The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization by Mohamed Amer Meziane
France imagines itself to be the cradle of secular republicanism from which modernity was launched in 1789. But as Mohammed Amer Meziane shows in his new book, The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization, the Republic has been infused with colonial empire since Napoleon Bonaparte. Etienne Balibar argues that with this concept of "imperiality," Meziane has ruptured France's national myths.