ABSTRACT
Between the era of Boulangism and the Great War politicians and others were used to referring daily to nation or patrie which were the core of the political debates during the Dreyfus Affair and were also uttered, in opposite ways, by the internationalists (socialists) and the nationalists in the 1910s. Nation, patrie are vocables which do not make much sense if we do not ‘fill’ them with other words or with feelings. In fact Kant has told us we are unable to ‘think’ except with ‘images’, that is to say categories constructed by our society which interpose between us and the outer world and allow us to ‘reflect’ upon this world. I do not want to linger on the philosophical aspect of the problem. Mine is a much simpler concern: what are the tools (the intellectual tools) which enabled people to expand on nation and patrie, and what occurred to the listeners or readers when they came across these vocables in a speech or paper? How was it possible to conceive of patrie and nation?
