Cultural appropriation as a tragicomedy of generations

18.05.2307.10.21 of Kai Nonnenmacher

This article is written in German. Automatic translations:

« Homage to the ancient militant. Regret de voir manquer de lucidité ins un livre raté. Incompréhension de le voir baiser la babouche d'un politicien xénophobe. #Roscoff #Touchepasàmonpote #SOS RACISME #Appropriationculturelle »
Tweet from SOS Racism
Abel Quentin, Le Voyant d'Étampes

Homage to the ancient militant. Regret de voir manquer de lucidité ins un livre raté. Incompréhension de le voir baiser la babouche d'un politicien xénophobe. #Roscoff #Touchepasàmonpote #SOSRACISME #CulturalAppropriation
— rentrée littéraire (@rentreede) October 7, 2021

Jean Roscoff wants to write another essay, to renew his life once more, but in the words of the publisher it will be "the story of the fall of a romantic and cynical anti-hero in the age of social networks and identity shifts". ¹ The subject is his childhood idol, the American poet Robert Willow, who went into exile in France as a leftist, a friend of the existentialists, and then died in a car accident in 1960.

Cultural appropriation.

Je n'avais jamais entendu ce terme. À soixante-cinq ans, je m'apercevais que j'étais déjà sur la touche. I discover the danger of a déconvenue personnelle ce qui semblait être a concept essential pour comprendre l'état du racisme dans mon pays et dans le monde. On the other hand, the vertige de celui can be seen as something that is not plus in the coup. Individual sources of compensation are vertige par le fait qu'ils étaient en responsabilité. It is available encore prize sur quelque chose, un travail, une tribune, un engagement associatif. Ils étaient encore, du point de vue économique, du point de vue du pouvoir, dans le jeu.
Abel Quentin, Le Voyant d'Étampes

Cultural appropriation.

I had never heard the term before. At sixty-five, I realized I was already on the margins of society. In a moment of personal disillusionment, I stumbled upon a concept that seemed essential for understanding the state of racism in my country and in the world. The disorientation of realizing one is no longer in the know cannot be overstated. Some people of my generation compensated for this disorientation by holding positions of power. They still had something tangible: a job, a platform, an obligation to organizations. They were still in the game, economically and in terms of power.

The recently retired history professor from the University of Paris 8, with a penchant for alcohol, divorced, is the protagonist of Abel Quentin's second novel. Le Voyant d'Étampes, which the conservative press, like the Figaro and Current values Already being hailed as a warning sign of cancel culture – Quentin satirizes the media reactions to Jean Roscoff's book, thus anticipating the debate surrounding his own novel. Roscoff is currently being celebrated as a warning sign of cancel culture. overwhelmed on the field where he believed he had legitimized himself in the eighties alongside Harlem Désir and Julien Dray. The accusation is cultural appropriation, because writing about a member of the people of color (Robert Willow was Black) has become difficult even in France, which is surprising for a former anti-racism activist like our emeritus professor, who is investigating the reasons for his failure:

Soucieux de m'amender, j'avalai gloutonnement une dizaine d'articles et de vidéos sur le theme. Les dénonciateurs de l'appropriation culturelle appartenaient tous à une mouvance antiraciste importée des États-Unis. This nébuleuse était qualifiée d'« indigéniste » par ses détracteurs – ses défenseurs, eux, préféraient parler de pensée décoloniale. The vision is not a critique of the anti-racism of the father, universalist, which refers to the term of race. Celui pour lequel j'avais battu le pavé, with Marc et les potes.
Abel Quentin, Le Voyant d'Étampes

In an effort to make amends, I devoured a dozen articles and videos on the subject. Those who denounced cultural appropriation all belonged to an anti-racist movement imported from the United States. This fog was labeled "indigenist" by its opponents—its proponents preferred to speak of decolonial thinking. Their vision arose from a critique of the fathers' universalist anti-racism, which rejects the concept of race. The very anti-racism for which Marc, our friends, and I had paved the way.

Thus, the protagonist also represents the generational shift on the left, exemplified by the failure of an old white man who, by being left-wing, still meant the social issues of the 80s and less the sensitivities of identity politics. Authier summarizes in Figaro Referring to relevant essays by Paul Yonnet and Gilles Châtelet, he summarizes: “A war of generations, a war of races, a war of identities: The writer incisively dissects the war of all against all, the rivalry of representations and the victimization that prevail in present-day France.” ²

In Abel Quentin's first novel, SisterJenny Marchand, a young woman of French descent, converts to Islam. Weary of life in a bourgeois teenager's bedroom adorned with Harry Potter posters, she longs to become a martyr at a time when the President of the French Republic, Saint-Maxens, represents a jaded political system. The second novel explores the political malaise of the generational divide and analyzes the anti-racism of the 80s during the transition to private television. Thus, the fiction serves as a novel of ideas, a history of the French left, which, through the downfall of an old-guard leftist, also addresses the problems of the upcoming 2022 presidential elections, in which the fragmentation on both sides of the political center makes predicting the opponents in the second round increasingly difficult.

À l'époque, SOS Racisme était an antichambre de l'Élysée. Also, to save the maneuver between the invisible and deep morale, SOS Racism can lead to Canal plus. The new television chain was born in 1983, the year of the trade fair. Celle, also, où Laurent Fabius and the morgue aristocratique éteignaient les derniers feux de la period romantique, jauressienne, vieille gauche, inflationniste, incarnée par the imposant Pierre Mauroy – and c'était tout un program que de voir un trentenaire aux doigts délicats et aux costumes croisés Déloger le colosse du Nord, l'ancien professor d'enseignement technique, le militant besogneux qui avait plus d'une fois allongé ses grosses mains au-dessus d'un fire de Baril, dans le matin gelé, au milieu des grévistes. C'était le début du règne de la raison, (le cercle de la raison avait écrit un essayiste), la fin du Temps des cerises et des grandes réformes. This is also the debut of a rainy day, a medium-sized media, with the chain cryptée (voulue by François Mitterrand) and the irony of the branch, with its léchées.
Abel Quentin, Le Voyant d'Étampes

Back then, SOS Racisme was an antechamber to the Élysée Palace. But even for those who knew how to navigate the invisible and deep currents of the moral left, SOS Racisme could lead to Canal Plus. The fledgling television channel was founded in 1983, the year of the March of the Beurs. It was also the year that Laurent Fabius and his aristocratic morgue extinguished the last flames of the romantic, Jaures-esque, old-left, inflationary period, embodied by the imposing Pierre Mauroy—and it was quite a sight to see a thirty-something with delicate fingers and double-breasted suits oust the colossus from the north, the former technical education teacher, the hardworking activist who more than once had stretched his large hands over a bonfire in the middle of the strikers on a freezing morning. It was the beginning of the reign of reason (the circle of reason, as one essayist had written), the end of the era of cherries and grand reforms. It was also the beginning of a different era, that of the encrypted broadcaster (desired by François Mitterrand) and its fashionable irony, its sophisticated programs.

Perhaps this is also the major difference between Abel Quentin and the leftists of past decades, in a changed media landscape: In the novel and its polyphony, he himself doesn't have to explicitly take a position like the intellectual Sartre, who is very present in Quentin's novel. Both generations of leftists, who are pitted against each other here, can find further arguments for their struggle in the text, and even conservative readers can vent their frustrations. The prismatic meta-discourse novel thus demonstrates what the emeritus professor Jean Roscoff has not yet mastered.

The hashtag #jesuisroscoff is on Twitter 112 000 fois, tandis que #noircestnoir et #yapabonroscoff cumulaient, à eux deux, 150 000 retweets. Justice4blackpeople, a collection of anonymous people in the language against the "négrophobia d'État", is available on the basis of the personal address, the email address and the social security number. (…) J'ouvrais ma messagerie. Elle avait reçu an afflux d'emails inhabituel. « FÉLICITATIONS! » m'informait un message: you can also subscribe to a club libertin spécialisé dans le fist fucking. The prelèvements automatiques sur mon compte LCL avaient été mis en place, les débits avaient commencé. A Twitter account is now available in the veille, a selection of photos from gang bang interethniques, and a number of messages or duriers signed « Jean Roscoff, profession: fdp. » Léonie m'expliquait le senses peu amène de cet acronyms. The photo of the profile has a mounting base.
Abel Quentin, Le Voyant d'Étampes

The hashtag #ichbinroscoff was tweeted 112.000 times, while #schwarzistschwarz and #nixgutroscoff together received 150.000 retweets. Justice4blackpeople, a collective of anonymous individuals dedicated to fighting “state-sanctioned hostility towards people of color,” had posted my home address, email address, and social security number online. (…) My inbox was filled with an unusual amount of email. “CONGRATULATIONS” was the message: I had signed up with a sex club specializing in fist fucking. Direct debits had been set up on my LCL account, and the withdrawals had begun. The day before, a Twitter account had been created in my name, filled with photos of interracial gang violence and a dozen smutty messages signed “Jean Roscoff, Occupation: FDP.” Léonie explained to me the unpleasant meaning of this acronym, son of a bitch. The profile picture was a shabby photomontage.

Reference / Citation suggestion

Nonnenmacher, Kai. "Cultural Appropriation as a Tragicomedy of Generations." Rentrée littéraire: contemporary French literature. 2021. Accessed on May 19, 2026 at 18:23 p.m. https://rentree.de/2021/10/07/kultur-aneignung-als-tragikomoedie-der-generationen/.

This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.

Kai Nonnenmacher

Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg | Contact

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Notes

“[…] la chute d'un anti-heros romantique et cynique, à l'ère des réseaux sociaux et des dérives identitaires”, Éditions de l'Observatoire.>>>
“Guerre des générations, guerre des races, guerre des identités: l'écrivain dissèque avec force la guerre de two contre tous, la rivalité mimétique et la victimization à l'oeuvre dans la France d'aujourd'hui.” Christian Authier, “Le voyant d'Etampes, d'Abel Quentin: the bouc émissaire à l'ère de la "cancel culture"", Le Figaro, 22. September 2021.>>>

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This review presents Julia Weidmann's study "Continuum of Wars: Intergenerational Narratives of the World Wars in Contemporary French Literature" (Winter, 2025) as a fundamental, comparative investigation of a central phenomenon in contemporary French literature: the intergenerational narration of the World Wars. The starting point is the observation that subsequent generations—from the "wound" generation to the "inheritance" generation—reconstruct familial wartime experiences in literary form, mediating between archival research and imagination. To this end, Weidmann develops an original model of a "war continuum" that replaces traditional numerical generational categories with a metaphorical, trauma-oriented scale, and operationalizes this concept in a four-stage analytical method, which she applies to a broad corpus of authors (including Claude Simon, Patrick Modiano, Ivan Jablonka, and Anne Berest). The review particularly praises the methodological clarity, the nuanced close readings, and the identification of recurring narrative structures across generations, but also highlights limited weaknesses, such as a certain schematization in the comparative analysis and the relatively marginal treatment of aesthetic details. Overall, the study appears as a substantial contribution to literary memory studies, providing a viable set of tools for analyzing transgenerational memory and simultaneously opening up new perspectives for the exploration of future narrative forms.

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