The Seventh Function of Language

22

“Georges Marchais? No one cares about Georges Marchais! Surely you know that!”

Daniel Balavoine is finally able to speak. He knows that in less than three minutes they will stop him speaking, one way or another, so he tears into his maniacal monologue, stating that politicians are old, corrupt, and completely missing the point.

“I’m not talking about you, Monsieur Mitterrand…”

But still …

“What I’d like to know, what would interest me, is who the immigrant workers pay their rent to that they pay … I’d like to … Who dares every month to ask seven hundred francs a month from immigrant workers to live in Dumpsters, in slums?” It’s muddled, unstructured, full of grammatical errors, delivered way too fast, and it’s magnificent.

The journalists, who as usual understand nothing, grumble when Balavoine reproaches them for never inviting young people (and there’s the inevitable rhetorical snigger: well, obviously we do—you’re here, you little twerp!).

But Mitterrand understands exactly what is happening. This young brat is showing them up for what they are—him, the journalists around the table, and all their kind—old farts who have been moldering in one another’s company for so long that they’ve become dead to the world without even realizing it. He tries to agree wholeheartedly with the angry young man, but each attempt to get a word in edgewise ends up sounding like misjudged paternalism.

“Hang on, I’m trying to read my notes … In any case, what I want to give you is a warning…” Mitterrand fiddles with his glasses, bites his lip. This is being filmed, it’s live on television, it’s a disaster. “What I want to tell you is that despair is a motivating force and that when it’s a motivating force, it’s dangerous.”

The journalist, with a hint of sadistic irony: “Monsieur Mitterrand, you wanted to speak with a young person. You’ve listened very carefully…” Now get out of that, you jerk.

And so Mitterrand starts to stammer: “What interests me very much is that this way of thinking … of reacting … and also of communicating!—because Daniel Balavoine also expresses himself through writing and through music—should have the rights of a citizen … should be heard and, in that way, understood.” Keep digging, keep digging. “He says things his way! He is responsible for his words. He’s a citizen. Like any other.”

It is March 19, 1980, on the set of a Channel 2 news program. It is 1:30 p.m. and Mitterrand is a thousand years old.

23

What does Barthes think about as he dies? About his mother, they say. His mother killed him. Of course, of course, there’s always the hidden personal business, the dirty little secret. As Deleuze says, we all have a grandmother who had amazing experiences … so what? “About his grief.” Yes, sir, he is going to die of heartbreak and nothing else. Poor little French thinkers, trapped in your vision of a world reduced to the pettiest, most formulaic, most flatly egocentric domestic concerns. A world without enigma, without mystery. The mother—mother of all responses. In the twentieth century, we got rid of God, and put the mother in His place. What a great trade. But Barthes is not thinking about his mother.

If you could follow the thread of his hazy reverie, you would know that the dying man thinks about what he was, but above all about what he could have been. What else? He doesn’t see his whole life in a flash, just the accident. Who ran the operation? He remembers that he was manhandled. And then the document disappeared. Whoever’s responsible, we are probably on the brink of an unprecedented catastrophe. Whereas he, Roland, his mother’s son, would have known how to make good use of it: a little for him, the rest for the world. His shyness defeated him in the end. What a waste. Even if he survives, it will be too late to celebrate.

Roland does not think about his mommy. This is not Psycho.