French intellectuals have always defined themselves in political terms, typically as opponents to a corrupt government—but challenging state authority is not the only way intellectuals in France have exerted political influence. Jeremy Aherne invokes a neglected dimension of French intellectuals’ practice, where instead of denouncing the worlds of government and public policy, French intellectuals become voluntarily entangled within them The book consists of a series of case studies exploring policy domains from religion and secularization to educational reform and the media. It explores the political engagement of intellectuals such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, and André Malraux, and will be required reading for scholars of French political and social history.

Intellectuals and policy analysts might appear to inhabit two different worlds. Intellectuals aspire to articulate issues of universal concern; policy analysts attend to the detail of specific measures and programmes. How far do these common assumptions match up to reality? What happens when intellectuals engage with cultural institutions and the machinery of government? And how far is cultural policy connected to a history of ideas? The essays brought together here attempt to answer these questions. From the English Romantics to Lenin’s wife, from Plato to Herbert Schiller, this book offers new insights into how intellectuals from Europe, Canada and North America have sought over time to assert their cultural values in public life.

What does "America" mean to French intellectuals? Is it a postmodern ideal situated beyond history and metaphysics? A source of spiritual decadence that threatens the European tradition? Or is it "Extrême-Occident," the Far Western site that gives historical reality to the utopias of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment? Jean-Philippe Mathy offers the first systematic examination of French texts that address the question of America. He shows how prominent French intellectuals have represented America as myth and metaphor, covering the entire ideological spectrum from Maurras to Duhamel, and from Sartre to Aron. The texts themselves range from novels and poems to travel narratives and philosophical essays by Claudel, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Kristeva, and many others. Mathy deftly situates these discourses on America against the background of French intellectual and political history since 1789. The judgments on American culture that originate in France, he contends, are also statements about France itself. Widespread condemnation of American materialism and pragmatism cuts across deep ideological and political divides in France, primarily because French intellectuals still operate within a framework of critical and aesthetic models born in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and elaborated in the age of French classicism. Mathy engages issues central to interpreting the American experience, such as the current controversies over multiculturalism and Eurocentrism. Although Mathy deals mainly with French authors, he does not limit himself to them. Rather, he uses a comparative, cross-cultural approach that also takes in accounts of America by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Junger, Gramsci, and other Europeans, as well as American self-interpretations from Emerson and Dewey to Cornel West and Christopher Lasch. Because debates on American modernity have played a crucial intellectual role in France, Extrême-Occident is a major contribution to modern French cultural history. It will be essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the main currents of twentieth-century French thought.

Christofferson argues that French anti-totalitarianism was the culmination of direct-democratic critiques of communism & revisions of the revolutionary project after 1956. He offers an alternative interpretation for the denunciation of communism & Marxism by the French intellectual left in the late 1970s.

The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the complexities of ‘popular’ culture as a category of public policy. It approaches the notions of ‘cultural policy’ and ‘popular culture’ flexibly, examining what each comes to mean, explicitly or implicitly, in relation to the other. This generates a rich variety of approaches, but also a number of identifiable commonalities. We start from the proposition that 'popular culture' is largely absent as an explicit category of arts policy and debate today. The ‘arts’ are still, in practice, construed in terms of elite culture (despite claims to the contrary), while artefacts such as popular music, television, fashion, and so on are assumed to figure among the cultural or creative ‘industries’, giving the popular a set of narrowly economic, professional and commodity connotations. And yet, the popular is, in a range of ways, powerfully present as an implicit dimension of public policy and as a catalyst of cultural practices and attitudes. This apparent paradox underpins the proposal. The book is a collaboration between two UK-based institutions: the University of Leeds’s Popular Cultures Research Network and the well established Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. This book was originally published as a special issue of International Journal of Cultural Policy.

An award-winning historian presents an absorbing account of the French mind, shedding light on France's famous tradition of intellectual life Why are the French such an exceptional nation? Why do they think they are so exceptional? The French take pride in the fact that their history and culture have decisively shaped the values and ideals of the modern world. French ideas are no less distinct in their form: while French thought is abstract, stylish and often opaque, it has always been bold and creative, and driven by the relentless pursuit of innovation. In How the French Think, the internationally-renowned historian Sudhir Hazareesingh tells the epic and tumultuous story of French intellectual thought from Descartes, Rousseau, and Auguste Comte to Sartre, Claude Lé-Strauss, and Derrida. He shows how French thinking has shaped fundamental Westerns ideas about freedom, rationality, and justice, and how the French mind-set is intimately connected to their own way of life-in particular to the French tendency towards individualism, their passion for nature, their celebration of their historical heritage, and their fascination with death. Hazareesingh explores the French veneration of dissent and skepticism, from Voltaire to the Dreyfus Affair and beyond; the obsession with the protection of French language and culture; the rhetorical flair embodied by the philosophes, which today's intellectuals still try to recapture; the astonishing influence of French postmodern thinkers, including Foucault and Barthes, on postwar American education and life, and also the growing French anxiety about a globalized world order under American hegemony. How the French Think sweeps aside generalizations and easy stereotypes to offer an incisive and revealing exploration of the French intellectual tradition. Steeped in a colorful range of sources, and written with warmth and humor, this book will appeal to all lovers of France and of European culture.

The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture provides a detailed survey of the highly differentiated field of research on French politics, society and culture across the social sciences and humanities. The handbook includes contributions from the most eminent authors in their respective fields who bring their authority to bear on the task of outlining the current state-of-the art research in French Studies across disciplinary boundaries. As such, it represents an innovative as well as an authoritative survey of the field, representing an opportunity for a critical examination of the contrasts and the continuities in methodological and disciplinary orientations in a single volume. The Routledge Handbook of French Politics and Culture will be essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers and practitioners involved in, and actively concerned about, research on French politics, society and culture.