La France en Chantant: The Rhetorical Construction of French Identity in Songs of the Resistance Movement

Abstract

During the German Occupation from 1940 to 1944, members of the French Resistance sang folk songs to legitimize their movement in the face of widespread support for collaboration and brutal police attacks. Reprising a performative tradition of French political singing, Resistance fighters deployed national narratives and parody to define themselves as transhistorical French heroes while also practicing democratic forms they sought to safeguard. In this way, the songs represented resisters as the guardians of true “Frenchness,” an identity that excluded collaborators from the national community and robbed them of political legitimacy.