Frédéric Worms, professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in France. Image credit: AFP, by Pierre Andrieu
Sartre thought opposed the unilateral resolution of the United States on Jerusalem
Last Thursday (December 21), the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned the U.S. resolution recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital by an overwhelming majority.
Frédéric Worms, a professor of philosophy at the French Higher Normal College (ENS), published an article in the French newspaper "Liberation" on the same day, "Jerusalem: Isaat against unilateral resolutions", using the theory and political ideas of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to refute the basis of the unilateral resolution of the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, thus revealing the dangerous consequences behind Trump's decision.
Sartre published his famous essay "Reflections on the Jewish Question" at the beginning of the end of World War II (1946). The philosophical community held a Sartre symposium in Jerusalem last year around the article. Worms thinks a similar discussion is worth continuing because "all the controversy generated by this article, which was unique at the time, has not yet been resolved." In Worms' view, Sartre applied the great theme of "reflection" in Existence and Nothingness to the "Jewish question," a question that left people secretive, giving it the freedom to think was in itself a liberation from it.
The article, which was just translated into Arabic and published this year, highlights Sartre's visit to Israel and Egypt on the eve of the Six-Day War (June 6, 1967) 50 years earlier. "Unlike today, Sartre has refused to apply his views on the 'colonial question' directly to the local situation during this trip. This means that if he were alive today, he would not necessarily identify with the colonies (Jewish settlements) established outside the established borders. ”
Aside from Sartre's political leanings and historical context, Worms uses his "theory of recognition" (théorie de la reconnaissance) to further analyze the current situation. He summarized Sartre's discussion of the complexity of "recognition" in Existence and Nothingness and concluded that there was "no unilateral recognition". Unilateral recognition contradicts each other: one acknowledges others by becoming one's own "object", while the other person is also only willing and can only be the "subject". "Although I claim to recognize the freedom of others, I still do not exempt myself from dominating others. So I have to acknowledge that others have the right and ability to recognize me. "Recognition constitutes a Re(return)-Connaissance circuit only if the two sides are mutually subjective.
Sartre extended the "theory of recognition" he inherited from Hegel's philosophy into the realm of politics. The "recognition" of the human subject at the ethical level is an endless mirror game, and Worms points out that "Sartre places the 'state' in the subject position in international politics." War is a negative and serious consequence of the inevitable 'return' of a dangerous unilateral resolution of a State. "Russia's annexation of Crimea bears the consequences of undermining the original cognitive framework, and the unilateral recognition of Jerusalem by the PRESIDENT of the United States also needs to bear the corresponding risks."
Worms supports the French philosopher Bruno Latour in Where to Land? The article argues that "Trump is a leak addict who is always happy to expose the truth that the so-called elite has lost interest in the planet and the world as a whole." He himself represents the return of all unimaginable dangers. He affirmed French President Emmanuel Macron's perception of "mutual recognition," while noting that his "call for a peaceful U.S. resolution of the Israeli and Palestinian issues" remained too empty as an objection.
"Cat Lover" by Kristen Roupenian. Photo by Elisa Roupenian Toha, image source: New York Times website
The counterattack of the chicken soup story of "Running Present"
On December 11, 2017, the New Yorker published a short story called "Cat Person," written by Kristen Roupenian, who had previously been a Twitter writer with fewer than 200 followers. From the perspective of the heroine Margot, the novel tells in the third person about a short relationship between Margot, a 20-year-old young girl, and Robert, a 34-year-old adult male, from text messages "mutual prodding" to "running" to failing dating.
Inspired by a bad netizen meeting that he personally experienced, the author explores how labels such as "love cat or dog", "like independent movies", "literary and artistic tattoos", "can tell paragraphs and publish love bags" and other labels in the relationship between the sexes affect people's personality image construction and emotional judgment in the relationship between the sexes under the premise of only communication information transmission.
This novel quickly became popular on social networks like a virus, aroused strong resonance among a large number of post-90s female readers, and became the fiction work with the highest number of read and forwarded "New Yorker" this year, which attracted the attention and discussion of major mainstream media in Europe and the United States.
The heroine Margot's emotionally wavering, ambiguous attitude became the focus of online debate, with many readers commenting on Twitter that it was "too real to be uncomfortable." In an interview with The New Yorker, Rubenian dissects Margot's repeated mental processes: "Margot has been trying to construct the Robert she thinks of with all sorts of inaccurate and unreliable information. When she finally gets the exact evidence of what kind of man this man really is, it is the end of the story. Margo's imagination of Robert has always been a combination of romanticized ideals based on movies and anime and violent horrors based on pornographic culture. The hero says that he has two cats, named after Junji Ito's manga, and the cat never appears during the process from the time the two meet to have sex, pushing this uncertainty to the climax. At the end of the novel, Margot's roommate texts her to reject Robert, and he verbally denies her as a prostitute in his reply.
The novel depicts Margot as "trying not to provoke him to be angry and take responsibility for his emotions for the purpose of self-preservation, although the disgust is still in favor", and even "out of courtesy and not to appear capricious and spoiled", reluctantly endured "unnecessary sex". The Washington Post and other media outlets commented that it "continues the #MeToo movement that shared sexual assault encounters on social networks some time ago." ”
The Guardian notes that "cat lovers' sensational effects may only be comparable to those of Anne Plu's Brokeback Mountain (also published in The New Yorker) in 1997." The Washington Post article argues that the novel's popularity is due to "The New Yorker, the veteran magazine, for the first time, shed its print orientation in content, no longer blindly pandering to the interests of middle-aged and elderly intellectuals, and turning to 'millennial' young people." Vox News also believes that the novel portrays for readers "how 'desperately humble and kind' 20-year-old women are today."
In response to many male readers denouncing the novel's "vulgarity", Scottish writer Katie Welsh wrote in The Guardian: "Giles Coren (the famous British host of Giles Coren) made a special show to express his hatred of Jane Austen, and men sneered at Rubenigan's novel on Twitter, which is part of the modern 'literary witch hunt'. Female writers like Austin and Rubenián are always subjected to similar misinterpretations, as if romance could not contain anything else—alienation in the age of online socialization, class, desire, or inheritance law in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, etc. As long as a male writer writes about love, he is writing about the human condition, while a female writer is merely venting lust. Wilsch argues that while any woman who has used dating apps is likely to have lived through or written a story like Cat Lovers, There is no doubt about Rubeniyen's ability to generalize reality and her literary prowess. According to an interview with The New Yorker, Rubenigan received a Ph.D. in international politics from Harvard University before deciding to devote herself to literary writing, was fluent in Swahili, and was originally undergoing an employment examination by the US Foreign Ministry.
Laura Miller, a culture columnist for Slate magazine, wrote an article praising Cat Lover as "a great story." It's a shame to be treated like chicken soup on the Internet." Miller wrote in the article: "The guiding opinion of the press will lead many readers to think that Cat Lovers is only solving immediate real-world problems and providing a way to educate." It is easy to think that any literary imaginary work has some definite moral value. However, the number of sides on the merits of gender relations has long been worthless. What attracts so many readers is that Cat Lover rejects this tendency. In Miller's view, Robert's final insult to Margot can also be interpreted as "the aberrant reaction of a loner in the face of inexplicable rejection." So many readers who read the novel on their phones through a shared link and use it as a "chicken soup essay" "often don't realize that Margot's story is actually a reminder of how much they miss by watching through such a small window." ”