Discourse, 32.3, Fall 2010, pp. 348–351. Copyright © 2011 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309. ISSN 1522-5321. Book Reviews Mediated Bodies: The Production of the Colonized Francophone Subject Jaimie Baron French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism by Peter J. Bloom. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. 265 pages. $75.00 hardback, $25.00 paperback. The French Third Republic (1870–1940) coincided with the inven- tion not only of cinema but also of many other technologies— including Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotography of bodies in motion, the microphonographe (a precursor to the hearing aid), and the ergograph (which measured muscle fatigue)—which in turn were yoked to the state and to the imperial project of examin- ing, classifying, and representing different kinds of human bod- ies. Through the use of these technologies, the body of “natural man,” the colonized subject under French colonial rule, was set in opposition to the French (male) body. The various recordings and measurements taken of the colonized body, according to Peter Bloom’s French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism, helped to justify French colonization as part of a humanitarian, civilizing mission, a mission that Bloom suggests is perpetuated even now in images that seek to justify Western humanitarian intervention in developing nations. In preparing this book, Bloom conducted extensive archival research, and he puts a vast array of diverse objects—from postcards, advertisements, and flms, to scientifc inventions and schools of philosophy—in dialogue with