Re: Fleck Kristeva and conservativism


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Posted by hyperpersonalized on April 25, 1997 at 21:44:21:

In Reply to: Fleck Kristeva and conservativism posted by Rainer Ganahl on November 23, 1996 at 13:23:03:

:
: : the second half of the book is, I think, much more ambiguous.
: : Kristeva reexamins Aragon, Sartre and Barthes to find possible points of
: : "revolt" in a posit-ideological world. In these pages, in fact, you find
: : very much remarks which are surprisingly conservative. It is like a big
: : preach about the decadence of the world since the sixties, which
: : anti-american statements and a lot of flat sentences about the media society
: : etc. At the beginning, I was surprised. But you have to relate this to some
: : openly reactionary statements of Jean Baudrillard about contemporary art and
: : culture, published earlier this year in the french newspapers "Liberation"
: : and "Le Monde". For Baudrillard, the case is more evident: he allways was a
: : conservative thinker, coming out of a "cultural criticism" which was a big
: : tradition in the german and french conservativism, and it was allways a big
: : misunderstanding to see Baudrillard as a thinker of modernity or
: : post-modernity in the eighties. In private circles, Baudrillard had allways
: : very conservative positions, in political terms, and the only difference
: : with his new reactionary statements on contemporary art is the he now
: : expresses openly what he allways had thought about contemporary art.
: : The new book of Julia Kristeva is part of the same evolution in
: : France, but more relativistic and less direct then the actual statements by
: : Baudrillard. The very conservative views expressed by Kristeva today, are
: : part of a shift which is typical for many authors of the so-called
: : "structuralist" period in France. Many intellectuals who were structuralists
: : in the sixties, then maoists in the seventies and "neo-baroque"-thinkers in
: : the eighties, became supporters of conservative parties in France at the
: : beginning of the nineties. You have to consider that Philippe Sollers, the
: : husband of Julia Kristeva whose novels and esthetic positions she subscribes
: : for several times in her new book, took part in the conservative election
: : campaign of Edouard Balladur (a kind of old styled conservative politician,
: : reprensenting "la vielle France" of the 18th century). Some aspects of
: : Kristevas new book are directly related to this ideological shift in the
: : intellectual circle of Sollers.
: :
: I do see your poins and unfortunately have to agree
: also in the interview I made I was confronted with
: a lot of "nouvelles formes du sacré" as opposed to
: a politically interested thinking which I can't read
: otherwise but along the line you said

: concerning baudriallard, I gave also a talk at Columbia
: where he confronted 1968 to be purely "reactionary"
: it is an interesting strategy by Baudrillard to
: denounce all the progressive moves that occured around
: 1968 and label it reactionary, i.e. to say the way he thinks
: now.. I was surprised that the public didn't show
: any reactoin... I talked to him afterwards about this
: with such an insistance that he walked away from me
: ..... with Baudrillard there is a kind of a bitterness
: and a disappointment involved that goes together
: with a general ignorance of the fact that the world
: keeps moving ahead also with le grands penseurs parisiens

: Julia Kristeva on the other hand really believes in
: what she says. there is no zynisism involed, no new trend...
: it is more the fact that she becomes absorbed by a tradition she keeps
: reading and quoting: St. Augustin and others....
: needless to say that for me, the "new forms of the sacred" turn
: into an irrational kind of metaphysics that doesn't
: help us to resolve problems or make "revolts"...
: In this sense, I guess we have to revolte against her...
: Since she represents a powerful segment of actual contemporary
: intellectual Europ




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