The first English translation of the French cult classic that lampoons France’s most popular
intellectuals of the post-1968 period and their ideas which became forces of
counterrevolution. Eric-John Russell’s translation of Jaime Semprún’s brutal takedown of
France’s best-known intellectuals of the post-1968 period A Gallery of Recuperation is one of
the first full English versions of any of Semprún’s books. Originally titled Précis de
recuperation the book is a scathing critique of ten major thinkers including Michel Foucault
Gilles Deleuze Jean-François Lyotard and Cornelius Castoriadis. Semprún uses this catalog of
careerism to reflect on the concept of recuperation—capitalism’s uncanny ability to coopt
anticapitalist critiques and subvert subversion. His central question: What happens to
revolutionary ideas including Marxism itself in the hands of professional intellectuals?
Semprún’s idiosyncratic and playful style of polemics takes existentialism humanism
structuralism poststructuralism postmodernism aesthetics and psychoanalysis to task
casting new light on the figures who have become dominant staples of modern Anglophone academia
and proving the necessity of critiquing intellectuals’ roles within contemporary capitalism. A
cult classic among the French radical left and scholars of the Situationist International and
May 1968 A Gallery of Recuperation never made the impact it should have. Russell’s translation
marks a major step in recognizing Semprún’s work beyond its French context.
