The nineteenth-century study of hysteria at the Salpêtrière
hospital was a medical project, but also a theatrical one. The
hysteric's public appearance was a continual ethical provocation,
pointing ...not only to the vulnerability of her person but to the
unstable position of her spectator. Hysteria in
Performance sets out to uncover what kind of performance the
hysterical attack is, as well as the nature of hysteria in and as
performance as it occurred at Salpêtrière. The Salpêtrière
documents undeniably show the gravity of the institutional violence
committed against its female patients. Using the lenses of
performance studies and performance theory, Jenn Cole expresses the
overt and subtle damages done to hysterical women in Jean-Martin
Charcot's hospital, drawing attention to the hysteric's resistance
to these experiences: it is often simply by being herself that the
hysteric points to the inherent weaknesses in these systemic modes
of violence. In Hysteria in Performance , the hysteric
becomes a figure who represents possibilities for ethical
encounters within performance and everyday living. Revealing the
fraught and exciting nature of theatrical representation, and
continually drawing out the dilemmas and unexpected dynamics of
witnessing the suffering of others, this groundbreaking study
explores how Charcot's findings on hysteria produced a unique
mixture of theatre and science that still has unexpected things to
teach us.
The collection includes new translations of
Tocqueville's works, including the first English translation of his
Second Memoir , the original Memoir , a letter
fragment considering pauperism in ...Normandy, and the ''Pauperism in
America'' index to the Penitentiary Report.
Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the most important thinkers of
the nineteenth century, and his thought continues to influence
contemporary political and social discourse. In Memoirs on
Pauperism and Other Writings , Christine Dunn Henderson brings
all of Tocqueville's writings on poverty together for the first
time: a new translation of his original Memoir and the
first English translation of his unfinished Second Memoir ,
as well as his letter considering pauperism in Normandy and the
''Pauperism in America'' appendix to his Penitentiary
Report . By uniting these texts in a single volume, Henderson
makes possible a deeper exploration of Tocqueville's thought as it
pertains to questions of inequality and public assistance. As
Henderson shows in her introduction to this collection, Tocqueville
provides no easy blueprint for fixing these problems, which remain
pressing today. Still, Tocqueville's writings speak eloquently
about these issues, and his own unsuccessful struggle to find
solutions remains both a spur to creative thinking today and a
caution against attempting to find simplistic remedies.
Memoirs on Pauperism and Other Writings allows us to
study his sustained thought on pauperism, poverty assistance,
governmental assistance programs, and social inequality in a new
and deeper way. The insights in these works are important not only
for what they tell us about Tocqueville but also for how they help
us to think about contemporary social challenges. This collection
will be essential not only to students and scholars of
Tocqueville's thought, nineteenth-century France, and political
economy, but also to all those interested in the issues of public
assistance, associative life, voluntary associations, and
charities.
After India achieved independence from the British in 1947, France retained control of five scattered territories until 1962. Unsettling Utopia presents a new account of the history of ...twentieth-century French India to show how colonial projects persisted beyond formal decolonization.
Algerian migration to France began at the end of the 19th century, but in
recent years France's Algerian community has been the focus of a shifting public
debate encompassing issues of unemployment, ...multiculturalism, Islam, and terrorism.
In this finely crafted historical and anthropological study, Paul A. Silverstein
examines a wide range of social and cultural forms -- from immigration policy,
colonial governance, and urban planning to corporate advertising, sports, literary
narratives, and songs -- for what they reveal about postcolonial Algerian
subjectivities. Investigating the connection between anti-immigrant racism and the
rise of Islamist and Berberist ideologies among the second generation
(Beurs), he argues that the appropriation of these cultural-political
projects by Algerians in France represents a critique of notions of European or
Mediterranean unity and elucidates the mechanisms by which the Algerian civil war
has been transferred onto French soil.
What Ails France? is a provocative but constructive critique of the French model of technocratic, elite leadership. Brigitte Granville applies an economist's vision to the monetary and fiscal ...pathologies flowing from this ideologically motivated technocratic rule, reflected in Europe's flawed monetary union, runaway indebtedness, and chronically high structural unemployment.
Political economy, John Shovlin asserts, can illuminate the social and economic contexts out of which a revolutionary impulse developed in France. Beyond the role of political economy in political ...life, massive public engagement with problems of economic order mediated an enduring cultural transformation. Economic activity was reimagined as a patriotic pursuit, and economic agents-farmers, merchants, and manufacturers-came to be viewed as potential citizens.
Drawing on hundreds of political economic tracts published in France between the 1740s and the early nineteenth century, Shovlin shows how mid-level French elites (magistrates, clerics, lawyers, soldiers, landed gentlemen) sought to balance their interests and values with the need to regenerate a nation that had seemingly entered a period of decline. In their view, France's moral, political, and economic power depended not simply on expanding the national wealth but also on reviving civic spirit. The "political economy of virtue" held that luxury was the cause of the nation's economic and moral degeneration. When the monarchy failed to reform its political economic structures in the 1760s and 1770s, mid-level elites sought to eliminate the stranglehold of the plutocracy.
Shovlin argues that the Revolution grew out of a debate on how to establish a commercial society capable of fostering both wealth and virtue, and the revolutionaries sought to create such a society by destroying the institutions that channeled modern wealth into the hands of courtiers and financiers.
Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we ...explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy.
A passionate account of how the gulf between France's metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apartChristophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has ...become an "American society"-one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on "the periphery."As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country's new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy's analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an "open society" has emerged in France as a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.
