La maison commune et la toiture de paille. Démocratie, socialisme et émancipation, vus du don

Abstract

For Marcel Mauss, the gift represents a form of social exchange – or human relationship – among others; it is, at the same time, more than the gift itself. With the gift, "we touch the rock" or "one of the rocks," the fundamental relational infrastructure upon which the various established forms of human sociability are built. Another image or metaphor that inspires this text is that of the "common house" and its "straw roof," from Kanak society. Both are mobilized here to question the normative and political implications of the gift paradigm and to trace the paths of emancipation it still opens today. Through the example of social protection and socialism advocated by Mauss, this paradigm of the gift reminds us that the gift, as a relationship, in terms of its internal normativity – that of our most ordinary and essential "generous reciprocities" – constitutes a founding force: the one through which societies can, beyond their insular boundaries, freely give themselves institutions, particularly political ones, and common rules, thus weaving the threads of a shared world.