As nations, cities, and regions are increasingly compelled to market themselves as attractive spaces in a competitive global market, place brands have emerged as meaningful platforms through which to promote a particular version of place, in order to increase sales of international exports, to increase foreign investments, and to lure tourists and even university students. Building on contemporary practices of product and corporate branding, places brands are designed to speak to international scales of market competition, as well as to build “citizen value” at home (Anholt Reference Anholt2007; Volcic and Andrejevic Reference Volcic and Andrejevic2011) through the creation of a coherent brand identity. Yet, the reorganization of discourses of place (city/national/regional) in the form of a brand involves challenges and contestations not encountered in product branding (cf. Greenberg Reference Greenberg2008; Jansen Reference Jansen2008; Aronczyk Reference Aronczyk2013; Graan Reference Graan2013). In product branding, the construction of the product and the brand are often either simultaneous or are closely calibrated to render the most consistent brand identity possible. In the branding of place, brand creators necessarily negotiate long-standing ideologies of place, language, and culture that may not easily translate to the positive, apolitical, attractive, and authentic image needed to create a brand identity, which forms the core of the brand.
The regional brand recently created in the French region of Alsace represents a complicated instance of branding. Initiated in late 2010, the work of constructing the brand for the small, eastern region of France was contracted to a Parisian marketing firm that specializes in place branding, and over the course of nearly two years, the myriad public representations of Alsatian industry, tourism, and more were consolidated under the umbrella of ImaginAlsace, the brand. However, as a region that has historically known heterogeneous heritages due to its role in two world wars, the branding of Alsace also entailed a reconciliation of the brandability of its perceived heritage. A region at the center of European conflicts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Alsace was subject to four distinct shifts in national belonging between 1871 and 1945. Each shift brought with it competing projects of national unification by both France and Germany, mandating cultural and linguistic adaptation to the region’s new sovereign power. For many in the region, Alsatian heterogeneous national and linguistic belonging remains contentious today, more than fifty years since the region’s last forced annexation to Germany. Thus one facet of the contemporary branding work was to reconfigure the Alsatian reputation from a region beset by old historical conflict to an attractive and modern region. Contemporary creators of the new regional brand therefore did not ignore or avoid the often stigmatized Germanic heritage of Alsace. Rather, through the careful work of designing the identity of the regional brand, the tension posed by Alsatian French and German heritage is foregrounded and emphasized, woven into the brand’s very structure and rearticulated as positive added value, namely, in the form of the “Alsatian oxymoron.”
A framing element of the Alsatian brand identity, the Alsatian oxymoron is intended to reflect the fact that Alsatian identity is, branders found, “structured by ambivalence.” Thus the Alsatian oxymoron, or—as described by brand creators—“the provocative surprise that creatively expresses the Alsatian paradox,” is expected to deliver a productive tension that underscores Alsatian singularity.Footnote 1 Alsatian oxymorons include pairs of such contradictions that together communicate attractive distinction: local/cosmopolitan, traditional/innovative, and the fact that the region is at the periphery of France/at the heart of Europe. Conceived as a tool through which brand partners can better promote their products and the region, the Alsatian oxymoron also intentionally forefronts an attractive ambivalence of the regional identity. The brand identity of Alsace was carefully designed to convey a certain version of Alsatian duality. Through the brand ImaginAlsace, the consumer (be it an international corporation, a tourist, or even a resident of Alsace) is invited to encounter the region as a place of profitable hybridity, marketable diversity, and attractive ambiguity.
In this article I seek to trace both the historical roots and contemporary production of the so-called Alsatian oxymoron to shed light on the semiotic labor performed to create an attractively ambivalent brand identity. I draw on documents compiled by Alsatian brand producers called the “Identity Portrait of Alsace” and the “Diagnostic of Attractiveness”—in-depth studies of the regional identity conducted by the contracted marketing firm—to track the work that is performed to represent the region’s past. Specifically, I argue that the production of the Alsatian oxymoron as structured ambivalence is predicated on, reinstantiates yet reconfigures long-standing processes of national differentiation in Alsace in important ways. I draw on Susan Gal’s (Reference Gal, Duchêne and Heller2012) formulation of axes of differentiation to demonstrate how the brand presumes upon the overdetermined ideological opposition between Alsatian French and German heritages—in which one is seen to diametrically oppose the other—in order to create a new axis of differentiation marked by economic distinction: that in which Alsatian multiculturalism becomes profitable while national homogeneity is rendered unprofitable. It is by the regimentation of these axes and scales (local/national, national/global) through which such a reading of Alsatian oxymorons is possible. Thus just as the brand appears to resolve historical conflicts, they are consistently instantiated and reified through brand narratives. By tracing the literature produced and disseminated by brand consultants who designed the new, branded Alsace, I seek to explore the techniques by which such an emblematization of multiculturalism is made possible, and where it remains vulnerable to the inevitable misrecognitions inherent in the circulation of signs.
This article begins by exploring the semiotic nature of brands and branding, with a focus on branding duality and ambivalence. Second, I turn to the historical construction of what contemporary branders have emblematized and commoditized as the so-called Alsatian oxymoron. By exploring three particular moments in the historical semiotic differentiation of national identity in Alsace, I seek to demonstrate that place brands, while explicitly oriented to emerging neoliberal markets, also constitute and reproduce historically constituted borders, be they national, cultural, or linguistic. Finally, I turn to the production of the oxymoron itself. I argue that the brand’s appropriation of historical contradiction in Alsace is achieved through strategic reconfigurations of the brand identity—as depicted in branding documents. Whether the brand consistently delivers on its promise of attractive ambivalence is, however, less clear.
Brands and Places: Producing Attraction and Ambivalence
As a semiotic form, brands have generally been shown to be composite, material and immaterial structures that broadly function as nexus between consumers, products and their producers; as Lury has clearly articulated: the brand is “a set of relations between products or services” (Reference Lury2004, 2). Importantly, in recent years, as corporations have begun to prefer the promotion of branded lifestyles over individual products (Arvidsson Reference Arvidsson2006; Agha Reference Agha2011), contemporary brands are characterized by the promotion of attractive brand personalities—qualities, identities, affects, and aesthetics (Moore Reference Moore2003; Manning Reference Manning2010; Manning and Uplisashvili Reference Manning and Uplisashvili2007)—which may be conferred on consumers through the purchase of any range of branded products. So the saying now goes in the marketing industry: “a product is made in a factory, a brand is bought by a consumer” (Manning Reference Manning2010, 36). Thus, brand producers find their most important task to be the design and communication, not just of a brand image or product marketing campaign but of a brand personality. As William Mazzarella has noted, the construction of a brand depends on the construal of what he calls a prosthetic personality, through which the brand is given a distinctive voice, can more directly address consumers, and relate to them intimately (Reference Moore2003, 189). Indeed, it is the production of brand personality that engenders consumer loyalty, in which the consumer can find the brand relatable or, more importantly, may find the brand represents a desired personality. Reyes (Reference Reyes2013, 165) elaborates on the requisite personalization of brand in her discussion of brand personification that, she states, involves the recruitment of figures of personhood to the embodiment of corporate brands. Brand personifications circulate across a broad array of contexts, constantly undergoing recontextualization and rearticulation (Shankar Reference Shankar2006). The metapragmatic regimentation of identities, subjectivities, and emotions that is entailed in brand production is explicitly tailored to anticipated consumer appraisal and thus depends not only on constructing brand personality but also on predicting consumer desire (Moore Reference Moore2003). The brand thus, rather than a representation of things, is a semiotic structure that carefully purveys identities, an aspect of brand that is both continued and confounded in the production of place brands.
In the absence of manufactured products, the place brand appears antithetical to the objectives and methods of branding. Yet the processes involved in the branding of place are often guided by the same expert strategies and knowledges that have given rise to iconic brands. Place brands necessarily focus on the reorientation of place-based identity and reputation, bringing long-standing ideologies of place under the rubric of commodity formulations (Agha Reference Agha2011). Semiotically, the work to construct a place brand identity involves the calibration of meanings, communities, as well as aspirational experiences. While fashioning a brand(ed) identity is at the forefront of branding labor, a requisite repositioning of the nation/region/city within the ontology of brand undergirds the ultimate success of the place brand. The interdiscursive work that the brand ontology provides the place brand reorients national/regional identity into a class of other “things” called brands. As Nakassis has noted, “when we speak of brands, then, we are already talking about a metasemiotic relationship between some set of otherwise differently construed commoditized objects and a common formulation of them as members of the same class (e.g., as Puma, Reebok, Disney)” (Reference Nakassis2012, 628).
However, branding places differs from branding products and even corporations for the inevitable confrontation of long-standing ideologies of place and diverse histories and communities. Indeed, as one brander put it, “You don’t have to ask the beans in the can how they feel about the label” (Wally Olins, quoted in Aronczyk Reference Aronczyk2013, 81). In branding place, marketing professionals necessarily engage with existing place-based identities and reputations. In fact, branders often argue that in place branding their job consists merely of rebranding a nation, city, or region that already has a brand, thereby removing themselves from the active plane of creation (Aronczyk Reference Aronczyk2013). Olins (Reference Olins2014, 132) has argued that nations have always engaged in branding: “Branding the nation came into fashion with the Age of Enlightenment. The slogans, or straplines, or vision statements, as some people might now call them—‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’ and ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,’ respectively of revolutionary United States and newly republican France—set the style of nation building of the whole of the nineteenth century, when the modern nation emerged fully formed as an ideological construct.” While the strategic ideologies involved in nation branding are certainly connected to historical processes of nation formation (Comaroff and Comaroff Reference Comaroff and Comaroff2009, 123), by asserting the conventionality of place branding, branders obscure the subjective work involved in marketing. Instead, they position themselves as well trained to discover what was always already there. This is crucial, since as place brands inevitably erase identities, communities and histories determined not permissible in the reduced brand identity, branders themselves remain neutral in an objective realm untouchable by accusations of racism, sexism, or ageism (Aronczyk Reference Aronczyk2013).
In building on existing perceptions of place, place branders also seek to provide an aspirational and ultimately affective element to the brand identity. Cultivating affect entails particular conceptions of place, as well as potential consumers. Brands are increasingly dependent on the construal of affect in order to convey authenticity and structure relationships with the consumer: “Building a brand is about building an affective, authentic relationship with a consumer, one based … on the accumulation of memories, emotions, personal narratives and expectations. Brands create what Raymond Williams called a structure of feeling, an ethos of intangible qualities that resonate in different ways with varied communities” (Banet-Weiser Reference Banet-Weiser2012, 9). Place brands cannot be entirely constructed based on idealized consumer appeal however. They necessarily communicate both an aspirational place identity but also one that is recognizable to those who live there. It is thus regimented to multiple scales of legibility: it indexes, or points to, both place (local) and time (a hopeful future.) Branding place identity therefore relies on a careful balance between multiple social imaginaries—that which the brand promises, and that which is brandable. As Aronczyk notes, this balance also proceeds along the lines of strategic differentiation in relation to other competing places and nations: “As a point of differentiation, the brand essence must distinguish its object from its counterparts to allow it to emerge from a cluttered and competitive environment. Yet the identity cannot be so unique as to be outside the calculus of exchange; if its ultimate aim is to help its object circulate as a viable commodity in the marketplace, it must remain rooted in a relational context of functional similarity or standardization” (Reference Aronczyk2013, 75). As Aronczyk illustrates, branding place is ultimately contingent on a balance between profitably distinct place-based identities and a marketable place, subject to and legible within standardizing frameworks of the market.
As I argue here, the construction of a positive, representative, and attractive brand identity in Alsace was attempted by brand consultants through the regimentation of a particular quality “discovered” in Alsace’s past but newly construed through the brand: Alsace’s structured ambivalence. The quality of ambivalence is intended to function in the brand as an affective element in the brand identity—one through which tourists, foreign investors, university students and Alsatians themselves are invited to “feel” and “experience” Alsace. Therefore, rather than functioning as an index of Alsatian production, or a “source-identifying indexical” (Manning Reference Manning2012), the Alsace brand is intended to iconically convey the sensorial quality of Alsatianness. The construal of what has historically been stigmatized Alsatian duality, the “neither/nor-ness” of Alsace, is, through the brand emblematized as a positive quality iconically representative of Alsace.
The attractiveness of ambivalence is indeed not outside the purview of profitable brand development. As scholars have noted, ambivalence has the potential to facilitate brand promotion. Author Sarah Banet-Weiser (Reference Banet-Weiser2012, 218) has written, branders recognize ambivalence and indeterminacy as a space of potentiality: “Ambivalence, its lack of certainty, its inconsistency, the way it both harbors and is defined by doubt, is generally understood as a problem, something to avoid. Yet, it is important to take seriously the cultural value of emotion and affect and the potential of ambivalence, its generative power, for it is within these spaces that hope and anxiety, pleasure and desire, fear and insecurity are nurtured and maintained. Brand marketers realize the potential of ambivalence and capitalize on it.” The potential of ambivalence, as Banet-Weiser describes, constructs the brand as more real, personable, and affective. It capitalizes on engineered affect in order to create a more intimate prosthetic personality (Mazzarella Reference Mazzarella2003). Ambivalence, as a means through which to induce an intensified reaction to the brand, can, according to Banet-Weiser, be understood as at the root of the production of authenticity: “Individuals often feel ‘held’ by the intimacy of a brand culture: participating in brand cultures feels like participating in an ethical or moral frame, and they offer the ‘ongoing potential for relief from the hard, cold world.’ This affective sentiment, the feeling of authenticity, often does the cultural work of an inducement, attracting and retaining consumers as loyal members of a brand culture” (Reference Banet-Weiser2012, 219). Such strategies of engineering ambivalence and authenticity in brand cultures is expected to encourage brand adherence and loyalty. Doing so in Alsace through the Alsatian oxymoron requires the strategic emblematization of Alsatian duality, while reorienting what has long been seen as problematic heterogeneity into positively valenced “multiculturalism.”
Structured Ambivalence: The Case of Alsace
A meeting point between France, Germany, and Switzerland, Alsace and its inhabitants have claimed enormous linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity throughout their history. With the expansion of the homogenizing and delimiting ideologies of nationalism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, coupled with Alsace’s importance in the most significant European conflicts of the era, the region has come to be known as one caught between its two national neighbors, Germany and France. Indeed, between 1871 and 1945, the region changed hands between France and Germany no less than four times. Each change in national belonging brought with it associated and mandated shifts in language and culture, as well as the problematization of the former’s language and culture.
In this section I describe the historical constitution of what will later be described as the Alsatian oxymoron. Branders did not themselves create the form of the oxymoron; rather its semiotic blueprint was brought about over centuries of national, linguistic, and cultural processes of differentiation in Alsace. In order to understand these semiotic processes, I draw on Susan Gal’s (Reference Gal, Duchêne and Heller2012) recent formulation of axes of differentiation. As Gal (Reference Gal, Duchêne and Heller2012, 23) argues, ideologies do not emerge in isolation. Rather, ideologies are organized relationally through oppositional contrasts—axes of differentiation—on which contrasting values are allocated to linguistic forms. She points us to the contrast of “smooth” and “rough” in precolonial Java, as well as to the axis of differentiation of “restraint” and “volatility” in Senegal (22–23). As Gal further notes, the semiotic organization of such ideological frames is bound to change in predictable ways: “there is a characteristic form of change imagined in such ideologies: fractal recursion. An opposition, salient at some level of relationship, can be projected onto other levels” (23). In Alsace, the polar construction of national identities (French Alsace and German Alsace) can be understood as a particular process of ideological framing in which the constitution of one necessarily invokes the construction of its other. The ideological opposition of French-Alsace and German-Alsace occurs recursively over time to produce and reproduce erasures of elements of Alsatian regional identity that do not conform to the dichotomous poles prescribed by the contradictory form (Irvine and Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000).
In saying that the opposition of French and German is an important frame through which languages, objects, and cultures are understood and accorded value in Alsace, I do not mean to imply that is it the only possible frame. To do so would drastically belie the complex development of linguistic and cultural practices in the region (cf. Gardner-Chloros Reference Gardner-Chloros1991; Huck, Bothorel-Witz, and Geiger-Jaillet Reference Huck, Bothorel-Witz and Geiger-Jaillet2005). Here I seek to explore the particular development of one contrast that has particular salience in the branding work that has taken place in the region.
Drawing on local and scholarly accounts of regional experiences, I explore three particular moments in Alsatian history that elucidate the historical constitution of such a contrast: one during the Alsatian incorporation to Louis XIV’s France in 1648, then the annexation of Alsace to Prussia in 1871, and lastly Alsace’s annexation to and subsequent liberation from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Notwithstanding their disparate chronologies and historically contextual nuances, each moment reveals the recursive construction of a particular ideological contrast between French Alsace and German Alsace (Le Monde 2010).
Louis XIV’s Croissants
Louis XIV annexed the territory of Alsace in 1648 following the Thirty Years’ War, which had proved disastrous for the young region. Following the decimation of more than half of the region’s population in the war that succeeded in taking Alsace from the Holy German Empire, King Louis XIV later chose not to seek the conversion of the Alsatians’ religion, language, or culture, reportedly saying, “Il ne faut pas toucher aux affaires d’Alsace” (Keep out of Alsatian affairs). Louis XIV was apparently at no great pains to convert the region to Catholicism, nor was he interested in the immediate spread of the French language. The onset of such decidedly national projects would begin only with the French Revolution in 1789. Interestingly, however, according to regional histories, the king did perceive a lack of French culture in the region and took pains to extend an intentionally welcoming gesture to Alsatians. According to one scholar of Alsace, a particular effort was received with suspicion: “Lorsque Louis XIV a demandé à Louvois de déposer les croissants chauds dans la boîte aux lettres des Alsaciens, ces derniers ont fait la fine bouche. La légèreté de la pâte leur semblait suspecte. Les dents alsaciennes, habituées au dur pain allemand, eurent du mal à s’y faire” (When Louis XIV asked Louvois [his secretary of state] to deliver hot croissants to Alsatians’ mailboxes, Alsatians turned up their noses. The lightness of the dough to them seemed suspicious. Alsatian teeth, accustomed to hard German bread, struggled to adjust; Martin Graff, cited in Hoffet Reference Hoffet[1951] 2011). According to this story, Alsatians were not only culturally and linguistically German, they were physically German, with German teeth and tastes, making them ill equipped to savor the light French fare. The legend of Louis XIV’s croissants, which for the quoting historian represents the extent of the historical misunderstanding of Alsace, is here recursively tied to croissants and hard German bread. Furthermore, hard German teeth are opposed with perhaps weaker, more delicate French teeth. As the author goes on with his metaphor, it is the “dental problem” (problème dentaire) of the Alsatians that keeps them from speaking French as the Parisians do: “It comes from a chewing problem from which Alsatians suffer today” (Martin Graff, cited in Hoffet Reference Hoffet[1951] 2011, 15). These sensuous qualities of hard and soft, heavy and light, which intrinsically have no connection to either French or German national identity, are meaningfully signified as iconic of the communities to which they are attributed. In the above case, the “dental problem” suffered by Alsatians is iconic of their perennial “neither/nor” status, their national incoherence.
L’Alsace, est-elle allemande ou française?
Throughout and following the French Revolution of 1789, which was itself largely encouraged by the burgeoning discourses and ideologies of the nation and national identity, Alsace, along with other non-French-speaking regions in France, was problematized for its linguistic and cultural heterogeneity. Revolutionaries scoured the countryside to determine the means through which to “eradicate” such “anti-Republican” languages and cultures (De Certeau and Revel Reference De Certeau, Julia and Revel1975). Nearly one hundred years later, despite the lingering French suspicion of the true national spirit of the inhabitants of Alsace, the local Alsatian dialect and the regular use of German language remained relatively constant. In 1871, upon the French capitulation ending the Franco-Prussian war, it was this linguistic diversity that was cited as the reason for the German annexation of Alsace and its neighboring region of Lorraine. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, seeking to both expand and reunite the imagined (Anderson Reference Anderson1991) German territories of Europe, sought the annexation as a return to the natural spirit of the region.
Notwithstanding the previous Parisian distrust of Alsace, the French nation was engulfed in often rancorous debates over Alsace and Lorraine’s “true” home. It was avidly debated by academics, who simultaneously debated the meaning and nature of the nation itself. This is most clearly evidenced in Fustel de Coulange’s plaintive letter “L’Alsace, est-elle allemande ou française?” (Alsace, is it German or French?). Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830–89) was a well-known French historian who, in 1870 was forced to leave his post at the University of Strasbourg upon the return of German sovereignty. In his now famous exchange of several letters with German historian Théodore Mommsen, Fustel de Coulanges engages the debate of whether the region’s rightful place is with France or Germany. Fustel de Coulanges invokes his own experience of emotions, feelings, and affinities to underscore the region’s “Frenchness”—if not in language, then in spirit. As he says:
If your reasons tell you that Alsace must have a German heart, my eyes and my ears assure me that it has the French heart. You affirm from afar, “that it keeps an oppositional provincial spirit against France”; I’ve seen it up close; I have known men of all classes, of all religions, of all political parties, and I didn’t find this oppositional spirit against France anywhere. You insinuate that it has an antipathy towards men of Paris; I pride myself on knowing with what sympathy it accepts them. Of heart and spirit, Alsace is one of our most French provinces. (cited in Heffernan Reference Heffernan2001)
De Coulanges anthropomorphizes Alsace to speak of her heart and her spirit. While he strays from the Romantic essentialism of language in the nationalist project, he pits the German language against the French heart and spirit. He cites his own experiential knowledge and feelings that inform him—not of the potential duality of the region—but rather its profound Frenchness. It is French despite its German roots.
The primordial nationality of the region became a popular scholarly topic during the late nineteenth century, culminating in several studies connecting Alsatian biology, language, and nationality. Some scholars attempted to prove, by studying the shape of skulls, that Alsatians were really descendents of Celts and that, as a result, the language spoken in Alsace was Celtic (Vassberg Reference Vassberg1993, 11–12). Thus in the aggregation of biology, physiology, nation, and language, French—or in this case Celtic (in later oppositions, Latin)—is oppositionally defined as not-German. As one author noted, it was this era in particular that, through a seeming paradox, cemented the “Frenchness” of the Alsatian region, which had been reclaimed by Germany on account of its “Germanness” (Leinhard Reference Leinhard2011, 48).
Salz und Pfeffer, or sel et poivre?
The 1918 German defeat ending WWI returned Alsace to French nationality. And while there were immediately national celebrations to welcome the region and its inhabitants back to their “proper” geopolitical place, the return to France also brought increased—and abrupt—centralization and intense standardization of the French language. German styles and culture were discouraged and stigmatized, and the region was forced to look to Paris for its governance.
In 1940, Alsace was annexed to Nazi Germany (in contrast to the rest of France, which was occupied territory) and subjected to a harsh program of re-Germanization. While not considered full “German citizens” by the Third Reich, Alsatians were subjected to brutal Germanification policies that sought to restore their “Germanness” in a matter of 10 years (Leinhard Reference Leinhard2011, 52). French language and emblems of French identity were outlawed—even the beret—to the extent that German soldiers handed out German-style hats and caps (Vassberg Reference Vassberg1993, 20). French on street signs, monuments, newspapers, gravestones, and even salt and pepper shakers was changed to German. Fines were issued for public use of the French language, which in some cases was even punishable by incarceration in jail or in the Alsatian concentration camp in Schirmeck. Full German citizenship was bestowed only in cases of forcible (or voluntary) conscription into the German army, the Wehrmacht. As Vassberg (Reference Vassberg1993, 21) notes, “Between 1941 and 1944, some 140,000 Alsatian men, aged 17–38 were forcibly enlisted into the Wehrmacht, and sent, for the most part, to the Russian front. About 30,000 of these men died.” The stories of forced assimilation, brutality, and conscription feature heavily in the discussions of the Alsatian identity today; and the story of the men drafted into the German army, now known as the malgré-nous, or the “despite ourselves,” was only recently recognized as forced conscription by Nicolas Sarkozy.
Following Allied victory in 1945 and the restoration of Alsace to France, many Alsatians adopted the intense French aversion to German culture and language in reaction to the traumatic effects of their annexation and occupation. Alsatian identity continued to be beset by questions of national allegiance, and many Alsatians were accused of collaborating with the Nazis, voluntarily enlisting in the Wehrmacht, or even continuing to work as spies. The Alsatian denial of Germanic heritage and language therefore did not lead to an immediate acceptance by the larger French population. Rather, the indictment of German culture in Alsace spread to various cultural activities and came to rest heavily on the Alsatian language. Many parents began speaking French and not Alsatian to their children and refused to discuss the trauma of the war. To dissuade the use of Alsatian language, often perceived as the language of the enemy, billboards were erected that proclaimed, “C’est Chic de Parler Français!” (It’s chic to speak French!). Indeed, as Vassberg (Reference Vassberg1993, 26) states, “In some sense, too, Alsatians could blame their dialect for their miseries. Was it not because of the dialect that Hitler could refer to Alsace’s place in Deutschtum? And was not the forced enlistment of young Alsatians into the Wehrmacht considerably facilitated by their knowledge of a German dialect?”
Postwar: More French Than the French
Author Frédéric Hoffet wrote, in his 1951 book, “A Psychoanalysis of Alsace,” that “the biggest fear for the Alsatian … is to be what he is.” Although this sentiment follows the very difficult period of the Second World War, it bespeaks an unease that can be seen today. Consider the perpetual “neither/nor-ness” indirectly called forth by a recent (Reference Hoffet2011) cover story of the popular magazine L’Express. The title reads boldly “Alsatians Faced with Their Stereotypes,” followed by provocative questions that are meant to incite consumers to pick up and buy the magazine but that also reflect the broader ideologies through which the region continues to be understood: “Germans of France? An Omnipresent Dialect?”
The text of the article goes on, of course, to mitigate the bold questions posed. No, Alsatians are not German; they are French. And while many in the region continue to use the dialect, its use is declining quickly, with little government support to prevent the language from being lost. The projects aimed at consolidating the regional identity under the framework of a national French or national German identity have left their mark on the region and the nation. The region is understood in the French imaginary as “different” because of the complicated history, which, according to Alsatians has made them “more French than the French,” for all their efforts to be seen as fully French citizens.
Each of the above historical moments in Alsatian history marks an instance of further semiotic distancing of the axis of differentiation that regiments all things recruited, produced, or circulated as either French or German. Multilingual and multicultural Alsace continues to occupy the space in between these identities constructed as polar opposites, which contributes to the maintenance of the oxymoron in the Alsatian imagination. Not only has the axis of differentiation between France and Germany been carried forth, reified, institutionalized, and objectified in the Alsatian imagination, but the form of the oxymoron itself has emerged as an ontological frame through which Alsace and Alsatian identity are readily perceived. In the next section I examine the reconstruction of this objectified contrast through the modality of brand.
ImaginAlsace: Producing Identity, Rebranding Oxymorons
In May 2011, brand consultants presented the results of their research into the Alsatian identity, which they called the “Identity Portrait of Alsace” to an audience of regional government officials, professionals in the tourism industry, and regional leaders of commerce. This document—the synthesis of an expansive study—would elucidate the emblems and elements of, as they argued, the real Alsatian identity that would be most profitably foregrounded in the brand. Alsace, they concluded, had too much notoriety for its past, for the struggles of identity between French-Alsace and German-Alsace, yet the region did not have enough recognition for its modernity—its economic and political potential, particularly as the site of several European governing bodies (e.g., the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights). The brand, they argued, needed both to emphasize the commercial and entrepreneurial advantages of the region, while also regimenting and rendering attractive the question of Alsatian identity. Branders presented the “Identity Portrait” as a blueprint through which to organize the Alsatian brand identity—a remodeling that in part came to rest on the production of the Alsatian oxymoron.
Throughout the course of the 300-page “Identity Portrait” and its accompanying study, the Diagnostic for Attractiveness, Alsace is picked apart, compartmentalized, aggregated and parsed according to its relative potential in the ultimate brand. The “Identity Portrait” was first and foremost an investigative foray for the branding consultants into the region’s colors, feelings, smells, and landscapes. One consultant in particular performed focus groups, interviews, and even engaged in quasi-ethnographic research to determine the ways people talk about Alsatian identity, the ways inhabitants of Alsace feel about their region, and what they feel might allow the region to radiate (rayonner) internationally. Drawing on new platforms of consumer connectivity, the branding agency created a blog through which to survey a wider number of Alsatians as to the sounds, genders, and psychology of the region. Drawing on a total subject population of nearly 5,000 Alsatians and having analyzed their responses according to an internally produced and trademarked grid of territorial competitiveness, the branding agency presented their findings to a largely Alsatian audience, as the true and authentic identity of Alsace. While the majority of the presentation broadly outlined the significant emblems, personalities, and notable aspects of Alsatian culture, the presentation concludes with a redirection of the compartmentalized elements of Alsace into a strictly brandable formation—into the new model of personhood that would represent the new Alsace. While the underrepresentation of Alsatian modernity was given a clear solution through the promise of enhanced communications techniques in brand form, the “problem” of the Alsatian “trauma” was the subject of explicit work in order to be reproduced as “structured ambivalence.” According to Mazzarella, while a circulating commodity image is sure to be “reproduced—reworked—every time it resonates with local projects and situated desires … before it is launched on its journey, it is produced as the specific configuration of word and image that will enter into these encounters” (Reference Moore2003, 167). Thus when it came time to create Alsace the brand, branding consultants approached the idea of Alsace as a composite of emblems—static and legible as Alsatian—that can be reworked, recreated through processes of bricolage, which, as Mazzarella describes, is “a restless dialectical movement between concrete images and discursive meanings, between seduction and narrativization” (167).
As the “Identity Portrait” and its diagnostics demonstrate, Alsace already has a strong and unique identity, known throughout Europe. The region is well known in Europe and France and holds a positive image centered on tourism and tradition. Branders concluded that the region has great entrepreneurial potential, with a firm client base that recognizes the elements of terroir that make Alsatian products different. The wine and beer industries in particular were found to be adept both in coherently branding themselves as Alsatian and in maintaining thriving and ever-expanding profit margins. They found that Alsace enjoys an identity that is both rich and unique. It is, as they note, “a world apart, with an identity similar to that of a nation, with its own symbols, languages, music, literature, culture, comportment, and laws.”Footnote 2 Furthermore, they note that the unique geographic, cultural, and historic significance of the region in European history has led to a richly complex identity, which they positively label as a “fertile hybrid” which forms a coherent whole.
The Alsatian oxymoron, for branders, is both Alsace’s strength and its primary weakness. Alsatian identity is, as they note, “misunderstood in its reality; it is complex and sometimes paradoxical, which doesn’t always communicate attractiveness.” However, when such structured ambivalence is rendered positive, it can also serve to set the region apart from its competitors. The oxymorons listed by the branding consultants are numerous: “Latin/Germanic; a whole/a mosaic; urban/rural; citizen of the world/isolated in Heimat [an Alsatian/German word meaning “home”]; open/closed; rooted/cosmopolitan; traditional/pioneering; proud/burdened; serious/humorous; at the center of Europe/at the margins of France (and Germany); superiority/modesty.”Footnote 3 While the oxymorons, and their more favorable counterpart—the fertile hybrid—are varied, they are only made meaningful for Alsace through the long-standing oppositional axis of differentiation of German and French national belonging.
In the conclusion of the “Identity Portrait” (the “Identity Synthesis”), the myriad aspects of Alsatian identity are culled into a nascent coherent form. In what comes below I draw on branders’ visual renderings of the Alsatian identity to demonstrate the explicit metadiscursive regimentation of the Alsatian brand identity. Each aspect of Alsace is ordered according to its contributive potential in the brand form. Emblems of Alsatian, French, and German identities are diagrammatically relegated to their “proper” space as in a Venn diagram. The artistic rendering of the regional identity in the “Identity Portrait” presentation portrays the Alsatian identity as if through a time progression. The audience sees the various facets of the Alsatian identity overlap, exchange with one another, change shape, change name, or disappear completely.
In the first image (fig. 1), a red circle represents the region’s entire, spatialized identity. Inside that circle, posed as overlapping, yet discrete elements of the larger sphere, Geography and History are positioned as two, potentially dichotomous aspects of Alsace. Each carries its own, encapsulated narrative: while geography is described positively as “a strategic territory between the Vosges Mountains and the Rhine river,” the metalabel of “history” is clearly negatively valenced, described as “a coveted and disputed land, caught between a rock and a hard place, with a particularly eventful history.” While the choice of word eventful (mouvementée) here understates the historical legacy of conflict in the region, the category of “history” as potentially problematic is counterposed to the positively rendered “geography,” and their interaction is described underneath both categories as creating an identity that is more marked and explicit than elsewhere.
Identity Portrait of Alsace: Geography and History, 239. Slide from the presentation of the Identity Portrait conclusion. Courtesy of Comanaging and the Agence de l'Attractivité d'Alsace, http://www.marque-alsace.fr/le-portrait.
In the second image (fig. 2), the “Identity Portrait” shifts in both time and space to reveal the more complex and layered aspects of both geographic and historical identities in Alsace. Along the geographic side of the Alsatian bubble, a European identity encapsulates the Rhine and Swiss identities, while the Vosges mountain identities remains in a slightly smaller but distinct area. Inside Alsace’s “history” category, the aspects of regional heritage are determined along geographic boundaries. Rather than counterposing French and German, the “Identity Portrait” obscures the national element of the conflicts and articulates them as naturally bound, associated with the physical aspects of the Alsatian landscape. Germanic heritage is aligned with “across the Rhine river” (Outre-Rhin/germanique), while the region’s French heritage, here called “Latin,” is aligned with “across the Vosges mountains” (Outre-Vosges/latine). In the synthesis of the Alsatian identity, the brand identity appears to be above historically national disputes, to instead feature the naturally conflicting and discretely identifiable cultures of Alsace. Hovering between the geographic and historical elements is Alsatian cosmopolitanism. Neither geographic nor historical, it rises above both.
Identity Portrait of Alsace: Geography and History, 240. Courtesy of Comanaging and the Agence de l'Attractivité d'Alsace, http://www.marque-alsace.fr/le-portrait.
In the next image (fig. 3), condensing Alsatian identity further, the distinct spheres of Germanic and Latin identities are reconfigured as overlapping elements of bicultural and French identities. Again in a strategic move to sidestep the national nature of historical conflict, the branded visual rendering of the partial and malleable Alsatian personality is oriented toward politically safe yet attractively exotic multiculturalism. Finally, in the last image (fig. 4), the strategy to render the future brand identity is promised to integrate the former fractured image of Alsace with the more inclusive understanding of Alsace as a meeting place of plural identities that together form a coherent whole, revealed to be the fertile hybrid of Alsatian identity. The identity rendered brandable is as layered, yet entirely coherent, as the Russian nesting dolls with which brand consultants close their presentation (fig. 5).
Identity Portrait of Alsace: Geography and History, 241. Courtesy of Comanaging and the Agence de l'Attractivité d'Alsace, http://www.marque-alsace.fr/le-portrait.
Identity Portrait of Alsace: Geography and History, 248. Courtesy of Comanaging and the Agence de l'Attractivité d'Alsace, http://www.marque-alsace.fr/le-portrait.
Identity Portrait of Alsace: Geography and History, 255. Courtesy of Comanaging and the Agence de l'Attractivité d'Alsace, http://www.marque-alsace.fr/le-portrait.
The structuring of productive ambivalence that takes problematic duality to the level of fertile hybrid or attractive oxymoron involves both the simultaneous reification and transcendence of the centuries old contrast of French Alsace and German Alsace. The Alsatian oxymoron that positions tradition/innovation, local/cosmopolitan, and realistic/utopia on dichotomously differentiated poles is not the opposition between French and German. Rather, these contrasts grow recursively from the iconic duality that underwrites the Alsatian oxymoron. By inscribing duality and ambiguity into the brand form with the intention of deriving profitable singularity therefrom, branders seek to performatively reorient the projects of differentiation from French/German, to a new axis of differentiation of profitable/unprofitable, and more specifically profitable multiculturalism/unprofitable singularity. In the Alsatian oxymoron, we see the performative reorientation of projects of differentiation along relational axes to no longer oppose German/French, traditional/modern, Latin/Germanic but rather to strategically maintain the structured ambivalence of these forms on one end of an axis in which they are profitable—while national singularity, identity, and culture lie on the opposite end of a new contrast. But it is only through the maintenance and reproduction of these old tensions in which the scheduled oxymoron is rendered significant. Once the Alsatian region no longer appears complex and schizophrenic, the oxymoron loses its profitable appeal in the brand. Thus, it is in the complex calibration between the brand ontology and the brand identity that branders hope to both maintain and subvert historical projects of differentiation.
The brand and the “Identity Portrait” performatively reconstitute each oxymoron as an opposite on an axis of differentiation as the brand also performatively resignifies the contrast itself as profitable. Branders work toward a complex process of regimenting the proper recognition of place, people, and brand—as well as constituting and repositioning what must be recognized. In the creation of the brand identity, the “Identity Portrait” presentation became the site through which to guide the proper reading of Alsace in the recruitment of certain signs and the erasure of others (Irvine and Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000). In an effort to render the oxymoron into fertile hybridity, branders rely on the long held ideologies of the nation to reconstitute Alsace as productively ambivalent.
Embodied Brands and the Circulation of Ambivalence
In closing, it is necessary to acknowledge the fact that the regimentation of Alsatian brand identity described above represents an ideal iteration of the brand that had not yet encountered the contradictions and the potential misreadings that brands face in their circulation (Moore Reference Moore2003; Nakassis Reference Nakassis2012, Reference Nakassis2013; Reyes Reference Reyes2013). Indeed, the circulation of the branded oxymoron is now subject to the resignification, counterfeiting, and misrecognitions that may collapse any brandable added value it was intended to instantiate. I explore one instance of controlled circulation below of a webisode—sponsored by the regional brand promotion agency—in which a CEO of an international corporation who leads his headquarters in Strasbourg is interviewed about his feelings, impressions, and love for Alsace. More importantly, he is asked to explicitly engage with the Alsace brand identity as a brand “ambassador.” A series of such webisodes is hosted by a young woman named Valérie who leads short, five-minute interviews with Alsatian business owners.
In the carefully staged scene, both the host and guest are positioned in bright red chairs around a table in the form of the Alsace brand logo. The show host asks various questions of her guest: What do you do? Where are you located?—and, most importantly—What do you love about Alsace? While the scene itself iconically invokes the brand’s colors, lines, and image, each question asked by the host guide both the guest and the audience in their experience of Alsace through the brand’s message. Richard, a nonnative of Alsace, is asked to explain his first impressions of Alsace and how the region both exceeded and confirmed his expectations. The host, Valérie, follows his comments with a question reflexively reminding both the interviewee and the audience of the show’s intent to circulate the brand to business owners:
Valérie (nodding): Alors d’après vous qu’est-ce qui peut faire rayonner l’Alsace? [So, what do you think can best communicate Alsace?]
Richard: En fait les gros atouts de l’Alsace sont son positionnement géographique, c’est une ville qui est vraiment centrale par rapport à l’Europe. Et c’est vraiment une position qu’on peut exploiter. La deuxième chose est sa proximité avec l’Allemagne. On voit tous que l’Allemagne est un pays qui connait plutôt de succès en ce moment … et surtout moi, j’ai toujours cru en l’apport de la multiculturalité, et évidemment l’Alsace est l’endroit par définition où on peut mélanger la culture Allemande et Française, et on tire la meilleure des deux. [In fact the biggest assets of Alsace are its geographic position, it is a place that is really central in regards to Europe. And that’s really a position that is useful. The second thing is its proximity to Germany. Everyone knows that Germany is a country that has known great success recently … and especially, I’ve always believed in the potential of multiculturalism, and obviously Alsace is a place where, by definition one can mix German and French cultures, and take the best things from each of them.]
He explicitly relies on the branded reformulation of Alsace as a region of Europe, wherein one can do better business than in a place like Paris. The opportunities for a truly European business headquarters are understood here to be best facilitated by Alsace’s geographical location. Yet, as in the “Identity Portrait” described above, Alsatian geographic and historic multiplicity are intrinsically co-constitutive. Where there is geographic convenience, for this European business leader, there is also advantageous multiculturalism, through which Alsatian diversity is marked as decidedly positive and potentially profitable. It is also, however, marked as a mixture—not of natural hybridity—but of two distinct and bounded cultures that have been cleverly cobbled together.
The last segment of the interview involves the guest’s imagined embodiment of the Alsatian brand. Excitedly, the host declares it time for the “Alsatian Portrait” and turns to her guest with her first question. If you, she asks, were an Alsatian place, what would you be? Following his answer she starts anew, “What Alsatian innovation would you be?” Finally, she asks him to embody the Alsatian brand personality entirely:
Valérie: Et enfin, un oxymore alsacien? [And finally, an Alsatian oxymoron?]
Richard: L’oxymore alsacien je pense qu’il va être en ligne avec ce que j’ai dit depuis le début, c’est que je pense que les alsaciens sont beaucoup plus chaleureux que ce qu’on dit, donc je dirais la chaleur alsacienne. [The Alsatian oxymoron I think will be in line with what I’ve said from the start. I think that Alsatians are much warmer than what people say, so I would say Alsatian warmth.]
In being asked to reframe himself as an Alsatian oxymoron, this CEO is asked to both recognize and problematize Alsace as an attractive contradiction. He is asked to note those things about Alsace that serve as productive and perhaps surprising contradictions, which solidify Alsatian brand identity on the plane of profitability. Asked to performatively create his own Alsatian oxymoron, he is also asked to build on the region’s historical particularity, while reorienting it to fit neoliberal models of attractiveness. While official examples of this duality have included tropes of “local universality,” “concrete imagination,” and “tranquil intensity,”
Richard’s example also attempts an emblematized and neutralized recursion of differentiation. And so, in the example he provides, Alsatian is counterposed with warmth instantiated as its opposite—through which he affirms his appreciation and surprise at the friendliness of the inhabitants of Alsace.
Conclusion
The case of branding in Alsace reveals the ways in which branding place is more than an aesthetic renovation of a region’s international image. Rather, branding place requires the negotiation of place-based identities and ideologies through the work of creating a coherent and authentic brand identity. Through the labor of branding regional identity, specific emblems and icons that lend to the production of a profitable brand identity are indexically regimented to the new model of personhood (Agha Reference Agha2007) promoted in the brand. The construction of the Alsatian oxymoron, however, which lies at the center of the new Alsatian brand identity, represents a more complex scheduling (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003) of Alsatian diversity. In the form of the oxymoron, I have argued that branding consultants seek to emblematize Alsatian historical duality—reconstructed on the historically familiar axis of differentiation of French-German national and linguistic identity—so that it may circulate as a static and fixed element that indexes the brand form as well as the idealized Alsatian social persona. It forms the brand identity as an indexical icon that both resembles, and guides the perception of, Alsatian identity. Through semiotic strategies of brand, the Alsatian duality is artfully emblematized (e.g., French-German, local-international) and then remapped onto an axis of differentiation that renders ambivalence attractive in relation to national homogeneity. However, it is only through the calibration of these semiotic relations that the Alsatian oxymoron, and the larger Alsatian brand, comes to attain a resolved exoticism.
In this article I have sought to explore the ways in which brand identity is regimented in a particularly fraught instance of regional branding. The semiotic ordering of historical conflict into profitable ambivalence reveals both the continuity and change inherent in projects of cultural and linguistic production. The kinds of labor involved in the production of brand identities bespeaks the complexities in the objectification, marketing, and branding of cultural difference. Relying as place brands often must on juxtapositions of existing and aspirational identities, place brands often straddle multivalent and potentially contradictory spaces of reifying and explicitly exceeding historical borders.
