On Enthusiasm in Politics: 12 Hypotheses

International audienceThe author suggests twelve hypotheses to revive enthusiasm as a political category and, eventually, to restate the possibility of political action. In this perspective, the enthusiasm of the masses was the essential political element of " The Glorious Thirty Years " that followed the Second War World, characterized by a strong tension to realize a greater social justice. It was also at the base of the " Long Sixty-Eight " and of the processes of decolonization. Enthusiasm is thus thought in opposition both to the monopolistic pretension of political innovation forwarded by communist parties in the past and to the exclusive competence on political-economical decisions claimed today by democratic élites. Rethinking the enthusiasm that animated these historic sequences of the twentieth century should offer the possibility to respond to " the sad passions " that dominate the era of neoliberal administration of global democracy