Page 71 - Introducing Cultural Studies
P. 71

French  identity  is also  shaped  French  cultural  studies.
              by external Others.  For a long
              time,  France's  primary  Other   American  ideas  and  consumer
              was Germany.  Since  1945, its    culture  are  replacing  the
              Other  has been the  United       "norms"  of  French culture.
              States with  its powerful  cultural  People are  robbed  of their
              and economic  influence. The      language  and turned  into
              Americanization  of  France  has  passive  subjects  of  a foreign
              become a major  issue for         power.









































               The thorny  questions  of what  France  is (the  nation), who the
               French  are  (the  people)  and the  divisions  in  French  society
               (gender,  geography,  race, class)  are fault-lines  that  give  French
               cultural  studies  its  peculiar  vitality.  It  is almost  as  if  France  thrives
               in adversity.


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