Postcolonial Studies: A Political Invention of Tradition?

Abstract

It is misguided to imagine that French researchers and French universities are unaware of postcolonial studies. In reality, forms close to this school of thought emerged very early in the French university context, but they were obliged to take other academic traditions into account. The contribution of postcolonial studies to an understanding of the historicity of societies that were colonized by their metropoles, and of the colonial legacies left behind, thus appears limited from the point of view of a historical sociology of politics inspired by Marx and Weber.