In the book’s Outro, I discuss a controversy that erupted in 2011, when the minister of France’s Overseas Territories, Marie-Luce Penchard, proposed to hold an event celebrating overseas culture (the Jardin en Outre-Mer) in the very same spot where eighty years prior people from those same territories had been exhibited as savages. Despite widespread criticism (such that written by Christiane Taubira), officials refused to consider alternative venues, and ignored academics’ (such as Nicolas Bancel’s) pleas to at least situate the 2011 event within a larger discussion of “human zoos” in France. Penchard did, however, charge Françoise Vergès, then president of the Comité national pour la mémoire et l’histoire de l’esclavage, with researching the way the history of “human zoos” could be commemorated in France. Read the entire mission report.

The following year, Pascal Blanchard and Lilian Thuram organized an exhibition entitled “L’invention du Sauvage: Acclimatations/Exhibitions” (at the same time as the larger “Exhibitions: L’invention du sauvage” exhibit at the Musée du Quai Branly) to “regarder ce passé en face.”