What did they say, and by the way, how did they create that set of meanings?

Last week's topic on the Radio-France Culture program "La Fabrique de l'Histoire" was the history of bookselling in France. On Wednesday's show, the panel was a group of historians who have studied bookselling and booksellers since the 19th century. Two had studied the late twentieth century.

For the host of the show and his guests, talking about their subject included not only the findings and information that came out of the research, but explaining how the researchers got there. The host asked the guests how they went about gathering their information on book selling and publishing and why they chose personal interviews as their starting point. They might instead have gone looking for documents with numbers of books sold and revenues, dates when firms were established, or reports of lawsuits. There ensued a discussion of the role of oral history as a method and the meanings and importance the booksellers gave to the fact of being interviewed, plus the booksellers’narrative construction of their interviews.

(In case you’re interested, the researchers were following a set of procedures that have become common in the last 20 years or so. To judge by France Culture's history programs, oral history has become quite popular and valued. Starting also about 20 years ago, government ministers submit to recorded oral history interviews for the national archives as a sort of exit interview when they leave office. There's lots of recording going on nowadays. People are doing oral history on the social history of cooking and trains and the postal service.)

The interest in methods might be there because this is a history program, and the panelists are historians, but I think it is also because French education prizes critical analysis very highly and trains people in it. Having received this training, any group of educated French people are going to look at not just what the booksellers said but how they--and the researchers who report it--shaped their stories. Everyone understands that a story told depends on a set of procedures and self-definitions and self-understandings that should also be told.

The following link to a lesson on textual analysis shows the kind of training students get early on. http://www.site-magister.com/volrous.htm The intended audience is students preparing for the baccalauréat exam, which is the qualifying exam for university entrance, and also for the tougher entrance exams into the Grandes Ecoles. These are essay exams, no multiple choice. As an example of how candidates should analyze texts, the teacher compares two texts on the the same topic--"Which is to be valued, nature or culture?"--by Voltaire and Rousseau. (The two texts come from a pretty famous exchange between V and R. ) He gives detailed attention to the speaking "I" and the "you" to whom the texts are addressed, as well as to vocabulary, style, cultural allusions, and organization. All of this is to expose the workings of two authors' argumentation. Through literature and philosophy in high school--philosophy is the major subject in the last year of high school and figures among the essay subjects on the baccalauréat exam—students get a lot of training in this type of analysis. And that’s before they start university.

To repeat my point, the historian discussants here are trained to look at not just what the booksellers said, (“My grandfather came to Paris after WWII, went to work in a bookshop and learned the trade, then bought a small shop specializing in scientific books attached to the Jardin de Plantes”), but also at how they, the historians constructed their own work, and how the interviewees constructed their narratives. I am repeating myself here--see my entry from Oct 5 on the discussion of Young Stalin)—but this way of looking at things is a constant among French academics and essential training in schools. I have never heard a discussion where the discussants failed to self-analyze and look below the surface story. A high school graduate writing his essay on the university entrance exam should explain that Voltaire favors culture because it creates comfort and the life of the intellect, while Rousseau prefers nature because it teaches heroism and strength, and also explain how each author uses language as persuasion.

Granted, my radio discussants are academics; a direct comparison would require comparing their discouse to that of American historians. In my opinion, however, below-the-surface analysis is less common with Americans, whose training in it comes later. We aren't asked to do much of it before college, and even as undergraduates might not do a lot of it. In contrast, our training as lifelong consumers of the simplistic story lines of Hollywood films and television shows is very powerful. The educational system here tries to overcome some of this, but the French kind of training starts earlier and is more generalized in the population.

Of course, the French can be guilty of over-analyzing. It's hard to have a short conversation over a cup of coffee if you're in a hurry, and endless analysis can replace action. On Sept 11, 2001, it turned out to be good that the Americans on the last hijacked plane were steeped in the Hollywood story of the individualistic hero. They saved the White House or the U.S. Capitol by following the examples of Bruce Willis and Vin Diesel. Moreover, the web page with its model of literary analysis does illustrate another sometimes troubling French tendency: they really like models to follow. Still, we could use some more attention to make our common narratives tell something beyond, "What happened?" Noticing these differences in thinking is the study of culture.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/books/review/Leonhardt-t.html?_r=1&ref=books Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell's comments echo France Culture's reviewers of Young Stalin on unexamined ideology underlying common American narratives. See my Oct 5 post.

http://www.site-magister.com/sujets15.htm essay topics on literary analysis asked on the 2008 baccalauréat. In French. Bac topics are always published shortly after the exams are over in June.

http://www.education.gouv.fr/bo/2003/25/MENE0301199A.htm Ministry of Education’s national program of topics and objectives for the teaching of philosophy in “terminale,” the last year of high school. Scroll down for the tables showing topics to be treated in the three main high school tracks—humanities, business, and sciences. In French.