Mon Dieu!Poor, dear Sartre will be spinning in his grave, although I doubt the voice of the masses will be surprised that things have come to this. He was never much of an optimist, Jean-Paul. We are to leave this quartier, this haven of endless debate, with its view of the Seine and access to agnès b for designer T-shirts when funds are flowing. Which, of course, is rarely. For, naturelle-ment, as radical French intellectuels we are deeply impoverished, living off stale baguettes and cheap vin rouge (absinthe is so 19th century), with only the occasional Gauloise to add aroma. If the authorities understood the toll it takes to ponder and pose, they surely would not insist on moving our College of Social Sciences from the Rive Gaucheto Huis Clos. What are we, the vanguard of the proletariat, to do? The hoodies will laugh at our berets! They will set fire to my charmante, artfully distressed, Citroën Diane! I have heard it said that the workers drink instant coffee. Banished to barely Cartesian banlieues, how can an intellectual think?

Well, philosophy will be the poorer. They may think they are just cutting the brain out of Paris, but they are excising its heart. With no Derridistes, who will deconstruct reality, who will organise the protests? Who, more to the point, will host the elegant soiréesto liven up the long, dark nights of the soul? Yes, they may laugh at us, stuck in a cultural wasteland, having to talk to the unpleasantly real poor and the disillusioned instead of radical scholars who can agonise over which Camembert to buy. But without us, Parisians will have to abandon the barricades and engage in the sordid issue of work. They’ll hate it.