What Does

C 1
The questions to be discussed here coincide with some of my earliest C
R R
I interests, but I believe I can also ensure that they have an objective I
S importance in a conjuncture that is critical for the forms of knowledge S
I I
S that are gathered together under the name of “the social sciences and S

Theory Become?
&
the humanities,” and for the institutions that host them. Of course, this &
relationship is circular. However, in the title of the conference that brings
C C
R us together each term—and especially their conjunction—presents a R
I problem. This is why we can begin by considering the reasons adduced I
T T

The Humanities,
I in the text that was circulating semi-officially within the university in I
Q preparation for this conference, and which, I understand, gave rise to Q
U U
E a certain number of reactions—some of them quite lively. 2 To write the E
following is to say either too much or too little: “it was long believed
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that there exists a crisis in the social sciences and the humanities. After

Politics, and
3 3
1970, the Marxist or structuralist paradigms crumbled in the face of the
reality of the concrete subject they did not manage to explain; and it
was thought that other disciplines like economics or biology allowed
for a better understanding of the human fact in its two dimensions of

Philosophy (1970-
generality and singularity . . . .” Everything in this passage presents
a problem: the singular of each term, the different uses of “or”
(inclusive? exclusive?), the comparison of “paradigm” and “discipline,”
which could suggest a strong but risky epistemological thesis: the

2010): Reflections
disciplines between which we “distribute” what are sometimes called
“the humanities,” sometimes the “social sciences,” are in fact nothing
but explanatory, hermeneutical, or pragmatic “paradigms,” or else are
entirely supported by such paradigms. So that when the latter falter,3

and Propositions 1 1 A paper presented at the Seminar of Humanities & Social Sciences, December 16-17, 2010,
Université de Paris Ouest.

2 I later learned about the text published in Liberation on 16/12/2010 by a “collective of teachers and
researchers of Nanterre” entitled “The Conference Taken at Its Word”, which in particular included
the following formulations: “Social sciences and humanities. Despite the quality of the speakers,
this category which long ago provoked so many controversies, and produced so much critical energy,
consists here of an eclectic catalogue in which dominate two partisan positions that are presented as
unavoidable, as natural as the air we breathe. On the one hand, the old story of “the crumbling of the
structuralist and Marxist paradigm” (in the singular), ignoring their rich extensions and their theoretical
renewal in the global intellectual space. On the other hand, by way of common ground, of a positivism

Étienne Balibar
with a new look, some of the speakers mentioned the “cognitive paradigm”: down with social critique,
long live neuroscience and theories of behavior.”

3 They falter for intrinsic but also occasionally for extrinsic reasons: who could say, in this regard,
what are the reasons behind the “crumbling” of the Marxist paradigm (if we can even speak of such
a crumbling), of its own theoretical aporias or the the attacks it has faced in institutions and in public
opinion, and the relation these two have with historical events which involve them? Who can be sure
that this evolution is linear or that the same hypotheses won’t reappear in another form, that there
won’t be—or perhaps there already is—a “Neo-Marxism” just like there is a “Neo-Keynesianism”?

40 What Does Theory Become?... 41 What Does Theory Become?...

the discipline itself can be called into question. Witness the history of C while leading to two “regulations” of the alterity of cultures. I concluded C
R R
experimental psychology, sociology, and anthropology in the colonial I that structuralism, in a form that is equally distant from both empiricism I
and post-colonial periods. . . . But it is also possible that the finality S and speculation (therefore “critique”), had ignored the opposition S
I I
of an authentically reflexive paradigm is precisely to question the S between philosophy and scientific disciplines (doxa and theory, S
legitimacy of established rules and programs of disciplinary research. &
according to Milner 6). In the necessarily narrow limits of my intervention &
This is what Marxism and psychoanalysis more or less successfully this year, I would like to try to displace and revive these hypotheses in
C C
wanted to do, particularly in their “encounter” with the structuralist R order to take into account of a new conjuncture. R
idea that marked the last half of the century (why is psychoanalysis I I will do so in two steps. First of all, I will return to the meaning I
T T
now absent from this set up, while the debates over its subject are I and the function of the term “theory,” as it has been invested during at I
experiencing at this moment a new acuteness?). Q least a part of the structuralist adventure, in particular when it has been Q
U U
In 1995, the year of my arrival at Nanterre, I participated in two E overdetermined through its relation to Marxism, and on the reasons E
daylong conferences of the URA 1394 organized by the CNRS4 on the why, even at the cost of profound revisions, I think could not be done
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topic of “Norms of Scientificity and the Object of the Social Sciences,” 3 completely without harm. Next, I would (quickly) like to examine two 3
at which I presented a paper entitled “Structuralism: Method or questions that today seem to me to be strategic for the capacity of the
Subversion of the Social Sciences?”5 In this paper I developed the humanities to intervene in the social reality they take for an “object,” and
following idea: although it seems to be “complete,” the trajectory of thus for their eventual disciplinary renewal at the cost of a “theoretical”
structuralism remains the bearer of questions that are important to detour: one concerning the status of the economy as a social science,
the humanities, both for extending their field of knowledge and for the other concerning the aporias of the idea of “multiculturalism,” for
resisting the liquidation by which they are threatened today de jure which the simple development of cultural studies, as currently defined,
and de facto. To support this claim, I characterized structuralism not does not seem sufficient. Doubtlessly not by accident, we will see that
so much by its exportation of the linguistic model as by its attempts to the superimposition of these two questions implies a certain way to
solve dilemmas inherited from the epistemologies of the 19 th century problematize the phenomena of violence that accompany the current
(reductionism vs. hermeneutics or nomology vs. ideography) by developments of globalization and seem to require entering into a
constituting “anthropological” domains as autonomous objectivities by different regime of “power-knowledge” than the one under which
means of an axiomatization of the “relations” on which social practice the social sciences and humanities have worked in the institutional
and its historical variations or transformations depend. On this basis, I frameworks defined by the national, social, colonial, and secularized
then tried to show that structuralism—which is not a unified school of state.7
thought but a contradictory movement—is evenly divided around what, Let us begin with a few reflections on the meaning that a
following Foucault, we could call “points of heresy.” I provisionally reference to “theory” takes on today in the disciplines with which we
identified three such points: the first, concerning the constitution of are concerned. Undoubtedly, we will not escape a differential, or even
the subject, opposes its representation as overdetermined individuality oppositional, formulation. But I believe it is insufficient to take up
to its representation as lack or line of flight; the second, concerning again the classical antitheses of theory and practice (or application)
the constitution of objectivity, opposes the idea of an “epistemological and of theoretical construction and inductive or descriptive empirical
break” to that of a “view from afar”; the third, concerning the procedures, which do not have a specific relation to the history of
constitution of the universal, opposes cognitivism to comparativism, the social sciences and humanities (even if we can make an effort
to appropriate them there, which, in my view, precisely concerns

4 The URA (“Unité de Recherche Associé”) is a French research assocaition funded by the CNRS
“Centre national de la recherche scientifique”). (Translator’s note.)
6 Milner: 2008.
5 This text is now available at http://cirphles.ens.fr/ciepfc/publications/etienne-balibar/.
7 On these qualifications, see my recent book: Balibar: 2014.

42 What Does Theory Become?... 43 What Does Theory Become?...

“theory”).8 It seems to me that the discussion has to focus, first of C suggestion, then, is that this conflictuality—far from representing a C
R R
all, on the singular status of concepts within the “human” and “social” I sign of failure for theory and ultimately for knowledge—designates a I
disciplines. Yet these concepts still have, both internally and externally, S mode of constitution proper to certain disciplines, or to certain objects, S
I I
a “polemical” status; and this is what also renders them eminently S but under a twofold condition: 1) that the contestation does not remain S
problematic from an epistemological point of view, by raising the &
assigned to the partisan, and mutually antagonistic, uses of a pre- &
suspicion that they are thereby inadequate for objectivity. Among the existing theory, but rather that it is truly constitutive of an “antithetics”
C C
many terminologies that could be at our disposal here (for this character R of reason,” or returns from use to definition;10 2) that the contestation R
has been recognized by a great number of “theoreticians”), I propose to I includes a reflexive dimension, namely, that it leads to the determination I
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retain the one proposed by the English philosopher Walter Bryce Gallie I of the “standpoint” (the socio-historical situation but also the practical I
in a famous but already dated article: Q objective of transformation or intervention) being inscribed in the field Q
U U
The concepts which I propose to examine relate to a number of E of knowledge itself, as one of the conditions of possibility for its own E
organized or semi-organized human activities: in academic terms they “judgments.”
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belong to aesthetics, to political philosophy, to the philosophy of history 3 These considerations seem correct to me, but they are still a little 3
and the philosophy of religion. My main thought with regard to them is too abstract regarding everything the discussions of recent decades.
this. We find groups of people disagreeing about the proper use of the To go a step further, I now propose uses of the term “theory” in relation
concepts (…) When we examine the different uses of these terms and to two alternatives: on the one hand, that of science and critique; on
the characteristic arguments in which they figure we soon see that there the other, that of object and problem. Moreover, it seems to me that the
is no one clearly definable general use of any of them which can be set first inevitably leads to the second. What we call “theory” (sometimes
up as the correct or standard use (…) Now once this variety of functions theoreticism) never ceases to oscillate between an ideal of scientificity
is disclosed it might well be expected that the disputes in which the and an ideal of critical function, whereby the first seems to be privileged
above mentioned concepts figure would at once come to an end. But in by structuralism, while the second is always attributed to Marxism as
fact this does not happen (…) each party continues to defend its case being an inherent trait within the coupling we propose to discuss here,
with what it claims to be convincing arguments, evidence and other and of which it should be rightly acknowledged that it belongs to a rather
forms of justification.9 fleeting conjuncture, in a singular place, which must appear provincial to
It is worth noting that the mode of discursivity thus described us today (even if it cannot be reduced to “Nanterre madness,” where this
does not characterise such and such a discipline by providing a means conjunction was also not very popular in its own time). But the fact that
to enclose it but on the contrary defines a transdisciplinarity, what one theory thus occupies an unstable or even untenable position, correctly
could call a “porosity” of disciplinary borders, which opens up the attests to the paradoxical relations of interdependence between these
social sciences and humanities not only on the side of political theory terms. What is at bottom repeatedly suggested is that scientificity can
and history but also on the side of philosophy. On the other hand, we only advance by means of critique, and, conversely, critique can only
should note that it is not only a question of a characteristic of disciplines advance by means of science or at least conceptualization.11 This unity
or paradigms (as, for example, we can say that, in Kuhn’s perspective, of opposites is analogous to what can be observed in the field of the
every “paradigm” is sooner or later destined to be “contested”) but
also a modality that is characteristic of conceptuality itself. Gallie’s
10 Gallie refers to the Kantian “antinomies” as if a philosophical procedure for solving conceptual
conflicts, but it could be thought that their first characteristic is to turn them into a condion of thought
(incompatible with the empirical constitution of the natural sciences and by the same token excluding
8 In my 1995 presentation I cited Passeron: 2013, and Wallerstein: 2001. I could cite the “critical” anthropology from the field of scientificity.)
turn initiated by James Clifford and George Marcus in Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography, starting with the idea that anthropological research is always a labor of writing whose 11 From memory, I reproduce a formula used by the philosopher Gorges Canguilhem in his lectures:
codes are inscribed within an determinate institutional place. the notion of “scientificity” is equivocal, since it covers both the model of a formal deduction and an
experimental verification-rectification, but the fact is that formalization most often advances through
9 Gallie 1955-6: 167-198. See the commentary by Capdevila 2004: 293. experimentation and experimentation through mathematization.

44 What Does Theory Become?... 45 What Does Theory Become?...

physical sciences between the mathematical and the experimental, but C the second opposition under consideration: the science of objects or the C
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at the same time it displaces it. It implies that scientificity is established I science of problems. It must be acknowledged here that structuralism, as I
with the objective of underscoring, in a reflexive way, the ideological S Milner has explained so well, in a sense represented the triumph of the S
I I
conditions of its own questions and consequently the historicity of S classical ideal of a “science of objects,” which runs from Aristotle to S
its “subjects.” In this sense, one can take up again the thesis that “all &
Kant and Husserl (but also to Bachelard and Lévi-Strauss), constructing &
science is the science of ideology”: not the science of the ideology of the autonomy—indeed, the semantic closure—of its domain by
C C
others, but of its own ideology.12 Conversely, critique presupposes not R defining a system of laws or axiomatizable relations that we could call R
so much a semantics or hermeneutics of subjectivity (as a philosophy I mathèsis.14 But from the beginning, there was at work in structuralism a I
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of alienation always tends more or less to propose) as a pragmatics or I completely new orientation through Marx, Freud, and finally Foucault: I
a capacity to intervene in order to bring about the transformation of given Q what Lacan calls “conjectural science,” Deleuze relates to an intrinsic Q
U U
social situations—particularly conflictual situations—experienced E relation of critique and clinic, and Althusser also tried to introduce into E
as intolerable by some of their “subjects.” Critique therefore takes on his “theoreticist” conception of Marxism (centered on the correlation
# #
the form of what Foucault calls parrhèsia, or “speaking (the) truth” in 3 between the system of relations and the interplay of tendencies and 3
the face of power or domination, but it can only do so effectively only counter-tendencies), establishing as the criterion of historicity the
according to a cognitive modality, by producing an effect not only of “concrete analysis of situations” or the subjection of the activities of
mutual “recognition” but also a knowledge, and therefore a detachment knowledge to the essentially unpredictable conditions of conjuncture.
regarding experience, identifying tendencies or describable and Let us note that science does nor aim here to constitute objects or
verifiable relations, revealing determinations equally ignored by the domains of objectivity but rather to identify problems (in the sense of
dominant and the dominated. In this respect, in 1995 I tried to compare what “presents a problem” for the actors in a certain situation, the
the theme of the “view from afar” with that of the “epistemological subjects of an institution, etc., and thus prohibits them from “remaining
break.” in place,” whether a place within discourse or within an institution). A
Thus we are led to reverse the initial situation: the question is theory that tries at the same time to uphold the two requirements of
not so much to know if “theory” is taken as an explanatory model, scientificity and critical engagement cannot be only the science of an
a construction of an object of knowledge, or a manifestation of the object, or of a domain of objectivity unfolding between the formal generality
demand for emancipation and the transformative forces included in a of causal laws and the singularity of “cases” or figures of individuality,
given situation; it is rather about understanding how the “essentially but must also become a practice of problematization, which occurs only
contested” (and therefore contestable) nature of concepts attests to on the basis of differentials of visibility and invisibility, subjection and
the position of theory within the domain with which we are concerned: revolt, the normalization and subjectivation inscribed within situations
at the intersection of a critical engagement and a project of scientific and relations of forces. Here pragmatics necessarily carries theory
knowledge. It is also the condition that includes a dimension that is onto semantics, for situations can neither be defined a priori, nor simply
not accidentally but intrinsically self-critical. This can be explained by described, but rather exhibit a characteristic of eventness, urgency, and
the fact that in the field of the social sciences and the humanities the involvement (what Foucault brought together in the notion of actuality).
idea of a “normal science” in a Kuhnian sense means even less than it Problematization is the diagnostics of a situation’s urgency. But this
does in the field of natural sciences.13 We can then directly move on to presupposes that it arises by means of historical inquiry, or by the
interpretation of discourses and lifting their repression in “conditions”
12 Although initially advanced by Macherey in a 1965 artice, it was reprised by Althusser in the that are not as such spontaneously known (and in particular not as
introductory essay to Lire le Capital

13 I once proposed the idea that a “science”, which proceeds essentially by means of the rectification
of its pressupositions, following the Bachelardian model, is irreducible to the model proposed by
Thomas Kuhn regarding of the succession between the phases of normalization of paradigms and the
phases of revolution that put these into question: see Balibar: 1979. 14 Milner: 1978. Also see Desanti: 1975.

46 What Does Theory Become?... 47 What Does Theory Become?...

“parts” existing in their institutional arrangement).15 To problematize C (debates that apply in particular to the organization of its teaching). C
R R
is not only to “take a position,” it is to transform the arrangement of I This controversy, in France as well as in the United States, began by I
positions, the tracing of lines of demarcation, or the “distribution of the S questioning the (political, epistemological) “neutrality” of the criteria of S
I I
sensible,” as Rancière says. S formalization, below which the title of “science” is no longer recognized S
We are not going to amalgamate all discourses existing within &
by the “profession.” Following the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis, &
the field of humanities onto the relations of scientificity and critique it continues by questioning the adequacy of the “dominant” economic
C C
(we could even think that every invention or definition of a field of R models to reality (whose counterpart is the suspicion that intrinsically R
research or of a disciplinary paradigm corresponds precisely to a I “unreal” models carry out an essentially ideological function).18 By I
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singular way of articulating them). But we will guard against superficial I adapting a critical model proposed long ago by J.T. Desanti, that of I
antitheses. For example, in his recent work De la critique,16 which Q “three kinds of problems” likely to arise in the history of a science (as Q
U U
indicates current reflection on the status of the human sciences, E is nowadays with mathematics),19 we could suggest that the conceptual E
Luc Boltanski characterizes the orientations of a critical theory as a conflictualities in question are here three distinctive and superimposed
# #
strategic “provocation” intended to interrupt the continuity of social 3 orders, in such a way that each superior level retains over the previous 3
practice, by realizing both an “unveiling” of its own conditions and one that which seemed at first to be independent (what one could call a
an ”exploitation” of the contradictions inherent in it, symptomatically polemical ascent, just as Quine spoke of “semantic ascent”). 20
exhibited by the antithesis of discourses and actors. In this case I don’t At the first level, there is a questioning of “dominant” paradigms
see, for my part, an absolute incompatibility with the way in which in a and the reactivation of the divisions between “parties” or “disciplinary
1976 text dedicated to seeking analogies between the status of Marxism orientations” that are directly attached to programs or the taking of
and that of psychoanalysis (but basically generalizable to a broader positions in matters of economic politics (which quite simply amounts
spectrum of discourse) Althusser proposed a concept of “conflictual to noting that the economy rediscovers its former name of “political
science,” always already marked by splits not only in its developments economy” and not only “economics”). This controversy begins with
but also in the relationship itself of its bearers to its objects, which a confrontation between “Neo-classicists” and “Neo-Keynesians”
par excellence constitutes its problem.17 In both cases, it is a question of regarding the capacity for self-regulation by financial markets. It
escaping traditional epistemological dilemmas that oppose “factual continues with a confrontation over the question of knowing if the
judgments” to “value judgments,” by establishing on the basis of functioning of these inherently speculative markets arises from the same
“concrete situations” an intrinsic dialectic of knowledge and politics, for logic of adjustment between supply and demand and the periodic return
which each of these terms is always already present inside the other, but to equilibrium between these two, which allows for the modelling of the
according to changing and transformable modalities. distribution of goods or the allocation of productive capitals. Finally, it
*** concerns the univocity or the equivocity of what we mean by “market”. 21
In the second part of my presentation I will move on to examine, On the second level, there arises another “essential contestation”
as I have already announced, two strategic situations, always in a regarding the notions of equilibrium, the rationality of “agents,” and
programmatic way. The first concerns the significance of current consequently the mechanisms of regulation. This contestation leads
debates regarding the use and conception of “economic theory” certain economists to revive questions posed by Keynes regarding the

15 Cf. Foucault 1997:117. It is significant that the example on which Foucault relies here is that of the
interaction between psychiatry and criminology, which could be extended to the general question 18 See the “Manifeste d’économistes atterrés” publié le 01/09/2010 par Philippe Ashkénazy, Thomas
of the status of “anthropological differences” in modern society. See also the entire discussion on Coutrot, André Orléan et Henri Sterdyniak ; and the articles of Krugman : 2009, and et James: 2010.
the functions of prison developed beginning with Suirveiller et punir and the activities of the Groupe
Information Prison. 19 Desanti: 1975.

16 Boltanski 2004: 151. 20 See Laugier-Rabate: 1992.

17 Althusser 1991: 17-30. 21 Cf. Aglietta: 2010; Giraurd: 2001.

48 What Does Theory Become?... 49 What Does Theory Become?...

status of uncertainty in matters of economic development or cycles: C human activity). 25 As a result, the relationship between the history of C
R R
relative or absolute, accidental or intrinsic, endogenous or exogenous. I social and cultural evolutions and the transformations of planetary I
To conclude, this contestation concerns the fundamental postulate S ecosystems simultaneously appears to be ever more uncertain and S
I I
of utilitarianism: that of a direct or indirect convergence of economic S ever more restrictive: whence, too, arises its immediately conflictual S
activities towards a common good or an optimal allocation of economic &
character, not as a “critical phase” of scientific knowledge but as a &
factors (barring institutional or socio-political obstacles). But at the same permanent condition of its activity without a predictable end. These
C C
time, this contestation is confronted with the destabilizing perspective R revolutions underway in the conception of historicity are fully theoretical, R
of an intrinsic “divergence” of the financial economy, which could at I illustrating the cross-checking of science and critique: they are situated I
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best be temporarily limited by state controls. 22 I at the very point where epistemological problems are encountered in I
Now arises the “third kind” of problem (which Desanti related Q relation to the internality or externality of socio-political regulations Q
U U
to the necessity of “breaking up the apparent stability of stationary E and the predictability or unpredictability of tendencies leading to the E
semantic kernels” on which the very definition of a domain depends): transformation of contemporary societies (which obviously also have a
# #
nothing is simple here, for, on the one hand, we see formulated the 3 “cultural” dimension). 3
requirement of reintegrating the economy in its own right into the field We are tempted to confront these hypotheses with those that
of the “social sciences“ (a requirement that we could call democratic, could be drawn from a second example about which I shall, for lack of
since it suggests that the economy can no longer appear within space, be brief. The idea that “multiculturalism has failed” has recently
humanities as if it were a “sovereign” discipline, whether it were been brought into the forefront in the form of a declaration of German
situated below the “social” in a domain of material conditions that are Chancellor Angela Merkel—a declaration behind which lurks the
prior to political conflicts, or it were beyond, in a purely formal space, suspicion of political manipulation. 26 But behind this apparent “problem
having to do in general with logics of action and their mathematical of opinion,” is revealed very quickly a fundamental scientific and critical
foreseeability). But, on the other hand, we also see a tendency from (therefore a theoretical) stake concerning the very notion of culture:
the perspective of ecology (since ecology is simultaneously present in its “comprehension” and its “extension.” Just as there have always
other domains, particularly anthropology) to call into question the idea been several competing concepts of “culture” (which one tended to
of an autonomy of the “social” or the “human” in relation to “nature.” attribute to traditions themselves that were “culturally different,” which
This is the question of externalities whose bypassing or neutralization in most cases meant “national,” while—according to a thesis of Lenin
precisely enabled the construction of models of evolution that were a that was famous in its time—every culture is intrinsically divided along
priori oriented toward equilibrium or regulation. Yet these externalities lines of cleavage that are orthogonal to national differences), 27 so too
are of several types, which we don’t know if they are separable how from the start there have been several concepts of “multiculturalism.”
they can interfere: either social (for example, the effect on crises It is only by homonymy that we can bring together under the same
played by inequalities in the standard of living and by exclusions and concept a “multiculturalism” like Charles Taylor’s or Will Kymlicka’s,
their aggravation), 23 or environmental (themselves to be seen in what for whom cultures are totalities external to one another, properties of
is perhaps the biggest paradigm shift underway in the “humanities”: historical communities to which one belongs by tradition (occasionally
the re-questioning of the nature/culture opposition, 24 or even—more by assimilation), and whose co-existence can be promoted by means
restrictive, in my view—the revision of the very idea of historicity, which of a constitutional pluralism, in such a way that for each individual
requires the integration into “geological time” of a feedback effect of “his or her” communitarian belonging remains in the last instance the

22 Skidelsky: 2009. 25 Chakrabarty: 2009.

23 Giraud: 1996. 26 See the reaction by Habermas: 2010.

24Descola Philippe: 2013. 27 Lenine 1959: 11-45.

50 What Does Theory Become?... 51 What Does Theory Become?...

vehicle of education and subjectivation; and a “multiculturalism” like C hybridization or “creolization” is the rule, forming the very condition C
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Homi Bhabha’s and Stuart Hall’s, whose ultimate historical horizon I of the invention and transformation of forms of life, while, on the other I
is an incessant process of interaction between communities, leading S hand, emerge true points of untranslatability, which refer back to the S
I I
to the idea that what makes subjects capable of individualization and S irreducible heterogeneity of the symbolic representations of the human S
historical transformation is their capacity for translation and, therefore, &
(or “anthropological differences”: the role of sex differences, the &
of disidentification. 28 We also know that over time postcolonial communication value of bodies, the meaning of life or survival, of illness
C C
modern nations have been very unequally receptive to either of these R and death, the hierarchical classification of crimes. . .). R
conceptions of multiculturalism. I We clearly see today that the projects of the “multicultural I
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At any rate, the contemporary phenomenon described as the I constitution” for democratic societies considerably underestimated I
“return of the religious” or of “the sacred” irreversibly upends the Q the violence of religious conflicts (or at least religious at root) and Q
U U
debate and determines a crisis of the idea of multiculturalism as E above all misrecognizes their nature. In fact, these conflicts are not E
a realization of the cosmopolitan ideal. 29 Here we touch on a true opposed particularisms (in which case the “solution” would consist
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repressed of the humanities (including in the form of a division into 3 either in their separation under the aegis of a superior, transcendent 3
separate disciplines and methodologies, opposing anthropology to universality, or of their integration into a syncretic “spirituality”) but
the history of religion or to hermeneutics): the incompatibility of the are incompatible universalisms. However, this in no way implies that the
objects is precisely the symptom of the problem, but it does not yet question can be subsumed under the alternative of either a generalized
prescribe the ways of the problematization. Perhaps the latter proceeds “war of religions” to be relegated to “private” space by means of the
by means of a “critical” recognition of the element of truth contained reiteration of the “sovereign moment” of the institution of national
in the idea—however tendentious—of the Clash of Civilizations, set public power or else an “ecumenism” or “interreligious dialogue” into
forth by Samuel Huntington at the moment of the redeployment of the which would enter only the voices of those who define themselves as
American empire to the Middle East, and since then repeated under a “community of believers,” subsuming the political determination
different names in the service of disturbing resurgences of nationalism under their narcissistic self-definition. The truly political level (which
covered by the equivocal notion of “populism.” But above all it is the in another context can be called the challenge of citizenship) appears
lesson of extended comparativism, which re-questions the protocols of wherever social determinations—which are strictly speaking neither
“axiological neutrality,” founded on the postulate of a secularization cultural nor religious—overdetermine every articulation of the different
that would be irreversibly tied to modernization. Within the double bind mechanisms of collective identification. Contrary to the dominant media
of contemporary conflicts (and their political instrumentalization), representation, no “religious conflict” in the world today has “causes”
“culture” and “religion” are almost never separable (especially not in that are essentially religious themselves. This is why the “Marxist”
the form of a “culture of reference” that would underlie the Western category of ideology, insofar as it implies, at a minimum, the structural
institution of laïcité). But nor can they be identified using familiar combination of several scenes—each of which is an “absent cause” for
terminology, if it is true that, on the one hand, we are dealing with the other—can appear anew as an indispensable heuristic framework.
processes of socialization within which, even in a conflictual manner, Here we are (just as with respect to “externalities” in economy) on
the threshold of problems of the third kind, transgressing disciplinary
borders, whereas the search for categories with which to think cultural
28 Taylor: 1994; Kymlicka: 2000; Bhabha: 2004; Hall: 2008. Pour un tableau comparatif : Fistetti: diversity pertains to the first kind, and the incompatibility of “codes” of
2009.
cultural comparativism and religious comparativism pertains instead to
29 Danièle Hervieu-Leger dates from the 70s the diffusion of the expression “return of the religious” the second.30
(La Religion pour mémoire, Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1993). The terminology of the “return of the
sacred” is used particularly by Ashis Nandy (see “The Return of the Sacred. The Language of Religion
and the Fear of Democracy in a Post-Secular World”, Mahesh Chandra Regmi Lecture 2007) (http://
www.soscbaha.org/downloads/Return-of-the-Sacred.pdf). 30 Here I am sketching propositions developed in my article “Cosmopolitisme et sécularisme”, an
adaptation of the Anis Makdisi Memorial Lecture (American University of Beirut, 2009).

52 What Does Theory Become?... 53 What Does Theory Become?...

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