French Identity Research Articles

Paul Groussac’s Void: The French Writer and the Argentine Tradition

The French-Argentine Paul Groussac embodied a wide range of writerly functions and cultural-political positions within the Argentine cultural field between the 1880s and the 1920s: writer, playwright, chronicler, traveler, literary, art, and music critic, historian, educator, editor, and director of the National Library during 44 years. This essay considers his place in the history of Argentine literature looking at two of the many ways in which he inscribed himself in it. The first takes up the production and reproduction of the ontological privilege of French identity as a form of legitimization for his public—and often polemic—interventions, through which he sought to establish scholarly-disciplinary practices, protocols, and conventions that would articulate an entire critical field around his own authority. The second proposes to think his alternatively weak and strong inscriptions in the literary tradition through his own narrative production: his fiction and dramaturgy, travelogues, and biographical sketches. In other words, this essay situates Groussac in an Argentine literary tradition (conceived as an organic and institutionally sanctioned textual corpus) he believed to have founded and established, a selfrepresentation that led Borges to say that Groussac saw himself as “a missionary of Voltaire among the mulattage.”

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The Great Prehistoric Art Swindle: André Breton and Palaeolithic Cave Painting

At Pech Merle in 1952, André Breton provoked a controversial incident by damaging a Palaeolithic wall painting that he suspected to be a fake. This episode provides an insight into the contested status of prehistoric sites in post-war France and the theoretical and ideological implications of their cultural mobilization. Such sites allowed for a disavowal of wartime trauma and supported the reaffirmation of French national identity and its civilizing mission by locating the birthplace of human culture on French soil. Yet their extreme age also threw into relief the relative fragility of the recently invented nation-state. Breton's vandalism cast doubt on the models of cultural progress and pre-eminence that sought to instrumentalize prehistoric art but failed to appreciate the subversiveness of its ‘deep’ history. Ironically, however, Breton's scepticism ultimately enhanced the subversive dimension of archaeology by allowing it to demonstrate the authenticity and age of cave art.

Susie Cronin, Sofia Ropek Hewson and Cillian Ó Fathaigh (eds.), #NousSommes: Collectivity and the Digital in French Thought and Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, Modern French Identities 135, 2020) 162 pp.

Susie Cronin, Sofia Ropek Hewson and Cillian Ó Fathaigh (eds.), <i> #NousSommes: Collectivity and the Digital in French Thought and Culture</i> <i> (Oxford: Peter Lang, Modern French Identities 135, 2020) 162 pp.</i>

Being Breton through wrestling: Traditional gouren as a distinctive Breton activity

Gouren is a style of wrestling practiced in Brittany, France. It has been “sportised” during the last century, but it still represents an emblematic tradition for those people involved who exploit its ancient origins to describe it as a distinctive Breton activity. Following the same path of Breton “identity”—one that has been defined in opposition to hegemonic French identity— gouren is largely defined by its practitioners in opposition to the “hegemonic” wrestling style in France, judo, viewed as an epitome of globalized sports. Through their actions and narratives, Breton wrestlers shape an alternative (pre-modern) sporting culture, promoting non-aggressive, social, and non-hierarchical attitudes over radical competition, athletic performance and personal achievement. Accordingly, gouren is associated with “old-fashioned” ideas of masculinity, strength and related values, that serve to root the practice in the idealized past of Brittany—even now that women are actively involved in gouren.

Are the Bretons French? The Case of François Jaffrennou/Taldir ab Hernin

This article explores the poetry of François Jaffrennou, who published under the druidic pseudonym Taldir ab Hernin, as a case study in decolonized multilingualism. Close readings of Taldir's writing in Breton, Welsh and French reveal the pressures of negotiating a hybrid Celtic-French identity, as he affirms his Celticity while maintaining a careful relationship with France. Taldir criticizes the French state in his Welsh texts, whereas in French and Breton his critique is more guarded, subtly codified. The Celtic space which emerges here is full of tensions, as Taldir works both within and against the impulse to reconcile Celtic and French identities. I argue that being provincially Other in France requires a delicate balancing act, a special way of being French. I also contend that to work on the local is to work on the global, looking beyond regionalist and postcolonial approaches to Breton writing in an effort to dismantle the monolingualizing tendencies of French Studies.

The Whiteness of French Food

Food is fundamental to French identity. So too is the denial of structural racism and racial identity. Both tenets are central to the nation’s self-definition, making them all the more important to think about together. This article purports to identify and critique a form of “French food Whiteness” ( blanchité alimentaire ), that is, the use of food and eating practices to reify and reinforce Whiteness as the dominant racial identity. To do so, it develops four case studies of how law elevates a fiction of homogenous French/White food as superior and normative at the expense of alternative ways of eating and their eaters—the law of geographical indications, school lunches, citizenship, and cultural heritage.

MULTILINGUALISM AND MULTICULTURALISM: CHALLENGES FOR EDUCATION AND SOCIALIZATION IN THE XXI CENTURY

Our paper has two goals. First we review the state of multilingualism in the world today, with a particular emphasis on Europe which was the cradle of foreign education many centuries ago and has remained the leader in this field. There is no doubt that bi- and multi-lingualism characterize successful people of the XXI century, while the confinement to one language can be seen as a personal and social handicap or a socialization problem. We argue next, that the growing bilingual potential should be analyzed as integral part of bicultural personality of our time. Whether we speak native or second language, we participate in cultural communication. Language is not just a multilevel linguistic structure but also part and parcel of its culture, the warehouse of its meanings and history. Learning a language one acquires its culture. In this context we set research questions pertaining to the language ↔ cultural values and identity mutuality: Which and under what conditions impacts the other? Two studies were conducted by the second author on Polish-French bilingualism and bicultural identity of Romanesque university students and immigrants of two generations in France and Belgium. Opposite to our hypotheses, there was no evidence for mutual reinforcement of linguistic proficiency and cultural identity. French language skills among Romanesque students were low but their idealistic French identity was high. Polish cultural identity was dominant, over French, among second generation immigrant youths. We explain these results referring to theories of idealized identity and nostalgia. We conclude with recommendations, that second language teaching should not only be intertwined with general culture learning but also should convey realistic and not idealized versions of other cultural worlds. Extending learner’s identity, rather than replacing one by the other should be the goal of bilingual education. Keywords: socialization, education, multiculturalism, multilingualism, values, cultural symbols.

Kelly Ricciardi Colvin, Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944–1954: Engendering Frenchness

Kelly Ricciardi Colvin, Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944–1954: Engendering Frenchness

Fulcher, Jane F. 2018. Renegotiating French Identity: Musical Culture and Creativity in France during Vichy and the German Occupation. Oxford: Oxford University Press

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A Return to Culture: Literature as Ecology

Literature is an important part of French national identity and cultural patrimony, as seen in the hype around the literary rentrée each year and the prestige economy that continues to mark French literature with its prize system. However, French literature, particularly those works that are canonical or on track to being canonized, is full of excrement. I examine this literature's excrementality to argue that the shit in this valued literature allows us to think literature not in canonical terms but in ecological ones. Shit serves as the ground for conceptualizing what kind of material literature is; it is the material by which canonical texts break down the very idea of the canon that would contain them, thereby returning culture to its early, non-industrial, agricultural roots, where culture and cultivation converge as a material, human encounter with the environment marked by a cycle of exchange and reciprocity. Despite the seeming health of an elitist and canon-driven model of literary production, these works’ scatological quality acts at cross purposes with the canon to allow the shit-culture it contains to circulate and return to an environment where it can be mobilized to enrich and produce new forms of culture.

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction Catherine Chatterley In this issue, we launch our first Scholars Forum. The Forum will be a section of an issue that brings together a group of leading experts in a sub-field of antisemitism research to discuss an important new book, a controversy, or a specific question. The subject of our first Forum is Madga Teter's new book, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Harvard, 2020), a historical study based on printed and archival sources in 10 languages from eight countries over a period of eight centuries. The participants are leading experts on the subject of ritual murder accusations across Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern period: Elissa Bemporad, Hillel Kieval, Miri Rubin, Paola Tartakoff, Magda Teter, and Robert Weinberg. Our first article is a fascinating new study of Ingrid Rimland by Ben Goossen. Rimland was the wife of Ernst zündel and the founder of his Holocaust denial website in California (zundelsite.org). Goossen explores her life and work as a writer of popular Mennonite historical fiction, including her childhood in Nazioccupied Ukraine and her working relationship with several leading Mennonite intellectuals, before explaining her embrace of neo-Nazism and turn toward Holocaust denial and antisemitism. Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac's article on Houria Bouteldja and the Indigènes de la République provides readers with an intelligent appraisal of the Algerian-born French activist and the political group she founded in 2005. The article traces the history of this activist group and analyzes their public interventions and commentary on subjects concerning Jews including antisemitism, the Holocaust, zionism, Israel and Palestine, and terrorist attacks against Jews in France. Of particular interest is the Indigènes' concept of "state philosemitism," a term they coined to describe the French government's supposed privileged treatment of Jews resulting in the supposed special attention given to antisemitism above other forms [End Page 231] of racism in French public life. Likewise, Jews are accused by the Indigènes of being instruments of the French state and of European racist imperialism in general, and are told to reject their "false whiteness," which includes both zionism and their assimilated French identity. Finally, Philip Spencer provides readers with his reflections on the work of Robert Fine, who passed away in 2018. The focus of the article is on the problem of antisemitism on the Left and how Robert understood its development and persistence. Having worked closely with Fine for many years, Spencer is the perfect interpreter of Fine's work and the major intellectual influences on his thinking (Marx, Arendt, and Habermas). Robert Fine was dedicated to the concept of universalism and worked within the intellectual universe of the Left to try to provide a critique of, and an alternative to, its "self-inflicted failures." This issue's wide-ranging book reviews include a study of antisemitism in the comedy films of Nazi Germany, of the early roots of racism (including its antisemitic variant) in medieval society, an analysis of post-Vatican II Catholic doctrines on the Jewish people, a critical examination of Holocaust memorialization in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, a history of an American blood libel story in 1928 Massena, New York, and new biographies of zygmunt Bauman and Theodor Herzl. Sadly, antisemitism research has lost another two important senior scholars: Richard Levy (1940–June 23, 2021) and Manfred Gerstenfeld (1937–February 25, 2021). Richard will be missed by this editor as he was a very generous and helpful member of our advisory board. As always, I thank our authors, book reviewers, and expert readers for sharing their talent, expertise, and generosity with this publication. [End Page 232] Catherine Chatterley Founding Editor-in-Chief Copyright © 2021 Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism

When Past Group Events and Identities Define the Present: Effect of Perceived Collective Continuity on Defensive Behaviors of the French In-Group

Previous studies have highlighted the benefits of perceived collective continuity. However, to the authors’ knowledge, none have considered the negative effects of such perceptions when they concern a negative past or take the form of a break with a positive past. The authors therefore conducted three studies to examine the influence of perceived continuity (or a break) with positive versus negative events or identities on French in-groups’ defensive behaviors (i.e., perceptions of and attitudes toward refugees and intention to engage in collective actions). They expected to observe the positive impact of a positive (rather than negative) past continuity and a negative (rather than positive) past break. The results of Experiment 1 partially confirmed this hypothesis, as individuals who identified strongly expressed a greater intention to engage in collective actions when they perceived continuity with positive past events. Similarly, participants were more opposed to the reception of refugees when they perceived continuity with a positive past French identity (Experiment 2). Finally, high-identifier participants who perceived a break with a negative past identity expressed greater opposition to the reception of refugees and saw them more as a threat (Experiment 3). The authors discuss the importance of considering the emotional valence of past group memories for the continuity literature and a better comprehension of actual in- and between-group dynamics.

The Whiteness of French Food. Law, Race, and Eating Culture in France

Food is fundamental to French identity. So too is the denial of structural racism and racial identity. Both tenets are central to the nation’s self-definition, making them all the more important to think about together. This article purports to identify and critique a form of French food Whiteness (blanchite alimentaire), that is, the use of food and eating practices to reify and reinforce Whiteness as the dominant racial identity. To do so, it develops four case studies of how law elevates a fiction of homogeneous French/White food as superior and normative at the expense of alternative ways of eating and their eaters—the law of geographical indications, school lunches, citizenship, and cultural heritage.

Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944–54. Engendering Frenchness

Gender and French Identity after the Second World War, 1944–54. Engendering Frenchness

Perceived societal anomie, collective memory, and support for collective action: Perceiving that current French society is anomic influences present support for collective action through the reconstructed national past

The present research aimed to examine whether perceiving anomie within current society affects people’s representations of the national past and their support for collective actions through the reconstructed past. In two studies, we showed that perceived anomie affects people’s evaluation of some features of a past national figure (Study 1: Charles de Gaulle, former French president who had an important role during World War II) and an event (Study 2: May 68, an important French social movement that took place in May 1968). In Study 1, participants in the anomie conditions reconstructed de Gaulle as more positive (e.g., more moral, associated with more positive emotions) than did those in the neutral condition. In Study 2, the effects were different according to the anomie dimension made salient and were moderated by political orientation: Compared to participants in the neutral condition, salience of social fabric disintegration led to less positive representations of May 68 for rightist participants whereas salience of leadership disregulation led leftist participants to consider May 68 as more central in the French identity. Moreover, the reconstructed past induced by perceived anomie in turn influenced participant’s support for normative collective actions (Studies 1 &amp; 2) and actions against outgroups (Study 2), but not their support for violent actions.

“You can’t forget our roots anyway”: French College Students’ views on a Racially and Religiously Pluralistic France

Despite the longstanding presence of Islam in the territory of France, Muslim French must still claim and justify their belonging in the context of widespread public skepticism over Islam’s compatibility with “French” social and cultural values, such as laïcité, or secularism. The general public’s skepticism is also, in part, due to the historical and ongoing racialization of Muslim populations. Many French sub-populations, including those who are perceived as more “liberal” such as college students, are a part of this skeptical public. Therefore, how have these students speci cally been shaped by contemporary French discourses and understandings of laïcité? There is a lack of scholarly research on French college students in particular and their understandings of French identity, laïcité, and Muslims in France. To ll this gap, I conducted nine semi-structured interviews and drew on informal participant observation. In this article, I discuss French college students’ opinions on French identity as well as the desire for widespread assimilation, speci cally regarding Muslim women and their choice to wear a hijab in France. I examine these viewpoints within the framework of dominant French discourse, which often perpetuates the idea of a racialized Islam that is inherently incompatible with French culture. I argue that students on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum still reiterate opinions that t within this dominant French discourse.

Odilon Redon, Paul Gauguin, and Primitivist Color

Odilon Redon admired Paul Gauguin’s use of color, which he called color “derived from that of an other.” A distinctly foreign (as opposed to French) palette is central to both artists’ work, which features striking, nonmimetic colors. Both were reacting against Neo-Impressionist color theory as well as color theorist Charles Blanc’s xenophobic statements about the corrupting influence of color on French art. Gauguin embraced the “pure” colors of non-Western art, whereas Redon proposed a hybrid color palette blending new technologies and traditional models of color while extending French national identity to include the cultures (and colors) of colonial France.

French Dis-integration: New identity formation processes in 30° Couleur

‘Integration’ expects immigrants to conform to a certain idea of Frenchness. While ‘integration’ has been and continues to be the watchword in French politics, recent directors contend that new and decolonized French identities are formed through different mechanisms. This article argues that Lucien Jean-Baptiste and Philippe Larue in 30° Couleur present a protagonist of Martinican descent who comes to terms with his previously compartmentalized Frenchness through a process that this research conceives as a process of dis-integration, challenging the perceived notion that ‘integration’ is the only valid path to being French. The process of dis-integration has three fundamental steps: (1) the physical dissociation of the protagonist from his space of integration, (2) the rediscovery and reconnection with a deep part of his identity that he had (un)consciously repressed and subsequently erased and (3) the acceptance of his double or plural identity and the creation of a space where these identities can co-exist without dominating or annihilating one another.

Periphery and Intimacy in Anti-Imperial Culture and Politics

In the late period of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French imperialism, French thinkers, artists, and colonists had long held a fascination with the “others” inhabiting France’s colonies. Intimate contact and cross-cultural encounters led to descriptions and often violent differentiations of these groups that helped define French identity. But what might we learn by employing a “postcolonial praxis” that seeks new ways of interrogating identity from anti-imperial actors? Taking the perspectives of three key anti-imperialists—Frantz Fanon, Ousmane Sembène, and Simone Lellouche Othmani—this article unearths their perceptions about France and French identity. For these figures, France could represent either an unfulfilled promised land or a place of exile. Frenchness, likewise, ran the spectrum from a set of desired if unattainable qualities, an immoral culture to be resisted at all costs, to a national identity to be deployed for political strategy. This radical approach turns Frenchness into an “other” while contributing to the emergence of new postcolonial identities. At the same time, it demonstrates how three important definitions of France and of Frenchness depended upon both peripheral positionality and intimate access to French culture.