Abstract
In the recent article published in TIME, entitled "The death of French Culture", the author Don Morrison concludes: "Therein may lay France's return to global glory. The country's angry, ambitious minorities are committing culture all over the place?. France has become a multiethnic bazaar of art, music and writing from the disparate corners of the nonwhite world. French culture can thus find salvation in the productions of minorities. Implicitly, this means that these productions should be fully "integrated" to the French cultural heritage and be recognized as French productions by the cultural establishment. If we take "culture" in a broad sense that goes beyond the artistic dimension, it lies in the sense of what defines one identity. This controversial article exemplifies the debates about the integration of immigrants and minority groups in France today. It is quite relevant that the author, who advocates multiculturalism in French arts, is actually American. It seems that only a foreigner can support multiculturalism in France, because this theory seems contradictory with the political tradition of France. In fact, the phrase "French multiculturalism" is almost a contradiction in terms. But to understand in what sense this is so, "multiculturalism" must be defined.
