Conclusion

The conclusion brings together the different threads of the book to highlight the significant contributions of Lignes in the present moment. Whilst French politics has drifted ceaselessly to the right since the 1980s, some intellectuals have of late seemed to re-embrace Marxism and the radical left, Lignes helping this rejuvenation to a large degree. Lignes is described as having preserved two major strains of la pensée 68, a literary deconstruction similar to Jacques Derrida’s (though one more focused on the opaque and material nature of language than abstract, conceptual deconstruction), and a post-Althusserian Marxism. Politically, the review is shown to have consistently carried out a dual critique of liberalism and the extreme right, providing a coherent account of the rise of the FN and the growing crises of liberal capitalism in the new millennium. Along with the review’s new interest in feminism, gay rights and the environment, suggestions are made to the future lines of thought Lignes could pursue in coming years.

The Communism of Thought

Several important Lignes dossiers in the 1990s retraced the political activities of Robert Antelme, Dionys Mascolo and Maurice Blanchot in the 1950s and 1960s. This chapter restores the narrative of intellectual engagement traced by these significant collections and demonstrates the influence of these figures on the cultural politics and intellectual community of Lignes. Following their radicalisation during the French resistance, Antelme and Mascolo joined the French Communist Party after World War Two, participated in anti-colonial initiatives, recruited Maurice Blanchot to protest the return of Charles de Gaulle to power and the continuing Algerian War, and participated in the events of May 1968. Between Blanchot and Mascolo, two differing vectors of intellectual engagement, one more theoretical and literary and the other more stridently Marxist and materialist, are expounded. Lastly, the influence of Mascolo’s Le 14 Juillet, Blanchot’s Revue internationale and Philippe Sollers’ Tel Quel on Lignes is examined, and Michel Surya’s theorisation of the relationship between literature and politics is described with reference to Bernard Noël.

Combatting the Crisis

This chapter charts the political responses of Lignes in the new millennium, as securitisation methods, crises and states of exception replaced consensual liberalism as the dominant modes of governance after 9/11. Rather than the review’s normal pessimistic stance, a reshuffled editorial board instead emphasised the need to reconstruct active, political agency to resist the governments of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. An issue devoted to the militant Trotskyist David Rousset set the tone at the start of the new millennium, as Rousset’s experience in combatting concentration camps prompted the review to investigate the controversial use of migrant retention centres on French soil and theories of the State of Exception between Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. New routes to active political agency are then produced, firstly via Jacques Ranciere’s account of the eruption of new political voices and sans papiers activism. Lastly, Alain Badiou’s emphasis on extra-parliamentary politics the Idea of Communism is contrasted to Daniel Bensaïd’s stress on the need for a new, militant political party in the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections.

Power without Politics

Around 1996, the review re-orientated its political critique to examine how the globalisation of financial capitalism had hamstrung the progressive left. Michel Surya’s De la domination described capitalism as a form of domination that exercised a form of power without politics, and decried the moralisation of economics which suggested that as long as businesses behaved well, the global financial system itself was unimpeachable. The chapter demonstrates that Surya’s work was influenced by Jean Baudrillard, but that this latter thinker’s account of a now entirely virtual financial economy increasingly seemed inadequate, and the review turned back to Guy Debord for a more Marxist critique of the alienation produced by contemporary capitalism. After exploring this historical genealogy, the chapter explores the Lignes contributions of Groupe Krisis to see how this Frankfurt School-inspired group both predicted the 2008 financial crisis and provided an apocalyptic account of capitalism’s inevitable demise. Yet this account is also seen to be inherently de-politicising and foreclosing political action, and the chapter closes by contrasting it to the analyses of other Lignes contributors, such as Daniel Bensaïd, especially when discussing the EU treatment of Greece after the financial crisis.

French Thought between Liberalism and Fascism

Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot were two foundational influences on both Lignes and many of the review’s contributors. Yet, in the period after Lignes’ creation in 1987, the political engagements of both these figures in the 1930s were coming under increasingly scrutiny as they were suspected of fascist sympathies and anti-Semitic views. This chapter returns to the pre-war period to firstly delineate the review’s trenchant defence of Bataille’s political record, and the influence of Bataille on Lignes’ dual political program of anti-fascism and a critique of economic and political liberalism is subsequently delineated. Secondly, the significance of the review’s historic defence and recent exposé of the right-wing past of Blanchot is discussed in depth. The reception of these two thinkers is thus historicised, especially in the 1980s context of the anti-totalitarian ‘liberal moment’ and the growing anxieties of intellectual complicity with fascism following the Heidegger affair.

Excluded from Thought?

This chapter takes a more critical stance towards the review to examine its cultural conservatism and reticence towards identity politics. The review’s literary tastes, largely shaped by the legacies of Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, are shown to harbour a sense of artistic exceptionalism which often precludes representations of the everyday, and therefore also limits political solidarity with those usually defended by Lignes. Despite the racial or gendered exclusions it can produce, literary elitism or conservatism is in itself not necessarily criticised, but the hostility to mass culture inculcated by some aesthetic Marxist approaches is seen to be politically unhelpful in the present moment and other approaches to cultural politics in Lignes are sought. After Alain Badiou’s Circonstances 3 caused a row over anti-Semitism and the critique of Israel, it is suggested that the strategic essentialism of Judith Butler provides a more appropriate stance compared to Badiou’s strategic universalism. Lastly, Lignes’ virtual silence on gender and sexuality issues (a stance softening in recent issues) is contrasted to the Parti Socialiste’s progressive measures on parity, PACs and gay marriage.

Introduction

Lignes is introduced as the most useful review through which to provide a narrative of French intellectual culture and the preservation of French Theory (or la pensée 68) since the 1980s. After a brief introduction to both intellectuals and reviews, a history of the significant developments in French intellectual culture throughout the twentieth century is provided. The methodological approach to Lignes and its editor Michel Surya is then delineated, and the book is situated between intellectual, cultural history approaches and previous studies of periodical publications before a summary of the coming chapters is provided.

Breaking the Consensus

This chapter turns towards the political concerns of Lignes during its first series, largely focusing on changing immigration policies and the adoption of economic liberalism as the pensée unique of both the right and the left. It situates the early years of Lignes as dominated by the legacy of World War Two, as a rise in holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and racism is accompanied by a resurgence of the far-right and the Front National. Pierre-André Taguieff provided a useful analysis of heterophilic neo-racism early on, but, as Taguieff drifted towards the New Right and showed sympathy to Alain de Benoist, Étienne Balibar’s class based analysis of structural nationalism becomes favoured by the review instead. Turning its attention to the French left, Lignes is frustrated by the tightening of immigration policy suggested by changes to the nationality code, and also by the government’s support for the Gulf War. As the new social movements erupt in 1995, the review takes a firmer position on the side of the radical left, keen to foment social solidarities between the sans papiers and the unemployed, and to forge a more consistent critique of the economic liberalism now adopted by both the Parti Socialiste and the Rassemblement pour la République.

Immoral, Impure, Atheist Artists?

This chapter identifies the literary neo-Nietzschean critical ethos that defined the review from its opening issues, whilst also tracing how this ethos shifted in response to changes in the French social and political climate. The review’s progressive emphasis on anti-essentialist and post-foundational thought is contrasted to the return to Enlightenment thought, French values and communicational rationality proposed by Jürgen Habermas and Alain Finkielkraut. In contrast to the more abstract, conceptual emphasis of Derridean deconstruction, the review’s materialist approach to literary writing is demonstrated with particular reference to the works of Jean-Noël Vuarnet and Michel Surya. The review’s early, staunch secularism is then seen to become more tempered after scandals surrounding Islamic headscarves, laïcité, and the terrorist threats made towards Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen, Robert Redeker and Charlie Hebdo, as the review refuses to be drawn into outright condemnation of France’s stigmatised Muslim minority. Lastly, the review’s Nietzschean stress on amoral philosophy is seen to be more responsible than nihilistic when placed in the context of shifting social mores, especially regarding changing philosophical perspectives on paedophilia.