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The Origins of the Stanley Hoffmann We Knew

Some Comparisons on his Vichy Years with My Family Story

Peter Gourevitch

Abstract

Stanley Hoffmann’s years in France before, during, and after Vichy marked him both intellectually and psychologically. Many of his great works draw on his reflections on how he saw French people responding to this situation. By coincidence, my family was living in France from 1933 to 1940 as refugees from Nazi Berlin, where they had gone in 1923 as Menshevik refugees from the Bolsheviks. This essay explores Hoffmann’s story as a way of framing my own family history, and it reflects on the way those experiences influence our lives and ideas. Hoffmann went on to great prominence writing on international relations and the politics of France. Under his influence, I went on to help erode the academic boundary between domestic affairs and international relations.

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Populism and the Failures of Representation

Suzanne Berger

Abstract

Looking back at extreme-right politics in France in the 1940s and 1950s provides new perspectives on contemporary populism. Stanley Hoffmann’s analyses of support for the Vichy regime and for the Poujade movement emphasized how populist politics flourished in times when major segments of the population felt thwarted in efforts to have their interests and views represented in government. Attempts to explain populism by the economic or cultural characteristics of individuals are insufficient. As Hoffmann suggested, it is the political failure of parties and interest groups to channel the grievances and demands of the “losers” of globalization into policy arenas that fuels the rise of populism today.

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Roll Out the Barrel

French and Algerian Ports and the Birth of the Wine Tanker

Owen White

Abstract

When shipping companies first experimented with transporting wine in steel containers in the 1930s they promised to revolutionize the way French Algeria sent its most important export to metropolitan France. What capitalists saw as a rational and efficient use of new technology, however, dockworkers and barrel-makers saw as a dire threat to their livelihoods in a time of intense economic hardship. This article traces the social conflict that followed the introduction of the wine tanker and the declining use of wine barrels in port cities in both Algeria and France. In doing so it illustrates the wide range of people and places that held a direct stake in economic activity arising from France’s colonization of Algeria, from the rural environments in which wine was produced all the way to distant urban spaces such as Rouen.

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Book Reviews

Patrick Young, David Looseley, Elayne Oliphant, and Kolja Lindner

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Disruptive Technology

Social Media from Modiano to Zola and Proust

Elizabeth Emery

Abstract

In this article, Patrick Modiano’s 2014 Nobel Prize acceptance speech serves as a springboard to consider the lieu commun that “disruptive technology” is killing both literature and the contemporary press. Modiano’s depiction of himself as part of an “intermediate generation,” trapped between the intense focus of great nineteenth-century novelists and the many distractions of contemporary writers, cleverly invoked millennial anxieties related to new technology in order to establish his own place within literary history.

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The Invention of the Illustrated Press in France

Patricia Mainardi

Abstract

“Spreading the News: The Illustrated Press,” focuses on the new concept of the illustrated universal survey periodical that appeared early in the 1830s, first in England, then in France. It was enabled by technological advances such as the steam press, cheaper paper, wood engraving and stereotypes, as well as greater literacy among the citizenry. The earliest illustrated periodicals were published by social reformers in both countries who were attempting to raise the status of the working classes, but the medium soon attracted wealthier, more educated strata as well; within decades the illustrated press had spread throughout the world.

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Journalistes scandaleuses des années trente

Petite réflexion sur l’histoire de la presse de l’entre-deux-guerres

Marie-Ève Thérenty

Abstract

This article deals with women stunt reporters—French journalists Maryse Choisy, Marise Querlin, and Odette Pannetier—who chose to investigate under cover in the 1930s. Using various disguises, they made investigations into brothels, tricked their way into politicians’ home, and performed interviews under fake identities. Undercover reporting compensated for their difficulties in asserting themselves in a press created by and for men. It gave them a way to compete with male colleagues who were famous for sensational reportage all over the world. By focusing on such episodes, this article brings to light three heretofore unexplored facets of the history of the French press: immersion investigation, the history of women journalists, and the poetics of the 1930s press.

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La flânerie au feuilleton?

Quotidien et modernité critique chez Siegfried Kracauer

Catherine Nesci

Abstract

This essay explores Siegfried Kracauer’s journalistic work and urban miniatures of the late 1920s and the early 1930s, using the conceptual frameworks developed by Géraldine Muhlmann in Du journalisme en démocratie (2004), Marie-Ève Thérenty in La Littérature au quotidien (2007), and Guillaume Pinson in L’Imaginaire médiatique (2012). It argues that, in his capacity as publicist, “feuilletoniste,” and sociologist, Kracauer embodies Kant’s critical ideal of the public sphere, which Muhlmann identifies with the “journaliste-flâneur.” Featuring the everyday in its various social and cultural facets, Kracauer’s feuilletons not only focus on the ephemeral and fragmented nature of the everyday, but also foster the awareness of a modernity in crisis through the de-familiarization of surfaces, spaces, and objects. Published in the bottom of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Kracauer’s urban miniatures and reportages deploy rich interventions on the crisis of Western phenomenological, cognitive, and sociopolitical space.

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La modernité, invention médiatique

Alain Vaillant

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, not only did the extraordinary development of the printed press transform the cultural environment, but it also brought about major formal changes in literature. This article explores these trasnformations through a focus on the contemporary use of the concept of “modernity.” The word dates back to 1688 at least, but it was mostly employed during the nineteenth century to describe post-revolutionary France and especially to criticize its consumerism and materialistic “bourgeoisie.” Nineteenth-century media culture embodied the triumph of “modernity,” especially in the form of the petite presse (“small press”). Born in a world where censorship still compromised the freedom of speech, the petite presse was an illustrated, satirical, ironical, and wisecracking medium. It aspired to a generalized non-seriousness which would, for a long time, be viewed as the “Parisian spirit.”

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Le salafisme quiétiste en France

Un exemple d’apolitisme militant ?

Mohamed-Ali Adraoui

Abstract

How do purist Salafist communities frame the issue of politics? Known to display a reluctance towards political engagement and activism, unlike Islamists and Jihadists, purist Salafists, especially those who live within a non-Muslim-majority country such as France, highlight that Islam has nothing to do with classical political activism. Consequently, a major issue that needs to be examined is how purist Salafists reconcile their desires to preach and shape society through a process of public involvement and their efforts to refrain from engaging with political institutions. This article explores to what extent the notion of militant apoliticism is useful in describing this strategy of public engagement.