Global France, Plural France

Laurent Dubois. Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. xx + 329 pp. $27.50, cloth, ISBN 978-0-520-25928-7. Paul A. Silverstein. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. x + 298 pp. $49.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-253-34451-9. Reviewed by Ian Coller Published on H-Levant (April, 2011) Commissioned by Amy A. Kallander (Syracuse University) The word shared in the titles of these two bound these territories together for more than a books is “France,” but that word can mean many century. It is also a France of multiple transversal different things. In Laurent Dubois’s recent and identifications that challenge the postcolonial highly readable book Soccer Empire, “France” is French and Algerian nation-states from within. the mass-merchandised brand of Les Bleus, the What these two books show, then, is that France French national football team. At the same time must be understood in a plural sense. Too many “France” is a far more fragmented territorial English-speaking observers--whether neoconser‐ sovereignty scattered from the Caribbean to the vative France-haters or multiculturalist critics of Pacific. This is a France métissée, a product of the “republican” model--have fallen into the trap multiple crossings, both slave and free. The of projecting a unitary vision of France, a France France of Paul Silverstein’s close participant-ob‐ stripped of its messiness, its ambiguities, its con‐ servation of Algerians in Paris, is both France and tradictions. These two authors--following on from Algeria at once, perpetuating in underground seminal works by Tyler Stovall, Gary Wilder, and ways the coerced and ruptured connections that others--represent a different and refreshing trend, H-Net Reviews one which deserves the full attention of all seri‐ European Cup two years later. This victory is the ous students of contemporary France, colonialism central tableau of Dubois’s book, and he insists and postcolonial theory.[1] that it must be understood as a key event in mod‐ What these books share is a wholehearted ern French history. For the crowds pouring onto commitment to the people who live in this plural the streets, more numerous even than those who France, a determination to tell their individual welcomed the Liberation of 1944, it certainly stories in all their complexity, and to build from seemed so. There is little doubt that this moment that base toward a wider analysis of French soci‐ brought the diversity of the French population ety, its structures, and challenges. Silverstein ap‐ into the spotlight in a way that nothing else had proaches his subjects through the medium of ev‐ done before. A few churlish xenophobes com‐ eryday life, following the random individuals en‐ plained that the team was not “really French,” but countered in his feld work in the 1990s, applying Dubois makes a convincing case that the victory an ethnographical methodology with a highly crit‐ changed many people’s understanding of what ical and self-reflexive awareness of the environ‐ that “real” France could be. ment he shared with them. As much an outsider Sport can be discomforting to the historian as those he studied, Silverstein is able to strip because of the role that pure chance plays in its away many of the preconceptions of French and outcomes. In this instance it seems possible that a even of Algerian observers: he does not present random case of food-poisoning sealed Brazil’s fate this space as a “problem” of integration or of po‐ and allowed the black-blanc-beur (black-white- litical loyalties, but as a space in its own right, as Arab) French team to win. Would a French loss he aptly frames it, a “transpolitical” space. have changed the understanding of diversity in The names that pepper Dubois’s story are the long term? As historians we try to analyze the much more glamorous: Zinadine Zidane, Lilian processes at work across apparently random Thuram, Thierry Henry. These are names familiar events, and Dubois certainly marshals a vast to anyone with the remotest interest in football, range of references to contextualize the responses but Dubois uses their compelling rags-to-riches to that victory. It is important to recognize, how‐ stories to illuminate a raft of other less prestigious ever, that in the case of sport it is precisely the players and teams, along with their families, their sense of play, of luck, of miracle even, that defines neighbors, and the histories from which they its attraction. In that sense, sport must inevitably emerged. Soccer Empire is above all the story of explode from within our best attempts to contain the French team, not a sociological analysis of the it within a rational, historical explanation. One of sport itself. Indeed, in many ways it is an the great strengths of Dubois’s book is how fully unashamed paean to that team, to its diversity, its he gives rein to this other passion, how vividly he strength, and its skill. It is a celebration of the ex‐ brings to life in his writing the roller coaster emo‐ traordinary moments of possibility that football tions of exhilaration and despondency. That inti‐ seemed to open up in the World Cup of 1998 and macy and involvement might seem to place into again in 2006, moments that few observers of question its historiographical “objectivity”--but France could afford to ignore. Dubois is very clear what kind of a book this is, and it deserves to be understood both as a great The triumph of the French soccer team football book, and as an experiment in a new kind against Brazil in 1998, on the home turf and in of histoire engagée. front of a jubilant crowd, is the only World Cup France has ever won in the eighty-year history of In Dubois’s hands, the story of the French na‐ the competition, a triumph sealed by winning the tional soccer team is much more than just a can‐ 2 H-Net Reviews vas for the great sporting moments of exaltation licking story allows ample space for all these ele‐ and despair: it opens a space for exploring some ments to coexist, but they are never quite pulled of the more shadowy aspects of French colonial together into an overarching argument. and postcolonial history. His early chapters inves‐ Algeria in France provides a more tightly ana‐ tigate the ambivalent insertion of sport in the fab‐ lytical framework: Silverstein is acutely conscious ric of colonial society--as a “safe” activity to occu‐ of the powerful genealogy of anthropological py colonial workers as their working hours were knowledge about Algeria, and in particular the gradually reduced, or as the terrain for the rising Kabyle household (axxam) which played a crucial resentments of the colonized, which would even‐ role in the ethnological theory of Pierre Bourdieu. tually explode into years of violence and repres‐ Silverstein both challenges and renews these sion. These conflicts are never black and white, al‐ ideas, reconsidering Bourdieu’s “structural nostal‐ though race and color play a powerful role in gia” in the context of populations displaced dur‐ their development. Between colonizer and colo‐ ing the Algerian War, and resituating questions of nized are a panoply of other contradictory fg‐ space and spatializing practice in the urban sub‐ ures--the black colonial governor who fought urbs of Paris. He emphasizes the ways in which against Vichy; harkis who fought for the French ethnicity was shaped and even produced by larg‐ in Algeria; Kanak New Caledonians traumatized er historical events, and then maps these forma‐ by their experience in a Parisian “human zoo,” Al‐ tions of identity back into the everyday lives of in‐ gerian Jews playing on Muslim teams to make up dividuals and groups in France. He shows very ef‐ “European” quotas. Football is a thread that con‐ fectively how these formations have become as nects the lives of these people in tangled ways, French as they are Algerian, articulating them‐ dispelling any sense that there is any simple “na‐ selves increasingly alongside Breton, Catalan, and tional” story to be told. Basque regionalisms, extending solidarity to other Dubois--an eminent historian of the Haitian Berberophone populations in North Africa, while Revolution--never succumbs to the temptation to seeking shelter under the transnational umbrella simplify these concatenating realities. In giving of the European Union on questions such as hu‐ historical shape to this diversity, he shows how man rights. deeply rooted in French history the ethnic and re‐ Such transformations are part of the phenom‐ ligious plurality of the French team of 1998 actu‐ enon that Silverstein identifies as “transpolitics”-- ally was, with its white convert to Islam, its Antil‐ an increasingly deterritorialized set of claims and lean players of various backgrounds, its French contestations that no longer take as their ground a Arabs and Berbers and Basques and Africans. One single nation-state--in this case France or Algeria. group not represented in the team, of course, is Yet in drawing upon these powerful genealogies the other half of the population: women’s sport for his analysis, at times the inherited ethno‐ has never been given the same recognition as the graphical focus seems to inflect his argument games of men. But women are neither absent nor away from the wider implications of “transpoli‐ passive in this story: they can be formative influ‐ tics.” From the title of his doctoral thesis and ear‐ ences, like Thuram’s charismatic grandmother; lier publications, it seems that Silverstein’s origi‐ agents of political action, like the young woman nal feldwork was devoted to the question of who led the pitch-invasion during the Algeria- “Berberity” rather than to “Algeria”: and for this France match of 2001; or international athletes in reason all of his subjects were Kabyle (a term for their own right, like the track star Marie-José Tamazight-speaking eastern Algerians, with an in‐ Péréc.

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