English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Foucault and Pétain in montage; ecologism as class ideology 0:00 What idea of man do you have? Well, I believe that man has been, if not a bad dream, at least a nightmare, or at any rate a very particular figure, very determinate, historically situated within our culture.
0:36 You mean it's an invention? It's an invention, man. Sure of the affection of our admirable army, which struggles with a heroism worthy of its long military traditions, against an enemy superior in number and weapons. I see poorly, therefore, how an awareness, a political attitude could follow from your attitude of work. Of course, that is no doubt the question one asks of every form of reflection that is in the process of destroying a myth and that has not yet reconstituted one.
1:08 Certain that by its magnificent resistance, it has fulfilled our duties toward our allies. Sure of the support of the veterans whom I have had the pride of commanding. Sure of the confidence of the whole people, I make to France the gift of my person to lessen its misfortune. I believe that until now, we have never considered our own knowledge as a phenomenon foreign to ourselves. In these painful hours, I think of the unfortunate refugees who, in extreme destitution, roam our roads.
1:45 I express to them my compassion and my concern. It is with a heavy heart that I tell you today that we must cease fighting. We are here in a situation that is obviously very complex. It takes a whole twisting of our reason upon itself for it to manage to grasp itself in this way, as a phenomenon foreign to it. It has to pass outside of itself. In a way, it would have to be turned inside out like a glove finger. That's an affirmation.
2:15 Yes, but I wanted your feeling. There you go. Yes, listen, there's the answer. There you go, right? That's the title of the book. Ecology, the ultimate stage of capitalism. So, that, well, you have the answer in the book. Well, if that's really the question. Yes, of course, it's a class ideology. It's a dominant ideology. I've already answered that. So the fact that it provokes exasperation, a violent conflict, and not only in representations, obviously, but in the concrete, objective social relation, and that it's an ideology of the middle strata, of the middle class, that's what I said even in the preamble, and what is demonstrated, I think, and which is moreover right in front of us.
3:03 You just have to look at the social strata, their sociology, their position in the social relation of production. All of that seems quite clear to me. So the fact that the ideology is related, obviously, is clearly a mediation of the class struggle in the concrete, political conflict, yes, once again, that's what I explained in the preamble. So the answer is yes, and the fact that it is totally contradictory, antinomic with Marxism and communism, seems extremely clear to me.
3:40 And for those to whom this isn't clear, I tried to demonstrate it in the book, and in the general opinion, this demonstration is consistent. And moreover, I'm still waiting for consistent objections from those people who call themselves Marxists, or even communists, and who claim the contrary. There are apparently still a few of them, despite everything. Because all those I've—because I've consulted quite a few, including publishers of works by people I like, who officially are, and who claim to be Marxists or even communists, including those who published the works of Bellamy Foster, or all the theses claiming, or all the so-called essays claiming to demonstrate that Marx was the first ecologist.
4:37 When I had already, back then, as early as 2015, sent the first manuscript, the one, the beginning, Les Veaux et les choses, and roughly the first 60 pages of the book, the only thing they answered me—I talk about it in the book, you can find out more by reading the book, once again—was basically, yes, Dominique, you're right, but you don't attract flies with vinegar. So the objective was a political-aggregation objective, to gather forces around a completely bogus ideology.
5:07 So I would have made... ...toward people, as Robert used to say. Yes. Yes, but that's... So, but that's what I... From the preamble of the book onward, I explained that one of the objectives of the book was to demonstrate that it was an inanity, and moreover, we've seen the results. Now, with a few years' hindsight, we can clearly see where we stand on that. I'm not being taken into account, but it shouldn't be a dialogue, there's no problem. Go ahead. I have a question... Wait, wait, just a second. I have a question that's a bit...
Why the reference to Les Mots et les choses 5:37 ...a bit more mundane. Actually, I find the book reads very, very easily. It's the kind of thing you read with a pen in hand, but it reads very clearly. It's about the title, actually. Well, the character, I would say, the analysis of ecology as an ideological form contributing to entrenching, I would say, the domination of the bourgeoisie by promoting, for instance, I would say... Not entrenching, but... Reinforcing it. Producing it. Yes, yes. Producing it in the ideological field.
6:07 Absolutely, but by promoting, for example, sometimes even forms of "happy sobriety," to use that expression of contrition. Michel Clouscard, I believe, said that there are fundamentally two social classes. There's the one that consumes more than it produces, and the one that produces more than it consumes. Obviously you know that, you know everything. But that's the producer-consumer dialectic. Beyond that, I had a somewhat silly question that's been nagging at me, actually, about the title. Why the reference to Foucault? Well, I have an idea of the answer, and I think I even know it, but the connection isn't direct.
6:40 That is, well, I don't know Foucault very well, but he talked a lot about biopolitics, things of that sort, but he wasn't exactly the greatest ecologist either. No. Not at all. And the reference to Foucault, Foucault as, I'd say, to pick up on the earlier remark... He was no more of an ecologist than a feminist. Or a communist. Sure, but Foucault very certainly belonged to those people who claimed to be more left-wing than communists, as Dominique Pagani put it. No, he never claimed to be left-wing. No, but, well, still, he had...
7:12 He claimed to be subversive, revolutionary and Roman-ish [a play on "romain"]. He adopted postures... He was indeed part of those people. Yes, of course. He adopted postures that were very, very... Well, apparently very progressive, engaged. Not at all. No. Yes, I'll bet. Oh no, no, no, I'm answering. In any case, he enjoys a very strong aura. No, I'm answering. He enjoys a very strong aura. And the question, well, the question is that of the direct relation to his name. There you go. The Order of Things—what's the link with The Order of Things, really. Why bring the question back up? Because ultimately we didn't hear it. That's the question, basically, of the relation... The title.
7:42 Yes, the title. Who's in the title? Okay, let me try to answer as clearly as possible. It's actually fairly easy. It was the title I gave it from the start. For those who remember 2015 and the first drafts of the text. The reason... There are several reasons. But the main reason...
8:12 I'm going to answer what you said about Foucault and what I objected to. But the main reason is the following. It's that... One of the many... One of the many conclusions one could draw, that Foucault suggests or even claims outright in his book... I'm not going to give an exegesis of The Order of Things, whose reading I nonetheless recommend. It's perhaps the only Foucault book that is genuinely, in my opinion, interesting and instructive to read. Including because it contains all of Foucault's contradictions, for example, and those of all the Foucauldians who followed.
8:45 And one of the important points, he starts from... At that time, he's a structuralist. So there are a lot of references to language, to the structural problematic originating in structuralism, including that of Lévi-Strauss and others, Jakobson and company, but which trace their roots back to Saussure's structural linguistics. So he starts from there. That's also why, incidentally, he brings up the Port-Royal grammar and all sorts of things, in order to say, moreover, things that are sometimes not idiotic, but that are almost entirely false.
9:20 But that's Foucault's method. But what's interesting is that, from this point of view, which is one of the important viewpoints he favors at that time—because afterward he's going to say that in fact he's not a structuralist, etc., that he'd been misunderstood, already at this time when he was already claimed as a neoliberal—well, not exactly at that time, that will come a little bit later, very shortly after—one of Foucault's conclusions, from this angle of his book, is to say that we no longer have the words for things.
9:52 How long we've no longer had the words for things is another matter, something on which he isn't very clear, but anyway, it's one of his main claims. From there, he draws his relativist theses, that there is no truth, so there's nothing to transmit, and so on. Everything is contingent, and so on. I refer those who don't know Foucault—massively taught in universities, at least until a recent period, almost as a sacred word, and elsewhere too.
Naming the thing ecology; de Gaulle's calves 10:27 So then, the idea is that we no longer had the words for things. That's a point I won't develop here, we discuss it a lot among ourselves. It's one of the very old problematics, which divides even materialists and others, namely the question of nominalism, which lies in the background of all this. But the important point, so one of the reasons why I called it that, is that since it's a matter of ideology, of a rhetoric, a discursive rhetoric, and a problematic of representations, of the sign—the era when Foucault writes The Order of Things is also right after the great period of the semiologists, even Barthes gets into it.
11:10 So, at that time, when there were great debates, the thesis was this: that ultimately we need to find other names for things, and even that the things themselves are contingent on the way we name them, in the end. And so, the connection with the book is that, remember, since you've read it, the entire first part is essentially an ontology and an epistemology of what is...
11:44 ...what is called ecology, ecology in the sense of... including political ecology, whether it's a science, what could it possibly be, if it's something other than an ideology, what could it consist of, etc. And so, well, I proposed the words for that thing. And the words—the allusion to the calf, obviously you know it, running through Dominique Pagani's introductory remarks—is obviously another allusion, a historical one this time, to the period, and which boils down to the phrase of one of the most repugnant figures still alive from the sixty-eighter period, whose historical importance in the construction of the dominant ideology as ecology I would recall.
12:41 And so, at that time, we have someone who has this cry from the heart, who will represent what the entire ruling class will produce for us starting in the 1970s, namely Cohn-Bendit. And I recall that Cohn-Bendit's major slogan, in which he truly expressed an absolutely characteristic class vision, and all the frustration behind the people who would come after or alongside Foucault, was "ten years is enough," but he specified—ten years of what?
13:12 Ten years of Gaullo-communism. And for those who don't know—and there may be a few among those who will watch this video or read the book—this is obviously an allusion to the general's famous phrase, "The French are calves [veaux]." I recall that this phrase was uttered when he arrived, at the moment of the liberation of Paris; he was acclaimed in front of the city hall, and he had a fairly precise memory that at exactly the same spot, six months earlier, an equally dense crowd had acclaimed Pétain.
13:42 There you go. That's... That's what's behind the title. Over to you. The... Sorry, I forgot the first name. Andréas. Sorry? Andréas. Andréas, there we go. But precisely, Andréas's question remains pending, so to speak, that is, you answered very well, except that he says the link isn't explicit—that's what I think we need to address. Yes, yes, yes, we need... Between this semantic critique and Foucault's thought. That said. Yes, go ahead.
Anti-humanism, the green dotted line from Foucault to antispeciesism 14:12 That said. I'll add something. Allow me to answer on a point that seems essential to me and that goes to the heart of the book, the heart of a progressive critique of ecology. There's something fundamental, what's most dangerous in dominant ecology. When I say dominant, I don't only mean ecology as prescribed to us by Macron's executive government after Hollande, etc.
14:44 Unfortunately, it's as it spreads among the dominated. That's what François meant earlier. It's that unfortunately, it spreads like an oil slick into the middle strata. I'm very pleased that, as a good Clouscardian, you spoke of middle strata and not middle classes to him. But that's not our topic. On the other hand, what's most dangerous is anti-humanism. And there you can guess I'm answering. Sorry, I'm using "tu" with you. He's answering for me. I'm answering the question. That's what I would have explained to you. But of course, Foucault is after all the one who said, listen, humanism is an invention.
15:16 Man is an invention—not humanism, man is a recent invention fortunately destined to disappear soon. That's where the collusion lies. There's a green dotted line, not a red one, a green dotted line running between several forms of apparently contestatory critiques. Let me interrupt you for a second, I'm keeping track of my film. I should note that this quote Dominique just recalled can be seen in an INA video from when The Order of Things was published.
15:52 So, you see, you understand the connection. Absolutely. And so, when I now look at antispeciesism, well, I mean, we're so much within it, that is, within a certain post-Foucauldianism at this level. Right? There's a neo-naturalism, it's no coincidence they're all Spinozists, these gentlemen. You won't get me to say a word against Spinoza's work. The difference is that Dominique won't forgive Spinoza for sometimes attacking Descartes. No, no, no, no. There, I deny that.
16:22 No, I'm teasing you. No, Kant, yes. That, my proven, certain anti-Kantianism. But Spinoza is not the same problem at all. Fine, but still, and then, Hegel, who is nonetheless a reference we share, said that every philosopher has two philosophies, his own and Spinoza's. It's still worth recalling that it's from Spinoza, through Deleuze and others. But precisely, on the other hand, the neo-Spinozism that appeared during the Cold War as an anti-Marxist machine, and which runs from a Deleuze to a Derrida, passing through all the Onfrays—well, let's not go that far—that one can imagine.
16:57 And it's no coincidence that the same people have Nietzsche as their idol, also a neo-naturalist, a neo-vitalist. Deleuze started with the most vitalist of our great philosophers—because he's someone I respect—that's Bergson, who's a reactionary, etc. But in a way, Bergson isn't worthless, he's subtle, there are some very beautiful things about memory. But that said, the dotted line running through all this is a neo-naturalism. Now, coming back to our discussion with Harry B, there is indeed a continuity, since I asked him—and I'm still waiting for the answer—what difference do you make between nature and matter.
Nature and matter; class separation 17:36 Excuse me, we're among intellectuals, we do have to work a bit after all. Right, we're on the words here. Well, it seems to me, as a Marxist—I'll answer my own question since no one else is—there is a set, for me, which is the most extensive in the logical sense of the term, which is matter, within which you can make a division: there is matter untransformed by man, which we can call natural matter, and historical, cultural matter, call it what you like—again, I'm not a structuralist, I don't submit to the tyranny of signifiers.
18:10 There you go. So, there's what I wanted to answer, that's the link. That Foucault should be emblematically in the title. I don't know if he's the only representative of anti-humanism, even though he is one, of course, he's a target—that's quite—no, but then, it's an anti-humanism that doesn't take caricatural forms, he's intelligent and cultured, he's not one of the zealots of ecologist ideology, of course, since, at the time of The Order of Things, at the time of The Order of Things, it wasn't even a matter of state yet, so of course, that's not the allusion...
18:47 Well, essentially, Dominique answered for me, but... Let's say Doumé so as not to confuse things. Yes, Doumé, Doumé Pagani, but yes, of course, it's the anti-humanism that's one aspect, but it's mainly to... and the anti-humanism that will lead me to develop this question of separation, an ontological question that's there from the very start of the book, in order to clarify things, including from an epistemological point of view, and to show clearly how the type of separation that will allow for a distinction, an ecologist negation, a distinction that...
19:25 ...something that they can then negate. In order to negate something, they first had to define what they were going to negate. So everything gets negated. So that's developed, I think you'll grant me, quite methodically and systematically in the book. So this separation is completely antinomic with the one on which Marxism is founded, which is the separation of man from what he does, from his action, from his being.
20:00 In short, all of that is also developed in the book: namely, the class separation which is at the origin of the whole Marxist anthropology and its view of history as a contradiction in process. It's the principal contradiction, the one that is the unmoved mover—well, actually quite well moved—of class struggle. It is indeed class separation. Read the book on that. Every time, I'm just recalling Marx. That's in pretty much all of... Earlier you were recalling Aristotle. I recall Marx's sources too, and Marx's references, of course, but the book is above all a Marxist book, and it addresses itself primarily, for the reasons I explained earlier, mainly to those people who believe themselves to be Marxists and claim to be ecologists, or to those ecologists who claim that Marx was an ecologist like them.
20:52 So, I think I've demonstrated that this is absolutely untenable, inconsistent, indefensible, based on—including—certain perfectly explicit texts of Marx on all sorts of questions related to degrowth, the world, finite resources and infinite growth. I think that's where it gets stuck, but above all because... There's an undeniable fact, which is that Marx, as a good materialist, takes the natural element into account. When he says, for example, that until now we haven't managed to fish in waters where there were none, that's also a way of talking about resources.
Foucault, neoliberal, anticommunist and influential intellectual 21:30 Well, he's simply being dialectical there. He's saying that in order to transform nature, it has to exist. There's one last thing I wanted to clarify about Foucault, since it was part of your question. Foucault, then, is absolutely no more of an ecologist, even at the end of his life, than he is a feminist, or even left-wing, let alone a communist, even though he was in the [Communist] Party. He was like everyone else, because in order to build a career, like so many others who were already in any case totally anticommunist—but one must remember the chronology of Foucault's personal history.
22:04 There you go. It's the 1950s after all. So we're not in the same context in the 1950s as at the end of the 1960s. Context, I mean, socially, in terms of intellectual worldliness and so on, and what is, I'd say, dominant for building an academic career, among other things. So Foucault is absolutely not an ecologist. In fact, ecology wasn't discussed at all at that time, or very very little. But he absolutely does claim, very early on, to be not a liberal but a neoliberal.
22:42 Let's be clear. Not only is he perhaps just as viscerally anticommunist and anti-Marxist as Deleuze, but he doesn't say so. And so, Deleuze, for obscure reasons that will moreover be clarified, and moreover kept very well hidden until that point. We don't hear much about him. He's very discreet, one might say. But Foucault is less so, and his anticommunist side will immediately be presented as an aspect of being marginal, hence subversive, hence revolutionary.
23:21 That's the equation that will become the decisive one from 1968 onward, hence the success of Foucauldianism at that time. So all the references to Foucault are tied to that, because he's in France, in any case, and it's above all a matter of French ideology here. I touch a bit on international aspects, one might say, since it's a matter of Marxism, but it's the construction of this French class ideology, which is the ideology of nearly the entire political class today, including not only politicians or elected officials, or those who'd like to be, but also their inspirers, their intellectuals, their agents of all kinds, the whole ideological apparatus, the press and so on.
24:06 So, here we are in this kind of massive effect. So, among all the contradictions that I unfold after posing the phenomenon that we're going to critique in the book, of what ecology could be the name and what its consequences are, well, Foucault, who was nonetheless one of the influential intellectuals, especially after the, let's say, Sartrean period, then the Lacanian period, which was much shorter.
24:39 So, Foucault, who like many others, including still today, would have liked to occupy Sartre's place, would have liked to, did indeed occupy it at least in the field of the most reactionary class ideology, which became increasingly reactionary, increasingly regressive, increasingly mediocre, in the sense that I recall in the book, which is Rousseau's sense, to assume one's mean-ness, to dare to propose a neologism that allows one to understand mathematically what the relationship is between mean, mediocrity, etc. — well, he was truly, and that's why he was promoted along with the development of the productive forces and their contradictions as they appeared from the beginning of the 1970s, well, he was promoted as an intellectual of influence, as they all claim to be today, a major one, and who indeed had an enormous influence in fundamentally shaping the ideology that would then appropriate, aggregate to itself, ecologist demagogy.
25:47 It's...
Rousseau and the draft constitution for Corsica 26:18 that... It's just... No, I'm thinking of it for something very specific, it's in the little volume that the Materia Scritta publishing house, which is a Corsican publisher, when they do a print run of 400, they're happy, but which I pay tribute to because it's really quite well done, there's a volume that reproduces Rousseau's draft constitution for Corsica, bilingual, in Corsican and French, and for which I was asked to write the preface. I'm going to get insulted again, but being a good Corsican, I only ever read the prefaces.
26:52 Let's be serious, when you see the terraces cultivated right up to the cliff edges in Corsica, it means people had to work themselves to the bone to survive. At the time, we didn't talk about "Corsicanness," but at least we produced Corsicanness instead of talking about it. And so, Rousseau, at one point, receives this letter from Paoli's envoy, telling him — I'm not straying from the subject, we're right at the heart of it — telling him, we're calling on you as a consultant, as we'd say today, draw up a draft constitution for us, you are the vanguard of the Enlightenment, our Republic has only just been baptized, etc.
27:28 It's a bit like the Vietnam of the time for European intelligence regarding Corsica, people talked about it, Voltaire said Europe is Corsican, I mean, because there was this movement where it had freed itself, just like that, from the Genoese yoke, we've talked about it a lot, but Rousseau says, you're very kind, it's a great honor you're doing me, but I'm not the right man for the job, I'm too old, I'm tired, I'm sick, I have a catheter in my urethra, well, yes, I'm probably not far from it, hounded from house to house, pursued by the police of three great European powers, so honestly, find someone else, I'm very honored, you've fought a magnificent fight, but since the other man persists, Rousseau starts asking consultant-type questions, the geographical distribution of mineral resources, which is rather rare for this Rousseau, Paoli's customs, the relationship of the Corsican people with the clergy, and suddenly, in the third letter — there are only four letters in the appendix to the work, I take the liberty of recommending it to you, Draft Constitution for Corsica — where he suddenly says, and here I come
28:38 to the allusion I was making, listen, let's drop the draft constitution, I'm tired, I'm no longer up to it, I'm at the end of my rope, let me come die at your place, let me come die at your place — it's an extraordinary passage — I would like to live, I'm borrowing the formula with which Goethe concludes his Faust for the next generation, live free on a free land, a land which had just been freed, that's what I want, what I want is to die free on a free land, and of course, the French solution, the armies of Louis XVI — you don't draw up a constitution for a country that isn't independent — so the project fell through, but we almost had Rousseau's tomb somewhere near Corte, and he adds — and here I come to Cohn-Bendit, to the antithesis of the intellectual in the service of power — and he adds, don't worry, I don't want to be a philosopher-advisor, I ask to be in some obscure pieve, that means a canton where we're from, there, with my wife and I, we've never asked anyone for anything to live, we are economically self-sufficient, so it's the complete opposite of the dominant intelligentsia, there, that's why I'm making this long detour, because it's a very fine figure
From philosopher to sophist: Foucault and moralism 29:49 that Rousseau systematically refused — God knows it would have interested him — but true to his motto, vitam impendere vero, to make one's life depend on truth, well, he remained in obscurity, so to speak. Yes, and here, before giving the floor to those who want to speak, I'll just add one thing, which is that this brings us back to this figure of Rousseau, praised, as we know, notably by Marx, even though Marx criticizes all his bourgeois, petit-bourgeois sides, etc. — he read, appreciated, like Hegel of course, Rousseau, and at least one thing which, moreover, in a particularly striking way, in his famous letter about Proudhon, where he also alludes to Rousseau, Marx is very clear, he mentions the fact that Rousseau never lowered himself to serve those in power, and in terms where we understand very well what's going to happen from, precisely, the end of the 1960s, with Foucault, who was the most brilliant of them, is that we're going to enter a period
30:59 which is not yet that of personal development replacing, substituting itself for philosophy, but it is the era in which we find ourselves, on the other hand, today — but thanks to Foucault, we're clearly going to move, well, he's going to facilitate the path that leads us to today's state of decay, and for a very simple reason, which is that we come back a bit to what happened after the era of great classical philosophy, Plato-Aristotle in Greece, where there is a collapse of thought and everything else, moreover, and we pass from the era of philosophy, in the classical Greek sense, to that of the sophists.
31:41 Of the sophists. And starting from the 1970s, I guarantee you, having lived through it, we are, obviously, in morality — and not at all morality in the sense evoked, including by Descartes in the... in "moraline." It's not even morality in the old sense of the categorical imperative, etc., which isn't my cup of tea either. No, it's morality precisely in the sense of personal development and above all in the sense of the mores of the sophists.
32:12 And the goal, once again, I remind those who... I'll give an express introduction, the sophist — and again, this is not to question Foucault's brilliant intelligence, precisely, which was not the same — the most harmful of them because he was formidably effective, had absolutely not, moreover, this is what he claimed for himself, had absolutely no aim, no objective, as a social or philosophical will, of truth, but rather to please his audience, and from the way he gave them this satisfaction, he drew a social recognition which, for him, was the essential gratification.
32:57 It is this model that would be generalized and spread from then on and that constituted an extremely favorable ground, a breeding ground, both for liberalism and for what's called neoliberalism — though there's not really a difference — which didn't need that, but made good use of it, and which brings us back once again to the ecologism discussed in the book.
Conceptual difficulty and use of the book in the struggle 33:29 Nicole, did you want to ask a question? Yes, you just said a moment ago that your book was aimed in fact at Marxist ecologists, and I find that... No, no, I didn't say that. Did I? I said that originally, the first text was at the time intended for an ideological battle against those among those who presented themselves, claimed to be Marxist, and also claimed to be ecologist, who claimed that Marx was the first ecologist, and those among the ecologists who claimed that it was a leftist, progressive ideology, etc., even one of struggle against capitalism.
34:14 I made a shortcut. But that's only the first part of the book. Yes, I made a shortcut, but your book is still aimed at people who already know a certain number of concepts, of dialectics, and I find that when you say something that I've summarized, which is a bit false, it's restrictive, because me, I want to use your book — I fight, I'm a scientist, a nuclear physician, I fight against ecology, well, against the followers of ecology.
34:52 Ecologist ideology. There, ideology, not the poor people who think they need to sort their recycling, etc., no, Yves Cochet, Cohn-Bendit, well, all that. And it's been 40 years that I've been fighting against these people, I've dealt with ecologists, scientists and others, well, and it was, at the beginning of my career, there was Chernobyl, if you can believe it. So, I don't know if you see, the ideology, the ideological ecology, was anti-nuclear, so that's clear and plain.
35:27 It still is. Okay, my question. So, I mean, in what way do you think that — because I'm going to use your book, because I think that in terms of social consequences, consequences for the class struggle, consequences in daily life, your book is extremely fruitful and can contribute. — A priori, it was published for that. — There you go. But there's a contradiction between things that, on a conceptual level, can seem difficult for people, and the...
36:06 But which ones, for example? Because, honestly, throughout the whole second part of the book — that is, from the very beginning, and moreover this was a reflection made by many, those who are here, and who contributed, that's the reason why there are questions and answers — when we got to the final version of the text, they told me, we need a foreword to explain. There's a foreword to explain. So, from the start, I announce that indeed, as Marx says, in every science, the beginnings are difficult, well, or arduous.
36:41 But, quite simply, because you need a beginning, as Hegel would say, and so, we lay out the thing we're going to talk about. And that's a bit conceptual, exactly like the beginning of Capital. — Absolutely, it's conceptual. — But afterward, afterward, we explain. I'll tell you one thing, which Dominique talked about, Mr. Dominique. Actually, there's a great struggle between scientists, we have to fight against everything, there's a lack of data, among people, of basic scientific data, which means we have to deal with it.
37:14 Me, I explain what an atom is with electrons around it, etc. So, that's where I am. Do you see the difference, actually, between the level of your book and ignorance? — There, I don't agree. It's not that I disagree, it was one of my concerns, and I spent a lot of time on it. As you know, but many of those who are here can testify to it. It took — the whole last part of the book took me nearly a year, and a year of exchanges, discussions, debates, to try to clarify, and the very purpose of the whole self-critical apparatus section is precisely to try to clarify everything that could be, as François said, the questions one might ask oneself, we tried to answer them afterward.
38:08 But the question first had to be raised. So, for it to be raised, the object of the question had to be laid out first, precisely. So, indeed, general ignorance, including among Marxists, and in particular, not only those who claim to be ecologists, or among ecologists, those who claim to be Marxists, because I think there is no serious Marxist who could imagine being an ecologist at the same time — it's roughly like those who claim to be Marxist and Nietzschean, or God knows what, Marxist and Foucauldian, and so on.
38:41 So, it's completely contradictory. So, I think the book shows this fairly consistently and methodically. But the goal was to give everyone the elements to understand what we're talking about, how it applies to the current situation. And I was very careful that it be understandable. You saw, there's a whole response to Pierre, who's behind you, where he raises the objection, he says to me, but what audience are you addressing?
39:14 He, he managed to understand the book quite well. And at the time, these questions and my answers didn't yet exist. And so I explain to him, and it's argued, you just have to read the book, I tell him why it's meant for all audiences, and including, I would say, to a large extent, those who think of themselves as ecologists, that is, an extremely broad audience, since in this field, a whole... I agree. Yes, so at that point, what's complicated? Or what doesn't get through?
A dominant ideology criticized like a religion 39:45 Because that's the question. I can't just say it's ignorance and... I presume there are certain readers who balked at reading the first section of Capital. For example, I presume, I don't know. — Wait, Angela wants to say something. — Yes, I think the difficulty is that people are looking for a recipe for being a real ecologist. — There you go. — And so, we read this book and we come out of it... Well, so, do I kill the cockroaches or do I let them multiply?
40:19 There you go. You... That's a concrete thing because it's the problem as president of the co-op board. We have a cockroach problem, do we let them live? Do we take a materialist and dialectical approach? At that point, there are cockroaches in the furniture. In any case, now we're going to have to do a survey and everyone has to vote on this thing which, ten years ago, would have been settled just like that. There you go. So, I'll answer anyway because I...
40:50 How to be a real ecologist? But that's not the problem. — Yes, but I think the question, well, the question, Nicole's objection, I welcome it, obviously, because that's what the book was made for. It's to provide a tool for debate, to serve as a basis for a debate, with a certain number of arguments that are more or less built and consistent, and which, moreover, seem so well-built and consistent that so far, all those who have objected, including the objectors, including those we just mentioned earlier in the preface so to speak, Dominique, I'm still waiting for their objections to the content of the book, and honestly, I think I'll be waiting a long time.
41:35 But what you're explaining is that it presupposes a knowledge of things that people are unaware of. — But that's exactly what the book teaches them. That's one of the purposes of the book. So, yes, there's a revealing effect, that is, there are many things you're unaware of, even if you're unaware that you're unaware of them. — That's it. — Me, I tell them, you have to hang in there, start, then you'll read, as you say, then you'll read it straight through. Hence the foreword, and I do recall that I put in a quote from Marx, since the book is resolutely, essentially Marxist, so a quote from Marx's most famous text, one that I took from his own preface.
42:21 In every science, the beginning is arduous. There you go. So, the start is a bit difficult but you'll get there, and to my knowledge, all the readers of the book so far have managed it, and afterward, you'll be able to do something with it. Well, we hope so, in any case, if we've managed to convince you. If you'll allow me, because at the start when I began the book, I had this kind of, well rather in the texts, this kind of reflection where I said to myself, so, global warming or not, pollution or not, aspects that materialize what's been put at the level of policies.
42:58 But I think the book by the Man isn't about action. It's about the ideological core. — Exactly. — And at a certain point, becoming aware and saying, you're anti-humanist. But I can't say that it's a certain number of science. — No but exactly, but I believe Dominique's book isn't about analyses, contradictions, for example, is warming due to solar cycles, etc. It's not about analyzing whether capitalism is or isn't good for the environment.
43:30 And moreover, at one point, he has a very funny chapter where he says, well, come on, nobody wants — I'm going along with his point, but I'm turning it around. When he says at one point, but nobody wants to be irradiated, nobody's going to stand behind the car and breathe in the exhaust fumes, etc. He's at the heart of what's been imposed on us. And the thing you're talking about is that the virus is so widespread everywhere that we end up apologizing, asking for forgiveness. One virus can hide another.
44:00 And there you go, that is to say we're faced with something where measures are taken, whereas that wasn't true 40 years ago, and it's as if we were criticizing a dominant religion and a dominant philosophy. — But that is indeed what we're doing. — And that's good, that's good, that's exactly what they say. and the face of attacking. That's why I was saying that...
