BLACK SKINS, FRENCH VOICES
Case Studies in Anthropology
Series Editor
EDWARD F. FISCHER
Vanderbilt University
Advisory Board
THEODORE C. BESTOR
Harvard University
ROBERT H. LAVENDA
Saint Cloud State University
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Carol Ireson-Doolittle (Willamette University) and Geraldine Moreno-Black (University of Oregon)
Namoluk Beyond the Reef: The Transformation of a Micronesian Community
Mac Marshall (University of Iowa)
From Mukogodo to Maasai: Ethnicity and Cultural Change in Kenya
Lee Cronk (Rutgers University)
Black Skins, French Voices: Caribbean Ethnicity and Activism in Urban France
David Beriss
(University of New Orleans)
Forthcoming
The Tanners of Taiwan: Life Strategies and National Culture
Scott Simon (University of Ottawa)
The Iraqw of Tanzania: Negotiating Rural Development
Katherine A. Snyder
(Queens College, City University of New York)
Urban China: Private Lives and Public Culture
William Jankowiak
(University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Muslim Youth: Tensions and Transitions in Tajikistan
Colette Harris
(Virginia Tech University)
BLACK SKINS, FRENCH VOICES
Caribbean Ethnicity and Activism in Urban France
DAVID BERISS
University of New Orleans
First published 2004 by Westview Press
Published 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright 2004 by David Beriss
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Photographs courtesy of author except where otherwise indicated.
All maps by Samara Ebinger.
ISBN 13: 978-0-8133-4254-2 (pbk)
Contents
France is a country of contradictions. It has been the most stalwart proponent of European integration while positioning itself on the front line in a battle against U.S.led cultural globalization. The country has long served as an archetype of the modern European nation-statepolitically unified and seemingly homogeneous culturallywhile being divided by profound regional differences and separatist movements (such as in Corsica).
Where a distant gaze may clearly see cultural homogeneity, closer inspection reveals great diversity. The France that David Beriss describes in this book is an amalgamation of many countries, and his nuanced description leads the reader to see the folly in discussing France in the singular. In cosmopolitan Paris we glimpse the self-proclaimed guardians of French high culture, in a working-class suburb we encounter the subtle xenophobia of local politics, and everywhere we see the immigrant populations from North Africa, southern Europe, and the French Antilles. It is a place of de jure uniformity (Frenchness) but de facto plurality. It is in this ambiguous space that Beriss sets his narrative.
There is a long-standing French tradition of romanticizing the exotic (Paul Gauguins images of Tahitian women come to mind), but this allure is tempered by a fear of cultural dilution and pollution. Mainstream French appreciation of foreign music, for example, stops short of embracing these traditions as part of a national patrimony. In Black Skins, French Voices we see this tension from the viewpoint of the immigrant Antillean community. Beriss begins his narrative in the French Antilles, on the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, where he too gets caught up in the flow of people to France. Today about one-third of all Antilleans live in France, almost as many as live on either Martinique or Guadeloupe. As residents of a French overseas territory, Antillean immigrants are French citizens. One might think that this would ease the trauma of migration, but accompanying their citizenship is an implicit expectation of cultural assimilation: if you are French, you should act French.
Most mainstream French politicians have adopted public discourses of multiculturalism in acknowledgment of the countrys diversifying population. Yet the anti-immigrant far right has also seen a dramatic surge in support in recent years. And French social policies continue to promote cultural assimilation. As I pen these lines, the French National Assembly is debating a bill to ban conspicuous religious attire (the target being Muslim head wear) in public schools. Paradoxically, this is intended to promote the stalwart liberal cause of secular education while undermining the au courant liberal concern with multicultural inclusion.
Beriss argues that French domestic public policy is primarily oriented toward issues of class while Antillean activists call for reforms that address ethnic divisions in their own right. To these immigrant populations, elements of Antillean culture take on fetishized symbolic roles. Eating boudin sausages, drinking rum, dancing to zouk musicsuch iconic yet quotidian aspects of Antillean life acquire new political meanings in the context of French cultural politics. Yet these are not uncontested, and Beriss shows how some activists lament the minstrelization of Antillean culture.
Black Skins, French Voices makes an important contribution to the ethnography of nation building in a globalized world. Beriss takes us behind the scenes of French cultural politics, showing the little battles that are fought daily as part of a larger, largely uncoordinated campaign. We see, for example, the contested meanings of the bicentennial Bastille Day celebrations of 1989 and the World Cup soccer championship in 1998. We are made privy to debates over what is le culturel among Antillean theater troupes in Paris. In representing the diversity of French society Beriss does not gloss over the complexities of cultural hybridizationseen, for example, in the link between French spiritualism and Antillean magic.
This book also makes an important contribution to the field of anthropology as a wholeparticularly on issues of race and class, immigration, and national identity. Looking at residents of the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, both at home and as immigrants in Paris, Beriss takes an approach that is at once intensely global and intimately local. He shows how they manage their identities as both French and Caribbean in the heated context of French cultural politics, as well as the changes that immigration is making in Western European societies.
