Sartre's play Les Mouches (The Flies), first performed in 1943 under German occupation, has long been controversial. While intended to encourage resistance against the Nazis, its approval by the censor indicates that the regime did not recognize the play as a threat. Further, its apparently violent and solitary themes have been read as irresponsible or apolitical. For these reasons, the play has been characterized as ambiguous or worse. Sartre himself later saw it as overemphasizing individual autonomy, and in the view of one critic, it conveys an “existentialist fascism.” In response to this reading, it is necessary to attend to the elements of the play that already emphasize duty to society. From this perspective, the play can be seen as anticipating the concern with collective responsibility usually associated with the later Sartre of the 1960s. More than this, the play's apparent “ambiguity” can be found to exemplify a didacticism that is much more complex than sometimes attributed to Sartre. It is not only an exhortation about ethical responsibility, but also a performance of the difficulties attendant to that duty.
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Sartre's Theater of Resistance: Les Mouches and the Deadlock of Collective Responsibility
Andrew Ryder
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2009
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 78–95 (18 total)
Judith Butler and the Sartrean Imaginary
Kathleen Lennon
Sartre’s Imaginary Personages In his early work The Imaginary , 1 Sartre discusses the performance artist Franconay, ‘a small stout brunette woman’ who is imitating Maurice Chevalier. In this performance ‘that black hair we did not see as black
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 22–37 (16 total)
Performative and Eidetic Simulations
Three Imaginary Regimes
Elad Magomedov
In a famous section of The Imaginary , Sartre discusses a performance of the French actress Claire Franconnay, a short, plump, dark-haired woman who in imitating the actor Maurice Chevalier becomes ‘possessed’ by this tall, thin, light-haired man
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2022
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–22 (22 total)
Editorial
John Gillespie and Sarah Richmond
the light of the influence of existentialism and phenomenology. Sartre’s imaginary personages make up his account of individual and social identities. He sees identity as a performance of the individual, whereas Butler sees it as emerging within a
Two Failures of Left Internationalism
Political Mimesis at French University Counter-Summits, 2010–2011
Eli Thorkelson
counter-summits, which sought to appropriate the gravitas of international summits like the European Council or the G20, and to acquire political recognition by imitating the official performance of discursive authority. The Brussels counter-summit, for
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2018
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 143–169 (27 total)
Jean-Paul Sartre
The Russian Teatr Interviews of 1956 and 1962
Dennis A. Gilbert and Diana L. Burgin
thing is to find an audience. All other problems are secondary to this basic one. An audience exists, of course, and if its response to a play is positive, the play can run for two to three hundred performances. However, the overwhelming majority of this
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–17 (17 total)
Abstracts
’s organizational gambit to wrest local political control from the mainstream parties. This article analyzes the FN’s performance in these elections from the standpoint of political demand and supply. First, it elaborates the social, economic, and partisan
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Abstract
- Pages:
- 155–158 (4 total)
Book Review
Mabogo Percy More, Sartre on Contingency: Antiblack Racism and Embodiment
Thomas Meagher
human values. The differences between the two text are more formal than argumentative. Gordon's texts is, in effect, a phenomenological performance utilizing the phenomenon of antiblack racism to demonstrate the phenomenon of bad faith and vice versa
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2022
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 98–101 (4 total)
Sartre in Austria
Boycott, Scandals, and the Fight for Peace
Juliane Werner
performance in Paris, at the Théâtre Antoine on 2 April 1948, the play’s anti-Communist reputation snowballed, especially in the United States, where the play, translated as Red Gloves , proved so tendentious that Sartre took legal steps to counter its
In Sartre Studies International
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–18 (18 total)
Disruptive Technology
Social Media from Modiano to Zola and Proust
Elizabeth Emery
lies in its apparent simplicity. Where Houellebecq’s press stunts are so over the top as to be identifiable as such, Modiano’s performance of “literarity” is so subtle it does not register as performance. The discarded cartable and cardboard box in
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 76–89 (14 total)