DUHENNOIS, DORIS

Panel

Session 3: Culture and Performance

Presentation

Environmental crisis and colonial dismantlement in the Lesser Antilles

Colonial monuments located in past and present Caribbean French and British Overseas Territories act as constant reminders of a traumatic history, and controversies around their dismantlement highlights the complexity of dealing with the legacies of colonialism. The current environmental crisis is one of these legacies, as colonialism and the imposition of a capitalist mode of production, based on the exploitation of people and nature, played a key role in the emergence of global warming (Gonzales, 2020). While the literature has established a connection between climate justice and colonial reparation, and between the latest and statues' dismantlement, little attention has been paid to the relation between climate justice and dismantlement. Specifically, few have explored how struggles for monuments' reassessment have been used to advance demands for climate justice and examined the role played by the environmental crisis in triggering demands for dismantlement. These questions are particularly important in the Caribbean, as the islands and their populations are facing some of the most dramatic consequences of climate change. In order to bridge this gap, I will present a project designed to compare colonial memorisation between the Caribbean islands, France and Britain, analysing the contestations of the legacies of colonialism according to a transatlantic axis. Using this framework, I will examine the interconnection between reassessment of colonial monuments and demands for climate reparation in the Caribbean and analyse how these debates have impacted the way the environmental crisis is perceived in France and Britain.