TOURAINE, Alain, A New Paradigm For Understanding Todays World
TOURAINE, Alain, A New Paradigm For Understanding Todays World
TOURAINE, Alain, A New Paradigm For Understanding Todays World
paradigm
a new
for understanding
today s world ^~
Alain Touraine
polity
First published in French as Un Nouveau Paradigme pour comprendre le inonde
d'aujourd'hui by Alain Touraine © Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005.
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ISBN-10: 0-7456-3671-3
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2 Globalization
From the post-war states to the globalization of the economy
• A n extreme capitalism • The rupturing o f societies
• Alter-globalism • From society to war ° A globalized world
Bibliography 211
Index 216
Introduction: A New Paradigm
For a long time we described and analysed social reality in political terms:
order and disorder, war and peace, government and state, king and nation,
the republic, the people, revolution. Then the industrial revolution and
capitalism freed themselves from political power and emerged as the 'basis'
of social organization. We then replaced the political paradigm by an
economic and social paradigm: social classes and wealth, bourgeoisie and
proletariat, trade unions and strikes, stratification and social mobility,
inequalities and redistribution - such became our customary analytical
categories.
Today, two centuries after the triumph of economics over politics, these
'social' categories have become confused and exclude much o f our lived
experience. We therefore need a new paradigm, for we cannot revert to the
political paradigm, above all because cultural problems have assumed such
importance that social thinking must be organized around them.
We must position ourselves within this new paradigm in order to be able
to name the new actors and new conflicts, representations of the ego and
collectivities, disclosed by a fresh look that reveals a new landscape before
our very eyes.
The search for the central point in this new landscape immediately leads
us to the theme o f information, which refers to a technological revolution
whose social and cultural effects are visible all around us. But the most
important thing is the point Manuel Castells has rightly stressed: the
absence o f any technological determinism in this information society. This
clearly separates us from industrial society, in which the technical division
of labour was inseparable from the social relations o f production. A new
2 Introduction: A New Paradigm
situation has been created on account of the great social flexibility of infor-
mation systems. Such a claim contradicts the all too frequent discourses
on the invasion o f society by technologies, but it is acceptable to those who
define globalization primarily by the dissociation between a globalized
economy and institutions which, only existing at lower levels - national,
local or regional - are unable to control economies that operate on a much
vaster scale. Perception of violence, wars and repressive systems leads to
the same conclusion: this world of organized political violence is no longer
a social world. Modern states were created through wars; today's conflicts
have no political or social function. A war is no longer the other side of
a social conflict.
A l l these remarks converge on the same point: the collapse and dis-
appearance of the world we called 'social'. This judgement should not be
a cause for surprise, since millions of people deplore the rupturing of
social bonds and the triumph of a disruptive individualism. We must
take as our analytical starting-point this destruction of all the 'social'
categories, from social classes and social movements to institutions or
'agencies of socialization' - the term given to the school and the family
when defining education as socialization.
The non-centrality of 'social' categories is so radically new that we find
it difficult to abandon the sociological analyses we are used to.
It is not easy to speak of a 'non-social' analysis of social reality.
However, this expression is no more strange than that of political societies,
which was applied both to the Absolutist monarchies and national states
when reference to God and the social expression of religious beliefs lost
the central place it had occupied. We can even outline a process of devel-
opment leading from collectivities based on external principles of legiti-
macy - especially religious ones - to others whose legitimacy was political,
then to collectivities that conceived themselves as economic and social
systems, and finally to our kind of social existence, which is invested on
the one hand by the non-social forces of interests, violence and fear, and
on the other by actors whose objectives are personal freedom or mem-
bership of an inherited community - objectives that are themselves not
specifically 'social'.
II
Briefly set out as above, does this hypothesis put an end to any sociologi-
cal analysis? This question will become increasingly urgent as we approach
the end of Part One of this book, which is devoted to the 'end of the social'
- a phenomenon at once fascinating and disturbing.
Introduction: A New Paradigm 3
Ill
to altered attitudes towards sexuality. The idea this book wishes to defend
is that we are changing paradigms in our representation o f collective and
personal life. We are emerging from the era when everything was expressed
and explained in social terms; and we must define the terms in which this
new paradigm is constructed - one whose novelty makes itself felt in all
aspects o f collective and personal life. I t is high time we knew where we
stand and which discourse on the world and on ourselves can render them
intelligible to us. Let us therefore start by registering the break that is
rapidly separating us from a still recent past, before we seek to define the
character o f this paradigm switch.
The aim of this book is to present the transition from one paradigm to
another, from a social language about collective life to a cultural language.
This transition is accompanied by a mutation caused by the rapid devel-
opment o f a direct relationship o f the subject to itself, without passing
through the meta-social intermediaries that pertain to a philosophy o f
history. This mutation, which is o f great importance in its own right, has
a still broader significance: collectivities turned outwards and to the con-
quest of the world are replaced by different ones, turned towards the inte-
rior o f themselves and of each of those who live in them. The last chapter
of this book will describe this major reversal, whose principal actors are
women.
To start off with at least, the approach pursued here may seem surpris-
ing or difficult to understand. But any inconvenience is easy to avoid:
readers should allow themselves to be carried along by the text. As you
read on, things will become easier and your critical reactions will be easier
to express because you will have understood that all the themes o f this
book are closely inter-related, without an unduly strict discipline being
imposed on the line of argument. A paradigm is not a puzzle.
As the contents page indicates, the book is divided into two parts. The
first analyses the end o f the social and the phenomena o f social decom-
position and de-socialization. I t is entitled 'When We Referred to Our-
selves in Social Terms'. The second part is called 'Now that We Refer to
Ourselves in Cultural Terms' and in it are to be found the two notions at
the centre o f the new paradigm: the subject and cultural rights.
IV
9/11
that it did not have to develop a geo-politics. A l l the talk in the United
States and throughout the world was o f economic globalization, new tech-
nologies, the situation o f women, and so on. Bill Clinton was the master
of this formidable economic power and conducted a multilateralist
policy. Then all o f a sudden, the day after 11 September 2001, the official
language - that of the government and the establishment - changed
completely.
Economic problems disappeared from the front of the stage, mastering
new technologies seemed less gripping, and the public space was entirely
taken up with a bellicose language that was more geo-political than patri-
otic. A wounded America examined itself: 'Why don't they like us?' asked
Norman Mailer. But this soul-searching soon vanished before the imper-
ative o f capturing Osama bin Laden. Before long, condemnation focused
on Saddam Hussein, who in fact had no special relationship with al-
Qaeda; and very soon, in front o f a U N Security Council hostile to war,
President Bush and Tony Blair were seeking to prove the need for
intervention.
President Bush explained that the United States was threatened in the
short term by chemical and biological - perhaps even nuclear - warfare,
obliging it to resort to a pre-emptive war.
In the weeks preceding the military attack on Iraq, the American
political stage was almost entirely occupied by the President and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Democratic Party did not intervene.
Over and above their technical prowess, the major T V stations were mere
appendices of military HQ. The BBC World Service alone provided infor-
mation. I n the print media only the New York Times, the sole genuinely
national newspaper, adopted a certain independence o f stance after a long
silence and began to discuss the government's declarations and intentions.
In short, this country, where public opinion disposes of numerous, diverse
media, fell silent.
For months the only voices heard were those o f President Bush and his
Defense Secretary; and, still more, the voice of God, which the President
often heard and to whom the Cabinet prayed.
This country, which had been the first secular modern state, became
obsessed with its divine mission: the defence o f Good against Evil. These
words are to be taken in their most literal sense. I t is because America con-
sidered itself the leader o f the camp of the Good that it was able to con-
vince itself, through lies, falsehoods and intensive propaganda, that Iraq
headed the camp of Evil. I f we recall the actual weakness o f Iraq, already
conquered once without difficulty and which succumbed again almost
without a fight, we can get the measure of the unpredictable character of
the mutation of a country which, a few months earlier and following
President Bush's election in conditions verging on illegality, seemed wholly
The Break 11
preoccupied with managing its own power and taking great strides on
the road of new technologies, outstripping Europeans incapable of
taking decisions and Japanese bogged down in an interminable banking
crisis.
One further remark, which is perhaps the most important for those who
are not Americans. The United States, which had created the system of
the United Nations (particularly the Security Council), rejected any inter-
vention by the international organization in its conflict with Iraq, while
seeking to obtain a majority in the Security Council by charging Secretary
of State Colin Powell with the humiliating task o f defending the official
position with arguments that carried no conviction. For two years the
United States went on justifying unilateralism. I t was responsible for
defending Good against Evil, it claimed, and would i f necessary conduct
several wars at once. I t expressed its contempt for 'old Europe' in brutal
terms and at the same time successfully sought to fracture the European
Union, whose member states were incapable o f agreeing an international
policy.
Some people think that the present period is merely an episode and that
the return of the Democrats to the Presidency will sooner or later put an
end to this ideological policy. But the latter was developed more than ten
years ago. Not since Wilson have we seen in the United States so signifi-
cant a group o f ideologues - and of high intellectual calibre - elaborate a
new conception of the role of the United States i n the world by commit-
ting their country to a series o f conflicts that might one day lead it to a
confrontation with others.
Eighteen months after 11 September, the break with the past took even
more brutal forms. Iraq, liberated from Saddam Hussein, rejected its
liberators but without descending into civil war or forming a united resist-
ance front. Harassed by the guerrillas, the American army resorted to
torture, like most armies that feel surrounded by a hostile population. A n d
as i f to render the identification o f its country with Good even more scan-
dalous, it increased its use of the most humiliating sexual abuses. Is not
the change of historical period and, behind that, o f societal type becom-
ing so dramatic as to force us to question ourselves on breaks that go far
beyond the political and military initiatives of the sole superpower?
In recalling facts that are familiar to everyone, my aim is not to give my
opinion on the policy developed by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and a
whole host of others i n the service o f President Bush, but to register at
the very outset o f this book a mutation which, over and above the inter-
national policy o f the United States, affects the whole world. August 1914
was experienced as a mortal break in Europe; September 2001 marks the
end not only of an era, but above all o f a certain conception and a certain
modus operandi o f American society and o f the whole world.
12 W h e n We R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s In S o c i a l T e r m s
This sense of a break has been felt throughout the world. I t was further
reinforced with the re-election o f President Bush.
Fear
After the fall of the Communist state and empire, the talk was exclusively
of civil society and the relaxation of norms in all spheres - and hence o f
the liberation of individuals. None o f these themes was superficial and
none can be ignored when we undertake a general analysis o f social life.
But what we have experienced and understood in the last three years is
that the life of societies, even the wealthiest, most complex and best pro-
tected among them, remains dominated by fear, violence and war.
Many draw the conclusion that it is still necessary to prioritize weapons
over technologies, mistrust over trust - a notion that played such a central
role in the formation o f capitalism. The grip o f fear, this sense of a mortal
threat that is coming closer, this determination to conduct war against Evil
in the name o f a protective God, are not inventions, are not American
nightmares. September 11 is the date of a particular attack committed in
New York and Washington. But it had been preceded by others and fore-
shadowed others. In various points of a very diverse Arab-Muslim world,
we have seen the proliferation of 'volunteers' for a death that strikes them
as well as their enemies. Those who are called 'terrorists' on one side, and
'heroic fighters' against the enemies of God and Nation on the other, are
also warriors. I n a vast swathe of the world, attempts at modernization
have failed; and attempts to create Islamic states, having secured major
victories (especially in Iran), have been exhausted and seem in retreat. A n d
in France, as in the United States, over and above all social realities, there
emerges the idea of a holy war that must be conducted in the name o f
Good against Evil.
A t a lower level of violence, in many countries, even in a France armour-
plated in its republican consciousness, we see society fragmenting into
communities. A t the end o f the European nineteenth century, the transi-
tion from communities to society, from collective identities to the rule of
law, had emerged as a major advance. Are we living through a converse
movement - a return to communities imprisoned in themselves, led by an
authoritarian government, and rejecting other communities as enemies?
Many will say that these threats and conflicts are indeed dangerous, but
that it is artificial to reduce the West to the war policy o f George W. Bush
and that the authors of the attacks form only a tiny minority in the Islamic
world. Once, the whole of Latin America seemed to be in flames. But the
fires were extinguished and the military dictatorships, which presented
themselves as the only agencies capable of putting an end to the
The Break 13
guerrillas and unleashed a much more bloody violence, fell in their turn.
N o one is satisfied with the current situation, but no one reduces the life
of the continent to a dependency endured by countries deprived o f any
possibility of acting. Even Africa, where there is such a mass o f misery
and poverty, cannot not be reduced to ethnic struggles and bloody
dictatorships.
Indeed, let us not conclude, before even having begun our reflection,
that war and communitarian violence will destroy everything in their path.
But let us not be satisfied either with considering these struggles to the
death as so many accidents or exceptional cases. For, i f we look around
us, we shall see societies that have been destroyed, turned upside down,
and manipulated. We have always known that public life was more often
dominated by the passions than the interests. But increasingly in today's
world, the passions aim to negate the other rather than struggle with it.
A world in decline
tural rights. Once we spoke of 'social actors' and social movements. I n the
world we have already moved into, we shall invariably have to speak o f
personal subjects and 'cultural movements'.
We no longer believe in progress. We are acutely anxious about the
decomposition o f cities and rural zones, about social violence and holy
wars alike. This does not condemn us to a pessimism all too easy to live
with for most members of the world's middle classes. But it does prompt
us to pose the question: where is the movement, the force, that will stop
war to come from?
This book would like to offer an answer to that question by exploring
the deepest changes that have occurred in our societies. It takes the risk o f
setting itself an objective that is very difficult to achieve, because it is
impossible to live without searching for answers to the threats that hang
over us and the transformations that have already led us to make the tran-
sition from one type o f society to another.
I have opted in this first chapter to give more space to events than analy-
sis or the formulation of a general view within which particular points
would assume their place. This reportage, which remains removed from
theoretical issues, is intended to help us to situate the main actors in a con-
crete historical situation.
The principal actor is obviously the United States. But the immensity
and diversity o f the social space in which it develops make it difficult not
to succumb both to the demonization of its government and the fascina-
tion exercised by a country that governs the whole world's mass con-
sumption and communications, and which enjoys an overwhelming
scientific and technological lead over other countries.
How to proceed? We must, I believe, regard the United States as the
quintessential refugee country and, at the same time, as a country o f con-
quest, discovery and conflict that rendered its internal life at once fasci-
nating and disturbing. Today, despite the massive arrival o f Hispanics, the
United States is less concerned with its internal problems than with its
international role. From the Vietnam War to the occupation of Iraq, this
prompted a rise in debates, divisions and even confrontations that render
today's United States a country closer to the United Kingdom in 1904 than
the United States of 1954. This country, turned inwards and proud of its
success, is now confronted with popular movements and state policies that
attack its hegemony and its military ventures.
The 'Western world', a vague but real entity, has dissolved and we have
seen an abrupt decline in the role o f Great Britain. A n all-powerful
America is much less interested than it used to be in Europe and Latin
America. Between the United States and China there exist only some very
secondary decision-making centres, of which the European Union is the
most visible, and a confused mass that is called the Islamic world, torn
16 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
certain that the social world is sufficiently strong to resist the power of the
elements it has itself unleashed. While my analysis is normative, it is not
apologetic.
As a sociologist, obviously I am not seeking to destroy sociology. But it
must be clearly understood that there is no convincing reason to identify
sociology with the analysis of an exclusive path (or step) o f moderniza-
tion. Let us not forget that i f 'social' categories are disintegrating today,
they replaced 'political' categories less than two centuries ago. Moreover,
sociological analysis does not take shape in isolation from the observable
facts. I would not speak o f the crisis of the social, o f the rise of non-social
violence, and o f the personal subject i f all these phenomena were not
already observable around us and within us.
I appeal here neither to a past golden age nor to a new conception of
progress. I t is of our experience that I speak, and in the first instance of
the historical situation in which the paradigm change that this book seeks
to account for occurs.
Globalization
After the Second World War, both in the new countries founded on the
ruins of the colonial system and in the Communist countries and the
majority of Western countries, voluntaristic states emerged that sought to
create a new nation, to restore an economy destroyed by war, or to rapidly
improve workers' living conditions.
The welfare state, established in Britain in 1943 by the Beveridge
Plan, was certainly very different from the French system of social
security created in 1945. But in both cases, as in others, the key figure
in economic and social life was clearly the state, both because it alone
possessed sufficient resources to give impetus to an economic policy,
and because immediately after the war social and national upheavals
dictated a profound transformation of the laws and very definition of
political life.
Accordingly, the state intervened in all domains (economic, social and
cultural), often in authoritarian fashion, but, in the case of most Western
countries, with the intention of combining profound social reforms and a
transformation in national consciousness with economic reconstruction.
In Europe hopes of achieving a form of economic development more
attuned to social problems than the American model persisted for a long
time. Thus, Michel Albert has contrasted Rhenish capitalism (i.e. of a
German variety), in which co-management and unions play an important
role, with Anglo-Saxon capitalism, whose objectives are exclusively eco-
nomic. A n d it was only at the end of the twentieth century that Rhenish
capitalism came to seem more of a handicap than a driving force, amid
20 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in Social T e r m s
the triumph of international markets and the rapidity with which liberal
decision-makers could act.
In fact, all the economic aspects of this state interventionism more or
less rapidly fell into decay, especially in countries that no longer possessed
efficient public administration and where there was corruption. However,
until the beginning o f the twenty-first century the idea that the national-
ization o f economic activities was vital for the country's progress persisted
in some countries. I n France, in particular, a quasi-religious conception of
nationalization was created; and during the great strike of 1995 one could
still hear rail workers and their friends extol the state as the bearer of uni-
versal values in the face of a bourgeoisie that only defended particular
interests.
Despite this resistance, the new mode of modernization, based on
free enterprise and the central role of the market in allocating resources,
was rapidly established everywhere. Thus, control and regulation of the
economy were less and less based on objectives or norms foreign to eco-
nomics. Throughout the last quarter o f the twentieth century, the inter-
ventionist state was virtually universally (and completely) replaced both
by a state that primarily sought to attract foreign investment and facilitate
national exports, and by firms that increasingly formed part of transna-
tional entities and were combined with financial networks which, relying
on new mathematical techniques, can derive significant profits from the
circulation of information in real time. These rapid changes are the direct
result o f an internationalization o f production and exchange that was to
result in the globalization o f the economy.
M y intention is not to describe this globalization of the economy in
detail. But we must situate it in historical terms in order to be able to
understand its impact on the break-up of contemporary societies.
Let us therefore return to the period that began in the mid-1970s up
until the fall o f the Berlin Wall, and ended with the attack that destroyed
the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. This period began
with the oil crisis - in other words, a massive transfer of resources from
Japan and Western Europe to the oil-producing countries, which placed
their reserves i n New York banks so as to generate interest - something
that already indicated a form of globalization of the economy. For at least
thirty years, despite the aggressiveness of the Soviet camp at the beginning
of the period, the Western world had taken a considerable lead in virtu-
ally all sectors o f industrial and economic life, where the United States
assumed an increasingly dominant position. A n economic view of history
became established, according ever more importance to economic and
technological factors in social change. The globalization of markets; the
growth of transnational firms; the formation of networks whose crucial
importance has been clearly highlighted by Manuel Castells; the new effec-
Globalization 21
An extreme capitalism
objectives on economic actors. For many years, this enthusiasm for glob-
alization was contested above all by the defenders of local or national
interests and of products requiring national protection in order to ensure
their survival in global competition - European and N o r t h American
farmers, for example. Despite everything, the World Trade Organization
was decisively strengthened when China became a member of it. A n d local
resistance has largely fused into a planetary movement of opposition both
to global capitalism and to American power, which is its main support.
The Porto Alegre World Social Forum has been its Mecca.
Some think that the undermining or decomposition of national soci-
eties and states constitutes a step towards the creation of a political and
cultural life at a global level as well as an economic one. Does not this idea
conform to what we have long observed - namely, the constitution of
increasingly large social entities? I n this respect, the formation of national
states, imposing their power on local lords or collectivities, towns or
monasteries, was sufficiently protracted and tumultuous for us to be pre-
pared for the development o f a global society being slow and difficult, but
also inevitable.
Such a hypothesis cannot be excluded. But when we seek to identify a
more limited period, we feel ourselves being pointed in the opposite direc-
tion: not towards the formation of a global society, but towards a growing
separation between economic mechanisms, which operate at a global level,
and political, social and cultural organizations, which only act at a more
limited level, losing all capacity for interaction with the global level. As a
result, what is called society is breaking up, since a society is defined by
the interdependence in the same territorial entity of the most diverse
sectors of collective activity. Accordingly, does not the globalization of the
economy necessarily entail the decline of the national state and, conse-
quently, an ever more massive deregulation of the economy?
These rapid indications enable us to bring out the main cultural and
social implications of globalization. The most obvious is the creation of a
mass society in which the same material and cultural products circulate in
countries with very different living standards and cultural traditions. This
by no means signifies a general standardization of consumption and the
'Americanization' of the whole world. On the contrary, we see diverse, con-
flicting currents combining. The first is the cultural influence exerted by
the major firms of consumption and leisure: Hollywood is indeed the
dream factory of the whole world. But it will also be observed that it does
not thereby bring about the disappearance of local products. For we are
witnessing a diversification of consumption in the richest countries. In
New York, London or Paris, there are more foreign restaurants than before
and one can see more films from other parts of the world. Finally, we are
also witnessing a resurgence of forms of social and cultural life that are
Globalization 23
But are we really dealing with a new society? I n previous types o f society,
the technical mode o f production was inseparable from a social mode o f
production. I n industrial society, the organization o f work as defined by
Taylor and then Ford consisted in transforming manual work so as to
obtain the greatest possible profit; and payment by productivity, which was
24 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in Social Terms
lead their country to ruin. There will always be an acute tension between
the race for creativity and competitiveness and the endeavour to enable the
maximum number o f inhabitants o f each country to construct their lives
and have an influence on their environment.
European firms have made great progress and have internationalized
themselves. But the European effort i n terms o f the production, diffusion
and application o f knowledge remains insufficient; and to varying degrees
there is a pervasive failure to equip each person with the possibility o f
being a well prepared, well protected, well informed and clearly oriented
actor in social life. N o solution is to be found either in the preservation of
the current welfare state, or in the acceptance of an unrestricted liberal-
ism. Only a renewal of our ideas about society and its transformation can
enable us to conceive the social policies that will allow us to supersede the
welfare state, by altering its objectives and especially the modalities of
public intervention.
Alter-globalism
Let us sum up. Globalization does not define a stage of modernity, a new
industrial revolution. I t occurs at the level of ways of managing historical
change. I t corresponds to an extreme capitalist mode of modernization -
a category that should not be confused with a type of society, such as
feudal society or industrial society. A n d war, be it hot or cold, belongs to
this world of competition, confrontation and empire, not to that o f soci-
eties and their internal problems, including their class struggles.
A very diverse range of demands has gathered around the general theme
of anti-globalization, seeking to converge in the project of an alternative
globalization. The success of the Porto Alegre forum derives from the
fact that it has attempted to assemble social movements and currents o f
opinion which aim to give a positive meaning to the demonstrations in
Seattle, Gothenburg, Genoa, and many others elsewhere, which had a pre-
dominantly critical function. A movement has thus been organized, as
powerful as it is diverse, that challenges the most important leaders o f the
global economy.
A wave of sympathy has accompanied these Davids defying the Goliaths
of international finance. A n d the state o f the economy, so often presented
as a step in progress, now seems to many to be a construct that serves the
privileged and harms the poorest. I f the anti-global movement has re-
baptized itself alter-globalist, it is (as we have said) in order clearly to indi-
cate that it is not against the global opening up of production and trade
and that it is fighting for a different globalization - one which would not
ride roughshod over the weak, local interests, minorities, and the environ-
Globalization 27
It is more difficult, but even more necessary, to define what sets this short
period, which I have defined in a figurative way as one symbolically extend-
ing from the fall o f the Berlin Wall to the destruction of the towers o f the
World Trade Center, apart from the great break that put an end to it and
saw the spirit o f war triumph. Contrary to what is often said, the period
of globalization remained characterized by the accelerated circulation of
goods and services, but also of cultural works and practices - and even of
28 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
A globalized world
ism. His thesis would be weak i f it merely staged a very unequal struggle
between a central empire and peripheral societies or states incapable of
genuinely challenging it. On the contrary, however, Huntington shows us
a West (i.e. the United States) losing its hegemony and threatened by the
rise o f other civilizations.
Conversely, those who put globalization at the centre o f their represen-
tation o f the world show that it is dominated by American hegemony, since
global networks are to a very large extent in the hands o f the Americans.
A n d it is against them that the alter-globalist movements have been
created.
The contrast between the two theses is so total because they are in
part complementary. The reason for the massive approval enjoyed by
Huntington's approach is that it highlights the increasingly central role o f
cultural affiliations and beliefs - in particular, religious ones - in conflicts
that several generations of analysts have sought to explain in purely eco-
nomic or political terms. I n this respect, Huntington is surely right to
speak o f Islam where so many other authors only want to hear talk of oil.
But such cultural phenomena are implicated in policies and struggles that
discount state boundaries. I n particular, as we know, al-Qaeda recruits
activists who are often highly integrated into Western countries. I t is there-
fore neither economics nor civilizations that should be placed at the centre
of analysis, but the forces for mobilizing the resources required for polit-
ical action.
We must go beyond this initial observation. The political world is dom-
inated by the confrontation between the United States (and its most loyal
allies) and Islam (or what is called such). Whether or not we accept it,
Huntington's thesis today calls for a more positive statement about the
relations between religion and politics in a world which is experiencing,
and has just experienced, major conflicts whose actors refer to themselves
as religious. Was it gratuitous i f I began this book with the thunder-clap
of 11 September 2001 in New York and the world's entry into a state of
war, which has since increasingly taken the form o f terrorist attacks and
hostage executions that propel us into a state o f utter barbarism and are
an obstacle to understanding the causes of these battles and to seeking
solutions to them?
To take the analysis forward, we must return to our starting-point of
globalization, in as much as it signifies, over and above the globalization
of exchanges, the separation between economy and society - a separation
that contains within it the destruction o f the very idea o f society. We have
seen a process o f separation between the objective power o f the United
States and the subjective, national, religious, or whatever resistance of
groups or nations that can now only defend themselves subjectively, by
appealing to their ethnicity or history. It is when this subjectivity and this
32 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
need for identity develop i n a political vacuum that the relations between
nations can be reduced to a war between enemies defined by their forms
of worship, their religions or their laws.
In an already distant past, Khomeini's Iran attacked the United States.
Similarly, in Afghanistan, Sudan and Algeria in particular we have seen
Islamist political groups create or seek to found new Islamist republics.
But after the triumphant years came the defeats - especially that of the
Taliban in Afghanistan. A n d the great politico-religious enterprises have
given way to forms of bellicose behaviour, to attacks on the American
hegemonic power, in which al-Qaeda would appear to be the main agent.
One hundred years ago, Lenin was to be heard defending the idea of
the role o f the revolutionary vanguard, and then, sixty years later, we saw
the birth of the idea o f the foco, fashioned in Latin America, to foreground
the role o f a vanguard that was even smaller - and even more cut off from
the 'masses'. Today, we are dealing with a guerrilla o f kamikazes carrying
out armed actions whose impact on public opinion is enormous, but who
do not refer to any religious project. Many of these self-sacrificial terror-
ists seem to be motivated by hatred of the enemy. I n the Palestinian case
the religious component of the movement has been limited (even at
the outset, when the role o f Christians influenced by Marxism was so
important).
Thus recent history has turned its back on Huntington's thesis. But is it
not refuted by world history as a whole? I t was in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries that we experienced wars of religion. Thereafter,
competition between states, economic struggles, and totalitarian ambi-
tions inspired wars i n which religion played only a secondary role, except
with the entry onto the stage o f peoples or nations who were seeking to
win their independence, as was long the case with Poland. I n short,
Huntington's thesis, which is brilliant and clearly presented, emerged at
the historical moment when it was least applicable.
Europe: A State without
a Nation
Much has been said about the decline of the national state. In particular,
Europeans, who increasingly feel that they belong to larger or smaller ter-
ritorial entities than a state, define these entities in economic or cultural
terms, and less and less in institutional or political terms. But we cannot
make do with such vague claims. First of all, because many Europeans in
modern history have felt that they belonged primarily to a city and its
region: Amsterdam, but also Leiden and Hamburg, Florence and Sienna
- so many city-states that for a time at least played a major role, before
being incorporated into a national state.
34 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s In S o c i a l Terms
The national state had three main functions: creating a state bureau-
cracy capable o f intervening in economic development; exercising control
over morals and sentiments, as Norbert Elias in particular has shown in
his studies o f Absolutist monarchy and especially the Versailles court; and
waging war, in order to construct a national territory or fend off attack
by enemy states. How do things stand today with the national state? A n d ,
in the European case, can we speak of its decline or disappearance -
hypotheses that could be extended to Latin America or other parts o f the
world?
The administrative and economic activity o f the state has expanded, but
at the same time it is outflanked by the consequences o f economic glob-
alization and European construction itself. The state's role in training
and education, but also in moral control and repression, has markedly
decreased, in part as a result o f scientific advances, in part because o f the
triumph of a consumerist, hedonistic individualism. In sum, the national
state is much less of a general framework for collective identification than
it used to be. Britons, Germans or the French no longer identify their
national consciousness with the policy o f their state. I n contrast, it might
be thought that European integration has strengthened national con-
sciousness in Italy, because the whole country had to make great efforts
to become a full member of monetary Europe. But this national con-
sciousness was very weak, given the relative failure o f Italian unity in the
nineteenth century. The citizens of other countries like to mock European
nationalisms. However, this is to confuse the present with the past. The
national flag floats over many more buildings - even private ones - in the
United Sates or Sweden than in France or Italy. What persists is a feeling
of superiority on the part of the 'old' countries, which succeeded in
projecting their weapons, their languages and their products into vast
territories.
The primary objective behind the creation o f Europe, and in the first
instance of the European Coal and Steel Community, was to make wars
between European countries impossible. None o f them now dreams o f
triggering a new conflict, which could spill as much blood and create as
much horror as previous conflicts. The desire to render impossible wars
that had in fact already become so, as a result of the humiliation at the
moment of the final settlement after the fall o f Germany and Japan, was
not artificial. I t engaged the six countries that had taken the initiative o f
European construction in a new form of political existence, even though
no one at the time spoke o f a federal Europe, while de Gaulle for his part
referred to a Europe des patries.
The success o f the Europe created by Schuman, de Gaulle, Adenauer,
Monnet, De Gasperi, Spaak and others can be explained in the first
instance by the absence o f theoretical and ideological debates throughout
E u r o p e : A S t a t e w i t h o u t a Nation 35
The French accepted the treaty by the skin of their teeth. Other countries
would have rejected it, had their citizens been consulted.
The question now being posed by everyone, even i f most participants in
European construction remain supporters of an empirical definition of it,
can be formulated as follows: will Europe be a national state, as England
and France have been? Will a European consciousness and identity soon
exist? A n d will Europeans refer to themselves by this name, rather than as
English, Germans, Italians, when they introduce themselves to Americans
or Japanese?
A great step forward was taken when the idea o f a European Constitution
emerged. Germans like Jurgen Habermas and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, moti-
vated by their profound hostility to any German nationalism, took the lead
in a campaign in favour of the creation of European citizenship. But the
momentum was short-lived. The idea of a Constitution was re-launched,
but in more pragmatic fashion, when it came to the incorporation o f new
member states. The attempt is all the more imperative in that states defend
their particularisms, their national interests. The success of this draft Con-
stitution (which remains uncertain as I write) is paradoxically accompa-
nied by a regression in European sentiment. Now, as a result, the only goal
of the European Constitution is the survival o f the Union. Highly useful
and deserving the support o f a large majority, this Constitution will not
found the 'constitutional patriotism' to which Habermas refers. I n many
countries there would not be a majority for such a document and impor-
tant electoral successes have been achieved by opponents of the European
idea - in Belgian Flanders or the Netherlands, following Austria and the
Scandinavian world, which is still hesitant about Europe. In France, to the
surprise of many, the Socialist Party, which has been a consistent sup-
porter of the European idea, has split and one of its leaders is building
his projected presidential candidacy on a victory of the ' N o ' campaign.
As Europe expands, diversifies, and intervenes more in the life of its
member states, it seems to be closing in on itself, on its internal problems,
while not always playing a significant role in world affairs. What European
can mention Europe's inability to prevent the massacres in Bosnia and
impose a peace on the belligerents without a strong sense o f shame? What
European can be content with Europe when the names of Sarajevo,
Vukovar and Srebrenica are pronounced?
Well before the invasion o f Iraq by the United States, with the support
of numerous European countries - above all, the new members of the
Union liberated from Soviet domination - doubt set in as to the
38 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in Social T e r m s
I n sum, by dint of its very caution Europe is an effective agent for the
construction in Europe of the liberal model that is globally triumphant,
rather than the creator o f a different model.
Should we conclude that Europe has lost its original dynamism, that it
is growing weaker as it expands, and that it ultimately weighs little in the
process o f globalization? It is true that Europe is less and less interven-
tionist, without being as liberal as the directors of the World Trade
Organization would like it to be. I t retains some limited room for taking
initiatives, defined in rather negative terms - that is, the abolition o f obsta-
cles to the free circulation o f goods, capital, information and even people.
This pessimistic conclusion has been reinforced i n a period when Europe
has lagged significantly behind the United States in the use o f new infor-
mation and communication technologies. Such inferiority is accompanied
by a rise in unemployment. I n France, consciousness of decline has
prompted acute anxiety and led to the outbreak o f the 1995 strike, which
went far beyond demands for public services. This strike, which provoked
a lively controversy between intellectuals and trade unionists, led some
activists to demand massive state intervention in economic life - some-
thing that was impossible and primarily evinced absolute opposition to
liberal policies. Some countries, especially France, find it very difficult to
leave behind the dirigiste planning model that was for so long predomi-
nant on the left - and this despite the economic collapse o f the Soviet
model. I n France, defence o f the public sector, augmented by the nation-
alizations o f 1981, remains the principal condition of social progress for
many; and this approach is charged with anti-European sentiment. I n
Europe as a whole, few aspire to a return to the managed economy, but
growing doubt surrounds the efficiency of the European social model.
The attack o f 11 September and the American war on Iraq have divided
Europe: a large number o f countries supported the United States; others
- France in the forefront - were opposed to the unilateral decisions o f the
United States and were supported i n their rejection o f war by a large
proportion o f public opinion. This further weakened the European
Union.
We must conclude from all this that i f the European countries have avoided
turning i n on themselves, it is not because they now form a single nation,
but because they are constructing a state. This state already exists i n fact,
since a large part o f Europe possesses a single currency and much o f the
business o f national parliaments is given over to adapting their countries'
40 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in Social Terms
European powerlessness
European powerlessness not only manifests itself at the level o f interna-
tional politics: the greater part of the global scientific and industrial elite
is attracted by the United States on account o f the quality of its research
centres and major universities.
It is therefore time for Europe, overcoming the weaknesses and power-
lessness o f each of the European countries, to create a network o f insti-
tutions and research centres of excellence capable of rivalling the United
States - or o f collaborating with American universities and laboratories
on an equal footing. But we are far from being able to attain such a goal;
and i f European research policy has grown in scope, it is at the price o f
an administrative cumbersomeness that discourages all those who do not
participate in very large projects.
Europe is thus still very far from constituting a genuine state, but it is
nevertheless tending towards it. On the other hand, as I have said, it is
impossible to speak of a European nation and still less of a European
homeland or Heimat.
The enlargement of the European Union is further exacerbating its
weakness as a nation. The fact that all member countries belong to the
same 'cultural' area, defined in very general terms, does not prevent
nations and governments from being very different from one another. Can
it be said that Waterloo and Aboukir are memories shared by the English
and the French? Has the classical opposition between Protestant countries
and Catholic countries disappeared, like the one dividing tea-drinkers
from coffee-drinkers, and those who use oil for cooking from those who
use butter?
Many French, Italians or Germans feel less out o f place in New York
than in many European cities. Great Britain likes to look towards the high
seas - that is, the United States - whereas Italy feels itself Mediterranean.
These differences, derived from a long history, are one of Europe's major
attractions. Why wish for a European culture when we already possess
more than twenty? Europeans remain convinced of the need to construct
Europe; they accept the extension of the Union's competence; they recog-
nize that the indisputably European countries which have just entered the
Union have the right to do so. A l l that, they say, is reasonable, indicates
good management, and forms part o f the logic of the great European
project. But where in all this are the sense of belonging, collective memory
and social projects that impart a concrete meaning to the national idea?
A n d what is the basis for the idea that Europe should replace national
states in the collective life o f the citizens o f European countries?
On a political or practical level, such a debate does not have much
importance, since the European Union itself has abandoned the idea o f
42 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
To repeat the point, the idea behind this book is that over and above dra-
matic events and long-term economic changes, we are living through the
end of a type o f society - most importantly, of a representation of society
in which the Western world has lived for several centuries.
This faltering paradigm was built on the idea that society has no other
foundation than a social one. I t was not the first paradigm to become
established, when the religious order o f the world disappeared. I t was in
fact the political order that took the place of the latter - in the first
instance, the state. The formation of modern states, o f Absolutist monar-
chies, but also of city-states, and later of national states, was the major
product of this period, which can also be called the age of revolutions,
from those that brought about the overthrow of Absolutist monarchy - in
Holland, England, the United States, and most o f the Spanish colonies o f
America - to the more recent revolutions that erupted all over Europe or
developed outside it.
It was the development o f industry which, much later, put the economy
and the forms of organization bound up with it at the heart o f social life.
It was then that a specifically 'social' representation of society took shape.
But the succession of these two representations of social life clearly
occurred within the same vast historical complex. For more than four cen-
turies, uniting the two successive types of society, the idea obtained that
social life was its own end, that the integration of society and the ration-
ality of its functioning, as well as its capacity to adapt to change, were the
main yardstick of good and evil. Deviance and crime were defined as a
threat to social order; and family or institutional education was called
T h e End of S o c i e t i e s 45
socialization. These facts are well known, but they must be mentioned
here, since our central claim is precisely that we are living through the end
of the 'social' representation of our experience. This break is as significant
as the one that put an end to the religious representation and organiza-
tion of social life several centuries ago.
This definition o f such a vast historical complex comes up against two
objections. The first is that the countries which constituted themselves as
states and societies also had two other main activities: foreign trade and
war. The European was the man o f great expeditions to the east and the
west; and he created huge empires charged with supplying wealth to the
metropolis. However, the Portuguese and Spanish empires did not give rise
to societies o f the type presented here, whereas, according to Fernand
Braudel, the Netherlands and England very rapidly transformed expedi-
tions and conquests into societies that knew how to transform gold and
silver into machines, knowledge and laws. The other activity that played a
central role in European countries was war, and even i f it was a factor in
the rationalization of production, as was evident in the arsenals, it remains
the case that struggles between the major states for hegemony in Europe,
and the more or less long and destructive wars they entailed, mobilized a
significant proportion of state resources. This objection must remain
without a response, given how constant and costly European wars were.
But we must follow Max Weber and the majority o f modern historians
who reveal how, behind this military history, that of princes and soldiers,
a different type o f society was formed - one of bourgeois and artisans,
public and private administrators, and which was also a society o f the
creation and massive diffusion of knowledge.
Here we encounter the second, more important limitation o f the idea
of society. I n the age o f Enlightenment, English and French domination
provoked national reactions often inspired by a voluntaristic policy o f
entering into a world that was too exclusively in the hands o f the English
and French. Herder was its finest representative, pleading for the right o f
the Germans, Baltic peoples, and inhabitants of the Balkan countries to
have a place in the new type of society. But these reactions were still situ-
ated within the central model. This was not the case with the nationalisms
which, in the name of the particular essence o f a culture, a history or even
a biological origin, broke with the Franco-British model (or at least
wished to).
The violence of Fichte, especially in his attacks on the French language,
and a long tradition o f defending a nation defined as creator o f a partic-
ular culture and imaginary, marked Germany, which at other times became
the finest representative of industrial society with its workers, employees,
civil servants and entrepreneurs. There is no need to underline the fact that
in many countries secularization was limited, allowing what were often
46 When W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
teaches is purely civic. I have spoken elsewhere of human rights, but here
it is the duties o f citizens that are in question. A n d even i f patriotic enthu-
siasm declined in European countries with the onset o f European con-
struction and the globalization of the economy, this attachment of a
religious type, but purely secular, to the homeland is to be found in many
countries, large or small, and especially in the United States.
This extreme, constant reference o f society to itself is characteristic o f
a mode o f development - one that reduces the protection o f an inheri-
tance or acquired interests to a minimum. A n d it is only in open societies,
capable o f conquering markets and controlling their environment, that this
entirely 'social' vision o f social life can develop and that the notion o f
society can acquire the status o f a principle for assessing forms o f per-
sonal or collective behaviour in the social whole. I am referring here to a
way of augmenting a society's capacity to act on itself. But this analysis
would not be complete or sufficient i f it did not penetrate into the inter-
nal life o f societies so as to apprehend their dynamism and internal
conflicts - but also their elements o f weakness.
This type of society acquired its power by concentrating all resources
in the hands of a ruling 'elite' that possessed knowledge, managed accu-
mulation and production, and governed public life. These ruling elites were
composed of adult males belonging to the Western world and the colo-
nizing countries. Defined as inferior, by contrast, were manual labour, the
body, emotion, immediate consumption, private life, the world o f women
and o f children. I t is not enough to say that women or manual workers
were regarded as inferior: it is inferiority that assumed different guises,
among them women and workers. Such a polarization, o f which Claude
Lévi-Strauss remarked that it evokes the steam engine, which opposes a
hot pole to a cold pole in order to generate energy, creates tensions and
conflicts between those above and those below, the haves and the have-
nots. Hence the consistent importance o f class struggles, revolutions and
ideological debates in these societies.
Western societies were thus defined by the accumulation of resources in
the hands of a ruling elite and by the potency of social conflicts, which
prevented the rulers transforming themselves into rentiers and privileged
persons. Our societies were masterful. Thanks to the use o f force and
reason, they dominated nature and made themselves its masters. Oriented
outwards, constantly proclaiming their goals and strategies, they suc-
ceeded in putting the overwhelming majority to work i n order to fulfil the
objectives fixed by firms and their directors.
By contrast, they turned their gaze away from individuals themselves.
They loved thought and science, but they distrusted consciousness, in
which they saw the mark o f the religion which exerts such a negative
influence, especially on women. State education syllabuses faithfully
48 When W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
The idea of modernity, to which the following chapter will also be devoted,
is opposed to that of a society which is its own foundation, its own legit-
imacy. Instead, it asserts that it exists only because it recognizes the exis-
T h e E n d of S o c i e t i e s 49
The world o f the interests and that o f the passions are always linked.
For example, Marx believed that human beings are guided by interests, but
the historical events he analysed are charged with passion, as is the class
struggle.
Conversely, societies that approximate to the pole o f modernity always
risk getting entangled in a double language - a communitarian language
and a universalistic language - which will undermine their action.
These considerations not only concern the so-called 'underdeveloped'
countries; they also refer to concrete situations in 'developed' countries,
for there is not one o f them that succeeds in creating something new solely
out of new materials and dispensing with any communitarian reference.
That is one o f the reasons why the entirely self-legitimated model o f
society, which was the main instrument o f European and Western victo-
ries for so long, demands such attention. A model interposed itself be-
tween past and present that was bereft o f historical definition, since its
particular character was to found society only on itself, and hence without
any reference to evolutionistic or historicist conceptions.
This European model of modernization wrested such a lead that it could
identify itself with modernity and convince itself that no other path to
modernization exists, so that this collection of countries, regions and cities
would form a long caravan in which each animal places its hooves in the
tracks o f the one preceding it. The Netherlands, then Great Britain and
the United States were conscious of being, or having been, at the head o f
the caravan, although at times Germany and then Japan believed them-
selves capable o f stripping them o f first place and the French regarded
themselves as having best thought out this model. The pretensions o f the
Soviet Union never amounted to anything more than militant propaganda.
The European model o f modernization can be called male, in as much
as here no opposition is more complete than that o f the conquering, inno-
vative male and the female confined to reproduction. Here woman is not
held in contempt; she might even be glorified on occasion, but without
ever being released from her confinement. The distance separating women
from key decisions seems to increase with the acceleration o f moderniza-
tion, reaching its extreme point in France in 1848 with the creation o f
universal suffrage for all men - and hence the elimination o f all women
from public life.
But the European model of modernization takes a different form in each
of the countries where it is applied. I t was in Amsterdam, and then
Holland and England, that economic activity first achieved its independ-
ence from political power. By contrast, France, along with Great Britain
the first country to create a national state - the future political model that
dominated the world - assigned this state a central role in implementing
modernization in all its aspects. Later, from the eighteenth century, a not
T h e E n d of S o c i e t i e s 51
yet unified Germany asserted its claim to found a particular type of mod-
ernization, superior to the others, more profoundly rooted in the history
and culture o f a Volk.
Outside Europe, all modes of modernization have combined in a more
or less conflictive manner entry into modernity with the defence, or even
renaissance, of an older culture and society. Some of these countries had
achieved a level o f knowledge and technology superior to that o f the
Western countries. But only the latter were able to give impetus to the
dynamic o f modernity by transforming science into techniques and inno-
vations, by creating a national spirit - and by recognizing individual rights.
Most modes of modernization were also undermined and distorted by the
subordination o f the countries concerned to a colonial power which
increased the distance between Westernized elites and peoples locked in
tradition and social disorganization. This led to the failure of some
attempts at development (and even induced dramatically negative tenden-
cies to de-modernization).
In short, no mode o f modernization in the world developed a compa-
rable vision to that o f Western Europe: making society not a means but
an end. I t is therefore reasonable to prioritize analysis o f this Western
model, whose ascendancy over the whole world, once very great, seems to
have declined in the period of the military and political success o f the
Leninist-Maoist model, and then resumed its forward march after the
defeat o f the Soviet empire, until its triumph with its concentration in
the United States, while Europe lacked the will to act and Japan seemed
paralysed.
social origin is, and I will tell you what your career in the education system
will be. Indicate your profession and your income, and I will tell you what
your rational political choice is (even i f you do not always make it). Each
study published seemed to destroy an illusion and a wide public discov-
ered the importance o f inequality, stratification, and increasing or decreas-
ing social mobility, of which it had a spontaneous awareness that scholarly
studies readily confirmed. As for economic studies, they were invariably
identified with the investigation of rational choices, allowing them to
exclude certain variables that were too complex and too vaguely defined -
those o f subjectivity - in order to devote themselves to the study of the
relations between the elements o f the economic system.
Obviously, this 'sociologistic' standpoint never completely triumphed in
sociology. But it nearly always occupied a dominant position, from
Durkheim to Parsons; and it has continued up until our day to reap success
by bringing out social inequalities more clearly. But the domination o f
'classical' sociology has finally been destroyed, not so much under the
impact of intellectual critique as on account o f the decomposition o f insti-
tutions and norms.
(1) The least dramatic and often most positive form taken by this decline
was the democratization o f a society where fundamental conflicts found
institutional solutions or mediations. The history o f the working-class
54 When W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
(2) A t the opposite end of the spectrum we find the authoritarian, dicta-
torial and even totalitarian state form whereby, in many countries, higher
or middling categories fended off both working-class opposition and sec-
ularization, by conquering society in the name o f nationalism, itself sup-
ported by the repressive will of armed forces, based on an ideology that
extolled the unity o f the nation or the people against the parties. There
are huge differences between the reactionary Mediterranean dictatorships,
Nazism or Japanese military imperialism, and the prolonged victories of
Leninism-Maoism. But everywhere the model o f society was destroyed in
favour o f an absolute state power and it took a long time to rediscover,
under the earth scorched by state violence, the remains or new shoots of
a 'civil' society.
(3) Finally, very different from this second type but distinct in orientation
from the first, a third process challenging the European model of society
was the triumph of the market. During the major period o f liberalism's
triumph, society exists less and less: it is the markets - particularly finan-
T h e End of S o c i e t i e s 55
Irruption of democracy
It was during the first phase of modernization that political categories were
applied to all domains of social life. The overriding concern was to ensure
order against disorder, internal peace against violence, and the integration
of society against the arbitrariness of a prince or warlord.
The national state - a phrase that sums up the most important political
creation in the European model - warrants its renown, because it overran
the Absolutist monarchies and founded a political entity - the nation -
which in turn established strong links with civil society. The notion of
citizenship rests on the recognition of political rights. That o f national
state does not contain any reference to democracy. Great Britain was the
first to give civil - i.e. economic - society its independence and make it the
basis of its legitimacy. The other country that invented the nation-state -
France - associated only the people with the state and the nation, a notion
invented by the state which reduces society to its reflection, as it mirrors
society. The historical memory of the French readily combines the Revo-
lution and Napoleon in a central phase of its history which François Furet
extended to the end of the nineteenth century - that is, up until the decline
of peasant, bourgeois and patriotic France.
In many other countries, the state was less strong or did not exist; and
it was the will to form a nation that led nationalism to accord such strong
legitimacy to the state that it merged completely into it and always looked
more to it than it did to society.
Accordingly, democracy is not always part of the European model o f
society, while revolution is a significant component. This observation
applies even more clearly to countries where the national state was not
created and remained the prisoner of an empire, as in the case of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. But it existed only in limited fashion in the
United States, since the main problem o f that country - the state o f
the black population - led to a civil war and was resolved only in the last
quarter of the twentieth century as the result of action that was simulta-
neously democratic, revolutionary and populist.
In France, democracy was undermined by the long refusal to grant
women the right to vote. I t invariably served to legitimate the power of oli-
garchies, rather than to construct a political system in which the majority
controlled executive power through representation by means of parlia-
ments or référendums.
T h e End of S o c i e t i e s 57
One would be tempted to say that democracy, even when tainted by oli-
garchy and class power, was more a British than a European reality. I n
other words, it triumphed in a country that was more imperial than
national, since it remained defined by the union o f several nations. This
further reinforces the idea that the nation and democracy are notions
which are more opposed than complementary. The French have recently
demonstrated it. Enlightened public opinion, invited to choose between
the notions o f republic and democracy, has moved increasingly sharply
towards the republican ideal, while displaying limited interest in equality
- the central value of democracy. Thus, the more revolutionary and
national than democratic inspiration that put France back on its feet at
the Liberation, under the joint leadership of de Gaulle and the Commu-
nist Party, was not replaced by an advance of social democracy when it
became exhausted.
By contrast, the national state, which has never been referred to as much
since its imminent disappearance began to be announced on a daily basis,
owed its enduring importance and resistance to globalization itself,
because it was and remains the political expression o f society, in the strong
sense given this word in the European model.
We must speak o f social movements in almost identical terms. They too
occupy a central position in the model o f society, since it rests on a great
concentration o f resources, the formation of a dynamic ruling elite, and
conflicts verging on rupture. A n d in the case of the social movements to
an even greater extent than in that of the nation-state, the political space
is better defined in terms of revolution than democracy. To the extent that
the latter word could be used by the Communist movement, whose centre
- the Soviet regime - was never seriously able to claim to be a democratic
power. I t signified that the priority was ensuring the well-being of the
people, which made it synonymous with revolution. This has nothing
to do with the idea of a government formed and changed from the
bottom up.
A t the opposite end o f the spectrum was the formation, initially in Great
Britain, o f an alliance between social movements and democracy. That
between the trade union movement and democracy was sealed in Great
Britain thanks to the Fabians and the idea of industrial democracy. From
it emerged a social democracy that elsewhere evolved towards Commu-
nism, and elsewhere still ceased to be hand in glove with the working-class
movement, whereas in some cases (especially Scandinavia) it ensured a
lasting alliance between a powerful trade unionism and an egalitarian
democracy.
The French case is less satisfactory: the figure o f Jean Jaurès has
remained the most elevated, even though he did not accede to the leader-
ship o f the Socialist Party, because with identical vigour he was deputy
58 When W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
Critical analysis of the national state must not lead us to forget that
it forms part of the model that I call society, whereas other types o f
state not only do not pertain to it, but strive to make all aspects o f
society submit to the construction o f their own power. Nationalism is the
imposition o f the interests o f the state on the nation and the whole
of society. Where does the boundary between the nation-state and
nationalism lie? Above all, between the existence and the non-existence,
the strength or the weakness, o f society - particularly its national
component.
Wherever there is great political, social or cultural heterogeneity, when-
ever a country is shot through with profound regional differences or insur-
mountable linguistic or religious barriers, the national state is transformed
into a nationalist will, into the assertion o f the unity of a nation that does
not in fact exist. Nationalism is a purely political project that seeks to
'invent' a nation by assigning a state uncontrolled powers to bring forth a
nation and even a society. When it is devoured by nationalism, the national
state ceases to be a component of society and the latter risks being
destroyed. Nationalism is very far removed from modernity and it is
doubly dangerous for democracy. This is so, firstly, because it functions
from the top down, and hence in the opposite way from democracy; and
secondly, because it replaces the complexity of social relations with sheer
assertion of an affiliation that is then defined less by its content than by
the nature of its opponents. Nationalisms have made a powerful contri-
bution to destroying society by imposing a logic of war on it, a division
of the world between friends and enemies, which blocks the functioning
of society.
T h e End of S o c i e t i e s 59
Farewell to society
The most significant and visible o f these crises is the place o f work in
each person's life. The reduction in the working week, the increase in the
number of holidays and, even more, the prolongation o f retirement have
led many analysts to speak o f the end of work. Our life, which was for so
long dominated by the problem of production and the need to survive, is
now dominated by consumption and communications. The accelerated
reduction in working hours is experienced by most people as a liberation
and not as the loss o f a creative experience.
This discourse, which is to be heard all around us and is favoured by
intermediate categories, often prompts two kinds o f objection. The first
derives from the highest categories. Can a hi-tech society function only
with temporary and casual workers? How can it be forgotten that the
number of technicians, specialists and professionals of all orders, o f
'symbol manipulators' (in Reich's words), has greatly increased? Certainly,
these categories invariably find themselves protected on the labour market
by their skills. But they are no longer interested in the success o f the firm,
because they have learnt that the firm might be destroyed by competition,
might relocate its activities, or might brutally divest itself o f its older
workers. They think about their own success, their career, their ability to
grasp situations and explore new domains. A n d this is also how re-
searchers, innovators, and professionals in the public sector, academic or
medical, behave, well aware as they are of the (probably incurable) weak-
nesses of their institutions. They embark on new European or global proj-
ects, or even emigrate to master new forms of knowledge.
The other type of objection derives from below. How bitter it is to hear
the end of work and expansion of free time being celebrated when one
is unemployed or a casual worker, when one works in a declining sector
or sees one's own qualification lose its value with the emergence o f new
technologies!
In fact, we have lived through such a profound alteration of situation
and attitude that we cannot spontaneously perceive it. The main social
conflicts used to have their source in work relations; now it is to be found
at the level o f the globalized economy, whose consequences make them-
selves felt on local employment and stir up opposition combining defence
of the local and critique of the global. One aspect of this change is that
what affects us most directly is what once used to seem most remote -
something well conveyed by the idea of sustainable development, or,
conversely, that o f a climate change which will drastically alter the life of
the overwhelming majority, whereas our everyday experience is, in part
at least, delivered from the constraints it used to impose on us. The
share of skilled work permitting a certain autonomy has greatly ex-
panded compared with unskilled work, despite the marked increase in
casual work.
T h e End of S o c i e t i e s 65
Work more than ever traces the line demarcating the central, superior
part o f society from its periphery. I t is true that many think of work solely
as a way of ensuring holidays and a guarantee of resources at retirement.
But for as many people, i f not more, work has a more important place,
irreducible to the hours directly devoted to it. Thus, training, retraining,
technological games, or information are at the heart o f free time. They
should not simply be regarded as leisure activities. Formerly, the great
divide separated those who lived from their labour and those who lived off
their capital. Today, the separation lies between those whom we can call
specialists (or professionals) and those who possess no qualification, that
require genuine training and who are increasingly to be found in the service
sector.
A n d who spares a thought for the dirty jobs that exist the world over,
where production is low, where the population lives on nothing but foreign
aid, smuggling or other illegal activities, like the production, trafficking
and sale of drugs? The economic world is no longer the vast entity in which
everyone was guaranteed a job and a wage. The industrial wastelands are
expanding, but the mobility of qualified professionals is also on the rise.
Many lack work; for others it is their main reason for living. The separa-
tion between economy and workers, system and actors, is the best defini-
tion of the current crisis. Before our very eyes the logic of the markets,
which governs firms, and the protection o f careers, which is what wage-
earners aspire to, are becoming separated. But globalization is going to
oblige all countries, whether industrialized or not, to press their advan-
tages and thereby make the best use o f their 'human resources', their skills,
and to raise their level of production.
Accordingly, the inhabitants of the industrialized, rich countries should
not any longer rely on the quality of their inheritance. Relocations are
already hitting them hard, but is it not foreseeable (even logical) that those
who work a lot and earn little will win out over those who do not work
much but have high incomes? But it is more easy for us to denounce the
ills suffered by the Third World than to lower the barriers that we our-
selves have raised in order to defend our agricultural or industrial produce.
To summarize: work is losing none o f the importance it had in the life
of the majority of people at the height of the industrial period. What is
disappearing before our eyes is the civilization o f work. Jiirgen Habermas
speaks in this regard o f the dissociation o f the historical content of civi-
lization from its Utopian content.
What has just been said about work can be generalized, or at least
extended, to other important domains of social life. Everywhere we find
the same separation between the meaning of an activity for society and its
meaning for the person who performs it. But the meaning for society
always tends to be weaker than the meaning for the actors themselves. We
66 When W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
are therefore living in societies which are discontented with themselves, but
where everyone forms more positive projects and expectations for them-
selves. This is the opposite o f the situation we experienced for so long,
when individuals brooded in a society that was rather pleased with itself.
In short, we are witnessing a transfer of values from society to individu-
als and we are moving, as and when we can, into a new form o f the eco-
nomic world.
Let us take the case o f schools. Ideas here are still confused and choices
very difficult. In many countries, France among them, schools were
assigned the mission of preparing, socializing, workers and citizens.
Schools said that it was not for them to take account o f the differences
between pupils; this (so the representatives o f state education thought)
would result in them being more concerned with the most active pupils,
from privileged backgrounds. Schools were not at the disposal o f pupils,
but must aid them to acquire general knowledge, to respect the organiza-
tion o f society and nation, and to acquire a sense o f discipline. Such was
the spirit of the German and French secondary schools, classical or scien-
tific, before (in the German case) the upheaval introduced by Nazism. This
conception is clearly encapsulated in the definition o f education as a social-
izing factor and the complementary idea that successful socialization is
what creates free, responsible individuals. This conception thrived for a
long time on the de facto monopoly o f state secondary schools, on the high
professional quality o f teachers, and in an economic situation that guar-
anteed a place in the adult world to the overwhelming majority o f pupils.
Such a conception of school life is still alive, as is the discourse. But they
are in disarray and complaints are to be heard on all sides. The French
debate on secularism has only served to increase the confusion. How can
one still consider the pupil simply as a future member o f society? Can one
take blindness or bad faith so far as not to see that, by refusing to take
account of the psychological, social and cultural situation of pupils, one
increases the privileges o f those who belong to an educated milieu, who are
better informed, and who are therefore in a position to construct projects
for the future? Should we not have the courage to say that schools, which
should encourage equality, tend to reinforce inequality by multiplying the
obstacles in the way o f those who come from underprivileged backgrounds
and cultural minorities, as is indicated in the French case by the low number
of children from immigrant families who rise up the social scale?
Teachers are upset by having to transmit knowledge to many pupils who
show no interest in the syllabus and are bored at school - where they still
sometimes find themselves at an adult age. But it must not be forgotten
that many children and families know that their future largely depends
on their scholarly success. Contrary to massively widespread stereotypes,
many veiled Muslim girls share this conviction, want to do well in their
The End of S o c i e t i e s 67
studies, and do not see why they should have to choose between their
religious beliefs and their professional future. Confronted with major
problems, teachers frequently adopt defensive attitudes. I t is true that the
personal behaviour o f teachers is often more open and innovative than
their collective discourse. But the distress on both sides is considerable and
will only increase with greater pressure for everyone's cultural rights to be
respected - rights to beliefs, to lifestyles, and so on. The already dated idea
of the school as a sanctuary o f public life, whereas religious forms o f
behaviour are confined to the private sphere, will rapidly become unsus-
tainable because it will be perceived by a growing number o f pupils and
parents as repressive and unjust.
A n important acknowledgement of the need to individualize teaching
has been made in France by college teachers, who have had the courage
to recommend retention o f the single college so as to avoid increasing the
social segregation that exists in the lycées. This presupposes an individu-
alization o f teaching, given the heterogeneity of the classes in colleges. The
need for an apprenticeship in rational and even scientific thinking must be
asserted with the same force; and here Nobel Prize winners like Georges
Charpak in France have taken initiatives that have been crowned with
success.
General orientation o f teaching towards the pupil is still held up to
ridicule by some; and the permissiveness o f some teachers, like the excesses
of some educationalists, have led many parents and teachers to demand a
return to a more traditional form o f teaching, based on knowledge acqui-
sition. But the altered conception of the school is too profound to depend
entirely on the vagaries o f the political conjuncture. We shall not return
to a conception o f teaching as socialization, since the social system -
society - no longer exhibits the solidity of the past and the individualiza-
tion o f learning, and hence in teaching today the support given to each
pupil's initiatives is already producing results.
Similar observations could be made of other sectors. What we are living
through is not the collapse o f a sandcastle, but the exhaustion o f social
policy focused on society, its functions and its integration. We are already
all caught up in the transition from a society based on itself to self-
production by individuals, with the help of transformed institutions. Such
is the meaning o f the end of the social I am referring to here.
N o theme is more widespread today than the rupturing o f the social bond.
Neighbourhood groups, the family, mates, the educational or professional
milieu seem everywhere in crisis, leaving the individual - above all, when
68 When We Referred to Ourselves in Social Terms
ing course to the next, gave this answer: 'First and foremost, the police.'
This reply is so logical that it requires no comment. 'And next?', asked the
interviewer. 'Teachers and social workers,' replied the young man. 'But
why?', asked the astonished interviewer. 'Aren't they trying to help you,
not to exploit you?' The young man replied: 'Because they lie to us, mislead
us. They call on us to integrate into a disintegrated society.' This answer
has a relevance beyond the specific case o f the population to which the
young man belonged. For many the world has lost all meaning, and non-
meaning can only provoke acts o f pure hatred - self-hatred, and hatred of
the environment - or an unrest without any objective, at the heart of a
mass culture haunted by images o f violence.
Among the workers and migrants from the poor countries, it is women
who suffer this loss o f any sense of themselves most. They used to form
a category defined by its inferiority, but which nevertheless had recognized
functions. The decomposition o f the old system may well have prepared
for the advent of new actors and new types of culture and society, but it
also leads to an ever more complete submission to the domination of the
market. Notwithstanding some exaggeration, the image o f the woman
manipulated as a sexual object and subject to male violence contains much
truth - and we can no longer reject feminist accusations about the fre-
quency and gravity o f the violence suffered by women.
Must we go so far as to call into question the theme to which I have myself
assigned so much importance - that o f social movements? First o f all, we
must note the undermining o f this notion. It used to evoke the working-
class movement, national liberation movements and feminism. Today, I
read in the metro station I am entering that a 'social movement having
occurred among a certain category of the workforce, several metro sta-
tions will be closed until further notice'. How can we fail to be disturbed
by the loss of substance in this great notion, now used to refer to any work
stoppage, whereas the idea o f social movement was reserved for conflicts
between organized social actors whose stake was the social mobilization
of the main cultural resources of a society? Was not the working-class
movement, for example, in conflict with the world of the employers for
access to the resources created by an industrialization that both camps
valued equally? Invoked for any old purpose, the notion o f social move-
ment loses any content and becomes useless.
As we leave behind the long phase dominated by the idea o f society,
our first move is to abandon an analytical tool that has seemingly lost all
its force. Some will add that it was high time to study more concrete
70 When W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
Conclusion
The key thing today is not to describe the success or ruin of the model of
society that was the instrument o f the West's triumph, but to reject both
the optimism o f progress and the pessimism of sociological critique that
has registered nothing but collapse. What matters is whether individual-
ism, which is replacing social utility as the central focus of thought and
action, will succumb to the sirens of marketing and television pro-
grammes; or whether it will prove at least as demanding and combative as
the idea at the heart o f Western society was. I t is so easy to blame con-
temporary individuals for their egotism and lack o f a sense o f history! As
easy as it was to blame society for its taste for norms and instrumental
reason.
Certainly, we must see how the individual is manipulated by propaganda
and advertising. But we must also discover the social actor present in this
individual and even the subject who lies within her and fights against mass
society, the impersonality of markets and the violence o f war. For nearly
half a century, social thinking, especially in France, sought to be r i d o f the
subject, as i f the latter were betraying its idealist discourse and privileging
the rich against the poor, because the rich speak better. This was a pathetic
battle at a time when the world was dominated by totalitarianisms, wars
and confrontations.
Might the end o f society lead to the birth o f the subject! Many reject
this optimistic hypothesis. I simply ask them to recognize that this is the
main issue in our society: how are we to defend and enhance the creative
freedom of the subject against the waves o f violence, unpredictability and
arbitrariness that increasingly roll over the social space?
Revisiting the Self
A t first sight, the idea of modernity does not seem to add much to the
analysis of what I have called the 'social' paradigm o f social life. Do we
not call modern that which is created and constantly transformed? Does
not the long classic opposition between community and society make the
latter the synonym o f modernity? D o we not think that modernity casts
out thrones and altars so as to allow society to manage itself, regarding
its integration as a central need that must serve as a criterion for assess-
ing behaviour? We are proud of regarding ourselves as citizen-members of
a nation and as depositories of sovereignty, and hence able to make or
change the law; and just as proud o f being workers whose activity is useful
to the collectivity, to the society that recognizes it through various sorts
of remunerations, particularly monetary ones.
The triumph of the idea o f society was nowhere as complete as in the
Western world, which took the lead over the rest o f the world precisely by
identifying itself with modernity.
Consequently, does referring to the 'end o f the social' mean anything
more than that 'modernity is exhausted'?
Many analysts are tempted to claim that modernity itself lies in ruins
and to announce our entry into the postmodern. To speak thus means, in
particular, asserting the disappearance of any central historical principle
for defining the social whole. This is an intellectual stance with such
general, radical consequences that it entails for those who adopt it a sense
of virtually infinite possibilities o f conceptualization, which they grant
themselves; and, by the same token, serious risks o f theoretical and
practical disorganization, to which they are exposed. I have always kept
my distance from this intellectual approach, however important and
fertile.
72 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
What is modernity?
I first of all want to propose a definition o f modernity which counter-
poses thinking focused on society to thinking centred on modernity, and
which is clearly encapsulated in an expression that will be employed
several times here: modernity is defined by the fact that it imparts non-
social foundations to social phenomena, that it subjects society to princi-
ples or values which, in themselves, are not social. This may be a cause for
surprise.
It is clear that such a definition of modernity leads us in a different direc-
tion from that heralded by the word 'society'. I have mentioned that self-
produced societies, defined by their instruments and their oeuvres, do not
appeal to any non-social principle, whether in their analysis or their action.
But this internal analysis, which must be retained, must also be completed
by further characterization. How does an 'active' society, at once creative
and conflictive, form itself in opposition to social systems organized for
their reproduction, equilibrium and integration - what we call communi-
ties based on non-social principles, be they religious, traditional, or some
combination o f the two? Is the transition from community to 'society' to
be explained by the imposition on the totality o f social life o f the domi-
nation exercised by a ruling elite? This explanation seems weak, for vio-
lence can create power but not the capacity for self-transformation and
rationalization. This leads us to define modernity by the intervention o f
anti-communitarian principles.
Only such principles can challenge the established order. But what are
these principles? The most varied answers have been given to the question;
and the list is long. We must reduce it as much as possible, in order to
identify non-social principles for orienting action that are genuinely fun-
damental. Following an inventory of the components of modernity which
are generally regarded as the most important, two seem to me to be indis-
pensable to the existence of modernity. They are the conditions o f exis-
tence for freedom and creativity within social systems, which naturally
tend to reinforce themselves rather than to form free actors.
The first principle is belief in reason and rational action. Science and
technology, calculation and accuracy, the application o f the results o f
science to increasingly diverse areas o f our existence and society are
necessary, quasi-obvious components o f modern civilization for us. The
important thing is to stress that reason is not based on the defence o f col-
lective or individual interests, but on itself and on a concept of truth that
is not apprehended in economic or political terms. Reason is a non-social
foundation of social life, whereas the religious or the customary were
defined in social terms, even i f they referred to transcendent realities, since
the sacred is a social reality.
R e v i s i t i n g t h e Self 73
this way it can improve not its degree of integration, but the life chances,
action and satisfaction o f needs o f all members of society.
Consequently, the link between the Western idea o f society and that o f
modernity is strengthened as the self-production of society gives us greater
confidence in our capacity to be modern. I t would be absurd to claim that
Western society has the same relations with modernity as all the other
types o f modernization; that all follow paths which make them progress
towards modernity in the same way, passing through forms of organiza-
tion and mobilization that often distance them from it. A n d it is this very
kinship that obliges us to stress at greater length the separation - even
opposition - between our ideas o f society and modernity, whereas what
unites them is almost too visible, since we know that the idea of moder-
nity was born within societies o f a Western type - and not within closed
communities.
The societies that have been called industrial or post-industrial do not
isolate rationality from rationalization, a method of production that
resorts to calculation, but whose main aim is to increase the control of
capitalist profit over workers' labour.
A t the same time, the universalistic affirmation o f the rights of each
individual was likewise limited in industrial society, where the talk was also
of social rights - that is, the rights of workers. This could lead to the inter-
pretation o f those rights as being bound to result in the establishment of
a society o f workers, a classless society - a notion that reintroduced a
model o f society and was therefore poles apart from the individualism of
human rights. Only modernity in itself militates against any confusion
between the freedom of each person and social integration.
The distance from full-scale modernity is even greater when we consider
the societies o f early modernity (at least in the Western world), for reason
was then bound up with the formation of the modern, 'bureaucratic' state,
which was invariably an Absolutist monarchy or oligarchy. The freedom
of the citizen was defined more by duties than by rights.
But no society, not even the most advanced technologically, can be iden-
tified with modernity. What opposes the two notions is that society, com-
pletely contrary as it is to a communitarian logic, also tends to its own
reinforcement. I t therefore gives preference to the 'general interest', and
hence to everyone's duties, over individual rights. Instrumental rationality,
which seeks efficiency in achieving results, cannot be confused with moder-
nity either. A n d this distinction is so charged with meaning that it occupies
a central place in sociological thought, thanks to the Frankfurt School and
a whole line o f works that are among the most important in sociological
thinking, from Horkheimer and Adorno, via Marcuse, to Habermas.
Conversely, no modernization is a necessary and sufficient condition for
attaining modernity. The march to modernity occurs by concentrating
Revisiting t h e Self 75
many elements derived from other societies. The completely new is never
fashioned exclusively out o f what is new; it is equally constructed out of
old materials. Modernity is a creation that exceeds all its fields o f appli-
cation, for all have another side - that of the reinterpretation o f the pre¬
modern. The idea o f society is always centred on itself, both by those who
deal with the functions and utility o f forms of behaviour and by those
who everywhere perceive the instruments and effects o f a domination. I n
contrast, the idea o f modernity contains an insurmountable tension
between, on the one hand, reason and the rights o f individuals and, on
the other, the collective interest. Citizenship and civil rights are also a polit-
ical expression of rationality, but one that is opposed to the integration
and reinforcement o f society, since rights are opposed to duties.
Moreover, the two principles o f modernity do not form a single unit
and can be set in competition with one another. Rational action is not
always in accordance with individual rights and the latter are no less fre-
quently exercised against rational thinking.
The relations between the idea of society and that of modernity emerge
more clearly still when we assess the evolution of societies linked to moder-
nity: do they reinforce themselves to the extent that modernity becomes
identified with the reign o f interests? By contrast, does social organization
dissolve into a modernity that imposes constant change? Or - third solu-
tion - do the two orders o f reality increasingly separate in a dynamic that
protects secularization and secularism?
Let us successively examine - and exclude - these three responses. The
first is the one that best satisfies the pessimism o f realists, who are per-
suaded that interest always prevails over rights and principles, and that the
interdependence of the elements o f social life becomes so great that it no
longer allows room for the openness represented by modernity: we must
make do with avoiding excessively brutal infringements o f rational think-
ing and human rights, but we must also adapt to poorly defined, chang-
ing situations o f which we are not the masters. This empiricism enables us
to avoid the most serious errors, even i f it does not lead to us behaving in
accordance with the principle of any modernity.
The second solution is attractive only to those who impart an elemen-
tary meaning to modernity - that of constant change - which is far
removed from the one that it seemed to me necessary to confer on it.
Above all, the idea that general, enduring problems are dissolved in a
present that is itself fragmented by incessant change is very far removed
from our lived experience, since we increasingly pose ourselves long-term,
76 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
imposing values, norms, and forms of authority, and defining statuses and
roles. For modernity is the exact opposite of the self-creation o f society.
What we are living through is the destruction of society - that is, the
social vision of social life, the set of categories in which we have lived like
a suit of armour for more than a century. We see crumbling around us
societies o f production and social struggles, whose dynamism gave us a
lead of several centuries over the rest of the world. It is only to be expected
if many can see nothing but the ruins of such a grandiose construct. I
myself constantly stress the return of violence and war; and I have empha-
sized the triumph of the market over work and creation. But in the face
of the black clouds that loom so large in our sky, I also perceive the ever
more brilliant presence of a modernity whose principles (belief in reason
and recognition of universal human rights) are asserted over the ruins of
social systems.
Far from being plunged into a world where only interest and pleasure
survive, we are ever more clearly confronted with our own responsibilities
as free beings. I have already made the point: on the ruins o f the social
systems there appear two increasingly obvious forces, neither o f which is
social: the naturalized forces o f the market, violence and war, on the one
hand; and the equally non-social, because absolute and universal, appeal
to rights and reason, on the other. Our history is no longer defined by its
meaning and ultimate destination, or by the spirit o f a time or people, but
by the clash o f natural forces - markets, wars and catastrophes - with
modernity, with the subject.
Why speak of 'modernity'? Why not refer to 'values' or, more tradi-
tionally, to 'Enlightenment philosophy'? I avoid the idea of values, which
sometimes refers to a religious conception and sometimes to the most clas-
sical sociology, for- which values are at the apex o f the system of norms
and social organization and can therefore only refer to society itself, like
all forms of the sacred.
For its part, the idea of modernity refers, over and above society's action
on itself, to the sources o f rights, the presence o f the universal in the social.
It is good i f the content given to the idea of modernity here evokes the
philosophy of the Enlightenment, for the latter, through its political as well
as its intellectual expressions, is infused with the same confidence in the
creation of self by self, thanks to transcendence of the forms of social
closure that prevent recognition of the universalism of rights and reason.
I f the notion o f society was creative for so long, it was (as I have said)
because it appealed to modernity against the communities that it overthrew,
and hence to universalistic principles like reason and the universal rights of
each individual. But today, modernity is superseding society in its turn.
Because sociological critique has accurately identified more domination
than rationality in the functioning o f societies, and more duties than rights,
78 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
it has become increasingly difficult for us to believe that the human being
becomes a free, responsible individual by integrating into society, its norms
and laws. On the contrary, we have an ever stronger sense o f what opposes
the individual to society and, equally, society to modernity, because the
modern individual is increasingly defined by her relationship to herself and
modernity is the constant appeal, beyond social norms and duties, to a uni-
versalism o f rights that can certainly degenerate into a hedonism manipu-
lated by commerce and media, but which can equally be the locus o f an
appeal to the subject in its emancipatory universalism.
Modernity was for a long time borne along by the idea o f society; it can
only develop today by dispensing with it, combating it even, and by taking
possession o f the subject - which is increasingly directly opposed to the
idea o f society.
The idea o f modernity appeals to no transcendent principle. On the con-
trary, it asserts that the creative freedom of each one - o f each individual
or category o f individuals - is the highest good, that it does not presup-
pose any foundation other than itself. This explains why modernity is never
identified with some particular society or government, or with some par-
ticular current o f ideas or type o f teaching. Just as modernity was rein-
forced by the transition from community to society, so it is strengthened
- and to an even greater extent - by the supersession o f society. I t detaches
itself from any social expression, like a religion separating itself from any
Church or ritual practice.
The ruin o f society certainly has as many negative aspects as positive
ones. As I have said, de-socialization leads to the destruction o f social
bonds, to solitude, to a crisis o f identity. A t the same time, however, it lib-
erates people from imposed affiliations and rules. N o t only is modernity not
undermined by it, but it becomes the sole force of resistance to all forms o f
violence; and it is to modernity that responsibility falls for reconstructing
institutions that will no longer serve society - re-baptized the 'general inter-
est' or 'common good' - but the creative freedom o f each individual.
This conception o f modernity and human rights typically comes up
against two opponents. The first, which is more visible today, is embodied
in Islamic or Asian milieus that refuse all universality to the Western model
and claim that theirs, determined by a communitarian conception o f social
life and by the preservation o f the traditional family, has proved more
effective than ours, affected as it is by the many forms o f personal and col-
lective decomposition. The writings o f Lee Kuan Yew, powerful, author-
itarian master o f Singapore, are regarded as perfectly representative o f
this tendency, which Michael Ignatieff opposes to that of Western
Enlightenment philosophy. I n reality, this kind o f thinking does not
propose a definition of modernity: it defends a different model o f mod-
ernization that it deems more effective - something which is not in itself
unacceptable.
Revisiting t h e Self 79
The central position assigned modernity - that is, the creative freedom o f
the actor, not the requirements and functions of social systems - results
80 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
from the observation made at the end of the previous chapter: we are living
the 'end o f the social'. For the break to be complete, it remains to exclude
more firmly than I have hitherto done the forms of social thought that
corresponded to the 'social' representation of collective life, which repre-
sented a very important part o f sociological analysis.
We must recognize the impact of the transformation o f social reality on
sociological thinking. They must both advance, in the domain of social
ideas as in that of social behaviour, towards a new vision of collective life
and also o f individual behaviour, to which the idea of modernity has in-
troduced us. The theme o f the end of the social, of the need to eliminate
the idea of society, completely changes (as we are well aware) our way o f
thinking and talking.
We can no longer think about social phenomena sociologically and should
not do so. This is less difficult than it appears at first sight, since, in societies
other than ours, the social has been conceived in political or religious terms.
The potent and, all things considered, optimistic image o f a society that
confers from above a meaning on everyone's social life has always been
accompanied and contested by that of a society enclosed in itself and
reduced to the language of internal domination. Today, this closure is no
longer that of armies subject to an all-powerful head. I t is the domination
that filters into all the parts o f society, and above all into actors them-
selves, as Michel Foucault showed so powerfully, whereas central power is
undermined, for it is under attack from a capitalism that allows econom-
ics to dominate society. I n this connection, American radical feminists
have convincingly shown that the words and notions that make it possible
to describe women's situation and behaviour have as their principal func-
tion imposing an authoritarian reference on the model o f stable, asym-
metrical heterosexual relations. The peculiarity of forms of domination is
to pass themselves off as natural - and hence non-imposed.
Sociology has largely drawn on these two conceptions o f social systems.
During the years of post-war reconstruction, it was dominated by the
oeuvre o f Talcott Parsons, who constructed, almost down to the last detail,
the plan o f a society organizing its four main functions: selection of polit-
ical ends, employment of economic resources, socialization o f actors, and
punishment of deviance. A generation later, a critical sociology began to
be diffused in virtually all Western countries, which discovered the effects
of domination in the words, gestures and practices of each sector of social
life. I n the United States the student movement, action in support o f black
people's demands for civil rights, and also the struggle against the war in
Vietnam shattered the intellectual good conscience o f post-war America.
'Critical functionalism', perhaps because it offered a universal key to
social analysis by inviting us to discover mechanisms for constructing
and transmitting generalized domination in all domains, had great success
R e v i s i t i n g t h e Self 81
Emancipatory individualism
duction, which possess arms rather than markets, and which also impose
a new slavery by reducing workers' living standards as far' as possible. The
undermining of our societies, which is explained by the exhaustion of their
traditional model o f development, therefore leads on the one hand to
increasing autonomy and domination of the world o f war and, on the
other, to the triumph of short-term consumption over long-term develop-
mental projects.
This leads us to pose the fundamental question to which this book
would like to respond: is a new model o f modernization possible? Can a
new dynamic emerge in our relaxed societies? I t cannot be created by
imposing new internal tensions, since our history has been dominated for
a century and a half by the overthrow of forms of domination and the
relaxation of tensions. We must therefore look in the opposite direction.
What is the principle that might prevent our societies from sinking into
a generalized exhausting competition, but without resorting to the spirit
of power, conquest and crusade to re-galvanize society and impose new
constraints and sacrifices on it? It is individualism. It is true that this word
has a bad reputation. It has served to eulogize personal interests and indif-
ference to the lot of the majority; and when it lauds the success of the
affluent, casting the situation of the insecure and the excluded into obscu-
rity, it is literally intolerable and justifiably becomes the target of attacks
by those who defend solidarity, justice and equality.
But we are looking for a different answer: does a form o f individualism
exist that might replace the will to conquer and the creation o f high inter-
nal tension which account for the effectiveness o f the European model of
modernization? While the whole of Part Two of this book is given over to
seeking an answer to that question, is it possible to indicate in a few lines
here what such an answer might consist in and, consequently, how our
societies might escape the opposite and complementary dangers of sub-
mission to the rules o f the market and imprisonment in a communitari-
anism that inevitably leads to war?
We have referred to the liberation movement whereby the dominated,
rejecting their submission, conferred a subjectivity on themselves, asserted
themselves as beings of right who rejected injustice, inequality and humil-
iation. Why not look at a theoretical level for an answer that would give
the liberation movements - those of the working class, colonized nations,
women, and various minorities - their full significance, by affirming that
in a world which can no longer be constructed around conquest and man-
aging extreme tension, it is the quest for the self, the resistance of the self
to impersonal forces, that might enable us to preserve our freedom?
This form o f resistance contains self-affirmation, not only as a social
actor but as a personal subject. The destruction of the idea o f society can
only save us from a catastrophe i f it leads to the construction of the idea
86 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l T e r m s
of the subject, to the pursuit of an activity that seeks neither profit, nor
power, nor glory, but which affirms the dignity o f all human beings and
the respect they deserve.
Let us now return to the reasons for the decline of the notion o f society.
The key point in the debate is whether the individual is formed by becom-
ing a citizen or, on the contrary, by detaching himself from the norms, sta-
tuses and roles which organs of authority and 'agencies o f socialization',
like the school and the family, can no longer force him to accept. The first
idea was at the very heart o f the construction of societies of a democratic
type. Whereas authoritarian, populist or communitarian societies call for
the transcendence of individual interests in favour o f maximum partici-
pation in a collective entity - a people, a race, a religious belief, a language
or a territory - the greatness o f our liberal democracies is that they con-
ceived institutions as milieus for the production o f free, responsible indi-
viduals, concerned to act in accordance with universalistic criteria. This is
how we arrived at the idea o f the subject.
Two contrasting phenomena then occurred: the disintegration o f the
ego defined as a set of roles; and the rise o f a conscious, reflexive indi-
vidualism defined as the demand for oneself, by an individual or a group,
of a creative freedom that is its own end, which is not subordinate to any
social or political objective. The individual then ceases to be an empirical
unity, a character, an ego; in a converse dynamic, it becomes the supreme
end that is substituted not only for God but for society itself. The indi-
vidual was produced by society, in her most concrete behaviour, as well as
in her thinking. Now the opposite is true. The creative affirmation at the
heart of modernity resists social organization and, depending on whether
its self-assertion is satisfied or not, assesses it in positive or negative terms.
This language, which is neither difficult to understand nor more fragile
than that which made the individual a social being, warrants careful atten-
tion, for it completely excludes various habitual representations of the
relations between individual and society.
Should such a conception be attacked and condemned as idealist? But
why is it more idealist to say that the individual seeks to be recognized as
free and responsible than to claim that he defines himself with reference to
the values and norms o f society? On the contrary, I am very careful not to
appeal to the notion of value because it always mixes up concrete forms o f
social life with a definition of good and evil. The peculiarity o f modernity
is that it does not appeal to any principle or value external to itself. I t is
genuinely self-creative, in a way that suits agnostic minds but also certain
forms of religious thought - those which stress the direct relationship
between the believer and God, in abstraction from any social attribute.
As a modern phenomenon, the individual therefore escapes social
determinism, in as much as she is a self-creating subject. Conversely, the
R e v i s i t i n g t h e Self 87
be called social life - that is, to the world o f the acquired as opposed to
the world of the transmitted. Consequently, we must keep a constant
watch over the modalities of the reinforcement o f society, sometimes in
the name o f modernity itself, for it can lead to the self-destruction o f this
modernity. The threat is permanent. Rationalism, like the rationalization
of industrial labour, can also serve to destroy actors' consciousness.
More complex, at least in appearance, is the inversion that can lead to
respect for rights being transformed into an instrument of oppression.
How can we be unaware that the defence o f cultural rights can also turn
into an obsession with the identity, homogeneity and purity of the group,
the rejection of minorities and differences? I n the name of cultural rights,
communities are constructed that impose their laws, which they disguise
as rights. In the name o f an identity and a tradition, authoritarian rulers
seek to impose principles, and even practices, that negate freedom of con-
science and free cultural choices.
The rationalized universe and communitarian regimes can also act in
concert to deprive us of the exercise of cultural rights and, more broadly,
modernity itself, of space. A t each stage of modernity the same dangers
have emerged. Thus, during the French Revolution it was in the name of
liberty and the nation that regions and social categories were destroyed. A
century later, the working-class movement forced respect for social rights.
But it was in the name o f the working-class movement that the dictator-
ship of the proletariat was imposed and that the social rights which were
beginning to be recognized were destroyed. The universe of social actors
could only be formed by fighting on two fronts simultaneously: against
the reproduction of traditional values and forms of authority and, at the
same time, against an authoritarianism that was technocratic as well as
communitarian.
How can modernity safeguard itself against the danger of self-destruc-
tion that dominated much of the twentieth century, via all the forms of
rationalized organization in the service of new communitarianisms -
which in the case of Nazism went as far as genocide? Only by recognizing
that modernity can be realized solely through rational thinking and respect
for universal human rights, and hence by making its main goal the cre-
ation of actors whose freedom and responsibility are precisely based on
the two principal components o f modernity. When the biologist Axel
K.ahn adopts for his own purposes his father's invitation to be 'reasonable
and human', he expresses this idea in the most direct manner. 'Reason-
able' is inseparable from 'rational'; and 'human' above all signifies respect
for the rights of others. Modernity does not manifest itself in the creation
of the 'best of all possible worlds', but on the contrary in the subordina-
tion of all forms of social organization to a central goal: producing indi-
viduals capable of inventing and defending their own capacity to combine
R e v i s i t i n g t h e Self 89
rational thinking and basic human rights in social institutions that are con-
cerned with both efficiency and liber ty.
This conclusion is valid for every part of the world. Where the com-
munitarian threat is enhanced by the experience o f dependency, it is the
appeal to reason that plays the most emancipatory role. I n contrast, in the
richest or most 'developed' countries it is the appeal to human rights that
offers the best protection against the regime o f interest, of money as a
caricature of rationalization.
Here we finally return to our starting-point. Talk o f social determinism
entails that the logic of society impose itself on the intentions and inter-
ests of actors. Yet on the contrary, the decline o f the notion of society
entails the decline of the idea that behaviour is subject to forms of social
determinism. Numerous sociologists and historians have observed the
undermining of transmitted statuses, of familial, social, national, etc.
affiliations; and, consequently, the replacement o f external explanations
of actors' behaviour by different ones, which are increasingly proximate to
actors' relations to themselves. To illustrate the point, it will suffice to refer
to studies of education. Schools, it has long been argued, transmit social
inequalities (this, let it be said in passing, represents progress compared
with the naive ideological assertion that schools are a powerful levelling
factor). This leads to them being regarded as a black box and to the claim
that educational outcomes are determined by the preceding social situa-
tion. This was a decisive move, whose success was so great that it abounds
in sociology manuals. But now analyses of the 'institutional effect' con-
ducted by François Dubet have demonstrated that educational outcomes
are more dependent on the nature o f communication between teachers and
the taught in schools - which refers directly to the standpoint of actors
and their interactions. Today, the theme of forms o f social determinism,
which was once illuminating, is primarily an obstacle to understanding the
social actor. Modernity - that is, the central orientation of modern actors
to the assertion of their own freedom - is primarily inflected by a logic of
the actor who seeks to assert herself as such.
Were a majority of sociologists to continue to support the old repre-
sentation o f social life and the complementary theme of social determin-
ism, sociology itself would lose its vigour and perhaps its life, for what
must be undertaken as a matter o f urgency is the study of actors, their
relations, conflicts and negotiations. Were sociology to put off its indis-
pensable modernization, it would condemn itself to being nothing more
than a closed chapter in the history o f ideas.
But this transformation is already well underway. The success of 'Cul-
tural Studies' proves it. Initiated in Great Britain by Stuart Hall, the dis-
cipline was developed by Margaret Archer and soon conquered a major
position in American academia and beyond. What does this research
90 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d t o O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
We must now examine the location that should be assigned to the types of
society and culture that are arising before our very eyes. Two main ques-
tions stand out. (1) Can we give a historical expression to the transfor-
mations described? Are we dealing with a new stage of modernity, a form
of postmodernism, the birth of a post-industrial society, or a communi-
cation society? (2) D o the other modes of modernization undergo muta-
tions comparable to those of the Western world or, on the contrary, are
we witnessing the collapse of a part o f the world which is losing control
and self-consciousness?
First o f all, then: in what terms should we conceive the changes that
have just been analysed? I t is highly unlikely that it is in the economic terms
of stages of growth, changes in capitalism - or even o f relations between
market economy and public intervention. For at the outset we recognized
that globalization, economic phenomenon par excellence, was detaching
itself from the national or local societies it overarches, provoking in these
societies significant reactions of defence or rejection, but which for the
most part remain separated from specifically social movements.
A n approach in terms of modes o f work and forms o f production is
attractive to many more sociologists. I t is no accident i f the renaissance o f
sociology in Europe, following the Second World War, was the interna-
tionally recognized initiative of Georges Friedmann. I n the first instance,
this sociology studied the transition from a craft society to a production
society dominated by the manufacture of mass materials by workers
subject to a strict division of labour and often to imposed work rates. Then
it became interested in the communication society, organized into net-
works and transmitting information (more and more often in real time).
The more that human societies have increased their ability to transform
their environment - at the increasingly great risk o f destroying it - the
more those who live in these societies have regarded themselves as the
R e v i s i t i n g the Self 91
masters and creators o f nature itself, and have sought the meaning o f their
action in the use o f reason and new organizational methods.
During a period that corresponds above all to the great success o f indus-
trial society, our focus was directed outwards, towards the conquest o f
space and time, towards the creation of new materials and new appara-
tuses. Reason seemed everywhere triumphant, both within us and in the
world; and scientists (so people thought) were soon going to occupy the
place which had once been that o f representatives o f forms o f spiritual-
ity. Perhaps even the accelerated development of techniques helped sepa-
rate the world of production from the lived experience of human beings.
But today we must recognize the naivety o f those who believed in progress,
whether they belonged to the capitalist system or the Communist world.
It would be superfluous to state here, following so many others, that the
negative aspects o f progress have become more evident than its positive
features. M y conclusion is very different. We have been so transformed in
all the aspects o f our existence, both positively and negatively, that we have
returned towards ourselves, towards our ability to act, invent, react, in
such a way that we have ceased to define ourselves as the masters o f nature
and regard ourselves as responsible for ourselves, as subjects. To speak o f
self-consciousness here is problematic, for this term seems to refer us to a
human nature, collective or personal, which we can observe in the same
way we do stars through a telescope. I n fact, the subject is not conscious-
ness o f the ego or the self, but the pursuit of a self-creation beyond all
situations, all functions, all identities. We want to exist as individuals amid
techniques, rules, forms o f production, power and authority, but also amid
assertions o f identity and war-like drives. We live in a world that is less
and less 'natural', which we know is o f our own creation, so that our action
is carried out on the effects o f our action rather than on an environment.
Ecologists, who study the impact of our action on the environment rather
than the characteristics o f the 'natural milieu' (as it was still called half a
century ago), are well aware o f this.
Our morality no longer consists in adapting to the laws of the universe
or adhering to the word o f a god, even among those who have such beliefs.
It is no longer based on the pride of creation and the generosity that it
can contain. It is the anxious quest for the subject, the being for itself, as
the sole principle o f self-grounded evaluation, while all social moralities,
in particular national or republican ones, have long since demonstrated
their powerlessness or harmfulness. We are leaving - we have already left
- behind the era when the nature o f the machines or techniques employed
defined a society. A n d notwithstanding the importance of communica-
tions in contemporary societies, it is in terms of relations with the self,
rather than o f communication with others, that the new type o f social life
is defined.
92 W h e n W e R e f e r r e d to O u r s e l v e s in S o c i a l Terms
The Subject
Giddens analysed earlier and more fully than most o f those who have
referred to it since the 1980s. I t is the idea o f reflexivity, applied to this
analysis, that has taken his analysis in a direction I feel I am moving in
myself, even though the representations of the individual which are pre-
sented to us on all sides feel alien to me. Self-presence, self-reflection,
authenticity and also intimacy, love and commitment - all these words
refer us to a self-presence that begins with a presence to the body, to
breathing or movement. This individualism oriented towards self-presence
is eminently modern, as Anthony Giddens convincingly argues, for it
involves as complete a detachment from social roles as possible. I belong
to the vast current o f ideas that stresses the transition from the world of
society to that of the individual, the actor oriented towards herself.
But when I refer to the subject, I nevertheless refer to a reality which is
very far removed from that presented by Anthony Giddens and so many
others. Two differences strike me immediately: the first is that I define the
subject in its resistance to the impersonal world o f consumption, or that
of violence and war. We are continually disintegrated, fragmented and
seduced, passing from one situation to the next, from one set of stimuli to
others. We lose ourselves in the crowd of our situations, reactions, emo-
tions and thoughts. The subject is a summons to self, a will to return to
the self, against the flow o f ordinary existence. For me the idea o f the
subject evokes a social struggle like that of class consciousness or national
consciousness in earlier societies, but with a different content, without any
externalization, entirely directed towards itself - while remaining pro-
foundly confiictive. That is why the first images to spring to mind to
illustrate the idea of the subject were those o f resisters, o f freedom
fighters.
The second difference is the one I have just indirectly mentioned. The
subject never identifies completely with himself and remains located in
the order o f rights and duties, in the order of morality and not that of
experience.
It is for these two reasons that I resist the idea o f love as the quest for
intimacy, however powerful the idea. Duties towards oneself and the rights
that mark the presence of the subject in each individual exceed all rela-
tions. The love relationship itself, which rises above sexual relations, seems
to me to be more like the encounter and mutual attraction of two bearers
of subjecthood than an intense quest for interiority, which impoverishes
more than it enriches. I do not situate my reflection in the universe of iden-
tity; and this word frightens more than it attracts me. The subject is the
opposite of identity and is lost in intimacy, even when it traverses these
realities and is traversed by them. Conversely, I am led to say that the
subject is the conviction that inspires a social movement and the reference
to institutions which protect liberties.
The Subject 103
Defence of sociology
Are the lines that I have just written foreign to sociology - that is, the pos-
itive, verifiable knowledge o f social situations and social actors? Not in the
least: I would even say that no other sociology is possible today. Just as it
is impossible to describe a society while neglecting the religious phenome-
non - something that does not render criticism of those who appropriate
the divine, and transform it into a sacred phenomenon whose management
they assume, any less necessary - so it is impossible today not to recognize
the presence o f the subject, when criticism and struggles against imperi-
alisms, nationalisms and populisms - but also against the reign of money
and growing inequality - are accumulating. It is impossible not to refer to
human rights, and hence not to recognize that the number o f human beings
who assess their acts and their situation in terms of the ability to create
themselves and live as free, responsible beings is on the increase.
Those who see around them only victims and machines o f domination
and death are half-blind. They do not see, alongside the injustice and
death, the assertion o f the will to struggle against it; they ignore the suc-
cesses achieved in these struggles. The gods have not only made way for
warriors and jurists. We always need a double of ourselves: she it is who
affords us rights and, consequently, a moral sense - the sense o f good and
evil. A n d this double, by dint o f coming closer to us, o f being ever less
objectified in a superior, distant world, enters into each of us. A n d we then
act in the name of higher principles, at the same time as we punish our-
selves for our inability to live up to them.
I n an initial phase, this moral consciousness still bears a close resem-
blance to a religious creation. Natural law is simultaneously nourished by
old traditions and a vector of individualism. Thus we came to place our
faith in economic progress and the triumph of reason, in the fatherland,
in revolution - and even in a project o f perpetual peace. But we have now
left behind the long period when we believed that we could satisfy our-
selves with temporal objectives - the power, wealth, glory and immortal-
ity promised to great men.
Today, our morality is less and less social. I t is increasingly distrustful
of the laws o f society, of government lectures, of the prejudices with which
106 N o w that W e R e f e r t o O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
For the sociologist, the subject is not only a notion constructed through
a general intellectual initiative; it must be observable - that is, present itself
to the consciousness o f social actors, at the same time as it is located by
the analyst in a social situation that corresponds to the maximum number
of its characteristics. Now, it is precisely at the point when the cultural
image o f society becomes established, when we observe the major switch
in action and representation from the external world to the internal world,
from the social system to the personal or collective actor, that the idea
emerges of the subject as the ideal o f the actor, o f the individual who
wishes to be an actor. Here I hope readers will allow me to cite a name -
one constantly on my mind as I was elaborating the notion o f subject: the
name o f Germaine Tillion.
A n ethnologist from the first generation o f Marcel Mauss's pupils, at
the start o f the war she joined the Resistance, founding a network to which
she gave the name o f Musée de l'Homme. Deported to Ravensbrûck, she
survived through an astonishing combination o f circumstances and after
the war became the president of the former deportees to this camp, while
continuing her ethnological work in Algeria. During the Algerian War,
having declared in favour o f independence for this French territory, she
took a public stand against torture, but also against bomb attacks. The
interviews she conducted with Yacef Saadi, F L N head in Algiers and thus
the person with principal responsibility for the bloody attacks that suc-
ceeded one another there, brought home to me that this woman represents
an almost perfect example of what I call the subject. For she took a stand,
assumed all the risks, but without ever giving up saving lives - and she dis-
covered in her interlocutor internal debates similar to her own. Engaged
in numerous struggles, she never abandoned saving individuals.
Full o f passion, wisdom and respect for every human being, this woman
is almost one hundred years old as I write her name. Her life is largely
unknown to the general public, even i f she is respected and loved by many
people who have known her or know o f her activities. What fills me with
admiration for her is that she has served great causes, but without ever
identifying completely with any o f them, because she put human rights
and the struggle against violence above everything else.
But i f the most luminous figures play an indispensable guiding role, their
action would have no impact i f it was not relayed by organizations and
decisions whose content in terms o f subjectification is certainly much
weaker, but which ensure the creation and reinforcement o f the subject's
institutional defences. It is thanks to this collective action, and in partic-
ular to representative democracy, that guarantees are afforded to everyone
- individually and collectively. On the other side, by contrast, we find the
figures of evil, with their henchmen, their hired co-conspirators, and all
those individuals who seek to derive some minor personal advantage from
108 Now that W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in Cultural T e r m s
Rights
During the period when forms of behaviour were defined and assessed in
social terms, norms and values privileged the submission of actors to the
needs of society. Conversely, the notion of the subject becomes established
at the end o f a long history o f impoverishment of these ideals, constitut-
ing an essential aspect of what is called secularization.
The subject is not the actor bereft of any 'objective' external principle
for guiding her behaviour. On the contrary, the subject is the one who has
transformed herself into the principle for guiding her behaviour. 'Be your-
self - such is the highest value. Consequently, the only norms that are
imposed on her are negative: they instruct her not always to obey the
authorities, not to believe in the necessity o f all forms of social organiza-
tion - in particular, as regards everything involving personal life. This
explains, for example, the strength of the resistance on the part o f so many
Catholics to the present Pope's decisions in matters o f private morality.
Even i f we rarely have the strength to defend the rights of the individ-
ual against those of the community, we feel the liveliest distrust o f insti-
tutions that are charged with punishing deviants and criminals, or even
with taking care o f minorities and the disabled. We are always afraid that
what is called the interest of society ignores the right of each person to be
treated as a subject, respecting what we call basic human rights. This
attachment to human rights is accompanied by a loss of confidence in,
and of respect for, institutions and collective actors, especially political
ones, which were for so long vectors of popular sovereignty, and whose
legitimacy was for a time superior to that of all other institutions.
I f we are still attached to them, it is because their presence protects us
from the arbitrariness o f dictatorships and violence, whose most immedi-
ate effect is to destroy any reference to the subject. I f one allows oneself
to be carried away by dreams that reveal the reality o f our lived experi-
ence better than the discourses constructed by the authorities, we can
imagine forms o f social life that would be increasingly deprived of insti-
tutions. Political decisions would be taken at the end o f an unusual contest
between characters that were more symbolic than real. Schools would no
longer have buildings or syllabuses; and their teachers would no longer
form a particular social body. Extremely varied techniques - in particular,
encouragement of the imaginary and reasoning - would be put in the
service o f each individual. I t is in the domain of justice that changes would
The Subject 109
be most necessary: have we not long been searching, albeit with little
success, to counterpose liberty, equality and fraternity to all the forces
destructive of the subject that are ill-concealed behind the terrible obliga-
tion to defend society?
This evocation of the subject via imaginary representations could lead
to a misinterpretation i f we did not immediately recall that the notion of
the subject is closely bound up with that of rights. The subject, such as we
conceive it and defend it today, is not a secularized version of the soul,
the presence of a supra-human reality, divine or communitarian, in each
individual. On the contrary, the history of the subject is that of the
demand for increasingly concrete rights, which protect cultural particu-
larities that are ever less generated by voluntary collective action and by
institutions producing affiliation and duty. It is this transition, from the
most abstract rights to the most concrete, that leads to the reality of the
subject.
The more that universal rights are linked to membership of the human
race, the less they have real consequences - aside from the abolition of the
death penalty. Political rights are more real, although they are exercised
within a given collectivity - a city or nation, in particular. Social rights are
the more effective in that they apply to specific situations, like collective
agreements. The main objective of the long struggles of the working-class
movement was to add to political rights, which are potent in their univer-
salism but too remote from everyday lived experience, social rights invari-
ably defined as the rights of particular professional categories. Establishing
a link between the universalism of political rights and the specificity of
social rights is so difficult that the working-class movement split amid the
violence of the debates. Part of the Second International, which was to
identify itself as social democratic, kept social rights within the democratic
framework; the other part, initially in a majority, counterposed social rights
- workers' rights - to bourgeois liberties, leading to Leninism-Maoism,
whose power dominated half the world for fifty years. I shall analyse more
precisely the way in which history is repeating itself as new cultural rights
lead some of their defenders in the direction of communitarianism, while
others seek to assimilate particular cultural rights and general political
rights, without forgetting those who, in the name of a narrow conception
of the Republic, are opposed to the idea of cultural rights.
Today, the rise of communitarianisms that are authoritarian and deter-
mined to keep women in a situation of dependence and inferiority explains
the reluctance of some countries, like France, to recognize cultural rights,
in the name of republican universalism. However, over and above the
debates conducted in a particular conjuncture, it is impossible not to rec-
ognize the importance of cultural rights - that is, the power of demands
based on a culture or gender within the population itself. A n d political
110 Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms
parties will have to end up recognizing that cultural rights are inseparable
from political rights and social rights. The subject does not assert itself
outside o f the social and cultural characteristics o f those who regard them-
selves, and wish to be recognized, as subjects.
attention to the other can also distract from the self. We must be rather
distrustful o f intimacy, as of silence, for it is always liable to stifle self-
consciousness. I t is always better to combine engagement in active life with
the move to return to the self.
We have for so long been judged by what we did, and not by the con-
ditions in which we lived, that we find it difficult to combine a more reflex-
ive vision with an active conception o f human beings. Certainly, we have
no desire whatsoever to be once again defined by our situation at birth,
for that would seem to us to mark a serious regression. But we find it
increasingly difficult to accept being defined exclusively by our actions -
that is, being judged by categories that are those o f employers, private or
public, whose respect for the personality of the wage-earners they employ
is not always their main concern. A n d even those o f us who continue to
accord very great significance to working life feel the need to take some
distance from their activities, to return from time to time to themselves,
and to pose questions that would once have seemed incongruous: am I
happy? A m I doing what I really want to do? A m I capable o f under-
standing X? A m I certain that at this moment intolerable things are not
happening, that a serious injustice is not being committed? These ques-
tions that I ask myself, these judgements which I make on myself and the
world, are the equivalent o f the observations that I as subject make on
myself as a social actor. This explains why the appearance o f the subject
can occur in any situation.
It is just as imperative to protect the idea o f the subject against inter-
pretations that are at once moralizing and psychologizing. The subject is
not the person who 'realizes' themselves, as they say, or who performs the
functions entrusted to them well - the good worker, good citizen, good
father or mother. The emergence o f the subject is not bound up with the
end o f meta-narratives referred to by Jean-François Lyotard, for personal
meta-narratives are worth just as much as the collective meta-narratives
whose disappearance he noted. The life of the personal subject is as dra-
matic as the history of the world. The subject is no more at ease in the
society of money and violence than in the Communist perversion of the
hopes and struggles of the working-class movement.
The reality of the subject runs through all the scenes of history. The
subject is no more present in our civilization than in others. However,
because it is no longer embedded in the construction o f a sacred world in
modernity, it is in our society that it is most frequently confronted with
itself. Liberated and fragile, it can now finally appear as such following the
dissolution of its distant projections.
We are all tempted to attribute to the subject an image that is clearly
discrepant with lived experience. Adventurer, generous, victorious over all
intrigues, at once moving and ridiculous: is D o n Quixote an image of the
The Subject 113
subject? I f he was not, an entire nation would not recognize itself in him.
For the French chivalry he seeks to imitate also represents nostalgia for a
Spain that was falling into bourgeois mediocrity, which would soon dis-
tance itself from its European neighbours by lagging far behind them,
which would forget what accounted for its grandeur as well as its ruin. But
we must not succumb to the attraction of insane dreams. The subject does
not protect itself from the present by leaping towards the future or fleeing
into the past. We lose sight o f it when we believe we have unearthed it in
one of our imaginary lives. The subject is in us, here and now - a living,
anxious quest for the meaning of each of our gestures and each o f our
thoughts. That is why it is never more present in us than when we are in
love, for one of the principal meanings of such relationships is the dis-
covery of two subjects by one another, at the heart o f their mutual desire.
The subject is borne along by the efforts we make to liberate ourselves
from the place assigned us. The most extreme attempt to attain oneself as
a subject is to descend into the self, to break all the ties that bind us to
what is called reality and spend a Season in Hell, so as to arrive at
'Morning' (penultimate text): 'Quand irons-nous, par-delà les grèves et les
monts, saluer la naissance du travail nouveau, la sagesse nouvelle, la fuite
des tyrans et des démons, la fin de la superstition, adorer - les premiers!
- Noël sur la terre!' 'Le chant des cieux, la marche des peuples! Esclaves,
ne maudissons pas la vie.' ('When shall we go beyond the shores and the
mountains to acclaim the birth of the new work, the new wisdom, the
flight of tyrants and of demons, the end of superstition to adore - the first
worshippers! - Christmas on earth!' 'The song of the heavens, the proces-
sion o f peoples! Slaves, let us not blaspheme life.') Different images might
be superimposed on those of Rimbaud: that of meditation or a dialogue
with death.
What most troubles those who seek to impart concrete historical content
to the idea o f the subject is that this word in itself summons up images of
mastery in the first instance. Is not the subject the one who imposes his
will on the world, who transforms it in his own image, or who establishes
order and laws where chaos and violence obtained? We are still haunted
by this image o f the conquering subject, full o f virtii, inherited from the
Italian Renaissance. The figure we imagine as the subject o f history is the
direct opposite o f the subject of the prince, who is dependent on a master.
But these images, which are still present in our collective memory, no
longer inspire us with confidence. For two centuries it has not been the tri-
umphant prince who held our attention, but the slave who rebels in the
name o f her labour, her people, her gender - to the extent that we recog-
nize the presence o f the subject more where there is lack than where there
is abundance. D o not dependency and solitude protect those who endure
them against the illusions o f greatness and power? We instinctively look
114 Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms
for what seems to us most human on the part of the exploited, the scorned,
the forgotten. But in this altered situation a representation persists which
must likewise be excluded. According to it, the subject is grasped only in
real-life situations, with reference to power possessed or endured, in rela-
tion to the other, whether friend or enemy, who is always capable o f dic-
tating a vision of the world, be it triumphant or despairing. But it is also
by extricating ourselves from all representations o f the subject as agent o f
history, as bearer of a society, that we can see the true figure o f the subject
emerging - that is, the individual or collective subject who is no longer
guided by the values, norms and interests o f society, or by privation, frus-
tration and revolution.
But how can those who look outside of themselves, towards power or
enemies, succeed in returning to themselves and attaching themselves to a
consciousness o f their existence, to the discovery and production o f them-
selves as the ultimate goal o f their action? We are emerging from an age
when history was the subject, sometimes even a piece o f history arbitrar-
ily sliced up in historical time. Thus, we spoke o f industrial society, o f the
Soviet revolution or regime, as real characters. A n d in a transitional phase
I myself referred to the historical subject, whereas now I only want to speak
of the personal subject (which in no way reduces it to individual cases). We
were incapable of talking o f the personal subject, and understanding our
culture's return to the search for the self, when we were imprisoned in this
anthropomorphic or even theomorphic approach to history; and classical
sociology placed a further obstacle in our path by treating society as a
character, of the same kind as the jurists are fond of calling the legislator.
This personalization o f historical epochs had a predominant influence
until the First World War. Thereafter, the scale o f the destruction and
death caused by wars and dictatorships, the presence on every continent
of concentration and extermination camps, and mass killings - all this
makes it difficult, in fact impossible, to discern a human face amid the
ruins.
During the second half of the twentieth century, above all in the rich
West, we have sometimes had the impression of once again being thrust
into historical complexes similar to those of the years before 1914. But
globalization renders attempts to isolate a type o f society (or even civil
society), and to describe it as the fruit o f rational debates and choices
made by virtue o f the procedures established by a constitution, illusory.
A t a time when war to the death is raging between Israelis and Palestini-
ans, when the United States has suffered the terrorist attack of 11 Sep-
tember 2001 and then invaded Iraq, and when Africa is breaking up under
the blows o f poverty and internal wars, can we conceive the new century
in terms of a step towards a type o f society? I n fact, since the beginning
of the First World War we have ceased to be defined by history.
The Subject 115
A related note
In our contemporary societies, it is the world o f the media that most per-
sistently distorts and manipulates the subject present in each individual. I
have already made the point: it does so by separating the image from the
lived, the face from the body. This world o f images detached from bodies,
objects, even landscapes is quite different from the world o f ideologies and
myths, as conceived by nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellectuals.
What their words referred to was constructs, functioning to conceal a form
of power and exploitation, to impose a discourse whose continuity masked
ruptures and conflicts. Most often, this involved them rendering a form of
economic domination invisible. A n d various superstructures or elements
of everyday life were indeed in the service o f the ruling class and the insti-
tutions that protected it.
Today's world of images does not appeal to any hidden power. I t does
not seek to open up what must not be known or understood. Indeed, it
can only develop because the old world o f myths has been emptied of its
'objective' content, to the point where it is reduced to interpretations pro-
duced by intellectuals who make do with referring to a form o f domina-
tion or exploitation that is so ill-defined as to be as readily detectable as
the rainbow behind the rain.
I f this debate is important, it is precisely because it involves the issue o f
ideology and therefore cannot help to clarify what opposes two ways o f
seeing things. On the one side, forms o f behaviour are explained by the
ruses of power, which transfers explanation towards an economic and
political order that is very remote from actors, who for their part are
imprisoned in false consciousness. On the other, counterposed to the world
of images manipulated by the media is the living, concrete individual,
who feels deprived of the meaning of his experience and projects. One
side ascends to the economic system and its structure; the other descends
The Subject 119
with already formulated demands - and even with techniques for search-
ing for the self that are often borrowed from spiritual traditions. But the
meaning of this reflection will only become altogether clear in the follow-
ing chapter, when the idea will be presented that it is in struggles for cul-
tural rights that the return o f the self to the self, from which the figure of
the subject emerges, occurs most successfully.
The notion o f social movement has been so frequently abused, and even
prostituted itself so many times, parading on the military front or feast-
ing in the caches o f the secret services, that it seems impossible to attach
a precise meaning to it. However that may be, the central role occupied by
social movements in the specifically 'social' model of development leads
us today to recognize their decline and, above all, their betrayal prior to
their death, lamented more by the powerful and the rich than by the
exploited and excluded. But how can we stop at this righteous anger
against so many activists turned policemen, particularly in the Commu-
nist countries?
I f the dark side of the social movements is that of society, the bright
side is that o f modernity. They stand in fact on the side of reason against
the arbitrariness o f power, but above all on the side o f the universal rights
of the individual. I n any conflict and social movement, we can hear an
appeal to equality, freedom, justice and respect for all. These words are
not the dazzling cover that masks intrigues, interest groups and betrayals.
They emerge from the conflict as lava flows from a volcano, amid the black
stones that attest to earlier eruptions. Those who have not forgotten the
meaning of words employ 'social movement' only when it refers to a break
at the same time as the assertion of one's dignity and the will to re-
appropriate the products of industrialization. We have identified these
breaks and outpourings in the great working-class insurrections - in par-
ticular, in the strikes o f 1913, 1936, and 1947 and 1948, to cite only France.
We felt its presence in May 1968 in Paris, in the 1970s at the heart of the
movement for black civil rights and against the Vietnam War in the United
States. We have also felt its presence in more remote places - in Salvador
Allende's struggle in Chile, in the action of the Zapatistas in Chiapas in
Mexico, and above all in the Poland of Solidarity. This exigency, present
in social movements and exceeding any strategy and tactics, is also to be
found in strikes, protests, rebellions and Utopias that briefly cause a land
seemingly so tightly controlled by the forces of order to tremble.
There is no subject who does not suffer from the misfortune of others,
who does not recognize the social movement when it exists, even when it
The Subject 121
say me, I posit the existence o f an I that recognizes the I , which can only
be done by combining the conscious and the unconscious. I t is what seeks
to find the subject who can become one of the Fs and thus enable the indi-
vidual or group concerned to conceive themselves consciously as an I , as
a subject. The latter is not positioned above the individual, like a sign o f
the presence o f God or the spirit. On the contrary, the subject is below
social being, not above it. I t is the recognition o f the singularity of each
individual who wishes to be treated as a being o f right. There is no dis-
covering the subject without a 'self-examination' that descends below con-
sciousness. A sociology o f the subject therefore cannot simply run through
history from one summit to the next. Quite the reverse, it seeks to bring
out in each person their capacity to impart meaning to their own
behaviour.
Should we simply say that the subject, when it is not conscious, is to be
found in the pre-conscious and, in particular, that it is potentially present
and conscious in an individual or group, or even a social category? Cer-
tainly not. The subject withdraws into the unconscious. Should we say that
it is repressed there? No, because it is not a super-ego that bars the route
but the opposite - everydayness, the norms of public life, the urgency o f
practical decisions, the intensity o f emotions, and the pursuit o f interest
or o f the solution to a difficult problem.
The subject seems covered up by the banality o f the ego and its situa-
tions, as a book is covered by the sand of a dune and can no longer be
found, because it has no communication with the sand covering it, perhaps
with a very fine layer but one that reveals nothing o f the buried object.
This would explain why in our lives the subject is mostly absent, as i f it
were unknown. But the real situation is very different. The absence o f the
subject in the conscious world definitely leaves a trace. I n a simple case,
this might be a guilty conscience or vague anxiety about not having
behaved as one should have done, o f having closed one's eyes to suffering,
or o f having closed one's ears so as not to hear a complaint or appeal.
Here the subject is confined to the poorly marked boundary between the
unconscious and the preconscious. But when the subject is plunged into
the unconscious, it cannot re-ascend to consciousness by itself. Its bearer
must be hailed, blamed; a consciousness must be counterposed to its un-
consciousness. I t is invariably the situation itself that shatters the routine
of consciousness and the slumber o f the pre-conscious. For example, the
repression o f a dream or of a demonstration and the blood spilt all o f a
sudden reveal that interests and passions were in play which go far beyond
the consciousness of lived experience. In fact, we often have the impres-
sion o f walking on the ice of a frozen lake, of being in danger o f falling
into the cold water because at some unforeseeable point the less thick ice
will crack.
The Subject 123
Proximity
Much more positive and important is the relationship between the sociol-
ogy of the subject that I am proposing and the school o f those who, setting
out from the same starting-point, have posed a very different question
The Subject 125
from mine: how can we reconstruct the social bond, the Bindung (to use
the German word that best corresponds to this line o f inquiry and which,
for this reason, is most often used)?
N o one seriously intends to reject the individualism that is at the heart
of contemporary culture, apart from those who desire an authoritarian
regime. But many sociologists seek to understand it. The subtitle of
François de Singly's book Les uns avec les autres attests to the fact: 'Quand
l'individualisme crée du lien'. Refusing both an extreme individualism and
a communitarianism that is even more dangerous than the evil it wishes
to fight, this school intent upon reconstructing the social bond has dis-
covered and defended the idea that individualism and the social bond, far
from being opposed, are complementary, indispensable to one another.
To summarize the argument in a few words: the individual is constructed
as such, acquires self-esteem, only to the extent that he receives favourable
images o f himself from members o f the local community to which he
belongs. This line o f thinking is inspired by George Herbert Mead's theory
of the self, which sees the self as the internalization o f the images that
others have of it, images which are positive i f they all create and defend
positive social bonds, a sense o f shared belonging, and belief in everyone's
responsibility in the individuation o f each person. This idea, which is very
far removed from the communitarianism that is a response to a feeling of
social exclusion, is nourished by the defence of the individuation of each
person as the end of social exchanges and methods of management.
The role of the Catholic Church, which is more active in Italy than other
European countries, might explain the sensitivity o f Italian thinkers -
Franco Crespi in particular - to this search for the construction of social
bonds based on respect for everyone's individuality. I t is an idea that leads
to the even more central theme of recognition, which Axel Honneth in
Germany has made the focus of his thinking. It is the recognition o f the
other as such that makes communication and even integration possible.
This is opposed to the classical but empty image of the transcendence of
individual interests required to ensure a collective bond. We can easily see
why German thinkers are so actively engaged in an intellectual movement
that expels the monsters which have convulsed Germany and the world.
This kind o f thinking, which is spreading in Great Britain as much as
in Germany and Italy, and has representatives of the highest calibre every-
where, defends the idea that the individual, in order to be a subject, needs
to be recognized by others. This presupposes the attachment of them all
to social and political organization, because the main goal of the latter is
the recognition o f each person as a subject by the rest. This is a great image
of democracy, which does not boil down to the protection o f liberties and
the pursuit of equality, or even to a will to justice, but assigns priority to
the freedom, the responsibility and hence the singularity of each person.
126 N o w t h a t W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
former. A n d the twentieth century seems to have ended with the exhaus-
tion o f commercial thinking.
To refer to secularization and the disenchantment of the world, as i f we
were witnessing with modernity the triumph o f instrumental reason, cal-
culation and interest, is inadequate. I t would be more accurate to talk o f
an internalization o f the subject that allows the transcendent world to
enter into historical time and institutional space.
Such is the main ambiguity of modernity. I t has encouraged moral indi-
vidualism and the idea o f human rights, relayed by Enlightenment phil-
osophy. But it has also been used by those who aspired to the sacralization
of political power and society. The conflict that opposes these two inter-
pretations to society has often been masked by the fact that the formation
of the national and republican state occurred under the auspices o f human
rights and a civic religion that ended up in the anti-religious persecutions
of the Terror. I n the same way, the construction of Communist dictator-
ships was effected in the name o f the rights and dignity of the workers - a
process that irresistibly evokes the accumulation of wealth and privilege by
the Catholic Church or by others in the name o f the evangelical model.
Today, we are witnessing the undermining o f religious institutions and
the assertion o f less institutionalized expressions o f religious sentiment.
Faith and belief in a party, a Church, a nation and so forth are quitting
the scene, and membership of society loses its communitarian force. I t is
communitarianism itself that attracts the crowds. Society is no longer
sacralized; the sacred therefore once again clings to communities. We thus
find facing each other emotions o f a religious type, open to the outside
world, approaching symbols o f universalisai, and sacralized communities,
above all when they define themselves by natural roots: ethnicity, language,
and so forth. Such a separation between appeals to the divine subject and
management o f the economy and institutions results in individualizing the
relation of the subject to itself and rendering it more intimate, more pas-
sionate. Meanwhile, the world o f the sacred is reduced to the instruments
of power and draws from them neither the capacity to generate affective
reactions, nor the requisite strength to inspire a debate in which ideas
would have a major mobilizing force.
teachers themselves, and above all by the parents of pupils who are con-
vinced that choice of school has profound and lasting effects on their chil-
dren's whole life, confront one another. But i f this theme can be broached
with a certain serenity in some quarters, that has certainly not been the
case in France, where two or more school systems have been in con-
frontation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The French case is of
especial interest, in as much as the clash of ideologies has resulted in a
veritable war between the secular school and the Catholic school. Follow-
ing a century of confrontation, a law incorporated most private teaching
into a major public service of national education, while recognizing private
schools' freedom to organize. I n order to understand the issue clearly, we
must first of all turn our attention to the notion of secularism.
Secularism was and is an essential component of what can be called the
republican spirit - that is, the discovery of criteria for evaluating individ-
uals and institutions in terms of the common good, the public interest,
patriotism, dominant social norms, and also of the rationality of knowl-
edge. N o t all its defenders have conceived secularism in these terms, but
this republican conception has had - and retains - considerable influence.
This redefinition of good and evil by social usefulness or harmfulness, by
awareness or indifference with respect to the duties of each citizen towards
his local or national collectivity, was counterposed to a conception of
society founded on traditional authorities and religious beliefs.
The debate had concrete stakes: who was going to form the ruling elites
- the Catholic Church or the republican school? Here we encounter the
preoccupations of Jules Ferry and the main founders of the secular school.
Is there any need to recall that in France this ideological conflict took an
extreme turn with the Dreyfus Affair, launched by a combination of
Catholicism and a nationalism extending to anti-Semitism, which led the
army to forge evidence and have one of its officers unjustly deported, pro-
voking an impassioned and ultimately victorious reaction on the part of
the Dreyfusards? The separation of Church and state issued in France in
the sacralization of the political field.
But i f the principle of secularism must be entirely accepted, this does
not oblige us to accept the 'republican' spirit - that is, the limitation of the
school's remit to preparing pupils for social, professional and national life.
A modern society drastically reduces much of its creativity, but also its
realism, i f it does not combine a rational spirit with knowledge of the per-
sonal, psychological and social history of each individual, and with open-
ness to the personal subject who nurtures herself on a collective history
and memory, on the origins of religious thought as well as on struggles to
overthrow social, national and sexual forms of domination.
Just as rationalism must be accepted in a society for it to be modern,
so, far from residing over and above the other components of collective
132 N o w that W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
What does the personal experience o f the subject consist in? Does it
involve an intimate experience, like the awareness of having a soul or o f
being located in a place or time when human freedom is waging a great
fight, is exposed to great risks, and requires courage and sacrifice?
I n history the subject has manifested itself in experiences whose impor-
tance was clearly felt. Today, respect for the human person and freedom
has often been engaged in struggles where good confronted evil. I delib-
erately use this expression, which can nevertheless give rise to all sorts of
possibilities. Those who died fighting an enemy who was not only a foreign
invader but a torturer and a racist, especially those who volunteered to
fight, knew that they represented more than themselves and that they were
sacrificing or risking their lives for more than themselves and their com-
munity. I t is too easy to refute these words, to present soldiers and the
dead as mere victims, Verdun and Stalingrad as slaughterhouses. Con-
cealed in this pseudo-realism is an intolerable lack o f respect. There are
far fewer pure victims enveloped in the meaninglessness o f history or the
hidden effects o f wars for oil than the hard-headed claim. A n d many more
men and women than are acknowledged have died fighting evil, aware that
they were sacrificing themselves, protesting, hoping. I n the most dramatic
of situations, it is not easy to prove assertions o f this kind. However,
it cannot be said today that the Jews of Warsaw, the living-dead o f
Auschwitz, the deportees o f Kolyma, and so many others who have been
annihilated, had lost all humanity before being cast into death. To say this
is not to succumb to an infantile heroization, but to feel, through the oral
or written testimony which has come down to us, that those who have been
held in contempt, insulted, reduced to the worst physical and moral misery,
retained something of their dignity, of their will to remain human, o f the
The Subject 135
spirit o f solidarity. How can it be thought that those who died in such
large numbers at Stalingrad fighting the Wehrmacht had no sense o f the
tragic and glorious role that history had accorded them in taking their
lives, while making them agents of a liberation much more precious than
themselves - these soldiers who fought in the uniform o f a totalitarian
regime? Who would dare to reduce the peasant-soldiers o f Stalingrad to
the combatants of Stalin's army? A n d who can say that none of them knew
anything o f the historical mission they were performing?
It is natural that what first comes to mind is the great struggles, for it is
in such situations that we can perceive on the grandest scale what sepa-
rates the struggle against an enemy from the fight for human dignity. But
when we approach more personal experiences, and hence less spectacular
ones, other difficulties arise: how are we to distinguish between awareness
of the meaning of the lived experience and all the psychological mecha-
nisms whereby we flee ourselves - or, on the contrary, are suffocated by
self-regard? The experience o f being a subject manifests itself above all in
the consciousness not o f an obligation to an institution or value, but of
the right o f each person to live and be recognized in her dignity, in what
cannot be abandoned without stripping life of all meaning. A sense o f
duty, a sense of obligation - these expressions are used by everyone. But
it must be added that only those who feel responsible for the humanity o f
another human being feel that they are subjects. I t is in recognizing the
human rights o f the other that I recognize myself as a human being,
that I recognize that I have obligations to myself. Is this a question of
exceptional, heroic conduct? On the contrary, it is mostly a question of
personal experiences lived in a banal context - that of the family, the
amorous relationship, or the immediate circle o f neighbours. But whether
individual or collective, these experiences are counterposed in full aware-
ness o f the fact to obedience to the laws, customs and commands o f
leaders.
We are not forever deprived of the distance from ourselves that enables
us to look at ourselves as subjects. A n d let us stop playing at being hard-
headed and insensitive to what constitutes for each o f us, intellectuals and
non-intellectuals alike, the most vital part of our life, the most pressing
interrogation o f our experience and the meaning o f our choices and
our hopes.
It is at an intermediate level between 'historic' events and our relation-
ship to ourselves - that is, in the relationship with the other (which can
take the form of a relationship to others) - that the experience of the
subject seem most frequent and most alive. Many of us have had the expe-
rience of recognizing in the other a presence that goes beyond the person
concerned. We are then attracted by the illuminating presence o f a higher
human value that an individual carries within him.
136 N o w that W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
A l l these remarks seek to make it clear that the relations between indi-
viduals or groups are not exclusively, or entirely, social relations. N o r are
they purely inter-individual relations. Interposed between the two is what
imparts meaning to the struggles o f those who want to be actors and who
also want others to be able to be. The idea o f the subject discloses in me
and i n the other what we might have in common.
It is in a gaze, in a meeting of gazes, in the force o f the presence and
intensity o f revelation or possession that the presence o f the subject, and
of the relation between subjects, is revealed. Our lived existence can be suf-
ficiently controlled, subjugated or corrupted to deprive us o f any presence
of the subject and imprison us in money, hierarchy, repression. But this
poverty, this vacuum, are not inevitable. Whether we experience the
emotion that demands solidarity, or are touched by love or hopes o f
liberation, we do not confine ourselves to a network o f statuses and roles,
of gratifications and punishments, o f acceptance or refusal o f the social
order. Our life is ceasing to be wholly social. There is no social movement
that does not cause us to leave the social order, in the name o f freedom,
equality, justice, or any expression of the presence o f the subject in us and
between us.
One immediate consequence of the distance which exists between the
subject and social organization is that the presence or absence of the
subject does not depend on the social categories considered. Neither
the young nor the old, the rich nor the poor, are closer to being subjects
than others. This contradicts the idea so often expressed in the eighteenth
century that the people does not think, except at the elementary level o f
hunger, fear, or enjoyment. Such extreme class consciousness no longer
corresponds to our ideas, even among the most conservative o f us. We have
instead been accustomed by the Christian tradition and revolutionary
history to believe that the poor, those who suffer and those who are
enslaved, are better representatives of the spirit o f liberation (and hence
subjectification) than the rich, imprisoned as they are by their wealth and
often guilty o f causing others to suffer.
The first shall be last. However important the message, it cannot be com-
pletely respected, for we cannot link the destiny o f the subject to social
organization, even at the price of inverting the hierarchy. Good and evil
can appear anywhere, even i f it is true that the nature of good and evil
cannot be defined without direct reference to freedom, equality and justice.
The subject does not spread its wings above society. N o r is it trapped in
its rules and hierarchies. I t is present in society and history, in collective
and interpersonal relations, but it also develops in them as an exigency, a
protest, a hope.
The subject lives in the world, but does not belong to the world. That
is why the idea of the subject is such a powerful weapon against racism.
I f a social or national group identifies itself with absolute good, with a
The Subject 137
god, with the future or progress, it must invent the opposite of itself. Belief
in a god induces belief in a devil or in some other principle of evil. Thus
it was that the West, identifying itself with reason, progress and Enlight-
enment, invented the Orient, which is, according to Edward Said's classic
analysis, the site o f unreason, turned to the past rather than the future,
and to particularism rather than universalism. Christendom first o f all
rejected the Jews, from whom Christians had separated themselves even
though Jesus himself was a Jew, accusing the Jews o f deicide. Then the
expanding West, capable o f conquering the world, perceived the colonies
as the opposite o f what had enabled it to triumph. The colonized world,
especially the Arab world, became the locus of Evil, o f what threatens the
Good Empire, as President Bush proclaims. The elimination o f this dan-
gerous pair - God and Devil, pure and impure - renders impossible any
racism, which always presupposes that all meaning attaches to one side,
while the other embodies meaninglessness. The more religious the defini-
tion of the self, the stronger the rejection o f the other defined as other.
Hence the extreme form o f anti-Semitism in a world where segregation is
imposed (shtetl, ghetto). The more social and political the opposition, the
less strong the racism. Hence the transformation o f anti-Arab currents. A
remote (except for colonists) and, above all, social relationship, it is trans-
formed into a relationship o f proximity. Having been political, it becomes
religious; and the religious attentat is now the source o f the strongest reac-
tions o f rejection.
The converse development has occurred in the case of the Jews: reli-
gious hostility has been transformed into a social conflict, to the point
where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict foregrounds political conflict. Over
and above recognition o f the other - an expression that can remain vague
- the important thing is that the appeal to the subject is everywhere
present; in other words, that everyone acknowledges the general conditions
of modernity. The Jews have overwhelmingly entered into modernity; for
the most part, the Arabs have remained outside it. This has created an
insurmountable distance which Israelis and the diaspora interpret as their
superiority, while others deem it the expression o f a form of domination
and exploitation. We must always remember that intercultural communi-
cation presupposes recognition by the relevant parties of universal attrib-
utes in both camps, for the contrasts between them are then limited by the
recognition of elements that allow for both debate and negotiation.
The anti-subject
Those who study the conditions of social peace or social advance have
often identified the main adversary of these processes as the violence that
destroys what has been built, destroying society. That is why the theme has
138 N o w t h a t W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
both this externalization of the subject and its link to a collective social
experience - i n other words, to historically locatable forms o f organiza-
tion and practice. That is the main reason I speak of subjects as a princi-
ple that escapes the level of social organization and as a force mobilizing
beliefs, resources, solidarity and sacrifices. Between the world o f the gods
and that of societies, there is the world o f the subject - that is, the uni-
verse o f the reflection o f human beings on creative human beings. The
subject is a prisoner, but also a liberator.
The subject can be destroyed not only by power, organizations, or
money; it can also be destroyed by itself. For the more the meta-social,
transcendent guarantees o f the subject disappear, the more the subject
must directly assume, without institutional mediation, the task o f dis-
tancing itself from its social environment. The subject thus risks becom-
ing overburdened with tasks and suffocating itself. From classical
sociology we have inherited the idea of anomie - that is, those crises o f
social organization which provoke a personality crisis. Today, it is no
longer in society but in the subject itself and its self-consciousness that we
seek the cause of personality problems. Alain Ehrenberg has explored this
immense field, where a new analysis o f mental illnesses is being developed
This analysis returns to the expressions whereby we recognize our inabil-
ity to make a clean separation between what pertains to the strbject and
what pertains to the self or the ego. I n the same way, a believer must sep-
arate what pertains to her faith from what pertains to religious practices,
just as a working-class activist must register the difference between
demands that concern union rights and those that proceed from class con-
sciousness. I t is frequently ambiguous efforts, rather than wholly bad ones,
that help to destroy what should be protected and retrieved.
It is often easier to understand what the subject is by describing the
effects of its absence, than by saluting its projects and discourses. For the
march towards an ideal cannot be accomplished without mobilizing a
power, an authority, a strategy. When sociological analysis was organized
around the idea of society or social system, the idea o f anomie and, more
generally, of crises o f social organization gave us a clear understanding o f
the nature of what was destroyed. The absence of the subject, or rather
the loss of the subject, is the loss o f oneself, o f the complex o f forms o f
behaviour that do not refer to any meaning. In one o f the most beautiful
films in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue, a young, invariably silent man
kills a taxi driver and then, condemned to death, is executed, having simply
entrusted to his lawyer a photograph of his sister, killed some years earlier
in an accident. This only serves to increase our ignorance o f what makes
him a killer and victim of the death penalty. Such an absence of 'psy-
chology' touches on the main thing: what is involved is indeed the human
subject and its disappearance, not social organization and its crises; and
The Subject 141
Between the idealism o f religious visions and then the great modern
Utopias (the egalitarian Republic, the classless society, unlimited progress),
on the one hand, and the non-normative, descriptive analysis of hierar-
chies, forms o f domination, crises, and forms o f collective consciousness
on the other - in a word, between gods and societies - there lies the vast
domain o f the subject, which penetrates deeply into the world o f gods and
human beings, but which enjoys a unity o f its own and cannot be reduced
to either an Olympus or the functioning o f a society.
The domain o f the subject is that in which humanity reflects more on
itself and places itself in the position o f creator of itself, often at the price
of a division whereby conscious woman creates creative woman. The dis-
tance between the two is increasingly reduced as human beings become
more capable o f transforming their environment and especially themselves.
But even i f the distance is abolished, the separation o f the creator from
the created does not disappear. On the contrary, it is then that the human
being becomes subject without any disguise and feels itself engaged in the
invention and defence o f itself as a creator.
We have long had a clearer view of the subject's disguises than o f the
subject itself, o f its incarnations than its 'soul'. However, as the heavens have
emptied and the soul, stripped of any external origin, has become nothing
but self-consciousness, the image of the subject, o f the human being for
itself, has become ever sharper. As religions declined, the space of the
subject was filled and morality replaced what had been the gods' domain.
The error of materialist rationalism was to believe that once supersti-
tion had disappeared, reason would triumph and, like the rest o f our activ-
ities, morality would be governed by the imperatives of reason and the
laws of science. We are far enough advanced in our development - that is,
in modernity - to know that reason has not been the only beneficiary of
modernity and that the idea o f individual rights, always present in Western
thought, has been asserted with increasing force under the influence o f
Enlightenment philosophy. We even see moral judgements regaining
ground in the face o f technological and scientific thinking. The ecological
movement has taught us to recognize our duties to nature - something
that has not led us to dissolve culture into nature, but on the contrary to
introduce moral judgement into the domain of nature.
142 N o w t h a t W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
Let us first of all refer to the case of multinational states - that is, the case
of national minorities who demand certain attributes of independence.
The countries of ex-Soviet Europe invariably belong in this category. I n
particular, outside Hungary itself Hungarians form significant minorities
in Slovakia and Romania. A n extreme case is that of the Kurds, who are
present in several states. But it is true that not all Kurdish minorities
demand the creation of a Greater Kurdistan - an idea defended above all
by the Kurds o f Turkey, whereas those of Iraq have succeeded in securing
advantages from the government in Baghdad. We can also place in this
vast category Catalonia and Quebec, which are quasi-states within a state
that retains certain prerogatives - especially on the international level.
C u l t u r a l Rights 145
These minorities always defend their cultural rights - in particular, the use
of their own language in schools and in administrative affairs. They are
sometimes identified with a religious denomination and the head of the
Church in question then often plays a political role in defending the
community.
A l l these problems are lived with passion and have been the underlying
cause of many bloody conflicts, which are even more bloody when a
national structure is lacking, as in the region of the Great Lakes in Africa
or, for different reasons, in Yugoslavia when the Serbian mini-empire col-
lapsed. These problems have existed for a long time and have played a role
of the utmost importance in the greatest international crises - in particu-
lar, in triggering the First World War.
But when we discuss today what is called multiculturalism, we are not
thinking of this type of situation in the first instance. N o r are we think-
ing of a conflict like that pitting Israelis and Palestinians against one
another, since the Palestinians who live in Israel and possess Israeli nation-
ality do not have a great weight, whereas those who fight for the creation
of a Palestinian state (or even for the elimination of the state of Israel)
have great influence. We are primarily thinking of less institutional situa-
tions, of the creation or the development of 'communities' and minorities
formed following migration, expulsion or exile.
What is new is that nationally, ethnically or religiously defined groups,
which only existed in the private sphere, now acquire a public existence
that is sometimes sufficiently strong to call into question their member-
ship of a particular national society. The more adamantly the states con-
cerned refuse to recognize the existence of these minorities, the more
visible the phenomenon is. This is true of the French Republic, which has
always offered immigrants the opportunity to merge with the national
community, regarded as the bearer of universal values. I n even more
extreme fashion, the Constitution of the United States is reputed to be
ethnically blind, which in part explains the strength of secessionist move-
ments among Afro-Americans throughout history. We are now living
through the undermining of national communities and the strengthening
of ethnic communities. Even in a France that is highly vigilant about
anti-Semitism, and where the social ascent of Jews was spectacular for
several generations, we have seen the re-emergence of a certain Jewish
communitarianism. This phenomenon is the most general, the least
directly political, and, seemingly at any rate, fosters relatively moderate
positions.
We should not confuse this major trend, which is bound up with the
growing importance of international migrations and the formation of new
nations, with communitarianism, defined in the strict sense by the power
of the community's leaders to impose practices and prohibitions on their
146 Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms
members. This is something that restricts the civil rights of the men and
women concerned and creates, in W i l l Kymlicka's apt phrase, 'internal
restrictions'.
I n principle, communitarianism is defined by contrast with citizenship -
and so sharply that in so far as citizenship is itself defined by the exercise
of political rights in a democratic country, communitarianism inflicts
obvious harm on individual liberties. Accordingly, in this respect liberals
are right to combat communitarianism unreservedly. But the error would
be to believe that such a defence of citizenship against communities
resolves the problem of minorities.
That is why, in order to avoid such misunderstandings, I believe it more
appropriate to refer to 'cultural rights' in their connection, obliging the
democracies to reflect on themselves and to transform themselves so as to
recognize those rights, just as they were transformed - not without major
conflicts - to recognize the social rights of all citizens. Cultural rights are
in fact positively linked to the political rights, and hence citizenship, which
communitarianism contradicts.
A t the start of our analysis, reading Kymlicka, who is a recognized
authority on the study of minorities, helps us to make an important choice:
are we going to study minorities, the defence of their rights, and the way
in which it is inscribed in the political rights of all? Or will our theme
instead be cultural rights? I opt for the second formulation, given that the
first places us in the framework of a sociology of the social system, of the
relations between majority and minorities, of the conditions of social
justice, whereas the second is centred on the subject. This choice between
the standpoint of the social system and that of the subject governs the
development of my analysis.
Since mass production has penetrated, after the domain of industrial
manufacturing, the spheres of consumption and communication, and
since borders and traditions have been overrun by the distribution of the
same goods and services the world over, vast areas of our behaviour, which
we believed to be protected by their inscription in the private sphere, are
exposed to mass culture and correspondingly threatened. I t is in the cul-
tural field that the main conflicts and demands occur, the ones with the
weightiest stakes. This category - culture - seems at first sight rather het-
erogeneous: cultural dependency in the first instance concerns the most
dependent countries, but also ethnic, religious or sexual minorities. I t is
even more visible in large cities, where serious threats hang over the envi-
ronment. Finally, and especially perhaps, it is most visible in the demands
of women, who want their dual demand for equality and difference rec-
ognized, in that it is the vector of a more profound change than those to
which industrial society has accustomed us.
The most important thing is to understand that we cannot consider cul-
tural rights as an extension of political rights, in so far as the latter must
Cultural Rights 147
These initial remarks on cultural rights aim only to situate them vis-á-vis
political rights and social rights - in particular, the rights of workers who
occupied the central position in the movements and conflicts of modern
societies, pre-industrial and then industrial.
We must now enter the debate, of great significance, that contrasts
recognition and redistribution - in other words, cultural or moral demands
and economic demands. This debate has involved many authors, but in
particular Nancy Fraser, Professor at the New School University in New
York, and Axel Honneth, who is Jürgen Habermas's successor in the chair
of philosophy at Frankfurt University.
Such a definition of the problem is certainly not ideal and is more
appropriate for philosophers than sociologists, for it rapidly emerges that
these two orders of demands are at once distinct and inseparable, above
all when they are both defined in terms of justice (in contrast to the con-
ception o f 'recognition' as a condition of self-realization, which is Charles
150 Now t h a t W e Refer t o O u r s e l v e s in Cultural Terms
1 that social movements are a very particular category within the vast
complex of actions that involve demands;
2 that these movements are defined by the wish to secure new rights;
3 that the 'new social movements', which are certainly highly diverse, all
demand recognition of a new type of rights - cultural rights;
4 that these demands are new and are not to be found in industrial society
or in pre-industrial societies;
5 that cultural rights, like social rights before them, can become anti-dem-
ocratic, authoritarian or even totalitarian instruments, if they are not
closely linked to political rights, which are universalistic, and i f they do
not find a place inside the social organization - in particular, in the
system for allocating social resources.
(1) Demands can occur at two levels: either to alter the relationship
between the contribution and the remuneration o f a group in a favourable
direction - for example, by obtaining a wage increase or a reduction in
working hours; or - something that is a higher goal - to enhance a group's
decision-making capacity or influence - for example, by securing recogni-
tion of a trade union and its capacity to conduct collective negotiations.
There does not in fact exist any general principle o f unity between
demands.
A social movement, whatever its strength and its form, is situated at a
higher level. I t is the actor in a conflict, acting together with other organ-
ized actors, whose stake is the social use o f the cultural and material
resources to which the contending camps both attribute key importance.
These two dimensions - social conflict and unity o f the field of cultural
references - combine to constitute movements whose prominence is often
C u l t u r a l Rights 151
Need we stress that this analysis takes its distance from the confused
idea o f multiculturalism? For the hypothesis o f a coexistence between dif-
ferent cultures is meaningless: either the relations between them are
managed by the market or violence; or, as in the present discussion, we
recognize elements o f transition from one culture to another, and above
all the presence o f universalistic elements in several cultures. The absolute
multiculturalist hypothesis is as absurd as that of the cultural homogene-
ity of a city or country. Intercultural relations are the only reality - and
they are what need to be studied, from trampling over the Other to cul-
tural mixing.
(3) Axel Honneth and many others deny the existence of new social
movements (born after the 1960s). According to them, they are merely
arbitrarily isolated elements in a complex o f attitudes or demands mixing
all kinds of objectives: economic, cultural, national, generational, sexual.
This assertion, which also corresponds to the thinking of other sociolo-
gists or philosophers, involves me personally, since I have used this expres-
sion since 1968 and made it the guiding line o f my book on May 1968 in
France, and then the theme of a series o f studies conducted in France with
François Dubet, Michel Wieviorka and Zsuzsa Hegedus {Lutte étudiante
in 1978, La Prophétie anti-nucléaire in 1980, and Le Pays contre l'Etat in
1981) , and then with Dubet, Wieviorka and Jan Strzelecki {Solidarité in
1982) . In addition to these books, which present case studies, there are The
Voice and the Eye (1978), which analyses social movements and sets out
the method I developed to study them; and Le Retour de l'acteur (1984),
which presents critical conclusions on various new social movements at
the end o f the 1970s: the 'Occitanian' struggles against the French state,
the Solidarity movement in Poland, and trade unionism in France. (Since
then, the same method has been used in numerous cases in France and
other countries.)
The general conclusion of these studies is that a number of movements
are predominantly cultural movements, very different from the ones whose
socio-economic orientations had taken root in industrial societies; but that
the 'new wine' had been missed because it had been put in 'old goatskins',
as the Gospel puts it - that is, more concretely, in an ideology and forms
of action inherited from the working-class movement, especially its revo-
lutionary tendencies. I n the case of the feminist movement, it could even
be regarded at one point as a 'front' in a more general anti-capitalist and
anti-imperialist action. The failure o f the long student strike in 1976 in
154 N o w t h a t W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
France stems from the same error: the distance between a workerist dis-
course and students' real problems.
I n 1968 I offered an analogous interpretation of the May movement in
France: its main inspiration, which derived from students and youth, was
quite new; and with it culture had entered into the political field. But this
new experience was stifled, especially in the universities, in a revolution-
ary Marxist verbiage that gave preference to dead words over living action.
What does the novelty of these movements consist in? The same thing
as what later inspired the creation of an alter-globalist movement in
numerous countries, but also many movements o f political ecology. Both
foreground the contradiction between uncontrolled technological and eco-
nomic forces and the diversity of species and cultures, local activities and
languages, that helps form the subjectivity o f each o f us; and, more gen-
erally, both revolt against the negation of the actor's subjectivity and self-
respect. Thus, for example, women rebel against being treated as sexual
objects without any limit other than the laws of the market. Another
theme, linked to the first, is the recognition of cultural diversity and hence
of minorities in the face o f the evolutionistic progressivism which
announces that all roads lead to New York (rather than Rome). I t might
be said that the central conflict in which they are involved opposes glob-
alization to subjectivities and, at the heart of the latter, the will to be a
subject - that is, to take as one's main objective integrating the most diverse
experiences into the unity of a self-consciousness that resists external pres-
sure and seduction.
(4) Is it wrong to claim that such objectives are new, that they are differ-
ent from workers' struggles for autonomy in work? I f I make this com-
parison, it is because it was at the centre of the research I conducted at
the beginning of my professional life, which focused on working-class con-
sciousness. The latter did not reach its maximum extent in the most diffi-
cult economic situations, amid crises, wage reductions and j o b losses. N o :
class consciousness is not an effect of the crises and contradictions o f cap-
italism, but o f an awareness o f the conflict between employers and wage-
earners for the appropriation of the wealth created by production. I t was
strongest among skilled workers, whose crafts were broken up by the intro-
duction of 'scientific' methods of work organization (Taylorism and
Fordism, particularly in the metal industries). The high point was reached
in general in the early years o f the twentieth century. I n France we can
precisely situate this moment in the 1913 Renault factories strike. This
result, as we can see, corresponds neither to analyses that reduce every-
thing to interests, nor to those which adopt a moral vocabulary. We are
dealing with a conflict whose stakes involve economics but above all class
- a conflict between two opposed classes as it finds expression in daily
C u l t u r a l Rights 155
work, for example around productivity based wages. While few or no social
movements exist that do not have economic objectives, only in industrial
societies, defined in the broad sense, are economic objectives the expres-
sion both o f a class conflict and o f the wage-earners' wish to be respected.
New social movements for their part do not have the transformation of
economic situations and relations as their guiding principle; they defend
the freedom and responsibility o f each individual, alone or collectively,
against the impersonal logic of profit and competition - and also against
an established order that decides what is normal or abnormal, permitted
or prohibited.
Is it true, as Craig Calhoun maintains, that such movements have existed
in every age? The arguments advanced in support of this idea are scarcely
convincing. People sometimes take their inspiration from E. P. Thompson,
recalling that the working-class movement defended statuses {Stände) as
much as classes. Certainly, but that involved a working class in the process
of being made, in which professional and local identities had great weight.
Enlarging the controversy, some signal that the 'nationalities' movement
in Europe in the first half o f the nineteenth century was guided more by
a sense o f cultural belonging and a desire for independence than a calcu-
lation o f interest. The formation o f new nations is indeed a complex
process where very different factors intersect. But it is the idea, based on
a collective consciousness, o f a nation freed from foreign domination that
informs national movements. A n d the latter belong in the category of
political movements, predominant in pre-industrial societies when the
major problems were posed in political terms, not social or cultural ones,
in terms o f order or disorder, peace or war, hierarchy or confusion, and
so on. Such movements are therefore very far removed from what have
been called the new social movements. Religious movements are even more
remote.
(5) The final point is one that concerns us every day. The appeal to iden-
tity, it is said, can serve liberal or democratic orientations, but also an
authoritarian communitarianism or even a search for ethnic purity, racial
or religious, that constitutes a real threat. A n d in fact, the notion o f iden-
tity is itself so confused and so dangerous that we should avoid employ-
ing it whenever possible. For it refers to the nation or some religion,
notions that are completely foreign to social movements, in as much as the
latter are centred not on the self-assertion o f a collectivity, but on aware-
ness o f a conflict and the wish to control the use society makes of its cul-
tural and material resources.
In order to avoid such deviations, the cultural movement must be closely
connected with the defence of universal political rights and social rights,
which often take the form of economic objectives. Already, when the great
156 N o w t h a t W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
struggles were being waged to secure social rights, one tendency, which for
a long time was majoritarian, separated itself off and identified defending
workers with a dictatorship o f the proletariat, which (it rapidly became
clear) would be a dictatorship over the proletariat. Another, which at first
was virtually marginal and mainly present in Great Britain, secured great
victories after 1945 with the creation o f systems o f social protection, and
even earlier, when it was a question of fighting social inequalities by voting
for progressive income tax and establishing free use of certain essential
services, such as education and health. This current, which was initially
called industrial democracy, and then social democracy, asserted the need
to link everyday defence of workers in their work situation to appeals to
expand citizenship.
The same is true today. I n many cases, the assertion o f identity rejects
any principle o f alterity. But it is only by combining cultural movements
with the defence o f political rights for all that it is possible to act in defence
of minorities, while respecting the democratic principle o f the law o f the
majority. Such is the most general problem facing all movements, whether
political or national, social or cultural: to assimilate the principle o f uni-
versal citizenship successfully, but concretely, by embodying it in power
relations and cultural conflicts.
It is on this condition that cultural movements are protected against
their opposites: self-enclosed communitarianisms that do not recognize
any alterity. As regards the debate between Nancy Fraser and Axel
Honneth, we must conclude that their respective constructions are in fact
rather similar to one another, because both place the idea o f justice at the
heart of their analysis. That, as readers will have realized, is a position I
do not share, since any analysis of justice bears on the organization o f
society, whereas social movements are always 'figures of right' that must
be established in all situations, not all of which are social. Those who wrote
the first declarations of the rights of man on the basis of natural law
theory, its Christian sources as well as what linked them to the politics o f
the Enlightenment, knew this full well.
Modernizations
from the German model, based on invoking the cultural history o f the
nation.
But the most important thing today is to recognize the diversity o f the
combinations between modernity and cultural heritage or political system
that exist throughout the world. For nothing justifies dividing the world
into two camps, as Soviet propaganda used to and as influential circles in
all the countries regarded as modern still do. Those who are blind to the
diversity o f modernizations do not see that on the one hand a mass society
establishes its power in all spheres of production, consumption and
communication; while on the other, cultures imprisoned in themselves -
in particular, in their religious beliefs - have as their main goal not mod-
ernization, but war against the hegemonic power, political and cultural, of
other countries. This extreme situation seems often to dominate the global
landscape, imparting considerable cogency to Samuel Huntington's thesis
on the clash of civilizations and the central role o f religious and ethnic
conflicts, even i f closer examination leads (as I have said) to a more
nuanced conclusion.
It is in fact possible to elude this self-fulfilling prophecy. Modernity has
defenders nearly everywhere and above all enjoys support from those who
want to combine past and future, beliefs and progress. I t would be false
and dangerous in equal measure to regard the enormous Islamized part
of the world as an anti-modernist bloc, willingly imprisoned in the repro-
duction o f a culture by constant reference to sacred texts founding an
immutable order. The same error was committed by those who thought in
Europe that only Protestant countries could modernize, while countries
marked by Catholicism were imprisoned in their clerical communitarian-
ism. The element of truth in such assertions ultimately dissolves in the
enormous quotient o f error they contain.
Let us return for a moment to the debate agitating France in 2004. I t is
false to say that all the girls who wished to retain the veil at school were
proclaiming their attachment to Islamic culture against rationalist, secular
Western culture. A significant percentage of them stated their desire to
combine their family and personal background with the world o f knowl-
edge and professional life for which school prepares pupils. I t is true that
the French, at the point when parliament adopted a restrictive law against
signs of religious affiliation at school, prioritized fear of Islamist funda-
mentalism and disruption of the educational or hospital system. But now
that the necessary brake, desired by the great majority o f the population,
has been applied, we must once again listen to the voices o f veiled girls
who are modernist. For those of us who do not belong to the Islamic
world, this involves bringing a critical judgement to bear on our percep-
tion of the other and our frequent inability to recognize in the other
the same endeavour to combine the modern spirit with attachment to
158 N o w that W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
really does challenge important aspects of the school syllabus, and which
must indeed be repulsed. They call for the separation of the private sphere
from the public sphere, and assert that the state and the polity have been
- and remain - the only institutions capable of founding a social order
that serves freedom, whereas religious powers, often associated with tra-
ditional interest groups, defend everyone's freedom badly or not at all. This
position is in fact untenable, for citizenship - a basic value that must not
be sacrificed to any model o f class society or a religiously homogeneous
society - is undermined i f it is not extended to the sphere where most per-
sonal or collective experience unfolds.
However, we must once again stress the gravity o f the problems posed
by such an extension. I n the nineteenth century, many politicians opposed
the recognition o f social rights for fear of breaking with the universalism
of political democracy, which some referred to as formal or bourgeois.
A n d , as I have mentioned, those who called for social democracy in order
to break with bourgeois democracy went on to establish the dictatorship
of the party that declared itself the representative o f the proletariat.
denounce the pride of the most powerful civilization, which refuses to rec-
ognize that which is different from it.
One society can recognize another one, even i f it perceives it as domi-
nant or colonialist. More important are the differences between societies
which accord priority to their particular orientations and their own goals
and those, on the contrary, which privilege assertion of the rights of the
individual. I t is impossible to choose between these two positions; they
both risk lapsing into unilateralism i f they forget one of the aspects of
their existence. We might speak here, once again, of the necessity for
ambivalence that characterizes those who defend the universalism of indi-
vidual rights and, at the same time, the singularity of the path which a
society opts to follow - without being satisfied with either of these posi-
tions, but knowing that to combine them and arrange their complemen-
tarity is the least bad solution.
The more globalization and international exchanges - especially migra-
tion - develop, the more possible and necessary it becomes to combine
recognition of the other with an attachment to rationalism and the asser-
tion of individual rights.
The meeting and mixing of cultures does not occur in general on an
equal footing. Haiti offers striking proof of the fact. Mulattos there are
regarded as superior to the black population in whose name Duvalier took
power, making clear reference to the relations of inequality and domina-
tion existing between categories defined by their skin colour. Black people
commonly avenge themselves, whether as the result of an opening of the
public space, or - more frequently - of the overthrow of the government
by those who in the colonial situation were subjected to extreme forms of
domination. Finally, this revenge can be religious, as is indicated by the
rapid development of cults that are often called Protestant (let us avoid
the word 'sect' used by the traditional Churches to underscore their supe-
riority). They attest to both a reappropriation of remote cultural origins
and to an assertion of their moral superiority by those who have failed in
their attempts at social advance or who have suffered downward mobility.
In all cases, whose diversity can only be summarily evoked here, it is impre-
cise to speak of the defence or destruction of cultural rights. The invoca-
tion of rights is never reducible to identitarian references. We can only
speak of cultural rights, I repeat, when cultural and social forms of behav-
iour demand to be recognized in the name of universalistic principles -
that is, in the name of the right of all to practise their culture, language,
religion, kinship relations, alimentary customs, and so on. A n d it is only
when opposition to a central culture defined as universalistic emanates
from minority cultures (or cultures with inferior status), condemned by
those who identify themselves with universalism, that conflict becomes
inevitable.
164 Now that W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s In Cultural Terms
Let us take the example of Turkey, which has already been referred to
in this book, starting in particular from the works o f Nilüfer Gole. She
has very clearly demonstrated the political and national ambition o f rulers
who aspired to found a new type o f society as far removed from post-
Khomeini Iran as from the countries that had been Sovietized or those
that were drawn into an accelerated Americanization (like Puerto Rico).
It is here that the theme o f cultural rights has reached a peak, for it was
not a question o f erasing boundaries in favour o f hybridization, but o f
combining some national elements with others, derived from richer coun-
tries, which threatened to overrun everything i f care was not taken. The
defence of cultural rights emerges as a direct expression o f the action o f
the subject.
A very different example merits particular attention: that of the
Zapatista movement which emerged in Chiapas in Mexico from 1 January
1994. I t has often been inaccurately interpreted, especially by its European
admirers. We remember that the guerrilla movements which dominated the
life o f Latin America led urban youth brought up on the idea of the foco
- that is, the revolutionary vanguard - to support peasant struggles whose
main objective was not recognition o f the Indians, but the fall o f the
regime of domination supported by the United States and international
finance authorities. The general failure o f the guerrilla movements is
explained in the first instance by the fact that they did not take account
of local realities. This assumed an extreme form in the Bolivian expedi-
tion of Che Guevara, who had rejected all contact with Bolivian parties
and trade unions and entered a Guarani-speaking peasant zone where land
reform had been carried out. Aware o f the reasons for this failure, Marcos
wanted to link the defence o f the Maya communities in the Selva Lacan-
dona with a programme for the democratization of Mexico, his idea being
to create a major movement that was simultaneously social and political.
The agreements signed by the two camps envisaged complex ways of com-
bining Mexican law and that of the indigenous communities. The march
on Mexico was to be the starting-point for broader action. The failure o f
this endeavour in no way detracts from its importance, which consists in
the attempt to combine the defence o f communities with a political trans-
formation o f the national state.
Sexual rights
rating sexual and emotional life from the reproduction and construction
of a family. Can we speak of the creation o f a cultural category that has
finally been recognized? I do not think so.
In the first place, because there is no more homogeneity among gays
than straights, especially since some homosexual behaviour represents
a protest against prohibitions and a transgression. As the prohibitions
fall away, the search for lasting relations assumes ever more importance,
while the demand for the rights to marriage and parenthood is being
consolidated.
There is no reason on this last point to assign too much importance to
the differences between women and men: when it comes to filiation, the
main thing is the question of the blood tie that is to link generations with
one another. This is a crucial issue, but should not provoke great debate
today, since we have opted for a very favourable attitude towards adop-
tion - when it is not corrupted by financial transactions. The success o f
full adoption, the growing importance of reconstituted families, advances
in artificial insemination - everything conduces to making it the case that
bonds of filiation are no longer all blood ties (far from it).
Why should homosexuals be the only ones prohibited from filiation?
Why should they be forbidden to marry?
The problems become more delicate when we examine not various types
of lasting relationship, but brief or occasional relationships facilitated by
contraception (especially male), and still more relationships detached from
any project of a life in common. N o one will deny that such behaviour is
unlikely to strengthen the subject! But they are not to be judged in this
fashion. I f we accept the idea that the subject creates itself starting from
sexual experience, through the relationship with the other and then with
the self, we must concede the existence of multiple sexual relationships,
one o f whose basic roles is to affirm the autonomy of sexual activity. A n d
i f this line of argument does not convince everyone, let us all agree to
contest as a matter o f priority any regressive conception of sexual life such
as still prevails in many families and schools - especially religious ones.
Domination and liberation are words that form part o f the same general
view of sexuality - that o f the victim - and hence o f the same refusal to
take the actor into consideration. In addition, the theme of liberation is
rapidly mired in confusion, since it refers to a starting-point - domination
- from which it is a question o f liberating oneself, but not to any destina-
tion, since sexual freedom can just as easily authorize the transgression of
social and moral norms as conduce to the elimination o f a prohibition
founding a repressive morality. Analysis should not foreground the various
constraints or forms of liberation that guide sexuality. On the other hand,
we must follow the radical feminists when they denounce the subjugation
of all forms of sexuality to the single model o f the heterosexual
166 Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms
not contradict the practices and ideologies o f difference. Such is the first
condition for complementarity between the rights o f minorities and the
democratic system. Conversely, a Constitution that ignores ethnic differ-
ences, as is the case i n the United States and France, represents an obsta-
cle to protesting against communitarian excesses. This is the case above all
because the inequality o f opportunities between the various ethnic groups,
observed in schools as in employment, indicates that some of these groups
are regarded as inferior and treated as such.
I n the case o f France, many statistics indicate that schools themselves
act as a selection grid to the detriment o f the children of immigrants, in
particular Maghrébins, a low proportion o f whom progress to higher edu-
cation. Whereas there exist three decidedly hierarchical types o f lycée
(general, technological and professional), it is frequently the case that the
classes o f professional lycées are almost completely composed o f the chil-
dren of immigrants. Ordinary racism, which represented the colonized as
inferior beings needing only an elementary education, is replaced in our
more mobile societies by selection mechanisms that are unofficial but
easily detectable. Thus, feminists have been able to show that even in the
absence o f selection procedures the proportion of women drops the
further up the professional hierarchy one goes.
Campaigns against inequality of opportunity are waged in the name o f
classical liberalism. But we know that these campaigns fail, for they have
no purchase on the causes o f inequality. The difficult problem o f positive
discrimination ('affirmative action') is then posed. Its principle is incon-
testable: it is similar to that o f progressive income tax - which is our best
weapon for reducing inequality. I t has secured some notable results in large
firms, but it is ultimately largely ineffective. I t is true that in the United
States, in the large universities that had adopted this policy in favour of
particular ethnic groups, the abolition o f such measures has led to the dis-
appearance o f Afro-American students from the higher levels of studies,
which they had penetrated. But it is also true that the introduction of a
few individuals at this level does not fundamentally reduce the inequality
of which Afro-Americans are the victims. I n order to defend this policy,
we must resort to a different kind of argument, which sits well with the
general position that I am putting forward here.
Positive discrimination makes little difference to the actual situation, but
it attracts public attention to inequalities, as has been shown by the impas-
sioned debates that have taken place in the United States - and today in
France, where the Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris, an elitist estab-
lishment protected by an entrance exam, has decided to recruit directly a
certain number o f students from lycées in disadvantaged areas. This case
is all the more interesting in that the director of Sciences Po has raised
students' enrolment fees so as to grant free places to those who are due to
C u l t u r a l Rights 169
something that threatens the 'poor whites' with marginality, where once
they hoped for upward social mobility for their children. Muslim activism,
and especially the war between Israel and Palestine, has transformed the
social awareness o f exclusion among workers o f Arab, Turkish or other
origin into an ethnic and religious consciousness that has reinforced reac-
tions of rejection in the older native French population. Over a longer
period, this reaction has above all had the effect o f isolating the poorest
and weakest categories when other categories left the world of council
housing to accede to dwellings answering to a higher social status.
Whereas a blending o f the poor from different origins had long been
the rule, ghettos now formed, especially on the periphery o f large cities.
And whereas France, and in particular those who influence its public
opinion, defend republican integration against the communalist danger
supposedly threatening republican citizenship, France at the base is widely
permeated by this communitarianism, to the point where secondary-
school students often define themselves by their religion or that o f their
group of origin rather than by their social situation, their political affilia-
tion, or their sporting preferences.
Between Arabs and Jews, especially the most radical on both sides, there
is a high degree o f aggression. Numerous attacks on synagogues have
occurred and a new anti-Semitism, born out o f an extreme anti-Zionism,
has developed. The more that exclusion and the ghettos expand, the more
defensive community reactions refer to religious affiliation. The first veiled
lycée pupils appeared in Creil in 1989. Despite the proposals o f the Conseil
d'État in favour of negotiations in each establishment, the conflicts mul-
tiplied and religious activists soon challenged school syllabuses deemed to
contradict the Koran, and sometimes also hospital organization, which
was accused o f not ensuring separation between men and women when it
came to treatment and care.
As Parliament assembled a commission and the President of the Repub-
lic created the Stasi Commission, after the name of its head, to reflect on
the appropriateness of a law that would prohibit so-called conspicuous
signs of religious affiliation, public opinion was engaged in an impassioned
debate. I n it two problems were conflated that were in fact distinct: on the
one hand, respect for the cultural rights of veiled schoolgirls; on the other,
defence o f the so-called republican spirit and, above all, o f citizenship
against communitarianisms, especially Muslim ones. This duality of prob-
lems is expressed in a clear separation between two categories of veiled
girls: those who wish to combine modern studies with their religious affil-
iations; and those who, o f their own free will or succumbing to pressure,
play the card o f Islamist attacks on French 'secularism'.
Is the Islamist threat genuine? We have mentioned the refusal o f some
veiled girls to attend biology or history courses, the attitude of some
C u l t u r a l Rights 171
Muslims who reject male doctors touching their wives, but we do not know
the frequency of such incidents. In the present world situation, however,
it would be unrealistic to deny the existence of an upsurge in fundamen-
talism. This must not stop us from recognizing the fact that the global fear
of Islamic-inspired terrorism confers a probably exaggerated importance
on certain local incidents. I n the French case, a sense of this danger was
sufficiently widespread and strong for a law restricting or prohibiting reli-
gious signs in schools ultimately to be massively approved by public
opinion.
But recognition o f the danger must not lead us to forget the existence
of young Muslim women who wish at all costs to participate in modern
social life - which presupposes their graduation from school. Most
abandon any voluntary sign o f affiliation to a non-Western culture and
dress and live in Western fashion. But since 1989 a number o f them have
wanted to be free, at school and elsewhere, to display obvious signs o f their
religious affiliation. A t the beginning o f the movement, a study conducted
by F. Gaspar and Farhad Khosrokhavar showed that a majority of these
veiled secondary-school pupils were modern, wanted to pursue their
studies and gave them a scientific orientation. Similar studies have yielded
analogous results in the case of Turkey: veiled pupils were not distinct
from the rest as regards their future projects, even when negative pressures
were exerted on them. Since then, there is no doubt that the sway o f the
family, local and religious background over some young pupils has
increased with the exacerbation of exclusion and the growing isolation o f
the ghettos. But the category o f modern veiled girls who want to combine
their native culture with their present and future social milieus has cer-
tainly not disappeared. The report o f the Stasi Commission wanted to see
acknowledgement of the profound differences that exist between the
various categories o f veiled secondary-school girls.
Ally or adversary of this secularism, depending on the circumstances, a
new form of opposition to religious fundamentalisms, particularly o f the
Islamic variety, has asserted itself. I t derives from feminist movements,
which is logical, since religions - in particular, monotheistic ones - have
imprisoned women, often violently so, in dependence on men and excluded
them from public life. Thus, feminists comprehensively attack an Islam
which they accuse o f imprisoning women in an inferiority and dependence
of which the chador is the most visible symbol - at the risk, obviously, o f
impeding any evolution.
The meaning o f these battles between two camps, each o f which is
divided in two by an internal opposition of great significance, is not that
the past resists the future and custom resists reason. What fuels the con-
frontation between cultures is the fact that for much o f the global popu-
lation Western culture, while attractive, is inseparable from a military,
172 N o w t h a t W e Refer t o O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
economic and political domination that has not diminished, but only
changed its form from the initial modern colonial expeditions to today's
globalization, which is ever more clearly in the service of the American
empire.
Another interpretation, opposed to the preceding one, leads to conclu-
sions that are even more dangerous. This is cultural relativism which, by
eliminating any universalistic reference, in fact precludes communication.
I f this thinking was applied, the poorest countries would also be those
with the fewest prospects of achieving their liberation.
It is good to discover, through the study of a particular historical case,
the general nature of the solution that allows for communication between
cultures, while remaining as far removed from extreme multiculturalism as
from cultural imperialism. I f French society, feeling itself threatened mil-
itarily and culturally, rejects anything that comes from without - that is,
assigns itself a monopoly of the universal and identifies itself with the
latter - it will increasingly be compelled to embark on a crusade, the one
already being conducted by George Bush's United States. Conversely, i f it
inclined to cultural relativism - but this is much less likely than the other
hypothesis - it would imperil its social and political unity. The objective
that imposes itself on us all is to recognize (and have recognized) a core
of universal principles - those constitutive of modernity - and the multi-
plicity of historical modes of modernization, so as to render the greatest
possible number of modes of modernization compatible with the univer-
sal principles of modernity.
The separation and the complementary character of modernity and
modernizations is not only conducive to understanding and respecting dif-
ferent cultures, on condition that they recognize general principles like the
practice of rational thinking and respect for individual rights, without
which intercultural communication is impossible. I t must lead us further,
towards a transformation in the way we approach these problems. I t is no
longer exclusively a question of understanding what enables cultures to
communicate; what is at stake is whether an awareness of the differences
between cultures can be transformed into an evaluation, by the actor
herself, of her own forms of behaviour. This involves a radical switch of
perspective: the issue is no longer whether two or more cultures are com-
patible, but to observe how actors handle the transition from one culture
and society to others, and above all the role played by beliefs, attitudes,
and prohibitions in facilitating or, on the contrary, complicating the
transition.
Such an approach analyses the actor's behaviour in a new way. Initially,
the goal is simply to grasp and analyse the difficulties encountered by
immigrants or others in their transition from one culture to a different one.
It is no longer a question of defining the relations between different cul-
C u l t u r a l Rights 173
tures, but the kind o f behaviour that enables actors not to be defeated by
the difficulties they encounter. Various pieces o f research have shown that
the presence o f strong convictions facilitates the transition from one
culture and society to others. What is measured here is the ability o f the
actors to behave as subjects - that is, to conceive and create their own
route. I t is no longer the compatibility between different cultures that is at
issue, but the capacity of individuals to transform a series o f lived situa-
tions and incidents into a personal history and project. We can therefore
advance the hypothesis that those who have been able to manage their per-
sonal history have more consciously chosen it, in a way less determined by
shocks to, and loss, of the self. Their behaviour has resulted in them raising
the level o f the judgements they work out about themselves. This approach
enables us to achieve knowledge of the personal and collective field that
confers meaning on what is called history.
We can expand on this remark. Too often, studies of intercultural rela-
tions present them to us as so many roads leading from one city to another,
as i f cultures were comparable to cities, as i f a culture exercised total
control over some particular population. Such situations certainly exist -
in particular, in colonial or quasi-colonial situations like those experienced
by the Indians o f Latin America. But the population o f cultural minori-
ties is attracted by regions whose living standards and labour markets offer
them better chances o f survival or social advance. This is not a question
of communication between two or more cultures, but o f the relations
of attraction exercised by central or privileged categories on the more
dominated. In the industrialized Western countries, minorities are often
composed of a group o f individuals who do not necessarily constitute a
community and, above all, handle among themselves relations of domi-
nation, blending and cultural mixing that render analysis in terms o f the
juxtaposition or separation of two cultures impossible. Each culture is pro-
foundly influenced by its neighbours, especially by those who represent a
pole o f attraction. Such is the case with young Arabs from the Maghreb,
among whom there has developed a consciousness o f religious identity but
also of de facto membership, subjectively experienced, of French society,
which far from corresponds to the stereotypes often presented. Thus, ref-
erence is frequently made to 'young immigrants', even though the young
people concerned were born in France, invariably possess French citizen-
ship and speak French.
Very different is the case of the immigrants who arrived in large numbers
in the United States prior to the First World War, and again in recent
years, who rapidly identified with their host country. A n extreme case is
Argentina which, very rapidly and thanks above all to a French-style edu-
cation system, transformed Italian, German, Swiss and French people into
Argentinian citizens swiftly detached from their native society and culture.
174 N o w that W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l T e r m s
them in an obsession with their identity. Accepting that the world is dom-
inated by an open conflict between American power and militant Islamism
amounts to engaging in a logic o f rupture that will result in all o f us, indi-
vidually and collectively, losing our capacity for acting.
The social sciences have been taken up for at least two decades, in partic-
ular in the United States, with the debate between liberals and communi-
tarians. The debate remains confused, because one calls liberals those who
claim that economic rationality prevails over any other cultural model in
all societies and all social groups, but also those who defend the idea that
universal rights exist, over and above social differences, which are embod-
ied in the citizenship whose institutions serve each individual in as much
as she is a bearer o f universal rights.
The first aspect o f liberalism is not readily defensible. I t is true that
many forms of behaviour, o f political project, and o f what are called social
movements are guided by the collective pursuit of the satisfaction o f indi-
vidual interests, as in the case of trade unionists who combine to obtain
a wage increase from which each o f them will benefit. But there is a big
difference between an assertion o f this kind, whose utility is limited, and
the mass of individual and collective forms o f behaviour that are guided
by ends other than interest. A n d it is always dangerous to reduce major
international or national conflicts to struggles between interests, just as it
is unacceptable to detect in the action of religious militants nothing but
economic or even political motives.
As for the reference to universal rights, it must take the form o f citi-
zenship. That is what makes human beings equal in abstraction from their
social attributes. But it is precisely here that the other viewpoint is intro-
duced, for social rights, and even more cultural rights, are not reducible
to political rights - and do not equally apply to everyone. Social laws
protect miners, seafarers, or bakery workers. A n d in a much more radical
way, cultural rights protect differences, whether the categories concerned
are in a majority or minority. To seek to reduce everything to political cit-
izenship or the republican spirit, as do a number o f politicians and intel-
lectuals, is strictly reactionary. Certainly, i f the defence of economic and
cultural rights is isolated from the assertion o f political rights, it risks
becoming anti-democratic. A t the same time, however, we must refuse any
definition of rights that takes account neither of social rights nor o f cul-
tural rights, and hence neither o f struggles against employers nor the
defence o f cultural minorities. Political rights on the one hand, and social
and cultural rights on the other, are complementary. To depart from this
C u l t u r a l Rights 177
Secularism
The thinking that has been articulated in this chapter leads to conclusions
distant from what is called the French conception o f secularism. But can
I formulate such a conclusion after having asserted that secularism is one
of the main components o f modernity? I have defended the principle of
secularism with so much conviction that I cannot now call it into ques-
tion: separating Church and state, breaking up the holistic constitution o f
society, allotting a central, independent place to political power defined as
the invention of society by itself - these formulations correspond perfectly
to my idea of modernity and to my mind, as in the view of a very large
number o f citizens, constitute an indispensable condition for the realiza-
tion of democracy. A n d what is involved here is clearly an active concep-
tion o f secularism, for suppressing theocracy and the influence of
Churches over government has always been difficult; and the task is
never complete. In France, after a period of intense religious and political
conflict, calm gradually descended, to the satisfaction of the great
majority.
This approach to secularism obviously has nothing to do with the anti-
religious and anti-clerical secularism, which often rests on an elementary
rationalism that would like to extend the requirements of scientific think-
ing to domains other than its own. Some speak in this connection o f
secular religion; but this is merely a remnant from an already distant past.
What is much more important, and enjoys much more support - and
more active support at that - is the idea that schools should above all be
schools o f the Republic. Initially, we are inclined to support this concep-
tion, whose objective is more noble than the nationalism that dominates
schools in many countries. The French citizen and republican formed in
178 N o w that W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
French primary and secondary schools does not learn to defend his
country and his flag in all circumstances. Teachers have taught him to
defend political freedom, social justice and a critical spirit in the public
arena. A n d those who condemn republicanism in the name of a religiously
inspired morality obviously have no right to reject or scorn the French
conception of secularism. The school intent on being both republican and
secular, and which is at the same time completely tolerant as regards reli-
gious opinions and options, merits more respect, it seems to me, than one
where religious education is obligatory - and still more than one where
this teaching is based on a state religion, even when the latter amounts to
a morality that is ultimately less dangerous than the totalitarian political
ideologies imposed in so many countries during the twentieth century.
However, once we have acknowledged the qualities o f the secular school,
and even those elements that are indispensable to the defence o f democ-
racy, we must reintroduce themes that have forced themselves on us
throughout this chapter. Schools must not ignore the religious phenome-
non in general and different religious beliefs and practices in particular.
Furthermore, their teaching is truncated and creates inequality when it
maintains that it does not have to concern itself with pupils' social situa-
tion or life history.
Knowledge of the religious phenomenon is indispensable. First of all,
because the history o f religions helps us to understand our history and the
present. But the question then arises: must schools teach that there is
something beyond the social and the political which, in successive cen-
turies and in the various continents, has assumed particular forms - at one
point God, at some other time the universe or nature, and elsewhere again
reason or revolution, or even M a n and natural law, which is religious in
origin but which the declarations o f human rights, from the eighteenth to
the twentieth century, issued from? Or should they make religious facts
known without interpreting them?
It is predominantly a question today of recognizing that most societies
rest on non-social principles, on values defined and respected as situated
above laws and political decisions. We often find a trace o f this in consti-
tutions or what are regarded as founding texts, as is the case in Great
Britain, the United States and France. We are witnessing a renaissance in
moral thinking, the assertion of basic human rights which, as the theolo-
gians of natural law argued, must be defended by all means, including the
refusal to obey political authorities guilty of not respecting these rights.
This formulation clearly indicates the principles of resistance to the sacral-
ization of the political. But it is even more important because of the con-
clusions that can be drawn from it in a global situation strongly marked
by the rise of movements which are at once religious and political, and
irreducible either to terrorism or to a purely spiritual phenomenon.
C u l t u r a l Rights 179
This brings us back to the central theme of this chapter - namely, that
a large number of contemporary routes to modernization combine reli-
gious components with often old forms of social organization and cultural
life. This is how individuals and groups in which religious and non-
religious forms of behaviour mix, combine, or contradict one another are
often actively led to modernity. I t would therefore be arbitrary, and cer-
tainly false, to declare the modernity to which schools refer and some
particular cultural heritage that does not regard itself as anti-modern
incompatible. The pursuit of continuity is as common as the quest for
rupture.
What concerns those who are not content with the French 'republican
model' is that it pushes a number of individuals towards other cultures
which are indeed completely opposed to modernity. Openness, in contrast,
must help the majority national group (religious or ideological) to adopt
a more critical self-awareness, whereas the 'republican' spirit, especially
when it is on the defensive, tends to defend a culture and civilization en
bloc, while forgetting their heterogeneity and the presence in them of cul-
tural elements that are foreign to modernity, even in contradiction with it.
It is certainly not easy to mark out the boundary between what is
opposed to modernity in minority cultures and societies and what must be
criticized (or, on the contrary, accepted) in the majority culture. But it is
this complexity that can confer on schools their educational value and,
above all, enhance their capacity to advance the maximum number of
pupils in the direction of this core of modernity - without compelling
them to follow the path taken by the majority culture, which (as I have
repeatedly said) cannot be identified with modernity.
Moreover, establishing a clear boundary between public life and private
life amounts to inflicting damage on religious - but also political - think-
ing and action, since all religions have public activities and visibility. Sec-
ularism therefore does not consist in constantly reinforcing the separation
between the private world and the public world, for this division would
increasingly lead, as is already often the case, to schools being on the
margins of the innovations and debates that are emerging, especially
among the young.
I n other words, i f the idea of secularism must evolve, and i f schools
must accord ever greater importance to intercultural communication, at
the same time as they reinforce the principles of modernity, it is not in
order to allow themselves to be hacked into by religious associations that
are often linked to political, ethnic or religious parties. On the contrary, it
is so as to facilitate the access of all, and hence of all minorities, to moder-
nity itself, by facilitating its combination with individual and collective
experiences whose contours meld historically situated cultures and uni-
versal principles.
180 N o w that W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
Intercultural communication
The more populations mix with each other in a world that is becoming
nomadic, the more numerous are the encounters that might result in the
absorption of one group by another, or in war between them, but also in
intercultural communication. A n d this is facilitated not so much by every-
one participating in a largely globalized civilization, as by common accept-
ance o f modernity and its basic principles.
What must never be forgotten is that an encounter between societies and
cultures always contains an asymmetry of power: one o f them is majori-
tarian, the other is minoritarian; on the one hand, the colonizer, on the
other, the colonized. This power relationship is always recognized by the
dominated party; it must also be acknowledged by the dominant one,
which in this way will distance itself somewhat from the established order
(which is favourable to it). The encounter even presupposes that the dom-
inant recognizes the superiority of the dominated in some domains, which
are often at the heart o f its cultural identity: a knowledge o f particular
sacred texts or of some literary or musical tradition.
But these remarks must not mask the underlying intention of discourses
on intercultural communication and even on multiculturalism: refusal o f
a monopoly on culture by the most modernist Western countries. This
refusal remains domineering as long as other cultures are described in
terms of exoticism, specificity, or as being inspired by passions regarded
as inferior by superior cultures. But it becomes a positive, even redemp-
tive force when it replaces the spirit of war, which pits the strongest against
the weakest.
It is in the countries that have most strongly identified themselves with
the universal, with reason, with good governance that this aspiration to
intercultural communication is expressed with the most difficulty. Ernst
Curtius brilliantly demonstrated that i f in the nineteenth century France
defended the idea of civilization against Germany (which separated the
Volk from culture, regarded as access to higher values and knowledge), it
is because it regarded itself as a totality completely permeated by the uni-
versal, whereas the Germans, whose national integration was recent and
weak, still felt the great distance that separated the higher values of culture
from their collective experience. This French sense of being the bearers o f
Cultural Rights 181
the universal, which was even more intense than that which inspired the
English, even though they were more powerful, is explained both by the
Catholic tradition and by the revolutionary break.
However that may be, the radicalism o f French thinking and action
found it hard to accommodate a pragmatic or purely utilitarian vision.
Hence the self-consciousness that renders perception o f others so difficult.
A t the end o f the twentieth century, no European country can any longer-
claim to embody the universal. Moreover, it is in the United States that
this sense is developing today, based on that country's incontestable dom-
inance in the sciences as in military power or technological innovation.
As a result, the richness o f the anthropological work conducted i n the
United States does not prevent that country from appearing to the rest o f
the world to be incapable of understanding others and convinced of the
inherent superiority of all aspects o f its civilization.
I n short, what in the nineteenth century was the illusion o f the French
and the English is today that of the Americans. It is true that the largest
empires or states, and also those that are geared to seeking internal balance
rather than an encounter with other civilizations, are the worst prepared
to develop intercultural communication, whose necessity they sometimes
deny. Conversely, small countries, situated at the crossroads o f economic
and cultural flows, often experience the need to understand those around
them and are thus more predisposed to recognizing the other.
opposed, but which are equally alien to social life: on the one hand, those
that derive from the market, war and the destruction of all aspects o f life;
on the other, those that appeal not to the social order or surging desire,
but to the assertion o f the self and o f ourselves as subjects o f our exis-
tence and agents of our freedom.
As a result, the principal object of analysis is no longer society, but
actors who are already more than social, since they are defined not only
by their social affiliations and relations, but also by cultural rights, so that
they are indeed complete individuals and not abstractions, as the citizen
or even the worker remained. Awareness of this switch also enables us to
understand the exhaustion o f the political forms of thinking and action
we have inherited from the past.
8
A Society of Women
An altered situation
Modern society in the West was created by a subject that had now entered
into each individual and thus left the divine world behind. However, like
all the major resources in this type of society, the subject was concentrated
in the ruling elite, primarily embodied in men. The 'society o f men' both
generated much energy and created tensions that reached breaking-point.
The dominant pole was conquest, production and war - that of men -
whereas the female was the principal figure of inferiority and dependence.
Absent from the ruling pole, woman was as much part o f the subject as
man, but endured domination. There is certainly only one subject, but it
is not equally present in each of the two poles, female and male. The cre-
ative subject is also present in the procreating woman, just as the subject
embodied in the amorous body of woman is also present in the brutal
power of man. The subject, defined as the transformation o f the socially
determined individual into self-creator, is as present in man and woman,
but in a different way. There are also forces o f negation of the subject on
both sides: the break with 'life' on the side of man; submission to the bio-
logical rules o f this life in the case of woman. Modern society, in which
man dominates woman, does not, however, reduce the latter to her subju-
gation. She is also the mother, the body, love. When the Western model o f
modernization decomposes, when its springs slacken, this is what enables
woman potentially to occupy a dominant position in a new type of society,
where man, while losing his power, will not be reduced to a dependence
analogous to woman's in male society.
The neutral formulas I have just employed seem insufficient to many
women today. They would like to condemn the idea (still expressed) that
A S o c i e t y of W o m e n 185
women have no soul, are not subjects, more violently. Indeed, this idea has
not completely disappeared, even when it is dressed up in a more elegant
discourse, which extols the beauty o f women while implying that beauty
pertains to women just as mind and consciousness pertain to men - as is
proved by the fact that the majority o f intellectual and artistic oeuvres
have been produced by men . . . A n even more developed discourse like-
wise concludes that women must be referred to in 'objective' terms, i n
terms of the domination they suffer. Does not saying that women are
merely victims of male, heterosexual domination amount to claiming that
they have no consciousness and are incapable of rising above general emo-
tional reactions? The advantage of simple formulas is that they betray the
anti-feminism that inspires them. For there are ways o f fighting male dom-
ination which are replete with anti-feminism.
The sensible thing is to recognize the profound differences that distin-
guish contemporary culture from the culture of an already distant past.
The subject then, and until recently, was still not sufficiently oriented
towards itself and conscious self-assertion. On the one hand, it only
attained itself through its projection into a suprahuman world: that of the
sacred and the divine. On the other, it defended itself more easily through
mutiny and rebellion than by a complex process of self-awareness. Such a
difference is important, but it is insufficient to establish a marked differ-
ence between men and women. It remains the case that the ideology in
which this past culture was situated is that o f an extremely hierarchical
opposition between men and women.
What we are living through is the transformation o f the classical model
of modernity, which is so strongly polarized. The dominated categories -
the people, the workers, the colonized, women - have transformed them-
selves into social movements that have severed the tie of dependency that
made them the slaves of a master. A t the end of the period of the major
conflicts inspired by these social movements, modernization as the West
experienced it - that is, in complete rupture with the old worlds - has lost
its energy and dissolved into the universe of consumption and pleasure,
which is no longer capable of generating genuinely creative ideas or pro-
voking new conflicts. Because they always retained the idea that the new
is not constructed exclusively with the new but also out of the old, other
roads to modernization can avoid this exhaustion, which predominantly
affects the West, in that it pushed the accumulation, polarization and con-
frontation of opposite extremes to the limit.
The only cultural model that might impart new life to a West now spread
over much o f the globe is one which counterposes to the polarization of
one type o f modernization, today in decline, the converse dynamic: the
reconstitution and recombination o f elements which had been separated
so that one dominated the other. This is a model which also advances the
186 N o w t h a t W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
idea that the new is created and managed by those - women - who had
represented the main figure o f dependence, but who are now endeavour-
ing to supersede the men/women opposition rather than to replace male
domination by female domination.
This alteration would be impossible i f the situation of woman in the clas-
sical model o f modernity, dominated by man, could be defined in the wholly
negative terms of the dependence or violence they suffered. But that is pre-
cisely how it is most often defined, above all by extreme critiques which deem
male domination so complete that there is no room for resistance, still less
for a counter-offensive. Before clarifying how women can become the main
agents o f the creation of a new culture, we must therefore critically examine
the purely negative definition of the female condition.
The commonest image is that the dependence imposed by the old cul-
tural model, when undermined by the general transformation o f a society
that is more 'active' and less given to describing itself in absolute terms, is
transformed into an even worse dependency than the old one, even though
it apparently contains elements of liberation. With the whole of society
being transformed into a set of markets and tradable goods, and social
actors predominantly pursuing their own economic advantage or pleasure,
women find liberation from the constraints of the old model in the market.
However, they also experience more intense pressure, which ends up
transforming them into sexual objects capable of being bought, sold or
exchanged. This new dependency renders difficult (even impossible) the
transformation o f women into the main actors in the construction of a
new cultural model. Yet the market economy is often accompanied by the
construction of a space that is at once private and open, and at the same
time women achieve genuine economic and general autonomy through
wage-labour.
Women's social inferiority declines (or disappears) more quickly in some
countries, like Great Britain or the Scandinavian countries, and more
slowly in the Latin countries and even France, where women were only
granted the right to vote almost a century after men. The feminist move-
ment then increases in strength and imposes significant reforms, making
possible a balanced view o f the situation o f women, who still suffer
inequality but who have conquered rights and the means freely to run
many aspects of their lives, in particular what they do with their bodies.
The conjunction o f feminism and the advantages derived from the market
economy set in train a transformation in the female condition that is
moderately positive, but sufficiently so for women, conscious o f these
improvements, not to seek to take on a role of fundamental cultural trans-
formation. As I have indicated my intention to explain why they play this
role, I must now justify this hypothesis and, above all, identify the obsta-
cles they encounter - obstacles that can lead them into forms of behav-
iour involving rupture.
A S o c i e t y of W o m e n 187
towards the relationship to life and death. What is being said here has a
consequence that must be mentioned straight away. Sexuality is the con-
struction of forms of sexual behaviour. I t is therefore necessary to recog-
nize the existence of forms of sexual behaviour that do not contribute to
the construction of a complex sexuality, but which nevertheless attest to
the autonomy of sex, which alone renders the construction of sexuality
possible. This sexual behaviour detached from sexuality as a cultural con-
struct is what we call eroticism. Its ambiguity and importance derive from
the fact that it remains sex in the first instance, but also colours a rela-
tionship to the self and to others. I f entirely detached from everything that
is sexuality, it degenerates into pornography. But we must clearly under-
stand that our sexual culture cannot be constructed simply out of social
or cultural models. A n d eroticism is a condition of sexuality because it
precisely refers to what must be constructed.
Having reached this point, we encounter the fiercely debated question
of the presence of so-called erotic or pornographic programmes on tele-
vision. We should be troubled by this, because the main objective of tele-
vision is to produce televisual objects - in other words, to transform real,
diverse beings into objects constructed by and for television. This is all the
easier in that the characters considered are devoid of relational, emotional
or intellectual reality. Thus television, so adept at decontextualization,
readily accommodates itself to pornography, but finds it more difficult to
bring out the erotic dimension of sexuality; and is completely useless when
it comes to analysing the most constructed sexualities, such as are to be
found, for example, in works of art, whether literary or pictorial.
How can we avoid saying something about prostitution here, since it is
the subject of interminable debate and repeated condemnation? I t is cer-
tainly necessary to protest against the exploitation by pimps of women
forced to leave their country for economic reasons and to offer up their
bodies to men, who are themselves invariably imprisoned in a frustrated
need for sexual satisfaction. Many prostituted women, together with the
men who resort to using them, share the same misery and help to enrich
the pimps. The very mention of prostitution provokes indignation. But
against whom should it be directed? Against prostitution itself or against
misery? Do women in search of significant profit (or who only aim to be
part-time ladies of the night), those who give men a sexual massage, belong
to the same category as the prostitutes who live in slavery and are com-
pelled to give themselves to anyone?
We should beware lest passionate condemnation of prostitution result
only in controlling and punishing the prostitution of the poor without
touching that of the rich. Certainly, what is no longer possible is to regard
the brothel as a pure place of liberation, in accordance with the image
made popular by literature and painting, from Maupassant to Toulouse-
192 N o w that W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s In C u l t u r a l T e r m s
Lautrec. But why choose between the defence o f 'sex workers', the con-
demnation o f pimps and the social regularization o f an activity that would
be sufficiently controlled to yield taxes to the state? I t would be hypocrit-
ical not to recognize that prostitution always involves a failure and pre-
vents the women who engage in it from living a free, responsible life. But
we should mistrust condemnations that are intended not to liberate
women, but to increase society's control over men, o f whom it is quite ille-
gitimate to say that they always want to dominate, even destroy, these
women. The very spirited campaigns waged by some feminists against
pornography and prostitution can also conceal a will to extend control
over habits, already strong in the case of women, to men.
Almost by definition, prostitution is an activity with a low level o f emo-
tional exchange, since it primarily involves a woman or man trading their
body - which is the precise opposite o f the construction of the self as a
subject. But this is not a reason for projecting an image o f prostitution
that corresponds only to the most degrading situations, even though it is
true that the latter are very common. As I have said, not only do the mis-
erable men who resort to the poor, most exploited prostitutes live as
destructively as those prostitutes. But 'chic prostitution', which is proba-
bly more easy to bear since it is more agreeable to be rich than poor,
can allow a little room for affective speech and demands. Finally, the
prostitutes, male and female, for whom this option has been the only
way they could meet their desire to change sex, must be considered
separately.
Brazil is probably the country that has explored the melding of sexual
identities furthest and the United States was right to help transsexuals,
who most often live in a state of rejection. I t would be good if, in a country
like France, opinion was not so defensive that it ultimately locks those,
male and female, whom it pretends to want to 'save', into prostitution. The
rejection of transsexuals in France leaves them with virtually no escape
other than prostitution; and it is urgent for the defence front L G B T (Les-
bians, Gays, Bi, Trans) to be strengthened. Too often, the theme o f sexual
liberation, however positive, is used as a pretext for developing and impos-
ing new norms that are not only hygienic in kind, but which compound
the rejection that affects people in a situation o f failure, emotional
deprivation, dependency, or even petty criminality. 'Society' is here more
demanding and less charitable than the Churches, which issue condemna-
tions but do not demand positive repression. A n d in countries where there
is great poverty and crushing unemployment, how can we fail to under-
stand the women who have formed trade unions for 'sex workers', hostile
to repressive measures, and who, in a situation that is impossible to trans-
form completely, at least try to offer prostitutes a minimum o f protection
both from the public authorities and the clients themselves?
A S o c i e t y of W o m e n 193
image of the seductive man making women succumb to his desire provokes
ever more numerous negative reactions, even i f some women might aspire
to be conquered, without thereby alienating their freedom. I t is now more
commonly accepted that seduction, while remaining exercised by the
two partners, is in the main handled by the woman: the intersection o f
seductions works better when this is the case. This signifies that the con-
struction of the woman by herself through her sexuality governs the sym-
metrical construction o f the man. We have definitely moved into a period
of female supremacy. A n d the world o f seduction precisely helps to give
women the main role in cultural innovation.
How far removed we are from the female victim! This in no way means
that the weight o f inequality and violence does not crush many women,
but simply that over and above this suffering and injustice they are the
bearers, in the name o f the whole population, o f a new cultural model: a
phrase that is to be understood in the broadest sense and which leads us
to expand on the reflections presented hitherto.
Women can only assert their existence as subjects by refusing to define
themselves exclusively by their heterosexual relationship to man and by
the social functions that this relationship leads them to perform. Certainly,
such 'liberation' can take the form o f the proclamation o f a female iden-
tity in itself, and even of the superiority o f women to men. But these asser-
tions are more fragile than they seem at first sight. For in playing the game
of a 'female psychology', one quickly lapses back into representations o f
woman that are so conducive to male domination because it might be
thought that they have been created by it. Women who take this seemingly
easy path soon identify with gentleness, the sense of others, sensitivity -
in short, all qualities alien to man the hunter, soldier and conqueror.
Very different, opposed even, is the motion that invites women in the
name of their freedom to reject, by suppressing the relationship of dom-
ination they suffer at the hands o f men, all polarizations - o f which that
between male and female is the most general form - and to reconstruct
a human experience that has been split into two unequal parts by the
European mode of modernization.
This general enterprise o f reconstruction is evident in many sectors o f
everyday life. Thus, ecologists wish to transcend the opposition between
economic modernity and the equilibria that render life on Earth possible.
A l l forms of psychotherapy offer programmes for re-establishing the bond
between body and mind; and psychoanalysis has oriented its thinking in
this direction for even longer. More immediately still, every day we see not
only male domination being challenged, but also its effects, the most indi-
rect and the most direct alike.
A l l these tendencies, whose list could be extended, not only contest
forms of domination. They also defend against the pseudo-individualism
198 N o w t h a t W e R e f e r to O u r s e l v e s in C u l t u r a l Terms
rior to those of men, and when the signs of male authority and the sub-
mission of women to the image that men create o f them are ubiquitous?
This reminder of obvious realities, which no one disputes, in no way
undermines the conclusion that I am presenting here: yes, men have power
and money, but women already posses the meaning of lived situations and
the ability to formulate it. I t is already much easier to make women speak
about women than it is men about men. The latter are embarrassed by the
images conveyed by the themes o f masculinity and virility. Many want to
be more like women, sometimes even to feminize themselves; and in sexual
relations the images o f penetration, possession and insemination are being
undermined as women more clearly recognize the localization o f their
pleasure and, above all, as men learn to replace the old position o f mastery
by an ability to turn towards the self, as women do. The success of many
techniques recommended by psychologist-sexologists derives above all
from the fact that they are progressively getting rid o f the images o f male
domination, both in life in general and in sexual relations.
The main weakness o f these analyses stems from the fact that they
convey the impression that we are dealing with women liberating them-
selves or already liberated, receiving new representations and new prac-
tices, and capable o f conceiving and achieving by themselves changes that
accord them an innovative, more independent role - but one that does not
meet with resistance from other women. Yet there has been resistance; and
there still is. Such profound changes cannot be accomplished without
encountering opposition and even provoking reactions o f rejection. I want
to signal two o f them here, which correspond to very different situations.
The first context in which women meet with negative reactions is that
of immigrant populations (as indicated by all the cases studied in France),
where very strong control is exercised by brothers over sisters, whether or
not the latter are veiled. The most surprising thing is that before 1990 girls
of immigrant origin were not subject to such strong pressure in these
neighbourhoods. Boys and girls could walk together. Then, rather rapidly,
fathers and especially brothers began to exercise increasingly tight control
over girls. The group turned in on itself, while the great majority o f mar-
riages conformed to the old moral order: arranged unions based on a cer-
tificate of virginity - something that contributed to the development o f
minor surgery to reconstruct the hymen and, among many girls, persist-
ent recourse to relations involving anal sex. Some girls manage to have a
sex life locally; others have the opportunity to quit the neighbourhood; yet
others lead a double life. The goal o f many men in such neighbourhoods
is to prevent young women having a sex life. Anyone who wears a skirt
will thus be stigmatized as a prostitute. She will be suspected o f consent-
ing when she is raped in a 'tournante' ('take your turn' style), while this
practice seems to be developing, under the leadership of the strongest boys
200 Now that W e Refer to O u r s e l v e s in Cultural T e r m s
The woman-subject
movement presses this development to its conclusion: over and above their
national, social and cultural affiliations, women define themselves by their
gender, as sexed beings and, more important still, as beings subject to a
domination exercised over them in their entirety - in particular, over their
bodies. With this a switch in conflicts is effected: from the social conflict
conducted in the name o f control over the economy, we have made the
transition to a struggle by women whose stake is control o f themselves
and the defence o f rights involving all spheres o f their behaviour.
What does 'whose stake is control of themselves' mean? I t means: whose
stake is a direct, conscious reference to oneself, in contrast to a definition
of the self by reference to man, male power and the functions o f repro-
duction. But i f woman is not to be defined by her dependence, she must
redefine her relationship with man. There is no unisex society in which
men and women would become increasingly similar and where the differ-
ences between individuals (or even between types of sexual relations)
would be more important than those that distinguish men from women.
The construction of the female subject will increase the distance between
men and women, because the former cannot live the same corporeal expe-
rience. I t is necessary to assign a central place to the woman-subject and
recognize that sexuality is becoming detached from all social roles - in par-
ticular, from the male construct that is gender. Those who think that
woman is gradually being reduced to nothing but a sexual object in the
process o f the eroticization of society as a whole are therefore completely
mistaken: the liberation o f sexuality affirms the construction o f self as
subject. I t helps to destroy the image o f the woman submitted to male
power - to the power that granted him a monopoly on the heterosexual
relationship in which she was dominated.
It is appropriate, and even necessary, to speak o f the birth of a society
of women. But we must avoid referring to a feminization o f society, for
that would reintroduce the false (and dangerous) idea that women are
endowed with a permanent, general character. The fact that cultural cat-
egories are taking precedence over social categories does not mean that
gentleness is being substituted for force or pleasure for duty. What I am
writing here does not appeal to psychology, but only to the history o f
culture. But it is indeed women who are the bearers o f current cultural
changes. As the dominant actors in the old system (which can be called
male), men established a system o f thought and action which defines, and
constantly dictates, choices. Either it is this or it is that: either it is capi-
talism, or it is the people, which is in power; it is necessary to choose
between nature and culture. This is a system o f analysis that makes knowl-
edge o f individuals, who are rarely cut from one cloth, impossible. In
contrast, at the moment when they are becoming dominant, women them-
selves assert their superiority by their complexity, their capacity to pursue
A S o c i e t y of W o m e n 203
several tasks at once. They think and act in ambivalent terms - terms that
make it possible to combine things and which do not dictate a choice. A n d
it is indeed in a world o f ambivalence (no longer in a bipolar world) that
we live. Schools that receive the children of immigrant families can neither
fully integrate them into the majority culture, nor maintain them i n their
native culture. The least bad choice is to combine the two, which gener-
ates dissatisfaction, but avoids the negative consequences of simple solu-
tions. I n work on young men and women in Italy, S. Tabboni was the first
to show that women refused to choose between personal life and profes-
sional life; that in so doing they were conscious o f losing something o f
both, but not completely; and that any other solution would be intolera-
ble for the great majority o f them. For their part, men have the sense of
being imprisoned in the world o f work.
This ambivalence increasingly necessary to individual life (as to inter-
national politics) is an attribute o f the subject, and here of the woman as
subject, since she detaches herself from the logic o f situations and gives
priority to constructing an action directed towards the assertion o f the
free, responsible actor.
which are outside social time and space. The subject, whether male or
female, cannot exist i f it does not possess a specific time, space and lan-
guage. A n d it is indeed the addition of these three dimensions - desire,
recognition of the other and the wish to live with the other - that founds
the amorous relationship.
But we must go beyond this initial remark and examine the place of men
in the new culture, in the reconstitution of the complexes that had shat-
tered within the male model, knowing that this operation is performed by
women. I t is impossible to reduce the position of women in the culture of
recent centuries to their dependence, their inferiorization, and their exclu-
sion from public life. Their role in private life, in the family and in the edu-
cation of children suggests different approaches. Now we face the same
exigency in the case of men: i f my hypothesis that it is women who have
responsibility for the great project of reconstituting the world and super-
seding the old polarities is accepted, what will men's role be? I t cannot be
restricted to the realization of the loss of domination. Witness the vio-
lence that accompanies this loss of domination, whether direct physical
violence (that suffered by battered women) or psychological violence (by
breaking social affiliations).
There is no question here of asserting that men, stripped of running the
world they used to dominate, have no recourse but to violence and are
drawn towards this kind of behaviour.
M a n is drawn towards everything that is located beyond the limits of
the social, either in order to destroy it or, on the contrary, to keep open a
social universe whose reconstitution is now the main agenda. The discov-
ery of new worlds, research programmes in all areas of knowledge, remain
(or become) just as strongly male, but are no longer regarded as the
achievements of which the collectivity can be most proud. Science is as
much feared as admired: it can, as we know, provoke catastrophes, just as
it can reveal new sources of energy. Atomic energy was the first to testify
to this ambiguity in the population. The general meaning of social life
increasingly eludes men; they seek in themselves for a meaning they no
longer find elsewhere and in institutions they no longer control. Perhaps
they are attempting to ensure themselves social spaces that would belong
exclusively to them, which would be purely male, whether homosexual or
otherwise. But most often they are seeking to bring to a society obsessed
with the quest for its own equilibrium and survival the openness towards
the outside, the technical mastery of the environment, so indispensable to
societies of reconstruction and reintegration, which are always threatened
with suffocating under the protection they have established.
Such male behaviour is nevertheless increasingly minoritarian. Indeed,
the majority of men seek to integrate into the new society of women,
A S o c i e t y of W o m e n 205
Post-feminism
Post-feminism has thus set in train rapid changes and has already secured
results that (far) exceed in importance the objectives and achievements o f
feminism itself. For it is primarily post-feminism that has brought about
the cultural alteration of major importance which has seen us pass from
a society o f men to a society of women. These changes do not occur
through the prism o f political life; they permeate the subjectivity o f each
person, because they tend to make each individual a subject.
Moreover, it is on the basis o f due awareness o f what post-feminism is
and o f what it has achieved that we can understand the social scene as a
whole and its new problems. On all sides, people rightly signal the decline
of social and political actors, of parties, trade unions and their ideologies.
The legacy of the working-class movement, which was so powerful (and
creative for so long), is exhausted, just as, a century earlier, the legacy o f
the French Revolution and movements for citizenship was exhausted. But
these social and political actors have made way for other voices and other
figures: those o f the personal subject, which is predominantly woman, but
just as present in cultural minorities - to the point where today we more
readily define democracy as respect for minorities than as the rule o f the
majority. A n d on another side, but in line with this first set o f social actors,
we find organized movements that are ranged against globalization not
because they reject it, but because they have detected in it the extreme form
of a capitalism opposed to any control and any regulation, and which con-
sequently destroys identities, particularities, memories, forms o f savoir
faire and o f speciality.
The inheritors o f the social democrats (and even o f the Communists)
no doubt have a long career ahead of them. But it is clear today that it is
outside this legacy and its representation o f the world that the ideas and
emotions which are transforming society and its authority relations, its
forms o f communication, its relations between individuals and between
groups, are being invented. Politicians must understand the changes that
are underway, even i f they should abstain from seeking to direct them.
Such openness is even more necessary in the case o f intellectuals and ide-
ologues - especially those who for half a century laid down the idea that
no action is possible, because everything in social and cultural life is
imprisoned in a system o f domination. This general thesis was applied
as radically to the question of women as to the situation o f dependent
countries - and with the same errors.
The sway o f the ideologies born at the end of the twentieth century is
still strong, and will long remain so, because it is relayed by numerous
teachers and lecturers to a public that has rapidly expanded. Against this
ideological heritage, I would like everyone to understand that the analysis
A S o c i e t y of W o m e n 207
The main themes of this argument are closely interrelated; the sequence
of chapters discloses their interdependence in the construction of a new
paradigm. But it seemed to me useful, for those who want to read this
book as well as those who have just read it, to outline more directly and
more briefly the path that led me from an awareness of historical changes
to an analysis o f the principal notions that enable us to understand this
mutation.
1 The starting-point is globalization, conceived not simply as a global-
ization o f production and exchange, but above all as an extreme form o f
capitalism, as a complete separation o f the economy from other institu-
tions - in particular, social and political - which can no longer control it.
2 This dissolution of boundaries of all sorts entails the fragmentation
of what used to be called society.
3 The consecutive collapse o f social categories of analysis and action is
not an unprecedented event. I n the early stages o f our modernization, we
conceived social phenomena in political terms - order, disorder, sover-
eignty, authority, nation, revolution - and it was only after the industrial
revolution that we replaced political categories by economic and social cat-
egories (classes, profit, competition, investment, collective bargaining).
Current changes are so profound that they lead us to assert that a new
paradigm is in the process of replacing the social paradigm, just as the
latter took the place o f the political paradigm.
4 The individualism that triumphs on the ruins of the social represen-
tation of our existence reveals the fragility of an ego constantly altered by
the influence o f the stimulation it is subject to. A more developed inter-
pretation of this reality underscores the role o f the media in forming this
individual ego, whose unity and independence seem to be threatened.
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214 Bibliography
the self 91, 92, 93-5, 96-7, 101-2, irruption of democracy 56, 57
111-13, 115, 119-20, 121-2, role of the state 19, 35, 38
142-3 social representation of society 45
sexuality 119, 190-1 a society of women 186
social bonds 124-6 United Nations (UN) 11,43
social movements 95, 120-1, 139 United States of America (USA)
sources 103-5 communitarians 176
the unconscious 121-4 cultural mixing 167
women 95, 97, 110, 115, 200-4 cultural rights 158-9, 168, 176-7
subjectification 5, 93-4, 142 democracy 56, 79
subjectivities 83-4 education 133, 168
system-actor link 63-7 end of social thought 80
EU and 35-6, 38-9, 40, 41, 42, 43
Tabboni, S. 203 globalization 20-1, 22, 23, 24, 30-2
Taylor, Charles 162 intercultural communication 181
Taylor, F. W. 48, 156, 158 international role 15, 28, 30-1
teaching 67, 133-4, 177-8 liberalism 176
see also schools mass society 55
technological determinism 1-2 migrants 68
terrorism 9 popular sovereignty 79
cultural rights 171 post-9/11 policy 9-12, 28, 30, 39,
end of societies 63 43, 61, 62
fear 12 social movements 120
globalization 27-9, 30, 31, 32 status of war 61, 62
US post-9/11 policy 9-12, 28, 30, universalism
39, 43 communitarianism 175, 176
Thatcher, Margaret 23 cultural rights 162-4, 175
Thompson, E. P. 155 modernity 73, 74, 76, 77-8, 162-3,
Tietze, Nikola 92 209
Tillion, Germaine 107 the subject 109
totalitarianisms 54, 59, 79, 81 Western societies 49
trade 45 utilitarianism 49
see also economic globalization;
markets veils 157-8, 159-60, 169-73, 177
trade unions 13-14, 23, 54, 57 violence
transsexuals 192, 194 modernity 76, 77, 78
Turkey 40, 144, 164, 171 permeation of 12-13, 14, 16
the social bond and 68, 69
unconscious, the 121-4 a society of women 204
underemployment 68 the subject and 102, 103, 107, 111,
unemployment see work 137-8
United Kingdom (UK)
cultural rights 156 see also terrorism; war
European integration 34, 41
European model of modernization war
50 cultural rights 158-9
international role 15 emancipatory individualism 84-5
end of societies and 60-3
226 Index