Full Description
This remarkable study develops a theoretical critique of contemporary discourses on secularism and assimilation, arguing that the perspective of assimilating distinct religious minorities by incorporating them into a secular and supposedly neutral public sphere may be self-subverting. To flesh out this insight, Jansen draws on the paradoxes of assimilation as experienced by the French Jews in the late 19th century through a contextualised reading of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. She proposes a dynamic, critical multiculturalism as an alternative to discourses focusing on secularism, assimilation and integration.
Contents
1 The crisis of multiculturalism, new assimilationism and secularism 2 Assimilation in the French sociology of incorporation from a multicultural perspective 3 The new liberal sociology of assimilation and its transnationalist alternatives 4 Alfred Bloch's personal integration test at the threshold of the protagonist's family's home 5 Stuck in a revolving door. Cultural memory, assimilation and secularization 6 Elements for a critique of the laïcité-religion framework 7 Secularism, sociology, security 8 The highly precarious structure of assimilation: modernist philosophical schemes, memory and the Proustian narrative
