Examining the Making of the Post-WWII Literary Citizen through the Concept of "Regime of Historicity"

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Historical Inquiries to Make “the history”: Unrevealing History from Visuals in the Cold War era

Abstract

Objectives
After World War II, the French educational system underwent its second most significant reform of the 20th century (Garnier, 2020; Chapoulie, 2010; Prost, 2013). The objective was to democratize education by providing students with a classical French literary education, aimed at establishing a "common cultural reference" for making a new 'literary citizen' (Cardon-Quint, 2010). However, I argue that this new literary citizen emerged from a broader desire to reframe a historical narrative marked by the Franco-French War, decolonization, reconciliation of wartime trauma for national unity and coherence. To examine this "literary citizenship," I employ Hartog's concept of "régime d'historicité" or "regime of historicity" (Hartog, 2003) and provide a decolonial reading by expanding traditional archival research methods and engaging with non-traditional materials, visual language, and diverse temporalities.

Theoretical Framework
My research employs an interdisciplinary approach to explore how historical narratives are reinterpreted to reflect evolving cultural landscapes. I draw on François Hartog's concept of "régime d'historicité" or "regime of historicity" (Hartog, 2003) to understand how different historical contexts interpret various temporalities. Hartog emphasizes that historicity encompasses the perception, representation, and understanding of conditions that render events historical. It centers on the narrative—the form and content of the story—contrasting past understandings with contemporary retellings (Hartog, 2003; Barthes, 1970). I conduct a decolonial reading of visual texts as non-traditional knowledge sources, identifying epistemological shifts within historical materials. I explore how we might reconsider traditional linear narrative configurations, noting that meaning and our interaction with "temporality"—encompassing past, present, and future—occurs through narratives and remains fluid. This framework facilitates discussions on story construction, emphasizing narrative form and text creation mechanisms.

Data and Methods
For this presentation, I use two humorous 1960 drawings by cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé: Le Petit Nicolas (Goscinny & Sempé, 1994), a children's book about a boy at school, and Rien n’est simple, a collection of social commentary cartoons (Sempé, 1963). I interpret the drawings in two ways. First, through regimes of historicity, I show how educational discourse circulates during change and how humor in comics reveals shifts in contemporary retellings within an evolving social imaginary. Second, I propose a dual reading of the cartoons to examine their form—specifically, the syntax and grammar of the text—and how this form destabilizes linear, closed narratives. The visual elements introduce temporal fluidity that challenges a linear narrative.

Findings and Scholarly Significance
By applying these frameworks, I aim to foster a nuanced understanding of narratives and collective memory across contexts. The post-World War II period is pivotal for reconceptualizing time, reflecting a shift in how France understands its past, present, and future. This shift reveals an ongoing process of rethinking temporality. Hartog's work highlights these changes and their resonance with individuals and communities navigating historical narratives. Through a decolonial reading of non-traditional texts, it becomes feasible to tease out historical threads and examine how educational discourses circulate within fluid cultural assemblages, illuminating causality's ambiguities.

Author

• Britt-Marie Zeidler, University of Wisconsin - Madison