Patasociology at the University Of Nanterre

359 REPRINTS AVAILABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHERS PHOTOCOPYING PERMITTED BY LICENSE ONLY© BERG 2011 PRINTED IN THE UK CULTURAL POLITICS VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3 PP 359–370 CULTURAL POLITICS DOI: 10.2752/175174311X13069348235213 Patasociology at the University of Nanterre Jacques Donzelot The history I am writing about here takes place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It lasts less than ten years. “History” is perhaps too strong a term, in that what is involved is merely a conversation between two sociologists – Baudrillard and myself – in a lecture hall of the Department of Sociology at the University of Nanterre. But it may seem acceptable, perhaps, if we take the view that history is what we deem worthy of remembrance. And when we look now at those who listened to that conversation, those who followed that distinctly unacademic course and who still speak of it as a moment stolen from the seriousness of the university and the graveness of life, this seems to be the case. Many actually embellish or embroider upon it, lending it a retrospective appeal that was by no means guaranteed on each occasion. But this happens with all – major or minor – acts of daring in which one is fortunate enough to participate. In this case the act of daring may seem quite modest: it consisted in joining together two courses which, in accordance with the regulations, were designed as separate, and in taking advantage of similar timetable slots to combine their two audiences. In this way, we were able to > CULTURAL POLITICS 360 JACQUES DONZELOT converse rather than teach or, to put it another way, to substitute the exchange between two ways of thinking for the programmed diffusion of predigested knowledge. To this formal transgression was added another where content was concerned. Not only did we not teach canonical sociology but, as an effect of Jean Baudrillard’s well-known predilection for pataphysics, our common class quickly came to deserve the title of “patasociology” that was applied to it. What I mean by this is a despairing sociology or, more accurately, a way of driving sociology to despair. At least this applies to Jean Baudrillard’s remarks, for, as we shall see, I chose as my role not to try to outbid my partner (would that have been possible?), but – increasingly – to diverge amiably from his views. The term “history” is also justified if we take the view that it refers to an action taking place within a particular framework, with a beginning and an end, the whole “holding together” to cast a specific light on a particular moment. That moment here is the period of transition between the critical thinking of the 1960s and 1970s, when boundaries between disciplines were disrupted, and the return to the comfortable lap of those disciplines. To write the history of a conversation that took place twenty or so years ago may seem an impossible task when no specific trace of that conversation remains. There are, of course, the books that were published at the time, echoing that conversation, but they have a finalized form that detaches them, so to speak, from its flow. And, most importantly, how is one to relate with a minimum of objectivity a discussion in which one was a participant? There is only one solution: to start out from the impression this long-running conversation made on me, to allow myself a retrospective reading of it and to reconstruct it as a function of the meaning I find in it at present. As a consequence, I shall describe, first, the specific climate of the University of Nanterre, its Sociology Department, and the shared course we taught there. Then I shall mention the content of that conversation, its themes, the way we dealt with them respectively, and the way they followed from one another. Lastly, I shall attempt to characterize the nature of the radical position that was Jean Baudrillard’s, as it appeared to me then, comparing it with the “academic radicalism” that is currently striving to gain a hold, in the form of the Boudieusian school. * In the mid 1970s there was still an air of danger around the Sociology Department at Nanterre. It exerted...