[My French is sketchy, but perhaps someone will take up Bourdieu's call to collective work and polish it up :o) By the way, does anyone know what meeting he was addressing, or what paper originally published this?]
May 18, 1999, Op Ed
The Intellectuals and the War
by Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologist
Professor of the College de France*
I would like first of all to acknowledge the work done by Catherine Samary in editing the text "Stop the Bombing, Self-Determination" which may be associated in some minds with my name.(1) Today, I would like essentially to propose a working program, and a method of work to go with it. My hope is that this meeting will have a future. I think that we can find, here, in the emotions that these events have aroused, the point of departure for an enduring collective project, not only about the war, but about the ensemble of questions that are bound up with it -- a collective intellectual enterprise in the service of the victims.
My first remark is in the form of a warning, addressed to all of us, but first of all to myself. I believe it would be good if we could avoid the passionate and emotional approach, bound up as it is with the kind of exhibitionistic narcissism that leads each of us to want his own opinion-column, his own little opinion, his own response -- in short, to show off how clever we are. I would say instead "Let us work collectively," knowing full well this is very difficult. Each of us has his own ideas and contradictory thoughts, and often we just prefer to be silent, sometimes even out of modesty. But working collectively in a network will at the very least permit us to combine our competences.
Secondly, I believe that we must keep to the spirit of our initial text (2), which can be read without embarrassment a month later, even though many things have happened since. It is important to preserve this orientation of refusing false alternatives, which function like a trap, constantly reinforced every time we listen to the media. There's a big risk in talking about the war in Kosovo, because it means that journalists will probably reduce our words to a caricature. Lord knows what will be said about our meeting today, despite our warnings. But I'd like to quote Karl Kraus: "If I must choose between the lesser of two evils, I choose neither." I think we must demand the right not to choose, the right to refuse to excuse either the crimes of the Serbs or those of NATO. We must refuse to let the problems be posed in these terms.
What can the intellectuals assembled here do? They can work intellectually, of course. They can function as a sort of "think tank." This is a word that is generally employed in a very different context and is associated with the domination of the powerful. But why can't we make a "think-tank" without financing, without capital, without an address, on the basis of the good will of all? Why can't we meet as a sort of international and interdisciplinary working group, with each putting his intellectual arms at the service of the collective?
What would be the programme for this working group? First off, there's the work of inquiry and the dissemination of information. It would make sense to use the Internet to make contact between people, etc, as sort of an Agence-France Presse of immediate history. Our ideal would what you'd get if you had several copies of Pierre Vidal-Naquet all going at once. Secondly, there is the work of critique. An observatory of the media, with perhaps Henri Maler among them, would make a critique of the language utilized in this war. How can one speak for example of a "humanitarian catastrophe?" How can an expression this absurd be repeated without any self-consciousness by the majority of journalists?
Thirdly, there is the work of critical analysis, bringing together researchers of different disciplines, e.g., economists, historians, legal scholars, in order to reflect, for example, on the connections between the movement against neoliberalism in general and this war in particular. One might get a grasp on the relation between the concentration of capital and the fragmentation of ethnic groups and nationalist movements (taking as a foundation, for example, the work of Catherine Samary on the role of the IMF in Bosnia). Doesn't the break-up of Yugoslavia have something to show us about the policies of the IMF? Or one might work on the situation in Russia, which strikes me as agonizing. It would be necessary to assemble a whole range of political and economic analyses. And it would be necessary to investigate the outside interests who are working and have worked towards the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and in particular to investigate the different roles played by Germany (and Austria) and the United States.
Another working group could organize around the history of the Balkans and the responsibilities both past and present of the nations of Europe. History is not an instrument of fatalization. On the contrary, it can be the instrument of defatalization. It is never too late -- even if we had to wait 10 years before starting this enterprise -- to try and establish the genesis of the various nationalisms, not to say the racisms, and especially that of the Serbs. Especially because we know this last one had intellectual origins. Serbian nationalism is the marriage of academic historians (it might be necessary to re-read Danilo Kis's _The Anatomy Lesson_) and television. Milosevic is their armed offspring.
Fifthly, there is the work of research on universal rights. Can one continue to accept the role of the United States as the world's policeman? How can we define intervention, and the limits of sovereignty that implies, and the limits of those limits? And how to discuss all this in a rational manner rather than passionately? This group, perhaps gathered around Monique Chemillier-Gendreau, would work towards giving a juridical content to our ethical mental states. At the moment, people on the Left are denouncing "human rights-ism." Ten years ago, it was an insult hurled by the Right at the Left. Now, one side of the Left is hurling it at the other. Is it not possible for us to give a serious political, juridical and philosophical content to the idea that all people have rights?
And then there is the work of prognostication, in the sense not of predicting the future, but of get a grasp on the probabilities and tendencies of the present. It is necessary to look beyond Kosovo and its neighbors, notably toward Russia . . .
And finally there is the question of Europe. It seems that one of the effects of the war in Kosovo will be the death of social Europe (to the extent it ever existed) to the profit of military Europe. I personally think the death of social Europe is not nothing. If one proposes a grand Balkan federation, it would have a completely different meaning as part of socially deepened European federation.
Clearly, I think that we can all agree to call for an international conference under the aegis of the UN. And from this perspective, why shouldn't intellectuals act a little bit like legislators in an area when legislators have been shrinking from the task? This is why is seems to me important to start this collective work, on a European level -- a cumulative work, capable of constructing new responses.
* Last work was _La Domination masculine_ by Editions du Seuil, 1998.
(1) This refers to the public appeal published in Le Monde on March 31st -- NDLR.
(2) Ditto.