If you are one of those people who will automatically give your seat to an elderly passenger on the bus, the sight of such an action would maybe make Olivier Roy despair a bit less about the crisis of culture the world is going through right now.
“Culture means that we share something ‘implicit,’ such as politeness,” the respected French sociologist, political scientist and Islam scholar tells Kathimerini on the occasion of the Greek release, by Estia, of his latest book, “The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms.”
In this dense study, Roy argues that contemporary cultural controversies – from political identities to gender fluidity and from the cancel culture to neo-feminism – ultimately lead to the triptych of “deculturation,” codification and the extension of normative systems.
Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, also contends that Western civilization is declining without any visible successor on the horizon and that every aspect of our lives is being codified, via internet apps, for example, and filled with rules and regulations. Incoming US President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk are, says Roy, “products” of this world.
The main argument of your book is that the very sense of culture is in deep crisis and what we experience is a form of deculturation which brings a set of coding and a model of rules (rules about everything) that navigate one’s life. This process, as you write, began after 1968, a pivotal year for replacing the traditional set of life values with desire and individuality. So, what went wrong in 1968?
The cultural revolution of the 60s was about sexual freedom and, more precisely, the idea that culture represses desire, that culture is an alienation. Freeing desire would lead to a more harmonious society. Culture was seen as embodying an old decaying world. This was a “hippie” vision, not a leftist or Marxist one (communists were more puritanical about sexuality and family life). The extraordinary fact is that this vision spread to a large part of the society, not just to its utopian margins. It was reinterpreted in terms of a neoliberal way of life: a society made of individual entrepreneurs. Culture became perceived more in terms of entertainment than in terms of heritage.
What comes after the death of a dominant culture?
I do not see a new culture, for many different reasons. First, globalization means the need to communicate without reference to a given culture (including the American culture). It supposes a language turned into a code (no implicit [understandings], no reference to literature or history). Secondly, culture is no longer based on initiation, on learning, but on performance and enactment: hence the development of games online, role plays, kidulting (adults playing games as children would do), speed dating etc. Culture means that we share something “implicit,” such as politeness. When there are no such implicit limits and rules, there is violence, because violence turns into a way of communicating: brawls, fights, murders, suicide are recorded by the very actors and circulate online. Violence allows the youth to appear as “actors” in the two senses of the term: They exist by staging themselves in a violent role.
Which movie or series would you pick to best describe deculturation?
The dystopian series “Game of Thrones,” which simply flattens history by conflating it with legends and fantasy, or “The Truman Show,” which makes visible every minute of human life – the world is pure representation, pure show; there is no implicit – and “Mad Max,” which, like all apocalyptic movies, shows how the disappearance of culture opens to a world of pure violence.
You comment that the Western world has gone from “Make love, not war” to the MeToo movement and the “woke agenda.” If wokism and cancel culture are the problem, what is the solution? The only alternative in the West right now seems to be a Trump culture.
Wokism and cancel culture are not the problem, they are a consequence of deculturation, not the cause of it. Because there are no more shared values, the only way to impose values is through an authoritarian normative system. The conservatives do exactly the same thing: They promote their values through imposed norms, such as anti-abortion legislation. Trump is a pure product of deculturation; his language is crude and violent, he is part of the cancel culture: His opponents are enemies to be destroyed, there is no right to mention transgenderism or racism for instance. He sees politics as both a boxing ring and a market.
What does Europe have to offer?
The problem for Europe is that it is caught between two trends: One is the promotion of abstract universal values which are implemented by a bureaucracy cut off from real societies; the other is a reference to an “identity” which is not connected with real values (for instance most politicians who refer to “Christian identity” do not care for real Christian values) and looks more like folklore than real culture. The asset of Europe is what remains of the schooling system, its rich “visible” culture and the sense of history that led to the creation of Europe. Once again, education is the key.
You make an interesting point in your book in the connection between deculturalization and the internet. Many governments in Europe, Greece included, and further abroad, are trying to limit or ban young people’s access to social media. Do you agree with such measures? And what do you make of Elon Musk’s lofty role in the incoming Trump administration?
‘Culture means that we share something “implicit,” such as politeness. When there are no such implicit limits, there is violence, because violence turns into a way of communicating’
I approve the limitations of the access to social media for young people, but it supposes a greater involvement of the parents, who are often addicted to the same social media. As for Musk, he is the embodiment of deculturation. Like many libertarians, he started with the defense of individual freedom in an open market, but he is turning more and more authoritarian and violent, which puts him on the same foot as Trump. They will probably part ways not because of ideological differences, but because of too much super-ego competition.
Nazism, you write, was the greatest symptom of the Western culture crisis. Are European democracies facing a similar threat? What do you make of the rise of the AfD in Germany or the recent alliance between the left-wing New Popular Front and the far-right National Rally in France? Are centrist liberals or the left to blame?
The left lost when it endorsed the free market. Maybe it would not have succeeded anyway, but at least it would not have lost its soul. The populists are not Nazis or fascists (except for a small fringe of them). They are certainly racist and xenophobic (more than nationalist). What they defend is not an ideology or a utopia, as was the case with the fascists, Nazis and communists. They defend their “way of life,” or at least a nostalgic view of a good everyday life, and they reject anything that could put it into question: neoliberalism, immigration, global elites and even climate change. The last example is typical: They know that global warming will upend their world, but they just refuse to change their everyday life until their death.
People also seem to have lost their faith in religion. But do people need to believe in something? And if so, what is the new faith?
The new faith is individual spirituality: a quest for self-realization, personal happiness, wellbeing. Hence the success of yoga, meditation and specific diets, but also of legal suits to obtain compensation for any moral damage. Religions are collective and reinforce the social link. Spirituality accentuates individualization and social delinking.
Immigration, climate change and artificial intelligence are three immediate challenges for the West and the world. Can one of them become humanity’s new utopia? Something to bind us all under a common cause?
These challenges are not seen as opening towards a new utopia but as the omen of an apocalyptic future. I mean that they are perceived as such, although immigration and AI, but even climate change, could be seen as an opportunity for rethinking the basic values of our societies and reconstructing a common good. But it is not the case.
Why do we need utopias?
Utopia is important for the youth: the idea that they can do better, live better than their parents. But for the first time in history they fight against the future, which is identified with global change. They fight to stop time. They fight to stay in the past. It is not good.
So, what does the West stand for today? Who are the new barbarians?
Barbarians were supposed not to have a culture. So the new barbarians are the people who have internalized this deculturation and enjoy it. The issue is not to look at roots, but at the top of the tree. We should stop speaking about our “heritage,” and specifically our “Christian heritage,” because when you have a heritage, it means that somebody is dead, and in this case it is Christianity. The issue is to make alive and legitimate a new way to make sense of our past and history. A vision, not a museum.
If you could make one fundamental change in how the world works, what would it be?
As far as Europe is concerned, it is important to work at developing social links at the local level and to develop a European culture through education and exchange (the Erasmus program is important here). The issue of a European defense is also important: If young Europeans are not ready to die for the defense of Europe, then it means that Europe has been unable to put a soul in its quite successful institutional system. And the soul is culture.
You are suggesting the formation of a European army. Do you think Europe will have to defend itself in the near future?
It is more a matter of dissuasion than of an imminent threat. If Europe has no credible defense system, Russia will slowly encroach on its eastern members, the Baltic states. A strong European defense will deter any adventurism from Russia.
What does the division between East and West stand for in today’s world?
It is not East and West; it is democracy versus authoritarian states. For now it is Europe versus Russia, not the East. But Russia might change. And Europe too.