Book review: Thrilling, smart and funny thriller about the philosophy and power

Roland Barthes analyzed the entrecôten and fries fritesens importance for franskheten. Barthes was one of the most sensitive, the most persistent analysts of fiction that ever existed, but he stretched out his analytical ability to include the study of the Tour de France, latest Citroënmodellen, damtidningars cover and guidebooks.

On February 25, 1980 returning Barthes from a lunch to the office, crossing the rue des Écoles and gets run over by a tvättbil. A month later he dies of the injuries.

This is a fact. And that is Laurent Binets novel ”the Language of the seventh function”: one of continental philosophy's biggest stars about to die.

the scuffle, between the scene of the accident and the death bed in the hospital, lost a document that Barthes carries with him. This is not a fact. This is fiction, In any case, as far as we know.

Laurent Binets novel is a satire on what is called the poststrukturalismen, but also a kind of tribute. ”The language of the seventh function” use deckarens approach to writing the history of the major philosophical battles about how the world should be interpreted, if it can even be interpreted, and why.

Above all it is an insanely funny novel. But I guess that most of the subtleties are lost if you don't have a single idea of the philosophical and to some extent the political conditions around the 1980s. If you miss it, you can rely on the commissioner Bayard.

to investigate the Roland Barthes death. For perhaps it was a deliberate murder in order to get access to the handwritten document, he possibly carried with him. Bayard is a classic French commissioner: högerreaktionär, racist and explicit antiintellektuell.

Favoritmeny, one must assume: the entrecôte with fries. But now he has to try to put themselves into the intellektuellas life, so he has to more or less kidnap a young lecturer to use as an interpreter in order to understand what goes on in the etheric layers of the society.

What is it that is at stake? Why are the political opponents Mitterand and Giscard d'estaing so interested in the investigation?

The seventh function of language allude – briefly – on the linguist Ferdinand de Saussures hint about a feature of the language which later has been called the performative. That is to say, opinions which in practical terms changes the world in the same moment they are uttered. A couple of examples are ”Hereby I declare you man and wife” and the simpler ”I promise to ...”.

with the naked language reshape society. Imagine this power in the hands of, for example, an aspiring politician.

It is, therefore, what is at stake. And the quantities of stakeholders plot their battle in Laurent Binets black and immersive novel.

It is a thrilling, smart, funny, and hilarious novel. Disrespectful play it with the philosophical environment from the time when philosophy mattered perhaps more than ever otherwise. Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Camille Paglia, Bernard-Henri Lévy, John Searle and, in particular, Umberto Eco and many more key figures emerge, all of them in this novel, entirely in the hands of the author, who does not hesitate to take the life of the biographical fully alive people.

Read more: the French idérevolutionen and the inevitable kulturkrigen.

What Laurent also reminds us of is the inglorious epitaph, which these poststrukturalister have met. The playful questioning poststrukturalismen eventually came to be called postmodernism (a term first used by Jean-Francois Lyotard as a description of the post-industrial society, and never intended as any sort of method or focus) and then, in the american karriärakademikers hands, radicalized to the ”cultural studies” and eventually land in the present-day repressive identitetspolitiska protofascism.

trained to read Laurent Binets novel? No, but it helps. Here are some amazing scenes, such as when wannaben and with the bulletin editor Philippe Sollers drawn with a kasperteater for children in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Or when it keeps on to be trouble between the continental and analytical philosophers in a park at Cornell university.

For those who lack the philosophical basis offers Laurent Binet plenty of educational support. The readers who already have a idea you can expect entertainment at a very high level.