Attention aux mots d’ordre ! Éléments pour une enquête sur la signification de l’État

Abstract

The State (its nature, its meaning) is often decoded in terms of watchwords, with attention to the instructions and orientations that would turn the State into a “Welfare State”, a “Neoliberal State”, a “Police State”, or a “Democratic State”. This is particularly the case when studying transitional situations, i.e. the reform or modernisation of the State. But this approach also points to failures, misappropriations, ambiguities and, in short, to the degree of barrenness a watchword may carry. What is a watchword, though? And how can it serve an inquiry into the meaning of the State? A few answers are offered here, based on a study of the circulation of the “government-as-a-platform” motto in France (“État plateforme”). Six aspects ought to be considered: the watchword’s lineage (i.e. paternity, authority), its ambivalence (semiotic indeterminacies), support (infrastructure and organization), extension (semiotic hold), exhaustion (loss of traction), and sedimentation (the watchword becomes a reflexive concept for political science).

Keywords

• semiotics
• watchwords
• Deleuze (Gilles)
• Guattari (Félix)
• State reform
• government as a platform