La francophonie et ses contradictions: multiples positions, multiples intérêts [The francophonie and its contradictions: multiple positions, multiple interests]

Abstract

In this article I use a framework taken from political economy in order to describe and explain the role of French in processes of symbolic domination (Bourdieu 1982). The construction of the nation-State went hand in hand with a specific form of capitalist expansion – liberal and democratic – legimitized through distinctively modernist ideologies (Hobsbawm 1990). This expansion takes now forms different enough to claim that in our time we are immersed in high modernity (Giddens 1990). At the same time, it maintains enough continuities to describe it not as a post modernity but as a (high) form of modernity.