Ensemblance by de Miranda, Luis;

Short description:

Through several historical case studies from the last 300 years, Luis de Miranda shows how the phrase 'esprit de corps' acts as a combat concept with a clear societal impact. He also reveals how interconnected, yet distinct, French, English and American modern intellectual and political thought is.

Long description:

Esprit de corps has played a significant role in the cultural and political history of the last 300 years. Through several historical case studies, Luis de Miranda shows how this phrase acts as a combat concept with a clear societal impact. He also reveals how interconnected, yet distinct, French, English and American modern intellectual and political thought is. In the end, this is a cautionary analysis of past and current ideologies of ultra-unified human ensembles, a recurrent historical and theoretical fabulation the author calls ‘ensemblance’.

Table of Contents:

Esprit de Corps: A Timeline

Introduction: A Thousand Platoons – The Enduring Importance of Esprit de Corps

• Team Spirits: Twenty-First Century Uses of ‘Esprit de Corps’
• Knowledge Aperture: Academic Literature on Esprit de Corps
• Abstract Universalism: The Problem of a Philosophical Perspective When Studying Esprit de Corps
• As Far as We Can Tell: A Longue Durée Intellectual History of the Uses of ‘Esprit de Corps’
• Surveying Large Issues Within a Small Compass: Digital Genealogy

1. Musketeers and Jesuits: The French Birth of ‘Esprit de Corps’ in the Eighteenth Century

• Not Only in the Military: First Occurrences of the Phrase in Print
• The Head of the World: A Short Prehistory of the Phrase ‘Esprit de Corps’
• One Hundred Fifty: A Quantification of Esprit de Corps?
• Bad Grafts: Critical Uses of ‘Esprit de Corps’ in the Encyclopédie
• Too Zealous to Be Honest? The Trial of the Jesuits

2. Adunation of the Nation: Towards a Republican Esprit de Corps

• The Mask of Reason: Dialectics of Particularism and Patriotism
• Collective Cogito: The Nation as a Natural and Spiritual Corps
• Capitalism versus Esprit de Corps: The Suppression of the Corps de Métiers
• Common Good: Revolution and the ‘Adunation’ of Society

3. We Must Hang Together: The English Appropriation of Esprit de Corps in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

• Exotic Flavour and Distinction: Linguistic and Semantic Observations
• Unavoidable Zeal: Early Propagation of EdC in British English
• The Honour of a Nation: Official Debates about EdC in the UK and the USA
• The Natural Bond: Universalist and Familial Esprit de Corps

4. The Way of Napoleon: The Uniformization of Esprit de Corps in Early Nineteenth-Century France

• Superiorly Normal: Renewal and Normalization of Esprit de Corps
• Esprit de Corporation: The Decline of Labour Communities and the Spread of Individualist Competition
• The Honour and Duty of the Soldier
• Defend Your Flag: Napoleonic Esprit de Corps
• The Cement of the Social Edifice: The Counter-Revolutionary Praise of Esprit de Corps

5. Collective Temperament: Esprit de Corps as Sociality and Individuation in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

• Whose Norms? Conformative Esprit de Corps and Autonomist Esprit de Corps
• ‘We Who Suffer’: The Problematic Regulation of Solidarities
• Esprit de Corps and The Spirit of Individuality: Tocqueville’s Reminiscence
• Esprit de Corps and the First French Sociologists: Fourier, Tarde, Durkheim
• Self-Alienation: The Individualistic critique of Esprit de Corps

6. The Mystique of Esprit de Corps in France in the Twentieth Century

• The Moral Empire: Permanence of the Ambiguity of Esprit de Corps in French
• The Superior Self: Esprit de Corps as Honour in Terraillon and Bergson
• Professional Habitus: French Esprit de Corps in Work, Management and French Education
• Esprit de Corps as a War Machine: From De Gaulle to Deleuze
• The future of a Gallicism: Canada as a Semantic Border Between French and English

7. The Way of Hilton: Esprit de Corps in the UK and the USA in the Twentieth Century

• ‘A Happy Phrase’: The Specificity of English Uses of ‘Esprit de Corps’
• Brothers in Arms: Esprit de Corps in Military Discourse
• The Purpose of Unity: Political and Institutional Aspects of Esprit de Corps
• Measure by Measure: Intellectual and Theoretical Uses of ‘Esprit de Corps’
• The Management of Men: Corporate and Managerial Discourse

Conclusion: Ensemblance

• ‘Large issues within a small compass’: Histosophy
• Is a General Theory of Esprit de Corps Possible?
• Drive, Discipline, Duty and Distinction: Four Scales of Esprit de Corps?
• The Contigency of Ensembles: Six Questions Raised and Answered

BibliographyIndex