Navigating the French

Well Emily I have to tell you that I love this podcast. Why you may ask? Well I have visited France a handful of times and I am also a beginner in the French language. Alas I am in my mid sixties and really enjoy learning about history and culture of France. I also enjoy learning French words here and there but im afraid I’ll always be a beginner as a language student. So whats with your podcast…. I love that you tease us with a word and you do talk of the word but use it as a jumping off point for fascinating discussion about all the ideas that circle around the word and it’s meaning and thankfully for me the podcast is in English but you often have many French words intertwined in the discussion so I learn some then. You do an excellent job Emily and I am trying still to listen to the many past episodes. Anyway a hearty merci beaucoup for all your hard work and great questions and excellent guests! Be encouraged and keep going… great stuff!

Each episode unpacks something about french culture that, as someone who has lived in France for 5 years, I sense and know is important, yet don’t really understand. I really appreciate the insight the experts on her show bring about french cultural signifiers. Highly recommended.

It probably is not surprising that this podcast is not spared of the famous American love for moral judgement. In this case, more of a contemporary progressive left type of judgement. The host doesn’t understand some of the fundament reasons why her Anglo-Saxon culture is very different from French (and European as a whole) culture. France is a country with a rich history spending more than a millennium. Its culture is not based on skin color, unlike her home country. Nor does it have a history of importing slaves. France is not a proposition nation, it is not a nation of immigrants and as such the host’s views on what it means to be French and become French are fundamentally uninformed. As someone who has lived in the US, I have seen with my eyes how Americans treat women and the resulting lack of confidence. The host’s comments on the position of French women in society reflects more of her heritage than the reality, and I can say that with the confidence of someone who was not surprise of the recent Supreme Court decision, which reflects American religious fervor, their view of women, and the various divisions of society in identity groups. It is surprising for the host to implicitly refer to herself as French, I feel a much deeper understanding of her own culture and of French culture is needed to understand the differences. Many of the guests are Americans or from other Anglo-Saxon countries and use that cultural heritage in their views. It is very troubling that the current Americanization of France can result in the importation of identity politics and moral judgement. A culture based on religion, gender, racial, and other identities, and the many prejudices created by that could only be a giant (about 240 years) step back for France.