Radical Attitudes in Modern Societies: A Challenge for Democracy

The places as well as the modes of expression of radicality are clearly "off-system” and located in a space of meanings that are necessarily critical and even potentially subversive. It feeds on the challenge of representative democracy, and eventually leads to the organization of democratic practices solely within the framework of direct democracy, driven by the expression and protest of active minorities of citizens.

Political radicality involves a set of varied and disparate phenomena that share a form of contention about and a categorical imperative for profound change in society:
• the denunciation of the established social order and the economic, cultural and political elites that support it
• the rejection of the institutions that underpin the political system in force
• the belief in options for the radical transformation of social and political structures.

Related to the attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, it refers to a repertoire of meanings and actions covering a wide range of expressions.

This course will explore these different ranges of expression and various forms of radicality. It will identify a set of attitudes or acts that involve a desire to break with the political, social and cultural system and more broadly with the norms and customs prevailing in society. Last but not least, it will focus on a specific movement which has recently taken place in France, the so-called “Gilets Jaunes.”