IHC Talk: Bruno Perreau | Spheres of Injustice

How can we revitalize minority politics while making the fight against discrimination beneficial for all? Bruno Perreau proposes thinking about minority experiences relationally. How one person is governed has a direct impact on how another is. Legal provisions that protect gender can be used to protect race; those that protect disability can protect age, sexual orientation, or class, and so on. This is what Perreau calls intrasectionality, a new concept and an innovative legal strategy to tackle today’s political challenges. Audience Q&A and a reception will follow.

Bruno Perreau is the Cynthia L. Reed Professor of French Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Faculty Affiliate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He is the founding chair of MIT’s Center of Excellence in French Studies. Perreau is also the author of thirteen books on French and US institutions, bioethics, family policies, queer cultures, minority politics, and contemporary theories of justice, among them The Politics of Adoption (MIT Press, 2014), Queer Theory: The French Response (Stanford University Press, 2016), Les Défis de la République (with Joan W. Scott, Presses de Sciences Po, 2017), and Spheres of Injustice: The Ethical Promise of Minority Presence (MIT Press, 2025).

Sponsored by the IHC’s On Fire series