All the pleasure was mine Claire! Content que tu aies pu profiter de l'accueil (et des spécialités) de Bourgogne et c'était un plaisir de t'avoir parmi nous !

Je travaille maintenant à Dijon, mais je reste affilié à la VUB où je travaillais l'an passé. Et je garde beaucoup d'affection pour Bruxelles !

Si vous parlez anglais, ce petit extrait du livre de Sclafani vous montre un peu le genre d'analyse que les collègues sociolinguistes font sur lui :

static.routledge.com/978113824450...

Bien sûr, en termes de richesse lexicale et de sophistication de la langue, le constat est simple pour Trump. Mais au-delà de ces mesures linguistiques, il y a des choses à dire sur la façon dont il parle. Son usage du discours rapporté, son sens de la répartie, ses digressions métadiscursives,...

Merci beaucoup, c'était un plaisir !

C'est un beau compliment, merci ! Je le fais à ma modeste mesure, mais il y a nombre de spécialistes qui font l'exégèse très détaillée du discours de Trump.

Ma référence reste Jennifer Sclafani et son livre "Talking Donald Trump", qui va bien plus en profondeur que moi.

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Read the full article:
“From sovereignty to créolisation: populist strategies and the Mélenchon–Ruffin split.”
Out now in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

(Please do reach out to us if you face difficulties accessing it!)

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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So, must left populism choose patriotism over “minority” struggles?
The French case suggests otherwise: créole populism—anti-racist and pluralist—proved more promising than the sovereigntist turn, both electorally and as a strategy for radical democracy.

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Créolisation names a different universalism—open, conflictual, grounded in difference.
It is not a boutique cultural gesture, but a "dirty", grassroots process that emerges from below and redefines who "the people" can be.

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Créolisation pictures the people not as a fixed identity but as a relation—open, unstable, shaped by intertwined histories and cultures.
It roots universalism in lived plural vulnerability, not abstract national sameness.

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Seeing those limits, Mélenchon shifted strategy.
Instead of wooing far-right voters, he mobilised subaltern precarious groups—especially racialised abstentionists—and grounded this move in Édouard Glissant’s concept of créolisation.

11/
In France, the sovereigntist gambit aimed to lure mob-leaning far-right voters into supporting the left. But it failed. The “faché pas facho” line proved to be a dead-end.
As @ericfassin.bsky.social notes, it misunderstands far-right loyalty and ends up reinforcing exclusion.

10/
We build a typology mapping three expressions of invisibilised masses (that can overlap):
(1) Subalterns – excluded by race, gender or status
(2) The precarious – atomised, insecure workers
(3) The mob – déclassé, fringed, resentful groups courted by the far-right

9/
To grasp this turn, remember that populism is not only about stylistic transgressions of charismatic leaders—it is about who is drawn onto the stage.

Its transgression lies in mobilising the invisibilised—sectors that are, in fact, very diverse, literally heterogeneous.

8/
Gradually, however, Mélenchon pivoted. He refocused on abstentionist, racialised, precarious voters in the banlieues, adopting an openly anti-racist, feminist, and queer-inclusive discourse.
It was not a strategic shift that happened smoothly, and he has been heavily criticised for this choice.

7/
Mélenchon initially backed that line. The so-called "faché pas facho [angry, not fascist]" strategy assumed that far-right voters weren't inherently reactionary, but simply lacked alternatives—and that appealing to national symbols could bring them (back) to the left.

6/
To reach them, Ruffin embraced patriotic tropes, and set aside race and gender issues, seen as "divisive".

This was in line with LFI’s "sovereigntist" phase: attempting to reconstruct a national-popular identity to rally dissatisfied citizens leaning toward the far-right.

5/
Our case study is the split within La France Insoumise between @jlmelenchon.bsky.social and @francoisruffin.fr.

Ruffin sought to rally what he called "les petits blancs"—"little white people" of deindustrialized and rural France: outraged citizens who have increasingly turned to the far-right.