Summer breaks

It’s summer. La Vie des Idées is on vacation. We will resume our publishing rhythm from August 29. Here, in the meantime, is a selection of texts and interviews published this year.


Trials



Yasmine Bouagga, “Total incarceration”

There are two million prisoners in the United States today, with increased use of high-security solitary confinement. The violence of this system and its dramatic effects, particularly on the youngest prisoners or those suffering from psychiatric disorders, is now the subject of public debate.

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Nonna Mayer, “The myth of the demonization of F.N. »

Whatever its president says, the National Front has never ceased to be racist and xenophobic, judging by the opinion of its members and sympathizers. This is what the annual survey carried out for the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights shows.

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Thomas Breda, “The reform of the labor code”

The government wants to simplify the labor code, to benefit company negotiation. But by avoiding the dysfunctions of this negotiation, the envisaged reform does not tackle the deep institutional causes which hinder social dialogue in France.

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Sylvie Aprile & Delphine Diaz, “Europe and its political refugees in XIXe century “

The revolutions of XIXe century brought to the fore a new figure, that of the political refugee, and new reception policies. But, yesterday as today, the uncertainty of the vocabulary used reflected the contradiction of European States regarding the right to asylum, between duty of protection and fear of strangers.

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Leïla Vignal, “Syria: the strategy of destruction”

For five years, the Syrian population has been the subject of intense repression by a regime which is implementing a massive policy of destruction, forcing more than half of Syrians to leave their homes and seriously threatening the future of a country drained of its strength.

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Laure Bordonaba, “Arthur C. Danto or the duality of worlds”

What distinguishes a blank canvas from an empty board? a simple object from a readymade? What is this mysterious gap that art creates by separating itself from life? These are the questions posed by Arthur Danto, a major figure in contemporary art theory.

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Olivier Fillieule & Fabien Jobard, “A splendid isolation: French policing policies”

While in France, the police held guilty of relentlessness call for a rally against “anti-cop hatred”, in Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the interaction between police and demonstrators is distinguished by control and dialogue. The French police are resisting new models of policing, articulated around the notion of de-escalation. O. Fillieule and F. Jobard explain the reasons for this doctrinal retrenchment.

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Interviews



Florent Guénard, “Against terrorism, exceptional legislation? : Interview with François Saint-Bonnet »

The state of exception has a long history in France. Intended to deal with crises of all kinds, it is today invoked to respond to terrorism. But nothing says, according to legal historian F. Saint-Bonnet, that this is the right solution to the terrorism that strikes today.

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Mathieu Trachman, “How to judge the enemies of the State? : Interview with Vanessa Codaccioni »

By approaching the question of exceptional justice in a historical manner, Vanessa Codaccioni sheds light on recent debates around anti-terrorism struggles. It shows that these devices are rooted in a long history, and that it is less a question of opposing security to freedom than of understanding changing practices, embodied in institutions, which shed light on the ordinary issues of justice.

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Marieke Louis, “The roots of the Islamic State: Interview with Loulouwa Al Rachid & Matthieu Rey”

The Islamic State (EI) was not born suddenly in the summer of 2014. It is rooted in the mixed history of Iraq and Syria over the past twenty years. Loulouwa Al Rachid and Matthieu Rey unravel this complex heritage ofEIboth a legacy of Baathist authoritarianism and the American intervention in Iraq.

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Nicolas Duvoux, “Labour law: issues and repertoires of action: Interview with Sophie Béroud”

The protest movement against the “Labor Law” highlighted generational inequalities in the face of precariousness. Political scientist Sophie Béroud analyzes the issues of this bill in terms of gender inequalities as well as the forms of mobilization to which the current protest gives rise, with the contradictions of the unions.

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Reviews



Jean-Fabien Spitz, “What is French secularism? »

Republican secularism, Patrick Weil maintains, must keep religion out of the public space. Isn’t this asking more of the law than it has the right to do? And misunderstand republican equality?

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Manuel Cervera-Marzal, “What is the Republic? »

The Republic is a complex idea that oscillates between two legacies, moderate and revolutionary. Samuel Hayat returns to this antagonism crystallized in the Revolution of 1848.

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Jean-Philippe Pierron, “Alzheimer or the loss of self”

Alzheimer’s disease is not a disease like any other. It radically transforms those who are affected; it leaves no part of the individual intact. How then can we continue to recognize a man in the one she wins? And what type of care should we provide?

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Paul Demont, “The slave-expert and the citizen”

In Athens, in Antiquity, expert tasks were entrusted to public slaves, who were honored but deprived of all decision-making power. This is how, explains P. Ismard, that democracy managed to protect itself from specialists.

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Anna-Louise Milne, “On the benches of the suburbs”

Based on a long-term survey of suburban students, sociologist Fabien Truong highlights the diversity of the trajectories of young people from working-class neighborhoods. An exploration of the construction of adult identity and social place that places great importance on languages.

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Nicolas Martin-Breteau, “Racism as a visceral experience”

Can the militant autobiographical essay renew the analysis of racial violence in the United States? The writer Ta-Nehisi Coates re-engages the debate on the denouncing power of literature and the extent of racism in American society.

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Thibault Le Texier, “Bourdieu, lesson on method”

The first two years of Bourdieu’s teaching at the Collège de France constitute less of a general introduction to his concepts than a long dive into his method, at the crossroads of reflexivity, symbolism and structural analysis.

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Christophe Charle, “The roots of the university crisis”

We have been saying it loudly for years: French universities are doing badly. A new book continues the reflection, in particular evoking the fate of young, precarious generations. But the fragility of the academic world is also due to the absence of a common ideal.

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Denis Matringe, “The Kamasutra and its audiences”

The Kamasutra written in IIIe century is not only an erotic work: it is also a treatise on the art of living for well-off city dwellers, whatever the caste to which they belong, whatever their sexuality, and whether they are stud, bull or hare, elephant, mare or hase.

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