Author: Donald Reid / Political Geography: France

Author:: Donald Reid
Publication Date:: 06-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: 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.
Political Geography:: France

Author:: Donald Reid
Publication Date:: 09-2004
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz drew on their experiences as deported resisters at the Ravensbrück concentration camp to put forth narratives of deportation with compelling sets of imperatives for survivors and their audiences: Tillion placed the experience of camp prisoners in a continuum of clochardisation preceded by slavery and colonialism, enterprises in which France played a larger role than Germany, while de Gaulle Anthonioz extended the camp experience past 1945 to the creation and maintenance of an underclass in advanced capitalist societies like France. Reflection on their years at Ravensbrück encouraged Tillion and de Gaulle Anthonioz to look upon those left outside of prosperous postwar France - clochards in Algeria and the desperately poor in France - as being of the world they had lived in in the camps. This encouraged them to revisit their experience as providing understanding and insights for the survival and resistance of these disinherited.
Political Geography:: France, Germany, and Algeria

Author:: Donald Reid
Publication Date:: 09-2000
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme is a socio-cultural response to the neoliberal explanation of the successes and failures of capitalism in France during the last three decades in terms of individual rational actors and markets. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello draw their inspiration from critical readings of sociologists who interpreted earlier incarnations of capitalism, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. The sesquicentennial of The Communist Manifesto elicited many commentaries praising Marx and Engels for their insightful evocation of the revolutionary nature of capitalism. Starting here, Boltanski and Chiapello point to the contradictory nature of capitalism, which thrives on destruction and expansion, yet requires checking mechanisms to avoid self-destruction through the alienation of precisely those who have driven the processentrepreneurial bourgeoisie, directors, and managers. To the obvious capitalist project of continually creating consumers must be added that of selling capitalism to those producers whose allegiance to capitalism Marx and Engels took for granted.
Political Geography:: France

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