Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
MAURIZIO LAZZARATO
In this story, begun in 1879, finished in 1884 and published for
the first time in 1896, Tarde uses science fiction to operate a
"value reversal", a "trans-valuation" in the manner of Nietzsche.
Tarde sees the future of humanity unfolding in three phases.
The first, which he calls "Prosperity", is globalization as we know
it today. The second is an ecological "Catastrophe" during which
the sun is extinguished and the Earth becomes a desert of ice.
In it we see the signs of what awaits us. In the third phase,
"Regeneration", Tarde urges us to reflection in order to avoid the
damage caused by both globalization and the "Catastrophe".
Tarde based his fantastical story on a very concrete analysis of the
economic, social and political conditions of the end of the 19th
century. Economists agree that this was the world's first true period
of globalization.' During this period, the world economy reached
a level of integration in trade, capital flows and population mobility
which would only begin to reappear in the second half of the 1980's.
The two World Wars and, to some extent the Cold War, ended
this first great international expansion and caused a full blown
retreat to the Nation State. Technological innovation (notably in the
domains of transportation and communications), and institutional
innovation (implementation of the first forms of revenue distribution,
of social laws, of the rudiments of a provider State, of laws regulating
weekly working hours, etc.') had progressed rapidly. All of these
developments provided a glimpse of the future and Tarde drew
its romanticized portrait in the first chapter of Underground Man
(Fragment d'histoire future).
9.
economy". Prosperity reaches to the ends of the earth: globalization
leads literally to "the end of the world" and to the "end of history".
In the "end of the world" there is nothing "outside" of the economy-
based world; nothing exists outside of the market economy.
The end of history corresponds to a time when there is no land
left to be conquered, no civilizations to be colonised and no more
populations to be "extensively" exploited. The exploitation and
domination of the single and total market are "post-colonial''.
"What shall we become now that we shall soon no longer have
foreign, African and Asian outlets to serve as palliatives or as
distractions from our disagreements, as outlets for our goods,
for our cruel instincts, for our plundering, as prey for our criminality
and for our excessive birthrates? How shall we manage to re-
establish relative peace at home? For many years it has allowed
us to project our conquering onto the outside world." 3 According
to Tarde, the global economy will produce a great homogeneity
of peoples and cultures. He describes the post-historic era as the
result of a process which first removes differences based on
aristocratic values, on caste, on language, on social class, etc.
then leads to general uniformity. It is a process of world-wide
homologation of usage and customs, of languages and of
institutions.
IO.
of the arts and sciences, a reduction in working hours, an increase
in leisure time and global universal suffrage result in both "frivolous
and superficial wealth", and a centralised political and cultural
system, a "Single State" with a "population in the billions". When
George Bush took office, Toni Negri put forth a hypothesis which
stated that the constitution of the Empire was faced with two
choices: it could either pattern itself on the model of the Roman
empire with its rights, its granting of citizenship to barbarians and its
capacity for assimilating cultures and peoples different from itself or
on the Byzantine model of violence and absolutism. Tarde did not
hesitate: the government of global prosperity did not take its cue
from the institutional and political forms or democracy or from the
Roman Empire, but from the Oriental one. 'The result was not, as
had been announced, a vast democratic republic." To underline the
absolutist character of this Empire, its capital, Constantinople, is
razed and rebuilt in an "imperial profusion of masonry on a site
vacant for three thousand years, on the ruins on ancient Babylon".
ll.
"Indeed, we may ask ourselves whether this universal similarity is
the ultimate fruit of civilization or if, on the contrary, its sole purpose
and consequence isn't, in all its current forms, and as it relates
to customs, to alphabets, to language, to knowledge of the law,
etc. the flowering of individual differences which are at once truer,
more intimate, more radical and more delicate than all of the
differences destroyed. "5
12.
for humanity to develop a culture based neither on socialist nor on
liberal principles. According to Tarde, the universality of modernity,
represented in both traditions, although in different ways, will be
realized in the Universality of the State.
13.
"No longer say: Up there! Say: Down there! There, down there,
very deep, is Eden, the place of deliverance and of beatitude.
In this place, and in this place only, are innumerable conquests
and discoveries still possible!" Whereas religious utopias seek
humanity's salvation in the heavens and modern political utopias
seek it on Earth, Tarde finds his underground, in the volcanic
depths of our planet.
14.
model of society. The first group condemns individual greed and
declares that, because of it, the task of organising mutual assist-
ance cannot be left to market forces: it must be organised through
a "plan" for which responsibility is fully assumed, and through
conscious collective "economic" collaboration. The latter group
affirms that the most rational way to help one another is for every
individual to pursue his or her own self interest. It is the concept
of social relations based on "work" and utility, that is, on economic
purpose that Tarde's theory seriously challenges. Industrial activity
"represents a non-social, nearly anti-social relationship". ls the
relationship between worker and boss a truly social relationship?
"Not in the least" according to Tarde.
IS.
Society is no longer based on an exchange of servlces but on an
exchange of admiration or criticism, of favorable and unfavorable
judgments.
The third clue that Tarde offers is his belief that relationships must
be thought of differently and social relations conceived differently.
But what is meant by "social"? It is important not to make a
distinction between social and economic, between nature and
society. Sociology draws its legitimacy and its independence
as a science from this distinction. To understand the concept of
social, beyond the separation of Nature and Society, Tarde proposes
to first "completely eliminate Nature (both its animal and vegetal
forms)" in order to bring forth the "true social bond which appears
thus in its full force and purity". The result of this purification is
a "fully human humanity" freed from other living beings and from
the component elements of nature such as rivers, oceans, etc.
16.
this new science of the "intensive" reveals that the constituent parts
of molecules are animated by desires and beliefs, by a will and by
a capacity for judgment. "As psychologists reveal the atomology
of "I'', I was going to say the sociology of "I", they enable us to
see, in the minutest of details, the most admirable of all societies:
the hierarchy of consciousnesses, the feudalism of vassal souls
of which our selves are the pinnacle.'"' There is no conceptual
difference between the association of elements which constitute
a molecule and those which make up a society (in fact, Tarde calls
them all "monads"). The only reason that we believe there is an
"abyss" between molecule and society is that we can know the
inside of the second but not of the first.
,/-......,
/ \
17. ' '
: ;'
' ·-- . . . 'i
the Spirit of Peoples, Absolute Knowledge, the Working Class and
Capital. Sociology only takes into account the great collective actors:•
Society, the State, Parties, etc. To counteract this, all individuals
must be given freedom, independence and the power to create
with no distinction made between nature and society, between
human and non-human.
For Tarde, the end of history spells the end of the great emanci-
pating sagas carried forth by the Subjects of History. It is the welling
up of a non-historical era, of an era of creation. The aesthetic life
of regenerated humanity is not about the production or the
consumption of works of art, the development of which, as we
have seen, leads to superficial and frivolous prosperity. It is about
invention, the creation and diffusion of possibilities. It is invention
and creation of possibilities not only in artistic activity but in all other
activities as well. This is the meaning of the aesthetic: the production
and distribution of the "sensitive", the production and distribution
of reflections, of affects.
18.
impulse rather than on justice and the commerce of mutual
assistance and services."
NOTES:
1 Suzanne Berger, Notre premiere mondialisation, Seuil, 2003.
2 Ibid.
3 Gabriel Tarde, La psychologie economique, II tome, Felix Alcan, 1904, p. 418-419.
4 Ibid., p. 422.
5 Ibid., p. 422.
6 Ibid., p. 419.
7 Gabriel Tarde, Fragment d'histoire future, S(Jguier, 2000, p. 69.
8 Gabriel Tarde. Essais et melanges sociologiques, p. 191-192.
9 Gabriel Tarde, La psychologie economique, II tome, Felix Alcan, 1go4, p. 420.
10 Gabriel Tarde, Fragment d'histoire future, S(Jguier, 2000, p. 90.
11 Ibid., p. 119.
12 Monadologie et sociologie, Les Empecheurs de penser en rood, 1977, p. 99.
19.