Gina Bull on Political Identity in France

Just as the American government faces the standoff on budget reform, bringing Tea Party power to the fore, the headline ravaging Paris is the French’s own conservative ascendance. To the astonishment of France, Marine Le Pen, new leader of the far-right National Front party and daughter of famed Jean-Marie Le Pen, won a greater percentage than any other candidate in a poll by the Le Parisien newspaper. According to the survey—though its accuracy is being heavily questioned—Marine Le Pen would win the first round of elections coming up. Such a scenario comes as a shock and goes even further than the surprising win of her father in 2002 as a runner-up in the first round of elections, leading to the overwhelming victory of Jacques Chirac in the second round.

From the perspective of an American in Paris (by that I mean me, not Gene Kelly), the story is somewhat surprising, and somewhat familiar. The current president Nicolas Sarkozy is hugely unpopular right now, and Marine Le Pen has risen in part as an alternative. My 70-year-old host mother seethes in disgust at the television when the pundits (often) correct Sarkozy’s grammar. (I, on the other hand, sympathize with his struggles in the subjunctive, and like a wizened grandmother, tell stories of how bad we had it in the days of Bush).

And enter Marine Le Pen, empowered woman with radically right views who challenges the status quo and wins the populace. Sarah Palin, anyone? Realistically, though, the comparisons don’t go very far. The real reasons I believe that Le Pen’s popularity comes as a shock is that it threatens the identity of France as being not only a country upholding (definitely by American standards) very liberal values, but also, one that considers itself very rational and logical. I have the advantaged perspective of studying at Sciences-Po in Paris, the very highly esteemed university for political science (so esteemed they like to brag that Sarkozy flunked out). In French networks, Sciences-Po is the breeding ground, the starting line for the entire political world.

As an outside observer, it was interesting to see certain self-images of political France—ones that decidedly contrast with Marine Le Pen’s surge in popularity, for example. Firstly, I’ve had professors claim with complete certitude France’s exceptional attachment to revolutionary ideals, even that they are the one country best suited for Marxism. Secondly, that France is decidedly committed to “fraternité” and “égalité”; in class one student even said that France could not statisticize ethnicity in the banlieue (suburbs of Paris) because France doesn’t think in others, it thinks of everyone as French. While I definitely do not think that the “racist” stereotype of Parisians is necessarily true, I balk at the fact that France is color-blind—especially since the immigrant groups proliferate almost scientifically on metro lines as one leaves the center of Paris (it’s no New York where diversity is concerned). Without generalizing, I “problematize” (to use a favorite Sciences Po term) these claims of French identity.

Another quality I’ve noticed from Sciences-Po is the French love for precision and standardization. The first thing thrown at us in Orientation is the incredibly stringent attachment to methodology, namely in exposés, or oral presentations—down to the number of seconds of each part to the exact correlation of “parties” and “sous-parties” (two parts with each two or three sous-parties, vs. three parts with each two/three sous-parties: the age-old rivalry). Each class in Sciences-Po is required to include exposés, a fact I mention not just to summon your pity for my study-abroad experience (incredibly boring and incredibly stressful!), but because I honestly believe it’s of integral sociological importance. Sciences-Po students are bred to be skilled orators and synthesizer/simplifiers, preparing them for their political careers.

Moreover, it spreads into French culture as a whole—I’ll often see talk shows on television with large round tables, where each personality is required to give their own exposé. Even look at the French language itself: what is the subjunctive, but not a way of indicating opinions of doubt, opinion, or superlative as opposed to fact? The French love to be precise, and come from a position (contrary to American schools) where there really is an authoritative fact that comes from the well-established process of study.

Alas, this middle ground of rational established fairness is thrown a loop when the extreme right leader achieves the strongest popularity. I point out these contradictions not to criticize France (we certainly are not perfect in the States, and you’ll find hypocrisy wherever you look), but rather to engage my observations of the French political elite society. I was quite startled when my host mother, in responding to the spread of protest movements out of Egypt at how “civilized” and “cultured” Egypt is. As opposed to whom, I asked, what does “cultured” mean? (She didn’t understand my question, and proceeded to explain the word “culture” to me with “educated,” etc.). What bothered me most was her approach of certainty and righteousness, looking down at Egypt like an approving mother, bastion of liberty.

In the Western world, must we not take a better look at our own purported values? Parisians love to look at each other, and everyone encompasses the shared spectacle—evident anywhere from the metro, where people tend to stare and dress in standardized refined and presentable fashion, to cafés, which line up chairs directly in voyeur view of streets. In this time of worldwide political upheaval, it will be interesting to see what France comes up with, regarding their own political and social composition.