Summary
Dominique Pagani reads literary works closely and uses them as material for thought. In Proust, whom he often quotes, he notes that the beauty of the girls at Balbec comes from their class and their economic ease: for him, great authors see social classes1. He also finds in Proust the memory that overdetermines all the others2, and the return of the past through Vinteuil's little phrase. He sees in it a victory over death by an author who did not believe in eternal life3. He sets Nerval's Angélique beside a dream from Aurélia to show that the second is the first "multiplied by minus one". For him this proves that human productions are determinable, and in this respect he ranks Nerval above Proust4. He also comments on Hölderlin, Gracq, Rousseau's Reveries, where writing shares happiness, and Sylvie, which stands against the power of money. He sees in Kleist and Kafka "trickles of water" leading towards Nazism. Finally, he links The Night Watches of Bonaventura to the modernity that began at the end of the eighteenth century.
- 1What is to be done? 3/329 Jan 2016
- 2#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…13 Nov 2020
- 3Schubert: the divine captives3 Aug 2022
- 4#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss9 Jun 2021
Introduction produced automatically from the 8 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.
The 8 videos
Readings on the spotFrom Plato to Proust
6 Jul 2026What does amorous desire seek through the body and the gaze: someone or something?
Pagani Parle MusiqueSchubert: the divine captives
3 Aug 2022How does music enter into time only to leave it, bringing back the past to the point of touching a kind of eternity?
Cycle 9.2#9.23 “Ruled like music paper!” Bach, Nerval, Lévi-Strauss
9 Jun 2021How can it be shown that the historical sciences have an object as rigorously determinable as that of the natural sciences?
Cycle 9.1#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…
13 Nov 2020How does memory, which retains and names, confront the indeterminacy of origins, and how can one memory overdetermine others?
Cycle 6#6.3 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism
8 Jan 2020How does the relationship between substance and subject, which converge in Antiquity and diverge in modern times, shed light on the reactionary attempt, up to Nazism, to restore "the compact solidity of being"?
Saint-Dizier Popular UniversityThe religion of money
29 Sept 2019Why is money, the most vile thing there is, so close to the sacred, and how can we get out of this religion of money?
What Is to Be Done?What is to be done? 3/3
29 Jan 2016How can one respond to the question "what is to be done?" through a theoretical detour, and how does Rousseau, between the praise of labor and the praise of idleness, found property, happiness, and the beauty of landscape on praxis?
Interviews for L’Affranchi#3 The myth of the noble savage in Rousseau
23 Sept 2014What does the "noble savage" mean in Rousseau, and what do his draft constitution for Corsica and the theme of the island reveal about his relation to nature and society?