Michel Maffesoli, professor emeritus at Sorbonne and provocative sociologist, known for his theses on the return to communitarianism and the new urban tribes, anticipates in the new book L'Ere des Soulèvements, a future of popular revolts that mark the end of modernity. And he sees in today's democracies, exposed by the pandemic, the maintenance of power by concealing death and fear by a declining elite. We met in Paris for a conversation about this “masked ball turned into macabre dance”.
ichel Maffesoli (1944) has persisted, for decades, an enfant terrible of French sociology, since he published some of the works that ignited great controversy within the community of social sciences, still submitted to the dominant ascendant of Pierre Bourdieu. Titles such as La Violence Totalitaire (1979), L'Ombre de Dionysos (1982) and Le Temps des Tribus (1988) made the date and the vision