Abstract :
[en] With the publishing of his books Le premier sexe in 2006 and The French Suicide in 2014, Éric Zemmour durably engaged in a war against the “feminization” of the French society. Finding echo from masculinists and anti-feminist groups online, Zemmour established himself as a well-known and popular figure among far-right communities. Directly feeding from the manosphere’s thesis, the candidate’s heated hostility towards LGBTQIA+ rights, gender equality, immigration and feminism was particularly concretized during the 2022 French presidential elections (Alduy, 2024). As a matter of fact, this specific context was a clear opportunity for the candidate to further spread his populist ideology. By developing a confrontational rhetoric, Zemmour durably enforced themes pertaining to the “Great Replacement” theory (Taguieff, 2022) and enhanced the symbolic role of gendered identities during the whole presidential campaign. However, despite being widely known for his misogynistic views, the candidate presented himself as a “feminist” (Guaresi, 2023). The candidate language and rhetoric successfully managed to redefine the tone and pace of the last election campaign (Llorca, 2022). Shaped by the post-MeToo cultural context, Zemmour’s shift in the construction of his ethos offers a relatively softer image to his audience while still spreading his conservative antagonistic and masculinist rhetoric of the “Great Replacement.”
Through the analysis of the candidate’s discursive construction of woman.en, this communication will discuss how masculinists and anti-feminist arguments are voiced during the candidate’s electoral rallies. Feeding on an intersectional approach of discourse analysis, this contribution will also investigate how these specific views of gender were conveyed by the means of the Great Replacement theory in Zemmour’s populist rhetoric. During this presentation, I will also elaborate on why an intersectional approach to discourse analysis (Paveau, 2023) can help us understand how masculinist arguments serve Éric Zemmour’s electoral objectives and how his rhetoric contributes to banalizing anti-feminist ideas in the debate. This contribution will therefore rely on a lexical, semantic and rhetoric analysis of the candidate’s electoral meetings in order to investigate how his anti-feminist views are conveyed and normalized within the discursive construction of woman.en.
