Translated by Asunción Alvarez
Pautrat, Badiou, Žižek. I read in the latest issue of Monde des Livres that my old friend at the École Normale, Bernard Pautrat, has published a book on Spinoza and love, Ethica Sexualis. When he was young and we shared the same room at rue d’Ulm, he was 100% Derridean. Since then he has sown his wild oats – like Derrida himself. He has accurately translated Spinoza’s Ethics, and Rilke and W.H. Auden, among others, gracefully – I am particularly fond of his translation of Perse. He denied me a classroom at the École for my advanced seminar, which I requested, how long ago? Ten or fifteen years perhaps. “You see, Lacan is not fondly remembered in this house, the way in which he left, you must understand…” I did understand. I refused to set food there to “give a lecture,” as he proposed to me, at the request of Badiou, who is now a housemaster among philosophers, no doubt as compensation.
I will be returning there on Friday 9th September to read a text by Lacan which my friend Catherine has chosen for me. But I don’t blame Pautrat, an institutional man in the institution, which has its own logic which dissipates outside. I hope to read this book once I return to Paris, with the most favorable of prejudices. Pautrat is a very acute man.
Making love in Spinoza’s way? What could that be like? Erotics more geometrico, before Lacan, never amounted to much. Or after Lacan, for that matter. I remember listening to Badiou, in a lecture at the École de la Cause, raise a mountain of mathemes to give birth to a mouse. Nonetheless, Alain has an experience, which I believe is very authentic, both of mathematics and of love. He and Žižek are a hellfire duo which is scorching contemporary philosophy and illuminating young people. In New York, they were welcome by Josefina Ayerza at Lacanian Ink. Josefina, lacanian pure sugar, asked me beforehand for my agreement before offering them shelter. Now they stay with her when they drop by, she knows them well.
BACK IN PARIS. Pautrat thought about sending me his book, with a friendly dedication. I will comb through his book once the whirlwind of my return ceases to require all my efforts. Nothing prevents Aurélie, or Anaëlle, or Clotilde, or Deborah, all of them trained philosophers, to do so before me. Who speaks better to women? Spinoza or Catherine Millot? The first part of this chronicle was written in Ré; the second one, right now.
