Reading May ’68 through a Levinasian Lens: Alain Finkielkraut, Maurice Blanchot, and the Politics of Identity

Abstract

AMID THE FRENCH STUDENT PROTESTS of May 1968, there a moment when figure of Jew made an unforgettable appearance on public scene. In third week of May, during a lull in unrest, radio broadcasts reported that Daniel Cohn-Bendit, young German Jewish strike leader, had been denied reentry into France after a brief trip to Germany. The government decision, clearly meant to diffuse protest, had opposite effect. Crowds poured into streets Avithout directive, organization, or planning and united in folloAvmg chant: Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands.1On one level, function of this call amid student riots straightforward: it a rallying cry, a statement of solidarity with movement's boisterous leader. By capitalizing on act of deportation, this slogan allowed for easy (although obviously unfair) analogy between French government and Nazi Germany. Thus, phrase underscored position of students as victims of an oppressive and authoritative regime while simultaneously reenactmg ideal of fraternite illustrated here by students' insistence that nothing separated their status from that of their foreign-born Jewish leader. Given this interpretation, students' expression of solidarity could be read as a demonstration of French republican spirit, evoking stance of Dreyfusards some eighty years earlier when they refused to allow one man to be condemned unjustly - except, of course, for one remarkable difference:2 During Dreyfus affair, those who rallied for Jewish captain's cause did so in name of Enlightenment ideal of humanity, an ideal uniting men above and beyond their differences.3 They protested suspicion directed at Dreyfus as a Jew and established their solidarity with him as a man and as a French citizen. As Emile Zola so famously wrote to President Faure, have but one passion, that of Enlightenment, in name of humanity that has suffered so much and that has a right to happiness.4 Dreyfus 's Jewish identity was nearly beside point. The student protestors of May '68, in contrast, allied themselves with Cohn-Bendit by adopting his identity, not by asserting that he shared in theirs. They did not protest in name of an idea of humanity but in name of the Jew; instead of claiming status of universal for Cohn-Bendit, they claimed status of exception, of Jewish particularity, for themselves.5In follows I be considering two interpretations of this event and its significance for thinking about status of Jew and Judaism in France, one by contemporary philosopher and cultural critic Alam Finkielkraut (b. 1949) and other by writer and critic Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003). 6 Despite differences in these two mterpretations, both come to their conclusion, I will argue, by way of Emmanuel LeAanas's (1906-95) representation of Judaism in what have come to be called his Jewish writings. My argument is that these two interpretations, despite certain commonalities, reveal in starkness of their opposition a tension at heart of Levinas's conception of Judaism. For Fmkielkraut, Levinas provides a means to reject actions of student protestors and yet simultaneously to defend Judaism as a teacher of moral autonomy in line Avith tradition of Enlightenment, a true center worthy of defending from onslaught of multiculturalism. For Blanchot, on contrary, protestors' actions enact political principles inherent in Judaism. In very impropriety of their actions they perform an act of uprooting, inspiration for which Blanchot discovers in Levinas's philosophy. In what follows, I Avili first trace architecture of Fmkielkraut's and Blanchot's position, contextuahzmg their reactions to slogan within larger framework of their thought. I will then turn to Levinas in order to illustrate how their positions on '68 derive from two divergent readings of Levinas's thought. …