ABSTRACT
MS You said recently that intellectuals today are unhappy; why do you think this?
I say this with some irony because intellectuals have chosen unhappiness by wanting to be intellectuals, by taking a kind of relative distance, whether it be one that expresses shame, or torn feelings, or a critical distance. They are always at odds with themselves: this is the condition of being an intellectual. But are they really unhappy? I say they are because it seems to me that their position is less propitious today. There doesn’t seem to be any social movement of the kind we had in the sixties and seventies, which also had theoretical inspiration. Around the time of May ‘68, but also earlier in the sixties, there was a kind of conjuncture which allowed things to solve themselves. We didn’t have to pose or solve theoretical/practical problems. There was a kind of theory about, which was autonomous, but which, by being this very thing, connected with a conscious social practice, or an unconscious one, for that matter. It wasn’t necessarily a conscious class or mass ideological practice. But movement there was. I think intellectuals felt this energy, and felt it without being affiliated to any group, or being involved in personal terms. For instance, I remember Utopie, which was a small review and sold very little. We didn’t have any offices or publicity. But we felt we were writing for someone. I am not saying that we were happy. We had a favourable critical position, ‘favourable’ in that its radicalism drew on the energy of revolt that was taking place in one fraction of society. All this slowly came to an end during the seventies. This energy used itself up. It’s certainly true in my case.
