What's left? : the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the right / Diane Rubenstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rubenstein, Diane, 1953-

Series:

Rhetoric of the human sciences

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

École normale supérieure (France).

Education, Higher--Social aspects.

History.

Intellectual life.

Historiography.

France--Intellectual life--20th century.

France.

France--Intellectual life--20th century--Historiography.

Intellectuals--Political activity--France--History--20th century.

Intellectuals.

Intellectuals--Political activity.

École normale supérieure (France)--History--20th century.

Conservatism--France--History--20th century.

Conservatism.

Politics and literature--France--History--20th century.

Politics and literature.

Education, Higher--Social aspects--France--History--20th century.

Education, Higher.

Physical Description:

xv, 215 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, [1990]

Summary:

In this study, the author connects pedagogical and literary institutions to issues of writing, political position and power. She suggests that the leftist caricature of the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), the training ground for French intellectuals, is inaccurate because it represses the role of writing. By deconstructing the ENS as one would a text, she garners from the writing of the "normaliens" a picture of an institution that reinforces superiority, exclusivity and hierarchy. Towards the end of the book, Rubenstein relates the irony of the post-World War II trials of "normaliens" in which authors become victims of their own writing. She also turns the tables on the ENS, calling upon its own writings to reveal its rightist ideological positions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-207) and index.

ISBN:

0299125602

0299125645

OCLC:

21761951