“And what I would say, in Rorty’s defense, is that such an immersion in abstraction as that of Deleuze’s is basically a bourgeoisie luxury. One only need look at our philosophical history to see that. The abstract considerations have tended to be the domain of white Anglo-Saxon males who have a generational advantage. Women and minorities, up until now, have been busy with the more concrete political/social issue of achieving equality.
Now make no mistake about it: I love Deleuze; the guy has changed my life. And he, himself (in the A to Z interview (claimed that friendship is a matter of knowing the other’s madness: which is as much a matter of knowing the other’s faults. And, in that spirit, I would argue that there was a bit of hypocrisy and self contradiction in his dismissal of Rorty.”
“Bernardo Bertolucci’s highly stylized film about May ’68, The Dreamers (2003), is a vivid illustration of the narrow, exclusively Parisian image of the events that has to be overturned is we are to see things in their proper historical light” –Buchanan’s reader guide, pg. 13
As luck would have it (like Deleuze was my guardian angel or something aiding my present immersion (the movie happened to be on one of my movie channels last night, forcing me to forego watching The Big Chill from the beginning to catch it about halfway in. But it was enough to see the significance of it in terms of this exploration.
I would first note how it confirmed the bourgeoisie nature of theory and the radical. The sister and brother were clearly able to engage in the radical experiments they did because they had the luxury of doing so. And this factor haunted their engagement in the protest towards the end. It was as if they engaged in the act of protest merely for the sake of protest. Michael Pitt’s American character gave us the distance that allowed us to see that contradiction while also providing an expression of American intrigue with French culture. We can really see this in Pitt’s grilling of the character Theo as concerned his embrace of Maoism.
What we have to put in mind here is that Bertolucci is Italian and, therefore, an outsider to French culture and see in this the possibility that what we are dealing with are outsider perspectives and the disconnect between how outsiders (Americans as well (see French culture and how French culture sees itself. Hence Professor Buchanan’s desire to overturn the perspective.
At the same time, I couldn’t help but note a similar sense of sensibility between Isabelle and the female character at the end of Sartre’s Nausea: that flippant nihilism that alienates the male character in its combination of the power of beauty and desire exploiting the power of radicalism for the sake of radicalism. Nor can I help but connect this with the Kafka chick (please excuse the misogyny of the term “chick”: one who throws herself (in a dreamlike way (at the main character and drifts away just as quickly. But, once again, we could be dealing with an outsider’s perspective of French women.
That said, I’ve basically been sketching around unfamiliar territory here: exploring. I really hope, before this immersion is over, to zero in on this particular part of the book and tinker, tweak, and tighten things up.