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Article: Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Identity in France and Germany.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Canadian Journal of History
- Article date:
- December 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Canadian Journal of History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Identity in France and Germany, 1750-1914, by Harold Mah. Ithaca, New York, and London, Cornell University Press, 2003. xii, 227 pp. $41.95 US (cloth), $19.95 US (paper).
Harold Mah argues that German and French thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and historians, since have used an oversimplified and untenable model of "identity." In an unusually clear and subtle manner, Mah uses poststructuralist notions of the unstable nature of identity to throw new light on central works of German and French intellectual history. This results in a profound revision of long-established historiographical tenets about the culture ...