Richard Joseph Golsan

Philip Watts

Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française and Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes constitute the two most important literary publishing events in France in the new millennium. Both novels have enjoyed enormous commercial and critical success, and both have generated considerable controversy among literary critics and historians. In this volume of Yale French Studies, leading scholars in the fields of literary studies and history reflect upon the significance of these two works and attempt to answer some of the questions that they raise about the ways in which literary fiction organizes our understanding of the past and our perception of the world.

Around Suite Française and Les Bienveillantes

Literature and History

Gabriel Rockhill

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has influenced disciplines from history and philosophy to political theory, literature, art history, and film studies. His research into nineteenth-century workers’ archives, reflections on political equality, critique of the traditional division between intellectual and manual labor, and analysis of the place of literature, film, and art in modern society have all constituted major contributions to contemporary thought. In this collection, leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism engage Rancière’s work, illuminating its originality, breadth, and rigor, as well as its place in current debates. They also explore the relationships between Rancière and the various authors and artists he has analyzed, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Flaubert, Rossellini, Auerbach, Bourdieu, and Deleuze. The contributors to this collection do not simply elucidate Rancière’s project; they also critically respond to it from their own perspectives. They consider the theorist’s engagement with the writing of history, with institutional and narrative constructions of time, and with the ways that individuals and communities can disturb or reconfigure what he has called the “distribution of the sensible.” They examine his unique conception of politics as the disruption of the established distribution of bodies and roles in the social order, and they elucidate his novel account of the relationship between aesthetics and politics by exploring his astute analyses of literature and the visual arts. In the collection’s final essay, Rancière addresses some of the questions raised by the other contributors and returns to his early work to provide a retrospective account of the fundamental stakes of his project. Contributors. Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Yves Citton, Tom Conley, Solange Guénoun, Peter Hallward, Todd May, Eric Méchoulan, Giuseppina Mecchia, Jean-Luc Nancy, Andrew Parker, Jacques Rancière, Gabriel Rockhill, Kristin Ross, James Swenson, Rajeshwari Vallury, Philip Watts

History, Politics, Aesthetics

Jacques Rancière

Stephan Schmidheiny

Jr, Charles O. Holliday

Ten years on from the Rio Earth Summit, world leaders will gather again in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September. As planetary anxieties about globalization, poverty and climate change grow, where does the international business community stand? Are they a barrier to change or an engine for it? One outcome of Rio was Changing Course, the hugely influential book by Swiss industrialist Stephan Schmidheiny, which argued that business needed to be part of the solution to global environmental degradation. Now, Schmidheiny has joined with fellow prime movers in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD – the key business organization focusing on policy research and development in this crucial area), Chad Holliday, Chairman and CEO of DuPont; and Philip Watts, Chairman of Shell; to spell out the real business case for addressing sustainable development as a key strategic issue. The results are ground-breaking. For the first time, leading industrialists are arguing that not only is sustainable development good for business, the solving of environmental and social problems is essential for future growth. Drawing on a wealth of case studies and personal interviews from business leaders operating around the world, Walking the Talk clearly demonstrates that the vanguard who have operationalized leading-edge environmental and social initiatives are benefiting in a myriad of ways that benefit the bottom line – and the planet. The book argues that the time for rhetoric is over. The business of business has changed. Even more remarkably, the authors insist that a global partnership – between governments, business and civil society – is essential, if accelerating moves towards globalization are to maximize opportunities for all – especially the world's poor. As Chad Holliday recently stated in an address to the United Nations: "Given existing technology and products, for all six billion people on the planet to live like the average American, we would require the equivalent of three planet Earths to provide the material, create the energy and dispose of the waste." Such an option is evidently not available and the book argues that far more eco-efficient and socially equitable modes of development must be pursued in order to allow poorer nations to raise their standards of living. The solution provided by Walking the Talk is to mobilize markets in favour of sustainability, leveraging the power of innovation and global markets for the benefits of everyone – not just the developed world. This means a further liberalization of the market-a move that would be condemned by anti-globalization protestors. Yet, as the authors argue, business cannot succeed in failing societies. When the global market fails poor countries, where most of the world's people live, it will also eventually fail business. Subsidies for rich countries' products and tariffs against poor countries' products do not constitute a "free" market, or one that best serves people or business. Similarly, governments cannot subsidize fossil fuels or water and expect businesses, or ordinary citizens, to use them efficiently. So, a new, fair and equitable market is needed. A market that can work for all. The authors therefore call on protestors against globalization to stop protesting against the market and instead to campaign instead against the perverse policies that impoverish people and their environment. Walking the Talk explores the opportunities and challenges inherent in eco-efficiency (producing more with less), corporate social responsibility, and a transparent, "wired" world where reputations can be irreversibly damaged – or enhanced – in real time. It also devotes a chapter to ways in which corporations can and must "learn to change". It examines the new partnerships needed among companies, governments, and civil society to produce real change, and the ways in which these alliances can work for all concerned. And it argues that consumer choice and consumer information should be encouraged as a positive force for sustainable development. Only what is valued is carefully used and so creating markets for environmental goods and services may be the best way to protect scarce resources. This is especially true in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, where business-like approaches, such as the development of carbon trading, offer workable solutions to policy-makers. Whether small, medium or large, all businesses must innovate and change to meet the social and environmental challenges of the coming years. Walking the Talk provides a broad set of proven roadmaps to success as well as real-life inspiration for business to embrace the real challenge – to build a global economy that works for all the world's people.

The Business Case for Sustainable Development

Walking the Talk

This book is about four writers—Sartre, Eluard, Blanchot, and Céline—whose works confront and respond to the purge of collaborationist intellectuals in postwar France. It investigates how their writing argues for or against the different positions outlined during the purge and how it reflects or distorts the competing theories about literature to emerge from the trials. These writers were themselves involved in the trials to varying degrees: Céline was accused of treason, though eventually condemned on a lesser charge; Eluard, one of the leading Resistance poets and a Communist, published in the clandestine Resistance press and devoted a number of his poems to condemning collaborators; Sartre’s theory of committed literature reiterates the theme of the writer’s responsibility as presented during the trials; as for Blanchot, if his work never directly comments upon the purge, its arguments for the autonomy of literature are both a response to Sartre and a commentary on what Blanchot called the “trial of art.” In their reactions to the purge, these writers mobilized a number of discourses, ranging from the historical, economic, and literary to the sexual, medical, and corporeal. To understand their views on the trials, it is useful to read their texts as allegories of the purge. At one point or another they all speak about the purge through a series of metaphoric substitutions maintained through an extended narrative—whether this narrative is a critical essay, a novel, or a collection of poems. The texts also give the reader a code for reading them allegorically, and this code is the purge archive, whose records, debates, and arguments reshaped the way writers understood their craft.

How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France

Allegories of the Purge

Roland Barthes

The most famous name in French literary circles from the late 1950s till his death in 1981, Roland Barthes maintained a contradictory rapport with the cinema. As a cultural critic, he warned of its surreptitious ability to lead the enthralled spectator toward an acceptance of a pre-given world. As a leftist, he understood that spectacle could be turned against itself and provoke deep questioning of that pre-given world. And as an extraordinarily sensitive human being, he relished the beauty of images and the community they could bring together.

Philip Watts

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