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The New Sartre: Explorations in Postmodernism By Nik Farrell Fox

Jean Paul Sartre is still widely regarded as France's most famous and influential philosopher. Yet, to many, his work has been superseded by the work of subsequent poststructuralist and postmodernist philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze. "The New Sartre" presents a radical reassessment of Sartre's work and his relationship to postmodernism. It presents the reader with a detailed analysis of Sartre's entire oeuvre, from the 1930s to the 1970s, focusing in particular on his two main philosophical texts, "Being and Nothingness" and "The Critique of Dialectical Reason". Arguing that Sartre was a schizophrenic and transitional thinker, a thinker caught between modern constructionism and postmodern deconstruction, the book explores the differences and similarities between Sartrean existentialism and French poststructuralism. A fundamental re-evaluation of one of the central figures of 20th Century thought, "The New Sartre" highlights the critical value and enduring relevance of Sartre's work to our postmodern times.

Jean-Paul Sartre was the undisputed giant of philosophy throughout the sixties and seventies. His relationship to poststructuralists has been widely discussed in reference to the political upheavals which led to '68 and the reforms borne thereof. However, since the absorption of existentialist tenets and the eclipsing of its philosophical mood we've come to reassess Sartre as an intellectual of a bygone era. Many a time there have been revival attempts in his regard, none of which have had much success or pertinence, save, perhaps, Fredric Jameson's use of his attitude towards a materialist subject culturally bound to a being of facticity. Finally, here comes an assessment that defines the French philosophe within the postmodern realm. Nik Farrell Fox aptly analyzes Sartre's entire oeuvre, from the thirties to the seventies, with particular emphasis on "Being and Nothingness" and "The Critique of Dialectical Reason". The author does not stretch Sartre's philosophical ingenuity nor does he undermine the political circumscription by hindsight awarded him. So the question posed, treated, and deconstructed by Fox is "What is Sartre's place, relevance, and influence within Postmodernism?" As a sociologist the interpretation is intellectually acute, theoretically outstanding, and rhetorically compelling. His emphasis on Sartre's analytical reasoning, dialectical circularity between praxis and inertia through a Marxist visual, and the Hegelian thrust inherited by existentialism proves to be a vindication for a thinker who we have laid aside prematurely. The irony, a postmodern trademark indeed, is that amid the differences and similarities between two French philosophical schools of thought, Fox finds the more recent one lagging in terms of political engagement. A timely read and a bedeviled exposition that raises a fearless daunting and enterprising discourse to the surface of a postmodern sea which had done its most, by way of neglect, to wash to other shores a thinker we must not ignore. Herein lies the force and urgency of this book, fun, exciting, invigorating, and radical. Not an elegy, but by all means, not an epitaph either. Sartre is alive and breathing, his specter haunting the scene and the "event" we are presently living through a violent death of subjectivity. This is an informative book and a must read.

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