Does this guy earn more than he does?
“Between this system of law that governs actions and relates to a subject of will, and consequently the indefinite repeatability of the error, and the outline of the salvation and perfection that concerns the subjects, which implies a temporal scansion and an irreversibility, there is, I think, no possible integration…”
Yes, without a doubt. Bayard is unable to suppress the bitterness that instinctively makes him detest this voice. The police have to battle people like this for taxpayers’ funds. They’re functionaries, like him, except that he deserves to be remunerated by society for his work. But this Collège de France, what is it exactly? Founded by François I, okay: he read that in the entrance hall. Then what? Courses open to all, but of interest only to work-shy lefties, retired people, lunatics, or pipe-smoking teachers; improbable subjects that he’s never even heard of before … No degrees, no exams. People like Barthes and Foucault paid to spout a load of woolly nonsense. Bayard is already sure of one thing: no one comes here to learn how to do a job. Episteme, my ass.
When the voice wraps up by giving the date and time of next week’s lecture, Bayard returns to Lecture Hall A, elbows his way through the flood of students pouring out through the swing doors, finally enters the lecture hall, and spots a bald, bespectacled man at the very back of the room wearing a turtleneck sweater under his jacket. He looks at once sturdy and slender. He has a determined jaw with a slight underbite and the stately demeanor of those who know that they are valued by the world. His head is perfectly shaved. Bayard joins him on the stage. “Monsieur Foucault?” The big baldy is gathering his notes in the relaxed manner of a teacher whose work is done. He turns welcomingly toward Bayard, aware of what levels of shyness his admirers must sometimes overcome in order to speak to him. Bayard takes out his card. He, too, is well aware of its effect. Foucault stops dead for a second, looks at the card, stares at the policeman, then goes back to his notes. In a theatrical voice, as if for the attention of what’s left of the audience, he declares: “I refuse to be identified by the authorities.” Bayard pretends he hasn’t heard him: “It’s about the accident.”
The big baldy shoves his notes in his satchel and exits the stage without a word. Bayard runs after him: “Monsieur Foucault, where are you going? I have to ask you a few questions!” Foucault strides up the steps of the lecture hall. He replies without turning around, loud enough for all the remaining students to be able to hear him: “I refuse to be confined by the authorities!” The audience laughs. Bayard grabs his arm: “I just want you to give me your version of the facts.” Foucault stands still and says nothing. His entire body is tensed. He looks down at the hand gripping his arm as if it were the most serious human rights violation since the Cambodian genocide. Bayard does not loosen his hold. There are murmurs around them. After a minute or so of this, Foucault finally speaks: “My version is that they killed him.” Bayard is not sure he’s understood this correctly.
“Killed him? Killed who?”
“My friend Roland.”
“But he’s not dead!”
“He is already dead.”
From behind his glasses, Foucault stares at his interrogator with the intensity of the shortsighted. And slowly, emphasizing each syllable, as if concluding a long argument whose secret logic he alone knows, he announces:
“Roland Barthes is dead.”
“But who killed him?”
“The system, of course!”
The use of the word system confirms to the policeman exactly what he feared: he’s surrounded by lefties. He knows from experience that this is all they talk about: society’s corruption, the class struggle, the “system” … He waits unenthusiastically for the rest of the speech. Foucault, magnanimously, deigns to enlighten him:
“Roland has been mercilessly mocked in recent years. Because he had the power of understanding things as they are and, paradoxically, inventing them with unprecedented freshness, he was criticized for his jargon, he was pastiched, parodied, caricatured, satirized…”
“Do you know if he had enemies?”
“Of course! Ever since he joined the Collège de France—I brought him here—the jealousy has intensified. All he had were enemies: the reactionaries, the middle classes, the fascists, the Stalinists, and, above all, above all, the rancid old critics who never forgave him!”
“Forgave him for what?”
“For daring to think! For daring to question their outdated bourgeois ideas, for highlighting their vile normative functions, for showing them up for what they really were: prostitutes sullied by idiocy and compromised principles!”
“But who, in particular?
“You want names? Who do you think I am? The Picards, the Pommiers, the Rambauds, the Burniers! They’d have executed him themselves given the chance. Twelve bullets in the Sorbonne courtyard, beneath the statue of Victor Hugo!”
Suddenly, Foucault strides off again and Bayard is caught off-guard. The professor gets a head start of several yards, leaves the lecture hall and races up the stairs. Bayard runs after him, close behind. Their footsteps ring loudly on the stone floors. The policeman calls out: “Monsieur Foucault, who are those people you mentioned?” Foucault, without turning around: “Dogs, jackals, mules, morons, nobodies, but above all, above all, above all! the servants of the established order, the scribes of the old world, the pimps of a dead system of thought who seek to make us breathe the stench of its corpse forever with their obscene sniggers.” Bayard, clinging to the banister: “What corpse?” Foucault, storming up the stairs: “The corpse of the dead system of thought!” Then he laughs sardonically. Trying to find a pen in the pockets of his raincoat while keeping up with the professor, Bayard asks him: “Could you spell Rambaud for me?”
8
The superintendent enters a bookstore to buy some books but he is unused to such places and struggles to find his way among the aisles. He cannot find any works by Raymond Picard. The bookseller, who seems relatively knowledgeable, mentions in passing that Raymond Picard is dead—something Foucault had omitted to tell him—but that he can order New Criticism or New Fraud? On the other hand, he does have a copy of Enough Decoding! by René Pommier, a disciple of Raymond Picard who lays into structuralist criticism (that, in any case, is how the bookseller sells him the book, which doesn’t get him much further), and most notably, Roland Barthes Made Easy, by Rambaud and Burnier. This is quite a slim book with a green cover, a photograph of Barthes staring out severely from an orange oval. Coming out of the frame, a Crumb-style cartoon character says “hee-hee,” grinning and laughing, mockingly, one hand over his mouth. In fact, I’ve checked, and it is Crumb. But Bayard has never heard of Fritz the Cat, the countercultural cartoon strip and film, in which black people are saxophone-playing crows and the hero is a cat in a turtleneck who, Kerouac-style, smokes joints and fucks anything that moves in Cadillacs, against a backdrop of urban riots and burning Dumpsters. Crumb is famous, though, for the way he drew women, with their big, powerful thighs, their lumberjack shoulders, their breasts like mortar shells, and their mares’ asses. Bayard is no cartoon-strip connoisseur, and does not make the connection. But he buys the book, and the Pommier, too. He doesn’t order the Picard, because at this stage of the investigation dead authors don’t interest him.
The superintendent sits in a café, orders a beer, lights a Gitane, and opens Roland Barthes Made Easy. (Which café? The little details are important for reconstructing the atmosphere, don’t you think? I see him at the Sorbon, the bar opposite the Champo, the little arthouse cinema at the bottom of Rue des Écoles. But, in all honesty, I don’t have a clue: you can put him wherever you want.) He reads: