Christophe Bruchansky

Tomorrow’s leaders won’t emerge from top-down hierarchies but from new types of organizational structures. Decentralization, cooperation and inclusion play an increasing role in the success of any organization. And new governance models have been created to meet this global trend. The concept of the postmodern organization for instance – one that is decentered, self-reflexive and multi-faceted – is more than 20 years old. The idea that organizations should not focus solely on shareholder value but serve a diverse set of stakeholders (pluralistic organizations) is more relevant than ever, although it was already widespread in the early 2000s. Alternative governance models exist but still need to gain in popularity. In this interview series, we’ve asked a panel of experts to describe (not so) new leadership and organizational theories, what they have learned while practicing them and how more organizations could start applying them.

Advances in machine learning and natural language processing are revolutionizing the way we live, work, and think. As for any science, they are based on assumptions about what the world is, and how humans interact with it. In this paper, I discuss what is potentially one of these assumptions: structuralism, which states that all cultures share a hidden structure. I illustrate this assumption with political footprints: a machine-learning technique using pre-trained word vectors for political discourse analysis. I introduce some of the benefits and limitations of structuralism when applied to machine learning, and the risks of exploiting a technology before establishing the validity of all its hypotheses. I consider how machine-learning techniques could evolve towards hybrid structuralism or post-structuralism, and how deeply these developments would impact cultural studies.

Advances in machine learning and natural language processing are revolutionizing the way we live, work, and think. As for any science, they are based on assumptions about what the world is, and how humans interact with it. In this paper, I discuss what is potentially one of these assumptions: structuralism, which states that all cultures share a hidden structure. I illustrate this assumption with political footprints: a machine-learning technique using pre-trained word vectors for political discourse analysis. I introduce some of the benefits and limitations of structuralism when applied to machine learning, and the risks of exploiting a technology before establishing the validity of all its hypotheses. I consider how machine-learning techniques could evolve towards hybrid structuralism or post-structuralism, and how deeply these developments would impact cultural studies.

Notre raison d’être ne pourrait se concevoir isolément : elle est intimement liée à celle d’autrui ainsi qu’à la raison de toute chose se présentant à notre esprit. Nous voilà donc contraints, pour exister, d’octroyer un sens au monde. Or je suggère que ce sens est arbitraire ; il n’est justifié en rien, l’existence n’étant fondée sur aucun fait tangible. Il s’agit dès lors, pour l’être humain, non pas d’aboutir à une quelconque vérité, mais d’assumer son erreur ontologique. Ceci aura, comme je tâcherai de le démontrer dans ce livre, des implications scientifiques (relation entre l’être, ses observations et la notion d’ordre) et métaphysiques (condition de l’être, ses limites et prolongements) profondes. L’existence est en perpétuel mouvement, elle est un souffle, composé de progressions et de ruptures. Ce souffle ne serait cependant que pure agitation si l’être conscient ne lui attribuait pas une certaine continuité esthétique, c’est-à-dire s’il ne se concevait pas lui-même, ainsi que la réalité qui l’entoure, de façon suffisamment stable et cohérente pour autoriser l’émergence de sa conscience. La réalité est, en tant que telle, pur chaos ; elle n’inclut aucune forme ni aucun ordre, seul l’être conscient lui prête de telles propriétés. Il le fait pour la beauté du geste, et y met d’autant plus de bonne volonté que son existence lui apparaîtrait, sinon, infondée.

Je décris dans ce livre un projet alternatif de société. Une société dite « digressive » serait basée sur le principe de n’en imposer aucun à autrui : principe paradoxal dont je démontre qu’il est équivalent à la maximisation globale des choix individuels ainsi qu’au combat contre toute forme d’aliénation. Loin d’être stérile, ce principe pourrait, je l’affirme, avoir des applications très concrètes dans la tenue des activités humaines. La société digressive est un manifeste pour une société post-certitude, une réponse pragmatique aux dogmes et monopoles en tout genre.

Christophe Bruchansky asks if we’re living in a global themepark. Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971. It was the second theme park built by Disney, the first being Disneyland in California in 1955. Disney World is not one theme park, but a group of four theme parks, two water parks, and many hotels, all together in Orlando. It is one of the most visited attractions in the world, and represents far from merely an American phenomenon. Disney theme parks are now located in Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong, and a new park has recently been announced for Shanghai. But what is a Disney theme park? Is it a utopia? Is it a heterotopia – a concept defined by French philosopher Michel Foucault? Or is it something else? As you will see from this article, understanding Disney World requires a profound reflection on culture, history and reality.

In this book, I describe an alternative project for society. A digressive society would be based on the principle that no one is allowed to impose a principle on others. This paradoxical principle is, as I demonstrate, equivalent to the global maximisation of individual choices as well as the combating of all forms of alienation. Far from being sterile, I argue that this principle could have highly concrete applications in the conduct of human activities. This book is, I hope, a productive attempt to develop a system at the crossroads of critical theory, existentialism, libertarianism, and anarchism: a system founded not on any preconceived notion of justice or human rights, but rooted in the ambiguous nature of human existence. Digressive Society is a manifesto for a post-certainty society, a pragmatic answer to all dogmas and monopolies.

What is the difference between a game and life? Is the game really ending when we go back to our everyday activities? Or could The Sims video game not be a good representation of our existence? It is with these questions in mind that I decided to explore the interdependence that exists between our everyday cultural reality and the rhetoric manifesting itself in video games. This paper introduces some of the key concepts used in the semiotics of video games and attempts to articulate them in a single frame. It is a short introduction to storyworlds, procedural rhetoric and gamespace.

Our raison d’être cannot be considered in isolation: it is inextricably bound to the raison d’être of the Other, as well as to the reason for all those things our minds perceive. In order to exist, we are therefore constrained to attribute meaning to the world. However, I suggest that this meaning is arbitrary; it is in no way justified, since existence is not founded on any tangible facts. The task facing humans is thus not to succeed in finding some kind of truth, but to come to terms with their ontological error. As I will attempt to demonstrate in this book, this notion has deep-reaching implications that are both scientific (the relationship between the self, the observations made by the self and the notion of order) and metaphysical (the condition, limits and extensions of the self). Existence is in perpetual motion, it is a breath of air, made up of advances and interruptions. However, this breath would be nothing more than mere agitation if the conscious being did not assign it a degree of aesthetic continuity; in other words, if it did not conceive of itself, as well as the surrounding reality, in a sufficiently stable and coherent fashion to enable the emergence of its conscience. Reality is, in itself, pure chaos; it comprises neither form nor order. It is assigned these qualities by the conscious being, which is engaging in graceful action and employs great determination, since without such qualities its existence appears baseless.

This paper is a copy of Digressive Society’s conclusions. In the book Digressive Society, I describe a society that would be based on the principle that no one is allowed to impose a principle on others. This paradoxical principle is, as I demonstrate, equivalent to the global maximisation of individual choices as well as the combating of all forms of alienation. A digression should be understood in the positive sense, it is distancing ourselves from an initial intention, deviate from a pre-established or expected discourse. This book is, I hope, a productive attempt to develop a system at the crossroads of critical theory, existentialism, libertarianism, and anarchism: a system founded not on any preconceived notion of justice or human rights, but rooted in the ambiguous nature of human existence.