Read moreSince the vote on the law of August 24, 2021 strengthening respect for the principles of the Republic, the controversial climate surrounding secularism (a term which is carefully avoided in the legislative title 1) has faded, even if the government remains active on this issue. Let us take the example of the campaign to promote secularism in schools by the Ministry of National Education, then headed by Jean-Michel Blanquer, launched on August 30, 2021. It shows a series of photographs in which children, whose first names indicate that they are of different origins, share the same school activities and "laugh at the same stories", are "in the same bath" (the question of school swimming pools is in the subtext), "wear the same colours" and "think for themselves", etc. The title of the campaign, "That's what secularism is", cannot fail to challenge the reader, insofar as it calls for neither interpretation nor questioning of the notion, which is immediately essentialized. "That's it," therefore, it goes without saying: it is the symbol of internalized evidence, of the suspension of criticism. This formula designates, indicates and names – and we know the power of naming – a smooth concept, without roughness, which no longer calls for gloss or history or sociology, but which must be accepted as is, under the auspices of an abstract and universalist rationalism. In his Reflections on the Jewish Question (1946), Jean-Paul Sartre had highlighted its pitfalls, just as Roland Barthes had deciphered the "myth today" in Mythologies (1957) or noted, in The Empire of Signs (1970), the extent to which it had given its dismissal to universalist rationalism, according to which the other was assimilable to oneself (therefore "same"), and vice versa. On June 22, 2022, the Council of State, hearing an appeal for the first time under the new "secularism referral" provided for by law, confirmed the suspension, decided by the interim relief judge of the Grenoble administrative court, of the authorization granted by this city to wear the "burkini" in its municipal swimming pools. The application of this law, to be considered as a new deal, on the one hand, and the still uncertain position of the new government emerging from the legislative elections of June 2022 regarding secularism, on the other hand, call for a pause which favors our own reflection2. Administering secularism The bill was presented to the Council of Ministers on December 9, 2020 (the anniversary of the final vote on the 1905 law) and adopted at first reading in the National Assembly on February 16, 2021. The law was promulgated on August 24. A large number of researchers were heard by elected officials, as well as representatives of religions and various sections of civil society. The Observatory of Secularism has regularly been the target of attacks. These came from various sides, including that of the Republican Spring, close to Manuel Valls, in favour of an exclusivist if not metaphysical secularism, Péguyste, of the public school conceived as a "sanctuary", a new Church, which would be cut off from society, and of which Laurent Bouvet, who died in December 2021, Iannis Roder and Gilles Clavreul are the most visible activists3. The day after the assassination of Samuel Paty, the Observatory found itself at the heart of a new controversy, the main objective of which was the dismissal of its general rapporteur, Nicolas Cadène. This was not the Prime Minister's decision, but the structure seems more in limbo than ever, especially since the official mandate of the general rapporteur was coming to an end a few months later. In March 2021, it was up to Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate for Citizenship, to confirm that she was taking on the role of "Madame Laïcité" in the government by formally considering the abolition of the Observatory and its replacement by an interministerial body, placed under the direct authority of Matignon. The main function of this structure would no longer be to be an organ of expertise and explanation of a secularism approached from its legal aspect, but rather to administer secularism, in an axiological mode. On April 4, 2021, Jean-Louis Bianco was not reappointed to his duties. How does the interministerial committee that replaces it intend to articulate with the "Council of Wise Men" of secularism, created on January 17, 2018 by Jean-Michel Blanquer? Placed under the aegis of his ministry, his orientation is correlated with a republican secularism attached to the sacralization of the school and to the existence of an abstract citizen, cut off from all his determinisms (from which he should be "emancipated"). Led by sociologist Dominique Schnapper, the Council has become over the months a government think tank on secular issues. A mission letter addressed to the sociologist confirms this decision. In this text, written by the minister, if secularism is immediately defined as a principle, it quickly becomes one of the "values ​​of the Republic"4. The Council plans to organize academic teams on "secularism and religious facts" responsible for supporting schools and raising awareness of "attacks on secularism." The Council has several members who are sensitive to "republican" or "control" secularism, such as Laurent Bouvet, Rémi Brague (until January 2021), Olivier Galland, Patrick Kessel, Catherine Kintzler, Frédérique de la Morena, Alain Seksig and Jean-Pierre Obin, and several of them are close to or stakeholders in the Republican Spring or the Secularism Republic Committee. There will be no member of the laboratory founded by Jean Baubérot, the Societies, Religions, Secularism Group. The parliamentary hearings of winter 2020-2021 will undoubtedly constitute a pivotal moment in the history of secularism in France. The opposition of religious groups to a bill that they consider to be a restriction of the freedoms of organisation provided for by the 1905 law is remarkable. It was up to Pastor François Clavairoly to be the main bridgehead of this protest (Dominique Schnapper would underline his astonishment on this subject). Coming out of the reserve of a Protestant Federation of France which wants to be, echoing the expression he used in the title of a book published in 2019, a "watchdog" of the Republic, it is towards the profound questioning of the regime of religious associations that the criticism is directed. Indeed, one of the objectives of the bill is to encourage the Muslim faith to organize itself no longer by registering under the umbrella of associations under the 1901 law (which give them great freedom with regard to the State, the counterpart of which is reduced funding), but rather under that of religious associations of the 1905 type. The pastor's speech had an effect. Greater state oversight and control is the main feature of this bill. But that's not all. It is also planned to restrict the freedom of associations (sports, cultural, youth, etc.) resulting from the Waldeck-Rousseau law by asking them to commit, through the prism of a form, to respecting the "values ​​of the Republic"; as for the Montessori and Freinet pedagogies, they are also in the eye of the storm. If the Catholic Church is structured according to diocesan associations (Poincaré-Cerretti agreements, 1923-1924), according to a framework where an association corresponds to a diocese, Protestantism is much more fragmented in its structure; the application of this law would therefore significantly complicate its organization, without even mentioning Islam, which is the object of clear suspicion here. As for the appointment of ministers of religion, the bill provides that it will be entrusted to religious associations and no longer, if we stick to the field of the Catholic Church, to the bishop, which represents a paradigm shift. It is all the more sensitive since it would be up to the prefect to define whether an association can claim to be religious or not, and to what extent it can benefit from a subsidy from the public authorities. This is granted to the extent that the association, in its republican commitment, undertakes to respect public order and the dignity of the human person. But what does this "public order" often invoked in major past declarations mean? These are the "minimum requirements of life in society", with discretionary contours and which in themselves represent a value which weighs on the whole debate. Left-wing Christians and Disengagement The same echo resonates in the article published on April 18, 2021 in La Croix by Isabelle de Gaulmyn. Editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper, for which she was the permanent special correspondent to the Vatican, she headlines: "Secularism: Aristide, come back, they have gone mad!" "She invokes left-wing Christians who, in her view, experienced their 'greatest hours' in the Senate." The reference is important. Left-wing Catholicism, like liberal or left-wing Protestantism, feeling an affinity with the political memoirs of André Philip and Michel Rocard, but also of Paul Ricœur, were among the main defenders of 1905 conceived as a law of freedom. Jean-Louis Bianco and Jean Baubérot come from this political culture. The fact that left-wing Christians have become a minority in the French political arena since the 1980s is a significant factor. Faced with a right wing (Les Républicains and large sections of La République en Marche) determined to defend this bill, a Socialist Party which has become a very small minority and which has included in its ranks the supporters of a restrictive secularism (Manuel Valls) and a far right in whose eyes Islam remains an irreconcilable otherness, there seems to be a lack of a political voice, that of the Christians of the left. They still express themselves, but more in the space of civil society and not necessarily by claiming this political or ideological sensitivity. And what about fellow travelers who are atheists, agnostics or undeclared, who seem to escape the sociological radar and in whom we take relatively little interest? The desire to see civil society re-appropriate the secular question is demonstrated by the publication of a growing number of columns in the daily press, most often Le Monde and Libération, but also the weekly Télérama (March 20-26, 2021). These articles bear witness to what I see as an attempt to regain control of public discourse by researchers attached to a liberal interpretation of the 1905 law, after years during which they were heard, but to a less visible extent than republican sensitivity. The desire to come together arises, at the risk of being dissolved in the public debate. They appear at a time when regimes of trust and then distrust are followed by one of disengagement between intellectuals and the political world. Philippe Portier notes that the political world, in a large majority, now considers secularism as a "set of values", as do Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez and Valentine Zuber. In Le Monde of April 7, 2021, one hundred and nineteen signatories contest the suppression of the Observatory of Secularism. A platform of international support appears in Libération. This approach raises the question of the internationalization of the notion of French secularism. An online journal, L'Observatoire du décolonialisme, echoed this on April 16, 2021. This body declares to "fight against the promotion of anti-Semitism, sexism and racism by pseudo-science and to defend the principles which depend on the University: language, school and secularism." Its title reads: "International supporters of the Observatory of Secularism: friends or gravediggers of secularism?" Does a "foreign signatory" truly possess all the necessary skills to comment on a question as complex as French secularism? Obviously not, according to this article. Added to this is the received idea that the term "secularism" is difficult to translate, particularly specific to France, and finally, that it is invariably "Anglo-Saxon colleagues" who find it impossible to make oneself heard6. “Anglo-Saxonization” is often brandished as the cause of a threatened secularism, anchored in its French foundations. In a much more subliminal, if not unspeakable, way, researchers of Protestant culture are sometimes suspected of favouring this option, thus being reduced to their status as an "anti-patriotic" community, "party from abroad". This is one of the strong challenges, and one in the process of being reconfigured, of this nationalism with its old refrain7. Another platform claiming to be inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Christopher Lasch and George Orwell, Lieux communs, "an independent site for a radical self-transformation of society", with managers who are still poorly identified (anti-Enlightenment who came from the left to the right, according to a certain confusionism?), has taken the habit of categorizing, not without a precise knowledge of the actors, the defenders of liberal secularism under the name of "neo-concordatarians". Fighting against the community rather than the individual is manifested in the political will to rethink the policing of religions in the bill. During his parliamentary hearing on December 22, 2020, Jean Baubérot had already noted the importance of this police force, the existence of which contemporary legislators seem to have forgotten, preferring to consider the law too lax. The revaluation of this religious police has been palpable since the death of Samuel Paty. Following this crime, the Pantin mosque was closed, while the individual who had published the video on social media implicating the mosque in the professor's death was not immediately worried. The authorities therefore targeted a community largely independent of the assassination, and not a person specifically involved in the affair. This practice is a metaphor for a bill that has chosen to punish communities rather than certain individuals who pose a danger to public order. After having highlighted in February the "illiberal turn" implied by the bill, Philippe Portier put forward his arguments on May 15, 2021, during an interview given to Ouest-France. He highlights the little regard that this project has for the notion of community in its interaction with that of religious freedom (the majority is oppressed, rather than a minority that should have been neutralized, as with the closure of the Pantin mosque) and the desire to establish secularism as a value. An ahistorical and essential secularism On April 18, 2021, Marlène Schiappa announced, to everyone's surprise, the holding of a general assembly on secularism. No one among the researchers seems to have been informed of this project. And, quite quickly, this initiative, which had no follow-up, was disavowed by Emmanuel Macron. One structure must instinctively be followed by another, the antechamber of which would be these general states, organized after the phase of debate, of deliberation, and not before it, which does not fail to raise questions. Marlène Schiappa invited media agents, such as Caroline Fourest and Raphaël Enthoven (whose thoughts on the matter can be found in vain). The announced presence of Barbara Cassin, known for her commitment to the fate of migrants in the Mediterranean, may be surprising in this context. She was apparently "trapped". She will not attend the meeting on April 20. Then, for the first time, a point of view with a polemical content from “inclusivist” secularism emerges. It blossoms under the pen of Jean Baubérot: “Marlène Schiappa and the “crooks” of secularism”, in L'Obs 8. This incriminating text is positioned in the field of intellectual competence. In a sense, it shows the importance of the scholarly factor in the debate, whether it is the aforementioned abandonment or the recourse to history. Here, the competence is no longer religious, as with Régis Debray (“secularism of intelligence”), but historical and legal. Baubérot, shortly after meeting Marlène Schiappa, gave her a lesson in scientific rigour, in a context where books by political decision-makers on the subject (and often written by collaborators) of a very questionable acuity, like that of Gérald Darmanin9, were flourishing. Extracting secularism from its history and its law was a desire of Minister Blanquer. Extracting secularism from its history and its law was a desire of Minister Blanquer. In an exchange of views between Patrick Weil and Jean-Michel Blanquer that L'Obs published on May 13, 2021, the ministerial position is clear on this subject. On several occasions, Jean-Michel Blanquer announces that "the principle of secularism is not purely legal", that "fortunately, ministerial authority does not limit itself to stating the law. There are sociological and geopolitical realities that escape the question of the law" and that the best thing would be to vote for an "augmented 1905". We can identify another cross-section of his argument, which is the assumed, and no longer implicit, essentialization of secularism. If he speaks of it as a principle, it appears to be a value in his mind. For Jean-Michel Blanquer, the laws of 1881-1882 gave the “first tastes of secularism”. As for this one, it is appropriate to "transmit" it, to "keep it alive", as one would do with an immutable and ahistorical torch. A new nationalism On June 9, 2021, the creation of an association under the 1901 law named: “Vigie de la laïcité” was announced. A column in Le Monde announces this birth. The reference to the 1905 law and to the definition of secularism proposed by Ferdinand Buisson in 1883 are clear: neutrality of the State and guarantee of freedom of conscience are its two benchmarks10. The creation of the Vigie appears as an acted stage of the abandonment, doubtless temporary. We must now see how the structure will position itself with regard to a government in which Jean-Michel Blanquer, a central player in a desire to morally rearm the Republic through secular means, has been replaced by Pap Ndiaye, who a priori has a very different profile. It will still be necessary to measure the room for maneuver of some of his advisors, former close associates of Blanquer, such as his chief of staff Jean-Marc Huart or his advisor Julie Benetti11. Where the Observatory mixed members from the political world, experts and representatives of civil society, the Vigie distances itself from politics. If the political world is increasingly moving away from any legal tropism, this organ of civil society is in turn moving away from politics, while remaining attentive to the law, without however reducing secularism to this domain. Conceiving it as a philosophical and liberal movement is claimed as central. The rupture between representatives of religions and several official bodies of the Republic around the question of respect for religious freedom was followed by that of the intellectual field in its liberal fringe (exclusivist sensitivity remaining very silent during the period studied, as if the government had integrated its theses and made its militancy temporarily obsolete). This movement is part of the regime of the "specific" intellectual defined by Michel Foucault, belonging to a heterogeneous social body (the Watchtower of secularism shares a common base of principles, but does not claim perfect homogeneity arising from a "same"). This body presents a circumscribed field of expertise that it considers to be diverted by an audible public voice and contesting a power in a position of domination. In the spring of 2021, it was from an "official Republic", to use the category used by Christophe Charle in the context of the Dreyfus affair12, that the founding members of Vigie distanced themselves. The secular question is today confronted with a new form of nationalism. Nationalism, in the sense understood by Isaiah Berlin, one of the four criteria of which is the belief in the supremacy of the rights of the nation, whenever there is a conflict of authority or the need to choose between contradictory loyalties. It is then necessary to constrain the groups which call into question cohesion13. René Rémond wrote that intellectuals, beyond the counter-examples of Maurras and Barrès (more thought leaders than intellectuals), have often been the "bête noire" of nationalism14. Should we recall that Jean-Michel Blanquer considered that a senator, in the Senate session of April 7, 2021, adopted an “unpatriotic” attitude? The militant and academic secularism of the 1950s-1980s first gave way to its legal turning point in the 1990s-2000s, then to its politicization. Today, secularism, after having been the object of a "security inflection" identified by Philippe Portier, integrates a nationalist, nostalgic narrative, drawing more from Péguy and Alain than from legal texts. Roland Barthes saw himself as a Westerner in Japan, precisely to escape the fantasy or orientalist pretension of the Westerner, thinking he could assimilate completely, blend into the distant culture and, by a pendulum swing, expect the other to do the same. Without doubt – let us dream – he would have written a mythology, as sober as it is formidable, devoted to this secularism. Perhaps he would even have seen a stigma of “Frenchness” there. The 2020-2022 period has weakened an elementary structure: the association. But the ongoing process goes much further. It seems to further sanctify, under the pretext of "letting young Muslim girls breathe" in public schools, thus removed from religious influence, a Republic in search of unity, of a revised and corrected "living together" and of an increasingly smooth "same". A Republic that contemplates itself, incomparable, and which gives its history the beauty so feared by Paul Valéry, a Republic half-Narcissus, half-Adonis. It would still be necessary to recall the tragic, and somewhat pathetic, fate of the two Greek heroes. 1. See Véronica Thiéry-Riboulot, Usage, abus et usure du mot laïcité, foreword by Valentine Zuber, Paris, Publications de l'École pratique des hautes études, coll. “The EPHE conferences”, 2022, p. 35. 2. On the categorization of ways of conceiving secularism, see Catherine Kintzler, What is secularism?, Paris, Vrin, 2007; Jean Baubérot, The Seven French Secularisms. The French model of secularism does not exist, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2015; Philippe Portier, The State and religions in France. A historical sociology of secularism, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016. 3. See the recent analysis by Haouès Seniguer, The Authoritarian Republic. Islam in France and Republican Illusion (2015-2022), Lormont, Le Bord de l'eau, 2022, p. 129-159. See also Vincent Peillon, A secular theology?, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2021. 4. See Jean-Fabien Spitz, The Republic? What values? Essay on a new political fundamentalism, Paris, Gallimard, coll. “NRF trials”, 2022, p. 95-111. 5. See the interview with François Clavairoly, “Protestantism wants to assume its role as a ‘watchdog’ of the Republic”, La Croix, January 21, 2021. 6. See Valentine Zuber, La Laïcité en débat, au-delà des idées reçues, Paris, Le Cavalier bleu, 2017. 7. See Sébastien Urbanski, The Republic Tested by Nationalisms. Public school, common values ​​and religions in Europe, preface by Alban Bouvier, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, coll. “The social sense”, 2022, p. 66-77. 8. Jean Baubérot, “Marlène Schiappa and the “corrupt” of secularism”, L’Obs, April 22, 2021. 9. Gérald Darmanin, Islamist Separatism. Manifesto for secularism, Paris, Éditions de l'Observatoire, 2021. It is highly likely that the author of this pamphlet was Louis-Xavier Thirode, the minister's advisor on religion and immigration, and described as a "specialist in secularism" by Le Monde on April 8, 2021. Although the minister embarrassedly denied this suspicion of authorship, it is nevertheless very likely (and, ultimately, hardly surprising if we know that political books are rarely the work of the signatories). Thirode is an ENA graduate and sub-prefect, having headed the Central Office of Worship from 2011 to 2013. He resigned from his post following several disagreements with the Observatory of Secularism. 10. These include Jean-Louis Bianco, Nicolas Cadène, Valentine Zuber, Jean Baubérot, Dounia Bouzar, Michel Wieviorka, Philippe Portier, Jean-Louis Schlegel, Jean-Marc Schiappa, Daniel Maximin, Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, Olivier Abel, Radia Bakkouch and Nilüfer Göle. 11. See Anne-Sophie Mercier, “Pap Ndiaye. “At a harsh school”, Le Canard enchaîné, June 8, 2022. 12. Christophe Charle, Birth of the “intellectuals” (1880-1900), Paris, Éditions de Minuit, coll. "Common sense", 1990, p. 91-93. 13. See Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current. Essays on the History of Ideas, trans. by André Berelowitch, Paris, Albin Michel, 1988. 14. René Rémond, “Intellectuals and Politics”, French Review of Political Science, vol. 9, no. 4, December 1959, p. 870.

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