{"id":668,"date":"2017-01-16T11:47:19","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T11:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/?p=668"},"modified":"2022-02-25T13:42:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T13:42:33","slug":"sartre-revisited-in-light-of-the-obama-era-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/en\/sartre-revisited-in-light-of-the-obama-era-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sartre Revisited in Light of the Obama Era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb145&Prime; img_size=\u00a0\u00bblarge\u00a0\u00bb alignment=\u00a0\u00bbcenter\u00a0\u00bb]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc09df3c{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc09df3c\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<span lang=\"EN-US\">Why do I feel it <i>necessary<\/i> to publish this text <i>this<\/i> year rather than a year or two years ago ? Because of the political context. Because of Memphis and Martin Luther King, Jr. Because of Barack Obama. And may be also because of my own debt to Sartre, as being someone educated as a colonized Jew in Algeria, who managed to decipher my own cultural identity through Franz Fanon and Sartre. Finally, because of the links that I always felt existed between African American leaders and Sartre. <\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc09eed8{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc09eed8\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb143&Prime; img_size=\u00a0\u00bblarge\u00a0\u00bb alignment=\u00a0\u00bbcenter\u00a0\u00bb][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #999999;\">\u00ab\u00a0I am a man\u00a0\u00bb the legendary demonstration in Memphis, Tennessee, photographer: Richard L. Copley, 1968<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc09f3d7{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc09f3d7\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In one of Sartre\u2019s texts written upon his 1945 return from his first travel to the US, from which he came back fiercely mobilized against racial discrimination, using his charisma and his hegemony to express an awareness that very few intellectuals were expressing at the time, \u00bb&rsquo;If you\u2019re not a US citizen,&rsquo; I was told, \u2019never mention the Black issue, you might hurt the feelings of your hosts, even with the most innocent comments. And, even if you were extremely considerate, you would give the impression that you are awkwardly intruding into a family affair.&rsquo; I <em>did <\/em>mention the Black issue, however, and I do write about it today\/\u2026\/ I also encountered a new spirit here. When I wondered about the fate of the Blacks, far from avoiding the conversation, most Americans hastened to give me information, to introduce me to specialists, to Black people. In this country, justly proud of its democratic institutions, one man in ten is deprived of his political rights: in this land of equality and liberty, live thirteen million untouchables; they serve you at the table, they shine your shoes, they operate your elevator, they carry your suitcases to your compartment; but they have nothing to do with you, nor you with them; they call themselves \u2019third class citizens&rsquo;. They are the Blacks.\u00ab He ended his accusation, though, on a surprising note. \u201cSuch is today the situation of the black population in the United States. It is tragic. But it would be utterly unjust to predict the future of America from this static cut.\u00bb (see: Jean-Paul Sartre, \u00abCe que j\u2019ai appris du probl\u00e8me noir\u00bb, <em>Le Figaro Litt\u00e9raire<\/em>, June 16, 1945.<\/p>\n<p>Here, the description of the African Americans\u2019 \u00abtragic situation\u00bb is conducted in an optimistic mood, as if the country \u00abjustly proud of its democratic values\u00bb, would soon be able to produce a radical change. The same hope and the same optimism are again underscored twenty years later, when Sartre refused to lecture at Cornell University because of the Vietnam war, and wished his American readers \u00abto succeed better\u00bb in ending the Vietnam war than the progressive forces in France during Algerian war. He ended by adding something which seems to predict Obama\u2019s election, by saying that \u00abwhen the young people of America, trained by brave professors will be old enough to take hold of the common responsibilities, there is every reason to hope that a deep change will emerge both in the USA and in the world at large.\u00bb (see Jean-Paul Sartre: \u00abUne Nuit blanche\u00bb, <em>The Nation<\/em>, May 31, 1965) Those two texts, written twenty years apart, are marked by the same positive feeling for the US, whatever the period. If, in the USA of the nineteen forties, a country divided by racial segregation, Sartre became an ethical militant, it is just a few months later that, in Paris, he developed his interest in African intellectuals, when he met Alioune Diop, the founder of <em>Pr\u00e9sence Africaine<\/em>.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc09f932{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc09f932\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb146&Prime; img_size=\u00a0\u00bblarge\u00a0\u00bb alignment=\u00a0\u00bbcenter\u00a0\u00bb][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #999999;\">Jean-Paul Sartre<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc09fdb8{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc09fdb8\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Does it seem somewhat far-fetched to put a French philosopher (however a global public intellectual he might have been) in parallel with an elected American President, living almost six decades after him? In order to think about Sartre\u2019s relationship to the US in this new century, and especially in light of the Obama presidency, I could not but help underscore uncanny similarities between the childhoods of Jean-Paul Sartre and Barack Obama, as developed in <em>Les Mots<\/em> and in <em>Dreams from my Father<\/em>. \u00bbI learned long ago to distrust my childhood and all the stories that shaped it,\u00ab Obama writes, in a striking echo to Sartre\u2019s assertion: \u00bbAfter all, the reader has understood that I distrust my childhood and all that survives from it.\u00ab In the structural elements which determine the construction of their identity, one can also decipher many correspondences: born a family structure marked by the <em>absent father<\/em> who remained a myth more than a reality, both propelled toward academic excellence by their families, both supported and promoted by their unflagging mothers, with a set of grandparents (<em>Karl\u00e9mamie<\/em> for Sartre, <em>Toot and Gramps<\/em> for Obama), who exercised an enormous influence during their grandson\u2019s childhood; both covered a triangle of locations (some more mythical than others) with distinct cultures (Paris-Alsace-the South West for Sartre, Hawaii-Indonesia-Africa for Obama). Yet, there seems to be something more at stake than these biographical traces, as important as they must have been in each man\u2019s<em> Ausbildung<\/em>. First, let\u2019s start by recalling Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama\u2019s philosophical references. (see: Barack Obama, <em>Dreams from My Father<\/em>, Three Rivers Press, New York, 1995, page XV; Jean-Paul Sartre, <em>Les Mots, <\/em>Gallimard, Paris, 1964.<\/p>\n<p>Obama has publicly stated that his \u00bbfavorite philosopher\u00ab remains Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). As for King, one should also remember that he wrote his Ph. D. in 1951 on Paul Tillich (1886-1965) while being very heavily influenced by Karl Barth (1886-1968). Tillich, Barth, and Niebuhr were all Protestant ministers, as well as philosophy professors, from German or Swiss-German origin, who belonged to a tradition of what can be described as \u00bbSocial Christianity,\u00ab \u00bbDialectic Theology,\u00ab or \u00bbMessianic Protestantism,\u00ab who professed \u00bbcontextual theologies,\u00ab at times revolutionary, at times third-worldist, who grounded their analysis in the observation of the man in the world, and that Niebuhr was even sometimes called a \u00bbChristian Existentialist.\u00ab These are only signs of a similar lineage between King and Obama on one side who, as American activists, refer to a certain radical theological background and Sartre on the other side who, as an existentialist philosopher from Protestant training, sometimes displayed signs of Messianism in his writings and attitudes. Even if Sartre never particularly admired his great-uncle, Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), the African Missionary in Lambar\u00e9n\u00e9 (Gabon) who belonged to the same tradition of German Protestantism and also received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, he admitted some link with him as apparent in this letter: \u201cDear Uncle Albert,\u201d he wrote in 1962, \u201cI am sorry not to be able to see you more often. We often share the same goals, without sharing the same principles; and that is the condition of a fruitful debate. You have a great experience of those under-developed countries which remain at the center of my preoccupations, and I often would like to ask you about it.\u00bb But there is more.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc0a022e{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc0a022e\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[vc_single_image image=\u00a0\u00bb147&Prime; img_size=\u00a0\u00bblarge\u00a0\u00bb alignment=\u00a0\u00bbcenter\u00a0\u00bb][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #999999;\">Dr Albert Schweitzer<\/span><\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc0a06ba{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc0a06ba\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When Obama, as a community organizer who had read Saul Alinsky\u2019s <em>Rules for Radicals<\/em>, addressed the powerless in Chicago, he taught them that learning and organizing was about \u201cshifting the balance of power\u201d and he insisted upon the need to build collective unity. When Sartre, for his part, tried to raise student consciousness in 1968, he criticized the attitude of the academic <em>mandarins<\/em> epitomized by Raymond Aron, whom he described as someone who \u201cpossesses a power to which he desperately clings: that of imposing, on behalf of a knowledge he has accumulated, his own ideas, without allowing anyone to criticize them. But a knowledge which is not constantly criticized, constantly reappraising itself from this critique, has no value at all. The only way to learn is by challenging. <em>\/La seule fa\u00e7on d\u2019apprendre, c\u2019est de contester.\/<\/em> This is also the only way to become a man. For me, an intellectual is someone who is faithful to a political and social entity but who never stops challenging it.\u201d (see: <em>Situations VIII<\/em>, \u201cLes Bastilles de Raymond Aron,\u201d p. 184-190, where Sartre makes the distinction between \u201c<em>pouvoir accord\u00e9\u201d<\/em> and \u201c<em>pouvoir de droit.<\/em>\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>Similar contradictions can also be identified in both men\u2019s logic by looking at the tensions between their launching of a merciless machinery of intellectual conviction and their refusal of a certain kind of recognition. In one of his dreams, dating from the year 1960 (one of the most intense of his life), answering to a Dean who had announced that credits had been voted to \u00aberect a statue for him in the garden,\u00bb Sartre answered that \u00abin a few years, he would be either \u00bbtotally forgotten or else too famous\u00ab for having his statue in the garden (see: Annie Cohen-Solal: \u00abTracking Down a Willing and Reluctant Hero,\u00bb in: <u>L\u2019Esprit Cr\u00e9ateur<\/u>, vol. XXIX, n\u00b0 4, Susan R. Suleiman, editor, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 86-96)<\/p>\n<p>This anecdote echoes Obama\u2019s comments in June 2009, when invited to deliver the Commencement speech at Arizona State University, but after some trustees had considered inappropriate that he receives an Honorary degree, because he \u00ab had not achieved enough. \u00bb \u00abI come here not to dispute the suggestion that I have not yet achieved enough in my life,\u00ab Obama said. \u00bbI come to embrace the notion that I have not done enough in my life\/\u2026\/ I heartily concur, I come to affirm that one\u2019s title, even a title like \u2019President of the US\u2019 says very little about how well one\u2019s his life had been led, that no matter how much you\u2019ve done, or how successful you\u2019ve been, there is always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.\u201d In this dialectic of extreme humility and extreme responsibility, in this call to always remain <em>in progress,<\/em> in the certainty that achievement always belongs to the future, do not we seem to hear a similar voice? We could coin it a \u00abrealistic utopia\u00bb, see Percy B. Lehning, <em>John Rawls, an Introduction<\/em>, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, where he describes the Rawlsian ideas of a \u00abjust society\u00bb, of \u00abtogetherness\u00bb as the unique way to build a civil society, some notions can also undoubtedly be heard in Obama\u2019s speeches.<a href=\"#_ftn26\" name=\"_ftnref26\"><\/a><a href=\"#_ftn26\" name=\"_ftnref26\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>YouTube, ASU Commencement Speech, 15 May 2009[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As for the reaction to the Nobel Prize, when rereading Martin Luther King\u2019s acceptance speech in 1964, it is striking to note that he accepted the award on the behalf of \u201ca movement,\u201d on \u201cbehalf of all men who love peace,\u201d rather than taking it as an \u201chonor to \/himself\/ personally.\u201d The very same year, the Literature Prize went to Sartre, who declined it because of his refusal to distinguish himself from others. \u00abI find that it is better to attempt to realize in se the human condition, in its radical form, as much as we can, than to cling to thin, specific differences, which you call, for instance, talent, which is a crime against oneself and against others, because it is to concentrate oneself exclusively on what separates. In truth, when I say that I am <em>anybody, <\/em>I mean that it is not uniquely a reality, it is also a task one should refuse all distinctive traits, in order to be able to talk on behalf of all people. And one can only talk on behalf of all people, if one is all people. We should not try to be, on the model of my damned colleagues, the<em> sur-homme,<\/em> but on the contrary, we must try to be the most human possible, that is to say, as similar as possible to others\/\u2026\/ Differences are thin, and they are at the source of vanity, of ambition.[\u2026]In this respect, the Nobel Prize would have been a small distinction, a small power, a separation.\u201d In Barack Obama\u2019s remarks this October, one can hear poignant echoes of King\u2019s acceptance on \u201cbehalf\u201d of a set of causes as well as Sartre\u2019s refusal on behalf of a call to communal responsibility. Sartre demands that we recognize the \u201cradical form\u201d of the \u201chuman condition\u201d rather than \u201cthin, specific differences.\u201d Obama suggests not to \u201callow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another.\u201d[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc0a0b15{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc0a0b15\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[vc_video link=\u00a0\u00bbhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/Qbel5MhtDq4&Prime; el_aspect=\u00a0\u00bb43&Prime; align=\u00a0\u00bbcenter\u00a0\u00bb][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Without forcing the comparison, Sartre\u2019s discussion of the strategies for denying difference can further illuminate Obama\u2019s declaration, when he first downplays his own role as an individual, claiming that he does not see it as an award for his \u201cown accomplishments,\u201d before shifting the attention to \u201cAmerican leadership,\u201d for which he is a placeholder, then broadening the scope and gesturing to the Sartrian view that an individual person can become all people. \u00bbNow, these challenges can\u2019t be met by any one leader or any one nation,\u00ab Obama says. \u00bbAnd that\u2019s why my administration\u2019s worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take responsibility for the world we seek.\u00ab Hammering the Sartrian notions of \u00bbresponsibility\u00ab and \u00bbengagement,\u00ab Obama accepts the award <em>in the name<\/em> of American leadership which itself functions on <em>\u201cbehalf\u201d <\/em>of the \u201caspirations held by people in all nations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Behind the common humility of refusal or deferral, we can read a similar conviction in the conception of the Prize, as a tool for action. \u00bbWhat I would have accepted with gratefulness,\u201d Sartre commented, \u201cwould have been the Nobel Prize after <em>les 121,<\/em> because at that time, I would not have considered it distinguishing, but as proof of solidarity. Then, I would have accepted it, not for me, but as a political call to action in foreign countries, touching a radical action against war, then yes, but I would not have considered it <em>mine<\/em>.\u201d In much the same way, Obama displaces the prize away from himself and on to a set of causes: \u201cTo be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who\u2019ve been honored by this prize \/\u2026\/ And I know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it\u2019s also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.\u201d (see: nytimes.com, published 9 October 2009, accessed 2 November 2009.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc0a0fc1{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc0a0fc1\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[vc_video link=\u00a0\u00bbhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/AORo-YEXxNQ\u00a0\u00bb align=\u00a0\u00bbcenter\u00a0\u00bb][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Far from turning Sartre into a religious philosopher or Obama into a Congregational Minister, I have tried to underline some echoes, some traces, some common resonances in their behaviors, in their speeches, and in their texts. That French society that rejected Sartre in the year of his centennial does not understand the interest of the philosopher for people in movement or groups in process, just as they are intrigued by his refusal of all honors, of almost all dogmas, and as they are disconcerted by his horror of stasis, his reversals of course, his treachery, his contradictions, his whims. And even if Sartre adopted a well known French tradition of insubordination, and even if he can be found at all key points of the 20th century, that is all the less reason for the French intellectuals to forgive his lapses. In a French society that considers institutional legitimacy essential, Sartre occupies a singular position. His refusal of any institutional recognition seems to challenge his intellectual legitimacy and to blur traditional categories. How could these transgressions be forgiven? He becomes the object of all distrust.<\/p>\n<p>If, decades ago, African American artists flocked to Paris because the French cherished their art and ignored racial issues, today, minorities in France struggle to be fully integrated, trapped by a society which refuses to confront real issues. On the other side, even if we now see a Barack Obama entangled in concrete difficulties about stopping war in Afghanistan, closing Guantanamo, or expressing his criticism against the lack of civil rights in China more forcefully, we well remember the Sartrian challenge of conciliating morals and politics. (\u201cMorals and politics are altogether absolutely necessary and strictly impossible.\u201d) Could it be that, as early as 1948, arguing that \u00abfor three thousand years, the White man has enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen \u00bb, Sartre started to develop a post-colonial vision which in turn became the dorsal spine in the identity process of all liberation movements throughout the world? Ironically, it is the United States, not France, that has followed Sartre\u2019s lead in bringing politics of identity to the fore, in a neat inversion of the stereotypes about French radicalism and American conservatism.<\/p>\n<p>But it goes even further: in the \u00abnew spirit\u00bb of the United States that Sartre was able to predict six decades ago, in all those debates and conversations\u2014challenging, uncomfortable, often hurtful\u2014that have carried the US to this threshold moment with Obama\u2019s presidency, we still can decidedly hear Sartrian injunctions and recognize the traces of the \u00abethical compass,\u00bb the \u00abmessianic bohemianism\u00bb or else the,\u00abprophetic call to action.\u00bb In fact, if Sartre succeeded at all, it was by by creating the conditions of possibility for each powerless individual, each powerless group, to think in a subversive way relations of power. Today, in 2017, on MLK Day, Sartre\u2019s message ought to be alive and challenging again in the US, in order to counter the disaster which we are now facing and as Samantha Power quoting Dylan Thomas, recently tweeted : \u00abWe are not going gently into the night. \u00bb[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc0a1424{height:20px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc0a1424\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">par <strong>Annie Cohen-Solal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column]<style>.ld_spacer_6a916bc0a1895{height:30px;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ld-empty-space ld_spacer_6a916bc0a1895\"><span class=\"liquid_empty_space_inner\"><\/span><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do I feel it necessary to publish this text this year rather than a year or two years ago ? Because of the political context. Because of Memphis and Martin Luther King, Jr. Because of Barack Obama. And may be also because of my own debt to Sartre, as being someone educated as a colonized<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anniecohensolal.com\/sitev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}