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Synopsis
The Vichy Past in France Today: Corruptions of Memory is an interdisciplinary study examining the continuing impact of the memory of Vichy and World War II in French politics, literature, intellectual discourse and debates, and the law. It argues that despite multiple efforts in all of these areas to come to terms with France's World War II past and to fulfill a "duty to memory" to Vichy's Jewish victims, the nation is still not reconciled to the so-called "Dark Years," even seventy years after the Liberation. Indeed the Vichy past "occupies" important recent works of literature, inflects much political discussion and debate, often serving as a metaphor for political (and moral) evil. Its legacies include the passage of problematic laws that dangerously distort and simplify complex historical realities. Chapter I examines the historical and legal legacies of the 1990s trials for crimes against humanity and traces their impact on the so-called "memorial laws" of the new century. Chapter II revisits the 2002 presidential elections in France and the impact of Jean-Marie Le Pen's first round victory on intellectual and cultural debate. Chapter III explores Alain Badiou's controversial characterization of Sarkozy's presidential victory as a return of "Petainism" in The Meaning of Sarkozy. The discussion is cast against the backdrop of Badiou's "radical" political thought and Sarkozy's political uses and misuses of the World War II past. Chapter IV examines the controversy surrounding the publication of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (2006) and its morally and historically problematic portrayal of an unrepentant Nazi and SS officer. Chapter V discusses Yannick Haenel's fictional recreation of the Polish resistance hero Jan Karski (The Messenger, 2009) in his novel by that name, and the polemics between the novel's author and the maker of the classic Holocaust documentary film, Shoah, Claude Lanzmann. The Conclusion first explores the ways in which the memory of Vichy inflects literary and political reflections on the recent terrorist attacks in France. It also examines strategies proposed by French philosophers for moving beyond the "impasse" of Vichy's memory in France before concluding with a different strategy proposed by the author for the French nation to move beyond the memory of the Dark Years. New & Used
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What Reviewers Are Saying
In The Vichy Past in France Today: Corruptions of Memory, Richard J. Golsan has made another significant contribution to our understanding on both sides of the Atlantic of France during the "Dark Years,".... Whatever the future, Golsan has written a highly informative study combining literary and political history. The Vichy Past in France Today is not only a first-rate analysis of memories of the war years in France and the ways in which they are used for political and literary purposes, it also offers insights into the creation of what Marianne Hirsch has called "post-memory," or the transmission of memory to succeeding generations.... Golsan has given us a magnificent study of the public sphere of politics and culture pertaining to the memories of the war years. * H-France Review * A powerfully argued analysis. . . . Vichy today stands as a metonym for an interpretation of the past that threatens to displace the French Revolution as the guiding referent for defining French identity in our times. Golsan offers a compelling explanation of how and why. * Journal of Modern History * Splendidly lucid and insightful, Richard J. Golsan's study illuminates the French memory of the Vichy regime, its complexities, and its consequences for contemporary France. -- Gerald J. Prince, University of Pennsylvania Americans, still haunted by their Civil War of a century and a half ago, should not be surprised that the French bear an even fresher wound from the defeat of 1940 and their conflicting responses to German occupation. Richard J. Golsan's books have been wise guides to the unending replay of these pains in French politics and culture, and The Vichy Past in France Today carries his work forward into the twenty-first century with his customary thoughtful care. -- Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University Richard J. Golsan analyzes the ways Vichy France is repeatedly reconfigured, suffusing contemporary French culture. As a damning metaphor and a polemical tool, it is increasingly distant from the past as conceived by historians of the period. In The Vichy Past in France Today: Corruptions of Memory, Golsan lucidly explains why so many of those who now remember the Vichy past in France appear doomed to repeat that memory as farce. -- Donald Reid, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Richard J. Golsan, one of the best North American connoisseurs of French culture and politics, has written a new, brilliant, and thought-provoking book. Breaking a kind of a consensus, he argues that France is still coping with the legacy of the Dark Years. From 1990 to 2000, public debates have largely focused on French accountability in the Holocaust, the need to provide accurate historical narratives, and moral issues to be learned from the Vichy past. On the contrary, in the last decade, controversies seem to go backwards and carry on multiple forms of revisionist and distorted interpretations of the past. These are consequences of a lingering feeling of decline, of the extreme right's growing impact, and of deeper political divisions. Whether one follows or not his rather pessimistic views, Golsan reopens the discussion on the French 'hot topic' par excellence. -- Henry Rousso, Institute for Contemporary History, French National Center for Scientific Research