CSR perceived as an imaginary object caught in a dynamic of substitutional training[La RSE perçue comme un objet imaginaire pris dans une dynamique de formation substitutive]

Our culture is based on a triple mutilation: a separation between culture and nature, an ignorance of life and a perception of the human being through the prism of a dualistic anthropological paradigm (which means that the human being is understood as composed of a body and a soul, made up of a mind and a psyche). These paradigmatic choices are at the origin of an abysmal fear and a feeling of lack that become founding and structuring elements of our society, which tries by all means to provide adapted responses. The modern project thus promised us to become the master and possessor of nature. Its failure has plunged us into a blind and exhausting hypermodernism. These responses seem to be of two kinds: firstly, material, through the transformation and unlimited exploitation of a limited nature broken down into resource-objects; secondly, imaginary, through the creation of a parallel world that attempts to satisfy egos through false noses and make-up. They result in the destruction of our environment while rendering us totally incapable of fully understanding what is going on. Freud observed that our culture was caught in a struggle between the life and death drives. Death drives dominate today, pushing us inexorably towards self-destruction. Faced with the approaching abyss, our first response seems to be denial or half measures. In this respect, CSR is an exemplary management theory: it acts as an illusory safety valve to close the lid on our rising anguish. CSR is a poor managerial concept, a ready-to-think and ready-to-deploy technique, which relies on the same shortcomings as management and only results in reinforcing the problems. The ideological performativity that it operates contributes to giving us the illusory feeling that we are doing something that allows us to respond to the issues of our time, giving us a good conscience, but contributing on the contrary to maintain our illusions and to hide the fruits of our choices. Phenomenology, ethics and psychoanalysis seem to be potential keys that offer us new perspectives for understanding our dying world and for discerning ways out and alternative postures.