The work of the sociologist Didier Eribon has set off cross-disciplinary debates in recent years. This article traces the central content-related interventions of Eribon. The thesis is that Eribon's work is pervaded by various efforts to analytically convey the subject areas of social inequality and cultural differences. These attempts at mediation take place in at least three ways, and they can be presented particularly well in the light of the German-speaking debate on Eribon's work. After a brief contextualization of Eribon's work and the discussion about it, the following will firstly trace the meaning that Eribon ascribes to shame as an embodied sign of social and cultural belonging. Second, we discuss Eribon's explanation of the political rise of the ultra-right in Europe. Eribon assumes, as will be shown, that struggles for cultural recognition and struggles for the redistribution of social wealth are interwoven. Not least for this reason, Eribon also takes a mediating position in the political discussion about class struggles on the one hand and identity politics on the other, which can ultimately be understood as a third aspect of the mediation attempts.
