French Politics, Culture & Society

In recent years, surveys have consistently shown relatively high levels of racism and xenophobia in France. In particular, a 1999 Harris poll conducted for the Commission nationale consultative des droits de l’homme revealed that 68 percent of the respondents in a national sample declared themselves somewhat racist; 61 percent believed that there are too many foreigners in France; 63 percent believed that there are too many Arabs (up 12 percent compared with 1998); and 38 percent believed that there are too many blacks (up 8 percent compared with 1998).1 Against the backdrop of a long, difficult, and partly repressed colonial past, a full 28 percent of French voters have, since 1983, voted at least once for the openly racist and anti-Semitic Front National.2 These results clash with the popular image of a Republican France, where the dominant political ideology affirms that the ascribed characteristics of citizens are irrelevant to their participation in the polity.

The nature of the French economy has changed radically in recent years. Breaking with its mercantilist and dirigiste past, France has since the early 1980s converted to market liberalization, both as the necessary by-product of European integration and globalization and as a deliberate effort by policymakers. Whereas the French state used to own large sectors of the economy, partly to keep them from foreign control, now even a Socialist-led government proceeds with privatization, with scant regard for the nationality of the buyer.

Les deux dernières décennies de la chronique politique française ont été caractérisées, entre autres, par l’éclosion incessante d’« affaires » mettant en cause la probité des dirigeants. Les « scandales » à répétition qui émaillent désormais le débat public en ont profondément affecté la nature. Cet article ne prétend pas proposer une interprétation d’ensemble du phénomène. Il se contente, sur la base des observations de l’auteur, d’avancer quelques pistes de compréhension de cette « corruption » à la française. Nous nous limiterons ici à la sphère proprement politique, même si les « affaires » de ce genre n’épargnent évidemment pas les domaines administratif et économique.

Unlike Anglo-Saxon countries, France, along with other Mediterranean democracies (Italy, Spain)1 has waited until the end of the twentieth century to publicly identify the various forms “public misconduct” can take2 and to begin to address them politically. Two convictions mark a breach in the national tradition of impunity for public corruption: that of the treasurer of the Socialist Party, deputy and former minister Henri Emmanuelli, in March 1996 for concealment of trading on his influence (earning him an18-month suspended jail sentence and, more notably, two years of attainder and political ineligibility); and that of the mayor of Grenoble, RPR deputy and minister Alain Carignon, in July 1996 for corruption (earning him four years imprisonment).

"Pour le cas où il m’arriverait quelque chose,” Jean-Claude Méry explained in his sudden confession that day in May 1996. The fallen fundraiser, ailing and embittered, was consigning to videotape rich recollections, professional secrets so generally embarrassing that their revelation could only assure his own peace of mind. Or was he plotting posthumous revenge on the Hôtel de Ville occupants who had disowned him? For last fall, there they emerged on the television screen, their most questionable sources of revenue divulged in the mummified spite of a dead financier.

Disons-le d’emblée : l’ouvrage de Gisèle Sapiro est impressionnant. Issu d’une thèse de sociologie dirigée par Pierre Bourdieu1, il s’imposera comme une référence. Il intègre un ensemble de travaux qui se sont penchés depuis une vingtaine d’années sur les lettres françaises pendant la guerre2 et inclut de nombreuses archives inédites. Il représente un des accomplissements récents les plus aboutis en matière de sociologie historique des intellectuels.

Henry Rousso’s The Vichy Syndrome (1987) has changed the way many people think and write about France since 1940. Yet it is likely that the term “syndrome” (from the Greek sundromos or “running together”) in his title remains a provocation because it invokes a pattern of behavior linked to disease and abnormality By extension, it conveyed an implied accusation—perhaps even an indictment—concerning an inability on the part of France as nation and society to confront the nature of the 1940-1944 period. Among historians, debate on the data or evidence that the concept of syndrome might legitimize or even privilege with regard to the writing of history added to questions about what had prompted Rousso to level this critique against colleagues in the discipline.

Comprendre les conduites politiques des écrivains français pendant l’occupation allemande à la lumière des logiques propres au monde des lettres, tel était l’objet de ma recherche. Ce questionnement s’inscrivait à la fois contre la logique du jugement et du procès qui l’a longtemps emporté sur l’analyse distanciée, comme le rappelle Steven Ungar, et contre une histoire politique des intellectuels qui tendait à négliger les facteurs non politiques de leur engagement, en particulier ceux qui relèvent plus spécifiquement de leur activité professionnelle. Ces deux tendances illustrent les effets induits par la surpolitisation de ces années de guerre sur la perception rétrospective qu’on en a.

Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

Laurent Dubois, Les Esclaves de la République. L’histoire oubliée de la première émancipation, 1789-1794, transl. by Jean-François Chaix (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2000).

Eric Amyot, Le Québec entre Pétain et de Gaulle: Vichy, la France libre et les Canadiens français 1940-1945 (Montréal: Éditions Fides, 1999).

Megan Koreman, The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-1946 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

Lynne Taylor, Between Resistance and Collaboration: Popular Protest in Northern France, 1940-45 (New York: St. Martin’s Press [London: MacMillan], 2000).

Rosalind Williams Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London by Sharon Marcus

Robert Aldrich Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Métissage by Françoise Vergès

Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960 by Owen White

Michael Miller The Construction of Memory in Interwar France by Daniel J. Sherman

Christian Delacampagne Émigré New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-1944 by Jeffrey Mehlman

Robert L. Frost Retour sur la condition ouvrière: enquête aux usines Peugeot de Sochaux-Montbéliard by Stéphane Beaud and Michel Pialoux

Christopher K. Ansell Comprendre les évolutions électorales: la théorie des réalignements revisitée by Pierre Martin

Michel Devigne and David Mulhmann Paris, ville invisible by Bruno Latour and Émilie Hermant

Notes on contributors

Articles Review Essays Book Reviews Index of Books Reviewed Film Review