Françoise Vergès

Françoise Vergès is a lecturer in postcolonial studies in the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her last book, La Mémoire enchaînée. Questions sur l'esclavage (Paris: Albin Michel, 2006) was awarded the 2006 Françoise Seligmann Foundation Prize Against Racism.

Xenophobia and the Civilizing Mission

Europe’s civilizing mission is humanitarian - its duty to intervene to spread the good word, protecting the oppressed against local tyrants. The conditions by which this protection is granted are always dictated by the protector and never the protégé. Though this is not said, it is a given.

By Françoise Vergès

/ 13 May 2011