The Role of French-Arab Women in Constructing a Postcolonial France

In the years following 2000, French society finally started to address problematic issues emanating from its colonial past (massacres, slavery, and forced labor) and to question what it means to be a postcolonial nation. The discussion of such pointed and problematic subjects had for so long been repressed by successive French governments who feared civil unrest among France's postcolonial immigrant communities and who were ofte composed of and influenced by powerful and nostalgic ex-settler pressure groups. The concept of “postcolonialism” also challenges the fundamental ideals of the French Republic whereby citizens should meld into the dominant social norms of French society and renounce their respective individual history or culture.