English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Announcement of the theme and the fund for the translation 0:00 What Clouscard is fighting is not desire, it's the ideology of desire. In ideology, there is logos. And not only does he not reject desire, but what he blames this ideology of desire for is reducing the infinity of your desire to cheap trinkets. The offer made by capital is cheap. Good evening everyone and welcome to 2023. I'm going to read you Marty's text, who is a new fellow traveler, if I may say so. And without any commentary, I'll simply read you his text, but judge for yourselves.
0:43 Hello Mr. Pagani, I'll get straight to it. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for introducing me to Clouscard. Thank you for thinking about music, something far too rare, and yet, as a 20-year-old, I can tell you we terribly need it. I made a donation of 5 euros for the translation. It is of course meant to add to the pool which, and I thank you, a significant number of you have already begun to contribute to, and we hope the flow won't dry up any time soon. Anyway, we have until June, we'll talk about it again.
1:21 Thank you a thousand times. So, there you have it, this young man, as a 20-year-old, I can tell you we terribly need it. I made a donation of 5 euros for the translation. My name is Marty and I say thank you. I need to make a comment. Yes, I'll make just one. I'm going to go to the other extreme. I learned today that we had received an enormous contribution, I won't say the amount, but it differs by a few zeros, coming to us from the other side of the world, from French-speaking Asia, to put it quickly, right?
1:57 Out of courtesy, for the one who expressed his generosity through this donation, for the translation into English of Clouscard's texts, I go, you see, from one—may Marty forgive me if I say a kid, but when I say that, it's admiring, right?—from a 20-year-old to a mature man who makes an enormous donation. Both move me deeply.
2:28 So, the only comment I wanted to make is that, if there are people who manage to extract 5 euros from their daily scarcity, that should encourage quite a few of us—I mean, of you, of us—and third parties you should talk to about it, so that we reach our 20,000 euros by the dawn of summer, so to speak, in June. There, I'm thinking of the broadcast on Le Précepteur's channel, where Charles Robin kindly devoted a long session to Clouscard's thought.
Tribute to Le Précepteur, state monopoly capitalism 3:05 And I won't sing its praises, because, myself, as I often say, being less creative than a transmitter, I'm all the more admiring of this technical achievement—not only that, you can feel there's real involvement—the clarity of this transmission, its progression from the simplest to the most complex, an excellent progression, and if there was Clouscard, it isn't an obvious thing to do. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to this channel and to its founder and host, whom I also greet, and to whom I wish a year at least better than all those that preceded it.
3:55 But I have only one fear—it's been years and years that I've worried about the misreadings one can make of Michel Clouscard's texts, which are simply of a complexity, or rather a richness. I mean, as soon as you go beyond split, immediate thinking, you can be understood in various ways and touch very different sensibilities.
4:26 And everyone knows that Clouscard has been used across the whole political spectrum, from one extreme to the other. And so, since Charles Robin had the excellent idea of beginning his presentation of Clouscardian thought by showing how important the concept of the ideology of desire was throughout Clouscard's body of work in general—even though it's in Le Capitalisme de la séduction that this theme bursts forth for the first time, with the importance we know—it remains that, while it's clear to a Charles Robin, clear to those who already have a certain theoretical, philosophical formation—not necessarily academic, even as an amateur, which is all the more to their credit—
5:14 But on the other hand, I warn against a misreading every time this theme of the ideology of desire in Clouscard is approached. Clouscard does not put desire on trial. One could believe it, if inattentive, that everything Charles Robin develops, with great coherence, is Clouscard's denunciation of this unbridled consumption in the name of desires by which postmodern capital—call it what you like—the capital which, in Clouscard's language, presupposes the stage of state monopoly capitalism already achieved, is no longer daddy's capitalism, right, where it was a matter of conquering the national market.
6:03 You know, there were several railway companies before the First World War. But once the national market is saturated and you move to exportation, the scale changes. And if you keep the ethic of daddy capitalism, of capitalism-as-daddy-knew-it, as you like, that is, work, effort, saving—the opposite of the ideology of desire—you arrive at what caused the most serious crisis in the history of capital until the one we're living through today, what is conventionally, and wrongly in my view, called overproduction.
6:43 And of course capital's intention at the start of the Cold War, at the end of the Second World War, when all of the United States' competitors were ruined by the greatest conflict between human beings in history, the bloodiest and also the most materially destructive. Whereas during that time, not a single brick of any house, any city, any state of the United States was so much as grazed by a single bullet.
7:18 And so much the better! I'm not going to rejoice that the United States suffered the sufferings of war. Especially since they know it's blood that was shed, but not on their own territory. I recall this to say that this colossal economic striking force which the United States possesses without any rival—look at the state Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, the countries that could have overshadowed it, were in in 1945—this striking force, had it taken up the ideology of daddy capitalism, of capitalism, CCL as Clouscard calls it, you know, those who know these texts well, competitive liberal capitalism, which he opposes to state monopoly capitalism, right?
8:07 That is, not the capitalist state, but the state that uses the state apparatus to divert it from the state, that is, from the general will of you and me, from the collective and common interest if you prefer, in order to divert it for private benefit, to vampirize the collective for the benefit of the private. That is one of the greatest secrets of the world we live in. I hope that by repeating it, it becomes a little less secret, but never hesitate to spread this distinction between the state and the state apparatus.
The ideology of desire: trinkets against Tristan 8:44 What Clouscard is fighting is not desire, it's the ideology of desire. In ideology, there is Logos. Now often people say it's the science of, geology, science of the Earth. No, it's discourse about the Earth, scientific discourse about it. But it's discourse about, word for word, I mean, you can very well say science of the Earth, it doesn't bother me at all. But if you take the etymology with its rigor, wherever there's the suffix -logy, that is, discourse about, in other words, once again, Clouscard is attacking a discourse about desire.
9:23 And not only does he not criticize desire, but what he blames this ideology of desire for—I'll take up the root logos, but this time with a term that makes one think more of diarrhea than of divine Logos, of logorrhea, right, which consists, especially from '68 onward, in knowing how to live, how is the expression, like pigs, something like that, I don't remember anymore.
9:55 In short, what Clouscard blames this logorrhea for is not being desiring, it's being too cheap when it comes to desire—forgive me for talking like many of my followers, for whom I have a great deal of affection, and among the most loyal. But I want first to insist on this distinction. What Clouscard blames today's capitalism for is that, faced with the infinity of your desire—the legitimate infinity, if I may put these two words together—
10:32 Otherwise, speaking of the one who dared to write "Treatise on Mad Love." How can there be a treatise? A treatise is somewhat systematic, mathematical, a treatise on unicellular organisms. No, a treatise on mad love. Treatise of Tristan and Iseult. In the same sense, what Clouscard blames the ideology of desire for is reducing the infinity of your desire to cheap trinkets, to this enormous supply, in response to this enormous demand that is yours—the offer made by capital is cheap.
11:15 It is infinitely inferior to, and falls short of, what you would be entitled to expect. And I just spoke of cheap trinkets. No, no, I'm not being insulting or vehement. I'm quoting Clouscard. Remember, most of you, I know, have already seen this broadcast which has become a cult program, I'm glad of it—Michel Clouscard's appearance on Apostrophes, with a Bernard Pivot who, moreover, plays fairly honestly when he tells him to explain himself better.
11:47 In short, who gives him a bit of a boost at times. Because Clouscard, for the moment, remained silent, he listened to the logorrhea of Séguéla too, who was in full euphoria, having just gotten Mitterrand elected, with his slogan, "the quiet force." And at this moment, progressively, Clouscard brings in class determinations. And then, all of a sudden, who would have believed it?
12:18 Séguéla explodes. Up until then, he had been strutting about, trying to make out he and Clouscard were together, we're all pals, we're all liberated people. And suddenly, anger, Séguéla. So, if I understood correctly, what you're proposing to us is the gulag. And at that moment, Clouscard says, there we go, back to fashionable chit-chat. The gulag, you're against desire, against passions, against dreams. And there Clouscard interrupts him and says, it's not the dream.
12:48 You heard that it was the dream. It's trinkets. And he adds, the dream is Tristan. Do you know it? How many angels passed by during the silence between Clouscard's question, Tristan, do you know it, Mr. Séguéla, and Séguéla's stammering as he moves on to something else, of course. So when I speak of cheap trinkets, it's to tell you, no, this isn't a trial of desire. It's a trial of the merchandise that capital puts in its shop window, on the market.
Clouscard is not a killjoy 13:24 It's a metaphor, and a metonymy at the same time, in response to your desire. So it would be a misreading to make Clouscard into a stern moralist railing against sin, as practically all religions denounce. Don't forget that as early as the Old Testament, even before the Gospels, the flood was already sent because we were wallowing in sin.
14:02 Sin is erotic and nutritive consumption, of riches, of appearances, of your clothes, of "maddening meats" as it's put in the New Testament, and of alcoholic drinks, etc. In short, already punishment by water, punishment by fire, Sodom and Gomorrah. You see, it's as old as the world to rail against this. The Church has always wallowed in debauchery along with the powers that be.
14:35 I say the Church with a capital C. There are admirable people, that happens. Well, I'm speaking statistically, we're in the human sciences. So, generally speaking, statistically, it wallows with those in power while forbidding the common people from doing a tenth of it. A king, a Henry VIII of England, could divorce and even withdraw from the papal Catholic religion. Isn't that so? From then on, the English called their religious adversaries the "papists."
15:06 Isn't that so? Because the Pope wasn't very keen for him to marry the fair Anne Boleyn and divorce, there you go. A king could divorce, but divorce was forbidden for the population. And it's enough to make people believe that it's the elites who consume, who push people to consume, while the common people, the vast majority of the population, the laboring populations, would supposedly be sober and ascetic.
15:39 no, come on, really? Thankfully peasant couples enjoyed themselves in the haystacks, far from the eyes of the village, from the curtains that get drawn, and the priest, and the patroness ladies. Thankfully, no, no, common people want to have pleasure too. I don't often say this. Still, look, if only at a Bruegel wedding, a Bruegel painting, look, look at that kind of desire, that desire for happiness.
16:22 And you think Clouscard is going to rail against that? Really, well, all right, I find—having practiced with him, having spent time with him day to day—I wouldn't need to make a long speech about it. I've rarely seen anyone as much of a bon vivant as him. I tell you, in every domain. There's the table, of course, but not only that—except, to lighten things up, I'll make you laugh, but it's authentic, except that he had a little, a seed of paranoia, I've told you, because there was even a thing he used to say.
16:54 And when we were at a restaurant, when there were several of us, he would say, I don't know if it's an effect of my paranoia, but I have the impression of always being the worst served at the restaurant. No, it would be the last straw if he deprived himself. He wasn't anxious about consuming too much, but rather about not consuming enough. There you go. And as soon as we were at a friend's who knew how to entertain, who had refinements and good food, and who was attentive to everyone's desires, a quality host, Clouscard would say, listen, a good house.
The dominant Protestant culture and its societal rigorism 17:28 Really, honestly, to make him into a stern moralist. There you go. It's obvious for someone like Charles Robin, but it lends itself to misreading because of a current developing within the dominant ideology, which I could sum up in one word—there's no way around it—as a declined ideology, namely puritanism, the dominant culture on the planet—I'm speaking of the dominant culture, you see, I made a small slip there, into dominant ideology, that's part of it, but ideology can express itself through different channels, and in particular through a certain culture.
18:10 The Protestant culture, given the power, the importance of the United States' grip on the economy, on war and peace on the planet, isn't that so? Even if, through what suffering, it's beginning to encounter some resistance and no doubt the horizon of a limit—forgive the pleonasm, since "horizon" comes from the Greek term "horos," which means determination, limit.
18:42 Where sight stops, right? One cannot insist too much on this theme at a time when this dominant ideology, this dominant culture, is nonetheless of Protestant origin. I have nothing against the Reformation. There are those who continue the original wars. There are those who are exasperated by the "parpaillots" [Huguenots], or the reverse.
19:14 There are those who think Catholics are all child molesters. In any case, that's what circulates in the Anglo-Saxon countries. You see, in the dispute between England and Ireland, between Anglican England and Catholic Ireland, it can get quite heated. Come on, let's not sink below the belt, but simply, there are admirable things in the immense movement initiated by Luther.
19:46 He was right to condemn simony, right to condemn the trade in sacraments. Yes, but there were people who went about, from courtyard to courtyard, selling you a rung of Jacob's ladder that he saw in a dream, or a feather fallen from the Archangel Gabriel when he made the Annunciation. That brought in money, these relics. So I'm not putting the Reformation on trial, I'm saying there's one aspect of the Reformation that is crucial, which is societal rigorism.
20:29 People will tell me that's the opposite of the consumption Clouscard denounces, the liberal-libertarian consumption. That's where you have to think dialectically. We're right at the heart of the debate. It's in England that you find the greatest eccentrics, the most admirable, the funniest ones anyway, that is, the most caste-bound country in the Western world. Caste-bound, I do mean caste, in the sense of India.
20:59 I can't cover every subject at once, but it will be enough, for those who aren't convinced or haven't sought to inform themselves on this theme, to watch the admirable cinematic masterpiece by Joseph Losey, an English director, called The Servant, right? It's the story of the relationship between a valet, English as can be, and his young lord, as they say over there, a golden-jacket type, we'd say here.
21:36 A young man from high society, right, who is so miserable when his servant goes on strike, because of the tension between the two of them, and he sees, after an evening, a party at his place, the ashes on the carpet, the mess—and since he's never done anything in his life, never tidied up his own mess with his own hands, only through the intermediary of the servant—you can guess that this film is perhaps the most striking illustration of the Hegelian dialectic of master and slave, and how the slave ends up making himself master of the master, since at a certain point—I won't tell you the ending—but anyway, halfway through the film, the young lord begs his servant to come back, not to leave him alone, to sell all these things that need doing around the house.
22:15 There you go. All that to tell you, there's a dialectic between puritanism and debauchery. A Rockefeller wouldn't eat for free in a restaurant or a cafeteria of his own company if he made a tour, an inspection—no, he paid for his steak. That's Protestantism, isn't it? But generally speaking, I'll finish, I'm finishing, this connection I'm drawing between the dominant culture at the global level—I'll sum up the essential—coming from Anglo-Saxon countries, that is, predominantly, the Nordic countries, predominantly—the whole south of Germany being Catholic, well, predominantly—evangelical, forgive me, I'm speaking German, evangelical, Anglican, Presbyterian, precisely insofar as there is no longer any central authority of the Church as there is among Catholics, in Rome—
Rigor over eros: everything is permitted, but nothing is possible 23:25 "Rome, the sole object of my resentment," Corneille—precisely, Protestantism favors the proliferation of sects. You see? It's important to see here that the rigor concerns mainly the societal domain, and eros in particular.
23:55 Before saying "but what does this have to do with liberated—" liberated. I note that the most fervent, the most fervent militants—that's not the word, it's not people who militate, militate, that's already a bit suspect, it's political, people who do politics without saying so, right? You know, Alain used to say, a man who says he's neither left nor right is necessarily on the right.
24:25 That would be easy to demonstrate. I do mean demonstrate, not argue at the level of opinion. Basically, if he doesn't do politics, it's because the current state of things—well, doesn't satisfy, especially the hymn, but that we can't do better. So I'm on the right. We can't do better than what exists now. So all change is useless, very quickly put. That's called logic, we're not in psychology or interpretation here.
24:56 So, the majority of those who are liberal, libertarian, exercise what censorship? None at all. They never seem to notice the deliquescence of morals, they never look at porn accessible to minors, at drugs, and above all, the worst of all, Nutella. I can't get over the fact that people made such a fuss about eating Nutella. It's really extraordinary, I mean. The poor should stay poor and not even have calories. Well, okay, maybe it's not good for obesity and all that, but I mean, give them a bit more income and they'll lose weight.
25:32 Do you see the paradox? But it's mainly about eros. I'm deliberately using a term a bit more extensive than libido. So, faced with the infinity of human desire, such as no theorist in the contemporary world has explored it, questioned it, dug into it, gone as deep into it as Clouscard does in the Treatise on Mad Love, across the whole span of that extraordinary work.
26:05 it is precisely the romance of Tristan and Iseult, the poem, whatever you want to call it, which from its own era had a success like an atomic bomb. There were continuations in Swedish, already in the Middle Ages, I don't know, reworkings, variants. It's that not only is he not against desire—because desire has never been raised to such a paroxysm as in the tale of Tristan—and that's what Wagner tried to convey to the point of madness in his music.
26:46 Parenthesis within parenthesis, Wagner sometimes complained about stagings, you know, that didn't do justice to the intensity of the score. And he said, after all, maybe it's just as well, because if Tristan were staged the way I dream of it, people would go mad. You see, when I speak of paroxysmal, I'm serious. So, to turn someone who analyzed, developed unprecedented analyses starting from historical materialism, on the myth or the romance—the poem, the myth is originally an oral poetry—of Tristan and Iseult, into a bogeyman, someone who says 'you mustn't screw, you mustn't'—that's really a falsification, and it's not just that, it's that it goes in the direction, I come back to this, I insist on it, of the guilt-tripping that has been going on for some time toward each and every one of you.
27:54 So, I may seem to be going in circles, since I haven't resolved the contradiction, but no, on the contrary: people are encouraged toward libido, toward debauchery, yes, while being told 'you mustn't throw that away, put your plastic in a separate bin, the car mustn't run over the toad crossing the road,' because of species extinction—you can guess that bourgeois feminism, political ecologism—again, I'm denouncing discourses, I'm not saying there's no environmental problem at all, no, we could very well take collective measures, which would require planning, the exact opposite of the world we live in, and the exact opposite of those who militate in green parties, who are all, you know, in favor of the market economy.
28:46 I'll point out to you that the most fervent supporters of the current war in Europe are the German Greens, whereas 70% of Germans—there were recent polls, very recent, look it up, never take my word for it, it's a matter of checking, quickly done—express their disagreement with over-arming the ukro-nazis. That's my own term for them, I'm not the only one, but I'll say the Germans—I'm not sure they call them ukro-nazis, but there you go. In any case, you see, we mustn't get this wrong: there's a puritanism on all fronts that doesn't run through the same channels, and it will tell you—and here you find Clouscard's key formula—everything is permitted, that's not puritan, yes, but nothing is possible.
29:38 It's not possible to say to a young woman, 'listen, you're lovely this morning'—because, in any case, you always want, as you like, but this blouse, this color suits you like never before—how dare you, 'you raped me.' Puritanism. Not a neo-puritanism, no, it's the return of the old puritanism, that of the churches, not of religion, you know? Pascal, whom no one can suspect of being an atheist, an anti-Christian, Pascal said, of all those bold sinners, they will be forgiven, but for the half-sinners, hell without restriction—Pascal.
30:21 And Clouscard—this is one of the very rare times I saw him quote Nietzsche approvingly. He liked that passage where Nietzsche speaks of Pascal, saying 'he flows in my blood.' And yes, even Nietzsche, the anti-Christian par excellence, the one who said either Christ or Zarathustra, 'aut Christus, aut Zarathustra,' even Nietzsche pays homage to a figure like Pascal, who here denounces the hypocrisy of this puritanism, you see?
31:00 Like Molière, his great contemporary, in the same era, denouncing, in Tartuffe, tartufferie—that's what Clouscard is denouncing. Yes, but still, wouldn't he be on the side of the environmentalists today, saying that we're forced to consume useless things?
There is no such thing as a consumer society 31:30 To this I refer to two different works, even if the theme comes up elsewhere too. I'm not interpreting him, I'm quoting him, where he keeps repeating this formula: there is no such thing as a consumer society. There are classes that consume, there are milieus where people consume—good for them. That doesn't bother me that they consume. What bothers me is that they can only consume insofar as others are prevented from doing so.
32:03 It's a completely different kind of trial. I'm not putting the other person's pleasure on trial, only my own. Let me make a small aside about the pleasure of the other. We had an exam in experimental psychology. At the time I was doing my philosophy degree. For people with a philosophical training, it was a bit funny to call 'philosophy' the business of watching rats run through mazes. It was interesting, though. I remember someone guiding us through it, a disciple of the behaviorists, of behavioral psychology, who told us: you see, we put a male rat in rut into a cell, and we expose him to the scent of other males.
32:51 Right? The desire of the other. Immediately, his libido drops until it almost goes out. As if he were deterred from going to coitus by the mere fact of having rivals. You see? No, no, I don't have that kind of hatred. I'm not worrying about the desire of the other. And besides, when I talk about myself, it's trivial. But anyway, that's not Clouscard's trial, I repeat. It's about what capital puts at the disposal of those who want to consume.
33:31 And so, I pick up again the quotation I had started from him. Yes, I mean these two works essentially: The Frivolous and the Serious, and Neo-Fascism, the Ideology of Desire. You see? Which comes after The Capitalism of Seduction. But somewhat in the same vein. He himself says, moreover, that this constitutes his triptych. And where he says: the consumer society, it doesn't exist. I have never seen a society that consumes. 'Society' is a global term. Take the dishwasher. Right now, there are thousands of Pakistani immigrants washing dishes in restaurants that are making a fortune.
34:08 And whom we glimpse like that, as an underground world, like a Nibelung, in The Rhinegold, I have seen milieus, classes that do not consume a consumer society. And he adds: but if anyone ever points out to me that there is a consumer society, tell me where it is, I'll run there right away, because that would be communism realized. And people want to make Clouscard out to be someone who condemns consumption, as if he were preaching, 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent.'
34:44 There you go. I wanted to insist on this theme as a complement to the Précepteur's broadcast, which of course fulfills its contract, as they say in bridge, by laying out very briefly the essence of a difficult body of thought that we are so little used to hearing through the mainstream media, that it took a considerable gift for synthesis to pull it off.
35:18 What I'm saying is meant as a complement, digging into this or that detail compared to another, in particular that of the trial—not of consumption, but of the ideology of desire. The way desire is filtered in the dominant discourse to the point of impoverishing it, to the point of producing—well, I'm not going to go back over my complaints about pop music that has done away with popular music, you know? Well, after all, when you get down to TikTok or the Shorts series, you know, cultures like that—I mean, capital can't sleep easy.
Reading of a member's text on Mai 68 35:58 But, it turns out, and this reassures me somewhat, that I'm not the only one worried about this possible misreading. And one of our most loyal members, I'm thinking of Sébastien Brunois, whom I want to pay tribute to, posted on his Facebook page—I recommend it for that reason—listen to it, I've done enough voice-over already, I won't start again, I'll read you his text, the text of his post.
36:40 I apologize, it's not to quote myself a second time, but he's kind enough to begin with a quote from yours truly: 'I'd rather be an old-fashioned progressive than a trendy reactionary.' Yes, it's true I said that some years ago, but if I had to reconsider it now—again, I'm wary of the misreadings one can make of a sentence that clear—I'd want to say: I'd rather play the role of the old-fashioned progressives, keep up appearances, that doesn't bother me on a personal level, than actually be, not merely in appearance, a trendy reactionary.
37:17 So certainly, and here Sébastien continues, certainly, Clouscard observed that the capitalist mode of production mutated at the end of the Second World War—I'll get to that later, when I mentioned it—when it moved from conquering the national market to conquering the world market, that it shifted from being repressive toward the producer and permissive toward the consumer; he observed that the student May '68—very specifically, Sébastien is not putting May '68 in general on trial, he has nothing against May '68, no more than Clouscard does, quite the opposite—the May '68 of the CGT, of the unions, of the acquired benefits of those who, having apparently never had serious material problems, reduced to a mess of pottage the contempt embedded in expressions like 'metro, work, sleep,' the mass of the rabble, as Voltaire puts it speaking of the majority of the population, the mass of the rabble
38:28 is only good for metro, work, sleep, you see. And while the unions and the CGT were leading the charge, taking advantage of the crisis of '68 to launch the biggest strike in the history of the French labor movement, probably the European one too, I know of no equivalent, ten million strikers, that's not something you find every day.
39:04 This decoupling from the student May '68—which is well identified here by Sébastien—which mainly had societal demands, you know, gender-related, ecological, whatever you like, and which, whenever properly social demands were raised—and I'm speaking to you at a time when our pension system is being given the finishing blow—
39:34 You'd almost believe that, after all, well, that's it, the social question has been settled since the Liberation, so now we can add the societal—sorry, one is being done at the expense of the other right now—this student May '68, whenever there was reference to genuinely social struggles, called them 'sectional' struggles.
40:04 Unemployment, wages, how flat! You see the contempt, and above all, how much it betrays a class origin—again, good for them, I'm not envious of wealth, I'm not for everyone being poor, but for everyone not having too many problems, you know, at that level. There you go, so let me look at Sébastien's text again, I don't know it by heart, but on the student topic, it promoted transgression at the level of mores, not in socio-economic relations, mores, whether concerning paternal authority, sexual liberation, drug use, including cannabis, or through rock music.
Sexual freedom did not wait for 68 40:55 You find here more or less entire chapters of The Capitalism of Seduction, if you look closely. Let me make a little aside here about sexual freedom, it's a bit much, you know. Sexual freedom has always existed, it didn't wait for '68. If you read Dangerous Liaisons in the eighteenth century, or the works of the Marquis de Sade, or the escapades—
41:29 sorry, I'm having a memory lapse, that's all I can think of, but The Marriage of Figaro, Count Almaviva, excuse me, who reigns over Seville, you know, Spanish nobility. Those people, puritanism—they transgressed it as much as they pleased. 'Ah, but that was reserved for an economic elite.'
42:00 I mentioned this earlier, you see, I'm trying to throw out overtones, because we don't have time to develop point by point, but you see, when I said that, still, those who used to frolic, luckily for them, in haystacks, they well deserved it between the gigantic efforts of harvest or sowing. Yes, those who dallied in the haystacks, lying in the hay with the sun as witness—that was a very popular song in the fifties, sung notably by Jean Sablon.
42:39 Those people acted against, you know, against the traditional morality that the Church jealously watched over. And it's curious, isn't it, that in today's era, when people talk about sexual liberation, what's new is that this link between the possession of wealth, of economic, financial assets, and—here we go again—sexual liberation, has extended to the middle strata.
43:20 Well yes, it's no longer the privilege of eras when there were only extremes, you know, a marquis at the top, and not even a working class yet, but the peasants, the majority, straining under their burden at the bottom. The top and the bottom here being, of course, metaphors. So, that's a small aside I wanted to make about May '68 supposedly having granted sexual liberation. In the end, men and women have nothing left to learn, neither women among themselves nor men among themselves for that matter, for the past 10,000 years.
43:51 What is there left for you to learn? Some people go around making a catalog of positions, I swear, but they're all known and practiced for 10,000 years. What do you want us to believe? So, there you go, tarataboom, sexual liberation, right? What matters is to see that whatever allows one to free oneself from the puritanical straitjacket is always tied to a certain level of wealth. So, thanks, thanks to the union struggles, the workers' struggles that made possible, before the war, the strikes of '36 with the first paid holidays.
44:28 And above all, in '46 and '47, our social security system, or what remains of it now, and our pay-as-you-go pension system—thankfully that allowed a first extension of wealth that had previously been the preserve of a very small number. And that made possible, yes, the generalization of a certain sexual liberation.
44:59 it wasn't '68 that decreed it. I'd even say—I won't repeat what I said earlier—that a certain bourgeois feminism, because I'm not attacking feminism, I'm not, say, that of the Malian woman. I won't dwell on it, but I'll never repeat enough that whatever is said here or there, among men as among women, among reactionaries or progressives, it doesn't matter. In any case, it's always the woman who suffers the most, all else being equal, in every class and at whatever level of the social ladder.
45:36 There you go. But bourgeois feminism, that's not it, is it? I simply remember that during the second-to-last big attacks on pensions, just before 2005, before the big movements of 2005, when the riot police were guarding the oil depots, it was tense, there were picket lines, there were clashes.
46:06 That very evening, I happened to be listening—well, I was listening to the news to find out how the social movement was developing—and I see Clémentine Autain pop up, saying that the only real opposition today is made up of immigrants, the—I forget which minority—the convicts, the immigrants, well, Foucault basically, all while calling herself a communist.
Nothing subversive left: enjoying without restraint 46:37 There, let me get back to Sébastien's text, we were at rock music. However, one must understand that he did not put the evolution of these mores on trial. He simply observes that, as a consequence, there is nothing subversive left in contesting paternal authority. There were people smoking joints around Michel Clouscard, with whom he was very close.
47:07 From time to time he'd take one, smell it like that, and say 'that must be good.' I'd even say, taking it a bit further—it's one of his most profound quips, and it's not just a quip, it's profound—when he said, about the drug problem, at a time when there were 10,000 articles a day about drugs, how to stop these addictions, how to save the young, this abyss—he said, 'the trouble with drugs is that it must be damn good.'
47:37 Full stop. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. So what Sébastien sees here is one of the hardest things to see, that's why I'm really, really touched that he took the time to post this developed piece. When he says, almost paraphrasing—although he never practiced it physically, given his young age, Sébastien—he's completely in step with a formula Clouscard often used: 'I'm not blaming you for what you do, I'm blaming you for not owning it as such.'
48:22 Right? Well, I smoke a joint, that doesn't make me the vanguard of the revolution. Do you think MEDEF trembles because I smoke a joint? You'd really have to be an idiot. That's what Clouscard says, and that's exactly what Sébastien sees very well here. That's why I'm dwelling on his text. It has the double advantage of restoring the complexity of Clouscard's thought—because I call 'complex' the fact of not being stuck in the little jingles of TV talk shows and mainstream water-cooler debates.
48:59 It has that advantage, and secondly, of being right in step. You get the feeling that for each paragraph of this post, you could attach one of Michel's formulas or quips. He simply observes that, as a consequence, there's nothing subversive left in contesting paternal authority, in having an unbridled sex life. How is that subversive?
49:29 There are people you run into in Paris wearing outfits some find outrageous. I say, but listen, Paris has seen worse for 2,000 years. People don't even notice them walking by in Paris. It's been a long time since, to astonish the Paris crowd, you'd need to get up very early. Have you never heard of the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses? That's what young men and young women were called under the Directory. There had been tense periods, you know—the Revolution, the revolutionary wars—and then, before Napoleon brought everyone into line for a while, there came a period of loosened morals.
50:09 Isn't that so? It's Nerval who says, speaking of the time when he went to the theater every evening in full courting attire, to quote him when he says: 'It was not the elegant, adorned vice of the Regency, the skepticism or the mad orgies of the Directory, you see?' Why am I talking about the Directory? Because, you know, young women had little mirrors on their shoes, like this, like that.
50:40 You could look down and tidy yourself up. Do you want me to go further? Saint Augustine! Of course! Saint Augustine, the Christian, the bishop! The bishop of Carthage, of Tunis, north of Tunis. The bishop of Hippo himself, in his Confessions, which are quite audacious, you know. You have to wait for Rousseau, more than 2000 years later, to find the equivalent. At one point, he recalls the time when he used to follow prostitutes in the street, right?
51:14 Just imagine that in the streets of Tunis, back then, they had already come out of the Ice Age a few thousand years before, and there was already quite a lot of sand — a bit less than now, but already quite a lot. And the prostitutes had letters engraved in relief on the soles of their shoes. So that in the sand, you'd see "Follow me, young man!" Yes indeed, follow me! No, not in English, of course. Right? Yes indeed!
51:44 And then there are some who say we had to wait for Cohn-Bendit, right? No, come on, let's be serious. Let's get back to Sébastien. He simply notes that as a consequence of this, there is nothing subversive left in challenging paternal authority, in having an unrestrained sexuality, taking drugs, or listening to rock. Just imagine how that makes stock markets crash, listening to rock. So the student uprising of May '68 is not, properly speaking, a revolution, but a counter-revolution.
52:15 Neo-capitalism is reactionary, but in a permissive way. That's the complex I was talking about earlier. A nice dialectic. Unlike the capitalist mode of production of old, this is a capitalism of unrestrained enjoyment. That's the expression I was looking for earlier. Thank you, Sébastien. To borrow the famous slogan of Daniel Cohn-Bendit. But enjoying yourself on unemployment benefits, smoking cannabis while listening to heavy metal, but on welfare — I should point out that heavy metal is the preferred music of skinheads who, with baseball bats, beat up a Mozambican student or one from sub-Saharan Africa generally, in a street in Berlin or Dresden.
52:59 I'm only talking about established facts. But enjoying yourself on unemployment benefits, smoking cannabis while listening to heavy metal, but on welfare. I come back to rock, by the way, I mean, when Vietnam was drowned under bombs — more bombs fell on Vietnam, and even more on Laos, than on all the battlefields of the Second World War combined. People always find that hard to believe. It's a tonnage that has been measured.
53:29 Let's check it out. It will soon be clear. The one down below, whose children's eyes were running down their cheeks because napalm had knocked them out of their sockets — what did it matter to him whether the guy at the controls up there was Black or white, gay or straight? What did that matter to him? What is certain is that this guy was listening to rock more often than to The Art of Fugue. There you go.
Know-how and making it known, critical mass 54:01 Statistically, check it anyway — that's the meaning of Clouscard's famous aphorism, everything is permitted, but nothing is possible. There, I wanted to read that, first to pay tribute to Sébastien's clear-sightedness here, and also, if I may, to encourage him to persevere on this fine path. So, I don't want to draw out this monologue indefinitely, having already paid a well-deserved tribute to the Précepteur channel and to Charles Robin, simply for having made the effort of getting the word out.
54:42 There are those who have know-how, and then there's making it known. The two are inseparable. Making known what the thought of this Clouscard consists of — a thinker people are talking about more and more, pulling him out of the incredible anonymity into which the dominant apparatus — and I'm not being paranoid here, it's more than obvious — had confined him.
55:14 I have a second tribute, a corollary tribute, but even more specific, if you will — not more important, but more precise — to the Précepteur channel, for having had the kindness, I would even say the solidarity, to agree, on the space of his channel, on his own video, to highlight the link to the fundraiser we're organizing to gather enough to translate — 20,000 euros, once we get there.
55:59 Clouscard into English. Thank you, Charles Robin, thank you Le Précepteur, thank you to the... the public... I'm trying not to say followers, the audience of Le Précepteur, there — I say that because I have too much respect for those who devote time to theoretical effort to consider them mere followers, which is literally what "followers" means.
56:36 Now, I know that the use of a word is not always tied to its etymology. So, well done and thank you, an immense thank you to the Précepteur channel, and I remind you that the translation of Clouscard's thought into English would allow us, would allow us to get somewhat closer to a critical mass.
57:09 I really care about this expression, because after all, the English-speaking world is not just England and the United States. That's already considerable. It's already all the Nordic countries — take any Swede, Norwegian, you speak English to them, it's like speaking Italian to a Corsican, or vice versa. But a Chinese student, if by chance he speaks a foreign language besides Chinese and Mandarin, there's a strong chance, an enormous chance, that it's English above all others.
57:48 So you see the considerable scope when I speak of critical mass, and it's not just that there would be even more people approaching Clouscard's thought, but people who are less subjected to the dominant ideology as we try to define it and clarify its determinations. There. And you've understood well that I'm telling you not only to put your hand in your pocket, but to solicit as much goodwill as possible to do the same.
58:22 I wish you a happy new year again, and I'll also say see you soon, because this is our first broadcast of 2023. It's not the last. Thank you a thousand times, and see you very soon.
