Bourdieu: Recording these experiences directly from those who have lived them can in itself be overwhelming; to keep one’s distance would be unthinkable. For instance, we felt obliged to omit several accounts from the book because they were too poignant, too full of pathos or pain.

Bourdieu: What we wanted was for readers to see this absurdity in a raw, unvarnished form. One of the instructions we gave ourselves was to avoid being literary. You may find this shocking, but there is a temptation to write well when faced with dramas such as these. The brief was to try to be as brutally direct as possible, in order to return to these stories their extraordinary, almost unbearable violence. For two reasons: scientific and, I think, literary, since we wanted to be un-literary in order to be literary by other means. There were also political reasons: we believed that the violence wrought by neoliberal policies in Europe and Latin America, and many other countries, is so great that one cannot capture it with purely conceptual analyses. Critiques of neoliberal policy are not equal to its effects.

Bourdieu: But there is a connexion between this sense of having lost the traditions of the Enlightenment and the global triumph of the neoliberal vision. I see neoliberalism as a conservative revolution, as the term was used between the wars in Germany—a strange revolution that restores the past but presents itself as progressive, transforming regression itself into a form of progress. It does this so well that those who oppose it are made to appear regressive themselves. This is something we have both endured: we are readily treated as old-fashioned, ‘has-beens’, ‘throwbacks’ . . .

Bourdieu: Exactly. This is the great strength of conservative revolutions, of ‘progressive’ restorations. Even some of what you’ve said today is influenced by the idea—we’re told we lack humour. But the times aren’t funny! There’s really nothing to laugh about.

Bourdieu: Yes, but the strength of neoliberalism lies in the fact that it has been implemented, at least in Europe, by people who label themselves socialists. Schroeder, Blair, Jospin all invoke socialism in order to carry out neoliberal policies. This makes critical analysis extremely difficult because, once again, all the terms of the debate have been reversed.

Bourdieu: At the same time, it has become difficult to take up a critical stance to the left of social-democratic governments. In France, the strikes of 1995 mobilized broad sectors of the working population, employees and also intellectuals. Since then there have been a whole series of movements—of the unemployed, who organized a Europe-wide march, the sans-papiers, etc. There has been a sort of permanent unrest, which has obliged the social democrats in power to adopt at least the pretence of a socialist discourse. But in practice, this critical movement is still very weak—in large part because it is still confined to the national level. One of the major political questions confronting us, it seems to me, is how to create on an international scale a position to the left of social-democratic governments, from which it would be possible to exert real influence on them. Attempts to create a European social movement have so far been no more than tentative. What I would ask is what we as intellectuals can contribute to this movement: one which is absolutely essential, since—contrary to the neoliberal perspective—all social gains have historically come from active struggles. So, if we wish to have a ‘social Europe’, as is often said, we need to have a European social movement. I believe intellectuals have an important responsibility in helping to bring such a movement into being, since the power of the dominant order is not just economic, but intellectual—lying in the realm of beliefs. That’s why one must speak out: to restore a sense of utopian possibility, which it is one of neoliberalism’s key victories to have killed off, or made to look antiquated.

Bourdieu: The Weight of the World sought to assign a much more modest, but useful function to intellectuals than they are accustomed to. The public writer, as I have seen in North Africa, is someone who can write and lends his skills to others, to express things they understand better than him. Sociologists are in a very particular position. They are unlike other intellectuals, since most of them know in general how to listen and to interpret what is said to them, to transcribe and transmit it. Perhaps this makes them sound too much like a guild; but I think it would be good if intellectuals, indeed all those with the time to think and write, were to take part in this kind of work—which presupposes an ability, all too rare among intellectuals, to shed their usual egoism and narcissism.