The number and thought of risk : a mythology in the present

Abstract

The text hypothesizes a myth of the figure in our contemporary societies by resorting to the thought of Roland Barthes on a subject where one hardly expects it: the criticism of the thought of risk, in the criminal context. Indeed, today, the figure, with its scientific and rational appearances, would constitute the cardinal virtue of a well-conducted policy. The various indicators to which it gives rise would lead to good "governance" under the guise of what Barthes would call an innocent word. Worse, dehistoricized and manipulated with no real contextualisation, it would have become a sign that is void of content (a "fetish"?), exonerating those who use it from assuming the real in its complexity. In this figure’s universe, we would thus witness the deployment of a new narrative that we propose to discuss. And the idea of this text is perhaps here, in the folds of the real and the political, illuminated by the thought of Barthes and his Mythologies. In these perspectives, two main questions arise: on the one hand, what happens when the figure passes for truer than reality? On the other hand, has it not already become our second nature?