Decolonizing History

Abstract

The borders between North and South quickly erode when we study the history of anti-colonial revolutions. This is perhaps especially true of France, where the Palestinian revolution has been a rallying cry in the struggle for migrant rights for the past half century. This article investigates the reactivation of anti-colonialism in the postcolonial era, tracing the decades-long “postcolonial anti-colonial” movements born in migrant circles in France, from the 1970s to the present. What happens to the notion of anti-colonial revolution when it is brought back to the metropole? How does it change when it is brought to bear on the migrant question? First posed by the Palestine committees forged by migrant workers, foreign students, and Maoist militants in the wake of the September 1970 massacre of Palestinians in Jordan, these questions have shaped discourses around migrant rights in France for the past fifty years. In conclusion, this article revisits the archive of the migrant theater collective Al Assifa as it is remediated in Bouchra Khalili's 2017 film The Tempest Society, and speculates on the current place of migration in world historical discourses of decolonization.