Introduction: On Pascal Bruckner

Abstract

Introduction:On Pascal Bruckner Richard J. Golsan Abstract Pascal Bruckner is one of France’s leading “public intellectuals” and novelists, whose work has elicited praise and stirred controversy for almost three decades. This issue of South Central Review includes two essays by Pascal Bruckner, as well as appreciations of is work and contributions by the French “New Philospher” Andre Glucksmann, Luc Ferry, a philosopher and former Minister of Eduction under Jacques Chirac, the French novelist Serge Koster, and Paul Berman, Writer in Residence at New York University and regular contributor to the New Republic, the Village Voice, and other publications. It also includes scholarly contributions dealing with Bruckner’s essays and fiction by two American scholars, Ralph Schoolcraft, Nathan Bracher, and one by the South American scholar and poet Eduardo Espina. Bruckner’s contributions to the issue examine two controversial topics, European Anti-Americanism and the concept of vulgarity. From Bruckner’s perspective, European anti-Americanism constitutes first and foremost a kind of Girardian scapegoating, where all the ills of modernity as well as other flaws—both of which Europe shares—are blamed on the “other”. The reasons are several in Bruckner’s diagnosis. The most obvious is a resentment and envy of American power and influence. More central is a deep seated European self-loathing that manifests itself in a misguided idealization of formerly colonized people and an overwhelming sense of guilt over the horrors and abuses of Europe’s recent past. Bruckner’s second contribution, again following a Girardian logic, examines “vulgarity” as a consequence of a “loss of degree” a failure of a legitimate and legitimizing cultural hierarchy that defines social and cultural virtues and makes them broadly acceptable. When cultural hierarchy is absent or in a state of dissolution “vulgarity” extends its reach, and traditional notions of “good” and “bad” become inoperable, and are even subject to inversion. In an oft-cited passage in André Malraux's great philosophical novel of the Spanish Civil War, L'Espoir (Man's Hope), the Italian aviator Scali asks the Spanish Republican leader Garcia during a lull in the fighting what, in the latter's opinion, is the best thing a man can do with his life. Garcia responds: "Transformer en conscience une expérience aussi large que possible"—"Render into consciousness as broad a range of experience [of life] as possible" (898). Malraux himself certainly aspired to that ideal, being, during the course of his life, a novelist, an art critic, a filmmaker, but also a self-styled revolutionary in French Indochina, a volunteer aviator and fund-raiser for the Spanish Republic, a Resistance fighter against the Nazis during World War II, and finally a Minister of Information and later Minister of Culture under Charles de Gaulle. Since Malraux's time many French intellectuals have sought to live up to Garcia's ideal, in one form or another. Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus certainly come to mind as examples as essayists, novelists (and playwrights) and intellectuels engagés, although neither ever served—or would ever serve—in an official capacity in the French government. More recently, the list includes most visibly—and flamboyantly—the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, the leader of the "New Philosophers" who emerged in the wake of the French student revolts of 1968. More "public intellectual" than "philosopher" properly speaking (he holds no academic post) Lévy is also a novelist, essayist, filmmaker, director of the publishing house Grasset, political activist—and media darling. Lévy's most recent work, American Verigo, published last year, garnered a good deal of media attention in this country ("BHL," as he is known in France, appeared on the Daily Show, among other spots)—as well as mixed reviews. Another French intellectual who in many ways appears to fulfill Garcia's ideal is Luc Ferry, a distinguished political philosopher (with academic credentials), public intellectual, and, very recently, Minister of Education under Jacques Chirac. Ferry is interviewed in this issue of South Central Review. But perhaps more than either Lévy or Ferry, the figure who in many ways best exemplifies the ideal proposed in Malraux's novel three quarters [End Page 1] of a century ago is Pascal...