ABSTRACT
The relationship between politics and the individual is therefore fundamental to understanding the meanings and legacies of the mid-twentieth century. Political questions and ideas might provoke spirited engagement, introspection, or even disgust, but the enforced intimacy between the political and the personal made for inescapable choices and decisions. Focusing on France, and bringing together historians of politics, literature, philosophy, art, and film, this volume sheds new light on the imagination and experience of the political individual in the age of the masses. In contrast, Politics and the Individual engages with recent research that challenges the emphasis on collective memory — and the associated preoccupation with cultural and linguistic representation — in order to reassess the roles of individual memory, embodied experience, politics, and agency. Even studies of French responses to fascism do not always include detailed discussion of the individual as political leader. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
