“Un petit entraînement physique, pour l’acceptation du monde”. Christophe Tarkos and the neoliberal counter-revolution as the Revolution
Résumés
Christophe Tarkos, “poète révolutionnaire” auto-proclamé, fait une révolution étrange. Ses textes maximalisent la duplicité de l’idée révolutionnaire dans le contexte néolibéral des années 1990. D’une part, note Graeber, “the Left had largely abandoned utopianism”; d’autre part, the Right [...] had catastrophically appropriated [...] the idea that the revolutionary is the agent of the inevitable march of history” (Graeber: 2014). Tandis que l'assaut du capitalisme néolibéral sur tous les aspects de la vie est déclaré complet (Dardot et Laval: 2009), que l’histoire elle-même aurait atteint sa fin (Fukuyama: 1989) : Tarkos formule la critique non critique du capital dans la langue contre-révolutionnaire du néolibéralisme – “L’argent est la seule valeur universelle”, “l’argent est révolutionnaire" (Tarkos: 2008). Ce faisant, il énonce cette double impasse: celle du néolibéralisme, de la destruction constante des corps, des psychés et des milieux de vie qu’il entraîne, et celle de l’impossibilité pour les forces révolutionnaires de mettre un terme à la contre-révolution. En proposant un “un petit exercice musculaire de remise en forme pour supporter, accepter le réel” (Tarkos: 2014), il conçoit l’équivalent poétique de l’extension de l’Homo œconomicus à toute l'humanité : “someone who accepts reality” (Becker: 1962).
Malgré ça, la plupart des critiques ont interprété Tarkos à la lumière des cadres théoriques émancipateurs de gauche : soit à la manière indirectement subversive de Deleuze (Barda: 2018 ; Sainsbury: 2018; Caillée: 2014), soit à travers le schéma marxien d’une révélation des contradictions cachées du capital (Farah). A travers une étude des poèmes L’Argent (1997) et Oui (1996), je montre que Tarkos ne fait rien de tel. Arguant que le contexte politique et idéologique dominant dans les années 1990 est plus pertinent pour les interpréter que la tradition théorique de l’émancipation, je montre que la poésie de Tarkos “littéralise” la vision du monde où il n’y a effectivement pas d’alternative (Gleize: 2009). En comparant ses poèmes au noyau fondateur de la pensée néolibérale (W. Lippman; L. von Mises; F. Hayek; G. Becker and Paul H. Rubin), cet article met en lumière la proximité dérangeante de leur “révolution” et explore les effets socio-littéraires de l’éradication de tout espoir en une révolution non capitaliste.
A partir de L’Argent, la partie 1 analyse la façon dont les contradictions du capitalisme néolibéral sont poétiquement changées en armes, dont le capitalisme est absolutisé, et dont la Révolution marxienne est identifiée à la contre-révolution néolibérale. Dans la partie 2, une analyse de oui montre que la langue de Tarkos est une entité plastique dont les évolutions internes parviennent à réconcilier la liberté et la détermination d’une façon plus cohérentes que les néolibéraux. Sur ces bases, la partie 3 présente les fondations de la pensée néolibérale à l'œuvre dans les textes de Tarkos. Dans la droite ligne de cette tradition, Tarkos instrumentalise la conception évolutionniste de l’histoire où le capitalisme est la “Grande Révolution (Lippman: 1937) à laquelle l’esprit “intuitif” des “hommes communs” (Paul H. Rubin: 2003) doit être adapté. Étant donné que leur “mental architecture” est “adapted to life in the small roving bands in which the human race [...] evolved” (Hayek: 1988), il s’ensuit que la véritable tâche révolutionnaire, pour Tarkos comme pour les néolibéraux, est de provoquer la “revolutionary re-adaptation” de l’humanité aux impératifs du marché, à la division du travail, à la compétition généralisée et au règne sans partage de la marchandise. “La valeur de l’argent, écrit Tarkos, réconcilie l’ensemble de soi et du monde, elle fait de soi l’adaptation elle-même” (Tarkos: 2008). Par un tour de force poétique, il invente l’idiome rêvé du néolibéralisme. L’horizon pré-déterminé du capital comme aboutissement nécessaire de l’humanité est ainsi réconcilié avec la qualité métamorphique, imprévisible et intérieurement “plastique” (Malabou) de la pensée et de la vie. Il est meilleur joueur à ce jeu de langue que l’actuel maître du jeu français Emmanuel Macron (Révolution: 2016), ses poèmes résolvent la quadrature du cercle de la révolution en temps néolibéraux.
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Introduction. Christophe Tarkos and the puzzling resurgence of revolutionary poetry under neoliberalism
1In 1993 – reviving long forgotten words (“marxiste”; “révolution culturelle”, “poète révolutionnaire”), troubling the most clean-cut of discursive divides by serialising incommensurate social attributes and discursive planes (character traits; fantasist geographic origins; football-team and Marxist allegiances), buffooning avant-gardist political positivity – Christophe Tarkos thus introduced himself:
- 1 Christophe Tarkos, “Bio: chou”, biographical note, 22/11/1993, in Ecrits Poétiques, ed. by Katalin (...)
moi : je suis une personne équilibrée, autonome, assise. […] Je suis une personne non-violente, pacifique, pacifiée, en paix. Je suis une personne installée dans les courants de pensée. Je regarde les images. Je suis bien élevé et poli et courtois.
[…]
moi : je suis marxiste. Je respecte la tradition de la révolution culturelle. […] Je suis affilié, j’adhère, je suis pour. Je suis pour l’O.M., pour Blaine, pour Milan. Je suis pour. Je milite. Je suis pour la participation. Je participe. Je suis pour. Je travaille pour.
[…]
Je suis un poète révolutionnaire1.
- 2 « Je suis un poète révolutionnaire », performance in Marseille (24 April 1996) in L’Enregistré : pe (...)
- 3 Tarkos, PAN, POL, 2000, p. 47.
- 4 Among others, Nathalie Quintane; Stéphane Bérard; Pierre Alféri; Charles Pennequin; Katalin Molnar; (...)
- 5 Christian Prigent, Ceux qui merdrent, POL, 1991, p. 22.
2In a 1996 performance in Marseille, he repeated: “Je suis un poète révolutionnaire”2 ; in PAN (2000), he persevered: “Je serais une machine face au capitalisme”3. Tarkos belongs to a generation of poets who, since the 1990’s and thereafter, provocatively reinstated revolutionary politics into poetry4. After an absence of nearly 20 years: “la conscience d’un conflit, d’une lutte à mener” in both literature and the world; “l’idée qu’un engagement dans le renouvellement des formes pouvait jouer un rôle dans la bataille d’idées”5 as Prigent described the 1970’s avant-garde, recurs within poetical practices. Albeit relying on different textual methods, their activity is remindful of the last period in France when politically purposive poems were made and theorised.
- 6 Fabrice Thumerel, Le Champ littéraire français au XXème siècle. Éléments pour une sociologie de la (...)
- 7 Christian Prigent quotes this era-defining motto in La Langue et ses monstres, Cadex, 1989, p. 9.
- 8 Cf. Benoît Denis, Littérature et engagement. De Pascal à Sartre, Seuil, coll. « Essais », 2000, p. (...)
3Between 1965 and 19756 indeed, as Prigent observed, “il n’est d’avant-garde que politique”7 and its aims are revolutionary. The structural homology defining of the modern avant-garde – binding aesthetical breaks to political ones (Denis: 2004) – was raging throughout the poetical field8. Mao’s quotes were in the epigraphs of poetical reviews:
- 9 Epigraphs to TXT’s manifesto, « Fonction d’une revue », by the redaction committee of TXT (Christia (...)
1. "La littérature et l’art sont subordonnés à la politique, mais ils exercent à leur tour une grande influence sur elle." (Mao Tsé Toung, 23 mai 1942)9
- 10 Fabrice Thumerel, Le Champ littéraire français au XXème siècle. Elements pour une sociologie de la (...)
- 11 Isabelle Garo, Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser et Marx: La politique dans la philosophie, Demopolis, 2 (...)
- 12 Razmig Keucheyan in François Cusset (dir.). Une histoire (critique) des années 1990, La Découverte/ (...)
4But after the effervescence of 1965-197510, the “dépolitisation qui suit Mai 68”11 affected the literary field as much as the general economy of discourses. As “the opposition to capitalism reached a historic low”12: “classe”, “lutte des classes”, contemporary poet Nathalie Quintane recalls,
- 13 Nathalie Quintane interviewed by Diakritik, “Nathalie Quintane. Un Hamster à l’école”, Diakritik, 1 (...)
ces mots avaient disparus dans les années 80 ! On était dans une purée insensée où la "société" d’un seul tenant marinait dans un état, ou statu quo, étale et sans rapports13.
- 14 Laurent Jenny, Je suis la révolution. Histoire d’une métaphore (1830-1975), Belin, coll. “l’extrême (...)
- 15 Klauwitter and Viol, Contemporary Political Poetry in Britain and Ireland, Universitätsverlag Winte (...)
- 16 « Je suis un poète révolutionnaire », performance in Marseille (24 April 1996) in Tarkos, L’Enregis (...)
5Among writers and critics too, the prevailing view has become that the blending of “révolution” with literary creation “[est] un lieu commun si usé (et désormais exténué) que nous n’y prêtons même plus attention”14. As Klauwitter and Viol indicate, this means that “committed poetry lacks poeticity”, that “‘good’ poetry should be timeless and aloof rather than topical and interventionist”15. In this politically-averse receptive context, what does it mean for Tarkos to label himself “un poète révolutionnaire”16? As we will see, the aberration of this positioning with regards to contemporary literary doxa is aggravated by its political irrelevance. Following the 1980’s and under the sway of turbocharged neoliberalism, pursuing “une pratique d’écriture dans la lutte politique” (TXT’s manifesto) could hardly be contemplated.
- 17 Isabelle Garo, Deleuze, Foucault, Althusser & Marx, p. 230.
- 18 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative ?, Zero Books, 2016, p. 14.
- 19 Pierre Dardot et Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, transl. by Georg (...)
- 20 Former 1968 militants resorted to terrorist actions during the « années de plomb » in Italy, German (...)
6As neoliberal capital seizes hold of the world, Garo notes, “[c]'est bien tout futur non capitaliste qui se trouve ici barré, faute de contradictions internes qui pourraient permettre de le penser et de le construire en tant que tel.” In an epoch namely characterised by “un mouvement social qui ne se manifeste pratiquement plus […] ; une précarisation accrue de la condition salariale ; [...] une remise sous contrôle de la force de travail” (Boltanski and Chiappello: 1999): “c'est l'affirmation du caractère englobant du marché mondial qui vient parachever l'affirmation d'une histoire désormais sans issue.”17 If “capitalism” thus “seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable”18 (Fisher: 2016); has “integrate[d] all dimensions of human existence”19 (Dardot and Laval: 2013): there is but to stay silent, trade new hobbies for dead hopes, and/or kidnap bank CEOs20. Previous models of “revolutionary” action, within “committed” poetry or otherwise, hardly speak to the 1990’s world. Marcuse’s appraisal of the post-war U.S. henceforth applies to the French context:
- 21 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, 2nd E (...)
In the absence of demonstrable agents and agencies of social change, the critique [of capitalism] is thrown back to a high level of abstraction. There is no ground on which theory and practice, thought and action meet21.
- 22 Tarkos, oui in EP, p. 163 and p.164.
7In this situation, insofar as it is both literarily and political inconceivable: what is the sort of a “révolution” that Tarkos’ poems could possibly be doing? “Puisque c’est vrai ; La révolution”, given that “le poème va faire la révolution”22, as is laid down in oui, our suspicions are raised as to whether we are dealing with a “révolution” of the right kind.
- 23 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, transl. by Martin Milligan, Prometheus Boo (...)
- 24 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx/Engels: Collected Works: Volume 3: (...)
- 25 David Graeber, Direct Action. An ethnography, AK Press, 2009, pp. ix-x.
- 26 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme, Gallimard, coll. “nrf Essais”, 19 (...)
8Revolution, or the complete transformation of productive and social relations, the “negation of the negation”23 of the existing world, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie arising out of social struggles and “self-change”24 of “human activity” are, for the young Marx, “the necessary pattern and dynamic principle of the immediate future”. Communism, conceived as the “next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and recovery”, is at the order of the day. But during Tarkos’ time, as Graeber notes, these revolutionary assumptions have undergone “a weird kind of inversion”25. If capitalism “s'est révélé infiniment plus robuste que ne l'avaient pensé ses détracteurs [et] Marx au premier chef”, Boltanski and Chiapello argue, “c'est aussi parce qu'il a trouvé chez ses critiques mêmes les voies de sa survie”26. On the one hand, as Graeber explains, “the Left had largely abandoned utopianism”, on the other, “Free-market "reformers" [were] declaring themselves revolutionaries” as “the Right [...] had catastrophically appropriated [...] the idea that the revolutionary is the agent [...] of history” (Graeber: 2014). Such is the ideological context in which Tarkos wrote L’Argent, from the mid-1990’s onward. Surprisingly, however, Tarkos endorses this state of affairs with a positivity surpassing neoliberals’ themselves.
- 27 Tarkos, EP, respectively p. 263 ; p. 277 ; p. 276.
L’argent est la valeur sublime.
Le réel est égal à la somme d’argent.
L’Argent est révolutionnaire27.
- 28 Jean-Marie Gleize, Littéralité: Poésie et figuration; A noir: poésie et réalité, Questions Théoriqu (...)
9Resorting neither to irony nor to sarcasm (Farah: 2005, Hummel: 2020), he imparts truthful assertions in the “littéral” sense : “littéralement”, “le texte ne dit rien d’autre que ce qu’il dit, au moment où il le dit”, its difficulty derives neither from ambiguity nor a “trop plein de sens” but from its “"réalisme” primaire, agressif, déroutant, contradictoire à toutes nos habitudes.” 28
- 29 Tarkos, EP, p. 265.
L’argent télescope le souci du faire et son plein épanouissement, il est exactement ce qu’il dit, il est exactement ce qu’il fait faire, il est exactement ce qu’il transforme, l’argent transforme tout réellement29.
- 30 Razmig Keucheyan in François Cusset (dir.). Une histoire (critique) des années 1990, op. cit., Epub
- 31 Alain Farah, “L’Argent de Christophe Tarkos, un poème à gages” in Emmanuel Bouju, L'engagement litt (...)
- 32 Antoine Hummel, Pas spécialement poétique : Nathalie Quintane, Christophe Tarkos et la dé-spécialis (...)
- 33 Alain Farah, art. cit.
- 34 Anne-Renée Caillée, Théorie du langage et esthétique totalisante dans l'oeuvre poétique de Chris (...)
- 35 G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, Minuit, 1975, p. 147; also in G. Dele (...)
- 36 Daisy Sainsbury, op. cit., Chapter 1, p. 137. D. Sainsbury borrows Victor Shklovsky’s notion in “Ar (...)
- 37 Alain Farah, Le Gala des incomparables, Classiques Garnier, 2013, p. 54.
- 38 For Marxist theorist David Harvey, Marx’s “need for science” arises from the “need to unmask what i (...)
- 39 Farah, Le Gala des incomparables, p. 153, also in Farah, art. cit.
10In “the absence of collective actors [that] embody the driving forces for social change”30, Tarkos thus lays out and magnifies the duplicity of the revolutionary idea in the 1990’s. As such, his poetry has baffled critics who attempted to pin down its political effects or to retrace its author’s intentions. A. Farah and A. Hummel respectively recognise that “Tarkos développe un discours qui entretient l’ambiguïté face à ses desseins”31, leaves no rhetorical clues indicating the “position réelle ou l’opinion sincère de l’auteur.”32 It seems indeed unconceivable that Tarkos, co-founder of the suggestively named Poezi Prolétèr review, defender of refugees’ rights (e.g. “Ouvrier vivant”) and published by “un petit éditeur que tout sépare de la droite corporatiste, s’éloignerait de la ligne éditoriale d’Al Dante pour s’engager dans une apologie du capitalisme total”33. The inconsistency of, on the one hand, Tarkos’ positioning in a left-wing milieu, and his counter-revolutionary assertions on the other, critics have often sought to salvage an emancipatory dimension out of Tarkos' apparently absurd take on “la révolution”. Anne-Renée Caillée, Daisy Sainsbury and Jeff Barda’s34 interpretations rely on Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of “dé-territorialisation” and “langue mineure” to infer the “ambition de résister aux discours dominants” from his writing (Farah). Tarkos’ exhibition of the “agencements collectifs d’énonciations”35 that constitute the matrix of individuation enables him, they argue, to eschew “all forms of identification or stable entity” (Barda) and to emancipate readers through “defamiliarisation”36 (Sainsbury) – “une révolution dans l’art et dans la vie”37. In his reading of L’Argent, Farah goes the furthest in claiming an emancipatory positivity to this uncannily pro-capital text. Relying on the Marxian epistemology of exposing the hidden contradictions of capital38, Farah argues that L’Argent is a “machine à démonter les processus” attempting to “rapporter le discours social” in a manner that “rév[èle] [...] les non-sens de la doxa”, “les mensonges et les contradictions des idées véhiculées par le discours social au sujet de la valeur marchande”39. But despite these critics’ attempts at construing Tarkos' emancipatory potential, it remains that this self-declared “poète révolutionnaire” both “littéralement” and non-ironically asserts that “l’argent est révolutionnaire” – not popular uprisings or liberated subjectivities. And more, it is effectively “l’argent” itself that allows Marx’s negation of the negation to take place. It reconciles the alienated subject with its “species being” (Marx) by enabling the free pursuit of every (lucrative) activity.
- 40 Tarkos, L’Argent in EP, p. 286 and p. 283.
Le corps et le comportement sont maintenant libérés des contraintes, est libre une personne solidement ancrée dans la recherche entièrement justifiée de l’argent [...]40.
11L’Argent’s absolutization of money, like communism, arises out of the effective “negation of the negation” of alienation and exploitation under capital. In Marx’s early writings, the capitalist relation of production imposes “estranged, alienated labour” and “degrad[es] spontaneous activity, free activity, to a mean”. Labour becomes “activity performed [...] under the dominion, the coercion and the yoke of another man”. Under it, the reified subject
- 41 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., p. 80, p. 77, p. 80.
sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; [...] the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production41.
- 42 Karl Marx, op. cit., p. 112.
- 43 Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58 (First Version of Capital), Marx/Engels: Collected Works (...)
- 44 Tarkos, EP, p. 286, p. 265, p. 267.
12But the revolutionary abolition of capital realises “the sensuous outburst of my life activity”42 “based on the universal development of the individuals”43. Problematically, in Tarkos, “l’argent” grants the liberation which communism had promised: “Lorsqu’il agit par cette valeur l’individu est un, un et réconcilié avec lui-même.” Exploitative structures are abolished as their negation comes to life: “L’argent pour faire, délier, réaliser le souci de l’homme qui ne l’étouffe plus”; “l’argent [...] sauve ta liberté”, “réconcilie l’ensemble de soi et du monde”, “épanoui[t]”44. “L’argent” thus fosters
- 45 Tarkos, EP, p. 268 and p. 287.
la totale liberté qui rallie retient ensemble l’imagination et sa concrétisation qui réconcilie soi et sa dignité et la multiplication des actes qui fondent le relèvement de la dignité.
[Il] donne les facultés proprement humaines d’adaptation, d’imagination éclair45.
13What, then, is Tarkos playing at? To elucidate this question, this essay will do away with the emancipatory assumptions Tarkos' critics have held. We will see that Tarkos' poems effectively identify the “révolution” and the neoliberal counter-revolution initiated in the late 1970’s. Focussing on L’Argent, part 1 shows how contradictions are textually weaponised to construe and promote money’s absolute and necessary revolution. Focussing on oui, part 2 shows that Tarkos' plastic language resolves the contradiction of freedom and determinacy at the heart of the neoliberal project. In the third part, we will see that his texts poetically incorporate key elements of neoliberal thinking key aspects of neoliberal thought (W. Lippman, G. Becker, L. von Mises, F. Hayek and P. H. Rubin). Namely, the need to foster the “revolutionary re-adaptation of mankind” (Lippman) to capital’s requirements. But by “littéralement” reconciling human freedom with capital’s determinedness, we will show that Tarkos' language generates a more consistent revolutionary neoliberalism than even Lippman, Hayek, Mises and Macron’s.
1. L’Argent’s radical un-critique of capitalism: “l’argent est révolutionnaire”, fuelled by contradiction
- 46 From Tarkos computer file “Utisme-17 juillet97.DOC” quoted by Philippe Castellin in L’Enregistré, o (...)
- 47 Bibliographic details from K. Molnár and V. Tarkos, Ecrits poétiques, op. cit., pp. 401-403 and P. (...)
- 48 D. Christoffel speaks the “proliférante » quality of the text ; R. Ego of its display of the “force (...)
- 49 Hummel, Pas spécialement poétique, op. cit., p. 475.
- 50 David, Christoffel, « Christophe Tarkos et ses revues », La Revue des revues, vol. 63, no. 1, 2020, (...)
14The first object of this study, L’Argent, is Tarkos’ most explicit exploration of neoliberal capitalism. Tarkos’ project to “présenter […] la valeur suprême”, the notion “qui redéfinit l’homme”46, was first conceived in 1995 as the presentation of a revolutionary “Doctrine” (1995-1996)47. Projecting to pin money down, to give an exhaustive account of money’s total extension throughout human affairs, he produced a “sprawling”48 compendium of declarative statements aiming to encompass the whole of its dominion. As Hummel remarks, “il faut que rien n’échappe”49. In 1998, the text is entitled “L’Argent est la seule valeur” and is released in the Moue de Veau review50. Although Tarkos' open-ended discursive research leaves no definite version of the text, the “40 plaquettes” long book version entitled L’Argent, published by Al Dante in 1999, will be considered here.
- 51 Tarkos, EP, respectively, p. 276, p. 266, p. 279.
- 52 EP, respectively, p. 269, p. 302, and p. 270.
- 53 J.L. Austin, How to do things with words, 1962, Oxford Clarendon Press, p. 121, p. 139.
- 54 David Christoffel in his postface to: Christophe Tarkos, Das Geld, traduit en allemand par Tim Trza (...)
15This poem is a perplexing discursive aggregate. Generically speaking, it lies between the dogmatic sermon asserting money’s dominion (“la plus forte des valeurs”), the epistemic quest to aggregate its boundless ramifications (“l’argent vient au début [...], est à la fin comme l’aboutissement de tout”) and a pedagogical guide of conduct (“tu es ton argent”51). Its more than 350 constituent statements – isolated paragraphs ranging from 4 to 141 words52, 1 to 6 sentences – are formally free-standing, unordered and redundant in relation to each other. These sentences display predication in its simplest form: imputing a limitless array of qualities to money, the text’s unvarying object and subject (Hummel). They foreground illocutionary marks53 denoting the speaker’s exertion to pin money down: phrasings and rephrasings, redundancies, repetitions. They are, however, devoid of rhetorical clues as would mark the linear steps of an unfolding argument. On the contrary, as Christoffel notes, the text “a l’air de changer de sujet tout le temps.”54 The speaker is unargumentatively assertive, puts on a show of chaotic realism that resists macro-discursive cohesion. It does not seek to drive a point home but iteratively elaborates on money’s self-evident dominion.
- 55 Tarkos, EP, respectively: p. 266; p. 263; p. 277.
L’argent est dans le monde, la fabrication de l’argent passe par toutes les fibres du corps du monde.
Pour atteindre la valeur de l’argent, il suffit que le but ultime de tout le comportement soit la fabrication d’argent, la fabrication de l’argent se réalise dans le monde.
Le réel est égal à la somme d’argent.55
- 56 Tarkos, EP, p. 281.
- 57 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, transl. by Talcott Parsons, Routledge (...)
- 58 Marx, Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. by Martin Nicolaus, 1993 (...)
- 59 Tarkos, EP, p. 290.
- 60 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin Editions, 2000 [1949], Epub
16Money’s revolution is such that “psychologiquement, tout change, la pensée n’est plus la même pensée”56. But beyond human psyche and behavioural dispositions, the physical fabric of the world is shown to be transformed also. Displaying the spatial and temporal ambiguities of money’s revolution, the temporal inconsistencies in the paragraph quoted below construe a temporal “iron cage”57 where money’s existence spatio-temporally precedes itself. Marx described the expansion of capital as a process whose “development to its totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating the organs it still lacks.”58 Likewise, money’s revolutionary time-frame is that of “l’invention de la réalité des destins d’après coup”59, one where “le temps n’est plus celui de la réalisation chronologique naturelle”. L’Argent non-chronologically “creates” the “presuppositions” (Marx) it relies on in the process of becoming the totality that it already is. But L’Argent’s account of itself, unlike Marx’s account of capital, is not merely critical and analytic. Like the “Ingsoc” party doctrine of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it resorts to “Doublethink” to blend descriptive analysis with performative prescription. In order “to rule, and to continue ruling”, money “must be able to dislocate the sense of reality”60 (Orwell). Let us consider the temporal “dislocat[ion]” that takes place in this paragraph:
- 61 Tarkos, EP, p. 263, I have emphasised the contradictory verb forms.
L’argent est la seule valeur qui a un lien avec le viable. Elle est une valeur extérieure morale et une valeur chaque jour dans toutes les directions infiltrée, elle s’infiltre, elle est présente dans toutes les réalisations, elle se répand dans tous les mouvements de l’esprit, elle s’est infiltrée dans tous les gestes, elle n’est pas restée dans le domaine des jugements, elle est une valeur vivante61.
- 62 There are two ways to look at a verb: its (internal) aspect and its (external) chronology. “Aspect” (...)
17In the second sentence, “extérieure” establishes a temporal boundary. It refers to a past point of origin from where money’s infiltration began: money was first exterior to the world; it then started to infiltrate it. But this liminal acknowledgement of money’s exteriority is soon denied. Three pages later: “elle n’est pas extérieure, elle s’infiltre”. What, then, is money’s current location? Is it inside, outside, somewhere in between or all of the above? In this paragraph, the infiltration metaphor conveys the process of money’s change in status and in position. Initially exterior, money becomes interior to the world but, simultaneously, it is posited to have been internal all along. The verb infiltrer undergoes a series of polyptotons which mutually contradict. Did the process of money’s infiltration ever start? And if it did, when? Does this process reach completion (“s’est infiltrée”) or is money forever to be infiltrating (“elle s’infiltre”)? Lastly, how can money still infiltrer the world if it is no longer exterior to it? These spatio-temporal contradictions hinge on the aspectual variations of three verbs: infiltrer, être présente and se répandre62 . “S’infiltre” and “se répand” seize the process of money’s interiorisation from the point of view of its beginning. In that sense, their aspect is inchoative. Yet “infiltrée”, “s’est infiltrée”, “est présente” and “n’est pas restée” capture the same process from the point of view of its completion. In that sense, despite the mutual exclusivity of these two forms, these three occurrences are aspectually terminative. What’s more, as “s’infiltre” and “se répand” capture an ongoing and incomplete process: they are imperfective. As their beginning is acknowledged while their end is indeterminate: they are unbounded. “Infiltrée”, “s’est infiltrée” and “n’est pas restée”, however, are just the opposite: aspectually bounded and complete. These accumulated aspects involve the simultaneous existence of mutually exclusive verbal temporalities. All stages of money’s infiltration happen, have happened and will continue to be happening within the money-specific geotemporal frame.
- 63 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, transl. by Kathleen Blamey, Polity Pre (...)
18The paragraph considered here is but one example of the manifold internal contradictions which abound in the text. But such contradictions do not, I argue, function like a “machine à démonter les processus” that would expose “les non-sens de la doxa” (Farah). Rather, as it appeared to Castoriadis and to many Marxists after 1968, some of the contradictions supposed “to destroy the system ha[ve] in fact been resolved within the system”63. Tarkos' money-text, like capital, weaponizes contradictions to guarantee its supremacy. As we will now see, money’s revolutionary infiltration into the spatiotemporal fabric of the real is at one with its moral hypostasis.
- 64 Tarkos, EP, p. 276.
- 65 Tarkos, EP, p. 263.
- 66 Monique Wittig, « Homo Sum » in The Straight Mind and other essay, Beacon Press, 1992, p. 53.
- 67 « l’argent donne la vérité » ; « tout sera juste ou faux » (EP, p. 264).
- 68 « Soi sans argent est abandonné. » ; « Celui qui y sera infidèle [à la règle de l’argent] dépérira (...)
- 69 M. Wittig, op. cit., p. 51.
- 70 Tarkos, EP, p. 277.
19In a random and repetitive succession, jumping from one value to the next and back to the first again: L’Argent summons every major moral dichotomy the West has conceivably ever held and shows its supersession by money – “la valeur de l’argent est la plus forte des valeurs.”64 The text’s reduction of all things to the value of money is analogous to Parmenidean monism: ‘what is is being, what is not is not being’ (Fragment 6). Money: “la seule valeur qui a un lien avec le viable”, the sole “valeur vivante”65, can fittingly replace “being” in the sixth fragment of Parmenide’s poem: ‘what is is money, what is not is not money’. All the philosophical “categories of opposition that have shaped us”66 (Wittig) are, explicitly or implicitly, treated as equivalents to the one true alternative: money / not money. “La beauté”/ugliness; “l’amour”/its absence; “la vérité”/“le mensonge”67; “le plaisir”/“la douleur”; “la vie”/ “la mort”; “le bonheur”/despair ; justice/injustice; “la vertu”/evil; “réalité”/“croyance”; “possible” / “impossibilité”; “liberté”/“contraintes”; “la confiance”/distrust; “le partage”/isolation68; “l’activité”/“le non acte” are turned into the mere particulars of the true underpinning distinction: money / not money. Since “dialectics operates on a series of oppositions” that have a basic “metaphysical connotation: Being or non-Being”69, as Monique Wittig explains, L’Argent thus brushes off dialectics entirely. Not-money, like not-being, is a crippling fantasy from which sane minds must rid themselves to accept reality’s one-sided positivity: “La valeur du réel est la valeur de l’argent. Le réel ne s’éprouve que par les moyens de mettre en œuvre, de réaliser, ces moyens sont donnés par l’argent.”70 L’Argent effectively restores Logos to a stage of pre-dialectical unity: other than money, “tout le reste est une zone d’impossibilité”.
- 71 Alain Farah, art. cit., p. 48.
20Contrary to Farah’s assumption – the text would “révèle[r] des éléments” normally obscured “par la dictée continue du discours dominant” –, the manifold logical inconsistencies of the text propel rather than impede the penetration of money. In fact, the playful intensity with which contradictions are contrived fosters tragi-comic affects as to the political inefficacy of exposing capital’s “mensonges et contradictions des idées véhiculées par le discours social au sujet de la valeur marchande”71.
21As we will see in the next sections: the conciliation of freedom with the capital’s necessity, being a central contradiction of neoliberalism, is effectively resolved within Tarkos' plastic language.
2. Poetry “pour supporter, accepter le réel”. The material conciliation of freedom and determinacy
- 72 Ibid., p. 264.
- 73 EP, p. 270 While “transfèrement” is attested in the carceral lexicon to designate the transfer of p (...)
22L’Argent thus construes the most damning counter-revolutionary worldview one could conceive. In lieu of revolutionary struggles, “l’argent est la valeur de la réalisation”72; “réduit toute distance entre la pensée la sphère de la pensée et la sphère de la réalisation, de sa transfération dans le domaine du réel.”73 Money thus fills the place of revolutionary praxis, in the sense Castoriadis defined this “essential intuition of the young Marx”:
- 74 Cornelius Castoriadis, op. cit. p. 57.
an [activity] which transforms the world by transforming itself, which allows itself to be instructed by instructing, and which prepares the new by refusing to predetermine it [...]74.
- 75 Herbert Marcuse, op. cit., pp. 258-259.
- 76 Marcuse, op. cit., p. 260.
- 77 Herbert Marcuse, op. cit., p. 66.
- 78 EP, p. 289.
- 79 EP, p. 300.
- 80 David Gallop, Parmenides of Elea: Fragments, University of Toronto Press, 1984, 103–5, fragment 6
Originally, as Marcuse explains after Marx, the “critical theory of society” derived the “idea of the liberation of inherent possibilities” from “empirical grounds” – “the presence of real forces (objective and subjective) in the established society”75. But in the absence of such demonstrable forces for change, and “in the face of its efficient denial by the established system”, Marcuse sought a non-orthodox way for the revolutionary “negation” to be politically productive: in the fight for the lives “of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable”76. But despite relying on a similarly “inherent” model for change, L’Argent’s revolutionary theory makes a decisive switch. Like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, it swaps focus from the “inherent possibilities” of the oppressed people to those of the oppressive system: the absolutisation of commodity rule. What Marcuse called “the great refusal” – the revolutionary “protest against that which is”77 – is thus is turned into the protest against that which is not (e.g., communism). Aside from the pursuit of money: “[t]out le reste est une zone de croyance, une zone d’impossibilité, d’indéfinition sans fin”78, “toutes les autres réflexions sont inutiles, […] font preuve […] d’une volonté de ne pas jouer à la réalité”, “ont pour but l’absence de moyen, l’étouffement, le mutisme, l’emprisonnement, le délire gratuit, la négativité, la mort, le non acte”79. Pursuing something irreducible to money, like pursuing non-being in Parmenides, or faithlessness in monotheistic creeds, entails self-annihilating sanctions: “they are borne along / deaf and blind at once, bedazzled, undiscriminating hordes”80 (Parmenides), left “in utter darkness, unable to see – deaf, dumb and blind” (Qur’an 2 : 6-19), enter “the way that leadeth to destruction” (KJ Bible, Matthew 7:14).
- 81 Christophe Tarkos interviewed by Gudrun De Geyter (now called Klara) for VRT Radio 3, Rotterdam Poe (...)
23Hence, the only revolutionary option is not refusal of the existing world but its radical acceptance. When asked by Gudrun De Geyter whether the “commencement de la pensée” is to “commencer par dire non”, to “résister à la vie comme elle est”81, Tarkos replies “[qu’il a] un peu l’impression du contraire”.
- 82 Ibid.
J’ai un peu l’impression qu’il faut toujours dire, il faut commencer par accepter le réel tel qu’il est. Parce qu’on a quand même, fondamentalement, un réflexe – très naturel, très rapide – de fuir. D’inaccepter. Alors, on va dire non, et on va rentrer dans le monde du fantasme, de de… je voudrais pas dire l’illusion, mais c’est un peu, le monde… dès qu’on se détache un petit peu de l’acceptation, c’est un monde que je connais pas82.
- 83 Ibid.
- 84 Gary S. Becker, “Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory”, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 70, n (...)
24In accordance with this assumption, Tarkos’ poetical practice rewrites the aim of revolutionary action. From bringing about a new state of affairs it becomes the radical furthering of the already prevailing socio-economic structures. “[J]’espère que le lecteur, lui, aussi, musculairement dans sa tête musculeuse, il va faire aussi son petit exercice [...] pour supporter, accepter le réel.”83 A Poet Laureate of the economic world order, Tarkos designs a poetical counterpart to Gary Becker’s extension of “Homo oeconomicus” to humankind: “someone who accepts reality”84. Many of his texts thus provide a material and practical training in accepting the capitalist reality.
- 85 Two occurences of this assertion were found by Anne-Renée Caillée (op. cit.) : in « Pupe fan min », (...)
- 86 Tarkos, ibid.
25 Working under the assumption that “la pensée est kinesthésique”85 – that thought derives from the embodied experience of physical movement –, Tarkos’ poetics reconciles the mutability and dynamism of life and thought with perpetuating capitalist structures. In the poem entitled oui – another name for acceptance (“pour pouvoir avancer un tant soit peu là-dedans, pour faire même un geste [...] dans une telle réalite cohérente, et collée, on est obligé, au départ, d’avoir un "oui"”86 –, Tarkos thus pulls off a poetical tour de force. Through a poetically constructed evolutionary process, he reconciles the identitary reproduction of the existent with the internal necessity of its metamorphosis.
- 87 As Christian Prigent notes in Ecrits Poetiques, oui was first published by Al Dante in 1996. It is (...)
- 88 Tarkos, oui in EP, p. 170
26In the following passage of the poem oui 87, two main textual actions are combined. On the one hand, the morphological inflections of certain key words embody meaning as a non-static, self-generating and evolving entity. On the other, the indeterminacy of this evolutionary process is governed (determined) by the physical laws of matter in motion. The process through which something is internally transformed is thereby equated with its being what it was all along. From the tautologically occluded assertions (“bloquée”) that “ce qui est est” and that “ce qui est est fermé”, “enfermé88, the text proceeds through synonymous periphrases that imperceptibly introduce variation. But as a result of self-generated repetitions, the posited closure of meaning (“ce qui est ferme le sens d’être”) is internally disproven. In political terms: difference and repetition, identity and evolution, change and conservation, revolution and counter-revolution are shown to act as real equivalents.
- 89 Tarkos, oui in EP, pp. 170-174.
Ce qui est est fermé ne signifie pas. Ce qui est est l’ensemble de ce qui est. Ce qui est est enfermé. Ce qui est fermé ne s’ouvre pas. Ce qui est est une fermeture. Ce qui est fermé est. Ce qui est ouvert n’est pas. La fermeture est fermée. La fermeture ne ferme pas ce qui n’est pas. La fermeture enferme ce qui est dans ce qui est. [...] Ce qui est est par absence d’ouverture. Ce qui est est avec la fermeture. Ce qui est est l’effet de la fermeture. Ce qui est ne signifie pas. Ce qui est est l’effet d’être fermé. Ce qui est en étant s’enferme. La fermeture en fermant enferme. [...] La fermeture est bloquée. [...] Être est fermé. Être ne signifie pas. [...] Être et être fermé est la même chose. Le sens d’être est seulement d’être. Ce qui est se mélange. [...] La fermeture est un obstacle. L’espace de ce qui est est plein. Ce qui est revient. Ce qui est revient vers ce qui est. Ce qui est remue. Ce qui est retient ce qui est. Le remuement mélange. Ce qui est est continu. Ce qui est n’a pas de place. [...] 173 Le mélange ne se guide pas. Le mélange continue. Le mélange entraîne aux mélanges. Les mélanges se mélangent. Les mélanges entraînent au mélange. Le mélange se mélange. Le mélange mélange ce qui est mélangé. Ce qui est se déroule. Ce qui est ne déborde pas. Ce qui est poussé au mélange. [...] Le temps déroule le mélange. Le mélange se déroule. Ce qui est est déroulé. [...] Le temps se déroule. L’unique mouvement déroule ce qui est à l’intérieur du déroulement. Le mélange s’accumule. [...] Le mélange s’appuie sur les mélanges. Le mélange accumule les mélanges passés. L’accumulation s’accumule. L’accumulation pèse. [...] Ce qui est est pesant. Le déroulement pèse du même côté. [...] Le poids de l’ensemble de ce qui est converge. [...] Le déroulement serre le mélange. Le mélange est le déroulement. L’accumulation est le poids de l’accumulation. Le poids de ce qui est enferme ce qui est. Le déroulement se referme. [...] Ce qui est est déroulé. [...] Ce qui est est en mouvement. Le déroulement est en mouvement. Le mouvement est seul. Ce qui est est dans l’unique déroulement. Le temps se déroule. L’unique mouvement déroule ce qui est à l’intérieur du déroulement89.
- 90 “La fermeture est bloquée. [...] La fermeture est un obstacle.”
- 91 “Ce qui est est sans forme.” ⇔ “Ce qui est se forme. [...] Ce qui est forme” (Oui, p. 171 and p. 17 (...)
27 The morphological inflections on “fermé”, “enfermé”, “ferme”, “fermant”, “fermeture” figure the plasticity of meaning which these very words seemingly deny – “ce qui est ne signifie pas”. In effect, the negation of space, time, movement and change internally give rise to space, time, movement and change. The entire poem is an unbroken chain of equivalences where each full stop acts as a "⇔" sign. It opens a semantic equivalence with the next sentence: “Ce qui est” ⇔ “est fermé” ⇔ “est une fermeture” ⇔ “absence d’ouverture” ⇔ “l’effet de la fermeture” ⇔ “s’enferme” ⇔ “ce qui a fermé”. But within this process of creating tautologies, “ce qui est” loses the passivity present in “est fermé”. Via its substantive form “fermeture” and the gerundive “en fermant”, it becomes an active agent in the process of its own closure. “L’effet de la fermeture” – the notation of this agentivity – is enshrined in the subsequent active form: “s’enferme”. Thus “fermeture”, being a negation of space, becomes space’s affirmation through the act of enclosing a space – the space where what is is: “l’espace de ce qui est”. Along the same process of self-negating, contiguous and identical changes: the text tautologically moves on to deriving the notions of movement90, form91, change and time from the “mélange” of their negations. “Ce qui est se mélange. [...] Le temps déroule le mélange. Ce qui est est déroulé. [...] Ce qui est est en mouvement. [...] Le temps se déroule. [...] Le déroulement pèse”. The subject of a process is the object of the same process, its agency in the process equates its subjection to it.
- 92 Tarkos, EP, oui, p. 179.
28 This line-by-line generativity of the text is governed by undeniable physical laws. New material actions such as mélanger, dérouler, pousser, s’appuyer, converger, and later peser, accumuler are seamlessly summoned from within the ontological stasis of “ce qui est” ⇔ “ce qui est” ⇔ “est fermé”. Passively and actively, these actions both act on themselves and on one another within the enclosed semantic space of the “fermeture”: “ce qui est poussé au mélange”, “le mélange mélange”, “le temps pousse le mélange”, “pèse sur le déroulement”, “le déroulement se referme”, etc. Although these material acts contradict the closure of being where they emerge, they are its condition and material base: the constitutive processes of what is’s existence. That “le déroulement enferme ce qui est” is the consequence and, through its equivalent of “le déroulement pèse”, the simultaneous cause of the fact that “ce qui est est pesant”. Thereby “ce qui est” neither freely floats in space nor receives form by accident: it is its own physical determinacy: “le poids de ce qui est enferme ce qui est”. Material weight, contrary to mass (the unvarying quantity of matter), is thus the cause and consequence of movement (“le déroulement est en mouvement”), time (“le temps se déroule”), accumulation (“le mélange accumule les mélanges passés”, “l’accumulation pèse”), form (le déroulement déroule sa forme”) and gravitation (“le poids de l’ensemble de ce qui est converge”). Therefore, the internal variability and self-negating action of “ce qui est”, being “littéralement” object and subject of physical causes and effects (“ce qui est produit est une production d’effets”), guarantees the determinacy of “ce qui est”. The preservation of “ce qui est” (material facts, representations, social structures) is thus brought about by its own internal metamorphoses. Its identical reproduction relies on its own autonomous albeit physically determined mutations (“Le mélange se poursuit seul” ⇔ “Le mélange ne se guide pas.” yet ⇔ “Le sens est unique.”). The process through which “ce qui est” is: identical metamorphosis, is the textual process that generates tautologies: “La vérité est vraie. La pensée pense. La parole dit. Le destin destine”92. In the following passage, the physical undeniability of this textual “vérité” is further clarified.
- 93 Ibid., p. 175.
Ce qui est produit une production d’effets. Ce qui est produit tous ses effets. Les effets produits sont effectifs. Ce qui est n’a pas d’autre effet. Ce qui est est vraiment son effet. Ce qui est a un sens. [...] Le sens est unique. Le sens est l’unique effectivité de ce qui est. Le sens est effectif. Le sens de ce qui est est l’effectivité de ce qui est. L’effectivité est unique. Les possibilités sont nulles. L’effectivité est certaine. [...] L’opération s’effectue de proche en proche. La réalisation est continûment réalisée. La solution est effectivement unique. L’effectivité se ferme. [...] L’effectivité se referme sur ses formes93.
29The phenomenon of wave propagation in a continuous and deformable milieu is literally qualified, by physicists, as "propagation de proche en proche". In this paragraph, “l’opération s’effectue de proche en proche” is the self-conscious acknowledgement of this physical fact as it materially ripples through the text. The one-directional (“a un sens [...] unique”), continuous and contiguous (“continûment” and “de proche en proche”) progression of the textual wave prompts the effects which the text painstakingly advertises. Here too, the permutability of syntactical categories is fully at work to construe a reign of equivalences. Passive and active (“produit” “est produit”); substantive, adjective, adverb and verb (“l’effectivité” “effectue” “effectivement” “l’effet” “effectif”; “une production” “produit” “le produit”); object and subject (“est” / “est”) are variously identical. What may appear like inconsistent variations is in fact the tangible assertion of reality’s one-dimensionality: “L’effectivité est d’une seule réalité. La réalité est effectivement unique.” It is captured, phonetically also, in this compound alliteration: “se referme sur ses formes”. As the consonantal sequence is played twice [s/r/f/rm - s/r/s/f/rm], the process (“se referme”), its form (“ses formes”), substance (“ce qui est”) and textual expression are phonetically identified.
- 94 Tarkos, “Entretien de Bernard Verdier avec Christophe Tarkos”, 3 November 1996, in EP, p. 353.
30 But it is only because of the French language’s necessarily consecutive logic, because of its syntax’s distinctions between process and result, object and subject, agent and recipient that this text can seem contradictory. Like the Moebius Strip or the Penrose stairs, in displaying side by side the result of a process and the process of a result, Tarkos' text resolves its own paradoxes. It forms a consistent albeit “disconcerting synchrony” (Malabou). In conceiving society as a “social totality”, as in Marx’s Grundrisse, past, present and future states are variously entwined and mutually contemporaneous at any given point in time. As in L’Argent’s “infiltration” paragraph, Tarkos' poetics thus lays chronology down flat. “Le mélange accumule les mélanges passés.” It unfolds (“déroule”) time’s stratas by substituting the material laws of gravitational physics to the rules of temporal succession. Like “ce qui est”, Tarkos' “langue [...] poétique” does not mimic nor represent matter but is itself material – such is “la vérité palpable de l’existence matérielle du texte”94. In his own account:
- 95 Tarkos “Ma langue est poétique”, oui in EP, op. cit., p. 47.
Ma langue est poétique. Elle est fluide. Comme un ruisseau de montagne. Elle court, elle descend, elle se retourne et continue, elle court dans les pierres95.
- 96 Catherine Malabou, Plasticity at the Duck of Writing. Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, trans (...)
- 97 Malabou, op. cit. Because « nothing exists that is not already changed, transformed, metamorphosise (...)
- 98 Malabou, op. cit.
Tarkos' static-dynamic poetics thus combines “continuity” with “contiguity”, “rupture” with suture” like Malabou’s “cineplastic axes”96 through which form and meaning evolve and stay the same. “Plasticity”, in Tarkos also, underpins the revolution: “Plastiquement, c’est possible. [...] C’est déjà plastiquement fait. Faire la révolution.” And yet, plasticity: “that which is able to both give and receive form”, is Malabou’s conceptual “motor scheme” to conceive and summon something new “after the end of history”, “before and after metaphysics”97. But Tarkos does not partake in her cautious optimism. His poems do not emancipate anyone or anything from being reproduced through the workings of capital. Neither does he fall prey, like Adorno, to an “infinite exploration of the [...] overly rich nuances of the dusks of negativity”98. Resorting to neither emancipatory positivity (the voluntarist effort for change) nor revolutionary negativity (unfurling the implications of revolution’s impossibility), Tarkos pursues a Third Way in revolutionary politics. In an unexpected turn for a leftist experimental poet, he perfects and radicalises the “dominant” discourse of neoliberal theorists. Tarkos, like capital’s yes-men which Bourdieu describes,
- 99 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. by Gino Raymond, Harvard University Press, 199 (...)
fin[d] nothing for which to reproach the social world as it stands. They endeavour to impose universally, through a discourse permeated by the simplicity and transparency of common sense, the feeling of obviousness and necessity which this world imposes on them; having an interest in leaving things as they are, they [...] always borrows the language of nature99.
- 100 Tarkos, oui in EP, p. 176 and p. 178.
Through the literalised workings of physics, such is the naturalisation of the social order that occurs in L’Argent and oui: “la réalité est effectivement unique. [...] Le but de ce qui est est d’être effectivement ce qu’il est.”100 But Tarkos’ texts go further than that even in his pursuit of neoliberalism. Like neoliberals, he posits that the revolution does not lie in the future but has been initiated already; that the real task for revolutionaries is to foster its full realisation – to “perfect organising market trends already underway”. In line with Walter Lippman’s identification of global capitalism with the “Great Revolution”, the “Great Society”, and with his evolutionist understanding of human history, Tarkos' language attempts to remedy humankind’s defective “adaptation” to its revolutionary predicaments. But unlike neoliberals, he does so without failing to occult class interests or enforcing coercion. He contrives to resolve the neoliberal contradictions poetically.
3. Perfecting the idiom of neoliberalism: the free adaptation of humankind to the necessities of capital’s revolution
31As Foucault first noted and as Ross B. Emmett summarises, the difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism lies in the political voluntarism of the latter:
- 101 Robert Van Horn and Philip Mirowski, “Neoliberalism and Chicago”, Chapter 13 in Ross B. Emmett, The (...)
The starting point of neoliberalism is the admission, contrary to classical liberalism,
that their political program will triumph only if it becomes reconciled to the fact that
the conditions for its success must be constructed, and will not come about [...] in the absence of concerted effort101.
This is where the neoliberal program meets revolutionary Marxism and, in part, the reason why neoliberals were so successful in bringing about political change. To change the world rather than merely interpreting it, Marx’s 11th thesis on Feuerbach, is also a motto for them. But while the first sought to rid humankind from capitalism, the latter seek to free capitalism from the backward human dispositions that block capitalism’s expansion. The means and ends pursued by Marxists and neoliberals are thus diametrically opposed. For Castoriadis, the “revolutionary element” that “burst forth in the youthful works of Marx” is the refusal to
- 102 Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institutions of Society, op. cit., pp. 56-57.
32to grant itself in advance the solution to the problem of history [...] and asserts that communism is not an ideal state towards which society is progressing but the real movement that suppresses the existing state of things. It stresses the fact that men make their own history under concrete conditions and declares that the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves102.
- 103 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Fox & Wilkes, 1966 [1949], p. 863.
33As opposed to this non-deterministic, bottom-up and abolitionist understanding of social change, the neoliberal one is deterministic, conservative and top-down. Initiated by Walter Lippman in the 1930’s, neoliberalism rests on a curiously evolutionist anthropology akin to the logic at work in Tarkos' texts. One of its premises, as expressed by Ludwig von Mises, is to recognise the “dullness and clumsiness on the part of the masses”103. For Friedrich Hayek’s mentor and co-founder of the Mont Pelerin Society, the “masses”,
- 104 Von Mises, op. cit., p. 864.
the hosts of common men, do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind104.
Hence the problem for neoliberals, and without any malice on their part, is that “inert people” may very well “prefer bad doctrines” (e.g. “the Marxian creed”) which inevitably lead to “disaster”. In response to the collectivist threat and the masses’ obtuseness, the “cœur théorique du nouveau libéralisme” and its “matrice politique, sociologique et anthropologique” is developed by Walter Lippman. This theoretical framework elucidates the causes of the political error of the “great mass of mankind” (Lippman) composed of “naïve (untrained) individuals” (Paul H. Rubin). In doing so, it points to the necessary solution.
- 105 In “Il faut s’adapter” (2019), Barbara Stiegler complements Foucault’s analysis in showing the deci (...)
- 106 Walter Lippmann, The Good Society, Transaction Publishers, 2005 [1937], p. 111 and p. 114.
34For Lippman as for later neoliberals, Barbara Stiegler shows, it all comes down to addressing “la défectuosité du matériau humain”105 with regards to the capitalist revolution. In a nutshell, the “Great Revolution” brought about by industry, the division of labour and market-organised competition has left the human species culturally “lagging” and “maladapted”. Since “men are not as adaptable as a fluctuating market demands”, Lippman argues, the completion of the revolutionary process requires “the revolutionary readaptation of mankind, [...] human nature and usage”, “a stupendous readaptation of the human race”106. The reason for that
- 107 Lippman, The Good Society¸ p. 114.
our social intelligence has been shaped to a mode of life which was organized on a small scale, and, in respect to the duration of any particular generation, was static. But the industrial revolution has instituted a way of life organized on a very large scale, with men and communities no longer autonomous but elaborately interdependent, [...] but for more than a thousand years after the disintegration of the Great Society in the Roman world, the western peoples lived in small, relatively self-contained communities. To that kind of existence our traditional habits and preconceptions, our customs and institutions, have been adapted107.
- 108 Paul H. Rubin, « Folk Economy », Southern Economic Journal , Vol. 70, No. 1, July 2003, pp. 157-171 (...)
In the work of later neoliberals, the historical scope of this evolutionary framework has been extended and scientifically refined. Economist Paul H. Rubin, following F. Hayek, puts forth that the erratic nature of “popular political economy” and “folk beliefs” is explained by “modern theories of the evolution of the mind”108. Lippman’s “more than a thousand years” evolutionary time-frame is multiplied tenfold to become an “ancestral” feature that defines “human nature” (Rubin), or “race” (Hayek). True science indeed shows
- 109 Paul H. Rubin, art. cit., p. 159.
that our brains evolved to solve problems that persisted in the environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA). This is the period when our ancestors were evolving to become human. [But] relatively little evolution has occurred since humans became civilized (in about the last 10,000 years), so much of our mental architecture is thought to have evolved in hunter-gatherer societies, and our minds are best adapted to such societies109.
- 110 But even “economists, Rubin points out, [can] sometimes commit the same sort of zero-sum error: "If (...)
- 111 Barbara Stiegler, op. cit., Epub
- 112 Walter Lippman, op. cit., p. 207.
The scientific weapons of class interest and class hatred against communism are refined to the point where the irrational “appeal of various "labor theories of value" that Marxists and others have adopted” is rendered self-explanatory. “The class struggle is an example of zero-sum thinking” “consistent with beliefs”, “folk hypotheses” and “intuitive [...] errors”110 that derive from cognitive “maladaptation”. For Lippman as for Mises, Rubin and others, “Marxism” and “collectivism” are a counter-revolutionary “regression to a more primitive” evolutionary stage. The paradox of this political program, as Stiegler remarks, is thus “celui de toute approche téléologique du devenir”: “le caractère évolutif de l’évolution [...] est entièrement perdu au profit d’une loi transcendante déjà fixée”111. Capital, “en dehors de toute délibération collective sur les fins”, is the pre-determined “télos ou la fin ultime de l’humanité”. The human “will to be free”, conceived by Lippman as the “great affirmation inspired by the positive energies of the human race”112, can thus be observed up to a point only. Neoliberal freedom is indeed at pains to reconcile itself with the pre-determinacy of the capitalist horizon. But as we saw earlier, Tarkos' language squares the circle of this pre-determined liberty.
- 113 In Révolution, Macron “considère trois domaines comme prioritaires pour l’investissement public. Le (...)
35Twenty years before the writing of Révolution (2016) – Emmanuel Macron’s compendium of neoliberal topoï –, a little under a hundred years after theses ideas’ first formulation, many of von Mises, Lippman, Rubin, Macron, and Becker’s113 assertions are almost indistinguishable from Tarkos'. The “revolutionary re-adaptation of mankind” (Lippman), the necessary re-making of everything from “habits and preconceptions” to “customs and institutions”, explicitly takes place in L’Argent. “Psychologiquement, tout change”: “la valeur de l’argent”
- 114 EP, p. 267.
réconcilie l’ensemble de soi et du monde, elle fait de soi l’adaptation elle-même, elle met en branle soit une adaptation continuelle dans le monde, soit un monde qui ressemble au monde114.
- 115 Ludwig von Mises, op. cit., p. 11 and p. 133.
36“La grande transformation” required to “actualiser [nos] systèmes de pensée au contact du réel qui nous entoure” (Macron), to remedy “the cultural lag” (Lippman), “[ce] retard qui nous coûte cher” (Macron) calls for a praxeological resolution. Praxeology, von Mises’s core assumption that “human action is purposeful behavior [...] aiming at ends and goals”, has had a rich posterity. “The ego’s meaningful response to stimuli” in order to obtain “what satisfies them more [rather than] what satisfies them less”115 is thus foregrounded by Macron and, in similar wording, by Tarkos:
- 116 EP, p. 123; Révolution, p. 155; EP, p. 293; Révolution, p. 5.
Tous les buts sont biens, ce qui va se faire se réalisera pour le bien du but [...] et de la transformation du monde.” (Tarkos)
Transformer le réel, déployer l’action, restituer le pouvoir à ceux qui font (Macron)
Le bonheur est de faire, faire est faire les plaisirs (Tarkos).
Si nous voulons avancer […] il nous faut agir”, “Pour agir efficacement, il faut avant tout être lucide” (Macron)116.
- 117 Respectively Révolution, p. 4, p. 22, p. 120 ; EP, p. 295, p. 276.
Since “imagin[er] que revenir en arrière serait possible” (Macron), is “une zone d’impossibilité” (Tarkos): we must “affronter la réalité du monde” (Macron), “combat[tre] les notions non réelles” (Tarkos). Since “le réel est la seule valeur” (Tarkos): “la politique [doit] se confronter au réel” (Macron)117. “And how else”, Lippman asks,
can the human race advance except by the emancipation of more and more individuals in ever-widening circles of activity? How can new ideas be conceived? How can new relationships, new habits, be formed? Only by increasing freedom to think, to argue, to debate, to make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, to explore and occasionally to discover, to be adventurous and enterprising, can change be more than the routine of a recurrent pattern.
- 118 EP, p. 299 ; Révolution, p. 53.
60 years and 80 years later, “la recherche d’une trouvaille est dans l’esprit de la pensée de l’argent” (Tarkos), we must hence “récompense[r] la prise de risques, l’enrichissement par le talent, le travail et l’innovation” (Macron). For “the more gifted among [...] the great mass of people” to flourish unfettered (Lippman) they must be incentivised to “penser aux moyens de faire de l’argent avec toutes les méthodes utilisables, inventables par l’esprit humain, surprenantes”118 (Tarkos).
37But despite all of these similarities, Tarkos provides a more consistent neoliberal language than neoliberal champions themselves. The main paradox of neoliberalism: the inconsistent articulation of freedom with determinacy, of radical “human freedom” with the non-negotiable expansion of capital, is seamlessly realised in his writings. As we saw in “oui”, the evolutionary processes and internal creativity of Tarkos' plastic language is made compatible with closure of meaning rather than with its openness. In so doing, Tarkos subverts the philosophical notions that tried to conceive radical forms of social novelty – Castoriadis’s “magma”, “radical imaginary” and Malabou’s “plasticity” – and dedicates them to capital.
38In the Imaginary Institution of Society as in “oui” and L’Argent, revolution’s problem comes down to this central question:
- 119 Castoriadis, op. cit., p. 340.
Can we go further than simply acknowledging the limits of identitary logic and of the ontology which is consubstantial to it, go beyond merely negative ontology and open up a path (or several paths) in order to think what is without confining ourselves to saying how it is not to be thought?119
- 120 Anne Boyer, « Questions for Poets » in Anguish Language. Writing and Crisis, ed. Cunningham, John, (...)
Such is the question Tarkos’ language answers with a no. In oui, “to think what is” is the continuation of “ce qui est”. Such is the answer he dedicates to the “glittering yes”120 of capital. While oui embodies the organic processes through which immanent creativity is the substance and form of staying the same (“identitary logic”), L’Argent supplements this material work by acknowledging its role in perpetuating the capitalist “révolution”. “Toute la vie est une action réelle de rendre réelle une métamorphose.” “La valeur de l’argent”
- 121 Tarkos, EP, p. 267.
pousse à être la situation elle-même, à sentir ce que la situation sent, à connaître ce que la situation connaît, à se métamorphoser comme la situation se métamorphose.
Elle pousse à entreprendre en même temps que le temps pousse la situation en même temps que le temps pousse121.
The infinitely plastic quality of the verb “pousse”, whose subjects and objects are interchangeable – just as, in oui, “ce qui est poussé au mélange” is equally “ce qui pousse le mélange” –, the reversible symmetry and internal transfers of active, passive, subjective and objective forms is the self-engendered outcome of this identity: “être” ⇔ “se métamorphoser” ⇔ “la valeur de l’argent”. Since that which gives form receives form also (Malabou), since society makes individuals as it is made by them:
- 122 Castoriadis, op. cit., p. 372.
39even as instituted, society can exist only as perpetual self-alteration. For it can be instituted only as the institution of a world of significations, which exclude self-identity and exist only through their essential possibility of being-other; and it is instituted through the constitution of social individuals, who are as they are and can function as they do only to the extent that their socialization informs the manifestations of their radical imagination but does not destroy it. It is true that, as such, the institution that is posited in each case can exist only as a norm of self-identity, as inertia and as a mechanism of self-perpetuation; but, equally true, that of which there should be self-identity, the instituted signification, can exist only by altering itself, and alters itself through doing and social representing/saying. In this way, the norm itself alters itself through the alteration of that of which it should be the norm of identity, awaiting the moment it will be shattered by the explicit positing of another norm122.
40L’ArgIent and oIui self-consciously share Castoriadis’s premises: the instituted is instituting and vice-versa; its conservation hinges on its metamorphosis. But contrary to him, Tarkos' language consistently precludes the revolutionary “supersession” which Castoriadis derives from them: “the moment [the norm] will be shattered by the explicit positing of another norm”. When it comes to the “radical destruction of the known institution of society, in its most unsuspected nooks and crannies”, Castoriadis argues that “nothing allows us to affirm that a self-transformation of history such as this is impossible” (Castoriadis). But for Tarkos, as we saw, such is the definition of an “impossibilité”, the refusal of the world which he refuses. By conforming the autonomist critique of orthodox Marxism (Castoriadis’ and others’) to capital, Tarkos does not foster emancipation but perfects the neoliberal formulae.
- 123 Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, by Hayek
- 124 The term is Barbara Stiegler’s (op. cit). Neoliberals use it only in relation to collectivist regim (...)
- 125 As neoliberal constantly repeated and as Michel Foucault showed in Sécurité, Territoire, Population (...)
- 126 Macron, op. cit., p . 5.
- 127 Ludwig von Mises, op. cit., p. 864.
- 128 This antithesis is constitutive of the neoliberal project. “This method of social control is, I sub (...)
- 129 Cf. for instance Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Knopf Canada, 20 (...)
- 130 Walter Lippman, op. cit., p. 157 and p. 210.
41Tarkos' poems thus contrast with neoliberal thought and practice. For them, the persistence of backward schemes in “the biological constitution of homo sapiens”123 (Hayek) requires “authoritarian”124 measures of “social control” (Lippman): the reform of human dispositions and behaviours through the (re-)education of children, the furthering of the capitalist revolution through judicial reforms and public policy125 – “Nous devons tous sortir de nos habitudes”126. Under favourable conditions, the “men” endowed with “astounding intellectual power to conceive sound social and economic theories” have but to make these ideologies “palatable to the majority”: to “win the approval of inert people” through law and education.127 Throughout the latter xxth century, however, neoliberalism’s antithesis of a “free” and “self-governing people”128 within capital’s necessity did lose some of its euphemistic power. The “revolutionary re-adaptation of mankind” and the generalisation of the market economy have turned out to entail compulsive propaganda, the intentional starvation of countries, militarily and police terror, extreme financial and legal forms of social coercion, “new management”, etc.129 Such is, for neoliberals, the underside of freedom which classic liberals “forgot” to account for in their “belief that this natural order prevailed in the childhood of the race”: a “naive theor[y] of democracy”130. Backward populations finding issue with the racialised and patriarchal capitalist order – such as, to name but a handful of violently repressed protests under neoliberalism, the Gilets Jaunes, the recurring “émeutes de banlieues” in France, Nuit Debout, the Genoa and Seattle riots, or even Syriza – are thus to be marshalled back into line using every available means. Tarkos, by subsuming class interests, class hatred and brute force under the identitary self-evolution of “ce qui est”, resolves neoliberalism’s inconsistency and squares the poetical circle of its revolution.
Works of Christophe Tarkos cited
Tarkos, Christophe, Morceaux choisis, Arras, Les Contemporains favoris, n.7, 1995
––, PAN, POL, 2000
––, Ecrits Poétiques, ed. by Katalin Molnár and Valérie Tarkos, POL, 2008
––, L’Enregistré : performances, improvisation, lectures, ed. by Philippe Castellin, POL, 2014
Critical corpus
Austin, John L., How to do things with words : The William James Lectures at Harvard U. 1955, 1962, Oxford Clarendon Press
Barda, Christophe, “Boules de sensations-pensées-formes in Christophe Tarkos' poetry”, Nottingham French Studies, 57.1, 2018, pp. 18–32
Becker, Gary S., “Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory”, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 70, no. 1, University of Chicago Press, 1962, pp. 1–13, url: http://0-www-jstor-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/stable/1827018
Benoît, Denis, Littérature et engagement. De Pascal à Sartre, Seuil, coll. « Essais », 2000
Boltanski, Luc and Chiapello, Eve, Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme, Gallimard, coll. “nrf Essais”, 1999
Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. by Gino Raymond, Havard University Press, 1993
Boyer, Anne, « Questions for Poets » in Anguish Language. Writing and Crisis, ed. Cunningham, John, Iles, Athony, Matar, Mira, Vishmidt, Mira, Archives Books, 2015, pp. 116-118
Caillée, Anne-Renée, Théorie du langage et esthétique totalisante dans l'oeuvre poétique de Christophe Tarkos, (doctoral thesis, Université de Montréal), 2014
Castoriadis, Cornelius, The Imaginary Institution of Society, transl. by Kathleen Blamey, Polity Press, 1987 [Seuil, 1975]
Christoffel, David, Postface to Christophe Tarkos, Das Geld, traduit en allemand par Tim Trzaskalik, Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2019
––, « Christophe Tarkos et ses revues », La Revue des revues, vol. 63, no. 1, 2020, pp. 8-27
Dardot, Pierre et Laval, Christian, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, transl. by George Elliott, Verso, 2013 [2009]
Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Félix, Capitalisme et schizophrénie I, L'anti-Œdipe, Éditions de Minuit, 1972
––, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, Minuit, 1975
––, Capitalisme et schizophrénie II, Mille Plateaux, Minuit, 1980
Ego, Renaud, « Poésie-infinie-réalité. La poésie de Christophe Tarkos », La pensée de midi, vol. 28, no. 2, 2009, pp. 185-190
Farah, Alain, “L’Argent de Christophe Tarkos, un poème à gages” in Bouju, Emmanuel, L'engagement littéraire : (Cahiers du Groupe φ - 2005), Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005, pp. 153-163, URL: http://0-books-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/pur/30057
––, Le Gala des incomparables : Invention et résistance chez Olivier Cadiot et Nathalie Quintane, Classiques Garnier, 2013
Fisher, Mark, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative ?, Zero Books, 2016
Foucault, Michel, Naissances de la Biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France. 1978-1979, Gallimard/Seuil , coll. « Hautes Etudes », 2004
––, Sécurité, Territoire, Population. Cours au Collège de France. 1977-1978, Gallimard/Seuil , coll. « Hautes Etudes », 2004
Gallop, David, Parmenides of Elea: Fragments, University of Toronto Press, 1984
Garo Isabelle, Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser et Marx: La politique dans la philosophie, Demopolis, 2011
Graeber, David, Direct Action. An ethnography, AK Press, 2009
Gleize, Jean-Marie, Littéralité: Poésie et figuration; A noir: poésie et réalité, Questions Théoriques, coll. “Forbidden Beach”, 2015
Harvey, David, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2014
Hummel, Antoine, Pas spécialement poétique : Nathalie Quintane, Christophe Tarkos et la dé-spécialisation de la poésie (1992-2019), (doctoral thesis, Université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France, Valenciennes), 2020, author’s website: https://www.testanonpertinente.net/PSP/#
Prigent, Christian, La Langue et ses monstres, Cadex, 1989
––, Ceux qui merdrent, POL, 1991
––, « Christian Prigent, nageur de fond, denseur de langue, videur d’espaces. Entretien avec Christian Arnaud » in Faire Part, 14/15, Z’Editions, 1994, pp. 11-30
Jenny, Laurent, Je suis la révolution. Histoire d’une métaphore (1830-1975), Belin, coll. “l’extrême contemporain”, 2008
Keucheyan, Razmig in Cusset, François (dir.). Une histoire (critique) des années 1990, La Découverte/Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2014, Epub
Klauwitter, Uwe and Viol, Claus-Ulrich, Contemporary Political Poetry in Britain and Ireland, Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2013
Lippmann, Walter, The Good Society, Transaction Publishers, 2005 [1937]
Lucbert, Sandra, Personnes ne sort les fusils, Seuil coll. “Fiction & Cie”, 2020
Macron, Emmanuel, Révolution, XO Editions, 2016
Malabou, Catherine, Plasticity at the Duck of Writing. Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, trans. by Caroline Shread, 2010 [2005], Columbia University Press, Epub
Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, 2nd Ed., Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1991 [1964]
Marx, Karl, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, transl. by Martin Milligan, Prometheus Books, 1988
––, Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. by Martin Nicolaus, Penguin Books, 1993 [1973]
Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin Editions, 2000 [1949], Epub
Quintane, Nathalie interviewed by Diakritik, “Nathalie Quintane. Un Hamster à l’école”, Diakritik, 14/01/2021, https://diacritik.com/2021/01/14/nathalie-quintane-il-ny-a-pas-de-mutation-du-metier-denseignant-il-y-a-une-liquidation-un-hamster-a-lecole/ (March 2021)
Rubin, Paul H., « Folk Economy », Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 70, No. 1, July 2003, pp. 157-171
Sainsbury, Daisy, 'Pour une poésie mineure': linguistic experimentation in the work of Dominique Fourcade, Olivier Cadiot and Christophe Tarkos, (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford), 2018
Simon, Roland and others, Histoire critique de l’Ultra-gauche: Trajectoire d’une balle dans le pied, Senonevero, 2009
Stiegler, Barbara, “Il faut s’adapter”. Sur un nouvel impératif politique, Gallimard coll. “Essais”, 2019, Epub
Thumerel, Fabrice, Le Champ littéraire français au XXème siècle. Elements pour une sociologie de la littérature, Armand Colin, coll. « U / Lettres », 2002
TXT redaction committee (Christian Prigent, Alain Duault, Jean-Luc Steinmetz, Jean-Pierre Verheggen, Eric Clémens, Daniel Busto, Philippe Boutibonnes, Yves Froment, Jacques Demarcq, etc.), « Fonction d’une revue », TXT, n°5, TXT éditeur, 1972, consulted on http://www.le-terrier.net/txt/txt/article24.html, [February 2021]
Van Horn, Robert and Mirowski, Philip, “Neoliberalism and Chicago”, Chapter 13 in Ross B. Emmett, The Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010
Von Mises, Ludwig, Human Action, Fox & Wilkes, 1966 [1949]
Wallas, Graham, The Great Society. A Psychological Analysis, The Macmillan Company, 1916 [1914]
Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, transl. by Talcott Parsons, Routledge Classics, 2001 [1905]
Wittig, Monique, « Homo Sum », in The Straight Mind and other essay, Beacon Press, 1992.
Notes
1 Christophe Tarkos, “Bio: chou”, biographical note, 22/11/1993, in Ecrits Poétiques, ed. by Katalin Molnár and Valérie Tarkos, POL, 2008, p. 31. (Ecrits Poétiques will henceforth be abbreviated as EP.).
2 « Je suis un poète révolutionnaire », performance in Marseille (24 April 1996) in L’Enregistré : performances, improvisation, lectures, ed. by Philippe Castellin, POL, 2014, p. 491.
3 Tarkos, PAN, POL, 2000, p. 47.
4 Among others, Nathalie Quintane; Stéphane Bérard; Pierre Alféri; Charles Pennequin; Katalin Molnar; Laurent Cawet; Anne-James Chaton; Christophe Fiat, etc.
5 Christian Prigent, Ceux qui merdrent, POL, 1991, p. 22.
6 Fabrice Thumerel, Le Champ littéraire français au XXème siècle. Éléments pour une sociologie de la littérature, Armand Colin, coll. « U / Lettres », 2002, pp. 103-104.
7 Christian Prigent quotes this era-defining motto in La Langue et ses monstres, Cadex, 1989, p. 9.
8 Cf. Benoît Denis, Littérature et engagement. De Pascal à Sartre, Seuil, coll. « Essais », 2000, p. 24.
9 Epigraphs to TXT’s manifesto, « Fonction d’une revue », by the redaction committee of TXT (Christian Prigent, Alain Duault, Jean-Luc Steinmetz, Jean-Pierre Verheggen, Eric Clémens, Daniel Busto, Philippe Boutibonnes, Yves Froment, Jacques Demarcq, etc.), n°5, TXT éditeur, 1972, consulted on http://www.le-terrier.net/txt/txt/article24.html, [February 2021].
10 Fabrice Thumerel, Le Champ littéraire français au XXème siècle. Elements pour une sociologie de la littérature, Armand Colin, coll. « U / Lettres », 2002, pp. 103-104.
11 Isabelle Garo, Foucault, Deleuze, Althusser et Marx: La politique dans la philosophie, Demopolis, 2011
p. 230.
12 Razmig Keucheyan in François Cusset (dir.). Une histoire (critique) des années 1990, La Découverte/Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2014, Epub.
13 Nathalie Quintane interviewed by Diakritik, “Nathalie Quintane. Un Hamster à l’école”, Diakritik, 14/01/2021, https://diacritik.com/2021/01/14/nathalie-quintane-il-ny-a-pas-de-mutation-du-metier-denseignant-il-y-a-une-liquidation-un-hamster-a-lecole/ (March 2021).
14 Laurent Jenny, Je suis la révolution. Histoire d’une métaphore (1830-1975), Belin, coll. “l’extrême contemporain”, 2008, p. 6.
15 Klauwitter and Viol, Contemporary Political Poetry in Britain and Ireland, Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, 2013, p. 9.
16 « Je suis un poète révolutionnaire », performance in Marseille (24 April 1996) in Tarkos, L’Enregistré, op. cit., p. 491.
17 Isabelle Garo, Deleuze, Foucault, Althusser & Marx, p. 230.
18 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative ?, Zero Books, 2016, p. 14.
19 Pierre Dardot et Christian Laval, The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, transl. by George Elliott, Verso, 2013 [2009], p. 8.
20 Former 1968 militants resorted to terrorist actions during the « années de plomb » in Italy, Germany and in France. In 1986, for instance, Renault’s CEO George Besse was killed by the Action Directe group. (Cf. Roland Simon and others, Histoire critique de l’Ultra-gauche: Trajectoire d’une balle dans le pied, Senonevero, 2009).
21 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, 2nd Ed., Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1991 [1964], p. xliii.
22 Tarkos, oui in EP, p. 163 and p.164.
23 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, transl. by Martin Milligan, Prometheus Books, 1988, p. 114.
24 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx/Engels: Collected Works: Volume 3: 1843–44, trans. by Martin Milligan and Dirk J. Struik, Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, pp. 229–348, p. 304.
25 David Graeber, Direct Action. An ethnography, AK Press, 2009, pp. ix-x.
26 Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme, Gallimard, coll. “nrf Essais”, 1999, pp. 71-72.
27 Tarkos, EP, respectively p. 263 ; p. 277 ; p. 276.
28 Jean-Marie Gleize, Littéralité: Poésie et figuration; A noir: poésie et réalité, Questions Théoriques, coll. “Forbidden Beach”, 2015, p. 259.
29 Tarkos, EP, p. 265.
30 Razmig Keucheyan in François Cusset (dir.). Une histoire (critique) des années 1990, op. cit., Epub
31 Alain Farah, “L’Argent de Christophe Tarkos, un poème à gages” in Emmanuel Bouju, L'engagement littéraire : (Cahiers du Groupe φ - 2005), Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2005, pp. 153-163, URL: http://0-books-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/pur/30057.
32 Antoine Hummel, Pas spécialement poétique : Nathalie Quintane, Christophe Tarkos et la dé-spécialisation de la poésie (1992-2019), (doctoral thesis, Université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France, Valenciennes), 2020, author’s website: https://www.testanonpertinente.net/PSP/#.
33 Alain Farah, art. cit.
34 Anne-Renée Caillée, Théorie du langage et esthétique totalisante dans l'oeuvre poétique de Christophe Tarkos, (doctoral thesis, Université de Montréal), 2014 ; Daisy Sainsbury, 'Pour une poésie mineure': linguistic experimentation in the work of Dominique Fourcade, Olivier Cadiot and Christophe Tarkos, (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford), 2018 ; Christophe Barda, “Boules de sensations-pensées-formes in Christophe Tarkos' poetry”, Nottingham French Studies, 57.1, 2018, pp. 18–32.
35 G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, Kafka, pour une littérature mineure, Minuit, 1975, p. 147; also in G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie I, L'anti-Œdipe, Minuit, 1972 and II, Mille Plateaux, Minuit, 1980.
36 Daisy Sainsbury, op. cit., Chapter 1, p. 137. D. Sainsbury borrows Victor Shklovsky’s notion in “Art as technique” in relation with “deterritorialisation” to “capture the political potential of the new modes of perception provoked by dismantling conventional forms of representation”. (Sainsbury, op. cit., p. 26).
37 Alain Farah, Le Gala des incomparables, Classiques Garnier, 2013, p. 54.
38 For Marxist theorist David Harvey, Marx’s “need for science” arises from the “need to unmask what is truly happening underneath a welter of mystifying surface appearances”. (David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 8).
39 Farah, Le Gala des incomparables, p. 153, also in Farah, art. cit.
40 Tarkos, L’Argent in EP, p. 286 and p. 283.
41 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, op. cit., p. 80, p. 77, p. 80.
42 Karl Marx, op. cit., p. 112.
43 Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857–58 (First Version of Capital), Marx/Engels: Collected Works: Volume 28: 1857–61, trans. by Ernst Wangermann, Lawrence & Wishart, 1986, p. 95.
44 Tarkos, EP, p. 286, p. 265, p. 267.
45 Tarkos, EP, p. 268 and p. 287.
46 From Tarkos computer file “Utisme-17 juillet97.DOC” quoted by Philippe Castellin in L’Enregistré, op. cit., p. 282.
47 Bibliographic details from K. Molnár and V. Tarkos, Ecrits poétiques, op. cit., pp. 401-403 and P. Castellin in L’Enregistré, op. cit., pp. 285-287. The version considered here is reproduced in the Ecrits poétiques (based on Al Dante’s 1998 edition).
48 D. Christoffel speaks the “proliférante » quality of the text ; R. Ego of its display of the “forces d’expansion infinie du langage” (Renaud Ego, « Poésie-infinie-réalité. La poésie de Christophe Tarkos », La pensée de midi, vol. 28, no. 2, 2009, pp. 185-190). Its enunciation is described as “logorrhéique” (C. Prigent in EP and Anne-Renée Caillée, op. cit.).
49 Hummel, Pas spécialement poétique, op. cit., p. 475.
50 David, Christoffel, « Christophe Tarkos et ses revues », La Revue des revues, vol. 63, no. 1, 2020, pp. 8-27
51 Tarkos, EP, respectively, p. 276, p. 266, p. 279.
52 EP, respectively, p. 269, p. 302, and p. 270.
53 J.L. Austin, How to do things with words, 1962, Oxford Clarendon Press, p. 121, p. 139.
54 David Christoffel in his postface to: Christophe Tarkos, Das Geld, traduit en allemand par Tim Trzaskalik, postfacé par David Christoffel, Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2019.
55 Tarkos, EP, respectively: p. 266; p. 263; p. 277.
56 Tarkos, EP, p. 281.
57 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, transl. by Talcott Parsons, Routledge Classics, 2001 [1905], page 124.
58 Marx, Grundrisse. Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. by Martin Nicolaus, 1993 [1973], Penguin Books, p. 278.
59 Tarkos, EP, p. 290.
60 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin Editions, 2000 [1949], Epub
Tarkos showcases the Orwellian « mutability of the past ». For instance, in declaring that if “Oceania is at war with Eastasia”, then “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. [...] since the beginning of history”. In this paragraph of L’Argent, the same holds for money.
61 Tarkos, EP, p. 263, I have emphasised the contradictory verb forms.
62 There are two ways to look at a verb: its (internal) aspect and its (external) chronology. “Aspect” designates its internal chronology, the temporal development of the process (or state) conveyed by the verb. To enquire about a verb’s aspect is to consider it “sous l’angle de son déroulement interne” (Paul Imbs, L'Emploi des temps verbaux en français moderne. Essai de grammaire descriptive, 1960, quoted in Grammaire Méthodique du français, op. cit., p. 291). It differs from the verb’s external chronology i.e., its temporal inscription at the level of the utterance and with regards to the events described.
63 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, transl. by Kathleen Blamey, Polity Press, 1987 [Seuil, 1975], p. 17.
64 Tarkos, EP, p. 276.
65 Tarkos, EP, p. 263.
66 Monique Wittig, « Homo Sum » in The Straight Mind and other essay, Beacon Press, 1992, p. 53.
67 « l’argent donne la vérité » ; « tout sera juste ou faux » (EP, p. 264).
68 « Soi sans argent est abandonné. » ; « Celui qui y sera infidèle [à la règle de l’argent] dépérira seul, ou pire s’appauvrira. » (EP, p. 285, p. 280).
69 M. Wittig, op. cit., p. 51.
70 Tarkos, EP, p. 277.
71 Alain Farah, art. cit., p. 48.
72 Ibid., p. 264.
73 EP, p. 270 While “transfèrement” is attested in the carceral lexicon to designate the transfer of prisoners, “transfération” is a neologism assigning political praxis to the ambit of accountancy. Its faulty derivative suffix (-ation) stresses the distinctiveness of the processual force at stake: the infiltrative force of money is unparalleled and absolute – “il n’y a pas un mouvement qui ne soit extérieur à son programme” (EP, p. 263). Money is the “unique” value that includes “tous les aspects du métabolisme humain”, the sole abstract notion to be “permanente et efficace”; “assurée et compréhensible et sûre”; “universelle [et] commune”;“sérieuse et réelle”. (EP, p. 265 and p. 269).
74 Cornelius Castoriadis, op. cit. p. 57.
75 Herbert Marcuse, op. cit., pp. 258-259.
76 Marcuse, op. cit., p. 260.
77 Herbert Marcuse, op. cit., p. 66.
78 EP, p. 289.
79 EP, p. 300.
80 David Gallop, Parmenides of Elea: Fragments, University of Toronto Press, 1984, 103–5, fragment 6
81 Christophe Tarkos interviewed by Gudrun De Geyter (now called Klara) for VRT Radio 3, Rotterdam Poetry international, 1997, in Christophe Tarkos, L’Enregistré, op. cit., pp. 244-245.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 Gary S. Becker, “Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory”, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 70, no. 1, University of Chicago Press, 1962, pp. 1–13, url: http://0-www-jstor-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/stable/1827018
85 Two occurences of this assertion were found by Anne-Renée Caillée (op. cit.) : in « Pupe fan min », in Morceaux choisis, Arras, Les Contemporains favoris, p. 97 and in PAN, p. 173.
86 Tarkos, ibid.
87 As Christian Prigent notes in Ecrits Poetiques, oui was first published by Al Dante in 1996. It is “à mi-chemin d’un recueil de poèmes [...] et d’un livre-poème conçu globalement.” The passages quoted here come from the first section of oui entitled “F”, the capitalised initial of fermeture. (EP, pp. 170-180) The many cuts have been made necessary by the length and repetitiveness of the text.
88 Tarkos, oui in EP, p. 170
89 Tarkos, oui in EP, pp. 170-174.
90 “La fermeture est bloquée. [...] La fermeture est un obstacle.”
91 “Ce qui est est sans forme.” ⇔ “Ce qui est se forme. [...] Ce qui est forme” (Oui, p. 171 and p. 177).
92 Tarkos, EP, oui, p. 179.
93 Ibid., p. 175.
94 Tarkos, “Entretien de Bernard Verdier avec Christophe Tarkos”, 3 November 1996, in EP, p. 353.
95 Tarkos “Ma langue est poétique”, oui in EP, op. cit., p. 47.
96 Catherine Malabou, Plasticity at the Duck of Writing. Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, trans. by Caroline Shread, 2010 [2005], Columbia University Press, Epub
97 Malabou, op. cit. Because « nothing exists that is not already changed, transformed, metamorphosised », « to change [...] necessarily amounts to transforming transformation and understanding that alterity arises from this intrametabolic upheaval ». (My emphasis)
98 Malabou, op. cit.
99 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. by Gino Raymond, Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 131.
100 Tarkos, oui in EP, p. 176 and p. 178.
101 Robert Van Horn and Philip Mirowski, “Neoliberalism and Chicago”, Chapter 13 in Ross B. Emmett, The Elgar Companion to the Chicago School of Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010, p. 196.
102 Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institutions of Society, op. cit., pp. 56-57.
103 Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, Fox & Wilkes, 1966 [1949], p. 863.
104 Von Mises, op. cit., p. 864.
105 In “Il faut s’adapter” (2019), Barbara Stiegler complements Foucault’s analysis in showing the decisive influence of Darwinism (via the liberal evolutionary politics of Herbert Spencer which Lippman corrects) on the genesis of the neoliberal solution. (Barbara Stiegler, “Il faut s’adapter”. Sur un nouvel impératif politique, Gallimard coll. “Essais”, 2019, Epub)
106 Walter Lippmann, The Good Society, Transaction Publishers, 2005 [1937], p. 111 and p. 114.
In Graham Wallas’s original theory (Lippman’s professor and mentor in political evolutionism), however, the Great Society’s response to “maladaptation” entailed to “produire un nouvel environnement qui, par la stimulation de nos dispositions existantes, tende à la vie bonne”. (Graham Wallas, The Great Society. A Psychological Analysis, The Macmillan Company, 1916 [1914], p. V, quoted and translated by Barbara Stiegler, op. cit.) But in response to the same problem, Lippman’s neoliberalism opts for the other side of the alternative: not changing the environment to reflect human faculties but to transform humankind in accordance with the capitalist environment. (Barbara Stiegler, op. cit.)
107 Lippman, The Good Society¸ p. 114.
108 Paul H. Rubin, « Folk Economy », Southern Economic Journal , Vol. 70, No. 1, July 2003, pp. 157-171, p. 160.
109 Paul H. Rubin, art. cit., p. 159.
110 But even “economists, Rubin points out, [can] sometimes commit the same sort of zero-sum error: "If the rich get more, that leaves less for everyone else" (Krugman 2002, p. 67).” Paul H. Rubin, art. cit., p. 159.
111 Barbara Stiegler, op. cit., Epub
112 Walter Lippman, op. cit., p. 207.
113 In Révolution, Macron “considère trois domaines comme prioritaires pour l’investissement public. Le premier, c’est le "capital humain"” (Emmanuel Macron, Révolution, XO Editions, 2016, p. 48).
114 EP, p. 267.
115 Ludwig von Mises, op. cit., p. 11 and p. 133.
116 EP, p. 123; Révolution, p. 155; EP, p. 293; Révolution, p. 5.
117 Respectively Révolution, p. 4, p. 22, p. 120 ; EP, p. 295, p. 276.
118 EP, p. 299 ; Révolution, p. 53.
119 Castoriadis, op. cit., p. 340.
120 Anne Boyer, « Questions for Poets » in Anguish Language. Writing and Crisis, ed. Cunningham, John, Iles, Athony, Matar, Mira, Vishmidt, Mira, Archives Books, 2015, pp. 116-118.
121 Tarkos, EP, p. 267.
122 Castoriadis, op. cit., p. 372.
123 Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit, by Hayek
124 The term is Barbara Stiegler’s (op. cit). Neoliberals use it only in relation to collectivist regimes.
125 As neoliberal constantly repeated and as Michel Foucault showed in Sécurité, Territoire, Population (Cours au Collège de France. 1977-1978, Seuil/Gallimard, 2004), the law is a privileged instrument of biopolitical coercion.
126 Macron, op. cit., p . 5.
127 Ludwig von Mises, op. cit., p. 864.
128 This antithesis is constitutive of the neoliberal project. “This method of social control is, I submit, the appropriate method for a self-governing people to use.” (Lippman, op. cit., p. 163) Everyone is left free to opt for more capitalism.
129 Cf. for instance Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Knopf Canada, 2007; Grégoire Chamayou, La Société ingouvernable. Une généalogie du libéralisme autoritaire, La Fabrique, 2018; Sandra Lucbert, Personnes ne sort les fusils, Seuil coll. “Fiction & Cie”, 2020.
130 Walter Lippman, op. cit., p. 157 and p. 210.
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Mathieu Farizier, « “Un petit entraînement physique, pour l’acceptation du monde”. Christophe Tarkos and the neoliberal counter-revolution as the Revolution », TRANS- [En ligne], 28 | 2022, mis en ligne le 27 novembre 2024, consulté le 16 février 2025. URL : http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/trans/8253 ; DOI : https://0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.4000/trans.8253
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