Description
Book SynopsisMadame de Pompadour''s famous quip, ''Apr_s nous, le deluge,'' serves as fitting inspiration for this lively discussion of postwar French intellectual and cultural life. Over the past thirty years, North American and European scholarship has been significantly transformed by the absorption of poststructuralist and postmodernist theories from French thinkers. But Julian Bourg''s seamlessly edited volume proves that, historically speaking, French intellecutal and cultural life since World War Two has involved much more than a few infamous figures and concepts. Motivated by a desire to narrate and contextualize the deluge of ''French theory,'' After the Deluge showcases recent work by today''s brightest scholars of French intellectual history that historicizes key debates, figures, and turning points in the postwar era of French thought. Relying on primary and archival sources, contributors examine, among other themes: left-wing critiques of the Left, the internationalizing of thought,
Trade ReviewAmerican historians have neglected the study of postwar French intellectual and cultural life for nearly twenty years. . . . This book is a breath of fresh air. I couldn't let go of it. -- Marie-Pierre Le Hir, Professor and Chair, Department of French and Italian, University of Arizona
After the Deluge promises to be an important book in the field of French and Francophone Studies. -- Aurelian Craiutu, Indiana University, Bloomington, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
a valuable work and a useful read. * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online, March 2008 *
Instead, the book is successful in presenting an alternative picture of the postwar French intellectual landscape, rich in details and carefully researched. -- Stephanie B. Martens, University of Alberta * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online *
These essays will challenge preconceptions and offer new vantage points from which to assess contemporary French thought. Recommended. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Is There Such a Thing as "French Philosophy?" or Why do We Read the French So Badly? Chapter 3 Against Capitalism? French Theory and the Economy after 1945 Chapter 4 The Post-Marx of the Letter Chapter 5 A New Generation of Greek Intellectuals in Postwar France Chapter 6 Kostas Axelos and the World of the Arguments Circle Chapter 7 "Un contradicteur permanent:" The Ideological and Political Itinerary of Daniel Guérin Chapter 8 Guy Hocquenghem and the Cultural Revolution in France after May 1968 Chapter 9 The Myth of Emmanuel Levinas Chapter 10 Raymond Aron: Nationalism and Supranationalism in the Years Following the Second World War Chapter 11 French Intellectuals ant the Repression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: The Politics of a Protest Reconsidered Chapter 12 From l'Univers Concentrationnaire to the Jewish Genocide: Pierre Vidal-Naquet and the Treblinka Controversy Chapter 13 French Cultural Policy in Question, 1981-2003 Chapter 14 Religion, Republicanism, and Depoliticization: Two Intellectual Itineraries-Régis Debray and Marcel Gauchet Chapter 15 Afterword: For Intellectual History
