Five years ago, elective and partisan politics seemed to reconnect with the world of intellectuals. Benoît Hamon attracted intellectuals and journalists with new ideas. We remember the abundant use of the theses ofErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe by the campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, at the time, crossed Bastille-Nation-République arm in arm with the theorist of the “left populism”.
It must be recognized that neither Hamon nor Mélenchon balked at the time on the call for reinforcement from the intellectuals, whose work and image they were able to use. We could then believe in the great return of intellectuals in partisan and electoral life. Both undoubtedly saw in these companionships what they had missed in the past, and a way of breaking the impasses inherited from three decades of operation of the partisan left as influenced by the partisan springs of the PS in particular. 2017 was marked on the left by the great return of the “collective intellectual” as an idea.
Zemmour, sole object of the mobilizations of intellectuals?
This year, it is against Éric Zemmour that the intellectuals have organized themselves and have contributed, through individual or collective works, to invalidating the theses of the polemicist-candidate, to putting them back in a historical perspective and to intervene in the political arena to give the citizen and their readers serious and substantiated foundations. Among them, Laurent Joly denounced the “falsification of history” by Zemmour.
The candidate has, year after year, established himself as an “intellectual”, if not a historian. Cécile Alduy has, in her field, worked to decipher the words of the Zemmourian speech. Solo or in teams, the intellectuals of the academic world most versed in intervention in public debate have not defected in the face of the Zemmourian offensive.
Critical thinking in internal exile?
To the left of the left, thinkers, circles and journals are still very much alive, as well as a galaxy of teeming and productive publishing houses, but whose imposing substance is struggling to permeate the left at the ballot box while it still irrigates militant circles. There is indeed a mobilization of supporters of critical thought either for Fabien Roussel or for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but this year does not see these battalions of intellectuals posted on the front line.
In the mid-2010s, Podemos claimed this function of politically and electorally defending the common matrix of the new radical lefts, which is critical thought. Jean-Luc Mélenchon brings together a “parliament” of high quality people who do not permeate the debate.
This campaign is at least as worrying because of the absence of intellectuals as because of the obsessively scrutinized polls.
setback Where Movements as intellectually dynamic journals, The fabric Where Agone as publishing houses, and so many others, produce intellectual material that is often innovative and stimulating. But everything seems to indicate that the open period in Europe with market movements is closing.
To fix one’s eyes too much on the «rollings»no doubt we have forgotten that a presidential campaign is also a national campaign which disseminates a vision of the world, works, which go beyond the electoral program to anchor in society, intellectual references articulated to the existing, the daily experience, the material condition of each.
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This campaign is at least as worrying by the absence of intellectuals in the candidates’ campaigns as by the obsessively scrutinized polls. The tripartition of the political landscape is becoming clearer; but the left, especially that of ideas, theoretical debates and what feeds the political strategy of a camp, left to be permanently relegated to its archipelago of journals, media and publishing houses, cut off from the national debate although abundant intellectually. An unforeseen lasting consequence of this campaign.
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