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The 2008 Economic Crisis and the French Narrative of National Decline: Une causalité diabolique

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09639489.2013.767790

1469-9869

Sarah Waters,

French Historical and Cultural Studies

Abstract With its roots in right-wing nationalism, declinology or déclinisme has been revived in the post-2008 context as a means of interpreting and reacting to the economic crisis. Recent texts interpret the crisis as a new chapter in an ongoing story of national decline that has progressively marginalised France, derailed its international status and destroyed its cultural integrity. Unlike the declinist writers of the 1990s who saw economic liberalisation as a panacea for France's ills, post-2008 writers are characterised by a reactionary nationalism that repudiates openness and seeks to fortify borders against external threats. Drawing on historian Michel Winock's work, the author argues that recent texts perpetuate a logic of causalité diabolique that distorts and manipulates a situation of economic crisis for ideological purposes. Just as during other periods of economic crisis in French history, this literature panders to a dangerous nationalism that exalts the nation, demonises foreigners and seeks to defend France against a malevolent outside world. Ancré dans un nationalisme de droite, le terme de déclinisme ou declinology a été ravivé dans le contexte d'après 2008 comme une façon d'interpréter et de réagir face à la crise économique. Les derniers écrits à ce sujet dépeignent la crise comme un nouveau chapitre dans le cours de l'histoire d'une nation en déclin. Ce nouveau chapitre a progressivement marginalisé la France, mis en échec son statut sur la scène internationale et démantelé son intégrité culturelle. Contrairement aux écrivains déclinistes des années 90 qui voyaient en le libéralisme économique un remède aux maux de la France, les écrivains d'après 2008 se distinguent par un nationalisme rétrograde qui rejette toute ouverture et cherche à immuniser les frontières contre toutes menaces extérieures. En s'inspirant du travail de l'historien Michael Winock, l'auteur soutient que les récents écrits sur le déclinisme pérennisent une logique de causalité diabolique. Cette logique déforme et manipule une situation de crise dont le seul but est de satisfaire des objectifs idéologiques. Tout comme d'autres périodes de crises économiques que la France a connues, cette publication observe un nationalisme pernicieux qui glorifie la nation, diabolise les étrangers et cherche à préserver la France de l'hostilité du monde externe. Notes [1] The debate about declinology in France reflects a wider preoccupation within Western industrialised societies, with a decline of the West in the face of emergent economies such as China, Brazil and India. Recent titles which point to a decline of the West include economist Dambisa Moyo's (2011) How the West was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly and the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead; the chief economist at HSBC, Stephen King's (Citation2010) Losing Control. The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity; Walter Laqueur's (Citation2007) The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent; and Bruce Thornton's (Citation2007) Decline and Fall. Europe's Slow Motion Suicide. Zambian-born Dambisa Moyo, in her best-selling book How the West was Lost, reflects on the failed economic policies and decision-making that led to the West's economic decline and for her the 2008 crisis was 'yet another step in a fundamental transition from one economic power to another; from the West to the Rising Rest' (Moyo Citation2011, xii). [2] Jacques Chirac virulently criticised the thesis of French national decline and supported the debate organised by La Fondation pour l'innovation politique on 23 March 2005 on the theme 'À qui profite la thèse du déclin en France?' Similarly, Dominique de Villepin, Prime Minister from 2005 to 2007, coined the phrase 'déclinologues' in his prime ministerial speech of 10 January 2006, in which he railed against 'le discours malheureux' of those who, in his view, were damaging the French national interest. Meanwhile, many French economists have mobilised to challenge a dominant declinist discourse, such as those who launched the website 'Tous optimistes' in 2011, which is intended to inspire positivity about France's prospects and therefore to help boost economic recovery. This initiative was led by CitationJean-Hervé Lorenzi, economics professor at Paris-Dauphine, president of the Cercle des économistes and author of Le Fabuleux destin d'une puissance intermédiaire (2011). Other economists in this group include CitationKarine Berger and Valérie Rabault, both private-sector economists who published a similarly upbeat title, Les Trente glorieuses sont devant nous (2011). In the press, L'Express (Citation2011) published '111 raisons d'être optimiste pour la France' in order to signal France's excellent prospects for the future. [3] Winock borrows this term from the title of a book by Léon Poliakov (Citation1980), La causalité diabolique: Essai sur l'origine des persécutions. [4] In La décadence de la nation française (1931), CitationRobert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu depict a nation teetering on the brink of disaster and facing imminent catastrophe: 'Il nous apparaît qu'en tant que nation, la France est en décadence et peut-être bientôt en agonie. Il nous apparaît que cette agonie mettrait en péril à la fois la paix du monde et la liberté de l'individu. Il nous apparaît que pour remédier aux effets désastreux de cette situation, il reste encore une chance et une chance seule' (11). They blame France's decline on Americanism—a force seen as more pernicious than fascism—whose capitalist model, based on values of scientific rationalism and materialism, was destroying France's national spirit. They called for a reawakening of 'la patrie française' and the creation of an 'ordre nouveau' that would lift France out of its moral turpitude and rebuild the fabric of the nation (242). [5] For a discussion of the debates on national decline of this period, see Meunier (Citation2004), Bacqué (Citation2006) and Taguieff (Citation2006). [6] For leftist historian Jacques Julliard in Le Malheur français, the French had sunk into a state of 'mélancolie morbide', not as a result of international transformations but because of an all-pervasive individualism and a loss of the collective values and ideals that once defined the national experience (2005, 137). For Julliard, France's salvation lay in defining a new leftist project rooted in collective values of citizenship, justice and social equality. [7] This term was coined by the French investment banker, economist and political adviser CitationAlain Minc, whose book, La Mondialisation heureuse (1997), championed the virtues of market integration and state reform and was seen as a key reference for the pensée unique that was seen to dominate French politics during the 1990s. Minc was a founding member of the liberal think tank, Fondation Saint Simon, and is close to Nicolas Sarkozy. [8] Eric Zemmour is a columnist for Le Figaro and presents a daily editorial on RTL, France's most popular national radio station. He has attracted controversy for his conservative views and is routinely accused of racism, sexism and homophobia. On 30 March 2010, SOS Racisme summoned him to appear before a criminal court on charges of racial defamation following his comments on a Canal+ television programme when he was speaking about his book, Mélancolie française. He commented that blacks and Arabs were targeted by the French police because they were more likely to be criminals: 'les Français issus de l'immigration étaient plus contrôlés que les autres parce que la plupart des trafiquants sont Noirs et Arabes… c'est un fait' (Le Monde, le 16 mars 2010). He was convicted on 18 February 2011 and ordered to pay a fine of 2000 euros. [9] Hervé Juvin has been described as an 'intellectual executive' whose work is influenced by the intertwining worlds of culture and business. His book combines a trenchant leftist critique of neo-liberalism with a traditionally right-wing preoccupation with themes of cultural identity, nation and national borders (Anderson Citation2006, 132). In so far as he can be situated politically, he is close to the Centre-Right journal Le Débat and interestingly, its chief editors Pierre Nora and Marcel Gauchet are the first to appear in his list of acknowledgements for Le Renversement du monde. [10] Jean-Pierre Chevènement is on the nationalist Left and describes himself as a republican and a Eurosceptic. He was Minister of Defence from 1988 to 1991 and Minister of the Interior from 1997 to 2000. He was a presidential candidate in the 2002 elections and since 2008 has been a member of the Senate.