Nicolas Bancel

Building the History Museum to Stop History: Nicolas Sarkozy’s New Presidential Museum of French History

When he ran for president in 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy promised to build a museum of French history. He declared that he was troubled by the lack of a coherent account of the nation’s great moments and great heroes. On being elected, he started the planning process, finally settling on the Hôtel de Soubise, part of the Archives nationales, as the site of the future Maison de l’histoire de France. Although his project was supported by a certain number of intellectuals, many university scholars, especially the historians, raised strong objections to a concept that returned to the old Third Republic civic history in the style of Ernest Lavisse. The future museum was to offer visitors old-fashioned narrative history of male achievements, with no account taken of new insights that women’s, gender, social, cultural, colonial and immigration history have added to any discussion of what France is or might be. It rejects the idea that there have been, and can be, many ways of being French. The critics of the museum project deplored the instrumentalisation of the nation’s past – one of several such presidential ventures – for short-term political gain. The strike of archive employees, which lasted for several months, scuttled that site as the future home of the history museum. The story is not finished. The discussion of the presidential museum initiative is placed in a larger context in which increased economic neo-liberalism, greater state interventions at home and overseas, and the propagation of a nostalgic-conservative vision of the nation’s past reinforce each other, even as they coexist in uneasy union.

Prosopographical analysis of sports elites: Overview and evaluation of a seminal study

This paper aims at describing a method of analysis unused in social sciences in general and in physical and sports practices in particular, namely the prosopographical method. The paper first outlines the prosopographical thought processes as a method of historical investigation. Then it describes the main patterns into which French sports elite between 1945 and 1972 can be grouped (following Pierre Bourdieus sociological theory). Finally, it proposes ways of refining the prosopographical framework and suggests areas for future research.

France, 2005: A postcolonial turning point

During the early years of the twenty-first century, anxiety pertaining to the status of French national identity and grandeur reached a highpoint. Interestingly enough, this anxiety expressed itself through a focus on colonial and postcolonial history and numerous initiatives were undertaken aimed at rehabilitating French colonialism, especially in an attempt to appeal to repatriated communities from French Algeria. Arguably, the most notable revisionist measure came in the form of the ‘Loi n° 2005-158 du 23 février 2005’, which proposed including lessons in school textbooks that would highlight the positive role of French colonisation, as well as developing several museum and monument-based projects aimed at valorising the French colonial project. Diametrically opposed initiatives coincided with these, and several new racial advocacy organisations (such as the Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires and the Indigènes de la République) were established. These organisations denounced the injustices generated by discrimination, argued that these originated in the history of slavery and of colonisation, and demanded a critical reading of colonial history and greater acceptance in French society. These diametrically opposed positions thus represent distinctive assessments of postcolonial French society and, rather than producing new openings for multiculturalism, have translated instead into even greater political and social polarisation. However, both positions reflect acute social and political dissatisfaction and a common desire to achieve recognition for historical sufferings. These transformations continue to influence the French political landscape and underscore the urgency of finding solutions to these problems that in turn will allow for peaceful coexistence.

From the making of Paralympic champions to justification of the bio-technical improvement of man. The ideology of progress in action

This collection of papers has arisen from the presentations and debates that took place during the international congress ‘Being disabled, becoming a champion’, held at the University of Lausanne on 12 and 13 November 2015. First proposed by the Institute of Sports Sciences at the University of Lausanne, this congress became reality due to the cooperation of numerous partners, – academic, scientific or simply affiliated, – all of them directly concerned by issues that associate sport, disability and social change: the National Swiss Research Fund, the Social and Political Science Faculty and the Science-Society Interface of the University of Lausanne, the University Institute of the History of Medicine of the Canton of Vaud University Hospital Centre, the ‘Health, Education and Disability’ research laboratory (Santesih) of the University of Montpellier, the ‘Adaptation to tropical climate, exercise and society’ laboratory (ACTES) of the University of the West Indies and the Swiss Paraplegic Foundation. This collection brings together 10 articles that can be grouped into three themes. The first part consists in four articles examining different facets of the history of sports organizations set-up during the 1950s for athletes with motor or intellectual impairments. Starting from their inception, these papers retrace their history and focus upon how and by whom they were founded, have been managed and have developed over the course of more than 60 years. The results of the first socio-historical research in Switzerland on sports movements for people with motor deficiencies, spearheaded by Nicolas Bancel, are presented initially. Julie Cornaton and her co-authors shed light on the origins and the double dynamic of the development between 1956 and 1968 of sports for the physically disabled in the Swiss Confederation, thereby enhancing our understanding of the current activities and orientations of the two large-scale Swiss organizations for ‘disabled sports’. While the first arose from medicine and the military, espousing a goal of rehabilitation governed by a hygienic and medical conception of physical activity, the second is built around a competitive model, and is resolutely focused on the practice of sport. In continuity with this study, the article by Stanislas Frenkiel underscores the important work of an unusual organization: association: the Swiss Paraplegics Association. Ever since the 1980s, given its human, financial and

Rethinking Postcolonial Worlds through Physical Activities

This special issue follows on from an international workshop entitled ‘Postcolonial Bodies’ which was held – in partnership with The International Journal of History of Sport – at the Institute of Sport Studies at the University of Lausanne on 5–6 June 2014. Thanks to the contributions from numerous specialists in the historical and social developments of physical activities in a colonial and postcolonial context, the main objective was to explore the epistemic issues raised by our approach. Why such a theme? Today, input from postcolonial and globalization studies greatly extends the scope for including the subject of ‘sport’ in polysemous analysis of transnational cultures and diasporas. The porous nature of both spatial and political borders is just as present in the development of sporting migration from not only south to north – but also north to south – as they are in the postcolonial transformation of former colonies (Niko Besnier). Moreover, the exploration of such practices before, during, and after decolonization shows that the political split which occurred on independence should also be put into perspective and rethought by looking at the role played by cultural practices – and physical activities – ‘through the colonial mirror’ (Nicolas Bancel), which shows the strong continuities which existed from colonial times to the postcolonial period. The ambivalence of this process which mixes political freedom with forms of intermixing, even acculturation, of the former colonial power’s culture can be identified from the moment modern sports were introduced into the former colonies until the postcolonial development of sport and sporting migration. On the one hand, the analysis of the role played by sport in postcolonial practices and representations of multiculturalism, frontiers, and gender shows the ambivalent nature of their local and international footings. Whilst the standards transmitted by modern sports favoured an individuation of the body, it also opened the door to numerous assertions whether of identity or politics. From South Africa (John Nauright and Benedict Carton) to postcolonial Ireland (Mike Cronin), from an East-West antagonism to a North-South competition (Anais Bohuon), well-known sportsmen and women incarnate the essential dimensions of the sporting postcolonial scene: ethnic and national identities, definition and control of gender, cultural change and hybridation of practices. On that point, one approach of this collection is to be able to gain a better understanding of the practices studied, in vastly different contexts, revealing at the same time a process of reaffirmation of genealogical rules in modern sports – meritocratic values, discipline of the body, competitive habitus – which all contributed to reinforcing

Génocide ou "guerre tribale"? Les mémoires controversées du génocide rwandais

Le genocide du Rwanda constitue l’un des evenements majeurs du xxe siecle : 800 000 Tutsis et Hutus de l’opposition au « gouvernement interimaire » rwandais ont ete massacres entre avril et juin 1994. Or, la reconnaissance de ce genocide ne va pas de soi. Cet article analyse les « contre-feux interpretatifs » mis en place selon trois axes : negation du genocide, euphemisation en « guerre tribale », these du « double genocide ». La presse dans cette guerre de memoire a ete un vecteur tout a fait essentiel.

The divisive origins of sports for physically disabled people in Switzerland (1956–1968)

Abstract Today’s Swiss movement for disability sports is made up of two distinct institutional entities. This division originated in the 1960s, when prominent figures in the Swiss movement were seeking to institutionalize their practices. In 1956, Sport Handicap Geneva was the first Swiss association to offer and organize physical and sporting activities for physically disabled people. A few years later, in 1959, the Swiss Grouping for Paraplegics of the Swiss Association for Paralytics and rheumatics became the rallying point for athletes in wheelchairs who could no longer recognize themselves in the orientation proposed by the Swiss Sports Federation for Invalids, their expressions of disagreement setting the stage for a protracted conflict. An analysis of the beginnings of the institutionalization of disability sports in Switzerland will help us to better understand the reasons why this national sports movement has remained bicephalous.

Physical Activities through Postcolonial Eyes: A Place of Epistemologic and Historiographical Experimentation

This contribution has a triple objective. The first is historical; it is to identify works, analysis, and perspectives covering the history of sport, which relate to the field of Postcolonial Studies developed elsewhere. By discussing anglophone and francophone works, we try to show the differentiated dynamics of research carried out in these two areas, while highlighting what each one owes to the other and vice versa. The second aim is analytical. We try to bring out the main themes of these works while proposing – from a postcolonial perspective – possible areas of research to pursue. Finally, the last objective is epistemologic. It discusses some problematic areas of interpretation around the role of physical activities in the process of colonization and decolonization.