André Labarthe and Raymond Aron: Political Myth and Ideology in La France libre

See Robert Colquhoun , Raymond Aron , Vol. I, The Philosopher in History, 1905-1955 (London: Sage, 1986), 229.

See Colquhoun, 228-9, for a list of the most notable figures.

See Colquhoun, 47-76.

See Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris: Julliard, 1983), 172-4. Hereafter, most references are given in the text, using the form Mémoires.

Brian Crozier , De Gaulle, Vol. I, The Warrior (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), 138; and for the general circumstances of the Free French in London, see M. and J.-P. Cointet, La France à Londres, 1940-1943 (Brussels: Complexe, 1990).

For reminiscences of Labarthe's taste for recounting tall stories, see Robert Mengin, De Gaulle à Londres vu par un français libre (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1965), 266-7; Jacques Soustelle, Envers et contre tout. Vol. I. De Londres à Alger. Souvenir et documents sur la France libre, 1940-1942 (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1947), 47; and Colquhoun, 218-19.

La France libre, 1.1 (Feb. 1941), 310. References hereafter will normally be given in the text, using the form (volume.issue number [month/year], page number); but occasionally abbreviated to e.g. (8.45: 210) or (:210).

See Crozier, 136-8, 166-7, 177-8; Colquhoun, 230-2. De Gaulle makes the rather self-serving comment in his memoirs: 'En outre, l'esprit aventureux de certaines personnalités, ou simplement leur inaptitude à se plier aux règles et obligations d'un service public, imprimaient de rudes saccades à l'appareil. C'est ainsi que, pendant mon séjour en Afrique, André Labarthe avait quitté notre administration et que I'amiral Muselier s'était heurté aux services publics', Mémoires de guerre I. L'Appel 1940-1942 (Paris: Plon/Livre de Poche, 1954), 156.

See Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle, Vol. I, Le Rebelle (Paris: Seuil, 1984), 663, 672; Colquhoun, 233.

See Colquhoun, 235.

See Aron's Mémoires, 184, where he recalls that an editorial by Labarthe, calling for unity, was harshly criticized by de Gaulle's entourage. The article in question was no doubt 'Les Conditions de l'unité' (5.27 [Jan. 1943], 161-5), in the course of which Labarthe remarks: 'Il serait néfaste que, dans la confusion et le désarroi d'une situation sans précédent, des rivalités personnelles, des querelles secondaires exaspèrent les questions de doctrine et fassent perdre de vue 1'essentiel: [...]' (:161). Labarthe also observes: 'Or, du fait même des circonstances, l'idée démocratique prend sa signification la plus immédiate, la plus impérieuse, par opposition à l'idée du chef absolu. [...] Rien n'est plus absurde, rien n'est plus contradictoire que de lier à un nom l'idée de la démocratie française, alors que - trop d'exemples étrangers l'ont montré - la prétendue incarnation de la démocratie en un homme risque d'aboutir à l'anti-démocratie d'un régime autoritaire' (:165). In his memoirs de Gaulle lists La France libre among the hostile publications which painted him as a would-be dictator with an entourage of fascists, and portrayed Giraud as a rampart of democracy (Mémoires de guerre II. L'Unité 1942-1944 (Paris: Plon/Livre de Poche, 1956), 106), but the truth is that the position adopted in the review was extremely veiled.

See for example, Aron, 'L'Ombre des Bonapartes' (6:34 [Aug. 1943], 280-288); and his Mémoires, 184-6 for retrospective recantation. See above, note 11, for an example of Labarthe's strictures in similar vein.

Sartre, 'Une grande revue française de Londres', Combat, 7-8 Jan. 1945, quoted in Mémoires, 173 (for full reference to the original source, see Colquhoun, 245, note 134).

Barbara Goodwin , Using Political Ideas, 3rd ed. (Chichester: John Wiley, 1992), 29. For examples of the theoretical tradition from which my definition of ideology broadly derives, see Reo Christensen et al., Ideologies and Modern Politics (London: Nelson, 1972 ); Martin Seliger , Ideology and Politics ( London : Allen & Unwin, 1976 ); Roy Macridis , Contemporary Political Ideologies: Movements and Regimes, 2nd ed. (Boston : Little, Brown & Co., 1983).

See Seliger, Ideology and Politics, 108-112, and 175-208.

George Egerton , 'Collective security as political myth: liberal internationalism and the League of Nations in politics and history', International Historical Review, v( 1983),501.

See, for example, Henry Tudor, Political Myth (London: Pall Mall, 1971), especially 13-17 and 121-140; Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society. Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual and Classification (Oxford: OUP, 1989), especially 23-6. My objections to this position are set out in more detail in Political Myth: A Theoretical Introduction (New York: Garland, forthcoming 1993/4).

Seymour Chatman , Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990), 21.

See Leonard Thompson , The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1985).

See Christopher Flood , 'Constructing the meaning of conflict: the discourse of the French Right on the Spanish Civil War', Quinquereme, xiii (1990/ 1991), 29-45.

See Aron, Introduction ... (Paris: Gallimard, 1938); L'Opium ... (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1955). For a useful collection of short essays, see Politics and History, tr. Miriam Conant (New York: Free Press, 1978); and for discussion, Gaston Fessard, La Philosophie historique de Raymond Aron (Paris: Julliard, 1980); Colquhoun, 119-159.

For an interpretation of these dimensions of sacred mythology, see Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History, tr. Willard Trask (London: Arkana, 1989 [1954]).

See, for instance, Tudor, 65-120; with particular reference to the USA, Dan Nimmo and James Combs, Subliminal Politics. Myths and Mythmakers in America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980); and for Nazi Germany, James Rhodes, The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980); Charles Strozier, 'Christian Fundamentalism, Nazism, and the Millenium', Psychohistory Review, xviii, 2 (1990), 207-17.

See Girardet 97-138, on the Golden Age; André Reszler, Mythes politiques modernes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), 58-82, on the myth of decline; Anthony Smith, 'National identity and myths of ethnic descent', Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, vii (1984), 95-130, on both of these and others. For reference to these themes in sacred myth, see Eliade, 91.

On conspiracy myths, see, for example, Girardet, 25-62; and the classic case study, Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide. The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967).

See David Apter , 'The new mytho/logics and the specter of superfluous man', Social Research, lii (1985), 269-307.

Speech to the Constitutional Commission, 7 July 1941, in Philippe Pétain, Discours aux Français, 17 juin 1940-20 août 1944, ed. Jean-Claude Barbas (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), 151: see thematic index in Annexe No 6, under ordre nouveau, rénovation, révolution, Révolution nationale, for numerous speeches in similar vein. A useful discussion of many of the central themes of Vichyite and Resistance mythology can be found in Hilary Footit and John Simmonds, 'Destroying the myths of débâcle', in Anthony Cheal Pugh (ed.), France 1940: Literary and Historical Reactions to Defeat (Durham: University of Durham Modern Language Series, 1991), 19-33.

On the theme of suffering and sacrifice in political myth, combined with idolatry of the hero, see Murray Edelman, 'Myths, metaphors, and political conformity', Psychiatry, xxx (1967), 217-28; Nimmo and Combs, 231-45, focusing on the American case. For an interesting analysis of the Vichy-controlled media's attempts to cast French prisoners of war as figures of redemptive suffering, see Sarah Fishman, 'Grand delusions: the unintended consequences of Vichy France's prisoner of war propaganda', Journal of Contemporary History, xxvi (1991), 229-54.

See Colquhoun, 300-2; Aron, Mémoires, 172-4.

See Colquhoun, 244-5, note 127.