Smoker on the Second Floor Balcony

Thinking It Over: Two Short Meditations

Dimanche, Midday, rue Mouffetard, Paris. / Photo JG.

Worlds criss-cross at Mouffetard, flow in and around each other: tourists and students perched at Place Contrescarpe, that oval at the top of the hill where France’s hériteurs présumés (Ecole Henri IV, Sorbonne), hungry tourists and Hemingway hopefuls, pass without recognition, firmly ensconced in very different lives. Down the hill, people enter St-Medard for the late service while Sunday market packs up. Old, even ‘Eternal France’, unchanging and why should it: they were here before you. It’s not a tourist spot to them, it’s a culte, however loaded with meaning the word is.

The old road south to sunny Italy keeps secrets in plain view, the regional wineshop, crowded with bottles stacked by rivers and regions, sits close by the fishmonger, across the street from the tiniest café that somehow keeps a corner for live musicians. The street still has a chanteur, singing to keep warm. Even so, not quite Paris-enough to be a tourist must-see. Our modest Roman coliseum isn’t far and so is the best clothing store in Paris, typically crowded with theatre people hunting for costumes on the cheap. Prices are posted but Simon prefers to chat while he studies you, figuring out what you’re worth. The French may pinch their euros but the sale, the encounter, not the final price, is what counts. The whole great Sunday afternoon brocante table-full is a trade-off. People tend not to throw things away in this country, they save it for that Saturday or Sunday when they can sell it. Everything stays in circulation. Simon said, come back tomorrow, I’ll have pants for you. He’d sized me up.

This place cannot be found. Doesn’t show on any map. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t exist – it’s a carrefour, a crossroads, a live nexus. Stand there long enough and the pretty picture of the building façade becomes a meditation on time. St.-Medard is directly behind me as I pause to take this image, seize this moment in time, as it will presumably be standing here long after I’m gone. So am I going to go in, I mean, finally finally go in to the soft shadows where all is forgiven ? It gets dark early at this end of the year. There’s still an hour or so of light. Confessions can wait. 

On Badiou’s Way

“This diagram is based on the fundamental hypothesis that the subjective effects of the contemporary world situation, which has lasted since the 1980s, cannot be understood on the basis of any single contradiction.”

So writes the eminent Alain Badiou in the text accompanying his graph of our intellectual tensions. It’s enough to make you scream from the back of the classroom. Is it really possible that notre cher philosophe is so out of touch he’s unaware capitalism and communism fell into each others arms forty years ago ? The State burgeons while Man diminishes. Must Badiou continually hit us over the head with the Red Book just to remind us that he, too, was young once ?

Where we live now is a hodge podge of Capital-Communism, overseen by a constantly expanding, enervating blob that wants to know our every move. The old terms are ready for the junkyard, like being called a fascist by someone sitting comfortably at an NGO, who, when not tossing money around, likes to call people names. (Item: NGOs really aren’t Non-Governmental at all, are they, now that they’re in cahoots with the state for funding, the two bodies engaged, flagrante delicto, in a passionate embrace, rearranging the world to suit their tastes.)

Oh, a fascist. Another one who dissents, who has ideas, who isn’t ready to join the latest Righteousness Campaign. Make Orwell Fiction Again, as the meme has it.   

So if Capitalism and Communism, two pillars of Badiou’s worldview, both fascinated by the allure of Total Control, have stolen each other’s tricks, what other parts of the philosopher’s worldview are out of sync with reality on the ground ? If only a chart could give us some idea where we are now or of some way out of our current Goulash Capitalism, served to Top Clientele at the best restaurants, while the Rest of Us pass in the street or press our faces to the glass.

Alain Badoui : born January 1937 in Rabat, éminence rouge of French philosophy, influenced by Althusser, Sartre and Lacan, mathematics and the revolutionary romance 1960-70. A presence in French political life who makes frequent interventions in public debates.

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Here We Go Again

Welcome to the many new subscribers who came around during my absence. It feels rather churlish to beg subscriptions after a long health- and work-related layoff, but if readers care to, they can toss a few coins into the hat at the address below. It’s appreciated, especially as we near the one-year date of my dossier, my petition for legal status here in France, slowly decomposing on the bureaucrat’s desk in Lons, Jura near the Swiss border. How that little drama is going to resolve, especially in light of the explosive debate over immigration in France, is anyone’s guess. A later column will cover my canny/unwise attempts to speed things along. In the meantime, time for another smoke. Any questions ?

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