Synopses & Reviews
France has long defined itself as a color-blind nation where racial bias has no place. Even today, the French universal curriculum for secondary students makes no mention of race or slavery, and many French scholars still resist addressing racial questions. Yet, as this groundbreaking volume shows, color and other racial markers have been major factors in French national life for more than three hundred years. The sixteen essays in
The Color of Liberty offer a wealth of innovative research on the neglected history of race in France, ranging from the early modern period to the present.
The Color of Liberty addresses four major themes: the evolution of race as an idea in France; representations of andquot;the otherandquot; in French literature, art, government, and trade; 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. The many permutations of race in French historyandmdash;as assigned identity, consumer product icon, scientific discourse, philosophical problem, by-product of migration, or tool in empire buildingandmdash;here receive nuanced treatments confronting the malleability of ideas about race and the uses to which they have been put.
Contributors. Leora Auslander, Claude Blanckaert, Alice Conklin, Fred Constant, Laurent Dubois, Yaandeuml;l Simpson Fletcher, Richard Fogarty, John Garrigus, Dana Hale, Thomas C. Holt, Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Dennis McEnnerney, Michael A. Osborne, Lynn Palermo, Sue Peabody, Pierre H. Boulle, Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Tyler Stovall, Michael G. Vann, Gary Wilder
Review
andldquo;andlsquo;The French are not racists like the Americans!andrsquo; andlsquo;But are they French racists?andrsquo; 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.andrdquo;andmdash;Herman Lebovics, author of True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900andndash;1945
Review
andldquo;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.andrdquo;andmdash;George M. Fredrickson, author of Racism: A Short History
Review
andldquo;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.andrdquo;andmdash;Ann L. Stoler, author of Race and the Education of Desire: Foucaultandrsquo;s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things
Synopsis
Traces the multiple histories of race and racial thinking over time in France and in Francophone areas of the globe.
About the Author
“‘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 Things
Table of Contents
Foreword /Fred Constant --Introduction:Race, France, histories /Sue Peabody andTyler Stovall --1. Race: the evolution of an idea --Fran÷cois Bernier and the origins of the modern concept of race /Pierre H. Boulle --Eliminating race, eliminating difference: Blacks, Jews, and the Abbâe Grâegoire /Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall --Of monstrous Mâetis? Hybridity, fear of miscegenation, and patriotism from Buffon to Paul Broca /Claude Blanckaert --2. Representations of the other --Race, gender, and virtue in Haiti's failed foundational fiction: La mulãatre comme il y a peu de blanches (1803) /John Garrigus --Inscribing race in the revolutionary French Antilles /Laurent Dubois --Sex, gender, and race in the colonial novels of Elissa Rhaèis and Lucienne Favre /Patricia M.E. Lorcin --French images of race on product trademarks during the Third Republic /Dana S. Hale --Sambo in Paris: race and racism in the iconography of the everyday /Leora Auslander andThomas C. Holt --3. Colonial and global perspectives --Good, the bad, and the ugly: variation and difference in French racism in colonial Indochine /Michael G. Vann --Constructions and functions of race in French military medicine, 1830-1920 /Richard Fogarty andMichael A. Osborne --Panafricanism and the Republican political sphere /Gary Wilder --Frantz Fanon, the resistance, and the emergence of identity politics /Dennis McEnnerney --4. Race and the postcolonial city --Identity under construction: representing the colonies at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889 /Lynn E. Palermo --Who speaks for Africa? The Renâe Maran-Blaise Diagne trial in 1920s Paris /Alice L. Conklin --Catholics, Communists, and colonial subjects: working-class militancy and racial difference in postwar Marseille /Yaèel Simpson Fletcher --From red belt to black belt: race, class, and urban marginality in twentieth-century Paris /Tyler Stovall.