Gilles Clavreul is co-founder of Printemps republican and general delegate of the L'Aurore think tank. He was interministerial delegate for the fight against racism and anti-Semitism from 2015 to 2017.
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When I started to use the expression “identity pincers”, in 2016, my idea was not to dress up the worn-out staple in new, neither true nor false like all common stems, who would like that "The extremes come together". Nor did I mean to say that they look alike, that they say the same thing or that they represent the same type of threat.
On the other hand, something seemed to me like a mechanism which makes very diverse forms of political, social, religious and thematic protest interdependent, characteristic of the "identity age" in which, as Laurent Bouvet * points out, we have now entered. Generalization of individual and collective affirmations to the detriment of the common, erasure of traditional normative benchmarks (political, union, class, etc.), publicity valuation of the “narcissism of small differences”… So many signs that we can no longer escape.
It is not only a political fact, nor of culture, but a fact of civilization, sensitive as well in the mass consumption - the "come as you are" of Mc Donald's - as in the radical militancy.
This is because, to be furious and strident, the little identity music is written on a neo-liberal and commercial scope, the “degradation of being in having and having in appearing” denounced by Guy Debord.
The lowering of politics has created a void, the loneliness of the individual lost in the crowd prophesied by Tocqueville has precipitated the lack and generated new needs: identity proposals fill this void.
To be furious and strident, the little identity music is written on a neo-liberal and commercial scope.
Why "pincers"? Because these proposals that everything opposes politically, for example that of the American supremacists and those of the “wokes”, nevertheless revolve around the same axis, in this case that of race. They claim to relate what we say and what we think to what we are. In doing so, the all-identity gradually stifles the democratic conversation: turning the citizen back on the individual and the individual on his attachments, his birth, his gender or even the religion in which he was brought up, he assigns to each fixed positions and kills the very idea of collective deliberation. Second attribute of the pincer: the pressure of the left pincer accentuates that of the right pincer, and vice versa.They feed each other in an escalation of anathemas and witchcraft trials where everyone is summoned to take sides or forcibly enlisted in one or the other camp.
In an interview published last Monday in
Le Figaro
, Alain Finkielkraut refutes the idea of pincers, seeing it as a "false idea". As I understand his reasoning, he believes that we cannot oppose or put on the same level those who participate in the advent of this identity age and those who are worried about it, grieve over it and try to do so. resist. The only fault of these is that they are sometimes excessive, driven by the anguish of seeing their culture disappear; the first, on the other hand, are the agents of a destructive passion which aims for a compulsory multiculturalism to supplant French culture. In other words, there would not be two great face-to-face identity narratives, but an identity threatened on the one hand and identity destroyers on the other, or more simply a prey, the "us". »French and European, and predators.
What identity are we defending? Who agrees on what? Do we take everything together, or do we allow ourselves to sort it out?
I immediately see two difficulties arise. First of all, I'm not sure that all those who defend a threatened identity have exactly the same idea as Alain Finkielkraut: Péguy, Kundera, the French gallantry which “Finkie” praised in
L'identité unhappeuse
, are fairly imperceptible figures, to say the least, in the program of the National Rally. Here we are faced with a first pitfall: what identity are we defending? Who agrees on what? Do we take everything together, or do we allow ourselves to sort it out? Etc. Second problem: do the contemptors of our threatened identity want the generalized leveling of values and the crushing of origins in a great relativist whole - which has rather been Alain Finkielkraut's thesis since
The Defeat of Thought
- or do they advance masked, behind an apparent multiculturalism, to impose a replacement identity, as Eric Zemmour or Renaud Camus say? In this last hypothesis, there is certainly a confrontation of models, not to say a clash of civilizations; remains that France according to Zemmour and Camus is no more France than Islam according to Tariq Ramadan and Youssef Al-Qaradawi is not Islam - at least, nothing obliges to adhere to the vision that they are. give.
I could stop there to say why I still keep the pincers in my toolbox: I use it to reject proposals whose identity is the principle, and which I do not want.
But Alain Finkielkraut's argument is on a higher plane.
First, he invites - and on this we will agree entirely - to judge the champions of identity on both an intellectual and moral level: between the poor and repetitive thought of the wokes, the decolonial delirium and the Islamist brutality, on the one hand, and democratic, French and European culture, on the other, is it only necessary to express your preference, so obvious, spontaneous and immediate is it?
Political identity and cultural identity
Then, he poses, and arises, the cultural question: for Alain Finkielkraut, identity is culture. Well, however curious it may seem, it is on this idea which sounds like obvious, that my path nevertheless moves away from his: of cultural identity, which we collect as a heritage and which we perpetuate, I separates the political identity, that which one chooses according to a project of collective organization and principles of life to which one adheres. However, my political identity is that of a citizen of the French Republic, indivisible, secular, democratic and social. Of course, this identity is not unrelated to my culture; but it is not limited to it. I can even say that in the opposite direction, Mediterranean that I am, part of my culture escapes my political being. So culture and politics overlap,but do not overlap.
Alain Finkielkraut has the great merit of clearly laying down the terms of the debate: either we make the nation a fact of culture, as he argues.
Or, as I believe, the nation is first and foremost a political construction.
Therein lies the root of our disagreement.
We could, in a somewhat academic way, refer to the opposition between Fichte and Renan: although Alain quotes the latter, it is rather towards the former that he leans when he transcribes the nation in order. the politics of a community of ideas and sensations of which language is the crucible.
Either we make the nation a fact of culture, as he argues.
Or, as I believe, the nation is first and foremost a political construction.
Now, it seems to me, the history of national construction in France bears witness to an entirely different experience: it is the State that made the nation, first on the legal, military and administrative level, and only then, much later, by cultural unification. So when should we date the birth of a “language policy”, to paraphrase Michel de Certeau? Certainly not from the Renaissance, wrote Colette Beaune **: around 1500, "language is not one of the major concerns of French national sentiment". The error of interpretation is however frequent in connection with the edict of Villers-Cotterêts (1539): it fixes the administrative language, but does not assign any unifying function to it. It is the language of official papers, it is not yet that of the people. Later, the creation of the French Academy,which participates in the ideal of formal perfection of the Grand Siècle, is not an instrument of conquest of the masses. After the unfinished projects of Father Grégoire under the Convention, it was not until the Third Republic that the linguistic mosaic and the weak penetration of French to the south of a Saint-Malo-Geneva line were perceived as a stake, the persistence of local talks being seen as an obstacle to the firm and lasting establishment of the republican regime. But before that, there were several centuries of peaceful cohabitation between plurilingualism and national feeling: the divisions over which the power is concerned are political, social, and above all religious, but not linguistic.After the unfinished projects of Father Grégoire under the Convention, it was not until the Third Republic that the linguistic mosaic and the weak penetration of French to the south of a Saint-Malo-Geneva line were perceived as a stake, the persistence of local talks being seen as an obstacle to the firm and lasting establishment of the republican regime. But before that, there were several centuries of peaceful cohabitation between plurilingualism and national feeling: the divisions over which the power is concerned are political, social, and above all religious, but not linguistic.After the unfinished projects of Father Grégoire under the Convention, it was not until the Third Republic that the linguistic mosaic and the weak penetration of French to the south of a Saint-Malo-Geneva line were perceived as a stake, the persistence of local talks being seen as an obstacle to the firm and lasting establishment of the republican regime. But before that, there were several centuries of peaceful cohabitation between plurilingualism and national feeling: the divisions over which the power is concerned are political, social, and above all religious, but not linguistic.the persistence of local talks being seen as an obstacle to the firm and lasting establishment of the republican regime. But before that, there were several centuries of peaceful cohabitation between plurilingualism and national feeling: the divisions over which the power is concerned are political, social, and above all religious, but not linguistic.the persistence of local talks being seen as an obstacle to the firm and lasting establishment of the republican regime. But before that, there were several centuries of peaceful cohabitation between plurilingualism and national feeling: the divisions over which the power is concerned are political, social, and above all religious, but not linguistic.
Culture only becomes an issue with the gradual and inexorable erasure of the religious reference, to which the most daring of revolutionaries, Quinet noted, did not dare to touch a century earlier. But in France in the midst of technical, economic and demographic upheaval at the end of the 19th century, it becomes urgent to give a still fragile and contested Republic a solid social base: if we smile today at the naive and frankly catechumenal form of the “morality of our fathers” advocated by Jules Ferry, it should be remembered that consistent intellectuals, such as the neo-Kantian Charles Renouvier, previously laid the foundations for a “secular morality” and proposed to the Republic to assume the role of “Spiritual power” in place of the Church. A speech so powerful that it is hardly heard these days: yet,he made us.
Identity of France and national identity
So, in fact, there flourished a properly French - French culture, as Braudel says, and not a national one, because nothing resembles a nation less, in terms of its own characteristics, than another nation.
It was Nicolas Sarkozy's mistake to choose his words badly, when he set out in search of "national identity", a half-political, half-bureaucratic initiative, based on an intuition however legitimate: he spoke of the identity of France, without soaking it in the bath which ultimately did not reveal much about the migration issue, the initiative could have borne fruit.
To cherish France is to be a patriot;
but how to extol the nation, in a generic way, how to do it without being complacent towards nationalism?
Here is a beautiful question of borders ...
Let us return to the dawn of the Third Republic. French identity became a political project in its own right, backed by a unifying narrative, sometimes oblivious to the vicissitudes of history, little said about gray areas, but more respectful of diversity than is often said. . A culture-palimpsest which superimposes itself on local identities without completely erasing them. Braudel's “France sewn together” can still be seen everywhere, the “small countries” *** do not challenge French culture, on the contrary they strengthen it. Like these multicolored discs which appear all white when you spin them, it is the richness of its tones, the variety of its palette, which makes the unity of France, on condition that it is always on the move. There is only one limit to this, but it is clear: diversity,we can accept everything as a culture, but we must deny it everything as a policy. Thus, as the Constitutional Council had firmly recalled, there is a Corsican language, a Corsican history, Corsican landscapes and soul; but there is no Corsican people. And no more - at the time when the Government is embarking on a slippery slope, that of the recognition of an alleged “right to differentiation” - of Basque, Breton, Afro-descendant, Alsatian peoples, etc.that of the recognition of a so-called “right to differentiation” - of Basque, Breton, Afro-descendant, Alsatian peoples, etc .;that of the recognition of a so-called “right to differentiation” - of Basque, Breton, Afro-descendant, Alsatian peoples, etc .;
Thus identity is, for the life of the city, neither good nor bad in itself.
It is a given that the politician must integrate, but it does not indicate anything by itself as to what allows man to inhabit the collective space.
On the other hand, the ideological instrumentalisation of identity, that is to say identity politics, undoubtedly rarefies democratic oxygen by restricting our choices to our affiliations.
There may be some more desirable or more comfortable identities than others, but no identity-based policy is built, in my opinion, on a solid foundation.
Secularism, finally
A final word on secularism. Here again, even though its history bears witness to a singular method of settling the theologico-political question, it is a philosophical and political principle and not a cultural trait. We do not defend it because it is French, but because it makes possible a precious balance between individual freedoms and the rules of collective life. To make it a French specialty is to resign ourselves to the fact that it cannot be universalized: this is not what Algerian, Tunisian, Turkish or Iranian intellectuals and activists expect of us, who envy our secularism. Let us have ambition for our principles: they are greater than us. And the principle of secularism is intimate with us - not to tear apart the palimpsest of the French narrative where the Catholic Text lets itself be discovered at every line;but to look with benevolent and detached interest at all the scriptures, to write our own score, freely.
* Laurent Bouvet,
The Identity Peril
, Éditions de l'Observatoire, 2020
** Colette Beaune,
Birth of the Nation France
, Gallimard, 1985
*** Olivier Grenouilleau,
Our little homelands
, Gallimard, 2019