Le Nord et le Midi : Contribution à une analyse de l'effet Montesquieu

Abstract

North and South : a Contribution to Analysis of the "Montesquieu Effect". The paradigmatic case of Montesquieu's «climate theory» is examined so as to describe the logic of the «Montesquieu effect». This is the effect of truth or scientificity that is procured in the social sciences, as it was in the natural sciences in earlier periods, by superimposing two principles of coherence : the surface coherence of the rhetoric of scientificity (partly based on borrowings from more advanced sciences) and the deep coherence of mythical logic. The mythological «scientificity» that is produced in this way presents in a misrecognizable form a complex of sexual and social phantasms (North/South, cold/hot, tense/relaxed, etc.) which crystallize in the metaphor of the metal spring and the image of the seraglio.

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