French defeat in the colonies drove its intelligentsia rightward before structuralism rose

Evidence

While the labour movement itself had gradually been tamed through the 1950s, facilitated further by the French Communist Party’s convergence with its own bourgeoisie on the colonial question, the defeat in Indochina and the bloody combat in colon-dominated Algeria served to move large sections of the French population, including substantial sections of the intelligentsia, into the Right’s embrace. The settlement of the Algerian War then paved the way for full-scale consolidation of High Gaullism. It was at this point that the ascendancy of structuralism and then of semiotics began – first in fairly radical variants, in keeping with the temper of the times, and then in increasingly formalist, domesticated directions. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 96

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: French structuralism’s rise followed decolonization defeats and masked rightward political drift — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 249; French colonial wars, not Asian revolutions, first radicalized the metropolitan intelligentsia

Related

• French colonial wars, not Asian revolutions, first radicalized the metropolitan intelligentsia (similarity 0.92)
• French structuralism’s rise followed decolonization defeats and masked rightward political drift (similarity 0.91)
• French poststructuralist ascendancy accompanied the Rightward political consolidation after Algeria. (similarity 0.88)
• French postcolonial theory grew from the Occupation and anti-fascist struggles at home (similarity 0.82)
• Theory’s ideological shifts track the real fortunes of decolonized states (similarity 0.80)
• French colonial defeats and occupation, not Asian decolonization, radicalized Western literary theory (similarity 0.79)
• French anticolonial radicalism grew directly from anti-fascist and Resistance politics (similarity 0.79)