Michel Clouscard

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Michel Clouscard (born August 6, 1928 in Montpinier , † February 21, 2009 in Gaillac ) was a French sociologist , philosopher and political intellectual . He was close to the French Communist Party .

Clouscard was Professor of Sociology at the University of Poitiers from 1975 to 1990 . He retired to Gaillac to write his other work, some of which remained unpublished. He died in the aftermath of Parkinson's disease .

Life

youth

Michel Clouscard was the second child of the carpenter Jules Clouscard (1896–1968) and the teacher Myrène Clouscard (1897–1988), née Gaston, who separated in 1932 without divorce. After struggling with difficulties in elementary school - he and his older brother Jean (1924-2003) grew up without paternal assistance - he passed his literary A-levels in 1948.

As a teenager he did athletics in the Club Union Athlétique Gaillacoise. In 1947/48 he was one of the best French short distance runners. Because the school requirements could hardly be reconciled with competitive sport, he could not qualify for the 1948 Olympic Games in London . He processed this experience in his diploma thesis, published in 1962, entitled The Social Functions of Sport .

The years of college education

Michel Clouscard enrolled at the literary and social science faculty in Toulouse in 1948 and passed his philosophy diploma ( License ) in 1952 . During his studies he heard lectures from Ignace Meyerson, who worked as an interdisciplinary and social science psychologist, and Georges Bastide, whose secular and republican ethics inspired him. With Georges Gurvitch he wrote his diploma thesis on the subject of sport and adopted its methodical attitude of "dialectical hyper-empiricism". Gurvitch initially took over the supervision of his doctoral thesis, but had to give it up for health reasons. Henri Lefebvre took over the guidance of his doctoral thesis, which he defended in 1971 and which appeared in 1972 under the title L'Être et le Code .

plant

In his main work L'Être et le Code , Clouscard drew a parallel between the Ancien Régime and the present. Then, as now, the intelligentsia obey the business elite. Clouscard denounced the Freudo Marxists, who see the consumption provided by capitalism as a liberation, although the relations of production have not been changed. He called this convergence "libertarian liberalism". He also examined the social contradictions between production and consumption. The elite take up the main share of the "frivolous" without producing, while the lower classes exploited themselves in order to have access to a minimal frivolous consumption.

His work draws on the positions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Friedrich Hegel and Marx, which he seeks to combine. Clouscard added an anthropology of capitalism to the Marxist analysis . In his work Rousseau or Sartre, Von der Moderne , his philosophical research focused on the idea of ​​the social contract , favoring Rousseau over the neo-Kantian Jean-Paul Sartre .

He was a critic of social democracy , which he considered part of the new capitalism of the consumer goods industry. At the same time, he clearly distinguished himself from Stalinism because he developed the conceptual basis for a political philosophy of democratic self-determination. Among other things, he proposed the introduction of a fourth power: the “Parliament of the Collective Workers”. This philosophy of practice should, through education and training, produce a society characterized by internationalism, participation and overcoming capitalism.

reception

Jean-Paul Sartre praised L'Être et le Code , despite the sharp criticism of Husserl and himself.

Michel Houellebecq's novel Extension du domaine de la lutte (expansion of the combat zone) presents an analysis of the social relationship between men and women from the perspective of liberalism, similar to Michel Clouscard's concepts, although Houellebecq mixes liberal with conservative views.

Although Clouscard is the most important reference for Alain Soral , the former has clearly and publicly demarcated itself from the political work of the latter in an article entitled Aux antipodes de ma pensée (In stark contrast to my thinking). The title is actually directed against Le Pen . Soral had written a foreword to Clouscard's book Néo-faschisme et idéologie du désir (Neofascism and Ideology of Desire) in 1999, several years before he joined the Central Committee of the National Front .

Publications

  • L'Être et le Code, Editions Mouton, 1972; reissued: L'Harmattan, 2004, ISBN 978-2-7475-5530-2
  • Néo-fascisme et idéologie du désir, 1973; reissued: Le Castor Astral, 1999; reissued: Delga, 2008, ISBN 978-2-915854-10-7
  • Le Frivole et le Sérieux, Albin Michel, 1978; reissued: Delga, 2010, ISBN 978-2-915854-20-6
  • Le Capitalisme de la séduction - Critique de la social-démocratie, Éditions sociales 1981, reissued: Delga, 2006, ISBN 978-2-209-05457-2
  • La Bête sauvage, Métamorphose de la société capitaliste et stratégie, Éditions sociales, 1983
  • De la Modernité: Rousseau ou Sartre, Éditions sociales, 1985
  • Newly published under the title: Critique du libéralisme libertaire, généalogie de la contre-révolution, Éditions Delga, 2005, ISBN 2-915854-01-7
  • Les Dégâts de la pratique libérale ou les métamorphoses de la société française, Nouvelles Éditions du Pavillon, 1987
  • Traité de l'amour fou. Genèse de l'Occident, Scandéditions-Éditions sociales, 1993, ISBN 978-2-209-06862-3
  • Les Métamorphoses de la lutte des classes, Le Temps des Cerises, 1996, ISBN 978-2-84109-071-6
  • Refondation progressiste face à la contre-révolution libérale, Éditions L'Harmattan, 2003, ISBN 978-2-7475-5307-0
  • La production de l '"individu", Delga, 2011, ISBN 978-2-915854-27-5

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ His best times: 11.1 s in the 100-meter run (the French champion Valmy achieved 10.9 s) and 22.8 s in the 200-meter run (the French champion Litaudon achieved 21.9 s)
  2. ↑ according to his fellow student Jean-Marc Gabaude
  3. ^ As Les fonctions sociales du sport in: Cahiers internationaux de sociologie , June 1962, No. 33
  4. ↑ Les Métamorphoses de la lutte des classes, Paris, Le Temps des Cerises, p. 15
  5. ^ Letter, presented to the jury by Jean-Paul Sartre and read by M. Lefebvre in 1972, in the archive of the Association pour Michel Clouscard
  6. ↑ See in particular L'Être et le Code , Introduction, De la critique de l'épistémologie bourgeoise à la raison dialectique, Paris, L'Harmattan, pp. 7-18
  7. ^ "  Aux antipodes de ma pensée  " [archive], L'Humanité, 30 mars 2007
personal data
SURNAME Clouscard, Michel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French political thinker
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Montpinier ( Tarn )
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 2009
Place of death Gaillac (Tarn)