China and the West

Tel quel : littérature, philosophie, science, politique [ID D24159].
1971 : "On comprend donc comment, dans ces conditions, la révolution culturelle prolétarienne chinoise, plus grand événement historique de notre époque, dérange le calcul révisionniste et qu'il fera tout pour la falsifier. Eh bien, nous, nous verson tout pour l'éclairer, l'analyser et la soutenir."
Lisa Lowe : The editorial committee at the journal Tel quel had become ardent followers of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. After 1968 these critics and intellectuals, who judged the promising yet ultimately suppressed May revolts in France a failed revolution, turned to the Cultural Revolution as an alternative example of revolutionary theory and practice. These intellectuals adopted 'Maoism' and defined it as a more radical critique of society, one that took its theoretical inspiration from a source outside western Marxism.
In 1971 Tel quel constituted the People's Republic and the Cultural Revolution as absolutely nonoccidental phenomena, which, owing to their very situation outside, western European political experience, represented a model for revolution and ongoing cultural criticism that could not be recontained by western ideological systems. French Maoism at Tel quel subsided by 1975.
By 1971 a manifesto indicating the journal's enthusiastic embrace of Maoism had been published ; the political tenets of the Mouvement de juin 71 were consolidated, with the publication of a "Déclaration" and lists of "Positions" appearing in Tel quel ; no 47 (1971). The declaration began with a protest against the censoring of Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi's De la Chine at a commercial display by L'humanité, the Communist press. Tel quel editors argued that the choice to suppress De la Chine indicated a repressive and dogmatic policy, which colluded with and made possible the revisionist 'line'. The declaration of Tel quel's Maoism was specifically a reaction to the PCF's prohibitions ; China was embraced as a privileged topos of revolution precisely because information about China was suppressed by L'humanité and the PCF : "La censure inévitable du révisionnisme sur la Chine est le prix à payer 'par lui' pour que cette hégémonie soit 'totale'..."
The lack of knowledge about China also enabled Tel quel's theorists to idealize the Cultural Revolution as the epitome of 'permanent revolution', a revolution which they constituted as having successfully reintegrated into the factories and countrysides the solidifying elite strata of administrators, bureaucrats, and technicians. In addition, Tel quel elaborated on the then popular notion of the Chinese Cultural Revolution also inclueded a vigorous and continual critique of art and literature, resulting in an ever-changing and ultimate avant-garde. It is in this latter sense particularly that Tel quel romanticized China as a utopian aesthetic ; because information about China was prohibited and censored, the theorists at Tel quel were able to situate their abstract notions of textual practice there without risk of contradiction or disillusionment.

François Houmant : Philippe Sollers n'ira pas à la fête Fête de L'Humanité. In : Le monde ; 11 septembre 1971.
Sous ce titre, le quotidien rend public le désaccord du directeur de Tel quel avec le Parti communiste français. L'objet de cette rupture : l'interdiction du livre de la journaliste italienne Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi - De la Chine – à la fête annuelle du Parti. Prenant la défense de l'auteur, Philippe Sollers ne rompt pas seulement avec le Parti communiste mais rend hautement visible l'admiration qu'il porte à un ouvrage qu'il a contribué à faire publier. Il stigmatise l'interdit, exalte le livre et prophétise son inscription dans la durée : "Aucun intellectuel d'avant-garde, et plus encore aucun marxiste, ne peut, semble-t-il, rester indifférent davant cette mesure. De la Chine représente aujourd’hui un admirable témoignage sur la Chine révolutionnaire mais encore une ressource d'analyser théorique qu'il serait illusoire de croire refouler. De la Chine, c'est la puissance et la vérité du nouveau lui-même. Son absence, sa censure... sont les symptômes d'un aveuglement navrant... Le travail de Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi a devant lui toute l'histoire."
L'affaire Macciocchi joue en fait le rôle de catalyseur idéologique. Elle apparaît surtout comme un prétexte rendant possible le divorce de Tel quel avec son allié communiste d'hier et enracine la revue dans le camp des pro-chinois : opération qui permet de cumuler les avantages liés à la prééminence idéologique, Tel quel devenant rapidement le point de passage de toute und fraction de l'intelligentsia maophile sans perdre ce visage de révolutionnaire qui sied aux avant-gardes.
Si l'intérêt pour la Chine était quelque peu perceptible avant 1971, il faut donc attendre cette année-là pour qu'éclate la primauté des thèses maoïstes au sein du comité de rédaction.
La parabole telquelienne n'aurait sans doute pas été complète sans un voyage en Chine populaire. A leur retour, loin des polémiques suscitées par l'irruption de L'Archipel du Goulag et la parole du 'zek' Soljénitsyne, ils s'empressent de donner réalité littéraire au simulacre de dévoilement qui leur fut proposé.

Eric Hayot : Tel quel's reception of the Cultural Revolution was itself conditioned by a numer of contexts, both practical and theoreticall. It was these contexts that set the stage for Tel quel's eventual embrace of Maoism and the 1974 trip to China.
After 1966, the distinction between the cultural dream-object 'China' and actual China became less desirable to maintain, since doing so would be to miss out on 'the message' China was putting out for the first time. The sudden breath of revolution now from a place that had previously functioned largely as an exotic utopia in the past pushed Tel quel toward an increasing sense that China was the literal place of world revolution, and toward a greater sense of the material and intellctual value of China.
Tel quel turned openly to Maoism in 1971. The move came about partly because of the journal's deteriorating relationship with the French Communist Party. Between 1966 and 1971, as Tel quel began publishing texts on China, the journal and the PCF stood together in the field of French politics, a stance that remained largely true even during the student revolts of 1968. The final break between Tel quel and the PCF in 1971, occurred around the PCF's refusal to sell Maria-Antoinetta Macciocchi's book 'De la Chine'. Tel quel's adoption of Maoism was officially announced in its 1971 issue. As a whole, the declaration and positions in this issue concern themselves far more with European politics than Chinese ones. Besides the various positive references to Mao Zedong's thought and the Cultural Revolution, no mention is made of conditions in China. But the ninth in a list of provosals made by the journal's editorial committee encouraged intellectuals both inside and outside Tel quel to 'undertake the serious work of ideological and political reeducation', and suggested that Tel quel would eventually think through the political, economic, national and international implications of its political struggle.
The preface of “Chinese thought” says the issue offers its readers the background necessary to understand the global political situation for which China has assumed a growing importance. More specifically, it asks readers to consider 'the particularities of the language, literature, art, and philosophy of China, in order to better follow and understand the political, social, and cultural transformations that China today is producing and manifesting'.
The 1972 issue on China reflected the two major lines of Tel quel's inquiry : one more concerned with developing a theory of Maoism (and thus with contemporary China), and the other more interested in the radical possibilities of Chinese language and literature (and classical China).
Facts about 'China' as it appeared to Tel quel : 1) Its language uniquely combined signifier and referent ; 2) its poetry articulated the universal and long-repressed (in the West) problem of symbolization ; 3) its Maoism offered the hope of a truly cultural revolution.