This chapter is concerned with the development of new patrimonial and museographical practices relating to transatlantic slavery in France and its far-flung overseas departments in the Caribbean. From the outset, it is worth recalling that these departments consist of micro-societies that were born out of slavery and whose historical trajectory has yet to find its rightful place within that of the French nation. What follows may therefore appear surprising since the proposed analysis chimes a dissonant note amid the increasing clamour for action at a museal level for the creation of places to collect, remember and honour the memory of slaves. Instead, this chapter takes an opposite approach by questioning the meaning of these new patrimonial practices within France's politico-memorial field through a critical investigation that reflects upon attempts to represent slavery. Starting with concrete experiences of the diverse scenographies of slavery – most of which will be museographical – this chapter will draw out the questions that emerge from the desire to make slavery visible, or rather the desire to voice slavery through the language of patrimony. My intention here is based on previous works dedicated to the more general question of memories of slavery today and how they are associated with, or disconnected from, the racial categories that were constructed during slavery, and notably race and racism. To summarize, this previous work has been concerned with the ways in which society's conceptions today continue to be propped up by similar processes inherited from those that formed the foundations of colonialism and slavery (Chivallon, 2012).

Before beginning this analysis of patrimonial discourses, it must be stated that museographical practices relating to slavery expose practitioners to a situation where they are no longer dealing with an historical event that is reassuringly distant (temporally speaking) from the present day and has only to enter the museum. The museography of slavery is entirely subject to contemporaneous social relations and to the political governance that authorizes memory policy. In order to consider the discursive strategies that enable the slave past to become visible through the medium of museography, we must return to the conditions in which slavery is first able to enter a patrimonial space destined for public use.