France's War on Her Own History

IT SEEMS from recent events that the French malaise is no longer confined to the present. It applied to contemporary problems of the nationâ??s economy and politics, and now it also encompasses the past. Through a challenge to French history it has reached the foundations of national republicanism. The unsurprising reaction to this has been a mixture of Gaullist hand- wringing and post-colonial self-satisfaction. But current debates have also raised some positive and key questions about the role of history, and its relationship to memory, morality and the state.