Sartre's second century

156 Chapter Eleven
very distinction between the two categories is provocatively deconstructed
in Hope Now. Thought of in this way, Hope Now occupies an especially
interesting position in Sartre's ceuvre—not simply because it was his final
publication, but because it points to an explicit convergence of his
philosophical and literary ambitions, which he had for so long insisted
were distinct.
It is, of course, difficult to discuss Hope Now without letting the
controversy surrounding the text obstruct our analysis. After forty years in
the public eye, Jean-Paul Sartre appeared to reinvent himself just before
his death in 1980. In a set of interviews between Sartre and Levy,
published in Le Nouvel Observateur only weeks before Sartre's death,
Sartre came curiously close to embracing a Jewish messianic attitude and
he shockingly dismissed many of his earlier ideas. In the aftermath of the
publication, an outraged Simone de Beauvoir accused Benny Levy of
manipulating the aged Sartre while others chided her in turn for betraying
Sartre's final wishes. The stakes of the debate were high because the
legacy of a great philosopher was in question. It is understandable,
therefore, that the controversy has dominated most discussion of the text.
However, since it has now been more than a quarter of a century since the
controversy first erupted, I am going to ask that the reader of this chapter
momentarily look past the intrigue for the sake of doing justice to the text
itself. To borrow a phrase from Husserl, I suggest that we "bracket off the
question of Sartre's possible conversion to Judaism or his manipulation at
the hands of Benny Levy. 2 To be sure, that does not mean the murkiness
will disappear entirely. We should not approach the text as if it were
written by Sartre in his prime, for it was indeed published shortly before
he died. Sartre was blind, debilitated, and in many ways dependent on
L6vy when it was composed. Our knowledge of that should and inevitably
does condition our experience of it, but let us treat it as one determining
factor of the work and not as the be-all and end-all of the discussion.
Proceeding in this manner, I shall argue two basic points. First, I will
show that Sartre's distinction between imaging and signifying
consciousnesses is key for understanding how he separated his
philosophical works from his literary endeavours. Then, I will show how
this distinction ultimately fails when we apply it to Hope Now. Sartre's
Accordingly, I have not included a discussion of the controversy in the present
essay. For a comprehensive account, see Ronald Aronson, "Sartre's Last Words".
Aronson's introduction to the interviews remains the most exhaustive treatment of
the subject to date. For readers interested in a more biographical account of the
Sartre-Levy friendship, a good place to start is Annie Cohen-Solal's Sartre: A Life.