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Questions of religion and cultural policy in France

2011; Routledge; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10286632.2010.528837

1477-2833

Jeremy Ahearne,

Cultural Identity and Heritage

Abstract This article explores how questions of religion have impinged on or informed various dimensions of culture‐shaping policy in France. Firstly, it considers not only how religious references have been orchestrated in high‐level attempts to frame secular national identities, but also how such processes have assumed quasi‐religious forms and functions. Secondly, it analyses the changing place of religion in French educational curricula and recent contested endeavours to introduce it as a cultural 'fact' into those curricula. Thirdly, the article examines influential framings of art policies in their relation to religion. It considers the pivotal function of religious fragments and debris in Malraux's vision of the imaginary museum and the use by Bourdieu of sustained religious metaphors to describe the sacralizing dynamics of secular art world. Finally, the article examines, in a long‐term perspective, the implicit and explicit cultural policies of religious bodies themselves in their attempts to act upon prevailing cultures. Keywords: French cultural policyimplicit cultural policyreligion and cultural policyView correction statement:Questions of religion and cultural policy in France Notes 1. On the imperative for social groups to work against their 'entropic' disintegration, see, for example, Debray (1981 Debray, R. 1981. Critique de la raison politique, ou l'inconscient religieux [Critique of political reason, or the religious unconscious], Paris: Gallimard. [Google Scholar], 1997 Debray, R. 1997. Transmettre [Transmitting culture], Paris: Odile Jacob. [Google Scholar]). The same issue is treated in canonic sociological texts such as Durkheim ([1912 Durkheim, E. [1912] 1976. The elementary forms of the religious life, Edited by: Swain, J.W. London: Allen and Unwin. [Google Scholar]] 1976 Berger, P. [1967] 1990. The sacred canopy: elements of a sociological theory of religion, New York: Anchor. [Google Scholar]) and Berger ([1967] 1990) (the principal focus of both the latter is specifically the sociology of religions as a foundational socio‐symbolic question). 2. See, for example, Durkheim ([1912 Durkheim, E. [1912] 1976. The elementary forms of the religious life, Edited by: Swain, J.W. London: Allen and Unwin. [Google Scholar]] 1976) or, more recently, Debray ([2003 Debray, R. [2003] 2007. Le Feu sacré. Fonctions du religieux [The sacred fire: functions of the religious], Paris: Gallimard (coll. Folio‐essais. [Google Scholar]] 2007) (or even, in certain respects to be discussed below, Bourdieu [1992 Bourdieu, P. [1992] 1996. The rules of art: genesis and structure of the literary field, Edited by: Emmanuel, S. Cambridge: Polity. [Google Scholar]] 1996). Rousseau's notion of 'civil religion' ([1755 and 1762] 1994 Rousseau, J.‐J. [1755/1762] 1994. Discourse on political economy and the social contract, Edited by: Betts, C. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 158–168) has also recurrently been adapted to frame such perspectives (e.g. Bellah [1975 Bellah, R. [1975] 1992. The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]] 1992, Baubérot 2004 Baubérot, J. 2004. Laïcité 1905–2005, entre passion et raison [Laicity 1905–2005: between passion and reason], Paris: Seuil. [Google Scholar], pp. 163–186). 3. Sarkozy's orchestration of potent religious symbolism at the level of 'national identity' policy has been complex and deliberate, both during his period as minister of the interior and as president. He – with the help of his speech‐writers Henri Guiano and Emmanuelle Mignon – has extolled the virtues of Catholicism (symbolically at the Vatican's Lateran Palace in 2007 Sarkozy, N. 2007. Discours de Nicolas Sarkozy au Palais de Latran le 20 décembre 2007 [Speech by Nicolas Sarkozy at Lateran Palace on December 20 2007]. Le Monde, [Google Scholar]) as a force for social cohesion in France, and indeed quite explicitly as an integral part of France's fundamental 'culture' (Sarkozy 2007 Sarkozy, N. 2007. Discours de Nicolas Sarkozy au Palais de Latran le 20 décembre 2007 [Speech by Nicolas Sarkozy at Lateran Palace on December 20 2007]. Le Monde, [Google Scholar]). In so doing he self‐consciously transgressed certain enshrined principles of laicity (setting the figure of the priest, for example, above that of the republican primary school teacher). Sarkozy also set up in 2003, as 'minister of the interior and religions', a 'French council for the Muslim religion' designed to provide the state with an official interlocutor (a pragmatic move that is closer to the Napoleonic concordat model than to the post‐1905 separation of church and state). As president, he nonetheless maximized in his legislative programmes the rhetorical charge of images of extreme 'Islamism', such as the full‐length veil (the burqua), thereby retaining at the same time a necessary foil for the political projection of a self‐consciously lay national cultural identity. 4. This is, of course, not the only possible linkage of republican identity and religious tradition – see, for example, Bellah ([1975 Bellah, R. [1975] 1992. The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]] 1992). 5. For a particularly striking example, see Hunt's analysis of revolutionary 'Festivals of Reason' ([1984 Hunt, L. [1984] 2004. Politics, culture and class in the French revolution, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]] 2004, pp. 60–66). 6. These celebrations could usefully be related to Raymond Williams' category of 'cultural policy as display' as placed into contemporary debate and suggestively extrapolated by Jim McGuigan (see Williams 1984 Williams, R. 1984. "State culture and beyond". In Culture and the state, Edited by: Appignanesi, L. 3–5. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts. [Google Scholar], McGuigan 2004 McGuigan, J. 2004. Rethinking cultural policy, Maidenhead: Open University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 61–91). More generally, on the parallel construction in Europe since the eighteenth century of manifold overarching 'national' identities based on 'cultural' programmes, see Thiesse (2001 Thiesse, A.‐M. [1999] 2001. La Création d'identités nationales. Europe XVIIIe – XIXe siècle [The creation of national identities in Europe between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries], Paris: Seuil. [Google Scholar]) or Hobsbawm ([1990 Hobsbawm, E.J. [1990] 1992. Nations and nationalism since 1780. 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"European institutions and the contribution of studies of religious diversity to education for democratic citizenship". In Religion and education in Europe: developments, contexts and debates, Edited by: Jackson, R., Miedema, S., Weisse, W. and Willaime, J.‐P. 27–55. Münster: Waxmann. [Google Scholar]). 14. For the status of such capitalized abstractions as 'enchanted' myths, and the disenchantment that decapitalized them through the twentieth century, see, for example, Gauchet ([1998 Gauchet, M. [1998] 2005. La Religion dans la démocratie [Religion in democracy], Paris: Gallimard (coll. Folio‐essais. [Google Scholar]] 2005, pp. 38–39). 15. The term was originally coined by Derrida (1993 Derrida, J. 1993. Spectres de Marx. L'État de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internationale [Spectres of Marx: the state of debt, the work of mourning and the new International], Paris: Galilée. [Google Scholar], p. 15). It is designed to echo 'its near‐homonym ontology, replacing the priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead nor alive. [It is] a wholly irrecuperable intrusion in our world, which is not comprehensible within our available intellectual frameworks, but whose otherness we are responsible for preserving' (Davis 2005 Davis, C. 2005. Hauntology, spectres and phantoms. French Studies, 59(3): 373–379. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 373). On the reception of Malraux among art historians, see Tadié (2004 Tadié, J.‐Y. 2004. "Introduction". In Oeuvres Complètes, IV, Ecrits sur l'art [Complete works, IV, writings on art], Edited by: Malraux, A. ix–ixxii. Paris: Gallimard. [Google Scholar]). 16. For a fuller development of these terms and the accompanying perspective, see Bourdieu ([1992 Bourdieu, P. [1992] 1996. The rules of art: genesis and structure of the literary field, Edited by: Emmanuel, S. 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For a suggestive analysis of counter‐reformation artistic strategy within a 'cultural policy' framework, see Mulcahy (2011 Mulcahy, K. 2011. The cultural policy of the Counter‐Reformation: the case of St. Peter's. International journal of cultural policy, 17(2): 131–152. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], this issue); for an approach to the modern Catholic Church within such a framework, see Bennett (2009 Bennett, O. 2009. On religion and cultural policy: notes on the Roman catholic church. International journal of cultural policy, 15(2): 155–170. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], forthcoming Bennett, O. forthcoming. Strategic canonization: sanctity, popular culture and the catholic church. International journal of cultural policy, [Google Scholar]). 21. Tom Conley helpfully proposes the term 'governance' in his translation. 22. The term 'exculturation' was coined by Hervieu‐Léger (2003 Hervieu‐Léger, D. 2003. Catholicisme, la fin d'un monde [Catholicism: the end of a world], Paris: Bayard. [Google Scholar], p. 97). She uses it to describe a general socio‐cultural process affecting the position of Catholicism within contemporary French society. I am using it here in a more voluntaristic or strategic sense. 23. I am indebted to Anita Kangas for the idea of 'latent' cultural policies.