In this Book
- The Enemy Within: Culture Wars and Political Identity in Novels of the French Third Republic
- Book
- 2008
- Published by: The Ohio State University Press
summary
In The Enemy Within, Gilbert D. Chaitin deepens our understanding of the nature and sources of culture wars during the French Third Republic. The psychological trauma caused by the Ferry educational reform laws of 1880–1882, which strove to create a new national identity based on secular morality rather than God-given commandments, pitted Catholics against proponents of lay education and gave rise to novels by Bourget, Barrès, A. France, and Zola. By deploying Lacanian concepts to understand the “erotics of politics” revealed in these novels, Chaitin examines the formation of national identity, offering a new intellectual history of the period and shedding light on the intimate relations among literature, education, philosophy, morality, and political order. The mechanisms described in The Enemy Within provide fresh insight into the affective structure of culture wars not only in the French Third Republic but elsewhere in the world today.
Table of Contents
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- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-ii
- Table of Contents
- pp. iii-iv
- Acknowledgments
- p. v
- Introduction
- pp. 1-15
- Conclusion: The Erotics of Politics
- pp. 248-257
- Appendix B. The Dreyfus Affair
- pp. 264-267
- Bibliography
- pp. 280-292
Additional Information
ISBN
9780814271735
Related ISBN(s)
9780814202319
MARC Record
OCLC
1227264755
Pages
312
Launched on MUSE
2020-12-22
Language
English
Open Access
Yes