Actualité
Appels à contributions
L'exception française: Negotiating Identity in the French National Imaginary

L'exception française: Negotiating Identity in the French National Imaginary

Publié le par Marielle Macé (Source : Elizabeth VITANZA)

L'exception française: Negotiating Identity in the French National Imaginary
November 2 3, 2006
University of California, Los Angeles

We are pleased to announce our annual conference with keynote speakers
Dudley Andrew and Kristin Ross

The term l'exception française originally conveyed the belief that the demand for human rights and social welfare was unique in its insight and place in French national culture. Yet the term has since given way to contentious notions of cultural purity, resistance to the perceived effacement of French culture and criticism of supposedly foreign intrusions within that culture. Current events such as the EU referendum and rioting have only added to the debate surrounding the term and its usefulness: today, Dominique de Villepin is as much a proponent of the exception française as Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In order to consider the meaning, manipulation and treatment of l'exception française over time, our conference aims to open up discussion about the role it has had and continues to play in concepts of French culture. How does it function in approaches to French literature and the arts? How does its attendant problematic of identity expand or limit the French imagination? How have writers, artists and policymakers adapted to work within its tradition over time? Similarly, what voices have been challenged, adopted or silenced in the name of the cultural purity that often underlies this idea? Thinking of authors, artists and theorists from Rousseau to Delacroix, Fanon to Derrida, we would like to examine how l'exception française impacts cultural production and dissemination, as well as social acceptance.

We are pleased to welcome two keynote speakers who take an interdisciplinary approach to their study of French culture. Dudley Andrew is Professor of Film Studies and Comparative Literature at Yale University. His books include Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film and the recently published Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture, co-authored with Stephan Ungar. Kristin Ross is Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. She is the author of Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture, May '68 and its Afterlives as well as the co-editor with Andrew Ross of a 2004 collection of essays on Anti-Americanism.

Please send 250 word abstracts (in French or English via email to frenconf@ucla.edu) by February 15, 2006. Possible paper topics may relate the exception française to the following:


Theories of literary/visual/cinematic production
Theories of language and translation
Theories of national identity/imaginary
Definition and use of the concept in different literary and historical epochs
Dissemination (e.g. packaging, marketing) of French literature, art and film
Canon formation, past and present
Negotiation(s) of multiculturalism in French literature, art and film
Intersections of French domestic/ foreign policy and cultural production
Contradictions among French cultural policy, communities, and politics
Anti-Americanism and l'exception culturelle