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PARTISAN REVIEW
ways asks why I speak about ethics and history when those notions
already have been deconstructed. Not even the most dogmatic French
deconstructionists ask such questions .
EK:
Yes, many of us feel the same way . But, do you think that the
people who invite you are more familiar with your positions of five
or ten years ago?
JK:
Maybe. But I don't think that they were quite so formalisti c even
then . Still , there is some sort of misinterpretation , since formali sm is
newer than are historical and ethical interpretations: some people
focus on it and forget its content. I wrote my first paper in France for
Roland Barthes's 1966 seminar about Mikhail Bahktin . He soon be–
came an important figure . But I spoke about a book by Bakhtin on
Dostoevsky, and about another one on Rabelais , which already were
considered poststructuralist or postformalist. Bakhtin accounted for
what happens in the literary forms of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, but
did not disconnect these formal aspects from the surrounding history
and ethics. He looked at the esthetics of the Carnival in relation to
the Church , etcetera. I was interested in how he already considered
form as part of historical and moral issues.
EK:
Unfortunately, in America, we divide intellectual life into disci–
plines.
JK:
Yes, it is a universal academic tradition .
EK:
From what you said , I gather you believe that the French are
more playful than the Americans?
JK:
Yes. On the one hand Americans are more extremist and on the
other more tolerant. Those tendencies in structuralism , for instance ,
or what you call the deconstructivism of Derrida, have been devel–
oped in a very sharp and absolute way. In France , they are not the
only important, or unique , orientations . They exist in a cultural tra–
dition and at a cultural intersection that allows for other positions–
both classical and ideological. At one time we suffered from a strong
tradition, but such a tradition also prevents new inventions from
taking over, from considering themselves as unique and absolute.
EK:
In Paris , of course, you always have many more interdisciplin–
ary discussions in the real sense, rather than conferences that call on
people from various disciplines.
JK:
Yes, this is true. And this was particularly important in French
universities after '68 . Yet, it also gave rise to something useless ,
because people representing different epistemological models often
cannot talk to each other; they stay on parallel discourses that don't
cross or meet. That is why we now change the very objects of our
