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MIGRATION,
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC PURPOSE
DIASPORAS AND CITIZENSHIP

Pathology Diagnosis
and Social Research
New Applications and Explorations

Edited by
Neal Harris
 Political Philosophy and Public Purpose

Series Editor
Michael J. Thompson, William Paterson University
New York, NY, USA
This series offers books that seek to explore new perspectives in social
and political criticism. Seeing contemporary academic political theory and
philosophy as largely dominated by hyper-academic and overly-technical
debates, the books in this series seek to connect the politically engaged
traditions of philosophical thought with contemporary social and political
life. The idea of philosophy emphasized here is not as an aloof enterprise,
but rather a publicly-oriented activity that emphasizes rational reflection
as well as informed praxis.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14542
 Neal Harris
Editor

Pathology Diagnosis
and Social Research
New Applications and Explorations
Editor
Neal Harris
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, UK

ISSN 2524-714X ISSN 2524-7158 (electronic)

Political Philosophy and Public Purpose
ISBN 978-3-030-70581-7 ISBN 978-3-030-70582-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70582-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
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names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
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the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
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 Series Editor’s Foreword

Erich Fromm once asked from the vantage point of the mid-1950s, “can a
society be sick?” The question was posed at the apex of the “affluent soci-
ety”, an age of unprecedented social wealth and post-subsistence society
was emerging. It was also a time when modern medicine, vaccines and
other modern therapies for dealing with physical maladies were reaching
unprecedented efficacy. But Fromm saw that, just as Marx had a century
earlier, that modernity was ill, that it suffered from a de-humanising
pattern of pathologies that could be diagnosed and cured. Today it is
still not difficult, when skimming newspapers and popular journals, to
discover evidence for the thesis that modern society is ill. Fromm believed
that a critical, humanistic form of reason would be able to root out
the causes of social pathology—of alienation, reification, personal psychic
suffering—and usher in a new sense of freedom and humane existence.
Although it was once at the origin of modern social science, the
concept of social pathology has fallen out of favour in recent decades.
Although thinkers such as Rousseau, Hegel, Marx and Durkheim remain
the progenitors of the idea that societies as whole entities can suffer
from pathologies, the ontological paradigms of much of mainstream social
science have marginalised thinking about macro social entities as having
distinct properties and features. As methodological individualism reshaped
the social sciences and social theory, the idea that only individuals can
suffer and that only individuals can be healed became prevalent. The idea
that the origins of individual suffering was social, that there were systemic

v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

and social-ontological mechanisms—such as the way modern societies

were organised and the kinds of values and norms that they made preva-
lent—responsible for the ways that individual suffering emerged in the
first place, was gradually put out of sight. Methodological holism—the
view that society as a whole could be understood as the explanatory unit
of analysis—was increasingly seen as wishy-washy metaphysics, not suited
to the world of analytic reason and modern science.
This view has begun to shift. Emerging largely out of the critical theory
tradition, the concept of social pathology persisted and was brought back
into currency with the work of Axel Honneth and his attempt to diagnose
social pathology as defects in recognitive relations. But we can now see
that social pathology is expanding beyond these narrow concerns. Neal
Harris’ work has been at the forefront of a new generation of critical
theorists that have decided to go back to the original themes and theo-
ries of critical theory in order to refresh our thinking about the nature
of social pathology and the kinds of defects that rationalised, capitalist
society engenders. This collection of essays is rich as well as novel. Each
paper in the volume seeks to move us towards a more holistic approach to
social pathology, one not restricted to pathologies of communication or
recognition alone, but also to the kinds of social irrationality that plagues
modern capitalist forms of the social organisation no less than the psycho-
logical states of the self. Harris, himself an important emerging voice in
critical theory with an expertise in social pathology theory, has been able
to turn our attention to new themes and new questions. In doing so,
he has placed critical social theory on a more politically engaged plane, a
course that should inspire others who seek social change and continue the
collective effort to make the world rational.

Gramercy Park, NYC Michael J. Thompson

Winter 2020
 Preface

In the summer of 2019, Heinz Sünker organised a conference at the

University of Wuppertal to mark the 50th anniversary of Adorno’s
passing. The event brought together an otherwise disparate band of Crit-
ical Theorists to reflect on Adorno’s life and work, and the continuing
impact of his Critical Theory today. While of the final contributors to this
volume only Gerard Delanty, Michael J. Thompson and I participated in
the conference, the origins of this project truly lie in Wuppertal, and three
particular themes were discussed at length.
The first of these was the continuation of an ongoing dialogue with
Gerard Delanty on the fading sociological core of Critical Theory. The
Institute for Social Research, while heavily inflected with left-Hegelian
philosophy, originated as a site for the analysis of the immanent contra-
dictions within the social world: a primarily interdisciplinary-sociological
consideration. Delanty’s panel at the conference spoke to these sociolog-
ical roots, and the importance of the distinctly immanent-transcendent
project Adorno advanced. In the face of the increasing swamping of the
sociological component of Critical Theory by Rawlsian and neo-Idealist
currents, it felt timely to produce a volume that sought to return social
research to the centre of the conversation. This is not a territory marking
exercise; Critical Theory has always aspired to be self-consciously inter-
disciplinary. Rather, this attempt to “re-sociologise” Critical Theory is
presented to maintain this cross-disciplinary engagement. For it to remain

vii
viii PREFACE

relevant, Critical Theory must always aspire to be more than another

flavour of theory of justice.
The second theme inspiring this volume is the increasing ‘domestica-
tion’ of Critical Theory, to use Michael J. Thompson’s turn of phrase. A
joy of reading Adorno, and of discussing his work, is the true hostility
and devastating negativity on display towards capitalist irrationality. Such
political and philosophical commitments are ironically absent in the work
of leading Critical Theorists, such as Honneth, even as we witness the
impeding cataclysms of global warming and insurgent neo-fascisms. While
Adorno’s “praxis” of combating reified consciousness through esoteric
critique was (perhaps) reasonably snubbed as bourgeois pretension by the
soixante-huitards, today it is almost as if the view from the Ivory Tower
has become too ghastly to comprehend, and a self-protecting retreat has
been sounded. While in the face of an increasingly unstoppable ecocide
this is not necessarily a poor move from a clinical “defence mechanism”
standpoint, many conference attendees felt Critical Theory still harboured
a potency to challenge structures of domination and should not retreat to
an opiate for the weary, defeated mind, facing insurmountable odds.
Finally, in editing this volume I was conscious of the increasingly
fractured nature of contemporary Critical Theory. A purported “Critical
Theory” reader might today incorporate Foucault’s biopolitics, Debord’s
psychogeography and Lacanian psychoanalysis, without mention of Social
Pathology, Minima Moralia or Dialectic of Enlightenment. The increasing
breadth and development of the field are only positive, and any attempt
to restrict Critical Theory to the veneration of a first-generation German
canon smacks of a futile conservatism. Rather, the fracturing of Critical
Theory today is damaging in that it risks losing theoretical coherence:
while Foucault and Debord offer much to the contemporary researcher,
they cannot be conveniently integrated within the ambit of Erich Fromm
and Walter Benjamin. These are theorists with clearly differentiated theo-
retical foundations; attempts at a synthesis, while often productive, require
careful consideration. Further, with the increasing investment in post-
structuralist theorisation, the centrality and unambiguity of a hostility to
capitalist reification is lost: Foucault’s work (or perhaps readings of his
work) is/are more amenable to neoliberalism than his myriad devotees
admit. In this regard, the collection seeks to bring together disparate
voices and new approaches while maintaining an immanent-transcendent
 PREFACE ix

methodology, seeking to anchor a broad, contemporary Critical Theory

within a dialectical and pathology diagnosing imagination.

Oxford, UK Neal Harris

Winter 2020
 Contents

1 Introduction: Social Pathology and Social Research 1

Neal Harris

Part I Explorations in Contemporary Social Pathology

Diagnosis
2 The Pathogenesis of Brexit: Pathologies of British
Political Modernity 23
Gerard Delanty
3 Pathologies of Reason in Computational Capitalism:
A Speculative Diagnosis of Our Computational
Worldview 47
James Stockman
4 Pathologies of Digital Communication: On
the Ascendancy of Right Populism 73
Estevão Bosco and Wagner Costa Ribeiro

Part II Ontological and Epistemological Considerations

in Social Pathology Scholarship
5 An Ontological Account of Social Pathology 113
Michael J. Thompson

xi
xii CONTENTS

6 Who Is Ill When a Society Is Ill? 141

Onni Hirvonen
7 A Biopolitical Account of Social Pathology: Viewing
Pathology as a Political-Ontological Issue 163
Yonathan Listik

Part III Beyond Pathologies of Recognition: New Voices,

New Directions
8 Rawlsian Liberalism as a Failure of Critique 193
Ane Engelstad
9 The Revolt of the Maladjusted: Defacing the Currency
of Social Pathology Diagnosis in Contemporary
Critical Theory 221
Denis C. Bosseau
10 The Challenge of Postcapitalism: Non-Capitalist
Temporalities and Social Pathology 253
Onur Acaroglu
11 The Future of Pathology Diagnosing Social Research 275
Neal Harris and James Stockman

Index 283
 Notes on Contributors

Onur Acaroglu is an instructor at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

and a co-founder and tutor at the Free University of London (FUL),
UK. He is assistant editor at the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books
(MPRB) and author of Rethinking Marxist Approaches to Transition: A
Theory of Temporal Dislocation (Brill, 2020). His interests include social
theory and Western Marxism.
Estevão Bosco is a Critical Social Theorist. He is a postdoctoral
researcher at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, a Fellow of the São Paulo
Research Foundation, and the coordinator of the RedSars2 network at the
Latin-American College of Global Studies (FLACSO/Brazil). Previously,
Dr. Bosco was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, UK,
and a Research Associate at the University of Campinas, Brazil. He is the
author of multiple journal articles, book chapters, and the book Sociedade
de risco: introdução à sociologia cosmopolita de Ulrich Beck (Annablume
and São Paulo Research Foundation, 2016).
Denis C. Bosseau is a doctoral student at the Research Centre for Social
and Political Thought (SPT) at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
His research focuses on contemporary strategies of resistance with partic-
ular attention given to practices of whistleblowing and the emancipatory
effects of acephalic social movements of contestation, like that of the
Gilet Jaune in France, seeing how such forms of contestation can serve as
sources of inspiration for a re-politicisation of critical practice within the

xiii
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

field of critical theory. He is co-editor on a proposed collection of cross-

disciplinary essays in critical theory, indicatively titled Critical Theory in
(A Time of) Crisis.
Wagner Costa Ribeiro is Professor of Geography at the University
of São Paulo, Brazil. Dr. Ribeiro has held visiting appointments at the
University of Barcelona, the University of Salamanca, the University of
Seville, Spain, and the University of Caldas, Colombia. He is the author
of several journal articles, book chapters, and books, including: A Ordem
Ambiental Internacional (Contexto, 2001 and 2005) and Geografia
política da água (Annablume, 2008).
Gerard Delanty is Professor of Sociology and Social & Political Thought
at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. His most recent publication
is Critical Theory and Social Transformation (Routledge, 2020). His
other publications include: The Cosmopolitan Imagination (Cambridge
University Press, 2009), Formations of European Modernity, 2nd edition
(Palgrave, 2019), Community 3rd Edition (Routledge, 2018), and The
European Heritage: A Critical Re-Interpretation (Routledge, 2018). He
has edited many volumes, including the Routledge International Hand-
book of Cosmopolitan Studies, 2nd edition (2019) and, with Stephen P.
Turner, the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political
Theory (2011). His most recent volume is Pandemics, Society and Poli-
tics: Critical Reflections on Covid-19 (De Gruyter, 2021). He is also the
Chief Editor of the European Journal of Social Theory.
Ane Englestad is a philosopher working on the concept of injustice and
critiques of mainstream political philosophy at the University of Sussex,
Brighton, UK. She is the former editor of Marx and Philosophy Review
of Books (MPRB).
Neal Harris is a Lecturer in Sociology at Oxford Brookes University,
Oxford, UK. He has published research in the European Journal of
Social Theory, Social Science Information, Thesis Eleven, International Soci-
ology, the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books, and Studies in Social
and Political Thought. His work focuses on the Critical Theory tradi-
tion, past and present. He is currently working on two main projects: a
monograph on the foundations of pathology diagnosing Critical Theory,
to be published with Manchester University Press (2022), and a co-
edited volume with Onur Acaroglu, indicatively titled: Thinking Beyond
Neoliberalism: Theorising Transition and Resistance (Palgrave, 2021).
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

Onni Hirvonen is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Department of

Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His
research interests include the Hegelian philosophy of recognition, critical
social philosophy, and contemporary social ontology. Hirvonen’s recent
publications analyse collective responsibility, recognition and work, and
populism.
Yonathan Listik is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He was previously a researcher
and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Essex, Colchester,
UK. His research focuses on political philosophy, specifically on the
connections between contemporary ontology in the continental tradition,
political theory, and aesthetics.
James Stockman is a Critical Theorist and doctoral candidate working
in the field of Digital Media at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
He is a member of the editorial collective for the journal Studies in Social
& Political Thought, and he works as a Doctoral Tutor in the Department
of Media & Communications at the University of Sussex.
Michael J. Thompson is Professor of Political Theory in the Depart-
ment of Political Science at William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA.
His most recent books are The Specter of Babel: A Reconstruction of Polit-
ical Judgment (SUNY, 2020) as well as the forthcoming, Twilight of
the Self: Cybernetic Society and the Eclipse of Autonomy (Stanford) and
Perversions of Subjectivity: Public Reason and its Discontents (Routledge).
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Social Pathology and Social

Research

Neal Harris

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes to our social,

economic and political systems. Hidden among the startling statistics
from demographers and epidemiologists lies a predictable reality: the
fortunes of the world’s billionaires ‘increased by more than a quarter’
between April and July 2020 (Neate, 2020). The crude dynamic of the
rich disproportionately profiting, and the poor disproportionately dying,
was replicated at both a global and a national level (Harvey, 2020). True
to form, the popular press attempted to displace critical political economy
with xenophobia (Ong & Lasco, 2020), yet such efforts met with
only partial success. With COVID-19 disclosing the myriad irrationali-
ties of neoliberal governance, social critique returned with a vengeance,
increasingly framing capitalism itself within the language of pathology.
Making this connection most explicitly was the ubiquitous activist banner

N. Harris (B)
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: nharris@brookes.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Harris (ed.), Pathology Diagnosis and Social Research,
Political Philosophy and Public Purpose,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70582-4_1
2 N. HARRIS

declaring: ‘Capitalism Is The Virus’. At the same time as this resur-

gent challenge to neoliberal hegemony, the importance of considered
government intervention is likewise being showcased globally (Pickhard-
Whitehead, 2020). Political parties whose leaders had recently declared
that there was ‘no such thing as society’, and who had triumphed the
shrinking of the welfare state, suddenly competed to demonstrate their
respective competence at centralised administration. The lie that an inter-
nationalist neoliberalism offers the optimal means of social organisation
was instantly forgotten. As in wartime, protectionism and state inter-
vention rapidly became the accepted orthodoxy. The spectacular failure
of neoliberalism to offer meaningful solutions, and the comparative ease
and joy with which solidaristic mutual aid networks flourished, provided
a stark juxtaposition (see Nelson, 2020). The present conjuncture evinces
both a renewed critique of capitalism as distinctly ‘pathological’, while
enabling tangible alternatives to emerge.
While the pandemic brought virological imagery to the fore, there has
long been a rich tradition of anchoring socio-political critique within the
framing of ‘pathology’ (Honneth, 2000, 2007; Fromm, 2010 [1991];
Neuhouser, 2012, inter alia). The development of pathology diagnosing
social criticism can be tracked not only within the classics of Western
philosophy, from Socrates’ attack on Glaukon’s ‘fevered’ ‘city of pigs’
in the Republic (371bff) through to Rousseau’s attack on civil society
in the Second Discourse (1984 [1762]), but also within Indian ‘New
World’ teachings, for instance, the Theosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti
(2008). Political scientists (Mudde, 2010), criminologists (Sutherland,
1945; Best, 2007) and psychoanalysts (Freud, 1953) have likewise devel-
oped the heurism in various directions. However, while these diverse
schools have all influenced what it means to diagnose social pathologies,
the framing maintains a particular significance within Frankfurt School
Critical Theory. Here, the language of ‘pathology’ has been mobilised
to enable researchers to push beyond the liberal imagination of ‘justice’
and ‘legitimacy’, thus emboldening social research to identify a plethora
of distinct, and often more foundational, challenges to the existing social
order (Honneth, 2000). It is this Critical Theoretical understanding of
social pathology which this volume seeks to extend.
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 3

1 Social Pathology and Critical Theory

Frankfurt School Critical Theory offers an interdisciplinary approach
to social research that marshals concepts and methodologies from left-
Hegelian philosophy, Marxism, psychoanalysis, epistemology, sociology
and aesthetics, to interrogate how socio-political structures shape the
consciousness and behaviour of social subjects. Hegel’s critique of Kant’s
Idealist philosophy is thus of central importance for Critical Theory.
While Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (2007 [1781]) explored noumenal,
universal Ideas, discoverable a priori, Hegel offered a conception of
Reason which was distinctly socio-historical. For Hegel, Geist (‘reason’
or ‘spirit’) was emerging, or ‘unfolding’, within both the social and
the natural world, working through its latent contradictions. Indeed, as
Hegel would claim in both the Phenomenology of Spirit (1970 [1807])
and Science of Logic (2015 [1816]), the cognition of social subjects is
fundamentally connected to this dialectical working through of the incon-
sistencies immanent within the social world. Reason, for Hegel, is thus
a distinctly social reality, connected to the development of macro-social
logics and processes: how one thinks, as much as what one thinks, is
socially dependant. For Axel Honneth (2007), the ‘explosive charge’ of
Critical Theory derives from its focus on the ‘pathologies’ manifest within
this ‘thicker’, social understanding of rationality.
While Honneth is one of the most prominent contemporary figures
associated with the Frankfurt School today, Critical Theory is held to
have passed through three distinct ‘generations’ (Jay, 1996 [1973]). At its
inception in 1923, the Institute for Social Research [Institut für Sozial-
forschung ] practised an unremarkable orthodox Marxist economics. It was
Max Horkheimer’s appointment as director of the institute in 1930 which
brought methodological innovation and the idiosyncratic fusion of disci-
plines; welcoming psychoanalysts, sociologists, philosophers and literary
theorists. First-generation Critical Theory is thus typified not only by the
work of Max Horkheimer, but also by that of Theodor Adorno, Herbert
Marcuse, Erich Fromm and Walter Benjamin (see Jay, 1996).
Working together, Adorno and Horkheimer developed a strikingly
negative and dialectical account of society, culminating in their co-
authored Dialectic of Enlightenment (1979 [1944]) and Adorno’s (2005
[1951]) Minima Moralia. Centring the left-Hegelian analysis of social
rationality, the authors identified deep-seated pathologies within the
foundations of contemporary thought. Free-market capitalism, Soviet
4 N. HARRIS

state capitalism and the horrors of the Nazi fascistic terror were held
to be manifestations of a deformed, ‘pathological’ irrationality. Enlight-
enment thought itself, declared Adorno and Horkheimer, with self-
conscious hyperbole, ‘has extinguished any trace of its self-consciousness’
and has become ‘ultimately self-destructive’ (Adorno & Horkheimer,
1979 [1944]: 4). Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse served to
inject a Freudian-Marxian synthesis to these conversations. Fromm’s
humanist Marxism (1963, 2010) spoke explicitly of the ‘insane society’
and a ‘pathological normalcy’, while Marcuse (1977 [1941]) brought
a phenomenological lens with his critique of a pathological ‘one-
dimensionality’ to the modern social experience. Walter Benjamin’s (2008
[1935], 1978) work added yet further nuance and eclecticism, intro-
ducing the concerns of temporality, redemption and the messianic. While
these theorists approached social research with differing inflections, they
all shared a strong conviction in the need to conduct a deeper form of
social criticism, to disclose the contradictions within the dominant form
of life (Honneth, 2000).
First-generation Critical Theory enabled incisive social critique, yet
Adorno’s increasing emphasis on philosophical negativity, and his belief
in the emancipatory potential of abstract art, failed to resonate with the
dynamic political activism of the late 1960s (see Jarvis, 1998: 90–123;
124–147). As Fromm and Marcuse moved to develop Critical Theory
in directions more in keeping with the zeitgeist, first-generation Critical
Theory’s metaphysics seemed increasingly antiquated and paralysing. In
this context, Jürgen Habermas (1972, 1984) attempted to offer radi-
cally new theoretical and normative foundations, forging what has since
become known as the ‘second generation’ of Critical Theory. Developed
in Knowledge and Human Interests (1972 [1968]) and extended in his
Theory of Communicative Action (1984 and 1987 [1981]), Habermas
offered a new grounding for Critical Theory, anchored less explicitly
in left-Hegelianism. Synthesising insights from pragmatics, hermeneu-
tics, analytic philosophy and developmental psychology, Habermas sought
an unambiguously post-metaphysical Critical Theory (see Rasmussen,
1991). With Habermas, Frankfurt School social research increasingly
focused on identifying pathologies of systematically distorted commu-
nication; instances where systemic logics overdetermine the possibili-
ties for communicative exchange and deliberation within the lifeworld.
While Habermas served to rehabilitate pathology diagnosing, normatively
undergirded social research, his account was comparatively distanced
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 5

from the explicitly anti-capitalist agenda of his predecessors. Michael J.

Thompson (2016) thus reads Habermas’ work as presaging the ‘domes-
tication of Critical Theory’, sacrificing political radicalism at the altar of
institutional credibility.
While some Critical Theorists today retain a primary investment in
a Habermasian methodology (see Bosco and Wagner’s contribution to
this volume), Axel Honneth’s Critical Theory of Recognition is widely
credited with providing the foundations for a ‘third generation’ of Frank-
furt School scholarship. Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition accelerated
Habermas’ post-Marxian, post-metaphysical approach to Critical Theory
(Thompson, 2016), increasingly centring a micro-sociological intersub-
jective analysis. Developing the young Hegel’s Jena writings, Honneth
argues that the subject’s affective experience(s) of ‘misrecognition’ can
serve as an immanent entry point for social critique (Honneth, 1995
[1992]; see Delanty & Harris, 2021). This approach has been highly
influential and has brought Frankfurt School theorists into dialogue
with a variety of applied practitioners and traditionally more liberal
disciplines (see Laitinen et al., 2015; see Hirvonen’s contribution to
this volume). Yet, despite the undeniable proliferation of recognition-
theoretical approaches among social researchers, Honneth’s framework
has been highly divisive, with philosophical (Thompson, 2016), feminist
(McNay, 2007), decolonial (Coulthard, 2014; see Bosseau’s contribu-
tion to this volume) and political-economic (Fraser & Honneth, 2001)
objections being raised.
While scholars invested in a first-generation Hegelian-Marxism may
lament the degeneration of the Frankfurt School programme into
a neo-Idealist and politically quiescent irrelevance (Thompson, 2016;
Kouvelakis, 2019), the centrality of pathology diagnosing social research
persists, albeit in a drastically ‘domesticated’ form. Unlike Ideal theo-
retical approaches (see Engelstad’s chapter), social research employing a
Frankfurt School methodology remains (theoretically, at least) anchored
in the critique of the immanent contradictions manifest within the
lifeworld. Pathology diagnosing Frankfurt School research is thus funda-
mentally an endeavour committed to offering a form of normative social
criticism, probing beyond the empirically observable, to analyse struc-
tures, learning processes and socio-political dynamics (see the chapters by
Delanty; Stockman; Bosco and Ribeiro; Acaroglu). As Strydom (2011)
and Delanty (2020) have highlighted, the methodological commit-
ment which undergirds this research is an investment in immanent-
transcendence; identifying the possibilities for a less-contradictory form
of social life that exist latent within the present social order.
6 N. HARRIS

2 Pathology Diagnosing Social

Research Today: Three Existential Crises
Despite the critical-explanatory potential of Frankfurt School research,
and the potency of pathology diagnosing social critique, Critical Theory
today sits in an increasingly precarious position within the academy. Three
potentially existential crises can be identified, which threaten the future
of Critical Theory as a distinctly Hegelian-Marxian interdisciplinary social
research endeavour, capable of making an impactful critique of social and
political life.
The first challenge has been framed as the ‘domestication’ of Critical
Theory (see Thompson, 2016). Following Honneth’s Critical Theory of
Recognition, social pathologies are today increasingly framed through the
optic of ‘pathologies of recognition’ (Laitinen et al., 2015; see also Zurn,
2011; Harris, 2019), with structural-relational Marxism displaced by a
primarily intersubjective account of the social world. While this approach
is credited with helping to expand the focus of Critical Theory from its
perceived productivist-bias (Laitinen et al., 2015), the recognition-lens is
viewed by its critics as being socio-theoretically, philosophically and polit-
ically problematic (Fraser & Honneth, 2001; McNay, 2007; Thompson,
2016, 2019, inter alia). Specifically, the dominant ‘pathologies of recog-
nition’ approach seeks to apprehend all social problems through an
exclusively intersubjective framework; and thus suffers from what McNay
(2007) deems a ‘scholastic epistemocentricism’.1 In short, this means that
every social problem, including maldistribution, is increasingly researched
through an intersubjective perspective. For example, Schaub and Odigbo
(2019) have recently presented the reliance on foodbanks as a manifes-
tation of ‘consumptive need misrecognition’. For Nancy Fraser, such an
exclusively intersubjective account fails to capture the central dynamics of
neoliberal political economy, which extend far beyond the intersubjective
register, to include:

1 By this rather ungainly term, borrowed from Bourdieu, McNay (2007) means that
recognition theorists risk distorting their conception of the social world in order to
retain the validity of their ‘recognition’ approach. For McNay, instead of admitting the
obvious reality, that a monistic recognition lens is unviable, recognition theorists alter
their understanding of the social world to fit within the parameters of their heurism.
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 7

…the supply and demand for different types of labor; the balance of power
between labor and capital; the stringency of social regulations, including
the minimum wage; the availability and cost of productivity enhancing
technologies; the ease with which firms can shift their operations to loca-
tions where wage rates are lower; the cost of credit; the terms of trade; and
international currency exchange rates. (Fraser & Honneth, 2001: 215)

In short, ‘pathologies of recognition’ approaches can be seen as socio-

theoretically limited in their failure to adequately capture the true breadth
of socio-political and economic dynamics at work within the social world.
Furthermore, the ‘pathologies of recognition’ account can be read
as evincing a neglect of central Marxian philosophical insights. For
Thompson, social research which is predicated on a ‘pathologies of recog-
nition’ framing is built upon an inescapably ‘neo-Idealist’ social ontology;
it invests social subjects with cognitive capacities which they cannot
possibly possess. As Thompson persuasively argues, scholars who hold
there to be ‘a self-sufficiency to the powers of intersubjective reason,
discourse, structures of justification and recognition’ fail to account for
the ‘potency of social power, rooted in the material organisation of social
life’ (Thompson, 2016: 15). Recognition scholars hold the intersubjective
capacities of the subject to be infallible, detached from wider socialisation
processes. A foundational tenet of first-generation Critical Theory, as we
have seen, is that social power and knowledge are connected. This insight
is not only crucial to Hegel’s ‘sociologised’ Kantianism, but also to Marx’s
subsequent materialist inversion of Hegelian idealism. This central strand
of Critical Theory can be seen to be ‘domesticated’ in that it has forgotten
its central, radical insight: ‘the critique of society is critique of knowledge,
and vice versa’ (Adorno, 2005: 250). Indeed, for Thompson, our capacity
to engage intersubjectively, to know other subjects and their places in the
wider social world, must be framed as a capacity that is vulnerable to the
workings of constitutive power in a patriarchal, racist and capitalist society.
Such a ‘domestication’ can also be seen in the politics of today’s leading
Frankfurt School Critical Theorists (Thompson, 2016; Kouvelakis, 2019).
This is perhaps best captured by Deutscher and Lafont’s (2017) co-edited
collection, Critical Theory in Critical Times, which, instead of dealing
with the impending cataclysm of capitalist-induced global warming, or
the distortions to consciousness produced by the ascent of algorithmic
rationality, opens with Habermas’ discussion of ‘dual sovereignty’ in the
context of the European Union. Unlike Delanty’s chapter on Brexit in
8 N. HARRIS

this volume, which seeks to locate the referendum relative to broader

social-political pathologies, regressions in social learning processes and
displaced class antagonisms, Habermas’ text sits closer to Lockean liber-
alism than to dialectical Critical Theory. Frankfurt School Critical Theory
thus risks becoming thoroughly domesticated as its leading voices have
increasingly, ‘receded from the confrontation with the primary source of
social domination and disfiguration of human culture: capitalist market
society’ (Thompson, 2016: 2).
Secondly, and relatedly, Critical Theory is increasingly retreating into
competing abstract philosophical systems, a far cry from the rigorous
interdisciplinary social critique of its prime. While Delanty (2020) and
Schecter (2019), among others, have argued Critical Theory must retain
a clear connection to its sociological roots, leading practitioners such as
Habermas, Honneth and Forst, have retreated from direct sociological
analysis. As Thompson puts it, much contemporary Critical Theory serves
to ‘articulate an academicized political philosophy sealed off from the real-
ities that affect and deform critical subjectivity’ (Thompson, 2016: 3).
In essence, a flambéed Enlightenment Liberalism masquerades as Critical
Theory when penetrating critique is needed more than ever. As Kouve-
lakis (2019) witheringly frames it, Honneth has brought Critical Theory
to the precipice of Hegelian scholasticism. As Englestad’s chapter in this
volume underscores, social and political philosophy desperately needs to
embrace social critique; Critical Theory must not move in the direction of
ideal theory. Frankfurt School Social Research can thus be seen to be at
risk from an excessive ‘philosophisation’, blunting its capacity for critique
and decentring the diagnosis of social pathologies.
Lastly, the merit of Frankfurt School Critical Theory is also increasingly
challenged by decolonial and post-colonial theorists (see Allen, 2016).
To date, two principal criticisms have been raised. Firstly, that social
research which draws on Frankfurt School concepts and methodolo-
gies has systematically ignored colonisation, slavery and the non-Western
experience. Secondly, that the methodologies and concepts developed
by Frankfurt School Critical Theory are themselves tainted by colonial-
ising epistemes and must be urgently reconsidered. While a productive
response to the first criticism can be to acknowledge the need to embrace
a more reflexive cosmopolitan imagination (see Delanty, 2009), the
second charge is harder to constructively imbibe. For Amy Allen, a
commitment to decoloniality heralds the ‘end of progress’, that is, the
belief in clear teleologies which are often complicit in coloniality. Reading
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 9

Habermas and Honneth (and, for different reasons, Forst) as saturated

with such Eurocentric progress narratives, Allen argues for a return to
the ‘epistemic humility’ of Adorno and Foucault. Yet, as Martin Jay
(2018) argues, such a solution is not entirely satisfactory; for one reason,
decolonising the normative foundations of Critical Theory à la Amy Allen
retains a remarkably Eurocentric epistemic ensemble. Indeed, Allen can be
read as failing to adequately integrate voices from beyond the Eurocentric
canon, while (rightly) making Critical Theorists question their claims to
universality. However, as Jay submits, one must be careful of a neo-nativist
trend within post-colonial scholarship: Critical Theorists must not retreat
from the critique of authoritarian neoliberalisms in post-colonies, many
of which are simultaneously post-colonial and colonising in the present
(Fanon, 1961; Osuri, 2017). In short, the current impasse might be read
as a dangerously self-castigating paralysis, desperately requiring further
critical scholarship.

3 The Structure
and Contribution of This Volume
It is within this context that this volume was conceived of as an oppor-
tunity to showcase the enduring merits of pathology diagnosing social
research, notwithstanding the very real areas of reflexive analysis that
are undeniably warranted. As the contributors demonstrate, now is a
crucial time to advance a normative, post-liberal form of social research,
focusing on the forms of rationality manifest within the social world. This
volume thus seeks to showcase the contemporary relevance of pathology
diagnosing social criticism as much as its analytic potency. The chapters
gathered here demonstrate that the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism
and widespread defacement of critical consciousness can be powerfully
engaged through a pathology diagnosing, dialectical imagination.
The volume is divided into three parts, grouping together applied
research (Part I), philosophical reflections (Part II) and conscious
attempts at forging new relationships between pathology diagnosing
critique and other schools and traditions (Part III). The contributors
also represent a diverse demographic; ranging from established profes-
sors from the Global South, North America and Europe, to early-career
academics from across Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Turkey, France and
the UK. The diverse spread of ideas and positions offers a chance to unite
10 N. HARRIS

established scholarship with potential future research emerging across

Critical Theory.
In the opening substantive chapter, ‘The Pathogenesis of Brexit:
Pathologies of British Political Modernity’, Gerard Delanty interrogates
‘Brexit’ as a manifestation of social and political pathologies. Far from
offering the British precariat a vehicle for progressive transformation,
Delanty argues that Brexit should be simultaneously framed as a conserva-
tive cultural movement and an accelerant for neoliberal colonisation, both
ironic projections of underlying class resentment. Brexit is thus framed as
a manifestation of a pathology of social consciousness, a displacement of
popular dissatisfaction, which has tragically imploded into an ultimately
masochistic imperial nostalgia and xenophobia. Drawing on Adorno
et al.’s Authoritarian Personality (1994 [1950]), Delanty argues that
Brexit should be viewed as symptomatic of more widespread authoritarian
tendencies emerging within Western liberal democracies. Connecting this
with distortions of communication within the public realm, made possible
through digital communication, Delanty charts how popular discourse
was forced ever further to the right as social, cultural and political patholo-
gies were elided. Delanty’s chapter demonstrates the utility of applying
a pathology diagnosing lens to conduct research on the integration of
political and social pathologies and underscores the continuing relevance
of Adornian ideas for applied social research today. Delanty concludes
that ‘Brexit has two faces: one an inward nationalistic one that draws
its strength from imperial nostalgia, anti-immigrant xenophobia, anti-
cosmopolitan resentment and a revival of nativist English nationalism;
the other one is a neoliberal agenda to free the UK from EU regula-
tion in order to become a global free-trading nation with its basis in
the Anglosphere’. Written before the COVID-19 pandemic, Delanty’s
analysis seems only more powerful in light of recent developments.
Chapter 3, James Stockman’s ‘Pathologies of Reason in Computational
Capitalism: A Speculative Diagnosis of Our Computational Worldview’,
tracks the ascent of a distinct ‘network rationality’. Centring left-Hegelian
themes in his analysis, Stockman argues that computational technology
has shaped how we understand and deploy reason itself. Increasingly,
subjects come to comprehend and value the social world solely through
computational frames of reference. As such, social pathology func-
tions as a crucial heuristic to facilitate research into our fractured and
distorted world view. Matching Delanty’s engagement across social and
political pathologies, Stockman explores the entanglements between
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 11

the constellation of computational rationality and right-wing political

dynamics. In a world where humanistic reason is framed as inefficient
and outmoded, legalistic and juridical considerations of data protection
and anti-trust legislation are woefully impotent remedies. To contest the
purported objectivity of ‘network rationality’, Stockman uses the framing
of pathology to prosecute an epistemic engagement with the founda-
tions of computational power and their distinctly material socio-political
implications.
Chapter 4, Estevão Bosco and Wagner Costa Ribeiro’s, ‘Pathologies
of Digital Communication: On the Ascendancy of Right Populism’, uses
a Habermasian framework to research how the social web’s systemic
distortion of communication has facilitated the rise of right-populisms.
Focusing on Brazil, but ranging more widely, the co-authors submit
that the pathological colonisation of the lifeworld by systemic logics is
manifest tout court with digital communication. The insurgent ‘attention
economy’ is found to have undercut communication-oriented, intersub-
jective exchange, substituting meaningful dialogue for a system-oriented
‘attention-as-currency’ model, where ‘value’ is connected to constant
content dissemination and consumption. While the authors acknowledge
the ever-increasing integration of digital systems, their focus is particularly
on private messaging services, which are identified as holding a primary
role in the erosion of communicative reason. To facilitate their argument,
the co-authors commence by providing a detailed sketch of a Haber-
masian pathology diagnosing social research framework, which they apply
through a close reading of analyses of the cybernetic world.
Part II, ‘Ontological and Epistemological Considerations in Social
Pathology Scholarship’ addresses central philosophical concerns for
pathology diagnosing social research. This section opens with Chapter 5,
Michael J. Thompson’s, ‘An Ontological Account of Social Pathology’.
Developing ideas expressed in his iconoclastic The Domestication of Crit-
ical Theory (2016), Thompson argues that the diagnosis of social patholo-
gies must focus on the ways that our social relations are structured.
In opposition to the dominant ‘neo-Idealism(s)’ of Honneth and Forst,
Thompson submits that we must not critique our social forms solely on
the basis of their intersubjective norms, but as a social totality; as a ‘syn-
thetic whole of relations, practices, norms, institutions and purposes’. To
enable such a critique, Thompson argues for a critical social ontology,
so that the researcher can grasp the social totality as a distinct object of
analysis. In keeping with Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
12 N. HARRIS

(1844), Thompson submits that researchers must be attentive to the

pathologies which are foundational in the structures of our social relation-
ships. Namely, the ‘way that our social relations are shaped, as well as the
collective goals and purposes towards which our institutions are oriented’.
Thompson presents how such a structural, social-relational analysis, which
focuses on the objective conditions of our social lives, is best achieved
through a critical social ontology. In summary, for Thompson, the extent
to which society is irrationally constructed, at the level of its relations,
practices and goals, can be determined through a considered engage-
ment with its socio-ontological reality. Drawing on Fromm (1963, 2010
[1991]), Rousseau (1984 [1762]), Zimbardo (2007) and Marcuse (1964,
1977), Thompson’s provocative chapter offers a new avenue for critical
social research which will undoubtedly spark productive debate.
Chapter 6, Onni Hirvonen’s, ‘Who Is Ill When a Society Is Ill?’
also explores key ontological questions for pathology diagnosing social
research. However, in contrast to Thompson, Hirvonen is invested in
a primarily intersubjective account of social pathologies, and thus sits
closer to Axel Honneth’s Critical Theory of Recognition (1995, 2014)
than to Thompson or Kouvelakis. Despite this foundational divergence,
both Thompson and Hirvonen agree on the importance of developing
a critical social ontology to further pathology diagnosing social research.
In Hirvonen’s prose, ‘the stronger the ontological commitments … the
easier it is to evaluate social orders on the basis of the concept of social
pathology’. Hirvonen’s chapter follows Laitinen and Särkelä (2019),
using their four-fold typology of distinct conceptions of social pathology
as a springboard from which to outline the divergent social-ontological
commitments corresponding to each framing. Hirvonen’s contribution to
this volume thus showcases potential areas of productive dialogue across
today’s increasingly divided academy.
Chapter 7, Yonathan Listik’s, ‘A Biopolitical Account of Social
Pathology: Viewing Pathology as a Political-Ontological Issue’, provides a
nuanced post-structuralist-inflected critique of the pathology diagnosing
framework. Yet, rather than merely seeking to deconstruct left-Hegelian
themes, Listik works to ensure their immanent coherence, arguing that
without ‘due sensitivity to the complicities and complications that a diag-
nosis of X as “pathological” precipitates, such research might end up
inadvertently safeguarding the capitalist subject from the intrinsically capi-
talist deterioration that threatens it’. Listik powerfully argues that an
implicitly capitalist ‘immunological’ ontology undergirds much pathology
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 13

diagnosing social research, in which the health of an isolated subject

threatened by broader social modalities is the antecedent model behind
the heurism’s appeal and longevity. Listik’s provocative chapter engages
with Honneth (2008, 2015, inter alia), Dews (2007), Freyenhagen
(2013) and Fromm (1963 [1955], 2010 [1991]), seeking to demon-
strate that each approach relies, even if unintentionally, on problematic
conceptions of normality and health. Drawing on Esposito (2008, 2010,
2011), Listik challenges the reader to ‘strive for a non-individualised
social relation, one where immunisation is not in place, and therefore the
pathological openness to the external is not mediated by an administrative
relation’. In short, Listik argues that a considered awareness of the onto-
logical assumptions undergirding pathology diagnosing social research is
urgently required.
Part III: ‘Beyond Pathologies of Recognition: New Voices, New Direc-
tions’, unites authors consciously trying to bridge traditions, schools
and disciplines, deliberately seeking to push Critical Theory beyond its
current neo-Idealist impasse. The contributors to this section thus seek to
bring Critical Theory into dialogue with an explicit, self-aware historical
materialism, feminist philosophy and decolonial theory.
In Chapter 8, ‘Rawlsian Liberalism as a Failure of Critique’, Ane
Engelstad draws on Critical Theory and feminist political philosophy to
highlight the limitations of Rawls’ (1971) A Theory of Justice. Making
the case for the importance of social critique, rather than abstract ideal
theory, Engelstad’s chapter demonstrates the importance of transgressing
disciplinary and school-based boundaries. Rawls’ A Theory of Justice has
dominated political philosophy journals and lecture halls for nearly half
a century, yet, methodologically, Rawls embraced none of the central
insights of Critical Theory. As Engelstad draws out, Rawls’ famous ‘orig-
inal position’ and ‘veil of ignorance’ presupposes autonomous subjects
who are capable of rationally articulating an objective understanding of
justice. As the social pathology diagnosing imagination discloses, and
as Engelstad clearly presents, the forms of rationality that the subject
enacts and reproduces reflect dominant social logics and dynamics. Thus,
the self-interested autonomous Kantian subject of Rawlsian liberalism
crumbles when located within the reality of patriarchal, capitalist, racist
and ableist social relations. While retaining fidelity to the possibilities
of analytic philosophy, Engelstad demonstrates the particular failings of
the Rawlsian imagination, drawing on the work of Charles Mills (2005),
Susan Moller Okin (1989) and Axel Honneth (2007).
14 N. HARRIS

Chapter 9, Denis C. Bosseau’s, ‘The Revolt of the Maladjusted:

Defacing the Currency of Social Pathology Diagnosis in Contemporary
Critical Theory’ provides a withering critique of contemporary pathology
diagnosing social research. Integrating hitherto underexplored authors
within mainstream Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Bosseau makes a
clear, powerful argument: that the dominant understanding of social
pathology fostered by contemporary Critical Theory is one where the
subject is insufficiently adjusted to the mores and norms of the social
realm. While for Honneth this is due to the failure of subjects to satisfac-
torily imbibe the (rational) social norms due to extant, yet malleable, (irra-
tional) intersubjective relations, Bosseau presents a diametrically opposed
account of social pathology. Drawing on Martin Luther King (2005),
Fred Moten (Moten & Harney, 2013) and Franz Fanon (1952), Bosseau
argues that ‘maladjustment’ is exactly what Critical Theory should aspire
for: to disrupt the dominant norms and mores of racist, patriarchal neolib-
eralism. Categorically rejecting the approach of normative uplift anchored
(implicitly or explicitly) to normative reconstructive critique, Bosseau,
echoing Thompson (through Fanon), locates social pathologies within
the dominant structures of the social world. Evoking Marx’s letter to
Ruge (1844), Bosseau reminds us that the job of clarifying the strug-
gles of the age is not one of persuading the ‘undercommons’ to see the
disguised equity and rationality of their plight; rather it is to expose the
manifest contradictions of a world in which multiply marginalised subjects
find it ‘impossible to breathe’ (Fanon, 1952: 183).
Chapter 10, Onur Acaroglu’s ‘The Challenge of Post-capitalism: Non-
Capitalist Temporalities and Social Pathology’, introduces a previously
absent consideration in pathology diagnosing social research: temporality.
For Acaroglu, ‘post- and non-capitalist temporalities are inscribed in the
tendency to resist alienation’, an argument he presents in his recently
published Rethinking Marxist Approaches to Transition (2020). Centring
temporality within the diagnosis of social pathologies, Acaroglu’s chapter
identifies a clear lacuna: that research into social pathology is locked into
a singular present, blind to the multiple dissenting rhythms within social
life. For Acaroglu, a historical materialist optic helps disclose the limita-
tions of such a unilinear ‘march of time’ perspective. Acaroglu illustrates
how the ‘time’ of accumulation is ‘distinct from that of social reproduc-
tion’, despite their substantial overlaps. Exploding the temporal monistic
perspective of mainstream pathology diagnosing research, Acaroglu urges
Critical Theorists to attend to the potential immanent departures from
 1 INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL PATHOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH 15

capitalist processes. The presence of rival temporalities is thus identified

as a crucial area for critical social research.
Harris and Stockman’s co-authored, ‘On the Future of Pathology
Diagnosing Critical Theory’ brings this volume to a conclusion.
Reflecting on the preceding chapters, the co-authors comment on the
importance of a continuing social research endeavour that pushes beyond
the liberal horizon, and engages with the dominant forms of social
reason constituted by, and which reinforce, today’s increasingly destruc-
tive authoritarian neoliberalism. Seeking to unite themes from across
the volume, the co-authors argue that such social research is at its best
when it combines an analysis of the structural-relational form of social
existence, its impact upon the possibility for critical consciousness and
broader social-political logics and contingencies.
The contributions gathered in this volume not only speak to a variety
of concerns, but are also written by theorists working within and across
many different schools, traditions and locations; thus inducing construc-
tive tensions with the potential to disclose productive future syntheses
and relationships. In the face of unfathomable odds, Critical Theory still
harbours the potential for a progressive, rigorous, impactful attack on
social irrationality. In light of the manifold challenges facing a dialec-
tical Hegelian-Marxist Critical Theory, both from internal and external
parties, I hope this volume serves to champion the critical-explanatory
potential of a form of critique which transcends both liberal ideal theory
and the increasingly omnipresent neo-positivism(s). Over the next few
decades, the socio-political and economic challenges that progressive
social researchers will confront will likely be epic in scale as climatic catas-
trophe vies with insurgent neo-fascism as the leading horror expedited
by neoliberal irrationality. It is thus crucial that social researchers remain
sensitive to such destructive, terrifying potentialities. As Adorno (2005
[1951]: 235) writes in Minima Moralia,

[S]he who relinquishes awareness of the growth of horror not merely

succumbs to cold-hearted contemplation, but fails to perceive, together
with the specific difference between the newest and that preceding it, the
true identity of the whole, of terror without end.

The precise form that Critical Theory will take, in ten, twenty or fifty
years’ time is extremely uncertain. The hope embedded in this volume is
that it will contribute towards the safeguarding of a form of social research
16 N. HARRIS

that targets the impact of constitutive power on social rationality, led by

researchers aware of their positionality. In other words, interdisciplinary
Critical Theory.

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 PART I

Explorations in Contemporary Social

Pathology Diagnosis
 CHAPTER 2

The Pathogenesis of Brexit: Pathologies

of British Political Modernity

Gerard Delanty

The concept of pathology is a useful way to make sense of the negative

aspects of a society.1 Social pathologies refer to the social illnesses and
various kinds of social problems that bring about widespread social
malfunctioning, alienation, malaise and atomisation. In many applications
in social science, the focus is on specific vulnerable groups, the effects
of poverty, unemployment, stress and so on. In this chapter, following
the seminal work of Erich Fromm,2 I argue that the notion of pathology
can be usefully applied in a more general sense to society as a whole in

1 I would like to acknowledge helpful comments from Neal Harris and a reviewer on an
earlier version of this chapter. My thanks too to William Outhwaite and Patrick O’Mahony
for comments. This chapter, it should be noted, was written in early 2020, just before
the pandemic, with which Brexit was to become intermeshed.
2 See Fromm (1941, 1963 [1955], 2010 [1991]). See also Burston (1991) and Harris
(2019).

G. Delanty (B)
Sociology and Social & Political Thought, The University of Sussex,
Brighton, UK
e-mail: g.delanty@sussex.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Harris (ed.), Pathology Diagnosis and Social Research,
Political Philosophy and Public Purpose,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70582-4_2
24 G. DELANTY

order to make sense of societal regression. There are relatively few studies
on the pathogenesis of political modernity. Klaus Eder (1985) wrote a
classic one on Germany. The idea of modernity engendering pathologies
has been central to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, but has
been rarely, if at all, developed in relation to current trends. In making
this claim, I am not suggesting that there is a normal condition from
which the pathological is a departure. Indeed, it can be the case that
pathologies themselves become normalised.
In this context, I am interested in major political pathologies, which are
related to socio-cultural pathologies. The example I am taking is Brexit,
which I argue is an event of considerable historical significance and that
it can be seen as a political pathology that has nurtured a wider socio-
cultural pathology.3 I would like to make a strong claim and place Brexit
in the context of the pathogenic formation of British political modernity.
It is not my claim that Brexit was inscribed within the course of modern
British history, but that certain historical conditions made it possible.
The outcome was contingent in the end on specific circumstances, but
it cannot be taken on its own as an aberrant event. I also argue that
Brexit is not a specifically British phenomenon. While having British-
specific features, it can be related to trends towards authoritarianism in
other democracies, most notably the election of Trump in the USA.
To this end, in order to try to understand it theoretically, I draw on
one of the major works of social and political analysis in critical theory,
namely the monumental Authoritarian Personality, published in 1950 as
part of the Studies in Prejudice programme (Adorno et al., 2019 [1950]).
I also draw on the work of Erich Fromm, who was closely associated with
Horkheimer’s circle in New York in the late 1930s and wrote key works
on social pathology (see Harris, 2019). One of my key arguments is that
Brexit is a pathology of democracy: it is an elite-led project that disguises
itself by populist rhetoric as the will of the people. It is also an example
of a pathology of entrapment. One of the basic questions is this: why did
an advanced democracy allow an event to take place that has inflicted
major economic, social and political damage? The main argument for
Brexit reflects a deep pathology, namely that Brexit must be implemented
simply on the grounds that it was supposedly decided to do so and should

3 For a wider analysis on Brexit see Evans and Menon (2017), Haseler (2017) and
Outhwaite (2017).
 2 THE PATHOGENESIS OF BREXIT: PATHOLOGIES … 25

be implemented even if in the most undesirable way possible and regard-

less of the consequences. This is rather like a doctor giving a patient the
wrong drugs because of a prior decision and not reversing the decision
despite the harmful consequences.

1 British Political Modernity

and the Pathogenesis of Brexit
British democracy and the myth of the ‘mother of parliaments’, is often
taken to be one of the models of democracy for many countries. But polit-
ical longevity can also be nothing more than the survival of the ancien
regime or long ossified political structures. As often noted, the constitu-
tional settlement in Britain was much earlier than in most other countries
and, as a result, its design reflected less the modern spirit of democracy
than an accommodation of the interests of the ruling elites. The settle-
ment of 1688 leading to the Bill of Rights shaped the later development
of democracy in that it was an arrangement between the restored crown
and parliament, whereby sovereignty shifted to parliament, but in a way
that preserved the royal prerogative in the institution of the ‘crown in
parliament’ and the prime minister as the representative of the monarch,
who in constitutional theory appoints the prime minister.
The strengthening of parliament—itself divided into two houses, one
the representatives of the landed hereditary aristocracy, and the other the
representatives of ‘the country’, in essence, the merchant class—against
the crown in the second half of the seventeenth century meant that abso-
lutism would be curtailed in a way that was not the case in much of
Europe when it finally moved against absolutism. But this model was not
fit for purpose in later times. It was itself the product of a failed revo-
lution against the crown in the 1640s. The original English Revolution
led by Cromwell established the short-lived English Republic after the
execution of the despotic Stuart King Charles 1 for treason in 1649.
The radical republican tradition was buried with the Restoration of the
Stuart monarchy in 1660 and the subsequent settlement of 1688, the
so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’, was in effect a counter-revolution that
was never overcome, only constantly modified by Acts of Parliament,
the most important being the Great Reform Act of 1832. The memory
of the republican regicide was repressed in the new myth of parliamen-
tary sovereignty bolstered by the Anglican state church and the imported
Hanoverian monarchy to secure the Protestant succession. Republicanism
26 G. DELANTY

was expunged from the country that invented it. Henceforth it was asso-
ciated with foreign and anti-colonial movements. Paradoxically, England
imported its monarchies from abroad: France, Holland, Hannover. The
1534 Act of Supremacy can be seen as England’s break with the conti-
nent, with which it has been so closely imbricated in the middle ages
(Black, 2019). If a break occurred, it was later with the need born of
political necessity to repress the memory of republican regicide. However,
the relation between Britain and Europe is much more complicated (see
also Simms, 2017).
The result of the ‘English Revolution’ and the subsequent constitu-
tional arrangement—and the convenient absence of a written constitu-
tion—was that England entered the modern age with revolution silenced
and disguised by the nascent Whig theory of history and the fiction of
ancient liberties. There was never any questioning of this myth of parlia-
mentary greatness since Britain was never defeated in war or occupied
by a foreign power and therefore never forced to recreate its political
institutions. Instead it did the occupying. The doctrine of parliamentary
sovereignty, it should be noted, does not pertain only to the House of
Commons but to the two houses of parliament and thus preserves the
monarch as the sovereign. It meant in practice that the Ancien Regime
was preserved and only had to accommodate demands from civil society.
This historical background is key to the pathogenesis of Brexit, which
was predicated on the basis of a myth of sovereignty and a parliamen-
tary tradition that was ill-equipped to deal with changed notions of what
sovereignty means. Parliamentary sovereignty, adhered to for centuries,
came face to face with calls for popular sovereignty and what resulted
was a dysfunctional mixture of both, as reflected in the use of the arcane
ritual of the prorogation of parliament and the royal prerogative to deal
with parliamentary opposition to the government’s Brexit plans. British
Eurosceptics rightly or wrongly criticise the political institutions of the
EU, but fail to see the flawed design of their own political institutions.
One consequence of what was a relic of the early modern period is the
absence of a modern written constitution. The British Constitution (in
effect a medley of documents and Acts of Parliament) did not provide
what all modern constitutions provide, namely a written statement of the
rights of the individual and a recognition of the people as the source
of sovereignty. By investing sovereignty with parliament, British political
modernity located the source of sovereignty in the crown, as represented
 2 THE PATHOGENESIS OF BREXIT: PATHOLOGIES … 27

in parliament. Everything else is a matter of convention. In an era when

the political establishment were members of the same male Oxbridge-
educated elite, convention was broadly functional for the working of
the political system. But in the era of mass democracy and the funda-
mentally changed circumstances of the present when the masses are less
diffident and respectful of the elites, that gentile class model ceases to be
operational.
There is one other legacy of history that needs to be brought into
the discussion: the ambiguity of British history and English history. The
formative period of British history was the history of England, which
absorbed Wales after the Norman conquest of 1066. The Norman legacy
was confined to England and Wales, which were organised around the
Norman system of government. Part of this was extended to Ireland,
but the conquest, which has been described as ‘internal colonisation’,4
was incomplete. Scotland lay outside the realm with only a Union of
Crowns taking place after the death of Elizabeth in 1601 and the subse-
quent succession of the Scottish James VI as James I. By the time of the
union of England and Scotland in 1707 and the later union of what had
become Great Britain with Ireland in 1801, the course of history led to
the dominance of England in the UK. This was in part due to its size—
today containing 85% of the population of the UK—and the strength of
its economy, but principally was due to its political dominance. The result
was that the UK was formed on a fundamental tension between its consti-
tutive parts. In 1922 the most troublesome element was removed. Today
it is a matter of contention whether the union of Scotland and England
is a voluntary union of equal nations or whether the union created an
entity more in keeping with Hobbes’ Leviathan. What we have witnessed
since the Brexit Referendum is the return of the repressed. The failure to
develop federal structures and solve the basic flaw in the make-up of the
UK simply postponed the problem of the lack of balance in the relation
of England to the other regions. Devolution was one solution, but it was
a case of too little too late and nurtured an appetite for more autonomy.
The belief—sustained by propaganda and popular culture—in the Empire
for a time bound the nations and the classes together (Mackenzie, 1984,
1986). This was the main expression of British nationalism and was also

4 See Hechter (1975) for the original theory. See also Bartlett (1993).
28 G. DELANTY

destined to require large doses of nostalgia made possible by the constant

invention of the past.
This situation of what was in effect a disunited kingdom has some long-
term pathogenic consequences. These consequences should be seen less
as causes than preconditions of later developments. The price paid for the
departure of Ireland in 1922 was the partition of the island. The border
erected as a result of the creation of the two states, the Irish Free State
and the Orange State, has weighed like a nightmare on the history of the
islands until the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998 (see O’Mahony
& Delanty, 1998 [2001]). What seemed to be an enduring solution to the
troubled history of Ireland and Britain received a shock in 2016 with the
Brexit Referendum and the implementation of a selective interpretation
of the Referendum that necessitated a reinstatement of the border. This
was a shock that has also rekindled Scottish nationalism.
Two other legacies of political modernity can be mentioned. Due to
the predominance of England in the design of the UK, there was the
curious absence of English nationalism. British nationalism as represented
in the pageantry of the state, crown and empire, until recently, was a
different matter and it was to this nationalism that most of the consti-
tutive nations and classes subscribed. The Irish Home Rule movement
of the second half of the nineteenth century under the leadership of the
Irish Parliamentary Party reconciled itself to much of this imperial nation-
alism, since it broadly accepted Ireland’s place in the empire and in the
British-dominated kingdom. That of course changed after 1918 when
republican nationalism usurped the older conservative nationalism. Scot-
tish nationalism, and to a lesser extent Welsh nationalism, has regularly
raised its voice, though not in the name of republicanism. In contrast,
English nationalism had been silent, if not absent. Perhaps it never had
to express itself, given that the state patriotism of Britain in effect repre-
sented England and when most English thought and spoke of ‘Britain’
they meant England.5 For the greater part, Englishness was expressed
in cultural forms rather than taking an overt political form. That has
all changed since 2016 with the rise of a virulent English nationalism.
While 2016 was a watershed, a politicisation of English nationalism in
the preceding ten years or so was on the rise (Kenny, 2016, 2017).

5 See George Orwell’s poetic portrait of the English and Englishness. See in particular
the essay, written in 1941, ‘England Your England’.
 2 THE PATHOGENESIS OF BREXIT: PATHOLOGIES … 29

Unlike Britishness, Englishness never adjusted to multiculturalism. Non-

white British people did not identify with what had become the rallying
call of the far-right, such as the National Front and the British National
Party. Xenophobia, racism, anti-migration patriotism and an increasingly
demonic Europhobia morphed into each other to produce a new and
powerful culture of authoritarian nationalism that increasingly dominated
the Conservative Party (see Kumar, 2003; Haseler, 2017).
Finally, there is the legacy of empire, which defined Britain for some
two hundred years, specifically from the mid-nineteenth century to the
middle of the twentieth century. What has rendered the post-imperial
context susceptible to pathologies is that the loss of empire occurred at a
time when two other developments unfolded. Britain emerged victorious
from the Second World War and the myth of its victory—which was due
to the USA and the USSR— sustained the sense of imperial grandeur even
as the empire effectively disappeared. This was also the moment when the
UK joined the then EEC, embracing the Europe it helped to defeat. Thus
a national myth of greatness was sustained long after the reality on which
the myth rested had disappeared. Membership of the EEC was broadly
embraced by the political right and for a time met with some resistance
from the left. Europe was not seen as an enemy. This was partly because
European integration in the early 1970s was largely a matter of economic
cooperation and because the British elites believed they could dominate
the project while remaining sufficiently distant. It was only a matter of
time before that optimism would be questioned. There were also limits
to the capacity of the state and popular culture dedicated to nostalgia to
produce it in sufficient quantity and to satisfy new demands that did not
so easily fit into the received view of the British past. The declining signifi-
cance of the two world wars, the reality of a post-imperial nation entering
the post-industrial society and the growing confidence of the post-war
project of European integration all provided the basic ingredients for a
revival of British nationalism. The long-dormant English nationalism was
slowly awakened and its target was Europe.
I have outlined in the foregoing the basic elements of the cauldron that
produced the pathogenesis of political modernity in Britain and which all
came to a head in 2016 with the ill-fated Brexit Referendum, which marks
the point at which Britain made its break with Europe. In doing so, I am
stressing here the British specificity of Brexit, which was influenced by the
course of British history. However, I emphasise that there was nothing
in that history that foreclosed any specific outcome, which was always
30 G. DELANTY

determined by the circumstances of the present. As argued, the histor-

ical legacies served rather as established preconditions that made possible
later movements, such as Brexit. From a sociological perspective, emphasis
must always be placed on how social actors in a given situation interpret
their times and their circumstances. If the circumstance had been different
in 2016, there would no doubt have been a different outcome due to a
different interpretation of the question posed by the Referendum. I shall
return to this later and also to the other dimension of Brexit, namely that
it was a British expression of wider societal trends that can be found in
many other countries.

2 The Making of a Political Pathology:

The Referendum and Its Aftermath
Like most countries today, the UK is a parliamentary democracy. Despite
the arcane historical inheritance in the design of its political institutions,
it is not unlike most other liberal democracies in that in practice elected
governments rule rather than the people directly. Public participation in
government is indirect, with public opinion organised in different ways as
well as other inputs, such as from experts, pollsters and lobbyists. Laws
are made by parliament. For these reasons, most liberal democracies have
a difficult relationship with plebiscitary democracy, whereby the public
make laws, or at least provide parliaments with the necessary decisions to
make laws. Referendums are one of the main instruments of plebiscitary
or direct democracy (Tierney, 2014). Countries that use this instrument
need to do so with caution given the potential for Referendums to under-
mine the basic principles of liberal democracy. Referendums are also
regarded with suspicion by the proponents of radical democracy, since
they stifle and frustrate public participation and effectively service as a
substitute for deliberation. Some examples can be given to illustrate the
dangers of Referendums.
Ireland regularly has Referendums, but these are normally for single-
issue problems (amending a constitutional law, for example, such as
legislating for Gay marriage or abortion). Switzerland makes more exten-
sive use of Referendums where they are part of a political process and
may take a more complicated format whereby a follow-up Referendum
 2 THE PATHOGENESIS OF BREXIT: PATHOLOGIES … 31

may be required in the manner of a run-off election.6 There has been

a general increase in the use of Referendums across European coun-
tries, but where they are used there is generally an acceptance of the
need to define the rules governing majority-making, such as the speci-
fied requirement of a supermajority, or a required minimum turn out,
etc. (see Hollander, 2019; LeDuc, 2003). The UK has had few and those
were mainly for regionally specific issues. There were only three national
Referendums, with the first two resulting in a no vote majority, so the
status quo was not changed.7 The 2016 Referendum was the first to result
in a vote for change. The result was tumultuous for several reasons. This
was despite one protection built into it: it was an advisory Referendum,
not a legislative one. In other words, the outcome did not have to be
implemented; it was designed to inform government policy. That is why
no other safeguards were built into it, such as a supermajority.
Referendums, unless they are qualified in some way, are otherwise
based on simple majorities. While this can be an instrument of democ-
racy, for example, as a way of testing the public mood, as a method
for public participation, they can easily become anti-democratic. This is
because democracy is not only about decision-making by majorities; it
also secures protections against what majorities can do, especially where
they claim to be in the name of ‘the people’. Democracy is therefore as
such about the protection of minorities from majorities as it is about the
rights of majorities. Two other points need to be made.
Unlike election outcomes, which can be reversed at the next election,
Referendums that are not properly legislated for can lock a society into
a course of action that cannot be easily reversed or subject to negoti-
ation. Here the danger of a deep pathology is very great and happens
when a tiny majority secures a decision that is binding for everyone but
the outcome needs further interpretation due to a lack of clarity on the
practical implications. This happens when a Referendum is called on a
question that has no clear answer.
The Brexit Referendum was momentous in that the outcome was not
expected and was immediately co-opted by previously marginal groups
who in effect brought about a conservative cultural movement that fed

6 On run-off Referendums see Henley et al. (2019).

7 These were in 1975 on European membership, 2011 on an alternative voting system,
and the 2016 Referendum.
32 G. DELANTY

off various kinds of class resentment. 52% voted Remain and 48% voted
Leave, with the majority of the Leave vote in England (Clarke et al.,
2017; Evans & Menon, 2017). It did not need to be called in the first
instance. It was a high-risk calculation of the then Prime Minister, David
Cameron, as a way to end dissent in the Conservative Party. However, it
received parliamentary approval without extensive scrutiny and an act of
parliament passed without any consideration of what might happen were
the Leave Vote to win. The main parties canvassed, without great enthu-
siasm, for Remain, confident that the masses would be obedient and heed
the advice of the elites to vote remain. Although it was a consultative
Referendum, the government and opposition regarded it as legislative,
though there was no constitutional reason to do so. Within months after
the outcome, there was swift silencing of the legal status of the Refer-
endum as consultative. It was repackaged as something that had to be
implemented. Since it was consultative, the Act of Parliament did not
define the vote share required for a determinate majority. The majority of
3.8% (c 1.2 m) was very small but was deemed to be decisive and ‘the will
of the people’ and thus had to be implemented, despite no definition of
what was to be implemented. Leaving the EU has multiple meanings and
many adverse implications. Deadlock in the political system arose after an
election, which left the governing party without a majority and dependent
on support from a far-right Unionist party in Northern Ireland.
Over a three-and-a-half-year period, until the general election of
December 2019, a process of radicalisation took place in both the political
system and in the wider society, especially in England. In this sense, Brexit
was as much a cause of change as a consequence of changes that had
occurred. Brexit became the mantra of the right and underwent ever new
and darker interpretations as to what it might mean. Leaving the EU in
2016 could have meant a so-called ‘soft Brexit’, but due to the variety of
interpretations as to what this might be, and the ascent of new and more
radical interpretations, no consensus was reached. Meanwhile, the tide of
opposition grew; but this was divided on the question of the preferred
method to stop Brexit. There was a fierce debate between factions on
whether a second Referendum was desirable. Those who favoured a
second Referendum could not agree when it should be staged, or agree
on the precise wording of the question posed. The Liberal Democratic
Party’s proposal of a direct, unilateral revocation of Art. 50 triggered
further divisions.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Nous ne pouvons cependant oublier cette enseigne, plus moderne, d’un
chapelier du boulevard de Sébastopol, nº 28 bis, qui aurait pu figurer dans le
chapitre consacré aux enseignes singulières: A l’Hérissé, figure d’un homme
à crinière de porc-épic, s’élevant d’un demi-mètre au-dessus de sa tête, et
difficile à coiffer, assurément, pour tout autre que l’ingénieux industriel qui
l’arbore au-dessus de sa boutique depuis une vingtaine d’années[267].
 XXVI

LES ENSEIGNES PENDANT LA RÉVOLUTION

L A Révolution commence en 1789, et l’on peut dire, avec Colnet[268], que

l’enseigne va parcourir toutes les phases de cette révolution. «Au lieu de
rester, comme nous l’avons vue jusqu’ici, dit M. Amédée Berger, tantôt
patronale, c’est-à-dire portant l’effigie du saint, protecteur de la corporation,
tantôt parlante et représentant les outils du métier, ou enfin imaginaire avec
des figures capricieuses et insignifiantes, nous allons la voir devenir
politique[269].» Il y avait eu sans doute, et peut-être de tout temps, des
enseignes politiques, mais ce n’était qu’une exception, au lieu d’être une
généralité. Ainsi l’avénement de Louis XVI au trône avait été signalé par
l’enseigne de la Poule au pot, accompagnée de ces vers satiriques:

Enfin la Poule au pot sera donc bientôt mise:

On doit du moins le présumer,
Car, depuis deux cents ans qu’on nous l’avait promise,
On n’a cessé de la plumer.

Colnet remarque très judicieusement que les enseignes, à partir de cette

époque, semblent faites pour retracer les mœurs du jour et les révolutions
des idées. En 1789, après le 14 Juillet, «tout est à la Bastille, dit M. Amédée
Berger: l’image de la vieille prison est représentée de cent façons diverses;
on la voit sur tous les murs; les hommes portent, sur leurs habits, des
boutons représentant les différents épisodes de la journée du 14 Juillet, et les
femmes se coiffent avec des bonnets garnis de deux rangs de créneaux en
dentelle noire. Pendant l’année 1790, tout devient à la Fédération, et en
1791, c’est le tour de Monsieur Veto.»
L’enseigne suivait le mouvement des esprits: «Il y en avait de
révolutionnaires, dit M. J. Poignant[270], il y en avait de contre-
révolutionnaires, et comme le Parisien est essentiellement de l’Opposition,
ces dernières étaient les mieux achalandées; il y en avait de gaies, il y en
avait de tristes, il y en avait d’indifférentes.» Les hôtels garnis, dont le
nombre augmentait sans cesse avec la population flottante de Paris, avaient
changé leurs enseignes pour se disputer les voyageurs qui arrivaient de la
province plutôt que de l’étranger; un de ces hôtels, dans la rue de Richelieu,
prenait l’enseigne des États-Généraux; un autre, celle de l’Assemblée
nationale, un autre celle du Grand Necker.
Le plus somptueux d’entre eux existe encore; c’est le grand hôtel
Mirabeau de la rue de la Paix. L’histoire de son enseigne est assez piquante,
et nous a été contée par le petit-fils du fondateur. Ce brave homme,
originaire du village du Lys, aux environs de Senlis, était venu, comme tant
d’autres, chercher fortune à Paris vers 1789. Il avait ouvert à la Chaussée-
d’Antin, qui n’était encore qu’un élégant faubourg, un modeste hôtel meublé
qu’il baptisa Hôtel du Lys. Vinrent les premiers troubles de la Révolution,
qui dépopularisèrent la fleur de lis à tel point, que l’enseigne du Lys, toute
géographique qu’elle était, devenait compromettante. Mirabeau venait de
mourir dans un hôtel de la Chaussée-d’Antin, voisin de l’hôtel garni; il
n’avait pas dédaigné de venir s’asseoir à la table d’hôte avec des amis
politiques, la rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin avait reçu son nom par acclamation
populaire; l’hôtel adopta aussi cet illustre patronage, sous lequel il traversa
vaillamment les mauvais jours de la Terreur, l’Empire et, ce qui est plus
surprenant, la Restauration, que tous les hôteliers de Paris accueillirent avec
enthousiasme. Le petit hôtel avait grandi; de la rue du Mont-Blanc, il était
passé rue du Helder, puis rue Napoléon, dès son ouverture en 1806. A la
rentrée des Bourbons, il conserva fièrement son enseigne, tandis que la rue
abdiquait piteusement son nom pour prendre celui de rue de la Paix. Il ne
paraît pas disposé à l’abandonner.
On reconnaît bientôt l’affaiblissement du respect des choses religieuses
par la disparition successive des images de saints qui avaient été les premiers
patrons de l’enseigne, et qui n’étaient pas moins fêtés dans les rues de la
capitale que dans le calendrier. On fait enlever, sans bruit et sans scandale,
certaines enseignes trop royalistes; on efface certaines inscriptions trop
favorables à l’ancien régime: par exemple, le meilleur confiseur de la rue des
Lombards, qui recommandait sa maison par l’enseigne du Grand Monarque,
corrige cette enseigne en l’intitulant: Au Grand Vainqueur; mais les
royalistes lui gardent rancune d’avoir débaptisé cette enseigne renommée, et
ils lui tournent le dos pour donner leur clientèle aux magasins du Fidèle
Berger et des Deux Amis, deux boutiques voisines dont les enseignes n’ont
rien à démêler avec la politique.
Après l’arrestation du roi et de la famille royale à Varennes (juin 1791),
l’Assemblée nationale rend un décret qui ordonne d’effacer partout les
emblèmes de la royauté. Ce décret s’attaque surtout aux enseignes sur
lesquelles figurent les armes royales et les insignes royaux. Quelquefois le
commerçant, irrité de la guerre tyrannique faite à son enseigne, résistait
autant que possible à ces misérables tracasseries, exercées contre lui au nom
du peuple. Un restaurateur, à l’enseigne du Tigre royal, ayant été sommé par
la municipalité de supprimer l’épithète de royal, la remplaça par celle de
national et eut l’audace de faire inscrire, à la porte de son établissement: Au
Tigre national[271]. Le frontispice d’un Almanach de 1792 représente des
ouvriers enlevant des enseignes qui portaient le nom ou les armes du roi,
ainsi que les symboles du gouvernement monarchique.
Depuis que l’armée des princes se formait à Coblentz dans le but de venir
délivrer Louis XVI, prisonnier de l’Assemblée nationale, les bureaux des
racoleurs fonctionnaient à Paris avec une fiévreuse activité pour donner des
hommes à l’armée royale, qui avait besoin de nouvelles recrues en prévision
d’une guerre d’invasion. D’autre part, ces bureaux s’étaient multipliés
depuis que le ministère payait la prime d’engagement, et leurs enseignes,
exclusivement militaires et patriotiques, avaient remplacé partout des
enseignes bachiques et affriolantes, qui eurent toujours tant d’empire sur les
pauvres dupes du racolage. De cette époque datent certaines enseignes qui
ont subsisté jusqu’à nos jours, et qui faisaient appel à la bonne volonté des
remplaçants, dont la conscription autorisait légalement le trafic, comme une
espèce de marché de chair humaine. Il n’y a pas longtemps que nous avons
vu disparaître le Petit Tambour, au coin de la rue de Bièvre; le Grenadier,
rue Corneille, etc.; l’Ancien Tambour, quai de la Tournelle, existe même
encore, ainsi que les Deux Sapeurs de la rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau.
C’est en 1793, après le 10 Août, que la fermeture des églises porta le
dernier coup aux statues de piété que la dévotion de nos aïeux avait érigées
au coin des rues et sur la façade des maisons. On ne fit pas grâce à celles que
le zèle de quelques courageux propriétaires s’efforçait encore de protéger.
C’est alors que le buste de Marat remplaça la statue de la Vierge dans la rue
aux Ours et qu’un restaurateur de la rue Saint-Honoré inaugura l’enseigne du
Grand Marat, avec une double inscription; savoir, d’un côté: Il
fut l’ami du peuple et observateur profond, et de l’autre côté:

Ne pouvant le corrompre, ils l’ont assassiné. «En même temps, ajoute M.

Amédée Berger, comme le comique a toujours chez nous sa place à côté des
plus lugubres souvenirs, un marchand de la rue Saint-Eustache placarda
l’enseigne suivante au-dessus de sa porte: Aux cols, brassières et ceintures
nationales, avec cette incroyable inscription: «Les hommes étant convenus
de porter la cocarde aux trois couleurs, comme signe de patriotisme, il est
étonnant que les femmes ne soient décorées, ni pour elles ni pour leurs
enfants, de rien qui puisse prouver leur civisme. C’est pour faciliter ce
moyen qu’on vient de fabriquer des ceintures et des brassières aux trois
couleurs, qui ne laissent aucun doute sur les principes de ceux qui les
porteront.»
 Sous le règne de la Terreur, il n’est pas prudent de jouer avec les
enseignes, et le plus sage est de les ôter tout à fait plutôt que d’en modifier le
sujet et le titre. Aussi faut-il être notoirement républicain pour oser se donner
le luxe d’une enseigne nouvelle, car tout était matière à suspicion et à
dénonciation. Un cabaretier de Sèvres, qui avait de longue date une belle
enseigne: Au rendez-vous des marins d’eau douce, s’imagina que le
tutoiement révolutionnaire n’était pas suffisamment observé dans le mot
rendez-vous, qu’il changea en rends-toi, et l’on put lire sur cette enseigne:
Au rends-toi des marins d’eau douce. Malheur à qui eût osé conserver sur
son enseigne une croix, une couronne, ou un écusson d’armoiries!
Le moment était si lugubre et si redoutable, que personne n’avait le cœur
d’être plaisant, même sur une enseigne; mais du moins la plaisanterie
pouvait cacher la peur. Ainsi un marchand, nommé Basset, avait joué sur son
nom en se donnant un chien pour enseigne et en l’intitulant: Au Basset[272].
Un autre, qui demeurait sur la place Vendôme, avait cru se faire de son
enseigne un paratonnerre politique en y inscrivant une phrase de Robespierre
relative à l’Être suprême[273]. La police, à cette époque terrible, trouvait le
temps d’éplucher les enseignes et de les mettre toutes au diapason de la
circonstance. Après la création du Calendrier républicain, adopté par la
Convention le 24 novembre 1792, un arrêté du Bureau central de Paris
enjoignit aux cabaretiers de substituer, sur leurs enseignes, aux mots: bière
de mars, ceux-ci: bière de germinal[274].
M. Firmin Maillard a caractérisé ainsi les enseignes de la Terreur:
«Brutus, Spartacus et quelques autres martyrs de la liberté deviennent des
héros d’enseignes. C’est à la Lanterne nationale ou à la Carmagnole que
vont se désaltérer les garçons bouchers: ils arrivent au cabaret, drapeau
déployé, drapeau sur lequel il y a un énorme couteau et ces six mots écrits au
bas: «Tremblez, aristocrates, voici les garçons bouchers!» Voilà leur
enseigne! mais rien ne peut égaler celle du libraire Tisset, «coopérateur des
succès de la République française.» L’abominable homme restait rue de la
Barillerie, nº 13, et il avait au-dessus de sa porte une guillotine enluminée
entre les montants de laquelle se trouvaient inscrits les noms des personnes
qui devaient être exécutées dans la journée. Du reste, cet aimable personnage
éditait une liste de condamnés qu’il appelait: Compte rendu aux Sans-
Culottes, par très haute, très puissante et très expéditive dame Guillotine,
rédigé et présenté aux amis de ses prouesses, par Tisset.»
 AU LION D’ARGENT.

Alors on pouvait dire qu’au-dessus de la France, il y avait une enseigne

terrible, sur laquelle flamboyaient ces trois mots, qui depuis ont pris quelque
chose de solennel: A la Terreur! Puis, tout finit avec des Notre-Dame-de-
Thermidor, hommage ridicule, mais honnête, rendu à Mᵐᵉ Tallien, qui eut
assez d’empire sur son mari pour le forcer à jouer sa tête en décidant la
Convention à mettre fin au règne sanglant des Jacobins, par la révolution du
9 Thermidor.

AU LION FERRÉ.

Toutes les enseignes n’ont pas disparu pendant la Révolution; ainsi qu’on
a pu le voir par celles que nous avons citées, beaucoup de figures en pierre
ou en bois trouvèrent grâce devant le vandalisme brutal de la populace,
quand elles n’avaient aucun sens politique, comme le Lion d’Argent,
charmant détail de la maison nº 1 de la rue des Prouvaires, dont la gracieuse
ornementation est un des rares spécimens intacts du style Louis XV; le Lion
ferré, de la rue Saint-Martin, le Vieux Satyre, de la rue Montfaucon, et
surtout comme l’Hercule, de la rue Grégoire-de-Tours, alors rue des
Mauvais-Garçons-Saint-Germain, que les républicains du quartier avaient
pris sous leur sauvegarde, en le surnommant le Vieux Sans-Culotte, et qui,
comme les trois qui précèdent, existe encore aujourd’hui.
 On vit renaître les enseignes non politiques et inoffensives sous le
Directoire, mais d’abord en très petit nombre. La Terreur avait donné des
leçons de prudence et de réserve aux plus aventureux[275]; on hésita quelque
temps, avant de se remettre à vivre au dehors, pour ainsi dire. Dans les
premiers jours de défiance et de trouble qui suivirent la grande délivrance de
Thermidor (27 juillet 1794), on avait eu l’idée de faire inscrire sur les portes
des maisons les noms des personnes qui habitaient ces maisons; on renonça
bientôt à
cette inquisition intolérable. La Révolution avait tué l’industrie des peintres
d’enseignes; on ne les vit renaître de leurs cendres qu’au milieu du
Directoire. En attendant, on avait remplacé les enseignes comme on avait pu.
Mercier, dans la description qu’il fait du Palais-Égalité, ci-devant Palais-
Royal, en 1799, nous fournit à ce sujet un détail bien singulier: «Les
tableaux sortis des cabinets curieux, les gravures libertines, les romans
érotiques, servent d’enseignes
 à une foule de prostituées logées aux mansardes[276].» On ne faisait alors
aucun cas des meilleurs tableaux anciens, qui pourrissaient dans la boue chez
les marchands de bric-à-brac. Sébastien Mercier, dans un autre endroit du
même ouvrage, raconte qu’un savetier avait pris, pour en faire l’auvent de
son échoppe, un superbe tableau de maître, représentant la Cène.
 Les premières enseignes peintes qui reparurent à Paris furent celles des
restaurants, des cafés, des marchands de comestibles: c’est de ce temps-là
que datent l’enseigne de l’hôtel des Américains, rue Saint-Honoré, près de
l’Oratoire; la Flotte Sainte-Barbe, rue Saint-Martin; le Gourmand, de
Corcellet; le Bœuf à la Mode, de la rue de Valois; le Veau qui tette, de la
place du Châtelet, aujourd’hui rue des Halles; l’enseigne des Trois Frères
provençaux, etc. Après les établissements de gastronomie, les débits de tabac
eurent des enseignes, telles que la Bonne Prise, encore à sa place au nº 7 de
la rue Saint-Jacques, la Civette, de la place du Palais-Royal et la Grosse
Carotte. «Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois[277], respecté, disent les frères de
Goncourt, a tout à côté de lui une renommée nouvelle, une enseigne
fameuse: la Grosse Carotte, ce débit de tabac qui rivalise avec la célèbre
Carotte américaine des Halles.» Le jardin Turc, dont la vogue commençait à
se prononcer au boulevard du Temple, n’avait trouvé rien de mieux, pour
remplacer une enseigne peinte, que d’avoir à sa porte des Turcs, de vrais
Turcs, en costume, qui fumaient indolemment leur pipe, de midi à
minuit[278]. C’était le premier essai des tableaux vivants.
 XXVII

LES ENSEIGNES AU XIXᵉ SIÈCLE

A LA fin du Directoire, il y eut comme une renaissance des enseignes, à

Paris. Beaucoup de celles qu’on avait mises au grenier, au début de la
Révolution et surtout pendant la Terreur, reprenaient leur ancienne place
sur les boutiques, sans aucun changement ou avec de légères modifications
exigées par l’état social et politique. Ce fut bientôt une mode, une fureur,
une folie. On ne souffrait plus qu’une boutique qui avait acquis une clientèle
respectable fût dépourvue d’enseigne. Il fallait donc en faire peindre de
nouvelles, en toute hâte, et les peintres en lettres, qui venaient de traverser la
Révolution, n’y avaient pas gagné du côté de l’art et de l’orthographe. Ces
enseignes improvisées, qui semblèrent sortir de terre pour se répandre dans
tous les quartiers et toutes les rues, ne faisaient pas honneur à la peinture
française, à l’esprit français et à la langue française. C’était un affreux
désordre d’enseignes horribles, ou ridicules, de toutes formes et de toutes
grandeurs, qui se disputaient le terrain et qui n’obéissaient qu’à la loi du plus
fort ou du plus effronté. On avait commencé, pour leur faire place, par
effacer l’odieuse inscription: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, ou la Mort, qui
s’était imposée, comme une épitaphe sépulcrale, sur tous les murs et sur
toutes les portes, en guise d’enseigne révolutionnaire.
«Le Consulat, dit M. Amédée Berger, à qui nous laissons la parole, faute
de pouvoir mieux dire, le Consulat eut beaucoup à faire pour nettoyer les
murailles de Paris, qui s’étaient singulièrement illustrées depuis la
Révolution: les reliefs et les massifs se balançaient de plus belle au-dessus
des passants alarmés; et en présence des inscriptions les plus grossières, le
besoin d’un nouveau Caritidès se faisait de nouveau sentir.» La réforme fut
radicale, et une ordonnance de Bureau central du canton de Paris, en date du
1ᵉʳ frimaire an VIII (novembre 1799), obligea tous les boutiquiers à
supprimer les enseignes pendantes, à les remplacer par des tableaux
incrustés dans les murs, enfin «à corriger dans les enseignes tout ce qui
pouvait s’y rencontrer de contraire aux lois, aux mœurs et à la langue
française». Pour prévenir tout abus, on devait soumettre d’avance à l’autorité
la copie des inscriptions que l’on avait l’intention de placer au-dessus des
boutiques, et il était interdit de modifier le texte approuvé par
l’administration[279]. Cette intrusion pédantesque de la police dans la liberté
des enseignes ne plut pas à tout le monde. «En attendant que l’on s’occupe
de la restauration des lettres, disait avec dédain le dramaturge Arnault dans
une note de journal, on procède à la correction des enseignes. Nos édiles ont
pris, en effet, un arrêté excellent sous plusieurs rapports. Des magistrats qui
savent lire ne veulent plus que des écrivains ne sachent pas écrire[280].» On
lisait, le 1ᵉʳ décembre 1810, dans le Mercure de France, une autre note, qui
doit être de Jouy, puisqu’il l’a intercalée depuis dans son Hermite de la
Chaussée d’Antin: «M. Caritidès (personnage des Fâcheux de Molière)
voulait, avec raison, qu’on réformât la détestable orthographe des enseignes,
et l’on vient de faire droit, en 1810, au placet qu’Éraste fut chargé, par lui,
de présenter à Louis XIV, en 1661. Tant de grossières absurdités vont enfin
disparaître, et il ne restera plus à désirer aux beaux esprits les plus minutieux
que de voir s’établir une sorte d’analogie entre les enseignes et les
professions. Ce défaut était moins choquant autrefois qu’il ne l’est
aujourd’hui; il y avait quelque raison pour qu’un cordonnier fût à l’Image de
saint Crépin, un tabletier au Singe d’ivoire, un marchand de tabac à la
Civette. Mais quelle espèce de rapport peut-on établir entre le Masque de fer
et des bonnets de coton, entre Jocrisse et un joaillier, la Vestale et une
lingère, le Petit Candide et un bureau de loterie, la Bonne foi et un tailleur?
Nous ne manquons pas de mauvais plaisants tout prêts à trouver là des sujets
d’épigrammes.» L’orgueilleux Étienne de Jouy ne pardonnait pas à la lingère
qui lui avait emprunté une scène de son opéra de la Vestale pour en faire une
enseigne. «Sous l’Empire, dit Amédée Berger, une révolution s’était opérée
dans l’aspect des rues marchandes de Paris: le magasin avait supprimé la
vieille boutique, et alors avait commencé une curieuse lutte de façades,
d’étalages et d’enseignes. Chacun voulait avoir son enseigne, et un
marchand du faubourg Saint-Denis, ne sachant à quel saint se vouer, écrivit
au-dessus de sa boutique: A n’importe quoi.» M. Auguste Luchet complète
cette description dans un chapitre sur les Magasins de Paris[281], où il étudie
la métamorphose de la boutique en magasin: «On perdit deux cents, trois
cents aunes d’étoffe en guirlandes d’étalage. On n’eut point d’enseignes, on
eut des tableaux, des tableaux à l’huile, peints sur toile, que l’on payait
jusqu’à mille écus: luxe inouï, incroyable, qui pendant dix ans donna un
aspect fantastique aux rues Saint-Honoré, Saint-Denis, Neuve-des-Petits-
Champs, et commença la pompe merveilleuse des boulevards de Paris.»
La monomanie d’enseignes peintes avait pourtant donné lieu à bien des
critiques dès l’année 1810; on lisait dans la Chronique du Mercure de
France, le 29 décembre de cette année-là: «Les calembours, bannis du
théâtre, semblent vouloir se réfugier sur les enseignes. Un marchand gainier,
nommé Aymon, a trouvé très spirituel de prendre pour enseigne: Aux Quatre
Fils Aymon. Un marchand de tableaux du passage du Panorama, du nom de
Pierre Legrand, a fait peindre au-dessus de sa porte le portrait du Czar; au-
dessous est écrit: Au Czar, Pierre Legrand, marchand de tableaux. Enfin, un
libraire connu a joué sur son nom plus agréablement encore, en l’inscrivant
ainsi: A la Sagesse de Charron, libraire. C’est à présent qu’on peut dire avec
vérité que l’esprit court les rues; on s’en aperçoit quand on le retrouve dans
les salons[282].»
Lady Morgan, ci-devant miss Owenson, qui visitait la France en 1816, a
formulé des critiques analogues sur les enseignes de Paris[283]: «Je ne
connais véritablement rien de plus amusant, à Paris, que les allusions
classiques et les devises sentimentales qu’on trouve dans les enseignes, et
l’absurdité de leur application ajoute beaucoup au ridicule de leur effet. Je
remarquai au-dessus de la porte d’un boucher, dans la rue Saint-Denis, une
enseigne représentant un bouquet d’œillets fanés, avec ces mots: Au Tendre
Souvenir. La Tentation de saint Antoine, en relief, est suspendue à côté de la
Fille mal gardée, et les Trois Pucelles figurent sur les fenêtres d’un tailleur
pour l’armée, qui, pour attirer des pratiques, s’intitule Tailleur civil et
militaire, tandis que saint Augustin promet de «reblanchir à neuf les vieilles
plumes». L’Ange gardien s’annonce pour «faire des envois à l’étranger», et
la Religieuse offre son «magasin de nouveautés, au plus juste prix». Au
Bienvenu, au Revenant, aux Bons Enfants, aux Amis de la Paix, sont des
enseignes arborées bien souvent pour attirer le chaland. La Belle Hélène et
les Trois Sultanes étalent leurs charmes dans tous les quartiers pour séduire
les gens et intéresser le goût ou le sentiment du passant imprudent. La
morale même est appelée à l’aide du sentiment, et les marchandises les plus
chères sont achetées au Gagne-Petit ou mises en vente à la Conscience.» Les
observations critiques de Lady Morgan sont moins justes quand elle suppose
que les enseignes des boutiques pourront un jour fournir des armoiries aux
futurs parvenus; que la noblesse s’élèvera du comptoir à la pairie, et que ces
nouveaux mystères héraldiques défieront la sagacité des Œdipes du blason: