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Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 13, No. 2, 195-214 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1359183508090897

Recycling Recognition

The Monument as Objet Trouvé of the Postcolony

Ferdinand De Jong

University of East Anglia, UK, f.jong @uea.ac.uk

This article examines the recycling of a colonial memorial to African veterans in Dakar, Senegal. This act of appropriation by the Senegalese government radically transformed the significance of the memorial and reconfigured the city's memoryscape. Whilst the Senegalese government thus reclaimed colonial history as constitutive for the postcolony, it simultaneously underwrote a postcolonial claim for recognition. The article examines this case as indicative for a wider trend to claims for recognition for which recyclia seem to lend themselves par excellence. As objects of mimetic appropriation, colonial memorials can be seen as the objets trouvés of the postcolony.

Key Words: memoryscapes • monuments • postcolony • recognition • recyclia • Senegal • Tirailleurs sénégalais


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