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Summary
This article examines the practice of autopsies in French-ruled West Africa in the interwar era. It contributes to the discussion of medical knowledge and its employment in the colonies and raises a set of questions regarding the administration's motives for performing autopsies and the African responses to this practice. In order to answer these questions, I briefly examine the practice of autopsies in France and move to the colonies to look at the problematic ways in which they were performed under colonial conditions. I then delve into local practices of ritual autopsies that also aim to explain death, but in different ways. Finally, I demonstrate what the differences and similarities between practices of colonial and ritual autopsies can teach us about the idea of the Civilising Mission and its perception by African colonial subjects.

Ruth GINIO Les enfants africains de la Révolution nationale Dès la mise en place du système éducatif colonial, l'administration française en AOF a été confrontée à des difficultés,dont la principale était d'inculquer aux enfants africains les valeurs de la civilisation française, sans effacer la distance qui sépare le colonisateur du colonisé. À l'époque de Vichy, l'administration coloniale en AOF accorde une attention spéciale aux enfants africains de la «Révolution nationale». Elle applique les réformes de l'«éducation générale» mises en place en métropole. Les nouvelles conceptions éducatives, leur contenu et leurs objectifs, donnent une légitimation forte aux idées coloniales qui existaient bien avant Vichy, mais qu'il n'était guère aisé de concilier avec les valeurs républicaines. La devise «Travail, Famille, Patrie» était, pour l'administration coloniale, plus aisée à expliquer aux écoliers africains que la précédente, « Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité », que contredisaient totalement les réalités coloniales dans lesquelles ils évoluaient.

"Silence lies between forgetting and remembering. This book explores the ways in which different societies have constructed silences to enable men and women to survive and make sense of the catastrophic consequences of armed conflict. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, it examines the silences that have followed violence in twentieth-century Europe, the Middle East and Africa. These essays show that silence is a powerful language of remembrance and commemoration and a cultural practice with its own rules." "This broad-ranging book discloses the universality of silence in the ways we think about war through examples ranging from the Spanish Civil War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Armenian Genocide and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Bringing together scholarship on varied practices in different cultures, this book breaks new ground in the vast literature on memory, and opens up new avenues of reflection and research on the lingering aftermath of war."--Jacket

Silence lies between forgetting and remembering. This book explores how different societies have constructed silences to enable men and women to survive and make sense of the catastrophic consequences of armed conflict. Using a range of disciplinary approaches, it examines the silences that have followed violence in twentieth-century Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. These essays show that silence is a powerful language of remembrance and commemoration and a cultural practice with its own rules. This broad-ranging book discloses the universality of silence in the ways we think about war through examples ranging from the Spanish Civil War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Armenian Genocide and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Bringing together scholarship on varied practices in different cultures, this book breaks new ground in the vast literature on memory, and opens up new avenues of reflection and research on the lingering aftermath of war

This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide. Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through.