Sartre's second century

158 Chapter Eleven
the page in bold, laying claim to subsequent words and ideas. The
expressive nature of "Jean-Paul Sartre" appears in this way much as
"Maurice Chevalier" appears on the face and body of the female
impersonator. Levy's comments are likewise claimed by his name,
although for most readers he is an unfamiliar character, shrouded in
mystery and controversy. Thus, we create a fictitious identity for Levy
which takes ownership over the words that follow his initials. But while
this takes place, the content of the Sartre-Levy discussion contradicts the
gesture of its supposedly straightforward form. We watch as Sartre, a
lifelong atheist, adopts a younger man's religious vocabulary in order to
think with him. Sartre petitions us, the reader, to understand the
importance of their collaboration. Unlike a traditional interview where two
individuals exchange ideas back and forth, Hope Now is an effort to create
"plural thoughts". We witness an experiment in a way of thinking and
doing philosophy. Still, this experiment takes place on a page that visually
maintains the traditional interview format, and thus a white space
continues to separate the initials of the interlocutors, as if to say: "We may
be thinking together, but each of us deserves our own voice." The political
and ethical analogies here are numerous, and Sartre delights in using them
to full effect.
The result is a unique literary and philosophical experience that
destabilises the traditional concept of the interview. These metastable
states without equilibrium are the subject of my investigation. After all,
our experience of Hope Now is obviously not reducible to that of an
impersonation. Let us, then, attempt to grasp the text in all its uniqueness
and see whether it brings us any new insights. Before doing this, however,
we need to dive more deeply into Sartre's own thoughts on the difference
between philosophy and literature.
Sartre's Distinction between Literature and Philosophy
In the course of an interview given in May 1975, Sartre stated that he
had never had a stylistic ambition for philosophy, defining style as "first of
all, economy [...] making sentences in which several meanings co-exist
and in which the words are taken as allusions, as objects rather than as
concepts." 6 He says unequivocally: "In philosophy a word must signify a
Cumming's excellent article, "Role-Playing: Sartre's transformation of Husserl's
phenomenology".
"An interview with Jean-Paul Sartre", with Michael Rybalka, et al. I first
encountered this quotation in Jonathan Webber, "Notes on the Translation". For
his part, Webber uses the passage to justify the consistency with which he