Les intellectuels faussaires: le triomphe médiatique des experts en mensonge by Pascal Boniface (review)

known as la vogue nègre. Boittin describes “the negrophilia that flooded Paris in the 20s” (11) and shows the increasing popularity of black night clubs such as La plantation, La boule blanche, and Le nègre blanc where Jazz tunes distracted Parisians from their daily life and the memories of the horrors of the Great War. This passion catapulted to instant stardom a young African-American woman from Saint Louis, Missouri. Josephine Baker magnetized her Parisian audience with her crazed dances and songs in La revue nègre and manufactured the image of a “colonized, black, female body to perfection” (13). Baker provided fantasy to a city still deep in post-war depression, changed Parisian fashion, revolutionized women’s hairstyles with her coupe à la garçonne, and popularized colonial images across the arts. The opening chapter on Baker allows Boittin to set up the political reach of the book. Indeed, although adored by cabaret crowds, Baker’s fabricated image of the colonized woman enraged many Africans in Paris, particularly militant African women, who felt Baker’s performance perpetuated the imperial attitude of the French government. In the late 1920s anti-imperialist sentiments among colonized Parisians grew and began to worry the French government. The Centre des affaires indigènes was created to keep an eye on colonial migrants. But policing their gatherings did not stop the 1924 foundation of La ligue universelle pour la défense de la race noire, the first political group to bring the wrongs of imperialism to public attention . When the French government decided to organize l’exposition coloniale in 1931 to showcase the achievements of French colonization, anti-imperialist activists called to boycott the event they saw as an excuse to display Africans and Antilleans as commodities and parade them in front of dignitaries. To protest l’exposition, colonized migrants organized an anti-exposition to show the reality of the colonial experience seen from the point of view of the colonized. A pro-independence discourse arose in black intellectual circles. African newspapers and magazines such as La dépêche africaine, Le cri des nègres, La race nègre, and La revue du monde noir offered platforms to debate issues of race and humanity, particularly in the 1930s when the spread of fascism threatened Europe. Prominent and activist African women such as Jane and Paulette Nardal wrote for and influenced the direction of these periodicals. They opened the way for other women, white and black, to influence society through their writings. These powerful African women contributed to the rise of the French feminist movement. Boittin paints an unexpected picture of interwar Paris, one that attests to not only the engagement of colonial migrants in all aspects of daily life but most importantly to the crucial role of African women who ushered in a new era for all women. Texas Christian University, Fort Worth Marie-L. M. Schein BONIFACE, PASCAL. Les intellectuels faussaires: le triomphe médiatique des experts en mensonge. Paris: Jean-Claude Gawsewitch, 2011. ISBN 978-2-35013-277-8. Pp. 252. 19,90 a. Huit ans après un ouvrage controversé, Est-il permis de critiquer Israël? (2003), où il condamnait le silence des intellectuels français sur la politique du gouvernement Sharon, Pascal Boniface, fondateur et directeur de l’Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS), poursuit son réquisitoire dans un texte dont l’intitulé semble déplacer le sujet, mais dont le contenu porte presque exclusivement 964 FRENCH REVIEW 85.5 sur les débats relatifs à la situation au Proche-Orient. L’auteur y stigmatise les argumentations sectaires, erronées, voire délibérément controuvées, de quelques penseurs et “experts” fort connus dont l’opinion, jamais remise en cause, est devenue une sorte de diktat largement relayé par les médias. La première partie, “De la malhonnêteté intellectuelle en général”, est une réflexion sur le rôle et la place des intellectuels en France aujourd’hui. Contrairement aux engagements valeureux d’antan, de Voltaire lors de l’affaire Callas à Zola défendant Alfred Dreyfus, les prises de positions de certains représentants de l’élite française actuelle ne...