{"id":67358,"date":"2006-03-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/03\/17\/la-crise-en-france-un-regard-anglo-saxon-subtil-et-nuance\/"},"modified":"2006-03-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-17T00:00:00","slug":"la-crise-en-france-un-regard-anglo-saxon-subtil-et-nuance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2006\/03\/17\/la-crise-en-france-un-regard-anglo-saxon-subtil-et-nuance\/","title":{"rendered":"La crise en France: un regard (anglo-saxon) subtil et nuanc\u00e9<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

La crise en France: un regard (anglo-saxon) subtil et nuanc\u00e9<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t17 mars 2006 Les r\u00e9actions ext\u00e9rieures \u00e0 la crise du CPE en France sont assez mesur\u00e9es. Elles sont, d’une fa\u00e7on peut-\u00eatre surprenantes, aussi mesur\u00e9es qu’elles sont excessives en France. La crise est per\u00e7ue en France sur le fond du d\u00e9bat sur le d\u00e9clin fran\u00e7ais (le d\u00e9bat sur le ni\u00e8me d\u00e9clin fran\u00e7ais, d\u00e9bat comme s’il \u00e9tat acquis que ce d\u00e9clin existe) ; elle est per\u00e7ue, hors de France, sur le fond d’une crise globale et multiforme qui frappe tout l’univers qui ne cesse de s’affirmer et de poser sa marque sur toutes les r\u00e9flexions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tAinsi est-on loin du torrent d’invectives et de sarcasmes qui, d’habitude, marque les commentaires de la presse anglo-saxonne lorsqu’une crise touche la France. La vision de la valeur r\u00e9elle de la France est, aujourd’hui, bien diff\u00e9rente hors de France<\/a> qu’en France, surtout dans les \u00e9lites fran\u00e7aises largement influenc\u00e9es par ceux qu’on nomme les d\u00e9clinologues fran\u00e7ais. (D\u00e9clinologues fran\u00e7ais : un terme dont la fausset\u00e9 r\u00e9v\u00e8le l’intention id\u00e9ologique partisane, et auquel nous pr\u00e9f\u00e9rons sans la moindre h\u00e9sitation, par honn\u00eatet\u00e9 intellectuelle, celui de d\u00e9clinistes. Le d\u00e9bat est bien loin d’\u00eatre futile et m\u00e9rite quelques observations. Voir notre Bloc Notes<\/a> de ce jour.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tL’\u00e9ditorial du Guardian<\/em> d’aujourd’hui<\/a> est inhabituellement grave et examine le conflit en cours en France pour ce qu’il est. L’introduction de ce texte court en donne l’orientation et rencontre une de nos tr\u00e8s fortes convictions que la France est effectivement le syst\u00e8me d’alarme le plus avanc\u00e9 des crises du monde. Cette premi\u00e8re phrase est compl\u00e8tement juste, compl\u00e9t\u00e9e par une autre, dans le corps de l’\u00e9dito, qui fixe justement l’enjeu : \u00ab Because of its tendency to polarise and dramatise politics, France has always had the capacity to remind the rest of the world what the really important questions are. <\/em>[…] Yet the underlying argument <\/em>[of the French crisis] is a critical one for all countries which are finding it more difficult to combine a high degree of social protection with economic success, and which are increasingly tempted to discard more and more of the first in order to secure the second.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tD’autre part, nous pensons qu’un article publi\u00e9 le 12 mars<\/a> par le correspondant de The Observer<\/em> \u00e0 Paris, Jason Burke, est tout \u00e0 fait remarquable. Si l’article a comme sujet la situation et les ambitions de Nicolas Sarkozy (\u00ab Napoleon seeks his empire<\/em> \u00bb), s’il examine la carri\u00e8re de l’homme et les d\u00e9boires de l’\u00e9poux, il offre \u00e9galement in fine<\/em> une analyse remarquable de la situation fran\u00e7aise. Il s’attache justement \u00e0 ces rapports \u00e9troits entre la psychologie de la crise fran\u00e7aise et celle de la crise mondiale, \u00e0 cette \u00e9trange fonction fran\u00e7aise de servir de signal d’alarme pour les grandes crises de notre temps. Il ne s’agit pas du texte d’un adorateur de la France, car rien ne dissimule ce qu’il pourrait y avoir de ridicule ou de d\u00e9risoire dans la chose d\u00e9crite ici ou l\u00e0 ; mais ce qui aurait conduit aussit\u00f4t \u00e0 l’usage exclusif du sarcasme chez un journaliste moyen du Monde<\/em> ou de L’Express<\/em> devient le moyen d’explorer un peu plus en profondeur un \u00e9tat des choses qui invite \u00e0 la subtilit\u00e9 et \u00e0 la mise \u00e0 jour des nuances.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tL’extrait suivant du texte de Burke \u00e9claire, nous semble-t-il, ce que nous voulons dire :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab When I arrived in Paris six months ago, a friend told me about the bread served at breakfast in her local cafe. Some days it’s good, she said. Other days, if the baker’s lost on the horses or rowed with his wife, then it isn’t. At the time I did not recognise that, very gently, she was giving me the key to understanding modern France and the modern French world-view. She was saying was what many French people feel. France is defiantly not part of the consumerist, capitalist, US-led economic and cultural wave that is engulfing the world. France is different. My friend spoke of two other elements which were new to me. She described herself as neither from left nor right but a republican, and spoke of the importance of a multi-polar world. The implication was that the leaders of the pole opposed to the Anglo-Saxons would be the French. Anglo-Saxon is another word you hear often in France. It means Anglophone, economically liberal, rampantly capitalist. It means the brutish British with their powerful economy and low taxes, their lower levels of unemployment but higher levels of poverty. It means the unsophisticated, insular, ignorant, crassly self-confident Americans who have somehow and this is apparently an historic injustice of enormous proportions managed to become the world’s only superpower. It means a threat. It also means, of course, an overweening sense of pr\u00e9carit\u00e9.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb One of the things that struck me most on arrival in France was this sense of external threat and internal crisis, despite the fact that the nation is still quite evidently one of the most successful states of the modern world. I started counting crises’ the crisis of wine, of textiles, of the press, of the railways (the latter immeasurably better than the UK’s shambolic, expensive and filthy system) and then gave up. As for threats, the biggest threat of all, that which apparently menaces all that France stands for, is globalisation, something that I had largely considered as a relatively benign process that brought countries closer together. Not for many in France. The destruction of distance, the melting of frontiers, was seen by many as a potential disaster. Even the project of the European Union was seen as a sinister Anglo-Saxon led liberal’ plot to undermine the French social model and its cultural and economic traditions. The spread of the English language was an appalling loss to the world, not a means to greater international communication.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb All is thus insecure, threatened, precarious, whether jobs or a way of life. This explains, to a degree, the intensely powerful myths that surround French agriculture even if France’s future clearly lies not in producing steak and turnips but in capitalising on its incredible reserves of knowledge, thought and culture.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb The latter cannot fail to impress. If you want one difference with the UK, you will find it in the general level of popular conversation. In Bobigny, in the famous Paris banlieues the celebrated department 93, scene of so much of the trouble last autumn I spoke to a taxi driver who, after comparing rap lyrics to those of Corneille, the classic French playwright, explained to me the history of politically engaged French songwriting since the 1940s. In a poor provincial town in eastern France, the local mayor and backbench MP talked to me about different concepts of urban planning, making rapid references to major sociologists. He, incidentally, was a Sarkozy supporter. Everywhere the general level of public conversation is several notches higher than it is across the Channel and immeasurably superior to that found across the Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bb But the French love affair with words has its drawbacks. A Swiss journalist friend spoke of the ‘logorrhoea’ of the French, which is unfair, but does indicate the degree to which words are favoured over action. There is a strong sense that if the ideas are there, and expressed in the right words, then actions are superfluous. So, during the riots of last year, which pitted angry, unemployed, alienated, disenfranchised youth from ethnic minorities against not angry, employed, fully franchised white policemen, the refrain the Republic is not racist was everywhere. This was true: the principles of the French Republic are inspiring, the institutions are impartial, the laws are stunning in the simple elegance of their justice. But there is libert\u00e9, \u00e9galit\u00e9, fraternit\u00e9 and there is r\u00e9alit\u00e9. As another French friend commented: We are interested in pourquoi (why), the Anglo-Saxons are interested in comment (how).<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La crise en France: un regard (anglo-saxon) subtil et nuanc\u00e9 17 mars 2006 Les r\u00e9actions ext\u00e9rieures \u00e0 la crise du CPE en France sont assez mesur\u00e9es. Elles sont, d’une fa\u00e7on peut-\u00eatre surprenantes, aussi mesur\u00e9es qu’elles sont excessives en France. La crise est per\u00e7ue en France sur le fond du d\u00e9bat sur le d\u00e9clin fran\u00e7ais (le… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3228,2687,3872,4590],"class_list":["post-67358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-crise","tag-france","tag-observer","tag-sarkozy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}