Press room

You were one of the creators of the term post-industrial society. Today we speak of the information and knowledge society, and even the network society. There is also talk of the strategic importance of creativity and innovation as a driving force of the transformation of industries in the network society. What do you think of the changes that the term post-industrial society has undergone these days? And of the relevance of these subjects related to creativity and innovation?

We are right to prioritise the most positive aspects of the changes that we are experiencing, but today we also have also wars, hunger, civil violence, etc. We have to think of other aspects that are important: people who emigrate, industries that close down, social exclusion in the rich countries. Some 40-50% of the population lives outside all of this development that we talk about: outside the politics, the culture and the mechanisms of creativity and innovation associated with industries.

We should not imagine a world that steadily progresses from agriculture to industry with qualification and that reaches creativity as though it were reaching the pinnacle. It may prove to be ingenuous and dangerous. Now, what is the present situation, how could it be defined? Evidently, it could be defined in sociological terms, up to a point, even in economic terms. But I prefer to do it another way. I'm not saying that these aspects don't occur, but it is another type of focus that I would like to favour. It may be a complementary subject: what to me seems to be the most structural aspect, the one with most impact, with most consequences, is a movement of human activity inwards. We began with the outward movement: agriculture, industry, war, conquering the world and beyond, the adventurous spirit and the far west… I am talking of the Europeans who conquered the world: the world of knowledge, the geographical world, the financial world, etc.

But I think that the whole world agrees in that the whole post-industrial society thing was a very dangerous vision: for example, it is as though we were to say that we're leaving this hotel where we are now without knowing where we're going. It would be better if they could tell me that we're going to the Gothic Quarter or to Tibidabo. At the time, people like Manuel Castells said: "I'm going to speak to you of communication, information, negotiation…". Without a doubt, that is much better, but they did it 20 years after we spoke of post-industrial. The evolution that we are experiencing today seems to me to be the most important of all the ones that we have experienced. But more and more, what is important is not the control of the outside world, but the ability to invent, to create, to act on ourselves, to control our behaviour, to know our languages better, to know the networks better, the effects of others… I don't know, I think that what we are witnessing after the industrial society is this: we are going from a society of tools to a society of language or of networks or any other thing, but always more or less directly related to language.

Would this then be what would characterise today's man and civilisations?

Yes, what characterises today's man and civilisations is the ability to address oneself, what characterises our world is reflexiveness. A term that comes from sociologist Anthony Giddens. We are acting in a world produced by us, we aren't discovering nature as in the eighteenth century, we're standing on a land of cement, built by us, with a map organised or designed by others. This for me is the fundamental idea. There are people who say: "We've gone from a religious world to a rationalised world, of rationalisation, secularisation, from an affective world to an instrumental world." I completely disagree with this vision, which in some way is used by the people from the Frankfurt school. I don't think it is that simple. The fundamental phenomenon that occurs is that of the internalisation of all the principles that used to go outwards: God, history, nature, the classless society, the society of abundance… anything. And we are now going through a society that is much more than post-industrial, more than its technologies. It is true to say that it is not a question of giving a definition without incorporating these aspects, but we are entering a world in which we are talking with ourselves more than doing any other thing, with words that are a little different. If one says that there are relationships with the outside world, relationships with other human beings but social or interpersonal beings…

Are we referring to the central role of the modes of production of subjectivity?

That's right and when you refer to creativity, I prefer the current expression "Subjectivation process creation". I speak a lot of subjectivation, which is reason, not subjectivity. I did not create that expression, in fact it was used quite a lot by Michel Foucault. Today, everyone claims to be utopian, saying that in this world – a world of machines and now a world of networks and of communications signals – man is lost… No! I would say that on the contrary: what we are experiencing is globalisation and communications. These indicate that the sense, the meaning of a situation, technique or conduct are separated from the world of techniques, from the world of communication, expression, production, consumption, etc.

That is to some extent the sensation that I had and that I have much more now. My social itinerary began right in the middle of the industrial society, my life ending up completely outside that society. It was very difficult for me to get out of that world, of technique, of social movements, of a vision of the society of the future, etc. Getting out of that, getting out of this reference framework and discovering that the workings of the individual, of the group, of society is organised around entirely different principles, not focused on the object but on the subject. I'm not saying that it's more or less difficult to study from communication, from transformation, principles of evaluation; both things are difficult, they need time and documents…

Little by little, from the start, but not before the final phase of my work, I tried to get out of a world without falling into a type of extreme optimism or pessimism. We're not talking of the change of society but the change of social thought, the instrument for studying social changes and then conclude, confirm. Evidently, one cannot study or understand a renewed or transformed situation without reasoning the instruments of analysis. Here, I insist a lot that it was done through immense difficulties: because during the last half a century, this objectivism was defended a great deal through post-Marxism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, the most important thing that occurred was not a post-Marxism but a post-Nietzscheism that was the opposite of the whole system of social, moral, etc. control. Always returning to the interior from the exterior but without giving this interior a structure that could explain what can be attempted to be done, created.

And does this mean a change of the social agents?

There was no longer any reference to industrial society, to capital, to class struggle. But it is difficult today to see industrial society with its actors; it disappeared when the Soviet system swallowed up trades unionism and the workers' world. You were in the wake of another type of animal in those days… To refer to another date that is politically fundamental, whereas in 1947, when Europe was divided, when everything of the workers, of trades unions disappeared, there is obviously a positive transformation, in 1989, but as I have identified myself quite a lot with Poland, I would even say in 1981 with Solidarnosc… Basically, the fall of the wall was the fall of a system of control of thought. This unfortunately didn't last long because in 2001, 11 September shows the importance of the world of war. There is never a long period of good times.

Little by little, especially between the 1980s and the start of the twenty-first century, we started to see something that indicates that a new society is going to develop in spite of war, of religious struggles, etc. But we are already in another period, I know this fairly well because in my life I spoke, instead of about situations or social classes, I spoke of actors, and I didn't speak about interior crises but of social movements, and finally I spoke and I speak about subject. But this idea that we are living in a moral system, the definition of what it loses or what it marks out, after all this subject of social sciences, which doesn't match nationalisation and utilitarianism, etc., but that in this world with mass communication, with all types of transport, our basic problem is that we cannot support ourselves on the future, the past, up, down… So the only thing that helps guide us is our presence, ourselves. One is lost from sight, there is a series of incidents, of experience of separate lives…

What is fundamental for us, as we cannot find support outside, is to find a support, a legitimisation of us in ourselves, and this can be said using the most known, most traditional expression, but which was done away with for 150 years, which is the expression of the right of man. To use this expression: it is the human being who has the right to have rights. I would say that there is a doubling up, to say it a little more pretentiously. The human being has the need to live in an empirical world but also with a view to a symbolic world, and for that reason in the symbolic, religious, aesthetic world, they express not only the shadow of themselves but the light of themselves, which makes sense of their action, which permits a definition of rights, then a definition of success, defeat, power doesn't matter… This type of dialogue with oneself of which I find a huge amount in the world of women today, in the post-civilisation world, appears to me to be the most important thing and I do not want to separate this objectivation from the production of communication, etc. From this re-interiorisation, if they want to see it like this, is the resubjectivisation, subjectivation in fact.

What do you think of the way in which we speak today of the crisis of representative democracy and of its revitalisation towards a more participative democracy?

Some time ago, 30 years more or less, at a sociology congress in Sweden, I presented a work that was entitled "How can the idea of society be undone". People took it as a joke. Everyone in international society is more or less in agreement with me. About the crisis of democracy… it's more than a crisis! There's a crisis of the city, of the school, of justice or of the family. For at least 10 years I've been using the expression of the end of social. We are living in a world without social categories; there are objective, technological and, let us say, moral objectives, in this original sense of the word. This is why we should combine two things, and perhaps I do it in a very traditional way: first everything that is a principle of unity of integration of everything – which is the most dangerous that there is and that is why it is the principle of totalitarianisms – then we have to make possible a rather English way in the style of a directive democracy, let us say, that limits subjectivity and the objectivity so that it can leave a space that I call the space of politics. That free space in which different variables are managed to be combined in the least dangerous or most positive way possible.

For example, the word "democracy" was always obscure by the central image in the west of democracy (Hobbes, Rousseau). There is a fundamental agreement: the city triumphs, the common good prevails. I am horrified by that as it is exactly the opposite to what we call "democratic", because precisely what is important is to defend the individual as a technologist, as etc., against any type of predominant logic, of power, of business, of the conciliation system, of the globalisation cycle, it doesn't matter… Maintaining a space under control of the subjectivity discussed, let us say prepared, observed, uncovered of individuals and groups.

 

There is a crisis of a representative democracy. For what reason? For the simplest reason. It isn't because the parties are not representative, it's because the social classes are no longer representable. We talk of the working class, but where is this working class? The working class no longer exists. There is a real situation: this doesn't exist. Or faith in the country? Then there is a definitive insufficiency. In other words, we have to forget old categories. There has been much talk, as in Porto Alegre, of a participative democracy. It is a limited thing. Why? Because it is still a consumption-type phenomenon or process: people want to spend enough money to build a hospital, a school or a road. People devote part of the city's budget to build this.

We have to create favourable conditions for becoming aware, in the free expression, of that demon or God that there is in all of us. The ability to formulate, express, organise, defend the rights. I would say that what is important is, and I'm going to be very traditional here, to recognise that in every individual or group there are universal elements and references; there is something above equality or justice between beings, between groups. There is, and that for me is the only basis of a real fight, the equality of the rights to have a right.

What do you think that the role of a university in this new situation may be?

A short while ago at a meeting that I had with some university lecturers, someone said that we had to be aware that not only the European universities are dying but even the best universities in America are disappearing. The university is an institution that will disappear because the fundamental trend of all universities today is to format, specialise and professionalise, etc.

I remember that we once organised a seminar in the school of social studies, and a journalist came along and asked the organisers: but how do you define yourselves? Sociologist, historian, philosopher… What does it matter? A student cannot develop intellectually if, for example, they study on a highly specialised Master's in Equity Companies or the History of the Middle Ages in Tunisia. In our new university system, the question is not just to advocate an opening-up but also to permit the possibility of the learning itinerary of a student who goes from Paris to Rotterdam or to London, or Cologne or Oxford.

Today there is more mobility and I love that. It is the ability to invent oneself, to handle several languages, to handle several cultural experiences… I believe in that type of moral vision, of applied politics. It isn't that I want the main thing to be the diversification of experiences, but I do want to create the conditions through which an individual can create through their own individuality. And individuality is not created without reference to universalising factors.