MESOPOLHIS (axes 1 & 6) / LEST study day: «New forms of domination and new logics of control».»
Details
Friday 30 January 2026 | 10am - 4pm | Mmsh, salle Duby
Seminar organised by Magali Ballatore and Sylvie Chiousse.
The aim of this day is to gain a better understanding of asymmetrical gender relations and the institutions that regulate educational and family relations, particularly today. It brings together the views of sociologists and psychoanalysts. We would also like to open the day up to child protection associations, women's associations and trade unions.
Programme :
10am-11am. Presentation by MARC JOLY, CNRS Research Fellow, author of Narcissistic perversion. A sociological study (ed. CNRS, 2024)
Through what processes did a discreet notion of clinical psychopathology, «narcissistic perversion», give rise in the years 2000-2010 to a new figure of the violent spouse, the «narcissistic pervert», who psychically destroys his partner by manipulating her, even after separation?
To answer this question, Marc Joly first looked at the conceptualisation of the notion by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier. He then analysed the circulation of this category in the media, in relation to the practices of the «psychology» professions, before examining its use within an association working to combat moral violence within the family.
Combining ethnographic observation, questionnaires, interviews and case studies, it shows narcissistic perversion as a reaction to the loss of social and legal legitimacy of male domination, in other words as a sociopathology, a perverse adaptation to the new norms of equality in society and in the couple.
11am-12pm. Discussion
Discussants: Magali Ballatore (URMIS) and Océane Pérona (MESOPOLHIS), author of Those who can still walk and smile (Julliard, 2024)
14h. Presentation by ROLAND GORI, author of De-civilisation. The new logic of control (Editions Les Liens qui Libèrent)
3pm-4pm. Discussion
Discussants: Philippe Vitale, Professor of Sociology at AMU, member of LEST, chairman of the former national commission on transplanted minors in La Réunion and vice-chairman of the «Betharram» transitional justice commission; ; Sylvie Chiousse, MESOPOLHIS, socio-anthropologist and scientific director of the journal Esprit Critique.
What is «de-civilisation»? For Roland Gori, there is no doubt about it: de-civilisation is not the work of «savages», «barbarians» inheriting a civilisation of «child kings» or «suburbanites» who are violent by nature or through riotous traditions. Today, the brutalization of social relations and the extreme violence of ordinary aggression must be seen from the angle of a society that sacrifices the culture of dialogue and prevents thought processes in favour of a civilization of morals. The Other is no longer the person from whom we expect symbolic recognition, but the partner in a game of social warfare in which the subject measures his or her strength. Faced with this state of affairs, the time has come to adopt a critical reading of the functions of language and to put the power of the imaginary of languages back at the heart of democratic invention. Today, the critical function of language is being degraded by the trickle of fake news, the mass propaganda of political agitators, the communication services of the vacuum industries, the viral infobesity of social networks... These political perversions of language give precedence to force, cynicism and the enjoyment of nothingness over the desire to live and love. We urgently need to learn to free ourselves from their social and psychological stranglehold by reinventing the social and cultural conditions that enable a people to think and share what is sensible.
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