Narendra Modi fighting a battle of political – but also historical – narratives on July 25, 2020Recent events shaking the Indian political scene are obliging those who advocate optimism about the future to consider downgrading their forecasts. Impartial political scientists have little choice but to adhere to such a position. They must also pay attention to the will of the Hindu nationalist body of thought to win what one might call […]
Amin Maalouf and a lesson on identity on July 24, 2020There is a short book, In the name of identity, by the French-Lebanese novelist Amin Maalouf that merits regular rereading. It examines the question of identity.Indeed, the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First centuries have seen disturbing tensions, running counter to the prediction that globalisation would usher a world in which cultural differences, far from stoking […]
The construction of a cultural racism? on November 13, 2019Unlike her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose racial discourse was direct and primitive, Marine Le Pen, President of the National Rally(Rassemblement National),has tried to endow this political current with an ideology that, at least at first sight, seems respectable. In a book called So that France lives, she blames the political choices made by the […]
“Lobsters everywhere, justice nowhere” on September 19, 2019The journalist, Florence Aubenas, posing as a recently separated housewife, tried to look for a job in the city of Caen, Normandy, when she was 40 years old. Pole Employment (Pôle Emploi), formerly known as the National Employment Agency (Agencenationale pour l’ emploi), quickly came to advise her, in rather harsh terms, a cleaning job. […]
Self-determination: Kashmiris’ Valiant Resistance on August 28, 2019What is now called the “international community” quickly indeed adopted a position of “wait-and-see” to which it has by and large stuck, including when the Kashmir Valley took up arms in the late 1980s. Literary Lessons Arundhati Roy chose to employ the novel to describe the difficult fate of the Kashmiri population. The human rights […]
Climate change, polar bears and the need for a responsible consumption on August 22, 2019The polar bears of Antibes In the middle of last July, a controversy rocked the city of Antibes, a town in southeastern France on the Mediterranean Riviera. It was about two polar bears (Rasputin and Flocke) in Marineland, a theme park spread across 26 hectares. Marineland belongs to the Spanish multinational company Parques Reunidos, and […]
As the summer holidays begin, where is the ‘yellow vest’ movement? on July 20, 2019In a novel called The Ogres’ Happiness(Au Bonheur des Ogres), Daniel Pennac traces the life of a disadvantaged family. In reply to his boss, who has suggested he should not be so emotional, one of the main characters constructs deep inside himself the following answer: “I’m not emotional, I’m a naked bird, sitting on a […]
The disillusionment driving the yellow vests on May 3, 2019There can be no doubt that the tenacity of the protesters, who started the yellow vest movement in November 2018, and who have so far achieved only meagre success in terms of direct outcomes, has astonished the French politicians. Historians of the Left, anxious to portray the French Revolution of 1789 as a glorious phenomenon […]
France’s yellow vest movement in France adrift? on April 1, 2019French accounts of the popular movement that led to the fall of the monarchy can be divided, at the risk of over-simplification, into two. The first, favoured by many historians of the left, is generous, not without a dose of romanticism, a people anxious to build a new world based on justice and equality. The […]
France’s yellow vest movement adrift? on March 27, 2019French accounts of the popular movement that led to the fall of the monarchy can be divided, at the risk of over-simplification, into two. The first, favoured by many historians of the left, is generous, not without a dose of romanticism, a people anxious to build a new world based on justice and equality. The […]