Obviously
there is a lot going on in the book, but one of the things that interested me
about the book dealt with the matter of friendship. There is a moment in the first section of the
book where Genet gets into a conversation with the fedayeen. He is asked is if he is a Marxist/ “I was rather surprised, but didn’t attach
much importance either to the question or to the answer. “Yes”, I said. “Why?”
I was still not really interested.
Ferraj’s young face looked open and guileless. He was smiling, but anxious to hear what I’d
say. After awhile I told him
nonchalantly: “Perhaps because I don’t
believe in God.” (113) At this moment a colonel tries to end the
conversation, but the fedayeen refuse this, and the two (Genet and the colonel
have a debate upon the existence of God.)
This debate links to a conception of freedom that both are trying to
express, one that links to a notion of sovereignty.
“When you start by putting the
discussion under the aegis of God you cut the ground from under my feet—I don’t
claim the patronage of anyone so grand.
And your God is all the grander because you can increase His dimensions
as much as you like. But the reason you
also insisted on beginning with the seal of friendship is that even though
you’re a Muslim you’ve got more faith in friendship than you have in God. For here we all are, armed, an unbeliever
among believers, and yet I’m your friend.”
“And where does friendship came from
but God?… To you, to me, to all of us this morning. Would you be our friend if God hadn’t
inspired you with friendship for us, and us with friendship for you?” (117)
Obviously, I don’t want to get into the
theological implications of such a discussion, which are not that interesting,
but the notions of social structure that come up. For Genet, the matter of importance is the
friendship among men. It is what
attracts him to these various modes of rebellion. When he makes the statement, “I am a
Marxist”, he hollows it out of all its traditional meaning and links it with a
form of contingency of relationships.
Whereas the colonel links the modes of friendship with the figure of
God. I would push this farther to see a
discussion of whether the revolutionary community is based on a telos or end,
or whether it is based on the interactions and the love that its members hold
for each other.
We can see this in the way that
Genet relates a certain Marxist-Leninist belief system with a religious
belief. “The worst were the ones whose
heads were full of neat but crude slogans that they unloaded on you like a ton
of bricks. The one I dreaded most was
Thalami, who I believe meant to turn me into a perfect Marxist-Leninist. The Koran had a surat for every occasion:
David Thalami had a quotation from Lenin.
And he wasn’t the only one. In
the early days I told myself the revolutionaries were only young after all.”
(281) Both these modes of telos are put
into relationship with each other, and are expressed within the most deadening
language possible. Genet later links
them up with certain notions of the European state. These things in effect, kill the possibility
of the revolution.
Certainly, it is difficult to argue
against that fact. Postcolonial and
postrevolutionary states have really not managed escape out of this bind. But on the other hand, it seems that Genet’s
model (if we can use such a word) points to any mode of organization creating
the preconditions for this. The question
becomes is there a way of thinking this question that escapes this?
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