Episode 19: “Words Open the Infinite”: Leslie Kaplan and the unfinished revolutions
In episode 19, Jennifer Pap and I talk with American-French poet, novelist, and playwright, Leslie Kaplan (born in 1943), whose revolutionary writing we have been translating. As a student, Kaplan participated in the occupation of French factories in ‘68 and the May uprising and general strike that followed. Several years later she resided and worked at La Borde, a radical non-hierarchical psychiatric clinic directed by Jean Oury. Oury was a leading figure in the psychothérapie institutionnelle movement. La Borde attracted major thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Frantz Fanon who were forging meeting places between anti-fascism, revolutionary politics, and psychoanalysis. We read from and talk with Leslie about her first book, Excess-The Factory, which focuses on her experience working in the factories, and her third, The Criminal, set at La Borde, both of which we translated into English. Along the way we discuss Leslie’s close relationship with an Auschwitz survivor, the entwining of justice and love, the relationship between the “limit” and the “infinite,” Leslie’s interest in theater and “play,” and the multiple and necessarily unfinished revolutions demanded by our time.
We want to acknowledge the very sad passing of writer and revolutionary thinker Joshua Clover (1965-2025), whose press Commune Editions (with Juliana Spahr and Jasper Bernes) published Excess-The Factory in 2018. We remember Joshua with great respect and gratitude.
Books and other texts mentioned or discussed
Leslie Kaplan, Excess—The Factory, translated by Julie Carr and Jennifer Pap
Leslie Kaplan, The Book of Skies, translated by Julie Carr and Jennifer pap
Leslie Kaplan, Ms. Nobody Knows, translated by Jennifer Pap
Leslie Kaplan, Mathias et la Révolution
Jean Oury, “The Hospital is Ill” (interview in Radical Philosophy 143 (May /June 2007)
More on Jean Oury and La Borde
“Jean Oury and Clinique de La Borde: A Conversation with Camille Robcis”
La clinique psychiatrique de La Borde (1971) (Film)
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Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com
Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
Leslie Kaplan, in the 1970s. Photo by Alecio de Andrade
Born in New York and raised in France in an American family, Leslie Kaplan writes in French. She studied philosophy and psychology and history. During her studies she took part in anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist movements against the wars in Algeria and Vietnam. She worked in several factories as an "établie" starting from January 1968, and experienced the May `68 movement in an occupied factory.
Since 1982 she has been publishing poetry, novels, essays, and plays, mostly with P.O.L. Her first book, L’ excès-l’usine, was acclaimed by Marguerite Duras and Maurice Blanchot.
Her work has often been adapted for the stage (Claude Régy, Frédérique Lolliée, Élise Vigier, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, etc.) and her books have been translated into over ten languages. Kaplan was on the board of Trafic, a review founded by Serge Daney.
Jennifer Pap teaches French and Francophone Studies at the University of Denver. She has written articles on a number of 20th century and contemporary French poets, writers, or artists among which Guillaume Apollinaire, Dominique Fourcade, Georges Braque, René Char, and Leslie Kaplan. AK Press published her translation of Leslie Kaplan's Disorder: A Fable in 2020, and her translation of Leslie Kaplan's Miss Nobody Knows will be published by Tripwire Editions in June 2025. In collaboration with poet Julie Carr, she has translated L’Excès-l’usine (Commune Editions, May 1, 2018) The Book of Skies (Pamenar Press, 2024), and The Criminal (forthcoming).
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