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Chapter 8 Détente Debating America in the 1960s

1. An insightful survey of this problem is Paul Gagnon, " La Vie future : Some French Responses to the Technological Society," Journal of European Studies 6 (1976): 172-89. [BACK]

2. For example, Jean Baudrillard, Le Système des objets (1968) and La Société de consommation (1970); Henri Lefebvre, La Vie quotidienne dans le monde moderne (1968); Bertrand de Jouvenel, Arcadie: essais sur le mieux vivre (1968); Alain Touraine, La Société post-industrielle (1969); Georges Elgozy, Les Damnés de l'opulence (1970). [BACK]

3. Jean-Francis Held, "L'Homme-auto," in La Nef no. 37 (1969): 132. This issue of La Nef was devoted to essays on consumer society. [BACK]

4. Philippe Bénéton and Jean Touchard, "Les Interprétations de la crise de mai-juin 1968," Revue française de science politique 20 (February 1970): 524-25. A few references to consumer society can be found in the documents reproduced in Alain Schnapp and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Journal de la commune étudiante: textes et documents (1969), 356, 566-69, 595-98. The literature on the events of 1968 is voluminous, but a good recent interpretation is Henri Weber, Mai 1968: vingt ans après (1988). [BACK]

5. Flanner, Paris Journal, 491. [BACK]

6. Over half those polled in 1964 liked Americans, contrasted to only 11 percent who held a "bad opinion" (Gérard Vincent, Les Jeux français [1978], 326). [BACK]

7. To the question, "Which people least resembled the French?", those polled said: the Americans (43 percent), the British (22 percent), the Italians (8 percent), and the Germans (7 percent) (Grosser, The Western Alliance , 217). [BACK]

8. Alain Bosquet, Les Américains sont-ils adultes? (1969). A similar essay is Jacques Lusseyran, Douce , trop douce Amérique (1968). [BACK]

9. Maurice Duverger, "Dans la carapace d'une automobile," L'Express , 5 March 1964, 39-40. [BACK]

10. René Etiemble, Parlez-vous franglais? (1973 ed.), 37; the first edition was 1964. Page references for further quotations from this work are in the text. [BACK]

11. Noting, for example, how the United Fruit company got the Pentagon's help to unseat Latin American rulers who interfered in its business, Etiemble wrote that one could understand "Washington's hate against the only European statesman who, since the 'Liberation,' dares resist the pretensions of the dollar. Since the OAS has not been able to get rid of him, and since they have not been able to buy him, American finance is out to get his hide" (234). [BACK]

12. "As for the Yankee military who have automobiles baptized as bus d'école driving around the streets of Paris . . . I have to note that if the Nazis tortured and massacred members of the Resistance, they made the effort to draw up their atrocious tableaux d'honneur in good French" (239). [BACK]

13. Philip H. Coombs, The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy: Educational and Cultural Affairs , Council on Foreign Relations (1964), 111-133 [BACK]

14. St-Robert, Le Jeu de la France , 132-48. [BACK]

15. Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises , 245-61. [BACK]

16. Defferre, "L'Indispensable Europe," 152-53. [BACK]

17. Claude Julien's earlier works include Le nouveau nouveau Monde (1960). [BACK]

18. Claude Julien, L'Empire américain (1968), 502. Further page references for this work are in the text. There is a debate between Julien, Pierre Cot, and Jean-Jean-François Revel in "La Gauche face à l'empire américain," Dire no. 2 (1968): 12-27. [BACK]

19. Employing a conventional Marxist approach Eric Gaument ( Le Mythe américain [1970]) debunked America's economic achievement and ridiculed the French Americanizers. Real wages may have risen in the United States, but there was plenty of poverty and the middle class had difficulty making ends meet, according to this Communist critic. One could not speak of affluence in American education, housing, or medicine—not to mention the gross inequalities of wealth based on region, gender, and race. The Americanization of Europe would only bring the most noxious traits of unbridled capitalism. Marxist underconsumption theory led Gaument to predict, in the distant future, an intensification of the class struggle in America with the poor joining the working class and its white-collar allies. [BACK]

20. Emmanuel Astier de la Vigerie, "Faut-il être anti-anti-Américain?", Réalités no. 254 (1967): 40. [BACK]

21. Domenach, "L'Empire américain," Esprit , April 1966, 650. [BACK]

22. Domenach, "L'Explosion", Esprit , October 1970, 489. [BACK]

23. Domenach, "Critique d'un éloge," Esprit , December 1969, 877. [BACK]

24. Domenach, "Notes d'un retour en Amérique," Esprit , November 1969, 621. [BACK]

25. Domenach's introduction in Esprit , June-July 1968, 968-69. [BACK]

26. Domenach, "Notes d'un retour," 624-25. [BACK]

27. Edgar Morin, Journal de Californie (1970), 209; further page references for this work are in the text. Extracts from his journal appeared under the title "La Mutation occidentale" in Esprit (October 1970, 515-48). [BACK]

28. Jean-Jean-François Revel, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun , trans. J. F. Bernard (1971), 47. Further page references for this work are in the text. [BACK]

29. Quoted by Nora, "America and the French Intellectuals," 330. [BACK]

30. Jean Guiget, Aspects de la civilisation américaine , 2d ed. (1971). [BACK]

31. Bernard Cazes, "La Malaise dans la consommation," La Nef no. 37 (1969): 135-46. [BACK]

32. Réflexions pour 1985, La Documentation française (1964), 12-13. A similar position was advocated by the former planner Lionel Stoleru in his study L 'Impératif industriel (1969). [BACK]

33. Pierre Massé, cited in Henry Rousso, ed., De Monnet à Massé (1986), 216. [BACK]

34. Stanley Hoffmann et al., A la recherche de la France (1963) is a translation of In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass., 1961). Hoffmann had been interpreting American policy and Franco-American relations for years in such reviews as Esprit , and Wylie's work on rural France was well known. [BACK]

35. Michel Crozier, "Le Climat intellectuel," Esprit , January 1968, 9; further page references for this work are in the text. In the early 1980s Crozier furnished a far more sober assessment in Le Mal américain (1980), in which he also charted his own intellectual itinerary in America since the late 1940s. [BACK]

36. Raymond Aron, Progress and Disillusion: The Dialectics of Modern Society (London, 1968), 192. [BACK]

37. Quoted in Pinto, "Sociology as a Cultural Phenomenon," 174-75. [BACK]

38. See, for example, Fourastié's Grand Espoir du XXe siècle , which went through several editions; and his title in the "Que sais-je" series, La Productivité , which also had multiple editions. Fourastié was only slightly less optimistic in a later book: Lettre ouverte à quatre milliard d'hommes (1970). [BACK]

39. Richard F. Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France (1981), 244. [BACK]

40. Fourastié quoted in Gagnon, " La Vie future: Some French Responses," 177. [BACK]

41. Jean St-Geours, Vive la société de consommation (1971). [BACK]

42. Louis Armand, "Faut-il être anti-anti-Américain?", Réalités no. 254 (1967): 38-43. Another rebuttal to anti-Americanism was Julien Teppe, Contre l'américanophobie (1969). [BACK]

43. Jacques Maisonrouge, Manager international (1985). Some of the most

active proponents of an American approach to management were Jean Milhaud, Octave Gélinier, and Noël Pouderoux, all of whom were associated with CEGOS. A pioneering effort toward constructing a history of the subject is the collection of essays in a special number of the Revue française de gestion (no. 70 [1988]). Roger Priouret published his interviews with managers as La France et le management (1968). [BACK]

44. Gilbert Gantier, "Une Source d'inspirarion" in Les Américains et nous , 107-18. [BACK]

45. Servan-Schreiber, The American Challenge , 276; further page references for this work are in the text. [BACK]

46. Interview with Servan-Schreiber, "A propos du 'Défi américain,' " Promotions (April-June 1968): 25. [BACK]

47. Servan-Schreiber, The American Challenge , 191-95, and "A Propos," 25. [BACK]

48. Le Progrès de Lyon , 25 April 1968. [BACK]

49. A lonely exception is Jacques Gasquel ( Perspectives , 9 March 1968), who argued that in many respects Europe was ahead of the United States and that given the troubles in American society, Servan-Schreiber's next book ought to be rifled "La Décadence américaine." [BACK]

50. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, "Solitaire Europe," Le Figaro , 7 December 1967. Giscard discussed the book with Mitterrand on Europe No. 1 ( Le Monde , 23 October 1967). [BACK]

51. The heads of IBM-France and Royal Dutch Shell, Jacques Maisonrouge and André Benard, respectively, saw no answer in trying to create vigorous multinationals by merging European firms that were unprofitable or technological laggards ( L'Express , 4-10 December 1967; Sud-Ouest , 30 November 1967). [BACK]

52. Julien's objections appear in an interview in Combat (29 January 1969). A spokesman for the Parti socialiste unifié observed: "There is the response of the shortsighted idiot that consists of being more American than the Americans in order to better resist them. One does not fight evil with evil or the plague with cholera. The struggle for national independence is indivisible from the struggle for social liberation and it means the substitution of socialism for capitalism, which, in essence, is no different in Europe than in the United States" (Manuel Brindier, "La Réponse socialiste au défi américain," Le Progrès de Lyon , 5 March 1968). [BACK]

53. Mitterrand, "Seule une Europe socialiste . . . ," Fédération Champagne , 1 April 1968. [BACK]

54. The Communist response is in L'Humanité , 25 November 1967; Charles Fiterman, "Pour une Europe indépendante, démocratique et pacifique," Cahiers du communisme , April 1968, 14-26; Le Monde , 17 January 1968. [BACK]

55. Thierry Maulnier, "Le Modèle américaine," Figaro , 5 December 1967. [BACK]

56. André Piettre in Le Monde , 23 December 1967; emphasis is in the original. [BACK]

57. "Etats-Unis d'Europe ou Europe des Etats-Unis?", Communauté européenne, December 1967, 7-10. [BACK]


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