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Keith Reader's brief, unfinished article 'Freeze Peach' situates contemporary controversies surrounding free speech in relation to material and economic concerns. Ian James's response draws attention to the way Keith does this by bringing together four key figures of late twentieth-century philosophy and theory: Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish. Ian argues that the conjugation of Marx-inspired theory with thinkers associated with the postmodern would have allowed Keith to develop a uniquely perceptive and productive insight into the present moment of political disorientation, one which demands a renegotiation of the legacies of both modernity and postmodernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Moberly-Jourdain affair involved two female Oxford dons who, in 1901 on a visit to the palace and grounds of Versailles, believed that they had encountered the ghosts of Marie-Antoinette and some of her retinue in the Hameau she had had built there to play shepherdess games. The two women's report of their experience attracted much attention at the time, though it seems all but certain that they had simply overinterpreted everyday personages and events. My article reads their account of their "adventure" and subsequent commentaries and glosses of it through the lens of the Freudian unheimlich or uncanny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the reasons why the label of film maudit is all too applicable to Jean Eustache’s nowadays little-known masterpiece La Maman et la putain, offering a succinct overview of the director’s career and the film as well as situating it within the time of its making and release and analysing its subsequent distributional vicissitudes. Along with a brief scrutiny of what exactly might be meant by the term film maudit, it offers an analysis of the reasons why the film’s accessibility is so restricted and a summary of available (and not-so-available) secondary sources dealing with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at representations of the banlieue in the cinema of the 1930s – a period before the term banlieue was synonymous with deprivation and violence as, especially since Matthieu Kassowitz’s 1995 film La Haine, it has subsequently tended to become. The work of Claude Autant-Lara and Maurice Lehmann (Fric-Frac, Circonstances atténuantes) and that of Anatole Litvak (Cœur de Lilas) receive close attention along with two more widely known films, Marcel Carné’s tragic Le Jour se lève, whose banlieue is topographically unsituated but could well be Parisian, and Jean Renoir’s Partie de campagne where the countryside near Paris provides the setting for two bucolic idylls that offer a different, less grim view of the banlieue than that nowadays current. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A literary criticism of the 1846 novel "La Cousine Bette," by Honore de Balzac is presented. Topics discussed include the author's choice of palimpsest motivated by autobiographical considerations, and his buying of a Livre de Poche edition of the book from Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge, England nearly fifty years ago. Also mentioned are the Balzacian sententiousness and how the very act of reading the novel has changed in the intervening half century.

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An introduction is presented to this special issue dealing with topics related to attitudes in France regarding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with subjects including the Six-Day War, the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the European pro-Israeli group J Call.

The article presents the author's insights on the Place de la Bastille, which is considered as one of the most important historical site in Paris, France. It states the cultural and political histories of the quartier including its transformation from revolutionary proletarian to residential and cultural centre. It highlights the shift in the Bastille area's image, topography, and identity. Moreover, it discusses the Parisian concepts in Walter Benjamin's "The Arcades Project."

The Deleuzian reading of L'Année dernière à Marienbad proposed here draws less on what has become a virtually canonical concept in film studies – Deleuze's time-image – than on a much earlier work by the same author, Masochism, which treats sadism and masochism as qualitatively different symbolic universes. Resnais's film, with its deployment of mirrors and statuary and its suggestion of a contract between the characters A and X, presents striking resemblances to the world of masochism as described by Deleuze (drawing on the work of Theodor Reik). At the same time, the role of the third protagonist, M, like that of Robbe-Grillet who wrote the screenplay, has Sadean overtones, suggesting that it might be possible to read the film with its diegetic ambiguities as a Möbius strip linking the sadistic and the masochistic world not only with each other, but with the crystalline universe of the time-image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recounts the persecution of French teacher Gabrielle Russier due to her love affair with a much younger male pupil. Russier's suicide in 1969; Implications of the affair on questions of power, desire, privacy and policing; Consideration of the repressive policing of desire in bourgeois society.

Discusses a study on the French cinema during the occupation years. Focus of historicism in film scholarship; Criticisms against occupation films such "Les Visiteurs du soir; Reason behind the audience appeal of the motion picture "Pontucarral"; Information on the first attempt at documenting the films made during the occupational year; Impact of "French National Cinema" book on the motion picture industry.

Introduces the articles on theoretical works published in the March 2004 issue of "Paragraph."

Extension du domaine de la lutte (1999) deals with a social class - the world of middle computer management - infrequently seen in recent French cinema. The article interrogates this representation along with problems of masochism and male sexual self-disgust raised by the film and the Michel Houellebecq source-novel. The film's two central characters purportedly, and vainly, seek pleasure in heterosexual fulfillment when it may be masochistic jouissance that is the real object of their desire. The Kristevan notion of the abject - Generally applied to the feminine appears in this context to be applicable to masculinity and the phallus as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the political and cultural commitment of French intellectuals Pierre Bourdieu and Regis Debray. Similarities of the writers' political positions; Differences between their attitudes toward the state, the nation and gender; Analysis of the difference in the two thinkers' approach to State provision.

Looks at the impact of Jean Renoir's 1936 motion picture `Le Crime de Monsieur Lange' on the history of France. Information on the leftist theater Groupe Octobre; Overview of the motion picture; Views on Renoir's communitarian version of socialism.

Focuses on the prominence of women in French studies in Paris, France. Persistence of European cultural stereotypes; Femininity of the city of Paris; Experiences of the author with French studies; Culmination of cultural studies through `Paris, c'est une blonde'.

In this article, the author takes a look at the state of European cinema in 1968. The author recounts the emergence of films about violence. He references the book "Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties," by Tariq Ali. He also highlights the appearances of heroes and martyrs in cinema during the year. In addition, the author addresses the manifestations of less impressionistic approaches applied by filmmakers in their work. He also offers an account of an ironically appealing hint of exotic reflection-theory in European cinema.

Reviews the motion picture `Mon once d'Amerique,' scripted by Jean Grault and directed by Alain Resnais.

The article explores the position of the intellectuals in the social formations in Great Britain and France. It mentions the disparity of the political and social positions of the intellectuals in two countries. It adds that while in France, they assumed significant position, intellectuals in Great plagued by the unsophisticated and underdeveloped intellectual market that is difficult to conceive.

The article examines the representation and exploitation of women in the cultural industries based from a study of the Cultural Development Division of UNESCO. It states that the consistent segregation of the female audience in a soap opera is an emphasis on feminine attributes and emotions in any media programming. It also discusses how women become the target for mass-media messages as an essential factor of their programmes.

Interviews writer Jacques Derrida. Literary works of Derrida; Traditional linearity of writing; Presentation of Husserl's 'Origin of Geometry'; Theoretical models of psychoanalysis; Struggle of the sans-papiers; Interview of Derrida with Bernard Stiegler.

Examines the representations of youth and adolescence in pre-new-wave French cinema. Dominance since 1980s; Metonymic relationship; Fourth Republic films; Visibility of lost innocence; Pessimistic interrogation of young people's relationships with their parents.

Discusses the representation of women and cookery in France. Focus on Lyonnais woman cooks; Equation of cuisine with religion.

The article discusses the impact of Great Britain's withdrawal from the European Union on its relationship with France.