Chapter 9: Decolonizing Caribbean Heritage: Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Future Research

By the end of the 20th century, Caribbean heritage was institutionally defined by an inherited European conception, which developed hand in hand with the formation of national identities. It represented the greatness of nations and was founded on the value of rare, ancient, precious objects and monuments as historic proof of the value of cultures and people. Those definitions excluded its construction of colonized people at different levels and all who were not part of the elite, delegitimizing their culture, visions of the past and transmissions. Those who were in the shadows of this Modernity, were those who felt oppressed by the past and its continuities and they began to demystify the positive value of Modernity, showing its hidden face and extreme violence deployed out of Europe. This violence affected Europe in a boomerang effect “Choc en retour” with the advent of World War II (Césaire, 2004, p. 13). Furthermore, the Holocaust shook the making of history and knowledge, showing that oppressors could voluntarily erase traces of the past as to deny humanity. Struggles for freedom and equality as anticolonial, underground and feminists’ movements converged with larger questionings of the idea of the truth after World War II, in complex intertwined dynamics.