Colonial Representations, Post-Colonial Aspirations: French Cultural Policy in the Final Decade of the Tunisian Protectorate

Abstract

In the Tunisian Protectorate, the phrase “cultural activities” referred to events such as artistic expositions, academic conferences, and literary competitions organized by a variety of associations which received backing from the French colonial administration. By examining in detail these cultural activities, sponsored primarily by the Bureau of Public Instruction in the decade before independence, this study demonstrates that through such events the government of the Resident General sought to propagate and promote a particular image of French culture among Tunisian elites with the intention of securing a dominant position for French art, language and literature in a post-colonial Tunisia. This image, which presented French culture as unified and diverse, continuous and dynamic, universal and superior emerged principally as a response to the new political realities created by the growing strength of Tunisian nationalism. In addition, assuring this privileged position for French civilization in areas where direct political control was being curtailed or abandoned altogether was a process directly related to Frenchmen‟s negotiation of their own cultural identity in relation the rest of the world during the post-WWII era.