Il n’est jamais trop tard pour essayer de bien faire ; ce que nous faisons en commentant, un peu tardivement, la mort (le 20 novembre) de l’historien et du sp\u00e9cialiste de politique ext\u00e9rieure des USA Chalmers Johnson, pass\u00e9 de la droite dure, pro-Pentagone, \u00e0 la critique la plus radicale de l’Empire, et de la fin de l’Empire. Ses livres r\u00e9cents, avec le s\u00e9rie des Blowback<\/em>, ont \u00e9t\u00e9 d’immenses succ\u00e8s, bien que l’homme ait \u00e9t\u00e9 alors implicitement class\u00e9 comme un dissident du syst\u00e8me. Selon Steve Clemons, parlant de l’historien et de l’expert en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, \u00abChalmers Johnson,<\/em> [] from my perspective rivals Henry Kissinger as the most significant intellectual force who has shaped and defined the fundamental boundaries and goal posts of US foreign policy in the modern era<\/em>\u00bb (plus loin, et comme en passant, Clemons note que Johnson, en fait, surpasse Kissinger) ; selon Clemons toujours, cette fois sur Johnson le dissident, figurant parmi les critiques radicaux de l’Am\u00e9rique devenue Empire : \u00abJohnson measured himself to some degree against the likes of Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal but in my mind, Johnson was the more serious, the most empirical, the most informed about the nooks and crannies of every political position as he had journeyed the length of the spectrum.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tSur l’\u00e9volution de la critique de Chalmers Johnson, Clemons fait cette observation th\u00e9orique, particuli\u00e8rement r\u00e9v\u00e9latrice. L’observation vaut pour Johnson, pour l’\u00e9volution des USA, mais aussi<\/strong> pour l’\u00e9volution, que nous consid\u00e9rons comme terminale, du syst\u00e8me en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de la conception moderniste du monde, de l’encha\u00eenement de cette conception moderniste au syst\u00e8me, c’est-\u00e0-dire \u00e0 la primaut\u00e9 de la mati\u00e8re sur la hauteur de la pens\u00e9e intuitive dans cette perspective. Il s’agit d’une \u00e9volution qui suit les lignes de la globalisation, du nivellement des formes (de l’essence) du monde au profit de son naufrage dans la masse de sa substance informe, jusqu’\u00e0 l’appr\u00e9ciation catastrophique d’une uniformisation quasiment entropique par le biais de la repr\u00e9sentation \u00e9conomiste du monde, qui est effectivement la phase terminale de la pens\u00e9e du syst\u00e8me.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abJohnson once told me when I was visiting him and his long-term, constant intellectual partner and wife, Sheila Johnson, that the UCSD School of International Relations and Pacific Studies no longer either really taught international relations or pacific studies and that a student’s entire first year was focused on acultural skill set development in economics and statistics. To Johnson, this tendency to elevate econometric formulas over the actual study of a nation’s language, history, culture and political system was part of America’s growing cultural imperialism. Studying them is really about us as they will converge to be like us or will fall to the way side and be insignificant.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tJustement, l’article de Clemons sur Johnson, le 21 novembre 2010<\/a>, extr\u00eamement long, disert et int\u00e9ressant concernant Johnson, manifestement \u00e9crit dans la fi\u00e8vre de l’\u00e9motion de la terrible nouvelle pour lui-m\u00eame, est \u00e9galement extr\u00eamement int\u00e9ressant concernant Clemons lui-m\u00eame. Clemons \u00e9tait un proche de Johnson, affectivement et intellectuellement, et, aussi bien, professionnellement, lorsqu’il proclame combien lui-m\u00eame (Clemons) lui doit beaucoup dans l’\u00e9volution et le succ\u00e8s de sa carri\u00e8re. Clemons retrace la carri\u00e8re de Johnson et, sur un point particulier, qui est une certaine s\u00e9paration de la perception entre le critique mod\u00e9r\u00e9 Clemons et le critique radical Johnson, fait quelques remarques int\u00e9ressantes sur leurs divergences. C’est la fin de son texte, o\u00f9 l’on voit que Clemons n’est pas loin de reconna\u00eetre que le radicalisme critique de Johnson est sans doute plus fond\u00e9 que sa propre mod\u00e9ration (Nous avons soulign\u00e9 de gras les remarques, en passant, qui le sugg\u00e8rent, notamment, presque la m\u00eame courte phrase, r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9e deux fois : il devait avoir raison, il avait probablement raison…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t(En m\u00eame temps, on go\u00fbtera l’anecdote de Johnson d\u00e9sirant se retirer du Council of Foreign Relation auquel il avait adh\u00e9r\u00e9 \u00e0 ses d\u00e9buts, qu’il consid\u00e9rait comme vici\u00e9 et tomb\u00e9 d\u00e9finitivement dans les rets du syst\u00e8me, s’entendant d\u00e9clarer qu’on ne pouvait se retirer du CFR puisqu’une affiliation \u00e9tait consid\u00e9r\u00e9e comme \u00e0 vie et ne cessait qu’avec la mort du sujet ; et Johnson r\u00e9pliquant, comme sous le coup de l’intuition concernant l’enjeu de la crise : Consid\u00e9rez-moi comme mort Cette anecdote va au-del\u00e0 de l’anecdote, car elle illustre bien, d’une fa\u00e7on symboliquement significative en \u00e9voquant la mort par une ironie am\u00e8re, la rupture<\/strong> totale avec le syst\u00e8me \u00e0 laquelle un esprit loyal et un caract\u00e8re ferme sont aujourd’hui conduits par le respect de leur logique, et le respect de la mission qu’ils se sont n\u00e9cessairement assign\u00e9s.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abIn recent years, we were more distant mostly because I was not ready, as he was, to completely disown Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbMany of Johnson’s followers and Chal himself think that American democracy is lost, that the republic has been destroyed by an embrace of empire and that the American public is unaware and unconscious of the fix.<\/em> He may be right<\/em><\/strong> but I took a course trying to use blogs, new media, and a DC based think tank called the New America Foundation to challenge conventional foreign policy trends in other ways. Ultimately, I think Chalmers was content with what I was doing but<\/em> probably knew<\/em><\/strong> that in the end, I’d catch up with him in his profound frustration with what America was doing in the world.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbChalmers and Sheila Johnson saw me lead the battle against John Bolton’s confirmation vote in the Senate as US Ambassador to the United Nations but given the scale of his ambitions to dislodge America’s embrace of empire, Bolton was too small a target in his eyes.<\/em> He was probably right.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbSaying Chalmers Johnson is dead sounds like a lie. I can’t fathom him being gone and with all of the amazing times I’ve had with him as well as the bouts of political debate and even yelling as we were pounding out JPRI materials on deadline, I just can’t imagine that this blustery, irreverent, completely brilliant force won’t be there to challenge Washington and academia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbFew intellectuals attain what might have been called many centuries ago the rank of wizard an almost other worldly force who defied society’s and life’s rules and commanded an enormous following of acolytes and enemies.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbWizards don’t die and I hope that those who read this, who knew him, or go on reading his works in the decades ahead provoke, inspire, jab, rebuke, applaud, and condemn in the way he did.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbIn one of my fondest memories of Chalmers and Sheila Johnson at their home with their then Russian blue cats, MITI and MOF, named after the two engines of Japan’s political economy Chal railed against the journal, Foreign Affairs, which he saw as a clap trap of statist conventionalism. He decided he had had enough of the journal and of the organization that published it, the Council on Foreign Relations. So, Chalmers called the CFR and told the young lady on the phone to cancel his membership.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe lady said, Professor Johnson, I’m sorry sir. No one cancels their membership in the Council in Foreign Relations. Membership is for life. People are canceled when they die.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbChalmers Johnson, not missing a beat, said Consider me dead.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbI never will. He is and was the intellectual giant of our times. Chalmers Johnson centuries from now will be seen, I think, as the intellectual titan of this past era, surpassing Kissinger in the breadth of seminal works that define what America was and could have been<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tNous avons suivi Steve Clemons ces derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, comme un critique avis\u00e9, mais effectivement mod\u00e9r\u00e9, de la politique washingtonienne. Ces deux derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, Clemons est devenu, selon notre appr\u00e9ciation, moins int\u00e9ressant par rapport aux \u00e9v\u00e9nements, et nous l’avons moins cit\u00e9, jusqu’\u00e0 le d\u00e9laisser compl\u00e8tement.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tEffectivement, durant cette p\u00e9riode d’acc\u00e9l\u00e9ration de l’Histoire et de l’acc\u00e9l\u00e9ration de l’effondrement des USA, la mod\u00e9ration de Clemons est apparue de plus en plus comme informe, c’est-\u00e0-dire priv\u00e9e de l’essence qui est n\u00e9cessaire \u00e0 une juste appr\u00e9ciation de ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne colossal qui nous affecte tous. D\u00e9sormais, les \u00e9v\u00e9nements en ont d\u00e9cid\u00e9, et la mod\u00e9ration dans la critique n’est plus de mise parce qu’elle devient, m\u00eame contre son gr\u00e9 et malgr\u00e9 l’\u00e9ventuelle loyaut\u00e9 du critique, faiblesse et complicit\u00e9. Peut-\u00eatre la mort de Chalmers Johnson, avec l’aveu implicite qu’on lit par petites touches sous la plume de Clemons, constitue-t-elle le choc qui r\u00e9v\u00e8lera \u00e0 ce m\u00eame Clemons la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 urgente d’une radicalisation de sa critique, \u00e0 l’image de son ma\u00eetre et ami. Ainsi la mort de Chalmers Johnson pourrait-elle annoncer la r\u00e9surrection de Steve Clemons.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t(De Chalmers Johnson, on lira aussi ce texte du 17 ao\u00fbt 2010<\/a>, sur TomDispatch.com<\/em>, sans doute le dernier de ses \u00e9crits importants, sur son sujet favori (portrait d’un empire en cours d’effondrement). L’introduction de Tom Engelhardt, grand ami de Johnson, sonne r\u00e9trospectivement comme un adieu fun\u00e8bre \u00e0 Johnson, lorsqu’Engelhardt raconte comment il \u00e9dita le premier Blowback<\/em>. C’est effectivement le cas, lorsqu’on lit la note d’Engelhardt le 23 novembre 2010<\/a>, trois jours apr\u00e8s la mort de Johnson : \u00abBecause I knew by then that he would never write again, I introduced that piece with a little stroll of my own down memory lane the story of how I came to edit and publish his book Blowback.<\/em>\u00bb Le texte de Chalmers Johnson lui-m\u00eame, \u00abPortrait of a Sagging Empire<\/em>\u00bb, sonne comme un testament intellectuel, bien entendu \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re des pr\u00e9cisions que nous donne Engelhardt, mais aussi en r\u00e9alit\u00e9 Il semble bien que Chalmers Johnson savait qu’il s’agissait du dernier texte important qu’il nous donnerait.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 29 novembre 2010 \u00e0 06H06<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Il n’est jamais trop tard pour essayer de bien faire ; ce que nous faisons en commentant, un peu tardivement, la mort (le 20 novembre) de l’historien et du sp\u00e9cialiste de politique ext\u00e9rieure des USA Chalmers Johnson, pass\u00e9 de la droite dure, pro-Pentagone, \u00e0 la critique la plus radicale de l’Empire, et de la fin… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5264,3560,6179,2631,6875,708,1381,2866,2986,2622,2650,3270,10418],"class_list":["post-72511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-blowback","tag-chalmers","tag-clemons","tag-de","tag-dissident","tag-empire","tag-engelhardt","tag-johnson","tag-lempire","tag-la","tag-mort","tag-radicalisme","tag-steve"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}