Community, Myth and Recognition in Twentieth-Century French Literature and Thought (review)

In this intricate and carefully crafted piece Nikolaj Lübecker examines the means by which Bataille, Breton, Sartre, and Barthes seek to explore, (re)define, and establish social engagement. This larger topos of community is filtered through narrower concepts such as Hegelian (via Kojève) recognition and Sorelian myth, with the result that crucial and often previously unexamined interchanges between the primary authors are brought to the fore. Where many attempts to treat such a vast interchange of ideas would be doomed to reductionism and generalization, Lübecker efficiently and effectively limits his focus to a series of highly specific historical and textual moments: primarily (though not exclusively) the Bataille and Breton of the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Sartre of 'Pourquoi écrire?', and the Barthes of Le Degré zéro de l'écriture and Comment vivre ensemble. Somewhat paradoxically, the extreme specificity of the corpus is both a strength and a weakness. The decision to deal almost exclusively with the Bataille of Contre-Attaque, for example, means that the author's more nuanced theories of the heterogeneous are only summarily dealt with. In light of Lübecker's (convincing) insistence that the communities he is analysing seek to come to terms with the ineffable, a more explicit discussion of Bataille's concept of the heterogeneous would, arguably, have enabled the author to transcend influential readings of Bataille by Nancy and, by extension, Derrida. These are very minor criticisms, however, largely because the limitations imposed on the corpus allow Lübecker to explore in admirable detail numerous mutual resonances between the texts he does choose to focus on. Breton and Sartre — too often read as diametrically opposed to Bataille — are rightfully restored to a position of near collusion with him. Indeed, Lübecker argues that, '[i]nstead of considering Contre-Attaque as Bataille's project, one could (provocatively) suggest that this group delivered a properly surrealist politics' (p. 40). Similarly, Sartre's theorizing of the exchange between writer and reader becomes a 'theory of silence' (p. 100) and threatens to undermine the Hegelian dialectic in an operation not wholly unlike Bataille's own. Again, the specificity of Lübecker's gaze simultaneously confines and sharpens his reading of Sartre, spawning the revelatory observation: 'we are not communicating in spite of the inexpressible, but on the basis of the inexpressible' (p. 102). Lübecker's reading of Barthes is particularly original, insightful, and adept, and the Barthesian concepts of the idiorrhythmic and of 'social swing' are deftly woven into the larger argument that each author seeks to forge community and 'to approach something it is difficult to theorize within the communicational, intersubjective framework of recognition' (p. 144). On the whole, then, this is a lucid and at times highly original piece, and Lübecker's sympathetic readings are strengthened by the genuine validity of the task he has set himself. Moreover, his tracing of key influences — particularly Hegel, Kojève, and Sorel — makes this a welcome addition not only to the discourse surrounding the notions of community, myth, and recognition, but also to the study of the individual authors he examines.