Caribbean Connections by Lorna Milne (review)

Abstract

ii 22 Reviews French Popular Culture: An Introduction. Ed. by Hugh Dauncey. London: Arnold. 2003. viii + 22opp. ?16.99. ISBN 0-340-80882-9. Designed primarily as an introductory textbook, this slim volume, comprising an introduction and fourteen concise chapters, discusses French popular culture from 1945 to 2000, with themes ranging from radio to fashion via cyberculture and bande dessinee. The book is very much aimed, in both tone and format, at undergraduate students or those new to French Studies, with each chapter following a reassuringly standardized pattern: main body of chapter, short conclusion, suggestions forfurther thinking and reading, bibliography. While this pattern, combined with the repetition of ideas and concepts throughout the book, may prove frustrating for scholars, it is a useful strategy for an undergraduate manual as potentially difficultconcepts are reinforced, thereby making them easier to understand forstudents dealing with them for,possibly, the firsttime. The introduction provides a concise thematic history of the development of popular culture in France, discussing, among other key moments, les annees folles, the Algerian War, and May '68, and making appropriate connections between the political and economic events of the time and their influence on popular culture. Each subsequent chapter places the 'cultural product' discussed in a socioeconomic and political framework, considering, where appropriate, the genres and subgenres of the product, and explaining its development in France since 1945. The suggestions forfurtherthinking are particularly relevant forstudents today in that many of the ideas encourage first-hand interaction with the 'cultural product'. Students, forexample, are encouraged to watch French television or listen to French radio and are given practical resources to enable them to access channels and stations whether in France or in Britain. A further pedagogic tool can be found in Denis Provencher's chapter on 'Press' in the form of a case study on the October 2002 attack on Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe. His analysis ofthe presentation ofthe attack in differentnewspapers is helpful to undergraduates as a model fortheir own analyses, which are oftena necessity of advanced language or news media courses. Furthermore, throughout the book English translations are given after all French words and terms, other than those in common usage in English; explorations ofterms that could oftenbe confused or erroneously taken forgranted by undergraduates are similarly provided; for example, John Marks explores the differences in usage and connotation between la cuisine, la gastronomie, and I'alimentation in his chapter on 'Food'. This book, then, will prove useful both as an introductory overview for students of popular culture and for those students focusing on any aspect of contemporary France, making it a valuable and welcome tool in the development of French popular culture as a valid discipline at post-secondary level. University of Leeds Kim Harrison Caribbean Connections. Ed. by Lorna Milne. (Forum for Modern Language Stu? dies, special issue, 40.4) Oxford: Oxford University Press. October 2004. ?12. ISSN0015-8518. The connections alluded to in the title of this special issue of FMLS are ostensibly those that emerge fromthe juxtaposition of its diverse range ofessays. Certainly, there is much that connects the articles, notably an interest in how Caribbean history?often theorized as a non-history?shapes and creates the cultures of the archipelago. His? tory is thus the common thread that binds and brings coherence to the project, as indeed it does to any attempt to understand the Caribbean as an entity. Behind this more obvious set of connections, however, there is, it seems, a further level of inter? relatedness that is being suggested, implied, and actualized to varying degrees in the MLR, 100.4,2005 1123 essays. These relations are not so much intra-Caribbean as transatlantic, and more specifically between Scotland, Ireland, and the Caribbean. With perhaps one or two exceptions, the authors have direct connections to Ireland or Scotland, and these connections have a discernible effectin their interpretations of Caribbean cultures: there is a marked absence of exotic interest in the non-European other,and a strong, if subtle, sense of identification with Caribbean experience across the essays. To the edi? tor's and authors' credit, these transatlantic connections remain largely implicit, and manifest themselves more in a general unspoken sensitivity to postcolonial Caribbean experience...