UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines issues of cultural and religious difference in France -- how France can and should reconcile itself to the diversification (and the attendant and inevitable conflicts in moral, cultural and religious values, traditions and identities) inherent in globalization. In particular, I explore whether and to what extent French Republicanism (and the practices and theories thereof) -- rooted in theoretical and historical conceptions of the Social Contract and the General Will and in the romanticized political and social construct of the uniform and universal French citizen -- can take on and accommodate cultural and religious difference within its view of the state, the nation, law and politics. In short, I consider whether and to what extent the model that has theoretically and historically advanced a colorblind and assimilationist attitude to difference contains, in reality, a certain flexibility for a diversity of moral, cultural and religious values and identities, in the particular form of the 4-5 million Muslims in France today. I contend in this dissertation that a level of flexibility and elasticity is already evident in the theories and practices of French Republicanism, which has transformed over time as the French Republic has adapted to different circumstances of diversity; and that this transformation underscores the fact that French Republicanism, as a political model, is not monolithic or 'fixed' in time, but is contingent and consists in multiple and alternative narratives of and visions for the French republican nation-state vis-à-vis diversity. In this dissertation, I work to reconceive of French Republicanism in more 'diversity-friendly' terms and to carve out from the history of ideas in this area a theoretical and practical space for cultural difference within the French Republic.