parochial boy
parochial_boy
Junior Chimp
Posts: 5,108
Political Matrix
E: -8.38, S: -6.78
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« on: February 09, 2021, 03:42:39 PM » |
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« edited: February 10, 2021, 04:13:58 AM by parochial boy »
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Context for said quote being, of course, the much maligned security and "secession" laws, but also a rather interesting bill guaranteeing academic liberties as long as "consistent with republican values". Well, hmm....
Anyway, it's an odd one, as anyone with more than a passing knowledge of France's media environment will be well aware of how a sort of decomplexed, radical right wing nationalism that would make even Fox News or the Daily Mail have second thoughts has become very mainstream. It goes beyond the usual outposts like Le Figaro, Sud Radio and Valeurs Actuelles to the whole cable news environment and even traditionally milquetoast outlets like Le Point or left wing ones like Marianne. To the point that being an "intellectual" in contemporary France essentially means making tedious remarks about "secessionism" and "Islam" and whatever. Whereas "woke-ism", as a phenomenon, is marginal, basically only Médiapart are really like that in a consistent way.
Anyway, I was kind of surprised to see Gérard Noiriel being presented as some anti-woke reactionary in the article, considering a large part of his work is precisely about things like racism and integration. So anyway, I haven't read the book obviously, but did watch their interview on France Inter, and it seems that mostly the complaint is that people aren't talking about class any more and that contemporary controversies aren't put in to any sort of historical and sociological context, but are instead treated as something new. Basically "the media shoud talk to sciologists and historians like us more often". They even go as far as saying that their own analyses are intersectional, just not advertised as such.
Cut a long story short, the NYT article seems to have misunderstood, or be misrepresenting things somewhat. On the one hand, you have a Macron playing up the ethnic resentment in order to shore up a right wing electorate, and on the other you have a couple of old social scientists who kind of just wish that people would talk about Marx more.
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