Society assigns places. It pronounces verdicts, which take hold of us and mark our lives forever. It establishes boundaries and hierarchies individuals and groups.
The task of thought is to bring to light these mechanisms of inferiority and the logic of social domination and reproduction. Didier Eribon invites us to a true renewal of the analysis of classes, trajectories, identities, and the central and ambivalent role of institutions (notably the school system, law, politics, etc.) in their creation. With the horizon of the idea that only an approach that places at the center of its concerns the problem of the determinisms by which our lives are governed can allow us to open the way to a politics of emancipation.

Published in October 2009, Retour à Reims received considerable acclaim and sparked much debate. Didier Eribon is now undertaking a deeper exploration of the narrative and the reflections interwoven in this work, which has become a classic.

Didier Eribon is a philosopher and sociologist. He is a professor at the University of Amiens. He recently published Retour à Reims (Fayard, 2009; Champs-Flammarion, 2010) and a new edition of Réflexions sur la question gay (Champs-Flammarion, 2012).