The phenomenon of youth gangs first presents information of interest on the psychology of adolescents poorly understood, and then to show that some processes even less explored, at work in contemporary society. This is especially the first aspect that caught the attention of specialists, particularly in France, while the second, beyond the apprehension of a recent sociology itself became, in 1958, the hackneyed theme of a certain journalism. The main thing is to say the risk of a revolutionary change in contemporary society, was thus avoided, or better, exorcised. Yet it is clear that the "growing pains" of youth is but a symptom of a wider growth of the company itself.
This suggests that the third and most important bands of the phenomenon of interest, and the real justification of his study - due to the fact that this is not a pure manifestation of the unknown and original, but a essentially characterized by the fact that his refusal against the company. This phenomenon, because it reveals the processes whose origin is as obscure as their consequences seem formidable, led, from its appearance, a social reaction that gave him his own face, that of a marginal phenomenon. Such is the origin of the myth of black-jackets, now predetermining any apprehension of the facts and placing any reflection on youth within a mythic structure which acts for the company instituted a sort of fog defensive. This screen prevents observers to grasp that there is a real trend of contemporary society as it seeks to repress, including a repressive handling of his symptoms.
An ill-posed problem.
The problem of the future of Western civilization is disguised as "youth problem", creativity reduced to the ability to adapt. This reduction affects not only the vision of the observers, it also determines or deflects the actions of those it affects. The myth of black-jackets and countless avatars build the theater where the actors appear this historiographical drama aborted that are "bands" and the challenge, since its emergence, is transformed into juvenile delinquency, and the revolutionary potential are reduced to identify with robbers.
This is because the phenomenon itself to observation, blurred, deflected and reinterpreted in advance, that its study is necessary. "All science is the science of hiding," said Bachelard. Now, about the tapes, the company is hiding something of herself, and the cache is the phenomenon itself. As the observer, as a member of the society which he undertook to update the "hide", he is obliged, if he does not want to echo the reigning ideologies, to conduct a "reduction "advance of the phenomenon to understand the various components, to undertake its decoding, to trace the dialectic, in its successive coagulations, constitutes it.
