Laurent Binet ‘La Septième Fonction du Langage’

-In the beginning, philosophy and science worked hand in hand together up until the 18th Century, in order more or less to counter the church’s  obscurantism….then from the 19th Century…continental philosophy….became more esoteric, more and more free style, more and more spiritualist.
-Whilst the English and the Americans remained faithful to a more scientific idea of philosophy, what we call Analytical Philosophy.***

Earlier in the year I took one for the team when I read Blanco Calderon’s ‘The Night’  a crime story with more than just a background in linguistic theory and the different theorists in South America and in the world. Well in spite of the wonderful write-ups I have seen, the nightmare is back, a crime novel with more than just a background in linguistic theory where the two main protagonists, Simon Herzog and Pierre Bayard probably the only fictitious characters in the book become mixed up in a farcical search for a document describing the 7th function of language (don’t worry the other six are explained), an understanding of which would permit the person who masters it to manipulate his audience, and for which the French semiotic philosopher, Raymond Barthes, has been killed.

I could not work up an interest to care about who were, and what were the relationships between Foucault, Sollers, Kristeva, Sartre, Derrida, Cixous,Todorov, Althusser, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari, Debray, Roman Jackobson, Umberto Eco, Chomsky, J-Kahn,  Jack Lang, Laurent Fabius, Serge Moati, Régis Debray, Mitterrand and Giscard and thus to understand or care about the satire concerning them. As I put it When I read the Blanco Calderón:

-So if you are a linguistic theorist, this is the crime story for you. Otherwise like myself you may find this a particularly hard slog.

I would add that if you are particularly interested and versed in the 1970’s Paris Philosophy microcosm you may enjoy this book.

The story beginning in Paris, takes in spies killing with poisoned umbrellas, Bologne and the characters are there for the explosion destroying the main railway station as the characters flit around the world to offer historical situations and people for the purpose of the author’s satire.

I should point out here that this review goes against the opinions of most, or even all, of the other write-ups I’ve seen.

First published in French as ‘La Septième Fonction du Langage’ by Grasset in 2015
Translated into English by Sam Taylor  and published as ‘The Seventh Function of Language’ by Harvill Secker in 2017
*** My translation