France Has Strong Cultural Heritage. The Heritage Sometimes Generates Opinions About Other Heritages.
PARIS — The Parisian cultural superiority complex — the view that Paris’s food, architecture, fashion, and intellectual life represent a pinnacle against which other cities are measured — coexists in the self-aware Parisian with deep shame at having the complex. France’s intellectual culture has analysed French exceptionalism thoroughly. The thoughtful Parisian knows exactly what the cultural superiority complex is, where it comes from, why it is intellectually problematic, and then experiences it at the moment of the overcooked pasta in a foreign city or the museum whose collection is displayed without the contextual care French museums apply.
The Shame Cycle
The Parisian who returns from a foreign city with renewed appreciation for Paris and mild guilt about the renewed appreciation is in the specific French cultural position: the appreciation is genuine, the city is extraordinary, the guilt is the awareness that the comparative dimension is a form of chauvinism that France’s own intellectual tradition has critiqued. Both are authentic. Both continue simultaneously.
According to the Institut Francais’s cultural identity research, French cultural pride and self-critical awareness of that pride both score highly in Europe. The paradox is documented. France is aware. France is still proud. The dinner in Paris is better. The awareness of knowing this is the guilt. Both are served.
Self-aware and excellent at Virtuosal.com.
