Sartre's second century

The New Sartre: A Postmodern Progenitor? 115
assumptions by turning his critical vision towards complexity and
constellation rather than stasis and univocity.
Another significant respect in which Sartre's political outlook contrasts
with the postmodernist view is his search for a primary political agent
which, as Pontalis has noted, changes as Sartre's political trajectory
evolves. In his early political period this agent is the individual, in his
middle phase the Communist Party (PCF), and in his later period, the
youth. This clashes directly with the postmodern project to pluralise
political agency (or to dissolve it altogether, as in the case of Baudrillard)
in order to prevent the imposition of the viewpoint of a single hegemonic
group. Postmodernists decentre the importance of the proletariat as a
primary political agent, favouring instead a kind of patchwork alliance
between different and disparate discourses, knowledges and groups. By
contrast, in Anti-Semite and Jew, Sartre argues for the prime historical
importance and status of the proletariat, arguing that it is not merely one
oppressed group among several, but a "universal class" which holds the
key to the liquidation of oppression:
The reason why the revolutionary adopts the standpoint of the proletariat is
first of all because this is his own class, then because it is oppressed,
because it is by far the most numerous, so that its fate tends to merge with
that of humanity, and finally because the consequences of its victory
necessarily entail the suppression of classes. 34
Sartre steadily distances himself from this Marxist viewpoint as his
work evolves, turning instead, in his final political period, to the youth and
to student groups as a prime focus for progressive political change.
However, although the object of his focus changes as his work evolves, his
political project consistently inclines towards unity embodied in his idea of
a prime political agent—an idea that postmodernist political thinking
rejects (following Lyotard) as terroristic and exclusionary.
This tension between Sartre's universalising and unifying political
aims and the postmodern preference for multiplicity, difference,
fragmentation and plurality can be seen in part in the changing role of the
intellectual following 1968 in France, which led Sartre to question and
revise his own status as a classic intellectual. This came most notably into
focus in 1969 when, addressing a meeting of student groups at the
Mutualite, he was given the instruction "Sartre, sois bref—"Sartre, be
brief'. 35 This small incident was representative of a wider shift in the role
34 Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 72.
35 For a description of this incident see Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, 780-81.