ABSTRACT
The impact of colonialism on French cultural production both during the period of colonial empire and in its contemporary aftermath has been the central focus of the public history group ACHAC, the Association Connaissance de l’histoire de l’Afrique contemporaine. The term lieu de memoire is now commonplace, often deployed loosely–even to the extent of being ‘sloganised’–with no reference to its originally strict definition in Nora’s use of it in the context of the bicentenary of the French Revolution. The ambivalence of attitudes towards the ephemeral is arguably linked to a more general uncertainty regarding the study of material things. Board games provide a firmly directive frame in which play is deployed in the service of forming a pro-colonial mindset.
