Philosopher Sylviane Agacinski elected to the French Academy

It increases the number of women members of the institution to seven

Philosopher Sylviane Agacinski elected to the French Academy

It increases the number of women members of the institution to seven. The philosopher Sylviane Agacinski was elected Thursday, June 1 to the French Academy. The Gender Politics author garnered 13 votes out of 23 voters in the first round, the Academy announced. Historian Bertrand Lançon received one, while nine academicians voted blank or registered a cross.

Sylviane Agacinski, 78, has produced a prolific work on sexual alterity, claiming a "new feminism". But she caused controversy in her political family, the left, by her positions hostile to medically assisted procreation (PMA) for all women and to surrogacy (GPA).

Former companion of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, with whom she had a son in 1984 whom she raised alone, she married the future socialist presidential candidate and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in 1994.

Four vacant chairs

Her latest essay, Facing a Holy War (2022), is a response to those who have called her an Islamophobe, an accusation, according to her, regularly brandished "to hide Islamist proselytism".

The election puts an end to a series of three missed moves to award chair 19, previously occupied by the writer Jean-Loup Dabadie, but also Boileau, Chateaubriand or René Clair. The journalists Franz-Olivier Giesbert and Olivier Barrot, and the writers Benoît Duteurtre, Frédéric Beigbeder and Eric Neuhoff had been rejected.

Of the 40 armchairs of the French Academy, there are now four vacant. Another election is scheduled for June 22, in chair 6, with candidates such as the philosopher specializing in Islam Christian Jambet or the oncologist David Khayat.