French revolution

Berghahn Books is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sartre Studies International.

http://www.jstor.org

Berghahn Books

Sartre, Derrida and Commitment: The Case of Algeria Author(s): Bruce Baugh Source: Sartre Studies International, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2003), pp. 40-54Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23511147Accessed: 02-05-2015 15:17 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 144.82.177.222 on Sat, 02 May 2015 15:17:10 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Sartre, Derrida and Commitment The Case of Algeria

Bruce Baugh

Let me start with an apparent aside. In the midst of his dialectical demolition of Foucault's Histoire de la folie, in "Cogito et histoire de la folie,"1 Derrida argues that although Foucault wants to do an

archeology of madness's silence, an archeo-logy is a logically ordered work (465), and that even though Foucault wants to protest against reason's sequestration of madness, "reason in the classical age" can

only be brought before the tribunal of Reason in general (466), which could then rule on the unreasonableness of classical reason. Then, in a footnote that was dropped from the version in Writing and Difference (1967),2 he adds: "A bit like how the anti-colonialist revolution can only liberate itself from a de facto Europe or West in the name of transcendental Europe, that is, of Reason, and by letting itself first be won over by its values, its language, its technology, its armaments; an irreducible contamination or incoherence that no

cryI am thinking of Fanon'scould exorcise, no matter how pure and intransigent it is" (466).

It is this footnote, and the problem it raises, that I want to discuss

today. For how anxious a footnote this is, written as it was in 1963, on the heels of Algerian independence in 1962, with the wounds of that conflict still fresh, and by someone who was no mere spectator. Like Camus, and unlike Sartre and many others, Derrida was himself a French Algerian, a pied noir, with friends and family living in

Algeria. Who can forget Camus' protest against the FLN's bombing of French civilians in Algiers: "I love justice but I also love my mother."3 And yet like Sartre, and unlike Camus, Derrida's note reveals that his sympathies lie with "the anti-colonialist revolution." The problem for the revolutionaries, in Derrida's view, is that they can protest against European injustices only in the name of a Euro

pean ideal of justice, and fight European colonial power only by using European weapons, tactics, forms of political organization, and

Sartre Studies International, Volume 9, Issue 2, 2003 - 40 -


Sartre, Derrtda and Commitment

theories (including Marxism and psychoanalysis). In short, they can liberate themselves from European rule only by Europeanizing themselves. The winner loses.

If that was the difficulty for the revolutionaries, in Derrida's view, how much more intractable were Derrida's difficulties! From what

position could he, as a European (or at least Europeanized) intellec tual speak concerning Algerian problems, or Algerian attempts to solve them? It's as if Derrida knew better than the Algerians them selves the "truth" of their actions, and had assumed the vantage point of Absolute Spirit, placing the Algerian insurrectionaries in the

predicament of Hegel's "unhappy consciousness," condemned to

wavering between the opposites of "independence" and "depen dence," affirmation and negation, Europe and Africa, without ever

realizing some unitary and reconciliatory synthesis. In order to

negate Europe, the revolutionaries must affirm Europe; to affirm transcendental Europe, they must negate empirical Europe. Perhaps. And perhaps Derrida's understanding of the anti-colonialist's prob lem is based on a vantage point that is not entirely external to that of the revolutionists, for although Derrida is a French-Mgerhn, by lan

guage and culture, he is also a North African Jew, outside the Catholic community of French colons. Neither simply "a stranger on the African shore," as Connor Cruise O'Brien uncharitably said of

Camus,4 nor an Arab or a Berber, or Moslem, Derrida finds himself in a very Derridean position: both inside and outside of Africa, nei ther inside nor outside of it, caught in an aporia that places him, too, in the position of Hegel's unhappy consciousness, which affirms what it negates and negates what it affirms. In this, he is like his

compatriot, Albert Memmi, also Jewish, who also found himself to be neither coloniser nor colonised and yet both one and the other, being from a non-European and non-Moslem indigenous group, "relatively privileged" vis A vis the Muslim majority, and living this "double solidarity and double rejection" as his own felt contradic

tion, his own dchirement of the mind.5 But how can Derrida affirm his solidarity with an African and Moslem independence movement from this awkward position? More generally, how can any European or Western intellectual speak on or to African concerns without

framing them within European theory, without invoking European moral and political values? And if Africa speaks, can a European hear?

Let us return to Frantz Fanon's "pure and intransigent" cry, as

heard by Sartre: "He speaks of you, never to you ... For the fathers,

we alone were the speakers; the sons no longer even consider us as

valid intermediaries: we are the objects of their speeches."6 In Fanon's

-41 -


adminHighlight

Bruce Baugb

The Wretched of the Earth (1961), says Sartre, Africa speaks to Africa, about "us," that is, about Europe. In which case, we can only follow Sartre's injunction: "Listen" (WE 9). In 1961, "we Europeans" are no longer in the position of the speaker, or even of the person spo ken to, but only in the position of something spoken about, exactly as Africans had been in relation to European speech a half-century earlier. In his earlier essay on black poetry, "Black Orpheus" (1948), Sartre had couched the relation in terms of sight, rather than speech, making use of his famous analysis of the gaze (le regard): "Here are black men standing, looking at us, and I hope that youlike me will feel the shock of being seen. For three thousand years, the white man has enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen; he was a

pure gaze ... Today, these black men are looking at us, and our gaze re-enters our own eyes."7 The effect, says Sartre, is that we see our

selves through the Other's eyes, objectively, with characteristics we had never suspected: "suddenly, France seems exotic in our own

eyes."8 At the same time, the African becomes the Other as subject. the gaze that sees us, without being seen, the consciousness that knows us, without being known. In short, we have no experience of the African, but only an experience of being an object for Africans, of

the effect of being seen and spoken about by an Other, from a per spective that is inaccessible to us. And for that reason, Sartre's essays on Africa in general, and on Algeria in particular, are addressed to Westerners or Europeans: it is of them Sartre speaks, and only indi

rectly of Africans. Sartre's concern is not what Africans should do to liberate themselves from their European masters; it is what Euro

peans should do in the face of Africa's efforts to liberate itself. Con

sequently, he does not offer judgments concerning either African

goals or means, but engages in an effort of comprehension, of under

standing and listening. Since the African is the gaze, and we are the

object, we cannot judge or perceive the African using our categories and perspectives, but must rather try to infer the categories and per spectives by which the African judges us.

In both "Black Orpheus" and his "Preface" to The Wretched of the Earth, Sartre does not ignore the problem Derrida identifies: that African revolutionaries must have recourse to European speech and

thought. In "Black Orpheus," Sartre thought the solution to this dilemma lay in poetry, which would turn the language of the colonisers inside-out: "Since the oppressor is present even in the lan

guage they speak, they will speak this language in order to destroy it."9 Thus, the black poet's use of language is revolutionary nega tion, the "dark work of negativity, which patiently gnaws away at

-42


adminHighlight

adminHighlight

Sartre, Derrida and Commitment

concepts,"10 not, as in Surrealism, simply to liberate the imagination, desire or l'esprit, but to liberate "a certain concrete and determinate form of humanity ... the oppressed Negro."11 Yet between "Black

Orpheus" (1948) and 1961, Sartre came to realize that the political efficacity of Fanon's prose was far greater than any poetic destruction of language. If language is a tool to be used, then the object is not to deform it or to destroy it, but to get the tool into the right hands, so that it can be used effectively. What's important is who is speaking, and to whom. What is said is secondary.

Secondary, but no incidental. For as soon as Africans speak to

Africans, whether about themselves ("Orphe noir," Sit. Ill233) or about us ( WE 10), their mode of thought and speech changes. In his "Preface" to Fanon's book, Sartre traces the evolution of a process

leading from objecthood to subjectivity (WE 8-10). At first, the colonised are only spoken of, and spoken to only in the form of

commands, but they do not speak; the colonisers are owners of the Word. Then follows the assimilated "native," whose speech merely echoes European speech: "From Paris, from London, from Amster

dam, we would utter the words 'Parthenon! Brotherhood!' and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open '... thenon! ... ther hood!" At this stage, when Europeans listen to the colonised speak, they hear only themselves, and narcissistically love and approve the colonised for reflecting back to them their own idealized self-image. In the next phase, the colonised try to turn this to their own advan

tage, appealing to European ideals and values, such as democracy and freedom, to shame the colonial powers for not living up those

ideals, for example, for being humanist in theory, but racist in prac tice. In effect, this strategy consists in trying to force Europe to lis ten to itself more seriously, and to "practice what it preaches." But the values that frame the debate on both sides (colonised/coloniser) are still European, and a Eurocentric frame of reference remains

unquestioned. Indeed, the project of "liberation" for "natives" at this stage is simply that of becoming European. However, since the built-in racism of the colonial system prevents the "native" from ever

being accepted as a European, this strategy leads to a dead end: the colonised are unable to assimilate, and yet cannot reject European values either, and are indeed in the position of Hegel's "unhappy consciousness," "caught up in their own contradictions" (WE 8), exactly, that is, as Derrida finds them, and more or less as Derrida finds himself, in 1963.

Except that for Sartre, there is a further phase, decolonization, when through the voice of revolutionaries such as Fanon, "Africa

-43


Bruce Baujh

finds itself and speaks to itself," and Europe becomes the object ( WE

9) while the "objects" of European anthropology become the sub

jects of history who make history of Europe (WE 27).12 "Fanon

explains you to his brothers and shows them the mechanism by which we are estranged from ourselves; take advantage of this, and

get to know yourselves seen in the light of truth, objectively ... It is

enough that they show us what we have made of them for us to real ize what we have made of ourselves" (WE 13). In essence, the colo nized possess the truth of the colonizers, and by listening to what

they say about us, we stand a chance of breaking free of our Euro centric narcissism: our insistence on talking only about and to our

selves, seeing only ourselves, and understanding no way of being other than our own (WE 25-26). The decolonization in the colonies will then lead to a decolonisation of the colonizers (WE 24), but

only if the colonized grasp us from a point of view that is truly other than our own, and not an echo or reflection (however inflected or

deflected) of ours. If I were to fully understand the Other, then I would perforce be

subsuming the other under my own point of view, through my own concepts and categories, and would thereby reduce the Other to a

version of myself. The point of view of the Other, if it is genuinely Other, must be wholly Other, and hence wholly unknown to us. We can never experience it directly, but can come to understand it only

through how the Other addresses us, treats us and behaves towards

us. This is why Sartre, following Michel Leiris, refers to "phantom Africa ... absent, disintegrating Europe by its black and yet invisible rays, out of reach" ("Orphe noir," p. 241). Yet, even if I cannot fully grasp the Other, I can, says Sartre, grasp my being-for-others, or who I am for the Other, and Sartre's essays on various oppressed groups (Jews, women, Africans) attempt to do just that: draw a portrait of the anti-Semite, of the colonizer, of the "beautiful soul" of the West ern liberal who wants to be "neither victim nor executioner" (in Camus' phrase). It is our essence that is revealed to us by the Other, as an unrealizable that we nevertheless must assume; the essence of

the Other is entirely beyond our grasp, and escapes all our cate gories.13 As for the essences of and about the Other that we have con structed, they reflect more our own fears and hopes than any truth

about the Other; as Fanon points out, anti-Black racism is based on the European's projection onto Blacks of their own "irrational long ing for sexual license, or orgiastic scenes, of unpunished rapes, of unrepressed incest."14 Sartre is insistent that "the native," "the Jew," " the Negro" and so on are all products of oppression, rather than any

-44


adminHighlight

adminHighlight


fundamental reality of the persons so designated. "It is the settler who has brought the native into existence," writes Fanon ( WE 36), mostly through the dehumanizing violence that ranges from beatings to the suppression of the language, culture and traditions of the colo nized (WE 15). In that case, those who affirm their pride in being a

native, a Black, a Jew and so forth "continue to view themselves with the concepts and according to the pattern furnished by their persecu tors."15 This is a submission to violence, rather than resistance or rebellion that would be necessary to remake their humanity, a resis tance and rebellion that looks to an open and revolutionary future, and not a mythical past (WE 12, 21). "We only become what we are

by the deep-seated refusal of what others have made of us" ( WE 17). The position of the committed intellectual vis vis Third World

anti-colonialism can then only be that of the sympathetic listener, who takes the colonizeds criticisms of the colonizers seriously, and uses them as a way of trying to overcome the colonial mindset. The

primary goal, then, is self-criticism, using the vantage point of the Other in order to get outside one's narcissistic self-reflection. The

danger, of course, is of becoming more narcissistic than ever, by engulfing the Other within the ambit of one's own concerns and

problems, and constructing a fantasy of the Other that is tailor-made to help rid oneself or what one wants to "purge" from one's own

being. This would be the ethnocentric temptation of "hyperbolical admiration," as Derrida puts it, which is merely the inverse of "eth

nocentric scorn": "each time that ethnocentrism is precipitately and

ostententatiously reversed, some effort silently hides behind all the

spectacular effects to consolidate an inside and draw from it some domestic benefit."16 To the extent Sartre looks to the Third World to reveal Europe's true face to Europeans, and looks to decoloniza

tion in the colonies as an impetus to an "internal" decolonization of consciousness of the colonizers, he is indeed attempting to derive "some domestic benefit" from Third World liberation struggles. He is also in danger of constructing not just a "phantom Africa," but a

phantasmatic and hallucinatory one: Africa as an anti-Europe, the

negation of Europe's psychic repression and denial of the body, and thus entirely constructed out of what Sartre hates about Europe and himself (much as the racist projects what he hates about Europe and himself onto Africans).17 As Stuart Zane Charm puts it, Sartre has a

tendency to mythologize Black experience in "a mixture of senti mental romanticism and anti-colonial protest,"18 and thus failed to heed his own warning "about the temptation to see in the Other one's own unexpressed desire."19

-45


adminHighlight

Bruce Baiigh

Let us leave Sartre twisting in the wind for the moment, and return to Derrida, and specifically Derrida's 1995 "return" to Alge ria via Sartre's "home turf," Les Temps modernes, in his "Parti pris pour l'Algrie."20 Over thirty years of independence have not led to the fulfillment of those anti-colonialist revolutionary aspirations that had aroused so much hope among Western intellectuals. Sartre well knew that a later generation could easily turn the sacrifices of an ear lier generation into something that in no way corresponded to the earlier generation's intentions; one can only imagine his dismay, if he could learn that his apartment was bombed, twice, so that Algerian women and minorities could be denied the political rights enjoyed by their counterparts in France. We can only imagine what Sartre would say. As for Derrida, we know. His short piece on Algeria protests against the current political situation there in the name of "transcendental Europe's" values of democracy, free elections, free

speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the separation of Church and State, and so on. And Derrida condemns the Algerian situation both as a European intellectual, speaking in the name of European ideas and values, and as a "native son": for Derrida declares that although he had long since left Algeria, he had often returned to it, and had always carried it with him. He has returned, then, to a place he never left, which he had continued to inhabit, and which certainly had inhabited his heart and thought through "a

painful love of Algeria" (236). His aporia of belonging/not-belong ing to Algeria continues to haunt him.

His "intervention" in the Algerian situation, however, seems

entirely and unproblematically European, through and through, in tenor and in content; the values it invokes are those of "The Rights of Man and the Citizen."21 The voice of the Algerian Moslem, whether Arab or Berber, whether of the FLN government or the Islamist rebels, is entirely absent from this text although Derrida

attempts to invoke, or rather, conjure the "voices" of Algerians who are "in neither camp," a point I'll return to later. The very person nages just mentioned exist, at most, only as persons addressed by Derrida's "appeal" for Algerian civil and political rights, where these

rights are conceived of la franaise, "in the French manner." For the ostensible object of Derrida's small text is the wider political com

munity (especially in France), which is called upon to exert whatever force it can on the Algerian government to get it to relax its repres sive measures. Unlike Sartre, then, Derrida is not speaking primarily to the French about what the French are doing, or if he is, it is in a

way that is more likely to soothe their conscience than to trouble it.

-46


adminHighlight

Sartre, Derridtt and Commitment

When Sartre wrote, concerning the betrayal of revolutionary hopes, that "nothing protects a nation from itself, not its past, its loyalties or even its own laws, if fifteen years is enough to change victims into

executioners," he is speaking of France, in 1957, and speaking to the French about France, in order to force them to recognize what

France had become, to shame them into becoming something wor thier of their own recent past, and to destroy their "good con science."22 Derrida, speaking through a French periodical to an

Algerian problem, seems unclear as to his intended audience. In any case, there seems to be little evidence in this text of Derri

da's much-vaunted "hospitality" and welcoming of the non-Euro

pean Other in his or her alterity,23 and a lot of telling the Other what to do, couched in the language of the troubled conscience of a West ern liberal who recognizes, at least, the very questionable position from which he speaks (237). Is this "the double bind" of being "responsibly European," as Simon Critchley calls it, the "duty to

respect both difference and singularity, while at the same time main

taining the universality of law," or of certain fundamental human

rights?24 Perhaps, although this "double bind" itself involves being caught between two European values: respect for differences (plural ism) and the assertion of basic rights (universalism). In short, it is a

problem for Western liberals, and could very well be a matter of pro found indifference for Algerians on both sides of the internal con flict, none of whom make either liberal pluralism or the liberal

universalism of "rights" central to their program. But let me back up a minute, for this is much too hasty. For Der

rida in fact begins his article, a contribution to a Forum around an

"Appeal for a civil peace in Algeria," with the question, "in the name of what and of whom, if one is not an Algerian citizen, does one associate with or subscribe to this appeal?" (236). Derrida replies that it is not as someone French or as an Algerian or even as some

one French born in Algeria as such that he is a signatory to the

Appeal (237), but as part of "an international solidarity" along the lines of the International Writers Parliament, "which seeks its guar antees neither in the actual state of international law and the institu tions that currently represent it, nor in the concepts of nation, State, citizenship and sovereignty that dominate this international dis course" (239). As in Spectres of Marx, Derrida invokes "a new inter

national,"25 one that does not yet exist, except through certain

hopes and aspirations that would summon it to "come" (viens,

viens). It is along these lines that Derrida argues that any serious

position on Algeria must take into account and attempt to address its

-47


Bruce Bauh

serious economic situation and chronic unemployment, which are "essential components of the civil war," and are inextricably linked with Algeria's external debt, an issue that only international mone

tary and financial agencies can address (237-38). This goad to the conscience of the international community aside,

however, the remainder of the article sets forth demands for genuine democracy along thoroughly Western, liberal lines. There must be a set calendar for elections; public discussions "armed only with rea soned arguments;" a free press; respect for the electoral results; and

periodic changes of government (238). "The vote is certainly not the whole of democracy, but without it ... there is no democracy" (238). Nevertheless, those who would profit from elections, but who would not respect "democratic life," namely, government by law, respect for free speech, minority rights, and a plurality of languages, morals and religions, are not genuinely democratic (239). All cul

tural, linguistic and religious groups must be free not only to belong to their religion or culture, but to practice these, openly and pub licly, without fear of reprisal, in an atmosphere of tolerance and mutual respect (239-40). There must be an end to murder, torture and capital punishment as political means (240). There must, finally, be an end to the exclusion of women from political life (241), not

just electorally, but in the campaign of violence waged by both sides: "This civil war is essentially a war of men," and hence, tacitly, against women (241).

Who could disagree with the demands Derrida sets forth? That is, who among us Western intellectuals? These are modern, even post

modern, liberal-democratic and pluralistic principles that we all believe in. In fact, many of us wish that these principles be respected in the West (for example, that the United States would abolish capital punishment, at least for children). That would answer the question "in the name of what" the "Appeal for a civil peace" was launched. But in the name of whom? The "new international" Derrida invokes has a certain status or reality; it reflects the hopes and values of a

good many intellectuals around the world, and not only "in the West." Nevertheless, it has very little reality beyond these hopes and values, and the appeals launched in their name; in comparison to the

IMF, PEN and other human rights organizations have very little effect. In short, the Wirklichkeit, the "effective reality" of this "inter national" is negligible. This organization is not simply "spectral," as Derrida would have it, but as "hallucinatory" as Sartre's "Africa": if this "specter" seems to be our uncanny double, it is because it is, being nothing more than the projection of our desires onto an

-48


adminHighlight


Other, an Other that is this time completely nebulous. When Der rida adds that the "Appeal" is not just in the name of those Algerian men and women who are struggling for democracy, but in fact comes

from them (241), then it is very hard to overcome the suspicion that this is a genuine auditory hallucination, at best, and a bit of imperial ist ventriloquism, at worst.

The style, strategy and the very title of the forum for Derrida's

intervention, "Appeal for a Civil Peace," inevitably calls to mind Camus' "Appeal for a Civil Truce" (1956).26 Camus' proposal for an end to violence directed at all civilians, French or Arab, invoked his love for Algeria, the sufferings of which he had lived through as "a

personal tragedy," and launched his "purely humanitarian" and non

partisan appeal in the name of Algeria's future, and of "a community of hope" whose desire for mutually respectful dialogue he wished to

"echo," a dialogue that would preserve differences rather than annul them ("As for me, here as in every domain, I believe in differences and not in uniformity"). Refusing to speak "in the name of our Arab

friends," Camus nevertheless declares his solidarity with those Arabs

who, like himself, "courageously stand ... in the no man's land where we are threatened on both sides," and who are "torn within themselves." And however vapid, misguided and ineffective the

"Appeal" was, it was given publicly, on Algerian soil (in Algiers), at a forum sponsored by a committee of Europeans and Arabs (including members of the Algerian Front de Libration Nationale), and under

the very real threat of violence from ultra-rightist French colonists. But despite the courage of Camus' gesture, the "community of

hope" in whose name he spoke was, in comparison with the warring sides, rather amorphous and very ineffective, and although his appeal spoke to both Arabs and Europeans, inside and outside of Algeria, it was not listened to by either side.27 Of course, this was largely because events had progressed to a point where a "civil truce" was

already no longer possible, although Camus was unaware of this, but it was also because his "Appeal," which invoked both univeralist

rights and respect for differences, was sufficiently ambiguous and unclear that it disappointed Arabs and Europeans alike. Derrida's

"Appeal," despite the vast differences between Derrida and Camus on colonialism, is prey to a similar ambiguity, although Derrida char

acteristically tries to turn that ambiguity or "undecidability" to his own advantage.

Derrida describes his article, and the entire Temps modernes special issue on Algeria, as an instance of Les Temps modernes' stance of

"non-infidelity," that is, of neither fidelity nor infidelity, but "the

-49


adminHighlight

adminHighlight

Bruce Baujjh

renewed oath not to betray," to never renounce or deny, however

often one changes course: there is a certain "fidelity" to self that allows lor, and even requires, contradicting oneself, disagreeing with

oneself, and it is this self-disagreement of Les Temps modernes with which Derrida most agrees.28 This "non-infidelity" might also accu

rately enough describe the double bind of the European intellectual vis vis Algeria, caught between fidelity to "difference" and to uni versalist notions of rights and justice. And it is from within this "double bind" of "undecidability" that the intellectual must come to a decision, because he or she is already caught in the bind, already "engaged," and hence already "committed," prior to any decision. In his tribute to Les Temps modernes on its fiftieth anniversary, Der rida recognizes that Sartrean engagement is not (which "we had a

tendency to forget") a decisive or decisionary heroism of the will, but a gamble made in circumstances in which one finds oneself

engaged, that is, passively thrown before any decision, making any decision or action a gamble on a basis (fond) that is

" undecidable and in a space heterogeneous to all knowledge (savoir)."29 It is just such a "gamble" that Derrida's Algeria article takes.

That might appear to absolve Derrida of the charge, levelled by

Critchley and others, that "Derrida's work results in a certain impasse of the political," and cannot move, responsibly, from the undecidabil

ity of texts and readings to the necessity of political decisions,30 For after all, Derrida has made his decision in this text, he has "rolled the dice." Yet as Critchley points out, he can give no account, in terms of his own philosophical positions, of why he made just the "gamble" he did.31 In his "Parti pris," his partisanship seems to be for univer salism ("democracy"), at the expense of pluralism ("difference"), but it also seems that he could just as easily have gone the other way. Moreover, in opting for human rights, Derrida is opting for a thor oughly Eurocentric perspective, even if his vision of a democracy "to come" for Algeria is also meant to point out that democracy remain

something futural and "to come" for Europe as well. For however much the Other passes over into the Self or the Same, "democracy," whether Europe's or Algeria's, is a European idea.32

Sartre seems, on the face of it, both more open and more cau

tious. He recognizes that Algeria's revolutionary future, in 1961, is to be made, and hence open and undecidable. There is no knowing how it will turn out, or if the values or principles of the new regime will be democratic. And while Sartre is committed to a form of "universalism," he insists that "All those who adopt a universalist perspective here and now [1965] are reassuring to the established

-50


adminHighlight

adminHighlight


order ... True intellectuals ... are by contrast disquieting: for they suggest that the human universal is yet to come."33 "The true intellec

tual, in his struggle against himself, will come to see society as the arena of a struggle between particular groups ... for the status of

universality," but this universal is a task, a goal: it does not exist.34 Not that the universal is an ideal which simply has not been achieved or realized, but that we will not even know what it is until it has been achieved. For that reason, we struggle in the dark, gradually discerning and attempting to cast off various forms of oppression and alienation, but with no blueprint for the future, and no "advice" about how the world "should be," ultimately. If there is a "pro gram" here, it is merely that we stop doing horrible things to others, stop torturing and oppressing, and "make peace": that is, "we" who have the power to do so in having power over those we oppress.35

Since the oppressed are those who wish to achieve the status of

humanity, it is their struggle that moves "the history of mankind" toward the concrete universal (WE 31), and away from "the notion of the human race ... an abstract assumption of universality which served as a cover for the most realistic practices" ( WE 26), including the enslavement that regarded certain people as inferior or less than human (WE 15, 17).

Herein lies the dilemma, for Sartre and for Derrida. If the com mitted intellectual is to be "on the side of the oppressed" a posi tion which arguably makes more sense from Sartrean premises than

Derridean onesthen which side is that? The Islamist rebel or the secularist military government? Algerian women, or the Algerian men who want to be masters in their own house, and not be dictated

to by their former colonial masters? It is not enough to shout

"democracy!" in the hopes that somewhere African lips will part and emit an echo: "... mocracy!" Neither can we unqualifiedly categorize any single group as "the oppressed," and assign to them Marx's mis sion for the proletariat, namely, ushering in universal freedom and

equality, on the grounds that when the lowest of the low achieve

equality, then all men (and women) will be equal. Nor can we offer lessons and advice to other cultures, or their governments, when their policies fall afoul of our ethical norms, especially when we our selves so often fail to live up to our own principles. The position of

the "committed intellectual" seems to be impossible. I conclude with another passing remark. Derrida said, in 1968,

that "every philosophical colloquium necessarily has a political signif icance ... Such is the case here."36 Such indeed is the case here. "After September 11" (much as I hate to use this all-purpose clich),

-51


Bruce Baugb

there are more than a few intellectuals who, out of shock and grief, are opting for Camus' position: yes, we love justice, but we also love our families. Far more, it seems, have no qualms in asserting a Euro centric conception of values in order to justify a "war on terrorism," arguing that the Taliban's brutal treatment of women and religious minorities somehow justified bombing what used to be Afghanistan. Even assuming the sincerity of such a position (which I don't), its fundamental presupposition is that the universal human rights being invoked to justify the war are human rights such as we conceive them. At this writing, I see very little evidence of an effort to see ourselves

through the eyes of the Other, or to listen. Whether through a

bomb-sight or a camera lens, we are the ones in the position of see

ing, rather than being seen. And although September 11 should have alerted us to the fact that the seeing subject is neither invisible nor invulnerable, it has become, in the dominant public discourse, a narcissistic wound that drives us (us "Westerners," us "North Ameri

cans") further back into ourselves. Even for those who try, in one

way or another, to take "the side of the oppressed," we are again faced with the problem of in effect choosing which oppressed group to side with. The women oppressed by the Taliban, and other

Islamist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? Undoubtedly, but which ones? Westernized and educated women, many of whom fled the

country, who share our conceptions of human rights, democracy, and women's rights? That would be the easy choice, but it's a prob lematic one, for we thereby exclude all those women and men in the

Islamic world who either have a different conception of humanity and human rights, or who are trying to invent such conceptions for

themselves, instead of merely accepting our version as being the only valid choice. Sartre's and Derrida's difficulties concerning "intellec tual commitment" vis vis anti-colonialist struggles have always been ours as well; it's just that "after September 11," this is more obvious than ever.

52


adminHighlight


Notes

1. Jacques Derrida, "Cogito et histoire de la folie," Revue de mtaphysique et de morale 68 (1963): 460-94. Parenthetical references are to this version of the arti cle.

2. Jacques Derrida, L'Ecriture et la difference (Paris: Seuil, 1967); trans. Alan Bass,

Writing and Difference (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978). 3. Camus' actual words, according to Emmanuel Robls, were: "If a terrorist

throws a grenade in the Belcourt market where my mother shops, and if he kills

her, I would be responsible if, to defend justice, I defended terrorism. I love jus tice but I also love my mother." Cited in Herbert R. Lottman, Albert Camus: A

Biography (New York: George Braziller, 1980), 577; see Lottman, Albert Camus, trans. Marianne Vron (Paris: Seuil, 1978), 586.

4. Connor Cruise O'Brien, Camus (London: Fontana, 1970), pp. 9-14.

5. See Jean-Paul Sartre, "Albert Memmi's The Colonizer and the Colonized," in Colonialism and Neocolonialism, trans. Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewer and

Terry McWilliams (London and New York: Roudedge, 2001), 48-49. 6. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Preface" to Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans.

Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 10 (my emphasis); hereafter WE.

7. Sartre, "Orphe noir," Situations III (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp. 229-30. Eng lish translation by John MacCombie, in Sartre, What is Literature? and Other

Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 291. Translation modified.

"Black Orpheus," p. 292.

Sartre, "Orphe noir," Sit. Ill, p. 247; trans., p. 303.

"Orphe noir, Sit. Ill, p. 251.

"Orphe noir," Sit. Ill, 257-58. See Howard Davies, Sartre and 'Les Temps modernes' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 177. See Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken

Books, 1965), p. 137: "the authentic Jew, like any authentic man, escapes

description." Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 165.

Sartre, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: New American Library, 1963), pp. 54-55.

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Balti more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 80.

See Pascal Bruckner, The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 185, who calls Sartre "an uncritical and naive Euro

centrist." This judgment is shared by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in A Critique

of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 171-73, who reduces Sartre's position on colonialism to his remark in Existen

tialism and Humanism [trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Haskell House, 1948),

pp. 46-47) that "There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a

primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information." Yet Spivak unwit

tingly repeats Sartre's gesture, in "Black Orpheus" in particular, of seeing white

civilization as a result of the taming and repressing of libidinous affect: "this

53


Bruce Baugh

rejection of affect served and serves as the energetic and successful defense of the

civilizing mission" (p. 5). Stuart Zane Charm, Vulgarity and Authenticity. Dimensions of Otherness in the

World of Jean-Paul Sartre (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), p. 205.

Charm, p. 209.

Derrida, "Parti pris pour l'Algrie," Les Temps modernes 580 (Jan-Feb 1995): 233-41.

In fact, the forum was co-sponsored by the Human Rights League (Ligue des

droits de l'homme), a venerable French defender of "human rights," especially

political rights. Sartre, "Une Victoire," afterword to Henri Alleg, La question (Paris: J.J. Pauvert,

1958), p. 100. See Derrida, L'Autre cap (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1991); trans. Pascale-Anne

Brault and Michael Naas, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe

(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992). Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 198

99.

See Derrida, Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the

New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: Chicago University Press,

1994). Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York:

Vintage, 1974), 131-42.

See Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography, 566-76.

Derrida, '"Il courait mort': salut, salut. Notes pour un courrier aux Temps mod

ernes," Les Temps modernes 587 (March-April-May 1996): 7-54; see p. 9, 14, 32.

Derrida, "'Il courait mort' ..." p. 12.

Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction, pp. 189-90, 199.

Critchely, p. 200.

See Critchley, p. 212, who emphasizes that democracy is inachev and -venir, but does not note that this "future" is a European legacy. Sartre, "A Plea for Intellectuals," trans. John Matthews, in Between Existentialism and Marxism (New York: Pantheon, 1974), p. 253.

Sartre, "A Plea for Intellectuals," p. 250.

Sartre, "Une victoire," p. 122.

Derrida, "The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 111.

-54


Article Contentsp. 40p. 41p. 42p. 43p. 44p. 45p. 46p. 47p. 48p. 49p. 50p. 51p. 52p. 53p. 54

Issue Table of ContentsSartre Studies International, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2003) pp. i-vi, 1-124Front MatterEditorial [pp. iv-v]Sartre and TerrorIntroduction [pp. 3-4]Sartre on Munich 1972 [pp. 5-8]The New Orleans SessionMarch 2002 [pp. 9-25]

Risks of EngagementSartre: Intellectual of the Twentieth Century [pp. 29-39]Sartre, Derrida and Commitment: The Case of Algeria [pp. 40-54]Fanon and Sartre 50 Years Later: To Retain or Reject the Concept of Race [pp. 55-67]Sartre's Wagers: Humanism, Solidarity, Liberation [pp. 68-76]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 77-83]Review: untitled [pp. 84-88]Review: untitled [pp. 88-95]Review: untitled [pp. 95-102]

Notice Board [pp. 103-122]Notes on Contributors [pp. 123-124]Back Matter

French revolution

Documents

Transcript of French revolution