ABSTRACT
For quite some time, social emergency has been in the limelight of the media and, as winter approaches, it occupies the forefront of our minds, the cold serving as a reminder of the misery of fellow citizens, of the distress of those who are in need of food and lodgings. Yet, paradoxically, so omnipresent is the reference to emergency in the representations and daily actions that it remains a theoretical unthinkability. Social emergency is qualified by the evidence of a relation to limited time, with reference to medical emergency. Emergency is at odds with such a logic because it is directly involved in the event and because it is constrained to produce a result. Medical emergency serves as a usual consensus-based reference to social emergency, for legitimised to a large extent as much by its ends as by its proven efficacy, even if it does not raise any questions itself.
