Френското изключение (конфликтът на интерпретациите)
The French Exception (The Conflict of Interpretations)

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to present contemporary France – the state of its social, political and cultural institutions – through the lenses of the debate on the key concept of „French exception”. On the one side of this debate are the French historians François Furet and Pierre Nora, on the other side is the British historian Perry Anderson. What is at the very heart of the debate is the question: Do the decline of Gaullism and communism, and the subsequent „liberal turn” of French society in the mid 70-ties of the XX century entail normalization of the country, smoothening of the political manners, pacification of social life – or, on the contrary, do they mean banalization, loss of creativity, effacement of all those features that for long used to be considered as signs of the French exceptionality? The recent clash between the philosophers Alain Badiou and Alain Finkielkraut during the debates on the French national identity leaves the impression that in France both the national utopia and the social utopia are far to be obliterated, that French exceptionality is still alive.

• Details
• Contents