Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This introductory chapter aims to move subjugated knowledge to the limits of the colonial difference where subjugated become subaltern knowledges in the structure of coloniality of power. It ...
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This introductory chapter aims to move subjugated knowledge to the limits of the colonial difference where subjugated become subaltern knowledges in the structure of coloniality of power. It conceives subaltern knowledges in tandem with Occidentalism as the overarching imaginary of the modern/colonial world system: Occidentalism is the visible face in the building of the modern world, whereas subaltern knowledges are its darker side, the colonial side of modernity. This very notion of subaltern knowledges makes visible the colonial difference between anthropologists in the First World “studying” the Third World and “anthropologians” in the Third World reflecting on their own geohistorical and colonial conditions.Less
This introductory chapter aims to move subjugated knowledge to the limits of the colonial difference where subjugated become subaltern knowledges in the structure of coloniality of power. It conceives subaltern knowledges in tandem with Occidentalism as the overarching imaginary of the modern/colonial world system: Occidentalism is the visible face in the building of the modern world, whereas subaltern knowledges are its darker side, the colonial side of modernity. This very notion of subaltern knowledges makes visible the colonial difference between anthropologists in the First World “studying” the Third World and “anthropologians” in the Third World reflecting on their own geohistorical and colonial conditions.
Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.003.0009
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This afterword extends the observations from previous chapters, which distinguished postmodern from post-Occidental thinking as a critique of modernity from the interior borders (postmodernism) and ...
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This afterword extends the observations from previous chapters, which distinguished postmodern from post-Occidental thinking as a critique of modernity from the interior borders (postmodernism) and from the exterior borders of the modern/colonial world (post-Occidentalism), to deconstruction and to world system analysis. Postmodern criticism of modernity as well as world system analysis is generated from the interior borders of the system—that is, they provide a Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism. The colonial epistemic difference is located some place else, not in the interiority of modernity defined by its imperial conflicts and self-critiqued from a postmodern perspective. On the contrary, the epistemic colonial difference emerges in the exteriority of the modern/colonial world, and in that particular form of exteriority that comprises the Chicano/as and Latino/as in United States—a consequence of the national conflicts between Mexico and the United States in 1848 and of the imperial conflicts between the United States and Spain in 1898.Less
This afterword extends the observations from previous chapters, which distinguished postmodern from post-Occidental thinking as a critique of modernity from the interior borders (postmodernism) and from the exterior borders of the modern/colonial world (post-Occidentalism), to deconstruction and to world system analysis. Postmodern criticism of modernity as well as world system analysis is generated from the interior borders of the system—that is, they provide a Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism. The colonial epistemic difference is located some place else, not in the interiority of modernity defined by its imperial conflicts and self-critiqued from a postmodern perspective. On the contrary, the epistemic colonial difference emerges in the exteriority of the modern/colonial world, and in that particular form of exteriority that comprises the Chicano/as and Latino/as in United States—a consequence of the national conflicts between Mexico and the United States in 1848 and of the imperial conflicts between the United States and Spain in 1898.
Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter brings border thinking into conversation with postcoloniality through the colonial difference. Postcoloniality, and its equivalents—beyond Eurocentrism and Occidentalism—is both a ...
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This chapter brings border thinking into conversation with postcoloniality through the colonial difference. Postcoloniality, and its equivalents—beyond Eurocentrism and Occidentalism—is both a critical discourse that brings to the foreground the colonial side of the “modern world system” and the coloniality of power imbedded in modernity itself, as well as a discourse that relocates the ratio between geohistorical locations and knowledge production. The reordering of the geopolitics of knowledge manifests itself in two different but complementary directions. The first is the critique of the subalternization from the perspective of subaltern knowledges. The second is the emergence of border thinking as a new epistemological modality at the intersection of Western and the diversity of categories that were suppressed under Occidentalism, Orientalism, and area studies.Less
This chapter brings border thinking into conversation with postcoloniality through the colonial difference. Postcoloniality, and its equivalents—beyond Eurocentrism and Occidentalism—is both a critical discourse that brings to the foreground the colonial side of the “modern world system” and the coloniality of power imbedded in modernity itself, as well as a discourse that relocates the ratio between geohistorical locations and knowledge production. The reordering of the geopolitics of knowledge manifests itself in two different but complementary directions. The first is the critique of the subalternization from the perspective of subaltern knowledges. The second is the emergence of border thinking as a new epistemological modality at the intersection of Western and the diversity of categories that were suppressed under Occidentalism, Orientalism, and area studies.
Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explores the implications of national ideologies in the domain of languages and literatures intermixed with the colonial difference. It looks at the Haitian Revolution, wherein language ...
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This chapter explores the implications of national ideologies in the domain of languages and literatures intermixed with the colonial difference. It looks at the Haitian Revolution, wherein language was intrinsically related to community formation and to geopolitical configurations. Indeed, the Haitian Revolution is crucial for envisioning a new scenario of geopolitical configurations and for understanding the function of languages for political interventions and for building communities. “An other tongue” is the necessary condition for “an other thinking” and for the possibility of moving beyond the defense of national languages and national ideologies—both of which have been operating in complicity with imperial powers and imperial conflicts.Less
This chapter explores the implications of national ideologies in the domain of languages and literatures intermixed with the colonial difference. It looks at the Haitian Revolution, wherein language was intrinsically related to community formation and to geopolitical configurations. Indeed, the Haitian Revolution is crucial for envisioning a new scenario of geopolitical configurations and for understanding the function of languages for political interventions and for building communities. “An other tongue” is the necessary condition for “an other thinking” and for the possibility of moving beyond the defense of national languages and national ideologies—both of which have been operating in complicity with imperial powers and imperial conflicts.
Walter D. Mignolo
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156095
- eISBN:
- 9781400845064
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156095.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the ...
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This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.Less
This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.
Bonny Ibhawoh
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199664849
- eISBN:
- 9780191748523
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199664849.003.0007
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This chapter concludes the book and recaps its key arguments. It argues that imperial courts were central to the construction and contestation of colonial difference as well as to the subsequent ...
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This chapter concludes the book and recaps its key arguments. It argues that imperial courts were central to the construction and contestation of colonial difference as well as to the subsequent management of tensions between native exceptionalism and imperial universalism. The adjudication of imperial difference inevitably manifested the contradictions of British law. Imperial Appeal Courts operating beyond the direct influence of provincial colonial officialdom served as alternate locales for debates revolving around questions of inclusion and exclusion, power and restraint. The chapter draws parallels between historical and contemporary trends in supranational adjudication and the globalization of legal culture.Less
This chapter concludes the book and recaps its key arguments. It argues that imperial courts were central to the construction and contestation of colonial difference as well as to the subsequent management of tensions between native exceptionalism and imperial universalism. The adjudication of imperial difference inevitably manifested the contradictions of British law. Imperial Appeal Courts operating beyond the direct influence of provincial colonial officialdom served as alternate locales for debates revolving around questions of inclusion and exclusion, power and restraint. The chapter draws parallels between historical and contemporary trends in supranational adjudication and the globalization of legal culture.
Bonny Ibhawoh
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526105646
- eISBN:
- 9781526128140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526105646.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter examines British imperial rule of law and its relationship to colonial difference. The ideal of impartial legality within the British Empire was embodied in a supreme right of appeal to ...
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This chapter examines British imperial rule of law and its relationship to colonial difference. The ideal of impartial legality within the British Empire was embodied in a supreme right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a right continues in force even in a few locations today. During its more active periods, the Privy Council saw itself as the instantiation of the idea of rule of law across the empire, and therefore as a profound force toward world-spanning legality and social order. Yet this universal aspiration toward the rule of law did not lead toward simple assertions that all peoples throughout the empire should immediately adopt British social forms. Instead, the judges sought to assimilate existing patterns of social life to a shared juridical order. Theirs was a universalism that did not insist upon the same rights for everyone, regardless of who and where they might be, but rather emphasized the submersion of all local legal orders to the rule of the empire’s central court. As Ibhawoh notes, many of the questions that occupied the Privy Council continue to matter today as developing systems of international law replay many similar, difficult debates.Less
This chapter examines British imperial rule of law and its relationship to colonial difference. The ideal of impartial legality within the British Empire was embodied in a supreme right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a right continues in force even in a few locations today. During its more active periods, the Privy Council saw itself as the instantiation of the idea of rule of law across the empire, and therefore as a profound force toward world-spanning legality and social order. Yet this universal aspiration toward the rule of law did not lead toward simple assertions that all peoples throughout the empire should immediately adopt British social forms. Instead, the judges sought to assimilate existing patterns of social life to a shared juridical order. Theirs was a universalism that did not insist upon the same rights for everyone, regardless of who and where they might be, but rather emphasized the submersion of all local legal orders to the rule of the empire’s central court. As Ibhawoh notes, many of the questions that occupied the Privy Council continue to matter today as developing systems of international law replay many similar, difficult debates.
An Yountae
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823273072
- eISBN:
- 9780823273126
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823273072.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter extends the meaning of the abyss by giving it a concrete and contextualized shape. The chapter probes complex crossings that take place at the intersection of the mystical and the ...
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This chapter extends the meaning of the abyss by giving it a concrete and contextualized shape. The chapter probes complex crossings that take place at the intersection of the mystical and the political by investigating the colonial impasse from which the Afro-Caribbean decolonial imagination of the (post)negritude movement emerges. In the writings of the Caribbean thinkers one witnesses an extended notion of identity based on relational ontology; the story of the shattered other shapes the very contours of the collective history from which the traumatized self emerges. It is, then, in this very middle, the groundless site lying between the traumatizing past and the dumbfounded present, between fragmentation and reconstruction, and between suffering and redemption, where one begins to reflect upon the possibility of passage, of beginning after trauma. The possibility of the reconstruction of the traumatized self is reconsidered in the extended notion of identity based on relational ontology found in the writings of the Afro-Caribbean thinkers. A comparative reading of Glissant and contemporary continental philosophers (Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Rosi Braidotti) molds the contour of colonial difference emerging in Glissant’s decolonial vision.Less
This chapter extends the meaning of the abyss by giving it a concrete and contextualized shape. The chapter probes complex crossings that take place at the intersection of the mystical and the political by investigating the colonial impasse from which the Afro-Caribbean decolonial imagination of the (post)negritude movement emerges. In the writings of the Caribbean thinkers one witnesses an extended notion of identity based on relational ontology; the story of the shattered other shapes the very contours of the collective history from which the traumatized self emerges. It is, then, in this very middle, the groundless site lying between the traumatizing past and the dumbfounded present, between fragmentation and reconstruction, and between suffering and redemption, where one begins to reflect upon the possibility of passage, of beginning after trauma. The possibility of the reconstruction of the traumatized self is reconsidered in the extended notion of identity based on relational ontology found in the writings of the Afro-Caribbean thinkers. A comparative reading of Glissant and contemporary continental philosophers (Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Rosi Braidotti) molds the contour of colonial difference emerging in Glissant’s decolonial vision.
Parna Sengupta
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520268296
- eISBN:
- 9780520950412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520268296.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This text challenges one of the most compelling historical fictions: that Western rule secularized the non-West. It confronts this idea by demonstrating how the sustained involvement of missionaries ...
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This text challenges one of the most compelling historical fictions: that Western rule secularized the non-West. It confronts this idea by demonstrating how the sustained involvement of missionaries in the expansion of modern education ultimately reinforced, rather than weakened, the place of religion and religious identity in the development of Indian modernity. This chapter questions the conclusions drawn by theorists of historical and contemporary imperialism who describe the missionary role as a “self-consciously” modernizing project. It reveals the paradox that the pursuit and adaptation of modern educational techniques and institutions, mainly exported to the colonies by Protestant missionaries, opened up new ways for Hindu and Muslim leaders and the colonial state to reformulate ideas of community along religious lines. It demonstrates the centrality of vernacular education as a space in which missionaries and native leaders could theorize and ultimately propagate the practices and norms required of a properly modern society. It reveals the ways the materials and institutions of vernacular education became a means to argue for a vision of community and identity based on religious affiliation.Less
This text challenges one of the most compelling historical fictions: that Western rule secularized the non-West. It confronts this idea by demonstrating how the sustained involvement of missionaries in the expansion of modern education ultimately reinforced, rather than weakened, the place of religion and religious identity in the development of Indian modernity. This chapter questions the conclusions drawn by theorists of historical and contemporary imperialism who describe the missionary role as a “self-consciously” modernizing project. It reveals the paradox that the pursuit and adaptation of modern educational techniques and institutions, mainly exported to the colonies by Protestant missionaries, opened up new ways for Hindu and Muslim leaders and the colonial state to reformulate ideas of community along religious lines. It demonstrates the centrality of vernacular education as a space in which missionaries and native leaders could theorize and ultimately propagate the practices and norms required of a properly modern society. It reveals the ways the materials and institutions of vernacular education became a means to argue for a vision of community and identity based on religious affiliation.
Bonny Ibhawoh
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199664849
- eISBN:
- 9780191748523
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199664849.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History, Constitutional and Administrative Law
Focusing on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the colonial regional Appeal Courts for West Africa and East Africa, it examines how judicial discourses of native difference and imperial ...
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Focusing on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the colonial regional Appeal Courts for West Africa and East Africa, it examines how judicial discourses of native difference and imperial universalism in local disputes influenced practices of power in colonial settings and shaped an evolving jurisprudence of Empire. Arguing that the Imperial Appeal Courts were key sites where colonial legal modernity was fashioned, the book examines the tensions that permeated the colonial legal system such as the difficulty of upholding basic standards of British justice while at the same time allowing for local customary divergence which was thought essential to achieving that justice. The modernizing mission of British justice could only truly be achieved through recognition of local exceptionality and difference. Natives who appealed to the Courts of Empire were entitled to the same standards of justice as their ‘civilized’ colonists, yet the boundaries of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference somehow had to be recognized and maintained in the adjudicatory process. Meeting these divergent goals required flexibility in colonial law-making as well as in the administration of justice. In the paradox of integration and differentiation, imperial power and local cultures were not always in conflict but were sometimes complementary and mutually reinforcing. The book draws attention not only to the role of Imperial Appeal Courts in the colonies but also to the reciprocal place of colonized peoples in shaping the processes and outcomes of imperial justice. A valuable addition to British colonial literature, this book places Africa in a central role, and examines the role of the African colonies in the shaping of British imperial jurisprudence.Less
Focusing on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the colonial regional Appeal Courts for West Africa and East Africa, it examines how judicial discourses of native difference and imperial universalism in local disputes influenced practices of power in colonial settings and shaped an evolving jurisprudence of Empire. Arguing that the Imperial Appeal Courts were key sites where colonial legal modernity was fashioned, the book examines the tensions that permeated the colonial legal system such as the difficulty of upholding basic standards of British justice while at the same time allowing for local customary divergence which was thought essential to achieving that justice. The modernizing mission of British justice could only truly be achieved through recognition of local exceptionality and difference. Natives who appealed to the Courts of Empire were entitled to the same standards of justice as their ‘civilized’ colonists, yet the boundaries of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference somehow had to be recognized and maintained in the adjudicatory process. Meeting these divergent goals required flexibility in colonial law-making as well as in the administration of justice. In the paradox of integration and differentiation, imperial power and local cultures were not always in conflict but were sometimes complementary and mutually reinforcing. The book draws attention not only to the role of Imperial Appeal Courts in the colonies but also to the reciprocal place of colonized peoples in shaping the processes and outcomes of imperial justice. A valuable addition to British colonial literature, this book places Africa in a central role, and examines the role of the African colonies in the shaping of British imperial jurisprudence.
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281886
- eISBN:
- 9780823286003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281886.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The second chapter investigates the link between Christian thought and the historical matrix decolonial thinkers have theorized as the coloniality of power. In light of the historical theory of ...
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The second chapter investigates the link between Christian thought and the historical matrix decolonial thinkers have theorized as the coloniality of power. In light of the historical theory of coloniality and Christian theology’s entanglement in coloniality, this chapter opens up options for what decolonization might look like within theological reflection. This chapter begins with the task of considering the place of Christian theology within the coloniality of power. It then moves to offering possibilities for decolonizing descriptive statements of the human person, ways of knowing, and eschatological imaginations, and introduces the concept of decolonial love by engaging the way Chela Sandoval has used this term. Introducing these options leads to a threshold question for thinking from a Christian theological perspective within a decolonial project: Can members of communities that have been rendered nonpersons through various manifestations of the coloniality of power think and speak theologically on their own terms?Less
The second chapter investigates the link between Christian thought and the historical matrix decolonial thinkers have theorized as the coloniality of power. In light of the historical theory of coloniality and Christian theology’s entanglement in coloniality, this chapter opens up options for what decolonization might look like within theological reflection. This chapter begins with the task of considering the place of Christian theology within the coloniality of power. It then moves to offering possibilities for decolonizing descriptive statements of the human person, ways of knowing, and eschatological imaginations, and introduces the concept of decolonial love by engaging the way Chela Sandoval has used this term. Introducing these options leads to a threshold question for thinking from a Christian theological perspective within a decolonial project: Can members of communities that have been rendered nonpersons through various manifestations of the coloniality of power think and speak theologically on their own terms?
Alice L. Conklin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449017
- eISBN:
- 9780801460647
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449017.003.0020
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines how the idea of a special republican mission to civilize the “primitive” people of the earth provided the ideological framework for France's colonial empire in the modern era. ...
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This chapter examines how the idea of a special republican mission to civilize the “primitive” people of the earth provided the ideological framework for France's colonial empire in the modern era. While its antecedents stretched back to the Enlightenment and Revolution, this claim reached its apogee under the secular Third Republic, as it embarked upon its greatest attempt ever to sell the idea of the mission civilisatrice to the larger French public. In the aftermath of Vichy's humiliating collaboration with Germany, the Fourth Republic reinvented the terms of imperial governance, and with it the notion of France's imperial mission to civilize. As for de Gaulle's Fifth Republic, it remains an open question whether or not the “civilizing mission” has survived the formal end of the French empire.Less
This chapter examines how the idea of a special republican mission to civilize the “primitive” people of the earth provided the ideological framework for France's colonial empire in the modern era. While its antecedents stretched back to the Enlightenment and Revolution, this claim reached its apogee under the secular Third Republic, as it embarked upon its greatest attempt ever to sell the idea of the mission civilisatrice to the larger French public. In the aftermath of Vichy's humiliating collaboration with Germany, the Fourth Republic reinvented the terms of imperial governance, and with it the notion of France's imperial mission to civilize. As for de Gaulle's Fifth Republic, it remains an open question whether or not the “civilizing mission” has survived the formal end of the French empire.