French Civilization and Its Discontents

Nationalism, Colonialism, Race

Contributions by Janet Bergstrom, Hafid Gafaiti, Edouard Glissant, Donna Hunter, Jean Jonassaint, Valerie Kaussen, Ethan Kleinberg, Driss Maghraoui, Patricia A. Morton, Tyler Stovall University of California, Richard Terdiman, Lyn Thompson, Georges Van Den Abbeele Dean of Humanities, Unive, Nancy Wood, Winifred Woodhull, Ali Yedes Edited by Georges Van Den Abbeele

Publication date:

22 October 2003

Length of book:

288 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x157mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739106464

What happens when the study of French is no longer coterminous with the study of France? French Civilization and Its Discontents explores the ways in which considerations of difference, especially colonialism, postcolonialism, and race, have shaped French culture and French studies in the modern era. Rejecting traditional assimilationist notions of French national identity, contributors to this groundbreaking volume demonstrate how literature, history, and other aspects of what is considered French civilization have been shaped by global processes of creolization and differentiation. This book ably demonstrates the necessity of studying France and the Francophone world together, and of recognizing not only the presence of France in the Francophone world but also the central place occupied by the Francophone world in world literature and history.

Part 1 The Intelligentsia and New Conceptions of French Identity
Chapter 2 The Marginality of Michel de Certeau
Chapter 3 Disorienting Le Corbusier: Charles Edouard Jeanneret's 1911 Voyage d'Orient
Chapter 4 France in the Wilderness
Chapter 5 Opacity in the Films of Claire Denis
Part 6 Black Diaspora and Créolisation
Chapter 7 The French Language in the Face of Creolization
Chapter 8 Kojève and Fanon: the Desire for Recognition and the Fact of Blackness
Chapter 9 Historically Particular Uses of a Universal Subject
Chapter 10 For a Caribbean Intertext: On Some Readings of Maryse Condé's Crossing the Mangrove
Chapter 11 "Hereditary Antagonism": Race and Nation in Maurice Casseus's Viejo
Part 12 Orientalism and the Maghrebian Presence in Post-Colonial France
Chapter 13 Nationalism, Colonialism, and Ethnic Discourse in the Construction of French Identity
Chapter 14 French Identity, Islam, and North Africans: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Realities
Chapter 15 Social Dynamics in Colonial Algeria: The Question of Pieds-Noirs Identity
Chapter 16 Remembering the Jews of Algeria
Part 17 Miscegenation, Degeneration, and other Metropolitan Anxieties
Chapter 18 Decadence/Degeneration/Créolité:Rachilde's La Jongleuse
Chapter 18 Love, Labor, and Race: Colonial Men and White Women in France during the Great War
Chapter 20 The Children of Belgium

This is a superb collection. The elegant introduction presents the current situation of French and Francophone studies with icy clarity and should become required reading. The contributors add original interdisciplinary perspectives on intellectual and cultural history, race and gender, cinema and architecture, the Caribbean, the Maghreb, and Belgium. No one working in French studies can afford to ignore this book.