An Accordion Tune

Tireless, Marie and Nikolaas, the architects of this special issue and the accompanying conference, asked me to retrace my “international trajectory.” I find this somewhat awkward for two reasons: first of all, I’m not very good at telling stories; secondly, my “trajectory” is rather unexceptional. Nevertheless, they insisted, my readers might find it useful.

Yet, how are we to speak of things “international” today, in a time when this term – which once belonged to the epic of communism and socialism – resonates only as a narrow category, confronted as it is with a global reality of interdependence and interconnection within which national realities certainly persist, but hardly refer to an “international” dimension? “Cosmopolitan” would be my preference, but this is ambitious since nothing is less certain today than cosmopolitanism. In fact, as I reflect on this “trajectory” – which I have never thought or been asked about – , I realise first of all that for me it has for a long time simply been part of philosophical labour, and then that it is a question of a complex interplay of near and far: in terms of space, certainly, but also in terms of thinking, in terms of the extent and limits of all “communication,” or conversation, lectures, conferences, meetings, palaver, discussion; all figures of the same playing of the accordion where the moving walls of a bellows must in turn be pulled apart and pushed together.

Let’s therefore attempt to play a little tune on the accordion.

Undoubtedly, we should start with the experience of my childhood. In 1945, my father, a military engineer, was sent to Germany as part of the occupation. I spent five years in Baden-Baden – so from my fifth to my tenth year. I did not have even the slightest awareness as to the reasons for why we were there. Due to random encounters, I took quickly to speaking German and by the time I returned to France I was almost bilingual. That did not last, but I nevertheless kept the taste for this other language and for the pleasure of switching from one to the other. Later, this allowed me to teach in German in Berlin – which I will say more about later. What was far away undoubtedly joined paths with me very early on.

I did not leave France during my studies. There was no Erasmus at that time, nor the desire to go gallivanting across the globe. There was nevertheless an attraction to “under-developed” countries, and some of my friends went to stay there or did their military service there (with the system of postponements for studies, we did not do it at the time of the Algerian war). One of my friends was in Oran in this capacity when I was finishing my studies and I stayed with him for a few days. I was very curious about this new country, but did not have the time to really get to know it. I returned there about forty years later, with great interest; but on this occasion again for too short a stay, divided up for a series of lectures.

Speaking of lectures immediately prompts me to introduce this remark, which applies to everything that follows: giving lectures or attending conferences is the worst way to travel abroad. For two reasons: the first is that time is always too short; the second is that, between philosophers of different countries, a stage is set up that essentially effaces countries, peoples and even languages (we translate). I did it often, for quite a long time, and ended up feeling regretful: the idea of being far away in order to turn to the same circle of interests and references, without any real connection to a country, has something off-putting. This has nothing to do with the welcome provided by the hosts, nor with the generally warm climate. But it’s the overwhelming feeling of having stepped out of a plane to go speak in a room, followed by dinner with colleagues before returning to one’s hotel whilst asking oneself “What am I doing here?” (here being Austria or Massachusetts). Of course, sometimes something happens and a discussion can be full of life, fire even. But we don’t stay, that’s the major error. When you have at least three days, when you can wonder about a bit and recognise people – that point is crucial to me: you have to be able to recognise and return to (retrouver) someone – at least once or twice – in order for things to start happening. If not, the accordion is stuck, there is no bellowing.

Having said that, my earliest memory of travelling abroad is a mission to Romania in Ceausescu’s time (I forget the year, but around 1975). It was a mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs intended to facilitate academic contacts in spite of the circumstances. The project was so poorly put together that the Romanians didn’t know what to do with me. There was no question of me attending faculties of philosophy. Instead, I was taken for a visit to an anthropology laboratory where everyone was very embarrassed. We mostly drank tea. Through I don’t know what channel, I was offered to go and see a retired philosopher who was suspected by the authorities. This visit – curtains drawn, with a man who spoke elegant French but did not wish to say much as he let me know through gestures – made a huge impression on me. For the remainder, I made some very pleasant little trips in the company of young sociologists eager to show me their country: in Cluj, I listened to La Traviata in Hungarian; in Iaşi, I slept in a nuns’ convent who awaited the exceptional visit of a Moldovan patriarch who had been authorised to come see them; in Budapest, I had a guide, a very kind student, very careful but giving clear indications as to his feelings. I walked around a lot, I believe to have seen something of this country. Of course, this exception remained unique. At the same time, two other offers came in: a trip to the United States and a teaching post in Berlin.

The trip to the United States was part of the profusion of trips trigged by the aftermath of the famous 1966 conference in Baltimore. The Americans wanted to discover the “structuralists” (this was the overall category) and the French (like the Germans) were still to discover America. I will return to this.

In Berlin, after his sudden death (in 1971), Peter Szondi’s students and assistants wanted to organise a seminar. I’ve forgotten how – probably through Derrida – , but I was invited to do so since I spoke German. I went there for two days every two weeks. This continued for several years, with stays of two to three months that I spent at Jakob Taubes’ Institute for Hermeneutics. The experience of Berlin – insofar as teaching is concerned – was the richest one I’ve had abroad. It was still the Berlin of the wall, of the occupation of buildings and – on the horizon – of the Rote Armee Fraktion. The students were impressively present and active, and everything took place in an atmosphere of permanent inventiveness. But at the beginning of the 1980s, the Berlin Senate began to put things in order … For the first time, I was not visiting, I was working whilst living there; I was in – not the country, for sure, because it was an island apart – but in what we now call an ecosystem. That is to say, that which specifies, organises and sometimes also displaces, the very notions of near and far.

It was an entirely different ecology in the United States where, after several trips for lectures, I had regular stays at the University of Irvine. This system had been inaugurated (at least insofar as “French theory” was concerned) by Derrida, Lyotard, Marin, Goux, Damisch, Lacoue-Labarthe and many others. Lacan, Deleuze and Foucault appeared there frequently, but in other forms than extended stays. It was the rise of “French theory” and I find it painful to say to what extent this long episode, overloaded with rivalries but also worked by deep tectonic movements, became insufferable to me – even though I was myself part of it: it accumulated so many misinterpretations and so much nonsense. In this case, there is no question of an accordion, there is instead a cacophony against a background of deafness.

It is, in fact, a matter of one of the great shockwaves taking place in the world – let us say, for the sake of simplicity, since 1945. One of the consequences of what had happened to Germany, and which somehow transported the thought of Husserl and Heidegger to France. This had certainly begun before the war, but afterwards Germany was bled dry. Through Corbin, Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Beaufret, a transfer took place that – complex and polymorphous for sure, but nevertheless a transfer of an intellectual inspiration – had been trigged by Husserl: namely, a sense of the need to re-establish philosophy, nothing less, which was in fact a response to the shaking felt by European society since at least Nietzsche. “French” thus had both empirical and “historical” motives, and France was there a guide who in turn proved to be an instigator. As for “theory,” it is a term whose indeterminacy betrays perplexity. Since we do not know whether its philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, etc., we call this vagueness “theory.” And this is accompanied by enormous misunderstandings, which I cannot dwell on here.

I would like to add that it was a subdivision of that other vague term that constituted the “linguistic turn.” A very clumsy (but understandably so, given the role played by various disciplines of language) way of grasping a phenomenon that was basically that of a general suspension of acquired meanings (such as history, man, sense, etc.). Today, it can be reversed in favour of a demand for the “real,” as if the preoccupation with language did not concern precisely the very “reality” of the supposedly “real.”

I will not dwell on it any further: this is just to indicate that, for me, the role played by the United States at this time was but a banal effect of this overall movement.

Later on, for entirely different and pragmatic reasons, I spent two years in San Diego and then Berkeley. So I could have pursued an American career, but I had no interest in that whatsoever. The favourable conditions, the undeniable friendships, could not prevent a malaise due to the deep separation between the university and the country (especially in California). I much preferred to be in Europe, where the university was for me – at least then – as much part of the country as my childhood school was part of its little town. The accordion did not work well for me in the United States.

Other reasons – health reasons – prevented me from returning to the other side of the Atlantic anyway. Unfortunately, the same was true for South America, where I was never able to go despite all my interest in this so very carnal culture.

In Europe, throughout this period, many relationships were forged: especially with Italy, Germany – no longer that of the Berlin wall – and Spain; to say nothing of almost all the other countries (including, in the 1990s, those of Central Europe and former Yugoslavia, around which militant fervour of course reigned). The regime of the visits prevailed everywhere, but I stayed in Italy and Germany on multiple occasions as a visiting professor. I cannot go into detail, nor make a typology of the intellectual climates (fascinating in itself), but detailing the variations of what had become more European rather than just “French,” and partly more Latin than Nordic, is necessary. Certainly, there were contacts and echoes everywhere; but in the North and East of Europe, little by little, a pragmatic, sociologising or psychologising rather than philosophical thinking had taken root. The accordion sometimes produces too discordant sounds.

England, it turned out, was a little bit out of the way – only a little bit, because I made several visits there, but must say that the 2019 conference in Oxford was a great surprise. I had at times been invited – each time prevented by my health – but from there to such a conference was a big step. Moreover, the organisers were French and Flemish – which is at the same time indicative of the increased mobility of students. I might add this sign of the times: it was the very same year that my grandson was staying in Oxford, where he practices so-called “analytic” philosophy, which already formed the core of his studies in France.

Once again, it is a question here of profound movements accompanying the major techno-economic and geopolitical evolutions or involutions of the last twenty years.

Outside Europe, Japan unsurprisingly not only comes first but is also a place where I breathed the same philosophical air as in France, surrounded by entirely different fragrances and hues. As well as the same air of friendship. For health reasons, I have not been elsewhere in Asia. I have some correspondents in China and Korea. I have forged promising connections in India around the journal PWD (Philosophy World Democracy).

Then there is Africa, the North of which I have visited quite often – going as far as Egypt – and with which I have relationships that history has committed our countries to. But I have only enjoyed a friendly stay south of the Sahara, in Burkina Faso – around 1985 – , after which my health forever closed off for me a continent that fascinates me all the more. Nevertheless, students from Burkina Faso came to Strasbourg for several years.

Today, from whatever region, Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, e-mail operators and many other agents of connection, make another accordion resound – whose music is still to be deciphered.

This exposition is dry, I am aware of that. To tell a real story – of which I am incapable – would take a hundred times the space. It would allow me to name all those, so many, who have opened their doors and their work to me, many of whom are still friends. In responding to Marie’s and Nikolaas’ request, I am conscious both of the insignificance of a trajectory blended with a thousand others and carried by an even greater number of events, as well as the wealth of encounters that are in turn much richer and stronger than a schematic outline could even suggest. And they go, when luck intervenes, far beyond philosophical exchanges. The accordion accompanies the dance very well.

Jean-Luc Nancy, November 2020

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.