The Seventh Function of Language

For François de Sales, bishop of Geneva in the seventeenth century and author of Introduction to the Devout Life, the elephant is a model of chastity: faithful and temperate, he has only one partner, with whom he mates once every three years for a period of five days, away from prying eyes, before they wash each other at length in order to purify themselves. Handsome Hervé, in his underpants, grumbles from behind his cigarette about the truth behind this elephant fable: the horror of Catholic morality, on which he spits—at least symbolically, as he is short on saliva, so he just coughs on it instead. Foucault, in his kimono, becomes animated: “Exactly! What is very interesting here is that even in Pliny we find the same analysis of the elephant’s morals. So if we trace the genealogy of this moral, as Nietzsche would say, we realize that its roots reach deep into an epoch prior to Christianity, or at least into an epoch where its development was still largely embryonic.” Foucault looks jubilant. “You see, we talk about Christianity as if it were a single thing … But Christianity and paganism do not constitute clearly defined and distinct entities. One mustn’t think of impenetrable blocks that appear out of nowhere and disappear just as suddenly, without influencing each other, interpenetrating, metamorphosing.”

Mathieu Lindon, who is still standing holding the handle of the broken coffeepot, asks: “But, uh, Michel, what’s your point exactly?”

Foucault gives Lindon one of his dazzling smiles: “In fact, paganism can’t be regarded as a single entity, but the same is even more true of Christianity! We need to reevaluate our methods, you understand?”

Slimane bites into his biscotte and says: “Hey, Michel, you know that conference at Cornell, are you still going? Where is that place, exactly?”

Foucault, always happy to answer questions, no matter what they might be, and unsurprised that Slimane should be interested in his conference, replies that Cornell is a large American university situated in a small city in the northern United States named Ithaca, like Ulysses’s island. He doesn’t know why he accepted the invitation, because it’s a conference on language, the “linguistic turn” as they say over there, and he hasn’t worked in that field for a long time (The Order of Things came out in 1966) but anyway he said yes and he doesn’t like to go back on his word, so he’ll be there. (In fact, he knows perfectly well why he accepted: he adores the United States.)

When Slimane has finished chewing his biscotte, he drinks a mouthful of the scorchingly hot tea, lights a cigarette, clears his throat, and asks: “Do you think I could come with you?”

54

“No, darling, you can’t come with me. It’s a conference for academics only and you hate it when people call you Monsieur Kristeva.”

Sollers’s smile cannot conceal the wound to his ego that, alas, may never heal.

Can you imagine Montaigne or Pascal or Voltaire doing a postgraduate degree?

Why do those pathetic Americans obstinately refuse to take any notice of him, this giant among giants, who will be read and reread in 2043?

Can you imagine Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo? Will I one day have to ask permission to think?

The funniest thing is that they’re inviting Derrida, obviously. But aren’t you aware, my dear Yankee friends, that your idol, this man you revere because he writes différance with an a (the world decomposes, the world dissolves), wrote his masterpiece, Dissemination (the world disseminates), as an homage to his own Nombres, which no one in New York or California has ever bothered to translate! Seriously, it’s just priceless!

Sollers laughs and pats his stomach. Ho ho ho! Without him, no Derrida! Ah, if only the world knew … Ah, if only the Americans knew …

Kristeva listens patiently to this speech, which she knows by heart.

“Can you imagine Flaubert, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Claudel, Proust, Breton, Artaud, taking a postgraduate degree?” Sollers abruptly stops talking and pretends to think, but Kristeva knows what he is going to say next: “It’s true that Céline wrote a doctoral thesis, but it was for a medical degree, although in literary terms it was superb.” (Subtext: He has read Céline’s medical thesis. How many academics can say as much?)

Then he rubs against his wife, sliding his head under her arm, and says in a dopey voice:

“But why do you want to go, my beloved squirrel?”

“You know why. Because Searle will be there.”

“And all the others!” Sollers explodes.