Showing papers in "Substance in 1995"

The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead

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Identity Crises: France, Culture and the Idea of the Nation

Abstract: L'A. affirme que la France semble affronter une crise d'identite liee a un sentiment de declin. Il s'efforce de comprendre les raisons de cette attitude. Il examine ensuite les differentes conceptions de la nation depuis E. Renan. Il s'interesse aux etudes litteraires aux Etats-Unis et plus particulierement a la place qu'y occupe l'etude du francais. Il montre que, dans les annees 1920, l'enseignement du francais jouissait, dans ce pays, d'un grand prestige mais que, dans la periode contemporaine, celui-ci tend a etre devalorise, juge elitiste

Vicious Circles: Immigration and National Identity in Twentieth-Century France

Abstract: IN AUGUST 1993, THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT'S Journal Officiel published the terms of newly-adopted legislation designed, according to Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, to stem the tide of would-be immigrants threatening to overwhelm France's political, cultural and social institutions. Impelled by ambitions to see the country achieve a state of policy nirvana he called "Zero Immigration,"' between May and August 1993, Pasqua ushered into existence a cluster of laws designed to curb the entry of foreigners at the borders and to assert greater control over the conditions of their legal residence in France.2 Described by Le Monde's Philippe Bernard as a "very severe toughening"3 of policies with respect to foreigners, the Pasqua legislation crowned a twenty-year effort by the French state to halt the influx of immigrants-particularly workers from North Africa and other former colonies whose labor had fueled the postwar industrial expansion that began to slow in the early 1970s. Pasqua's sweeping policy initiative, like its more piecemeal antecedents of the preceding decade,4 places French society at considerable odds with its venerable post-revolutionary tradition of welcoming foreigners in need. Born of a commitment to universalist principles of inalienable human rights, modern France's open-door policy of granting refuge to persecuted individuals and minorities-singularly generous by European standards-is being sorely tested in the postcolonial era, in which former imperial subjects and their progeny have fled the grinding poverty of economies left underdeveloped by a century or more of colonial exploitation.

North African women immigrants in France : integration and change

Abstract: L'A. porte son attention sur l'integration des femmes originaires d'Afrique du Nord en France. Il montre que celles-ci sont tantot considerees comme des agents potentiels d'integration ou comme des victimes du fondamentalisme islamique. Il souligne que les hommes d'origine maghrebine sont traditionnellement tres mal percus par la communaute francaise. Il montre, en revanche, que pour bon nombre d'analystes, les femmes, par le biais des mariages avec des francais de souche, constituent un facteur d'integration pour ces populations

Immigration, poster art, and transgressive citizenship : France 1968-1988

Abstract: L'A. montre que les affiches ont joue un role considerable dans la lutte contre le racisme en France et la mobilisation de l'opinion publique. Il retrace l'histoire des mouvements migratoires qui ont concerne la France au 19 e et au 20 e siecles. Il s'interesse aux mesures politiques prises en ce domaine. Il presente un certain nombre d'affiches et de slogans mis en avant lors de campagnes contre le racisme et s'efforce de comprendre, de percer a jour le discours culturel qui en emerge

Nihilism, Relativism, and Literary Theory

Abstract: NOW THAT THE TURBULENT EMERGENCE of the various poststructuralist kinds of theory has subsided into the past, we can assess these theories with some historical perspective. Few would be likely to dispute that "theory" has a been a major event in the history of criticism, but as with all such events, significance changes as meanings are rewritten over time. We can begin to ask now, just how important, and indeed what kind of an intellectual "event" has theory been? Of course, we need even more temporal distance than we now have to make a solid judgment, but we can perhaps turn to other twentieth-century histories for help. For instance, in looking back at the history of theory in the last few decades, we can readily find interesting similarities to the history of physics in the first half of the century, similarities that can help us understand what has happened in the humanities.

French Colonial Studies and Postocolonial Theory

Abstract: AS THE FRENCH, ALONG WITH OTHER NATIONAL SUBJECTS within the "new" Europe, find themselves interrogating the boundaries and limits of national identity in the light of rising anti-Semitism, ethnic cleansing, racial or ethnic claims to citizenry, and the socio-economic pressures of immigration, those concerned with the global politics of French culture have found themselves drawn to postcolonial theory as a source of useful, if often problematic, critical paradigms. The colonial legacies of Britain, Spain, Portugal and France, and, to a lesser degree, Germany and Holland, have been restudied and redebated in conferences, lectures, and research centers throughout North America. Often amalgamated with African-American, Afro-Caribbean, French-Asian, transnational and diaspora studies, postcolonialism has generated a lengthy and fast-growing bibliography, and, increasingly, humanities departments advertise positions calling for expertise in the field of postcolonial studies.

Alain Finkielkraut and the politics of cultural identity

Abstract: L'A. porte son attention sur l'œuvre d'A. Finkielkraut. Il s'interesse plus particulierement a son approche de la notion d'identite culturelle. Il montre que celle-ci vise a depasser l'opposition entre universalisme et particularisme et a se situer en dehors de toute vision hegemonique. Il souligne que Finkielkraut a elabore une vision de la politique sur le plan identitaire qui met en exergue la memoire. Il affirme que Finkielkraut denonce la trahison par les intellectuels des ideaux de la Revolution francaise

The Ephemeral Era: Gilles Lipovetsky

Abstract: brief reference to the immigration question within the general framework of the global "door-slamming" by rich nations on immigrants from poor neighboring countries, no special mention is made of France as a particularly troubling spot in the world. While there are references to important elections in Germany and Russia, nothing is said about the French upcoming April presidential elections, as if an election that will change the nature of a fourteen-year r6gime (and for which only a few seem eager to be candidates) were not important. There is an old French proverb, "Happy people do not have History." It's probably too rash to conclude from the absence of France in the Newsweek article -that that country has now reached the blissful status of a happy people that time has forgotten. However, if this were the case, there is no doubt that the philosopher of such a nation would be Gilles Lipovetsky. Contrary to the other French jeunes essayistes (such as Bernard-Henri Levy, Pascal Bruckner, Alain Finkielkraut, Luc Ferry, and others), Lipovetsky is a supporting chronicler of a post-1968 French society perceived as indulgent and narcissistic, living in a satisfying democracy organized as a free market and driven by the opiate of advertising and frivolous desires generated by fads. This stance places Lipovetsky at odds with the French intellectual tradition, which has always considered individualism as a social poison. Although French intellectuals have valorized a "right" social disobedience to oppose a perceived mistake by the majority, individualism for the sake of personal gratification has always been rejected as not socially conscious. The whole social fabric of France, in a sense, has been shaped since the French Revolution so as to counteract the idle, narcissistic characteristics of its former aristocracy. "Fraternity" has been elevated to the status of key-word in the new egalitarian order of the Republic, and it is assumed that the genius of our great figures is due largely to their caring for the community, and not indulging in a selfish pursuit of individual happiness. Even Tocqueville, a

Austin and Antin about "About"

Abstract: THIS IS AN ATTEMPT TO READ, in two cases, the meaning of resistance to metalanguage. The notion of metalanguage has long played an allegorical role in the morality play of linguistic debate.' To put it melodramatically, metalanguage appears as a superego or an arm of a police state of consciousness; as Jonathan Culler observes, it makes its users "feel securely outside and in control" (199). It follows that instances of resistance to metalanguage register protests against self-deluded sovereignity. Culler continues:

I Love You, Moi Non Plus

Abstract: of the clearest examples of how well a love/hate relationship can work, even in the sphere of international relations. Since World War II, both the attraction and the rejection of each other have reached new heights. Many sectors of French life have become "Americanized"-a fact both applauded and violently decried; as for the United States, in no danger at all of a Gallic invasion, the issues have been political on the one hand (when France refuses to follow American leadership, it is regularly berated as a difficult and ungrateful ally), and cultural on the other, with a strong French intellectual presence on American campuses serving as a convenient lightning rod for ideological debates. Still, the official discourse is that the two countries are the best of allies, that they have repeatedly come to each other's defense, and even rescue, and that they are the only two major powers that have never waged war against one another. All of this is true. Franco-American friendship is a fact of life. But the real truth is that the relationship between France and the United States, especially in the past half century, is more that of a love affair than that of a friendship, with its passions, jealousies, idyllic moments, suspicions, break-ups, reconciliations, heartbreaks, the perpetual accusations that "you don't love me as much as I love you." It is a beautiful love story since it has resisted the erosion of time, but like many love stories, it can be stressful for the two partners, who complain that they are not loved well enough. And it is often fatiguing for the friends of the couple who are caught in the crossfire. Americans and the French are forever questioning their partnership, and books, articles, colloquia, and polls permanently take the temperature of the relationship. That alone is proof of the exceptional nature of that relationship. Two important, related colloquia held in 1991 were typical of this endeavor: "Americans Look at France," held in New York, and "L'Amerique des Franqais," held in Paris.' This is more natural for France, since the United States is clearly the foreign country that is most important for France in the post-war world. Oddly enough, despite the fact that

In Praise of the Impure

Abstract: I AM A SCIENTIST BY PROFESSION. Nature, as I observe it-the whirl of phenomena to be understood, interpreted and transferred-is the world of chemical transformations. This has made me familiar with model-building for data analysis. I would like to focus here on levels of representation.1 It is a trite observation indeed that one can formulate quite a few representations for any given phenomenon. Furthermore, and as a rule, these schema (often iconic) are ordered. A first question is that of the origin and validity of such hierarchies. A second question is whether building such ordered sets of representations is a general feature of the mind, whatever the field of study, when what we try to understand can belong either to an artistic or a scientific sphere. A third issue thus is the possible existence of some invariable and universal ability in the mind that devises such classifications among representations. At this point, the devil's advocate raises a major objection: the various disciplines lack intercommunication. We live in a time when it is easy to ignore the strength of such a critique, infected as we are by the ambient relativism, and beset as we are by mediocre interpretations of every kind. And yet there is much evidence to support such a critique: one could infer from the difference between the founding apories of chemistry and of physics, or of biology and biochemistry, or of astronomy and cosmology, that scientists in the various fields of knowledge do not share a single, unifying vision. Their various world views, according to the critique, are mutually incompatible. This is a way of putting an abrupt stop to the discussion.

Blanchot and Freud: The Step/Not Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Abstract: But dying, no more than it cannot finish or accomplish itself, even in death, does not let itself be situated or affirmed in a relation of life, even as a declining relation, a declining of life ... And life knows nothing of dying, says nothing about it, without, however, confining itself to silence; there is, suddenly and always, a murmur among words, the rumor of absence that passes in and to the outside of discourse ...

"Great Projects" or Mediocre Designs?

Abstract: FOR THE LAST 15 OR 20 YEARS, but especially in the last ten, public agencies have been practicing an active architectural politics.' This has enriched the Parisian landscape with "les grands projets du President," since this is the designation given to l'Opera de la Bastille, la Pyramide and the extension of the Louvre, the park and la Cit6 de la Musique at La Villete, l'Arche de la Defense, I'Institut du Monde Arabe, and le Ministbre des Finances at Bercy, which will be joined by the future Bibliothbque de France and le Centre International de Conf6rences at Quai Branly.2 Admittedly, some cities in the provinces have also received, or should receive, new monuments-a few Zeniths here, a museum there-but these remain marginal in comparison to the investments concentrated in the capital. In this architectural politics, diverse motivations seem to converge and to reinforce each other: pursuit of prestige for the country, which is not without its effects on the tourist industry; aspiration on the part of state power for the gratitude (reconnaissance, in both senses of the word) of its subjects, by presenting itself to them as an enlightened patron of the arts; and, finally--since it is necessary to include a "zest" of social consideration-a desire to be perceived as the artisan of "urban civilization" (in the words of the President de la Republique). The latter is a vague term, but much in use right now by public agencies (notably by the Ministre de la Ville); in it are mixed connotations that are as much socio-spatial (urbanity, integration, the right to the city) as political and cultural (citizenship, the right to culture). How should we look at these "grands projets du President"? How can we analyze them, not only in their form and style, but also in their functional ambitions and their meaning? To answer these questions, it is no doubt necessary to develop a double analysis: a first one focusing on the particular style of these edifices--on the tools of contemporary architectural creation as applied to large public buildings; and a second analysis of the meaning and pertinence of monumental architecture, and of the social and political finality of undertaking such grands projets in a technological and democratic society.

Letting Words Have Their Say: Ponge, Alechinsky and the Appropriation of the Written

Abstract: The action of painting leads the painter to an awareness of the material nature of his craft, much more so than the writer who is never sufficiently conscious of the material act of writing, of the tracing of words. This notion was significantly amplified by Christian Dotremont, who derived his logograms from it. Marcel Havrenne spoke of a poetry "in which the script itself has its word to say." Both of them referred to the impact of the physical act of writing on the imagination. Implicit in this attitude is a mistrust of any idea that is too precise at the outset: it can blind one to new ideas that might otherwise appear while work is in progress... (Margin 18).

The Maastricht Treaty and France's "Great Design"

Abstract: THE FRENCH REFERENDUM OF SEPTEMBER 20, 1992, concerning the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, spectacularly imposed the idea of Europe, a concept long judged distant and too abstract by the majority of French people. This was a hazardous if not imprudent gamble, since nothing required the consultative referendum that a parliamentary vote could have easily replaced (at least in France). The referendum yielded the wellknown result: "partial victory" for Treaty supporters, "victorious defeat" for its detractors. Nonetheless, if the French debate--so passionately evoking the full force of the Dreyfus Affair or the Algerian War-seriously sidetracks the construction of Europe, France still remains a country transformed by more than a decade of "socialism" and almost as long a period of a strict monetary policy. But there is the old and the new in this. The old, regarding Maastricht, is the return of the revolutionary phraseology and the affirmation of the Republic, possibly marking the end of the "end of the French exception," as Franqois Furet has phrased it. What is also old, is the anti-European holy alliance of the extreme right and the extreme left, united for the first time since the 1930s in their mutual loathing for parliamentary institutions. The new--which is not new in itself, but must be stated or restated-is that after the referendum, there are two Frances: a France of the rich and elevated cultural capital (pro-Maastricht), and a France of fear, poverty and ignorance (anti-Maastricht). Indeed, that the class struggle is a reality (which official France denied in the eighties) and that the public votes in protest amounts to a rude awakening after the bliss of the 1980s. If the average person has finally been invited to take an interest in the European question, and has finally been consulted on what concerns him or her, reflection on the question still clearly began before September 20, 1992.

Of Words and the World: Referential Anxiety in Contemporary French Fiction

Abstract: Here David Ellison explores the problems encountered by France's best experimental authors writing between 1956 and 1984, when faced with the question: \"What should my writing be \"about\"?\" These years are characterized by the rise of the \"new novelists,\" who questioned the representational function of writing as they created works of imagination that turned in upon themselves and away from exterior reality. It became fashionable at one point to affirm that literature was no longer about the world but uniquely about the words on a page, the signifying surface of the text. Ellison tests this assumption, showing that even in the most seemingly self-referential fictions the words point to the world from which they can never completely separate themselves.Through close readings Ellison examines the novels and theoretical writings of authors whose works are fundamental to our perception of contemporary French writing and thought: Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Duras, Sarraute, Blanchot, and Beckett. The result is a new understanding of the link between the referential function of literary language and the problematic of the ethics of fiction.