From Revolution to Literature:” The Political Aesthetics of the Young New Right, 1936–1937

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes Both Maurras and L’Insurgé editors were prosecuted for “incitation to violence” in their articles. Charles Maurras was reportedly concerned by such accusations that the French nation was decadent: while l’Action Française never hesitated to denounce those they believed to be inimical to France—whom they referred to as the forces of the “pays légal”—they never berated France itself, the “pays réel,” which should be restored and recovered. For Action Française ideology, see Eugen Weber, Action Française. Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962. I rely on Julia Kristeva's theorization of abjection in: Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. I rely on the psychoanalytical notion of the subject as founded in lack and therefore characterized by alienation. See: Jacques Lacan. “Subversion du sujet et dialectique du desir dans l’inconscient freudien.” Ecrits 2 Paris: Seuil, 1971: 151–91. On the relationship of culture and politics in 1930s France, see: Dudley Andrew & Steven Ungar. Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2005. Jean-Pierre Maxence, cited in Nicolas Kessler, Histoire Politique de la Jeune Droite (1929–1942). Une révolution conservatrice à la française (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 383.