October 7, 2023, the world turns upside down

October 7, 2023 marks a historic break. This is one of the themes addressed in Le Bouleversement du monde, in which political scientist Gilles Kepel deciphers the geopolitical cleavages arising from this event, as well as their resonances and consequences.

Gilles Kepel's erudition is unquestionable. Nor have his pedagogical skills or the freedom of his views, as the hundred or so people who came to listen to the Emeritus University Professor on May 21 at a conference-debate in Lausanne organized by the Cercle démocratique «Le Regard Libre. Le Regard Libre.

The same is true of his latest essay, Le Bouleversement du monde, The evening was devoted to the first quarter of the 21st century.^th century. This book, reissued in paperback with new chapters in April to incorporate Donald Trump's re-election into thinking about the new geopolitical order, analyzes in particular the caesura marked by October 7, 2023.

Indeed, the massacre that day of 1,210 Israelis by Hamas terrorists, and the terrible response to which this event, experienced as a second Shoah, gave rise, led to a consolidation of the identity appropriations of these tragedies. Very quickly,« writes Kepel, »each of the camps developed a battery of moral arguments in the service of which the atrocities committed by the adversary were exacerbated, while those perpetrated by the partisan were silenced. (...) In so doing, they erected dividing lines that partly took up certain old oppositions, but reorganized them to dig new moral and intellectual trenches in the process."

Quarter-turn rotation of allegorical cardinal points

«In geopolitical terms, this meant turning the cardinal points, which had been given allegorical significance since 1945, a quarter turn to the right. The West thus became the North, to be replaced by the South - the latter flanked by the epithet ‘global‘ to mark its claim to dethrone the former West - now displaced into the obscurity of the Septentrion - as the purveyor of universal ethical standards.’

Le Bouleversement du monde focuses on the causes of this rupture and its consequences, which are being felt more than ever in our European societies. A good way to catch up or extend the May 21 session is to take the time to read this important text, for a better understanding of what's at stake in this burning issue.

Philosopher by training and journalist by profession, Jonas Follonier is the editor-in-chief of Regard Libre. Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com.

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Gilles Kepel
World upheaval. From October 7 to Donald Trump's return (updated edition)
Pocket
April 2025
338 pages

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