Blockchain Papers

José Pedro Zúquete

The French intellectual Dominique Venner, who was born and died in Paris (1935–2013), is today a key reference for the European Identitarian right, which aims to replace conservatism with Identitarianism as the default position of the Right. Identitarians view conservatism as inadequate for confronting contemporary challenges, particularly demographic fears and threats to Europeans, due to its inoffensive, overly accommodating nature and adherence to liberal norms and values. In contrast, Identitarianism presents itself as radical, addressing the root causes of societal decline (the erosion of heritage, identity, and ethnic continuity) rather than settling for superficial reforms or accommodating decay as mainstream conservatives frequently do.A sociocultural European movement of intellectuals and activists that emerged at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Identitarianism prioritizes not only the recognition of the cultural and ethnic identity of Europe's autochthonous populations but also its inherent and ancestral distinction from nonnative and non-European cultures and peoples. Identitarian groups see themselves as locked not merely in an ordinary political battle but also in a civilizational and transcendental struggle in which the literal survival of European cultures and peoples is at stake. A mentality of group survival is at the heart of Identitarian activism which is focused not on purportedly “universal” bonds such as humanity—a modern abstraction erected and celebrated at the expense of national, ethnic, and racial distinctions—but aimed at the particular territorial, cultural, and ethnic traditions and heritages that constitute “traditional” Europe and its peoples. If what defines a liberal society is the promotion of individualism and individual freedom, Identitarians believe that, to save Europe, group interest must trump self-interest. Thus, tribal feelings of belonging and ethnic loyalty must be reborn and must constantly renew themselves to reverse what they perceive as Europe's tragic fall into submission and decadence.1This inquiry, set against the rise of Identitarianism, explores how vanguardism and vanguardist ideas shaped Dominique Venner's life and thought over time. It specifically examines Venner's vanguardist framework, which asserts that a select group, endowed with authentic knowledge, will overcome the forces of evil and decadence to reverse Europe's historical crisis and initiate a revitalized era.2 Furthermore, this article demonstrates Venner's vanguardism through his words, activism during his lifetime, and his enduring posthumous legacy.Dominique Venner's life falls into two distinct phases. The first period, spanning the 1950s to the mid-1960s, centered on militant activism and military engagement, marked by his participation in the Algerian War and radical nationalist causes. The second period, beginning in the 1970s and continuing until his death in 2013, focused on scholarly contemplation and historical writing, reflecting a deliberate withdrawal from political agitation. These phases highlight Venner's evolution from a combative nationalist to a reflective historian, shaping his legacy within the Identitarian Movement.During the first period (1950s–mid-1960s), Venner embodied the role of a soldier and activist. He volunteered at a young age for the Algerian War (1954–1962), serving as a paratrooper, and upon returning to France, became a political prisoner in 1961 for his involvement with an antigovernment dissident paramilitary group. This phase was characterized by intense street activism, including frequent confrontations with police and left-wing rivals. “I was savagely beaten several times by police officers, scalp split, ribs fractured, in the police van, hands tied behind my back with handcuffs,” he wrote in his diary. “It seemed to me to be part of the game. The risks of the job in a way. And it would have been humiliating, I would have demeaned myself, lowered myself, if I had complained. That would give them [the police] too much honor. [Instead I chose] to suffer with impatience and contempt and not to whine like a woman.”3In this activist phase, Venner also emerged as a nationalist entrepreneur, deeply engaged in militant publications and networks across France and Europe, while supporting nationalist politicians. As one of the founders and the director of the mid-1960s magazine and Euro-nationalist movement Europe-Action, he actively championed European nationalist causes. Although later he continued to be an active member of the radical right intellectual milieu—for example, contributing in the early years of the new-right think tank GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne, “Research and Study Group for European Civilization”)—Venner gradually withdrew from political activism, and the 1970s mark the beginning of the second period of his life, when he retired from all political agitation and militancy.This second period (1970s–2013) saw Venner embrace a contemplative life, relocating to the countryside of Normandy, raising a family of five children, and dedicating himself to scholarship. He described himself as a “contemplative historian,” though not a professional academic. His third wife, Clotilde, 36 years his junior, who shared the last dozen years of his life with him, described him as a “thinker of history.”4 In this role, Venner authored nearly fifty books on topics ranging from European and American history (including wars, revolutions, and the Civil War) to biographies, to politics, nationalism, and European identity, to spirituality and tradition, to enigmas and political crimes, to even hunting and hunting weapons, in which he was an expert. Several of these works, such as his 1981 History of the Red Army, won accolades, including an award from the Académie Française, and many were translated into other European languages. Additionally, Venner founded and managed history magazines, including Enquête sur l'Histoire (1991–1999) and La Nouvelle Revue d'Histoire (2002–2017).Venner's shift from activism to scholarship mirrored Ernst Jünger's concept of The Forest Passage (1951), which describes the “internal exile” dissident thinkers undertake to live freely in an oppressive sociopolitical environment. Venner's friend, nationalist militant and historian Philippe Conrad, noted in a book-tribute that “entering the forest”—i.e., embracing a life of detachment and resistance—“allowed [Venner] to escape the hazards and disappointments of militant action, [because] he found in his encounters with the past and in the reflections that they inspired in him the means to join a continuity exceeding the limits of individuality alone.”5 Jünger's themes of world-weariness and outsiderhood, expressed in The Forest Passage and his post-apocalyptic novel Eumeswil (1977), resonated deeply with Venner. On his eighty-eighth birthday, Jünger wrote of “a sorrow that Hölderlin attributes to Hyperion: the feeling of being a stranger in one's own Fatherland,”6 a sentiment that permeated Venner's outlook during this contemplative phase.“What struck me [about Venner] was his reserve,” recalled journalist Claude Chollet upon meeting him,7 an observation reflecting Venner's widely noted aloofness and “rather cold character.” This guarded nature was both innate and deliberately cultivated, as Venner eschewed pleasure-seeking for ascetic self-discipline, earning descriptions of his “Prussian” demeanor from his inner circle. His wife viewed this sternness as embodying an “aristocratic ideal, you don't show your emotions.”8 This disposition aligned with Venner's philosophy of resilience against a hostile world. In his diary, while preparing his autobiography Le Coeur rebelle (Rebel Heart), he wrote in a dialogue with his younger self, “I had never imagined that there were other, much more vicious and perilous ways of living dangerously: being different, not bending to the herd, not content to seek pleasure, happiness, comfort, amusement (‘my dear friend, I hope you had fun’). Unless my weird idea of happiness is bound up with permanent confrontation.”9 Venner's ethos of rebellion against a degraded modern world defined his purpose, encapsulated in his oft-quoted maxim: to be a rebel “is to make yourself your own law. To find in yourself what counts,”10 even “in defiance of the herd, if necessary.”11Throughout his life, Dominique Venner was, in terms of strategy and method for achieving what he called a European “rebirth,” a Leninist. “I was a very attentive and very early reader of Lenin, who taught me enormously,” he noted in a TV documentary.12 In the early days of his political activism, Venner expressed his grief that, unlike the Left, the Right had no relevant guides for action. As a result, he set out to write the Right's equivalent of Lenin's What Is to Be Done? (1902), the famous pamphlet in which the Russian leader argued that the revolution would not arise spontaneously and proclaimed the need for a vanguard party to guide the masses. Venner wrote For a Positive Critique in the summer of 1962 while incarcerated in the Parisian La Santé Prison, and published it anonymously at the time.In For a Positive Critique, Venner wrote, “The works of Marx are immense, unreadable, and obscure.” Thus, A Lenin was needed to extract a clear doctrine and to transform this enormous hotchpotch into an effective weapon of political war. Nationalism has its own collective Marx, just as obscure and unsuitable as Engels’ partner was for Russia in 1903. It is imperative that we create our own Lenin.13In this short book (originally twenty-three typewritten sheets), Venner, in typical Leninist manner, makes the success of the nationalist camp dependent on two things: (1) a new revolutionary doctrine, and (2) a new revolutionary consciousness. Venner writes that this revolutionary consciousness is not spontaneous—it can only arise through education and the formation of a revolutionary elite, or, in his words, “a young and revolutionary elite, infused with a new conception of the world.” In particular, the section “A Living Order” has special relevance, for here he characterizes the “revolutionary elite” as a “lucid minority” upon which “the community and the future of civilization will rest” and ‘“a vocational political elite, endowed with an iron will that serves a historical mission.” In a word: a vanguard.He continues: The selection and the education, from youth, of this elite, will be one of the primary preoccupations of the new society. Their training will invigorate of and to intellectual will not only by to but also to will a living one constantly over but in Thus, the of will be by that of and of this idea of a Order” is not new in in the and it the idea of a elite” that will Europe more the can find these ideas in the works of and This idea was for by Identitarian with his for a new revolutionary a new this is the of revolutionary in his legacy of Venner's guide for has was translated in many in the Philippe one of the founders of the Identitarian movement in France in the first of the twenty-first century, in the of wrote, of reflections are relevant for who to out political with a revolutionary saw as and As he wrote in a diary, from is the the against the On he or one with is not to To that of the to be an to be It can be argued that Venner's in the second part of his life as a “contemplative was a that was and a revolution that was not just intellectual but for Venner's historical the idea of the of Europeans, who what they and have into “I hope that a new will from in the of a to our authentic he Venner's and and the of European the only out of its decadence and submission to to to to the of Europe's peoples in ancestral the only to Europe's and in the one of Venner's is viewed within the for In the of a Venner, hunting first and a of with our and with the It was an of As Venner wrote in his La or weapons, through I to my the the the of the Venner's on nature and the are part and of his of and the idea of a and nature of or that the modern world. of and the new must be and from it you will and as with Venner thought that need to with past and historical Venner the of and have into a of or life into cultural and ethnic it will be to them and make a European Venner's a for European tradition, which for him is all a of a and and is its Venner's role is to the of that has been and in modern In The of from he of an that, being is very It is the of times the reference to this of is in an as a of that is by a select For Venner, to with the observation that the history of European civilization is an behind which a history up of is the of these are here two for the of Venner the Europe in a and at the a and a in this the role of the vanguard Venner his with one of the of the of a of In other words, that a particular individual or a group a in history and a to the that the of the here is the idea that will set you and will the for a new the Identitarian who authored a of Jünger Ernst A European the as his role his life, and Venner as living of the survival of a in He this would Europe's Jünger was an not by but by his and in an of his magazine Nouvelle Revue Venner wrote, Living of inner and authentic through the a of an of which the was the Ernst Jünger was an of this in our of History as not In one of his he noted that what the was “the hope of one's while in the is a that the the very with as a like in the who on these are to them what they who see the are The are who are the or in with the Venner called these to the his hope for not in the but in the of the (the as he wrote in The of itself first and by the of a which is of all authentic founded not on but on and a for That will an revolution of ideas and The idea of a the European also at the heart of Venner's his political Le of the The of the which has been published in during the the of this Venner the and the for ascetic and minority” to an over the Venner this with the “The would by in the of of of the the very of of the Venner wrote that in to into a and the of European and were this of a be with and These Venner's on the of 2013, the a in his and himself at the of in That he several who were of his had his death for two at a the he them of them him to the Venner I my on the that will be the And it will only be one not both I like this to be as of As his later would “I believe it is to to the that I what is of my life to and to Venner wrote many are of my an of I give over to death to I rebel against It was his last political and his his family his in the the in Normandy, the of a as his not to his life he he had his to European He that his and activism had the and for a European which he was would to French a his and family such that his was a deliberate political and rather than a to Venner's frequently deeply the of embodied in the adherence to the that is to a life not in the that Venner's his at a vanguardist with the from to in Venner's deliberate to Europeans, an to cultural identity and a new for a which the to found Venner's radical by modern political with both vanguard to enduring cultural the in a of the Venner what he saw as a who had a and died in the of a by and and he had an in the hands of the being to escape The of death viewed through a a from life, for in of an and and Venner's own Venner this until the by his of for his last and the of a by the a to his the that to a death that is the of a all the and all the like To be not all have the his of as if he were a member of a elite, have been or at its have with the In a novel and at at the of him just the and you that what you are to will the from you will be in the for a and they will It will be of no the to the of a of and of a activist community that his and his and he been Venner's Venner's in the of a will be in the of an example, this the that has his Venner has a of role and for a of young and Identitarians across He is celebrated as a cultural and political soldier who his to its very last and the of as an of for a Venner's life is at the very of and by groups across Venner's death became a that at our Europe was wrote the militant in the magazine He that Venner's was a upon by a of a to “the of Europe at its up against is on in street or on by of and against the the of the time. “The battle that and “the that are when the of Venner is celebrated in and Venner's such as is to all that or be a rebel is to make that never of your frequently in these and and are through of Venner was on on the of his marked by an of and publications to him only in France but across several other European how an activist in the of Venner the to up our that history was not that it was not over and that the had its his life as by his he the that would a new in a in to the of from the for all to the of the young need to themselves in the of Dominique Venner, who had of these who find in Venner are frequently as a group by a consciousness of the Europe and by the to its survival and This of role to in the to Venner that several groups across Europe years his his was described as to the who are the masses. are the last Europeans, on our the of the of with of the of Venner and the of nationalist and Identitarian groups tied to activism and the of the and a more of his legacy the in of a think This was Venner's last and also one of the topics of during Venner's last with his on the of his think tank founded by his to It is the the European first was Philippe Conrad, who the of Venner's magazine of history his and also one of the who shared Venner's last in is the reference to the one of the of that, with the for Venner the of it “the of our of The reference in the to “the European both the Venner to and to Venner's on the for European with the of the the idea of an a elite, with a historical of Le of the to Venner's last no He wrote, the has a a and an is of European as as there of and of the European will be to is it a of and of the that history will its has training for young on European politics, and as as and book These and to of new and Identitarian in to the in in the hope that they will the European in the future and the vanguard of the new revolution of of the nature of the It was by of the that the early had that [Venner] imagined and an as the of a new European and which would the are of the who will the intellectual and the first of its the more than young in the nationalist and Identitarian of its in to them for into of society they have and on and political In the of of the politics, set up cultural or write and into more hostile in the actively the enduring of Dominique Venner's which to many In the Paris a of the French of the the Venner's it and the in the of the of and the this as In a the Paris the it and and the to to the The to Venner's his to his through and the of the collective identity and to Venner's These Venner's as a to the of the The published a the as “the of the by the two were in the in founded in and the in founded in the to European its and education and the formation of new to a future aligned with these to and Venner's role in and vanguardist ideas and is This is both in his life and as as in his Venner the role of a he a and the of the the for its and how to with it and overcome and this he the of as as own of the role they in the he also the role of a this was both early on in his more combative political and also by what he saw as the and of the of European history and its only the his of his role as a vanguard of it also the identity the leader and the collective he which in of the this This was even by the of death the leader a and death that, in the of only his as a one of the who saw Venner as a role that “in the Dominique Venner is a a a his death as a it as a of and which he in of the of the think tank be as a of of in which his and the of his own for the on and are in the of a future or, as by the community of a of

Elsa Ferreira

No abstract is available for this record.

Patrice Higonnet

This book is a virtuoso performance. At stake is the trajectory of modern France and its historiography, which gives us, briefly, varying monarchic heroes from Jeanne d’Arc to Henry IV, Louis XIV, and, especially since 1789, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle, along with their allies and enemies, their admirers and their critics.1 The book outlines their careers and summarizes the work of their many historians, even that of René Goscinny, the creator of the comic-book characters Astérix and Obélix. Gueniffey considers all of them from a lofty point of view. He begins with a judgment about “the end of history” borrowed from Furet—not the “end of history” from an American standpoint with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1988 but for France.2 De Gaulle’s place in history marked the end of the history for France as it been written for centuries, as “a traditional idea of the nation—[of] the Monarchy and the Revolution, together; [of the] economy and [of] consciousness.” Thus, today, “Anti-Gaullism is dead. And so is Gaullism.” To cite the title of Williams’ biography of de Gaulle, the man was The Last Great Frenchman.3We can now, today, calmly, consider all the French heroes and their commentators, from Jeanne d’Arc to Henry IV very briefly and Louis XIV briefly but to Napoleon and de Gaulle in considerable detail. This book, Gueniffey explains, is not “an essay in comparative history.” It does not aim to follow its two subjects from their cradles to their graves. The introduction proposes instead “une réflexion” on various “lines of thought,” such as the exercise of power, the centrality of writing, their deaths, their funerals, and the place in history of “great men,” as in the work of Carlyle and Nietzsche. “Through them, my subject is France itself.”4In five chapters, Gueniffey’s text considers how Napoleon and de Gaulle resolved—for themselves, for France, and for the world—their political trajectories and their political resurrections during the decisive 100 days, in 1815 for Napoleon and in the creation of the Fifth Republic in 1958 after World War II for de Gaulle. As we might expect, the two men are both similar and dissimilar: Napoleon with his war of movement and de Gaulle with his tanks, the battles of Lodi in 1796 and Abbeville in 1940 serving as mutual positive proof. The two men were also authors, de Gaulle showing himself as an admirer, inter alia, of André Malraux and Napoleon engaging in a puerile quarrel with Germaine (Madame) de Staël.Underlying all of this comparison is a troublesome problem: What happens if Napoleon was not really French (curiously, the title of the book in Paris was Napoléon et de Gaulle: Deux héros français)? At one point, Gueniffey hints at the matter, quoting Taine’s characterization of Napoleon as “a Corsican, foreign to France” (127), but later in the book, Gueniffey is more direct: “Napoleon did not know a word of French as a child.… [He] belonged nowhere and as a teenager dreamed of succeeding [Pasquale] Paoli” (214). How true. He was also, incidentally, not merely a war criminal; like Adolf Hitler (an Austrian) and Joseph Stalin (a Georgian), he used war as an excuse to silence any kind of popular and nativist opposition to his demonic activities. De Gaulle was much closer to Michelet’s Jeanne d’Arc than to Chateaubriand’s “Buonaparte.”5The style of this book is flamboyant and invariably elegant even when it occasionally turns, for effect, to mere slang—for example, when it refers to Napoleon as “un bon zigue.” The book’s translation of Zazie’s utterance “Mon cul” from Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dan la Metro (Paris, 1959) as “my ass” also seems fair enough. But should we translate the rest of her dismissal of Napoleon, “Il m’intéresse pas du tout, cet enflé, avec son chapeau à la con,” as “a bombastic swell with his stupid hat”? Probably not.

Allan Antliff

Clyfford Still on the Margins of Anarchy Allan Antliff (bio) Among the founding artists of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, Clyfford Still's pronounced individualism and hostility to State power are routinely acknowledged, but have yet to be critically evaluated in dialog with anarchist currents during and after World War II (fig. 1). David Anfam, who is the foremost authority on Still, has provided a baseline for charting interrelationships by perceptively analyzing how the artist's "Nietzschean brand of individualistic anarchism" shaped his self-conception and aesthetic romanticism, but goes no further.1 More generally, scholarly treatments of Still's art and politics have foregrounded the Cold War as the key issue, to the detriment of anarchism. Susan Landauer, for example, influentially characterized the artist as a reactionary right-winger during the 1990s (more recently acknowledging Still's politics were not right wing, she supports her case with a passing reference to anarchist poet Kenneth Rexroth's "later" [1959] critique of the "social lie" by way of comparison).2 Similarly, in Abstract Expressionism as Cultural Critique: Dissent during the McCarthy Period (1999), David Craven marshaled Anfam's analysis only to conclude Still's anarchism drew him into an "unwitting convergence with [Cold War] laissez-faire individualism."3 Turning to Ellen D. Landau's codifying anthology, Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique (2005), Still is again subsumed into Abstract Expressionism's Cold War reception, with Marxist interpretations of the movement's aesthetics and social significance predominating.4 Katy Siegel, Lillian Davies, and Pauline Pobocha's exhaustive survey, Abstract Expressionism (2011) is similarly silent regarding anarchism as a factor in Still's development.5 The pattern is indicative of how Abstract Expressionism is broadly framed in the [End Page 491] discourse: as a breakthrough "American" style pioneered by leftist-inclined artists in response to World War II and buffeted, initially, by the politics of the Cold War, which was quickly taken up by the art market, canonized as the latest advance in international modernism ("a new art for a new world"), and integrated into museum collections in the United States and Europe.6 Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Erna Bert Nelson, Studio Portrait of Clyfford Still, 1941. Photograph courtesy of the Clyfford Still Archive, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, Colorado. Until very recently Still's archive and personal library were unavailable to researchers, and this undoubtedly also played its part in the interpretative lacuna I am drawing attention to. Letters and other documents in the Clyfford Still Museum archive allow an examination of transatlantic anarchism's concern with aesthetic values, art's capacity to serve as a site of social freedom, and the institutional forces arraigned against the movement. Both Still's art practice and views, and his reception in this milieu, matter [End Page 492] for understanding Still's contributions to the politicization of art. Anarchists engaged in cultural networking through "horizontal ties among diverse, autonomous elements" (for example, social centers, editorial groups, activist organizations, and informal friendship circles) coalescing around opposition to authoritarianism in all its forms.7 These fluid, affinity-charged networks generated diversity, which was regarded as a positive value, in accord with anarchism's overarching ambition to institute direct forms of democracy within a decentralized federated system of governance.8 Consequently, Still's aesthetic radicalism and combative stance toward art institutions found a willing audience among anarchists, even as he deliberately marginalized himself from broader social struggles. The American Sickness On November 25, 1957, anarchist poet/activist Michael McClure sent a letter to Still from San Francisco.9 He related, "I've admired your painting very much for a long time," adding, "I wish had gotten to the Bay area a few years sooner."10 McClure was recalling his decision to relocate to the city in 1951 to study with Still and fellow Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko (like Still, an anarchist).11 San Francisco is where Still had begun working in an abstract idiom, creating paintings that "established him as one of the most original and highly regarded artists associated with the earliest strains of Abstract Expressionism" (Sobel, "Why a Clyfford Still Museum?," 15). He taught at San Francisco's California School of Fine...

Amaury Perrin

L’encadrement juridique de la monnaie virtuelle est indispensable mais difficile. Une régulation se met en place mais elle ne peut être que transitoire. Plus que le Bitcoin, c'est la blockchain qui devrait faire l'objet d'un régime juridique adapté.

J. Eric Gross

Reviewed by: Aesthetic Citizenship: Immigration and Theater in Twenty-First-Century Paris by Emine Fişek Janice Gross AESTHETIC CITIZENSHIP: IMMIGRATION AND THEATER IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY PARIS. By Emine Fişek. Performance Works series. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017; pp. 240. As part of its commitment to l’exception française, France has long supported the ideals of republican universalism through policies that use the arts to integrate its citizens and foster cultural competency. Given the postcolonial nation’s relentless struggle “to integrate a multicultural polity” (5) with its robust animation culturelle outreach, Aesthetic Citizenship rightly identifies France as an “exemplary site” to study the social and aesthetic practice of immigrant theatre. Emine Fişek’s meticulously documented overview of the conflicted politics of French immigration offers an essential backdrop to the book’s ethnographic accounts of localized performance projects that developed in social centers, aid organizations, and neighborhood associations in 2008. Each project enacts performance as both a staged event and “a structuring logic of social life” (29), demonstrating Fişek’s argument “that national participation, belonging, and citizenship are spheres of experience that require rehearsal, and that theater is a particularly apt space through which to understand the complicated relationship between ideal and enactment” (5). Focused largely on the Sarkozy era (2002–12), the book situates the immigration crises of this period within France’s larger historical struggle toward national self-definition (including examinations of the 2004 law and the headscarf controversy, and 2005 urban violence in the banlieue neighborhoods). The book’s emphasis on embodied social practices interweaves performance studies research with discourses of alterity and communal belonging from French cultural theorists (Étienne Balibar, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Rancière). Fişek’s expertise in cultural and linguistic translation serves the book’s extensive consideration of France’s distinctive relationship to processes of social integration and its articulation in the French language. Most importantly, the book’s argument rests on the tension between universality and particularity contained in two fraught terms: intégration as the abstract notion of French republican universality and autonomous personhood, and the danger of communautarisme as particular identification (local, ethnic, or religious) with the resultant categorization of the immigrant as Other. Fişek distinguishes Anglo-American notions of “community-based performance,” “intercultural theater,” and “multi-culturalism” from French critical terms often lacking handy English equivalents (communautarisme, laïcité, banlieue, animation culturelle, citoyen, and immigré). These concepts unique to the French lexicon are well-presented and prove critical to assessing theatre’s capacity for civic and artistic engagement consistent with France’s “ideal” of “social enmeshment and moral autonomy” (180) performed as an “enactment” of individual national belonging and self-affirmation. Interweaving archival, theoretical, and socio-political sources, Fişek’s ethnographic, dialogic, and self-reflective approach calls to mind Dwight Conquergood’s ideal ethnography of the “ears and heart” as a co-performative witnessing. Extensive interviews and exchanges with theatre practitioners, social and humanitarian aid workers, and civic actors and activists offer “fieldwork vignettes” that bring localized immigrant experience to bear on the development of an “emergent immigrant theater” and the staging of the “immigrant body.” Noteworthy is Fişek’s nuanced discussion of immigrant women’s relationship to embodiment and the complexities of ethno-cultural particularity. Her account of the contradictory stances regarding the headscarf controversy is particularly incisive and theoretically enmeshed in feminist scholarship (by scholars including Judith Butler, Jane Freedman, Joan Scott, and Saba Mahmood). [End Page 121] Focused on empowerment through immigrant corporeality, the book tracks “two dueling ideologies” of emancipatory work: “public recognition for those who lacked visibility,” and “arts practices as habit-generating phenomena that participat[e] in the creation of cultured citizens” (17). Each chapter narrates site-specific case studies where “ethical and aesthetic sensibilities” intersect and evolve. Chapter 1, “On the Paris Stage,” outlines the early effects of 1970s decentralization policies in their outreach to the “non-public” in underserved areas (la banlieue) through state-sponsored animation culturelle. The French-Arab troupes Al Assifa and La Kahina, as precursors to immigrant theatre activism, illustrate theatrical engagement as “both a force for cultivation and a space for aesthetic militantism” (23). The...

Karl Lauschke

Although academic and practical interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has continuously increased over the last few years, there is still a need to better understand their social acceptability. The aim of the study was to explore the double edge of NFT legitimacy for NFTs by unveiling the role of sustainability and by adopting technology legitimacy and the field of sustainability transition studies as a theoretical lens. Specifically, this research investigates the role of sustainability in securing and maintaining technology legitimacy within NFT projects. We interviewed 12 experts through exploratory qualitative research. The findings highlight three main ways in which sustainability participates in the legitimation of NFT projects. While sustainability can be inherent in the NFT project itself, this legitimation can also be derived from the perceived sustainability of the NFT technology or be part of innovative business models. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are then discussed. JEL CODES: O33, O35, O50

Bob Hancké

This article discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how they regionalized their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the ‘Golden Age’, large firms had geographically reorganized their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was decentralized into the provinces, primarily to address cost and labour conflict issues. When the large firms faced a profitability crisis in the 1980s, and the traditional state‐financed way out of the problems was no longer available, they saw in these proto‐regional production systems a chance to become more competitive. They relied on the decentralization policies of the governments in the 1980s, and used the second‐order effects of the new policies as a means to modernize their own operations. L'article examine l'adaptation des grandes entreprises françaises, notamment la régionalisation de leurs structures de production dans les années 1980. Durant ‘l'Age d'Or’, les grosses entreprises avaient réorganisé géographiquement leurs activités: la planification stratégique restait à Paris, tandis que la production réelle se décentralisait en province, principalement pour résoudre des problémes de couûts et de conflits sociaux. Lorsque ces grandes entreprises se heurtèrent à la crise de rentabilité des années 1980, alors que la solution traditionnelle de financement étatique n'existait plus, elles virent dans ces systèmes de production proto‐régionaux une chance d'améliorer leur compétitivité. Elles s'appuyèrent donc sur les politiques de décentralisation des gouvernements de l'époque, profitant des effets secondaires de ces initiatives pour moderniser leur propre fonctionnement.

David Platten, Malcolm Cook

Part 1 The arts: literature, Rachel Edwards literature engagee the Hussards the mode retro criticism the Nouveau Roman women writers a return to myth beur fiction poetry the theatre, Martin Sorrell from thelate 19th to the mid-20th century the theatre of the absurd - and the example of Rene de Obaldia Jean Genet - Anton Artaud Bertolt Brecht decentralization total theatre - Jean-Louse Barrault collective creation Jerome Savary and le grand magic circus Ariane Mnouchkine and le theatre du soleil the dominance of the director Peter Brook the re-emergence of the playwright French cinema since 1945, Keith Reader the beginnings the old and the new the new wave Godard and others women directors the return of quality Forum des Halles cinema conserving the cultural heritage of historic buildings and towns in France since 1945. Part 2 Popular culture: sport in France, A Greaves preamble - sports, games and pastimes administration participation - the gout de spectacle, media influence recent trends physical education in schoos and the Associations sportives physical education teachers - training, equipment status the media, Alan Pedley the decline of the Parisian daily press finance, production and distribution the Paris dailies radio television from state monopoly to privatization the rise of Frenc television advertizing and quotas from TFI to culture cable and satellite television - monster or panacea food and wine, Stephen Mennell the historical sociology of French haute cuisine nouvelle cuisine gastronomes and the gastronomic public domestic cookery conclusion popular music, G.Poulet. Part 3 Cultural debates: Paris versus the provinces - cultural decentralization since 1945 gender issues historical and social landmarks femmes, vous lui devez tout! women and language - the quest for a language autre conclusion the French language since 1945, D.A.Trotter.

Robert Wangermée

Trends of Cultural Administration in Western Europe. In the last three decades, the ways and means of public intervention in cultural affairs have been multiplied and diversified following variable patterns in different countries. There has been an evolution in the levels of public intervention, which differ according to decentralization and federalism. There has also been an evolution of the means of intervention, because governments use new financing practices. Nowadays a new actor is emerging on the scene of cultural policy : the European Community.

Gérard Pelissionnier, Jacky Perreur

A study of the process of administrative decentralization in the period of 1950 - 1983 is the subject of the present article. The substantial part of the discussion is devoted to presentation of actions undertaken after 1981, i.e. in the course of changes brought about by presidential and parliamentary elections. As far as the period to 1931 is concerned, the authors view its organizational moves as a manifestation of deconcentration of power tendencies, rather that a genuine decentralization. Legal acts enacted after 1981 prove a real will of the legislator to carry out a decentralization process. The article discusses in detail all acts and decrees regulating a new competence division between local communities and the state, changes in executive powers in regions and departments, new functions of regions,, new role of state representatives in communities, principles of financing and control a posteriori, possibilities of communities intervention in economic and social matters. All that results in eliminating the state's tutelage on local communities in the respect of administration and financing. The period which has passed since 1981 is too short to allow drawing any far reaching conclusions. It is therefore advised to undertake an attempt at resuming that new stage of decentralization after a certain time.