Postcolonial identity constructions in French popular culture of the long 1960s

The Ivorian-French singer John William between intercultural appropriation and subversive affirmation of blackness

Abstract

The Ivorian-French singer John William is almost forgotten today, although he was a very popular French artist in the “long 1960s“. His biography and artistic work crystallize central aspects of France’s ambivalent approach to its colonial heritage in the context of decolonization, as well as strategies of postcolonial positioning and representation. John William links his experiences as an Afro-French with African-American history and the memory of slavery, but also with a fascination for the United States. Using William’s autobiography as an example, intercultural transfer and appropriation processes in French popular music are examined against the backdrop of decolonization. The article analyzes representations of cultural alterity as well as forms of identification and self-staging in the ambivalent field of tension between transatlantic blackness and (post-)colonial assimilation, which can also be read as subversive strategies for one’s own positioning, and thus questions the significance of non-European reference points and the suppression of one’s own (post-)colonial realities in the media pop culture of the time.