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This book offers a selection of the papers presented at the 2008 annual conference of the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF), with chapters focusing on regional formation, European policy, the cultural landscape of Paris, the place of Maghrebi artists in popular music, the evolution of cultural policy regarding 'popular' culture, and filmic and novelised representations of desire, ethnicity and nationality.
Guided by postcolonial critique, this book takes as its starting point the recognition of multiple identities in modern and contemporary France, despite (and against) the traditional republican emphasis on national unification and the relegation of notions of ethnicity, sexuality and cultural difference to the so-called private sphere. While many publications have engaged with this topic, few juxtapose social and political issues with cultural approaches. This edited volume, by contrast, incorporates the work of specialists drawn from a broad range of academic disciplinary areas, including history, politics, literature and cultural studies, and shows how perceptions of the self and of the other as French have changed over the years, with an emphasis on the contemporary period (post-1945).
List of contents
Contents: Barbara Lebrun/Jill Lovecy: Introduction: Plural Identities in Modern and Contemporary France - Sami Naïr: Preface: Reflections on the Republic and Ethnicity - Mark Sawchuk: After the Plebiscite: Cafés and Conflict in Nice and Savoy during the 1860s - Louisa Zanoun: From the Second Reich to the Third Republic: Identities and Politics in the Moselle département, 1918-1936 - Jean-Christophe Penet: Laïque et indivisible ? Secularisation and the Crisis of Republican Identity in Contemporary France - Maura Stewart: Lettre à tous les Français : 'European Vision' in the 1988 French Presidential Election - Philippe Marlière: A Soured Relationship: The French Socialists and European Integration - Keith Reader: Cultural Topography: A New Growth Area? - David Looseley: Making History: French Popular Music and the Notion of the Popular - Ellie Sutcliffe: 'Un peu d'ici, un peu de là-bas ; ça me revient' : Identity Struggle in the Music of Faudel - Franck Le Gac: Citation Citizenship and the French Fiction Film - Penny Brown: 'Is this my war?' Identity Crises in French Children's Literature after World War Two - Helena Chadderton: Identity Negotiation in Marie Darrieussecq's Le Bébé and Le Pays - Renate Günther: Etrangers à nous-mêmes' : Identity as Alterity in the Work of Marguerite Duras - Owen Heathcote: Queering French Gay Identities? Eric Jourdan's Aux Gémonies (2007).
About the author
Barbara Lebrun is Lecturer in Contemporary French Culture and Politics in the Department of French Studies at the University of Manchester. Her work focuses on the place of ethnicity, performance and contestation in French popular music. She is the author of
Protest Music in France. Production, Identity and Audiences (2009).
Jill Lovecy is Lecturer in Government in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. She has published on issues of gender representation in French and European politics.
