Transcript
Claire ParnetSo, "P" is "Professor." You are 64 years of age, and you have spent nearly 40 as a professor, first in French high schools, then in the university. And so this is the first year that you plan your weeks without teaching. So, first, do you miss your courses since you've said that you taught your courses with passion, so I wonder if you miss no longer teaching them?
No, not at all, not at all. It's true that courses were my life, a very important part of my life. I really, deeply enjoyed teaching my courses. But when my retirement arrived, I was quite happy since I was less inclined to teach. This question of courses is quite simple: I believe that courses are like- there are equivalents in other domains- a course is something requiring an enormous amount of preparation. I mean, it nearly corresponds to a recipe, like in so many activities: if you want five, ten minutes at most, of inspiration, one has to prepare so very much, to have this moment of. . . If you don't, well. . . So I realized that the more things went on- I always did that, I liked doing that a lot, I prepared a lot in order to reach these moments of inspiration- and the more things went on, the longer I had to prepare only to have my inspiration gradually diminished. So it was about time, and it didn't make me happy, not at all, since the courses were something I greatly enjoyed, but they became something I needed less. Now I have my writing which poses other kinds of problems, but I have no regrets, but I did love teaching enormously, yes.
Claire ParnetAnd, for example, when you say "prepare a lot," how much preparation time was it?
It's like anything, there are rehearsals for a class, one rehearses. It's like in theater, in popular songs, there are rehearsals, and if one hasn't rehearsed enough, there's no inspiration. In a course, it means having moments of inspiration, without which the course means nothing.
Claire ParnetYou don't mean that you rehearsed in front of your mirror?
Of course not, each activity has its modes of inspiration. But there is no word other than memorizing... Memorizing and managing to find that what one's saying is interesting. Obviously, if the speaker doesn't think what he's saying is interesting -and that doesn't go without saying, thinking that what one is saying is interesting, fascinating. And this isn't a form of vanity, it's not finding oneself interesting or fascinating, it's the subject matter that one is treating and handling that one has to find fascinating. And to do so, one sometimes has to truly whip oneself. The question isn't whether it's interesting, but of getting oneself stimulated to the point that one is able to speak about something with enthusiasm: that's what rehearsing is. So, I needed that less, undoubtedly. And then courses are something quite special, a course is a cube, it's a space-time, and so many things happen in a course. I like lectures much less, I never liked lectures because a lecture is too small a space-time. A course is something that stretches out from one week to the next. It's a space and a very, very special temporality. It has successive steps. It's not that one can redo or catch up when something doesn't go well, but there's an internal development in a course. And the people change from week to week, and the audience for a course is quite exciting.
Claire ParnetHere, we are going to start with the beginning. You were first a lycée professor. Do you have good memories of this?
Well, yes, because that doesn't mean anything since it occurred at a time when the lycée was not at all what the lycée has become. I understand. . . I think of young professors today who are demoralized by the lycées. I was a lycée professor shortly after the Llbératlon, when it was completely different.
Claire ParnetWhere were you?
I was in two cities, one I liked a lot, one I liked less. Amiens was the one I liked because it was a very free city, very open, whereas Orléans was much more severe. This was still a period when a philosophy professor was treated with a lot of indulgence, he tended to be forgiven a lot since he was a bit like the madman, the village idiot. And usually he could do whatever he wanted. I taught my students using a musical saw, since I had taken it up at the time, and everyone found it quite normal. Nowadays, I think that would no longer be possible in the lycées.
Claire ParnetWhat did you explain to them by using the musical saw? How did that function in your course?
I taught them curves, because the saw is a thing that, as you know, one had to curve the saw in order to obtain the sound from the curve, and these were quite moving curves, something that interested them.
Claire ParnetAlready it was about the infinite variation. . .
Yes, but I didn't only do that, I taught the baccalaureate program, I was a very conscientious professor.
Claire ParnetIt was there that you met Poperen, I think.
Yes, I knew Poperen quite well, but he traveled more than me, and stayed very little in Amiens. He had a little suitcase and a big alarm clock because he didn't like watches, and the first thing he did was to take out his clock. He taught with his big clock. I found him very charming.
Claire ParnetAnd who were your friends in the teachers' lounge, because when one is a student . . .
I liked the gymnastics professors a lot, but I don't recall very much. The teachers' lounge in the lycée must have changed a lot today as well, it was quite something.
Claire ParnetAs a student, one imagines the teachers' lounge as a mysterious and oppressive place.
No, it's the time when. . . there are all sorts of people there, solemn or jokers. But in fact, I didn't go there much.
Claire ParnetAfter Amiens and Orleans, you were in Paris at the Lycée Louis-Ie-Grand in the preparatory course, so can you recall any students you had that were remarkable or who didn't amount to much?
Oh, students who didn't amount to much? Who amounted to something? I don't really recall any longer. . . Yes, I do recall them. To my knowledge, they became professors, but none that I know of became government ministers. Someone became a police officer, but no, really there were none very special, they all went their own way, they were quite fine.
Claire ParnetThen there were the Sorbonne years of which one gets the impression that they correspond to your history of philosophy years. And then, came Vincennes which was an entirely crucial experience after the Sorbonne. Well, I am jumping here since Lyon came after the Sorbonne. First, were you happy to teach at the university after the lycée?
"Happy, happy"-it isn't really an appropriate word. It was simply a normal career. I had left the lycée; if I had gone back to the lycée, it wouldn't have been dramatic, it just would have been abnormal, a setback, so the way things worked out was normal, normal, no problem, and I have nothing to say about it.
Claire ParnetWell, for example, the university courses are differently prepared than the lycée courses.
Not for me, not at all.
Claire ParnetFor you, it was the same.
Exactly the same, I always taught my courses the same way.
Claire ParnetWere your lycée preparations as intense as your university preparations?
Of course, of course. In any case, one has to be absolutely imbued [with the material], one has to love what one is talking about, and that doesn't happen by itself, so one has to rehearse, prepare, go over things mentally, one has to find a gimmick. It's quite amusing that one has to find something like a door that one can't pass through from just any position.
Claire ParnetSo you prepared your courses exactly the same way at the lycée and at the university. It was prepared equally at the lycée as it was later at the university.
There was no difference in nature at all between the two kinds of courses. Yes, the same.
Claire ParnetSince we are discussing your university work, you can talk about your doctoral thesis. When did you defend it?
I had already written several books before [my defense], I believe, in order not to do it, that is, it's a frequent reaction. I was working a lot, and I realized I had to have the thesis, that I had to do this, that it was quite urgent. So I made a maximum effort, and finally I presented it among one of the very first defenses following May '68.
Claire ParnetIn 1969?
In 1969? Yes, it must have been in 1969, among the very first. This created a very privileged situation for me because the committee was obsessed with only one thing, how to arrange the defense in order to avoid the student groups roving through the Sorbonne. They were quite afraid, since it was right after the return to school following the May '68 events, so they didn't know what would happen. I recall the chairman telling me, "Ok, there are two possibilities: either we have your defense on the ground floor, where there is one advantage, there are two exits, so the committee could get out quickly, but the disadvantage is that, since it's on the ground floor, that's where the students are more likely to be roving around. Or we could go to the 2nd floor, with the advantage that students go upstairs less frequently, but the disadvantage of only one entrance and one exit, so if something were to happen, we might not be able to get out." So that, when I defended my thesis, I could never meet the gaze of the committee chairman since he was staring at the door to see if someone was going to come in, to see if the students were coming in.
Claire ParnetWho was the committee chairman?
Ah, I'm not saying his name, it's a secret.
Claire ParnetI could make you confess.
No, especially given the chairman's agony at the time, and also he was very charming. But the chairman was more upset than I was, It's rare for a committee to be more disturbed about the defense than the candidate in this completely exceptional situation.
Claire ParnetYou were probably better known at that point than most of the committee members.
Oh, no, I wasn't all that well known.
Claire ParnetThe defense was on Dlfference and Repetltlon.
Yes.
Claire ParnetWell, you were already very well known for your works on Proust and Nietzsche. So we can move on to Vincennes, unless you have something to say about Lyon after the Sorbonne. . .
No, no, no. . . Vincennes, there was indeed a change, you are right, not in nature of the preparation of my courses, in what I call my preparation, my rehearsals for a course, nor in the style of a course. In fact, from Vincennes onward, I no longer had a student audience. This was what was so splendid about Vincennes. It wasn't the case in all the universities. They were getting back to normal. At Vincennes, at least in philosophy -it wasn't true for all of Vincennes- there was a completely new kind of audience, which was no longer made up of students, which was a mixture of all ages, people with all kinds of professional activities, including psychiatric hospitals, even patients. It was perhaps the most colorful audience and finding a mysterious unity at Vincennes. That is, it was at once the most diverse and the most coherent as a function of, even because of, Vincennes. Vincennes gave this disparate crowd a kind of unity. And for me, it was an audience. . . Later, had I been appointed elsewhere- I subsequently spent my whole teaching career at Vincennes- but had I been forced later to move to another faculté, I would have completely lost my bearings. When I visited other schools after that, it seemed like I was traveling back in time, landing back in the middle of the 19th century. So at Vincennes, I spoke before a mixed audience, young painters, people undergoing psychiatric treatment, musicians, addicts, young architects, people from very different countries, with waves of visitors that changed each year. I recall suddenly 5 or 6 Australians who arrived I don't know why, and the next year they were gone. The Japanese were constantly there, each year, and there were South Americans, Blacks... It was an invaluable audience and a fantastic audience.
Claire ParnetBecause, for the first time, you were speaking to non-philosophers, that is, this practice. . .
It was, I believe, fully philosophy in its own right, addressed equally to philosophers and to non-philosophers, exactly like painting is addressed to painters and non-painters, or music not being limited to music specialists. It's the same music, the same Berg or the same Beethoven addressed equally to people that are not specialists in music and to people who are musicians. Philosophy, for me, must be strictly the same, it is addressed as much to non- philosophers as to philosophers without changing it. Philosophy, when it's addressed to non-philosophers, that doesn't mean one has to make it simple, no more than in music. . . One doesn't make Beethoven simpler for non-specialists. It's the same in philosophy, exactly the same. For me, philosophy has always had this double audition, a non-philosophical audition as much as a philosophical one. And if these two don't exist together, then there is nothing. Without these, philosophy would be worth nothing.
Claire ParnetNow, could you explain a subtle distinction? In lectures, there are non- philosophers, but you hate lectures.
Yes, I hate lectures because they're artificial and also because of the before and the after of lectures. Finally, as much as I like teaching courses, which is one way of speaking, so I hate speaking equally. Speaking really seems like an activity for. . . So, lectures-talking before, talking after, etc., and all that doesn't possess at all the purity of a course. And then, the lecture, there's a circus quality in lectures- courses also have their circus quality as well, but at least it's a circus that amuses me and tends to be more involved. In a lecture, there is a phony side, and the people who go to them. . . Well, I don't know, but I just don't like lectures, I don't like giving talks: they're too tense, too much like prostitution, too stressed, too I don't know. That doesn't seem interesting to me at all.
Claire ParnetLet's come back to your venerated audience at Vincennes that was so mixed, and in those Vincennes years, with madmen, addicts, as you said, who made wild interventions, took the floor, never, never did any of that ever seem to bother you. All of these interventions in the middle of your course and you continued to lecture, and none of the interventions were objections. That is, the maglstral aspect of the course remained.
You need to find another word, since this expression- cours maglstral-is imposed by the university, but we really have to find another word. That is, I see two conceptions of a course: the first is one in which the object of the course is to incite rather immediate reactions from the audience by means of questions and the need for interruptions. This is an entire trend, a particular conception of a course. On the other hand, there is the so- called maglstral conception, with one formal person who speaks. It's not that I prefer one or the other, I just had no choice, I only had experience with the second form, the so-called maglstral conception. So a different word is needed because, almost at the limit, it's more like a kind of musical conception of a course. For me, one doesn't interrupt music, whether good or bad, or one interrupts if it's really bad, but usually one doesn't interrupt music, whereas one can easily interrupt spoken words. So, what does this musical conception of a course mean? I think it means two things, based on my experience, although I don't mean that this is the best conception, this is just how I see things. Considering how I know my audiences to be, those that have been my audiences, I tell myself, there is always someone who doesn't understand on the spot, and then there is something like a delayed effect, a bit like in music. At one moment, you don't understand a movement, and then three minutes later, it becomes clear, or ten minutes later: something happened in the meantime. So with these delayed effects in a course, someone can certainly understand nothing at one point, and ten minutes later, it becomes clear, there's a kind of retroactive effect. So if he had already interrupted- that's why I find interruptions so stupid, or even certain questions people can ask. You ask a question because you're in the midst of not understanding. . . well, you would be better off waiting.
Claire ParnetSo these interruptions, you found them stupid because people just didn't wait?
Yes, that's the first aspect of it: what someone doesn't understand, there is the possibility that he'll understand it afterwards. The best students were those who asked questions the following week. I had a system toward the end, I don't know who invented it, it was them, they would pass me a little note from one week to the next -a practice I appreciated-saying that I had to go back over a point. So they had waited. "You have to go back over this point"- I didn't do it, it wasn't important, but there was this kind of communication. There is the second important point in my conception of a course: since a course I taught was two and one-half hours in length, no one could listen that long. So, for me, a course was always something that was not destined to be understood in its totality. A course is a kind of matter in movement, really matter in movement, which is how it is musical, and in which each person, each group, or each student at the limit takes from it what suits him/her. A bad course is one that quite literally suits no one, but of course, one can't expect everything to suit just anyone. So, people have to wait, because at the limit, it's obvious that some people nearly fall asleep, and then, by some mystery, they wake up at the moments that concern them. No law can foresee what is going to concern someone. It's not even the subjects that are interesting, but something else. A course entails as much emotion as intelligence, and if there is no emotion, then there is nothing, it's pointless. So, it's not a question of following everything or of listening to everything. It's rather a question of keeping a watch so that you grasp what suits you, what suits you personally. That's why for me a varied audience is so crucially important, because I sense clearly that the centers of interest shift and jump from one person to another, and that creates a kind of splendid fabric, a texture, yes. So there you have it.
Claire ParnetWell, that's the audience, but for this "concert," you invented the expression "pop philosophy" and "pop philosopher."
Yes, that's what I meant.
Claire ParnetYes, but one could say that your appearance, like Foucault's, was something very special, I mean, your hat, your fingernails, your voice. Were you conscious that there was this kind of mythification by your students around this appearance, like they had mythified Foucault, as they. . . mythified the voice of Wahl. First, were you conscious of having this appearance and then of having this special voice?
Oh yes, certainly, since the voice in a course- let's say that if philosophy- we've talked about this already, it seems to me-mobilizes and treats concepts, then it's normal that there be a vocalization of concepts in a course, just like there is a written style of concepts. Philosophers aren't people who write without searching for or elaborating a style. It's like artists, and they are artists. So, a course implies that one vocalizes, even it implies, yes- I speak German poorly-a kind of Sprechgesang, clearly, obviously. So, if on top of that there are mythifications- did you see his nails?, etc. - that kind of thing occurs to all professors, already even in grade school. What's more important is the relationship between the voice and the concept.
Claire ParnetTo make you happy, your hat was like Piaf's black dress. . . There is a very precise allure.
Well, my point of honor is that I never wore it for that reason, so if it produced that effect, so much the better, very good. There are always phenomena. . .
Claire ParnetIs that a part of your role as professor?
Is that a part of my role as professor? No, that isn't part of my role as professor, it's a supplement. What a professor's role is, is what I said about prior rehearsal and about inspiration in the moment, that's the professor's role.
Claire ParnetYou never wanted either a "school," or disciples, and that corresponds to something very deep in you, this refusal of disciples. . .
I don't refuse at all. Generally it works both ways: no one wants to be my disciple any more than I want to have any. A "school" is awful for a very simple reason: a "school" takes a lot of time, one turns into an administrator. Consider philosophers who have their own "school": the Wittgensteinians, it's a "school." Ok, it's not much fun. The Heideggerians, it's a "school." First it implies some terrible scores being settled, it implies exclusivity, it implies scheduling, it implies an entire administration, a "school" has to be run. I saw the rivalries between French Heideggerians led by Beaufret and the Belgian Heideggerians led by De Waelhens, a real knife fight. It was abominable, at least for me, without any interest. I think of other reasons. I mean, even on the level of ambition, being the leader of a "school." Just look at Lacan... Lacan was the leader of a "school" as well. But it's awful, it creates so many worries. One has to become Machiavellian to lead it all, and then for myself, I despise that. For me, the "school" is the opposite of a movement. A simple example: Surrealism was a "school," with scores settled, trials, exclusions, etc. [André] Breton created a "school." Dada was a movement. If I had an ideal- and I don't claim to have succeeded- it would be to participate in a movement. Yes, fine. . . To be in a movement, yes, but to be even the leader of a "school" does not seem to me to be an enviable fate. A movement, yes. . . The ideal is finally. . . It's not at all to have guaranteed and signed notions or to have disciples repeating them. For me, there are two important things: the relationship that one can have with students means to teach them that they must be happy with their solitude. They keep saying: a little communication, we feel isolated, we're so alone, etc., and that's why they want "schools." They can only achieve something as a result of their solitude, so it's to teach them the benefit of their solitude, it's to reconcile them with their solitude. That was my role as a professor. And then, the second aspect is a bit the same: I wouldn't want to introduce notions that would constitute a "school," I'd want to introduce notions or concepts that would make it in the everyday arena. I don't mean these would become something ordinary, but that they would become commonly accepted ideas, namely ideas that one could handle in different ways. That could only occur if I addressed this to other solitary people who will twist these notions in their own way, to use them as they need them. So all of these are notions of movements and not notions of "schools."
Claire ParnetAnd do you think that, in today's university, the era of great professors has passed, things don't seem to be going very well in the universities?
Well, I don't have many ideas about that since I no longer have a place there. I left at a time that was terrifying, and I couldn't understand how professors could continue teaching. That is, they'd become managers. The university, and the current political trend is clear: the university will cease being a place of research, entirely consonant with the forced entry of disciplines that have nothing to do with university disciplines. My dream would be for universities to remain research sites and that, alongside the universities, technical schools would multiply, where they would teach accounting, information science, etc., but with universities intervening only, even in accounting and information science, on the level of research. And there could be all the agreements possible between a technical school and the university, with a school sending its students to pursue research courses. But once they introduced technical school subjects into the university, the university is done for, it's no longer a research site, and one gets increasingly eaten up by these management hassles, the vast number of meetings at the university. That's why I said I don't see how professors can prepare a course, so that I assume that they do the same one every year, or they just no longer do any preparation. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps they continue to prepare them, so much the better. But still, the tendency seems to be the disappearance of research at the university, the rise of non-creative disciplines in the university, those that are not research disciplines, and that's called the adaptation of the university to the job market. It's not the role of the university to adapt to the job market. It's the role of technical schools.