The avoidance word still screams its name

Abstract

Was it not here, on this same French soil, in this culture-proud nation that sometimes appears to conflate the very notion of civilization with whatever is uniquely French, that a culture warrior took the bulldozer to a hamburger joint some years ago? His mission was to stem the tide of a neobarbarism that, for the French, is synonymous with whatever is Ameri can. Lost on that protector of French cultural purity was a thought that must have tickled the collective memory of former French colonials: the McDonaldization or Disneyization of French urban landscape was a kind of poetic justice in a reverse play of history. McDonalds had arrived from the former colony of another European power to challenge the cultural hermeticism of a former colonizer. The circumstances, and action directe of the bulldozer response differed somewhat from the strategy embarked upon by the poet and statesman Leopold S?dar Senghor, Aim? C?saire, L?on Damas, Birago Diop, Ren? Depestre, and other cultural militants?to adopt Senghor's own expression? in their own time. They were also protesting?right on the terrain of their colonizers, and as protagonists of a distant civilization?the ascendancy of others over their own cultures and civilization. Theirs was of course a far