At the end of August, the sociologist Michel Wieviorka published in L’Express a long analysis to explain that France was very far from being invaded by Wokism, and that the comparisons with the United States made little sense. The text provoked many reactions. Author of two notes on “woke ideology” for the Fondapol think tank, Pierre Valentin, who was quoted by Michel Wieviorka, sent us this response. We publish it in order to keep the debate alive.
Any pandemic will always have its so-called “reassuring” virologists. Faced with the woke virus, we have Michel Wieviorka in France. In a text published by the Express, Mr. Wieviorka deplores the use of “medical metaphors which pathologize social questions rather than tackling them in substance”, and seems to want to attribute the viral metaphor concerning “cancel culture” to the minister of Education. Whoever did me the courtesy of reading it, and I’m very grateful for it, forgets that this analogy came from woke thinkers, not their detractors. Jacques Derrida himself affirmed that one could summarize, by schematizing, “the matrix of all that [qu’il] has done since he began to write “, to a” parasitology, a virology “, a metaphor then taken up by black feminism via Breanne Fahs and Michael Karger in 2016. Do these authors pathologize their own work?
“Our country cannot be used by Pierre Valentin to illustrate a phenomenon considered to be threatening to our culture,” affirms Michel Wieviorka, adding that “those who denounce the hold of” wokism “at the university have few heavy facts or trends strong to report “. It would be to forget the very exhaustive Report on ideological manifestations at university and in research published last May by the Observatory of decolonialism and identity ideologies.
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The cascade, the avalanche of raw facts is there, indisputable: twenty-three pages of “examples of theses in human and social sciences” woke, seventeen pages of examples of manifestations of “cancel culture” in the world university, twenty pages of examples of teaching, courses and other woke seminars, eleven pages on “journals and events in the human and social sciences” wokised. In America ? UK ? In Canada ? No, in France, and with very recent examples to back it up.
In France, we came close to the privilege of having our own little Evergreen (an American university which in 2017 was the scene of riots against a professor of biology, Bret Weinstein Editor’s note) to us, when the names of two professors of Sciences Po Grenoble having been accused of “Islamophobia” were plastered on the walls of the university. This event took place just a few months after the beheading of Samuel Paty, pushing the authorities to place these two teachers under police protection. The intention was clear, or at least the risk assumed.
“Michel Wieviorka prefers to play the card of blindness”
Despite the very obviousness of this heavy trend, according to the statements of many researchers and professors from the French academic world, Michel Wieviorka prefers to play the card of blindness: “research and teaching in the human and social sciences are only getting started. little on the way of “woke” and other perspectives associated with it, “cancel culture”, “race relations”, etc. Yes, there are militant groups which carry ideologies linked to “woke” or “cancel culture “, on the margins of the university, even within it, and a few researchers, teachers and students are involved. But there is nothing very significant here.” If the problem is fortunately not entirely denied, it is all the same frankly minimized.
As for French companies, he also judges that “nothing shows that they are and will be confronted more and more massively with the problems subsumed by the term” woke “”. Why on earth did Arielle Schwab and Benoît Lozé de Havas Paris feel the urgent need to work on a white paper to “help French companies answer the questions raised by the American woke wave”? Why are we now seeing more and more French brands communicating in inclusive writing on social networks? Several people from the French entrepreneurial world have already contacted me to discuss this subject, a sign of the interest that many of them have in it, as this also demonstrates this article from L’Opinion.
Michel Wieviorka also writes: “Facts, analyzes: to counter” wokism “, almost everything is imported”. The fact of relying on Anglo-Saxon analyzes in the analysis of Wokism is perfectly assumed. Otherwise, it would amount to complaining – to use the metaphor – that we are relying on Covid-19 vaccines manufactured in countries more infected (and therefore better informed) than us.
A fight between irreconcilable lefts
In the study drafted for the Foundation for Political Innovation, almost all of the authors quoted haphazardly claim to be liberalism, progressivism and the center left. By treating them as “conservatives”, Michel Wieviorka joined Wokism in the desire not to qualify his intellectual adversaries, but to disqualify them, even if it meant sinking into gross inaccuracies.
In addition, in sociology, rigorous labeling of each other is fundamental. Believing that this left, sometimes liberal, always republican, would descend from Edmund Burke or Sir Roger Scruton leaves one wondering. If this fight “targets the left” – we will readily admit it – it is more precisely a certain left which is targeted by another. This debate is thus essentially that of two irreconcilable lefts, and not a joust between the left and the right, unless it is officially admitted that the labels “right” or “conservative” are now only foils and not legitimate categories. of political sociology.
An exponential dynamic
The other problem with denying the problem of French Wokism is that one is forced to deny obvious curves and dynamics. Without being fatalistic, the IFOP poll for L’Express in February clearly announces the exponential aspect of the popularity of French Wokism. In 2013/2014, no one knew what “inclusive writing” was. Today, 13% of the French population adheres to it, and this writing already dominates many French universities. The administration of the Sorbonne is crazy about it.
15% of the French population believe that “white privilege” corresponds to a reality in our society, 19% for the concept of “rape culture”. These terms did not exist yesterday, and they are now part of our public debate. Moreover, what emerges from this survey is that it is the young people – graduates or in the process of being so – from the well-to-do classes who are the most woke. That is to say, the cultural, political, institutional, academic, and media elites of tomorrow.
It is interesting to study the evolutions and the reversals of “reassuring” virologists in recent years. Faced with the mutant postmodernism of American universities from the years 1990 to 2010, they explained that this phenomenon was only intellectual. Faced with the demonstrations of student wokism on US campuses from 2012 to 2017, they asserted that this phenomenon was neither significant nor dangerous. Faced with the events of Evergreen University in 2017, they conceded that if this movement could involve dangers and excesses, it would remain confined to American universities. When America elects a president, Joe Biden, who takes up the latest woke concepts and reserves allowances for non-whites, they explain to us that if wokism is well off campuses, only American will remain. When the United Kingdom gets down to it, Wokism is just an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. And faced with the beginning of French Wokism, we have the speech of Michel Wieviorka.
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Perhaps Mr. Wieviorka is one of those who, noting that a fire has ravaged the neighboring houses, does not care about the smell of smoke emanating from theirs. Even criticize those who would cry fire a little too loudly. Or with the bad taste to do it too early.
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