Interview with Michel Maffesoli on the Theme of "Cults"

Michel Maffesoli is best known for his analyses of postmodernity, everyday sociality and the resurgence of the religious in contemporary life. In this interview with CICNS he reads the French « secte » debate through that lens: a fragmenting, “wild” sacred returning in new forms, a Jacobin State ill-equipped to accept it, and a scapegoat mechanism at work in the anti-cult campaigns.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 10 November 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Michel Maffesoli holds the Durkheim chair of sociology at the Sorbonne. He is also a co-founder of the Centre d’études sur l’actuel et le quotidien at Université René Descartes Paris V. He is the author of numerous books, notably Le Temps des tribus, published by La Table Ronde, and Du nomadisme, in the Livre de Poche edition. He speaks to us here about religiosity in its new forms and about its place in what he calls postmodern society.

[Maffesoli]: Manifestly, we are at present gaining access to another relationship to the world and to others. We are passing into another type of civilization: we are in the process of leaving what has been called modernity, which elaborated itself in that way, laboriously, over the three centuries that have just elapsed. There is indeed something that is surrounded [inaudible ?]. Our relationship to others is in the process of being put in place. At bottom, that is what religion, religiosity, is. One of my colleagues even speaks of “reliance” — re-linking, in the plain sense of the term. More and more, what is primordial is to link myself to the other, through the fact that I link myself to nature, that I link myself to the deity, in a broad or vague way.

There is a return of what we had believed we had gone beyond. A return of what modern rationalism — and very precisely European rationalism, at bottom — had imposed in the name of a somewhat simple, I was going to say simplistic, notion of progress, and which we see returning in these various forms of a conception of the individual that is, I would say, much more whole. In what some call — and I am one of them — postmodernity, there is, one might say, a new deal. The cards are being dealt anew. And where a somewhat truncated conception of the individual had prevailed — I did say it: rationalism is not the critique of reason, it is a certain conception of reason that is purely instrumentalized, that is finalized, that must be efficient — well then, that had truncated the individual, and now we have a much more global conception.

The term employed by the techniques of the contemporary New Age — I mean the term holism, for example — shows clearly, then, that there is this other relationship, once again, a much more plural one. Now, it can of course be disordered. Like everything in the nascent state, it is for better and for worse, as always, here too. But I would see in it rather the expression, how shall I put it, of a welcoming of the non-rational, a welcoming of life, a welcoming of the other, of the stranger, in its various forms. And from this point of view, in contemporary “reliance”, in what I call this somewhat syncretistic religiosity that is at play, well, there is something there, once again, in which new forms — beyond the term itself — of solidarity express themselves, new forms of generosity, in ways of being, in the relationship one has to others and to the world. So there are these two aspects: of a mosaic and, at the same time, of a rootedness. And, at bottom, that is postmodernity. That is to say, something which, at bottom, is no longer homogeneous and which remembers that there are roots. Which remembers, at bottom, primordial, original things — the things that form the crypts of collective being. And, for me, the tendency is moving in that direction. From this point of view, it can be regarded — contrary to what many say — as a form of enrichment. And let us think of it as such.

It is certain, how shall I say, that Jacobinism, which lies at the very foundation of the thinking of the French State — that is, a very pyramidal conception, at bottom, one that evacuates disparities, differences, specificities — has difficulty conceiving that there could be, precisely, another way of praying, another way of being with others, another way of relating to nature. I am not going to give you my judgment. I do believe, in fact, that the State — I even wrote one of my books on this — has a totalitarian violence. That is to say, the true violence: the violence, indeed, whose function is to homogenize, to rigidify. We have a whole series of indications, at present, which show clearly that this model is saturated, that this model is fragmenting, it is fissured.

So there are rearguard battles — the various state bodies which, at present, continue to fight against cults, for example, in that sense of the expressions. The technique of the scapegoat is, quite obviously, a customary technique. That is to say, it is important, how shall I put it, to cast onto an animal predestined for that purpose the sins, the defects, that lie within the social body. And it is driven out, loaded with the sins of society. That, originally, was the scapegoat. And at bottom, it is obvious that all the forms of non-rationality are, at present, working through the social body. The development of clairvoyance, the development of astrology, the development of all the forms, if you like, that were forms of philosophy, of syncretism, of Buddhism, of Zen, of this, of that, and so on. Fine. Whether one likes it or not, empirically, it is there. It exists. At the same time, it is certain that a certain intelligentsia — politicians, journalists, academics — are afraid of this. So they tend to load an animal with all the sins of the collective body in order to drive it out. But it is a customary process. For my part, I think there is no reason to panic. There is no reason to panic. And above all, one must not play along with the game.

I go often, very often, to Japan, for example. The word “cult” is used there as what designates a given group that has cut itself off from another… That is what it means, at bottom: that has cut itself off from something else. So it can be taken in a non-pejorative way. That said, one must not be naive. I think it is not possible: at present, in France, the word “cultish” or “cult” refers to something that is always connoted as very pejorative. It is a French specificity. Not solely French, perhaps. It can be found in this or that other European country. But it is not found in the United States, for example. It is not even found in England, and so on in the same vein. It does not seem interesting to me — it even seems inopportune to me — to stigmatize something. If only in order to fight against what one considers dérives sectaires, one must first understand it. One must first see what is at stake. That is to say, once again, to have that much more holistic vision I was speaking of earlier, as the new spirit of the time that is at play.

Now, what is certain is that there is — through certain government bodies, but in a much more general way, at the level of the right-thinking consensus, of the politically correct or the morally correct that tends to predominate in our societies — a distrust precisely of those who experiment with other ways of living, of thinking, of praying, or whatever else. And that is their problem. In any case, what I can say from a — I was going to say sociological — point of view, not simply as a thinker: it is not good to stigmatize. That is to say, it is always dangerous when one wants to think society as it ought to be, and not as it is. So, for my part, my work consists in describing what is. Whether or not I agree, for that matter, with what I have described — that is another problem, which I will not go into here. But to describe what is, in this matter, is to say that there is, indeed, a fragmentation of religion.

And that where religion had, in a sense, been monopolized, where it had gathered itself into great institutions — the Romanization of the Catholic Church was only pushed to its conclusion at the end of the nineteenth century, with the First Vatican Council; before that, there were diversifications in the liturgies, and so on — so there was a sacred that was monopolized, homogenized, and then we realize that at present there is a wild sacred (sacré sauvage). Something that is fragmenting, that is becoming heterogeneous. I would say that this is one of the characteristics of postmodernity. As always, it is for better and for worse. That is to say, quite obviously, in this fragmentation of the sacred you will have deviant, perverse forms, and so on in the same vein. But at bottom, when there is a cultural swarming, as is in my view the case at present, one need not necessarily be afraid; it is better, on the contrary, to have a great deal of serenity. In order to appreciate it, in the true sense of the term.

I had a great deal of trouble five or six years ago, because I had a fairly well-known astrologer defend a doctoral thesis. Her thesis on astrology was interesting, because its subject was precisely the ambivalence of the media with regard to astrology. And I found that thesis, from that point of view, very pertinent. And not a thesis of astrology, but on astrology, by a person who was precisely a protagonist of it. But it was not on astrology; it was the media and astrology. And her idea was to show how there was this ambivalence. And the media do have this ambivalence. That is to say: look at how, at one and the same time, they will invite the astrologers — we are taking this example, but it could be other forms — and, at the same time, will criticize them, will mock them, and so on.

I think we are in a moment of absolute ambivalence. That is to say: at once, it works on me, it itches me somewhere, it tickles me — as Doctor Knock would say: it itches you, it tickles you somewhere — and then, at the same time, we are a little ashamed of it. So the media — which for me, moreover, have no real influence, contrary to what is said. There is no need to panic. There either. It goes in one ear and out the other. When we look, at bottom, at what the message carried by the media is, it is almost close to zero. If only because of technological development: the multiplicity of channels, the multiplicity of information channels, means there is a perpetual scrambling. So I do not think one should panic about that. About the influence of the media, in fact, which is much smaller than is believed, than is claimed in principle — in order to give themselves importance, in a certain way — journalists in particular. And then, like all the other sectors of social life, they are ambivalent. For the reasons I told you earlier. That is to say, one cannot deny the fact that there is some of this, of that, of this thing here — of the non-rational. I prefer to say non-rational rather than irrational. There is non-rationality in social life. And at the same time, it makes a bit of a mess. It is all a bit yucky. So we have this ambiguous and ambivalent relationship.

In a general way, there is this disagreement, in the plain sense of the term, between an intelligentsia that remains dominated by the great categories elaborated in the nineteenth century — eighteenth, nineteenth: the philosophy of the Enlightenment, the great social systems — and which has difficulty, I would say, updating its knowledge or its analytical grid. Hence the incapacity, which is very often its own, to understand the expressions of the passions and the emotions. Islamist fanaticism or terrorism is a form of expression of a religious passion too. And so there is a great incapacity to understand that as well. And so on in the same vein, there you are. So, from this point of view, there is in general — it is not the first time this has happened in human histories — but we are living through a moment in which there is a fundamental disagreement between what is lived and what is thought. And some people — I am one of them — apply themselves, with difficulty it must be said, but then there is no reason to despair, to trying to bring it about that this disagreement is, in a sense, closed up. Or at any rate, that the gulf recedes. That the gulf that exists between, once again, what is said and what is lived narrows. And in a certain way, I see an evolution under way, in particular among the young intellectual generations now arriving, who are, let us say, far less narrow-minded, from this point of view, than the preceding generations.

Very often, when one internalizes what others want, what one is designated by, you end up truly being what they want you to be. It is a somewhat complicated formula, but it says clearly what it means. That is to say that, at bottom, one must live serenely what one wishes to live serenely. In this matter, if you are interested in the new spiritualities, it is by living these forms of spirituality that, at bottom, they will radiate of themselves.

At the beginning of Christianity, the man who is for me a great founder of Christian philosophy, Saint Augustine — precisely, one who fought against the heresies, who fought against Arianism, who fought against persistent paganism, and so on — said, at bottom: Christianity, which for him was orthodox Christianity — well, it must be sure of itself. And if it is sure of itself… In Latin, he said “boni des sui diffusi” [inaudible ?]: the good diffuses of itself. So one must not internalize the other’s criticism. What is important is to make sure, first, of the truth — of the truth of what one has to say, of the depth of what one has to say. And if there is some — precisely, and this is not an easy task, if one makes that effort, which truly demands asceticism (ascèse) — well then, at that moment there is, once again, a process of diffusion.

Look at the old wisdom that one finds in China, that one finds in India, where the sage, at bottom, in order to make the rain come, first works on himself, on what it is to calm one’s emotions, on his interiority, and it is that which can bring it about that there is rain, snow or whatever else. No matter — it is a fine apologue. And in this matter, there is no specific action. There is — let us take what I said in the plain sense of the term — the diffusion of something that has matured. There you are.

Now, that there may be blockages, rearguard battles, barriers and so on in the same vein — so it is. That is what the human tragedy is, in a certain way. It is the very nature of institutions to block what is new, or what is renewal. But then, I say it at my age, now, with a certain — I was going to say wisdom, at any rate serenity: it seems to me that if what one has to say is founded, in the true sense of the term — that is, that there is something in it that points back to the original, something that points back to its roots — well, those roots will be dynamic. That is what I have called dynamic rootedness (enracinement dynamique). So from this point of view, I am fairly quietist.