by Michel Maffesoli

---

It’s a kind of mental laziness for which we risk paying a heavy price. A verbal tic, pervasive on both left and right, which consists in seeing ‘communitarianism’ everywhere. A foolish attitude – as if a matter would be resolved when we suppress it, artificially, by denying it – and an infantile one too, that of incantation: we repeat the words and think that by doing so we deal with the issue.

What of the facts? It was the grandeur of social organisation in modern societies that reduced everything to the unit. Erase differences. Standardise ways of being: a beautiful ideal, the Republic, One and indivisible. But – and not for the first time – we are witnessing a saturation of this unitary ideal. Heterogeneity is regaining force and vitality; reassertion of difference, diverse localisms, linguistic and ideological specificities forming around a common origin, real or mythical. All accentuate forms of life founded less in universal reason than in shared sentiment. Continue reading →