Postwar France Research Articles

Structuralist or Lesbian? Claude Lévi-Strauss and Monique Wittig on Rousseau's “Science”

In postwar France a proliferation of thinkers sought to move away from the dialectic of negation and synthesis. Two such writers turned to Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the source of a non-dualistic reflection. In 1962, Claude Lévi-Strauss laid claim to him as the “founder of the sciences of man,” and, inspired in part by his contact with Buddhism, he created a non-dualist version of the philosophe as a foil to Sartre. In 1989, Monique Wittig would also take up Rousseau, but in order to challenge Lévi-Strauss's notion of the exchange of women. In her hands, Rousseau also became a non-dualist through whom she could formalize the insights of gay and lesbian community life as a theory of sex abolition: “the science of the oppressed.” With archival materials, close readings, and historical contextualization, this article explores the genesis and interactions of both interpretations and situates them on the broader horizon of postwar thought.

Migration, Exile, and Vocation in the Metropol: The Figure of Joseph in the Early Writings of Léon Askenazi

This paper considers the relationship between exile and migration as reflected in a case study of biblical exegesis in modern Jewish thought. I consider the place of the biblical figure of Joseph in an early text by Léon Askenazi (also known as Manitou), a North African kabbalist and French intellectual, and a key spiritual leader of Francophone Jewry in the second half of the twentieth century. The paper begins by locating Askenazi within the mass migration, or “repatriation”, of the Algerian Jewish community to metropolitan France. I then examine and analyze the reinterpretation of Joseph in an early and unpublished text by Askenazi. I show how Askenazi’s explication departs from a common reading of the Joseph story by recasting it as a positive diasporic narrative with direct contemporary implications. I argue that during Askenazi’s early years in Paris, he sought to offer a “Josephic” model for Jewish life in postwar France, a model which also functioned as an alternative to the Zionist ethos of the negation of exile. The paper’s conclusion reflects on how Askenazi’s ideas may speak to conversations on religion and immigration.

Charm Offensive: Commodifying Femininity in Postwar France by Kelly Ricciardi Colvin (review)

Charm Offensive: Commodifying Femininity in Postwar France by Kelly Ricciardi Colvin (review)

Vampiric Masculinity. Rachilde's Le grand saigneur (1922) and the Writing of Gender Violence in Post-War France

Rachilde’s novel Le grand saigneur (1922) stands out from her other works in the 1920s and 1930s for its provocative portrayal of the French war veteran as a sadist who inflicts violence on those who do not conform to the codes of militarized, hegemonic masculinity. This article argues that the novel reflects the post-war years as a violent era for women and non-conforming men, shaped by the hateful discourses that emerged during the First World War. Rachilde writes about psychological and physical threats to women and non-conforming masculinity by delving into the violent fantasies nurtured by a larger-than-life, though well-recognizable, supporter of hegemonic masculinity against them. Drawing on an eclectic mix of literary genres, Rachilde depicts a society in which the impunity of men protected by their wealth and military status and the guilt bestowed upon (sometimes internalized by) women trivialize diverse forms of gender violence. Le grand saigneur belongs to the few ‘romans anti-sentimentaux’ Rachilde wrote during the interwar period. It is also an arresting attempt to write about gender violence through multiple subjectivities in order to explore the gendered, cultural, traumatic, and socio-economic factors that enabled it at this troubled historical juncture.

Making Space in Post-war France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning. By Edward Welch

<i>Making Space in Post-war France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning</i>. By Edward Welch

An Interview with Debra Bricker Balken and Lynn Gumpert, curators of Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962 (Grey Art Gallery, 2024)—Part Two

The exhibition Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962, running between March and July 2024, examines the art of US expats in Paris following World War II. The following is the second of a two-part interview with the show’s curators, Debra Bricker Balken and Lynn Gumpert. In this second part, the curators discuss the title of their show, which constitutes a reference to Vincente Minnelli’s famous film An American in Paris (1951, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron). Their choice to pluralize “American” reveals much about their conceptual approach. They also discuss the inter-influence but also tensions between French and US artists of the post-war period. They evoke the idea of dialogue between New York and Paris, a notion that has been eclipsed by assumptions about the ascendancy of the New York art scene over the Parisian counterpart in the postwar period (for example, Guilbaut 1983). The curators turn us towards the idea of other forms of globalism, and other forms of modernism, that do not center the New York school. The interview concludes with a brief connection of this exhibit to the “post-global” moment in curatorial world (O’Neill 2019) and the wider society.

Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France, written by Camille Robcis

Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France, written by Camille Robcis

Correction to: Three women artists in postwar France: Anna-Eva Bergman, Germaine Richier, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

Correction to: Three women artists in postwar France: Anna-Eva Bergman, Germaine Richier, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

The emerging discipline of public economics in postwar France

After the Second World War, optimal pricing in the public sector became an important topic internationally. The welfare enhancing properties of marginal pricing were a key concern, yet, the technical computation of marginal costs also proved difficult. It was unclear how to compute marginal costs, mainly in view of the discontinuities of the cost function. In the context of post-war reconstruction and of practically implementing a marginal pricing policy, this technical debate was closely linked in France to the “Calais traveller paradox” and the emergence of a new generation of engineer-economists contributing at the same time to the theoretical debate and to the practical implementation of marginal cost pricing. Maurice Allais and Marcel Boiteux, as well as Gabriel Dessus and Roger Hutter contributed to developing national solutions that also spread theoretical thinking internationally. This debate connects with the history of economic calculus and the rise of public economics, as well as the possibility of computing optimal welfare enhancing prices in the face of market failures.

MASS RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION AS AN ELEMENT OF CRISIS ARCHITECTURE

The world's population loses their homes due to natural disasters and wars every year, many international organizations have been created to eliminate such consequences. Architects as volunteers also make efforts to design typical low-cost mass housing., there is a concept of crisis architecture to denote this phenomenon. Its feature is the fastest possible reconstruction of housing for people in disaster zones. The next term discussed in the article is urbicide, the purposeful destruction of cities caused by wars, terrorist attacks, and other aggressive actions that we have in Ukraine today.&#x0D; The purpose of the article is to reveal the features of mass housing architecture in its relationship with crisis phenomena and urbicide in society. For this purpose, the possibility of reconstruction, reconstruction and development of the architectural and urban structure of cities in the post-crisis period is considered. The features of the crisis architecture of countries and cities affected by wars, as well as floods, fires and other natural disasters (Rotterdam, Hiroshima, Bismaya, Skopje) are analysed. Foremost, the restoration of the engineering infrastructure was observed. Work on solving the housing problem consisted in the repair of damaged buildings, the reconstruction of large apartments into small apartments and the construction of typical temporary low-rise buildings 3 available raw materials. Unified 4-5- story series of economy houses were popular in post-war France, Hungary, Slovakia and other countries. Disadvantages of such housing include chaotic construction, simplification of architectural solutions, lack of individual stylistic features. Later, the temporary residential quarters were dismantled. At the same time, a significant part of such panel houses remains inhabited even in our time. &#x0D; Ukraine was significantly affected by the Second World War. Mass construction according to typical projects took place in the 60s, as a result of which about 23% of the country's housing stock has physical and moral deterioration. In view of the military actions, it is extremely important to use the international experience of rebuilding cities, to carefully approach the selection of projects, focusing on the economic component, the safety of residents and high-quality architectural solutions.

Philip G. Nord. After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France.

Journal Article Philip G. Nord. After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France. Get access Philip G. Nord. After the Deportation: Memory Battles in Postwar France. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xiii, 472. Cloth $39.99. Pieter Lagrou Pieter Lagrou Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Email: Pieter.Lagrou@ulb.ac.be https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6119-5361 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 1031–1032, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad162 Published: 22 June 2023

Camille Robcis. Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France.

Journal Article Camille Robcis. Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France. Get access Camille Robcis. Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Pp. x, 220. Paper $35.00. Katja Guenther Katja Guenther Princeton University, US Email: kguenthe@princeton.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 1037–1039, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad195 Published: 22 June 2023

:Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France

Previous articleNext article No AccessModernCamille Robcis. Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France. (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning.) 240 pp., illus., notes, bibl., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2021. $35 (paper); ISBN 9780226777740. Cloth and e-book available.Anatole Le BrasAnatole Le Bras Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 114, Number 2June 2023 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724812 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

:Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France

:<i>Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France</i>

:Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France

:<i>Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France</i>

Edward Welch, Making Space in Post-war France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning

Edward Welch, <i>Making Space in Post-war France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning</i>

Joseph Wulf and the Path Not Taken: The Turn from Writing Jewish History in Yiddish to Writing Nazi History in German

Abstract Before Joseph Wulf gained renown as a pioneering Holocaust historian in postwar Germany, he attempted to establish himself as a Holocaust historian in the Yiddish-speaking community of postwar France. In 1952, however, he left Paris and the world of his fellow survivors to settle in Berlin. Of the Holocaust survivors who turned to writing the Jewish history of the Holocaust in Yiddish immediately after World War II, only one—Wulf—turned yet again to become a German-language historian of the Nazis. The question is why. In addition to well-known personal factors, a close reading of Wulf’s Yiddish writings from 1946 to 1952 reveals the scholarly impetus for his departure: his approach to writing Holocaust history diverged in every significant respect from the already evolving norms of Yiddish Holocaust historiography—and pointed instead toward the new beginning he created for himself in Berlin. This article proposes, for the first time, to recover and discuss Wulf’s postwar Yiddish writings in the context of his contemporaries’ historical works in Yiddish.

Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France. By Celeste Day Moore

In Soundscapes of Liberation, Celeste Day Moore has woven together a compelling book that sheds new light on the Black (American) experience in twentieth century France. Her critical intervention is to show that although the circulation and reception of Black music in postwar France seemed emancipatory, the reality was more complex. Moore outlines the tensions between an idealized rhetoric of racial freedom in France and the real erasures and stereotyping that characterized the transmission and reception of music of the African diaspora. She uses approaches from social and cultural history, popular culture studies, sound studies, and French colonial and postcolonial studies. Moore’s nuanced account of the emancipatory and constraining effects of soundscapes is central to understanding the complexity of “race” and racialization in France. She focuses on the time period after the Second World War although, as she points out, these characteristics are typical of earlier periods and continue to this day.

Nimisha Barton. Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880–1945.

In the 2000s, the global turn swept through modern French history, above all among scholars in the United States. In a post-Cold War context where Western Europe was no longer of great strategic interest, France and the French had to be made “global” to retain their relevance in a crowded disciplinary marketplace. Fortunately, it was easy to globalize the history of a nation that had once had a substantial overseas empire, was widely recognized as a “great power,” and seemed to be grappling openly with the politics of racial difference and the legacies of its colonial past. As research agendas in the field quickly changed, a new cohort of graduate students began to rediscover topics that had fallen out of fashion or had been ignored altogether. Nimisha Barton fits squarely within this new generation of French historians, and her book reflects many of the most interesting innovations that have emerged from the global turn. Anyone who knows the field will recognize themes—such as immigration, gender, and the meaning of citizenship—that have been the subject of significant English-language scholarly attention in the past twenty years, but Barton carefully moves the conversation on to more unfamiliar chronological and methodological terrain. For a start, her focus on the Third Republic is a welcome departure from the much more crowded historiography of immigration in postwar France. Just as importantly, her use of the term “reproductive citizens” brings into conversation the histories of women, the family, and republican citizenship. Despite the stimulating work of scholars such as Camille Robcis, Judith Surkis, and Amelia Lyons, the strongly gendered character of republican citizenship in twentieth century France remains a neglected subject of study.