From my dissertation

1. The presentation I am giving relates broadly to the area of decline. The thesis has a provisional title that asks is "French Decline 1990 - 2004 a soft social construction and whose interests does it serve?" Why have I chosen decline as my topic and then appended this to France? Since 1990 their has been a vast amount of literature that has been labelled ‘decliniste’. The author Perry Anderson writing in the London Review of Books describes it as such “ Newspapers, journals and bookshops brim with debate over French decline. Gradually trickling to the surface in the past few years, le declinism bursts into full flow with the publication last winter of La France quit tombe ’(2004)”