Reimagining the "Educated Citizen": Creolization and Democratic Praxis in Public Spaces

• In Event: 42.074 - Troubling (Post)Colonial Histories: Curriculum, Policy, and Public Spaces

Abstract

This research argues that the transatlantic environment of Louisiana and the creolization process that was a part of that environment in the early nineteenth century were instrumental in fostering a public democratic culture which developed outside of formal education and which was not contingent upon legal realities and political rights. It provides a counter-narrative to dominant Enlightenment ideologies of the educated democratic citizen and the public sphere by articulating how a creolized Louisiana-Franco-Afro-Creole democratic ideology was nurtured through the practices of everyday life within the shared public spaces of antebellum coffee houses. The author traces ways in which this public culture provided access to democratic praxis for groups of people who were denied those opportunities by formal republican institutions.

Author

• Robyn Andermann, Louisiana State University - Baton Rouge