Radicalism in French culture: a sociology of French theory in the 1960s

165 Pages·2016·1.665 MB·English

by  Kauppi, Niilo

Radicalism in French Culture
A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s
Niilo Kauppi
Radicalism in FRench cultuRe
Public intellectuals and the
sociology of Knowledge
Series Editors
dr andreas hess, university college dublin, ireland
dr neil mclaughlin, mcmaster university, canada
the sociology of knowledge has a long and distinctive history. its function has
always been that of attempting to bridge the aspirations of the discursive and
institutional founding fathers of sociology with that of modern attempts to define
the discipline through the study of the emergence, role and social function of ideas.
However, since Mannheim first outlined his program in the 1920s, the sociology
of knowledge has undergone many changes. The field has become extremely
differentiated and some of its best practitioners now sail under different flags and
discuss their work under different headings. this new series charts the progress
that has been made in recent times – despite the different labels. Be it intellectual
history cambridge-style, the new sociology of ideas which is now gaining strength
in north america, or the more european cultural analysis which is associated with
the name of Bourdieu, this series aims at being inclusive while simultaneously
striving for sociological insight and excellence. All too often modern attempts in
the sociology of knowledge, broadly conceived, have only looked at form while
they downplayed or disregarded content, substance of argument or meaning. this
series will help to rectify this.
Radicalism in French culture
A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s
niilo KauPPi
CNRS/University of Strasbourg, France
© Niilo Kauppi 2010
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Niilo Kauppi has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kauppi, niilo.
Radicalism in French culture : a sociology of French theory
in the 1960s. -- (Public intellectuals and the sociology of
knowledge)
1. France--Intellectual life--20th century.
2. Radicalism--France--History--20th century.
3. Philosophy, French--20th century. 4. Literature and
society--France--History--20th century.
i. title ii. series
306.4’2’0944’09046-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kauppi, niilo.
Radicalism in French culture : a sociology of French theory in the 1960s / by Niilo Kauppi.
p. cm. -- (Public intellectuals and the sociology of knowledge)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-0783-6 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-0784-3 (ebook)
1. Radicalism--France--History--20th century. 2. France--Politics and government--20th
century. 3. France--Intellectual life--20th century. I. Title.
HN440.R3.K3817 2010
303.48’4094409045--dc22
2010022218
ISBN 9781409407836 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409407843 (ebk)II
contents
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgments ix
introduction 1
PART I FRom LITeRATuRe To RevoLuTIoN
1 The Nouveau Roman and Rebellion 11
2 The Tel Quel Saga 17
3 Julia Kristeva’s Invasion of Paris 25
4 Kristeva’s Power-Ideas: Ideologeme and the Zerologic Subject 33
5 Rebellion around Tel Quel 47
6 Sollerspierre, the Revolutionary of the Text 59
7 “Sciences” of Meaning, Work and the Unconscious 69
PART II DéSeNChANTemeNT AND DISINTegRATIoN
8 Neo-surrealism: Breton and Mao 77
9 The Symbolic Revolution of Jacques Derrida 83
10 The Taming of French Theory 91
11 The Power-idea of Structure 107
12 The Bourgeois Political Order: A Critique 115
13 Constructing an Academic Sociology 121
vi Radicalism in French Culture
epilogue French theory as symbolic transgression and
Political Rebellion 131
Bibliography 137
Index 149
list of tables
9.1 The “science” of the text and Marxism 89
10.1 Saumjan’s and Kristeva’s theoretical models (partly based on
Kristeva 1969a: 287) 97
This page has been left blank intentionally
acknowledgments
This work has been long in the making. It started in 1984 while I was a philosophy
major at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Interested in modern philosophy, I
had written pieces on derrida, Foucault, saussure and Weber, to the irritation of
my teachers—most of them students of the late Georg henrik von Wright—versed
in analytical philosophy. encouraged by my mentor ilkka heiskanen, i decided to
explore for my master’s thesis the politics of knowledge involved in the semiotic
theory of Julia Kristeva. For my Ph.d. thesis, i started looking for more social
scientific ideas. Ilkka proposed I read Pierre Bourdieu, whose work had started to
come out in Finnish. Intrigued by the social scientific perspective developed by
Bourdieu, especially in his study on the political ontology of martin heidegger,
i decided to send him a Ph.d. proposal. through my readings my previous
philosophical interests had turned into more empirical ones, and i composed a
Ph.D. project on the avant-garde journal Tel Quel (of which Kristeva had been
a member) in the 1960s in France. The journal was then, in the mid-1980s, little
known outside of France. Only a few doctoral dissertations existed, produced by
German linguists and literary theorists. to the surprise of everyone, including
myself, Bourdieu liked my proposal, and invited me to join his doctoral seminar at
the ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris starting from the Fall of
1986. The Academy of Finland—a publicly funded research institute—provided
me with a generous grant.
The fieldwork I did in Paris in French intellectual milieus and Bourdieu’s as
well as his associate’s Monique de Saint Martin’s teaching and advice enabled me
to develop a sociological perspective on Tel Quel and the French intelligentsia
of the 1960s. As a preliminary, however, I wrote in Finnish a nearly 800-page
Licenciate thesis (a “small” thesis preceding the Ph.D. thesis) on the history of Tel
Quel that I defended in 1987.
For the Ph.d. dissertation, i composed in French a more compact, sociological
analysis that scrutinized the links between Tel Quel, the social conditions of its
existence and the institutional context of the French intellectual field. Defended at
the University of Helsinki in 1991, the Ph.D. thesis (La constitution sociale d’une
avant-garde) had left out—because of size requirements—the analysis of the texts
and ideas produced that was included in the “small” thesis. The work at hand is a
rewriting of these parts that were not included in the Ph.d. thesis and its english
language expanded version (The Making of an Avant-Garde: Tel Quel 1994).
since those times my point of view has evolved into a more Weberian one.
This development is visible in my books that have come out since 1991/1994
(French Intellectual Nobility in 1996, The Politics of Embodiment in 2000 and