ABSTRACT This article examines the Gaullist critique of the Maastricht Treaty during the run-up to the 1992 French referendum, focusing on the arguments advanced by Philippe Séguin, Charles Pasqua and Marie-France Garaud. It reconstructs their case against European integration as a defence of French republican sovereignty, civic identity and institutional integrity. Rather than aligning with far-right or economic objections, these neo-Gaullist figures grounded their opposition in a republican tradition that viewed delegation of authority to supranational bodies as a threat to democratic legitimacy and national cohesion. Drawing on speeches, pamphlets and media interventions, the article situates their position within the wider crisis of the French right after cohabitation, highlighting tensions between Gaullist and liberal currents. It also explores how their Euroscepticism intersected with concerns over technocracy, immigration and the dilution of civic participation. By tracing how these arguments drew on both neo-republican and Gaullist legacies, the article offers a new perspective on how Maastricht catalysed a redefinition of political sovereignty in late twentieth-century France.

ABSTRACT This article examines the linguistic practices of French-speaking drag queens on the television show Drag Race France (2022), focusing on the morphophonological integration of English borrowings, while also analysing how these borrowings may serve as resources in identity construction, social positioning and cultural commentary. Drawing on a corpus of spontaneous speech, this study provides a detailed linguistic analysis of borrowing types and of the prevalence of borrowings in different parts of the linguistic system, before moving on to examine how borrowings are used to demonstrate artistic authority, to mediate interactions with others, and in drag queens’ performances of self. These borrowings are examined not only as linguistic phenomena, but also as stylistic and strategic resources for identity construction and interactional positioning. Using Drag Race France as a case study, this article highlights the ways in which drag queen speech draws on exogenous anglophone norms to situate localised drag performance within the global drag culture popularised by RuPaul’s Drag Race and its franchises. The analysis of borrowings used in context sheds light on the social meanings associated with specific performative stances that use linguistic material from English in French.

ABSTRACT This article approaches francophone African crime fiction from the perspective of mobility studies, with the aim of taking Afroeuropean mobilities ‘seriously’ by understanding mobility in itself as a valuable subject of inquiry. Seeking to explore the tangible, multiple and relational aspects of Afroeuropean mobilities in the context of francophone African crime fiction, this article uses Bolya’s La Polyandre (1998) and Simon Njami’s Cercueil & Cie (1985) as case studies, highlighting the key role that mobility plays in crime fiction. The mobilities-oriented analysis of the novels pays particular attention to their representations of mobility practices and infrastructures, modes of transport and places of transit. Applying some of the key tenets of the New Mobilities Paradigm and thus contributing to the mobilities turn in the humanities, the article argues for the necessity of a holistic understanding of postcolonial mobilities that does not limit itself to one category of mobility, namely migration. In particular, the analysis highlights the importance of exploring the relationship between macro- and micro-scale mobilities in order to acknowledge the diverse ways in which mobilities motivate francophone African crime fiction.

ABSTRACT From Kant to Derrida, seminal theorisations of hospitality enlist fixed place as a key tenet of the concept. Serving to naturalise an inside ‘host’ in opposition to an outside ‘guest’, such theorisations perpetuate France’s self-image as universal ‘host’ offering hospitality to foreigners. This paper explores how this spatialised hospitality is reconfigured in the work of Colombian-born, Paris-based artist Iván Argote. Through dialogue with three works, the film Au revoir Joseph Gallieni (2021), the sculpture Strengthlessness (2020) and the installation Air de jeux (2022), the paper argues that Argote uses spatiality to uproot French hospitality, thereby creating new, playful spaces for welcome. The author first explores how Argote uses Au revoir Joseph Gallieni to (de)construct France’s vertical model of hospitality, showing it to uphold dichotomies which disadvantage the nation’s ‘guests’. Next, she engages postmigration theory to show how Strengthlessness embraces a horizontal model of welcome for contemporary France. Finally, the author demonstrates how Argote’s reconfiguration of spatialised hospitality makes space for friction, generating playful, discursive fora for the reimagining of public space like Air de jeux. Through this creative disruption, Ellis argues, Argote invites us to consider a more expansive conception of hospitality untethered from fixed place.