Afterword Medieval Debris
Afterword Medieval Debris
This afterword describes the aim of the author in establishing an archive of local knowledge that places colonial history in relation to medieval studies during the Third Republic through Joseph Bédier. His influential medievalism resides simultaneously on Réunion, in Paris, during the Third Republic, and within French literature, and its formation and impact derive from the multiple migrations that made these collocations possible. Bédier’s literary histories reflect, and reflect on, the many meanings of French imperialism, viewed simultaneously from the eleventh century and the twentieth century, and from France’s southeastern colonial edge and its metropolitan center. The afterword also discusses Anna Laura Stoler’s concept of “imperial debris”, a sociocultural process that the author exemplifies with Joseph Bédier’s journeys which suggests that sometimes the colony comes “before” the metropole. The idea of imperial debris underscores the very idea of creole medievalism—an imperial formation also shaped by subversion and resistance.
Keywords: Joseph Bédier, Anna Laura Stoler, colonial history, medieval studies, Third Republic, Réunion, Paris, imperial debris, subversion, resistance
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