540
NANTERRE
3 ) The University will not indeed be re\'olutionary; all that we
do ami will do can always be recuperated by the ruling powers so long as
Il1r
whole of society has not been reconstructed, Yet the task to be
;LcC'Omplished within the Faculty is not vulgarly reformist, We must
impose institutions and modes of teaching and research that permit
nitical understanding of reality in all its [omls and liberation of the
power of expression, ' '''e must not let the reform be made by the exist–
ing powers and their allies, middle-of-the-road students and teachers:
they would not accomplish anything at alL and by their failure we would
once
a~~ain
be faced with the preexisting University conditions, Bet\\'een
the critique of a University judged wrong because It is
unadapted
to the
demands of modern capitalism and the critique of a University which
would be wrong precisely because
adapted
to these demands, the distinc–
lion would not always be made, and the revolutionary critique \-vould
become confused with reformism, The mo\'ement would be led to close
itself off within the University, instead of fighting sick by side with
the workers, Essentially, it wou ld be recuperated,
4)
In
attacking not only political oppression and socioeconomic
exploitation, but also eultural alif'nation, the movement has revealed
this: that repression is not only a question of poliee dubs or electoral
trickery, nor even f'xclusively a question of pressures on salaries and
work outputs, but that it permeates the content and forms of culture,
what the ruling class diffuses through television, press, vacation clubs,
organized tours, films, periodicals, as well as university culture,
In
par–
ticular, it appears that repressive systems operate at the heart of the
cuitural relationship (in the first examples above: distributor/ cultural
product/ consumer; in the last : teachers/ knowledge/students) - systems
which are more primitive and basic than those of class society, and which
nourish the newer forms of repression, The drama of desire and its
repression, anxiety and the reflexive search for security - here is the
silent mechanism which the managerial classes play upon more and
more openly to maintain their domination, and here is the level to which
our critique must pierce in order to be true, The truth is what trans–
forms; it alone is revol utionary; wi th it alone there can be no com–
promise, We must try to be the wound of truth in the side of alienation,
5) We must keep open and avai lable to the critical consciousness,
2 On this conception of the rela tion between teacher and taught , and the
relation of both to knowledge, sce Paul Ricoeur, "R eforme et revolution
dans I'universite," which originally appeared in
L e Monde
in early June
and has been reprinted in
Esprit,
No. 6-7 (June-July, 1968). Ricoeur is
Professor of Philosophy at Nanterre.
