Urban generations: Post-colonial cities
Mohammed V University, Rabat
01 – 03 October 2004
19. Behind the Facades
Dupre, Karine (Tampere University of Technology, Finland)
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.