Sartre and the Press

Abstract

Sartre’s involvement in the press was a natural, logical development of his writing activities in other spheres. Between 1944 and 1980, Sartre produced numerous articles and gave many interviews for the daily and periodical press relating both to his own work and to his current views on the national and international political situation. It is, of course, important to stress initially that, unlike Nizan, unlike Aron, Sartre at no stage in his development was a regular contributor to a specific newspaper/ periodical. There is nothing in Sartre’s output that is comparable to Nizan’s journalistic contributions to L’Humanité and Ce Soir, or to Aron’s contributions to Le Figaro and L’Express, for example. Sartre perceived the press as a forum for cultural intervention at opportune moments, rather than as a privileged textual site for regular political commentary. Although Sartre’s contributions to Les Temps Modernes are both impressive and significant, they are of a different order to the daily and weekly journalism of Nizan and Aron.