Your uncle is the type to bawl that feminists emasculate men and your brother is a convinced anti-European? Do not panic, the editorial staff of Usbek & Rica has selected a few essays that should allow you to sharpen your weapons against your opponents on December 24th. And long live the debate of ideas!

Nuclear: stop or again?, Antoine de Ravignan (Les Petits Matins, 2022)

“The dictatorship is never far away when you entrust the experts – or any body – with the task of deciding what is or is not good for a society. In his latest book, the deputy editor-in-chief of Alternatives Economiques Antoine de Ravignan assures us that if the scientific approach ‘allows us to clarify and objectify a choice’, it must ‘in no case replace it’. ‘The relaunch or exit from nuclear power is a fundamentally ethical and political decision, and not a conclusion which would impose itself by its own rationality’, states the journalist. Hence, beyond its very ‘personal’ conclusion (‘it is preferable not to engage in the relaunch of nuclear power in France and, consequently, to come out of it little by little’), his call for ‘the citizen to finally be the object of consideration’, so that all the arguments for and against keeping nuclear in the electricity mix are carefully considered.

A New Dark Age, Technology and the End of the Future, James Bridle (Allia, 2022)

Would we be experiencing the end of the ideology of progress, this state of mind which postulates that the development of human civilizations can only go on improving, that the rise of digital technologies is necessarily a blessing which should enable ever more staggering scientific advances? In A New Dark Age, Technology and the End of the Future (Allia, February 2022), James Bridle believes that the direction human societies are taking is not that of social and intellectual progress, but that of regression due to the deeply obscure and anti-democratic character of both the economic system (which favors the enrichment of the richest) and the new digital tools (which are at the service of this system).

Deviant Ecologies: Journey to Queer Lands, Cy Lecerf Maulpoix (Cambourakis Editions, 2021)

In his book Deviant Ecologies: Journey to Queer Lands (Cambourakis Editions, September 2021), journalist and activist Cy Lecerf Maulpoix explores how LGBTQI+ struggles, and minority perspectives, cultivate new approaches to political ecology. An initiatory journey, as much as political, which navigates between personal experiences and historical accounts to think about a ‘plural’ ecology.

The Flattening of the World, Olivier Roy (Le Seuil, October 2022)

While French intellectual life seems more than ever centered on cultural battles, political scientist Olivier Roy, in one of the most brilliant essays of the fall, The Flattening of the World (Le Seuil, October 2022), defends the less pessimistic idea that this permanent putting into play of the notion of culture would be the symptom… of a process of deculturation already largely advanced in our societies.

Sovereignty, the obsession of nations, Nicolas Leron (Editions Bouquins, March 2022)

In Sovereignty, the obsession of nations (Editions Bouquins, March 2022), the doctor of political science and researcher associated with CEVIPOF and OFCE Nicolas Leron offers us an explosive light on the notion of sovereignty. The absolute Holy Grail of Eurosceptics, now brandishedby Europhiles who dream of establishing “European sovereignty,” it is above all, according to him, a decoy that prevents us from saving democracy.

The Fetish and the Pen, the new product of capitalism literature, Helene Ling and Ines Sol Salas (Rivages, 2022)

In The Fetish and the Pen, the new literature of capitalism (Rivages), the authors and teachers Helene Ling and Inès Sol Salas draw up an indictment of the consequences of shareholder concentration in the world of publishing. Literary standardization, premium in rankings, growing weight of Amazon and self-publishing, consumerist digitization of attention… And literature in all this?