Facing Postmodernity: Contemporary Thought in French Culture and Society by Max Silverman (review)

Abstract

MLR, 96. , 200I MLR, 96. , 200I May 68 in FrenchFictionand Film: Rethinking Society,Rethinking Representation. By MARGARET ATACK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. I999. x + I82 pp. f35 (paperbound I4.99). Liketheeventsof 1848asdepictedinFlaubert'sL'Education sentimentale, revolutionary moments andpoliticalturning-pointsoftenfindmore faithfulrepresentationof their multifaceted and fragmented realities in artistic forms than in documentaries or newsreels. This is certainly the central premise of Margaret Atack's book, which seeks to explore the many May '68s of 'May 68' that writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Merle, Julia Kristeva, Marie Cardinal,Jean-Pierre Manchette, and Rene-Victor Pilhes, and film-makerssuch as Jean-Luc Godard and Marcel Ophuls record.Bysettingkeyfilmsortexts aboutthe event in the richsocio-political context of reactions to Gaullismand the Fifth Republic, the specific subculturesof studentexperience, the foreignimmigrantworkers,intellectuals,MLF activists,and bourgeois consumer society are also made visible. The choice of illustrationsfrom high and low culture, especially the roman noir,thefilm noir,and the polarfurther exemplifies the shifting ground of French cultural production in the face of Americanization,publicity,and multiculturalism.The whole opens up the question whetherMay '68, whateverits facets,was indeed a breakpointbetween modernism and postmodernismprecisely because of the antihumanisticand fragmentedfocus of these exponents, the genres they employ, and the ambiguitiesof perspectivethat give them impetus. The choice of texts and filmshere is inevitablysubjective,and other readersmay wonder why Les Guerilleres or La Rondede nuit, among others, are not given prominence. However, by bringingtogether some illustrationsfromprint and nonprintfields ,Atackshowshow we need to galvanizeresourcesfromthe ever-widening range of artefactsin storagebetween covers, in cans, and on microchips that make up intellectualhistoryin a technocraticage only in its infancyin that sameMay '68. While some priorknowledgeof the historyand literatureof contemporaryFranceis necessary to appreciate the many strandsof this book for their complex but clear analyses,the livelydocumentarystylewillgive much pause forthought to those new to the fields covered. Books should make one want to ask questions and find out more. This one certainlydoes as it bringstogethera gamut ofways of readingrecent historyand testsways in which the myths, too, of May '68 may be re-evaluated. UNIVERSITY OFEXETER MARYORR FacingPostmodernity: Contemporary Thought in FrenchCulture and Society. By MAX SILVERMAN. London and New York:Routledge. I999. X + I98 pp. ?I6.99. Building on and deepening the argumentsof his previous work on citizenship, the city, national identity, and the civil society in modern France,Max Silvermantakes the reader on a fascinating guided tour of the mindscapes of what is for him the paradigmaticpostmodernnation state.The firstlocation isthe 'Jew',the quintessential other who may now also be the uprooted postmodern subject 'under erasure'. Otherness of France's (post)colonial past informs the second site to highlight the wider racismsof France'snational identity reconstructionsafter the Second World War. New ethnicities then form the third locus on the itinerary,concomitant with the modern city as space, its fragmentation challenging the orderliness of Haussmannian utopian control. Together, these peregrinationsdescribe the seductions of multiculturalism,transience,commodities, excess, and choice of'le culturel' as opposed to 'La Culture'. While such democratizationof art and its productions May 68 in FrenchFictionand Film: Rethinking Society,Rethinking Representation. By MARGARET ATACK. Oxford: Oxford University Press. I999. x + I82 pp. f35 (paperbound I4.99). Liketheeventsof 1848asdepictedinFlaubert'sL'Education sentimentale, revolutionary moments andpoliticalturning-pointsoftenfindmore faithfulrepresentationof their multifaceted and fragmented realities in artistic forms than in documentaries or newsreels. This is certainly the central premise of Margaret Atack's book, which seeks to explore the many May '68s of 'May 68' that writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Merle, Julia Kristeva, Marie Cardinal,Jean-Pierre Manchette, and Rene-Victor Pilhes, and film-makerssuch as Jean-Luc Godard and Marcel Ophuls record.Bysettingkeyfilmsortexts aboutthe event in the richsocio-political context of reactions to Gaullismand the Fifth Republic, the specific subculturesof studentexperience, the foreignimmigrantworkers,intellectuals,MLF activists,and bourgeois consumer society are also made visible. The choice of illustrationsfrom high and low culture, especially the roman noir,thefilm noir,and the polarfurther exemplifies the shifting ground of French cultural production in the face of Americanization,publicity,and multiculturalism.The whole opens up the question whetherMay '68, whateverits facets,was indeed a breakpointbetween modernism and postmodernismprecisely because of the antihumanisticand fragmentedfocus of these exponents, the genres they employ, and the ambiguitiesof perspectivethat give them impetus...