JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Politics323constitutes him, through them all, as Other and threatens him in and through theOthers. To the extent that, for the conscious, lucid Jew, being-Jewish (which is hisstatute for non-Jews) is interiorised as his responsibility in relation to all other Jewsand his being-in-danger, out there, owing to some possible carelessness caused byOthers who mean nothing to him, over whom he has no power and every one of whomis himself like Others (in so far as he makes them exist as such in spite of himself), theJew, far from being the type common to each separate instance, represents on thecontrary the perpetual being-outside-themselves-in-the-other of the members of thispractico-inert grouping. (I call it this because it exists within societies which have anon-Jewish majority and because every child even if he subsequently adopts it withpride and by a deliberate practice—must begin by submitting to his statute.)Thus, for example, if there is an outbreak of anti-semitism, and Jewish members ofsociety are beginning to be accused of “getting all the best jobs”, then for every Jewishdoctor or teacher or banker, every other banker, doctor or teacher will constitute himas dispensable (and conversely). Indeed it is easy to see why this should be so: alterityas everyone’s interiorisation of his common-being-outside-himself in the unifyingobject can be conceived as the unity of all only in the form of common-being-outsideoneself-in-the-other.This is because totalisation as an organised form of social relationsactually presupposes (in the abstract and in extreme cases, of course) an originalsynthetic praxis whose aim is the human production of unity as its objectification inand through men. This totalisation—which will be described below—comes to menthrough themselves. But the totality of the gathering is only the passive action of apractico-inert object on a dispersal. The limitation of the gathering to these particularindividuals is only an accidental negation (since, in principle, as identities, their numberis not determined). Transformation into a totality is never the aim of a praxis; itreveals itself in so far as men’s relations are governed by object-relations, that is to say,in so far as it comes to them as a practico-inert structure whose sealed exteriority isrevealed as the interiority of real relations. On this basis, and in the context of exigencyas an objectivity to be realised, plurality becomes unity, alterity becomes my ownspontaneity in the Other and that of everyone in me, and the reciprocity of flights (asa pseudo-reciprocity) becomes a human relation of reciprocity. I have taken thesimple and unimportant example of the passengers on the bus only in order to showserial structure as the being of the most ordinary, everyday gatherings: as a fundamentalconstitution of sociality, this structure does in fact tend to be neglected by sociologists.Marxists are aware of it, but they seldom mention it and generally prefer to trace thedifficulties in the praxis of emancipation and agitation to organised forces rather than