Miti e utopie della modernità nelle Riflessioni sulla violenza di Georges Sorel

This paper analyses the work Riflessioni sulla violenza written by Georges Sorel and published in 1908. The principal aim of this paper is to present the deep relationship between myth, violence and politics in order to reevaluate how irrational forces have guided social movements and revolutions. The distinction between the notions of force and violence introduces the central thesis of Georges Sorel’s political thought, which is called anarcho-syndacalism. More specifically, George Sorel puts together Marx and Bergson in order to develop a severe criticism of the Third Republic and to theorize the role of violence in the transition from capitalism to socialism. Through the myth of the general strike, Sorel introduces his philosophical perspective on social struggles against the parlamentarism.

For Science and Country: History Writing, Nation Building, and National Embeddedness in Third Republic France, 1870–1914

This article examines late nineteenth and early twentieth-century historiographical practices and convictions in Third Republic France. It shifts the focus from the question of whether French academic historians were nationalists to the issue of how they were nationalists. If republican academic historians took a critical stance on nationalist distortions of the past, they nevertheless associated the teaching of history with patriotism and opposed historiographical “pan-Germanism” in ways favorable to French cultural and territorial claims. Meanwhile, the growing internationalization of the field stimulated scholarly competition across the West and spurred reflections about nationals’ epistemological privilege over national histories, methodological nationalism, and the invention of national historiographical traditions. Uncovering the anxieties of continual debate with foreign historians and the nationalist right wing, this article offers a prehistory of present-day dilemmas over global, national, and nationalist histories in an international field characterized by structural inequalities and academic competition.

Election preferences of the inhabitants of West Pomerania in local elections in the Third Republic of Poland

Western Pomerania was said to be called as a stronghold of the left, for the Democratic Left Alliance both in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century achieved some of the best results in the country. Only after the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005 and the local government elections in 2006, the electoral preferences changed towards the center of the political scene. The Civic Platform of the Republic of Poland turned out to be the change, Law and Justice to a lesser extent. The article presents a political analysis of the voting preferences of the inhabitants of West Pomerania in the local government elections with regard to the three mentioned parties. The aim of the research was to analyze the direction in which the electorate goes. It was checked whether the SLD was permanently eliminated and how strong the dominance of the PO was. Furthermore it was examined whether PiS is a real threat to the PO RP and whether the SLD has a chance to regain its lost position. It seems that regardless of the attempts made, the position of the SLD after the 2006 elections is stable and there are no indications that the Alliance could dominate the analyzed region again. However, in spite of the fact that since 2006 the PO enjoys high support, since 2014 PiS has been achieving better and better results, depriving the PO RP hegemon in its position in 2006–2014.

Republican Citizenship in French Colonial Pondicherry, 1870-1914

This work of historical sociology revisits and analyses the earlier part of the Third Republic (1870-1914), when France granted citizenship rights to Indians in Pondicherry. It explores the nature of this colonial citizenship and enables comparisons with British India, especially the Madras Presidency, as well as the rest of the French empire, as a means of demonstrating how unique the practice of granting such rights was. The difficulties of implementing a new political culture based on the language of rights and participatory political institutions were not so much rooted in a lack of assimilation into the French culture on the part of the Indian population; rather, they were the result of political infighting and long-term conflicts over status, both in relation to caste and class, and between inclusive and exclusive visions of French citizenship.

Navigating the Fourth Republic

Through the end of the Third Republic, only tiny numbers of West African students managed to study at France’s universities. Barriers to higher education began to fall after World War II, especially after African populations collectively gained citizenship. Higher education became a high-stakes policy area, as French officials and West African students and politicians vied to influence the parameters and possibilities of the postwar order. Amid escalating concerns about West African student migrations to the metropole, French officials eventually opened an Institute of Higher Studies in Dakar. However, this inchoate institution ended up highlighting the fundamental ambiguities of overseas citizenship. As West African students turned increasingly to anti-colonial activism, French authorities finally committed to establishing a full university in Dakar. Paradoxically, the construction and consolidation of this French university took place during the period of active decolonization.

Konserwatyzm narodowy Maurice’a Barrèsa jako sprzeciw wobec nowoczesnej ideologizacji życia zbiorowego

The subject of the article is the philosophical and political concept of Maurice Barrès (1862–1923), French writer and thinker, the most important next to Charles Maurras, a national-conservative thinker in the Third French Republic. The author argues that the topicality of Barrès’ concept lies in revealing the threat arising from the desire to fully reflect reality in political ideologies. The hermeneutic exegesis of Barrès’s concept avoids its superficial reading as chauvinistic or internally incoherent. The author situates it as an ideological and historical context as a polemic with official ideology of the Third Republic, that is, Charles Renouvier’s neocantism. Its links with the concepts of Ernest Renan and Hyppolite Taine, writers combining individualism and agnosticism with conservatism, are revealed. The author points out that Barrès’ opposition to the ideologization of collective life resulted from his concept of man. In the course of its evolution — the transition from ‘The Cult of Self’ to conservatism, its individualistic aspect has been preserved. This justified both the valorisation of the nation as one of the sources of the self’s identity and the rejection of chauvinistic approaches to nationalism, not taking into account other factors forming the human identity, i.e. the region and the universal community. It also justified the rejection of ideological apriorism in politics and political projects.

Illness, Aesthetics, and Body Politics: Forging the Third Republic in Émile Zola's 'La Faute de l'abbé Mouret'

This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola’s La Faute de l’abbé Mouret (The Sin of Father Mouret) (1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republican discourses compete. Using Paul Ricœur’s theory on Christianity’s original sin, this article compares Mouret’s sickness with physical evil and illustrates how Zola redeploys the traditional religious symbols of the heart, the blood, and the Word to the secular realm. It will show that original sin is a Christian myth inscribed on the body, and that Zola’s reformulation of a core religious doctrine and its supporting framework can and must be dismantled for the fledgling secular Third Republic. The article shows an attempt by Zola to forge a republican self, and thereby offers a new perspective on the nature of the Zolian body which merits further study under the field of Medical Humanities. Through the construction of the religious body, the article also contributes to wider critical discussion on mythology in Zola’s work.

Introduction

The study of music in the political and religious contexts of Third Republic France poses challenges that center around the relationship between the Catholic Church and the French Republic and the role of the musician therein. This introduction frames how the political and religious landscapes of the Third Republic have been discussed in the past and how cultural products shaped and were shaped by their social environment. Finally, it sets up the book’s ultimate move away from the simplistic notion that Church and State were separated by irreconcilable differences by introducing key players in the Republic’s musical transformation of Catholicism into an acceptable and desirable facet of its national and international identity.