Pub Date : 2022-07-19DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2098939
A. Wimbush
The French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe were colonised by the French as far back as 1635. These early French settlers became the owners and masters of the sugar cane plantations, where Black enslaved people were subjected to brutal treatment. White plantation owners were colloquially known as ‘béké’ (the term ‘blanc pays’ was more common in Guadeloupe, but ‘béké’ was also used) and they made up approximately ten to fifteen percent of the Antillean population. While their numbers have since dwindled (today their descendants account for only one percent of the population), they continue to hold political and economic power on the islands. Despite their importance in local politics and economic activities, and their prominence in the cultural imaginary of Antilleans as a presence to be both feared and fetishized, there is a surprising lack of scholarship on literary representations of the béké figure. Maeve McCusker aims to correct this with her fascinating new study, Fictions of Whiteness: Imagining the Planter Caste in the French Caribbean . The book studies how the béké have been represented in novels written by both béké and non-béké writers. It takes a broadly chronological approach through these texts, beginning with little-known nineteenth-century writers such as Auguste-Jean Prévost de Sansac, count of Traversay
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Pub Date : 2022-07-06DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2083091
Robert Mortimer
ABSTRACT With the approach of the sixtieth anniversary of the Evian Accords that brought an end to the Algerian War, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, commissioned the historian, Benjamin Stora, to prepare a report on the evolution of relations between the two countries since the independence of Algeria. Stora, born in Algeria in 1950, is one of the most productive French historians of the Algerian nationalist movement, author of many studies of the wartime period and its aftermath. Relations between the two countries have often been strained, and observers note that there has been little reconciliation of the traumas of colonisation and the exodus of the European pied-noir population in 1962. Predictably the Stora Report has proved controversial. The paper will analyse the context, the content, and the reception of the report on the two shores of the Mediterranean.
{"title":"The Stora Report","authors":"Robert Mortimer","doi":"10.1080/09639489.2022.2083091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2022.2083091","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With the approach of the sixtieth anniversary of the Evian Accords that brought an end to the Algerian War, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, commissioned the historian, Benjamin Stora, to prepare a report on the evolution of relations between the two countries since the independence of Algeria. Stora, born in Algeria in 1950, is one of the most productive French historians of the Algerian nationalist movement, author of many studies of the wartime period and its aftermath. Relations between the two countries have often been strained, and observers note that there has been little reconciliation of the traumas of colonisation and the exodus of the European pied-noir population in 1962. Predictably the Stora Report has proved controversial. The paper will analyse the context, the content, and the reception of the report on the two shores of the Mediterranean.","PeriodicalId":44362,"journal":{"name":"Modern & Contemporary France","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42503045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2047627
Fiona Barclay
{"title":"Performing the pied-noir family: constructing narratives of settler memory and identity in literature and on-screen","authors":"Fiona Barclay","doi":"10.1080/09639489.2022.2047627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2022.2047627","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44362,"journal":{"name":"Modern & Contemporary France","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47132763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2069732
Jeff Barda
ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which French experimental poetic practices have investigated, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the way the social order is produced in everyday activities—how individuals talk, describe, account for and make sense of the ordinary. Through an analysis of three case studies, this article explores how numerous French practitioners seek to reintegrate art into the praxis of life, principally through language use. It shows how these practitioners develop proposals and methods that allow us to think about action, and thus redefine the very idea of aesthetic experience. Such explorations resonate strongly with a range of theoretical debates (pragmatism, interactionism, ethnomethodology) about the way we think about social reality, everyday reasoning and ordinary situations. It concludes by showing not only how these works challenge attitude and beliefs towards art and language, but also how they invite us to pay attention to attention itself.
{"title":"Making sense of the ordinary through discursive practices: a French ‘socio-writing’ turn?","authors":"Jeff Barda","doi":"10.1080/09639489.2022.2069732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2022.2069732","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which French experimental poetic practices have investigated, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the way the social order is produced in everyday activities—how individuals talk, describe, account for and make sense of the ordinary. Through an analysis of three case studies, this article explores how numerous French practitioners seek to reintegrate art into the praxis of life, principally through language use. It shows how these practitioners develop proposals and methods that allow us to think about action, and thus redefine the very idea of aesthetic experience. Such explorations resonate strongly with a range of theoretical debates (pragmatism, interactionism, ethnomethodology) about the way we think about social reality, everyday reasoning and ordinary situations. It concludes by showing not only how these works challenge attitude and beliefs towards art and language, but also how they invite us to pay attention to attention itself.","PeriodicalId":44362,"journal":{"name":"Modern & Contemporary France","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48462254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2030696
Jessica Lynne Pearson
(Germany was also at the forefront of these debates, and the French did not want to simply follow the Germans), historians may be drawn in by the many political and economic players, named and where possible, quoted, and meaningfully contextualized. Philosophers and political scientists will also find the book important as they follow Ewald’s presentation of the various political parties, their arguments for and against certain proposals, and the ideologies behind them. The influence of one thinker in particular, Michel Foucault, Ewald’s dissertation advisor, is also evident. More helpful than oversimplifying a complicated and fascinating read is a consideration of its contemporary relevance, something Johnson mentioned at the beginning of his preface, as did Cooper at the end of her essay. One might first assume that as we revise social welfare systems in our time, the lessons of the past would be illuminating, and yes, knowing from where these systems arose is essential in their maintenance and improvement. But Ewald also provides a lesson for the development of other systems. That is, the problem of workplace accidents and the inability of the social, legal and political systems of the 19 century to deal with them seems quite like the ways COVID-19 has challenged our systems, leading to our inability to stop the pandemic. Striking a balance between individual liberty and state control is one important theme in both eras. In Ewald’s analysis, the challenges of the 19 century led to a creative new way to ensure people’s security through shared insurance costs and equitably shared benefits—an analysis well worth reading for its own sake. But the application to today was also heartening. We too must determine how to honour individual liberty while assuring broader security. The systems of the past are simply inadequate to deal with problems they were never meant to address, but when pushed to the brink, creative solutions are possible. It’s hard to tell from Ewald’s text whether the politics then were as polarized as they are today and misinformation as rife—additional social factors to consider. Still, the parallels suggest that we too should be able to devise new systems as innovative as that which Ewald describes as having birthed the French welfare state.
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Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2083092
Eva Jørholt
ABSTRACT This article explores four recent audiovisual productions that bring to light the state-organized mass migration of French West Indians from Martinique and Guadeloupe to mainland France through BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le développement des migrations dans les départements d’outre-mer) during the 1960s and 1970s. Vehemently criticized at the time—some observers even comparing it to the slave trade—BUMIDOM ended up being largely obfuscated from the collective national memory. Each in its own way, the four productions—two documentaries, Bumidom—Des Français venus d’Outre-mer (2011) and L’Avenir est ailleurs (2007), as well as the fictional TV mini series Le Rêve français (2018) and the feature film Le Gang des Antillais (2016)—unearth the humiliation experienced by the Martinicans and Guadeloupeans handled by BUMIDOM and how it enhanced their feeling of being perceived as not entirely French. After examining the productions, the article concludes by discussing them in relation to the concept of creoleness—as advocated by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant in Éloge de la créolité (1989)—and the ‘desire for conviviality’: to what extent can an excavation of a painful and contentious past be helpful in that respect?
本文探讨了最近的四个视听作品，揭示了在20世纪60年代和70年代期间，法属西印度群岛人通过BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le ddecimement des migrations dans les ddecpartements d’re-mer)从马提尼克岛和瓜德罗普岛到法国大陆的国家组织的大规模移民。当时受到激烈的批评——一些观察家甚至将其与奴隶贸易相提并论——最终在很大程度上与国家集体记忆相混淆。这四部作品分别以各自的方式——两部纪录片《流浪者》(2011年)和《流浪者之路》(2007年)，以及虚构的电视迷你剧《流浪者Rêve》(2018年)和故事片《安提罗伊人》(2016年)——揭示了流浪者处理的马丁尼人和瓜德罗普人所经历的羞辱，以及它如何增强了他们被视为不完全是法国人的感觉。在研究了这些作品之后，文章最后讨论了它们与克里奥尔概念的关系——正如Jean bernab、Patrick Chamoiseau和Raphaël conconant在Éloge de la cracemoolit(1989)中所倡导的——以及“对享乐的渴望”:挖掘一段痛苦和有争议的过去在这方面能有多大程度的帮助?
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Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2084604
I. M. Bergem
ABSTRACT The radical left in France has been in decline in France since the 1980s, with union-membership falling and working-class voters moving towards the populist radical right. When the Yellow Vest Movement (YVM) appeared in 2018, it seemed to encapsulate the very demographic that the radical left had lost touch with. However, the YVM did not appear as a straightforward left-wing movement, with unions and radical-left parties branding it as a petty bourgeois tax-protest or as the radical right in disguise. This article is based on interviews with radical-left activists that decided to join the YVM to wage ideological combat within it. Building on a grounded theory approach concerned primarily with culture, I investigate how Marxist social imaginaries shaped the activists’ interpretation of the YVM. In particular, I explore the key concepts ‘vanguardism’, ‘revolutionary spontaneity’ and ‘false consciousness’ to understand the interviewees’ often contradicting rationales and interpretations of the YVM. I find that the radical-left activists got involved in the YVM with the objective of turning it into a left-wing movement, while at the same time appreciating the disorganized, horizontal anti-intellectualism of the YVM.
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Pub Date : 2022-06-28DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2090912
T. Christiaens
ABSTRACT Michel Houellebecq’s Anéantir has received mixed reviews. Houellebecq’s focus on loving intimacy and care for the elderly within the nuclear family allegedly showcases his transformation from an embittered critic of the capitalist status quo to an apolitical novelist interested in the private sphere. I argue that this criticism overlooks Houellebecq’s concerns about old age and love in his earlier novels and how they relate to his social critique. Particularly Houellebecq’s La Possibilité d’une île presents a critique of lonely precarity as the dominant mode of being-in-the-world today. Though critics of post-Fordism have already described post-Fordist forms of life as opportunistic, fearful, and cynical, Houellebecq adds that this uncertain marketized lifestyle also leads to bitterness that increases with old age. By confronting Houellebecq’s phenomenology of contemporary life to Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, I argue that, whereas Heidegger highlights the role of anxiety and death in fostering a sense of meaning to human existence, Houellebecq rather argues that such an authentic confrontation with death has become impossible in contemporary culture and that love is instead the emotional tonality most responsive to the cultivation of a meaningful good life.
Michel Houellebecq的《ansamantir》受到了褒贬不一的评价。Houellebecq关注核心家庭中的亲密关系和对老年人的关怀，据称这表明他从一个对资本主义现状不满的批评家转变为一个对私人领域感兴趣的非政治小说家。我认为这种批评忽略了Houellebecq在他早期小说中对老年和爱情的关注，以及它们如何与他的社会批判联系起来。尤其是Houellebecq的《La possible it d’une le》对孤独的不稳定性提出了批评，认为这是当今世界的主要存在模式。虽然后福特主义的批评者已经将后福特主义的生活形式描述为机会主义、恐惧和愤世嫉俗，但Houellebecq补充说，这种不确定的市场化生活方式也会导致随着年龄增长而增加的痛苦。通过将Houellebecq的当代生活现象学与海德格尔对此在的分析相比较，我认为，尽管海德格尔强调焦虑和死亡在培养人类存在的意义感方面的作用，但Houellebecq更倾向于认为，这种与死亡的真实对抗在当代文化中已经变得不可能，相反，爱是对培养有意义的美好生活最敏感的情感调性。
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Pub Date : 2022-06-28DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2082395
M. Audin
meeting some of the expectations of life-writing, then, the Ostinato project also witheringly dismantles every assumption of the genre, replacing teleological narrative with a fragmentary yet always rhetorically elaborate idiom (the influence of Gerard Manley Hopkins whose work Des Forêts helped translate in the mid-1980s is here hard to miss). The paradox of Ostinato, then, following on from what Blanchot in 1963 described as the ‘almost [sic] infinite nihilism’ of Le Bavard, is that, while traversed throughout with an uncompromising sense of the limitations, frailties, and shortcomings of language, it nevertheless carries on: Pas à pas, i.e., step by step, negation by negation, as Des Forêts’s posthumous 2001 title would have it, jusqu’au dernier, i.e., till the very last, albeit a very last that forcibly would forever remain inaccessible. If it is true then that the Ostinato project opens onto ‘ineluctable cosmic void’, as Maclachlan convincingly shows, it nevertheless also remains the case, he judiciously adds, that in Des Forêts’s work ‘persistence in responding to the demands of writing is seen as a manifestation of a life force, even if the latter is inescapably bound up with death’s own relentless approach’. ‘Optimists write badly’, Valéry once put it. ‘But pessimists’, Blanchot rejoined, ‘don’t write at all’. In emphasizing the convergence between Des Forêts’s enterprise and the late work of Derrida (though it is perhaps disappointing that the book doesn’t engage with Yves Bonnefoy’s admiring, lengthy, but discordant 1986 reading of Des Forêts’s œuvre), Maclachlan is able to demonstrate the singular excess of language over its own avowed deficiencies, and provide affirmative evidence, not of the possibility of autobiography, but of its far-reaching, never-ending impossibility.
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Pub Date : 2022-06-21DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2022.2077322
M. Laronde
RÉSUMÉ Avec Algérie ! Algérie ! (2007), Éric Michel retrace des évènements de la guerre d’Algérie, en Algérie comme en France, de 1954 jusqu’aux massacres d’octobre 1961 à Paris. Cette naturalisation de l’Histoire collective par la fiction rejoint le roman historique où « l’événement est objet de récit » (Ricœur) et l’écriture « raconte » l’Histoire en transformant la fiction en discours liminal, un discours ambigu qui « brouille la ligne de partage » entre fiction et Histoire (Rancière). L’analyse recense les différentes formes d’archives qui constituent la base de l’écriture et permettent au lecteur d’historiciser les éléments du récit qui sont liés à l’Histoire de l’Algérie. Pour Alice Zeniter, L’art de perdre (2017a) n’a pas pour motivation de raconter la guerre d’Algérie mais d’« écrire un roman qui soit une trajectoire de migration » (2017b) sur trois générations. L’enquête de Naïma sur ses origines algériennes sur Internet, en bibliothèque, chez les historiens, fait de la fiction une « anarchive » (« une alternative aux archives officielles », Brozgal) où l’alliance entre mémoire, postmémoire et écriture de fiction « renvoie[nt] à une manière de ‘faire l’histoire’ » (Certeau). Les deux romans se conjuguent pour faire de l’anarchive un complément de l’archive dans l’écriture d’une Histoire « vivante ».
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