That old trick

“ To conclude once again, I will cite something Michel Foucault wrote some time ago:  'For a long time, the so-called ”left-wing“ intellectual spoke, and was accorded the right to speak, as the master of truth and justice.  He was listened to, or claimed the right to be listened to, as the representative of the universal.  To be an intellectual was to some extent to be the conscience of all.'  There is little that can be said in response to this warning.  When a number of us took part in the May 1968 movement, they hoped to be preserved from any ambition in the singular, and in a way they succeeded, through not being singled out for attention, but treated in the same way as everyone else, the strength of the anti-authoritarian movement making it almost easy to forget all particularity, and impossible to distinguish between young and old, the unknown and the too well-known, as if, despite the differences and the incessant disputes, each person recognized himself in the anonymous words inscribed on the walls and which, in the end, even when on occasion they were the result of a collective effort, never declared themselves the words of an author, being of all and for all, in their contradictory formulation.    But of course that was an exception...

It provides no solution, even if it gives an idea of a revolution that does not need to succeed or achieve a fixed goal, since, whether it endures or does not endure, it is sufficient unto itself, and since the failure that eventually rewards it is none of its concern [emphasis added].

Thinking back to the anti-colonial struggle, the role the intellectuals played in it and, as a case in point, the initiative represented by the 'Declaration of the 121 on the right to insubordination in the Algerian war', I observe that there too, those who declare themselves made no claim to be announcing a universal truth (insubordination for its own sake and in all cases), but were doing no more than support decisions that they had not taken, acknowledging responsibility for them and, in so doing, identifying themselves with those who had been forced to take them.  No doubt they were giving their endorsement in this way, saying to the authorities:  if you strike at people who are unknown, you will have to strike at people who are less so:  thus, once again, using their modest or great fame in order to say, in their turn, what is just and what is unjust – but in a way that was not without risks, although the risks entailed were not great enough to conceal from them the abuse of authority with which their initiative remained is not tainted, at least marked.

In this there is a moral constraint which some cannot elude, which others refuse.  It is beyond all judgement.  For my part – and this shall be my personal confession – there is scarcely a day when, in the most vulnerable part of my memory, I do not recall these terrible words, inscribed in a fragment of René Char's:




I want never to forget that I have been forced to become – for how long?  –a monster of justice and intolerance, a cooped-up simplifier, an arctic individual with no interest in the fate of anyone who is not in league with him to kill the hounds of hell.  The round-ups of Jews, scalpings in police stations, terrorist raids by Hitler's police on stunned villages, lift me off the ground, strike my chapped face with a red-hot slap or molten iron.

That was written in 1943 ('Notes to Francis Curel').  That improbable date hangs suspended above our heads.  Its return is always possible.  And it is that date, in my view, which denies intellectuals any hope of disappearing and so shying away from being questioned, from the torment of being questioned.”

-Maurice Blanchot, "Intellectuals under Scrutiny"  (as translated by Michael Holland)

Submitted as follow-up to David's post, and as precursor for things to come.