Peter Sloterdijk and the French "microclimate"

German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk shares some of his thoughts on the "French exception" with Antoine de Baecque. "My francophilia is absurdly unconditional, but I must say that when I understood the causes of the youth protest movement against the CPE [first employment contract] France appeared increasingly mysterious to me. France is sealed off from the world around. ... Since the beginning of the 1980s the French have built a 'laboratory of shared social luxury'. They no longer form primitive tribes, but luxury tribes that live in nicely temperate greenhouses of social protection ... . France constitutes a sort of psycho-political exception in its attempt to create a protected space where the winds from the job market and the icy rains of neoliberalism are regulated and heated. It has its own microclimate, its own safety bubble. That's a delusion, yet at the same time, a beautiful delusion."

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