Former surgeon turned publisher and writer, Éric Hazan died on June 6, at the age of 87. Very committed to the left, he left his mark on the life of ideas at the start of the 21st century, with his publishing house, La Fabrique.
Although it was founded in 1998 as a small publishing house which “only edit friends”, La Fabrique is today one of the most prestigious and controversial independent publishing houses. She owes this status to a man, the far-left writer Éric Hazan, who devoted the last 25 years of his life to her.
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Died on June 6, 2024, the famous publisher had been ill and physically diminished for several years. The left is losing a singular figure, in turn capable of being interested in the Revolution, decolonization, old Paris and Balzac.
From surgery to writing
Born in 1936 in Paris, into a Jewish family, Éric Hazan is the son of Fernand Hazan, publisher and founder of Editions Hazan. Very early politicized, he joined the FLN in Algeria, before returning to finish his medical studies. Having become a cardiovascular surgeon, he put his skills at the service of causes he believed to be just, notably in Lebanon, during the war which began in 1975.
But ultimately, it is towards publishing that he will turn and find fulfillment. In 1983, he took over from his father at the head of Hazan Editions, then devoted to art books. After almost fifteen years of service, he left the company after the takeover of the Hachette group, which took place four years after the death of Fernand Hazan. He then founded, in Belleville, La Fabrique, a house whose ideas were anchored “politically to the left of the left, but without giving in to any partisanship, without being subservient to any group or party”as he explained in an interview with La Croix in 2004.
Self-taught, Éric Hazan is no less erudite. He began writing and published in 2002, The Invention of Paris: there are no steps lost, threshold. Paris, its history, its town planning and its sociology became one of the favorite themes of the publisher, who subsequently published A crossing of Paris (Threshold, 2016), The Tumult of Paris (La Fabrique, 2021) but also Balzac, Paris (La Fabrique, 2018). His other favorite field is History, and not just any history, that of revolutions.
Published in 2015, at La Fabrique, The Dynamics of Revolt. On past insurrections and others to come is probably his most emblematic work on the subject. He tries, in his own words, “to take advantage of the relative calm which precedes historical commitments to make a sort of synthesis of the traps strewn along past revolutions as well as moments of success and hope”.
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Éric Hazan writes, of course, but above all he edits. Over the years, his house became one of the most important of those on the radical left. Among its authors, we find Giorgio Agamben, Éric Fassin or Frédéric Lordon, as well as classics, such as Angela Davis, Daniel Bensaïd or Karl Marx. But during the years 2000 and 2010, La Fabrique will especially be under the spotlight and criticism for two authors: the Invisible Committee and Houria Bouteldja.
Insurrection and decolonial thought
“From whatever angle we take it, the present is without exits. This is not the least of its virtues. […] Those who claim to have solutions are denied within the hour”lyrically announces the Invisible Committee at the beginning of their first pamphlet, The coming insurrection (2007). Associated in the minds of Julien Coupat and the Tarnac saboteurs affair, the anarcho-situationist collective believes that an armed insurrection is the only solution and sees the premises in the riots which hit the suburbs in 2005. If for the moment his predictions have not proven correct, he can nevertheless boast of having sold tens of thousands of copies. To our friends (2014) and NOW (2017), which follow, in the same vein.
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The other controversial author is an author: Houria Bouteldja, pioneer of decolonial thought in France and spokesperson for the Party of Indigenous People of the Republic (PIR), until 2020. It is an understatement to say that White people, Jews and us, his essay published in 2016, created controversy. In this work, the essayist who develops a racialist reading of French society and invites white people to get rid of their “whiteness”, divides the left, which does not know whether it should support it or distance itself from its theses. Seven years later, Houria Bouteldja signs Ruffians and barbariansa book in the same tone.
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“She is dignified, proud and expresses herself extremely well, both written and spoken. She’s a woman and an Arab too: that’s too much. […] I defend it and I take full responsibility for it”, comments, about the controversies aroused by its author, Éric Hazan during an interview given to the online magazine Le Comptoir. It must be said that the publisher does not fear controversy.
But the intellectual does not shock only by the authors he publishes, but also, sometimes, by his positions. For example, in June 2010, for example, he co-signed a column entitled “For the five of Villiers-le-Bel” in Release
calling for the overthrow of the police described as “occupying forces”. In 2018, denouncing the attitude of part of the anti-racist and anti-fascist left incapable of supporting the Yellow Vests, the writer stated in Mediapart: “The fact that the extreme right is present […] do not bother me “. Positions which can destabilize and have earned him as many enemies on the left as on the right. Because Eric Hazan was above all a man who thought outside the box.
