concrete universal(seeNE 170 ). Thus every move of the boxers in the
ring “incarnates” the fundamental violence that permeates the historical
process in a field of scarcity. The upshot of this quasi-Hegelian stance
is that “boxing in its entiretyis present at every instant of the fight as a
sport and as a technique, with all the human qualities and material
conditioning (training, physical condition, etc.) that it demands” (CDR
ii: 20 ). Of course, Sartre will expand ET, of which this fight is an
incarnation in a dialectical sense, to include the socioeconomic dimen-
sion (the contractual relationship, the capitalist interest, the racial and
class identities of fighters and crowd and the like; unfortunately,
“gender” identities are not mentioned). It appears that the duality
of ET and incarnation was introduced to foster the historical character
of the dialectic, rendering it historical, not in a narrativist sense but in
its social ontological dimension.
Incarnation is an especially apt notion for integrating idiosyncrasies
and biographical considerations into the historical account as befits an
existentialist theory. In fact, the existentialist approach to history, being
a combination of historical materialism and existential psychoanalysis,
demands that we “concretize” (incarnate) the formal abstractions into
the convergence of a lived life. Sartre speaks of incarnation as “the
concrete universal, constantly producing itself as the animation and
temporalization of individual contingency.” In the case of the boxing
match, this means that “one punch, likeone dance, is indissolubly
singular and universal” (CDRii: 40 ). So Sartre’s turn to Stalin, if not
a complete treatise on the dictator and the “directorial” society that
he constituted and that constituted him in a dialectical circularity, is a
suggestive move in that direction. Though incomplete, it prepares us for
a more complete “existential psychoanalysis” of Flaubert and his times
inthe Family Idiot.
The circularity of incarnation: the case of StalinArmed with these additions to the dialectic constructed in volumei,
Sartre is now in a position to discuss a historical phenomenon that
focuses not only on the formal ensembles of structural intelligibility
and on a praxis-process of professional violence, but on a sovereign
individual: and not just any individual, but one who in the 1930 s and
1940 s could say “L’E ́tat, c’est moi” or its Russian equivalent, though
Vol. II,Critique 351