“[My books] celebrate hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. The Satanic Verses rejoice in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world.” — Salman Rushdie, quoted in Robin Cohen, “Creolization and Cultural Globalization: The Soft Sounds of Fugitive Power” (2007).
For 10 or 15 years, I’ve been presenting historical research papers centering on a type of cultural interchange called creolization. The word is clunky and hard to define, partly because it has migrated from the colonial French patois spoken in the Caribbean to postcolonial theory, cultural anthropology and predominantly European literary criticism.
Along the way It’s picked up various connotations, some of them politically and racially fraught, but Wikipedia, which is pretty good at reaching a broad consensus, simply defines it as “new cultural expressions brought about by contact between societies and relocated peoples.” It can mean different things to different people, and some of the differences are quite controversial, but that’s my basic understanding of the word “creole.”
Think Cajun French, with its mixed French, English and African American vernacular syntax and vocabular (or the similar Haitian kreyòl ). And how about a nice gumbo, with its blending of French, West African and Choctaw Indian ingredients. They all qualify as creole, a word with obscure Spanish and Portugese origins meaning roughly “born here (in the colonies)”. Depending on who’s talking, and where, it can have variable racial overtones.
“Creole” has been used to describe everthing from Russian Orthodox Alaska Natives to old-time “polkabilly” music, a blend of Norwegian, Czech, Greman and American dance music in the upper Midwest. I’ve used the term in several research papers on the Swedish-American culture that grew up in Chicago and the upper Mississippi Valley in the 1800s.
As the term crossed over into cultural anthropology, Ulf Hannerz of the University of Stockholm has been especially influential. He borrowed it from linguists – to whom creolization signifies a colonial language with mixed new- and old-world antecedents, usually reflecting different racial and cultural backgrounds – and uses it to describe a generalized process whereby subordinate, or peripheral, cultures create hybrid forms that “put things together in new ways.”
Like other students of the phenomenon, Hannerz quotes post-colonialist novelist Salman Rushdie, who once said his writing “rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world.” While creolization theory can be seen as a post-colonial reaction to what cultural anthropologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse describes as a “McDonaldization” of global culture, he quickly adds the process has been going on at least since the ancient Greeks encountered the Egyptians and Persians and continues to the present.
More recently, I’ve been reading up on a French poet and philosopher named Édouard Glissant who found deep parallels between the creole culture of his native Martinique and American novelist William Faulkner’s epic story of racial injustice, slavery and its bitter legacy in the old South. Therein, says Glissant, lies America’s original sin.
So it was with great interest that I learned creolization is likely to become one of the issues bandied about in next year’s French presidential election. If it does, we have a lot we can learn from the French. And from France’s former colonies in the Caribbean.
And, for that matter, from Édouard Glissant’s take on Faulkner.
Glissant, who died in 2011, was partly descended from African slaves in Martinique. Faulkner was the product of a culture built on slavery. Yet Glissant, according to Wikipedia (again reflecting the scholarly consensus). “traced parallels between the history and culture of the Creole Caribbean and those of Latin America and the plantation culture of the American South, most obviously in his study of William Faulkner” [Link in the original.]
Not only that.Depending on how next year’s Frnch presidental election plays but, I believe Glissant’s later writing may offer us a viable way out of our legacy of racism and settler colonialism.
Here’s how it might work: One of the leading contenders is a hard-left socialist named Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who campaigned on his vision of a multi-ethnic, creolized France in the past and returned to it in the earliest rounds of this year’s campaigning. He’s considered something of a perennial candidate, having run for president before in 2012, 2017, and 2022. And he hs been variously described as ”far-left”; a social democrat; a “highly polarizing figure” with a “penchant for provocation and his dubious inflammatory statements”; a Trotskyist; a populist; a “former senator turned radical reformer”; and a “a 70-year-old veteran who counts the young among his primary constituencies.” There would appear to be ample evidence for most, perhaps all, of these assertions.
But Mélenchon’s appeal with students, whose legitimate complaints over education and cost-of-living issues sparked an outburst of rioting we’ll get to in just a minute, and the deep unpopulatity of President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right, “neoliberal” governmnet,” put him solidly in second place behind second-generation right-wing movement leader Marine Le Pen.
So the betting in Paris is the 2027 campaign will turn into a slugfest between the far right and the ultra-, or populist, left. Unless other issues intrude — who knows? Ukraine? the cost of living? income inequality? — one of the issues is likely to be immigration, and with it Mélenchon’s concept of creolization.
Editorial note — this is about as far as I got before the Oct. 17 rioting in France, which grew out of larely peaceful student protests but exploded into nationwide rioting, mostly over deisel prices and the cost of living. As rioting continued, various right-wing influencers blamed the hard left, immigrants and nondescript “black bloc” agitators (in the US we’d call them “antifa”) for the violence. At first, I tried to update this post, taking into account the ideological shift in coverage, but now (Monday, Oct. 20), I just want to finish the post as an explainer of the status quo ante, since I don’t know what effect the ieological rhetoric will have on the cultural issues I’m following here.
I can’t pretend to be an experet on French electoral politics. They have a multiparty system, and the parties have a dizzying way of splintering and coalescing around charismatic politicians. Nor have the recent demonstrations and riots against the center-right government of President Emanuel Macron clarified anything. To futher confound the picture, both US President Trump and Vice President Vance have barged in and tried to make the myriad issues their own.1 one demanding the French “CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!” and the other warning violence happened because “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion.”
Add editorial note: Whether the Trump regime’s appeal, exemplified here, to an American version of the grand remplacement (great replacement) theory gains any traction in France, where it originated, remains to be seen. It appears immigration will be an issue in the April elections, however, with Le Pen railing against migrants and Mélenchon supporting them.
Mélenchon has clearly taken Glissant’s philosophy to heart. How it plays out remains to be seen.
France’s election: The status quo ante
A couple of things stand out in the English-language coverage I’ve been able to consult, both in Europe (infcluding the UK) and America.
- The key issues that have emerged so far include the soaring French national debt; cost-of-living pressures (the kinds of theings we chuck together in the US as “affordiblity,” coupled with income inequality; and a general sense that President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right government has betrayed its mandate. Sound familiar?
- Immigration, so far, has been a secondary issue. Far-right candidBut itate Marine Le Pen has embraced the grand replacement theory, which holds that shadowy globalists have imported presumably more docile Africans and Asians to replace (white) ethnic Europeans. Mélenchon has latched onto Gissant’s creolization as an antidote that embraces racial, cultural and religious diversity.
According to a late-August horse-race story in Le Monde, Le Pen is the clear front-runner:
Mélenchon is polling at between 16 and 17%, up from 12% in April, according to the survey of more than 1,700 French adults. Le Pen remains comfortably ahead, with between 35 and 38% of voting intentions, according to the poll. She was projected to win regardless of her second-round opponent, securing 68% against Mélenchon’s 32% and 55% against [center-right Édouard] Philippe’s 45%.
But it’s not quite that simple. Philippe Marlière, professor of French and European politics at University College London, takes a closer look at the demographics, and concludes yourger French voters are more diverse, both ethnically and culturally, than their elders. He says:
Mélenchon refers to a generational France that is young, urban, “creolised” and descended from post-colonial immigration. His discourse sketches out a national identity that breaks with the commonplaces of French republicanism, indifferent to the ethnic origin of individuals. […] For Mélenchon, it is an attempt to rebuild the French national narrative; a narrative that breaks with a conception of the nation that is considered abstract and homogenising. Mélenchon’s discourse acknowledges – and celebrates – France’s ethnic and cultural diversity. Unlike so-called ‘pluralist’ countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada or the United States, France, despite being deeply diverse, minimises or even denies its de facto multiculturalism.
At a time when far-right forces are dominant in several European countries (including France), the unvarnished affirmation of multiculturalism is a politically courageous act.
Posting to his own substack, Marlière, explains how Glissant’s theory of creolization gives Mélenchon an issue that appeals to young voters. It also contains, I believe, a lesson for us in the United States and other countries that must wrestle with the legacy of settler colonialism. Says Marlière:
For several years, Mélenchon has been using the theme of creolisation, a concept borrowed from the Martinican writer Édouard Glissant (1928-2011). For Glissant, the Creole Caribbean is shaped by the encounter of different cultures, which feed off each other and give rise to other cultural forms (language, practices, ideas). This creolisation is part of the historical context of slavery and colonialism, which gave rise to a melting pot of African, Amerindian and European cultures.
The France from which Mélenchon speaks is not Glissant’s Antilles. In both situations, however, we find the same process of permanent, unpredictable intermingling, where identities are transformed through contact with one another, without it being possible to predict what form this creolisation will take. It is an optimistic discourse that breaks with the assimilationist injunction that has dominated Franco-French debates for almost half a century.
Do you see the great big rabbit trail Mélenchon just opened up there? Step aside, Peter Rabbit, Mr. McGregor and Peter Cottonail. This is more like a rabbits’ interstate highway, and we’re coming through!
Are Mélenchon, Glissant and Philippe Marlière of University College London suggesting a history of settler colonialism leads to pluralist, even creolized, societies like in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? That one, I’ll have to sit with a while. But it opens up possibilties.
Replacing the grand remplacement? Really?
Mélenchon’s celebration of creolized diversity can have it downside. Marlière argues he falls into what we would call an “identity politics” trap in the US as he flirts with the great replacement theory:
By invoking Glissant, Mélenchon adorns himself with the prestige of anti-colonial thought, but he betrays its spirit. Édouard Glissant rejected any assignment of identity, any reduction of individuals to their origins, any political exploitation of culture. Conversely, […] Mélenchon’s left is no longer a political project that seeks to unite a majority of French people, but a cultural minority camp, absorbed by identity struggles. Mélenchon’s usual theatrics turned into intellectual bravado when, in a speech in Toulouse last January, he revived the notion of the “great replacement” to suggest that the new France embodies a generational replacement based on creolisation and miscegenation.
In response, let’s just say Marlière is not convinced by Mélenchon’s appropriation of what so clearly is, no matter how much you dress it up, a white supremacist conspiracy theory. “Rather than detoxifying a word borrowed from fascist vocabulary,” says Marlière, “he indirectly validates the racialist and conspiracy theories he claims to be fighting.”
On this one, I’m with Marlière.
Replacing le grand remplacement? Realy?
Also raising the issue of the grand remplacement was an nterview with Jaques Rupnik, a political scientist at Scienes Po University (aka the Paris Institute of Political Studies). Conducted by Denisa Ballová, a reporter in the foreign affairs desk of Denník N, of Bratslavia, Slovakia, and picked up by the Euronews newsletter of Brussels, the interview ran under the rather unambiguous headline, “Le Pen and Mélenchon are ‘economically illiterate’ and weaponising migration, says French scholar ahead of 2027 race.”
Again, does any of this sound familiar to American readers?
Le Pen’s views on immigration are well known. She’s a leading advocate of the grand replacement theory, and she makes Trump’s and JD Vance’s attitude to Black and brown peope seem inviting, downright warm and fuzzy by comparison. Mélenchon also stokes the immigration debate, but from the opposite direction. Says Rupnik:
The great replacement conspiracy theory (“grand remplacement“) should be mentioned since the far right embraced it long ago. It is the idea that the native French population will gradually be replaced by new immigrants.
And Mélenchon now says: “What great replacement? On the contrary, it is an opportunity for France. He says: “The more of us there are, the better.”
Mélenchon has therefore adopted the theory of grand remplacement, but instead of presenting it as a threat, he has turned it into a huge opportunity. Of course, everyone knows what he is aiming for. It is an election campaign, and he is appealing to voters who are themselves immigrants. [Links in the original.]
And so it goes. The smart money is betting on Le Pen in next April’s election. But Mélenchon is winning plaudits, at least in some quarters, for opposing her more blatant Islamophobia. And young people, who tend to be more ethnically and culturally heterogenous than their elders, are drawn to his celebration, to slightly misquote Salman Rushdie,of mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that that makes all things new.
My sense of it all, for what it’s worth, is this: We have been arguing about migration at least since the early Bronze Age “Bell beaker people,” thus known to archaeologists for their distinctive pottery, moved across Europe and replaced England’s resident neolithic hunter-gatherers — and 90 percent of the gene pool — between 2450 and 1800 BCE. I suspect our descendents will be arguing about it 2,400 years from now.
In the meantime, I think Édouard Glissant, William Faulkner, Jean Luc Mélenchon and Salman Rushdie have the better part of the argument.
Notes
1 Trump’s contribution, together with Vance’s, was duly reported Monday, Oct. 19, in The Hill. an inside-the-Beltway Washington newsletter that has a past history of cozying up to Trump but but now gets pretty good marks for objectivity. The story made it clear both Trump and Vance saw what they wanted to see in the riots. I’ll just quote it at length:
President Trump and Vice President Vance are placing the blame on immigration for the riots in France that grew violent over the weekend.
“The migrants have taken over France,” Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social. “They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!”
Vance over the weekend said, “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion.”
“They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen,” he wrote in a social media post that reposted a video of a French building burning.
“I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn,” he continued. ”And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”
The Hill’s account, like other media outlets both in Europe and America, made it clear that the riots were primarily about student concerns, to begin then the cost-of-living and general dissatsfaction with the center-right Macron government. Immigration came up primarily as a side issue, when Marine Le Pen and others on the right blamed violence on the “ultra-left.” The story’s omissions are as interesting, at least to me, as its allegations. So I’ll just quote the passage in all its glory:
Demonstrations that began with students protesting deteriorating schools and teacher shortages snowballed into protests for a multitude of issues including cost-of-living and anger toward French President Emmanuel Macron.
They came to a head over the weekend, turning violent as some half-million people took the streets. Some masked-clad people battled with police while setting cars and buildings on fire.
While French officials haven’t mentioned immigration as a factor in the demonstrations or riots, they have blamed a left-leaning party.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu on Monday accused the “ultra-left movement” of “orchestrating profound disorder in the country leading up to the presidential election,” according to reports.
France has its presidential election in April 2027. Marine Le Pen has appeared to be the front-runner. She is the candidate for the National Rally, France’s far-right political party.
Trump and Vance have both publicly supported Le Pen, who has advocated for the deportation of immigrants who illegally entered France.
Works Cited
An Yountae and Benjamin Davis, “Glissant on Religion: A Conversation,” Political Theology Network, March 21, 2026 https://politicaltheology.com/glissant-on-religion-a-conversation/.
Aude Mazoue and Tracy Mcnicoll, “‘Créolisation’: Candidates clash on immigration, assimilation and identity,” France 24, Feb. 15, 2022 https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220215-cr%C3%A9olisation-as-right-wingers-tout-assimilation-m%C3%A9lenchon-levies-creole-counterpunch.
Philippe Marlière, “Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s “New France”: Reverse Orientalism?” French Pastoral, Feb. 11, 2026 https://philippemarliere.substack.com/p/jean-luc-melenchons-new-france-reverse.
“Poll shows Le Pen’s biggest challenger may be hard left’s Mélenchon,” Le Monde, Aug. 24, 2026 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/08/24/french-poll-shows-le-pen-s-biggest-challenger-may-be-hard-left-s-melenchon_6756806_7.html.
Jacques Rupnik, “Le Pen and Mélenchon are ‘economically illiterate’ and weaponising migration, says French scholar ahead of 2027 race,” interview by Denisa Ballová, Euobserver, Oct. 1, 2026 https://euobserver.com/238893/interview-le-pen-and-melenchon-are-economically-illiterate-and-weaponising-migration-says-french-scholar-ahead-of-2027-race/.
Mallory Wilson, “Trump, Vance blame immigration for French riots,” The Hill, Oct. 19, 2026 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6157897-trump-vance-france-riots.
[Uplinked Oct. 23, 2026]
