Céline and Anarchist Culture

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Yves PagsCline and Anarchist Culture

1 is important to remember one's first impressions of a book. When 1first read Voyaseau bout de la nuit at the age of six teen. Jfeh as tho ugh 1were entering into an uncensored language. one that bypasses the usua lsplit between the spoken and the written :above ail. 1 feh as though 1had encountereda work whose rebllious nature and resistance to social norms and mores confusedthe boundaries between poetry and pondes.Soon after. l leamed thar the author, who haddescribed Voyase as a text that was "toc anarchistic," if not the only novelof the cenrury10 have a "communist seul." had , since 1937 ,alsow rittent hree ant i-Semitic pamphlet s andhad thus effectively collaborated, at least bywrit ingthese impassioned tracts, in the xenophobie massacre of the 1940S.1From then on,we needed only to choose our side\ For sornepeople, Cline was the inspired destroyer ofthe dominant arder, the a rbic crit ic of "theend of the night" of modern misery. Foret hers, he was the filthy loudrnouth , aut horof raci st slurs and herald of the immin entThe SoUlhAllamie QlUl rrer/y : Spring '991.Copyright Cl '991 by Duke University Press.ccc o 8 ~ 8 ? / 1 1 . 5 0


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massacre. I t was thus necessary ro forget one or the orher. if not roreclaim one instead of the e ther. since his work seemed tOhe Ioreverirreconcilable with itse lf. Unlike Rimbaud, who des uoyed his pen sothat he could become an arms dea ler, C line left us an oe uvre that isnei ther Iocomplete no r repudiated . On the contrary. it oscitlates hetween severa! incompatible impulses that Cline. the genius of one ortwc books. would defin itely have subordinated tO the levet of unr esolvab le ideological debate s. After reading Guigno!'s Band, however,it seerned to me that th is schemaric view of the Clinean dilemmamissed th e essen tla l point. Published in 194'1, just a Iew yea rs af ter hisracist pamphlets. Cline' s English saga continued the insidious under mining initiated in Voyage: th is was accomplished by the double entique of dominant soc ial no rms and of the registers of literary writ ing.Tha nks to his obsessive rhetoric, the emergence of antt-jew tsh. am iblack. an rt-homosexcal. ann-commurust banaliues did no t diminishthe rebeUious spirit of his first book . The ant i-Semitic ramer did notreplace th e iconoclastie novest : from beginning tc end , t hey moreor Iess coexisred. construc nng. work by wo rk, an ambivalent oeuvreth at was often contr adictory and wrought by politi cal turmoi!.As amb ivalent as it may he. this Clinean ideologiea l jumble isnot timeless : it helongs to a very specifie period . Its reacnonary orlefti st te rnpteuons are related tc an important histor ical t ime lagproduced by World War l. In his fict ion, Cline never stoppee re .producing the Iroze n, nosta lgie image of t he early 19005 as an Eden ,in add ition to feeding his raci st obsession with a visionary paci ficism taken from his apocalypnc tessons in murderous bellicos ity. Inothe r words, he polemically Iruerpreted and fictionally transposedthe epoe hs thr ough whie h he lived not according to the politicaldivisions of the 19305 and 19405. but by means of a double psychicuniverse ; th e ideal ism of the pre-1914 world and the tra uma of theGreat War.

If we were tO t ry to locate the links hetwee n, for example. Drieula Rochelle 's or Barbusse 's ideology and Cline's, we would run therisk of missing the tr ue stakes of the latt er 's ideology. By return ingto t he sources of the extremisl discou rses specifie to the years 1871 1914. however. we ean exa mine the raw forms of th e two originaltropes in Cline's politi ca l statements.The first cornes from an ultra-

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righl-wing discourse th ar enjoyed a brief popularity arnidst the racistfer vor of t he Dreyfus affol ir and was given a second wind du ring theearly 19005by numerous ulrra-patriouc. corporarist. and raci st movements. The seco nd evolves within a composi te libertarian dtscou rsedriven by a vartety of forces, from ana rchie unionism to radical individualism. whic h attai ned its momen t of glory in th e lB90s beforegradu ally decli ning during the belle poque. The resurgence of a pre1914 xenophobie and gene rally reactionary discourse in Cline's pamphlets of 1937- 41 and in his post'1945 nove ls is clear. This discoursecor unbutes to a fundament al coherence in Cline's work that ls impossible to ignore. It st ill remains ta he seen whether t he Iibertarianresu rgence of th e ea r ly 19005. the relari vely unknown side of the pre Clinean politi ca l umverse. furnishes his work wit h anot her sort ofcoherence.

wecen discern three axes within the remnants oflihertarian thought:the critique o f normative knowledae, wh ieh is based on th e denunciation of th e domi nant scholarly and acade mie cultu res; the critique ofthe notion of progress. wh ich is characte rized by a certa in defiancetoward the cult of mechanized and attenaung work : and the critiqueof the wo rking class and its proletarien messianism, which is linked tca reject ion of the oppressive laws of social conformity and of the ideaof c1ass consciousness. But this schemauc classification poses a newprob lem. Thse thre e axes essentia lly resume beeng. term for ter rn,th e dead bo rses specifie to the th mes found in pre- 1914, ulr ra -right wing discou rse: ami-inrellectualisrn. which critiqued the decadenceof the democratie intelligentsia in t he name of a more or less aristoc rat ic elitism; reactionary anriprogressivism. which rejec ted Enlightenment th ought and applauded the retu rn tO ancien rgime values;and moralistie antimalerialism. which denied c1assantagonsm i n thename of a systematic and corporatist conception of national community. The convergence of ana rchie and ult ra right-wing foundationsin Cline's work is not simply a coincidence. The referent ia l ambivalences of his ext remisms seem to sha re a single ideological core.which the histori an Zeev Stern heil labe is "pre fascist" in his book Nidroite, Ni ga uche.' One could say that. thiTty years later. C line re-


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tumed re the sources of the revolunonary right's laboratory of ideasby going down the same convoluted paths of this initial synthesls be.tween the antldemocranc left of the post-Dreyfus era and the moralneocorporatism of the Action Frana ise. Cline in turn used the pre.text of rhetorcal anarchy in order to camouflage the ult ra-right -wingessence of his texts . His seemingjy ideological cont radictions thusconfonn tc the framework of a superseding coherence, thar of the"nat ional popu lism" of the turn of the century.Th is a priori , seducnve hypothesis seems nonetheless to omit anessential aspec t of Clinean ambiguity, ln Cline's work, fascinatingpolemica l filiations tend to become purely backward-looki ng, conseevanve. and racist litanies wit hout giving rise tc any new, rightwing system of values. His react ionary babbling does not becometru ly Ptai nist or pro-Nazi enthusiasm, giving his blessing to Iamily.work, and tri umphant Aryanism. The only gesture that his satir icalverve borrows from ultra-rigbt-wing thought is thar of a totally selfconta ined, redundant denunciation: "a system of hostilities wit h noway out."1 Cline does not follow this positive element found withinthe Iasctsr agenda, the Spartan utopia that for certain people indudedthe notions of eugenlcs and pan -Europeanism : in fact , he embracesonly their ragt: for nihilist devalorization. Il is thus essential thar weask ourselves if the I b affinities of his discourse do not alscfeed a voractous. critical negativity. Il is not a question of simply de.tecting the slighrest "revolutionary" positiviey in the sense of a collective, soc ial emancipat ion: bowever. irdoesseem that the moment umof anarchie subversion that surfaces in Cline's fict ion almost imperceptibly valorizes certain ethical or existential perspectives that areby nat ure antiauthorit arian.The critique of scholarly and academie norms of knowleclge mani

fested in ail of Cline's work seems at first to exist for the sake of asocio-lite rary exchangevalue: authenticity. In opposition to the professional dilet tante, Cline offers the model of an "authentic" authorwho attempts to reconcile the existence of the narrato r wit h theidealized life of his characters, This model d osely resembles th at ofthe proletarian writ er glorified in the late 1920 S by Barbusse or Poulaille. But, in the final analys is, we see that Cline's workdoes not fol.low this agenda of social realism, which is supposed ta represent the

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misery of working-d ass conditions whiie actlvely participati ng in itsfight for emancipa tion. Astranger to this literary valorization of c1assconsclousness.Cline, like the Paris Commune writer Jules Valls before him , uses authemicity as a stylist ic weapon . As antibourgeoisas it may d aim to he, this weapon challenges only a single experience. either marginal or "t rregular.' which is in perpetuai oppositionto the class ical, mimetic, and conformist uses of the dominant tanguage. Th is is where Cline gets his repeared praise- that ts to say,for "direct emotion"- which. associa ted wit h his verbal lynching ofthe so-called sophisricated intelligents ia in 8ag


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ln Cline's work . like that of Valls. the satire of intetlectual conformity is fomented by a violent diatribe against the educat ionalsystem_ For the anarchis ts of the early 19oos. scheel was lik e an"antechamber of the barracks," a place for "licking into shape," aplace of "pesky. putiran, and sullen oppression":' for Cline. schoo lemblemeuzes " the disaste r of enchamment [ferie]:" Thse parai lei attacks inevitably conclude in a purely negative critique. whichclose ly resembles, on egain . the ultra .right-wing harangues agatnst"srate educa tion." Neven betess. a number of Cline's novels dep ietthe childlike ex travaganzas thar seern ta survive the wreckage of th isfailed academie space: the "Meanwell Collge" episode in Death onthe lnstoltment Plan ; that o f t he "Orphans of the Red Cross" in Cast/eta Cast/e ; or that of the "idiotie kids" in Riaodoon. The apparentnihilism in his critique of schoo l a llows a space for intermediarycommunities "peopted by children who are at thei r garnes and little noth ings and giddy pleasures and showy stuff." which reminds us of theatmosph re of the "free areas" that the anarchists established dur ingthe belle poque.' We kncw that the young Destouches. as a cavalryman stationed at Rambouillet . had an opportu ni ty tOcome into contact wit h " La Ruche " (The Beehive]. esrablished by the libertar ianpedagog ue Sebastien Faure accordtng to the prtnctptes of "integral"education propagated by the Fourierists. The episode of the "agricultu ral phalanstery" in Deolh on rhe /nstaJ/ment Plan , inspired by th isex perience, a llows Cline to revalor ize anot her typeofplayful . ectectic. and noncoerc tve apprenticeshlp tc knowledge: th e "passiona te"pedagogy of th e utopian sociali st Charles Fourier. The emancipatedbrats of Blme-te-Peut , who "discipline themsetves" and "no longerunderstand obedience," like the "little hordes" of "phatangeue" Fourier ists , are th e New Men ofone of the rare utopias that Cline sparesfrom his apocalyptic polernics.'The critique of the illusion of a working c1assbegins with a meticu lous deconstr uc tion of the concept of the proletariat : "The misfortun e in ail this is tha t the re are no 'common people' in the poignantsense that you understa nd. . The hero ic. egalit'arian proletariatdoesnot exist,"Cline concludes in a letter to Elie Faure dated March1935.' This pithy remark defines the alleged proletariat as an obvious expression of the nothingness of human natur e. a pure dynamic

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of volumary submission. and a collective "hypnotic " violence. Byreduci ng t he popular enrity to the level of vicious proies, tO a sub servient mass or hallucinating crowd. without proposing in retumthe slightest aristocrat ie relief, Cline engages only in an exe rctseof purely nihi listic devalonzarion. Il nevertheless seems thar certa inunspoken anar chie/i ndividualistic assumpti ons wit hin this denunciat ion of prole tarian messianism harbor sorne ethical ourlets at th ehear t ofa socia l space thar Cline describes as a game of the "Romanarena" and of "massacre."ln the moralizing sat ire concemi ng public cowardice and voyeur

ism- whieh, as M.-C. Bellosta notes in Cline ou /'or t de la contra-diction. is borrowed from a profoundly reactionary version of neoJansen ism ' - Cline isolates severa! rare exceptions to the rule ofhuman nature 's false vinees. Thse except ions. as in the case oft he soldie rs Bardarnu and Robinson, or the ir insubordinate and selfmurilated alte r egosof t he years 1911-18. demand the right re " fear,'th ar is to say. the right to an active cowardice. While watching villages burn, they pracnce a "voyeurism" th at distances them from theinsa ne bellicosity. Princhard 's monologue at the beginn ing of Voyaaeestablishes the minimum agenda for thi s ethical alternative; it con s ists of an opposition berween collec tive cowardice and a simple. passive resistance "wit hcut ideal ," between the honors earned via socialst ruggte and a "fundamental unwon hiness.' berween a "formai disgrace" and an "automatic dishonor." Permitting oneself to "stink"in order to remain "pacifist." tc be "disgusti ng enough to dtsgustthe Nauonv's-ct bese are the paradoxically positive princi ples of C linea n resislant sroicism that we also find in t he writings of AndrColcmer. the insubordnat e libertanan who wrote in 1916:

1was not fleeing the hattl e by deserting. rat her. 1 was lookingfor it . Staying in the melee wou ld have been. in every way. acoward ice for me. By deny ing myself to the Nation, 1waseliminating the possibility of ail e fTets and ail repairs. 1was dec1aring my own state of war. 1was positioning myse lf not merelyouts ide thei r melee. but against their melee."

Behind Cline's sa lire of massservility. reactu alized in the pseudoFreudian form of a "sadieo-masochist ic" death drive. lay anolher


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critical reference. tc Discours de la servitude volontaire. written byMomaigne's friend. th e humanist Estienne de La Botie. In this text .wh ich lays bare the masses' "unrelent ing will to serve: ' Il we find Cline's principal insight : "Men ding . , , to ail o t beir sadness . and wecannet coa x them to lei go."!' For the sixteenth-cent ury humanist .the "decis ion tc he a serf" is a direct resuh of the familiar customof "crerinizaticn" th rough the games of the Roman arena and of thereproductio n of despotic relations th roughout th e social pyramld .By stigmatizing the sadcmasochtsttc inertia of the masses in accor.dance with thse same pr inciples. Cline reapproprlat es one of themost charactensnc positions of enack with in the individualist anarchy of th e belle poque. Interestngly enough. during this pencd. LaBotie's Discours was paradoxcally rransformed inro a bible far th ecali tO rebellion . In the final analysts. we can see tha t the Clineancritique of the proleta riat's desire fa r bondage does net att empt inany way ta justify a natural social hierarchy, but instead seeks torevatonze an alternative subversion th at rejects bath the revoluuonary illusions of the workers ' movement and the Stati onsof th e Crossof st ate reform . In his own way, Cline reappropriates th e spir it ofprovocation rhat emblematized certain belle poque "outlaws/scofflaws" who were similar tO the anarchist Jules Bonnot ; in April 1912.Bonnot convened his own death into a war mach ine ta he deployedagain st the double rule of tyranny and servitude alt er he was besiegedat Choisy-le-Roi by hundreds of police and gawking vigilantes. Asear lyas 1910, the young Iibertaria n and Nierzschean Victor Serge explained this pre-Cttnean politk s orthe wcrsr. in ail its posit ivity. asa need "t c make the ignaminy of masters. or even the ignominy ofsc bjugaon. fel t through our obstinate independence."!'Cline's critique of the idea of theproletariat was inspired by Gusta ve Le Bon's early versio n of sociology; beginning in 1895, Le Bonproposed the theor yo f a "psychology of the r o w d ~ in opposit ion tothat of Marxis t materialism.lS According to this psycho sociologist .the masses are incapable of bath initiative and rebellion and arethu s nothing but a mob displaying "irrational" behavior, which, inthe end, does nothi ng but unconsciously follow the u g g e s t o s ofa "leader:' This theory would become reactualized by the massivetyrannies of the twentiet h cent ury, ail of which, from Leninism tO

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Nazism and on th rough the fascisms of Mussolini and Sorel. deve loped an intimidating manual of totafitan an propagand e out of theart of governing by "collective hypncsis." Il is true that Cllne's workconstanuy divides the proletar iat tr uc "hallucina ting" hordes, but ildoes not culminate in a celebration of the leaderc r the modern Princeof Public Opinion. lnstea d, Cline lebrates a "transversal" perspective, which aligns the charisma of the leader wit h the manipulatedcrowd so as to emphasize an individuol J'Oth thot Boes ogainst the currem of the dominant order's commands and the slavish imitation ofthe dominated ; th is is the perspective rha t the Stirnerian ana rchistAlbert Libertad summarized in 1905:"We love the man. we hat e thecrowd. We reiterate the cry of this pamphlet: Asanst the shepherds.aga;nst the Rocks."

If C line 's harangues against the shams of the intellectu a l and theproletariat have much in common with the critical nihi lism of rightand left-wing ex rremtsts. they do not lead to an enthusiasm for thenational populism of the belle poque. but rather ro the paradox ofethical and existemial figures who exhibit underlying affinit ies wi thIibertarian thougbt: the autod idact , who embodies a noti on of apprenn ceshtp without a master and the pedagogical utcpt as of th ePounertsts: and the resister, who glorifies pacifist coun ter-heroismand act ive neutrali ty when confronted by the dead emis of voluntary servitude and the obedience of the masses. We could carry outthe same analysis wit h respec t ro Cline's crit iques of the idea ofprogress and of the symptoms of social "degeneracy". thse alsopresent unusual individual alternatives.Two exempleswould beDoc .tor Semmelweis's experimental skepuctsm. which haunts Cline's enti re oeuvre. and. among ethers. Mre Henrouille 's "gay knowledge,'which suggests the glorification of categorical idiocy. Il is only interms a f this theoretical agenda that we can disti nguish his antiSemitism, which does not generate any covert libertarian perspectiveand does not reveal the underside of the utopian sen ing. Cline'santi Semitism is not the depart ure point for ail of his political un.certainties, as has often becn said, but , on the cont rary, it signifiesthe specific moment when Cline silenced his creative uncertaintiesat their source and sentenced himself lO a racist univoca lity thatc10sed in on itself. an ideological rhetor ic lhal hencefort h became


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a shield, blocking ail the outlets that his aruiauthoritana n affinitieshad previously untocked.It is important to reiterate the way in which Cline litera lly re

appropr tated fragments of liberta rian sensibility : their significant substance was denved from perspectives rhat did not presen t thernselvesas a doctr ine of polilica l concepts, but rather as marginal. part ial.and eccentnc figures, actors in an interior phantasmagoria who areIike ethical or exis temial indices immersed in a fictional space. Anarchy was never more than poteruial ideological rnaterial . a series ofbanalit ies that needed to he reenergiz ed with the help of a subversive imagination and writing. The reactionary side of Cline's work,culminating in the pamphlets of the late 1930S, expressed itself inan ostenrat iously politcal way, which tended to radically simplifyCline's system of thought . to subsume his imagination within a univoca l ideological paradigm. In th is Clinean game of hide-and-seekbetween polirics and Iiteraru re , we need to read beyond the evidenceor proo of supposedly "engaged" texts and look instead to the pottucal unspoken, which probably engages the mental universe of thewriter even more profoundly than thar which is stated : those liberat ng scenar ios thar a literary oeuvre creates, and not the decla ration s of ideological faith , which essenuay serve as decoys for thework: those no rms and conventions that th e oeuvre cunningly subverts under the guise of certain motivating norms and prejudices-the utopies of inrimate asides masked by official slogans.- Translated by Gayle Levy

No. . ."[My book) ts too anarchisticM ; louis-Ferdinand Cline . Iener 10 "N-," 5 Nevember ' 912, in Cahiers Ct/ine 5: Lenres li des amies, e. Col in W. Nenclbeck(Paris , (979), 8, : lene r 10 Georges Altman, J7 October 191 - 1 in Cahiersde l'Herne(Paris, ' 9n ), '95Zeev Ste rnbell. Ni droite, Ni gou

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Céline and Anarchist Culture