One Story of Academia: Race Lines and the Rhetoric of Distinction through the Académie
française explores how the word race was historically linked to kings and feudal lords as a
sign of elite social distinction and how the Académie française has embodied that type of
distinction in France since its establishment in 1635. Meant to be an undeclared scholarly
«mysterious» companion to the French monarchy the Académie created a powerful attraction for
the highest classes inspiring critics of different stripes considered to be the highest
expression of Frenchness it excluded different groups based on class gender race ethnicity
religion ideology and nationality. The self-proclaimed heir to ancient Greek and Roman
scholarship the Académie also claims to represent Europe the West and even Humanity. However
as an academic institution it has experienced «dialectical» arguments between traditional
(feudal) elitism and scholarly elitism as both sought to define French culture in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. «Trustees of taste» and promoters of purity the
Académiciens and their strong supporters followed the troubled evolution of the word race and
of social distinction. Borrowing from inter-European ethnic issues and nationalism subscribers
to the growing «racial» distinction had the features of the colonized analyzed with the French
and by extension European and Western sense of social distinction in mind. Consequently the
colonized ended up at the lowest end of the social scale in turn this placement explained the
application of European feudal norms of exploitation on the colonies and created the more
controversial and dreaded concept of «racism». This book highlights how the significance of
language in the French sense of race - as superiority - is at the heart of the Académie
française.
