Maureen Murphy

A Realm of Memory for a Cité d'histoire

‘White air is full of words’, wrote Salman Rushdie in 1999. Between the walls of the Palais de la Porte Dorée rises a history mingling the pomp and circumstance of the violence of domination, the superficiality of exoticism with the profundity of stereotypes, the grandiosity of colonial works of art with the flaws of a bygone model whose memorial revivals are none the less still numerous today. Constructed on the occasion of the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition, the building initially called the official museum of the colonies changed its names and attributions time and time again: the Musée des Colonies et de la France Extérieure (Museum of the Colonies and of France Abroad) in 1932, the Musée de la France d’Outremer (Museum of France Overseas) in 1935, to become the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens (Museum of African and Oceanic Arts) following colonial independence. This symbolic detachment in relation to the colonies, expressed in the selection of names imposed on the institution, reflects the image of the politics of progressive disengagement led by France vis-à-vis her empire. Today, the palace houses the Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration (CNHI). From one history to another, a shift has occurred, yet the substrata remains unchanged. How is colonial