Worldliness

mondanité

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Summary

Dominique Pagani sees worldliness (mondanité) as the concept most specific to Michel Clouscard, who raised it from representation to concept. He makes it the keystone of the work, more important than the pairing of productive forces and relations of production1 2. He links it to Rousseau, who denounces not the world but worldliness, and from whom Clouscard takes the idea of class snobbery3. He refuses to reduce it to the everyday, pejorative sense of "bling-bling": its meaning ranges from the worst to the best, depending on whether the conditions of happiness are reserved for a few or extended to the whole of society4 5. The world is not the earth but what humans make of it. It is ambivalent, both superficial and the site of technical progress and architecture, and it serves as a ruse of reason6 7. Yet worldliness remains a world run by a dominant power. He illustrates it with jeans, which passed from the cowboy to billionaires8 9. It explains why the dominated are permeated by the dominant ideology. It also turns the proletariat away from humanity's cultural heritage10 11.

Summary produced automatically from 15 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Talks · 23 May 2026Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: is Michel Clouscard still relevant?

1:43:35Clouscard's own contribution: the worldly argument, unconscious, dissuades the proletariat from gaining access to humanity's cultural heritage.

Cycle 11 · 3 Sept 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?

6:08A concept proper to Clouscard, constitutive of our consciousness and of ideology; it infiltrates the gap between infrastructure and superstructures.

Cycle 11 · 22 Jul 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: the world as “cunning of reason”

1:39:17The world is ambivalent: superficiality, bling-bling, but also sowing, technical progress, architecture; cunning is what reason uses to make a place for itself.
1:57:51The world is not the earth: it is what man has made of it, the form he gives it, in which his ends are legible.

Cycle 11 · 29 Jun 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative

2:03The most essentially Clouscardian concept, where his own contribution is concentrated, more important than the productive forces and relations of production.
1:28:28Jeans move from the cowboy's garment to that of billionaires because they connote the wealth of America: a worldly success.
1:35:18Worldliness is a world directed by a prince of this world, a dominant figure; it is not a world without a master.

Talks · 29 May 2023From the debauchery of sense to the orgy of sentiment

2:17A concept raised from representation to concept by Clouscard; keystone of his work, which maintains the balance of opposing forces.
15:20Happiness has a necessary relation to the world: happiness and worldliness go together.

Cycle 11 · 18 May 2023Worldliness in Clouscard, or privileges for all

3:07A concept whose extension and comprehension Clouscard broadened; it must not be reduced to the common, pejorative sense of bling-bling.
1:33:29Its meaning ranges from the worst to the best, depending on whether the conditions of happiness are confined to a few or extended to society as a whole.

Cycle 11 · 26 Apr 2023Worldliness in Clouscard, or “the dominant ideology”

7:39Worldliness, worldly, and world share a root; in the ordinary sense, going into the world means going into high society.
30:46The reflection moves a cursor between worldliness in its most pejorative sense and the joy of going to the theater of the world.
49:12The weight of the worldly explains why the dominated are permeated by the ideology of those who dominate them.

Series · 6 Jul 2012Radio Galère: Michel Clouscard (1)

34:02Rousseau denounces not the world but worldliness; Clouscard retains from him the notion of class snobbery.