Occupation–Liberation: A View from the lycée

Citation

Kidd W (2015) Occupation–Liberation: A View from the lycée. Journal of War and Culture Studies, 8 (3), pp. 214-227. https://doi.org/10.1179/1752628015Y.0000000018

Abstract
In offering a ‘view from thelycée’, my paper examines a relatively under-researched and un-synthesised aspect of France’s Second World War experience of occupation and liberation, namely the extent to which the ideological dimensions of the conflict between resistance and collaboration impacted upon and were refracted by the secondary school environment, which functioned as a forum for the development and expression of opposing, often highly-charged, political attitudes. My principal sources are a combination of published individual memoirs and a recent archival-based survey of a particular Parisian lycée during the war. By identifying pre-war aspects of the phenomenon, and revisiting post-war cultural representations of the period, the analysis steps outside the conventional chronological parameters of June 1940–August 1944 in which liberation/the Liberation are subsumed into the overarching narrative of the resistance movement, and offers a personal perspective on otherwise familiar events.

Keywords
occupation; collaboration; resistance; liberation; education; lycée/lycéens

Journal
Journal of War and Culture Studies: Volume 8, Issue 3