The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews by Maurice Samuels (review)

Reviews 195 and geography schoolbook, Le tour de la France par deux enfants, G. Bruno (the pseudonym of Augustine Tuillerie) instills a sense of French identity in generations of French pupils by means of a tale of travel and adventure throughout France. In it, two orphaned boys set out from their village in Lorraine, recently annexed by the victorious Prussians, to rejoin France and to keep their French citizenship. Through numerous encounters, the work imparts lessons of patriotism, practicality and morality. Finally, Arthur Rimbaud’s poetic voice in Une saison en enfer is interpreted as the mapping of an individual psyche as it resists the values of an oppressive school system and the colonizing influence of the new capitalist economy. Fittingly, Rimbaud fled Western society for a life in Abyssinia. In conclusion, Lindaman notes that the expressions of psychic geography studied in this work are specific to the first twothirds of the Third Republic and represent authoritarian attitudes no longer accepted by today’s public.Yet some views of the two geographers, Reclus and Vidal, are relevant even in today’s cynical age. The principles of organic ties endure as a feature of identity, not as a static ideal but in the fluidity of constant movement, amid the influx of immigrants and the growing sense of European identity. The implications of this study will resonate with scholars of the nineteenth century and with others interested in theories of identity. Southeast Missouri State University Alice J. Strange Samuels, Maurice. The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews. Chicago: UP of Chicago, 2016. ISBN 978-0-226-39705-4. Pp. 241. In this textual and cultural analysis of seven key moments in France’s postrevolutionary history, Samuels shows that the concept of French universalism has undergone numerous semantic shifts, which he sees as the direct consequence of France’s characterization of its Jewish population: “Jewish difference has always been essential to the elaboration of French universalism, whether as its dialectal opposite or as proof of universalism’s reach” (5). Although the current definition of French universalism implies that citizens“must be shorn of all particularities”(3) to embody the universal values of equality and liberty, Revolutionary thinkers held, despite common contemporary belief, less restrictive views. Lacretelle, l’Abbé Grégoire, or even Robespierre had called for the economic assimilation of the Jews (by excluding them from certain professions), but never did they require cultural assimilation, nor the relegation of religion to the private sphere. For these Revolutionaries, assimilation would be the result, rather than the condition, of Jewish inclusion, thus defining the nation “by ideology rather than blood or ancestry” (37). Frenchness was universal in that it became attainable by all those who chose it. Universalism’s first major semantic shift occurred under the First Empire. Napoleon, fearing that French Jews might identify primarily with a (then non-existent) Jewish nation, created a Jewish consistory as he had done for Protestants and Catholics, putting religious authority in the hands of the State, and relegating religion to the private sphere. In the mid-nineteenth century however, Jews became a more visible minority in France, especially in the theater. Jewish actress Rachel, for instance, became one of the brightest stars of the Comédie-Française. Her performances of Racine and Corneille’s heroines raised the question as to the compatibility of French culture and Jewishness. While some critics viewed Rachel’s success as a corruption of Frenchness, many more saw her success as proof of universalism’s success, but a universalism that allowed (once again) for particularisms.Yet, in his chapter on Algeria, Samuels notes that despite the pluralistic model of universalism that permitted Rachel’s rise to fame, erasure of difference would become the condition for the naturalization of Algerian Jews and the reason for denying Muslims citizenship (it was believed that Muslims would never assimilate into French culture). This differential treatment of Jews and Muslims reinforced the idea that Frenchness was a (universal) choice. Samuels also reveals that Zola’s apparent philosemitism hid strong assimilationist views, while the supposed stereotyping of Jews in Renoir’s La grande illusion served on the contrary to undermine the differences that did not, in...