Alain Finkielkraut

Dispatches from the Balkan War and Other Writings is a collection of essays on the Balkan crisis and on European reaction to it. In opposition to many powerful figures in France, ALAIN FINKIELKRAUT has largely supported the Croatian struggles for sovereignty. He argues against an array of outmoded views of the Balkan region and its political and cultural conditions -- conceptions that date back to earlier in the century and that have long be-deviled the region and the European powers' relation to it. The book takes up larger issues about European political and intellectual history -- issues that are in urgent need of re-examination and revision in the post-Cold War world.

A timely and passionate book, this volume will be of great interest to Finkielkraut's many admirers as well as to anyone interested in the ongoing Balkan crisis and modern European history.

The Future of a Negation is a crucial statement on the Holocaust -- and on Holocaust denial -- from Alain Finkielkraut, one of the most acclaimed and influential intellectuals in contemporary Europe.

The book examines the Holocaust, its origins in modern European thought and politics, and recent "revisionist" attempts to deny its full dimensions and, in some cases, its very existence as historical fact. Finkielkraut's central topic is the impulse toward "negation" of the Nazi horrors: the arguments made by many people, of varying political orientations, that "the gas chambers are a hoax or, in any case, an unverifiable rumor". In addition, Finkielkraut looks at other instances of twentieth-century mass murder and at arguments made by contemporary politicians and intellectuals that similarly deny the full extent of these other atrocities. An original, fearless book, The Future of a Negation is an essential contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and of genocidal politics and thought in our century.

The Holocaust changed what it means to be a Jew, for Jew and non-Jew alike. Much of the discussion about the new meaning has been done by French writers of the left, but their work is a storm of contradictions. In The Imaginary Jew, Alain Finkielkraut describes with passion and acuity his own passage through that storm.

The poststructuralist critique of subject-centered reason is investigated, both historically and theoretically, against the background of the modernity/postmodernity and "information society" debates. Peters criticizes neoliberal constructions of the subject in education that rest heavily on the assumption of "economic man." He searches for viable contemporary political forms by investigating the role of intellectuals and education in postmodern culture; the neoliberal doctrine of the self-limiting state; and its construction of "market" subjects such as education and the politics of space, ethics after Auschwitz, science and technology, the critical role of mass media, cybernetics and cyberspace, democracy and the politics of difference.

Modern and contemporary cultures are increasingly marked by an anxiety over a perceived loss of authentic cultural identity. In this book, Vincent J. Cheng examines why we still cling to notions of authenticity in an increasingly globalized world that has exploded notions of authentic essence and absolute differences. Who is "authentic" and who is "other" in a given culture? Who can speak for the "other?" What do we mean by authenticity? These are critical questions that today's world--brought closer together and yet pulled farther apart by globalism and neocolonialism--has been unable to answer. Inauthentic compellingly probes these issues through revealing case studies on the pursuit of authenticity and identity. Each chapter explores the ways in which we construct "authenticity" in order to replace seemingly vacated identities, including: the place of minorities in academia; mixed-race dynamics; the popularity of Irish culture in America; the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland; Jewish American identity; the status of Jewish America in relation to Israel and Palestine; the cultural problems of international adoptions; and the rapidly changing nature of the Asian American population in the United States. Inauthentic combines the scholarly and the personal, informed argument and human interest. It will undoubtedly appeal to academic scholars, as well as to a broader reading audience.

One of the distinctive features of the "Vichy Syndrome" -- the persistence of the memory of the Vichy regime in French political and cultural life -- is that it has been extremely difficult for an authoritative historical discourse to impose itself. Why does Vichy, and all that the name entails, fascinate and even obsess the French, inflecting not only discussions of the past but of the present as well?

In Vichy's Afterlife, Richard J. Golsan explores the complexities of some of the most provocative episodes of Vichy's curious persistence in France's national consciousness. He argues that each of these episodes, events, and scandals, constitutes a crossroads where history and "counterhistory" -- different or competing versions of the past -- encounter one another, often with explosive and even destructive consequences.

Facing Postmodernity explains French cultural theory by grounding it in the politics of the issues facing France today such as: * the breaking of the city * racism * the crisis of culture * new citizenship. It discusses some of the major responses to postmodernity by contemporary French thinkers, both the very well known - Lyotard, Levinas, Derrida - and those who will be less familiar to a non-French audience. In doing so, it addresses the questions central to the postmodern debate whatever country it takes place in; questions of history, of representation, identity and community.

While music lovers from all over the world have tried to recreate the ambience of French cafés by playing music from stars such as Piaf, Trénet and Chevalier, intellectuals, sociologists and policy makers in France have been embroiled in passionate debate about just what constitutes 'real' French music. In the late 1950s and 1960s a wave of Anglo-American rock 'n' roll and pop hit Europe and disrupted French popular music forever. The cherished sounds of the chanson were sidelined, fragmented or merged with pop styles and instrumentation. From this point on, French music and music culture have been splintered into cultural divides - pop culture vs high culture; mass culture vs 'authentic' popular culture; national culture vs Americanization. This book investigates the exciting and innovative segmentation of the French music scene and the debates it has spawned. From an analysis of the chanson as national myth, to pop, rap, techno and the State, this book is the first full-length study to make sense of the complexity behind the history of French popular music and its relation to 'authentic' cultural identity.