Les Temps Modernes: The Early Decades

2 sessions with Mitch Abidor

Les Temps Modernes, founded by Sartre and Beauvoir in 1945, ceased publication in December 2018. It had been one of the most prestigious intellectual, political, and cultural journals in the world, in its heyday between 1945-1975 setting the terms of intellectual debate all over the world.

This class will examine the first decades of its existence, when such important works as Sartre’s What is Literature appeared in it, as well as the first installments of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It will focus on its political positions, as Sartre first attempted to set up a third-way party, became a fellow-traveler of the PCF (publishing The Communists and Peace), then rejected working with the Communists (publishing The Ghost of Stalin). It will trace the journal and its editors’ commitment to anti-colonialism, particularity its courageous work in support of the Algerian FLN. Its role during May 68 and its aftermath will be examined, as Les Temps Modernes espoused the cause of the Maoists and the far left all over the world. Finally, it will look at its position on the conflict in the Middle East, about which Les Temps Modernes published a 1000 page issue.

Mitch Abidor has published over a dozen volumes of translation, including a collection of Victor Serge’s anarchist writings, Anarchists Never Surrender. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and Cineaste. Mitch has been translated into German and Turkish. He is currently writing a history of the Bisbee Deportation of 1917.

This is a two week course. Fees below are suggested and are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay.