DOMINIQUE SCHNAPPER
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about the communist world . There was the communist world on one
side and the Americans-the anticommunists-oh the other side.
The top intelligentsia is very pro-American .
Peter Shaw:
I think an anti-American passion, in which America is
seen as the force that crushes the Third World, and as the opposite of
the virtues of the Third World, must still exist.
Dominique Schnapper:
It's very ambiguous. Even Regis Debray, who is
sort of typical of this Third World ideology, is passionate about the
United States , though he has a very ambiguous position . There is a
kind of love-hate relationship between French intellectuals and
Americans . I hope someone will deal with this subject, because it's a
fascinating one . It's not "in" to be simply anti-American. At the
beginning of the socialist government there was Jacques Lang, who
once talked against American movies, and, as you may know,
French intellectuals don't like French movies but love American
ones . And there was something like an intellectual revolution pro–
testing his position against American movies , from the left and from
the right.
Dennis Wrong:
What I see emerging in this country, among intellec–
tuals who are university teachers , is precisely what you are describ–
ing in France. This is a much less centralized country, and things
take longer to diffuse out into the boondocks of the provinces. I
think , as far as Marxism is concerned, the situation is quickly
developing in which the top intellectuals in the top universities have
left it behind , are not interested anymore, are post-Marxist. But it is
filtering down to the community colleges, to the West-rm sorry,
I'm a chauvinistic Easterner; I think the West is a nowhere
place- and to high schools. This is just the kind of division, it seems
to me , that you report about France. And I see it coming here, more
slowly , and in a more halting kind of way .
Dominique Schnapper:
Of course, I don't want to talk about America,
which I don't know. But my feeling is that a generation ago one
came to America to get rid of this Marxist language, and that
now-after rve spent a term at Princeton-Marxist language is
everywhere. It may be just one instance, but at Princeton it was
astonishing.
Harold Kaplan:
I'm always puzzled by the lack of relationships be–
tween the European countries I served and lived in - France and
Germany. This little distance , these few hours by train between
Bonn, or Berlin , and Paris, is a world. The Germans are in many
