Finkielkraut, Alain 1949–

PERSONAL: Born 1949, in Paris, France.

ADDRESSES: Home—Paris, France. Office—École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France. Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Nebraska Press, 1111 Lincoln Mall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0630.

CAREER: École Polytechnique, Paris France, professor of humanities.

WRITINGS:

(With Pascal Bruckner) Le nouveau désordre amoureux, Seuil (Paris, France), 1977.

(With Pascal Bruckner) Au coin de la rue, l'aventure, Seuil (Paris, France, 1979.

Ralentir: mots-valises!, Seuil (Paris, France), 1979.

Le juif imaginaire, Seuil (Paris, France), 1980, translation by Kevin O'Neill and David Suchoff published as The Imaginary Jew, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1994.

L'avenir d'une négation: réflexion sur la question du génocide, Seuil (Paris, France, 1982, translation by Mary Byrd Kelly published as The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1998.

La réprobation d'Israël, Denoël, Gonthier (Paris, France), 1983.

La sagesse de l'amour: essai, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1984, translation by Kevin O'Neill and David Suchoff published as The Wisdom of Love, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1997.

La défaite de la pensée: essai, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1987, translation by Dennis O'Keeffe published as The Undoing of Thought, Claridge Press (Lexington, GA), 1988, translation by Judith Friedlander published as The Defeat of the Mind, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

La mémoire vaine: du crime contre l'humanité, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1989, translation by Roxanne Lapidus, with Sima Godfrey, published as Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes against Humanity, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Le mécontemporain: Péguy, lecteur du monde moderne, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1991.

Comment peut-on être Croate?, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1992, translation by Peter S. Rogers and Richard Golsan published as part of Dispatches from the Balkan War and Other Writings, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1999.

Le crime d'être nóus: l'Europe, les nations, la guerre, Seuil (Paris, France), 1994.

L'humanité perdue: essai sur le XXe siècle, Seuil (Paris, France), 1996, translation by Judith Friedlander published as In the Name of Humanity: Reflection on the Twentieth Century, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

L'ingratitude: conversation sur notre temps, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1999.

(With Elisabeth de Fontenay) Des hommes et des bêtes, Tricorne (Geneva, Switzerland), 2000.

Penser le XXe siècle, Ecole Polytechnique (Paris, France), 2000.

Une voix vient de l'autre rive, Gallimard (Paris, France), 2000.

(With Paul Soriano) Internet, l'inquiètante extase, Mille et Une Nuits (Paris, France), 2001.

(With Charles Matton and Ernest Ernest-Pignon) Etre artiste aujourd'hui, Tricorne (Geneva, Switzerland), 2002.

(With Marc Baconnet and Mireille Grange) Enseigner les lettres aujourd'hui, Tricorne (Geneva, Switzerland), 2003.

(With Peter Sloterdijk) Les battements du monde: dialogue, Pauvert (Paris, France), 2003.

In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Anti-Semitism, 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including World.

SIDELIGHTS: Alain Finkielkraut was born of Jewish parents who escaped Nazi persecution during World War II and settled in France. His parents downplayed their heritage in order to protect their son from prejudice. Finkielkraut wrote Le juif imaginaire, translated as The Imaginary Jew, to disccuss his feelings about this denial of fancestry. Frederic Raphael wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that "awareness of his parents' mortality excites a longing for the one thing they have refused him: accurate memories of the great community to which they once belonged in Poland and from which their son is forever exiled. His Jewishness, in which family is religion, has no bigger foundation than his parents' love."

Booklist contributor Aaron Cohen found that Finkielkraut's main thesis is that memories of Jewish life prior to World War II have "become so laden with nostalgia that the complexities of the past are no longer considered." David Singer, who reviewed The Imaginary Jew in the New Leader, stated that "the personal aspect of the author's observations is made explicit in an opening chapter on his youth. He invents the term 'imaginary Jew' to describe his own condition, how as a young man he sought to live vicariously off the Holocaust. Looking back on this period, Finkielkraut is filled with shame and remorse, referring to himself contemptuously as 'genocide huckster,' the 'swashbuckler of the concentration camps,' a 'deportee for the fun of it.' He writes with withering irony." The book ends with Finkielkraut looking for a new direction to reaffirm his Jewish identity. Paul Berman wrote in the New Yorker that Finkielkraut's love for his parents "was itself a key to his Jewish heart," and called the book "brilliant and rueful and bitter at the same time. It shows the joint influence of Sartre and Philip Roth—a combination that only Alain Finkielkraut could bring off."

Among Finkielkraut's other titles is The Undoing of Thought, later published as The Defeat of the Mind. Times Educational Supplement reviewer John Weightman felt that the author is concerned in this volume "about the effects of cultural relativism within Western society itself. There has been a loss of confidence in intellectual and artistic values, so that everything tends to be put on the same level: Beethoven and pop music, comic strips and serious literature, graffiti and great painting. This trend is magnified by the logic of the consumer society, which seeks out the lowest common denominator. "In his review, Berman argued that Finkielkraut "has the kind of talent for generalizations which allows his subject to be vast and his book to be short and the reader to be satisfied even so." Commentary reviewer Thomas Pavel believed the theme is "the precarious relationship between minority groups and the larger societies they inhabit. A democratic society that owns up to its sorry treatment of an ethnic or racial minority in its midst deserves admiration, Finkielkraut wrote in his earlier book; but when it attempts to redeem itself by bestowing favors upon that group in the present, it can easily undermine the morale of its beneficiaries, who receive compensation for an injustice they did not personally endure." "In his concluding chapter," wrote Pavel, "Finkielkraut explores some aspects of multiculturalism today. He focuses in particular on education, where, he argues, the multicultural doctrine undermines individuality, self-reliance, love of freedom, and faith in justice."

In Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes against Humanity, Finkielkraut covers the trial of former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie that took place in 1987. Barbie was a low-level Nazi collaborator responsible for sending thouands of Jews to the death camps during World War II. New York Review of Books contributor Ian Buruma noted that, according to Finkielgraut's account, "the trial was a valuable demonstration of how everyman, no matter how faceless or insignificant, must be held responsible for following criminal orders." Carol A. L. Prager reviewed the book in Queen's Quarterly, stating that "whereas the Nuremberg Trials expressed the condemnation of a world united in moral outrage, the trial of Klaus Barbie, 'Butcher of Lyon,' some forty-three years later, was thrown into fatal disarray, to Finkielkraut's mind, by French politics and the defense of moral irrelevance made by Barbie's lawyers." L'Esprit Createur contributor Richard J. Golsan found the book to be "a moving and incisive meditation on the history and legislation of the notion of crimes against humanity. It is, finally, an acerbic critique of the media, with its capacity to destroy our sense of history, and especially through television, to banalize momentous events by reducing them to the dimensions of everyday life."

Comment peut-on être Croate? consists primarily of articles originally published in La Monde and other French publications, wherein Finkielkraut defends Croatian nationalism. Norman Stone wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that the author lays to rest myths surrounding Croatia's succession from Yugoslavia in 1991, and added that Finkielkraut "does not see it either as illegitimate or as 'Fascist.'" The collection was translated and included in Dispatches from the Balkan War and Other Writings. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Finkielkraut is critical of world response to the Balkan conflict, French media "impatience," "bad humor," and a specifically French form of myopia that he terms "navel contemplation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1994, Aaron Cohen, review of The Imaginary Jew, p. 1565.

Books & Culture, January, 2001, Miroslav Volf, review of Comment peut-on être Croate?, p. 28.

Commentary, November, 1995, Thomas Pavel, review of The Defeat of the Mind, p. 134.

First Things, January, 2001, Brian C. Anderson, review of In the Name of Humanity: Reflection on the Twentieth Century, p. 41.

Judaism, spring, 2000, Rafael Medoff, review of The Future of a Negation: Reflections on the Question of Genocide, p. 244.

L'Esprit Createur, fall, 1993, Richard J. Golsan, review of Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes against Humanity, pp. 119-120.

London Review of Books, October 31, 1996, Eric Fassin, reviews of The Imaginary Jew and The Defeat of the Mind, p 32.

Modern Age, winter, 1995, Wayne Allen, review of The Undoing of Thought, pp. 179-182.

National Review, July 3, 2000, Damon Linker, review of In the Name of Humanity: Reflection on the Twentieth Century.

New Leader, December 19, 1994, David Singer, review of The Imaginary Jew, p. 31.

New Yorker, September 4, 1995, Paul Berman, review of In Defense of Reason, pp. 93-94.

New York Review of Books, October 26, 1989, Ian Buruma, review of Remebering in Vain, pp. 31-32, 41, 43-45.

New York Times Book Review, May 7, 1995, Mark Lilla, review of The Defeat of the Mind.

Partisan Review, winter, 1999, William Phillips, review of The Future of a Negation, p. 9.

Publishers Weekly, March 13, 1995, review of The Defeat of the Mind, p. 56; November 29, 1999, review of Dispatches from the Balkan War and Other Writings, p. 62.

Queen's Quarterly, fall, 1993, Carol A. L. Prager, review of Remembering in Vain, pp. 569-582.

Research in African Literatures, summer, 1998, Cilas Kemedjio, review of The Defeat of the Mind, p. 201.

Shofar, fall, 2000, Jacques Kornberg, review of In the Name of Humanity, p. 153.

Spectator, December 3, 1988, Colin Welch, review of The Undoing of Thought, pp. 36-37.

Times Educational Supplement, October 28, 1988, John Weightman, review of The Undoing of Thought, p. 25.

Times Literary Supplement, July 31, 1987, R. W. Johnson, review of La défaite de la pensée: essai, p. 811; July 3, 1992, Douglas Johnson, review of Le mécontemporain: Péguy, lecteur du monde moderne, p. 34; April 2, 1993, David Cesarani, review of Remembering in Vain, p. 26; May 14, 1993, Norman Stone, review of Comment peut-on être Croate?, p. 10; May 6, 1994, Frederic Raphael, review of The Imaginary Jew, pp. 7-8.

Wilson Quarterly, winter, 2005, review of In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Anti-Semitism, p. 96.

ONLINE

National Public Radio Web site, http://www.npr.org/ (May 13, 2003), Melissa Block and Robert Siegel, "Interview: Simon Schama and Alain Finkielkraut Discuss a Perceived Resurgence of Anti-Semitism in the U.S. and Europe."