CIAO DATE: 12/2008
Volume: 26, Issue: 2
Summer 2008
Tocqueville, Comparative History and Immigration in Two Democracies (PDF)
Nancy L. Green
Although mass migration to the United States and to France did not occur until after Tocqueville’s visit to America, by rereading Tocqueville’s classic De la démocratie en Amérique through the lens of immigration history, we can question some of the common assumptions about Franco-American differences. First, Tocqueville’s comparativist gaze needs to be re-examined, especially with regard to the way in which it has been repeatedly invoked during the Tocquevillian renaissance of the last thirty years to differentiate the French and American experiences. Second, if Tocqueville did not discuss immigrants per se, his analysis of voluntary associations points to an important component of civil society which has been present both in France and the United States ever since immigrants began arriving en masse. Theories about the rise and decline of civil society as well as generalizations about Franco-American differences need to be challenged by including immigration associations in a new Tocquevillian analysis of democracy in both countries.
A Brief Comment on Nancy Green's Essay
Arthur Goldhammer
The Lithographic Conspiracy: How Satire Framed Liberal Political Debate in Nineteenth-Century France
Amy Wiese Forbes
This article discusses political satire under the July Monarchy. It analyzes how the question of satire’s political meaning was generated and framed in the 1830s as debate over abstract rights under the new, supposedly more liberal government of the July Monarchy. Following the Revolution of 1830, lithographic satire became connected conceptually to political conspiracy and was argued to be harmful to the new regime. State institutions, including the police, the courts, and the National Assembly, attempted to understand and define satire politically. The effort to evaluate satire’s potential harm to the state shaped French liberalism into a contest between rights to free speech and protection from harm. This process was part of a broader struggle to construct legitimate authority in France.
Pierre Goldman: From Souvenirs obscurs to Lieu de mémoire
Donald Reid
Pierre Goldman was born to Jewish resisters in France in June 1944 and lived with the inability to match his parents’ achievements during the war. Although a secondary figure in soixante-huitard movements, his trials for murder in the early 1970s made him a central figure in post-soixante-huitard activists’ reflections on their situation. This essay examines Goldman’s sui generis efforts to establish his identity as a resister and a Jew, his central role in his generation’s attempts to define their relationship to the society they wished to change, and his place in the succeeding generation’s efforts to differentiate themselves from the generation of their parents, Goldman’s generation.
Apology and the Past in Contemporary France
Julie Fette
In societies coming to terms with historical injustices, public apology has recently emerged as a potent trend. This is particularly true of France, where the state served as a catalyst for a wave of public apologies for acts of intolerance committed during the Second World War. Following Jacques Chirac’s 1995 official apology for Vichy’s anti-Semitic policies, various groups in civil society publicly atoned for their particular Vichy roles in discrimination against Jews: the medical profession, the law bar, the Catholic Church, and the police. How does public apology, as distinct from court trials, historical commissions, and reparations, affect contemporary France’s reconciliation with its past? This article also analyzes how apologizing for Vichy has created demand for an official French apology for the Algerian War. By 2006, the politics of memory in French society decidedly shifted attention from Vichy to post-colonialism: in both cases, the apology turn imposes new dynamics of remembering and forgetting.
La naissance d’un géant: Arcelor-Mittal (1948-2006)
Éric Godelier
In 2006 a terrible fight pitted two steel makers, Mittal and Arcelor, against each other. Understanding the dynamic of this enormous takeover requires a historical perspective. The structure, business strategy, and corporate governance of these groups evolved over a long period of time. This article explores the conflict in the context of the history of French steel industry. An examination of Usinor, moreover, as the ancestor and creator of Arcelor, can reveal a lot about the political, social and economical influence of steel makers in French society. Understanding the conflict also calls for an analysis of how a large company could change its corporate culture. Instead of reducing corporate culture to individual or collective “values,” as Edgar Schein did some time ago, this article explores Usinor’s culture as a system of representations, material elements, technologies, products and ways of doing and thinking.