'Wokeism' and the Politics of Shame: Constructing an Internal Enemy in Contemporary French Debates

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Abstract

In France, the notion of "wokeism" has rapidly become a catch-all pejorative in public discourse, targeting a range of social struggles perceived as threats to the republican order and to so-called "universalist" thought. Promoted by prominent intellectuals and political figures, this rhetoric has given rise to an ideological offensive against gender studies and critical sexuality research, frequently accused of promoting identity politics or ideological activism. This presentation focuses on two recent and highly mediatised cases emblematic of this dynamic: (1) the controversy surrounding a forthcoming collective volume on “wokeism” to be published by Presses Universitaires de France (PUF); and (2) the so-called “shameful” colloquium, which mobilised a discourse openly stigmatising intersectional approaches in academia.

Through these two case studies, the presentation examines the contemporary mechanisms of symbolic censorship and intellectual delegitimisation that target dissident sexualities and the scholarship that supports them. Drawing on the sociology of reception and the sociology of public controversies, it explores how such polemics contribute to the (re)construction of a normative national narrative—one in which the racialised, gendered, or queer body becomes a site of ideological conflict. This research also aims to situate the French debates within a broader transnational dynamic of ideological repression, shaped by the intersection of populism, moral panic, and a nostalgic desire for epistemic hegemony.