This article was downloaded by: [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities]

On: 31 January 2014, At: 06:12

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Parallax
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tpar20

The Latest New World

Alexandre Kojve
Published online: 30 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: Alexandre Kojve (1997) The Latest New World, Parallax, 3:1, 23-27, DOI:
10.1080/13534645.1997.9522371
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13534645.1997.9522371

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or
arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms
& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/
terms-and-conditions

The Latest New World'

Downloaded by [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities] at 06:12 31 January 2014

Alexandre Kojve

Francoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse (Paris: Julliard, 1954)

- Un Certain Sourire (Paris: Julliard, 1956)

Translated by David Macey

A new type of world has been born to literature. And for my part, I find it quite
natural that it should have been born in Paris and diat an unmarried mother (die
mother of a purely literary neonate of course) should have given binh to it.
This new world itself was obviously not born yesterday. But aluhough research into
me question is no longer forbidden, paternity is far from having been definitively
established in this case, and the procession of claimants to that heavy responsibility
has not yet come to a close. And yet, even during the lifetime of die putative fadier,
a German - and he too was a genius - hinted discretely at what a Great Corsica
might be. And for my part, I am beginning to believe firmly mat die latter conqueror
was himself effectively responsible for what was, for him, die honour and the pleasure
of die conceiving our new world. German insinuations aside, die German informer
saw very cleariy and predicted die nature of die child he announced to the worid.
Even though many people who are well endowed with common sense still fail to
take seriously visions, even diose of this visionary (not to mention die disturbing
visions of certain of his aposdes), despite the fact diat he was enamoured of reason
[Vernunft].

In England, however, one contemporary seemed to have seen tilings just as clearly.
At all events, he certainly realized diat, dianks to die exploits of his Franco-Italian
competitor, the honour (which some call vainglorious) of virile heroism can now be
won (albeit in purely sartorial terms) only in civilian dress (the colour of mourning,
of course). But that peaceful genius died an unknown martyr to his sensational
discovery (which was to have unforgettable repercussions in the world, defined in
the true sense of the word) without leaving any literary trace, and his hagiographers
never revealed to non-initiates die true meaning and import of his painful act of
witness (a French nunnery still shelters his material relics).

parallax 4 (february 1997): 23-28

Downloaded by [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities] at 06:12 31 January 2014

In France, finally, there was once a Marquis who was imprisoned by the Tyrant but
liberated by the People. He too understood that, in the new free world, everything
would now have to be committed in private, especially murders, which were perforce
seen as the (nobly gratuitous) acts of an egalitarian and fraternal Liberty. But the
popular Liberators initially saw this liberated man as a mere Libertine. Even today,
the few elite men who read him and talk about him seriously are accused by the
eminendy serious masses of not really being serious. And so he did not divulge the
secret either!
Truth to tell, it is because I wanted at last to reveal a mystery mat has been so
carefully preserved by those who are party to it (assuming that some of them still
exist), that I resolved to write and even publish the few pages that follow, and to
dedicate mem to all those who will read them and, merefore, quite definitely to
mademoiselle Sagan. The good offices of some vigilant Argus will no doubt ensure
that they come to her notice.
For it is thanks to the care with which this young girl has written her first two books
that the world in question has been 'born to literature". Until this young French girl
came along, no man of letters was willing to speak of it, or at least to speak of it so
nicely. One great American literary hack of modern times specialising in the analysis
of virile behaviour did of course look into the problem of a world that had been
emasculated by its father, who remains unknown as it happens. Having grown his
beard (now white), probably to give himself courage in his heroic struggle against
despair, this famous author searched the world for the last human male, or rather
the last truly male man, and claims to have at last found him in the Caribbean Sea,
in the form of an old fisherman. True, he was half-dead. Even then, the only worthy
adversary he could find for him was a fish (of a different species, as it happens, to the
one that served as a model for one of the symbols of a well-known religion).2 A
heroic and very strong fish, but even so... But this modern Anglo-Saxon's very recent
natural history remained just as esoteric as the already venerable Germanic
apocalypse of universal History.
It is merefore a very-very-young-young French girl who has the (literary) honour of
revealing to the crowds (her male and female readers) throughout the true nature of
the world where this glory was won. And she certainly does so in a very honest way,
though her way of doing so may still perhaps be somewhat 'unconscious' (in the
philosophical sense of the term) or 'naive' (in Schiller's sense, or in other words as
opposed to sentimental).
To get straight to the point, we are dealing with a world that is new because it is
completely and definitively devoid of men (as defined by Malraux-MontherlantHcmingway to cite only those three classics and to leave Homer and the others in
peace). A world without men, seen (vu3) by a young girl of course. But a world that
differs completely from the already dusty world in which another young girl (not a

Downloaded by [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities] at 06:12 31 January 2014

Parisian, as it happens) saw, so to speak, nothing but the flannel trousers which, at
that time, were worn by practically no one but 'authentic' men. By contrast, in the
new world revealed to us by the young girl to whom this world has been revealed,
men (not in the ambiguous sense of the equivocal French word, but in the precise
and proper anatomo-physiological sense) or those who stand in for men, tend to
flaunt themselves quite naked (but with compulsory muscles) or in a state of undress
before the by no means startled eyes of young girls. In my day (and for me those were
the good old days, as has been the case for all time and of all the times that have
been spoken of with a certain sadness [une certame tristesse]). In my day, I say (with
virile pride), nudity, even when complete, tended rather to be the preserve of prettygirls (at least in art and literature). Such too was its fate in a more distant past. And
besides - God knows - undressing the virile men of the past was no easy matter. It
took four or five people to get a shining knight out of his gleaming armour, and
more recently still the help of a strong young lad was no luxury if you wanted to get
a famous soldier out of his fine shining boots. No doubt things have gready improved
since then. Even in my day, casual and comfortable pyjamas from the effeminate
Indies had conquered the free Western world, thanks to the British conquerors of
the servile Orient. And yet, insofar as it was a literary theme, the role of these occioriental garments (initially reserved exclusively for men; their mammas stricdy forbade
well -brought up young girls to wear them) was stricdy confined to bedroom farces.
It would be difficult indeed to imagine a serious (masculine) author of those times
evoking the pyjamas of a (literary) hero whose virility was called upon (on, say, the
bleeding soil of revolutionary Spain and, to spell it out, in an army sleeping bag) to
initiate into the purest love a young girl whose purity (moral purity, of course) had
not been sullied by her earlier and repeated rape at the hands of a dozen (reactionary)
males. Of course in our new world (where, fortunately, pure young girls no longer
need to get themselves raped to become able to make love properly or, if you prefer
to put it that way, purely and simply), the young girl who is talking about it speaks in
detail only of her own pyjamas, and their immaculate purity is watched over with a
maternal eye by the second young man of her choice. But one really cannot see why
today's young writeresses should not be able to talk just as easily, and with just as
much fraternal devotion, about the pyjamas worn by the ex-virile partners of the
masculine-looking lovers of their novels' heroines. For their heroines already eye up
with a very masculine indifference (which still, it is true, seems to them to be
'marvellous', as they themselves admit with touching humility) the virile forms that
are on show as they watch one of their potential conquests walking in beauty in the
street or, more specifically, on the pavement of the Promenade des Anglais (Un Certain
Sourire, 18). When die conquest has been consummated in a bed (ibid., 106), they
kiss his 'torso' (which, unfortunately and even if it were that of the Apollo Belvedere,
can never, from a certain point of view, be as good as that of a Venus from die
Capitol, or anywhere else come to that).

Downloaded by [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities] at 06:12 31 January 2014

No one could honestly deny that all diis is profoundly humiliating for those of us
who, thanks to some Mendelian accident, were born with the body of a man (unless
they have forgotten the non-sexual meaning of the generic name they bear). Even
so, in this case, it would take some courage, not to deny and disagree, but to conform
and agree. But is there any point in expressing indignation, as some still claim to be
able to do? O r in describing mese young girls as Amazons', with a subde hint of the
irony that has so advantageously replaced the outmoded bronze of the heroic legends
of very ancient Greece, now brought back4 into fashion by die sophisticated thinkers
of our time? As the saving goes, beggars can't be choosers. At all events, I am reluctant
to believe that anyone has any intention of advising these so-called Amazons (who
have, as it happens, shown no hostility towards any husbands, not even their own)
mat they should divide, if only for a joke, into two groups, with one group taking the
role of die men they have had to stop fighting because there are no men left to fight.
For thousands of years, men 'took' girls. Then it became the fashion for girls to 'give'
diemselves. But is it the girls' fault if, in a new world where there is no male heroism,
they can be no longer either 'given' nor 'taken' and have to be content widi letdng
themselves be talked into it, like it or not? In these conditions and in a world in
which we are now forced to live so long as our deaths means nodiing to us, is it not
preferable for them to let themselves be talked into it with the best possible grace
and will-power? And what would be the point of sending these gracious but voluntary
'Amazons' to nunneries (as some would seem to wish to do, without every daring to
say so), or to other subde and professional healers of supposedly damaged souls (as
some occasionally think fit to suggest on the grounds that the girls in question are
not 'truly happy', though they never offer to meet the cost - a high cost, as it happens
- of this so-called moral decontaminadon)? Even assuming that die girls could be
'normalised' to such an extent diat behaving like 'real women' would make them
perfecdy 'happy', how could they find die real men they need in a world where the
acme of male power now lies in die peaceful and laborious (aldiough duly motorized)
activity of a fenile husband?

To sum up my final opinion, I will say that in my view Ccile and Dominique (die
name is to be read in the feminine) are, like Frangoise herself, girls like any odiers.
What I mean is this: like any odier girls in any dme or place with unusually sharp
minds and what is commonly (or nobly?) called 'guts' (even though not all of them
had the dazzlingly precocious literary talent displayed by at least one of their number).
What is new about the above-mentioned young girls (and this is what is humiliating
for those of us who are after all men, at least from a certain point of view) is that the
third of them has allowed the other two to begin to live, not in the world of which
young girls dream almost as much as young men, but in this strange new world. This
latest new world is indeed our world and its specific characteristic, which distinguishes
it from all other is, as we know, the fact that diere are virtually no more real wars or
veritable revolutions. Before long, the only place for a glorious death will be a bed
(private or public). Dying a glorious death will be conditional upon taking on wild

Kojve

26

Downloaded by [University of Minnesota Libraries, Twin Cities] at 06:12 31 January 2014

beasts (non-castrated ruminants) sword in hand, or risking one's life to scale peaks of
over eight thousand meters (or the equivalent number of English or other feet).
Now, there are very few such peaks, and they will soon be forgotten about when they
lose all the virile interest they now have. They will be equipped with eidier cable
cars that present as little danger as possible, or landing-pads for helicopters which,
we all hope, will soon be being used for purely peaceful purposes, meaning that all
sexes and ages will be able to use them. As for the wild beasts diat are currendy used
to realize the virtual virility of a few authentic (and mosdy Iberian) human males,
there is a great danger that a public opinion (which is certainly far from 'naive' but
very 'sentimental', to re-cite the great poet of Sturm and Drang) that no longer tolerates
die idea of (painlessly) execudng real murderers (even in the formerly aristocradc
homeland of the last civic dandies), will soon be mobilized to put an end to die
sufferings (and diey are cruel and so humiliadng) inflicted upon these poor vegetarian
animals who have never done anyone any harm.
When diey see the state of paradisiacal peace diat has finally been reestablished on
earth, the ancient gods (male and female alike) who laughed so loudly in the day of
Achilles's batdes but who almost died of thirst in a less remote area, may themselves
be content to smile a certain smile as diey, like everyone else, drink visqui, which - at
least in our world - is pronounced scotch and drunk diluted widi iced water. Even die
most Epicurean Sage in die world will readily grant diem that pleasure.

Notes
' "The Latest New World" was first published as
"Le Dernier Monde nouveau" in Critique 1112
(Aug-Sept, 1956).
T h e exclusive h o n o u r accorded to fish and
fishermen would be unfair to non-emasculated
bovines, were it not that die latter were the object
of an eariier book by the author in question, who
has devoted the better part of his literary auvre and
even his own life to bloody combats between (male)
mammals, and were it not that he fell back on coldblooded animals only when h e was in his (virile)
decline.
1
-Any typographical error that added an Y to the
end of '/' would be a horrible betrayal of the
author's deepest thought (because men and not
world would be the object, trans.].

'Once again, a typographical error omitting the

(feminizing V) on 'remise' would make it agree, not
with Ancient Greece, but with the famous poetic
'bronze'. We could make it perfecdy well today,
and even use it in the way the legendary heroes
used it in theirs (when they could make nothing
better, or at least not in terms of metals). No one
would dare (either in their lifetime or even after
their glorious deaths) to challenge their virility. Such
a typo might expose me to t h e risk (which is
c e r t a i n l y s e r i o u s for a n a u t h o r ) of b e i n g
misinterpreted, or even totally misrecognized (in
die sense of mis-understood).