Bruno Perreau - Böcker

How minority issues concern all of us, and why a new conception of justice grounded in solidarity can revitalize democracy.How can the rights of minorities be protected in democracies? The question has been front and center in the US since the Supreme Court’s repeal of affirmative action. In Europe too, minority politics are being challenged. Reactionary groups abuse the notion of minority by demanding to be protected just as minorities are, while the notion of a “protected class” risks encouraging competition among minorities. Also, in the age of algorithms, the very concept of minority is being transformed—the law of averages is replacing that of the greater number. In Spheres of Injustice, Bruno Perreau shows how can we revitalize minority politics and make the fight against discrimination beneficial for all.Perreau proposes thinking about minority experiences relationally. How one person is governed has a direct impact on how another is. Legal provisions that protect gender can be used to protect race; those that protect disability can protect age, sexual orientation, or class, and so on. This is what Perreau calls intrasectionality, a new concept and an innovative legal strategy, which builds on the idea of intersectionality. This book takes up many concrete cases (discrimination at work and access to healthcare; new techniques of deliberation; innovative teaching practices; etc.) and connects them to the history of minority movements, the sociology of violence, and contemporary theories of justice. Updating one of the greatest classics of political theory, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality by Michael Walzer, Perreau shows that minority presence can teach new forms of responsibility to one another and that the resonances between experiences of injustice—much more than a belief in shared moral principles—ground a political community.

In 2012 and 2013, masses of French citizens took to the streets to demonstrate against a bill on gay marriage. But demonstrators were not merely denouncing its damaging effects; they were also claiming that its origins lay in "gender theory," an ideology imported from the United States. By "gender theory" they meant queer theory in general and, more specifically, the work of noted scholar Judith Butler. Now French opponents to gay marriage, supported by the Vatican, are attacking school curricula that explore male/female equality, which they claim is further proof of gender theory's growing empire. They fear that this pro-homosexual propaganda will not only pervert young people, but destroy the French nation itself.What are the various facets of the French response to queer theory, from the mobilization of activists and the seminars of scholars to the emergence of queer media and the decision to translate this or that kind of book? Ironically, perceiving queer theory as a threat to France means overlooking the fact that queer theory itself has been largely inspired by French thinkers. By examining mutual influences across the Atlantic, Bruno Perreau analyzes changes in the idea of national identity in France and the United States. In the process, he offers a new theory of minority politics: an ongoing critique of norms is not only what gives rise to a feeling of belonging; it is the very thing that founds citizenship.