Bureaucracy: a Shape-Memory Word

Abstract

Terminological debates, leaving aside the problem of the translation of terms, usually revolve around the definition of words. Less frequently discussed is the question of whether a particular lexeme is appropriate as a form for a given definition. Present-day historians of the Russian administration of the 16th — 18th centuries can be divided into two groups: those who freely use the term bureaucracy to describe the Muscovite and early imperial systems of administration, and those who consider it unsuitable for this purpose. However, the disagreement is rooted not so much in different scientific definitions (according to Marx, according to Weber) or differences in empirical description of the subject, but rather in a deep psychological acceptance or rejection of the very word bureaucracy as a scientific term. Some historians insist on the need for the researcher to banish from his mind all negative associations connected with the common linguistic usage of this lexeme, while others resist to this. The purpose of this article is to explore the history of the word bureaucratie in French during the decade of the French Revolution; to show, on the basis of the monuments of parliamentary eloquence, periodicals, literature and contemporary dictionaries, that this word was used as an expressive sign (according to Charles Bally terminology); and to remind thus the origin of that powerful negative emotional charge, which still remains in most European languages (especially in Russian) and prevents the word bureaucracy from being transformed from an expressive sign into a scientific term. The conclusion is that the word bureaucracy is still used as a performative (a speech act equivalent to an action), which aims to reveal and stigmatize evil in the form of some vice of executive power. Given this fact, it is suggested that the lexeme may be more useful not as a term for a «rational form of domination» in Weberian paradigm, but as a key concept in the (historical) psychology applied to the phenomenon of public administration.