According to Jean-Fabien Spitz, republicanism’s foundational ideals have been betrayed by the very people who purport to defend them against liberalism. An overemphasis on questions of identity makes it possible to forget that the republic was, from the outset, a principle of social justice.
What motivated French colonisers to found schools in the Maghreb and Subsaharan Africa? Carole Reynaud-Paligot shows how their superiority complex ended up overcoming their meritocratic ideals and dreams of diversity.
What if the impending ecological crisis required a recommitment to republicanism? This is Serge Audier’s thesis: we must not respond to environmental challenges with an anti-modern or anti-statist reflex, but with a new conception of the general interest.
In order to fix a society, it is not necessary to wield the “civilising” stick of republicanism. The novels of George Sand, far from being mere rustic tales, propose a clandestine way of doing politics – a democratic project undertaken with no preaching or violence.
The state of exception has a long history in France. Intended as a measure for dealing with crises of any sort, it is now used as a response to terrorism. According to legal expert François Saint-Bonnet, however, there is no evidence that it is the right solution to the kind of terrorism that strikes today.
By studying political and legal debates over citizenship through the prism of the colonial situation in the nineteenth century, in the metropole as well as the colonies, Silyane Larcher proposes a new genealogy of citizenship and asks us to rethink how the French Republic was constructed.
How should one interpret the “Allegory of Good Government”, a fresco painted by Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena in 1338? Is it praising the law that preserves the peace within the city and protects individuals, or the wisdom that naturally guides men towards the common good?
For more than thirty years, Joan Scott has been informing and transforming both our history and the way we write history, while encouraging us to question categories and change our modes of thinking. From class struggle to sex differentiation, sexual emancipation and race, she proposes a critical analysis of Republican rhetoric to undermine naturalized forms of inequality.
How comprehensive can a history of modern French political thought claim to be? Jeremy Jennings has undertaken to capture the complexity of modern French politics in ten thematic chapters.
How to renew the currently dwindling support for democratic governance? To the minds of theorists and historians, whether advocating going back to classical political traditions like Republicanism or drawing lots, or experimenting new approaches, increased political participation may be the best path to follow.
Mayotte joined the ranks of French departments in 2011. Although it passed almost unnoticed, the event reflects an integration that began in the 1970s but that is likely to continue for many years to come. The case of this small island raises the question of how colonial modes of governance can be ended in France’s overseas territories.
In France, Islamic institutions follow the Republic’s rules, respect the legal and political system, but suffer from the fact that the principle of religious equality is contradicted by popular resistance to their presence in French society. To overcome this inconsistency, the American ethnographer John Bowen calls for a reinvention of the 1905 law on religious buildings and the adoption of “reasonable accommodations.”
The election of the President of the French Republic by universal suffrage is said to represent an undeniable step forward for democracy, in that it enables the people to directly choose a leader and a type of politics. According to P. Brunet and A. Le Pillouer, however, the opposite is true: electing the president by universal suffrage destabilises our institutions and weakens political life.
According to the historian Dan Edelstein, the violent phase of the Terror arose directly out of the French revolutionaries’ fascination with natural right theory. This new interpretation is unpersuasive to Annie Jourdan; in particular, she questions the relevance of analysing the French Revolution in Schmittian terms.
How can a republic be perpetuated and civic virtue maintained? The historian Dan Edelstein responds to the criticisms posed by Annie Jourdan in her account of his book, The Terror of Natural Right. In particular, he defends the thesis according to which natural right is two-sided, at once liberating and violent.
Two books study the relationships between European societies and their Muslim minorities, in the wake of the Hijab controversy. Joan W. Scott claims that critical republicanism, as defined by Cécile Laborde, leads us to question the republican value of actual institutions and norms. It appears that France is not too republican, but not republican enough.
In his new salvo, Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison seeks to lay bare the imperial essence of the Third and Fourth Republics. His criticism of the myth of a benevolent French empire is achieved at a fairly high cost in terms of nuance and analytical value.
