The Seventh Function of Language

We are in a Parisian hospital again, but this time no one can enter the room—because this is Sainte-Anne, the psychiatric hospital, and Althusser is sedated. Régis Debray, Etienne Balibar, and Jacques Derrida stand guard outside the door and discuss how best to protect their old mentor. Peyrefitte, the minister of justice, is also a former student of the École Normale Supérieure, but that doesn’t seem to incline him to magnanimity, because he is already demanding in the press that the case go to trial. On the other hand, the three men must listen patiently to the denials of good Dr. Diatkine, who has been Althusser’s psychiatrist for years, and who regards it as absolutely unthinkable—more than that—physically, “technically” impossible (I quote) that Althusser could have strangled his wife.

Foucault turns up. If you were a professor at the ENS between 1948 and 1980, then among your students and/or colleagues, you’d have had Derrida, Foucault, Debray, Balibar, Lacan. And BHL, too. That’s how it is in France.

Foucault asks for the latest news, and they tell him what Althusser has been repeating endlessly: “I killed Hélène. What happens next?”

Foucault leads Derrida aside and asks him if he’s done what was asked of him. Derrida nods. Debray watches them on the sly.

Foucault says he shouldn’t have done such a thing, and that he refused when he was asked. (Professional rivalry obliges him to rub in the fact that he was asked before Derrida. Asked what? It’s still too early to say. But he refused because one shouldn’t deceive a friend, even what is known as “an old friend,” with all those implications of weariness and only partly repressed bitterness.)

Derrida says they must move forward. That there are interests at play. Political.

Foucault rolls his eyes.

BHL arrives. He is politely shown the door. Naturally, he will find a way back in.

Meanwhile, Althusser sleeps. His former students hope for his sake that he is not dreaming.

52

“Tennis clay-court vision satellite broadcast on grass you see that’s how it is you have to hit back each phrase hard straight away second ball net cord topspin volley backhand forehand winner borg connors vilas mcenroe…”

Sollers and Kristeva are sitting at a table in a refreshment area in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and Kristeva is nibbling tentatively at a crêpe au sucre, while Sollers monologues tirelessly and drinks his café crème.

He says:

“In Christ’s case, there’s one pretty special thing—that he said he’s coming back.”

Or:

“As Baudelaire said: I took a long time to become infallible.”

Kristeva stares at the skin of milk floating on the surface of the coffee.

“Apocalypse in Hebrew is gala, which means ‘to discover.’”

Kristeva arches her back to hold back the nausea rising in her chest.

“If the God of the Bible had said I am everywhere, we’d know about it…”

Kristeva tries to reason with herself. She reminds herself silently: “The sign is not the thing, but still…”

An editor they know, Gitane in his mouth, limping slightly as he takes a small child for a walk, comes over to say hello. He asks Sollers what he’s working on “at the moment,” and naturally Sollers is only too happy to tell him: “A novel full of portraits and characters … hundreds of notes taken in real-life situations … about the war of the sexes … I can’t imagine any novel being more informed, more multilayered, more corrosive and lighthearted than this…”

Still mesmerized by the film of milk, Kristeva suppresses a retch. As a psychoanalyst, she makes her own diagnosis: she wants to spit herself out.

“A philosophical novel, even metaphysical, with a cold, lyrical realism.”

Infantile regression linked to a traumatic shock. But she is Kristeva: mistress of herself. She controls herself.

Sollers spews his torrent of words over the editor, who frowns to make clear his intense attentiveness, while the small child tugs at his sleeve: “The highly symptomatic turning point of the second half of the twentieth century will be described in its secret and concrete ramifications. One could draw a chemical table of it: the negative feminine bodies (and why), the positive bodies (and how).”

Kristeva reaches slowly toward the cup. Slips a finger into the handle. Brings the beige liquid to her lips.

“The philosophers will be shown in their private limitations, the women in their hysteria and their calculations, but also as being free (in both senses).”

Kristeva closes her eyes as she swallows. She hears her husband quote Casanova: “If pleasure exists, and if it can be experienced only in life, then life is a joy.”

The editor hops about: “Excellent! Very good! Good!”

The child looks up, surprised.

Sollers is just warming up, and moves on to the plot: “Here, the bigots look miserable, the sociopaths and sociomanes denounce superficiality, the spectacular industry becomes trapped or desperately wants to distort the fact, the Devil is annoyed because pleasure should be destructive and life a calamity.”