Description
Book SynopsisFinally, he examines the relation of the Dreyfus Affair to the culture of forcethat marked French society during the prewar years, thus accounting for the rise of the youthful athlete as a more compelling manly ideal than the bookish and sedentary intellectual.
Trade ReviewBy shifting the main focus from race to gender, from anti-Semitism to masculinity, Forth demonstrates just how deeply rooted in French culture the Dreyfus Affair was. -- Margaret H. Darrow H-France 2004 Forth provides an important contribution to the study of the scandal and to the broader cultural history of fin-de-siecle France by arguing that the divisive events of the Affair were framed by participants on both sides as a crisis in the French male body Choice 2004 Original and exciting... Forth uses the Dreyfus Affair as a means to explore not only the contingency of manhood but also the subtle ways in which gender norms are implicated in racist imagery, class boundaries, and the construction of the intellectual in fin-de-siecle France. -- Carolyn J. Dean American Historical Review 2004 A nuanced and sophisticated analysis of French manhood. -- Lisa O'Sullivan Medical History 2006 Forth's analysis... lends important insight into the problematic ways in which this rhetoric has operated historically. -- Judith Surkis Journal of Modern History 2006 Innovative and articulate, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the Dreyfus Affair, masculinity, or medical discourses in fin-de-siecle France. -- Nancy Fitch English Historical Review 2007 Erudite and interesting book. -- Rhonda Garelick Men and Masculinities 2008 A compelling portrait of a cultural crisis, and a book that should both interest the general reader and fascinate the area specialist. -- Joseph Zizek Journal of French Studies 2008 A rich and provocative study of the Dreyfus affair and the crisis of fin-de-siecle masculinity... This is a valuable book because it presents the Dreyfusards from a new perspective and because it disrupts the teleology that has surrounded the Dreyfus affair. -- Judith F. Stone Patterns of Prejudice 2008
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Body Politics of the Dreyfus Affair
Part I: Masculinity and the Jewish Question
1. Masculine Performances: Alfred Dreyfus and the Paradox of the Jewish Soldier
Part II: Dreyfusard Fantasies
2. Sanctifying Dreyfus: Intellectuals, Jews, and the Body of Christ
3. Educating the Will: Crowds, Contagion, and the Dreyfusard Body
4. Adventures of the Naked Truth: Women and the Dreyfusard Imagination
Part III: Remaking the Male Body
5. The Belly of Paris: Manhood, Obesity, and the Body of Zola
6. The New Man and the Culture of Force
Conclusion: An Affair to Remember
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
