Site de Denis Duclos

Many thanks for your commentary. I am not sure I really got the point you raised. Symptom and syndrom are bound by nature, the first revealing the second, and the second explaining the first.
The problem in such cultural issues is that there is no other way to prove the existence of a syndrom except collecting symptoms. The 'werewolf complex' is now more than ten years old, but if I am still thinking it is a good tool for understanding the United States (even if the terrorist has replaced the serial killer), it is precisely because there is a theoretical frame at work. The theory is not complex : as the 'ultimate' version of the western democratic societies, the US culture emphazises both individual freedom and machinery of law. And there is a competition between the two, inflating at the same time the individual as a potential monster and the machinery as a potential 'matrix'. But this is a 'local' theory', which only makes sense if you locate it within the frame of a broader one : western cultures are organizing themselves around a specific conversation, concerning the rule of law. But each 'participant' in this conversation interprets differently the same object. For instance, the Germans tend to promote an association between law and national community, the Italians oppose law to local rules, and the French always recall the 'Power' that is supposed to enforce the law. Only the English are posing the law in a way the Americans will 'push' to an extremity. Now consider the 'criminal cultures' of all these countries : they reflect their different positions in the conversation : the English have made many steps in building up th 'monster' character (which comes from too much liberty, threaten by totalitarianism), the French are full of pity regarding the poor and mad people who kill, when they have no chance to shake the Authorities , The Germans (who have been excellent at producing altogether real collective monstrosities) are now trying to prove in tv movies how nice and friendly are the policemen in charge of calming down weirdos. And the Italians like to show you that -in Naples at least- cops and maffia guys collaborate tightly to help the city remaining as humane than ever. But the theory goes even farther : when the western countries are obsessed with freedom and law, the eastern ones are more interested with identity. Remember that the chinese ideograms are shared by most of peoples around China (despite the different oral tongues), which drives everybody there to search what being 'is represented' through writing. The question : 'who are you ?' is probably more important there than 'how are you disciplined in order to remain free ?'. I don't have much room to develop the idea, but you could probably find a lot of symptoms illustrating the 'chinese syndrom' (not the nuclear one !), in eastern cultures. How to be oneself (and being it in a specific place in the cosmos) is probably their main question, beginning with the corean way of becoming more westerners than the real ones (in some of their movie thrillers, it is striking). I could finally evoke the case of nomadic cultures which put the emphasis on pure freedom, the necessary principle of order being included in the freedom of the chief of the group. You know enough of the american culture to aknowledge that it is a principle of which destiny is to enter in conflict with the 'balance principle' which rules America. Indeed, imposing one's rule to one's descendants is quite the contrary of living free because of a common law, democratically set up. Godfather is not Matrix, and heroes that defend the Father's honour are simply terrorists in the view of the opposite culture.
Of course, all this is very simplified, but something remains : there is probably a hidden conversation running about what is the difference between a heroe and a monster. And beyond the difficulty of the matter, it is probably something like a global conversation emerging there...