Modern Society Is Perverse, Not In Spite

Politics And The Economy Are Not Things That Exist, Or Illusions, Or Ideologies. They Are Things That Do Not Exist And Yet Which Are Inscribed In Reality And Fall Under A Regime Of Truth Dividing The True And The False.

And More Than Once In The Course Of Time, The Same Theme Reappears: Among The Mystics Of The Fifteenth Century, It Has Become The Motif Of The Soul As A Skiff, Abandoned On The Infinite Sea Of Desires, In The Sterile Field Of Cares And Ignorance, Among The Mirages Of Knowledge, Amid The Unreason Of The World - A Craft At The Mercy Of The Sea's Great Madness, Unless It Throws Out A Solid Anchor, Faith, Or Raises Its Spiritual Sails So That The Breath Of God May Bring It To Port.

Take The Notion Of Tradition: It Is Intended To Give A Special Temporal Status To A Group Of Phenomena That Are Both Successive And Identical (or At Least Similar); It Makes It Possible To Rethink The Dispersion Of History In The Form Of The Same; It Allows A Reduction Of The Difference Proper To Every Beginning, In Order To Pursue Without Discontinuity The Endless Search For Origin.

Why Shouldn't I Be Interested In Politics? That Is To Say, What Blindness, What Deafness, What Density Of Ideology Would Have To Weigh Me Down To Prevent Me From Being Interested In What Is Probably The Most Crucial Subject To Our Existence, That Is To Say The Society In Which We Live, The Economic Relations Within Which It Functions, And The System Of Power Which Defines The Regular Forms And The Regular Permissions And Prohibitions Of Our Conduct. The Essence Of Our Life Consists, After All, Of The Political Functioning Of The Society In Which We Find Ourselves.

Prison Continues, On Those Who Are Entrusted To It, A Work Begun Elsewhere, Which The Whole Of Society Pursues On Each Individual Through Innumerable Mechanisms Of Discipline.