Sartre, Girard, Mead: L'écologie du désir et des objets

Aux propos extrêmement intéressants de Stéphane Vinolo (min. 37) sur la parenté phénomenologique entre l'example sartréen de la queue de l'autobus (ou des voyagers de l'autobus lui-même) et le désir mimétique selon l'analyse de Girard, je voudrais ajouter une observation sur la théorisation de de ces phénomènes de la constitution des sujets et des objets de désir. On pourrait parler —d'ailleurs Vinolo parle— d'un environnement nouveau constitué du fait de l'existence du désir, et des désirs similairement constitués (voire mimétiques) des sujets désirants—une vraie écologie émergente du désir, d'ailleurs. 

On peut faire pire que de mettre ces réflexions en relation avec une des théories les plus puissantes sur le concept d'environnement—celle de George Herbert Mead. C'est une conception puissante et originale—peut-être dérivée de la psychologie de Wundt et de Dewey, mais formulée ici à un niveau d'abstraction et à la fois de concretion tel qui en fait un puissant instrument d'analyse de tout genre de phénomènes sociaux. George Herbert Mead a théorisé, dans ses livres La philosophie du présent et Esprit, Sujet et Société, une puissante conceptualisation interactiviste des phénomènes sociaux, qui d'ailleurs va de la "socialité" inhérente à l'intéraction entre deux phénomènes physiques, aux formes complexes de socialité humaine, en sociologie, psychologie, politique, etc.  Sa conception émergentiste est attentive à la constitution de nouveaux phénomènes qui surgissent de cette socialité, à chaque niveau de complexité. Voici sans doute un puissant contexte théorique où peuvent s'encadrer, ou (soyons moins ambitieux) qui peut s'apparenter aux réflexions de Sartre et de Girard sur la constitution de situations et des environnements locaux pour les sujets en vue de leur relation envers un objet de désir—ou de nécessité, un désir qui va peut-être plus loin que le désir.

Voici deux pages du livre de Mead Esprit, Sujet et Société où il examine la manière comme les sujets constitutent un nouvel environnement symbolique (une réalité virtuelle, pourrait-on dire) du fait de leur intéraction autour d'un objet—un environnement construit sur la relation sujet-objet qui est de soi un nouvel environnement qui les définit comme tels; c'est sur la constitution de l'objet comme tel objet d'abord, et comme symbole après, que l'écologie du désir se fonde:

Symbolization constitutes objects not constituted befroe, objects which would not exist except for the context of social relationships wherein symbolization occurs. Language does not simply symbolize a situation or object which is already there in advance; it makes possible the existence or the appearance of that situation or object, for it is a part of the mechanism where by that situation or object is created. The social process relates the responses of one individual to the gestures of another, as the meanings of the latter, and is thus responsible for the rise and existence of new objects in the social situation, objects dependent upon or constituted by these meanings. Meaning is thus not to be conceived, fundamentally, as a state of consciousness, or as a set of organized relations existing or subsisting mentally outside the field of experience into which they enter; on the contrary, it should be conceived objectively, as having its existence entirely within this field itself. The response of one organism to the gesture of another in any given social act is the meaning of that gesture, and also is in a sense responsible for the appearance or coming into being of the new object—or new content of an old object—to which that gesture refers through the outcome of the given social act in which it is an early phase. For, to repeat, objects are in a genuine sense constituted within the social process of experience, by the communication and mutual adjustment of behavior among the individual organisms which are involved in that process and which carry it on. Just as in fencing the parry is an interpretation of the thrust, so, in the social act, the adjustive response of one organism to the gesture of another is the interpretation of that gesture by that organism—it is the meaning of that gesture.
     At the level of self-consciousness such a gesture becomes a symbol, a significant symbol. But the interpretation of gestures is not, basically, a process going on in a mind as such, or one necessarily involving a mind; it is an external, overt, physical or physiological process going on in the actual field of social experience. Meaning can be described, accounted for, or stated in terms of symbols or language at its highest and most complex stage of development (the stage it reaches in human experience), but language simply lifts out of the social process a situation which is logically or implicitly there already. The language symbol is simply a significant or conscious gesture.
      Two main points are being made here: (I) that the social process, through the communication which it makes possible among the individuals implicated in it, is responsible for the appearance of a whole set of new objects in nature, which exist in relation to it (objects, namely, of "common sense"); and (2) that the gesture of one organism and the adjustive response of another organism to that gesture within any given social act bring out the relationship that exists between the gesture as the beginning of the given act and the completion or resultant of the given act, to which the gesture refers. These are the two basic and complementary logical aspects of the social process.
     The result of any given social act is definitely separated from the gesture indicating it by the response of another organism to that gesture, a response which points to the result of that act as indicated by that gesture. This situation is all there—is completely given—on the non-mental, non-conscious level, before the analysis of it on the mental or conscious level. Dewey says that meaning arises through communication [See Experience and Nature, chap. V.] It is to the content to which the social process gives rise that this statement refers; not to bare ideas or printed words as such, but to the social process which has been so largely responsible for the objects constituting the daily environment in which we live: a process in which communication plays the main part. That process can give rise to these new objects in nature only in so far as it makes possible communication among the individual organisms involved in it. And the sense in which it is responsible for their existence—indeed for the existence of the whole world of common-sense objects—is the sense in which it determines, conditions, and makes possible their abstraction from the total structure of events, as identities which are reelevant fro everyday social behavior; and in that sense, or as having that meaning, they are existent only relative to that behavior. In the same way, at a later, more advanced stage of its development, communication is responsible for the existence of the whole realm of scientific objects as well as identities abstracted from the total structure of events by virtue of their relevance for scientific purposes. (Mind, Self, and Society, 78-80)

On peut voir chez Mead une théorie fondationnelle sur la notion d'écologie, d'environnement, de niches écologiques et de coévolution—une coévolution qui joint dans une chaîne intéractionnelle le monde physique, les ressources des vivants, le désir, la rivalité, et la dynamique de l'intéraction complexe avec les objets virtuels constitués par la conscience humaine.

—oOo—