Critical mass

Summary

Dominique Pagani borrows the notion of critical mass from nuclear physics and uses it as a political metaphor. For him it refers to a maximum number of citizens meeting a maximum of knowledge, a meeting feared by the powers he calls alienating1. According to him, the authorities lie because a truth shared by a large number of people could reach this threshold and bring about revolutions2. He takes up the image of fission: the ruling class keeps absolute knowledge apart from the great number, for fear that their junction would "blow up in its face"3. He specifies that this is historical knowledge about ourselves, not knowledge about isotopes4. He also applies the notion to the spread of Clouscard's work, whose English translation would reach readers who are more numerous and less subject to the dominant ideology. In 2026 he extends it to geopolitics: for the imperialists, the dangerous critical mass would be the unification of Black Africa and Maghrebi Africa5.

1. 1#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)2 Nov 2018 · 1:01:27
2. 2#2.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?10 Mar 2016 · 1:05:27
3. 3#4 Harnessed to confinitude11 Apr 2020 · 35:08
4. 4#9.20 From signal to sign: Einstein28 Apr 2021 · 46:15
5. 5Mali: a response to Emmanuel Macron's remarks at the Africa Forward summit16 May 2026 · 26:47

Summary produced automatically from 7 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.