French Literature Reviews - 2026
X. Vigna, Hope and Terror: Class Struggles and the Struggle over Writing in 20th-Century France
History, Politics and Society
Review published in Acta Fabula (November 2022, vol. 23, no. 9): "Writing Working-Class Centrality between 1914 and 1980" by Julia Cela
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Hope and Terror: Class Struggles and the Struggle over Writing in 20th-Century France
Xavier Vigna
Publication date: 22/09/2016 Publisher: La Découverte ISBN: 978-2-7071-8689-8 EAN: 9782707186898 Format: Large Format Binding: Perfect bound Page count: 318 p.
The twentieth century brought the French working class to its historical peak. The waves of strikes it led, alongside the trade unions and political organizations it joined, inspired both hope and terror at the prospect that workers might fundamentally upend the social order. This dual sentiment found expression in a multitude of writings. From the State—acting through the police and labor inspectors—to employers, Catholic organizations, and sociologists (to say nothing of the intellectuals who chose to live and work as laborers for varying periods starting in the interwar years), observers endlessly scrutinized the working class and its morality.
Workers responded through tracts, personal testimonies, and novels that chronicled their labor, lives, and struggles. It is these texts—some archival, others published, some well-known and others entirely unknown—that Xavier Vigna explores in this book. He demonstrates that these struggles over writing are, at their core, class struggles. One recalls Emmanuel Macron denouncing the alleged illiteracy of workers: when such contempt is deployed to legitimize social and political domination, and when anti-communism bleeds into anti-worker sentiment, working-class writing—which talks back and refutes these claims—serves as an instrument of individual and collective emancipation.
By revisiting working-class history, this book invites us to reread the French twentieth century.
Xavier Vigna is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Burgundy. His publications include L'Insubordination ouvrière dans les années 68. Essai d'histoire politique des usines (Rennes, PUR, 2007) and Histoire des ouvriers en France au XXe siècle (Paris, Perrin, 2012).
An article discussing this work can be read on enattendantnadeau.fr:
"The Working Class: Contemporary Stakes", by M. Bouyssy.
And on laviedesidees.fr:
"Sayings and Writings of the Working Class", by C. Grenouillet.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Writings, Centrality, and Struggles
A Political History of Writings
An Internal Orientalism?
Hope and Terror
I / Debates and Inquiries on Workers
1. The Working Class Under the Eye of the Thomas Ministry
The Labor Service and the Proliferation of Inquiries
Evaluating Women, Foreigners, and Colonials
National Workers: Associated yet Distant
2. The Bogeymen of the Interwar Period
Catholic Inquiries and Terror
Dangers and Remedies
Strikers and Popular Front Militants
3. Harbinger of Communism or Integrated Citizen? The Worker in Debate During the Cold War and the Years of Growth
Postwar Writings
The Communist Polarization on Either Side of the Cold War Onset
The Worker: Laborer, Resident, and Integrated Citizen?
4. Semi-Skilled Worker, Striker, and the Dominated: Working-Class Centrality in the 1968 Years
Writing the Strike and the Struggle
Taking or Seizing the Voice
Workers: Semi-Skilled and Duped
5. The End of Hope and the Transformation of Terror
Workers in Crisis
The Beauty of the Dead
Writing the Crisis
Authoritarian Terror versus Solidarity
II / Figurations, Identifications, Emancipation
6. Classifying, Hierarchizing, Essentializing
Workers, the Professional, and Race
Hierarchizing Immigrants
Essentializing Female Workers
Depreciation of the Rural vs. Celebration of the Urban
7. Writings of Struggles and Struggles of Writings
Proscribing Striking Workers and the Crowd
The Rhetoric of Working-Class Hostility
Confronting the Labor Movement
8. Symbolizing the Class: Emblems and Stigmas
Trades and Professional Archetypes
Markers of the Working-Class Condition
Restoring the Working-Class Universe
9. Voices and Pathways to Emancipation
Accessing the Written Word
Struggling and Bearing Witness
Literariness in the Service of Emancipation
Conclusion
Sources
The twentieth century in France witnessed profound transformations in industrial labor, political militancy, and social organization, framed by recurring tensions between capital and labor. Within this historical landscape, the lives and struggles of working-class populations attracted sustained attention from diverse observers, ranging from state authorities and employers to sociologists and intellectuals. At the same time, workers actively documented their own experiences through varied forms of expression, creating a rich corpus of texts that recorded their working conditions, daily lives, and collective actions.
Xavier Vigna examines this dual body of documentation, exploring how these writings reflect broader social hierarchies and political conflicts throughout the century. Readers interested in the social history of labor and the intersections of literature with political struggle may find this work a relevant contribution to the field.