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ABSTRACT
Tourism in Paris embodies the contradictions of contemporary France, which struggles to think critically about its own postcolonial era. The invisibilization of colonial and anticolonial traces in the production of Parisian tourism narratives, the heightened otherness of Black communities in the tourist offer and the complex institutional heritagization of the colonial past illustrate the challenges in thinking about racial difference. By articulating two bodies of work, one dealing with racialization processes in French society, and the other with the geography and anthropology of tourism, this article examines the modalities in which a counter-hegemonic narrative of Parisian and French identity is produced and received based on the analysis of a tourism project, Le Paris Noir, or Black Paris. The article casts light on the symbolic violence that occurs through the internalization of the invisibilization of Black geographies and the challenges in breaking with France's powerful assimilationist legacy among racialized minorities. The Black Paris project serves as a laboratory to observe the effects of the racial denial mechanisms occurring in French society, and the resistance to them, taking the form of a decolonial praxis. The article emphasizes the role of social technologies in shaping the relational narrative of a transatlantic Blackness.
Acknowledgments
The author especially thanks the Black Paris project guide and visitors for sharing their voices. The author also wishes to thank the Journal editor and the special issue editors for their support, encouragement, and constructive feedback. Suggestions from anonymous reviewers were also appreciated. Finally, the author thanks the EIREST, the interdisciplinary group for tourism research in Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University, for their support.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. UNWTO
2. Paul Ricoeur (Citation1986) and Cornelius Castoriadis (Citation1975)'s theoretical frameworks are very important to conceptualize the instituting dimension of the imaginary and the power relations which structure it. The material environment cannot be conceived outside “the work of symbolic effectuation that it enables” (Chivallon, Citation2008, p. 84) as well as the social imaginary cannot be conceived outside its degree of concreteness in the material environment.
3. The official website for the promotion of Paris Ile-de-France presents a section named “World Cultures”, which offers “immediate boarding for a world tour” through urban walks to discover Africa and the Maghreb with its districts like the Goutte d'Or, Barbes, Belleville, the “Little Mali” of Château-Rouge. “Here, you don't need a passport to discover other cultures: when the world comes together to Paris, the scenery is guaranteed!”. http://www.visitparisregion.com/guides/envie-de/cultures-du-monde-64610.html
4. The author took part in several tours at these two sites throughout 2015–2016.
5. The Art Deco architecture of the Palais de la Porte Dorée is a major dimension of the tours: the guide describes the style of the building, the exterior facades, the interior design and the visual arts. Thus, the spatial practices of the tourists consist in gazing at the settings as well as taking pictures of the furniture, the wood parquet floor, the ceiling, etc.
6. The concept of assimilation, characterized by its colonial genealogy, is still effective today as it is a mandatory condition to acquire French citizenship (Hajjat, Citation2012). It means the internalization of the French “civilization” or “culture”, an “unconscious dressage” (Saada, Citation2006), associated with the organic conception of national belonging. To this extent, Abdelmalek Sayad (Citation1999) suggests the notion of “trans-substantiation” to convey this idea of a radical and ontological transformation of the becoming French citizen.
7. Jacques Rancière's theoretical framework on politics and police is very relevant to think about the regime of visibility of “those who have no part” (Citation1995, p. 53).
8. Indeed, Paris has played a major role in the construction of the identity of an African-American elite, people who wholly participated in the intellectual and artistic life of Paris, far from American racial segregation (Archer-Straw, Citation2000; Benetta, Citation1994; Fabre, Citation1991; Frund, Citation2012; Stovall, Citation2012). During the 1920's and 1930's, a number of eminent figures from the USA's Harlem Renaissance moved to Paris to join its thriving artistic and cultural circles: jazz musicians, writers, dancers, singers, painters and boxers. The presence of Black Americans left an indelible mark on the city, one that is explored by two tour operators as part of their tours that delve into this “Black Paris”. Walking The Spirit Tours, created in 1994 by a Canadian woman of African descent, stands out as one of Paris’ leading operators of “Black Heritage Tourism” and targets English-speaking tourists of African descent seeking out traces of the legacy left by the Black diaspora and wanting to discover France and Paris from an Afrocentric perspective. Black Paris Tours is another agency, founded in 1998 by an African-American woman, which offers circuits through the city focusing on the experiences of African-Americans in Paris.
10. Colonial Administrator, Governor of the French West Indies; during the Second World War, he fought for the Free French Forces in Africa, in particular in Brazzaville.
11. Here, the guide tells a story about a conversation between Hughes and his father: “When young Langston Hughes told his father of his ambition to become a writer, he could only think of Alexandre Dumas as an example of a coloured writer who had made money. And his father countered: Yes, but he was in Paris where they don't care about colour”. The father's reply usually gets a laugh from the tour group.
12. Négritude is a cultural, philosophical and political movement developed by francophone African and Caribbean intellectuals, writers and politicians in France in the 1930s, claiming their race consciousness against French colonialism.
13. The debate reached its peak when the theatre tried justifying their decision to cast a white actor: “Othello is a pinnacle of the tragic theatre repertoire. However, the play is rarely staged in France. One of the main challenges comes in trying to find an actor for the lead role was – this undoubtedly influenced our decision”, alluding to the lack of black actors capable of playing the part.
14. In a follow-up interview, the guide claimed that he did not know about it and learnt it from another Afro-descendant activist.
15. Banania is a popular chocolate drink. The brand portrays a smiling Black character, representative of the racist and colonial ideology.
16. Expression which requires testimonies of lived experiences, illustrating the denial of recognition (Honneth, Citation2007). The work of the French philosopher, Hourya Bentouhami (Citation2014) on Fanon's phenomenological approach to the body provides insight into the importance of acknowledging the psychological dimension of recognition, analysing how skin colour is experienced and racism embodied.
17. Though the tours were racially mixed, the interviews mainly focused on Afro-descendant visitors.
18. The two recent publications led by French female philosophers (Bentouhami Citation2015; Bessone, Citation2013) assert the structuring role of race in re-configuring social power relations and institutions in contemporary French society. Thus, racism is not a residual phenomenon in French society.
19. SOS Racism belongs to the first generation French antiracist movement born in 1984. It is criticized by the new anti-racist groups founded in the 2000's as the institutional antiracism, particularly for denying agency to the racialized subjects and more broadly for its analysis of racism.
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Linda Boukhris
Linda Boukhris is a geographer and researcher at the University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France. She is currently working on a book on race, nature and the political economy of tourism in Costa Rica.