Book Reviews

interesting questions. First, it illuminates the nature of French economicdevelopment. In a period of economic expansion and concentration when the artisanat lost about a quarter of its population, France remained a nation of small proprietors. Secondly, the artisans illustrate a specific instance of ‘class’. Skilled, independent tradesmen possessed a rough unity shaped by similar work experiences, small ownership and some professional expertise, though without a fixed point in the socio-economic spectrum. Although artisans existed long before 1919, their self-awareness stemmed from the creation of an artisanat that articulated a world view stressing the virtues of smallness and the integration of work and life. Not feeding on a politics of resentment, that view propounded an elitism ofpetits, a resolutely populist political orientation. The artisanat, with its dislike of political adventurism, did not serve as an incubator for political extremism. Artisans’ links to the Radical party or the limited threat to small property in twentieth-century France may have restricted fascism’s appeal.

Zdatny’s study, based on documentary sources, an extensive reading of Artisan journals throughout France and a large secondary bibliography, offers a detailed, thorough examination of the development and fate of numerous artisans’ organisations during the inter-war years. This monographic account raises interesting broad questions while filling in the specific details of a neglected aspect of twentieth-century French social and economic history.

Chestnut Hill. MA Marjorie M. Farrar

Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War, James Der Derian (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), ix + 215 pp., 235.00 H.B., E12.95 P.B.

Post-Structuralism appears to have routed cliometrics and even gender as the latest American intellectual fad, From time to time a work appears which seems to open up a new ‘market’ for studies, papers and publications for a whole generation of ambitious young academics. A new ‘approach’ is developed with a curious professional jargon which sounds like a catechism: key words and phrases seem designed to spark a certain response. Formulae in American life are now so all-pervading that they effect the ‘structure’ of the intellectual process. Having sat through some very tedious and unexceptional papers at American Studies Conferences in Great Britain, I afterwards consoled myself that the study of war in the modern world would be safe from the hypnotic and vice-like clutches of post-Structuralism. Now my illusions are shattered. James Der Derian has attempted to introduce its concepts (plus quotations from Barthes, Foucault and company) to international relations.

The levels of tedium inflicted on the reader are very high. Sentences such as the following litter the book and obscure the argument: ‘It is rather to relink the etymology of security with its ontology, in order to dismantle the aprioriargument based on a doxu, that proves the existence (and necessity) of one form of security over against a plurality of others based on paradoxa’ (p. 75). Fascinating, as Mr Speck might say. Should the reader persevere? There is a lot of crude and rather artless epigrammatic writing and the exposition is not easy to follow, unless one is a member of ‘the elect’, from whose tongues

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Book Reviews 991

references to ‘discourse’ and ‘intertextual’ trip with facility. The argument, to paraphrase Gore Vidal, is as simple as the language that expresses it is complicated. Der Derian sees speed, and the capacity to monitor international developments as central to an understanding of world politics in the 1990s; yet these developments may be misunderstood if they are viewed exclusively through the prism of the ‘media’ and the videotape.

But the style of the argument is not easy to follow. The book’s content resembles a reel of film taken by a photographer at a press conference. It forms a series of snap shots taken from all kinds of angles, but no clearly defined image of the overall event emerges. Indeed, the more ‘the method’ is stressed, the less focused the thrust of the argument appears. Hares scamper all over the pages of the book; indeed hares end up chasing hares. The main problem lies with the chosen methodology, post-Structuralism itself. All of the areas of study considered here, especially the categories of terrorism, can be understood without reference to the wearisome fragmentation of the post-Structural approach. This first and foremost is a tool for analysing texts, and Der Derian’s attention is swiftly engaged by the way popular literature treats international relations and war. He has some interesting observations on what he calls their ‘interdiscursive origins’. But this book is too eclectic for my taste. It reveals all the enthusiasm, and the self-indulgence, of a late convert.

King’s College, London Brian Holden Reid

L’Espace de la douleur chez Loaisel de Trbogate, 17521812, Raphael Gimenez, (Paris: Minard, 1992), 276 pp.

This is a most impressive study of thorough scholarship on a minor, but significant writer of the pre-Romantic period in France. Loaisel de TrCogate wrote rather prolifically, both novels and plays, and was fairly widely read and at times successfully performed in his day, though his career ended in neglect and indeed misery, and ensuing decades did little to enhance his reputation until our own days, with Townsend Bowling’s 1981 monograph and then some perceptive articles about aspects of his work, especially by Michel Delon. Gimenez has probably unearthed and told us everything we shall ever learn about the man’s life and his productivity, his bibliography, his literary career, unless an unexpected treasure-trove of documents appear somewhere. For the life, ‘l’espace de la douleur’ is a fitting enough title; Loaisel lived through the trials of the revolution, before that knew a military career which was mysteriously interrupted; one might also find it a fitting enough title for his work, much of which is not readable today either because it is extremely difficult of access (Gimenez has done an edition of Dolbreuse, also published by Minard, which fascinated Gerard de Nerval to the point of making him draft a re-write) or because it is slightly less readable for the average present-day reader than, say, Goethe’s Werther. But Gimenez convincingly demonstrates his historical significance as a representative of the ‘fall upon the thorns of life and bleed’ school so prevalent in France.

Most of the study is taken up with an admirable ‘ttatprksent’ of scholarship on Loaisel, including a highly helpful review of scholarship about him where the nineteenth century, excepting perhaps Nerval, is curiously silent. Gimenez admirably refuses the temptation

Volume 18, No. 6, November 1994