ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the central role of the colonial narrative as a unifying memory amidst Belgium's complex identity politics. It demonstrates the narrative of a benevolent Belgian colonialism has become increasingly contested and under strain. The chapter highlights modes by which Louis Michel continues to revere the colonial past and discursively reproduce its conventional legitimising tenets. It also points to mnemonic sites that revive recognisable and enduring colonial complacencies. The chapter traces process by which such sites as school textbooks, curriculums and the royal museum of Central Africa reproduce paternalist and, to varying degrees, exalting assumptions of the colonial past. It examines the apology within the increasingly contested official state narrative of the colonial past. The chapter also examines a web of contestations and expediencies that intersect with the state's mea culpa.
