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Emmanuel Macron and the Passive Revolution of French Neoliberalism: Discipline, Defection, and Dissent in Contemporary French Politics

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Date

2022-08-08

Authors

Biscahie, Thibault

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Abstract

Understanding the rise of Emmanuel Macron – and by extension, the expansion of French neoliberalism – necessarily entails a breakdown of traditional disciplinary boundaries. Political science alone cannot account for the seemingly contradictory patterns and dialectics of change and continuity inherent to the current French moment. Concepts and ontologies derived from history, economics, sociology, discourse analysis, international relations and political science must be mobilised and fused in this endeavour. In parallel, linguistic gaps – from French to English, and inversely – must also be bridged so as to combine the proximity offered by the source-language and the perspective afforded by the foreign language. An original contribution of this dissertation is thus to offer a single integrated approach – both in disciplinary and linguistic terms, drawing on various perspectives and upon both French and English language sources – to the election of Emmanuel Macron and its implications for French politics, economics, society, as well as social theory.

This research first aims to situate Emmanuel Macron's election in the longue durée of neoliberalisation efforts in France in order to contextualise the long decay of the traditional Left and Right, as such deliquescence laid the ground for the recourse to rigid solutions of the 'Caesarist' type which Emmanuel Macron seems to incarnate. Against this background, Fernand Braudel's conception of the longue durée is mobilised to delineate the long-term cycles and to distinguish the socio-political trends that derive from conjunctural circumstances from other types of tendencies which are deeply inscribed in the structural dimensions of society and politics. This study seeks to contribute to the development of a neo-Gramscian perspective on French politics, highlighting the French state's organic crisis and the role of organic intellectuals and subaltern social groups in the formation of historic blocs. It thus problematizes the strategic project of Emmanuel Macron as a molecular and group-specific trasformismo from the 'extreme centre' that gave way to a form of 'authoritarian anti-populism'. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of this project from above and its associated mode of governance – analysed as a passive revolution with Caesarist elements – remains contested by opposition and resistance from 'subaltern' social groups in contemporary France.

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International relations

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