Toussaint Louverture à Nantes, La Rochelle et à Bordeaux : Entre recouvrement, passages mémoriels et impasses

Abstract: Toussaint Louverture's life trajectory is one of "passages" in the sense of ascension from the lowest to the highest social echelon. However, few French people know that it was this Black general who, in the Saint Domingue colony, took the French Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man to a level France had never imagined by abolishing slavery. It is so because the "passage," or transmission, of Louverture's memory remained for a long time in archives accessible only to historians and history-lovers. There have been efforts since the 1990s in Nantes, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux to inscribe Louverture's name in spaces easily accessible to the general public. This article shows that the recovery process in Nantes and Bordeaux perpetuates a logic of political recuperation, marginalization, confinement, and of impasses that can be transcended only through political courage and humility.