Claudine Haroche was at Unicamp to present her latest book, which in French is titled L'avenir du sensible: les sens et les feelings en question (The future of the sensitive: the senses and feelings in question), in a well-attended lecture at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH), on April 10th. The work brings together essays that result from more than 20 years of research and reflections on sensitivity and the formation of culture. The Portuguese edition, scheduled for release at the end of May, will have the title slightly modified to The condition of the sensitive: the senses and feelings in question.
The researcher explains that the essays bring an anthropological and sociological approach, that is, transdisciplinary, and that writings by authors such as Marcel Mauss and Norbert Elias greatly inspired her in preparing the texts. “I would like to specify, however, that I never wanted to close myself within the thoughts of any author, even when it comes to Hannah Arendt, in whom I completely recognize myself. It seems necessary to construct issues, objects capable of illuminating the contemporary world.”
Claudine Haroche focused mainly on the issue of forms and manners, the subject of two articles by Marcel Mauss that she considers to be founding: The techniques of the body and A category of the human spirit: the notion of person, the notion of the self. “In the first part of the book, I cover the 16th and 17th centuries, a period in which treatises on civility, education and the formation of manners, such as those of addressing the prince, were published”.
According to the sociologist, these treaties offered the learning of moderation and the education of posture, gestures and attitudes. “Moderation presupposes a distinct representation of the body, a relationship with the limit. It is this relationship that installs the subject in its place and allows its existence. Moderation translates into gestures and played a role in the construction of social identity.”
Thus, in court society, while the cadence and slowness of the steps gave majesty to the king, the individual had his hierarchical position defined by the distance or proximity to his majesty. “This place indicated a specific distribution of individuals in space and the postures and attitudes contributed to expressing deference, consideration, respect and dignity based on the social value that was recognized in the other”.
After examining court society as a society regulated by forms and rites, Claudine Haroche, in the second part of the book, reaches the 20th century. “In a radically different context, insistent demands emerge around political, social and also moral rights, as well as as consideration, recognition and respect”.
According to the author, social, mental and psychic boundaries are drawn between individuals, regulating distances and proximity between groups, with the aim of preventing hand-to-hand combat that could lead to violence. “There is a chapter in which I examine the growth of the informal in contemporary societies, which are individualistic and narcissistic.”
From the event of youth movements in Germany from 1918 to 1933, the researcher records the development of the corporate spirit. “It develops in the most overwhelming way: it is the group spirit, the clan spirit, that Freud feared so much. It reflects the fusion of bodies and spirits, in which individuals come together in communities of emotions, manifesting aggression and violence, intense and unlimited violence.”
It also reminds us that Norbert Elias, in his studies on the Germans, had already discerned the threatening dimension of the growth of contemporary informality, with processes of deinstitutionalization, deritualization and derhythmization. “My intention was to show that, at present, societies are going through a phase of fluidization and social, political and technological upheavals similar to those of a century ago.”
Being and feeling – Claudine Haroche dedicates the third part of the book to the Externalization of interiority, addressing the contemporary individual's ways of being and feeling. “Before, stability, continuity and engagement constituted values and ways of being that were encouraged in professional life and among friends. Today, displacement, avoidance, disengagement are what are defining and valuing behaviors.”
In the author's opinion, the relationships that link individuals to each other are now fleeting, ephemeral, inconstant, disengaged. “The individual is marked by fragmentation, discontinuity with himself, being inapprehensible by others. Obviously, I am referring to Western democratic societies, which with globalization have become relatively borderless.”
The process of shrinking consciousness is analyzed in the fourth part of the book. The sociologist explains that at the end of the 19th century, derhythmization was accompanied by a disorganization of psychic life and a qualitative mutation of the senses. “For Walter Benjamin, technology produced mechanical effects that call into question the senses and consciousness itself.”
The absence of forms and mediation, in the researcher's reasoning, translates into an immediacy that encourages superficiality in both the mechanisms of understanding and perception. “This superficiality, according to Benjamin, is due to a gap between the ways of seeing and the ability to feel. The difficulty and even the inability to represent oneself leads to inner impoverishment.”
Claudine Haroche observes that the state of fluidity that surrounds today's society can, over time, result in states of indistinction between the real and the virtual, reaching the life of representation. “In this fluid world, spatiality, temporality, rhythms, the sense that democratic functioning proposed, were partly emptied of their meaning by the speed, instantaneity and continuous and unlimited character”.
Resistance – The author highlights, however, that there is resistance. Therefore, although the title of her book refers to Freud's The Future of an Illusion and Civilization's Malaise, she avoided the term 'malaise'. “I preferred 'the future' because it is open and always brings something new. I believe that there are resistances, conscious or not, that can slow down these incessant sensory and informational flows”.
For the researcher, it is necessary to be aware that disciplinary societies have been replaced by control societies, and that the disciplined bodies of the past have given way to fluid bodies. “On a bodily level, mechanical and disciplinary models were partly abandoned and profound arrhythmia and a feeling of permanent fatigue were left in place.”
Therefore, Claudine Haroche speaks of a future in which this rhythmization of corporeality gives way to an alternation between stopping and movement, protecting the interior space. “The individual needs the feeling of being an agent. The means of communication – internet, e-mail, television – place us in a position of passivity. People need conversations, sensitive and intellectual relationships, they cannot spend their lives in front of screens.”
Transdisciplinary path
Professor Maria Stella Martins Bresciani informs that Claudine Haroche has maintained links with the IFCH History Department since 1985, having participated in the founding of the History and Political Languages Center. The group has been holding talks in Brazil and France, which resulted in books on the following themes: “Passion and reason in politics”, “Memory and (re)feeling”, “Humiliation”, “Trivialization of violence” and “Alterity” .
What stands out is that Claudine Haroche managed to follow a transdisciplinary path, which I consider very difficult, as she forced herself to cover several disciplines at the same time. With basic training in the study of language, she embarked on sociology and political anthropology, migrating from oral and written languages to the language of the face and body, that is, sign language, analyzing texts in a competent and sensitive way”, says Stella Bresciani.
ASocieties are going through a process of fluidification, with the blurring of boundaries between intimate, private and public space, causing the relationships that link individuals to each other to become fleeting, ephemeral and inconstant. "I think we are facing a real upheaval, the so-called silent anthropological revolution", says sociologist Claudine Haroche, researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France.
PRESS ROOM - � 1994-2008 State University of Campinas / Press Office