‘The Radio, This Unknown’ and <i>La Nouvelle Équipe Française</i>: National and Transnational Public Spheres in Post-1945 France

Abstract

This article examines the representation of the radio in an important post-1945 periodical in France, La Nouvelle Équipe Française (La NEF). Analysing a double issue of La NEF, ‘La Radio, Cette Inconnue’ [‘The Radio, This Unknown’], I argue that we witness an implicit tension between a new state monopoly on radio and the transnational nature of radio broadcasting. On the one hand, this issue features the major figures in the new state radio institutions, the RDF and the Club d’Essai, with their contributions functioning as quasi-promotional material. On the other hand, three philosophers (Gaston Bachelard, Louis Lavelle, Brice Parain) all focus on the potential of radio for founding new transnational communities post-1945. We then turn to the status of the periodical within this dynamic. I propose that La NEF presents the periodical as a privileged site of the articulation of this tension between the nationaland the transnational, thus affirming the value of the periodical for the construction of a post-WWII public sphere.