Jay Collay

Research

Thesis

Rising from Obscurity: History Lessons from the Interwar Breton Cultural Movement

A historically inspired cultural revival focused on lost or diminishing cultural practices has the potential to be a politically double-edged sword. While looking to an absent past can encourage cultural production among otherwise precarious minority cultures, it can also notoriously empower reactionary authoritarianism. The interwar period of the Breton cultural revival movement in France—categorized as the second of the movement’s three emsavs, or waves—contains alignments across a wide political spectrum, but scholars have primarily focused on the far-right militants and their infamous Nazi collaboration (Bargain, 2010; Carney, 2014; Mees, 2011). While this is an important phenomenon to study, those factions affiliated with the Communist Party, Christian Democrats, or the wartime Resistance have received far less attention.

This project proposes to survey correlations between historical narratives and reactionary behavior through the political diversity of the second emsav and its extensive written canon of popular publishing. It will focus on how historiography, minority history, and cultural myth-making were employed as mechanisms for unity, and interrogate how tactics contrasted or overlapped across ideological alignments—including but not centering the infamous right wing. Did rhetoric of a Celtic Revival and Celtic heritage encourage people to engage with the past and present outside of racial ideology? When did political ideology dictate or preclude certain historical narratives? How were these historical perspectives used to justify action in the present? In today’s global climate where culture wars, changing approaches to teaching history, and authoritarian sentiments often coincide, a case study of one particular cultural movement offers a vital perspective on whether historical appeals inevitably serve as tools of regression and authoritarianism.

Funding sources

Funded by the South, West, and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

Supervisors

Kevin Passmore

Professor of History