Génération, générations

Sous bien des plumes, il est question d’une « génération 68 », fondée sur l’équation Mai 68=baby-boomers. Certes, il serait incongru d’enlever à ces derniers leur rôle, effectif, dans les événements du printemps 1968. Pour autant, il apparaît historiquement plus juste de parler de générations 68 au pluriel. Et un tel constat, important en lui-même, l’est également pour ce qui concerne l’étude de l’ombre portée de ces événements. Les générations, en effet, actrices d’un présent, sont toujours le fruit d’un passé et c’est bien sous l’effet d’une telle double différenciation qu’elles diffractent ensuite de façon très contrastée une histoire commune et deviennent, de ce fait, un prisme dans lequel l’ombre portée de cette histoire se lit de diverses manières. L’analyse de cette diversité est d’autant plus complexe que cette – ou ces – générations 68 est devenue depuis quelques années l’objet d’un procès en responsabilité : les mots forgés par cette génération auraient engendré les maux de la société française contemporaine. Ce sont aussi ces accusations qui constituent l’ombre portée et qui sont étudiées dans cet article.Many pens write of a “68 generation”, based on the equation May 68=baby boomers. To be sure, it would be incongruous to take their role away, a real one, in the events of Spring 1968. However, it seems to be historically more valid to speak of generations 68 in the plural. Such an observation, important in itself, is equally important concerning the study of the cast shadow these events left. Generations, thus, actors of a present, are always the fruit of a past and it is under the effect of a double differentiation that they diffract a very contrasted common history and become, because of this, a prism in which the shadow carried by this history can be read in various ways. The analysis of this diversity is all the more complex as this or these 68 generations has/have become over recent years the object of a process of responsibility: the words forged by this generation are said to have engendered the defects of contemporary French society. It is also these accusations that make up the shadow cast studied in this article

La norme et la transgression. Remarques sur la notion de provocation en histoire culturelle

Le thème de la provocation apparaît essentiel pour l’histoire culturelle. Il est lié, en effet, à la notion de transgression, elle-même découlant de celle de norme. Il conduit donc à travailler sur la norme et la transgression culturelles, éléments essentiels du métabolisme des sociétés et des représentations collectives en leur sein. En même temps, il est vrai, force est de constater qu’une telle approche est de mise en œuvre complexe, la norme découlant de ce que l’on appellera, faute de mieux, la sensibilité d’une époque. On touche par-là aux représentations et aux imaginaires, et donc à ce qui balise, tout autant que le font le droit ou la coutume, les comportements individuels et collectifs au sein d’une communauté humaine donnée à une date donnée. Il s’agit là d’un domaine à la fois immense, puisqu’il touche à la vie privée et à l’intimité, et très imperméable à l’investigation de l’historien, puisqu’il concerne des notions aussi complexes que le rapport au corps ou la relation avec l’Autre. On a tenté ici de mieux préciser ce domaine en évoquant trois cas de figure relevant de la même décennie, les années 1960.Provocation is an essential notion in cultural history. It is linked to that of transgression, also coming from the notion of norm. It leads to working on cultural norms and transgression, essential elements of societies’ metabolism and its collective representations. It is true that at the same time, such an approach must be recognized as being difficult to put into practice as the norm comes from what will be called, for lack of a better term, a period’s sensibility. Here are the representations and imaginations, and thus what marks, just as much as law or customs, individual and collective behaviors within a given human community at a given date. This is both an immense area since it touches private life and intimacy and impermeable to a historian’s research since it concerns notions as complex as the relation to the body or with the Other. The article aims to circumscribe this area by bringing up three cases from the same decade, the 1960s.Provocation is an essential notion in cultural history. It is linked to that of transgression, also coming from the notion of norm. It leads to working on cultural norms and transgression, essential elements of societies’ metabolism and its collective representations. It is true that at the same time, such an approach must be recognized as being difficult to put into practice as the norm comes from what will be called, for lack of a better term, a period’s sensibility. Here are the representations and imaginations, and thus what marks, just as much as law or customs, individual and collective behaviors within a given human community at a given date. This is both an immense area since it touches private life and intimacy and impermeable to a historian’s research since it concerns notions as complex as the relation to the body or with the Other. The article aims to circumscribe this area by bringing up three cases from the same decade, the 1960s

Private International Law Aspects of Authors’ Contracts: The Dutch and French Examples

Copyright generally vests in the author, the human creator of the work. But because, at least until recently, most authors have been ill-equipped to commercialize and disseminate their works on their own, the author has granted rights to intermediaries to market her works. Since most authors are the weaker parties to publishing, production, or distribution contracts, the resulting deal may favor the interests of the intermediary to the detriment of the author’s interests. Many national copyright laws have introduced a variety of corrective measures, from the very first copyright act, the 1710 British Statute of Anne, which instituted the author’s reversion right (still in force, albeit much modified, in U.S. copyright law), to detailed limitations on the form and scope of grants found in many continental European copyright laws. Recently, the Netherlands and France have amended their copyright laws to reinforce author-protective provisions; the French reforms particularly envision the publishing contract in the digital environment. But many author contracts, especially in the digital environment, grant rights for multiple territories: how does the international dimension of these agreements affect the practical ability of individual countries to regulate authors’ contracts with respect to exploitations occurring within their borders? If, on the one hand, “lawmakers tend to be provincial in developing copyright-contract rules, remaining focused on largely local parties and interests rather than on policies common to many jurisdictions,” and, on the other, general principles of private international law leave to the parties the determination of the law applicable to their contract, may the parties simply avoid “provincial” protections of authors’ economic interests by choosing (or the stronger party imposing) the law of a less author-interventionist jurisdiction to govern the full territorial extent of the ransfer? This Article will first discuss two examples of reforms of copyright-contract law, then will consider the extent to which private international law rules may render these reforms largely ineffective for authors who grant rights for multiple territories. Finally, we will propose private international law approaches that preserve local author-protective contract restrictions without rendering the implementation of the international agreement unduly cumbersome or unpredictable. We recognize that our approach departs from classic, content- neutral, private international law rules, because it seeks to impose a particular outcome. But content-neutral choice of law rules are what create the problem that provoked this examination in the first place: the rule of “party autonomy,” that directs courts to look to the law the parties choose for their contract enables the stronger party to avoid weaker party protections simply by submitting the contract to a less-constraining national law. The proposed rule remains within the general private international law (nonsubstantive) framework because it in no way instructs states to adopt author-protective measures. It simply endeavors to ensure, if a state does determine to recalibrate the balance of power between authors and exploiters, that the contract not set the state’s efforts to protect its resident authors to naught

Private International Law Aspects of Authors\u27 Contracts: The Dutch and French Examples

Copyright generally vests in the author, the human creator of the work. But because, at least until recently, most authors have been ill-equipped to commercialize and disseminate their works on their own, the author has granted rights to intermediaries to market her works. Since most authors are the weaker parties to publishing, production, or distribution contracts, the resulting deal may favor the interests of the intermediary to the detriment of the author’s interests. Many national copyright laws have introduced a variety of corrective measures, from the very first copyright act, the 1710 British Statute of Anne, which instituted the author’s reversion right (still in force, albeit much modified, in U.S. copyright law), to detailed limitations on the form and scope of grants found in many continental European copyright laws. Recently, the Netherlands and France have amended their copyright laws to reinforce author-protective provisions; the French reforms particularly envision the publishing contract in the digital environment But many author contracts, especially in the digital environment, grant rights for multiple territories: how does the international dimension of these agreements affect the practical ability of individual countries to regulate authors’ contracts with respect to exploitations occurring within their borders? If, on the one hand, “lawmakers tend to be provincial in developing copyright-contract rules, remaining focused on largely local parties and interests rather than on policies common to many jurisdictions,” and, on the other, general principles of private international law leave to the parties the determination of the law applicable to their contract, may the parties simply avoid “provincial” protections of authors’ economic interests by choosing (or the stronger party imposing) the law of a less author-interventionist jurisdiction to govern the full territorial extent of the transfer? This Article will first discuss two examples of reforms of copyright-contract law, then will consider the extent to which private international law rules may render these reforms largely ineffective for authors who grant rights for multiple territories. Finally, we will propose private international law approaches that preserve local author-protective contract restrictions without rendering the implementation of the international agreement unduly cumbersome or unpredictable. We recognize that our approach departs from classic, content-neutral, private international law rules, because it seeks to impose a particular outcome. But content-neutral choice of law rules are what create the problem that provoked this examination in the first place: the rule of “party autonomy,” that directs courts to look to the law the parties choose for their contract enables the stronger party to avoid weaker party protections simply by submitting the contract to a less-constraining national law. The proposed rule remains within the general private international law (non substantive) framework because it in no way instructs States to adopt author-protective measures. It simply endeavors to ensure, if a State does determine to recalibrate the balance of power between authors and exploiters, that the contract not set the State’s efforts to protect its resident authors to naught

Authors and Exploitations in International Private Law: The French Supreme Court and the Huston Film Colorization Controversy

On May 28, 1991, France\u27s Supreme Court, the Cour de cassation, rendered its long-awaited decision in Huston v. la Cinq, a controversy that opposed the heirs of film director John Huston against the French television station Channel 5 and its licensor, Turner Entertainment. Defendants sought to broadcast a colorized version of Huston\u27s black and white film classic, The Asphalt jungle. Plaintiffs, John Huston\u27s children and Ben Maddow, who collaborated with Huston on the film\u27s screenplay, asserted that broadcast of a colorized version violated Huston\u27s and Maddow\u27s moral right of integrity in the motion picture. The central question before the Cour de cassation, however, concerned not the substance of the integrity claim, but plaintiffs\u27 entitlement to invoke it. Under French law, the moral right to preserve a work\u27s artistic integrity is an incident of authorship. Upon creating the work, authors are invested with exclusive moral and economic rights. While economic rights may be transferred, moral rights are both inalienable and perpetual. Thus, a film director who has granted all economic interests in her work nonetheless retains the moral rights to oppose violations of the work\u27s integrity and to receive authorship credit for her work. Under U.S. law, by contrast, film directors do not enjoy rights tantamount to, or even approaching, their French counterparts. Most significantly, under U.S. copyright law\u27s works made for hire doctrine, employees, or in most circumstances, commissioned creators who participate in the elaboration of a motion picture, are not considered authors : the film\u27s producer is deemed the author. The problem in the Huston case therefore was: Who is the author of the film? If the French courts applied the U.S. law concept of authorship, then John Huston would not have been ruled the author, and accordingly, he and his heirs would lack any moral rights. If, however, the French courts applied the French concept of authorship, then John Huston\u27s status as an author would have been recognized; accordingly, he and his heirs would have been the beneficiary of the moral right of integrity. Thus, first and foremost the Huston affair presented an international conflicts of laws controversy

François Mitterrand, le pouvoir et la plume

De l’homme qui aimait les livres au personnage de roman, l’ascension politique de François Mitterrand ne peut être séparée de la littérature. Ce portrait de l’auteur du Coup d’État permanent retrace les différentes postures lettrées endossées par un homme de pouvoir qui se rêva homme de Lettres avant d’être embaumé comme monarque républicain et grand écrivain. Si la symbolique lettrée a joué un rôle essentiel dans la fabrique de la gloire mitterrandienne, elle s’inscrit aussi dans l’ombre portée du général de Gaulle. Fondateur d’une République, l’homme du 18 Juin condense grandeur politique et grandeur littéraire, obligeant ses successeurs à mêler à leur tour carrière de la plume et du suffrage. L’attrait mitterrandien convoque alors un autre récit : celui du roman national. Cette fascination qu’exerce la littérature sur nombre d’hommes politiques français n’en soulève pas moins des interrogations. Pourquoi les hommes politiques s’adonnent-ils à la passion littéraire ? Pourquoi la littérature est-elle une composante indispensable de tout destin national ? À travers l’exceptionnelle trajectoire de François Mitterrand, c’est cette liaison durable du politique et de la littérature au sommet de l’État qui se trouve élucidée. Elle dévoile une esthétisation du politique et une sacralisation de la littérature. Elle explique les raisons de cette exception hexagonale élevée au rang de mythologie : celle de la France, nation littéraire. Elle permet de comprendre la complicité qui unit, depuis l’Ancien Régime, l’homme de Lettres et l’homme d’État

Féminisme

Conçu dans le double objectif de rendre compte des avancées et des productions d\u27 une discipline jeune, l\u27 histoire culturelle, et raconter, de façon neuve, l\u27 histoire de France, de 1848 à nos jours, ce dictionnaire réunit environ 150 auteurs représentatifs de la recherche la plus innovante. Fruit du travail concerté de deux équipes réputées, le Centre d\u27 histoire de Sciences Po et le Centre d\u27 histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines de l\u27 Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, il constitue une nouveauté complète puisqu\u27 il n\u27existait pas, à ce jour, d\u27 histoire culturelle de la France