ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on colonialism’s prolonged and devastating impact at the level of the individual, including for the author herself. It lends further urgency to the need to deconstruct (and ideally neutralize) the stratified traces of contempt that so readily become internalized. Traces of contempt, and her grappling with their multiple effects upon her and her loved ones, lay at the crux of the author’s artistic production in which images, stories (sound and video), and other archival sources mingle together. Deconstructing these bitter fruits comes via drawing upon snippets of family stories that push her to try to make sense of the burden of instinctual violence that overwhelmed her own father, together with many other immigrant men in his neighbourhood. Her work, as such, probes not only the deeper roots of this violence but also the reasons why her parents came to a France where they were unwanted.
