What do you think?
Rate this book
The Traitor
Autobiography, philosophical inquiry, confession— The Traitor is an unclassifiable and unforgettable book from one of France’s most inspiring social critics. Written when André Gorz was 32 and rising to prominence in the Parisian existentialist milieu, The Traitor starts from an acute personal crisis, “a state of absolute subjective misery,” rooted in social and political alienation. Using psychoanalysis and Marxism, Gorz explores the origins and symptoms of this crisis and struggles towards a resolution which he finds at last in political commitment and self-affirmation.
Few personal documents have ever been so rigorously analytical; few philosophical texts so vividly illuminated by the honest recall of painful experience. Gorz’s father was Jewish, his mother his tormented childhood in Austria during the Anschluss , when he took refuge first in religious asceticism, then in a self-destructive identification with Nazism, is scrupulously recorded. So, too, is his adolescent exile in Switzerland, his early encounters with Sartre—who, as “Morel”, is a constant reference point—and the conflicts of his first love affairs.
Sartre called The Traitor “an invitation to life.” It remains the most intimate and profound book to emerge from the existentialist movement, while providing remarkable insights into André Gorz’s subsequent work.
Few personal documents have ever been so rigorously analytical; few philosophical texts so vividly illuminated by the honest recall of painful experience. Gorz’s father was Jewish, his mother his tormented childhood in Austria during the Anschluss , when he took refuge first in religious asceticism, then in a self-destructive identification with Nazism, is scrupulously recorded. So, too, is his adolescent exile in Switzerland, his early encounters with Sartre—who, as “Morel”, is a constant reference point—and the conflicts of his first love affairs.
Sartre called The Traitor “an invitation to life.” It remains the most intimate and profound book to emerge from the existentialist movement, while providing remarkable insights into André Gorz’s subsequent work.
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
4 people are currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
André Gorz
70 books101 followersAndré Gorz , pen name of Gérard Horst, born Gerhard Hirsch, also known by his pen name Michel Bosquet, was an Austrian and French social philosopher. Also a journalist, he co-founded Le Nouvel Observateur weekly in 1964. A supporter of Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist version of Marxism after World War Two, in the aftermath of the May '68 student riots, he became more concerned with political ecology.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he was a main theorist in the New Left movement. His central theme was wage labour issues such as liberation from work, just distribution of work, social alienation, and Guaranteed basic income
In the 1960s and 1970s, he was a main theorist in the New Left movement. His central theme was wage labour issues such as liberation from work, just distribution of work, social alienation, and Guaranteed basic income
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 9, 2019
With so little attention here on Goodreads, I am left thinking this is a seriously underappreciated gem. Andre Gorz, for those who have never heard of him, was a prominent (Austrian-born) French writer, philosopher, and social theorist who wrote many books. The Traitor can be set apart from the rest of is work though; instead of theory, such as The Crtitique of Economic Reason (the only other book of his I have read), The Traitor is part philosophical tract, part autobiography, part intensive case study (where the case studied is one's self), ultimately adding up to a unique and curiously self-conscious form of antinovel.
The case study is done through a lens of what I think Jameson would describe as a dialectic of incommensurables (in other words, non-comparables): Marxism and psychoanalysis. Jameson might also call this dialectic particularly fruitful, full of creative potential, and bursting with energy because any dialectic of incommensurables worth pursuing is exactly that.
Of course this particularly fruitful dialectic is well known these days (hell, look at Zizek's prodigious output on on the two); I had no idea it was already a thing back in the mid-fifties when this novel was written (though I must admit my knowlege of the Existentialist milieu that produced it is superficial at best).
Anyway, it is an intense story about growing up the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother in Austria during the rise of the Nazis, his exile in Switzerland, and eventual migration to liberated France. Poignant and insightful, and also pairs quite nicely with Kristeva's Black Sun (which I recently finished); it is extremely good! This book is criminally overlooked. Read it, it's fairly short.
The case study is done through a lens of what I think Jameson would describe as a dialectic of incommensurables (in other words, non-comparables): Marxism and psychoanalysis. Jameson might also call this dialectic particularly fruitful, full of creative potential, and bursting with energy because any dialectic of incommensurables worth pursuing is exactly that.
Of course this particularly fruitful dialectic is well known these days (hell, look at Zizek's prodigious output on on the two); I had no idea it was already a thing back in the mid-fifties when this novel was written (though I must admit my knowlege of the Existentialist milieu that produced it is superficial at best).
Anyway, it is an intense story about growing up the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother in Austria during the rise of the Nazis, his exile in Switzerland, and eventual migration to liberated France. Poignant and insightful, and also pairs quite nicely with Kristeva's Black Sun (which I recently finished); it is extremely good! This book is criminally overlooked. Read it, it's fairly short.
December 30, 2023
A man is explained just as much by his adult condition as by his childhood.’ …. ‘To understand a man you must therefore deal with him in terms both of his present condition and of his pre-historic past.’
‘You can never change a man only from waist down; his morality now conditions and justifies his sexual behaviour, although the latter originally conditioned the former. It is his entire person which he must now modify in order to modify his sexual behaviour’
‘You can never change a man only from waist down; his morality now conditions and justifies his sexual behaviour, although the latter originally conditioned the former. It is his entire person which he must now modify in order to modify his sexual behaviour’
May 8, 2022
Ein Buch zum wieder lesen.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews