At a time when the theme of suffering, like that of the victims, imposes itself without discernment in our political and social universe, Emmanuel Renault’s book brings elements of conceptual clarification in the absence of an original investigation.
In the vast family of critical theories, Emmanuel Renault is one of those who, like Axel Honneth, endeavor to base their work on the definition and criticism of “ social pathologies Which directly affect individuals. In this context, social suffering, that is to say suffering whose causes are social, is obviously the most radical experience on which a criticism can be based. “” The struggles against social domination are often struggles against suffering, suffering offers a critical point of view against domination when social struggles are lacking. »(P 34)
Theoretical, Emmanuel Renault’s work, does not provide a new survey on suffering, it first endeavors to definite it and to see how it renews social criticism at a time when a multitudes of research, books, films and associative movements testify to the thousand faces of this suffering: psychic suffering, disaffiliation of Homelesssuffering at work … at the time also when all those who are dealing with this suffering, caregivers, social workers, activists, say how inexpensive, exhausting and corrosive for those who are directly confronted.
While social suffering has something obvious to its unbearable character even, it is extremely difficult to define and problematize. Either it is directly referred to the tragic of the human condition and, in this case, it is futile to designate it as social and to make it the point of support of a political criticism. Either it refers to a singular personal pathology and it is a medical approach. Either it would simply proceed from the functioning of society, at the risk of dissolving as intolerable psychic experience. Social suffering is therefore inseparably social and psychic, psychosocial. Emmanuel Renault is placed under the patronage of Bourdieu, Devereux, Durkheim, Freud, and his analysis constantly calls for the two ends of the chain so that social suffering is not reduced to the random accidents of life, nor to chance biographies, or only objective mechanisms which would only make a symptom of social dysfunctions.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish suffering and pain, normal suffering and abnormal suffering and the author devotes a long chapter to establish distinctions, sometimes excessively fine, between the various dimensions of social suffering in order to highlight what suffering has social in singular experiences, without switching to the side of psychopathology or on the side of “ simple »Social problems.
Not only Emmanuel Renault endeavors to build social suffering from an epistemological point of view, but he also wants to give him or give him back a political role by considering, perhaps in a somewhat excessive way, that it would be the forgotten part of social movements and political issues would not give him room or would not know what place to make him. So he devotes a whole chapter to the genesis of popular protests and struggles led in the name of the misery and suffering of the poor. These struggles, he recalls, were led neither in the name of the exploitation, nor in the name of democratic rights, nor even in the name of equality, they were in the name of a social suffering so radical that it was both a factor of mobilization and the heart of the legitimacy of the struggles. Social suffering is “ the indictment Capitalism and, beyond, of society itself. Emmanuel Renault wants to recall that, contrary to popular belief, raw social suffering was at the origin of the social movement of XIXe century. Conducts as a plea, these learned pages however give the feeling of fighting a somewhat fake opponent as the suffering of damned of the earth has imposed itself in the formation of social movements of the century of industrialization, as this suffering could not be completely denied.
More convincing is the analysis of the installation of the theme of social suffering in public space with the creation of “ listening places “, Of” organizations of “ support for victims And, more broadly with the entry of suffering into social vocabulary: suffering workers, suffering students, suffering families … Three large vectors have carried this theme: the psychology of work with the work of Christophe Dejours for example, social work and new forms of poverty brought to the general public by the success of World miserythe evolution of psychiatry towards mental health, that is to say towards the concern of suffering without initial pathology. It also seems, observes Emmanuel Renault, that the theme of suffering settles down all the more easily since the suffering of some causes the suffering of those who take care of them, which are less and less professionalized, less and less protected by the institutions likely to give it meaning and to put it at a distance. Consequently, meeting with suffering is no longer publicized and it becomes even more unbearable.
Beyond these causes “ cyclical », Emmanuel Renault also identifies major diagnoses relating to the emergence of social suffering. The first is due to the symbolic mutations which “ would weaken The individual in the face of the trials of normal suffering and those that are less so. Basically, we would suffer all the more since our “ Me Would be less strong, less consistent and more worn towards the complaint. The other mechanism would be due to the transformation of norms: obliged to be free and responsible, we would suffer by an effect of exhaustion, fatigue, anomie … Finally, neo-liberalism would generate disaffiliations, extreme inequalities and strictly social suffering at the margins of the system and in its center, in the work of work as well as the work, especially those of Sennett relations between a new economic organization and the “ Corrosion of character ».
The problem of social suffering perhaps is less due to the suffering itself than to the definition of its social character. Emmanuel Renault distinguishes four major paradigms. The first is that of political economy which, identifying suffering alone, would lead to denying it by distinguishing only “ good “And the” bad Poor, guilty suffering and suffering victims. The second paradigm, that of social medicine, would leave the global social causes of suffering in the shadows. The paradigm of anomie, borrowed from Durkheim and Halbwachs, would ignore the social causes of suffering by considering it as a social death resulting from the only dissolution of links more than domination. Finally, the Freud of Malaise in civilization Consider that suffering proceeds from the weakening of the mechanisms of psychic and symbolic defense. These criticisms necessarily lead Emmanuel Renault to propose a complex conception of social suffering based on the integration of biographical and social. Consequently, these are the attacks on the consistency of the ego, to “ Self needs “Who define social suffering, suffering relating to factors” positive “, Trauma, domination, exclusion, and to factors” negative », The weakening of resistance to suffering.
The denunciation of social suffering bases social criticism on the requirement of self -realization, on “ capabilities »Sen. would say. It is a criticism of testimony making visible what societies hide, much more than a directly political criticism. It is, quite rightly observes Emmanuel Renault, a criticism that defuses justifications. In this sense, it is a criticism of testimony, a criticism of spokespersons or, to put it differently, a moral criticism. However, this is a theme that does not use and does not use the author of the book more anxious to register in the vast question of neo-liberalism sometimes considered as the ultimate and radical cause of all our misfortunes and allowing an immediate rise towards politics. However, as well show work, starting with those of Dejours, the causes of suffering do not all live in the “ system “, They also hold to others who harass, who despise, who ignore … if social suffering raises the question of the justice of institutions, it also raises the question of evil.
Perhaps it would have been necessary to give more weight to the properly moral aspects of social suffering and its criticism. The reader cannot disagree with the recall of the political role of suffering and that is all the less since the moral arrest of suffering in the formation of social protests seems to be strengthening with the withdrawal of traditional social movements. On the other hand, it can be surprised that the properly moral dimension of this arrest is so weakly underlined and that, for example, Emmanuel Renault leaves aside the link between social suffering and religion. Armies of hungry peasants led by monks, such as Thomas Münzer, to radical micro-movements of the XIXe Century described by Thompson, to the religious and social movements of Latin American and Indian slums today, the socio-religious manifestations of absolute suffering are so constant that one has a little trouble understanding why Emmanuel Renault seems to ignore them. Perhaps it is because these movements are too moral and too infra-political, perhaps it is because of a vision too secularized and too “ modern “Of politics that the dimensions proper” morals Social suffering has so little room in this book. Absence all the more astonishing as the few movements that speak in the name of the most suffering of us, the Homelessprisoners or certain patients, want to be much more than social moral movements, which does not prevent them from having some social efficiency when they may aim for a form of moral salvation which would have nothing properly religious.
We can therefore discuss this scholarly book whose subtle arguments borrow from several intellectual spaces. The fact remains Social suffering has a great interest: at a time when the theme of suffering, like that of the victims, imposes itself without discernment in our political and social universe, it is important to know what we can speak without being, neither invaded by emotion, nor silenced by complaints and virtuous and somewhat agreed poses of “ critical ». In a properly theoretical style, Emmanuel Renault’s book teaches us to see what is so difficult to face.