Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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fate parallels the demise of Communism: peak

circulation of over 400,000 copies in 1946

was halved by 1958, and dropped in the 1990s

to around 60,000. The last French daily to be

directly associated with a political party, its

readers are primarily party members and sup-

porters. The party appoints senior executives

and editor; many journalists are party mem-

bers. The stance is partisan, the tone combat-

ive. L’Huma, as it is commonly known, de-

votes special attention to social and industrial

problems, emphasizing the universal dimen-

sion of the workers’ struggle.

PAM MOORES

See also: left-wing press; national press in

France; parties and movements

Huppert Isabelle

b. 1955, Paris

Actor

Her career was launched in Goretta’s The

Lacemaker (La Dentellière) in 1977). She has

made films for many auteurist directors: sev-

eral for Chabrol, including Violette Nozière

(1977) and La Cérémonie in 1995, Pialat’s

Loulou (1980), Godard’s Sauve qui peut (la

vie) (1979) and Passion (1981), Tavernier’s

Coup de torchon (1981), Blier’s La Femme de

mon pote (1983). Her favoured persona is that

of the rebel with feminist overtones, e.g. the

closet lesbian in Kurys’s Coup de foudre

(1983) or the abortionist in Chabrol’s Une

affaire de femmes (1988).

PHIL POWRIE

Further reading

Hewitt, N. (1996) Literature and the Right in

Post-War France: The Story of the

Hussards, Oxford: Berg (a comprehensive

account).

Hyvrard, Jeanne

b. 1945, Paris

Writer

Hyvrard’s adoption of a pseudonym and her

efforts to protect her privacy led readers of

the novels she published in the mid-1970s—

Les Prunes de Cythère (The Plums of Cythera),

Mother Death (Mère la mort) and La

Meurtritude (Murderation)—to assume that

she, like their narrator/protagonists, was a

black woman from the Antilles who had ex-

perienced madness and psychiatric incarcera-

tion. Hyvrard is in fact white and French, but

was inspired to write after working in the Car-

ibbean in the late 1960s. Much of her creative

work deals with themes such as women’s iden-

tity/identity loss, their (oppressive) bond with

the mother, their relation to writing, and the

(deadly) restraints imposed upon them by pa-

triarchal society and its language. Identified

by critics as a kind of écriture féminine, her

literary style is multivocal, poetic and gram-

matically unconventional. Apart from novels,

Hyvrard has written short stories and, in the

1980s, philosophical essays, including Canal

de la Toussaint (All Saints’ Channel) and La

Pensée corps (Thinking Through the Body),

published respectively in 1986 and 1989.

ALEX HUGHES

See also: Montrelay, Michèle; women’s/lesbian

writing

Hyvrard, Jeanne

290

Ici-Paris

Newspaper

Ici-Paris is one of France’s main weekly scan-

dal sheets, euphemistically classified as the ‘es-

capist press’ (presse d’évasion). Founded in

1945 by Henri and Suzanne de Montfort, as

successor to their Resistance newspaper, Ici-

Paris soon changed to target a lowbrow mar-

ket, featuring horoscopes, titillating love in-

trigues, cartoons and society gossip. Locked

in permanent battle to outdo its main com-

petitor, France-Dimanche, it has consistently

plumbed the depths of outrageous, shocking

and far-fetched reportage, drawing on bizarre

tales of the occult, gory accounts of medical

mishaps, exposés of secrets, and in particular

the intimate detail of marriages and divorces.

It has made a speciality of speculatively prob-

ing the private lives of internationally known

figures in politics or entertainment, often

printing wholly fictitious accounts, and focus-

ing with particular relish on Europe’s royal

families, especially that of Britain; for exam-

ple, since the 1960s it has regularly headlined

lurid announcements of the (secret) abdica-

tion, blindness, terminal illness or death of

Queen Elizabeth II. Its circulation rose to a

high point of 1.2 million in 1970, but fell in

the 1990s to a third of that level. Like France-

Dimanche, it is now owned by the powerful

Hachette publishing group.

MICHAEL KELLY

Further reading

Agulhon, M. and Bonte, P. (1992) Marianne:

les visages de la République, Paris: Gallimard

(an anatomy of France’s major icon).

Forbes, J. and Kelly, M. (eds) (1995) French

Cultural Studies: An Introduction, Oxford:

Oxford University Press (a collection of es-

says).

Fumaroli, M. (1991) L’État culturel: essai sur

une religion moderne, Paris: Folio (a polemi-

cal critique of state cultural intervention).

immigration

Immigration has become an issue of major

political, social and cultural significance. In

recent times, it has been used as both a politi-

cal football and an umbrella term to refer to a

diverse range of issues. The term ‘immigration’

is therefore ambiguous, since it can embrace

both the limited questions of migration flows

and the nature of the foreign population in

France, and wider issues and debates in con-

temporary French society, such as French na-

tional history and national identity, Islam and

secularism, and racism and anti-racism.

Let us briefly consider the recent history of

migration flows and immigration policy in

France. Until the beginning of the 1970s, im-

migration was largely confined to the realm

of technocrats concerned with the economy,

the labour force and questions of demogra-

phy. The state had a minimal role in regulat-

ing migration flows (despite the presence of

the Office National d’Immigration, established

in 1945 precisely for that purpose), and immi-

gration was not a prominent political issue. A

more interventionist approach by the state was

only deemed necessary when the nature of im-

migration changed from predominantly Euro-

pean flows to North and sub-Saharan African

flows, was believed to have shifted from the

temporary residence of single men to the per-

manent settlement of families, and was conse-

quently deemed to be no longer simply an eco-

nomic but now a social and cultural question.

The new ‘problem’ of immigration required a

new ‘solution’ which, as in other Western in-

dustrial democracies at the time, took the form

of immigration controls of non-European for-

eigners whose presence was conceived as a

threat to social cohesion.

Following the suspension of primary im-

migration in 1974 by Giscard d’Estaing, ini-

tial efforts to aid the process of integration of

immigrants (for example, in the areas of hous-

ing and employment) and to recognize cultural

difference soon gave way to a more rigorous

attempt to control and reverse migration flows

from North Africa. This policy was pursued

through measures which linked the right of

residence to employment, clamped down on

illegal immigration (immigration clandestine)

and established a package of financial aid for

repatriation (aide au retour).

Despite Socialist claims that they would in-

troduce a new and coherent policy on

immigration

293

immigration when they took over power in

1981, the broad lines of Mitterrand’s policy

of ‘integration and control’ in the 1980s could

be said to be simply a continuation of the ap-

proach adopted by Giscard in the 1970s.

Measures improving the lives and conditions

of immigrants—the right to free association

of immigrant groups and the amnesty for ille-

gal immigrants in 1981, the ten-year residence

and work permit in 1984—were offset by

tighter controls from 1983 onwards, the re-

fusal to grant immigrants the right to vote in

municipal elections (a promise which was con-

tained in Mitterrand’s 110-point manifesto

programme for the presidential elections of

1981), and the reintroduction of a voluntary

repatriation scheme (aide à la réinsertion) in

1984. Since 1986, the alternation of right- and

left-wing governments has had little bearing

on the direction of immigration policy, which

has continued to favour restrictive controls on

entry and residence, the removal of illegal im-

migrants, and the tightening up of rules on

political asylum.

Despite the fact that the foundations for

this politicization of immigration were laid in

the 1970s, it was only in the 1980s that immi-

gration became an issue of major political sig-

nificance: the rise of the extreme right-wing

Front National (founded in 1972 by Jean-

Marie Le Pen), and the parallel rise of new

anti-racist organizations (notably SOS

Racisme in 1984 and France Plus in 1985),

polarized the issue around pro- and anti-im-

migrant positions; political parties sought to

use immigration for electoral ends; the media

raised the stakes through their generally emo-

tive treatment of the question; while second-

generation youth sought new forms of expres-

sion of cultural and political identities. By the

middle of the decade it had become difficult

to debate immigration in a rational, non-par-

tisan way, because the issues had become ob-

scured by half-truth and distortion, while the

term ‘immigration’ had itself become a euphe-

mism to refer to those of North African origin

or ‘appearance’. In this atmosphere, the fact

that the Portuguese community was roughly

the same size as the Algerian community, or

that almost half a million Harkis (Algerians

who fought for France during the Algerian

war) and many second-generation immigrants

born in France had French nationality, did not

disturb the general impression that ‘immigra-

tion’ was a question of what to do about ‘oth-

ers’ from the Maghreb. Increasingly, this un-

holy alliance of euphemism, dubious statistics

and cultural stereotyping was bracketed (in

political and media discourse) with wider so-

cial and political questions, such as the prob-

lems of housing and employment in the sub-

urbs of major cities, the crisis in universal val-

ues and the ‘integration’ of society, and the

future of secular education (laïcité).

In other words, the contemporary

politicization of immigration is symptomatic

of wider crises affecting France in a post-colo-

nial and postmodern era: migration from the

poorer south and the post-Communist East to

the richer Western democracies; the break-

down in processes of assimilation of diverse

people through the major institutions of the

state; the question of cultural difference in a

society which has traditionally prided itself on

uniformity and equality in the public sphere

(la République une et indivisible); new forms

of racism accompanying the fast-changing po-

litical and cultural landscape; the nature of na-

tional identity in what is, arguably, a post-na-

tional era.

Accompanying the debate on immigration

has been a far-reaching reappraisal of French

national history and the idea of the nation.

For some, it has been an opportunity to view

France’s past in terms of an historical cultural

unity which is threatened by the cultural dif-

ference of today’s immigrants. For others, it

has been a chance to reaffirm the importance

of immigration (and hence diversity) in the

development of the French nation, and to chal-

lenge the mythical cultural homogeneity of a

‘pure’ France. The historical question of

whether the nation is a contractual associa-

tion of individuals (irrespective of race, reli-

gion or origin), or a community of cultural or

racial heritage, is at the heart of these debates.

This was most evident at the time of the pro-

posed changes to the Nationality Code by the

immigration

294

Chirac administration in 1986–7. The plan to

transform the acquisition of French national-

ity for second-generation children born in

France from an automatic right to a voluntary

request was shelved at the time, but became

law under the Balladur government in 1993.

Many saw this as a clear sign that France had

abandoned its traditionally open model of the

nation based on residence (known as the po-

litical model) in favour of the ‘German’ model

based on blood (the ethnic or racial model).

The debate on the Code of Nationality dem-

onstrated to what extent ‘immigration’ raised

fundamental questions about the history and

institutional fabric of the French nation.

In recent times, immigration has been trans-

formed from a minor non-political issue into

a major issue encompassing diverse aspects of

French society and history. At stake are fun-

damental questions concerning France’s

present and future: Are equality and uniform-

ity the only means by which social solidarity

and cohesion can be preserved, or can an ac-

ceptance of difference and pluralism provide

the answer? Or can France find a satisfactory

middle path between the two?

MAX SlLVERMAN

See also: beurs; demographic developments;

Désir, Harlem, and SOS Racisme; Islam;

Judaism; parties and movements;

postmodernism; racism/anti-semitism

Further reading

Hargreaves, A.G. (1995) Immigration, ‘Race’

and Ethnicity in Contemporary France,

London: Routledge (good overview of cur-

rent debates and issues).

Ireland, P. (1994) The Policy Challenge of Eth-

nic Diversity: Immigrant Politics in France

and Switzerland, Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press (analysis of immigrants’

political mobilization within the context of

a national framework of a ‘host’ society ).

Silverman, M. (1992) Deconstructing the Na-

tion: Immigration, Racism and Citizenship

in Modern France, London: Routledge (im-

migration treated as a symptom of wider

crises in contemporary France).

Weil, P. (1991) La France et ses étrangers, Paris:

Calmann-Lévy (detailed and comprehensive

analysis of French immigration policy).

Indochine

Musicians

An influential, highly instrumental rock group

with a harsh, rhythmic, powerful sound,

whose career in France took off in the 1980s.

Internationally renowned, they export their

product—polished, but with a hint of derision

in their style—to the rest of Europe, Canada,

the Far East and Latin America. Their tours

include numbers from their last three albums:

The Birthday Album (1991), Un jour dans

notre vie (One Day in Our Life) from 1993

and Radio Indochine (1994).

GÉRALD POULET

Further reading

Barthe, M.-A. (1985) ‘Chômage, travail au

noir et entraide familial’, Consommation 3

(article reporting a research project into the

relationship between unemployment and

the informal economy).

Rosanvallon, P. (1980) ‘Le Développement de

l’économie souterraine et l’avenir des

sociétés industrielles’, Le Débat 2 (theoreti-

cal article suggesting the unemployed are

active in the paid informal economy).

Windebank, J. (1991) The Informal Economy

in France, Aldershot: Avebury (a discussion

of competing theoretical perspectives con-

cerning the informal economy in France).

Institute of the Arab World

Conceived in the context of the oil crisis under

Institute of the Arab World

296

the presidency of Giscard d’Estaing as part of

a policy to improve relations with the Arab

world, this became one of the Grands Projets

built under François Mitterrand. The site and

architect originally chosen were changed un-

der the auspices of Jack Lang at the Ministry

of Culture and his adviser Christian

Dupavillon. The building, designed by Jean

Nouvel and partners, was acclaimed as an ar-

chitectural masterpiece. Inaugurated in 1987,

its facilities include a museum, a library and

exhibition space, but its record of activities has

been generally disappointing, due to persist-

ent conflicts between the founding partners.

SUSAN COLLARD

Further reading

Bradby, D. (1991) Modern French Drama

1940–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press (see Chapter 4 for a discus-

sion of Ionesco).

Esslin, M. (1980) The Theatre of the Absurd,

Harmondsworth: Penguin (a thorough

analysis of plays and philosophy; see espe-

cially Chapter 3).

Lamont, R. (1995) Ionesco’s Political Impera-

tive, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Irigaray, Luce

b. 1932, Belgium

Psychoanalyst and philosopher

Irigaray is a feminist working in the areas of

psychoanalysis, philosophy and linguistics.

Her work in general has been more warmly

received in Italy, Canada, the United States and

Britain than in France, although the impor-

tance of her studies in sociolinguistics is rec-

ognized in France far more than in anglophone

circles.

Initially the aspects of Irigaray’s work which

attracted widespread attention were her cri-

tiques of Freud and Lacan, and her poetic cel-

ebrations of the female body in This Sex Which

is Not One (Ce Sexe qui n’en est pas un). This

skewed perspective on her oeuvre led to her

being associated with women such as Hélène

Cixous and Julia Kristeva as a ‘French femi-

nist’ or advocate of écriture féminine. In the

course of the 1970s and 1980s, these terms

came to imply an emphasis on the joys of the

female body, particularly in its reproductive

capacity, which appeared biologically essen-

tialist, heterosexist and Eurocentric to many

other feminists—whether materialist or reform-

ist. They also implied esoteric and thus elitist

writing, which was difficult to penetrate, both

because of its technicality (the range of psy-

choanalytical and philosophical reference) and

because of its avant-gardist literary qualities.

From the late 1980s onwards, a number of

works have been published by Margaret

Whitford and others which have addressed

Irigaray’s work with the seriousness and at-

tention to detail which it requires, helping to

unpick these misconceptions or

oversimplifications.

Unlike Cixous and Kristeva, Irigaray has

fairly consistently presented herself as a femi-

nist. The former have both trained as analysts

of literature, have produced literary works

themselves and, more unusually to an Anglo-

Saxon feminist eye, have focused their celebra-

tory analysis of linguistic transgressions and

modernist or avant-garde literary practices

(which Cixous has called écriture féminine) on

male-authored texts (with one or two notable

exceptions, such as the writings of the Brazil-

ian modernist Clarice Lispector). Irigaray ap-

pears to have little interest in literature as such,

although her amorous dialogues with philoso-

phers such as Nietzsche—as in her Marine

Lover (Amante marine)—have an undoubted

poetical quality. Her mode of reading does not

display Kate Millett’s hostility to male authors,

but it combines amorous dialogue (approach-

ing Cixous’s reading practice) with a feminist

critique which would be more welcome to an

Anglo-Saxon feminist audience than Cixous’s

readings of Joyce. While, as a practising psy-

choanalyst, she is not as hostile to Freud as

certain radical feminists, her approach is more

openly feminist than that of Kristeva, who also

practises psychoanalysis (see Irigaray’s Specu-

lum of the Other Woman).

Irigaray’s loving words about women’s

sexual organs and possible relations between

women still provoke charges of biologism, de-

spite hopeful pronouncements by her admirers

that the debate is dead. Clearly her words are

designed to help make women feel more posi-

tive about what has been denigrated and de-

graded in our society. Irigaray is aware that for

change to occur a transformation must take

Irigaray, Luce