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This chapter describes Johnson’s experience of translating A Voyage to Abyssinia during a period of mental illness, which resulted in his discursive possession. The chapter analyzes how the multiple conflicting sources of the textwould have contributed to such.

This chapter examines the arguments about whether social citizenship can be based on an individual rational actor logic or requires a framework of normative principles, embedded in the institutions of social provision and in policy-making. The arguments of Titmuss, Le Grand, and others about blood donorship, social care, and other areas where altruistic and humane rather than self-regarding values appear to be central are considered. Individual rational actor approaches can explain how reciprocity and a limited social inclusion may be sustained, as Chapter 4 showed. Analysis of social psychological, sociological, and economic evidence shows that a full understanding of trust rests on both the alignment of interest that a rational actor logic can explain and also the recognition of values of commitment and care in the trusted person. These are contradicted when action is driven by externally imposed incentives. The trust deficit is a central issue in rational actor reform of social provision.

The title of Pierre-Sylvain Régis’ multi-volume work, Cours entier de philosophie; ou, Systeme general selon les principes de M. Descartes, contenant la logique, la metaphysique, la physique, et la morale, tells us of its ambitions. The work is intended to be systematic and complete, that is, to satisfy all four parts of the curriculum: logic, metaphysics, physics, and morals (in that order). It also purports to be based on Descartes’ principles. This chapter discusses Régis’ work, and similar such works (those of Jacques Du Roure and Antoine Le Grand, in particular), on various topics from the parts of the curriculum, in relation to Descartes’ views and in contrast with those of the late Scholastics. It proceeds in parallel with the previous chapter on Descartes, with sections on Cartesian logic, metaphysics and natural theology, physics, and ethics—in that order.

This chapter studies how, amongst the significant trends emerging in French cinema in recent years, there has been a concerted desire by some film-makers to produce more transnational films inspired by the globalisation of culture and the representation of intercultural issues. Le Grand voyage (Ismaël Ferroukhi, 2004) illustrates this trend and presents a specific manifestation of what it means to grow up in a multicultural context in French society today, namely the experience of second-generation young adolescents born and/or brought up in France whose parents came from North African countries. The film combines an unusual production history with surprising critical and public success, an aspect which facilitated its international distribution. What makes Le Grand voyage original is the way in which it veers away from the usual themes associated with 'beur cinema' in France from the 1980s as well as from the social problems identified in the films of the 1990s set in the 'banlieue' (suburbs), to focus instead on the notion of a journey of Self-discovery. The chapter then investigates a number of intercultural 'journeys' that the film engages with, those which inform the multicultural representation of contemporary France.

Although Islam is now France's second religion, in many ways Islam has functioned as something of a structuring absence in French cinema. This chapter considers how three recent films by Maghrebi-French directors – Le Grand voyage, London River and Dernier maquis attempt to reverse this trend, focussing on issues such as Islam in the workplace, the Muslim umma as transnational community, representations of terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. As such, the chapter argues that these films open up a consideration of both ‘French’ Islam, the place of Islam in Europe and the extent to which identification with Islam for France's Maghrebi immigrant population and their French born descendants suggests a point of identity that moves beyond the diasporic axis of host/homeland

At the time of his deportation to Buchenwald, Semprun was a member of the Communist Resistance. His political beliefs appear to have sustained him through the experience, scarred but not traumatized. The experience only becomes traumatic, in the sense of radically destabilizing his identity and beliefs, when his Communist convictions are tested and finally broken in the early 1960s. His subsequent literary writing revolves around the trauma of war and its continuing disruptive effect.

Invoking Bakhtin’s influential concept of the chronotope and its productive appropriation in Paul Gilroy’s discussion of the Black Atlantic and in Hamid Naficy’s work on accented cinema, this chapter focuses on families in motion. Its overriding concern is how transnational mobility affects the structure of the family and its identity. Many films chart journeys of outbound and homebound migration, whereby home does not necessarily signify the place of origin buy may designate a spiritual home, such as Mecca is home for the global Muslim community. Home-seeking journeys often lead to disillusionment or death, thereby challenging the myth of a glorious homecoming, regarded by many scholars as fundamental to the diaspora experience. The chapter’s second line of enquiry probes the films’ generic and stylistic strategies and asks how Journey of Hope (Reise der Hoffnung), The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite), Almanya - Welcome to Germany (Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland) and The Grand Tour (Le Grand Voyage) inflect and modify the conventions of the road movie.

The starting point for this chapter is a work by the German artist Joseph Beuys. ‘7000 oaks’ is an installation which he inaugurated at Kassel, a city that had been damaged during the Second World War (Scholz 1986). Each tree was paired with a basalt stele which was quarried locally. In Beuys’s conception, the installation would change its character over time. For the first few years the standing stones would be the dominant feature, but they would become less conspicuous as the oaks grew to maturity. After that, there might be two very different outcomes. Either new trees would be planted as the old ones died— that was the artist’s plan—or a setting of monoliths would be all that remained with the stones themselves marking the positions of oaks that had disappeared. Beuys was concerned with regeneration in a way that was entirely appropriate in a war-damaged city where the oak trees would gradually replace a setting of rocks. His work was informed by his interest in ecology and played on a contrast between wood and stone which is equally relevant to archaeology. They are very different materials from one another, but both were used in prehistoric structures and employed in distinctive ways. Wood is an organic substance and eventually decays. Stone, on the other hand, is inorganic and for that reason it lasts a long time. The distinction is important in considering ancient architecture (Parker Pearson and Ramilsonina 1998). Of course, there were places in which only one of these materials was available, but there were others where the distinctive ways in which stone and wood were used are especially informative. Two examples illustrate the point. Neolithic houses in Northern Europe were timber constructions, but most of the tombs that accompanied them were made of local stone. In this case, the choice of building material suggests that these dwellings were thought to have a finite lifespan, whilst the tombs of their occupants would have a longer history. Similarly, the Neolithic longhouse at La Haute Mée in north-west France was built of wood but was accompanied by a granite menhir (Cassen et al. 1998).

This chapter explores the expulsion of the Acadians from their Canadian settlements by the British in 1755, with particular focus on Newfoundland and the forcible deportation of French fishermen that took place several weeks beforehand. It argues that the Newfoundland incident was driven by the way English and French fisheries were perceived by naval authorities; the circumstances and opportunity of the moment; and the motives of the Captain John Rous, who orchestrated much of the operation. It charts the events in detail, and concludes that the deportation of the fishermen of Port aux Basques and Codroy could conceivably be seen as a ‘dry-run’ for the larger deportation to come. It also suggests that the maritime career of John Rous requires further investigation, as existing records leave many questions about his role in the deportations unanswered.