Pierre-André Taguieff

Encyclopedia : P : PI : PIE : Pierre-André Taguieff

Pierre-André Taguieff, born at 1946 in Paris is a philosopher and political economist, director of research at CNRS (in a Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) laboratory, the CEVIPOF). He is the author of many sociologic essays, mainly concerning the questions of racism, racialism (or "scientific racism"), antisemitism and historical revisionism.

Works

In La Force du préjugé - essai sur le racisme et ses doubles (1987), Pierre-André Taguieff analyzed several different types of racism:

The first type of racism is against miscegenation, in favor of racial segregation and wants to conserve differences between various alleged races. 19th century racialism theories, such as Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853-55), gives an example of this type of racism, which pretends to found itself on science and on the existence of biologic human races. In other words, this pseudo-scientific racism mistakes the amount of melanin (which determinate skin color) with racial differences.
The second type is insidiously hosted by the Enlightenment philosophy of universalism: its dream of unity of mankind may bring it, in specific and extreme cases, to the will to annihilate all cultural differences, amounting to effective genocide or ethnocides. Taguieff's point is not in declaring that the Enlightenment philosophy is racist in itself, but rather than extreme forms of this will of universality may lead, in practice, to the destruction of the plurality of cultures and to the refusal of even moderate forms of multiculturalism.
The third type, more recent, has integrated the cultural relativists attacks against racism. This new form of racism has reversed the famous anti-racist arguments of ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss against him. According to Lévi-Strauss, different cultures are incommensurable, and, because of this, each one thinks progress and superiority is on its side - Lévi-Strauss, in his 1952 essay for the UNESCO, used the famous metaphor of two trains crossing each other: each one thinks he is going the right way, while the other seems not to move or to move backward. Because of this, ethnocentrism is a necessary optical illusion, which in turn racist discourse use to justify itself. According to Taguieff, racist discourse such as the one supported by Alain de Benoist' Nouvelle Droite far-right movement has accepted the theories of cultural relativism and the inexistence of biological race. Claiming it uphold cultural relativism and thus antiracism, this new racist discourse in fact prones the strict distinction of various ethnic groups and segregation between them. Since it argues that "ethnic groups" exist but are not biological races, it claims not to be racist. However, apart of the pseudo-scientific racist theories of the 19th century, it shares the same anti-assimilationist point of view and refuse any melting pot whatsoever. Arguing that Enlightenment's universal philosophy, took to its extremes, is a form of racism, it pretends to be antiracism by preaching strict separation of ethnic groups. However, if the critics against "universal racism" are correct, it is clear that this new form of racism is in the direct line of the old discourse of separation between different supposed races.

Taguieff was also closely interested by Leon Poliakov and worked a lot on the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Today, he works on nationalism, future of the Republic and the concept of progress.

Pierre-André Taguieff's denounciation of antisemitism and of the instrumentalisation of anti-zionism by specific and ultra-minority groups has been somewhat controversial, his opponents claiming that he was identifying anti-zionism with antisemitism. However, Pierre-André Taguieff does not define himself as a "Jewish intellectual", and is a staunch opponent of any form of communitarianism whatsoever. As such, he does not claim that anti-zionism is necessarily antisemitism, but simply that in some islamist circles, explicit anti-zionism may dissimulate implicit antisemitism, in the pure tradition of the European history of antisemitism.

Bibliography

1986 - Racismes, antiracismes (edited by André Béjin, Julien Freund; with Alain de Benoist et al) ISBN 286563163X
1987 - La Force du préjugé. Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles (Tel Gallimard, La Découverte) ISBN 2070719774
1991 - Face au racisme, La Découverte (dir.)
1991 - Théories du nationalisme (Kimé) (collaborating with Gil Delannoi)
1992 - Les protocoles des sages de Sion, faux et usage d’un faux
1994 - Sur la Nouvelle Droite, Galilée
1995 - Les fins de l’antiracisme, Michalon
1996 - La République menacée, Textuel
1997 - Le racisme, Flammarion
1998 - Face au Front National. Arguments pour une contre-offensive, La Découverte (avec Michèle Tribalat)
1998 - Les populismes
1998 - La couleur et le sang : doctrines racistes à la française, Mille et une Nuits
2000 - L’effacement de l’avenir, Galilée
2001 - Du progrès. Biographie d’une idée moderne
2002 - La nouvelle judéophobie, Mille et une Nuits
2004 - Le sens du progrès - Une approche historique et philosophique
2004 - Prêcheurs de haine. Traversée de la judéophobie planétaire, Mille et une Nuits
2005 - La république enlisée - Pluralisme,communautarisme et citoyenneté, Ed. des Syrtes
2005 - La foire aux illuminés Ed. Mille et une nuits.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.