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PARTISAN REVIEW
JK:
At the moment we're in the middle of a regression which is
present in the form of a return to the religious, a return to a con–
cept of transcendence, a rehabilitation of spiritualism. It's a vast
problem which can be interpreted in various ways.
It
is not
uninteresting. There are now in France all sorts of spiritualist
movements: pro-Christian, pro-Jewish, pro this and pro that .
Here the Sartrean problem returns. I think that there's a religion
of reason in Sartrean thought, just as in the new spiritualists
there's a religion of transcendence . But both of them obliterate
those forms in which the fact of signification is produced, the form
in which meaning is produced .
PM:
So, from this point of view, a religious notion of transcendence ,
a fetishizing of reason a la Sartre, are structurally the same .
JK:
I think so, and both are regressions with regard to the current
of thought which is most acute, most lucid in the twentieth cen–
tury, and which involves , as well as the discovery of the determin–
ing role of language in human life , the whole adventure of con–
temporary art. There's a blindness in Sartrean thought in that
regard which gives it extremely charming ethical and humanistic
positions , just as it gives extremely precursive ethical and
humanistic positions to all the new spiritualists today, who are
often in the foreground of the cultural, ideological battle in Paris.
It would be better to take up again the basic presuppo–
sitions, start from the small things, the small notions . I had a pro–
fessor who bequeathed to me great wisdom in this area: Emile
Benveniste, professor of linguistics at the College de France . He
used to say to me, "You know, Madame, I concern myself with
small things, the verb 'to be,' for example. " Well, I think one must
have this ambitious modesty, leave the meaning of history, pro–
duction, leave all that and take up instead the minimal com–
ponents that constitute the speaking being. The little elements
that make me speak, the little elements that make me desire. It's
still too difficult to be able to separate them. I mean that it would
be necessary to start from a minimalism, to simplify things, and
to be satisfied with more rigorous thinking rather than stir up
emptiness with grand theories .
PM:
So could we say that Lacan and Benveniste together in some
sense provided this next step, and that at this point one could
situate the beginning of your work?
JK:
Exactly. Benveniste's work is important because it sees the ne-
