‘C’est le petit livre rouge / Qui fait que tout enfin bouge’: The case for revolutionary agency and terrorism in Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise

Abstract

This article argues that Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1967 film, La Chinoise, has been over-read as prescient of les événements of May ’68 and not taken seriously enough as a far-reaching interrogation of the political limits of revolutionary violence and terrorism. By examining in close detail the film’s explosive, anti-realist style and ironizing textual strategies, focusing in particular on the set-piece train sequence with philosopher Francis Jeanson, I claim that Godard is both attacking the state terrorism of de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic and firing a warning to the new generation of student agitators that the path of revolutionary terrorism entails illusion, error and catastrophe. I suggest finally that part of the reason for the relative lack of terrorist activity in France post-’68 may be attributed to La Chinoise which, while revealing the precariousness of all political action and discourse (including cinematic), stimulates its viewer into further critical reflection, notably on the potential for terrorism within language itself.