Nicolas Sarkozy ou la masculinite mascarade du President

In: Raisons politiques: études de pensée politique, Issue 3, p. 19-45

Abstract

The analysis of the strategic identity of President Nicolas Sarkozy unveils how sexual identity works for the presidential role, and how it can be defined as a "corporeal identity capital" that functions in and for the political body. The heightened investment, explicit and unedited, of the president in a "virility resource" can be jointly understood in the French context of in his duel with Segolene Royal, and in the compensatory logic tied to the structure of his political capital and its trajectory. Nicolas Sarkozy turns apparent stigmas into resources, by claiming to have brought an "abrupt change" to the presidential style, notably by projecting a popular and uninhibited masculinity. For the first time in the universal Republic masculinity is no longer an implicit privilege, but an asset like any other. Adapted from the source document.