Sugary except of a good and worth-reading review (better than the silly and petty one by Adam Kirsch in the New Republic) of Stéphane Hessel's Indignez-vous (translated as Time for outrage in the UK) by Sudhir Hazareesingh:
At the same time, in its denunciation of the moral order and conformism of official French institutions, this pamphlet succinctly captures the French zeitgeist (in a truly sinister fashion, Hessel’s alma mater the École Normale banned a meeting he was due to address in January on the issue of Palestine, on the grounds that it might threaten public order). Yet Hessel’s outrage also reflects the despair of many French progressives at the vapid and fissiparous state of the Left. He does not address or seek to transcend this fragmentation; indeed it might be argued that his appeal remains rooted in a moralist individualism which inherently limits the scope for effective collective action. But Time for Outrage! compensates for this political deficiency by consummating the French rupture with the practices and values of Sarkozism: its hollowness and vulgarity, its obsession with demonizing immigrants and Islam, its failure to tackle France’s endemic social and economic problems, and its consistent pandering to the neo-Vichyist rhetoric of the Front National. The latter policy has boomeranged spectacularly: the French President’s popularity has plummeted in recent months, while support for the extreme Right has grown correspondingly. In early March 2011 an opinion poll on voting intentions for next year’s presidential elections placed the new Front National leader Marine Le Pen ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy (and all other candidates) – a trend which adds another element to Hessel’s list of causes for collective indignation, and makes his analogy with the French Resistance even more compelling than perhaps he might have imagined.
Shocking confession: In spite of myself, I got a copy of Hessel's pamphlet. I haven't read it. I'm waiting to see if it is going to stand the test of time. That said I'm going to steal Hazareesingh's expression, French zeitgeist, it will stand the test of time!
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