[LINK] "What it is to be French"

[rfmcdonald]

Back on the 30th of October, Denis Colombi at Une heure de peine... posted a provocative essay (in French, "Ce que c'est d'être un français") on the ways in which people on the outside on a nation-state coming in (here, France, but generally applicable) always have question marks associated with their identity, how their belonging to the nation is questions by ongoing interrogations and indoctrinations and tests, and even then, as he puts it later in the essay, one can become French but not be French. What, he asks rhetorically, does it mean to be French? (My somewhat idiomatic Google-based translation is below.)

To be French today means that you don't have to answer this question, or at least not having to provide his own answer. Is this a rhetorical response?. Rhetoric as a response? This would be the case if it wasn't anchored in a reality that all those who have had the opportunity to spend time with immigrants have learned. One doesn't have to go to the most deprived and the most difficult areas of our country, it will do to go to a single university or other institution of higher education hosting some students of foreign nationality, especially the extracommunitari as the Italians subtly say.

Only rarely do insiders, those who are established certain relationships, those who have legitimate status, have to explain why they are there and why they are legitimate. They usually just explain why others should not be there, why others should not join them, why they are illegitimate and unworthy to participate in the same activities and enjoy the same rights.

Go read the whole thing.