Éric Zemmour : Essayiste Pamphlétaire, Pamphlétaire Essayiste

Abstract

If Renza Bensmaïa is right to see in the essay “the Other that gives birth to all the others” ; if it is indeed the case that, since Montaigne, it has fed on doubt and fuelled debate ; if it is therefore coeval with modernity ; then there is a contradiction between Éric Zemmour's essayistic stance and his — reactionary, extremist, xenophobic — political program. Instead of trying to resolve this contradiction by negating either of its terms, I follow the internal logic of the essay as practised by Zemmour to arrive at the paradox of an essayist who is also an extremist. Evolving from the essay to the pamphlet, and oscillating between the two, Zemmour is this paradoxical essayist who “tries” to escape the essay by means of the essay.