Search

Contemporary France is a prolific arena for post-fascist actors, parties, and movements. Self-proclaimed alternative news outlets and publishing houses serve as forums for information and mobilisation, through various strategies, to resist an alleged onslaught by the enemies of the nation and its people: multiculturalism, feminism, political correctness, political corruption, and civilisational decay. In this article, I explore uncivility as a discursive logic within the French post-fascist media-ecology, focusing on the conspicuous use of irony and discursive displacement. More specifically, I discuss how sardonic irony as an uncivil discursive strategy is employed to navigate the legal boundaries of free speech and how discursive displacement, coupled with irony, is used as an affective identificatory technique in post-fascist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berlioz's Harold en Italie (1834) is a strange, ambiguously programmatic symphony that refers explicitly to both Beethoven and Byron--two of the lions of Romantic heroism--in ways that are not always straightforward. I argue that Berlioz's evocation of Romantic heroism is an ironic commentary on the impossibility of artistic freedom in bourgeois society. I also identify a new literary connection to the symphony: the comically ironic short stories and journalism written by Berlioz's friend Th'eophile Gautier. Many have argued that both the Byronic archetype and the nineteenthcentury symphony became vehicles for exploring the high ideal of Romantic heroism. Hearing Harold as humorously ironic enables insights into Berlioz's experience of his cultural moment and alternative readings of the impact of Byronic andBeethovenianheroismonsubsequent generations of artists, while also opening possibilities for exploring narrative as a hermeneutic for musical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the nineteenth century, not only did the extraordinary development of the printed press transform the cultural environment, but it also brought about major formal changes in literature. This article explores these trasnformations through a focus on the contemporary use of the concept of "modernity." The word dates back to 1688 at least, but it was mostly employed during the nineteenth century to describe post-revolutionary France and especially to criticize its consumerism and materialistic "bourgeoisie." Nineteenth-century media culture embodied the triumph of "modernity," especially in the form of the petite presse ("small press"). Born in a world where censorship still compromised the freedom of speech, the petite presse was an illustrated, satirical, ironical, and wisecracking medium. It aspired to a generalized non-seriousness which would, for a long time, be viewed as the "Parisian spirit". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the author introduces the issue's theme of humor and irony in media and political discourse during the 2012 presidential election campaign in France.

The article discusses the political posters created by the Atelier Populaire student movement during the demonstrations that took place in Paris, France in May 1968. The author discusses the creation and design of the posters in light of the political process that characterized the 1968 demonstrations. Particular emphasis is paid to the ironic rhetoric of the posters and on their ability to disrupt the prevailing ways of thinking about the political situation. In addition, the author comments on the relationship between the 1968 demonstrations and the resistance to the Algerian war during the early 1960s.

The article discusses the self-deprecating style of humor that arose in Bretagne, France, in the 1990s from an ethnological perspective. Topics mentioned include the jokes about Breton stereotypes that were popular in the high Middle Ages, lists of the types of vocabulary common in Breton humor, and the use of common themes such as poverty, uncleanliness, and stupidity.

Humour was at the core of the spatial imaginary of the emerging French avant-garde of the 1880s. But what was the specific role of different forms of humour in their attempts to re-imagine urban place and community? In this article I develop a non-representational historical geography of the aesthetics of place in fin-de-siècle Montmartre. The article analyses how Montmartre artists used humour in order to inject new life and vitality into the urban environment. The ambivalence of humour made it a powerful device through which to experiment with creating a novel experience of place and stylizing an affirmative urban ethos. Two modes of humour in particular were predominant: irony and pantomime buffoonery. Through irony, they attempted to create an experience of place that encompassed the contradictory and fugitive nature of the modern city. In buffoonery, they found a way of affirming the city’s potential at the same time as remaining alive to its suffering and violence. In combination, this urban ethos can be theorized as a form of ‘affirmative pessimism’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Filosofía UIS is the property of Universidad Industrial de Santander and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although Agnès Varda is recognized as an early avatar of feminist film-making, her 1965 film “Le Bonheur” remains a misunderstood work, frequently criticized for its ostensibly anti-feminist message. This essay excavates specific sources of imagery from French women's magazines that idealized the daily drudgery of the housewife and explains how Varda applied this imagery to her characters to challenge feminine ideals. This essay shows that "Le Bonheur" expands visually and thematically on two influential texts: Simone de Beauvoir's “The Second Sex” (1949) and Betty Friedan's “The Feminine Mystique” (1963). As a director making feminist films in an unreceptive climate, Varda employed a sophisticated strategy of visual irony in “Le Bonheur” that disputes the film's narrative and conservative notions of domestic harmony. We can thus discern new depths in post-war feminism and appreciate Varda's contribution to a complex, trans-Atlantic dialogue about the structure of domestic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her first published collection of short stories, Three Lives (1909), Gertrude Stein used an epigraph that she attributed to the French Symbolist Jules Laforgue. Critics have so far agreed that Laforgue actually never wrote this sentence. We think, on the contrary, that the sentence could have been inspired by a very similar one included in Laforgue's Moralité Léndaires, and that Gertrude Stein could have had various reasons to quote this work. This article tries to analyse these reasons, comparing the themes treated by the two artists, and the opinions they had in common, considering that Gertrude Stein was totally plunged in the Parisian cultural atmosphere of the beginning of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laughter played a crucial strategic role in the fight against clericalism and religion in France during the second half of the 19 th century and the first half of the 20 th century. The cultural output from this polemical use of laughter is contrasted with a "scholarly literature," which fought against religion in a radically different manner that featured reason facing obscurantism and prejudice. Drawing on a study of the contributions dealing with "the psychology of religion" or "hieropsychology" published in the Revue de l'hypnotisme, I will try to show that there also exists a "scholarly ridicule," the forms, codes, and uses of which are characteristic of the anticlerical laughter associated with "medical materialism."