Of painted naked bodies and decapitated statues: the interpretive history of Fort-de-France

Abstract

In September 1991, the statue of Empress Josephine de Beauharnais Tascher de la Pagerie was beheaded in La Savane, a city park in Fort-de-France. Twentytwo years later, no one has claimed responsibility for this act of mutilation, the head has never been replaced, and the event continuously generates passionate debates among intellectuals, contemporary artists, politicians and the general population of Martinique. This article analyses the meaning of the beheading, and explores how new decisions by the French government regarding the celebrity of Empress Josephine broaden the socio-cultural and political subtexts that sustain the beheaded statue. The study also examines how recent symbolic reappropriations of the beheaded statue by French performing artist Sarah Trouche rewrite a social text from a disputed socio-historical context.