demean oneself. It behoves the noble to behave nobly, and the source of nobility is just as clear in a noble act as the source of noble actions is in nobility itself. I read the following this morning in the newspaper: ‘It behoved Mr Kurt Furgler, the President of the Confederation, to express, on Tuesday evening, the condolences of the Federal Council to the Egyptian people after the death of president Anwar Sadat.’ The authorized spokesperson is the one whom it behoves and on whom it is incumbent to speak on behalf of the collectivity. It is both his privilege and his duly, his proper function, in a word, his competence (in the legal sense of the term). Social essence is the set of those social attributes and attributions produced by the act of institution as a solemn act of categorization which tends to produce what it designates.
The act of institution is thus an act of communication, but of a particular kind: it signifies to someone what his identity is, but in a way that both expresses it to him and imposes it on him by expressing it in front of everyone {kategoreim meaning originally, to accuse publicly) and thus informing him in an authoritative manner of what he is and what he must be. This is clearly evident in the insult, a kind of curse (sacer also signifies cursed) which attempts to imprison its victim in an accusation which also depicts his destiny. But this is even truer of an investiture or an act of naming, a specifically social judgement of attribution which assigns to the person involved everything that is inscribed in a social definition. It is through the effect of statutory assignation {noblesse oblige) that the ritual of institution produces its most ‘real’ effects: the person instituted feels obliged to comply with his definition, with the status of his function. The designated heir (according to a more or less arbitrary criterion) is recognized and treated as such by the whole group, beginning with his family, and this different and distinctive treatment can only encourage him to fulfil his essence, to live in conformity with his social essence. The sociology of science has shown that the greatest scientific successes are achieved by researchers who come from the most prestigious academic institutions. This is largely explained by the high level of subjective aspirations determined by the collective (i.e. objective) recognition of these aspirations and their assignation to a class of agents (men, students in elite institutions, established writers, etc.) to whom these aspirations are not only accorded and recognized as rights or privileges (in contrast to the pretentious pretensions of pretenders), but assigned, imposed, like duties, through emphasis, encouragement and incessant calls to order. 1 think of the cartoon by Schulz which shows Snoopy perched on the
roof of his kennel saying: 'How can one be modest when one is the best?’ One would have to say simply: when it is common knowledge - which is the effect of ofhcialization — that one is the best, aristas.
