La vie privée des convictions

It is necessary to share someone's ideas in order to love or appreciate them? What role do political choices and beliefs play in a couple, a family, a friend group, or more broadly, in all the relationships that we maintain?

This book illustrates the constant interweaving of our private lives with our political beliefs. It seeks to go beyond political science’straditional reluctance toincorporate the role of individual affect in its analyses. As individuals have become freer from belief systems and ideologies than ever before, they have in turn been forced to make choices based on criteria ofidentification and closeness, thus making the private sphere a new realm of the democratic process.

Investigating intimacy as a site for political experience and involvement, this work deciphers the permanent negotiations that play out in family discussions or between partners with different opinions. It tells the story of an exceptional couple, the Thorez's, who lived as one entity in terms of emotions and politics and it dissects the different manners in which friends can part ways due to political beliefs.

The author invites us to see politics through the prism of our private lives, thus allowing us to explore other ways to interpret and understand the politicisation of individuals.