{"id":1042,"date":"2016-12-05T21:18:28","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T02:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2016-12-07T16:20:38","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T21:20:38","slug":"repairing-nietzsche-in-cesaire-a-few-damned-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/nietzsche1313\/repairing-nietzsche-in-cesaire-a-few-damned-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Gil | Repairing Nietzsche in C\u00e9saire: A few damned notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

La sph\u00e8re de la po\u00e9sie n’est pas en dehors du monde, r\u00eave impossible d’un cerveau de po\u00e8te ; elle veut \u00eatre justement le contraire, l’expression sans fard de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nietzsche quoted by Ren\u00e9 M\u00e9nil, Tropiques<\/em> No. 1, April 1941.<\/p>\n

0. The curious antifa(z) of early C\u00e9saire(s)<\/h2>\n

What a strange idea, that one could speak the truth without obstacles, especially during a struggle against white fascist miasma. Fake news, post-fact, algorithmic bias, cultural appropriation, filter bubbles, and this just in, a mistrial in Walter Scott’s evident murder, all weighing heavy on us… and we return to repair Nietzsche\u2014again. C\u00e9saire might be able to help, but before he does we might have to adopt the repair work of a Mazzino Montinari and a Giorgio Colli, and return the truth to manuscripts and incongruent editorial ecologies.<\/p>\n

In April of 1941, under the jealous watch of the Vichy censors, Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire, Susanne C\u00e9saire and a few kin spirits launched the journal Tropiques<\/em>. They had keys to the colonial press, l’Imprimerie du Courrier des Antilles<\/em>, where they would set to work when official business took a break. Their journal could be considered a model of censored #antifa cultural journalism when you read it at the dawn of Trump’s America. In their able hands, for example, the blood-and-soil poetry of Charles P\u00e9guy was repaired for a colonized people who could read their own landscape and the ties that bind between the lines. This double voice that could pass censorship seems key to their survival\u2014well that, and the fact that the censors were apparently a bit stupid.<\/p>\n

As the journal steamed on during the war, Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire was secretly working on a brutally direct historical drama with the title “Et les chiens se taisaient” (And the Dogs Were Silent). The plot of the drama follows the events of the Haitian Revolution and the cruel destiny of its leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who dies betrayed in a frozen cell in the Jura mountains. The manuscript could’ve cost him his livelihood\u2014if not his life\u2014had it been found by the Vichy authorities. But truth under fascism is only half of the story. After the war, in 1946, after fascism had been replaced with liberal colonialism, the line “mort aux blancs,” kill the whites, rephrained 69 times in the original manuscript, was reduced to one appearance in the PG-13 oratorio published in Paris for a bruised audience\u2014the source used for the translation you read. As with most famous attempts at presenting black armies decimating white armies, history didn’t find its proper stage.<\/p>\n

When we speak of the Nietszchean tragedy-as-truth in fascists times, let us not forget this strange coexistence of double-speak under censorship and the unstaged honesty of pseudo-liberation. If our truth is to be Dionysean, I suggest we do not forget the C\u00e9sairean ruse\u2014l’humour noir<\/em> cracking up off-stage. We might need it\u2014particularly here, where our words, our phrases, and even our unique writing style is a de facto hashtag\u2014a dangerous archive of betrayal and allegiances.<\/p>\n

1. Over time<\/h2>\n

A \u201cscientific\u201d interpretation of the world \u2026 might therefore still be one of the most stupid of all possible interpretations of the world, meaning that it would be one of the poorest in meaning.\u2026 We cannot reject the possibility that [the world] may include infinite interpretations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (trans. Walter Kaufmann; \u00a7\u00a7373\u201374.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

C\u00e9saire connections to Nietzsche and the rest of the European irrational-industrial-complex\u2014Claudel, Spengler, Breton, Frobenius, Bergson, Freud, Jung, Frazer, Mabille, and even Bachelard\u2014should not be hard to find after James Arnold’s seminal work Modernism & Negritude<\/em>, published in 1981. Arnold is not, after all, the only one invested in tallying C\u00e9saire’s continental debt… or cancelling it. When I look at the receipts, though, I see nothing but inversion and rebirth.<\/p>\n

The PDF of “Po\u00e9sie et connaissance” you read for Nietzsche 13\/13 is a scan of the published facsimile of the penultimate issue of Tropiques<\/em>, no.12, originally published in 1945, after Vichy had long gone and the journal had traveled the hemisphere by post and suitcase. The Tropiques<\/em> text itself is an adaptation of a conference paper delivered by C\u00e9saire in Port-au-Prince in September, 1944, and first published in Cahiers d’Ha\u00efti<\/em> in December, 1944, at a time of some hope. The differences between the two texts are substantial, and I invite the reader to read the original in our recent edition of C\u00e9saire’s works, Po\u00e9sie, th\u00e9\u00e2tre, essais et discours<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One line missing from your PDF is pertinent here: “Aux temps ou la connaissance \u00e9tait co-naissance, au sens claudelien du mot,” to be found on that suspect paragraph mounting an origin story (your page 158). That claudelian sense is, of course, the sense of a “Trait\u00e9 de la connaissance au monde et de soi-m\u00e8me”: Knowledge that is born from self and world, but also literally<\/em> self and world born together\u2014without Bossuet’s god. C\u00e9saire’s poet becomes the standard bearer of a “nouvel Art po\u00e9tique de l’Univers, d’une nouvelle Logique.” (Claudel “Art Poetique”) The same year in October, 1945, he would write to Breton, “Inutile de vous dire que l\u2019action po\u00e9tique reste pour moi la principale et grande affaire, dont l\u2019autre n\u2019est qu\u2019un compl\u00e9ment,” the other being l’action politique<\/em>. One possible way for you to take him at his word, as I do, may come from Gary Wilder’s recent book Freedom Time<\/em>, where alternative futures play out from these years.<\/p>\n

The same riff can be found in Et les chiens se taisaient<\/em> in the voice of The Rebel. I apologize for not having at hand the English translation suggested for you. Here’s the source:<\/p>\n

LE REBELLE
\nj\u2019avais amen\u00e9 ce pays a la connaissance de lui-m\u00eame,
\nfamiliaris\u00e9 cette terre avec ses d\u00e9mons secrets
\nallum\u00e9 aux crat\u00e8res d\u2019h\u00e9lodermes et de cymbales
\nles symphonies d\u2019un enfer inconnu,
\nsplendide parasit\u00e9 de nostalgies hautaines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the source of that source:<\/p>\n

Toussaint.<\/p>\n

J\u2019avais amen\u00e9\/j’aurai<\/span> j’amenerai ce pays \u00e0 la connaissance de lui-m\u00eame,
\nje familiaris\u00e9<\/span> familiariserai cette terre avec ses d\u00e9mons secrets
\nj’allum\u00e9<\/span> j’allumerai aux crat\u00e8res d\u2019h\u00e9lodermes et de cymbales
\nles symphonies d\u2019un enfer inconnu,
\nsplendide parasit\u00e9 de nostalgies hautaines…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reason for the shifting tense can be found in the genesis of the manuscript, with source building upon source. The first iteration of the manuscript did not seem to have Toussaint as the center of attention. As Toussaint slowly became the Nietzschean hero you read today, the chronology of events changed in turn. In early drafts, the lines take place after<\/em>, and in the final state, before<\/em> the revolution. Not without complication, the scene returns to post-revolutionary time in the 1946 prison.<\/p>\n

The time of knowledge co-born of self and world ruminates from the material traces of the record. While I enjoy a flight of fancy to infinite worlds as much as the next theory-bro, the eternal return here is the return of A as A’ regardless of tense\u2014that is, the time of the scarab is always the now of mutable material traces. Of course we are right to compare Obama’s America to the Weimar Republic, as C\u00e9saire was right to compare colonialism to nazism!<\/p>\n

2. Colombusing Piscator, Toussainting Claudel<\/h2>\n

Est-ce toi, Colomb ? Capitaine de n\u00e9grier ?
Est-ce toi vieux pirate, vieux corsaire?<\/em><\/p>\n

…Et les chiens se taisaient<\/em>, typescript, ~1941.<\/p>\n

If the Nazis hadn\u2019t broken Nietzsche, we wouldn\u2019t have to constantly repair him. His toxic masculinity doesn\u2019t help either. I confess to have once cursed Nietzsche for his machismo on Twitter, with a dash of Catholic guilt for good effect. After all, empathy for a lapsed philologist is not difficult to muster.<\/p>\n

In a very real sense, though, repair is more often than not a counter-repair. When Claudel decides to appropriate the techniques of Erwin Piscator, without the latter\u2019s acquiescence, for his obscene redemption of Colombus in Le livre de Christophe Colomb<\/em>, he leaves the door wide-open for C\u00e9saire to repair the repair. Crowds on stage, projections on screen, documentary evidence are all summoned in the typescript of Et les chiens se taisaient<\/em>. C\u00e9saire not only envisioned a staged truth, that truth came with the social justice mechanics of Brecht\u2019s mentor and the anti-colonial fire of a black normali\u00e9n<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Of interest to our Nietzschean investigations is the fate of the chorus and the screen in the struggle for Columbus\u2019 legacy. Early stages of the typescript reveal a use for the screen that coincides with Claudel\u2019s appropriation of Piscator: a conflation of diegesis with mimesis, where the \u03c7\u03bf\u03c1\u03cc\u03c2 is to be understood as all voices on stage singing in unison, including the screen: when black armies killing white colonists were described by the chorus, the screen projected black armies killing white colonists\u2014but more importantly, and this is key, the Piscator machine is repaired in the process by overwriting the deus in machina<\/em>.<\/p>\n

From Claudel…<\/p>\n

CHRISTOPHE COLOMB II, de m\u00eame<\/em>: Quitte ta m\u00e8re! Abandonne-la! Quitte ta famille! Quitte, quitte ta m\u00e8re! La Volont\u00e9 de Dieu est ta patrie! Tout cela qui t’emp\u00eache de partir, tout cela est ton ennemi.<\/p>\n

CHRISTOPHE COLOMB I: Quitterai-je mon p\u00e8re et ma m\u00e8re? Quitterai-je ma patrie?<\/p>\n

Tout cela appara\u00eet m\u00e9lang\u00e9 sur l’\u00e9cran.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…to C\u00e9saire:<\/p>\n

La r\u00e9citante. (dolente)
\n300.000 hommes, tribart bris\u00e9, se pr\u00e9cipitent dans la ville et
\npoussent des hurlements clabauds… Le port est couvert de blancs
\nqui cherchent \u00e0 gagner les b\u00e2timents en r\u00e2de… Ah, les chaloupes
\nchavirent…
\n(A mesure qu\u2019elle parle, tout cela se dessine sur l\u2019\u00e9cran.)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Nietzsche disavows Die Geburt der Trag\u00f6die<\/em> in a later Preface, C\u00e9saire disavows his draft in a letter from July 1944 to Henri Seyrig: “J\u2019ai vraiment honte de vous avoir confi\u00e9 ma petite machine”1<\/sup><\/a>. At this point in the genesis our notes are damned to an eternal return. As we transition from fascism to faux-liberalism, the screen is overcome\u2014sublated even\u2014by an unsteagable, prophetic Chorus. Claudel is erased from Po\u00e9sie et connaissance<\/em>; Colombus eventually becomes your Administrator. When you read the script today in search of the overman bound, please bear in mind the ruse of the earlier god, \u03a0\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03b5\u03cd\u03c2.<\/p>\n

3. C\u00e9saire in the hybrid record<\/h2>\n

I’m running out of steam and time, so I’ll leave you with a few bibliographic pistes<\/em> as you make your way through the record\u2014hybrid because ours is now part digital, part analog: a curious machine where our own overcoming must take place. If we are ready to join Nietzsche and C\u00e9saire in disavowing a mechanistic universe for a gay science (stage or text), we can only do so through the resistance of this, our own machine.<\/p>\n

Making your way through C\u00e9saire’s hybrid record is, of course, no easier than Nietzsche’s. C\u00e9saire traversed many editorial environments and had a penchant for revision and reuse. He allowed his editors legendary freedom. He was also pirated early on. The critical reception begins early and will spread around the world quickly enough. In the 1970s we already start seeing substantial bibliographic work, and it is only accelerating now, renewed by the rigorous work of Kora V\u00e9ron and the amor fati<\/em> of Google.<\/p>\n

Work in the born-and-die-digital record is just beginning. You can definitely find all of my work on Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire open<\/a> access<\/a>. Our crowdsourced Zotero bibliography<\/a> remains an example of what we could accomplish when we work together<\/a> in these treacherous environments. Based on this bibliography, I’ve put together a map below to give you a sense of the spread of the critical work on C\u00e9saire from 1939 until the present, and the difficulties ahead. Feel free to use it as one would an enumerative bibliography:<\/p>\n