Race Lines And The Rhetoric Of Distinction Through The Acad Mie Fran Aise

One Story of Academia

One Story of Academia: Race Lines and the Rhetoric of Distinction through the Académie française explores how the word race was historically linked to kings and feudal lords as a sign of elite social distinction, and how the Académie française has embodied that type of distinction in France since its establishment in 1635. Meant to be an undeclared, scholarly, «mysterious» companion to the French monarchy, the Académie created a powerful attraction for the highest classes, inspiring critics of different stripes; considered to be the highest expression of Frenchness, it excluded different groups based on class, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, ideology, and nationality. The self-proclaimed heir to ancient Greek and Roman scholarship, the Académie also claims to represent Europe, the West, and even Humanity. However, as an academic institution, it has experienced «dialectical» arguments between traditional (feudal) elitism, and scholarly elitism as both sought to define French culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. «Trustees of taste» and promoters of purity, the Académiciens and their strong supporters followed the troubled evolution of the word race and of social distinction. Borrowing from inter-European ethnic issues and nationalism, subscribers to the growing «racial» distinction had the features of the colonized analyzed with the French, and by extension, European and Western sense of social distinction in mind. Consequently the colonized ended up at the lowest end of the social scale; in turn, this placement explained the application of European feudal norms of exploitation on the colonies and created the more controversial and dreaded concept of «racism». This book highlights how the significance of language in the French sense of race - as superiority - is at the heart of the Académie française.

Race Lines and the Rhetoric of Distinction Through the Académie Française

Fictions of Race in Contemporary French Literature

Contemporary French writers have embarked on various quests for new sources of thematic and formal inspiration which are increasingly tied to issues of postcolonial legacies. However, French literature has never been consistently examined through the lens of race, ethnicity, and its relation to (post)coloniality. Fictions of Race in Contemporary French Literature is the first scholarly study to engage with the figure of the White writer and explore the White literary gaze in contemporary France. The book highlights the inherent postcoloniality of White Hexagonal literature in a context marked by institutionalized colour-blindness, and offers a reflection on responsible writing in and about postcolonial France. The book identifies a set of formal features, functions, and aesthetic dispositions which reveal the ways in which White writers grapple with postcolonial subjects. It focuses on seven case studies featuring texts by Marie Darrieussecq, Virginie Despentes, Annie Ernaux, Nicolas Fargues, Pierre Lemaitre, Édouard Louis, and Nicolas Mathieu. Achille and Panaïté argue that it is imperative to recast the enduring boundedness of race and empire as a matter of equal concern to White and non-White writers.