Culture
January 1, 1
Michael Roth
Ernest Jones had the urge to stand out. A small man, he learned early how to make himself visible through his bearing, his clothes, his mannerisms. And he learned how to distinguish himself—no ordinary Jones, he!—through the quality of his voice and intensity of his gaze. By the time he finished his medical studies and began a specialization in neurology, in 1902, he seemed poised for professional success and could boast of his “flair for rapid captivation of the opposite sex.” But Jones could also be abrasive if not boorish, and he soon discovered that he was not very popular Almost twenty-five years ago, Jean-Luc Nancy published The Inoperative Community, a work that tries to avoid the mystical authoritarianism of communitarianism without falling into the lonely oppressiveness of individualism. The book confirmed Nancy’s place as a philosopher who would continue a productive deconstruction without ever pretending to resolve a philosophical problem, establish an identity, or build a foundation. Nancy’s version of deconstruction has been more tactile, engaged with flesh and material, than that of many other of its followers. But like his more abstract colleagues, he has never wanted to reduce the ambiguities that he seems to think are faithful Sarah Kofman had something to say, about philosophy, about psychoanalysis, about art, about women. She found her voice in the 1960s, and the language she came to speak was deferred and delivered—articulated—through the lexicon of her generation. It was a time that prized radicalism of thought and often of deed. Impetuousness was rewarded; extravagance in interpretation became an odd norm. Some of the writing from this period, and some of its dramatic political gestures, now look like mere antics; the invitation to easy irony was a slippery slope and could easily be co-opted by commercial culture. And it was.