Mirror of a Nation. The Ecole Nationale d’Administration
What is France ? What is it to administer France ? Administration does not consist of fashioning peoples as if they were made of modelling clay. Territory is a political creation, because it is above all, as the art of the Renaissance revealed, a portrait of the Earth, a monumental image, in which mankind seeks to get to grips with what is most human about humankind, its self-resemblance.
That is why territory is a living material on which Administrations operate, a space in which the relation to power is displayed, a relation which concerns identity, you might even say the love of our own image. Territory is a humanity which has been given form, which has been incorporated into a given location, which establishes the meaning of that location, which inhabits it.
The preservation of what we call the State requires extensive theatrical means, and the rationalist West is no exception to the general experience of humanity where institutions are concerned : one must have faith in them, as one has faith in one’s own image. Never have we seen, never will we see a society without music, without songs, without founding myths, without banners and emblems.
The ENA is a nursery of power, it manufactures semi-finished products. The “State kindergarten” selects the plants. The School’s task is to transplant them into the active Administration, on the model of the Church or the Army, following the principle of a hierarchy of functions. The Énarque will implant himself there and produce the fruits of power, which in France is called serving the State.
The vertical State has ceased to impress us. But, lo and behold, its divine place has been taken by the Economy. What have the scenarios of ardent political devotion become, the collages of religious passion, the allegiance to symbols which breathed life into the bond with the State ? Has our capacity for evolving while yet conserving reached its limit ?
France has become a local player in the Anglo-American bubble of military, financial and media alliances, which places the world under the surveillance of the social sciences and of economic indicators. The ENA has tracked that tendency.
The Administration makes application of transnational and trans-European techniques, it is a patchwork structure annexed to the Economy. And yet…, the idea of public service is still there, even if it has sunk beneath the surface. But is it going to disappear ? The war of annihilation, followed by the incursion of the economy, changed the face of the world in the 20th century.
The old States survived by virtue of their recourse to generalized diplomacy. Negotiation has become the great domestic business of the Western Nations, the new art of governing. The managerial State confronts lobbies, the apiary of the world of labour, disadvantaged social groups. The market has lodged itself in our mincis: now a policy, or the image of a leader, or a State edict have to be “sold”.
What is power, what are its new resources, and how are the bonds between human beings reproduced, in an era of the planetary refeudalization of the earth by the market ? And if there are no longer any Nations, why would there be any Civil servants ?
The categories which we use to analyse power and the structures of the State lose their relevance little by little, when they are arbitrarily detached from their deeper anthropological meaning, and our capacity to understand states of affairs in a world on which we have no grasp, will be lastingly affected.
This text has been used to develop the film script.