EIn May 2017, a journalist asked me about the notion of kairos about the unexpected election of Emmanuel Macron, elected by ” breaking in “as he himself acknowledged. Par kairosthe ancient Greeks designated, in fact, the occasion, the decisive moment: knowing how to spot the kairos is both a matter of glance and preparation or experience. It is the glance of the eagle on the battlefield, the one illuminated by the “sun of Austerlitz”, but if Blücher arrives instead of Grouchy delayed in his march, it is Waterloo. The weather (chronos) regains its rights, the kairos changes sides, and it’s a debacle.
In 2017, Macron had been able to seize the opportunity that presented itself, even though he was not supposed to win. But, through his stubbornness, François Fillon, in spite of himself, had helped him! What the seven years of a solitary exercise of power were like is not my point, except to note that this president, who wanted to be Jupiterian and master of the clocks, has increasingly given in to presentism, multiplying the opportunities to spread, in all formats and to the point of incontinence, the presidential word, on the grounds that only it could respond ever more quickly to the crises and emergencies that continued to accumulate.
But the more he wanted or believed his speech to be performative, the more he was accused by his opponents of being “disconnected”. For it is only for the gods that saying and doing are one: since no gap or delay slips between the two, since their time is not time chronos humans, the one who passes, who stretches between past, present and future. They evolve in a kind of perpetual kairos. Insensibly, with hubris helping, Emmanuel Macron came to believe that, through his words, he could generate kairosthat it was enough to create opportunities, even decisive moments, and that time chronosas would stewardship, would follow.
Realities on the ground
On the evening of June 9, the announcement, against all expectations, of the dissolution of the National Assembly marked the high point of this practice of performative speech. In an instant, it certainly produced a decisive moment, a kairos which, he thought, would give him back the advantage and, first of all, that of the choice of the battlefield, after the heavy defeat (although announced) in the European elections. But the surprise effect did not last long, the kairosconceived in the bedroom at the Elysée, did not resist the realities on the ground and, even less, the calculations of the general staff and the seasoned campaigners of electoral battles. From this kairos which was offered to them, they seized to write it down in time chronos of a campaign and in the unfolding of more or less miraculous government programs.
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