Seminars

In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, observers increasingly referred to ocean liners as 'floating cities.' While the phrase is usually treated as the characteristic hyperbole of an Age of Steam, this paper interprets it as a proposition. Sketching an urban history of the ocean liner, the paper focuses in particular on the trans-Suez routes connecting France to its empire across the Indo-Pacific. In transit across this imperial highway, it argues, the categories of colonial rule had to be continually reconstructed, just as the boundaries between nation and empire required constant negotiation. Instead of reproducing a model colonial 'city' in microcosm, in other words, the steamship voyage risked exposing passengers to a deeply disorienting reflection of the French Empire.

This article examines the 1853 discovery of skeletal remains attributed to Geronimo, a 16th-century Algerian martyr, as a pivotal event in the construction of French colonial Catholicism in Algeria. It argues that Bishop Antoine-Augustin Pavy and other church officials strategically transformed the purported relics and their accompanying narrative into instruments of religious and political legitimization. Through forensic examination, public spectacles, and artistic representations, the Church shaped a foundational myth of martyrdom and conversion, framing French colonialism as a divine mission to spiritually reconquer North Africa. The article demonstrates how the Geronimo episode facilitated a tense collaboration between ecclesiastical and colonial authorities, enabling the Church to advance its conversion agenda despite official restrictions. The case demonstrates how religion actively shaped colonial practices, sacred architecture, and missionary efforts, challenging the perception of French rule as a purely secular project.

In the early 1960s, a group of West African psychoanalysts clinically engaged with the situation of African migrants in Paris. In the process, the group thought about subject formation in new ways, pointing out the salience of racist hostility for subject formation. With this, the paper argues, the group represents a crucial link to posit decolonization as an analytic frame for the 1960s’ avalanche of experiments in subject formation.

In the 1920s and 1930s Indochina became France’s “model” colony and shining example of the potential of mise en valeur. In addition to ample investment opportunities, especially in concessions and infrastructure, Indochina produced critical resources that provided the material basis of modern French life and leisure: the camphor used to make film for movies, the resin used to produce record albums; and, above all, the rubber used for automobile and bicycle tires as well as the rubber belts that smoothed the motion of the film projector. Much of these materials, however, were produced by contract and marginally free labor, pointing to the ways that French economic life was predicated on colonial labor. Taking up the concept of a “temporal fix,” this chapter examines this set of unequal dependencies and how it shaped the development of French industrial capitalism.