and for this reason it can be integrated, sympathized with, moulded, blurred. crossed and finally left. The mûlid is a walkabout; the Other is present as a multiplicity and as the set of its single units at the same time. The crowd allows the showing off and the disguising at the same time. It is the place where the "sleepwalker" referred to by Isaac Joseph (1984) develops as a metaphor of the character that is learning to become a social individual and feeds his urban practice starting from an immersion in the common space where the crowd has settled in. Aware of the context around him, but, above all, worried about his own route, the sleepwalker is able to see without looking, to cross a scene or a place, to pass unnoticed or hide his presence.

  Unofficial English version provided by the author of the Italian paper published in:BOLLETTINO DELLA SOCIETÀ GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA ROMA -Serie XIII, vol. VII (2014), pp. 55-62 Living in town, living the town. -Despite the overlapping of different elements of marginalization, stigmatization, invisibility and misrepresentation, or probably just because of them, the mûlids can be seen as social mechanisms and spaces of experimentation and adaptation to different ways of doing and of meeting the town, as places of initiation and training for living it together, in Sennett's sense (2003). With very few means and little support, but with many resources, participants fit in situations of density and promiscuity, accommodate places to the variety and the intensification of their functions, arranging every element in a single whole. Although everything takes place simultaneously, even if time and gestures seem confused and overlapping, or classifiable in conflicting registers, the baroque, confused character of the event is nonetheless only an apparent one. People get together and mingle, in every verb tense and mood (I pass by, you sleep, she eats, he sits,

These events are very popular in Egypt, above all in Cairo, where several saints belonging to the Prophet's lineage are worshipped(Biegman, 1990;[START_REF] Hoffman-Ladd V | Devotion to the Prophet and his Family in Egyptian Sufism[END_REF].

The practice and longevity of the Muslim mûlids are connected to Sufism, a very important and meaningful tradition in Egypt.

The traditional saints in Cairo are present also in other places: Zaynab is buried also in Damask, and there are some Husayn's sanctuaries in the Omayyadi mosque, in Alep, in Raqqa, in Achkelon and in Karbalà.


The Empire in French History Teaching. From a Promise to a Burden

Françoise Lantheaume

The French colonial empire was essentially formed in the nineteenth century, for the most part in Africa, Asia and the West Indies. Composed of territories and populations with diverse statuses, subjected to colonial political and economic development projects, the empire was, until the 1960s, an important topic in education. The space formerly devoted to the empire in curricula and textbooks testifies to its importance, as does the effort displayed in them to keep abreast of colonial affairs, hewing fairly closely to the current situation at the time. Until the beginning of the wars of independence, the history of the empire (involving conquest, exploitation, relations between the empire and metropolitan France) was the focus of a narrative that served the aims of a national cohesion that was battered and bruised by political and social divides, the various revolutions of the nineteenth century being just one expression of these divisions. A different 'us' was being created, combining ideas of national and imperial grandeur. Education seemed to be a way to forge a common awareness of 'us', and this concept, however heterogeneous and non-egalitarian, displaced the otherthe potential enemy to be dominatedoutside of mainland France.

Which Kind of School Narrative for the Colonial Empire?

The colonial empire has played various roles for France, with economic and political ones being the most often emphasised. However, beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the empire also served as an antidote to the fear of decadence and division haunting the French, who dreaded a return to the ancien régime's 'unconstituted aggregate of disunited peoples' (Mirabeau), or to post-revolutionary divisions. The colonial project had federated otherwise antagonistic forces. According to the view long held by the majority, the empire was advantageous to both concerned parties. On the one hand, it benefited metropolitan France; on the other, progress in the fields of economy and education brought technical rationality, that is, the enlightenment that would likely liberate colonised peoples from the 'obscurity' of 'archaic beliefs' and from poverty. The invention of the empire entailed a reorganisation of arguments and imaginaries around a new geographic and symbolic space of reference. Education accompanied this project, feeding on the process and feeding it in return by enrolling a number of generations in it. This can be seen as an updated reinterpretation of schools' mission on the French mainland: the peasant children of Indochina, Africa and the Maghreb replaced those of Brittany, Savoy and Auvergne, as well as the proletariat of industrialised cities. To educate them, to make them members of society by means of their sharing of knowledge, values and a common good, this was in short the function of school. The mission of instruction in history was to contribute to what Charles Seignobos calls the 'political education' of French children, introducing them to the grammar of republican politics and the vocabulary of modern society.1 History (and geography) classes, that 'propaedeutics in the social',2 were organised in reference to a national space, now extended to the empire, and to a specific political form, the parliamentary republic. Knowledge of French ancestors and memorisation of their great deeds and terrible woes were part of the project. Seeing oneself as part of their continuity and the continuity of the nation's history, respecting the establishment and maintaining a common historical awareness in which the motherland played an important rolethese were some of the ingredients of education until, after the Second World War, critical thought began to be promoted in schools and the democratisation of the educational system led to new expectations.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the school's historical narrative, developed on the basis of institutional injunctions, was in synch with the scholarly knowledge produced by historians, geographers and anthropologists in particular, lending the narrative its scientific legitimacy. For instance, racial hierarchy and the succession of civilisations along an ascending line of progress both commonplace notions in history and geography textbookscorresponded to the accepted paradigms in the humanities and social sciences of the time. By way of an example, one of many, professor Antoine Porot (1876-1965), a leading figure of the Algiers school of psychiatry, who was acknowledged for his role in the modernisation of colonial psychiatry,3 and the author of textbooks spanning over half a century, argued for the inferiority of 'North-African natives', whom he placed between primitives and 'civilised' men (the missing frontal lobe explained their cognitive and psychological characteristics, as well as their pathologies). The fact that the textbooks of future psychiatrists did not abandon these theories until the 1980s testifies to the penetration of non-egalitarian notions in scientific circles. 4 The decolonisation movement disrupted the established historical narrative and its application in schools. This was all the more true insofar as two phenomena posed a challenge to the education system, and did so with increasing urgency starting in the 1970s. First, the circulation of new scientific approachescultural anthropology and the new historiographychanged the understanding of colonised peoples, of history as a whole and colonial history in particular. Second, there was the co-presence, in schools, of the children and (in the late twentieth century) grandchildren of the protagonists of a history filled with 'sound and fury'. In addition, the modification of the teaching aids that textbooks embody transformed the production of the resources that teachers could draw on to render French colonial history and its reception intelligible to pupils with different and sometimes conflicting historical backgrounds. Consequently, what was defined as memorable and teachable was revised. How did the interpretations of the colonial empire evolve in history education throughout the twentieth century? Such is the central question of the present study.

In order to answer this question, we proceeded to analyse a corpus covering the years 1923 to 2004 5 and made up of official directives, institutional supporting documents and seventy-three secondary school (lycée) history textbooks. Our analysis sought to single out the various changes the formal curriculum had gone through. Two surveys, carried out with about forty teachers in an interval of more than ten years, provided several elements for understanding the actual nature of the curriculum. 6 The present analysis adopts the viewpoint of sociologists who believe that curricular contents have a certain autonomy with respect to both scholarly knowledge and educational directives 5 Our first study about the teaching of the history of the empire was carried out as part of the 'Groupe d'études sociologiques': Françoise Lantheaume, La définition des contenus d'enseignement en histoire: critique et valeurs, histoire et mémoire, summary report, typescript (Paris: INRP/GES, 2000). The second study, which focused on Algeria, was the subject of my doctoral thesis: Françoise Lantheaume, L'enseignement de l'histoire de la colonisation et de la décolonisation de l'Algérie depuis les années trente: Etat-nation, identité nationale, critique et valeurs. Essai de sociologie du curriculum, doctoral thesis, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, typescript, 2002. The data collected have since been completed and updated in various articles, some of which are quoted below. 6 The first survey addressed the teaching of the history of the Algerian War in a secondary school in the 'zone of priority education' (Zone d'Education Prioritaire) (1996); the second addressed the teaching of colonialism in secondary schools after the introduction of the socle commun, or 'common foundation ' (2007-2010). The former was carried out as part of a DEA postgraduate study at Université Lyon 2; the latter was a joint research study (UMR) in education and politics (Université Lyon 2/Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique). and instructions, while remaining related to the state of society and to the outcomes of social interactions. 7 Three tendencies can be identified in the teaching of French colonial history. These correspond to three stages (the two more recent ones partly overlapping), with the inevitability of events and developments standing as an element of continuity between the three. These three periods in school history of the French colonial empire can be defined as the stage of promise, followed by the stage of withdrawal and reconfiguration, and, in turn, by the stage of the burden, repentance and recognition.

The Promise Stage

The French colonial empire of the twentieth century, conceived as a of republican universalism, held the promise of a 'greater France' with attractive economic benefits and enhanced symbolic and political grandeur for the country. These elements were associated with the expansion of western civilisation (republican for some, Christian for others, or sometimes both at the same time). In this phase, which runs from the early twentieth century to the 1960s, a continuity with the Roman empire might be asserted. For instance, some textbooks explained that France did to Algeria what the Romans had done to it, that is, conquered the land, as some textbooks explain, for its good.

The history taught (geared towards events, politics and feats of war) devoted considerable space to the history of France, which included the history of the colonial empire. In this framework, colonial conquest is the subject of detailed narratives. It has its heroes and counter-heroes (such as Bugeaud and Abd-el-Kader), and its groups of prototypical actors (missionaries, colonisers, military men, indigenous peoples), who are presented in a uniform way. The victims are the French soldiers killed in combat, the only casualties for whom numbers are provided in the textbooks. Conquest is a source of bravery: in addition to natural obstacles, native populations did not always prove very cooperative, as indicated in the Malet-Isaac textbook with regard to Algeria, 'Bloody revolts had to be quelled'. 8 The impersonal 'had to be' indicates necessity and the absence of responsibility; the repression is a defence against revolts, which are qualified as 'bloody', while the repression itself is not characterised. The violence of conquest is justified. Nevertheless, excesses are sometimes condemned when they appear as hindrances to the spread of civilisation's benefits. The Malet-Isaac, the textbook most commonly used, testifies to this conception of a socalled 'progress-oriented' colonisation.

In all the textbooks, colonised peoples are described in terms of their physical, even psychological characteristics, which are associated with the environment they live in (geography playing a creative role in the matter),9 and have no other history than one marked by madness and violence or exoticism, as in the images of the corps of Amazons (women warriors) of King Béhanzin (1889-1894) in Dahomey (which became Benin in 1975). The Amazons made a strong impression on French soldiers, and their memory is perpetuated in the textbooks with a mixture of exoticism and apprehension. The colonial empire thus embodies the promise of a renewed imaginary. However, between the 1960s and the 1980s, the struggles for independence led to a gradual reconfiguration of the historical narrative.

Withdrawal and Reconfiguration

A certain withdrawal can be observed in the history of the empire, mainly with regard to the conquest, which is either soberly addressed on a European scale, or omitted. Decolonisation gains entry into curricula and textbooks, first marginally, then in a surer, more pointed manner. New historiographical approaches facilitated and fostered this transformation. Thus, history seen over the long term (the longue durée), cultural history, history of the present time and postcolonial history changed the representation of the colonial empire, France's actions and their impact on colonised societies.

Overall, criticism of Eurocentric teaching, especially in the name of third worldism, produced a more critical discourse without questioning the ineluctable character of both colonisation and decolonisation. New approaches emerged, addressing new objects of study. These include the demographic and economic impact of colonisation, forms of decolonisation, the chequered economic role of the empire, and cultural encounters as characteristic of the colonial conquest. On the whole, however, curricula and textbooks devoted less space to the empire, now regarded as the sign of a past that needed to be shaken off. It is the European project, replacing the colonial one, that was highlighted. With its promise of peace and prosperity, the European project allowed one to turn the page on a notso-glorious past. The spread of the treatment of colonial history across various themes and stages of the curriculum, and the withdrawal of the theme of conquest, are both indicative of this change.

The postcolonial stage is characterised by the gradual filling up of textbooks with documents in place of discussions presenting a particular point of view on the empire. Starting in the 1970s for junior secondary schools (collège), and the 1980s for senior secondary schools (lycée), new textbooks were drafted by teams of teachers and instructors under the guidance of a university professor. Increasing the number of authors and the range of their backgrounds fostered the development of a greater variety of points of view and greater concern for school instruction. On the other hand, this also deprived readers of a congruent interpretation of the historical sequence of colonialism, something that is associated with the viewpoint of a single author. The history of the empire now resembled a jigsaw puzzle and it was up to teachers and/or pupils to fit together the various pieces. 10 This contributed to a gradual disappearance of the colonial question, despite a new abundance of iconographic documentation, which also served to replace a now impossible discourse about the colonial empire and other controversial subjects.

Analysis of textbooks in other courses of study indicates a lack of uniformity in the treatment of imperial history. In vocational schools, for instance, the history of wars continued to command considerable space for a longer time, and more pages were devoted to Indochinapossibly because the authors considered that its exoticism and extraordinary natural conditions would be more likely to catch the attention of pupils (who, at the time, were predominantly boys). There were also appreciable differences depending on the school networks. Teaching in Catholic schools, for example, stressed the role of missionaries and specific figures such as Charles de Foucauld. Although the textbook authors do leave a distinctive stamp on their work (as in the case of Fernand Braudel, Pierre Chaunu, Jacques Marseille), the greater number of writers makes it all the more difficult to identify an authorial voice.

Finally, a study of the evolution of secondary school curricula and textbooks shows that this more detached viewpoint originated, not in a radical change of criticism, but rather in the margins (the study of civilisations in the 1970s, the cultural approach in the 1980s) and/or in a change of focus and approach (longterm historiography, history of the present day), in the reference to human rights and its replacing national or imperial references, and in the shift of the most heated topics into the historical documents, whether written or visual, which bear witness to the events detailed. This represents a process of cooling down in order to make topics that had become controversial something that could be taught in schools again. The new state of affairs in teaching was characterised by a reconfiguration around Europe (seen as the new future of France) and a more global approach to empires. The colonial empire became a thing of the past, a past that was difficult to come to terms with once its worst aspects had been 10 Françoise Lantheaume, 'Manuels d'histoire et colonisation. Les forces et faiblesses de la polyphonie de l'auteur-réseau, ses effets sur la formation de l'esprit critique ', LIDIL 35 (2007), 159-175. revealed by formerly colonised peoples, but one that was gradually being dealt with in a more critical way.

Burden and Repentance

The colonial empire, a burden which the European perspective would eventually make it possible to relinquish, resurfaced in the 1990s as a moral burden. A compassionate reading took shape, and the category of 'victims' grew in popularity. Then, at the very end of the twentieth century and in the early twentyfirst century, as a result of the revival of claims of identity and/or memory by groups of actors concerned by colonisation, education came to be influenced by the repentance and/or recognition movement. The French colonial empire was treated as an element of the larger, now outdated historical process of colonisation. Paradoxically, this more general outlook was accompanied, in textbooks, by an endlessly drawn-out present and a disappearance of direct statement by the narrator. The many textbook authors, because of their involvement in other educational spheres (at the end of the 1990s, one third of the authors sat on selection boards and many of them were instructors at the university institute for teacher training, IUFM), formed a network that was jointly involved in producing multiple educational contents.

The new themes associated with the empirehuman zoos, mental imagery, colonial culture and memoryhighlight a new use of the past in line with current trends, a use that falls between repentance and the rise of the heritage industry, recognition and establishment of identities that are predefined by a given historical experience. However, despite the efforts made to integrate those forgotten by school history, many of them in fact remained overlooked, due to an absence of both precolonial history until recently and specific groups of actors (harkis, 11 colonisers, pieds-noirs, regiment soldiers); and to the omission of mechanisms specific to the empire (exactions, 'regroupment camps', judicial exceptionalism, or institutionalised torture going back to the beginning of colonisation). 12 Furthermore, the recent tendency to emphasise the recognition of victims is not without its own problems. 13 That is, this category is not always defined in the same manner, and the risk of competition among victims is no 11 Fatima Besnaci-Lacou, Benoît Falaize and Gilles Manceron, eds, L'histoire des harkis: mémoire et transmission (Paris: Éd. de L'Atelier, 2010), 178-186. 12 Françoise Lantheaume, 'Les difficultés de la transmission scolaire: le lien Algérie-France dans les programmes d'histoire et les manuels en France au XXe siècle', in F. Abecassis et al., La France et l'Algérie: leçons d'histoire. De l'école en situation coloniale à l'enseignement du fait colonial (Lyon: Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique, 2007), 217-228. 13 Françoise Lantheaume, 'L'enseignement de l'histoire du fait colonial. La voie étroite entre "devoir de mémoire", politique de la reconnaissance, et savoirs savants', in M. Crivello, ed., Les Echelles de la mémoire en Méditerranée (Arles: Actes Sud/MMSH, 2010), 363-376.

minor one; but above all, historical rigour is undermined when priority is granted to an approach which is more compassionate and emotional than rational and historicised.

Finally, in order to understand the above-mentioned changes, historiographical fashions should be taken into account. Some historians never appear, others only rarely, while the 'entrepreneurs of memory' work to construct the narratives of the groups to which they belong, in keeping with contemporary issues and interests. 14 The teaching of history is also a market and some excel at cornering certain sectors.

Conclusion

This brief outline of the secondary school teaching of colonial history in twentieth-century France shows the extent to which the topic is rooted in a social project that integrates a policy of the past. On the other hand, an evolution towards a 'victim-memorial regime'15 can be observed in policies pertaining to school-related knowledge. Such an evolution took shape as a mobilisation of scientific, discursive, human and material resources which circulated between different (academic, political, educational, editorial) spheres, and in networks that have a tendency to expand and grow complex. While they support and constitute the curriculum, they are also the source of tensions. An understanding of how the history of the colonial empire is taught cannot forgo studying the characteristics of these networks.

The teaching of the history of the colonial empire has not undergone a brutal revolution, but there are notable differences between the early and late twentieth century. Questions that were once deemed too controversial to be addressed have become almost commonplace. The history of the colonial empire, however, does remain partly subjected to the effects of fashion, and even lobbying.

Teaching practice displays the same logic observed in the prescribed curriculum, where questions relating to controversial memories may only be taught if they are toned down. The topic of colonialism is regularly described as an opportunity to teach tolerance to pupils; yet this is not in keeping with the usual historical approach, whose ends are not grounded in moral edification. This hinders understanding of both complexity and real historiographical, didactic and pedagogical work. In our surveys, teachers who claim to avoid specific subjects related to the history of the colonial empire (for fear of sparking or bringing to light tensions in their class) are essentially the same as those who identify the controversy as a phenomenon imported from the public sphere through their pupils. On the other hand, those who take on the topic as a scientific problem and possess the necessary professional resources succeed both in dealing with the questions and debates, and in turning the matter into a tool for historical reflection, critical distance, knowledge and sharing of a common history.

Throughout the twentieth century, in order to produce a public narrative for schools, the teaching of the history of the French colonial empire was repeatedly reworked, and this reworking was determined by both the issues of the day and power relations. Tension continues to exist, however, between an assertive transmission of heritage and the training of critical thought, which is not to be confused with the practice of denunciation. Now the promise has gone, and the burden has been set down, history remains, which traumatised memories must not obstruct.

7

  Jean-Claude Forquin, Les sociologues de l'éducation américains et britanniques. Présentation et choix de textes (Paris, Brussels: De Boeck University, 1997); Viviane Isambert-Jamati, Les savoirs scolaires: enjeux sociaux des contenus d'enseignement et de leurs réformes (Paris: l'Harmattan, 1990); Françoise Lantheaume, 'Solidité et instabilité du curriculum d'histoire en France: accumulation de ressources et allongement des réseaux', Education et sociétés. Revue internationale de Sociologie de l'éducation 2 (2003), 125-142. 8 Albert Malet and Jules Isaac, Cours d'Histoire Malet-Isaac pour les classes de philosophiemathématiques (Paris: Hachette, 1939), 172.

Charles Seignobos, 'L'enseignement de l'histoire comme instrument d'éducation politique', in C. Seignobos, C. V. Langlois, L. Gallouedec and M. Tourneur, L'enseignement de l'histoire. Conférences du musée pédagogique (Paris: Imprimerie nationale), 1-24. Reprinted in C. Seignobos, Etudes de politique et d'histoire (Paris: PUF, 1934), 109-132.

Antoine Prost, Douze leçons sur l'histoire (Paris: Le Seuil, 1996), 26.

Jalil Bennani, La psychanalyse au pays des saints(Casablanca: Le Fennec, 1996).

Antoine Porot, Manuel alphabétique de psychiatrie (Paris: PUF, 1952); Antoine Porot and Côme Arrii. 'L'impulsivité criminelle chez l'indigène algérien; ses facteurs', Annales médico psychologiques 90 (1932),

; Antoine Porot and Jean Sutter, 'Le primitivisme des indigènes nord-africains; ses incidences en pathologie mentale', Sud médical et chirurgical(15 April 1939), 129-135.

Manuela Semidei, 'De l'Empire à la décolonisation à travers les manuels scolaires français', Revue française de science politique 1 (1966), 56-86.

Maurice Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective (Paris: PUF, 1964).

Johann Michel, Gouverner les mémoires. Les politiques mémorielles en France (Paris: PUF, 2010). Part of this analysis was previously explored in Maryline Crivello, Patrick Garcia, Nicolas Offenstadt, Concurrence des passés. Usages politiques du passé dans la France contemporaine (Aix en Provence: Publications de l'Université de Provence, 2006), 245-255.