Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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about a reappraisal of the position of Judaism

and concepts of Jewishness, three of which are

considered here. First, the contemporary cri-

sis in Republican institutions and ideals, the

breakdown in traditional forms of political

mobilization, and the re-emergence of ethnic

identities, has led to new forms of Jewish self-

perception and new directions for political ac-

tion. Less and less reticent about expressing

their difference, Jews are now just as likely to

fight anti-semitism on ethnic lines (that is, as

Jews) as on the traditional Republican lines of

the Rights of Man (that is, as human beings).

The robust challenge to revisionist histories of

the war and to the latent (and often overt) anti-

semitism of the Front National demonstrates

a greater willingness, especially among the

generation of Jews born after the war, to reaf-

firm the Jewish presence in French history and

in contemporary France. Hence, the infamous

statement by Jean-Marie Le Pen that the Holo-

caust represented only a ‘detail’ in the history

of the war and the desecration of Jewish graves

in Carpentras in 1990 were both met by high-

profile campaigns to mobilize popular support

behind opposition to anti-semitism.

Second, the betrayal of the Republican con-

tract by the Vichy regime and the continuing

refusal (until relatively recently) of political

leaders to acknowledge the complicity be-

tween France and the Holocaust have contrib-

uted to a loss of faith in the universalist egali-

tarianism of Republicanism, and the desire to

be more assertive in protecting Jewish inter-

ests. The issue of war crimes in the 1980s and

1990s is, in part, a reflection of this desire: the

pursuit (by the lawyer Serge Klarsfeld and oth-

ers) of the Nazi Klaus Barbie and the French

collaborators Paul Touvier, René Bousquet

and Maurice Papon not only sought to bring

to justice those who had committed crimes

against humanity, but also aimed to challenge

established myths about French protection of

Jews during the war.

Third, the Holocaust itself has become, for

many, the major determinant of Jewish identity

and has therefore replaced the connections be-

tween Jews and the Enlightenment tradition of

modernity as the central definer of Jewish his-

tory in France. Much cultural output by Jews

since the war (notably that of Paul Celan,

Edmond Jabès, Claude Lanzmann, Emmanuel

Lévinas, Patrick Modiano and Elie Wiesel) has

inevitably dealt with questions of survival and

loss, memory, history, identity and representa-

tion deriving from the experience of the Holo-

caust.

For a number of French writers and phi-

losophers (Maurice Blanchot, Hélène Cixous,

Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard) Jew-

ish experience of the Holocaust has been de-

veloped into a generalized critique of the

project of modernity. The term ‘Jew’, inextri-

cably linked to Auschwitz, is employed alle-

gorically to signify the failure of the modern

project of assimilation or eradication of the

other, and the postmodern impossibility of the

representation of truth, presence and reality.

‘Jew’ is therefore an affirmation of all that was

stigmatized in the age of modernity, including

otherness, difference and a non-essentialist

concept of unrooted and diasporic identity.

Here the specificity of real Jews, Jewish his-

tory and identity is replaced by the term ‘Jew’

as a sign of ‘otherness’ and postmodern flux.

Hence, Judaism and Jewishness in France

today must be seen in the context of both wider

historical processes and contemporary devel-

opments. In today’s climate of a crisis of as-

similation and a decline in universal values,

Judaism and Jewishness are more overtly

particularistic, fighting their corner to reaffirm

their past and present existence. Like other

ethnicized groups today, Jews are caught be-

tween two extremes: on the one hand, fixed

and monolithic versions of difference and his-

tory; and on the other, more flexible and plu-

ralistic notions of difference and history in

which Jewishness is not only itself seen as prob-

lematic (for example, the distinction within the

Jewish community between Sephardi and

Ashkenazi traditions), but constitutes only one

aspect of a multilayered identity. Although

poles apart in terms of identity-formation, both

these positions have at least one thing in com-

mon: the view that Jews are not simply deter-

mined from the outside (through the look of

the non-Jew or the anti-semite, as Jean-Paul

Judaism

309

Sartre famously argued in 1946 in Anti-Semite

and Jew (Réflexions sur la question juive), but

play an active role in the construction and per-

petuation of their own difference.

MAX SlLVERMAN

Further reading

Birnbaum, P. (1992) Anti-Semitism in France:

A Political History from Léon Blum to the

Present, Oxford: Blackwell (a translation

from the French of Birnbaum’s comprehen-

sive treatment of the subject).

Hayoun, M.-R. (1991) Le Judaïsme moderne,

Paris: PUF, ‘Que sais-je?’ (general introduc-

tion to modern Judaism).

Lyotard, J.-F. (1988) Heidegger et ‘les juifs’,

Paris: Galilée (postmodern philosophical

use of the term ‘Jew’ to signify otherness).

Juppé, Alain

b. 1945, Mont-de-Marsan, Landes

Politician

One of a generation of technocrats whose

political career was tied to that of Chirac

from the late 1970s, Juppé was deputy mayor

of Paris (1983–95), Minister for the Budget

and government spokesman (1986–8), and

General Secretary of the neo-Gaullist RPR

(1988–95). As Minister for Foreign Affairs in

the 1993–5 Balladur government, his compe-

tence was generally appreciated. Elected

mayor of Bordeaux and appointed as prime

minister by Chirac in 1995, he soon faced

protracted strike movements and became

deeply unpopular, owing to the apparent

readiness of his government to sacrifice em-

ployment, welfare provision and public

spending to the exigencies of preparing

France for a single European currency. He

was widely (but somewhat unjustly) blamed

for the Right’s resounding defeat in 1997, fol-

lowing President Chirac’s ill-advised calling

of early elections.

LAURENCE BELL

See also: European economic integration; par-

ties and movements

Juppé, Alain

310

Kaas, Patricia

b. 1967, Forbach, Lorraine

Singer

A remarkably mature blues singer for some-

one of her age, Patricia Kaas is one of the ris-

ing stars of the world of French popular mu-

sic. Already a very successful stage performer

(in France and abroad), whose successes in-

clude Mademoiselle chante le blues (The

Young Lady Sings the Blues) and I Wanna be

Loved by You, Kaas has already been drawn

to Hollywood and to a possible film career.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Positif (1989) December (special section on

Kieslowski).

Sight and Sound (1996) May (special section

on Kieslowski).

Klein, Yves

b. 1928, Nice;

d. 1962, Paris

Artist

As an artist, Yves Klein resists all classifica-

tion, despite his involvement with Nouveau

Réalisme. Without a formal art education him-

self, he was raised among painters. His father

was a landscape artist and his mother a painter

of the art informel school. In his own art work

Klein could be said to have transcended the

opposition between the abstract and the figu-

rative his parents represented: his almost fa-

natical devotion to Rosicrucianism and the

Christian mystical teachings of its sacred text,

the Cosmogonie, played a crucial role in the

development of his artistic theories and prac-

tice. These beliefs were complemented by his

practice of the spiritual disciplines associated

with the art of judo, which he taught for much

of his adult life.

In 1955, his monochrome painting Expres-

sion de l’univers de la couleur mine orange

was rejected by the Salon des Réalités through

a failure to understand Klein’s intentions.

These were to awaken in the viewer, through

contemplation of the luminous intensity and

immateriality of the single colour, the picto-

rial sensibility (la sensibilité picturale), which

seems to equate to some kind of cosmic con-

sciousness. It was the critic Pierre Restany who

took on the role of interpreting and promot-

ing Klein’s work, beginning with the 1959 ex-

hibition ‘Yves: propositions monochromes’.

The highly saturated luminous blue which

Klein developed and patented as International

Klein Blue (IKB) was used in his 1957 Milan

exhibition in which eleven similar-sized blue

monochromes were shown. Klein had priced

each differently in an attempt to show that the

painting’s value resided not in its physical ap-

pearance but in its immateriality. It was an

attempt to bring his art into line with the

teachings of the Cosmogonie, which proph-

esied that the end of the age of physical mat-

ter and ego consciousness would herald an era

of ‘pure spirit’, the immaterial.

The spiritual quality Klein saw in the col-

our blue was given further expression in his

exhibition ‘Pigment pur’, which displayed a

variety of objects impregnated with blue pig-

ment, and an ‘aerostatic sculpture’ consisting

of 1,001 blue balloons suspended over Paris

could be regarded as an early Happening, pre-

figuring those of the 1960s.

Thanks to his 1958 exhibition ‘Le Vide’.

Klein has been seen as a precursor of

Klein, Yves

313

Minimalism. The empty interior and bare

white walls of Iris Clert’s gallery represented

an attempt to raise cosmic awareness by pre-

senting the immateriality of the void itself as

an object of contemplation. The void as a

theme reappeared in 1965, when Klein pub-

lished a one-off newspaper featuring a photo-

montage of himself flying in space with the

caption ‘Le peintre de l’espace se jette dans le

vide’ (‘The painter of space flings himself into

the void’). This use of the media for artistic

ends also identifies him as an early Pop artist.

In 1959, he used the female body as a ‘liv-

ing paintbrush’, orchestrating the application

of blue paint to the model and producing im-

prints on paper fixed to a wall. Dubbed

Anthropométries de l’époque bleue by Pierre

Restany, these body prints represented for

Klein a concentration of ‘vital energy’, while

others now see them merely as early examples

of body art or performance art.

In 1960, Klein produced his triptych IKB,

Monopink, Monogold, the triad of colours

observable at the centre of a flame. Fire as a

symbol of the life force was celebrated in his

fire-sculptures and tamed in the fire-paintings

made by holding sheets of paper to the flames.

The process involved in creating these is com-

parable to that involved not only in his

Anthropométries but also in his Cosmogonies

de la pluie, in which rain was allowed to leave

its mark on a painted blue canvas.This subor-

dination of the painter’s skills to the single

creative act arguably prefigures conceptual art

of the 1970s.

Klein’s ability to anticipate so many later

trends is not confined to the field of art. Many

of the features of Rosicrucianism that in-

formed his artistic production are reminiscent

of the New Age thinking that arose in the dec-

ade following his premature death from a

heart attack. His eccentric and grandiose

plans for a provisional world government led

by artists, scientists and the spiritually en-

lightened were grounded in the same belief

system that fuelled his art. For Klein, art and

life were one.

CAROL WILCOX

Further reading

Stich, S. (1995) Yves Klein, London: Hayward

Gallery (gives useful and detailed documen-

tation on the beliefs and values that inform

his art).

Weitemeier, H. (1995) Yves Klein 1928–1962,

Cologne: Benedikt Taschen (a comprehen-

sive account of his art and life).

Kofman, Sarah

b. 1934, Paris;

d. 1995, Paris

Philosopher

A disciple of Derrida, Kofman wrote widely

on his work and that of Freud and Nietzsche.

Key thematic preoccupations of her work are

aesthetics as read by and within psychoana-

lytic theory, and female sexuality in the psy-

choanalytic context. The latter is the focus of

Kofman’s 1980 publication, The Enigma of

Woman (L’Énigme de la femme: la femme

dans les textes de Freud). This work explores

Freud’s accounts of female sexuality, and criti-

cally deconstructs their ambiguities, obscuri-

ties and contradications. Kofman also wrote

two autobiographical texts, Rue Labat, rue

Ordener and Paroles suffoquées (Suffocated

Words).

ALEX HUGHES

Further reading

Bradby, D (ed.) (1996) ‘Introduction’, in Three

Plays by B.-M.Koltès, London: Methuen (a

general introduction to Koltès’s drama in

English).

Kraemer, Jacques

b. 1938, Metz

Actor, director and playwright

The founder of the Théâtre Populaire de Lor-

raine, and a proponent of the decentralization

movement there until 1984, Kraemer has di-

rected his own and others’ works in France

and Germany. He is currently the director of

the Théâtre de Chartres.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Barthes, R. (1970) ‘L’étrangère‘, La Quinzaine

littéraire 94.

Fletcher, J. and Benjamin, A. (eds) (1990)

Abjection, Melancholia and Love: The

Work of Julia Kristeva, London and New

York: Routledge.

Lechte, J. (1990) Julia Kristeva, London and

New York, Routledge (clear, accurate and

interesting—focuses on Kristeva as

semiologist).

Moi, T. (ed.) (1986) The Kristeva Reader, Ox-

ford: Blackwell (a useful introduction).

Spivak, G. (1988) ‘French Feminism in an In-

ternational Frame’, in In Other Worlds:

Essays in Cultural Politics, London and

New York: Routledge (a hostile reading of

About Chinese Women and work by

H.Cixous).

Kurys, Diane

b. 1948, Lyon

Director, screenwriter and producer

Diane Kurys’s semi-autobiographical films use

period reconstructions and close social obser-

vation to evoke childhood, adolescence and fam-

ily breakdown from a female point of view. After

eight years as an actress, in 1977 Kurys wrote

and directed Peppermint Soda (Diabolo menthe)

about growing up in the 1960s. Coup de foudre

(1983) deals with ambivalent female friendship

in postwar France, while 1990’s C’est la vie (La

Baule Les Pins) reconstructs a family summer

holiday. Although Kurys does not identify her-

self as a woman director, her films problematize

women’s subjectivity through predominantly fe-

male-centred narratives. Her study of the mod-

ern (bourgeois) woman, Après l’amour (1992)

was followed by a less successful venture into

psychodrama, A la folie (1994).

CARRIE TARR