Afro-Germans, multidirectional memory and French colonial aphasia: The legacy of the First World War in Galadio by Didier Daeninckx

This article offers an analysis of mnemonic traces in Galadio, Didier Daeninckx’s 2010 novel. I demonstrate that by fictionalizing the history of the persecution of Afro-Germans under National Socialism, the novel exposes antiblackness as a neglected phenomenon of the Third Reich. Synchronously, applying Michael Rothberg’s theoretical framework, the article discusses the dialogue between Jewish and Afro-German legacies of violence in the novel, as well as the intricate relation between colony, camp and what Paul Gilroy defines as camp mentality. Furthermore, I argue that Daeninckx engages with French colonial aphasia: in my interpretation, his oblique approach to the French imperial past conveys its simultaneous presence and absence, which is key to disabled memory. Finally, I focus on the ethics of commemoration in Galadio, which claims space for black soldiers in French collective memory of the two world wars, yet at the same time challenges imperial loyalties and homogeneous approaches to French national identity.

The Great Prehistoric Art Swindle: André Breton and Palaeolithic Cave Painting

At Pech Merle in 1952, André Breton provoked a controversial incident by damaging a Palaeolithic wall painting that he suspected to be a fake. This episode provides an insight into the contested status of prehistoric sites in post-war France and the theoretical and ideological implications of their cultural mobilization. Such sites allowed for a disavowal of wartime trauma and supported the reaffirmation of French national identity and its civilizing mission by locating the birthplace of human culture on French soil. Yet their extreme age also threw into relief the relative fragility of the recently invented nation-state. Breton's vandalism cast doubt on the models of cultural progress and pre-eminence that sought to instrumentalize prehistoric art but failed to appreciate the subversiveness of its ‘deep’ history. Ironically, however, Breton's scepticism ultimately enhanced the subversive dimension of archaeology by allowing it to demonstrate the authenticity and age of cave art.

The “Latin” Melting Pot

This article explores how, through discussions about immigrant assimilation in fin de siècle Algeria, French republicans contemplated and wrote into law the ethnic traits of French national identity. Republicans assumed that the North Mediterranean immigrants who settled in Algeria shared ethnic origins with French settlers and consequently asserted that France should work to “fuse” the two groups. Assertions about immigrants' ethnicity took different forms. In the colony they appeared either at the margins of colonial administrators' attacks against immigrant communal organization or in literary representations of French-Mediterranean fusion. In the metropole republican legislators portrayed immigrants as innately prone to becoming French and thus supported the 1889 nationality law that naturalized them. The passing of the 1889 law prompted the creation of an explicitly ethnorepublican assimilatory model. The model's proponents combined sociological and eugenicist principles to both socialize immigrants into the nation and promote the transfer of their Mediterranean “vigor” into French bodies. Cet article examine les efforts des intellectuels et des dirigeants républicains pour assimiler les immigrés européens en Algérie à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle. Il affirme que les identités communautaires et la prépondérance démographique des immigrés ont poussé l'élite républicaine à envisager leur capacité ethnique à s'assimiler à la société française, et montre que l'idée que les Français et les immigrés avaient la même origine ethnique a façonné les débats sur l'assimilation nationale et a influencé la formation des lois républicaines fondamentales. En Algérie, des affirmations à propos de l'identité ethnique des immigrés européens apparaissaient en marge des discussions politiques sur leur organisation communautaire et dans les romans des écrivains algérianistes. En métropole, des législateurs républicains supposaient que la « ressemblance ethnique » entre Français et immigrés assurait l'assimilation rapide de ces derniers et ils ont soutenu la loi de 1889 sur la nationalité qui les a naturalisés. A l'issue de la législation de 1889, une vision de fusionnement des colons français et des membres de la « race méditerranéenne » en Algérie s'est développée. Ses partisans ont combiné des principes sociologiques avec des principes eugéniques dans le but d'incorporer les immigrés européens dans la nation et de faire transporter leur « vigueur » dans les corps des Français.

MIMESIS AND HUMAN GEOGRAPHY IN PAUL VIDAL DE LA BLACHE’S METHOD

Based on the concept of mimesis elaborated by the Brazilian literature theorist Luiz Costa Lima Brazilian scholar, this article aims to analyse the Vidalian human geography. Its particular use of description and its capacity of metamorphosing environmental elements into geographical categories able to revealing the French national identity under the long-run time show how complex and relevant its method is.

Introduction

The Introduction opens with evidence of the extent to which questions of employment, precarious and flexible labour have come to dominate the French political, cultural, and intellectual agenda since, broadly, the beginning of the new century. It then argues that this is itself evidence of the extent to which the shift to post-Fordist forms of accumulation is posing a fundamental challenge to established notions of French national identity and republican citizenship as these were institutionalised in the postwar compromise. A summary of the book’s content follows which clarifies how it seeks to probe more deeply into the precise nature of these phenomena and the diverse ways in which French filmmakers and authors have sought to represent them.

Investigating Representation Ethos Émotif in 2007 French Presidential Election

The issue of immigration became prominent in French political discourse in 2005 that leads to debate about France and nationalism. During the lead-up to the 2007 French Presidential election, various concepts of a French national identity were promoted by candidates: Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolene Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Candidates gave particular attention to ethos, specifically ethos émotif. In this article, the researcher will characterize the ethos émotif presented by the four candidates mentioned above. The ethos will be then examined whether it were successfully embodied in these candidates' speeches by investigating the public reaction they received based on articles published in the French media. This research will apply a critical discourse analysis and interactional sociolinguistics approach using elements of interaction formulated by Stébe (2008) and Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1990). Data will be classified using the software LEXICO 3.

Paschal Grousset et les éducations physiques françaises et étrangères dans le contexte géopolitique européen et impérialiste (1880–1914)

Between 1880 and 1914, the initiatives of French actors in Physical Education and sport increased in France in order to recover geopolitical stability. Paschal Grousset was one of the most active French people to register his proposals in a national and an international debate. Being inspired by foreign systems of Physical Education, in France he aimed to protect physical exercise and participation in Physical Education as a celebration of French national identity. This placed him in opposition to his contemporaries, some of whom promoted Scandinavian, English or Germanic exemplars. He rejected British proposals and criticized openly the German model of Physical Education, Paschal Grousset highlights through his speeches and his practices the obstinacy of a man aware of the weight of international rivalries in the reconstruction of France at the end of the 19th century. Considered today as the inventor of the “republican sport”, he imposed on French territory the educational model of the “hereditary rival” through the demonstration of the role played by physical exercise in the British economic and colonial expansion. At the same time, and without giving up gymnastics, he denounced the model of the “hereditary enemy” by caricaturing German Physical Education and the German education system. However, in both cases, Grousset’s intention was always to retain from foreign exempla only what was in compliance with the values of the French Republic, both in the facts and in the principles.