Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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108

opened. The result was a new breed of young

circus performers from outside the traditional

families. After training, their options were sev-

eral: they could join a traditional family cir-

cus; work for one of the school directors; work

in the theatre (which had become increasingly

interested in the idea of popular performers);

or go into street theatre. Alongside these op-

tions, however, a number of the new circus

artists set up their own companies. From the

Cirque du Bidone, renowned in the 1970s for

its nomadic, hippie approach, sprang several

young companies which became internation-

ally well-known, including Archaos, with its

appeal to urban audiences through its machines

and apparent chaos. Other names such as

Roncalli, Zingaro, Plume and Docteur Paradis

also became synonymous with the new circus

generation. In 1981 they set up the Artistes

Associés pour la Recherche et [‘Innovation au

Cirque to help and promote their profession.

With their new enthusiasm and fresh approach,

introducing the mystery, illusion and drama

that was evident in the theatre of the time,

young companies succeeded in attracting au-

diences back to the circus: the traditional ones

also benefited from this renewed interest. The

three most influential circus companies are still

the equestrian Zingaro theatre, Archaos and

the commercial Cirque du Soleil.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Goudard, P. (1993) Écrits sur le sable, Paris:

Artistes Associés pour la Recherche et

l’Innovation au Cirque (a lively account of

the development of postwar circus).

civil rights

France has a proud history of enshrining civil

rights in her constitutions. The Constitutions

of the Fourth and Fifth Republics (1946, 1958)

make reference to the 1789 Declaration of the

Rights of Man, and the Republic proclaims the

fundamental rights of liberty and equality.

However, aspects of French politics and soci-

ety—such as centralized political control of the

police and judiciary—have given rise to con-

cern over civil rights as they apply in practice.

In the 1950s, little concern was arguably paid

in practice to civil rights, except perhaps over

French use of torture in the Algerian war (1954–

62) and the brutal repression of pro-Algerian

demonstrations in Paris (1961). In addition to

concern over the independence of police and ju-

diciary under de Gaulle, much of the French po-

lice’s bad reputation stems from the disturbances

of May 1968. The violence of the riot police cre-

ated animosity between the public and forces of

law and order which is still prevalent, periodi-

cally renewed by events such as the student re-

volt of 1986. During the 1970s, liberalization of

society led to developments which increased in-

dividuals’ civil rights, albeit with occasional at-

tempts by government to maintain control. In

1973, the post of Médiateur (Ombudsman) fa-

cilitated contacts between the administration and

individuals, and in 1974 France signed the Eu-

ropean Convention (but omitted to allow indi-

viduals to appeal to the European Court of Hu-

man Rights). In 1975, the loi Veil legalized abor-

tion, symbolizing the progress made in the 1970s

by feminism and gay rights. In 1978 the Com-

mission Nationale de l’Informatique et des

Libertés (National Computing and Freedoms

Commission) was created, notably allowing ac-

cess to administrative documents. In reaction to

May 1968, the loi anti-casseurs (anti-vandal law)

of 1970 gave the authorities greater powers over

demonstrations, and in 1980 the loi Sécurité et

Liberté was introduced to combat the ‘insecu-

rity’ fostered by anti-Jewish terrorism in Paris

and Corsican nationalism.

After 1981, it was expected that civil rights

would be strengthened by a Socialist adminis-

tration more attentive to individual freedoms.

Indeed, the 1980s saw a number of reforms of

legislation, including in 1981 the repeal of the

‘anti-vandal’ and ‘security and liberty’ laws

and abolition of the guillotine and of the Court

of State Security. The Socialists attempted to

civil rights

109

suppress unauthorized police phone-tapping

and unnecessary identity checks and to make

the police and gendarmes more accountable.

During cohabitation (1986–8), the Right in-

troduced an ‘anti-terrorist law’ and tightened

control of immigration, reversing Socialist am-

bitions. Increasingly during the 1990s atten-

tion has focused less on civil rights in the con-

text of law and order (despite various contin-

ued misuses of phone-tapping) and more on

the threats to citizens’ freedoms posed by la

fracture sociale (social division) of economic

hardship and by the challenges of

multicultural society: initiatives such as the

Revenu Minimum d’Insertion (RMI, or mini-

mum guaranteed income) have helped address

the problems of exclusion, but the rights of

immigrants to freedom and equality are under

continuing threat.

HUGH DAUNCEY

See also: abortion/contraception; immigration;

legal system; racism/anti-semitism

Further reading

Questiaux, N. (1991) ‘Liberties in France: A

Balance Sheet of the 1980s’, French Politics

and Society 9, 3–4:18–31 (useful overview).

Cixous, Hélène

b. 1937, Oran, Algeria

Writer and literary theorist

Although an Algerian whose first language is

German, Cixous is thought of as a French lit-

erary theorist. Her father, who died in 1948,

was a Sephardic Jew whose family moved from

Spain to Algeria and her mother, an Ashkenazi

Jew, settled in Algeria after her family had fled

the rise of Nazism in 1933. Observing the af-

fects of French colonialism, Cixous was also

witness to anti-semitism both from the French,

when the Vichy government refused licence to

her father to continue practising medicine, and

from the Algerian Arabs. Her experiences may

explain her interests in the relation between

politics and writing, the construction of sub-

ject identity, the politics of sexual difference

and, more generally, the representation of

‘otherness’. With some simplification we can

distinguish three phases of her work.

The first phase, commencing with the 1967

publication of the novel Le Prénom de Dieu

(God’s First Name) and her doctoral thesis on

James Joyce (1968), focuses on the materiality

of writing, the idea of the ‘exile’ as a critical

figure of cultural resistance and on ‘epiphany’

as a moment of transformation. This theoreti-

cal occupation with the relation of culture,

politics and writing was reflected in her ap-

pointment as chargée de mission to found the

experimental University of Paris VIII at

Vincennes in 1968. Her experimental novel

Inside (Dedans) of 1969, awarded the Prix

Médicis, is structured according to a number

of oppositions or differences and this atten-

tiveness to the structure of language and mean-

ing led Cixous to investigate the unconscious

processes involved in writing and reading in

Le Troisième Corps (The Third Body) of 1970,

Les Commencements (Beginnings) in 1970

and Neutral (Neutre) from 1972.

In the 1970s, along with theorists such as

Kristeva, Barthes, Irigaray and Derrida, she

pursued literary questions concerning the nar-

rative voice and these took her, via

poststructuralist linguistic analysis and

Lacanian psychoanalysis, to her second-stage

analysis of the complexity and instability of

subjectivity in its relation to the dominant,

phallic, order. In First Names of No One

(Prénoms de Personne) and Portrait du soleil

(Portrait of the Sun), both from 1974, Cixous

moved from the Hegelian idea that recogni-

tion is constitutive of subject identity. Armed

with Bataille’s rendering of an open psychic

economy, she named the psychic economy of

contract ‘debt’, violent appropriation and

property as masculine and the economy of gift

as feminine.

Sorties (Exits) and The Laugh of Medusa (Le

Rire de la Méduse) both from 1975, have

Cixous, Hélène

110

become canonized within feminist literary criti-

cism for the clarity with which they state the

epistemological project of feminist

poststructuralism. We can see repeated the in-

fluence of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and

its Derridean deconstruction in her insistence

that one term in any relationship attempts to

dominate, control or even obliterate the other,

that (feminine) otherness is necessary but threat-

ening to the formation of (masculine) subject

identity. Beyond this, she suggested, one should

think of the subject as primarily bisexual and

the jouissance of the psychic economy as poly-

morphously perverse, and try to figure ‘an

economy without reservation’ which is per-

formed as, or speaks through, écriture féminine.

While Cixous believed that either sex can write

in this way, she retained the gendered name to

mark two facts: that women would benefit from

a subversion of the Symbolic Order and that

women, due to enculturation, are more likely

to identify with it as they have a more positive

relation to desire. Works such as Breaths (Souf-

fles) and The (Feminine) (LA), from 1975 and

1976 respectively, were an attempt to demon-

strate this affirmative relation to desire but also

led to the criticism that she was exploiting cul-

tural definitions of ‘feminine’ values and the

identification of the feminine (gender) with

women (sex). Clearly Cixous was aware that

the analysis of stable subject identity as an ef-

fect of the masculine Symbolic Order left her

with two problems. The first, of practical im-

port, was that feminists, radical or otherwise,

often proclaimed the concept ‘woman’ as

though it held stable reference. For this reason,

Cixous helped establish Des Femmes publish-

ing house and was active in Psych et Po, a group

dedicated to psychoanalytic and revolutionary

theories of oppression but antagonistic to the

‘humanist’ feminism associated with Questions

féministes. Second, she had to conceive a psy-

chic economy ‘outside’ the dominant, binary,

patriarchal order without using terms produced

within that order; work undertaken by the Cen-

tre de Recherches en Études Féminines. Influ-

enced in the main by the writings of the Brazil-

ian Lispector, Cixous embarked upon the third

stage of her work, which can be characterized

loosely as the exploration of the representation

of difference, a move from the ‘scene of the un-

conscious’ to ‘the scene of history’.

In her work with the Théâtre du Soleil, the

early modernist themes are woven with the

sense of the historical-political nature of the

Symbolic Order. Firmly within the tradition of

cultural theory, Cixous on the one hand de-

cries the cultural logic of industrialization and

colonial expansionism, but on the other risks

eulogizing cultural otherness as ‘the otherness

of the other’, with theatrical space posited as

the place for showing the problems of identity

and for the enactment of pluralism as many

and varied voices. Thus, it could be said that,

just as Cixous previously looked for the reso-

lution of the conflictual relationship between

men and women in the imaginary, a psychic

economy without reservation, here she looks

for a utopic reconciliation of conflict in ‘an

economy of love and gift’ exemplified in other,

more exotic, cultures. The problematic aspect

of the latter position revolves around three

things: the conflation of psychoanalytic and

monetary definitions of the term ‘economy’,

Cixous’s attempt to give positive content to

utopic reconciliation and the placing of this at

the level of a general libidinal economy. It does

appear that certain naturalist, if not essential-

ist, assumptions are an integral part of her

work. Because she is working within cultural

theory, it should come as no surprise that trans-

formation, we find finally, is an individual,

‘epiphanic’, aesthetic act.

GILL HOWIE

See also: feminist thought; literary prizes

Major works

Cixous, H. (1975) Le Rire de la Méduse, Paris:

L’Arc pp. 39–54. Translated K.Cohen and

P.Cohen (1976) in E.Marks and I.de

Courtivron (eds) (1981) New French

Feminisms, Brighton: Harvester Press.

Cixous, H. and Clement, C. (1975) La Jeune

Née, Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, ‘10/

18’. Translated B.Wing (1986) The Newly

Cixous, Hélène

111

Born Woman, Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.

Further reading

Conley, V.A. (1992) Hélène Cixous, London

and New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf (a

key critical analysis).

Sellars, S. (ed.) (1988) Writing Differences:

Readings from the Seminar of Hélène

Cixous, Milton Keynes: Open University

Press (collected pieces).

——(ed.) (1994) The Hélène Cixous Reader,

London: Routledge.

Shiach, M. (1991) Hélène Cixous: A Politics

of Writing, London and New York;

Routledge (a highly lucid study).

class

Class is a fundamental social category, ex-

pressing the relationships within and between

large groups, each of which is characterized

by a common economic condition. Class

therefore provides an important cultural iden-

tity, as the focus for social solidarities and for

the complex relationship between individuals

and their social environment. It ranks along

with nation and gender as one of the most

powerful sources of identity.

Class identities embody the domination of

particular classes at particular times, and the

struggles and strategies of classes to secure or

improve their relative social power. For most of

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries France

has been acutely conscious of its class conflicts,

and the decade which preceded World War II

was one of the most class-conscious periods in

its history. To a large extent these conflicts were

suppressed during the Occupation, and they

continued to be repressed by common consen-

sus at the Liberation. The extent to which class

identities were subordinated in the work of na-

tional reconstruction is one of the most remark-

able features of the period. However, class con-

flicts re-emerged with renewed vigour in 1947,

and have been a feature of fluctuating promi-

nence since that time, with a second peak in the

early 1970s after the May 1968 events. Class

considerations inform the material conditions

in which culture is produced, the forms and hi-

erarchies of cultural production, and the im-

ages and narratives which it presents.

In so far as it depends on a degree of sur-

plus, whether of time or money or other re-

sources, culture has usually been associated

with social elites, and the term ‘culture’ itself

is often restricted to mean certain preferred

leisure pursuits of the wealthiest classes. The

dominant French Republican tradition has,

however, usually presented a more

universalistic aspiration, and has shown a con-

cern to ‘democratize’ or broaden the class base

of culture in three dimensions: what may be

depicted, what activities are recognized as cul-

tural, and who can gain access to culture.

The written and visual forms of culture since

the nineteenth century have prided themselves

on widening the range of what may be depicted

in respectable culture, including the most har-

rowing depictions of life in the lower depths

of society. The class-conscious realist classics

of Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Hugo and Zola

have remained popular, and are frequently

adapted for stage or screen, whether as period

pieces, like Berri’s Germinal of 1993 (after

Zola), or in modernized settings, like Lelouch’s

Les Misérables of 1996 (after Hugo).

Class differences are most frequently ex-

plored in realist mode, in works such as Claire

Etcherelli’s novel Élise or the Real Life (Élise

ou la vraie vie) of 1967 or Chatiliez’s film La

Vie est un long fleuve tranquille (1988). Both

of these show class differences intersecting

with ethnic differences, an increasing preoc-

cupation in France as the layering of educa-

tion, wealth and status have concentrated im-

migrant communities in the least-favoured

economic sectors and geographical zones.

However, the avant-garde culture of the 1960s

and 1970s exhibited class in other aesthetic

modes, often less sentimentally, as in Buñuel’s

film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

(Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie) of 1972,

Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil production

class

112

of 1789 (1970), or in Coluche’s one-man com-

edy shows, with the distinctive comic persona

of the ‘ordinary bloke’ (le mec).

Often the portrayal of class has been asso-

ciated with the Left, as in the poems and film

scripts of Jacques Prévert, the paintings of

Fernand Léger or the novels of Louis Aragon.

It was a feature of the ‘socialist realist’ move-

ment of the late 1940s and early 1950s, pro-

moted by the Communist Party and exempli-

fied in the novels of André Stil, or the paint-

ings of André Fougeron, whose subjects were

the struggles of dockers, miners and other in-

dustrial workers. But class has also been a fo-

cus of the more conservative ‘heritage’ culture,

exemplified in Berri’s films Jean de Florette and

Manon des sources (1986), which examine the

hierarchies of rural society and the onset of

modernization. Whatever their ideological

preferences or personal aspirations, French au-

diences remain fascinated by images and nar-

ratives of class.

The providers of culture have, however,

sought not only to satisfy their audiences, but

also to widen them, attempting to draw in the

‘popular’ or working classes, which since the

1950s have had significant amounts of dispos-

able income. In the process, they have also

been led to reappraise and widen the notion

of what might legitimately count as culture.

In practice, if not in theory, these two con-

cerns have usually been in conflict, the aims

of ‘democratizing culture’ cutting across those

of ‘cultural democracy’. And, since 1945, both

tendencies have had weighty advocates.

Both the Fourth and Fifth Republics pur-

sued policies of state support for the arts, en-

couraging more popular access to the estab-

lished founts of culture: to libraries, museums

and galleries, theatres, and even, with the

Cinémathèque, to cinemas. Then early at-

tempts at decentralization were followed by

Malraux’s maisons de la culture of the 1960s,

attempting to expand the number of these cen-

tres of cultural excellence. This process was

accelerated through the huge expansion of the

Ministry of Culture in the Mitterrand presi-

dencies, under the impulsion of Jack Lang.

However, in most of these attempts to bring

culture to the people, the benefits were largely

reaped by the well-to-do middle classes.

The opposite approach, of valorizing the

culture of the people, was largely aimed at giv-

ing recognition to existing cultural activities

of the industrial and rural working classes,

and enabling them to develop their critical and

creative abilities. Its most articulate early ad-

vocates were the People and Culture (Peuple

et culture) association, formed of left-wing

Catholics and communist activists. From 1945

onwards they arranged cultural events in

workplaces, church halls and community cen-

tres, and organized film clubs, festivals and

other local initiatives. Gradually their work

was taken up by adult education networks and

from the 1960s by the new category of ‘cul-

tural animators’ (animateurs), first at munici-

pal level, and then under Jack Lang by the

Ministry of Culture. The state imprimatur on

a wider concept of culture, including, for ex-

ample, folk crafts, popular music, and comic

strips (bandes dessinées), has typically met

with a mixed response, being widely resented

for co-opting and institutionalizing activities

which had their origins in resistance to the

dominant bourgeois cultural values.

Since 1945, French intellectuals have devel-

oped many approaches to class, ranging from

Marxist theories of class struggle as the motor

of history, through debates on whether economic

changes were transforming or entrenching the

class structures, to the subordination or aban-

donment of class in favour of other social preoc-

cupations such as race, gender, sexuality or ecol-

ogy. Class has usually been euphemized in gov-

ernmental discourse, even under Socialist gov-

ernments, but class issues continue to be reflected

in social problems of unemployment, homeless-

ness, urban decay and the like, and the figures

of proletariat and ‘lumpenproletariat’

(underclass) lurk under the preferred notions of

inequality (les inégalités), insecurity (la précarité)

and exclusion.

MICHAEL KELLY

See also: Catholicism and Protestantism; con-

stitution of the Fifth Republic; literary adap-

tations; Marxism and Marxian thought

class

113

Further reading

Forbes, J. and Kelly, M. (eds) French Cultural

Studies: An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford

University Press (explores the relationship

between culture and its social context since

the late nineteenth century, dealing at sev-

eral points with class and its representation).

Mendras, H. and Cole, A. (1991) Social

Change in Modern France: Towards a Cul-

tural Anthropology of the Fifth Republic,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

(focuses on the social history of France and

the breakup of traditional class structures).

Rigby, B. (1991) Popular Culture in Modern

France: A Study of Cultural Discourse,

London: Routledge (traces notions of

popular culture since the 1930s, examin-

ing the debates around it and its class asso-

ciations)

Clément, Catherine

b. 1939, France

Feminist thinker, writer and journalist

The author of works on the history of psy-

choanalysis, Freud and Lacan—whose theory

she defends in the 1981 publication Vies et

légendes de Jacques Lacan (Lives and Legends

of Jacques Lacan)—Clément has also written

(in 1979) a study of opera as a patriarchal

production, Opera, or the Undoing of Women

(L’Opéra ou la défaite des femmes), and a col-

lection of Marxist-orientated essays on litera-

ture, art, film and opera, entitled Miroirs du

sujet (Mirrors of the Subject). This latter work,

published in 1975, dissects the relationships

between ideology, culture, sociosymbolic

structures and the subject. Clément is best

known for the essay which she co-wrote in

1975 with Hélène Cixous, The Newly Born

Woman (La Jeune Née). She is also the author

of several novels.

ALEX HUGHES

See also: feminist thought; psychoanalysis;

women’s/lesbian writing

Clément, René

b. 1913, Bordeaux;

d. 1995, France

Director

One of the leading film-makers of the Fourth

Republic in particular, Clément’s prolific out-

put lacks any strong thematic unity and thus

brought him into disfavour with the Cahiers

du cinéma critics. Jeux interdits won an Oscar

in 1953 and remains a major filmic evocation

of childhood, while Plein Soleil (1960) gave

Alain Delon his first major role. He was prob-

ably the first major French director to realize

the benefits of co-production, working in Italy

and London as well as in France.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Delannoy, P. (1995) Cyril Collard: l’ange noir,

Paris: Éditions du Rocher (readable biog-

raphy).

Médioni, G. (1995) Cyril Collard, Paris:

Flammarion (portrait of Collard through

interviews with family, friends and col-

leagues).

collective creation

In post-May 1968 theatre, some theatre

groups wanted to respond to the revolution-

ary mood of the times by assuming a political

role in the type and subject matter of their

productions as well as operating democrati-

cally as a company.

Cohn-Bendit, Daniel

115

Collective creation, as the resulting prac-

tice became known, was pioneered by compa-

nies such as Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du

Soleil, its leading exponent. Each member of

the company played an equal role in conceiv-

ing and executing the production, receiving

equal pay. Rather than working from estab-

lished texts, collective creation relied on

lengthy improvisation periods and research

from all company members into the subject

matter of the work. Famous productions in-

cluded the Théâtre du Soleil’s celebrated 1789,

1793 and L’Age d’or (The Golden Age), which

aimed to break down barriers between audi-

ence and players as well as those of job de-

scriptions within the company: all took their

turn ticket-collecting (even Mnouchkine),

sweeping the stage, and discussing the produc-

tion with the public after the show. Individual

areas of expertise—for example, the skill of a

stage designer or lighting director—were rec-

ognized, but ideas and suggestions were wel-

come from any company member.

The Théâtre de l’Aquarium, also at the

Cartoucherie, Vincennes, was equally noted for

its collective creations. The first of these, Les

Guerres Pichrocholines (The Pichrocholean

Wars), in 1967, was based on an episode in

Rabelais, and actually preceded the first Soleil

collective creation. Led by Jacques Nichet, the

company was noted for its expert handling of

documentary material which it adapted into

theatrical events, for example in Marchands

de ville (Town Traders) and the later La Soeur

de Shakespeare (Shakespeare’s Sister). The

Théâtre National de Lorraine, which special-

ized in regionally based, politically based col-

lective creations such as Splendeur et misère

de Minette la bonne Lorraine (Splendour and

Misery of Minette, the Good Woman of Lor-

raine). This handled the troubles of the Lor-

raine iron-ore industry through a detective-

story plot depicting a girl caught up in Ameri-

can-style gang warfare.

André Bernedetto’s Nouveau Théâtre

d’Avignon was also noted for its collective

creations dealing with the Mediterranean area,

often performed outside, using both profes-

sional and amateur actors.

Although collective creation was success-

ful in establishing new techniques and atti-

tudes, presenting ideas and material in a revo-

lutionary theatrical way, the lengthy lead pe-

riods needed for improvisation and research

were time- and cost-consuming, and often fi-

nancially impractical. Creation by committee,

always a difficult proposition, was also a sig-

nificant contributory factor in the decline of

collective creation by the end of the 1970s.

Companies like the Théâtre du Soleil returned

to text-based productions, applying to these

many of the useful techniques collective crea-

tion had taught them.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Bradby, D. (1991) Modern French Drama

1940–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press (see the chapter on collective

creation).

Whitton, D. (1988) Stage Directors in Mod-

ern France, Manchester: Manchester Uni-

versity Press (see the chapter on

Mnouchkine).

Coluche

b. 1944, Montrouge;

d. 1986, Opio, Alpes-Maritimes

Comedian and actor,

real name Michel Colucci

The comedian, film actor and activist known

as Coluche attained instant notoriety when the

ORTF aired his send-up mocking racism on

the part of a ‘normal’ petit-bourgeois mec to

millions of viewers awaiting results of the May

1974 presidential elections. Six years later,

Coluche draped a tricolore sash over his bib

overalls during his own brief presidential cam-

paign. In 1983, he earned a César for his

Coluche

116

performance in Claude Berri’s Tchao Pantin.

Subsequently he helped to launch the restau-

rants du coeur to provide free meals for the

unemployed and homeless. He died in a mo-

torcycle accident in 1986.

STEVEN UNGAR

Further reading

Boggio, P. (1991) Coluche, Paris: Flammarion

(biography).

Ungar, S. (1996) The Coluche Effect’, in S.

Ungar and T.Conley (eds) Identity Papers:

Contested Nationhood in Twentieth Cen-

tury France, Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press (relates two early satirical

sketches to Coluche’s performance in

Tchao Pantin).

Comédie-Française

Founded in 1680 by Louis XIV, the Comédie-

Française is the oldest of France’s five national

theatres, operating as a society of self-manag-

ing performers, or sociétaires. Its repertoire is

based on classics and major modern works.

Jean-Pierre Miquel has been general adminis-

trator since 1993.

ANNIE SPARKS