to introduce dr. tomorrow at chaplain
Matheson can you hear me all right so
who is an assistant professor of modern
European history at the University of
Illinois urbana-champaign she received
her PhD from Rutgers in 2002 where she
studied under the eminent historians
Bonnie Smith and Jones Scott among
others and earned her bachelor's degree
from Concordia University in Montreal
now over the last few years dr. Matheson
has published several articles that have
established her as one of the leading
young scholars in the field of French
intellectual history a position that has
thus far earned her an invitation to
speak at the Sorbonne and a prestigious
visiting fellowship at New York
University's Institute for French
studies in spring 2005 now her first
book which will have the same title as
today's talk that is turning on the mind
French philosophers and television will
be out from the University of Chicago
Press this fall Matheson's work provides
an intriguing new perspective on a
particularly important aspect of
twentieth-century French history that is
the role of the intellectual as a public
figure in French life those of you who
are from my history 202 class will
remember that excerpt from Zola's
editorial jacooz and the Dreyfus Affair
which is widely seen as the birth of
this character the public intellectual
France in any event in France today
philosophers have really managed to
attain a degree of celebrity that might
strike Americans as surprising during
their lifetimes thinkers like Jean
Baudrillard Ari da and jean-paul Sartre
were bona fide stars whose comments on
the events of the day were presented
frequently in mainstream newspapers and
yes on television dr. Matheson's work
analyzes this phenomenon and explains
why it is that practitioners of what can
often be a very esoteric discipline have
become such important fixtures in
mainstream French cultural life as it's
developed since the Second World War
now before I turn the podium over to our
speaker I'd like to thank all the
organizations that have made this talk
possible the Western European Studies
Program
Iowa State French club the department's
of philosophy world languages in culture
and history the Greenlee School of
Journalism and communication the F
Wendell Miller trust and the GSB
lectures program and now dr. Matheson
the floor is yours good evening good
evening let me begin by thanking John
Monroe and Iowa State University for
inviting me to come and speak to you
this evening and for all of her to all
of you for thanks thank you for taking
the time to attend my talk it's a
privilege and a pleasure for me to be
here for the past 10 years I have been
grappling to understand a peculiarly
French phenomenon 50 years of the
televising of philosophy and
philosophers in France between 1951 when
jean-paul Sartre first appeared on
television news and the end of the
century over 3,500 television programs
have aired in France
featuring philosophers or their work and
here we have a graphic representation
event now two North American eyes like
my own and possibly to yours as well
this is an absolutely startling
phenomenon very unusual it also
complicates arguments by post-war
intellectuals people like Theodor Adorno
and French scholars like Pierre Bourdieu
about fundamental opposition's between
high and popular culture and it
contradicts the argument that television
is inherently anti intellectual that it
is a menace to democracy culture and
moral values and that it is the
unabashed arch enemy of the book so why
were the French so interested in
philosophy and philosophers and what
does it mean to actually do philosophy
on TV is it even possible my work uses
the unlikely domain of the televising of
philosophy
here we have some images from the
various kinds of shows different people
in order to claim that if we are to
comprehend the ways in which ideas
images and especially identities
nationally identities are vested in
contemporary history we ignore the
medium of television at our peril in my
talk today I'm gonna make three major
arguments first in the aftermath of
world war two you're all so good you're
starting to write right now
excellent um French state television
deployed philosophers as a metonym for
French national grandeur
so philosophers represent French
national grandeur second by the
mid-1960s the televising of philosophy
became a vital if problematic tool for
the assimilation of an increasingly
diverse post-colonial public third
during the 1970s and 80s philosophers
used the small screen to demand
political and ethical accountability
revalidating their own importance as
public intellectuals and advancing
intellectual power now this assertion
that they use TV in the 70s and 80s to
reassert their power contradicts a
prevailing thesis of cultural decline
that speculates that during these same
years the rise of the media intellectual
the so-called mediocracy sounded the
death knell for intellectual culture in
France now neither the Renaissance in
political philosophy nor the fascination
with ethics which are evident in France
at the end of the 20th century and the
beginning of the 21st are explicitly
explicable without reference to this
history so in order to explore these
claims about national grandeur about
philosophy as a tool for post-colonial
assimilation and about public
intellectuals using TV to call for
political and ethical accountability I'm
going to bring your attention to three
moments in
French television history the first one
is a 1957 broadcast of a French
philosopher whose name was Gaston
Bachelard mash lard the ACH ELAR
D okay he's a philosopher of science
then we're gonna look at educational
programming on philosophy which is
produced during the 1960s so television
like educational programming shows kind
of the Sesame Street variety of things
in a French version and then we're gonna
look at a philosopher named Michel
Foucault who appeared on television in
1976 to talk about a book that was very
popular called the history of sexuality
Volume one and he appeared on a show
called atlas daf which was a television
book show where people came on to talk
about books okay so following the
liberation from German occupation in
1944 France was eclipsed on the world
stage
by the rise of the USA and the USSR and
it was eager to sort of erase its
collaborationist past and to regain a
place in the global balance of power
French ex descent existentialism was
generating international interest and
the state saw philosophers as a sort of
very valuable form of French cultural
capital now they knew that television
didn't exert much influence beyond
national borders we didn't have
satellite or anything like that right
but they believed that the medium had
great potential to reconfirm French
greatness to domestic audiences and by
the 1950s broadcast coverage of famous
people like jean-paul Sartre
Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir was
exploited as a visible sign of French
renewal and we can see here two images
from when Camus accepts the Nobel Prize
and this was televised in 1957 and when
Saar court refuses the Nobel Prize later
in 1964 now television tried to sort of
avoid political controversy at this time
so it presented philosophers as cultural
jet setters as celebrities okay and in
this way it rendered them as a sort of
corporeal synecdoche for a specifically
French form of national glamour and
intellectual power and this process sort
of demonstrates my first point and it is
exemplified in coverage of Gaston
Bachelard on a renowned book show called
lectio poultice which means reading for
all and this book show started airing in
1953 and it aired for fifteen years and
it was incredibly popular in France it's
also the first time that they ever
discussed philosophy on TV so here this
man with the beard is Gaston Bachelard
young with his daughter know who is this
guy he was born in 1884 into a
working-class family his father ran a
taboc his grandfather was actually a
shoemaker he had a career as a
postmaster then he worked in for The
Electric Company he went to war during
World War one and fought the trenches
but in midlife he taught himself
philosophy and he passed the state's
highest exam in philosophy and completed
a doctoral thesis on epistemology at the
age of 43
eventually he advanced to the chair in
the history and philosophy of science at
the Sorbonne by the time of his death so
this is from like 1943 until his death
he had produced over 90 publications
including 23 books so this is a guy who
didn't have trouble like finishing his
essays or getting tenure or anything
like that right we should all emulate
this kind of productivity the
philosopher was also featured or
discussed on television 57 times between
the first time he appeared in 1956 and
the end of the century and here we sort
of have a basic graph showing different
television coverage of various people we
can see that jean-paul sartre who's the
most famous is over 500 appearances
between 51 and 99 be ashell his name is
actually Bernard Omri levy he's sort of
a celebrity philosopher in France then
we have Camus rimmel at home
Michel Foucault and Bachelard down at
the bottom there but still a significant
number of appearances
now his iconic image quickly embodied
the very essence of philosophy for the
viewing public and here we can see what
he looks like he certainly looks like a
philosopher to me here he is on a show
called sent : island which is sort of
like banner headlines this broadcast
footage which was shot just prior to his
death actually aired numerous times over
20 times it was rebroadcast on French
television um after that and it's now
considered a classic of early French TV
it was also the first of over 80
documentaries on philosophers unfolding
blogs of philosophers that was produced
for French television so let's talk
about the first show that made him a
sort of television icon here's this book
show reading for all this guy's the host
of it here do my a and here's do my a
talking about the encyclopedia of
philosophy the show that Bachelard is
invited on the air for now one thing we
need to know and we're talking about
television in France if it at this time
there is one channel in France all
television is public there's no private
television okay so the second channel
isn't launched until 1964 the third
channel is launched in 1972 this means
until 1984 you only have three channels
in France okay you try on your
television if you've got a philosopher
on channel one and you only have one
channel you watch it right you don't
have a lot of choice you can't click and
television doesn't privatized in France
until 19 it actually legally in 82 but
in 84 we get the first cute cable
network okay so this is a really sort of
restricted state program for what the
state wants its audience to be watching
and that's really important
by 1962 almost 40% of
homes had televisions and electrical
twos this show was capturing about 32%
of the viewing public which is pretty
high ratings so according to this guy
Keir Dullea okay the thing that was so
attractive about this book show is that
you'd invite these authors on to talk
about their work and you would learn
something by how they presented
themselves right verbally and physically
that you could learn just by reading the
material so the program sort of
exemplifies what were the tripartite
aims of French television during this
time and those aims were to inform to
educate and to entertain they're
actually the same as the BBC in London
okay so that's the goal of television at
this time and of course we can see the
entertain comes last right it also on
this show is going to sort of trumpet
the importance of philosophy in French
culture at a time when falafel Asif II
is under siege within the Academy I'm
going to talk more about that in a
minute so on this show Bachelor is
invited to represent one of 61
philosophers who have contributed to
this encyclopedia of philosophy and when
the show opens we see do my a who I
actually interviewed when he was like
close to 90 years old a couple years ago
in France it was very fascinating he's
sort of happening this big volume
towards the audience and saying you know
there's weighty significance here this
is really important right and do my
introduces his guests to the camera and
then we get a long shot of all three of
these men along with Gaston Bell J who
is another philosopher and who had
actually edited the volume okay and
Berger Bell Jay explains that this text
is sort of an introductory overview to
philosophy and philosophers the
encyclopedia also covers religion but
they don't talk about religion at all
interestingly okay here we have some of
their comments
right philosophy is the affair of each
one of us this book surpasses readers
who are purely and simply philosophers
what hit me about this enormous volume
is that it is readable we can see that
what they're trying to convince the
public of is that all of you can really
read this stuff and it's gonna be
fascinating you're gonna be really
interested in it ok so as the program
progresses the camera keeps going back
to Gaston Bachelard and when it ends
this segment ends on a close-up of his
image now his presence on the show is
really interesting because he wasn't
particularly famous at the time to a
broader public he's not asked about what
he wrote for the volume at all ok
he's not well-known to general French
audiences but his physical presence
which is so suggestive of the classical
image of the philosopher if we need to
hammer at home we can look at him next
to Socrates you know yeah right it
performs a crucial function he is I
argue the representational embodiment of
philosophy philosophy signified through
his physiognomy alone through the way he
looks he links contemporary discussions
of philosophy to this sort of revered
classical past and in doing this his
image serves him and his personal like
notoriety but it also acts as a symbolic
site for the national affirmation of an
endangered cultural ideal so when I say
this what do I mean an endangered
cultural ideal philosophy is in danger
at this moment in France why to explain
this claim we're gonna return for a
moment to the historical context by the
1950s right where after the war the
French state is struggling with the
debacle of the Algerian war right French
is an imperial power it has a colony in
Algeria it's been at war with this
colony from 1954 to 1962 and during this
eight-year struggle to try and keep
Algeria French the fourth Republic which
is the government in power is destroyed
it brings general
a Gaul to power as a president and
initiates the fifth republic it also
becomes one of the bloodiest examples of
decolonization on record there's a lot
of torture that goes on on the part of
the French when Algeria is finally
granted independence in 1962 and here we
have the cover of the New York Times the
Evian Accords mark the end of this war
and we can actually see de Gaulle on
television the picture shows him on
television because he uses TV a lot to
sort of get his political message out
there right we know that for the French
the notion of sort of ethical redemption
is key they've really sullied their
image by the way in which they tried to
hang on to Algeria so there's a once
again this need for a revitalized drive
for French cultural supremacy right
which is going to serve as a sort of
salad for wounded national pride and
these various threats which are being
posed to the nation by decolonization by
something called coca colonization I
don't know if any of you've heard that
term yet coca colonization this is
America taking over the world right
these kinds of threats right by the
threat of European integration make the
definition and the cultural acquisition
of Frenchness what does it mean to be
French okay all the more important and
many people many intellectuals believe
that philosophy was going to be an
important tool for young people and for
the general public to sort of grapple
with these pressures right it would
restore a national dignity and it would
inculcate in them the capacity not only
for autonomous critical thinking because
philosophy is gonna teach you to think
critically and to be like a good citizen
a good member of the population but also
it's actually going to make you French
if you learn philosophy you will be
French now we need to remember that
France teaches philosophy in high school
okay so all high school students study
philosophy and this means that if you're
the general public right you know
something about philosophy and you might
actually be a little bit more interested
in it if you see it on television
but at the same time we have France
modernizing right we have this new drive
for technology and we get sort of
conflict between tradition and
technology at this point we also have a
baby boom in the post-war period we have
a absolutely rapidly expanding student
population right the student population
triples if you can imagine in the 1960s
in ten years if in ten years your
student population tripled on this
campus what would you do with all those
students right yeah there's just massive
expansion in the demographics and
consequently this propels a crisis
between education as a sort of
intellectual moral training and
education as a vocational school right
we see that today how many of you are
here thinking I mean a vocational
education I need to get a career
afterwards right I need a job right I
can't think about just any educating
myself okay so we had this sort of
struggle between these two attitudes
towards what education should do and
professionals and professors ok believed
that state directed television could be
used to colonize the intimate spaces of
the private sphere because it goes right
into your living room right and it could
be used as a means for philosophes
dissemination television would ensure
that tradition and philosophy and
consequently the moral health and the
unity of the nation would survive but
how are they planning to actually
achieve this end how are they going to
do this okay I mean how can public TV
actually work as a force for national
unity well some of the most remarkable
examples of this agenda were broadcast
between 1964 and 1969 in and yeah we're
about to go to you can change this to
the next screen but as part of a
collection of 40 broadcasts called the
teaching of philosophy now just give me
a sec forget that okay
these shows were conceived by a woman
named Dina Dreyfuss who actually
happened to be the first wife of clothed
Levy Strauss maybe some of you have
heard of clothes Levy Strauss he was a
famous anthropologist okay and they were
intended to be viewed
in high school classrooms so what I'm
about to show you is for the high school
but it was broadcast nationally okay and
it featured some of France's greatest
living philosophers people like Foucault
like Alain Badiou who's now very famous
Raymond at home Jean I believed George
Kang Ji Young poppy curve yeah Borja
names that you may or may not know but
these are very famous people in France
and they were all in these broadcasts
now I'm going to show you the 90 second
credit sequence that opens the broadcast
for the 1964-65 season okay and I'm
going to suggest to you that when we
watch it it captures the pedagogical
objectives okay of six years of
philosophical programming in France and
it sort of illustrates how the
televising a philosophy is going to be
used to sort of shore up French national
identity so let's take a look at that
now learn how hard you have to hit that
button to make sure it should work
is it working yeah I'm gonna hit play
again
hit harder ah yes good if you can turn
the volume goes two little buttons down
Oh
I would only say only sometimes anyway
yeah she doesn't she
all that class you know 15 if you
yourself you know
it's tough okay go back to Arthur
there we go good okay so what are we
supposed to make of this sequence right
in less than 90 seconds we have the
camera situating youthful fascination
with philosophy within the legacy of a
venerable tradition right these
individuals as they are depicted are
equally significant got something going
off down here sure wouldn't hold on
second
all right I'm back okay so who did we
see in this thing
right we saw old people we saw young
people we saw men women we saw whites
blacks Arabs Asians right the people who
are speaking the mature figures okay are
mostly white and male and I'm gonna come
back to this okay now mixed gender Elise
says high schools okay where we see both
girls and and boys we're actually
established in 1925 so the fact that we
see young girls studying philosophy is
not very surprising okay especially
because after the 1950s there are more
and more girls in philosophy classes
because boys are going into the
mathematics and the sciences as France
is starting to modernize okay so the
humanities are feminizing at this moment
but the fact that we see all of these
racially diverse images is kind of
surprising and it raises some questions
for us right through the 1970s most
broadcast coverage of non-european
immigrants has only focused on social
problems employment housing racism okay
the immigrant is not presented as a
subject he's presented as an object okay
immigrant families children young people
they're almost absent from the small
screen so the fact that we were seeing
people and I hope you noticed like here
we had this asian boy for example who
was reading a philosophy text okay is
really important and what I'm going to
argue is that this underscores the
importance of philosophy to this new
multi-ethnic public in a post-colonial
moment
so following decolonization we have all
these new people coming into France and
it betrays anxieties about national
integration how are we going to make all
these people really feel French okay at
the same time it gives us a sense of
equality of opportunity right all of
these people come here they're gonna
study and they're gonna be just as
French as we are supposedly okay
so it gives us some sort of access to
Frenchness and it also has all of these
locations in the cafe we saw the street
signs things like that
we have this image at the sorbonne right
which also tell us that philosophy even
though it might be universal as a
discipline is actually really
fundamentally sort of Parisian and
French and that you can you can access
it if you live here in this country so
the woman Deena Dreyfus who had produced
these she really wanted to emphasize to
people that philosophy is sort of a
living activity right and that it is
something that is born in community and
then it is developed through dialogue
but given its oral roots the question
remains why not just put it on the radio
right why are we televising it is there
really something for us to see here I
mean what is important about this okay
so we're going to take a look at one of
the shows and you have to remember these
are shows that are broadcast to high
school students okay so we're gonna go
back to another sequence and this show
is called philosophy and truth and it's
from the sixth show of the 1964-65
season if you imagine you're all in a
classroom with your professor and you're
watching this on a Wednesday morning
to be there we go excellent
we have Dreyfuss on the far side you
produce them and michel foucault
the left he still has hair
the owl of Minerva it's a symbol of
wisdom okay so the broadcast ultimately
comes to no definitive conclusions it's
of course longer than that I've excerpt
it but the lack of closure in these
philosophy programs is sort of
characteristic and it's also something
that we would call heuristic lis useful
okay because professors would use it to
generalize opposing views for debate
inside of the classroom is their truth
and error in philosophy or not what do
we mean by that okay but we get from the
images is again this notion that
philosophy is sort of a constant
conversation in France right that
philosophers are these real living
breathing people they take taxis they
wear overcoats they smoke cigarettes and
they have discussions just like the rest
of us do so in this sense we get the
notion that this visual dimension is
really crucial to it but there's also a
really important disc juncture at play
because with these white men as sort of
masters right the programme belies the
invitation it contradicts the invitation
of the opening credits okay which are
sort of presenting philosophy as
available to everyone and what it's
actually showing is that this sort of
discourse is really traditional
it's patriarchal on its Western it's
white and it's fundamentally again
French so this image of the master
thinker that's captured on camera okay
shapes the message of the broadcasts
just as much as those opening credits do
those multiracial faces in the opening
credits and this is a contradiction that
really captures a tension that is
inherent in the project of post-colonial
assimilation okay how do you reconcile a
sort of mythic image of your country
France as elite as hierarchical and as
traditional with this new ideal which is
inclusive and egalitarian and modern
okay and we sort of see that playing out
here now I'm going to take us to 0.3 the
notion that philosophers as public
intellectuals are going to be
intervening on matters of political and
ethical importance and we want to
remember that the French concept of this
political committed
public intellectual took its modern form
as your professor suggested dr. Munro
during the Dreyfus Affair okay at the
end of the nineteenth century but in
many ways French philosophers have
embodied this ideal since the
Enlightenment right but it's not until
the liberalisation of the French
audio-visual landscape in the 1970s
right here and this happens after some
enormous riots that philosophers are
able to exercise sort of political
Liberty on television and what this
image says is the police are at the
office so da Fabio convenient fall says
which means that they are at it's like
saying the police are at ABC or the
police are at CBS the police are in your
home okay and what it mean and that says
this is the police
chez vous or in your home okay which
means basically that the state is
controlling what's on television okay so
it's an anti censorship image there now
at this moment what we see is a move
towards liberalization in television and
we also see that there's a new interest
in ethical questions in the general
public now what do we mean by that
ethical questions these are questions
about the difference between right and
wrong between good and bad between duty
and the law and virtue and one of the
things that is apparent is that these
ethical questions are particularly
pressing in France in the 1960s as they
are in many places in the world
okay there are all sorts of disputes
going on about abortion about
immigration about feminism about gay
rights about the environment as we move
into the late 60s and early 70s about
neo racism the emergence of new forms of
racism right about the Holocaust about
the death of communism and Marxism I
mean is this a good thing or a bad thing
right and for many people
here we see some sort images of these
various ethical issues that are
happening we have some Albanian
immigrants this sign that says my body
belongs to me
this from the French feminist movement
this actually cartoon of lepen who runs
the the new right party in France and it
says you know this goes quite nicely
with flambe is sort of our smoking sin
at synagogue so we see the emergence of
new racism is here and what we see is
that television is going to play a
really vital part in giving the public
new tools for dealing with all of these
ethical disputes especially in the
aftermath of this major crisis that
happens in France in 1968 right when ten
million people go on strike hard to
imagine 10 million people on strike okay
as a result of these student revolutions
so we have it with a really a national
crisis and it's in the aftermath of this
that we start to see intellectuals on
television taking political stands and
one of the places where that happens is
on another book show which also ran for
15 years which is called a post cloth
and this is the guy Bernard Pivo who
hosted that show so in order to think
about that I'm gonna look at a little
bit more TV footage of a very famous
philosopher whose name is Michel
Foucault not quite yet just one in fact
now this show is really really important
a lot of people complained about it
because it seemed to have a sort of
stranglehold over the book market
basically if you were an author and you
were invited on this show your books
sold to a lot of people it's kind of
like Oprah you know how she was like
choose best book and then everybody
would go out there and buy it well for
example we have this man
Vladimir Yankovic you can see he's a
very old man here right he was invited
on television in 1980 to talk about a
book that he had published and he was 76
years old and in the week after he was
on the air he sold 30,000 books
this was more books than he had sold in
his entire lifetime right so we can
really see the impact of television it's
changing how the public is actually
absorbing intellectual information and
so it's very controversial now in
six this famous philosopher named Michel
Foucault is invited on to talk about
this book that he publishes called the
history of sexuality and the show is
called what is the future of man and
it's broadcast live and in this instance
it's actually broadcast from the Louvre
okay so famous Museum there in the
Sumerian room at the Louvre they have
live chamber music playing Rachmaninoff
at the beginning of it and we're gonna
take a look at the very first moments of
that broadcast when he's been invited on
to talk about his book
push it down there we go
stop stop the tape first did you okay
good thanks okay so what is Foucault
wanna talk about right he's live on the
air he says thanks for inviting me but
you know I really don't want to talk
about my book I wanna talk about
something else
okay what he wants to talk about is a
problem that's going on in the Soviet
Union there's a doctor who's been
arrested
his name is dr. stern okay and he's
arrested by the KGB in 1974 and he's
been prosecuted for sexual misconduct
and for perversion and fraud and this
affair okay is also connected to a real
interest in the question of Soviet
dissidents which is emerging in the West
after the French tenth translation of
Alexander Solzhenitsyn book The Gulag
Archipelago which maybe some of you have
heard of okay now dr. Stern is a member
of the Communist Party but he's also a
Jew okay and he had been denounced
because he had refused to dissuade his
sons from trying to emigrate to Israel
okay so he's arrested on a whole series
of charges and they're all trumped-up
charges okay and at the trial he's
sentenced to eight years of forced labor
in a penal camp in Kharkov it's like
going to Siberia essentially and his
sons are fighting for his release now
the stern affair this whole affair
becomes really important because it
participates in a debate in the French
media at this time that had come about
because of the publication of
Solzhenitsyn's book now why are the
French interested in critiquing
totalitarian
in the 1970s partially because in French
politics there's an alliance in 1972
between the Communists and the
Socialists called the union of the left
and the people who are in power okay who
are not on the Left are afraid that if
the left comes to power the Communists
are gonna take over France so they're
trying to discredit communism and
totalitarianism okay and Foucault is
also very anti-communist and so he's
invested in this controversy on the one
hand politically he wants to talk about
it on television because he's interested
in discrediting sort of Stalin in the
gulag and the whole communist
totalitarian situation that's now
emerging in the USSR of course this
after Stalin but anyhow at the same time
what he does when he's talking about dr.
Stern is he uses it to talk about all of
the philosophical ideas that he
expresses in his book the history of
sexuality so okay ultimately his
discussion of the stern affair okay
hits all of the main themes of the
history of sexuality which was
interested in sort of medical discourse
discourses about the prison and about
sexuality okay about the way that power
and knowledge come together and how they
produce our ideas about truth so he's
talking about these things by talking
about the stern affair so in one way
he's using something which is very
popular in the media to also get his own
philosophical ideas out there to the
general public
okay um now he's using this major media
event to drive home a political um
narrative his sort of political
perspective but also his ethical
perspective and also his philosophical
perspective and he's doing this in
contradiction to what many people think
is well television is now controlling
how intellectuals are seen in the public
eye okay but he's saying no no I'm gonna
use television to do my thing like to
put my agenda out there okay so that's a
really good example what happens on this
particular show of how into
actuals are also deploying the media for
their own ends it's not uniquely sort of
just TV controlling how intellectuals
are seen by the general public now a lot
of times there's a big debate in France
about the role of intellectuals on the
media and whether or not the media has
sort of denigrated their status in the
public sphere one thing that is true is
that the media does shape how we
understand people so for example
Foucault died of AIDS in 1984 and a lot
of the television coverage that we see
of him after 1984 is linking his memory
to AIDS okay what's really interesting
is that he never publicly evolved the
fact that he was homosexual when he was
in France and he never really talked
about gay rights or anything like that
but after his death this becomes an
important way for the public to
understand him as a gay man who was a
homosexual died of AIDS etc etc etc so
we can see that the media works both
ways sometimes intellectuals can use the
media for their own agendas sometimes
the media uses its own agenda to shape
how the public understands intellectuals
now some people would say that basically
the effects of television are inherently
negative for intellectual and cultural
life and we see this in statements like
this which we get from a very prominent
intellectual neighbors used to Bray
who's sort of parodying you know he says
now that's my idea of a philosopher and
this is a very sort of popular
philosopher named Bernard already lovey
okay you know and someone says to him
well did his ideas convince you and
they're like no but just look at him I
mean he looks like a philosopher it's
sort of back to Bachelard
right he looks like a philosopher we
should trust this guy okay and this is
obviously a critique of what television
can do but another thing of course is
that people are afraid of the way that
television is now controlling the
commercial market right it has
tremendous power to shape intellectual
life then again as Foucault himself says
I shall never be convinced that a book
is bad just because its author has been
seen on television but of course it
isn't good for that reason alone either
now drained of political valence by a
controlling government during the 1950's
philosophy on TV served as a sort of
abstract symbol of French cultural
regeneration and it promotes this
Universal patriarchal vision of French
cultural superiority in the 1960s
television turned to philosophy to try
and pacify the tensions of a
post-colonial
public and once television liberalized
in the aftermath of the student
revolutions of 1968 we can see that
philosophers are starting to acknowledge
some of these tensions and
contradictions that have been existing
in French history in the postwar moment
and assuming a public role as mediatic
intellectuals on the small screen by the
1980's French TV becomes one of the most
important platforms for philosophy in
France and during the 1990s its
remarkable eight new shows on philosophy
he's like not individual programmes but
actual series are produced between 1994
and 1997 on French television including
a sitcom called la filo Sanofi which
means philosophy according to Philippe
which actually takes place sort of like
Beverly Hills 90210 it's about high
school students in a high school
philosophy class okay so you see this
real popularization of philosophy and we
have philosophy cafes where people go
and talk about philosophy and cafes and
we have fellow cabinet which is where
you would go and instead of seeing a
psychologist you would actually go and
consult a philosopher who's going to
tell you read Socrates he will solve
your depression or whatever right and
then we get sort of the American
follow-up to that where we get books
like from Plato to prozac I think that's
the correct it's either prozac to plate
or Plato to prozac but it's you know
this sort of notion that if we read
philosophy it'll solve our problems okay
so one of the things that I'm arguing
is that television has a really
important role to play in helping to
bring philosophy into the public sphere
in France and actually to change the way
that philosophy is done it popularizes
it and it gives us a new form of
philosophy which is sort of what we
might call philosophy light right it's
popular philosophy for the masses it's
gonna solve your social and ethical and
moral problems and of course this is
important because at this moment right
in the aftermath of 1989 what happened
in 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall end of
communism in Eastern Europe many people
say sort of an end of ideologies a
crisis we have world secularization
going on it's interesting because now
we're sort of going back to religion but
people are looking for you know what is
it how do how do we know how to act in
this world where all of these things
that we had believed in for so long are
really changing and one of the things
that we can see is that for the French
at least philosophy becomes a an
important way of doing that now I think
sort of too close I want us to look at
one final clip of Michel Foucault okay
because one of the big critiques of
philosophy on TV is that it's not
possible for us to really talk about
intellectual ideas on television because
television is antithetical to that
television is all about sound bites and
like you know short blips so let's look
at philosophy on TV in Foucault and this
is again back to that program from 1976
where he's talking about the stern
affair but then he returns at the end
talking about his own work
let me just close the door over there
does that door close I think they're
starting in the next room
so in closing I think that what I'm
really arguing to do that to you is that
my work reveals that in France the sort
of social and political and cultural
conflicts that have permeated the
post-war period have all been orbiting
around one central question what does it
mean in a modern multicultural nation to
be French and we can see debates over
this and things like the recent debate
over the headscarf affair when it was
outlawed just a couple years ago for
Muslim schoolgirls I'm no longer allowed
to wear head scarves to school right or
in the riots that took place all through
France in October of 2005 right we can
see that this question what does it mean
to be French who qualifies as French has
yet to be resolved and the stakes of
this investigation are very high for the
French philosophy has long been a way of
inculcating this notion of Frenchness
into the public and so we see them
seizing on philosophy as a way of
ensuring that if you're educated in this
particular way okay you will be more
French right the stakes of this kind of
question are very high because they
extend beyond the boundaries of France
and they raise issues that really strike
at the heart of our understandings of
the role of education what can education
do in a democratic society of this
relationship between high and popular
culture how do we resolve like the
relationship between philosophy which is
really high culture
the emergence of visual culture
television this is how most people learn
about the world these days right they
watch TV of the effects of the media on
the intellectual field and really about
the very survival of national identities
in a globalizing world what does it mean
now for television when we're facing
satellite technology right cable network
all of these things how do you retain a
sense of national identity in the face
of American hegemony for example so
these are the kinds of things that I
think an examination of the televising
of philosophy in France can give us some
insights into and raise questions for us
about how other nations also achieve
this through the use of the media and
that's basically what I want to share
with you today I'd be happy to answer
any questions that you have okay thank
you
you can stand at the mic or you can
speak loudly 1982 good question okay so
question is you know is is television
totally private now is it partially
public and partially private it is part
in part there are pasta
there are a number of public stations
and there are a whole slew of private
stations some of them are what we call
terrestrial channels they're not
satellite right and then we have a
multiplication of hundreds and hundreds
just like in the United States of cable
channels and things like that which are
all private at this point and what is
interesting is that those philosophy
shows that I mentioned from the 1990s
the eight shows that came on the air
almost all of them were on public TV so
we can see that the government this is
part of a government agenda to let get
philosophy across to the public but yeah
so it's a it's a mixed now but when we
look at sort of major networks major
networks are half and half pretty much
okay thanks anything else yes
right right right that's a really
interesting question you know it's funny
in the aftermath of world war two
there's an organization called UNESCO
UNESCO which is based in Paris actually
and they did a study of European
countries of the role of philosophy in
European countries because one of the
things that they argued was that it was
because not enough countries studied
philosophy that we went to war now
there's a big argument okay that if we
had a really educated public okay if we
educate our public so that the public
knows how to think critically then
they're gonna make smart decisions and
they're gonna be good citizens and
they're not going to get us into
horrific things like a Holocaust right
we're not going to end up with genocides
and things like that and they repeat
this in 1995 UNESCO which is this big
organization
goes out and does a worldwide study of
the status of philosophy around the
world and the argument that they make is
that anywhere that democracy goes
philosophy follows so the minute that
you have a country that becomes a
democratic country okay then philosophy
starts to be taught in the high schools
and in the universities a very
interesting argument I'm not sure you
know that we can completely back it up
everywhere but um what we do see and
your question is interesting from the
perspective of you know okay if the
French are saying philosophy is ours
it's all about Frenchness then what do
we do with like European Union
integration etc etc do we want to spread
that out there well a sort of
contradiction which is inherent in the
notion of what it means to be French is
that the French also think that they
have a purchase on universalism if we
think back to the french revolution
liberty equality fraternity napoleon
we're gonna go out and conquer all of
europe right we're gonna take and we're
gonna spread all of these universal
ideals which are ours but they're really
good and you should all have them it's
sort of that idea okay france
philosophy it's ours they're really good
you should have them too okay but um not
quite to the extent that we do maybe
could sort of argue I think a little bit
that it still remains something that is
there's a fundamental sort of Frenchness
about intellectual culture people are
very proud of that there so it's a
little bit of a contradiction inside of
it it's a good question yeah anything
else yes
does it as intensely promote philosophy
today is in the 20th century well we
certainly have not had that same those
those television shows a lot of them end
by the nineteen like 1998-99 so we start
to see sort of a drop-off afterwards I
think that there's a little bit a little
bit of a decline in the promotion of
philosophy at the moment but you still
do see quite a bit of it I mean in
nineteen when was it 2004 there were
eight bestsellers which were popular
philosophy books and we still see
colossal I popular philosophy books
hitting the bestseller list and selling
you know a hundred thousand five hundred
thousand copies which is unheard of you
know for the United States we wouldn't
tend to have that kind of thing
happening so it's still important but I
think there are specific moments in in
French history when it's more important
than others and I would argue that it's
during the 90s there's sort of a crisis
about national identity that happens in
the aftermath of the end of communism
etcetera etc that sort of pushes it into
the public eye and then it's sort of
stepped back from that a little bit
right now and we'll see whether whether
it happens again I mean I don't know but
yeah good question yes
right
right right so right okay so question is
you know what who counts as a
philosopher in France you know and does
this include non-western figures okay
largely the focus is on Western figures
largely the focus is on French men there
are very few women ever seen on
television as philosophers even actually
French female philosophers who do exist
rarely appear on TV so there is
definitely a focus sort of on the white
male French philosopher by the same
token of something else you were saying
that I was gonna address the whole
question of what does it mean to be who
is a philosopher right when you start a
study like this and you're trying to
determine well Who am I actually gonna
look at right I mean what I did I went
over to France I was thinking about the
fact that these guys seem to be so
famous I went to the television archive
I went to the database I punched into
the database philosophy and bang I had
3,500 hits and I thought oh my goodness
you know what the hell are these people
watching but they've got all these shows
on philosophy but then the question is
who are they who are the philosophers
how do I know who these guys are right
or women okay
so in order to figure that out because
one of the things that makes you a
philosopher in France is that you have
to pass a very high exam it's called the
aggregation and if you pass that exam
then you're considered to have attained
the highest level of philosophical
training okay
so that qualifies you as a philosopher
but for my work what I actually did is I
let the media tell me who philosophers
were so if someone was called a
philosopher on French TV
I said aha they're a philosopher okay
whether they'd actually had
philosophical training or not I use them
in my corpus because it's one of the
things that sort of methodologically how
do you figure out who you're looking at
and who you're not looking at because
some people sort of cross those
boundaries like bourdieu who's actually
a sociologist or levy strops who's
trained as a philosopher and independent
gee or stuff like that so basically I
live in media determine that but largely
it is Western there is some there is
some looking at sort of people from the
Orient but much much much less much less
yeah any other questions well thank you
very much for your attention and enjoy
the rest of your week and for inviting
me here I appreciate it
