Abstract
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Terms marked with an asterisk in the text refer to the definitions in the glossary.
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Notes
- 1.
Recall that this designates an attitude of opposition to analytical work, the latter being an object revealing unconscious desires and the effect of inflicting on man the crime of narcissism, cf., Sigmund Freud, ‘Résistances à la psychanalyse’ a text written in French, [1925], in: Sigmund Freud (Ed.), Résultats, idées, problèmes, vol. II, 1921–1938, Paris, PUF, 1992, pp. 125–139; Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Nineteenth Lecture: Resistance and Suppression, [1916], United States, Horace Liveright, 1920, place 4037 sq.
- 2.
Pierre Bourdieu, Esquisse pour une auto-analyse, Paris, Raisons d’agir, 2004.
- 3.
Freud invites us to do so as he writes in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego [1921], New York, First Rate Publishers, 2016, p. 1: ‘The contrast between Individual Psychology and Social or Group Psychology, which at a first glance may seem to be full of significance, loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined more closely. […] In the individual’s mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent, and so from the very first Individual Psychology is at the same time Social Psychology as well—in this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words’.
- 4.
Referring foremost to the celebrated work of Sigmund Freud, William Bullitt, Woodrow Wilson: a Psychological Study, New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction, 1999; cf., equally, Eugène Enriquez, La Horde et l’État, Paris, Gallimard, 1983.
- 5.
For example, the AFSP (Association française de Science Politique) organised a colloquium on 27th November 1971, entitled The Importance of Psychoanalysis to Political Science, cf., equally, a special edition of the journal, Pouvoirs, (11), 1979.
- 6.
Alexander Wendt (Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999) writes nonetheless that: ‘the role that unconscious processes play in international politics is something that needs to be considered more systematically, not dismissed out of hand’, p. 278.
- 7.
This phrase belongs to the lexicon of Realist theorists. It refers to the diplomatic-strategic sphere, the only one that is decisive in their eyes for analyzing international relations.
- 8.
We could even go as far as the unconscious on this point, cf., Josepha Laroche, ‘La conscience malheureuse comme mode d’action internationale: le pacifisme de Romain Rolland’, in : CURRAP (Éd.), Le For intérieur, Paris, PUF, 1995, pp. 137–149.
- 9.
On the idea of understanding as an overall approach to action and taking into account the meaning given by the actor, cf., the idea of the signifying set, Max Weber, Economy and Society, [1922], trans., Berkeley, University of California Press, 2013; cf., equally, Philippe Raynaud, Max Weber et les dilemmes de la raison moderne, ‘Les origines de la sociologie compréhensive’, Paris, PUF, 1987, pp. 71–81.
- 10.
On this concept, cf., Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye (Eds.), Transnational Relations and World Politics, Harvard, Harvard University Press 1972; Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye Power and Interdependence, [1977], 3rd ed., New York, Longman, 2001.
- 11.
Georges Balandier, Anthropologie politique, Paris, PUF, 1967, p. 1.
- 12.
The writings on sociology of Norbert Elias also abolish the borders between the internal and external, putting the emphasis on the relationships of interdependence that determine social configurations.
- 13.
Norbert Elias, Au-delà de Freud, sociologie, psychologie, psychanalyse, [1939], trans., Paris, La Découverte, 2010; Quentin Deluermoz (Ed.), Norbert Elias et le XX e siècle, Vingtième Siècle, Apr–Jun 2010.
- 14.
James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990; James N., Rosenau, Ernst Otto Czempiel (Eds.), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
- 15.
In fact, these were often his disciples, cf., Edmund Leach ‘Violence’, London Review of Books, 23 Oct. 1986; Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, New York, Polity Press, 1991; Abram de Swaan, ‘La décivilisation, l’extermination et l’État’, in : Yves Bonny, Jean-Manuel de Quieroz, Erik Neveu (Eds.), Norbert Elias et la théorie de la civilisation, Rennes, PUR, 2003, pp. 63–73 ; Jonathan Fletcher, ‘The Theory of Decivilizing Processes and the Case of Nazi Mass Murder’, ‘Towards a Theory of Decivilizing Processes’, Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdskrift, 22 (3), 1995, pp. 283–296.
- 16.
This concerns the last work of Elias first published in 1990 and composed of five essays of which ‘The Breakdown of Civilization’, cf., Norbert Elias, The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Cambridge, Cambridge Polity Press, 1996. On this point, we could also consult Françoise Lartillot (Ed.), Norbert Elias : étude sur les Allemands, Lecture d’une œuvre, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009. But we must not forget that already in 1929, Elias wrote a text entitled “The Sociology of German anti-Semitism”, in: Norbert Elias, Early Writings. The Collected Works of Norbert Elias, vol. 1, Dublin, University College Dublin Press, 2006, pp. 77–83.
- 17.
Florence Delmotte, ‘Une théorie de la civilisation face à l’effondrement de la civilisation’, Norbert Elias et le 20 e siècle, Le Processus de civilisation à l’épreuve, Vingtième siècle, (106), Apr–Jun 2010, pp. 58–59.
- 18.
We return here to Elias’ thesis that German decivilization is consubstantial to the weakness of the German State, the fragility and incompleteness of its monopoly of violence. These elements should be correlated with the German habitus, see Sonderweg, cf. Elias, The Germans… op. cit., p. 7 sq.
- 19.
Stephen Mennell, ‘L’envers de la médaille: les processus de décivilisation’, in: Alain Garrigou, Bernard Lacroix (Eds.), Norbert Elias, la politique et l’histoire, Paris, La Découverte, 1997, pp. 213–236.
- 20.
Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State. The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- 21.
Daniel Drache, Defiant Publics, The Unprecedented Reach of the Global Citizen, Cambridge, Polity, 2009; Daniel Drache, ‘L’autorité morale en temps de crise’, in: Josepha Laroche (Ed.), Un Monde en sursis, Dérives financières, régulations politiques et exigences éthiques, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010. Coll. Chaos International, pp. 185–196. Saskia Sassen, ‘Le retour de l’accumulation primitive’, in: ibid., pp. 169–183.
- 22.
On the innovative diplomacy of the international fellowship of the Nobel, Josepha Laroche, Les Prix Nobel. Sociologie d'une élite transnationale, Montréal, Liber, 2012, p. 131 sq.
- 23.
Bertrand Badie, Le Diplomate et l’intrus, L’entrée des sociétés dans l’arène internationale, Paris, Fayard, 2008, p. 45 sq., p. 187 sq.
- 24.
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, [1939], London, Wiley-Blackwell, 2000. Equally, Joseph R. Strayer, Charles Tilly, William Chester Jordan, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2016.
- 25.
Since 1930, Elias had been the assistant of Karl Mannheim at the University of Frankfurt. But the rise to power of the Nazis in 1933 forced him to interrupt his studies; he was not allowed to support his empowerment thesis on court society and its defense was forbidden. He then fled Germany and went into exile in Switzerland before reaching France and the UK, and after the war, the Netherlands, see ‘Biographical Interview with Norbert Elias’ in: Norbert Elias, Reflections on a Life, Cambridge (MA), Polity Press, 2007, p. 2 sq. and 49 sq.
- 26.
Elias, The Civilizing Process… op. cit., p. 102.
- 27.
Bernard Lahire writes here that ‘In French sociology and doubtlessly beyond, we regard Norbert Elias a little too often as a simple successor of Max Weber and largely underestimate the importance of Freud’s work in the genesis, the formulation and the realization of his intellectual project’, cf., Bernard Lahire, ‘Postface, Freud, Elias et la science de l’homme’, in : Norbert Elias, Au-delà de Freud, op. cit., p. 187; Elias himself clearly claimed: ‘I was always of the opinion that the theory of Freud left behind needed to be developed further’, cf., Elias, Reflections on a Life… op. cit., p. 70.
- 28.
This concept of the death drive was forged by Freud as part of his general theory of the psychic apparatus. He introduced it in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, United Kingdom, Read Books, 2013.
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Laroche, J. (2017). Introduction. In: The Brutalization of the World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50793-4_1
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