Leslie Kaplan - Les outils

Deus nao é casado, Invenção da linguagem e democracia

Leslie Kaplan — 2014-01-20T16:32:00Z

Penso que a interrogação a respeito das palavras, a
respeito da linguagem,
faz parte da vida democrática, da vida em democracia
a linguagem é o primeiro bem comum
a prática da linguagem é uma prática do comum, da vida em comum
e, assim,
a linguagem é o primeiro ameaçado, ameaçado sem parar,
por qualquer questionamento do comum, da vida compartilhada
por tudo o que visa imobilizá-la
torná-la rígida
empobrecê-la
esvaziá-la
por tudo o que visa dela fazer um mero instrumento de comunicação
achatado
uniforme
unilateral
consensual
suprimindo-lhe a sua dimensão polissêmica, e sua dimensão
de apelo

Esta questão é a preocupação de qualquer escritor,
quaisquer
que sejam suas posições políticas, ou sua visão do mundo

Tomarei como exemplos dois escritores
“reacionários” no plano político, Flaubert e
Dostoievski, os quais brigaram cada um a seu modo
contra todas as formas da linguagem codificada,
convencional, plana, uniforme :
– Flaubert e seu Dicionário das idéias prontas
lembro-lhes as primeiras palavras de seu dicionário :
ABELARD (Abelardo), ABRICOTS (damascos, abricós), ABSALON (Absalão), ABSINTHE (absinto), ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE (Academia Francesa), ACCIDENT (acidente), ACCOUCHEMENT (parto), ACHILLE (Aquiles), ACTRICES (atrizes)...

esta lista mostra que o princípio ativo é : qualquer
palavra pode tornar-se uma idéia convencional
Flaubert persegue na idéia pronta a estupidez e na
estupidez alguma coisa, digamos, de “voluntária”
no sentido da “servidão voluntária” de La Boétie

mas precisemos, por exemplo, na letra S, fim :
“SOUPIR (Suspiro) : Deve ser exalado perto de uma mulher
SPIRITUALISME (Espiritualismo) : O melhor sistema de filosofia
STOÏCISME (Estoicismo) : É impossível
STUART, Maria : Apiedar-se de sua sorte
SUFFRAGE UNIVERSEL (Sufrágio universal) : Último termo da ciência
política
SUICIDE (Suicídio) : Prova de covardia
SYBARITES (Sibaritas) : Bradar contra
SYPHILLIS (Sífilis) : Todo mundo é mais ou menos afetado por ela”

o que impressiona de imediato, claro, é o vazio dessas definições
mas também seu caráter autoritário :
muitos infinitivos, trata-se da ordem do pensar, e o tom é peremptório,
cortante
isto é, a idéia pronta, sua tolice oca, acompanha
a proibição de pensar
e através do Dicionário vê-se esboçar um personagem,
o “burguês” satisfeito, que pensa e fala conforme
acumula os pensamentos e as palavras são objetos para arrumar no
seu armário
e que, com seu ar descontraído, está disposto a reprimir
ferozmente a Comuna...

– Dostoievski e sua guerra contra “a idéia”
Dostoievski assinala os impasses de um pensamento que se
pretende “moderno”, o pensamento do tudo se equivale, do
“se Deus não existe, tudo é permitido”...
e relaciona esta forma de pensar com a perda do
apelo ao outro, o rompimento da promessa, a traição
ele mostra a violência escondida na generalização,
que atribui ao outro um determinado lugar, que o encerra
numa definição irrefutável
ele opõe a palavra viva à “a idéia”
ao que ele chama “2+2=4”,
isto é, a exatidão, a generalidade científica ou pseudo-científica, esmagadora
incontornável, diante da qual só resta
inclinar-se,
mas que deixa passar a vida viva, o detalhe
“há muito tempo que não nascemos mais de pais
vivos, nascemos da ideia”,
é o que ele nos diz nas Notas do subsolo
e ele relaciona, concretamente nesta narrativa, esta
forma de pensar através de generalidades e um assassinato real, a
traição de uma criança

então : o vazio está longe de ser nada
o vazio é agressivo, assassino
é ocupar o lugar
é “eu sou eu e cala a boca”

ver Baudelaire
lembrar-se que o primeiro poema de Flores do mal,
endereçamento Ao leitor, começa com a palavra “asneira”

A asneira, o erro, o pecado, a mesquinharia
Ocupam nossos espíritos e trabalham nossos corpos,
E alimentamos nossos queridos remorsos
Como os mendigos nutrem seus vermes.

Mas entre os chacais, as panteras, os parasitas,
Os macacos, os escorpiões, os abutres, as serpentes,
Os monstros esganiçados, uivantes, rosnantes, rastejantes,
Na galeria infame dos nossos vícios

Há um mais feio, mais malvado, mais imundo !
Embora ele não manifeste grandes gestos ou grandes gritos,
De bom grado fará da terra um bagaço
E num bocejo engolirá o mundo ;

É o Tédio ! o olho carregado por um choro involuntário,
Ele sonha com cadafalsos fumando seu houka.
Tu o conheces, leitor, este monstro delicado,
– Hipócrita leitor, – meu semelhante, – meu irmão.

mas, o que é o Tédio ?
o que me impressiona, é que Baudelaire coloca o tédio em relação com o ódio
um ódio sem desejo ativo
um ódio passivo, sonhador, enfumaçado
estático, imóvel
inerte
e feroz
“De bom grado, ele fará da terra um bagaço/E num bocejo engolirá o mundo”
este Tédio baudeleriano parece-me muito atual
combina com uma sociedade onde reina a idéia pronta, o consensual, o convencional,
uma sociedade de eus isolados
sem diferença, sem outro uma afirmação de si sem conteúdo
puro meio para ocupar o lugar
por nada, simplesmente para ocupá-lo, para impedir o outro de
pensar
e eventualmente para excluí-lo
pensar tautológico : Sarkozy (abril 2009) : “o importante
numa democracia é ser reeleito”..
.
voltarei a essa questão
gostaria de lembrar que Hannah Arendt em sua
análise do Sistema totalitário deu um destino particular
ao clichê
lembrar-se de sua reflexão sobre o que ela chama em
Eichmann em Jerusalém “os clichês euforizantes”,
empregados por Eichmann, após Hitler ou Himmler,
“a batalha do destino para o povo alemão”
“são batalhas que as gerações futuras
não terão mais que conduzir”
“nós sabemos que o que esperamos de você é
sobre-humano : você precisará ser sobrehumanamente
desumano”
Arendt não se satisfaz em repertoriar, sublinhar,
essas palavras esvaziadas de sentido, ela mostra de forma mais ampla
as relações da burocracia, do totalitarismo e da
linguagem
Ver Raoul Hilberg em O extermínio dos Judeus
da Europa, “O extermínio dos Judeus começou
quando em 1933 a primeira definição do não ariano foi
inscrita pelo primeiro funcionário...”
ver também o estudo da “LTR”, a língua do Terceiro
Reich, de Victor Klemperer
ora,
e isto continua a análise da “idéia pronta” em
Flaubert e da “idéia” em Dostoievski,
é importante notar que a maneira de esvaziar as
palavras, de roubar-lhes o seu sentido, o sentido, qualquer sentido, não se
encontra somente nas palavras de ordem
(como num regime totalitário)
mas também na sociedade de consumo
onde tudo se torna “produto”
onde as palavras tornam-se produtos
por exemplo, no texto “as palavras e as coisas ” a gente
se pergunta o que é melhor, mais vantajoso, o incesto ou
a catarata
onde é promovida uma trivialização,
o não importa o quê, a opinião descomprometida,
o puro eu, eu, eu :
que ocupa a frente da cena,
que é um novo ópio do povo
como um eu pleno, vivo, não existe, o que está
na frente da cena é um eu que se afirma
somente “eu”
oco, vazio
a questão do clichê, da idéia pronta, da convenção
do consensual,
está no centro da reflexão sobre linguagem e democracia,
linguagem e burocracia,
linguagem morta, linguagem viva
daí a importância de conceber a linguagem como uma
criação continuada,
contínua uma criação associada ao encontro, à surpresa, ao
espanto
oposta ao que chamei “a categoria, o compartimento e o caso”
categorizar pessoas, colocá-las em compartimentos, torná-las
casos
ver em Febre , a análise da palavra “dossiê”, das palavras
“cumprir ordens”
retomada entre outros do processo Maurice Papon
que a respeito de Sylvain Mohlo, disse “eu não conheço
este dossiê”
recusa, generalização, banalização, estigmatização
Judeu, Judeu ? Judeu ! Judeu sujo
há uma relação necessária entre invenção da linguagem e
democracia
a democracia, é a recusa da designação de lugares
a recusa da recondução do mesmo
ao contrário a democracia combina com abertura,
a circulação dos lugares, das situações, das palavras, das
idéias
a “democracia” é o regime que, como diz Claude
Lefort, “institui-se e mantém-se na dissolução
das certezas”
ou ainda, “uma sociedade confrontada à contradição
geral que libera o desaparecimento de um fundamento da
ordem social” (a respeito de Tocqueville),
ou ainda, um regime que se edificou “aceitando a
divisão social, o conflito, a heterogeneidade dos costumes e
das opiniões” (a respeito de Arendt).

Mas que tudo isso seja considerado uma tensão, um conflito
contínuos, ininterruptos
sem fim
não se pode terminar com eles, ter a última palavra
(pode-se querer...)
lembremos de Humpty Dumpty, o personagem de cançoneta,
o ovão convencido de si mesmo, arrogante, em Alice no
país das maravilhas : the question is : who is the máster, that's
all, a questão é : quem é o mestre, só
isso, a questão é : quem é o mestre, ponto, isso é tudo
ser o mestre é ter a última palavra
e não esqueçamos que após o enunciado desta suposta
verdade Humpty Dumpty, esse ovão, cai e se quebra
em mil pedaços...
ou seja, há uma relação entre democracia
e aceitação do conflito
e portanto uma certa aceitação da angústia
em outras palavras : a linguagem é o lugar da certeza e da
incerteza
o concreto não é nada se ele não for nomeado
(“isso” = nada)
mas quando nomeado, é reduzido
uma cadeira não é esta cadeira não é esta cadeira
azul não é esta cadeira azul no meu quarto...
a palavra é a morte da coisa
e no entanto a coisa vive na, pela, a palavra
a linguagem, para retomar Hegel, é “a vida que carrega a
morte e nela se mantém”
neste sentido a linguagem é o lugar da angústia

ao contrário, o clichê, a idéia pronta, a convenção, o
consenso é uma forma de se livrar da
angústia
isto é do conflito
apesar talvez das aparências, é o lugar do medo
do medo do conflito
e para começar do conflito consigo mesmo
o clichê é uma forma de impedir o outro na língua
e, para começar, o outro em si mesmo, em seus próprios
conflitos, contradições.

Volto a Baudelaire e ao tédio
“o Tédio” este monstro cheio de ódio
é o não-desejo
o não desejo da língua, do pensamento na língua
o não-desejo pelo outro na língua
a recusa de encontrar na língua e no pensamento
alguém
que por sua vez fale
que coloque em
que por sua vez fale
que coloque em questão o que se pensa
que questione
que seja diferente
a recusa da surpresa, de ser surpreendido
e este outro, esta diferença, supõe um conflito possível
na língua
no pensamento
e também no seu próprio pensamento
o que supõe reconhecer que se é dividido
que não se está forçosamente de acordo consigo mesmo
mas que há um conflito a resolver
um trabalho a fazer
portanto uma angústia
para pensar juntos estes opostos.

Não se deve subestimar a possibilidade sempre
presente de uma redução da linguagem, de uma vontade
de empobrecimento da linguagem,
de uma linguagem em mão única,
a possibilidade sempre presente de uma civilização do clichê
que reconhece que a angústia é a “parte divina
do homem” (Heitor de Macedo)
e que busca “fazer coisas com a angústia”
(Rilke)
a literatura faz parte deste trabalho
a literatura : tentar manter o outro na língua
através do que chamei “o detalhe, o pulo e o vínculo”
– o detalhe, não o anedótico
os detalhes estão vivos, eles têm sentido
(não o sentido, mas sentido, um sentido)
o detalhe é um estilhaço do real
enquanto o anedótico gira no vazio, rumina o trivial,
como o clichê que ocupa o lugar
o detalhe opõe-se ao mesmo tempo ao anedótico
e ao dogma (“a idéia” dostoieviskiana)
– o pulo, para retomar Kafka que define o escrever como
“pular para fora da cadeia dos assassinos”,
isto é, na ficção, no possível
o colocar em relação, fazer relação
relacionar coisas aparentemente sem
relação
o amor em suma, e para começar o amor pela vida, já
que “a vida é única”.



traduit par Heliete Karam

Writing moves the sky

Leslie Kaplan — 2014-01-20T16:29:00Z

First of all I would like to thank the New School, and Edith Kurzweil who invited me to this eighth William Phillips lecture and gave me the opportunity to come to the prestigious New School.
My father Harold Kaplan was a great friend of William Phillips, who published his first short story, The Mohammedans, in Partisan Review, in 1943, and later his Paris Letters, and many other pieces, and I feel I always heard about Partisan review and William Phillips at home.

I was born in Brooklyn, in 1943, but brought up in Paris. Before the war, my father was studying French literature at the university of Chicago where he had a scholarship. He started working for the radio in 1942, in The Voice of America (La voix de l'Amérique), with André Breton and Pierre Lazareff, and afterwards was sent to Algiers, where he was when I was born.
Then, at the Liberation, he decided to stay in France. He had my mother come with me, I was two years old, and he worked with the American embassy in Paris for twelve years. My two brothers were born in Paris. I went to a French school and then to college in France, and I stayed in France after my parents left on other missions. And so I write in French, I am a French writer, of American origin, even if I have always thought, without really knowing what that meant, that underneath my French, English continued to exist.

My interest in language probably came in part from my family environment. My two parents were second generation Americans, their own parents were Jews who had fled the tsarist Empire. The journey of my grand parents, both on my father's and my mother's side, I found described in a book that I read as a grown up, World of our fathers, of Irving Howe, which was very important for me. I also discovered that my great grand uncle, Jacob Denison, was a writer in Yiddish, and had founded an orphanage in Warsaw after the First World War. He is buried with his two friends Ans-ki and Jacob Peretz, in the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw, miraculously preserved. Two years ago when I went to Poland for the first time with one of my plays that was being put on there I read some verse of the Dibbouk over his tomb.
My two parents loved literature and ideas, and the house was full of books, novels, poetry as well as political essays. When I was a child my father was attaché culturel and he had an important role as a go-between for American and French cultures.
But the fact that I was bilingual also played a great role, being a little American in Paris, and having two languages, one for home and one for school. And there also was a lost language, Yiddish, since my mother spoke Yiddish with her mother when we visited her in the summer in New Jersey, when the family went back to the United States on « home leave ».
So the relationship between words and things, the act of naming, was not a matter of course, it was questioned. This is probably how the arbitrary character of language but also the playfulness contained in words could strike me all the more.
I have told this story in a fragmentary autobiography, Mon Amérique commence en Pologne, My America begins in Poland.
Strangeness of language, of words, of meaning. But writing always seemed the thing to do, to be a matter of course.

Then, the Sixties : the movement of those years. I studied philosophy and history, passionately, and I took part in the student movement, in the movement against the war in Algeria, against the war in Vietnam, and afterwards, I was influenced by the Cultural Revolution in China, of which I knew nothing in reality. I joined the French ranks of maoïsts because of the idea of an alliance between manual and intellectual workers. I took part in what was called the « mouvement d'établissement » and I went to work in a factory in January 1968. I lived through the May 68 events in an occupied factory, and I continued to work in a factory for about two years afterwards.

The experience in the factory was a radical one. It became the substance of my first book, L'excès-l'usine. And it questioned how to write. I did not want to write like Zola, I wanted the factory to appear as something astonishing, banal and at the same time surprising, shocking.

My experience at the factory put every thing into perspective. And first of all, though I wasn't aware of it at the time, language.
Language, the most common of things, what men and women have, at the beginning, in common.
I mean that EVERY THING could be, had to be, thought differently. Words for the most ordinary things no longer seemed to the point, effective.
You work, really ? You eat, really ? You live, really ?
In order to say anything at all, first you had to invent.

You could make a speech, but that didn't account for anything-except for the ability to make a speech.

When I started to write this experience, I tried to render physical sensations : I wanted to write what was outside, but also what one had inside, in one's head. This was in opposition with naturalism and determinism, where things and beings, are supposedly in their rightful place, correspond to their definition.
It was only afterwards that I realized how « the factory » and the world « under the sky of the factory », questioned everything, contaminated everything.
And, one had to acknowledge it, this could empty experience, make experience something empty.
Take the word pace, in French : cadence, I think of the word because I recently read an article on factories in China. What does it mean to keep the pace on the assembly line. Those words mean nothing, or almost. Becoming the pace of the assembly line would be more correct. You can also talk of an infernal pace, “No more keeping an infernal pace !” was a slogan in May 68.
Alienation of experience, how a real experience becomes unreal, how language becomes false, a lie : This question belongs to everybody, which is why a naturalistic vision, where words are reduced to a social, a psychological, etc., origin, has never suited me.
This question still exists in my work today in different forms, of course : novel, theatre, poetry, essays.
And it seems to me the question of the « factory » is always connected with a research both on language and on madness.

Do we speak/ think/ write, do we talk to each other as if we were in a factory ? Or do we do so otherwise ?
Is a sentence open or closed ?
Do we live inside language as an alienated consumer or as a free man/woman ?
Do we assemble our sentences together without thinking, as if we were making manufactured objects ?
Do we address a person or nobody at all ?
Do we want to crush the person we are talking to with words ?
Do we want to have the last word ?
Are we present or absent to ourselves ?

And when we speak of « madness », what are we talking about ?
Is it a place, a situation, a way of behaving which are « mad » ?
Is language mad, has language become mad ?
How can we fight, with what forms can we fight the attempts to make everything trivial, to promote anecdotes, clichés that are empty and aggressive, even murderous, clichés that could be the present form of the « opium of the people » ?

The experience I had of psychoanalysis also was a decisive one. A passionate interest for the Unconscious has never left me, and I have always tried to find ways of writing that take the Unconscious into account. I have written a novel, The Psychoanalyst, and I have tried to work out the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature.

Psychoanalysis and literature are of course two experiences with language, with words, which take words seriously and explore them in all directions. Psychoanalysis separated from psychiatry with Freud's discovery of the Unconscious, and with the method of free association that Freud invented : not an a priori explanation involving some ready-made knowledge about the patient, but a form of listening, available, « floating » says Freud, where something surprising, unexpected, emerges, precisely the Unconscious. In the same way literature is not made with generalities, explanations, proclamations, but with details, surprising details that can appear insignificant but which question the usual and routine ways of thinking, ready made speeches, all different forms of stupidity, of « accepted ideas » (Flaubert), all « frozen words » (Rabelais).
For a writer as for a psychoanalyst, language is alive, always addressed, even if it is « to no one », and it has multiple levels.
As a writer, I am interested in what is real, what comes as a surprise, and what questions. As I have said, I try to place myself aside from naturalism, determinism. The character is not a « case ». In my novel The psychoanalyst, the patients are « heroes » : heroes of thinking, who confront the conflict between their desire for truth and their passion for ignorance (Lacan), like Oedipus, and like every one. The psychoanalyst is not the one who knows every thing, but a man or a woman who searches with his patient. And in the book, there is the psychoanalyst Simon Scop, and his patients, but there is also Eva, who is the second most important character, who comes from the French banlieue, the poor forgotten suburbs, and who interprets her life with the help of Kafka.
The way I see it, psychoanalysis and literature share a democratic vision of words, not a technocratic one, outside all dogma. And in this sense I agree with Nabokov who made fun of psychoanalysis, and claimed seeing no interest in a practice that consists in applying Greek myths on the genitalia of a certain number of people… And literature is not made with good feelings or good intentions. But psychoanalysis and literature aim, through the attention they pay to words each in their way, to do away with forms of alienation. That is, to make things more open, to help us be more available, more present, to the world, to encounters, to chance, as Freud says. They are both ways of practicing astonishment.
Psychoanalysis and literature have in common their refusal of categories, compartments, cases.
Taking words seriously, every word, and the words of every one, is a way of asserting, and maintaining, that language is the first and primordial social link, it is a way of being heedful of drifts toward forms of totalitarianism that are always possible. Bureaucracy, situation of neglect, of « desolation » (Arendt).
But it is also a way of being heedful of the display of hollow individualism, of trivialisation, of the reign of the anecdote : whereas a detail is a condensation, a flash of reality and points to a meaning, not the meaning, but a meaning, the anecdote promotes empty words, aims to occupy space for nothing, just occupy for occupying. In this sense, psychoanalysis and literature take into account the person as a singular entity, but are each in their own way, the opposite of an individualism that brandishes empty words.
And each in their own way, they have to do with art : they go with awakening, thinking, working « one by one » : a psychoanalysis is an encounter, and it is always a particular person, at a particular moment of his or her life, who encounters a work of art. They are two different forms of experiencing what is the exception, not the rule (Jean Luc Godard). Two forms of experiencing singularity, that recognize that anguish is far from being the evil that has to be done away with, as in the dream of a pill that would finish all mental suffering, but is on the contrary what makes us human, « the divine part of man (Heitor de Macedo). Two ways which we try, as Rilke put it, to « create things out of anguish ».

So, in a sense, at the outset of my desire to write, there was something that questioned what is « normal », what is supposed to be normal and banal, and that reveals itself as not at all normal, but on the contrary, strange, even « mad ».
This double questioning, on language and on madness, continues to drive me to write.

Recently I was rereading for the millionth time Stavroguine's confession in The Demons (The Possessed) and I noticed a detail I had never seen. It's at the beginning of the chapter, Nicolas Stavroguine arrives in the monastery and asks to see the starets with whom he has a rendez-vous. A monk takes him there, through corridors and corridors, and this monk, who is impressed, intimidated by Stavroguine, who is a prince, the son of Varvara Petrovna, etc., chatters endlessly, asking Stavroguine all sorts of questions. Stavroguine stays silent, lost in thought, or maybe irritated by the questions. Then, writes Dostoïevski, the monk, « receiving no answer, showed himself more and more respectful ». And there, I stopped reading. « The monk, receiving no answer, showed himself more and more respectful ». In one line all condensed, Dostoïevski gives us the obsequiousness of the monk, the contemptuous indifference of Stavroguine, and the relation between the two, the link, the dynamics of the link : the cringing respect _ voluntary bondage as La Boëtie put it _ brought forth by absence of answer, silence.
Why am I telling you this detail ? This tiny detail in the entire story of The Demons ?T Well exactly because it's a detail, a crumb, a flash of reality which I hadn't noticed before, which can be the mark of a detail, but which, once you do notice it, reveals itself as obvious, with enormous implications. You can see the mechanics of authority fall into place, you can see them function, you can see the Super-ego, obscene and ferocious as Lacan puts it, you can see Big Brother.
The detail is a condensation of reality, it is the very substance of literature. I believe it is what we learn by reading Dostoïevski (and of course many others).
No ideas but in things … as said William Carlos Williams.

But if I speak to you of Dostoïevski, an author who is part of my making, it is also because reading him, though I did not formulate this right away, the reader is confronted with characters who speak all the time. Literature is a way of staging thought, the search for a point of view on the world. And with Dostoïvski, that goes through speech, dialogue and monologue.
Inside the dostoïvskian narrative, there is always a staging of speech, a constant drama of words themselves. And this makes obvious the importance of language and speech, the dangers of a way of talking that is seductive or murderous, the possibility of empty speech. All this is always present in Dostoïevski's novels. The question : “what are words ?” is always there, at work. It's presence questions the text, the reader, the spectator.
(As it is said in Hamlet : )
_What are you reading my Lord ?
_Words, words, words.
In this respect, the Notes from the underground is an exemplary text. The narrator develops a long monologue where he is forever going back over his hatred and his despair. « I am a sick man… I am a mean man… I don't even know at all what is my sickness… ». He can't extricate himself. This first part of the story is terrifying, and light is shed on it when we read the second part of his story, which is no less terrifying.
In this second part the narrator tells of an event that took place before : he committed a murder, he sent back a very young woman, a child, to a brothel. We then understand the first part : he has done something that is irreparable, and now without a relationship to another, his life no longer has any firm footing, and he is himself under the curse of emptiness, of absence of meaning, of absurdity.
As you well know, Dostoïevski confronted the question of modernity and of anguish that goes with it, the question of « If God doesn't exist, then all is allowed ». But, that is the point, he kept the question open, by refusing a cynical solution. Is it because he believed in God ? I would rather say : because he believed in the human fact of speech, of language, in the necessity of acknowledging the other who is speaking, with whom you are speaking. Even while following the twists and turns of how one can try to deny this fact, to avoid acknowledging the other, denying him, killing him, and, first of all, precisely, paradoxically, with words.

What are words, what is language and speech, what are the grounds for a true way of speaking, a way that does not fall into emptiness : this question is not new, Aesop already said that the tongue can be the best and the worst of things.
But in our modern times it is rendered more acute by the fact that the market is more and more powerful. I will of course recall Mallarmé for whom literature was a way of restoring their meaning to words, a purer meaning, to the words of the tribe, « donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu », of preventing words from becoming « des pièces de monnaie usées qu'on se repasse en silence », worn out coins that we pass on back and forth in silence.
Our time certainly pushes this question further still, by emptying words of their meaning and by promoting what I have called a « civilization of clichés », where words have become advertising slogans and are used to sell anything and everything.

Clichés, certainties, « received ideas » have of course always existed. Flaubert even made a comical Dictionary with them, in which every word, any word, can become a cliché. Flaubert begins with Abelard, Apricot, Absalom, Academy…
Beneath their apparent bourgeois good-nature, and their quiet emptiness, these « received ideas » are ways of knocking out the other with peremptory statements, given as obvious facts, so called neutral, in fact very aggressive.
But in our time things go very far.
Society is always threatened by the impoverishment of language, by simplification, by codes, by conventional, conformist ways of thinking.
Under a “soft” appearance, this is a prescribed way thinking, it's a way of forbidding us to think in any other way.
Thinking with “received ideas”, with “clichés” is a way of getting rid of the anguish that is part of the human condition, part of language : where there is language, there is conflict, there is certainty and uncertainty… and confronting uncertainty, taking upon oneself to deal with the infinite of words, to deal with anxiety, is always more difficult than having closed certainties.
In our world, language is often considered a simple, neutral, tool, made for communication. We erase the gap between the person who is speaking, who is stating something, and what this person is saying, the statement itself, we erase the fact that words have multiple meanings, and are always addressed. This double fact is the nature of language. What is promoted is a false idea, the notion of simple, plain, communication, that goes through or not, and if it doesn't it's a purely technical problem.
This is a way of seeing that comes from advertising : a smooth world, filled with living dead, with zombies.
Words become products, slogans, wrapped up in cellophane.
We live in a world where speech in public places is constantly degraded, where advertisement and television have an enormous impact on culture, where we face, as Serge Daney, a French critic and essayist, put it, the “marketing of the individual and loss of experience”. Talk shows, reality shows, “live” broadcast, narcissism, ours is a self-centered world, where the disclosing of little secrets without any importance, anecdotes, trivia are presented as culture.
Advertisement is a self-referring system, what advertisement advertises for, first of all, is for advertisement itself. For a world that is beautiful, good, true, genuine, sincere and authentic… and clean, a world made at the snap of a finger, with no relation at all to time or space.
Our world promises something “unlimited without any commitment whatsoever”, as I read recently in an add for a cell phone subscription : empty all-mightiness.
For advertisement there are only two options : either you have the product, the object, or you don't, the world is binary, it is divided in two… and the rest of the world equals zero, advertisement goes with a latent but total aggressiveness, it does away with the Other and others.
That is why it is urgent to question language, speech, speech in public places, how speech is treated.

I will quote William Carlos Williams, in his forward to Allen Ginsberg's Howl :
“Every man is defeated, a man if he be a man is not defeated”.
But then, who is this man who is not defeated.

My hero : Kafka, who wrote in his Journal (1922) : “To write is to jump outside the line of the assassins.”
Example of this prodigious jump : “one morning after a troubled sleep Gregor Samsa woke up changed into an enormous vermin”.
Here is a jump, a jump into fiction, which we can appreciate maybe all the more if we remember that Kafka's father had insulted his son's great friend, the actor Löwy, who played in Yiddish, and had called him precisely “vermin”. Kafka takes this insult, this word, and with his particular genius, transforms it, makes a real insect of it, something the reader considers with dread, and, of course, pleasure.
This sentence of Kafka's has always seemed to me to be the very definition of what writing is, and more specifically, the writing of fiction.
“To write is to jump outside the line of the assassins” : the assassins, contrary to what one might believe, are those who stay in line, who follow the usual way of things, who repeat and start over again the bad life as it goes.
What do they assassinate ?
The possible, every thing that could begin, tear away, change.
Kafka says that writing, the act of writing, is putting a distance with this usual way of things, the distance of a jump.
He says, to write is to jump outside, to jump elsewhere. That implies something you can stand on, and words are that, they allow you to stop and grasp where you come from, where this world comes from, this old world of assassins.
If you only say again, repeat, start over… you never extricate yourself, where is the point.
Jumping is an act, an act of thought, a breaking, it's not a simple accumulation, a linear process, you continue, you continue, and things change by themselves. No. You have to work loose, to move.

I would like to read a few extracts of my plays, they deal with language, our society, madness…

All my life I have been a woman

all my life I've been a woman
a woman
all my life
does that sentence seem
odd to me
no
sometimes
sometimes it seems odd to me
all my life
I've been
a woman

how can you talk that way
all your life you've been a woman
how can you say that

I'm saying it, that's all

but you don't realize
how can you say that
calmly

it's not sure I'm saying it calmly

you're saying it
calmly
if not you'd be climbing up a wall

a wall ?

yes a wall
you can't say that
« all my life I've been a woman »

I can't say it ? I can't say it ?
I'm saying it
all my life I've been a woman
I'm saying it

if you say it
if you say it

O.K., then if I say it

if you say it
nobody will understand you

it's impossible to understand ?

I said One cannot understand you

I don't understand

what don't you understand

what you are saying
I don't understand what you are saying

I think you don't understand
yourself

true
I don't understand myself
all my life I've been a woman
what a huge sentence

huge ?
huge ?
what do you mean, huge ?

that sentence has such potential
so many possibilities
that sentence includes
I'm saying : includes
so many other sentences

O.K.
but
a blender
liberates a woman

oh no
not that
no

yes yes yes
a blender
liberates a woman

I'm saying all my life I've been a woman
that sentence is huge
huge
huge
and you
your answer is
a blender

yes
a blender
that's right
a blender

I'm leaving
you're too limited

leaving me ?
why ?

I'm leaving you
you're too limited
I am in front of a huge sentence
huge
all my life I've been a woman

I just wanted to talk to you about blenders

blender
schmender

don't you think household items
are important ?

I'm in front of that sentence
all my life I've been a woman
I'm in front of it
got it ?
in front ?

aren't you interested
in carrot scrapers ?
carrot scrapers
have changed my life

have they changed your life
or have they changed life ?

they have changed my life
the vegetables are perfectly scraped
I save money
I save time

I'm talking about a huge
sentence
in front of which I am
all my life I've been a woman

all the little vegetables are respected in their diversity
potatoes
carrots
leeks
fenel
egg plants
zucchinis
turnips
all those little veggies

you're the vegetable

the blender also changed my life
a simple purée is much more
than just a simple purée

you're really limited
purée

to blend
to crunch
to cut
to slice
to press
and juices
ah juices

what about juices

they are infinite

trivial
you are trivial
I talk to you about a huge sentence
all my life I've been a woman
and you answer with the infinity
of juices

apples
pears
bananas
strawberries
ah strawberries
citrus fruits
oranges
lemons
fruits
vegetables
mixtures
infinite
infinite
infinite

trivial
trivial
trivial
all my life I've been a woman
that's something else for infinity
that's something else

and soups

what about soups

broth and soup
soup and broth
in the singular
in the plural
infinite liquid
liquid infinite
the liquid penetrates you
fills you up
flows into your intestines
flows in your veins
becomes your blood
your identity
tell me which soup you eat
and I'll tell you who you are
it warms you up
that soup
it cools you too
sometimes
gaspacho
cucumber soup
eat your soup
I'm enthusiastic

soup is total

is it sexual ?

of course it's sexual
it's total
it's sexual
proof being
when you don't like soup
you've got a problem
and
who says problem
says sex
all problems
are sexual
at bottom

masturbation is sexual

masturbation
or mastication ?

masturbation
is sexual
mastication as well
fellatio
sodomy
sexual
to go in
to go out
to go up
to go down
to run
to stop
to pant
to dream
to dream is totally sexual
when you say, I'm dreaming
or : Pinch me, I'm dreaming
everything is sexual
even masturbation
is sexual
it's totally sexual
to pinch
to shake
to tickle
to hit
to tremble
to shiver
to die

…………………………………………………………………………………

Louise, she is crazy

(translated by Amelia Parenteau)

there are those days when everything seems flat
flattened
a puddle

everybody feels that

I don't care about everybody
I'm talking about myself
there are those days
when I feel so insignificant
nearly nothing

everybody feels that

I don't care about everybody
I'm talking about myself
for me, there are those days
where I say to myself, the proof
that a women doesn't amount to much
is that God isn't married

what do you mean ? what do you mean ?

the proof that a women doesn't amount to much
is that God isn't married

nonsense
you are really depressed

of course I'm depressed
how can you not be depressed
is God married
yes or no ?

maybe He's married
maybe He's not married
God does what He wants<br/>

God-is-not-married
if God were married everybody would know about it
God is not married

He isn't ?<br/>

God is self-reliant

if you get married
you aren't self-reliant ?
I don't see God as single

you don't ?
if you get married, you depend on someone
God doesn't depend on anyone

God is love

of course
God is love

God is love
He depends on those He loves

on those He loves
or on those who love Him ?

on those who love Him
and on those He loves
God needs us

He needs us ?
He is all-powerful
He doesn't need anybody

God is all-powerful
but He isn't crazy

God isn't crazy ?
maybe He's crazy
maybe He's not crazy
God does what He wants

do you give Him
a capital H ?

of course
I give Him
a capital H

God isn't crazy
God speaks to me

He speaks to you ? He speaks to you ?
sure He does

God does speak to me
I hear Him

what do you hear ?
in what language does He speak to you ?

He speaks to me in a very beautiful language
with exquisite words

exquisite words ? exquisite words ?
you make me laugh
you give me a good laugh
in what language does He speak to you ?

a better language than yours, in any case

God speaks Latin
everybody knows that

He speaks to me
He speaks to me specifically
He says, My little chicken, My chickie

……………………………………………………………………………..

Move the sky

I am in love but I prefer breaking our relationship
That way he's not the one who leaves

I prefer staying with some one I don't love
That way I don't suffer if he goes away

I prefer living with someone I despise
That way I'm not afraid he doesn't love me

I prefer ruining my life
That way I don't regret anything

I prefer fretting my heart out
That way I accuse no one

I prefer saying nothing
That way I stay with my longing

I prefer failing
That way I don't make anyone jealous

I prefer looking awful
That way I have my revenge

I prefer being ugly
That way my mother hates me

I prefer being stupid
That way I disappoint

I prefer making mistakes
That way I reassure every one

I prefer being stupid
That way, it's over, I'm stupid

I prefer living with a sick person
That way I know I'm in good health

I prefer working with fools
That way you can see where the ideas come from

I prefer hiding
That way nobody can find me

I prefer breaking every thing
that way there is nothing left

I prefer living on nothing
that way I keep every thing

I prefer giving orders
That way I am sure I am free

I prefer hurting
That way I can see hate in the other

I prefer humiliating
That way I am the queen

I prefer destroying the other
That way I am safe

I prefer nothing goes on
That way I'm not afraid something will happen

+++

people always say monkeys look like human beings
I think it's silly

yes but
frankly
frankly

what, frankly

that little monkey
he is the exact copy of my brother

you exaggerate

not at all
I don't exaggerate at all

how can you say that
a monkey is a monkey
O.K., he's cute
but nevertheless, he's a monkey

do you see his ears ?

how could I not see them ?
that's all you can see

well, my brother has the same

the same ?

the same ears
I'm telling you
r/>
it's not because you think
I'm saying because you think
they have the same ears
that there is a real likeness
a true likeness
a deep likeness

the face is the same, too
all creased, crumpled, worn
when my brother was a baby
my mother left him with me all the time
I was so annoyed

he was all creased ?

yes all creased
all crumpled
he looked like a little old guy
the monkey looks just like that

no, it's not the same thing
we are human beings
absolutely not the same thing

that might not be true

of course it's true
you can't compare

every body compares

to compare is not scientific
a monkey is limited, a limited being

limited ? limited ?
you make me laugh
have you seen Nenette
the way she wipes the widow
crr crr crr
she takes a Kleenex, she wipes the window
crr crr crr
and that little monkey
look at him
look how delicate he is
how graceful
he plays
he hides

you ‘re talking rubbish
you say “he plays”, “he hides”
you are projecting, projecting

I am not projecting
I am watching
He is very concentrated
he plays he hides
he wants to find out
he explores
his forehead is all creased from paying attention

bullshit
he has creases, his skin is creased, that's all
you know there are nations
and not just any
the great Chinese nation for example
who eat monkeys

that's disgusting

why disgusting ?
they are animals

it's disgusting
it's as if you were eating
I don't know
it's as if you were eating
an ancestor

an ancestor ?
an ancestor ?

do we go back to monkeys, yes or no
you are not going to repudiate Darwin, evolution
science, progress
I will never eat a monkey

don't say a monkey
you should say : eat some monkey
use a partitive, a partitive preposition
some cake, some pie
it's not a personal problem
between you and the monkey

look, a monkey is too near
you cant' t eat it

no
you have to eat it
it's obvious
you have to
you have to eat monkey
otherwise

otherwise ?

otherwise you are going to mix every thing up
you are going to lose your marks

we are in times of confusion
where marks…
where marks….

where marks ?

marks are unsteady
wobbly
they disappear
nobody knows where they stand

in any case
a monkey is a monkey

have you seen his hands ?

of course I've seen his hands

he has a thumb

yes, it's true
he has a thumb

and his feet

what about his feet

you're not going to call them paws
paws are coarse
thick
animal

O.K, OK. They look like feet

so ?

so what ?

come on, doesn't it make you feel nervous ?
dizzy ?
do you see a difference ?

I see little difference
very little difference
that's why you have to eat him

lecture given at the New School for social research in New York, on November 5th 2013, extracts read with Amelia Parenteau

from 3 plays

Leslie Kaplan — 2014-01-10T16:25:00Z

All my life I have been a woman

all my life I've been a woman
a woman
all my life
does that sentence seem
odd to me
no
sometimes
sometimes it seems odd to me
all my life
I've been
a woman

how can you talk that way
all your life you've been a woman
how can you say that

I'm saying it, that's all

but you don't realize
how can you say that
calmly

it's not sure I'm saying it calmly

you're saying it
calmly
if not you'd be climbing up a wall

a wall ?

yes a wall
you can't say that
« all my life I've been a woman »

I can't say it ? I can't say it ?
I'm saying it
all my life I've been a woman
I'm saying it

if you say it
if you say it

O.K., then if I say it

if you say it
nobody will understand you

it's impossible to understand ?

I said One cannot understand you

I don't understand

what don't you understand

what you are saying
I don't understand what you are saying

I think you don't understand
yourself

true
I don't understand myself
all my life I've been a woman
what a huge sentence

huge ?
huge ?
what do you mean, huge ?

that sentence has such potential
so many possibilities
that sentence includes
I'm saying : includes
so many other sentences

O.K.
but
a blender
liberates a woman

oh no
not that
no

yes yes yes
a blender
liberates a woman

I'm saying all my life I've been a woman
that sentence is huge
huge
huge
and you
your answer is
a blender

yes
a blender
that's right
a blender

I'm leaving
you're too limited

leaving me ?
why ?

I'm leaving you
you're too limited
I am in front of a huge sentence
huge
all my life I've been a woman

I just wanted to talk to you about blenders

blender
schmender

don't you think household items
are important ?

I'm in front of that sentence
all my life I've been a woman
I'm in front of it
got it ?
in front ?

aren't you interested
in carrot scrapers ?
carrot scrapers
have changed my life

have they changed your life
or have they changed life ?

they have changed my life
the vegetables are perfectly scraped
I save money
I save time

I'm talking about a huge
sentence
in front of which I am
all my life I've been a woman

all the little vegetables are respected in their diversity
potatoes
carrots
leeks
fenel
egg plants
zucchinis
turnips
all those little veggies

you're the vegetable

the blender also changed my life
a simple purée is much more
than just a simple purée

you're really limited
purée

to blend
to crunch
to cut
to slice
to press
and juices
ah juices

what about juices

they are infinite

trivial
you are trivial
I talk to you about a huge sentence
all my life I've been a woman
and you answer with the infinity
of juices

apples
pears
bananas
strawberries
ah strawberries
citrus fruits
oranges
lemons
fruits
vegetables
mixtures
infinite
infinite
infinite

trivial
trivial
trivial
all my life I've been a woman
that's something else for infinity
that's something else

and soups

what about soups

broth and soup
soup and broth
in the singular
in the plural
infinite liquid
liquid infinite
the liquid penetrates you
fills you up
flows into your intestines
flows in your veins
becomes your blood
your identity
tell me which soup you eat
and I'll tell you who you are
it warms you up
that soup
it cools you too
sometimes
gaspacho
cucumber soup
eat your soup
I'm enthusiastic

soup is total

is it sexual ?

of course it's sexual
it's total
it's sexual
proof being
when you don't like soup
you've got a problem
and
who says problem
says sex
all problems
are sexual
at bottom

masturbation is sexual

masturbation
or mastication ?

masturbation
is sexual
mastication as well
fellatio
sodomy
sexual
to go in
to go out
to go up
to go down
to run
to stop
to pant
to dream
to dream is totally sexual
when you say, I'm dreaming
or : Pinch me, I'm dreaming
everything is sexual
even masturbation
is sexual
it's totally sexual
to pinch
to shake
to tickle
to hit
to tremble
to shiver
to die

…………………………………………………………………………………

Louise, she is crazy

(translated by Amelia Parenteau)

there are those days when everything seems flat
flattened
a puddle

everybody feels that

I don't care about everybody
I'm talking about myself
there are those days
when I feel so insignificant
nearly nothing

everybody feels that

I don't care about everybody
I'm talking about myself
for me, there are those days
where I say to myself, the proof
that a women doesn't amount to much
is that God isn't married

what do you mean ? what do you mean ?

the proof that a women doesn't amount to much
is that God isn't married

nonsense
you are really depressed

of course I'm depressed
how can you not be depressed
is God married
yes or no ?

maybe He's married
maybe He's not married
God does what He wants<br/>

God-is-not-married
if God were married everybody would know about it
God is not married

He isn't ?<br/>

God is self-reliant

if you get married
you aren't self-reliant ?
I don't see God as single

you don't ?
if you get married, you depend on someone
God doesn't depend on anyone

God is love

of course
God is love

God is love
He depends on those He loves

on those He loves
or on those who love Him ?

on those who love Him
and on those He loves
God needs us

He needs us ?
He is all-powerful
He doesn't need anybody

God is all-powerful
but He isn't crazy

God isn't crazy ?
maybe He's crazy
maybe He's not crazy
God does what He wants

do you give Him
a capital H ?

of course
I give Him
a capital H

God isn't crazy
God speaks to me

He speaks to you ? He speaks to you ?
sure He does

God does speak to me
I hear Him

what do you hear ?
in what language does He speak to you ?

He speaks to me in a very beautiful language
with exquisite words

exquisite words ? exquisite words ?
you make me laugh
you give me a good laugh
in what language does He speak to you ?

a better language than yours, in any case

God speaks Latin
everybody knows that

He speaks to me
He speaks to me specifically
He says, My little chicken, My chickie

……………………………………………………………………………..

Move the sky

I am in love but I prefer breaking our relationship
That way he's not the one who leaves

I prefer staying with some one I don't love
That way I don't suffer if he goes away

I prefer living with someone I despise
That way I'm not afraid he doesn't love me

I prefer ruining my life
That way I don't regret anything

I prefer fretting my heart out
That way I accuse no one

I prefer saying nothing
That way I stay with my longing

I prefer failing
That way I don't make anyone jealous

I prefer looking awful
That way I have my revenge

I prefer being ugly
That way my mother hates me

I prefer being stupid
That way I disappoint

I prefer making mistakes
That way I reassure every one

I prefer being stupid
That way, it's over, I'm stupid

I prefer living with a sick person
That way I know I'm in good health

I prefer working with fools
That way you can see where the ideas come from

I prefer hiding
That way nobody can find me

I prefer breaking every thing
that way there is nothing left

I prefer living on nothing
that way I keep every thing

I prefer giving orders
That way I am sure I am free

I prefer hurting
That way I can see hate in the other

I prefer humiliating
That way I am the queen

I prefer destroying the other
That way I am safe

I prefer nothing goes on
That way I'm not afraid something will happen

+++

people always say monkeys look like human beings
I think it's silly

yes but
frankly
frankly

what, frankly

that little monkey
he is the exact copy of my brother

you exaggerate

not at all
I don't exaggerate at all

how can you say that
a monkey is a monkey
O.K., he's cute
but nevertheless, he's a monkey

do you see his ears ?

how could I not see them ?
that's all you can see

well, my brother has the same

the same ?

the same ears
I'm telling you
r/>
it's not because you think
I'm saying because you think
they have the same ears
that there is a real likeness
a true likeness
a deep likeness

the face is the same, too
all creased, crumpled, worn
when my brother was a baby
my mother left him with me all the time
I was so annoyed

he was all creased ?

yes all creased
all crumpled
he looked like a little old guy
the monkey looks just like that

no, it's not the same thing
we are human beings
absolutely not the same thing

that might not be true

of course it's true
you can't compare

every body compares

to compare is not scientific
a monkey is limited, a limited being

limited ? limited ?
you make me laugh
have you seen Nenette
the way she wipes the widow
crr crr crr
she takes a Kleenex, she wipes the window
crr crr crr
and that little monkey
look at him
look how delicate he is
how graceful
he plays
he hides

you ‘re talking rubbish
you say “he plays”, “he hides”
you are projecting, projecting

I am not projecting
I am watching
He is very concentrated
he plays he hides
he wants to find out
he explores
his forehead is all creased from paying attention

bullshit
he has creases, his skin is creased, that's all
you know there are nations
and not just any
the great Chinese nation for example
who eat monkeys

that's disgusting

why disgusting ?
they are animals

it's disgusting
it's as if you were eating
I don't know
it's as if you were eating
an ancestor

an ancestor ?
an ancestor ?

do we go back to monkeys, yes or no
you are not going to repudiate Darwin, evolution
science, progress
I will never eat a monkey

don't say a monkey
you should say : eat some monkey
use a partitive, a partitive preposition
some cake, some pie
it's not a personal problem
between you and the monkey

look, a monkey is too near
you cant' t eat it

no
you have to eat it
it's obvious
you have to
you have to eat monkey
otherwise

otherwise ?

otherwise you are going to mix every thing up
you are going to lose your marks

we are in times of confusion
where marks…
where marks….

where marks ?

marks are unsteady
wobbly
they disappear
nobody knows where they stand

in any case
a monkey is a monkey

have you seen his hands ?

of course I've seen his hands

he has a thumb

yes, it's true
he has a thumb

and his feet

what about his feet

you're not going to call them paws
paws are coarse
thick
animal

O.K, OK. They look like feet

so ?

so what ?

come on, doesn't it make you feel nervous ?
dizzy ?
do you see a difference ?

I see little difference
very little difference
that's why you have to eat him

extracts read with Amelia Parenteau at the New School for social research in New York, on November 5th 2013,

Luisa è pazza

Leslie Kaplan — 2013-03-03T16:24:00Z

mi hai tradita

cosa ? cosa ?
ti ho tradita ?

perfettamente
mi hai tradita
perfettamente

in che senso ?

mi hai tradita
mi hai preso le parole
le hai distorte
le hai capovolte
le hai svuotate
le hai appiattite

ma cosa ? quali parole ?

tutte le mie parole
le parole che ti ho dato
ne hai fatto poltiglia
mi hai preso le parole
ne hai fatto non so cosa
ne hai fatto frasi
discorsi
un bla bla

ma quali parole ?
le parole sono di tutti

hai preso le mie parole
quelle mie

le tue parole ? quelle tue ?
i tuoi segreti ?
ti ho preso i segreti ?

hai preso le mie parole
tutte le parole
tutte le mie parole
tutto quello che ti ho dato
l'hai preso
hai tradito la mia fiducia

ma di che parli ?

parlo del parlare
ecco di che parlo
sai molto bene di cosa parlo
ti parlo
e quello che dico
tu non lo senti

non lo sento
o non lo capisco ?

non lo senti
non lo capisci
vai a vanvera

a vanvera ? a vanvera ?
in che senso ?

le mie parole, tu le prendi
le utilizzi
le deform
i
le dai ad altri
le fai circolare
senza chiedermelo

per esempio

no no no
nessun esempio
metti insieme le mie parole
le ridicolizzi
le stravolgi

non capisco

io ti dico, Vedi
e tu mi chiedi,
Cosa devo vedere

tu mi hai detto, Vedi ?

ti dico, Vedi
è chiaro
Vedi
Senti

che cosa dici
non capisco

« Vedi »
« Senti »
è semplice

vedere, sentire
non è la stessa cosa
cosa dici

ti ho detto, Vedi
te l'ho detto ieri
e mi hai detto
Cosa devo vedere ?
Non c'è nulla da vedere
non senti
noncapisci

ti ho detto, « Cosa devo vedere ?
non c'è niente da vedere »
tutto qua

mi hai detto, Cosa devo vedere ?
io sono lì, davanti a te
ti dico, Vedi
tu mi dici « Cosa devo vedere ?
non c'è niente da vedere »
io sono lì, davanti a te
sono lì, piantata
e tu, tu non mi vedi,
non mi senti

non ti vedo
o non ti sento
sii precisa
per una volta nella vita
tenta di essere precisa
le parole hanno un senso, in fondo

tu non mi vedi
non mi senti
me ne sto lì davanti a te
e mi attraversi con lo sguardo
non esisto

si parlava di Luisa
Luisa va dappertutto
non vede nulla
non vede nessuno

Luisa, Luisa è pazza

Luisa, Luisa è pazza
compra di tutto
non riesce a fermarsi
nulla la può fermare
lo dice lei, dice,
non v'è ragione di fermarsi

ma è vero
non v'è ragione
di fermarsi

e allora, così
compri tutto ?

certo
compro tutto

non compri
quello
che ti serve ?

che mi serve ?
e che c'entra ?

ma come, che c'entra
ti serve una cosa
ti manca qualcosa
la compri

per niente
non compro affatto
perché mi manca qualcosa

ma
allora
perché

compro perché vedo
qualcosa che mi piace

sciocchezze
sono sciocchezze

ma certo
sono sciocchezze

lascia perdere
non ci arrivi

a cosa non arrivo

non ci arriviamo

ma cosa

comprare
non comprare
questo

è quello che dice Luisa

dice cosa

lei dice, non ci arrivo

Luisa è pazza
lascia perdere
comprare
non comprare
non hai alcun principio
compri un costume da bagno
ti ci vuole una settimana
lo vedi
torni a guardarlo
te lo provi
ti informi
ti ci vuole un settimana

è difficile, il costume da bagno

Louise, she's crazy

Leslie Kaplan — 2013-02-17T16:22:00Z

you betrayed me

what ? what ?
I betrayed you ?

absolutely
you betrayed me
absolutely

how so ?

you betrayed me
you took my words
you twisted them you turned them around
over and over you turned them inside out
you emptied them
you flattened them

but what ? which words ?

all my words
the words i gave you
you made them into a mush
you took my words
you did something with them you made a mess of them
you made flowery sentences out of them
speeches
blahblahblah

but which words ?
words belong to everybody

you took my own words
my words

your words ? your own words ?
your secrets ?
I took your secrets ?

you took my words
all the words
all my words
everything i gave you
you took
you betrayed my trust

what are you talking about ?

I'm talking to you about talking
that's what I'm talking to you about
you know exactly what I'm talking about
I'm talking to you
and what I'm saying
you're not hearing

I'm not hearing it
or I'm not understanding it ?

you're not hearing it
you're not understanding it
you're missing the point

the point ? the point ?
what point ?

my words you take them
you use them
you distort them
you give them to others
you spread them around
without asking me

for example

no no no
no examples
you pile up my words
you ridicule them
you twist them

I don't understand

I say to you, You see
and you ask me,
What am I supposed to see

you said to me, You see ?

I say to you, You see
it's clear
You see
You hear

what are you saying
I don't understand

“You see”
“You hear”
it's simple

to see, to hear
it's not the same
you're not making sense

I said to you, You see
I said that to you yesterday
and you said to me
What am I supposed to see ?
There's nothing to see
you don't hear
you don't understand

I said to you, “What am I supposed to see ?
There's nothing to see”
that's all

you said to me, What am I supposed to see ?
I'm right here in front of you
I say to you, You see
you say to me, “What am I supposed to see ?
There's nothing to see”
I'm right here, in front of you
I am just standing there
and you, you don't see me
you don't hear me

I don't see you
or I don't hear you
be specific
for once in your life
try to be specific
words have precise meanings, after all

you don't see me
you don't hear me
I am here in front of you
you see through me
I don't exist

we were talking about Louise
Louise goes everywhere
she doesn't see anything
she doesn't see anyone

Louise, she's crazy

Louise, she's crazy
she buys everything
she can't stop herself
nothing stops her
she says it, she says
There's no reason to stop

but it's true
there is no reason
to stop

and so you
you buy everything ?

of course
I buy everything

you don't buy
according to
what you need ?

need ?
what's the connection ?

what do you mean, what's the connection
you need something
you're without something
you buy it

not at all
I never buy something
because I need i
t

but
why
then

I buy because I see
something that I like

nonsense
that's nonsense

well obviously
it's nonsense

never mind
it's beyond you

what's beyond me

it's beyond us

but what is

buying
not buying
all that

that's what Louise says

what does she say

she says, It's beyond me

Louise, she's crazy
never mind
buying
not buying
you have no principles
you buy a bathing suit
that takes you a week
you go look at it
you go look at it again
you try it on
you ask for advice
that takes you a week

bathing suits are tricky

Toda mi vida

Leslie Kaplan — 2013-02-17T16:21:00Z

toda mi vida he sido una mujer
una mujer
toda mi vida
me parecerá rara esta frase ?
no
a veces
a veces me parece rara
toda mi vida
he sido
una mujer

cómo puedes decir semejante frase
toda tu vida has sido una mujer
cómo puedes decir eso

lo digo, eso es todo

pero no te das cuenta
no puedes decir eso
tranquilamente

no es dicho que esté tranquila

dices esa frase
tranquilamente
si no estarías trepando muros

¿muros ?

sí, muros
no puedes decir esa frase
“toda mi vida he sido una mujer”

¿no puedo decirla ? ¿no puedo decirla ?
bueno sí, la digo
toda mi vida he sido una mujer
lo digo

si dices esa frase
si dices esa frase

entonces qué, si digo esa frase

si dices esa frase
no se te entiende

no se entiende la frase ?

he dicho, No se te entiende

no entiendo

no entiendes qué

lo que dices
no entiendo lo que dices

creo que no te entiendes
ni a ti misma

es verdad
no me entiendo ni a mi misma
toda mi vida he sido una mujer
esa frase es inmensa

¿inmensa ?
¿inmensa ?
¿qué es, inmensa ?

esa frase tiene tanto potencial
de posibles
esa frase encierra
digo bien : encierra
tantas otras frases

sí
pero
moulinex libera a la mujer

ah no
eso sí que
no

sí sí sí
moulinex libera a la mujer

yo te digo, toda mi vida he sido una mujer
esa frase
es inmensa inmensa inmensa
y tú
me contestas
moulinex

sí
moulinex
justamente
moulinex

eres tan limitada
te dejo

¿me dejas ?
¿por qué ?

te dejo
eres tan limitada
yo estoy frente a una frase inmensa
inmensa
toda mi vida he sido una mujer

quería simplemente hablarte de moulinex

moulinex
schpoulinex

¿no lo encuentras importante
los electrodomésticos ?

estoy frente a la frase
toda mi vida he sido una mujer
estoy frente
¿entiendes ?
frente

¿tú no te interesas
por los ralladores ?
a mí los ralladores
me cambiaron la vida

te cambió la vida
o cambió la vida

me cambió la vida
las verduras quedan perfectamente peladas
economía de dinero
economía de tiempo

te estoy hablando de una frase
inmensa
ante la cual me encuentro
toda mi vida he sido una mujer

todas las verduritas son respetadas en su diversidad
papas
zanahorias
puerros
hinojos
rábanos
berenjenas
zapallitos
nabos
todas las verduritas

eres tú la verdura

mezclarlo también me ha cambiado la vida
un puré simple es harto mejor
que un simple puré

eres realmente limitada
puré

mezclar
amasar
triturar
cortar
rebanar
exprimir
y los jugos
ah los jugos

qué los jugos

es infinito

frívola
eres frívola
te hablo de una frase inmensa
toda mi vida he sido una mujer
y me respondes al infinito
jugos

las manzanas
las peras
los plátanos
las frutillas
ah las frutillas
los cítricos
las naranjas
los limones
las frutas
las verduras
las mezclas
infinito
infinito
infinito

frívola
frívola
frívola
toda mi vida he sido una mujer
eso es otra cosa como infinito
eso es otra cosa

y las sopas

qué las sopas

sopa y caldo
caldo y sopa
singular
plural
infinito líquido
líquido infinito
el líquido te penetra
te llena
corre por tus intestinos
corre por tus venas
se vuelve tu sangre
tu identidad
dime qué sopa
bebes
te diré
quién eres
te calienta
la sopa
te refresca
también
a veces
gazpacho
caldo de pepinos
tómate la sopa
soy entusiasta
la sopa es total

¿es sexual ?

obvio que es sexual
es total
es sexual
la prueba
cuando no nos gusta la sopa
tenemos un problema
y
quien dice problema
dice sexo
todos los problemas
son sexuales
al origen

todo es sexual
incluso la masturbación
es sexual

¿la masturbación
o la masticación ?

la masturbación
es sexual
la masticación
también
la felación
la sodomía
sexual
entrar
salir
subir
bajar
correr
pararse
jadear
soñar
soñar es completamente sexual
cuando se dice, Estoy soñando
o : Pellízqueme estoy soñando
es completamente sexual
pellizcar
sacudir
cosquillear
pegar
temblar
estremecerse
perecer

perecer, cómo
quieres decir debilitarse

debilitarse
perecer
perecer y debilitarse
todo
caminar
brincar
cuando ves a alguien brincando te das cuenta que es sexual
brincar
saltar también
abrir una puerta
ah los placeres de la puerta
meter la llave
girar la manilla
dar un portazo
o al contrario
cerrarla lentamente sin hacer ruido
sujetándola con las dos manos
empujar
pasar
tropezar
te lo digo, todo
arrastrar
evidentemente arrastrar
ves a alguien arrastrándose
piensas inmediatamente en eso

arrastrar
buscar
esperar
ir de un lado a otro
balanceando una carterita de mano

sí
sí
la prostitución
es sexual

¿sexual
o
financiera ?

sexual
y
financiera

financiera
material
carnal
la prostitución
es carnal

ah los placeres de la carne
pero
el placer supone
la libertad

¿la libertad ?

la libertad
sí
la libertad

me siento un poco sobrepasada
estamos un poco sobrepasadas
de todas formas

nos cuesta pensar
sin referencias precisas
es verdad
pero

no eres capaz

¿no soy capaz ?

no eres capaz

¿no soy capaz ?

no eres capaz
de mantener
y de acompañar
a tus parientes, tu familia, tus amigos
y de intervenir
activamente
a través de tu trabajo y tu profesión
en el mundo
para que sea mejor
para todos

(silencio)

he dicho : no eres capaz
de mantener
y de acompañar
a tus parientes, tu familia, tus amigos
y de intervenir
activamente
a través de tu trabajo y tu profesión
en el mundo
para que sea mejor
para todos

(silencio)

no eres capaz
no eres capaz
no eres capaz

sin comentarios

tienes razón en callarte
no eres capaz

(juntas)
toda mi vida he sido una mujer
toda mi vida
he sido
toda mi vida he sido una mujer

The importance of jumping

Leslie Kaplan — 2012-11-07T16:18:00Z

“Literature begins at the moment when literature becomes a question” Maurice Blanchot

Andreas Vermehren Holm : I attended the reading you gave at Gothenburg Poetry Festival November 2010, and the lecture you gave at Litterär gestaltning a couple of days after. Needless to say : I became extremely inspired, and not only by your fundamental approach to language and writing, the material of your work, but also of the easiness and serenity with which you described the question of responsibility and ethics in writing and the acute need for political awareness. I have, in my approach to this conversation, focused on four of your books : L'excès-l'usine (1982), Les Outils (2003), Toute ma vie j'ai été une femme (2008), and Louise, elle est folle (2011) - which I enjoyed performed by Frédérique Loliée et Elise Vigier , the theatrical duo which also performed Toute ma vie, at the stage of La Maison de la Poesie, Paris. I must say that the experience of Louise, elle est folle on stage, was an experience of explosive communication. But concerning your work with experience as a concrete material, as a material for the work of the writing, also related to perception in language and the conception of language, you have described the experience related to L'excès-l'usine as the experience of an emptying of language, an experience of no experience at all, which made language seem false, which made language lie ?

Leslie Kaplan : Well, we can start with the question of experience, after all you do have to start somewhere, and that is exactly where you do start, with what you have experienced, what you have felt and thought, etcetera. Experience is a very important word for me, but it is not something that is given immediately, I think it has something to do with feeling and thinking, let's say : elaboration. One has to work through the experience in order to make it an experience. This is something that Freud and others have certainly understood, because sometimes you can go through something, which you never want to think about any more, but I think it is something that in any case has always been there. It is not easy to really come to terms with how you live and what you live with all the time. I think, for me, that words and literature are a way of making experience full, giving it real meaning.
Now, on the other hand, there are many factors that, let's try and formulate it in a way that is not totally paranoid, very simply make experience empty. First of all, the fact that if you are somebody, let's say a person, who is very open to the world, the world is in any case always much greater, much bigger and much stronger than you are as an individual person, of course you are going to be totally drowned, so you choose and come to terms with it, that is one thing. And then there is also the fact that society -– and this is at least my way of seeing things and of course it is a political statement -– tends to empty experience, tends to substitute what is really felt by a person with something that is literally unreal. That is certainly why there is all this talk in my play about the reality show where, for money, for gifts, or to just be seen on TV, people eat cockroaches during a TV show.

There is a sort of paradox : when it is a big thing to do something that is so horrible, and that, since you are supposed to do it, you cannot really consider horrible. This is a typical example, a very symbolic one, of the question of making an experience real or on the contrary emptying it.
I do think words are all about that. Poetry and prose, literature is a way of finding words, because you do have to find them, you do have to invent them, even though they exist already. Words usually exist, but you have to find the right words in order to make an experience mean something, in order to make it matter. This is almost the essence of literature to me.

AVH : The concrete experience of the concrete material. But concerning the choice of material in relation to this matter, there is almost a commenting dimension in some of your dialogues. I am thinking in particular of Les mots et les choses where the two women are discussing the television broadcast “Queen for a day”, and where the total absurdity of the words used in the language of the program reveals itself, through their dialogue, as a result of their dialogue.
But in relation to L'excès-l'usine I remember reading a conversation between you and Marguerite Duras, with the whole description of the table which is a table, but not a table at the same time – it is well known that you worked on a factory from ‘68 to ‘71 ?

LK : All sorts of different factories.

AVH : Could you describe the work with a material so concretely bound to a period of time, where certain events occurred but a material that nonetheless is the material of experience ?

LK : What I can say about that experience, the experience of L'excès-l'usine, is that I was not at all prepared to find what I did find there. I went to work on a factory as a political gesture, I did of course think that it wouldn't be a “bed of roses”, as you can say in English, but for me it didn't mean anything specific even though I had of course read about factories, etcetera.
I was really astonished with what I should call the concrete experience of alienation. It was very concrete, very material. As a matter of fact, just to make a sort of bridge, in L'excés-l'usine, which came out in ‘82 but was written a few years before, I finished it in ‘80, there is the sentence : “on est folle” (Man er skør), so now we have “on est folle” and “elle est folle”, “Louise, elle est folle” in 2011, which just goes to show that there is a certain continuity in experience with the research and the work on this question.
For me, when I tried to write about it afterwards, afterwards because when I went there I had no idea that I was ever going to write a book about it, my idea was to participate, first in the factory, the movement there with workers and intellectuals, and then in what happened, which astonished everybody of course, the events of ‘68.
It was not at all predicted. But when I did sit down to write about it, this is really what came out, this language, this book. The material of L'excés-l'usine was really the experience of being in the factory, being on the assembly line, being in the corridors, going to work on a bicycle, all these sorts of things. The work was to try and find the words, to try and find in words, what was the meaning of it all.
There is, I believe, many ways, and they continuously exist, to write about this kind of experience. What I did know when I started to write was that I didn't want to write à la Zola, even if Zola is a great writer. But it couldn't be like that because of what I had felt, myself. I wanted to give a mental picture of what you could feel when you were in the factory ; the emotional experience of alienation.
There is no mentioning of the strike in the factory in L'excès-l'usine. I write about the strike in another book, from 1996, the first in the series Depuis mantenant. In that book you have the events of ‘68 in the factory. But I really wanted to write about what you felt in the factory, what you could feel and what you could have felt.

AVH : How did you find the exact words for the experience ?

LK : You find the words at your table, when you write. I remember a very strong feeling the day I wrote a very simple sentence : “les chiffons sont faibles.” (the rags are weak)(Kludene er svage) They were in a big pile, used and thrown away. Suddenly it was obvious that this sentence, which of course had something to do with my own feeling of total weakness and was connected to me feeling like a little piece of cloth thrown in a corner. But suddenly I felt that everybody could feel that ; this feeling of total weakness, even though nobody in the factory would use those words, because nobody would. That was it.
Another really important thing is that when the book came out in ‘82, there were many programs, meetings one the radio and television, meetings with union leaders, people who worked in a factory. It was the beginning of Mitterrand.
Basically, everybody was totally shocked, but at the same time I was invited and people were interested.
Well, what you do is that you exaggerate. As a matter of fact, there is a little in the conversation with Marguerite Duras, because the question was : what are we going to do if it is as you write ? How are we going to cope with it ? That was a question which was asked, but that is exactly not the question for a writer.
A writer writes, asks questions, and then eventually people do things about it. I consider working eight hours on an assembly line as being simply not human. This is something I have never given up.

AVH : I am thinking of Hannah Arendt in relation to the question of the perverted discourse, the discourse of the production society in which all things serve in terms of function and use. Arendt describes homo faber left with meaninglessness in the midst of usefulness and how, I quote : “utilitarianism never can find the answer to the question G. E. Lessing once put to the utilitarian philosophers of his time : “And what, if you please, is the use of use ?” I have been thinking of L'excès-l'usine, and not to quote the apostrophe itself, but as a very precise, almost iconic, representation of some of the philosophical lines in the work of Hannah Arendt ?

LK : Actually, I read Arendt after I wrote L'excés-l'usine. Mainly, I would say, because she was translated very late in France. And I think that was because her concept of totalitarianism did not please the people on the Left who should have been her allies. Well, this is a complicated story I think. She died in ‘75 and was translated into French more or less at that time, which is really incredibly late when you think about it, quite absurd actually. Many people on the Left thought that her concept of totalitarianism would help American capitalism, because it accused Russia, accused the Soviet Union, placed Nazism and Stalinism on the same level, analysing it on equal terms, etcetera. They did not see the completely revolutionary position she had taken and developed. Now, of course, that has certainly changed. But back then people on the Left kept repeating, as if they felt the need to, that there was a difference between Nazism and Stalinism.

AVH : Regarding the material of the work and the emptying of language in terms of political issues : when Sarkozy states that “the most important thing in a democracy is to be re-elected” – that is another example of an emptying of experience. The word democracy carries no meaning if that is the approach to it, if that is the context of usage, it's eroded, and there are many of these kinds of issues in today's political world ; emptying through repetition with no intentions behind, emptying words through the manipulation of words in political doctrines, etcetera.
I am thinking about your fundamental approach to language in, for instance, the dialogues of Toute ma vie, let mots et les choses, Louise, elle est folle. There is a constant questioning of every utterance ; it is like the motor, the drive, the joy of it. The utterances are not becoming invalid in their meanings, but the meanings are merging into one another, from one mouth to the other, constantly shivering with new significance. And the basis for this movement is the presence of a “we” ; “we” as in more than one voice. What is your conception of your approach to language and the importance of it as such in a democracy like the one we are currently living in ?

LK : It seems to me that democracy is really a regime, a system that is without any absolute ground. Democracy is a state of being where people have to live with each other without being able to refer to a king or any higher power. It really has to do with the act of constantly making it liveable. So I think the matter of questioning language is really a matter of taking part in the whole idea of democracy – even if it is not necessarily obvious, and no one thinks about the questioning of language 24/7 – you can't not be alert in a democracy, you can't not be conscious.
Even though it is very tiring for everyone, this is the way it is. If you fall asleep on a certain issue, somebody is going to pick it up in the wrong way.
You can't fall asleep on a question, and you can never give up. It is a problem and we see it every day, in France just two days ago for instance.
Mr. Sarkozy's official “spokesman”, Claude Guéant said that maybe in France, French people are getting too tired of having too many people who aren't French and they don't feel at home in their own country anymore. *
Immediately someone who is alert, Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Le Pen, said : Well why does he not come to the Front national ? Which means : why doesn't he come to the extreme Right, because this is what we have been saying all the time.
This is of course a very little detail. But you can't just let it pass. Because a detail like that, a remark in the media like that, is creating something that has to do with hate. There is no other word.

AVH : The way you use dialogue is a very direct way to create the expectations of thought ; it is almost aggressive in its presentation of the creation of meaning. People are forced to constantly position themselves.

LK : I think, I really think, and this is deep down, that language is dialogue. I think that even when nobody is there, you are in a dialogue.

AVH : Every person is influenced by others in an inescapably way, no voice is ever isolated.

LK : Exactly. It is really part of language. And even more part of the written language. Proust has a sentence, which for me is really great, where he says :
»On écrit toujours dans une langue étrangère« (One always writes in a foreign language.)
And this is a very interesting statement from someone who took the French language to its maximum. So why did he say that ? I think he means that a writer is always in a way inventing a new language. He is always in a process, he never stops. Language is never something that is given once and for all, it is always in the process of making, of becoming. And this is very, very important. It also means that, like I have said, you are always in the process of dialogue.
Hannah Arendt says that too, though in a completely different way. When she returned to Germany after the war for the first time, and afterwards reflected upon it, she ends up asking her self – I quoted this in my book Fever (2005) too : “How come some people did not become Nazis ?” This is a good question.
She says : it was not because of principles, it was not because of moral reasons, no, it was because they did not want to live with a murderer : themselves.
It really shows that one is two, that you are two.
It shows that if you had accepted to become a Nazi, you were living with a murderer inside yourself.
And some people did just not want that.
For me it shows that being conscious is the fact that you are two, the fact that you are talking to yourself is the fact that makes you conscious.

AVH : Regarding the dialogical approach to language, and the view of the whole notion of dialogics as representing important and fundamental human values, I would like to discuss the work of Bachtin in relation to your own work, what you in Les Outils describes as thinking with other works, the works of others ?

LK : I discovered Bachtin at a time when I was very absorbed by Dostojevski. I had returned to DostoÏevski when I felt the need to write novels, so I reread a lot of his work, and I fell upon Bachtin's work, which I hadn't read, and I was really very thrown over. To me he was enormous. I wrote an article on Dostoïevski, "L'expérience du meurtre", published in Les Outils, and I quoted Bachtin. I think he has a very concrete way of showing the reader the inventiveness of DostoÏevski, how he always writes about people who are on the point of doing things, and who have a language going on in their heads all the time. Understanding this about any of Dostoïevski's characters, I think it shows how completely modern he is.

AVH : Not to speak of his brilliant analysis of the sentences, their origin, belonging either to the implicit author or the hero, or both in the same sentence as a hybrid, the dialogism. The experience of the dialogue is something that comes in a plurality of forms, for example in my reading of Louise, elle est folle and Toute ma vie j'été une femme ; the experience of the constant movement of every word, how they are constantly adapting each others sentences into their own, small fragments of formulations, continuing and continuing until the breaking point but pushing the envelope. However, when you realise that what you are experiencing as a moment of wildly living discussion, you also realise that this is not a part of the text. It might be a strategy, but could it the very simple and yet extremely powerful effect of the progressive dialogue ? The words become completely alive. It is very hard to fix this point of movement and progression in the text, in the dialogue as such, it is a more general point, a modus of existing. That became obvious with Louise, elle est folle performed on the stage. The value of the movement of dialogue, the constant repositioning, the openness…

LK : It is true that we, the two actresses and I, have a very close relationship, and I really think the two actresses understand the way I write, and maybe even better than I do, which is after all normal, because you are always interpreted by somebody else. The example you just gave for instance, I could never have said it.
I do think the whole question for a writer is to make the words alive, to keep them alive, to bring them more to life.
Of course, if you go one step further, it could have to do with complete madness, because as we all know, when you are in a delirium the WORDS become the THINGS.
But that's the whole question. This is certainly a vital point, a very crucial point.

AVH : I will just quote a dialogue of Blanchot :
"... there must be at least two to say it." / "I know. It is necessary that we are two. " / "But why two ? Why two speeches to say one and the same thing ? " / "Because it's always the other person who says it."

LK : That's perfect.

AVH : I would like to discuss the notion of dialectic process contra dialogical process as well as your idea of the jump ?

LK : For me the jump comes from Kafka. He writes about jumping out from the lines of the assassins. Writing, he says, in his Journal, in the year 1914, January 27th, is jumping out from the world of the assassins, jumping out from the line of the assassins.
Now, he doesn't say anything else, so of course you stay with this, and you wonder, and you wonder, and you wonder, but somehow you have understood that this is exactly what you felt. In my book Le Psychanalyste, and in many other places, I have said that the word assassins have a different meaning for everybody. Of course, for Kafka you immediately think of his father, the world of the Austro Hungarian empire, his own psychosis. It can be all sorts of things, it can be women ; it doesn't matter. The question is how you experience this act of jumping. Kafka calls it an “observation that is an act” (in german : Tat-Beobachtung, see what Blanchot writes in the chapter “Kafka et l'exigence de l'oeuvre”, in his book L'espace littéraire). To go back to the very beginning of this conversation, when I spoke of writing the sentence, Les chiffons sont faibles, I think I had the experience of a jump when writing that sentence. And further more in relation to L'excès-l'usine when I wrote down “on” [man], not “je” or “il”, but “on” – somebody else could write “I” and it would be a jump, that is not the issue. I think that you know that you are creating a distance, a step that puts you apart from the things that repeat themselves. This is really what you experience in writing. Kafka put the word “jump” on it and that's perfect, because there is a feeling of elation, of something going up, even if you have to come down again afterwards. And it contains the description of the need for something very solid on which you can place your feet and take off, and of course for a writer it is words, the words are the ground from which you jump.
It gives you something very concrete, something very material, where you can experience the strength of that, the distance. That definitely has to do with dialogue, the dialogics, because it shows that you are not of one piece. There are at least two of you, and if you are Dostojevski there is at least a hundred of you in the same time. You are somebody who is there, then you leave, but at the same time you know what you have left, where you came from. There is a process of being two in one. That is the question of dialogue, the question of being two.

AVH : The question of ethics in writing, the risk that is connected to this leap, to this jump, the whole question of turning to and turning away from, apropos the apostrophe, what is your conception of the other in the moment of writing or your conception of the other ones work ?

LK : It seems to me that the great thing about language, the human thing about language, is that every word, and it is almost banal to say it, every word is a world.
So whatever you think, and you can think of a table, of sugar, of coffee, you can think of anything, and literally you can go everywhere with this. I mean others are included in literally every word. This is something that has been experienced since the beginning of the last century, Joyce for example, of course partly as a result of the Freudian discovery, but not only, suddenly began to use words in an associative way, and understood that every word really is just a potential. Actually the other is something that in a way doesn't have to be another person, a public, a reader, even though, of course, they are there and you do want them to be there, but they are also in the very words themselves.
This is how it works.
When I wrote for the theatre, I wrote directly for Fred and Elise for example, and of course I thought of them when I wrote, I knew them, and I knew it was going to be played on a scene, etcetera, but at the same time I am fully persuaded that anything I can write, any sentence can become something they can do with. Maybe they have given me confidence in the fact that every sentence written immediately can be given away.
It is really a question of a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

AVH : In relation to the X in Louise, elle est folle, an X for uncertainty and Sex, I have been thinking of Jean Paul Sartre's X for existentialism and the for ever unknown nature of the humans. There is an amusing connection between your X and his ?
But in relation to the whole question of the political responsibility of the writer – one does not need to be a political or an engaged writer in the ways of Sartre, but merely a writer, and this is Blanchot : a writer and aware of being in relation to others, if not in any other way, through the very usage of language. What is your notion of responsibility and ethics in the moment of writing ?

LK : This is exactly where the question of jumping is so important. I think the writer certainly has a great responsibility, but it seems to me that the writer is first of all responsible towards language. And by that I mean towards every aspect of language, which again means first and foremost what language contains of potential, possibility and fiction, which means that even when the writer writes about what is going on, the writer is really very much concerned with and responsible of the fact that things could be different. That is something that is included in language. Anything you say contains the possibility of something else. Something else could be, of course, another world, something else could be another regime and something else could be another word.
This is my conception, even though I have never spoken of it like this before, but my conception of an ethics would be : you can't want to have the last word. You can't say that it is finished and this is the only way you can talk. A part of language is to leave things open. A part of language is to be in perpetual dialogue, and therefore in perpetual openness. This is the basis of the ethics of writing for me.
Whatever you write about, it is really rather complicated, because when you write about someone who is horrible, how are you going to do that ? Obviously, you would want to finish it, there is enough going on, not to speak of Gaddafi, where you really want to finish.
Just to challenge what I say about leaving things open. But you have to find a way, if you are writing and not just giving information, where there is a possibility, something possible. This is the ethics.

AVH : And the emblematic X in relation to the X of Sartre ?

LK : As a matter of fact I did not think of Sartre. The X is representing the whole thing about sexuality. I just think the way it is spoken about today is too silly for words. But in relation to La folie [galskaben], the fiction : everybody is concerned with madness, and writers, like Kafka, they invent things, and of course it is a way to jump. Becoming an insect is after all an invention.

AVH : The invention of the insect is also a way of getting claws, for example, to jump and to come back with a weapon. But to quote Sartre : “If you observe the terms of the human life as terms as such, that is defined by an X, that is the X of the humans, but not by their natural context, their positive determination, than you deal with another form of human nature. A term-based nature”

LK : The only human nature is to not have a nature.
I have always thought that there are two things. Exactly because of my conception of the ethics of writing, I refuse a naturalistic point of view or a romantic point of view. Either you are completely determined or you are an individual against the world, that was the romantic point of view, and I think that there is an interaction, and you don't exist without others. I mean, that is a part of the human fact, from the very beginning, a child for example can not develop without human environment. That has to do with dialogue, which again has to do with others.

AVH : The impossible position of saying “I”, the total desubjectification, to the two bodies on the stage in Toute ma vie and Louise, elle est folle. Can you describe the movement, if one can speak of a such, from the impossible “I” to the “we” ? From “on est folle” to “elle est folle” ?

LK : When I was writing L'exces-l'usine I couldn't do without the “On”. It was absolutely fundamental ; really a way of showing that you don't exist on a subjective level, showing that you can't make things your own in such a world. In the book that came after L'excés-l'usine, which is Le Livre des ciels (1983), there is an “I”, but it is a very abstract “I”. It was vital for me to try and make the “I” real, or one could say make the character more and more real, because I think writing has do with life and it was something that was very important for me.
When I started to write novels, Le Criminel (1987) for example, I had to have two characters, simply because there is a movement in time ; there is a beginning to the story, there is a middle, and an end.
It was important for me to leave the world of the factory where time does not exist. A world you could call eternal. And here the word eternal is not something desirable. And then with the novel Le pont de Brooklyn(Brooklyn Bridge) (1986), and the ones that came after, it was really a question of inventing, a question of searching for and searching through characters that would not be a sort of classical characters, which represented a certain given aspect of the world, but who were living in a world where words and language went through them. It was very important for me to find a way of using characters. I think that in a way, even though what I am writing now is a novel, it was an obvious step for me to do something with dialogue for the theatre. There is something that was always there, which is questioning language, questioning the obvious use of words and the obvious in general. As for the book L'excès-l'usine, nothing is more obvious than a factory, everybody knows what it is, everybody walks by it, etcetera, etcetera, but it is not obvious, it is not obvious at all. That was a motive, for sure.
I decided that I had to write this book, that I wanted to write about my experience, ten years after, that is. At the same time with the decision of writing came the fact that a factory is not a factory. Or to put it like Stein : a factory is a factory is a factory is a factory. You get mixed up on different levels.
And now that I have said the word level, I have always tried to embrace as many levels as possible. Always, always, always. That's a part of the description of what has been constant in my work from "On est folle" to "Louise, elle est folle".
In Louise, elle est folle , the show, the text is open in the way of a presence of a million levels existing simultaneously.
Even in the scene created by Yves Bernard, there is the representation of all the different levels of text. He constructed the scene as a page. You can go from up to down and down to up. The question of levels has to do with what is modern and what isn't, taking in account all the different levels of language.
We can not, not take all the different levels into account since, just to put it very simple, we are conscious of the fact of the unconscious. Voilà.

AVH : “On ne sait pas, on ne peut pas savoir”.

LK : When I talk of levels, I talk of the question of paradox, because “On ne sait pas, on ne peut pas savoir,” the positive is the negative. If you feel it, you can feel as a complete negative ; you're nothing, you don't know anything. And at the same time you can change it into an ethics. Okay, I will not be sure, I will not be dogmatic. This is a paradox. I use the word paradox ; I know it is not very precise, it means that things are always at least two things at the same time. When you are weak, you have to make your weak point your strong point. But your strong point can be your weak point. This is a way of living. It certainly has to do with democracy, nothing is for ever or once and for all, at a given place, or at least, if a place is given, that place can be changed.

Szaleństwo, norma i utrata doświadczenia

Leslie Kaplan — 2012-10-04T15:16:00Z

Opowiem Państwu o moim doświadczeniu pisarki. Heitor de Macedo, psychoanalityk, nie mógł przyjść, ale ja wspierałam i nadal wspieram walkę '39 przeciwko Ciemności Zabezpieczającej' o zniesienie prawa z 1. lipca 2012 roku o kontynuowaniu interwencji medycznej bez konieczności uzyskania zgody pacjenta.

Napisałam Luiza to wariatka, ponieważ refleksja nad 'szaleństwem' jest dla mnie sposobem na kwestionowanie społeczeństwa takiego jakim jest : konformistycznego, jednomyślnego, obwarowanego normami i otoczonego reklamami, bez miejsca na brak i ...bardzo szalonego.

Szaleństwo' 'burzy' nasze przekonania i kwestionuje społeczeństwo oraz świat, piętnując to, co jest, jak to się mówi, normalne. Dla pisarza to kwestionowanie dotyczy przede wszystkim, ale oczywiście nie tylko, języka, który pod pozorami łagodności, może w każdej chwili pójść ścieżką autorytatyzmu i zafiksować się na na banałach, które są nie tylko pustymi 'ideami nabytymi', ale też 'brutalnymi uproszczeniami' tak jak przyrównanie tzw. szaleńca do 'niebezpiecznego schizofrenika' autorstwa eksprezydenta Francji.

Właśnie tę 'cywilizację banału', jak ją nazwałam, utwór Luiza to wariatka chce przedstawić, pokazać na scenie i na nią chce uwrażliwić, aby pobudzić do refleksji nad tym, czym mogłaby być etyka mowy, języka i stosunku do drugiego człowieka.

Wracając do tej refleksji, chciałabym powiedzieć o 2 seriach prac, które rozwinęły się na różnych polach : o refleksji Pierre'a Dardota i Christiana Lavala na temat neoliberalizmu i jego 'nowej logice świata' z jednej strony, a z drugiej o tym,co zostało rozwinięte przez Serge'a Daneya, tego 'kinofila', jak sam się określał, który patrzył na świat przez pryzmat swojej miłości do kina.

Ci autorzy analizują ewolucję dzisiejszego społeczeństwa, każdy na swój sposób i skupiając się na przedmiocie swoich badań, demaskują jego szaleństwo, kładąc nacisk na normatywność, przymus faktycznie istniejący chociaż niewypowiedziany, narzucone myśli i sposoby zachowań. W obydwu przypadkach pozostaje to dla mnie refleksją nad etykę mowy i 'cywilizacją banału'.

La nouvelle raison du monde, esej wydany w 2009 roku przez wydawnictwo La decouverte, opisuje jak, w świecie, w którym jedyny horyzont wyznacza rynek, 'neoliberalizm narzuca się jako nowa logika świata, która z konkurencji robi uniwersalną normę zachowań i nie pozostawia nietkniętą żadną ze sfer ludzkiej egzystencji'.

Przywołam z ostatniego rozdziału kilka opisów, które dotyczą neoliberalnego podmiotu, który kieruje się nową normą, nową logiką, który właśnie przez nią jest ukształtowany, opisy frapujące i takie, które, moim zdaniem, dobrze pokazują jak to, co 'normalne' i to, co 'szalone' się przenikają :

społeczeństwo stało się 'przedsiębiorstwem złożonym z przedsiębiorstw' i stąd 'nowa, subiektywna norma'-atrybut 'człowieka hipernowoczesnego':niepewnego, uległego, kruchego, pozbawionego granic i stałości, człowieka współzawodniczącego, całkowicie zanurzonego w światowych zawodach

jest on nowym, jednolitym podmiotem, podczas gdy w kapitalizmie w rozumieniu gospodarczym istniały rozbieżności pomiędzy obywatelem a człowiekiem w sensie podmiotu gospodarczego i pomiędzy tymi dwoma aspektami i pozostałościami wartości religijnych i tradycyjnych

tutaj chodzi o to, żeby człowiek pracował dla przedsiębiorstwa jakby pracował na swoje własne konto

trzeba zatem zatrzeć wszelki dystans między nim a przedsiębiorstwem. Przedsiębiorstwo staje się nowym określeniem dla 'zarządzania sobą'. Por:Thatcher : 'Economics are the method. The object is to change the soul.', ekonomia jest metodą, celem jest przemiana ducha.1988

Stąd konieczność subiektywnej implikacji, społeczeństwo nabywa w nieunikniony sposób nowych jakości : self help, energia, inicjatywa, ambicja, planowanie, odpowiedzialność za siebie

w ten sposób każdy staje się miniprzedsiębiorstwem

stąd duże znaczenie 'technik rozwojowych' przez całe życie

żyjemy w królestwo 'coachów'

trzeba lepiej poznać swoje 'ja', swój 'scenariusz życia', 'zasady gier społecznych', być otwartym, wielozadaniowym, pozytywnie nastawionym, empatycznym, kooperatywnym
sam wybieram swoje życie, swoje zachowania, swoje myśli, swoje uczucia, swoje wrażenia, swoje wspomnienia, swoje słabości, swoje choroby, swoje ciało, wszystko. W innym wypadku rezygnuję z możliwości wyboru.
Jestem zupełnie autonomiczny.
Laurence Parisot, 2005 rok : 'życie, zdrowie, miłość są niestałe, dlaczego praca miałaby nie podlegać temu prawu ?'
Stąd nowe konsekwencje dla podmiotu :

zawsze pozostaje odpowiedzialny za to, co mu się przydarza(accountability)

funkcjonuje w nowym trybie wyczyn/zadowolenie z wyczynu

wyczyny sportowe są nowym wzorcem zarówno dla życia zawodowego, jak i seksualnego : 'ciągle mało'
We are the champions. No time for losers. Jesteśmy zwycięzcami, Nie ma czasu dla przegranych

ciało nie jest już ograniczeniem, techniki coachingu są na porządku dziennym, poznać siebie, wziąć się w garść, mieć dobrą strategię życiową

sukces ma być widoczny, staje się elementem pokazu, show
Dardot i Laval podkreślają także, że te wymagania stają się źródłem dolegliwości i chorób psychicznych oraz skazują nowego człowieka na leczenie kliniczne.
Cierpienia w pracy, stany przygnębienia, 'zmęczenie byciem sobą' idą w parze ze złudzeniami o wszechmocy
Zauważają, że Lacan definiował już 'dyskurs kapitalistyczny' jako odrzucenie niemożności.
Według nich, możemy mówić o desymbolizacjii, psychotyzacji masy, słowa utożsamiamy z rzeczami, nie ma ograniczeń, rzeczywistość się zamazuje.
Nie tylko dlatego, że odcinamy się od dawnych wartości, jak przekonuje dyskurs konserwatywny,
ale też zakładając, że jedyną wartością jest współzawodnictwo, tym samym aktywnie promuje się zerwanie i porzucenie więzi w przedsiębiorstwie, w rodzinie.
Jest to królestwo negacji, iluzji, kłamstwa, czyli tego, co autorzy nazywają zwyczajnymi dewiacjami.
To wszystko koreluje z osłabieniem się liberalnej demokracji, jako że przestrzeń publiczna jest stopniowo redukowana, a jedyną rolą państwa staje się zapewnienie konkurencji i warunków do współzawodnictwa w sposób otwarty, ale i przymuszający.

Ten opis jest niewątpliwie przerażający i w pewien sposób pokrywa się- choć w innym kontekście- z tym, co Hannah Arendt opisywała mówiąc o totalitaryzmie, kiedy w „Korzeniach totalitaryzmu” nazwała nazistów 'bandą zdeklasowanych ludzi, którzy starają się pozbawić innych ludzi poczucia rzeczywistości'.
Utrata poczucia rzeczywistości jest jednym z określeń dla alienacji i pozostawała kwestią, która także zajmowała Serge'a Daney'a.

Jeden z artykułów Daney'a zwiastujących zagrożenie, zatytułowany 'Rynek jednostki i utrata doświadczenia', który ukazał się w styczniu 1992 roku w dzienniku Liberation został niedawno ponownie opublikowany w magazynie Trafic z okazji rocznicy 20-lecia założenia tego pisma przez Daney'a tuż przed swoją śmiercią.
Daney zaczyna od podkreślenia, że sukces 'reality show'może oznaczać podwójne zjawisko : po pierwsze, zawłaszczenie telewizji przez społeczeństwo oraz po drugie, odpowiednie formatowanie jednostki.
Niemniej jednak trzeba zapłacić za to wysoką cenę : przekreślić wartości doświadczeń ludzkich.
Ciekawe jest, że Daney przywołuje na ten temat słowa pisarki, Virginii Woolf : 'doświadczenia życiowe są niewyrażalne i to właśnie jest powodem całej samotności'. Może niekoniecznie niewyrażalne, ale na pewno stanowią wyzwanie i przedmiot poszukiwań artysty.
Daney tak opisuje utratę doświadczenia : każde doświadczenie, które można łatwo zredukować do 'show' przedstawiającego jego rzeczywistość, nie jest doświadczeniem. A przynajmniej nie jest doświadczeniem osoby, która opowiada o swoich przeżyciach, tylko doświadczeniem całej grupy.
Społeczeństwo promuje chwytliwych bohaterów i scenariusze 'jak trzeba'.
Idea względnej prawdy wywraca do góry nogami katechizm, który według Daney'a jest oparty na idei Dobra, którą ucieleśnia reklama.
To 'wybrakowane doświadczenie i nie wypowiedzenie tego, co było' zostaje zastąpione przez 'ugładzone widowisko, które pokazuje to, co się zastanie.'
Znajdujemy się w przyszłości uprzedniej(przestrzeń czasowa właściwa dla audiowizji) : obróbce rzeczywistości i wizualizacji tej poprawionej rzeczywistości. I Daney dodaje :
do czego oni(ci bohaterowie) powinni być podobni : muszą przypominać kiepską telewizję, kiepskie kino, kiepski teatr.
Aby opowiadać się za dobrem wspólnym, muszą być bardzo kiepscy i straszliwie usłużni.
Ten katechizm, ciągnie Daney, który nie jest żadną wielką Mszą, żadną religią 'wymaga tylko od nas, klonów sprzedanych w przebraniach indywidualnych jednostek, żebyśmy zrezygnowali na zawsze z jakichkolwiek wspomnień przeżyć, przez które Pascale Breugnot(prezenterka, która wymyśliła ideę psy-show) nie mogłaby pomóc nam ponownie przejść, trzymając nas troskliwie za rękę'
i Daney zauważa 'jak także we Francji, globalna wioska domaga się swojej należności'
Podsumowując, Daney ukazuje nam sprzeczności między globalizacją a wioską oraz między narcystycznym nadęciem, wszechmocą i prawie zerowym poziomem jestestwa.

Można porównać kwestię utraty doświadczenia z tym, co Daney pisze w czasie pierwszej wojny w Iraku o kadrze, któremu przeciwstawia obraz, szczególnie w tekście 'Wojna, kadr, obraz', tekst ukazał się w 'mardis de la Femis' w styczniu 1991 roku, w trzecim tomie cyklu 'Dom, kino i świat' (POL, 2012).

Kadr, który nie pozwala na widzenie opowiada się po stronie pozorów, narcyzmu.
Jest jedynie próbą techniczną, pozbawioną jakiejkolwiek wartości informacyjnej.
Na przykład ''Teraz przenosimy się do Rijadu'

i oko kamery kieruje się na studio reporterów.(jedyną informacją jest to, że pracują).

W przeciwieństwie do kadru, obraz funkcjonuje jako obraz drugiego człowieka, świat zewnętrzny istnieje w pełni, aż do skrajności, śmierci.
Montaż w kinie polega właśnie na zmierzeniu się z tą ideą odmiennych stanów, offu, odwrotności, drugiego człowieka, wroga.
I to do kinomana, a nie telewidza należy zadanie znalezienia brakującego obrazu.
Telewidz nie jest przyzwyczajony do braku, offu, drugiego człowieka. Odbiera wszystko jako pełnię, przekaz bezpośredni, gładki, jest na skraju schizofrenii..'Za cel, mówi Daney, niszczycielski aparat stawia sobie czysty kadr, z którym od lat oswajają się dzieciaki poprzez gry wideo ; uczą się widzieć jedynie to, co w wyobraźni niszczą.
Jak to powiedział Jean-Luc Godard 'do obrazu trzeba dwojga' : talentu oraz politycznego znaczenia obrazu, brakujący obraz. Czy równoległy montaż startu rakiet Scud i Patriot jest dobrym montażem ? A gdyby chodziło jedynie o sprawdzenie dwóch typów broni sprzedawanych przez supermocarstwa ? Odkąd montaż stał się niemożliwy, mówimy o kadrze, czyli tautologii, solipsyzmie.'

Mamy zatem z jednej strony precyzyjny i zarazem przerażający opis zwariowanego dzisiejszego świata oraz neoliberalnego podmiotu, który jest skazany na jego zamieszkiwanie, a z drugiej strony refleksję o przedstawieniu tego świata przez kino i telewizję.

Nowe postulaty to :
Nie brak, a pełnia.
Nie pragnienie, a nasycenie.
Nie przyzwolenie na niewiedzę, a mistrzostwo.
Nie drugi człowiek, nie podmiot, a moje ja..

Nie podsumowując :
Dardot i Laval mówią o powstawaniu sprzecznych postaw i podkreślają, że etyka i polityka są nierozłączne.
Jako pisarka widzę związek między etyką obrazu, który przeciwstawiam kadrowi, oraz etyką słowa i mowy, które pozwalają na kwestionowanie, pozostawiają miejsce na kwestionowanie, wymianę, konfrontację, otwarcie się,
które niesie za sobą możliwość poszukiwania, dociekania, gry.
które nie zgadza się na ostatnie słowo, na autorytarną mowę i argumenty, na ciągle tylko moje ja, na łatwiznę i na inwazyjny charakter banału.

factory

Leslie Kaplan — 2012-04-11T15:13:00Z

What is the relation between my experience at the factory, that « mad » place, and my experience as a writer ?
My experience at the factory was radical : it put every thing in perspective, and first of all (though I didn't realize it) language, the most common of things, what men and women have, at the beginning, in common. I mean that EVERY THING could be, had to be, thought differently. Words for the most ordinary things seemed no more to the point. You work, really ? You eat, really ? You live, really ? To say anything what so ever you had to invent.
You can make a speech, but that does not account for anything_except for the capacity of making a speech.
When I started to write this experience, I tried to account for feeling : I wanted to write the outside, and also what you had in your head, in opposition with naturalism, determinism, where things, and beings, are so called in their place, correspond to their definition. It was only after that I realized how « the factory » and the world « under the sky of the factory », questioned everything, contaminated every thing, and could, one had to acknowledge it, empty experience, make experience something empty. Take the word rythm, I think of the word because I recently read an article on factories in China. What does it mean, to follow the rythm on the assembly line. Those words mean nothing, or almost. Becoming the rythm on the assembly line would be more correct. You can also talk of an infernal rythm, Down with infernal rythmes ! was a slogan in May 68. This question is the alienation of experience, how real expérience is made to become unreal, how language becomes false, a lie, and this question belongs to every body, and that is why a naturalistic vision, where words are reduced to a social, psychological, etc., origin, has never suited me.
This question continues to be alive for me today, in different forms, of course, novel, theatre, poetry, essays. But the question of the « factory » always seems to me to be linked with a research on language, and a research on madness. Do we speak, think, write, like in a factory or otherwise ? Is a sentence open or closed ? Do we live inside language as an alienated consumer or as a free man/woman ? Do we talk to each other as in a factory ? Do we assemble our sentences together without thinking as if we were making manufactored objects ? Do we speak to a person or to nobody ? Do we want to crush the person we are talking to with words ? Do we want to have the last word ? Are we present or absent to ourselves ?
And when we speak of « madness », what are we talking of ? A place, a situation, a way of behaving that are « mad » ? Is language mad, has language become mad ? How can we fight, with what forms can we fight, the attempts to make everything trivial, to promote anecdotes, clichés that are empty and agressive, even murderous, clichés that are the present form of the « opium of the people » ?
Those who have lived through a strike and an occupied factory know it : the most important event is always how one takes possession of one's expérience, and the dignity and the pleasure that comes with that. Collective action brings into movement all the different categories of people, makes them come out of themselves, workers, employees, precarious, and unity is made around action, the activity of thinking, and the pleasure of thinking. Let's remember what Serge Daney said about Lubitsch and nazism : the real answer to terror is not virtue, but refusing to renounce to pleasure… and remember Rancière's descriptions of « the night of the proletarians » in the 19 th century. The most difficult and the most important thing, it seems to me, is to live without letting yourself be idictated a rythm that is not your own, to live and find forms that pass on what you have understood, at a certain time, through this struggle, because these forms pass on how you have made a possible exist, another life possible.