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Intelligence of the explanation text

Here's what I wrote in the foreword of this book, published in 2005 in Ellipses:

"The text analysis remains a fundamental exercise of teaching French. It is called linear explanation or comment compound, followed study or methodical reading, its purpose is essential training for critical thinking, that is to say both:

- analytical skills: the ability to discern the text, to perceive the subtlety of their means of expression, to interpret the speech knowing avoid the pitfalls of language - all things very necessary for citizens who rely on the conscience of their freedom;

- Faculty admiration: art to appreciate art, marvel at the power of a imagination, to enjoy the joy of a style, to measure the authenticity of a message through to recapture the works that precede us the cultural heritage that is we - the risk of stimulating the desire to write because the admiration leads to creation.
is naturally through practice that acquired the intelligence of the explanation, that simultaneously illuminates the text and receives light. And this does not just happen. "

In this manual, so I proposed a quarantine of" keys "to get to the heart of various types of texts that are worth to be explained, and written comments thirty models, including an analysis of page powerfully ironic written by Montesquieu cons "Negro Slavery" ( The Spirit of Laws , XV , 5).

But I just discovered, to my amazement, there are short-sighted critics who take this text to the first degree, and an author of Montesquieu are racist! The excellent record on Montesquieu, in Wikipedia, refers precisely to one of these "interpretations", which is the opposite of any "understanding of the text," and Montesquieu accuses of having been a shareholder of the Compagnie des Indes "(who practiced the slave), which is false.

It seems more serious than this kind of "reading", which aims to be "militant", being part of a general questioning of the Enlightenment and humanism, who are the very basis of "Human Rights ", that is to say anti-racism. Certainly, one can judge the length that was the actual behavior of European countries to the Enlightenment, but provided you do not get the wrong conclusion: if many Europeans have betrayed the Enlightenment, it is their betrayal that must be condemned, not the Enlightenment (in whose name, in fact, we can bring this critical thinking).

All this reinforces my idea that, more than ever, respect for words and their meaning, rigorous analysis, mastering tools to interpret the texts (especially knowledge Figures style) are indispensable to anyone who will face the tyranny of the media-correct, to avoid sinking into imbecility barbaric.

In a world where stupidity is virulent, we need to make intelligent contagious.

BH