| The Parisian apache has been a literary phenomenon and media staple in France since the turn of last century. He has existed in many different forms, but has always been characterized by a suburban address and a rapacious disposition. The apache first came to light in a nation overrun with cheap western fiction, which begins to explain the existence of our "Redskin." What are more difficult to explain, however, are the reasons for the apache's appearance decades later, when the suburban populations had entered into a period of great flux, suburban Marxism was on the ascendant, and the western vogue had begun to fade. Still more curious is the ubiquity of the apache in the pages of today's suburban fiction, in an age when the politiquement correct prohibits the sort of name calling that might explain the persistence of apache, and in a neighborhood where talk is of immigration, Islam, and Islamism---not of the Noble Savage.; But how to explain the longevity of the apache? How has he come to assume so many different forms? And exactly what purpose does he serve for persons inside and beyond the suburban gate? The answer lies in the mutability of the term, for apache, having no raison d'etre beyond considerations of political or literary expediency, is resurrected wherever or whenever the times demand it. And so the figure of the apache, having assumed many different faces in the course of the last century, is yet always available for reinvention, for one cause or another, whether for good or for evil.; I will follow the apache from Belle Epoque Paris, through the "Red" suburbs and interwar period, and into the housing projects of today's immigrant suburbs, where violence, crime, and the specter of jihad occupy politicos and media alike. But the "Redskin" mantle endures, and weighs so heavily on the pages of today's suburban fiction that a reappraisal of this tradition, in light of the historical-literary record, is very much in order. This, finally, is the intention of the author. |
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