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French Discourses on Exorbitant Jewish Memory

Carolyn J. Dean

in Aversion and Erasure: The Fate of the Victim After the Holocaust

This chapter discusses the general effort of French intellectuals after the 1980s to define victims and the experience of victimization in a new cultural context. Among many scholars and critics in ... More

This chapter discusses the general effort of French intellectuals after the 1980s to define victims and the experience of victimization in a new cultural context. Among many scholars and critics in France, Jews, the particularity of whose sufferings under the Vichy regime and in the Holocaust were only belatedly recognized, have been increasingly associated with victims and a hyperbolic rhetoric of victimization. The sustained attention paid in the last two decades both to Vichy's crimes against Jews and to the Holocaust itself in speeches, commemorative rituals, trials, and television shows led not only to an association of Jewish identity with collective injury, but also, to a French backlash against too much Jewish memory. French journalist and writer Nicolas Weill uses the term “Holocaust Fatigue” to describe the same phenomenon, and views it as the “probable cause” of public apathy when anti-Semitism allegedly resurged in France between 2000 and 2002.Less

Tocqueville’s Relation to Jansenism

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This chapter considers the supposed Jansenist leanings of Tocqueville. For generations, scholars have been arguing that Tocqueville had deep sympathy for Pascal and perhaps for Jansenism. However, it ... More

This chapter considers the supposed Jansenist leanings of Tocqueville. For generations, scholars have been arguing that Tocqueville had deep sympathy for Pascal and perhaps for Jansenism. However, it remains to be seen what effects meditation on Pascal had on Tocqueville's writing. Furthermore, we cannot speak of “Jansenism” without examining what the public image of Jansenism (one of the most controversial schools of thought in French intellectual history) was in the 1830s and 1840s. And finally, we will need to say something about Tocqueville's stance with respect to that image. The chapter argues that Tocqueville was neither devout nor militant. He had no intention of publicly advocating a religious dogma, although he was in favor of publicly censuring materialism. For those who would like to enlist Tocqueville in the cause of religious revival, a letter to Kergorlay will set things straight. In it he explains that, from the standpoint of civic virtue, a book like L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ is useless and even dangerous.Less

Intellectuals and the Republic

Jerrold Seigel

in The French Republic: History, Values, Debates

This chapter assesses the role of the intellectuals in France's political arena, most notably in the matter of the Dreyfus Affair. In its most general sense, the term “intellectual” might refer to ... More

This chapter assesses the role of the intellectuals in France's political arena, most notably in the matter of the Dreyfus Affair. In its most general sense, the term “intellectual” might refer to any person who dwells in the world of thought. During the 1890s, however, the word took on a particular meaning in France, referring to those thinkers, writers, artists, and teachers who come forward to play a role in public debate. The crystallization of this meaning took place in connection with the fierce conflicts that divided the country over the conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for treason, and it led to a new prominence for those it designated. The chapter shows how this and several other distinguishing features of French life had made France into a place where intellectuals earliest and most prominently assumed this role in the nation's public sphere.Less

“Catholicisme ondoyant”:: Catholic Intellectual Engagement and the Crisis of Civilization in the 1930s

Michael Kelly

in God's Mirror: Renewal and Engagement in French Catholic Intellectual Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Kelly’s chapter provides an account of the development of a new humanist concept of engagement forged by French Catholic intellectuals in the crucible of debates and experiments of the 1930s. For an ... More

Kelly’s chapter provides an account of the development of a new humanist concept of engagement forged by French Catholic intellectuals in the crucible of debates and experiments of the 1930s. For an innovatory group of French Catholic intellectuals, the decade before the Second World War appeared as a crisis of civilization, the events of which shaped their search for a new relationship with ‘la Cité’ and attempts to found their socio-political involvement in new forms of citizenship. Often perceived as inconstant and ambiguous in their affiliations by contemporary politicians, these Catholic intellectuals were seeking to articulate underlying norms and values in secular terms. Kelly explores the development of a humanist concept of engagement through the work of Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, and Emmanuel Mounier, and shows how their efforts in the 1930s brought into being a broader, inclusive and flexible means of engagement that is arguably still as fresh and effective today.Less

Introduction

John E. Joseph

in The Henri Meschonnic Reader: A Poetics of Society

This chapter presents Meschonnic’s intellectual pathway, situating his theory in its time and French environment. It explains the relationship between linguistics and literary studies and Meschonnics ... More

This chapter presents Meschonnic’s intellectual pathway, situating his theory in its time and French environment. It explains the relationship between linguistics and literary studies and Meschonnics stance in the French debates starting in the 1960s, also pointing at Meschonnic being a distinguished poet himself. Meschonnic saw the flaws of linguistic structuralism and expanded the field. The second part of the introduction offers insights into Meschonnic’s biography and the development of his theory and career pathway, illuminating some of the grand original themes running through Meschonnic’s work and the originality of his thinking.Less

Introduction

in Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History

This book highlights mysticism of twentieth-century fascination with its emotional, bodily, and excessive forms, as well as how mysticism plays a crucial role in the work of other secular ... More

This book highlights mysticism of twentieth-century fascination with its emotional, bodily, and excessive forms, as well as how mysticism plays a crucial role in the work of other secular twentieth-century French intellectuals. It focuses on a feminized and embodied figure of the medieval and early modern mystic, and the work it performs, both epistemologically and affectively, for these secular, twentieth-century intellectuals. The meaning of the woman mystic's experience, especially her bodily experience, has been discussed with regard to competing interpretations and claims to authority. The difference between feminine and masculine types of mysticism is rendered more problematic by the fact that the most visionary and ecstatic mystics usually include within their texts the call for a move through the visionary to another kind of more ineffable experience of union with the divine. Thus, feminism needs to find a place for the rituals that help human beings sustain loss and support subjectivity.Less

Expanding His Readership: Benamozegh’s Turn to French

Clémence Boulouque

in Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism

Chapter 4 examines Benamozegh’s turn to a French audience and the affinities of his themes with the main French thinkers of this era, such as Renan, Leroux, or Michelet. The right tone for persuading ... More

Chapter 4 examines Benamozegh’s turn to a French audience and the affinities of his themes with the main French thinkers of this era, such as Renan, Leroux, or Michelet. The right tone for persuading his readers and the question of the audience he targeted turned out to be stumbling blocks as he tried to refashion himself as an intellectual but, sometimes bombastically, strove to convince secular readers of the need to reassess the significance of religion in order to confront the challenges of modernity. After penning a scathing Jewish and Christian Ethics, his apology for the universal values of Judaism culminated in his posthumous crowning achievement, Israel and Humanity.Less