French Politics Research Articles

The political history of France in reflection of the national cinematography (1960s – 1970s)

The goal of this research consists in determination of the place and role of French cinematography of 1960s – 1970s in the political history of postwar France. The object of this research is the process of transformation of political discourse in the context of transfer of power from Charles de Gaulle to Georges Pompidou. The subject of is reflection of the history of collaborationism in the films “Sadness and Pity” (1969) and “Lacombe Lucien” (1973). The author examines such aspect of the topic as reflection of the political and cultural elites on the Vichy regime. Special attention is given to the political consequences of the screening of films about collusion of the Nazi to French citizens. The scientific lies in the analytical overview of the popular films of French national cinematography of 1960s – 1970s, which interpret the phenomenon of “collaborationism” and “opposition" of the period of German occupation. As a result, it is proven that these films distorted the silence on collusion of a number of citizens to the occupier that prevailed in the French political and public discourse. The author notes that resign of Charles de Gaulle as the head of the French Republic led to the emergence of the products of popular culture that revise the previous interpretations of the military past and have a capacity to change the political situation in the country.

An Eclectic Political Scientist: A Tribute to Robert Elgie

AbstractRobert Elgie's contribution to comparative politics is considerable. His work covers a range of subfields, including the study of political institutions, French politics, political leadership, presidentialism and semi-presidentialism. He became the leading scholar of semi-presidentialism and indeed defined much of the research agenda in this subfield.

Kindness as the Foundation to Community: For a ‘Radical Equality Tempered by Benevolence’. Joseph Rey of Grenoble (1779-1855)

Abstract This article examines the work of the jurist and political and social theorist, Joseph Rey. It explores Rey’s role within a French and international network of intellectuals and conspirators who sought to overthrow established monarchies and replace them with popularly elected democratic republics. The article shows how Rey’s extensive writings on legal, political, social and educational questions give a unique insight into France’s political, intellectual, social and ideological life in the first decades of the nineteenth century. We argue that Rey’s contribution to the debates that defined the modern ideological categories of liberalism, republicanism and socialism was significant in its endeavour to reconcile all three. This attempt at reconciliation was motivated by a powerful desire to end the internecine struggles that marked France in the aftermath of the Revolution and Empire. This led Rey to draw on the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and the Philosophical Radicals in order to nourish a French republican liberalism rooted in the work of the Idéologues and combine this with his profound reading of Robert Owen’s work on co-operation. It goes on to show how Rey became known as France’s principal representative of Owenism, and sought to shape the debates between the dominant schools of French Socialist thought, Fourierism and Saint-Simonianism, by introducing into those discussions a radical conception of equality and the idea of co-operation. Rey’s attempts to reconcile the liberal-republican preoccupation with liberty and self-governance with socialist considerations on equality and social justice stand out from the works of his contemporaries. It is this unique, and long-forgotten, contribution to French and European political and social thought that makes Rey worthy of renewed attention.

The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture. Edited by Marion Demossier, David Lees, Aurélien Mondon, and Nina Parish

This handbook aims to provide an overview of the most pressing and mediatized cultural and political issues facing contemporary France, placed against the backdrop of modern European history. Essays by prominent academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds make up the book’s four parts. The contributions in the first part provide a foundation for the subsequent sections, focusing on modern and contemporary French politics, with special attention to the electoral politics leading to the Macron presidency, the history of the notion of Gaullism, colonization of and involvement in Africa, and the evolution of women’s political participation. The second and third parts engage with questions related to belonging, identity, and spaces of contestation. The authors interrogate a wide range of highly politicized topics in France, such as policies on immigration and ‘integration’, Islamophobia, the racialization of Romani people, protest movements, constructions of and discourses surrounding the banlieue, and contemporary feminisms. The final part addresses the mediation of memory, remembrance, and culture. Contributors analyse exhibition decisions made in First World War museums, the role of propaganda and mass media in politics, music nostalgia, the figure of the public intellectual, and representations of Jews. One of the book’s strengths is its inclusion of many chapters dedicated to interrogating questions of race, racism, and othering. Marwan Mohammed, Marion Demossier, Tom Martin, Fabien Truong, Mehammed Mack, and Rebecca Infield and Rebekah Vince offer particularly illuminating contributions that consider the interplay between French national identity and various forms of race politics. If the ambitious aim of this book is to provide a survey of the French political and cultural landscape, it bears mentioning that any attempt to canonize cultural issues worthy of study necessarily involves the politics of exclusion and inclusion. While Mack’s chapter does look at the gay nightclub space, this handbook would have been improved if more space were devoted to the consideration of queer and trans issues in France. Moreover, certain chapters reveal blind spots and a disconnect with the populations being spoken for. For instance, ‘Gender and Crisis’ ventures into troubling territory with the suggestion that misogyny may be present in fashion companies’ decisions simply to sell headscarves (p. 183). Such a claim fits within femonationalist discourses that instrumentalize feminism against Muslims by characterizing Islam as a fundamentally oppressive religion from which women must be ‘saved’. Similarly, ‘The French “Banlieues”’ dubiously asserts that racial polarization is ‘inscribed […] in mindsets [in America], far more than in France’ and attributes ‘most’ riots in the banlieue to the ‘accidental’ killings of youth by police (p. 137). A consideration of the many high-profile, non-accidental instances of excessive force throughout French history that have led to the deaths of Black and Maghrebi people would have been helpful here. In summary, this handbook’s twenty-three chapters provide a foundation necessary for students of contemporary French culture and politics. However, readers should engage critically and thoughtfully, as academics themselves are not impervious to the effects of the mediatization and politicization of the topics discussed throughout this book.

Неопределенность французской политической жизни: Сдвиг вправо и кризис представительной демократии

This article deals with the evolution of French politics between 2017 and 2020. Using systematic surveys, which are conducted by the Center for the Study of French Political Life and in which the author is directly involved he shows that President Macron’s policies have not succeeded in dissipating a democratic crisis affecting trust in political institution. The sanitary crisis had a great impact on the political situation in the country. In France, the crisis associated with Covid-19 was manifested not in the confrontation of political forces, but in the criticism of the government by civil society and in the growth of populism. In this respect, France is very different from Germany, where there is a general public consensus, and Great Britain, where confidence in the system-forming parties remains. Populism has gained ground in French politics and explains, more than any other factor, both the distrust in the Presidency and in government health policies. The rise of left-wing and rightwing populism has not led to the disappearance of the division between left and right. A shift toward right values and State intervention can be observed in French public opinion, changing the electoral game for the 2022 presidential campaign.

Gender, Family, and French Political Life

Gender, Family, and French Political Life

Ideology or History as “Idéologie:” C. F Volney and the Uses of the Past in Revolutionary France

The French Revolution had a complex relationship with historical thought. In a significant sense, the politics of 1789 was built upon a rejection of the authority of the past. As old institutions and practices were swept away, many champions of the Revolution attacked conventional historical modes for legitimating authority, seeking to replace them with a politics anchored in notions of reason, natural law and natural rights. Yet history was not so easily purged from politics. In practice, symbols and images borrowed from the past saturated Revolutionary culture. The factional disputes of the 1790s, too, invoked history in a range of ways. The politics of nature itself often relied on a range of historical propositions and, as the Revolution developed, a new battle between “ancients” and ‘moderns’ gradually emerged amongst those seeking to direct the future of France. This article explores these issues by focusing on a series of lectures delivered at the École Normale in the Year III (1795), in the wake of Thermidor and the fall of Robespierre. The lectures, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, were designed to lay out a program for historical pedagogy in the French Republic. Their author, Constantin-Francois Volney (1757–1820), was one of a group of figures who sought, during these years, to stabilise French politics by tying it to the development of a new form of social science—a science that would eventually be labelled “idéologie.” With this in mind, Volney sought to promote historical study as an antidote to the political appropriation of the past, with particular reference to its recent uses in France. In doing so, he also sought to appropriate the past for political purposes. These lectures illustrate a series of tensions in the wider Revolutionary relationship with history, particularly during the Thermidorian moment. They also, however, reflect ongoing ambiguities in the social role of the discipline and the self-understanding of its practitioners.

Der nordische Fremde: Historische Untersuchung des medialen Schwedenbildes im Heiligen Römischen Reich (1500–1721)

Until to the beginning of the 17th century the North was rather an unknown and abstract space for the average German-speaking recipient of early modern mass media (for example illustrated broadsheets, newspapers, pamphlets). In the course of the 17th century due to Denmark’s and Sweden’s participation in the Thirty Years War, the northern regions became a central topic in the early modern mass media and therefore forced the recipient to be more aware of it. In the course of the second half of the 17th century the northern kingdoms became less important for the publicists in the Holy Roman Empire and instead they laid their focus on the politics of French and the Ottoman Empire. Thus, the image of the northerners and their stereotypes, which had been introduced to the German speaking readers in the course of the Thirty Years War, lived on until the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless, the Great Northern War (1700–1721) brought the people from the northern regions back to the media landscape of the Holy Roman Empire and about the same time the illustrated broadsheet – an almost antiquated genre of mass media that had struggled with the upcoming of the new modern genre ‘newspaper’ – experienced a kind of a renaissance.
 The aim of this article is to describe how the northern region, with a focus on Sweden, was depicted in early modern mass media between the 15th and the 18th centuries. I will show continuities and changes of the visual and textual representation of ‘northerners’ and ‘Sweden’ in early modern mass media, which were published in the Holy Roman Empire between around 1500 until the end of the Great Northern War in 1721.

Republican Socialism and Gendered Portrayals of Catholic Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century France

The popularity of Ultramontanism and the political energy provided by Sacred Heart piety gave French Catholicism of the post-Commune era a militant posture, one that republican socialists saw as antagonistic to their political objectives. This article shows that socialists responded by emasculating their Catholic opponents. Drawing on the materialist tradition that emerged from the Enlightenment and Revolution, and highlighting the resignation and emotive nature of radical Catholic piety, republican socialists maintained that religious belief was evidence of inadequate virility. Speaking to the anxieties of the period, which included concerns about racial degeneration and the adequacy of France on the world stage, this gendering of epistemological convictions allowed socialists to argue for the exclusion of religion and the religious male from French politics.

Chris Millington. Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French Politics.

Chris Millington. Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French Politics.

A Big-Data Approach to Contemporary French Politics

Mixing the methods of machine learning and those of French cultural studies, this article explores recent trends in French politics. We analyze a large data set from Twitter (over a hundred and fifty million tweets) in order to reveal notable currents in discourse around the Gilets Jaunes and the French presidency (with particular focus on Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen). This article delineates our methods and places this data analysis in a broader cultural and political context, concentrating primarily on major trends in French politics from 2017 to late 2019. We argue that our interdisciplinary approach reveals elements of French political discourse that would otherwise remain obscure, especially regarding the rise and fall of the Gilets Jaunes movement on Twitter.

Catalan language in French Catalonia today: a case of revernacularisation? A path between identity recovery and linguistic heritage

ABSTRACT This article concerns Northern Catalonia, the part of the Catalan-speaking area that today is in France. A Catalan-speaking region until the first half of the twentieth century, the effects of Frenchification – the acceptance of the French political and economic project in the contemporary era – and the multiple demographic changes of the twentieth century after World War II led this area to language interruption and linguistic substitution of French for Catalan. Despite this, the vernacular language is still maintained at the heart of society in natural and artificial ways. What role is there for the Catalan language in everyday life? What space for the Catalan language without official recognition in response to the massive influx of non-Catalan speakers? Catalan today is poorly spoken by very fragmented groups of speakers, a consequence of the substitution. Despite the situation, many inhabitants of French Catalonia express their everlasting desire for the language. School is often the instrument that allows the use of a language to be revitalised, but without the political desire, it will be very difficult for the language to prosper via this route. Solutions do exist: simply apply the existing laws, have a true policy in the media, exhibit responsible behaviour, etc. So if we do not want to think about the demise of the Catalan language in Northern or French Catalonia, must we still believe in replantation, revernacularisation, revitalisation, regeneration? In 2019, the Catalan language is in danger of death in France, but it is not dead yet.

The Game of Chance: Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass and Nineteenth-Century French Political Caricatures

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915–1923), also known as The Large Glass, is one of Marcel Duchamp's most complex works and has elicited a wealth of scholarly suggestions as to its meaning and sources of inspiration. Nevertheless, although it is recognized that Duchamp’s early practice as a maker of cartoons paved the way for an oeuvre replete in wit and wordplay, the inspiration Duchamp drew from well-known French caricatures received almost no attention. To fill this void, the present article proposes that The Large Glass was based on the caricature A New Game of Rings, issued by Charles Vernier on the eve of the 1848 presidential elections for the Second Republic. Upon close inspection, Vernier's satirical cartoon suggests not only the composition of The Large Glass, but also themes that are central to Duchamp’s oeuvre: games, absurdity, and hilarity; chance, whether uncontrolled or controlled; and the dichotomy between male and female, reality and idea. Moreover, the political scenario presented in the mid-nineteenth century caricature had considerable relevance for the situation of the Third Republic when Duchamp created his work. Thus the tragicomedy of the Bride and her Bachelors represented in The Large Glass may be said to epitomize the changing relationship between Marianne – the female personification of the Republic – and the French people during the turmoil of the First World War.

Macron versus the RN? The Battle Lines of French Politics Following the 2019 European Elections

Macron versus the RN? The Battle Lines of French Politics Following the 2019 European Elections

Jacques Chirac, the Last Giant of French Politics

Jacques Chirac, the Last Giant of French Politics

An anti-humanist acquittal: ‘Résistantialisme’ and the lettrist defense of Louis-Ferdinand Céline

ABSTRACT In 1949 the novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline was languishing in exile in Denmark, having fled a warrant that had been issued for his arrest on charges of collaboration during the Occupation. Having been one of the most successful writers of the 1930s, Céline was now one of the most hated men in France; a notorious anti-semite. During this period the lettristes Maurice Lemaître and Isidore Isou, both Jews, decided launch a campaign to defend Céline. This was meantas a severe provocation to the right-thinking intelligentsia on the Left Bank who were so hypocritical and so quick to condemn Céline, whilst many of their crimes went unpunished. But what really brought Céline and the young Jews together was that they both shared a special contempt for Jean-Paul Sartre. More precisely all three of them them had been particularly incensed for parallel reasons, by an article Sartre had published in 1945 in the journal Les Temps Modernes called ‘Portrait of an anti-Semite’. This article will explore why this piece had so incensed the three men, and what their contribution was to the politics of post-war Paris. More to the point the polemic against Sartre marks a shift from Humanism in French politics.

Rethinking Colonialism in France’s Post-Chirac Era. From Sarkozy’s ‘Anti-Repentance’ to Macron’s ‘Crisis of Acceptance’

For the first time in post-war history, the French State acknowledged in 2018 the use of military torture during the Algerian War of Independence, through the statement of the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The declaration was inscribed in the context of the Franco-Algerian War, attempting to restore and vindicate the memory of Maurice Audin, a victim of the French colonial system established in Algeria. The article deals with the postcolonial memory of the Algerian War of Independence in French public sphere, focusing on the politics of memory of the presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron. Exploring the uses of the colonial past in French politics, I seek to delineate the process of ‘coming to terms’ with ‘colonial legacy’ and to trace the transformations that the ‘modes’ of remembering have undergone in France over the last few decades.

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.

Religious Reform, the House of Guise and the Council of Fontainebleau: The French Memorial Service for Marie de Guise, August 1560

During the summer of 1560 the power of the Guise family was under attack in France and Scotland alike. In Scotland, Marie de Guise, mother of Mary, queen of Scots, who had acted as Regent for her daughter from 1554 onwards, had recently been defeated by religious rebels and died shortly thereafter. In France, the influence of her two younger brothers, Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, and Francois, duke of Guise, over Francois II provoked criticism whilst the government was also under pressure to make concessions to Protestants. On 12 August 1560 a memorial service was held in Notre Dame de Paris. This is entirely passed over in accounts of French politics in the period, and appears as a mere epilogue to studies of Marie de Guise herself. This article offers the first analysis of the organisation of, attendance at, and contents of the service, focusing in particular on the funeral sermon. Coming eight days before the Council of Fontainebleau the memorial service, witnessed by a large and influential audience, provided an excellent opportunity for Marie de Guise’s family not only to celebrate her life but to tell a positive narrative about the House of Guise as a counter to widely circulating criticisms.

Observations lexicales sur les champs sémantiques SOCIALISME et COMMUNISME dans une œuvre philosophique et contre-révolutionnaire de « science absolue » du XIXe siècle

Abstract This article focuses on certain semantic aspects within the vocabulary of French politics : in detail, how the meaning of words used in a political context changes through the ideas and theories of a particular social group. It aims more specifically at highlighting the relationship between ideology and word meaning in the philosophical text Principes de science absolue (1875).