24,656
edits
Changes
Fool
,no edit summary
Today, after the fall of Socialism, the knave is a neoconservative advocate of the free market who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as counterproductive sentimentalism, while the fool is a deconstructionist cultural critic who, by means of his ludic procedures destined to 'subvert' the existing order, actually serves as its supplement.
==Quotes==
It was noted then that, for a long time now, there have been left-wing intellectuals and right-wing intellectuals. I would like to give you formulas for them that, however categorical they may appear at first sight, might nevertheless help to illuminate the way.
"Fool" (''sot'') or, if you like, "simpleton" (demeurE'') - quite a nice term for which I have a certain fondness - these words only express approximately a certain something for which the English language and its lterature seem to me to offer a more helpful signifier - I will come back to this later. A traidtion that begins with Chaucer, but which reaches its full dvelopment in the theater of the Elizabethan period is, in effect, centered on the term 'fool'.<ref>In this and subsequent passages, the words 'fool' and 'knave' along with 'foolery' and 'knavery' in quotation marks are in English in the original.</ref>
The 'fool' is an innocent, a simpleton, but truths issue from his mouth that are not simply tolerated but adopted, by virtue of the fact that this 'fool' is sometimes clothed in the insignia of the jester. And in my view it is a similar happy shadow, a similar fundamental 'foolery,' that accounts for the importance of the left-wing intellectual.
