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Making or Breaking Colonial Heritage Spaces

Introduction
Céline Barrère, Muriel Girard et Barbara Morovich
Traduction de Danya Kiernan
Cet article est une traduction de :
Faire avec ou défaire les espaces de l’héritage colonial ? [fr]

Texte intégral

Re-Examining Power Relations Through a Colonial and Post-Colonial Lens

  • 1 Georges Balandier, “La Situation coloniale. Approche théorique”, Cahiers internationaux de sociolog (...)
  • 2 Philippe Colin, Lissell Quiroz, Pensées dé-coloniales. Une introduction aux théoriques critiques d’ (...)

1This issue focuses on spatial, architectural and landscape heritage produced in “colonial situations,”1 exploring the contact, friction and tension between ideology, cultural exchange, ideas of modernity and societal impacts. Architectural and built spaces, as well as certain landscapes, reveal enduring colonial power relations long after independence and the fall of empires. From a decolonial perspective born in Latin America, this is what Anibal Quijano (2005) calls the “coloniality of power”; that is, a power structure persisting below the surface.2 Him and others, like Walter Mignolo (2011) and Arturo Escobar (2003), agree that

  • 3 Ibid., p. 12.

coloniality refers to colonial dominance, emerging with the conquest of the Americas and progressively emanating on an international scale to impose a global hierarchy of peoples based on race, sex, epistemology, spirituality, linguistics, and so on.3

  • 4 For an overview of these debates, see Stéphane Dufoix, Décolonial, Anamosa (Le mot est faible), 202 (...)
  • 5 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincialiser l’Europe. La pensée postcoloniale et la différence historique, P (...)
  • 6 Armelle Choplin, “Désoccidentaliser la pensée urbaine”, Métropolitiques, November 2012, [online] [h (...)
  • 7 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Épistémologies du Sud. Mouvements citoyens et polémique sur la science, (...)
  • 8 Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion”, African Studies Quarterly, vol (...)
  • 9 Olufemi Taiwo, Against Decolonization. Taking African Agency Seriously, London, C. Hurst & Company, (...)

2While various debates surround decolonial approaches,4 this current issue upholds the idea of ongoing political, economic, cultural, racial and epistemological power relations. It puts forth a situated analysis whereby each context is complexified by case. Thus, instead of using top-down approaches, it seeks to “provincialize”5 and “de-Westernize”6 reflections on spatial production and legacy through in-depth fieldwork. It also aims to reflect on a range of situated knowledge, linked to other epistemological foundations that reveal “emergence” and “absence.”7 Trajectories of concepts as they appear in non-Western contexts is also up for consideration, such as the word “decolonial” in English and French-speaking Africa. For some, decoloniality does not lead to the total exclusion of Western ideology, but rather to new syntheses based on adaptations that “make sense” for African thinking, as in Kwasi Wiredu’s work.8 Meanwhile, the critical opinion of Olufemi Taiwo9 urges for a rejection of the word “decolonial” as overly instrumental and vague, thereby ignoring its widespread use within and outside the academic world. Against this backdrop, this issue draws on a vibrant interdisciplinary framework (historical, geographical, sociological, etc.), paying close attention to the flow of ideas and lateral movements between so-called dominant and dominated spaces, as opposed to binary North/South relations.

3Such power dynamics formalize differently depending on colonial systems and situations, both historically and spatially. There are three main types, as Eve Tuck and Kayne Wayne Yang describe: “In external colonialism, all things Native become recast as

  • 10 Eve Tuck, Kayne Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor”, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Educat (...)

natural resources’ [...] internal colonialism, the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people, land, flora and fauna within the ‘domestic’ borders of the imperial nation [...] and settler colonialism.10

  • 11 This combines distinct temporalities: the long history of colonization—centuries old in Latin Ameri (...)
  • 12 Felwinn Sarr, Bénédicte Savoy, “Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers un (...)

4As such, urban architecture and organization inflict inequalities of power in space, whereby relations to others are built upon distance and exclusion as well as imposed rationales, all of which are topics of debate, controversy and violent action.11 In recent years, examples highlighting reactions to colonial or post-colonial plans include: the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 (with actions involving statue removal in the US and Great Britain, demands for street names to be changed, etc.), the Must Fall movement in South Africa, along with museums of former colonial powers repatriating objects for the first time.12

  • 13 Stéphane Dufoix, op. cit.
  • 14 Céline Regnard and Fabien Bartolotti, presentation of the Mars Imperium program (Amidex, Telemme), (...)
  • 15 Ibid.
  • 16 Saskia Cousin, Anne Doquet, Alexandra Galitzine-Loumpet, “La Restitution du point de vue du retour. (...)
  • 17 Biennale Architettura 2023, Demas Nwoko Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Archit (...)
  • 18 The conference took place from April 9 to 11, 2025, and was organized at ENSA Paris-Malaquais by Di (...)

5Such movements have also revived and internationalized early 20th century demands for spatial decolonization.13 The Mars Imperium program —“Marseille Impériale: histoire et mémoires (post)coloniales xixe-xxie siècles14”— led by historians Céline Regnard and Xavier Daumalin, illustrates links between historical knowledge production and memory, along with calls for the decolonization of public space. The program was “born from an observation: although there are numerous traces of Marseille’s colonial past, knowledge often contains biased narratives and preconceived or overlooked ideas that are out of step with the latest research, providing inadequate responses to the growing social demand for information on these subjects.”15 This can be seen in the rise of colonial heritage walks led by artists, associations and activists, embracing multi-situated epistemology and calling for dialogue regardless of the positions of actors involved.16 One outcome has been to highlight other ways of writing history, narrating space and analyzing domination, much like in South Africa’s immediate post-apartheid period. This has also occurred in the field of architecture, as witnessed at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2023, curated by Lesley Lokko and featuring the Nigerian architect Demas Nwoko17 (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement), along with the conference “Making Architectural History Through the Prism of Environmental and Decolonial Issues.”18 Such demands and diverse epistemology are increasingly challenging relationships to subjects, fields, teaching methods, along with ways of executing and analyzing urban and architectural design.

(Un)Thought Colonial Legacies: The Tangible and Intangible

  • 19 Annonymous, “Avant-propos”, in Habiter l’indépendance. Alger, conditions d’une architecture d’occup (...)
  • 20 Christoffer Kølvraa, Britta Timm Knudsen, “Decolonizing European Colonial Heritage in Urban Spaces. (...)
  • 21 Guillaume Blanc, L’Invention du colonialisme vert. Pour en finir avec le mythe de l’Eden africain, (...)
  • 22 Annabell Taylor, “LesDoubles Noms de lieux: une lecture à parts égales de l’histoire néo-zélandaise (...)
  • 23 See [online] [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/denali-mckinley-rename-trump.html].

6Making or breaking with colonial heritage involves questioning the “unwillingly inherited.”19 This includes the colonial, post-colonial and decolonial traces of architecture, space and landscapes, as well as their contemporary uses and interpretations, whether in terms of improvement, destruction, reimagination or abandonment. Adopting an evolving, diachronic, non-deterministic approach to culture, the focus is on processes and traces of these spatial production methods, and what they generate in terms of relationships with the past and the present. This includes memory and the creation of collective narratives, in which mechanisms of repression, removal, reformulation and reemergence play a role.20 Regrettably, none of the articles in this issue focus on landscapes, in which historians have revealed traces of colonial action up until today, and which are of equal importance as sites of struggle. Guillaume Blanc’s study of national parks and the Unesco designation in Africa21 is a case in point. Another example is in New Zealand, where the landscape has been re-semantized through the inclusion of original indigenous toponyms alongside those “invented” by British settlers. This demonstrates the coexistence of relationship systems, along with interpretations and ways of experiencing the landscape.22 Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024 in the United States has also underlined the relevance, fragility and reversibility of these recognition processes, as illustrated in the revived controversy over the naming of Mount Denali/McKinley in Alaska.23

  • 24 Pierre Singaravélou, “Ouverture. Renouer nos histoires (xxie siècle-xve siècle)”, in Pierre Singara (...)
  • 25 Nadia Yala Kisukidi, “Introduction”, partie I “Après les colonies, des années 1960 à aujourd’hui”, (...)
  • 26 Stéphane Valognes, “Cherbourg: vestiges d’une ville impériale”, in ibid.
  • 27 Léopold Lambert, “Décoloniser l’architecture”, Tumultes, n° 48, 2017, p. 175-183, [online] [https:/ (...)

7The call for papers included three areas of investigation: words for colonial spaces; intentional valorization, reimagination or effacement; and unthought and illegible space. Authors primarily responded to the second theme, while implicitly addressing the two others. The aim of exploring deliberate strategies of valorization, reimagination and effacement is to investigate representations behind the actions concerning this spatial, architectural and landscape heritage. With this in mind, Colonisations: Notre histoire, directed by historian Pierre Singaravélou, uses a long historical perspective to shed light on “continuities, reconfigurations and breaks.”24 In the same book, Nadia Yala Kisukidi points out that the “material traces, vestiges and legacies of colonization” are manifold, giving shape to “a cultural (monuments, architecture, town plans) and linguistic heritage that has been partially transformed.”25 It is thus crucial to understand how these spaces are represented, by whom, and the underlying values attached to them. Processes of valorization, reimagination and destruction are sometimes intertwined, like when the demolition of Cherbourg’s former colonial Cité de l’Infanterie revealed links to the colonial past.26 Hence, an increasing number of architectural collectives, critics and researchers are calling for a decolonial approach to architecture that is not just symbolic.27 However, as Pierre Gaussens and Olufemi Taiwo have criticized, the popularity of certain decolonial discourses, especially when centered around ideas from Western researchers, must be questioned. This, of course, is also a reflexive critique by authors dealing with this concept, much like the authors in this issue.

8Examining these strategies inevitably involves thinking about how groups or individuals name and identify these spaces, observing changes between the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. Drawing on Nigeria, Tokie Laotan-Brown looks at the roles of institutional and non-institutional actors involved in heritage spaces in Lagos, demonstrating how the valorization of one heritage (the restoration of Glover Hall) and the demolition of another (the Supreme Court) can be part of the same institutional strategies. Moreover, she highlights how decolonial approaches emphasize practices of reuse or inclusivity.

  • 28 See especially, Abderrahim Kassou, “Casablanca, enjeux et limites d’une patrimonialisation en cours (...)
  • 29 Saskia Cousin, Christine Mengin, “Ce qui reste de Porto-Novo”, in Pierre Singaravélou (dir.), op. c (...)
  • 30 Guide du Marseille colonial, Paris, Éditions Syllepse, 2022. Other guides from the same publisher i (...)
  • 31 See [online] [https://memoiresetpartages.com/visite-guidee/].
  • 32 See [online] [https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2025/05/06/a-biarritz-la-rue-de-la-negresse-re (...)
  • 33 Pierre Sintès, Rue d’Alger: art, mémoire, espace public, Paris, Éditions Mf, 2022, p. 18.
  • 34 Pierre Sintès, Samia Chabani, “Espace public, espace narratif et valeur conflictuelle du patrimoine (...)
  • 35 Guide du Marseille colonial, Éditions Syllepse (Arguments et mouvements), 2022.

9Whether past or present, categorization and linguistic variations are never neutral. For example, architecture built under the French protectorate in Morocco has been categorized by texts, authors and activists as “colonial architecture,” “20th century architecture,” or “Art Deco architecture/heritage.”28 Further, Sophie Paviol’s article questions Ali Tur and his rejection of “colonial architecture” while presenting his Guadeloupe reconstruction project in 1936. How did this attitude shape his practice, trajectory and intervention context? Indeed, according to anthropologist Saskia Cousin and architectural historian Christine Mengin, “ ‘naming’ [...] means simultaneously experimenting with the appropriation of colonial forms and the resistance of non-Western ontologies.”29 Using the three toponyms of Benin’s political capital —Ajacé/Xọgbonú/Porto-Novo— they demonstrate how these refer to different territorial realities, along with urban forms and meanings. Today, issues surrounding odonymy are also good examples. In France, citizens denouncing colonial vestiges have taken action by exposing them in Guides published by Syllepse30 in several cities, or by organizing decolonial marches and memory trails run by the Mémoires et Partages association in Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Le Havre, Biarritz and Bayonne.31 Controversies surrounding the rue de la Négresse in Biarritz (renamed Rue de l’Allégresse in May 2025)32 and its associated legal battles highlight how the many “surviving traces of colonial history in urban space”33 are expressed in multiple language registers depending on generations, illustrating enduring or revived power relations. Such controversies may also be observed in examples like the institutionalized memory of industry leaders,34 or in the Guide du Marseille colonial’s condemnation of the slave trade.35

  • 36 Françoise Vergès, Seumboy Vrainom, De la violence coloniale dans l’espace public. Visite du triangl (...)
  • 37 Philippe Gervais-Lambony, “Nostalgies citadines en Afrique du Sud”, EspaceTemps.net, May 2012, [onl (...)
  • 38 Philippe Gervais-Lambony, “Le tomason: un concept pour penser autrement les discontinuités et disco (...)
  • 39 See [online] [https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023/dangerous-liaisons/twenty-nine-studio (...)
  • 40 Donna J. Haraway, “Savoirs situés: la question de la science dans le féminisme et le privilège de l (...)

10Highlighting valorization, reimagination, erasure or even destruction raises questions about unthought and illegible space; that is, that which exists in a form of latency, due in part to a loss of meaning surrounding what is represented or shaped. Consider, for example, the semiological analysis of forms, symbols and representations carried out by Françoise Vergès and Seumboy Vrainom on the bas-relief (designed by Alfred Auguste-Janniot) of the façade of architect Pierre Laprade’s former Palais des Colonies, now the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration.36 Highlighting elements of a past that are no longer immediately comprehensible, it evokes the term Thomasonn, borrowed by geographer Philippe Gervais-Lambony from Japanese artist Genpei Akasegawa (1987) to describe post-apartheid spatiality in South African cities not categorized as remains or relics.37 For him, these urban objects, “stand out in space because of their incongruity and [...] the continuity in time (we don’t know their exact date, only that they are remnants of the past). Their unexplained nature is what makes them so valuable.”38 Another example is the work of Congolese artist Sammy Baloji, Aequare the future that never was, discussing the Yangambi agronomic institute in the Democratic Republic of Congo—screened in 2023 at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Combining archives of colonial propaganda footage and the artist’s own recently shot images, the film explores colonial legacies and the resulting ecological destruction in the world’s largest rainforest, surrounding this institute.39 Two other perspectives are also relevant. The first addresses, “situated knowledge”40: who is speaking, from where and for whom? The second questions everyday life, or the integration of these objects into urban space, which we either fail or pretend not to see. Questioning the unthought must be done by resituating actors’ voices, as the illegibility of some is not necessarily that of others. Likewise, the meanings behind what is read may vary according to actors, eras and political systems.

Museum Systems, Inherited Urban Forms, Reconciliation and Conflict

11This issue is organized into three sections. The first focuses on museum systems as reflections of continuity and power relations. Anne-Laure Iger and Sara Tassi examine several Art Nouveau exhibitions in Brussels, revealing and dismantling a “curatorial continuum” that blurs the connections between architectural trends, history and legacies of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo, and overlooks colonial violence. Meanwhile, Paul Wolkenstein investigates the Brezhnevian subsidiaries of the Lenin Museum in Central Asia, discussing the deconstruction of domination through their transformation after the collapse of the USSR, evoking rejection, appropriation/indigenization and nostalgia.

12The second section deals more specifically with inherited architecture and urban forms. Analyzing design, conservation and rehabilitation processes, as well as architectural materiality and devices, gives rise to epistemological questions regarding history-making, along with the criteria and methods behind patrimonialization. Tokie Laotan-Brown considers processes of valuation and re-semantization—from destruction to valorization—of the cumbersome legacies of colonial architecture in Lagos State, Nigeria, revealing a growing demand for the decolonization of architecture. In the Casbah of Algiers, Asma Hadjilah investigates the diachronic strategies of re-signifying this urban and architectural colonial heritage, from Algerian independence to today. The analysis falls between constructing a post-colonial national memory and integrating a globalized heritage strategy. Sophie Paviol’s article revisits Ali Tur’s architectural and urban productions in Guadeloupe, using a non-essentialist perspective based on the reflections of Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant. These buildings, with their spatial qualities and uses, are not just about a political project, but also transcend binary rhetoric (mainland/colony, alienation/resistance, academic/vernacular, etc.), raising questions about the circulation of knowledge and the polysemy of forms. The author explores the epistemological and methodological issues involved in “making 20th century colonial architectural history.” This is somewhat aligned to the approach developed by Judith le Maire and Dalia Perziani in their article on the concept of “situation,” particularly colonial, as applied to architectural teaching in the post-colonial Democratic Republic of Congo.

13The last section deals with situations of a more extreme and recent nature, such as armed conflict, considering architecture and its legacy as reconciliatory and/or instrumental. Based on the reconstruction of Beirut in the 1990s, Joseph Salamon discusses the post-civil war heritage consensus surrounding the French Mandate’s architectural and urban legacy. Unlike other historical periods, such as the Ottoman Empire, the French Mandate’s urban and architectural forms led to a type of semantic “neutralization” that served as a sort of distraction from ongoing intercommunal tensions and that was reused to foster consumption and leisure. Clarisse Genton investigates the “coloniality of architecture” in Palestinian Territories through a building typology developed in the 1990s by the Israeli state. Reserved for Israeli citizens, these buildings and their architectural features create problematic territoriality in a context of persistent conflict.

  • 41 Cosimo Lisi, Paris capitale coloniale. Violence cartographique de l’espace abstrait, Eterotopia (Pa (...)
  • 42 Malcom Ferdinand, S’aimer la Terre. Défaire l’habiter colonial, Paris, Seuil (Ecocène), 2024.
  • 43 Sara Tassi, Villes de lignages. Généalogies urbaines à Ajacẹ́, Xgbonú, Porto-Novo, Genève, Meti (...)
  • 44 Saskia Cousin Kouton, Ogún et les matrimoines. Histoires de Porto-Novo, Xogbónù, Ajàsé, Nanterre, P (...)

14Further reflections on the spatial, architectural and landscape dimensions of colonial heritage, as well as on overcoming a relationship of coloniality, can be found in the reviews of other works related to this issue: that of Cosimo Lisi, Paris capitale coloniale. Violence cartographique de l’espace abstrait (2024),41 Malcom Ferdinand, S’aimer la Terre. Défaire l’habiter colonial (2024)42 and the combined works of Sara Tassi, Villes de lignages. Généalogies urbaines à Ajacẹ́, Xgbonú, Porto-Novo (2023)43 and Saskia Cousin Kouton, Ogún et les matrimoines. Histoires de Porto-Novo, Xogbónù, Ajàsé (2024).44

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Notes

1 Georges Balandier, “La Situation coloniale. Approche théorique”, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. 11, 1951, p. 44-79.

2 Philippe Colin, Lissell Quiroz, Pensées dé-coloniales. Une introduction aux théoriques critiques d’Amérique latine, Paris, La Découverte/Zones, 2023.

3 Ibid., p. 12.

4 For an overview of these debates, see Stéphane Dufoix, Décolonial, Anamosa (Le mot est faible), 2023), in which he outlines the origins and differences with post-colonial perspectives, demonstrating its operative character in thinking about the production and circulation of knowledge. See also the work directed by Pierre Gaussens et al., Critique de la raison décoloniale. Sur une contre-révolution intellectuelle, Paris, L’Échappée (Versus), 2024, critiquing the decolonial approach, which they believe downplays class relations to the “ethno-racial” relations it highlights.

5 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincialiser l’Europe. La pensée postcoloniale et la différence historique, Paris, Amsterdam, 2009 [2000].

6 Armelle Choplin, “Désoccidentaliser la pensée urbaine”, Métropolitiques, November 2012, [online] [https://metropolitiques.eu/Desoccidentaliser-la-pensee.html#collapse_forum].

7 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Épistémologies du Sud. Mouvements citoyens et polémique sur la science, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer (Solidarité et société), 2016.

8 Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion”, African Studies Quarterly, vol. I, Issue 4, 1998, p. 17- 46.

9 Olufemi Taiwo, Against Decolonization. Taking African Agency Seriously, London, C. Hurst & Company, 2022.

10 Eve Tuck, Kayne Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor”, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, n  1, 2012, p. 4-5.

11 This combines distinct temporalities: the long history of colonization—centuries old in Latin America, since Christopher Columbus; since the xviiith century in Africa, with European expansion; independence and state-building; contemporary post-colonial reflections; and demands for decolonization.

12 Felwinn Sarr, Bénédicte Savoy, “Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle”, Présidence de la République française, 2018, [online] [https://www.vie-publique.fr/rapport/38563-la-restitution-du-patrimoine-culturel-africain].

13 Stéphane Dufoix, op. cit.

14 Céline Regnard and Fabien Bartolotti, presentation of the Mars Imperium program (Amidex, Telemme), seminar “Manières d’hériter”, March 4, 2025, [online] [https://www.marseille.archi.fr/actus/seminaire-manieres-dheriter-seance-03-mardi-04-mars-2025-2-2/]. This program brings together 60 people and 14 cultural and academic actors. It is funded by the Amidex foundation, Aix-Marseille Université, and driven by UMR TELEMMe (AMU-CNRS). The portal marsimperium.org gives an overview of current knowledge and debates on Marseille’s colonial and post-colonial history. It was launched at the Mucem, Marseille (consulted May 29, 2025).

15 Ibid.

16 Saskia Cousin, Anne Doquet, Alexandra Galitzine-Loumpet, “La Restitution du point de vue du retour. Épistémologies multisituées”, Cahiers d’études africaines, 2023, p. 251-252, [online] [http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/44938].

17 Biennale Architettura 2023, Demas Nwoko Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Architettura 2023, [online] [https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/demas-nwoko-golden-lion-lifetime-achievement-biennale-architettura-2023], consulted May 29, 2025.

18 The conference took place from April 9 to 11, 2025, and was organized at ENSA Paris-Malaquais by Diane Aymard (Crenau-UMR AAU), Federico Ferrari (ENSAPM-PSL, ACS), Marilena Kourniati (ENSAPLV, Ahttep) and Sophie Paviol (ENSAG-UGA, AE&CC), in collaboration with Christelle Lecoeur (ENSAPM-PSL) and Marilia Macedo Espina (ENSAPM-PSL, ACS) with the support of IEA de Paris.

19 Annonymous, “Avant-propos”, in Habiter l’indépendance. Alger, conditions d’une architecture d’occupation, SHED Publishing, 2022, p. 11.

20 Christoffer Kølvraa, Britta Timm Knudsen, “Decolonizing European Colonial Heritage in Urban Spaces. An Introduction to the Special Issue, Heritage & Society”, Heritage & Society, n° 1-2, p. 1-9, vol. 13, 2020, DOI: [10.1080/2159032X.2021.1888370].

21 Guillaume Blanc, L’Invention du colonialisme vert. Pour en finir avec le mythe de l’Eden africain, Flammarion, 2020. See also the conference by Martine Chalmet, “Les Parcs nationaux en Algérie dans les années 1920-1930. L’exemple d'une politique coloniale de patrimonialisation”, a performance by Matthieu Duperrex “Suivre l’oued et remonter l’histoire coloniale du paysage. L’exemple d’une politique coloniale de patrimonialisation”, and panel discussions “De l’écologie coloniale. Histoire et traces” organized by ANR Imagin-e, October 9, 2024.

22 Annabell Taylor, “LesDoubles Noms de lieux: une lecture à parts égales de l’histoire néo-zélandaise?”, in Sarah Gensburger, Jenny Wüstenberg, Dé-commération. Quand le monde déboulonne des statues et renomme des rues, Paris, Fayard, 2023, p. 119-127.

23 See [online] [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/denali-mckinley-rename-trump.html].

24 Pierre Singaravélou, “Ouverture. Renouer nos histoires (xxie siècle-xve siècle)”, in Pierre Singaravélou (dir.) Colonisations. Notre histoire, Paris, Seuil (L’Univers historique), 2023, p. 8.

25 Nadia Yala Kisukidi, “Introduction”, partie I “Après les colonies, des années 1960 à aujourd’hui”, in ibid, p. 17.

26 Stéphane Valognes, “Cherbourg: vestiges d’une ville impériale”, in ibid.

27 Léopold Lambert, “Décoloniser l’architecture”, Tumultes, n° 48, 2017, p. 175-183, [online] [https://www.cairn.info/revue-tumultes-2017-1-page-175.htm]; Mathias Rollot, “Décoloniser l’architecture ici et maintenant”, Analyse Opinion Critique, 2024, [online] [hal-04588328]; or Mathias Rollot, Décoloniser l’architecture, Paris, Le Passager clandestin, 2024.

28 See especially, Abderrahim Kassou, “Casablanca, enjeux et limites d’une patrimonialisation en cours (témoignage)”, Hesperis- Tamuda, vol. XLV, 2010, p. 177-184.

29 Saskia Cousin, Christine Mengin, “Ce qui reste de Porto-Novo”, in Pierre Singaravélou (dir.), op. cit., p. 45.

30 Guide du Marseille colonial, Paris, Éditions Syllepse, 2022. Other guides from the same publisher include Le Paris colonial et ses banlieues (2018), Le Guide du Périgueux colonial et des communes proches (2023), Le Rouen colonial (2023), Le Soisson colonial (2020), Le Guide du Bordeaux colonial et de la métropole bordelaise (2020).

31 See [online] [https://memoiresetpartages.com/visite-guidee/].

32 See [online] [https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2025/05/06/a-biarritz-la-rue-de-la-negresse-rebaptisee-rue-de-l-allegresse-apres-une-decision-de-justice_6603239_3224.html].

33 Pierre Sintès, Rue d’Alger: art, mémoire, espace public, Paris, Éditions Mf, 2022, p. 18.

34 Pierre Sintès, Samia Chabani, “Espace public, espace narratif et valeur conflictuelle du patrimoine à Marseille: l’expérience de l’association Ancrages”, in Pierre Sintès, Rue d’Alger: art, mémoire, espace public, op. cit.

35 Guide du Marseille colonial, Éditions Syllepse (Arguments et mouvements), 2022.

36 Françoise Vergès, Seumboy Vrainom, De la violence coloniale dans l’espace public. Visite du triangle de la Porte Dorée à Paris, Paris, Shed Publishing (Arpentages), 2021.

37 Philippe Gervais-Lambony, “Nostalgies citadines en Afrique du Sud”, EspaceTemps.net, May 2012, [online] [https://www.espacestemps.net/wp-content/plugins/wp-mpdf/cache/default_fr_nostalgies-citadines-en-afrique-sud.pdf].

38 Philippe Gervais-Lambony, “Le tomason: un concept pour penser autrement les discontinuités et discontiguités de nos vies citadines?”, Espaces et sociétés, n° 168-169, 2017, p. 211.

39 See [online] [https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023/dangerous-liaisons/twenty-nine-studio-sammy-baloji] et [https://imanefares.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/sb-journal-lowdef.pdf].

40 Donna J. Haraway, “Savoirs situés: la question de la science dans le féminisme et le privilège de la perspective partielle”, in Manifeste cyborg et autres essais, anthology by Laurence Allard, Delphine Gardey and Nathalie Magnan, Paris, Exils, 2007, p. 107-142.

41 Cosimo Lisi, Paris capitale coloniale. Violence cartographique de l’espace abstrait, Eterotopia (Parcours), 2024.

42 Malcom Ferdinand, S’aimer la Terre. Défaire l’habiter colonial, Paris, Seuil (Ecocène), 2024.

43 Sara Tassi, Villes de lignages. Généalogies urbaines à Ajacẹ́, Xgbonú, Porto-Novo, Genève, MetisPresses, 2023.

44 Saskia Cousin Kouton, Ogún et les matrimoines. Histoires de Porto-Novo, Xogbónù, Ajàsé, Nanterre, Presses universitaires de Paris-Nanterre, 2024.

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Céline Barrère, Muriel Girard et Barbara Morovich, « Making or Breaking Colonial Heritage Spaces »Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère [En ligne], 23 | 2025, mis en ligne le 15 juin 2025, consulté le 11 juin 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/craup/17135 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/144tv

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Céline Barrère

Céline Barrère is a sociologist and urban planner with a doctorate in urban planning, and is a lecturer in human and social sciences at ENSAP Lille. She is co-director of the “L’Hôpital comme milieu” research project. Her research focuses on urban narratives, discursive strategies for “memory-making”, both the ways in which we remember and what constitutes a legacy, in order to question social practices and the production of values, the forms of resistance of popular cultures and their specific resources. She is the author of: with Caroline Rozenholc, Les Lieux de mobilité en question. Acteurs, enjeux, formes, situations, Paris, Karthala (coll. du CIST), 2018; with Grégory Busquet and Muriel Girard, Mémoires et patrimoines. Des revendications aux conflits, Paris, L’Harmattan (Habitat et sociétés), 2017; and recently published “‘Faire mémoire’” de New Orleans East: prendre place dans la ville et produire un contre-récit de citadinité”, Sarah M. Broom’s “The Yellow House”, Atlante. Revue d’études romanes, n° 17 “Socio-poétiques urbaines: construire le discours social de la ville dans la littérature”, edited by Pilar Andrade Boué and Angel Clemente Escobar, 2023, [online] [https://journals.openedition.org/atlante/26719]; with Catherine Grout, L4Épreuve de l’hospitalité. De l’hôpital à la ville, Lille, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2024."
c-barrere@lille.archi.fr

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Muriel Girard

Muriel Girard, sociologist, is a senior lecturer in the humanities and social sciences at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Marseille, and a member of the Investigations sur l’histoire et l’actualité des mutations architecturales  (Inama) research center. She is also co-responsible for the “Héritage et patrimoine” research committee of the Association internationale de sociologie de langue française, and co-leads the Inama research center’s “Manières d’hériter” seminar. Her research focuses on heritage as a social and political construct. She also focuses on urban transformation and housing, paying particular attention to vulnerabilities, precariousness and, in these contexts, the heritage dimension. Her publications include Le Théâtre du patrimoine. L’artisan, le maire et le touriste à Istanbul, PUFR, 2020.
muriel.girard@marseille.archi.fr

Barbara Morovich

Lecturer HDR in humanities and social sciences at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Strasbourg, AMUP research center, Barbara Morovich is Director of the Institut français de recherche en Afrique (Ifra-Nigeria, UAR 3336). For the past twenty years, she has been developing research on urban transformations, contemporary worlds and inequalities in Europe (France), Africa (Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria) and Latin America (Argentina), analyzing the capacity of dominated or “minority” social groups to invent possibilities for themselves through processes of memorialization and patrimonialization. Her publications include Miroirs anthropologiques et changement urbain: qui participe à la transformation des quartiers populaires, preface by Monique Selim, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2017. She was also president of the Association française des anthropologues and publication manager of the Journal des anthropologues (2016-2022).
barbara.morovich@strasbourg.archi.fr

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