On 16 October at the Institut de France, the Prix François Guizot-Institut de France was awarded to Jacques Julliard for his book :
Les gauches françaises. 1762-2012: Histoire politique et imaginaire, Flammarion.
This book is the first overview of the French left, from the eighteenth century to the present day, from the philosophers of the Enlightenment to François Hollande. It shows what the Left has retained from each historical period: the idea of progress in the late eighteenth century, the human rights of the Revolution, the parliamentarianism of the censal monarchy, universal suffrage in 1848, secularism in the Third Republic, the labour civilisation of the Popular Front, and the patience of François Mitterrand's power. Finally, he distinguishes four lefts: liberal, Jacobin, collectivist and libertarian.
The intellectual background to each period is illuminated by «cross-portraits», in the imitation of Plutarch - from Voltaire and Rousseau through Robespierre and Danton, Lamartine and Hugo, Clemenceau and Jaurès, to Sartre and Camus, and finally Mendès France and Mitterrand... A vision that is both historical and anthropological.
Born on 4 March 1933 in Brénod in the Ain department, Jacques Julliard is a journalist, essayist, historian by training and former trade union leader. Born into a family of notables, he grew up in a republican environment with a radical tradition. In 1950, he entered the khâgne in Lyon, where he was greatly influenced by his reading of Marx, Proudhon, Pascal and Kant. Jacques Julliard entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure on the rue d'Ulm in 1954 and joined the journal Esprit the following year, thanks to Jean Lacroix. He was involved in student unionism and had anti-colonialist views. In 1956, he left the UNEF to chair the national student conference for a solution to the Algerian problem. He took part in the Reconstruction group. After taking a degree in history, he went to Algeria in 1959 as a psychological action officer for the civilian population. On his return to France, he taught at Chartres and then at the IEP in Bordeaux. In 1965, he directed a political collection at Seuil. The following year he became a professor at the IEP in Paris and a lecturer at the Sorbonne. In 1978 he published his first editorial in the Nouvel Observateur. In 1982 he founded the politico-cultural review Intervention. Jacques Julliard is the author of several political essays, including La Faute aux élites, La Reine du monde: essai sur la démocratie d'opinion and a Dictionnaire des intellectuels français. In December 2010, Jacques Julliard joined the weekly Marianne, after 32 years with the Nouvel Observateur.
