Echoes of a Recent Past: Contemporary French Anti-Americanism in Historical and Cultural Perspective

Echoes of a Recent Past: Contemporary French Anti-Americanism in Historical and Cultural Perspective

International Security Studies at Yale University

January 1995

In a review article of recent works on Franco-American relations published in the Fall, 1994 issue of French Historical Studies, Irwin Wall noted that "It is generally admitted that since the 1980s France has outgrown its once pathological anti-Americanism." "What better time than now," he asked rhetorically, "to examine the phenomenon [of anti-Americanism] from a dispassionate, scholarly, point of view?" ₁

Wall's comments speak, in large part, for a scholarly consensus. ₂ And indeed few, to be sure, would deny that such vast political reconfigurations as the end of the Cold War, the discrediting of communism, and the triumph of the American economic model throughout much of the world have dampened the once shrill cry of "Yanqui Go Home." Internal developments within France itself, furthermore--the decline of the left, the growing acceptance of consumer culture, the more realistic appreciation of France's place on the geo-political stage, and the curious vogue of "Reagomania" in influential French intellectual circles during the 1980s--have muffled the voices of all but the most obdurate "anti-Americans." To paraphrase the title of a recent book by Richard Kuisel, the French have seemingly been "seduced", gradually coming to accept the process of Americanization with ever-abating resistance--even, it would seem, embracing it with open arms. ₃

But if the heady days of the 1950s and 1960s�are undoubtedly gone, when Gaullists and Communists alike could summon the specter of "le défi américain"--the American challenge--with fist-brandishing defiance, inveighing against the threat of U.S. economic imperialism and cultural conquest in summary dismissal of the American way of life, it is perhaps too early to relegate French anti-Americanism to the dust-bin of history. For as any American visitor to France can testify, certain French stereotypes of the United States die hard. And indeed, at the very time that both Kuisel and Wall were writing, France was engaged in numerous debates that summoned echoes of a recent past. Though the accents have changed and the intensity of criticism has diminished, many French still view America through historically and culturally determined lenses, with the United States continuing to serve a time-honored role--as a mirror in which the French see themselves, gauging and fashioning their own national identity accordingly. The present paper will undertake to investigate these echoes, focussing on three recent debates in France--the ratification of the GATT accords in 1993, the passing of a 1994 French law banning the use of English words in public discourse, and the contemporary French discussion of American political correctness.

A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF ANTI-AMERICANISM IN FRANCE

Considerable effort in recent years has been devoted to un-covering the historical roots of French anti-Americanism, producing a significant, and ever-growing, literature. ₄ As numerous scholars have noted, the very term is complicated, first entering French usage in the early 20th century, but not appearing formally in French dictionaries until as late as 1984. ₅ Frequently levied with careless imprecision, and often by Americans themselves imbued with a sensitive and at times over-zealous patriotism, the charge "anti-American" is easily abused, conflating any criticism of American policy or practice with more trenchant opposition. It is thus worth asking what exactly anti-Americanism is, whilst sketching some of the basic characteristics of its historical unfolding in France.

Like any other complex term, "anti-Americanism" is by nature multivalent, shaped by historical accretion and resonating with complicated overtones. In its strictest sense, of course, the term connotes a rejection of "Americanism" (a word which itself resists any simple definition) implying, as Marie-France Toinet notes, a "systematic opposition--a sort of allergic reaction to America as a whole." ₆ But while, as Toinet continues, anti-Americanism in this very narrow sense is probably fairly rare, the term nonetheless suggests rather sweeping opposition, a critique of the United States that transcends mere disagreement over specific policy questions or government decisions. In this respect, French anti-Americanism has always been, first and foremost, cultural-- that is, grounded in a critique that sees certain aspects of the American way of life as fundamentally corrosive, undermining American pretensions to serve as a social and political paragon, and above all as an example to France. ₇

Although it is possible to trace strains of this cultural critique as far back as the 18th century, following the development of key oppositions (old France vs. modern America, civilisation vs. unrefined vulgarity, Latin vs. Anglo-saxon, idealism vs. materialism, cosmopolitanism vs. puritanism) down through the 19th, it was only with the advent of American world power that condemnation of the United States crystallized as something more than merely the preoccupation of the isolated thinker. ₈ This point is important, for anti-Americanism in France must be understood primarily as a reaction to a perceived threat, a defense of a way of life and national identity viewed as under siege. In the wake of World War I, as France struggled to come to terms with what Paul Valéry famously termed the "crisis" of European civilisation, attempting to put together, both literally and figuratively, the pieces of a shattered country, signs of arriviste American power were all-too-evident. ₉The young nation's military and diplomatic might had been amply demonstrated in the war, and was not be forgotten--even, ironically, at a time when the United States was slipping into isolationism. Its economic hegemony, clear to many before 1914, took on demeaning new resonance as France grappled under the onus of American-funded war-debt, and assembly-line products stamped "made in U.S.A" flooded French markets. Finally, culturally, for the first time, America's presence was felt on a mass scale. Via the Hollywood invasion, American fashion, jazz, and dance steps shuffled their way into everyday life, along with cigarettes and shaving cream, exerting a presence impossible to ignore.

It was during this period, then, of French cultural crisis on the one hand, and the affirmation of American strength on the other, that French intellectuals began to ruminate in a substantial and systematic way on the potential problems posed by the growing strength of the United States. ₁₀ And though the concerns of individual thinkers necessarily varied according to predilection and political persuasion, one can nevertheless single out a number of core considerations--central themes destined to shape the contours of French anti-Americanism down to the present. First was the preoccupation with America as the symbol of the ultra modern, the frightening image of the life of the future. The United States, of course, had long served Frenchmen as a sort of crystal ball of the world of tomorrow, functioning for 18th-century republicans as an inspiring ideal of the possibilities of enlightened virtue, and rather more hesitatingly for Tocqueville in his vision of the future of democracy. In the period following the Great War, however, French critics focussed most explicitly on the economic dynamics that were transforming American life, coming to associate the process of "Americanization" with many of the worst aspects of modernity. The advent of the Taylor system and the conveyor belt, increased mechanization, and the further regimentation of methods of production in the United States allowed French critics to paint a picture of the dehumanized world of American society. Drained of particularity, and lost amidst the growing homogeneity of mass production, the American worker was an automatum, devoid of individuality and independence of thought. ₁₁ Indeed, American society as a whole seemed to many French thinkers merely an absurd organizational structure for the anonymous pursuit of work--likened, in George Duhamel's tremendously popular, Scènes de la vie future (1930), to an ant-hill. As the title of this classic text warned menacingly, this too would be the grim future of France lest it took appropriate measures to defend itself.

Closely related to this lurid association of America and the modern were the twin charges of conformism and materialism. For just as the process of Americanization resulted in the standardization of the means of production and the goods thereby produced, mass consumer culture also generated pre-fabricated ideas and human beings. Through�mass advertising, the press, and ultimately, the motion picture, Americans were being goaded towards ever greater likeness of mind--a further push towards conformity which many, following Tocqueville, already saw as an inherent tendency of American society. As Marcel Braunshvig could comment in his La vie américain of 1931:

For Americans, the most serious threat--one which is already a reality--is that standardization is applied not only to material objects but also to matters of the spirit. In different areas of thought, the press has the role of spreading ideas which are already developed...like manufactured goods themselves...;but these are ideas which are always accepted without a discussion and which tend to make robots of individuals and of society a blind mechanism. ₁₂

Unreflective, un-spiritual, un-civilized, Americans had ceded the idea to the thing, and now, modern barbarians, satisfied the cravings of their souls, as well as their bodies, with the material objects of a consumer culture. This, the third great charge in the anti-American critique--that of materialism--runs as a constant theme throughout the literature of the 1920s and 1930s. As Robert de Saint-Jean commented in 1934, noting the change in attitude of his countrymen since the war, "In 1917, we thought that the American responded only to higher ideals. Several years later, we considered Americans a race which hungered after profits, wallowing in comfort, and deaf to nobility." ₁₃

A specter of the dehumanized future, conformist, homogenized, materialist--America, curiously, was also indelibly puritan. This claim, as old as the new world itself, took on greater force in the wake of Wilson's attempts to "preach" to the Allies at Versailles and with such internal developments in the United States as the passing of prohibition. Coexisting, paradoxically (and often in the same work), with the opposing charge of materialism, the puritan indictment could be used to condemn the oppressive--and repressive--nature of American life, as well as the "naive" crusading impulse of Yankee moralists. As Paul Bourget commented at the turn of the century in an observation frequently repeated between the wars, "The history of the Anglo-Saxon race would...be inexplicable without this hereditary instinct of the missionary." ₁₄ If the charge of puritanism points out the way in which anti-American diatribes could be internally contradictory, another common referent--the problem of the American melting pot--illustrates the same point. For just as French cultural critics were identifying the conformism, homogeneity, and dulling sameness of American society as a chilling metaphor for mass culture, they also looked with trepidation at the vast influx of foreigners into the United States, identifying racial heterodoxy as a serious peril to Western civilization. The cultural diversity of the United States, it seemed, portended a world of ethnic tension and strife--an image which took on added resonance at a time when France itself was experiencing an unprecedented wave of immigration--primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe. As David Strauss has observed, "The prospect that the United States as a nation might be unable to fuse its diverse racial elements into a new American race was profoundly disquieting for French travelers." ₁₅ American racism and the anti-immigration laws of the 1920s were frequently cited as examples of assimilation's evident failure, used at the same time to argue the comparative cosmopolitanism and tolerance of France.

Forged in a cauldron of cultural insecurity, these themes would form the basis for subsequent critiques of the United States--both of the left and of the right. ₁₆ One could of course elaborate them in far greater detail. But even this attenuated description serves to illustrate a number of important points about anti-Americanism as it took shape between the wars, and as it has manifested itself since. Preeminently cultural, the phenomenon was also quintessentially defensive, rising in response to a perceived threat to the French way of life. In the minds of French critics, America was the specter of the future, posing a direct challenge to French values and independence, either through a conscious design to "imperialise" the world or through the more passive--but equally pernicious--diffusion of its materialist culture. To what extent these fears, and other anti-American tirades, were grounded in social realities in the United States was--and continues to the present--to be a source of contention. What is beyond dispute, however, is that much of French commentary on the United States was and is shaped as much by internal French political and cultural concerns as by actual developments in the United States. As Michel Crozier has noted aptly, the United States has long played a special role in the social and political imagination of the French, providing a field upon which French critics may "project..their hopes and fears about the future of the world and the future of their own country." ₁₇ Marie-France Toinet seconds this judgement, noting that "debates over anti-Americanism are, in large part, at heart Franco-French debates--debates which are relatively autonomous with respect to American realities." ₁₈ Finally, Richard Kuisel, drawing on Benedict Anderson, emphasizes in his study of French anti-Americanism the way in which America has been used continually as a foil against which the French define themselves. ₁₉ In the context of the inter-war period, anti-American literature served as a way to mediate fears of France's declining economic and diplomatic strength, to vent right-wing anti-modernist concerns about the changing face of France, and to express left-wing anger at the ravages of capitalism and the dangers of capitalist imperialism. As we shall see, this tendency to use America as a mirror against which to view France, elucidating French attributes and characteristics against their American opposites, is one that continues to the present.

One last general point about French anti-Americanism should be made before proceeding further--a rather obvious, but necessary point--namely, that not all French men and women follow blindly the harangues of anti-American firebrands. Indeed, certain scholars have argued that anti-Americanism, both in the thirties and since, has been primarily a bête noir of the intellectual, a sentiment not shared in large part by the average Jean in the street. ₂₀ It is, of course, tremendously difficult to gauge general opinion for an issue so complex, and this study, like most others, will focus by default on the voices of those who do the talking--journalists, intellectuals, politicians, and other public figures, making general reflections on wider sentiment throughout the way. It is, to be sure, not without interest that a book such as Duhamel's virulent Scènes de la vie future went through over 150 editions in its first year of publication (193O). ₂₁ And France has known other periods in which the concerns of the journalist and intellectual have been shared by broad swaths of the populace. But it also must not be forgotten that the same France that devoured Duhamel's anti-American classic, also rushed to greet Charles Lindbergh's The Spirit of St. Louis in 1927 with barrier-breaking enthusiasm, deifying this American hero as an angel of the modern. Both before and since, France has produced innumerable defenders of America and the American way of life. And while this study will necessarily concentrate on America's detractors, it is essential to remember that alongside a peculiarly French antipathy for the United States lies a peculiarly French fascination with America. This love/hate duality gives a particular inflection to French anti-Americanism, distinguishing it from the anti-Americanisms of other countries. As Michel Crozier comments, paraphrasing a witticism used with regard to French feeling towards De Gaulle, "Every French citizen has been or will be one day successively pro- and anti-American." ₂₂

"GUERRE CULTURELLE:" GATT AND THE HOLLYWOOD MENACE

The October 14, 1993 edition of the popular French weekly news magazine, L'Express, pictured a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex, teeth barred, towering over a dwarfed Parisian landscape. The bold-faced headline warned: "Culture: The American Assault." A reference to the imminent release in France of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, the article raised the specter of an American media giant trampling its French competition under foot, and then devouring it whole. The "dinosaurs", Minister of Culture Jacques Toubon commented without irony after seeing a special preview of the film in September, "are a threat to the cultural identity of France." ₂₃

Though Spielberg's monsters, which upon their release in late October were playing to record-breaking audiences in more than a quarter (450) of France's 1800 theaters nationwide, served as perfect symbols of the brutal power of America's cultural establishment, they were seen merely as the shock troops of a more vast and formidable army. For France, at the time of the film's release, was entrenched in what Minister of Communications, Alain Carignon, termed "a cultural war"--a fight to the finish over the inclusion of the audio-visual sector in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), scheduled to be signed that December. ₂₄ Arguing that the products of culture--most notably, radio, television, and film emissions--should not be subject to the strict laws of the market, the French pressed for what they termed an "exception culturelle", a cultural exception to the free-trade principles enshrined in the Uruguay Round of the Gatt Accords. This, in effect, would allow France to maintain heavy subsidies to its film and television industries, as well as to continue quotas erected in the 1989 European Community directive, Television Without Frontiers, which mandated that at least 51% of all E.E.C televisual programming be of national or European origin. ₂₅ A major growth industry for the future, and the United States' second largest export earner after aeronautics, the televisual industry was thus no small exception. But the French remained adamant, claiming that the survival of their film industry as well as their very national culture were at stake. In the end, they were able to successfully repulse a powerful Hollywood lobby with close ties to the Clinton administration, retaining their quotas and subsidies intact, and allowing Prime Minister Edouard Balladur to proclaim triumphantly that "The European cultural identity has been saved." ₂₆ In the process, however, French politicians and media pundits galvanized the country behind what an insightful cover story in Le Point depicted as an "anti-American crusade". As the article noted with some chagrin, the crusade "reawakened mauvais souvenirs"-- "bad memories of a time when the Action Française, the Communist Party, and national populism joined their disparate voices in a mutual curse against the imperialism of American modernity." ₂₇

Indeed, the furor raised over the GATT controversy--and the arguments it produced--were by no means unprecedented. During at least two specific junctures in French history, simmering resentment over the threat of the cultural imperialism of Hollywood has come to a head in major international disputes. The first reached a climax in 1927-1928, when the French established a Cinema Commission charged with enforcing a quota system for American films, and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America responded by boycotting the French market. The second exploded in the aftermath of the signing of the Blum-Byrnes Accords (May 28, 1946), the pre-Marshall Plan treaty that absolved French lend-lease war debt and provided low-interest loans to help offset a post-war balance of payments crisis in return for the abolition of French trade restrictions. Free-trade, it was argued then, and in the 1920s as well, would lead to the demise of the French film industry, and thus to the annihilation of a major source of national sovereignty, the production of cultural images. ₂₈ In both cases, France was able to exact, in the end, concessions from the United States, which agreed to quotas in 1928 and 1948, but only after waging significant struggles.

There can be no doubt that in both instances, like that of GATT itself (see below), the French were able to back their exaggerated claims of American cultural imperialism with certain legitimate facts. In 1924, for example, a full 85% of all feature-length films shown in France were American-made. French filmmakers, by contrast, were unable to distribute more than a piddling number of their own productions in the huge American market. American companies, furthermore, owned roughly three-fourths of the best movie houses in France during the 1920s, and exercised a number of unfair trading practices, like forcing distributors to buy and promote numerous American titles in order to obtain blockbuster hits. Finally, American companies enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the movie equipment industry. And this in a country that could make pretensions, via the Lumierés brothers, to having invented film. Decimated by the war, the French movie industry sputtered before the onslaught of American films in the 20s, a situation not unlike that faced by the fledgling industry in the aftermath of the Second World War, when a huge back-log of American films, including such classics as Gone with the Wind and Citizen Kane, descended upon a disorganized industry (and eager public) with overwhelming force. ₂₉

Yet, if there was thus some justification for French concerns over the magnitude of Hollywood's market share and for the need to erect quotas, the militancy of French anti-American rhetoric was overblown, to say the least. Spearheaded by the far-right in the 1920s and the Communist Party in the 1946-48 dispute, both affairs nonetheless rallied supporters across the political divide. And both affairs, most interestingly, produced startlingly similar language. At root concern, of course, was the survival of the French film industry itself, at once an important source of jobs and a focal point of French cultural prestige. "Must we already look forward to the day," one critic begged with alarm during the 1920s, "when American sound films will spread over the world, submerge it, and drown national productions?" ₃₀ French nationalists in the 1940s posed the same question, painting grim scenes of the economic catastrophe that would be wrought by an un-protected market. ₃₁

But the film disputes entailed far more than merely matters economic. For to cultural nationalists in both periods, American films served as the "stealth bombers" of an insidious campaign to convert the world to American values. Charged with potent destructive force due to its mass appeal, the film created tastes and desires that would ultimately seek gratification in American consumer goods, while at the same time disseminating covert ideological messages that would spell the death of French sensibilities and tastes. As Jean Allary commented, symptomatically, in the 1920s:

Formerly the preachers of Cincinnati or Baltimore deluged the world with pious brochures; their more cheerful offspring, who pursue the same ends, inundate it with blond movie stars; whether as missionaries loaded with Bibles or producers well supplied with films, the Americans are equally devoted to spreading the American way of life. ₃₂

Marcel Braunschvig concurred, noting in 1931 that the "film is in the process of Americanizing the world"--a view, though in this case one of a far-right traditionalist of the inter-war period, that was equally at home in the rhetoric of the French Communist Party after the war. ₃₃ As Louis Jouvet commented then in protesting the impact of the Blum-Byrnes accords: "The change in taste [wrought by an influx of American films] would be irremediable and mortal [unless France acts accordingly]. Nurtured on the wine of Bordeaux, our stomachs would be forced to accustom themselves to Coca-Cola--a process that would spell the abdication of one's quality of Frenchness." ₃₄

Implicit in both these statements is the perennial theme that French culture and French film is by nature more sophisticated, more meaningful than its American counterparts, which, homogenized and processed, play to the most base instincts of the consumer. But equally evident is the more fundamental notion that control over the cultural images disseminated in film is a central aspect of national identity. To lose this control, it was argued, would be to cede an important share of national sovereignty to the behemoth across the seas. As David Strauss has commented, expressing the voice and fears of those who waged the anti-American film campaign of the 1920s, "If Europeans no longer had the power to interpret their tradition, they would cease to have an identity of their own." ₃₅ Such reasoning was second nature to the post-war opponents of Blum-Byrnes.

Like GATT, both these historical struggles were fought in the context of larger political negotiations. ₃₆ Like GATT, both were able to unite vastly divergent political groups in common cause against a common enemy. And again, like GATT, both earlier affairs resulted in relative victories for the French. But the most enduring similarity is that of political discourse--a fact acknowledged by at least some of the participants in the 1993 affair. As Minister of Culture, Alain Carignon, commented in a September 25, 1993 interview with Figaro Magazine, "this war has a plan and a history." ₃₇ And the noted French director Bertrand Tavernier observed, making reference to the long-standing dispute over who should be credited as the actual inventer of the cinema, Thomas Edison or the Lumiére; brothers, "The GATT wars are really a hundred years old." ₃₈

Whether acknowledged or not, the language used in the GATT affair bore striking resemblance to earlier anti-Ame culture and French film is by nature more sophisticated, more meaningfurican invective, spanning as in previous periods, the political divide. As L'Express commented, "We have refound the road of forgotten words--'American imperialism', 'résistance', 'union sacrée.' From the left to the extreme left, from the right to the extreme right, finally--consensus!" ₃₉ Gaullist Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon, made much the same point, noting that "the cultural politics of the left and the right are the same in France. Culture transcends political divisions here. It is part of the national consensus of our country." ₄₀ Toubon certainly drew no complaints from his predecessor, Socialist Jack Lang, who remarked that "On this subject, there is not a left or right in France. The new government has adopted the same policies as I've been defending for 10 years." ₄₁

United together in a "cultural front", both the right and the left attacked what they portrayed as an explicit effort by the American entertainment industry "to impose domination by any means." ₄₂ Driven solely by considerations of profit, Hollywood executives, French critics charged, were intent on destroying the only viable film industry left in Europe. "France," the noted actor Gerard Depardieu declared, "is the only country not devastated by the invasion of commercial American cinema." ₄₃ And were the GATT accords to extend to the televisual industry, France, too, would fall. As a group of French and European directors commented apocalyptically in an open letter in Le Monde, "there will be no more European industry left by the year 2000."

Although this group, like other French antagonists, claimed that it was "only desperately defending the tiny margin of freedom left to us...protecting European cinema against its complete annihilation", much more was waged in the struggle. ₄₄ To Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon, nothing less than the "survival of [French] culture", of "[the French] way of life" was at stake. Assuming the tones of his nationalist forbearers, Toubon stressed:

We must not let our souls be asphyxiated, our eyes blinded, our businesses enslaved. We want to breath freely--breathe the air that is ours, the air that has nourished the culture of the world, and that, tomorrow, is in danger of being lost to humanity.... Let us mobilize for this battle of survival. ₄₅

Across the political aisle, Socialist President Franç ois Mitterrand was saying much the same thing, noting in a speech given several days later touching on the GATT issue:

Let us be on guard. If the spirit of Europe is no longer menaced by the great totalitarian machines that we have known how to resist, it may be more insidiously threatened by new masters--economisme, mercantilism, the power of money, and to some extent, technology.... What is at issue is the cultural identity of nations, the right of each people to its own culture, the freedom to create and choose one's images.... A society that relinquishes to others its means of representation, is an enslaved society. ₄₆

Finally, in acknowledgment of an interviewer's observation that the dominant media power of the United States was "more effective than 100 divisions in conquering the world," Alain Carignon responded, "This poses, fundamentally, the problem of national sovereignty," adding that in the future the autonomy of nations would in large part be a function of the ability to produce images--a force more pressing, even, than independent military capability. ₄₇

All three of these men, responsible public officials in positions of great authority, hastened to add that their comments did not reflect a particular animus towards the United States. "This is not anti-Americanism," Toubon affirmed. Despite their disclaimers, however, it is difficult not to recognize in their military metaphors and language of domination and enslavement, the familiar themes of historical anti-Americanism. Other French critics were less subtle. The philosopher and academic Michel Serres commented, for example, that there was now more Anglo-American influence in Paris, "than German during the Occupation," comparing American cultural presence in France to Nazi aggression. ₄₈ Bertrand Tavernier, employing a different metaphor, suggested a parallel between American cultural imperialism in France and the "genocide" wrought against Native Americans. "We cannot allow the Americans", he stressed, "to treat us in the way they dealt with the redskins." ₄₉ In an October 20, 1993 open letter to Bill Clinton, Bertrand Delpech Poirot, writing for Le Monde, preferred a comparison to the weapons of the atomic age, likening the destructive power of American mass culture to that of the nuclear bomb. Nonetheless, Poirot predicted that just as "the Somalians had refused to accept the United States as the policeman of the planet, another underdeveloped people, the French, would refuse to allow their culture to be spoiled ["gattifié"] according to U.S. fancy." ₅₀

Compared to the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, to Nazis, and to the brutalizers of Native Americans, the contemporary United States and its Hollywood cultural establishment was receiving the full brunt of the imperialist charge. To some, American cultural conquest was simply part of a larger process of globalization--a process with unfortunate consequences, to be sure, but one not effected with explicit ill-will. Jacques Buob, writing in L'Express, for example, noted that "from North to South, stretching even to Japan...our children wear baseball hats, the youngest go to Euro-Disney, others crave Nikes, listen to rap, and gorge on Pizza while watching the Simpsons." Though acknowledging the obvious--that such trappings originate in the United States-- Buob argued that they are no longer strictly a function of an American way of life, but part of a "world culture" which has "ceased to be [strictly] American," having been adopted "everywhere." ₅₁ Others, however, saw more direct agency--and sinister motives--behind this "coca-colonization" of the world. The French producer, Marin Karmitz, for example, noted:

Of course the U.S. movie industry is a big business, but behind the industrial aspect, there is also an ideological one. Sound and pictures have always been used for propaganda, and the real battle at the moment is over who is going to be allowed to control the world's images, and so sell a certain life style, a certain culture, certain products and certain ideas. With the globalization of satellite and cable systems, that is what is at stake. ₅₂

Reversing the order, Alain Carignon, speaking on the threat to Eastern Europe of American cultural hegemony, remarked, "The Americans [understand that Eastern Europe will soon be a major market] and so want to accustom its population to their culture, and thus to their products. The image creates the need for certain types of products: McDonalds was preceded in France by American television series." ₅₃ In either case, however, whether through the explicit design of American businessmen and politicians, or through the more passive, but equally detrimental, process of Americanization, the end result is portrayed as the same: the stultifying homogenization of French, and indeed, world culture, the destruction of particularist sensibilities, and the loss of national sovereignty and identity. As the noted philosopher, Regis Debray, commented, "an American monoculture would inflict a sad future on the world, one in which the planet is converted to a global supermarket where people have to choose between the local ayatollah and CocaCola." ₅₄

Against this numbing standardization of the world, French participants in the GATT war posed frequently as the valiant defenders of freedom and choice, maintaining the greater pluralism of French society, and positioning themselves as the universalist defenders of potentially enslaved peoples throughout the globe. America might be content with its prefabricated way of life, they argued, but other nations had the "moral right" to be able to choose for themselves. What this self-congratulatory rhetoric tended to ignore, however, was the rather painful fact that like it or not, French consumers seem to prefer Hollywood productions to their own. Eight out of ten of the top grossing films in France in 1993 were of American origin, and it is hardly fair to attribute the popularity of such programs as "Baywatch" to the tyranny of American imperialism. ₅₅ As Stanley Kauffman noted in The New Republic, "No one holds pistols to the heads of French filmgoers...forcing them to attend Spielberg and Schwarzenegger pictures. Most people want them." ₅₆ Thus, when the French denigrate Hollywood films as "hamburger-like", readily prepared, and readily consumed, but of dubious merit, vaunting their own gourmet productions as more serious works of art, despite low attendance at the box office, one might ask to what degree this is merely high-brow posing, a refusal to acknowledge market realities and to act accordingly.

In the end, these issues are complex, and one can make valid arguments both for the need for special protection for art and culture and for the just workings of free-market mechanisms. But even if one is prepared to grant the French certain legitimate grievances in the GATT affair, it must be admitted that the overstated tendencies of French rhetoric were troubling. As the foregoing analysis should make clear, French participants in the GATT wars were speaking a charged language, one with direct parallels to earlier anti-American discourse in French history. Pitting their own "artistic" film industry against one concerned solely with gleaning profit, French critics, in turn, waged a war of culture, summoning the beast of American imperialism from the recent past. Devouring sovereign nations, and then washing them down with carbonated beverages, this pre-processed leviathan, left uninhibited, would convert the world to its own image, leaving conformity, materialism, and homogeneity in its wake. America the menace, it seemed, was again just that.

Such language should give one pause in avowing that French anti-Americanism is dead. It also reveals, quite plainly, the delicate state of French national identity--a topic that I will return to in the conclusion. For this is a language of fear, of uncertainty, of confusion. And whatever the satisfaction French men and women derived from their critics' favorable comparisons between French culture and that of the philistine other, this was surely outweighed by the negative effects of avoiding a more pressing issue: namely, undertaking a careful, and self-critical, examination of the deficiencies of France's own film-industry, posing the question of how it might become more globally competitive. As Le Point noted, it is "not normal that such a debate was not raised, adding that "a few precise and legitimate objections notwithstanding," the "anti-American crusade [of the GATT wars]...serve[d] to barricade us with our fears behind a wall of 'cultural exception', at the very moment when the internationalization of problems, of markets, and technologies is the order of the day." ₅₇ At a time when most critics were busy flagellating the American monster, such hard criticism was rare.

THE LOI TOUBON: CULTURAL PROTECTIONISM AND "THE DARK TIDE OF AMERENGLISH"

Although France could claim a victory in the GATT negotiations, it considered this merely a single battle in a larger war. "The enemy troops are sticking to their positions," French director Jean-Jacques Beineix commented. "They have not been able to launch their final assault, but they will." ₅₈ Conscious of the fact that the United States would continue to pursue efforts to break down France's cultural "Maginot Line", and that European Community support for its position, foot-dragging at best during the negotiations, could not be assured for the future, the French vowed to keep up the fight. As then Foreign Minister Alain Juppé commented on the very day of the signing of the accords, "We won satisfaction today, but we will have to be vigilant tomorrow. The United States will return to the charge." ₅₉ As if to underscore this continued trepidation, the French Senate approved a law several weeks later mandating that 40% of all French radio songs be of national origin.

Meanwhile, French cultural protectionists were busy opening up another front in this war for national survival, preparing legislation to outlaw the use of English words in France. As Prime Minister Balladur remarked during a visit to the Académie Française in February, "safe-guarding the language must be a political priority" both as a means to "stake out France's cultural singularity" and as a way to fight against "the uniformization of the planet." ₆₀ Putting words where his mouth was, the Prime Minister helped to shepherd through the National Assembly what came to be known, in tribute to its chief sponsor, as the "Loi Toubon". The law rendered the use of French "obligatory" in all public discourse--advertising, television, radio announcements, product descriptions, scientific colloquiums, and so forth--charging a government commission with the task of deciding upon new French words where no indigenous equivalents existed, and imposing fines of up to 50,000 for violation. ₆₁ And though the legislation was eventually struck down by the Constitutional Council, France's equivalent of the Supreme Court, the ill-fated law nonetheless generated a significant stir, once again amply dredging France's anti-American past.

To Americans, such an overt attempt to police the very language of its people "smack[ed]," as an article in the Washington Post commented, of "Orwell." ₆₂ While there may be some justice to this characterization, it is nonetheless important to understand the central place France has historically attributed to language as a bulwark of its national identity and as a force for ideological dissemination. For centuries, French panegyrists have waxed rhapsodic on the special role of their country's tongue as the living soul of the people, making the subject, as David C. Gordon comments, a national "obsession". ₆₃ If language is a component element of national identity of any society, it is doubly so for the French. Like the film disputes of the GATT wars, the protection of the French mother tongue has a long history--a history that both shaped and sheds light on the debates surrounding the loi Toubon.

One may trace French efforts to guard, purify, and promote its language well back into the past. For the purposes of this study, however, it was only towards the end of the 19th century that the defense of the French language assumed a negative tone, identifying foreign incursion as a threat to be checked, challenged, and repulsed. For indeed, from at least the latter half of the 17th century, when the great French classical authors basked in the rays of Louis XIVs expanding sun, until this point, French was on the ascendant. The language of court, of diplomacy, and of civilization, French was praised as a universal language, the language of humanity, boasting the unique attributes of "purity," "clarity", "cleanness," and "precision." ₆₄ With France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, however, the unification of Germany, and the growing strength of the Anglo-Saxon countries, the supremacy of French could no longer be expected as a matter of course. "Perhaps the first indication," David C. Gordon writes, "that the members of the French elite now felt that the French language needed to be defended and extended abroad through conscious effort--its supremacy no longer being self-sustaining and automatic--was the establishment of the Alliance Française in 1883." ₆₅ Through this organization, and through others such as the Mission Laique and a vast network of colonial schools, France pursued a policy of explicit language promotion, linking the mother tongue directly to France's mission civilisatrice, its effort to bring the "superior" values of the metropole to the "backward peoples" of Asia and Africa. Bound up with the struggle for empire of the new imperialism, this policy pitted the French language in direct competition with German, and most explicitly English.

From a numerical standpoint, the policy was undoubtedly successful. By the 1930s, the second largest empire in the world could claim possession of over 12 million square kilometers, including a population of 67, 341, 000 natives and 1, 471, 000 Europeans. Not all spoke French, of course, but the numbers themselves were still impressive. Nevertheless, certain French cultural critics detected cracks in the foundation, producing a slow trickle of works in the latter part of the 19th century that developed gradually through the first third of the twentieth century into a steady stream. The titles alone are revealing: Le crise du français (1909), Défense de la langue française (1913), Le français, langue morte? (1923), Le péril de la langue française (1925), Le massacre de la langue française (1930). ₆₆ As Jeffra Flaitz has shown, these works, and a host of others, described the state of the language in three principal ways, 1) bemoaning the declining prestige of both French and France on the international scene, while lamenting the gains of the English rival tongue; 2) protesting the corruption of the French language, its bastardization and pollution by English, and 3) decrying the threat of ideological colonization posed by the infiltration of foreign--again, chiefly English--words. ₆₇

Not all these works identified America alone as the sole menace to the French language. Many included England and the other Anglo-Saxon countries as well. With the steady rise of the United States to world prominence and the attendant decline of Britain, however, American English assumed a privileged place as a target for attack. The burgeoning anti-Americanism of the inter-war period fused quite happily with concern over the sanctity of the French language. Functional, utilitarian, crass, a derivative tongue lacking roots as well as beauty and grace, "Amerenglish" seemed the very embodiment of the culture it carried. Not only did it imperil the fluidity of French through its ever-increasing diffusion, but it bore the seeds of the American way of life, posing an ideological threat to French cultural identity.

This notion of language as a subtle instrument for conveying ideological message may seem odd, if not overtly paranoid. It is important to remember, however, that the French themselves have long considered--and used--their own language in precisely this way. During the Revolution, and after via Jules Ferry's national school system in the 19th century, French was employed quite self-consciously as a nation building tool, as a way of welding the incipient republic together, often by rigidly suppressing regional dialects and languages. ₆₈ Even more explicitly, French was seen as the principal weapon of the mission civilisatrice, a way of carrying French culture and values to the peoples of the colonies. Language was the vessel of the national genius, and it was only through it that one could imbibe the universal principles purportedly embodied in French culture itself. Thus, to conceive of language as an instrument of ideology, a means by which individuals' thoughts could be re-ordered and structured anew was a logical conclusion for many French cultural critics. In the wake of the Second World War, as the French empire disintegrated and American world presence increased dramatically, the critique of American English as a covert means for spreading the noxious influence of American culture was widespread. ₆₉ A host of books in the 1960s and 1970s leveled this charge. As the most famous, René Étiemble's vicious Parlez-vous franglais? (1964) asserted:

We do not lack our own truly French absurdities, shortcomings, and vices; let us content ourselves with them and cease to borrow, with the vocabulary of the Yanquis, the shortcomings, absurdities, and vices that this language announces. For as we adopt the Atlantic pidgin tongue, we bring with it the embryo of anti-semitism, virulent racism, sexual cant, devotion to the dollar, and scientific superstition. This, in turn, will accustom us to what pleases the Rockefeller dynasty à la United Fruit, to moral re-armament, to the John Birch Society. Let us shit on these dogs. ₇₀

The thousands of words flooding the French language, either whole or in curious compounds, what Étiemble termed "franglais," (eg. "choine gomme" for "chewing gum") brought with them, the Sorbonne professor affirmed, the pathologies of American society. Both the French language and the French people were being slowly "colonized" by the insidious incursions of the Atlantic pidgin. And lest the French government took efforts to resist this "yanqui imperialism",Étiemble and others feared, the once great language, and its culture, would be doomed.

In fact, since the war, French politicians have taken numerous steps to protect and to promote the mother tongue. ₇₁ But despite these measures, Anglicisms continue to dot French signs and advertisements in abundance, and the list of American terms incorporated into the French language (and French dictionaries) grows daily. Whether or not this constitutes, in turn, a threat to the national sovereignty of France is, of course, a disputable proposition. But this, in any case, was the point Jacques Toubon stressed in defending his proposed legislation. As he argued in a long editorial piece printed in Le Monde the day after he unveiled the law to the Council of Ministers (February 23, 1994):

[T]he usage of a foreign language is not innocent. Language serves, in many cases, as an instrument of domination, an agent of uniformity, a factor of social exclusion, and, when one employs it with condescension, a means of expressing snobbery and scorn. To refuse to create, to communicate in one's language, moreover, is to deprive oneself of one's own genius, of one's capacity to express creative thought. ₇₂

The Minister of culture, certainly not thinking in this case of Samuel Beckett, raised once again the challenge posed by America, speaking in the historically charged language of domination and uniformity. Citing the recent GATT affair, he noted that the "Anglo-Saxon countries" were continuing their "considerable efforts" to not only "conserve their positions" but to "conquer new territory" as well. And he defended his law as a response to this challenge, paraphrasing Churchill to the effect that "if the empires of tomorrow are those of the mind, then language will occupy the first place in this geo-political struggle." He finished by reiterating Balladur's call to make the "politics of the French language a national cause." ₇₃

Here were all the themes of the anti-American language discourse of the past: the question of the prestige of French in the international community and the necessity to fight for its advance, the threat of ideological colonization, and finally, the importance of the purity of la langue, implicit in the very bill itself, which sought to expunge some three thousand English terms from the French vocabulary, replacing them with suitably Gallic alternatives. A Higher Council of the French Language was created to assist in this purpose, inaugurated by Prime Minister Balladur with the words that defending the French tongue was "an act of faith in the future of our country,". ₇₄ At the same time, a separate delegation produced an official dictionary of many of the new French terms, offering such substitutes as "sable américain" for "cookie", "succès de librairie" for "bestseller", and "coussin gonflable de protection" for "airbag."

The three themes raised here were the most consistent with previous French writing on the threat to language. But Toubon raised others too--themes that possessed significant resonance with earlier anti-American caricatures and that had also surfaced at the time of GATT. Describing his law as a means of preserving "linguistic pluralism", Toubon expanded on this point in an interview with Los Angeles Times correspondent Scott Kraft. "We support the concept of linguistic pluralism," Toubon commented. "If, one day, all mankind spoke in one language, or rather in one international code, this would lead to a dramatic impoverishment of culture and cultural exchange, and, finally, it would mean a regression of humanity." ₇₅ Toubon, of course, was not referring to Esperanto. Un-named, American culture and American English were nonetheless clearly the culprits, threatening to impose their colorless uniformity on an iridescent world. Whereas France is thus depicted as the defender of tolerance, of pluralism, of choice, America, by contrast, is pictured as narrow, intolerant, and provincial--a critique that Toubon made more explicit elsewhere. Posing the rhetorical question of how one could deny Europeans the "right" to speak their own language, Toubon answered, in a defense of his language initiative published in the New York Times, that this would not be possible "unless one implicitly considers that the world's citizens have no right to wish to spend their lives using any language other than AngloAmerican." "Admittedly," he continued:

Americans may have some difficulty in understanding that a problem exists. Europeans would not assume that Americans, who are known for not being too open to foreign cultures and for pursuing their own cultural protectionism, understand foreign languages. Many Americans, on the contrary, often forget that one has the right in other countries not to understand their language and to speak another one. ₇₆

Although the article was otherwise conciliatory, this passage maintained that one could only deny the logic of Toubon's law if one believed that Anglo-American should be the sole language of the world. Citing American protest to his proposed initiative ("a tempest in a demitasse"), he clearly implied that this was the case.

But the threat to pluralism was not the only danger raised by Toubon. For on the other hand he noted that the influx of American words and a "cultural model made in the USA" imposed by television was fragmenting society. The "trend at the moment," he proffered as a concrete example:

...is to play street basketball, and this leads to children dressing like the American basketball players, walking like them and using the same vocabulary. This phenomena has always existed, but I think this may cause our society to break down into tribes. The ultimate risk would be that our Republic, our common thing, disappears. There is a lot at stake here. ₇₇

If language, as Toubon maintains, is not innocent, then one might point to his use of the word "tribe" in the context of funny walks and basketball with an accusing finger. Pluralism, it seems, has its limits. Capable of making the country one, and tearing it apart at the same time, America is truly a super power.

France, of course, is a sovereign nation. And indeed it does have the right to pass legislation regarding its language accordingly. As Toubon pointed out, several American states have drafted laws governing the use of English as well. But this fact does not prevent one from pointing out the absurdities of Toubon's justificatory rhetoric. The implication that French is somehow in danger of being overrun by an Amerenglish stampede is sensationalist, to the say the least, as ridiculous as claiming that the use of English words will fragment its society into tribes. There is, moreover, something particularly galling in listening to a law that would control the very words with which individuals choose to express themselves described as a defense of pluralism. Whereas one can hear "in a country not known for being too open to foreign cultures" the countless languages of the world spoken on the street corners of every large city, French thrives virtually uninhibited in France. And it should not be forgotten that the country that now so bravely defends pluralism against the American monolith has frequently been accused with more than a little justice of conducting its own linguistic imperialism--against the peoples of France, and against those of the former empires.

These ironies were not lost upon all those participating in the debate around the Loi Toubon. A veteran of the GATT wars, Bertrand Poirot, was quick to support Toubon's legislation, citing "Anglo-American infiltration" and noting that "from afar, the powerful of the planet dictate their law of language into the hearths [sic], the minds" of all weaker cultures. He speculated that in the long term "American pidgin" may become completely "obligatory in order to live 'modern'", reducing the languages of less developed countries to dialect (patois). Yet, he also realized that France was particularly well placed to realize that "the fate of languages follows that of arms and trade." "Ask the Africans if we are not just a little bit their 'Yanquis'" he noted, "and see if they don't dream of applying an 'exception culturelle' to us." ₇₈ Others were more to the point. Seeking, during the Senate debate, to ensure that the proposed Toubon law would not imperil the use of France's many regional languages, a small group of Senators led be Henry Goetschy (Bas-Rhin) worried that the legislation could be used as "a war machine against regional languages." Fighting every "step towards linguistic Jacobinism", they obtained, in the end, an amendment to the law ensuring that the regional languages and dialects (Breton, Basque, Catalan, German, Flemish, and Occitain) would be recognized as part of "French" for the purposes of the legislation. ₇₉

Still others pointed out that the government's frequent claim that today's youth was no longer speaking French correctly was an indictment of the education system, rather than a justification of the need for a cultural embargo. Advertising executives, scientific organizations publishing in English, and those in international business protested the increased costs they would face by virtue of the legislation. Some merely ridiculed the law as a silly diversion from more important matters, with hip young radio announcers taking to calling the Minister of Culture Monsieur "All-good" in direct English translation of his name. "Language, like French genius, comes and goes," the satirical weekly Le canard enchainé commented. "At the moment, neither is in good shape." ₈₀ The morning paper Infomatin noted that "All proposals designed to legislate on the use of language give off a stale smell." ₈₁ And the novelist Jean d'Ormesson dismissed the legislation summarily, describing it as "ridiculous". ₈₂

Toubon himself, when questioned about these and other critics of his law, responded that they were a "vocal minority" amongst a "silent majority." ₈₃ He was probably right. For with the exception of a small caucus within the Socialist party that abstained from the vote (and eventually petitioned to have the law reviewed by the Constitutional Council), the legislation sailed through both houses of the National Assembly. And opinion polls released after its passage placed popular support for the initiative at 90%. ₈₄ One author maintained that the relative silence of opponents was caused by "fear of being accused of acting as an agent of American imperialism." ₈₅ Whatever the case, it seems that large numbers agreed with Toubon's affirmation that "it is hard to imagine that anyone would find the French Government's proposals anything but eminently logical." ₈₆

Toubon, however, had not reckoned on one important body, the Constitutional Council. Taking up the legislation on July 29, 1994, at the prompting of the abstaining Socialist deputies, it ruled that Toubon's law contradicted the right to free speech enshrined in Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Going further, it undercut not only the legal basis behind the law, but the philosophical one as well, noting that "like any living language, the French language evolves by integrating into its vocabulary terms from diverse sources," granting to the people the ultimate sovereignty in making these choices. This, Le Monde commented, was a victory for "common sense." ₈₇ The government did not agree. Edouard Balladur noted testily that had the Constitutional Council existed in the 16th century, "it might well have overruled François I." ₈₈ And Toubon, in a long, rambling homily to the French language published in Le Monde, accused the Council of having misread his law. The Council's failure to uphold the legislation, he complained, was a blow to "the superiority of the values of culture over those of the market," and risked aggravating social tensions in France. ₈₉

Not all was lost, however. Deferring to an article of the French constitution added in 1992, which declares that "French is the language of the Republic", the Council admitted that the government could enforce Toubon's law in the public sector, obliging state-owned companies, television stations, and civil servants to abide by its restrictions. This part of the law has since gone into effect, and is presently protecting the nation against foreign incursion. But this is small conciliation to those who still see American English as a threat to the national integrity of France. Writing just this past summer, former Minister of Culture and present Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, Maurice Droun, warned of the continued challenge of "angloricain, Amerenglish", which "flows like a dark tide through the audiovisual media, the publicity and travel businesses, banks, laboratories and modern industries" spreading "vulgarity" and "pollution" in its wake. "The idiom of the dominant world power," triumphing because "it is the language of the dollar", Amerenglish poses not only a challenge to the French, Droun avowed, but to the English as well. "Lose your language," he enjoined, "and you lose your soul." ₉₀

In 1923, the French critic A. Thérive noted that "our linguistic consciousness is nothing less than our national consciousness"--a statement that, given the affair of the Loi Toubon, would appear to be as true today as ever. ₉₁ A window into the soul of France, the discussion surrounding the proposed law revealed, like the GATT affair before it, the continued resonance of anti-American themes of old, as well as the uncertain state of French national identity. For the exaggerated fears of American linguistic imperialism and the overwhelmingly negative character of the law's defense pointed as much to insecurity within the French nation as to the menace to France's security posed from without. As Edwy Plenel commented in Le Monde, the Toubon episode signalled the defensive response of a country unsure of itself, a country unable to come to terms with its present place in the world. Rather than vainly denouncing "the invasion of Anglo-Saxon barbarisms" in a diversionary witch hunt, Plenel continued, the country would do better to confront more pressing problems, asking why at a time of dynamic international change, it insists upon "closing itself off" from the world, rather than "opening to it". ₉₂ Few critics during the discussion Toubon law, however, seemed inclined to pursue this painfully direct line of inquiry.

"LES NOUVEAUX PURITAINS:" AMERICAN POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN FRENCH PERSPECTIVE

"Chirac: 'Le danger, c'est le politiquement correct'!" intoned the headline of an interview with then French presidential candidate, Jacques Chirac, featured in the January 12-18, 1995 issue of Le nouvel observateur. Seeking to portray himself in an anti-establishment light, Chirac criticized what he identified as a "media space" dominated by elites from which all those who do not share opinions of appropriate "political correctness" are marginalized. Avowing that a "fractured" France was on the verge of "crisis," Chirac warned that in such periods, "nothing is more dangerous than political correctness, for this leads to immobilism." ₉₃

The current President of France was not speaking of the movement that has animated American university campuses and editorial pages over the last several years. Nor did the ideological forces he associated with media bias--in this case, ironically, the conservative policies of his Gaullist presidential rival, Edouard Balladur--have anything to do with the usual cast of characters singled out for suspicion in America's culture wars--liberals, feminists, homosexuals, African Americans, and so forth. Yet his invocation of the term "political correctness" to refer to a numbing and uncritical orthodoxy, and the attendant dire warnings of societal breakdown are nonetheless revealing in this context. For since the inception of the American debate over political correctness, French commentators have followed the heated exchanges in the United States with rapt, if horrified, attention. Denouncing PC with a fury surpassing that of even the most unsympathetic American critics, French observers, moreover, have been virtually unanimous in their censure of this "ravaging virus". ₉₄ As the French sociologist, �ric Fassin, notes, "In contrast to the United States, there is not a debate over the PC controversy in France, but rather a universal denunciation." ₉₅ Marie-Christine Granjon, author of a recent analysis of French perceptions of American multiculturalism, concurs, noting that "the general tendency [in France] is towards a systematic condemnation [of PC]." "Discordant voices," she adds, "are rare." ₉₆ Synonymous with narrow-mindedness, dogmatic moralizing, and pressing conformity, the very term "politiquement correct", as Chirac's use illustrates, has become a staple of French public discourse.

Unlike the debates over GATT and the Loi Toubon, the French reaction to political correctness does not harken back to specific polemics in French history. Nonetheless, it draws amply on the stock of stereotypes and patterns examined throughout this paper. Reverberating in the popular as well as the academic press and generated as much by the left as by the right, this consensual response once again demonstrates the lingering resonance of anti-American themes in France.

Given that political correctness is often viewed in the United States as a Gallic export in the form of subversive French theory, there is something ironic in its rejection across the Atlantic. Received impressions notwithstanding, however, France itself harbors few PC sympathizers. French commentators themselves are quick to point out that such authors as Michel Foucault and Hélène Cicoux are read far more widely in America than in their native France, and indeed the French literary canon of "dead white males" remains relatively unassailed. Men and women still employ the universal "he" in public discourse without fear of reprisals, and French feminism, both theoretically and actively, is a muted affair by trans-Atlantic comparison. If it is true that the anti-racist organization, S.O.S Racisme, enjoyed a certain vogue in the mid-1980s employing multicultural language in the face of proposed anti-immigration legislation, its apogee has past, sharing the fate of the French left in general. In short, France has effectively quarantined itself from the ravaging American virus. Both within the French academy and without, le politiquement correct is first and foremost an American phenomenon--the basis for ridicule and disparagement.

Spawned by the excesses of sixties radicalism, the disease of political correctness, the French reader learns, has now thoroughly infected the very "soul of the country," the American University system. Here, purportedly, squads of "thought police" roam campus halls in legion, tyrannizing white males, and exercising a censorship over public discourse in a manner reminiscent of the most chilling pages of Orwell's 1984. To study French at Harvard, for example, is akin to living in Moscow under Brezhnev, according to Figaro Magazine correspondent, Victor Loupan, who himself did his literary training behind the iron curtain. Making full use of double entendre (the acronym PC summons the rigid orthodoxy and dogmatic insularity of the now moribund French Communist Party, the "PC"), Loupan laments that the great classics of French literature have been forsaken, replaced by radical, second-rate authors, chosen "according to ideological and political criteria." American meritocracy, he adds, has degenerated into a carping mediocrity, and the quality of education, both at Harvard and throughout the United States, has plummeted accordingly. To drive home the point, an accompanying cartoon pictures a beleaguered white male professor in stocks and chains, observed by two women who comment: "He wanted to teach us a reactionary author...white...anti-feminist...a certain Molière! And French as well!" ₉₇

But these "disturbing parallels between the West of today and the East of yesterday" reveal more than merely a crisis in the American university system. For the virus of political correctness is not confined to the incubating campus. Indeed, to numerous French commentators, such "ideological terrorism of the left", frequently characterized as "inverse McCarthyism", or a revival of the witch-hunting enthusiasm of the American puritanical tradition, is at once symptom and cause of the more general erosion of American society. ₉₈ To Philippe Raynaud, writing in Le Débat in 1992, the PC controversy raises major questions about "the future of America and perhaps even of democracy as a whole." In his, albeit sophisticated, analysis, the segmentation of contemporary America into multicultural interest groups derives in large part from the divorce between the will of popular sovereignty and the claims of "subjective rights". With the failure of big government initiatives such as the New Deal and the Great Society and the growing passivity of the electorate, those seeking redress for present and historical wrongs have turned to the affirmation of a priori rights, using creative jurisprudence--in the tradition of affirmative action--and petitions to the state to defend them. The resulting cacophony of minority voices, in Raynaud's view, represents a strange twist on Tocqueville. The tyranny of the majority has become the "tyranny of minorities," with an increasingly fragmented America inclined to reject the possibility of a common good. ₉₉

Marie-France Toinet, a self-described "Jacobin" writing in the same issue, is more sympathetic to the plight of oppressed minorities, yet she also views the PC debate in Tocquevillian terms. For her, the claims of multicultural militants today are the direct result of the inherent rigidity of American society. A conservative, Christian "tyranny of the majority", long successful in stifling minority voices, is now tasting the bitter fruits of its oppression. The sad irony, however, is that the very groups so long relegated to the periphery of American society have inherited the "clericalism" of their oppressors, and thus now proselytize with a dogmatism and inflexibility equally lamentable. The prospects for American democracy, Toinet suggests, are "grave." ₁₀₀

Numerous other French observers point to what is depicted as the "atomization" or "balkanization" of contemporary America with similar concern. Providing still another variant on the Tocqueville analysis, a July 1994 article in Le Point, "Moeurs grains de folie américains," whose leading photo shows a group of New York demonstrators demanding the end to "fat oppression," notes that the "raging cult of the victim" in the United States justifies Tocqueville's prediction that in societies not explicitly recognizing inequality of condition, citizens will take ever greater offense at even the slightest social differences. This "insatiable appetite for equality"--a potentially destructive craving permeating the body of American democracy--is thus seen as driving the manifold interest groups which at once further divide a fragmented America and at the same time threaten to level all before them, devouring the country in a "debauchery of right thinking and sentimentality." ₁₀₁ Once again, the implication is that American democracy is seriously in peril.

These are merely a few--representative--examples of the type of criticism that has deluged the French media since the inception of the PC debate in America. As the eminent scholar of modern France, Stanley Hoffman, notes, the French, in discussing PC, have propagated a number of "bizarre notions" about the United States. ₁₀₂ Such notions should by now be familiar. Once again, one hears the charge of conformism--ironically, in this case, to describe a movement that puts forward the right to difference as one of its central concerns. Whether characterizing an oppressive majority, against which the PC militants react, or those militants themselves, French critics point repeatedly to the will to uniformity that allegedly underlies American cultural and intellectual life, eradicating genuine individuality and forcing strays into the herd. The tyranny implicit in American society is thus mirrored perfectly in what is described as the "dictatorship of political correctness." ₁₀₃

Closely related to this charge is that of the puritanism of the denizens of the "clerical republic." America's new zealots have imbibed the lingering intolerance and fanaticism of old, and now preach with a rigidity worthy of Jonathan Edwards. Crying "date rape" in the face of innocent flirtation, enforcing anti-smoking legislation, and hunting witches in campus halls and government corridors, American feminists and other "nouveaux puritains" display the same moralizing instincts of their Christian forefathers, with equally lamentable consequences.

Finally, the phenomenon of political correctness is portrayed as a symptom of the implosion of democracy. Whatever the will to conformity and tyranny in American life, it is not enough to stave off, it seems, the fragmentation of American culture into a kaleidoscope of warring factions. For though PC advocates may be dictatorial in their tactics, the end result of their labors is anarchic, splintering America into a welter of hostile "tribes," ethnicities, and interest groups. Lacking a unifying culture capable of blending its manifold constituents into a healthy whole, America's melting pot has cracked, and now spills its unreduced contents onto the landscape of what a special issue in Le nouvel observateur described on its front cover as a "democracy gone mad." ₁₀₄

There are, to be sure, those in the United States who share similar perspectives. And indeed it must be granted that the excesses of the advocates of the values associated with political correctness provide ample material for enterprising French journalists eager to sell a story. Yet one needn't deny the justice of some of the French criticism to recognize in these apocalyptic suggestions of the end of American democracy and macabre portrayals of an Orwellian world incarnate a good deal of nervous--and telling--exaggeration. To regard the French response to political correctness as merely the sign of a healthy skepticism, in other words, would be to miss the way in which this commentary serves, like the discussions surrounding the GATT affair and the Loi Toubon, as a means of articulating fears about France. Thus, it is not difficult to see in the hostile reaction to multiculturalism and the anxious portrayals of American "balkanization" a concern with France's own delicate polity, increasingly "threatened" by waves of North African immigrants, many of whom are resistant to outright cultural assimilation. By characterizing the United States as an oppressively conformist country, unyielding to the vocal demands of its constituent ethnic groups, French commentators at once implicitly present France as a more open, accepting culture, in this way dispelling fears that it too will experience the problems associated with multiculturalism, while at the same time stressing the integrity and importance of French culture itself. When juxtaposed with the contrasting specter of the tribalism and disintegration of contemporary America, a unifying French culture in the Jacobin and Third-Republic traditions, through which all are putatively accepted as citizens provided they agree to a certain definition of "Frenchness", is reaffirmed. Such argumentation further validates efforts to protect French culture and the French language from centripetal and corrupting forces.

Filtered through the lens of anti-American themes of the past, the rhetoric in all three of the examples examined in the course of this article enjoys a long historical pedigree. Its particular inflections, however, are very much the product of contemporary circumstances. It is time, now, to probe this contention in greater detail, asking what these echoes of a recent past--in all three cases--tell us about the France of the present, examining the purposes that the lingering anti-Americanism of old serves today.

CONCLUSION: ANTI-AMERICANISM AND FRENCH NATIONAL IDENTITY

The 1994-95 French presidential elections uncovered a deep substratum of national anxiety. The victorious candidate, Jacques Chirac, spoke throughout his campaign of crisis, reiterating the gloomy prognosis that France was undergoing a social breakdown--a crise sociale--linked to long-term unemployment, the stratification of rich and poor, the instability and impoverishment of the suburbs, urban violence, and ethnic tension. "The crisis of our suburbs," Chirac commented characteristically in a speech delivered in Lyon in mid-December, "is the reflection of the general crisis that is spreading over our society--a social crisis, a crisis of civilisation, a crisis of conscience." ₁₀₅ Candidates at the political extremes also invoked this rhetoric, and their dramatic success in the first round of voting confirmed what national surveys and opinion polls had already revealed: large numbers of French citizens were profoundly concerned about the present--and future--state of their country. ₁₀₆

The causes of this anxiety are many. Structural unemployment, the globalization of markets and technology, the need to reduce a bloated public sector, slash budget deficits, and streamline inefficient businesses, has highlighted the necessity of carrying out extensive changes in the French economy--changes that may well be for the better in the long run, but that, in the short term, increase worker insecurity and disrupt established patterns of daily life. At the same time, the influx of immigrants from North Africa and other parts of the world has strained ethnic tensions (dramatically heightened by the recent wave of Algerian terrorist bombings), while an increase in urban crime, ghetto-ization, homelessness, drug use, and other problems long familiar to the United States have caught up with a France relatively immune to these phenomenon until fairly recently. Finally, the acceleration towards European Union, only narrowly accepted in the 1992 referendum, poses the general question of France's position in the world. Many, to be sure, see the EU as a vehicle for enhancing French international and economic influence, but there are those who fear that the historically independent nation will be subsumed by a dominant Germany or stifled by an inflexible bureaucracy unresponsive to particular French needs. ₁₀₇

All of these dynamics, inducing change and dislocation, throw into relief the question of France's place in an evolving world, forcing both French leaders and the populace to define themselves and their country in response. The status of French identity, in short, is very much a salient concern, a fact reflected clearly in all three of the cases investigated in this paper. In the debates surrounding the GATT treaty and the Loi Toubon this was abundantly apparent, as French critics inveighed against the threat posed by American mass culture and language, arguing that the French way of life was perilously at stake. In the case of French criticism of American political correctness, the menace to French national identity was less explicit; few French observers, that is, portrayed PC as an export virus endangering French culture directly. But if France thus seemed effectively quarantined from political correctness itself, the French commentary surrounding this phenomenon nonetheless betrayed an implicit, internal preoccupation with its symptoms and causes--ethnic strife, inequality, dislocation, and social fracture. The alarmed portrayals of the implosion of American democracy and the unanimous castigation of multiculturalism revealed, in other words, the displacement of concerns about France. By decrying political correctness with such concerted exaggeration, French critics engaged in a practice they have indulged frequently over the course of the century--projecting their own anxieties across the Atlantic. A 1994 cover story in Le nouvel observateur, in fact, drew this connection explicitly, picturing smoking cars before an incendiary urban landscape--the aftermath of a French riot--asking of the future, "Tomorrow, America?" And although the article conceded that France had not yet arrived at "American extremes," it did note that it was already "well on the road", citing a rise in urban violence, gang culture, ghettos, and resistance to ethnic integration as proof. ₁₀₈ The question mark of the title page highlighted perfectly what in fact has animated so much of the French commentary examined in this paper--fear of the future, for which America continues to serve as a disturbing image.

All three of these case studies, then, reveal the delicate state of French national identity. They also demonstrate the way in which French critics continue to use the United States as a mirror against which to view France itself, defining, gauging, and buttressing French national definitions accordingly. Projecting their concerns and anxieties onto the "imagined community" of the United States, French commentators in turn see their reflections there as well. Thus, in the rhetoric surrounding the GATT affair, the Loi Toubon, and American political correctness a series of marked contrasts--mirror opposites--emerges quite distinctly. Whereas America is a conformist and homogenous country, seeking to force its values and ideals on dissidents at home and abroad, France is pictured as the defender of pluralism, tolerance, and the right to difference. Whereas a philistine America is driven by materialist concerns, placing the dollar before all else, France reveres the sacred value of art and culture. Whereas America is narrowly provincial and puritan, France is cosmopolitan. Riven by cultural fragmentation, the United States pays the price of both intolerance and the excesses of minority demands. France, by contrast, presents the strengths of Gallic liberty chastened by consolidating unity and tradition. Although as with many stereotypes, there are no doubt elements of truth to some of these cultural appraisals, their relationship to complex sociological realities, on the whole, is casual at best. For just as the reflections of the United States are contorted through the lens of historical anti-Americanism, the French self-conceptions represent idealized images--images that distort as much as they enlighten, redirecting painful self-examination through rose-colored windows.

Born of anxiety and social insecurity, the anti-American rhetoric examined in this paper represents a response to change and dislocation. In each of the three cases, French critics and officials drew on highly patterned modes of analysis to explain contemporary issues, responding to perceived threats to French national identity in a type of cultural reflex that is itself, highly patterned. These anti-American outbursts summoned echoes of a recent past. But while it is safe to say that anti-Americanism is not dead in France, and will likely rear its head again in various guises, one should not over-exaggerate its strength. When revelations of American economic espionage orchestrated by the CIA were leaked to the French press during the 1994-1995 presidential campaign, Minster of the Interior, Charles Pasqua, the likely source of the leak, attempted to convert the issue into political capital, raising the hydra of American imperialism. But the French people read this move for what it was--a blatant effort to divert the public eye from critical attention then focussed on a government scandal. What, thirty years ago, could well have served as a perfectly scripted opportunity to inveigh against Yanqui machinations thus resulted, as one journal commented, in a "boomerang effect," drawing fire on Pasqua himself for this transparent attempt to manipulate the public. As for the American espionage itself, most French commentators noted candidly that France had long engaged in the same sort of activity in the United States. ₁₀₉

Such episodes point out the limits of anti-Americanism in a contemporary context. For much of the century, anti-American invective was sustained by the far right and the far left, and although these forces have by no means died in France, their scope has been significantly reduced. When politicians and commentators speak the language of anti-Americanism today, they do so, in large part, without the support of ideologies innately hostile to American democracy and capitalism. This limits the appeal of demagogic language as well as its sustainability. The Pasqua episode is a case in point.

One hopes that the French will react similarly in the future, looking critically at the United States when national interests inevitably conflict, but in a manner shorn of the distorting lenses of the past. In the process, France may be able see itself more clearly too. Yet, as this paper has pointed out, longstanding cultural assumptions die hard. At the very time that the French public was rejecting Pasqua's deal of the anti-American card, numerous newspapers were depicting the fall of the dollar on world currency markets as "American imperialism." ₁₁₀ Even more recently, the fiery speaker of the National Assembly, Philippe Séguin, described, in a front page interview in Le Figaro, world condemnation of French nuclear testing in the Pacific as the result of an "Anglo-Saxon plot" to discredit France. ₁₁₁ Until France comes to terms with its place in a changing world--arriving at acceptable and realistic appraisals of its national identity--such philippics will likely continue to dot French public discourse. And knowing the French, probably thereafter as well.

Note 1: Irwin M. Wall, "From Anti-Americanism to Francophobia: The Saga of French and American Intellectuals," French Historical Studies 18, no. 4 (Fall, 1994): 1083. Interestingly, Wall cautions at the end of the article against the rise of anti-French feeling in the American academy. Back.

Note 2: The title of the English volume of collected essays, L'Amérique dans les têtes: Un siècle de fascinations et d'aversions (Paris, 1986), edited by Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik, and Marie-France Toinet is indicative of this consensus: The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism: A Century of French Perception, Trans., Gerald Turner (London, 1990). As Ezra N. Suleiman comments in that volume, "There is little doubt that the image of the United States in France has substantially changed over the last few years" (p. 108). Back.

Note 3: Richard F. Kuisel,Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, 1993). Back.

Note 4: See, most notably, Charles W. Brooks, America in France's Hopes and Fears, 1880-1920, 2 Vols. (New York, 1987); Christine Faure and Tom Bishop, eds., L'Amérique des français (Paris, 1992); Kuisel, Seducing the French; Denis Lacorne, et. al., eds., Rise and Fall; Jean-Philippe Mathy, Extreme-Occident: French Intellectuals and America (Chicago, 1993); and David Strauss, Menace in the West: The Rise of French Anti-Americanism in Modern Times (Westport, CT, 1978). Back.

Note 5: Marie-France Toinet, "Does Anti-Americanism Exist?," in Lacorne, et. al., eds.,Rise and Fall, p. 219. Back.

Note 6: Ibid. Toinet points out, citing William Safire, that the word "Americanism" was first popularized in 1909 by Teddy Roosevelt who used the term to signify "courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and strength--the virtues that made America." For other reflections on the definitional problems of "anti-Americanism," see Kuisel, Seducing the French, pp. 7-8. Back.

Note 7: Philippe Roger, "La guerre de Cents Ans. Aux sources de l'anti-américanisme français," in Faure and Bishop, eds., L'Amérique, p. 185. This stress on the cultural nature of anti-Americanism is not to imply that economic or foreign policy concerns are irrelevant. Clearly, much of left-wing anti-Americanism in France has been closely related to a critique of capitalism, and the Gaullist variety was often most strident in discussing international affairs. But as should become evident in course of this essay, anti-American critiques of both these varieties are generally rooted in deeper, more fundamental criticisms of America at large--criticisms with a significant history, shape, and pattern. Back.

Note 8: For 18th-century French perceptions of the United States see Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West. A History of the French Image in American Society to 1815 (Princeton, 1957); Peter P. Hill, French Perceptions of the Early American Republic, 1783-1793 (Philadelphia, 1988) and Michele R. Morris, ed., Images of America in Revolutionary France (Washington, DC, 1990). Useful commentary on the 19th century may be found in Brooks, America and Jacques Portes, Une fascination réticente: Les Etats-Unis dans l'opinion française, 1870-1914 (Nancy, 1990). On the importance of the inter-war period in the crystallization of anti-Americanism, see Strauss, Menace; Roger, "La guerre", p. 184; and Kuisel, Seducing the French, pp. 1-2. Back.

Note 9: The reference, of course, is to Valéry's two famous essays of 1919, entitled "La crise de l'esprit." Back.

Note.10: In the pages that follow, I draw heavily on David Strauss' account in Menace in the West. Back.

Note 11: See Strauss, Menace, Chapter 11, "The Second Industrial Revolution: The Assembly Line and Mass Society," pp. 175-186. Back. Strauss, Menace, p. 171. On French views of American racial conflict, see Chapter 10, "The Racial Conflict: Anglo-Saxons Versus Foreigners," pp. 157-174.

Note 12: Cited in Strauss, Menace, p.181 Back.

Note 13: Cited in ibid., p. 189. Back.

Note 14: Cited in ibid., p. 54. Back.

Note 15: Strauss,Menance p.171. On French views of American racial conflict, see Chapter 10, "The Racial Conflict: Anglo-Saxons Versus Foreigners." pp.157-174 Back.

Note 16: Kuisel, Seducing the French, p.13; Roger, "La Guerre," p. 184. Back.

Note 17: Michel Crozier, "Remarques sur l'antiaméricanisme des Français," in Faure and Bishop, eds., L'Amérique, p. 191. Back.

Note 18: Toinet, "Quelques considérations sur l'antiaméricanisme," in Faure and Bishop, eds., L'Amérique, pp. 221-222. Back.

Note 19: Kuisel, Seducing the French, p. 6; Back.

Note 20: See, for example, Jacques Rupnik and Muriel Humbertjean, "Images of the United States in Public Opinion," and Ezra N. Suleiman, "Anti-Americanism and the Elite," in Lacorne, et. al., eds., Rise and Fall, pp. 79-97 and pp. 108-116 respectively. Back.

Note 21: Pascal Ory, "From Baudelaire to Duhamel: An Unlikely Antipathy," in Lacorne, et. al., eds., Rise and Fall, p. 49. Back.

Note 22: Crozier, "Remarques," p. 192. Back.

Note 23: Cited in "La guerre des images," Le Point, September 18, 1993, p. 32. Back.

Note 24: Cited in "Sur les programmes français, la grande menace," Figaro Magazine, September 15, 1993, p. 21. Back.

Note 25: France possesses even tighter restrictions than those laid down by the general EEC law, requiring 60% of its television programming to be of European origin, a full 40% of which must be French. By contrast, a loophole in the "Television Without Frontiers" directive, specifying that the European quotas need only be enforced "where practicable" allows numerous countries to circumvent them. France has long pushed for the eradication of this clause--to this point, without success--against the opposition of other member states, notably Great Britain, Holland, and Germany. Back.

Note 26: Cited in Scott Kraft, "In French Parliament, A Resounding 'Oui' for Accord," The Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1993. Back.

Note 27: Pierre Billard, "Les vieux démons français," Le Point, September 18, 1993, p. 30. Back.

Note 28: On the French-U.S. film wars of the 1920s, see David Strauss, "The Rise of AntiAmericanism in France: French Intellectuals and the American Film Industry, 1927-1932," The Journal of Popular Culture X, no. 4 (Spring, 1977): 752-758. On the struggle over the Blum-Byrne accords, see Irwin Wall, The U.S. and the Making of Post-War France, 1945-1954 (New York, 1991), pp. 49-63, 113-127; and Jacques Portes, "Les origines de la légende noire des accords Blum-Byrnes sur le cinéma, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine XXXIII (April-June, 1986): 314-329. Back.

Note 29: Strauss, "Rise", p. 754, and Portes, "Origines", p. 323. Portes argues against the long-held "black legend" in France that French negotiators sold-out to Hollywood-based American pressure at the bargaining table of the Blum-Byrnes Accords. He shows, rather, that the film issue was given relatively little notice during the actual negotiations themselves, and was only drummed up after the fact, making a persuasive case that French critics, led by the PCF, in large part fabricated this particular myth of Hollywood's cultural imperialism. Nonetheless, the "black legend" has shown remarkable staying power, emerging once again, as Irwin Wall notes, during the Gatt controversy. See Wall, "From Anti-Americanism to Francophobia", p. 1088, note #9. Back.

Note 30: Cited in Strauss, "Rise," p. 756. Back.

Note 31: Portes, "Origines", p. 321. Back.

Note 32: Cited in Strauss, "Rise," p. 756. Back.

Note 33: Ibid., p. 752. Back.

Note 34: Cited in Portes, "Origines", p. 321. Back.

Note 35: Strauss, "Rise," p. 757. Back.

Note 36: As Strauss points out, the 1927-28 conflict was waged against the background of French anger at the United States over what were considered to be the onerous terms of the 1926 war-debt agreement as well as U.S. unwillingness to guarantee France against German attack. The 1946-48 dispute took place in the context of debate over U.S. terms for loans and assistance to re-build France in the aftermath of the war. Back.

Note 37: "Sur les programmes français, la grande menace," Figaro Magazine, September 15, 1993, p. 21. Back.

Note 38: Cited in Roger Cohen, "Out There: Paris; Barbarians at the Box Office," The New York Times, July 11, 1993. Back.

Note 39: Jacques Buob, "Culture l'assaut améicaine," L'Express, October 14, p. 31. Back.

Note 40: Cited in John Rockwell,"Making A Mark On French Culture," The New York Times, November 8, 1993. Back.

Note 41: Cited in "Lang Threatens Art Veto on GATT," The Washington Post, July 22, 1993. Back.

Note 42: Cited in Roger Cohen, "Aux Armes! France Rises to Battle Sly and T. Rex," The New York Times, January 2, 1994. Back.

Note 43: Cited in Roger Cohen, "Out There: Paris; Barbarians at the Box Offices," The New York Times, July 11, 1993. Back.

Note 44: Cited in Bernard Weinraub, "Directors Battle over GATT's Final Cut and Print," The New York Times, December 12, 1993. Back.

Note 45: Jacques Toubon, "GATT et culture: Laisser respirer nos âmes!", Le Monde, October 1, 1993. Back.

Note 46: Cited in Alain Rollat, "L'Elysée dans la bataille de l'exception culturelle', Le Monde, October 11, 1993. Back.

Note 47: "Sur les programmes français, la grande menace," Figaro Magazine, September 25, 1993, p. 22. Back.

Note 48: Cited in Bertrand Le Gendre, "La culture, valeur marchande," Le Monde, November 22, 1993. Back.

Note 49: Cited in William Echikson, "'Sacre Bleu!' American Dinosaurs," Fortune, November 29, 1993, p. 16. Back.

Note 50: Bertrand Delpech Poirot, "Don Quichotte et les dinosaures," Le Monde, October 20, 1993. Back.

Note 51: Buob, "Culture", p. 34. a href="#txt51"> Back.

Note 52: Cited in Cohen, "Aux Armes!" France Rallies to Battle Sly and T. Rex," The New York Times, January 2, 1995. Back.

Note 53: "Sur les programmes français, la grand menace," Figaro Magazine, September 25, 1993, p. 21. Back.

Note 54: Cited in Roger Cohen, "Aux Armes! France rises to Battle Sly and T. Rex," The New York Times, January 2, 1994. Back.

Note 55: Scott Kraft, "Jean-Jacques Beineix: Defending the French Film Industry Against a Global U.S. Movie Market," Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1994. On the popularity of "Baywatch," see "Viewing Figures," The Economist, March 18, 1995, p. 38. Back.

Note 56: Stanley Kauffman, "Truth and Consequences: French Trade Protectionism," The New Republic, November 22, 1993, p. 26. Back.

Note 57: Pierre Billard, "Les vieux démons français," Le Point, September 18, 1993, p. 30. Back.

Note 58: Cited in Alan Riding, "The World Trade Agreement: The French Strategy," The New York Times, December 15, 1993. Back.

Note 59: Ibid. Back.

Note 60: Cited in Jean-Pierre Peroncel, "Edouard Balladur re�u quai Conti de l'usage du français..." Le Monde, February 14, 1994. Back.

Note 61: The relevant clause of the law read: "The recourse to any foreign term, or to any foreign expression, is prohibited when there exists a French expression or a term with the same sense." Back.

Note 62: Sharon Waxman, "Unspeakable Truths for the French," The Washington Post, June 28, 1994. Back.

Note 63: David C. Gordon, The French Language and National Identity (1930-1975) (The Hague, 1978), p. 32. Back.

Note 64: The classic statement of French's universal role is Antoine Rivarol's Discours sur l'universalité de la langue française (Paris, 1784). Back.

Note 65: Gordon, French Language, p. 37. Back.

Note 66: These and other titles are listed in Jeffra Flaitz, The Ideology of English: French Perceptions of English as a World Language (Berlin, 1988), p. 104. Back.

Note 67: Ibid., pp. 103-110. Back.

Note 68: On the Revolution's aggressive language policy and its historical underpinnings, see David A. Bell, "Lingua Populi, Lingua Dei: Language, Religion, and the Origins of French Revolutionary Nationalism," The American Historical Review 100, no. 5 (December, 1995): 1403-1437. Back.

Note 69: It cannot be denied, of course, that there was some truth to this charge. During the Cold War, U.S. agencies such as A.I.D., the Peace Corps, and the Department of Defense spent millions of dollars in promoting English throughout the world. Back.

Note 70: René Étiemble, Parlez-vous franglais?, nouvelle édition(Paris, 1980), p. 323. Back.

Note 71: General De Gaulle pursued a particularly aggressive language policy, establishing in 1966 the Haut Comité pour la Défense et l'Expansion de la Langue França;aise. In 1975, under the presidency of Giscard d'Estaing, the National Assembly passed the so-called Bas Law (after its sponsor, Pierre Bas), which outlawed the use of English in public discourse where a French substitute could be found. Lacking enforcement provisions, it was largely ignored. Back.

Note 72: Jacques Toubon, "L'Esprit des langues," Le Monde, February 24, 1994. Back.

Note 73: Ibid., p. 10. Back.

Note 74: Cited in Marlise Simons, "Ban English? The French Bicker on Barricades," The New York Times, March 15, 1994. Back.

Note 75: Scott Kraft, "Interview--Jacques Toubon; Defending the French Language Against All Interlopers," The Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1994. Back.

Note 76: Jacques Toubon, "Tempest in a Demitasse," The New York Times, April 4, 1994. Back.

Note 77: Scott Kraft, "Interview--Jacques Toubon; Defending the French Language Against All Interlopers,"The Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1994. Back.

Note 78: Bertrand Delpech Poirot, "Après l'adoption de la loi Toubon en premiere lecture au sénat: défense et illustration du français," Le Monde, April 18, 1994. Back.

Note 79: Les sénateurs veulent que la protection du français ne pénalise pas les langues régionales," Le Monde, April 16, 1994. Strongest support for the bill, both in the Senate and the National Assembly, came from the majority RPR and the PCF. Back.

Note 80: Cited in Marlise Simons, "Ban English? The French Bicker on Barricades," The New York Times, March 15, 1994. Back.

Note 81: Ibid. Back.

Note 82: Ibid. Back.

Note 83: Scott Kraft, "Interview--Jacques Toubon; Defending the French Language Against All Interlopers," The Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1994. Back.

Note 84: Jacques Toubon, "La loi de tous," Le Monde, August 4, 1994. Back.

Note 85: Thierry Brehier, "Le Conseil constitutionnel et la loi Toubon, Le Monde, August 1, 1994. Back.

Note 86: Jacques Toubon, "Tempest in a Demitasse," The New York Times, April 4, 1994. Back.

Note 87: "Le Conseil constitutionnel refuse à l'Etat le droit d'imposer un français codifié," Le Monde, July 31-August 1, 1994. Back.

Note 88: Cited in Alain Riding, "Mr. 'All-Good of France' Battling English, Meets Defeat," The New York Times, August 7, 1994. Back.

Note 89: Jacques Toubon, "La Langue de tous," Le Monde, August 4, 1994. Back.

Note 90: Maurice Druon, "Watch your language, mes amis!", The Sunday Times, August 6, 1995. Back.

Note 91: Cited in Flaitz, Ideology, p. 103. Back.

Note 92: Edwy Plenel, "Langue vivante, puissance défunte--défensif, le projet de loi sur l'emploi du français exprime la nostalgie d'une gloire perdue," Le Monde, May 4, 1994. Back.

Note 93: "Chirac: 'Le danger, c'est le politiquement correct'!", Le nouvel observateur, January 12-18, 1995, pp. 26-28. Back.

Note 94: Victor Loupan, "Cette drole de France--enquête sur les campus américains", Le Figaro Magazine, April 16, 1994, pp. 10-18. Back.

Note 95: �ric Fassin, "Political Correctness" en version originale et en version française: Un malentendu révélateur," Vingtieme Siècle 43 (July-September, 1994): 33. Back.

Note 96: Marie-Christine Granjon, "Le regard en biais. Attitudes françaises et multiculturalisme américain (1990-1993)," Vingtième Siècle 43 (July-September, 1994): 18. Since the completion of this article, several other "discordant voices" have emerged to challenge the dominant French caricature of political correctness. See, for example, the special issue of Esprit (June, 1995), "Le Specter du multiculturalisme américain" and Le nouvel observateur, "Contre-enqu&eccirc;te sur le politiquement correct", April 13-19, 1995, pp. 4-8. Back.

Note 97: Victor Loupan, "Cette drole de France--enquête sur les campus américans", Figaro Magazine, April 16, 1994, pp. 10-18. Jean-François Revel, writing in Le Point in 1993, likened the American university to a concentration camp--a "campus de concentration." ("États-Unis: universités, la tentation minoritaire," Le Point, March 20-26, 1993, pp. 60-61). Back.

Note 98: See, for example, Dominique Nora, "Les nouveaux maîtres censeurs," Le nouvel observateur, August 29-September 4, 1991, pp. 48-50; Roger Lewin, "Universités américaines; la chasse aux sorcières, La Recherche, April, 1992; and Bruno Gosset, "Le mouvement `politically correct' ou la dictature des bien-pensants," and "Le maccarthysme revient par la gauche," Le Quotidien de Paris, June 3, 1992. Back.

Note 99: Philippe Raynaud, "De la tyrannie de la majorité à la tyrannie des minorités," Le Débat 69 (March-April, 1992): 50-59. Back.

Note 100: Marie-France Toinet, "Une république cléricale," Le Débat 69 (March-April, 1992): 60-67. Back.

Note 101: Sophie Coignard, "Moeurs grains de folie américains," Le Point, July 16, 1994, pp. 54-60. Back.

Note 102: To the magazine's credit, a dissenting interview with Professor Hoffman was printed in the above-cited issue of Le Point (July 16, 1994). Back.

Note 103: François Furet, "Amérique: Une démocratie folle," Le nouvel observateur, December 3-9, 1994, p. 5. Back.

Note 104: "Special Amérique: Une démocratie devenue folle," Le nouvel observateur, November 3-9, 1994. Back.

Note 105: Cited in Philippe Flamand et Eric Mandonnet, "Ce que proposent le parti socialiste et Jacques Chirac, La Tribune, February 8, 1995, p. 2. Back.

Note 106: Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose far-right Front national consistently evoked the specter of crisis, placing the blame, however, on corrupt politicians and third-world immigrants, polled a record high 15+ percent in the first round of the elections. Collectively, Robert Hue's Communist Party and the Trotskyite faction led by Arlette Laguiller took close to 14% of the vote, once again based in large measure on rhetoric decrying the ravages of the social situation and the paralysis of government. Back.

Note 107: These fears are expressed most forcefully by far-right politicians such as Le Pen and Philippe Villier, and by the Communist Party. Back.

Note 108: Le nouvel observateur,November 24-30, 1994. The acclaimed French film "La Haine" (hatred), released in the Spring of 1995, focussed on the events surrounding a riot in the banlieu, dramatizing the fear of racially and economically motivated social fracture. Back.

Note 109: See, for example, "Espions américans autres révélations," Le Point, March 4, 1995, pp. 56-59. Back.

Note 110: See, for example, "Dollar: Impérialisme monétaire," Le Figaro, April 7. 1995. Back.

Note 111: "Essais nucléaires: Séguin dénonce un complot anti-français," Le Figaro, August 3, 1995. Back.