The Imperative of Opinion: A Pragmatic Sociology of Critique in ‘Actualité Politique’

Abstract

Based on the concept of actualité politique, this essay aims to analyze the economy of opinion and critique in contemporary societies. Based on various research projects arising from our works and on a reflection concerning the pragmatic sociology of critique, we respond to a fundamental question: what are the determinants of the ‘passage’ of a critique into action; i.e., the conversion of internal indignation into an external manifestation of the social actors? The argument has three parts, one structural and two conjectural. In the first, we map the main variables determining the passage from indignation to criticism. In the second, we show how a series of historical transformations in the scarcity/abundance interplay of the elements in this matrix have made opinion and criticism more available and, in the continued evolution of their presence in contemporary life, a core mode of sociability. In the third part, we analyze three consequences of this movement: the trivialization of criticism, conflict, and the devaluation of objective truth.