The New Old World (39 page)

21
. ‘Présentation',
Les lieux de mémoire
, I, p. xiii.

22
. See, among others, Steven Englund, ‘The Ghost of Nation Past',
Journal of Modern History
, June 1992, pp. 299–320, and David Bell, ‘Paris Blues',
The New Republic
, 1 September 1997, pp. 32–6.

23
. See Pierre Nora,
Les Français d'Algérie
, Paris 1961; and, for a brief glimpse, François Furet,
Un itinéraire intellectuel. L'historien-journaliste, de France-Observateur au Nouvel Observateur (1958–1997),
Paris 1999, pp. 60–64—a selection of texts by Mona Ozouf that does not linger on his early years. The extent of its omissions is demonstrated by Michael Christofferson in ‘François Furet Between History and Journalism, 1958–1965',
French History
, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2001, pp. 421–7, who shows that Furet, writing under pseudonyms, was a prolific commentator on French politics, from a position well to the left of his later outlook, down to 1965.

24
. ‘L'ère de la commémoration',
Les lieux de mémoire
, III/III, Paris 1992, pp. 977–1012.

25
.
Mythologies
, Paris 1957, pp. 222ff; significantly, the example Barthes used to analyze the nature of myth was an icon of imperial
francité
from
Paris-Match
, just what
Les lieux de mémoire
set out to forget.

26
. An intelligent example is Pierre Manent,
Histoire intellectuelle du libéralisme. Dix leçons
, Paris 1987, which ends with this trio. It is characteristic of much of this French discussion that Mill does not rate a mention.

27
. Denis Berger and Henri Maler,
Une certaine idée du communisme
, Paris 1996, p. 187.

28
. François Furet, ‘Chronique d'une décomposition',
Le Débat
, No. 83, January–February 1995, pp. 84–97.

29
. Furet et al.,
La République du centre
, pp. 58–62.

30
. ‘L'utopie démocratique à l'américaine',
Le Débat
, No. 69, March–April 1992, pp. 80–91; ‘L'Amérique de Clinton II',
Le Débat
, No. 94, March–April 1997, pp. 3–10.

31
. François Furet, ‘L'énigme française',
Le Débat
, September–October 1997, pp. 43–9.

32
. François Furet,
Le Passé d'une illusion
, Paris 1995, p. 579;
The Passing of an Illusion
, Chicago 1999, p. 502.

33
. ‘L'idée française de la Révolution',
Le Débat
, No. 96, September–October 1997, pp. 28–9.

34
. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, ‘En lisant
L'Idéologie française
', and Pierre Nora, ‘Un idéologue bien de chez nous',
Le Débat
, No. 13, June 1981, pp. 97–109. A year earlier, Nora had written that Lévy possessed a kind of undeniable legitimacy, conferred by the genuine desire for knowledge that 100,000 readers had invested in him:
Le Débat
, No. 1, p. 9.

35
. Daniel Lindenberg,
Le rappel à l'ordre. Enquête sur les nouveaux réactionnaires
, Paris 2002; and
contra
, Alain Finkielkraut, Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent, Philippe Muray, Pierre-André Taguieff, Shmuel Trigano, Paul Yonnet, ‘Manifeste pour une pensée libre',
L'Express
, 28 November 2002. For a dry comment on the dispute, see Serge Halimi: ‘Un débat intellectuel en trompe l'oeil',
Le Monde diplomatique
, January 2003, p. 3.

36
. René Rémond, by no means a critic of the upshot, makes this argument: ‘Instabilité législative, continuité politique',
Le Débat
, No. 110, May–August 2000, pp. 198–201.

37
. Nicolas Véron, ‘Les heureuses mutations de la France financière',
Commentaire
, No. 104, Winter 2003–4, offers a gratified balance-sheet of these changes.

38
. Pierre Grémion,
Le Débat
, No. 103, January–February 1999, p. 99.

39
. Le Pen got 230,000 votes more than in 1995, and his former lieutenant Bruno Mégret, who had split away from the FN, received 670,000, making a combined increase of 900,000. But in 1995 Philippe de Villiers had won 1,440,000 votes, with comparable appeals. In 2002 his Mouvement pour la France did not enter the presidential race.

40
. Jean-Jacques Chevallier, Guy Carcassonne, Olivier Duhamel,
La Ve République 1958–2002. Histoire des institutions et des régimes politiques en France
, Paris 2002, p. 488; a standard reference work in France, as its publishers describe it.

41
. For an extended statement, see his
Homo Juridicus
, London–New York 2007.

42
.
Les infortunes de la République
, Paris 2000, p. 165.

43
.
Esquisse pour une auto-analyse
, Paris 2004, pp. 117–27.

44
. To select only one, often out of several, per case: Spain—Elliott; Italy—Mack Smith; Portugal—Boxer; Germany—Carsten; Netherlands—Israel; Sweden—Roberts; Poland—Davies; Hungary—Macartney; China—Needham; Spanish America—Lynch.

45
. ‘La pensée réchauffée', in
La pensée tiède
, Paris 2005, p. 101; as often happens in translation, a misleading title for the reflections above, since the principal ideas at issue were not tepid, nor were they only at issue, without reference to political life.

46
. ‘La pensée réchauffée', p. 111.

47
. ‘La pensée réchauffée', pp. 112–4.

48
. ‘Fernand Braudel and National Identity',
A Zone of Engagement
, London 1992, pp. 251–78.

49
.
Ce grand cadavre à la renverse
, Paris 2007, pp. 9–16, 157–60, for the latter's breathless account of how he was first wooed by his old friend Sarkozy, and then rallied to the ‘courage and solitude' of Royal.

50
. For an overall analysis of the vote, see Emmanuel Todd,
Àprès la démocratie
, Paris 2008, pp. 136–40.

51
. Both before the first round: see ‘Avant qu'il ne soit trop tard',
Nouvel Observateur
, 1 March 2007; and ‘Appel de 200 intellectuels pour Ségolène Royal',
Libération
, 18 April 2007.

52
. The most lucid analysis of the limitations of Sarkozy's agenda is offered by Roland Hureaux: ‘Nicolas Sarkozy peut-il réussir?',
Le Débat
, No. 146, September–October 2007, pp. 102–10.

53
. Remark to a UMP deputy, reported in
Le Monde
, 13 December 2008.

54
. For a sardonic report on the extent of politicians' consultation of intellectuals, if not necessarily acceptance of their advice, see Jade Lindgard, ‘La grande “chasse aux idées”, ou comment les politiques en consomment un maximum, sans toujours s'en servir', in Stéphane Beaud et al.,
La France invisible
, Paris 2006, pp. 473–84, covering Sarkozy, Fabius, Bayrou and Royal.

55
.
Les enfants maudits de la République. L'avenir des intellectuels en France
, Paris 2005, pp. 203–12.

56
. Elsewhere, Noiriel himself—attractively capable of self-correction—has noted how little Foucault's hunger for publicity and wild generalizations corresponded to the figure he recommended:
Penser avec, penser contre. Itinéraire d'un historien
, Paris 2003, p. 246.

57
.
De la division du travail social
, Paris 1893, p. v. By 1915, he was telling his compatriots that an ‘aggressive temper, bellicose will, contempt for international law and human rights, systematic inhumanity, institutionalized cruelties' were among the ‘multiple manifestations of the German soul' (sic). Aganst the ‘morbid mentality' and ‘social pathology' of the ‘monster' across the Rhine was ranged the legitimate confidence of France that behind it stood the superior force of the ‘nature of things'.
‘L'Allemagne au-dessus de tout'. La mentalité allemande et la guerre
, Paris 1915, pp. 3, 46–7. Seignobos was a fellow-member of the committee publishing this rubbish. ‘Intellectuels spécifiques et intellectuels de gouvernment, même combat!', Noiriel is obliged to note, after complaining that Nizan—whose scathing description of Durkheim's efforts to give ‘official morality the appearance of science' has lost none of its point—had linked the two men:
Les fils maudits de la Republique
, pp. 223–5; for Nizan on Durkheim, see
Les chiens de garde
, Paris 1932, pp. 189–92.

58
. For apposite comment on this part of
Les enfants maudits
, and assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the book as a whole, see Serge Halimi's review, ‘Une arrière-garde de l'ordre social',
Le Monde Diplomatique
, September 2005.

59
. Not more representation, but deliberation was needed in France: ‘Malaise dans le représentation',
La République du centre
, Paris 1988, p. 180.

60
. Pierre Rosanvallon, See
Le peuple introuvable
, pp. 105–276, announcing the birth of a ‘new collective sensibility'.
La démocratie inachevée
takes up the theme, with ‘the silent revolution of the mandate' (pp. 255ff). The overlapping themes of the trilogy relieve Rosanvallon of the burdens of any too exacting chronology, allowing for considerable flexibility of periodization. Treatment of the half century between 1930 and 1980 is very cursory, and Vichy is ignored altogether.

61
. ‘L'esprit de 1995',
Le Déb
at, No. 111, September 2000, pp. 118–20.

62
. Pierre Rosanvallon,
La démocratie inachevée
, p. 397. Italics in original.

63
. ‘Towards a Philosophical History of the Political', in Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk,
The History of Political Thought in National Context
, Cambridge 2002, pp. 201–2.

64
. Pierre Rosanvallon,
La contre-démocratie
, Paris 2006, pp. 269–78.

65
. Rosanvallon,
La démocratie inachevée
, p. 393.

66
.
La contre-démocratie
, Paris 2006, p. 322

67
.
Le même et l'autre. Quarante-cinq ans de philosophie française (1933–1978)
, Paris 1979, p. 139.

68
. Pierre Rosanvallon,
La légitimité démocratique
, Paris 2008, pp. 327.

69
.
La démocratie inachevée
, pp. 407–8.

70
. Inviting comparison with Rosanvallon is the tetralogy under way from Marcel Gauchet,
L'Avènement de la démocratie
, whose first volumes,
La révolution moderne
and
La crise du libéralisme
, appeared in 2007. The parallels between the two projects, as offering at once a genealogy, pathology and redemptive apology of liberalism, are very close. The main difference is that Gauchet, who starts his story much earlier, around 1500, pitches it at a more general and philosophical level—‘an extreme stylization of the analysis'—and pivots it on the emergence of the West from religious belief, and the crises this gradual exit has provoked. Otherwise, the intention—‘to de-banalize liberal democracy'—and even the periodization are virtually the same. Gauchet, however, dwells more on the strains that accompanied the arrival of liberal democracy after 1880, when imperialism puts in an appearance as an ‘infantile disorder of globalization', and on the perils of totalitarianism that interrupted its progress after 1918. Today, as in Rosanvallon, the troubles afflicting liberal democracy must be seen as a ‘crisis of growth', leading—for Gauchet, in a somewhat longer run—to its constructive recomposition.

71
. By 1998, just 5 per cent of its members were workers; no more than 13 per cent were even employees. In the first years of the new century, its total effectives were actually fewer in number than those of a now politically insignificant Communist Party: Henri Rey,
La gauche et les classes populaires
, Paris 2004, pp. 47, 49, 52.

72
. For a portrait of the ‘moral economy of cynicism' and rival careerisms from top to bottom of the latter-day PS, all the more devastating for being not unsympathetic to its subject, see Rémi Lefebvre and Frédéric Sawicki,
La société des socialistes
, Paris 2006. In this Hobbesian world ‘where militant is wolf to militant', in the words of one of its members, a former leader—Pierre Mauroy, no less—can remark that ‘if the disgusted leave, only the disgusting will remain': pp. 201, 214.