[15748] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: Stanford, on France -- advantages of distance
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Apr 18 20:25:33 2005
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Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 08:18:12 -0700
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From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
FYI France: Stanford, on France -- the advantages of distance
A handsome Stanford Library exhibit tells the story:
"Facets of French History: Resources for Research in the
Stanford University Libraries"
"The Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special
Collections, is pleased to announce the exhibition *Facets
of French History: Resources for Research in the Stanford
University Libraries*. This exhibition highlights the
French history collections at the Stanford University
Libraries and the Hoover Institution Archives. These
collections include a broad spectrum of primary source
and rare materials that span several centuries. Facets of
French History will be on view at Stanford University's
Cecil H. Green Library, Peterson Gallery, second floor of
the Bing Wing from March 17 through June 12, 2005. The
exhibition is free and open to the public..."
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/exhibits/frenchhistory.html
Stanford, 5600 miles from Paris, studies France: famously, in
Stanford's case -- but there also are so many other places on the
globe, many even more distant from Paris, which share the
fascination for things French.
So how is France viewed, nowadays, from its own antipodes? What
do people study, when they "study France", at a distance away
from their subject four times the length of Europe? How do they
study it when they do not speak the language? And even if they do
know French, how do they view the Hexagone from an alien milieu
-- one surrounded by concepts and cuisines which at times make
it hard to "think French"?
In a world coming unstuck, somewhat, from accepted geopolitical
and linguistic points of view -- "freedom fries", as an example
of both -- our conceptions of one another need re-evaluation.
No less than Bernard-Henri Lévy is undertaking this, right now:
his series, just begun in Harper's, on crisscrossing the US in
search of Tocqueville's vision... Google, too, is making a
contribution, or at least is spurring others to make theirs: in
response to Google Digital Library announcements, the Président
of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France has declared his fear
that soon the outsider's view of his country's cherished
Revolution will be that of, merely, "The Scarlet Pimpernel"...
And this is the Era in which, supposedly, digital information has
brought us "The Death of Distance". In some ways it has, but in
others we seem further apart from one another than ever.
So here is how Stanford does it, how they view the French from
afar. It is a fascinating picture: "these documents are puzzle
pieces," Stanford says, "facets showing different perspectives on
single events".
The exhibit offers a series of "sections", in part to show
collection strengths of the great library which it represents:
1) "The French Revolution of 1789" -- "a mixed legacy"
Most foreigners nowadays think first of the country's famous
Revolution: "Scarlet Pimpernel" versions, yes -- but, to be fair
to us foreigners, also the rest --
* Stanford's exhibit shows, among other interesting items,
"assignats": the Continental Currency of the French Revolution
-- similarly worthless, ultimately, and similarly symbolic of the
great hopes and dashed expectations which social needs and
revolutions can bring. Then,
2) "Nineteenth-Century Revolutions" -- "political upheaval"
How sad though that, outside, France should be known so much for
its wars: its 18th c. Revolution, and its 19th c. revolutions --
* The exhibit presents "Le peuple (1848)", "L'ami du peuple
(1871)", and other items.
3) "The Great War" -- "la der des der"
And its 20th c. wars --
* A "poster ordering mobilization" dated "2 August 1914". And
"ration tickets" from April 1919, every bit as evocative as
Revolutionary "assignats". And French humor: the sardonic
approach so familiar to devotees of Le Canard Enchainé -- here
among other treasures a newspaper, "L'Echo de Tranchéesville",
its edition of jeudi 2 Sep. 1915, declaring, "nullement politique
et très peu littéraire".
4) "World War II" -- "an image of the nation united in
resistance"
Although at least Stanford appears to be resisting the constant
pressure to conflate, and confuse and over-simplify, those
various 20th century conflagrations --
* The terrible events of the second great conflict, which set it
off so well from the terrible things of the first: "Testimony
about massacre at Oradour sur Glane, 10-25 June 1944" --
"Testimony about experiences in German concentration camps" --
"Habitants de la région parisienne, Alerte!" -- from the
unparalleled collections of Stanford's Hoover Institution.
5) "Fairs and Exhibitions" -- "vibrant urban culture"
And Stanford also gets to the "fun" which, in addition to its
wars, symbolizes France for so many --
* For instance the wonderful posters of "L'Exposition de Paris"
of 1889, showing "Comparative heights of the Eiffel Tower (300
meters) and the [other] Principal Monument of the World: The
Great Pyramid (145 meters)... St. Peter's in Rome (152
meters)..." -- and other "expos" of 1867 & 1878 & 1931.
6) "Political Economy" -- "from political sovereignty to
commercial activities to everyday economic decisions...
not all works of political economy are grounded in reality"
The Dismal Science, too, receives top billing in the exhibit --
perhaps because of Stanford Library's great collection strengths
in the subject, but perhaps too for the great contributions which
French thinkers have made in the area, contributions which so
affected the nations from which foreign travellers come to France
-- Globalization affects us all, and it is nothing new --
* And there always have been controversies: Stanford shows a
letter from Turgot to Condorcet, and 1665 recommendations to the
king on "The Art of Reigning", and "La noblesse militaire et la
noblesse commerçante: dispute littéraire" of 1756-9 -- and
wonderful marginalia, in a text by Fourier, declaring "faux" and
punctuated with an indignant exclamation point.
7) "Counting and Describing the Nation" -- "enumeration
and analysis"
Technique, then, there being more to France than just its wars --
* The art of governing depending so much upon statistics,
Stanford shows the dawning of modern studies of same, in
France; and the exhibit declares, very interestingly,
"the continued importance of humanistic description and
panegyric even in an official report on the state of the
realm" -- 'Mémoires des intendants sur l'état des
généralités de Paris, Riom, Mantauban...' (c. 1699)
shows, "provincial administrators filled their lengthy
manuscripts with details on local resources, climate, and the
'mores' of the inhabitants, sometimes suppressing the
tables of financial or census data they had gathered for
the inquiry as beneath the dignity of its royal audience"
Would that modern "econometric" studies, and Federal Reserve
"irrational exuberance" announcements, might be so interesting.
8) "Narratives and Perspectives" -- "light into the
lives... of those left out of more official historical documents"
Another area important to foreigners, about France and the
French, being travel and the attempt to understand from afar --
* Stanford shows 18th century travel memoires, a 19th c. "Woman's
travel journal", J-J Servan-Schreiber's 1957 "Lieutenant in Algeria"...
9) "Religion" -- "The close relationship between absolute
legal sovereignty and confessional uniformity"
The exhibit also demonstrates the great utility of comparative
approaches. On religion, for example: at a time when that topic
has become so apparently-central and critical to social and
political debate somewhere -- as in the US, now -- it is useful
to remember that few "church/state" topics have not been debated
before elsewhere, particularly in places as interestingly
contrasted to the US as France --
* Stanford shows an "Edict du roy" of 1599 on religion, and
materials on Unigenitus from 1803, and on "L'Affaire du foulard
-- Profs, ne capitulons pas!" from Le Nouvel Observateur of 1989.
10) "Les Femmes: Women & Feminism" -- "women... how their
traditional roles as lovers, wives and mothers emerged as
politically and culturally charged issues"
Another current topic amenable to a comparative approach...
* The exhibit's various items here include a remarkably -
entitled, "Le triomphe des femmes ou il est montré par plusieurs
et puissantes raisons gue le sexe feminin est plus noble et plus
parfait que le masculin" (Anvers, 1707) -- loose translation [by
me, JK, not by Stanford], "The Triumph of Women, in which it is
Demonstrated, through Various and Very Strong Reasons, that the
Feminine Sex is More Noble and More Perfect than the Masculine"(!)
11) "Exploration and Travel" -- "the world beyond"
And another category demonstrating the vast interest of
foreigners, at Stanford as elsewhere, in the adventurous side of
the French... not just their revolutions, or their science, but
their sheer wanderlust...
* Stanford presents "la mission civilisatrice": although there
always are many motives -- as the exhibit puts it, politely --
"Some of these explorations, carried out for political
reasons, the promise of economic wealth, and under the
auspices of the country's mission civilisatrice,
ultimately resulted in France's overseas empire. Others,
however, were undertaken by adventurous individuals
wanting to learn firsthand about other societies,
cultures, and natural environments."
-- showing materials from exploration in Asia, America, Africa.
So the US is not the first, to have had many motives: some
examination of earlier overseas adventurism by others, such as
the French, might be useful.
12) "Colonial Perspectives" -- "Algeria"
13) "Colonialism And Empire" -- "France's imperial
endeavor began with the acquisition of territories in
North America, in the seventeenth century"
And then there are the great difficulties, which any society runs
up against. In these few months following the curious, "LOI n°
2005-158 du 23 février 2005 portant reconnaissance de la Nation
et contribution nationale en faveur des Français rapatriés" --
and the furor which is resulting now in Paris over that -- the
Chinese are actually rioting now, over similar issues regarding a
new school textbook just introduced in Japan --
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050411/325/fg2eu.html
-- Stanford very interestingly displays, "El Moudjahid, organe
central du Front de libération nationale" and "L'Echo d'Alger:
Journal républicain du matin", both of 1958.
14) "The Organization of Knowledge" -- "the Encyclopédie...
this compendium of knowledge possessed a power to transform
society that was of a different order than the monarch's
ability to command the construction of great monuments"
Rationalism, too, is generally under attack these days -- as the
Age of Enlightenment, largely invented in France, seems to many
to cast less light and more shadow, now, and that a lengthening
and even attenuating one. So it is useful to be reminded of the
reasons why Europe, and the US, chose rationality --
* Stanford's great collection displays, "Dictionnaire Etymologique
de la langue française" of 1694, "Instruction sur la manière
d'inventorier et de conserver, dans toute l'étendue de la
république, tous les objets qui peuvent servir aux arts, aux
sciences et à l'enseignement", of "l'an second de la république"
[1793 or 1794], and -- one is tempted to say "of course", but not
all foreign libraries can offer this -- "Encyclopédie, ou,
Dictionnaire raisonné" (1751-1765).
15) "Intellectual Life and the Public Sphere" -- "the
literary and scientific capital of Europe"
And as political-types everywhere, in the US these days as much
as any, ponder once again Ben Franklin's observation, "there is
no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if
well-administered" -- Europe is voting, right now, on their EU
Constitution -- just so Stanford reminds us of the ferment which
always accompanies political reform --
* The exhibit shows Mercure de France, and Necker's eulogy of
Colbert -- and even a satire, by one "Louis Guillaume de La
Follie", entitled, "Le philosophe sans prétention, ou L'Homme
rare. Ouvrage physique, chymique, politique et moral, dédié aux
savans" (1775) -- complete with a title page image of little
children playing with fire, beneath the banner "Docent Ludendo"...
16) "Scientific Discovery: New Approaches to the Natural
World" -- the discoveries, but also, "the methods and
practices of inquiry they established"
* Exhibit: "Académie royale des sciences. Machines et inventions"
(1735-1777); Buffon, "Histoire naturelle" (1749-1804); others.
17) "Domestic Economy" -- "'the expenses of a
household'... running a home and farm... the
transformation of French food into a national cuisine..."
History being a collection of many small things... Stanford's
exhibit shows that there is far more to "France", even in the
eyes of the foreigner, than just her truly terrible wars.
Félicitations, then, to curator Sarah Sussman and her team, and
to Stanford Library and the Hoover, for an effort well worth
seeing, for anyone in or who can make it to California before
June 12. The exhibit shows how Stanford sees it:
* War and Revolution
* Recording the French
* Discovery
* Society and Economy
-- and that should be of great interest, both to foreigners and
to anyone French themselves -- "puzzle pieces", just as Stanford
says, "facets showing different perspectives on single events".
--oOo--
A travel note:
In these days of the "euro fort" there are at least as many
French people wandering around the US as there are "Americans in
Paris". In California the visitation becomes an inundation: "the
accent" can be heard now in elevators, on street corners, down at
Fisherman's Wharf, up in the Napa Valley. Visitors asking how to
find the "Val de silicone"...
Prompting the thought that the US view of France might be just as
interesting as is the French view of the US...
Not that French tourists come all the way to America to find out
about themselves -- any more than US tourists visit the Hexagone
to study baseball and hamburgers and Midwest Populism -- although
the accent américain can be heard at EuroDisney, it is said, and
definitely in the Champs Elysées McDo.
But internationalism -- trans-nationalism, increasingly -- does
operate in two or more directions, never just in one. So French
specialists interested in how France is perceived might do well
to study more than just the latest "freedom fries" headlines:
visit Stanford, this Spring -- see a thoughtful American view.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071-5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
/ \ Any material written by me which appears in
----- FYI France may be copied and used by anyone for
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Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
all rights reserved except as indicated above.
--oOo--
