« Le tyran asservit ses sujets les uns par les autres » : une analyse de la domination

Résumé En

«The tyrant enslaves his subjects through each other»: an analysis of domination -- Through two of her research fields (the debt economy in Tunisia in the 1990s and the neoliberal bureaucratization that characterizes the contemporary world), Béatrice Hibou proposes a reflection on the masterpiece of Étienne de La Boétie. By putting forward a relational conception of power, The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude allows us to rethink in a more complex and ambivalent way the exercise of domination and the practices of what is called obedience. It highlights a fundamental element: fear is not primordial; power is not imposed from above but it is exercised through its insertion, painless and often insidious, into the workings of daily life and in the play on mutual dependencies. In so doing, La Boétie accompanies us in a reflection on the diversity of causes and mechanisms that allow us to understand the exercise of domination. Sensitive to the incompleteness of practices and explanations, to the causal plurality and diversity of processes at work, and to their possible interpretations within society, this work invites us to reflect on responsibility, or more precisely on the dilution of responsibility.