Description
Book SynopsisAddresses four major themes: the evolution of race as an idea in France; representations of "the other" by French writers, artists, and business people; the international dimensions of French racial thinking, particularly in relation to colonialism; and the impact of racial differences on the shaping of the modern French city.
Trade Review“‘The French are not racists like the Americans!’ ‘But are they French racists?’ All of us, both French and American observers, have been bedeviled by some variant of this exchange I once had about the homeland of universal equality. This collection of transatlantic essays is the first systematic sounding of the praxis of race in French history. The contributions by American, Caribbean, and European-French specialists are universally fascinating and smart.
The Color of Liberty is now the best thing on the subject in any language. We need it.”—Herman Lebovics, author of
True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945“According to some observers, color-coded racism is an American problem that the French have, for the most part, managed to avoid. This fine collection of essays raises considerable doubt about that assumption. The authors show that race has been constructed somewhat differently in the two republics, but also demonstrate that the French, like the Americans, have often failed to live up to their own egalitarian principles when it came to relations with people whom they considered nonwhite.”—George M. Fredrickson, author of
Racism: A Short History“Enfin! Stovall and Peabody take up the call to place race at the center of French history and enlist a range of skilled scholars to show its tenacious filaments and deeply French roots. This volume gives substance to the diverse genealogies of racisms in the making of France while accounting for their troubling contemporary presence.”—Ann L. Stoler, author of
Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality
and the Colonial Order of ThingsTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Foreword / Fred Constant ix
Introduction: Race, France, Histories / Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall 1
1. Race: The Evolution of an Idea
Francois Bernier and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race / Pierre H. Boulle 11
Eliminating Race, Eliminating Difference: Blacks, Jews, and the Abbe Gregoire / Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall 28
Of Monstrous Metis? Hybridity, Fear of Miscegenation, and Patriotism from Buffon to Paul Broca / Claude Blanckaert 42
2. Representations of the Other
Race, Gender, and Virtue in Haiti’s Failed Foundational Fiction:
La mulatre comme il y a peu de blanches (1803) / John Garrigus 73
Inscribing Race in the Revolutionary French Antilles / Laurent DuBois 95
Sex, Gender, and Race in the Colonial Novels of Elissa Rhais and Lucienne Favre / Patricia M. E. Lorcin 108
French Images of Race on Product Trademarks during the Third Republic / Dana S. Hale 131
Sambo in Paris: Race and Racism in the Iconography of the Everyday / Leora Auslander and Thomas C. Holt 147
3. Colonial and Global Perspectives
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Variation and Difference in French Racism in Colonial
Indochine / Michael G. Vann 187
Constructions and Functions of Race in French Military Medicine, 1830–1920 / Richard Fogerty and Michael A. Osborne 206
Panafricanism and the Republican Political Sphere / Gary Wilder 237
Frantz Fanon, the Resistance, and the Emergence of Identity Politics / Dennis McEnnerney 259
4. Race and the Postcolonial City
Identity under Construction: Representing the Colonies at the Paris
Exposition Universelle of 1889 / Lynn E. Palermo 285
Who Speaks for Africa? The Rene Maran-Blaise Diagne Trial in 1920s Paris / Alice L. Conklin 302
Catholics, Communists, and Colonial Subjects: Working-Class Militancy and Racial Difference in Postwar Marseille / Yael Simpson Fletcher 338
From Red Belt to Black Belt: Race, Class, and Urban Marginality in Twentieth-Century Paris / Tyler Stovall 351
Contributors 371
Index 377
