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| Sartre's Les Temps Modernes | |
|---|---|
| Title | Les Temps Modernes |
| Editor | Jean-Paul Sartre |
| Founded | 1945 |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Frequency | Monthly |
Sartre's Les Temps Modernes Les Temps Modernes was a Parisian intellectual journal founded in 1945 that served as a central forum for postwar Jean-Paul Sartre and a wide network of continental and transatlantic figures associated with existentialism, Marxism, and decolonization. The review linked debates around World War II, the Cold War, the Fourth Republic (France), and anti-colonial struggles such as the Algerian War to literary, philosophical, and political practice, attracting writers and activists from across Europe and the Americas. Its pages hosted polemics, fiction, criticism, and reportage that engaged with institutions and crises including the United Nations, the Soviet Union, the United States, and movements like FLN and African National Congress.
Les Temps Modernes was established in the immediate aftermath of World War II by a founding group centered on Jean-Paul Sartre with collaborators drawn from wartime and Résistance networks including Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Sacha Zaliouk-adjacent circles. The journal’s origin intersected with major events such as the liberation of Paris and the birth of the United Nations. Financial and institutional backing alternated between private patrons, sympathetic editors linked to Gallimard, and cultural organs responding to the reconstruction of the Fourth Republic (France). Early editorial decisions were shaped by intellectual exchanges with émigré and international figures like Albert Camus, Maurice Nadeau, Claude Lanzmann, and correspondents in London, New York City, and Moscow.
Les Temps Modernes articulated an editorial mission that combined existentialist ethics as articulated by Jean-Paul Sartre with a commitment to anti-fascism and later to anti-colonialism, aligning at times with Marxist analysis associated with thinkers such as Karl Marx and public intellectuals engaging with the Soviet Union and Communist Party of France. Its political orientation evolved through controversies over the Algerian War, the Prague Spring, and critiques of both NATO and United States foreign policy. The review’s stance often placed it in dialogue or conflict with publications like Combat (French newspaper), Les Lettres Françaises, and journals connected to the French Communist Party and liberal circles around Libération.
The collective included a rotating cast of principal and guest contributors: regulars such as Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Genet, Albert Camus (in early interactions), and editors who later became associated with key cultural institutions like Gallimard and the Sorbonne. International contributors and correspondents included figures like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot-era translators, and intellectuals from Argentina, Algeria, and Morocco. The collective model resembled contemporaneous editorial practices at Partisan Review and engaged with intellectuals linked to Columbia University, Harvard University, and the networks around New York Intellectuals.
Les Temps Modernes published essays, reviews, fiction, and polemical interventions that fused literary criticism with political commitment, often invoking theorists and writers such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hegel, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Marcel Proust. The journal’s pages featured reportage on the Algerian War, debates about decolonization led by figures like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, and discussions of culture referring to authors including Marcel Proust, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and Victor Hugo. Literary practices emphasized testimonial prose and feuilletons in the tradition of Honoré de Balzac and modernist experiments echoing James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Critical engagement extended to film and theater, connecting to practitioners like Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud.
The journal was repeatedly embroiled in censorship disputes and legal challenges stemming from pieces on the Algerian War, denunciations of torture attributed to French Army units, and controversies over support for anti-colonial movements like the FLN. Legal actions involved courts in Paris and directives issued under successive administrations of the Fourth Republic (France) and later the Fifth Republic (France), provoking debates that implicated institutions such as the Ministry of the Interior (France) and the Conseil d'État. High-profile controversies also involved defamation suits between contributors and public figures, polemics with the French Communist Party, and state surveillance linked to Cold War anxieties involving MI5 and KGB-era stories in international circulation.
Les Temps Modernes shaped postwar intellectual life across Europe, Latin America, and Africa, influencing debates in universities such as the Sorbonne, École Normale Supérieure, Columbia University, and University of Oxford. Its legacy is traced through subsequent journals and movements including Structuralism, Post-structuralism, and decolonization scholarship that cites contributors like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. The review’s intersections with film, theater, and literature contributed to cultural shifts evident in the works of Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, and poets like Paul Celan. Archives and collected issues are preserved in institutional holdings linked to Bibliothèque nationale de France and university special collections, and its debates continue to be referenced in scholarship on existentialism, Marxism, and twentieth-century intellectual history.
Category:French magazines Category:Jean-Paul Sartre Category:French intellectual history