Agenda

Between 1800 and 1960, the French-language press constituted a privileged vantage point from which to observe colonial dynamics. Whether produced in metropolitan France or in colonised territories, it contributed to shaping narratives of imperial expansion, disseminating racial and civilisational categories, constructing representations of otherness, but also articulating criticism, resistance and counter-discourses. It played a central role in the circulation of texts and images, as well as in the development of hybrid cultural forms. The press can therefore be understood simultaneously as an instrument of domination, a space for negotiation, and a site of aesthetic and intellectual innovation.

This conference aims to explore these various dimensions by examining the French-language press in colonial contexts from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together history, literature, art history, media sociology, linguistics and cultural studies. It will investigate newspapers and periodicals as active participants in the colonial enterprise, focusing on the conditions of their production, their networks of circulation, the discursive and visual forms they employed, and the ways in which they were used by different social groups. Particular attention will be paid to the relationships between the metropolitan press and newspapers and periodicals published in the colonies, the transfer of models, the circulation of texts and images, and the forms of appropriation, subversion and contestation that emerged within these publications.