In the wake of Donald Trump's victory and the rise of the far right across Europe, the view has spread that left-wing political movements, or at least some of them, have unwittingly contributed to this trend. From within the left itself, and not coincidentally, this responsibility is often attributed to feminism or, more generally, to wokism, a derisive term that also encompasses critical race theories and decolonialism. The idea is that the demands of these movements—which are or should be essential to left-wing progressivism—go too far and have therefore provoked a perverse effect or one backlash, another term imported from the English-speaking world. Using a different term, we would talk about the boomerang effect, a device that can hit the person who threw it hard. Another argument is that certain claims, which are considered exaggerated (such as all those related to gender fluidity and the trans issue), endanger the rights acquired through workers' struggle or by left-wing governments.
We are led to believe that, in the world of culture, research and teaching in the field of human and social sciences, the virus woke It has infected most of the people who participate. We are fortunate, it is said, to have several brave men—there are also women who contribute to this discourse, but fewer—who dare to cry out in the wilderness and denounce this disease that supposedly weakens the scientific rigor and interest of productions in these fields, as well as their transformative capacity.
It is therefore legitimate to ask: have feminism and activist and academic anti-racism gone too far? And, if we remain in the university world: is it true that they are hegemonic in research and higher education, and that this endangers other perspectives and objects of study that are less fashionableIn France, a team of sociologists has conducted solid quantitative research to examine this hypothesis and provide an answer; the newspaper Le Monde This was echoed a few days ago. Using artificial intelligence tools, these researchers examined more than 50,000 scientific articles in the humanities and social sciences, published between 2001 and 2022, to determine the proportion of this scientific production that takes gender into account. It's particularly interesting to see its evolution, because there's a prevailing feeling that this progress in gender studies has occurred primarily in recent years, which also coincide with the rise of right-wing political positions.
The results tell us that in the first years observed in this study, at the beginning of the 21st century, gender was present in 9% of publications, and that, two decades later, it has risen to 11.4%. If we qualify this result, we see that in certain disciplines (economics and geography), gender is rarely considered, while in sociology, the most extensive field, it reaches 15%. Regarding issues related to race, its consideration is marginal: it does not reach 3.5%. We are, therefore, a far cry from the alleged hegemony that threatens other studies and perspectives, such as those based on social class, that is, on economic factors.
On the political level, the same voices that complain about the prominence of feminism and anti-racism say that this "makes us forget the economy," which is the root of all inequalities and the social unrest of a majority of the population. Feminist demands, especially, are considered a kind of luxury, a mirage that obscures the "real" problems of the people, and that contributes to "the people" opting for right-wing rather than left-wing options. The problem is that this message, spread by politicians from the most conservative spectrum around the world, has also resonated with some sectors of enlightened progressivism. Therefore, it is surprising (and, for some, comforting) that a historian not suspected of unhinged feminism, such as Patrick Boucheron, a member of the venerable Collège de France, has recently suggested that feminist and anti-racist achievements have only just begun, and that we must go much further and not allow ourselves to be drawn into the fray. backlash.
Furthermore, a distorted view of feminist, anti-racist, or decolonial cultural and academic productions is often presented. It is argued that they contribute to an identitarian victimhood and that they divide rather than unite, since they appeal to particularisms rather than "universal values." But it is easy to be a universalist when one belongs to the camp that created the norms regarding gender and race: that of symbolic and social privilege. It is also said that feminisms and critical race theories appeal to a feeling of "guilt" about these privileges, and that this makes them unpopular. However, what irritates and what the defenders of this universalism fear most is perhaps not the feeling of guilt, but the displacement of our central position and the constant questioning that these other perspectives force upon us.
