The 7th Function of Language
Laurent Binet
The 7th Function of Language
Laurent Binet
Roland Barthes, one of the twentieth-century’s towering literary figures, is knocked down in a Paris street by a laundry van. It’s February 1980 and he has just come from lunch with Francois Mitterrand, who is locked in a battle for the Presidency. Barthes dies soon afterwards. History tells us it was an accident.
But what if it were an assassination? What if Barthes was carrying a document of unbelievable, global importance? That document was the key to the seventh function of language - an idea so powerful it gives whoever masters it the ability to convince anyone, in any situation, to do anything.
Police Captain Jacques Bayard and his reluctant accomplice Simon Herzog set off on a global chase that takes them from the corridors of power and academia to backstreet saunas and midnight rendezvous. What they discover is a global conspiracy involving the President, murderous Bulgarians and a secret international debating society. In the world of intellectuals and politicians, everyone is a suspect. And who can you trust when the idea of truth itself is at stake?
Review
Robert Frantzeskos
Paris, 1980. Detective Jacques Bayard is not familiar with the works of the influential literary critic and philosopher Roland Barthes when he enters his hospital room on a Monday afternoon. Barthes has just been hit by a passing truck on Rue des Ecoles, after dining with the socialist presidential candidate François Mitterand a few weeks before the election. Nothing appears out of the ordinary after Bayard’s initial investigation, but something doesn’t sit right with him: what if this were no accident? What if Barthes had in his possession a secret, fabled document of literary theory that was coveted by intellectuals across the globe: politicians and Communist governments alike? To guide Bayard through the labyrinth of what he sees as left-wing intellectual obscurantism, he must reluctantly enlist the aid of a young lecturer in Semiology, Simon Herzog. Together, they investigate clues, travel across Europe, and navigate the works of some of the towering figures of twentieth-century thought (Foucault, Kristeva, Deleuze, John Searle, Philippe Sollers), each leading them closer to a secret society of debating academics and the mystery of The 7th Function of Language.
Laurent Binet, has delivered an incredibly complex, hilarious philosophical-detective story set in an absurdist, alternate universe of French philosophy and literary history. Upon first glance, it might seem difficult, and at times an unusual departure from his debut work (where the process of history is investigated as it is written). Here, we’re inside a counterfactual history, but return to Binet’s familiar post-modernist tropes and self-consciousness. For instance, at one point Herzog (after listening to Derrida lecture) becomes increasingly paranoid, questioning whether he is nothing more than a character inside a poorly constructed novel.
Once the world of the story is revealed and understood, The 7th Function of Language is a wonderful assemblage of Joyce, Conan Doyle, and Umberto Eco (himself another character), and a must-read for those who are interested in the history of ideas, but refuse to take them too seriously.
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