Mass, Number & Consensus
This article examines the political and philosophical dimensions of what Gilles Châtelet identified as the tyranny of number in contemporary market democracies. Drawing extensively on Châtelet’s work – particularly Living and Thinking Like Pigs and Les animaux malades du Consensus – as well as on Ma...
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| In: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap, |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Language: | Anglais |
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European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
2026
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| Online Access: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | This article examines the political and philosophical dimensions of what Gilles Châtelet identified as the tyranny of number in contemporary market democracies. Drawing extensively on Châtelet’s work – particularly Living and Thinking Like Pigs and Les animaux malades du Consensus – as well as on Marcuse, Wiener, Bernays, and Barthes, the article traces three interconnected phenomena: the fetishism of quantification as a tool of social control and mass management; the devaluation of language through the discursive strategies of governance, technocracy, and public relations; and the fabrication of consensus as a prodigious instrument of social anesthesia and subjugation. The article argues that the mathematization of political and cultural life – from university rankings to managerial newspeak, from cybernetics to the engineering of consent – constitutes not a neutral rationalization but a deliberate offensive against singularity, emancipation, and the power of negative thinking. In conclusion, Châtelet’s prophetic lucidity is reaffirmed as an opening of possibilities rather than a counsel of despair, and as a call to philosophical and political responsibility. |
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