In a very stereotypical way, we - me included - use to consider Dreyfus' affair as the birth of the public intellectual, with doves on the one side, definitely against Anti-Semitism and any kind of obscurantism, and the black sheep - the representatives of the conservative and clerical mainstream condemning cpt. Dreyfus.
Ruth Harris, in his exhaustively documented book The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the affair that divided France is admirabily broking those myths, offering a nuanced picture of the intellectual ambiance of the France of the time. "During the Affair, intellectuals and anti-intellectuals struggled over the uses and abuses of history and science, and the place of religion in contemporary society. The national crisis also provoked a refinement of nationalist thinking that was one of its most significant legacies to French political culture" (p.201). In a similar way with the German Jewry at the beginning of the WWII, the French Jews were and wanted to be assimilated to the greater French culture, but more assimilated they pretended to be more counter-reaction from the part of the "traditional" elites.
The author discernes very carefully the deep roots of the pro- and counter-Dreyfus through the manifestations of popular pietisme, religiosity, psychological, sociological and historical basis of the intellectual roots of the local culture. Sometimes overcharged with data and information, the book represents a fascinating adventure of the mind through the hidden labyrinth of the history.
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