Enemy Within: Culture Wars and Political Identity in Novels of the French Third Republic

by Gilbert D. Chaitin

Overview

In The Enemy Within, Gilbert D. Chaitin deepens our understanding of the nature and sources of culture wars during the French Third Republic. The psychological trauma caused by the Ferry educational reform laws of 1880-1882, which strove to create a new national identity based on secular morality rather than God-given commandments, pitted Catholics against proponents of lay education and gave rise to novels by Bourget, Barrès, A. France, and Zola.
            By deploying Lacanian concepts to understand the “erotics of politics” revealed in these novels, Chaitin examines the formation of national identity, offering a new intellectual history of the period and shedding light on the intimate relations among literature, education, philosophy, morality, and political order. The mechanisms described in The Enemy Within provide fresh insight into the affective structure of culture wars not only in the French Third Republic but elsewhere in the world today.           

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814256206
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	01/29/2021
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gilbert D. Chaitin is professor emeritus of French and comparative literature at Indiana University-Bloomington.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Universal Education, Culture Wars, and National Identity 17

Chapter 2 The Disciple, by Paul Bourget: A Dangerous Experiment in Education 45

Chapter 3 The Novel of National Energy, by Maurice Barres: Maurice Barres Protofascist? 79

Chapter 4 The Novel of National Energy: Nationalism, Identity, and the Transferential Novel 109

Chapter 5 Contemporary History, by Anatole France: The Memory of the Present 139

Chapter 6 Contemporary History: Filling the Emptiness Within 167

Chapter 7 Truth, by Emile Zola: Zola's Daymare and the Truth of Verite 195

Chapter 8 Truth: True Treason, or the Rape of the Republic 219

Conclusion The Erotics of Politics 248

Appendix A Chronology of Historical, Intellectual, and Literary Events 259

Appendix B The Dreyfus Affair 264

Notes 268

Bibliography 280

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

"Because Gilbert D. Chaitin demonstrates a rare degree of expertise on the philosophical issues at stake in the French novel of education, and can skillfully apply a range of interpretive methods from the psychoanalytic to the historical, he is very well-qualified for this ambitious undertaking. He displays an effective, highly original, sophisticated yet clear prose style that succeeds in the difficult challenge of synthesizing the diverse genres of literary criticism, philosophy, history, and political theory." —M. Martin Guiney, professor of French at Kenyon College


"Gilbert D. Chaitin's readings of four novels of ideas are gripping and impressive. Even if one hasn't read the texts, one is persuaded by the intelligence and sophistication of his interpretations. One follows-clearly and without confusion-a complicated set of arguments about the relations between students and teachers, past and future, history and politics that are explored in the novels. At once philosophy, history, psychoanalysis and literary exegesis, the book is a tour de force." —Joan Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study

From the Publisher