LaFayette, We Are, Um… Absent

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TygrBright's Journal

LaFayette, We Are, Um… Absent

Posted by TygrBright in General Discussion
Mon Apr 17th 2006, 11:42 PM

American commentators in a variety of media and representing a suprisingly broad segment of the left-right spectrum have been enjoying themselves mightily, pontificating about What’s Wrong With The French, as evidenced by the civic furor over Chirac’s modest proposal to create a two-tier employment system in La Belle Patrie. While a few have jumped onto the leftist bandwagon, expressing umbrage over the “rightist” French government’s attempt to institutionalize a two-class employment system, most have been treating themselves to a veritable orgy of superior smirking over the lazy Frogs’ determination to possess AND eat their cake-er-croissant.

Why do Americans feel so blissfully entitled to make simplistic generalizations about France and the French? What is it that gives us this smug assurance that we have fathomed the depths of something labeled the “French National Character,” as though every French person were indistinguishable from her/his neighbors, like a row of little souvenir dolls sold at the Epcot Center gift shop, complete with baguette and bottle of vin ordinaire and a jazzy little beret?

Not that the French don’t do their part (and then some) to provoke American reaction, with their stubborn insistence on wending their own way through the escalating complexities of a shrinking, globalizing world culture, clinging determinedly to their national identity. They seem to take particular glee in vigorously rejecting all the adaptations to Americocentric global acculturation that we patiently proffer for their own good. Their obstinate resistance to the Pax Americana might be less mock-worthy were it not so intimately coupled with their apotheosis of Francocentric cultural traditions that are incomprehensible, if not antithetical, to Yankiedoodledom.

Just today I waded through a column by Roger Cohen, columnist for The International Herald Tribune, which displayed intellectual contortionism of no mean order in service to the belief that We Have The Europeans (including the French) Taped. To be sure, the most egregious silliness was in the form of a quote from one Robert Paxton, characterized as “a historian of France”(!) who made the startling assertion that while “Americans are always at the new frontier, risking all, at least in our imaginations,” the French “have not had a new frontier since the Middle Ages.”

Well.

Alsace, Lorraine, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Canada and Louisiana aside, what does Mr. Paxton the “historian of France” consider a ‘frontier?’ Apparently the overthrow of a tyrannical kleptocratic monarchy, the formation of a viable republican government, the rise of military dictatorship that conquered most of Europe and North Africa, the loss of that Empire within a single generation, the recovery and reestablishment of a constitutional representative government, the development of the world’s premier civil engineering tradition and the construction of the Suez Canal, the development of unprecedented public health infrastructure, etc., don’t qualify.

Achievements like the Code Napoleon (still one of the most rational and consistent bases for legal process in spite of its anachronistic lacunae,) the supernally civilized contributions to world literature and philosophy of Montaigne, Voltaire, Descartes, Rousseau, etc., were apparently a flash in the pan, the last post-Medieval flowering of French civilization. Of course, such a conclusion requires the modern “historian of France” to ignore the existence of Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Claude Levi-Strauss, etc., not to mention the contributions to world civilization made by the likes of Claude Malhuret (of Medecins Sans Frontiers), Jean Dausset, Luc Montaignard, and the pioneering work in renewable energy of the French research establishment.

It is, seemingly, all too easy for Americans to ignore such inconvenient realities and instead to focus on the things we find baffling, antithetical, or ridiculous about French culture. That’s more of a reflection on our own provincial, nativist sins than on the shortcomings of Gallic culture, politics etc. Their worst offense seems to be (gasp!) they don’t want to work! “Work,” that is, in the American definition of “work,” which entails obsessive identification with our jobs, a grinding drive to acquire sufficient cash flow to buy ever more stuff we will end up throwing away soon, and an uneasy fascination with the mythical promises of unchecked capitalism for our own individual (and family) benefit.

The French, in common with many other European states, appreciate jobs that provide them with the opportunity to satisfy creativity or craftsmanship, endure jobs that don’t provide such opportunities, and focus their real lives and identities on family, home, culture, recreation, religion, etc. In making the choice to structure an economy that permits people to do this while maintaining themselves economically, they have prioritized quality over quantity, a concept alien (and, apparently, highly threatening) to American economic and social wisdom. They have chosen to live with the very real downsides of that prioritization, just as Americans have chosen to live with the downsides of unchecked economic Darwinism.

In portraying France as economically stagnant, risk-averse, steadfast in opposition to change (or at least the kind of change Americans consider ‘progress,’ economically speaking,) American critics conveniently ignore the achievements of French engineering and architecture, agricultural research, medicine, and any number of other fields where advances pioneered by French researchers and companies are making modern life just a little more sustainable. French energies are directed at finding ways to enjoy the best fruits of technology while minimizing the damage to the environment and to the values of a family- and community-centered culture. American energies are directed toward maximizing profit through innovation.

Yes, such choices carry negative consequences, and yes, France has serious social and cultural problems for which no effective solution is yet proffered. Why does this give America license to be smug and condescending about their problems? As a dear friend quotes her granny’s homespun wisdom, “Don’t be looking in other peoples’ kitchen windows when your own sink is full of dirty dishes.”

Disclosure: TygrBright’s ancestry includes French Canadian immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally, and she has been known to eat brie on occasion, but has never smoked a Gauloise or bothered to see La Femme Nikita.