I must congratulate The Sunday Times of Malta on its report on Maltese memory regarding the French interlude of 1798-1800 (The Sunday Times of Malta, October 26), as discussed in my new book. What readers must have missed in that report, however, is the complete title of the book itself, which is France in the Maltese Collective Memory, Perceptions, Identities after Bonaparte in British Malta.

I am certain the full name of the volume enables one to better comprehend this academic PhD thesis that carries a corpus of researched theories on collective memory and identity.

The book is not only proposing a revision of history but, more importantly, it is provoking a debate on Maltese identity today, 50 years after Independence.

As per the coverage by The Sunday Times of Malta, the French interlude was only used as a case study. Most of the critical analysis, however – contrary to what was reported – is not about ‘national identity under French rule’ but specifically about what happened to Maltese collective memory and identity under the British colonial period and up to this very day.

The thesis contends that in many respects the manipulated, blocked Maltese collective memory of the last two centuries has produced an identity which is today still more colonial than Maltese.

As philosopher/historian Paul Ricoeur aptly points out, dominant institutions could unwittingly activate passive, subtle forgetting by escapist practices or alternatively by omitting and neglecting.