Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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place on several levels; she does discuss eco-

nomic, political and legislative issues. However,

her expertise is in philosophy and psychoanaly-

sis, and she has focused on questions of lan-

guage. Crucially this is not a disembodied lan-

guage—Irigaray has emphasized our need for a

sensible transcendental which would overcome

the deathly opposition between body (indeed,

all matter) and mind or soul. That opposition,

which privileges the mental and spiritual above

mere matter, has not only had lethal effects in

the biosphere, Irigaray tells us, but is also a

question of sex, of downgrading the maternal

body in favour of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Women will only be able to exist as women (as

opposed to the opposites of men, the mothers,

virgins and whores assigned value in the mas-

culine economy) when they have a place in the

Symbolic and Imaginary Orders—when they

have their own spiritual and aesthetic place, but

also when the spiritual and cultural ceases to

be cut off from the (maternal) body.

Irigaray publishes on a range of topics us-

ing a range of styles. The articles in Je, tu,

nous, covering the role of the placenta, sexual

practices in the time of AIDS, women and em-

ployment, are accessible to a wide audience.

Other texts, such as Elemental Passions (Pas-

sions élémentaires), invite the reader to read

them over and over again, playing with the

dense, polysemic and elliptical pronounce-

ments. Others again, such as her collaborative

work on sociolinguistics (see Sexes et genres),

address an audience of specialists, and use

technical language and scholarly style.

Irigaray’s work can be conceptually divided

into three strands:

• the critical strand, in particular her engage-

ment with great figures of philosophy and

psychoanalysis;

• the positive, practical strand—detailed sug-

gestions how women’s lives might be im-

proved in the short and medium term; and

• the poetic and utopian strand, for example

her dreams of a feminine economy.

The first strand has proved most generally

palatable, although some feminists find as-

pects of this work both elitist and too kind to

the great misogynists of the past. The second

strand has sometimes been found comically

detailed by more ‘sophisticated’ readers. The

third strand inevitably provokes questions like

‘how’ and ‘when’. The best answer utopian

feminists can suggest is the transformative ef-

fect of reading utopian writing—at least as

likely as the transformative effect of reading

Mallarmé.

JUDITH STILL

Further reading

Burke, C., Schor, N. and Whitford, M. (eds)

(1994) Engaging with Irigaray, New York:

Columbia University Press.

Irigaray, Luce

299

Chanter, T. (1995) Ethics of Eros: Irigaray’s

Rewriting of the Philosophers, New York

and London: Routledge (philosophical

analysis).

Fuss, D. (1990) Essentially Speaking, London:

Routledge (an interesting intervention into

the essentialism debate although the oppo-

sition set up between Irigaray and Monique

Wittig is somewhat schematic).

Grosz, E. (1989) Sexual Subversions: Three

French Feminists, Sydney: Allen and Unwin

(an important survey).

Whitford, M. (1991), Luce Irigaray: Philoso-

phy in the Feminine, London: Routledge

(essential reading for anyone who wishes

to take Irigaray seriously).

——(ed.) (1991) The Irigaray Reader, Oxford:

Basil Blackwell (a clear, accessible introduc-

tion to Irigaray’s work).

Islam

Islam is often confused with islamisme. The

former refers to the religion and cultural prac-

tices of Muslims; the latter to a political

project associated especially with fundamen-

talist movements in Iran, Algeria, Egypt and

elsewhere. The conflation of these two terms,

coupled with the negative historical image of

the barbarous Islamic hordes of the Crusades,

has led to the popular image of Islam as a

threat to the secular and ‘modern’ foundations

of the Republican nation-state. Yet new con-

structions of Islam in France have challenged

this image and, in the process, have reformu-

lated both Islam and Frenchness.

Negative images of Islam in France have

been fuelled not only by the rise of Islamic

fundamentalism elsewhere in the world but by

a number of other contributory factors.

Amongst these we should mention the Alge-

rian war and the debate around immigration.

The bitter war fought between 1954 and

1962, which ultimately led to Algerian inde-

pendence, has left deep scars in the French

‘psyche’. The uncertain position of about half

a million ‘French Muslims’, or Harkis, in

France (those who fought for the French dur-

ing the war of independence and had to be

repatriated to France in 1962 for their own

safety) is testimony to the profound ambiva-

lence in France towards Algerian Muslims.

The politicization of immigration over the

last twenty-five years has had the effect of ex-

tending this ambivalence to all North Africans

(Maghrébins) in France. The new discourse of

the cultural difference of North Africans in

France (frequently based on the criterion of

religious difference) is a powerful weapon for

those who argue for the incompatibility of

French and Muslim identities. Following what

is perceived as a crisis in integration of many

from immigrant families, Islam has become

associated with the ‘problems of the suburbs’,

disaffected and delinquent ‘second-generation’

youth, and uncivilized foreign practices (like

ritual slaughter).

Underlying the notion of a dichotomy be-

tween Frenchness and Islam is the powerful

French tradition of laïcité (secularism). With

its roots in Republican universalism and

Jacobin anti-clericalism, this tradition is cen-

tral to the profound belief that the modern

nation depends on the division between pub-

lic (political) and private (religious/cultural)

spheres. Islam, which does not recognize this

division, is therefore interpreted by many as

incompatible with the modern French nation.

However, in today’s post-colonial,

postmodern and pluralist climate, not only

does this doctrinaire version of laïcité appear

more and more like an intolerant fundamen-

talism itself, but the separation of the public

and private spheres (and hence political and

sociocultural questions) is becoming increas-

ingly difficult to maintain. A number of com-

mentators have suggested that the principles

of laïcité need to be rethought in order to bring

it into line with the contemporary national

and international landscape, and to guarantee

the possibility of a French Islam.

Many of the issues mentioned above were

raised during the famous ‘headscarf affair’ of

1989, in which three Muslim girls were excluded

from their school in Creil near Paris for wear-

ing their Islamic headscarves, hence breaching

Islam

300

the code of laïcité in state education. Although

the event was often presented in the media as a

struggle between the fundamentalist obscurant-

ism of a foreign-based Islam and the modern,

secular and enlightened French nation-state, the

issues were far more complex (see Gaspard and

Khosrow-Khavar 1995).

Unlike Christianity and Judaism, which (in

their different ways and over the years) have

reached compromises with the Republican

secular tradition and have an institutional

presence recognized by the state, Islam has

never been granted the same opportunity to

find a similar space of its own. Hence, the

common perception that Islam functions as a

fifth column in France, manipulated by for-

eign regimes and outside influences (for ex-

ample, the grand mosque in Paris is under

Algerian control), is largely due to the inabil-

ity of the French state to establish the ground

rules for a French Islam.

However, just as Jews are not simply the

product of anti-semitism, so too Muslims are

not simply the product of anti-Muslim racism.

Today, more than ever, Islam in France is far

from an unproblematic faith, reducible to ex-

tremist fundamentalist politics or the product

of negative images. Kepel (1987) and Étienne

(1989) have revealed the diversity of practices

which go under the name of Islam, and the

heterogeneous nature of the so-called ‘Mus-

lim community’. Less than 5 per cent of the

2.5–3 million Muslims in France actually pray

in a mosque or other place of worship, and

most of them are of the older generation. For

many young Muslims (for the most part born

in France with French nationality, or eventu-

ally to acquire it at the age of 18), Islam has

been either rejected or reinterpreted in a vari-

ety of ways. A number of young people have

used Islam strategically, for the purposes of

socialization and identity construction. For

most, a Muslim heritage today is only one part

of the wider process of socialization and iden-

tification; in conjunction with other forms of

cultural and social identification, Islam con-

tributes towards a hybrid sense of identity

which challenges all-embracing religious/cul-

tural stereotypes.

The so-called ‘second’ or beur generation

has not only participated in political struggles

to redefine rights and identities (for example,

through anti-racist organizations like SOS

Racisme and France Plus, and movements for

new citizenship), but has also produced a vi-

brant cultural output, frequently born from

the clash or mixing of traditions and identifi-

cations. In literature (Hargreaves 1991), mu-

sic, theatre and the other arts, the new voices

in the 1980s and 1990s of the beur generation

have presented a challenge to the frequently

ethnocentric nature of French cultural pro-

duction and cultural theory, and rendered

problematic some of the unquestioned as-

sumptions underlying concepts of the French

nation and national identity. The writers

Mehdi Charef and Azouz Begag, the pop

group Carte de séjour and the popular music

known as raï have all, in their different ways,

refashioned the terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘France’

to counter the notion of their mutual incom-

patibility.

Institutional rigidity and negative histori-

cal images are therefore being challenged by

two processes: the breakdown of the divisions

between the political and the sociocultural

spheres, and the everyday construction by

young French Muslims and cultural practi-

tioners of a hybridized form of identification.

Pluralism from above and below might yet

lead to the erosion of monolithic stereotypes

of Frenchness and Islam.

MAX SlLVERMAN

See also: beurs; Désir, Harlem, and SOS

Racisme; education, the state and the church;

postmodernism; racism/anti-semitism

Further reading

Cesari, J. (1994) Être musulman en France:

associations, militants et mosquées, Paris:

Karthala/IREMAM (comprehensive over-

view of Muslims in France).

Étienne, B. (1989) La France et l’Islam, Paris:

Hachette (historical account).

Gaspard, F. and Khosrow-Khavar, F. (1995)

Islam

301

Le Foulard et la République, Paris: Éditions

du Seuil (account of the ‘Creil affair’).

Hargreaves, A.G. (1991) Voices from the

North African Immigrant Community in

France: Immigration and Identity in Beur

Fiction, Oxford: Berg (discussion of beur

writing).

Kepel, G. (1987) Les Banlieues de l’Islam:

naissance d’une religion en France, Paris:

Éditions du Seuil.

Islam

302

Jabès, Edmond

b. 1912, Cairo, Egypt;

d. 1991, Paris

Poet

Edmond Jabès is the outstanding self-con-

sciously Jewish poet writing in French during

the second half of the twentieth century. Born

in a French-speaking community, he began

writing poetry in 1943, having cultivated

friendships with Max Jacob and Gabriel

Bounoure. After the Suez crisis he left Egypt

to settle in Paris and pursued his activity as a

writer with renewed vigour. Deeply marked by

the trauma of the Holocaust, Jabès tried in his

writings to come to terms with the silence and

absence of the Hebrew God during the years

of persecution and extermination. After an ini-

tial collection of poems published in 1959, Je

bâtis ma demeure (I Build My Dwelling), he

developed a poetic style comprising lyrical ex-

pression, narrative, meditation, journal entries

and aphorisms. The first cycle of six books

(1963–5) is called The Book of Questions/The

Book of Yukel/Return to the Book (Le Livre

des questions/Le Livre de Yukel/Le Retour au

livre), followed by the anagrammatic series

Yaël/Elya/Aély (1967–72) and closed off by a

seventh volume entitled El, ou le dernier livre

(El, or the Last Book) (1973). ‘Livre’ occurs

consistently in these, as well as in Jabès’s later

works, such as the three volumes of 1976–80,

The Book of the Resemblances (Le Livre des

ressemblances); its specific significance lies in

the fact that Jabès thinks of the persistence of

Judaism as being informed and confirmed by

‘the Book’. Thus, for him the act of writing

has become in certain ways the most authen-

tic Jewish (and also human) act in the time of

God’s eclipse: how to speak the unutterable.

WALTER A.STRAUSS

Further reading

Jefferson, A. and Robey, D. (eds) (1986) Mod-

ern Literary Theory, London: B.T. Batsford

(has several clear sections on Jakobson’s

poetics and a bibliography).

Jarre, Jean-Michel

b. 1948, Lyon

Composer and musician

Jean-Michel Jarre is France’s most famous and

commercially successful popular composer and

musician of the modern era. His unprecedented

success—based on technical and technologi-

cal innovations with synthesizers, such as his

semicircular ‘Magic Keyboard’ and his famous

Laser Harp—has guaranteed him huge audi-

ences worldwide: for example, 1 million spec-

tators for his Bastille Day concert in the Place

de la Concorde in 1979, 150,000 spectators

at five concerts in Peking and Shanghai in 1982

(with 30 million watching on television and

500 million listening on radio), and 1.3 mil-

lion people at his free concert in Houston in

1986 (a feat which won him his second entry

in the Guinness Book of Records). Worldwide

record, tape, CD and video sales are now al-

most impossible to calculate, but record sales

alone were of the order of 32 million by 1986.

Jarre’s family contained a number of musi-

cians and it was therefore not surprising that

he began to learn the piano at the age of 5.

While he was still at the Lycée Michelet, he

took lessons in harmony, counterpoint and

fugue with Jeannine Rueff of the Paris Con-

servatory. He also learned to play the electric

guitar before gaining his degree and joining

the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (Musi-

cal Research Group) in 1968. The direction

his career was to take was now clear: seeking

to create something other than conventional

or classical music, he experimented with a new

acoustic world that went beyond traditional

scales and musical notation. The initial result

was The Cage (1970), a piece of pure elec-

tronic music, followed in 1971 by the auda-

cious but eminently successful introduction of

his avant-garde music to the Paris Opera with

AOR. The experimental Deserted Palace fol-

lowed in 1972.

Jarre now diversified his activities by writ-

ing music for films, television, advertisements

and other performers, not to mention compo-

sitions for ballet and the theatre. His first re-

cording intended for release, the revolution-

ary Oxygène, dates from 1976 and became the

best-selling French record of all time, topping

the charts worldwide. This instant success

brought with it prestigious accolades at home

and abroad (the Grand Prix de l’Académie

Charles Cros in France, and ‘personality of the

year’ awarded by People magazine in the USA),

while his achievements were recognized by the

world’s press (‘Jean-Michel Jarre Oxygenius’,

proclaimed Interview; ‘A French revolution to

rock the world’ announced the Daily Mirror).

The world of popular music had been intro-

duced to new sounds—electronic in origin but

vibrant with emotion and rich in their powers

of suggestion.

Jarre’s second album, Equinoxe (1978),

confirmed his international status and encour-

aged him to break new ground in the realm of

live performance. The result was the spectacu-

lar and highly innovative Bastille Day concert

of 1979 which, in addition to attracting the

(then) record-breaking number of spectators,

was seen by a television audience of some 100

million. On a personal level, this live concert

allowed Jarre to realize one of his ambitions:

the re-establishment of the free, ‘open-house’

musical festival. On a commercial level, it also

led to the production of France’s first ‘full-

length’ video featuring a popular concert

(though the duration—forty minutes—may

seem short by current standards). Further suc-

cesses have followed, such as Magnetic Fields,

Zoolooks, Rendez-Vous, Waiting for

Cousteau, and Jarre made a huge impact on

the United Kingdom with his much-acclaimed

Docklands Concerts (1988). Jarre continues

to produce innovative, emotionally charged

music of the highest quality and to perform in

Jarre, Jean-Michel

304

multimedia concerts which exploit every form

of entertainment technology.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Anquetil, P. (1995) ‘Géographie du jazz en

France aujourd’hui’, Les Cahiers du jazz 6

(an analytical and critical survey of the jazz

scene in Paris and the regions).

Bergerot, F. and Merlin, A. (1991) L’Épopée

du jazz 2: au delà du bop, Paris:

Découvertes Gallimard (a remarkably well-

illustrated and informative study of post-

war jazz in general, with a relevant chapter

on jazz in France).

Jonasz, Michel

b. 1947, Drancy

Singer-songwriter

This former member of the group King Set

initially wrote songs for others (including

Alain Souchon) before becoming a most suc-

cessful solo performer whose hits include Jean-

Claude Vannier’s Super nana (Fantastic Chick)

and his own J’veux pas qu’tu t’en allies (I

Don’t Want You to Go Away). The anguish

which his songs often express (and the influ-

ence of blues is most pronounced) is some-

times tinged with humour—a combination of

mood also characteristic of Souchon’s work.

IAN PICKUP