Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen both reject the left-right divide in French politics, either claiming to incarnate it 'en même temps', or being beyond it.
They propose new oppositions: for Macron, progressives vs. reactionaries, for Le Pen, patriots vs. globalists. Both refuse to acknowledge the other's new framework or their respective place in it. What consequences for our understanding of history and contemporary politics of seeing political dynamics not through a left/right divide but a centre/extremes one?
Hugo Drochon is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is a political theorist and historian of political thought, with interests in Nietzsche's politics, democratic theory, liberalism, centrism and conspiracy theories. He is the author of Nietzsche's Great Politics (Princeton University Press, 2016).
Paul Kelly is Professor of Political Theory and Head of Department at the Department of Government, LSE.