Book contents
- Contemporary Fiction in French
- Contemporary Fiction in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Mediterranean Francophone Writing
- Chapter 2 After the Experiment
- Chapter 3 Getting a Future
- Chapter 4 Contemporary French Fiction and the World
- Chapter 5 The Franco-American Novel
- Chapter 6 Graphic Novel Revolution(s)
- Chapter 7 ‘Back in the USSR’
- Chapter 8 Fictions of Self
- Chapter 9 Trauma, Transmission, Repression
- Chapter 10 Wretched of the Sea
- Chapter 11 Urban Dystopias
- Chapter 12 Imagining Civil War in the Contemporary French Novel
- Notes
- Select Secondary Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 12 - Imagining Civil War in the Contemporary French Novel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2021
- Contemporary Fiction in French
- Contemporary Fiction in French
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Mediterranean Francophone Writing
- Chapter 2 After the Experiment
- Chapter 3 Getting a Future
- Chapter 4 Contemporary French Fiction and the World
- Chapter 5 The Franco-American Novel
- Chapter 6 Graphic Novel Revolution(s)
- Chapter 7 ‘Back in the USSR’
- Chapter 8 Fictions of Self
- Chapter 9 Trauma, Transmission, Repression
- Chapter 10 Wretched of the Sea
- Chapter 11 Urban Dystopias
- Chapter 12 Imagining Civil War in the Contemporary French Novel
- Notes
- Select Secondary Bibliography
- Index
Summary
One of the striking features of the debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, televised on 3 May 2017 in the run-up to the second round of the French presidential elections, was Macron’s recourse to the language of civil war. Leaning on a reference to comments by political scientist Gilles Kepel, Macron claimed that the social division exacerbated and exploited by Le Pen’s Front National played perfectly into the hands of France’s ‘terrorist’ enemies, and he used the notion of civil war to capture this division: ‘Ce qu’ils attendent, le piège qu’ils nous tendent, c’est celui que vous portez, c’est la guerre civile.’ / ‘What they want, the trap they are setting us, is the very one you are helping to make, that is civil war.’ Warming to his theme, he repeated the charge of laying the groundwork for civil war twice within the following forty seconds. Nor was this his only public use of this language: addressing the European Parliament on 17 April 2018, he described the opposition between newly successful authoritarian nationalists and upholders of the ideal of transnational European democracy in terms of the return of civil war to Europe.
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- Information
- Contemporary Fiction in French , pp. 219 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021