Jean-Pierre Le Goff: "Griveaux affair, how did we get there?"

2/14/2020, 7:20:58 PM

LARGE INTERVIEW - With rare finesse, the intellectual sheds light on this affair by placing it in the context of an unstructured individualism, devoid of collective affiliations and benchmarks.

Jean-Pierre Le Goff is the author of many remarkable works, such as May 68, the impossible legacy (La Découverte, 1998), La Fin du village. A French history (Gallimard, 2012), Malaise dans la democratie (Stock, 2016) and La France d'hier. Story of an adolescent world, from the 1950s to May 68 (Stock, 2018).

An important figure in French intellectual life, Jean-Pierre Le Goff analyzes the implications of the choice of Benjamin Griveaux to renounce his candidacy for mayor of Paris after the disclosure on the internet of a private sex video. The philosopher and sociologist considers scandalous the diffusion of this video and describes it as "operation of political destabilization". He analyzes the fabric of resentment in part of public opinion, heated up by the Internet and social networks. He underlines the paradoxes of an exhibitionist era, which claims to be both taboo and in search of purity, therefore merciless for the "wrongdoers". And Jean-Pierre Le Goff points out