The American Enemy

"Indeed! I chose this book because Philippe Roger contributes an erudite yet witty and scathing account of Gallic anti Americanism. He starts in the 18th century when French naturalists claimed they found the New World inhabited by deformed animals and degenerate natives. And he ends with Cold War intellectuals like Sartre, who complained that America at that point was suffering from rabies – by which he meant virulent anti Communism. The subject of The American Enemy is French intellectuals rather than public opinion or policy. Roger has composed a kind of genealogy of ideas, and argues that the French developed a veritable discourse about America built on stereotypes, prejudices and fictions. Americans are supposedly materialists, Puritans and racists. If you go back to the 18th century there is an expression of cultural superiority. French intellectuals saw America as a rude country of immigrants lacking any cultural eminence. So there is a Gallic condescension operating here. Even to this day there is a belief that the French are the guardians of culture and we [Americans] are the purveyors of some kind of cultural pap. Roger is trying to ridicule this discourse which he finds biased, hypocritical and uninformed. He is trying to remove a toxin from French intellectual life."