English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Presentation of the guests and of an article on confinement 0:00 Music I'm happy to be back with you, dear friends, dear comrades, very happy, all the more so because in case you were tired of me, which I would be the first to understand, you won't be face to face with me alone this evening, because we have guests whom I'm only too happy, and honored moreover, to introduce to you.
0:47 Indeed, honored that they were willing to take time out of their schedule to take part in this livestream. Philippe Moreau, whom I no longer need to introduce, and who remains vigilantly at the controls for our whole production, had, like me, an excellent impression reading the article by Alexandra Tricottet, who is no stranger to those of you who are the most faithful.
1:20 Philippe Moreau — to extend my parenthesis — but Alexandra Tricottet, I remind you, is the one who produced this little gem called The Trowel and the Hammer. It's a little gem because there's a question of me in it. No, seriously. There's a question above all of Clouscard and of Negroni, of François Negroni, and of many other things, and above all a retrospective look at the decades that have just gone by. And believe me, most of you will be quite pleased to see this light shed on it, confirming what you apparently already think of it.
1:59 So, Alexandra Tricottet has just published an article in the latest issue of a blog created by Benjamin Le Louarn, who is also with us this evening. So, after Alexandra, let me tell you about Benjamin. Some of you already know his blog. It's called Le Gros Rouge qui tâche [The Rough Red Wine That Stains], and he'll present it to you. I won't do it in his place, but I recommend it to you.
2:31 Not with your eyes closed, that would be a shame when it comes to reading. But here again, it's gratifying for those who are, rightly, a bit exasperated by the monotony of what one hears elsewhere. It provides what you might call a breath of fresh air, all this. And so Philippe and I, we were, well, I'll put it the way you would, blown away by the quality of Alexandra Tricottet's article — I'm going to make her blush — which seems, doesn't it, to focus on the event we've just come out of.
3:16 Question mark: the lockdown — I'm not sure we're coming out of it any time soon. But anyway, I mean, you know, last time I spoke to you about an impossible un-lockdown. We're a bit in that same period. But she talks about it so well that I don't feel much need to dwell on it. What it seems to me — but she'll correct me if I'm wrong — is that starting from the lockdown, or rather she presents it a bit as a metonymy, without saying the word, because she has no pedantry at all — I'll take this opportunity to say that Alexandra is an academic who has suspended her attendance at the alma mater, at the academy, in order to build houses with her own hands using traditional materials.
4:04 And believe me — to extend my parenthesis — having lived in the Sahel, in one of the hottest regions on the globe, I've clearly seen the difference, when there's a power outage and no more air conditioning, between reinforced concrete with the iron rebar radiating heat all night after enduring nearly 50 degrees during the day, and houses made of earth — is that right, Alexandra? Yes. I say cob because I'm no expert, or banco as they say in Africa, but anyway. And believe me, that's a luxury in the times we're living in.
4:36 So Alexandra never stops thinking while building her houses. That's what gives us articles of such excellent quality. And as I say, she presents the lockdown a bit as a metonymy of the era we're living in, a bit like a revealer, or an acceleration of the awareness of just how incredible the era we're living in truly is.
5:13 I'm thinking of a book that will be coming out soon — may its author forgive me for giving it away before it appears — I'm thinking of Dominique Mazuet, who will soon be publishing Les veaux et les choses [The Calves and Things], which is a kind of firebrand against the environmentalist vulgate, and not against the environment, to which we are all very attached. And in it, he repeats this slogan I hold dear, doesn't he: environmentalism, the final stage of capitalism.
5:48 Or final phase, if you like — medical metaphors, right? You see? So we come back to this medical metaphor. Before speaking — I don't want to hog the floor — but before handing the floor first to Benjamin, who's going to present his blog, since he's the host, and to Alexandra who produced this article we're discussing this evening, I'd like to just go to the end, the last lines, you see, of Alexandra's article.
The article's ending: Nerval before Rousseau's tomb 6:21 Now, it loses a bit of its meaning if you haven't read everything that comes before. But after having shown, hasn't it, that in this era, her reflection led her to show that individual destinies and collective destiny cannot be cleanly separated with an axe, far from it — I'll simply read you her closing lines without comment. Our choice therefore comes down once again to that of Nerval in Angélique: either the fantasized individual novel, or Rousseau's tomb and collective destiny.
6:52 Obviously, Alexandra is alluding to the author of The Social Contract, collective destiny. And there follows a quotation from Nerval, who, before Rousseau's tomb at Ermenonville, during his walk in Sylvie, utters these significant words addressing the author of Emile: 'You had given us the milk of the strong.' I'll continue the quotation. 'And we were too weak to benefit from it.'
7:22 'We have forgotten your lessons, which our fathers knew, and we have lost the meaning of your word — last echo of ancient wisdoms.' There it is. And Alexandra concludes her article: 'Let us hope that we are not too weak this time to benefit from it.' To benefit from all these revelations that occurred thanks to the masks that fell during the lockdown. But it's off to a bad start. I'll continue reading Alexandra's closing lines. It's off to a bad start. At least the struggle will have gained in clarity.
A communist and Rabelaisian blog: the "third restoration" 7:53 There we are. So I'll hand the floor over to Benjamin Le Louarn, creator, initiator, and writer for his blog Le Gros Rouge qui tâche, who will present his blog to you. And afterward, we'll come back, of course, to Alexandra's article. Benjamin, I'm glad to put you in touch with our audience. It's over to you. Actually, it's me who thanks you, Dominique. Thank you for the blog and for Alexandra, because she's a knowledgeable writer who deserves to be known and shared.
8:32 So, thank you, and thank you to Philippe for the invitation. So, to talk about the blog — it's an online journal that we try to keep... on a communist and Rabelaisian line. And to talk about it, I'm going to... That's not a bad program. No, I like it. For once, you see, Pagani, I'm going to imitate you, you see, because why not. I'll start with a little detour. Go for it! Come on, why not. So, well, I have a friend and comrade we have in common, actually, Victor Sarkis.
9:10 So, he's a young Marxist philosopher. Excellent comrade. So I recommend both his talks and his articles. And he often says, as a kind of joke, that... he says, well, if I had to write a biography, I'd start by saying, I was born at the dawn of the third restoration. Well, what does that mean? It means, quite simply, that those born in the '90s were in a sense born confined, if you will.
9:43 That is, well, confined for... I'm handicapped. ...dispossessed. Confined on the level of reason, but also of feeling, feeling in the Rousseauian sense. That is, feeling as an education toward reason, confined aesthetically, confined politically. And that's clearly linked to the fall of the Soviet Union and all the cultural forms that existed, and political forms too, around the Soviet Union. Now yes, it's been said a thousand times, it had plenty of flaws.
10:14 We can talk about the bureaucracy, the absence of direct democracy. But nonetheless, the collapse of that structure, which was the Soviet Union, has, I believe, deprived the Third World and the European proletariat of any real alternative to the social anthropology produced by Atlanticist capitalism since 1945. So there was a socialist alternative one could debate, but which was real, and whose collapse objectively consecrated the advent of global capitalism under North American piloting.
10:55 So, besides, if you want to understand — and if my a priori moral judgment is correct — the growing nostalgia today among Russians for the Soviet Union, just think of Hobbes. Because I believe the Soviet Union was, for the Russian people, the Leviathan that was supposed to devour the Behemoth. That is, there was a collective forced, under the sword of historical necessity, and also in order to escape underdevelopment, to bring the predatory logic of the market to its knees.
11:32 So, I'll go back to this time that is ours, that of this third restoration. Now, when you look at the landscape a bit, we've seen the collapse of communism, of socialism, of Gaullist republicanism, of republicanism plain and simple, in fact of Jacobinism, of Arab nationalism, of our sovereignty being cosmeticized, even of African Marxisms. And ultimately we find ourselves, on a world scale, in a kind of general mental confinement.
12:05 Because there's an ideological terrain we're beginning to emerge from, but which for a long time, in the early 2000s, was divided between, on one hand, Francis Fukuyama's end of history, and on the other, Huntington's clash of civilizations, if I wanted to sum it up. What's more, this Fukuyama end of history in the liberal democratic paradise has in concrete terms been carried out in the hell of this supposedly democratic capitalism, which only proceeds with the duty to intervene or the responsibility to protect against fragile and weak nations.
12:41 I remind you, it's well known, the famous words of Madeleine Albright, when asked, well, 500,000 Iraqi children dead as a result of the intervention, was it worth it? She said, yes, yes, the price was worth it. So that's really exactly what Jacques Vergès called democracy with an obscene face. Well, I've made... I've made a little detour there, but all I mean to say is, well, one might say, look, we're disciplined Leninists, and within Leninism there is nonetheless the will, the ambition to make accessible to everyone, especially to those less well-off, financially, socially, to seize class-based forms of knowledge, of learning, that's it.
Gaily parting with one's past: Marx and laughter 13:30 But we too, I think, along with Alexandra, want to be serious and rigorous, yet without wanting to be, as we're so often invited to be in our time, I think, killjoy iconoclasts, you see what I mean. You're working on that text right now, Pagani, isn't it — the Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. There's a passage I like where Marx mentions the death of the ancient Roman gods.
14:05 He tells us those gods died twice, first with gravity, with Aeschylus and Prometheus Bound, and then in great laughter, thanks to Lucian of Samosata, who essentially ridicules and caricatures them. So once again, comedy succeeding tragedy. Absolutely, and it's this kind of attitude, Marx tells us, which, in a very beautiful phrase, he says, well, allows humanity to part gaily with its past. It's active. It's profoundly in that sense that the two of us at Le Gros Rouge qui tâche are Rabelaisian.
14:40 We want to help make sure that this ongoing separation from liberal-libertarian anthropology takes place as gaily as possible. And it's not easy, especially given the terrifying, moribund weight bearing down not only on current ideological consciences, but also because of economic constraints and the crisis. So, that's it. I'll end there.
15:10 The purpose of the online journal is twofold. If I didn't want to be pretentious about it, it's a bit like what Marxist satirists mean by that. And to put it concretely, we do feel like rigorously mocking the faces of the ideologues paid by those in power, of all these petty politicians who think they're making history, who never set in motion anything but parodies of Picrocholine wars. And also — this matters to me — you mentioned ecology — I think we also need to free Marxist speech from the ideological locks that people try to impose on it.
15:51 And above all, that people try to impose on it through various modern coteries. And these are coteries whose lack of... Modern, I don't know. Contemporary, let's say. Postmodern. Yes, postmodern, that's good. And their lack of... For these people, their lack of concrete representativeness among the masses is inversely proportional to their capacity for ideological harm. When you see today the valorization of themes like nature, race, sex, at the expense of the social and the class struggle.
16:28 Color and gender. Right, we have... There, we really have, I believe, yet another decisive confinement on the terrain of emancipation. So, that's it. I'll stop there. Alexandra is the guest of honor now. And again, thank you, Dominique, and Philippe. Thank you for this introduction. Dear friends, dear comrades, if you want to know more, don't hesitate to subscribe online to Le Gros Rouge qui tâche. That's the exact title.
17:00 Yes. There you go. There's an extended pun on your... a play on words. Right, tâche [stains/task]. I'll bounce back very quickly, before handing the floor to Alexandra, on your Marxist-Rabelaisian pairing. Not only do I have nothing to say against it, but I rejoice in it as a Marxist and even as a French communist. I use the word communist very freely here.
Rabelais, happiness, and "ecologism, opium of the people" 17:30 I'm not alluding for now to any party. Neither for nor against, moreover. I'll leave anti-PCFism to the Trotskyists, Maoists, and other anarchists, I mean. That is, to those who claimed to be to the left of the Communist Party in '68 while handing us over to the right — that is, to the right of De Gaulle — and who have been governing us ever since. Post-Vichy. No, no, what I like about the Rabelaisian side is first of all the laughter, the happiness.
18:02 Because in... there's the substantific marrow, as Rabelais says. And the marrow isn't a random metaphor. It does you good wherever it passes, in the palate and on the tongue. It's good. We've had enough of this guilt-tripping of humanity, dirtying nature, I mean, and that we're all filthy consumers who've been at it for millennia. This betrayal by a certain Christianity, called the established churches, who made us beat our breasts, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
18:39 And now ecology is taking over. Which makes me say, by the way, drawing on Marx's saying that religion is the opium of the people, that I would say environmentalism is the opium of the people — in the English sense of 'the people' as celebrity/media crowd. It's the updating of Marx's formula, except that this 'people' is more reactionary than the 'people' [in the traditional sense], but that will perhaps be the subject of another discussion. So, thanks for Rabelais. I put Rabelais, let's say, in harmony, in the musical sense of the term, in phase, if you prefer, with one of the most beautiful phrases of the French Revolution, Saint-Just's: 'Happiness is a new idea in Europe.'
Reading from Un immense caveau by François de Negroni 19:23 First, then, second, what struck me in Alexandra's article is this convergence, you see, of individual destiny and collective destiny. Not that they cannot be separated, but when they are not separated, individual destiny becomes a deadly neurosis. I don't think I'm betraying Alexandra's thought in saying that.
19:54 Now, I see that — I've just — but these are coincidences, are there such things as coincidences? Listening a bit to the least deadly of paranoiacs claiming there's no such thing as chance, as I'm tempted to say, to think sometimes, because I received from François de Negroni, whom I greet, who is in Corsica, his very latest publication — he too will forgive me, because I wonder if the book is even in bookstores yet, it barely is, since it's only just been published — and in which we find, you see, at the end — I don't want, of course, to give away the story — but the last day of the character who is at the center of his narrative, I'm showing it here, it's called Un immense caveau [An Immense Vault], there it is, it's a work of nearly 90 pages, and so, it's the last day of the character, I won't say more, I'll just read these lines, and you'll immediately see the connection
21:04 with Alexandra's conclusion, and especially with some themes she takes up and will develop in the body of her article. When, well, the hero, the main character of the story, leaves his house on his last day. 6:30, he crosses the threshold of his home with a determined leap. Outside, a light, cool dawn breeze caught him; he had to suppress within himself the fleeting surge of a vital impulse that was no longer appropriate.
21:36 We're not in the collective here, apparently we're in personal anecdote, a narrative. We're in the novelistic mode of the novel. Perched on a bollard, a seagull was calmly watching him. You see, in the novel, the mocking, at-ease glance, without showing any sign of being startled. Let me note in passing, we need to move quickly, this will save you time, that the seagull represents the sudden emergence of nature. All at once, in the story, it's the animal. The mocking, at-ease glance, without showing any sign of being startled.
22:07 So it was true, this charming fairy tale, endlessly repeated on the airwaves and illustrated through many animal or plant examples, colon: thanks to the planetary lockdown of its irresponsible bipedal predator, nature was taking the liberty of reclaiming its rights. It was running wild, decking itself out with unruly grasses right into the artificial urban anthills, while the decroissance fundamentalists of the lumpen-bobo-tariat paraded triumphantly — fanaticized vegans, convulsive environmentalists, snarling antispeciesists, Saint Greta, the Swedish teenager whose maturity had been stolen.
22:58 I remind you that she always says her childhood and youth were stolen, but I believe what François de Negroni reveals to us is far more serious: that her maturity was stolen from her. They were recovering their strength, just like TF1's Zarathustra, the restless Monsieur Hulot, that brilliant issuer of ultimatums to the human race. There we go, you see — we set off on a personal anecdote, look how we find our own time again, yours, mine, ours. There we go, breathe deeply, and so on.
23:28 There you have it, I don't want to give away what comes next. You want to know what happens. That's the art of the writer. Good heavens, you don't know where he's going, you don't know what he's doing. So, for that, you'll have to read Un immense caveau, published by Materia Scritta. I'm sure, Alexandra, you understood why I quoted this passage and how it resonates with your text. I tried to follow, but I'm not sure I managed to.
24:00 Ah, you're not giving yourself enough credit. As for me, I let myself be intimidated by François de Negroni's pen, which I envy, but anyway, I took immense pleasure in yours, and that's why we're here together. So, there we are — I'd like to ask you: am I wrong to say that Covid, which is the main subject of your text, since the title, after all, is 'Ave Covid, morituri te salutant'
"Ave Covid": death as absolute master 24:32 and not that barracks-room joke, sorry, from ICD, which had people saying 'You're dead, and you're laughing, and give my regards to your aunt.' I'll be called homophobic. No, no, I think it's very important that you recall that, because there's gravity in that title. There's the absolute master, death, which you cite twice in your text. I recall that it's Hegel who shows that if there's one moment that slips in the dialectic, it's precisely that of death, the moment he himself calls the absolute master.
25:08 It's no longer a master who is slave of the slave, it's the absolute master. So, am I wrong to think that Covid is what, I don't know, a Marcel Mauss would have called a total social phenomenon, which lets us see many other things simply beyond Covid itself, beyond the pandemic itself. Am I wrong? No, no, you're not wrong, since it did have a fairly significant magnifying-glass effect that many people noticed.
25:43 That's it, that's what I also tried to describe, that it made the anxious even more anxious, the worried even more worried, etc. Also, 'Ave Covid,' that's because it's what the gladiators used to say to the emperor before combat. It's also a program. Yes, thanks for reminding us, because we have plenty of young friends who no longer study Latin at school.
26:18 The gladiators' formula as they passed before Caesar before their combats and performances was 'Ave Caesar morituri te salutant,' which means 'hail, Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.' So, that was to recall that in any case we were all going to die, but that didn't stop us from fighting. There you go. There's an answer from gladiator-writers, written with the sword, that's good, and the retiarius, with the net.
26:53 There you go, but I'd like you to keep the floor. So, there was the story of the shock that had also seemed important to me, that is to say, in the end... I was struck by that, there, I'll hand it right back to you, but the whole beginning of your text is superb insofar as you dwell on the stunning effect produced first by that change which was, for the vast majority of us, almost all of us, the sudden eruption of Covid into our daily lives.
27:27 I'll hand it back to you. And the fact, well, actually the sudden onset of lockdown, because... That's it. It had a... Yes, it's not the virus, it's the political decisions that followed. It's as if we were being prevented from fighting too against what was happening, that is to say we were... We were being asked to go home and wait for it to pass. And in the end, everyone, well, it seems to me, all the people I saw at that time had the same impression, that is to say we were as if we'd been tackled, we were a bit dazed, we had a lot of trouble thinking, we had a lot of trouble continuing to do what we used to do, and not just for material reasons.
28:14 There was a kind of shock, of stupefaction. That's it, that's what I was trying to describe. That's why I used the image of the trip-up. There you go, you fall flat, and as you fall, you watch yourself falling. I don't know how to put it better, but there was a kind of slow motion at that moment. That's very well rendered in your text, I mean, precisely, that stupefaction, other words are needed, we won't repeat ourselves, but I repeat that what's at stake here is less the virus itself, which I don't mean to deny, as some conspiracy theorists do.
Conspiracy theory and the sorting of patients 28:56 I'll open a parenthesis about conspiracy, to be clear. I have two clarifications to make, which will actually bring me back to Benjamin's introduction too. It's that—I have good news to announce—it simplified political discourse enormously. You know, Aristotle already said 2500 years ago, mathematics unites men, politics divides them. That hasn't lost its relevance one bit. But, they divide so much that one wonders how Pagani can have the pretension of wanting to simplify everything.
29:27 Well, yes, yes, I'm going to sum up the solution to all political problems in a single formula for you. There are only two political positions left, not ten thousand. Don't let yourselves be impressed. There's the official theory, that of those who govern us. As soon as you move a millimeter away from it, you're in conspiracy-theory territory. As soon as you disagree with the media, with his master's voice, you're a conspiracy theorist. There you go. That's to pay tribute to those called conspiracy theorists too.
29:57 That said, it's true that some of them are a bit off their rocker. The virus exists. We've all had acquaintances, relatives, well, not necessarily, who were victims of it. And since you're talking about lockdown, when we were told to stay home, we all knew either a parent, or a relative, or a friend who went to the hospital for something else, for other conditions, or even affected by the virus but in a mild way, so to speak, because of their age, for instance.
30:29 And who were told, to their great astonishment, by the doctors, 'go home, we have other things to do.' In my daughter's case, they said to her, 'you're standing up, so we're not interested in you. I'm only interested in those who come here at the final stage and dying.' It's still stunning. I'm not talking here about the caregiving staff, I'm talking about the instructions at the entrance. It's still frightening. It's a bit like there being bikers on the road who push you aside because there's a procession going by, an ambulance, I don't know, and you find yourself there on the side of the road, as you say, stunned and dazed, wondering what you're doing there.
31:08 And as they say, you're going to spend a few days on the road, in the ditch. There was that, there was also the triage, which is stunning too. Go on, that interests me. The triage, that is to say, past 70, you're no longer treatable, you're no longer admitted to intensive care. Even though for 40 years we've been drummed into believing that at 70, you're still young. Yes. Tell me about it. We're in full agreement.
Revolution and counter-revolution since 1789; the loss of a recourse 31:38 So, I told her that I was also going back to what Benjamin said, who spoke, who made a chronological breakdown with his excellent formula borrowed from Victor Sarkis, whom I salute in passing, of the third restoration. It's so well observed. So, I'm having trouble getting over just one. I recall here that since the storming of the Bastille, we haven't been living in a revolutionary time nor a counter-revolutionary time, but we're living the combat between the two.
32:13 We tend to forget that a bit too often. And in that combat between the two, well, it's been quite some time now since 1789, it's been well over two centuries now. If you look closely—the historian will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think everyone agrees—the time of the counter-revolution has been much longer, that of the restoration, of the restorations after Robespierre, after Waterloo, after Charles X, after Louis-Philippe, then afterward there was Mr. Thiers who restored again after the Commune.
32:57 Well yes, we're living through the era of restorations. And then, the magnificent program of the CNR, wasn't it, we tried in part to pilfer it—Friot shows this very well—how a certain right tried to reclaim what were the prodigious advances of the executive, of the social policy and program of the Resistance. There you go. So, I really appreciate that formula.
33:28 And then, he dated it, he made it coincide with the fall of the Soviet Union. So, I recall that to make—two clarifications need to be made. First, one I borrow from our late friend René, René Comer, I don't know, who was a blessing for the last period of his life, the last long period of his life, probably the happiest, of Michel Clouscard, whom we lost to cancer, which took him a few years ago, who had this phrase which is perhaps the most sensitive thing I've heard about the disappearance of the alternative to the Atlanticized planet.
34:05 to Atlanticist globalization. When he said the fall of the Berlin Wall is not a failure of communism, it's a great step backward for humanity. That's the first clarification. The second—now I know I'm going to annoy my friends at the PRCF, and I say this because I care about keeping the excellent relations I have with them, I salute them, I co-sign 90% of what they say and publish. I can allow myself just to say this, which isn't a reproach to them, I'm saying what I think for myself.
34:39 I think that with my big mouth, I would have been shot under Stalin. There, there, that's it, I've stopped annoying them, everything's been said. Okay? I'm not making an apology for the Soviet Union. But I'm saying that the world we've been living in since the fall of the Soviet Union is terrifying. If the Vietnamese saved honor, if the Vietnamese defeated the two greatest imperialist powers of the era, from the Indochina War to the Vietnam War, if they shot down several thousand American aircraft—aircraft meaning helicopters, F-105 fighters, whatever you like, the first F-15s bombed Vietnam, the B-52s—if they were able to do that, it wasn't with slingshots.
35:25 It was with Soviet SAM-6, SAM-7 missiles. There was a recourse. You have to have lived—as I have since, well, for those who need to be empiricists, because some know this very well without having gone to Africa, but you have to have lived in what was called at the time the Third World to see just how much the disappearance of that recourse was a stupefaction in the most negative sense for millions of populations among the most exploited in the world.
35:55 I remember that when Sankara was assassinated by the Atlanticist camp—let's be clear, that's an open secret—I'm deliberately taking a regional issue here. The Africans I spoke with at that time, in the days that followed, who were opponents of Sankara, who were somewhat more conservative people, far more conservative certainly than him, who felt a bit frightened by the speed with which he was having ministers driven around in Renault 5s—which was the first time since independence that I saw major changes in African politics, having ministers driven in Renault 5s, and not, no, not in Mercedes.
36:41 So, they were devastated, they were opponents of Sankara, they were devastated to see his assassination, to see that all of a sudden they were alone facing the Atlanticist machine. I always say Atlanticist so as not to bash Americans—there are Americans who fought against Atlanticism, and I salute them in passing. Of course, America is the flagship of the Atlantic Alliance. But there, I say that to make a clarification so that, following Benjamin's introduction—
Yellow vests and class divide during confinement 37:11 —people don't think we're all three being paid by the Russian special services, you know how it is. That's being said these days, it's making headlines. Now every news bulletin starts with the fact that the Russians control everything, all the elections, everything happening in the West is orchestrated by the Russians, and if we elect Miss Arcachon at the end of August, they'll say it's the Russians who rigged the Miss Arcachon election on the beach. Miss Arcachon, that's not possible. Why? They're pretty powerful.
37:44 Well, then Miss Beaumont sur Lomagne, Beaumont de Lomagne, sorry. That one's possible. Okay. Beaumont de Lomagne is a wonderful little area near Montauban where our friend Alexandra and her husband Laurent live, whom I salute in passing. A fine connoisseur, among other things, of the French Revolution. There you go. So Alexandra, I think we're in agreement. Yes, I'm struck too precisely by what you say about these societal decoys thrown in our faces, aren't they, so that things don't catch fire socially.
38:32 I haven't forgotten that the Yellow Vests started with a story about an ecological tax that was rejected. Don't try that on us. If I now have to travel an extra 60 km to get my social security paperwork or a certificate, or to send my son to school, and on top of that raise the fuel tax that lets me get there—that was the drop of fuel that made the vase overflow. If we saw people my age on roundabouts around braziers in the dead of winter, that's no coincidence.
39:09 That's also why I read the Negroni passage, which is in tune with your text, where the seagull and nature reclaim their rights—and would you be willing to sum up for us all those passages where you say there was a class divide between those who could find a new life in refinement, rediscover the charms of intimacy with pebbles, birds, and the wind at their second home, while the ward maids in the hospitals, mind you, were catching Covid.
39:45 Go ahead. Yes, the ward maids, the construction workers, they kept going. All the jobs that don't do remote work, in fact, all the jobs where you have to carry plasterboard panels and other stuff. You can't do that by bike, you can't work remotely, you're forced to go grind away. On the metro or the RER, you could clearly see the populations who were going to work.
40:20 It's, I don't know what to say. It's true that at that time we heard all sorts of—there was that text going around, that was circulating on social media, that people were sending each other, called 'The virus speaks,' which was an absolutely disgusting text about the virus saying to humans, 'you've profited too much, you've abused too much, now you're going to pay.'
The "virus that speaks" and guilt-tripping 40:50 And the people around had a kind of enjoyment in reading that thing and passing it along. And it was a... Sorry, I'm interrupting you there. I'm interrupting because Alexandra is a historian, so for her it's familiar. She can't imagine how unfamiliar this is for many people. Especially for young people who aren't taught history anymore. Yes, there are young people who are unbeatable on eleventh-century Burgundian vineyards and who soon won't know whether Pétain came before or after Jesus Christ.
41:20 So, since all that is old-fashioned, daddy's history, linear, well, totalitarian. Anyway, so she's in the process of recalling that this discourse, that Covid is our punishment because we consumed too much, we sinned too much. I'm not betraying your thought, Alexandra. No, no, but that's... That's exactly Pétain's discourse during the Occupation. If France was defeated, it's because it had dared to bring in the Popular Front, raise wages, and win paid vacation.
41:50 Bunch of parasitic freeloaders. It's still incredible, incredible, isn't it, that those who consume the most in the world we live in—I presume, in the hotels where Hulot stays, etc., the jacuzzis, the whole business, the hammams, well, I'll get worked up, I won't press the point. Those who consume the most in the world we live in spend their time making us feel guilty by saying that if there's so much aid needed for the elderly, it's because of you and me.
42:21 And then, there was also... Well, I don't know if you got that text about the speaking virus, but it's quite... Of course, it was obscene. Obscene, yes. So, what did you have the virus say? I can see you're repeating what you had it say in place of... Giving it its true voice back. I don't remember anymore because I won't be able to find it just like that. But there were also all the collapsologists, special guests, explaining the same thing, that is to say, the world needed to be rejuvenated, that we need to—
43:02 That's it. Basically, we need to get rid of the old, get rid of the ugly, get rid of... We don't know how far that could go, but it does recall some not-so-brilliant episodes of our history. What did the virus say again? I don't remember. What also shocked me was that thing about 'take care of yourself,' that kind of injunction... Yes, I said I'd come back to that. ...which ultimately meant, take care of yourself because no one else is going to do it for you.
43:34 So it was something very... very violent, actually. Serious, an abandonment, really. Yes, a kind of abandonment. Besides, people felt abandoned because there was no explanation anywhere, that is to say, there was no... there was no message at all saying, well, if you have Covid, you need to watch out for this, this, and this, you need to, I don't know, drink herbal tea, you need to—
44:05 There was no recommendation at all, there was just their damn barrier gestures, cough into your elbow, which nobody does, because it wouldn't occur to us. There you go. And that's it... And it's true that everyone who was in lockdown... Because there was an involuntary lockdown-ness, that is to say, jobs, work stopped, there was remote work instead of going to the office, but there were also all those who withdrew from the economy, that is, out of fear, out of anxiety, I don't know, they told themselves the end of the world was near and so they stayed home, they went home, and they—
44:47 they were waiting, actually, for it to validate their... their anxiety, the anxiety that's been chewed over for years, that is to say... It validates the worst-case hypothesis, the worst hypothesis. There you go, there are too many people, we're too many, we pollute too much—onto everyone else, it's never me who's the excess one, it's always the others. So, they stayed in their... in their self-enclosed bubble, actually, listening to the funereal litany every evening. So, I'll hand the floor back to the virus, to give it right back to you, but indirectly.
45:21 So, I'll quote you: if it really spoke, it, the virus, if it really spoke, it wouldn't say to 21st-century humans, 'you behaved badly, and that's why I've come to restore order.' It would say, 'you've been screwed for 50 years. Marx was right, and Clouscard too, whether you like it or not,' that's what it reveals, indeed, even to the most incredulous who still cling to their illusions of Western democracy, of a progressive Europe, and of an exemplary, modern United States.
Europe absent and workers organizing themselves 45:56 There you go, I wanted to restore that superb passage. There was the reaction of the Italians, well, the Italians' reactions, which were very striking because it was just a bit before us, and they were really angry, angry at Europe, they were burning flags, they really couldn't get over this whole affair. I'm sure there would have been a referendum on an Italexit or whatever, I'm sure 90% would have voted to leave Europe.
46:28 Yes, I don't know, 90, I don't know, but in any case, the Italians were pretty furious. They saw Chinese planes arrive, Cuban planes, or whatever you like, but Brussels, forget about that. Yes, yes, yes. Well, now there are some who say Europe did what needed to be done. Yes, absolutely. We haven't gotten past that. You'll see, next fall, in September, you'll see from the employment figures that Europe did everything that needed to be done. Yes. So those figures surprise you. I don't know if this comes across well, but you'll see there will be surprises.
47:00 Even the border closures were decided unilaterally by each country at the last moment, under completely haphazard conditions. Well, anyway. It wasn't a European decision. We heard... What was also striking was even among remote workers. You didn't hear from the hierarchy, in fact. There was nobody at the helm. That was quite striking. That is to say, even in the hospitals, it was the caregiving professions, the nursing assistants.
47:32 it was all the staff who organized themselves to reinvent intensive care beds, requisition stuff, use the nurse's husband who worked in a family-run plastics factory to get, I don't know, spacers to make masks. There you go, the garbage bag story. Everything. Indeed, there were plenty of reactions and plenty of things done in a hurry, notably concerning the hospital—but the public hospital, because we heard absolutely nothing about the private clinics—but all those reactions were made by those who were on the job, in fact.
48:16 All decisions were taken by those who were at work, at the bank, everywhere, buying tape, finding hydroalcoholic gel — that wasn't provided by the board of directors, by the hierarchy. Them, they were, I don't know where, at the swimming pool, probably, I don't know. What is comforting in this horror, though, is that a society where the workers take charge of themselves is feasible. Yes, of course, but then you wonder why it goes on.
Remote work and the community-camaraderie dichotomy 48:47 We don't need shareholders and traders to live in a society, but we do need those who provide patients with oxygen and those who ensure transport. We fully agree. Then, sorry, go ahead. No, I was saying, after that, there was the whole business about teleworking that Philippe raised, that is, the fact that indeed, there was no longer any commuting time, which was something that radically changed the job.
49:18 There was the fact that those who were teleworking, in order to set up teleworking, spent an infinite amount of time sorting out a load of IT problems. Nothing was ready, in fact. So they had to test things, and they spent their day fixing technical issues and not producing at all, but with a kind of... IT security, for instance. With a... There you go, security issues in particular, and with a kind of staging of work that was even stronger than the usual staging when you go to work, where you get dressed, where you put yourself into a character.
50:01 There you go, that was it... At home, in fact, for those who had teleworking partners — the luck of having teleworking partners — there was a kind of staging of work. No, but you're speaking gold there, because precisely, regarding teleworking, in your article you introduce a new dichotomy that I found wonderful, between two forms of sociability, one which...
50:32 which I found execrable and which you also denounce, in very clear terms, which is communitarianism — and God knows that these days it's making headlines. It's so much simpler, isn't it, to throw communities out into the street to make people believe there's opposition than to throw society out. Society, that's a famous title — Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, society and community. But... And which you oppose to comradeship, a term one gets the impression belongs to ancient history, soon enough.
51:07 when you see how often it is avoided, sidestepped, and which you restore, showing that it has come back here, precisely. And with the Yellow Vests, already, it had resurfaced, and thanks to the lockdown, we found again... There you go, I'd like you to develop this dichotomy too, between community and comradeship. I talked about that too, in relation to our own work.
51:41 That is to say... As with the Yellow Vests, as... That is, facing the threat, what choice do we have? Do we keep working together or not? Quite simply. So we had... We had a colleague who, for good reasons, because... he was afraid, or because his... his family needed him, I don't know. But he... withdrew from...
52:11 From... From comradeship, precisely. From comradeship at work, moreover. Because comradeship is forged at work, in fact. There you go, there you go. That's why I said you have to leave home, leave the lockdown, leave the 'stay at home.' You have to get out... Kinship is an important bond, I have nothing against family, but kinship is not comradeship. Comradeship, you have to leave home for it. And it's no accident, by the way, that the first time we hear this word for ourselves is in the schoolyard, once we've left mother's apron strings and we're in the schoolyard, rubbing shoulders with our comrades.
"Take care of yourself" and the comrade's immanent solidarity 52:44 Yes, of course. As it happens. So, as you put it very well, it's especially at work that one discovers comradeship, but precisely, I connect that to 'take care of yourself.' You denounce the phrase. And you say it's a form of abandonment, it's a very worrying phrase. I'd just add this — forgive me for turning it a little toward psyche and personal fate rather than the collective — but it's not reassuring. A friend of mine who'd had a great heartbreak, dumped by his girlfriend to whom he was very attached, said: the worst part was when, as she left, she said to me, 'take care of yourself.'
53:29 Every time, it's really felt as an abandonment. It means, well, ciao, thanks, I've given enough, now it's over. You're on your own. It's still terrifying. A government telling its citizens: don't count on us. Yes. There you go. And also the fact that comradeship involves a form of election, of elective affinity, but there's also a...
54:02 at work, anyway, you do it with whoever's there. Well, I feel a solidarity in the word comrade. There you go. The logical implication doesn't seem obvious, but to me it is... It's not a community, not a chosen community, it's not... There you go, there you go, there you go. There you go. It's not a family, not a family in the sense of the traditional family. It's... There you go, it's the people you... you... you work with every day, that's it. Well, I don't know, the Cuban comrades sending doctors to Italy, that's still...
54:37 That's not a kinship bond, that. Or, back in the days of the Popular Front, the wives bringing — to show it's not incompatible with kinship either — bringing the grub to their husbands who are locked in, who are inside the factory and behind the gates, occupying their workplace, no less. So there really is a solidarity immanent to the term comradeship.
Questions: waste, pollution, the European Union, and parasitic occupations 55:07 Yes, of course, yes. But a solidarity, well, I don't know how to put it, but a day-to-day solidarity, that's it. There you go, there you go, we fully agree. And not a circumstantial one. Philippe, isn't it about time we gave the floor to those who might want to ask us questions? Given the timing. Ah well, listen, if you like, yes.
55:37 If there are any. So, I took advantage of my privileged position to underline what has just been said about — I think in Alexandra's text there is something really worth digging into, this business of comradeship versus community, well, as an alternative. I find it has ramifications everywhere. To me it speaks especially to what's happening with the Yellow Vests, to a great many things.
56:07 I think there's something to dig into there, and I'd like as many people as possible to think about it. Because I find it's a spirit of openness pitched at a level — I think there's very strong potential in that. That is, doing things 'with' isn't at all in the spirit of... I remember a local elected official I knew a bit here, from the PCF, who, every time he had contact with someone making a rather personal, slightly clumsy request, something like that...
56:50 he'd look at me and say, 'ah yes, that's it, that's the human element,' with absolutely terrible condescension, even though he'd held his party card for 25 years. That, I didn't understand. That's the block that needs to be broken. That is, you mustn't be condescending toward the comrades at your door, on the roundabout at Les Tempes or Montlhéry. Exactly. There's something in common to be put into practice which is natural, where you don't need to force yourself, you don't need condescension, and which is an alternative to community, to withdrawal, or else to the nonsense of 'I love everybody.'
57:30 To the in-crowd. Etc. There you go, the in-crowd. So, that really... Well, it was a shock to me when I saw that passage in the text. And it would be... Mister blog host. I'd love there to be some follow-up on that. Me, I... Can I make a few remarks? Yes. Of course, of course, of course. We're running fast. Right, I'll go back very quickly over your discussion. It stirred up several things for me.
58:02 First off, I... well, I won't be obsessive about ecology, but I find that... you were talking about waste, for instance, the question of waste. It was Alexandra who mentioned that. I find that in ecologist thinking there's a tendency to lump waste and wastefulness together under the category of pollution. And that's really something very important, because when you have experience as a worker in health, in care, in home help, in personal assistance, or even in the hospital world — if we take this category strictly, the category of pollution, this ecological category — I can assure you there's nothing more 'polluting' than a disabled person, a bedridden person, in two words a person who is in a state of complete dependency.
59:03 You see, there is a problem there, in that waste is normal in a society, in a civilization that functions. On the other hand, to raise the problem of waste is necessarily to raise the problem of management. Exactly. So that's the first thing your remarks inspired in me. And then, to talk about Italy too, Alexandra, I think it was really shown in this ordeal of Covid that the European Union is completely struck by political unreality.
59:40 It's a kind of headless structure with an institutional competition that's designed to be incapacitating, and which really unveiled and revealed its true nature, its true social function — in the same way that I think Covid also demonstrated, Dominique was talking about it, but indeed, the trades and sectors on which the French nation, and every nation really, rest.
1:00:13 We see this whether in health, in energy, in transport, or in food. Those are the sectors that actually keep a country running. I don't want to be unpleasant about certain trades. Personally I have nothing against teleworking. Teleworking is also flexibilization taken to excess. You have people working at the CAF, people who are lawyers, people... all that had to be managed. I mean, benefits... And on top of that, teleworking considerably lengthened the working days of the teleworkers concerned.
1:00:48 But anyway, I mean, we didn't really see, during Covid, what use a financier, a trader, a communications person, an advertiser was. Just as much as the trades essential to social progress were unveiled, I think there's also been an awareness of the various parasitic forms of work among the middle classes, who live off the collective worker and who are all the more prone to guilt-tripping and to an ideological, ecologist discourse, while living off that collective worker.
1:01:28 So, there you go, that's the only thing. Those are the few remarks that quickly came to mind from what you were saying. As for the media, we saw what they were for: to scare people, for nothing, to be a pain. That's clear, but Clouscard said it all in Les Dégâts de la pratique libérale — there's nothing to add. You just have to read it, on the trades of entertainment and information.
1:02:05 The magnifying-glass effect, that was quite an important thing. I mean, it really... I think there are quite a few people who realized a whole lot of things they'd felt confusedly before, but it confirmed all those impressions nonetheless. And it shocked pretty much everyone. So now, we have to forget it quickly and get back to our activities.
Communism and "civil war among the poor" 1:02:37 But I don't think it will just pass like that. I'd just like to add something. It's important, on the question of communism. I think that in the history of all humanity, in my opinion, we have never gathered so many of the practical, technological, and scientific conditions for the realization of communism. And I think that never, at the same time, has communist theory been so marginalized, and above all has the workers' movement been so weakened and disorganized.
1:03:20 I think that's a real problem we have to face. I think it's the problem of our time as communists. It's an effect of what Clouscard had — sorry for the expression, but there's no other word, frankly — prophesied, when he said back in the 70s that capitalism would bring civil war to the poor. Instead of it being, as you say, communist theory that gets spread around, it's on the contrary the hatred of all against all.
1:03:53 I mean Arabs against Roma, men against women, Corsicans against French people, Hutus against Tutsis. In short, everything that's identity-based, everything that has nothing to do with social classes, is wonderful for the MEDEF — they just have to twiddle their thumbs and wait for it all to tear itself apart, weaken, and scatter. That said, I don't want to be pessimistic, sorry Philippe, I'll hand the floor back to you right away, but I do note all the same that, one after another, there appear together the book Un immense caveau by Negroni, with the passage I read you, Alexandra's article, and the article devoted to Clouscard in Marianne — who would have believed it, I'm not a subscriber to Marianne, but still, I mean, that said, it's a paper that isn't much more right-wing than l'Huma these days.
1:04:50 Alas, I'm the first to sadly say so — I'm not at all paying tribute to Marianne, I find it damning for l'Huma. So I pay tribute to the Marianne journalists who took this initiative. There you go, I mean, there is indeed something, there is indeed, as Alexandra said, a magnifying-glass effect that lets more and more people see more and more things.
1:05:20 Philippe, go ahead, I cut you off.
1:05:54 Yes?
The State as general will and the State apparatus 1:06:24 I'll start with the State. To bring back something that won't take much for us to get used to, for those who are used to it, that is. But since it's a very little-known idea, I feel, even repeating it, delivering a script, we keep getting cut off.
1:06:59 Against the State, you have the anarchist and you have the MEDEF. It's curious all the same, because you'd think they couldn't stand each other. But yes, the libertarian can be liberal. And the liberal understood, from the 60s, especially from the early 70s onward, the profit to be made from being libertarian within his capitalism.
1:07:30 These are Clouscard staples. Where am I trying to get to, regarding the State? To this distinction, which Michel Clouscard and I held very dear, between the State and the state apparatus. I'll put it very simply. And if I happen to be out looking for mushrooms, sorry, but since I lived for a long time in countries with no autumn, I'm a bit more motivated than average to go looking for mushrooms, because I missed it. As you're walking along your path in the woods and it's blocked, with a barrier marked 'private forest, mushroom-picking forbidden' — 'private' here means: watch out, this isn't the State here, this isn't you, it's me.
1:08:11 It's not you, it's not you, it's not the collective, it's me and me alone. Right, that means, it's private, private forest, that means, you're deprived of it, my friend. You're deprived of it. Whereas when I see marked 'state forest,' of Donzis, of Vizzavona, of Chantilly, of wherever, well then, that means: we can go there, it's ours. This isn't the State that the anarchists and the MEDEF talk to us about. The constraints, the rules, the regulations, the bureaucracy.
1:08:43 No, it's the opposite. It's not the State that restricts my freedom, it's the one that extends it, the one nobody talks to us much about — that's what Rousseau called the general will. That's where I'm getting to. When the State is that, then I answer yes: we lack State. We have the most monstrous state apparatus governing us. From surveillance cameras to the GAFAs, well, and soon chips under the skin.
1:09:15 I mean, we have the most monstrous state apparatus, in the service of — oh surprise, horrible surprise — in the service of what? In the service of the private. The most monstrous state apparatus of all time, given today's technologies, in the service of that absence of State which, by definition, is the private sector. That's how I answer, sorry. Éric. Wasn't it before Raphaël, wasn't it Éric. There you go, there you go, there you go. So, thank you Éric, an excellent question that lets us reconcile ourselves not with the state apparatus, which we need to get rid of, but with the State as general will.
1:09:58 This general will — and I'll end my answer on the State with this — we expressed it in 2005. It wasn't taken into account. We have been living under a coup d'État, strictly from a constitutional standpoint, since the rejection was overridden after the 2005 referendum. It's the first time, to my knowledge — I've spoken with constitutional law specialists who confirmed this to me — that there had not been, until then, I had never seen, a referendum vote annulled by a representative vote, by an indirect vote.
Home care work, the market, and mask-wearing 1:10:36 There you go. If you have answers to the other two questions, I don't at all want to hog the floor. Can you remind us, Philippe? Yes, go ahead, go ahead. I'd just have one remark, to follow up on what you just said, staying with the Covid theme. For instance, the world of home care, that's a world I know well. And what needs to be said is that the market, privatization, push home carers to bypass the collective and the State.
1:11:09 That is, in fact, you have home-care sectors where the pay is quite low. It's somewhere between 7.90 euros, something like that, and minimum wage. And it depends whether you have a permanent contract or not, whether you work weekends or not, whether you accept nights or not, whether you skip your day off or not. So the pay varies, but it stays fairly low. And if you stop, in fact, being a declared worker, so to speak, in a traditional home-care agency, and start doing undeclared work...
1:11:50 It happened to me concretely, I doubled my pay. But then, when Covid hit, there's no insurance. There's nothing at all. And in fact the families, naturally, protect their elderly. And there you are, completely exposed. You're completely exposed. I say this because at the Sorbonne there were seminars critiquing social ontology, meaning, you understand, anti-Marxist seminars. They notably promoted a book by Laurence Fontaine, which I found absolutely appalling.
1:12:21 It's called The Market, History and Use of a Social Conquest. Actually, Fontaine's argument... A little sound problem? It's the state apparatus that censors. And there you go, the state apparatus censors. And so, he says, basically, the marginalized, it's a kind of liberal Foucauldian argument where she says, there, it's the marginalized who resort to the state.
1:12:59 And this state is emancipatory for individuality, etc. These are things that still need to be said. Because these were seminars on the critique of social ontology that were held at the Sorbonne, with, in parallel, it was sublime, seminars on Heidegger. And that went on for a while. A nice division of labor. The one who said that we have a duty of Eros toward the Führer. Well, I'm quoting, you know, if you're interested. There, there.
1:13:31 And afterward, regarding the mask-wearing stories, I read a post, as they say, in globish, from an emergency room doctor at the Salpêtrière who talks about, regarding the now-mandatory mask-wearing, etc., who talks about the second wave. I think it's Sylvain Bourgeois or Bourgois, I don't know who published that testimony.
1:14:04 And it's interesting because it's a doctor who restores the figures. That is, when people talk on TV, I've noticed, when they explain to us that in Brittany, it's picking up again, or in Mayenne, or whatever, in the media, there are no figures at all. That is, there are percentages, there are trends, all that. But there's no number of hospitalization cases or the number of... There's no real increase given.
1:14:36 And so, he talks about a change, for example, from 2 to 8, from 2 people to 8 people. There, there's no second wave, actually. The virus is still active in certain places. It's still dangerous, I mean, hazardous. But why are we all made to wear masks now, since Monday I think, as soon as we go somewhere, when we're no longer at all at the peak, and during the peak, we had nothing.
1:15:11 We were forced to make things ourselves out of bras. It's the height of absurdity. We'd need... I'm not against wearing a mask if there's a danger or a problem. There. But I don't see, here, the 135 euro fine if you don't wear a mask when you go out. I don't see what that's for anymore now, other than to get us used to doing what we're told.
Truth and lies: scientism and the strategy of uncertainty 1:15:43 I don't know. I can't get rid of that idea. As a philosopher, I'll speak up anyway because there's a strange takeaway from what you just said. Stepping back in general on truth and lies in all this, because that's what it's about. I have no idea, myself. I'm not a specialist. I'm not a technician, a scientist. I can't tell you the mask is useful, the mask is useless. I can't decide. I've heard, like you, like everyone, everything and its opposite about it. But that's what's worrying.
1:16:14 It's that a power that threw a Greta at us for ages to tell us listen to the scientists and stop warming up the planet, as if there were such a thing as univocal science. Now that's not science, that's scientism. That was our religion, right there. Either you're a conspiracy theorist, or you listen to Greta who listens to the so-called scientists. And now, ah, we don't know, according to some things, masks, yes, according to one period, they're useful, according to another, they're not.
1:16:44 It's testing, yes, testing, no. It's really extraordinary. And that, for me, is not accidental. I don't care if I get called a conspiracy theorist. I explained earlier that just by being an opponent, I'm already a conspiracy theorist to the dominant discourse and to single-minded thinking. But I mean, it's already a strategy to keep us in anguish and uncertainty. There's a way of experimenting live, it would cost billions to do in normal times, but Covid lets them do it for free, to put a population with its little finger on the seam of its trousers, at the hour and time desired.
1:17:25 It's really extraordinary all the same. There, that's what I'll answer regarding the evil of it. On the substance, I'm not a specialist, I won't decide. Well, there, we're allowed to go eat now. I thought Benjamin was going to read an excerpt. Ah! No? Ah yes!
Kafka, a reading on camaraderie, and conclusion 1:17:55 Maybe we can end on that note actually, because I don't see any new questions. Again, there are remarks, but... We can't hear Paga. No, sorry, I'm answering Alexandra's wonderfully provocative question, saying that regarding going to eat, I'm answering what the priest says in the chapter of Kafka, the second-to-last chapter of The Trial called "In the Cathedral," where he says "Can I leave now?"
1:18:27 The priest tells him "The law takes you in when you come, and lets you go when you leave." So it is with matters of the law. So, a little reading. Yes! So, it's the passage on comradeship, is that it? It would be my pleasure. Ok. I never tire of hearing it again or rereading it. All right. For the listeners, this is the passage from Alexandra's article, which counterposes the notion of comradeship and community.
1:19:07 That's it. Will you go ahead? Please, go ahead. Yes. So. All those who prevent this union with the common, by appealing to individual virtue, individual conscience, individual responsibility, don't know that only comradeship allows one to face adversity. And comradeship has nothing to do with the chosen community. It gathers what it finds, what it encounters. It makes do with what it has. Community, on the contrary, dreams of itself as aristocratic, precisely in order to decollectivize things by turning them into communities, so as to have a bigger share.
1:19:46 Necessarily, they're always fewer in number in a community. The famous share of merit, the one their ineffable singularity would earn them, is all the better valued or monetized in a small group. Singularity is temporary. It ends with its bearer and is soluble in the common. And better dead than let it dissolve. There's the ground, bitterly won. The tyrannical, eroticized self. Narcissus admiring himself and finding himself terribly handsome.
1:20:16 Thank you for that beautiful reading. I'll add one last little postlude before closing this session. First, I thank Alexandra and Benjamin for agreeing to take part in our live session tonight. Of course, thanks to the ongoing miracle that Philippe manages to pull off. But I'll take the opportunity to say a word to those who very faithfully followed my series of talks on the logic of the subject and on its aesthetic chapter.
1:20:51 Don't think I've forgotten you. Don't think I've dropped the matter. I'll get back to it next Wednesday.
