MALAISE FRANCAISE (via Steve Jacobson):

Summertime, and living is not easy for French racked with self-doubt (Amelia Gentleman, August 10, 2004, The Guardian)

To judge by the opinion pages of France's leading rightwing daily, Le Figaro, the nation is in the grips of a powerful, soul-destroying bout of self-doubt.

Asked to define and explain the precise nature of what it means to be French, some 40 philosophers, politicians, academics and writers have devoted more than 50,000 words to the issue, in a series which has occupied most of the paper's comment space for the past two months until it concluded yesterday. Many of the responses have been bleak in the extreme.

Pointing to France's loss of its position as a global power, its weakening role within Europe, its failure to integrate its immigrant population, its exhausted public services and its stumbling industry, the exercise has been imbued with a nostalgia for a lost era of French greatness.

Many of the articles reflect the current wave of "declinism" in France, a spreading intellectual phenomenon which has over the past few months inspired a series of highly self-critical but best-selling books about the nation's fundamental problems. With titles such as French Disarray, France in Freefall, French Arrogance, the works indulge in a frenzy of self-flagellation over the country's stale economy, mounting unemployment and its flailing position in the international arena.

The books have unsettled the government and prompted irritated responses from the prime minister and the foreign minister.

This look like a job for Jimmy Carter!

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 11, 2004 8:43 AM