Suchergebnisse

This article discusses the infamous Bataillons d'Afrique to which French former criminals were sent to complete their duty of military service. The 'Bat d'Af' were created to prevent the young male bourgeoisie from having to mix with these 'undesirables' and 'reprobates', and they were stationed well away from the mainland in France's North African colonies. This article discusses themes such as discipline, punishment, torture, homosexuality, interracial power relations, and delinquent 'cultures' in this imperial context.

This special issue is given over to the work of Jean Baudrillard, who died on 6 March 2007. The issue brings together a number of articles which assess the legacy of Baudrillardian thought in both Francophone and Anglophone scholarship. Further articles discuss Baudrillard's contribution to a specific domain of intellectual enquiry: communication studies, anthropology, architecture, feminism. The issue is intended to provide a broad assessment of Baudrillard's work, and to mirror the breadth and diversity of the thinker's own interests.

Although a committed critic of colonial abuses and mismanagement, Andrée Viollis should not be viewed as an anticolonialist. The indigenous discontent she witnesses in India, Indochina and Tunisia does not impel her to denounce colonialism itself, but rather convinces her of the possibility of a reformed and humanitarian colonialism. This article studies Viollis's accounts of uprising in British India, the aftermath of revolt and repression in Indochina, and the emergence of Néo-destour in Tunisia. It examines comparisons she made between British and French colonial systems and colonial management, and investigates how the accession of the reformist Popular Front to government altered her perception of the value of French colonial rule. It traces the trajectory of the type of liberal, humanist colonial thought, prevalent in France before the Second World War, which Andrée Viollis embodied.

An analysis of the ways in which national or ethnic identities are transformed and a new common identity is forged amongst legionnaires intersects with key factors which have been perennially important to the discussion of transnational communities: the very creation of that sense of community, the importance of a shared history and heritage, the transmission of a cultural memory. Different versions of the legionnaire 'myth' in popular culture show how the image of the Legion readily adapts to culturally and historically specific milieux, thereby translating across national borders. Thus although it might be argued that the Legion disseminates a certain idea of Frenchness across borders, it also serves as a useful vehicle for other nations' own mythologies.