Returning to Reims

On thinking the matter through, it doesn't seem exaggerated to assert that my comingout of the sexual closet, my desire to assume and assert my homosexuality, coincided within mypersonal trajectory with my shutting myself up inside what I might call a class closet. -- fromReturning to Reims

After his father dies, Didier Eribon returnsto his hometown of Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty yearsearlier. For years, Eribon had thought of his father largely in terms of the latter's intolerablehomophobia. Yet his father's death provokes new reflection on Eribon's part about how multipleprocesses of domination intersect in a given life and in a given culture. Eribon sets out toinvestigate his past, the history of his family, and the trajectory of his own life. His storyweaves together a set of remarkable reflections on the class system in France, on the role of theeducational system in class identity, on the way both class and sexual identities are formed, and onthe recent history of French politics, including the shifting voting patterns of the working classes-- reflected by Eribon's own family, which changed its allegiance from the Communist Party to theNational Front.

Returning to Reims is a remarkable book ofsociological inquiry and critical theory, of interest to anyone concerned with the direction ofleftist politics in the contemporary world, and to anyone who has ever experienced how sexualidentity can clash with other parts of one's identity. A huge success in France since its initialpublication in 2009, Returning to Reims received enthusiastic reviews inLe Monde, Liberation, L'Express, Les Inrockuptibles, and elsewhere.

Didier Eribon, Professor of Sociology at the University of Amiens, is well known for his groundbreaking biography, Michel Foucault, first published in 1989. He is also the author of Insult and the Making of the Gay Self, as well as numerous other books of critical theory.