Oral Culture and Anticolonialism in Louise Michel's Mémoires (1886) and Légendes et chants de gestes canaques (1885)

In order to understand Louise Michel's support for the 1878 Kanak revolt, we must consider her aesthetics of oral culture in Mes Mémoires and Légendes et chants de gestes canaques. Michel was acquainted from an early age with the oral culture of her native Haute-Marne. Moreover, it was in the context of oral culture that she was able to assume a socially significant role: that of a great orator who spoke in defense of the oppressed. Her sense of community thus depended greatly upon her identification with pre-industrial peoples for whom the spoken word was the primary mode of communication. (KH)