“Sexualités et politique: le pari du flou. Réponse à Sandra Lucbert,” by Houria Bouteldja, was first published on Contretemps. Révue de critique communiste on 18 November 2025. In this text, Houria Bouteldja responds to a letter addressed to her by Sandra Lucbert, which had been published on Contretemps on 4 September 2025, under the title “Le net et le flou. Lettre à Houria Bouteldja.” Its English translation and publication on Communis takes place within the framework of the collaborative partnership between Communis and Contretemps. Read the English translation of Lucbert’s letter here.

“If there is agreement on the main enemy and respect for different spaces and times (including those of the white working classes), then anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist unity will have to renounce the universalization of today’s hegemonic forms of sexual identification and leave room for ‘delinquent’ practices that resist normalization and consumerism. A political program that claims to fight against capitalism and undertakes to respect LGBT and queer forms as much as subaltern heterosexual forms, or that agrees to come to terms with the invisible, the unidentifiable, the clandestine — the blurred — without privileging white forms — so clear — over others, would be, in this fragmented world, the only formula that would truly deserve the name of decolonial communism.”

— Houria Bouteldja

Response to Sandra Lucbert

I would have liked to begin this letter with a compliment worthy of the one you gave me, but that would come across as flattery because I don’t know you well enough. More precisely, I am not familiar with your work. I know that you are well known and — I believe — recognized for your writings on literature and psychoanalysis, but I am a complete ignorant in these areas. I am not qualified to assess your “value,” let alone what you might be able to offer me. I listened to you talk about political literature on Hors-Série, but I couldn’t tell if I had learned anything. Let’s chalk it up to my ignorance. On the other hand, I really enjoyed following a debate you had at Dany et Raz. I discovered in you a lively, powerful, and knowledgeable woman. That earned my admiration. What I do know is that you are part of a left wing that stands firm, unapologetic about its radicalism and anti-imperialist commitment, as evidenced by your association with Révolution Permanente. That was enough for me — because for me anti-imperialism is the mother of all battles — to think that your letter deserved a response. First, for shamelessly narcissistic reasons. When a respected figure of the “true” left addresses me in a spirit of “camaraderie,” I am flattered. Second, because the letter was published on Contretemps, a serious website, which immediately lends it credibility regardless of its actual merits. Finally, because it was expected. For those who hoped for it, it had a soothing effect. I recall François Bégaudeau’s reaction, which has the merit of conciseness: “Lucbert’s text is a masterpiece of its kind. It is absolutely spot on.”

But maybe you saw it. Others were more cautious. Some were embarrassed.

I’m one of them.

In this letter consisting of 27 points, you chatter. With style, but still, you chatter. You think you are making an original contribution, when in fact you are merely reciting the litany of all those who, before you, have gone into this exercise since, in the early 2010s, the news broke: 1) You are not born LGBT (or queer), you become one. 2) White sexual imperialism exists. This had the effect of throwing the entire French progressive left into disarray and causing us to lose allies. I could forgive you for that, because that is not your crime. What is less acceptable is your aplomb. To say that you treat me like a schoolteacher treats her students would be inaccurate, because a teacher is entitled to give lessons, and I humbly admit that I could be your student in some areas. I fear, and I’m sorry to say this, that you are behaving like a white woman towards an unfinished indigene* woman.

Hear this: I hate more than anything else using this paralyzing weapon that the indigènes abuse to silence critics and gain the upper hand over any white person without having to fight. So calling you white in my writing will not be gratuitous. It would cost me dearly to label you as such without proof. Consider this letter a demonstration.

Are you shifting? Me neither.

Points 2 and 4. Two points, two untruths.

First, you congratulate me on my communist “coming out.” Not only would I know how to shift, but I would also be heading in the right direction. However, the only real conversion I know of is my conversion to revolutionary nationalism and internationalist patriotism, which, as you know, has earned me some ridicule. As for my “move” towards communism, you are mistaken. You are confusing two things: the goal (communism) and the strategy for achieving it. You have to be a post-colonial subject (or have read us seriously) to know the heavy dispute that separates the  indigènes from the left in general and the socialists and communists in particular. You have to have endured all the compromises of real communism with the racial State during colonial history, endured the communism and municipal socialism of the 1980s, and the rabid secularism and Islamophobia of almost the entire left in the 2000s, to understand that it was highly risky and completely counterproductive, despite the solid Marxist training of most of the initiators of the  Appel des Indigènes, to claim to be “communists.” If we were reluctant to wear this rather cumbersome label, it was because we first had to lay down our conditions and cross swords with this left, which we dialectically identified as both our “main ally” AND our “primary adversary.” It was illusory to hope to gain credibility with the indigènes without breaking our chains. The more we fought the left, the more we grew in the eyes of non-whites. The more we distanced ourselves from the left, the more respect we gained. It wasn’t until 2019, and the march against Islamophobia, that the radical left found favor in the eyes of part of the indigène community. That is to say, fourteen years. Fourteen years during which none of us ventured into the territory of this despised left. But this step taken by the LFI (not to name it) towards us was not enough to cross the Rubicon. For that, we had to wait until 2025. The year of this exchange with you. Twenty years since the Appel des Indigènes. In order, we waited for LFI to give more guarantees[1], but the progress of the white left is not the only factor in our “shift.” We can add, as an external factor, the resistible but real fascist risk, but also internal factors: the near defeat of endogenous political experiments. For example, that of political Islam, which has produced the worst (terrorism) and the best (resistance to colonialism) abroad, and of civic Islam at home. Not that we, as decolonialists, had many illusions about the so-called “Islamist” or “Islamic” option, which we knew (with few exceptions) to be often liberal and inconsistent. Here too, we had to wait not for the end of this cycle (because political Islam still exists) but for its twilight. It was the colonial counter-revolution in response to the Arab revolutions that sounded the death knell for this utopia born of anti-colonial resistance in the 1930s. Personally, I place the symbolic end of this alternative at the end of 2024: when Joulani, having recently gone from “anti-Western jihadist” to “freedom fighter,” sided with the imperialists. The merit of this surrender is that it allowed us to put an end to our last scruples. And since LFI had blown up the organizational frameworks of political anti-racism while integrating, albeit partially, its contributions, our anti-left coquettishness became obsolete.

To cut a long story short: we waited until the indigènes were cornered, until all doors were closed to them — betrayed by most of the regimes born of independence, defeated by the alternatives born of these betrayals, eroded by liberal solutions (those embodied by Macron at the beginning of his first term) and the emergence of a radical left. It took the indigènes being backed into a corner for us to lay our cards on the table, not without the “excuse” that Mélenchon had proven himself and not without attaching the word “decolonial” to “communism,” so important is it to us to distance ourselves from his BBR version. Let me be clear: this “shift” is not a step towards a place where you would already be and where you would be kind enough to wait for us. That place is the transformation of the left to which political anti-racism has contributed and where it has pushed you. As far as I am concerned, I am but the outpost of this trajectory. I am one step ahead of my people (vanguard) and at the same time I obey them (rearguard). When I make this proposal for decolonial communism, the indigènes are ready, or, to use Malcolm X’s words, I sat down at a table where my plate was finally full.

So much for my “shift.” Now let’s talk about yours.

You say that I have made you shift. If by “us” you mean “the radical left,” that’s not wrong, given its progress in addressing State racism. But as far as you are concerned, personally, I think you are mistaken. You are not shifting. You are resisting. I will elaborate further, but I can already “reveal” three salient features of this resistance, which will form the three parts of my response:

— The first is that you don’t read, you read poorly, or you believe yourself to be naturally equipped to confront me without having to study the theoretical work of decolonialists. That’s your right, but you’re taking a risk.

— The second is that you are looking for your reflection in our mirror. You endorse those indigènes who happen to resemble you. Through your discourse, which is ultra-dominant in far-left circles, it is an entire social class that is speaking, that of white progressives from the upper middle classes who are delighted to be recognized by their “counterparts” from racial minorities and vice versa. I postulate that this mutual recognition is nothing more than the inscription of both parties in the field of the dominant ideology of the white left.

— Lastly, and most importantly, you are off topic. You spend most of your argument talking about gender and sexuality, when my contribution focuses primarily on the contradictions that need to be resolved in order to build a hegemonic bloc. You talk about ideology when I talk about strategy. Sexuality is merely a knot that we must untie in order to devise a strategy for conquest and hegemony. However, this knot was tied by white people, and rather than loosening it, your letter seeks to tighten it.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, I would like to reiterate my general theoretical framework. The decolonial movement has no ethical problem with homosexuality or formal or informal unions between people of the same sex. We know that social forms of sexuality are not governed by natural forces but produced by historical forces. We also know that there is no stability in sexual categories. They are constantly evolving as a result of social and economic transformations. We know that specific homosexual relationships have always existed in pre-colonial societies and that they still exist in one form or another in post-colonial societies. As such, “marriage for all” does not provoke any moral disapproval on our part. The heterosexual model, man/woman, is not “natural,” and it is right to criticize its normativity and universality. The same applies to all other models. Same-sex marriage, promoted as legitimate since 2014, is a circumstantial and historically situated form, corresponding to the specific needs of a given population. This is why we have been careful not to support it, as it appeared to us to be a demand of the white middle and upper classes. However, as racialized groups and therefore at the bottom of the social ladder, we feel it is undignified to fight for those who are better off than us, firstly because the reverse is not true, but also because there are non-white forms of union, such as polygamy, which find no space for legitimization in public debate. While from a decolonial point of view, no form of union should take precedence over others, it is nevertheless clear that same-sex marriage will take precedence over African polygamous marriage, which is still practiced, albeit clandestinely, in France. Put in these terms, it is clear that the problem is not so much the quality of forms of social life (fluidity vs. binary) but which ones are circumstantially legitimized by white power and which ones are condemned, repressed, and criminalized. Before defending the same-sex unions of African children, it would be appropriate, from a decolonial perspective, to defend the polygynous unions of their parents. But as I can already hear cries of horror, I will stop there, having set the stage for debate.

1. You don’t read, and you read poorly. Or you don’t take us seriously.

Point 5. “Gender and sexuality: pending review.”

Are you serious?

My first article on gender dates back to the prehistory of my involvement, before the PIR [Parti des Indigènes de la République] existed. It was published in Politis on 4 March 2004. It dealt with the intersecting issues of race and gender[2]. The second, in October 2004, appeared on Oumma.com. It dealt with the colonial instrumentalization of the veil and gender, already identified by Fanon. With the PIR, numerous texts on gender and the critique of intersectionality followed[3]. The one on sexual imperialism began in 2013. Since then, there has been a plethora[4]. Those on subaltern masculinities from 2014 onwards, but more seriously in 2017[5]. My two books published by La Fabrique both deal with gender and sexuality.

Point 26. You contrast me with feminists like Laura Rita Segato, whom I actually cite in my writings. Unlike me, she is able to articulate the link between feminicide and capitalist logic. Really? By assuming that I automatically despise materialist feminism, you are insulting me, but you are also insulting La Fabrique, my foreign publishers, and the universities that invite me to speak. Do you really think they would be fooled by such an inconsistent activist, who would be unaware of the existence of feminism in general and decolonial feminisms in particular? If they publish me or invite me, it is precisely because I have fought to oppose a decolonial theoretical and political approach to the liberal and culturalist wave of mainstream feminism. If you type “Decolonial Feminism + Houria Bouteldja” into a search engine, you will find that these texts have been translated into a multitude of languages. You will also discover that — although I do not call myself a feminist — I am part of the same tradition as Rita Segato.

2. You are White

Points 6 and 7. You know that descriptive statements are not prescriptive statements. Observing a conservative reaction does not mean justifying it, let alone encouraging it. I maintain that conservatism is one of the defensive manifestations of a social body under attack and not necessarily the manifestation of a retrograde cultural identity stasis waiting to be liberated from itself. Fanon himself said that self-preservation (rather than conservatism) was one of the stages of the decolonial process. But I want to be honest. The Houria who analyzes this situation does so objectively, but the Houria who is part of this group participates in this defense. I have always said that we must understand and support the bright side of the indigènes who resist. I do not stand outside my people. I am part of them. One foot in, one foot out. That is to say, on the ridge line. I know that between a certain romantic conservatism (which Benjamin supported) and reaction, there is only one step, and that our moral decline is a serious possibility. That is why the decolonial challenge is like walking a tightrope. You will argue that indigènes who identify as LGBT are part of my people. To which I would reply in the affirmative, except that, I repeat, I have one foot in and one foot out. As a decolonial activist, I never allow myself to be imprisoned by indigènes whom I know to be integrationists, whether they are those who resist at the risk of reaction (homophobes) or those who adhere to white models without questioning them (progressives). If I choose to support those who reject the LGBT model, it is to support the silent resistance that is based on race and class. But that is not the only reason. As a Fanonian, I have an aversion to imitation, an evil from which we, as indigènes, are incurable. So when I see alternative models being invented that escape the needs of the State, my first instinct is to support them, not to fight them blindly. Let me explain: you contrast the term “violated” with “offense,” which reduces my argument to a moral dimension that would only concern “certain”  indigènes. My question would then be: Sandra Lucbert, are you capable of thinking about the articulation of morality and politics in a post-colonial context where the indigènes are crushed? Does the fact that it is “moral” and that it only concerns “some” justify resigning from this blind spot? Admittedly, this is a question of morals, but the terrain is political. And contrary to what you claim, it is not “some” but the majority who do not recognize themselves in the sexual categorizations of whiteness, including people who practice homosexuality, otherwise why would Pride in the suburbs be an event? However, I am well aware that between these two poles — the large non-white majority that rejects these categorizations and the minority that supports them — things are not set in stone. I am well aware of the existence of worlds between these two possibilities, because there are many who fit into this model while constantly questioning it and negotiating back and forth. I would even say that among the younger generations (the most urban and socially privileged), things are moving significantly towards acceptance of these identity discourses, that is, towards you. Should we welcome this? I’m not going to ask you that question, as you’re busy welcoming my fellow believers who have finally reached your shores with honors. I’ll ask the readers. To welcome it, we would have to consider the politicization of sexuality, LGBT identity claims, and visibility as an insurmountable horizon, the only path to emancipation. However, the validity of the policy of “visibility” is questionable. As recalled by Marc Aziz Michael, who has sharply criticized the injunction to pursue such a policy in the Palestinian context, authors as eminent as Michel Foucault have long demonstrated the association between visibility and domination. The invention of sexuality in the 19th century contributed to the foundation of the State program aimed at making the desires of the population visible, and therefore manageable. Through this, the State intervenes violently in family life, and sexuality comes under the control of the consumer market and the police. A quote will speak for itself: “Disciplinary power is exercised by making itself invisible; on the other hand, it imposes a principle of compulsory visibility on those it subjugates. In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. Their exposure ensures the power exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen, of always being able to be seen, that keeps the disciplinary individual in subjection.”[6] The invisibility of sexuality in neighborhoods, on the contrary, allows them to escape control[7]. This makes it more difficult for capitalist power to apprehend a multitude of invisible and discontented subjects who are constantly causing trouble. And this is despite the fact that suburban residents are precisely the prime target of State’s repression.

And despite this, we should adhere to a progressive reading of history, go through all the stages you went through (one wonders why?) and arrive where you are (are you even happy?). And to oppose this state of affairs would be tantamount to reactionary nostalgia that idealizes the pre-colonial world. However, numerous anthropological studies prove the opposite: the failure of the universalization of the hetero/homo duality. According to Joseph Massad, “[i]t is precisely the failure of the universalization of the hetero/homo duality that so intrigues white Western anthropologists and calls for the intervention of international gay and straight organizations, whose mission is to transform the world into a copy of Euro-America”[8]. I would add that it is this resistance that drives institutions to support Pride events. In light of the above, does it not occur to you that perhaps there are other possibilities, and that other peoples or populations have experimented with them in the past, that they continue to hold on to forms that have not yet been destroyed by the Western steamroller? Worse than that, you don’t consider for a second that — perhaps — it would be up to you to backtrack and learn from us. Or even to join us in the world of the invisible and, to quote Edouard Glissant, of opacity. If you want to know, I think the LGBT movement itself has reached the end of a cycle, that it is running out of steam, and even that it no longer has much to offer since the integral racial State has sucked it dry. Many queer critics are calling for a rejection of the appropriation of these identities by the State machine and even for a move beyond them. So I ask you this question: why should we go on a pilgrimage when everyone else is coming back from one? Why, at a time when the LGBT movement is most compromised by the racial State and liberalism, when criticism of homonationalism and pinkwashing is coming from all sides[9], when even the idea of coming out has become passé, should the indigènes take the path that is already a dead end? Why, when they are inventing or reinventing their own alternative forms, escaping narrow categorizations that are irreducible to “the king of sex,” must we oppose them with this “enlightened” regime of sexuality, when theirs sidesteps the processes of standardization? Why, when they rightly reject the white invention of this hetero/homo binary as a way of organizing their identity, and refuse to consider their sexual desires as the expression of their most intimate truth, should we downplay or even despise this experience, which can become formidable in the face of the State’s drive for control? Why not simply reverse the roles? They teach, do you learn?

Points 7 to 13. The fact that you read the sketches as deriving from one another (“a parallelism that produces meaning,” the cruise = Pride) or that, according to you, I am “waving a figure of decadence” is not my concern. To say that the question of gender in my work “has been reduced to the dimensions of progressive laundering” is an accusation made in bad faith. On the other hand, I have the right to concern myself only with this aspect, with the possibility of setting aside certain dimensions, without these being reduced to a simple third party that has been excluded. For my part, I accept that I am able to articulate the moral and the political. The example of the cruise cannot be subsumed into a simple transfer of the division of labor to the postcolonial question. It is not just materialistic. It is symbolic violence, a clash between worlds and a test for the Tunisian staff confronted with a “border situation“[10] that has enormous implications on the individual, collective, and political levels. Gender and sexuality are sources of identity tension and moral panic that have effects on political determinations, whether in the global South or in the peripheries of the North. The reasons? I’ll leave it to the psychoanalysis enthusiast to explain the mechanisms, but for my part, I’m only interested in the effects. I therefore accept that I want to untangle the knots based on this issue. If what was causing tension among the indigènes was a march on climate change or against unemployment, I would set about devising a strategy based on these points, but you will agree that no one honestly believes there is a knot to untangle here. As for your criticism that I was too hasty in declaring that in Beaufs et Barbares there is “no trace of the primacy of race over class (or gender),” because, according to you, in my work “gender finds itself subordinated to race and class,” I would like to remind you that gender and sexuality are used against the indigènes for civilizational purposes. I can only conclude that you misunderstand the role of sexuality as a tool of domination and racial control in the hands of colonial powers. By ignoring this, you are replacing a political analysis of the relationships between race, the State, and imperialism with a moral culturalism based on abstract images and emotions, while contenting yourself with attributing to me a “primacy of race” without examining the way in which power organizes sexuality as an instrument of racial rule. Yet it is precisely around the issue of race that national and imperialist unity is played out against the  indigènes outside and inside, the Tunisian staff and the inhabitants of Saint Denis. Over there, with European development aid that is cut off as soon as the Southern States fail to comply with the Northern sexual agenda; here, with media campaigns against a dark-skinned soccer player who refuses to wear an LGBT armband or an imam who expresses doubts about the legality of homosexuality.

Point 14. I made a mistake about the date. The Pride event I was referring to is not the first one, but the one that took place in 2022, about which we published an article in the magazine Nous entitled “La Pride des Banlieues ou la domestication des sexualités barbares” [Pride in the Suburbs or the Domestication of Barbaric Sexualities]. We were there. As we were at the 2023 event, where our observations were much the same. We do not learn from your writing that Pride “articulated” issues of sexuality with social or anti-imperialist issues, since we noted this in our report. But that does not change the essence of the problem, which is as follows and which you blithely sidestep: why are Pride events authorized or encouraged, while anti-racist and anti-imperialist demonstrations are suppressed? Better yet: why are they funded when the idea of subsidizing a march against Islamophobia or police violence would cause a huge scandal? Why have school curricula incorporated issues of gender and sexuality, which have become priorities, while Islamophobia and Palestine are absent or even viewed with suspicion to the point of being reported to the police? Why are there interventions in middle schools in Seine-Saint-Denis on homophobia when these same institutions are ultra-Islamophobic? Are you familiar with the work of Simon Massei, who highlights the racist nature of these measures, which particularly target the indigène population[11]? It’s the elephant in the room. Why should indigène LGBT people be exempt from answering this question? Does the right to demonstrate as an LGBT person in Saint-Denis negate the responsibility to take a stand on the agenda of white power? If you had read Louisa Yousfi, you would have understood that “history always teaches us how much the instrumentalization of struggles depends less on the consent of those who lead them than on the political context in which they are carried out.” Finally, and this will be my last remark on this point: why in Saint-Denis or La Courneuve? Let me explain: let’s assume that the condition of homosexuals in France is the result of the heterosexist structures of the State, in which case these Pride events should take place in Paris, possibly on dates different from the official Pride to challenge its Eurocentrism. But no, they take place in the suburbs instead. We can only conclude that the problem lies with the residents of these neighborhoods. This leads to confusion: you say that these Pride events address gender, class, and race. Great! But who are they targeting? When they denounce racism and poor housing, it’s clear. It’s the State. But when it comes to gender and sexuality, whom are they targeting? The State or the population? If it’s the State, why Seine-Saint-Denis? Do you see the contradiction? One of two things is true: either the State is responsible for sexual oppression, in which case these Pride events should march in Paris or in city centers where white power is concentrated, or the oppression comes from the  indigènes, in which case it is legitimate to march in the suburbs. This point, though, must be addressed frankly and without hesitation. Yet this is what these Pride events do. This contradiction is anything but innocent. From the point of view of institutional supporters or the white left, the reason is simple: Pride events pave the way for the gentrification of the inner suburbs to attract the white middle classes, who make their “relocation” conditional on social and ideological comfort. To Naturalia, cheese shops, and bike paths, we can now add Pride. It is understandable that in this landscape, the mosque stands out a little, and its closure is collateral damage. From the point of view of the initiators, the motive is different. They are clearly attracted to forms of liberal emancipation where individual interests take precedence over collective interests. That is why they have not chosen the wrong place. It is their families and their own people that they want to convert to the white model of emancipation. That is their absolute right. But it is up to them to explain to us, if they insist on remaining in the camp of subversion, how they intend to distinguish themselves from the powers that be, which also want to bend these families to their will, subject them to this model, and if possible, get rid of them? Last but not least, they cannot claim to be decolonial. Adopting the LGBT identity model means belonging to the white left. This is not a problem in itself, as many indigènes, if not the majority of those who are politicized, find themselves in this situation. But it is good to clarify this point.

Point 15. The intramural Pride did not escape us at all. When white labor, feminist, or LGBT movements orient their agenda toward an anti-imperialist perspective, we no longer have any political demands of them. We take note of this. But it goes without saying that this radicalization comes at a price. For example, last August in Montreal, a radical Pride event took place, with chants of “Free Palestine” to protest the official Pride event supported by the city and funded by banks and organizations with Palestinian blood on their hands. The protesters were driven away by the police with tear gas and batons: the State protects the LGBT establishment against queers who stray from the norm. You are therefore right to point out that intramural Pride has lost its main financial backers. But since progressivism is funded by capital, it is easy to turn off the taps. For example, Trump has revoked Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices in universities: the problem is not just fascism but also identity politics, which has taken subordinates hostage by tying their fate to capital. If anti-imperialist LGBT people are having their subsidies cut, it proves only one thing: they are on the right track. But I remind you that all this is happening in the white political arena. These LGBT people are taking responsibility. That is to their credit, and yet they carry their own bags, not ours. As for the 2025 Pride poster that made you so proud and provoked the ire of Zionists and Islamophobes, here it had the effect of a cold shower. You still have a lot to learn about the concept of space-time because, you see, we would never have promoted it, no matter how good its intentions were. Understand this: we can definitely defend it against the fascists. We are not missing the mark. The fascists and Macron’s supporters are our enemies, not the anti-racist White Pride movement. On the other hand, we have the right not to identify with it because if we don’t like this poster, it’s not for the same reasons as them. They don’t like what’s in it about us, and we don’t like what they want to do with us in it. Our discourse is multifaceted but not duplicitous, depending on the positions and parameters in place, which change from one context of dialogue to another. We know all too well what lies behind this inclusivity. Admittedly, there has been progress in political anti-racism and in opposition to the genocide in Gaza, but there is a trade-off: adhering to the white sexual model. The result: a veiled woman on the official Pride poster is fake. It sounds as false as Médine’s latest rap about VSS [Violences Sexistes et Sexuelles]. Only that we are fighting for our integrity. We will come to you as we are — roughly speaking — and not as you dream us to be. When we sit down at that famous table in front of that famous plate, we also want it to be filled… to our liking. Remember? The politics of dirty hands.

Points 16 and 23. You make two serious errors regarding the Stonewall uprising and the struggle of the Combahee River Collective. Not to mention Kollontai.

The first is your simplistic use of their idealized image. You are right to recall the rebellious and racialized origins of Stonewall, but everyone knows that Pride events are no longer what you describe and that they were almost immediately co-opted by liberal whiteness . You mention black and trans women. That’s anachronistic. They never identified as trans. On the contrary, this identity emerged in the middle class in the 1990s, in opposition to the Stonewall generation, which identified itself with words that are now obsolete, such as “transvestites”.

The second is that you think you can impress me (or impress readers?) by evoking these struggles, which have rightly become emblematic, when I have been attending Euro-American university lectures for fifteen years, all steeped in intersectionality, which constantly idolize these two experiences and make them the starting point for the collective emancipation of non-whites, the ultimate and unsurpassable references. You have no idea how fed up I am with this fetishization of non-white queer struggles (especially when we know how completely invisible the Million Man March, whose 30th anniversary we are celebrating this year, has been). Indeed, your use of the American reference only serves to universalize a form of sexual politicization born of a specific context — that of Black and queer struggles in the United States — without sufficiently questioning the conditions specific to postcolonial France: the memory of sexual violence during the colonial era, colonial prostitution and rape in Islamic countries, white universalism, racist secularism, Islamophobia, the hyper-masculinization of men, and the cultural and religious resistance of victims. You homogenize the sexualities of non-white worlds on the pretext that they are “racialized” without taking into account French colonial structures and their contemporary extensions. But decolonial theory is always situated in specific times and places. The sexuality of non-white Americans of yesterday is not the same as that of Muslims and Blacks in France today.

Point 25. Ah! But I see you’re aware of that, and now you’re playing your trump card. Lesbians of Color (LOCs) who took the homonationalist phenomenon seriously enough to link their struggle to that of refugees. Fair enough. But today, apart from Caroline Fourest, everyone takes homonationalism into account. So what? Did you know, however, that LOCs strongly criticized the first Pride in the suburbs in 2019? Here’s what they said:

We cannot accept Saint-Denis being used as a showcase for French-style pinkwashing, which, behind a facade of pseudo-visibility, leaves intact the consequences of racist, sexist, and capitalist policies and that destroy the lives of our families, our communities, our friends, and our comrades, here and elsewhere. In this way of investing in Saint-Denis and THE suburbs, we can see nothing other than a desire to buy a clear conscience and, at the same time, the history of our struggles.

Or else:

Being visible on Saturday, June 9, but with what goals and what consequences for our struggles, our communities, and our sisters who are not protected the rest of the year? Our life experiences are those of lesbians from post-colonial migrations, exiles, refugees, caught up in complex community and family networks of solidarity that cannot be reduced to the rhetoric of coming out and public visibility alone.

Point 22. Starting from the premise that I am an incorrigible romantic, you contrast me with Marx and Engels, who “did not mistake the direction they were taking.” “We cannot,” you say, “go back on what has been changed by the anthropological revolution of individualism. We must change from there.” Tough luck, since for me that’s the basis. This principle is at the heart of my concerns. Here is what I said in another speech at the same summer university: “My mother, as I told you, would like me to be a better Muslim. But I hate demagoguery. I want to fully embrace who I am. And I repeat, I am a modern woman. I can’t pretend to be anything else. I am rooted in a new anthropology, that of modernity, which has created individuals and destroyed all other forms of anthropology. If I wanted to act more Muslim than I am, I would fall into folklore. And folklore fools no one.” You see, Marx and Engels can just go take a hike. As for Kollontai and the sacrifice of the feminist revolution on the altar of the communist revolution, what can I say? That long, monotonous sob is, in a way, worse than Stonewall and the Combahee River Collective, since it haunts me as much on American campuses as it does in France. Not that Kollontai was wrong. Quite the contrary. It’s just that the comparison with us does not stand up to any material analysis. Until the 1970s, communist forces were powerful. Organizations of this magnitude deserve to be criticized for neglecting the relationship between gender, production, and reproduction. But what does that have to do with us, who are mocked for meeting in phone booths? The risk of division that communists feared so much is the privilege of organized groups. To share this concern, you have to exist. I hope you haven’t failed to notice that the political existence of the indigènes is always precarious, especially in times of fascism. Moreover, how can we make gender an issue for mobilization when even the most consensual issues (Islamophobia, police violence, Palestine) fail to build unity? How can we add the articulation of class, gender, or sexuality when the first comes to us in a paternalistic way and the other two in a civilizational way and are therefore rejected? Above all, how can we justify prioritizing women or homosexuals over men? If the latter are truly, as I believe, the sacrificial victims of the white order, it is on the basis of them that decolonialists must devise a strategy, and not on the basis of the favorite victims of white progressives, whose suffering no one among us denies. It is therefore natural, based on the geography of emotions produced by this situation, that we are particularly concerned about the reception of Pride by these men whom “white ferocity” dreams of turning into eunuchs on the pretext that they are a threat to those around them. If you were less self-centered, you would know that the problem must be approached from the other direction. Our men are not your men. It is because they are subhuman beings threatened with emasculation that they risk becoming a danger to their own people (or to themselves), not the other way around.

Point 24. If you summarize the answers to points 6, 7, 16, and 23, you should be able to understand why I am refraining from commenting on Pat Parker’s poem. However, I find it amusing how you brandish it like a trophy at a time when no Netflix series, no blockbuster movie, or Disney film can escape “inclusive” specifications, and at a time when French cinema — which cannot be suspected of Islamo-Bolshevism — is swooning over Hafsia Herzi’s latest film, whose heroine is a Muslim lesbian. “Blatant” is the word.

3. You’re off topic

Points 17 to 22 + 27. The male knot. It was this curse that pushed me into activism: our brothers are fair game for the cops. In the 2004 Politis article, I made it clear from the outset that any feminist action would be conditional on a compensatory proposal for men. Because apart from their castration, in which sisters (and now gay men) are complicit, no political offer is made to them. I have always thought that the rest of the community would pay the price for this humiliation through a masculinist and inevitably homophobic backlash. It has not escaped you that this is precisely the backlash I fear in my article “Bye-bye Jane Fonda,” because it is this backlash that could contribute to precipitating the ruin of Euro-American “democracies,” liberal progressivism being, in our view, one of the antechambers of fascism. However, you have interpreted my supposedly decadent view of the skits at length, but you avoid the issues I raised. You have royally disregarded situations that I have nevertheless described explicitly. You say nothing about the humiliation of the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis and the authoritarian/progressive Islamophobic system that forbids them from expressing their disapproval — a right that white opponents of “Marriage for All” in the have abused to the point of provoking physical violence against the police or its supporters. You are not concerned about what their passivity might mean in a context of surgical fascism. And you seem completely indifferent to the deleterious effects that are already observable. For example, the fact that non-white people who are “prevented” from participating may succumb to the calls of the right wing, in the context of an alliance between reactionaries and indigènes. Or, for example, that certain fringe areas of neighborhoods may have joined the Catholic right wing of the “Manif pour tous” to defend the hetero-patriarchal family model. On another level, the “Égalité et Réconciliation” movement has managed to bring together elements of the far right and the indigène movement on an anti-progressive basis. In fact, you don’t give a damn about the purpose of the intervention, which is to try to ward off (in theory) this dire fate. Clearly, for you, horizon and strategy are one and the same. Your horizon here is the emancipation of LGBT people, your strategy is the emancipation of LGBT people. You climb onto a roof and shout urbi et orbi that you defend LGBT people. Frankly, I envy your life. But here, it’s not like that. If you want to protect women and homosexuals, you’re going to have to defend men. If you want to tear down the heterosexist structures of the capitalist nation-State, you’re going to have to legitimize the indigène patriarchy. If you want to combat homophobia in neighborhoods, you’ll have to advocate for Muslims’ right to be as reactionary as Christians. If you want to combat white supremacy, you’ll have to learn to love little white boys. If you want to deconstruct Zionism, you’ll have to understand it as a form of unfortunate dignity. If you want to combat French imperialism, you will defend revolutionary patriotism, etc. In other words, you have to fight poison with poison. And unlike you, I don’t reverse priorities: I don’t take cultural effects for the cause, where the challenge is first and foremost to transform the material conditions that make it possible to transform emotions and thus achieve emancipation. The only victory of these Pride events is that of white progressivism, which Macron’s government and, tomorrow, the far right will be able to recycle into a State homonationalism that has already subverted and domesticated white sexualities. Only a decolonial proposal will be able to undo all these knots. It is indeed in the radical critique of sexual imperialism and homo-racialism that the salvation of women and homosexuals in the neighborhoods lies, and not in a conscious or unconscious project to subjugate hunted and dominated men. Believing that all this will reduce competition between the genders rather than amplify divisions is at best naive, at worst irresponsible.

Let us turn to the strategic proposal that your letter compels me to clarify, for which I thank you. If there is indeed a white social space and a non-white social space, both of which delimit distinct political spaces, this raises the question of the autonomy of these spaces, but also of mutual understanding of space-time and the necessary development of a political strategy that allows for convergence against the main enemy, where some advocate progress and individual emancipation and others resist it. This requires, above all, that this main enemy be identified. Let us call it Macron or, more abstractly, the extreme center, and not the bearded and veiled “reactionaries,” “sexists,” and “anti-modernists” for some, or the progressive, feminist, pro-gay rights movements for others. If there is agreement on the main enemy and respect for different spaces and times (including those of the white working classes), then anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist unity will have to renounce the universalization of today’s hegemonic forms of sexual identification and leave room for “delinquent” practices that resist normalization and consumerism. To put it clearly, a political program that claims to fight against capitalism and undertakes to respect LGBT and queer forms as much as subaltern heterosexual forms, which it is urgent to stop assimilating into the majority narrative on patriarchy, or that agrees to come to terms with the invisible, the unidentifiable, the clandestine — the blurred — without privileging white forms — so clear — over others, would be, in this fragmented world, the most reasonable formula. One that would truly deserve the name of decolonial communism.

Could this proposal lead to a decolonial communist revolution, as you seem to hope? It doesn’t seem sufficient to me, but only God knows. Less ambitious, it could at least pull the rug out from under the demagogues (white and non-white) who are paving the way for the far right. It could also strengthen trust between the radical left and the various peoples of France, however discordant they may be. And that would already be quite something.

Dear Sandra. I must conclude. I hope I have kept my promise not to have unfairly singled you out. In any case, I believe I have not dodged any of your criticisms. If I have, I remain open to debate because, as you, Marx, Engels, and I know, the future is yet to be invented.

Notes

* In contemporary French political discourse, in contrast with the more neutral autochtone (native/indigenous) or First Nations used to refer to Indigenous peoples elsewhere, the term indigène refers to people from former French colonies in North Africa, the Caribbean, and other parts of the world who face discrimination in France. Rather than just original inhabitants of the land, in this context, and therefore in this text, the indigènes reclaim a history of colonial marginalization, highlighting a “postcolonial colonialism.” [Translator’s Note]

[1] Which it has done in part, through its criticism of the police State and its support for Palestine since October 7.

[2] “Women in colonial thought.”

[3] See: https://houriabouteldja.fr/intervention-dhouria-bouteldja-au-iveme-congres-international-du-feminisme-islamique/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/race-classe-et-genre-lintersectionalite-entre-realite-sociale-et-limites-politiques-2/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/feministes-ou-pas-penser-la-possibilite-dun-feminisme-decolonial-avec-james-baldwin-et-audre-lorde/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/race-classe- -et-genre-une-nouvelle-divinite-a-trois-tetes-2/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/bat-ma-jrana-we-sebbah-y-guerguer-en-finir-avec-luniversalisme-blanc/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/feminismes-blancs-feminismes-non-blancs-quel-bilan-apres-laffaire-tariq-ramadan/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/de-linnocence-blanche-et-de-lensauvagement-indigene-ne-pas-reveiller-le-monstre-qui-sommeille/

[4] https://houriabouteldja.fr/universalisme-gay-homoracialisme-et-mariage-pour-tous/ ; https://houriabouteldja.fr/droit-de-reponse-a-street-press-et-rue89/ ; https://qgdecolonial.fr/lettre-de-madjid-ben-chikh-a-houria-bouteldja/; https://qgdecolonial.fr/lettre-dhouria-bouteldja-a-madjid-ben-chikh/

[5] https://houriabouteldja.fr/en-finir-avec-le-soralisme/; https://houriabouteldja.fr/defaire-luniversalite-du-feminisme-blanc-patriarcat-et-masculinites-subalternes/; https://qgdecolonial.fr/medine-roussel-et-hassani/

[6] Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, Gallimard, 1975, pp. 219-220. [See in English Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, translated from the French by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995. All citations have been translated from the French original with no reference to any previously existing English translation — Translator’s Note.]

[7] Cf. Mehammed Mack, Sexagon, Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture, Fordham University Press, 2017. Excerpts translated into French available online on Contretemps, July 28, 2027.

[8] “L’empire de la ‘sexualité’ en question. Réponse de Joseph Massad à Philippe Colomb et Stéphane Lavignotte,” Revue des Livres, no. 10, March-April 2013, p. 24.

[9] See Gianfranco Rebucini, “Homonationalisme et impérialisme sexuel: politiques néolibérales de l’hégémonie,” Raisons politiques, no. 49, 2013.

[10] Michel Agier, La condition cosmopolite. L’anthropologie à la preuve du piège identitaire, Paris, La Découverte, 2013.

[11] Simon Massei, “Le public scolaire face au discours égalitaire. Une réception entre genre, race et classe,” Revue française de pédagogie, no. 217, 2022.

Featured image: Houria Bouteldja. Photo:  Anthony Francin/La fabrique, 2023. Courtesy of Jeune Afrique.

Translated from the French by Rolando Prats.

Houria Bouteldja