English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
There is no consumer society 0:00 I vote, I don't vote anymore. I can't vote for anything other than communist, if I could ever vote for those communists. Never. She's more Europeanist soon than Marie-George. I can't. So I don't vote. It's not good.
0:30 How did you get on with consumer society? At first sight, it's generous to be against consumer society. It's a good sentiment. In a way, I see the waste myself. No need to draw you a picture, at whatever scale. That's the first thing. But then, how dangerous it is to phrase it that way, vaguely, without specifying. Without specifying production of what, consumption of what. So, there again, great solitude, because, I quote Clouscard, he's very clear.
1:06 He says, I have never seen a consumer society. Or if one exists, tell me, I'll go there right away. It's true, that would be realized communism. No, I have seen classes that consume, milieus that consume. I have never seen a society that consumes. First point. Second. And there have to be many who go without so that others can consume. And that's what they lived, somewhere, for a long time, in developing countries. It's frightening. It's a kind of detailed working-out of what Clouscard says day by day.
1:39 And coffee, for example. I lived for a long time in Ivory Coast, which is the leading coffee producer on the continent. When you see how much it's billed for? I'm not talking about the fancy cafés. But simply, a Parisian coffee is easily 2 euros now, a coffee. When you see what's paid to the coffee pickers, or rather the producers, precisely the opposite of the consumer. To Ivorian, African coffee producers in general, Ivorian in particular. I mean, the markup, the profits are staggering.
2:12 Now, coffee doesn't grow in our regions. So every day, you see, the cups of coffee consumed, every minute, in offices, in workplaces, in the United States, in Europe, etc. That comes from a product that's... Because we always talk about oil to make this point. Here I'm taking coffee. I never talk about it. These are enormous figures. Well, let's leave that aside. But, so, there you go, to clarify the concepts. Clouscard is the first to propose bringing these representations back to a concept. For him, there isn't production and consumption.
2:46 They're two moments that can occur within the same individual. When consumers are shown in a TV report, you see people in a supermarket buying stuff. But wait, maybe that's a worker, a farmer, it's a producer just as much. An executive, because it's not only material production. A seamstress doing her shopping. What does that mean? Does it mean they're consumers as if we were just there, spineless, consuming? No, they're perfectly entitled to go shopping after all that work. They do work after all. That already needs putting back in place.
3:16 First, a question of semantics. And above all, above all, above all, they propose a concept. That's where it gets serious. You don't judge a standard of living as too high or not high enough or this or that, vaguely. That is, like my grandmother. That's it, because my Corsican grandmother marveled at light switches. Because it even came late to Corsica. She'd spend her time flicking them. On, off, on, off. Marveling at the light bulb. I understand, because in her time, having that was an incredible luxury. Because relighting candles was complicated. And water, fetching water, you can't imagine what that was like.
Producing more or consuming more: a measurable criterion 3:47 Well, anyway. So, for those people, today we consume by their standards. In that case, we should rejoice every day that we're not back at Neanderthal, at Homo sapiens. What does that mean? It's stupid to judge by a past stage. What am I saying? I'm saying there's only one objective way to judge who is a producer and who is a dirty consumer. It's that there are two social classes. There are ten thousand, but they can be reduced to two, when you're rigorous. There's the class of those who produce more than they consume, and the class of those who consume more than they produce.
4:17 Full stop. There, it's measurable. Clouscard even proposes a concept. We should only reserve the word consumption for someone who is established as consuming more than they produce. That someone can be a legal entity, it could be a company, it could be France, it could be... At the level of an individual, it's complex. But I mean, all this is measurable. We're in the realm of the feasible, of what's possible, even if there are difficulties, mathematical models to build. So maybe if we judged our consumption based on the production possibilities offered by today's technology, we'd realize we're well below what we should be consuming.
4:56 So I'm completely reversing the thing. Even if the usual response is to say we should stop, that we produce ten times too much of this and not enough of that. That's it, that's essential. It's certain that if we produced enough anti-AIDS medication, I'm thinking of Africa, I mean, to bring prices down, that wouldn't be a bad idea at all. I mean, it's inaccessible to the people who need it most, or Denis Wackind, you experienced that when you were over there. So yes, there are things we don't produce enough of because their price is still too high, cars should cost 2000 euros maximum.
5:26 When you see how long it takes to produce one now, it's scandalous, somehow. A car shouldn't cost anything. I know you're not really into cars. But you have to understand how much we've been deceived, always measuring our standard of living as if today's government had suddenly brought prosperity, when it's actually the work of several centuries first. And above all, you judge a standard of living relative to possibilities, you shouldn't be utopian either, I'm not going to complain that I don't yet have my vacation home on Mars.
5:56 Maybe that will come, we're not there yet. So relative to today's possibilities, to the productive forces, to speak in Marxist terms, to today's productive forces, we should consume what we feel like consuming, what we need and what we desire, which is not nothing. There aren't only needs, otherwise we'd have stayed at the animal stage, much more so. So there, I'm completely against the grain of degrowth understood in that sense. Even though, I repeat, there are plenty of things, plenty of products that I'd be delighted to see decrease.
6:28 We'll come back to a sharing of wealth. Yes, the two are linked. Clearly, that's why these are phony issues. When I say phony concepts, it's to avoid posing the real problems. There's that shadow behind it. We're made to believe we'll solve the problem by discussing it wisely among ourselves in a café. No, that requires, we come back to it, a revolution, but not in the spectacular sense. It's not enough to man the barricades. But basic, radical changes. They can be silent, quiet, peaceful.
6:58 Stalin's ignominy was to have confused class struggle with the struggle against individuals. You can eliminate an entire parasitic social class, they exist, the traders, etc. You can eliminate a social class without harming a single individual. Whereas with Stalin, if it's not you, it's your brother, that's not good, in the end the whole family goes. That's the monstrosity. So, can we attack the banking system without needing to target Jews, etc.? Of course. There, we agree.
The societal opposed to the social 7:29 But you've seen, there are watchdogs standing guard. If you attack BNP, you'll be told you're antisemitic. It's incredible that we've come to this, how intimidated people have become by this kind of discourse. That, I see, the Foucaults, more than Deleuze, they bear a lot of responsibility for that. Foucault does nothing but champion causes that are always the most marginal of the marginal. The guy in prison, the slammer, the convict, the immigrant homosexual, the immigrant homosexual convict and schizophrenic.
8:02 Well, in the end, it's strange. Foucault, who is a privileged person, a diplomat's son, I mean. And the whole of communism today, well the Communist Party, has rallied to that? But yes, that's exactly it. That's why I can't vote for, what's her name, the blonde one, the one affiliated with the communists. Yes, yes, always seen with the other historian, what's his name, you know him. Sorry? Autain, that's it. Mother Autain, I heard her say, right in the middle of the strike, the last battle over pensions. It was crazy, one of the last great fights, when there were guys standing guard near the oil stockpiles.
8:37 And who was saying, you have to understand that the only real opposition today is homosexuals, immigrants, in the middle of the fight over pensions. It's crazy. That's where you see the societal being pitted against the social, to that degree. It's actually criminal, in a way. You can even fight both battles. You can emancipate homosexuals, especially in countries where it's banned, while also making social progress. It's not contradictory. I'm ready to fight against the Egyptians who throw gay people in jail, of course.
9:07 That has nothing to do with it. And there you go, and it's not men dominating women or women dominating men. There are men and women. Madame Bettencourt dominates us. What am I telling you? There are men and women who dominate other men and women. Even if all else remains equal, and it always needs stating, I've traveled enough in the poorest countries. It's the poor woman who suffers the most in terms of humanity. That's fairly clear. Yes, well before developing that, I should point out that this is a concept that's starting to become commonplace.
Liberal and libertarian: two notions joined together 9:44 Whereas he was in isolation, he produced a phrase, as they say, that was linguistically revolutionary at the time, which has now become almost trivial. So first, the fact of having to stick these two notions together. Because generally, the libertarian is imagined as the anarchist in the streets throwing a paving stone at whom? At the liberal boss. So they're not at all the same camp. They're even opposed. How can he say liberal-libertarian? That's the classic way the problem is framed. The libertarian is, I don't know, the street urchin who charges off to fight injustices.
10:20 Now, first, capitalism is anarchist in its essence. Capitalism hates the state, the law, regulation, rules. You hear it every day, that's all they repeat. In France, we're drowning in bureaucracy, in directives. I who worked in a huge private company like Hachette, the bureaucracy of a big company is every bit as bad as that of an administration. I can tell you that. Paperwork and... Anyway. Well. So that debunks the myth, without even needing to go looking for the extreme examples of the purest liberal-libertarianism I was alluding to earlier.
10:58 There's an old tradition. Whose common point is that the principle... One is tempted to say the individual, but that would actually be a misuse of the word. It's the particular that is their principle. I'm making this small nuance, sorry, to introduce a difficulty that Hegel resolved with his concept of... Generally, the individual is opposed to the group. Let me open a small parenthesis: the most abject notion that has allowed all these reversals is that of totalitarianism. That was coined by the student of the most Nazi of philosophers.
11:29 I'll go quickly, it was coined by Hannah Arendt, Heidegger's student. Because there are some... No, but I say that because some still wonder whether Heidegger was a Nazi. No, he's not a Nazi. He's the most Nazi of philosophers, which is nonetheless different. He was a big one, because there were little Nazis, we didn't call Hitler that at the time. And... What's a bit worrying is that the shadow of Heidegger... It's in Heidegger's shadow that the whole French philosophical school from Sartre to Derrida is situated. Despite all their differences and their internal disputes. It's still worrying. It's really the Cold War era.
12:00 And... Heidegger, a few quotes. We have a duty of Eros toward the Führer. Does that interest you, having drinks with the Gestapo? Second, the greatest invention of Western metaphysics is the creation of the Panzer Divisionen, that's from the 1933 seminar. That's quite a lot, I mean. And... Every time you try to bring up the file, they say, no, you haven't understood, Heidegger is complicated, you're not really a philosopher. That's interesting too. There are the oxen who understand nothing.
12:33 And... So... Liberals and libertarians, one had to dare to show... A bit like the young Hegel suddenly understood that behind German romanticism there was the English factory. That's what changes in Hegel. He suddenly sees the machinery behind the scenery, of melancholy and of... He sees that there was an English factory, after all. Well. There's Hegel, they said he read the political gazettes like the morning prayer. That's a telling metaphor. And so, to stay up to date, he didn't appear to be in an escapist world.
13:06 He had gone along with his fellows up to that point. So, the fact of having yoked together these two names, which seemed entirely opposed in ideological public opinion, while showing their deep connection, is now being confirmed before your eyes. This morning I heard someone summarizing the point of view of ISIL. You know, the ones who play football with the heads of those they've slaughtered... What's it called? The army that wants a single Islamic State in the Levant.
13:41 Anyway. Who is currently doing away with Iraq, as they tried to do with Syria and failed, so now they're in Iraq. And whom we pretend to oppose. I'm convinced we support them. The rebels? Sorry? The rebels? Yes. The jihadists? Yes, of course. They served well, they fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. They're providential guys. They tore down the Iraqi nation-state to make three out of it, the Kurds on one side. That's exactly what I'm saying. Their program is to build the Ummah.
14:11 Let me remind you, I'm not speaking in order, that is, to remove these borders resulting from colonization, which is what the jihadists are saying today, and rebuild the great Ummah without borders. In fact, they made a propaganda film showing a bulldozer removing the border in the sand. Curious. It's a value shared with Brussels. Borders are outdated. That's curious, isn't it. These are the ones we financed to bring down Assad, without succeeding. Because there, it was a bit too much.
14:41 And also because the other Assad is a brute too. I mean, his father killed 20,000 of them, 30 years ago. But mainly because the majority of Syrians are very attached to the Syrian nation and to the Alawites. So to see suddenly this conspiracy, this objective convergence, between discourses that apparently can no longer be opposed—ISIL and Western diplomacies—and the directives from Brussels, namely that nations must be abolished, and then also, there's the austerity side, puritanism, Protestant-tinged.
15:26 There's a culture there, it's very important, we always neglect it. You mustn't screw, you mustn't eat, you mustn't consume. That's also the puritan program, after all. Mustn't forget that. There's a supposed profligacy, well known, as if we were the grasshoppers. Which is nonsense anyway. And there you go. So, deciding that starting in the 1970s, there was the emergence of a liberal-libertarianism, that is, the opposite of daddy's repressive capitalism, of saving, of effort, of having and of hard-won gain, for the world we now live in, which is magnificently summed up by Clouscard's formula, which gave the DVD its title: everything is permitted, but nothing is possible.
16:13 And that's the trick played. Everything is permitted, but while signing on at the unemployment office, if you want it translated into plain French. Everything is permitted, but with a part-time job, where at the end of the month, doing the math, I'll get half the minimum welfare. There you go. And the trick is played. Why would we need to reduce consumption? It happens through constraint. You put people out of work, and there you are, you've got your degrowth, you've got it. The proof is what we're living through, since now we're threatened more by deflation than inflation, which I've never seen in 65 years. It used to be inflation we worried about.
Stability of the metric and sales figures 16:43 You're going to experience deflation. You didn't experience inflation, you'll get deflation. There's nothing worse, mind you. There's nothing inevitable in all this. When I knew Clouscard, Henri Lefebvre, who was his thesis supervisor, ran a seminar at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, at its annex near the Deux Magots, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the theme of integration.
17:26 Sociologically, let me explain, what was subversive at one time now becomes integrated as part of the establishment. A yogurt in a field. At a certain time, that was a surrealist audacity. The effect of discontinuity, of collage, as one might have said, a yogurt in a field. That was a modern painting. Now, any ad, any poster shows you a yogurt in a field. So, to demonstrate the power of integration, that wasn't a bad idea. That was Lefebvre's idea, it was quite a good theme. And so each of us gave a talk on how society integrates those who claimed to oppose it.
18:01 I spoke earlier about the Trotskyist Jostin, the Maoist Kessler. He had integrated himself so well into that society. And I was presenting like the others, I had just arrived there. Because I'd come late to Paris. I was in Abidjan. And I decided to do something on a field I know a bit better, or am a bit less ignorant of than the others, which was musical consumption. I specify, musical consumption. So, with measurements, not about my tastes.
18:31 And it's clear that when you take all the genres together, taking the genres from classic record-store shelves—classical, jazz, popular music, roughly speaking—you can refine the classifications further. Then you can add Latino, other things, whatever. In short, world music, an important genre I haven't set aside. I worked on it for 10 years at my center, with UNESCO's support. Anyway, so when you take those genres, you just need to do measurements.
19:02 We find that the level of sales is directly proportional to the stability of the metric—sorry, I'm not speaking in strictly musical terms, but it's easy to understand. I mean that as long as you can keep going like that all the way through, the piece doesn't move. It doesn't move. It can scream, Quentin, I don't know, Quanta, I forget, the singer, but anyway, I mean, the metric doesn't move. Once you've grasped the first measure of a rock song, you've grasped every measure.
19:32 —it had better not. There you go. Same in jazz. The swing, I suppose, the steady beat, etc. There you go. But be careful, this even includes, you'll understand, sorry, baroque music, which I call baroque, B-A-R-O-C-K, you're starting to understand why. But yes, it appeared at the same moment. We hadn't played that way in three centuries. I'd say, all of a sudden it comes back at the moment rock appeared. These things run deep, it's the world of the Marshall Plan. It's not deliberate, it's deeper.
20:02 than that—if it were deliberate, it wouldn't be as perfectly done, or undone. I mean, the pieces of music are on rails, as I call it. And whether I condemn them or approve of them isn't the question. But I will state my view, I don't refuse the debate. It depends what's layered on top. Because Bach has exactly that same metric. The metric doesn't move, you have to wait for Beethoven for the metric to start moving in music. You have to wait for the French Revolution. The great breaks are funny like that. The great upheavals, the industrial revolution, the political revolution. So before that, tida-tim, tantam, right to the end, the tempo doesn't move.
20:38 But Bach, layered on top, it's not scarcity there. He achieved a melodic and harmonic development of such complexity that it compensates for the metric monotony of his time. There's nothing missing. Jazz does exactly that. On the canvas of the blues, on the blues chords, the same ones found in rock'n'roll, rock'n'roll strictly speaking, or AC/DC, that kind of thing, on those chords, you'll find everything. Parker, or Gillespie, or Miles, they'll do solos, they'll enrich it melodically, because it would be repetitive like rock'n'roll to keep playing the same chords all the time. Once I saw rock musicians come and ask a jazz musician, can you show me how you play those chords?
21:12 Well yes, you see, there are two and a half chords in the whole history of rock. What am I telling you? And there you go, it's nice besides, I mean, it's good for dancing, festive, whatever you want, although—here's a little social and societal point, a small compliment to rock—it's that it includes anyone, because it's so easy that literally anyone can get onto the dance floor, so to speak. I'm not talking about rock'n'roll strictly speaking, which is much more complex. Have you noticed that when there's a couple who really know how to dance rock'n'roll, everyone watches them. 40 years on, it's curious, whereas one fashion chases out another every two years, you'd think there's a new kind of music, not at all.
21:45 That, that has never moved. Curious, isn't it? There you go, I have no stake in this. But the fundamental principle, still, is that one. It's that you can choose whatever metric you want, it needs to be compensated for, or conversely, if you have a very agitated metric, the rest shouldn't be too complex either, otherwise the music becomes imperceptible. Well, I don't want to be too abstract, but it's clear that in Beethoven, from time to time, there's a chord and nobody, no listener, however knowledgeable, can tell whether it's going to go left, right, forward or backward.
22:17 There's an unpredictability that comes with the era. Freedom has become central. There's no program that unfolds just like that. Bach's music, like Vivaldi's, they're different, but they share the same code. That's what I'm saying. It's not the same rhythmic reality, not the same metrics, except that Bach enriches the melody and the harmony on top of it incomparably more than Vivaldi. That's what makes individual differences. These are musics of a world, I won't even say of an era, that is, several centuries, where there was a place for everything and everything had its place. And you didn't move from it.
Celebrity music has killed popular musics 22:49 The guilds were made to block economic evolution—not to mention the peasants—nothing moved, practically until after the war. That's it. So, through these discussions with Clouscard, who doesn't know anything about it—I allow myself to say that because he was the first to say it himself, 'I don't know anything about it, you've thrown me in'—well, he didn't come from bourgeois culture. He brought me 100,000 times more than the little I pointed out to him about music. He told me, that comes right on time, I suspected as much. You see? And that's how it came to fertilize something, that's how the long chapter on the Sodo made its way into the Trilcodes.
23:21 In the capitalism of seduction, sorry. And it's that for something to sell quickly, you, him, anyone, has to memorize it as fast as possible. So, in the morning, I shave, I've already heard it six times without realizing it because I hear it on the radio in the morning or from any media. That's a well-made hit. And that's how people music came to kill popular musics. I really care about this. I care about it a lot because a popular music of meaning—again, it's like 'nature' earlier. Careful, this is the philosophy side, I'm sorry, but that's Socrates's trade, that's our specialty, questioning words.
23:56 We can't do anything about it. Namely, the relation of a people, of this people, as opposed to that one, just as there are flowers that only grow on a certain soil and not on another, or fruits or plants, etc. So, I mean, Hungarian popular music can't be the same as the popular music of the Amazonian Indians, etc. And not so long ago, within the regions of France, there was already a differentiation: in the southwest, it was rather the tango that was the most widespread popular dance.
24:29 In the northeast, it was rather the polka, the java, the accordion with the Belgians. And all these notions matter. Now, for the first time in the history of global music consumption—I'm being a bit solemn because it's not trivial after all—we listen to the same hits between 10pm and 2am in Rio, in Tokyo, in Abidjan, in San Francisco, in Paris, etc. It's unprecedented. So it's a music that has come to flatten the differentiation of popular musics.
24:59 It's quite the opposite. That's why I say—it's not to indulge in Anglo-Saxon jargon that I say 'people music.' People music has killed popular musics. It's a kind of play on words. But, on the other hand, it's true likewise of the notion of pop music, if you will, it's a sort of antiphrasis for me. There are two things to it. It seems to me there's domination through culture, but there's also uprooting, individualization, which caused the thing in parallel.
25:33 Absolutely. I'm not a conservative. I'm delighted that we no longer listen to grandpa's music. That's not the question. What I'm saying is that we're precisely at an impasse. Mass music hasn't evolved for 50 years. In terms of musical parameters. That is, you only have—the young people, I notice, only know one timbre, the amplified string. It could be an oboe, a clarinet, a flute, a horn. That's a richness passing them by. So, I'm for enriching the possibilities. You can do avant-garde with a horn, a clarinet, and with an electric guitar. I'm not against any timbre.
26:03 What matters is what the musician does. But who's questioned this timbre in 40 years? So, distortion, whatever you want, reverb, wah-wah, etc. But I mean, there it is. My kids, sorry, my kids, when I was project leader of this training and music promotion center in the poorest countries in the world, in Niger, the kids, at first, only knew Vanessa Paradis, Michael Jackson, etc. They knew nothing about traditional Nigerien popular musics, and that's normal. I mean, for them, that's their old folks' music.
26:33 I'm not condemning it. Just like the Breton woman who arrived at Gare Montparnasse to flee Breton poverty and turn to prostitution on Rue de la Gaîté—she doesn't want to hear about bagpipes and headdresses and such. That's understandable, wanting to turn her back on it a bit. But that's not it. They're caught in a trap. That is, when I made them discover what they're forbidden access to by this music, that's what I denounce most. They're in a kind of musical ghetto. Denied access to jazz, to classical music, well, to musics that move, that are enriched.
27:03 Or where there's music, they don't have plastic. They have the TGV. In a way, it was revelations. And some of them reconciled with traditional African musics that fascinate crowds in Europe, of course, and all the better, by taking this detour through jazz, through the classics. It's a profound journey. These are guys who had never seen a piano in their life because—it's a poor country—I wasn't going to charge them registration fees, it was symbolic. It was as if there was nothing at all. These were kids in Lyon that I had at the center.
27:35 And I chose it on purpose because I started from zero. That's what was good about this project. I didn't jump on a moving train. I opened it from zero with your money. The European Commission funded it. And so, I deliberately chose a neighborhood where white people didn't often come, a working-class area, etc., so that the kids, if they're from there, wouldn't be intimidated by the wealthy neighborhoods. It's very divided over there. I suspected as much. Where you have great poverty and wealth. So it's striking.
28:06 There was one kid, I remember. My piano arrived from France. Well, the boat trip is a bit long, etc. To get in, the door was locked because my girlfriend had left, she was packing food for a trip, and the door was locked. I didn't have the key. So, while waiting, I tap on the keys to see if it hadn't suffered too much during the trip. Oh, the kids. 'But where's the power coming from?' There's no outlet, no power, and it works. And it comes from Europe. That's not normal. For them, acoustic instruments are African, and electric instruments are white people's.
28:39 Isn't that interesting as an anecdote? It's fantastic, really. So, I told them, all the same, that the great history of great music is acoustic, and that neither Thelonious Monk nor Charlie Parker ever touched an amp, after all. Well. And that they are the most illustrious of their little brothers. And so I saw it in their eyes, something happened. Surprising, it's true that, well, for them, acoustic is a bit the old thing. And it comes from Europe, so it must be good. But how could the piano work without power?
What is to be done? Theory 29:19 I'll give the answer I gave to Friot. I'll raise the question at the Ebre tropic, so to speak. Because, the first response is to avoid it. 'What is to be done?' Implying, we've talked enough, we've done enough theory, now we need to get our hands dirty, no more head-scratching, in short, life is the opposition of theory and practice. Now, for the third time we recall the quote from—Sauré—what does Lenin say? Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary practice. What is to be done with theory? That's what's most lacking today.
29:49 In the sense, of course, of reflecting—well, theory isn't a book, it's not only in libraries, it's not doing the history of thinkers. It's starting from TF1, from Canal+, whatever, and reflecting—that's where, in the strict sense, I mean reflecting, saying, what are we actually saying? That's not coherent. Because that word—'nature' was saying that earlier, now it says the opposite—that's theoretical work. It hasn't changed since Socrates, since its birth, it's seeking what speaking means. That's important. Because that's where the social stakes lie.
30:21 Depending on whether I call a Syrian rebel a resistance fighter or a rebel, that already completely changes his profile. You can kill or, on the contrary, save, by changing a vocabulary, by transforming a vocabulary. Never have words been as rigged as they are now. And it's on this soil, this vagueness, that the far right flourishes. On this confusion. It's because in a way, I blame a great deal—irrationalist doctrine, I come back to Deleuze, Foucault, etc.
30:52 Not because I'm in love with the concept of clarity, I'm rather more of a nocturnal person myself. But, I mean, you need both, you have to be dialectical. But on the other hand, we've so privileged anti-reason, anti-rationalism, because it's obvious that reason is the gulag—this scheme, which is starting to take a bit of a hit with the economic crisis and the social crisis and what it reveals above all. Let me remind you that Foucault wrote a work in which he fervently defends pure and hard liberalism.
31:22 Afterward, he made us believe he was on the left. That matters a great deal. So, that's how I answer all of this: first, what is to be done, what to do with theory, but not theory in an elitist sense, not more head-scratching that would put off the guy at the Cahira in La Courneuve, or elsewhere, but simply, on the contrary, what's within everyone's reach: making the effort to have a theoretical distance from public speech.
31:57 Whether it's mediated, print press, spoken press, television, the internet, of course. And that seems to me the most important thing. Why is it that the same people—why is the nation-state an unbearable prison when it's Yugoslavia, fine, and when it's Ukraine, it's scandalous that Donetsk secedes, that's curious. Values reverse, it's a real mess, the worst kind. That's when all sides can trade places and that gives what's called red-brown.
32:29 Soral surfed on that, the red-brown thing. There's a point, point M between A and B, which is point M. So it partakes both of A and of B. You never quite know where you stand. Sometimes you get the impression 'more Marxist than Marine, you die.' I want to nationalize Alstom—white-red, soon she'll be denouncing unemployment caused by the European Commission. That's the Communist Party's program, right? Of course, she lets slip other things about her identity too, and those who pray in the streets and keep her from sleeping, or things like that.
33:02 But, in a way, the perversion lies in words. Now, that is, in a sense, liberating. For that, allow me to conclude on this point. Because anyone can do it. You don't need money, capital, or a powerful press organ—even if none of that hurts when you have it for a good cause. But that's resistance. And I'll finish on this, I'll conclude on the very figure of Socrates. We picture the little old man with the beard, etc. Socrates is someone who emerges, historically, when the city-state collapses. It's about to pass into the Empire.
Socrates, night watchman of the city 33:32 It's Alexander, then Caesar, Philip, then the son, Alexander, then the Roman Empire. Without going into detail, that ends the city-state everywhere. This single model of representation. Well, what does Socrates do? He goes down into the street and questions people, which is annoying. 'You're asking me? I only know that, and now I'm stammering. That's no good.' He asks a general what courage is, the man stammers. He asks an artist what beauty is, the other stammers. 'Beauty is the statue I made, there.' 'Yes, but it will crumble with time and it isn't beautiful.' 'Yes it is, that has nothing to do with the statue.' 'Yes, that's true.'
34:03 So there it is, it ends up being irritating. And above all, he's accused of corrupting the youth and of making people stop believing in the gods of the city. That's the basis of the charge at the trial, essentially. So there's an enormous misunderstanding. Socrates is the one who tells the city that it can still be saved. He's the night watchman. The owl of Minerva. You can see the twilight, the fading light. Well, he's the night watchman. It's as if a guy came to tell you, 'Hey buddy, wake up, the house is on fire,' and you shoot him because he's pulling you out of a delightful sleep.
34:35 That's what happened—the murder of Socrates. It's an image worth what it's worth, and that's the starting point. So, we need to start again with Socrates, putting politics back into immediate interpellation. And writing, in a way, for instance, as you know, if I were a specialist—it would rather be in Hegel, actually, than in Rousseau, but I don't like the word 'specialist.' Hegelian studies have never been in better shape. That's not our subject so I won't develop it. There are books, translations like there have never been. But it's all cushioned and confined within little university chapels.
35:08 'Ah, you're doing your thesis, so you should go see so-and-so because he knows about it.' It's a closed circle. We're far from Socrates, who never wrote a single line and who questioned people in the street. 'Tell me, you who know so well how to distinguish yourself at the battle of Marathon, what is courage?' 'Rather, what do you call it?' There. I'll end there.
