{"title":"Generating desire: Chocolate, chromolithographs, and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy's fairy tales","authors":"A. Duggan","doi":"10.1177/09571558231165249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231165249","url":null,"abstract":"There existed a fascinating means of collecting fairy tales in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that has hitherto remained unexplored: the collection of chromolithographs or “chromos,” used as a marketing tool by French department stores like Le Bon Marché and by chocolate producers like Poulain. Scholars such as Emily Cormack, Laura Kalba, and Pearl Michel have carried out essential research on the deployment of chromos in the rise of consumer society, but this is the first study with a specific focus on chromos that feature fairy tales. In mid-century, Victor-Auguste Poulain, a French chocolatier from Blois, found the means to mass produce chocolate and sought to transform the nineteenth-century conception of chocolate from being an elite privilege or a medicinal product to being a plearurable food accessible to the middle classes. It was under the direction of Victor-Auguste's son Albert that chromos, including fairy-tale themed chromos, became an important marketing tool for the company in the 1880s. Children in particular were encouraged to purchase the mass-produced chocolate by the insertion into the packaging of fragments of tales like “The White Cat,” “The Doe in the Woods,” and “Beauty with the Golden Hair.” Each chocolate bar would include a beautiful color chromo of the tale on the recto, with the narrative fragment on the verso. This marketing strategy becomes a desire-generating machine: the desire for more story fuels the desire to purchase more chocolate, which subsequently fuels the desire for more story. In effect, as I hope to show through this case study of Poulain's use of tales by d’Aulnoy, narrative desire gets converted into consumer desire through Poulain's marketing campaign.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47296509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pastiche, protest, and the politics of reception in “the J’irai cracher Affair”","authors":"I. Curtis, Andrew M. Davenport","doi":"10.1177/09571558231156993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231156993","url":null,"abstract":"In The Devil Finds Work (1976), James Baldwin presents a remarkably generous review of Boris Vian's controversial novel, J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (1946). Vian's book was exceptionally sensitive to the “rage and pain” of African Americans, Baldwin thought. Baldwin's words seem surprising today: Vian, a white Frenchman, published the work as a protest novel under the false identity of a fictional African American, whom he called Vernon Sullivan. The novel was a hoax, a prank. J’irai cracher sur vos tombes tends to be viewed today in North America, rightly, as an egregious instance of cultural appropriation. The present study argues, however, that the French pastiche of a Black American protest novel baited the reading public into a debate that ignored racism, colonialism, and protest. We argue to view J’irai cracher sur vos tombes and the ensuing scandal it provoked, as an historical archive that allows us to chart a certain ideological climate in France. The public reception of the novel makes abundantly clear that, on the subject of J’irai cracher, Paris wanted to talk about sex, youth morality, and the threats of American cultural hegemony—not racism. Read as an historical affaire, the scandal exposes an extended moment of collective blindness in France. When examined as an historical incident, “the J’irai cracher Affair” reads like a dramatic ironic pronouncement, as if Vian were making a joke only he and a select audience—Baldwin, for one—would understand.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43494587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The mainstreaming of the far right in France: Republican, liberal and illiberal articulations of racism","authors":"A. Mondon, S. Dawes","doi":"10.1177/09571558231157224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231157224","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview, Aurelien Mondon and Simon Dawes analyse the mainstreaming of far-right politics. It aims to make sense of Marine Le Pen's rise by putting it in perspective and accounting for the role of the mainstream itself in the process. Building on the research Mondon has undertaken with colleagues, this interview explores in particular the importance of understanding mainstreaming beyond it being the success of the far right or a sign of its growing popularity. In particular, this requires a more critical take on issues such as populism, but also articulations of racism, to understand how politics which had been relegated to the margins of history have returned to the norm and occupy today a disproportionate space in public discourse. Far from downplaying the threat posed by the far right today, Mondon stresses that combatting it is of course essential, but that a more holistic approach, which tackles the role of mainstream actors in the legitimisation of reactionary politics, is essential if we are to stop the slide towards fascism.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"329 - 339"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44097369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"33 ans après la première affaire du foulard : où en est la laïcité en France ?","authors":"M. Wieviorka","doi":"10.1177/09571558221150999","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221150999","url":null,"abstract":"Résumé En 1989, l’affaire dite du « foulard » ou du « voile islamique » voit en France les passions se déchaîner à propos de la laïcité à l’école. L’épisode est vieux d’un tiers de siècle, et cet article s’intéresse à ce qu’il présente de fondateur dans des débats qui, depuis, se sont structurés, intensifiés et diversifiés. Islam, terrorisme, immigration, égalité des femmes et des hommes, racisme et antisémitisme sont au cœur de la vie intellectuelle et politique, une novlangue est apparue, « cancel culture », islamo-gauchisme », « wokisme », etc., et deux extrémismes désormais proposent un principe d’unité indifférent ou hostile à ce qui fait diversité. D’une part le nationalisme, ce qui n’est pas étonnant. Et d’autre part la perversion de l’idée républicaine que l’auteur appelle « républicanisme », et dont il analyse les implications.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"275 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44313008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Du Crésoxipropanédiol en capsule’. Jean Yanne's musical satire: ‘Interdit d’interdire’ or ‘chanter juste et penser faux’?","authors":"Hugh Dauncey","doi":"10.1177/09571558221143491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221143491","url":null,"abstract":"The satirical songs of Jean Yanne (1933–2003) are a little-studied aspect of the work of this French singer-songwriter, comedian, actor and film director. Composed and performed in the late-1950s and mid-1960s Yanne's satirical music, like his radio and television comedy sketches, spoke to tensions in French politics and society during a period of rapid socioeconomic and sociocultural modernisation. Yanne's idiosyncratically derisive humour was controversial, dividing audiences and critics into those who saw the comedy and others suspecting him of right-wing anarchist nihilism. Analysis of his songs’ themes, lyrics and music shows how Yanne's musical satire continued and developed existing trends in humour and musical comedy, and discussion of how he was critiqued as ‘poujadist’ enables fuller understanding of the complexity of his oeuvre and its reception. Criticism of Yanne as poujadist aims to invalidate his satire, but ‘getting the joke’ equates, ultimately, to seeing his humour as freedom of speech.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"411 - 430"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41417448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dany Laferrière as a Japanese writer: Fantasy and despair","authors":"P. Mcquade","doi":"10.1177/09571558231152994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558231152994","url":null,"abstract":"Dany Laferrière has demonstrated a continuous engagement with Japan, beginning with the novel Éroshima in 1987 and continuing to his most recent publication in 2021, Sur la route avec Bashō. The aim of this article is to understand what role Japan plays within Laferrière's writing and how it helps us understand the complex network of sex, power, and race in his work. Between the cosmopolitanism of the network of nation-states and the despair of identity politics, I situate Laferrière's use of Japan as a fantasy that empowers the writer beyond the impasse of a white-black racial imaginary. Reading Laferrière this way allows us to understand how his writing uses the fantasy of the Orient, often to the detriment of Asian women. As such it contributes to comparative work between Asian and French literatures, debates in Francophonie, and critical understandings of race in the Francophone sphere of the Americas.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46579880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Ici et par toute la terre': Paris, British universities and the French study abroad in the inter-war","authors":"Wendy Michallat","doi":"10.1177/09571558221150702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221150702","url":null,"abstract":"This article begins with the recommendations of the Leathes Report of 1916 in connection with the internationalisation of language study and the reasons why the ideal of transnational mobility was slow to take root in language departments in the UK. It examines how the provision of safe, secure and affordable accommodation for women students was an effective counter to alarmist stay-at-home tales. And it looks at how feminist educators campaigned to promote international learning and teaching opportunities for women scholars. It argues that the Leathes concept of an ‘immersion’ experience conflicted with the University of Paris's interpretation of the ‘internationalisation’ of study. The Cité universitaire (CU) project, launched in the 1920s, offered the possibility for the easy placement of a growing number of students from the British red-brick universities in particular. But the conviction of British academics that the proposed Collège Franco-Britannique should house both French and British students was at odds with the University of Paris's concept of a campus of representative national houses in which only students of that country were permitted to live. It concludes that the mobilisation of the profession into subject bodies was a key factor in the evolution of study abroad programs and more broadly in the consolidation of ‘modern studies’ in the new civic and red-brick universities across Britain.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"34 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48177125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pourquoi terroir? Reflections on French influences on Australian winemakers’ senses of place","authors":"J. Dutton","doi":"10.1177/09571558221150700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221150700","url":null,"abstract":"Terroir is an untranslatable, unstable, and often undefinable French term frequently used in the global wine industry. This article focuses on the transnational potentialities and cultural transferability of terroir in reflecting on French influences on Australian winemakers’ senses of place. After outlining the evolution of terroir in France to demonstrate how and why it appears to have become a floating signifier, I examine the use of terroir in the Australian winemaking context. I thereby provide an example of how this French concept has travelled and been translated by Australian proponents of the term at the other end of the New World of wine. Finally, I present conclusions drawn from the particular case of French-Australian cultural transfers to demonstrate key features of the current state of terroir's globalisation.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"9 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48444900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La Vagabonde assise – space, place and the meaning of home in Colette and other women writers","authors":"D. Holmes","doi":"10.1177/09571558221144368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221144368","url":null,"abstract":"Nick Hewitt wrote wonderfully well about the significance of different places in French history and culture, and in our lives. Colette was a chronicler of places, from the famous childhood house and garden in Burgundy, to Brittany, Provence and of course Paris. But as her writing moves across regions and houses, home recurs as a crucial place in the emotional landscape of a human life. Nick was also always attentive to the relationship between canonical and ‘minor’ authors, and to the interplay between socio-political moment and cultural production. In this article home is examined as a vital and recurring theme not only in the work of Colette but also in that of her lesser-known female contemporaries – for home as a place has particular practical and emotional meanings for women.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"62 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47864650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Placing lost intersectional plots in Houellebecq's Anéantir (2022): Race, climate and scandalous textual necropolitics","authors":"R. Cruickshank","doi":"10.1177/09571558221145188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221145188","url":null,"abstract":"Placed in the context of scandals surrounding Houellebecq's earlier novels, Anéantir (2022) is described as strategically losing its political and other plots to focus on the death of its protagonist. This narrative choice cannot, however, dispense with questions raised by representations of race (universalism, colourism, racialization, Islamophobia); of colonial and postcolonial exploitation (including the Françafrique); and of ‘green-bashing’, anthropocentrism and the elision of differential impacts of climate catastrophe. These questions are considered in terms of necropolitical power over who lives or dies, and precarious lives experienced as ‘slow death’. Fiction is established as always already a form of necropolitics–of textual decisions of life and death. Whilst climate catastrophe is not foregrounded in this predominantly anthropocentric narrative, the ultimate question is whether Houellebecq intends any kind of self-reflexive ‘ecocritique’, or whether the gravest global scandal—of human contributions to climate crisis—is ignored.","PeriodicalId":12398,"journal":{"name":"French Cultural Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"92 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46560866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}