The purge and the codification of memory in postwar French literature and film
Creators: name: Segura, Louis
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2019

description: This dissertation is about the influence of the postwar Purge on francité, or French national identity and cultural memory, as expressed in cinematic and literary representations of the Occupation and the Resistance. My dissertation begins in 1944 with the Liberation of Paris when Paris was plunged into a war with itself in what is known as l’épuration. The Purge as it is commonly known in English was a series of expedited trials beginning before the liberation which were meant to punish French citizens known or suspected to have collaborated with the Germans during the Occupation. I show that the Purge created an aesthetic and political shift in postwar French literature and film by constituting new metaphors to articulate francité which continues to permeate contemporary representations of the Occupation and the Resistance. I argue that the Purge casts a shadow over postwar France and its on-going effort to navigate the codes of national identity, cultural memory, and by extension, francité to show how the Purge and representations of the Occupation and the Resistance are not just historical events but part of a living experience that continue to shape and be shaped by French cultural memory. I conclude that since 1944 there has been an interplay between the political and the popular that manifests in the representations of the Occupation and the Resistance which I demonstrate by drawing attention to shifting signifieds like patriotism and nationalism which form the contours of a more diverse and heterogeneous francité. My dissertation considers films with literature on an equal basis and contributes an analysis of French films of the period which have not received the same critical attention as literature.My dissertation is in two two-part chapters in which I contextualize popular cinematic and literary representations of the Occupation and the Resistance throughout the Purge and thereafter to highlight a development of a discourse of francité. Part I, “The Purge: The Resistance and Its Referents” focuses on the immediate postwar period (1944 to 1946) as represented in film and demonstrates the importance of cinema during the Purge as France begins to try to come to terms with what has come to be known as les années noires, or the “Dark Years,” of the Occupation. In first chapter “La Libération de Paris and the Liberation of French Cinema” I discuss the short documentary film La Libération de Paris while exploring the cultural and historical demands on the postwar film industry as constituted by the Purge. I argue that the Purge rearticulated French identity in liberated Paris, shaping French cultural memory via the documentary film La Liberation de Paris. In chapter two “Purpose, Intention, and The Purge in La Bataille du rail and Jéricho” I develop this argument by analyzing two fictional films, both made in 1946, that portray the Occupation and the Resistance using documentary footage: La Bataille du rail (dir. Réné Clément) and Jéricho (dir. Henri Calef). In this chapter I argue that French cinema responded directly to the Purge which then went on to impact French postwar cultural memory and subsequent representations of the Occupation and the Resistance. In Part II, “Tracing the Purge” I focus on writing and authorial intention and how the Purge and its legacy continues to inform French politics and identity. I begin with a chapter on Albert Camus’ La Peste (1947) titled “La Peste: An Allegory of the Purge.” This chapter serves as a literary analogue to the exploration of film from Part I and engages directly with the ethics of representation, especially allegory. In the chapter I argue that La Peste is a critique of the Purge in that Camus draws attention to social and political conflicts of postwar France to construct a narrative of fragmented francité. In the final chapter, “Guy Môquet and the Memory Laws: Tracing the Purge in the 21st century” I contextualize the contemporary and recurring discussion of the Second World War in France in order to explore the legacy of the Purge and to consider how these representations shift into the twenty-first century. I argue that the Memory Laws are an extension of the Purge in that they re-frame current representations of the Occupation and the Resistance and the cultural memory of the war into a more diverse and heterogeneous francité for the 21st century.