Racial France

Undergraduate / Graduate

Over the last two decades, questions of race, racial identity, and racial discrimination have come increasingly to the fore in France, despite (or because of) the country's prevailing rhetoric of colorblind indivisibility. These issues are becoming ever more pressing on a background of intensifying racisms and right-wing populisms in Europe. The purpose of this course is to offer analytical perspectives about these critical tensions and their ripples across the landscape of contemporary French politics. Using readings from a wide variety of fields (among others, anthropology, sociology, literature, philosophy, history, political science, and news media), we will unpack the discourses and lived experiences of race that have shaped the politics of national identity and difference in France since the late 18th century. We will see that the question of 'racial France' has been intimately bound up with the country's history of colonialism and decolonization, with its Republican ideology, with matters of law and government, with questions of citizenship, religion and sexuality, with recent debates on multiculturalism, and with white malaise and resentment stirred by the growth of right-wing extremisms. In the course of our examinations, we will also reflect on the specificity of race and racialization in France, and its differences from racecraft in the United States.