Denis Duclos is a French sociologist, Ph.D. and research director at the CNRS in Paris. He is the author of The werewolf complex: America's fascination with violence. He is also the author of studies on environmental risk.
Biography
His main research field has been the phenomenon of societal "great fears" for both scapegoat characters and collective actions viewed as generating disasters. He interprets these fears as "symptomatic" positions, that is to say, which are formed in place of explicit political positions, when reasonable conversation is impossible on crucial issues. The subjects of fear rarely relate directly to a real problem at stake. For example, the serial killer, as a myth, represented, in the United States, the difficulty of finding a balance between legal system and individual freedom: both having the potential of turning into monstrosity. Another example: the fear of "mad cow" disease seemed to represent a more fundamental issue: artificiality of our lifestyles and our interventions on life forms and their natural intermingling. The fear of climate change reflects the broader problem of the difficulty to pass from a world composed of human entities in conflict to a world where humanity acts "as one man." The most blatant and more constant symptomatic transfer is the hatred/fear of the "Jewish conspirator" who appears to embody a rejection on the others of the guilt associated in Christian society, to the act of making God equal to Man. Indeed, no one can explain the recurrence of this hatred/fear without analysing the regular trait it represents within Western civilization, as if "mechanically". In the background of these phenomena, which can rightly be named "pathologies", Denis Duclos built a theory of cultural fields, of their conversational structure. He considers in particular the emergence of "positional" clusters which tend to directly organize themselves into a global conversation, gradually moving away from their traditional shells: religious, national, international and civilizational fields. For example, it appears that the European field is largely centered by the question of law : The Anglo-Saxon position tends to equate law and society, while the "latin" response anchors the law in civic local conditions, whereas another position is based on the necessary correspondence between law and a wide community spirit. This conversation is a special case of a pluralization of positions to be found at other levels, but also, ultimately, in the basic attitudes of all cultures On the assumption that, in a sense there has potentially only ever been one human cultural field, Denis Duclos questions History as a confluence of separating and unifying trends. He raises the problem of the pluralistic frame which, in a “society-world”, will necessarily supersede existing intermediate forms, too deeply embedded into outdated and self-centered organizations. Duclos has also published in the Revue de Mauss, a French anti-utilitarian journal.
Le Complexe du loup-garou : la fascination de la violence dans la culture américaine La Découverte, 1994, Pocket-Agora, 1998
Démocratie des techniques et choix énergétiques in L'énergie, des usages et des hommes Editions du Cercle d'art, Paris, 1999.
Les quatre natures de l'homme, Conclusion to L'environnement, question sociale, dix ans de recherches pour le ministère de l'Environnement. Editions Odile Jacob, 2001
L'empreinte des formations subjectives dans l'histoire, in L'anthropologie psychanalytique, Anthropos, 2002
Heurs et malheurs du concept de risque in: Dictionnaire des risques, Armand Colin, 2003, pp 327–345
Entre esprit et corps, La culture contre le suicide collectif Paris, Anthropos, 2002, 260 p.
Société-monde : le temps des ruptures, La Découverte, 2004
La nostalgie gothique comme ingrédient de la société informatisée Les presses de l'université de Montréal, 2005
La fonction imaginaire de la structure symbolique : ou comment revisiter Lévi-Strauss, in La fonction symbolique, retour aux sources et actualités M. Zafiropoulos Economica, Paris, 2005
L'invention du langage, Anthropos, 2007
Les sondages d'opinion La Découverte, 2007
Esprit et Corps : l'idéal collectif suicidaire et la résistance du vivant, in La technique et le façonnement du monde : mirages et désenchantement Gilbert Vincent, L'harmattan, Paris, 2007.
Pourquoi tardons-nous tant à devenir écologistes ? Société écologique et post-modernité'',. L'Harmattan, Paris, Avril 2007
Other languages
The Werewolve's Complex : American fascination with violence, Berg International, Oxford-New York, 1997.
Per una nuova ecologica politica, Edizioni Dedalo, Bari, 2000, 336 pp
La vocazione suicida del potere collettivo : culmine dell umano, eterno focolaio dell'inumano in Umano, Post-Umano, potere, sapere, etica nell'età globale edited by Helena Pulcini, Editori Riuniti, 2005.
To Symplegma tou lycanthropou. I Elxi tis americanis coultouras pros ti via, Editions Koxlias, Athènes, 2006, 318 p.
