It is never easy to free oneself from a dominant discourse which states the law of desire.
So we are all subject to the inevitable diktat of a successful vacation.
He orders us to realize ourselves according to a certain standard, to reach happiness by ticking overdetermined boxes.
The holidays crystallize more than any other event what the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard once called “the libidinal economy”, in other words, the place of a collective desire, and a form of social injunction.
Read alsoHow does the desire for a change of scenery influence our emotions?
Without going into details, remember that holidays are a modern invention, dating from the 20th century: in 1936, the Popular Front passed the law on paid holidays for all workers, and reduced weekly working time to forty hours.
It is a major social achievement, which marks everyone's entry into the discovery of leisure, a time "removed from work", "given" for oneself, which the individual is free to occupy as he sees fit. .
But let us note that alongside the break specific to the holidays, the suspension of daily life that they cause, they remain intrinsically linked to a certain economic law that seeks to optimize human time.
Holidays are part of a logic of economic performance
Raphael Zagury-Orly
To give, one should expect nothing in return, hope for nothing from what must remain incalculable, as another French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, says.
A “given” time?
A “free” gift?
Not really.
Because once it is part of the circle of exchange – gift and counter-gift – the gift cancels itself out.
Holidays are actually part of a logic of economic performance: they
ultimately
allow you to gain in productivity.
Work and holidays are interdependent;
they complement each other, so to speak.
Guarantee of social success
Full screen
Raphael Zagury-Orly.
Press office
It is therefore not surprising that the holidays are the target of sometimes unconscious injunctions.
Each season has its fans: the beach and the boat in summer, the mountains, skiing, the chalet in winter, so much so that listing them amounts to making a list of commonplaces and clichés that we associate by habit, and one is reluctant to question.
To not participate in the story of one's vacation is to refuse a form of sociability, it is to free oneself from a certain common story.
Successful holidays have become so commonplace that they have become a guarantee of social success.
To have or not to have something to tell situates the individual within the economic system which seeks to define him before, during and after work.
In France especially, holidays are sacred!
Raphael Zagury-Orly
Who can claim to resist the injunction of a successful holiday?
This would call into question our conception and our management of time throughout the rest of the year, and even call into question the operating system of Western societies.
In France especially, holidays are sacred!
Which, in itself, is not at all negative: the Anglo-Saxons envy us our art of living, and the way in which we manage to suspend our activities for a fairly long period.
But the fact remains that wanting or claiming to tear oneself away from this logic would amount to questioning social discourse in its entirety, what makes it stick and the echo it finds in us.
This would amount to questioning the relationship between our desire and the desire of others.
But sometimes,
big questions are needed!
They are the ones that make it possible not to let others define our desire.
Incentives to…
See:
the exhibition
Must we travel to be happy?
, at the EDF group foundation in Paris , and an unprecedented journey to understand what kind of traveler you are thanks to 32 contemporary artists.
See:
Alexandre le Bienheureux
, the film by the wonderful Yves Robert (director) and Philippe Noiret (the main role) released in 1968, a delicious ode to laziness
To take the risk of another story, to be at its source, is to take the risk of succeeding "differently".
It is to invent another modality of the present, to dare to reclaim time, while bearing in mind the various challenges of our relationship to the world.
I am obviously thinking of our ecological responsibility: holidays are all too often the place of unbridled ecological expenditure and let's be frank, disastrous (carbon footprint, in particular).
Reinventing oneself in an eco-responsible way is not without pleasure or success.
Organized until Sunday 12 June by the Monaco Philosophical Meetings, under the chairmanship of Charlotte Casiraghi, co-founder.
Free and open to all.
On the program, ecology, education, care, women, and the pleasure of philosophizing.
