Didier Eribon

Like many gay men, Didier Eribon moved to the big city and effectively broke off contact with his parents when he came out — he was prompted to write this memoir largely by the process of renewing his relationship with his elderly mother, decades later, when she found herself having to cope with his father’s illness and death.

In the book, he reflects on how both his sexuality and his choice of an academic career cut him off from the rough, working-class background he grew up in, and at show more the odd ways in which the two interact. It is quite consciously written as a book by an academic, for academics, and it’s written in the finest sociologese (a dialect that at least has the merit of being no harder to understand in French than it is in English...). It can be tough for a lay reader to follow in places, and occasionally it almost reads as though Eribon is just making fun of himself, but it is worth battling on through the jargon. Eribon takes his personal experiences and bounces them up against political and sociological theory and against the parallel experiences of writers who have influenced him - Sartre, Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu, etc., but also, less obviously, Annie Ernaux, Raymond Williams, James Baldwin and Patrick Chamoiseau. And he comes up with some interesting conclusions about the problems that are inherent in the relationship between academic left-wing thought and the real working-class that it claims to represent.

One aspect of the book that has got a lot of media coverage is his analysis — drawn from his mother’s admission that she “only once” voted for Le Pen — of the way the Left may have made space for radical right-wing ideas by moving into the comfortable mainstream of politics. But this is actually a rather minor part of the book, and he doesn’t really develop this idea very far. What was interesting, though, was the point he made about the complexity of the act of voting. People don’t simply vote to express their agreement with a candidate’s policies, or in their own interests (in press interviews more recently he’s taken this further to talk about not only the way his mother — a pensioner dependent on social security — would have lost out if Le Pen had got in, but also the turkey/Christmas referendum in the UK). But there also seems to be something more than a little patronising about his attitude: he seems to accept that working-class culture is necessarily racist, sexist, homophobic, and that you can only get beyond that by engaging people in some cause that makes them see beyond their own noses (striking workers show solidarity with their black colleagues...).

What I found particularly interesting about the book was the frankness of Eribon’s discussion of his feelings about his working-class background, which actually do seem to come very close to those Ernaux expresses in her books (in very different language!). There is the same feeling of shame and embarrassment at his (perceived) coarseness and ignorance compared to his bourgeois fellow-students, the same guilt about having abandoned “where he came from”. And the same anger about the education system that pretends to provide equal opportunities but is actually designed to favour kids from nice, respectable middle-class backgrounds at every stage.

Also interesting to see his thoughts about how expressing his sexuality as a gay man required him to develop an identity different from the one he grew up in, so reinforcing the tendency to become middle-class (and a sport-hating aesthete — yes, we’ve all been there and done that...!).

Not an easy book, but worth reading if you’re interested in class and sexuality and how they interact. show less

I've always loved this bio of Foucault, since it was written by someone who knew him and was a member of the scene in which he moved. Not a massive tome of scholarship, or a tell-all full of latex and pills, but a contemporary account. A great French take on a French thinker with a clear and engaging translation.

I'll admit I don't read non-fiction titles very often, but this is one of the better ones I've read in recent years. With his sociological/philosophical approach, Eribon provides insight into what it is like to come from the "working class" and try to break out of the vicious cycle; very interesting thoughts about what happened to Marxism and the left, accompanied by the rise of the ultra-right; and a great deal of genuinely honest self analysis about what it means to be a homosexual in a show more society that is still today highly discriminatory of any behaviour it sees as different from the accepted norm, whether that means being poor, being a socialist or being gay.
This is a very interesting book that can be read by everyone who wants to understand the importance of tolerance. show less

Interesse für Kunst oder Literatur hat stets, ob bewusst oder unbewusst, auch damit zu tun, dass man das Selbst aufwertet, indem man sich von jenen abgrenzt, die keinen Zugang zu solchen Dingen haben; es handelt sich um eine »Distinktion«, einen Unterschied im Sinne einer Kluft, die konstitutiv ist für das Selbst und die Art, wie man sich selbst sieht, und zwar immer im Vergleich zu den anderen – den »bildungsfernen« oder »unteren« Schichten etwa. Wie oft konnte ich in meinem show more späteren Leben als »kultivierte Person« die Selbstzufriedenheit besichtigen, die Ausstellungen, Konzerte und Opern vielen ihrer Besuchern bereiten. Dieses Überlegenheitsgefühl, das aus ihrem ewigen diskreten Lächeln ebenso spricht wie aus ihrer Körperhaltung, dem kennerhaften Jargon, dem ostentativen Wohlgefühl … In all diesen Dingen kommt die soziale Freude darüber zum Ausdruck, den kulturellen Konventionen zu entsprechen und zum privilegierten Kreis derer zu gehören, die sich darin gefallen, dass sie mit »Hochkultur« etwas anfangen können. Dieses Gehabe hat mich seit je eingeschüchtert, und doch tat ich alles dafür, so zu werden wie diese Leute, in kulturellen Kontexten dieselbe Lockerheit an den Tag zu legen und den Eindruck zu vermitteln, ich sei ebenfalls so geboren worden.

Wenn die überlebende oder wiederhergestellte Bedeutung des »Wir« sich dermaßen gewandelt hat, dass nun nicht länger die »Arbeiter« den »Bourgeois« gegenüberstehen, sondern die »Franzosen« den »Ausländern«? Oder genauer: Wenn der Gegensatz zwischen »uns hier unten« und »denen da oben«, in den sich der zwischen Arbeitern und Bourgeois verwandelt hat (was schon nicht mehr dasselbe ist und jeweils unterschiedliche politische Schlussfolgerungen impliziert), plötzlich eine nationale und ethnische Komponente bekommt, weil »die da oben« als Befürworter einer Immigration wahrgenommen werden, deren Folgen »die da unten« angeblich jeden Tag zu ertragen haben, einer Einwanderung, die plötzlich für alle möglichen Übel verantwortlich gemacht wird?

Die entfremdete Weltanschauung (den Ausländern die Schuld geben) verdrängt den politischen Begriff (gegen die Herrschaft ankämpfen).

Ich entschied mich also für Bildung und »Kultur« und gegen den Männlichkeitskult der unteren Schichten. show less