The Americanization of France: Searching for Happiness After the Algerian War by Barnett Singer (review)

Reviews 295 of this experimental hybrid work, both images and text are fully inverted, forcing the reader to turn the book around. In Yeux, Serres takes philosophical and literary experimentation to unprecedented heights, in comparison to his earlier works. 3D technology, designed by Dassault Systems, allows the philosopher to catch a glimpse of what it is like to see the world through the eyes of other life forms, including bees, cats, rats, and falcons. In the larger context of Serres’s ecocentric worldview, the importance of this simulated experience cannot be overstated, despite its inherent limitations. After momentarily perceiving the world differently through the eyes of another organism, Serres obliterates any meaningful distinction between the subject and the object. The philosopher takes aim at traditional, mainstream Western philosophy , which has relegated other life forms to the status of an object.Serres convincingly contends that the entire biosphere is replete with subjects in the philosophical sense. Fervently declaring that millions of autonomous, sentient subjects exist on this planet, the philosopher explains in the first chapter, “Voir et être vu”: “Car ils reçoivent, stockent, traitent, émettent la lumière; brillent donc comme des yeux [...] comme la plupart des choses renvoient la lumière tout autant qu’elles la reçoivent, la piègent et la traitent, j’imagine qu’elles voient tout autant qu’elles sont vues” (12). In this first section and throughout the work as a whole, Serres attempts to deliver a coup de grâce to outdated anthropocentric thought systems that run contrary to the principles of modern science. Serres’s motivations for elevating other animals to the privileged position of a subject are quite transparent. Without a radical paradigm shift that recognizes non-human agency and the intrinsic right of every being to exist, the philosopher is convinced that our mistreatment of the cosmic forces upon which our very sustenance depends will lead to oblivion. For Serres, debunking unfounded notions of human exceptionalism is the key to preventing an eco-apocalypse and saving the human race in the process. In what is perhaps his most innovative text to date, Serres compels us to think harder about the philosophical question of agency by temporarily immersing ourselves in simulated, virtual realms and reflecting upon all of the ramifications of scientific erudition before it is too late. Mississippi State University Keith Moser Singer, Barnett. The Americanization of France: Searching for Happiness After the Algerian War. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4422-21659 . Pp. 281. $65. At the outset, Singer outlines in his thesis that the Algerian war was a“searing”(5) chapter in French history causing a significant fracture in the country’s culture and mentalités. Until then, France was a “serious” (5) nation whose people “lived in good part for ideals, and for others, rather than their own happiness” (50). Following its “giving in” (5) on the Algerian front, the country “amputated something very significant of itself” (5–6), and began “succumbing to the ideal of personal, material happiness and, increasingly, happiness à l’américaine”(6). Singer unabashedly chooses sides and clearly indicates a preference for the former period.Although the title implies the focus is on the post-Algerian war period, half the volume is devoted to the tumultuous years preceding Algerian independence, the extreme violence of the FLN in both countries during the war, and the conflicts between the various French decision-makers leading up to the final resolution. As a colonial military historian, the author details“the terrible disheartening”(66) of the military during that war and its negative impact on young Frenchmen who “progressively gave up on patriotic, military orientation”(77).Ample biographical information is provided as well on the heroes he admires most: General Salan who believed that General Bigeard,“the great warrior of unfeigned culture and heart” (69), was “‘the sole person who could have resolved the problem’ of French Algeria” (68). As for the “dogmatist” (62) de Gaulle, whose “gargantuan ambition made him nearly a clinical narcissist” (63), he and his negotiator Louis Joxe, “were ‘had’ in the accords concluded at Evian” (66). While atrocities and barbaric murders committed by the FLN on peaceful citizens in France and...