“To speak of “decivilization”, as Emmanuel Macron does, is nonsense”

2023-06-19 18:00:16

“Macron launches an appeal against “decivilization””, titled The world of May 26. A double page offers four articles returning to the death of three police officers in Roubaix, that of a nurse in Reims and the aftermath of the fire at the home of the mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins. On the same day, another article catches the attention of those who share an interest in the work of sociologist Norbert Elias (1897-1990). The article evokes the link established by the director of the IFOP, Jérôme Fourquet, during a lunch at the Elysée, between the three “miscellaneous facts” and one “process of decivilization” going “contrary to the process of civilization of mores” described by Elias. The president would have acquiesced and the words attributed to him confirm it.

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In certain research networks, we are surprised to see the name of a sociologist who has rarely taken center stage cited in the public arena. We are concerned to see his analyzes distorted and mobilized in a context marked by emotion. In terms of violence, because that is what it is, we remember the various mobilizations of the last five years against government policy, from the “yellow vests” to the pension reform, via Notre – Dame-des-Landes and Sainte-Soline.

These movements have certainly been the occasion, for certain groups, to use violence against property and even against people. But they have above all in common to have been too often repressed by the police, even to have been the subject of police violence. That is to say state violence that is not legitimate in the sense defined by law, or accepted as such by the population.

The readers of Elias also have in mind the association of the “decivilization” au “great replacement” during the last presidential election campaign. Beyond words, this scarecrow theme continues to undermine political debate, in France as elsewhere. Certain far-right ideas have “percolated” into most political formations and seem to be taking hold in public opinion in more or less presentable forms. There is no doubt that none of the luncheon diners on May 23 share the idea that “their civilization” is threatened by “barbarians”nor that such is the meaning to be given to the “process of decivilization”.

Reductive slogans

But what about the use of a term that is first claimed by the most extreme nationalism? It is politically understandable to pay attention to what “popular France”. But it is clear that such elements of language help to exacerbate an emotion that primarily benefits declinist, racist and xenophobic discourse, far from an analysis capable of“challenging society as a whole, in depth”as the French president hopes.

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