A Divided Republic Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France

This book is an original and sophisticated historical interpretation of contemporary French political culture. Until now, there have been few attempts to understand the political consequences of the profound geopolitical, intellectual and economic changes that France has undergone since the 1970s. However, Emile Chabal's detailed study shows how passionate debates over citizenship, immigration, colonial memory, the reform of the state and the historiography of modern France have galvanised the French elite and created new spaces for discussion and disagreement. Many of these debates have coalesced around two political languages - republicanism and liberalism - both of which structure the historical imagination and the symbolic vocabulary of French political actors. The tension between these two political languages has become the central battleground of contemporary French politics. It is around these two poles that politicians, intellectuals and members of France's vast civil society have tried to negotiate the formidable challenges of ideological uncertainty and a renewed sense of global insecurity.

Introduction: French politics after the deluge; Part I. Writing the National Narrative in Contemporary France: The Return of Republicanism: 1. Writing histories: two republican narratives; 2. From nouveaux philosophes to nouveaux réactionnaires: Marxism and the Republic; 3. La République en danger! The search for consensus and the rise of neo-republican politics; 4. Postcolonies I: integration, disintegration and citizenship; 5. The Republic, the Anglo-Saxon and the European project; Part II. Liberal Critics of Contemporary France: Le Libéralisme Introuvable?: 6. In the shadow of Raymond Aron: the 'liberal revival' of the 1980s; 7. Rewriting Jacobinism: François Furet, Pierre Rosanvallon and modern French history; 8. Postcolonies II: the politics of multiculturalism and colonial memory; 9. Whither the Trente Glorieuses? The language of crisis and the reform of the state; 10. Liberal politics in France: a story of failure?; Conclusion: political consensus in twenty-first-century France; Bibliography; Index.

Emile Chabal was educated at the University of Cambridge, Rice University, Houston, Harvard University, Massachusetts and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He completed his PhD at Cambridge and his thesis was subsequently awarded the History Faculty's Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize, and Seeley Medal for the best dissertation across all periods. Immediately after completing his doctorate, Chabal took up a position as Departmental Lecturer in Modern European History in the Faculty of History and Balliol College, Oxford. He returned to Cambridge in 2012 as a Research Fellow in French Political History at St John's College. In 2013, he moved to the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor's Fellow in History. his research has, for the most part, touched on three main areas: the transformation of French politics since the 1970s, Franco-British relations in the twentieth century and the legacy of postcolonialism in France. This has resulted in a number of publications on subjects ranging from the 'Anglo-Saxon' in modern French thought to contemporary French conceptions of the nation, the citizen and the secular. Chabal has also worked on political counter-narratives in France, including liberal reinterpretations of modern French history, theories of multiculturalism and the politics of postcolonialism. More recently, he has turned his attention to French neo-liberalism and anti-liberalism, and he has an ongoing project that looks at identity politics, clientelism and the history of inter-community relations in Montpellier since the end of the Algerian War. All of this research has sought to elaborate imaginative new frameworks for understanding contemporary political culture in France and Europe.