The madonnas of exile: reflections on the emotional life of French external resisters
Résumé
Chronicling the War, Re-imagining French-ness: Memoirs of the French external Resistance
One-day workshop, University of Manchester, Friday 14 June 2019.
Keynote speaker: Prof. Guillaume Piketty (Sciences Po): “The madonnas of exile: reflections on the emotional life of French external resisters”. Organisers: Dr. Charlotte Faucher (University of Manchester), Dr. Frances Houghton (University of Manchester) and Dr. Laure Humbert (University of Manchester).
The study of wartime and post-war life-writingis integral to the history of the French external Resistance, which we define broadly to include members of Free France and subsequent Gaullist committees, as well as those men and women living outside France who did not directly belong to Gaullist movements but still considered themselves as resisters(such as the Jean Jaures Group in London) or shifted from being supporters to challengers of de Gaulle (such as the Admiral Muselieror the journalist and writer Pierre Bourdan). Some resisters put pen to paper out of a desire tohonor the memory of their deceased comrades and pass on their story to the next generation. Others, by contrast, refused to write their wartime stories, either in reaction to the commemorativepractices of First World War poilusand/or the various post-war political appropriations of the Resistance(Roumette, 2014).In recent years, historians have been increasingly attentive to the silences and distortions in resisters' accounts, exploring how gendering and 'whitening' of wartime and post-warpublic narratives impacted on resisters’ communication oftheir wartime experiences. [...]