PARTISAN REVIEW
81
analysis of literary texts). Schizoanalysis wipes out the Oedipal concep–
tion, the illusion of the ego, the phantasm of the superego, guilt, law,
and castration.
In
this truly materialistic theory, desire
produces reality
-- not a gap, an essential lack, as in Lacan.
We need only take note in closing of issue Number 55 of
Tel Quel,
from which Denis Roche has just dissociated himself with a great to-do,
following the Artaud-Bataille conference at Cerisy-la-Salle. Sollers's
observations "Sur Ie Materialisme" in this issue should be read (the book
is to come out in December, published by Seuil), as well as a remarkable
essay by Jean-Louis Baudry (who is on the editorial board) on Bataille's
experience interieure,
which he demystifies completely; and there is also
a short sequence taken from Maurice Roche's next book, "Cou(l)pe."
But parallel to the ebb and flow of ideas agitating the French
intelligentsia, some weightier concerns have been revealing themselves:
indignation in response to the military putsch in Chile; bad conscience in
the face of acts inspired by anti-Arab racism (how is one to deal with the
withdrawal of immigrant Algerian workers?); anxiety produced by the
growing inflation of the franc (the bank discount rate is now up to
llY2
percent). For the optimists, however,
tout va bien,
since the new
Montparnasse Tower has just opened its eighty stores and its height (720
feet) constitutes a new peak in the Parisian sky: a peak which obstructs
the view of the Ecole Militaire, to be sure, but which still hallows the
expansionist vistas of the Pompidou regime . ..
(Translated from the French by Stephen Donadio)
