La barbe - La politique sur le fil du rasoir

Description

Excited by the mockery of his beard, in 363 the emperor Julian wrote a satire, the Misopogon, otherwise known as "the enemy of the beard", aimed at the Christianized population of Antioch. Rather than a frontal attack, Julian treats the subject in the wrong way and makes fun of "this goateed chin, which I think I could make smooth and clean, as pretty boys have it". He admits that "the beard must be a hindrance: it forbids to print clean lips on smooth lips".
In the fourth century, the beard of an emperor was therefore controversial. In other times, it would have been a great success. The beard is a complex political weapon. Well-trimmed and fashionable, it is formidable.
Anachronistic, it is a burden.
Julian, with his scraggly beard, was not of his time. He is not of ours either, where the hairless and the depilated govern: our politicians have stopped being hairy. But has the beard really lost its place in politics? Is it unthinkable that a bearded man could become president? Julien, long nicknamed the Apostate, has the assets to make a successful career in politics: he has intrigued the greatest - Montaigne, Ibsen or Yourcenar -, he has the experience of violent attacks against his physique and he has thought about the place of the hair that grows on the face, chin and cheeks of politicians.
This is an opportunity for an exchange full of piquant anecdotes, through the centuries, a discussion in which participants of all kinds participate.
The politics of the beard or the beard in politics: in the morning, in front of the mirror, is it reasonable that a candidate to the highest magistracy can think of something else than the blade that caresses his cheek? A shave without concentration leads to a scar. To be a politician is to seduce. Can the bearded man seduce? In short, should one be the enemy of the beard in politics?