Other radical geographies: Tropicality and decolonisation in 20th-century French geography

This paper analyses the anticolonialist commitment of a group of French geographers who variously criticised French colonialism or directly contributed to decolonisation movements in Africa in the central decades of the 20th century. Based on the analysis of works and unpublished archives of these scholars and activists, I argue that their work can be considered as a specific French contribution to early critical and radical geographies, exposing the complexity and diversity that constitutes the plurality of geographical traditions, to be understood through their stories of political dissidence. I extend current scholarship analysing histories and theories around the movement of “radical geography” as well as geographers' works on decolonisation, postcolonialism, and anticolonialism, stressing the need for diversifying geographical research's standpoints beyond Western canons. I especially call for rediscovering other critical and radical geographical traditions from outside the Anglosphere, eventually French anticolonialist geographies, whose exponents directly collaborated with colleagues from the South, especially the Maghreb and Western Africa. Studying these traditions is indispensable to decolonise geography and make it more international, cosmopolitan, and activist. This paper also extends recent contributions demonstrating that, in imperial ages, geography showed more potentiality for inspiring political dissidence than was commonly believed.