The French Presidential Election and the State of Democracy in France
In this episode the focus is on the latest presidential elections in France and the state of its democracy. What were the significant differences between this election and the previous one? Is there a new wave of anti-intellectual sentiment spreading across the country? It also delves upon how current political entities manoeuvre their way within the framework of the traditional right/left divide: has Macron forsaken his liberal values and did that lead to reluctance among his voters? Did Marine Le Pen’s strategy of de-demonization work? How did the far-left fare and who did they vote for in the second round?
Democracy in Question? · Eric Fassin
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Show Notes
Guests featured in this episode:
Éric Fassin, Professor of sociology and co-chair of the Gender Studies Department at Paris VIII. University, where he also established the Research Center on Gender and Sexuality Studies. His research addresses sexual and racial politics as well as immigration issues, in France, Europe, and in the United States in a comparative perspective. He is currently working on book project with his brother, Didier Fassin, on The Rising Significance of Race in France, to be published the University of Chicago Press.
GLOSSARY:
How Assa Traoré became a symbolic figure in France?
(00:16:00 or p.4 in the transcript)
Assa Traoré is the sister of Adama Traoré, a black French man who died in police custody in 2016. Assa Traoré has been acquitted of defamation charges brought against her by police officers. She accused three police officers of killing her brother, but the investigators have been unable to agree if he was suffocated or if he died because of an underlying medical condition.
The death of Adama Traoré has elicited many parallels between George Floyd's death in the U.S. Assa Traoré, has become the symbolic figure of the Black Lives Matter movement in France. Source:
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What does Harry Frankfurt write On Bullshit?
(00:35:06 or p.8 in the transcript)
Harry Frankfurt, a moral philosopher, makes the following observation in his book: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.”
Aspects of the bullshit problem are discussed partly with reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, Wittgenstein and Saint Augustine. Three points seem especially important – the distinction between lying and bullshitting, the question of why there is so much bullshit in the current day and age, and a critique of sincerity qua bullshit.
Frankfurt makes an important distinction between lying and bullshitting. Both the liar and the bullshitter try to get away with something. But ‘lying’ is perceived to be a conscious act of deception, whereas ‘bullshitting’ is unconnected to a concern for truth. Frankfurt regards this ‘indifference to how things really are’, as the essence of bullshit. Furthermore, a lie is necessarily false, but bullshit is not – bullshit may happen to be correct or incorrect. The crux of the matter is that bullshitters hide their lack of commitment to truth. Since bullshitters ignore truth instead of acknowledging and subverting it, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies. Source: