L'Orthographe française au temps de la Réforme

In his writings between 1941 and 1951, Michael Polanyi developed a distinctive view of liberal social and political life. Planned organizations are a part of all modern societies, according to Polanyi, but in liberal modernity he highlighted dynamic social orders whose agents freely adjust their efforts in light of the initiatives and accomplishments of their peers. Liberal society itself is the most extensive of dynamic orders, with the market economy, and cultural orders of scientific research, Protestant religious inquiry, and common law among its constituents. Liberal society and its dynamic orders of culture are, Polanyi explained, directed at transcendent ideals (truth, beauty, and justice). He saw knowledge, rules of practice, and standards of value in these orders as being preserved in traditions that inform and constrain the initiatives of their members. Investing faith in a cultural enterprise, Polanyi's agents choose to act responsibly, dedicating their freedom to an ideal end. They are custodians and cultivators of the heritage of their dynamic order.     

Parité, la nouvelle ‘exception française’

This article shows how a movement for gender parity in politics, distinct from the second-wave women's liberation movement, formed in the 1990s, and how the subsequent parity reforms, which public opinion strongly favoured, gained support among political elites. It highlights the triumph of a conception of democracy based on the idea that political representation is to be shared between two equal and different sexes. Nevertheless, what appears to be a common sense victory, namely, the establishment of a universalism finally made real by the increase in the number of women in elected assemblies, is in fact ambiguous, especially when considered in relation to the feminism of the 1970s.     

Le Socialisme français en crise

This article analyses the gravity and reasons for the crisis currently affecting the French Socialist Party. Going beyond the electoral disasters of 2014, it situates this crisis within the context of the destabilisation of the French party system due to growing divisions on the left and on the right caused by the evolution of the European Union in the current context of economic crisis. The left/right cleavage that structures the functioning of the political system is being called into question by an alternative cleavage that increasingly opposes the supporters of European integration against their opponents. The cross-cutting nature of these two cleavages will henceforth prevent the left from uniting on a programme of government. Within the Socialist Party itself this phenomenon is a factor of serious division and, as a result, makes the government's parliamentary base more fragile. It further deepens the long-standing differences on economic policy because of the explicit choice made by the Socialist government in favour of a supply-side approach. The Socialist Party seems to have arrived at the end of a political cycle where it will have to make choices that it has postponed for many years, with the risk of breaking up and with the threat of starting an electoral and political decline that could ultimately deprive it of its status as a party of government.     

Provocation Versus Performativity: Launching la littérature coloniale française in 1909

In 1909, the colonial newspaper La Dépêche coloniale launched an enquiry entitled La Littérature coloniale de la France comparée à celle d'Angleterre. It was through this initiative that the idea of a ‘French colonial literature’ first caught wider public attention and generated polemics in literary circles and beyond. The aim of this article is to study the aesthetic and ideological agendas driving the enquiry and the polarised reactions it produced, from a sociological perspective inspired by Pierre Bourdieu's work. The author argues that La Dépêche coloniale's questionnaire encoded a set of assumptions designed to guide the answers and impose a vision of colonial literature, rather than elicit debate. One of the respondents, Pierre Mille (1864–1941), preferred provocation: in a piece published in a high-circulation daily Le Temps ahead of the results of La Dépêche coloniale's enquiry, he proclaimed Rudyard Kipling to be the model colonial author, only to conclude that French colonial literature was inexistent. The ensuing debate marked a watershed in the conceptualisation and the institutionalisation of French colonial literature, by setting in motion a process that would be brought to completion in the interwar period.     

L'Oubli et la mémoire dans quelques tragédies classiques françaises

This article explores the dynamic interplay between memory and forgetfulness in three French classical tragedies: Cinna, Andromaque, and Britannicus. Corneille envisages forgetfulness as a political virtue in Cinna: Auguste's clemency represents not only the redemption of the political misdeeds of his enemies but also their conversion from rebellion to submission. Moreover, the emperor's magnanimity conjures the notion of historical myth, his transcendence of guilt, and his profound need to detach himself from his criminal identity. Andromaque highlights, on the contrary, the tragic inability of protagonists to escape the powerful hold of the past on their conscience. Memories of the Trojan War continue to obsess them. Whereas Pyrrhus calls into question his heroic identity and winds up rejecting it, Andromaque takes refuge in the mythic past of Troy and remains forever wedded to the horrific images of the war's carnage. Racine emphasizes the deep-rooted influence of the historical past in Britannicus: Agrippine incarnates the aging matriarch bent on recapturing her glorious past but remains obsessed with the tragic dimension of time, which will result in her ultimate fall from power. Néron exemplifies the would-be virtuous emperor incapable of escaping from the tragedy of genetic determinism. By centering attention on the sheer decadence of Rome and the ignominious reign of the “monstre naissant,” Britannicus stands in direct opposition to Cinna, which clearly belongs to the heroic tradition of French classical tragedy.     

Le plan de sauvetage des scientifiques français

From 1940 to 1942, a number of French scientists take refuge in America with their families. They are part — often not being aware of it — of a rescue program organized from New York by two of their colleagues. Henri Laugier and Louis Rapkine, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation (financial and logistic). Reconstitution of the different stages that paved way to an applicant for exile proves that the Vichy government did not prevent, as a rule, the temporary departure of French intellectuals, even if Jews. As for the United States, they made easier the reception of the only scientists who could enrich durably the American intellectual life.     

Les élites parlementaires françaises et la parité: Sur l'evolution d'une idée

This article analyses French parliamentary elites' perceptions of gender parity in politics. In particular, it examines the debates that took place in the National Assembly and the Senate between 17 June 1998 and 28 June 1999 with regard to the constitutional bill on women and men's equal access to elected office. These debates, which primarily sought to determine whether to modify article 3 or 4 of the Constitution, highlight the main preoccupations of proponents and opponents of parity, notably: popular sovereignty, republican universalism versus communitarianism , the modernisation of political life, equality between female and male citizens, and, finally, the role of parties in representation and the selection of elites. In the conclusion, questions are raised about representative democracy and, above all, women's role in political representation.     

Le génocide des Arméniens et l'opinion publique française durant la Première Guerre Mondiale

Durant la Première Guerre Mondiale, la presse parisienne de l'arrière évoque abondamment le génocide des Arméniens, tant pour dénoncer les massacres que pour alimenter un discours propagandiste visant à la mobilisation de guerre de la société civile. Les journaux voient en l'Allemagne l'instigatrice du génocide, plaçant la souffrance arménienne dans la continuité des exactions commises à l'encontre des Belges. Certains journaux parisiens se servent également du génocide des Arméniens pour opposer musulmans et chrétiens dans un discours aux accents de guerre de religion tandis que la presse de droite fait occasionnellement preuve de xénophobie à l'encontre des réfugiés et des victimes. La situation s'inverse même à la fin du conflit; le génocide des Arméniens étant dénoncé comme « bourrage de crâne » dans le but de promouvoir le rapprochement Franco-Turc.     

Gabriel Germinet and the ' Livre d'or du théâtre radiophonique français ' (1923-1935)

The Ecole de Brive represents one of the most successful examples of marketing literary texts in recent years. The Ecole consists of eight authors all of whom publish with Editions Robert Laffont and write novels that deal with the rural France of bygone eras. Laffont has grouped these writers together, created a ‘school’ and then marketed their work as a healthy alternative to the overly introspective fiction produced by Parisian intellectuals. With the Ecole de Brive Laffont has cleverly exploited the traditional tensions between the city and the country, the widespread dissatisfaction with the political and cultural status of contemporary France, and the perceived inaccessibility of currently fashionable literature, in order to sell novels that claim to renew average French peoples’ contacts with their putative roots in the quasi‐mythic world of la France profonde.