The closed society. Vichy and the political employ of the regionalist myth

di David Bidussa
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 2 (1998), p. 101

Regionalism in France has often been employed as a democratic ideological resource capable of hindering – or limiting – the centralizing and authoritarian effects of state centralism. The political experience of Vichy shows a different course of the regionalist myth and of the political and cultural space of the region: that of representing, beside a mythicized retrieval of ruralism, the essential ring for the definition of an authoritarian social project built on a scheme which does away with the idea of conflict and is based on a corporative dimension of society.