No More Learning

? And then, little by little, the two institutions, which underneath their petty squabbles were in fact profoundly akin, tended to become completely indistinguishable. We know per- fectly well that today the literature said to be avant-garde is only ever read by academics; that a writer over thirty has students around him who are doing their theses on his work; and that writers live for the most part by giving courses and by being academics. Thus the truth about something is already evident there, in the fact that literature functions thanks to a play of selection, sacralization, and institutional valorization of which the university is at once both the operator and the receiver.
? Q: Are there intrinsic criteria for [evaluating] texts, or is it only a matter of sacralization by the university as institution?
MF; I know nothing about it. I would simply say this; in order to break with a certain number of myths, like the one of literature's expressive character, it has been very im- portant to establish the great principle that literature is con- cemed only with itself If it has anything to do with its author, it's according to a mode of death, silence, and the very disap- pearance of the one who writes.
? The reference here to Blanchot or Barthes matters little. The essential thing is the importance of the principle; the intransitivity of literature. It was indeed the first stage thanks to which one could get rid of the idea that literature was the place of all transits, or the point where all transits ended up, the expression of totalities.
? But it seems to me that this was still only a stage. Yet, to maintain the analysis at this level is to risk not disman-
? 116 On Literature
? tling the set of sacralizations by which literature has been affected. On the contrary, one risks sacralizing it even worse. And that's actually what has happened, even up to 1970. We have seen a certain number of the themes of Blanchot and Barthes used for a kind of exaltation, at once ultra-lyrical and ultra-rationalizing, of literature as a structure of language sus- ceptible to analysis only in itself and in its own terms.
? The pohtical implications were not absent from this exaltation. Thanks to it, one succeeded in saying that literature in itself was at this point freed from all determinations, that the fact of writing was in itself subversive, that the writer possesses, in the very gesture of writing, an imprescribable right to subversion! Consequently, the writer was a revolution- ary, and the more the writing was Writing (l'e? criture e? tait e? criture), the more it plunged into intransitivity, the more it produced in doing so the revolution! You know that these
things were unfortunately said. . .
? In fact, Blanchot's and Barthes' trajectory tended to- ward a desacralization of literature by breaking the connec- tions that put it in a position of absolute expression. This rup- ture implied that the next movement would be to desacralize it absolutely, and to try to see how, in the general mass of what was said, at a given moment and in a certain mode, this par- ticular area of language could be constituted, an area that must not be asked to bear the decisions of a culture, but rather how it can be that a culture has decided to give it this position so singular and so strange.
? . Q: Why strange?
? MF; Our culture accords to hterature a part which is in one sense extraordinarily limited: how many people read lit- erature? What place does it actually have in the general expan- sion of discourse?
? On Literature 117
? But this same cuhure imposes on all its children, as a touting towi^ffds culture, this passage through a whole ideol- ogy, a whole theology of literature, during their studies. There is a kind of paradox there.
? And it's not unrelated to the affirmation that writing is subversive. That someone affirms it, in such and such a periodical, has no importance and no effect. But if at the same moment all instructors firom high school teachers to university professors tell you, explicitly or not, that the great decisions of a culture, the points where it changes. . . these must be found in Diderot, Sade, Hegel or Rabelais, you see very well that it's finally a matter of the same thing. Both make literature func- tion in the same way. At this level, the effects of reinforce- ment are reciprocal. The so-called avant-garde groups and the gross mass at the university are in agreement. That leads to a very heavy political blockage.
? Q; How have you escaped this blockage?
? MF: My manner of taking up the problem was on the one hand the book on Raymond Roussel and then above all the book on Pierre Rivie`re. Between the two there is the same investigation; what is this threshhold starting from which a discourse (whether that of a sick person, a criminal, etc. ) be- gins to functiion in a field described as literature?
? In order to know what is literature, I would not want to study internal structures. I would rather grasp the move- ment, the small process through which a non-literary type of discourse, neglected, forgotten as soon as it is spoken, enters the literary domain. What happens there? What is released? How is this discourse modified in its efforts by the fact that it is recognized as literary?
? 118 On Literature
? Q: You have however devoted texts to literary works about which this question is not posed. I am thinking notably of your essays in Critique on Blanchot, Klossowski and Bataille. If they were collected in a single volume, perhaps they would give your transversal an unexpected image. . .
? MF; Yes, but. . . . It would be rather difficult to speak of them. At bottom, Blanchot, Klossowski and Bataille, who were finally the three who interested me in the 1960s, were for me much more than literary works or discourses interior litera- ture. They were discourses exterior to philosophy.
? Q; That is to say. . .
MF; Let's take Nietzsche, if you like. Nietzsche rep- resents, in relation to academic philosophical discourse, which ceaselessly refers to him, the outside edge. Of course a whole channel of Western philosophy can be found in Nietzsche's works. Plato, Spinoza, the philosophers of the 18th century, Hegel. . . all that passes through Nietzsche. And yet, in relation to philosophy, there is in Nietzsche's work a roughness, a rustic simplicity, an outsideness, a kind of mountain peasant- ness that allows him, with a shrug of the shoulder and without appearing in any way ridiculous, to say with unavoidable force: "What non-sense all that is! "
To rid oneself of philosophy necessarily implies such an offhandedness. It's not by remaining in philosophy, it's not by refining it to the maximum, it's not by turning it against itself that one exits from it. No. It's by opposing it with a kind of astonished and joyful stupidity, a sort of incomprehensible burst of laughter that in the end understands, or in any case, breaks. Yes. . . it breaks more than it understands.
? To the extent that I was nevertheless an academic, a professor of philosophy, what remained of traditional philo-
? On Literature 119
? sophic discourse hampered me in the work I had done on madness. There was an Hegelianism there that dragged. To make objects appear that were as derisory as relations with the police, measures of internment and the cries of the mad, that did not suffice inevitably to exit from philosophy. For me, Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot and Klossowski were ways of exiting fi'om philosophy.
? In the violence of Bataille, in the sort of insidious and disturbing sofmess of Blanchot, in Klossowski's spirals, there was something that began with philosophy, put it into play and into question, then left it and came back. . . Something like the theory of breathing in Klossowski is connected by I don't know how many lines to all of Western philosophy. And then, through the staging (mis en sce`ne), the formulation, the way in which all that functions in Le Baphomet, philosophy leaves it entirely.
? These comings and goings around the position of phi- losophy finally rendered permeable--and thus finally deri sory--the frontier between philosophy and non-philosophy. A
? Translated by John Johnston
? 11
The Politics of Soviet Crime
? ? Q: Guard towers, barded-wire fences, police dogs, prionsers transported in trucks like so many animals. . . When the first filmed reports of life in a Soviet detention camp to reach the West were shown on French television, these were some of the scenes witnessed by viewers--scenes all too char- acteristic of our century. Soviet spokesmen at first denied the film's authenticity. Later admitting the existence of the camp in question, they added, by way of justification, that only non- political prisoners were interned there. The response of the French public was on the whole one of relief: "Oh well, since they're only common criminals. . . . " What were your reactions to the film and to the responses it elicited?
? MF: One early statement on the part of the Soviet authorities impressed me enormously. They claimed that the very existence of the camp in plain view in the middle of a city proved that there was nothing shocking about it. As though the fact that a concentration camp could exist undis- guised in the middle of Riga constituted an excuse. (The Ger- mans, after all, sometimes felt the need to hide their camps. ) As though the shamelessness of not hiding from the people of Riga what they do in that city entided the Soviet authorities to demand silence everywhere else and to enforce their demand.
? 122 Politics of Soviet Crime
? It's the logic of Cyrano de Bergerac, cynicism as censorship; "You're not allowed to mention my nose because it's right in the middle of my face. " As though it were possible not to see the Riga camp for what it is, a symbol of shamelessly exer- cised power, just as we see our own city halls, courts, and prisons as emblems on the escutcheon of power.
Setting aside for a moment the question of whether its inmates are political or non-political prisoners, the camp's high visibility and the fear inherent in that visibility are in themselves political. Barbed wire, searchlight beams, and the echoing footsteps of prison guards--that is political. And that is policy.
I was also struck by the Soviet rationalization you quoted; "These are not political prisoners; they are common criminals. " Now, as a matter of fact, the Soviet vice-minister of Justice has said that the notion of political imprisonment does not even exist in his country. The only ones who may be prosecuted are those who seek to weaken the social order and the state by means of high treason, espionage, terrorism, vili- fying propaganda, or the dissemination of misinformation. In short, he defines as non-pohtical precisely those acts which the rest of the world considers political.
? The Soviet definition is at once logical and bizarre. The obliteration of the distinction between political and non- political offenses in the Soviet Union would be a logical de- velopment. But at that point, it seems to me, all offenses be- come political. In a socialist state, any breach of law--rob- bery, the most petty of thefts--^is not a crime against private property, but against the property of the people, against soci- ety itself, socialist production, and the body politic. I would understand if the Soviet authorities had said that there were no longer any non-political prisoners because all crime is by defi- nition political. As it is, we must not only accuse the vice minister of lying (because he knows there are political prison-
? Politics of Soviet Crime 123
? ers in the Soviet Union), but also ask him how after sixty years of socialism they still have a criminal code for non-political crimes.
? However, if we define criminality in purely political terms, we necessarily forego the traditional contempt for "common" criminals that is an essential element of the penal system itself And if we consider all crime to be political, then our response to it must be equally pohtical. But in fact, the guard towers, the police dogs, and the endless gray barracks are only "political" in so far as they are sinister evocations of Hitler and Stalin, who used them to dispose of their enemies. The penal methods themselves--incarceration, deprivation, forced labor, brutality, humiliation--^are not far removed from those invented by eighteenth-century Europe. Those v,'ho break the laws of the Soviet Union are subject to bourgeois penal techniques some two hundred years old. And far from changing these techniques, the Soviets have made them more atrocious and carried them to their logical extreme. What so moved those who saw the Riga documentary was not only the specter of Dachau, but beyond it, the endless procession of human beings condemned to penal servitude--a two-hundred- year spectacle used by those in power for the purpose of in- stilling fear.
? Q: I think the explanation of these paradoxes lies in the fact that the Soviet Union claims to be a sociaUst state but is in reality not at all socialist. The hypocrisy of Soviet leaders and the incoherence of their official statements follows logi- cally from this fact. It has been evident for some time now that if the Soviet Union has been unable to evolve along lines that the Twentieth Congress seemed to suggest, it is because the weaknesses of the Soviet society are structural and lie in the mode of production, and not simply in a more-or-less bureau- cratized leadership.
? 124 Politics of Soviet Crime
? MF: It is undoubtedly true that although the Soviets indeed changed the distribution of property and the role of the state in the control of production, they merely adopted certain power and management techniques perfected by nineteenth- century European capitalism. The particular morality, esthetic forms, and disciplinary methods that already functioned effec- tively by 1850 in European bourgeois society--^its forms of social control--^were adopted wholesale by the Soviets. I think the system of imprisonment was invented as a generalized penal system during the eighteenth century and consolidated in the nineteenth century in connection with the development of capitalist societies and states. Moreover, the prison system was only one of the techniques of power necessary to the development and control of the forces of production. The dis- ciplined life--disciphne in school, at work, in the army-- is also a technical innovation of that period. And techniques are easily transplanted. Just as the Soviets adopted the principles of scientific management and other related management tech- niques developed in the West, they also adopted our discipli- nary techniques, adding one new weapon--^party discipline-- to the arsenal we had perfected.
? Q: It seems to me that Soviet citizens have even more difficulty than Europeans in understanding the political significance of these mechanisms. I see proof of this in the unfortunate prejudice of Soviet dissidents against non-political prisoners. Solzhenitsyn's descriptions of the latter are abso- lutely chilling. His "ordinary" criminals are subhuman crea- tures incapable of expressing themselves in any known lan- guage. The least we can say about his attitude is that he shows them no compassion.
? MF: The hostility shown toward "ordinary" crimi- nals by those who consider themselves political prisoners can
? Politics of Soviet Crime 125
? seem shocking to those of us who think that poverty, rebellion, and the rejection of exploitation and humiliation are at the root of delinquency. But we must try to look at things in terms of their tactical relevance. We must take into account the fact that in the Soviet Union, just as in France or elsewhere, the crimi- nal element is controlled, infiltrated, and manipulated by those in power. Among criminals as among non-criminals, rebels are a minority and conformists a majority. Do you think that a system of punishment that provides recidivism could have been maintained if criminal behavior did not serve some fiinc- tion? Early in the nineteenth century it became obvious that in most cases imprisonment tumed the condemned into lifetime offenders. Other methods of punishment would certainly have been invented, were it not for the fact that the professionaliza- tion of crime created a kind of reserve army useful to those in power for providing services such as prostitution, for example, and for providing informers, strike-breakers, lackeys, agents- provocateurs, and even bodyguards for electoral, and even presidential candidates. In short, there is a historical conflict between political and non-political offenders--^in so far as those in power have always sought to implicate both groups in the same base, selfish, and savage criminality.
? I do not mean to imply that non-political criminals are the faithful handmaidens of the Soviet regime. But given the extreme difficulty of the dissidents' struggle, I wonder whether it is not necessary for them to distinguish themselves from the others, to show that their cause is not that of the "thieves and murderers" with which the regime tries to iden- tify them. This may be only a tactical maneuver on the part of the dissidents. In any case, I find it difficult to condemn the attitude of the Soviet dissenters who are careful not to be confused with the "ordinary" criminals. I believe there were many members of the French resistance who when arrested refused--for political reasons--^to be taken for black-market-
?
126 Politics of Soviet Crime
? eers, even though the latter could expect a far less cruel fate.
? However, if you were to ask me about a country like France, my answer would be different. Here must point out the existence of a broad spectrum of illegalities that extends from the sometimes honored, always tolerated wheelings and deal- ings of politicians and the merchant princes of drugs and mu- nitions (who all use the law), to the prosecuted and punished offenses of the small-time thief who rebels against the law, is ignorant of it, or even baited by it. And we must also point out the unequal treatment handed out by our penal system. The important distinction here is not between political and non- political offenders, but between the profitable illegalities per- petrated with impunity by those who use the law, and the simple illegalities that the penal system uses to create a stand- ing army of criminals.
? Q: But it is also true that in the Soviet Union, just as in France, there is a profound rupture between the ordinary people and those found guilty of petty crimes. I recently saw a program on Italian television that ended with scenes of a prison cemetery where those who died while serving their sen- tences are buried in tombs hardly worthy of the name. The prisoners' families almost never claim their dead--undoubt- edly because transportation is too expensive, but also because they are ashamed. For me, the scene had profound social im- plications.
? MF: The break between public opinion and criminals has the same origin as the prison system itself. Or, rather, it is one of the great benefits that the power structure has reaped from that system. In fact, the hostile relationship that we see today between criminals and the lower strata of society did not exist until the eighteenth century--and in some parts of Eu- rope not until the nineteenth or even early twentieth century.
? Politics of Soviet Crime 127
? The gap between rich and poor was so wide that the thief--the redistributor of wealth--was welcome among the poor. Until the seventeenth century, thieves and bandits were popular he- roes, some of whom remain as shadowy but positive figures in our mythology. The same is true of the bandits of Corsica and Sicily and the thieves of Naples. But in an urban industrial setting, pilfering and petty theft became too costly, and these infractions tolerated by the masses began to be seen as a seri- ous threat. At that point, a new form of economic discipline calling for honesty, accuracy, punctuality, thrift, and an abso- lute respect for property was imposed at all levels of society. It became necessary on the one hand to assure more efficient protection of wealth, and on the other to create in the popular mind an openly hostile attitude toward illegality. Thus with the aid of prisons, those in power created a hard core of crimi- nals who had no real communication with the masses and were no longer tolerated by them. This isolation facilitated both the infiltration of the criminal element by the police and the development, in the course of the nineteenth century, of an underworld ideology. The contempt, suspicion, and hatred aroused by criminals should not come as any surprise: it is the result of 150 years of effort on the part of politicians, ideo- logues, and the poUce. One should not be surprised either by the fact that the same phenomenon is found in the USSR.
? Q: One month after the Riga documentary was shown on French television, the release of the mathematician Leonid Plyushch focused attention on another all too famihar aspect of Soviet repression: the imprisonment of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals.
? MF: The internment of dissidents in mental hospitals constitutes an extraordinary paradox in a country that calls itself socialist. In the case of a murderer or child molester, a
? 128 Politics of Soviet Crime
? search for the psychological roots of the crime and an attempt to cure the perpetrator can be justified; the procedure in any case is not illogical. But the dissenter--I mean the one who does not accept the regime, repudiates it, or does not under- stand it--^is of all Soviet citizens the one who should not be considered mentally ill. Instead, he should be the object of political instruction designed to make him open his eyes, to raise his level of consciousness, to make him understand in what way Soviet reality is intelligible and necessary, desirable and pleasant. However, dissidents are subjected to psychiatric treatment more frequently than anybody else. Does this not mean that it is not possible, to convince someone in rational terms, that his opposition is unfounded? Does it not mean that the only way that Soviet reality can be made acceptable to those who don't like it is by authoritarian methods--^through the use of drugs that affect hormones and neurons? The para- dox is a revealing one: Soviet reality is only pleasant under the effects of Thorazine. And if only tranquilizers can make it acceptable, then perhaps there is a real cause for anxiety. Haven't the Soviet leaders renounced the rationality of their revolution, worrying only about maintaining docility? The pu- nitive techniques employed in the Soviet Union reveal this renunciation of all that is basic to a socialist project.
? Q: But there has been a certain amount of change in the Soviet Union. There is less repression now. In Stalin's time, everyone was terrified; one day you were the head of a factory, the next day you found yourself in a prison camp. Now, a certain element can act with impunity. If you are an academician, you no longer go to prison. Not only is Sakharov still fi-ee, but out of a total of 600 Soviet academicians, only seventy signed the denunciation of him. This means that the others felt free to refuse to sign. Twenty years ago this would have been unthinkable.
? Politics of Soviet Crime 129
? MF: I agree that the reign of terror has abated some- what. However, terror is not the apogee of discipline, but rather its failure. Under Stalin, the head of the NKVD himself could be executed as he left a cabinet meeting. (In fact, no head of the NKVD ever died of natural causes. ) Change and upheaval were inherent in the system itself. Fear is circular: those who unleash terror inevitably become its victims. But once the ministers, police officials, academicians, and other party leaders become entrenched and no longer fear for them- selves, discipline in the ranks below them will function effec- tively without even the sUghtest risk of upheaval.
I would like to retum to the issue of punishment in a more general sense. The questions of what to punish and how to punish have been debated for a long time. Now, however, we are beginning to ask ourselves some strange new ques- tions. "Is punishment necessary? " "What do we mean by pun- ishment? " "Why is there a connection--^until now taken for granted--^between crime and punishment? " The idea that crime must be punished is so familiar, so necessary to us, and yet, there is something somewhere that makes us doubt. Con- sider the cowardly relief of judge, jury, journalists, spectators, etc. , when a psychiatrist or psychologist tells them not to be afraid to find a defendant guilty, that they will not be punish- ing the offender, but merely providing for his/her rehabilita- tion and cure. The defendant is found guilty, sentenced, im- prisoned. The court is acquitted.
? To suggest an alternative to punishment is to avoid the issue, which is not the judicial context of punishment, nor its techniques, but the power structure that punishes. This is why I find the problem of criminal justice in the Soviet Union so interesting. It is easy to mock the theoretical contradictions that characterize the Soviet penal system, but these are theo- ries that kill, and blood-stained contradictions. One can also be surprised that they weren't able to come up with new ways of
? 130 Politics of Soviet Crime
? dealing with crime and political opposition; one must be indig- nant that they adopted the method of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that they pushed it to a degree of meticulousness that is overwhelming.
? Their dimensions unknown, the mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union--systems of control, of surveil- lance, punishment--are versions of those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie as it struggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many so- cialisms, real or dreamt: Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its future withering away, there is a missing term--the analysis, criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself. Socialism and so- cialist societies have no need for new declarations of human rights and freedoms: simple, thus unnecessary. But if they want to be worthy of love and no longer rejected, they must address themselves to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is to invent a way in which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a true innovation. A
? Translated by Mollie Horwitz
? 12
? I, Pierre Rivie`re
Q: If you like, we can begin by discussing your inter- est in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivie`re, and in particular your interest in the fact that at least in part it has been made into a film.
MF; For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychol- ogy, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychia- trists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it's a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique wit- ness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish this book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your
19th century colleagues?
In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't
know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminolo- gists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of
? 130 Politics of Soviet Crime
? dealing with crime and political opposition; one must be indig- nant that they adopted the method of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that they pushed it to a degree of meticulousness that is overwhelming.
? Their dimensions unknown, the mechanisms of power in the Soviet Union--systems of control, of surveil- lance, punishment--are versions of those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie as it struggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many so- cialisms, real or dreamt; Between the analysis of power in the bourgeois state and the idea of its future withering away, there is a missing term--the analysis, criticism, destruction, and overthrow of the power mechanism itself. Socialism and so- cialist societies have no need for new declarations of human rights and freedoms: simple, thus unnecessary. But if they want to be worthy of love and no longer rejected, they must address themselves to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is to invent a way in which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a true innovation. A
? Translated by Mollie Horwitz
? 12
? I, Pierre Rivie`re
Q: If you like, we can begin by discussing your inter- est in the publication of the dossier on Pierre Rivie`re, and in particular your interest in the fact that at least in part it has been made into a film.
? MF: For me the book was a trap. You know how much people are talking now about delinquents, their psychol- ogy, their drives and desires, etc. The discourse of psychia- trists, psychologists and criminologists is inexhaustible on the phenomenon of delinquency. Yet it's a discourse that dates back about 150 years, to the 1830s. Well, there you had a magnificent case: in 1836 a triple murder, and then not only all the aspects of the trial but also an absolutely unique wit- ness, the criminal himself, who left a memoir of more than a hundred pages. So, to publish this book was for me a way of saying to the shrinks in general (psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists): well, you've been around for 150 years, and here is a case contemporary with your birth. What do you have to say about it? Are you better prepared to discuss it than your
19th century colleagues?
? In a sense I can say I won; I won or I lost, I don't know, for my secret desire of course was to hear criminolo- gists, psychologists, and psychiatrists discuss the case of
? 132 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? Rivie`re in their usual insipid language. Yet they were literally reduced to silence: not a single one spoke up and said: "Here is what Rivie`re was in reality. And I can tell you now what couldn't be said in the 19th century. " Except for one fool, a psychoanalyst, who claimed that Rivie`re was an illustration of paranoia as defined by Lacan. With this exception no one had anything to say. But I must congratulate them for the prudence and lucidity with which they have renounced discussion of Rivie`re. So it was a bet won or lost, as you like. . .
? Q: But more generally, it's difficult to discuss the event itself, both its central point which is the murder and also the character who instigates it.
? MF: Yes, because I believe that Rivie`re's own dis- course on his act so dominates, or in any case so escapes from every possible handle, that there is nothing to be said about this central point, this crime or act, that is not a step back in relation to it. We see there nevertheless a phenomenon without equivalent in either the history of crime or discourse: that is to say, a crime accompanied by a discourse so strong and so strange that the crime ends up not existing anymore; it escapes through the very fact of this discourse held about it by the one who committed it.
? Q: Well how do you situate yourself in relation to the impossibility of this discourse?
? Nff: I have said nothing about Rivie`re's crime itself and once more, I don't believe anyone can say anything about it. No, I think that one must compare Rivie`re with Lacenaire, who was his exact contemporary and who committed a whole heap of minor and shoddy crimes, mostly failures, hardly glo- rious at all, but who succeeded through his very intelligent
? I, Pierre Rivie`re 133
? discourse in making these crimes exist as real works of art, and in making the criminal, that is, Lacenaire himself, the very artist of criminality. It's another tour de force if you like: he managed to give an intense reality, for dozens of years, for more than a century, to acts that were finally very shoddy and ignoble. As a criminal he was a rather poor type, but the splendor and intelligence of his writing gave a consistency to it all. Rivie`re is something altogether different: a really ex- traordinary crime which was revived by such an even more extraordinary discourse that the crime ended up ceasing to exist, and I think moreover that this is what happened in the minds of the judges.
? Q: Well then, do you agree with the project of Rene? Allio's film, which was centered on the idea of a peasant seizing the opportunity for speech? Or had you already thought about that?
? MF: No, it's to AUio's credit to have thought of that, but I subscribe to the idea completely. For by reconstituting the crime from the outside, with actors, as if it were an event and nothing but a criminal event, the essential would be lost. It was necessary that one be situated, on the one hand, at the interior of Riviere's discourse, that the film be a film of mem- ory and not the film of a crime, and on the other hand that this discourse of a litde Normand peasant of 1835 be taken up in what could be the peasant discourse of that period. Yet, what is the closest to that form of discourse, if not the same one that is spoken today, in the same voice, by the peasants Uving in the same place. And finally, across 150 years, it's the same voices, the same accents, the same maladroit and raucous speech that recounts the same thing with almost nothing trans- posed. In fact Alho chose to commemorate this act at the same place and almost with the same characters who were there 150
? 134 I, Pierre Rivie`re
? years ago; these are the same peasants who in the same place repeat the same act. It was difficult to reduce the whole cine- matic apparatus, the whole filmic apparatus, to such a thin- ness, and that is really extraordinary, rather unique I think in the history of the cinema.
? What's also important in Allio's film is that he gives the peasants their tragedy. Basically, the tragedy of the peasant until the end of the 18th century was still hunger. But, begin- ning in the 19th century and perhaps still today, it was, like every great tragedy, the tragedy of the law, of the law and the land. Greek tragedy is a tragedy that recounts the birth of the law and the mortal effects of the law on men. The Rivie`re affair occurred in 1836, that is, twenty years after the Code Civil was set into place: a new law is imposed on the daily life of the peasant and he struggles in this new juridical universe. The whole drama of Rivie`re is a drama about the law, the code, legality, marriage, possessions, and so forth. Yet, it's always within this tragedy that the peasant world moves. And what is important therefore is to show peasants today this old drama which is at the same time the one of their lives: just as Greek citizens saw the representation of their own city on the stage.
? Q: What role can this fact play, the fact that the Nor- mand peasants of today can keep the spirit, thanks to the film, of this event, of this period?
? MF: You know that there is a great deal of literature about the peasants, but very little peasant literature, or peasant expression. Yet, here we have a text written in 1835 by a peasant, in his own language, that is, in one that is barely literate. And here is the possibility for these peasants today to play themselves, with their own means, in a drama which is of their generation, basically. And by looking at the way Allio
? I, Pierre Rivie`re 135
? made his actors work you could easily see that in a sense he was very close to them, that he gave them a lot of explanations in setting them up, but that on the other side, he allowed them great latitude, in the manner of their language, their pronuncia- tion, their gestures. And, if you like, I think it's politically important to give the peasants the possibility of acting this peasant text. Hence the importance also of actors from outside to represent the world of the law, the jurors, the lawyers, etc. , all those people from the city who are basically outside of this very direct communication between the peasant of the 19th century and the one of the 20th that Allio has known how to visualize, and, to a certain point, let these peasant actors visu- alize.
? Q: But isn't there a danger in the fact that they begin to speak only through such a monstrous story?
? MF: It's something one could fear. And Allio, when he began to speak to them about the possibility of making the film, didn't dare tell them what was really involved. And when he told them, he was very surprised to see that they accepted it very easily; the crime posed no problem for them. On the contrary, instead of becoming an obstacle, it was a kind of space where they could meet, talk and do a whole lot of things which were actually those of their daily hves. In fact, instead of blocking them, the crime liberated them. And if one had asked them to play something closer to their daily lives and their activity, they would have perhaps felt more theatrical and stagey than in playing this kind of crime, a little far away and mythic, under the shelter of which they could go all out with their own reality.
? Q: I was thinking rather of a somewhat unfortunate symmetry; right now it's very fashionable to make films about
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? the turpitudes and monstrosities of the bourgeoisie. So in this film was there the risk of falling into the trap of the indiscreet violence of the peasantry?
? MF; And link up again finally with this tradition of an atrocious representation of the peasant world, as in Balzac and Zola. .