French Cultural Identities



From the Renaissance onward, specific cultural and language politics has been imposed on the French territory at the expense of regional dialects. This politics was reinforced throughout the entire Ancien Régime and aggravated in the colonial empire era until the 20th century, when it eventually began to crumble due to the decolonization and uprising national and regional demands. Today, France finds itself in an era of strong individuality and communitarianism, responsible for a profusion of cultural identities at the heart of the European community, whose boundaries keep getting blurred.In order to better understand the question of the cultural and national identity, we will study, by looking into relevant texts, what being French and / or francophone has meant for five centuries.