دانلود کتاب The Action-Image of Society: On Cultural Politicization

Introduction to some Conclusions:
It was while working with the Edinburgh sociologist Tom Burns on a comparative European project that I had the idea of developing and complementing the study of the problems raised by the curiously solid, widely discussed - and questionable - notion of the image of society, by examining social categories that have been forced to adapt to rapid and constant change.
When the May explosion occurred in France, we realized that it would hardly be reasonable to expect the students to be able to present an image of present-day society or a clear vision of the future. We set out to explore the questions raised by this social notion in relation to accelerating and permanent change.
Subsequently, the research developed in rather unexpected ways. It is clear now, with the conclusion written, that the general remarks on literature and the problems concerning this notion of the image of society with which we expected to conclude this study would not really be relevant, any more than hypotheses would be in the introduction - the hypotheses that any self-respecting writer has to formulate as a point of departure. On the basis of the analysis of a short opinion poll carried out by means of a questionnaire (Chapter 2), we came to realize increasingly that the only valid introduction would be the evidence of a student who had actively participated in the events (interview with ND, Chapter I ), which is reproduced practically in full. This interview, recorded in May itself, contains, in fact, most of the themes we developed later.
After some weeks' reflection on our material, it seemed to us that the double juncture between anarchism and Marxism and between politics and culture was probably one of the essential features of the May events, even if it does not exhaust the full range of possible interpretations of a complex phenomenon that comprises aspects of the crisis and evolution of society, of education and social conflicts, and so on. We felt that a kinship existed between May and various other movements, both earlier (Dada, Surrealism) and contemporary (avant-garde movements in jazz, the theatre, and the cinema) , and tried to understand, by means of a rather special type of exploration, covering all aspects of a particular social world, this current or trend that might be called 'cultural politicization'.
A group discussion with intellectuals who had experienced the events at first hand (Chapter 3) served to illustrate a number of major problems and to outline some of the methods of analysis used. It seemed to us at the time to be essential to study the world inhabited by the different social 'actors', students and intellectuals in particular, from the inside. Such a method, which might be called 'hermeneutic', involves, as we have tried to show in our treatment of the notions of proj ect and projection (Chapter 4), the classification of one's observations within their own frame of reference if their full consequences are to be grasped. We have been helped in this by quotations from authors in the same field, whether or not they were participants in our group discussion.
Taking as a basis texts written by activists, students, and intellectuals, we then tried to describe as fully as possible, but within the limitations of one of the main currents of the May Movement, a whole series of stages in their imagination and action, which, since the two notions merge together in practice, we have called 'imaginaction'. The first characteristic of this intersectional, politico-cultural, anarcho-Marxist current is to proceed from a total critique of established society, a critique that is also directed at the established opposition (Chapter 5), to the affirmation of a new society that is experienced, here and now, as we ourselves saw, a society that was non-established and intended to remain so (Chapter 6).
As our thinking advanced - the different chapters were developed simultaneously, in relation to one another - we became increasingly conscious of the fact that May seemed, in turn, to explain Dada, Surrealism, Free Jazz, etc. Between the creativity expressed by a number of the participants in May and that of certain non-conformist intellectuals - whose works were hardly read before this spring thaw - or artistic movements that we wished to place in parallel, there exists a homology that presents a problem too vast for us to do more than merely elucidate the data. It is left to other studies, or to an analysis taking this study as its starting-point, to carry the investigation further than we have been able to do at present.
Do these rather obscure movements contain phenomena that are an affirmation of a new society, and not merely of a subculture, or an inverted culture, or a pathology? Are these tendencies, including certain aspects of the Ma.y Movement, such as we have presented here, microcosms, a prototype that prefigures, if not the society of tomorrow, at least some of its problems and solutions? Can one speak, with Edgar Morin, of anthropolitics?
What we have come to is not so much a conclusion, an answer to these questions, as a realization that the important thing was not simply to gain a better understanding of May through the parallels we made; what was important was that these parallels could be made at all. Such an approach is the exact opposite of the kind that, from an a priori position, declares that 'it was not political' . Political it certainly was, but in a different way.