Race, gender, class oh my

I come out of my all too long blog break to simply point out that the snide remarks from KC Johnson regarding political history continue to be incredibly tiresome.  Why, for instance, is this little note necessary in a post regarding Ted Kennedy’s legacy:

(*–Actually, given present personnel patterns in the academy, a generation from now I doubt there will even be a sufficient number of historians of Congress to survey, so perhaps I should say “journalists who specialize in Congress” instead.)

It’s not.  All it does is reveal Johnson’s own insecurities regarding the state of his field, rather than the quality of the work being done in American history, much of which it seems he doesn’t deign to read.

Other recent examples can be seen here and here.

Gallica 1 Google Books 0

Recently, I’ve been ranting to anyone who would listen that Google Books has seemingly lost all utility, most likely dating back to the copyright settlement.  Case in point: I want to do a text search of Gustave Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale.  Now, there are a couple searchable English translations on Google Books, but no French edition, even though several are clearly in the public domain.  Turn to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France’s digital library Gallica and what do we find?  Multiple downloadable and full-text enabled editions — not just a preview in other words — and images of the original manuscript as well.  Gallica is quickly becoming my most important research “site” after the police archives.  Indeed, while books I used to be able to search on Google Books seemingly disappear at random, I find newly available materials on Gallica on a weekly basis.  Even if you’re not a French specialist, I can’t recommend this resource enough.

The Daily Show on the Burka Ban

The Daily Show on the Burka Ban

Almost missed this clip. I like how they addressed the issue from a different angle than the dreaded multiculturalism.

more about “The Daily Show on the Burka Ban“, posted with vodpod

Just for record…

As much as I enjoyed this takedown of yet another conservative’s francophobia, you can indeed find hamburgers on Parisian menus.  They’re everywhere in fact.  It’s somewhat of a double edged sword, for while you will inevitably be dissapointed with the quality of your hamburger — though I have heard that the best burgers in Paris are at Cafe Divan — you will get to witness the French eating their’s with a knife and fork.  Yes, they shovel forkfulls of bun-cheese-bacon-burger-bun into their bouches rather than using their hands.  I continue to find this hilarious.  One day I’m going to get punched for staring and giggling.

Submitted with no comment

From the Fourth of July issue of Direct Soir, one of the free dailies you can pick up on the metro:

My favorite part, translated:

“Excesses: ‘It’s a country founded on quantity and not on quality.  The American must have many things at home, otherwise he becomes anxious.  Quantity reassures him.  The national sport is shopping.  On his plate, there’s a mountain of food.  He eats an enormous amount.”

Love the armchair psychology.  The next bit is pretty good too: “Junk food: “Everything is relative.  The American doesn’t think he eats badly, he find his cuisine to be delicious.”

Happy Fourth of July.

From the “What century do we live in again?” file

Speechless (via Pandagon):

Universalism, Nationalism, and the Burqa

Michelle Goldberg has a really nice piece, relying heavily on the views of Joan W. Scott, of the origins of the debate on the burqa in France. She notes the prevailing view that Sarkozy’s big push on this was, in part at least, in response to the moment in Obama’s Cairo speech where he critiqued “the view of the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.” I certainly read that as a shot at France, certainly many French people did as well. I’ve spoken with two about the speech, both of whom noted a, relatively justifiable, annoyance at Americans trying to tell the world what to do, how to act, etc.

It’s a fair enough point, but it also underlines an important aspect missing from discussions of these issues, which Goldberg’s otherwise nicely balanced piece serves as an example. Her subtitle poses the question: “What happens when feminism and sexual liberation become tools for nationalism?” By this she means Sarkozy’s attempts to curry favor with the French far-right, represented by Jean-Marie le Pen’s National Front, while not alienating the “Left,” who would hesitate to attack Sarkozy for moves made in the name of feminism and women’s equality. In this sense, Sarkozy plays to an entire political spectrum, solidifying his electoral base — which doesn’t seem to have anywhere else to go, by the way — in the name of French values, but a type of French values carefully presented as egalitarian, rather than chauvinist.

But what’s missing in this analysis, and this is where pointing at America becomes problematic, is an emphasis on the fact that French nationalism, since the French Revolution, has been tinged with a universalism that does not only encompass its own citizens and immigrants, but the world over. When the Revolution began marching through Europe it did so, not only in the interests of self-preservation, but in the belief that the principals it was still in the process of laying down — a process never fully complete — could apply the world over. That is one type, the maintstream type, of nationalism one sees in France to this day. The effort to ban the burqa in the name of women’s rights, therefore, is not just an assertion of French values, but of universal human rights, never mind the incredibly problematic, and fairly condescending, attitude it shows to those women who wear the burqa whose rights don’t seem to matter. The French debate, in other words, is also a mode of exerting France’s own applicability to other countries. It is, in other words, a way of telling the world what to do, how to act. It’s just done with a whole lot more subtlety than Americans usually manage.

P.S.  I got the link to Goldberg’s piece from Matt Yglesias, who rightly highlights some of the potentially negative effects of a burqa ban.  Where I think some naunce should be added is in his assertion that “The French have a strong tradition not just of secularism, but of a kind of illiberal egalitarianism that holds that everyone should really be the same…”  Not exactly, at least from my point of view.  The French have a tradition that everyone should be both treated as and act the same in their relation to the public sphere.  In other words, French tradition does not reject difference; rather it rejects the notion that such difference is fundamental to one’s personhood and relation to state authority.  The French citizen is abstract, not homogeneous.  See, of course, Joan Scott’s Parite!for the best introduction to the French principal of the abstract citizen.

Friday Random Top Ten

It’s been long enough since the last one edition:

1)  Mahgeetah – My Morning Jacket
2) The Boy With The Arab Strap [Live] – Belle and Sebastian
3) Havalina – Pixies
4) I’m Waiting For The Day – The Beach Boys
5) Blue-Green Arrow – Yo La Tengo
6) Annan Water – The Decemberists
7) Harvest Breed – Nick Cave
8) Heat Walks Against Me – Seafood
9) Can’t Stand It – Wilco
10)The Great Curve – Talking Heads

The Lord of the Rings in Iran

I obviously don’t have much to say on the events in Iran, leaving such things to the experts and those with the contacts, other than to note how affecting, yet also perverse, watching the events unfold has been.  (This Daily Show clip hit hard for some reason).  But I feel the urge to note just how bizarre I find Iranian television broadcasting Hollywood films to mollify the masses.  So many assumptions frame such a decision, discussed endlessly by cultural critics.  The Iranian government as Frankfurt School?  But also, as the Time piece on The Lord of the Rings notes, an implicit subversiveness, a particular choice that lends itself to individual interpretation.  Tolkien himself always claimed that his stories were not allegory, but should instead be considered “applicable.”  How appropiate, then, to take the seemingly hopeless struggle that succeedes in The Lord of the Rings and therin find solace for the protestors and their lost comrades.