Is there a French multiculturalism?

Résumé du document

In the recent article published in TIME, entitled "The death of French Culture", the author Don Morrison concludes: "Therein may lay France's return to global glory. The country's angry, ambitious minorities are committing culture all over the place?. France has become a multiethnic bazaar of art, music and writing from the disparate corners of the nonwhite world. French culture can thus find salvation in the productions of minorities. Implicitly, this means that these productions should be fully "integrated" to the French cultural heritage and be recognized as French productions by the cultural establishment. If we take "culture" in a broad sense that goes beyond the artistic dimension, it lies in the sense of what defines one identity. This controversial article exemplifies the debates about the integration of immigrants and minority groups in France today. It is quite relevant that the author, who advocates multiculturalism in French arts, is actually American. It seems that only a foreigner can support multiculturalism in France, because this theory seems contradictory with the political tradition of France. In fact, the phrase "French multiculturalism" is almost a contradiction in terms. But to understand in what sense this is so, "multiculturalism" must be defined.

Extraits

[...] Consequently, the francophone literature has been carefully put apart in several fields. Several literary prizes are rewarded exclusively to “francophone writers”, such as the Prix du Jeune Ecrivain Francophone, that has a counterpart (the prix du Jeune Ecrivain Français) for French writers. Academic programs devoted to francophone literature were created. Our “Black-American literataries studies” in a way. At the university Paris II, students in literature can specialize in francophone literature. Recently, several “francophone” writers criticized this distinction that is supposed to be in favor to them. [...]

[...] It cannot remain as such in a multicultural France. A room has to be made between the individual and the State for cultural groups. Jeremy Jennings borrows Roman's idea in La démocratie des individus , that “Citizenship is to be reconceived as a series of lateral relationships between individuals and groups rather than as a vertical relationship between individual and state.” This means that entering into a cultural group can become one of the way to participate to the public debate, and thus become a citizen. [...]

[...] The main figure of republicanism is the citoyen : this free, independent and reasonable individual, who seeks the general interest as he enters the public sphere. The reference to Rousseau is obvious. The conception of the as Dominique Shnapper explains in La Communauté des citoyens, is based on the idea that the individual can relinquish his personnal roots: the family ties, religion, culture and so on, in order to communicate with the others in the public realm. The construction of the French nation did actually more than that. There was an effort made to diminish the actual differences between the regions. [...]

[...] But in this purely sociological interpretation, the question there a French multiculturalism?” is not really relevant. The real debate is about the political meaning of the term. Indeed multiculturalism is also a political theory explained by thinkers such as Charles Taylor. This theory advocates for the recognition of the minorities' differences, the need to consider each cultural group to be of equal value of the one to which I belong. The implication of multiculturalism is not only that because someone is different he should not be treated unequally, but also that this difference should be acknowledged (by the majority) because it is one of the main components of one's identity. [...]

[...] This conception is still very much anchored in the mind of French policy-makers. For example, the HCI (Haut Conseil à l'Intégration), an institution in charge of finding solutions to the problems of immigration in France, published a report entitled Liens culturels et integration, where it defends theses principles. In a subsection entitled “L'intégration, réponse à la diversité culturelle”, the authors write L'intégration suppose que l'étranger se joigne à la communauté nationale dans l'égalité des droits et des devoirs. L'étranger conserve ses particularismes mais aucun n'entre en considération pour l'exercice de ses droits et pour l'accomplissement de ses obligations La République ne reconnaît de droits qu'à l'individu, libre à l'égard de ses liens communautaires. [...]