Looking ahead to the Fall semester, I wanted to share with you some writings I did this Spring and Summer about recent events relating to the issues we’ll be discussing this semester.
First, the “Arab Spring” of protests and revolutions that have shaken up the Middle East started in Tunisia, a former French colony. Here’s a nice radio piece featuring David Peisner, a writer for Spin Magazine, about some of the music that provided the inspiration for, and soundtrack to, that revolution.
As you will learn, I’m a bit obsessed with soccer and politics, which we’ll be exploring throughout the semester. It has been quite an interesting Spring and Summer for French soccer:
In July, I wrote a series of pieces recently about the Women’s World Cup, particularly a profile of one of France’s star players Louisa Necib, who is of Algerian background and sometimes compared to Zinedine Zidane.
In addition, I provided coverage of the scandal involving racism at the French Football Federation. This case, little-covered in the U.S. media, exploded in France when a tape was released proving that high-ranking members of the Federation (including national team coach Laurent Blanc) had discussed ways of limiting the number of players of African and Arab background in the youth academies within the country. I wrote an editorial in French about the issue for Mediapart, the French news site that broke the story. The English-language pieces I wrote about the issue (in order of their appearance) are:
“Racist Delirium at the French Football Federation”
“Racist Delirium: A Close Reading”
The other big story of the summer, of course, was the scandal involving the rape allegations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. There has been much ink spilled about this, of course, and will certainly continue to be. I assume you have followed this case, but for those of you who read French wanted to point you to an interesting piece (by Manthia Diawara that examined some of the connections between the French Football Federation case and the DSK issue.
I’m re-posting a comment by Lindsay Barrett here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/opinion/the-strauss-kahn-case.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=dominique%20strauss-kahn&st=Search
http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2011-08-01#folio=032
Le charge de viol contre Dominque Strauss-Kahn était recément rejeté, presque complètement à cause de ce que les procureurs ont appelé le “pattern of untruthfullness” chez l’accusatrice, Nafissa Diallo. Le rejet du charge d’un immigrée pauvre, noire, et femelle, peut-être vu de quelques perspectives. Il y l’aspect socioéconomique, que le témoignage d’une bonne ne “vaut” assez que ce d’un homme d’affaires; l’aspect raciale, que le témoignage d’une femme noire n’est pas assez valide que ce d’un homme blanc. Et il y a l’aspect du sexe, que les mots d’un homme sont plus valides que ceux d’une femme. Mais la racine de la manque de “validité” de l’accusation de Diallo était son “pattern of untruthfullness”, pas le racisme ou sexisme des procurers. Elle a menti dans son appel à refuge aux Étas-Unis, qu’elle était violée par un gang de soldats dans son pays natal, Guinea.
Mais on doit examiner la raison pour laquelle elle était obligée de mentir: dans son article “The Asylum Seeker” pour l’issu du premier d’août de cette année, Suketu Mehta décrit le practique commun des immigrées – selon le conseil de leurs avocats- de mentir et dire qu’elles étaient violées, la seule prévision réalistique sur lequel elles peuvent compter pour la réussite.
“It’s not enough for asylum applicants to say they were threatened, or even beaten. They have to furnish horror stories, It’s not enough to say they were raped. Inevitably, these atrocity stories are inflated, as new applicants for asylum get more inventive about what was done to them, competing with the lore that has already been established, with applicants whose stories, both real and fake, are so much more dramatic, whose plight is so much more perilous, than theirs.”
Il y a tant d’immigrées avec des histoires d’horreur des pays africains- un grand nombre desquels, comme le Guinea, étaient colonisés par la France- que la verité ne vaut plus assez. Et cette mensonge Diallo était obligé de dire était une grande partie de la raison pour laquelle son accusation était rejeté. Donc de tous ces aspects, on doit considérer d’une façon particulièrement penser le plus est l’aspect colonial.