Between Cultural Studies and Cultural competence

Abstract

THE TEACHING OF FRENCH civilization and culture at century's end would appear to be well off. In 1990s, two new textbooks appeared (Edmiston/ Dumenil, Steele et al.), plus revision of Les Franqais and sophisticated overview of pedagogical and methodological issues by Steele and Suozzo. There is first-rate general presentation in Through French Windows; there are new journals like French Cultural Studies and Transculture, intercultural gems by Kaplan and Platt, bestseller in Johnson's Le Divorce. Nora's Lieux de memoire is not only out in more affordable version, but selection is being translated into English. In area that concerns me here, Forbes and Kelly offer perhaps first thorough-going look at evolution of meaningful practices within diversity of French and French-speaking cultures, which they see as history of challenges to French identity as defined by nation, class, and gender (1-7, 290-95). 1996 alone saw publication of Yaari's program description, Acquiring Cross-Cultural Competence (Singerman; hereafter: AATF) and Ungar and Conley's Identity Papers. The AATF document seeks to identify core knowledge, capacity for empathy, and ability to observe and analyze that make up cultural competence in French as defined by body of teacher-scholars. (Behavioral skills are also cited but not described in volume, and second volume will be devoted to pedagogical activities.) The AATF approach is inter-national, i. e., is geared to needs of an American language-learning public and includes sections on Quebec and Francophone Africa. Identity Papers on other hand is resolutely intra-national, analyzing moments or loci that illustrate process described as the breakdown of prevalent model of [French] citizenship grounded in assimilation, a progressive loss of faith in identity linked to collective categories such as society and nation (3, 4). The special issue of CFC published in 1997 (Fourny/Schehr) attests not only to intensity of critical debate but also to established competence of great many colleagues whose specialty might have been considered problematic only ten or fifteen years ago. I will not attempt to ruminate on full methodological itinerary since 1957, which saw publication of two of canonical works for

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