View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt The project of Liberation and the projection of national identity. Calvo, Aragon, Jouhandeau, 1944-1945 by Aparna Nayak-Guercio B.A. University of Bombay, India, 1990 M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 1993 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2006 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Aparna Nayak-Guercio It was defended on December 13, 2005 and approved by Dr. Alexander Orbach, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies Dr. Giuseppina Mecchia, Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian Dr. Lina Insana, Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian Dr. Roberta Hatcher, Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Philip Watts, Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian ii Copyright © by Aparna Nayak-Guercio 2006 iii THE PROJECT OF LIBERATION AND THE PROJECTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY. ARAGON, CALVO, JOUHANDEAU, 1944-45 Aparna Nayak-Guercio, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2006 This dissertation focuses on the months of liberation of France, June 1944 to May 1945. It analyzes three under-studied works taken as samples of texts that touch upon the question of contested identities. The texts are chosen from the main divisions of the political spectrum, namely Gaullist, far right, and far left. Although the focus is on the texts themselves, I trace the arguments found in these works to the larger discourses in which they are inscribed. In particular, I address the questions of guilt and innocence, justice and vengeance, past and future in the given historical circumstances. The first chapter examines “Le droit romain n’est plus” by Louis Aragon. I focus on the discussion of justice, vengeance, and punishment as they emerge from the text, notions that are embedded in the broader polemics among the intellectuals of the Resistance. I discuss the importance of music in this story where it plays the role of a structuring device. Finally, I examine the associations that can be made between writing, music and nationalism in the larger context of national identity. The second chapter deals with La Bête est morte! La guerre mondiale chez les animaux by Calvo. It is an allegory using animals as protagonists and is in comic book format. I discern three loci in the narration that work together in order to re-inscribe the national identity in the values of the republic, thereby providing its young readers with a grammar of good and evil, patriotism and treason, guilt and absolution. The third chapter is a discussion of Journal sous l’Occupation by Marcel Jouhandeau who flirted with Fascism in the 1930s and manifested his anti-Semitism in articles and a book. I read his Journal sous l’Occupation as a public testimony in writing of his purge trial that never happened. I investigate the question of fear, the process of self-exoneration in his reasoning, the question of the journal as instrument of self-definition, and discuss personal and national identity. iv The conclusion focuses on Guy Kohen’s Retour d’Auschwitz and ties the different works and contemporary journalistic discourses together. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE.................................................................................................................................VIII 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 “LE DROIT ROMAIN N’EST PLUS”: ARAGON ON JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE............................................................................................................................. 44 2.1 THE WRITER AND THE CONTEXT ........................................................... 45 2.2 LAW AND JUSTICE ........................................................................................ 56 2.2.1 Form............................................................................................................. 57 2.2.2 Droit, loi, justice........................................................................................... 62 2.3 MUSIC, CULTURAL POLITICS, NATIONALISM .................................... 78 2.3.1 Culture: instrument of propaganda and of resistance ............................ 78 2.3.2 Music, musicality and politics in “Le droit romain n’est plus”.............. 83 3.0 D’OU VENONS-NOUS ? QUE SOMMES-NOUS ?… REPRESENTATION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF IDENTITY CREATION. THE CASE OF LA BETE EST MORTE! 100 3.1.1 Children and reading................................................................................ 103 3.1.2 The illustrator and the authors................................................................ 106 3.2 LA BÊTE EST MORTE ................................................................................. 111 3.2.1 General layout and structure................................................................... 112 3.2.1.1 The front cover.................................................................................. 112 3.2.1.2 The genre ........................................................................................... 115 3.2.1.3 The narrator...................................................................................... 119 3.2.2 The protagonists........................................................................................ 122 3.2.2.1 The bad guys: the Axis ..................................................................... 122 3.2.2.2 The good guys: the Allies ................................................................. 127 vi 3.3 LOCI OF IDENTITY CREATION ............................................................... 137 3.3.1 An euphoric rememoration: the incipit .................................................. 138 3.3.2 La Liberté guidant les animaux............................................................... 148 3.3.3 Remembering to forget............................................................................. 161 3.4 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 168 4.0 REPRESENTATION OR CREATIVE REVISION? THE CASE OF JOURNAL SOUS L’OCCUPATION BY MARCEL JOUHANDEAU ................................................... 171 4.1 BACKGROUND.............................................................................................. 175 4.1.1 Historical conjecture................................................................................. 176 4.2 GUILTY SILENCE AND EXPLICIT JUSTIFICATION........................... 188 4.2.1 Feelings of guilt: a true confession or mere illusion?............................. 190 4.2.2 Rhetorical process of self-exoneration .................................................... 201 4.3 PERSONAL IDENTITY................................................................................. 211 4.3.1 Indifference to his fate.............................................................................. 211 4.3.2 Self-definition: from alterity to unity...................................................... 217 4.4 “NOTRE JUSTIFICATION EST DANS L’AVENIR”................................ 224 4.4.1 (Re)writing History while (re)writing his story...................................... 225 4.4.2 Appropriation of circulating discourses and Historicism ..................... 234 5.0 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................... 245 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 257 vii PREFACE In the course of writing this dissertation, I received much encouragement and support from the members of my committee; I would like to thank all of them for their continued interest in my work. I am also appreciative of the encouragement received in the course of the years from all my professors in Pittsburgh, Bombay, and Paris. Sincere thanks also to all my friends. I would never have been able to bring this project to term without the support of my parents and parents- in-law to whom I owe heartfelt thanks. Above all, the material, intellectual, moral support of my husband Salvo were instrumental in keeping me on track and I could never thank him enough. Last but not least, I thank my son Valerio for always reminding me that there is life outside graduate school. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION World War II was a time of division, equivocation and even civil war in France. Not only was the country divided geographically into the Occupied Zone and the Free Zone, it also had two governing bodies that contended for power, one legitimated by the Germans and present on French soil, the other a self-proclaimed “Free France”, exiled in London and recognized by the English. The question of national identity in France at the moment of Liberation remains a delicate issue. Indeed, from the Armistice of June 1940 onwards, there was a deep schism in French society. The Vichy regime which was in power collaborated with the German occupying force, while the Resistance movement opposed both the occupiers and the regime in power. This seemingly simple dichotomy becomes further complicated when considering the differences of political opinion within these two larger factions. Not only were there Resistance groups from the whole political