【DG】C as in "Culture"

從這裡來的。（我好懶。）

今天在對資料，越想越覺得這一段要放上來。我的法文程度當然一定馬聽不懂，好在有英文簡說。法文法文，難道我以後還要跟這個語文奮鬥嗎？目前我只要英文好就好了。

Parnet asks what it means for Deleuze to "?tre cultiv?" (be cultivated, cultured).

Deleuze says that he does not live as an "intellectual" or sees himself as "cultiv?" because when he sees someone "cultiv?," he quite simply is "effar?," terrified, and not necessarily with admiration. He sees "cultured people" (gens de culture) as possessing a "savoir effarant", a frightening body of knowledge, knowing everything, able to talk about everything. So, in saying that he's neither an intellectual, nor "cultiv?," Deleuze understands this in that he claims to have no "reserve knowledge" (aucun savoir de r?serve), no provisional knowledge. Everything that he learns, he does so for a particular task, and once that task is completed, then he forgets everything and has to start again from zero, except in certain rare cases (e.g. Spinoza, who is in his heart and mind).

So why, he asks, doesn't he admire this "frightening knowledge"? Parnet asks if he thinks that this kind of knowledge is erudition, or just an opinion, and Deleuze says, no, not erudition. He says he can name someone like this since he is full of admiration for him: Umberto Eco, who is astonishing, it's like pushing on a button, he can talk about anything, and he even knows he does this. Deleuze says this frightens him, and he does not envy it at all.

He continues by musing about something he has realized since retiring, since no longer teaching. Talking is a bit dirty, he says, while writing is cleaner. Talking is to be charming (faire du charme), and Deleuze links this to attending conferences, something he never could stand. He no longer travels for health reasons, but to him, intellectuals traveling is nonsense, their displacements to go talk, even during meals, they talk with the local intellectuals. "I can't stand talk, talk, talk," and it's in this sense, seeing culture linked to the spoken word, that makes him hate culture [Deleuze uses the very strong French verb "hair" to express this].

Deleuze says he attributes the current crisis, the period of the desert, to three things: 1) that journalists have conquered the book form, that journalist now find it quite normal to write a book that would hardly require a newspaper article. 2) A general idea has spread that anyone can write since writing has become the tiny little affair of the individual, family archives, archives in one's head. People have all kinds of personal experiences, so they decide to write a novel. 3) The real customers have changed: the television customers are not the viewers, but rather the announcers, the advertisers; in publishing, the customers are not the potential readers, but rather the distributors. The result is the rapid turnover, the regime of the best seller. All literature a la Beckett, creative literature, is crushed by it. That's what defines a drought period, one of Bernard Pivot [former host of the literary chat show, Apostrophes, now of Bouillon de culture (Cultural Boiling Pot), nullity, the disappearance of all literary criticism outside commercial promotion.