The Seventh Function of Language

“Yeah, well, obviously, the paradox is that so-called continental philosophy is now much more successful in the U.S. than it is in Europe. Here, Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault are absolute stars on campus, while in France they’re not studied by literature students and they’re snubbed by philosophy students. Here, we study them in English. For English departments, French Theory was a revolutionary weapon that enabled them to go from being the fifth wheel of the social sciences to being the one discipline that subsumes all the others, because since French Theory is founded on the assumption that language is at the base of everything, then the study of language involves studying philosophy, sociology, psychology … That’s the famous linguistic turn. Suddenly, the philosophers got upset, and they started working on language too—your Searles, your Chomskys, they spend a good part of their time denigrating the French, with demands for clarity (‘what is clear in conception is clear in articulation’) and demystifications, objections along the lines of ‘nothing new under the sun, Condillac said it all already, Anaxagoras used to repeat the same thing, they all cribbed Nietzsche, et cetera.’ They feel as if their thunder’s being stolen by clowns, buffoons, and charlatans. It’s to be expected that they’re angry about it. But you have to admit, Foucault is a lot sexier than Chomsky.”

[Anonymous student, interviewed on campus.]

65

It’s late. The day has been punctuated with seminars. The public has come out in force and listened attentively. Now, briefly, the excitement on campus dies down again. Here and there the laughter of drunken students can be heard in the night.

Slimane is alone, lying in the room he shares with Foucault, listening to his Walkman, when there is a knock at the door. “Sir? There’s a phone call for you.”

Slimane ventures out carefully into the corridor. He has already received some initial offers; maybe a potential buyer wants to raise his bid? He picks up the receiver from the telephone on the wall.

It’s Foucault on the line, in a panic. He struggles to say: “Come and get me. It’s starting again. I’ve lost my English.”

How Foucault has managed to find a gay club—S&M into the bargain—in this godforsaken hole, Slimane has no idea. He gets in a taxi and is driven to an establishment named the White Sink, located in the suburbs near the lower part of town. The clientele wear leather trousers and Village People baseball caps. To Slimane, the atmosphere seems fairly pleasant at first. A bodybuilder with a riding crop offers to buy him a drink, but he declines politely and goes off to inspect the back rooms. He finds Foucault on LSD (Slimane recognizes the symptoms immediately), crouching on the floor—half-naked, with wide red welts on his body, in a total daze—in the middle of three or four Americans who seem to be questioning him anxiously. All he can do is repeat, in French: “I’ve lost my English! No one understands me! Get me out of here!”

The taxi driver refuses to take Foucault, either because he’s afraid he will throw up on his seats or because he hates queers, so Slimane holds him up, supporting him under the shoulders, and they walk back to the campus hotel.

Ithaca is a small city of 30,000 inhabitants (a figure doubled by the students on campus), but it is very spread out. They have to trek a long way through the deserted streets, past endless rows of more or less identical wooden houses, each with its sofa or rocking chair on the porch, a few empty beer bottles on low tables, overflowing ashtrays. (Americans still smoke in 1980.) Every hundred yards there is a wooden church. The two men cross several streams. Foucault sees squirrels everywhere.

A police car slows down next to them. Slimane can make out the cops’ suspicious faces behind the torchlight that shines in his eyes. He says something in French, sounding cheerful. Foucault makes a gurgling noise. Slimane knows that to a trained eye the man leaning on him does not look merely drunk but completely high. He just hopes that Foucault has no LSD on him. The policemen hesitate. Then drive away without taking any further action.

Finally they arrive downtown. Slimane buys Foucault a waffle in a diner run by Mormons. Foucault yells out: “Fuck Reagan!”

It takes them an hour or more to climb up the hill. Thankfully Slimane has the idea of cutting through the cemetery. During the walk, Foucault repeats: “A nice club sandwich with a Coke…”

In the hotel corridors Foucault has a panic attack because he saw The Shining just before he left France. Slimane tucks him in. Foucault demands a good-night kiss, and falls asleep dreaming of Greco-Roman wrestlers.

66

“I’m not saying this because I’m Iranian, but Foucault talks a load of crap. Chomsky is right.”

[Anonymous student, interviewed on campus.]

67