Read moreWhat do you expect from this exchange? Nathalie Heinich: I am curious to know if it is possible to exchange real arguments that are not invectives, which is unfortunately the trend of our time. François Cusset: I am a little skeptical about the possibility that anything will come of it. The only advantage I see is that the spontaneity of speech short-circuits the rhetorical strategies that are deployed in the media space, particularly on the Web, in an ideological and polarized way. N. H. : In my experience, it is unlikely that a dialogue of this type will change our respective positions. It is not even certain that this will lead to better mutual understanding! However, it may be useful to clarify our differences in the eyes of third parties, for the public, the readers… F. C. Those who have already formed opinions before reading and will tend to choose the interlocutor they feel closest to. N. H. : On that point, I would be more measured; there are also subjects on which many people hesitate. These are the people I want to address. “There is certainly a shift in sensitivities today on issues of gender and race. That this takes a monolithic form is a deliberate distortion for political purposes”François Cusset In the event of disagreement, one method for moving forward is to clarify the terms of the debate. In this case, you do not have the same understanding of the word "wokism". For you, François Cusset, it does not designate a reality but a fantasy. F. C. : Indeed, there is a problem with the delimitation of the object. What does this so-called wokeism refer to? Those who use the term, generally to oppose it, tend to include gender studies, decolonial thought, feminist struggles, the LGBT movement, sometimes also radical ecology, or even demands from political Islam. That there is today, particularly among the new generation, a shift in sensitivities on questions of gender or race, is certain. That this takes a monolithic form, reveals an ideology, in the singular, is completely inaccurate or, rather, is a deliberate distortion for political purposes – the suffix "-ism" clearly indicates that we are in the realm of ideological denunciation. “Behind the diversity of the causes defended, there is a deep unity, what I call “identitarianism”. “Wokism” is based on assigning individuals to communities of belonging” Nathalie Heinich N. H. I have an answer regarding both the term and the content. On the subject of the term, I would still like to state that the word "woke" exists, has been widely used among the American population since the Black Lives Matter movement and that it also resonates with the theology of awakening widespread in American Protestantism. So, we are not dealing with a creation from scratch for the purposes of stigmatization... On the content, I add that behind the diversity of the causes defended, there is a profound unity. The common thread is what I call “identitarianism.” Wokeism is based on assigning individuals to communities of belonging that are defined by the discrimination they have suffered: women, people of color, homosexuals and trans people, Arabs or Blacks, Muslims, even obese or disabled people... All of this is specific to the Anglo-American tradition of multiculturalism, which tends to oppose people based on community affiliations. F. C. The term "woke" is indeed linked to the theologies of awakening, which were very active on American soil from the 18th century onwards. But if the word woke or the expression stay woke have been used by African-Americans, by many others too, no one claims to be woke, a term used by far-right polemicists. As for identity, here it is a problem, a burden, an assignment, not an ideology, and one more “-ism”. N. H. I disagree in two ways. First, there may be excellent reasons to oppose an ideology such as identitarianism, particularly in the name of universalism. Furthermore, your reduction of the adversary to the extreme right is abusive: since you are an Americanist, you are not unaware that a part of the American intellectual left and the Democratic Party today declare themselves anti-woke. I refer you, for example, to the interventions of the psychologist Jonathan Haidt or to the book by the philosopher Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke. I define myself as an anti-woke leftist. The method you have just used, consisting of disqualifying the adversary by assimilating him to the right, is typically Stalinist! Far right on one side, Stalinism on the other... We want to say: one for all! Nathalie Heinich, you insist a lot on the importance of not mixing research and activism. But is neutrality possible when you are an intellectual and you intervene in the public space? N. H. Let's not get into the wrong arena! Neutrality only makes sense in the academic world. But when I sign a pamphlet or intervene in a dialogue like this, it is a political statement. The distinction between arenas is essential. However, as in the time of Stalinism, those I call the "academic-militants" believe that the production and transmission of knowledge must be subordinated to political objectives. This is what I call in my book “ideologism”, which is a dimension of totalitarianism. F. C. : "Stalinist"! Always throwing the baby out with the bathwater, today's liberation struggles with yesterday's gulag… And then, excuse this touch of humor, but what you say about neutrality reminds me of what Paul Claudel said about tolerance: "There are houses for that!" "You seem to think that an institution like the University, which enjoys a very relative symbolic autonomy, would be immune to the power dynamics running through society. It's impossible! Economic and political interests permeate the University – which you know very little about! – and a permanent war is being waged there. Today, in the microcosm of the social sciences, there is a conflict between progressive and reactionary forces, but also, yes, between the social left and the cultural left. N. H. The sociologist Max Weber evoked the concept of "value neutrality" in order to describe the position of the scholar in the academic setting, which is not that of the politician: the scholar must suspend his value judgment in relation to the objects he studies. We all have, of course, subjective roots, values, opinions, but we must put them aside when we do research and teaching. On the contrary, the vogue of wokeness encourages students and researchers to highlight their subjectivities, their wounded identities, which is the opposite of the ideal of rationality and objectivity that we are supposed to defend as members of the scientific community. F. C. So, we would have to question your possible schizophrenia: understand how Nathalie Heinich, the doxic person, who has a whole series of opinions and commitments to defend what she calls her values, could suspend them to join a neutralized, aseptic space, which would be that of pure and disinterested knowledge. Not only does this seem improbable to me, but the simple expression "republican universalism" itself seems to me to be affected by an internal contradiction, insofar as it implements a particular universalism, belonging to the French tradition and which has no equivalent in other countries. N. H. Regarding my neutrality, I invite you to read my sociology works and challenge you to find the slightest partisan position on my subjects! As for the accusation of ethnocentrism made against the universalist position, I demonstrated its error in the introduction to Dare Universalism. Against communitarianism [Le Bord de l'eau, 2021]. François Cusset, you paradoxically maintain that “intersectionality” or “intersectionalism” could refer to a non-republican conception of the universal. Can you explain this? F. C. : I use this term here provocatively… Intersectionality is the idea that certain struggles are linked together, or would benefit from being linked, notably four major current struggles: the ecological struggle, the anti-racist struggle linked to the history of ethno-religious discrimination, the gender struggle or linked to gender equality, as well as the oldest struggle which serves as an external framework for the others, the struggle against the economic and ideological system of capitalism. Some activists propose to tactically link these causes. Now it seems to me that on the ruins of a notion of the universal which has been much misused, since it has served to defend male domination or colonial conquests, we could reconstruct a universal which would remain open and link these struggles. Their common goal is quite simple: it consists of saying that we all have the same earth under our feet and that we should stop digging into inequalities. N. H. If you use a term as complicated as intersectionality to say that the chances of success for a black or Arab woman are less than those for a white man, you're discovering the moon! More fundamentally, wanting to make the notion of intersectionality a springboard towards the universal seems absurd to me, to the extent that it is first based on a communitarian vision of the world. To have a common vision and aim, it is necessary to suspend community affiliations in favor of a reference to a more general entity. F. C. You reduce everything to this word community, which you demonize by placing yourself in the tradition of French republicanism, through a huge misinterpretation. When you read authors like Kimberlé Crenshaw, the lawyer who invented the word intersectionality, it is very clear that identity is never written in the singular, that it is not unique, nor fixed, nor an end in itself. Each of us is woven from plural identities: social, cultural, sexual, gender, geographic. And if identity is plural, relative and changing, if what was imposed can be reappropriated, what seemed essence, become construction site and coexistence, then it points towards a universal under construction. N. H. The version you present is by far the most intelligent, and I believe, like you, that Kimberlé Crenshaw is more profound than many of those who use her concept indiscriminately. The problem is that when we explain that a white woman cannot translate a black poet or that "anti-racist" activists banned a performance of Aeschylus at the Sorbonne because some actors wore black masks, we return to an essentialist version of identity. Moreover, you are right, France is probably the country in the world that has gone furthest in the decision to construct a political, civic and non-community definition of citizenship. But just because we are the only ones holding this position does not mean we are wrong against the rest of the world. F. C. : Very few activists, researchers or students essentialize, as you say. On several occasions in your writings you mention the possibility of choice, you assume that people, especially in the younger generation, would be keen to assert their community affiliations. You don't seem to grasp the very logic of the assignment. In reality, the opposite is happening: when you are Muslim or homosexual in France, you are assigned this identity from the outside, you are constantly referred to stereotypes. What you call "identitarianism" is rather an attempt to reverse the assignment, to not be locked into a category - Black, Muslim, woman, etc. A formula often comes up among young people, activists: "Let us be multiple..." Not just different from each other, the marketing version of diversity that has been fashionable since at least the "United Colors of Benetton" campaigns, but in the sense of a completely different aspiration: "Let us negotiate our contradictory affiliations, within ourselves and between us, let us trace our path towards freedom"... "Inclusive writing authoritatively locks us into a sexual identity. The desire to impose a politically compliant newspeak stems from a logic characteristic of totalitarianism” Nathalie Heinich N. H. I really don't see who would stop you from doing that, what real social forces would oppose your desire to be multiple! In addition, you cultivate an imaginary of systematic assignment, whatever the contexts. This is also the case with inclusive writing, which authoritatively confines us to a gendered identity. The desire to impose a politically compliant newspeak is part of a logic characteristic of totalitarianism. Moreover, in your “Tract”, you yourself apologize for not using it, thus acknowledging that you are a traitor to your cause… “There is no totalitarianism without a State apparatus, without a State which subjugates society. I understand that you don't like inclusive writing, but aren't you going overboard?” François Cusset F. C. : This use you have just made of the word totalitarianism, even in the title of your latest book, is really my limit, moral and political, and made me hesitate to accept this dialogue. What is totalitarianism? Not a word, in any case, to be used for the metaphor, if it refers to the Nazi and Soviet regimes, and their millions of victims. There is no totalitarianism without a state apparatus, without a state that subjugates society, as Hannah Arendt clearly showed. I understand that you don't like inclusive writing, but aren't you erring on the side of exaggeration? N. H. : Wokism is not totalitarianism in the literal sense because, fortunately, the "woke" are not in power: therefore, we are not dealing with totalitarianism as Hannah Arendt studied it. But we are in what I call an "atmospheric totalitarianism", taking up what Gilles Kepel wrote on "atmospheric jihadism": there are opinions that it would be illegitimate to express, people who are silenced, books that are banned from libraries, statues that are toppled. Cancel culture is creating a dull terror in academia, while sensitivity readers are being appointed by American publishing houses to ensure that the books to be published are in line with the new ideology. F. C. I reject this expression of "atmospheric totalitarianism," an absurd oxymoron that deals with the immeasurable. You are producing a deliberate, useless and dangerous amalgamation here. N. H. This is not an amalgamation but an analogy. And I make this analogy for a very specific reason: fifty or sixty years ago, if intellectuals wanted to denounce the gulag, they were silenced, ostracized within their own university, accused of playing the game of "big capital." Today, we are similarly accused of playing into the hands of the extreme right. F. C. : Your analogy looks more like a slip of the tongue: it's the regret of having lost the very convenient communist enemy – which, moreover, had nothing communist about it, since it was the Soviet system – but fortunately, you found a replacement for it with this new enemy which would be wokism. The starting point, the quarrel over "political correctness", does not date by chance from the turn of the 1990s... The fact remains that this constant parallel is unfounded: sixty years ago, there was a powerful Communist Party in France, whereas today, there is no Wok party! N. H. : No party, fine, but the Wokists have more and more power within the University. I receive many messages from colleagues, especially young people, who report the pressure they are under. On the Observatory of Identity Ideologies website, we list every week the seminars, conferences, and thesis projects that deal with woke subjects: it's considerable! F. C. : You are describing a university that does not exist. N. H. Go to the website and read our reports. F. C. : I teach at the University in France and often speak at American universities. I have a small minority of students who are very vigilant about these issues, but freedom of speech in class remains intact. If you are surprised that research projects related to gender, race or ecology are multiplying, it is because these questions are shaking up our societies! Furthermore, the studies – gender studies, postcolonial studies, etc. – are not taught at university in France. As a researcher at the CNRS, you occasionally stick your nose into a conference, but you don't know the classroom environment in higher education. N. H. I'm not there, but I'm looking into it. Furthermore, my American colleagues who are trying to get my books translated into English tell me that American university presses are reluctant because, in order to be published, you have to talk about "gender" or "race." F. C. You're surprised to be burned by a fire you're blowing on a lot! We have come to the end of this dialogue, without having of course been able to exhaust all the subjects... What do you take away from it? N. H. For my part, I regret not having better expressed the fact that, from my point of view, the fight against inequality and discrimination is perfectly legitimate but is poorly served by a wokism which is essentially a campus movement and has little impact on civil society. I think that those who want to fight against inequalities must do so in parties and associations, that is to say in the democratic framework. F. C. : I can, symmetrically, express regret that this debate on so-called wokism is a diversion from the real danger to the University and research, which does not at all stem from the alleged "woke hysteria" but from budget cuts, the dramatic state of cognitive and social precarity of the people who study and teach there... In short, from neoliberalism and its "reforms". The students have become so impoverished. That seems to me much more important and worthy of our commitment!

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