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The American Politics of
French Theory Derrida,
Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault in Translation
Jason Demers
Cultural Spaces
series University of
Toronto Press, 2019 Hardcover. xiii+218
p. ISBN 978-1487504489. $(Can)55
Reviewed
by William Cloonan Florida State
University
At the center of this study is a very sophisticated
understanding of translation theory. Demers’ interest is not in the methods
used to render a passage in one language as accurately as possible into another
language. Rather, his concern is with the ways ideas are transformed and
recreated by social and cultural factors as they pass from one nation and set
of historical circumstances to another. Specifically, his book considers “what
it looks like to think the translation of French theory associatively, as a set
of multidirectional relations between French thinkers and cultural and
political movements and icons across the Atlantic” [3]. For Demers “ideas are
not developed in the vacuum of a system; they are born of borders meeting and
border crossings. This is the cumulative and ongoing process of translation”
[4]. Although he believes that May ’68 was the catalyst for post-structuralist
theory, the historical parameters of his study date from the famous Languages
and Criticism and the Sciences of Man Conference held at Johns Hopkins in 1966
to the infamous 1975 Schizo-Culture Conference directed by Sylvère Lotringer of
Columbia University. According to Demers “the rhizome is a model for
doing translation” [13]. Deleuze and Guattari popularized the rhizome as a
theoretical concept due to the fact that it is a plant stem that does not
follow simple, straightforward growth patterns but develops instead by sending
out roots and shoots in a variety of heterogeneous directions. This is the
model for the sundry forms of cultural transmissions Delmer wishes to discuss
in this study.
The American
Politics of French Theory contains four chapters and a Conclusion. The first
three chapters juxtapose the work of a French thinker (Derrida, Deleuze and
Guattari, Foucault) with political protests taking place in the United States.
Chapter Four, which in terms of the author’s premises, is the most convincing
essay in the book, describes the intense, often chaotic interactions between
diverse (academic and non-academic) groups and individuals. A bizarre irony of The American Politics of French Theory
is that the more concrete and practical the French theoretical concept appears
to be, the easier it is to at least imagine its ramifications in a strife-torn
United States.
“Translating the Margins :
Paris-Derrida-New York, 1968” focuses on two essays from Derrida’s Margins of Philosophy (1972), “Tympan”
and “The Ends of Man.” In French tympaniser
is an archaic expression meaning “to criticize.” Derrida uses it to introduce a
discussion of criticism’s relation to philosophy [16] which eventually leads to
the argument that what is most vital in philosophical discourse is what can be
discovered on the margins of established academic discussions. This does not
mean largely unknown philosophers, but people like Hegel who can be reread in a
radically different way. The margins are not necessarily the new center for
intellectual discourse, but they possess the potential to provide a temporary vantage
point from which one can better appreciate the arbitrariness of the center.
Just before the actual presentation of his paper
Derrida proclaimed his solidarity with the often marginal opponents of the
Vietnam War. Largely on the basis of the philosopher’s assertion of political
engagement, Demers segues into student protests at Nanterre, but more
particularly at Columbia University in New York where the anti-war protests
were fueled by anger at the university for doing war research as well as
exploiting the real estate market in Harlem to the detriment of the local
inhabitants. For Demers “Derrida is translating the sentiments of those who are
marginalized … into the margins of a philosophical address that deconstructs the
logic of margins and centers” [40].
In “Translating Movement : Going Underground
with Deleuze and Guattari” Delmers describes efforts by the two French
philosophers, abetted by Jean-Jacques Lebel who acted as a passeur, to dialogue with the American intellectual underground
which consisted of artists (William Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, Gregory Corso, etc.), and then also with students, most
notably at Columbia. The exchanges with the artists were not without their
ludicrous moments. At one point Burroughs and company tried to listen to a
recording they had received from their French friends of a radio play by
Antonin Artaud entitled, To be Done with
the Judgment of God. What certainly must have complicated their
appreciation of the text was that they listened to it being played backwards
while they were dropping acid [52].
The strongest part of this chapter concerns the RAT Subterranean News which emerged as a
counter-culture reaction to Columbia’s involvement in the Vietnam War industry.
At its origins the paper was run by men deeply committed to stopping or at
least impeding the war. Yet as Vietnam began to wind down, the Rat started to devolve into a sort of
underground Esquire with sexism and
misogyny enjoying increasing
prominence. In the 1970s Rat was
taken over by women who made it a feminist broadsheet without any editorial
hierarchy.
“Prison Liberation by Association : Michel
Foucault and the George Jackson Atlantic” deals with the extended exchange of
ideas between Foucault’s Groupe
d’information sur les prisons (GIP), and the Black Panthers. The purpose of GIP was to provide prisoners in France
with the means of explaining their situation and articulating their concerns
and fears in their own words. Intellectuals such as Foucault would function as relays which “denotes an ethical
practice that makes strategic use of intellectual status” [111] in order to
focus attention on the written and voiced complaints of the incarcerated. The
intellectual would try to open doors for prisoners, but once provided a venue,
they would do the talking. The dialogue with the Black Panthers was largely
beneficial. Members of GIP profited
the American prison liberation movement, whereas George Jackson’s reputation as
a victim / spokesperson for the oppressed was enhanced by his contact with Jean
Genet.
Demers’ final chapter “In Search of Common Ground :
On Semiotext(e) and Schizo-Culture” examines the activities and implications of
the 1975 Schizo-Culture Conference organized by Sylvère Lotringer around the
journal Semiotext. Intended to be the
opposite of the usual academic conference, Schizo-Culture attracted groups from
within and outside the academic world. The results were often chaotic, bordering
on violent. Lotringer would later declare the conference a failure, or a “miss”
[158] as he termed it, yet Demers is more sanguine on the subject. Certainly,
of all the events he discusses in his book, this is the clearest example of
ideas being exchanged and recreated in the process. He refers to “staged
conversations” among the participants and bystanders, which is, of course, a
form of dialogue. For him it was an intellectual free-for-all where ideas were
translated in often unexpected, but potentially interesting ways. Given such an
environment the “right to misinterpret becomes the rule” [171].
If the Schizo-Culture chapter most successfully
illustrates the rhizome effect which is at the heart of Demers’ approach, it
also highlights the lack of critical usefulness of the theory. Translation
viewed from such a broad perspective can justify anything, since any recreation
has its legitimacy and is to a large degree dependent upon the prior intellectual
and political positions of the person expressing his or her concerns. Demers is
clearly a man of the extrême gauche,
but could not such open-ended translations of ideas be deployed by the extrême droite as well? Thus Derrida’s
positions could be viewed in terms of “foreigner, elitist, Jew.” The strength
of The American Politics of French Theory
lies not in its theoretical
underpinnings, but in its vivid recreation of American opposition to injustice.
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