On bêtise

Abstract

In this reflection, it questions the Lacanian notion of bêtise and its value in contemporary discourse. The article dissects the categorisation of intelligence and its historical links to the ideologies of eugenics and racism, highlighting the unfortunate outcome of attempts to measure intellectual level.

Drawing on Lacanian reflections on débilité and bêtise, they question contemporary ways of inscribing one's own word in the field of language, fostering uncritical and deresponsibilizing social postures. This condition has now spread to become a systemic feature of societies and cultures in which the mass media promote new forms of magical thinking. Another use of the signifier can then help us overturn the categorisations of intelligence and teach us to live with uncertainty.