Abstract

The way the nine Tarnac proponents of a self-supporting life were arrested and charged testifies not only to a disruption in the order of the law but also to a deeper mutation, in the symbolic order of society. The procedures that were implemented represent one of the most telling aspects in the new trend that has developed with the « war on terror », namely a person is defined as a terrorist not because he or she committed any specific crime, but because he or she is given that name by the Home office. The reason why these young people are called terrorists is the way they live, the fact they try to escape the economic machine and do not proactively submit to control procedures. The discourse of power becomes the one and only possible referent. Facts are kept out of the social field and out of th espace of what is thinkable. As a consequence, this image imprisons us in a psychotic structure