You have full access to this open access article. We argue that the book offers a stimulating perspective on discrimination, humiliation, and injury. Although Eribon is twofold vulnerable due to his class and his sexual identity, his pain and shame does not make him defenceless. It makes him the subject he is: the wound caused by a violent heteronormative order.
Therefore, becoming object of violations should not necessarily be conceptualised as the opposite to gaining agency but under certain circumstances can provoke resistance and rebellion. The book of personal reflections on his own social background is not only a big seller that was recently published in its 18th edition in Germany.
It also shaped intellectual debates more than any other in recent years. When the German translation of the book was published in , it was discussed in all major newspapers β from left-wing and liberal to conservative β which all without exception considered Eribon a timely voice of social criticism.
His book delivers answers to a multitude of recent questions vigorously discussed throughout Europe. It seems that he can help to explain the decline of the left and provide insights into the impoverished, homophobic milieu, which he grew up in. It therefore comes as no surprise that hardly anyone is more interesting to the German-language feuilleton than Didier Eribon at present.
Since the publication of his book, which was also adapted as a play for the theatre, he received an enormous number of interview requests; he regularly participates in panel discussions debating the possibilities of social criticism, for example in the summer of in Berlin alongside Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser. By using all these opportunities to comment on politics, Eribon attempts to influence and even intervene.
