Caroline Fourest on the Offended Generation

A conversation between Caroline Fourest and Alice McCrum at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 15/02/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.

In leftist dialogue, argues journalist Caroline Fourest, cultural appropriation has taken the place of blasphemy in service to the religion of origins. How did we get here, and where do we go now?

Have cultural conflicts invaded our private lives and private minds? Should we be concerned by the cult of identity? Does adherence to origins endanger free democratic exchange? In polemic treatise Génération Offensée, author Caroline Fourest outlines the biggest threat currently facing the intellectual left: itself. From canceling Dostoevsky to firing professors at will, Fourest uncovers a self-cannibalizing instinct at the heart of leftism which is eating the movement from the inside. This fight against offense has finally arrived in France, she argues, and brought with it its entourage cultural police turned thought police. Without any desire to return to the way things were before, Fourest proposes a simultaneously feminist, antiracist, and universalist path forward which allows for a distinction between cultural plunder and cultural homage.

About the speaker:

Caroline Fourest is a filmmaker, director, and journalist. She was the co-founder of the feminist, anti-racist and secularist journal ProChoix and taught at Sciences-Po Paris on themes of multiculturalism and universalism. Fourest has been columnist for Le Monde, France Culture, and Marianne, directed feminist film Sisters in Arms (2019), and now directs Franc-Tireur, a weekly newspaper against polarization and extremism.

Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.