Books in a Bind?: Paris Book Fair Highlights Industry’s Health and Fears

One of the big dates each year in the Paris season is the Paris Book Fair in March, and with three current students plunged into book world internships, IFE paid a bit more attention this year to the goings-on. As usual, nearly two hundred thousand visitors made their way past a thousand or more publishers’ stalls testifying to the continued existence in France of a healthy readership and a large number of small, independent publishers. Some of the largest houses, however, were conspicuous by their absence, protesting the high cost of space and calling for a more innovative, "interactive" event.

Like publishers everywhere, French actors are concerned about the book’s fate in a digital age, and IFE student Alexandra Lewis, working as a children’s book manuscript reader for the publisher Pocket Jeunesse, has been conducting research on the future of the book and of its publishers in the face of new technologies. It’s not by chance that Alexandra discovered her topic working for a children’s publisher; if the Book Fair is still thronged, it’s the next generation or two that worry publishers, who are busy developing multimedia enhancements to their stories.

In bookshops it can seem as if French society talks to itself through books, and when you’re at the Fair there’s a good chance you’ll see some well-known faces who have recently published their side of some conversation. This year it might have been former PM Lionel Jospin, or filmmaker Luc Besson among others. Some of the conversations can get pretty hot, and IFE student Ramsay Leimenstoll, working as an assistant to the director of press relations at the major publisher Gallimard, is focusing her research on the feud that broke into public view, in newspapers and books, between Shoah filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and author Yannick Haenel over the latter’s book about Jan Karski, the so-called "man who tried to stop the Holocaust single-handedly". Questions raised – and maybe even answered – by her research include: what should be the relationship between literature and "truth"?; does Haenel’s work open new paths for Shoah literature after the last witness has passed away?

Another investigation involving truth and literature is being carried out by IFE student Sarah McDonough, whose job interviewing authors for the online review of books Parutions.com has led to her into the sub-field of autofiction, and her research tries to set some perimeters to the definition of this so-called new genre which roams, Proust-like, the boundary lands between autobiography and fiction. Three stimulating investigations with one conclusion in common: keep reading!

Face Off: Burqas, Niqabs and the Women Who Want Them Banned

The IFE guest lecture for the month of March was delivered by a panel of three young women active in the not-for-profit organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS — "neither sluts nor submissive"). They presented to students the work of this organization that rapidly acquired visibility as it began giving voice to women from various cultural milieus who want to put at end to submissive cultural practices but not at the price of renouncing where they come from. NPNS’s founder, Fadela Amara, surprised more than a few when she accepted a ministerial post in the Sarkozy administration, but in any case the current leadership at NPNS is fully behind the government initiative to ban all face-obscuring veils.

In a forceful presentation the panel identified veils total or partial with a set of cultural practices that oppress and confine women, and contribute to a climate of violence against women. As they made clear, NPNS is not a think tank or a circle of philosophers but an activist organization giving voice and support to women facing cultural as well as socio-economic hurdles. If the niceties of cultural identity are to weigh in the debate it will be in terms of self-expression or empowerment, not as one of the many identity shibboleths thrown at them by the left, by the right, or by traditionalists behind them. NPNS is as a result also a profitable milieu for IFE students to redraw the social-political lines on their mental map of France, like intern Kathryn Peake as she accompanies NPNS teams on visits to high schools. As for constitutional niceties surrounding the ban of a garment, that’s a good subject for other IFE students, at other placements.

Vote Where You Are Planted or How Participatory Is Your Democracy?

As IFE spreads its activities to Strasbourg France it finds its areas of engagement spreading as well. Latest example is IFE student Alex Branham’s placement as an assistant to the city hall liaison officer for Strasbourg’s Council of Foreign Residents. Alex, a student in IFE’s Strasbourg Field Study and Internship program, offered in conjunction with BCA, is a political science major enjoying a ringside seat on a municipal political entity which is also at the confluence of several major issues in French society. The first breach of sovereignty in electoral politics occurred in 2003 when the European Commission gave EU citizens residing in another EU member country the right to vote in local and European parliamentary elections.

In France voices have been raised for some time in favor of allowing legal foreign residents to vote in local elections, but with anti-immigration sentiment hanging over a portion of the political landscape this innovation will have to wait. In the meantime nearly two dozen cities in France including Strasbourg have organized councils of foreign residents. In Strasbourg the Council may seize the mayor with the results of its deliberations on any issue. It’s power is consultative, but supporters of the initiative are working to increase the Council’s influence within that constraint.

This stimulating placement is made even more so by Alsace’s position as a border region, adding intensity to the electoral sovereignty issue, and by the strength of the far right end of the political spectrum in Alsace, making immigration the inevitable background debate to the activities of the Council. Alex has chosen to focus his research on a third set of political stakes: growing voter absenteeism as recorded particularly in economically depressed areas and (partially co-extensive) areas of strong immigrant populations. Even if Strasbourg’s Council of Foreign Residents has only consultative power, its constituents come from many of these low-turnout neighborhoods. The Council’s challenge? Increase participation of all sorts in order that voices are heard.

Back in Paris, taking an investigative rather than activist approach to the problem of voter absenteeism, IFE student Gabriel Cortès is conducting research into the record low turnout at recent French regional elections as an associate at CEVIPOF, a well-known political research institute.

Two Former Students Show Where IFE May Lead

Sophia Accord, student at IFE in 2001 and intern with the fine arts division of the Ministry of Culture, has just received her doctorate in the Sociology of Art from the University of Exeter, UK. Her independent field study project at IFE: "Towards the Democratization of Contemporary Art in France?" Her doctoral thesis: "Beyond the Code: The role of practical action, embodied cognition, and tacit knowledge in curating contemporary art". Between the two, she continued to conduct research in Paris, and she writes recently: "As you can see, my career unfolded thanks to IFE, merci!"

Kara Murphy, student at IFE in 2005 and intern at SOS Racisme, is now in law school at Northwestern University, aiming at a career in public interest law. She writes: "my IFE semester definitely influenced what I am doing now; I am going to law school because I would like to be an immigration lawyer, and my internship at SOS Racisme played a big part in sparking my interest in immigration issues. So many thanks to IFE staff for such a wonderful experience!"