Rezensionen 182 Hartel, Gaby (2000). “’Gestern war ich im Museum …’. Becketts ‘éducation esthétique’, skizziert anhand ausgewählter Notizen zur bildenden Kunst”. In: Samuel Beckett (2000). Das Gleiche noch mal anders. Texte zur bildenden Kunst. Hg. von Michael Glasmeier / Gaby Hartel. Übers. von Dieter Mettler. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. 75-84. Henning, Sylvie Devebec (1988). Beckett’s Critical Complicity. Carnival, Contestation and Tradition. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Joyce, James (1960). Ulysses, London: The Bodley Head. Knowlson, James (1996). Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. London: Bloomsbury. Knowlson, James / John Pilling (1979). Frescoes of the Skull. The Later Prose and Drama of Samuel Beckett. London: John Calder. Oppenheim, Lois (2000). The Painted Word. Samuel Beckett’s Dialogue with Art. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Pilling, John (1976). “Beckett’s ‘Proust’”. Journal of Beckett Studies 1. 8-29. Pilling, John (1997). Beckett before Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pothast, Ulrich (1989). Die eigentlich metaphysische Tätigkeit. Über Schopenhauers Ästhetik und ihre Anwendung durch Samuel Beckett. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Proust, Marcel (1972-1975). Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp (werkausgabe edition suhrkamp). Veit, Carola (2002). Ich-Konzept und Körper in Becketts dualen Konstruktionen. Berlin: Weidler. Zurbrugg, Nicholas (1988). Beckett and Proust. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd. Hans H. Hiebel Institut für Germanistik Universität Graz François Cusset, French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Translated by Jeff Fort. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Ulf Schulenberg François Cusset’s French Theory is a book about the dead. It tells a story, highly complex and full of unexpected twists and turns, whose protagonists are no longer with us. With the deaths of Derrida in 2004 and Baudrillard in 2007, French theory, it seems, no longer plays any role. Many critics have even advanced the argument that the golden age of theory was already over in the 1990s and that one should rather concentrate on a discussion of the question of ‘after theory’ or ‘post-theory’. What does theory have to offer, one might feel tempted to ask, in a time so radically different from the 1970s and 1980s when theory was still new, stimulating, and exciting? Is not theory singularly inadequate in times often designated as postcommunist and postcolonial, times that also force us to confront the conse- AAA Band 34 (2009), Heft 1 Rezensionen 183 1 François Dosse (1991). Histoire du structuralisme I: Le champ du signe, 1945-1966; (1992). Histoire du structuralisme II: Le chant du cygne, 1967 à nos jours. Paris: Éditions La Découverte. quences of 9/ 11? Furthermore, the question must be posed whether theory is of any use in developing new forms of activism in the confrontation with the multilayered and decentered systematicity, scary opacity, and heightened flexibility of a new kind of empire. Or has French theory never intended to present itself as useful in the first place? Foucault’s wish to provide a toolbox which his readers might use for activist purposes, Derrida’s turn to the question of deconstruction and ethics in the 1990s (culminating in Spectres de Marx in 1994), as well as Lyotard’s and Deleuze’s lifelong severe critique of (late) capitalism - all these authors seem to offer possible uses of theory. However, what about Maurice Blanchot’s hermetic ontology of the text (after his right-wing aberrations in the 1930s when he came dangerously close to sounding like Drieu la Rochelle)? And how does Barthes’s alleged frivolity in his late texts fit in here? Undoubtedly, these are important questions. Especially the possible use of theory at the beginning of the 21 st century plays a crucial role in Cusset’s study. However, at the center of this book, which was originally published in France in 2003 by Éditions La Découverte, are two questions: What exactly is French theory? And how has it come to dominate American universities and intellectual life in the US in general? While François Dosse’s two volumes of Histoire du structuralisme, which were published in 1991 and 1992, told the story of structuralism from the late 1940s to the 1990s, 1 Cusset analyzes the development of French poststructuralism and its American reception from the 1960s to the present. He repeatedly underscores that what he is primarily interested in is the American invention of French theory. In what way, Cusset asks, has French theory been decontextualized, displaced, and finally reconstructed “to confront specifically American questions” (XIV). As an intellectual historian strongly influenced by Pierre Bourdieu, Cusset focuses on the aspects of denationalization, decontextualization, deterritorialization, as well as on Bourdieu’s notion of a ‘structural misunderstanding’ and Said’s idea of ‘traveling theories,’ in order to elucidate the American identity of French theory. The recomposition of French theory in the US led to the production of a new radical political discourse on the basis of these French texts. As Cusset maintains, many of these French philosophers would not have recognized themselves in the new American arguments and positions. In order to illustrate and explain “this American adventure in French theory”, Cusset wants to describe “the social circulation of signs, the political use of quotations, the cultural production of concepts” (9). It is important to understand that Cusset disagrees with those who proclaim the end of theory and who moreover contend that it is much too late to speak about (French) theory at the beginning of the 21 st century. Or with those who deny the possibility of bringing theory and activism together and who therefore underline the allegedly oxymoronic nature of a Deleuzian ‘theoretical practice’. Stanley Fish, for instance, in his by now notorious New York Times blog, not only tells his readers about his utter confusion and disorientation caused by the number of types of coffee in a recently opened Starbucks, but he also, in a comment on Cusset’s book, repeats what he has been saying since the late 1970s, namely that theory has no conse- Rezensionen 184 quences. Moreover, Fish’s contention is that Cusset’s text shows that French theory in America does not have any political implications. That this is a misreading, or rather a purposive misinterpretation, becomes obvious throughout Cusset’s study. As Cusset makes unequivocally clear in the preface to the English edition of French Theory, “theory and activism do converge today” (XII). He elaborates on this point as follows: “New uses of theory’s major texts are possible today, they are even necessary, beyond the age-old aporia of theory and praxis as two distinct moments, that old Hegelian dialectics which French Theory was precisely supposed to have refuted, or at least avoided, in favor of what Deleuze and Guattari would call ‘theoretical practice’ - a real practical approach to theory” (XII). Cusset’s French Theory consists of three parts. The first part is called “The Invention of a Corpus”. It contains the following chapters: 1. “Prehistories”, 2. “The Academic Enclave”, 3. “The Seventies: A Turning Point”, 4. “Literature and Theory”, and 5. “Deconstruction Sites”. This part describes the beginnings of a Franco-American dialogue in the fields of art, literature, historiography, and philosophy. It discusses the significance of the conference “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man”, which was organized at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. Furthermore, this part presents the main characteristics of the American university system to French readers. It also attempts to clarify the significance of the New Criticism and its formalism for the development of American deconstruction. This first part of Cusset’s book concentrates on the 1970s. He summarizes French theory’s development in the 1970s as follows: “This was the decade of French theory’s countercultural temptations, its anarchic expansion, by way of alternative journals and rock concerts, but it was also the decade of the first academic uses of French theory, if only as the instrument of a (purely discursive) subversion of the university institution” (54). The second part of Cusset’s study is called “The Uses of Theory”, and it contains the following chapters: 6. “The Politics of Identity”, 7. “The Ideological Backlash”, 8. “Academic Stars”, 9. “Students and Users”, 10. “Art Practices”, and 11. “Theoretical Machinations”. This part discusses the American invention of French theory, and its use for radical political purposes, in the 1980s. It elucidates the crucial role French theory played for identity politics, gender studies, cultural studies, and subaltern and postcolonial studies. In connection with the radical politicization of theory by multiculturalists, feminists, and other leftist scholars and intellectuals, Cusset also discusses the ideological backlash by right-wing journalists and politicians such as Roger Kimball, Hilton Kramer, Dinesh D’Souza, William Bennett, and Lynne Cheney. Apart from offering summaries of these well-known debates, Cusset also calls attention to the enormous significance of theory for the practice and discourse of art (from painting and architecture to art criticism). Moreover, he discusses theory’s impact on technology, attempts to politicize the idea of the network, cyberpunk science fiction, the idea of a posthumanist technology-oriented world and the figure of the cyborg, as well as on American pop culture (from cinema to DJs such as DJ Shadow and DJ Spooky and the German electronic music label Mille Plateaux). The final part of French Theory, entitled “There and Back”, consists of the following three chapters: 12. “Theory as Norm: A Lasting Influence”, 13. “Worldwide Theory: A Global Legacy”, and 14. “Meanwhile, Back in France…” This part seeks to answer the question of “how far and how deep did French theory go? ” (265). In the chapter “Theory as Norm”, Cusset avers “that French theory has had a lasting effect: Rezensionen 185 the persistent attacks against it, the loss of its aura, the fact that it has become almost commonplace and has been the object of retrospective accounts - all of this indicates that theory has in fact been normalized, adopted, and institutionalized, penetrating deep into American intellectual practices, and remaining a fixture on class reading lists” (267). The next chapter discusses what might be termed the globalization of French theory. The author describes the far-reaching consequences of theory on a worldwide scale, resulting in what he calls “a ‘theory world’” (293) or a “‘worldwide theory’” (294). Cusset directs attention to “the emergence of a new, transnational, academic class” (290), a “true international avant-garde” (291) to which belong theorists such as Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Žižek. Cusset closes his book on the American invention of French theory by discussing the contemporary situation of the French intellectual scene. What has happened, he asks, to French theory in France? In answering this important question, Cusset once more underlines the political nature of his metatheoretical endeavor and he illuminates his position in the intellectual and political debates which have been going on in France since the late 1970s. Cusset’s bête noire are the ‘nouveaux philosophes’ or “the new ‘centrist’ humanists” (313), that is, authors such as Bernard-Henry Lévy, André Glucksmann, Maurice Clavel, Luc Ferry, and Alain Renaut, who have vehemently attacked ‘la pensée ‘68’ or ‘la pensée intensive’ in the name of a new republican order and a humanitarian moralism. As Cusset correctly maintains, at the height of French theory in the US in the 1980s, this way of thinking was almost completely eclipsed back in France. The thought of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lacan, and Lyotard had become irrelevant in the public sphere. In the name of a republican neo- Kantianism and a moralistic universalism and anticommunitarianism, the ‘nouveaux philosophes’ denounced the poststructuralist theorists “as perpetrators of a deliberate intellectual muddle - 1968 thinking, libertarian barbarism, irrationalism, dictatorship, irresponsibility” (315). Concerning the position of power of the new humanists in France, Cusset writes: “Convinced that every one of France’s problems, and thus the problems of the rest of the world, were the result of May 1968, of the unruly philosophies of the 1970s, and of the new identity-based ‘relativism’ - made in the USA - these moral athletes continue to hold the reins of power in the French intellectual world” (316). Of utmost importance for Cusset’s discussion of French theory, and for an understanding of his own political position, is his emphasis on the fact that Marx (still) plays a crucial role in any attempt to grasp the French theorists’ significance. Following Cusset, “their texts [. . .] were neither pro-Marx nor anti-Marx. They were, rather, an endless confrontation with, discussion on, reinterpretation of Marxism” (XV). The last sentence of course reminds one of Derrida’s comments on the relation between deconstruction and Marxism in Spectres de Marx. At the end of his study, Cusset formulates even more decidedly: “Thus, everywhere except in France, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, and even Derridean ‘hypercriticism’ incarnate the possibility of continuing a radical social critique beyond Marx, a critique that relative to Marx was finally detotalized, refined, diversified, opened up to the questions of desire and intensity, to flux and signs and the multiple subject - in a word, the tools of a social critique for today” (330). It becomes clear in his “Conclusion: Difference and Affirmation” that within his theoretical framework, which can legitimately be termed materialist, the concept of hope plays an important role. On Cusset’s account, French theory Rezensionen 186 2 For another important discussion of the American invention of French theory, see Sylvère Lotringer and Sande Cohen (eds.), French Theory in America (New York and London: Routledge, 2001). The essay by Lotringer (“Doing Theory”), who is the founder of Semiotext(e) and who has been very important concerning the dissemination of theory in the US, is particularly illuminating and suggestive. is not dead, but it on the contrary embodies a certain hope and directs us toward the future. Once more calling attention to the idea of a theoretical practice, Cusset claims that “in the university and beyond, French theory also embodies the hope that discourse might be able to restore life to life and provide access to an intact vital force that would be spared from the logic of the market and the prevailing cynicisms” (335). As Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt have shown in Empire and Multitude, the question of the effectiveness of theoretical practice in a field of immanence is of utmost importance for leftist theorists today. François Cusset’s French Theory is an impressive book. It is an elegantly argued, well-researched, and well-informed study about the invention of French theory in the US. 2 Cusset’s theoretical grasp is adequate to the demanding task of elucidating these complex transatlantic dialogues and polylogues. There are certainly some chapters in this book which are useful for French readers but which might be somewhat boring for Americanists and English Studies scholars since they summarize well-known debates (for instance, those on the culture wars and the neoconservative backlash in the 1980s). At the same time, however, one has to realize that Cusset adds many seemingly minor details to the story he is telling and thus makes it more lively and tangible. He tells us, for instance, about the importance of small journals and magazines (Bomb, Impulse, East Village Eye, and of course Semiotext(e)) for the dissemination of French theory in the US. We learn about artists, activists, musicians, architects, DJs, writers, and poets in connection with the adventure of the reinvention of French theory. Furthermore, Cusset’s story takes us to art galleries, artists’ squats, concert halls, bars, and even to such legendary places like the two punkrock clubs CBGB and Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan. Even those countercultural sites of dissidence played a role in the diffusion of French theory. They offered a space, if only to a certain degree, where the new theory could be practiced, creatively played with, or productively misunderstood. Undoubtedly, it is not the least important aspect of Cusset’s book that it sets itself the task of reminding its readers what it means to actually practice or do theory. Ulf Schulenberg Institut für Anglistik und Germanistik Hochschule Vechta