“A Shared Homeland for All Foreigners”: The Paris Myth

Abstract

The potential of Paris to offer “a shared homeland for all foreigners,^”2 a leitmotiv of the French cultural discourse for centuries, is paradoxically linked to the city’s propensity for universal estrangement. In his study of the Paris mythos, Karlheinz Stierle argues that the urban metropolis renders the very notion of stranger irrelevant, “because everyone is a stranger there,” the exotic visitor and native alike.³ In the 1920s, when diverse and substantial migration flows were converging on the French capital, the city appeared to have reached the culmination of inclusiveness, housing a higher percentage of foreigners to total population than any other major European center. Distinguished by unprecedented cosmopolitanism and diversity, Paris became one of the major sites of transnational exchanges.

America is my country, and Paris is my home town.¹