Contenu du sommaire

Jean Monnet, The USA and the French Plan, Irwin M. Wall. French Planning Commissioner, then President of the European Coal and Steel Community, leader of an « Action Committee for the United States of Europe », Jean Monnet was at the heart of all the struggles for French economic rebirth and European construction. The article describes his strokes of genius and his negotiation skills. It does not hide his failures, the clearest of which was the aborted project of a European Defense Community.

The French Bar aristocracy, a breeding ground for the Republic. The secretaries of the lawyers' training, Gilles Le Béguec. The Paris Bar lawyers' training program, through the yearly groups of its young secretaries, was the privileged locus for the formation of the parliamentary and governmental elite during the Third Republic. The acquisition of oratorical and legal competence, the position obtained in the networks of connections, added to a certain esprit de corps made the training course a real recruiting channel, flexible and effective. It was threatened by the end of the 1930s and even more after the Second World War by changes in politics.

Tubercolisis and the mountains : the birth of a myth, Pierre Guillaume. The quality of The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann's great novel, contributed subs- tantially to the idea that sanatoria should be located in the mountains for highest therapeutic efficacy. Mountain establishments never actually provided the majority of tubercolosis treatment centers. The myth took root, in spite of the obvious gap with reality, because of the connection established between the places of care for the wealthy and the mediocrity of the hospitals to which less comfortable patients were admitted. The mountain sanatorium was for many tubercolosis patients an impossible dream, the ideal place to which they could have escaped from the constraints and miseries of public hospitals. Because they were strictly defined medically and socially, the mountain sanatoria were a mirage for many sick people, a theme popularized by a certain type of mass literature.

Limiting births, the French Catholics' case of conscience (1880-1939), Martine Sevegrand. The demands of the Catholic church concerning fecundity and birth control have met with tenacious resistance in France since the 19th century. This does not come only from lay catholics subtracting their conjugal life from the Church's judgment so as to practice birth control, but also from priests careful not to lose their flock. The silence adopted by many confessors in spite of the Roman directives is witness of a deep malaise vis-à-vis the traditional doctrine concerning fecundity and continence. The solemn reaffirmation of that doctrine by a papal encyclical in 1930 only delayed public expression of questions and criticism within the Catholic church.

Radio, culture and democracy in France, a still-born ambition (1944-1949), Hélène Eck. At the time of Liberation, the state rapidly took over the function of information, leaving that of culture and entertainment to radio professionals. The national radio thus tried to play the role of an active cultural intermediary, capable of explaining « the great issues of the hour » to a broad audience. The national radio thus became in the beginning of the Fourth Republic a factor of French cultural life. While programming hesitated as to the relative place of high culture and « popular » entertainment, the choices nevertheless privileged authors such as Jean Cocteau who accepted the apprehension of the « mouth of darkness ». Subject to public service constraints and reinforced political control due to the Cold War, the radio did not have total freedom of cultural expression, as shown by the Antonin Artaud censorship case. In spite of everything, the radio did not suspend, in the name of politics, its minimal mission of reporting literary news.

Memory, myth and doxa of the state in Algeria. The Etoile Nord-Africaine and the « Watan » religion, Omar Carlier. The Etoile Nord Africaine, Messali Hadj's nationalist movement, has been banned from history since 1962 when the National Liberation Front acceded to power in Algeria. The front has advocated a philosophy of history « in action » and constructed a national religion which excluded the losers. This struggle for memory lost some intensity after the October 1988 events, and since of 1989, the Etoile Nord-Africaine has reappeared in the forefront of the Algerian historical stage.