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This volume of twelve essays focuses on two interrelated issues. First, it addresses the historical and cultural determinants that have given rise to what frequently has been described as "the French exception," the unusually conflictual French political process inherited from the revolutionary past in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its accompanying avant-gardism in artistic, literary, and philosophical practice, both of which distinguish France from other European countries.
Second, the contributors assess the exhaustion of this tradition in recent years-noted prominently on the occasion of the celebration of the bicentennial of the Revolution in 1989-in a progressive "normalization" of French society that has been the final outcome of the liquidation of the colonial empire, the collapse of Marxism as a social force, and the integration of France into the European Union.
The contributors are Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Marc Augé, Barbara Cassin, Françoise Gaillard, Maurice Godelier, Jean-Joseph Goux, Françoise Lionnet, Jean-François Lyotard, Mark Poster, Pierre Saint-Amand, Susan Suleiman, and Philip R. Wood.
Table des matières
Introduction Jean-Joseph Goux and Philip R. Wood; 1. Parameters of an ongoing crisis Barbara Cassin; 2. Terror on the run Jean-Fancois Lyotard; 3. Subversion and consensus: proletarians, women, artists Jean-Joseph Goux; 4. Situations of current French thought: the end of 'The French Exception' Marc Auge; 5. The terror of consensus Francoise Gaillard; 6. Democracy and totalitarianism in contemporary French thought: neoliberalism, the Heidegger scandal and ethics in post-structuralism Philip R. Wood; 7. Postmodernity and the politics of multiculturalism: the Lyotard-Habermas debate over social theory Mark Poster; 8. Performative universalism and cultural diversity: French thought and American contexts Francoise Lionnet; 9. Mission and limits of the Enlightenment Jean-Marie Apostolides; 10. The intellectual sublime: Zola as archetype of a cultural myth Susan Rubin Suleiman; 11. Is the West the universal model for humanity? The Baruya of New Guinea between change and decay Maurice Godelier; Reference matter; Notes; Index.
Résumé
This volume of twelve essays focuses on two interrelated issues: first, it addresses the historical and cultural determinants that have given rise to what frequently has been described as the French exception; second, the contributors assess the exhaustion of this tradition in recent years.
Texte suppl.
“It is the singular virtue of this superb collection that it refuses to dismiss the terms ‘terror’ and ‘consensus’ as simple rhetorical posturing, using them instead to dig deep into the debates that structure the current Franco-American critical scene.”—Peter Starr, University of Southern California
