Mechanical Dreams: Democracy and Technological Discourse in Twentieth-Century France

Abstract

Someone examining the technological artifacts of France over the past century might be stunned by their epic scale and profound evolution. Perusing artifacts at each end of the past century, the Eiffel Tower and the plutonium breeder reactor at Creys-Malville, can elucidate these aspects. While their large scales certainly evoke strong reactions, their respective meanings are vastly different. The Eiffel Tower reflected republican engineering, with each equally-sized member structured rationally and functioning harmoniously as the eminently public monument reaches skyward. By contrast, the breeder communicates its technocratic-authoritarian style by several steel strata of security shielding, which house plutonium, the deadly namesake of the ancient Greek underworld, far from the public. The public can freely mingle at the Eiffel Tower unhampered by police or guards.1 The proprietors of the breeder grudgingly welcome the public with a solar-heated visitors center (placed outside the security perimeter), replete with heroic, pressed-plastic photos of experts designing, building, and operating a seminal symbol of energy engineers’ expertise.