Our colleague Christian Godin authorizes us to make public the letter he sent to an elected environmentalist – and to which he received no response – following the prevention of Caroline Eliacheff's conference at the Cité-Philo festival in Lille, in November 2022
Dear Sir,
On November 7, you co-signed a letter addressed to Mrs. Martine Aubry, Mayor of Lille, to ask her to prohibit the holding of the meeting organized by Citéphilo yesterday, Thursday, November 17, at the city's Media Library.
Mrs Aubry had the honesty and courage not to give in to your pressure, nor to that of several "trans" associations which for several days had been campaigning for this meeting not to take place.
If I am writing to you, it is because I am the philosopher who was to present the latest work of Madame Caroline Eliacheff, renowned psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist, co-written with Madame Cécile Masson, psychoanalyst and university professor. Before yesterday I did not know Madame Eliacheff, I only became aware of her book last week.
Yesterday, around thirty activists, mobilized by social networks which are today's word of mouth, occupied almost half of the room in the Media Library set aside for the meeting, and with their noise and slogans prevented Madame Eliacheff, the organizers of Citéphilo and myself from saying a single word.
This act of censorship is absolutely scandalous. Citéphilo is the main philosophical meeting in France, which, for a month, offers quality conferences and meetings, free of charge, for a large, loyal audience interested in the life of ideas. In the twenty-six years that this organization has existed, and which honors the city of Lille, I have practically not missed a single edition, as a speaker or as a moderator. This is the first time that I have witnessed such a scandal.
But the scandal is also in the letter you wrote to Ms. Aubry, and that is why I am writing to you in turn. In support of your request for a ban, you say: "Caroline Eliacheff is regularly singled out as holding transphobic positions." But since when do we accuse someone based on rumors alone? Have you even read the book that was supposed to be discussed yesterday, The Factory of the Transgender Child ? I hope so, if you are intellectually honest. In that case, you must have noticed, just like me, that there is not a single sentence, not a single word that could give substance to this absurd accusation. You know this better than I do, since you are an elected political leader: since the public expression of transphobia is a crime in France, it is permissible for any citizen to take legal action against someone who has been guilty of such a crime.
Your second argument was to say "that the authors are questioning the possibility for minors to self-determine as transgender", as if this thesis was unacceptable, and not its opposite! Do you know that Ms. Eliacheff denounces in her book what could constitute in the years to come and not only in France, but also in the United States, the United Kingdom and in the Scandinavian countries, because cases are starting to be seriously documented, a major health scandal? For years, children have seen their bodies altered by pharmaceuticals and mutilated by surgery under the pretext that they "want" to change sex. To justify this barbarity, not necessarily less traumatic than pedophile aggression, a fetish word, always the same, is waved: self-determination. As the pharmaceutical industry and medical techno-economics have every interest in seeing their market expand, they also have every interest in allowing the development, or even in favoring, of this ideology that is very much in line with neoliberalism of American origin, and which consists in erecting the so-called personal will as an absolute. As if the will were unconditioned, as if it depended on nothing (trans associations do not want to know anything about the physical determinations, nor the psychic determinations, nor the sociocultural determinations of the individual, which means that in the same movement biology, psychoanalysis and sociology are rejected out of hand - as obscurantism it is, admit it, difficult to do better). This is what, as a philosopher, I would have liked to have debated in public yesterday. But the activists who obstructed the debate do not seem to know what a debate of ideas could possibly mean; they divide the world into two irreconcilable camps: us and our friends on the one hand, and our enemies on the other. I tried to get a few words across amidst the hubbub by addressing one of the demonstrators in the front row face to face. He shouted at me: "You are not concerned!" I tried to make him understand that nothing human was foreign to me, that Marx was not a worker, and that Michel Foucault did not spend a single day in prison. It was a waste of time. Well, you never know, I told myself to reassure myself.
I am, as a philosopher and as a citizen, indignant, deeply indignant. The cause of ecology is more than just, it is necessary, it is vital. We all know that today, the destiny of humanity is linked to this question. And what do I see? Those responsible (and to what extent are they responsible?) who have, in one go, lost the sense of nature (they only talk about the environment), and who, under pressure from certain groups, are going to play the useful idiots of a capitalist techno-economy of which they also present themselves as the best adversaries.
I am outraged and at the same time I pity you, pity your stupidity, your ignorance, your unconsciousness. Yesterday something very serious happened in Lille: an estimable intellectual was defamed, speech and thought were hindered. Lives devoted to intellectual work were considered worthless. What no government, even the extreme right, would have dared to do today was done yesterday: the banning of a philosophical meeting. Think about it: hatred of language and reflection has a name: it is called "barbarism".
There are political parties and movements that are preparing this barbarity. You are opening a boulevard for them.
Yours sincerely,
Christian Godin.
