About this Event
A few months after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action, how to revitalize minority politics and make the fight against discrimination more effective?
For Bruno Perreau, being in the minority means being caught in a relationship of substitutability. Facing the spectacle of George Floyd being choked to death by police in Minneapolis, any black person knew that they could have been in his place. Wouldn’t anyone also shaped by the threat of violence feel challenged?
Perreau will present his new book Sphères d’injustice. Pour un universalisme minoritaire (La Découverte, 2023), which reflects on the resonances among different types of minority experiences and argues that analogy can ground a new theory of justice.
When judges struggle to establish discrimination at the intersection of several identities, it remains possible to use one of them to protect another. 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.
Perreau will review the current obstacles to the notion of minority in Europe and North America: management excesses, algorithmic reach, reactionary attacks, and competition among minorities.
He will also update Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer’s classic work of political philosophy and plead for an ethic of interdependence based on learning rather than on interest (liberalism), recognition (multiculturalism), or empathy (care).
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
La Maison Française NYU, 16 Washington Mews, New York, United States
USD 0.00
