French Literature Reviews - 2026
É. Roudinesco, Soi-même comme un roi. Essai sur les dérives identitaires
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
Soi-même comme un roi. Essai sur les dérives identitaires
Élisabeth Roudinesco
Seuil, 2021
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17.90 € incl. tax
288 pages
EAN 9782021480870
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The toppling of statues in the name of anti-racism is disconcerting. The striking hostility towards men displayed at the heart of the feminist struggle raises profound questions. What has happened for yesterday's emancipatory commitments—notably anti-colonial and feminist struggles—to turn so radically inward?
For the past two decades, the phenomenon of "identity labeling" has been steadily growing, to the point of encompassing society as a whole. This is evident in the evolution of the concept of gender and the transformation of the idea of race. In both cases, extraordinarily rich intellectual tools—stemming from the works of Sartre, Beauvoir, Lacan, Césaire, Said, Fanon, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida—have been pushed to extremes of reinterpretation to serve the ideals of a new conformity. Traces of this can be found just as easily among certain advocates of queer transgenderism as within movements like the Indigènes de la République and others immersed in the pursuit of identity politics.
Concurrently, however, the notion of national identity has made a comeback in the rhetoric of French far-right polemicists, driven by the terror of a "great replacement" of the self by a demonized otherness: the migrant, the Muslim, May '68, and so on. This discourse champions precisely what identity politics on the opposite side rejects: a white, masculine, virile, colonialist, Western identity. Identity pitted against identity, therefore.
A common thread running through all these deviations is the essentialization of difference and the universal. In her conclusion, Élisabeth Roudinesco offers several pathways for escaping this trap.
A historian, Élisabeth Roudinesco has authored landmark books on the history of psychoanalysis in France, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud (winner of the 2014 Prix Décembre), the family, and more. Her works are translated worldwide.
The intellectual landscape of contemporary France has been significantly shaped by the legacy of twentieth-century thinkers such as Sartre, Beauvoir, and Foucault. These figures provided the conceptual foundations for anti-colonial and feminist movements that aimed at broad emancipation. As the discourse around gender and race has evolved, these theoretical frameworks have been subject to reinterpretation. The book Soi-même comme un roi. Essai sur les dérives identitaires examines how concepts once rooted in universalist traditions are now being utilized to support movements centered on identity claims and the essentialization of difference.
The text identifies a development where both identity politics and far-right nationalist rhetoric rely on the construction of exclusionary categories. By discussing the rhetoric surrounding the migrant, the Muslim, and the legacy of May 1968, the author highlights how these opposing sides mirror each other in their focus on identity. The work concludes by offering pathways for escaping the trap of essentialized difference. Readers interested in the evolution of French intellectual history and the sociopolitical implications of identity-based movements may find this study relevant.