Abstract EN:

This thesis is composed of several studies devoted to the utopian phase of saint-simonianism (1825-1835) (there are two analyses of the saint-simonian periodical le producteur, and a discussion of the correspondences of two saint-simonian women, c. Simon and a. Arnaud), to utopia as a form of imaginary representation of the social space, as well as a critical history of saint-simonianism. The unifying principle of this body of texts resides in a reflexion which seeks to explore and determine why utopias flourished in the modern post-revolutionay political space, more particularly how the various modes and forms of expression and representation peculiar to utopian saint-simonianism came to define a religious experience. The critical interpretations of the saint-simonian movement over the last a hundred and fifty years, the various "meta-discourses" on saint-simonianism, all held within the framework of a positivist and linear conception of history, leave a "remainder" which is difficult to grasp through classical analytical tools and which cannot be refined away in terms of "political history". It is this "utopian remainder" which is analysed here in some aspects of its manifestations (namely the search for a new spiritual power as a tool for criticism in the yet not-stable political space of the end of the french restoration, and the emancipating practices of women in "speech acts" and "writings"). The conceptual framework here is that of walter bejamin's historical approach which allows these past experiences to be re-located in their contemporary political present and enables us to re-define the emancipating potentialities of these social imaginary forms which have been overlooked by classical analysis. Saint-simonianism thus appears, in its ambivalence, rather than the forefather of socialism or technocracy, as part and parcel of the invention of democracy.