| Zusammenfassung: | Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the regional governing bodies of Martinique, an Overseas Département of France, maintained a well-funded cultural program that was unique in its dedication to the development of an identity that was distinct from the national culture of France but without any accompanying separatist rhetoric. In analyzing the characteristics of the ideal Martinican "cultural citizen," I argue, we must recognize the central place of individualism in the French nationalist cultural prototype so as to expose structural similarities between French and Martinican official cultural identities. We must also identify the cultural equivalent of linguistic zero signifiers, that is, the absent qualities of the cultural citizen, which expose social divisions antithetical to Martinican bureaucratic and political interests. I focus on race and language as two examples of these absences.
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