Counter-revolution

contre-révolution

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Summary

Dominique Pagani understands counter-revolution as a long-term movement. Since the French Revolution, he sees revolutions and counter-revolutions alternating, as neo-classicism and neo-romanticism alternate1, and he regards the Third Reich as the worst of them2. Following Michel Clouscard, who alone, in his view, gave it a rational model, he treats the student May 68 as a counter-revolution distinct from the workers' June: it brings about the decline of the two forces born of the Resistance, Gaullism and communism3 4. The neo-capitalism that results is repressive for the producer and permissive for the consumer. On the philosophical level, he sees in it a counter-Marxism aimed against dialectics, carried by structuralism and by the "hyper-Nietzscheans" from Heidegger to Deleuze5, and a neo-Kantianism that locks away the gains of 1789. He also links to it, in our own time, each "reform" that undoes gains won through hard struggle6.

Summary produced automatically from 16 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Season 14 · 21 Oct 2025The silences of the media uproar: the Atlanticist re-Nazification

19:19The 1970s open the great philosophical counter-revolution against the dialectic.
1:05:41Since the French Revolution, revolutions and counter-revolutions have alternated; the worst to date is the Third Reich.

Series · 7 Feb 2023Nietzsche, or the Great Ninny

0:52The hyper-Nietzscheans of the Cold War, from Heidegger to Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida, use Nietzsche in the counter-revolution.

Season 11 · 14 Jan 2023Beware of misreadings! Clouscard and the ideology of desire, in homage to Le Précepteur

51:59The student Mai 68 is not a revolution but a counter-revolution; neo-capitalism is repressive for the producer and permissive for the consumer.

Talks · 16 Jan 2021The world before, the world after (part 1)

10:09Each "reform" is a new stage of counter-revolution: it attacks the gains of several generations and leads back to the world of the day before yesterday.
52:30Successive reforms bring down gains won through hard struggle, which some dare to call privileges.

Series · 2 May 2019Michel Foucault

16:11A great phase brewing in 1966: it is a counter-Marxism that causes the forces born of the Resistance, Gaullism and communism, to decline.
55:15Its generic theme is neo-Kantianism, which uses Kant to lock down the advances of the French Revolution.

Season 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus

17:23A thought as old as the Revolution, which returns in guises presented as new.
26:45Since the French Revolution, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary thought have alternated, like neo-classicism and neo-romanticism.

Series · 8 Dec 2015Michel Clouscard, the paths of praxis (1/2)

3:13It begins at the end of the 1960s; only Clouscard gave it a rational model.
29:14Clouscard opposes a philosophy of the counter-revolution, that of Heidegger, to a philosophy of the revolution, that of Plato; historically, restoration lasts longer than revolution.

Series · 26 Sept 2014#4 Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: on the thought of M. Clouscard

14:26May '68 is a counter-revolution, distinct from the workers' June.
35:43After the advances of the Liberation, capital regains control in the early 1960s; May '68 eliminates Gaullism and communism.

Series · 29 Jan 2012Everything is allowed but nothing is possible: Michel Clouscard (2)

15:10May 68 leads to the decline of the two forces of the Resistance, Gaullism and communism: it is a counter-revolution, despite being the largest strike in French history.