Penser le métissage. De la tragédie individuelle de l’identité au débat politique sur le multiculturalisme

• Main Author: Marie-Christine Bureau
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Catholique de Louvain 2012-12-01
• Series: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rsa/800

In France, the topic of hybridisation has gradually made itself heard in public space since the 1980’s through a rhetoric often possessing prophetic overtones. This article first underlines the traps inherent in using the term, insofar as the word itself conveys an ideology the thinkers of hybridisation nonetheless seek to free themselves from. We then try to delineate three distinct levels among the traps through which the phenomenon of hybridisation becomes understandable : the level of lived experience ; that of the emergence of cultural expressions in civil society ; that of the political debate on multiculturalism. The article finally strives to show the advantages of a relational theory of individuation inspired by Gilbert Simondon’s work, in trying to bring these three levels of analysis together.