Posted at 3:00 p.m.
I myself am a master’s student in sociology at UQAM since 2018, as well as a research assistant.
My area of research is the sociology of nationalism, where some of the questions addressed in Philippe Lorange’s open letter1 are extensively and constantly treated. I also specify that I do not know him at all.
The quotation from a professor criticized by Mr. Lorange is really questionable, and the letter therefore deserves a serious answer. However, given some of Mr. Lorange’s comments, it is hard to believe that he is writing in good faith even if his questioning is legitimate.
Having studied political science and sociology, he must know the definition of racialism: the doctrine according to which the human race is really divided into races, and that these real differences between races explain social phenomena. To qualify someone as a racialist is therefore to accuse him of racism, a racism that would not be accidental or unthought, but thoughtful and learned.
Racialism today is pseudoscience and no one claims it, except certain fringes of the extreme right. This is an accusation which may be admissible (I am thinking, for example, of the numerous accusations2many of which have been epidermal, but some well-argued, prompted by the words of activist Houria Bouteldja in France), but which cannot be taken lightly.
So who are the “racialists” Mr. Lorange speaks of in his letter, and what are their positions? Hard to say. One can think of postcolonial and decolonial theories, which are the most frequent targets of such accusations. In my experience, there is no postcolonial or decolonial “orthodox” in the sociology department of UQAM. These two labels cover a wide variety of very different, debated work and writing, so I’m not sure what such orthodoxy would look like in the first place.
Suffice it to say that I am generally disliking most of these approaches, favoring Weberian approaches to ethnicity and social boundaries instead. I have had several opportunities to discuss and debate at length the criticisms leveled at postcolonial approaches (to cite one example, the book by Indian sociologist Vivek Chibber Postcolonial Studies and the Specter of Capital) at seminars, and although it led to some sometimes heated debates, I never had a problem. In fact, I can’t even say that I felt in a minority position.
It must be said that I am not in the habit of approaching the interlocutors with whom I have theoretical disagreements by qualifying them immediately and gratuitously as racialists. If Mr. Lorange really wishes to address the criticisms of these approaches, taking them seriously and submitting to the same criteria of rigor that he imposes on them, he should easily discover that he is not the only one, nor among the students or among teachers.
On the other hand, if his letter is representative of the degree of consideration he has for his opponents, it is the entire academic community that risks posing a problem for him.
As for the evocations of the cultural revolution and the fear of seeing Western culture erased, which would have sinned by its whiteness in the eyes of the dangerous students of UQAM, I am not sure there is a polite way of saying it: if one is lenient, it is a very broad caricature of rather marginal remarks presented as if they were omnipresent. If one is less lenient, it is shameless lies.
I would have liked to have had more space to address other aspects of Mr. Lorange’s letter. His questions about the professor’s remarks can, under the right circumstances, lead to quite fruitful discussions, and he is not necessarily wrong to doubt the relevance of this formulation. Fortunately, he will certainly have the opportunity to have such discussions during his career at UQAM, if he is willing.