Transcript
On the condition that it's posthumous!
Claire Parnet"R" is "Resistance." As you said in a recent lecture, philosophy creates concepts, and whenever one creates, as you said in this lecture, one resists. Artists, filmmakers, musicians, mathematicians, philosophers all resist, but, what do they resist exactly? First, let's take this case by case: philosophers create concepts, but does science create concepts?
No. These are rather questions of ends, Claire. Because if we agree to reserve the word "concept" for philosophy, another word is needed then to designate scientific notions. One doesn't say of an artist either that he/she creates concepts. A painter or a musician doesn't create concepts, he/she creates something else. So, for science, one needs to find other words. Let's say, one could say, for example, a scientist is someone who creates functions, let's say. I'm not saying it's the best word: he/ she creates new functions, but creating functions occurs as much. . . Creating new functions. . . Einstein, Gallois, the great mathematicians, but not only the mathematicians, there are physicists, biologists, all create functions. So. . . how does this constitute resisting? How is creating resisting all that? It's clearer for the arts, because science is in a more ambiguous position, a bit like cinema: it is caught in so many problems of organization, funding, etc., that the portion of resistance... But great scientists also mount considerable resistance, if one thinks of Einstein, of many physicists and biologists today, it's obvious. They resist first against being forced in certain tempting directions and against the trends in popular opinion, that is, against the whole domain of imbecilic interrogation. They really have the strength to demand their own rhythm, they can't be forced to release just anything prematurely, just as one usually doesn't hurry an artist. No one has the right to hurry an artist. But I think that. . . That creating would be resistance because. . . I believe. . . Let me tell you, there is a writer I recently read who affected me greatly on this topic. I believe that one of the great motifs in art and thought is a certain "shame of being a man." I think that Primo Levi is that writer and artist who has expressed this most profoundly. He was able to speak of this "shame of being a man" in an extremely profound book because he wrote it following his return from the Nazi death camps. Levi said, "Yes, when I was freed, the dominant feeling was 'the shame of being a man."' It's a statement, I believe, that's at once quite splendid, very beautiful, and not at all abstract, it's quite concrete, "the shame of being a man." But it could be open to misinterpretations. It does not mean that we are all assassins, that we are all guilty, for example, all guilty of Nazism. Levi says it admirably: it doesn't mean that the executioners and the victims are all the same. . . You can't make us believe that. There are a lot of people who maintain, "Oh yes, we are all guilty". . . No, no, no, nothing of the sort. . . We cannot confuse the executioner with the victim. So "the shame of being a man" does not mean that we are all the same, that we are all compromised, etc. It means, I believe, several things. It's a very complex feeling, not a unified feeling. "The shame of being a man" means at once how could men do that-some men, that is, other than me- how could they do that? And second, how have I myself nonetheless taken sides? I didn't become an executioner, but I still took sides to have survived, and there is a certain shame in having survived in the place of certain friends who did not survive. So it's therefore an extremely composite feeling, "the shame of being a man," and I believe that at the basis of art, there is this idea or this very strong feeling of shame of being a man that results in art which liberates the life that men have imprisoned. Men never cease imprisoning life, they never cease killing life- "the shame of being a man." The artist is the one who liberates a life, a powerful life, a life that's more than personal, it's not his/her life.
Claire ParnetOk, so I guide you back toward the artist and resistance, that is, the role of the shame of being a man, art freeing life from this prison of shame, but it's something very different from sublimation. That is, art is not at all this. . . It's really a resistance. . .
No, not at all. . . It means ripping art from life, life's liberation, and that's not at all something abstract. What is a great character in a novel? A great character is not borrowed from the real and even inflated: Charlus is not Montesquiou. He's not even Montesquiou inflated by Proust's brilliant imagination. These are fantastic powers of action for life, fantastic powers of action for life, however badly it turns out. He has integrated worlds into a fictional character. It's a kind of giant, it's a kind of exaggeration in relation to life, but not an exaggeration in relation to art, since art is the production of these exaggerations, and it is by their mere existence that this is already resistance. Or, we can connect with the first theme "A," writing is always writing for animals, that is, not to them, but in their place, doing what animals can't, writing, freeing life, freeing life from prisons that men have created, and that's what resistance is. I don't know. . . That's obviously what artists do, and I mean there is no art that doesn't also liberate a power of action for life, there is no art of death, first of all.
Claire ParnetBut sometimes art doesn't suffice. Primo Levi ended up committing suicide much, much later.
He committed suicide. . . Ah yes, ah yes, he could no longer hold on, so he committed the suicide of his personal life. But, there are four pages or twelve pages or a hundred pages of Primo Levi that will remain, that will remain eternal resistances, so it happens this way. And it's even more. . . I am talking about "the shame of being a man," but it's not even in the grandiose sense of Primo Levi, you see? Because if one dares to say something of this sort, for each of us in daily life, there are tiny events that inspire in us this shame of being a man. We witness a scene in which someone has really been too vulgar, we don't make a big thing of it, but we are upset, upset for the other, we are upset for ourselves because we seem nearly to accept this. Here again, we almost make some sort of compromise. But if we protest, saying "what you're saying is base, shameful," a big drama gets made out of it, and we're caught, and we feel- it doesn't at all compare with Auschwitz- but even on this minuscule level, there is a small shame of being a man. If one doesn't feel that shame, there is no reason to create art. It's . . . Ok, I can't say anything else.
Claire ParnetBut when you create, precisely when you are an artist, do you feel these dangers all the time, dangers that are surrounding you, that are everywhere?
Yes, obviously, yes, in philosophy as well. It's what Nietzsche said, a philosophy that doesn't damage stupidity- damage stupidity, resist stupidity. But if philosophy did not exist- people act like "oh, philosophy, after all, it's good for after-dinner conversations." But if philosophy did not exist, we cannot guess the level of stupidity. Philosophy prevents stupidity from being as enormous as it would be were there no philosophy. That's the splendor of it, we have no idea what things would be like. Without art, what would the vulgarity of people be... So when we say "to create is to resist," it's effective, I mean. The world would not be what it is if not for art, people could not hold on any more. It's not that they read philosophy, Philosophy's mere existence prevents people from being as stupid and beastly as they would be without it.
Claire ParnetWhat do you think when people announce the death of thought, the death of cinema, the death of literature-does that seem like a joke to you?
There are no deaths, there are assassinations, quite simply. Perhaps cinema will be assassinated, quite possibly, but there is no death from natural causes, for a simple reason: as long as there would be nothing to grasp and take on the function of philosophy, philosophy will still have every reason to live on, and if something else takes on the function of philosophy, then I don't see at all how it could be anything but philosophy. If we say that philosophy consists of creating concepts, for example, and, through that, damaging and preventing stupidity, then how could philosophy die? It could be blocked, it could be censored, it could be assassinated, but it has a function, it is not going to die. The death of philosophy always seemed to me an imbecilic idea, it's an idiotic idea. It's not that I am attached to philosophy. . . I'm very pleased that it doesn't die, I don't even understand what this means, "the death of philosophy." It just seems to be a rather feeble idea, kind of simpering, just to have something to say, just a way of saying things change, and there's no more use. . . But, what's going to replace philosophy? What's going to create concepts? So someone might tell me: "You must not create any more concepts," and so, ok, et stupidity reign-fine, it's the idiots who want to do philosophy in. Who is going to create concepts? Information science? Advertising agents who have taken over the word "concept"? Fine, we will have advertising "concepts," which is the "concept" of a brand of noodles. They don't risk having much of a rivalry with philosophy because I don't think that the word "concept" is being used in the same way. But today advertising presents itself as philosophy's true rival since they tell us: we advertisers are inventing concepts. But, the "concept" proposed by information science, "concepts" by computers, is quite hilarious, what they call a "concept." So, we shouldn't be worried about it.
Claire ParnetCould we say that you, Félix, and Foucault form networks of concepts like networks of resistance, like a war machine against dominant modes of thought and commonplaces?
Yes, why not? It would be very nice if it were true, that would be very nice. In any case, the network is certainly the only. . . If one doesn't create a "school"- and these "schools" don't seem good at all- if one doesn't create a "school," there is only the regime of networks, of complicities. Of course, it's something that has existed in every period, what we call Romanticism, for example, German Romanticism, or Romanticism in general, this was a network. What we call Dadaism, it's a network. And I'm sure that there must be networks today as well.
Claire ParnetAre these networks of resistance?
By their very existence. The function of the network is to resist, and to create.
Claire ParnetFor example, you feel both famous and clandestine, this notion of clandestinity that you are fond of.
I don't consider myself at all famous, I don't consider myself clandestine. I would like to be imperceptible. But there are a lot of people who would like to be imperceptible. That doesn't at all mean that I'm not. . . Being imperceptible is fine because. . . But that's a question that's almost personal. What I want is to do my work, for people not to bother me and not make me waste time, yes, and at the same time, I want to see people, because I need to, like everybody else, I like people. There are a few people whom I like to see. But, when I see them, I don't want this to create the slightest problem, to have imperceptible relationships with imperceptible people, that's what is most beautiful in the world. You can say that we are all molecules, a molecular network.
Claire ParnetIs there a strategy in philosophy, for example, when you wrote your book on Leibniz, was it strategically that you wrote on Leibniz?
I suppose that depends on what the word "strategy" means. I assume that one doesn't write without a certain necessity. If there is no necessity to create a book, that is, a strongly felt necessity by the person writing the book, then it would be better not to do it. So when I wrote on Leibniz, it was necessary for me. Why was it necessary? Because a moment arrived for me- it would take too long to explain- to talk, not about Leibniz, but about the fold. And for the fold, it was at that time fundamentally linked to Leibniz. But I can say for each book that I wrote what the necessity was at each period.
Claire ParnetBut besides the grip of necessity that pushes you to write, I mean, your return to a philosopher as a return to history of philosophy after the cinema books and after books like A Thousand Plateaus and Antl-Oedlpus. Is there. . .
There was no return to a philosopher, which is why I previously answered your question quite correctly. I did not write a book on Leibniz, I only wrote a book on Leibniz because, for me, the moment had come to study what "a fold" was. I study the history of philosophy when I need to, that is, when I encounter and experience a notion that is itself already connected to a philosopher. When I got passionately involved with the notion of "expression," I wrote a book on Spinoza because Spinoza is a philosopher who raised the notion of "expression" to an extraordinarily high level. When I encountered on my own the notion of "the fold," it seemed to go without saying that it would be through Leibniz. Now it does happen that I encounter notions that are not already dedicated to a philosopher, so then I don't study the history of philosophy. But I see no difference between writing a book on the history of philosophy and a book of philosophy, so it's in that way that I follow my own path.