The Americanization of France

This is a perplexing—and often frustrating—book. Barnett Singer asks some very important questions about post-war French politics and culture, but the answers he gives are, at best, partial and, at worst, deeply problematic. Even more worryingly, he frequently fails to apply the most basic criteria of historical scholarship to his work: he treats sources uncritically, makes dubious generalisations based on anecdotal evidence, and indulges far too easily in simplistic assertions. Indeed, it is debatable whether this book can really be called a piece of scholarship at all. There are moments of sharp insight but these are more than outweighed by a troubling absence of critical reflection. Singer’s basic argument is that the Algerian War was the pivot around which post-war French history turned. Before the loss of Algeria, France was a ‘serious’ place in which principles were real principles, politics was real politics, and elites were real elites. But from the 1960s onwards, the French succumbed to a ‘happiness’ revolution that was largely inspired by America. Since they were no longer beholden to higher principles of empire and culture, the baby-boom generation that came of age in the 1960s sent France hurtling into the arms of a cultural revolution that brought psychoanalysis, yé-yé singers and corrosive individualism. Over the period from the 1970s to the 1990s, this process continued apace. By the 2000s, France was a fallen nation that, under the influence of Americanisation, had finally consummated its terminal ‘civilisational’ decline.

Aesthetics · Americanization · Ancient history · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Empire · Happiness · Individualism · Period (music) · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Victory · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · North African History and Literature

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