In addition, France provides us with a fascinating terrain when it comes to linguistic diversity, as languages take centre stage in how the local, the national and the global are connected and enacted in the country. Regional languages such as Basque, Occitan, Breton and Corsican are the driving force behind French regionalisms, where the support for such languages entails the defence of regional traditions and practices (see Marcellesi 1975; McDonald 1989). Since the sixteenth century, but notably during the Third Republic—from 1870 to 1940, when French nationalism and La Republique were consolidated—the preservation of regional languages and traditions was discouraged, as a consequence of the French governments heavy investments in homo- geneising language policies. Emphasising French monolingualism in order to forge a national unity (Escude 2013), such policies were in accordance with the putative integrative potential of the French language, in a discourse advancing that the national language would also help integrate immigrants in French territory (Grillo 1985).
The 1960s saw a rise of regionalisms in France, with increasing ties between regional language activism and regionalist political movements. Just as Frenchness was largely delimited by a linguistic component, regionalist movements also placed language at the core of claims for recognition of a distinct 'Corsican people' (Jaffe 1996: 817—819; 1999) or 'Breton people':
You may learn Breton dances (in a Cercle celtique) or blow up the palace of Versailles (like the FLB [Breton Liberation Front]) and call yourself part of the Breton movement; you will not always be taken seriously, however, by those who now dominate the movement, if you do not speak, or at least seriously aspire to speak, Breton. (McDonald 1989: 87)
This grammar of identity affirmation and recognition gained ground in the late twentieth century, becoming manifest through bilingual signs (French/regional language) for town names and through more governmental provisions for regional language teaching in public schools (Candea 2010, 2011: 309).
The same centrality of language applies on the global scale, particularly regarding France's colonial and post-colonial areas of immediate influ- ence. Whereas the British colonial project was founded upon the political and economic axis constituting the Commonwealth, French imperialism relied more heavily on forging cultural and linguistic ties with France's colonies, which culminated in the establishment of the Francophonie. These cultural and linguistic links have remained central to the relations that France maintained with its former colonies:
The cultural and utopic fraternity enshrined, in the moment of the decolonisation, in the notion of 'Francophonie' is, therefore, directly linked to the conception of the universal qualities of the values and political ideals of the French Republic, conveyed by its language. (Baneth- Nouailhetas 2010: 77)
If languages can set peoples apart—as when regional languages challenge the French national unity—they can also bring peoples together—as with the Francophonie. In several ways, languages play a crucial role in how French political institutions equate cultural diversity with linguistic diversity and how French society engages with diverse forms of language activism.
Unsurprisingly, Esperanto also finds its place within these dynamics. In Bretagne, Breton speakers are among the most active Esperantists, drawing connections between activism for a regional language and for an international language—while bracketing French, the national language. A similar scenario can be found in the south of France, notably in Occitanie, where many come across Esperanto through activism for the Occitan language. This region is also prominent for its proximity with the Spanish border, which has historically provided for significant soli- darity among Occitan-speaking and Catalan-speaking Esperantists who work together in and through Esperanto to build collaboration between their regional language activism (Botella 1996). Just as such activists argue that the historical dominance of French has hindered the regular use of their regional languages, Esperantists in the French capital raise the issue of the imposition of English on French, perceived through the growing borrowing of vocabulary from English, the increasing offer of English-medium courses at French universities and the use of English in speeches of French politicians in the multilingual European Parlia- ment. Using the political frameworks of the French state and the European Union as platforms, these arguments assume that English is not an international language, but a national language transposed to the global level. Accordingly, supporting the use of Esperanto in interna- tional settings would constitute a step towards the defence of French in the national scenario. Going beyond human languages, as I explore in Chapter 7, Paris-based Esperantists also link Esperanto with computer programming languages through the lens of collaborative coding and free speech.
In this respect, France provides a setting in which my research questions resonate with national debates on politics and languages, estab- lishing a fruitful environment for both Esperanto and this study. Looking at how Esperantists understand the potentialities and contingencies surrounding their language and community, my first set of questions considers how to make sense of this language's learning process. After all, once one learns Esperanto, how does one find or create contexts in which to speak it? How does this language act as a mediator and what kind of information does it primarily convey? From these initial ques- tions, I move to the discourses and practices sustaining the language: to what extent can Esperanto be a gateway to engagements with other polit- ical stances? How does the language ideology behind Esperanto posit cosmopolitan openness and more egalitarian communication—if such features can be attached to a language at all? Meanwhile, two questions related to the endurance of the Esperanto community run through this book: how can Esperantujo be rendered stable if people's allegiance to it is utterly voluntary and barely instrumental? And how do the Internet and digital media influence the dynamics of and the shapes taken by this community? These are among the issues that will be explored in the pages to follow.
1.5 JourneyLog
In perusing these chapters, the readers and I move from the theoret- ical problems of a language's political orientation and a community's endurance to their ethnographic solutions. While the present chapter sets the scene in which a language so singular can be like any other language, the second chapter introduces the discourse that, developed over history, grounds Esperanto. It does so not by outlining an unproblematic histor- ical account aimed at contextualising the reader, but rather, by showing how the history of Esperanto—as presented in advertising leaflets, world maps and individual narratives—is made eventful and linear, conveying certain perceptions of progress in which the recollections and expecta- tions of present-day Esperantists dwell.
Analysing the preparations for the 2017 Universal Congress of Esperanto, the third chapter counts the help of anthropological theo- ries on mobility, multi-sitedness and arbitrary locations to explore a productive overlap: on the one hand, my methodological concerns of drawing Esperantist networks and, on the other hand, my interlocu- tors' constant attempts to make such networks proliferate. Folding back into the previous chapter, this discussion shows how performing the labour required to keep this dispersed community alive through short-lived gatherings is perceived as making justice to Esperantos history. Chapter 4, in turn, delves into the abovementioned Universal Congress to explore how Esperantists from various national, linguistic and cultural backgrounds gather and do what they do best: materialise the cosmopolitan sets of principles behind the language. As cosmopoli- tanism emerges here as sets of discourses and practices around nation- alism, non-nationalism and internationalism, I analyse how the existence of Esperantujo dwells on the recognition of alterity as national otherness and on the irreducibility of certain forms of diversity.