[CM-A Thinks Allowed] Histories of HyperNormalisation: "French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment" by Paul Rabinow
Discussion between William Martin, Gideon Kossof, Stefan Gruber, and Cassim Shepard on Chapter 2: Modern Elements - Reasons and Histories.
Paul Rabinow's French Modern (1989/1995) explores how modernization in France (1830s–1930s) was shaped by emerging notions of space, society, and governance. Using anthropology, philosophy, and cultural criticism, Rabinow examines the rise of “social environments” through urban planning, architecture, epidemiology, welfare, and legislation. He highlights the role of “technicians of general ideas” - statisticians, architects, colonial administrators - who forged new norms: “milieux” as fields of intervention and regulation. Modernity revealed itself not through elite theory alone but through pragmatic social forms in both metropolitan and colonial contexts, demonstrating how rationality materialized in built environments and social institutions.