The JDD. Many French people are following the presidential campaign across the Atlantic with interest, but also with a certain dismay… Despite the Americanization of lifestyles that you describe, is this not a sign that we have not completely become American? ?
Jérôme Fourquet. Americanization is a fairly profound phenomenon that affects all aspects of social life, but France is not America, of course. We do not have the political violence, the two-party system, the weight of money in electoral campaigns… However, we observe a fascination for this election; this year again, the news channels are putting themselves “on American time” with special correspondents; we are bombarded with comments from specialists on the Iowa caucus… Our entire political class loved the series The West Wing (at the White House); the UMP became Les Républicains; we imported into France the mechanism of primaries, which is completely American (country where elections are in one round), whereas in our electoral system, the first round served as it…
Another example of the very profound influence of American news, after the questioning of the right to abortion by the American Supreme Court in 2022, we voted for its constitutionalization, almost unanimously, while in France , no powerful and structured movement makes the restriction of access to abortion its emblematic fight. Never before have so many abortions been performed in France, and yet it was deemed very urgent to constitutionalize it! It's a bit like being the 51st American state.
The diversity, scale and speed of the French Metamorphoses that you exhibit are dizzying. Is it wrong to say that France has changed more in two generations than in several centuries?
Jérôme Fourquet. I am not a historian, but what I wanted to highlight in this book is the depth and speed of these transformations. We have certainly already experienced periods like the Trente Glorieuses, the French Revolution or the industrial revolution, during which the country had changed a lot, but what strikes me in these last decades is that even the anthropological underlying has been modified, although it had almost never moved.
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For example, the very principle of the first name has changed: historically, a newborn was given the first name of an ancestor, to place him in a lineage, a heritage, a continuity. Today, it is the principle of distinction and singularization that prevails, as illustrated by the very strong inflation in the corpus of first names used. We can also mention the relationship with the body, which is manifested in the explosion of tattoos for example, or the evolution of family structures dear to Emmanuel Todd: today, 25% of families with children are single-parent families.
“It’s as if France were the 51st American state”
A political unthinking which had, you recall, emerged with the Yellow Vests. You have contributed to bringing certain subjects into the public debate, but you readily quote Nicolas Mathieu, also agree with certain observations of Michel Houellebecq… Can literature say or sense what sociology or opinion studies do not perceive?
Yes, of course: a photo, a curve, a map can have a very strong demonstrative impact, and this is also the idea that guided this book, to reach a different audience… But, sometimes, a paragraph or a well-turned page by a Nicolas Mathieu or a Michel Houellebecq makes you more aware of certain social or cultural realities than a long sociology article! This is why I try, as much as possible, to refer to authors. I cite in particular Nicolas Mathieu who recounts a funeral in a church: his character looks at the stained glass windows, the dragons, the archangels… and this language has become a dead language for him. This passage is worth all the stories about dechristianization.
Reading your latest table of the political “big bang”, one wonders if macronism will be a parenthesis of history…
As its name suggests, Macronism is very linked to the person of Emmanuel Macron. From the moment when, institutionally, he cannot present himself a third time, and given the choice of dissolution, disastrous for his political camp, we can question the sustainability of this current. But those who found themselves in this central block will not disappear, and it will remain, in a undoubtedly different form. The whole question is whether he will have sufficient electoral support to reach the second round or not.
Was it a parenthesis? The parties of the “old world”, to speak like the Macronists, would even say that it was a nightmare which lasted ten years, and that we will wake up by resuming the good old habits of the left-right match. I don't believe in it and I think that it is possible that we will remain in a very unstable, very chaotic political situation, with this tripartition of the political space which is not at all adapted to our institutions, to our political culture and our voting methods. Macronism as macronism is set to decline, but this decline does not mean a return to the status quo ante, in my opinion.
If it were overtaken by a radicalized right and left, could we see it as a clash between those who defend “the France before” and those who bet on “the France after”?
In some ways, we can look at things this way. On the RN side, even if it is not theorized with these words, there is the idea of the right to historical continuity, which had been one of the markers of Fillon, for example, and which we can also find in Zemmour. The slogan “ We are at home »intoned in RN meetings, means that we want “that France remains France”. Conversely, a whole part of La France insoumise relies on “France after”like Jean-Luc Mélenchon relaying a photo of one of the first major pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Place de la République in Paris, with many Palestinian flags, accompanied by this comment: “This is France. »
The Insoumis and Mélenchon theorized the cultural and demographic change which is taking place in France and became the champions of creolization in progress and of this new France in the making. But we can clearly see that on economic and social subjects, for example on the repeal of the pension reform, RN and LFI can also both be followers of a certain conservatism and opposition to reforms.
French metamorphosesJérôme Fourquet, Le Seuil, 208 pages, 29.90 euros.
