Suchergebnisse

"This book is an original and sophisticated historical interpretation of contemporary French political culture. Until now, there have been few attempts to understand the political consequences of the profound geopolitical, intellectual and economic changes that France has undergone since the 1970s. However, Emile Chabal's detailed study shows how passionate debates over citizenship, immigration, colonial memory, the reform of the state and the historiography of modern France have galvanised the French elite and created new spaces for discussion and disagreement. Many of these debates have coalesced around two political languages - republicanism and liberalism - both of which structure the historical imagination and the symbolic vocabulary of French political actors. The tension between these two political languages has become the central battleground of contemporary French politics. It is around these two poles that politicians, intellectuals and members of France's vast civil society have tried to negotiate the formidable challenges of ideological uncertainty and a renewed sense of global insecurity"--

While many other democracies in the world celebrate or simply tolerate public expressions of difference, France has traditionally remained hostile toward them in the name of republican universalism. The rise of identity politics in recent decades, however, has posed a serious challenge to this position. Today, France is torn between republican values that do not reflect the complexity of a multicultural society, and a global culture war that has supercharged local disagreements and polemics.

L'intellectuel français existe-t-il toujours ? Si oui, se positionne-t-il de plus en plus à droite ? Pour répondre à ces deux questions, cet article retrace les grandes lignes du développement de la vie intellectuelle en France depuis les années 1970, aussi bien dans sa forme (la médiatisation) que dans son contenu (l'émergence de nouveaux débats). Il analyse également l'avenir de l'intellectuel dans un contexte de crise démocratique mondiale afin de proposer une nouvelle définition de « l'intellectuel engagé ».

It is striking the extent to which many liberals have seen themselves as figures on the margins of politics. This is partly an ideological issue. Of all the great 'isms' of the modern age, liberalism has had neither the historical certainty of the two great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, nor the reassuring hierarchical logic of conservatism. Most liberals have agonised about how much humans can achieve and have repeatedly stressed the fallibility of rational or democratic solutions, at least in comparison with more revolutionary ideologies like communism. But liberals' sense of living on the margins is also a consequence of the context in which liberalism was born. In Europe, the spectre of the French Revolution – and, later, the Bolshevik Revolution – gave liberalism a specific flavour. Liberals were often keen on reform, but they always feared social upheaval. Time and again, liberals found themselves in power only to lose control of the pace of social change. In the worst cases – 1815, 1848 or 1917 spring to mind – this put the liberal cause back by generations. For much of modern European history, to be a liberal was to be in a perpetual state of siege.

AbstractUsing the case study of Montpellier, this article explores the relationship between local political actors and postcolonial minorities since the end of the Algerian War – particularly, the city's pied-noir, harki, Moroccan and Jewish populations. It examines the discourses used to secure the electoral allegiances of these groups and the myriad ways in which they laid claim to certain civic and political spaces. It employs diverse oral, archival and audio-visual sources to demonstrate how postcolonial minorities have gained important concessions from local authorities and how identity politics has developed under the Fifth Republic, despite France's strong republican tradition.

A comparative analysis of the governance of irregular migrants in France, Germany and the UK since the 1960s. Will appeal to scholars and students of immigration policy, irregular migration, and theories of state knowledge, as well as the growing field of agnotology (the study of ignorance).

The pandemic may have consigned historians to their homes, but this did not stop history from taking centre-stage in public debate. From falling statues to culture wars, history in all its forms has continued to be deployed by states, activists, prestigious institutions and grassroots organisations. As has always been the case, those who study history for a living have rarely played a prominent role in these debates. At best, historians have tended to be confined to supporting roles as 'advisers', 'consultants' or 'experts'. Still, even for those historians who eschew the rough-and-tumble of political and civic discussion, it is impossible to remain entirely neutral. Governments and politicians can overturn funding priorities; universities can suddenly find themselves targets of hostile political campaigning; and lecture halls can turn into sites of civic struggle. This constant historical instrumentalisation is a dramatic reminder of the power of narratives in constructing realities.

In this essay, we sketch out a method, histosophy, which makes possible the study of intellectual history and conceptual genealogy both in depth and over long periods of time. Histosophy uses digital tools to survey 'large issues within small compasses.' A genealogy of signifiers, it considers metonymic parts of a problem in order to contribute precisely and coherently to a larger perspective. We outline the theoretical contours of our approach. We exemplify how it works in practice by looking at the signifier 'esprit de corps', the study of which is presented in detail in the histosophical book The Genealogy of Esprit de Corps(Edinburgh University Press, 2019). The phrase 'esprit de corps' has been widely used since the eighteenth century in different discourses (political, military, sociological, etc.), but it is sufficiently limited that its genealogy can be traced across centuries and nations with precision, coherence, clarity, and with the help of automated search engines. By contrast, related but bigger concepts like freedom, individualism or solidarity are part of dozens of disparate and fuzzy discourses, so often uttered that the analysis of modern uses is problematic. The histosophical methodology is applicable in six discrete stages, here outlined.