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because it was immoral to be discussed . It was a very violent at–
mosphere in intellectual spheres, as it was in '68. I try to explain
some of this to my students, but now they cannot believe that in the
fifties anti-anticommunists wouldn't shake hands with anticom–
munists .
As to sociology, which is my field, there was one sociology: it
was Marxist, along with some empirical American sociology- a
strange mixture. There was a turning point-1968 . We didn't
realize it then, but it appears now that the '68 movement was as
much against the Communist Party as against the government.
And , in away , it was sort of an intellectual liberation for intellec–
tuals who 'had stopped being communist to become leftists. To
be
leftist was a new kind of freedom . No longer did the so-called
"domination by the dominators" explain everything. Of course, what
we now call the '68 generation - I mean Lacan, Derrida, Bourdieu,
Foucault-has been more or less influenced by Marxism, especially
Bourdieu . But it was a change for intellectuals still to be Marxist,
without being members of the Communist Party. And that made for
a great change in intellectual life .
Then , apart from the '68 movement, there was
the great event,
namely Solzhenitsyn - his presence in France and the publication of
his books. He played an immense role , although he said something
the anticommunists had been saying for twenty years. I mean
Koestler, Silone, and others. But, of course, he was Russian; he had
a literary genius which the others didn't have; and he said it at the
right time - at a time when it could be heard. And the last proof of
this great change in Parisian intellectual life is the fact that the
generation that wanted to be successful through the media - the new
philosophers , Bernard Henri Levy, Andre Glucksmann-came after
Solzhenitsyn . Again they didn't say anything new, but they said it in
a different way , and it became "in" to say it. So, that was the great
turning point in '75.
Finally, we go to what's happened in these last twelve years,
after Solzhenitsyn's appearance on the scene . Something absolutely
new happened . To explain it, I have to introduce my second distinc–
tion , between the top intelligentsia and the professional intellectuals,
whose number increased considerably between the two periods - to
one million civil servants who belong to the French Ministry of
National Education ; plus all the media people, the publishers, the
people working in the Maison de Culture who also are so-called in–
tellectuals . Now, the top intelligentsia in Paris have something in
