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This humorous cartoon captures (perhaps exaggerates) the degree to which the affair divided society:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_d%C3%AEner_en_famille#/medi...
On one message board i frequent, it has been taken up as a meme template. Simply replace "l'Affaire Dreyfus" with "the C++20 modules proposal", and you're done.
Proust's writing of the explicitly Jewish character Bloch in "lost time", has anger and inner conflict which I think speaks to his own emotions. The casual antisemitism of others, speaks to to his experience. Bloch is distinctly unlovable and has characteristics of the of-the-time antisemitic tropes. Swann is an inferred jew. It's an indistinct quality, and he is definitely damaged goods in the story arc. I would think Proust identified with bits of both Bloch and Swann.
The Dreyfus affair speaks to present time in "fake news" but also, in the division lines inside parties where a commitment to truth overrides other concerns. Cheney has little in common with the democrats. She just had a personal Rubicon crossing moment. A man who is antisemitic, finds evidence of a miscarriage of justice against a Jewish officer, exposes it and is banished to an outpost in Tunisia is a literary/historical example of the fate Cheney is bringing forward.
Most of the people in the center of the Dreyfus Affair are opportunists. Even Zola. Can we not see elements of this in Trumpism and current politics?
Guy Chapman's book on Dreyfus is the factual one I enjoyed the most. It's older, there may be better more recent appraisals. Robert Harris captures the feverish spying between the armed forces of the time, and competition between agencies inside the state. Even "Papillon" has its Dreyfus moments, Henri Charriere writes of the devils island prisoners making souvenirs to hawke to the credulous- each said to be "once belonged to Dreyfus"
Some of the factual elements of the detective story in Dreyfus are strongly filmic: the paper tests in the fakes are Hitler-diaries level crude it becomes blindingly obvious it's a mishmash of real and faked writing. The cynical double dealing of the agencies offering plea bargains knowing he's innocent to save face.
Dreyfus served his country post rehabilitation in WW1.
Good comment. I was going to point to the Robert Harris book too and the clear parallels with fake news.
I'd add the current popular blaming of "the elites" by populist politicians has uncomfortable echos too.
I also like this piece in the linked article:
On one side were the Dreyfusards who defended reason and believed that France’s identity was defined by the abstract principles of equality and liberty. On the other side were the anti-Dreyfusards who deified unreason, convinced that France’s identity was rooted in la terre et les morts—the soil and the generations of dead buried in it.
> the Dreyfusards who defended reason and believed that France’s identity was defined by the abstract principles of equality and liberty.
This makes sense as long as you don't think about it for longer than 30 seconds. Is every country, every person, striving towards the abstract principles of equality and liberty then "French"? Did being French hold no meaning when they were still a monarchy? Was everyone on the wrong side of the French revolution then not French, but some other nationality?
And is Jewish identity likewise meaningless outside of a commitment to some abstract principles (and if so, which ones?), or do they, unlike the French, get to define it with other criteria, such as kinship and shared history?
> This makes sense as long as you don't think about it for longer than 30 seconds. Is every country, every person, striving towards the abstract principles of equality and liberty then "French"?
According to a famous quote attributed to Jefferson, yes. It's up to you to adhere to that poetic licence.
That being said, the quote you're commenting doesn't claim that these values are exclusively french, merely that it would be unlike France's identity to deviate from these values.
> Did being French hold no meaning when they were still a monarchy? Was everyone on the wrong side of the French revolution then not French, but some other nationality?
You're building a straw man out of the claim. If someone says that the US society is profoundly democratic, that doesn't mean that the whole population was replaced somewhere between 1775 and 1783. Simply that some events alter and shape the identity of a society. And I believe that there is no discussion that the French revolution was a defining moment for the French society.
> do they, unlike the French
That point is pretty weird. Are you claiming that jews can't also be french? That's a pretty extreme point, usually linked to regressive nationalist ideologies.
> Are you claiming that jews can't also be french?
Okay, so Jews can be Jewish and also French, since French is something anyone can be. And the French can be French and also... what? French identity can be claimed by anyone, but you shy away from applying that logic to the Jewish identity.
> French identity can be claimed by anyone, but you shy away from applying that logic to the Jewish identity.
This reads like you're trying to have an argument about it, and I'm not really interested in having it. I'm sure you can understand how different groups of people have different criteria about who is a member and who isn't.
And do other groups, besides the French, that have member criteria other than allegiance to abstract principles, also "deify unreason", as that quote put it? You didn't have such a laissez-faire attitude to member criteria when it came to deconstructing the French identity.
> you're trying to have an argument about it, and I'm not really interested in having it
You were hoping your absurd near-total negation of French identity would go unchallenged.
> Did being French hold no meaning when they were still a monarchy?
Absolutely none. People were first and foremost from their region and each region had its own laws, customs and often language.
What French view as the French identity very much is a post-revolutionary idea which was mercilessly spread through the eradication of regional cultures and languages and the standard curriculum by public schools during the nineteenth century.
> What French view as the French identity very much is a post-revolutionary idea which was mercilessly spread through the eradication of regional cultures and languages and the standard curriculum by public schools during the nineteenth century.
While there's no doubt that unspeakable horrors were done in the name of forging a collective narrative later on, it's also wrong to claim that's the origin of the french identity.
During the _états généraux_ people who had a strong regional bond also sought to collaborate and build alliances outside of their group (e.g. the _club Breton_ [1], which grew into the _club des Jacobins_). Collaboration and common interests forged a new identity overlapping existing identities. If this process hadn't happened, there would never have been new revolutions happening simultaneously across France in the 19th century, way before the 3rd republic's schools opened.
That process is pretty similar to post-revolution US colonies growing (and figuring out the details, and, at times, arguing about it) a new sense of common future on top of their existing independent identity.
Such a funny coincidence that Native American, Indian, Chinese, African, or Jewish identity are never attacked this way. They somehow remain legitimate and valid, despite being composed of smaller groups that changed through history.
Nobody bats an eye when they organize based on shared history and interests. But god forbid the French do it, then all of a sudden they have nothing in common, and the only identity they are allowed, if any, is the most Balkanized and irrelevant one.
I don’t understand your comment. The French obviously shares an identity nowadays. It’s a very modern fabrication however. I mostly disagree with the commentator explaining that it originated in the États généraux. Bourgeois had common interests but the idea that it leads to a common identity is itself a fabrication of the third republic from my point of view. The nineteenth century revolutions are mostly Parisian affairs (then again it’s fairly easy to convincingly argue that Paris is France).
The point is that this shared identity didn’t exist before the revolution and the nationalist push used to justify waring with Germany under the third republic is mostly responsible for spreading it. France as a unified state is a very recent development anyway. The kings were fairly weak before Louis XIV.
The Terre and Les morts side, that's where Vichy had roots.
Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetary touches on this too (and a lot of other interesting stuff).
> And to continue to place stones even when you no longer know why the reason why.
OT, but I always enjoy that kind of typos that offer us a glimpse into the editorial process.
Usually editing is cutting, so it's likely that the first version was "even when you no longer know the reason why", that was then changed to "even when you no longer know why" (which I think is better).
But if the editor (or the author) had simply deleted "the reason" then there would be no typo (either the deletion would have worked or it wouldn't, but in both cases there would be only one instance of 'why').
So I gather the editor added the 'why' before 'the', and then intended to delete the rest of the sentence, but for some reason that didn't happen.