XJV>;

r jP' 1 Pv, e0r8 r D - E c o n o m o u ' o u f depaxtment chair, for continued support

Including A s valuable assistance ol Paula Stacy and Rasa Masopust. who did
much work and solved many problems for us—we still cfwe them lunch.
We are profoundly grateful to all of these many friends for ihelr help.
INTRODUCTION:
THE STUDY OF
f^obert Con Davis
Ronald Schlelfer

CRITICISM AT THE
PRESENT TIME

AN APOLOGY FOR C R I T i a S M

Bn'nM U l d n . 0l r 8 U ! p r U e A n y . r e a d o f o l a Q , iQlfoductlon to literary criticism to

en .ountor d g f e w l v e n o w and apology. Malthew Arnold eiUblUhed the g e w « of
c aica wh,,n b , be wl
u • « " T h e Function of CriUcUm at the P r r e n t
m8
about crUM " " o n I n g th# " m a n y objeclloni" to a praviou. "proposition
lU tra 0rtiulC8 lot
M y?' P the present day." H . bad e u e d b"
quoted his doLractori u laying, in that the "Importance . . . (hel wslgued to
in c r l t l d s m ' W a i „ < ) X T l , y 9 ' " A r m 3 l d 1 1 1 8 1 1 1 ' j l m e d o u t that'there.U weaUvlty
In criticism a , well as la lUeraturei "U It were not so," he .aid, "ull but a very
aUoTooVIhU b o ' l t , 0 u l / r 0 m happiness of ell men." Northrop Frye
mo^71 I . spologeUc I lance In the InlroducUoa to Anatomy of Criticism
1 P U 1 1 S h d 111 1 0 4 9 a n d M r I n t e d l n
h U b i ' o k aI ss ' T hh 0r F H , r , , ? '' P S e c t i o n VUlof
' 1° ^ Fun^Uon ol Criticism at the Pi esent Time." la that essay Frve'
w e d t h t t l t1 9
, c ?" ' " I t l c was .being viewed a , .an " W U . t m a ^ q u 4 " L tha
e a, 4
S aZ T w " p m 8 U 8 ^ 0 f m d l l t 8 f a r y M P » " l o n . " e "second-hand
.Imitation of crentlye poww.V Appeaxlng fifteea year, aitw i h l , text a^d
. M if•• _
^ D 6 6 r E r L O C ! 5 ' T t l ? 1 0 ' , 8 ' ' ' l " ' S u s a a S o n t 4 8 In Agal/isl W e r p r e t a l l o n
UB66) ficoldgd all altlci, for; their InterpreUUon of Ulerary te*U for their
d a ms. In parUculw. that " X : U r e a l l y - o r really. o e - S That Y U
; • • T h a t Z li really p . " Mor« valuable L n Z m ^ l e a d i g i c L u y
L t • ^ l h a ^ a V ' e x p; ' y re,n c l n "thB h l ^ " t - U b e r ^ S v d u e Tn
w, ,1, ,®1 ' . 8 ' h s lumlnousaess of the thing Itielf, of thlnas belna
what they are." InterpreUUon, . h e concluded rather • h « p l y l , ,impW Boi^^^^^
S . ' r j a f J c f t f 9 p 7 ^ l l ? 1 z u8! l0 u d ; # C a d e , oot " wU ua dc h e o l l 8
b e K v ^ t h aa l ,sl tuu d e n t , ^H ; " » " « t t i r e who
J , Q 9 n u should be dUcouraged (from readlna criticism on ih«
a t r e t t d l a 8 b l U n U t h 9 l r C a p a d t y o r lnd
Judgment " ' 8 P « n d e n t response and
„ r J . , ^ Q , r < i r e C ,1 n I l l y ' ? e o ' ' f t i y H a r t m a n wrote h i . own version of the apologia
S a : M ' Z 1 £ a / ' r m ' f ( M 8 a 0 ) , l h 9 "P'S'^Ph for which he took
r u n c U o a q( CfUiclsm . otsay, Degijaalns wlib T S Ellot'i '
^ s u r a n c e t h a r " c r l t l C l , l : i U M Inevitable a . b r e a t h l i ^ ^ ^ K w e x p l o ' r e f ' U
gulf between phllo.oplUc crlUcIsm (In' C o n d n a n t ^ E j ^ ^ a ^ j practlcal
 I N T K O U U C l ' l O N i / r n f STUDY OK CKI'l'lCllSM AT TUli I'lUiSl-NT I'lMli
crilicism |ln England and the'United SlalosJ," repeatedly assuring us that
"criticism" must be accorded Its status as "a g j i u e , or a primary text," loo. In
this Hartman is shifting the groiinds of anxiety associated with c r i t i c i s m — u at
least making them more apparent. This anxiety is occasioned by the os. cl blUty
that criticism might be more than Just commentary, more, ir. fact, llian "just"
literary. Along this same line, J. Hlllls Miller In "The Search (or Grounds In
Literary S t u d y " (Section VllI) focuses his discussion around Arnold and
contemporary understandings of his critical practice in order to isolat, a n '
"Imperial" element in literary criticism. Beginning in the eighteenth century at
least, Miller argues, literary criticism—as well as "contemplating" and "ex-
plaining * literary worlts-r^has attempted to address wider areas of cultural
practice beyond literature. The study of literature. Miller says, "has been
weighted down in our culture with the burden of carrying from generation to
generation the w,.ole freight of the values of that culture; what Matthew Arnold
called 'the best that is kjiown and thought in the w o r l d . ' " Miller i-xpHcitly
raises the questions of why this should be—what historic:.! events in the
eighteenth or nineteenth centuries might have contributed to ihU practice, and
what implications it has for the study of literature. But whatever Its Implica-
tions, this pliunomenon has occasioned repeated apologies (or criticism,
repealed discussions and much anxiety about tlie nature and goals o( llturtry
study.
THE CONTRARIETY OF CRITICISM
In this context undergrnduate and graduate literature students could well have
Iheir own anxiety about the opoJogia crilica. Thoy may wonder what t h j y are
getting Into when the critics themselves are unsure about what th'iy are doing.
Is this apologia a gesture of modesty cloaking the grand—perhaps pre-
s u m p t u o u s - a m b i t i o n s of traditional literary study? Is It an Indication that
critics are simply nervous obout the usefulness of whot they are doing? It Is
historically true that from Dante's time on, writers also have been critics. The
coupling of poetry and poetics, therefore, should not be startling to anyone.
Why, then, should critics—at least since the time of Arnold—be nervous or
even unclear about what they do, especially now, wlien so many " d o " criticism
during what can legitimately be called "the critical age"? Indued, most of the
"literary theorists" In world hUtory, Uiose w h o actually try to formulate the
principles of literary study, are probably alive at the present tlnio.
Despite the wide practice of criticism and formulation of theory, the
conflict within critical practice that Arnold artlculalus and Miller describes
gives rise to great anxiety and great Intellectual debate. Tills conflict Is the
contradiction between the modest activity of creating a situation in which the
best that Is known and thought can have wide currency (Sontag's "trans-
parency" or Frye's description of (he job of criticism "to got us many people in
contact with the best that has been and is being tliought and said") and the
Imperial " b u r d e n " of maintaining cultural values In general (Frye's description
of the "verbal universe, in which life and reality are Inside literature'' and
which only the methods of criticism can help us to understand), In fact, the
very /unction of criticism has changed or become more self-reflective in recent
I N T K Q U U d ' l Q N ; Tltli STUOY OK CRJTICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME
time. Contemporary criticism has expanded Iti horlion to Include a vast array
of questions (Millor'i "freight") thai heretofore teemed ouUlde, or only
Implicit wlUiin, i u purview, This Include! questions of politics, leroantlcs, the
philosophy of language,"sexual and social relations, &nd probing concerning
the nature of literary study—Its responsibilities and iU very objects of study.
Such expansion ha» occasioned rouch conlroyersy and debate, exacerbat-
'ng rather than resolving the contrkdlcUdn vylthln a l t l c l s m and the anxiety of
Its practlra. The exploration of wider"cultural quesUons has come In recent
limes to be called lllefftryj'lheoly," and while lllerary theory Is not always
explicitly apologetic, It often'ineeU tremeadous opposition, especially within
Uie academy, since It ha» tended tb make explicit the very contradiction in
fi criticism that occasioned • Arnold's anxiety. Moreover,' the apologies for
criticism we have examined ate fornu of self-consciousness In critical practice,
and In one sense llteraiy " t h e o ^ " U always apologetic precisely because It
self-consciously explore* and situates what U Is doing. Thus, from the first
wllculallons of modttin literary theory ia the early nlaeteeolh century when
r riodrich Schlegel Imagined crlUcUm to be a "reconilructivo" p r whereby
a critic enhances Ihe development of arti It has lelf-coasclously explored Its
practice end soUal iltuationi la to doing, at Scblegel Imagined (and HarUnan
later claimed), lha cxlUc actually elevates criticism u a genre to the level of art.
Schlegel's romantic view ol criticism as an organic outgrowth of art survives In
uie poetics of the English Romantics and in the theory of such neociasslclsts as
T, S. Eliot and Ezra F o u n d , a i well as in much current thinking,
The contrary view, however, alsp present In the oarly nineteenth century,
says tiial criticism merely l u p p l e m e n t i art and, at worst, is a parasite draining
away Its llfeblood. At best it it a "hermeneutlcs" whose aim Is to recover the
uitentlonal meanings ol the artist and then, mission accomplished, quietly
disappear. Only on occasion, in this view, does criticism marginally Increase
our appreciation of artistic form, thereby giving support to art In a limited way;
This sepurutioii cf crlllcUm from art Is also Implicit In Frank Kermode's Idua of
genre us e " c o n s e n j u s , a set of foreunderstandlngs exterior to a text which
enable us to follow that text." Kermode, thus, believes that erltlclsra Is totally
d e p e n d e n t on llleraturo, aud he therefore has lllllt sympathy for the conflicts,
and convolutions, of current theory, Crltlclsm.Is merely an adjunct to literature,
and the two—as Kermode believes—belong In different areas of culture
anyway. .
Current theory, lacking Schlegel's belief In unity and Kermode's In
suparatlun, has IntenslQed tills debate. Contemporary criticism, In fact It
stranded between these t w o views—"nervous" about criticism's having a
separate Identity, end yet :it constantly undermines dlsUnctlons separating
Action and poelry, or prose fiction end expository prose, and even (despite
what Kormode says) the basic distinction between criticism end lileraiure.
Cortulnly about the d i s a e t e n e s s of critical and literary texts has been vanishing
or some time, and we are left with a h j b r l d critical "thing," which Hen-y
Jamus s term for the novel as a genre could describe—a baggy monster, thut Is,
criticism and literatura Intertwined and Intermixed, and mutually implicated,
la other words, we consistently find It t..jre difficult than Kermode suggests to
P l ,
l '" " a n d " between crlticism/litenture and cannot say precisely
how the two relate, ellhor merging or forming a relationship. As we have boen
asWng, why does It make critics nervous to formulate the relationship of
crilicism and lllerature?
 INTKODUC I'lON; Tlli; STUDY OK CKITICISM AT Till- HREiiliNT TlMli
T j l E rONTKMl'ORARY D E U A T E
We can focus on thesu questions by looking at a specific dispute, tlie recent
contioversy over the criticism/literature relationship between M. H. Abrams
and J. Hillis Miller. In a review ot Abrams's Natural Supornaturallsm;
Tradition and Revolution In Romanlic Literature (1971), M i l l e r — w h o genu-
inely appreciates Abrams's w o r k - - g r a n t s the f u n d a m e n t a l claim of Abrams's
historical scholarship, namely that "Dlake, HiJlderlln, Wordsworth, and the
rest have 'translatud' the supernaturalism of the I'lutonic und Christian trudl-
tion Into a h u m a n i s m " and.tlial what followed this "Uanslatlou" Is the fuel of
Romanticism Itself. Out Miller goes on to add the qualification tiiat "Abrams'
presuppositions |in such a study] . . . ate themselves a version of Western
metaphysics, even a version w h i c h might be defiued as romantic. NoluraJ
Supernaluralism therefore presents the familiar'spectacle of a book about
Romanticism which Is permeated through and through with Romantic assump-
tions." Miller Is arguing lhat Abrums, unconsciously drawing u p o n Romantic
assumptions in his work, unwittingly blurs the distinction between criticism
and literature, even though It Is this distinrtion u p o u w h i c h his "criticism" Is
based. j1
In a description of his w o r k Abrams says that "In retrospect, I think I was
right to compose Natural Supernaluralism . . . by relying [almost solely] on
taste, tact, and intuition rather than on a controlling m e t h o d , " because the rules
of Romantic discourse "are complex, elusive,' unsystematic, and subject to
Innovative modification: they manifest themselves in the Intuitive expertise of
the historian; and the specification uf these rules should not precede, but
follow practice." Thus, whereas Mille: demonstrated that Abrams wrote a
Romantic (though "critical") fiction In Nalurtil S u p e r n a l u r a l i s m — a "fiction"
in the genre of "criticism," a fiction that reitorales the characteristics of other
Romantic fictions—Abrums, like Kermode, claims that he was simply working
Intuitively to discover the threads of Romantic Influence that are locoted with
objective validity "out there," actually in poetry. Abrums suw no sucli
Romantic stance in his own work, no mixing, or contamination, of poetry with
criticism. Literoture and Criticism, for Abrums, like " l i f e " und " a r t , ' are
intelligible only as distinct entitles, the " a n d " in this coupling indicating total
separation.
. Further, Abrams also sees criticism as a f u n d a m e n t a l l y derivative pursuit
lhat draws Its life (parasitically) from literature's body. Criticism, If the world
were a little better place, would not bo needed. In cuiitrast, for Miller the " e n d "
• Implicit In "criticism/literature" Is a moment of "aporiu" d e s i g n a t j i g varying
and reversible priorities wherein we may see—upsetting Abrams's vchima—
the "critic as host" to literary texts. This Is a reversal, as MIIU: writes. In which
"both word and counterword ("host" and "guest"] subdivide. Each reveals
Itself to be fissured already within itself, to be" in Miller's term borrowed from
Freud, " u n c a n n y . " In other words, literature is the host, as Abrams claims, or
criticism and literature participate in a "literary" discourse where " h o s t " and
"guest" are significant and reversible aliernatlves—phases, so to speak, in the
process of reading. In sum, lor Miller, criticism (nurture) Is Inherently
"fictional," end fiction (nature) Is deeply "critical." For Abrams, on the other
side, the two clearly are not interchangeable m any way thot challenges their
distinctness or ..itelllgiblllty as categories.
The Abrems/Mlller debate points up, among other things, the range of
possibilities in current theory for piosllionlng criticism In relRtlon to literature.
U we use Abrams and Miller to mark oxtrentes, we can further divide
INTKOUUCnON; THE STUDV OF CRITICISM AT THE P I ^ S E N T TIME
cuntomporary critical stfotegles Into four major areas. First, according to
Kerniode and Abrams, the cdUcUm/Ulerulur# relallonshlp Is broadly exegeli-
cal. Criticism h o f o — e i t h e r a full M lale^pf«ta^on , , or a narrow judgment about
guaeric classlflcallon—Aads Iha external ronalralnti on a text, a dlmeuslou not
part of the text buf a "forraal" ordering of otherwUe p o l y m o r p h o u s textual
"content.'' SuggBstlng a brace of prosthetic limb, criticism In this regard Is the
undesirable a n d yet unevoldabla thing, useful but embarrassing. This Is a
variant of Sontag'i antl-lntarpretatlon itanca and close to the "textual rhelorlc"
presented In Section U o( UiU book. In that section, Waller Ong, for example
exumines h o w the language of literature—lli1 rhetoric—creates roles for readers
to a s s u m e In relatloo t o » t e x t . ' . •
Second, positing » l a t i tlgld division between criticism and literary text Is
the h e r i n e n e u l i c a p p r o a c h . Most polotedly in phenoraenologlcai Interpretation
(as In the Geneva School], thli crlUclim attempts to d l j c o v e r literary " f o r m " In
the s y m p a t h e t i c e n d ImaglnaUvg probing of a text, the intimate Interrogation of
the textual Interior," T h i s approach, as practiced by George* Poulat, Gaston
Dache ard, a n d (at o n e time) J. HUIU Miller, e n t a i l , believing that a text
constitutes Its o w n interior " w o r l d , " w h i c h can be entered directly b y the
reader U u o u g h a n ImaginoUv# experience ol the text. T h i s Is close to the
rhetorical analysis of K e n n e t h Burke (Section U), but unlike that aualysls this
approach posits less distance between the m a n i p u l a t e d reader end the m a n i p u -
lating text. a
A third a p p r o a c h , positing a smaller separation of criticism from literary
texts, 1^ that of Reader-Response. Here, the relallonshlp is an "afiective," or
psychological o n e in criticism that attempts to describe the text's "effect" (or
emotional contour) e n d " e f f e c t " on the r e H e r . T h i s kind ol criticism may also,
as in Stanley F l j h ' s w o r k (Section 11), suggest a less " p e r s o n a l " and more
SOCIHI W D c o n v e n t i o n a l context, in w h i c h to u n d e r s t a n d the workings of the
text w u h l n the reader. (Fish's convenUonai interpretation of Reader-Response
criticism can be traced to the "ordinary language" philosophy of J. L. A u s t i n -
discussed In Section i V — a n d , ultimately, to the late philosophy ol Lud\/lg
Wittgenstein, an approacii sharply opposed to Ong's " p e r s o n a l " rhetoric.)
I. ,? a y ' 1 w h e n l t 9 between criticism and literature dissolves
altogether, the sumlollc (sec Julia Kristeva, Section ill) and deeonslruclJve (Paul
rh„M a Ka 1 , ftncl H e n r
n, . r L o u 1 ' G 8 l e .»' s « = " o n VIU) approaches suggest
1 falur
* involves multiple influences among
ih M C r l. 1 I 8 " . ? , r w y t 8 * u 4 ' M , ftmQn?i f"ore broadly, textual " s y s t e m s " —
that Is, chains of slgniflers that move freely through every order of text, in the
sem otic and d e c o n s U u c t l v e views, each " t e x t , " w h e t h e r critical or literary, is a
localized but a l w a y s indeterminate inscription of an "intertext." Thus, at one
exUeme, represented j y Abrams and Kermode, we find the essentially rhetori-
cal Uieory where n genre Is an exUatextual "context of expectation," precisely
a set of l o r e u n d e r s t a n d i n g j " present in readers' and writers' minds. At the
other extTHme, with somlotlcs and decoiistrucllon, criUclsm Is positioned
problematically as an indeterminate fold (or twist) In reading. T h e critical text
slips In -Mi^d out of sight as it merges into a n d then comes out of the literary text.
Another i m p o r t a n t view, of the a i t i c l s m / l i t e r a t u r e relationship is Implied
In this col ectlon s m a n y practical a n d Interpretive essays. Each such essay
addresses Issues of reading.'textuallty, narraUvity, influence, history, or cul-
tural reference a n d , thereby, stages an e n c o u n t e r b e t w e e n literalure and current
[;' e . 0 / y ' E ? c j ' e l y
' l discourse Into contact with literary
In. Ujs carefuJ reading of « text. U k e other crit-
ical/literary e n c o u n t e r s — A b r a r a ' s The Mirror a n d the L a m p (1853). Michael
 INTKOUUCriON: THii !>TUUY Ol' CKl'l'lCliiM AT TlHi I'UliSliNT TIMli
IN IKUDUCI ION; ' I ' m i STUUV UK CKlTICItiM A T TlUi FKESENT TIME

Ryan's Marxism a n d Deconslruclion (1982), and Jojia Gallop's The Oaughlnr's

Seduclion (1982)—these essays argue for cciUcal connections that have pre- | a M d i,1'8 S 1 ® n l f y l | , g Monkey'."'In that essay. Gates follows the
P f f t C t Ce
viously gone unn.oticed or have been strategically ignored. Elllin r! I —as U Is designated la what Ralph
^ Perhaps closer to the Miller pole t h a n the Abrams, many of these Ellison calls. tha unwutten dictionary oi American Negro' usage"—throuah •
practical" essays indicate the intervention of history In criticism. T h e reader col d practice;!" In blade cultures' and reconcelves "ilgnlfy'n" as a
Inierprets a text from a defined viewpoint and produces a uniqu« " r e a d i n g " in •RCBrnHCf .M 0 1 11181 G o ' f ' d l i c o v e r . " la tha po.tinodern fioUonof Uhmael
that encounter, and this reading ls 4 a radically historical concern, an unrepeat- rnif." V ' el1lay—i» i n f i I y " t r a d u l o n i ' 1 " In Its critical present at l on-
able event in literary history, h a p p e n i n g each lime a j if for the first lime. Gerald Ga e» situates himself at U^e lnteriecUon o( the "tx&nsltlonal phase" of
Graff, in his study of criticism at the present time, notes this contem- crllicism, semloUc »tudie», and loclal.and cultural history. That Is, be situates
porary historicbl sense in the coupling of " p o s t m o d e r n . . . literature ond intflrn ® 80 old p a r a d l p strongly: akin to axlstenUalUm, archetypal
literary criticism," the reading of one will, the pther markina a particular n S fi! A"' 8 n , d 1 K a n t l a c ejthetlci—which flourished during what may be
n u w r i c a l m o m e n t . The same a s s u m p t i o n holds in Raymond F e d e r m a n ' s K9 0 th9 C 1
) f i H1 '"
0
or,". X P erl" crlUcal s t r a t e i r t m u l L d
Sur/iclion; f i c t i o n Now a n d Tomorrow (1901), an impassioned promotion of ' Nnrih t h a J l u l h o f t t y o ( : T i . S . . Eliot, tho sot)thera Fugitives, I A. Richards, and
y9 fUl
the connection, and the inseparability, of contemporary theo.y and E n H M ~ r 1 I t ' . n e w paradlgin'lalluenced by Ferdinand de Saussure,
H8lde
postmodern literature, in this work, F e d e r m a n predicted thul "the primary 8Ker, Cls'ide Uvl-Slr»u»s, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The latter
focus of fiction in the future will be not to " p r e t e n d any longer to pass for C h p' M , v v o ' k •liows, has coonecUons'with decoostrucllon,
reality, for truth, or for beauty. Consaquentiy, fiction will no longer be regarded der-Fesponse crlUclsra; and the social conitclousness ol feminism, under
as a mirror to life, as a pseudoreallstio d o c u m e n t that Informs u> about life, nor Man ? ! r r i d a vid
, G
? ?J a" cn q, yu Hw a rLacan.,
tm4fl
' ' • H U " ' MiUer, Paul de
will it be judged on the basis of its social, moral, psychological, metaphorical, Man, S t^Lv F
Monijy l I Julia vKrliteva,
Fi^h,
commercial value." In Federman's view, tomorrow's fiction will "unmasK ,is a I J a t 0 V / p f t r f e c i | ^ develop! la what may be called the Age of the Reader,
own fictionality" and "expose the m e t a p h o r of its o w n Iraudulence." This a period of nonspeclUIzed reading sUategiei, or "ordinary" reading. Whereas
prediction divides into lour propositions for " t h e future of fiction"! (1) the In the earlier paradigm a i t i o and criticism were thought (though uacon-
typography ot iradllional novels, w h i c h has become "boring and restricllvo," sc ous y) to be varnplrUlng literature's vital body. In U ^ y ' . p T d l ^ ^ e
will be cliangod . j as "to give the reader an element of choice . . . land] wltlcy par?site Is also • host, or a "primary taxt," u C«ofirey Hartman claims,
discovery"; (2) the advent of this n e w typography will mean that "linear i.,)d S f / n r n l ' 1 0 , U l t 8 r P" t Allon, loo, Thls shUt from text to reader-really from
orderly narration," " n o longer possible," will be broken u p and refracted; (3) text-as-producl to reading activity—entails a new view of the criticism/
these d e v e l o p m e n t s will then lead to the reulUation that "there cannot be any literature relationship. While criticism In the N«tv CtlUcal paradigm was a
truth nor any reality e,v.terior to fiction," to the extent that "writing fiction will cl^lntaxn T 4
f m o a 10 t l l # experience conceived u a trdns-
be a process o( inventing, on the spot, the material pf fiction"; and (4) future fXo, ^ * 7 . ? Sontag said—of "the lumiaousness ol the thing lUeU, of
VV y aie
hctlon "will be seemingly dovoid of any meaning, it will be deliberately ' 1 ^ ' " In the contemporary paradigm criticism Is a
Illogical, irrational, unrealistic, non sequitur, and incoherent." species of literature, another way to.read and write, the paraslle/hosl relaUon-
8 4 Parad 8
These avant-garde p r o p o s i t i o n s — i n t e n d e d to expose "the fiction lil- of In C f l i L ' T ' ??f mulU
P1# and aot a fixed orlentaUon.'
reality and to show that "reality as s u c h does not exist, or ruth( r it exists only h a Ssocial V
l d o ror" ' c cultural a lrd d U n
u 7 t ; i r > . place
, l 0 a C<U, b 9 M e a Wh8t W6 wl
in its fictionalized version"—seem distaiitifrom current concerns with ethics tne olr contemporary criticism.
' " " " " " C
and politics in criticism. Even so, F e d e r m a n ' s propositions constitute not
merely criticism," in this case a prediction' for the future, but a f u n d a m e n t a l l y THE HUMAN SCIENCES AND CULTURA L CRITICISM
Uter
2 ^ l e Ll s l t u a t e , d w ' l h l n '^>8 senre of "criticism of prose fictinQ." 3'hls genre,
whetHfer the " p r e d i c t i o n s " are correct or not, m u s t ' b e taken precisely t s a f"0'1.1,;,'0™ t
tl19
conleinporary debate In criticism has t a k e n - l n a sense, an
fictior: li construct, a piece of "surfiction" a n d . thus, aimed at no "IruUi" and .ludy l ! d t W ' d U d n V l f V e i " 0 U t l ( } l h e , ? | u " " o . ' ' o U h M a t u r e ol humanistic
touching no "reality exterior to fiction." F ed erman ' s overtly " c r i t i c o r ' text i. Uiat Uie " h u m S " V P l a C U C e 0 l l U e f V y a l a c U l n - The Uadltional view
Uius,^provides its o w n case in point, being n e i t h e r merely a critical c o m m e n - hum! humwlUes have been areas ol knowledge that examined unique
ary (nurture) on . terature conceived as a host nor purely a fictional text ^ o f ^ u!eVttilaEVo?^ 0
tCt,',Cj.hynr1,llc ""dy-Chauc^CanteSr;
(nature). Federman's text, a kind of ''allterature" (in lhab H u s a n ' s term), is lojes, uie battle ol Waterloo, Locke's Treolfse on Human Nalur«, Pica'so's
s i m u l t i n e o u s l y critical and literary, the very sort of "fiction" F e d e r m a n o Z T n of " C ? U a r l e l , e V e n N o w t o a ' ' Prinelpla and Darw'n's
preoicled. Origin 0/ S p e c l e s - l s a unique event that occurred only once and conse-
We have examined Federman's work because, in m a k i n g no gesture toward v h n a n M ' i " 1 ? m if 1>® • t u d l e d thfough description and paraphrase.'As tho
apology the way others (even self-proclaimed radical departures) often do, his . linguist Louis HJelmslev noted, according to this UadlUonal view "humanistic
ext helps us to d i s t i n g u ' i h the important features of a transitional p h a s e in L Z 0 S S f l l V , ? , U f f 1 p . h e U 0 B l e n f t " e nonrecurrent aad lor that very r e a s o n
literary criticism, or U»e m o v e m e n t from Uie N e w Criticism of Cleanlh B r o o b S eatrueat.
a ^ , U b i B C U d he
10 e x i c t a d
w d Wimsatt and Beardsley, as well as the historical criticism of A b r a m s , . . , In the field ol tha humanltle.," goes on," "conseouenilv
to contemporary developments of reader-centered approaches. Moreover, ? r • I V ;? U l d 10 b a
• d W8"'nt method (from s c i V n S - S y S
Federman is describing in "surfiction" the critical proctice with w h i c h w e end description, which would b« oeirer to poetry than to exact science—or at anv
this volume. Henry Louis Gates, jr.'s " T h e Blackness of Blackness: A Critique ot whicl'!) m 8 | • M * t l l c U , U , l U t 0 • d l »cu»lve lorm ol presentation In
which tlie phenomena pass by, one by one, wlU»out being interpreted through a

L..
 INTKODUCTION: THE STUDY OK CRITICISM AT THE FRKSENT TIME
IMTltODUCTlON; T H E STUDY OF C R i T i U S M AT T H £ PRESENT TIME

system," This " m e t h o d , " HJelmslev suggests, Is "history" In Its most chrono- sociology—and even the "professional" debates within literary studies them-
logical manifestation. Since the "objects" of h u m a n i s t i c study are unique, they Uea8 w U h 1118 , l u d
can be catalogued only in chronological order, and so the h u m a n i t i e s have tarion ^ ' ! y o l lll«atur8. that are examined in
various essays of( Ihli book.
traditionally been-"hlstorical" studies: the history of philosophy, the history of
art, history itself, the history ol science, literary history, and so forth. Frye said . I" a , w , a y ' t h e n ' W 9 suggesting that the study of crlUclira can profiubly
be situated as a pwt--and a leading part—of the study of culture. A more
the same thing about critical practice in 1948; "literature being .as y t t
complete Justlfiaitlon for this expansion would necessarily Involve a discus-
unorganized by criticism, it still appears as a huge aggregale or miscellaneous
„ ° n l l 0 1 ' h 0 definition of Uia term "culture" beyond what we have oifered.
pile of u e a t i v e efforts. The only organizing prluclplu so far discovered in it Is
Cu lure, Raymond Williams notes la Keywords, Is "one of the two or three
chronology, and w! ;n we see the miscellaneous pile sUung out along a
mos complicated words la the English Language." In another book. Culture,
chronological line, some col)erence is given to it by tradition [chronologically
Williams says that cultural practice' and 'cultural production' are not simply
conceivd]," derived from an otherwise constituted social order but are themselves maVr
Implicit in Frye ar^d Kjelmslev is the possibility that the humanities could oleaients lu its conslltutlo;)," In this conception, culture Is not some "inform-
"reorient" themselves and adopt a more scientific model for their study.
n ,0Cl9
Instead of following what Frye calls "naive induction," the humanities could h ? n ! l 1,(7 ff! r4lh8f
' m l U m ,
"y- 11 11
through w h i c h necessarily . , , a social sysiem Is communicated, reproduced,
attempt, as Hjelmslev says, "to rise above the level of mere primitive descrip- experienced and explored." ,
tion to that of a systematic, exact, and generalizing science, in the theory of V lll
which all events (possible combinations of elements) are foreseen and the l l!!'? 8 h . d e f i J l U l 0 ^ ' of course, are net the only valid description of
C ult u
cul ure, but it Is g ear from hU ideas that lllerary studies conceived as a
conditions for their realization established," S u c h a discipline would attempt systematized critical acUvlty-a a l t l d s r a that studies "signifying systems" In
to account for the objects of the h u m a n i s t i c study in terms o( systematic
relationships among them (e.g,, Frye's discussion of genre) or amo n g the • d l « c M u f n ?K B ac , fLad
* ! SeMrallzlng w a y - I s la a position lo
direct its methods and obsetvaUoas to lh« widest area of the production of
e b m e n l s that combine t j constitute those objects (e,g., Paul de M a n ' s
discussion of grammar and tropes in Section IV) ratiier than their chrcnologicul r r ! ! " ! ? 8 ! 5 - 1 ? c u l t t w ? 1 •efvlUes as specific signifying pracUces and as a general
description, in this case, the " h u m a n i t i e s " could be conceived a s the " h u m a n n l n q y ;, ^ i „ 8 C t ' 4 ' . i r o n 8 " S " 0 1 9 0 ' c a n be made thai the texts we
custoinarlly call "llteralufs" constitute a privileged site where the most
sciences," j Important social, psychological, and cultural forces comblae and contend. In'
In such a conception, as Frye notes, criticism would take Its place a m o n g
the social sciences rather than the natural sciences. In fact, such a division cun Dioduc(5!on ! " h T ' m " t 0 d U f : 0 U r , a ' 1 0 l a n 8 U 4 « 9 l n 8 1 1 1 1 1 manifestations, in it,
be seen in the social sciences themselves. In the Course in Cenerul Ungufslfcs, i reception, Is » "natural" focus of literary studies and a
for instance, Saussure specificaily distinguishes between two m e t h o d s of n J u r a l outgrow h of criticism. One result of such a possibility has been the
a Cl vlty
studying economics—economic history and the " s y n c h r o n i c " study of the nudv In ih "J , ' / P 18 e x a m l n a U o n of the Instltulloo of lllerary
economic system at any particular m o m e n t . Most of the social sciences. In Ohrnfl!in'« R n ° Q b ' l k 9 1 R J o b e f t Scholes's Texlupl Power. Richard
contemporary practice, arc divided in '.his fashion. Psychology, (of Instance, Cullor^s F r ^ m f n o \ Ul^rulure. Jonathan
encompasses the analysis of unique case histories of "clinical" psychology, Culler s Framing he S/gn; fritieism and its Injlilulfons, Frank LenUlcchla's
and experimental psychology attempts to alrticulale the " g e n e r a l " f u n c t i o n i n g Criticism and Social Change, u well m a host of feminist « d black siudles. t h r
of mental activity. Anthropology encompasses both the study of u n i q u e very nature of the study of literature Is being examlaed In relailoa to other
' cultures and, as in Claude U v l - S t r a u s s ' s work, the "general" functioning of Mc iUQfn ' ' r ' i i 4 ' VV8 h a V # a " e f f l P l e d , n l h l s book—and especially In the last
aspects of culture. Even an earth science s u c h as geology studies both t)ie DrnrMr»~ K , 3 " l m u c h M Po«»lble thls Wider conception of critical
historical d e v e l o p m e n t and the synchronic composition of geological forma- ? S y li"rS dil.m|qUe M an l m p 0 r U n
' l n { 0 f m l n 8 'oreB wUhl
"
c
lions.
In this way, lilerary study also can be seen to offer two " m e t h o d s " of
s t u d y — i n Frye's terms, lltorary history and more or less •ystomatii.ing
crilicism. What allows the systemlzation of criticism, however. Is the c o m m o n THE DIFFICULTY OF CRITICISM
and " r e c u r r e n t " element of traditional hu.-nanistic study, the fact thut. as
Hjelmslev notes, all the humanities deal in the study of language and discourse. A central paradox—given tlie widened scopj and ambition of criticism we are
Discourse, moreover, is c o m m o n to the social sciences in general, and conse- describing, and given, as we have suggested, the reorientation of recent critical
t
quently a systematic crilicism could be a more general theory of discourse, a r .^ J j 8 , w a J d e f — H i a t many critical texts in this book should be
more general study of cultural [i.e., discursive) formations. 111 this w a y , dlfficul y | D r« ^ v n ( U ,"' f a l d ) ' o r o b ' C U f e 1 0 l h e l r density and generally
Y e , u c h l , 1118
crilicism can u a n s f o r m itself into being the " h u m a n science" w h i c h w o u l d ihluuh t . , ' "•'» « commonplace of contemporary
study the functioning and creation of a host of " d i s c o u r s e s " within society f o u g h t that so much contemporary alllclsm and cultural critique—de Man's
(Including, of course, "lllerary" discourse). Suc.h a h u m a n science w o u l d h« nWy' ? 8
f' »«mJollcs, Derrlda's "decoastructlve" philosophy,
attempt to describe whal distinguishes llleialure from olher language .sc and the psychoanalysis of Lacan, Jameson's Marxist analyses, and Clxous's feminist
what literature shares with them, ll w o u l d attempt, as maj.y have already discourie—should he d.fflcult to follow. But what does It mean exactly for a
attempted, to situate lllerary practice within olher c u l l u u l pr:-5lic-;8 (includ- f 1 0 h 8 d , U f l c " 1 , T F o f 0 0 9 iWng, since they did not write In the
ing linguistics, teaching, politics, psychology, philosophy. Ideology, Uadltion of expJfcQlIon de lejtle. or "close reading." or In the formalist mode
that dominated mjdern InterpreUtlon. Ihesu critics art frequently madden-
10 INTRODUCTION; THE STUDY OF ClUriClSM AT THE PRESENT TIME INTKUUUCI ION; THJi STUDY O F CKITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME
11

Ingly elliplical, especially in word play, As George Stelner remarlu about such
"dlfficull" writers, it can seem as tliou,^!) "at curtain levels, wc are not meant to
understand at all, and our Interpretation, indeed our reading Itself, is an
Intrusion. . , . For w h o m " — a n d here Stelner could be referring to many
•sSBBSBassSiSK
contemporary critical texts—are they "composing (their) cryptogrems?" Why
should the reading of contemporary criticism be this difficult?
Stelner sheds light on four dllferent types of difficulty—contJngonI, L c t b a v m h . hT ' m 01 W U l U y , a 1 - " m l e r - 1 0 S w T f X o u ^ ° " In
modal, tactical, and above ell, onloJoglcaJ—that ate relivant to the tusk of fiifniui « " « y w l t h I l « U y presentation! of such "ontoloalcal"
reading contemporary criticism. In brief, he describes contingent difficulties a: difficult e a - p r e . e n u u o n i ol what leems to be a s o r l X e a c h wlthln S . v "
tlioso problems we have with the obscurity of a particular text—Its exotic or
unclear allusions cr its use of deconstructive, psychoanalytic, linguistic, and
philosuphica! terms that we, as Stelner said, "need to look u p . " Either we look
up "trace," "aporia," "aphanisis," "metonymy," end " m e t a p h o r " and under-
stand them, or we fail to understand. Since current criticism Is Interdisciplin-
ary and steeped In the debates of philosophy, psychoanalysis, linguistio, and
twentieth-century thought generally, the difficulty here can bs formliable.
Next, model dilficulty, rather than being an obscurity in the text, 1« the reu'der't
resistance to a text's presentation and the reader's misunder'ttanding, or
possibly dislike of its mode (Its genre or form). Much contemporary criticism,
lor Instance, Is polemical—written In a restricted dialogue with other theorists ;
" r e a X l " ' Q ' e x a m P 1 9 ' »<» M l emphasize cridcism u attempUng a unified
who diligently pursue theoretical debates and ongoing commentaries. This
magisterial mode—wherein the writer ptoclainit and argues, dnd the audience • Instead, a p r o c 8 M ' V , ' i D ^ l t ^ « ^ by
" ? e a a i n 8 " 0 T " c o n t a n l . " They see,
may be restricted to readers already kriowledgeabU as critlc«—ca1^. block all . i d e to s l d S i i r L 0 d p t Q C f " ' l h f l , w i D ^ U k a • melwnom/froth
understanding by others. (Dertida's, Kristeva's, de Man's, end Lacan's essays
are most notorious in this regard.) Thli-d, lacUcol difficulty li created by a
writer's strategies for dislocating the reader and inhibiting any usual or
conventional response to a text. Stftlner identlues tills difficulty (fvnd the next)
with the strategies of modernist literatr.re—the difficulty, for instance. In
simply following the "narrative line" of The Wests L«nd, or the play of ideas
p s - s a s s i s s
and sounds in Wallace Stevens's poetry. Out similar difficulties are encoun- a detadied'^observBr-i^^ cwtemporarycrlUclsm,lafact,thenoUonof
tered in criticism. When Kristeva, for example, splits her voice Into competing lsi7 Rnihl . 4,1 0 1 t8 o
P » « l o g l c a I Innocent b y j t a a d e r - n o longer ex-'
double columns in "Stabat Mater" In Section 111, the reader li prevented from 0
« i ic^nd 'exi !JldTlit^ P0*1,1^ C 0 '»Pl«'» involvement b e t w l
following a lint.ar reading pattern. The t^xt, In effect, intenticmally dislocates a f4ult Ua9
customary orientation in order to establish a "deconstruwtlve" one, and the S g h and ' runs
B4k
competllion wUhtn the text for the reader's attention helps to accomplish tlils (both what we know w U C w f k L J w U i?8 ",ubJecUvlt^"
porurv criticism In ^ i . It) irremediably problamaUc. Contem-
end. Lil(ewlse, Lacan's constant word play and his refusal to spell out and
pursue a cleat analysis of either Poo's story or the analytic practice he is
simultaneously describing in "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter' " (Section V)
present the same tactical difficulty. T h e reader Is intentionally dislocated, just
as, one could argue, psychoanalysis itself strategically attempts to dislocate and reorientation U n e c w l S e J l w L ^ l h ^ NN ee w
w WMrgaacfl and the
" u a l t v " and , Critlw were accustomed to calling
disorient the patient/reader.
These difficulties—even though they ate enough to sabotage a single w
reading—in time ore "naturalized," as the Structuralists say, and become relegated to the Defloharv of r w n o i l i o l e a o « i a l i t e u t u r e a r f l oow
formal and familiar aspects of a text's structure and orientation. In short, in
time they btcome less di/^cull—less a part of textual obscurity, just as, in
Jameson's argument In Section VI, the difficulties of modernism themselves w h i c h sense S M l t f a l ' i S ' l ^ a a d PoUntlaJly painful , h U u in
are seen to . w i i r h nU.! MnUal and the marginal, culturs and literature,
hevv) become "canonical" and "reified." The fourth difficulty In reading 0U SalVe m 0 v l a £ r o i a o a #
coiuemporary criticism—the greatest and by for the most interesting—is the otlier, f r ^ woWdf i ' « to
onlologlcal: the difficulty, as Stelner wrote, that breaks "the contract of
ultimate or preponderant Intelligibility between poet and rnader, between text
and meuilng. . . . Difficulties of this category cannot be looked up." he
conltnues, because "they confront us with blank questions about the nature of ^ I t e m e n t of fRnd 0 f f M y
?lher' l i e c S S w I d t^e
lb# OCC4,l0a4j h 0 l U l a y l0W
human speech (and) about the status of significance," E y orTd c ^ l l l d L " d J contemporary m e r l ? ; .
.12,-' INTROUUCriON; Tllli STUDY OK CRITICISM AT THli PRESENT TIME
INTRQUUCITON; T H E STUDY O P CRITICISM A T THE PRESENT TIME

i
APOLOGIA
1 1 1 5 D e C o n M o n
"'"voIkSt'lnltL^lSrV)! " S t Old Criticism (New
Finally, tills introductory discussloo, loo, Is .a votslon of tlie apologia crlllca
and Implicitly enters the conversation with M a t t h e w Arnold, Northrop Frye, . "Tradlllon a n d Difference," DIacrUlct, 2, No, 4 (1872), 6-13.
Susan Sontag, Geoflrey Hartman, David Lodge, /. Klllii Miller, and oUiert. But T9T0') ' En
«,,,Vn (Now Yorki'Oxford University P r e , ,
it li an apologia critica w i t h an historical difierence. T b s relatloashlp w i t h
literature has evolved to that criticism n o w i« n o longer automatically cast as
nurture, as the poor relation of llteraturs. Instead, c o n t e m p o r a r y discourse
ventures to reconcelve this relatlonslilp In a variety o{ ways, stid the apologia
criUca—no longer merely a defense of criticism—looks increasingly like a
(crlUcal/lltorary) genre ai' well, one that could usefully be studied lu tl>e
context of c o n t e m p o r a r y c i l t l c h m that this book attempts to establish. In otlier Scholus, Robert, TexluoJ P o w e r (New Haven: Yale Unlverilty Press, 1985)
Words, we may see the apologia cn'lJca more clearly as a getue once we stop Soritag, Susan, A g a i n , ! inlerprelalfon (New York; DeU, 1966).
feeling awkward about needing to study and write criticism, w h i c h , as we have pTes^mB)0" D'/flCulty and
O t h . r E u a y . (New York; Oxford University
' been arguing, is becoming as natural as the reading a n d writing of literature''
Williams, R a y m o n d , Keywords (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
REFERENCES Culture (London: Fantana, 1984),

Abramj, M. H., The Mirror a n d the Lamp; fiomantic T h j o r y and the Critical • " •r.vV-Afe
Tradition (New Yorki Oxford University Press, 1953).
Nolurol S u p e r n o t u r a l i s m : Tradition a n d Revolution in Romantic Uloro-
lure (New York; W,W. Norton, 1971).
"Rationality end Imagination in Cultural History: A Reply to Wuyna
Booth," In Critical Inquiry, 2 (1976)i 4 4 7 - 6 4 ,
Arnold, Mattliew, Arnold: Poetry ond Prose, John Bryson, ed. (London; Rupert
Hart-Davis, 1S54).
Bar'.hes, Roland, S/Z, Richard Miller, trans. (New York; Hill trnd Wang, 1974).
Bloom, Harold, et al., Deconslruction a n d Criticism (New York; C o n t i n u u m ,
1979). ,
Culler, Jonathan, Frar-ing the Sign; Criticism a n d Its Institutions (Normun,
Okla.; University of Oklahoma Press, 1988).
Federman, R a y m o n d , ed., Suifiction; Fiction Now ard Tomorroiv, 2nd e d . .
(Chicago; Swallow Press, 1981),
Frye, Northrop, A n a t o m y of Criticism; Four Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Prlncelon
University Press, 1957).
Gallop, Jane, The Daughter's Seduction (Ithaca; Cornull University Press,
1982).
Graff, Gerald, Literature Against Itsel/; Literary Ideas in Modern Soclnty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
Pro/esslng Literature (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Hartman, Geoffrey H., Criticism In the Wilderness (New Havon: Yale University
Press, 1960).
Hjelmslev, Louis, Prolegomena J o a Theory o/ Language, Francis WhitfiBld,
trans. (Madison; University of Wisconsin Press, 1961).
Kenaode, Frank, Genesis o/ Secrecy (Cambridge: Harvard Univorsity Press,
1979).
Lealrlccbia, Frank, Criticism and Social Change (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1983).
Lodge, David, ed., Twentieth-Century Literory Criticism: A Reader (White
Plains, N.Y.; Longman, 1972).
 W H A T IS CRITICISM?

«possible.7T1creTfos0lJ^y^^ " a their ^ u d i c s

radWOflCXW a n d 0 b i e
of c u i n u c a n d O k s c r i a ^ . S " " CT
t0 cns: EC
u n d e r s t a n d i n g in i u sclf-convrlm.th/ ^",1 1 ' t^e tasic of
d c f i n i u o n s of criticism, but ihp o • ^ i r a e j u l o n s . There a r e m a n y p j i s i b i c
r o a m of d i S c o U J S , a p e u 2 ? n C r V 0 n e C r n t r a l 1 0 , h e s w d y o f U l c ^ t u r J a ^ Z
8 s<:U<0,licious
o d s of u n d c r s u n d i n g . anenUon to the meth-
N o n h r o p Frvc s a w ^ U d s m . as o p p o s e d t o the m o r e general a n d 15
« wc o f acsthcucs, ^ s p l c s T o ^ c i o p .
<,efi/litlo:u o r
m e t h o d s o f "reading;" "Criddsm " T T p m ^ "U'eratuie- and
T a J e n ^ - i s as inevitable « ^ S L r 4 T h " ^ "T,aditi0n a n d lh<: I d
« i>'''ual
d h e E C I 0 n 5 a y th:lt Wcsh< uld
the worse for a n i c u J a , t o ^ w h ; t ^ T n „ , f , " ' none
e n W e roaJ 1
an emotioi. a b o u t it, f o r c r i t l c i i i L „ r b c o l : ar.d foe!
t h r o u g h o u t L'lis b o o k Drovide <l ff O W n , 1,1 u c w o r k
' of criUcism." Others
com
criticism. Criticism, Five a i s u e s l A ^ r ' r " P l e m e m a r y d e f i n j U o n s of
0 0 Crilicism
• spcaics/or ? ' =" P^sent Tu^c,"
remains-dumb." '' data that is t h e c b / e a of scienUfic discourse,

texts a n d ' ' l i i c ^ a i r c " i t s c l / t , ' a < ^ a l l y t0 diSCOVcr wh:lt l i l c

"0'
as systematically r s o t h e r " s c i e n c e s " — ^ ^ ' a n " Sh0U,U p u " u e lhis
criticism "preserves ti7e i i ^ . l f i ^ T n r " .-""themat'cs or history. He a^^ucs that •
sary for literary studies as a w h o l e t o ralke"^'3"0^11"10!"1 ^ n i l e " r y ] rese:lrch" " « « •
Cl) s i n i f i c :
to culture." Roland Baithes arsiies thiToHtM ^ ' S " H contribuUon
C t i C l S m 15
include in its d i s c o u r ^ ^ " ^ " ^ " t l a U y an activity" that " m u s t
the work in q u e s U o T ^ u t ' o r t h ^ c o n . ^ r 0 " 0 0 U i e l / - " 'o
C M
o w n language." QiUcJi-n Elaine S h n ^ ^ " 3 5 t 0 m p l c t c l > ' 1 5 PO"it>lc by its
W r i l 10 FemijlisI
derness," is p o s i U c ^ n ' T ^ l w l e n ••idt j . " " " Criticism in . h e WiJ-
c U b c r a l dc: 1 o f
m o r e specifically in t h e ease of feminist 1 ' ' iJ'smicrcsicdncsi";
"With the f c n u n h t . s a n d l t L •' I 1 . U P O S i U O n e ' 1 b c t W c c n conccm
criticism studies b o t h " r e a d i n e " an i ^ " w o m c n 1 5 u r U e r s . " H e r e again
8 C e Y m e
• c r - a s .hey d o f o f m ^ n ; r n t l ^ ; L o k l ^ \ "
vantage p o i n t " lo f o c u s o n " t h e ^ L i 0 ' m a k e , i , c to
=' " c w c o n c e p t u a l
0 t di/rcrencc
a m o n g texts but also " d i l f e r e n c e s - ^ v a ^ u •—"'Jiffcrenccs"
N o r t h r o p Frve joins Eb'oi. Banh f a n ' l l i C r u l l J n ; , t i o n within texts,
Ui CrilJCiSm Sccli5 0 l
a "conceptual vantage p o i n r so J ^ " "
a Si^ednc c o n c e p t u a l f r a m e w o r k . " F r y e ^ ^ i f " 1 f 1 ! 1 l i l c r - " l u l c iii i c m i s of
w o r k " b a s e d o n g r a n d "arehetypal" ^ a t t e - S " ^ " " " r p 3 n i < : u t l r " c o n c e p t u a l f n t m e -
Con Davis, Robert and Ronald S c h h i l e r 1994 , W p a u c m s o . i i g m f i c a n c c , while Danjics, S h o w a f .
Studies. 3rd ed. New YorX and London; Longm^'" 0 ' L " e f 3 r y C " i i c ' s w Cultural ±y.
18
I / WHAT IS CRITICISM?
C O
r r " / W r 01 Cri,lcis
" ' describe diiTcrcnt onr S , such «
Mincisi^ p s y ^ o i n a l y s k , ind diifcrcDt kinds of feminism. Gerald Graff in "The
H ^ a ^ . M ) a h " w n l a one history of the rebtions among t h c ^ vanugc «
S ^ ° h n i l l ^ L ' m l i K " U 0 Q l J h i S l 0 r y " 0 r i i , C r a f y S W d i « - d cnUciS8m. H b
m n h CODCCTn
^nhrL ^ 8 literature—beginning, In i m p o r a n t ways in
" ^ 7 A™°,d 5 defi3e
FMcUon of Criticism a: ;he P r o e m " ^ e "
In 1 8 6 5 — a ^ c d that TOenUure teaches taetf." - f t a o i c a i aiUcism"—criUcism
i l m taJces M its task the d o s e jcnitiay o r eipUcaUon of particular literary texts—often
u U o n ^ o f t r f „ 0 : ^ 0 f , l ? r U r e , " t C a C h l l l K l t S C , f -" H o w - - - « • h c ^ n i ^ T i n t e ^ "
UUOIW of t o n s in thu book c x p U d t J y show—interprctaUons such a j Louis
M i o t i c " r e a d ^ g of Disneyland. Stephen Grcenblatfs "new historicist" reading of
Shalcespeare s Henry rV. Paula Bennetfs "lesbian" reading of Emily
fK>Ctry
' i ^ l 0 r i l W O ' ? C l O S < : rcS:1Ul8 of Freud's Dcra—anproaches to practicai criti-
^ J d i n e t h ^ d ^ ." :iilC:nt ". 1 J s u r a P t J o h s and presupposiUons about the namre of
definition of Uterature, and the cultural work of Uterury and discursive
V ^ <: > ^ U I n p t i o n t h a t 'i'crature tcachcs Itself—thus Implying that criUcism has a
v ^ U m i u ^ J u s e - i s clear in Arnold', d ^ a i p U o n of the aim of m d 4 m " S ^ e A e
o b j e « as in itself it n a l i y is" (emphasis added). With this task accomplished the critic
can then Mpire to present "the best that Is known and thpuglu in the world " Graffs
^ t o t is t h « the ofthr. L b c n l h u m a n h
^ a r t i c u l a t e d in what GnffcaUs "Amoldian humanism," p r e s ^ o ^ t p ^ X
conceptual framework." or theory, even when that tradition
' h i : r ^ C , V 5 U n p ! y l n i ' a e m P t c d "reading," and simply encompassing and prx>mot
mg .he best -Hat is ^ o w n and thought. Barthes also d e L b c s t V ' i u K ^ U e n T e ^ of
^ tradiuon, which he says, "Is not to be blamed for its prejudices but for the f a a
^ " c o n c c a l J l h cra, masks them under t h . moral alibi of rigor and obiccUvitv "
how^ter argues that feminist criUcism discovers a tradition of Utcrary studies (made
up of women Writers) diiTerent from the Amoldian t r i d m o n . T ^ . d u / o n a u r ' r j
more to learn from women's studies than from hngiish studies, more to learn from
r r " 5 1 l h C 0 7 l h : l n £ r o r a l n o m c r s < : r a i ' ' " on the masters."
Critic T ' " 0lfCridCi5ra-boai and lUercUu^ i t s e l f - U . e s e
^n"'n^'id 0<h
f ^ throughout this book, are attempUng to ovate a broader
Anarchy T h ^ h / d fijT'11"'?1 s ' u d i e s ' ' ' h a n c v c n Ariiold presents in Culture a n d
o.ir,. kL defines cuinire as the "great help out of our present difliculUes-
P " " " " o f o u r t o u l perfection by means of getUng to kj-ow on aU the
m a n e n which most concern us, the best which has t v . n ,h ' ? ° ' 0 " aU t h c
o i ^ ' n ^ 1 1 ' I i ' r o U e h ' f f l a > 0 W l C d g C ' t U x n i j l g a s u c : ' m o r f ' c s t i arid frcc'tho^ght'u^wn
our stock noUons and habits." Similarly, HUot defines culture in the wcstctn t r a d i ^ n
L S o i d P ^ . ^ y e 2 ^ d h 0 f WEIUU rCoSP e 't"h aF ,r yl Ch cC n t l S ^ C S S a y b y
^ vIa, , • • " " ^ o ^ d a U o n of Uterature by criUdsm in"o
^ e verbij u^verse was one of die thing; that Matthew Arnold meant by culture "
I I WHAT IS CRITICISM?
19
unprovinclat. In his history'of the relationship between ideas and insUnnionj, Gra "r
cmphMlzes this double and seemingly self-contra 'laory task in his aacmpt to trace
quesUons about the nature and cultural functions of literature" that literary* criticism
more generaUy pursues.
n i E DOUBLE TASK OF CRITICISM
In Geoffrey Hartman', Criticism In the WiUemess (1980). from which Showalter
b o r r o w , the title of h e r essay here, Hartman e x p l o r e "the guif between philosophic
^ U d s m tin Continental Europe] and p r a a l c a l crixicisrh (In England and thc United
States), repeatedly aisuiing us that **cridcism" m i m be accorded its siatUs i s Ma genre,
or a primary tea" too. In this comment Hartman articulate,: a kind of anxiety a?'
S | ^ t e d with criticism, o n e occasioned by the possibility that criUcism might be more
man just commentary, more, in fact, than "just" Uterary. Hiili, Miiier in "The Search
for G r o u n d , in LUeiajy Study- (In "What Is Uterary Theory?") focuscs h i , discussion
^ u n d Arnold and contemporary u n d e i s u n d i n g , of his criUcal practice to isolate an
"imperial" d e m e n t In Uterary criticism. Miller argue, that, beginning in thc eighteenth
century at least, literary criUctsra has attempted to address wider areas of cultural
practice beyond literature. The study of literature "has been weighted down in our
culwre with the burden of carrying from generation to generaUon the whole freight
of the values of that o J m r e . what Matthew Arnold caUed 'Uic best that is laiown and
thought in the world.""
Miller raises the quesUons of w h / this should be. What historical c^'-mts in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries might have contributed to this practice.' What
unpUcaUons does this practice have for Uic study of literature? Many of the essays
Uuoughout Contemporary Literary C. Uicism, but espedaUy those in "What is Uterar)-
Ineory?" raise quesUons about the Interest of criUcism. Who is served by thc historical
ornis criUcism has ukcn? Who Is left ouu' I low do silent assurnpUons about Uie nature
and consUMcUon of "reading." "Utcrature." '•culture," "sclf-cvidence," and "rigor and
Objectivity" affect people In particular places—in the dassroom, in Ausunlia, in
. orea. m .Melanesia. In jail, at thc nauonal convenUon for the M o d e m . l a n g u a g e
Assoaauon, and In u.e particular self-concepts and sodai concepts created by gender
race, and class? CThcse are aU "places" described in different essays in tius book.) Who
IS served when criUcism is conceived as eitlier'simply commentary on Utcrature (a -
meuiod of readmg) or a conccptual.fr^mework that allows a text to be considered to
(thc
, . definiUon of "Utcrature")? One goal of Uiis book is to specify and
•I . c o n t c x u 1/1
which rcadUig and Utcrature are defined, to help dc-
W ShowaUcr lUs
f •• l h e cssenUal question of difference" in cultural and social
, Suct,
quesUons suggest why c r i U a — a t least since the time of A r n o l d - h a v e
^ e n nervous or even w i i l f ^ y u n d e a r about what ihey do. and why many students,
.t, W 1 ? 8 l ^ C c i i d c s 31111 c r i l i c a J debates they read, are curious but also anxious about
the study of c r i U ^ m . Despite thc wide pracUce ofcriUdsni and formulaUon of Uterary
theory, the conflict within critical practice that Arnold and Frye describe sUmulatcs
great intcUcctuaJ debate, This aoivity risei out of the contradiction between roles for
20
I I WHAT IS C R i r C l S M ? 1 WH
' A T IS CRITICISM?

c n u o j m . Cnuasm u ihc modest acUvity of creating a situaUon in which the best that
« known and thought a n have wide currency (F 0 -c' S dcscripUon of the job of
mn hT 1 ° M L 1 5 ^ n y P c 0 p l c i n C O n U a the best that has been and is being
a;LPm:;danUlrt^.(dc2S:.yWSu^^^ thC
be...-
. f o u g h t and said J . Cnuasm also has the imperial "burden" of maintaining cultural has been vanishing for some tim.- an^ of critical and library t e a s
WC Witil 1 h
i l u c j in general (Frye s descripUon of the "veibal universe, in which life and realicy described In Henry James's term f n , th > ' b r i d criikaj t h i n g " best
^ l ^ l d e bterature and which only the methods of ciiUcism can help us to under- criticism and literature intertwined ^ ' b a 8 S r m<mslcr- is-
s u n d ) . In fact, M the subUtJe of this boolc ( U e r a o , a n d Cultural S u d i e s ) suggests aesUietics o f a w e U - f o r m e d e s s a y — ' w i t h ^ ^ i T Even the
the v e ^ f u n a t c n of o i U o s u has changed or become more sclf-reHcxive in recent by contemporary literary critldsm as w e ' f" 1 1 c n d ~ i s
Ga> 3lri a u t
time. Contemporary c n u a s m has expanded its horizon to include a vast array of . vony Spivak-s essry. "Feminism 'and " " -
q u K U o r j that heretofore seemed outside, or only impUdt within. Its purview rncJe Studies"), w h o s e parts were wriarn and Gender
Include quesUons of poUtics, semantics, the philosophy of language, and socuaj and do not "add u p " or a « i K « i ti m " different occasions so that t.'- ey
W d J
"lhC natUre 0riitC
™y 5 , U d y
- t 5 - P O - ' b U i U e s and its very of History (in "Historical C r i U q u e - J ^ j J s o ' ^ l ^ t ^ ^ S ^ ' ^ 1 1 0 0 0 Q PhiJos<;> h
P )'
Woi (in "Psychology and P s y c h o a m i ^ A r ^ Tragmentary" form, a.-.d Toril
the opposiUon between w t o l e n c ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ocusca her cnticaj anil>-sis o a prcciscty
. S"'h atPlnsicn ^ occasioned much controversy and debate, exacerbating
rather than rcsonring the contradiction wiihio criticism ant, U,c anxiety of its p. aoicc For these reasons w e c o n s t a n t , f r a g m e n t s la the roncciving of k n o ^ l i - d i e
r e than KcTmod
^ e exploraUon of wider cultural questions has come in recem times to be calJcd pUce the impUdt " a n d " betv^CCT L ^ ; l ' ^ = ^SScszJ^to
M e ^ cultural studies," and It has often met tremendous opposiUon, not only
w t h i n the academy, which has tended to malce e^cpUcit the very contradiction Ji
c n u a s m that occasioned Arnold's anxiety, but in tJie popular press as well In the
a « d e m y however, criticism is positioned, as Darthes says, sclf-consdously to ex- E U O T A N O T H
^ T R A D m O N OF "NEW CRITICISM"
plore and situate what u is domg. This is precisely the burden of GralTs argument"
^ a t literary studjcs should explore rather than cover up its own contradiaicns and
controversies. Such con.rove-sies have a history that extends to ti,e early aniculations
criticism. In a word encompasses every attempt at
n . C n U Q 3 m m t h c t > c & i n n i n « o f l h e "inticcn-h century when Friedrich
^ e g e l imagmed cnuasm to be a "reconstructive" process whereby a criuc en- literary and cultursl study N o c e h a T b l M d L ^ t i C i S ^ ^ , r : u l s h i s l o r , c a i W r o a c h to
hances the development of an. In so doing, as Schlegel imagined (and Harunan later say this with such emphasis becm^t, ^ discovered and none wiU yet be found. We
11121 5 0 d
fr-me ail aiUcal S p ^ -J^e e ^ " =^1 cultural contexts
""11CmiUY e,cvjl" « ^ s e n r e to t T l e v e l o f a r t . ^ e g d s 0 0
romanUc view of c n u a s m as an organic outgrowth of an survives in the poeUcs of thc and cultural frames lt> rclaUon to the ^ d v ^ i f " ^ J C n d 1 0 C 0 £ ? l n l c n I 0 0 the social
^ ^ s h Romanucs and m the theory of such neodassidsts as T. S. EUot and Ezra o f p o e L y , fiction, and f o r m - t h e internal p a a - r . u n g
Pound as well 2S ui much current ihinJdng. the general name of "formalism " and a century, This work goes iindcr
m o v c m
"New CriUdsm." Thc ^ " " " "U.d
earlv T ^e C rsion t ^h V i ^.h' h 0 W C V C r , a l i 0 p r C S < n [ 1 0 a i c c : l r l ^ nineteenth c e n t u r y - a n & D r a l 1<: l a , c 1 9 3 0 5
? humanist myth"—says that oiUdsm merely supplements a n ti^ough thc late 1950s and still has an l S S a a " t a '
yCar5 of thc
and at woist, is a parasite draining away its lifeblood. At best it Is a "hermeneutics" century. Formalism and New C r i t l d l r ta nf™ ^
VCry m u c h
whose aim Is to rccover the IntenJonil meanings of the artist and then mlvtinr. movement in the arts that o c c u S d l ^ ? h r Bovemed bv thc
' C C ° m p J f h . C d ' <luieU > , , 0 d I i : 'PPcar- Only on occasion, in this view, docs'criUdsm " r f y In that period came to be c ^ c d "^ 1 !^ thc twentieth century tlxat
m
m a r g m ^ y ' n a ^ our apprcciaUon of anistic fonn. thereby giving support to art in r cxplorau'on of criUdsm in Oil c o m ^ o f J ™ - : ^ 11115 tatr°<'"Ction to the
C n l t y S t U d i c s i l 13
to describe thc rcl.-tcd m o v e m e n t s ^ / T ' necessary
i d t T o f I r m e ^ 2 S . ! C p l r l t i 0 n o f c r i l i d s m ' ^ m an is also impUdt in Frank Kem.ode's
•dea of geme as a consensus, a s e t of foreundeisundings exterior to a text which Icind of "universal," " i n . p e t s o l r a n H " ^ ! ^ ™ . 3 , CriUCiSO ,0 i
--"Jicate ^ h l
enable u . to foUow t ^ t text." Kennode thus b e l i e v e s t h a f o i U c i s m i l t o u u T d ™ ^ porary literary criUdsm Is rcspon'dinu anrf i V C c | i c i s c n t 0 w h i c h much cpntem-
dent on literature and he therefore has UtUe sympathy for the conflicts and c o n ^ u - thc reason why w c begin the book with p r 8 ^ ' " 15 r e a c U n 8 - part, this is
c i y w t l i c i s 311
siatcmci.t of literary Modernism. " ' • " ^ p o n a n t criUcal
K Z ' J i ' Z " ' l h C 0 7 : , C r i t i C l S m 15 - - ' i - c t to literamre. and t^e ^ o - a s
Kermode believes belong in different areas of culture anyway
has ?!i:fS?,1!add^8 Schlcfccrs bcIicfinunit
r Kerm<xle's in separaUon .cultu^iTndlellL0 ^ T U n ZZZ^Z0t m
r C
1i C m i S l S nSe 0r
'
has intensified this debate. Contemporary aiUdsm in fact is itrandcd between these • -central figure in literary Modernism, a ^ ! u O W l r 0 r a C h a t s < : n s c - E l i o t 15 »
dates from the early t w e n U e S ^ ^ i r v V^™1CIU ^ t l l c • A hglo-Axacrican worid that
u n d e i ^ r L ? . a y 0 a S ~ : ' b o u l a i U c i 5 m , s having a separate identity, and yet constanUy
underrr.mng distmoions separaung fiction and poetry, or prose lioion and pocuy of Uaudelalre, Mallarmi V a l i j y ^ a ^ oil 6 i n f U e " C C o f t h c French Symbolist
M O J n l h m 15 a
and CriUdsm, as weU as ^ ' : of Utcr.ture
PCnf><ajVC
— o r - " t ^ e r , several related per^pcc-
 W H A I IS J H I I l C i S W
23

aiUCS 0 OU a8C So[OCLknc;

iNltScmjjm huvc'bcgi^^i^ihe'tum ' ' - '
VC on JU ' o r i y . Babbitt caili for a further movement away from supposcxUv sort"
o t o n i. n . o f , X ""' *,,;
uncntical romanticism to "tough," "tritical" modernism. It is a shift, as T. £, HuL=e
1
Land in 1922 Rv crkm^ . ^ c/{KSJ«y v i a T. S. Elioc 9 77;^ ' coniemporary version of the neoclassic sensibiJir)- and as modes ot
04=„ » r , t L z , ™ ^ S Z T " T i " "'•• - , ' i - " 3 0 ' a U f n r ^ h T ' 0 ? a n < 1 c a r e f u l l ) r c n o < l u l 2 t c d sentiments. In short, Babbia and H u l = e
P

U for the abandonment of romanUdsm and for the development of an era ere c -
a . ™ , to w n r a p o r u , p o . m . M . m U o i . ^ p , , . n o ^ V ^ i S r S S , ? " 0 ' ; 8 m o d e m , anuromantic./onwi/sensibility. ••
£UtH elaborates this process in 'TraUiUon and the Individual Talent" when he
u ^ ^ r r J a , h P : l i t ' / - ' P T < : n t ' " a n d " f t l t u r c " ! L r c n o t 8 i v e l > ''acts or Simple realities of
h J 1 / O T 7 " a i^^^SMQcnt of areas of disturbance and discontinuity in t i e
m d i t of whach the poet constructs a n and culture in a coUage. Similarly, ia this pcricJ
and de SaU
« u r e - E U o l , s contemporary (see "S^^auruiiso
a r d ^ 7 ' ,- n T > - P r o P o s c s t h = t reiai[y " s e l f ' s a linguisUc a r « n 8 e m c n t of "sigmfieU-
a n d ^ t e n u a l meanings, a ctional and formal arrangement situated u-ithin a conie 3 7
ist conception of human c h i r a a e r in r r " ' p r c $ c n t i 1 0 anti
«>nuntic, m t i a p r c s s i o h - o ^ . t ^ n n ^ . Thus, cut o£f from the past, disliihcrited £rom it. the poet, artist, or a ^
> ^ o f language can cnoose to accept the i m p e n d v c and the lespo.-isibility 'no m o i e
This m o ^ r r c r a m w U h o u t ao
f y operative sense of past or present cuiture at ail.
n U h
" ^ ^ f th,:
" ^ ^ w c s t sense of "personal," aCpCnCnCC to b u f k T ' v ^ i o n of S " g « « t s a highly rational (almost Augustan) p n c -
1 0 8 1 C S h 0 W n , 0 c x i s t 1,1 l h c
^ ^ t i o n a l wasteland o f m c u j c r a
p o c J ,oils l o ma3cc
0[h '•. ,. ("craaliy cre^ue) cultural c o n a e a i o n s tha*
W0
fthe " ° t ° C i S t - I n o t l l c r w o r d 3 . Pocuy introduces form into a cultural H i a
W0 y d e f i n J U o n c a n n o t b<: w e
iut ^reraairo
r^n •
m transition. " formed, or "finished." because
e d0U
rticioric of-Wgh" ModcmLm—at d<:vlsuted nu
' c h of Europe. The n,lnJ!*, " ^ ' ? U 4 k " of Eliot's w-ork in criticism and in poetry, the presentation of
pe:Vons—is that of loss aoocalvose ann" 1 n8
^ i ' n 0 S L l > ' m l I c . middlc-class spokes- Uterary Mod C c < i^ t y SrC3t s u b c a i v c
i anxiety, is a defining anicuiaUon of
P o m J l Uoj.n E ! u a d d ' U O n , E U 0 t ' S w o ' ' l c ^ 1 a i U e =">1 » P O « initiated what
Mod;mlsln , „. j M l l t r.s.S"aTEto™j "
f o r t « a n i firftCCSCI! M " l h C ' ' A 8 C o f E l i o t ' " 1116 A j n c r i c a n Uterary criUcism of the
l fiftjCS t h a t ' " n d e r the name of "New CriUcism." explored Ungv-stic and
P Sivcs Jutora; ti
meaning to a text: tiiere ii no providential r ' = t Z Z n a ^ Z v 7 r f ! :rs u1 b 1 c 1c l,J v8 c , h , : S O - C : , U e d " 0 b ' " c c l j v c " s c " « lh =« l i . - . u r e pre.
cortlm
ouicomcs arc mcaning/ully situated On ih K to which history and its Te Man ' ' "cirects" that result from such Utenuy forms. ^ u l
culture 15 p r e c J l v T c 10 5 o Z u r i .n .C C 0 ' ' l r : ' f y ' l i , c ' " s i ^ c r i t a n c c of modem S e o r v O - • ^ S e , ? C W C r i U C i , m i n " ] l t C R c s l s u n c c 1 0 • n « : 0 0 ' - (in " Z t Is Uterar.-
Th<:
manv P c r f c a embodiment of the New CriUcism." he writes, "remains in
•uIcnt. t ^ T ' T , , > C r 5 0 n : " i t y l u , d "leolOBy of T. S. EUot. a combinauon of original
•

ini;i
Wend o r . r 1 1 ' f 3 " 1 1 " 8 1 V C r t , l l W i , a n d m 0 r a l c a x n c s t n e s s , an A n g l o - A m e ^ n
^ f e M r : : : r l 7 i m a a i i i c d ' r - n " ^ 0 ; ^ b - ' > " c h " t r e 1 ' 3 diiti"ct,y h u o , a n darker g c n t ^ t y not so repressed as not to afford tantalizing gUmpses of
mcraty f o l a n f o f *" ' T " " r C C V a I U a U O n 0 f l h e U - i ' s o f darker p i y c h l c and poUUcal depths." This posiUon. de Man goes on. ^ e s "the
exactly new ways of t i e n " r ! C 5 l h C l i C 111 t h C a m 8 = " ^ " U y - i / not S< a a n h i i t 0 r i C J I SCU , 11 iS b a S C d 0 n n 0 ( 0 n l y t h C a S S c n i o n o f b u t a L s o
0 preScrUaUon for s J Z n ~T ^ i^ e " ddisinterested " s• u b j e a of experience and knowledge. In the
ihe products of twenUcth-cen.ury cultwe n S '
W lWn P h ^ o n Struauniliani and Semiodcs." we wiU examine the closely related European
; — Of a serious q l s u o ^ g "
edge occaiioned by Uie vast chan B r^ in , h ^ c s u o j e a of ejcpcncnce and knowl- Ssccnuaic L 0 , i r ' goes
. n X ™objcatvity ' n hand
? T "tn rhand with• •explorauons
• - " li*. £ 5 2 K
Hencefoah. as Irving BabbUt s ^ d m r . ^ . n'"' m U,C tWCnlieth of strangeness
d e n d c j in liicraiurc must be viewed as m°" : C - X' " n y r o m i n U c o r sentiraenul ten- 1 ne p r m a p a l American version of formalism, the New CriUcisn alsooaoicit: «
rcal-worid d x s t i n X ^ a n d a X s s i n ? ' " t u « l i i m . " a dissolving of d t r : ^ S r
b t m
w A 5mi;,c
r o d o x y for ihc n c w criuciim
«^i>-dprvaepm;m
p u « o, t ™ - ' « Can l50l:
" c S C V C " 1 Of d ' c key tenets anicubted by major
^ g o-Amcnca:, cnucs from the late 1920s tJuough Ute 1950s, U.e period of Uie New
r V e dcVe;op,ncm- thc Ncw CriUcism'^cd to d i s p b c "
ontent m Uteraty analysu a„d to treat a work's form in a manner a n a l o g o L to
 I / WHAT iscRjnasw?
25
empirical research. Also the New CriUcism Wed to organize the larecr vrnrH^ r_
of Liciawre in accord with the inner ordering ofworlcs as r c v c a i c d ^ s M o f i r ^ n ^ n " 3
or - d o s e readings." i„ i B objeoiviry. U defined the
knowledge formally and thus avoided.the "modemiit" o i s u T f ^ i S i r ^ ! ?
close readings" U defined literature solely as impersonal. a « r h r r > ! ! ! ^
0tpcricncc and
thus attempted to avoid the crisis of c u l L a l i n ^ o w ".Jcucate critic
l«d New CriUcism as a kind of
Modernism. It accomplished both of these tasks by c r . n c e i v i n R ^ ^ n , 1 1 5 ^ 1 " " ' m -«•
a 1 n 8 o l l w a r c M
i« " . ^ w i L n W U ^ r ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ; ^ ° . - WtunJ:
sense and "ontcM f r a f f I* ' owaltcr^j fcmlriisra, and ia the hisioocaJ

modernist t r a d i U o r o T N ^ ( 0 r A j m j i
—>
various "schools" of occasioned. The response to thai crisis, as the
thi5 b 0 0 k S U
of 0 literature ^ r £ : o S ^ I 2 ^-t- - - u b j
Uon, or as Brooks says, "tendon." Only o Z : this PP0Si- CUltUral
tioning. Such a re^L w T l T J T T ' social ccmc:a of .one-
n C £ l iccti0Q rcc u c
o f "aestheUcs"—with'its a n o ^ ^ ' l ^ 5 that the autonomy
(0r crs cctivc o n
em media and its s o c J ^ ^ ^ ^ P P values), iis L n m s p i x -
cffcct
i.rcplaccd by ^ e o ^ a ^ ^ r a '' 1 C of controversy and culture——be
them into a kind of conicnt. As Brooks asscns in The W e u V ^ ^ Z ' , T ,turru/18 theory. occasion, by aesthetics conceived wirhin the c o n i c a of
P l n d O X and
irony actually rellect the . W c of ^

Ii£l-\TED ESSAYS IN
(discussed In "Str-cturuUsra and Scmioucs") W h c r c ^ T c ^ t i u ^ 1 1 " ^ ' " F o r T " U ' m CO^nrEMPOR.4J { Y UTERAJi Y CRITJCISM
:
tempted merely to lay bare tl.e operaUon of local deWc^ "-
and final interpretation of a work, the New CriUcs bcUevcd ^ t ! :ln> : a u ' , , ° r l u U v c
objectively and accurately in light of its actual structure o 7 f o n ^ a t " 1 rCad Kcn!ieih''1!fJC[-' " ! ! K S C a r C h r 0 r G r 0 U J l d s i n Study
v Z r ShW,o l U t C r J t U r C " for Uvir's"
Shklovsky. "An as Technique"
^^cliei Foucault. "What U an Authorf
Donna Haraway. "A Cyborg Manifesto" ,
8
way to read. In "The AiTcoi.e Fallacy," they also s t o w I ow T K
reader's.undisdplined "alTcctive" resoonsJTo a , •" l h < : o t h c r extreme a F U i m i E H READING
attenjpis to account for m a v d i a n n i h ^hc \ cry effects that Shlclovsky
images. In this ihinUng t | l c N c w Criiics C i^^vtd l 1 d inlcT
" P " : u u i c " 1 of An 1 0U,. 5 M :1 ., 1 cw. A m o M ; Poelnf anll / W f ; ,d Johjl Bfr5oa (U3nUon: R u p c n Hin,D3viii
l i d 5 r a lhC COnCCpt 0 f
aesthetic wholeness and
3 WOrk
•naey argued that a work, property read, will always be u r ^ ' e d i ton
Tony ' Z r New York: Hougluon MiflUn, 1 9 1 9 ,
tensions, as expressed in paradox and irony. In short i h c N ^ r ^ , • T O n , ' • F o r " ^ ' ' ^ " n d Mur.lsrn (London: Mcthucn, 1979).
coherence in a work, ' Critics assumed total
' l l n o n r^;i^I!r,7^^2^.JO/A;'MetlS '"'0 A'r: o / M C e r n a : . (New Y o r ) t :
M inl, J l m McFari:,ne
CONTEMPORARY U T E K / R Y C J U n a S M B^ks. I976r' " • / ' " / ' • " ' W 1890-1930 (New York: Pcngmn

BrZLCT'a C , C V d , ( N e W Y0rl : Lon

' & n " " . 1992).

i l f 5 s s r s r £ ~ 5 s
CrC 0 n n i t o CrilJa ln
•^ 7 ^ ; r0u
l ''!! '". ' 3 (1951). 72*81,
8 ^ Vm (New Yoric; Harcoiin, 1975).
,h : , n d ROl>C t
1933). ' ' '>enn Wlnrn
' CC)J
- UruUraandlng /-cw/o-.(New York; Hoil,,

i .
<
2 ROLAND OARTHES
t j
Roland Barthes W h a t Is C r i t i c i s m ?
1915-1980
It Is always j^ossible to prcscribc major cnticai
principles la accord with ooc'» klcologicaJ
siaiation, especially In Francc, w h e r e theoret-
ical models have a great prestige, doubtless
At the time of his death, RoUnd Banhcs w i s a professor at thc CoUcge de France thc because ihcy give the practitioner an assur-
W ^ e s t position in the French academic s>-stcm. Ttiroughout his academic career he ance that he is panidpating ac onoc in a com-
l^ld chairs in lexicology, th sodaj and economic sdences, and finaUy semiology bat, a history, and a totaUry; French criticism
The vanety of his study indicates the breadth of his published writing. No one essay has developed la this way for some fu'tecn
or book is rcprcsenuUve Of thc complete scopc of BartiKS's interests, inteUeoual years, with various fortunes, withia four
abUrty. or Influence. His woric of the early 19<SOs articulated the conccms of and major "piJiosoptiics." First of all, what Is
objectives for sirucruralisra, as S/Z did for postsiruauraiism in the 1970s. His major commonly—and questionably—called exis-
works m d u d e Writing Degree Zero (1953. translated Uno English 1968)-, Mic/ieU'tpar tentialism, which has produced Sartre's end-
Ui -mime (1954); Mythologies (1957, trans. 1972); On Racine (19<S3, trans 1964) cal works, his Baudelaire, his Flaubert, the
E k m ^ c^Semiolosy (1964, tram. 19<S7)i Critique et Verity (19(56): Systems d e la shorter articles on Proust, Mautiac, Girau-
Mode (19<57): S/Z (1970, trans. 1975); Empire of Signs (1970, tram. 1982); S a d e / doux, and Ponge, and above ail his splendid
Fourier/Loyola (1971, trans. 1976); The Pleasure of the Text (1973 trans 1976)- Genet. Then Marxism; w c k n o w (the ai^fur..,
Roland Barthes by Roland Bartluis (1975, trans. 1977); A Lover's Discourse; Frag- mcnt is already an old one) h o w sterile ortiio-
ments (1977, trans. 1978); and The Grain of the Voice: interviews 1 9 6 2 - / 9 8 0 ( 1 9 8 1 dox Marxism has proved to b e In oriUdsm,
trans. 1985). proposing a purely mcchanical e]:plaaaUon
•"What Is CriUcism.'" fint appeared in Critical llisays (19C^), a coUeoion that o f w o r k s o r p r o m u l g ilng slogans n t h e r than
marks the beginning of Uartlies's work in struauralism along with a range of other criteria of values: hence it is on the "frontiers"
critical interests. As he states in -The Str^auralist Activity," another essay in the of Marxism (and not at its. avowed ccnter)
coUcciJon, struauralism is an activity—not a school or movemcnl—that recon- that wc find the most fruitful critldsm: Luden
streets an " •object1 in such a way as to manifest thereby the rules of functioning G oldmann's v/ork cxpUdtly o w e s a great deal
. . . Of mis o b / c a . ' Thc rcconstniction of ihc objca, what Uanhcs calis a "siniula- to Lukacs: it is among the most flexible and
< ^ m , " an "imiudon," produces its inteUigibiiity becat.ie now its funoions. Invisible thc most ingenious critidsta which takes so-
in Its •naniraJ" sutc, arc realized. d a i and poUtical histoiy as its point of depar-
rhc critical activity that Banhes describes in ••What Is CriUcism.'" foUows the ture. And then psychoanalysis; in Francc
stnicuirallst rttftia he sets out in "Ihe StructuraUst Activity.•• He answers not only the today, the best rcprcsenutive of Freudian •
question In uie title of the essay along struauraUst Unes but the other quesUons the CriUcism is Charles Mauron, btit here too It is
^ a y n i s « as weU. What is the objca of criUdsm? What is the criuc's responsibility? tJie "marguial" psychoanalysis which has
« ^ a t IS the c n u c s task? The answer? Ue in Barthes's definiUon of ••mculanguage " been most fruitful; taking its departure from
which IS a w o n d bnguage" or "discourse upon discourse." In a sense the o b j c a of an analysis of subsunces (and not of works),
c r ^ m thc meiaianguagc—is similar to the reconsirucUon of the obi'c^-t, for both foUowing Uie ' dynamic distortions of the
produce the text s intcUigibUity. Thus thc criuc's rcsponsibiUr)' and task are to recon- image in a great number of poets, Bachelard
s m i a not a work's meaning but the "rules and consualnts of that meaning's elabora- has estabUshed something of a critical school,
uon i L". other words, the criUc reconstructs the ^ s t e m of a text becausc Utcrature b , influential that one might call Frcnch ciiti-
a language . . . a sj-stem of signs."
cisri) today, in its most developed form, a
criticism of Bachclardian inspiration (Pouiet.
Starobinskl.. Richard). Finally structuiulism
(or to simplify to an extreme and doubdess
abusive degree; formaUsm); w c k n o w thc Im-
Con Davis, Robert and Ronald Schleiler. 1994. Contemporaiy Literary Criticism a n d Cultural
S t u d i e s , 3rd ed. New York and London: Longman
47
porunce, even die vogue of this movcmcm in
Francc siacc L^-Strauss has opened to it thc
methods of the social sdcfices and a ccrtain
phUrsoplilcal reflection: few critical works
have as yet resulted from it, but they arc in
prcparadon, and among them wc shall
doubtless find, in particular, the Ltfluencc of
linguistic mof'tls corjstructed by Saussurc
and extended by Jakobson (who himself,
early in his carccr, partidpatcd in a move-
ment of Uterary cridcism, the Russian formal-
ist schooO: it appears possible, for example,
to d c v d o p an entire Utenuy criticism starting
from the two thetorical categories e tabiishcd
by Jakobson: metaphor and metonymy.
As we see, this Frcnch criUcism is at once
••national" (it owes Utue or nothing to Anglo-
American critldsm. to Spitzcr and his foUow-
ers,. to thc Croceans) and -contemporary (one
might even say "faithlcy"): entirrly absorbed
in a certain ideplogical present, it is reluctant
to acknowledge any partidpation in the criti-
cal tmdiUon of Saintc-Bcuvc, Taine, or L;*ii-
son. This last model nonetheless raises a spe-
d a l problem for our contemporary criticism.
The work, method, arid spirit of Lansotl, him-
self a prototype of tlic Frcnch professor, has
controlled, through cotmtless epigones,, the
whole of academic criticism for fifty years.
Suicc thc (avowed) prindples'oftliis criticism
arc rigor and objectivity in the csubUshment
of faos, one might suppose that there is no
incompaUbiUty between Lansonism and the
ideological criticisms, whidi arc aU criticisms
of interpretaUon. However, though the ma-
jority of French critics toddy are themselves
professors, there is a certain tension b e t w e e n
interprcdvc criUdsm and posltivist (aca-
dcmic) criticism. Tliis is because Lansonism is
itself an Ideology; not content to d e m a n d the
appUcaUon of Uic objective rules of aU s d e n -
tific invcsUgaUon, it impUcs certain general
 I / WHAT IS CniTlCiSM?
convictions about man, history, Literature,
In otlier words, criticism i s n o t a t a l i a u b l e o f
ind the relations between author and work;
• results or a body of judgments, it is cssenUally
for example, thc psychology of Unsonism is
an activity, Le.,' a series of intcUectual acts
uttcriy dated, coosisting essentially of a kind
profoundly conuiuned to tlie liistorical and
of anilogica] dctcnuinism, ^according to
subjective cadstence (they are the same thing)
which thc details of a work must resemble thc
of the m i a who performs them. Can an activ-
details of a life, thc soul of a char^icter roust
ity be "Hue"? It answers quite diOercnt re-
resemble the soul of thc author, ctc.—a very quirements.
spcdal ideology, since it is precisely In thc
Every novelist, every poet, whatever the
years following its formuIaUon that psycho-
detours literary thcoiy may uke, U presumed
analysis, for example, has posited contrary
to speak of objects and phenomena, even if
relations, relations of denial, between a work
they are imaginary, exterior and anterior to
and its author. Indeed, philosophical postu-
language the wortu exists and the writer
lates arc incviuble: Unionism is not to be
speaks: that is literature. The o b j e a of criU-
blamed for its prqudices but for thc f a a that
d s m is very different; the objcd of criUcism is
. it conccals them; masks them under the
not "the worid" but a discourse, the discourse
moral alibi of rigor and objeaivivy; ideology is
of someone else: criUcism is discourse upon a
smuggled into the baggage of.scientism like
discotirsc; it is a second language, or a meta-'
contraband merchandise.
language (as the logicians would say), which
operates on a first language (or language ob-
If these various ideological principles are
Jecfi. It foUows that the criUcal language must
possible at the same time Cand for my pan, in
deal with two kinds of reiaUons: the relation
a certain sense I subscribe to each of ihem at
of thc criUcal language to thc language of the
thc same time), it is doubtless bccause an
author studied, and die relaUOn of this lan-
idccloglcj chv^lce doos aot coasuiute the
guage objca to thc worid. It is Uie "fricUo;,'
Being of criticism and because "truth" is not
of these two languages which Jefiiies CP;:-
Its sanction. Criticism is more than discourse
d s m and perhaps gives it a great resemblancc
in the n o n e of "true" priiici'plcs. Ii follows
to anoUier menul acuvity, logic, which is also
that the capital sin in criticism is not i-Icology
based on the distincUon between language
but the sUence by wWch it U masked: this
object and metalanguage.
guilty silence has a name; good conscience,
For if criticism is only a metalanguage, U'us
or again, bad faith. Kiiw could we believe, in
mca-is that its task is not at all to discover
fact, that the work is an ob/ect exterior to ihe
"truths," but only "vaUdiUes." In itself, a lan-
psyche and history of the man who interro-
guage is not true or false, it is or is not vaUd:
gates it. an objea o%cr wliich the critic would
valid, i.e., consUtutes a coherent system of
cxcrdse a kind of aaraterritorial r'?hL' By
signs. The rules of literary language do not
what miracle would the profound communi-
concern the conformity of this language to
a t i o n which most critics postulate between
reaUty (whatever the claims of the realisUc
the work and its author cease in relation to
schools), but only its subihisslon to the sys-
their own enterprise and their own epoch?
tem of signs Uie author has esublishcd (and
^ there laws of creation valid fcr the Vrxitcr
we must, of course, give die word system a
but not for the critic' All criticism must in-
very strong sense here). CriUcism has no re-
dude in its discourse (even if it is. in the mo.t
sponsibUity to say whether Proust has spoken
I n d l ^ and modest manner imaginable) an
••Uie truth," whether Uie Baron de Charius
iraphcit reneoion on itself; cvciy criUcism is a
was indeed the Count de Montesquiou,
criticism of thc work a n d a criticism of itself.
whether Fran^olse was Celestr, or even,
ROLANO GARTHes
40
more generally, whether Uie society Ptoust
worid, but not "a meaning"; die work, at least
described reproduces accuratcly the histori-
die work wtiicii ordinarily accedes to critical
cal condiUons of Uie nobility's disappearance
scrutiny a n d this is pcrliaps a dcfmidon of
at thc end of the nineteenth century; its role
"good" literature—the work is never entirely
, is solely to elaborate a language whose co-
nonsigni/ying (mysterious or "inspired"), and
herence, logic. It short whose systemailcs
never entirely dear; it ij, one may say, i sus-
can coliea or better still can "Integrate" (in
p m d e d meaning; it offer, itself to Uie trader
Uic mathemaUcaJ sense of thc word) Uic
as an avowed s i g n i n g system yet wiUihoIds
greatest possible quanUty of Proustian lan-
itself from him as a signified object. This dis-
guage, trxactly as a logical equaUoa tests the
appointment of meaning explains on tiiC one
validity of reasoning wiUiout taking sides as
hand why thc literary work has so much
to thc "truUi" of thc arguments it mobilizes.
power to ask tlie worid-quesUons (undermin-
One can say thai Uie criUcal task (and this is
ing the assured meaiiini's wtiich ideologies,
,Uie sole guarantee of its universality) is purely
beliefs, aitd cdmraon isense s « m to possess),
format not to "discover" in thc work or the
yet wiUiout e v e r answeririg Uvcm (Ujcre Is no
auUior something "hidden," "profounc," "se-
great work w h i c h is "dogmaUc"), and on thc '
cret" which hitherto passed unnoUced (by
oUier hand w h y it offers Itself to endless ded-
what miracle? Arc w c more pcrspicadous
pherment, smoe there is ho reason for vis cver
than our predecessors?), but only to adjust die
. to stop speaking of Radne or Shakespeare
language to period affords him (exlstcndal-
.(unJcis by a dlsaffecUon wliidi will itself be a
ism, Marxism, 'psychoanalysis) to thc Ian-
language): suuultaneously an iiisistent prop- •
guagc, Lc., die formal system of logical con-
osiUon of mean'uig and.z stubbornly fugitive •
stnints elaborated by the author according to
meaning, literature ij indeed only a Ian-
his own period. The " p r o o f of a criticism is
gucge t Le., a syjtera of sigus; its being is not
not of an "aleUilc" onier (it docs not proceed
in its message' but in' this "system," And
from truth), [or criUcal discourse—like logi-
thereby the critic is not responsible for rcccn-
cal discourse, moreover—Is never anyUilng
struoL-ig die work's message but OiUy its sys- A
but tautological; it consists in sa}-ing ulU-
tern, just as t h e linguist is not responsible for
inately. though placing its whole being
deciphering thc sentence's meaning but for
M^thin tliat delay, what Jiereby is not insig-
establishing t h c formal struoure which per-
nificant; Racine is Racine, Proust is Ptoust;
mits this meaning to be transmined.
CriUcal "proof," if it exists, depends on an
It is by acknowledging itself as no mote
apUtude not to discotvr the work in quesUon
than a language (or more precisely, a meta-
but on Uic contrary to cotter it as completely
language) that criticism can be—paradoxi-
as possible by its own language.
cally but authenUcali;—bodi objccUvc and
Till s wx arc concerned, once again, wiUi
subjecUve, liistorical and cxistenUai, totalitar-
an csscntialiy formal acUvit)-, not in thc.cs-
ian and liberal. For on thc one hand, the lan-
UieUc but in Uie logical sense of Uie term. We
guage each cntic chooses to speak docs not
might say that for criUdsm, the only way of
come down to h i r ' from Heaven; it Is one of
avoiding "good coosdcncc" or "bad faiUi" is
die various languages his age affords him, it is
to take as a moral goal not die dedpherment
objecUvely the end product of a ccruin his-
of Uie work's meaning but the nxonstrucUon
torical ripening of knowledge. Ideas. IntcUec-
of Uic rules and constraints of Uiat meaning's
tual passions—it is a necessity; and on the
eliboratio.i; provided wc admit at once dial a
oUier hand, this necessary language is chosen
I literary work Is a very special semanUc sys-
by each criUc as a consec^jcnce of a certain
L tem. whose goal is to put "meaning" in Uie
existenUal organizaUon. as Uie exercise of an
 sc
I / WHAT IS CRITICISM?

Intel]ccnjal funciion which belongs lo him in

logue is egoisUcallj' .-'lifted toward the pres-
his own right, an cxcrcisc In which he puts aU
his "profundity," Lc., his choiccs, his pica-
sures, his resistances, his obsessions. Thus
ent: critidsin is not an "homage" to tlic tnitli
of the past or to rhe truth of "others"—it is a Elaine Shovvalter
begins, ac the heart of the critic^ work, the
dialogue of two histories and two subjcctivi-
construction of the intelligibility of our own
time. 1941-
Ues, the author's and the critic's. But this dia-
Translated by Richard Howard

Bora in Cambridge. Massachusetts, Elaine Showalter received an M.A, from Brandcii

1TJ!7,T(1 D
;,fr0m thc
of California at Davis. s t e C u S a"
vol ,^crs t)' and n o w
Wiches ai Princeton University. She has edited such
s Z m Z 1 S r n n Z ' Z ' Xni eJ bn e r ^ i re0 " a u { S o c U :
ffYT1 ' ' > ' y : and The N e w f ^ n i n i a Criticism Her
' Literature of Their Own; .Hriiish Women Novelists f r o m Bronte to
l ^ n g 0 9 7 7 ) : A t t e m a t b ^ Alcoa (1989), Speaking of
a n <
l ^ ! t U r ' 0 1 ' h e F i n ( i e S i i c l e O 9 9 0 y - a n d m o « reccntl'y Sister's
C h o i ^ Tradulon a n d O u i n g e in American Women's Writing ( l ^ i )
" W h J i s t h e n ^ ^ S ^ l i C ? m 111 < h e W i l d c n l c s s " Showalter asks [he question-
1nd n n £ !,K T r a e a ' S W r i U n £ ? " " 45 1 < l u c s t l o n wi'h exhilaxating possi-
b ^ u e s and oncc posed by herself and otner feminist writers. It began the " s h E m
. androcentric to a gynocentric feminist criticism." R c v i s i o r ^ t S ^ s 0 f 1 ^
canon o n therefore n o I onger contain the momentum of w 7 r ^ e „ S t ^ ^ m m t S
essay she analyzes four th.-oreUcal modeU that explore this d U W c b U o K ' S
luiguisuc. psychoanalytic, anJculPiral These m o J e h a i - l b U j '° 8 ' c ^ 1 1 '

more complete snd satisfymg way to u l k about the specificity and d ^ e r c n c e nf

women's Writing." Shovalter, then, beglr.s U.c work of p ^ S . g a l u S r f - m f
^ t ^ t ^ a s r a . a ground that is not "the serenely undifferenUaied univereality oi tcxi5
bu. tlie tumultuous and Intriguing wilderness of dilTerence itself.'

F e m i n i s t C r i t i d . s m in tlie W i l d e r n e s s

1. PLUItAUSM AND THE

FEMINIST CRITIQUE lyn Heilbrun and Catharine Stinipson identi-
fied two poles of feminist literary criUcism.
]
'^onien hai>e no wilderriess in ihetn, The first of these modes, righteous, angry,
•Vicy a r e provident instead and admonitory, they compared to the Old
Tesument, "looking for the sins and errors of
Content in the tight tuA cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread, the past." The second mode, disinterested
and seeking "the grace of iJiaginaUon." they
Louise fiogin. "Women"
compared to the New T . s u m e n t , Both are
ncccssary, tliey concluded, for otily the Jere-
In a splendidly wiuy dialogue of 1975, C a i v -
miahs of ideology can lead us out of the

«si

14
Literary t h e o r y - a history
in t e n e v e n t s
Several of the available introductory guides to literary theory incor-
porate such features as glossaries of key terms, 'timelines', and potted
accounts of the ideas of important theorists arranged in encyclopae-
dic format. I have not been tempted to include any of these features
in the third edition of this book, because I have always preferred to
integrate information into a themed narrative. But one way of pre-
senting the story of literary theory is to centre it upon a series of
the key events which constitute its public history T h e advantage of
doing this is that many of the underlying themes are thereby brought
to the fore, so that the trajectory of theory - the arc of its rise and
fall - becomes strikingly apparent. Of course, I am using the term
'literary theory' here in its narrow sense, which is to say in reference
to its resurgence from the mid twentieth century onwards, and
disregarding the earlier history of theory which was touched u p o n
in Chapter 1. Within these limitations, we can tell the story of the-
ory through ten key events.
T h e Indiana University ' C o n f e r e n c e o n Style', 1958
Reading: for t h e book of t h e c o n f e r e n c e see Style in Language,
ed. T h o m a s A. S c b c o k , T h e M . I . T . Press, 1960.
In its early phase (as explained in Chapter 2), literary theory was the
direct offspring of developments in linguistics. T h e interdisciplin-
ary 'Conference on Style' at Indiana in 1958 can be seen as an
important marker of the growing importance of linguistics within
L i t e r a r y t h e o r y - a h i s t o r y in t e n e v e n t s 253
the Humanities. T h o m a s Sebeok (1920-2001), who convened the
conference, was a Hungarian scholar in linguistics who had become
an American citizen in 1944. His doctoral studies at the outset of his
career had been supervised by the linguist Roman Jakobson, whose
'Closing Statement: (Linguistics and Poetics)' became the most
lastingly influential item of the conference. But the most innovative
feature of the conference itself was its interdisciplinarity: it debated
the question of style (how to define it, how to describe it, how to
investigate its effects) from the viewpoints of three relevant disci-
plines, these being linguistics, literary criticism, and psychology.
However, the overall bias of the papers was very much dominated
by linguistics, and of the nine sections into which the book of the
confcrcnce is divided, four of them centre on phonology, metrics,
grammar, and semantics, respectively, which are prime areas of
investigation in linguistics, while the fifth is called 'Linguistic
approaches to verbal art', and the sixth is merely the collection of
o p e n i n g and closing statements (one of each from the three contrib-
uting disciplines). So there is a strong sense of linguistics extending
its influence into the other two spheres - but especially into literary
criticism - and entering the era of its highest dominance and pres-
tige. Hence, the conference signals a distinct shift in the balance
of power within the Humanities, marking the m o m e n t when the
scientific method of enquiry extends its empire, and becomes the
accepted model of enquiry in general, spreading from the sciences,
to the social sciences, and now into the Humanities. Indeed, the book
of the conference, which r e p r o d u c e s papers delivered at the event,
a b o u n d s with diagrams, graphs, and tables of statistical analysis; if
you h a d taken it down f r o m the shelf without realising what it was,
you m i g h t assume on flicking through that it is a scientific treatise of
some kind. Its writers aim to demonstrate what is or is not the case,
rather than seeking merely to persuade us that what they assert is
truly t h e case. T h e y want to prove that certain assertions are true,
rather than merely arguing that they are, and that is the essence of
the scientific method.
T h e conference did not, of course, settle these matters, and there
were actually three closing statements, not just Jakobson's, as is often
s u p p o s e d . T h e closing statement on behalf of literary criticism was
 264 Beginning theory
made by the eminent critic Rene Wellek, and he was deeply scept-
ical about the claims of the linguists. All the same, the period of
dominance in literary studies by the humanistic approach of the
New Critics was entering its final phase, and the prestige of lingui-
stics was rising - the American linguist Noam Chomsky, born in
1922, and about to become as dominant a force in the linguistic
thinking of his generation as Saussure had been half a century ear-
lier, had already published his first book {Syntactic Structures, 1957),
and it was discussed by some of the speakers at the conference.
Using concepts drawn from linguistics would soon become almost
the default way of doing theory, partly because of the enormous
success of Chomsky's work in arguing that grammar and semantics
(that is, meaning) cannot be separated, and that ' d e e p ' syntactical
structures are the ultimate determinants of meaning.* Jakobson's
closing statement makes no attempt to sum up the a r g u m e n t s put
forward in the course of the conference. Rather, his densely techni-
cal analyses of poetry show the linguistic method at work. T h e argu-
ment, if there is one, is brutal and simple: poetry is language, so
poetry must now come within the sphere of linguistics; 'the linguist
whose field is any kind of language may and must include poetry
in his study' (p. 377, my italics). H e moves towards his conclusion
by approvingly quoting the critic John Hollander to the effect
that 'there seems to be no reason for trying to separate the literary
from the overall linguistic', and he ends with this resounding
proclamation:
All of us here, however, definitely realize that a linguist deaf to t h e
poetic f u n c t i o n of language and a literary scholar i n d i f f e r e n t to
linguistic p r o b l e m s and u n c o n v e r s a n t with linguistic m e t h o d s are
equally flagrant anachronisms, (p. 377)
Henceforth, literary criticism would strive above all to be 'scientific'
and methodical, and mere intelligence, combined with literary sen-
sibility, would no longer be enough. Welcome to the brave new post-
Indiana world!
' To give a cliched example, the following two sentences have the same 'surfacc*
syntax but different 'deep' syntax, and lhat is where their true meaning lies: 'The
chicken was readv to eat'. 'The Chairman was readv to eat'.
rAtfik
Literary t h e o r y - a history in t e n e v e n t s 265
T h e J o h n s H o p k i n s University i n t e r n a t i o n a l
s y m p o s i u m , 1966
Reading-. The Structuralist Contrirversy, ed. R i c h a r d M a c k s e y a n d
E u g e n i c D o n a t e , J o h n s H o p k i n s University Press, 1970 ( f o r t i e t h
a n n i v e r s a r y e d i t i o n , 2006). T h i s is t h e 'book of t h e c o n f e r e n c e ' , c o n -
t a i n i n g D e r r i d a ' s lecture ' S t r u c t u r e , Sign and Play', and t h e q u e s -
tions which followed.
In October 1966 an international symposium was held at J o h n s
H o p k i n s University in the U S A under the title ' T h e Languages of
Criticism and the Sciences of M a n ' . T h e sequence of elements in the
title of the symposium indicates the on-going primacy of linguistics,
but again the aim of the gathering was to be interdisciplinary. T h e
symposium was a co-production, so to speak, with the 'Sciences
de I Homme^ section of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, which-was
the cradle of structuralism. T h i s term 'the sciences of m a n ' indi-
cated a new subject area which linked the interests of what would
m o r e conventionally have been called the H u m a n i t i e s and the Social
Sciences, taking in (among other areas) anthropology, philosophy,
literature, linguistics, psychology and history. T h i s is the nexus of
disciplines which, so to speak, had pooled resources under the aegis
of structuralism, and this symposium celebrated the arrival and
establishment of structuralism, with contributions from its major
figures - Rene G i r a r d , Georges Poulet, Lucien G o l d m a n n , T z v e t a n
Todorov and Roland Barthes. T h i s consolidation of structuralism
can be seen as a move forward and beyond the complete dominance
of lingui.stics, for it was now realised that linguistics could not really
deliver on its promise to provide 'a universal matrix for u n d e r s t a n d -
ing all human p h e n o m e n a ' (p. xi). Hencc, the g r o u n d was shifting
again, and the impact of Derrida's contribution was to announce his
scepticism about the structuralist triumph and to inaugurate a new
stage o f ' p o s t - s t r u c t u r a l i s m ' .
T h e content of Derrida's talk is described in Chapter 3, and what
strikes m e about it now is that - like most of the memorable and sig-
nificant contributions at conferences - it takes verv little notice
of the surrounding arguments or contexts and simply bangs down
its challenge with Hare and conviction. But the characteristic weak-
ne.sses as well as the strengths of his approach are already apparent
266 Beginning t h e o r y
in Derrida's response to questions (see 'Discussion' after his
paper, pp. 265-72). H e is questioned with some persistence by Jean
Hyppolite, whose query comes from a structuralist perspective -
can you have structures without a referent? T h e previous 'centres'
of our thought (notions like ' M a n ' , ' G o d ' , ' T r u t h ' , and so on) have
been 'de-centred' and wiped away, and instead we are left with
structures like 'difference', that is, we have neither A nor B, we have
only the difference between them. Language, for instance, is a game,
with a structure of rules, but we don't ask what the game is for,
or what ultimate end it serves. S o Hyppolite wants to know what
Derrida thinks is behind the structure of language - ' O n e cannot
think of the structure without the centre', he says (266). To see what
he is getting at, think, for instance, of a game of football. T h e r e is
an intricate structure of rules and conventions which govern the
event, but what is behind the rules.' Is it something to do with
the excitement of playing or watching the game.? Is it the cup which
the winning team receives.' Is it the glory of victory, or the subli-
mated sense which winning gives of triumphing over the adver.sities
of life.' Obviously, there must be something behind the structures,
and Hyppolite wants to know what Derrida thinks it is. But of
course, Derrida doesn't tell him, and the question is deflected in
ways which later became all too automatic for Derrida as his fame
grew - 'I do not know where 1 am going,' he says (267). Pressed fur-
ther to say what structure is ('how will you define a structure for
me.' - to see where the centre is', p. 268), Derrida replies that the
concept of structure 'is no longer satisfactory', so 'what I have said
can be understood as a criticism of structuralism' (268). H e is
accused of always speaking o{ > non-cenlres , by a questioner who says
that without a notion of centres you can't explain what perception
is, 'for a perception is precisely the manner in which the world
appears centred to me' (271). In response, Derrida denies that he has
denied the existence of centre.s, but adds, 'I believe that the centre is
a function, not a being - a reality, but a function' (271). But he does
conclude by denying the existence of perception - 'I don't believe
that anything like perception exists . . . I don't believe that there is
any perception' (272). T h i s would seem to close off the 'soft option'
view of post-structuralism, that is, the view that it is merely a system
which emphasises the constructedness of everything, in other words,
Literary t h e o r y - a history in t e n e v e n t s 267
the notion that /)frceiving is always ror/ceiving. It is striking that the
questioning process seems to show Derrida almost being p u s h e d
into more extreme formulations than he i n t e n d e d , f r o m which it
will later be impossible to pull back. T h e material f r o m the 1966
conference was written u p in 1971, and the book of the conference
was finally published in 1972. T h e change in- intellectual climate
between the mid sixties a n d the early seventies was very consider-
able. By 1972, the implications of the D e r r i d e a h challenge to s t r u c -
turalism were sinking in, and for the major thinkers, at least, the age
of postructuralism was already in full swing.
T h e p u b l i c a t i o n of D e c o n s t r u c t i o n a n d Criticism, 1 9 7 9
R e a d i n g : t h e book itself, and a sample of key reviews, including
S. L. G o l d b e r g , London Review of Bonks (May 2 2 - J u n e 4, 1980), and
Denis D o n o g h u c , Nexp York Review of Books ( J u n e 12, 1980), u n d e r
the title ' D e c o n s t r u c t i n g D e c o n s t r u c t i o n ' , and Roger S c r u t o n ' s talk,
which was broadcast on B B C Radio .1 in 1980 and is r e p r i n t e d in his
book The Poltltcs of Culture am! Other Essays ( C a r c a n e t , 1981).
T h i s book - by five authors - was published by Yale University
Press in 1979, the five being Harold Bloom, Paul de .Man, Jacques
Derrida, Geoffrey H a r t m a n , and J. I lillis Miller, a g r o u p sometimes
collectively referred to as the 'Yale Mafia' of theory. T h e book
exemplified deconstriictive reading with reference to Shelley's ' T h e
Triumph of Life', presenting this approach to reading in its most
uncompromising and even brutal form. It showed deconstruction
(which by that time was being taken as representative of literarv
theory as a whole) in its p o m p - brash, confident, and provocative,
and, for many, a kind of Orwellian nightmare of what literary stud-
ies had become, as if they had been asked to imagine the future of
literary criticism, and were being shown a picture of a boot s t a m p -
ing on the face of a literary text for ever. T h e reviewers of the book
were polarised, and uncompromising in either praise or blame, as if
conscious that a decisive battle was being fought for the soul of lit-
erary studies. T h e most notable and sustained attacks on it were
S. L . Goldberg's in the London Review of Books, D e n i s D o n o g h u e ' s
in the Nerp York Review of Books, and Roger S c r u t o n ' s B B C Radio
3 talk.
 268 Beginning theory
L)eco7istrucltoti und CTiticistn csuscd such outrage because it wasn't
in fact a work of deconstructive theory, but (ostensibly) of decon-
structive practice. Had it been 'mere' theory, hostile academic read-
ers (or dippers-in) of other persuasions could have dismissed it as
not really being germane to their own core business of reading
and interpreting literature. It could then have been brushed aside as
just one more of the increasing number of books which spoke only
to other theorists and carried on a debate purely in the realm of
philosophical ideas, with little evident relevance to the day-to-day
business of reading and writing about literature. But this was not
the situation, and the feelings of affront and outrage which the book
provoked came about because it seemed to have invaded the humane
space of 'letters' (to use a traditional but now antique term for
literary study), threatening to transform the field from within into
something alien. T h e r e was great fear that this kind of thinking,
with its arcane vocabulary and its abstract formulations, was partic-
ularly appealing to young academics, so that the f u t u r e of literary
study would be poisoned if it caught on. For the first time (in the
U K , at least) literary studies began to be discussed on radio and TV,
usmg this book as an example of the strange events which were tak-
ing place in English departments. Word got out that a 'war' of some
kind was going in English faculties across the land. T h e term 'the
theoiy wars' quickly became current in discussions of the H u m a n i -
ties in the early 1980s, and the publication of Deconstruction and
Criticism can be seen as the declaration of war by the newly empow-
ered theorists on the disorganised status quo in literary studies.
The MacCabe affair, 1981
R e a d i n g : N o f o r m a l a c a d e m i c account of this event exists, b u t see
t h e n e w s p a p e r r e p o r t s f r o m late 1980 and early 1981 (which you can
find in m o s t university libraries by using t h e Times Full-text Database
and searching for 'Colin M a c C a b e ' in t h e period 1980 and 1981),
b e g i n n i n g with the Times of Saturday 24 J a n u a r y 1981, and t h e
S u n d a y Times of S u n d a y 25 January.
T h e fuss about Deconstruction and Criticism was hardly over, when,
in the autumn of 1980, it was decided at Cambridge University that
l i t e r a r y t h e o r y - a h i s t o r y in t e n e v e n t s 269
a young assistant lecturer called Colin MacCabe would not be
upgraded to a permanent lectureship, after holding a temporary post
for five years. Students protested, and there were disagreements
and divisions on the Faculty Board which had made the decision.
T h e events were reported in the newspapers and became a r u n n i n g
news story in the U K during the first half of 1981. T h e result was a
public argument about how English should be taught at universities,
with eminent figures from the English Faculty publicly taking sides.
Raymond Williams and Frank K e r m o d e supported MacCabe (the
former liking the Marxist aspects of his work, and the latter the
structuralist elements), while C^hristopher Ricks opposed M a c C a b e ' s
appointment and favoured more traditional scholarly and tradi-
tional methods. On Saturday 24 January 1981 the Tmes had a news
article and a leader on the matter, the article struggling to explain to
its readers what structuralism is: ' S t r u c t u r a l i s m can be described
simply as a linguistics technique which studies how language itself
influences the way an author writes', it informed us, not verv h e l p -
fully. T h e leader took a very lofty view of the whole business ( ' D o n s
dispute as children squabble, to test out and develop their muscles'),
and it too saw structuralism as being primarily about linguistics:
'Structuralism is first of all about g r a m m a r - not g r a m m a r c o n -
ceived in the prescriptive sense in which it was once t a u g h t in
schools (and seems to be no longer), but g r a m m a r as a pattern of the
subliminal forms of language, and therefore of the h u m a n m i n d ' .
T h i s i s a very anachronistic note to strike as late as 1981, for it seems
to be unaware that structuralism had now long been replaced by
post-structuralism, but the key names the reporters were told about
were those of the structuralist f o u n d i n g fathers - Levi-Strauss,
Roland Barthes, and so on - rather than Lacan and Derrida, and
there is n o mention of the fact that the tune in literary theory was
now being called by philosophy and deconstruction rather than
linguistics. T h e c o m m e n t s on g r a m m a r and the subliminal patterns
of the h u m a n mind seem to me more like a description of Chomsky's
idea of ' d e e p syntax' than the state of literary theory in the 1980s.
T h e leader was partly based on an interview with Colin M a c C a b e
which had been hurriedly conducted by journalist Ian Jack. H e met
iVlacCabe at Heathrow .Airport, on his return from a British Council
 270 Beginning t h e o r y
lecturing trip to Europe, and interviewed him during the taxi
ride into London. T h e interview was published in the Sunday Times
the next day (25 January), and again thc emphasis on language
is very marked - MacCabe in the taxi kept 'banging on about the
need of Eng. Lit. students to know g rammar', and Jack tells his
readers that MacCabe laments the fact that his .students no longer
seem to have been taught grammar at school, making it difficult
to convey ideas which build upon that framework. Ian Jack was
evidently puzzled to hear a lament about the decline of formal
grammar teaching in schools coming from a radical left-winger like
MacQbe.
T h e dispute dragged on at Cambridge and seemed to descend
into farcical parody, like an episode in T o m Sharpe's 1974 satirical
novel Porterhouse Blue (which is about the struggle between reac-
tionaries and reformers at a mythical Cambridge college). T h e p r o -
ceedings of the appointinents committee had by now been leaked,
and it was announced that the leak would be investigated 'by the
university's ancient court the Septem Viri J (the Seven Men). T h e n
the students revolted and passed a vote of no confidence in the
Faculty Board, calling for an open enquiry into the state of the
English Faculty T h i s duly took place in the Senate House, inevita-
bly described in the newspaper reports as 'oak-panelled'. It should
have been a high-level intellectual debate between structuralists,
Marxists, humanists, and the rest, but of course it wasn't - it was
about procedures, and administration, and committees. Higher
education in those days was expanding rapidly, but funding was
being rigorously curtailed by the T h a t c h e r government - there was
wet rot in buildings and a lack of cleaners, and students complained
about inadequate contact time with tutors who were increasingly
being pressured to get on with their research. T h e 'affair', in the
end, fizzled out: a compromise was reached whereby MacCabe's
post would be extended for a further year, but in July 1981 he left
Cambridge to take up the offer of a professorship at thc enterprising
Strathclyde University in Glasgow. On the whole, theory benefited
from all this publicity: here, it seemed, was a bright young talent
with cutting-edge ideas whose career was being threatened by the
forces of reaction. Theory, we might say, now had its martyr, and an
increased sense of its own coherence and importance.
rjR .
Literary t h e o r y - a history In t e n e v e n t s 271
T h e p u b l i c a t i o n of E a g l e t o n ' s Literary Theory:
A n I n t r o d u c t i o n , 1983
Reading-, thc book itself, and early reviews such as J o h n Bayley's
in the Times I.tlerary Supplement (10 J u n e 1983).
T h e spread of literary theory since thc 1970s seems in retrospect to
have been inevitable and relentle.ss, but in reality it was d e p e n d e n t
upon finding effective ways of teaching theory, not just ways of
studying it at faculty and postgraduate level. T h e M a c C a b e affair
highlighted some of the difficulties of doing this and showed the
need for detailed exposition, exemplification and discussion. M o s t
of the primary texts of literary theory had been written in F r e n c h ,
with a few in G e r m a n or Russian, and by no means all of t h e m had
yet been translated. T h e r e was an acute need for 'mediating' works,
that is, introductory books which could be used as course textbooks
on undergraduate and M A courses. W i t h o u t such books, literary
theory would be doomed to remain an elitist minority interest. T h e
need for basic secondary exposition was first supplied by the f o u n d -
ing in 1977 of the series of books known as ' M e t h u e n N e w Accents',
which provided students with individual introductory books on
structuralism, deconstruction, post-structuralism and the rest. An
introductory overview of literary theory was also a necessity, and the
first book to meet this need was Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory:
An Introduction, published by Black well in 1983. T h e book was an
instant success because it was written in a lively and provocative
manner, and resisted the temptation to produce a dense and ele-
phantine tome - such a book might have impressed peers but would
have been inappropriate for .students seeking initial enlightenment.
T h e s e qualities distinguished it from most of its successors, and
from the course-book 'readers' in literary theory which began to
appear from the late 1980s onwards. 'Readers' containing key arti-
cles and chapters by a range of major figures can be very useful if
they are selective and if they try to meet the actual needs of their
users, but such books succumbed long ago to competitive super-
sizing, with publishing firms striving with each other in a ridiculous
poker game to .see who can produce the biggest theory reader
(Publisher N to Publisher B: 'I'll see your thirteen h u n d r e d pages
and raise you by another thirteen h u n d r e d ' ) .
272 Beginning theory
Eagleton, by contrast, kept it simple: his introduction is called
'What is Literature?' and the first chapter tells the history of the
rise of English Studies; the next four chapters deal in turn with
phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, and psychoanal-
ysis, and the Conclusion is entitled 'Political Criticism'. Eagleton
makes no pretence to neutrality - he is a Marxist critic writing from
a committed and identified position, not a sipper and taster o f ' i s m s '
who swills each one round for a few moments and then passes on to
the next one. T h e omissions are striking - the index (this is in 1983)
has no entry on 'feminism' or 'feminist theory', for instance, and it
seems somewhat eccentric (in a book called Literary Theory) to
begin by asking 'What is Literature.'' rather than 'What is Literarv
Theory?' T h e overall argument is vigorous but taxing: the answer
to the question 'What is Literature?' is that literature 'docs not exist
in the sense that insects do'. It might be retorted impatiently that
literary theory must certainly exist, possibly even in the sense that
insects do, since Eagleton has written a book about it. But literary
theory's purpose, for Eagleton, seems anti-literary, and that distin-
guishes it from literary criticism, which is usually (one would pre-
sume) on literature's side. For him, theory's insect-like purpose
seems to be to act as a kind of super-bug, attacking literature from
within, with the aim of bringing about its death (though if literature
doesn't exist, how can it die?). T h a t is the kind of theological ques-
tion which is posed by Eagleton's famous allegorical ending:
1 shall e n d with an allegory. IVe know that the lion is stronger than
the lion-tamer, and so does the lion-tamer. T h e problem is that the
lion docs not know it. It is not out of the question that the death of
literature m a y help the lion to awaken.
As John Bayley said in his Times Literary Supplement review (10 J u n e
1983), the question is 'What is the lion?' Presumably, the lion is the
proletariat, and the lion-tamer is literature. So the job of theory is
to oppose literature and deprive it of its power to subdue and pacify
the masses. E^agleton's lion, however, seems wiser than he allows, for
the lion knows that the lion-tamer has a whip, and that is what makes
him stronger than the lion. T h e metaphor must envisage literature
as the whip, seeing it as part of the 'Ideological State Apparatus',
which controls us by ideology rather than force (see Chapter 8 for
Literary t h e o r y - a h i s t o r y in t e n e v e n t s 21i
the Althusserian notion of the 'ISA'). T h e power and impact of
Eagleton's book lay in its overall energy, wit, and mental agility, and
in its deft summaries of large bodies of thought. He is brilliantly
compressed and informative, for instance, in his chapter on s t r u c -
turalism; in the chapter on post-structuralism he raises the issues
that others only got round to m o r e than a decade later; the psycho-
analysis chapter ts more routine, and his final chapter on political
criticism puts his Marxist cards uncompromisingly face-up on the
table, but in a way that anticipates the ethical and moral issues which
would pre-occupy him twenty years later - 'What it means to be a
"better p e r s o n " ' , he says, 'must be concrete and practical'. Eagle-
ton's book, then, greatly contributed to the 'consolidation' of liter-
ary theory and helped to establish it firmly on the u n d e r g r a d u a t e
curriculum, giving tutors confidence that it might be possible to
teach it in a systematic way. In this ten-event history it marks the
apex of the rise of thcorv
J. Hillls Miller's MLA p r e s i d e n t i a l a d d r e s s , 1986
I f e a J i n g : 'I'residcniial A d d r e s s , I'Wft T h e T r i u m p h of T h e o r y , t h e
Resistance lo Kcading, and t h e (Question of the .Material Base.' P M L A
{.Vla> I l )87), 102(.'i): 2SI 91; r e s p o n s e h\ Ncw Mistoricist l.oiiis
.Vtonirosc, 'Professing the Renaissance: T h e Poetics and Politics of
(luliiirc', reprinted in Rivkin Rvan, p p 7 7 7 - 8 5
liy the mul 198()s, s\ m|)ioins of the coming decline of literary ihc()r\
began to emerge. .\ key m o m e n t was the .Modern Language Associa-
tion's presidential address by J 1 lillis Miller in 1986. T h e M L A is
the main professional body for university teachers of English in the
U S A , and its annual conventions are major events for the discipline.
T h e keynote address from the president is the climax, and it takes
the form of a kind o f ' s t a t e of the discipline' pronouncement which
will often point to f u t u r e lines of development. Hillis .Miller, as one
of the ' f a m o u s five' authors of Deconslructmn and Criticism, had long
been a proponent of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , and his address shows that he
had expected that the confident m o m e n t u m of the early 1980s -
when deconstruction seemed to be making a clean sweep of presti-
gious English departments in the U S A - would continue. However,
what was actually happening, it seemed, was that the dominance of
274 Beginning theory
theory was being checked by a new contrary force. T h e contrary
force was the rise of historicist approaches to literature, emanating
from the field of early modernist studies, and begun in the USA by
Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980) and in the
U K by Jonathan Doilimore and Alan Sinfield's Political Shakespeare
in 1985 (see Chapter 9). Historicism, as Hillis Miller realised, is
the polar opposite of deconstruction, which had become the most
prominent public embodiment of theory itself in the 80s, taking
over the status which structuralism had had in the 70s. So Miller
noted that (in effect) the 'Triumph of Theory' was being inter-
rupted by regrettable outbreaks of historicism:
Literary study in the past few years has undergone a sudden, almost
universal turn away from theory in the sense of an orientation toward
language as such and has made a corresponding turn toward history,
culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender conditions,
the social context, thc material base. (p. 283)
Historicism (as distinct from history) is what thc theory-weary aca-
demic masses (in the main) moved on to, and to ever more elaborate
forms of it, entailing extensive archival work, the setting up of inter-
disciplinary research centres, and the pursuit of cross-institutional
collaborations. As he presents the choice, it might seem rather obvi-
ous why many were choosing the side that Hillis Miller disapproved
of, for 'history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gen-
der conditions, the social context, the material base' sound rather
more interesting as a field of study than (as Miller phrased it) 'an
orientation toward language as such'. Essentially, deconstructive lit-
erary theory believed that students should study 'literariness' itself,
rather than literature (that is, the process of the conceptualisation of
meaning in general, rather than the specific meanings of, for example,
Middlemarch). In practice, it has always been very difficult to trans-
late this notion of 'literariness itself into a viable undergraduate
curriculum, and all those elephantine literary theory 'readers' merely
demonstrate that this is so. Likewise, striving for 'an orientation
towards language as such' is a bit like trying to look at the sun in
literary studies — you can't do it for long, it can be damaging, and you
very quickly want to took elsewhere. Studying history, culture, gen-
der conditions, and the rest, is much more concrete, and translating
Literary t h e o r y - a h i s t o r y in t e n e v e n t s 275
that range of interests into a syllabus which students would want
to follow isn't such a difficult task. So the turning of the tide away
from deconstruction and towards historicism was not really a
surprising trend.
But what exactly, we need to ask at this point, is the difference
between historicism and history.' Well, a historian might seek through
diligent research to recover the past, and enable us to walk again the
streets of Shakespeare's London, making for the playhouse to see a
performance of Hamlet. Wc will know how the streets looked, smell
thc siTielis, hear the sounds, and know what coins exactly we need to
have in our hands in order to get into thc theatre. (This is Stephen's
intellectual fantasy in the 'Scylla and Charybdis' section of Joyce's
Ulysses, of course.) These, noticc, are eviernal, material things,
representative of what hislornul research uncovers. T h e ultimate
end of such enquiry might be the Bankside Globe in London, an
Elizabethan theatre as authentic as we can make it. where we can
now go and have an approximation of that experience, standing
in the open air as thc groundlings did, and even hearing the sounds
of English as the Elizabethans heard them if the performance we
attend is in 'Old Pronunciation' (of course, you have to be able to
ignore the constant noise of jets flying into Heathrow). But histori-
cists don't really like enterprises like the Bankside Globe, because, in
the end, such external, material things are not their goal. Histori-
cists are interested in internal things. They are less interested in
what the Elizabethans saw in the theatre, than in how it felt to see
what Elizabethans saw there. They are interested, too, in what we
call 'identities' - including 'early modern identities', 'gender iden-
tities' and 'national identities' — that is to say, not mere external and
material things but something deeper which suffuses or transcends
the material fabric of the era. ' W h o cares', I can hear them say, 'what
kind of shirts the Elizabethans wore, or how they pronounced
English - I want to understand how it felt to be Elizabethan'. So
historicists are primarily interested in 'discourses', 'structures of
feeling', 'mind-sets', and 'identities', and they seem to me much
more confident than 'real' historians usually are that such funda-
mental and yet intangible elements of the past are recoverable.
Unlike historians, historicists want to go straight to that 'identity'
level, without all the boring archeological spadework that historians
276 Beginning theory
spend most of their time doing. 'Historians are always materialists,
historicists are always idealists', as Maurice Z a p p (the literary-
theorist hero of David Lodge's novels) would have said. Hillis Miller,
I think, ignores the distinction between historians and historicists
in his address, and sees the opposing force of historicism as repre-
senting just a kind of Gradgrindian interest in facts, and he natu-
rally cannot understand how that could compete in interest with the
fascination of'language as such'. As I read this sixth event, then, it
is symptomatic of the m o m e n t when theory's e n o r m o u s and rapid
success began to induce a certain complacency. Its huge impact at
highly privileged institutions in the U K and the U S A caused it both
to under-estimate the appeal of other approaches, and over-estimate
the likely intellectual shelf-life of its own ideas.
The S t r a t h c i y d e University 'Linguistics of W r i t i n g '
c o n f e r e n c e , 1986
Reading: T h e 'book of the conference' is The Linguistics of Writing:
Arguments Between Language and Literature, ed. Nigel Fabb, Derek
Attridge, Alan Durant and Colin MacGibe (Manchester University
Press, 1987). A TV documentary film about the event, called Big
Words Small Worlds, was written and presented by David Lodge and
broadcast on Channel 4, on 22 November 1987.
T h e sense that literary theory was perhaps becoming a little com-
placent again seemed in evidence when a high-profile conference on
literary theory took place in Glasgow in the s u m m e r of 1987, with
many of the most prominent theorists as speakers. In retrospect, the
conference seems both the point when theory reached the height
of its glamour and success, and at the same time the beginning of
the era when a certain triumphalism began to provoke dissent and
resistance which wasn't just coming from diehard traditionalists.
I think of that event now as being rather like the British Labour
Party's infamous 'Sheffield Rally', which was a political convention
mounted just before the General Election of 1992 when Labour
was well ahead in the polls. Unfortunately, the Rally came across on
T V as a premature victory celebration before any victory had been
achieved. T h e poll lead evaporated and the result for the Labour
Party was another five years in opposition. T h e same air of triumphal
Literary t h e o r y - a h i s t o r y in t e n e v e n t s 277
celebration was in evidence at Strathciyde, curiously mixed with an
attempt to revive the prestige of linguistics, for the conference was
organised by the P r o g r a m m e in Literary Linguistics at Strathciyde
University, and sought to repeat and re-create the impact of the
legendary 'Conference on Style' at Indiana in 1958 (the first theory
event discussed here). So in reference back to the Indiana conference,
this one opened with a 'Closing Statement', and closed with an
' O p e n i n g Statement', as if confident that it was setting in m o t i o n
a whole new era of theory. Yet the sessions were not always distin-
guished: several of the f a m o u s linguists seemed very mono-disci-
plinary to me, and they were in that sense a step backwards f r o m the
evangelistic interdisciplinarity of Indiana. David L o d g e , at t h e start
of his lecture on Bakhtin, reminded us that one of the Indiana ses-
sions had been a densely statistical and tabular paper on stylistic
deviations in suicide notes, and as it went on, the Glasgow confer-
ence began to seem m o r e and m o r e like a lengthy suicide note for
literary theory.
Derrida gave his lecture ' H o w to Avoid Speaking', a particularly
taxing and relentless address on negative theology, which lasted,
as I recall, for nearly two hours, the last half hour of which was
constantly punctuated by the sound of the lecture-theatre doors
opening and closing as m e m b e r s of the audience left the auditorium
in exhaustion. T h i s lecture is not in the book of the conference,
1 think because Derrida had already promised it elsewhere, but he
also gave a question and answer session which is included in the
book as ' S o m e questions and responses' (pp. 252-64). T h e format for
this session was that questions had been written out the day before
and handed to the chairperson, who passed them on to Derrida,
giving him time to consider his response. At the event each question
was read out by the chair and then Derrida responded, not from
extensive written notes, so far as 1 could tell, bi.U anyway with the
benefit of prior consideration, making it similar in feel to a present-
day interview conducted by e-mail. My memories of this session are
firstly of Derrida's wit and c h a r m , and secondly, of the way he star-
tled his audience by announcing that he had never said or thought
that the metaphysics 1 of presence was evil - ' I ' m inclined to think
exactly the contrary, that it's good' (p. 257). It took some minutes
for people to take in the implications of what had been said: if the
278 Beginning theory
metaphysics of presence is good, why spend a whole career seeking
to deconstruct it? T h a t was precisely what Jonathan Culler now
asked him from the floor (the session drifted away from the written
questions). T h e answer was essentially theological: the desire for
presence is natural, but to accomplish it 'would be death i t s e l f
(p. 260), so one is compelled to deconstruct it, to keep on showing
that what we mistake for the full presence of something is really the
shimmer o i differan ce. T h i s leads to what became in the years which
followed a familiar and habitual statement of his, that 'Deconstruc-
tion is not a method', it 'doesn't consist in a set of methodological
rules' (p. 262). Of course, I haven't taken this statement at face value,
so I do seek to demonstrate and quantify deconstructive practice
in Chapter 3. After all, Derrida does say that it 'has some method-
ological efTects' (262), though without explaining how exactly that is
Al
different from being a method. Overall, it was an impressive perfor-
mance, but it did give a foretaste of the remaining years of hi.s career,
in which he was always happy to say what deconstruction (or any-
thing else) was not, but never seemed able or willing to explain what
it was. T h e r e was a growing tendency within the theory world to
claim that people had misunderstood what he said, or had taken
it too literally, or in a naive or simplistic way, and this complaint
was constantly echoed by his supporters. When people argued that
he was wrong about something, the response was always that that
wasn't what he had said, or what he had meant.
As the conference went on, frustrations built up. It had seemed a
masterstroke to get a T V film made of the event (which hadn't been
part of the original plan), but lights and microphones are intrusive,
and even at coffee time the camera crews clustered round the big
names with their giant microphone booms, and rushed up to dele-
gates with release forms to sign if they had asked a question at a ses-
sion. T h e 'Opening Statement' on the final morning was interrupted
from the floor by people who wanted their say, not least about the
highly divisive power structures which the proceedings had laid all
too bare. Delegates voted for the studio lights to be turned off and
for the camera crew to leave the room, and it all ended rather rag-
gedly, with the resounding ' O p e n i n g Statement' losing its impact.
What had gone wrong? Certainly, there were too many big plenary
sessions (nearly all by American and British male speakers) and the
Literary t h e o r y - a history in t e n e v e n t s 279
responses were dominated by the same gr oup, leaving very little
space or time for open and democratic exchange. N o matter how
socially progressive its message, literary theory has to be socially
progressive in its methods too. Almost without realising it, and in
the space of a few years, theorists had become the new establishment
and the new elite of the academic world, and they seemed to be tak-
ing their position too much for granted. Like the L a b o u r shadow-
ministers arriving for the ill-starred Sheffield Rally in a cavalcade of
pseudo-ministerial black limousines, the big names suddenly looked
as if they were treating the t r i u m p h of theory a little too m u c h li'Ke a
fait accompli.
The s c a n d a l o v e r Paul de Man' s w a r t i m e w r i t i n g s , 1 9 8 7 - 8 8
Reading-. 'Yale .Scholar Wrote for P r o - N a z i N e w s p a p e r ' , Nerp York
Ttines, 1 December 1987, p 1. Pmil de M a n : Wartime Journalism,
l')3 c )-43, ed. Werner Hamacher, Neil H e r t z , and T o m K e e n a n , U n i -
versity of Nebraska Press, 1988. J a c q u e s D e r r i d a , 'Like the S o u n d of
ihe .Sea D e e p within a Shell; Paul de M a n ' s War', C r i i u a t Inquiry 14,
-Spring 1988, pp. .S90-652. T'or 'Critical Responses" to this piece, see
issue IS, S u m m e r 1989, pp. 765-81 1, D e r r i d a ' s reply to the responses
is 'Hiodegradables: Seven Diary FTagmcnts', pp. 812-73.
We have already discussed the 'famous five' Yale University decon-
structionists who were joint authors of Deconstruction and Criticism
in 1979, one of whom was Belgian-born Paul de Man (1919-1983).
His trio of books - Blindness and Insight (1971), Allegories of Reading
{1979) and The Resistance to Theory (1986) - have been highly influ-
ential, and he was much revered at the time of his death as the aus-
tere intellectual embodiment of literary deconstruction. But in 1987
an article in the New York Times revealed that as a young man in
Nazi-occupied Belgium in the early 1940s he had written nearly two
hundred articles of a markedly anti-semitic kind for the newspaper
Le Soir - for the material itself see P a u l de M a n : Wartime J o u r n a l -
ism, 1939-43. T h e original discoveries were i^ade by O r t w i n de
Graef, who was a Belgian student who had been doing research on
de M a n ' s early life and work. T h o u g h the case was shocking, it was
not primarily the personal guilt or otherwise of de Man which d a m -
aged the standing of deconstruction and of literary theory in general,
 28
0 _
Beginning theory Literary t h e o r y - a history in t e n e v e n t s 281

but the grounds on which other theorists attempted to defend him.

academic, that he endorses anti-semitism as a literary intellectual.
Especially counterproductive, in my view, were Derrida's lengthy
Literary theory, then, was seriously compromised by the de M a n
arUcles in the journal Critical Inquiry, his original defence of de M a n
affair, and thereafter it never quite recovered its prestige, its confi-
being seventy-five pages long, and his response to the responses a
further sixty pages. dence and its sense of moral and pohtical rectitude.

Derrida begins speculatively, asking whether it is possible to

respond to questions, what it might mean to do so, whether that J e a n Baudrillard a n d T h e Gulf W a r n e v e r h i a p p e n e d ' , 1991
would imply taking responsibility, and what responsibility is. It is at R e a d i n g : j c i n Haudrillard, I'he C u i f War Did Not Take Place, Power
once evident that a defence conducted in this way is going to take a Publications, Sydney, 199.S Chri.siopher Norris, Uncritical Theory:
very long time, and also that what is really required is what Derrida Postmndermsm, Inlellecluak, a n d the Gulf War (Lawrcnce and W i s h a r t ,
was never able to supply - clarity, concision, brevity, and strength of 1992).
conviction and compassion. T h e problem, too, is that the defender's
.As a result of three es.says first published early in 1991, Jean
posit:on is an impossible one: the best 'defence' might be to publish
Baudrillard (1929-2007) became known, in the popular imagination,
these wntings entire so that they are on the record, saying briefly
as the notorious French postmodernist philosopher who professed
whatever can be said in mitigation - de M a n ' s youth, his possible
to believe that the (first) G u l f War never happened. T h e three essavs
Ignorance, at least at the start, of what was actually happening to
were written (respectively) just before the war started, while it: was
Jews in Europe, and that there may have been threats or dangers, so
in progress, and just after it e n d e d , and were originally published in
^ a t he might have been acting out of fear rather than conviction
m,
the French newspaper Liberation in January, February, and M a r c h
g h t n o t a m o u n t to much, but I think it is actually all that
1991, all three then being republished together in French as
could have been done. It would be neither necessary nor right for
La Guerre du Golfe n'as pas en lieu, and in English translation as The
former friends and colleagues to turn against him and denounce
Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard was implacably imposed
him, but nor need they feel obliged to defend him. Intellectually
to Western foreign policy in the G u l f , and he uses a powerful and
theorists might feel that if de M a n remained undefended then
extreme rhetoric to make his points. T h e tone is savage and offensive,
deconstruction and literary theory would sink with his reputation,
like the rhetoric of Jonathan Swift in the eighteenth century when
but defences of him which seemed to be motivated by that self-
he is attacking political c o r r u p t i o n and social self-deception: For
interested professional motive would prove highly damaging. As a
Baudrillard, what happened was not a war - of the half million
friend, D e r n d a did feel the need to defend de M a n , but he seemed
Western soldiers involved, he says, m o r e would have died in traffic
to be using all the subtleties of deconstruction in order to do so, so
accidents had they stayed at h o m e than became casualties (p. 69),
that all those convictions about the unreliability of language and
and the estimated 100,000 casualties (p. 2) were all on one s i d e . T h i s
tho fragility of notions of truth and the self, were brought into'play.
represents an 'entirely asymmetrical operation' (p. 19), but what is
T h e result was inevitable - such concepts begin to seem themselves
notable is 'the obscene aphrodisiac function fulfilled by the decoy of
morally suspect, for questioning the very concept of responsibility
the event, by the decoy of war' (p. 75). T h e sexual imagery builds
seems to glide towards denying that we are responsible for what we
up: 'the war has unfolded like a long striptease' (p. 77), billed as a
do and say. To write in the 1940s that 'A solution to thejewish problem
'surgical war', and typified by the footage relayed from the nose-
that aimed at the creation of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe
cameras o f ' s m a r t weapons' h o m i n g in on their targets. T h e media
would entail no deplorable consequences for the literary life of the
event which the war became showed no actual human casualties,
West gives public support for (at best) deportations, and it is espe-
and was typified by 'clean' technological images of'surgical strikes'.
cially shocking, in view of de Man's subsequent career as a literary
But the striptease of the war culminated with television images of
282 Beginning t h e o r y
the horrific nnd mcrcilcss bombing of thc retreating Iftic]! iiriny
on the Basra Road at the end ol the war, and the irony is that per-
haps the most lasting image of thc event is Ken Jarecke's widely-
published photograph of an incinerated Iraqi soldier in a burned
out vehicle after the bombardment.
From the point-of-vievv of literary theory, the great irony of
Baudrillard s Gulf War essays is that they became victims of the
very condition they diagnosed. Just as the image, or 'simulacrum'
(see Chapter 4) of the war, in Baudrillard's accusation, was wrongly
taken to be the war itself, so the popular view of what Baudrillard
was thought to have written was substituted for what he actually
wrote. Hence, he became the whipping-boy of anti-theorists and the
target for high-moral-ground condemnations of postmodernism,
which was now, in the 1990s, being seen as representative of literary
theory in general (following the sequence of linguistics in the 1960s,
structuralism in the 70s, and deconstruction in the 80s). In the cari-
cature or 'simulacrum version' of what he had said, the hyper-clever
postmodernist quibbled about notions of reality and was indifferent
to the suffering and death that (we were indignantly informed) had
undoubtedly taken place, even if Baudrillard thought the Gulf War
hadn't. If we start by doubting the reality of the Gulf War, it was
now suggested, won't we end by doubting the reality of Holocaust. 5
Whereas the real damage to theory in the de Man affair was
caused by his defenders, the damage in the ease of the Baudrillard
episode was partly caused by his attackers. Christopher Norris,
who had defended de Man over the wartime writings, felt differ-
ently about Baudrillard, for he had now turned decisively against
'rhetorical formalism' in general, and postmodernism m particular,
seeing many aspects of theory as an abandonment of principles of
rational objectivity and truth m favour of relativism, consensus and
pragmatism. T h e result was his angry and scathing book Uncniical
Theory: Postmodernism. Jntellecluals and the Gulf War. for in his view
the Gulf War controversy brought all these issues to a head. Norris
wrote in the heat of events as they were happening, responding
to the Guardian's jmuzxy 1991 edited version of the first Gulf War
essay. He took Baudrillard's words to mean literally what they said
(that the Gulf War will not happen), a proposition, he says, already
Literary t h e o r y - a h i s t o r y in t e n e v e n t s 283
refuted on empirical grounds by the coinmencement of the bombing.
As he says (and he's right), 'perhaps it would be missing the point
to observe that Baudrillard's predictions were flat wrong' (p. 14).
Baudrillard is then lumped in with the theorists who had now
become Norris's targets - Richard Rorty, .Stanley Fish, Poucault
and the rest - all tho.se 'anticognitivists' who argue that ' " t r u t h " in
any given situation can only be a matter of the values and beliefs that
happen to prevail among members of some existing "interpretive"
community' (p. 16). Seeing 'reality' as 'a purely di.scursive phenom-
enon' (that is, constructed by codes, convention.s, language, etc.) is
part of the same thing, as is 'a prevalent misreading of Derrida's work
which takes him to be arguing - in solipsist fashion - that there is,
quite simply "nothing outside the text"' (p. 16, my italics). Puzzlingly,
the alleged misreading of Derrida seems exactly the same as Norris's
misreading of Baudrillard. Norris, in other words, reads Baudrillard
as saying that there is literally nothing outside the media misrepre-
sentation of the Gulf War. But why the double standard.? Why is
Baudrillard to be read only literally, and Derrida only figuratively, so
that the former always literally means what he says and the latter
never does.3 T h e 'Postscript (Baudrillard's second Gulf War article)'
makes some concessions, but still ends by attacking Baudrillard's
'thoroughgoing cognitive and epistemological scepticism' (p. 196).
Fierce though his attack is, it is surely the ca.se that .Norris and
Baudrillard are in essentially in agreement - both deplore the
unprincipled cruelty of Western policy in thc Gulf Baudrillard
shows how the event was rc-made as it was happening, and a replace-
ment reality o f ' s m a r t ' weapons and surgical strikes was fed to the
public. In reality, which was Baudrillard's point, the vast majority
of the weapons used in the war were anything but 'smart', and their
effects are still being experienced today T h e overall effect of theo-
ry's intervention in the Gulf War is that it became further discred-
ited because it was seen (quite wrongly in my view) as subscribing
to the erosion of absolute principles of truth and value and support-
ing tricksy blurrings of the edges between word and world, concept
and percept, reality and illusion, imagination and event. T h e theory
'community' had wrongly defended de Man and wronglv attacked
Baudrillard, and a third 'own goal' was on thc wav.
284 Beginning theory
T h e Sokal affair, 1996
R e a d i n g : Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers' Abuse of
Science (Alan Sokal and Jean B r i c m o n t , Profile Books, 2nd e d n , 2003,
first published in French in 1997 and in English in 1998).
In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University,
wrote a hoax article, entitled 'Transgressing the Boundaries; Towards
a Transformative Hermeneutics of Q u a n t u m Gravity', which was
largely m a d e u p of what he considered to be a skein of postmodern-
ist cliches. H e sent it to Duke University's postmodernist cultural
studies journal Social Text, which duly accepted and published the
piece. O n the day it appeared he published an article in another
journal revealing the hoax and arguing that the acceptance of the
original piece exposed the vacuity of postmodernist theory, and, by
implication, of ail cultural theory, given the pre-eminent status now
enjoyed by postmodernism. T h e hoax became a celebrated and
much debated event, but a significant element of its immediate rele-
vance here is that Derrida is quoted in the article and later joined in
the public controversy about it.
T h e original article is reproduced in Sokal and Bricmont's book
Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers' Abuse of Science, pub-
lished in English in 1998. T h e book and the article are not a whole-
sale attack on postmodern theory (though they were widely taken to
be that) but an exposure of the misuse of ideas derived from physics
and mathematics by prominent French theorists, notably Lacan,
Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, and others.
Broadly, the scientific and mathematical ideas borrowed by the French
theorists are those which seem to validate 'constructivist' or 'relativist'
notions of reality (for instance, Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Princi-
ple', Godel's thesis regarding incompleteness, Einstein's T h e o r y of
Relativity, and so on). T h e implication, says Sokal, is that a good
deal of postmodern 'jargon' seems to have no very concise or 'rigor-
ous' meaning, and that consequently the editors of an important
journal in the field were unable to recognise that the approved terms
and formulations were being mixed and multiplied to produce an
article which had no overall coherence or logic. If, when the hoax
was revealed, the editors had simply acknowledged that they had
made a mistake and needed to tighten u p their refereeing procedures.
Literary t h e o r y - a history in t e n e v e n t s 285
then the whole business might have blown over very quickly. But
they didn't, and a rapid escalation followed - for Sokal's compre-
hensive bibliography of the controversy see h t t p : / / p h y s i c s . n y u . e d u /
sokal//#impostures.
Because the accuser was American and nearly all the accused
French, the hoax was seen as an attack on the standing of French
intellectuals, and Julia Kristeva (one of the thinkers most harshly
criticised in the book) responded in the French newspaper Le Nouvel
Observateur (25 S e p t e m b e r 1997, p. 122) with the view that after a
li
period of Francophilia, the p e n d u l u m had swung back in the other
direction, and what was now being witnessed in the U S A was 'une
veritable francophobie' ('genuine francophobia'). D e r r i d a is not one
of the thinkers subjected to sustained criticism in either the original
article or the book, but in the article he is the first theorist to be
quoted, and the quotation is described as 'the article's first major
gibberish quote' {Intellectual Impostures, p. 244). T h e quotation,
rather oddly, is from D e r r i d a ' s off-the-cuff response to questions
from Jean Hyppolite, back in 1966 (as discussed above), and Derrida
refers to this when he c o m m e n t s on the Sokal affair (originally in
the newspaper Le Monde, and reprinted in his book Paper Machine
(Stanford University Press, 2005, pp. 70-2). In contra.sr to his inter-
vention in the dc Man ease, Derrida's comments are brief: what is
usually quoted is just the remark 'poor Sokal', referring to the plight
of a physicist who is better known for his hoax than his physics. But
Derrida too sees the affair in nationalistic terms - the 'credit' being
given in the USA to himself as a 'foreign professor' was perceived to
be excessive, so he is now attacked alongside other French writers for
a fault (that of using in a loose way metaphors drawn from science
and mathematics) which surely cannot be confined to the French.
H e would like to c o m m e n t f u r t h e r on 'the American context and the
political context', he says, but he has not the space to do so.
Overall, the Sokal affair does seem to have some of the national-
istic overtones perceived by Kristeva and Derrida. Having invited
literary theory into the country in 1958 and 1966, and having played
host to it for some forty years, the intellectual establishment of the
U S A now seemed to be giving it its marching orders. T h e message
seemed to be that the ' m o m e n t ' of theory had gone on long enough,
and it was now time for the theorists to pack their bags and go home.