The recently vandalized painting at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris raises the question, in our society, of censorship. Decryption with the sociologist Jean Viard.
The news of the week has repeatedly mentioned the temptation of censorship in different ways. First, on Sunday May 7, there is this man, a former far-right elected official who vandalized a work of art at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. And then Thursday, May 11, the reappearance of the augmented work of Louis-Ferdinand Céline at the Pléiade. Is there another writer who is quoted more than him to talk about polemical texts? The view of sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: What does this need for censorship that some may feel ultimately say?
John Viard: There are also two teachers who were suspended for comments they had made on Twitter. We are in a period where there are forms of violence, to which we must be very careful, because, for example, the young environmental activists who went to stick their hands on a board, well afterwards, there is a guy far-right vandalizing a painting. There is a connection between all of this. When we start to put messages of violence and aggression in art, in the public sphere, perhaps for good reasons, it is taken up and reused.
So the regulation of public debate is in question. But I don’t think you should block expression at all, I think there’s a lot to hear. You know, there is a phrase from Camus that said: part of the truth is in your opponent’s eye (quote from Camus: “We sometimes see more clearly in the one who lies than in the one who speaks the truth”; editor’s note) and I think that at the moment, it’s a phrase that you often have to remember.
This question of the censorship of works of art also arises concerning the movement that some call ‘woke’, with the questioning in any case of republishing certain texts which no longer correspond so much to current customs, by providing additional information, Could this be a bulwark against censorship?
It depends. Take the reissue of Mein Kampf, which was made by historians a few years ago, I was very much in favor of it, because I think that indeed, you have to read this text, including to understand that everything that happened with the Nazism, the extermination of the Jews, were announced in it. That is the work of a historian.
Afterwards, what is complicated is that our value systems change. However, you take old books, you take old artists, necessarily, they were in their context, it must be said. But there can be great writers. We must indeed remember their anti-Semitic dimension, especially with Céline who was extremely strong, but we must not kill art either.
The problem, in ancient societies, for example, take the Bible, it was rewritten for centuries. The text that we have does not date at all from the birth of Christ, it took centuries, because at the time, as the books were copied by hand, the copyists modified as they went along, to update. We are no longer in it, because they are no longer copyists, but machines. And so is it outrageous that books are retouched? All the debates on the titles of the books, that there is not the word ‘nigger’ in the title, etc., all that represents for us today marks of respect, these are things that will be done little by little, but which must be discussed with people.
In the United States, for example, they spoke with the community of African Americans to find out what they should be called in the public space. Should they be called ‘blacks’, ‘blacks’, African-Americans? These topics, in my view, need to be debated. And then we say here we are, we want to be called that. There, there is something where I think that in France, we are not very good…
And it is these discriminated people who should set the rules?
Who must propose them, then we negotiate them. In the United States, there was this negotiation on African-Americans and I think it is an interesting approach. But afterwards, to say that Céline was anti-Semitic, it’s important to say it all the time, including to her readers, because obviously that plays into her work, that’s not a reason to destroy it, you have to attention. We must protect art in all cases, but each time, we must put the context.
It’s a bit the same with Picasso. Yes, Picasso had a weakness for women aged 16, 17, 18, but in his time it was not a crime, I believe sexual majority was at 13. So, you have to say, you always have to put that in context too, so as not to rewrite history, and effectively condemn social practices or artistic practices that were in another context, but which are obviously no longer acceptable today. , because we are in another system. Culture changes as the battles we fight progress.