Tag Archives: passion

Here’s a bit of Make It Happen inspiration from French sociologist Antoine Hennion.  Even taste, especially taste, involves an active process of making it happen.

“What matters is what happens, what it does, what comes to light, in oneself and in things – and not what one is seeking. It is a question of sensing, of being taken, of feeling. But this is in no way a passive state: this making available of oneself could not be more active, as the word ‘passion’ effectively connotes; it passes through an intense mobilization of one’s abilities, it is backed up by skills and traditions, objects and tools. It has a history, it defines a collectivity. Taste is a making, a ‘making aware of’, and not a simple act of sensing. It is active, but contrary to an action, it is entirely turned toward an availability to what comes.  It is an active way of putting oneself in such a state that something may happen to oneself. A curious activity, indeed: it is a passivity actively sought, or an activity intentionally undergone, letting oneself be carried away, overflowing with the surprises that arise through contact with things.”

p 109 from Those Things That Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology by Antoine Hennion in Cultural Sociology, 2007, volume 1, number 1, pp. 97–114.  Translated from the French by Martha Poon.