P_Rosanvallon

 source: Philosophie magazine

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

Pierre Rosanvallon: “These are the emotions that today structure our commonalities”

Pierre Rosanvallon , interview by Charles Perragin published onAugust 26, 2021

In a world where class identities are losing their centrality in 

describing what is happening in the street, Pierre 

Rosanvallon offers new sociological constructs, more attentive to the 

subjective and emotional dimension of our lives. His new essay, 

The Trials of Life (Seuil, 2021), is an outline of sociological of this

reconceptualization.

You start from an observation: we no longer understand the social world. 

Why is that?

Pierre Rosanvallon: For the past twenty years, political parties have been in decline, 

as has unionism. The old right-left dichotomy and its polarities (exploiters 

versus exploited, order versus justice, interests versus values, etc.) no longer 

have the capacity to produce ideologies that channel the conflicts running 

through our society. This is nothing new. We know it but we have no answers. 

We say that society is becoming more individualized, that political parties are no longer 

well-adapted, we criticize the nature of institutions. But for the past four years, it is 

the social movements themselves that we no longer understand. The “gilets

jaunes” appeared as a sociological enigma. While workers and employees 

dominated their number, there was also a third made up of craftsmen, merchants, business 

leaders, intermediaries, managers and members of the higher intellectual professions. 

Inequalities have never been greater, and yet we realize that the traditional conceptualization 

of society in terms of class conflict is no longer sufficient to understand what is 

playing out on the streets.

You are proposing this concept of “life-hardships”(épreuves). What is this about ?

It is a question of re-assessing the subjective dimension of the social world, what 

is most sensitive and closest in the lives of individuals. We are no longer 

describable numbers and statistics. If we reduce what we call the popular 

classes to a criterion of income, we miss a large part of the lived reality, such as 

harassment, for example. More generally, if we analyze society from the echo of 

its various publications, we can  see clearly that  works on influence, 

harassment or sexual violence have a new centrality (think of the Metoo 

movement) which escapes sociological description. We have the objectivity of 

social statistics but we lack a whole emotional mapping.

What mapping do you offer?

First of all, there are existential trials, those which question the integrity of 

individuals, their identity. It is the personality violated, denied, reified, 

exploded, as in cases of moral or sexual harassment.This dimension is today the 

most described and the most perceived with a very important literature of 

testimonies. Then there are the trials of the alteration of the ideal of equality. 

Here we find experiences of contempt. Historically, contempt has made it possible 

to maintain a distance between categories of populations in reaction to the 

advent of an egalitarian society. This dynamic of distinction has only widened 

and become more democratic to the point of becoming a system.Contempt from 

distinction (especially between the economic and intellectual elites), contempt 

from class, then contempt from condescension which spreads throughout the social 

structure. These are, for example, young people preparing for a vocational 

baccalaureate who may feel looked down on by students following the general 

course in high school, or a construction laborer regarded with disdain by a 

professional worker or a machine operator. Finally, there is contempt from

indifference, the ordeal of the "invisible", this parallel world of subordinates 

withdrawn from the recognition of others. It is this ordeal, characterized by 

anger, resentment, humiliation that brought together the "yellow vests", much 

more than the consideration of factual inequalities, which are nevertheless very 

well documented.

“We doomed inequalities while 

legitimizing them. We are outraged by 

inequalities, but it is the personal 

injury caused by the ordeal of injustice 

that throws us into the street ”

Pierre Rosanvallon

What other trials does the alteration of the ideal of equality go through?

There are trials of discrimination. It is theBlack Lives Mattermovement , the 

denunciation of control by appearance or even all the demonstrations against colonial 

heritage. Finally, there are the trials of injustice. As I wrote in The Society of 

Equals[Seuil, 2011], knowledge of inequalities has not generated social 

movements to correct them and has not been translated into the political field. 

Already at the start of the 2010s, 90% of French people considered it necessary 

to reduce income gaps but  57% of them simultaneously considered that 

inequalities were the inevitable price to pay for an economy to be dynamic, 85% 

even consider that the differences in income are acceptable when they reward 

individual merit. We denounce  inequalities while legitimizing them. We are 

outraged by inequalities, but it is the personal injury caused by the ordeal of 

injustice that throws us into the streets. I am talking, for example, of situational 

injustices relating to the apprehension of (general) rules accused of not taking 

into account (particular) situations. This is the case of farmers protesting against 

a ban on pesticides that they consider to be included in a schedule that does not 

take sufficient account of their practical conditions. It is the 

expectation of a power attentive to the specificities of individuals and the 

rejection of the purely statistical visions of public decision-makers. The anger 

against taxing gasoline or limiting the speed to 80 km / h comes from there. 

Finally, there is the last category: the trials of uncertainty causing  feelings of 

mistrust or anxiety that we find in the marches for the climate as in the protest 

against the pension reform.

“With the 'anti-passports' movements, it is 

communities of anger that are 

expressed. It is a negative cement 

impossible to translate politically as it 

is, but a coming-together all the same ”

Pierre Rosanvallon

What type of ordeal do you associate with “sanitary passports” today?

It is the uncertainty associated with distrust of political and scientific 

institutions. Once again, it is evident here that we have no sociological criteria 

to characterize these outbursts. Behind the analysis of the experiences, I show in 

fact that it is the emotions which today structure commonalitiess. And no longer the 

doctrines, ideas or class interests carried by political parties or representations 

in general. Here, there are communities of “anti-Macron” anger, of anxiety. It is 

a negative cement impossible to translate politically as it is, but a coming-together all the 

same.

“Injustice is no longer evaluated in a 

class relation but in a relation of oneself 

to the world.Indignation is no longer a 

matter of statistics, it is a reaction to 

the trials we are going through, here 

and now ”

Pierre Rosanvallon

Where does this centrality of emotions come from? Is it the disintegration 

of the strength of parties as ideas that makes us live in a world more 

structured by emotions?

I do not think so. The disintegration of an institution or of a representation is 

only the expression of a deeper mutation of our societies which is the passage 

from an individualism of universality to an individualism of singularity. Let me 

explain: the great history of European modernity is that each individual became 

more free by being a figure of the collective. Take the case of being working class 

until the end of the XX th century: being a member of the working class,  was 

an assimilation of lifestyles, in neighborhoods, in a culture with its clothes, its 

language and its songs, to a story on which the proletariat, represented and 

stronger politically, thought to write a new page in the history of 

humanity.Being part of a community enriched you, gave you more consistency 

and pride. But, gradually, we passed to an individualism of singularity.From a 

certain level of development of societies, everyone is inclined to think that they 

can themselves be the source of their personal construction. And it is the 

perception of the world that comes out changed. Injustice is no longer evaluated 

in a class relation but in a relation of oneself to the world. Indignation is no 

longer a matter of statistics, it is a reaction to the trials we are going through, 

here and now.

You say that the language of experiencess could found a new internationalism. Could 

you explain ?

I was struck by a text, “The names of Fridays. Egypt, Syria, Yemen ”, published 

in L'Esprit de la revolte. Archives and news of the Arab revolutions (collective, 

Seuil, 2020). It concerned the language of the Arab revolutions, the slogans that 

were found in the demonstrations, the banners. In Syria, the first demonstrations 

against the regime were thus called “Fridays of dignity, pride or men of honor”. 

These talked about humiliation, contempt, respect. Whether in the Arab world, 

Africa, Asia or Europe, it is the arrogance of the powerful, the corruption of 

governments and the denial of rights that most often take men and women to the 

streets. The language of experiences constitutes a common one between 

different countries. But hey… Above all internationalism, we need to redefine 

the way in which we can conduct major sociological surveys. Put new 

instruments in place. I open a way.When we understand that society has changed 

and that we have new categories of analysis, it will finally remain to be seen to 

what extent all this can transform the way we do politics.