Early in this sometimes difficult text, which owes much to fellow Coll\u00e8ge de France professor Michel Foucault, Boucheron distinguishes analytical logic from fiction, noting that whereas the former gives the illusion that the world is logical, the latter \u201creveals to us the possibilities of thought.\u201d The stories that critique or shore up political discourses, whether, as Boucheron goes on to examine, the films of Charlie Chaplin or medieval art and modern novels, describe \u201ca reality that does not yet exist.\u201d Yet sometimes it does: As Boucheron, a medievalist, writes, numerous monarchs have attempted to legitimate their rule by revealing dreams that placed them in world-changing contexts. One was the English king William II, who, troubled by a dream in which he consumed human flesh, sought the counsel of a priest, who told him boldly and baldly that he had consumed Christ, \u201cand being a tyrant you devoured him whole.\u201d Fictions differ from facts, of course; in a sharp analysis, the author distinguishes lies, which acknowledge that there is an objective truth, from the \u201cbullshit\u201d of Donald Trump and minions: \u201cThe bullshitter couldn\u2019t care less about truth and is just looking to dominate.\u201d Boucheron\u2019s text, drawn from a series of lectures, is sometimes repetitive, both allusive and elusive, and often nebulous in a Parisian intellectual sort of way (and never mind that he snaps, \u201cIntellectuals are the first to concede to tyranny because it allows them, basically, to set themselves off from the people\u201d). All the same, in a narrative that wanders from the subversions of medieval epics to the cynical prescriptions of Machiavelli, Boucheron closes with a dour and timely note from Klaus Mann about how power works: \u201cIt\u2019s as if people are afflicted with a kind of physical repugnance for the truth.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Early in this sometimes difficult text, which owes much to fellow Coll\u00e8ge de France professor Michel Foucault, Boucheron distinguishes analytical logic from fiction, noting that whereas the former gives the illusion that the world is logical, the latter \u201creveals to us the possibilities of thought.\u201d The stories that critique or shore up political discourses, whether, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}