Ensemblance The Transnational Genealogy of Esprit de Corps

Is esprit de corps the secret engine of history?

Esprit de corps has played a significant role in the cultural and political history of the last 300 years. The idea was influential and debated during the European secularisation of education in the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, the United States process of Independence and the Bonapartist Empire. It was praised by British colonialists, French sociologists and during the World Wars. It was also instrumental in the rise of administrative nation-states and the triumph of corporate capitalism. Today, 'esprit de corps' continues to be influential in disparate discourses.

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'.

Luis de Miranda is Researcher in the History of Ideas Department at Örebro University, Sweden. He is the author of Being and Neonness (MIT Press, 2019), Peut-on jouir du capitalisme? Lacan avec Heidegger et Marx (Max Milo, 2009) and Une vie nouvelle est-elle possible? Deleuze et les lignes (Nous, 2009).

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

Bibliography
Index