“Parce que c’est la France!”: Heroic Cooperation and Suffering in Les Cahiers Français during World War II

Abstract

Les Cahiers Français, a francophone magazine edited in Montevideo between 1936 and 1948, had as its principal goal, to serve the propaganda of the educational institutions of the French Society of Education, conceived as essential instruments of the gallic cultural diplomacy in Uruguay. During the Second World War, the publication sought to engage the local community in efforts to provide material and moral support to the people affected by the conflict and to sustain France’s cultural hegemony in the country. In this paper, from the perspective of the theory of emotions, I examine two discursive strategies employed by the magazine to draw the involvement of its Uruguayan readers into the confrontation: the narrative of the historic friendship between both countries, based on the images of war cooperation in the 19th century, and the publication of representations of the suffering of France as a result of its defeat and occupation by Hitler’s armies.