[lbo-talk] Conversation with Derrida

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Thu Nov 5 02:06:23 PST 2009


Robert Wood: you would have to do some work to establish that this cynical opportunism was the result of his philosophy.

Georg Lukacs already did that work, in his book Destruction of Reason, first published I think in 1948. He has no difficulty explaining that the irrationalist philosophy developed alongside and in correspondence with the German reaction.

There is an interesting account of how it was that Lukacs came to be lecturing on German philosophy at that time. He was living in Moscow, and in dread of being taken away by the KGB.

'You had to have your little suitcade, toothpaste, toilet paper, two razor blades, one for shaving, one to kill yourself if the torture is too bad. This is the real world, not America, not California. This is what the world is all about. He said, he was all packed, in Moscow, ready for when the knock would come on the door, and it came. And he said to his wife very calmly: "Es ist gekommen. It has come. Auf Wiedersehn." The car had drapes, a KGB car, and the airplane was blacked out, of course. He wondered to which camp they were taking him. He said to himself: "Interesting. The still treat me well enough to fly me to the Gador. It was still called Gador, not the Gulag. Then, enormous fences of barbed wire for miles and miles. He walks in, everyone salutes him, they say: "You are Professor Lukacs. These are the captured German Generals from Stalingrad, the staff of von Paulus. You have been appointed to teach them German history and literature." He said he almost fainted. He said proudly he was just able to hold on to the suitcase so as not to faint. An hour later be began with a lecture on Heine. In front of von Paulus and the two thousand captured German staff officers, his first lecture was on Heine.' George Steiner, Lukacs after Communism, Eva Corredor (ed) Duke University Press, 1997,page 70



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