Resentment and the Right: A Twentieth-Century Cycle of Reaction,Revaluation,and Retreat by the French Extreme Right

Abstract

Throughout the twentieth century, French intellectuals of the Right have been locked in a cycle of resentment and reaction against the intellectual Left whom they blame for repeatedly ostracizing them from the role of ‘intellectuel’. This resentment of a perceived exclusion has resulted in a recurring trope of left-wing cultural hegemony and right-wing marginalization that has come to define the individual and collective identities of the intellectual Right today. This process of perceived hegemony, resentment, and identity reconstruction is readily apparent in the work of right-wing intellectuals Ferdinand Brunetière, Ramon Fernandez, Drieu la Rochelle, Maurice Bardèche, and Alain de Benoist. When faced with perceived left-wing hegemony, these intellectuals reacted with resentment, revaluation of their designation as the excluded ‘other’, and retreat to self-segregated cultural communities. Over time, this process has both distinctly defined the intellectual Right and effectively radicalized and alienated it from mainstream intellectual life and the French public.