Wiktor Stoczkowski is director of studies at the social anthropology laboratory at EHESS and at the Collège de France. He worked on the issue of the ethnology of racism and anti-racism.
The remarks that Frédérique Vidal made on the CNews channel on February 14, 2021, put the French academic world in turmoil.
After declaring that
"Islamo-leftism is corrupting society as a whole and that the university is not impermeable"
, the Minister of Higher Education and Research announces her intention to launch an investigation to distinguish
"What is academic research and what is activism"
.
It did not take more to unleash passions.
We cried scandal, intimidation, McCarthyism;
an electoral strategy of LREM aimed at attracting sympathies from the extreme right was presumed;
we became a philologist to discuss the etymology of the word "Islamo-leftism".
Two factions were immediately formed, which fought with tribunes, collective petitions and interviews in the media.
Some say that the French academic world remains irreproachable, knowing no other problems than those generated by unwelcome reforms for which only its supervisory ministry is responsible.
The others believe that universities suffer from activist drifts and that it is not abnormal for the government to be able to check whether the resources allocated to research and higher education are used not to lead political struggles, but to develop solidly substantiated and verifiable knowledge.
The main sticking point in this controversy, however, is not the minister's statement, but the divergent judgments that the two factions bring to a body of research brought together under the common label of decolonial studies.
The founding postulate of these studies is that Western states, heirs to colonial powers, constitute oppressive political regimes, structurally unfavorable to people of color, immigrants from previously colonized countries, women, homosexuals and Muslims.
The social and human sciences which bring to light these oppressions would fulfill their critical vocation and would thus contribute to the work of the emancipation of the dominated groups.
Advocates of decolonial studies present them as a nascent paradigm of contemporary thought, at the liberating vanguard of university research.
Their opponents see it rather as the expression of a doctrine which can certainly find a place in the political arena where all points of view are allowed to clash in a democratic debate, but which remains too dogmatic to be accepted in the political arena. 'academic enclosure.
The differences are so deep that passions often take precedence over arguments.
Each presents himself as the spokesperson for authentic knowledge;
the accusation of political activism is dismissed;
one believes to discredit the adversary by attributing to him connections with the extreme left or with the extreme right.
Some do not hesitate to resort to insult.
The excessiveness of these fulminations is enough to indicate that something disturbing is happening in the republic of professors.
The student in sociology, anthropology or political science, who arrives on the benches of the University is steeped in certainties: he believes he knows what human nature is, the springs of collective life and the mechanisms of history. .
It is difficult to be satisfied with explanations which reduce this controversy to a clash between “ideological opinions” and “proven knowledge” or between the extreme left and the extreme right.
The real issue lies elsewhere: it is the fundamental disagreement that has opposed, for a century and a half, two visions of the world.
It is no coincidence that the controversy mainly affects the social sciences and humanities.
A student new to astrophysics or genetics usually has no firm idea about quasars or single nucleotide polymorphism.
This is not the case of the student in sociology, anthropology or political science, who arrives on the benches of the University steeped in certainties: he believes he knows what human nature is, the springs of collective life. and the mechanisms of history.
The founding project of human sciences in the 19th century optimistically predicted that these “prenotions” would be quickly eradicated.
This hope has been dashed.
Theoretical controversies in the social and human sciences are never a confrontation between factual knowledge and conjectures accepted a priori: the latter and those continue to intertwine in most of the conceptual constructions produced by these disciplines.
This does not prevent the researcher from building a solid and even cumulative knowledge, provided that he does not take the conjectural part of his ideas for an irrefutable dogma, but for a provisional instrument, which can be abandoned if the facts provide him with a denial.
Antagonistic vision versus solidarist vision
Two great conjectural visions of man and society have continued to clash in our culture since the 19th century.
The antagonistic view presupposes that the main motives of the human being are his individual interests or the interests of the delimited group with which he identifies: each one is moved by the desire to acquire power, material wealth and social recognition.
Consequently, collective life is a perpetual struggle that individuals and groups wage for the exclusive appropriation of these rare goods.
Every society is divided into two categories: on the one hand, the privileged, holders of the leonine share of the goods of which they jealously guard the monopoly;
on the other, the victims looted by the owners of the appanages.
The unequal distribution of goods is an injustice which the dispossessed must put an end to, through struggles they legitimately engage against the dominant.
Contrary to this antagonistic vision, the solidarist vision supposes that the human being, far from always being guided by his utilitarian interests, tends to order his actions according to an ideal guided by reason.
The aspiration to equality is certainly legitimate, but it is futile to dream of unconditional equality, because only unjust inequalities are unjust.
Individual claims must give way to the collective interest, which demands compensation proportional to the diversity of individual contributions that each makes to the common good.
And since these contributions depend on unequal capacities which open the right to differentiated remuneration, inequality will always be an integral part of social life, the smooth running of which would be impossible if there were no capacity bonus.
The abolition of all social inequalities would not make society fairer: it would abrogate justice and society in the same gesture.
In spite of the differences which separate the social categories, each one must collaborate with the others to the good progress of the company of which they are all complementary and equally indispensable organs.
Instead of the society of struggles, where shifting power relations arbitrarily create the exclusive rights and privileges of the strongest, the solidarists aspire to a society founded on moral obligations, the power of which would promote a sense of duty, disinterested dedication. and self-sacrifice.
The horizon of history, here, is not the unlimited “emancipation” of all: it is a long road, never traveled to its end, which leads between the perils of conservative misoneism keeping order. established for the only possible order, and revolutionary intemperance convinced that any desirable transformation will be achievable.
The dictatorship of the capitalists is now replaced by the dictatorship of white "cis-genre" males, holders of the cultural capital acquired in schools which unduly favor the knowledge of Latin and the reading of the Princess of Cleves, the better to overwhelm those who excel in the art of slam.
In the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, Karl Marx's theory was the exemplary expression of the antagonistic view of the world, while the sociology of Émile Durkheim offered a model of the solidarist vision.
The break between these two visions in no way corresponded to the political separation between left and right.
Although the European socialist parties then adhered mainly to Marxism, each of them included a solidarist current, openly opposed to the Marxian idea of the class struggle.
Dominant in the French academic world under the Third Republic, the solidarist vision was demolished in the post-war period, thanks to the great vogue of Marxist philosovietism.
After the fleeting but fervent infatuations for Stalinism, then for Maoism, came the rich period of post-Marxist theories.
Seemingly removed from old-fashioned dogma, these theories took up several axioms of Marxism, while modifying and supplementing them.
This was the case with the historico-philosophical system of Michel Foucault, with his sustained interest in power, control and oppression, as with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, where the class struggle passed from the economic level to the symbolic level.
Decolonial studies flourished on this soil.
As in all antagonistic conceptions, the human being imagined by the decolonialists seeks to satisfy his interests as bearer of a sectoral identity, member of a category separate from the nation: ethnic, racial, religious, sexual or "kind".
Society is by definition oppressive, because it is divided into privileged people who monopolize power, and dominated victimaries, subject to the hegemony of the dominant.
The dictatorship of the capitalists is now replaced by the dictatorship of white "cis-genre" males, holders of the cultural capital acquired in schools which unduly favor the knowledge of Latin and the reading of the Princess of Cleves, the better to overwhelm those who excel in the art of slam.
The objective of decolonial studies is clearly formulated by its leaders: it is a question of reversing the relations of domination in French society and of imposing on the whole of French society a new cultural, ideological and moral hegemony.
It would suffice for decolonial theories to be believed and for our fellow citizens to be persuaded of being condemned to live in a society of egoisms and struggles, for them to start building a society effectively saturated with egoisms and struggles.
Having masterfully contributed to popularizing the antagonistic view of social life, Pierre Bourdieu correctly observed that "political subversion presupposes a cognitive subversion, a conversion of the vision of the world".
It suffices, in fact, to persuade people that the society in which they live is the arena of inevitable struggles of all against all, that moral values are a deceptive device intended to conceal cynical strategies, that man is a wolf. for man, so that converts, not conceiving of any other way of existing, begin to live as the sociologist postulated that they live.
Although sociological theories are supposed to be molded on social life, it is possible that social life can be molded on sociological theory.
A society saturated with selfishness and struggles
It would suffice for decolonial theories to be believed and for our fellow citizens to be persuaded of being condemned to live in a society of egoisms and struggles, for them to start building a society effectively saturated with egoisms and struggles.
That academics have the right to design research agendas based on antagonistic or decolonial assumptions is one thing.
The resolution to spread these postulates in university education is another, where, faced with a young and easily influenced public, the presuppositions of the antagonistic vision of the world are presented not as hypotheses to be tested, but as incontestable certainties.
Decolonial studies are still too recent for them to have already known their first sobered defectors, as there had been in Marxism, Foucauldism or Bourdieuism.
It sometimes takes a long time to understand that theoretical ideas, seemingly abstract, carry immense practical consequences.
Long years pass before the scales fall from the eyes of the adepts.
Decolonial studies are still too recent for them to have already known their first sobered defectors, as there had been in Marxism, Foucauldism or Bourdieuism.
Sociologist Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, once an enthusiastic disciple of Bourdieu, illustrates the phenomenon of such a late awakening.
It is a brazen world - she ends up writing, characterizing the society imagined by her former master -, filled with resentment, made up of violent relationships between abominable rulers and shameful rulers, crushed, humiliated.
“If the world were just that, it would be exhausting, unlivable, to destroy”
.
This is just a personal view of the world, she concludes, not the result of research.
The same can be said of all the theories that depend on the antagonistic worldview, from Marxism to decolonial studies.
Want a peaceful society
Why reject this worldview?
Because it is not the result of a search?
No, because we oppose a refusal which is not the result of research either.
We reject this vision because we do not want it to generate the society it portrays one day.
We prefer the bet of a peaceful and united society, certainly imperfect, but free from resentment and confrontation.
The society to which we aspire is not more "true" or more "scientific" than the other: it is an ideal, a distant but clear goal: it is a society where man should not be a wolf. for the man.
The controversy surrounding decolonial studies is anything but an inconsequential academic quarrel.
It is a conflict between two visions of human nature and of society.
For a century and a half, science has shown itself insufficient to justify the choice between one or the other, because science cannot tell us what is good and what is desirable.
One or the other company, each imagined in the silence of the cabinet, can happen, since we can choose to engage with all our might in the realization of one or the other.
Science will not help us in this choice.
On the other hand, an ideology made up of science can lead us to believe that we have no choice.
We must think about it by scrutinizing the teaching programs of our universities.
This is where we train the citizens of the world to come;
this is where we shape the society of the future.