{"title":"Éric Zemmour : Essayiste Pamphlétaire, Pamphlétaire Essayiste","authors":"P. Azou","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410205","url":null,"abstract":"If Renza Bensmaïa is right to see in the essay “the Other that gives birth to all the others” ; if it is indeed the case that, since Montaigne, it has fed on doubt and fuelled debate ; if it is therefore coeval with modernity ; then there is a contradiction between Éric Zemmour's essayistic stance and his — reactionary, extremist, xenophobic — political program. Instead of trying to resolve this contradiction by negating either of its terms, I follow the internal logic of the essay as practised by Zemmour to arrive at the paradox of an essayist who is also an extremist. Evolving from the essay to the pamphlet, and oscillating between the two, Zemmour is this paradoxical essayist who “tries” to escape the essay by means of the essay.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139371201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nineteenth-Century French Painting of Rural Life on Diplomatic Mission to China","authors":"Gonzalo J. Sánchez","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410204","url":null,"abstract":"Paysages et paysans: la vie rurale en France au XIXe siècle, 1820–1905 was the anodyne title of a loan exhibition inaugurated in March of 1978 at Beijing's National Gallery of China. As the first exhibition of Western painting in China after the instauration of the Communist regime in 1949, the show was a cultural- diplomatic landmark; its planning and reception can refresh our understanding of both Franco–Chinese cultural relations in the waning years of Maoism and the diplomatically recuperative uses of French nineteenth-century painting. This article uncovers the rationales of French actors and institutions as revealed in archival documents and then scrutinizes the unexpected reception of an art exhibition that remains an important episode in cross-cultural relations and aesthetic reclamation.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139371858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Le Rire and the Meaning of Cartoon Art in Fin-de-Siècle France","authors":"Andrew Kotick","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410201","url":null,"abstract":"As the foremost organ of the French satirical and illustrated press, the weekly Le Rire captivated a broad reading public in the final decade of the nineteenth century. At the crossroads of commercial entertainment and mass media, Le Rire sought to champion caricature and comic illustration as art forms worthy of serious merit and to make humor a powerful tool for political, cultural, and social commentary. This article aims to assess the periodical's impact in its time, and furthermore, contends that Le Rire was a determinative force in reshaping public mores toward comedy and satire, carrying the legacy of nineteenth-century developments in the history of French caricature into novel modes of expression and consumption at the turn of the twentieth.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139371346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Équivoques de l'oubli après Vichy","authors":"Nathalie Debrauwere-Miller","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410203","url":null,"abstract":"Through a reflection on the ambiguous facets of Holocaust oblivion that has lasted for generations, the article examines how the official politics of memory in France instrumentalized historical oblivion as an ideological tool. To this end, the essay analyzes Fabrice Humbert's 2009 novel, L'Origine de la violence, to examine the essential role of literature in pinpointing the dynamics of memory and forgetting while exploring the ambiguity of oblivion, pardon and reparation. The unveiled family secret is explored as an allegory of the cryptic national history that reflects the amnesia imposed after the Vichy regime (1940-1944) by the “resistancialisme” promulgated in the post-war period in France; amnesia decreed years later by President Georges Pompidou when he pardoned the French war criminal Paul Touvier in 1972. This politics of forgetting comforted a generation of citizens implicated in collaboration during WWII, resulting in conflicts with the younger generations, as portrayed in Humbert's text.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139371673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monumentalizing “The Collective”","authors":"Elena Maria Rita Rizzi","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410202","url":null,"abstract":"By analyzing the public mural paintings sponsored by the French state to help artists survive the economic crisis around the time of the Popular Front, this article intends to contribute to the study of the relationship between mass politics and mass culture in the 1930s. After addressing French and foreign views on mural art as well as state agendas behind mural commissions, the study examines the social and political significance of state-financed mural projects. Frequently large-scale and realized in a figurative style, murals portrayed collectivities in instants of conviviality and extolled the solidaristic ties binding them. State-financed mural paintings, I contend, monumentalized “the collective” so to create unity and collective spirit. Thereby, they created a visual politics that helped bridge the gap between art and the people and became agents of mass politics at a time of political instability.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139371183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bullfighting in Southern France","authors":"Duncan Wheeler","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410206","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on ethnographic research among bullfighting professionals and audiences in Spain and France, this report assesses the current health of bullfighting in Arles as a means to grapple with broader questions surrounding the cultural and political standing of this increasingly controversial activity on both sides of the Pyrenees.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139371814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Straight from the Heart","authors":"Bruno Levasseur, Imogen Long","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410105","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article considers how recent French documentary filmmaking has engaged with the representation of masculinities in some of Paris's most emblematic banlieues. Focusing on Alice Diop's sixth film Vers la tendresse (2016), which brings to the screen testimonies of straight and gay men from La Courneuve, Aulnay-sous-Bois, and Montreuil, this article examines how the documentary form offers new ways to interrogate men's experiences of love and relationships in the French peripheries. Drawing on an interview with the filmmaker, this article argues that Diop's conversation-based performative documentary filmmaking, with its detaching of image from sound, destabilizes viewer assumptions and challenges cultural clichés about men and emotion. By emphasizing the universal characteristics of the men's personal accounts, this article suggests that Diop's film reclaims the banlieues from the stereotype of a marginal space of “otherness” and offers instead singular narratives, voicing poignant portraits of masculinities that resonate widely in twenty-first century France.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"58 6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133677888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social, Economic, and Structural Developments of the League of Education","authors":"Anne Lancien, Florence Ihaddadene","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410104","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The League of Education is one of the most important French education confederations, with about 1.5 million members. Over the course of its 150 years of existence, it has been through many economic, ideological, and governance crises. But these crises have multiplied. The organization faces financial difficulties, a decrease in membership, a grassroots distrust of management and difficulty in ideologically positioning itself. This article draws from sociology and political science research about civic service policy within the League of Education and the transformations carried out by the organization under the French Fifth Republic. The authors deliver an analysis of the League of Education in light of new relations between the State and the associations, and considering transformations specific to the League of Education, its identity, its governance and its structure. The article illustrates why this crisis tends to last and analyses the resources mobilized by the League to overcome them.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127265800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Left-Wing or Right-Wing Populism?","authors":"I. M. Bergem","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410102","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article reviews the political views of the Yellow Vest Movement (YVM) and explores whether it can best be described as a left-wing populist movement, understood as being primarily inclusionary and focused on socioeconomic issues, or a right-wing populist movement, understood as being primarily exclusionary and attentive to struggles over ethnic identity. This examination will be done by comparing the YVM's political demands to the presidential programs of the Rassemblement National (RN) and La France Insoumise (LFI), which in this article is used as prototypes on right-wing populism and left-wing populism. Since its early beginning in 2018, the YVM has been branded as an avatar of the extreme right. By comparing the claims of the YVM to the programs of the RN and LFI, I argue that this interpretation of the YVM is not substantiated by their actual political demands, which are more aligned with LFI than with the RN.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124558882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rhinos and Hippos, Oh My!","authors":"L. Betty","doi":"10.3167/fpcs.2023.410103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2023.410103","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Laurent Obertone is virtually unknown outside the French-speaking world. The author of bestselling fiction and nonfiction works on crime, immigration, and civil war in France, Obertone maintains a cult following despite being exiled from mainstream media. This article examines the motifs of Obertone's work, focusing on human domestication, that is, the tendency of prosperous societies to excuse criminal behavior due to guilt, virtue signaling, and fear of conflict. Obertone sees French judicial laxity as a product of misguided humanitarianism coupled with status competition among elites to show the greatest indulgence toward criminals. This attitude is pushing France toward civil conflict, as criminals take advantage of a culture de l'excuse. Ultimately, Obertone's critique is of the “open society” consensus of the postwar West. Anti-authoritarian impulses are maladaptive in a climate of mass immigration and rapid social change, and if France does not take maintaining order seriously, the result will be catastrophic.","PeriodicalId":418722,"journal":{"name":"French Politics, Culture & Society","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128259124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}