Stripes!

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Just a book review I came across, that might be amusing to some of you! http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/sep/15/historybooks.highereducation2

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Say, is there a law somewhere which says anyone British who writes about someone French has to insult them at least twice in every paragraph?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the stripes book, but her criticism of the failure to take technology into account sounds justified - I complained to the BBC about a (British) programme that did the same thing last week.
On the other, more general point, I don't know how old the reviewer is, but she's slagging off the structualist/post structualist/post modernist theory that has been totally dominant in British as well as French universities for the last thirty years or so. I had to wade through it and I loathed every minute of it - post-modernism in particular is the antithesis of Jacobin moral certainty, and I think its influence on the current generation of politicians and political commentators is pernicious. I suppose I should have been warned - Terry Eagleton (then high priest of the cult) looked at me on the College open day, dressed in my goth Robespierre outfit, and said 'you won't be happy here', and he was so right!
As to the French in general, I suspect that, like every other middle class Londoner, Ms. Rule is even now sunbathing in her second home in Provence. The British middle classes adore France (maybe they don't adore the actual French, but then, neither did De Gaulle), and the British upper classes are (Norman) French!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I'm not particularly commenting on the merit (or lack thereof) of this book, so much as the way the review is worded. It seems to me that the way the criticism is phrased is not the same way it would be phrased for a book by a British (or simply non-French) author. More importantly, I've noticed this trend in every British article I've ever read about anything to do with France--even the positive criticism!--so my complaint is much more general.

I take your point about post-modernism though--I can't say I'm particularly pleased with much of it. (For reasons which may or may not appear obvious, given my views of the Revolution.)

From a lot of what I've seen of British "love" of France, it almost seems to me that they think the French don't deserve to live there and to enjoy it. (And really, there's no excuse for de Gaulle's sometime contempt for the people he purported to lead...) As to the British aristocracy's Norman origins, I can't really help blaming the Anglo-American conception of French as a snobbish language on them... But perhaps that's just me.