Representation In France Research Articles

Introduction: Parliamentary Representation in France

The constitution of the Fifth Republic, adopted in 1958, was deliberately designed to weaken parliament. This trend was reinforced by the constant empowerment of the president and the bipolarisation of political life. For this reason, but also due to some of its specificities, French political science did not pay much attention to parliament and its members. The aim of the seven papers gathered in this issue is to fix this deficiency. They cover the main aspects of parliamentary representation in France, deliver the fundamental information and tackle the central questions about it. The papers use a wide range of data, methods and theoretical approaches. They deal with MPs' conceptions and practices of their mandate, their opinions on the French regime, their activities in the constituency, values, contribution to law-making and the use of parliamentary questions, as well as their perception by the citizens.

From Theory to Practice: Citizens’ Attitudes about Representation in France

French institutions, political culture and history have favoured a very abstract conception of representation: MPs are expected to embody collectively the French Nation, but little is known about citizens’ concrete views on representation. In this paper, data gathered through a citizen mass survey are used. To overcome the usual abstract considerations on representation, respondents were asked their opinion on an MP who would endorse amendments proposed by an interest group. In the questionnaire, two features were changed randomly: the MP's political leaning and the type of interest group. It is shown by means of an original experiment that the ‘general’ conception representation has disappeared from citizens’ attitudes: despite the enduring legitimacy of the general will approach in the public sphere, French citizens appear to promote a conception of representation close to the Madisonian views on pluralism involving a strong attachment to the logic of territorial electoral linkage.

Conclusion: Challenging the Conventional Wisdoms about Parliamentary Representation in France

The seven papers gathered in this issue contradict four conventional prejudices about the French Parliament and its members. They show that citizens and MPs are not necessarily attached to a ‘general’ conception of representation, in which MPs represent the French Nation as a whole, with no reference to a territory or to specific interest groups. Second, the papers demonstrate that MPs are not perceived as an aristocracy agreeing on values and interests beyond political cleavages. Third, they prove that the representation gap between citizens and MPs is usually exaggerated and that electors are quite aware of the difficulties of being a deputy. Finally, they also establish that the weakness of the French Parliament and its submission to the executive power are often exaggerated. French MPs are nevertheless strongly focused on their constituencies and not much involved in parliamentary work; further, they are certainly not that enthusiastic about an eventual empowerment of their assembly.

The Mute’s Voice: The Dramatic Transformations of the Mute and Deaf-Mute in Early-Nineteenth-Century France

What does the mute have to tell us? In France at the end of the eighteenth and the start of the nineteenth centuries, this question propelled some important early melodramas, including Guilbert de Pixerecourt's Coelina ou l'Enfant du mystere (Coelina, or the child of mystery) (1800) and Jean-Nicolas Bouilly's LIAbbe de l'Epee (1799), with the secrets harbored by the mute character being central to the play's resolution. Outside the theater, in classrooms, hospitals, and institutions, this question also challenged pedagogues and philosophers who sought to determine just what kind of consciousness lay within the so-called deaf and dumb. The deaf-mute's social identity also performed important symbolic work in late-eighteenth-century France, as representative of those exiled from power and citizenship who were being welcomed into the new national community. This blend of the theatrical, pedagogical, and sociocultural significance of the deaf-mute is nowhere more apparent than in Bouilly's play L!Abbe de l'Epee, a dramatization of an episode from twenty-five years earlier in which the Abbe Charles-Michel de l'Epee, renowned his work in teaching the deaf and dumb to communicate through manual sign language, embarked a quest to have an abandoned deaf-mute adolescent recognized as the deposed Comte de Solar and returned to his rightful social position. Just as this play was drawing Parisian audiences, the capture of a feral in the woods of Aveyron, followed by his transfer to Paris to be examined by the leading intellects of the day, posed a similar set of questions: Who is this mute, and what can he tell us? The quickly became a subject speculation and appropriation in journals and stage, and the language and imagery of the theater, in return, exerted its influence scientific and philosophical observations, weaving with them to shape the way in which he was to be perceived by his contemporaries.This essay develops a perspective informed by studies to track the literary and social significance of the mute and muteness in Bouilly's play and in the world outside the theater in France at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Bouilly's UAbbe de i'Epee offers a unique site of tension between modes of representing the mute, thanks to its ostensibly realistic portrayal of a thinly veiled historical deaf-mute individual, the Comte de Solar, and his teacher and patron, the Abbe de l'Epee.1 The narratives around the mute wild boy captured in Aveyron and brought to Paris early in 1800 express the immediate impact of literary and theatrical discourses in shaping a popular understanding of the kind of difference embodied by the feral child, who was to become the subject of an extended and influential philosophical and educational experiment conducted by Jean Itard. Juxtaposed, Bouilly's play and Itard's reports his pedagogical progress with the can be seen to share significant features, including a concern with the place of the mute in society and the presentation of the teacher as heroic advocate of the disadvantaged. But we can also catch glimpses of literary, especially theatrical, in Itard's portrayal of his boy.My primary interest is in the relationship between the theatrical representations of muteness and that muteness-often combined with deafness-that existed outside of the theater, in the towns and villages of France. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder argue that disability pervades literary narrative, first, as a stock feature of characterization, and second, as an opportunistic metaphorical device.2 Coining the term narrative prosthesis to point to how literary narratives lean on imagery for their representational power, disruptive potentiality, and analytical insight,3 they argue that disability characterization can be understood as a prosthetic contrivance upon which so many of our cultural and literary narratives rely. …

Memory, History and Modernity

This article examines how official and unofficial early film footage intersects in the representation of France's mission civilisatrice in films taken in West Congo in the early twentieth century. We study uncut, and largely unseen footage of the French soldier General Henri Gouraud in Syria and Lebanon, filmed during the French acquisition of these territories following the First World War. This footage taken by Albert Kahn's photographer Lucien Le Saint, and now in the Archives de la Planète in Paris, reveals twin images of the General: one a powerful military commander of France's ‘civilizing mission’ and the other a relaxed, modern man of the kind not usually seen in public film footage. This article then, examines various contradictions at the heart of imperialistic discourse that characterised French cultural self-confidence in the last decades of the Third Republic.

Old Sluts and Dangerous Minuets: or, the Underlying Musical Tensions of the Querelle des Bouffons

The querelle des bouffons was once regarded as a mundane debate on the merits of French and Italian opera. Recent scholarship has shown, however, that the artistic arguments often concealed political subversion. This article investigates why theater was used in this way by examining the longstanding antagonistic relationship between French and Italian theater in France. This relationship created a space for broad criticism in which Italian theater threatened French absolutism as personified in French theater; the staging of political currents within the Franco-Italian dispute of the querelle may thus be seen as another example of this mode of discourse.

“THE PARISIAN BEAU MONDE”: FRANCES TROLLOPE'S REPRESENTATIONS OF FRANCE

English representations of France in the first half of the nineteenth century are informed by two contradictory tendencies: cosmopolitanism and nationalism. While the tradition of the Grand Tour and cultural exchanges led to some sympathy among English and French upper classes and intellectuals, and consequently to attitudes which could be described as cosmopolitan, there was at the same time a clear sense of Englishness. This article explores representations of France using the example of Frances Trollope's works, arguing that while Victorian novels generally reflect English nationalism, her novels and travel book on France are marked by a distinct cosmopolitan tendency. Idealizing French salons and their cosmopolitan aristocratic or intellectual elite, Trollope constructs herself as part of this coterie. As a writer and narrator in her novels, she presents herself as a well-educated and sophisticated woman of the world. In her later novels, this cosmopolitan tendency disappears, leading to a more negative portrayal of France and its society. This shift towards viewing the French as “others” was prompted by political and sociocultural events: the Revolution of 1848 and developments in French salon culture.

L'internationalisme ouvrier à l'épreuve des migrations africaines en France

Since its origins, the doctrines and practices of worker internationalism have been constantly affected by specifically national considerations. By studying the archives of the CFDT and the CGT, one may assess the manner in which French and African labor unions addressed the theme of immigration. In particular, this allows one to examine the considerations that led African labor unions to attempt to exercise control over the demands of Sub-Saharan workers residing in France and the subsequent marginalization of the latter at the hands of French labor unions. More generally, the study underscores the bureaucratization of the French labor movement, which disconnected itself from the social struggles of immigration and thereby contributed to the crisis of labor union representation in France. ■

Carriages, coffee-cups and dynamometers :representing French technical cultures in the London Mechanics’ Magazine,1823-1848

British discussions of French technical culture have often assumed, if not explicitly stated, contrasting ‘national styles’ : centralized, state-oriented, theoretically driven, and institutionally supported work in France ; dispersed, individualistic, empirically driven, school-shy practice in Britain. In this paper I examine a spectrum of French-British technical interactions during the second quarter of the nineteenth century and ask whether such caricatures have any power. To make this study more concrete I consider representations of France, and of French technical culture, in one important British periodical and, by way of occasional contrast, in some British professional and academic institutions. From the late 1830s there was a notable increase in the volume of technical literature ; but here, I focus on a periodical founded in 1823. The Mechanics’ Magazine (MM) was edited and printed in London but it was read far more widely. Its readership consisted primarily of literate but disputatious mechanics. Defining themselves against the gentlemanly, status-conscious civil engineers, the literary activists of the MM celebrated democracy, discourse and dispute. Their gaze fell on France and on French figures, institutions, technical processes, textbooks and theories. France was a distant arena of mechanical politics. There, exhibitions (it said) pandered to the useless wants of the aristocracy – were there only Kings in France ? There, Protestant craftsmen had resisted Catholic oppressors. There, fledgling Mechanics’ Institutes struggled against despotism. But not all was caricature : France was the land of heroes, like Charles Dupin, or a workplace for skilled artisans ; through de Pambour, Poncelet and Morin it could be a source, selectively, of technical insight and theory – even if built upon the example of British engineering works. Such representations of French technical culture ‘from below’ complement existing accounts of intellectual, cultural, or political encounter ; and they provide some clues as to the mechanisms whereby elite technical literature from France was appropriated in Britain.

“How ‘ya gonna keep’em down at the farm now that they’ve seen Paree?”: France in Super Hero Comics

Any extensive reading of super hero comics will reveal that the representation of France within the genre borrows mostly from touristic cliches, using the country as a foreign, exotic yet not too disorientating setting. Narrative economy and gradual refinements have led to the creation of a codified, consensual and unrealistic depiction of France, centered mostly on Paris and the Eiffel Tower. However, this efficient codification is not value-free. A study of Justice League Europe, a rare example of super-hero series set in France over a long period reveals that France is consistently depicted as a place of history, while being denied a contemporary significance. The country appears as a fascinating but subordinate neighbor, and this evaluation can in turn be found, albeit in a more elliptic way, in numerous series portraying France only in short episodes. The self-consciousness of modern super hero comics, however, suggests that the notion of representation should be handled with care. The depiction of France in super-hero comics originates in part in the perception of the country in the United States, but it also derives in a significant way from the internal evolutions of the genre.

A Short Introduction: Theatre in France in the Eighteenth Century

A Short Introduction: Theatre in France in the Eighteenth Century

Nos Spectacles 1946–1975: présence et effacement d'une revue catholique

Nos Spectacles , founded in 1932, was the official organ and voice of two successive associations concerned with Catholic amateur theatre in France, which constituted a means of conserving and propagating Catholic values. After 1945, the journal renewed its dedication to raising the artistic level of Catholic theatre through a process of acculturation of the faithful, but in decidedly different conditions for Catholicism as a whole in a secular society. Nos Spectacles is therefore an interesting case study in the participation of Catholic organisations in a wider context. Over the years, the increasing preference of Catholic stages for a non-Catholic repertoire and the important part played by Catholic amateurs in the administration of the global amateur sector led, along with the decline of parish and diocesan organisations, to the disappearance of the journal's specifically confessional identity and its eventual merger with a purely secular counterpart.

Between Majesty and Proximity: The enduring ambiguities of political representation in France

The term ‘proximite’ has been very much in vogue during the past few years. J.-P. Raffarin recurred to it often when he was Prime Minister and so constantly do many French politicians and bureaucrats. Proximity, as understood by local analysts, is largely dismissed as a mere ideological device aiming at resolving the so-called ‘crisis of representation’. However, according to some authors (Le Bart and Lefevbre, 2005), the success of such a slogan would also be an indicator of the emergence of a new mode of political legitimation in France, no less! It matters to insist upon the polysemic nature of the notion when it comes to political and symbolic applications because proximity may have spatial, social or patronizing connotations, among others. Mainly taking into consideration here the issue of outward signs of superiority, as opposed to demonstrable modesty, it will be claimed with empirical backing that in France political elites must often play on two distinct, and not easily compatible, registers: constantly proving and transcending proximity. If, in some countries, projecting an image of substance is imperative for politicians who want to appear as credible representatives, in some others the legitimacy of representation demands the lowest personal profile. France, this article argues, is mired in ambiguity. Historical developments led to a tension that was never resolved between unpretentiousness — a legacy of the Republican ideals of the French Revolution — and the pursuit of distinction — a lasting influence of the aristocratic tradition. These two aspects of political legitimation may appear incongruous. Yet, both make perfect sense, as some findings from a survey on the Mayors of the 1,000 largest cities and towns clearly show.

‘Toute ressemblance est voulue’: Theatre and Performance of May '68

During the years surrounding the events of May 1968, theatre in France underwent an upheaval, and the spectacle of May was an embodiment of these changes. Theatre companies began to organise themselves as collectives, young theatre artists further explored theatre as a means of social and political engagement, performances took place far from gilded theatre halls, and, during the May events, the National Theatre of France was occupied during a passionate attempt to enact utopia. The examples of Avignon playwright André Benedetto, the collectively-run Théâtre du Soleil's tour to striking factories, the key role played by university troupes, and the occupation of the Odéon theatre together illustrate not only the shift towards collectively-created, politically-active performance, but the vital role played by theatre during the May 1968 events.

Post-Political Theatre versus the Theatre of Political Struggle

In this article Bérénice Hamidi-Kim tests the hypothesis that two conflicting interpretations of the notion of ‘political theatre’ exist on the French stage today. She suggests that each is based on a specific ideology stemming from a specific conception of history and policy, which results in a legitimation of the theatre and of artists both in the theatrical field and in society at large. One, which she calls ‘post-political theatre’, seems to proceed from a radical anthropological and political pessimism, and has deliberately severed all links with all previous forms of political theatre and given up any revolutionary ambitions. The other, which she calls ‘political-struggle theatre’, proudly embraces the legacy of the earlier forms of revolutionary political theatre – the epic form of documentary theatre in particular – and is attempting to revive the political ambition of contributing to a comprehensive, coherent critical project, based on the assumption that theatre is a preparatory school for reality and for political action. Bérénice Hamidi-Kim's doctoral thesis was entitled ‘The Cities of Political Theatre in France from 1989 to 2007’. She is also author of ‘Quelle place politique et culturelle pour le cadre de l'Etat-Nation dans le théâtre de gauche français?’ in the e-review Sens Public (2006), and of ‘Théâtre populaire, immigration, intégration, et identité nationale’, forthcoming in the February 2008 issue of Etudes Théâtrales.

Workers' board-level representation in France and in Europe – experiences and developments

Workers' board-level representation in France and in Europe – experiences and developments

Between Parliament and the people: the problem of representation in France, 1934–39

SUMMARY As Pierre Rosanvallon has observed, one of the challenges for a democratic régime is the imagination of the people on whose sovereignty the régime is founded. This challenge was particularly acute for the Third Republic of France in the 1930s, when rival representations of the people—and of the popular will—were pitted against each other in theory and practice. Where was popular sovereignty located? In the crowd in the street and the workers on strike, or in the electorate and their official representatives, the parliamentary deputies? While these years have often been characterized as a struggle between democracy and fascism, Jessica Wardhaugh offers a new perspective on the period by adopting a comparative approach to the problem of popular representation and its attempted solution. Beginning with the riot of 6 February 1934 and the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary debates that followed, the article contends that in resolving the crisis of representation, the key question was not so much the choice between democracy and fascism as the definition of popular sovereignty in relation to street politics, parliamentary democracy and authoritarian leadership. A chronological and comparative analysis of left and right in the years 1934–39 reveals a progressive shift in the perceived solution to this problem from the people in the street to their parliamentary representatives, and subsequently from parliament to a national leader. It is thus possible to outline important areas of common preoccupation beneath the political polarization of these tumultuous years.

Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature by Sarah Gordon (review)

122Women in French Studies The anthology then takes us from the stronghold of the Reformation in southwestern France to the heart of humanism in sixteenth-century Lyon with Louise Labé's Débat de lafolie et de l'amour, a theatrical dialogue inspired by the theatrical innovations brought to France from Italy during this period. According to Evain, the play is both humorous and impertinent, as Labé couches biting critiques of the judicial system and the aristocracy behind an apparent bonhomie. More original, for Evain, is Labé criticism of the arbitrary nature of social inequality and the effects of male domination, and her affirmation of the absolute equality ofthe sexes. Catherine Des Roches, along with her mother Madeleine, held a prestigious literary salon during the 1570s in Poitiers which, like Lyon, had become a cultural center during the Renaissance. Four of her dramatic works are reproduced in this volume. Tobie is a tragi-comedy based on a passage from the Bible. However, Evain posits that the author was less interested in religious content of the play than its feminist message: of Sarra's eight husbands, only the last is not killed by an evil spirit because he was the only one who respected his wife. The second play, Bergerie, is a light pastoral comedy and final two plays, Placide et Sévère and Iris et Pasithée are short pedagogical dialogues on the subject ofwomen's education. Théâtre desfemmes de l 'Ancien Régime, XVT siècle is a well-edited and welldocumented anthology of plays by French women during the sixteenth century. The series as a whole will provide a greatly needed contribution to scholarship on women's theater in France as it will make a vast number of plays by women readily available and financially accessible for both research and teaching. Cecilia BeachAlfred University Gordon, Sarah. Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature. Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures 37. W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2007. Pp. [i]-ix; 220. ISBN 1-55753-430-6. $43.95 (Paper). This volume undertakes a literary examination of food references in medieval French texts, forging a connection between medieval studies and food history. Sarah Gordon notes in the introductory chapter that her study will not replicate the socio-historical work that has preceded it, but will explore the "comic literary use of food" in twelfth- to fourteenth-century French fictional narratives. Each of the four chapters is dedicated to a different genre of medieval literature: chapter one reads food fights and feasts in the prose/verse lyric; chapter two explores table etiquette in Arthurian romance; chapter three contrasts the city eating seen mfabliaux with the courtly feasts in the romances; and chapter four explores hunger in the Roman de Renart. The reliance on minor works of literature for much of the first and third chapters detracts somewhat from the impact of this study for the general reader, although it gives access to these texts to a non-specialist audience. The subject Book Reviews123 matter and Gordon's clear, virtually jargon-free prose seem to indicate that this volume is meant for the generalist, and it certainly would be appropriate for a wide public, from advanced undergraduates to specialists. That said, Gordon uses the un-translated term vilain in nearly every chapter; she might have laid the groundwork for the use of this term in her introduction, as she does with her opening remarks on thefabliaux in the third chapter. Gordon's work is most successful when she treats the major works of Arthurian romance in the second chapter, including Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval and Le Conte du Graal. Here she makes a clear connection between excessive eating and bad manners in literary texts and the disruption of chivalric and courtly conventions, with explicit textual references and a more obvious rendering of the comedie than in the previous chapter. She gives an extended examination of Guillaume de Clerc's Roman de Fergus as an anti-Arthurian text, and memorably describes an amnesiac Lancelot who turns from knight to chef in Jehan's Les merveilles de Rigomer. Her work on thefabliaux is similarly well-rooted in the texts, and allows a...

Embedded collectivism? Workplace representation in France and Germany

In most countries of Western Europe it makes little sense to speak of non-union employee representation, as this is understood in the Anglo-American world, for the principle of collective representation independent of the employer is strongly institutionalised. In this article we examine experience in two countries. In Germany, works councils with a wide repertoire of rights typically work in close partnership with trade unions. The system has experienced strains in recent years, and a growing proportion of mainly smaller workplaces are covered neither by councils nor by collective agreements; but there is virtually no evidence of alternative ‘voice’ mechanisms, and systems of direct participation are normally introduced by negotiation with councils. In France, works committees have fewer powers, and a divided trade union movement has been less successful than its German counterpart in ‘embedding’ the legally mandated institutions, at least in the private sector. Despite some common trends in both countries, national distinctiveness remains very apparent. There is growing scope for managerial strategic choice, but this is still institutionally bounded. Much more generally, countries displaying characteristics of a ‘European social model’ can be expected to sustain a close articulation between union and ‘non-union’ channels of representation.

Political Representation in France: A Crisis of Democracy?

The past two decades have witnessed growing political disaffection and a widening mass/elite disjuncture in France, reflected in opinion polls, rising abstentionism, electoral volatility and fragmentation, with sustained voting against incumbent governments. Though the electoral system has preserved the duopoly of the mainstream coalitions, they have suffered loss of public confidence and swings in electoral support. Stable parliamentary majorities conceal a political landscape of assorted anti-system parties and growing support for far right and far left. The picture is paradoxical: the French express alienation from political parties yet relate positively to their political institutions; they berate national politicians but retain strong bonds with those elected locally; they appear increasingly disengaged from politics yet forms of ‘direct democracy’ are finding new vigour. While the electoral, attitudinal and systemic factors reviewed here may not signal a crisis of democracy, they point to serious problems of political representation in contemporary France.