Julien Suaudeau- "L'impossibilité d'un nous: radiographie de la France post-républicaine"

Thursday, April 20, 2017 - 5:00pm

Cherpack Seminar Room - 543 Williams Hall

Unlike the US, France doesn't know how to say "We, the People". Or maybe it just doesn't want to. When it does, the claim to a collective identity comes out wrong. What are the reasons for this malaise? How come the national symbols and the national narrative always prevail on grammar in our representation of the French identity? Why does it have to be "us" against "them"? Why is "I" stronger than "we"? This lecture will map out the fault lines of the French self, before examining the prospects for a post-republican sense of community.