Badiou: On Different Streams Within French Maoism

Posted on December 3, 2008 | 4 Comments

This interview was posted priviously at

the Kasama Project blog. There is quite a lot in Alain Badious post-Maoist
philosophy in general as well as in this interview in particular with which I disagree,
but nonetheless this article is interesting so far as the French Maoist movement
shared some similarities (and many differences) with the U.S. New Communist
Movement:

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALAIN BADIOU, CONDUCTED BY

ERIC HAZAN
Eric Hazan: One of the most striking aspects of Sarkozys rise to power
was the support he attracted from Left renegadesfrom turncoats such
as Andr Glucksmann. As someone who still wears his coat very much the
same way round, how would you explain this strange phenomenon?
Alain Badiou: I think you have to put this in perspective, or rather look at it more
closely. First of all, it would be better to ask: why so many Maoists from the Gauche
Proltarienne? [GP was one of the main Maoist groups, whose name meant
Proletarian Left in French] Because it is among them that you find those who went
wrong in this way. Secondly, as far as I am aware, only a few rank-and-file activists
in the GP made this about-turn. So, to give your question a slightly more technical
character, I would say: why did so many people in the GP leadership take such a
bad turn?
There were other Maoist organizationsfor example the UCFML, which I was
involved in establishing, along with Sylvain Lazarus, Natacha Michel and others, in
1970. [1] In fact, Lazarus and Michel came from the GP, in the wake of a split of
sorts, whereas my own background was completely different: I came from the PSU,
the social democrats. Im not aware of a single leader or activist in our organization
who took a wrong turn, in the sense we are speaking of here. People from other
organizations, such as the GOP and VLR, often went back to the PCF, and there was
a sprinkling of other groups, in particular the PCMLF, whose idea was more to
rebuild the good old Communist Party, which was already in pretty poor shape. [2]
On the whole, these people are still somewhere or other on the left today.
But those who went wrong in public and spectacular fashionsome of them, like
Glucksmann, becoming official supporters of Sarkozydid come from the GP, which
was broadly hegemonic in this milieu, particularly among intellectuals. We could
mention Serge July, founder of Libration, Benny Lvy, who was the GPs leading

figure, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Olivier Rolin, head of the military
wing, or indeed Glucksmann himself, who joined rather late in the day, but joined
all the same. There were also less well-known intellectuals such as Jean-Marc
Salmon, who played a major role at Vincennes and later became a die-hard proAmerican. [3]
There are a number of ways to understand this turncoat phenomenon. The first is
that many of these people had a mistaken analysis of the situation at that time, in
the years 196673; they thought that it was actually revolutionary, in an
immediate sense. The Miller brothers gave me the tersest formulations on this
point. A few years later, around 1978, I asked them: Why did you just quit like
that? Because they dropped out very suddenlyeven today there are elderly
workers, Malians in the hostels, Moroccans in the factories, who ask us: How is it
that, overnight, we never saw those guys again? Jacques-Alain Miller said to me:
Because I realized one day that the country was quiet. And Grard: Because we
understood we were not going to take power. It was a very revealing response,
that of people who saw their undertaking not as the start of a long journey with a
great deal of ebb and flow, but as an avenue towards power. Grard said as much
in all innocence, and he later joined the Socialist party, which is something else
again.
So, a mistaken understanding of the conjuncture, leading either to a blocked
ambition, or to the realization that it was going to take a great deal of trouble and
hard work in a situation that was not all that promising. You could see them in
Balzacian terms as ambitious young men who imagined they were going to take
Paris by dint of revolutionary enthusiasm, but then came to understand that things
were a bit more complicated. The proof of this is that a large number of these
people have found positions of power elsewhere, in psychoanalysis, in the media,
as philosophical commentators, and so on. Their renunciation did not take place
along the lines of: Ill go back to being anonymous, but rather: That wasnt the
right card, so Ill play a different one.
There was a second principle involved in this reversal, less Balzacian and more
ideological. This was embodied by the nouveaux philosophesthemselves part of
a long historyand by those who followed them, often with a certain honesty and
not necessarily for personal ends. What happened at that point was a transition
from the alternatives of bourgeois world or revolutionary world to those of
totalitarianism or democracy. The shift can be given a precise date: it was
articulated starting from 1976, and a certain number of former GP activists were
involved in presenting it. Not just them, but them along with others. This was
particularly the case with Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau, when they wrote
their book LAnge, a kind of philosophical balance sheet of their involvement with
the GP. [4]
Here you can see the reversal at work. It revolves around the idea that, at a certain
point, absolute commitment becomes indistinguishable from absolute slavery, and
the figure of emancipation indistinguishable from that of barbarism. Grafted onto
this was the question of the Soviet camps as depicted by Solzhenitsyn. Above all
there was the matter of Cambodia and Pol Pot, which played a very major role for
those who had been actively involved in supporting the Khmer Rouge cause, and
then learned what an appalling story that was. All this gave rise to a kind of
standard discourse of repentance: I learned how absolute radicalism can have

terrifying consequences. As a result, I know that above all else we must ensure the
preservation of humanist democracy as a barrier against revolutionary
enthusiasm.
I can certainly accept that many people sincerely believed this, and not just
because they wanted a place in the media spotlight. A number of them remained
honest peoplelike Rony Brauman, like Jambet and Lardreau, who went quite far in
this direction but then stopped: they saw that this was no reason to become proAmerican and cosy up to the likes of Sarkozy. [5] By and large, these people, whom
you can call honest renegades, resigned themselves to the politics of the lesser
evil, which in one form or another always leads to the Socialist party. But others,
like Glucksmann, instrumentalized this fear of totalitarianism and rode the wave it
created.
They saw that the figure of the renegade from the Communist project, who steps
onto the media stage to stigmatize its horror and is able to say that he experienced
it in the flesh, and tell how he made a narrow escape, how he almost became a
Polpotist, could fill a gap in the market. They werent wrongthey were
orchestrated, all doors were opened to them, you hardly saw anyone else on
television; they built up a whole intellectual media empire on the basis of this
business.
Eric Hazan: What about Bernard-Henri Lvy?
Alain Badiou: Bernard-Henri Lvy, as you can imagine, was never a very
convinced Maoist, more of a sympathizer. But there was Olivier Rolin, who went on
to make quite a name in the literary world. And others, who were activists or
sympathizers of the GP, such as Jean-Claude Milnerwho, in the 1980s, starting
with his book Les Noms indistincts, declared that formal freedoms were not
something to be trifled with, and that the Cambodian business should be called
genocide. But Milner is a transition to a third point of entry.
This involves the long history of PalestineIsrael, the question of the name Jew,
etc. This aspect was all the more important, in the case of the GP, in that its central
character was Benny Lvy, alias Pierre Victor. He was the GPs charismatic leader,
and on top of that had been anointed by Sartre. He had a great capacity for
intellectual seduction, as well as being very forceful, and the combination
captivated a number of activists before seducing Sartre. This third aspect cannot
be seen like the others, as a visible political U-turn, a renegacy; it was rather the
idea that there was something higher than politics. Benny Lvy could maintain, in
substance, that in the end he had only ever been interested in one thing, the
absolute, and that his involvement in the GP was a misguided approach to this
absolute. In the event, he converted in a very precise sense: from progressive
politics to Jewish studies. To his converts eyes, revolutionary political commitment
seemed not just secondary and limited, but a wrong turning. All of this adds up to a
sophisticated kind of renegacy.
Many people who came out of the GP took this route. Not to the extent that Benny
Lvy pushed it, making religion and Jewish identity the organizing centre of their
existence. But they didwhether they were Jewish or not, that is not the significant
factorturn the extermination of the European Jews and the name Jew into the
emblems around which all should rally, against any political radicalism that was

bound to end up totalitarian. All those who had long been bothered by the question
of Israel, and those who at a certain moment, often for personal reasons (being
anti-Islamic today is always very close to a fear of the masses, a fear of the
banlieues and the poor), became anti-Arabthey all plunged into this symbolism. A
far from negligible role in this sorry affair was played by a certain professorial
republicanism, made up of a secularism that was as pugnacious as it was
corrupted, and a low-grade feminism. All ingredients from which first Le Pen and
then Sarkozy were the only ones to benefit politically.
In conclusion, I would say that the GP was marked by three characteristics: first, a
kind of impatient megalomania with regard to the course of history, a conviction
that the Maoists were in a position to take power or at least to overturn the
situation very rapidly. Second, they were extremely ideologized: what they took
from the Cultural Revolution was that ideology and personal re-education were in
commandwhich led them to launch a series of absurd campaigns, completely
detached from reality, out of pure ideologism, with a radicalism that was vehement
and imaginary in equal measure. I remember how, out of this over-estimation of
ideology, they created apolitical committees of struggle at Renault Billancourt.
That already anticipated Milners hatred for the political view of the world. They
went to the brink of armed struggle, and at the moment when they pulled back in
fear there were also a number of U-turns, always couched in a rhetoric of
compassion and repentance: Look how far I almost went. Thirdly, they were
always communitarians. One of our many run-ins with themour relations were
always dreadfulwas when they decided to establish a movement of Arab
workers in the factories. We opposed this communitarian separatism with the idea
of the international proletariat of France. It was a decisive struggle with long-term
implications: those who set up a movement of Arab workers can one day make a Uturn and become apologists for any other communitarian signifier. A good number
of those who today are hitmen for the Israeli army were rabidly pro-Palestinian at
the time of the GPin an adventurist and very precarious fashion, far too unreal
relative to the actual situation.
Once againand Im not speaking just for my own crowdthe combination of
these three characteristics is only applicable, as far as Maoism is concerned, to the
GP, and still more precisely to the GP after 1969. You might say that this GP was
the heir, in France, of all that was worst in the Chinese Red Guards during the
Cultural Revolution. Certain Red Guard groups, in the years 196769, developed
the idea that you can overturn a situation by means of all-powerful ideology and
spectacular violent actions. I always thought that Kuai Dafu, the leading figure of
the Beijing Red Guards, was a lot like the GP leadership; they adored Lin Biao, their
favourite Chinese leader, who said that you had to change man at the deepest
level. They liked that activist metaphysics.
Eric Hazan: Its strange. As I recall, the organization you were with was
known for being highly sectarian, whereas the GP attracted the decent
types. I wasnt alone in thinking this. The UCFML used to march carrying
banners with Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, chanting their names
in that order.
Alain Badiou: No, thats not how it was at all, what a muddle! The people youre
talking about were the PCMLFa closed bunch, Stalinists in fact. They were
attached to the Chinese state from the time of the Sino-Soviet conflict. You could

say that, seen from today, the difference between the PCMLF and the UCFML. . .
But in revolutionary politics, as you well know, such nuances are of major
importance. The PCMLF and the UCFML were like night and day.
I believe there have been three different interpretations of Maoism in France. The
first, and the oldest, was that, contrary to the USSR under Khrushchev, China held
on to an original hardline Stalinismand that the abandonment of Stalinism would
lead sooner or later to a general dissolution (in which regard they werent
mistaken). These people started the PCMLF believing they would rebuild a genuine
Communist party of class struggle, against the revisionism of the official PCF and
the USSR. It was both a dogmatic and a nostalgic interpretation. But it was also the
only place where you found old working-class activiststhere were young people in
all the Maoist groups, but not older ones, nostalgic for the great era of Thorez, the
1950s, when the Party ruled in the factories and housing estates. It was really a
conservative interpretation. At the other extreme there was the ultra-left
interpretation of the GP, which was almost anarchist: you launched bold attacks,
set up stunts, made revolution in the head, melted into the masses, always with
a very keen eye to the media. The organization was highly centralizedin secret;
in public it dissolved itself every five minutes in order to liberate the energy of the
masses.
As for us, the UCFML, I would say that we were a centre-left organization, in the
sense always advocated by Mao, who described himself as a centrist.
There were three essential points of Maoist provenance that we practised: the first
was that you always had to link up with the people, that politics for intellectuals
was a journey into society and not a discussion in a closed room. Political work was
defined as work in factories, housing estates, hostels. It was always a matter of
setting up political organizations in the midst of peoples actual life. The second
was that you should not take part in the institutions of the bourgeois state: we
were against the traditional trade unions and the electoral mechanism. No
infiltration of the so-called workers bureaucracies, no participation in elections;
that distinguished us radically from the Trotskyists. The third point was that we
should be in no hurry to call ourselves a party, to take up old forms of organization;
we had to remain very close to actual political processes. As a result of all this, we
found ourselves sharply opposed to the two other main currents. Our founding
pamphlet attacked both the PCMLF on the right and the GP on the left. A struggle
on two fronts . . .
Eric Hazan: And Tel Quel?
Alain Badiou: They were latter-day Maoists. [6] The first lesson that the Tel Quel
people drew from May 68 was that they should join the PCFan entryism which
rather repeated the Surrealists stance in the 1920s and 30s, with the idea of
revolutionizing the Communists from within, by the innovatory power of the word.
They went on to adopt a more Maoist posture, which in my view remained a
superficial crust. But they did, it must be said, pass through Maoism, and Philippe
Sollers was one of several who had a strange itinerary between the 70s and today
from Waldeck Rochet to Balladur and Royal, via the Great Helmsman. [7]
It is important to note that Maoism of the GP type was very marked by having been
fashionable among intellectuals for five years or so, say from 1969 to 1974, and
many people gravitated to it for that reasonas well as Sollers and Sartre, there
was Jean-Luc Godard, for example. What attracted these intellectuals and artists

was an aura of activism and radicalism, and they didnt look too closely at the
actual politics the GP was conducting, which often involved trickery and throwing
dust in peoples eyes. Almost everything put out by GP propaganda was half untrue
where there was a kitten, they described a Bengal tiger.
Eric Hazan: in terms of milieu, was there a difference in social origins?
Alain Badiou: I havent studied this point in any detail, but in my personal
perception of things, it is clear that there were a lot of young grands bourgeois in
the GP, which made it reminiscent of the Russian anarchist movement. There were
also many young women from the same milieu, who had broken with their families.
It is well known that the GP would hold meetings in enormous apartmentsI
sometimes attended these and took part. When the GP sent a big contingent out to
the Renault works at Flins in June 1968we should remember that one of them,
Gilles Tautin, was killed by the riot policethey organized an emergency network
to bring back the guys who had scattered into the surrounding countryside; and a
large part of the Paris intellectual bourgeoisie, including myself, went out in their
cars to rescue these activists.
Godards film Tout va bien gives a good picture of this kind of sympathy
simultaneously bourgeois, activist, distant and fashionable. The fascination of Yves
Montands character with events in the factory is totally characteristic of the
attraction the GP exercised on the intellectuals of the time. But remember that the
GP, like the UCFML, also contained workers, young people, Algerians, all kinds of
people.
Eric Hazan: I think that if my experience with the Communists hadnt
made me rather wary, I might have gone in that direction myself.
Alain Badiou: Yes, and me too, if I hadnt been put off early on by the element of
flagrant posturingboasting of things that didnt really existand a kind of
hystericization of activism, which I sensed very quickly would not stay the course.
For my part, I made a permanent commitment, it wasnt a youthful prank. Theirs
was an adventurist and fallacious style of action, but one that was exciting at the
same time, a politics that was also a fashion, its personal roots in actual fact not
very deepall this, in the GP, made possible those spectacular reversals that we
have now seen. Politics as excitement is not a good thing. The canonical example
in France was Jacques Doriot, the great hope of the 1930s when he was Communist
mayor of Saint-Denis. He was the Dionysian leader who set off for battle at the
head of his proletarian troops. That kind of visionary can make a total about-turn,
because the moment comes when, to remain in the spotlight, to maintain your own
excited self-image, you have to be able to pull off a complete change of course.
Doriot became a notorious fascist, an extremist collaborator with the Nazis.
The phenomenon of Doriotism was aggravated by a French characteristic: the link
between intellectuals and politicsan excellent thing in many respects, but which
has its specific pathologies. This was how, around 1969, a kind of hegemony of the
most superficial form of Maoism established itself in the trendy intellectual milieu,
and how we are now seeing an equally bizarre phenomenon, that of ex-Maoist
intellectuals who made a complete about-turn and whom you hear on television
railing against any kind of progressive politics. When Doriot was killed in his car by
machine-gun fire, he was wearing an SS uniform. As far as our Maoist renegades
are concerned, we should really speak of Doriotism as farce.

Translated by David Fernbach. This interview originally appeared in Eric

Hazan, Changement de propritaire, Paris 2007.
[1] ucfml: Union des Communistes de France Marxiste-Lniniste. [Footnotes by nlr]
[2] gop: Gauche Ouvrire et Paysanne, formed in 1968, dissolved in 1972;
pcmlf:Parti Communiste Marxiste-Lniniste de France (19671970); vlr: Vive la
Rvolution (19691971).
[3] Benny Lvy (19462003): nom de guerre Pierre Victor, co-founder in 1966 of
the Union des Jeunesses Communistes (Marxiste-Leniniste); set up the GP in 1968;
Sartres private secretary after GP disbanded in 1973. Jacques-Alain Miller (b.
1944): Lacans son-in-law, dominated the Vincennes psychoanalysis department
with his brother Grard (b. 1948). Jean-Claude Milner (b. 1941): linguist and
philosopher, author of works including Constats (1992) and Le Juif du savoir (2007).
Olivier Rolin (b. 1947): novelist, journalist at Libration and Le Nouvel Observateur;
member of pro-American think-tank, Le Cercle de lOratoire. Jean-Marc Salmon:
sociologist.
[4] Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau, LAnge: Ontologie de la rvolution, Paris
1976.
[5] Rony Brauman (b. 1950): physician, co-founder and president of Mdecins Sans
Frontires from 1982 to 1994.
[6]Tel Quel: set up in 1960 by anthropologist and former surrealist Philippe Sollers
(b. 1936) as an alternative to the littrature engage promoted by Les Temps
Modernes; politicized as of 1966.
[7] Waldeck Rochet (19051983): PCF General Secretary from 1964 to 1972

Badiou et Milner : les

meilleurs ennemis
Dimanche 07 Octobre 2012 12:00

Aude Lancelin

Lun est le pape de lextrme gauche, lautre, celui des

noconservateurs franais. Proches dans les annes 70, les
deux philosophes rompirent par la suite. Un livre de
dialogue les runit aujourdhui, Controverse, anim par
Philippe Petit.
Deux intelligences hors normes, deux noms de guerre pour ce qui reste
encore de milieu intellectuel en France, deux ex-camans de la Rue
dUlm, qui laissrent une trace indlbile sur leurs condisciples, deux
anciens maos bien sr, rescaps des annes rouges, qui quittrent
lastre mort de la rvolution par des voies trs diffrentes. Lun, Badiou,
en restant fidle limaginaire de la radicalit rvolutionnaire. Lautre,
Milner, en tournant le dos la politique dans son ensemble, dans le

sillage de Benny Lvy, ex-Pierre Victor, leader de la Gauche

proltarienne, qui aprs la dissolution de celle-ci se consacrera ltude
de la Torah, passant selon lexpression consacre de Mao Mose.
Longtemps proches, ceux-l rompirent au dbut des annes 2000,
loccasion dun article de Badiou dansLibration, ironique lgard de
Benny Lvy justement. Mais la brouille tait inluctable. En publiant en
2003 les Penchants criminels de lEurope dmocratique, charge dune
violence incroyable contre la gauche progressiste, quasiment accuse de
conspirer la venue dune seconde Shoah, Milner devient le chef de file
des noconservateurs franais et au-del, avantageusement cit par
Alain Finkielkraut autant que par Bernard-Henri Lvy. Paralllement,
Alain Badiou entame lui aussi un spectaculaire retour sur la scne
publique, entrecoupant ses travaux dontologie pure et ses sminaires
triomphaux en Californie, en Grce ou en Argentine par de petits livres
dintervention comme De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom ? (2007), aux effets
politiques et mdiatiques certains.
Qui a eu lide de refaire un pas vers lautre ? Jean-Claude Milner,
daprs ce que lon sait. Les voici donc aujourdhui runis, publiant le
rsultat de leurs quatre entrevues menes par notre collaborateur
Philippe Petit. Passionnante de bout en bout, cette Controverse,
paratre le 11 octobre, les voit sopposer parfois rudement sur lhritage
des rvolutions, la question de luniversel ou celle de la Palestine.
Beaucoup de convergences inattendues en revanche lorsque la
discussion porte sur le bilan du sarkozysme, la situation historique de la
France, les Indigns ou la prsidence normale, dcrite par Milner
comme la rconciliation des notables. Ces deux l parlent la mme
langue, pas de doute, et partagent de nombreuses rfrences.
Aujourdhui encore, ce sont eux qui font rsonner lcho de la grandeur
franaise, et lon se prend simpatienter de voir venir leurs
continuateurs.
Jean-Claude Milner : Je reprends volontiers la formule dAlain Badiou :
le XXe sicle a eu lieu. Mais ce qui a eu lieu, pour moi, cest dabord la
dcouverte progressive que le nom ouvrier avait cess de diviser. Il avait
t le diviseur par excellence au XIXe sicle. Il cesse de ltre.
Pourquoi ? A cause de la guerre de 1914. Les ouvriers, dans les nations
industrielles, acceptent la mobilisation et lunion dans la guerre. Lnine
porte sur ce point le juste diagnostic, mais il se trompe en pensant quil
pourra ranimer la force de division du nom ouvrier, en passant par
ldification dun Etat ouvrier. Le nom ouvrier, loin de diviser, va runir ;
il devient lun des multiples synonymes de la cohrence sociale.

Si le XXe sicle a eu lieu, cest pour une seconde raison : le nom juif est
redevenu un nom politique. Cest--dire un nom diviseur. Il lavait t
dj. Je pense laffaire Dreyfus, qui dun certain point de vue a appris
la politique une gnration.
Hitler a rouvert la question de la capacit de la politique empcher la
mise mort de ladversaire. Il la rouverte principalement propos du
nom juif. Il a fait cder la politique ; la fin de la guerre a rtabli la
politique, mais elle na pas referm la question. Le nom juif est encore
aujourdhui le diviseur majeur, celui qui convoque la politique sa limite.
Cet ensemble de propositions affirmatives me conduit mettre des
critiques. 1) Je considre quAlain Badiou a sous-estim la force
imaginaire de lantijudasme, aussi bien en France que hors de France.
2) Symtriquement, je considre quil a surestim la porte politique du
nom palestinien.
Je mexplique. Selon moi, le nom palestinien ne divise quen apparence.
Au contraire, il cre du consensus : au sein des honntes gens (je my
inclus), qui considrent tous que les Palestiniens sont dans le malheur ;
au sein de ce quon appelle encore le tiers-monde ; de plus en plus au
sein de la gauche euro-atlantique (Europe occidentale et Amrique). En
tant quil divise en apparence, le nom palestinien promeut une
apparence de politique. La question politique relle apparat avec le nom
qui divise rellement : le nom juif.
Alain Badiou : Cest bien une mode intellectuelle que se rattachent
des thses comme le nom ouvrier est mort, le retour du nom juif est
notre vnement. Cette vision du sicle nest-elle pas le fruit quelque
peu sec dun petit groupe de lintelligentsia franaise entre 1974 et
aujourdhui ? Nest-ce pas Benny Lvy et ceux qui lont suivi, au nombre
desquels Jean-Claude Milner, qui, dus que les proclamations
matamoresques de la Gauche proltarienne ne les aient pas ports au
pouvoir, se sont mis critiquer frocement la vision politique du
monde et le progressisme, jeter aux orties le mot ouvrier, et
bien dautres avec lui, faire de juif un nom hyperbolique, et de
farouchement propalestiniens quils taient se sont, avec la mme
certitude dtre la fine fleur du temps, convertis au sionisme le plus
intransigeant ? De tels revirements ont lavantage de transformer un
chec patent en lucidit suprieure, et dtre toujours dans le vent.
Mais voyons les termes prcis du litige. Pour commencer par les
critiques les plus factuelles, je tiens redire une fois de plus que je nai

aucunement sous-estim ou dni lexistence, y compris aujourdhui, y

compris dans notre pays, de lantismitisme. Je renvoie mes textes et
aux actions auxquelles jai particip sur ce point. Mais ce que JeanClaude Milner, lui, sous-estime de faon quasi monstrueuse, en fait nie,
purement et simplement, cest la puissance presque consensuelle, en
France, en Europe sans doute, de lhostilit aux Arabes et aux Africains
noirs, sous le nom convenu dimmigrs. Je lui demande raison de
cette dissymtrie. En ce qui concerne prcisment les agissements de
lEtat dIsral, ceux-l ne sont pas plus identifiables aux juifs que ne
ltaient ceux de Ptain ou de Sarkozy aux Franais, et mme moins
encore.
Ensuite, au bas mot, dans ce conflit, le rapport entre les morts violentes
de Palestiniens sous les coups des Israliens et les morts dIsraliens
juifs sous les coups des Palestiniens est de cent pour un. Ceux qui ont
d fuir, abandonner leur terre, assister la destruction de leurs
maisons, tre enferms dans des ghettos et dans des camps, passer des
heures pour aller dun village un autre, franchir des murs, ce sont les
Palestiniens. On stonne que le sensible Milner ne soit pas, cette fois,
du ct des corps parlants quon tue, quon humilie ou quon enferme.
Dans de telles conditions, la question est de savoir par quels chemins
passe la seule solution juste : un Etat moderne, cest--dire un Etat dont
la substructure nest pas identitaire, mais historique. Un Etat qui solde
cette guerre civile atroce en runissant les deux parties.
Ces remarques factuelles nous prparent dire ceci : il est tout
bonnement faux quun mot de la politique soit important (soit
un nom, admettons cette convention) proportion de ce quil divise.
Autant dire quen Amrique aujourdhui le vrai nom de la politique est
le mariage gay. Quant chez nous, il serait plus justifi aujourdhui
que Jean-Claude Milner tienne pour des noms minents les
noms Arabe ou Noir, pour ne rien dire dislam et islamisme,
lesquels lvidence infiniment plus que le prdicat juif, lequel est
devenu consensuel au point que Marine Le Pen elle-mme nose plus y
toucher, la diffrence de son papa. Cest que ledit papa avait des
faiblesses pour les seules politiques que lon connaisse dans lesquelles le
mot identitaire juif divise absolument, nommment les fascismes,
plus singulirement le nazisme. On peut mme dire que le
mot juif na t un nom politique minent, selon les critres de Milner,
et donc au vu de ses pouvoirs de division, que dans le nazisme et ses
succursales. Mais peut-tre Milner considre-t-il dsormais que toute
politique sapparente au nazisme ? Je reviendrai sur ce qui conduit sa
pense un antipolitisme radical. Un nom est politique, dirais-je quant
moi, sil inscrit une ide du bien, dans lordre de laction collective, du

mouvement historique rflchi dans une organisation de cette action. En

ce sens, du reste, il ny a aujourdhui que deux mots politiques
fondamentaux (deux noms) : la dmocratie, qui prtend unifier le
monde de la vie collective sous la loi extrieure du capitalisme
concurrentiel, et le communisme, qui prtend lunifier sous la loi
immanente de la libre association.
Mais Jean-Claude Milner, comme Glucksmann, ne pense qu partir du
mal. Il est comme ce parlementaire, M. de Mun, qui Jaurs
lanait : Vous aimez les ouvriers, monsieur de Mun, vous les aimez
saignants !. Sa pense salimente aux dsastres. Il nous la dit : la
seule chose quon puisse, quon doive esprer, cest de mettre fin aux
massacres, cest de condamner les mises mort. En matire de
pense politique, Jean-Claude Milner a grandement besoin de
victimes, douvriers saignants, de peuples martyrs.
Malheureusement, les massacres trouvent leurs racines non dans
labstraction de la mise mort des tres parlants, mais dans des
politiques prcises, dont on sait quelles ne sont combattues
efficacement que par dautres politiques. Sopposer aux massacres na
aucune consistance si cette opposition nest pas nourrie par lide dune
politique absolument diffrente, ide qui seule peut proposer une forme
dexistence collective dans laquelle le recours au massacre est exclu.
Je crois quau bout du compte la thse de Milner, cest que la politique
nexiste pas, ou mme quelle est toujours nuisible, et que la seule
chose qui compte est la morale de la survie des corps.
Voici par contraste ma position rsume : ce qui a commenc au XIXe
sicle, cest le mot communisme. Il a expriment au XXe sa possible
surpuissance, sous la forme dune fusion entre politique (communiste)
et Etat (de dictature populaire). Il faut revenir la sparation des deux,
ce qui exige une sorte de recommencement politique. Toute autre
orientation, singulirement le moralisme de la survie des corps, revient
entriner la domination, sous le mot cl dmocratie, du capitalisme
dchan dont nous exprimentons le dploiement plantaire, prenant
ainsi lentire mesure de son infamie. Communisme ou barbarie. JeanClaude Milner confirme, en tant que professeur par lexemple ngatif,
que nous en sommes bien l.
Jean-Claude Milner : Que dans ses rflexions Alain Badiou nait pas
sous-estim la force quantitative de lantismitisme dans lopinion, je
suis prt le lui accorder. Mais je pense quil a sous-estim le fait que

cette force saccroissait et quelle saccroissait parce que ses formes se

renouvelaient. Notamment au sein de lopinion dite claire, aussi bien
en France qu lchelle mondiale. Pour viter le malentendu, je rserve
le
terme antismitisme aux
formes
anciennes
et
le
terme antijudasme aux formes nouvelles. Lantijudasme nouveau est
devenu un marqueur de la libert desprit et de la libert politique.
Aprs 1945, aucun marqueur antijuif ne pouvait tre un marqueur de
libert ; tous taient au contraire des marqueurs de servitude. Cest le
moment sartrien. Il est clos. Aujourdhui, les marqueurs antijuifs sont
devenus compatibles avec les marqueurs de la libert politique et/ou
philosophique ; ils tendent mme en devenir une condition ncessaire.
Le nom juif a la proprit de diviser. Non seulement il divise lopinion,
mais il divise les sujets contre eux-mmes. Et notamment ceux qui
pourraient tre amens dire deux-mmes quils sont juifs. Par
contraste, la division quinduit la question du mariage gay confirme celui
qui a choisi dans limage quil a de lui-mme ; il en va de mme de la
plupart des exemples que moppose Alain Badiou. La division quinduit le
nom juif est dune tout autre nature.
Considrons prsent la question de lexistence ou de linexistence dun
Etat-nation se prsentant commetat juif. Dans la mesure o le nom juif
y est impliqu, il arrive quil divise le sujet contre lui-mme. Je lai
constat chez certains de ceux qui acquiescent au principe de lexistence
dun tel Etat ; je me suis laiss dire que la division se constate chez
certains de ceux qui refusent cette existence.
Je ne veux pas mattarder sur lventuelle superposition entre le refus
dun tel Etat et un antijudasme. Cette superposition existe, mais je ne
ferai pas linjure Badiou de la lui imputer. Que la naissance de cet Etat
ait t immdiatement suivie dune guerre, qui le niera ? Cette guerre
dure encore. Quelle provoque des morts nombreuses, qui en doute ? Il
ne peut en tre autrement. Les Palestiniens qui meurent sont persuads
quils meurent cause de lexistence dIsral. Quils en soient
persuads, cest indubitable. Mais rien ne prouve quils aient raison.
Aujourdhui, les Palestiniens se font tuer pour que les rgimes en place,
dans les Etats voisins, se maintiennent. Cest pourquoi je juge que la
division induite par les Palestiniens ramne un consensus, dont la
majorit automatique de lONU est une expression parmi dautres. Le
nouveau pouvoir en Egypte annonce vrai ou faux quil se chargera
lui-mme de la destruction ; du mme coup, le nom palestinien est

effac. Preuve que les Palestiniens ne meurent pas pour eux-mmes. Ils
meurent pour que leurs prtendus allis et leurs prtendus chefs
continuent dtre indiffrents leur sort.
Puisquon me demande un certificat de sensibilit, javouerai que cet
tat de choses me touche parce quil est de part en part habit par le
mensonge. Ce mensonge qui fait que le Palestinien se murmure, en
mourant, quIsral la tu. Non, ce qui tue le Palestinien, cest ce
mensonge mme. Paralllement, lIsralien simagine souvent quil
meurt cause des Palestiniens. Cest videmment faux. Il meurt parce
quil est identifi un juif et parce que certains puissants ont besoin
quun juif ne sache jamais si sa survie est assure. Face cela, Badiou
appelle de ses vux un Etat moderne dont la substructure ne soit pas
identitaire mais historique. A mes yeux, la proposition a le mme statut
de fiction rationnelle que lhypothse communiste. Elle na de sens que
si on accorde Badiou la totalit de son systme. Ce que je ne fais pas.
Qui peut imaginer que puisse subsister un tel lot dexception dans une
zone faite dEtats dont la substructure est identitaire, o lhistorique et
lidentitaire entrent en constante intersection ? Qui peut imaginer que
quoi que ce soit puisse se stabiliser entre Israliens et Palestiniens, alors
que la Syrie, lEgypte, lIran, lIrak et jen passe sont pris dans les rets
de linstabilit ? Nulle part dans le monde on ne peut faire mieux que
des bricolages ; dans cette zone du monde, les bricolages ne peuvent
pas aller au-del de larmistice. Est-ce une allgeance une doctrine du
mal ? Jadmets que je tiens le cours du monde pour vou au dsordre
indfini, mais la mise en quation du dsordre et du mal, cest du
platonisme. Or, je ne suis pas platonicien.