By Sophie des Beauvais
Last month’s Charlie Hebdo attacks sparked renewed debate on French national identity. Although France consistently condemns multiculturalism, it struggles to identify one unifying culture. Presently, the conservative right wing fringe is capitalizing on this debate, which is now perceived as reactionary and anti-republican.
Philosopher Ernest Renan’s definition of a nation is often applied to the French. A nation is “a spiritual principle,” which possesses the “the desire to live together.” It is before anything else a “civic republic” and “community of values.” However, a nation is more than a Zollverein—a mere community of interests is not enough. It is also a rich legacy, shared memories, and the product of a history that happened on the national territory. This definition leads to the perception of a cultural majority by part of the population.
Indeed, writers who can actually be qualified as reactionary are not only extremely popular but also seem to have built most of their audience on that subject.
In his best-selling essay Le suicide français (The Suicide of France), journalist Eric Zemmour makes a merciless indictment against the current state of French society. The essay deplores France’s perceived decline since the Gaullist 1960s, when the country was at its peak and enjoyed the stability of a patriarchal order. For Zemmour, this was the era before feminism, Mai 68, globalization, American consumer capitalism, the moral dictatorship of socialist intellectuals, women’s empowerment threatening men, extra-European immigration, and so on. In Zemmour eyes, all of these factors inevitably caused France’s present decline and the loss of its identity.
Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, Soumission (Submission), offers revolutionary prospects for the French political landscape. In 2022, fragmenting republican parties and Marine Le Pen’s rise bring Mohammed Ben Abbès to the presidency. Abbès, the fictional leader of the French Muslim Brotherhood, imposes a relaxed form of shariah law in France. The traditional élite eagerly collaborates with the new authoritarian regime.
Houellebecq’s satire of the unexpected radical cultural and political shift of France, condemn the ‘conservative republican’ ideology: National identity is only about republican values. There are no minorities because everyone is French and, by definition, equal. French law prohibits statistics based on race, religion, or origin. Acknowledging diversity would both breach the republican pact and accept communautarisme, a side of multiculturalism under which ethnic and social groups cease interaction with and live completely apart. This ideology is also called blind universalism, the outcome being the existence of a diversity of identities, whether or not this diversity is acknowledged. For Houellebecq, this blindness is the cause of an apparently sudden cultural shift.
In contrast with blind universalism, the liberal republican ideology asserts that while people do share similarities, republicanism is a form of racism and French society never stopped living in the post-colonial environment in which minorities are discriminated against within the society.
These two opposing ideologies cannot resolve the tension between a national community based on shared values and a supposed cultural majority. The dispute first appeared at the end of the 1970s, when the Socialist Party became the first party in France to include the term “national identity” in a political program.
However, the term was used to propose recognition of severely endangered regional minorities. After 1981, immigration became a major political issue. At the end of the decade, the left abandoned the discussion of national identity, fearing the National Front would benefit from the debate. Today, the moderate socialist left only uses superficial republican rhetoric on the subject. Accordingly, the right wing is alone to guide the debate.
The mid-2000s saw a political shift when French President Nicolas Sarkozy renewed the national identity discussion in the context of a perceived crisis of integration. Sarkozy created a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity in 2007. The ideology behind his slogan “La France tu l’aimes ou tu la quittes” (France, love it or leave it) concedes the existence of the supposed cultural majority. Loving France implies acting like those “integrated” French who adhere to a cultural norm.
Unsurprisingly, Eric Zemmour and other reactionary journalists emerged at this moment. These writers and polemics understood Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s lesson that ideological hegemony is necessary for any political project to succeed. They also knew how to take advantage of left wing disengagement in the debate.
France must adapt its idea of national identity to fit the current reality of a highly multicultural society. A single, rigid national identity is a utopia that cannot exist. There are multiple nationalities within France that are mobile, contradictory, and change with time. Accordingly, the real question is not about the existence of such a debate led by the civil society, but rather about the role of the state, the necessity of a plurality of views, and the moderate left’s engagement in that debate.
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Sophie des Beauvais is an editorial assistant at World Policy Journal.
[Photos courtesy of Maya-Anaïs Yataghène and mercopress]