Sociologies (May 2019)
Le singulier, le pluriel et le général
Abstract
This article aims to distinguish the processes of individuation, individualization, personification and, finally, personalization, which every individual has to go through in order to become a « person ». In such a context, singularization is an additional step, often paradoxical, since it risks at any moment depriving the « personalities » it has hoisted at the top of the public attention of any « personality correlation ». This being so, most singularity figures are two-faced Janus that allows them to escape from such depersonalization. While one of their faces is general and typifying, the other face suggests, behind the veil of generality, a supplement of subject that can not be reduced to a category member (a hero, a genius, an artist, etc.). Insofar as the figures of singularity provide the public who admire or denigrate them with dramaturgical and narrative « snatches » for reflection, they do not jeopardize, as such, the democratic public sphere. On the other hand, they do so when they abandon the register of representation for that of incarnation or depersonalization and thereby give up on the status of « moral person ». This is the case of the two extreme and antinomic figures this paper dwells on, the hyper-singular figure of the American President Donald Trump and the anonymous figure of the hacktivist collective « Anonymous ».
