`Avec un certain malaise': The Paxtonian Trauma in France, 1973—74

Abstract

Upon its publication in France in 1973, Robert Paxton's La France de Vichy1 caused something of a scandal. Henry Rousso has viewed the publication of Paxton's book as part of a turning-point in postwar French historical memory the phase of 'the Broken Mirror', the shattering of the dominant Gaullist consensus, a phase which Rousso located in the years 1971 to 1974.2 La France de Vichy was reviewed and/or passionately debated by virtually every publication of significance in France. Paxton, almost overnight, became a famous man in French letters and, in later years, thanks to his testimonies in the trials of accused Vichy collaborators, even something closer to a household name. In more ways than one, this reception was astonishing. For one thing, Paxton was a foreigner, and an American to boot; French intellectual circles did not usually become so worked up over the scholarship of a non-French historian of France. Second, Paxton's earlier book, Parades and Politics at Vichy, which contained more than a grain of what was to come in La France de Vichy, was ignored by the French academic community on its publication in 1966.3 It was not translated into French and was reviewed by only one scholarly journal.4 What caused this dramatic turnaround? Why was Paxton's scholarship received so differently in 1966 and in 1973? The answer may lie in the respective natures of the two books. Parades and Politics at Vichy was a more specific tome. While critical of Petain, Paxton was not overtly perceived as challenging the fundamental assumptions about Vichy which had dominated French historiography (and public discourse at large) since the end of the second world war. Of course, because it was not translated, it could not have much of an impact. La France de Vichy was something else entirely. First, it was translated (by the Seuil publishing house).