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Resentment and the Right

French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898–2000

Sarah Shurts

Resentment and the Right: French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898-2000 examines a century-long struggle between cultural spokesmen on the extreme right and left to dominate and define the concept of “the intellectual.” This struggle began with the introduction of the “intellectual” during the Dreyfus Affair of 1898 and continues even today among the intellectuals of the Nouvelle Droite. This struggle to monopolize the public perception of intellectual identity, and the status of moral and political guide the title conferred, consumed the intellectual leaders of the extreme right and left and saturated their engagement in political affairs. Because the left was the first to claim the title of intellectual in 1898, they defined the concept according to their own values and experiences. Hereafter, when intellectuals of the extreme right felt called to engage in public affairs, they portrayed their struggle for recognition as one of an oppressed and ostracized minority against a hegemonic left. Their resentment of this perceived repression became integral to their linguistic tropes, professional trajectories, cultural practices, and their self-conceptualization as intellectuals.
The book is organized around the argument that at each perceived national crisis throughout the century, when intellectuals felt called to engage, the right-wing struggle to define true intellectual identity for the public followed a similar cycle: self-identification as intellectuals, perception of exclusion by the intellectual left, resentment of this ostracism and development of linguistic tropes of left-wing hegemony and right-wing repression, differentiation, revaluation, and reappropriation of cultural values, self-imposed segregation of social networks and professional trajectories, internalization and revaluation of their perceived role as intellectual pariahs, and eventual isolation, alienation, and radicalization from the mainstream intellectual and political world. All together this has resulted in a very different experience of intellectual life and a distinctive understanding of what it means to be an intellectual over the century.

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 350 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-61149-634-5 • Hardback • June 2017 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

978-1-61149-635-2 • eBook • June 2017 • $122.50 • (£95.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / French, Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Social Science / Culture

Resentment and the Right

French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898–2000

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Resentment and the Right: French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898-2000 examines a century-long struggle between cultural spokesmen on the extreme right and left to dominate and define the concept of “the intellectual.” This struggle began with the introduction of the “intellectual” during the Dreyfus Affair of 1898 and continues even today among the intellectuals of the Nouvelle Droite. This struggle to monopolize the public perception of intellectual identity, and the status of moral and political guide the title conferred, consumed the intellectual leaders of the extreme right and left and saturated their engagement in political affairs. Because the left was the first to claim the title of intellectual in 1898, they defined the concept according to their own values and experiences. Hereafter, when intellectuals of the extreme right felt called to engage in public affairs, they portrayed their struggle for recognition as one of an oppressed and ostracized minority against a hegemonic left. Their resentment of this perceived repression became integral to their linguistic tropes, professional trajectories, cultural practices, and their self-conceptualization as intellectuals.
The book is organized around the argument that at each perceived national crisis throughout the century, when intellectuals felt called to engage, the right-wing struggle to define true intellectual identity for the public followed a similar cycle: self-identification as intellectuals, perception of exclusion by the intellectual left, resentment of this ostracism and development of linguistic tropes of left-wing hegemony and right-wing repression, differentiation, revaluation, and reappropriation of cultural values, self-imposed segregation of social networks and professional trajectories, internalization and revaluation of their perceived role as intellectual pariahs, and eventual isolation, alienation, and radicalization from the mainstream intellectual and political world. All together this has resulted in a very different experience of intellectual life and a distinctive understanding of what it means to be an intellectual over the century.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 350 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-61149-634-5 • Hardback • June 2017 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

978-1-61149-635-2 • eBook • June 2017 • $122.50 • (£95.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / French, Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century, Social Science / Culture

Author

Sarah Shurts is associate professor of history at Bergen Community College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: Intellectual Identity Construction Begins: The Dreyfus Affair, 1898-1902
Chapter 2:. Grooming the Right-Wing Intellectual: The Nouvelle Sorbonne Debate, 1910-1914
Chapter 3: Constructing the French Fascist Intellectual: The Interwar Polarization, 1930-1939
Chapter 4: The Ostracized Intellectual in Power: Occupation and Collaboration, 1940-1945
Chapter 5: An All-Consuming Resentment: The Intellectual Right in the Postwar Era, 1945-1967
Chapter 6: Resentment and the New Right: Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1968-2000
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Index

Reviews

Sarah Shurts offers a fresh and compelling perspective. . . Ambitious in scope yet also featuring close analyses of prominent and less-prominent thinkers, her book is likely to spark further debate, and deserves considerable admiration. . . . At a time when far-right claims of marginalization and persecution are pervasive, her book provides valuable insights into the motivations, strategies, and conduct of key exemplars of this vituperative tradition.
— H-France Review

Ambitious in scope, the book covers a large historical period, from the Dreyfus Affair to 2000, in six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. . . . Shurts’s Resentment and the Rightmakes an important and novel contribution to the history of intellectuals, particularly to the history of intellectuals of the extreme right.
— American Historical Review

Resentment and the Right

French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898–2000

Sarah Shurts

Resentment and the Right

French Intellectual Identity Reimagined, 1898–2000

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