ABSTRACT
Jean Paulhan's desire for the maximum discrepancy between his life and the State is of a piece with this anxiety. It reveals his suspicion of any pronouncement that asks to be believed, that calls on or requires the reader's adherence. Writing should not only take place, according to Paulhan, quietly; it should also produce a form of silence. Perversity sums up the basic intuition of some of the more influential readings of Paulhan's interventions in French intellectual life, particularly in the post-war period. In 1939 Paulhan gave his clearest statement on the limitations of opinion in 'La democratic fait appel au premier venu'. Paulhan's mistrust of petitions and his claim that writers should not be held to reckoning on the basis of their work, does not stem from a belief in a fully disinterested state of being. Paulhan's problem with Rhetoric or the State is its inevitable claim to draw its legitimacy from the ability to speak for all.
