Conference Abstracts
16. Dupre, Karine; Tampere University of Technology,
Finland
" Behind the Facades"
On March 19, 1946 Guadeloupe, an island located in
the Caribbean, changed its status of a French colony to that of
a French Overseas Department, after more than three centuries of
colonial rule.
Based on the principle of assimilation, the change
of status seemed at first glance to have unified both metropolitans
and the islanders, for assimilation was understood for some as the
proper mean to restore the French republican devise –Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity-in the island; and, for others, as the only
way to integrate this new department into the country. As such,
cultural discourses at that time also appeared somehow unilateral,
at the image of the Guadeloupean elite’s majority that did
not call for independency (in this sense closely following the Martiniquais
leader Aimé Césaire), as well as at the image of the
French administration and politics that were willing to raise up
the level of Guadeloupe (in terms of equipment, roads, health, social
equality, etc.) to that of France. Yet, in its implementation and
in details, almost 60 years after the “assimilation law”
passed, one can only wonder whether such assimilation truly existed
in the post-colonial cities of Guadeloupe, even in the earliest
times of decolonisation.
Because it may concern both crucial need (e.g. of
shelter) and aesthetics, architecture has been chosen in this paper
as the specific cultural discourse to be examined to assess the
impact of assimilation in Guadeloupe after 1946. Indeed, architecture
not only reflects one society’s pragmatic answers to its natural
milieu (climate and other geophysical conditions) and to the milieu
this same society developed (through choices of production and economy),
but also refers to politics, to power, to ideals, whether they be
artistic, hygienist, cultural, etc. In other words, architecture
should be understood here as clearly referencing to the different
identities one society might contain and to the intermingled relationships
bonding them to each others.
In Guadeloupe, where colonial discourses traditionally
emphasized dichotomy between colonisers’ buildings and those
of the colonized, architecture became obviously a challenge in the
post-colonial period. Besides, as much as the largest cities of
Guadeloupe have gathered much more interest than smaller cities
and villages by the evident underlining desire of representation,
cultural discourses –and here architecture- in the largest
cities were/are often much more readable than in the smaller cities
and villages. Yet, since 1946, urban growth and population growth
have considerably modified those notions of cities, towns and villages;
as well as they displaced the focus of cultural discourses. Therefore,
this paper proposes to analyze architecture as a cultural discourse
during the post-colonial period (1946-2003) in the context of two
town centres of Guadeloupe, Gosier and Trois-Rivières. As
such, the attempt is not only to describe and analyze “the
façade”, but also the inside voices.
Back
|
