Michel Porret
historian, honorary professor at the University of Geneva, president of the Geneva International Meetings
Published on September 23, 2024 at 10:06 p.m. / Modified on September 23, 2024 at 10:09 p.m.
In June 2024, comedian Laurent Gerra declared on France Culture that, during public shows, he can make people laugh at almost anything… except gendered, sexual, religious, communitarian, ethnic identities. Identity draws the moral boundary of sociocultural prohibitions and self-censorship. It exalts what prohibits laughter. Between consumerism, democratic atomization, loss of universalism and victim culture, hyper-individualism sanctifies radical identity around the “irreconcilable” dissimilarities between beings. Identity essentialism feeds neoliberalism as a society of entrepreneurs. Each individual will be responsible for their destiny, according to their “feelings”. For political scientist Olivier Roy, with this marketed individualism, “identity is defined by a few traits which, on the sexual, gender and racial levels, can offer a very wide range. The important thing in this new world is the illusion of free choice based on experience, the subjective” (The 1488, March 2024). After the “class war” (Marx), the “war of the worlds” (HG Wells) and the “star wars” (Spielberg), the war of identities is organized on the future of societies of feeling founded on conquering individualism.
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