The Simulacrum of Presence

I explain here why expert discourses that claim to objectively describe the world are simulacra, and why they can only lead to immobilism. I argue for an acknowledged recognition of our subjectivities, and I indicate how this is a path toward personal engagement in transformative action.

The Illusion of Scholarly Objectivity

We read countless texts produced by intellectuals, experts, scientists, philosophers, or sociologists, who attempt to describe the world in order to better explain it to others. These discourses are based on their research, on studies conducted individually or collaboratively, often with students, but especially on their personal, disciplinary, cultural, and political analytical frameworks, conscious or unconscious.

As Thomas Kuhn so brilliantly analyzed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), our ways of understanding reality are framed by “paradigms,” these sets of beliefs, values, and methods shared by a given scientific community. These paradigms guide research, but above all, they profoundly structure our perception of the world. Kuhn writes:

“Scientists, like laypeople, are immersed in an ocean of inherited interpretations. When they observe, they never do so in a conceptual vacuum; their perceptions are always oriented by disciplinary training, mental habits, and preexisting assumptions. [...] Perception is a theoretically charged act: what we see depends largely on what our training has taught us to expect. Not only our instruments, but also our minds, are shaped by the paradigm in which we operate — and it is in the light of this paradigm that the world makes sense.”

“[...] no part of scientific experience can be understood without reference to the theoretical conceptions that guide it; there is no observation that is not ’theory-laden.’”

Science, far from being a linear progression toward a unique and definitive truth, evolves through upheavals, through “paradigmatic revolutions”: a dominant explanatory model is replaced by another when the anomalies it can no longer resolve accumulate. Any claim to neutrality or absolute objectivity then becomes suspect, as it pretends to ignore the socio-historical and ideological background that necessarily permeates all knowledge.

In this critical lineage, Karl Popper goes so far as to define objective knowledge as “knowledge without a knowing subject.” In Objective Knowledge (1972), he writes:

“We must accept the fundamental distinction between subjective knowledge, which is the thought of a knowing subject, and objective knowledge, which exists in the world, and which can be studied and criticized independently of whether anyone knows or understands it at a given moment. A scientific theory, a story, a logical or mathematical argument exist, in this sense, objectively, and can be discussed objectively.”

And Popper specifies at the same time that this “objectivity” is never more than a methodological construction: scientificity arises from our collective capacity to refute, discuss, put into crisis. The effort of objectification thus remains an ideal, and not a pure reality, because all perception and all conceptualization remain situated, partially blind to their own presuppositions. The claim to objective knowledge can therefore make us forget that all perception of reality is necessarily situated, partial, and mediated by interpretive frameworks. Recognizing this does not diminish the value of a discourse; on the contrary, it gives it greater critical maturity.

Thus, for Popper, scientific knowledge becomes “objective” not because it is “neutral” or without bias, but because it is subject to critical discussion and accessible to any rational intelligence. This idea remains a regulatory ideal, not a realistic description of knowledge production. Objectivity in Popper is methodological, not ontological.

Those who claim to hold the truth, without flaw or nuance, primarily show a lack of perspective on their own point of view. Much more than a guarantee of rigor, this certainty can sometimes mask a dogmatism, even a new obscurantism. One must always be particularly vigilant about the validity of statements made with too much assurance. Because in reality, scholarly discourses often present themselves as objective findings, which they very rarely are. Every gaze is subjective, conditioned, partial. Nietzsche explored this subject in depth (Posthumous Fragments, winter 1886–1887):

"Against ’facts.’ — There are no facts, at most interpretations.
We cannot establish any ’fact’ ’in itself’: it might be necessary to admit, at least, that between everything that presents itself to us as fact and our interpretations, there is nothing other than a multitude of successive interpretations, superimposed on one another, and which are the object of power struggles, of different perspectives; ’truth,’ in this case, would only be a provisionally victorious mode of signification."

And in The Will to Power (1888):

“Truth is not something that would have a nature in itself, and any claim to objectivity is only a reflex of a position, a power relationship, a will to power over the real: ’What happens is a constant struggle to impose a form, which is always interpretation. Thinking is evaluating, measuring, appreciating according to a perspective — never by virtue of a universal or neutral essence.’”

For Nietzsche, even facts have a history: they result from processes of selection and forgetting, from a “war of interpretations,” from perspectives carrying interests and desires. Behind every scientific or philosophical statement, he invites us to seek: Who speaks? In the name of what? For what end? He thus sketches a genealogy of knowledge that puts into crisis any claim to neutrality.

Questioning the idea of objectivity should not lead to a relativism open to all winds: it is about accessing a hermeneutic lucidity about the position from which we speak, analyze, and judge. Recognizing the part of interpretation inherent in all knowledge is, as Donna Haraway says, to “situate” our knowledge: to explore its conditions of possibility, to account for it with honesty and rigor, to open dialogue and contestation.

Between the Popperian ideal of objectivity, which defines the value of knowledge by its capacity to be criticized by others, and Nietzschean radicality, which sees in every truth the expression of a vital perspective or a strategy of domination, any genuine intellectual posture can only be one of awareness of our place and its stakes, of vigilance, modesty, and critical transparency.

To summarize, recognizing the part of interpretation inherent in all knowledge opens to dialogue between diverse positions, to fertile confrontation of perspectives. This is what a true consciousness of complexity can trigger, alone capable of founding a living, critical, generous knowledge, and the foundations of commitments for real transformations of the world.

The Interpretive Relativity of Numbers

Let us return to a seemingly more prosaic subject: take, for example, the case of cuts in public funding for culture in 2025. On this theme, we find a multiplicity of data, often numerical, supposed to objectify the situation and support this or that analysis. But before discussing these numbers, we must start with a fundamental question: what is a number, exactly?

Each seems endowed with evidence, with an immediate power of certainty. Yet a number, in itself, means nothing without its context. A 10% decrease in the culture budget means nothing if we don’t know what it refers to. Is it a decrease compared to the previous year? Why not compare it to the national average? To the overall budget of the concerned community? To the evolution of the security budget? Or to the evolution of the unemployment rate or tax revenues in this territory? Each of these analytical angles brings out a different reading of the “reality” that this number is supposed to reflect.

The number, far from being a raw fact, is therefore always the product of a selection and a relationship. It becomes significant through comparison, through differentiation, through hierarchization. And this comparative operation is fundamentally oriented by subjective, cultural, political, or ideological choices.

Pierre Bourdieu illuminates this subject, in his work on the symbolic power of statistics, notably in his article Public Opinion Does Not Exist (1973). He shows that any numerical data rests on a triple construction:

1. The selection of relevant criteria;
2. The definition of categories (for example, who is counted as a “cultural actor”?);
3. And especially the illusion of universality of these categories, which masks a profoundly heterogeneous reality.

“What statistics does is not photograph social reality, but produce a coherent representation of it according to certain categories of perception and classification.”
Pierre Bourdieu

The apparent objectivity of the number therefore depends entirely on how it is narrated. The same indicator can serve to legitimize a policy as well as to criticize it. Thus, the choice of numbers we mobilize, and especially of other numbers to which we compare them, is never innocent: it translates a certain way of seeing the world, a value system, often unconsciously.

In other words, every number is a construction, but this construction is represented as a raw reality. This can induce a form of symbolic violence: brandishing a number in the space of public debate can close the discussion, because many consider the number as the form par excellence of rationality. And others can brandish other numbers, presenting themselves as equally rational. If numbers are powerful tools, they are never “reason” in itself. They are only one language among others, with its conventions, limits, and uses.

My criticism is not a disqualification: the objective is not to reject the number or statistical analysis, but to recognize its partial, situated, and constructed character. Not seeing this amounts to sliding from a reflexive use of the number to a rhetoric of authority, which conceals its presuppositions behind a veneer of neutrality.

In this sense, as Alain Desrosières, great sociologist of quantification, said, “measuring is categorizing, therefore interpreting”. Numbers don’t say what the world is, they say the world as we have chosen to count it.

This epistemological vigilance more generally joins the criticisms addressed to the illusion of objectivity in the human and social sciences. If we don’t take the time to deconstruct the reference frameworks behind indicators, we participate, without wanting to, in the naturalization of certain visions of the world, sometimes unjust, reductive, or ideologically oriented.

Ultimately, assuming the partiality of a number makes it stronger. It is recognizing that it is a point of view on the real, not the real itself. And it is, above all, giving ourselves the possibility of an open discussion on ways to describe and understand what is at stake in our world.

The Trap of Discourse Without Engagement

The second point I wish to criticize concerns a widely spread defect in so-called “scholarly” or “informed” discourses: their tendency to be content with a descriptive posture, without ever assuming real personal engagement. Too often, these texts present detailed findings, fine analyses, but stop at vague recommendations of the type: “we should do this,” “it would be pertinent to do that”. This kind of abstract formulation serves as a call to action, but without ever asking the essential question: and me, as author, what do I do concretely?

Yet, this is indeed the fundamental point: without personal incarnation, without direct implication, without the “I”, these discourses remain suspended in the unreal. They give the appearance of intellectual objectivity, while they actually flee responsibility. Saying “we should do...” is convenient and comfortable: it dilutes the actor in a vague collective, without concrete assignment. Who is this “we”? With whom does it act? By what means? Nothing is specified. This indetermination transforms the recommendation into an empty formula, a simulacrum of political or moral will, no risk taken by the author, protected behind the pseudo-evidences they have described, very often very hollow and consensual, which have only the appearance of “engagement.”

The Transformative Power of “I”

Conversely, fully assuming the use of “I” means accepting to root one’s discourse in one’s subjectivity, situated, embodied, therefore credible. This does not mean falling into narcissism or auto-fiction, but on the contrary offering an embodied, responsible word, from which a true dynamic of transformation can be born and inspire. As the approaches from cultural rights show well, the case study method, it is through the assumed expression of a personal point of view, the “I”, so difficult to maintain, that discourse becomes potentially inspiring, that it can touch the reader or listener, speak to them concretely and invite them to reflect on their own action choices.

This posture thus allows reconnecting ideas to lived experience, getting out of a purely intellectual or abstract relationship to the real. It gives form to a word that, while remaining reflexive, becomes operative: no longer simply thinking the world, but acting from what we think.

Paulo Freire expresses this perfectly in Pedagogy of Autonomy (1996): “No one educates another, no one educates alone, people educate themselves together through the mediation of the world.” Similarly, no one changes the world in place of others, but each can, through their own engagement, create a ripple effect. The “I” is therefore the first form of engagement, because it is the first proof of sincerity.

From Description to Embodied Action

A large part of the texts we encounter today fall, in my opinion, under what I would call simulacra of presence. They adopt a pseudo-objective posture, sometimes claim a collective scope, but in fact, neither this feigned objectivity nor this collective “we” invoked rest on a living or acting reality. These are abstract constructions, rhetorical fictions that give the illusion of speaking in the name of a shared truth or a collective consciousness.

Yet, this supposed objectivity, far from illuminating reality, contributes to obscuring it. It conceals what is nevertheless essential: the situated reality of the one who writes. All knowledge, all ideas, emerge from a singular, embodied point of view, situated in a precise context, with its limits, its history, its perceptions. Claiming absolute neutrality or exhaustive representation of the real means maintaining a myth. What each can offer that is truest is precisely this: an assumed, subjective, engaged word, which speaks from oneself, not to impose a universal vision, but to take part, honestly, in a living dialogue.

From this perspective, if the goal of many writings is to illuminate the world, to contribute to its transformation, then the true transformative power does not reside in external commentary or distanced judgment, but in personal and concrete engagement. It is not about telling others what they should do from a supposedly enlightened height, but about clearly sharing what each proposes to do, here and now, from where he or she stands.

It is therefore about leaving generalizing commentary to enter situated action. Not formulating general prescriptions for an indistinct “one,” but taking the word in one’s own name, proposing concrete gestures, perhaps modest, but real, and fully assumed. In this regard, Gandhi’s famous formula finds all its meaning here: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It invites not to direct others, but to engage oneself, to become an actor and not a simple narrator of the real.

Thus, let us write not to instruct from a pseudo-height, but to testify from our own height of being. Let us express our commitments not to prescribe, but to embody. Because this is what, ultimately, can inspire others: seeing what each attempts, experiments, dares, and not the lessons they claim to give.

A Necessary Distinction: Political Text and Personal Engagement

It is fundamental to establish a distinction between a political program and personal engagement through writing. What I speak of here does not fall under a political program, the latter belongs to a completely different logic. A political program is a set of concrete objectives, action proposals to be carried out if, one day, a formation reaches power and can orient public spending. It is part of a perspective of institutional exercise of power; these are promises, projections, often conditioned by government structures.

Conversely, what I evoke here are not laws, nor even bills. These are not political texts in the institutional sense of the term. Even if some present them as such, they actually fall under another nature. These are texts of sharing: sharing of ideas, reflections, deep commitments. They are the expression of an intellectual, sometimes existential positioning. If we want them to acquire a true political scope, not in the partisan or technocratic sense, but in the strong sense, that of a capacity to symbolically and concretely transform the real, then we must anchor them in lived experience, in an embodied word. We must engage in them concretely, in person.

Toward Transformative Writing

The challenge is therefore to fully assume our subjectivity. Too often, intellectual or militant writing adorns itself with false objectivity, a supposedly neutral gaze, supposed to be more “effective.” But this posture, in reality, contributes to maintaining the established order: it maintains a simulacrum of “disengaged” thought. Conversely, recognizing the situated part of our word and our perceptions means accepting to speak from what we are, from where we are. This is what potentially allows disrupting the frozen frameworks of discourse and action, because it is real, it is our reality, which is therefore full of potential for inspiration and transmission in the reality of others.

As Maurice Merleau-Ponty said: “True philosophy is to relearn to see the world”. This work of relearning passes through the lucid engagement of oneself in what one writes. It is not about proclaiming universal truths, but exploring, through authentic writing, the conditions of a more just, more thinkable, more livable world. Writing then becomes itself a transformative act, a political gesture in the deep sense of the term: that of making visible, making thinkable, and perhaps, through this, making possible. It is our personal engagement in the transformation, interior and exterior, that we wish to see happen that we must share, if we want to be real actors of personal and perhaps collective changes.