Posted by Jacob T. Levy:
When did this happen?
[1]"Bobo" appears to getting incorporated into French. The Le Monde
reporter does feel the need to define the term once, but doesn't use
scare quotes, treat it as a foreign word, or mention David Brooks. The
people quoted use it freely. Curiously, we get a detour into the
English word "gentrification," "which can be translated as
embourgeoisement". (Not without change of meaning it can't.) But no
mention of bobo's foreign genesis.
While the article contains moments of traditional French contempt for
the bourgeoisie, both boboification and drawing attention to it are
probably very good things in French political and social culture.
Dislodging French artists and intellectuals from their traditional
disgust for all things commercial, properties, or middle-class would
be valuable, as would weakening the tight relationships among class,
politics, and culture both in fact and in stereotype ("rich but
artists; bourgeois but of the left," etc).
Elsewhere in Le Monde: a serious, respectful, and substantial
[2]article on the dedication of the WWII memorial in Washington.
References
1. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,[EMAIL PROTECTED],36-366775,0.html
2. http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,[EMAIL PROTECTED],36-366747,0.html
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