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OF
Deconstruction
and the Fall of
Paul
deNan
DAVID LEHMAN
$21.95
Signs of the Times tive
is
a brilliant, witty, and provoca-
account of deconstruction— the most hotly con-
French import since existentialism— and
troversial
the scandalous fate of
its
fallen idol, Paul
de Man.
Deconstruction, which regards words as misleading "signs" and reduces history and literature to "linguistic predicaments," has
(many would say
had a tremendous
destructive) influence in our uni-
versities
and among the best and brightest of our
students.
To
its
detractors, deconstruction
is
a perni-
cious and antihumanist doctrine; nevertheless,
many
are uncertain of its implications and the full extent of
sway. In Signs of the Times David
its
Lehman
explains deconstruction in terms that finally render it
intelligible.
He
also gives us the riveting story of
the major scandals— pro-Nazi writings during
World War II a bigamous private life— surrounding de Man, the revered Yale professor who was decon,
foremost guru in the United States.
struction's
Lehman presents a fascinating and enigmatic protagonist and charts the ironies and reversals that
make de Man's
story resemble a gothic
melodrama.
Details of de Man's past began to leak out after his
death in 1983. Rushing to his defense, his followers
used their esoteric method to "prove" that his wartime journalism was not what
it
seemed. In doing
so,
they dramatized the dangers inherent in a system of logic that turns the
What
is
students find fessors
up
word and the world upside down.
deconstruction?
in
it
Why did a generation of Why are so many pro-
so seductive?
arms about
it,
while for others
it
holds
meaning of language and has it transformed the way books are
the key that unlocks the literature?
How
What arc Was de Man's
interpreted and taught?
deconstruction's
merits?
case the crucial
Its
future?
turning point in the history of an idea?
Addressing these questions
in this spirited
and
engaging book, David Lehman turns the tables on deconstruction, demystifying
its
forbidding jargon.
In masterly fashion, he relates the battle over decon-
struction to the crisis in higher education today.
shows why deconstruction
is
He
so vital an issue— one
that has itself become a disturbing sign of the times.
He
has written an important book, sure to be dis-
cussed and debated for years to come.
ALSO BY DAVID LEHMAN
An
Alternative
The
Perfect
Operation
to
Speech
Murder
Memory
POSEIDON
PRESS NEW YORK
LONDON TORONTO
SYDNEY
TOKYO SINGAPORE
SIGNS O
F
T
H
E
TIMES DECONSTRUCTION
AND THE
FALL
OF PAUL DE
MAN
D
A
V
D
LEHMAN
I POSEIDON PRESS Simon
&
Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New
New
York,
©
Copyright
All
York 10020
1991 by David Lehman
rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
I
in
whole or
any form
in part in
POSEIDON PRESS
is
a registered trademark
of Simon
&
Schuster
POSEIDON PRESS
colophon
&
of Simon
is
a trademark
Schuster
Designed by Liney Li Manufactured
1
3
United States of America
in the
5
7
9
10
8
6
2
4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lehman, David, Signs of the times
:
dcconstruction
and
the fall
date.
of Paul de
p.
and
Includes bibliographical references 1.
Dcconstruction.
B809.6.L44
2.
De Man, 1991
j49—dc20
ISBN
Man / David
cm.
Paul.
index.
L
I'itlc.
90-25825
CIP
0-671-68239-3
Lehman.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Deconstruction, the
happens erector
time you hear the word, sounds hke what
first
when your four-year-old has a temper tantrum with his Or maybe it reminds you of the mayhem in the museum
set.
scene in Batman, in
which the Joker and
his
henchmen deface paintmgs
and knock over sculptures with manic delight and much giddy laughDeconstruction doesn't altogether shed such fanciful connotations
ter.
when you
as these
on
know
get to
it
better and start gauging
the study of the humanities in America.
non, deconstruction
is
its
impact
As an academic phenome-
unquestionably so divisive and arguably so
would (I told myself as I embarked on this book) surely be a worthy goal to render it intelligible to the common reader. I was convinced as well that the case of Paul de Man may come to pernicious that
it
be considered the most significant academic controversy of our period.
would be lying if I didn't admit that I sometimes felt about this book as Jonah felt about going to Nineveh; there were times when I'd have much rather stayed inside the whale. At such times in particular I benefited from the counsel and the support of numerous But
I
writing
friends
and well-wishers, including
editor, Elaine Pfefferblit.
I
am
my
agent, Glen Hartley, and
grateful as
my
well to John Ackerman,
Lynn Chu, Wolfgang Holdhcim, Ron Horning, Robert Polito, and John H. Weiss, all of whom made valuable suggestions for improving the manuscript. Lauren Oppcnhcim copycditcd it skillfully. Others were
liberal
includes
with their time, thoughts, and recollections;
M. H. Abrams,
a partial list
Ian Balfour, Joel Black, Linda Brooks, Ste-
8
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
phen G. Crane, Roger
Gilbert,
David Grossvogel, Donald
Roger Kimball, Richard
Hall,
John Gordon, Nathanael Greene, John Hollander, Lawrence Joseph,
Klein, Charlotte Levrard,
Alison Lurie,
Steven Marcus, Michael R. Marrus, Edward Said, and Renee and
Theodore Weiss. The views of
the people with
corresponded sometimes conflicted with
no
less
for that. Finally,
students, writers,
some of
cases
their
and
my
critics
allowed
on condition of anonymity
academic adversaries.
I
spoke or
my own but were appreciated go
collective thanks
who
whom
me
to the professors,
to interview them, in
to protect
them from
the wrath
FOR MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
Part One: The Rise of Deconstruction
Chapter
1:
15
The End of the Word
17
Chapter 2: Crazy About Deconstruction
Chapter 3: Archie Debunking Chapter
To
4:
the Linguistic
Chapter 5:
A
Key
Chapter Chapter Chapter
6:
Chapter 9:
Man
The Fallen Idol
Scandal
in
Academe
Chapter 10: Signs of the Times
Appendix: '*The Jews
in
by Paul de
Notes
163
185
209 245
Contemporary Literature''
Man
269
273
Bibliography
Index
141
143
Like Uncle, Like Son
A
93
115
Idea
The Stolen Evening
7:
8:
65
Abyss
Part Two: The Fall of Paul de
43
295
301
We were wise indeed, own
the signs of our
of
its
own
could
we
time; and
discern truly
by knowledge
wants and advantages, wisely adjust our position in
it.
Let
us, instead
of gazing
wildly into the obscure distance, look calmly
on the perplexed scene on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters around
us, for a little,
where we
stand. Perhaps,
and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves;
our
own
whereby our own
relations to
true aims and endeavours in also
— Thomas
become
Carlyle,
may
clearer.
''Signs
(1829)
it,
it,
of the Times"
PART ONE THE RISE OF DECONSTRUCTION
CHAPTER
1
THE END OF
WORD
THE
Deconstruction: the very
sound to
it
which makes
word it
has an austere
some
sort
of sign
of our timid and disabused tmies.
—Michael Wood,
Signs of the times:
York, has
a sign
A
on
Be Deconstructed." lumbia
New
New
bookstore in the university town of Ithaca,
the wall advising patrons that "Shoplifters Will
A
Co-
professor in the English department at
telephone caller that she has had to
tells a
office because
^'Deconstructing Derrida"
"Philosophy Hall
is
in a state
move
her campus
of deconstruction." In the
Bloom complains about the way "A classic's content is no longer how it made it. This is called decon-
York Times Book Review, Allan
literature professors are treating books:
of
interest; the
struction." tells
only concern
And
off another.
It's
pages of Critical Inquiry, one critic
not that he doesn't "trust" her, he explains.
"One God must finally pay cash." A new multipurpose word has entered
It's
need not deconstruct the penny to see
that he "distrusts trust": that
is
in the recondite
even
Deconstruction
which
It
— —
stands
the
has
the
American vernacular.
word, though not necessarily the concepts for
made
spectrum of experience.
It
itself irresistible to
speakers across a
provokes a profusion of metaphors;
it
wide seems
SIGNS
18
many
to have as
TIMES
THE
OF
figurative applications as there are sentences
freshen
up just by
This
is
how
that
Claude Levi-Strauss's book
locution.
the anthropologist Clifford Geertz describes the impact
Tropiques had
Tristes
"Whatever anthropologists may think of the French
least a little bit
Works and Lives, which for criticism in 1989.
won
The
his field:
—
that
it is
example of what's gone
—few come away from
deconstructed."
on
Tristes Tropiques
a pretty tale, a revealing vision, or another
wrong with
more famihar
substituting the term for a
you can
it
without being
at
statement appears in Geertz's
the National
The winning book
Book
Critics Circle
Award
biography that year was
in
the late Richard Ellmann's magisterial life of Oscar Wilde. In his discussion of The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Ellmann notes
that Wilde's
book would indict." The Wilde the novelist deconstruct
preface "flaunted the aestheticism that the
"Wilde
result:
the preface- writer and
each other."
Turn
to the sports pages
uses. In his
and you find
annual postseason report, the
Reconstruction put to other
New
Yorker's
Roger Angell
declines to offer a full-fledged "deconstruction" of Kirk Gibson's
climactic
home run
whacked
against an Eckersley slider
slider away,
etc.")
in the first
game of the 1988 World
on the grounds
—
that such an analysis can only
begins and the Village Voice headlines
its
The 1989
profile
Kevin McReynolds with the promise
that
baseball season
of the Mets' strong, it
will "deconstruct"
the estimable left fielder. In April, the sports section of the
New
was
supposedly, but not quite, a
diminish the grandeur of the mythic moment.
silent
Series ("it
Sunday
York Times runs an essay by baseball commissioner A. Bartlctt
Giamatti, the one-time president of Yale University, a scholar of
Renaissance literature.
Two
weeks
later a letter
from an
irate fan blasts
the essay: Giamatti "should forget about his narrative cliche of the fan as
audience reinventing the text of baseball every season and return to
deconstructing The Faerie Queene or unions." Poets, too, have appropriated the
word.
When Walt Whitman
heard the learned astronomer lecture, he couldn't wait to go outdoors
and drink
in the sight
a similar effect,
wc
of the
might weigh
stars.
in
A
with
poet today, wanting to produce a
two-line poem: in the
first line
hear the fragment of an oration on deconstruction, and in the
second
line, the
between the
buzz of an
lines has
insect sipping a flower's nectar.
been the poet's
way of
The
space
exiting the lecture hall,
trading in one kind of buzzing noise for another. Deconstruction: the
END
THE
WORD
THE
OF
known
very word performs the rhetorical gesture it's
example
the single
communicate
that can
as
19
the metonymy
whole
the
flavor
— of
contemporary academic discourse.
Popping up
in
poems and
up book reviews American vernacular
conversations, spicing
and sports reports, deconstruction
is
used in the
with the cheerfully airy abandon that once marked
midcentury salute to death-of-god theorizing Part of the
charm oi
this linguistic situation
in the Gallic
manner.
few people,
that
is
that
existentialism,
in or
out of academe, have a very firm grip on what deconstruction means.
you don't need a grounding in the major deconstructionist add the word to your vocabulary. Speakers have little fear of
Evidently, texts to
being corrected
—and much
apparent justification for taking liberties
with the term. Whether by design or by a general slackening of the standards of academic prose, the purveyors of deconstruction don't
exactly sweat to subject.
The
make themselves understood
prose they perpetrate functions
warning outsiders to keep on
their side
as a
of the
tomes on the
in their
"no trespassing"
fence.
The
sign,
mystification
surrounding their practice has helped turn deconstruction into a totemic
word, and the general confusion has licensed speakers to appropriate the term for their
career
own
of the word
ends.
itself
It is
should
structive world-view: the idea
a pleasant irony that the
rambunctious
illustrate a basic tenet
of the decon-
of linguistic free-play. Words can have
no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used. Just so, deconstruction
has been used in
all sorts
of ways never intended or
foreseen by the coiner of that neologism and the
academic
members of
sect.
Entering the public vocabulary, deconstruction range of figurative meanings implied by the word's destruction
his
and
deconstruction
own
construction.
— many of which, properties as an
In the
it
may
has acquired a
be argued, are
oxymoron,
its
fusion ot
examples given, Roger Angell uses
as a deliberately starchy substitute for analysis;
Voice headline,
it's
in the
slang for character dissection, a substitute for the
old-fashioned "what makes him tick?" For Richard Ellmann, deconstruct
embraces the senses of
contradict,
Clifford Gcertz, to be deconstructed certed,
perhaps undone. Often the
to the force
of the de-
is
nei^ate,
and cancel
out;
for
to be challen^^ed, perplexed, discon-
word
carries a
prefix. Deconstruction
menacing edge, thanks embodies some vague
—
a
SIGNS
20
threat, a
bookstore shoplifters, an unhappy fate for ''The
fate for
fit
TIMES
THE
OF
Queene or unions." Allan Bloom discerns a
Faerie threat,
something resembling an academic
precedes a complete overhaul of the premises.
term of
literary analysis
and concrete
Columbia
the
of architectural decay that
professor, deconstruction identifies the stage
as a
To
and the "canon" of great books.
"classic literature"
accuracy
specific
cabal's conspiracy against
can be used with
It
(Ellmann) but also wryly
mordant wit
rhetorical fillip (Angell, Geertz), with jocular or
Ithaca bookstore, the letter to the Times), as a
Columbia
ball
and crane
academic
state
of affairs to be loudly lamented (Bloom) or
professor)
for any brand of criticism that promises or threatens to ished assumptions and devastate
its
objects
(the a
an aspect of an
as
,
as a
,
deconstruct the penny to see that even
as a
metaphor suggesting
wrecking
(the
strict
name
debunk cher-
of study: "One need not
God must
finally
pay cash."
Day
death sen-
In the aftermath of the Ayatollah's Valentine's
tence on novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989, journalism's herd of inde-
pendent minds converged on a marvelous
new
already on everyone's glamour
its
tion
seemed made to order for
war by other means. With
list.
Given
application for a term
connotations, deconstruc-
which literary criticism equals eye trained on the global Zeitgeist,
cases in
his
columnist Charles Peter Freund took stock in the
New
Republic of an
attempt by Muslim fundamentalists to censor Dante. (True believers revile the author
homet
of the Divine Comedy for placing the prophet Ma-
in the eighth circle
ordeal; he
between
is
cloven from chin to crotch, with
his legs.)
demanding the poet's
that
The
tomb
Man
self-described "Guardians
in
Ravenna
stage in
new its
zine, ran an ad in the
literary criticism.
come
his entrails
—
line
Now we
to
blow up
an effort Freund characterized, with
of dcconstructionist
same March 1989
"We
dragging
of the Revolution,"
criticism, at this
development." National Review,
quote box with the quip:
It is
a particularly nasty
Dante be publicly denounced, threatened
suitable irony, as "a
post-dc
of hell, where he endures
issue
of the
New
a rival
maga-
Republic
—
had no idea the Ayatollah was into
find out he's a dcconstructionist."
not difficult to multiply the examples, and easy enough to
across
two
usages oi deconstruction that seem to be in fundamental
McCullough, who edited Sylvia Plath's jourof the term. Writing about her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, Plath claimed that she bit Hughes on the check and drew blood on the occasion of their first meeting contradiction. Frances
nals, illustrates
one
common meaning
— END
THE
WORD
THE
OF
but her account of the incident, McCullough notes,
21
"is
deconstructed
by Hughes's friends" in Anne Stevenson's recent biography of Plath.
You it as
would appear, simply by exposing falsehood or an exaggeration. The miplication is that the object
can deconstruct something, a
of the deconstructive exercise trary
is
the case.
To
is
it
spurious. For other writers, the con-
deconstruct
with
a thing while dispensing
of
to devalue, to retain the shell
is
core, to replace the genuine article
its
Thus Jacques Barzun, of crime fiction, deplores two popular developsurveying ments: BBC television adaptations of the classics, and murder mystery weekends, holidays, and tours. These are symptoms, Barzun declares, with a counterfeit,
parody or
a
a simulation.
the field
of "the thing
of the age: theory and make-believe preferred to the
disease
the professor and the tourist guide busy deconstructing
itself,
every true Study in Scarlet."
As
a rule,
the immediate context will allow us to frame an
approximate idea of what an author means by
In aca-
deconstruction.
The American
demic discourse, however, context
is
Sociological Association holds
annual convention in Atlanta, and
this
how
is
a speaker assesses the social implications
habits: "In the
discourse
is
is
deconstructed, even
clear
is
with either the
Wall
is
way,
that deconstruction
Street Journal thinks
tells us,
among
that
is
those it's
the
who
claim to have one."
not clear what's being
magic word
—
said.
spoken
to be
eulogist's reverence or the anathematist's snarl.
"Western culture" courses rial
of women's sexual
emphasis on diversity, the notion of a hegemonic sexual
Even among those who speak
What
its
often of little help.
it
at
knows major
whom
to
blame for the
universities.
"an intellectual fashion
The
known
as
The on
assault
villain, the edito-
'deconstruction'
reading texts not as inherently worthy but to serve some professor's private agenda." That
is
possible that the
word
lates a writer's
powers of metaphoric invention.
striving to land,
tells
itself inspires the caricaturist.
convey the
us that the
You'd deconstruct
it
but
a caricature rather than a definition,
spirit
book
of Thomas Pynchon's
"is
Certainly
A book latest
it
stimu-
reviewer
novel, Vine-
an intentional subversion of orderliness.
by pulling
its
pin and heaving
it."
The
deconstruction seems to entail the lobbing of a hand grenade. other hand, a survey of American intellectual Hi(^her Education identifies deconstruction as a "as Balkanizing as social history." like this:
it is
What
is
life in
On
modern theory is
the
the Chronicle of that
deconstruction? Well,
"For deconstructionists, the world
oi
act
made up
oi
is
it's
empty
SIGNS
22
TIMES
THE
OF
rooms, with impenetrable walls and no doors, in which individual
minds are bent upon rending of
claustrophobic, the stuff the characters
with them
wear
inside.
a
texts
with a
how
sounds pretty
You wonder why
room
can be empty
does "rending texts" entail
or was that
and
that "slight smile"
And what
slight smile." It
locked-room murder.
a printer's error for "reading"
the
them? Yet whatever
"Balkanizing" consequences, just
as "social
—
being done has
is
history" does.
Very myste-
rious.
How
to explain the cachet
infiltrated public discourse?
At
of
the crudest level of its appeal, the
announces the writer's knowingness: I'm hip happening
in the
world of big
named Mark Horowitz,
way
the
Reconstruction,
ideas.
A
to
what's hip. I
know
it
has
word what's
Los Angeles-based screenwriter
trying to explain the current French enthusi-
Mickey Rourke, places the deconstruction craze in the perspective of "a constant war between the U.S. and France." In Horowitz's words, "We sent them Jerry Lewis, so they retaliated by sending us deconstruction and Jacques Derrida." There is some truth to this jape: deconstruction in America owes much to our starry-eyed reverence for French culture, based perhaps on a misguided asm for movies
starring
notion of French culture. Deconstruction conforms to an American
preconception of the cerebral French in the same in
The Nutty Professor represents
American
type.
Something
is
way
that Jerry
gained and something
lost in translation.
In the early 1980s, Paris taxi drivers, those sophisticates
turalist!"
''He, va done, structura/istef"
The Broadway equivalent
ing Ph.D.s do drive cabs, might be
only
a
of invective,
— "Get
could be heard barking,
Lewis
Frenchman's impression of an
a
lost, struc-
today, presuming that job-hunt-
"Go
deconstruct yourself!"
matter of time before deconstruction
is
routinely used
older cousin existentialism has steadily been used
—
—
It is
as its
as the squigglc of
fancy French mustard on the hot dog of a banal observation. You'll
be reading a feature on Miami Vice in a Sunday newspaper supplement
when suddenly your eye
upon this sentence: "The episode where rocker Ted Nugent blows up Sonny Crockett's Tcstarossa in a deserted lights
sand pit had a sort of existential Samucl-Beckett-hits-Dade-County quality."
Uh
huh; sort
of.
And when
the article goes
the episode "about the achingly vulnerable hooker
who
to eulogize falls in
love
him to a bed between stabbings and then shoots head," you arc positively disappointed when this isn't
with Rico Tubbs, herself in the
on
ties
characterized as a deconstruction of prostitution.
But behind the journalistic appropriation of deconstruction there
END
THE
WORD
THE
OF
23
something more complicated than one writer's desire to sound
is
and another writer's wish to mock that im-
intellectually fashionable pulse. status
The
plain truth
—and
has achieved talismanic
that deconstruction
is
has aroused tremendous anxiety in the larger mtellectual
community. "The very word has an austere sound to it which makes it some sort of sign of our timid and disabused times," the critic
Wood
Michael
in 1977. The word word of the hottest
wrote
value since. As the key
European
has lost
cultural import since existentialism,
it
It is
of
become
has
its
shock
the gradu-
and the
the humanist's bete-noire,
ate student's porte-parole, theorist's sine qua non.
little
(and most hotly contested)
literary
supreme badge of contemporary
also the
academic jargon, reminding us that the gap has never been wider
between public communication and
academe
—who sometimes
were not participating
ment as
it
in the history
of
talk wistfully
it
—
ideas,
the
of "the
world,"
as if
signals a
develop-
real
word deconstruction
people inside they
though some professors prefer to regard
an episode in the history of the youth culture that came of age
in the 1960s a
in
To
lit-crit lingo.
To
and 1970s.
word seems remarkable way
people outside of academe, the
handy synonym for academic trendiness
—
for the
they do things today in the land of the discourse and the text.
Deconstruction
the brainchild of Jacques Derrida, the Algerian-
is
born French philosopher, the United States, universities.
The
emy
is
today
has
is
—
(Destruktion)
or,
more
.
.
.
it
is
maker of supernally only the most famous of these. The the
exactly, in Heidegger's call for the destruction
One may wonder how
so recondite a project has
to achieve such notoriety.
Deconstruction
keep
man of many neologisms,
deconstruction
and indefatigable
prolific author
of ontology, the branch of metaphysics that studies the
nature of being.
managed
a
A
dispute.
etymological root in Martin Heidegger's concept of
its
Destruktion
a resident
pervasiveness of his influence in the American acad-
complex puns, and
word
visitor to at several
beyond
Derrida
lecturer,
of Paris and a frequent
where he has held faculty appointments
that
is
elusive of definition, and Derrida
means
way. "All sentences of the type 'deconstruction
a priori miss the point,"
are inaccurate
"method"
—
is
a "theory," or a
such terms, they maintain,
and reductive. This attempt to defy categorization
be part of the seductive appeal that deconstruction holds for
demic proponents:
it is
so
X'
Derrida has written. Derrida and his
followers ridicule the notion that deconstruction "philosophical project," or a
is
to
"new"
that
you
can't
fit it
into
its
may aca-
your existing
SIGNS
24
would declare those frames exploded. Academic deconstruction
frames of thought, and so "radical" that
of thought
invalid,
TIMES
THE
OF
obsolete,
it
blends together elements of linguistics, literary criticism, and philoso-
phy
into a
method of analysis
tual disciplines; a stated goal
is
that can be used within diverse intellec-
to dissolve the borders that traditionally
one discipline from another. The very appearance of a decon-
separate
structive text
may announce
of Glas, one of Derrida's most celebrated tomes, columns: the one on the
are
with Hegel and the one on the right
left deals
with Jean Genet, and the
The pages divided into two
the project's vaunted novelty.
effect
oblique dialogue with each other.
of two monologues having an
is
From
the strictly stylistic point of
view, the maneuver generates tremendous excitement. But to categorize such products and such procedures
The
Derrida's intention.
difficulty
is
—which
compounded
vastly
it is is,
difficult
of course,
by Derrida's
notorious word-drunkenness and by the imprecise and sometimes conflicting
result
accounts of his theories that his epigones proffer. that deconstruction,
is
at least
as it is
When
four different but overlapping things.
deconstruction they might
mean
One
practical
used in academic debate, signifies
a theory or a
people talk about
way
nexus of theories, a
of doing philosophy that seems to want to do away with philosophy;
more
specifically, the
word
stands for a type of literary criticism that
aspires to being universally applicable; or the speaker
mind
might have
in
the specific manifestations of the deconstructive impulse in his
own field; or the word may be used more generally to designate whole climate of opinion, an academic movement, a sociological phenomenon. Although deconstruction is now firmly entrenched in disciplines
or her a
as technically
remote
in literary studies,
as
and
law and in that
history,
domain
it first
made
its
presence
felt
has achieved extraordinary
it
prestige and institutional power. If Dcrrida, as dcconstruction's found-
ing father, remains is
tion.
It
was de
quarters
—
University it
its
ultimate authority figure, the late Paul de
Man
generally considered to be the guiding light of literary deconstruc-
Man who
gave deconstruction
its first
American head-
the French and comparative literature departments of Yale
— and
it
was he
who was most
into a full-fledged academic cult.
It
responsible for converting
would be
over, their methods and their ideas riddling
poems and
may
novels, films and plays.
deny
foolish to
Derrida's originality or de Man's brilliance. If used judiciously,
more-
help to elucidate certain
But deconstruction
in its
END
THE
WORD
THE
OF
25
purer forms doesn't want to be a party to anything so reactionary
The aim
the elucidation of Hterature.
and unmask, to demystity and dismantle
—
to deconstruct
can deconstruct just about anything. Everything ture" its
—
not in the sense that
meaning
is
—
in the
in the sense that
therefore "literature" is
no
reason, theoreti-
favor a novel by Dickens, say, over
cally, for the "literary" critic to
an episode ofAll
And
or deconstructed: there
— and you
equally "litera-
is
good writing, but
is
a function of interpretation.
been devalued
itself has
it
as
not to elucidate but to expose
is
Family, since either will serve as an appropriate
object of study.
Academic
literary theorists
way of making
this point.
Here
is
Duke
have their
own
ponderous
professor Barbara Herrnstein
book Contingencies of Value: "Since there are no functions performed by artworks that may be specified as genetically unique and also no way to distinguish the 'rewards' provided by art-related experiences or behavior from those provided by innumerable other kinds of experience and behavior, any distinctions drawn between 'aesthetic' and 'nonaesthetic' (or 'extraSmith's statement of the theme in her
value must be regarded
aesthetic')
two
centuries
of
as
David Bromwich noted
the critic
book, the
fundamentally problematic."
aesthetic philosophy
utilitarian
go
sailing out the
in a percipient
And
window. As
review of Smith's
philosopher Jeremy Bentham "said
it
faster:
good as poetry.' " It is a line of reasoning that, Bromwich observes, would reduce questions of literary value to a cost-benefit computation. The iconoclastic aim would appear to be the obliteration of the difference between aesthetics 'Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin
and philistinism
The
—
or, to say
it
faster, the
is
as
deconstruction of
art.
leveling of literature to the status of a soap opera, a board
game, or "innumerable other kinds of experience and behavior" must
seem is
a perverse doctrine for a literature professor to espouse.
certainly a place in a
professor
who
comic campus novel for the solemn-faced
declares that Shakespeare and Milton are not intrinsi-
cally superior to
daytime TV. But
art
is
only one item on the
things that the avatars o( deconstruction call into question.
Derrida's prize explicators has gone to causality
—
as if the
word game. Jonathan
on the idea
that the pain
it.
some length
we
feel
"The experience of
Culler
it is
the pin and thus causes the production
of
to deconstruct in the
rests his case against causality
precedes our discovery of
pain,
list
One of
laws of cause and effect could be undone
course of a
caused
There
the/?/// that
claimed, causes us to discover
of a cause," Culler
writes.
"To
— SIGNS
26
TIMES
THE
OF
deconstruct causality one must operate with the notion of cause and
apply
To
to causation itself."
it
turn the tables on
it
—
deconstruct causality
opposition of the causal scheme." Ergo: "If the effect the cause to
become
in short, to
is,
"the deconstruction reverses the hierarchical is
what
causes
a cause, then the effect, not the cause, should be
treated as the origin." In the
New
York Review of Books, the philoso-
pher John Searle writes a devastating critique of Culler's "tissue of confusions." Searle points out that Culler confuses the discovery of a cause with the production of a cause; moreover, "there
hierarchy between cause and effect in the
first
Exposing the logical
correlative terms."
isn't
that
it
isn't
One must
of such deconstructive
causality
are
But
Searle
refute the topsy-turvy logic that
sufficient to
confuses effects with origins.
two
of Culler's decon-
fallacies
structive reasoning, Searle performs a valuable service.
knows
any logical
place since the
also investigate the specific
For
displays.
it
stretches belief to
imagine that the blithe deconstructor of causality seriously means what he says
—
or intends to
The
out his theory in the realm of action.
test
deconstructive
method appears
advocacy taken to the point of bad
their
to be understood even as they insist that
Though for
it;
irony
a
is
word
all
own
and other reasons,
few have any flair carry on in the manner
of the put-on
with a disciple of Dcrrida
a debate
somewhat maddening proposition.
mean
opposites unite, black can
—
artist. is
is
white, a green light can
/;///
that caused it?
accompanies the outlandish
when
—
in
and
his
mean
own
stop,
client.
why: what would prompt a sane and
somehow
rational professor to assert that the pain
puncturing
a curious
realm of discourse in which
a
and the defense attorney can be counted on to hang
The immediate question
For these
hard to argue with someone
It is
resides in an alternative universe
expecting
favor,
your average deconstructionist tends to that
strictures,
messages are unintelligible.
some of them
that
of the earnest pedant rather than
who
Deconstructionists have the
faith.
knack of exempting themselves from
to entail a kind of devil's
What's
in
it
for
assertion, just as there
precedes the skin-
him? And no wink is
no
hint of a smile
an example presented by the physicist James Trefil
—
"a
philosopher of science says that the laws of physics arc merely social conventions, like
traffic
need only to cross the
laws."
To
deconstruct that position
street against the
flow of rushing
you would traffic.
Any
volunteers?
The
persistent assault
on our fundamental
cultural assumptions
I
,
END
THE
not on the laws of physics
if
notoriety. There are others. real or
its
lingo.
—
is
27
one reason for deconstruction's
You must consider its novelty
apparent difficulty
You must
WORD
THE
OF
which
(in
(undeniable)
takes pride), and
it
take into account, above
all,
peculiar
its
the professedly "subver-
sive" intent of the deconstructionists. Their outrageousness
is
calculated;
they seem to relish having a disruptive impact, and they are certainly
good
at
it
—
their ability to polarize
vitriolic debate
is
whole
and provoke
faculties
both well-documented and legendary. In the face of
deconstruction, gentle scholars turn ferocious. Asked to characterize the deconstructionists he has izes in
known, an exasperated
snotty, meretricious, addicted to
who demand
who
professor
modem British literature delivered this tirade:
special-
"Arrogant, smug,
straw-man arguments, horrible writers
of the company of Jane Austen and Chaucer, appallingly ingrown and cliquish at the same time that they to be considered
about expansiveness and
talk
wooden and mechanical
new
at the
frontiers
same time
and mechanical obeisances tojouissance * ual adolescents
good fortune
of discourse, unbelievably
that they
make
and free-play,
their
like all perpet-
contemptuous of the past and convinced
by great they were
that
the truth happened to be discovered just as
hitting puberty, a daisy-chain
of brown-nosers declaring
their high-
flown independence from the normal irksome constraints of nity and continuity, lose rationale fine, if not,
of
we
who
their
ists
—
if
evidence and logic bear
can always deconstruct them
The fury
essay that could stand
find deconstruction so irresistible a
word
guaranteed to
It is
the reader's blood pressure.
up
out,
in a decent senior
why journalwith what-
to appropriate,
inflate the diction
The very word
me
—would almost none of
in this professor's speech helps explain
ever degree of irony.
commu-
without the peculiar heads-I-win-tails-you-
arguments
them have written an seminar."
wooden
—and
raise
signals controversy, claim,
counterclaim, clash: a universe of fierce cabalistic disputation, an atmosphere charged with threat and recrimination, at a time crisis
the
words
and higher education tend to go together naturally.
The as
when
critic
Harold Bloom proposes "the School of Resentment"
an umbrella term for the
*Jouissance reader's
—
sexual ecstasy
critical theories that
—
is
the term used
orgasmic "pleasure of the text."
have been proliferating
by Roland Barthes
to describe the
SIGNS
28
TIMES
THE
OF
dizzily in university literature departments.
He names some
factions:
New
there are the "Lacanians, deconstructionists, Foucault-inspired
and latest-model feminists."
Historicists, semioticians, neo-Marxists,
All have their place in the School of Resentment, criticism
victims ries
used
is
—
it's
as a
way
their
—amalgamations
and go. Each acquires its
to get even with their oppressors.
about
its
tenured partisans,
its
New
which
it
theo-
—come
prestigious journal, and
But while deconstruction
one theory among many, what
the degree to
it is
literary
as historical
or conglomerations, for the most part
clout within the teaching profession.
technically, just
where
weapon on behalf of groups perceived
is
is,
really extraordinary
has informed and affected the others.
It is possible, for example, to describe a "New Historicist" as a Marxist who has read Derrida, while a "latest-model feminist" may be one who
propounds the deconstruction of gender
what
the thing,
might
she (or he)
academy
or, to get into the spirit
measure of deconstruction's
real
the prevalence of
is
of
counterhegemonic inversion
call a
of the male-female paradigm. The influence in the
—
its
idiosyncratic and
arcane vocabulary. Deconstructionists claim that theirs
is
the
most rigorous method
of close textual analysis ever devised. At the same time, however, they
seem indifferent to the question of which discussion;
primary emphasis
their
is
texts, if
on
any, are chosen for
propositions
theoretical
stripped of reference to any particular author or
body of work. Decon-
few examples of
solid literary analysis,
structionists offer relatively
since they operate
text operates the
on
a high level
of generality and assume
that every
same way. You'll fmd deconstructivc analyses of
handful of authors (Proust, Nietzsche, Rousseau), but you're to
come
across a deconstruction
a
as likely
of an abstract concept (such
as the
concepts of origin, continuity, and closure) or of a beer commercial's
system of
signs.
Perhaps
it is
better sense and produce
popular culture, to high
literature.
has, in
one in
any
critic
simply that deconstructivc methods make
more
traffic signs
interesting results
applied to
and fashion statements, rather than to
The more conventionally
case, a
when
"literary" dcconstructionist
permissive attitude toward textual interpretation. As
sympathetic to deconstruction has put
it,
"I
cannot find
it
myself to worry the question of the relation of empirical evidence
to theory."
Never before have
speculation and
Not
all
made
so
students are
literary critics
little effort
indulged so
much
in
pure
to demonstrate their claims.
enamored of the deconstructivc approach.
END
THE
29
Tokyo American Center was a teaching assistant when a surfeit of critical comparative Hterature at Yale until 1977
The in
WORD
THE
OF
director of the
—
theory drove him to chuck academe in favor of the foreign service.
Another disenchanted grad-school veteran, Elizabeth Connell
Fentress,
put in several years at Louisiana State University before deciding that the professional study of literature for her.
or what
it
The buzzwords of critical theory rang
ress reports,
has
in the corridors, Fent-
me
Triumphantly, one student told
game
to ignore "the tidal
'Trivial Pursuit'
wave of theory,"
document of endurance
muck" of
herself in "the
and that the professor had 'loved
—
If she chose
the master's degree."
fashionable theory first
But
immerse
to
would
clash
place
to study litera-
—
with her
not to theorize in a void. She was troubled, too, by the decon-
ture,
on "meaning": everywhere
structive assault that
make.
she ran the risk of forfeiting "that
reason for attending graduate school in the
we
"An
rest:
had chosen to
that he
" Fentress had, she says, a difficult decision to
dear
— was not
and one of these could be heard above the
deconstruct the it.'
become
one theory course called for students to 'deconstruct some-
exercise in thing.'
—
no
view,
I
between
real relation exists
live in. "If meaning
a piece
she encountered the
view
of writing and the world
was going to be demoted
as
another 'outdated'
concluded, what's the point? If I couldn't teach what
I
thought
I read was to be explained away as inaccessideemed it best to leave LSU, and to learn what I wanted to learn on my own." What makes Fentress's testimony so troubling is that hers is not
was good writing, ble,
why go
at all
on?
if what
I
an unusual case.
literary vocation
may
One
suspects that the student with an authentic
who
be the one
academic orthodoxies of our day.
number of students over the
last
becoming
It
feels least at
home with
the
a disquieting fact that the
is
electing to major in literature has steadily declined
twenty years
—
the period
when
critical theorists
were
the hottest properties in an increasingly fashion-conscious
profession.
Years have gone by since the
wishful thinker predicted
first
deconstruction's imminent demise. But while in France,
where
it
originated in the 1960s,
States has not appreciably
to a handful
particular J.
of
waned. At
—whom
Johns Hopkins. Yale
—
in
Man, and colleague Geoffrey Hartman dubbed
trio
their
no longer au courant
influence in the United
deconstruction was limited
universities: Yale, Cornell,
was home for the
Hillis Miller
first,
it is
its
of professors
Dcrrida, dc
a
30
SIGNS
"boa-decons true tors."
By
TIMES
THE
OF
1979 Derrida was the most frequently cited
Modem
authority in papers submitted to the journal of the Association
(MLA),
most
influential
which nearly
the professional organization to
presumed to belong.
literature professors are
book
that year,
De Man
and Miller weighed
aggressive briefs for the deconstructive method.
Language all
published his
in
with several
At the time, wrote one
contemporary observer, going from Harvard to Yale would have been like "a journey to the
moon." But by
true.
The
now
an accomplished
the mid-1980s that
was no longer
spread of deconstruction to campuses across America was
deconstruction had become a routine part
fact;
of the curriculum. Princeton and Harvard, johnnies-come-lately, were
making up sity
for lost time with their latest hirings. In 1986, the Univer-
of California
sprang for a reported six-figure salary to
at Irvine
from Yale. Confident predictions of deconstruction's dehave, in the light of such ballyhooed appointments, a hollow
lure Miller cline ring.
Geoffrey Hartman,
name
for deconstruction.
who is ardently protheory, has a punning He has called it "Derridadaism," as if it were
a kind
of philosophical poltergeist of dadaism, surrealism's forerunner,
an art
movement whose most
Duchamp's
installation
of
celebrated single gesture
a urinal in a
museum. Hartman
distinguished author of The Mirror and the Lamp,
Hartman, no fan of deconstruction, but
ophy of
Abrams
is,
is
its
antic
"the serious philos-
Zen master
the absurd," and Derrida "is the
the
in contrast to
too, stresses
he,
has written,
has also
M. H. Abrams,
likened deconstructionists to "clowns or jongleurs."
disposition. Deconstruction,
was Marcel
Western
of
philosophy."
The is,
tactics
of deconstruction are impish,
however, no denying the seriousness of
portends,
if
wc
momentous and
arc to believe
its
may
its
logic absurdist. There
intent.
Deconstruction
proponents, an "cpistcmic" shift
irrevocable change in the
acquire knowledge. Institutionally, it
its
it
way wc
hasn't quite
think, write, and
worked
that
their obligatory time
readings, feel
it
is
with Dernda's
Many
texts
students, having spent
and dc Man's rhetorical
possible to deploy the strategics of deconstruction
without necessarily adhering to
its
general principles.
Still,
deconstruc-
tion advertises itself as an all-or-nothing proposition, and that its
way;
be argued that deconstruction has, in the long run, modified
rather than transformed critical practice.
of
—
original appeal for aspiring assistant professors.
was part
Claiming to
call
END
THE
WORD
THE
OF
31
everything into question, deconstruction consciously poses challenge to accepted procedures.
young
faculty
And
elders.
to ignore
where
a
issue. In the
thus affords a perfect means for
generational warfare against their
who
does not
it
It
wage
to
conversely, those
it;
an unavoidable
even has
members
resist
deconstruction can't feel free
agenda,
set the intellectual
realm of academic
deconstruction
politics,
compelling wr-myth. Adherents were embattled
is
belied
by
the fact that
many
able institutional power; there are structed (death) and
deconstruction
maxim
its
some
due
it
— though
things that can't be decon-
force to be reckoned with:
.
Abrams
"By J.
gives
S. Mill's
of bright people between twenty and thirty
years of age are the best index to the intellectual tendencies era,
and
at first,
are tenured and wield consider-
some
things that won't be (tenure)
as a
that the opinions
remains
it
have ever since favored the posture of the embattled outsider the pose
itself as a
of the next
seems probable that the heritage of deconstruction will be
prominent
in literary criticism for
Very nearly
remarkable
as
other academic fields and
is
some time
When
come."
the influence of deconstruction
among contemporary
buzzwords of deconstruction
to hear the
with-it art historian.
to
writers.
which the
of the
Mark Rothko
is
painter's "image-sign
enabled him to elide or dismantle such conventional binaries"
we
on
are likely
in the published thesis
an abstract painting by
described as "a palimpsest of traces" in
You
may have
as birth
more time mastering Derrida's vocabulary than looking at Rothko's pictures. The ultimate in painterly deconstruction is the self-erasing work of art and death,
suspect that the student
conceived by the novel
Life,
A
late
French author Georges Perec in
User's Manual.
The
character
Bartlebooth, a wealthy English eccentric at the
age oi twenty to devote his entire
would be
"perfection
spent
circular: a series
whom
who
life
Perec
his brilliant calls Percival
lives in Paris, decides
to a single project
catenated nullify each other." Bartlebooth's plan requires lessons in watercolor painting for ten years,
aptitude for
where
a
He many
it.
seascapes in as
him
real
then spends twenty years painting five hundred ports around the world. Each
puzzle-maker makes
is
to take
though he has no
a 750-piece jigsaw
is
sent back to Paris,
out of it. For the next
twenty years Bartlebooth plans to reconstruct each puzzle
There
whose
of events which when con-
in turn.
an elaborate procedure for detaching the picture from the
puzzle, and this enables Bartlebooth to bring the original watercolors
with him
as
he returns to the five hundred ports where he painted them
SIGNS
32
TIMES
THE
OF
in the first place. Finally, he will apply a chemical to
from the picture before the as
is
—and end with
work
is
done
suggestive as
it
is
enigmatic.
It
with
the paint
Though Bartlebooth
blank paper.
(or undone), his purely conceptual
dies
triumph
proposes a notion of art
gratuitous, an activity rather than an object, ity rather than
remove
as
bound up with temporal-
eternity. Bartlebooth's self-erasing masterpiece
implies that the artistic impulse expires in the act of being satisfied.
Construction, reconstruction, and deconstruction are merely stages in
work of art from nothing
the progression of a
to
something and back
to nothing again.
There
what
is
much
to be said for fictional deconstruction, if that
novelists like Perec
and
Italo
is
Calvino are doing. While they
furnish analogues to certain deconstructive theories, the imaginative fictions to,
of Perec and Calvino are in no way derivative
those theories.
The same cannot be claimed
of,
for the
or secondary
more pedantic movement
writers affiliated with the so-called "Language school," a in
American writing
Not
past decade.
that has gained considerable
prominence
in the
but some of these self-styled, university-trained
all
experimentalists appear to spend half their time dismantling syntax and referentiality,
and the other half taking dictation directly from Der-
"The Law of Genre" appeared
rida. Derrida's essay
translation in 1980.
It
in an English
begins with these sentences: "Genres are not to
I will not mix genres. I repeat: genres are not to be mixed. mix them." Turn to page four of Vice by Carla Harryman, a poet who gets consistently high marks from her "Language school" colleagues, and this is what you'll find:
be mixed. I
will not
Genres arc not to be mixed.
The
writer
will not
I
repeat: genres arc not to be
I
will not
Tom and
I
genres.
mixed.
mix them.
Clark, reviewing the "Language school"
non, charges that (relatively,
mix
I
its
phenome-
poets "are as long on critical theory as they are
think also absolutely) short on poems."
And
certainly
these poets have a distinct predilection for fancy theorizing: so-and-so is
said to
have "subverted patriarchal assumptions" or maybe "decon-
structed the
Romantic image"
word tampon
in a
poem
consisting exclusively of the
repeated twelve times in a vertical column.
The poem
END
THE seems rather
less substantial
Reviewing
bears.
"Language"
WORD
THE
OF
33
than the critical jargon whose weight
several anthologies devoted to the
poets, Clark hears the
way
took a wrong turn on the
sound of "an
to the Derrida
works of
it
the
who
assistant professor
Cookout and ended up
poetry reading."
at the
The person or persona of Jacques Derrida Hepburn,
He
ways.
in surprising
"Movie." Perelman, of "Language temporary
together with Gary Grant and Katharine
is,
Bob
a character in
a master
poem
Perelman's remarkable narrative
of comic invention,
school" writers
critical
has entered our poetry
who
is
one of
a
number
have absorbed the lessons of con-
work get bogged down meaninglessness. In "Movie" we follow
theory without letting their
in jargon-riddled excursions in
which Grant and Hepburn, seemingly on loan from Holiday, play out their romance with Derrida looking over their a screwball plot in
shoulders.
One of
the surprises Perelman has in store for us
is
that
summer home is / in fact a gulag in Nicaragua." Unlike Perelman, neither Rodney Jones nor Norman Dubie seems to have any "Derrida's
of
sort
the
affinity
with poststructuralism or
Napoleon of deconstruction
its
in recent
projects.
Yet both invoke
poems. Jones's "Pastoral for
Derrida" concludes with a threatening image: the poet standing "under
The
the hermeneutical circle of the vulture."
speaker in Dubie's
"The
Apocrypha of Jacques Derrida" disavows being Napoleon Bonaparte: "I don't really believe It is as
issue
am
I
though Derrida
(or
the Corsican.
what he
contemporary poets
that
obliquely.
In
frequently
his
But then
stands for) has
obliged
feel
anthologized
new
Lagunitas," Robert Hass describes "the
to
/
Neither did he."
become
a troubling
address,
however
poem "Meditation
thinking" with
its
at
propo-
sition that
because there to
What
Hass
struction.
calls
It
in this
world no one thing
which the bramble of
word
a
is
IS
is
elegy to what
"the
new
similarly
—
blackberry corresponds, it
signifies.
thinking" sounds an awful lot like decon-
unnamed but
described
—and with
uncon-
by Louis Simpson in his poem "The Professor." The eponymous speaker of Simpson's poem explains that he "taught there is no truth, / that words mean what we want them / to mean, and cealed animus
nothing
else."
Simpson consigns the speaker
to an infernal place next
SIGNS
34
to Pilate.
He
A
is
/
moment
of
a "seismic activity"
way we
it is
its
and that
rather an epistemic shift that
human and
speaking of deconstruction.
is
"upheaval
this
think, across a span of disciplines, about
about method, even about the
biblical scholar trate
now of the necessity of an studies." He reports that his field has
"convinced
a methodological shift;
portends to change the texts,
is
in biblical
to feel tremors
more than
to their necks in "the substance they
continually out of themselves."
biblical scholar
iconoclastic
begun
them up
pictures
were increasing
TIMES
THE
OF
potential in the sphere
of gospel
The
material world."
He
proceeds to "illus-
studies"; like
it
or not,
it is
a challenge that biblical scholarship needs to meet. Deconstructive
analyses of the parables of Jesus are you'll find
some
in
still
comparatively
rare,
though
Stephen Moore's book Literary Criticism and
Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge. that Derrida's doctrines
Moore
offers
have been taken to heart
the
abundant evidence
at the
Yale Divinity
School. Indeed, according to Moore, "the more-deconstructionist-
than-thou game" has become quite popular in the biblical "guild." Let
one example
named Gary
suffice.
At
a conference in
1986 in Atlanta, a scholar
Phillips presented a paper titled "Deconstruction
and the
Parables of Jesus," and another professor countered with "Deconstruct-
ing ^Deconstruction and the Parables of Jesus' by Gary Phillips, or
Does
the Cat Perpetually Chase
Its
Tail?" Harold
Bloom,
not sanguine about the "rabblement of lemmings"
for one,
who
"are
is
now
converging upon the Bible, which they will find the most recalcitrant
of
texts,
though
that finding
is
not likely to deter them."
The profound impact of deconstruction on anthropology is more difficult to gauge, since the influence has worked both ways. From the anthropological investigations of Claude Lcvi-Strauss in the 1950s and 196()s, the theorists
of deconstruction derived something of their origi-
Man sums up
the anthropological parallel with
literary deconstruction: "In the act
of anthropological intersubjective
nal impetus. Paul de
interpretation, a fundamental discrepancy always prevents the observer
from coinciding
fully
with the consciousness he
is
observing.
The same
discrepancy exists in everyday language, in the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with
making on such
the actual sign coincide with
what what
has to be expressed, of it
signifies." In
dwelling
discrepancies, deconstruction seems to call into question the
fundamental project of anthropology emphasis shifted away from what
is
as a discipline.
Not only
is
the
represented and toward the means
I
END
THE
of representation but, since language it
WORD
THE
OF
is
35
medium,
inherently a slippery
follows that any attempt to represent other people and places must
be held suspect.
To
the deconstructively
necessarily infused
minded anthropologist, description
with ideology, and reports from the
field
is
of a third
world country may, whatever the writer's intentions, help perpetuate a colonialist perspective. Ethnography, that branch of anthropology
whose purpose is the accurate description of individual cultures, is that is, by the fact necessarily compromised by its literary character that all ethnography involves writing. "The true historical significance
—
of writing illusions
that
is
it
has increased our capacity to create totalistic
with which to have power over things or over others
as if
they were things," argues Stephen Tyler, an advocate of "post-modern
ethnography." Tyler goes on: "The whole ideology of representational signification
an ideology of power.
is
To break
its
spell
we would have
to attack writing, totalistic representational signification,
authority, but attack
all
this has
on writing has been accomplished by Derrida,
the author the creature of writing rather than theorists
ity"
and
of language and call
from
its
who
The made
"has
creator,"
who undermine
literature
and other
"authorial author-
representation into question. "Post-modern ethnogra-
phy," Tyler writes, "builds ples as
and authorial
already been accomplished for us."
its
program not
so
much from
the rubble of their deconstruction."
It is
their princi-
not entirely clear
what Tyler's "program" might entail. He proffers the paradox that "there is no instance of a post-modern ethnography, even though all ethnography be
made
today all,
in
that
is
post-modern
in effect,
some of the most
anthropology
questions about the
is
nor
intelligent
one
is
and
likely."
fruitful
A
case can
work being done
speculative and theoretical in nature. After
self,
about
how
the observer affects that
which
he or she observes, and about the narrative strategies for reporting these observations, are fundamental in this line of study. Nevertheless, the
prospect of that metaphorical "rubble" universal shout for joy.
lounge are
still
And
in the
calculated to cause a
isn't
meantime, the profs
in the faculty
chuckling over the one about the postmodern ethnog-
rapher in the field with a representative of an indigenous culture. At the end ot their three-hour tape-recorded conversation, the subject the interview says, "This has been very nice. to talk about
Do we
have time
of
now
me?"
In architecture, deconstruction
is
known
as
"deconstructivism"
SIGNS
36
THE
OF
TIMES
and seems to involve the deliberate perpetration of ugliness. Propo-
symmetry in favor columns, and skewed angles. It is a
nents of "deconstructivism" are inclined to shatter
of distorted
structures, tilting
movement with some currency; the Museum of Modern Art in New York considered it important enough to warrant a show of "Deconstructivist Architecture" in 1988. "Deconstruction," writes Mark Wigley, the show's co-curator, "gains very values of harmony, unity, and different
view of structure: the view
structure."
who
A
all its
stability,
by challenging
the
and proposing instead
a
that the flaws are intrinsic to the
deconstructive architect,
dismantles buildings, but one
force
who
Wigley
is
"not one
locates the inherent
dilemmas
explains,
within buildings. The deconstructive architect puts the pure forms of
on the couch and identifies the symptoms impurity. The impurity is drawn to the surface by a
the architectural tradition
of
a repressed
combination of gentle coaxing and violent torture: the form gated." If
all
architecture
choice of metaphors design for living,
it
is
is
Walking through
itself?
one recalled the character
went
in
is
undergoing
all that,
versity
of Alabama,
hit
Wall
Street?
—
a co-translator
of Derrida's
when Michael Milken was
Glas, thinks so. In the
slapped with a nincty-cight-
an English professor
—
sent a letter to the
defending the misunderstood junk-bond king financier."
Rand
"They
Richard Rand of the Uni-
count indictment on charges of racketeering and
Rand
who
But there were some nice goats."
Has deconstruction spring of 1989,
what
the deconstructivist exhibition,
Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall
to Greece to look at the buildings there. His assessment:
are unspeakably ugly.
stated that the
two
and the JournaTs financial pages.
To
as
securities
Wall
fraud,
Street Journal
a "deconstructive
things he had studied with rapt
attention over the course of twenty years
lot
interro-
singularly revealing. In the deconstructivist
appears that the imagined inhabitant
psychoanalysis and dwelling in a torture chamber. After
of the work
is
based on a vision of humanity, Wigley's
were Jacques Derrida's
texts
Rand's mind there was quite a
of continuity between the two, and particularly between Derrida's
theoretical
maneuvers and Milken's leveraged buyouts. Milken,
Rand's words,
"is
in
an inventive thinker whose thoughts about capital
formation happen to coincide uncannily with Mr. Derrida's thoughts
about concept formation." Milken had apparently made a deconstructive
move when
despised)
he turned the junk bond from "a ^marginal' (and
^supplement' to the overall investment machine" into "a
END
THE central
THE
OF
and dynamic feature." With
his
WORD
leveraged buyouts he had
accomplished a "reversal" and a "rewriting" the Derrida lexicon in place in
—of
37
— two more
terms from
the merger-and-acquisition strategies already
postwar America.
Rand's
letter reads like
an unconscious self-parody, but a brilliant
—
you have to pinch yourself to remember that his intent is to praise Derrida by linking his methods to those of Wall Street's disgraced prince of leverage. Why would a diehard deconstructor like Rand want to put Derrida in the company of an indicted felon? Perhaps because the mystique of the outlaw is one to which deconone
structors are particularly susceptible; deconstruction has thrived in
academe because and not
in spite
make them mad. And perhaps
of its capacity to outrage people and
there
something in Rand's analogy.
is
Junk bonds, the apotheosis of an age of greed,
are high-risk, high-yield
debt securities used to finance corporate takeovers.
Derrida and his cronies have aimed
at
Isn't it possible that
doing something comparable
empty
the academic marketplace, palming off a debased currency of
which they nevertheless claim value and
"signifiers" for
any
case,
Messrs.
Rand
Milken and Derrida deserve a
that deconstruction
miniskirt."
is
is
is
as
up
to date as insider trading.
parallel in the trashing
of
though the television people
The
literature.
There are hip professors of popular culture does,
letter-
Bloom's contention
who
deconstruction provides the theoretical rationale for it
The
respectful hearing."
to dispute Allan
a fading Paris fashion, "like a late arriving
No, deconstruction its
prestige? In
being perfectly serious in contending that "both
is
writer's purpose, he announces,
junk bond has
in
maintain that
MTV,
aren't saying.
By
and maybe
contrast, the
influence of deconstruction in the professional study of the law has
been enthusiastically defended and directly affected. Deconstruction
is
as
hotly assailed by the parties
the driving intellectual force be-
—
movement known as "Critical Legal Studies" "CLS" for The movement has polarized the faculties of several leading law
hind the short.
schools, Harvard's
most prominently, and has been fought out
pages of major law reviews. For some of
phenomenon with an unambiguously Gary
Peller, a
CLS
activist
who
its
proponents,
political edge.
in the it
of Virginia
School of Law, "the significance of the deconstructive practice truth as opposed to
a
According to
teaches at the University
simply to reveal the constructed nature of what gets taken
knowledge and
is
is
not
as fact,
opmion, superstition and myth.
It
SIGNS
38
TIMES
THE
OF
an important practice because, in our social world, these claims to
is
truth have played powerful political roles in the construction of our social relations
power and
—
those
powerlessness
is
power have justified out of power have been made to feel that ways
in the
their
own
that those in
fault
and inadequacy."
By
their their
implication and
extension, the deconstruction of "our social world" and "our social
of "power" to the "powerless"
relations" entails a transfer
—
or, in
deconstructive parlance, a reversal of the "binary opposition" between the rich and the poor.
Law
is
conceived to be the instrument of
ideology, the ideology of the ruling class, and
duty to demystify
it,
exposing rhetoric
as
the legal scholar's
it is
sham and putative
truths as
spurious.
The notion is
that
law
is
not value-free but has an ideological
an old and familiar one. But
way
before.
it
has never been presented in quite this
The underpinning of Critical Legal
indeterminacy derived from deconstruction
of
statutes
basis
—
Studies
of
a theory
is
as if the interpretation
and precedents were somehow an extension of
literary
criticism rather than a fundamentally different activity, involving different objectives, undertaken in a different spirit. Laws, after
all,
are
not prose poems; the deliberate ambiguity that can enrich our experience of a literary text
would
and quite undesirable. Yet
of law, highly irregular
be, in the sphere
CLS
specialists
approach the law
of literature awaiting deconstruction. They accept revel in, the indeterminancy
of the Harvard
Law
of all
School,
as a
texts, all writing.
who
as a
branch
given, and even
Duncan Kennedy
has been described as the CLS's
answer to Abbic Hoffman, speaks of a "fundamental contradiction" the core of any normative concept, antithetical senses.
The
which
contradiction
causes
it
would allow
to break a
down
at
into
judge to choose,
with impunity and without constraint, either of two diametrically
opposed interpretations
in
any case that comes before the court. There
can therefore be no criteria for determining the correctness of a judicial decision, and the rational basis for
law
is,
at a stroke, fatally
compro-
mised. It
tion
remains to be seen whether the
would tend more
final effect of legal
in the direction oi
pursuit of a particular political agenda.
So
deconstruc-
pure critique than
far,
in the
the absence of any proof
for the theory of "fundamental contradiction" has not stood in the
movement's way, despite the well-articulated such
as
Owen M.
Fiss,
fears
of
its
opponents,
professor of public law at Yale. In an article
END
THE in the Cornell is
Law Review,
of
how
much
Fiss
without merit
intellectually
WORD
THE
OF
39
explained
why
(since
based on a misunderstanding
it is
the
CLS
critique
of law
the judiciary works) as well as politically irresponsible (mas-
as the
aim of the critique
is
what might replace that which "The Death of the Law?" piece
—
critique
"without a vision of
itself,
destroyed").
is
—made
The
clear just
it
of
title
Fiss's
how much
is
at
stake.
There
is
which deconstruction
a further sense in
cause of the "epistemic shift"
speech of scholars
who may
12, 1989, close readers
it
portends
New York
of the
New
The
City.
—
precisely be-
colors the thought and
On May
not uphold Derridean principles.
York Times encountered an excerpt
from the forty-third annual Cardozo tion in
—
lecture at the City
Bar Associa-
speaker at this prestigious event was
Law
Professor Laurence H. Tribe of the Harvard
School, an eminent
scholar of constitutional law. Tribe's lecture had an unlikely
title:
"Law's Geometry and the Curvature of Constitutional Space." Tribe described a "paradigm shift" in the field of law as drastic as the
modem
conceptual changes in that sees
law
as
He
physics.
challenged "a conception
nothing more than a force that enters our
isolated instances to resolve discrete events
lives
and then moves on."
on
What
Tribe recommended was not altogether brand new, but there was
something novel about
his
approach.
judicial interventionism as a kind
He was
in effect
of corollary to Heisenberg's uncer-
tainty principle. For judicial rulings. Tribe argued,
make
recommending do not merely
"observations about law and society"; they "change the fabric
of the society
itself." If, in
beats a child to death,
and other local tragedy?
By
the
may
officials"
Supreme Court
the state
—be
—
case Tribe cited, a parent
form of
in the
it
wasn't the state
boy of his liberty in violation of the due amendment. But in Tribe's view, the
process clause of the fourteenth
majority rested on a "quite primitive vision" of the state
pre-modern paradigm" showing no hint ing state
may have
itself
workers
held accountable for not preventing the
a majority ruling the court decided that
that deprived the unfortunate
"social
that "the
—
a "stilted
hand of the observ-
played a role in shaping the world
it
ob-
serves."
What was new but
its
rhetoric
—not
in Tribe's address its
judicial
was not
program but
so
its
much
its
"The
paradigm of constitutional law," Tribe
still-reigning
substance
vocabulary of "con-
ceptual shifts" and
sweeping dismissal of
its
a rationalist
world-view. said, "stands
— SIGNS
40
in sharp contrast to
which recognize served and deny
TIMES
THE
OF
most contemporary modes of
the pervasive relationship
social thought,
between observer and ob-
the primitive notion that subjects act upon a back-
ground of distinct, fixed objects rather than existing ever-changing subject-object tension." Deconstruct
in a reciprocal this
and
paragraph, and
on the same contagious theory of indeterminacy you fmd we've already encountered a theory that owes almost as much to the postmodernist paradigms of deconstruction as to those of modern that
it relies
—
physics. If the notion "that subjects act
fixed objects"
is
what happens
"primitive,"
ual responsibility
and
upon
free will?
And
if
a
background of distinct,
to the concepts
people exist
of individ-
less as entities in
themselves than "in a reciprocal and ever-changing subject-object ten-
autonomous,
sion," hasn't the speaker deconstructed the self as an
The effect reduced conception of human freedom.
independent agent entitled to be judged by
would be
to foster a drastically
The protean tations
nature of deconstruction raises a fundamental prob-
may wonder what
lem: the reader
it is
It is
word
is
J.
is
Hillis Miller has this riff
simply
on
the
—
which
writes.
is
not
at the
"The word
nearer to
or complexly
most fascinating and
suggestive of Derrida's punning neologisms. "There tion
these activi-
or was meant to be?
possible that the linking element itself.
all
we any
central impulse, are
understanding what deconstruction
the
that links these various manifes-
of the deconstructive enterprise. Presuming that
do proceed from some
ties
actions?
its
is
no deconstruc-
same time constructive, affirmative," Miller
says this in juxtaposing 'dc'
and
'con.' " Miller
acknowledges that the word has "misleading overtones or implications," but his deconstruction,
list
of these
can't be said to spoil his fun.
too masterful and muscular. text with tools ished.
The word
he writes, "suggests something a bit too external, a bit
which
It
suggests the demolition oi the helpless
are other than
The word Reconstruction'
activity turning
and stronger than what
is
demol-
suggests that such criticism
something unified back to detached fragments or
is
an
parts.
It
suggests the image of a child taking apart his father's watch, reducing
it
back to useless
parts,
beyond any reconstitution." And here
Miller,
excited by his metaphors, seems to belie the idea that these "implications" arc "misleading" after
all.
"A
dcconstructionist
but a parricide," Miller writes, relishing
his
is
not a parasite
words. "He
is
a
bad son
—
— END
THE
WORD
THE
OF
41
demolishing beyond hope of repair the machine of Western metaphysics.
To tionist
the skeptical layman, as suspicious of jargon as the deconstruc-
suspicious of Western metaphysics, the sound oi deconstruction
is
suggests another possibility. Mightn't destructive intent?
An
arch parentheses
more tion
sophisticated
is
would emphasize
aspiring theorist
de(con)struction
—
be a con game concealing a
it
before rejecting
example of parenthetical
the
pun with
in favor
combined
senses
of a
cleverness. Deconstruc-
an end-of-the-wor(Ijd theory. As a method of analysis,
invariably to entail a meditation
on the ends of words
it
seems
end in the
of conclusion, aim, completion, and demise. There
is
of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about
an
air
so
much
deconstructive activity, in so
many of
merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.
inasmuch
as it
instability that
down
it
its
guises;
it
is
not
a catastrophe theory
It is
proceeds from the perception of an extreme linguistic
undermines the coherence of any statement
—
a break-
our collective confidence in the power of words to communi-
in
and represent experience.
cate ideas
It
announces or implies that
a
rupture has occurred, an irreparable break with the past, and that
nothing can ever be the same again. Deconstruction
putting things in question
likes
—
things like
cause and effect, right and wrong, the idea that a text expresses a writer's intention rather than
somebody
to
which
interpretations
would wipe
may
the slate clean;
but that nothing can be said cal ends.
be more or
it insists
—
that
hidden agenda, that
else's
individuals are agents of volition, or that there
is
an objective reality
less faithful.
Deconstruction
not that everything has been said
words have reached
their tautologi-
Surely no previous form of literary analysis paid so
—
much
grammar and rhetoric or devoted so much energy to showing that the grammar and the rhetoric of a given piece of writing can pull it in opposite directions. The logical outcome of such an attention to
analysis
is
that
it
confronts us with, in Miller's phrase, "the abyss of
'annihilation.' " Less sanguine observers call
An
end'of-the-worf/Jd theory.
to accomplish several things.
It
The
.
.
upside
word
down. The word
—
that
is
meant
word and world
of one to the other
is
doesn't reflect or represent the world; the
contains the world, and not the other
texts are self-referential
nihilism.
impHcs not only
are reversible terms but that the relation .
it
parenthesis in wor(l)d
way
around. Therefore,
they refer only to themselves, not to any-
42
SIGNS
thing outside themselves. There is
THE
OF is
no such thing
as the real
world;
it
a text, subject to misreading, a "problematized" text that invariably
resolves itself into an aporia, a terminal impasse.
and the larger community are blotted out is
TIMES
a succession
of humanity
of misleading
signs, a
to control them.
paradoxical sound of
its
name
It
The
writer, the reader,
at a stroke,
and
all that's left
parade of words beyond the power is
a
paradox
in
keeping with the
that deconstruction declares "logocen-
trism" the enemy. For deconstruction itself is centered on the relentless
study of the logos thought, but flesh,
—
also, in
the Greek term for word, speech, discourse, and
The Gospel According
to St.
John, the
word made
the engendering word, reason incarnate, the rational principle
presumed to
exist in the universe.
CHAPTER
2
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION Were
I
not so frequently associated with
with
a smile, the ica
is
Is
the study of the humanities
tion
—
in trouble? Is the
I
deconstruction.
—-Jacques Derrida,
I
memoires. for paul de
—
that cornerstone
academic treatment of
culture in the broad sense, failing our students? find defenders
of the
status
quo among
that
mas
of
a libera^
It is
easy
and
enough
The enrollments
gone elsewhere. Jeremiads bewailing
the students have
educa-
literature, art,
to
the tenured beneficiaries oi the
system. But the signs oi malaise are everywhere.
down;
this
would risk, following hypothesis: Amer-
adventure of deconstruction,
are
this
or
academic fashion are widely popular. Bleakly funny anecdotes oi
ignorance circulate around dinner tables ("Asked to read the passage
Roman numerals, then World War Eleven' "). The
aloud, the student stumbled over the unfamiliar tentatively
pronounced
fault can't lie entirely
ignoramus
who
'the battles
of
with the faculty.
figures in such jokes
It is
may
be that the collegiate
the product oi inadequate
preparatory training; students today enter college skill
and achievement than did
some connection between
their predecessors.
at
lower
levels oi
But surely there
is
the demoralized state of the humanities and
SIGNS
44
THE
OF
TIMES
the ferocity of the professorial debate
on what the "humanities"
about and on whether "humanism"
a
a connection, too,
is
good
There
thing.
are
surely
is
between the spread of college-level ignorance and
the rise of academic theories intended not to perpetuate but to "sub-
vert" (to use the
The for,
word
the theorists favor) our cultural heritage.
defensiveness of university officials
not hard to account
is
given the persistent criticisms to which they and their institutions
have been subjected in recent the status
quo
years. Still, the terms used in defense
are often disquieting.
of
A new species of academic bureau-
crat has
sprung up, invented to confute the criticisms made by Allan
Bloom
in
The Closing of
Cultural Literacy.
the
American Mind and E. D. Hirsch in
The "executive
tions" at a major Ivy
League
director of university
communica-
institution writes a letter to the Chronicle
of Higher Education assailing the idea of a "core" curriculum to be required of
He
students.
all
establish a hierarchy
argues that a core curriculum
of knowledge and values and
would
that such a hierarchy
would be incompatible with democratic ideals. This is what he writes: "The very point of modern culture is that we will not believe a thing if its hierarchy is determined by an elite. Even this formulation is not strong enough in the contemporary world: It is not just that we don't believe in hierarchies,
we
cannot believe in them." This
perspective for a high university official to take. to say that his
is
not an
elitist
institution?
How
Does
is
an unusual
the writer
mean
does that square with
the admissions department's proud boast that the school
is
one of the
hardest in the country to get into, one of the most competitive, most
archy"
most exclusive? Then
bogey word, "hieras if the modern American university weren't the most hierof structures, a stratification system by academic rank from
prestigious,
—
archical
lowly instructor to
there's that other
full professor,
with the tenure
line dividing the
haves from the have nots. If there were no hierarchy, would grades
be assigned? And, in the office of "university communications," would there be any need for the executive director to invoke his title?
It
gets
The impulse to denigrate "hierarchy" is, or would be if it were taken to heart, profoundly anti-intellectual, since the making of a hierarchy the subordination of some ideas to others
curiouscr and curiouscr.
in order
archy"
of importance
is
—
—
is
fundamental to rational inquiry. Yet "hier-
almost always a pejorative term in academic discourse, and
nowhere more
so than at our elite universities.
When
the contradic-
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION tions are so basic,
one
may
reasonably conclude that the "crisis"
the result of faulty perception, to be corrected
but that there
is
some
45
essential
by the
is
not
resident flack,
confusion and self-doubt behind the ivy
walls.
Certainly the
crisis is
acute in the field of literature. In the spring
and early summer of 1989, the assiduous reader of periodicals could have come across five memorable
articles
dilemma. Each was written by a
critic
Hughes hype"
in the
that
is
examining aspects of the of high standing. Robert
New
York Review of Books excoriated the "apocalyptic hallmark the of fashionable critical theory. "To write
straightforward prose, lucid and open to comprehension, using
mon
com-
is to lose face," Hughes wrote. "You do not make your you add something to the lake of jargon whose waters (bottled for export to the States) well up between Nanterre and the Sorbonne and to whose marshy verge the bleating flocks of poststruc-
language,
mark
unless
turalists
go each night to drink." Frank Kermode
magazine
Scrips!
in the Australian
observed matter-of-factly that "there
people interested in literature, and not even Irving
mon
Howe
reader"
New —"almost in the
all
an ever-
is
increasing supply of books classified as literary criticism
which few
professionals, can read."
Republic lamented the passing of "the
as if that figure has
been banished,
com-
at least in
the academic literary world, as an irritant or intruder, the kind of
obsolete person
who
characters bear
some resemblance
still
enjoys stories as stories and to
human
beings." In the Hudson
Review, Clara Claiborne Park added the author to the
made
obsolete in the
new academic
is
meant
list
of figures
order. Deconstructionists speak not
of Shakespeare but oi "Shakespeare"
marks
supposes that
still
—
the ritual use of quotation
to suggest the papier-mache status
of the designated
author. If authors are reduced to the level of fictional characters, Park declared, that
is
not only "an intellectual heresy."
It is
"a concept that
human personhood and human pain." Finally, again in the New Republic, Tzvetan Todorov deplored the "dogmatic skepticism" devalues
he finds in the academy
—
the attitude that "there
is
no such thing
as
Todorov dramatized the danger by recalling that George Orwell's 1984 Big Brother crushes the idea that reality is
truth or objectivity." in
"something objective, external, existing
in
its
own
right."
Through
agency of some ingenious torturing devices, Big Brother theosis
of dogmatic skepticism
—can prove
that "reality
is
—
the
that apo-
not external.
SIGNS
46
Reality exists in the the
New
human mind, and nowhere
who
Republic,
rov's piece under the
No
one
set store
immune
quite
by
The
else."
editors
their catchy headlines, ran
of
Todo-
"Crimes Against Humanities."
title
to the tendency to idealize the past,
some remote decade
locating in
"common
is
TIMES
THE
OF
a mythical golden age
readers" and engaging literary
critics.
of enlightened
Yet there does seem
to be
something unique about the malaise affecting
today.
We are familiar with the concept of "cultural literacy" and the
alarming evidence of ubiquitous student ignorance;
one about the sophomore Charles
who
Darwin "invented"
underwater escape chieftain.
artist,
Reports from the academic
ability to read
not given to
is
heard the
in Italy, that
Great Gatsby was an
and that Socrates was an American Indian
fundamental sense of literacy
failing to teach
we have
Toronto
thinks that
electricity, that the
literary studies
is
literary front suggest that a
also at stake
—
and to write. "Our students can't read, and
crisis
is
false alarms.
now
"The
ability to read, in the sense
of constru-
so rare as to constitute an abnormality."
English departments,
seems safe to say that the institutions of literary
it
Four decades ago, the poet Randall Critics had
Jarrell
Something odd was happening
begun
to
—be endangered
"People
many of them
still it is
read,
still
at large,
in the
write
of the
would
of
literature.
fiction writers; literature,
—
if the
trend were
left
very institutions established for
—and
the act of criticism
ative or Archetypal act
could see the writing
to the study
compete with poets and
valued in the culture
unchecked sake.
or the
have not been part of the solution.
the wall.
little
poem
While
cannot be attributed exclusively or even primarily to university
criticism
on
we are man
them," warns the judicious Denis Donoghue, a
ing or interpreting or following the play of the words in a a novel,
more
a decline in the general
its
well," Jarrell wrote, "but for
which has become the represent-
intellectual."
It's
an irony Jarrell would
have ruefully appreciated that posterity seems to have judged him a great critic and a merely
mind
in his
poet.
He
invested
poetry than in the vivacious
the poets that he loved.
had arrived
good
—and
his
more of his
critical essays
heart and
he wrote about
Yet he understood that "the age of criticism"
own
gifts as a poet,
impressive though these
were, paled beside the impassioned and pungent prose with which he
surveyed
his literary landscape.
most famous
essay,
"The Age of
Criticism," perhaps his
seems in retrospect to have the flavor of a prophecy:
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION
of the most extreme tendencies of Jarrell's time and
descriptive
it is
47
uncannily predictive of the commonplaces of ours.
Too much enough
ingenuity was going into
and poems,
into stories
much of what
Criticism." So
critical
complained
Jarrell
essays,
and not
"The Age of
in
passed for criticism "might just as well
have been written by a syndicate of encyclopedias for an audience of International Business Machines."
hope
Who could want to read, who could
to learn from, such "astonishingly graceless, joyless, humorless,
long-winded, niggling, blinkered, methodical, self-important, cliche-
Yet
ridden, prestige-obsessed, almost-autonomous criticism"?
cism, pursued as an end in
archetypal act. is
It
itself,
literary intellectual's
could no longer be taken for granted that criticism
"necessarily secondary to the
no longer
had become the
criti-
works of art
about"
—
was, in
fact,
self-evident that criticism had to be "about" anything.
The
it's
it
nature of criticism itself had been distorted, obliging Jarrell to state his first
principles: "Criticism does exist, doesn't
and
stories
and poems
Criticism was trying,
it
it
work
for the sake of the plays
does not."
this criticism
seemed, to supplant art and literature. Mindful
of the greater glory attached to the give their
it,
Much of
criticizes?
sciences,
some
wanted
critics
to
the veneer of a chemical analysis. Pseudoscientific
jargon was routine, and more care went into the development of a
"method" than
into anything that
might make us better
soon reach the point, Jarrell predicted, absurd theory fessionally
The
—
—
if it
will
do
is
way
the theorist
to the age
no harm
of theory
Vietnam made postwar obsolete
You
in the eyes
of his colleagues."
as
at
The age of
roughly the same time that
an adjective for the contemporary
can date the onset of the change to 1966 and a
to herald the arrival
of structural-
ism, Jacques Derrida subversively declared that structuralism /?(?5/
structuralism
now-
Johns Hopkins University.
at the
At the conference, which was meant
—and
will
which "the most obviously
legendary academic conference held
ished
It
maintained intensively, exhaustively, and pro-
specter Jarrell feared has long since materialized.
criticism gave
world.
at
readers.
was
fin-
was born. The following year Derrida
published three of his most formidable theoretical studies of writing, or
ecriture,
In
May
aiming to unmask the assumptions of Western metaphysics.
1968
— with
Paris in a state
of revolutionary uproar
in New York declaring humanism the enemy in "The Ends of Man." At the same time, and with
was
a
a
—Derrida
paper entitled
much wider
SIGNS
48
TIMES
THE
OF
audience,
Roland Barthes was making
literature
and the orgasmic "pleasure of the
pronouncements about
radical
Vanguard English
text."
from Barthes, Derrida,
professors began to quote in their lectures
Michel Foucault, and other "revolutionary" French
On
a grass-roots level, the domestic political upheavals
Democratic National Convention the
scale
in
Chicago was repeated
—
and without the bloodshed
ate students
—were
Blake appeared
down
convention, and
Vietnam was
it
The
The
of literary
on which the words of William "The tigers of wrath are wiser than
had
a lasting
symbolic significance. The war
result in
studies.
American
lit-crit
many
I.
a
of foppish French
time was a transformation of the very nature
outlook. Theory
would
reign
A. Richards in the 192()s
where
— term —had been
practical criti-
corned by the
the
host to a great
of them involved the interpretation
novel or a play or a poem. Critical theory, the
of the academic
literary
Thenceforth the study of literature could be primar-
different tendencies, but all
of a work,
in
profession slowly but
in favor
cism once held sway. Practical criticism British critic
And what
radical than critical theory?
tweedy English image
ily theoretical in
two graduThe
incident sparked a mini-rebellion at the
In the ensuing decade, the its
a professor and
radicalizing the profession.
was more
steadily shed
—
a poster
as a call to action:
the horses of instruction."
fashions.
annual convention of
arrested after a scuffle with hotel guards.
guards had tried to tear
studies
a
Association,
convention's headquarters, three activists
MLA
at the
at the
—on
which took place in New York December. At the Americana Hotel, which served as the
Modern Language
City that
in
of 1968
The turmoil
gave theory an added impetus in the United States.
modest
theorists.
hill,
seemed to
issue a royal decree
sending
new king the work
of htcraturc into
exile. There were always honorable exceptions, critics whose involvement with theory didn't preclude an engagement with specific authors and texts. But many professors were swept up in the intoxicating notion that criticism could heautotelic: it needed no object
of study outside of
them
as
itself. It
could ignore literary works;
it
could treat
specimens with no inherent value, symptoms ot a syndrome
rather than unique
works o(
art;
or
it
could use them
as
convenient
points of departure for fanciful "interpretations" that bespoke the critic's
ingenuity and were their
ticularity
of the work
in question
no longer, properly speaking,
own was
excuse for being.
lost in
criticism at
all
any but
The
case. Criticism ecriturc,
par-
was
a species
of
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION writing;
could revel in
it
needing no
God
autonomous
liberated state, an
its
subject to validate
it.
With
49
entity,
the zeal of Nietzsche announccritics
proclaimed
the death of the author; with the enthusiasm of a stripper
determmed
ing the death of
French
a century ago, certain
to take everything off, a British neo-Marxist
and more
literature;
pronounced the death of long-winded, nig-
"graceless, joyless, humorless,
gling, blinkered, methodical, self-important, cliche-ridden, prestige-
obsessed" prose gushed out than ever before
much of it no
longer concerned
itself
—with
the difference that
with any actual novel or poem
or play. It
would be an exaggeration to say that the present age of theory what was best about the age of criticism and magnifies its
repudiates
most questionable
own essays
features,
—
but
it
wouldn't be exaggerating much.
the contagious enthusiasm with which he praised, which he scorned testify to the passionate engagement with literature that was common once but is now long out of fashion. Chances are, if you majored in English between 1945 and 1970 you
Jarrell's
—
the dash with
studied literature primarily under the precepts of what the
"New
Criticism."
Developed
in the 1930s,
was then
called
widely disseminated by
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren in their textbook antholo-
and Understanding
gies Understanding Poetry
taught
two
what terms
how
generations of students to use
Fiction, the
New Criticism
works of
to read
literature,
m their analyses, what characteristics to value
paradox, complexity, and ambiguity), what to scrutinize (the
(irony,
tale,
not
what to disregard (the intentions of the writer, the impact of the work on its readers), and which periods of English literary history were most deserving of careful study (the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century were in, the poets of the Romantic movement were out). The New Criticism was still "new" enough to raise the teller),
hackles
among
self-styled traditionalists as late as 1948.
president of the
behalf of "the
Modern Language
common
That year the
Association launched a polemic in
reader" against the
New
Criticism's "fetish"
of complexity and ambiguity. But such rear guard actions did nothing
New
to prevent the
Criticism's conquest of the profession
on postwar
influence
literature itself.
Blackmur
—
New
At
its
critics as
R.
effective
pedagogy. Though many of the
tively
P.
patrician
liberating
in
their
the
manner and
and populist about
best
Criticism
—
New
values,
their insistence
in the
made
—and
its
work of such
for tremendously
Critics
were
instinc-
there was something on reading poems and
SIGNS
50
TIMES
THE
OF
novels without much, if any, reference to historical scholarship or biographical research.
It
meant
that students didn't need to
have had
prep-school training, nor did they need to be amateur scholars; they
simply had to be good readers. At a time
when
the ranks of college
students were swelled by the GI Bill, this method of reading promised access to a great line
work
of
works.
literary
for the pleasure, the
New
To
who were
all
of English
texts
literature.
New
Criticism did have
us," as Lionel Trilling put
we
its
polemical tendency
tendency went very
—
"to urge
amount of attention But Trilling, to whom
"to minimize the
it,
give to the poet's social and personal will."
this
of an
Critics rendered the fruits
immediate encounter with some of the canonical
The
willing to
much
against the grain, objected to the
New
Criticism as a doctrine, not as a set of techniques applied to the formal analysis
of
literary
works. The methods of the
New
Criticism were
themselves quite useful, provided only that the study of a work's
formal elements be not undertaken to the exclusion of historical and biographical considerations. Trilling,
who put the methods of the New
Criticism to use in several notable essays, always went beyond formal-
ism to attend to the cultural implications of a work of
literature,
its
short, the methods from incompatible with "the classic defense of literary study," in his formulation: "that, from the effect which the study of literature has upon the private sentiments of the student, there results, or can be made to result, an improvement ideas, its intentions, its effects.
developed by the
New
in the intelligence,
moral
A
far
and especially the intelligence
good many of
literature
—
the
New
Their
as it
touches the
student.
Critics,
being poets themselves, had
critical energies
were put
at the service
evaluating aesthetic success, enforcing critical discrimi-
nations, illuminating difficult
to
For Trilling, in
were
life."
their priorities straight.
of
Critics
The emphasis was on
what Blackmur
works and making them
accessible to the
close reading, with painstaking attention
called "language as gesture"
—
the
ways writers
charged their words with meaning. Literary works were admired artistic totalities: a successful
"verbal icon." like to
poem was
The myrmidons of
smash that particular icon
a
"well-wrought urn" or
literary theory,
—
can have a transcendent value just
by
contrast,
as
a
would
they repudiate the notion that art as
they dismiss Trilling's moral
rationale for literary studies, and they insist that criticism need not take
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTiON a
"secondary" place to
When
art.
commentary may
"literary
he
is
Geoffrey Hartman presses "the
with the creative writer, and adds that
reader-critic's claim to parity"
literature,"
51
and become
cross the line
as
demandmg
as
rebelling against a constraint that critics of a previous
Of course,
generation never questioned.
there
is
work of
criticism can't itself aspire to being a
no reason
literature.
work of
a
One
thinks
immediately of the lucidity, complexity, and brilliance of Trilling's
The Liberal Imagination and Beyond Culture. The prose pro-
essays in
duced under the dispensation of advanced very often has
Hartman
little in
common
critical theory,
with either
however,
literature or criticism.
himself, in a chastened spirit, once described the critic as "an
overgoer with pen-envy." The whole vogue of literary theory be an effort to compensate for what Hartman frankly called the "inferiority
complex
critic's
vis-a-vis art."
one way the
In at least
may
New Critics did prepare the ground for New Critics, a work of literature could
the theorists of today. For the
be treated
as
an isolated textual experience, stripped of social and
historical considerations. Literary theorists,
going further, disregard
not only the author's stated intentions but the very concept of authorship,
and
theorist
in all
too
many
cases the
the one he or she
is
is
primary text of concern to the
writing. Barbara Herrnstein Smith's
Contingencies of Value begins with a brief chapter about her classroom
experience teaching Shakespeare's sonnets
—about
the
m
which
The
discus-
ways
her responses to the sonnets have changed over the years.
on the no other example
sion serves as a springboard for Smith's theoretical disquisition
merits of relativism; after these
of
how
specific readers
make
few
sense
pages, she offers
of
specific
Critics labeled "the intentional fallacy"
—
works.
a
of both,
Forster liked to that he
was
has evidently been
"My
—
very well, says his aunt, but what will he
dear aunt," says the
doesn't write about anything.
One just
may
sport signs
young man,
peevishly, "one
writes." Substitute theorize for
and you have an inkling of what's
aspirant in the university today.
professors
—
The author is dead, and so is the oldThe theorist has risen out of the theorizing about everything and nothing. E. M. tell the story of the young man who declared one day
a writer. That's
write about?
write
New
logical extreme.
fashioned interpreter of literature. ashes
the
the reasoning that allowed
the critic to disregard the author's testimony
taken to
What
in store for that
Though
same
literary
the office doors of resisting
on them saying "Theory: Just Say No,"
the
SIGNS
52
TIMES
THE
OF
ambitious graduate student finds out in a hurry that theory the glory
is
where
is.
commonplace wisdom among job-seekers
It is
—
me
—
at
ML A
conven-
gathering "if you want to you have to be a deconstructionist or a Marxist or a feminist. Otherwise you don't stand a chance. You're not taken seriously. You're on the fringe. It doesn't matter what you know or don't know. What counts is your theoretical approach. And that means knowing the jargon, and who's in and who's out." His companion agreed, adding ominously that "to be a white male in academia today is like being a leper in the Middle Ages." Then the two of them went off to attend a session on "The Muse of Masturbation." There would be papers on "Clitoral Imagery and Masturbation in Emily Dickinson" something called "clitoral hermeneutics" is in and on "Desublimating the Male Sublime: Autoerotics, Anal Erotics, and Corporeal Violence in Melville and William Burroughs." tions that
make
it
one told
as
—
—
I
at a recent
in the criticism racket,
asked another conventioneer to help
tics."
said that
I
I
me decipher
me
as elusive.
graduate, told
ology
My
feminists
who want
It is,
emphasis on the clitoris as
on
it
some
sort
of sexual discourse." Other as
feminists,
an inadequate penis.
I
still
a
as the
view
wasn't sure what any of
literary criticism or the teaching profession but
of theoretical statement when she declared
inson's poetic style
my
"pseudophalloccntric," since an
was making
faith that the speaker in the conference hall
dimension of
MLA
championed by those
might arouse old bugbears, such
clitoris
had to do with
took
she said,
to "valorize" the clitoris rather than the vagina
guide explained, deride the concept
this
the interpretation of texts)
me that a synonym for this adventure in critical method-
in "the binary opposition
of the
is,
informant, an affably nondoctrinaire Yale
"ovarian hermeneutics."
is
hermeneu-
could grasp the clitoral part of the equation but that
the implications for hermeneutics (that struck
"clitoral
was
"clitoral."
work of
art.
Or
so
Gender I
that
Emily Dick-
now amounts
to a formal
gathered in the corridors of the
convention.
It
is
the age of theory in the seminar
deconstruction
is
rooms of America, and
the paradigmatic theory of the age.
Upon
the users
methodology
that
can be universally applied. Less a coherent system of beliefs than a
way
of its arcane terminology
it
confers elite status, and a
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION of thinking, deconstruction riddles
and conundrums, paradoxes and
in effect
it
words of
says (in the
know
"everything you
doubt over the very con-
casts skeptical
cepts of coherence and system and behef.
53
dazzles the initiate with
It
reversals. Its skepticism
is
total;
Theater comedy routine)
a Firesign
wrong/'
is
Deconstructionists like putting things, as they say, sous rature
("under erasure").
A
typical ploy
form, with slash marks running through them,
in cancelled
and exclude them
to include
words or phrases
to print certain
is
what
"signs," but
by way of "challenging
at the
same time. Words for Derrida
The answer he
a sign?
is
gives in
are
Of Grammatology,
form of the question,"
the very
though
as
that "the
is
the only one, that escapes the instituting ?' " The purpose of this typoquestion of philosophy: 'what is sign
is
that ill-named thing
,
.
graphical maneuver,
.
.
which Derrida derives from Heidegger, is to though inadequate, are the only ones
indicate that the cancelled words,
available to the writer. point,
though
program
idea of printing
And
ideas.
interesting
words with
slash
workings of
own
its
wet sponge
a fresh
.
to the
the logic of self-cancellation
marks through them
of typographical horseplay but
enterprise: the
boasts of
would apply
that
blackboard of received
a clever bit
makes an
it
however, putting things "under erasure" suggests an
larger sense, intellectual
a flashy gesture, and
It's
can quickly become an annoying affectation. In a
it
—
the
not merely
is
metaphor for
a
—
a larger
extreme doubt,
a theory that revels in
contrarian stance, asserts ideas without necessarily
subscribing to them, and regards
moments of
self-contradiction as
supernally important.
Among
those deconstructionists old-fashioned
about honest-to-god literary works, there linguistic
and rhetorical considerations over
amount of effort expended work in question can be shown
ble
a
meaning. Readers interested
poem, or
in evaluating the
the ideas and the values
deconstruction
of knowledge ally.
A
isn't
—
—
to contradict
in the
degree of
knowledge but it
that the "I"
a considera-
where the own power to make
its
moral dimension of its artistic
was the fashion tells
The Turn of the Screw may not be
art
a
novel or
success, or in treating it.
What you
a reflexive suspicion
extended to
who
and
to locate the exact place
promotes, can forget
a suspicion
generation ago
unreliable
it
others,
all
to write
tendency to elevate
a
is
enough
of
get with
all
sources
and culture more gener-
to declare that narrators are
the talc of Wutherin^i Hcij^hts or telling us the full story.
That
is
a
— SIGNS
54
among
useful insight;
other things
TIMES
THE
OF
reminds us that the author
it
is
not
to be confused with his or her characters. Deconstruction extends that
New Critical
insight to another plane, jumping
tors to duplicitous texts, as if authors
no more
real
—
from unreliable narra-
were no more trustworthy
than the characters they create. Authors,
if
properly
deconstructed, are fictional entities, or they are the unwitting pieces for a reigning ideology. Art is
to demystify
It is
This task gives the deconstructionist a heady rush:
it.
than
its
not only possible for the author did;
divided against
mouth-
mystification, and the critic's job
is
power over
in deconstructing a text, the critic establishes his or her it.
—and
it is
itself.
critic to
know more
about the text
also possible to expose that text as a
The author
as
an authority
is
house
dead; the authority
has been transferred to the critic.
Readers educated with the precepts of the
"New Criticism" were
taught to prize ambiguity, complexity, and irony in a
work of literature. The ambiguity of a
It
was the
it
was resolved
it is
passage spoke in
its
favor.
show how
elucidate the ambiguity and to
critic's task to
in the unified text; the analysis enriched the reader's
experience of the text by deepening tionists,
as cardinal virtues
however,
texts are
meaning. For the deconstruc-
its
not simply ambiguous but indeterminate
impossible for the theorist to decide which of several conflicting
meanings
is
the right one.
Meaning
itself evaporates; the
indeterminacy suggests that interpretation exercise. In short,
is
where "ambiguity" was
theory of
a futile or self-defeating
of the text and
a property
supported the idea of meaning, "indeterminacy"
is
a
property of the
interpretation and argues in favor of meaninglessness.
For the deconstructionists, literature instabiHty of language as a
medium
for
illustrates the
fundamental
communication. Language
is
autonomous and beyond our ability to control The grammar of a given statement might be at odds with its rhetoric the how and the what of a sentence can clash as in the like a biological system,
it.
—
—
familiar linguistic paradox this sentence
neither true nor false, for other.
them
The
trick
in the act
is
itly
is false,
syntax points one
a statement that can be
way and
to apply this insight to literary
its
content the
works and expose
of sclf-implosion. For deconstruction, according to one
school of thought,
works of
its
is
something that
literature," writes J.
any deconstruction the
look hard enough
at a
literature does to itself.
"Great
Hillis Miller, "have anticipated explic-
critic
poem by
can achieve." Accordingly, Yeats,
it
can be
shown
if
you
to say the
a
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION Opposite of what
55
appears to say: in covert ways, texts contradict
it
more interested in what is covThe deconstructive analysis of a
themselves, and deconstructionists are ert,
or absent, than in what
is
there.
literary
work
tainty
or what deconstructionists in
nearly always ends in a
—
moment of
terminal uncer-
good standing
call
an aporia.
Paul de Man, America's premier practitioner of literary deconstruction, likened the
predicament to getting stuck in a revolving door.
not a very comfortable situation, but
any
critical
methodology
result each time,
of both
literature
that virtually guarantees the
and
way of
cabalistic mysteries
ceremony.
same dismal
criticism.
is
full
of paradox.
examines the fallout from
complicated
only part of the problem:
that's
ahead of time, seems cruelly and needlessly reductive
Deconstruction it
An
antitheological theology,
the absence of a transcendental signified
—
saying the death of god
and
yet
it
shrouds
rituals as elaborate as those
One of its aims is demystification and values by which we
that the ideals
—
it is
no power
to
command
us.
—
itself in
of a religious
determined to show not natural and
live are
inevitable but are artificial constructions, arbitrary choices that to have
It's
ought
Yet, like a religion-substitute,
deconstruction employs an arcane vocabulary seemingly designed to
keep the
laity in a state
of permanent mystification. Putatively an-
become
dogma. Founded on extreme skepticism and disbelief, it attracts true believers and demands their total immersion. No skeptic ever sounded more sure of himself than did Paul de Man, and no iconoclast sounds more worshipful than does a keeper of tidogmatic,
de Man's
it
has
a
faith.
Which
more paradox: though
brings us to one
it
staunchly bears
an adversarial relation to prevailing conventions and institutions, deconstruction in America
is
itself
an institution and a convention.
vogue of deconstruction was short-lived really
took hold.
It
was
in the
hospitable reception and took
its
it
found
its
most
most extreme form. The French
critic
United
States that
it
Julia Kristeva observed in 1986 that a hard-line version
tion had
"become
a sort
The
England
in France; in
of monopoly"
in the
never
of deconstruc-
high echelons of Ameri-
can literary criticism. "In America, the so-called deconstructionists think that, because ethics and history belong to metaphysics and because metaphysics ethics
is
criticized
and history no longer
by Heidegger or
his
French followers,
exist," said Kristeva,
whose own post-
structuralist credentials are impeccable.
When
she lectures in America,
SIGNS
56
"somebody
she added,
TIMES
THE
OF
in the audience
always asks
why
I
speak about
and history when those notions already have been deconstructed.
ethics
Not even
the most dogmatic French deconstructionists ask such ques-
tions."
Shortly after de Man's death in 1983, Derrida tossed out the hypothesis that "America
deconstruction" (or that America
is
be "the proper name of deconstruction in progress,"
if
only Derrida
could bring himself to believe in proper names). The United he declared,
and through
most
which today,
"is that historical space all its
power
in all
would
its
States,
dimensions
plays, reveals itself as being undeniably the
sensitive, receptive, or responsive space
of
all
to the themes
and
effects
of deconstruction." This was a point that Derrida's angriest
critics
could concede. Deconstruction in the United States had very
quickly gone from an antiestablishment insurgency to an entrenched
power. Some deconstructionists even wondered out loud
institutional
whether the subversive force of their theory was arrested by the speed with which
had been assimilated
it
some of them
recalled the pedagogical
described in his famous essay (1961).
Modern lists,
"On
American academy. Perhaps
dilemma
that Lionel Trilling
the Teaching of Modern Literature"
writers engage in a quarrel with the culture at large
but, as Trilling pointed out,
reading
in the
impact
their
when
is
these
same writers enter the required
cushioned by the academic structure of
term papers and examination questions. The "terrors and mysteries" of
modern
literature
had
left Trilling's
students
unmoved:
them
"I asked
to look into the Abyss, and, both dutifully and gladly, they have
looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss has greeted them with the grave courtesy of
And lie
all
my
of serious study, saying:
'Interesting,
am
I
not?
you consider how deep I am and what dread beasts bottom. Have it well in mind that a knowledge of me if
cxa'tiN{y,
at
objects
contributes materially to your being whole, or well-rounded, men.' Trilling sought to
modern
convey
literature at
its
a shortcut to the abyss.
to his students the characteristic ideas
most disturbing; what deconstruction
offers
"
of is
Deconstruction therefore hastens the process
that Trilling called "the legitimization
of the subversive." Just as when asked to ponder "the
students in the early 196()s didn't bat an eye alienation of
modern man
terparts today
may
as
exemplified by the
artist," so their
cheerfully "reverse a binary opposition"
coun-
—
with,
grasp of the force of the proposition to which they
perhaps, as
little
have given
their reflexive assent.
To mouth
the jargon of deconstruc-
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION tion does
more
57
to establish a student's academic standing than to
"dismantle" any system of thought or action.
The function of
criticism,
may
it
be argued,
is
not to affirm the
of culture and society but to challenge them. The problem with
pieties
deconstruction and
offshoots
its
is
that they substitute
one
set
of pieties
for another. In the age of theory, criticism doesn't need to get things right; "all readings are misreadings"
Critics therefore
commenting on literature
a
contemporary shibboleth.
have the license to take what a
book. In practice,
"theoretical" studies
of
is
—books and
they like in
of
essays that refer primarily to theories
works themmany meticulous and minute dissections of
and only incidentally
selves. It has also led to
liberties
this has led to a proliferation
to literary
(if at all)
given "texts" with a view toward demonstrating some a priori axioms. Literary
works
are routinely reduced to their linguistic components,
their rhetorical stratagems laid bare. It
ing history,
nothing It
a fiction
is
or, perhaps, a
—
is
considered the height of
is
naivete to suppose that a character in fiction
—and
everything, includ-
anything but a "sign": a cipher signifying
mark of economic
class
or sexual "difference."
retrograde in the highest degree to imagine that Shakespeare's
IS
heroes and Jane Austen's heroines resemble actual
may lives.
ence
human
beings and
therefore have something to teach us about the conduct of our
Mimesis
—
is
as a project
—
literature as the representation
held to be a futile anachronism.
For the hard-line deconstructionist, not only referential;
its
meanings are undecidable,
velocity and location of a
mous
life
—words
of their own. mise
of experi-
Itself
Any
moving
literature self-
"indeterminate"
as
electron.
is
as
the
Language has an autono-
acquire and discard meanings as if they had minds text,
any system of signs, can be shown to compro-
from within. Here,
for example,
is
the opening oi the
Gettysburg Address: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on
this
new
continent a
dedicated to the proposition that us will
relation to the Declaration
men as
men
this
are created equal."
statement or
of Independence,
arc created equal" also appears; Lincoln
one of the nation's founding
ever,
all
have no trouble construing
nation, conceived in liberty, and
might pause over "our
principles.
fathers
A
in
its
Most of
"intertextual"
which the phrase
means
"all
to exalt equality
deconstructionist,
how-
brought forth" and "conceived,"
characterizing this trope as an attempt to appropriate for the patriarchal authorities the procreative
power
vested in the female body. "All
SIGNS
58
men
TIMES
THE
OF
might point out
are created equal," but the deconstructionist
that
"men" excludes women and other "marginalized" figures and that the document therefore promotes something other than full equality. "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people," Lincoln
but
urged,
Mencken once
did
—
deconstructionist
the that
may
argue
—
H.
as
L.
was actually the Confederate states that At work in such exercises is a kind of
it
fought for self-determination.
The
perverse imperative.
must expose the
critic
expose a scam or a sham, for
all texts
are
presumed
one would
text as
guilty, complicitous
with a Western philosophical tradition that the procedures of deconstruction are designed to discredit.
My own first exposure to deconstruction occurred before it
my
and
business to read Derrida, de
detail.
I
Man, and
got a strong dose of the stuff during a year
University, where
could
embraced
Many of
maybe
was
it
that implied
"meaning
Everything
know
is
is
fascist."
—
own phrase was common
his it
We
logic of his position.
me
it
with an
is
false."
to regard insist
inhabit, he said, an indeterminate universe.
It is
to
is
all
more
—
uphold
the only
is
on
way wc
interpretation,
correct than any other.
The proper
interpretations as equally "not true and not
that a given piece
and decided
specific
others.
is
To
of assurance
by using words. And the words of any discourse
and no interpretation attitude
air
knowledge. Calmly he explained the
mediated entirely through language
anything
in all
Maybe he was quoting somebody,
but he said
constantly shift their meaning. Everything depends
one meaning
to elevate
a hierarchy
o( discourse means something
of values, and
at the
expense of the
that renders
one guilty
a dictatorial urge. Fascism, in short.
On the
They
you what "phallocentrism" was, and how to "reverse hierarand why it was a good idea to put some words "under erasure."
earnestness that
of
Cornell
critical theory.
sympathetic and highly intelligent doctoral candidate told
can
made depth
tell
chies,"
A
at
held a postdoctoral fellowship in 1980.
I
the brightest graduate students had
I
their followers in
another occasion,
Temple of Zeus,
faculty at Cornell.
One of
them,
who
a
We
I
went with
a friend
and fellow writer to
basement snack bar favored by the sat
suffered
literature
with two well-known deconstructionists.
from
he was working "on" plagiarism
a severe case
—he wanted
of
writer's block, said
to deconstruct the "hys-
1
I
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION
man
The other problem what
word) with which colleges
teria" (his
treat plagiarism cases.
—
made plagiarism a theoretical The author, you see, is dead. And with
explained what
"problematizes"
59
it.
his or her
elimination, the text enters the academic equivalent of the public
domain. Since
belongs not to the writer but to everyone, the logic
it
that labels plagiarism a vice
terms of a political allegory.
cast in the
means of
called into question. This, too,
is
literary production,
rebel against his authority (a
The
may
author, controlling the
the fat-cat capitalist. Readers
is
pun
who
that clinches the case) are the heroic
proletariat, appropriating the language factory. "Private property theft," the professor concluded,
be
with the
of having
air
said
is
something
quite original.
"Maybe," plagiarism if
I
my writer friend,
you were
my
precision; for
anything.
replied
I
think
was
I
a
and irresponsibility;
stint
admired
his terse
teaching at Hamilton
student honor code.
universities, plagiarism
At Hamilton,
as
equated with dishonesty
is
who plagiarizes a term paper has comWere honor and integrity, then, to be written
a student
mitted a grave offense.
Were my
off as "hysteria"?
its
I
about
too stunned to say
little
had just completed a four-year
most colleges and
feel differently
the author of books."
part,
College, which takes pride in at
"you'd
interlocutors really intent
our cultural condemnation of plagiarism, and
if so,
on undermining what would the
practical consequences be? Perhaps their attack
on the notion of plagia-
rism was a merely "academic" exercise.
made me
eloquent ticity,
in
madness to
final
which Trilling observes
—
the
It
think of the
paragraph in Lionel Trilling's book Sincerity and Authen-
view
that
madness
that proponents
is
a liberating condition
go crazy themselves. Trilling remarks
intellectual life
of the doctrine of
of our culture that
does not involve actual credence."
it
that "it
fosters a
To
see
—
don't plan
characteristic
is
form of
how
of the
assent
which
this applies
to the
you need only consult the leading journals in which duke it out. When an article critical of Jacques Der-
deconstructionists, critical theorists
rida or J. Hillis Miller appears, these exponents
violation of their
own
sion of the truth,
edicts
wrong
to call their critics
which
—
about authors and
of deconstruction, texts, will
as if they, as authors,
their
own
texts,
were
in
not hesitate
in sole posses-
unlike those of the hapless
authors they deconstruct, arc supposed to reveal. In the literary
magazine
Scripsi,
I
came
across a piece
matic verse by the Australian poet Laurie Duggan,
who
of epigram-
had evidently
SIGNS
60
TIMES
THE
OF
poem
encountered some variant of the antiplagiarism rap. Duggan's is
of the Text":
entitled "Pleasures
The
editor of a magazine
who
denied "authorship"
more than
a function
as
of print
sues a parodist for libel.
Given the
possibility that a sincere deconstructionist
in terms
sincerity
—
—
is,
a contradiction
one more concept that awaits disman-
after all,
Duggan
is
upon the right ironic tone with which to discuss the whole phenomenon. It is surely a happy alternative to the apoplectic sputtering to which deconstruction has been tling
suspect that
I
known
many
to reduce
"America
otherwise highly articulate professors.
crazy about deconstruction," says a European profes-
is
sor in Small World,
David Lodge's send-up of jet-setting academic
conferencegoers in the age of Professor Morris says, last
"I'm a
bit
struction
Zapp of "Euphoric
This
makes
is
it
is
that?" she asks.
State" has an answer. "Well," he
kind of exciting
It's
idle figure
as
his
book Beyond Decon-
Felperin evokes the same image to describe the
Felperin does, the undeniable fact that so
perceive in deconstruction a threat to their
And
the
of speech: something about decon-
contradictory impulses that deconstruction both embodies and
Consider,
—
Like sawing through the branch you're
seem an inevitable trope. In
Howard
struction,
no
"Why
critical theory.
of a deconstructionist myself.
intellectual thrill left.
sitting on."
has hit
own
many
tasks
and
elicits.
professors
enterprises.
then, the paradoxical contrary: that deconstruction through the
and
197()s lit-crit
198()s
was the only available "market opportunity"
biz after the golden era
New
of the old
in the
Criticism. Consider,
two groups, Felperin's comment:
too, that the resistance to deconstruction divides itself into
which
dislike
it
for apparently conflicting reasons.
The view of deconstruction with the view of priests
of
of
it
a religion
their status
as a nihilist
as
an
of
literature
elitist cult.
Why
want
and power? Such a
plot
is
incompatible
would
the high
to abolish the source
state
of
affairs
would be
akin to the mafia lobbying for the extirpation of opium-
I
I
b
a
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION networks
61
man sawing
routine of a
bough on which he
off the
Deconstruction cannot, within Aristotehan logic
what each of can
its
nihilist plot
—
be
—
one and the same time.
at
it?
own
Felperin answers his
question by remarking that "within the
current system of institutional politics, deconstruction elitist
sits.
at least,
chief polemical opponents has claimed
and a
priestly cult
Or
comic
south-east Asia, or to the venerable
in
and conservative in relation to marxism, while
established formalism
may seem
it
utterly radical."
may
well seem
in relation to
But
our
to argue this
way, Felperin acknowledges, would be "to play into the hands of deconstruction," which
on being "contradictory,
sets store
multivocal, mind-boggling"
—on
perverse,
being, or appearing to be, suspended
in metaphysical space.
David Lodge writes
Howard
Felperin, as a critic
abuses of literary theory.
dweller
as a
is
found
bemused
of academic mores;
satirist
who would
separate the uses
from the
But the image of the saw-wielding
also in the
work of
proponent of decon-
a leading
struction. Jonathan Culler celebrates the activity in his
book On Decon-
struction:
Deconstruction's procedure
is
on which one
This
is
sitting."
called
"sawing off the branch
may
be, in fact, an apt
description of the activity, for though
somewhat
One
risky,
can and
it is
may
it
There
is
to
risk
the
is
unusual and
manifestly something one can attempt.
continue to
sit
on
a
branch while sawing
no physical or moral obstacle
it.
consequences.
whether one will succeed
The
where and how one might
land.
if
question
sawing
in
A
it
one then
is
willing
becomes
clear through,
and
difficult question: to
answer one would need a comprehensive understanding of the entire situation ficacy
of one's
—
the resilience of the support, the ef-
tools, the shape
of the
terrain
—and
to predict accurately the consequences of one's
"sawing off the branch on which one foolhardy to sche, Freud, if
they
fall
men of common
sense,
it is
is
an ability
work.
sitting,"
If
seems
not so for Nietz-
Heidegger, and Derrida; for they suspect that there
is
no "ground"
tree-
to hit and that the
most
SIGNS
62
clear-sighted act
culated
may
TIMES
THE
OF
be a certain reckless sawing, a cal-
dismemberment or deconstruction of the great cawhich Man has taken shelter for mil-
thedral-like trees in lennia.
This
a remarkable passage, not least because
is
it is
offered without the
leaven of humor. Unlike dadaism, Derridadaism characteristically does its
mischief with an
of solemnity. And
air
we
are not certain
whether
mount a volunteer rescue force to when they fall. The contempt for
to laugh uneasily in response or to
save the suicidal branch-sitters
"common
of "reckless sawing," the
sense," the praise
desire for "a
dismemberment or deconstruction of the great cathedralwhich Man has taken shelter for millennia" should make us uneasy. Yet we must remind ourselves that the daredevilry is all sleight of hand there's no need for a safety net if there's no ground to hit. Only in the never-never land of theory, where the law of calculated
like trees in
—
gravity
may
be transgressed without penalty, can such reckless proce-
dures be recommended. The the
comedian Ernie Kovacs
struction
when,
after
hit
in an episode
branch on which he action.
last intellectual thrill left.
sat
upon
the perfect
It is
possible that
comment on decon-
of his television show, he sawed off the
while delivering a monologue unrelated to the
Kovacs remained on the branch, which remained
in the air,
he finished sawing. The tree had fallen down.
How
did
we
get to this vertiginous depiction of the critic's lot?
The transformation of happened
in stages,
literary criticism into
not
all at
vaporous
critical
theory
one time, and the present "mmd-bog-
gling" dispensation was anticipated a century ago by that masterly
maker of paradoxes, Oscar Wilde. critics
of every generation
stated the classic position.
feel
The
"to see the object as in itself
it
now, was "the which the Matthew Arnold
In question, then as
function of criticism at the present time"
—
a question to
obliged to return.
function of criticism, Arnold wrote, really is."
is
Proper observation was held
you endeavored to see things clearly and to them whole, and you expected thereby to learn "the best that is
to be a moral imperative; see
known and thought
in the
thetic" alternative to the
world." Walter Pater presented an "aes-
moral instrument Arnold had proposed.
Arnold had proposed disinterestedness
as a criterion for critical
judg-
ment; Pater insisted that subjectivity was inevitable and should not be scorned, and he revised Arnold's dictum accordingly. "In aesthetic
I
— CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION criticism," Pater wrote, "the first step itself it really
nate
to realise
it,
Where
further.
to
is, is
know
towards seeing the object
one's impression as
distinctly."
it
Oscar Wilde
Pater revised Arnold,
63
it
in
really
as in
to discrimi-
is,
impish delight went
Wilde deconstructed him
turned Arnold upside down. Arnold had assumed that,
as
he put
—he
it,
"the
power is of lower rank than the creative." Not so, wrote Wilde. The "highest" criticism is "more creative than creation, and the critical
primary aim of the
There
Wilde
do
to
is
poet
table, the
valid
The
an object.
us see the object "as in itself
on the
really
is
not."
it
enough
poet,
really
may show
is
by
—
his
Wilde's phrase. For what
critic as artist," in
says about criticism
way of rendering
it
accept his equation of art and criticism
is
of "the
identification
to see the object as in itself
is
happens, a measure of truth in Wilde's paradox.
as it
is,
you need
All
critic
of the poet's
as a description
the use of metaphor,
not."
To
makes
get us to see the pears
us nudes, viols, or bottles; Wallace
we
Stevens shows us a hut standing beneath palms and
see a pineapple.
The aim of art, what's more, needn't be the representation of an object in the first place; modern art doesn't characteristically ask to be judged on the
basis
of
its
matter, criticism
two art
not
is
to inflate the
is
—
fidelity to a
a curious ploy,
of wielding
art.
To
really
But
—
the crux of the
between the
human
affairs
art
is still
while criticism
and obscurity. Literature, not
capable is
busy
criticism,
is
dangerous activity; the death sentence on the
author of The Satanic Verses that.
is
obliterate the differences
and a self-defeating one, since
retreating into obscurantism
theory
this
importance of criticism while puncturing that of
a significant force in
and always was the of
model. But, and
is
only the most violent recent reminder
literature has received
for the deconstructionist,
it
its
walking papers
exists as
in the age
of
something to be willfully
misinterpreted if not ignored altogether. If our writers today operate largely in a critical void, surely
some of
the
blame attaches to the
academic theorists whose backs arc turned to books other than their
own.
To
cism
—
to
take Wilde's paradox as a practical dictum for literary criti-
make
us see things as they aren't
—may
be the license for a
visionary program. In the age of theory, however, "to see the object as in itself
which
is
it
really
not"
—
use to denote a
is
not" sounds suspiciously like uttering "the thing
the phrase that the noble horses in Gulliver's Travels
lie.
And
indeed a deconstructivc "ethics of reading"
proposed by J. Hillis Miller
in his
book of that
title
—
lays
heavy
stress
SIGNS
64
on lying
as a
THE
OF
"universal principle." "Ethicity," writes Miller with
characteristic clunkiness, "is a region
necessarily
TIMES
made
of human
life in
By
true."
Miller reduces ethical judgments to the status of
and confused:
it
is
is
"everything
is
by
identifying
gesture
is
is
a
lie,
phoney" view of with falsehood
perverse in a
way
would
life.)
—by
—
it
was only
is
it as it
really
that calls attention to itself.
a toy saw.
call this the
Miller deconstructs "ethicity" seeing
on the branch, sawing away, and we half-expect him doesn't
fiat,
His logic
and on the implicit assumption
"verifiably true." (Holden Caulfield
it
rhetorical
lies!
based on the dubious proposition that
everything not "verifiably true" that nothing
is
into a universal principle, in the sense that ethical
judgments are necessary but never verifiably circular
which lying
is
not.
The
The man
sits
to fall but he
CHAPTER
3
ARCH DEBUNKING Only
the sign
—
Back
want
it.
for sale.
either/or
Sf>ren Kierkegaard,
to square one:
at defining
is
What
is
(1843)
deconstruction? Here are seven attempts
Perhaps the overlapping elements will
tell
us
what we
know:
to
Deconstruction
is
the practice, in reading, of one
refuses to be lulled into the
who
complacency of self, into believ-
ing in the stability of reference, or in the appearance of a
web of meanings.
seamless
It is
a
debunking of the delusory
tokens of meaning and reference. .
.
.
the term invented
showing
analysis
by Dcrrida
that the
in the 1960's to describe
major structures by which
organize our thoughts are constructions,
we
not natural and
inevitable.
...
a
form of commentary
between the
stated content
rhetorical system lishes a
system
that
shows the connection
of a piece of writing and the
which controls
it.
The connection
estab-
discrepancy between the content and the rhetorical .
.
.
SIGNS
66
A
deconstructive reading
TIMES
THE
OF
an attempt to show
is
how
the
conspicuously foregrounded statements in a text are systematically related to discordant signifying elements that
thrown into
the text has
both to
when
recover what
a text
is
its
shadows or margins, an attempt and to analyze what happens
lost
read solely in function of intentionality,
is
meaningfulness, and representativity. Deconstruction thus confers a
new kind of readability on
that readers
those elements in a text
have traditionally been trained to disregard,
overcome, explain away, or edit out
—
contradictions, ob-
scurities, ambiguities, incoherences, discontinuities, ellipses,
interruptions, repetitions,
and plays of the
signifier.
... the dismantling of conceptual oppositions, the taking apart of hierarchical systems
To
deconstruct a discourse
the philosophy
which
it
it asserts,
relies,
of thought
is
to
.
.
show how
.
it
undermines
or the hierarchical oppositions on
by identifying in the text the rhetorical
operations that produce the supposed ground of argument, the key concept or premise.
A
deconstruction always has for
its
target to reveal the
existence of hidden articulations and fragmentations within
assumedly monadic
totalities.
Five of these definitions were culled from proponents of deconstruction; the other
What
two from
the definitions have in
all
as a vigilant activity is
who dissent for different reasons. common is the sense of deconstruction
critics
born of mistrust and suspicion. Deconstruction
presented as a negating force, a "debunking" or a "dismantling," the
establishment of a "discrepancy."
what you
see
is
It
never what you get. Meaning
deconstructionist refuses to be taken
bcHcd by
its
rhetoric; the
solidity of quicksand,
deny
its
proceeds on the assumption that
in.
work's "stated content"
is
and the marginal elements of
a text subvert or
"conspicuously foregrounded elements." Deconstruction ex-
selves, discerns "discrepancies" it
"delusory" and the
"supposed ground of argument" has the
poses "hidden" contradictions, shows
where
A
is
how
texts
"undermine" them-
and brings them to account. Every-
confronts "hierarchical systems" and systematically takes them
t
— DEBUNKING
ARCHIE apart.
The
artificial,
67
man-made,
"structures" of our thought are regarded as
Our
"not natural and inevitable." as if
constructed,
out of bricks and mortar
wrecking
in their turn to the
strict
are therefore subject
There are no second sense,
constructions in that
interpretations
of a broad or
ball.
values and our ideals arc
—and
truths, as
only rival
when we
construction of the Constitution.
speak
of
a tenet
It is
deconstruction that our words give us away. Language's "hidden articulations
reveal an
and fragmentations"
unspoken assumption.
If that
fondness for text and construction
giveaway. is
there to
—
belie a speaker's intention or is
so, surely the
rather than book
deconstructive
do with
a text or a construction
deconstruct
survives the translation
—
separate articles in the
New
1990. In one case
used in disparagement; in the other,
it is
page thirteen, Rosellen
Brown
uses the
word
to
as praise.
compliment
Don
Grown-Ups. Lurie has uncovered "the neoconservative and
subtext of
bunked
book
it.
will.
two
in
York Times Book Review of March 11,
Alison Lurie's treatment of children's literature in her book the
a
but to unravel or decon-
forms of literary journalism. The word deconstruct appears
On
is
debunk this primary sense of the word from academic discourse to more popular
to
is
— —but what
or idea
A book asks to be read; an idea, to be understood
struct it?
To
may
't
Tell
sexist
Wil Huygen's acclaimed book, Gnomes," and thus deHer "deconstruction" of a "superficially benign" children's
Brown
the credulous.
writes, give "valuable aid
(Brown was perhaps unaware
structed, in a witty essay, the language
and comfort" to
that Lurie has also
of deconstruction
all
but
decon-
itself.)
On
page sixteen, meanwhile, Gertrude Himmelfarb uses the word with a fully negative valence in the course
of praising the
Not By Fact Alone. The "favorable reception" history have received Critics Circle
for "people
Award
who
and weary above
are all
—
the
book had
in criticism
—
is,
won
just
late
John
Clive's
that Clive's essays
the National
on
Book
writes Himmelfarb, heartening
weary of some of the new fashions
in history,
of the indecent speed with which one fashion
succeeds another ('deconstructs' another, in the language of the latest fashion)." For distasteful,
word that
Himmelfarb, deconstruction
as
an academic tendency
but the interesting and perhaps surprising thing
as she uses it describes substantially the
Brown commends. To deconstruct is
to
is
is
that the
same debunking activity
debunk, systematically, rigorously, ruth-
SIGNS
68
lessly.
The point was punningly made by Paul de Man
of deconstructive exegesis. As a
feat
TIMES
THE
OF
within a narrow and patrician range
literary critic,
—
his
ness
—
text.
but on
De Man
Bunker
one occasion he turned to
describes an episode
oi All
operated
on
that order
of great-
a television sitcom for his
in the
husband whether he prefers
asks her
Man
de
famous
chosen authors were Proust,
Nietzsche, Rilke, Rousseau, and several others this
in a
Family in which Edith
his
bowling shoes laced
over or laced under. Archie Bunker answers her with an impatient question:
"What's the difference?" The question
Archie means to say that he doesn't care.
when
And
is
a rhetorical one;
so he does a
bum
slow
Edith, taking his question literally, proceeds to explain the
between the two ways of tying your
difference
Man
affords de
questions
may
a lighthearted
be taken
literally
yield opposing meanings.
To
way
—and
The example
laces.
to demonstrate that rhetorical that
even simple sentences
may
Archie Bunker, "what's the difference"
announces an indifference to any answer that can be given; to Edith Bunker, on the other hand,
it is
a simple query for information.
potential for misunderstanding and confusion
use of language
—
or
would
we
de Man's account
is
we were all may be, de Man
be, if
are. It
an inherent risk in our like
Edith Bunker. In
writes, "impossible to
decide by grammatical or other linguistic devices which of the
meanings
(that can
undecidability
is
Man
But de
ence?" This
is
it
two
be entirely incompatible) prevails." This notion of
at the heart
gets
he uses him to pay a Derrida. For
The
of de Man's deconstructive program.
more mileage than that out of Archie Bunker; punning homage to that arch-punster, Jacques
appears that Derrida, too, asks
in fact
"What
is
the Differ-
one of the central questions with which Derrida
investigates language.
He
moaning not because of
a
starts
with the premise that
a
word
presumed identity with an idea or
but because of the word's difference
from
language works, he proposes the neologism
To
describe the
difference,
a
its
a thing
words
the other
Hnguistic system. But Derrida goes further.
gains
m
its
way
combination
of the French word for "difference" and that for "deferral." In French
you
can't hear the difference
between
difference
and
differance,
but the
is Derrida's way of indicating that meaning of words is always and incessantly deferred, never present. de Man's conceit, Derrida is thus "a ^e- bunker rather than a 'Bun-
substitution of an a for the second e
the In
ker.' "
And
since arche
of the arche
(or
is
the
origin)"
Greek word for
—convinced
as
origin, he
he
is
that
is
"a de-bunker
language and
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
thought lack foundation. The doyen of
differance
is,
69
in short,
hereby
dubbed "an archie De-bunker." propose that
I
a fancy
name
we
take de
Man at his word
for "archie debunking."
of de Man's complicated joke
—
Doing
and
deconstruction
call
so risks missing the point
or deconstructs
it
by emphasizing
the
may have
irreverence of the gesture, whatever the writer's intention
been. Call deconstruction the academic science of archie debunking
and you have cut
down
it
inflated rhetoric, the
The
to size.
phrase suggests that beneath the
punning, the preening, and the publicity, some-
thing fairly simple and innocuously "academic"
But
so.
right
away
the questions proliferate.
sciously "subversive" intent
debunking
going on. Maybe
some people and mortifies others? Does it forces of nihilism? Does that make it a radical
that beguiles
threaten to unleash the
phenomenon
or a reactionary one? If
academic
several
of deconstruction?
is
What about the conWhat is it about archie
it
has caused a revolution in
disciplines, will that revolution last? Perhaps, as the
philosopher John Searle has written, deconstruction's "rather obvious
and manifest intellectual weaknesses" make careful reader that the
merely
it
emperor has no clothes."
a fad that will fade, or
is it
a
"fairly obvious to the Is
deconstruction, then,
of critical terrorism? Are
we
Rome burns?
of fiddling while
fit
well understood as an arcane parlor game, or
Is it
is it
perhaps a form
speaking of a priestly cult of true believ-
or a professional sect of overachievers? Deconstruction has been
ers
depicted, and reviled, in terms so various that they can't
Or
can they?
The
tion implied in the
name
As
itself.
prizes
it
liquid in
the virtue of the
of your choice.
common
is
their
befits
all
is
the spirit of contradic-
it
that
you can
fill
it is
clearly not a
it
it
to
with the
phenomenon
feel indiflferent.
an age of theory,
it
seems that everyone, with conscious
or unconscious irony, has a pet theory to account for the
rise
theory in general and deconstruction in particular. There ple, the Zeitgeist theory.
According to
some of the primary "Both deconstructivc
this
reflects
intellectual currents literature
M. H. Abrams
is,
of literary for
exam-
argument, deconstruction
age.
flourish,"
theory of
means what you want
the responses to deconstruction have
emotional intensity;
about which one can
As
empty pot
What
—
if to illustrate Derrida's
language, deconstruction has no essence;
—
be true.
conflicting responses to deconstruction are in keep-
ing with the spirit of contradiction
mean
all
and anxieties of the
and deconstructive criticism
has remarked, "because they appeal to the
SIGNS
70
temper of the times
which we tend
—
to be
TIMES
THE
OF
a dangerous temper,
much more
one that worries
hospitable to negative
me
—
in
modes of
thinking and writing than to positive ones." Deconstruction capitahzes
on the
of authority and the
crisis
crisis
of
proposes a radical
faith; it
skepticism that suits the temper of a generation that
came of age amid
hype campaigns, and spin doctors. The
credibility gaps,
linguistic
assumptions of deconstruction must rank high on any Zeitgeist checklist:
my
that "the
medium
the message" (McLuhan), that "the limits of
is
language mean the limits of my world" (Wittgenstein), that there
can be no "unmediated" vision or idea, and that language constantly subverts a
itself.
program
In an age of disbelief, deconstruction gives
body of principles
to enact rather than a
its
adherents
to affirm.
And
in
proposing a universal conspiracy in the history of Western metaphysics
—
a conspiracy that leaves
a further advantage. It
nothing untainted
—
deconstruction has
promises an answer to everything.
It
is
an
ideology in the sense that Hannah Arendt gave to the term: an ism that "to the satisfaction of
adherents can explain everything and every
[its]
occurrence by deducing
from
it
a single premise."
For Arendt, an
ideology "claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for
all
'riddles
of the universe,' or the intimate knowledge of the
hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man."
The
description applies to the deconstructionists,
'riddles
of
Then
there
conduct their
of ideologues and whose "solution for
textual battles with the zeal
the universe' "
who
to reduce
is
them
to linguistic predicaments.
the professionalism theory: the idea that deconstruc-
is
method
tion exemplifies cult-formation as a
for prevailing in a profes-
sion noted for the bickering and the bitterness surrounding every
tenure decision.
all
Whatever
else
it is,
deconstruction
is
a
last
movement,
a
network of like-minded professors who fiercely promote one another's works and use their institutional power to further the cause. For all their professed distrust
of authority, deconstructionists show no reluc-
tance to exercise the prerogatives of authority. Mastery of the jargon certifies the
budding
theorist's professional standing; initiates arc re-
warded with teaching appointments and prestigious postdoctoral fellowships. Deconstruction makes possible, moreover, a risk-free form of subversiveness. it
safe
—
to
It
mouth
gives
its
adepts a
the rhetoric
way
to look daring while playing
of the rebel while climbing up the
whose legitimacy they Professor Zapp in David Lodge's Small
tenure ladder to pluck the fruits of the system
claim to question.
The
fictional
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
IVorU explains the sense ofprofessionalism conference, tease/'
Zapp
the
hope of arriving
of the enterprise institution
as a
group of workers journalists. shall
And
It is,
looks
as if
is
that
pluralists
who
any
battle
its
maintain our position in
Some
any other
a certain ritual, just like
we
—
lawyers, politicians,
have done our duty for today,
for deconstruction's institutional
accommodate
between dogmatists and
distmct advantage.
opponents are
its
rival positions
pluralists, the
—and
that
former have a
veterans of behind-the-scenes academic poli-
complain that too many humanists
tics
We
proponents are dogmatists while
are willing to
as Strip-
Zapp, simply "to uphold the
says
literary studies.
the realm of discourse
in
as it
on "Textuality
Zapp acknowledges, "if by point some certain truth.'* And the point
we all adjourn for a drink?" One often-heard explanation
success
in
whole?
of academic
At an academic
it,
at
by publicly performing
society
at issue here.
has just delivered a paper
There was no "point" to
you mean
71
creed rather than confront
it
they could ignore the
felt
new
directly, thus ceding the intellectual
initiative to deconstruction's advocates,
quick to sense an opening. But
these explanations underestimate the resistance to deconstruction, the
sustained efforts of
its
foes to refute
it
in print or
on
the academic
conference circuit. While some antideconstructionists were intellectually
overmatched, others brought to the task resources of mind and
scholarship that equaled those of their opponents.
always a courtly
M. H. Abrams,
found complimentary things to say about
critic,
Derrida in Partisan Review in 1979. But Abrams did not hesitate to characterize Derrida's theory as "suicidal"
on the grounds
that "his
subversive process destroys the possibility that a reader can interpret correctly either the expression of his theory or the textual interpretations to
which
it is
applied." In 1982, Frederick
of Commentary that "indeterminism that are both irrationalist
as a
Crews warned
movement
readers
bears implications
and undemocratic." Walter Jackson Bate, the
most formidable presence on the Harvard
literature faculty, raised his
voice in Harvard magazine that year. Deconstructionism, wrote Bate, involves "a nihilistic view of literature, of human communication, and
of
life Itself"
In
1986 Rene Wellek spoke out. Wcllck had been the
co-author of Theory of Literature (1948), a volume that helped pave the
of
way
for the
vogue of
literary theory.
Now, upon
the completion
six-volume History of Modern Criticism, Wellek published an admonishing postscript. "Recent varieties of skepticism" could, he his
— SIGNS
72
TIMES
THE
OF
wrote, "lead literally not only to the 'deconstruction' but to the destruction of
and scholarship."
criticism
all literary
It is
possible,
of
of Messrs. Abrams, Bate, Crews, and Wellek
course, that the protests
had the opposite effect from the one they intended.
The
protests
were
implicitly or overtly defenses of traditionalism, and an appeal to
may
tradition
not play
all
that well
with students,
who
are tempera-
mentally inclined to align themselves with the forces of change, the
new, the avant-garde. The point, however,
owed
tion that deconstruction
determined
is
to dash the glib supposi-
academic ascent to an absence of
its
resistance. If anything, the critics
of deconstruction were
quite aggressive in pressing their case, perhaps sensing
Alter did
with
its
—
—
as
Robert
the "martial implications" of deconstructionist discourse,
"warring forces of signification" and
its
ambition to prevail
over "the resistance" to theory.
A
likelier
explanation for the
rise
of deconstruction dwells
on the weakness of the old guard and more on the Turks.
of the young
The gurus of deconstruction have been remarkably
at recruiting disciples
"The
zeal
less
successful
and turning them into promulgators of the
faith.
deconstructionists are absolutely ruthless behind the scenes," a
hard-nosed combatant
at
Cornell told me. "They are essentially fanat-
you don't conform to their orthodoxy, there's something wrong with you. As in an inquisition, you are measured by your allegiance ics.
If
you're found religious or you're burned." In the course of researching this
book,
was
I
teachers at so sense
of
its
to hear this
many
ubiquity.
same analogy, or variants on
other universities that
One
it
literature professor
was hard
who
it,
from
to escape the
has taught at Yale
since deconstruction's halcyon days there observed in 1982 that decon-
become "a church" replete with hierophants and disciples. Changing his metaphor he added that "it has, in effect, put a laser beam in the hand of a spastic" avid disciples were using the procestruction had
—
dures and catchwords of deconstruction with mindless abandon. "Like
any dogma, themselves. teaching:
it
relieves people
And
that has
you don't have
of the burden of having to think for
become to
a
know
paradigm for American university anything provided that you
know
the method."
Several professors active in the resistance to deconstruction consider the theory's novelty to be an
the 197()s the
New
important source of
Criticism had run
its
course;
practitioners had died or reached retirement age.
its
appeal.
many of
its
By
chief
At the same time, the
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
tremendous expansion of universities
boom
the demographics of the baby
and grants were suddenly
scarce.
in the 1960s
—
"The
way
given
73
had
—
in
Hne with
to stagflation. Jobs
sense that 'everything has been
done' turns to panic as opportunities for appointment and disappear," notes Frederick Crews. "Such a
chmate
is
promotion
ideally suited to
nurturing a mania for theories, however poorly supported, that promise
number of allowable remarks one can make about
to multiply the
To
literature."
this
craving for novelty, add the Oedipal subtext of
deconstruction: the rise of the theory supports the notion that every
generation defines
itself in
phorical acts of parricide.
opposition to the one before
"The
real
America," in Robert Alter's opinion, in
it,
meta-
in
impetus of Deconstruction in "is a rebellion against
authority
the strictly delimited sense of academic institution and critical
tradition."
A
popular sociological theory emphasizes deconstruction's nose-
thumbing wisdom,
be seen to has
it
attitude,
its
its
scorn for institutions,
suspicion of received
its
antagonism toward hierarchical orders
commend
it
to legatees
that deconstruction
—
all
of which
may
of the turbulent 1960s. The theory
the academic revenge of the Sixties'
is
generation, a sublimation of the radical impulses of that era into
something resembling a "textual" revolution. The British Marxist Terry Eagleton that blend
states the case.
"Post-structuralism was a product of
of euphoria and disillusionment, liberation and dissipation,
carnival and catastrophe, to break the structures
which was 1968," Eagleton of
state
likely to beat
Dickstein,
who
you over
of language. Nobody,
the head for doing so."
has written extensively
on the
The
impetus
as
of the
was
much of
the
well as the footsoldiers for the explosion of literary theory
in the 1970s. streets
Morris
writes, "it
the failure of the revolutions of 1968 that provided
it
at least,
critic
cultural impact
up the theme. "As everyone knows," he
1960s, picks
"Unable
power, post-structuralism found
possible instead to subvert the structures
was
writes.
Now the strategies of confrontation
succeeded on the page. In the
first,
that
had
failed in the
heady phase o( Derridcan
deconstruction, every form of critical language was arraigned for self-deceptions,
its
internal contradictions,
its
its
residue of dubious meta-
physical assumptions."
There "as
is
something to be
everyone knows"
logic here
may
be
is
said for this analysis,
Dickstcin's sly
facile. It
though the phrase
way of acknowledging
looks right at
first
that the
glance but not so right
SIGNS
74
when you
start testing it out. It
TIMES
THE
OF
would be
incorrect, for example, to all of them militant between "1968" and
suppose that the acolytes of deconstruction were
There
radicals in the late 1960s.
a relation
is
but it is more ambiguous than straight cause Bromwich pinpoints exactly what is glib in the David and effect. reasoning "that what is happening now is the inward migration, on
advanced
critical theory,
campus, of the leaders and followers of the student revolt." The difference I
is
the difference
between
politics
and academic discourse: "If
say in a lecture, *The figuration of Prosperous last speech in The
Tempest betrays a slippage from subversion to containment which the occlusive presence of Caliban tends to undermine,' fantastic dialogue
may,
I
some
in
of the mind, be singing the equivalent of a Sandinista
Wedding March, but what
you practically is, 'Look at a slightly different list of secondary works this time, and don't turn in the paper late.' " Yet Bromwich also locates the particle of truth that justifies the linkage between the generation of 1968 and what Bromwich
calls
from the
it
means
to
"the institutional radicals" of today.
sixties has passed
idea that the university in 1968, translated into
is
a
"A
single article
unchallenged into the eighties
microcosm of society." That
campus demonstrations whose
of faith
—namely,
article
the
of faith,
real target
was
not the university administration but the national government. In the age of theory, on the other hand, the institutional radicals can pursue
Bromwich's words, "only the usual icono-
their projects with, in
clasm."
Though as in
the deconstructionists
cahoots with
would
leftist literary critics,
with grave mistrust.
It is
like to think
of themselves
the latter regard the former
possible to regard deconstruction as a species
of harmless pseudoradicalism, for
its
invincible skepticism blunts
its
force as an instrument of dissent. Deconstruction, in Terry Eagleton's
words,
"is
able to
unmask
of
signs,
mischievously radical in respect of everyone the
most solemn declarations
as
mere
else's
opinions,
dishevelled plays
while utterly conservative in every other way. Since
it
ammuni-
commits you
to affirming nothing,
tion." This
perhaps, precisely the sort of radicalism that can flourish
in a
is,
Yuppie
climate.
it is
as injurious as
blank
So Wolfgang Holdheim argues. Holdhcim,
chaired Cornell's department of comparative literature for characterizes deconstruction as an episode in the history
many
who
years,
of "the youth
culture" rather than in the history of ideas. In Holdheim's analysis,
deconstruction enables
its
adherents to retain
some
vestige
of "Storm
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE and Stress" radicalism while,
75
of tenure, they obey the
in the pursuit
upwardly mobile imperatives of the Republican Era. Holdheim makes a convincing case. The twentieth century began "with the movement of the Wandervogel and 1970s was
in
Germany, and the youth culture of
a rather recent
the 1960s
American version of the trend," he
The Vietnam war was the radicalizing event for the generation came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s. The withdrawal of American troops from Asia coincided with a general belt-tightening
writes. that
in
academic departments of the humanities, and
in short order, the
tendency toward political rebellion was replaced by
its
antithesis, the
pyramid-climbing of Yuppieism. "But in the academy, with cal' tradition,
What
openly acknowledged, not even to oneself. to this
its
'radi-
such a complete change of orientation cannot always be
could be the answer
dilemma? Meta-radicality, transcendent to the point of evapora-
The 'syndrome' furnishes this; it is the fitting ideology for the period when the academic youth culture is turning from revolt to tion.
careerism without clearly distinguishing the two."
To
the post-Vietnam generation,
were bound
stand for "liberation"
new
theories that purported to
to have an impact.
At
MLA
the
Wayne
Booth, whose book The Rhetoric of Fiction mfluenced a generation of literary scholars, shrewdly noted that "every
convention in 1976,
some kind of liberation, whether from bourgeois political control or from the critical claims of the past or both." Booth gave several examples. Roland Barthes offered, in Booth's words, "freedom from boredom." Fidelity to the text's intentions would result in sterile repetition, whereas Barthes's recommended method of reading promised "novelty and creativity." version of the newer criticisms has promised
Stanley Fish, the to be the
model
Duke
for
University professor
David
statement of this position (which he that critical theory "relieves
demands only
that
I
who
is
Lodge's Professor Zapp,
me
would
widely believed
made
the ultimate
later retract). Fish asserted
of the obligation to be right
be interesting": literary criticism
as a
.
.
.
and
personal
liberation front. It
really tell
is
you
remams unclear whether and as
revolutionary
that
many of
as it
its
m
what
claims to be. Critics of the theory will
most "original"
decades ago. John Ellis in his
sense deconstruction
insights
book Against
were formulated
Deconstruction alternates
between contesting deconstructivc notions and proving parts
of the theory could be gleaned
— without
that the valid
the excess doctrinal
76
—
in the
Derrida by
many
baggage
SIGNS
OF
works of
linguists
"is
someone who
is
and philosophers
is
by bland,
abundantly
preceded
That deconstruction
clear; its
baseless assertion. If a
antitraditional in being
it is
fancies itself as revolutionary
is
advocates are ever-anxious to portray themselves
When
of revolutionary change.
as in the forefront
revo-
is
famous for being famous, deconstruction
revolutionary in being revolutionary;
antitraditional."
who
years. In fact, Ellis contends, deconstruction
lutionary not in substance but only celebrity
TIMES
THE
structionist proposes parallels
may wonder whether
between
decon-
a leading
and nihilism,
his practice
we
to consider this a display of shock-tactic exhibi-
tionism rather than a heartfelt attempt at being "subversive."
merely the speaker's lack of true seriousness that
we deplore
—
or
is
Is
it
that
lack of seriousness, that penchant for articulating "subversive" ideas
without any
any
in
It is,
attachment to them, irresponsible in a larger sense?
real
case, easy to see
why
people
who
enchanted by such
aren't
gestures tend to regard deconstruction with unconcealed alarm.
In at least one of
its
manifestations, deconstruction's continuity
with the student radicalism of the 1960s
is
apparent. In 1985,
Duncan
Kennedy of the Harvard Law School referred to the Critical Legal Studies movement as "a ragtag band of leftover 60's people and young people with nostalgia for the events of 15 years ago." Ken Emerson in the New York Times Magazine describes Kennedy himself as "the spitting
image of
a grad student circa 1968,"
jacket and black jeans. Kennedy,
who would
down
to his corduroy
like to turn
Harvard Law
School into a "counterhegemonic enclave," has advocated several measures that are radical
by any standard
—
such
as a lottery
system for
admission to the school and either the elimination of tenure or the granting of
it
to
all
the legal hierarchy
professors. In is
Kennedy's words, "the ideology of
no more than
a spcciaHzcd application
of the
One senses
m such
general meritocratic ideology of American society."
utterances the spirit of the rebellious 1960s; one hears in distinctive diction
Of the the
like
little
it,
the
of deconstruction.
various metaphors in currency for deconstruction, surely
most disturbing
done
them
is
"critical terrorism."
to discourage the use
relishing the
The
deconstructionists have
of this handle, and
it
may
be that they
tough-hombre image that the phrase conveys.
The
admittedly hyperbolic analogy between deconstructionists and terror-
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE ists
on
appears to be based
that
77
several considerations besides the casual fact
both are features of the contemporary Zeitgeist. Both
temperament or by
and intransigence
tation for ruthlessness
when
thing in fiction to the deconstructive personality
who
always carries a
bomb with him
—
—
nearest
the anarchistic
is
man of
"pedantic
and hopes to invent
including but not limited to
those associated with Critical Legal Studies
course
The
Conrad's professor wants to destroy "public
a "perfect detonator."
faith in legality." Critical terrorists
reach the same end.
a repu-
their agenda,
the like.
professor in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent: a fanaticism,"
of
in pursuit
on faculty hiring committees and
serving
have
instinct, extremist. Deconstructionists
by
are,
They would
—
methods
use different
blow up
like to
—
to
metaphorically, of
the legitimacy of institutions and traditions, canons of taste
and judgment, and received values of any kind. deconstructionists steel themselves to toss their for the comfort of bystanders
—
And
like terrorists,
bombs without regard and readers of
in this case, the authors
literature.
Ironists
may
say that the danger
is
overrated
—
that the
only
people truly terrorized by deconstruction are other professors. Michel Foucault once described Jacques Derrida's prose style "obscurantist terrorism." it's
hard to
know what
savant to heap
The
contempt on
understand him. There
idea
is
that the style
is
the author
is
is
as
an effort at
so obscure that
trying to say, and this allows the
his critics
no denying
by saying they have
failed to
that the obfuscating jargon
of
deconstruction has proved useful for intimidating befuddled depart-
mental
foes.
But
to conclude that deconstruction
is
harmless except in
the limited sphere of academic politics and debate
is
to overlook a
simple but important consideration: that ideas, even specious ideas,
have consequences, for good or
ill,
and that the academic arena
ipso facto an insignificant one. Perhaps
with which if to
in
we
habitually link the
say that the fictional Professor
we
is
not
should question the ease
—
words harmless and academic as Zapp is right and there is no point
looking to academic discourse for something serious and substantial.
The
ideas that deconstructionists articulate
—with not —do provide fervor if
necessarily with seriousness in the old-fashioned sense
grounds for the
There
is,
of deconstruction.
It
terrorist analogy.
lessly nihilistic drive
anything and answers that there
is its
real or
we
can't
for one thing, the relentasks
—nothing
how we can be
know known. And can
metaphorical affinity with the projects of destruction
SIGNS
78
THE
OF
TIMES
and demolition, decentering and demystifying; Robert Alter wryly notes the critical theorist's affection for the de- prefix "with
ably salutary suggestion of taking things apart."
It
may
its
presum-
be argued that
of analytical intelligence entails taking something apart. PerBut deconstruction ups the ante. If we are to take the deconstructionists at their word, the task of taking texts apart is part and parcel
any
act
haps.
more ambitious and more threatening endeavor: the dismantling of "the metaphysics of presence" or what you and I would call of
a
—
Western thought. As tearing
methodology, deconstruction places
a critical
down
a concept or a clause
"problematizing"
new
anything critic
it,
to take
Sven Birkerts,
—on
"putting
to use the approved jargon its
it
its
emphasis on
in question" or
—without proposing
place. Deconstruction's "thrust," writes the
"is to
demolish the deeply-rooted conceptions of
the Enlightenment, presumably so that the culture can evolve in directions. Deconstruction itself offers
no signposts
only a method of taking things apart. In like
members of
structive shift
it.
You
for this evolution,
Deconstructionists are
a terrorist sect." Equally "terrorizing"
of attention from the content of
or her hidden motives;
with
this,
new
is
the decon-
a person's ideas to his
you don't read a book, or even have a dialogue it. A book subjected to deconstruction is a
interrogate
structure waiting to be dismantled; an idea subjected to deconstruction is
an idea whose legitimacy
is
cast in
doubt, terminally. Thus Luc Ferry
of "The Philosophies of '68"
in
France, describe the workings of "the deconstructive will" with
its
and Alain Renaut,
in their survey
underlying assumption that
symptom follows
"all
conscious discourse
is
really just a
that hides a deeper social or individual unconscious." If
this line, "it will
be
less
one
important to pay attention to what
who he is, in order to know what he is really saying. One can imagine what strange idea of mtcllcctual debate flows from this presupposition. The content of speech will be replaced by the person speaking and the determination of *where he's coming from.' Once the 'real motives,' unacknowledged and unacsomeone
says than to determine
knowlcdgcablc by the speaker, have been uncovered, the genealogy then threatens to legitimize a disturbing brand of intellectual terror-
Renaut assert with some wonderment that such systematic practices managed to reduce French philosophy "to the point that it became blind to what can be called only its own idiocy."
ism." Ferry and
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE One of the United
in the
79
curious things about the resistance to deconstruction
States
that
is
poHtical spectrum. Leftists,
it
unites critics
who
from both ends of the
regard Hterature and criticism as
potential agents for social change, contend that the purer forms of
deconstruction promote quiescence, not activism.
about deconstruction
is
not
What
from the world of material
To
reality;
this
its
view,
seems to entail
It
denies the relevance of
it
the precise extent that deconstruction
"brackets off" the social world
—
insisting that matters
are to be regarded as linguistic predicaments as
On
at the impasse.
deconstruction leads not to action but to paralysis. a recoil
them
putatively terroristic agenda but
its
penchant for heading off any discussion
history and biography.
troubles
—
of life and death
the tendency can be seen
conservative, ratifying the existing social order and discouraging
political action.
Deconstruction
is
regarded askance, moreover,
as
an
phenomenon. The deconstructors of "hegemony" are observed be working toward their own hegemony, scorning their rivals as
elitist
to
retrograde, reactionary, or even anti-intellectual.
One
Marxist
critic
discerned the trappings of a "hermeneutical mafia" at Yale. Presumably
go about
the dons of deconstruction offers they
None of tural
their business
by making people
cannot understand. this
brings any comfort to literary traditionalists, cul-
conservatives,
agenda. Such
or others
critics detect in
the impulse to
undermine
undermine themselves.
who
disavow
a
left-wing political
deconstruction a radical enough impulse:
institutions
Many
and ideas by asserting that they
observers think they detect the proce-
dures and principles of deconstruction in the programmatic assault
now
in progress against the
venerable idea of the canon
the notion
body of acknowledged masterworks with which
that there exists a
educated reader should become familiar. Allan in associating the techniques
says he
is
moved
Bloom
is
the
hardly alone
of deconstruction with the tendency to
turn the great books into canon-fodder.
Hoffman
—
The poet and
to defend the novels
critic
Daniel
of William Faulkner
against "the rage to deconstruct canonical works, sweeping through
academe
like a self-replicating virus in a
system."
Nor
Works and
is
computerized information
the fallout limited to the teaching of literature. In
Lives,
Clifford Geertz cites "deconstructive attacks
on
canonical works" as evidence oi the "pervasive nervousness" at hand in the study
of anthropology. Geertz chose
his
words
carefully. If the
SIGNS
80
impact of deconstruction on a
of
that
a
TIMES
THE
OF
of knowledge may be likened to
field
nervous breakdown, that seems rather the point of the
exercise.
There
in the practice as well as the theory
is,
an urge to tear
down
boundaries
—
of deconstruction,
the boundaries, for example, sepa-
from another. The application of deconremote from literary criticism is not
rating one academic discipline
structive strategies to disciplines
weaned on the ideas and methods of Jacques Derrida, anything from a comic strip to the Pledge of Allegiance qualifies as a text, and any text is fair game for a deconstructive For
an accidental
fact.
analysis. It
Derrideans maintain, a vulgar error to observe a distinc-
is,
between a
tion
theorists
and the world. The world as such. It
of
on
becomes
critical inquiry.
new
thing.
and any other kind
literary text
There
is
may
and
a text
—
or between the text
be read, or deconstructed,
possible, thanks to this logic, to
That
is
far
is
from
a
widen
the scope
bad thing and not altogether
a
every reason to keep bringing intelligence to bear
Hollywood movies, and even
science fiction and detective novels,
TV commercials,
which at the very least tell us things about ourselves that we ought to know, though knowing them might make us wince. A seminar devoted to "the deconstruction of everyday life" in which
—
the objects under scrutiny are designer jeans, radio jingles, tabloid
journalism, campaign slogans, and contemporary supermarket design
—becomes
cal
if
a real possibility
not aesthetic.
significance a tourist,
analysis
One
well have
tourist's
uses, sociologi-
study tourism, the
anxiety to avoid appearing like
may
a colleague
may
its
devote himself to the semiotic
of cigarette smoking.
In chapter five
of
this
between postmodernism thought. Yet
I
strongly
in
book, art
I
some broad
chart out
and poststructuralism
resist the idea that approval
implies assent to the latter. is
may
deconstructionist
of souvenirs, the
and so forth;
and
One
is
in
parallels
academic
of the former
in fact better able to appreciate
what
valuable in contemporary literature or painting or music without
reference to Dcrrida's theories. Moreover, cross-disciplinary seminars
more
the
happy
talk
about
on tourism may make deconstruction sound
cheerful and innocuous than
struction has not been to
all
it is.
For the
widen inquiry but
to
real effect
narrow
it.
with the perfectly sensible idea that much besides high
of decon-
Not
content
literature
is
worthy of scrutiny, deconstructionists would obliterate the differences between Roger Rabbit and Henry James. The function of criticism is
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
81
reduced to description and analysis; the task of evaluating works of is
left
undone. Abandoned
ities:
the
making and
art
is
one of criticism's foremost responsibil-
nation of a canon, a syllabus, a reading all
The determi-
revising of critical discriminations. list
of any kind,
is
stripped of
but political considerations, with results that are nothing
if
not
it would be difficult to dismiss Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Goethe, Tolstoi but not for the deconstructionist, who omits mentioning names but packages them all together as he patronizes a "conception of 'greatness' that, even in the 1980s, yields a corpus of works written by white males prior to 1920." The characteristic assumptions of deconstruction its pro-
most educated persons
arrogant. For
the masterworks of
—
foundly antihumanist
you deconstruct
if
structive
dogma
knowledge
drift
—have
history?
—
a nightmarish side.
What
happens
What happens if you accept the deconMan put it, "the bases for historical
Paul de
that, as
are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts
masquerade
in the guise
of wars or revolutions"?
What
happens
when
you deconstruct the subject, the self, the human protagonist? Tzvetan Todorov, a commanding figure among French structuralists, has grave doubts about the poststructuralist agenda. In an arresting phrase, Todo-
rov writes that
human
"it
is
not possible, without inconsistency, to defend
with one hand and deconstruct the idea of humanity
rights
with the other." Deconstruct humanity
of
to the status
responsible for master.
Gone
who would have been
up the
is
—and you
are left with an entity
no more
by an unseen
the existential hero, wearing a beret and trenchcoat,
upon
known
fate
reduce the autonomous self
actions than a puppet manipulated
his destiny; the
wanders unprotected into
place,
IS
is
act
a fiction its
—
to
fall.
deconstructed man, taking his
a hard-hat
Humanity
zone where
lethal
beams
deconstructed: the phrase conjures
of Winston Smith, George Orwell's hero
in 1984,
who
made to understand, on penalty of torture, that the name of the game power and that power consists in tearing human minds apart and
reassembling them to suit the rulers' specifications.
Orwell coined the word doublethink explained, denotes the labyrinthine processes
The word, he with which the mind may in
1984.
made "to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both oi them, to
be
use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."
That
is
not, as
it
happens, a bad description of the deliberately contra-
— SIGNS
82
TIMES
THE
OF
dictory logic of deconstruction. There are times is
precisely described as a
form of voodoo
when
deconstruction
literary criticism
—
it's
where the nuances leave off and the double-talk begins. Barbara Johnson, one of deconstruction's more cogent advocates, demonstrates the logic in her book A World of Difference. See seldom easy to
if
tell
you can follow:
"Instead of a simple 'either /or' structure, decon-
struction attempts to elaborate a discourse that says neither 'either /or,'
nor 'both/ and' nor even 'neither /nor,' while at the same time not totally
abandoning these logics
meant
to
undermine the
either.
tion/destruction.' Deconstruction
the
way
The very word
is
both,
it is
and
neither,
which both construction and destruction
in
deconstruction
is
of the opposition 'construc-
either /or logic
it
reveals
are themselves not
what they appear to be." Using deconstructive logic you can undermine the ground rules that make debate possible by "proving," for
—
example, that what your adversary says
Not merely do you
this
dupe or
it's
as
of "hidden
a set
tactic, it
between deconstructionists and
comes
close.
their critics
as
articulations." If
No wonder
that
sometimes resemble
between Alice and the inhabitants of looking-glass
the exchanges
—
appears to be.
it
your opponent altogether
reject
mouthpiece for
not exactly a terrorist
is
clashes
land
a
not what
contest the premises or dispute the conclusions of
your opponent's argument; you either a
is
though the debaters were playing with two
of rules. Each seems convinced that the other
is
different sets
being willfully obtuse,
and there are bonus points to be earned for the most acid-tongucd expression of contempt.
As doublethink
is
and here again there
to logic in 1984, so is
Newspeak
is
to language
a parallel in deconstructive practice with
its
"The key
that mean word here is hlackwhite, " Orwell writes in 1984. "Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. AppHcd to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming
punning neologisms
that black
is
white, in contradiction of the plain
Party member,
when
contradictory things at once.
it
means
to forget that
is
Applied to
a loyal willingness to say that black
Party discipline demands
believe that black
facts.
this.
But
white, and more, to
it
means
know
a
white
is
also the ability to
that black
is
white, and
one has ever believed the contrary." For those
who
equate deconstruction with critical terrorism, such passages from 1984
sound
a stern
of thought
admonition about the dangers of yielding to
that aspires to turn the
word and
the
a
system
world upside down.
— DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
Even
those
threatening
paronomasia
who
terms
—
—
characterize deconstruction in relatively un-
nakedness
imperial
say,
as,
or
will concur that in one area at least
Opponents of deconstruction and
effect.
83
exhibitionistic
has had a lethal
it
related theories can't help
dwelling on what these theories have done to language, in the name
of
a
way
heightened awareness of the
of Egypt couldn't equal
language works. "The plagues
the references to Freud and Jung and
all
and myths and existentialism and neo-Calvinism and
Thomas
that you'll
sometimes
one commonplace
see in
In the present age
has
gone to
new
a
have
critical theorists
lists)
a relaxed attitude
bonanza of
diacritical marks:
yet.
(though
many
footnotes
toward the traditional procearticle will yield a
quotation marks around words held
suspect,
hyphens to break a word into
expand
a
word
not be so
commonplace
dures of scholarship. But even a
like to
nothing
but the name-dropping tendency
may
extreme. There
ain't seen
may have changed
of theory, the names
Freud and Marx remain on most
you
wrote
article,"
One would
Randall Jarrell back in "The Age of Criticism." send a postcard to heaven: Dear Mr. Jarrell,
Marx
Aristotle and St.
like an accordion.
This
its is
components, parentheses to writing that
tries
hard to be
daring, playful, and experimental, but frequently succumbs to pure preciosity.
Consider the desperate cleverness of the
titles
that professors
give to the papers they deliver at academic conferences.
come
of Cultural Literacy":
the Production
You might
theme of "Class (room) Consciousness: Tradition and
across the
a
wave of the wand
and, presto,
Or
Marx's analysis of class conflict extends to sophomores and juniors.
you might
—
the
at
MLA
same
convention
—
"S(e)izing Power: Gender, Representation, and the parenthesis
more
is
meant
to
make
on where
take in a session
Body
Scale,"
the point that the slender
body
is
one
unjustly "privileged" notion.
A
professor with a
flair
audience by offering, for a into a publishable paper. in jest; his project
—
It
showmanship once amused convert any attempt
was hard
to say
sounded eminently
makes the right noises script-doctor
for
fee, to
—and
these
may
his
MLA
at a critical essay
whether the speaker was
practical.
So long
as
an essay
be inserted by the hired manu-
the content seems almost beside the point.
A
set
of
recurring code words needs to be sprmklcd liberally over the prose, like
ketchup over French
fries.
The
first
sentence should feature hegem-
— SIGNS
84
TIMES
THE
OF
ony; the second itinerary; the thir A foregrounding; the fourth, privilege
used
a verb
as
author'')
example, "the retrograde
(for
There should be plenty of
.
with deconstruction
(you must always
as
many
with a nod toward Derrida,
call it that) is
of your choice: male and
speech
that the
task
first
and
and
TV
culture, center
The
absence.
reckless
commercials
term in any such
may
of presence."
you
set is implicitly
would probably be
It
prisonhouse of language," too.
in thrall; textuality
is
Deconstruction in
is
subtext that
plus.
what
What
is
is
nothing
if
how
marginal to an experience
"AIDS discourse," we are all tourists
refers to
in
may
its
critic's role is
through them; to privilege
"It
is
it is
arrive
be subversive
is
a
be more significant than
—
as
lives.
when
a speaker,
Any
hierarchy
is
connotations of ill-gotten gains
making of value judg-
art
is
a
temptation that contemporary
Alison Lurie provides a helpful gloss
not popularity or traditional acclaim (economic
success or aristocratic lineage, so to speak) that
value of a text;
you
not to evaluate works of literature but to
critics are perfectly able to resist.
privilege:
To
appears to
it
our culture's "anal itinerary"
registers the deconstructive bias against the
on
mention "the
readers periodi-
straightforward
our scripted
unjustly repressive. Privilege with
see
en-
Language has humanity
central. Itinerary
analyzing
The
idea to
not oppositional.
suggests
ments.
—
West-
to "the metaphysics
favorite jargon words, and
customarily held to be
is
possible.
it
supposed to train us to see the hidden subtext
Dwell on deconstruction's
at a
good
unjustly
all.
any piece of writing, no matter
be.
is
truth
by showing
don't call
You must remind your
no escape from language
cally that
a
this
—and
You
knowingly
refer
opt for
with slender and
stick
you do
dorsed ("privileged") in Western philosophy. ern philosophy, of course;
znA periphery,
may
and propaganda; the semioti-
to dismantle hierarchies and
is
question some
call into
going to deconstruct the dichotomy
reckless, for truth
of
cally-trained analyst
Your
are
2indfemale, nature
writing, presence
and opinion; the really
fat.
You
-ize suffixes, such as
A good way to begin your
an allusion to de Man, and a determination to binary opposition or other.
the
de- or dis- prefixes, beginning
and dismantling, and
problematize, valorize, contextualize, totalize. discourse
critic privileges
now
determines the
the decision of the critic." Traditional values are
suspect because they are the instruments of a hegemony,
a
means
through which the holders of power reaffirm their power. Text, too, seems strategically chosen.
It is,
for one thing, a great leveler, since
it
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
on
serves equally well to describe the label
John Keats
— and
a
85
soup can and an ode by
reinforces the notion that these various "texts" are
equal in importance. Moreover, text suggests
allowing for a
textile,
metaphorical association oi reading and unraveling. Finally, where work
work ofart) carries a favorable overtone, text has a forbidding sound, smacking of schoolbooks and sermons. The reader is likely to (short for
with textbook; to
associate text
immediately to label
it
call
Anna Karenina
a
to
image of a
pile
your house and
of rubble. Lurie says said
is
thus
an object of study rather than an aesthetic
experience. As for the adversarial force o( Reconstruction the
text
he was there to
itself,
consider
someone came over deconstruct it, you'd want to best: "If
it
have him arrested." easy to parody the jingle-jangle jargon of deconstruction,
It is
though rarely has
"Cosmo Dewlap"
it
been done with the verve of the pseudonymous
in
underground
the
literary
magazine Exquisite
Corpse:
Attacking the abyss of contemporary
an aveng-
post-modern Clough, Braithwaite-Godolphin fear-
ing,
lessly deconstructs the
that
will
It
sense) to
the
ecriture like
no longer be honest
(in the
attempt to write "poems"
contempt of the
nity.
"poem" with such
terrifying finality
phenomenological
at all
without arousing
entire litero-a/w-academico
Having absorbed,
in
one swallow
as
it
commu-
were, the
devastating implications of the writings of Saussure, Benja-
min, Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, Husserl, Foucault, and Jong,
Braithwaite-Godolphin revels without apology
in the slip-
pages o( meaning, indeed the total lack of meaning
(in the
old-fashioned sense) of words, phrases, even "poems"
as a
whole, undercutting the now-discredited falseness of the
worn-out, shamelessly ideological English "grammar" for the Jouissance and
hard-won freedom of the bad-ass cowboy
poet.
They're
all
here
—
the voguish phrases, the French fashions, the ironic
quotation marks, the big words, the parade of names, and the unexamined assumption that to "deconstruct"
ing finality"
What
is
is
works of art "with such
terrify-
the right thing to do.
saddest about the prevalence
of this debased idiom
is
that
SIGNS
86
the people
who
literature.
"One
the
use
it
OF
are the professionally appointed curators
in other disciplines," the scholar
"What makes one weep
poet Donald Davie has written. is
now
disciplines supposedly as a
random"
and
that such
is
not just tolerated but considered normal in the
devoted to
medium of art." Davie
virtually at
of our
has long been inured to such grossness in the use of
mother tongue by scholars
use of English
TIMES
THE
—of
— example
literature, that
offers this
is
to say, to language
"chosen,
I
assure you,
the kind of "debased and yet pretentious
Esperanto or dog-Latin" he deplores:
We
see in this rehearsal
of "Foucault" that contemporary
criticism cherishes the displacement diacritics
both of
dialectics
by
and of totalized organic representations of history
by comprehensive graphs of affiliated
disciplines in the epis-
teme.
"Reading such jaw-breaking propositions," Davie
writes,
"we fmd
Ben Jonson when he objected to one of his contem" no language.' Professionalism is, no doubt, a contributing cause of the problem.
ourselves echoing
poraries that he *writ
The jawbreaking jargon of deconstruction
functions as a badge of
professionalism, ratifying the speaker's status and facilitating the per-
formance of certain logical jargon
rituals,
meaningless in themselves. Like the techno-
of the military
firms his or her expertise
analyst, the theorist's
gaudy
the layperson's sense of
by reinforcing
ignorance. Professionalism encourages obscurantism: justify a steep medical bill
not the
common
academic
theorist's
cold.
It
is
the diagnosis
is
it
is
vasomotor
easier
rhinitis
even possible that obscurantism
is
to
and the
revenge on society for having consigned him or her
to relative obscurity
face
when
patter con-
—
a
way of proclaiming
one's superiority in the
of one's diminished influence. The excesses of the deconstructive
prose machine ers are
make
it
pardonable to wonder whether some practition-
playing an intellectual confidence game, tricking out a pack of
pscudoprofundities in polysyllabic armor.
Nor
does
it
seem overly
cynical to suggest that the unreadable articles in scholarly journals arc
written and published primarily to demonstrate the writer's familiarity
with the professional
patois, in an effort to
advance up the rungs of
the tenure ladder. As against the professionalism in literary studies
today,
Donald Davie votes
for the old-fashioned concept of the teach-
— DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
87
ing "vocation" or "calling." Today, he notes, "no one reads
Spenser or contemplates writing about him, unless he has
Edmund paid
first
dues to the Modern Language Association of America." Literature
his
and
literary criticism
was
tion system
were both perhaps healthier when the accreditaformalized and the
less
was home
field
to " 'mave-
ricks/ insisting
on addressing
those questions
which the professional bodies had declared inadmissi-
to an illustrious shade like Spenser just
ble."
The problem of
professional jargon long predates the rise of
But the prose of deconstruction amounts
critical theory.
to a pure
statement of the problem: the prose of deconstruction seems deliberately
aimed
deconstruction of prose
at the
that expository writing
is
meant
one notes about the burgeoning
most of
it is
—
the explosion of the idea
to be understood. For the literature
frightfully hard to read;
first
of deconstruction
much of it
thing
is
that
seems to want to be
unreadable, as if this were a positive value. For deconstructionists
and
many of them
are quite up-front about this
—
it's
as
though
clarity
of thought were a specious virtue, an aspect of the logocentrism they've been taught to deride. Certainly they proceed as though the
proper use of language were not to impart information but to camouflage
to preserve an air
it,
outsiders at bay. at
of mystery about the
and to keep
David Grossvogel, who founded thejournalD/^fr/V/V5
Cornell in 1971, was asked
later.
enterprise,
The journal was
why
he resigned
as its editor five years
created, he explained, to give "a
forum
to
various kinds of criticism that were becoming important and didn't
have access
at the time:
Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic theory, and
deconstruction." Five years
later,
Grossvogel reported. Diacritics had
become "the entrenched journal of the poststructuralists. We had replaced one hegemony with another." Deconstruction was now "a religious creed, a political act
of
faith."
And
there was, Grossvogel
grinned, one other reason for his disaffection. "I
understand his
Jargon
is
own
it
false.
one to
The
blur,
line
hand
that
makes the old hat seem
gives an air of novelty and specious profundity
to ideas that, if stated directly,
or
an editor should
journal."
the verbal sleight of
newly fashionable;
felt
would seem
superficial, stale, frivolous,
between serious and spurious scholarship
with jargon on your
side.
But what
is
about the academic addiction to prefabricated phrases reveal an absence of thought and independence
—
is
an easy
most appalHng is
that they
the writer lets the
SIGNS
88
do
prefabricated phrases
TIMES
THE
OF
the thinking, as if in illustration of the
all
deconstructive notion that words manipulate us instead of the other
A
way
around.
uses,
however,
study of contemporary academic jargon does have if
only because
us measure the relative fashiona-
it lets
bleness of a doctrine or a dogma.
its
And
the perusal of professional
journals and university press publications confirms the impression of deconstruction's dominant place in the jargon jamboree. Consider the role
it
plays in Discourse and the Construction of Society, a recent
—
—
book
by Bruce Lincoln, who is the jacket copy informs us a "co-founder of the Program in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society" at
The book's
the University of Minnesota. tion of code
words designed
title itself is like a
to advertise the writer's credentials as a
theorist, able to cross disciplinary borders at a single
has its
combina-
bound. The book
the characteristics of an unwitting self-parody, particularly in
all
immoderate love o(
Reconstruction
likely to define
it as
—
here meaning something like
though Lincoln himself would be more
demolition or violent upheaval,
counterhegemonic inversion.
Discourse and the Construction of Society reads rather like an ode to deconstruction. Lincoln
exemplified everywhere.
study "of myth, crises,
ritual,
and anomalies
—
is
so
charmed by the word
The primary
and
is
on
it
forms and the emergence of
new
society."
ritual in
as
well as by gender;
it
—
exhumed Oliver Cromwell's dead body
"the ultimate act of deconstructing non-monarchic
During the Spanish Civil War, the corpses in
of estab-
formations." Here arc
words, he "struggled to deconstruct" the "sociotaxonomic
and mummified
crowds
signal, as
that qualify as deconstructions: Aristophanes in Plato's
order." Victorious Royalists
and hanged
—which
in a typical formulation, "the deconstruction
Symposium divided people by sexual preference in Lincoln's
historical upheavals,
especially the bloodier sort
lished social
few things
it
focus of his cross-disciplinary
classification"
Lincoln puts
a
that he sees
Barcelona.
which the
ety scnight by
ot priests, nuns,
saints were disinterred and exhibited before jeering
The exhumations, Lincoln
traditionally subordinate
means of
a
explains,
"were
segment of Spanish
a
soci-
highly charged discourse of gestures and
deeds to deconstruct the old social order and construct a new, radically different order in
its
place." (Translation: the exhumations
were the
way of saying that the church was as corrupt as the flesh oi its deceased ministers.) One of the more notable aspects of Lincoln's book is the absence of Jacques Derrida's name in the index fittingly, perrebels'
—
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE haps, since absence
Derrida
one of Derrida's crucial terms. The
is
nowhere
is
89
fact that
which the invention
cited confirms the extent to
of deconstruction has escaped from
its
And
if
what Lincoln means by the word
not quite what Derrida had
in
is
creator's laboratory.
mind, that seems perfectly consonant with deconstructive theory.
Words have
of their own, and few words demonstrate
a life
this
more
aptly than deconstruction.
A joke
of the 1940s had
it
that the typewriters in the offices
Review were equipped with
Partisan
a special
of
key that typed out the
word alienation on command. Many word processors today are programmed to flash deconstruction on the computer screen, trailed by all manner of ready-made nying jargon
is
that
Bruce Lincoln's
phrases. In
of the sociologist. The writer
the St. Bartholomew's
Day
"Given the
relation
who
accompa-
can say that
Massacre in France in 1572 "effectively
deconstructed" French society can also soberly to print:
case, the
commit
this
between schism and massacre,
sentence
it is
worth
asking what factors lead toward the exercise of massacre as an option."
Massacre as an option!
A
savage parodist
would have
producing a better example of what George Orwell had
a
hard time
mind when
in
he warned about the "special connection between politics and the
debasement of language." The problem of jargon, Orwell wrote, that
it
can
all
barbarous behavior. The pacification proceeded according
was never
the exercise oj massacre as an option is,
we had
A
is
too easily confer a bogus veneer of respectability on
order to save
to destroy the village in
to
plan. That
seriously considered.
is,
That
it.
mild-mannered old-school English professor
in
David Lodge's
Small World remarks that the word theory "brings out the Goering in
me.
When
I
"D" word, that afflict
hear too.
it I
reach for
my
revolver." So
shows up regularly
It
mankind
—
as
when an
summed up
in
with the dreaded lists
of the
evils
after-dinner speaker tickles his audi-
ence by remarking that "everything
be
it is
on blame-all
wrong with higher education may
one word: deconstruction." Dcconstructionists
charge, not entirely without reason, that the reaction against their
insurgency has been marked by hysteria and hyperbole and
misunderstanding and anxiety. But tionist to
sound
a
wounded
it is
is
based on
disingenuous for a deconstruc-
cry, for deconstruction
is
predicated on
the notion that misunderstandings are basic to language. Deconstruc-
SIGNS
90
tion wants to
awaken
OF
anxieties; a stated goal
is
to dismantle the repressive
it
any wonder that those
TIMES
THE
of poststructuralist theory
mechanisms of Western philosophy.
who do not share new theorists? Paul
Is
view of Western
this
Man wrote a celebrated essay entitled "The Resistance to Theory." He meant something thought should
resist
the
paradoxical by that phrase, but
its
de
primary sense
is
hard to mistake.
In academe, you're either with the deconstructionists or you're part of
Between those who depend on deconstruction to earn and those who would fight it every inch of the way, can be no peace, only stalemate the mutual animosity goes too
the resistance.
them
a living
there
—
deep. In England, the repulsion of the poststructuralists left hard feel-
The
Cambridge University in the winter of 1981. A young don named Colin MacCabe, whose work placed him squarely in the poststructuralist fold, was denied tenure in an acrimonious session of the faculty's appointments commitings
tee.
all
around.
decisive event occurred at
MacCabe needed
short.
Two
five
of the committee's seven votes; he
fell
one
who cast their ballots for MacCabe, Frank Raymond Williams, were promptly ousted from the
professors
Kermode and
our job to teach and uphold the canon of English
committee. "It
is
literature," said
Christopher Ricks, the most prominent of the profes-
sors
opposing MacCabe. MacCabe's supporters cried foul
they charged, a "witch-hunt" organized by "reactionaries."
—
it
was,
The Lon-
don newspapers made much of the imbroglio, which quickly acquired a symbolic significance: the dismissal of Colin MacCabe, leaving Camor bridge with only one poststructuralist on its faculty, had become perhaps had been from the start a high British verdict on deconstruction and related theories. In press accounts the outcome was presented as a triumph of English common sense over Left Bank abstruseness. Shortly after the incident, Kermode left Cambridge, where he had been King Edward VII Professor of English. He complained that his Cambridge colleagues were simply not sophisticated enough to handle the unsettling new doctrines coming from France. "Deconstructionism
—
—
is,
in part, a catastrophe theory, for
that the
behind
whole Western metaphysical
it
there
is
the assumption
tradition can be put into re-
verse,"
Kermode
dislike
having to consider such unsettling propositions,
with
explained. "It
is
at this
point that the orthodox,
their dusty banners: principle, the imagination, the
who
man human world,
the walls
—
DEBUNKING
ARCHIE
91
though the most vocal of them are manifestly unacquainted with the lack the second and seem to
first,
Kermode had
who
by hearsay."
the third only
depicted himself as a mediator. In retrospect he
known
he should have
"and he
know
better.
"There
a
is
felt that
war on," wrote Kermode,
ventures into no-man's-land brandishing cigarettes and
singing carols must expect to be shot at."
No on
wonder, then,
and won't
deconstruction
to too
that writers in diverse contexts let it
go.
The word means too many
—
many contending factions it The word itself has become a
everyone.
no one can ignore
—and
that
deconstruction proclaims
is
things
brings out the militancy in sign of our times
itself a
itself to
have fastened
—
a sign that
paradox and an irony, since
be the study of
signs:
of language
considered as a system of signs, and misleading signs at that.
Kierkegaard
tells
an anecdote in his book Either /
seems prophetic of deconstruction,
flashy gestures
its
core. Kierkegaard tells the anecdote to illustrate the
he saw
as
in mid-nineteenth-century
it
Denmark
Or
(1843) that
and enigmatic
dismaying gulf
—between
"philo-
sophical discourse" and reality. Listening to philosophical discourse
Kierkegaard writes, a
secondhand
were
store.
as
misleading
The
to bring in a pair
surprise.
seeing a sign in the
as
sign says: Trousers Pressed Here.
window of But
of trousers to be pressed, you'd be
"For only the sign
is
is,
if
you
in for a
for sale."
Kierkegaard's anecdote accurately expresses the deconstructionist's
view of language.
the relation stant;
It is
an article of the deconstructive faith that
between words and
language
as a
meanings
their
system lacks a vital center.
anything but con-
is
It is
pointless, therefore,
meaning of any verbal construct does not and cannot precede the words themselves, and these are as duplicito speak about meaning, since the
tous as the sign in the shop
window
behind them. Trousers Pressed Here its
the
existence
window
is
is
—
it
may
refers
be that nothing stands
only to
independent of the activity that a
model
it
itself;
names, the sign in
for any literary text.
But while Kierkegaard's anecdote insight at deconstruction's core,
it
helps
to deconstruct deconstruction itself.
It
the position of the store's proprietor,
illustrates the radical linguistic
make
a further point
—
it
seems
places the deconstructionist in
who
perpetuates practical jokes
and linguistic booby traps rather than useful goods and his ostentatious sign,
and because
services.
With
does he not dramatize the problem of "philosoph-
SIGNS
92
ical
discourse"
—
its
lack
sufficient
itself
THE
TIMES
of apparent contact with
reality?
are left to
funds on which to draw, a linguistic ruse?
times because
it's
And we who
wonder about what he's selling: is more misleading sign, a check without but one
wandered into the shop deconstruction
OF
a sign for sale?
Is it
a sign
of our
CHAPTER O
T
4
H
T
E
LINGUISTIC
ABYSS The
fall
spires us
into the abyss of deconstruction in-
with
as
much
pleasure as fear.
We are
intoxicated with the prospect of never hitting
bottom.
—
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Translator's Preface, Derrida's
of
GRAMMATOLOGY
In
one of
most notorious pronouncements, Paul de
his
that "death
is
a displaced
name
Man
declared
for a linguistic predicament." This
no doubt, the ultimate statement of the deconstructive credo.
we
think
we
are talking about matters
of life and death,
we
is,
When
are merely
having a "displaced" conversation about our mability to converse.
Assumptions that once held true about speakers and
listeners,
and meanmgs, have been thoroughly debunked. Sooner or fore, the mitiate
mto
the mysteries of deconstruction
visit a linguistic abyss.
later,
words there-
must prepare to
SIGNS
94
The age of theory
is
by
characterized
language and Hnguistics, and
TIMES
THE
OF
much of the
with
a general obsession
theorizing in recent vogue
requires famiharity with the groundbreaking
work of the
great Swiss
Hnguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Compiled from lecture notes taken by his students at the University
of Geneva
Genera! Linguistics remains the structuralism and
book
laid the
first
in 1916, Sausssure's Course in
word on
sequels. Published
its
the subject of French
posthumously
foundation for twentieth-century
in 1916, the
linguistics.
It
predicted, and provoked, the career of present-day semiotics.
temporary
literary theory
comes into
its
also
"Con-
own," wrote de Man, "in such
events as the application of Saussurian linguistics to literary texts."
Saussure conceived of language as a system of signs rather than
an orderly procession of meanings.
of words to
relation
word
their
One of his key
meanings
is
insights
do£ has no intrinsic meaning; nothing in the word,
Hund
in
German
that the
fundamentally arbitrary. The sound, or
its
more than does
shape on the page suggests a barking animal, any
its
is
or chien in French. Language consists of signs, and
signs are not independent entities that can be studied in isolation; signs
can only be understood in relation to one another within a larger linguistic system.
from the
The meaning of means what
others; dog
hog or bog.
And
this
is
a sign it
is
a function
of
difference
its
it is
not
The terms we
use
does in English because
true for concepts as well.
have meaning, Saussure reasoned, not because they correspond to an external reality and not because they reflect ideas, but because of their differential status
differentiation.
It
—
their functional value
within a system based on
follows that the pairs of any culturally determined
binary opposition define themselves in relation to one another. applications of this theorem are obvious.
The meaning of
Some
the terms
Democrat and Republican, for example, can be shown to depend on the
The significance of the in any given year would be lost on us if the context of what the Repubhcans were
system of differences to which they belong.
Democratic party platform
we
didn't recognize
it
in
saying at the same time. "Democrat," then, means what relation to is
always
"Republican" not
in flux. It
is
as
an entity unto
possible for
switch their meanings altogether line in
line
one era
of an
With
may
itself;
it
does in
and that relation
"Democrat" and "Republican"
—
to
the "Democratic" foreign policy
resemble nothing so
much
as the
"Republican"
earlier era. his
concept oi difference, Saussure argued that the meaning
"
of it
a sign
is
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
95
But he did not mean by this that less that it was divided against
arbitrary and variable.
was random or "undecidable," much
itself.
In Saussure's terms, any sign consists
word
makes,
its
content). For language to
of
a signijier
(the
sound
a
on the page) and
a signified (the word's
work, the sign needs
to be a united whole.
physical shape
For deconstructionists, however, there can be no point-to-point link
between
and
signifiers
of Saussure's unified
signifieds; in place
they offer the vision of a shattered center, a
According to Jacques Derrida, the is
infinite
—
split in the
linguistic "chain
word
sign, itself.
of signification"
the signifiers and the signifieds never stay in the
same place
for long.
two kinds of
Saussure had introduced a distinction between
he used the term langue to denote the structure or
linguistic activity:
system of a language and parole to denote an individual's speech
"The
linguistic system (langue)
acts.
necessary for speech events (parole)
is
to be intelligible," Saussure wrote, "but the latter are necessary for the
system to establish
itself."
Derrida fastens on the circularity of the logic
here and concludes that "one does not
something can
in general begin,
be
know where
it
and
to begin
how
langue or parole. " Language,
lacking a foundation or origin, entails "a systematic production of differences, the production
Thus
of
In Derrida's brand
words
of
a system
of differences
—
a dififerance.
Saussure deconstructed with a pun.
is
is
never present but
is
differential
the
linguistics,
meaning of
constantly defirred, since words
dififer
not
How do words differ from themselves? Part of the explanation is that there is an element of temporality in language, and therefore a word means something only from one another but from themselves.
different each time as it
is,
it is
used; Derrida's
own
style
oi exposition, prolix
depends on the notion that every repetition involves variation.
But Derrida's
critique
of Saussure
is
far
more
radical than that. For
Derrida, nothing in language "is anywhere ever simply present or absent.
There
are only, everywhere, differences
Words signified come ences."
disintegrate
are
compromised
and
traces
of
at their root: the signifier
differ-
and the
together like the accidental coupling of atoms that
into
their
components an
grounded on nothing. There
is
instant
no nonlinguistic
later.
reality
word-signs proceed and to which they must be therefore, nothing to keep in check
what Derrida
Language
is
from which
faithful;
there
is,
calls the "infinite
play of signification" that marks language in action. All that
we
have
SIGNS
96
and
are texts,
down
—
are indeterminate;
all texts
—
you break it down into a of knowing anything with
if
possibility
capacity of language to is
radically
wiped
out.
tell
A
TIMES
THE
OF
any use of language breaks
self-contradictory impasse. certainty
is
cast into
The
doubt; the
the truth at the service of a speaker's will
vertiginous abyss has opened up where there
once was solid ground. Saussure foresaw a science of "semiology" (from semeion,
Greek word for
"would show what
sign) that
laws govern them." While semantics concerns
what
constitutes signs, itself
the
with the meaning
of words, semiology would concentrate on the functional value of the of
signs independent
new
meaning. This
their content or
science,
Saussure wrote, "has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics
only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws
is
discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defmed area within the mass of anthropological facts."
With
the emergence of French structuralism and semiotics
in the 1960s, Saussure's
conceived
Applying
now
was
it,
prophecy was
realized.
Language,
as
Saussure
held to be the model for any sign-system.
this principle to psychoanalysis,
Jacques Lacan gave
most celebrated formulation: "The unconscious
it
its
structured like a
is
language." Literary criticism could resemble a species of structuralist linguistics
by other means, entailing the application of linguistic prin-
ciples to all
way.
You
manner of
texts
—
texts defined in the broadest possible
could, to equal advantage, offer a structuralist analysis of
a beauty contest, a
boxing match,
mony, an advertisement, stated content
a
dream. In each
of the signs but
emphasized the structure
a political debate, a
at the
case,
you
their relations to
myth,
studied not the
one another; you
expense ot that which
it
subtends.
could even conduct the analysis with something resembhng rigor.
It
was possible
James
the conventions of the narrative function
and variables of a mathematical equation. While the
attempt to put literary criticism on the same footing analysis,
You
scientific
to elucidate the deep structure of, say, a
Bond novel and show how like the constants
a cere-
with diagrams and
all,
was
that
as the scientific
from an unmixed
blessing, the
—
domain of literary criticism and the domain was potentially exhilarating.
integration of linguistics into the
widening of the scope of
far
—
Structuralism seemed to promise a major breakthrough in literary studies, as
it
had
in
anthropology before
academic history that structuralism
in the
it.
But
it
is
an irony of
United States was superseded
before
it
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
could ever fully establish
itself.
the United States assembled at the Johns
Professors
97
from France and
Hopkins University
of 1966 to celebrate the advent of structuralism
in the Fall
in all the "sciences
made
man." Derrida was the conference's fmal speaker and
of the opportunity. Structuralism, he declared, was effectively
The paper he of the
the
of
most
finished.
presented, "Structure, Sign and Play and the Discourse
Human
American career of
Sciences," launched the meteoric
deconstruction. Derrida's paper focused it,
subverted Saussure and
for
how
on the
doomed any
coherence?
A
saw
structuralist project to failure:
could you study the structure of a text
collapsible, lacking a center or it
linguistic loophole that, as he
if that structure
was
any kind of organizing principle to give
vision of chaos
—Derrida
calls it *'play"
concept of a unified structure. Fatally compromised
is
—
replaces the
the confidence
necessary for the interpretation of texts, whether conducted in a structuralist
mode
meanings and
or any other: the confidence that the text will yield its
truths, if read
its
with enough acumen and patience.
Derrida began his lecture by describing a momentous "rupture" in "the history
of the concept of structure," a concept "as old
as
Western science and Western philosophy":
moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse provided we can agree on this word that is to say, a system in which the
This was the
—
—
central signified, the original or transcendental signified,
is
never absolutely present outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain
and the play of signification Language invaded
infinitely.
the universal problematic.
Henceforth no intellectual
discussion could avoid a detour into the realm
of
linguistics.
Not
the
content of an expression but the means of expression must occupy our
metaphor ("invaded") emphasizes the
attention. Derrida's military
disruptive impact of the pronouncement. The central signified, the original or transcendental signified,
is
never absolutely present outside a system
of differences. Nothing exists ahead of language or outside
no things or
ideas except in
existence because they are
words.
grounded
in
it;
there are
Words have
an autonomous
nothing
This heavy cm-
else.
SrGNS
98
on absence
phasis
George Steiner
leads
TIMES
THE
OF
to propose the briefest and
perhaps pithiest definition of deconstruction on record. Deconstruc-
can be defined
tion, writes Steiner,
famous remark about the
mover
There's no prime
signified" or the presence
utterances and gives
a
supreme
of Oakland: "There's no there there."
city
—whether you
—
is
is
from
—
exist outside
modify
to
it
like a translation
—
the "transcendental
that "underwrites" our
in a
of language, "a system
meaning
that transcends the
"the absence of the transcendental
of the death of
terms to those of rhetorical analysis. If ance
it
their meaning. The absence of the transcendendomain and the play of signification infinitely. God
of differences." The dashed belief signified"
call
God
of an ineffable
and doesn't
fiction
power of language
an elaboration of Gertrude Stein's
them
tal signified extends the is
as
so,
God from
surely the deconstructive equivalent of original
grace, but
from pure, unmediated
had meanings but
lost
presence.
them; the process of
is
It is
sin: a fall,
is
not
not that words
differance
"always already," in Derridean parlance. There "the prisonhouse of language." There
theological
Derrida's concept of dijfer-
was
at
work
no escape from
only the prospect of
infinite
play.
In the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse. There are
no
facts,
tions. It is
only interpretations, and no
becomes possible for Paul de
everywhere;
anthropology,
merely branches of
literature
truths,
Man that
fic-
to declare that literature
and psychoanalysis are
linguistics,
—but
only expedient
is
far
from
a
consoling
thought, since literature involves "the presence of a nothingness." In effect, the deconstructionist
of
which he has already reduced
fictionality to
tion,
he
derogates everything else to the same level
insists, is
doomed from
the
start; it
is,
literature. Interpreta-
in
dc Man's words,
"nothing but the possibility of error." Under these circumstances, the proper function of criticism
is
"the deconstruction of literature, the
grammar of rhetorical mystifications." And with such pronouncements in mind, a whole school of literary critireduction to the rigors of
cism commits
itself to
doing deconstructive "routines" on
literary
works, displaying considerable ingenuity on the road to the foreordained dismal conclusion, the linguistic abyss that meets our gaze the heart
of any
at
text.
I
— ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
Derrida warmly endorses the
spirit
of
99
linguistic "play"
—
the
"affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and
without origin"
—and
oi play seems calculated to produce
his use
benign impression. There inveterate playfulness,
a
own
certainly in Derrida's
is
reliance
writing an
on jokes and puns and
etymologies to do the work of logical argumentation, and
count is
as
one mark of his originality. The wordplay
amusement park of
dizzying; in the
called Derrida offers the
most
sudden jerks forward. But those not
free-fall. If
and
language
if
reality has
everything
lies
or can be
is
rhetorical antics
from the
—
is
made
—even
to register misgiv-
hard to distinguish
to
lie,
then the concept of objective
—
or deconstructed. Divide
and mere anarchy
signified,
and
reducible to a linguistic predicament,
been fundamentally undermined
the signijier
Derrida essay
in a
understandable for humanists
it is
may
the higher criticism, the ride
ings about the "rupture" he describes; free-play
from
fanciful this
thrilling twists, turns, reversals,
maddened by Derrida's
a
is
loosed upon the
world.
George Orwell's 1984 denial of objective reality.
individual
is
his torturer's
sealed
when
a
is
the canonical text
The
is
triumph over the recalcitrant
broken Winston Smith
four raised fingers
manipulation possible
state's
on the dangers of the
number
five.
persuaded that
is
What makes
such mental
We can hardly
the state's control of language.
be expected to applaud the disjunction between words and what they refer to, if that
such
as the
is
the condition that
one Orwell describes
—
empowers
a totalitarian state
to falsify the past
and
alter the
terms
of our existence by eliminating some words and redefining others. Discourse, lacking a center, becomes an instrument of power, and so, in the land
ignorance
is
of Big Brother, war strength.
I
am
is
peace, freedom
not saying that Derrida or
is
slavery,
and
his followers find
such a thought comforting; on the contrary, Derrida
would
like to
believe that deconstruction fosters "the analysis of the conditions of totalitarianism in
all its
forms."
I
am
simply suggesting that the belief
in an exclusively linguistic universe leaves less
humanity more rather than
vulnerable to the forces of political tyranny. There
is,
in
decon-
struction, neither a safeguard against nihilistic despair nor an antidote
to passive quiescence.
moral judgment or
Rather than provide
a philosophical basis for
existential action, deconstruction has the effect
silencing literature and language, leaving us an intellectual void.
of
The
— SIGNS
100
danger of such a void
is
that
may
it
TIMES
THE
OF
be
filled
up by
the next great
dictator. I
was present
at the
1986 convention of the
Association,
which was held
as a British
professor
in
New York
Modem
Language
City that year, and listened
— Stephen Heath of Cambridge
University
demonstrated the ease with which deconstructive procedures can be
The
used to serve a sinister political agenda.
session at
which Heath
spoke was entitled "Literature and Propaganda." Heath mounted defense of propaganda. After noting that as
opposed to
literature, "its
be easy to reverse
considered "a bad thing,"
antonym," he commented
this hierarchy," since
"political action."
it is
a
propaganda
is
that "it should
fundamental to
Well, Heath was probably right in saying that the
hierarchy that values literature over propaganda can easily be reversed.
what
exactly
Isn't that
word once
again
realm of art
may
of the polity
—
is
tyrants
hierarchy.
do
after they seize
power? The loaded
"Hierarchy" implies that truth
in the
correspond to repressive authoritarianism in the realm
that
it's all
demolition of hierarchies
propaganda, or is
pursued
may
be treated
an end in
as
nothing to hold onto, nothing with which to
resist
The
as such.
itself,
leaving us
the imposition of
new hierarchical order. The twentieth century's dismal chronicle of new hierarchies, established upon revolutionary new theories, does not make one welcome the prospect. Postulate a disjunction between the word and the world, hold fast a
to
it,
and then assume the possibility
technology a false
—
that a
government
—made
in control
more imaginable by
of the airwaves can create
world out of words. What you end with,
supposition far enough,
is
paranoia.
struct, valid
This hnguistic predicament
—
the
and you find
it
con-
a fictional
is
—
the disjunction between the
taken to heart in a novel that
is
it
word
far less familiar than
Out ofJoint, a science was published by Philip K. Dick in 1959 but written
in its
fiction classic, as if for
you take
only because people have been manipulated to credit
and the world 1984 but,
if
The world of appearances may be
a collective hallucination; deconstruct
as real.
the
way, equally disturbing.
Tirtic
an imaginary reader in the year 1997. Early on, the novel's
protagonist, a
man with
the unlikely
name
of
Ragle
Gumm,
ap-
proaches a soft-drink stand in the park. Suddenly Ragle sees the stand disintegrate into
man, the cash
Coke and
its
component molecules, "along with
register, the
the counter
big dispenser of orange drink, the taps for
root beer, the ice-chests of bottles, the hot do^ broiler, the
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
101
jars
of mustard, the shelves of cones, the row of heavy round metal
lids
under which were the different
of existence,
up and it
of
all
reads.
it.
In
its
place
ice creams."
is
a slip
He
watches
it
pass out
of paper, which Ragle picks
The words "SOFT-DRINK STAND" are prmted on The stand, counter man and all, wasn't real. It was
in crude capitals.
just discourse.
The a
of the link between words and things
shattering
results in
kind of linguistic schizophrenia, and Dick develops a brilliantly
Gumm
paranoid scenario for his hero. Very gradually, Ragle to realize that the
part of a
town
in
which he
sham world designed
to
lives, his
begins
family and friends, are
keep him pacified
—
a
world where
appearances are carefully maintained to preserve the illusion that the year
is
the relatively innocuous
to great lengths to deceive
military plans. is,
in
one of 1959. The authorities have gone
our man, for he
really 1997.
It is
The
earth
is
is
indispensable to their
at
war with Luna
—
that
on the moon have staged an insurrection against the forces command of the earth. Ragle Gumm spends his days solving a
colonists
—
what he thinks he's doing. For two straight years, he has been the national champion of the "Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next?" contest. On the huge checkerboard diagram provided by the newspaper, Ragle locates the rank and file of the square on which the moving dot the "Little Green Man" will appear that day. Ragle is so good at this contest that he is able to make a living on his prize winnings. Naturally, people around him think he's a little odd: that a grown man should spend his time so idly! Ragle's peculiar occupation makes him a kind of allegorical representation of the sci-fi writer, of Dick himself. Just as the sci-fi running newspaper puzzle
at least that's
—
—
novelist appears to indulge in a frivolous activity that turns out to have
Ragle Gumm's puzzle-solving
a prophetic dimension, so
cent as
it
talent for
looks. In fact,
doing
—
is
Ragle
would
lie
tionists.
doing
—what he
really its
isn't
has an
so inno-
uncanny
predicting where the next moon-launched missile
the time, and the "Little tion. If
is
of the square indicates the
will hit; the rank
willing to oblige
what he
place, the file indicates
Green Man" stands for the engine of destruc-
knew what
the contest meant, he
sponsors; there's
no guarantee
might be
less
that his sympathies
with the powers that be rather than with the lunar insurrec-
So Ragle
is
kept
in the dark,
kept "happy," with a specially
chosen "wife" and a whole environment designed to be ing as possible
—
to keep
him
in an artificial state
of
as
unthreaten-
tranquility, in a
SIGNS
102
simulacrum of his hometown state's
power
astonishing
TIMES
THE
OF
in that year
of his childhood, 1959. The
Ragle Gumm's
to manipulate
reality
is
based
its control of the means of communication, its deployment of words severed from things and images divorced from actualities. Our
on
man's nightmare
of a decon-
in short, the fictional extrapolation
is,
Assume that language (and all other sign systems model of language) is fundamentally duplicitous,
structive world-view.
on the and paranoia becomes that function
a reasonable response to anything that advertises
When
itself as reality.
everything
phoney, when there
is
is
a breach
between word and thing, between image and substance, lying threatens to
become
On
a universal principle.
the
way
to discovering the truth about himself and his
circumstances, Ragle that has
crisis
made
Gumm
of the
arrives at a statement
predicament possible.
his
linguistic
could stand
It
as
an
epigraph for deconstruction:
Words, he thought. Central problem in philosophy. Relation of word to object .
.
.
what
Our
is
a
reality,
word? Arbitrary
sign.
among words not
But we
No
things.
live in
such thing
thing anyhow; a gestalt in the mind. Thingness
of substance. it
An
illusion.
Word
more
doesn't represent reality.
anyhow. Maybe God It is
sense
.
.
than the object
real
Word
gets to objects.
is
reality.
Not
us,
For
us,
though.
an approved deconstructionist tactic to search far afield for
the telling analogy, and there
between Dick's
fictional
Jacques Derrida
set in
is
at
least
When
told readers
one further resemblance
nightmare and the intellectual movement that
motion. The plot of Time Out
conspiracy theory. In a crucial sense, this
as well.
.
as a
represents.
Word
a
is
words.
is
of Joint rests
deconstruction in America was young, Michael
oi the
New
York Review
of
on
true of deconstruction
Books that Derrida
Wood
sees a 'Vast
metaphysical plot" infecting Western thought from Plato to the present.
The
principal feature
of Dcrrida's method
patient and intelligent suspicion''
— he
with which an intelligence operative interrogates plot he
is
determined to unmask
is
is,
Wood
wrote, "a
interrogates a text in the spirit a
captured spy.
The
"a doctrine of presence, a faith
— ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
holding that immediacy
is
value and indirection
has a name, logocentrism, and Derrida detects
it
is
103
evil."
The
everywhere.
doctrine
What
are
the attractions and limitations of such a universal conspiracy theory?
Wood summed
them up. "There are," he wrote in 1977, "obvious virtues in a plot you can fmd everywhere, especially if you enjoy your suspicions, but Derrida's thinking does at times remind me of those
Hollywood movies which insisted on confronting nothing less than the whole human condition." Edward Said, the most eminent critical theorist on the Columbia University faculty, put the case less politely five years later: "It has
always seemed to
me
that the
supreme irony
of what Derrida has called logocentrism
is
that
monotonous, and
as
inadvertently systematizing
tion, as
as insistent, as
is
logocentrism
Nothing
critique, deconstruc-
its
itself."
stays the same,
of oppression has led to
and the search for a unified
new
a
field
theory
deconstructive catchall for the meta-
bottom of our woe. The trendy coinage is merger of logocentrism and phallocentrism. The
physical conspiracy at the phallogocentrism,
right-minded
a
out to undo "patriarchal" assumptions. In
critic sets
—
—
you want as one enthusiast puts it to deconstruct "singularity, embodied in the phallus, asserted in Logos, inscribed in an egotistical I." As a definition of phallogocentrism this has the virtue particular,
of concision; together.
also has the reassuring
it
Yet here again
it is
has taken the place of argument.
pun
links the self, the phallus,
of negative
signification. If that
to arrive at a rather
Perhaps
it is
sound of rote phrases strung
hard to shake the suspicion that wordplay It
may
be that only the logic of a
and the logos is
so, the spirit
more mischievous
in this particular chain
of play makes
definition
of phallogocentrism.
up the space between the
rather like the printer's error that closed
sword," and chipped off the
The time deconstruction
that
its
has
—and
come
s
debunk
to
to ask
feels
positively
what
goaded
straightforward propositions.
do so with some
I
is
mightier than the
of suwrd.
the dcbunkcrs and demystify
difference
binary oppositions, deconstruction
one
possible
simply the linguistic equivalent o£ an optical illusion
second and third words of the sentence "The pen
and
it
is
it
makes.
With
its
aporias
coated so heavily in jargon
to define the
theory
as
a
set
propose the following group of
trepidation, though
I
am
of
ten.
I
cheered by the knowledge
— SIGNS
104
won't
that genuine deconstructionists is,
own
they really do play by their
TIMES
THE
OF
risk contradicting
rules.
me
must expect
anyone
else's.
Or
their
is
recommended only
and never for the sacred
texts to his
exercising the
Is
for dealing with other peo-
texts
of deconstruction?
the deconstructionists will directly refute the idea that tions are misinterpretations, that
that
be treated no differently from
texts to
that too optimistic an assumption?
free-play of signifiers ple's writing,
own
if,
For surely the proponents
of Derrida, glorifying the reader's empowerment to bend will,
—
all
If so,
interpreta-
none should be "privileged,"
that the
author's intentions are irrelevant, and that meanings are "undecidable"
and
unknowable.
texts
My
ten candidates for a deconstructive decalogue:
—Between struction begins
The word
is
the signijier
and
the signified falls the shadow.
Decon-
by tearing things asunder, or depicting them
severed from
its
as torn.
meaning; the linguistic intention
is
from the linguistic event. This notion, if taken to heart, would introduce either dififerance or terror into all writing and all separated
speech.
turns out that
It
are skating at the edge
whenever we
slippery precipice
frock in T.
we
S. Eliot's
poem
talk, write,
states the
or think.
theme: "It
is
of
a steep
J.
Alfred Pru-
and
impossible to say
what I mean." Yet, as another Eliot character says, "I've gotta use words when I talk to you." Words arc all that we have; everything
just
is
mediated by language.
—
Writing precedes speech. This
is
one of the most fundamental
of the hierarchical reversals that Derrida proposes.
writing that
arguing that
prior to speech, Derrida isn't pressing the patently false claim
is
invention of writing historically preceded the ability of
the
human
By
beings to communicate through spoken language. Rather,
Dernda's point
and that
it
write exist
that speech
as
"Writing
in
Derrida puts
From
is
as
devoid of "presence"
as
is
writing
would be incorrect to imagine that the things we say or in some prior form in our minds. Speech is not the materialthought.
ization of
inasmuch
is
we
On
the contrary, speech behaves like writing
are equally alienated
from our words
in either case.
general covers the entire field of linguistic signs," as it
in
Of Gratnmatology.
the point
of view of
strict logic, there
may
be
less
to this
11
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
celebrated instance of the deconstructive
105
method than meets the eye. speech is a form of writing
is logically no reason to say that you simultaneously maintain, as Derrida does, a distinction between speech and writing. It would be more accurate simply to observe that
There if
A
speech and writing are both aspects of a larger entity, language. professor for
who
work
did his graduate
what Derrida
doing here.
is
at
Yale has
this
of saying "cats and
instead
It is as if,
dogs are household pets," Derrida were to
domestic analogy
always
insist that "cats are
already dogs" by expanding the definition of "dogs" until
it
becomes
coextensive with that of "household pets."
Given Derrida's conspiratorial view of Western philosophy, his reversal of the speech /writing hierarchy is meant to have major implications. In in
one of his
Derrida observes that the
essays,
Greek means both "poison" and "cure" and
word
Phaedrus uses the
by some heavy
abetted
what he
word pharmakon
that Plato in the
to describe writing. This etymological conceit,
textual free-play, permits Derrida to expose
ambivalence toward writing in Western
sees as the perennial
philosophy. According to Derrida, speech has always been "privileged" over writing
—
that
philosophers since Plato are supposed to
is,
have distrusted the written word and placed their confidence in speech.
Written words, says Socrates
though they were
intelligent,
the
but
same thing forever. And once it
may
the hands not only of those
who
have no busmess with
a thing
who
is
understand
doesn't
put into writing, the
over the place, getting into
be, drifts all
it; it
talk to
if you ask
they say, from a desire to be instructed,
composition, whatever
you as them anything about what they go on telling you just "seem to
in the Phaedrus,
it,
but equally of those
know how
to address the right
people, and not address the wrong." It
seems questionable to assume that
this
speech by Socrates puts
Plato on record as "privileging" speech over writing. For after Socrates
is
a character in the Phaedrus
and doesn't always speak for the
author; in writing the dialogue, Plato gesture
made by
Socrates
m
this irony. Nevertheless, in
a "liberation."
may
be said to have negated the
the speech. Derrida himself has played
seeking to
chy of speech and writing, Derrida
somehow
all,
undo acts
on
the real or alleged hieraras
if
what
is
at
stake
is
though the championing of writing
It is as
over speech were a moral imperative. "The history of truth, of the truth of truth, has always been
repression outside
'full'
.
.
.
the debasement of writing, and
speech," Derrida writes in
Of
its
Grammatology.
SIGNS
106
This "debasement,"
this "repression,"
nemesis, logocentrism. ists,
for
forum
the academic conference as the
for the exposition of their ideas.
— Words language
nothing other than the old
remains a mild irony that the deconstruction-
medium and
presentation as the ideal ideal
is
advocacy of writing over speech, favor the oral
their
all
It
TIMES
THE
OF
speak
us.
Hillis Miller laid
J.
down
means of thinking. Language rather thinks man and ing poems, if he will allow for us.
We're not
makes it
this
this
do
so."
his 'world,' includ-
Language does the talking
of our words, but they control
dogma
is
waves away the
blithely
us,
how
If writers,
implication
is
can
we
possibility
of
(A
us.
that language speaks
of some repressive ideology or
other.)
one of the most radical of deconstructionist principles
What is
that
free will; for if language
assign responsibility for the statements
we
even great writers, are continually betrayed by their
words, what does that
this
we
say about the rest of the population?
are
implication challenges the is
to
deconstructive
at the service
manipulates
make?
it
in control
Marxist revision of
through us
"the law that
not an instrument or tool in man's hands, a submissive
is
The
merely passive conductors of language; the
autonomy of the
a deconstructionist goal: to
speaker.
undermine the
But then
self as a
this,
too,
concept or entity
proper Newspeak, to confront the Self with the Excluded Other
or, in
and thereby to deconstruct
—A//
the world's a text.
tcxtuality." Everything
more,
at
no
it.
is
This
a text or
is
the principle of "wall-to-wall
may
be considered
as such;
what's
fixed point does the text leave off and something called
The
noun of choice dates back to an influential essay by Roland Barthcs, "From Work to Text" (1971). The change in vocabulary, as Barthes makes clear, means a change in the ground rules of literary criticism. Work implies good literature, text embraces all a leveling impulse that does away with the value rcaHty begin.
oi
rise
text as the
—
judgments ate the
that used to distinguish critical activity.
works of
with authorless
a
Rather than evalu-
given author, the properly enlightened
texts.
For the
shift in
critic plays
terminology also signals
a shift
of authority. Work implies an author and text helps eliminate that unwanted personage. "The author is reputed the father and owner of
I.
his
work," Barthes
for the Text,
Works
readers; texts are
and reading
ings,
"As
writes.
inscription of the Father."
voured by passive
is
He
used the
it
107
reads without the
of "consumption" de-
are objects
"polysemous," having plural mean-
an act of "practical collaboration."
Roland Barthes affirmed what he text."
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
word Jouissance
called "the pleasure
of the
to indicate the erotic dimension
reading; the appropriate response to a
book
is
to read
it
of
like a playful
lover rather than like a uxorious husband, with liberty rather than with
Jacques Derrida raised the importance of the text to a meta-
fidelity.
physical quandary, a difficulty standing in the
anything with certainty. "There a rien hors du texte"
is
— he declared
way of our knowing
nothing outside the text" in
Of Grammatalogy.
sophical position that effectively dissolves
all
borders.
between truth and
sense to observe the distinction
—
It is It
'7/ n'y
a philo-
makes
fiction, for
little
example;
both are subsumed under the heading of "textuality." Texts don't speak about the world but about other texts. There
once was thought
to reside, only an infinity
The concept of textuality tion reflects and builds Zeitgeist.
You
a
is
on the
is,
where meaning
of mirrors.
good example of how deconstruc-
crucial assumptions
of our cultural
in the field
endowed with a similar significance of anthropology. "Doing ethnography," Clifford Geertz find the concept
argued in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), "is like trying to read foreign, faded, (in the sense of 'construct a reading of) a manuscript
—
full
of
ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious
emendations, and tendentious
commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior." Anthropological writings are interpretations in search in search
of scientific laws.
It
of meaning rather than investigations
follows that they are fictions, "something
made," "something fashioned." But for Geertz the knowledge of the ineluctable textuality of to a deconstructive
all
experience and
all
evidence doesn't lead
dead end. Geertz recognizes the threat to "the
knowledge" but maintains that "the attention of an ethnographic account
objective status of anthropological threat
hollow. The claim to
is
does not
rest
on
its
author's ability to capture primitive facts in faraway
and carry them home
mask or a carving, but on the degree to which he is able to clarify what goes on in such places, to reduce the puzzlement what manner of men are these? to which unfamil-
places
like a
—
iar acts
—
emerging out of unknown backgrounds naturally give
In the years since Geertz
wrote these words,
rise."
radical anthropologists
— SIGNS
108
have seized on the threat that he indubitable fact that makes
— The
author
hollow
calls
were the one
as if it
others suspect.
we
"Popular wisdom warns us that
dead.
is
all
TIMES
THE
OF
quently substitute the wish for the deed," writes the novelist and
William
Gass,
fre-
critic
"and when, in 1968, Roland Barthes announced the
death of the author, he was actually calling for Barthes himself sign up for suicide, but wrote his
of France where he performed
it. Nor did Roland way into the College
admiring audience."
vohes-faces for an
Barthes tolled the bell in his essay "The Death of the Author," naming that as the precondition for the wished-for "birth
of the reader." For
Barthes the demise of the author successfully completes a rebellion
The
against authority.
elimination of "the
attempt to "decipher" the thing.
text,
and
Author-God"
frustrates
wrote Barthes,
that,
is
a
any
good
The text is to be "disentangled," not "deciphered," and this what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity
"liberates
that
is
truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix
to refuse
God and
his hypostases
—
—an odd
leap
would have
The
is
of
of logic
makes
that
of the death of god
may
gods.
demise, nor
us balk at the
"liberating" as
and
it
—
members of
we know as they know we know as they know there
The death of is
as
match the idea
as perfectly as the current
suppose, because
that there are authors; are no
is
us believe. Gass explains:
idea of the death of the author does not
this faith
in the end,
in the metaphorical linkage
assumption that the literary half of the analogy Barthes
is,
There
something awry, William Gass notes, authors and gods
meaning
reason, science, law."
—
the author
—
not an ordinary
is
simply the departure of bcHcf, Hkc an
exotic visitor from the East, from the minds of the masses.
The two
expressions are metaphors
which
are the reverse
of
one another. The death of god represents not only the rcaHzation that gods have never existed, but the contention that such a bchcf
is
no longer even
irrationally possible: that
neither reason nor the taste and temper of the times can
condone
it.
The
belief lingers on,
of course, but
like astrology or a faith in a flat earth
—
in
it
does so
worse case than
I
a neurotic
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
symptom, no longer even on the other hand,
of the author,
He
is,
now
living in a
but he
of the author"
is
employed
were stripped of
is
a god.
the denial of a metaphysical belief; the "death
a denial
of
The
a material, historical, verifiable fact.
God
comparison between the author and cally
in
camper and cooking with propane.
no longer
is
The "death of god"
decHne
and swans, perhaps residing on Olympus
his thunderbolts
but
The death
a la mode. signifies a
authority, in theological power, as if Zeus
still,
109
is
a flawed
one but
is
strategi-
to glorify the reader-critic's willful disobedience. Gass
shrewdly suggests that the
real
point of convergence between the death
God
somewhere beyond the two in the wished-for "death of the father." Undoubtedly this concepts is the gesture that the word phallogocentrism is meant to perform. While Barthes calls for the overthrow of the author as a way to replicate in literary terms the death of God, Michel Foucault sets out of the author and the death of
—
lies
Accord-
to demonstrate that the author never existed in the
first
ing to Foucault, to identify a text by
name is, relatively when the texts we
speaking, a
today
its
author's
modern convention. "There was
a time
call 'literary' (narratives, stories, epics, tragedies,
place.
comedies) were
accepted, put into circulation, and valorized without any question
about the identity of their author." Foucault recommends that
we
regard the author not "as a genius" but as "an ideological product."
He
predicts that "the author-function will disappear" and that texts
anonymity of a murmur."
will then be able to "develop in the
It
hardly be said that neither Barthes nor Foucault removed his
from the
title
need
name
pages of the books in which they pronounce their
requiescat in pace for the author.
Deconstruction completes the tion
marks make the point that
assault.
For Jacques Derrida, quota-
would be
"it
frivolous to think that
'Descartes,' 'Leibniz,' 'Rousseau,' 'Hegel,' etc., are
What
are they, then?
Merely textual
authority. Peter Mullen's parodic
names of authors."
entities, fictive
beings devoid of
poem, "Deconstruction,"
exact:
D'ya wanna know the creed'a Jacques Derrida?
is
quite
SIGNS
110
TIMES
THE
OF
Dere
ain't
no reada
Dere
ain't
no wrider
Eider.
If the author
is
dead, and has been dead "always already," the author's
deconstruction
life is irrelevant:
ory.
To
boom
note the
a literary enterprise
is
in
is
a
profoundly antibiographical the-
biography
as a
publishing category and
as
one more sign of the breach between
to note
the academic scene and the culture at large.
—
Presence
is
The
absent.
deconstructive unmasking of "the meta-
Where
physics of presence" has a plainly antitheological charge. tentialism regarded "the death
phy of moral absolutist;
it
and that in
of god"
deconstruction
action,
suggests that an absolute
absence,
its
as a starting is
exis-
point for a philoso-
curiously
ground for truth
and needlessly indispensable
is
no moral judgments can be made. Apply
this
Ten Commandments, and you fmd that they deconstruct The argument goes like this: For the Ten Commandments to have any real moral force, you need to credit the authority of God. The various imperatives, the thou shalt and thou shalt not clauses, make no sense without the prior assertion of a God in whom these commandments originate. Therefore the Ten Commandments begin with an affirmation rather than a command: "I am the Lord thy God, who logic to the
themselves.
have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house oi bondage." The voice of
mandments; everything zov.
The
the
it's is
is
God
that
—God's
presence
makes ou^ht
—
precedes his
possible. "If
God
is
comdead,
permitted," wrote Dostoevski in The Brothers Karama-
deconstructive world-view
way of
saying
it:
—
History
is
"Nothing
bunk.
is
true;
is
closer in spirit to Nietzsche's
everything
Henry Ford summed up
is
permitted."
the orthodox decon-
structive position with admirable succinctness. History
is
of the dissolution of philosophical boundaries. Since there
one casualty is
no history
outside of texts, and texts are unstable in their meaning, history
rendered undccidablc exists
—
as
undecidable
within bracket marks.
A
is
as literature. In effect, history
programmatic skepticism toward
all
truth-claims promotes the view of history as either irrelevant to the
I
Study of a given text or
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
as itself a scripted text,
111
with no more substance
The double danger of such a view will to act upon our destiny while at
than a movie.
is
paralyze the
the
that
would
it
same time
it
implies the possibility that the "texts" of our lives can be revised, erased, or interpreted out
For a
of existence.
of the wars-as-texts theme, turn to
fictional treatment
Philip K. Dick's The
Man
in the
High
the "alternative history" subgenre
Castle (1962), a masterpiece in
of science
fiction.
The novel
is
based
Germans and the Japanese won the Second World War. The victors between them occupy the United States the except for Japanese control the West Coast, the Germans the East a slender nonaligned region in the mountain states. In a remote castle in this unoccupied zone lives a man named Abendsen, the author of a novel entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Though banned by the Nazis, The Grasshopper enjoys a lively underground existence. It is a most subversive novel its premise is that Germany and Japan lost the on the premise
that the
—
—
—
war. Juliana, Dick's heroine, undertakes a pilgrimage to Abendsen's
high tion.
and close
castle and, after various crises
She finds that the Abendsen house
single-story stucco house with
many
made up mostly of climbing
roses."
next. his
When Juliana
book
not a
shrubs and a
The
good
deal of garden
comes
startled to learn that
appearances to the contrary,
all
but "a
castle at all
climactic revelation
and Abendsen meet, both are Despite
"is true."
is
reaches her destina-
calls,
Germany
and Japan did lose the war.
The
fragility
to explore, fantasia.
of
whether
But when
on "empirical
it is
facts"
were somehow
is a great theme for the novelist form of a prophetic warning or a paranoid
historical truth
in the
is
taught
made
liberating, as
as serious
doctrine
—when
sober-faced, as though the
though
it
the assault
knowledge
weren't standard totalitarian
practice to substitute interpretation for fact in the rewriting
tory
—
the deconstruction of truth
—Goodbye
to aesthetics.
ideological constructions
—
Art
as are
is
is
of
his-
not so benign a phenomenon.
suspect because
works of
art are
governments, wars, and revolutions.
Art has been corrupted by technology. Fascism can be understood
as
triumph oi the aesthetic ideology: the Nazis mesmerized the masses with images and illusions, the construction of a myth. Here the key a
text
is
Walter Benjamin's essay "The
Work
of Art
in the
Age of
a
SIGNS
112
TIMES
THE
OF
Mechanical Reproduction" (1936). "The logical
of Fascism
result
the introduction of aesthetics into political life," Benjamin wrote. itself
could be treated
war
"expects
were an
if it
as
is
War
aesthetic spectacle. Fascism
of
to supply the artistic gratification
a sense perception
that has been changed by technology." Published in 1936, before the
Nazis' state-sponsored violence ran leaves out the state
W.
of the world are the
legislators
view of
a limited
Benjamin's analysis
full course,
more extreme forms of coercion of
which, to paraphrase
in
its
the fascist state
—
H. Auden, the unacknowledged
secret police.
But while Benjamin's
fascism, that hasn't stopped deconstructionists
is
from
harping on the dangers of "aesthetic ideology." The deconstructionist suspicion of art
Some
thority of the as
is
make
powers
ways
the
which
in
a quasi-political footing.
the argument that art underwrites the au-
that be.
an autonomous entity
mask
on
thus put
theorists
The view
work of art
that regards the
seen as a "bourgeois fiction" designed to
is
art
used to inculcate a dominant cultural
is
who
ideology. For the so-called cultural materialists,
put deconstruc-
tive tactics at the service
of Marxist objectives,
production, of interest
an object of study to the extent that
as
microcosm of the economic structure of
presents a
moral experience of a work of it
Language,
knowledge,
not
Throuj^h the Lookini^-Glass
Words, he
says,
depends on can a
art,
the ideas
of such
educates, are an obvious casualty
—
art
mean "a
who nice
don't
mean what you
docs the defining. In
it
The
programs.
Humpty Dumpty
in
think they moan. Everything
Humpty 's own
knock-down argument."
he wants
capitalism.
of
was an early forerunner of dcconstruction.
mediator oi power, not a repository of
mean what
a species
expresses, the feelings
critical
power.
is
it
is
them
It
beliefs.
mean. "The
to
example,
\^lory
follows that language
is
For Humpty, words
question
says Alice,
is,"
"whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question
Humpty,
is,"
Humpty
replies,
"which
is
to be master
—
the deconstructionists arc preoccupied with
that's all."
power
—
Like
they are
inordinately fond of using words such as power and institutions and
avoiding words such has a
comment, or
critics.
Sisj^reatness 3ind j;ienius
so
it
seems,
on the prose
style
Humpty
even
of deconstructionist
"Impenetrability!" he exclaims. Alice asks what he means. "I
meant by 'impenetrability'
"^
and wisdom.
that
we've had enough of that subject."
— What
you see
is
as
You
never what you get.
represent the world, but the text
regarding words
ABYSS
LINGUISTIC
THE
TO
is
113
expect a text to
self-referential.
You
persist in
means toward an end, but you cannot escape the
endlessly labyrinthine coils
of discourse. Words point only to other
words, to traces and differences, never to the
real thing.
The
truth
is
The late Walker Percy defined a deconstructionist as an academic who claims that texts have no referents, but who leaves a message on his what
is
absent, concealed, "marginalized," excluded, invisible.
novelist
wife's telephone answering
supper.
To
The message
is
machine requesting a pepperoni pizza for
a text, writes Percy,
extend the metaphor,
it
and the pizza
is
a referent.
could be specified that the telephone
answering machine in question has a self-erasing tape. The deconstructive critic should not be surprised if the pizza fails to materialize.
And
that brings us to the Marxist /Freudian axis. In a Marxist
model of knowledge, the superstructure culture
—
fare. In a
is
the tangible products of
camouflages and reinforces the hidden reality of
class
Freudian model, the manifest content of a dream
is
or disguise for that
—
the
its
world
latent is
The
warcover
meaning. In a deconstructive model, the text
similarly a camouflage. Like the Marxist's super-
structure and the Freudian's manifest content,
through.
a
it is
something to be seen
difference
is
that here, in contrast to the Marxist or
Freudian schemes, there
is
no ultimate meaning
penetrate.
There
is
to
which one can
only the constant deferral of meaning, the infinite
play of signification, and finally, the equilibrist's wire across the linguistic abyss.
-^
CHAPTER
5
KEY IDEA
A A word
that
that has
everybody excited, probably
everyone snaps up, or a question
generative idea orientation
—
the
germ of
a
carries a
complete re-
metaphysics, or at least the
in
"Open Sesame" of some new positive science. The sudden vogue of such a key-idea is due to the fact that at
all
sensitive
once to exploiting
connection,
for
and active minds turn
we
it;
try
it
every
in
every purpose, experiment
with possible stretches of
strict
its
meaning,
When
with generalizations and derivatives.
we become
familiar with the
expectations do not outrun so far, and then
over.
We
settle
its
its
new
actual uses quite
unbalanced popularity
down
to the
problems that
has really generated, and these characteristic issues
—Susanne
idea our
become
is
it
the
of our time.
new
K. Langer, philosophy in a
KEY (1942)
Talcs of the liberated signifier:
keep
fmdmg new
In an issue
situations
m
Now
that
we have
deconstruction,
which the word makes perfect
of Newsweek devoted to the escalating
costs
we
sense.
of the savings
and loan debacle, Jane Bryant Quinn notes that banks have begun tightening their credit policies, though
deconstruction oi the temple to sec
A
fashion reporter in the
New
"it's still
much
pretty early in the
evidence in the
statistics."
York Times Magazine salutes Giorgio
— SIGNS
116
TIMES
THE
OF
new look in men's clothes to be worn with a slouch,
Armani's
for the 1990s: loose-fitting gar-
ments,
in place
yesteryear. She quotes an expert
going on
on
cultural mythologies:
the "dismantling of Reaganist attitudes.
is
The
participates in that deconstruction."
column
of the power
writer of the
And
suits
of
what
is
fashion
"Newsmakers"
in the Philadelphia Inquirer has an item about a "hyper-rich"
Texas couple with a superfluous mansion on
their estate.
The couple
had "the 6,600 square-foot house carefully dismantled, then reassembled" on the grounds of an institution for emotionally disturbed children. Juxtaposed
is
an anecdote about an American
artist
who
bought two five-ton fragments of the crumbling Berlin Wall. The headline: "Deconstruction."
"Words in isolation have no meaning," Jacques Derrida has written. "What makes sense is the sentence. How many sentences can be made with 'deconstruction'?" Answer: no limit. Making up sample sentences is a game anyone can play. My hypothetical political columnist
wants to
nominees
recall the televised debate
in 1988:
"When Lloyd
*no Kennedy,' Bentsen not only
Bentsen told
won
structed the air and pretension of the critic
is
"By
not to be outdone:
mock
the rant at the
your cake and eating be placed on
this
it,
But
that he
Quayle campaign." The
putting the rant in the it
both ways
same time. This
too.'
Dan Quayle
was
the debate; he terminally decon-
discredited speaker, the playwright has
and to
between the vice-presidential
is
—
theater
mouth of
a
she gets to rant
generally called 'having
a high-sounding interpretation could
hedging of bets
—
to wit, that the dramatist intends
to conduct us to the deconstructive abyss that awaits
when
equal and
The art chronicler will come across plenty of works on which to pin the tag of deconstruction. The French sculptors Anne and Patrick Poirier, he might note, specialize in pscudoruins a fallen column here, a tomb entrance there opposite meanings cancel each other out."
—
strategically positioned to suggest "the effect
temple." hardliners
Then
—
there's
the foreign policy pundit:
left-wingers or right-wingers? it
The
might
question
is
which
is
the front page of the A^fw^ York Times today
Says
New
I
of decon-
so often mislead-
the autocrat of the breakfast table can get in
"On
Legislature Should
West
either unanswerable or
have the beneficent effect
structing the standard left-right dichotomy,
Even
"Are the Soviet
the ones critical of Gorbachev's overtures to the
meaningless, but asking
ing."
of a deconstructed marble
on the act: Chief
read, *K.G.B.
Ride Herd on His Agency,' and
in
117
sight
System
overview^
—
as the
Model.'
Though
—
paused over 'Oversight.' Did that mean
I
a deconstructionist
confirms that
might deride
it is
—
meaning";
true;
I
using
it
I
in a
New
Key. "Every-
carries a generative idea," if
reorientation in metaphysics."
1
cultural assumptions
enough, and
—
if
he or she disregards the metaphysical
there's
reasons to use
no reason it.
One
to shy
reason
away from
is
not a science, and therefore the
the
individual case.
The methods and
profound skepticism and
critic
broadly
—and
would be wise
several
to
borrow fit
an
categories of deconstruction,
its
of high play,
its spirit
word
it
that literary criticism remains an
from any given theory or system of thought
that seems to
may
help us to
make
of anomalies that would otherwise go unexplained. The decon-
structive bias in favor
of theory over practice
is
easily dispensed with,
and the alarming aspects of the theory don't discredit it
of our
brings to bear on the reading of literature the heightened
awareness of language that deconstruction promotes. Define
sense
not "the
believe this to be
believe that deconstruction has at least a limited value for the
dogma and
art,
its
believe that, for better or w^orse, deconstruction has codified
practicing literary critic
good
Susanne
with "possible stretches of
some and modified other of the prevailing time.
has entered the
it
a "key-idea" in the sense that
vv^ord,
"probably
it
germ of a complete
vulgarization, the
as
it
the w^ay
K. Langer had in mind in her book Philosophy
one" has snapped up the strict
Over-
Cites U.S.
or error? Self-deconstruction!"
popular use of the term deconstruction
language
He
Talk With Reporters,
slightly smaller type, 'In
fosters.
"We
ought scrupulously to
risk the use
all
the insights
of any concept that
seems propitious or helpful in getting over gaps," wrote R. P. Black-
mur, one of the century's greatest
literary critics.
"Only
be consciously provisional, speculative, and dramatic."
To
the extent
become a part of our language, moreover, it unavoidable. The poet whose concern, in Mallarmc's famous
that the is
word
the use should
phrase,
is
itself has
—
to "purify the dialect
deconstruction but will try to this
procedure:
asserts the if the
it's
of the tribe"
redeem
it.
—
will not simply ignore
Deconstruction has
called a recuperative reading.
A
gesture of recuperative
is
name
for
recuperative reading
value of a discourse after methodically tearing
real
a
it
apart.
And
the clear implication that the
discourse, prior to the critic's surgical intervention,
is
sick,
then so be
it.
One
step
toward recuperating deconstruction
is
to distinguish
SIGNS
118
between the "hard-core" and "soft-core" introduced by
Howard
1985. Felperin
classifies as
Bloom and
TIMES
THE
OF
book Beyond Deconstruction, in the work of such critics as Harold
Felperin in his soft-core
who
Geoffrey Hartman,
share affinities with the decon-
of a more humanistic world-view.
structionists but retain features
Hard-core deconstruction, on the other hand, "thoroughgoing," and Jacques Derrida it
is
hard-line, insistent,
"doyen." Felperin defines
is its
by hunting down
rather ingeniously
These terms were
varieties.
a precedent in ancient Greece.
work of thoroughgoing (what I shall later term 'hard-core') deconstruction to come down to us," Felperin writes, "is the fifth"The
first
On Not
century B.C. treatise
On
Being, or
Nature by Gorgias, the
argument of which was summarized by Sextus Empiricus: .
.
nothing
.
exists;
secondly
by man; thirdly
sible
surety
fined
.
.
.
.
.
.
if
if anything exists,
anything
is
it is
inapprehen-
apprehensible, yet of a
incommunicable to one's neighbour.'
inexpressible and
it is
even
even
'Firstly
"
The "hard-core" and "soft-core" categories are invoked but desomewhat differently in Stephen Moore's recent book about the
impact of literary theory on biblical
studies. Literary Criticism
and
the
Gospels. Derrida exemplifies the "utterly pitiless, no-holds-barred style
of deconstruction," which "can be called the
What Moore
writes.
calls "soft
Moore
'hard' style,"
deconstruction"
is,
on
the other hand,
"an American product, whose corporate headquarters might be said to
have been
at
Yale University until Paul de Man's death
Moore,
in other
Man
to the "soft" variety.
IS
My own
words, Derrida
sense
is
to "hard" deconstruction
and
I
mean
precisely the academic
his disciples. It
(or rigid,
follow.
"hard"
programmatic.
method
It
in the sense
in
having
tion;
is
an
to be used with a lighter touch; a
or "applied" deconstruction.
its
It
a strictly provisional
of being putativcly rigorous difficult to
something more than
differs
elastic critical
By
concept and
synonym might be
is
"practical"
from hard-core deconstruction
value and an utterly pragmatic func-
use does not imply the critic's subscription to deconstructive
doctrine in any larger sense. Soft-core deconstruction describe virtually any
A
Man
like an antitheological theology.
contrast, soft-core deconstruction
meant
hard-core deconstruc-
asks to be taken as
—something
in this
orthodoxy associated with dc
depending on your viewpoint) and defiantly
It is
a critical
is
By
For
what dc
of the terms "hard-core" and "soft-core"
context comes closer to Felperin's version. tion,
in 1983."
form of critical interpretation
may
that
is
serve to
concerned
119
with the tricky relations between language and meaning, between
what
is
said
and what
hidden, in a text.
is
mandatory
refuses the
It
trip
of deconstruction
to the linguistic abyss but retains the sense
devastating critique, an expose, an unmasking
—what
as a
the journalist
is
Ime
getting at in describing the effect of Lloyd Bentsen's showstopping
with Dan Quayle. Finally, soft-core
in his vice-presidential debate
deconstruction in this broad sense eschews the idea that reality
is
"inexpressible and incommunicable" but retains the deconstructive
conundrums, logical contradictions, enigmas, and ironic
alertness to
Deconstruction in
reversals.
to
all its
guises has certainly conditioned us
pay particularly close attention to those moments when, double-
crossed
by an author, we
we
result that
granted.
It is
a fictional trapdoor
—with
the
we have been taking for much of the art of our time,
have to rethink the things that
surely not a coincidence that
much of what
mium on just literary
down
fall
"postmodernism," seems to place a high pre-
called
is
such
and
shifts
reversals.
in
If,
new come up with inno-
keeping abreast of
developments, criticism must continually
vative tactics, the battery of devices associated with deconstruction will not In
fail its
to yield a value.
tremendously adaptable term. For the theatre
Saw might prompt
IVhat the Butler
play "deconstructs"
mines"
—
the institution
spoken aims and discrepancies
is
his
critic, a
itself to
new
be a
revival
a bit stronger than
"under-
of marriage and the concept of gender.
the contradiction
between
unspoken assumptions
called deconstruction.
of deconstructive stratagems by
of
the observation that Joe Orton's
—meaning something
book reviewer notes
tion
proved
soft-core sense, deconstruction has
—
More
A
a political journalist's
the charting out of such
significant
is
the applica-
Chapter
a brilliant novelist.
One
of Philip Roth's The Counterlife ends with the death of a major character,
who
novel reverses
is
its
—
surprise!
own
—
alive
and well in Chapter Two. The
premises midstream, reminding us that
it is
only
a fiction.
The
narrative
form on the one hand, and about the allegedly autobiograph-
ical
novelist's gotcha gets us to revise
character of Roth's fictional writing
though Roth would probably
resist
on the
also
makes
must be true to
us realize that
The Counterlife
is
we
fact.
expect
a terrific
You
other.
can say,
the term, that his novel decon-
structs the idea that a first-person narration
author's experience
our assumptions about
it
He
seemingly based on the
proves that
it
isn't so,
but
to be.
novel precisely because
it
is
so radi-
2L^i
SIGNS
120
of
cally skeptical
of counterfeit
own
its
postmodernist tricks
—
TIMES
THE
OF premises.
harnesses the full array of
It
the false-bottomed narrative, the multiplication
actualities
and alternative
having always to top what-is"
—not
"what-could-be
possibilities,
ingenious ends in themselves
as
and not merely to serve an inquiry into the puzzling relations between and
fiction
reality.
Roth
Rather,
from the dead,
characters back their fates, for a
interrupts his narrative and brings his
letting
them
revise their speeches
purpose that can be characterized only
moral.
as
and
The
middle-aged dentist dies during heart surgery, or the same dentist
New Jersey
recovers, abandons his to Israel,
where he joins the Gush
zealot: either scenario
but
as a
is
practice and family, and emigrates
Emunim
settlement of a charismatic
valid not only as a metaphysical possibility
moral predicament. The
dentist's initial
dilemma, for instance,
dramatizes the moral implications of Freud's argument in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In the man's decision to
undergo
a life-endangering
heart operation rather than continue to live without his sexual potency,
we
see the fatal alliance
of Eros and Thanatos
of desire and danger, sexuality and death irresistible,
—and we
—
the coupling
it
as inevitable,
see
the selfs anarchic refusal to subordinate
its
instinctive
the mandates of civilization. Civilization calls for self-
desires to
own wayward
dictates.
In submitting to the surgeon's knife, the dentist affirms the
primacy
preservation, yet the self insists
He
of the erotic impulse.
But
chapter.
dead
—and
Israel,
since this
so,
months
after all,
both
fiction,
there's
turn the page,
after his successful sides
its
pays for the decision with his
is
when we
on obeying
could have
we
life.
no reason he has to stay intercept him en route to
recovery from surgery. In
won
End of
the Civil
an example of applied deconstruction, I'm
all
War. for
It
this
fiction,
counts
as
it.
Deconstruction's methods and concepts, used selectively and
without doctrinal fervor, can sometimes bring us closer to the
fre-
quently enigmatic workings of some of our favorite books or films.
The poet and
critic
John Hollander, a masterly teacher, demonstrates of soft-core deconstruction when he observes
the pedagogical virtues that "Charlie
Chaplin deconstructs public statuary
frames of City
Li^jhts.
"
No
other
word
the effect of the brilliant sequence in
will
work
in
the opening
so well to describe
which the tramp, played by new civic monument.
Chaplin, sabotages the ceremonial unveiling of a
The
scene opens in a
ground
is
the
modern metropolis, downtown.
monument
—
a
group of three
statues
—
In the back-
draped
in sheets.
121
At
the
podium, speeches
a fanfare
are
dehvered by pompous bigwigs. There
of trumpets. Then the wraps come
one's surprise,
wakes up,
is
escape
statue.
—and
A
his trousers are
there, to every-
He
impaled by the sword
policeman in the crowd
moment, and everyone, including
What Chaplin By showing us
done
is
outraged by these
Spangled Banner
antics but, luckily for the tramp, the Star at just this
and
the tramp, asleep in the lap of the central statue.
tries to
of the adjacent
off,
is
the policeman,
sequence
is
played
must stand
to unveil an
at attention.
has
unveiling.
the tramp comfortably sleepmg in the
He makes
forbidding
is
monument by turning monument for what it is
Chaplin deconstructs the
statue's lap,
opposite.
in this
—by
us see the
depicting
it,
it
—
moment,
for the
as
into
its
cold and
welcoming and
homey. The incongruity of the tramp's presence drives home the point. The monument is seen for what it really is when the tramp's trousers by
are impaled is
a
monument
the bronze sword. For
now we
to "Peace and Prosperity"
—
recall that the statue
claims that are belied
the tramp's very existence in this depression year 1931.
by
Humanized by
the tramp, the statue signifies not "Peace and Prosperity" but the reality that
it
Minus
lence.
was meant
the tramp,
to exclude
it is
—poverty and
the threat of vio-
merely a monument to human vanity and
wishful thinking.
— —makes them
Something about the logic of Hollywood movies
know
we know
that
they're just
Movie
a deconstructive impulse.
movies
when
away from home,
it
is
they
that Claudette Colbert,
Happened One Night,
circumstances oblige her to rough
she
way
apt agents of
logic has
the spoiled heiress in Frank Capra's It as a character
the
reduced to subsisting on
is redeemed Having run
it.
strictly limited funds.
Pursued by unscrupulous reward-seekers, she manages to escape undetected
—
in
one memorable scene
—by playing
the part of the
im-
poverished young housewife. Stripped of her customary resources and defenses, she
is
just vulnerable
enough
to fall in love with a
could never belong in her social circle
—
the fired
man who
newspaperman
played by Clark Gable. Gable aids her escape but, more important, is
through him that she
her wealth. lesson
IS
is
how
little
that Gable's
her happiness depends
reward for teaching her
thrown
in,
though
at film's
end the couple
keep up the appearance of penury by honeymooning
lodge.
on this
her hand in marriage, connubial bliss with, presumably, the
lady's millions
to
realizes
The paradox
it
The premise
— you can be happy though poor—
is
is
in a
careful
motor
immediately
SIGNS
122
by the happy ending, which
cancelled
make
TIMES
THE
OF
grants the hero the riches that
wouldn't really be a happy ending,
his happiness complete. It
audience well knows, if necessity and not choice took the
as the
honeymooners deconstructs
to that dingy
its thesis,
motor lodge. Thus
or revises
outcome
the film's
the best things in life are free but
it:
you marry one. It's not so bad, the film is saying, to be unemployed in the depression year 193^1 if wake in up you're Clark Gable and you a bus with Claudette Colbert only
in
if
you're a millionaire or if
—
your arms. Another example:
Falcon deconstructs
impulse from
its
not too
desire
ostensible object.
the Dashiell
as in
It's
human
much
and that
it
to say that The Maltese
does so by separating the
Everyone
in
John Huston's movie,
Hammett novel on which it's based, is after an The characters played by
allegedly priceless piece of avian statuary.
Mary
Astor, Peter Lorre, and
sessed with the black bird.
It is
Sydney Greenstreet
are positively ob-
not simply a matter of greed, for their
beyond the monetary value of the jewels encrusted beneath the bird's enameled surface it is not what the statue can buy that confers the desired magic upon its possessor. The characters proceed as if possession of the trophy, though continuinfatuation with the falcon goes
would
ally deferred,
As the Fat teen years it.
If
I
Man I
justify
—
any number of years spent on the
(Greenstreet) says in
have wanted that
little
Hammett's novel,
item and have been trying to get
an additional expenditure in time of only'
—
phrey Bogart, is
Tive and
as detective
more than just
a display
Sam
Spade,
of irreverent it
of the revelation that the sculpture finally turns up, yields neither
scratched. as a
It is
a fake,
well,
his lips
—
by is
slang. its
silently as
When Hum"dingus,"
The
gold nor jewels
—
in
when
it
surface
is
black bird,
when
its
advance
and necessarily a fake, because the falcon
real value.
it
Dingus deconstructs the
proper name
a fake.
that will be
moved
calls the statue a
function of a never-ending fruitless quest.
need have no
sir
fifteen-seventeenths per cent.' "
object of obsessive desire, calling
only
— —
must spend another year on the quest
he calculated
chase.
" 'For seven-
The
exists
object of desire
Desire alone makes the falcon desirable.
You
can't ever possess the thing, for desire attaches itself to the quest, not
the finding. In a
ment of desire stairs
to
is
model of deconstructive really
its
negation; and
logic, the apparent fulfill-
when Bogart walks down
the
cradling the bird at the end of the film, he has exactly a "dingus"
show
for his trouble.
123
Deconstructive logic, with the importance
and self-cancellation, opens up interesting
explore. Philip K. Dick in his novel Valis
artist to
move when he
deconstructive
GOD GOD
The
IS
NO WHERE
IS
NOW
prints the
magnitude of the
(1981)
makes
What
issue.
it
his absence
—which
does prove
is
becomes
that contrary scenarios
be extrapolated from the same linguistic given
substituting either/and for either/or.
ties,
—
that language
write the
word
the rapist.
My
other
—
Perhaps
Then
therapist.
task
is
—
can act I
I
as a
—and of
spur to creative activity.
of the drama within the word
a clientele
unmasking,
whose
For surely
word
— —
self-cancell-
one that enables us to reach further
there's a sense in
which the client.
therapist in a psychoana-
And
the vicious suggestion that the rapist
as surely
The
villain's
has led not to a philosophical dead end but
encounter can violate his or her
therapy
none other than
psychiatric practice has prospered
the rapist has deconstructed the therapist.
to an imaginative possibility,
metaphor
is
of gun-shy women, victims of rape. With the
ing nature of the
lytic
itself.
can do the job in the form of a psychological thriller in
the trust-inspiring Dr. Jekyll,
truths.
I
and get
journey from one to the
which the notorious sex offender, always masked, on
literature's
introduce a space after the e
to devise a fictional
to generate a plot out
reali-
For the imaginative writer,
knowledge of language's generative power
irreducibly linguistic essence
a
not to deny the
is
always contains the possibility of affirming mutually exclusive
the
a
same clause two ways:
between God's immanence and
difference
on paradox
HERE
function of the typewriter's space bar
may
places
it
possibilities for the creative
the reverse of that
may
be an agent of
exposes the secret, self-deluded logic with which
the rapist justifies his misdeeds to himself.
Bruce Lincoln
in his
book
Discourse and the Construction of Society
goes overboard in his use o( deconstruction, opting to use the term in cases in
which there
in his discussion
is
no
particular insight to be gained
of "anomaly
as
by
it.
But
an instrument of revolutionary agita-
tion," Lincoln does cite a pivotal historical episode that aptly illustrates
the logic
of deconstruction.
When
Louis
XVI was
tried
and executed
during the French Revolution, treason was the charge formally
brought against him. The anomaly of the situation,
as
Lincoln explains,
SIGNS
124
was defined
that treason
is
Again we confront
king.
conundrum.
tive
would have
If
1793
in
TIMES
THE
OF
crime committed against the
as a
a self-cancelling proposition
you could convict
—
a deconstruc-
the king of treason, then treason
to be redefined. Lincoln's point, and
it's
good one,
a
and Robespierre aimed "not
that the revolutionary leaders Saint-Just
merely to convict one king, but to deconstruct kingship and related sociopolitical order."
of the king was on
—
against himself
of
coln's use
that
much
so
its
cor-
the king but the institution
committed
crime
a
crime that discredited royalty. Here, Lin-
a
is,
Not
the king had, in effect,
trial:
is
deconstruction
is
warranted, because the anomaly of the
charge brought against the king rhetorically expresses the Revolution's divorce of the law of the land from the prerogatives of the royal will
—
word, the deconstruction of the throne.
in a
Other examples of soft-core deconstruction could be given, but I
think these suffice to
and the
tactics that
one's attention not
event
—
make
The word
the case.
go with
it
—
a
is
handy one
to have,
the tendency, for example, to focus
on the center but on
the margins of a text or an
can be fruitfully used. Hard-core deconstruction
something
is
proceeds not from the love of literature but from the
else again. It
assumption that literature critical doctrine.
Worse,
laws of a
exists primarily to illustrate the
it
tacit
asks to be accepted in toto, not adapted into
a critical instrument to be used
with discretion. The hardening of a
theory into dogma, wrote R. P. Blackmur, carries the danger of "fanatic falsification."
by an
It
idee fixe, a really
but small scope
is
"arises
criticism
proved before the evidence
become supreme
assertion this
danger.
and given its
It is
its
the
is
as
criticism
when
a
of universal application. This
in, distortion,
virtues."
vitiation,
conformism
contradictory impulses
is,
it
is
is
the
assumed
and absolute
Hard-core deconstruction
it is
flaunts
not to be taken lightly.
on the way the humanities
least
One problem it
was
all
It
is
— undermines
has
are taught in
with the deconstructive ap-
promotes. In orthodox deconstruction,
of contradictory impulses. Your job vealing that
governed
notion of genuine
The text, any text, to show how the text
roads lead to the same dismal antitruth.
This
is
where, since something
claims to universality,
colleges and universities. is
body of
accurately described as "a really exaggerated heresy,"
consequences, not
proach
a
exaggerated heresy,
taken literally
body of tendentious
when
itself
You
along an allegory of
its
is
own
ultimately, a sterile and pointless exercise.
an arena
—by
deconstruct
all
it
those
by
re-
"unreadability."
\
125
me
two prime examples of hard-core deconstruction. Both are famous in hterary criticism circles. The first dismantles William Wordsworth's poem "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal." I quote Let
the
poem
give
in full:
A
slumber did
my
had no human
I
She seemed
fears;
a thing that
The touch of
No
spirit seal;
could not
earthly years.
motion has she now, no
She neither hears nor
Rolled round
With
rocks,
feel
force;
sees;
in earth's diurnal course
and
stones,
and
trees.
The poem is generally classified as one of Wordsworth's "Lucy" poems five brief lyrics that mourn the death of a girl though her name does not appear in "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal." Because of its brevity and its popularity within the Wordsworth canon, "A Slumber" has for many years served as a test case for literary interpretation. The traditional view is that the poem is elegiac, an
—
—
expression of grief recollected in the tranquility of mature wisdom.
The
space between the
and second stanzas of the poem
first
acts as a
bridge from the past to the present, from innocence to knowledge,
from
a carefree state
mortality.
The poem
restrained;
it is
ent simplicity the
of existence to so
is
moving
a
a frank
lament because
go hand
in
its
grief
is
so
economy and apparhand with an exquisite patterning. Nor has
so artistically satisfying because
poem, brief though
acknowledgment of
it is,
its
been exhausted by
critical
commentary;
still possible. One recent article dwells on Wordsrhyme scheme. The rhyme of "fears" and "years" is picked up in the second stanza by "hears," and perhaps it is not an accident that the last word in the poem is a near anagram for "tears." A rival reading stresses that Wordsworth, at the time he wrote
fresh insights are
worth's
"A Slumber,"
subscribed to a pantheistic philosophy.
belief that the dead return to the living life
stones and trees" are alive in an elemental sense.
the dead girl
according to
is
"Rolled round
this interpretation,
He
held the
of nature, that "rocks and
The knowledge
in earth's diurnal
that
course" becomes,
an occasion for cheer rather than for
SIGNS
126
While
lament.
The
ish.
I
TIMES
THE
OF
find this a difficult reading to accept,
case for the pantheistic interpretation has
it is
not outland-
been made with
care,
and one finds oneself quarreling with the conclusion, not with the
means used
By
to arrive at
it.
contrast, the deconstructive analysis
Spirit Seal"
comes
as a deliberate
shock.
It
My
of "A Slumber Did
was undertaken by J.
Hillis
Miller precisely as an object lesson meant to illustrate the virtues of his "alternative
mode" of
literary study.
A
deconstructive reading.
Miller explains, shows that "metaphysical assumptions are both present
and
at the
of tropes" ble
same time undermined by the
meaning
But
any text and
in
it
of
this
summing up
quite competently.
between the
first
He
a "play
is
of an aporia or boggling of the mind."
hypothesis
themselves," Miller will put
begins by
There
"leads to a suspension of fully rationaliza-
in the experience
since "the test
text itself."
it
to
the interpretation of the texts
is
work on Wordsworth's poem. He
the traditional interpretation, and he does this is
right to chart out the series of oppositions
and second stanzas of
"A
Slumber"; the
poem
does
from slumber to waking, from past to present, from the girl an innocent young thing to the inanimate "thing" she becomes in
progress as
death.
Yet
Miller's series
of oppositions includes one
foreign to Wordsworth's
"mother
as against
member
as
mother,
against
sister,
lines:
daughter or
Miller sister,
us that the
tells
poem
as against mistress
the family, that
poem
is
"odder" than
it
looks, stranger and
traditional interpretations allow.
The
poet's "I"
insists that
more enigmatic than
is
absent in the poem's
second stanza, Miller notes; perhaps "the speaker has as a
is,
or wife, in short, incestu-
ous desires against legitimate sexual feelings." For Miller the
presents
or perhaps any female family
some woman from outside
or daughter
that seems utterly
lost his
selfhood"
consequence of Lucy's death. Miller maintains, moreover, that "an
obscure sexual drama
is
enacted in this poem."
He
rather arbitrarily
Lucy as a stand-in for Wordsworth's mother, who died when the poet was eight years old; the dead girl "is both the virgin child and the missing mother, that mother earth which gave birth to the identifies
speaker and has abandoned him."
nuance
in the phrase "the
And
Miller discerns a disquieting
touch of earthly years." As he
phrase designates "a form of sexual appropriation":
by earthly years virgin."
The
is
a
way
is
that
the poet
it,
the
"To be touched
to be sexually penetrated while
upshot, for Miller,
sees
is
still
remaining
revealing his
127
"The poet
complicity and his guilt in Lucy's
fate.
Lucy's death by thinking about
Miller
it,"
asserts.
has himself caused
"Thinking recapitu-
in reverse mirror image the action of the earthly years in touch-
lates
ing, penetrating, possessing, killing,
encompassing, turning the other
into oneself and therefore being left only with a corpse, an
The etymological
sign."
the Latin root for "light"
poem, he
says,
—
—
it
empty
comes from
impels Miller to take one fmal leap.
an allegory of
is
name Lucy
derivation of the
But
loss.
it
is
not a dead
The
girl that
Wordsworth mourns for; it is "the lost source of light, the father sun as logos, as head power and fount of meaning." In the absence of the logos, the meaning of the poem must continually oscillate: "Each word in itself
becomes the dwelling place of contradictory
senses."
how
Miller purports to illuminate Wordsworth's text, but look far afield
he roams.
By
an associative method that resembles the kind
of exaggerated symbol-hunting that teachers used to discourage dents
from doing. Miller
mother It
girl as
stu-
both father sun and
and a deceased mother. Where
earth, a violated virgin child
suits his fancy,
dead
identifies the
he introduces biographical information about
Words-
worth, invokes psychoanalytic categories, and conjures up a compli-
somewhat incoherent family romance. In time-tested deconetymology the etymology of a name nowhere mentioned in the poem itself. Yet on the basis of such
cated and
—
structive fashion, he resorts to that
is
speculative procedures and capricious moves, he does not hesitate to
generalize broadly. declares, "the I
The
"loss
drama of
have singled out
all
is,
for
beyond the ornery and bizarre turns
well enough to have published
as part
of
He
he
first
flatly
deconstructive routine for rea-
one thing, aptly described
changing contexts.
is,
Wordsworth's poetry."
this particular
sons that include but go takes. It
of the radiance of the logos"
it
as a routine;
that
it
Miller likes
it
several times, in different
offered his
a brief for deconstruction.
forms and
"Lucy" interpretation
He
recycled
it
in
1979
for a 1990 dictio-
nary of literary terms, of which Miller was responsible for the entry
on
narrative.
Slumber Did
"To
say that
My
He Knew He Was are is
all
narratives, including everything
Spirit Seal' to big novels like
make
Anthony Trollope's
Right or Henry James's The Princess Casamassima,
no more than the exploration of a
to
from 'A
single figure or system
a large claim," Miller admits.
not shrink from making. Miller
is
validity of his interpretation but
Yet
it is
of figures
a claim that he does
evidently convinced not only of the
of
its
universal applicability; he
is
SIGNS
128
sufficiently
proud of
to offer
it
turn are invited to consider
it as
it
TIMES
THE
OF
exemplary pedagogy. And
as
we
in
a characteristic rather than exceptional
example of the deconstructive mind at work. "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal" furnished the battleground for one of the more memorable critical skirmishes in recent years. M. H. Abrams had previously clashed with Miller over the merits of the deconstructive enterprise. At a session of the MLA convention in 1976, the two men debated the issue, Abrams deploring the view that "no text, in part or whole, can mean anything in particular" and Miller espousing the notion that "nihilism
is
an inalienable alien presence
within Occidental metaphysics, both in poems and in the criticism of
poems." Three years
their continuing quarrel
later,
prompted one
academic wit to propose a Western, starring Abrams and Miller, called
"Shootout
at
Hermeneutic Gap."
Now,
Wordsworth's "obscure sexual drama," Abrams rose
He
attack.
wrote, he
said, as
to the counter-
has staked whatever
and about
literature,
on the confidence
intellectual history,
who
"a traditionalist
he has taught or written about
on
in reply to Miller's essay
that he has
and
literary
been able to interpret
the textual passages he cited with a determinacy and accuracy sufficient to the purpose at hand."
He examined
which Miller deconstructed
poem
his
construal
initial
medley of clashing
into a "bewildering
moves with of Wordsworth's
the sequence of
significations."
He
ex-
posed the double-dealing inherent in Miller's method: a dcconstructionist reading
cannot "dispense with a determinate construal of a
toward disseminating what has been so construed."
as a necessary stage
If deconstruction
is
Abrams wondered,
routinely taught as a
will
texts or will the goal
its
a
to a question
work of
selves to
acting,
engage us
and ordered by
human
reader."
literary study,
be "a display of modish terminology which never
of values. The
literature as "a
of thinking,
mode of
adepts acquire a proficiency at construing
engages with anything recognizable
down
text,
as a
work
of literature?"
human document
in their experiences, in
—
boiled
wrote Abrams, reads
traditionalist,
and feeling characters
It
a fictional presentation
who
arc
enough
language which
is
like
our-
expressed
human author in a way that moves and delights the The deconstructionist offers a poor substitute: "a set
a
of conundrums without solution." Miller's interpretation
of "A Slumber Did
vulnerable on one other point. Miller thinks he
is
My
Spirit Seal"
is
proving deconstruc-
tion's ability to tap the "inexhaustible strangeness"
of
literary
works.
129
He
proves, however, that the pursuit of novelty leads in the end to
poem
boring sameness. For while Miller's sexual reading of the fully predictable that his analysis
certifiably strange,
it is
nate at the place
where meaning
oscillates,
is
would termi-
words turn
into their
opposites, and logos disappears. Miller disdains traditional criticism
knows what it is going to find." But as Abrams notes, the charge applies more to deconstructive criticism than to its alternatives. Traditional modes of reading, in Abrams's words, "have amply demonstrated the ability to find highly diverse
because, he charges,
structures
of meaning"
struction
wide range of works. In
in a
"single-goal-oriented."
is
"aporia" and that
My
"already
it
is
what you
Look
for
decon-
contrast,
mind-boggling
will find.
second example of hard-core deconstruction was presented
by Paul de
Man
one of several paradigmatic "readings" that indicate
as
would
the direction he felt literary criticism should and
Man,
a
For de
take.
could be subsumed under the general heading
literary criticism
of rhetoric. RJietoric, he argues, "allows for two incompatible, mutu-
of view, and therefore puts an insurmount-
ally self-destructive points
able obstacle in the
make
to
way of any
the point than
reading or understanding."
by analyzing
"Among
—
a
famous
Man
chooses
a rhetorical question
one, well-loved and frequently taught? Accordingly, de
How better
School Children," one of the most glorious of William
Butler Yeats's poems.
He
will deconstruct
it
or, rather,
deconstructs itself into an undecidable "aporia."
of the deconstruction
O
is
to music,
we know
can
For traditional readers, these Yeats's question
is
it
particular focus
on the poem's closing couplet:
body swayed
How
The
show how
O
brightening glance,
the dancer
from the dance?
lines affirm a
powerful vision of unity.
sublimely unanswerable; you can't distinguish the
dancer from the dance, because they are the inextricable halves of a unified IS
whole
— you
can't
definitively rhetorical,
in effect
answers
it
ponders the
of
ideal
meant
itself.
It
is
to be posed but not answered, because a fitting
culmination to a
poem
conditions of mortality, old age, and the
"images" by seedy
a long-past
together
crisis
have one without the other. The question
realities. Earlier in the
day when he and
his
mocking
poem, Yeats
beloved had seemed
as
that
recalls
though blended
SIGNS
130
from youthful sympathy,
Into a sphere
Or
TIMES
THE
OF
to alter Plato's parable.
else,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.
The
Platonic parable Yeats has in
the theory
is
rehearsed that
mind occurs
human
in the
Symposium where
beings were originally one sex,
as
inextricable as the yolk and white of an egg, before they ran afoul of
who
Zeus,
explained
of
divided them into
as a
"Among
man and woman;
sexual attraction
longing for the primordial unity. The unity
School Children"
recalls these earlier lines
them in a vision of heavenly glory. Body and harmony of spirit and matter informs the very is
is
thus
at the close
but transcends
soul are one, and this processes
of
life.
Here
the last stanza, complete:
Labour
is
blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty bom out of its own despair. Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight
O
chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer.
Are you the
O
leaf,
body swayed
How
can
the blossom or the bole?
to music,
we know
what dandyish, and interpretation, de
He
apart, for, as
he sees
brightening glance,
from the dance?
these lines
is
elegant, brilliant,
"know
it,
which
on taking
insists
the dancer
the relation it
stands
—
Yeats's rhetorical question
from the dance,"
between the two is
—
as
to
experience, between creator and creation," the
logical
may
Man
discerns the
last line
of
form and
"Among
be seen to dramatize a condition of epistcmo-
unccrtamty that threatens any striving toward unity:
For
it
turns out that the entire scheme set
up by the
first
reading can be undermined, or deconstructed, in the terms
of the second,
meaning
in
them
between the
opposite. Rather than stating "the potential unity between
School Children"
tell
always treacherously unstable. In
where readers have always seen unity, de
short,
some-
perverse. Flying in the face of the "traditional"
Man
wants to
sign and that for
O
the dancer
De Man's commentary on
literally.
oil.
which the
that, since the
final
line
is
read literally as
dancer and the dance are not the
131
might be
even desperately neces-
useful, perhaps
same,
it
sary
for the question can be given a ring
—
"Please
dance"
how
me,
tell
—
to tell
them
of each symbolic .
.
.
can
I
by
detail
This hint should
know
But
apart.
of urgency,
the dancer from the
divergent interpretation.
a
suffice to suggest that
two
coherent but entirely incompatible readings can be
hinge on one
whose grammatical
line,
reading
this will replace the
structure
entirely
made
devoid
is
mood
o( ambiguity, but whose rhetorical mode turns the as
By
well as the
mode of
poem
turning the
poem
the entire
Man
upside down, de
poem
tautology: he proves that the
to
upside down.
achieves the force of a
can be turned upside down. Ulti-
mate unity gives way to ultimate meaninglessness. The dance
form"
fusion of "erotic desire with musical
naming of and the
disintegrates into the
a linguistic disjunction, the rupture
signified.
Thanks
to the duplicity
of
be cut out from under any statement. Never
as a
between the
signifier
ground can
rhetoric, the
shall the figurative
and
meanings coincide; never can the dancer and the dance be one.
literal
The remarkable thing about
deconstructive exercise
this
contradicts our experience of the
poem
but that
it
is
not that
it
displays the critic's
no more than an unwitting mouthpiece for the theories of Paul de Man. That is what opponents of deconstruction have in mind when they castigate it for parading the
monumental
I
now
have I
is
It is,
in
Blackmur's words, the sign
exaggerated heresy,
idee fixe, a really
but small scope
pages
depicts Yeats as
it
superiority over the text.
critic's
of "an
conceit;
taken literally
as
a limited defense
a notion
of genuine
of universal application."
reached a turning point in
have made
when
this
book. In the preceding
of soft-core deconstruction and
examined some of the ways and means of the hard-core kind.
shown how definitions
count for
the
word
itself has
entered our language.
and descriptions of deconstruction and have Its
rise in
I
I
tried to ac-
the academy, presenting the explanations
frequently given. There
is
the
view
have
have cited
most
that suggests that deconstruction
needs to be understood in the context of the growing "professional-
ism" of literary
studies.
related critical theories
There
—with
is,
too, the thesis that deconstruction
their revolutionary aspirations
and
and
their
SIGNS
132
"subversive" strategies
—
represent a sublimation of 1960s student radi-
calism.
And
of the
crucial assumptions
there
is
TIMES
THE
OF
the sense that deconstruction puts into play
of our cultural
Zeitgeist.
The
scope and ambition of deconstruction cannot be denied. to supplant philosophy as the discipline
university,
"today ble,
and
its
ideas
have
literary criticism,
common enough
in
It
intellectual
has aspired
of highest thought
infiltrated far-flung fields; the
tomorrow
the world"
is,
some
in the
theme of
however improba-
academe today.
While it is not the only critical theory in vogue, deconstruction its mark on most of the others and done more than the rest give the age of theory its characteristic "metalanguage." Decon-
has left to
struction has a pragmatic value, offering the graduate student a certifi-
ably
new
also has
yet officially sanctioned
an apocalyptic dimension
way
—
to approach familiar texts.
announces that the time
it
for the destruction of metaphysics, that the end of the It is
a fitting philosophy for a time
under
assault
—
a
time
when
the
when
is
It
right
word is at hand. word is itself
the written
computer screen threatens
to render
the printed page obsolete and when, what's more, the spoken and
written utterances of public figures meet with unprecedented skepti-
cism and disbelief on the part of the intellectual population. Deconstruction
is,
in
sum, a sign of our times, and nowhere more so than
in the relentlessly skeptical gaze
it
on the
turns
signs that
make up our
language and our world.
Whether you opt adjective,
many
it
is
for "nihilistic" or
easy to see
why
teachers and writers.
foundly inimical to
art
of action
(which
(which
it
hard-core deconstruction disturbs so
The impulse of deconstruction
and history (whose relevance critical analysis
some less-inflammatory
it
subordinates to theory) to biography
it
denies), to conventional
,
(since existential choices arc
Nor
deconstruction content to be disciples,
with which adherents deprogram themselves, indicate
anxieties,
methods of
always transmuted into irresolvis
merely one theory among many; the zeal of its
awakened
pro-
considers retrograde), and to any philosophy
able linguistic predicaments).
struction has seduced
is
some
fine
minds.
It
and aroused ferocious
as
and the
rarity
much. Decon-
has also quickened pulses, conflicts that continue to
get fought out in academic conferences, in the deliberations of hiring
committees, and in the literary supplements of newspapers and magazines.
The
institutional ramifications
of deconstruction are not to be
133
more
underestimated. Yet assistant professors
That sense of high the posthumous
is
on the
wrong
side
of the tenure
Man
earlier,
Man was
de
American deconstruction teacher,
influential
—
A
cult
Man
its
most
of authority.
power, sometimes grudgingly,
his intellectual
refuted and could not simply be ignored.
himself had
little
December 1983, de Man and J.
death in
death four
of acolytes had
his stern air
sometimes not, but always with the sense that de deconstruction, de
why
major
acknowledged authority figure of
the
formed around him. Admirers invoked
Opponents respected
his
a
most formidable theoretician,
its
purest practitioner.
its
mto
quickly blew up
academic scandal in December 1987. At the time of
Decembers
track.
stakes, that constant controversy, explain
of Paul de
case
than the strutting and fretting of
at stake
right or
Of
Man
needed to be
the significance of
doubt. Shortly before his
Hillis Miller
were discussing
the polemical battlefield that literary criticism had become.
"The
stakes
Man told Miller, and Miller would repeat the more than one occasion. No one realized then that the battle over de Man's texts would soon be transferred to the treacherous are
enormous," de
phrase on
of history.
terrain
For capsule,
it
was
as if
de
Man
had
whose contents began
behind a time-release knowledge
left
to leak out in
December 1987. What
neither de Man's adulators nor his detractors suspected in his lifetime
was
that the Belgian-born scholar
had begun
his career as a literary
German occuNovember 1942, de
journalist writing for pro-Nazi publications during the
World War
pation of Belgium in
Man's
articles
were appearing
circulation of any Belgian
Nazi-appointed
staff
Le
As
Soir,
newspaper
late as
which had the
—and which was
largest daily
edited
anxious to toe the political line laid
Berlin. In America, de
ble past,
in
II.
Man made no
though he had become
and though he exercised,
To
down
man, with
a public
a
faith,
in
wide following,
and writings, a kind of moral
the jolting substance of the disclosures
themselves was thus added the enigma of de Man's silence.
evidence of bad
a
public mention of his disreputa-
in his teachings
authority over his disciples.
by
Was it What
or was a subtler explanation required?
moral could be drawn from de Man's
silence
— given
the charge,
frequently lodged against him, that hard-core deconstruction
sets
out
to silence language?
The
case
of Paul de
Man became a cause celebre for many
reasons.
SIGNS
134
There was,
of
first
The
conjured up.
all,
TIMES
THE
OF
the darkness of the historical nightmare
case dramatized
—
yet again
—
the evident attractions
of fascist ideology for certain upper-class European 1930s.
By
a quirk
of
relief.
intellectuals in the
Man
historical coincidence, the de
occurred against a backdrop that threw
it
revelations
sensational features into
its
There had been the uproar surrounding President Reagan's
ceremonial
visit to
German
Bitburg, the
military cemetery
where the
bodies of Nazi SS officers lay buried. There was the capture of Klaus Barbie, the "butcher of Lyon,"
whose
trial in
France brought to the
whole sorry memory of French collaborationism in World War II. There was the remarkable case of Kurt Waldheim, who managed to win election as president of Austria in spite or possibly fore the
because
—
—of
the scandalous revelation that he served in a
German
military intelligence unit that perpetrated atrocities in Yugoslavia.
There were, too, periodic disclosures concerning the alleged Semitism of this or that famous cultural figure the Nazi Holocaust.
It
decade preceding
in the
became widely known,
anti-
for example, that
Stravinsky was a fan of Mussolini and a confirmed anti-Semite. It
seems increasingly clear that
World War
and philosophical cornerstone of our time.
political,
II
is
the moral,
When we
address
abstract or hypothetical questions concerning guilt
and justice
question, for example, of a citizenry's complicity in
its
misdeeds
—we
instinctively reach for examples provided
ond World War. And though the
may
the
by the Sec-
memory of those
first-hand
—
government's
fade as the survivors age and die, the traumas of the
events
war endure,
hanging over the consciousness and conscience of the generation born after Hitler's demise; each
war criminal
here, the
forgetful ex-Nazi
—
new
headline
—
unmasking there of
acts like the repressed
the capture of an escaped a
world "statesman"
memory
as a
that returns in
savage nightmares and triggers off a painful morning-after of breastbeating and recriminatory debate. At the time the dc
Man
scandal
broke, European intellectuals were greatly preoccupied with the pressing need to
come
to terms
with the Nazi
past.
still-
What was
the
proper relation to have with that past? In Germany the reigning intellectual
conflict"
Was
—
controversy
—
called
centered on the place of the Holocaust in
the attempted destruction of the
crimes, or could
it
—should —be it
or "historians'
the Historikerstreit,
German
history.
Jews a uniquely heinous
"relativized"?
denying the uniqueness of the Nazi genocide,
The
treats
set
of
revisionist view, it
in the
context
135
of Other national Soviet Union.
such
as those
perpetrated
issue in the debate
borne by Germany.
cal guilt
burden
atrocities,
The impHcit
If the
by StaHn
in the
the burden of histori-
is
Holocaust
is
"relativized," that
immediately diminished.
is
In France, at the
same time, the publication of Heidegger and
Nazism by the Chilean scholar Victor Farias precipitated an incendiary debate about the Nazi commitment of Martin Heidegger. Previously,
many people had
rather wishfully assumed that Heidegger's involve-
ment with National Socialism was a short-lived flirtation. Farias made the case that Heidegger embraced the Nazis out of conviction and not as a career
compromise. Propagandizing for
Hitler's revolution,
degger hoped to be Germany's intellectual FUhrer. During
month
tenure as rector of the University of Freiburg, he carried out
which
the Nazis' racial policies, all
Hei-
his ten-
Jewish professors.
resulted in the eventual expulsion
of
He signed his correspondence with an enthusiastic
"Heil Hitler!" and aflfirmed his allegiance to Hitler with these words: "the Fiihrer himself, and he alone,
of the future, and of
its
law."
is
German
the
Though he
reality
stepped
of today, and
down
February 1934, Heidegger remained a dues-paying
as rector in
member of
the
Nazi party right up to the end of the war. After Germany's defeat in 1945, friends implored
him
reaffirm "the inner truth
to repudiate Nazism.
chose instead to
movement (namely, the technology and modern man)." Though he
and greatness of
encounter between global
He
this
refused to discuss the annihilation of the Jews, in a lecture in 1949 he
likened "the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers and extermination
camps" to the mass-production of agricultural goods. While
many of
these facts
had long ago entered the public record, Farias
shaped a coherent indictment out of them. to
new
revelations,
which followed the
written by Heidegger in 1929
He
release
came belatedly
also
of
opened the door
his
book.
to light.
It
A
letter
warned
"growing Jewish influence" in modern German thought and recommended fighting it with forces "emanating from the soil." against the
where devout Heideggerians had worked long and keep the master's philosophical writings separate from his Nazi
In France,
hard to
activities, Farias's
book
shifted the terms
of the debate. Amid the ample
evidence of the duration and depth of Heidegger's commitment to
Nazism,
it
would no longer be
possible to
minimize
it
as a
brief and
inconsequential episode. Moreover, the evidence strongly suggested a
connection between Heidegger's philosophical antipathy toward hu-
SIGNS
136
manism and
his
Nazism
antirationalist philosophy. his philosophical writings
only
in 1933,
would
One
embrace of Hitler.
so far as to describe
this
time to
as
TIMES
THE
OF
commentator went
Parisian
"the poHtical translation" of Heidegger's
Heidegger used the ideas he propounded
—notably
in
Bein£ and Time (1927)
commend Nazism
arrest the "spiritual decline"
as
—
in
again
"a return to roots" that
of the West. In France,
in Jane
Kramer's phrase, "the vedettes of the apocalypse" conduct a continual
newspaper columns and magazine
intellectual debate in
In
articles.
1988 the storm over Heidegger's reputation dominated
Paris in
le
disc ours.
The de
Man
simultaneity of the Historikerstreit and the Heidegger and
controversies suggested
nightmare. ger,
of
Though de Man was not it
a thinker
was tempting
controversies as rough parallels.
was the betrayal of the
intellectuals
sophistication in itself offered
of a barbarous regime. verbiage
—and
ger and the de
Le Soir
file
critical
essays
of the
A
A
to see the
stature
of Heideg-
—
the reminder
kind of elaborate
1988 and
—
that
both the Heideg-
in their respective locales.
It
seems
A
in
articles
de Man's
United
—on
no previous
and the
set
of
ever received the
articles
commanded
third parallel, and the really distressing one,
concerned the reaction of Heidegger's followers in the
De Man's
articles,
the extreme
fair to say that
newspaper
critical scrutiny that
after.
cases
second parallel was the sheer amount of
of them polemical
revelation.
both
that intellectual
unleashed a blizzard of news reports, feature
—many
in
against the blandishments
the shrill tenor of that verbiage
perishable, forty-five-year-old
Man's
Heidegger and de
prominent theme
no bulwark
Man cases generated
meaning of the
in
the return of a repressed
and though de Man's relation to the Nazis was more tenuous and
far shorter duration,
Man
more than
States. In
both
in
cases, the faithful
France and dc
went
to great
lengths to deny the truth, or the relevance, or the significance, oi the
charges brouglit against their man. influence tivc
on Jacques Derrida, the
doublethink figured
as
And
tactics
since
Heidegger was
a
major
of obfuscation and deconstruc-
prominently
in the debate
on Heidegger
they would in the scandal of Paul de Man. Derrida scornfully wondered whether Victor Farias, who had spent years building up his dossier on Heidegger, "has read Heidegger for more than one hour." as
For Derrida, Heidegger's "terrifying" and "perhaps unpardonable"
postwar silence
demn
—
his failure to
the Nazi genocide
—had
acknowledge
his
Nazi
ties
or to con-
the beneficial effect of obliging "us"
137
what he had evaded. PhiHppe Lacoue-Labarthe, one of
to confront
Derrida's Parisian aUies, strove mightily to salvage Heidegger's reputation.
Heidegger's "merit," wrote Lacoue-Labarthe,
months"
for only ten
to Nazism. In fact, as
"is to
have yielded
we know from
Farias's
book, Heidegger's "ten months" lasted for decades. But according to Lacoue-Labarthe, the real problem with Heidegger's early philosophy
was not its
that
was antihumanist but
it
that
enmity toward humanism. "Nazism
the declared. In the de
ments,
made
When
Man
a
is
affair as well,
it
didn't
Barbara Johnson, a de
Man
Man's
past
was
most
at its
what
You
is
it
is
intense,
somewhat
protegee, asked an apt though
a fall,
revelation into an event?"
in
common.
disingenuous question: "Beyond the fact that Nazism
and that people love
enough
far
such outrageous pronounce-
invariably with a straight face, were the debate over de
go
humanism," Lacoue-Labar-
always news
that transforms this archival
can begin to answer the question by
focusing on the irony, the melodrama, and the pathos of the situation.
Had
the story featured a lesser luminary, or had the buried secret been
more mundane,
it
would never have caused such tumult.
A news item's
potential for controversy varies in direct proportion to the intensity
of the shock indeed.
The
it
delivers.
And
in de
Man's case the shock was powerful
story caught everyone off guard.
reputation was above reproach; about the to find in his closet a
man
last
De Man's
personal
thing people expected
was any kind of Nazi connection. Had he
the shock could not have been so great.
The
specter
killed
of the
swastika! Wasn't deconstruction supposed to be an instrument to be
used against totalitarianism structures
Man
—
or, in decon-talk, against "totalizing"
De
and ideologies of any kind? The ironies were pointed.
had gone so
far in
expunging pathos from
literary studies
—
here were revelations that inescapably brought pathos to the fore.
yet
The
writer had strenuously eliminated biographical data from consideration
— "Considerations of
are a waste
was
of time from
the actual and historical existence of writers a critical
a biographical fact that
by the most ardent
disciple.
had once characterized totalitarian)"
in
a
his
viewpoint," he asserted
A number methods
typically
of
as
critics recalled that
in
no doubt
de
Man
"totalizing (and potentially
convoluted,
may
paradox-filled
that the readings he
sentence.
be boring, monotonous,
predictable and unpleasant, but they arc irrefutable," de it
yet here
could not be overlooked or shrugged off
"Technically correct rhetorical readings
leaving
—
had
in
Man
mind were
declared, his
own.
SIGNS
138
"They
are also," he
went on,
TIMES
THE
OF
"totalizing (and potentially totalitarian)
for since the structures and functions they expose
do not lead
to the
knowledge of knowledge production that prevents all entities, including linguistic entities, from coming into discourse as such, they are indeed universals, of an entity (such as language) but are an unreliable process
consistently defective
What
language."
mean Above all,
writing
models of language's impossibility to be
mean when he wrote
did he
of
in light
On
weighed, judged.
new
Man
And what
did the
reignited the debate over
evidence that would have to be
the one hand,
youthful mistakes to indict a
that?
model
disclosed past?
the case of Paul de
deconstruction, introducing sifted,
newly
his
a
critical
you couldn't
use one man's
theory that began
many
years
later
—and
said
one longstanding opponent of deconstruction, judiciously. Yet de
Man's
own
in another man's
mind. "That's reading history backwards,"
brand of deconstruction necessarily implicated
language and language and
his silence thereafter precisely
Were
silence.
Man's work, or were
because
his
there continuities within the
body of de
his later writings a tacit repudiation
pro-Nazi world-view of the newspaper for which he wrote
World War
wartime
focused on
it
of the dark
in the
—
Commentators pointed out with many an alas and an / told you so that de Man, in his most influential book, had obsessively trained his skeptical gaze on the very questions of guilt and confession that his posthumous case seemed to raise. What sense would we make of these passages now? days of
II?
—
In the following chapters, in the light
of what
another, in the
may
if
I
it
as if it
we
months
I
propose to
learned, as
the Paul de
a text, for several reasons
I
will
The
unraveling.
riddles
it
poses
Dc Man's language
story itself
is
fascinating.
reversals, gothic secrets,
may
life is
is
story
life. I
examine the
want
text,
to approach
and to several ends. Full of
enigmas and unexpected paradoxes, the text of dc Man's
by ironic
Man
one damaging disclosure chased
after the scandal broke.
appropriate the term, of de Man's
were
tell
It
life
requires
resembles a novel marked
and explosive revelations, and the
well bear on our understanding of deconstruction.
almost
made
to order for a
world-view holding
that
"an unreliable process of knowledge production." The text
what cannot be known, compelling us to make extrapolations and conjectures, since he never owned up to what he had done, much less explained why he had done it. Yet
of de Man's
life teases
us with
something about the text invites us to interpret
it
and even supplies
— 139
US
with a key
—de
own critical De Man was the
Man's
apposite to his case.
and
Allegories of Reading, his intellectual
clear
and others
less so.
The
as
author of a book entitled
about
his secrecy
development
vocabulary seems curiously
his past invites us to read
an allegory in which some morals are
existence of de Man's wartime journalism
has unquestionably had the curious effect of forcing everyone, friends
and foes
alike, to revise their entire
that sense, the reflux
of de Man's past
of self-deconstruction tumbling down, just
understanding of Paul de Man; in
—
a point at
as the
is
precisely understood as a case
which the
comes
entire contraption
vision of unity in Yeats's
"Among
School
Children" founders, in de Man's analysis, on the observation that the dancer can be
known from
the dance.
The philosopher Stanley Cavell and
who were
de Man's colleagues
Fellows in the mid-1950s
some urgency,
—
to refute de
are
at
the poet John Hollander Harvard University's Society of
among
those
who
Man's interpretation of
have
tried,
"Among
with
School
Children." In separate essays, both Cavell and Hollander argue that a literal reading
of Yeats's
line
last
is
possible but
would
take a
form from the subversive one de Man proposes. Cavell and Hollander point out that to know from can mean to tell apart, but it different
can also
mean
might ask not
to
Therefore, the
infer.
how we
of the imagination
literalist
can distinguish the dancer from the dance, but
how, appealing to the dance as our source of knowledge, we can come to know the dancer. It is a fme distinction but a real one the differ-
—
between "the reading of despair" and "the readmg of hope." The purpose of the exercise is not to quibble over Yeats's sublime poem but to press home the possibility of knowledge agamst "the threat of skepticism" that de Man's reading represents. "The importance to me of preserving in Yeats's words the asserting
ence, in Cavell's words,
and the questioning of knowing," Cavell writes, ested in
the possibility of art as a possibility
acknowledgmg. This means
to
me
an interest in
"is that
its
know
the dance
is
not the world there
is."
The debate over
was always epistemological, not
question of whether anything can truly be "the reading of despair."
Would
past reinforce or contradict that
am
inter-
confrontation with
the threat of skepticism, with the possibility that the to
I
of knowing, or of
world we claim the dancer and
on the known. De Man preached
aesthetic, centering
the belated discovery of his
wartime
view?
Perhaps, in extending the analogy into the biographical sphere,
SIGNS
140
we
—Man "how
should identify de
The question
dance.
dance"
Man
—
said
then becomes it
was.
as the
TIMES
THE
OF
dancer and deconstruction
we know
can
as the
dancer from the
the
"desperately necessary" and "urgent" as de
as
De Man's
secret past
may
be, in deconstructive lingo,
an example of the peripheral episode that throws light upon the center;
de Man's youthful journalism, a marginal footnote to his mature deconstructive enterprise,
may
the response to the affair
information
—
the deconstructionists themselves,
thrown on the defensive
victory, suddenly
them.
provide a key to unlock its secrets. And on the part of those most affected by the
will serve as a practical
It
test,
a case
—
still
will
tell
in the flush
of
much about
us
of theory running up against
the hard material existence of an undeniable historical fact. It is i
f
.,
possible, as
struction has had
its
posthumous shock
it
one wag has put day"
—
that
it
how
received on that
December day
past
fact.
in the
New
in
1987
by the
when de
York Times.
How
would be if so antibiographical a should be vanquished by the discovery of a ruinous
poetically just
theory of literature biographical
dogma of decon-
that "the
will forever be modified
Man's wartime behavior was reported peculiar and
it,
it
But rumors of deconstruction's demise have
in the
proved premature, and for now, de Man's discipleship continues
to provide a
paradigm for other academic
cults
and
sects that elevate
theory and seem either indifferent to art and literature or
critical
actively hostile
toward them. The scandalous revelations have not
ended the controversy surrounding deconstruction, just
lifted
it
to a
further level of complication. Like the grin of the Cheshire cat that
survives the animal's material disappearance, de Man's
smile
—
often remarked
posthumous
text
of
upon by
his life
his colleagues
is still
—
in progress.
ambiguous
lingers in the air.
The
PART
TWO
THE FALL OF PAUL DE
MAN
CHAPTER
6
THE FALLEN
O
D
L
In a profession full of fakeness, he
—
Barbara Johnson, for
at a
memorial
was
real.
service
Paul de Man,
Yale University, January 18, 1984
To
his
academic confreres, Paul de
Man was
an exemplary figure, an
model worth emulating. His was the fortunate immiof Hitler's Europe a refugee or a resistance fighter; the details weren't clear who came to America and rose from penurious obscurity to a position of high intellectual eminence. He was inspiration
and
a
—
grant's tale: a survivor
—
the Yale professor with the sweet and gentle manner, the intensely
dedicated following, the reputation that transcended the academic cloister,
and the originality of mind to spark something resembling a
revolution in the field of literary criticism. Attractively modest of bearing, ferociously skillful in debate, de
Man was
America's archdea-
con of deconstruction.
At the time of his death in December 1983, de Man was, in Frank Kermode's words, "the most celebrated member of the world's most celebrated literature school." Published tributes to his influence some-
times took on a hagiographic
may as well Man. Shoshana Felman: "He did
cast; the professor's disciples
have been speaking of Saint Paul de
— SIGNS
144
TIMES
THE
OF
not seek leadership, yet he was naturally
once an intellectual leader
at
and a human guide." Ellen Burt: "He had himself no time to waste
women. And thus no time them from effecting a full entry into the have no time to waste barring anyone from
being seduced, disquieted, or threatened by to waste vindictively barring
profession.
He seemed
to
entering the profession. His time was devoted to giving us time, to
work." Barbara Johnson:
would
accuse
when he was that
or
were
seemed to
"It
him of anti-humanistic
me
paradoxical that people
beliefs,
the most pro-people person that
ways
truly effective, and not in
made people
was on
believe that he
I
or anti-people beliefs,
had ever met
made people side when he
that
their
—
in
ways good,
feel
wasn't: he
never failed people."
Even
nondisciples spoke of de Man's "ethical" and "benign"
presence in their graduate training.
have enveloped him. With
embody
he seemed to
texts,
One word
that
An
almost spiritual aura
said to
is
monastic devotion to the exegeses of
his
moral
intellectual seriousness as a
comes up again and again
in adulation
rigor
is
ideal.
—
"his
War-
intellectual rigor" (Ellen Burt), "his forgiving rigor" (Andrzej
minski), "the rigor and honesty of his thought" (Barbara Johnson)
second recurrent term of praise lectual authority he exerted
me"
Hillis Miller);
(J.
is
on
authority
—
his friends
and colleagues,
"Paul disclaimed his
own
and
that
is
of
this sense
intellectual rigor that de
Man
It
appointments
at
his graduate
work
at
A
was
this
on
none
author-
gave to the theory
immediately and invariably associated with
Having done
at least
authority, yet
had more authority than him" (Shoshana Felman). ity
.
"the extraordinary intel-
his
name.
Harvard and held teaching
Cornell and Johns Hopkins, de
Man joined
the Yale
faculty in 1970. In the decade that followed, that university established itself as
—dcpcndmg on
vanced center for
your view
—
literary studies in the
was where the great transformation of
where "practical" ethereal
the trcndicst or the
literary criticism
criticism as an ideal and a
domain of literary theory. At Yale
the three "boa-dcconstructors"
—
method gave way
in the 197()s
Dcrrida, de
took place
Man, and
Miller.
literature departments. in
Dernda
man most
was dc Man. De Man was, at chairman of the university's French and comparative
responsible for bringing
became,
to the
were gathered
held a series of visiting appointments at Yale, and the
various times,
most ad-
English-spcakmg world. Yale
him
there
Very soon
after his arrival in
New Haven
he
Barbara Johnson's phrase, "the center of theoretical grav-
FALLEN
THE ity" at Yale. Miller's
new
dispensation.
A
IDOL
145
primary role was to publicize and promote the tireless
campaigner, Miller was unabashed
whom
admiration for de Man,
he tended to
in his
with the awed
cite
reverence of a vice-presidential running mate.
Thanks largely tion gained
its initial
of de
to the efforts
Man
foothold in the United
and Miller, deconstruc-
States.
De Man
provided
The central essay in his Blindness and Insight (1971) combined an homage to Derrida with a critique of Derrida's reading of Rousseau. The essay had the effect oi sponsoring Derrida the theoretical model.
to an
American audience but
exigencies
of tailoring
also
of an American academic
Where Derrida had
his
deconstructed Rousseau, de
methods
Man
to the
criticism.
literary
specialty:
countered by
saying that Rousseau had deconstructed himself; authors, according to
known
de Man, have already
practice, this notion enabled de
of the authors he structive theory ies IS,
—
but
studies,
everything he says about them. In
Man to put his own ideas in the mouths also enabled
it
on
texts.
"There
is
literary stud-
an impact of Derrida which
Man commented. "As far as I'm the one who is much responsible
purely pedagogical," de
concerned, I'm often mentioned for that, since it
to reconcile decon-
with one traditional aspect of academic
the concentration
in a sense,
sophical:
him
my work
is,
as
in a sense,
more pedagogical than philo-
from the pedagogical or the
has always started
assignment of reading specific texts rather than,
as
didactic
the case in
is
Derrida, from the pressure of general philosophical issues." Adapting
Derrida to the tion
what
it
field
of literary
studies,
de
Man obtained for deconstruc-
never fully or only fleetingly enjoyed in France: an
of operations and
institutional base
a
devoted to English and comparative
home
in the
literature.
academic disciplines
"The accommodation
or appropriation of deconstruction in the United States
something that with some pride
is
specifically
in 1986.
producing
is
American," Miller told an interviewer
"As Derrida keeps saying, he has more power
and influence here than he docs
in France.
Deconstruction
is
really an
American thing."
The "Yale School"
—
the term frequently applied to de
Hartman, and Harold Bloom
Miller, Geoffrey
— was always
Man,
a mislead-
ing concept, implying an intellectual affinity that obtained primarily
between de
Man
and Miller. (Derrida was frequently omitted from
discussions oi the "Yale School"
American nor
a
on
the grounds that he
permanent member of the Yale
was neither
faculty.) In contrast
— SIGNS
146
to Miller and de
TIMES
THE
OF
Man, Hartman and Bloom were,
respectively, mildly
and strongly ambivalent about deconstruction. Hartman, justly famous for his wit and erudition, had a
flair
for the telling pun;
it
was he
captured the anarchic flavor of deconstruction by dubbing
it
who
"Der-
ridadaism." Bloom, a brilliant and prolific maverick, had written a quartet of studies that deidealized the ence; the author
whole question of literary
influ-
of The Anxiety of Influence (1973) made a powerful of one writer upon another was
case for the thesis that the influence
not a benign passing of the torch but rather a fierce struggle resembling an oedipal
Both Hartman and Bloom expressed misgivings about
rite.
deconstruction and especially about
experience of
of, the
human
its
indifference to, and exclusion
pathos in literature. Writing about him-
Hartman observed that "Bloom and Hartman are barely deconstructionists. They even write against it on occasion. For them the ethos of literature is not dissociable from its pathos, self in the third person,
whereas for deconstructionist criticism literature
precisely that use
is
of language which can purge pathos."
Bloom went
telling an interviewer in 1985: "I I
is
never did have,
more
alien to
struction
make
I
me
have no relation to deconstruction.
don't have now, and
a place for
Bloom nevertheless,
partly to emphasize
ideas
about literary
According to Bloom's reasoning, every great poem
successful poet gains his originality only
and hence vanquishing The Anxiety of
—
it is
on received
haunted by a predecessor and by a sense of
Bloom
never will have. Nothing
I
than deconstruction." If some surveys of decon-
the disruptive impact he has had influence.
from deconstruction,
further to distance himself
as
—
Influence,
its
own
"belatedncss."
is
The
by "creatively misreading"
his literary father.
These
ideas,
advanced
made
caused an intellectual sensation and
he likes to say, half in jest and half
in pride
—
in
"the pariah
of the profession."
There
is
one substantive point of connection between Bloom and
deconstruction. theory; rhetoric,
It
could be said that dc
Man
helped
Bloom
Bloom borrowed from de Man's deconstructive most notably when he expounded the view that
figures in a text correspond to psychological defense
refine his
studies in
rhetorical
mechanisms
in the
psyche of the author. In a review of The Anxiety of Influence, de anticipated this development. Bloom's psychological fathers
and sons was, de
Man
Man
drama of poetic
suggested, "a displaced version of the
paradigmatic encounter between reader and text."
Bloom had
de-
FALLEN
THE
IDOL
147
scribed six "revisionary ratios," six stages in the poet's struggle to
overcome
De Man contended
his master's influence.
of the
that each
"ratios" could be traced back to "the paradigmatic rhetorical
six
structures in
which they
example, de
Man
What Bloom
are rooted."
called kenosis, for
which the
characterized as "the figure of a figure, in
one deconstructs the universe produced by the other." Following through on these suggestions, Bloom dedicated next book,
A Map ofMisreading,
most challenging statement
the
Man. But Bloom firmly
to de in
de Man's review.
"We
his
resisted
can forget
about the temporal scheme and about the pathos of the oedipal son,"
Man
de
with the
had written. "Underneath, \The Anxiety of Influence^ deals difficulty or, rather, the impossibility of reading and, by
inference, with the indeterminacy ever.
Bloom continued
of
howwhat de Man thinks "we
literary
to address precisely
meaning." In
fact,
can forget about." For Bloom's theories are predicated entirely on
assumptions that would be anathema to the proper deconstructionist; his passionate intuitiveness
is
on
from
the other end of the spectrum
Bloom
deconstruction's linguistic reductiveness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and
casts
his
with
lot
affirms the centrality
the ego; he celebrates the act of interpretation instead
of
of documenting
"the impossibility of reading." Far from eliminating the author.
Bloom
on the conscious and unconscious impulses of the
focuses
whose struggle
individual poet, is
taken
as
for originality of being and expression
emblematic of the human condition. "There cannot be
method, except for yourself," Bloom has a
method;
late
it
Paul de
is
said.
"Deconstruction
the highly idiosyncratic personality and
Man
Long before
is
mind of
a
not the
and of Jacques Derrida." the revelations of de
Man's wartime
past.
Bloom
coupled a warning about deconstruction with a declaration oi what literary criticism
for
its
should be but seldom
eloquence and
Jacques Derrida
is
Man was
Paul de for
its
them both,
critique
is. It is
worth quoting
at length
of the deconstructive world-view:
a close personal friend
very dear to me.
intellectually.
But
of mine. The
late
have great admiration
I
I
consider their actual
on subsequent criticism to be highly pernicious. And though I'm very fond oi Geoffrey Hartman and Hillis
influence
Miller,
I
do not approve of deconstructive
of the modes of what
I
would
call
criticism or
any
formalist criticism.
I
SIGNS
148
would say that far away from
all
TIMES
THE
OF
European modes,
these
finally, are
poem
the experience of reading a
too
or the
experience of reading a story or the experience of reading a novel.
I
increasingly feel that criticism
women, must
must be personal, must be
must take the whole concern of men and
experiential,
including
offer a
all its
torments, very
much
into account,
me
kind of testimony. Emerson taught
says very beautifully
—
that the reader or student
sider herself or himself as the text,
whatsoever, be
it
what
is
were to be asked
I
all
to con-
received texts
the Bible or Shakespeare, simply as
mentary upon ourselves. This always done. If
and
is
in the English language,
I
—he
com-
the great critics have
who
are the fmest critics
would always have
said
Dr.
Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt and John Ruskin and to only a slightly lesser extent
Emerson and Walter Pater
and the divine Oscar Wilde. Precisely because they are critics in tell
one
whom
why
it
cry of the human. They They do not give one mere They do not substitute philosophy
one hears the
full
matters to read.
linguistic problematics.
for our agon and struggle with the author and with the text.
They remember always
that high literature
by
guage, and
read by suffering
that literature
is
suffering
a question
pathos, and their criticism
also
of
not just logos but also has ethos
in
On
one celebrated occasion, however, Bloom and Hart-
at least
reluctance, the
it.
cause with deconstruction.
—
With
little
apparent
two men joined Derrida, de Man, and Miller on
page of a volume entitled Deconstruction and
in 1979, the
sors
is
of ethos and logos but
and pathos
man made common title
written by
human beings and not by lanhuman beings. They know
personalities, is
is
book
—comprising
essays
Criticism,
by each of the
five
the
Published
Yale profes-
did nothing to dispel the notion of a "Yale School" and every-
thing to confirm
its
ascendancy. Years
later.
Bloom would make
the
wittily outrageous remark that the book's title was his "personal joke, which no one can ever understand: I meant that those four were deconstruction, and I was criticism." But in 1979 the book's impact
i
FALLEN
THE
IDOL
was unambiguous. Together with de Man's pubUshed
umph
that year,
in the
The
signaled the
tri-
And
measured by the sharpness of the backlash they
to the extent that there was it
was de
for better or worse,
as,
deconstruction's
American academy.
headquarters were at Yale,
out
Allegories of Reading, also
moment of
prestige and influence of the Yale critics, individually or as
a group, could be
aroused.
it
149
"Assuming there
is
a
a "school"
Man who was
and that
its
most often singled
leading spokesman and ideologue.
its
Yale Mafia, then surely there must be
a resident
"One is forced to finger Paul de may earn him the role of Don Paolo, own eminence in lit-crit circles may
Godfather," Frank Lentricchia wrote.
Man, who capo di
exhibits qualities that
" (Lentricchia's
tutti capi.
be inferred from the cinematic nickname that he has received in turn:
one
critic has called
him "the Dirty Harry of contemporary
critical
theory.") Lentricchia pointed to "the tone of respect, even reverence,"
with which the other Yale professors referred
Man
in their published writings.
What was
—
or deferred
about de
it
—
to de
Man
that
earned him such devotion? Lentricchia thought he saw the answer in
de Man's prose
—not
so
rhetoric, appropriately
which he made
much
in his matter as in his
manner.
enough, gave him away. The confidence with
was rather
his assertions
strikingly at odds with the
doctrine of extreme skepticism and doubt he was doing so
advance. Here was a us not only
de
what
In the
critic,
Lentricchia wrote,
literature has
Man commanded
ingly; in
Man
invisible.
it
much
"presumes to
must be." In
has found
know
it
is
assured and unques-
necessary to speak only spar-
his prolific lieutenants
he
is
almost
that according to certain dark tradi-
don need not speak often, nor elaborately, because when the don speaks he speaks with total authority, and it is de Man's "rhetoric of authority," as I'll call it, which has tions the
distinguished his criticism since critic
on
who
its
earliest days.
This
is
a
has always given the impression of having a grip
Even while, in Blindness and Insight, he was telling us that there was no truth, or if there was, that it could never be known, he spoke transccndentally of the "foreknowledge we possess of the true nature of literature." truth.
to
tell
short,
"the rhetoric of authority":
comparison to
We
who
been but also what
manner of a don whose power
tioned, de
De Man's
SIGNS
150
TIMES
THE
OF
Unlike Hartman, whose prose,
in
thine ramifications of a point,
pursuit of the labyrin-
its
model of the
the very
is
of self-consciousness; and
scholar's descent into the inferno
whose emotionally pressured and strident away a critic not altogether confident of how
unlike Bloom, style gives
what he proposes
Man
will be received, de
has not had to
speak in anything but a cool and straightforward manner.
new
Lentricchia's analysis has acquired a pressing
relevance in the
aftermath of the posthumous publication of de Man's wartime writings.
More
than one of de Man's former students recognized the tone
of Olympian authority with which the youthful de the future of Nazi-occupied Europe.
Man
wrote about
was the same "rhetoric of
It
authority" that Lentricchia found in de Man's Allegories of Reading.
The book's keynote
Man's
essay displayed de
style "at
most
its
in-
timidating," Lentricchia wrote, offering as his prime example de Man's assertion that "the rhetoric.
"There
is
whole of
tions
no reason why
absolutely
suggested for Proust
would bear out
literature"
would not be
his
theory of
analyses of the kind here
applicable, with proper modifica-
of technique, to Milton or to Dante or to Holderlin," de
asserted in Allegories of Reading. literary criticism in the
De Man
coming
Man
"This will in fact be the task of years."
himself could not help being ruefully aware of the
resentment that his views aroused. "Deconstruction, predictable, has been
much
as
was
easily
misrepresented, dismissed as a harmless
academic game or denounced
as a terrorist
preface to Allegories of Reading,
"and
I
weapon," he wrote
have
in the
the fewer illusions
all
about the possibility of countering these aberrations since such an expectation
would go
against the drift of
Johnson professed herself to be critics.
work
His
is
"startled
viewed, both from the
just as misguided or useless, but
my own
readings." Barbara
by the vehemence of de Man's
somehow
left
and from the
almost
as evil.
in his writing a conservative plot to talk literary critics
pating in social change. Conservatives see in cancel out
human meaning
tions to dc
Beyond
and even beyond
functioning
Radicals see
out of partici-
a nihilistic desire to
altogether." Johnson connected both posi-
Man's "central insight": that language "cannot
entirely *human.' " sages,
it
right, not
its
these,
—which produces
surface
meaning
Johnson effects
—
writes, there
that
is
itself
there arc hidden is
be
mes-
a "residue
of
not a sign of anything.
L
FALLEN
THE
but merely the outcome of linguistic
IDOL rules,
randomness of language.' Not that language
dom, but
that
For
we
can never be sure that
or even of 'the absolute is
always absolutely ran-
isn't."
the controversy surrounding deconstruction in general
all
and de Man's exposition of
denying the esteem thinker, a
it
151
in particular,
it
which he was personally held
in
man. In the wake of the Le Soir
Hartman was asked of an academic
to
cult,
was never any
there
comment on
disclosures, Geoffrey
Man,
charges that de
was extending the
all the ruthlessness that this implies.
as a teacher, a
fascist cult
as the leader
of leadership, with
These perhaps overheated charges
were made by more than one professor without love for de for deconstruction.
Hartman
Man
admired:
he
knew and
Man
or
replied with a ringing defense of the de
De Man made students see the seriousness of what they were doing. By the sheer power of intellect he made people see the importance of literature without any recourse to the
He made them aware of the he made us understand why
context of manners and morals. intricate logic
of rhetoric;
figurative language
was
was
a necessity, not a defect,
a defect, a necessary one. It
students admired de
Man
is
extraordinary
and imitated him.
It
and
if it
how many had some-
thing to do with the strength of what he was doing: he
would strengthen
their intellectual discipline.
He
did not
severity.
He
pierced an intellectual issue to the bone. After he spoke
you
attract
by flamboyance but by rigor and
something essential. He was absolutely He had negative charisma. It is not that he was flamboyant. He was modest in his bearing. He wasn't ruthless at all. He was absolutely honest in his intellectual
realized he touched
not personalistic.
opinions.
Someone with
literature behind, it
didn't
work
that
abandoning
that
way.
He
power of intellect often it
leaves
for philosophy. For de
Man
demonstrated the seriousness of
literature as a discipline.
One
can imagine a movie of de Man's
life as
time of his death from cancer in December 1983.
It
conceived
at the
would have been
an American success story, another chapter in the twentieth-century saga of
European
intellectuals
who
fled their
bloodied native ground
SIGNS
152
and flourished on American
A
soil.
TIMES
THE
OF
brilliant
young man of
letters
emigrates from Belgium to the United States in 1948. Toiling obscurely in a
Doubleday bookshop
and gets taken up by various novelist Phillips.
in
Grand Central
New York
Mary McCarthy and the He impresses many with
Station, he meets
intellectuals, including the
editor oi Partisan Review, his
William
breadth of cultural knowledge,
manner and aloof charm; people are eager to help him. A letter from Mary McCarthy to the poet Theodore Weiss, then chairman of the English department at Bard College, results in his first teaching job. At Bard he marries one of his students. They are so poor, and he so unassuming, that to make ends meet they uncomplainingly spend the summer picking berries and apples in the Hudson Valley. They move to Boston where he gets a job teaching in a Berlitz language school; on the side he translates articles from three languages for Henry Kissinger's journal. Confluence. Again friends assist him; de Man's austere passivity prompts Ted Weiss to write a letter to Harry his ironic
Levin, a co-director of Harvard's prestigious Society of Fellows.
Though de Man, born the average candidate, he
in 1919,
was
was admitted
a
good
ten years older than
to the Society, given a three-
year appointment with a stipend, few teaching responsibilities, and the
opportunity to master the old its
leading figures,
"New
Reuben Brower.
of Fellows were an impressive
lot:
Criticism" at the side of one of
De Man's
colleagues at the Society
the philosopher Stanley Cavell, the
Donald Hall and John Hollander, and the linguist Noam those who would go on to make formidable reputations for themselves. "Politics was the lingua franca of the Society," Donald Hall recalled years later. There were nightly discus-
poets
Chomsky were among
sions,
and "only
Chomsky
totally refused to talk politics"
—Chomsky
who, of all the Fellows, became the most overtly political during the Vietnam war and since. "One thought of Paul as 'a man of the left,'
pompous phrase that we used," Hall said. "It was known that he worked in the Resistance, although he did not talk about it." in a
De Man
spent the rest of the 1950s
dissertation at Harvard.
He went
working on
his doctoral
to Cornell to teach in 1960, and held
other professorial appointments at the University of Zurich and
Johns Hopkins
later in the decade. It
was
in the 196()s that
at
he began
publishing articles of unusual depth and subtlety in the nonacademic intellectual press as well as in scholarly journals. Casual readers literary criticism
could come across
his
work
in the
New
of
York Review
FALLEN
THE
IDOL
153
of Books, where he pubUshed an extraordinary essay on the poetry of Friedrich Holderhn, and in his introduction to the widely used Signet edition of John Keats's Selected Poetry. In 1971,
de
Man
an age
published his
which most
at
of
I
was no ordinary
enthusiasts to track
renown passed
One
such
down
most subtly argued book literary theory
it
The book even prompted
Man
had not collected
in the
around, and more often than not the copy was heavily
could save your dope
money
"wow"
for a
or
two
in the margins.
"You
month. That essay could blow your
several times over," a Yale graduate told
offers a
book: Geoffrey
"The Rhetoric of Temporality," acquired
underlined with an exclamatory
mind
classic.
the articles de
article,
at Yale,
"the most photocopied essay in literary criticism." Students
as
it
first
have ever read," and among adepts of
quickly achieved the status of a
volume.
newly arrived
nearly fifty-two at the time,
hailed Blindness and Insight as "the
kind
its
this
He was
of distinction have already published
scholars
But
three or four books.
Hartman
book.
first
me. David Bromwich
more sober assessment. De Man's essay, Bromwich writes, two dogmas have shaped critical thought about the liter-
"argues that
ary object since the early decades of the nineteenth century: the con-
ception of irony as a fixed perspective, and of the symbol as a fusion
of image and idea which cannot be found judgment: "After one has read
in allegory."
this essay, one's sense
of the uses of irony
can never be quite the same, and there seems to be very in ever talking
of the symbol again, except for the
of exhibiting the preoccupations of
little
historical
purpose
Insight,
de
Man announced
with "mock sensationalism" that the rules "that governed the pline of criticism and
ment have been to collapse." as a
made
so badly
He had no
solution to the
it
point
a school."
opening essay oi Blindness and
In the
Bromwich's
a cornerstone
of the
disci-
intellectual establish-
tampered with that the entire
edifice threatens
hesitation in proposing "a radical relativism"
crisis:
"There are no longer any standpoints that
can a priori be considered privileged, no structure that functions validly as a
model
credo, and
was accompanied by similarly oracular pronouncements:
no postulate of ontological hierarchy that can serve as an organizing principle from which particular structures derive in the manner in which a deity can be said to engender man and the world." This, in short, was the deconstructive it
for other structures,
"Sign and meaning can never coincide." The structure of a literary
work
is
like that
of a
chair,
which "in no way depends on the
state
SIGNS
154
of mind of the carpenter
who
is
TIMES
THE
OF
in the process
of assembHng
its
parts."
"Considerations of the actual and historical existence of writers are a
waste of time from a
viewpoint." "Literary texts are themselves
critical
but blinded, and the
critical
"The
deconstruct the blindness."
reading of the
critical
bases for historical
critics
to
tries
knowledge
are not
empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions." "Instead of containing or reflecting
experience, language constitutes
An
unlikely guru, de
"intellectual honesty"
—
it."
Man was
celebrated for his scrupulous
measured by the fastidiousness of what he
as
called his "technically correct rhetorical readings."
tion
of his
ideas often
seemed to double back on
The
prose exposi-
itself, as if
the author
were scrutinizing the very position he was advancing. "The Resistance to
Theory," for example, deplores the conventionally understood
"resistance to theory in this country." writes, "the
so compelling that at all. Certainly,
of
a matter
fact,"
de
Man
as
seems useless to concern oneself with the conflict
it
none of the objections to theory, presented again and
misinformed or based on crude misunderstandings of
again, always
such terms
"As
arguments in favor of the legitimacy of literary theory are
mimesis, fiction, reality, ideology, reference, and, for that
matter, relevance, can be said to be of genuine rhetorical interest." Yet at the
conclusion of the essay de
somewhat
De Man
itself this resistance."
is
the paradoxical and
"nothing can overcome the resistance to
startling claim that
theory since theory
Man makes
claims for literary
theory in general a meticulous attention to rhetorical detail and an ability to resist
what
What
advocates.
it
it
proves in the process
universal theory of the impossibility of theory." cither tremendously subtle or cat one's cake simultaneously,
ing sentences
is
the
more
it
it
this flourishing
In person, dc
more
so than
exposition in dc Man's conclud-
is
What a
not in
language
it
speaks
it is
is
the
remains impossible to decide
triumph or
Man was charming
when he
is
cannot help but flourish, and the more
flourishes, since the
language of self-resistance.
whether
its
is
of wanting to have and to
a case
is
of paradoxes: "Yet Htcrary theory
a chain
danger of going under; resisted,
it
and
"the
is
The argument
is
a fall."
and he was suave, perhaps never
elegantly parried a thrust at a big-name aca-
demic conference. He disarmed people with
his
European accent and
delivered a piercing retort with no sacrifice of decorum. Geoffrey
Hartman likened him
to the fencer in the
New
Yorker cartoon
who
FALLEN
THE
IDOL
155
neatly cuts off his opponent's still-smiling head and says "touche" after
Donald Hall picks up the same image: "I was very fond of and when he cut off your head, it was he who was smiling. Paul could say the nastiest bloody words, and never make you mad, because he did it in a sort of gentle way. But he was of course cutting your head off. A very good arguer he was. And there was something the fact.
Paul
.
.
.
forgivable about
utterly
him
in person."
Others spoke about de Man's
shoulder-shrugging irony and ever-present twinkle in the eye. At
academic conferences he had the knack of deflating what the previous speaker had said.
On
one such occasion,
himself passionately to Keats's
"Ode
a
well-known
''Forlorn,
likefoghorn to its
of
air
" de
me"
levity.
Man
—
A
when
said
it
was
two
stanzas
his turn to speak,
Man
by
taught in the
wry pun.
seems a comely female graduate student was going over the profes-
sors' tal
of the
"sounds
the dismissiveness of the remark camouflaged
colleague at Cornell, where de
1960s, recalled his ability to defuse a tense situation with a It
addressed
to a Nightingale," emphasizing
the poet's repetition of the wordforlorn in the last
poem.
critic
heads and charming the male dean to get her
dispute.
The colleague was
aplomb, a master of detachment.
furious but de
"Oh
way
departmen-
in a
Man was
all
yes," he smiled. "Miss
G
witty :
the face that launched a thousand scholarships."
Frank Kermode distinguishes the followers of Paul de
Man from
the students of an earlier generation, the "Modernist" generation for
whom dents, it
"On
when he
the Teaching of
Modern
recalls Trill-
Literature": "Trilling's stu-
introduced them to the abyss of the Modern, gazed into
*how interesting!' and passed by." Though Kermode indicate what the proper deconstructionist says when placed
politely, said
neglects to
m
Kermode
Lionel Trilling was a revered mentor.
ing's essay
the
same predicament,
theorists pride themselves
the abyss.
They do
it
is
on
known
well
that avant-garde literary
their ability to stare unflinchingly into
so in earnest emulation
of the master's example.
Man
Alert to the reigning trends in Continental criticism, de
on "a dangerous
vertige,
regression." There
a dizziness
were no
truths.
of the mind caught
They had
in
reported
an infinite
become texts, dupliciyou examined a a point where it decon-
all
tous texts, fictions within fictions within fictions. If text closely structs itself.
enough, you inevitably arrived
at
Suddenly the ground beneath you has given way, and you
must brace yourself for
a fall
from
cliff.
On
the lit-crit
was frequently
said
of Paul de
a vertiginous
conference circuit in the early 1980s,
it
— 156
Man
SIGNS
who
was "the only man
that he
TIMES
THE
OF
ever looked into the abyss and
came away smiling."
When de Man died in December 1983, Yale went into mourning. A. Bartlett Giamatti, then president of the university, declared that "a
tremendous light for humane us will ever be the same."
A
—
life
and learning
festschrift in
is
gone and nothing for
de Man's honor
—
entitled
The Lesson of Paul de Man was lovingly assembled and brought to press. Jacques Derrida dedicated a book, Memoires:for Paul de Man, to his friendship
And
with the deceased.
of academic
in the context
de Man remained the standard-bearer of the deconstruction When J. Hillis Miller succeeded to the presidency of the Modern
politics,
party.
Language Association
he used the occasion of his presidential
"The Resistance
address to echo essay
in 1986,
to Theory," de
Man's "already
classic
of 1979." Employing an argument familiar to students of psycho-
analytic theory. Miller reasoned that the resistance to critical theory
"the violence and irrationality of the attacks on theory" that
it
theory
is
"The
active, threatening, in fact triumphant.
as the resistance to
reading has
now
—
confirms
resistance to
taken the strange form of
the almost universal triumph of theory," Miller asserted, offering the
example of "the recent program of the Midwest Modern Language Association,
which met
in
Chicago
papers, panels, and sessions
might say aggressively head of a
pluralistic,
his partisanship.
the
young
He
of
this past
November. Almost all the were overtly and one
that convention
Though he spoke
theoretical."
as the titular
many-sided profession. Miller was unabashed
in
took the highly unusual step of naming some of
scholars he felt
were most
likely to succeed in the profession;
dc Man's proteges heavily freighted the
list.
As for Miller himself, the
impulse to ape de Man's rhetoric of authority proved affirm," he said, "that the future
of
literary studies
taining and developing that rhetorical reading " commonly called 'deconstruction.'
irresistible. "I
depends on main-
which today
is
most
Baseball players must wait five years after their retirement to
become
Man
eligible for induction into the sport's hall
next to no time
was enshrined a
few weeks
were warned day
—
On
a
at
Yale University's
snowy January
day,
took de
It
at all to enter the lit-crit equivalent.
memorial service
after his death.
De Man
art gallery
when
travelers
to stay off the slippery roads, hundreds gathered to salute
their colleague
that
at a
of fame.
and teacher. Read through the testimonials delivered
they form the
first
section
of The Lesson of Paul de
Man
—
FALLEN
THE
IDOL
157
man was
and you come away with the inescapable feehng that the
truly beloved. His disciples took pains to frame their eulogies in an exact, unsentimental
way
would have met with
that
not given
his colleagues issued rallying cries to the faithful. Derrida,
to understatement, said, to realize
revitalizing
the channels that irrigate
all
United
university, in the
tizer par excellence,
to say so, the future as best
"As we know already but
more and more, he transformed
we
States
in
we shall
come
also
the field of literary theory,
it
both inside and outside the
Europe." Miller, the prosely-
may
dare
of literary studies depends on reading Paul de
Man
made
most grandiose
the
on being
can,
and
as
and
his approval,
true to his
assertion: "If
example
as a
I
reader and as a
continuator of the long tradition of literary study to which he belonged."
"The
thing he probably
last
—
moral and pedagogical
would have wanted
rather than merely intellectual
was
to be
—example
a
for
generations of students and colleagues," said Barbara Johnson at that
somber and
tearful gathering, "yet
it
was
way of
precisely his
not
made him so irreplaceably an exception, and The late de Man "never sought followers," fellow mourners, yet "people followed him in
seeking those roles that
such an inspiration."
Johnson told her droves.
He was
ironic
discipleship; the
country
dotted with
is
His impact was so profound and so specific that
his disciples.
possible to determine
teacher but also
when
toward
from people's work not only
when he was
their teacher
they passed their time beside him.
he was their
that
He was
the implied reader
not simply a question of intellectual eminence; rather,
— —
tual vigor
disinterested, dedicated,
that
is
—what he was working on
driving literary critical pens in every university in the country."
agendas
it
without
it
was
false pretenses
It
was
intellec-
or hidden
made de Man an exemplary model. De Man was genu-
ine in the full honorific sense
of the word. As Johnson put
it,
"In a
profession full of fakeness, he was real."
"Yale
Still
Times reported eulogistic
Feeling Loss of Revered Professor," the in 1984,
campus-mood
supplementing piece.
A
bereft
its
New
York
routine obituary with a
Hillis Miller told the J.
Times
reporter that he had faithfully attended de Man's graduate seminar, "just because
something was going to happen there that
to miss." Professor de
Man,
the reporter concluded,
I
"came
didn't
want
to represent
SIGNS
158
an ideal that ship, a
would-be
attracts
scholars, an ideal
of intellectual fellow-
detached but passionate exchange of ideas without politics and
posturing."
The
—and —continued
the widening ripples of de Man's
adulation
intellectual influence
came
TIMES
THE
OF
the catastrophic revelations.
Then
for four years after his death.
Long ago and
professor had done the unmentionable
far
—something
away, the revered that, at
any
rate,
he himself neglected ever to mention afterward. The Times broke the story
on December
Found
Man
de
Man
The de it
Man
Belgium during World War II, newspaper under Nazi supervision; in his
do with words and with silence, with what Belgium and what he didn't say in America. Perhaps
scandal had to in
wasn't coincidental that de Man's
abstract plane
own
critical practice dealt
with words and with silence
who
been those
Did de Man's
—and
that there
on an
had long
de Man's theory had the effect of silencing
felt that
insistence
wish to lay the blame for
ceal the
second section was
he failed to make account of what he had done.
years,
wrote
language.
its
his native
had written for a
American
the lead page of
and the headline: "Yale Scholar's Articles
Nazi Paper." In
in
On
1987.
1,
a photograph of de
on language's "unreliability" con-
his
youthful journalism on language?
who
the occasional character
enjoys a lively posthu-
In fiction there
is
mous
by dint of having drafted
a will requiring prospective
The
successful legatee must, for
existence
perform extravagant
heirs to
example, solve a riddle (1962), in
as in
Harry Mathews's novel The Conversions
which an eccentric millionaire poses
"When was
in his will (such as
that the bulk
correctly.
—
feats.
By
of
his estate will
a stone
go
three riddling questions
not a king?") and stipulates
to the person
concealing the facts of his youth,
who answers them de Man assured for
himself and his works a similarly lively posthumous
fate.
The
belated
discovery of his wartime journalism had the effect of requiring his students to reconsider his entire mature ocuvrc in the light of the
belated revelations. Derrida, for one, used the occasion to exhort his
followers to reread de Man;
Man, from
read de
A
to
Z"
now more is
than ever, Derrida wrote, "to
"unavoidable."
A
minor irony was
that
the arch dcbunker of origins and ends assumed he had a firm hold
what "A aside, is
to
Z" now
and you're
bunk
left
—but now
between what he archives
entailed for Paul de
with
a sharper irony.
history said he
show he had
Man. Leave
on
that inconsistency
For de Man's party, history
was debunking de Man. The discrepancy had done during the war, and what the
actually done,
was
a
gap created not by the
— FALLEN
THE
of language
"unreliability"
further irony
wartime journalism
was
—
that the publication in
an exercise of will,
—had of
their order
America of de Man's
long after the publication of de Man's
in 1989,
deconstructive writings
of reversing
medium but by
as a
159
of dissembling.
a conscious act
A
IDOL
the effect of making the early
What
priority.
biographical equivalent of a chiasmus
—
seem
late,
had happened was the
the rhetorical figure in
the elements of a sentence occur in a crisscrossing pattern.
To
which
appreci-
you need to understand that the chiasmus was a trope by de Man and his fellow deconstructionists, who invest it with considerable significance. The trope is not at all unusual. Using the structure of a chiasmus, I may introduce two terms roses and violets, in that order. Then I proceed to discuss violets first, roses ate the irony,
greatly favored
—
Marx may have been
Karl
later.
that
is,
to allegorize the chiasmus
first
as a
way of conducting
an argument.
of a chiasmus in The Poverty of Marx's rebuttal of a book by Proudhon entitled The
John Hollander Philosophy,
the
of speech
to use this figure
detects the logic
Philosophy of Poverty. For the deconstructionists, similarly, the chias-
mus
serves to describe a
turning the tables. ject
—
What
working procedure
else
is
—
a
way of
instantly
the characteristic deconstructive pro-
"the reversal of binary oppositions"
—but
the
movement of
a
And now, with the belated discovery of de Man's wartime you had an unexpected new illustration of the trope. The writing he had done first was read last and compelled a retrospective chiasmus? writings,
—
reassessment of everything he had written in the interval.
The
case
of Paul de
Man
instantly divided itself into three sets
of questions, each corresponding to
a specific
concerned the period from 1940 to 1942
—
under the heels of the Nazi occupation.
time period. The
years
What
between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three)
done?
Was
it
as
bad
as
nor
his sparring partners
the extent of his fascist involvement, or
of the things he answer. careerist
said
and
looked? The answer was distressing: neither
it
allies
Man
exactly had de
(then
de Man's academic
first
when Belgium was
its
could have suspected
duration, or the repugnance
Other questions were more difficult to by ideological conviction, or was it sheer prompted the budding young literary critic
said in print.
Was de Man
a fascist
opportunism that
to grab the chance to write for
one committed to
a
Nazi party
November 1942? Was
it
fear
Le
Soir,
line?
a national
Why
newspaper
—
albeit
did he stop at the end of
of assassination by the underground
(the
SIGNS
160
fate
of a fellow Le Soir reviewer), or was
How
a matter
when
of belated scruple? the
war was over?
he pardoned because of his youth?
A nence
edge
second
of questions concerned the years of de Man's emi-
How were people to understand his failure to acknowl-
at Yale.
his
set
Was it, how did
wartime writings?
self-protectiveness? If so,
that de
surface
Man
one day.
his cancer
aware of him;
must have realized
He knew,
after
had been diagnosed
at least
with
that square
What
that his all,
his previously
deepens the enigma
is
wartime journalism would
that his cult
as terminal.
his disciples' devotion. Several
He
would
outlive him;
could not help being
were writing books about
one had begun to assemble an exhaustive bibliography of
his writings.
Given
all that, it
was surely only
the fugitive pieces turned up. years at
underground
a matter
of time before
Yet de Man, when he adverted
told people that he'd
all,
gone
to
to his
England and worked
or that he'd studied in Paris, or that he'd joined the
as a translator,
A
seemed, a matter of shrewd
as it
unimpeachable reputation for integrity?
war
it
did he escape the wrath of the court
Was
TIMES
THE
OF
in France
third set
—
three palpable falsehoods.
of questions
—
the
most incendiary ones
—
concerned
the present. Journalistic accounts of the case inevitably raised the
dilemma of whether, and to what extent, a should modify our understanding of his ideas. Did de
intractable philosophical writer's actions
Man's wartime words, and
his
subsequent silence about them, confirm
or contradict his analysis of language and writing, meaning and truth? It
was possible
somehow an silent at a
to conclude that the theory he so artfully spun out
alternative to confession, or a justification for not keeping
time
when words had
de Man's secrecy about left
holding the bag
the revelations
—
was
his past
when
—and
the force of actions.
was
that his admirers
the Scandal broke.
How
One
result of
and cohorts were
they responded to
the accusations and recriminations fiHing the
would itself become part of the story. Predictably, there were some who set about to deconstruct the most notorious of de Man's wartime articles to show that they subverted their own spoken intentions. Others suggested, more reasonably if not quite convincingly, that de Man's later work was, as Geoffrey Hartman put it, a "belated, but still powerful, act of conscience." Still others blamed the media air
as the
sors
messenger of evil tidings
from
whom
the
—and
reserved their ire for the profes-
media learned the
story. Deconstruction
was
FALLEN
THE could
defensive, and that gave
on the
clearly
IDOL
detractors an opening they
they did.
seize. Seize it
The academic
its
161
equivalent of a guerilla
war broke out
in the pages
of the Times Literary Supplement and the Chronicle of Higher Education, the
New
New
Republic and the
Criterion,
the Village Voice and the
London Review of Books. In the debate precipitated by the sudden rash of disclosures about de Man's early life, one could see the truth in the old adage that the ferocity of academic politics varies inversely with
But one
the material stakes involved.
also felt that
one might just
possibly be witnessing a critical turning point in the history of an idea.
Back
in 1984,
Geoffrey Hartman observed that deconstruction was
wave that will pass. Yet," he added in rebuttal, "even in America the movement associated with de Man and Derrida is felt to challenge more than a sometimes
belittled as "cliquish, another fashionable
particular set
of institutionalized values such
mon Reader
or a Public Style or a Unified Sensibility.
as nostalgia for a
The
Com-
spirit
of
Man seems to threaten the institutionalization of criticism itself." To challenge, to threaten, remained the operative words now that the Le Soir papers were on the table only now embodied by de
criticism
—
it
was deconstruction
that
was challenged and
of Paul de Man, spreading
like a
brushfire,
The
The
case
Reich
that lasted twelve
would be proved or disproved
was
in time.
there
were an
really
Man was
De Man's
allegorical
always more than an ordinary
"negative charisma," or some other
dimension to
facts, it
was exemplary
The
real in either event.
unexplained complexity, made him seem representative,
of the biographical
how
professor quipped: "Deconstruc-
of Paul de
scandal in academe.
clear just
A Columbia
prediction
speaker's bitterness
made
case
of criticism embodied by decon-
tion turned out to be the thousand-year years."
The
threatened.
spirit
deep ran the animosity to the struction's fallen idol.
media
felt
is
after all
as
though
his career as a critic. In the face
possible to contend that de
— though not
in the
way
Man's
life
his disciples
would have wished. He was, in some rough sense, like a Citizen Kane who died without saying "Rosebud!" and dropping a snow-filled paperweight. But despite de
Man
left
his silence
behind proved
consigned to the flames
and
his dissimulation, the
far less perishable than the
at the
end of Citizen Kane.
evidence
boyhood
sled
CHAPTER
7
THE STOLEN
EVENING The war will only bring about a tighter union of these two things that were so close from the start the Hitlerian soul and the German soul to the point that they will become a
— —
single
and unique power. This
phenomenon, because judge the
fact
it
means
is
an important
that
of Hitler without
one cannot
at the
time judging the fact of Germany and
same
that the
future o^ Europe can be envisioned only in the
framework of the the
German
a series
possibilities
spirit. It is
of reforms, but of the definitive eman-
cipation of a people that fmds called
and the needs of
not merely a matter of
upon
to exercise
—Paul
de
itself, in its
hegemony
Man,
in
in
turn,
Europe.
le soir,
October 28, 1941
The discovery of Paul de Man's wartime journalism was made in the summer of 1987 by a young Belgian scholar named Ortwm de Graef. A dc Man devotee, de Graef had set out not to damage the master's reputation but to deepen critic
he regarded
as
it;
he was preparing a doctoral thesis on the
"arguably the most challenging writer on
litera-
SIGNS
164
emerged
ture to have
TIMES
THE
OF
few decades." With scholarly
in the past
zeal,
down defunct journals and combing pages of yellowing newsprint. What had de Man written as a university student in Brussels? Was there anything in his de Graef pursued
his archival researches, tracking
Belgian years that might shed light on his subsequent career in the
United
States?
some shining
De Graef was
prospecting for the odd nugget of ore,
hint of the originality and brilliance that
were
to
come.
He happened upon paydirt of another color and texture. De Graef s initial discovery consisted of ninety-two articles de Man's byline in the pro-Nazi newspaper Le
Soir,
Belgium's most
widely read paper during the German occupation. Over a million
ally, it
a quarter
of
French-speaking Belgians read Le Soir daily through Octo-
ber 1942, in large part because of was, in
with
fact,
something
respectable prewar reputation.
its
It
newspaper of record. Editori-
like a national
had an anti-German posture that commended
to Belgium's
it
francophone community, the Walloons, but that changed abruptly
when
the Nazis overran
Belgium
in
May May
1940.
The
invasion began
16 edition oi Le Soir, the on the tenth of May. Following the newspaper's owners suspended operations and fled the country, as did most of the editorial staff. Belgium surrendered unconditionally on May 28. The fall of France a few weeks later dashed the hope that the
paper could be published in exile from
The German
One of the
first
things it
staff
was willing
over, staffing
it
with editors and writers judged
by the exacting standards of
politically correct
was back
no time in exploiting this situation. they did upon occupying Brussels was to seize
invaders lost
Le Soir and make Soir
Paris office.
its
to continue under the
new
By June 13 Le no one formerly on
Berlin.
in circulation, despite the fact that
dispensation.
The newspa-
per became, inevitably, an instrument of Nazi thought control and an
agent of the
German propaganda machine. "By choosing Germany wc
choose Europe," wrote at the
time Paul de
Man
Raymond wrote for
de Becker, Le Soir\ editor-in-chief it.
"Victorious
Germany
England from the continent and will assure peace for
So
heartily hated
be
known
was Le Soir during the occupation
derisively as
Le Soir
by the Nazis and by those
vole
— "The
who would
will expel
a long time."
that
it
came
to
Stolen Evening," stolen
collaborate with them. Yet
it
remained the citizenry's chief source of news. In the demoralizing aftermath
of Belgium's military
collapse, the
paper's influence
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
was not
to be underestimated.
quisling papers for information, but with
propaganda," wrote Anne Somerhausen, the
war
she noted, "yet
its
who
reads
out against
kept a journal through
it is
much
as
before the war, or more."
militarily,
was being bled of its labor
read as
and was struggling with severe shortages of food and
resources,
clothing; the
over in June 1940 by a quisling
illegally taken
The nation had been humiliated and
"Everybody
all his bristles
years in Brussels as an act of resistance. ''Le Soir, the biggest
pre-war daily, was staff","
165
Germans controlled not only
the
means of production
but the media of communication and information, and they were
nothing
if
Belgians
—
not
efficient at getting their
defeated, leaderless, and
nerable position.
The
message out. The defenseless
hungry
—were
in a spiritually vul-
people, Somerhausen wrote, were "like a de-
—
King" King Leopold III had surrendered to Germans and was now a virtual captive of his palace, a prisoner of war rather than a symbol of resistance. "We are apathetic. We try not to think beyond today. We shall be an easy prey to German propaganda," Somerhausen worried in July 1940. It was possible to read Le Soir and to dismiss the falsehoods it perpetrated, as Somerhausen was able to do. It was possible by the end of November 1942 for resistants buoyed by the British success at El Alamein and the German setback at Stalingrad to turn a defiant and vengeful eye on the "quisling press." But in the period when Paul de Man wrote for Le Soir, the war's ultimate outcome was far from clear, and the battle for the hearts and minds of the Belgian population was being waged in earnest by the Germans and their surrogates. Assisted by Tom Keenan, de Man's American bibliographer, de feated flock without a the
—
—
Man
Graef eventually determined that de than 170 articles in Le Soir
vole.
up
a
Het Vlaamsche Land,
in
with
a collaborationist brush.
published, in
Ten other
pieces
all,
by de
no fewer
Man
turned
Flemish-language daily similarly tarred
With
bilingual ease and an air of confi-
dent authority, the linguistically gifted and intellectually precocious
young man had addressed himself
both of
to
his nation's
main ethnic
groups: the Dutch-speaking Flemish (approximately half of the population)
cent).
knew,
and the French-speaking Walloons (nearly thirty-five per
He knew
he was writing for
too, that both papers
would have
were
a
wide national audience, and he pro-German as they
stridently
—
to be to pass muster with the occupation authorities.
De
SIGNS
166
Man
TIMES
THE
OF
had just turned twenty-one when he signed on
correspondent for Le Soir in December 1940.
November two For the
Man
Not
as a cultural
years later did he stop.
full
two-year period of
his association
with Le
advanced the Nazis' cultural agenda in ways small and
best he
was
end of
until the
a defeatist, certain that destiny favored the
who didn't see why his country's way of his career. At worst he was
Soir,
de
large.
At
Germans, and
an opportunist,
humiliation should
stand in the
"a
fascist,
an anti-
Semite, and an active collaborator with the Nazis during the
German
after a results
Man
—
judgment reached by John Brenkman meticulous analysis of de Man's contributions to Le Soir. "The of the inquiry are incontrovertible," Brenkman asserted. "De
occupation of Belgium"
the
responded, consistently and actively, to an entire range of ideo-
logical imperatives associated
with European fascism and
imperatives specifically dictated by the Third Reich."
notable points about Brenkman's indictment
is
political
One of
that he hardly
the the
fit
which the deconstructionists attempted to discredit refused to whitewash de Man. It could not be
stereotype with
who
those professors
Brenkman wrote out of an ignorance of deconstruction. The Northwestern professor had some years before published an analysis of Ovid that Jonathan Culler proclaimed "a classic deconstructive read-
said that
ing.
view held by those who knew and liked de Man American university career is that his wartime fling with fascism
The in his
charitable
must have been motivated by
careerist
self-advancement
—
an under-
standable if not, under the circumstances, a pardonable impulse in a
young man of twenty-two or twenty-three. Yet
so constant
was
his
apologia for the Germans that his motivation for joining Le Soir
whether he did the
two
it
—seems
—
out of opportunism or conviction or a mixture of
a subsidiary question.
Too many of dc Man's
articles
exhibit an unmistakably ideological cast; he acquiesced in the Nazis'
"new order" later
as if it
de Man,
a province
were an inevitable and
in his years as a
of
literature; the
critical practice,
ture serve the
had
it
young
is
how
de
The
the other
literary journalist, in his active
way around
—he
insisted that litera-
makers of history. His "literary" columns are always
implicitly and often overtly political. that
irreversible condition.
Yale eminence, insisted that history was
Man
treated not only as a fact
— —was
The German "revolution"
characterized the conquest of his country
of history but
as the
uppermost
fact to
for
be
—
when surveying
kept in mind
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
167
Belgium in 1941 declared, was noth-
the cultural life of
and 1942. Collaboration with the enemy, de
Man
ing short of "a necessity." It
when
setting the historical record straight, to
varieties
of collaborationism, though any form of
important,
is
among
distinguish
rapprochement with such a barbarous invader must unsavory, misguided, and timorous.
at the least,
today
strike us
The form espoused by
Man was more drastic than the fence-straddling "wait and see" known as attentisme adopted by some of his compatriots. A
de
policy
—
—
"wait and see" collaborator wasn't actively working toward a
World War
victory in
historical scenario as
as,
II;
rather,
he assumed
it
and determined to make the best of
with other forms of collaborationism,
varieties
German
to be the likeliest it.
There were,
of attentisme, some
less
objectionable than others. In Belgium, easily the most notable and
the
most controversial instance of the "wait and see" attitude was
exhibited by King Leopold
III.
A
brief
summary of his
that
case will help
put de Man's into the proper historical perspective. In
May
1940, days after Hitler launched his invasion of Western
Europe, Belgium's military defeat loomed
as a
of Belgium had a crucial decision to make. flee, as
both the king of
conquered
lands;
Norway and
his cabinet.
government
He
The king
could have decided to
the queen of Holland fled their
he could have elected to preside over a provisional
government-in-exile, the course of action
by
near certainty.
He
did neither.
did, in fact,
Though
go into
exile,
recommended unanimously
the ministers of the Belgian
Leopold chose instead to
behind. Rather than lead an incipient resistance, he authorized a plete capitulation, ordering his armies to lay
down
their
stay
com-
arms in
compliance with the German demand for an unconditional surrender.
The
were
king's actions
a
blow
to the national morale
—coupled
as
they were with pronouncements from Leopold's chief adviser exhorting the people not to
resist
decision to defy his cabinet created a
ment
would,
that
The
king's
between throne and
parlia-
the conquering Germans. rift
in time, precipitate the gravest constitutional crisis
in
Belgium's history. For the duration of the war Leopold remained
in
Nazi-occupied Belgium
—
as if the
until the
Germans evacuated him
Bclgmm
m
to
throne
itself
Germany
were held captive
after the liberation
of
September 1944. Though the king was evacuated against
his will, for years
afterward Leopold's
critics associated
his forced
departure with the simultaneous flight of hard-core collaborators.
Nor
SIGNS
168
could the king's
critics
bring themselves to forgive him for having
visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden in
November
He
gained nothing from
dictator, but left
attempt
modating the Nazis, he was trying
plausibly claim that in
—
—
a grotesque set
during the occupation a despised figure in their
—and
much of
particularly in his land.
arms eighteen days
began, Leopold
of
but his motives were not necessarily ignoble. Yet his
"mild" form of collaborationism was serious enough:
down
accom-
to act in his nation's best interests.
could be convicted of poor political judgment
blunders indeed
at supplicating the
behind the image of a royal humiliation.
The Belgian sovereign could
He
this
made
1940. Leopold had
POWs and alleviating food
hope of repatriating Belgian
the trip in the shortages.
TIMES
THE
OF
felt
By
its first
his
days
behavior
—made him
ordering his troops to lay
after the ferocious
Nazi blitzkrieg
Good
he was preventing their needless massacre.
military arguments could be marshaled to support this
view
— though
one indubitable consequence of the Belgian capitulation was that
it
the British and French armies in a perilously exposed position.
left
Re-
criminations were swift in the aftermath of the calamity that the
army managed miraculously to avert at Dunkirk. In London 4, in the great speech in which he vowed that England would on the beaches and on the landing grounds and never surrender,
British
on June fight
Churchill vented his
ire.
He
maintained their neutrality
mans
—long
British
after Hitler
recalled that the Belgians
—
a policy
of benefit only to the Ger-
gave evidence of
around and leave them
in the
our only
line
of retreat to the
with the
sea.
left flank
flank
In fact,
and thus kept open
without the advice of
his
and means of
aid,
Suddenly, without previous consul-
least possible notice,
own personal act, he sent German Command, surrendered his Army and upon
The
Commons, only to have Leopold turn lurch: "He and his brave, efficient army,
nearly half a million strong, guarded our
ters
his bellicose aims.
had responded to the Belgian sovereign's belated appeal for
Churchill told the House of
tation,
had foolishly
his
Minis-
a plenipotentiary to the
and exposed our whole
retreat."
Leopold made
the advice of his ministers
his decision
—with
not merely without but
ai^ainst
consequences that extended well
beyond the realm of military strategy. To the extent that a constitutional monarch is a figurehead of authority, the king's acquiescence in his captivity had a distressing symbolic significance. There are times
when
exile seems
synonymous with
resistance,
and the Nazi conquest
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
of Europe was one of those times. But just a figurehead; he
is
well-defmed hmits to pold had
ment
a constitutional
working partner
monarch
is
not
government, with
in the
power. Acting unilaterally, Leo-
his executive
own
himself at odds with his
set
—and
a
169
parliamentary govern-
thereby raised the whole question of his initiative, his
prerogatives, and, finally, his fitness to rule. Either parliament or the
king had,
in practical political terms,
been rendered illegitimate by the
king's decision to remain in occupied
king made
it
clear that
Belgium
—
particularly as the
he reserved the option to form a
new govern-
ment under the German occupation. Parliament would be casting doubt on its own legitimacy if, after the war, it simply welcomed back, with no questions asked, a monarch who had so clearly exceeded his constitutional bounds. Nor were his countrymen universally eager to forgive their sovereign. Unwilling to flee Belgium under the Nazi occupation, Leopold found himself obliged to take refuge in Switzerland after the war. His conduct
—and
the larger questions
about the proper relation between king and parliament debated in his absence. then under the
him
least
to Brussels
Not
until
of the electorate voted
they marched
The
down
threat
A
a little less than
Angry demon-
went up;
of revolution and
there
civil
Half
tion that
of the monarchy
itself
as
workers
a million
were outbreaks of violence.
war ended only when 1, 1950. It was
abdicated in favor of his son on August institution
hotly
plebiscite recalled
in his favor.
the streets of Brussels.
strike; barricades
—was
chanted "Leopold to the gallows!"
strators, protesting his return,
went on
raised
1950 did he return to Belgium, and
propitious of circumstances.
by an uncomfortably slim margin;
fifty-eight percent
it
the king as if the
could be maintained only on condi-
Leopold remove himself from the picture.
Was
the
condemnation of Leopold
III
too severe, given the
—
defense that could be mustered in his behalf
good even
if his
that his motives
were
policy was misguided, and that he stood falsely
accused of "treating" with the enemy? Historians are divided on the question.
The it
But David
comment seems
king's enforced abdication
was not
tion,
Littlejohn's
unjustifiable.
must be
A
may have been
unjust but
king, by the nature of his posi-
a focal point, a
outside and above politics.
apt:
symbol of national unity
Once he becomes involved
in
controversy, even by implication, he becomes a divisive
SIGNS
170
TIMES
THE
OF
force and vitiates the essential function of his high office.
Leopold had become involved
do or say could de
Meurthe's well-known
la
Due
the
on
in politics.
Nothing he could
Perhaps an inversion of Boulay
alter that.
comment on
the execution of
d'Enghien would be the most appropriate verdict
the abdication:
it
was worse than
a crime, but
it
was not
by
a mistake. Belgian unity could be restored only
substitution of a
"Wait and
new and
see," the
wartime policy, was
a
the
untarnished symbol.
shorthand rationale for Leopold's disastrous
way of hedging
one's bets in favor of the
likelihood that Germany's victory in Europe was assured and
be permanent. The historian E. the
Ramon Arango
explains the logic. "If
Germans should be victorious Leopold hoped
mum
advantage for Belgium, and
was designed writes.
"One
government Germans.
to
his
to gain the
to this eventuality,"
can imagine that Leopold reasoned like
He
will
with the Allies while the King
do nothing
maxi-
behavior during the occupation
accommodate himself
fights
would
is
Arango
the Belgian
this:
a prisoner
of the
to aid the aggressor, but he will
nothing to offend him. Irrespective of
who
is
do
the victor, that victor
will have a Belgian friend, or, in the case of Leopold, if not a friend, at least
and
not an avowed enemy. This was the policy oi attentisme, 'wait
see,'
'wait and profit.' "
More
than one of Belgium's ministers of
government were outraged by what they saw as the king's faintheartsome called it treason. As Belgium fell in May 1940, Paul Henri
edness;
Spaak a
— Belgium's once and
major role
pold of "a
future prime minister,
in the reconstruction
total collapse
of
uncompromising terms of
who would
of postwar Europe
a certain
his horror,
—
play
accused Leo-
moral sense." Spaak spoke and that of
in
his colleagues, at
learning that the king was planning to accept a political role for
himself under the certain
1)
number of
German occupation. "The King," he
said,
"had
radically false ideas":
The Belgian army should
fight only
on Belgian
soil.
The French and British Allies had been defeated and the war was over. Peace is going to be made and consequently 2)
it is
necessary to change cards and seek, as far as possible,
the favor of
him who
will be the victor.
a
As .
.
have
I
completely
said, these are
We were
.
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
false,
to take advantage of.
a certain
We
found them mad,
tage
of
you
their cause,
What Spaak
ideas.
stupid,
more:
a total collapse
us.
"You were bound from
you allowed thousands of French and
on our behalf and come be abandon
King
moral sense which shocked
Spaak addressed the king directly. that
mistaken
aware of the reasons which the King wanted
criminal, because they indicated in the
of
171
moment
the
British soldiers to be called
killed in the defense
of Belgium.
If
you
will be a traitor and will be dishonored."
which the King wanted
called "the reasons
to take
advan-
were the idea of a separate peace and the avoidance of useless
bloodshed
at the
expense of a unilateral capitulation to an invading
force: the calculations
Yet for Paul de marily because affirmative
it
of attentisme.
Man
didn't
go
in 1942, attentisme
was unacceptable
pri-
enough. Something bolder and more
far
was demanded by the prospect of German hegemony
Man
in
Germans had history on their in one of his articles, "which continues to flow without bothering about the reticence of a few individuals who persist in not understanding its power." And it was history, the pressure of "the overbearing reality," that condemned attentisme as "untenable." Reviewing (and recommending) a book by Europe. So
side:
far as
de
could
see,
the
"the current of history," as he put
it
the notorious French collaborator Alfred Fabre-Luce, de a critique
who is
Man
coupled
of attentisme with praise for "those rare perspicacious minds
have grasped" the power o( history. The task of
"to combat the inertia and hostility of the masses"
any resistance to the
irresistible
this fascist elite
—
to
overcome
Nazi future. History will vindicate the
proponents of collaboration. "Later
it
will turn out that they
were the
precursors of a unanimous will."
Some
Man
downplayed the importance of his wartime journalism on the grounds that a number of his cultural notices had little apparent political content. There was something de
dubious about
this
cially disingenuous, It
loyalists initially
argument
to begin with,
coming from advanced
flew in the face of their
own
insistence that
has an ideological dimension. They, of
expected to understand that even the
all
and what made
literary theorists,
it
espe-
was
that
even "literary" language
readers,
least political
might have been of de Man's book
reviews and literary "chronicles" assisted the Nazi propaganda ma-
SIGNS
172
chine.
De Man
TIMES
THE
OF
gave a veneer of intellectual respectability to the stolen style,
he lent support to
under a
fascist dictatorship;
newspaper. In his precociously hierophantic the idea that art and culture
might
flourish
he helped launder the image of Nazi Germany, and he did so
when
his defeated
of mass-persuasion. The argument, in any
when
170 of de Man's Le Soir
all
time
at a
compatriots were most susceptible to the techniques
articles
case,
proved academic. For
were
laid
out together,
it
good many of them were quite overtly political. De Man wrote warmly of the major collaborationist authors of Belgium and France: men like Alfred Fabre-Luce, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Robert Brasillach, Pierre Daye, and Bertrand de Jouvenel; men whose names appeared on the recommended list of the Propaganda Abteilung Frankreich, the German agency in charge of the mass indocbecame
clear that a
trination
of the French. Such noted collaborationists served
propaganda purpose: they helped deter and
at the
Man
a
double
resistance in the occupied lands
De
same time they reinforced the resolve of the Germans.
explained these authors and, in the explaining, endorsed their
vision of Europe. In the tart period, Jeffrey
words of one present-day expert on
Mehlman of Boston
University, de
Man
the
"plugged the
Nazi hit-parade."
As
past masters
of propaganda, the Nazis understood the power
of ideas and images, specious ideas and spurious images, repeated they passed for truths in credulous minds
among
until
and
a demoralized
divided populace. Belgium was a divisible entity to begin with;
Flemish and Wallonian populations spoke different languages ish
(Dutch) and French
rival cultural
of World
—and
communities.
War
II,
Propa(Jatida Ahtci/ufiiy,
— Flem-
coexisted in the mutual distrust of
And
Belgium was
a
demoralized nation.
To
the Nazis'
Belgium thus presented
golden opportunity: the people could be considered
view
a
new
a
change for the better from the decadence of prewar Europe.
the
last a
a
at least potentially
receptive to a propaganda effort determined to inculcate the
would
two
certainly during the bleak early days
the occupation of
order had arrived,
its
that
thousand years, and represented
German propaganda during World War II laid heavy image of "fortress Europe": the idea that Germany stood
stress
on
as civili-
bulwark against the barbarian hordes of Russia and the soulless materialists of the United States. In his journalism, de Man promoted zation's
this
view of things implicitly and sometimes quite openly
he saluted the valor of the
German
soldier
and sang the
—
as
praises
when of the
J
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
poetry that was coming from Mussolini's (damaging of de Man's
articles
were those
occupiers as
"more
dignified,
Among
Italy.
most
the
that surveyed "the present
Man
revolution" in Europe. In April 1941 de
173
described the
German
more just, and more humane" than the The war that resulted in Belgium's
victorious French had been in 1918.
subjugation wasn't merely "an economic and national struggle," he
argued in August 1941. at
It
was "a revolution"
organizing European society in a
—
more
aims
a revolution "that
He
equitable manner."
German triumph as if it were permanent, a fait accompli would be pointless. The war was over and the new Nazi order had begun. Germany had "the will to unify a set of regions referred to the to
which
that
resistance
have one and the same
ceaselessly
promoted the infamous "blood and conviction that a nation's culture
artist,"
Man
endeavor to divide," de
and with the
racial purity
but which
racial structure,
ideals
soil"
wrote
March
in
enemies
1942.
of duty and
He
—
the
bound up with
its
ideology of the Nazis
inextricably
is
its
sacrifice.
"A
sincere
he wrote, "can never renounce his proper regional [character],
destined
by blood and
which he has
soil, since it is
To
to utter."
de Man, fascism was a force for cultural
"We
and national renewal.
an integrating part of his essence,
are,"
he wrote in April 1942, "entering a
mystical era, a period for faith and belief, with
all
that this entails in
and rapture." Germany would point the way:
suffering, exaltation,
"the whole continuity of Western civilization depends on the unity
of the people in favor
man
who
of the
are
its
center."
There was indeed much to be
"irresistible necessity"
said
of collaboration with the Ger-
occupiers.
David
Littlejohn,
in
his
book The
Patriotic
Traitors,
divides
French collaborators into two broad categories. The majority favored
"only that degree of cooperation with the occupying power necessary to secure for France a tolerable life in the
welcomed
a
German
necessity" of collaboration, de
Man
driven
felt it
was
in the best interest
more and more
because they thought
it
into the
was
those
who
of France
camp of
those
in the best interests
ing Littlejohn's terms, John
in
but
seems to have crossed over from as Littlejohn implies,
"The tragedy of
ings-over were inevitable:
more
a
victory. In affirming the "irresistible
one category to the other. Perhaps, because they
";
group of collaborators not only acquiesced
radical (and smaller)
actively
'New Order'
is
such cross-
collaborated
that they
who
were
collaborated
of Germany." Borrow-
Brenkman contends
that de
Man's argu-
SIGNS
174
merits
man
—
though they
abstract
are
—put him
with the "Ger-
in league
victory" collaborators as opposed to those in the "French survi-
vor" camp. The former embraced
And
pragmatic, reasons.
gued
in his
German
in ideological terms. "Hitlerism," he ar-
Le Soir
article
German
history.
aberration in
not
fascist ideals for ideological,
de Man's commitment to the notion o( histor-
was expressed
ical necessity
the
TIMES
THE
OF
of October 28, 1941, was
On the contrary,
far
from an
"the Hitlerian soul and
soul" were "close together from the start," and the
war
The triumph of
will only bring about "a tighter union" of the two.
Hitler promised "the definitive emancipation of a people that finds
upon
itself called
waver
in his
hegemony
in
spokesmen
for French col-
when he
laborationism, and to
turn,
to praise the literary
to exercise, in
De Man came
its
one of them
chastised
commitment
to the
new
was for seeming
it
fascist order. In
he addressed himself to Robert Brasillach's account of France, Notre avant-guerre.
A
Europe."
wide-eyed rhapsodist,
August 1941, life in
who
prewar
has been
called "a sort
of fascist Rupert Brooke," Brasillach was the militantly
pro-German
weekly
editor o£je suis partout, a
literary talents
de
Man
of the collaboration. In
his
that presented the
review oi Notre avant-guerre,
took note of Brasillach's accomplishments,
his "excellent
with poetry and freshness." At the same time, de
filled
What was
Brasillach for his romantic individualism.
Man's view, was
major
Man
pages
upbraided
needed, in de
and order, not the "apolitical" pleasures of
discipline
the aesthete. In particular, he criticized the chapter in Notre avant-guerre
which
in
Brasillach evokes the Nazi Party Congress he had witnessed
Nuremberg in 1937. Brasillach's reaction to the spectacle, showing "some fright when faced with the 'strange' nature of the demonstrain
tion,"
was
that
of
political in the life
Brasillach sufficiently
new
"for
sudden importance of the
this
an inexplicable phenomenon." In sum,
to the fascist future.
practices a purer,
—
is
whom
sufficiently political, sufficiently
committed
Robert Brasillach a
man
of a people
was not
Man
that de
a
a
man
more
serious
tough-mindcd,
clear implication
is
form of fascism than even
famous for prophesying the emergence of
twentieth-century hero, homo
poetry" for Brasillach. "I
The
tell
fascista.
myself that
it
Fascism was "a kind of
cannot die," he wrote
prison in 1945. "I shall never forget the radiance of the fascism of
in
my
youth."
Wolfgang Holdheim, de
Man
as
the Cornell professor
who
chairman of that university's comparative
succeeded Paul
literature depart-
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
175
ment, was in a unique position to judge the seriousness of what de
Man
had written during the war. In the early days of the controversy, when attempts were
made
to
minimize the ideological character of de Man's
wartime journalism, Holdheim spoke out. of
his
"own
The
concrete."
Holdheim
half-Jewish
spent the
which had the same Nazi nightmare Belgium; he saw
He drew upon
"common Nazi
tally unoriginal,
years in Holland,
to endure as
murdered. Holdheim characterized de Man's collectively,
war
Jew, carted off
his father, a
the authority
which was unfortunately quite
historical experience,
by
its
neighboring
the Nazis to be
Le Soir
articles for
as,
hack work, excruciatingly dull and to-
embarrassing to read in their mediocrity."
He went
on:
How
could one view the publication of
articles
such
as
de
Man's, written by a Belgian, in occupied Belgium in 1941
and 1942? Only
as
an act of unspeakable moral shabbiness.
And what must have been 1945? Nothing
the status of such an author in
than that of a moral, political and
less
probably social outcast. This
may
a generation safely shielded
from
and often by
distance,
We can be certain,
be hard to understand for that period
of
a chronic lack
though, that
it
was
by temporal
historical insight.
fully understood
by
de Man. In the light of the atrocious revelations that flooded us in 1945, he
Germans found of
it
may even have
reconsidered that praise of the
as exquisitely civilized
occupiers which he had
necessary to insert into a literary article at the time
He must
his country's humiliation.
have been perma-
nently traumatized by events.
Holdheim spoke of
sternly,
a personality cult"
knowing
that de
Man
remained "the object
and fearing that "students continue to be ideo-
logically indoctrinated with his very particular idiosyncrasies." It
has been said in de
man and explam released
that
why
Man's defense
young men make
a military tribunal
him without charges
the distinction
that he
was
a
very young
mistakes. His relative youth
may
m Antwerp, after questioning de Man,
in 1945. It
is
important, too, to recall
between Belgian national fascism and the particular
ideology of the Nazi party. lost in the courts
It is
a distinction that
would not have been
of postwar Europe: a Belgian nationalist
—even
if
— SIGNS
176
he espoused the poHtics of fascism
meted out
—would be The
to an active collaborator.
fascism and
Nazism was
TIMES
THE
OF
at least as
wide
spared the punishment
difference
as that
between Belgian
between the
varieties
of European anti-Semitism. There was the old-fashioned kind of anti-Semitism (based, in the words of one Belgian commentator, on
myth
"the fear of economic competition" and "the Christian
who
[Jews]
were the people
racial
anti-Semitism of the Nazis
polluting force, a that de
Man
—
And
that they
then there was the
the insistence that Jews were a of contaminated people blood. The anti-Semitism
expressed in Le Soir was, as
traditional kind than to the
The
had killed God").
we
shall see, far closer to the
Nazi dream of state-sponsored genocide.
Man
leniency of the military tribunal strengthens the view that de
was primarily
a Belgian nationalist
who
envisaged a
fascist
Belgium
having a degree of autonomy and independence from direct German rule.
But too much
tions. its
stress
should not be placed on the court's delibera-
Though Belgium was tougher on
suspected collaborators than
neighbors were, the system had plenty of loopholes. In Wolfgang
Holdheim's words, "Postwar Belgian justice with regard to collaborators
was notoriously hit-or-miss
very lenient
—and de Man was
—sometimes very
severe,
sometimes
really a very small fish."
De Man was a free-lancer at Le Soir and not part of its regular full-time staff. He continued to maintain good relations with writers who opposed the Nazis, and his personal conduct toward Jewish acquaintances was evidently blameless. De Man Others certainly did worse.
was capable of offering the a
Jewish couple
who
shelter
It is
basically a
possible that de
man of shallow
felt
de Man; de tion of the
flat
Man,
home
for several nights to streets
of Brussels
where they had been staying for
all his
character. This
Goricly, a Jewish friend of dc
Goricly
his
found themselves on the
accidentally locked out of the
curfew.
of
Man
—
after
intellectual precocity,
was
was the opinion of Georges during the war years.
in Brussels
he could speak freely about his "clandestine activities" to
Man was
personally not threatening, because his affirma-
German "new order"
reflected "primarily his
opportunism"
and "his profound lack of moral conscience rather than any ideological
The
choice."
fact that
de
Man wrote
before the war for the student
publication Cahicrs du Lihrc Examen, which had a socialist cates
our sense of de
charting fascism
its
wayward
was paved by
Man
tilt,
compH-
only somewhat. Historians of socialism,
course, keep reminding us that the road to ex-socialists:
Mussolini had begun his political
and Hitler's party called
life as a socialist,
But to
de Man's
in
Le Soir
vole
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
itself
177
"national socialism."
from Cahiers du Libre Examen
case, the gravitation
seems merely to confirm the opportunistic character of
his early journalistic career.
If excuses can
be made for a young man's erratic behavior, there
A
good reason is that the practical effect of de Man's wartime journalism was far from negligible. On the contrary: it was substantial enough to make the Resistance take note. are also reasons to resist the impulse.
On
the sixth of September 1944, days after the liberation of Brussels,
denounced de
the journal Debout
Man
contemptuous terms
in
so far as to liken his personal appearance to that
of the
in the Cahiers du Libre
ended by December 1942
—
Examen. " True,
or, as
Fiihrer.
Man
"the self-proclaimed Le Soir, " the journal reported, de
novels and essays" in literary chronicles "as unreadable
wrote
—going
as
For
"dissects
those he
his activities at
Le Soir
Debout explained, "After a while,
he senses that things are taking a bad turn and he beats a very prudent retreat.
His name no longer appears in the columns of the self-pro-
claimed
Soir.
with
his
The poor
little carcass
lock of hair a
of
this little
the Place de Louvain."
la Hitler, deserts
Place de Louvain was where Le Soir had
The timing of de Man's
De Man began
able light.
of supreme moral
whether to
crisis
Seven months had gone by since the since the fall
of France, when de
December 1940.
It
the war. Stalin
was
remained lation
of
isolationist,
their
and the Nazis, voice.
To
was, for
army it
at a
as to
unfavor-
moment to decide
an inevitable
of Belgium, and
six
fate.
months
began writing for Le Soir
in the
in
West, the darkest winter of
league with Hitler, the United States
Dunkirk. All that stood between civilization
sometimes seemed, was Winston Churchill's radio
press
was not something
very
least
from
—
the
Man
The
and the British had narrowly escaped the annihiat
moment man could
have chosen such
it
many
in
still
in a decidedly
with Le Soir
them
fall
frail,
offices in Brussels.
moment when Europeans had
a
the Nazis or to yield to
resist
its
them
actions puts
his association
—
man, blond and
a
a
to write for the Nazi-controlled
look back on with pride. At the
meant he had participated
ignominy of
of de Man's Le Soir
in
—and was prepared
Hitler's conquest
articles in
whom
to profit
of Belgium. The surfacing
1988 made
this
much
clear. It
was
a
Man
once "seemed to exemplify an
intellectual seriousness that also felt like
moral seriousness." The phrase
bitter
is
blow
from an
to those for
article
on
the de
dc
Man
controversy by William Flesch, a
SIGNS
178
Brandeis professor.
De Man's Le
Soir career, Flesch wrote,
"As
givable," and for this reason:
TIMES
THE
OF
a public act
"unfor-
is
deeply collabora-
it is
no question that collaborationism can often be defended as the lesser of two evils. Historians frequently and rightly distinguish between collaborators and collaborationists, the former out There
tionist.
is
simply for a share of the Nazi's
which would for
less
tion
spare their countries
from the
almost always blurred, and so
is
was always more comforting
It
utter destruction reserved
of Nazi aggression. In
pliant victims
seeking an alliance
spoils, the latter
it
specific cases the distinc-
seems to be with de Man."
Man's wartime
to attribute de
To
journalism to expediency and opportunism rather than conviction. write for Le
Soir,
the newspaper with the widest circulation in Bel-
gium, could be construed
young
an opportunity that
as
would fmd tempting, even
critics
Nazi propaganda. "His was not a
if it
many
ambitious
meant subscribing
young
Goriely. "It was simply that an occasion presented itself for a
man of about twenty a large circulation
to
become
the literary critic for a newspaper with
and which certainly paid
everyone will concede the point. But
in
its
contributors well."
any case
it
1942?
It
would appear
correspondent their
Man's
that de
at just the
threw
moment when
at the
in the
it
was
end of November towel
as a cultural
the Nazis had given
"No
Le Soir column, Anne Somerhausen noted
Belgian patriot can possibly attend a
The Germans
of their Kultur campaign art or mtcllcct to
de Man's
last
up
as lost
Belgium."
With
Le
By November
Soir,
El Alamcin.
lecture
durmg
29, 1942, the date
war had
credible.
on
signifi-
the Americans and Russians as desperate
Though
allies,
there
fronts in Europe, the British had just prevailed at
The Americans had
Torch," thus gaining a foothold
Germans would
de
have sent no apostles
the course of the
hope of Hitler's eventual defeat had become
were not yet two
German
after
in her journal
have, in fact, so well realized the faikire
that for a year past they
dispatch for
cantly changed. the
Man
Le Soir
of German Kultur. In October 1943, eleven months last
the Occupation.
of
to quit
propaganda campaign to win over the Belgian populace to the
glories
that
Man
Not
Man's
leaves de
defenders in a quandary. For how, then, can one assert that principle that drove de
to
mind," reports Georges
political
successfully launched "Operation
in Africa.
At Stalingrad, where
suffer a devastating loss, the battle
had taken a decisive
Russian turn. Reporting on these military developments for the
George Orwell declared on November
the
BBC,
28, 1942, that "the final death
EVENING
STOLEN
THE
179
New
Order" had been dehvered. During the previous week, French West Africa had defected to the AlHes. The behavior of the Vichy turncoats meant that they, with their inside knowledge of
blow
to the
developments
in
Europe, had decided that the Nazi ship was going to
go down. "Any chance of French collaboration with the Nazis has now gone for good," Orwell said. Getting out of Le Soir just then
would have been a shrewd career move even if de Man hadn't had a more palpable reason to quit: he knew he had earned the enmity of the Resistance, and it took little imagination to speculate where that might lead. The fate of Louis Fonsny took the matter out of the realm of conjecture. Fonsny had been de Man's colleague at Le Soir; the two
men had
m
fact patrolled the
same
literary-cultural beat during the
Nazi occupation. In January 1943, Fonsny was Resistance at a Brussels tram stop.
It
could just
assassinated
as easily
by the
have been Paul
de Man.
Reading de Man's wartime journalism
made even more
disquieting
by
the
is
an unsettling experience
company he kept
Le Soir and Het Vlaamsche Land. The
end to
of
policy was
—
The war was blamed on the Jews Jewish Bolsheviks capitalists. The Nazi "revolution" would put an would vouchsafe the survival of "Western Christian
straightforward. in league
in the pages
latter's editorial
with Jewish
that. It
civilization" in
its
struggle with "the godless barbarians" of socialism.
Perhaps, indeed, the Nazis should annex Flanders
Vlaamsche Land could see the advantages of
—
that.
the editors oi Het
The Third Reich's
Propaganda Abteilung was well pleased with such sentiments. The paper
was "an extremely ministry reported in its
propaganda purposes," the
useful instrument for
March
1941. As for Le Soir, suffice
wartime editor-in-chief was
Convicted of war crimes
a figure
of infamy
in Brussels in 1946,
in
it
to say that
postwar Belgium.
Raymond
de Becker was
sentenced to death. (The sentence was later commuted.)
Among
the
French collaborators reviewed by de Man, Robert Brasillach was executed in Paris in 1945. Later that year, Pierre Drieu
committed suicide rather than stand
What
de
no reprimand a Resistance fall,
de
Man
had written
in the courts
Rochelle
in these
two newspapers earned him
of postwar Belgium. But the judgment that
newspaper passed on him
Man was
la
trial.
in
1943 was severe enough. That
one of forty-four Le Soir contributors to be de-
SIGNS
180
nounced
in a
pamphlet entitled Galerie
Gallery." There
described as one say,
one
is
a
des Traitres
photograph of de
"who knows whom at
Le
Man
—
"the Traitors'
and next to
it
—
he
is
the
or, as we would wind blows. He took advantage
Soir, the
pamphlet reported, but succeeded
who knows which way
of connections to land
TIMES
THE
OF
to stick with"
in staying there "thanks to his energetic propaganda."
—
The most notorious of de Man's Le Soir articles the one that caused the greatest pain and outrage when its contents were revealed in 1987 was entitled "The Jews and Contemporary Literature" ("Les Juifs dans la litterature actuelle") and dated March 4, 1941. It appeared
—
in
Le Soir
in the thick
against the
Jews
in
of the Nazis' most concerted hate campaign
Belgium.
A
month
when
later,
hooligans vandal-
Belgium had its own version of Kristall"The Jews and Contemporary Literature" was surrounded by virulent articles on the same racial theme; Le Soir 's editors had decided ized synagogues in Antwerp,
nacht.
to devote a special afternoon edition to the cause
of anti-Semitism,
"The Jews have committed numerous social wrongs," wrote the editors. "With their trickery and tenacity, they have seized control of politics, the economy, the press; they have profited from their privileged status, getting rich at the expense of their host nations and luring them into catastrophes that can only lead to war." The anti-Semitism of Le Soir went beyond "social grounds," however. It went beyond the old-fashioned antiSemite's bogey to propound the Nazi line that Jews were inferior as a race. The distinction was important: if the fault was biological rather than religious, cultural, or ethnic, then the most dire measures would which they defined
be justified.
"Our
in an editorial headnote.
anti-Semitism
is
of
a racial order," the editors
of
Le Soir proclaimed. The Jewish "type" must be combattcd, expelled: "We arc determined to forbid ourselves any cross-breeding with them and to Hbcratc ourselves spiritually from their dcmoraHzing influence in the
realm of thought,
De Man's
article in
unmistakable in
its
drift.*
and the
literature,
Le Soir
The
that
arts."
day was
less
extreme
writer begins by treating the question
of "vulgar anti-Semitism," which portrays Europe decadent because Judaizicd rejects this
*A
this
of "The Jews
book.
in
as
"degenerate and
French, the pejorative etyuive\''
argument on the grounds
translation
appendix to
[in
in tone but
that
He
European culture was healthy
Contemporary Literature"
is
included
as
an
THE enough
EVENING
STOLEN
181
to resist the nefarious Jewish influence. Jewish writers are
invariably of "the second rank," he writes. Thus, he concludes, "a solution to the Jewish problem" entailing "the creation of a Jewish
colony isolated from Europe" need not have "regrettable consequences
Europe stood to lose, at most, "some A quote box below de Man's byline that Le Soir ascribed falsely to Benjamin
for the literary life of the West." personalities
of mediocre worth."
contains an anti-Semitic slur Franklin.
was:
"A
menace by
It's
worth quoting
to
make
leopard cannot change to the nation that
what
plain
sort
of newspaper
this
Jews are Asiatics; they are a admits them, and they should be excluded its
spots.
the Constitution." It is
at the
it,
Man
reasonable to ask
Man knew,
what de
time he was writing for Le
Soir,
pondered the merits of deportation
In
and when he knew
March
as a possible
1941,
when de
"solution to the
Jewish problem," the Nazis had not yet identified deportation with murder. The "Final Solution" nation of a people in
January 1942.
—
that
grim euphemism for the extermi-
—was not
introduced until the
When
Man
de
Wannsee conference
wrote of "the creation of
may have had
a
Jewish
mind the so-called Madagascar plan that several Nazi officials, Himmler and Heydrich among them, had briefly considered in 1940 pending the outcome of the Battle of Britain. The Madagascar plan called for the forced colony isolated from Europe," he
relocation of four million
European Jews
The problem with
a French colony.
this
in
to that African island, then
"solution" was that
it
would
have required the active collaboration of both the British and the French. That was no longer a serious possibility in the after British Spitfires
fall
and Hurricanes beat back the enemy's Messersch-
mitts in their epochal battles in the
air.
On
September
17, the tenacity
of the R.A.F. forced Hitler to abandon Operation Sea Lion, for the invasion the
of England. With Britain
Madagascar option was It is
only
fair to
of 1940,
in
no mood
his plan
to capitulate,
killed.
assume that de
Man
wrote
as
he did in complete
ignorance of the Nazis' genocidal aims. But the systematic persecution
of the Jews was as clearly evident in Belgium as in the rest of Nazi Europe when he wrote for Le Soir. Jews in Belgium were banned from the civil service, the press, the practice
oi law, and the teaching
profession by a decree issued in October 1940 that
from Antwerp
to
went
into effect at
The expulsion of several hundred Jewish aliens northern Belgium in November 1940 caused a panic
the end of that year.
SIGNS
182
among Belgium's Jewish
TIMES
THE
OF
citizenry.
Many
but in
tried to emigrate,
On
February 1941 the Germans stopped issuing exit permits to Jews.
January 30, Hitler stood before the Reichstag and repeated that the
war would
result in "the annihilation
of the Jewish race
home
Europe." Apocalyptic threats could be heard closer to
"The
Jew must be
last
fense") told an audience in
Antwerp
words of the Holocaust
would have had
in
as well.
driven out of Flanders and the Walloons," the
leader of the rabidly anti-Semitic Volksverwering
In the
vow
his
that
De-
("the People's
March.
"One
historian Michael Marrus,
to live in a plastic bubble to be oblivious to the
massive, open, intense persecution of the Jews then under way, and
which was perfectly evident to someone in de Man's position." Yet none of it modified de Man's stance toward "Hitlerism" and "the
A
curfew on Jews was imposed in September 1941; Jewish businesses had been seized earlier that summer. The
present revolution."
following June, Belgium's Jews were forced to wear the yellow
On
August 20 of
Man
that year, de
star.
published an article in Het
Vlaamsche Land arguing that Jews were responsible for an "aberrant"
modern
strain in
reality."
literature,
That was the month when the Nazis commenced transporting
Belgian Jews to Auschwitz. Brussels early in the tales
"a forced, caricatured representation of
Rumors of
camps surfaced
the death
"of Jews shipped
in hermetically sealed cars to Berlin, killed
poison gas on the way, and thrown into a canal on the
rumors may have seemed incredible
were deported
arrival."
at first, their
made de Man's derogation of the Jews seem most conservative
in
month. Anne Somerhausen reported on "fantastic"
very currency
a calculated
blow.
By
estimate, at least twenty-five thousand Belgian
to their deaths
by
the end of the war.
with
Though
And
the
Jews
they had
been de Man's neighbors: the Jews of Belgium were most heavily concentrated in Antwerp, where dc Brussels,
where he wrote
And
for
Lc
Man was
born and
raised,
and
in
Soir.
that brings us to another inescapable irony.
A
high propor-
tion of dc Man's closest friends and colleagues, at Yale and elsewhere,
were Jewish. He had given none of them reason to suspect that he had an anti-Semitic past. It was they who, though they may have felt personally betrayed, also felt obliged to ask themselves the questions that de
Man
had managed to evade. Geoffrey Hartman,
helped bring dc
Man
Besides being a
"Yale School" eminence, Hartman was
to Yale,
was
in a particularly
who
had
poignant position. a
founder of
— EVENING
STOLEN
THE
183
program and an organizer of the university's Holocaust testimony. As a boy growing up in
Yale's Judaic studies
video archive for
clutches
Hartman had himself narrowly eluded the of exterminating Nazis. At the age of nine he was separated
from
mother, not to see her again until seven years had passed and
Germany his
she had
in the 1930s,
become "a
survivor. "There
shock
is
a
death-camp
nothing explanatory that relieves very
is
when
feel
I
stranger"; Hartman's wife, Renee,
there
is
much
man
evident anguish after the Le Soir papers surfaced. "In the
knew
personally
there
of graduate studies characterize de
(now
was not
at
Man
a trace
—
Yiddish
a
of anti-Semitism."
A
I
veteran
Yale made the irony more plain. Asked to
as a
teacher and a presence, the former student
a professor elsewhere) replied
ish"
the
an anti-Semitic act," Hartman said with
word meaning
without hesitation, "He was haim-
friendly, unpretentious, the opposite
of snobbish and supercilious. Leo Rosten,
who
supplies such defini-
The Joys of Yiddish, adds that "Jews put a high value on being " haimish. Jews had put a high value on Paul de Man as a teacher and tions in
colleague.
Ted Weiss, who helped arrange de Man's
appointment
at
Bard College, remembers
in the early 1950s.
school.
"We
overcome
De Man was
Man
academic in
Boston
then teaching French at a Berlitz
were dismayed," Weiss
his passivity
visiting de
first
recalls.
"We
goaded him to
and to look into Harvard for some work.
I
wrote to [Harry] Levin [then director of the Harvard Society of Fellows],
whom knew well. Paul saw him, and despite his age became I
a Junior Fellow; the rest
Jews!" Or,
as
is
history.
Harry Levin put
So it,
his
path was strewn with helpful
"some of
his best friends
were
non-Aryan."
By
not owning up to what he had done, de
and former
associates
his explanations for
they
felt
Man
himself
they
with the responsibility, to get
his
academic
on the witness stand
—and answer questions on
left his friends
after his death, to
him. Because they had been
would have
Man
the basis of
in place
mcomplete
make allies,
oi de infor-
mation, the fragmentary traces of their colleague's repressed past. But
everyone
who was anyone
his or her say
in literary criticism
about the de
Man
disclosures.
was determined
Here was
to have
a story full
of
pathos and irony, revelation and reversal, controversy and conflict.
Here, too, was a pattern of voluble discourse and mysterious silence
and wasn't that what deconstruction find, the
is all
about? Like a rich scholarly
Le Soir papers offered an unexpected convergence of two
184
SIGNS
THE
OF
TIMES
realms usually kept in separate compartments: the realm of literary
theory and the realm of historical actuality.
was never very
It
understand what
difficult to
disclosures so incendiary
—
or
why
every
seemed to fan the flames of the scandal, even articles that
tionists
history
and
—
sought to lay their rivals
is
it
to rest.
made
last article
the de
on the
Man
subject
(or especially)
those
The enmity between deconstruc-
only part of the story. The other part
the singular history of
Europe
in the years
is
of the Third
Reich. In the end, what was hard to swallow was not that de Man,
of
all
men, had an unsavory
of a Nazi apologist.
past but that he'd
Among American
intellectuals, there
quite equal to that of the specter of fascism all.
A
had precisely the one
—
grim joke making the rounds inevitably found
journalistic accounts his guilt?
He
of the scandal.
is
no horror
the Nazi variety, above its
way
into
Why didn't de Man acknowledge
couldn't remember, went the bitter punch line, because
he had a severe case of "Waldheimer's Disease."
—
CHAPTER
8
UNCLE,
LIKE
SON
LIKE
This sudden reflux of a past presented in such a Hght,
of
my
when I had devoted
the last seven years
hfe to building an existence entirely
separated
from former painful experiences, me weary and exhausted.
leaves
—Paul
de
Poggioli,
Man,
Letter to Professor Renato
Harvard
University,
January 26,
1955
I
am
not given to retrospective self-examina-
tion and mercifully forget
with the same alacrity although,
as
I
what
I
have written
forget bad movies
with bad movies, certain scenes or
phrases return at times to embarrass and haunt
me
like a guilty conscience.
—Paul
When IS
a
man without
Man, January 1983
de
a past acquires
one
after his death,
and the
man
an intellectual celebrity and his secret past involves the Nazis, the
journalistic
community
gets
busy
in a hurry.
The
search for
more
information begins with the anticipation that there's more to be had;
— SIGNS
186
TIMES
THE
OF
emerge into the
a long-repressed, carefully concealed past doesn't all at
once, but in stages.
It is
light
easy to understand the public's craving
John Updike recently observed that the Second World War, "at least for Europeans and North Americans, has become the century's central myth, a vast imaging of a primal time when good and evil contended for the planet, a tale of Troy whose angles are infmite and whose central figures never fail to amaze us with their size, for the juicy details.
their theatricality, their sweep."
The traumas of World War
are
II
never far below the surface of our conscious fears and anxieties about
our global destiny; the horrors wrought by the Nazis, so singular in their cruelty
and so unprecedented in
demand
sion even as they us, as
their scope,
to be understood.
still
They
defy comprehen-
serve, for
many of we are
the reference point in any discussion of absolute evil, and
vexed and haunted
—and sometimes vexed and outraged—by
revela-
may have been implicated, to How, we wonder, could this have
tions that this or that upstanding citizen
whatever extent,
Nazi horror.
in the
happened? There
is,
our whole sense of a person's
murder mysteries,
a
posthumous
besides, a special fascination in a
shock, a buried secret, something learned too
coda
in
life
—
something that
alters
like the "extra" chapter in
some
late,
which the detective explodes the ingenious
solution he had himself proposed a chapter earlier.
The sudden
of
reflux
his past
made Paul de Man's
a false-bottomed narrative. His case did
youth came to seem
like a
American career but
script to that career. In
the
dominant
—
Thmgs
commentary on
or a caveat about them; what he wrote during his
surfacing
resemble
funny things with time. His
past W2LS presented, in every sense, after his death. in his
life
when
it
one of his celebrated
his
he had written
mature writings,
World War
did
II
preceded
—seemed
like a post-
Man
argued that
essays,
dc
rhetorical figure in autobiographical writing
prosopopcia, the fiction of the voicc-from-bcyond-thc-grave." extent that the abstract
though
body of de Man's it
critical
is
"the
To
the
writing, impersonal and
was, could be seen to constitute a kind of obHquc
autobiography, the precociously authoritative voice that spoke in Le Soir during
World War
the voice that his
II
was "the voice-from-beyond-the-grave"
American readers heard
for the
first
time four years
after his death.
As
if the
Nazi connection weren't enough of a shock to the
American academic community, dc prises that sprang
from
Man
left
liberal
other posthumous sur-
their jack-in-the-box lair in 1988.
A
chain oi
UNCLE,
LIKE
unsavory revelations made
were
when
187
on
fruitful for reporters
it
to cover academic conferences as if they
In a year
SON
LIKE
the cultural beat
political conventions.
were revealed as philanderers
candidates for high office
or plagiarists by aggressive newshounds, de Man's character
had once seemed thoroughly above reproach His early
life, as
journalists
began piecing
gothic melodrama, with turns as wild
it
as
— took
a regular
together,
one
—which beatmg.
was the
finds in a
stuff
of
Dostoevski
novel and with a textbook example of an unreliable narrator. In the
of
light
wartime
his
very fact that so few of de Man's
activities, the
American readers knew anything about take
on an
eerie significance.
Who
in retrospect, did his reticence
his
European years began
this reticent
betoken? Might
about history
intellectual skepticism
was
it
to
man, and what,
be that de Man's
was the expression of a wished-for
own disquieting past? "We try to give ourselves a new past from which we should have liked to descend instead of the past from which we actually descended," wrote Nietzsche in a passage that de Man quoted in Blindness and Insight. The young de Man, we learned, had gone from journalism into amnesia about
business, associates
months
his
and "shady" was the adjective of choice when
were asked to describe
after his departure
where he
native Antwerp,
former
his business dealings. In 1943,
from Le sat
his
Soir,
de
Man
some
left Brussels for his
out the remaining years of the war.
He
among the tasks he set for himself was the translation Flemish of Moby Dick. The translation, which was published in
lived quietly;
into
1945,
marked
in Flemish.
A
the
first
year
time Melville's masterpiece had been rendered
later,
Hermes, devoted to
de
Man
set
fine-art books;
father to finance the venture.
The
up
a publishing house. Editions
he borrowed heavily from
business failed.
When
his
the twenty-
Man embarked for the United States in 1948, he left crowd of angry creditors and the prospect of a lawsuit. He
cight-ycar-old dc
behind
a
had ruined
his father
and had earned himself a
local reputation for
Ortwin de Graef noted that Editions Hermes was "appronamed Hermes being the patron of thieves in Greek mythology. The Belgian sociologist Georges Goriely recalled dc Man, the friend of his youth, for confcrcnccgoers at the University of Antwerp
dishonesty. priately"
in
—
June 1988. "A charming, humorous, modest, highly cultured man,"
said Goriely. at the time,
But
a scoundrel.
"Swindling, forging, lying were,
at least
second nature to him."
There was more, there was worse. There were the curious,
dis-
— SIGNS
188
TIMES
THE
OF
turbing revelations about de Man's other family, his 1939, while
still
a student at the Free University
Libre de Bruxelles, or
first
family. In
of Brussels (Universite
ULB), de Man had become
friendly with a
young married couple who traveled in the same cultural-political circles as he did. The man's name was Gilbert Jaeger; his wife was a Roumanian expatriate named Anaide Baraghian. At some point in the following year, de Man replaced Jaeger as Anaide's common-law husband though the three of them continued to share an apartment. "It was like z Jules and Jim situation," said Marc de Man, the third of three sons born to Anaide and Paul. The Nazi blitzkrieg in May 1940 changed the relationship. In that month Holland fell, Belgium fell, and by June the Nazis were marching down the Champs-Elysees. Paul de Man and Anaide fled Belgium together; Jaeger stayed behind. De Man and Anaide joined a mass exodus of civilian refugees on the roads of Belgium and France. The lightning-quick Nazi conquest it took eighteen days for the Germans to conquer Belgium had triggered a panic. The people were reacting to the colossal nature
—
—
of the
defeat;
it
happened so
a proper departure,
tions
fast that there
hadn't been time to organize
only the certitude that departure under any condi-
was preferable
to living under the swastika. People took to the
roads with only the vague sense of a destination parts
of France not yet under Nazi
Germans advanced on they fled on cars or on and barrows. In
Paris.
it
The panic
to the
accelerated as the
roads were choked with refugees;
foot, piling their possessions in carts, bicycles,
Alistair
At one point
The
rule.
—westward,
Home's
description:
was estimated
that as
many
as
2 million
Dutch and Belgians and nearly 8 million French refugees roads; some nine-tenths of the population of a city like Lille departed. During the first five days of the battle, the French kept the Belgian frontier closed. Then the human flood burst into northern France, resembling more were on the
one of the great migrations
fleeing before the Barbarian in
times of yore than any event hitherto seen in
modern
Europe. The number plates on the cars of the refugees, telling the truth the censors
were trymg
more and more
they realised the speed at which
the Barbarian
in
motion
as
was approaching.
to hide, in turn set
I
UNCLE,
LIKE Man
Paul de
For the
and Anaide Baraghian joined the exodus, getting
rest
of the year they continued to share
Jaeger. In January 1941 Hendrik, their
moved
afterward, they
One
of
to a place
can only speculate about
Belgium
mistress left
in the early
first
their
why
many of
reason that so barbarian.
Unable
but home, though
as far
been cut
off.
home was
household with
was born. Shortly
own. de
Man
and
his
pregnant
returned in August.
from
their compatriots did
to cross into Spain, they
their
son,
summer and
reasonable to assume that the couple fled
Man
189
French border with Spain before returning to Brussels in August.
as the
is
SON
LIKE
Brussels for the
—out of
fear
It
same
of the
had no other place to turn
in shambles; all their escape routes
And perhaps by that August it became man as he, with his connections and
that such a
had
clear to Paul de his
background,
needn't suffer under the Nazi occupation. There might even be a place for
him within
New
the
Order. The fact that he and Anaide were
turned back at the Franco-Spanish border was, in retrospect, another
of the
case's painful ironies
of
in the last years
—given
his life, to
Paul de Man's scholarly devotions,
Walter Benjamin, the great German-
who met his end at that same border in that same summer Many of de Man's followers have emphasized the increasingly
Jewish writer
of 1940.
vital influence that
on which de
project
Benjamin exerted on de Man's
Man was working when
late
work. The
he died was a critique
of "aesthetic ideology," a term derived from Benjamin's essay "The
Work
of Art
lecture de
in
Man
"The Task of min, de
Man
summer of
an
Age of Mechanical Reproduction." The
last
public
delivered was devoted to another of Benjamin's essays,
the Translator." Yet, despite his admiration for Benja-
never adverted to the crossing of their destinies in the
1940.
Like de Man, Walter Benjamin could not cross into Spain
border
officials
had nowhere
refused to honor his visa.
else to go.
—
the
But unlike de Man, Benjamin
Benjamin's status
as a
German Jew had made
imperative for him to escape Nazi Europe. On September 26, 1940, Benjamin reached the border and was turned away. Faced with the prospect of a hike across mountain paths to elude the Gestapo-conit
scious French border patrol, the forty-eight-ycar-old Benjamin, ex-
hausted and suffering from a cardiac condition, ended his despair.
It
was
border was
still
a heartbreaking story.
open; had he
set
The day before he
life
in
arrived, the
out on the journey a day
later,
he'd
SIGNS
190
have been forewarned
on
TIMES
THE
OF
border was closed. "Only
in Marseilles that the
day was the catastrophe possible," Hannah Arendt
that particular
grimly noted. The suicide caused the border to the
whom
band of refugees with
permitted to proceed to Portugal.
bargo on
was
visas
lifted.
The
officials to
Benjamin had
And
show mercy
arrived; they
within a few weeks the em-
story of the catastrophe that could only
have taken place "on that particular day" was well-known circle.
nations
Hannah Arendt
—
his
told
in the
United
historical circumstances
to the near-intersection
of
in de
Man's
in her introduction to Benjamin's Illumi-
it
most widely read book
any reference to the
were
own
his
States. In
omitting
—and —de Man
of Benjamin's death
path with Benjamin's
was, perhaps, just being consistent in refusing to introduce pathos,
biography, and social history into his disclosure. But what a glaring
omission
—and how one
wishes one could have put the question to de
Man, had he not died before
his past
Anaide Baraghian bore Paul de remained together until 1948.
It
on
a tourist visa; his
Man
three sons in
Man, America. He came
was then
bankrupt, decided to emigrate to States
was recovered. that de
all.
The family
discredited and to the
United
wife and sons, denied visas on the grounds
of questionable means of support,
sailed to Argentina,
where Anaide's
"The idea," said Marc de Man, now an attorney we would join him later after he got organized. My parents felt it would be too difficult to come as immigrants to the United States if my father were encumbered by three children and a wife." But rather than send for his family as planned, dc Man wedded parents had resettled. in
Montreal, "was that
Kelley during his teaching
his student Patricia
stint at
Bard College
between 1949 and 1951. Having an American wife would prove useful to de
Man.
It
guaranteed him the right to live and
and
it
made
States,
visas
was
needed to that he
it
visit
was
still
were legally married
easier for
Europe
him
in the
United
to obtain the exit and entrance
for extended periods
married to Baraghian
—
work
of study. The hitch
— assuming
that the
at the time he took his second wife.
The
two scan-
dalous revelation cast the legitimacy of one or another of de Man's families in doubt.
of an abstract
Bigamy!
It
was
intellectual debate.
American daughter
like a tabloid truth in the
"He was very
middle
private," de Man's
Patricia told a reporter. "I did finally find out that
he had another family."
One of the more was
his success at
remarkable aspects of de Man's American career
keeping past and present in separate compartments.
UNCLE,
LIKE
LIKE
SON
191
saw his father "only two days in my Hfe" boy was two years old. In Argentina, de Man's first family "never had any news from him, never a Christmas card. He sent very little money $50 a month for a few months, and then nothing at all." Marc de Man remembered the shock he was m for when he met his father for the first time in his adult life. It happened in Zurich in the late 1960s. When introduced to his American halfbrother and half-sister, Marc realized that they hadn't the slightest idea who he was. In fact, they had never heard of him. "And there was another shocking thing," said Marc de Man. "My father didn't leave us anything, not a memento, not a manuscript. He totally disinherited
Marc de Man
reports that he
when
after 1948,
the
—
He
the three sons. fully,
nothing whatsoever. And," he added wist-
left us
"we were very interested From 1948 until his death
in
him."
Man
thirty-five years later, Paul de
contrived to keep his pre-American days, and the living evidence
and
thereof, at a safe distance. His private nature discouraged questions,
he volunteered
little
about
his past.
He
never corrected the vague
impression that he'd been in the Resistance during the war. contrary, he obliquely encouraged this misrepresentation a letter to
who
Harry Levin
No
coming
to
—with
at
the
as
in
one
disarming an inquisi-
an ambiguous and vague reply.
America de
On
when,
and from the happy days of the Front
double agent was more suave
tive acquaintance in
left
as
he described himself casually
in 1955,
had "come from the
populaire."
—
Man
It
was
as if
had decided not only to abandon a
family, but an identity and a history as well: a failed business, a
bankrupted tradition stances
father, an unfortunate political past. In the
of
his
youth and
American novel
—
Gatsby
In de
de
—
his
family history. Like a character in an
like Ishmael in
Moby Dick and Gatsby
he would explore the possibility of a fresh
He would
whom
time-honored
of the American dream, he would escape from the circum-
start,
in
The Great
a clean slate.
invent himself anew.
Man's former
life
there
was one man
in particular
questions could be dangerous and answers imprudent.
Man came
closest to
blowing
his
about
The time
cover was when, in response to
anonymous denunciation at Harvard in January 1955, he invoked name of this man. Hendrik de Man (also known as Henri de Man) was Paul's uncle. One of the more celebrated European political
an
the
thinkers of his time, he
welcomed
was famous most of
all as
the quisling
who
the Nazi conquest of Belgium. In the painful chapter of
SIGNS
192
European cists, this
intellectual history dealing
man would
TIMES
THE
OF
with
who became
socialists
fas-
play a fateful part.
Born in Antwerp in 1885, Hendrik de Man came from a well-todo family of high social standing. He was the son of a business executive with aristocratic pretentions, and the grandson of a leader
of the Flemish cultural movement, the poet Jan van Beers. Like his after him, Hendrik de Man spoke and wrote four languages
nephew
with cosmopolitan ease he had,
—Dutch, German,
many homelands
he once remarked, "as
as
English, and French. as
He felt
languages." In
1941, Hendrik was fifty-six and Paul twenty-two. Paul had
under
and
his uncle's
wing
several years earlier; the deaths
brother had
his older
left Paul's father so
Hendrik to take the young man
Man
of what Paul de
—
of Paul's mother
distraught that he asked
One way
World War
did during
upon him
uncle's influence
in his charge.
come
II is
to
make
sense
to understand his
influence in a double sense, since the
nephew was not only profoundly
affected
by the
uncle's ideas, but
had
also gained his entree into fascist circles thanks to his uncle's influential
connections.
Man was
Hendrik de
a regular at the
Lucienne Didier, which served lectuals
of the
as a
fascist persuasion.
home of Edouard and
gathering place for Belgian intel-
Otto Abetz, Nazi Germany's ambassa-
dor to France, frequented the Didier salon. So did, among other
well-known
collaborationist writers,
Fabre-Luce.
The
World War
II
occupation. In uncle,
Didiers had
and all
it
functioned
likelihood
met and was
The
5,
it
up
their salon before the outbreak oi
as a collaborationist center
was here
during the
that Paul, sponsored
by
his
by Raymond de Becker, the pro-Nazi De Becker became editor-in-chief on De-
recruited
editor-in-chief of Le Soir.
cember
set
Robert Brasillach and Alfred
1940. Paul de Man's
first
byline appeared nineteen days
later.
Didiers themselves, together with de Becker and another man,
set
March 1941. La Toison J'Or (the Golden Fleece) was subsidized and controlled by von Ribbcntrop, Nazi Germany's foreign minister. The firm published the works of the leading up
a publishing
collaborationists
house
in
of the day. These were the very authors and
very books that Paul de Man praised in Le Soir. Hendrik de Man began his intellectual career as a
in
many
cases the
theoretician, the author
books
that
made
his a
socialist
of The Psychology of Socialism (1926) and other in the political debates of the
prominent voice
UNCLE,
LIKE
SON
LIKE
193
1920s and 1930s in Europe.* While he began with a straightforward
Marxist perspective, Hendrik de Man's experience
World War
I,
coupled with
his
exposure
young man
as a
Marx was
England, had convinced him that
a soldier in
as
in
to life in
need of a major
overhaul. Marx's concept of the superstructure, for example, was
Marx
seriously flawed.
economic
self-interest.
reason he was
held that ideas and ideologies merely reflect
He was wrong,
wrong was
in
de Man's view, and the
that he left out psychology: the importance
of willpower, for one thing; the psychology of mass-behavior, for another.
A
being, and
worker's self-esteem was it
important
as
could be elevated through ideals
de Man's theories evolved, the
fascist ideals
subordination of the individual to the In time,
mentary democracy and
his
in favor
of
as his
material well-
through,
Hendrik
as
duty, and the
sacrifice,
state.
reject the institutions
of parlia-
of authoritarianism. His revision of Marx
simultaneous embrace of nationalism provided a theoretical
footing for fascism last.
Man would
Hendrik de
—
— though he
considered himself a socialist to the
Already in 1930 he was corresponding on friendly terms with
Mussolini, another fascist authoritarian with socialist origins.
time the Wehrmacht marched into Belgium, de
zism "the German form of socialism."
on February
a conference in Brussels
He
Man was
By
calling
the
Na-
stated his political creed at
16, 1941. "I
am
not a
German
you prefer, a national-socialist Man. He envisaged "a social order in which labor is able to rule and in which the right to work can have value for everyone," but added that such a social order would not be possible "without an authoritarian state." Only authoritarianism was capable of ending the ruinous rule of money, which had corrupted every sector of society. The parliamentary system was just a bourgeois form of nationalist,
but a Belgian
socialist, or, if
Belgian," said Hendrik de
democracy, an instrument of passed. asserted.
"The
State
capitalist corruption,
must take on
a
and
its
time had
new form," Hendrik de Man
"That form can only be authoritarian since that
characteristic
goes hand in hand with revolution."
Not every
theorist has the chance to translate his ideas into
revolutionary action. Hendrik de
*Zur Psycholoqie
isme
des Sozialismus
—Beyond Marxism — and
was
Man
did. His formulation
translated into French as
Au
of "Le
dela du
into English as The Psychology of Socialism.
marx-
SIGNS
194
Plan du Travail" to be
known
—
"the de
—made him
OF
Man
plan" or simply "the plan"
as it
came
the chief theoretician of Belgium's Socialist
(POB),
Party, the Parti Ouvrier Beige
Nominally
in the 1930s.*
a
program, "Le Plan" called for the elimination of unemploy-
socialist
ment through same
means of a planned economy.
the
adopted by the that
TIMES
THE
was
It
enthusiastically
POB in 1933; de Man became the party's vice-president from Marxist
year. Neither event arrested his evolution
revisionist to fascist ideologue.
"One
can no longer achieve power
through revolution, but one can achieve a revolution through the
democracy was
exercise of power," he declared in 1934. Bourgeois
of power, was the answer. "In the future,"
obsolete. Fascism, the cult
he said in 1938, "one will have to be more bold in establishing a order while setting up an authoritarian state
socialist
—
the one being
May 1939 Hendrik de Man succeeded POB. When Belgium fell, he heralded the
conditional on the other." In to the presidency
of the
Nazi invaders and the new order they represented. Then he declared
new German
the dissolution of his political party and the establishment of a
union with a policy of "national revival"
—
a
union that the
authorities endorsed.
Throughout of
the 1930s,
Belgian neutrality
strict
between the
Allies
Hendrik de
—
Belgium's foreign policy, and de began.
II
He was
advocate
a strong
the policy of refusing to choose sides
and the Axis. "Peace with Hitler
any war whatsoever," he argued
War
Man was
is
in 1934. Neutrality
Man
still its
worth more than was
officially
still
champion, when World
appointed minister without portfoho
in the
unity government that was formed in Belgium on September
1939
—
after
went in
the day France and Britain declared
3,
war on Germany, two days
Germany's invasion of Poland. But Hendrik de Man's influence further.
He had become
an intimate of King Leopold
January 1940 he resigned from the government
military appointment attaching
When
King Leopold's advisers,
Hendrik de
on
capitulation, de
Man
Man May
favor of a
May
10,
Hendrik de
Man was
Alone among the king's
supported Leopold's decision to surrender 28.
When
helped draft the
Parti Ouvrier Belize
and
directly to the king's service.
closest political confidant.
to the Cicrmans
*Thc
him
Belgium on
the Nazis invaded
in
III,
the time
came
letters that
to explain the
Leopold sent to the
has been rendered variously as the Belgian
Party, Labor Party, and Socialist Party.
Workers
I
UNCLE,
LIKE
SON
LIKE
195
States. Had new government under the
king of England, the pope, and the president of the United
form
the Nazis permitted Leopold to
a
—
Vichy Man. that never came to pass would have been Hendrik de As Leopold's chief counselor, Hendrik de Man propounded the rationale for the king's decision to remain in Belgium under Nazi rule rather than join the government-in-exile. De Man made it plain that it was a choice of collaborationism over resistance. So plain, indeed, that when the war was over, Leopold's association with de Man was high on the list of charges leveled at the king by those parliamentarians and others who felt that their monarch had forfeited his right to rule. The central document in de Man's wartime portfolio was the infamous "Manifesto to the Members of the Parti Ouvrier Beige" with which he welcomed the Nazis into Belgium in July 1940. He spoke in his capacity as head of the Socialist Party and made the proper fascist noises about the role of the leader. "The role of a leader is not to follow his troops, but to lead them by showing them the way," he said. Then he urged his troops to give up the battle as lost. "Do not believe that it is necessary to resist the Occupying Power; accept the fact of his victory and try rather to draw lessons therefrom." The manifesto's occupation, his choice to head that government
—
the Belgian
—
and democratic
hostility to parliamentary institutions
ideals
is
remark-
able:
The war
has led to the debacle of the parliamentary regime
and of the
capitalist
For the working
plutocracy in the so-called democracies.
classes
a decrepit world, far
and for socialism,
from being
a disaster,
this collapse is
of
a deliverance.
And: For years the double-talk of the war-mongers had concealed
from you despite
that
this
cverythmg
in
regime it
has lessened class differences the self-styled democracies,
down
Nazi authoritarianism],
[i.e.,
that strikes
our mentality
much more
as foreign,
efficaciously than
where Capital continued
to lay
the law.
Smce then everyone has been morale of the German army
able to see that the superior is
due
in large part to the
— SIGNS
196
THE
OF
TIMES
greater social unity of the nation and to the resulting pres-
of
tige
authorities.
its
The manifesto ends with the code words of fascism: the call for "a movement of national resurrection, which will include all the vital forces
of the nation, of
When, following
its
youth, of
its
veterans, in a single party."
the liberation of Belgium, a military tribunal con-
victed Hendrik de
Man
in absentia, the charge
was
treason.
He
had
"knowingly and maliciously served the design of the enemy," and the documentary evidence began with the manifesto. It initially appeared in a provincial newspaper, the Gazette de Charleroi,
On
July 6
nephew would
his
instructive to
It is
3,
1940.
addressed a national readership in the pages of the
it
newspaper to which
Man
on July
later contribute,
Le
Soir,
compare the public statements of Hendrik de
nephew during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. In Le Soir on March 4, 1941, Paul de Man dismissed Jewish writers as mediocrities whose banishment from Europe would not injure Western culture. Two days later, his uncle took a moment to make his and
stance
his
on collaborationism perfectly
plain. France,
he told an inter-
viewer, was luckier than Belgium since the French "have a govern-
ment that has allowed them to enter into a policy of collaboration with Germany." On October 25, Hendrik de Man declared: "Henceforth, democracy and socialism will be authoritarian or they will not exist at all." On October 28, his nephew wrote in Le Soir that "Hitlerism" promised the "definitive emancipation" of the German people, whose destiny
it
was
There
close
is
to rule over Europe.
every reason to suppose that uncle and nephew were
—not only
but on the deeper level of what Freud called
politically,
the family romance. Necessity had rather like father and son.
made
Hendrik had,
their relationship a special one,
in fact, acted as Paul's surrogate
young man's development. And there was two men were linked by a crisscross pattern
father at a crucial point in the a
second complication: the
between two generations folklore. tions.
It is
—
the story of
the sort of narrative pattern one finds in
two
pairs
of brothers
in succeeding genera-
Hendrik de Man, the older of two brothers, was favored by
circumstance
as a child.
Great things were expected of him;
this
his father
projected his aristocratic aspirations onto the boy's education. Hendrik's
younger brother Robert was,
in sharp contrast, the
Hendrik de Man's biographer
tells
us that
expendable child
Robert "was actually surren-
UNCLE,
LIKE
SON
LIKE
dered to a maternal aunt after she had tragically
The de
Man
fraternal roles
had two
brother, in necessity.
sons,
whom
his
were reversed
lost
197
her
own children."
in the next generation.
Robert
was Paul, the younger out of family's hopes came to be invested Hendrik and Paul.
It
—
For in the family history of Paul de Man, two traumatic
events followed one another in a terrifying sequence as he entered his late adolescence.
when
On June
his bicycle crashed at a railroad junction.
the day later, Paul's
Hendrik was
20, 1936, Paul's brother
mother hanged
shy of his seventeenth birthday,
herself. It
who
killed
Exactly one year to
was Paul,
still
months
discovered the body. Robert de
Man, overwhelmed with grief, entrusted Paul to his uncle's supervision The destinies of uncle and nephew, of older brother and younger brother once removed, were now intertwined. Paul would take the place of his famous uncle's deceased namesake. He would be the bearer of the birthright if not of the name. The relationship that resulted between uncle and nephew has its analogue as Paul de Man, master analyst of rhetoric, must surely have recognized in the rhetorical figure of the chiasmus. The crisscross pattern linking this uncle and this nephew has the symbolic significance of the biblical Jacob crossing his hands when blessing the heads ofJoseph's sons, so that his right hand would favor the younger brother. The Nazis grew disenchanted with Hendrik de Man, and by 1943 he was spending his days in lonely retreat in the French Alps. In 1944 at this time.
— —
he escaped to Switzerland with the French underground in pursuit.
Following the war, he managed to elude extradition to Belgium and lived out his remaining years in bitter exile, writing
memoirs. The end of his narrative underscores just sense
of
a collective family tragedy
20, 1953, the sixteenth anniversary
drik de
Man
took
his
own
life.
was of
He
to
and revising
how
Hendrik de Man.
traumatic sequence, as a
his car into the as
though
his
Hen-
chose the same day, the same
path of a train.
own
kind of memorial to the deaths of
suicide could
nephew and
He
left a
extended a
somehow
his sister-in-law
before him. For the surviving nephew, he
One wonders what
On June
his sister-in-law's suicide,
circumstances, and the same means of death as his oldest
namesake: he drove
his
important the
serve
and nephew
complicated legacy.
thoughts ran through Paul de Man's mind each
year on the twentieth of June.
SIGNS
198
A
TIMES
THE
OF
year after his uncle's death, Paul de
Man was
appointed to his
three-year term in residence as a Junior Fellow of Harvard University's
Society of Fellows. prestige
was
It
much-coveted appointment. Besides the
a
conferred upon the holder,
it
it
had substantial
practical value.
Junior Fellows were given a stipend, exempted from tuition charges,
and spared from onerous teaching assignments. Paul de
Man was
popular with the other Fellows. His personal charm took the edge off his ferocity in debate.
he always smiled."
"He
was," remembers Donald Hall, "a
was no
It
secret that Paul's uncle
collaborator, but Paul himself
He
left."
let
on
that he
forthcoming with
was understood
had been
details.
had been
to be a
in the Resistance,
His friends respected
tiger,
but
a Belgian
man "from
the
though he was not
his reticence.
At Harvard, Paul de Man had a special knack for skewering an inflated intellectual reputation. In Donald Hall's account, "he knew Camus, and Camus (tilt of the head, a confidential look of disparagement) *was a phoney.' " challenged that winter ety's
De Man's own
—though,
Senior Fellows, the
word
thanks to the discretion of the Soci-
didn't get out. In January 1955 de
planning a trip to Europe, applied for a believed
of
to be in consequence
it
claims to genuineness were
new
Belgian passport.
this application that
Man,
De Man
he was de-
nounced, anonymously, to the Society of Fellows. While the Society has
no record of the denunciation on
that de
Man
wrote
in his
own
file,
we may
infer
from the
letter
defense that he stood accused of wartime
collaboration with the Nazis; his emigration status was questioned,
moreover, and
come
to
his allegedly dishonest activities at Editions
light.
On
January 26, 1955, de
Man
Rcnato Poggioli, co-director of the Society of Fellows. time in
of
his
his past.
Derrida,
American career
But
among
it
is
Written
It
—
that
its
was the only
claim
—made by
Jacques
that the letter constituted "a public act"
was
in
existence
scandal broke in late 1987.
was
on
fact anything but a public statement.
in great confidentiality,
Harvard
It
addressed himself to the issue
difficult to credit the
others
Paul de Man's part.
Man
that de
Hermes had
wrote to Harvard's
it
was
treated with such discretion at
entirely clandestine until the
The simple
truth
is
that de
Man
Le Soir
never made
public acknowledgment of his wartime behavior.
The able for
letter that
its
de
Man
sent to
Harvard
is,
in
any event, remark-
combination of evasiveness and self-righteous indignation.
"I could not possibly
have come to
this
country two times, with proper
passport and visa, if there had been the slightest reproach against me,"
UNCLE,
LIKE de
Man
A
wrote.
minor portion of
very long
his
Man's "political past, particularly under the defense
cleverly constructed
is
—
one big one, and the calculated trusting the writer's in
Le
This
Soir.
My
is
it is
199
letter addresses
predicated on several small
of the
risk that the readers
good faith, would not what de Man wrote:
Chairman of
letter,
is
a highly contro-
Because of his attitude under the
occupation, he was sentenced in absentia after the
war and died
He
in exile in Switzerland last year.
remains
an extremely debatable case and, for reasons that go to the
of internal Belgian
roots
political
problems, his
arouses extremely strong feelings at least in
apparently I
still
am
certainly
know
I
that
some
to-day.
no position to pass judgment on him, but his mistakes were made out of a lack of in
One
can
fmd
his
own
his acts
is
a matter
many under hear
now
the
that
I
title
tors,
I
two
year in Ger-
last
Gegen den Strom.
myself am being accused of collaboration.
1940 and 1941
newspaper
of history.
justification stated in the last
chapters of his autobiography, published
In
ideals.
did what he thought best for his country and his beliefs,
and the fmal evaluation of
I
name
Belgians,
machiavellism and not out of lack of devotion to his
He
I
wrote some
"le Soir" and, like
stopped doing so
when
literary articles in the
most of the other contribunazi thought-control did
no
longer allow freedom of statement. During the rest of the occupation,
I
did what was the duty of any decent person.
After the war, everyone was subjected to a very severe
examination of his political behavior, and a favorable
my name was not
recommendation. In order to obtain
one had not merely to produce a
certificate
a passport,
of good con-
duct, but also a so-called "certificat de civisme," stated that
one was cleared of any collaboration.
possibly have
come
to this country
lies,
seek out the actual articles
the social-democrat party,
versial political figure.
de
German occupation." The
Hendrik de Man, former Belgian Minister and
father,
German
SON
LIKE
two
times,
I
which
could not
with proper
passport and visa, if there had been the slightest reproach
SIGNS
200
against me.
and
ration,
To
me now,
accuse
TIMES
THE
OF
behind
my back,
persons of a different nation
this to
possibly verify and appreciate the facts, attack
which
a slanderous
is
helpless.
contains a
in fact
He
anti-Semitic articles or his praise of "Hitlerism."
"1940 and 1941" when
He
of November 1942.
He
can not
characterized his wartime journalism as
when to
who
number of mistruths and halt-truths. De "some literary articles" many were overtly political. He made no mention of his
The statement
Man
me
leaves
of collabo-
in fact
he wrote for Le Soir until the end
misrepresented the situation at the newspaper.
stopped writing for
he
it,
said,
"when
longer allow freedom of statement." At falsehood, since
it
limited the years
nazi thought-control did
no
seems like a simple
first this
hard to credit the notion that "freedom of
is
statement" was ever allowed at Le Soir
one reveals more than
intended
it is
vole.
But
like
to. It raises the
many
lies, this
question of Paul
de Man's sense of chronology. Perhaps in his mind there was a valid distinction
two
between Le Soir
December 1940 and
was
Man may
The
by
biggest
is
"no longer" write
what he wrote
that
own
his
volition,
if
he
felt there
was de Man's claim
self-aggrandizing and self-incriminating at once
of Hendrik de Man. At
wish, on the contrary, to dissociate his
But
that
reflection does
his uncle?
name from
that
one
realize
paternity for his uncle. For
on
The
when
a son than
on
irony, so plain
if
what he
Hcndnk's chosen
son.
it
tionist career.
By
his
embraced
a
mere nephew
smarts,
is
that in
curiously
was the son
Why would
Wouldn't he
—
in
suit;
Only
by claiming a cause,
there
is
it
is
more
to toe the parental line.
one sense Paul wasn't lying
one sense Paul de
Man
was
1972, however, Paul had conveniently devel-
youthful complicity in
That year,
—
of the convicted
has to gain
one's father has
he called his uncle his father
oped amnesia about
chance that
to underestimate de Man's subtlety.
is
perhaps understandable that the son would follow pressure
that he
glance this appears enigmatic.
first
he want to link himself more closely with
collaborator?
—
war
gamble de
a
slightest
might turn up.
in the statement
lie
was the
in the
and not cleared
Nazi censor. The whole thing was
a
not have taken
the articles in question
The
implication
product of
heartfelt, the
for publication
upon
the same newspaper
years later. Perhaps he felt that he could
honestly in late 1942. years
in
a critical essay
his uncle's collabora-
by Richard Klein,
a student
UNCLE,
LIKE
Man who made no secret of his fiHal
of de
in Diacritics.
Hendrik
to
SON
LIKE
201
attachment to him, appeared
—only
Klein mistakenly assumes that Hendrik was Paul's
theme
father. Klein's
Man
of Paul de
Klein's article discusses the relationship
He
oedipal.
is
examines Paul's "moralistic nihil-
ism," his avoidance of psychology, his seemingly systematic "repres-
He
sion of Freud."
conducting
his "father" as
Man
de
concludes that Paul was not so
was, after
all,
much
his oedipal rebellion against
"the
repudiating
him. Hendrik
serious Marxist thinker to apply
first
of alienation." Yet Freud
explicitly Freudian categories to the analysis
never turns up in Paul de Man's literary work. In a postscript to the Diacritics essay, Klein
admitted his mistake.
corrected by Paul de
Man.
Henri de
fact that
Man
is
"My
my
He
from the
scepticism doesn't spring
uncle and not
my father,"
informed him. Never dreaming that the error Paul de
had been, he writes,
Man had himself perpetrated when
it
de
in paternity
suited
him
to
Man
coolly
was one
do
so,
that
Klein
on a "What,
retreated to the position that an oedipal relation could occur
symbolic after
all,
with a father by another name. Klein asked:
level,
an uncle?"
is
In truth,
it
trying to evade
wasn't an avuncular influence that Paul de
when he
skirted clear
and the philosophy of history;
something it
by
ble
it
like the paternal legacy
Man was
of Freud and Marx, psychology
was something more immediate,
of a
past.
He would
try to
overcome
rejecting the very categories that seek to render the past availa-
—
politics, history,
and biography.
By
fiat
de
Man would
declare
an irrevocable rupture between the world of literature and the world
of empirical with about
facts.
As for the
silence, exile, his
wartime
facts
and cunning. past as
much
of his personal
And
past,
in retrospect,
it
as that past itself that
he evaded them
was
his silence
vexed and teased
Man in who tried
the ranks of his admirers. Shoshana Felman, a colleague of de Yale's comparative literature department, to vindicate the fallen leader flattering possible light.
was one of those
by portraying
his silence in the
Felman goes through extraordinary contor-
tions to arrive at the quite incredible assertion that "History as
caust
IS
mutely omnipresent
mature work."
De Man
Second World
War
a dissimulation
of the
most
in the theoretical
Holo-
endeavor of de Man's
kept silent about the part he played in the
"not past,
some would have it) as a cover-up or but as an ongoing active transformation of
(as
the very act of hearin^i witness" [Fclman's emphasis]. In her brief for
Man, Felman audaciously quotes from
the writings
de
of Primo Levi,
SIGNS
202
who was
TIMES
THE
OF
deported to Auschwitz from
Levi
his native Italy in 1944.
wrote that the "true witnesses" of the Holocaust were those victims
who
"have not returned to
Felman
cites the
about
tell
passage as though
well-connected Belgian journalist
and
perils
it
or have returned mute," and
somehow
it
who
How
of a death camp inmate.
applied to the young,
faced none of the deprivations
de
"to the complexity and ambiguity of history
Man as
could bear witness
Holocaust"
he never wrote about either the Holocaust or
fact
quisling pundit
—
is
just another
readers are asked to take
on
—when
of those deconstructive mysteries
faith.
But
that the author
in
his career as a
that
of anti-Semitic
by concealing them from view, serve as an honorable witness of "history as Holocaust" well, one wonders which is worse: articles could,
—
the desecration of the Holocaust or the ignobility of a theory that invites a scholar to play so fast
matters.
No wonder
and loose with such grave
many "nonaligned"
so
individuals were taken
aback by the deconstructionist response to the Paul de the Holocaust, after
all,
human
historical
Man
case. In
beings perished by the millions;
it
was
not, for them, a linguistic predicament.
As Shoshana Felman
sees
it,
"de Man's entire writing effort
is
a
silent trace of the reality of an event whose very historicity, borne out by the author's own catastrophic experience, has occurred precisely as of its the event of the preclusion the event of the impossibility
—
—
own
witnessing." Translation (approximate): de
made
his past "precisely" because history
it
Man
kept
silent
impossible for
him
about to
do
otherwise. Notice the tricks Felman plays. She paints de Man's collaborationist career as his
"own
catastrophic experience," as if he were the
victim of the "events" in question. issue, she also
her syntax confuses the
seems to be saying that a person cannot act and witness
himself acting at the same time. past
Though
somehow becomes mute
De Man's
eloquence;
failure to
more than
own up
that, his silence
seen as perfectly consonant with the tenets of deconstruction. difficult to
when
punch holes
in
Felman's argument. There
to his
It is
are, perhaps,
is
not
times
a witness exercising his constitutional right against self-incrimi-
nation
is
giving "mute" testimony.
when confronted with
Fifth
moral
issue
is
De Man, however,
his past;
he actively dissembled. The
stated not in the Fifth
Commandment
—
didn't take the
Amendment
real
but in the Ninth
the injunction against bearing false witness.
Andrzej Warminski, another of de Man's avid defenders, waxes indignant over the prominence given to the theme of de Man's silence
I
UNCLE,
LIKE in journalistic
coverage of the
SON
LIKE
case:
"Why
203
didn't he confess?"
"Why
did he keep it a secret?" Warminski answers these pertinent questions with a haughty one of his own: "What do they want de Man to have done? To have sent out a press release, held a news conference?" Warminski gives the back of his hand to those who wondered what it
said
about de
Man and his
theories that he tried to
Warminski's words, "Only the
ble past. In
who
thology of bitter academics lectual,
critical,
i.e.,
to
Warminski
that
his disreputa-
have always resented de Man's
power would want de Man
himself in a conversion narrative!"
a "press release"
bury
trivially guilt-ridden paintel-
to have inscribed
does not seem to have occurred
It
something other than a "conversion narrative"
—might have been more
—
or
appropriate than silence for
an honorable man, particularly one of de Man's critical powers and
What was
stature.
startling
was not
so
much
that de
Man
didn't
"confess" as that he shrouded his past in secrecy; he simply ignored his firsthand experience
when
greater
books and
discussing
experience was relevant. Perhaps
amount of candid self-examination from
his "intellectual It IS
ers often
which
issues to
that
not so unreasonable to expect a
it is
a scholar praised for
honesty."
a characteristic
of deconstructive criticism that
its
practition-
advance their arguments not by logical exposition but by a
triple threat
of paradox, jargon, and
Shoshana Felman makes her case for de a literary parallel.
Felman
fastens
Moby Dick into Flemish after of Moby Dick, she observes, choice of America
as a
True
literary analogy.
on
Man
through the agency of
the fact that
his career at
to form,
de
Man
translated
Le Soir was over. The choice
"prefigures not merely de Man's future
physical and cultural destination but the radical
nature of the departure, which will create an absolute break with what preceded, as he leaves behind everything connected to the Belgian past,
including his
own
Ahab and the made a similarly
family, wife and children." Captain
narrator Ishmael, the protagonists oi Moby Dick, have "radical departure" in going to sea.
Ahab
leaves behind wife
and
children to pursue his grudge match with the white whale, Felman writes, while Ishmael goes to sea "as a substitute for
suicide."
It
will be recalled that
Ahab
dies in his battle
committing
with the whale
while Ishmael survives the shipwreck by floating on a Felman, the postwar Paul dc
Man combined
coffin.
the destinies of both
To
Ahab
and Ishmael. According to her allegorical reading, Ahab's fanatic hunt for the
whale seems to correspond
to
"Nazi ideology." The Ahab
side
SIGNS
204
Man
of de to
has died at sea; he survives as Ishmael,
the
tell
One wonders
tale.
years before de Man's birth
—one hundred of Le
in the offices
—
—and
years before de
Man
neglects to explain
simply cannot double-talk
Man
Job
this
thee."
his.
somehow
And
equate, as
sojourn in America.
Moby Dick throws
"And
does, de
am
only
I
it
into
book of
that Melville quotes the
escaped
Man wasn't the sole survivor
unlike Ishmael, he told
Felman
You
Far from explaining or helping
But unlike Ishmael, de
of the catastrophe.
her
out of existence: where Ishmael narrates
kept silent about
Felman reminds her readers tell
to
confronted the Leviathan
in the epilogue to Ishmael's narrative:
alone to
—
—and what undermines
to exonerate his silence, the analogy with relief.
by exactly one hundred sea on a whaling-ship
between Ishmael's postshipwreck
the sharp discrepancy
is
went
that he
it is
didn't clinch her case
in 1819
Moby Dick and de Man's postwar
behavior in
his tale, de
bom
whose mission
Soir.
What Felman argument
Felman
that
pointing out that Melville was
in 1841
TIMES
THE
OF
Man's
nobody
silence
—
with
unless
you
opposite,
its
testimony.
have picked on Shoshana Felman's analogy with Moby Dick not
I
disapprove of literary allegories but because
because
I
reading
is
so
wrongheaded.
It
I
showcases the dangers of a method that
invariably interprets texts as internally self-contradictory that
would reduce
gleefully reversed.
simply turned upside
Ishmael's narration of the
down
to
fit
not the
facts
for
by reasoning but by metaphors
add up or ring true.
stand the
life
inspires
I
me
as
doomed voy-
—
the
world
is
wildest supposi-
—metaphors
that don't neces-
Still, literary
examples can help us under-
who
can't himsclt be reached
rather like the idea that the author oi Allegories
may have
of Moby Dick
method
its
of an enigmatic protagonist
comment, and
of Readin{j
a
but a theory. Felman
demonstrates a species of logic that would verify tions not
—
historical complexities to binary oppositions to be
Somehow
age of the Pequod equals de Man's intransigent silence
sarily
think her
led an allegorical textual
life.
Felman's reading
an anticipatory allegory of the career of Paul de
to propose three other textual parallels,
two from
Man
literature
and one from the movies, that could be called unconscious treatments
of Paul de Man's predicament
The
first
and
least
in
America.
substantial
suggested by a sentence that Paul de
one of
his
books. "I
am
of these
Man
fictional
wrote
in the
treatments
is
foreword to
not given to retrospective self-examination,"
UNCLE,
LIKE
SON
LIKE
he observed in 1983, "and mercifully forget what the same alacrity
I
forget bad movies
—
although,
have written with
I
The
—
to
imagme
the
Hollywood
Orson Welles's 1946 movie, The
I
though propose
Welles directed
Stranger.
played the lead; the supporting cast included Loretta as the
like
version
luridly melodramatic and easy to forget,
capable of haunting and embarrassing the forgetful one.
goodness
me
and haunt
association of a guilty conscience with scenes
from bad movies authorizes one of de Man's drama
with bad movies,
as
certain scenes or phrases return at times to embarrass a guilty conscience."
205
Young
and
it
(radiating
young woman he marries) and Edward FBI man on the trail of the notorious Nazi war
sweet, innocent
G. Robinson (the
criminal). Welles plays the
Nazi bigwig (Franz Kindler)
from Germany
of 1945 and has somehow
in the ruins
who
lost his
escaped
German
accent and acquired a cover of utter respectability in a serene, picture-
New
postcard
Rankin and
England
village.
Kindler
now
is
Professor Charles
teaches at a venerable boys' school in Connecticut.
It's
not
quite Yale, but almost: the fictional Harper School for Boys, founded in 1827, educates the "sons
To
seal his
to
woo
first
families,"
wed
famous
Welles
says.
he has managed Supreme Court even good to look at,"
subversive assimilation into American
and
justice, a
of America's
life,
the daughter of a United States liberal at that.
"The
girl
is
Welles confides. The analogy with de Man, exaggerated to begin with, soon
falls
apart entirely, and
I
wouldn't
raise
it
at all
except in an effort
upon one like a time I saw The Stranger I was struck by the scene in which Welles, making a telephone call in the drugstore phone booth, doodles on a pad in strong vertical and horizontal lines. A swastika emerges as if drawing one were the most natural thing in the world for the doodler, who then prudently to verify the notion that a guilty conscience can act
melodramatic movie, with nightmare
logic.
The
last
—
links the lines into a square.
thought oi de Man's
I
interest in "deface-
ment" and "disfigurement"
as figurative terms for what texts do to would be interesting, I thought, to subject this scene in The Stranger to a de Manian rhetorical reading, in which the "text" IS seen to enact a "movement oi^ effacing and of forgetting." The second textual analogy I propose is to Joseph Conrad's Heart Darkness. Here there are several outstanding coincidences. Marlow, of
themselves.
the narrator
makes
Man
me
It
of Conrad's
tale,
begins his journey in "a city that always
think of a whited sepulchre"
began
his literary career.
—
Brussels, the city
where de
Marlow's journey will take him to the
— SIGNS
206
Congo and primeval
Belgian
journey
is
his
TIMES
THE
OF
And
darkness.
of the
the culmination
encounter with Kurtz, the "universal genius." Kurtz
greatly esteemed
by
employers not only for
his
his constant
is
supply of
on the natives. In "method is unsound," as one company man puts it: there are heads on stakes that tell how Kurtz has worked his will in Africa. "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz," Conrad tells treasure but for his purportedly civilizing influence
reality, Kurtz's
my
us. In
not
as
deconstructive allegory of Heart of Darkness,
Kurtz but
as
see
not the perpetrator of
who was somehow
implicated in what he
beheld and reported (or failed to report) But of de Man, too, .
be said that
Europe went into
all
he was fluent
at
Man
de
—de Man was
Marlow
but a witness
atrocities
I
making. Like
his
his uncle
it
could
Hendrik,
an early age in four languages; he was intimately
familiar with the masterworks of
European philosophy and
literature.
His accent alone, which sounded neither German nor French but included traces of both, served to identify as
him broadly
indeed an emissary of European culture in the United
fondly recalled
how
the truth
came out
tale
life
and Heart of Darkness
is
States. Friends
de Man's accent: de
in
But the most important point of coincidence between Man's
European
as
Trut.
the text of de
not "de Trut" but a
lie.
concludes with his account of a deliberate falsehood
—
Marlow's
the
lie
that
he told Kurtz's intended rather than disabuse her of her cherished illusions
about the
man
she had expected to marry. Kurtz's famous
last
words were "The horror! The horror!" But Marlow, pressed by her name. Kurtz's intended, tells her that he died pronouncing .
.
Marlow's to
lie is a
brilliantly enigmatic stroke
which commentators keep returning.
lie is
that
could
lie
it
renders problematic
to Kurtz's fiancee,
part,
and one
consequence of Marlow's
that he has told us before.
all
what makes
What assurance do we have one? De Man's steadfast silence
A
on Conrad's
.
to us?
that his version
true
about
his
of events
wartime
past
is
calls into
Were
the
least,
those theories, as Shoshana Felman supposes,
founded on an omission?
them? And
historical
is
question the motives, conscious or unconscious, behind his
literary theories.
in
he
equally
enigmatic and similarly undermines his credibility. At the very it
It
us so sure that he isn't lying
if so, if
experience
Was
memory "mutely omnipresent" much the function of one man's
a dark
they were so
and one man's psychological
idiosyncrasies,
doesn't that dash their claims of universal validity?
My
third textual analogy
is
based on a sentence in The Great
UNCLE,
LIKE
Gatsby that extends to de
Man
SON
LIKE
and allegorizes
207
American career
his
the process. Gatsby, wrote Scott Fitzgerald, "sprang from
conception of himself." fashion an entirely
new
Was
Man? Did he not retaining his name (as Jay
not true of Paul de
this
identity for himself,
Gatsby, born James Gatz, did not) but jettisoning past?
De Man's
all
other links to his
triumphant American career seems either to dramatize
something about our national capacity for amnesia or to
America
idea of
as a
haven for those
who want
Fitzgerald once remarked that there are lives."
Of course we know
that's
convicted and sentenced,
talk-show guest hawking his surely
to the glory
it is
a fresh start,
and
One
people
at their
word.
It is,
Since the American spirit tions, starting all over,
acts in
we
American
are generous
thinks of the corrupt
surfaces a
few years
later as a
inside-the-beltway potboiler.
to the refugees
our
trust
we
and our
have offered
faith in
democratic
nevertheless, a virtue that suggests a failing. is
— —we
one of rebellion
seeking
new
origins
breaking with tradi-
—
in creating an
career of "greatness" that depended, to a large extent,
of the
past, as
if,
because
it
own To say
tend to erase our
we forget our own history, hoping for the best. Man resembled Gatsby is simply to point to de
extraordinary success at inventing himself
(or rature)
happened
far
on
Man's
American
the erasure
away,
it
never
at all.
For textual scholars of Scott Fitzgerald, the
of The Great Gatsby long presented a vexing
tripartite structure
riddle.
That structure
appears to have been adapted from Spengler's seminal book. Decline of the West. Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his editor. Perkins, granting as
the same
And
of war and revolution
and
that Paul de
happened
past. Scott
naive enough and confident enough to take
still
is
nation
of our nation's heritage that
disaster abroad. It speaks to
America
who
latest
few questions asked,
ideals;
traditions,
as a
illustrate the
bury the
to
"no second
wrong:
with second and third chances.
to a fault official,
in
his Platonic
Great Gatsby. But how, scholars
wondered, could
this
summer of
He knew no German and
The Decline of
the
Maxwell
much; Fitzgerald acknowledged reading Spengler
summer he was writing The 1924.
The
be? Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the
an English translation of
West didn't appear until two years
later.
Fitzgerald experts scoffed at the author's reference to Spengler.
Some
But the
most persuasive solution to the mystery was given by a scholar named Barry Gross in 1967. Gross adduced that Fitzgerald learned all the Spengler he needed to
know from
the July 1924 issue
of the Yale
Review.
The
208
SIGNS
issue
came out
at just the
and the Yale Review was the fact that Fitzgerald
reviewed in that it
was
sort
went out of
time he was working on Gats by,
of magazine he Uked to
his
way
would have come
of Spengler's theory of the cycles of
New
to obtain a
issue suggests his famiharity
in that issue that he
"Germany's
TIMES
THE
OF
Prophets."
with
copy of
its
The
a
And
contents.
across a cogent
history.
The book
read.
article
summary
was
titled
The author was Hendrik de Man.
CHAPTER
9
SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
N It is
always possible to face up to any experi-
ence (to excuse any guilt) because the experi,
ence always exists simultaneously
as fictional
discourse and as empirical event and possible to decide bilities it
is
it is
never
which one of the two
possi-
The
the right one.
indecision
possible to excuse the bleakest
because, as a fiction,
escapes
of crimes
from the con-
of guilt and innocence.
straints
—Paul
it
makes
Man, allegories of readlxg
de
(1979)
De Man's wartime journalism was the University of Nebraska Press. left
untranslated
— and
were
collected and published in 1989
The
in fact
newspaper rather than
set into type;
for the ten articles de
Man
A
wrote
articles
photocopied from the original
English translations were provided
in
Flemish for Het Vlaamsche Land.
useful appendix reproduces the page
Man's anti-Semitic see that pieces
article
written in
by French were
from Le Soir on which de
appeared on March
4,
1941.
The
reader can
by other hands on Jewish painting and on Freudian
psychology ("a Jewish doctrine") accompanied dc Man's critique of
SIGNS
210
Taken
the Jewish influence in Hterature.
TIMES
THE
OF
together, the articles repre-
sented a concerted campaign to vihfy the Jews as agents of cultural
decadence.
seems
It
paper's editorial in
Contemporary
surrounding
fair to say that the
were
more
far
Literature."
That was,
of de Man's defenders used to
at
any
rate,
His complicity in
relativize his guilt.
than that of others in the quisling press. But in the
—
two
years
Man's it,
conducted
a trial
—
was not
it
efforts
worked
less
disturbing
filled project to
De Man's
of Paul de
trial
in intellectual journals for the better part at all clear that this
The page
in his favor.
when you
which he
consider, in
lent his
articles for
of
"contextualizing" of de in
Le
Soir,
when you
see
Man's participation becomes more rather
delivers quite a shock; de
than
and the
"The Jews a judgment some
campaign was, they contended, more nearly passive
the anti-Semitic
Man
articles
viciously anti-Semitic than
Le
its
full intensity, the hate-
name.
were widely
Soir
read, quoted,
and
argued over well before the publication of Wartime Journalism, 194042.
The photocopying machine made them
numerous in the
the
common
property of
professors and journalists, in the United States and abroad,
months
after
Ortwin de Graef s
initial
discovery in the
summer
of 1987. This curious method of dissemination was one more aspect of the de
Man
affair that
made
seem somehow paradigmatic of the
it
academic situation today. It
has been suggested that the photocopying machine has helped
transform the practice of literary criticism into a nomadic sideshow: a
world of academic conferences
in far-flung places
where
the super-
armed with photocopies of one another's papers, enter into combat. The combat metaphor is taken from David Lodge's Small World: the novel is a parody of an Arthurian romance, with the stars
of the
lit-crit biz,
Modern Language
Association's annual convention serving as the ulti-
mate tournament for jousting Morris Zapp,
who
teaches at
profs.
The
"Euphoric State"
whom
Lodge calls and aspires to become
character
"the highest paid Professor of English in the world,"
is
notable for his
grasp of the changing sociology of academe. At one point explains
why
the era
of the individual college campus
belongs to an obsolete technology
he says with the confidence of one
—
is
Zapp
over. "It
railways and the printing press,"
who
has mastered Marshall
McLu-
Zapp adds, "three things which have revolutionized the last twenty years, though very few people have
han. "There are,"
academic
life in
woken up
to the fact: jet travel, direct-dialling telephones
and the
SCANDAL
A
Xerox machine.
ACADEME
IN
Scholars don't have to
work
211
in the
same
institution
meet
at interna-
to interact, nowadays: they call each other up, or they
And
tional conferences.
for data: any
and read
The
it
they don't have to grub about in library stacks
book or article home. Or on
that sounds interesting they
according to the flamboyant Zapp,
result,
have Xeroxed
the plane going to the next conference."
at
is
"a global campus,"
in which "the American Express card has replaced the library pass."
The
circulation of de
Man's Le Soir
articles
seemed to bear out
Morris Zapp's take on things. The news of Paul de Man's wartime career traveled
by telephone, spread by photocopy, and supplied the
reading material on jet planes conducting scholars to their next aca-
demic conference. The process began when Ortwin de Graef, through an intermediary, approached Jacques Derrida for advice in August 1987. As a result of that
phone
de Graef shipped copies of
call,
twenty-five of de Man's Le Soir articles to Derrida.
prompted the
latter to suggest that copies
A
perusal of these
be circulated in advance of
an October gathering of deconstructionists at the University of Ala-
bama
in Tuscaloosa.
made
associates
A number
the trip, photocopies in hand.
anguished statement from Derrida,
warned
ship" and the
of de Man's former students and
who
They
against organizing "a trial
of Paul de Man." But
same time he seemed to present a brief for the deceased.
he speculated, "must have lived a real agony."
He
de Man's Harvard
it
absolved de
damaging
letter,"
"wished
Man
letter
in
of 1955, pronouncing
in
of the thing,
Derrida nevertheless cited
from anguished
abject fear as
lation
his
it
his version as
of the
facts, in
evidence that de
Man
is
it
highly likely that de
Man
1955 that he had not "done anything that could be suspected
honorable intent to denials,
"a public act," which
1955 never to have done anything that could be suspected
of Nazism or collaboration," that wish
from
then misrepresented
Admitting that "we are not obliged to give
this presentation
of Nazism or collaboration." While wished
at
De Man,
of the charge that he had never acknowledged
political past.
credence to this
listened to an
spoke of his "bereaved friend-
may
regret.
this letter, a text
as easily
have followed
Yet Derrida
remarkable for
attributes an
its
falsehoods,
and evasions. Thus Derrida, even while denouncing "the jubi-
with which some
already begun the
trial
may
hasten to play that game," had in effect
proceedings by launching a preemptive and
highly tendentious defense oi de Man.
To
his credit
Derrida insisted that the damning documents be
/
SIGNS
212
made
public. "It
is
TIMES
THE
OF
some of
urgent," he said, "that
us hasten to take
their responsibiUties as regards these texts, to be the first to
there
is
no question of dissimulating them or of
show
that
participating in any
kind of camouflage operation." Accordingly, the Tuscaloosa group decided to return to the photocopying machine. Three professors were entrusted with the task of collecting de Man's Le Soir articles and
mailing copies to various other professors of note in the chy.
was announced
It
would
that an issue
lit-crit hierar-
of the Oxford Literary Review
by
reprint the articles along with "responses"
assorted theorists.
no trouble obtaining their copies from would be interesting to calculate what the
In the meanwhile, reporters had
compliant professors
—
it
photocopying budget of
mouth works
fast in
activity
all this
the academic
must have been.
A
community.
ern Language Association's annual convention
of the
session
—
Word
the big
Mod-
daddy of
academic conferences, held, that December, in San Francisco
—was
converted into a more-or-less impromptu discussion of what de
had done
in the war.
Once
the cat
the Nation, and ies
was
let
out of the bag
Newsweek reported
accelerated.
From one
—
New
after the
the story
—
of
Man
York Times,
the traffic in photocop-
quarter, expressions of shock and dismay
could be heard; from another, the distinctive note oi Schadenfreude; and these reponses quickly gave
sion as the
Le Soir
way
to a
more incendiary
level
of discus-
reached the desks of professors in campuses
articles
near and remote. At issue was not only de Man's reputation for personal integrity but the prestige of the entire critical
had championed. At subsequent conferences and
brow
literary supplements,
movement he
in the pages
of high-
de Man's detractors and defenders went
at
venom remarkable even by the usual acrimonious of intellectual disputation. The scandal left an unmistakably
each other with a standards
acrid taste in a their irc
over dc Man's secret
between de the dc
women
number of big academic mouths.
Man
Manians
life
Professors venting
didn't hesitate to propose links
"The real problem of spectacle of grown men and
then and deconstruction now. is
hero worship
—
the
idolizing another person," said Frank Lcntricchia, the
University professor
who
of the Yale "Mafia."
"It's
had once labeled de
Man
very bad to communicate
to students," Lentricchia told the Nation.
Duke
the "godfather"
this
hero worship
"It's politically
ugly. Stu-
dents need independence, scrutiny, self-reliance." "There's no doubt that dc
Man was
a
gung-ho collaborator," Jeffrey Mehlman
told
SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
IN
213
Newsweek. Mehlman, a Boston University professor of French, had
done
a considerable
amount of
Mehlman
his past,
the behavior
of collaboration
who
in a
fascist
speculated that there might even be "grounds for as a vast
amnesty project for the
World War
in France during
II." It
rather spectacular charge, and doubtless an exaggeration, but
made
of
of de Man's lack of candor about
viewing the whole of deconstruction politics
on
research
intellectuals in the 1930s. In the face
know-nothing
spirit.
introduced Derrida to
this
Mehlman spoke country."
"as
He had
it
was
a
was not
one of the people
long since aired
his
doubts about the political implications of deconstruction. It
became widely known
that
one of de Man's Le Soir
articles
"engaged with the ideology of anti-Semitism," to use the locution the professors seemed to favor.
It
also
became known
that the deconstruc-
a hefty tome of "responses" to be published volume of de Man's articles themselves. (The project,
were preparing
tion elite
alongside the
outgrowing the resources of the Oxford Literary Review, eventually filled two oversize books rather than one scholarly magazine. The
volume oi Responses comes out to 477 double-column pages, and the volume of Wartime Journalism to some 399 photocopied sheets.) What was planned, in effect, was a major symposium on de Man's wartime writings
—
a kind
tive contributor
of free-floating academic conference; each prospec-
was
sent a packet
of the photocopied
and was
articles
asked for cogent and informed commentary. This development itself
outraged some in the academic community. "I is
symposmm," Jon Wiener of the
to be a
told
a critic described as
Nation. "Paul must have
Belgium were being carted away. the Belgian Jewish
am
We
community, down
known
are so
who
to the babies.
are organizing this have lost
much under
what they
the
sway of
the
Man"
Jews of are discussing the butchery of
one more item about which to have a symposium people
shocked that there
"very close to de
man
all
is
To
the
treat this as
outrageous.
The
moral perspective; they
they cannot bear to consider
are doing." In lit-crit circles, the identity
of the speaker was
was Harold Bloom. Because of stature and because he had been one of dc Man's closest friends on the Yale faculty, the comment drew blood; in the months ahead,
never in doubt: everyone assumed
it
Bloom's
more than one of
deconstructionist critic cited
literary periodicals.
sees
"When someone
it
with anger
in the pages
asking 'not to be identified'
himself quoted by an unscrupulous professor-journalist,
says he
is
'shocked'
by the
fact that certain
when he
people are gathering,
if
only
SIGNS
214
problems (he would thus
in order to discuss these
and when he says he
you can
see
What
and discussion?
rights to assembly
is
why I am
TIMES
THE
OF
'shocked' in the
like to forbid the
does that remind you of?),
name of a 'moral
perspective,'
indignant and worried," wrote Jacques Derrida.
Derrida's indignation and
worry came through, though his logic left a symposium is
something to be desired; to express outrage over
scarcely "to forbid the rights to assembly and discussion."
The
symposium was not
protest against the
the only statement
in the article in the Nation that enraged deconstructionists
rida
on down. Jon Wiener's piece was, they claimed,
distortions
and insinuations." They took
charge of "hero worship" veneration of de
—and
from Der"rife
with
with Frank Lentricchia's
issue
the implicit analogy between the
Man and the fascist cult of the leader; de Man's former
colleagues insisted that his charisma had been benign, characterized by
monastic rigor rather than by dictatorial flamboyance. deconstructionists above
all
was the
accusation,
What
irked the
which Wiener
re-
ported, that the Tuscaloosa conference had been convened as a preemptive strike
—"an
exercise in 'damage control.' "
could defend themselves plausibly on
The deconstructionists count. The three professors
this
entrusted with the task of assembling de Man's wartime writings did
And
so with a scrupulous attention to detail.
of "responses" contains letter to
much
that
is
Harvard, a good chronology of
highly intelligent essays
the
valuable
—along with
—
companion volume
the text of de Man's
his early years, a
number of
the special pleading that one
expected to find in such a massive volume.
It
was, in any event, surely
understandable that the deconstructionists would take umbrage
imputation of a cover-up.
It
was understandable,
react in self-defense against the
too, that they
at the
would
inflammatory statements made by
Lcntncchia, Mchlman, and various others, identified or not,
in the
Nation and in Newsweek.
Yet the embattled posture of the deconstructionists, and ular their hostility
toward journalists and journalism,
logical cause. First
Wiener, then others on the de
far
in partic-
exceeded the
Man
beat were
subjected to shrill abuse. For Jacques Derrida, criticism of de
Man was
—
as if
condemn
the
held to be the figurative equivalent ot "burning his books" dissent
work
were equivalent
man on
or the
closing, that his
books
is
is
to censorship:
the basis of
"To
what was
judge, to
a brief episode, to call for
to say, at least figuratively, for censuring or burning
to reproduce the exterminating gesture
which one accuses
SCANDAL
A
de
Man
215
of not having armed himself against sooner with the necessary
vigilance."
The
anticipatory.
my
rebuffed in
of the charge was breathtaking, but
recklessness
To some extent the As one who covered
not atypical.
and
ACADEME
IN
efforts to speak
in the interviews
I
did
the story for Newsweek,
with professors of the de
manage
it
was
deconstructionist defensiveness was
to arrange,
was often party,
an attorney must
felt as
I
I
Man
with a hostile witness on the stand. That was as nothing next to the outcry that followed the appearance of
Newsweek printed
my
three-column
articles in the
appeared a photograph of Paul de
Man
More
Nazis on the march.
On
the top of one
in 1975; at the base
column, on another page, the magazine ran
press.
broken by advertisements,
article,
over the course of three magazine pages.
popular
column
of another
photograph of uniformed
a
than one deconstructionist or fellow trav-
complained that the "juxtaposition" of the two
eler vociferously
photographs insinuated that deconstruction was a latter-day derivative
of Nazism. that
One
of the page
Another
critic
critic
in
so far as to liken the
the allegory tiveness."
of any bridge between
it
in praise
— though
airily dismisses
Jewish writers
A
all
wrong, demanded
in the article in
anti-Semitism."
in
its
defense
it
Europe when of "the German revolution." In Newsweek I as
mediocrities
masse would not injure European culture. tantly anti-Semitic."
is
at stake in
described de Man's Le Soir article about the Jews
he
The sequence
photograph of march-
the deconstructionist faithful, the
wrote
face.
rhetorician's didactic effec-
ing Nazis was unfair, irrelevant, even scary
Man
"Technically
of the Nazis exagger-
and that
could be said to dramatize exactly what was
de
analysis:
office, the picture
of the nonpicturability of the
To
to
about the Jews.
aberrant sequentiality with the picture of the
its
amiable professor in his Yale ates the lack
Newsweek layout
article
provided a full-blown rhetorical in
a catachresis,
went
Le Soir featuring de Man's
I
—
the one in
whose deportation en
labeled the article "bla-
livid deconstructionist, insisting that
a retraction.
question de
He may,
Man
My
If in the
I
had
it
correspondent maintained that
repudiates
indeed, but
mote? Genteel anti-Semitism?
which
what he
what then did United
States
calls
"vulgar
his article
today
a
pro-
columnist
would we hesitate wondered whether my correspondent's reading of the Le Soir article was a fair example of deconstructionist text-interpretation at work. Not until a few months later, when Derrida's Critical Inquiry piece was published, did it become to recommend condemn this as
were
the mass deportation of blacks,
to
virulent racism?
I
— SIGNS
216
clear that the letter-writer
one
side, to
was toeing
minimize what de
on the
the journalists
TIMES
THE
OF
Man
a preordained party line:
on the
had done; on the other, to
vilify
case.
Nothing quite prepared one
for the virtual declaration of war
journalism that soon issued from deconstructionist quarters. Above the deconstructionists laced into "journalists
who
are also professors."
Jacques Derrida, referring to Jon Wiener's article
calumny," called for
his head. "It
is
as
"a stream of
frightening to think that [Wiener]
teaches history at a university," Derrida wrote, as if the dean
reading over his shoulder.
Hillis Miller, taking his cue
J.
on all,
were
from the
master, characterized "the violence of the reaction in the United States
and as
in
"a
Europe
Man's writings of 1941^2"
to the discovery of Paul de
new moment
in the collaboration
between the university and the
mass media." Presumably Miller understood the exact valence of the
word
collaboration
in that sentence. Paul de
Man
is
revealed to have
been a collaborationist, and Miller can think of no better response than to insinuate a parallel
of journalism
tions
between the Nazi-run Le Soir and the
in the
United
included in his indictment the
and Europe today! (Miller
States
New
institu-
York Times, the Nation, Newsweek,
the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the Manchester Guardian, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung acy.) Certainly
it
was noteworthy
—
a veritable international conspir-
that Derrida
and Miller condemned
contemporary journalists and "professor-journalists" more straightforwardly,
at greater length,
and with
less
equivocation than either of
them censured de Man's wartime journalism. Backfiring, this blamcthc-messenger strategy managed to accomplish the opposite of what was intended:
a
"foregrounding"
of deconstruction
When nalism
wrote
as
in the debate
—
to use the requisite jargon
about Paul dc Man.
Jacques Derrida described
"the Htcrary and
artistic
which remain unclear special pleading.
when Jonathan
column
that a very
One
to us,"
and it
sounded very much
A
many of
like a case
of
sensed one was up against a deniability campaign
Culler, Cornell University's premier deconstructionist,
Contemporary Literature" were merely
tion.
young man than two
less
political circumstances
reduced dc Man's offense to "one dismaying column," in
wartime jour-
his late friend's
for a newspaper, almost a half century ago, for
years, in very singular private
word
as if
"The Jews
a lone, regrettable indiscre-
shallow breath after charging that press accounts had "grossly
misrepresented" de Man, Culler claimed
—
against the evidence
—
that
SCANDAL
A de Man's other
ACADEME
IN
German
culture, but not Hitler, not the
Nazi party, not the German government or in an
its
even tone. Not so Andrzej Warminski,
complained that the reaction to the de
of "anti-intellectual hysteria" and to read the rest
energy of the German
articles "occasionally praise the
'renewal' and the tradition of
of
Man
a "frenzy
you
are stupid
enough
a
Man
de
revelations
of hatred."
to
.
.
who
diehard,
was evidence
One had
only
was an inadvertent
judge [de Man]," War-
minski wrote in one characteristic passage, "you judge for that judgment
wrote
policies." Culler
his diatribe to realize that this
self-description. "If
217
at
your
peril,
.judges only you." According to Warminski, the
"academic journalists" on the case displayed "a dismaying ignorance," perpetrated "stupidities," and were "shrill, strident, violent, (male)
"What," he sputtered, "could make so many of crawl out from under the rocks of their pathologies?"
hysterical."
these
creatures
In
this,
Jeffrey
Nazism"
as
Mehlman thought he could detect "the 'relativization' of "an item on the agenda of American 'deconstruction.' " He
could already hear the preamble. As .
.
.
That
all
so
is:
Mehlman put
it,
"So he was
a
Nazi
what!"
The seemingly orchestrated blame-the-media strategy made one wonder about the deconstructionists, who are supposed to be so alert to the ways and means of "mediated" expression. Could they have so fundamentally misunderstood the nature of literary journalism
as to
expect reporters to ignore, and writers to play down, a potentially fruitful
academic controversy
—
fruitful because
may
it
help to clarify
the larger conflicts and crises in the academic enterprise? Deconstruction had cultivated controversy and prospered
generated.
Did
away now
that a
provoke
noted professor to
a
its
exponents really expect the press to turn
major scandal had erupted?
impulse in deconstruction or
no choice but
air his
its
de
If the
Man
its
it
gaze
revelations
misgivings about the "nihilistic"
"anti-historical" bias, the journalist has
to present the quotation if he
the debate and the intensity tionists,
from the publicity
is
to
convey the terms of
of the feelings aroused. The deconstruc-
challenging the use of such quotations, retreated to a position
of mystification. They, and they alone, were qualified to discuss the matter;
all
others,
keep out.
There were doubtless inaccuracies
Man
aflfair;
in
journalism there always
in the early arc.
And
coverage of the de
deconstruction
is
a
notoriously difficult concept to define in a column inch. But the essential facts
were given
straight,
and the immediacy of thejournalis-
SIGNS
218
commendable
response was
tic
—
TIMES
THE
OF
meant
it
striving to
make
those of us
and were
affair
recondite matters intelligible to a wide audience.
Moreover, journalistic accounts of the
Even
had very
that the reporters
quickly grasped the disturbing implications of the
who
case
were
from one-sided.
far
frankly expressed our suspicion of deconstruc-
tion took pains to present the other side. Finally, deconstruction itself
did not lack for advocates in the press.
of journalists
of de
that such defenders
Jonathan Culler wrote their
was, after
It
Man
articles for the
in the guise
all,
as J. Hillis
Miller and
Times Literary Supplement
and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Yet these writers sweepingly condemned "journalism" and "journalists" as if they and their allies
—
were not subsumed under the
rubric.
on
In the ferocity of the deconstructionist attack
was evidently an element of displacement. academic faction
—
the retrograde professors
was
It
media" functioned
Miller's eyes, the "mass
as
who
the press, there
as
had
it
—
decon-
in for
But
struction in particular and critical theory in general.
condemnation of the
in J. Hillis
if,
an extension of an
Miller's
—
you deconstructed it a secjournalism, you could implicitly absolve
press revealed
if
ond agenda. If you vilified de Man: not he, but journalism, stood trial Language speaks us that old argument. And
—
for the if
Le Soir
making
articles.
argument
that
under these circumstances implied a moral equivalence between what
Man
de
wrote during the Nazi years and what journalists
in
1988
wrote about de Man, that seems to have been Miller's point.
Above everything journalistic
the deconstructionists objected to the
mquiry into deconstruction
that "the trial
but his
else,
—and
itself
the nnplication
of Paul de Man" would examine not only
ideas, in the
his
become
the real focus
of the polemic generated by the dc
but
difficult to sec
how
it is
mathematician
of
we
it
could have gone otherwise.
Man If
we may
alter
affair,
a brilHant
revealed to have behaved disgracefully in a
historical crisis,
but his
is
behavior
days of Le Soir and since. Deconstruction did
moment
our opinion of the man's character
will readily agree that the
new knowledge
has
no bearing on
mathematical formulas. But for a thinker whose lifework had to
do with language and
deconstruction stressed the
— and
whose hard-core brand of surely there was "indeterminacy" of texts
literature
—
some relation between the texts he was intent on forgetting and the texts in his
which he campaigned
to forget the "author," his "ideas," and
conscious "meaning." Deconstruction had long given people pause
SCANDAL
A because
dimension
in literature.
disclosures. It
model
of man
is
Man
subject," de
wrote
of the de
to discern an oblique attempt at
some of de Man's flamboyant
from
a linguistic
of nature and independently of the
in Allegories
of Reading.
follows from
It
are neither natural nor ethical nor theological, "since language as a
Man
concluded, political activity
man rather than an opportunity." The appeal of man with de Man's past needs no belaboring.
for
In the concluding chapter at
is
not
transcendental principle but as the possibility of contin-
gent error." Hence, de
a
this
Man's words, "society and government"
radical assertion that, in de
conceived
"The
declarations.
structured like and derived
that exists independently
more
the
all
intelligible, in the light
was even possible
self-justification in
political destiny
These omissions seemed
more
disquieting, and perhaps the
Man
219
makes no provision for moral action and dismisses the
it
historical
ACADEME
IN
is
"a burden
this position to
oi Allegories ofReading, de
Man
treated
considerable length and in great detail an episode in Rousseau's
Confessions
—
which Rousseau
the episode in
confesses that he stole a
ribbon and falsely accused an innocent servant
of the deed. Re-
girl
viewing Allegories of Reading for the New York Review of Books in 1980, Denis Donoghue dwelled on this crucial chapter. De Man dis-
Donoghue pointed out, as though both Rousseau's confession were the work of a "text-machine" rather
cussed the incident, lie
and
his later
than of an individual bearing deeds.
The key
quoted often
of
guilt. "It
in accounts IS
some
responsibility for his
sentences in Allegories of Reading
of the de
—
—
they
words and
would be
Man case addressed the question Man wrote, "to face up to any
always possible," de
experience (to excuse any guilt), because the experience always exists
simultaneously
as fictional
discourse and as empirical event and
never possible to decide which one of the two possibilities one.
The
indecision
makes
because, as a fiction,
it
it
from the
constraints
comment was
guilty, the decision has
been painfully easy.
tion."
And
possibilities
is
precise: "If
To
of
guilt
you've ever
a clear instance
self,
own
experience, accusing himself, justifying him-
and so forth.
De Man
and felt
of self-mystifica-
further:
his
is
remain suspended
Readers of the Confessions think they hear someone talking about
it
the right
possible to excuse the bleakest of crimes
escapes
innocence." Donoghue's
between de Man's two
is
can't bear to hear that voice,
220
SIGNS
TIMES
THE
OF
because he doesn't want to hear any voice: he wants to see a
machine working without human intervention. His appH-
model
cation of a Hnguistic it
were enforced
would
to
all
situations
he proposes,
in practice as rigorously as
commonly
dismiss the questions
rality, ethics, politics,
pedantic. If
is
and psychology, and
treat
it
mo-
considered in
them
as
purely linguistic functions.
There, in a nutshell, was the problem. Given what
de Man's tic"
past, doesn't his
of
but remarkably self-serving? Doesn't his reading of Rousseau seem
A
to exalt evasiveness into a philosophical ideal?
amusement
student recalled the professor's
Confessions, a phrase he regarded as is
we now know
theory of language seem not simply "pedan-
a contradiction in terms,
why
oxymoronic.
If "true confessions"
trouble yourself to confess? If
why draw
the constraints of guilt and innocence,"
the guilty thing
you once
did?
You
it
it
is
escapes
attention to
have already reduced empirical
events to the status of fictional discourse
you from
True
title
possible "to excuse the bleakest of crimes because, as a fiction,
from
Man
former de
magazine
at the
—and
thus your theory spares
the obligation to confront your guilt. You didn't confess
you have secrets you'd rather keep, this is an extremely convenient view to hold. Instead of taking the blame for the indefensible things you said, you put the blame on language. Instead of stepping into an unwelcome spotlight, you slip off into a linguistic night in which all cats are gray. In an essay published in 1966, dc Man discussed "The Literature specifically the nihilistic impulse in the German literary of Nihilism"
because
it
would have been
too easy to do so! If
—
tradition
Man
—and brought up
the question of
its
Man now
wrote, "that the Nazi
in a venerable its
and mature
"No
it
tradition.
It
was,
played on the most primitive mass
shortsighted
economic
selves underprivileged.
interests
writers and intellectuals and ranks."
own
With what experience
of
The Nazis
if
Le
Soir,
manner in well as on the
effective
instincts, as
little
were not eager
itself
anything, notable for
social classes that considered
received
cool confidence de at
one could claim,"
movement somehow rooted
profound anti-intcllectualism and the crude but
which
his
Dc
used the occasion to advance a thesis diametrically opposite to
the one that steered his pen in 1941 and 1942.
dc
relation to Nazism.
them-
support from
German
them
in their
to enlist
Man makes
his case
— though
publicizing the cultural pretensions of
— SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
IN
who
Nazi Germany and reviewing German writers regime,
De Man of the
221
supported the
evidence to the contrary. In "The Literature of Nihihsm,"
is
m
goes on to argue that Hitler triumphed
intellectual tradition
There was trahison
Germany
"in spite
of the country, rather than because of
des clercs [betrayal
by the
it.
intellectuals] to the precise
extent that literary thought and political action had lost contact with
each other.
The problem
is
not that a philosophical tradition could be
wrong but that it could have counted for so needed. The responsibility rests not with the so
manner
in
which
it
ity
of
De Man's comments on
trahison des clercs
of those
cultural basis for
Nazism
tradition? If tradition,
logical
who
sought
in the
—
de
as
German
what they perpetrated was
was the
this
was most
is
primarily a
the moral responsibil-
seem disingenuous to an extreme.
intellectuals
it
tradition but with the
was used or neglected, and
sociological problem."
when
little
Man
literary
What did
—
about the
to locate a
and philosophical
a misrepresentation
of that
responsibility for this distortion "primarily a socio-
problem"? Precisely what was one to think of writers
who
took
Nazism and culture could go hand in hand? Did only "sociology" bear responsibility for their words and deeds? The knowledge we now have of de Man's early career does more than cast doubt on such passages as these from de Man's later writing. They reveal him to be the opposite of disinterested and impersonal the very values for which de Man was most esteemed.
pains to
palm off the view
that
—
In a deeply personal sense, such writing seems dishonest.
De Man
published "The Literature of Nihilism" just before he
entered his deconstructionist phase.
The damage done by the Le Soir was far more damaging. The
disclosures to his subsequent writings
view
that substitutes a "text-machine" for
wars and revolutions
as
humanity and
"texts" would minimize
—
identifies
or even eliminate
some responsibility for their actions. In theory a man can escape "from the constraints of guilt and innocence." Moral judgments give way to the exigencies of the notion that people exercise free will and bear
a superior skepticism.
ments. History
itself
"Empirical events" are merely linguistic predicais
only a text to be reduced,
analysis, to a self-contradictory impasse.
to begin with, are writer's duplicity
—
in the
deconstructive
These propositions, debatable
weakened considerably by our awareness of the the fact that he
knew more
than he ever
and that he himself had everything to gain by applying to the blackboard
of history.
a
let
on,
wet sponge
SIGNS
222
As the de
TIMES
THE
OF
Man scandal developed in
Mehlman found
1988, Jeffrey
himself quoted frequently by journalists. Mehlman's credentials critical theorist
into English.
were impeccable; he had himself
as a
translated Derrida
But by the mid-1980s Mehlman had begun
to air his
misgivings about the political drift of deconstruction. In 1986 Mehl-
—who had an France —
man
book about anti-Semitism
previously published a
cited
which
instance in
who
confer "amnesty" on a writer cally in the
had compromised himself
old dilemma
could deconstruct "Resistance
Mehlman's use of
as
politi-
in the journal Representa-
—
between the two,"
a certain undecidability
tion."
Derridean analysis seemed to
Second World War. In an essay
Mehlman spoke of "the
tions,
a
in
resistance, collaboration,
as
by implication, you
if,
always already a dream of Collaborain the
deconstruct
following sentence was
Mehlman
deliberately provocative: Ezra Pound,
noted, "wrote a
mad-
deningly wrong-headed y^^r^ow and/or Mussolini, an attempt to neutralize
—
if
not deconstruct
democracy and the
HERE, fascist
the opposition between the father of
NOW in the
('The heritage of Jefferson
Italian peninsula at the
Jacques Derrida's book first
Pound was one oi "the
his readers that
...
is
beginning of the second
decennio, not in Massachusetts or Delaware')."
minded "a
—
fascist leader
Of Grammatology, where
Mehlman
re-
tutelary figures" of
he
is
singled out for
break with the deepest Western tradition."
When
dc Man's wartime journalism surfaced,
struck
it
Mchhnan
with some force that "no fewer than three of the most stcrhng careers flanking deconstruction
(that
is,
Derrida's
own
career)
were pro-
foundly compromised by an engagement with fascism." Mehlman had in
mind, besides de Man, Heidegger
Blanchot
in France.
Focusing on the
out an ingenious analogy
—
or point of continuity
early journalism and his later writing.
tion teaches
one
resistance,
dcconstructivc writings. so innocent as
—between
Mehlman knew
dc Man's
that deconstruc-
Geoffrey Hartman's words, "there are no dead
that, in
metaphors." The word
was not
Germany and the critic Maurice word resistance, Mehlman spun
in
for example, crops
What Mehlman it
between collaborators and
looked
—
not
resistants in
up frequently
in
word mind the war
suggested was that the
if
you kept
in
France and Belgium during the
Second World War. Might the current
conflict
between the avatars
SCANDAL
A
of deconstruction and those
ACADEME
IN
who
be seen
resist it
223
as a
redrawing of the
old combat lines?
De Man of that
essay
had described "The Resistance to Theory"
title in
1982.
famous
in his
But the phrase had already been mtroduced
by Geoffrey Hartman in his 1980 book Criticism in the Wilderness, which advocates the cause of critical theory. "The resistance to theory in Anglo-American criticism," Hartman wrote, "goes together with imported
a resistance to
from non-English countries or from
ideas,
other fields of inquiry." Here resistance
narrow-mindedness, insularity. There logical edge to the
made
is
is
identified
both
a military
word, with an emphasis on the
intellectually popular
by Freud,
with xenophobia,
and a psycho-
latter:
the notion,
that the subject's "resistance" to
or to a specific conclusion to which the analysis points,
analysis,
confirms the significance and possibly the validity of what Resistance confirms the diagnosis
of
a kind
fail-safe
it
British critic Christopher
tion
who it
of logic that makes for
a species
,
fine;
and
if
you
disagree, that's fine,
means you're merely trying to dodge an undesirable
The fling
resisted.
argument. If you agree with the deconstructive
position (or the psychoanalyst) too, for
—
is
truth.
Ricks was one opponent of deconstruc-
did not hesitate to pick up the "resistance" metaphor and
back
at the deconstructionists.
in 1985, "resistance to
what seem
Ricks recommended, he wrote
some of
to
us,
or at any rate to me,
the inordinate and unspecific claims of theory."
What was
needed.
Ricks argues, went beyond questions of "professional self-esteem" and "territorial imperatives."
What was
needed was resistance
unwanted invader or occupying
defiance of an
—
that
is,
force.
According to Jeffrey Mehlman, the belated discovery of de Man's
wartime journalism put
a sinister
fraught with significance as in general
a
new
spin
on
this
loaded word,
already was in the debate over "theory"
it
and deconstruction
con game might be going on
in particular.
—
Mehlman
suspected that
that the deconstructive
odd coincidence earlier
career
and the
— Mehlman later
calls
writings"
by writing against
—
it
in
the
'deconstruction'
that de
a "resistance"
Man
began and ended
movement? "For
1940's and his writings in
among
it
an
"an odd continuity between the
writings in French on behalf of the Nazi 'revolution'
Walloons
may
agenda
include the whitewashing of French collaborationism. Wasn't
in
both
among
his his
the
English on behalf of
the Americans in the 1970's, the idiosyncratic
— SIGNS
224
two endeavors, each
discursive feature binding the
movement from
a radical cultural
regarding the
abilities
American academia
TIMES
THE
OF
abroad,
is
of his broader audience
in the 1970's) to
a
in furtherance
of
pronounced pessimism
(the
French in the 1940's,
muster the wherewithal needed
demands each movement was putting on them." For 1941 and 1942, Mehlman argues, "a deluded resistance to
to respond to the
de
Man
in
from abroad was the vice of the French;
the salutary revolution
in
1982, ^resistance' (to theory) was an American shortcoming in the face
of a ^revolution' coming from France." In 1941 de of and for
a Belgian elite, the French-speaking
Man
had written
Walloons,
who were
de Man's words) "more attuned to the desired revolution" than
(in
their counterparts in France. Perhaps,
wrote Mehlman, "the Yale
graduate students were cast in the role of the Walloons of the 1970's."
Of all affair,
on deconstruction occasioned by Mehlman's was the most bitterly resented.
the de
the attacks
surely
was proposing an analogy
—
Man
In effect, he
nowhere else between Nazism then and deconstruction now: both were "revolutionary," imported "from abroad," proud of their "ruthlessness," and determined to overcome any native "resistance" in their path. Mehlin Paul
de Man's mind,
if
man's was a singular argument. For most of the other case
own
plaintiffs in the
of Paul de Man, deconstruction was troublesome enough on
—
it
was
scarcely necessary to develop parallels
struction and fascism,
its
between decon-
beyond the broad but important point
that
deconstruction provides no safeguard against nihilism and no basis for
an ethical critique of either fascism or Nazism. This L.
is
how
Charles
Griswold of Howard University put the argument:
Is
there anything in Deconstruction that could serve as a
basis for repudiating (and so
of)
Nazism? Grant for
moment
a
logically entail Nazism,
providing an ethical critique
and
that the theory does not
that lots
of perfectly respect-
able persons have taken a shine to the theory.
Does the
theory provide a basis for criticism o( that sort o( political
program?
I
doubt that
theoretically
it
docs, and this because
unintelligible
"good" and "evil"
.
.
.
us to utter the sentence cal justification;
when
De
basic
moral
it
terms
renders
such
as
Man's theory does not permit
"Nazism
pressed,
is
evil" with any theoreti-
we could
only say
the sensibility of one's empirical state at the
that,
given
moment
the
— SCANDAL
A
Statement was uttered,
may
as the case
be).
Is
ACADEME
IN
it is felt
that
Nazism
225
evil (or
is
good,
not an account to that effect morally
suspect?
Mehlman's cause
was, in contrast to Griswold's
it
tional;
it
more measured
tone, so sensa-
was, besides, a notable example of deconstructive logic
Mehlman's
word
"resistance" theory compelled interest not only be-
—only
disclosures
whole
argument
on
hinges
etymology
the
When
here turned against deconstruction.
were new, Mehlman told
a telephone interview.
I
wanted
I
a version
to test
Man
always been sympathetic to de shaken that sympathy.
me
it
of
the de
a
Man
of his theory during
out on a
critic
—though developments
who had may have
asked Geoffrey Hartman, famous for his jeux
ance in
comment on the semantic link between the French ResistWorld War II and the "Resistance to Theory" forty years
later. It
was worth
that this
was
de mots, to
In his
a
it
to hear
Hartman
prime example of the
own
article
on the de
say,
sort
Man
without
a trace
of irony,
of glib wordplay he deplores.
Hartman mounted defense of the later de Man.
disclosures,
the shrewdest and most nearly persuasive Having presented with unblinkered eye the disagreeable facts about his deceased friend's past, Hartman made the case for a complete rupture
between the de
Man
of the
fascist
period and the de
Man
oi Blindness
and Insight and Allegories of Reading. Despite his "shock" at learning of de Man's collaborationist activity, Hartman strove to be dispassionate .
.
— and .
to discourage the notion that de
and instead work[ed] out
Man
his totalitarian
"avoid [ed] confession
temptation in a purely
mtcllectual and impersonal manner." Against this view,
gued
that deconstruction as de
Man
had practiced
it
Hartman
ar-
was implicitly "a
kind of repudiation" of his wartime errors. According to Hartman, de
Man's sions
refusal to analyze himself
of Rousseau
would
live
with
— amounted
—
to write in the
mode of the
Confes-
to a refusal to exonerate himself; he
his guilt instead
oi making excuses and pleading for
The biographical facts that had lately come to light do, Hartman conceded, embed themselves in our consciousness but with the result that de Man's later work "appears more and more as a deepening reflection on the rhetoric of totalitarianism." Indeed, Hartman concluded, de Man's mature work "looks like a belated, but still forgiveness.
—
powerful, act oi conscience." I
have described Hartman's
line
of argument
as the
most nearly
SIGNS
226
persuasive of it
founders
those that were put
all
is
honesty" could
survive the tangible evidence of his evasions
De Man's
the
is
been
—
but only
you
if
accept the idea that
neither nihilistic nor cynical," and only if
most benign of
acknowledge
can be seen to constitute
later writings
a belated "act of conscience"
"deconstruction
his past.
on de Man's
possible constructions
all
You would
confession to confess.
of Paul de
Man
suspicious
And
that
is
had
of the rhetoric of
has forever demythologized. For those
to
Man
to mythologize a figure that the case
view of human nature
wartime journalism
you put
failure to
have to suppose that de
too fastidious to apologize, too skeptical
more
of de Man. Where
in defense
—
somehow
and equivocations.
up
on the assumption that de Man was writing good faith that his reputation for "intellectual
in relying
in his later years in
TIMES
THE
OF
—
those
who
who
have a
attribute de
opportunism rather than ideology
—
Man's
simpler
explanations for de Man's silence suggest themselves. Fear, for example
—
the fear of having his
interest. else,
De Man's
silence
name
about
infamy
cast in
—and
cool
self-
seems to be, above everything
his past
man
expedient and self-protective, the characteristic behavior of a
who would
sooner jettison a family and a history than forfeit
second chance
at success; for his
American years presented de
Man
his
with
Olym-
the chance to succeed precisely in establishing for himself the
pian voice of authority to which he had already aspired in his wartime journalism. Richard Klein, a self-described "Derridean"
mapped out before,
the oedipal relation
now weighed
DeManology."
in
between de
Man
work
and dangerous" for the
of Klein's endnotes was sober enough to gain
come
by keeping
his uncle years
was charged with exaggeration;
Klein's point being that the devil's difficult
had
with "a contribution to the future science of
Klein's piece
dedicated to trying out the supposition that de
most
and
who
silent
about
to light in 1948, they
is
the devil,
contend with. But one
Man
explaining what de
his past.
Had
the articles in
Man
States
a visa, Klein noted.
recalled a recent Federal appellate decision to strip another
had
Le Soir
might have deterred the United
Immigration Service from granting de
was
"the most interesting, the
critic to
in
Man was
it
He
former Yale
professor of his American citizenship. Vladimir Sokolov,
who
had
taught Russian literature at Yale from 1959 to 1976, had once written
some highly compromising wrote
articles
articles.
only to oppose
At
his
Communism
1986
trial
and make
he said "that he a living
and that
anti-Semitic slurs were ordered inserted by his Nazi censors."
Not
a
1
SCANDAL
A
very convincing defense,
Man might
have
he was
alive.
still
On
obliged to
to argue that de
intellectuals
Man was
but utterly broke with his
aimed
in fact
"It
a striking feature
many
intellectuals
whose
at
in
debate, the smart
among European
and that
he implic-
later
his latest writings
of European history between the wars that so
were drawn to
—
political
De Man's
—proved
Italy
and Spain;
totalitarian,"
Jonathan
went on, "bears criticism, focused on imagand still less to the style of
early journalism, Culler
resemblance to the sort of analytical
he was to develop in the 1950s,
rhetorical readings that he
and theoretical programs
Germany,
fascism in
Russia and elsewhere
Culler observed.
ery, that
Man
not unusual
fascist past,
when
the facts surfaced
dismantling the "aesthetic ideology" of fascism.
actual instantiations
communism little
mount had
of the 1930s, that he was young then, that
were is
227
resembled the one that an attorney for de
it
the prodeconstruction side of the de
move was itly
felt
ACADEME
IN
was
to develop in the 1970s in contact with
Jacques Derrida and deconstruction." This contention, however,
is
you take into account the form and structure of de Man's arguments, some points of resemblance do emerge. Alice Yaeger Kaplan, who had studied with de Man at Yale in the midhighly debatable;
if
Man I had as a teacher when I read the texts " in Le Soir, she wrote. "It wasn't because of anything he said, it was 1970s, "recognized the de
his strategies, his process
frontier
of
—
so familiar
—
that
I
recognized across the
of 1976 and 1940. The signals were the same: the
command
knowledge he was giving away, wasn't what was really important. Then a second para-
literary history, the vast cultural
because that
graph, with a quotation and
same emphasis on for the endings
its
logical inconsistency revealed.
rigor, the disdain for vulgarity, indulgence.
—and
it's
a big exception
the deconstructive finale that
I
am
used
—where, to,
de
instead
Man
The
Except
of the
abyss,
ends with a kind
of proto-fascist community building statement, a slogan." Whatever her sense of the continuities, Kaplan remained convinced that de
—
Man
"worked against his early work" though he was "the same man" and at hand were "the same emotional structures in 1942 and 1981." Like Hartman and Culler, Barbara Johnson argues that deconstruction as de Man practiced it was an implicit repudiation of totalitarianism. "Whatever Paul de Man is doing in these early essays, it is certainly not deconstruction," is
precisely the dismantling
Johnson
writes. "Indeed, deconstruction
of these notions of evolutionary continu-
228
ity, totalization,
SIGNS
organicism, and ^proper' traditions." For Johnson, the
vihfication of deconstruction
say that deconstruction
thought' (Newsweek) to the notion
TIMES
THE
OF
is
is
is
based on a severe misconception.
^hostile to the
like saying that
of substances," she
writes.
"To
very principles of Western
quantum mechanics
It is
a telling choice
is
hostile
of analogy
but an unconvincing one. For deconstruction, unlike quantum mechanics,
is
not a science; deconstruction's claims to
what many of its opponents
are precisely
of
spirit
dispute.
scientific validity
Johnson discerns the
analysis, rather than hostility, in the deconstructive project.
But what then
is
one to make of her assertion that "no one could have
been a more enthusiastic upholder of the integrity of Western thought than the Paul de
Man
of 1940^2"? The statement seems to identify
"the integrity of Western thought" with a vision of
ony
in
Europe.
And
that
is
of Western
a bleaker understanding
thought than most of us would
credit.
But arguably the bleakest of the responses were occasioned not by an excess of zeal
tions
German hegem-
to the de
—
Man
revela-
for or against decon-
Man, or what de Man represented at any particular period of his life but by its absence. There were those who, with a kind of determined neutrality, held that de Man's life and his work were two separate categories and that there was little sense in locating points of either continuity or discontinuity between the young journalist and the middle-aged Yale eminence. The philosopher Richard struction, or de
—
Rorty, addressing himself to the controversy that had erupted over Victor
Farias's
that learning about a philosopher's his
in Paris
Heide^^er and Nazism, argued against "the notion
moral character helps one evaluate
philosophy." Yes, wrote Rorty, Heidegger "fought Hkc a tiger to
become Socialist
that a as a
the official philosopher, the intellectual leader, of the National
movement."
Still,
Rorty
insisted,
it is
misguided to suppose
philosopher's moral indecency has any bearing on
thinker or on the substance of his thought. Here
Rorty 's argument, with
Many
is
importance
the heart of
pointed reference to Paul dc Man:
people think that there
fascistic
is
something
intrinsically
about the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and
are suspicious
much
its
his
of Derrida and Foucault because they owe so
to these earlier figures.
On
this
view, fascism
is
as-
sociated with "irrationalism," and a decent democratic out-
look with "confidence
in reason." Aristotle's casual accept-
SCANDAL
A
ance of slavery to his
ACADEME
IN
and proper
as natural
is
229
taken to be central
moral outlook; Heidegger's blood-and-soil rhetoric
taken to be central to his "history of Being"; Nietzsche's
is
swaggering
elitist
is
taken
as central to his ethic
of
self-
is condemned on the basis of the young Paul de Man's opportunistic anti-Semitism.
creation; "deconstruction"
Such attempts to simplify the thought of original thinkers
by reducing them
should be avoided, just
Hemingway of Pound
as
moral or
to
we
as
political attitudes
should avoid thinking of
simply a bully, of Proust
as
simply a
simply a lunatic, of Kipling
as
as
sissy,
simply an
imperialist.
This
witty, but the writer's pungent phrasing and reasonable tone
is
shouldn't blind us to his misrepresentation of the de
For
in truth, deconstruction
Man
controversy.
stood accused not "on the basis of the
young Paul de Man's opportunistic anti-Semitism" but by Man's embrace of fascism,
factors including de
his
a host
of
subsequent silence,
the problematic relation of that guilty silence to his theories about
and speech, and the denial campaign undertaken
guilt
defense by his confederates. For
its critics,
in
de Man's
deconstruction had always
seemed, for reasons vague or precise, to be an unwholesome doctrine.
The
belated de
renewed
it.
Man
As the
disclosures did not initiate the accusation; they
case
of Paul de
Man
turned into the case against
deconstruction, the unsavory biographical details played a part but
were never meant
to bear the brunt
Leave aside the accuracy or
of the charge.
fairness
ments and you fmd something disturbing IS
only partly camouflaged by
his flip characterizations
Proust, Pound, and Kiplmg. For while
of Hemingway
to think sissy,"
of Pound
as
as
of Rorty's summary in his logic,
"simply
it
would
a bully,"
state-
something that
of Hemingway,
certainly be a mistake
of Proust
as
"simply a lunatic," and so forth, that
"simply is
a
largely
because these are caricatures, and caricatures rarely teach us anything. If,
however, you avoid hyperbole and
you can
get to a
more
to our understanding
something more exact,
of Hemingway's
literary
it is
relevant
achievement that he
embody a masculine ideal; you can hardly overlook this when you read Men Without Women or Death in the AfterAnd it can hardly be denied that homosexual aestheticism ac-
strove to
obsession noon.
try for
plausible set of propositions. Surely
SIGNS
230
TIMES
THE
OF
counts for some of the distinctive energy of Proust's masterwork.
arguable that Pound's Cantos resemble the product of a
at least
is
deranged
sensibility
—and
that their failure to cohere
literary defect but a reflection it is
It
difficult to
is
not purely a
of the author's mental confusion. And
imagine a serious study of Kipling that would not take
into account his relation to British high imperialism, his sense of the
"white man's burden." Naturally the writer's irrelevant to his
But
if
itself.
you
works
if
you reduce biography
Rather than maintain that his thinking,
a philosopher's
wouldn't
it
sense to suppose
must title
interact in
numerous complex and
a literary
significant
himself too seriously.
He had
a
some given
was simply the working-out of
a set
What Rorty
"the assumption that anybody
religious or philosophical doctrine
cratic society"
—
and
scientific, cultural,
great philosopher had formulated."
— fundamentalism"
He
took
deluded sense of the power of philoso-
phy: "Heidegger thought that the a society
ways?
of Rorty's piece was "Taking Philosophy Seriously."
That, according to Rorty, was a mistake Heidegger made.
of
gossip.
moral character has
make more
and thought of a philosopher, a writer, or
that the life
The
of
to the level
respect the biographer's art, a better alternative presents
no bearing on theorist
will be seen as
life
is
political life
of ideas that some calls
"philosophical
who
disagrees with
a
danger to demo-
follows from such overseriousness. This
is
the "anti-
democratic" element that Rorty finds in "Christianity, or Islam, or Platonism, or Marxism, or Heideggerianism, or 'deconstruction.' " But there
is
a
nagging ambiguity
in
Rorty's injunction against "taking
philosophy seriously." In one sense he fanatics or cultists,
philosopher's
life
and
who
and work
is
warning us against becoming
can disagree with that? In keeping a
in separate categories,
however,
isn't it
Rorty who risks diminishing the importance of philosophy? In Rorty's view the thought of an original philosopher is "the result of some neural kink that occurs independently of other kinks." When such an argument is made by a professor of philosophy, it has a peculiarly disconcerting effect. if
it
Rorty supposes
as irrelevant to his
his physics.
no
should students study philosophy
has a merely clinical interest and does not address the
lead their lives? is
Why
But
that
philosophy is
that a philosopher's
as Einstein's character
a false analogy. Einstein's
relation to his physics because physics
philosopher's doctrine, by contrast,
may
is
way
people
moral character is
irrelevant to
moral character has
not moral philosophy.
A
very well touch on politics
SCANDAL
A and morality
—and
Rorty himself necessarily
all,
of Heidegger's Nazi involvement
The view his life has its insists that
—
his strictures
takes account
on the "anti-demo-
of Heideggerianism would otherwise lack
no
that sees
relation
between
full force.
a philosopher's
work and
counterpart, perhaps, in the deconstructive view that
books have no relation to
characters in
dissociation
231
then surely his actual historical behavior becomes
admissible evidence. After
cratic" element
ACADEME
IN
of an author from
his
works,
it is,
us.
And from
the
unhappily, a short but
breathtaking leap to disavow the making of any moral judgments
Man
whatsoever. Covering the de
affair for
the
New
York Times
Magazine, James Atlas documented the moral disasters of de Man's
pre-American and
life.
He
had been. Atlas demonstrated, a
a dishonest businessman, a
abandoned
his
liar,
a bigamist,
man who had bankrupted his father and when it came to deconstruction and when it came to de Man's wartime
wife and children. But
Atlas shrugged his shoulders,
writing he took refuge in an overwhelming question: "As for what
how can any of us know what we would have done under those same circumstances? De Man was in his early 20's when he wrote for Le Soir, an erratic young man capable of suggesting that Jews were a ^pollutant' and of sheltering them in his own home." The sentiment he did,
was disheartening, because
it
betokened a lack of confidence
needed to judge people
done otherwise was
to
to endorse a line
to justify an eyes-shut attitude
seemed
of reasoning that could be used
toward
all
manner of wickedness.
It
many who resisted Hitler rather than the many who did not do as Paul de Man
than fair to the
less
succumb
our
summon up the moral imagination and events. To ask who among us would have
examine history and
ability to
in
to mass hysteria
—
had done.
lies
The notion that with mankind in
beings
—
our age.
"there
is
a Hitler in each
of us"
—
that the fault
the abstract rather than with particular
human
has long been a fashionable response to the moral disasters of
It is
a
convenient response and an antihistorical one, enabling
the timorous to shirk the task of judging any individual instance
what
is
held to be, after
beating that
because
it is
all,
The ostentatious breast judgment is intolerable
a global condition.
would preclude a sin against
of
the passing of
memory
—
it
would
eradicate the differences,
actual and historical,
between torturers and victims, courageous
zens and craven ones.
The appropriate
citi-
standard by which to judge the
bystanders and witnesses of Nazi Europe
is
not the antihero of fiction
SIGNS
232
but the authentic heroes of the period, the Resistance
who
risked their
Denmark,
after
Himmler gave
own
TIMES
THE
OF
men and women of
the
Hves to save the hves of others. In
the orders for deportations to begin,
over sixty-five hundred of that nation's seven thousand Jews were
smuggled
safely to
ground but
Sweden, thanks not only to the Danish under-
to hundreds
of ordinary
citizens.
Monica de Wichfeld,
the
British-born wife of a Danish aristocrat, became a national heroine for
her tion in
work
—
in the Resistance, saving
for
Jews and sabotaging the occupa-
which the Nazis condemned her
Belgium, though
far less effective,
Joseph-Ernst Cardinal van
had
Roey spoke
its
to death.
own
The
Resistance
heroes and heroines.
defiantly against the Nazis,
lending the authority of his office to the Resistance. People from
and professions worked to save Jewish children from the
classes
of night and fog
that awaited
them
at the
all
fate
other end of the deportation
A
1980 documentary entitled As If It Were Yesterday presents interviews with Belgians who had, at risk to themselves, given shelter trains.
One
to Jews.
interview
is
woman who
with the Belgian
hid the
filmmaker's parents. These are some of the people, the places, and the
deeds that should be kept in
weighed It
mind when
the case of Paul de
Man
is
in the balance.
sometimes seemed that every
provoked
at least
last article
one counterarticle, along with
letters to the editor.
The
on the de a satchel
Man
affair
of indignant
reaction to Atlas's Times magazine piece was
The poet Louis Simpson fired off a letter in protest. "When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I remember hearing a swift.
woman
'We
say,
are
fatuous remark, but that
we
are
all
all guilty,'
it
was not
"
Simpson wrote.
as despicable as
Mr.
"It struck
me
as a
Atlas's suggestion
potentially cowards and collaborators."
At the same
time, Walter Kcndrick of the Voice Literary Supplement took Atlas to task for writing a
"worm's-eyc biography of de
Man
that answers all
none of the important ones." Kcndrick maintained that the one "reasonable, judicious voice" in the de Man hubbub was his own; he was referring to an earlier article he had written, one the trivia questions and
that J. Hillis Miller
had pronounced to be
"full
of resentment, malice
and undisguised xenophobia." In that
earlier article,
diagnosed de Man's wartime writing
as
Kcndrick had
symptomatic of
a cynical
that was also to be found in the academic careers of de Man's American followers. "De Man's work may or may not remain
opportunism
influential,"
Kendrick wrote. "In either
case, the
whole teapot tempest
— SCANDAL
A
amount
will probably
attempted to
IN
their
as
they found
guru were guilty of
it,
Manians never
merely to secure well-
The worst crime they
their proteges. is
opportunism, which
home, hardly counts
deconstruction's destined
What now
233
to nothing more, since the de
world
alter the
padded niches for themselves and and
ACADEME
crime
as a
America,
in
at all."
on journalists
stuck in Kendrick's craw was the assault
and "professor-journalists" that Derrida, Miller, and fellow travelers
make
sure everyone got the point, Kendrick signed
were mounting;
to
his article "Prof.
Walter Kendrick." "Derrida thinks
orthodox, by
dreamed
all
now
he's
advancing the
rather tiresome thesis that whatever de
those years ago (and we'll never really
know,
deconstruction soars above such petty matters, and those it
should receive merit bonuses," Kendrick argued.
though,
by
IS
rather different:
the wretches
who
He
feels
Man
did or
will we?),
who
"What
practice
he feels,
besmirched by newspapers, razzed
write for them, indignant that such scum should
presume to comment on those
who
Kensome examples of Derridean vituperation directed at Jon Wiener, the history professor who wrote the article on de Man that ran m the Nation; Wiener teaches at the University of California, Irvme, the same university where Derrida and Miller hold appointments. Taking his biggest windup, Kendrick reared back and threw: "Derrida comes perilously close to proposing a standard of professional purity on a quasi-racial model. Professor Wiener's unforgivable sin was to hide under his chaste academic robes the black-and-white star publish in Critical Inquiry
."
drick quoted
of journalism." With
this figure
of speech, Kendrick came perilously
between the persecuted Jews of Nazi Europe and American journalists today. So much for the "reasonable,
close to proposing an equivalence
judicious voice" of "Prof. Walter Kendrick." So
much
for the civility
o( professorial debate.
"In a profession said
of de
Man
full
at the
of fakeness, he was
time of his death.
real,"
Barbara Johnson
Now, however,
protegee had no trouble bringing herself to
the former
condemn de Man's war-
time journalism. In her essay on the revelations, Johnson quotes from the conclusion
Man
of "The Jews
considers "the creation
and comments: person
who
"How
—
Contemporary Literature" where de of a Jewish colony far from Europe"
in
can one avoid feeling rage and disgust at a
could write such a thing?" Johnson
resists efforts to
explain
— SIGNS
OF
THE
away what de Man had done. "The
fact that
234
been anti-Semitic in
no
trace
of
it
his personal Ufe in
in later years)
what anti-Semitism
is,"
TIMES
de Man seems not to have 1940—42 (and certainly showed
only points up a too limited notion of
she writes. "If there had not been people
who,
without any particular personal anti-Semitism, found the idea of deportation reasonable, there could have been no Holocaust." In declaring that there was a categorical break between de Man's Belgian and
American
Johnson was thus able to defend the
careers,
and
latter
excoriate the former; speaking in favor of deconstruction didn't oblige
her to
mount an apologia
Man's collaborationist writings. With
for de
Johnson one might debate the merits of deconstruction example,
thought it
it
or
is
—but with
was hard
"hostile" to
isn't
her sense of the
some
—
crucial tenets
of Western
wrong de Man had done
in
Le
Soir,
to quarrel.
There was, then, no need for deconstructionists
wagon
whether, for
to de
Man's
fallen star
—no need
to hitch their
to enlist the
methods of
deconstruction to demonstrate that de Man's wartime words meant
something other, something say.
age
less
odious, than
Such an attempt would run the
—between de Man
structionists
risk
what they appeared
to
of achieving the very link-
then and deconstruction
now
—
that the decon-
presumably wanted to avoid. Yet some of de Man's
ex-cohorts chose to
make
By
the attempt.
putting the strategies of
deconstruction at the service of explaining (or explaining away) de
Man's early "texts," the deconstructionists
new
level
lifted the
of debate and aroused the very
controversy to a
fears that they ostensibly
sought to dispel. Jacques Derrida took the lead. In the Spring 1988 issue oi Critical Inquiry,
Derrida wrote
revelations. as if
Reading
length about the meaning of the de
Man
sixty-two-page barrage of words, one
feels
at
this
one had stumbled into
a
marathon
est session ni
which bathroom
breaks arc forbidden; one's sense of reahty begms to dissolve. is
Sound of
entitled "Like the
the Sea
Deep within
Man's War." Derrida immediately makes in
mind
is
the
one
that
and only secondarily
broke out
full
essay
a Shell: Paul
clear that the
the Second
de
"war" he has
American newspapers
("in another sense")
"Whatever one may thmk of tionalist flurry
in
it
The
in
1988
World War.
the ignorance, the simplism, the sensa-
of hatred which certain American newspapers
we
will not engage in any negative evaluation " as if the overloading of Derrida asserts of the press in general,
displayed in this case,
—
A
SCANDAL
negative terms in the
first
cautious injunction in
its
lengthy labors
his
articles in
Le
Soir.
235
half of the sentence didn't override the
second part. But what was most striking
about Derrida's essay was not but
ACADEME
IN
his viUfication
at explicating
He would show
—
us
of deconstruction's
or deconstructing
how
to read de
critics
—de Man's
Man's Le Soir
he would demonstrate the deconstructive approach.
articles;
With
reference to three specific articles in
Le
Derrida
Soir,
introduces an "on the one hand ... on the other hand" set of binary
The longest of these discussions focuses, inevitably, on "The Jews in Contemporary Literature." On the one hand, de Man did write in that essay that Jews played an "important role" in "the phoney oppositions.
and disordered existence of Europe since 1920"; he did offer a stereotypical description
of the Jewish mind
(cold, detached, cerebral);
he did aver that Jewish writers "have always remained in the second rank," and he did entertain the idea of "a solution to the Jewish
problem" entailing the deportation of the Jews from Europe. Derrida
little
more than
elements of de Man's in the face
a
It
takes
page and a half to sum up these terrifying
"Will
article.
dare to say 'on the other hand'
I
of the unpardonable violence and confusion of these sen-
tences?" Derrida asks.
The answer
is
yes,
he will
—
for the next eight
pages.
On
circumstances are cited, and
And here all manner of extenuating many unjustified inferences made. Derrida
makes much of the
de
Jews de
the other
hand
.
.
fact that
.
Man
Contemporary Literature"
in
Man
praised
gave a favorable mention in "The
to a quartet of writers.
The
writers
were Gide, Kafka, Lawrence, and Hemingway.
Derrida the choice of names speaks well of de Derrida, a "curious and insolent"
list,
Man
—
it
To
was, writes
not only because Kafka was
Jewish but because these writers "represent everything that Nazism or the right
and the covert
wing revolutions would have liked to extirpate from great tradition." Could this have been, on de Man's
way of
history part, a
subverting the Nazi doctrine that he was forced to
mouth? Subsequent commentators, taking solemnly cited a reference
in
dc Man's
later
their
cue from Derrida,
works
to "double-talk, the
necessary obliqueness of any persecuted speech that cannot, at the risk
of survival, openly say what
it
In response to this species that
It
IS
means
to say."
of wishful thinking, one must concede
romantic to imagine that
a piece
coded message saying something very
of propaganda
different.
It
also
fits
is
really a
in nicely
SIGNS
236
with the deconstructive notion that
from within.
It
is
also
texts tend to sabotage themselves
wrong: the available evidence suggests
Derrida and Co. were clutching
name on de Man's
TIMES
THE
OF
of praiseworthy writers proves
list
that
For the inclusion of Kafka's
at straws.
little.
Princeton
Man, was the first list. Corngold pointed out that de Man had, in an article written a year before "The Jews in Contemporary Literature," simply borrowed his list of canonical modern masters from Aldous Huxley's Music at Night. It is difficult professor Stanley Corngold, a onetime student of de to raise the question
to attach
much
of the provenance of de Man's
significance, subversive or otherwise, to a rote sequence
of names reeled off by one Moreover,
name
—
eager to display his literary mastery.
is
Corngold observed, Huxley's
as
that
who
of Marcel Proust.
erasure. Perhaps
De Man had
list
included a
fifth
put Proust's name under
de Man's prudent omission of Proust, in an
article
emphasizing the mediocrity of French Jewish writers, was the really telling gesture.
De Man's
favorable mention of Kafka was one thing. Derrida
"The Jews in Contemporary Literature" begins with of "vulgar antisemitism." And it is true that de Man
also stresses that a rejection
criticized the
view
that, in his
words, European culture between the
wars became "degenerate and decadent" because of the influence of the Jews. For the author of "The Jews in Contemporary Literature," a question
own
and potent; rather they were
racial pollutants, pernicious
properly to be regarded
culture,
was
of substituting one form of anti-Semitism for another. The
Jews were not their
it
importance.
who
as mediocrities,
They were of little
which was healthy enough
habitually exaggerated
essential value to
European
to withstand their influence.
Were
they deported to a colony far from Europe, the loss to Western civilization article,
would be
and the context
That
negligible. in
which he
what de Man
is
says
it
is
says in the
the massive, organized
persecution of the Jews in Western Europe. But here
is
Dcrrida's
deconstructive gloss on de Man's treatment of "vulgar antisemitism":
What does
this article say? It
vulgar antisemitism. That
is
the primary, declared, and
is
underscored intention. But to is
that also to scoff^at or
This
two
latter syntactic
interpretations.
mock
indeed a matter of criticizing
scoff^ at
vulgar antisemitism,
the vulgarity of antisemitism?
modulation leaves the door open to
To condemn
vulgar antisemitism
may
SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
IN
leave one to understand that there
mitism
Man
the vulgar variety
But the phrase can
his silence.
and
this
especially if one
condemn that
makes no mention of
De Man
what he thought, was
this point: his fault
but what
tainly,
have quoted
this passage at
some length
is
careful not to
commit himself
—
to
is
vulgar, always
I
will never exclude,
One
will say at
context?
for three reasons. First, there
like a clever trial attorney,
he
to the various possibilities he holds
doesn't quite say that de Man's notorious article reduces itself
to an undecidable aporia, but he doesn't
and
antisemitism,"
to have accepted the context. Cer-
that, to accept a
is
it is
this context.
the speaker's slithering elusiveness
He
con-
does not say that either. If
a possibility
is
out.
may
the other kind,
antisemitism itscK inasmuch as
essentially vulgar. is
De
put down.
mean something
also
condemn "vulgar
he could not say so clearly in
I
is
reading can always contaminate the other in
a clandestine fashion: to
and
a distinguished antise-
is
never says such a thing, even though one
demn else,
whose name
in
237
he provides
in fact
impulses
m
its
deny
theoretical logic
—
that possibility either, that the contradictory
the article "contaminated [each] other in a clandestine
fashion." Second, there
doctrines as and
where
is
it
Derrida's blithe departure
suits
from
his
own
him. Suddenly he invokes context and
personality, categories that deconstruction has supposedly dissolved;
suddenly he considers what de he wrote if
—
a
Man
"thought"
as distinct
ploy he would ordinarily never tolerate, for
from what nothing
it is
not logocentric to suppose that a speaker's thought precedes his
words. Third, there
is
the
way
that Derrida proceeds to treat his
own
somehow proven
frankly speculative suppositions as though they were
statements of fact. In the paragraph following the one I've quoted,
Derrida repeats
—without
qualification this time
of condemning antisemitism inasmuch o{ rhetorical
fiat,
as
it is
—
that "it as
if,
a matter
by
a kind
de Man's article secretly condemns the prejudice
openly displays. Indeed, writes Derrida, "if de Man's ily
—
vulvar"
is
article
is
necessar-
contaminated by the forms of vulgar antisemitism that frame
these coincide in a literalfashion, in their vocabulary
thing that de
boring
Man
accuses,
as if his article
it
and logic, with
it,
the very
were denouncing the neigh-
articles."
In short, de Man's
presumed opposition
to "vulgar antisemitism"
SIGNS
238
TIMES
THE
OF
sufficed, for Derrida, to establish that
work for Le Soir was Never mind that the plain
de Man's
"ambiguous and sometimes anticonformist."
of the passage leads to the opposite conclusion.
"journalistic" sense
Derrida prefers a reading that would have de
of Europe, by coded message.
It is,
Man
defending the Jews
of course, irrelevant to Derrida that
would not be invented of "vulgar antisemitism" is more
the key to reading such a code
for a generation.
De Man's
plausibly read as
rejection
a conventional rhetorical strategy; a columnist frequently begins
by
considering and rejecting a point of view prior to formulating his
own.
"The Jews
In
his point
in
soon enough:
Man comes
Literature," de
"/4 solution to the Jewish
life
of the West,
superimposing
regrettable consequences." In
"on the one hand ... on the other hand" structure onto an
his
to
problem that would lead
of a Jewish colony isolated from Europe would not have, for
to the creation
the literary
Contemporary
what
that reaches such a conclusion, Derrida highlights just
article is
so
perilous about reducing authors to text-machines, and texts to revers-
The
central thrust
a defense
of European
ible binary oppositions.
rary Literature" to
is
throw the Jews
to the wolves.
of "vulgar antisemitism"
Making
a deconstructive
marginal; a
you
of "The Jews literature
in
and
The marginal element
Contempo-
a willingness is
a rejection
in favor of, say, a less philistine variety.
move you demote
the center and elevate the
repeat yourself, add an emphasis, drop a qualifier, insert
few parenthetical
digressions
—and
end you get just what you
in the
expected to find: one of those undecidable aporias that not only
Man
off the hook, just a
of reading
little,
but also
let
you
in the process. Derrida's reading
salute de
let
dc
Man's theory
of "The Jews
in
Contem-
porary Literature" thus seemed to confirm the worst fears of deconstruction's critics.
ingenuity
is
It
demonstrated what can happen when textual
used not at the service of the truth but smiply to allow
a highly idiosyncratic personality to strut stage. this
And
this
was not just another
and
fret his
text to be analyzed
touched a traumatic period of history
still
hour upon the with
a flourish;
alive in the nerve
endings of the survivors and their children.
Borrowing Derrida's logic, one could deconstruct Mein Kampf to reveal that its author was conflicted on the subject of the Jews: "On the one hand, he did regard the Jews as the enemy of everything German.
On
the other hand, he repudiated religious anti-Semitism."
For Hitler adopts in Mein
of "The Jews
in
Kampf a
Contemporary
rhetorical strategy not unlike that
Literature." Like de
Man, he begins
SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
IN
239
form of anti-Semitism; while de
by making
a critique
Man
'Vulgar anti-Semitism," Hitler dismisses "sham anti-Semi-
rejects
tism."
According to
of
a prevalent
Hitler, the Christian Social Party
Jews but went about put anti-Semitism on a
had the right
the
wrong way.
general idea in vilifying the
it
The
religious basis
party's mistake
was
to
though the condition of being Jewish could be altered with "splash of baptismal water." Jews, Hitler insisted,
of a
—
as
mere
a
were "not Germans
special religion but a people in themselves"; therefore, the solution
to the Jewish
problem had
to be racial
and biological, not
social
and
Mein Kampf is unambiguous. But a rhetorical reading could dwell on the author's critique of religious antiSemitism, which he disparaged as "superficial" and as possibly even "an expression of a certain competitive envy." Farfetched? No more so religious. Hitler's intent in
than some of the briefs filed in behalf of Paul de Derrida's apologia for de
Man
Man.
proceeded by intimation rather
than by direct argument; he spun off possibilities without committing
himself to them. But there was no denying the effect that Derrida's essay
had on de Man's admirers.
One
after
essays less subtle than Derrida's in ascribing to
another followed with
"The Jews
in
Contem-
porary Literature" a mitigating sense of complexity and ambiguity. close reading could
"prove" that de
Man was
A
writing in that essay
primarily in defense of European literature and only incidentally
lobbing grenades
at the
Jews. But you could go further.
S.
Heidi
Krueger, for example, dwelled on de Man's "irony" in "The Jews in
Contemporary
Literature."
Krueger went so
between de Man's anti-Semitic
far as to risk a
comparison
article and Jonathan Swift's
"A Modest
Proposal," that masterpiece of savage irony. She reached this stunning conclusion:
Although one can argue that the irony of "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" misfires, it is difficult, reading the article as a whole and in the context of the articles with which It appears, to read it as other than a calculated (and parodistic) fore-grounding
of the premises and applications
of "vulgar anti-Semitism" evidenced the page.
The
tone, moreover,
is
in the other essays
on
one of detached mockery
throughout the sections dealing with the Jews, and the object of the anti-Semites.
mockery Even the
clearly not the
Jews but rather the attribution of the view that the Jews
is
SIGNS
240
TIMES
THE
OF
have had disproportionate influence on "occidental'* Hterature to the Jews themselves reads, in this context,
the
less as
too familiar strategy of blaming the victim, than
all
as
tweaking the noses of the "vulgar anti-Semites," showing
them
that their
are those
own most vehemently pronounced positions
of the scapegoats they wish to expel.
Krueger's verdict:
would submit that what is wrong with "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" is not that it is, in the first inI
stance, anti-Semitic,
almost impossible to
it is
to the situation
More astounding on
but rather that
if
where
tell
we read it in isolation, it
stands with regard
of the Jews.
yet was Richard Rand's attempt to turn the tables
the charge of anti-Semitism:
In
ruminations on Paul de Man, The Nation has furnished
its
nation
this
— —with as
well
Switzerland
a
Germany, France, England and
as
very neat, a very up-to-date piece of
old-time "anti-Semitism." But the truly instructive thing
about the exercise
lies less in
the perennial retail value of
bloodlust, than in the undeniable validity of
its
and
in the visionary correctness
indeed, Paul de
Man
whelmingly Jewish
and
—
as
his
of
its
deconstruction
Jewish
as
its
insight,
charge: for are not,
somehow
over-
anyone, perhaps, in our
multi-national 198()s, can be?
One
could scarcely believe one's eyes: Paul dc
Man
had "somehow"
Jew! "That Paul de Man, biographically speaking, was not himself Jewish, is nothing to the point," Rand went on. "From the
become
a
American anti-Semitism, among other
sixteenth century onward, eties,
has been a discourse
were
a
move made
question
mark and
a
this
game, one would transcribe
double exclamation point. Paul de
have been anti-Semitic, for
Surely
of
in a chess
in fact de
Man
was the ultimate defense
reversing the
vari-
bigotry displaced. " If Rand's statement
was the
—and
Man
it
with
a
could not
real Jew in this affair!
the ultimate absurdity.
By
meanings of "Jew" and "anti-Semite," Rand was making •'^1
SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
IN
What
an application of the dcconstructive method.
black
he dramatized
who
can prove, or at
least get
himself to believe, that
white, that the four raised fmgers of a hand
is
who
that those
is
of that method to Orwellian doublethink. Happy
the eerie similarity the deconstructor
241
make
and
five,
excoriate Paul de Man's anti-Semitism reveal them-
be anti-Semites.
selves to
Man
Christopher Norris, a prominent British explainer of de
and
Derrida, employed a different denial-campaign device: obfuscation. In
Review of Books, Norris speculated about Paul de Man's probable reaction to the discovery of his wartime "texts": "Though the London
their existence
remained a
secret all those years,
Man
de
would,
have acknowledged their discovery with the attitude that
what
matter
is
how
written
is
scripta
I
think,
manent:
written and cannot be tactfully ignored, no
far his convictions
had changed
use of a conditional construction
—
in the interim." Norris's
was bizarre considering
—
that
what de
Man
did
past.
Norris proffered a benign interpretation of Hendrik de Man's
all his life
public declarations
was
precisely
welcoming
response to the catastrophe of
"was to draw up after
to "tactfully ignore" his guilty
the Nazis into
Belgium
in 1940.
"His
German occupation," Norris wrote,
a last-ditch tactical plan,
arguing that Nazism might,
evolve into something like a genuine National Socialism, and
all,
that therefore the possibility
only course open was to pin one's hope to that saving
and not hold out against the occupying forces." But for
Hendrik de Man, the German occupation of Belgium was most decid-
On
edly not "a catastrophe."
Man
the contrary.
Look up what Hendrik de
said in his "manifesto" to the political party
he headed, and
this
what you fmd: "The war has led to the debacle of the parliamentary regime and of the capitalist plutocracy in the so-called democracies.
is
For the
world
workmg
is,
far
and for socialism,
classes
from
a disaster, a deliverance."
for collaboration with the
possible face prestige in the
of
Germans.
to
make
on the de
Man
ditch tactical plan"
his
this collapse
is
name and
his
To
of
Hendrik de
a decrepit
Man
plain the writer's agenda: to put the best disclosures, for the sake
movement, and not
oi saving the
to let history stand
way. As for Norris's labors to explicate de
Man
in relation to
Martin Heidegger, the no-nonsense British philosopher A. quoted
a representative
called
characterize this as "a last-
J.
Ayer
sample of Norris's prose and pronounced
it
"gibberish." In the face
of all
this strategic defensiveness,
it
was hard
to escape
— SIGNS
242
TIMES
THE
OF
Man case had ecUpsed What de Man wrote
the conclusion that the responses to the de
importance the offensive
Le
articles themselves.
Soir had the effect of exploding the
our understanding of
his writings.
myth of the man and modifying
But what was
broadened the focus considerably. Deconstruction
of reading and
How
eye.
as
an intellectual movement,
benign a method could
in
in
be
it
now
if its
said in his defense itself, as a
method
stood in the camera's
proponents could so
away inconvenient facts and turn an unfortunate truth on its head? The approved deconstructive reading of "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" would reduce it to an arena of blatantly use
it
to explain
contradictory impulses
Man's theory of
—
this
was the reducdo ad absurdum of Paul de
What
rhetoric.
a curious irony that he
had himself
provided the posthumous text that would, when subjected to close demonstrate once and for
analysis,
the danger of a rhetorical
all
—
method that can be used to deny disagreeable truths that can be used to deny what is there. One might even say that de Man's Wartime that Journalism deconstructs the companion volume of Responses what he actually wrote exposes the pretensions and the fallacies of the
—
deconstructive commentary.
And
perhaps American journalists had performed a public service
after all, for
it
structionists to
ecy
made
was
show
in the
their true colors.
—
As
deconstruction
(dc) itself
Man Who
of proph— "Deconstructing
if in fulfillment
language of a newspaper headline
de Man," say, or "The tion"
coverage of the case that obliged the decon-
their
Put the
had reached
a
Con
in
a
Deconstruc-
terminal impasse.
The
deconstructors had proudly proclaimed the elimination of pathos from their critical vocabulary.
counted for only a
as the
Yet here was
a spectacle that
could be ac-
expression of a pure pathos: the veneration of
pcrsonaHty that could survive any number of grim biographical
Over
shocks.
this fallen idol the self-styled iconoclasts revealed
selves to be, after
A
final
as the case
all,
a
thoroughly idolatrous crew.
word must be of Paul de
said
Man
about
rhetoric
—
the rhetoric
on display
got fought out. Again and again one
encountered the most extraordinary recklessness with historical the transformation of those facts,
metaphor, myth, or reliance
on
rigor.
by
rhetorical analysis,
it
heavy
appears that the masters of deconstruc-
examine
For here was rhetoric
facts
rhetorical sleight oi hand, into
fictional construct. Indeed, despite their
tion have neglected to
them-
their
own
rhetoric with sufficient
in full flourish, a
parade of figures of
SCANDAL
A
ACADEME
IN
Speech. Facts, the intractable historical facts
243
of the Second World War,
were transmuted into metaphor; history was routinely appropriated serve the ends of rhetorical persuasion. There was,
statement that a
condemnation of de
exterminating gesture.''
A
critic
of de
first
to
of all, Derrida's
Man would "reproduce the Man was, in other words, no
better than an exterminating Nazi. J. Hillis Miller followed with his combative assertion that members of the university were guilty of
"collaborating" with the mass media in a plot to defame deconstruction.
For Walter Kendrick, fighting
the de
Man
beat
fire
wore "black-and-white
with stars"
fire,
—
the journalists
-journalists this
the persecuted minority and the deconstructors their
menters.
and
Most
bizarre of all
his partisans
were the
empowered
was Richard Rand's argument
real Jews in the case. It
is
that de
on
time tor-
Man
not enough to scorn
such rhetorical attempts at appropriating the roles of victim and persecutor in
all
their pathos
and horror.
oneself of the dangers that ensue
when words
lose their
It
is
also necessary to
when metaphors
meaning, and when
company, with the deconstructionist's
substitute for facts,
signifiers
blessing.
remind
and
signifieds part
^
CHAPTER G
S
O
N
S
H
E
T
F
10
TIMES The
fact that universal thought, in all
mains, by
all its
pathways and despite
its
do-
all
dif-
im-
ferences, should be receiving a formidable
pulse
from an anxiety about language
—which
can only be an anxiety of language, within
language
itself
—
velopment; and
ment not
is
it is
a strangely concerted de-
the nature of this develop-
to be able to display itself in
entirety as a spectacle for the historian,
if,
its
by
chance, he were to attempt to recognize in
it
the sign of an epoch, the fashion of a season,
or the erty
symptom of a
m
certain that the question
more or
less,
to a sign
the
this respect,
of the sign
is
povit
is
itself
or in any event something other,
than a sign of the times. it
Whatever
crisis.
of our knowledge
of the times
To dream of reducing
is
to
dream of violence.
—-Jacques Dcrrida, "Force and Signification " (1963)
SIGNS
246
In the
first
week of October
University campus It
was the
visit the
TIMES
THE
OF
1988, Jacques Derrida visited the Cornell
in his capacity as a professor-at-large
on
faculty.
its
year of a six-year appointment that required
final
campus
him
to
periodically, deliver lectures, and hold seminars. His
would last a week. On Monday and Wednesday, he would lecture on "The Politics of Friendship," and on Friday he would conduct a seminar on the subject. An overflow audience awaited him on Monvisit
day. Every available seat in the auditorium was taken with a quarter
of an hour
among
go before the
to
still
the estimated five
of the
start
lecture.
and otherwise squeezed
sent sat in the aisles, stood in the entranceway,
themselves
Some were
in.
French philosopher
The latecomers
hundred students and faculty members prethere just to capture a glimpse of the
—"Europe's foremost
plinary scholar," as the university newsletter put
few
a blue pinstripe suit appeared, greeted a
famous
philosopher and interdisci-
A
it.
dapper
man
friends in the audience,
then took his place before the lectern, adjusting his reading glasses.
hum
of anticipation
me
sitting
behind
God,"
in the tone
thing. That, said
year
Doc was
palpable.
of one
who is
is
what one
virtually unhittable.
Derrida had asked
A
hapless National
New York
his
He
League batsin 1985, the
audience to do a
little
advance reading for
packet of essays by Aristotle, Montaigne, Kant, Nietz-
and Maurice Blanchot was available for
local
photocopy
center.
The "readings"
round of deconstructive textual
treat, in
some way,
—
but the
hum
we were
title
at a
in for
of Derrida's
the general expectation that
the case of Paul dc
to account for the anticipatory
nominal charge
a
suggested that
analysis,
lecture aroused a different expectation
he would
Mets
God, man.
isn't
sche,
a
The undergraduate "He isn't
trying to persuade herself of some-
about Dwight Gooden of the
the occasion.
The
whispered excitedly to her companion,
remembered,
I
man
crowd was
in the
in
in Ives
noon. "The Politics of Friendship": perhaps,
Man.
This, too, helped
Monday
Hall that in
after-
time-honored decon-
two concepts designated in the title were like the contradictory whole and didn't the de Man affair drama-
structive fashion, the
halves of a
—
tize the conflicting vectors?
tual ally ot dc
tugged him disclosures
in
Man. Now, presumably, one direction, while the
yanked him
ble construction
but
common
Derrida was, after
to
Politics
a friend
and
intellec-
the obligations of friendship
political nature
in the other. That, at
of "The
all,
any
rate,
of the de
was one plausi-
of Friendship." There were
most of them was the sense
Man
that de
others,
Man would
SIGNS be
—and
couldn't help being
What more
—
abstract,
a vital presence in Derrida's discourse.
something
Man
and though the ghost of de Derrida was there to
— and
of friendship
like the deconstruction
Western philosophical
fleeting references to the question
friendship
247
Derrida had in mind, however, was something altogether
torically conceived in the
made
TIMES
THE
OF
of "friendship with the dead,"
never did vacate the lecture
to invoke the possibility
of a
repeating
it,
a friendship
on
equality."
on
the second of Derrida's lectures
after
Wednesday. That Monday, however, he was drum, pondering
not on the
politics based
"that doesn't yet exist," a concept of friendship "based
became evident
hall,
question the concepts oi politics and
call into
paradigm of friends-and-enemies but on the concept of All this
as his-
Though he
tradition.
intent
like a leitmotif
it
otherwise disparate parts of his discourse.
on posing
a
conun-
meant to connect the
He commenced
his lecture
by quoting Montaigne, who was himself citing Aristotle: "O my friends there is no friend." The two parts of the sentence are incompatible,
Derrida observed. If there
Or, with a friends,
O was
can
my friends
that
I
say there
there
is
is
no
no friend.
is
of the apostrophe
absent being
no
—
friend, to
emphasis: if
shift in the tonal
how
is
that
whom am
speaking?
I
as
my
of the
line
can address you
I
friend?
The is,
addressed as though
rhetorical structure
a figure
it
were
of speech
in
which an
present. Derrida repeated
the line frequently during the course of the day's lecture, leaving in
no doubt
that he
found
it
a fruitful aporia.
One of his
to Carl Schmitt, an antidemocratic political thinker active in in the 1920s
relation to
and 1930s. Schmitt stood, Derrida
Nazism.
He
quoted Schmitt to the
said, in a
it
detours was
Germany
"complex"
effect that politics
is
based on "a discrimination between friend and enemy," and that "nations group themselves according to the friend-enemy antithesis." In Schmitt's analysis, the difference a tolerable "otherness"
sense
between
entities
amounts not
but to a determined opposition.
of opposition and,
in Derrida's
Remove
words, "the political loses
boundaries." Derrida also presented a passage from Nietzsche's
to
the its
Human,
All Too Human: " 'Friends, there are really no friends!' Thus cried the expiring old sophist. 'Foes, there incarnate fool." Nietzsche had ture;
Derrida called
it
a
is
really
committed
"catapostrophc"
no a
—
foe!' Thus shout I, the complex rhetorical ges-
that
is,
an inversion of
what way, asked Derrida, did Nietzsche "overturn" Greek tradition? Back to Aristotle. Friendships as Aristotle Aristotle's apostrophe.
In
— SIGNS
248
TIMES
THE
OF
conceived them can be based on virtue, or usefulness, or pleasure. But "perfect friendship," said Derrida,
Because one must wish for the is
him
to wish
good
become God, but you
to
can't be friends
want
to deify a friend, since friendship has to
not God.
And
then, too,
no need of
has
with
God
partners." Besides,
can't
God
which
for one's friend,
no proportional equality between the
"there'd be
you
Why?
a contradiction in terms.
is
greatest
do with men,
friends. Therefore, if
"perfect" or "true" friendship tends toward raising the "other" into a divinity, perfect friendship friends there
hold
me
no friend. There followed an aside to the audience:
is
firmation. There
O
to come."
O
But
—
if
are
there
is
how
could
no friend.
"A
strange af-
be addressing them
I
turns to the future, a vision of a
democracy
also turns to the past, implying a prior sense of
It
only the minimal community of a there
common
language.
And
no friend leaves out the present.
is
Monday's
as
my "You
speaking, and
my friends
my friends
Derrida asked
am
O
by holding implying some knowledge of what I
must be friends or
way?" The sentence
community
you
responsible,
responsibility means."
this
Another aporia.
a contradiction.
responsible for the fact that
me personally
"still
is
drew
lecture
so,
to a close, "Is friendship ever
present?" I
me
was eager
said,
"Have we
the persons sitting
on
either side
Dcrnda
had attended
lecture she
backward
I
— "you
The woman
reversed."
before
know,
sitting
as a
you
The
game
Harvard undergraduate. She in
which nursery rhymes
behind
me
in a state
arc
phrases and concepts keep getting
me ("He
could ascertain her reaction, but a
English department told leaves
of
right
my left found it surprisingly easy to follow, unlike
likened that experience to a parlor recited
my
learned anything about friendship at this point?"
graduate student on a
know what
to
thought of the performance. The professor of cinema on
that he
of mystification.
isn't
God") disappeared
man who
teaches in the
why Derrida "Have you noticed how many had figured out
of his sentences seem to begin with conditional
clauses?
You're always
waiting for the main clause and it never comes. Derrida is a prisoner of the subjunctive mood." Another literature professor launched a diatribe aganist dcconstruction
foothold avoiders,"
at
recalled
it
had gained
a strong
Cornell because "most people in English are conflict
who
preferred to remain uninformed about critical theory
rather than contend with
who
and opined that
John
it.
Searle's
Later,
I
ran into a professor of philosophy
famous critique of dcconstruction.
Searle's
J
SIGNS essay
was
Word Upside Down,"
"The
entitled
TIMES
THE
OF
among
"deconstruction had found httle appeal
The exceptions
phers."
ous
One
allies."
rida as "the sort
was
acerb:
to this rule,
and
wrote
249
in
it
he argued that
professional philoso-
ambigu-
Searle, "tend to be
such "ambiguous ally" had evidently described Der-
of philosopher
"We cannot,
who
gives bullshit a bad name." Searle
of course, exclude the possibility that
this
be an expression of praise in the deconstructionist vocabulary."
my
may
asked
I
friend whether he agreed with Searle and he smiled. In the next
day's Cornell Daily
Sun
varied from refusals to
On It
comment
They witnessed
became
examined, and
Monday's
perhaps the
is
fraternity that Derrida
—
True friendship
between two men but never between
is
that
is,
the
—was
understood
as
woman
or
man and
a
least
meant to
treatment of friendship in the Western philosophical tradition
possible
of
ideals
approaching. Lib-
fast
deconstruct. "Fraternity? Cela suffit!" he said. Fraternity
exclusionary, Derrida maintained.
two
lasted
were on the
the three, fraternity
was the concept of
it
ideas."
hundred
five
performance that
a bravura
whose bicentenary was
Of
equality, fraternity.
erty,
as
clear that Derrida's thoughts
the French Revolution,
of his
to enthusiastic appraisals
Wednesday, perhaps half as many
turned out. hours.
read that "reactions to Derrida's lecture
I
a
between two women. "The double exclusion privileges the brother, even above the father," Derrida said in
which
patriarchy
is
in as
much
—
fighting
disrepute
as,
words
in a discourse
say, phallogocentrism.
Derrida waxed eloquent urging an ideal of friendship based not on fraternity but ful
on
equality: nonhierarchic, heterogeneous,
of the asymmetry that
is
common
to everyone."
be ready for an experience of equality that would
would measure up to build a politics on rophe
—"O my
its
friends, there
is
In
repeating
no friend"
an appeal to the future. True friendship society as
it is
at last
measurelessness?" he asked.
friendship?"
and "respect-
"When
we
just, that
"How
can
we
Aristotle's
apost-
thus
making
—Derrida was may
be
will
not yet be possible in
constituted at present; the concept as adumbrated in the
Western philosophical heritage may, what's more, be self-contradictory.
Under
these
circumstances,
the
speaker's
invocation of his
"friends" becomes a visionary imperative, prophesying their eventual
emergence. to
come";
O
my
there
is
friends
is
hopeful, oriented toward "the democracy
no friend mournfully looks to the past.
The decon-
structive aporia, in this case, turns out to be not an impasse but a
vaguely Utopian hope, a visionary plea.
SIGNS
250
TIMES
THE
OF
He
Derrida had given us a lesson in the deconstructive method.
had proceeded by analysis; it
most
allusion and quotation, neologism
he had worked over a figure of speech until
strikingly,
seemed to embody
a philosophical position. It was, as an
to philosophy, curiously poetic in
though incongruous
remained
it
we had
cinema professor had asked, point"
at this
—
or, at
structive treatment.
tion
logic
its
—
its
in philosophical discourse,
poem. True,
place in a
and rhetorical
any
But
rate,
approach
arabesques and leaps,
would not be out of
difficult to say
whether,
as the
"learned anything about friendship
anything that required the
to the upholders
decon-
full
of the orthodoxy,
that ques-
would have been out of order. The point of the performance was,
evidently, the performance as a species
of text
itself.
analysis, the
by an
in the positions espoused
Derrida had offered us philosophy
exposure of the rhetorical loopholes Aristotle or a Kant.
Following the formal part of
his lecture,
Derrida entertained a
few questions from the audience. The most entertaining of
tendency of the disciple to try to go one better than the
illustrated the
master.
A
bearded graduate student brought up Derrida's analysis of
Kant on friendship. According to
these
combine the
feelings
feelings contradict
Kant understood friendship
to Derrida,
of love and
But, said Derrida, the
respect.
one another. Love implies
repulsion, the maintaining
of
a contradictory character.
The graduate
two
attraction; respect implies
a distance. Thus, friendship in
student,
knowing
Kant has Derrida's
penchant for binary oppositions that cancel themselves out, asked
whether
and
love
respect
couldn't themselves perhaps be further re-
duced; couldn't they, too, be subdivided into contradictory halves?
thought of the conclusion oi Fear and Trembling,
in
I
which Kierkegaard
explores the ancient lineage of the "impulse to go further." Kierke-
gaard
cites the
river twice."
"You
can't
aphorism of Hcraclitus,
A
disciple
even do
master's thesis that
movement and wanted only
it
it
flux.
"You
can't
walk into the same
oi Hcraclitus was determined to go further: once."
became
"And
to be a disciple
The
had so "improved" the
disciple
a statement
denying the principle of
yet," writes Kierkegaard, "that disciple
of Hcraclitus
.
.
.
and to go further
—not
back to the position Hcraclitus had abandoned."
The scheduled "seminar" on Friday turned out
people attended. As
question-and-answer session. Perhaps
fifty
quently the case
many of
at
such gatherings,
to be an extended
the questions
is
fre-
seemed
motivated by something other than the desire for an answer
— you
SIGNS could
or in framing a question.
however
individual relation, professor of
He is
Some were simply
romance
to a point
trying to establish an
with the renowned speaker.
fleeting,
studies tossed
251
coming
the difficulty the questioners had in
by
tell
TIMES
THE
OF
him
bouquet, or tried
a verbal
A to.
observed that a certain passage in Montaigne's essay on friendship
"the most Derrida-like passage in Montaigne." (Derrida disagreed.)
Others were intent on displaying their mastery of the deconstructive prose machine.
returned to
O
With the air of my friends there is
the star pupil, a literature professor
Was
no friend.
the
"asymmetry"
in
example of the "breakdown between performa-
the apostrophe not an
and constative language?" This afforded Derrida an opportunity
tive
he could
"The asymmetry of
seize.
which half of the equation
monologue
subordinate," he said, then launched a
is
of phallogocentrism"
as a friend."
Question:
"You
know
ship to the mother's desire to
Among
that
is
said that
[from traditional concepts of friendship]
not necessarily
makes one wonder
concluded with the observation that "one of the most
that
interesting features
animal
the sentence
,
"you
can't
women
have an
are excluded
yet Aristotle likens friend-
her child." Answer: "Mothers are
women."
all
the questions,
A
the performance had ended.
two seemed
to linger in the air after
philosophy student took the floor and
spoke of wanting "to hold people responsible or blameworthy for phallogocentrism." Nervously, tentatively, he broached "the
their
name of
who
the friend
not want to speak."
Man," get
way
it.
whom
to curiosity
sort
of crowd ripple you
and somebody summons up
on everyone's mind. Derrida would have
made in his Critical Inquiry essay, group from passing judgment on de Man. "The
Reiterating the point he
he cautioned the
concept of making a charge
itself
belongs to the structure of phallogo-
centrism," he said. "But," the questioner persisted, "aren't passing judgment
was not a
you do
that be?" Derrida asked. "Paul de
There erupted the
propriety gives
the nerve to ask the question
none of
named, the person of
"Who would
the student said.
when
can't be
on phallogocentrism?" No,
to put phallogocentrism
on
trial.
you yourself
replied Derrida. His
In fact, he added, "I
aim
have
deep respect for the phallogocentric tradition." Derrida remained
straight-faced, but the laughter in the in the
room was
general. Perhaps
some
audience recalled that in the previous day's lecture Derrida had
identified "respect"
The
final
with "repulsion."
question of the day was posed by a
young woman,
SIGNS
252
blushing with earnestness, theorist Jacques Lacan:
il
THE
OF
TIMES
who quoted a Une from the psychoanalytical ny a pas des relations sexuelles there are no
—
some parallel between this statement and O my friends there is no friend? Could Derrida, at any rate, comment on Lacan's line? She was having a hard time formulating sexual relations.
Could
there be, she asked,
when
her question, and
she did so, Derrida asked her to clarify the
point. The young man sitting in front of me turned to the young woman next to him and said, "That was a stupid question." "I think it was a very good question," the young woman answered. For my part, I thought I understood the questioner's logic. There is no friend,
yet our vocabulary of friendship implies that there can be; mightn't
Only then did
the same be true of spouses?
humor of the
the
occur to me. If you could separate yourself from
viewing
it
as
you were
if
a spy
this
from ordinary
something altogether precious in the spectacle?
situation
voluble discourse, life,
wasn't there
A young woman
in the
world's most permissive society asks the visiting celebrity whether there
is
such a thing
sexual relations, and the audience ponders the
as
profundity of the moment.
Derrida was speaking. In so
have to think about
Ten months Friendship," a
who
said that he
would
it.
after
new
many words he
Derrida spoke
at
Cornell on "The Politics of
controversy erupted over "the
name of
the friend
cannot be named." The editors of Critical Inquiry had received
"a great the Sea
many
unsolicited responses" to Dcrrida's "Like the
Deep withni
a Shell: Paul
the better part of their
Sound
de Man's War." Electing to devote
Summer 1989
issue to the
continuing
flap, the
editors oflfercd six such critical responses along with Dcrrida's
ing-at-the-mouth reply to Derrida, given the
last
of
his critics.
Perhaps
word, would write
it
toam-
was predictable
that
at greater length (sixty-one
combined (forty-seven pages); Derrida is notoriWhether predictable or not, it was appropriate that analysis of de Man's wartime journalism would come
pages) than the others
ously garrulous. Derrida's textual
in tor careful scrutniy. It
structionists
or not rida's
and
was
their critics,
— was over
reading,
reading of de
structive criticism.
Man
as
if,
m
the conflict between the decon-
one area of
how
to read,
battle
how
— whether announced
to mterpret texts.
had willy-nilly become
The irony was
that Derrida
a test case
had
Der-
of decon-
insisted all
along
SIGNS that
Man
what de
he espoused
many
OF
TIMES
THE
wrote during the war had no bearing on the theories years later. Yet Derrida's
to elucidate the complexities of de Man's
the very
development he had wanted to
own
"responding" to the de
examine
ers to
Man
deconstructive labors
Le Soir
avert.
aged a link between the terms response and
constitute an act
253
articles
had hastened
Hadn't Derrida encourresponsibility
—
so that
was doing, would
disclosures, as he
of "responsibility"? Wasn't he thereby inviting readand arrive
his essay
at
some conclusions about decon-
struction's claims to critical "responsibility"?
To
the extent that Derrida's essay resembled an apologia for his
late friend
—
to the extent that the deconstruction
of de Man's
entailed an inventory of extenuating circumstances that Derrida
—
had managed to hoist deconstruction on
it
was
its
own
articles
possible
petard.
That was the argument made by John Brenkman and Jules David Law, the co-authors of one of the six responses to Derrida that Critical
Brenkman and Law cited Derrida's claim that deconstruction is an intellectual weapon against totalitarianism. With such claims, wrote Brenkman and Law, "Derrida puts the prestige of deconstruction on the line: its political significance, its power to published.
Inquiry
explain political and cultural conjunctures, and
its
capacity for self-
understanding. If these remain staked on the procedures and outcomes
of
his
account of 'Paul de Man's War,' the wager will be
Of one
—Jonathan
severe"
lost."
the six responses to Derrida in that issue of Critical Inquiry, Culler's
— took
exception to "Derrida's exceedingly
judgment on de Man's wartime writings
in
Le Soir and Het
Vlaamsche Land. Culler objected in particular to Derrida's "on the one
hand" statement these texts
is
that "the massive, immediate,
that
of
and dominant
a relatively coherent ideological
effect
of all
ensemble which,
most often and in a preponderant fashion, conforms to an official rhetoric,
remembered that Culler is the critical theorist who endorsed, in his book On Deconstruction, the procedure of sawing off the branch on which one is sitting. In his response to Derrida, however. Culler more closely resembled the that
of the occupation forces."
disciple
question
will be
determined to go further than the master. "The important is
what value
for us," Culler wrote.
give a
It
new dimension
[de Man's] critical and theoretical writings have
And his answer was that "the wartime writings much of dc Man's work in America, helping
to
one to understand more plainly what aesthetic ideology."
By
is
implied by his critique of the
such logic one might feel positively grateful
SIGNS
254
Man
to de
for the
work he
did in Le Soir. Far from disturbing our
presupposed admiration for de Man, these students that
we
of the writings
ethical questions. If the
articles will
of the
fascist
tendencies he had
Culler characterized
Man
work. The all
Le Soir and Het Vlaamsche
leveled to the status of annotative footnotes.
way of looking
of what de
his
waved away, along with
is
Man's critique of the aesthetic ideology
charitable
us, diligent
"important question" has to do with de Man's
later "theoretical" writings, the articles in
Land have been
help
our continuing devotion to
are, in
historical significance
TIMES
THE
OF
at
now resonates also
known." Well,
"De
as a critique
was one very
that
it.
"exceedingly severe" Derrida's judgment
as
had done. All the other respondents contended
that
Derrida had not been severe enough. Jean-Marie Apostolides, a Stanford University professor of French, interpreted Derrida's essay as "an
argument to exculpate de Man." For Apostolides that deconstruction "escapes confrontation
ment," and for
to the
view
this
was evidence
historical
develop-
"Because history reveals the 'decidable,'
this reason:
which sometimes means
with
guilt,"
whereas deconstruction
is
committed
that all texts are undecidable at the core. Marjorie Perloff,
of Stanford's English faculty, faulted Derrida for ignoring the particular history
definition its
o£ Le
She noted Derrida's
Soir.
and inexact
of deconstruction that the present-day Le Soir provided
coverage of the de
in other
ire at the loose
Man
disclosures in
December
in
1987: "Whether,
words, Le Soir did or did not collaborate with the Nazis seems
to matter less to
him than whether
today's
Le Soir can give
its
readership an accurate picture of deconstruction." Perloff was troubled, too,
by Derrida's "assumption
writers and artists tions."
is
that the writer
somehow exempt from
who
helps fellow
ordinary moral obHga-
As for Wolfgang Holdhcim, Derrida's "mystificatory" essay
was sclf-cvidcntly an apology for dc Man. The "on the one hand, on the other hand" structure that Derrida had placed on "The Jews in Contemporary Literature" amounted to a determined effort at "making the text say something other than what
it
says."
Holdheim was
anxious to dispel the supposition that de Man's guilt was primarily a function of superior hindsight:
"Once and
for
all:
the act [of propagan-
dizing in collaborationist journals] was considered even ceptable at that time than is
it
may seem
not a judgment but the reminder o( a
suspicious of Derrida's exhortations that
more unac-
today, and pointing this out historicalfact/'
we now must
Holdheim was "reread de
Man
I
SIGNS A
from to
to Z/*
make
It is,
TIMES
THE
OF
wrote Holdheim, "almost
255
as if certain circles tried
the best of a bad situation, turning the very scandal into a
further demonstration of their hero's overriding significance. underlies those exhortations
assumption that de Man's
is
late
still
w^ork
is
beyond
critique and demystify-
ing throughout. But w^hat if this dogmatic assumption
Jon Wiener, denounced "the
sensationalist flurry full
Man
accounts of the de
New
which the this,
had reported on the de
Man
is
questioned?"
disclosures for the
attended to Derrida's vilification of the press. Derrida had
Nation,
istic
who
What
another axiom: the unquestioned
case.
of hatred"
in the first journal-
Derrida had in mind the
article
York Times broke the story in December 1987. But
Wiener observed, was how
that article began: "In a finding that
most
has stunned scholars, a Yale professor revered as one of the brilliant
with
of
intellectuals
pro-Nazi newspaper
in
voice "full of hatred." tion that to judge and
his
generation wrote for an anti-Semitic,
Belgium during World
War
II."
Hardly
a
Wiener took umbrage, too, at Derrida's assercondemn de Man is tantamount to reproducing
"the exterminating gesture which one accuses de
Man
of not having
armed himself against sooner." Wiener's comment: "Derrida thus draws
a rhetorical
Man
connection between criticism of de
mination of the Jews
—
and exter-
an offensive argument that hardly helps de
John Brenkman and Jules David Law of Northwestern University concentrated on de Man's "ideological commitment to fascism," which they felt Derrida had obscured. They argued Man's
case." Finally,
that Derrida, in his quest for the saving ambiguities in de
Man's
wartime writing, had overlooked "the most obvious tension animating de Man's complex, evolving project: on the one hand, de
Nazi collaborator; on the other hand, he was a Belgian
Man was
a
fascist."
Without exception, Several went out of their
Derrida's critics were anything but friendly.
however, they observed the rules of civility.
way
to
pay
their respect. Perloff began her essay
with an old-fashioned
courtly gesture, a reference to Derrida's "eloquence."
Law complimented
Derrida on the "often moving testimony of his
personal and intellectual
he had
let
ties to
de Man," even while maintaining that
friendship stand in the
of the respondents was been
in the
Brenkman and
way of lucid
analysis. Certainly
as playfully irreverent as
Voice Literary Supplement.
none
Walter Kendrick had
Analyzing Derrida's prose
in
"Like the Sound oi a Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man's War,"
Kendrick thought he could discern
five propositions
"looming
in the
SIGNS
256
murk." The
War
II
five: "(1)
World War
II
took place in Paul de Man's
place, but
only in newspapers;
newspapers;
did not take place;
left ear; (3)
Paul de Man's
(4)
deconstruction
(5)
TIMES
THE
OF
(2)
World War left ear
World took
II
was made of
an unfortunate byproduct of the
is
French conditional." In contrast to such high-spirited mockery, the professors
who
dissented with Derrida in Critical Inquiry took care to
minimum of
present their views in sober accents with a
emotional
display.
Not
amazing response to
so Derrida. In his
gradables: Seven Diary Fragments," Derrida
the substance of his reply but
its
an unforgettable performance.
by argumentation but by
It
his critics,
"Biode-
came out swinging. Not
hyperbole and belligerence made
was
this
a sustained rant, proceeding not
invective. Rather than refute his critics,
Derrida ridiculed them, heaped contempt on their heads, spewed out vitriol.
A
conducted at those
brief concordance of the adjectives with his rhetorical
who
which Derrida
warfare turns up the following,
had the temerity to
criticize
all
directed
him: "abusive," "arrogant,"
"crude," "degraded," "dishonest," "grossly wrong," "ignorant and
murderous,
mdecent,
aberrant,
obscene,
naive,
obtuse,
"outright laughable," "venomous," and "violent." Derrida was, he said,
writing in the teeth of a "crusade against de
^Deconstruction.' "
He did
"frightened, painful, and truly excessive hatred." estly
and
in
expressed their
They wrote
''dishon-
(I am weighing my words carefully)." Moreover, on deconstruction were "uninformed, uneducated and
grotesque descriptions
elementary refusal in question,
—
(I
am weighing my words
or was
it
their inability
Derrida coined one of
his
—
lire
—
carefully)." For their
to read the
fronts
On
the
I
article,"
Combin-
he declared that his
they "can't/ won't" read.
Derrida fancied himself a besieged Napoleon.
mobilized against an
documents
patented neologisms.
ing the French infinitives pouvoir and vouloir,
opponents nc pvculent pas
number of
all
hadfaith
their statements
conquer.
and against
not shrink from attributing malign motives
Other than Culler, the respondents had
to his critics.
Man
he railed.
"What
"An army
effrontery!
has been
What
must confront!" Very well: he would divide and
one hand, there was Culler's
insistence that Derrida
had been "exceedingly severe" on de Man; on the other hand, the other respondents said the opposite. rida
was
ecstatic.
a
"Well," he
said,
An
five
absolute contradiction! Der-
"they can't
all
be right
time." As a debating tactic this was extraordinary
—
it
at the
same
ascribed to
SIGNS
TIMES
THE
OF
257
Culler's highly idiosyncratic position a weight equal to that
of the
combined force of the other dissenters. But for Derrida extraordinary measures are routine. He was not to be deterred by "anyone who might regret the harshness or the high-handedness
my
of certain ot
Given the "violence" and the "mediocrity" of
his
remarks."
opponents,
positively his duty to respond in "a high-handed tone." Derrida
impact of three
relish the rhetorical
"murderous
His
insults in a series.
"Biodegradables"
—were
of the compost heap
must
critics offered
caricatures, abusive simplifications, unjustified acts
lence." Destined for the oblivion
was
it
—hence
of viothe
title
the "confused, hurried, and rancorous pro-
Derrida contrasted the "ignorance, confusion, and
fessor-journalists."
bad faith" of one of his detractors with
his
own penchant for "nuanced,
complicated, and meticulous" analysis. In short, his
critics
were "ven-
omous," or they were "sleepyheads," guilty of "juvenile hysteria," or they radiated "arrogant bad faith," or "dishonesty," or "ignorance," or
all
of the above, and some had perpetrated "violent journalistic
acts." In
any
case,
they weren't merely his detractors.
They were, wrote
Derrida, his "censors."
Reading "Biodegradables" was here
I
hand"
am prompted
writing his
—
to adopt Derrida's
On
strategy.
submission.
"on the one hand, on the other
emphatic repetitions,
the sheer rhetorical force of his his
savage scorn, his elliptical asides,
To
inveterate wordplay, his admitted "high-handedness."
Derrida
which
at length,
to a mesmerist's full force
of
is
how
—and one
of submitting to
his rhetoric.
Derrida's reliance
on
insult
It is as
because he says he
—
he asks to be read,
power. Immersed
his fury
argumentation.
is
And
the one hand, Derrida can badger a reader into
He overwhelms with
his
a disconcerting experience.
to expose oneself
in "Biodegradables,"
one
feels the
understands the seductive attractions
On
the other hand, one can't ignore
and assertion to do the work of reasoned
though he operates by right.
is
read
But
isn't this
dictatorial
—one
fiat:
he
is
right
hesitates before using
the
word
the
presumed authority of the speaker, the metaphysical "presence"
strikingly logocentric? For "Biodegradables" depends
that dcconstruction has supposedly
sumption
IS
that Derrida, as the author,
regard to his earlier essay on de to say and ridicule those
disagreeing.
debunked. The unexamined
He
who
is
in a privileged position
Man. He would
tell
us
on as-
with
what he meant
revealed their ignorance or ineptness by
thus illustrates the dcconstructive double standard: the
theorist feels free to
exempt himseli from
his
own
strictures. It
is all
SIGNS
258
very well to argue that
know
doesn't
of that argument tionist,
texts
and
this
see
what happens when you give
own medicine.
of his
a taste
the author
Criticize the deconstruc-
advocate of multiple interpretations and indeterminate
suddenly behaves
that the author
readings are misreadings and that the author
all
But
best.
TIMES
THE
OF
—
as
though there
is
one right interpretation and
that allegedly deceased
and discredited entity
—
is
word after all: "That is not what I meant at all." shock to come across Derrida's harangue so shortly after
entitled to the last It
was
a
hearing his eloquent peroration on the possibilities of friendship in a society
of
Where, now, was
equals.
who
the visionary
foresaw the
dissolving of politics, the end of the friend-enemy antithesis, and a
new
Who
was
politics based
on
true friendship?
this thin-skinned, blustering,
angry Caliban smuggle
his
rant in "Biodegradables"
Caine his
ard
Mutiny —
hand
as
the
He was nowhere
How
abusive fellow?
way
did this wounded,
domain? The quality of
into Ariel's
reminded one reader of the
moment when Captain Queeg
he loses his self-control. Perhaps,
Rorty has argued,
in sight.
as the
trial
scene in The
rolls his
marbles in
philosopher Rich-
the claim that deconstruction proceeds
"rigorous argument" was always so
by
much bosh. For Rorty, "Derridad-
aism" comes closer to describing deconstruction in action. Rorty admires what he
"the playful, distancing, oblique
calls
way
in
which
Derrida handles traditional philosophical figures and tropes." Well,
may
"rigorous argument"
be absent from "Biodegradables," but
it is
hard to admire the dance of intellect that permits a writer to confuse his critics
A interred
with
change
his "censors."
in the public perception
from the
pubHshed
title
in 1990,
story's protagonist
a Father's Place
///
is
sympathetic fellow,
novelist.
in the family seat for a feels
Nick has brought
stories
by Christopher Tilghman. The
Dan, a widower and the scion ot
whose children gather a
piece of a
of deconstruction may be
much-acclaimed collection of
a landed estate,
summer weekend. Dan,
estranged from his son Nick, an aspiring his friend Patty
with him, and she
is
the
Contemptuous of Dan and his ancestral house, Patty spends most of the weekend in an antisocial posture: reading a book Tilghman identifies not by its title but by its author, Jacques Derrida. What does Nick see in Patty? She "tore the English Department at Columbia apart, " Nick says. "I've never known anyone who villain of the piece.
SIGNS
TIMES
THE
OF
takes less shit in her life." Patty wouldn't
between Nick and
his family.
Nick, she
says,
259
mind driving is
wedge
a
"trying to deconstruct
You mean destroy?" Dan replies. The story reaches its climax when Dan throws Patty out of the house. "Oh, cut the crap about his work," he says. "You want his family" in his novel. "Deconstruct?
this
you little Nazi, you want any soul you can get your hands on." Has deconstruction, so long in the ascendant, begun to lose its
soul,
momentum
academe? Yes and no. Define
in
yes. It
that
is
it
narrowly with reference
of Derrida and de Man, and the answer
to the doctrines
is
a qualified
probable that deconstruction will never again enjoy the cachet
had before history debunked de Man. The bad news
it
that
is
nothmg
has arisen to take deconstruction's place, or rather that the
theories
now
vogue
in
are in large
and
vital
deconstruction. Unlike love, moreover, tenure
tenure system will see to
many
place for
tional
it
that deconstructors
psychoanalysis,"
"poststructuralist
Marxism."
Man
later,
chose to
as a
call his
professors, Steven
book titles
trouble. In reality,
Knapp and Walter Benn Micha-
By
Critical Inquiry; the
—
it's
a military
J.
theorists
army whose supply
have
lines are in
remain the profession's dominant
Hillis Miller identified deconstruction's
the political Left
we
phalanx crushing the resistance in
just that different theories are trying to
coming from
spawned,
Kermode "The Limits of Theory." downturn in the fortunes
crowd decon-
struction off the stage. In an essay written before the de
broke,
it
decade's end, Frank
strongly suggests a
however,
year
critical scene
path to that of an overextended
players
and
A
in 1981.
theory in the academic marketplace. In ten years
gone from the image of its
in 1985.
overview of the
progression in
critical
institu-
feminism,"
together with the responses and counterresponses
was published
of
"deconstructive
wrote "The Resistance to Theory"
two Berkeley
article,
The
forever, and the
remain in high
took arms "Against Theory" in the pages of
els,
is
years to come, proffering such hybrids as
"deconstructive
Paul de
ways derivative of
— from "young
Man
scandal
main competition
as
Marxists and Foucaul-
dians" eager to restore to literary studies a concern for history and politics. "It
is
as if a great sigh
the land," Miller writes.
had
its
day, and
wc
"The
of
relief
era
can return with
were
rising
of 'deconstruction'
of the study of
is
all
over.
a clear conscience to the
more human work of writing about power, 'institution'
up from
across It
has
warmer,
history, ideology, the
literature, the class struggle, the
oppression
SIGNS
260
of women, and the Miller doesn't
as
much
like "the shift
is
away from the rhetorical what the glamour
to.
One
recent development
What
materialism."
an interest in literature not in
—
upon
shed
the
composition. Culture social
power
intentions
—
known by the com-
these approaches have in
its
own
and not for moral
right,
instruction or aesthetic enjoyment, but for the light tently
is
Historicism; a related approach to literature goes
name of "cultural
mon
in society as they
right in observing
is
of the profession are up
New
as the
women
they are 'reflected' in literature."
study of literature." But he theorists
of men and
real lives
and
exist in themselves
TIMES
THE
OF
power
—
may
inadver-
of a work's
conceived to be the result of economic and
is
struggles,
it
relations in force at the time
and a
reflects the
work
literary
—whatever
its
author's
It
becomes
dominant ideology of the day.
possible to study Shakespeare as the invention
of different audiences
from the seventeenth century
Mark Twain may be
rendered
as a
to the present.
product of the social conventions of
George
his time.
Orwell's books are shunted aside in favor of an investigation into his reputation
—
as if
Orwell's claims on our attention had
less
to
do with
what he wrote than with an alleged conspiracy among professors and critics to foist Orwell on us. While studies of this nature vary widely in the quality of mind brought to them, and while they differ implicitly from the "rhetorical readings" championed by de Man and Miller,
many of their
tactics
and
their assumptions derive
tive enterprise: the notion that the "I"
is
from the deconstruc-
not an autonomous individual
but a social construct, that the "margins of the text" hold the nitcrprc-
dccon-
tive key, that hierarchies cry out to be dismantled. After the
structive assault
on meaning
—
the reduction
to purely linguistic predicaments
—
for the return to history evinced
it is
by such
also be noted that leftist literary critics
of wars and revolutions
easy to
summon up two
critical theorists. It
were among
the
cheers
should
most conscien-
toughcst-mmded of those who wrote about the dc Man disclosures. At the same time the ironies of the situation are too pointed tious and
to be ignored: the chief ideological drive behind the trendy theories
of
"social constructionism"
analysis
and "cultural materialism"
of power and society.
nations of Eastern Europe
Who
is
a
Marxist
could have predicted that the
would renounce Marxism before American
literature professors did?
As
a result
of the de
deconstructors and literary
Man
affair,
leftists
—
the conflict
factions in
between hard-core
whose mutual
interest
— SIGNS it
may once have been
to join forces
of no return. Sooner or never any legitimate
TIMES
THE
OF
has progressed past the point
was bound
later, this
way of
—
261
was
to happen; there
reconciling the antimetaphysical meta-
physics of the one with the emphatic materialism of the other. There is
new
evidence, too, of concerted
making
and Phenomena, one of Derrida's seminal works,
Edmund
ing of the philosopher quite
damaging
early
books on which
on
efforts to refute deconstruction
philosophical grounds. Several scholars are
is
the case that Speech
based on a misread-
The charge
Husserl.
is
and Phenomena
to Derrida, since Speech
potentially
is
one of the
his reputation largely rests.
No, deconstruction is not quite the growth industry that it was a few years ago. But though the local reputations of the "boa-deconstructors" may show some slippage, the larger problem has not fundamentally changed. Pure deconstruction
no longer the height of
is
fashion, but the impulse continues in alloyed form,
tous as ever.
The language,
the categories, and the
of deconstruction keep cropping up. The
edicts
and
"war
it is as is
ubiqui-
peace" logic
of deconstruction
merged, to whatever extent, with the ideologies of Marxism, psychoanalytic theory, and feminism
One
the lit-crit establishment. tive
procedure
work
at
—remain
the prevailing suppositions of
can discern a fundamental deconstruc-
in the meteoric rise
of "gender" and "ethnic"
studies, at present the hottest areas in the lit-crit profession. It
example of the marginal supplanting the central
way
of the
maneuver can
a theoretical
sional practice.
The
—and
is
an
a clear-cut case
translate itself into a profes-
profession's latest hotshots are
still
asking the
question de
Man
In 1992 the
incoming president of the Modern Language Association
will be
lifted
from Archie Bunker: "What's the difference?"
Houston A. Baker of
most famous pronouncement between Virgmia the
middlebrow
Woolf and
sort
—
is
and a pizza," Baker told career
is
"no a
the University is
that there
Pearl
Buck
different
New
dedicated to the day
is
of Pennsylvania, whose
no
difference.
—between high
Choosing
literature
from choosing between
and
hoagy
am one whose
York Times reporter. "I
when wc have
a
a disappearance
of those
standards."
Writing
in the
New
Northwestern University
Republic,
tries to
Professor Lawrence Lipking of
acquaint the general reader with the
Once upon meaning into
distinguishing features of the current academic "episteme." a time, he writes, reading a text, the reader
took
it
was simple: "the author put
a
out again." Today, however, reading has
SIGNS
262
become "a knotty and treacherous
TIMES
THE
OF
business."
The
professional reader's
of passage include a repudiation of much that used to be "com-
rites
mon wisdom." One
former
of faith held
article
begins in reverence, "a feeling of
assumption, Lipking writes,
awe
that literary criticism
in the presence
of
art."
This
not only "outmoded" but positively
is
"embarrassing"; only a retrograde critic has a "reverence problem" or believes
to be the critic's function to illuminate
it
tions are today,
out loud
is
Lipking reaches for a
academic conformism
The
makes
simile
—about
elegant point about
its
assumption, anything but out-
the
and otherwise. Substitute the words party
what you
Lipking's ponderous episteme, and see
And
perhaps
professors, universalizing
in
which
his
age
—
—
assumption
this
helps explain the ease with
their
own
social habits, are able
Mark Twain and fasten instead spoke through him. The purveyors of
of a Dickens or
to reject the "genius"
on the ways
from
for
line
get.
expectation of conformism
this
that professionalism entails a party line
which
them Nixon
to say
that the with-it professor will hold certifiably "correct" posi-
political
tions,
"Even
telltale simile:
embarrassing, like admitting to having voted for
or smoking in public."
moded,
poems or derive
from them. To dramatize just how outmoded such assump-
inspiration
a
such analyses reveal their provincialism, their inability to distance
themselves
—
and
critics
their
own
as scholars
logical orthodoxies
of
should time.
—from
the reigning ideo-
The right-minded
professor in the post-Vietnam era imposes his or her correct attitudes
natmg
upon
the literature of the past
the sense of the past. In a
fit
of
—
own
assistant
politically
at the cost of
cHmi-
historical superiority, the critic
proves himself or herself guiltless of the sexism, racism, and assorted other isms that
imperative has
what
it is
damn more
the benighted denizens of earlier eras. to
do with
political correctness
Down,
it
The
establishing
and anxiously proclaiming one's loyalty to the
with the nominal subject under study, be
that
—
line
—
than
Hteraturc or history.
then, with "reverence," with "tradition," with anything
smacks of the "canonical," and up with "a hermeneutics of suspi-
cion" that extols the
critic
over the
startHng claim in his recent
would be starthng
if
we
book
artist.
Jonathan Culler makes
Framin(y the Sij^n
hadn't heard
it
—
at
any
rate
a it
so often before. In the past,
Culler writes, criticism was an adjunct of literature, and the history
of
criticism
was therefore part of the history of
literature.
Now,
SIGNS however,
way
the other
it's
TIMES
THE
OF
"now
around:
263
the history
of hterature
is
part of the history of criticism." Culler's prose style
of irony, and that
made
is
poker-faced, humorless; there's no evidence
is
why
such pronouncements sound
to order for an unself-conscious figure
Waugh
Why
satire.
as if
of fun
in
they were
an Evelyn
should criticism take precedence over literature?
Culler gives several reasons, beyond the unspoken one that binary
good
reversals are
for the patient
—
the deconstructive doctor routinely
A more
important reason
is
nities in universities" are
where the power
is.
prescribes them.
commuman The public of letters, that "the critical
the eclectic amateur, and the free-lance intellectual have disappeared;
the clerks and bureaucrats of
academe have taken
who
who
is
wield the power
canonized, what
is
—
they
explicated,
their place. It
is
they
determine, in Culler's words, "what
what
is
articulated as a
major problem
for literature." In the academic order of priority, therefore, criticism
may
be said to precede
literature.
In a practical sense. Culler's analysis literary critics fix the
is
right
on
of college courses. But what most distinguishes
mandatory reading
lists
the critics of today
from those of earlier generations
power
tence that
forever,
is
not their frank
demystifying the process of canon making, but their
interest in
criticism
academic
target;
canon by deciding what books get on the
is
is
about.
all
beyond
the
whole of
No
canon
revision, but the
is
the
game
—
that
power
is
insis-
what
or should be sacred, fixed once
canon
revisionists
now
at
work
are
perhaps unique in their readiness to subordinate literary and aesthetic values to a political standard. Acquiescing in the notion that disinterested inquiry necessarily a
an impossibility and that every value judgment it
is
anything
by applying ideological litmus
decisions sexist
is
power play before
and
racist
present. This
is,
of the thought
they
make
is
their
and determining the
quotient in any piece of writing, from Plato to the
bottom, a conception of the
at
literary critic as
police, single-minded, obsessively
the party line, willing to subject chosen
interrogation, and in favor
tests
else,
more than happy
works
an agent
concerned to enforce to a violent
form of
to eliminate literature altogether
of pure theory.
For Culler,
literary criticism can itself
avant-garde literature, thus making the
latter
perform the function of superfluous and expend-
able. In this respect, criticism as Culler conceives
it
need no longer be
SIGNS
264
dependent on ture
literature.
—presumably
The paradox
is
that the critic
literary criticism as
it
is
For
role.
all its
demoting Htera-
own
for the sake of elevating his
diminution of that
drastic
TIMES
THE
OF
role
—
risks the
vaunted ambition, academic
currently practiced occurs at the furthest
marginal remove from the texts of our
lives,
without an audience other
than the captive one of colleagues and paying students, without a subject,
without even a compelling raison
may
d'etre that
and the general public. Since
ticulated to parents, alumni,
be ar-
literature
is
the reason that criticism exists, the deconstructive notion that literature is
part of a larger entity called criticism, to be discarded if the critic
of a
so chooses, seems a perfect instance
which
he's sitting.
Yet Culler,
who
deconstruction with "Derridadaism," his vision
of
criticism's
man sawing
disparages the
hegemony
is
would be
the
first
a prankish antic.
of the deconstructive episteme are put forth as if
off the branch
view
on
that identifies to
No,
deny
that
the claims
in stubborn earnestness,
they were self-evident axioms from which only the naive would
dissent.
The
value of Framing the Sign
real
is
as a
guide to acceptable
opinions. In colorless, self-effacing prose, the author
what
lets
you know
they're thinking about in deconstruction headquarters. Concerns
about the
state
of the humanities are patronizingly written off
product of "apocalyptic visions,
crisis
narratives."
Academics
as the
who
emphasize teaching rather than research are presumptively found guilty of *'a conservative, even reactionary gesture."
Not
teaching, not
the "reproduction of culture," but "advanced or innovative critical
speculation"
is
the professor's proper role. Deconstruction "has been
the greatest source is
of energy
in criticism,"
development
the cutting-edge
deconstruction "seem in some sense
And
"rationality"
itself
lege," a variant
of
to
is
on the
clarity, concision,
cate
now
he repeats the by
and Critical Legal Studies
that Culler can endorse; the
made
law and
for each other," he writes.
tiresome, dubiously feminist argument that
some extent "complicitous with male
line, also
privi-
quite prevalent, that the prose virtues
and directness are masculine
strategics
and
repli-
male sexual behavior, that paradigm of oppression. Though some
feminists
do mouth
women, implying
it is
actually a terrible slander
on
that they cannot write clearly or think straight.
most animated when the subject is religion. with the priests!" he cries, mounting an attack on "the Fryes,
Culler
"Down
this shibboleth,
is
at
his
Hartmans, Girards, Booths, and Kenners
—our most famous
critics"
— SIGNS for being "promoters
of religion." So
discourse" and "theistic beliefs"
do not "deserve
respect,
TIMES
THE
OF
Culler can
far as
— God and
or racist beliefs deserve respect." Indeed, Culler the Bible "not racist
and
as
poetry or
sexist text."
antichurch.
How
Bible, and yet
On
this
absolute
secular
sexist
rock the deconstructionist builds
is
his
and reductive
his
is
view of the
claim for that view. This
and
as intolerant,
its
his
way
is,
in brief,
as the
other
as hostile to the spirit
of
humanism.
There may be some consolation temporary cogent
words
assume that
recommends reading
the creed of atheistic fundamentalism, as extreme in
kind of fundamentalism,
"religious
as narrative but as a powerfully influential
partial, prejudicial,
how
see,
religion, in other
we would
any more than
265
comment on
the abuses of criticism
Tom
Fielding in his comic masterpiece nearly as apt today as
Now,
when he
in reality,
compliment
much
in the
dogmatic self-celebration
critic's
to critics,
the
knowledge is
critics
Jones.
Fielding's
now become
words
published them in 1749:
world have paid too great
a
men of From this
and have imagined them
have been emboldened to assume a
power, and have so
dictatorial
far
succeeded that they are
the masters, and have the assurance to give
laws to those authors from whose predecessors they originally received them.
The critic, rightly considered, is no more than the whose office it is to transcribe the rules and laws laid down by those great judges whose vast strength of genius clerk,
hath placed them in the light of legislators, in the several sciences over
which they presided. This
office
was
all
which
the critics of old aspired to; nor did they ever dare to
advance a sentence without supporting
of the judge from whence
But
in process
it
it
by the authority
was borrowed.
of time, and
in ages
of ignorance, the
power and assume the dignity of The laws of writing were no longer founded on
clerk began to invade the his master.
the practice of the author, but
The
clerk
became the
on
legislator,
A
was formulated by Henry
greater profundity than they really are.
complaisance the
that the con-
not unprecedented.
the dictates
of the
critic.
and those very peremp-
are
SIGNS
266
gave laws whose business
torily
TIMES
THE
OF
was, at
it
only to
first,
transcribe them.
Hence
arose an obvious, and perhaps an unavoidable capacities,
very as a
judge would, and
men of shallow
being
mistook mere form for substance. They acted
error; for these critics easily
who
should adhere to the
lifeless letter
reject the spirit. Little circumstances,
of law
which were per-
haps accidental in a great author, were by these
critics
considered to constitute his chief merit, and transmitted as
be observed by
essentials to
his successors.
all
To
these
encroachments, time and ignorance, the two great support-
of imposture, gave authority; and thus many
ers
good writing have been
which have not the least and which commonly serve
established
foundation in truth or nature, for
no other purpose than
same manner ter,
as it
to curb and restrain genius, in the
would have
had the many excellent
restrained the dancing-mas-
treatises
on
that art laid
man must
it
down
dance in chains.
as
an essential rule that every
A
generation from now, literary historians are bound to regard
our period with some wonderment. professors ture,
rules for
was
a time, they will note,
of literature solemnly subscribed to the doctrine
while
full
when language a piece
It
of sound and fury, turned in on
signifies nothing. It
—when
itself
the
when
that litera-
was
a period
meaning or content
of
of writing was deferred, or rendered "undccidable," or "rc-
problcmatized," while the scholar's energy went into close rhetorical
You
readings of devious linguistic structures. the substance
of
hung up on
the
a
couldn't get around to
work of writing because you would necessarily way the language worked. A new vocabulary
get (or
"metalanguage") had to be devised to conduct these forays to the edge
of
a linguistic abyss.
Words were
and contradictory system of arbitrary and terminally
signs,
that "this will help us serve
you
—
itself
—which was
—and which
also
complex
like the sign in an otherwise
that the
shop has been closed and
better."
In an early essay, Jacques Derrida
language"
a
and the signs themselves were
signs,
ambiguous
denuded shop window announcing
and language was
wrote of "an anxiety about
"an anxiety of language, within language
he discerned across the
full
spectrum of intellectual
SIGNS
TIMES
THE
OF
267
This was, wrote Derrida, "a strangely concerted develop-
activity.
ment," yet
it
should not be seen
merely "the sign of an epoch, the
as
symptom of a
fashion of a season, or the
crisis."
What
Derrida called
"the question o( the sign" was not to be confused with "a sign of the times." Indeed he wrote, with characteristic hyperbole, that "to
of reducing
it
their enigmatic
many
so
dream
dream of violence."
deconstructionists have posted
question-mark sign so persistently over the
no wonder
it's
to
is
windows of academe,
In the shop
years that
of the times
to a sign
dissastisfied
last
twenty
customers have turned
Now
more than ever deconstrucsymptom a moral and cognitive crisis that shows few signs of of a crisis" letting up, though more voices are raised in protest each year. In the past, the deconstructionists had capitalized on the crisis atmosphere in the humanities. It worked to their advantage. The away, empty-handed and alienated.
tion seems aptly described as "the sign of an epoch" and "the
—
notoriety of deconstruction brought the benefits of publicity, and the resistance to deconstruction
was threatening. episode
Man
In the de
to exploit this sense
was proof of
of
affair,
vitality;
it
was
radical,
it
the deconstructionists tried again
They
crisis.
its
strove to interpret the
whole
an injunction to reread the misunderstood guru, and their
as
on the journalists and "journalistprofessors" who reported or commented on what de Man had done. was
strategy
to turn the tables
This time, however, de Man's defenders played a losing hand. Setting
out to expose the conspiracy against deconstruction, they succeeded instead in exposing their their worshipfulness
of the man that
The
it
would
of the de
lesson
a scoundrel than
own
with the stubborn refusal of his followers to read the
The de Man
of
a dossier a
—and
affair has less to
it
as
it
was written, and
to understand
its
revelations brought his disciples to the edge of
the abyss that they claim to seek safety
view of the world
more than mere facts to discourage them. do with the unmasking of
take
Man
writing on the wall, to read import.
conspiratorial
of de Man. They were so much under the sway
— and
they flinched, retreating to the
their illusions. In their briefs for
dc Man, they have provided
of proof that deconstruction
not a value-free science but
program
that
promotes
a
propensity for hero-worship.
And
struction:
it
it is
the crisis that
is
reckless disregard that
is
the final paradox
a
of decon-
pretends to expose.
In "Politics and the English Language,"
the assumption that
of the truth and
"we cannot by
George Orwell disputed
conscious action do anything
SIGNS
268
TIMES
THE
OF
about" the decline of our language. "Underneath "lies the half-conscious belief that
not an instrument which
we
language
is
own
shape for our
Orwell wrote,
this,"
growth and
a natural
purposes."
One
dubious achievement of deconstruction has been to take that "halfconscious belief and turn
by deconstructive
human
is
unwavering maxim. Language,
into an
alien
from human purposes,
wishes and will. As a doctrine
extent that is
decree,
it
what
it
is
a stranger to
pernicious to the precise
acquiesces in the curtailment of human freedom, for that
our ability to shape our words for our
at stake in
is
this
own
purposes.
A
survey of contemporary trends in academic criticism will fmd
a suitable
summary statement
lished in 1829.
"We
in an essay that
have our
scientific exposition.
The building of the
masonry or brick-laying: we have
A
fall,
itself,
which
with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration,
and held to be mysterious and inscrutable,
and
Thomas Carlyle puball human and divine
workings of genius
things," Carlyle wrote. "Poetry, the in all times,
on
theory
little
—which
latter, it
casualty of his age, Carlyle wrote,
tual condition
of the people"; in
economical condition"
—
its
lofty
theories
would seem,
is
is
of
no longer without
rhyme
is
its rise,
any other
height, decline
now near, among all
was "the moral,
stead
like
was
its
people."
religious, spiri-
"their physical, practical,
the "Body-politic" worshipped, the "Soul-
politic" ignored. Art, treated as if
it
were
a species
of masonry, could
be reduced to rubble; history was being demystified, "wonder" was
dying out
(since "it
is
the sign of uncultivation to wonder"), and
individuals were universally seen to be the products of forces
beyond
their control.
Carlyle entitled his essay "Signs of the Times."
around
us,
The
signs are
inckiding some that Carlyle couldn't foresee.
ambiguous, some arc confusing, but they can interpreted correctly.
It
would be
all
arc
be interpreted, and
a mistake to think that
by conscious action do anything about them.
Many
all
we
cannot
APPENDIX
Text of Paul de Man's "The Jews
March
4,
in
Contemporary
Le
Literature," in
Vulgar anti-Semitism readily considers postwar cultural phenomena the
Soir,
1941 (translated by David Lehman):
war of 1914—1918)
as
Literature hasn't escaped this lapidary judgment: several Jewish writers
(after
degenerate and decadent because Judaized [enjuiue]. it is
enough
under Latinized pseudonyms for
to have discovered
contemporary pro-
all
duction to be considered polluted and harmful. This conception entails some rather dangerous consequences. In the literature that in
no way deserves
agrees to assign
some merit
unflattering estimation of tors
Western writers
of a Jewish culture that
is
But the mistake
condemns
of our day,
to reduce
a priori an entire
them
it
would be an
to being
mere imita-
contributed to this myth. Often, they have
of the
literary
modern poetry and
monstrous outgrowths of the world war,
is
movements
deeper cause.
has, in reality, a
opinion, according to which
it
Moreover, from the moment one
foreign to them.
glorified themselves as the leaders era.
place,
to the literature
The Jews themselves have our
first
this fate.
at the
the
that characterize
The very
prevalent
modern novel were only
root of the thesis of a Jewish
takeover. Since the Jews have, in fact, played an important role in the
and disordered existence o[ Europe since 1920, a novel born
would
deserve,
But the
up
in that
phoney
atmosphere
to a certain point, the description enjuive.
reality
is
different.
It
seems that aesthetic evolutions obey very
powerful laws that continue on their course even while humanity important events. The world war provoked
and economic world. But
artistic life has
a
profound upheaval
been affected relatively
is
shaken by
in the political little,
and the
A
270
we know
forms that
came
P
P
at present
N
E
D
X
I
follow in a logical and normal fashion those that
before.
This
is
particularly clear with regard to the novel. Stendhal's definition,
according to which "the novel contains the law that
coming
down an open What was
mirror strolling
a
is
rules this literary genre today.
still
the obligation to pay scrupulous respect to external reality.
first is
by digging deeper, the novel has
managed
also
no longer remains immobile on the road;
to investigate the
most
secret corners
nitely
Hemingway, Lawrence
continuators
—
the
domain
constitutes the novelist's
could be extended indefi-
list
of the interior
to be not innovators breaking
who
it still
undertakes
this
but attempt, through methods appropriate to their
personalities, to penetrate the secrets
show themselves
it
of investigation.
terrain
—do nothing
rather
of the souls of characters. And
has been so rich and so fruitful in surprises that
Gide, Kafka,
But
to exploit psychological reality.
Stendhal's mirror
one and only
road," seen as
life.
with
By
all
this
shared
trait,
past traditions, but
are pursuing further the realist aesthetic that
own they
mere
more than
is
a
century old.
A that
similar demonstration can be
seem most revolutionary to
us,
made such
One
surrealism and futurism, have, in
isolated
phenomenon, created by
preponderant influence over
would appear
influence
might have expected
—
contemporary
therefore, that to consider
realizes,
its
On
—
is
absurd.
nor even to have exercised
creators,
evolution.
any close examination,
their
importance, since one
little
given the specific characteristics of the Jewish mind
would have played
the latter
its
to have extraordinarily
that
literature as an
the particular mentality of the 1920s,
Likewise, the Jews cannot pretend to be
[esprit]
as
orthodox ancestors from which they cannot be detached.
reality,
a
domain of poetry. The forms
in the
a
more
brilliant role in such artistic
production. Their cerebralness, their capacity to assimilate doctrines while maintaining a cold detachment for the
work of kicid
from them, would seem
to be very precious qualities
analysis that the novel requires.
But
in spite
of that, Jewish
writers have always remained in the second rank and, to speak only oi France,
writers
on
the order
of Andre Maurois, Francis de Croisset, Henri Duvcmois,
Henri Bernstein, Tristan Bernard, Julien Bcnda, and so on, are not among the
most important
figures,
directive influence for
Western
had
Wc
let itself
The statement
is,
who
have had some
moreover, comforting
That they have been able to safeguard themselves from
domain
could not have
as culturally representative as literature
much hope
for the future
proves their
of our civilization
if
be invaded, without resistance, by a foreign force. In keeping
originality and
European
in a
and especially not among those
literary genres.
intellectuals.
Jewish influence vitality.
on
life,
its
character intact, despite Semitic interference in
our civilization has shown that
What's more, one can thus
its
all
fundamental nature
see that a solution to the
aspects is
it
its
of
healthy.
Jewish problem that would
\
271
lead to the creation for the literary life
some
personalities
of
a
Jewish colony isolated from Europe would not have,
of the West, regrettable consequences.
It
of mediocre worth and would contmue,
develop according to
its
higher laws of evolution.
would
lose, in all,
as in the past, to
NOTES
CHAPTER 1: THE END OF THE WORD 17 "A classic's content": Allan Bloom, in December 17
"One need
the
New
York Times Book Review,
1988.
4,
not deconstruct the penny": David
The Anthropologist
(Summer
15, no. 4
in Critical Inquiry
18 "Whatever anthropologists as
may
Van
Leer, "Trust and Trade,"
1989): 762.
Works and
think": Clifford Geertz,
Author (Stanford: Stanford University
Lives:
Press, 1988), 21.
(New York:
18 "Flaunted the aestheticism": Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde
Knopf, 1988), 315. 18 "It was whacked": Yorker,
December
Roger Angell, "Hard Times (The Movie)," 5,
Baseball's Pedant," in the
"The Story of
Times on April
2,
New
J.
Wilson, "Giamatti
New
Republic,
"We
Baseball:
You Can Go Home
Again," appeared in the
1989.
March
in the
27, 1989.
had no idea": Advertisement for National Review,
March
is
York Times, Sunday, April 16, 1989. Giamatti's
20 "Guardians of the Revolution": Charles Peter Freund, "Petracide,"
20
New
1988.
18 "Should forget about his narrative cliche": Robert
article,
in the
in the
New
Republic,
27, 1989.
21 "Is deconstructed by Hughes's friends": Frances
Journals"
(letter to the editor), in the
New
McCullough, "Sylvia
Plath's
York Review of Books, January
18,
1990.
21
"The Crime,
disease
of the age": Jacques Barzun, "Introductory,"
cd. Jacques
York: Harper and
Row,
A
Cataloj^ue of ed.
(New
1989), xxii.
21 "In the emphasis on diversity": Richard Bernstein,
Bows
in
Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor, revised
to Hegemonicists," in the
New
"Age of Golden
Clarity
York Times, August 27, 1988.
21
"An
intellectual fashion":
Journal,
21
O
N
274
"An
December
T
E
"The Stanford Mind"
First
(editorial), in the
Wall Street
22, 1988.
Novel
in 17 Years," in the
" 'Vineland,'
Lehmann-Haupt,
intentional subversion": Christopher
Pynchon's
S
New
York Times, December 26,
1989.
21 "As Balkanizing": Michael O'Brien, the 60's:
We
"A Paradox of
Are Cosmopolitan; Our Scholarship
Intellectual Life Since
Not,"
Is
in Chronicle of
Higher Education, November 30, 1988. 22
"We sent them Jerry Lewis": Frenchmen Be Wrong?"
in
Quoted
xh^New
22 "The episode where rocker": Stephanie Brush, "Three
Captured a Decade,"
in the
23 "The very word": Michael
New
York Times, June
Wood,
York Review of Books, March
3,
"Can 50 Million
in Alessandra Stanley,
York Times Magazine, October 21, 1990.
4,
TV
Shows That
1989.
"Deconstructing Derrida," in the
New
1977.
25 "Since there are no functions": Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (Cambridge:
Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1988), 34.
25 "Bentham said
December
it
David Bromwich, "Sure,"
faster":
Criticism After Structuralism
(Ithaca:
26 "Tissue of confusions": John R.
26
"A
New
On
Republic,
Deconstruction: Theory and
Cornell University Press, 1982), 87-88.
Searle,
"The
Word Turned
Upside Down,"
York Review of Books, October 27, 1983.
philosopher of science": James Trefil, "The Survival of the Luckiest," in
30-November
the Washington Post National Weekly Edition, October
27 "School of Resentment": Harold Bloom, "Literature
New
it":
Geoffrey Hartman, quoted by Frederick Crews,
(New York: Oxford
Engagements
"An
5,
1989.
as the Bible," in the
York Review of Books, March 31, 1988.
28 "I cannot fmd
29
New
12, 1988.
25 "The experience of pain": Jonathan Culler,
in the
in the
exercise": Elizabeth
in the
New
Criterion
Council Fentress,
all
"Why
I
Left Graduate School,"
(June 1989): 77-82.
29 "Students electing to major seven percent of
in literature":
bachelor's degrees
Between 1963 and 1970, more than
were awarded
to students majoring in
English; between 1979 and 1986, the figure had dropped to percent. See the
"Shifting
MLA
Away from
in Skeptical
University Press, 1986), 132.
Newsletter (Wnitcr 1988): the Liberal Arts," in the
3; see also
New
below
three
Gene L Maeroft,
York Times, March 26,
1985.
30 "Boa-deconstructors": Geoffrey Hartman, "Preface," Deconstruction and cism
(New York: The Seabury
Press, 1979), ix.
30 "A journey to the moon": Frederick Crews, Skeptical Engagements,
Crews made convention
the observation in the course
in
December
1979.
Criti-
of
a talk
he gave
at the
116.
MLA
275
30 "Clowns or jongleurs": Geoffrey Hartman, "The State of the Art of Criticism," in The Future of Literary
Theory,
Ralph Cohen (New York:
ed.
Routledge, 1989), 100.
30 "The serious philosophy": M. H. Abrams, in
31
"By J. in
"How
to
Do
Things with Texts,"
Partisan Review 46, no. 4 (1979): 574. S. Mill's
maxim": M. H. Abrams, "Construing and Deconstructing,"
Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, ed. Morris Eaves and Michael
Fischer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 128.
31
"A in
palimpsest":
Anna C. Chave, Mark Rothko: Subjects in Abstraction, quoted "Was Rothko an Abstract Painter?" in the New Criterion
Hilton Kramer,
(March 1989):
4.
Law of
32 "Genres are not to be mixed": Derrida's essay "The Avital Ronell, appears in versity
of Chicago
On
Press, 1980). See
Rod
33
"An
trans.
Smith's review of Carla Harryman's
Vice in Paper Air 4, no. 2 (1989): 124—26. Paper Air
Horse Press
Genre,"
W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago: Uni-
Narrative, ed.
published by Singing
is
in Philadelphia.
Tom
assistant professor":
Clark, "Stalin as Linguist," Partisan Review
(Sprmg 1987): 300.
54, no. 2
33 "Derrida's summer home": ton, Mass.:
The
33 "Pastoral for Derrida":
Houghton
Bob Perelman,
Captive Audience (Great Barring-
Figures, 1988), 51.
Rodney
(New York:
Jones, Transparent Gestures
Mifflin, 1989), 55-56.
33 "The Apocrypha of Jacques Derrida":
Norman
Dubie, Groom Falconer
(New
York: Norton, 1989), 25-26. 33 "The
new
thinking": Robert Hass, "Meditation at Lagunitas," in The Antaeus
Anthology, ed. Daniel Halpern
(New York: Bantam,
33 "The Professor": Louis Simpson,
letter
to
1986), 183.
David Lehman, October
13,
1988.
34
"A
biblical scholar":
Stephen D. Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels:
The Theoretical Challen^qe (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989),
130-31,
145, 176-77.
34 "Rabblement of lemmings": Harold Bloom, "Literature 34 "In the
de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays
act": Paul
as the Bible." in the Rhetoric
of
Contemporary Criticism, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 11.
35 "The true historical significance": Stephen A. Tyler, "Post-Modern Ethnography:
From Document of
Culture: E.
The
Poetics
the Occult to Occult
Document,"
in
Writing
and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George
Marcus (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
131, 136. Sec also Geertz,
Works and
Lives,
36 "Deconstructivist Architecture": Mark Wigley, quoted "Deconstruct! vism,"
in the
New
Yorker,
Press, 1986),
131-38.
September
5,
in
1988.
Brendan
Gill,
O
N
276
T
36 "Deconstructive financier": Richard Rand, "Poetic
Wall
structed," in the
Street Journal,
S
E
May
1,
Justice:
1989.
37 "The significance of the deconstructive practice": Gary the
39
Mob: The
"CLS
of law":
critique
Cornell
Law Review
40 "There
of Representation,"
Politics
Owen M.
72, no.
Deconstruction and Criticism
41 "The abyss":
CHAPTER
2:
Tikkun
"Reason and
Peller,
no. 3 (1987): 95.
2,
"The Death of
the
Law?"
in the
(1986): 10-12.
1
no deconstruction":
is
Fiss,
in
Milken Decon-
"The
Hillis Miller,
J.
(New York: The Seabury "The
Hillis Miller, J.
Critic as Host," in Press, 1979), 251.
Critic as Host," 245.
CRAZY ABOUT DECONSTRUCTION
45 "Apocalyptic hype": Robert Hughes, "The Patron Saint of Neo-Pop,"
New
York Review of Books, June
45 "There
is
New 45
common
Republic,
"An
1989.
an ever-increasing supply": Frank Kermode, "The Limits of The-
ory," in Scripsi
45 "The
1,
in the
5,
no. 2 (1989): 40.
reader": Irving
June
intellectual
Howe, "The Treason of
the Critics," in the
12, 1989.
heresy":
Clara Claiborne Park, "Talking Back to the
Speaker," in the Hudson Review (Spring 1989): 43.
45 "Dogmatic skepticism": Tzvetan Todorov, "Crimes Against Humanities," in the
New
Republic, July 3, 1989.
46 "Our students can't read": Denis Donoghue, "The Joy of Texts," Republic,
in the
New
June 26, 1989.
46 "The Age of Criticism": Randall
Jarrell, Poetry
and
the
A^e (New York:
Vintage, 1955), 63-86.
47 "Three of his most formidable theoretical and Difference,
trans.
studies": Jacques Derrida, Writin^i
Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978);
O/Grammatolojiiy, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns kins University Press, 1976); and Speech and Phenomena,
trans.
Hop-
David
B.
Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
48 "At the Americana Hotel": Richard Ohmann, English
View of the
Profession
49 "1948": Gerald Graff,
in
America:
A
Radical
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 27-29. Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), 185-86.
50 "To urge us" and "the
classic defense":
Lionel Trilling, Beyond Culture
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 51
"The
reader-critic's claim":
Study of Literature Today 51
"An
11, 184.
Geoffrey Hartman, Criticism
(New Haven: Yale
(New
in the Wilderness:
The
University Press, 1980), 20, 201.
ovcrgocr": Geoffrey Hartman, The Fate of Reading (Chicago: University
of Chicago
Press, 1975), 3.
53 "The sign": Jacques Derrida,
Of Grammatology,
19.
54 "Indeterminacy": Sec Gerald Graff, "Dcterminacy/Indcterminacy,"
in Criti-
O
N cal
T
277
S
E
Terms for Literary Study, cd. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 165.
54 "Great works":
(Summer
Diacritics 5, no. 2
"Deconstructing the Deconstructors," in
Hillis Miller,
J.
1975): 30-31.
56 "The most dogmatic French deconstructionists": Edith Kurzweil,
view with Julia Kristeva," 56 "America
is
in Partisan
"An
Inter-
Review 53, no. 2 (1986): 217-18.
deconstruction": Jacques Derrida, Memoires:for Paul de Man, rev.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 18. 56 "On the Teaching of Modern Literature": Lionel Trilling, Beyond (New York: Harcourt Brace Jo vanovich, 1979), 10, 23-24. ed.
Culture
59 "The doctrine of madness": Lionel Trillmg, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge:
Harvard University
Press, 1973), 171. If
honorable uses of the word deconstruction,
60 "America
is
it
are determined to
fmd
could be said that Trilling
health."
David Lodge, Small World (New York: Macmillan,
crazy":
is
think
I
deconstructed "the doctrine that madness
we
1985), 118.
60 "The view of deconstruction":
Howard
Felperin,
Beyond Deconstruction: The
Uses and Abuses of Literary Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 114—15.
61 "Deconstruction's procedure": Jonathan Culler,
On
Deconstruction,
149.
63 "The poet's way": Examples from Wallace Stevens's "Study of Two Pears"
and "Someone Puts Selected
a
Poems and a
Pineapple Together," in The Palm
at the
End ofthe Mind:
Holly Stevens (New York: Vintage, 1972), 159,
Play, ed.
298.
64 "Ethicity":
J.
Trollope, James,
51. See
64 "Everything
is
Protocols of Reading
145-55, for an illuminating discussion.
Press, 1989),
John
is
much
phoney": "There (not
all,
Searle has written.
phony anyway,
"To put
3:
it
the phoniness
deconstruction." In the
an atmosphere of bluff and fakery that
is
of course) deconstructive writing," the philosopher
indeed commendable, since
CHAPTER
it
New
crudely, they think that since everything
of deconstruction
lies
is
somehow
is
York Review of Books, February
the practice": Denis
Paul de Man," in the
New
1984.
Donoghue, "The Strange Case of
"It's
Record Straight About Paul de Man and His Wartime Newspaper,"
in Chronicle
Man,"
in the Nation,
Time
to Set the
Articles for a Pro-
of Higher Education, July 13, 1988.
"A form of commentary": Edward structing de
2,
York Review of Books, June 29, 1989.
65 "The term invented by Derrida": Jonathan Culler,
Fascist
acceptable,
on the surface ready for further
right
ARCHIE DEBUNKING
65 "Deconstruction
65
Eliot,
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), (New Haven: Yale University
and Benjamin
Robert Scholes,
pervades
The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man,
Hillis Miller,
Said,
January
quoted 9,
in
1988.
Jon Wiener, "Decon-
66
"A
O
N
278
deconstructive reading
is
T
E
S
an attempt": Barbara Johnson,
A
World of
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 17-18.
Difference
66 "The dismantling": Christopher Norris, Derrida (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 19.
66 "To deconstruct a discourse": Jonathan Culler, 66
"A
On
Deconstruction,
86.
deconstruction always has": Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural
Language
Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust
in
(New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1979), 249.
67 "The neoconservative and
Time: The Real Story,"
sexist subtext":
in t\iQ
New
67 "Favorable reception": Gertrude Himmelfarb, "The Art of History
New
Credo," in the
Upon
Rosellen Brown, "Once
a
York Times Book Review, March 11, 1990.
Was
His
York Times Book Review, March 11, 1990.
68 "Archie Bunker": Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading, 9-10.
Word Turned Upside Down," 78. M. H. Abrams, "Construing and Decon-
69 "Rather obvious": John R. Searle, "The
69 "Both deconstructive
literature":
structing," 160.
70 "Ideology": Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
Totalitarianism
(New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 159, 468. 71 "Textuality
as Striptease":
David Lodge, Small World,
M. H. Abrams, "How
71 "Suicidal":
to
Do
28.
Things with Texts," 568.
71 "Indeterminism": Frederick Crews, "Criticism Without Constraint,"
Commentary Qanuary 1982): 71 "Nihilistic view":
W.
m
71.
Jackson Bate, "The Crisis in English Studies,"
in
Harvard magazine (September-October 1982): 52.
Rene Wellek, A History (New Haven: Yale University Press,
71 "Recent varieties": vol. 6
of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950 1986), 299.
72 "Martial implications": Robert Alter, "Deconstruction
New
real
America,"
in the
April 25, 1983.
Republic,
73 "The sense": Frederick Crews, Skeptical Engagements, 73 "The
in
129.
impetus": Robert Alter, "Deconstruction in America," 30.
73 "Post-structuralism": Terry Eaglcton, Literary Theory:
An
(Min-
Introduction
ncapohs: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 142.
73 "As everyone knows": Morris Dickstein, "School's Out," Literary Supplement
74 "That what Dissent
is
(Fall
(October 1988):
the Stanford Literature
76
Voice
19. in
1989): 550-51.
74 "The youth culture":
Dig Our
the
happening": David Bromwich, "The Future of Tradition,"
74 "Mischievously radical": Eagleton, Literary Theory,
75 "Liberation":
in
Wayne
Own
W. Wolfgang
Holdheim,
Review (Spring 1987):
Fori Academici," in
19.
Booth, " 'Preserving the Exemplar':
Graves," in Critical Inquiry
"Is revolutionary":
145.
''Idola
John M.
Ellis,
3,
or,
How
Not
to
no. 3 (Spring 1977): 416.
Against Deconstruction (Princeton: Prince-
i
O
N
T
E
279
S
ton University Press, 1989), 87. See also 88, 142-43, 157. "Advocates of deconstruction are dreaming if they really believe that radically counter to,
and
America
criticism. Deconstruction's success in
reverse
new
—by
air
its
is,
runs
thrust
[its]
American
the entrenched attitudes of
disturbs,
in fact, explained
by just the
playing to the prevailing climate and giving that climate
a
of legitimacy" (157).
"When
76 "Duncan Kennedy": Ken Emerson,
Legal Titans Clash," in the
New
York Times Magazine, April 22, 1990.
77 "Obscurantist terrorism": Quoted in John R. Searle, "The
Word Turned
Upside Down," 77. 78 "The de- prefix": Robert Alter, The Pleasures of Reading: Thinking About
Age (New York: Simon and
Literature in an Ideological
Schuster,
1989),
19-20.
78 "Deconstruction's thrust": Sven Birkerts, in Sulfur 19 (1987): 143. 78 "The deconstructive will": Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, "The Philosophies
of
'68," trans.
Mark
Review
Lilla, in Partisan
(Summer
56, no. 3
1989): 349,
354-55.
79 "Hermeneutical mafia": Frank Lentricchia, After
the
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 283. See also Deconstruction,
New
Criticism (Chicago:
Howard
Felperin,
111-12.
79 "The rage": Daniel Hoffman, "The Last of the Chicksaws," 39, no.
1,
81 "Conception of 'greatness' Its Institutions
"The
81 "It
is
in
Shenandoah
1989, 51.
79 "Deconstructive attacks": Clifford Geertz, Works and
81
Beyond
Jonathan Culler, Framing
":
Lives,
(Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma
bases": Paul de
Man,
Blindness and Insight,
Criticism,
trans.
and
Press, 1988), 47.
rev. ed., 165.
not possible": Tzvetan Todorov, Literature and
View of Twentieth-Century
131.
the Sign: Criticism
Its Theorists:
A
Personal
Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1987), 190.
82 "Instead of: Barbara Johnson,
A
World of Difference, 12-13. (New York: New American Library,
82 "The key word": George Orwell, 1984 1961), 175.
83 "The plagues of Egypt": Randall 84 "It
is
Jarrell, Poetry
and
78-79.
the Age,
not popularity": Alison Lurie, "Notes on the Language of Poststructur-
alism," in The State of the Language,
ed. Christopher
Ricks and Leonard
Michaels (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1990),
292.
85 "If someone": Interview with Alison Lune, Ithaca,
New
York, December
24, 1988.
85 "Attacking the Abyss": "Rambles
10-12 (Oct.-Dec. 1988):
3.
in
Book-Land,"
"Cosmo Dewlap"
Codrescu, editor of Exquisite Corpse.
is
in Exquisite
a
Corpse
pseudonym
6, nos.
for Andrei
86
"One
has long":
Inquiry 9, no. at
random"
T
S
E
Donald Davie, "Poet:
Patriot:
Interpreter," in Critical
(September 1982): 30. The sentence Davie chooses "virtually
1
is
O
N
280
from William V. Spanos, Paul A. Bove, and Daniel O'Hara,
Introduction to Boundary 2 (Fall 1979):
3.
87 "Vocation": Donald Davie, "Poet: Patriot: Interpreter," 42-43. 87 "Clarity":
Some
advocates of Critical Legal Studies manage to write clearly,
Kenney Hegland.
notes
politically repressive."
"Such and
"It appears,
criticism.
By
upon
Yale
clarity
is
Law Journal:
of certain types of thinking
forcing critics to speak in the traditional idiom, they defuse
Hegland, "Goodbye to Deconstruc-
their critical message."
Law Review
tion," in the Southern California "Diacritics":
insist
article in the
strictures militate against the articulation
and deradicalize
87
however, that to
Hegland quotes an
58 (1985): 1203-4.
Interview with David Grossvogel, Ithaca,
New
York, October
17, 1988.
88 "Struggled to deconstruct": All quotations from Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction
of Society: Comparative Studies ofMyth, Ritual, and
(New York: Oxford
Classification
University Press, 1989), 26, 167, 169, 106, 127, 98-99.
89 "Special connection": George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," in
A
(New York:
Collection of Essays
"On
90 "Colin MacCabe": See Ian Jack,
Harcourt, Brace, 1953), 165. the Trail of the
the Sunday Times (London) January 25, 1981. Ricks ,
Lonesome Don,"
was quoted
in
in
Dennis
A. Williams, "Unquiet Flow the Dons," Newsweek, February 16, 1981.
90 "Deconstructionism
is":
Frank Kermode, The Art
(Cambridge: Harvard University
CHAPTER
4:
ofTellinj^: Essays on Fiction
Press, 1983), 7.
TO THE LINGUISTIC ABYSS
93 "Death": Paul dc Man, The Rhetoric
oj
Romanticism
(New York: Columbia
University Press, 1984), 81.
94 "Contemporary
literary theory":
Paul de Man, The Resistance
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986),
95 "Differance": See Jacques Dcrrida, versity
of Chicago
Introduction
in
Robert Scholcs,
(New Haven: Yale
Alan Bass (Chicago: Uni-
Structuralism in Literature:
University Press, 1974),
Human
An
16.
97 "This was the moment": Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play Discourse of the
Theory
26-28.
Press, 1981),
96 "Semiology": Quoted
Positions, trans.
to
8.
Sciences," in Writin^^ and Difference,
in the
278-80.
1 '
98 "There's no there there": George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University
of Chicago
Press,
1989), 120-21.
98 "The presence": Paul de Man, Blindness and 98 "Nothing":
Ibid.,
141.
Insight,
rev. ed., 18.
O
N
T
98 "The deconstruction of
E
Man,
literature": Paul de
281
S
Allc^iories
of Readinj^,
17.
99 "The analysis": Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a de Man's War,"
Shell: Paul
Peggy Kamuf,
trans.
in Critical Inquiry
14, no.
(New York:
Carroll
3 (Spring 1988): 648.
102 "Words, he thought": Philip K. Dick, Time Out ofJoint
and Graf, 1987), 59-60. 102 "Vast metaphysical plot": Michael 103
"It
always seemed":
has
Constituencies, and 1982):
Wood,
Edward
Community,"
W.
"Deconstructing Derrida," 27.
"Opponents, Audiences,
Said,
in Critical Inquiry
9,
no.
1
(September
9.
104 "Writing
Jacques Derrida,
in general":
105 "The history": Ibid,
106 "The law that language": struction
and
Criticism,
106 "The author
is
in Image, Music,
44.
J.
Hillis Miller,
"The
Critic as Host," in Decon-
224.
reputed": Text,
Of Grammatology,
3.
"From Work Stephen Heath (New York:
Roland
trans.
Barthes,
to
Text" (1971),
Wang,
Hill and
1977), 155-64.
107 "There
is
nothing": Jacques Derrida,
Of Grammatology,
163.
107 "Doing ethnography": Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
York: Basic Books, 1973),
5, 10,
108 "Popular wisdom": William Gass, Habitations of
Simon and
(New
15-16.
Word (New York:
the
Schuster, 1985), 265.
108 "The Death of the Author": Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 142-48. 108 "The idea of the death of the author": William Gass, Habitations ofthe Word, 265.
109 "Death of the father":
Ibid., 286.
109 "There was a time": Michel Foucault, Strategies:
(Ithaca:
Perspectives
in
"What
Post-Structuralist
Is
an Author?" in Textual
Criticism,
ed.
Josue V. Harari
Cornell University Press, 1979), 149.
109 "It would be frivolous": Derrida,
109 "D'ya wanna
know
Of Grammatology,
99.
the creed'a": Peter Mullen, "Deconstruction," in the
Times Literary Supplement (London), October
18, 1985.
112 "The logical result of Fascism": Walter Benjamin, Illuminations,
trans.
Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), 241^2. 112 "Aesthetic ideology": See, for example, Lindsay Waters, "Paul de Man: Life
and Works," sity
112
in
de Man, Critical Writings 1953-1978 (Minneapolis: Univer-
oi Minnesota
Press, 1989), Iviii-lix.
"Humpty Dumpty": Lewis
Edition, ed.
Donald
J.
Carroll, Alice in Wonderland,
Gray (New York: Norton, 1971),
Norton
Critical
163.
112 "Greatness and genius": See David Bromwich, "The Future of Tradition,"
O
N
282
in Dissent (Fall 1989): 549.
S
E
For certain academic
commonly
"the adjective most
T
A KEY IDEA
5:
"Welcome
pretty early": Jane Bryant Quinn,
"It's still
May
Newsweek,
Ferla, "Sincerely
116 "Hyper-rich": ruary
3,
to the 1990s," in
21, 1990.
116 "Dismantling of Reaganist attitudes": Marshall Blonsky
La
Wolfe's Novel
February 1990.
Ideas"), in Harper's,
115
notes,
"totalitarian."
is
"Tom
113 "Pizza": Walker Percy, "Letter" (occasioned by
CHAPTER
Bromwich
theorists,
paired with "enlightenment"
as
quoted in Ruth
Yours," in x^^cNew York Times Magazine, April 18, 1990.
W.
Speers,
"Newsmakers,"
in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Feb-
1990.
116 "Words in isolation": Jacques Derrida, Memoires: for Paul de Man, rev.
ed.,
15.
116 "The French sculptors": Anne and Patrick Poirier exhibited the
Storm King sculpture park near Newburgh,
of 1989. Kay Larson, reviewing the exhibition
New New
in
York,
their
in the
work at summer
York magazine, wrote:
"Transporting their deconstructed temples into sunshine and rain proves to
be the definitive
test.
Sculpture in a gallery can explain
porary jargon. Outdoors sky,
it's
real
were lightweights, but
Larson, "Loose Marbles," in
through contem-
forced to compete against the actuality of
and architecture, within
Poiriers
itself
time and space. ...
I
have always
in daylight they positively vaporize."
New
York,
August
2,
117
"We
New Key (New
in a
York:
18.
ought scrupulously": R.
Form and Value
New
1989.
117 "Key-idea": Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy
Mentor, 1948),
the
Kay
28, 1989.
116 "K.G.B. Chief: The K.G.B. story appeared on the front page of the York Times, June
trees,
felt
in
Blackmur,
P.
"A
Critic's
Job of Work,"
in
Modern Poetry (Garden City, N.Y.: Doublcday Anchor,
1957), 340-41.
118 "The tion,
first
work of thoroughgoing": Howard
Fclperin,
Beyond Deconstruc-
104, 119-21.
118 "The utterly
pitiless":
Stephen D. Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels:
The Theoretical Challenge, 136-37. 120 "Charhc Chaplin": Hollander's comment on City Lights was made
in
conversation. For other useful examples of artful "dcconstruction," see John
Hollander, Melodious Guile: Fictive Pattern
Yale University
Press, 1988), 50,
in Poetic
Language
(New Haven:
67-68, 103, 200-202.
123 "King Louis XVI": Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and
the Construction
of Society,
169.
124 "Fanatic
and Value
falsification": in
Modern
R.
Poetry,
P.
Blackmur, "A
347.
Critic's
Job of Work,"
in
Form
O
N
T
126 "Metaphysical assumptions": All quotations are from
Edge,"
"To
127
283
S
E
J.
Hillis Miller,
"On
Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, 101-11.
in
say that
all
narratives": J. Hillis Miller, "Narrative," in Critical Terms
Thomas McLaughlin, 76. M. H. Abrams, "The Deconstructive Angel,"
for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and
"MLA
128
in 1976":
convention
in Critical Inquiry 3, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 434;
Host,"
as
ibid.,
and J.
Hillis Miller,
"The
Critic
447.
128 "Shootout": Partisan Review 47, no. 3 (1980): 390. 128
"A
M. H. Abrams, "Construing and
traditionalist":
Deconstructing," in
Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, 128, 148, 157-58.
129
"Two
incompatible, mutually self-destructive": Paul de
Reading,
130 "For
Man,
13.
It
turns out": Ibid., 11-12.
133 "The stakes are enormous":
J.
The Lesson of Paul de Man Romanticism and Contemporary
Hillis Miller in
[Yale French Studies no. 69 [1985]), 3. See also Criticism,
126.
Modern Music,"
134 "Stravinsky": See Richard Taruskin, "The Dark Side of
New
in the
134
Allegories of
Republic,
''Historikerstreit":
September
5,
1988.
For an excellent account,
see Charles
S.
Maier, The
Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity
Harvard University
bridge:
136
"One
Parisian
(Cam-
Press, 1989).
commentator": Alain Finkielkraut, quoted
Alain Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity,
trans.
in
Luc Ferry and
Franklin Philip (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), 38-39, 42. See also Robert Zaretsky,
"Sometimes
a Great
Commotion: The Heidegger
tuals," in Southwest Review,
Summer
Affair and French Intellec-
1990, 380-92.
137 "Lacoue-Labarthe": Quoted in Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity,
2, 87, 89.
137 "Beyond the
fact":
Barbara Johnson,
A
World of Difference,
137 "Considerations of the actual": Paul de Man, Blindness and
xi.
Insight,
rev. ed.,
35.
137 "Technically correct": Paul de Man, The Resistance
to
Theory (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 19.
139 "The reading of despair": Stanley Cavell, Themes Out of School: Causes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988),
45^7.
Effects
and
See also John
Hollander, Melodious Guile, 37.
CHAPTER
6:
THE FALLEN IDOL
143 "The most celebrated member": Frank Kermode, "Paul de Man's Abyss," in the
143
"He
London Review of Books, March
16,
1989.
did not seek leadership": Shoshana Fclman and Ellen Burt in The Lesson
of Paul de
Man
(Yale French Studies no. 69 [1985]), 3-13.
284
144
"It
seemed to
O
N
me
T
E
S
paradoxical": Barbara Johnson, quoted in Imre Salu-
(New York: Methuen,
sinszky, Criticism in Society
1987), 160.
144 "Rigor" and "authority": Ellen Burt, Andrzej Warminsky, Barbara Johnson, J. Hillis Miller,
and Shoshana Felman,
in
The Lesson of Paul de
Man
[Yale
French Studies no. 69 [1985]), 3-13.
144 "The center of theoretical gravity": Interview with Barbara Johnson,
145 "There
an impact": Paul de Man, The Resistance
is
to
Theory,
117.
145 "The accommodation or appropriation of deconstruction": Criticism Society,
in
156.
Criticism in Society,
in
222-23.
146 "Derridadaism": Geoffrey Hartman, Saving
the
Text: Literature, Derrida,
Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 33.
146 "Bloom and Hartman": Geoffrey Hartman, "Preface," Criticism,
and
in Deconstruction
ix.
146 "I have no relation to deconstruction": Harold Bloom, Criticism
in Society,
68.
146
"A
displaced version": Paul de
147 "Jacques Derrida
New
Haven,
May
is
Man,
Blindness and Insight, rev. ed., 273-75.
Harold Bloom,
a close personal friend": Interview with
1,
1986.
148 "Personal joke": Criticism
in Society,
68.
149 "Dirty Harry": Maureen Corrigan in the Voice Literary Supplement, March 1984.
149 "In the manner of a don": Frank Lentricchia, After
the
New
Criticism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 283-84.
150 "There
is
absolutely
150 "Deconstruction,
as
no reason": Paul de Man, was
Allegories of Reading,
16-17.
easily predictable": Ibid., x.
150 "Startled by the vehemence": Barbara Johnson,
A World
of Difference,
6.
151 "Ringing defense": Telephone interview with Geoffrey Hartman, January 16, 1988.
152 "Politics was the lingua franca": Donald Hall, telephone interview on February
6,
1988 and
letter to
David Lehman, September
153 "The most photocopied essay": in
"Caution! Reader
at
Work!"
edition of Blindness and Insight.
Wlad Godzich, quoting
— Godzich's
20, 1988.
)onathan Culler,
introduction to the revised
dc Man, Blindness and
In Paul
Insight,
rev.
cd., xvi.
153
"A more
sober assessment": David
and Community from Edmund Burke
Bromwich, A Choice of Inheritance: to
Robert Frost
Self
(Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1989), 273.
153
"Mock
Insight,
sensationalism": All quotations
from Paul de Man, Blindness and
rev. ed., 3, 10, 17, 25, 35, 141, 165, 232.
O
N
T
E
285
S
154 "The Resistance to Theory": Paul de Man, The Resistance
to
Theory, 5, 12,
19-20.
155 "Trilling's students": Frank Kermode, "Paul de Man's Abyss,"
156 "Already
classic essay": J. Hillis Miller, "Presidential
Triumph of Theory, 157 "As
we know
the Resistance to Reading, and the Question of the
PMLA
Material Base," in
7.
Address 1986. The
102, no. 3
(May
1987): 281-91.
already": Jacques Derrida, in The Lesson of Paul de
Man
[Yale
French Studies no. 69 [1985]), 324.
157 "If
may
I
157 "Yale
dare to say so":
Still
J.
Hillis Miller, ibid., 4.
Feeling Loss of Revered Professor": Susan Chira, in the
New
York Times, February 25, 1984.
158 "To read de Man, from Sea
Deep within
a Shell:
A
to Z": Jacques Derrida, "Like the
Sound of
the
Paul de Man's War," 639.
159 "The Poverty of Philosophy": John Hollander, Melodious Guile, 117-19. 161 "The
Man,"
of
spirit
in
criticism": Geoffrey
Reading
De Man
Hartman, "Looking Back on Paul de
Reading, ed. Lindsay Waters and
Wlad Godzich
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 11.
CHAPTER
THE STOLEN EVENING
7:
163 "Arguably the most challenging writer": Ortwin de Graef, "Aspects of the
Context of Paul de Man's
Earliest Publications," in Responses:
Man's Wartime Journalism,
ed.
164 "By choosing Germany": Quoted
in E.
Press, 1989), 115.
Ramon
Arango, Leopold III and the
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961), 169.
165 "Everybody reads quisling papers": Anne Somerhausen, Written
A
Belgian
Paul de
Werner Hamacher, Neil Hertz, and Thomas
Keenan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Belgian Royal Question
On
in
Darkness:
Woman's Record of the Occupation, 1940-1945 (New York: Knopf,
1946), 228.
165 "Like a defeated flock":
166
"A
fascist,
Responses,
166 168
Ibid., 18, 20.
an anti-Semite": John Brenkman, "Fascist Commitments," in
cd.
Werner Hamacher
ct al., 34.
"A classic dcconstructivc reading": Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction, 283. "He and his brave, efl^icicnt army": David Cannadine, ed., Blood, Toil, Tears
and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 158.
169 "Belgian unity could be restored": David Littlejohn, The
A
History of Collaboration in German-Occupied Lurope,
Heinemann, 1972),
184.
170 "More than one": E. Question,
5—6.
Patriotic Traitors:
1940—1945 (London:
Ramon
Arango, Leopold
III
and
the Belgian
Royal
O
N
286
T
171 "If you abandon their cause": Recueil de documents etabli par
1949
(Brussels:
official
S
63-64; quoting from pages 87-89 of
Ibid.,
Roi concernant
Secretariat du
la
periode
1936—
a
volume containing
stated period, including those
exchanged between
Imprimerie
documents of the
le
E
et Publicite
du Marais),
the king and the ministers of the Belgian government.
171 "Later
it
will turn out": In
Le
July 21, 1942, in Paul de Man, Wartime
Soir,
Journalism 1940-1942 (Lmcoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1989),
Cited in John Brenkman, Responses, ed. Werner Hamacher
253-54.
et al., 27.
172 "Plugged the Nazi hit-parade": Quoted in Jon Wiener, "Deconstructing de
Man,"
m
the Nation, January 9, 1988.
173 "More dignified, more 1941, in Paul de
just,
and more humane": In Le
Man, Wartime Journalism,
173 "Organizing European society": In Le 173 "The will to unify": In Le 173
"A
sincere artist": In
173 "The whole continuity": In Le "Irresistible necessity": In
173 "In the best
interests
26, 1941, ibid., 137-38.
16, 1942, ibid., 207.
Het Vlaamsche Land, July 26-27, 1942,
173 "Entering a mystical era": In Le
173
August
Soir,
March
Soir,
April 12-14,
Soir,
66.
Le
Soir,
April 28, 1942,
March
Soir,
July 21, 1942,
Soir,
ibid.,
16, 1942, ibid.,
ibid.,
322.
226-27. IQil.
253-54.
ibid.,
of Germany": David Littlejohn, The
Patriotic Traitors,
210-11.
174 "French survivor": John Brenkman, al.,
174
Werner Hamacher
et
27.
"Hegemony
in
Europe": In Le
Wartime Journalism, 174
in Responses, ed.
"A
sort
of
fascist
1
October
Soir,
28, 1941, in Paul do
Man,
58.
Rupert Brooke": David
Littlejohn,
The
Patriotic Traitors,
12,
1941, in Paul dc
200.
174 "Brasillach's accomplishments": In Le
Soir,
August
Man, Wartime Journalism, 130-131.
Wolfgang Holdhcim, March 17, 1988.
175 "Very particular idiosyncrasies": the
London Review of Books,
176 "The people the Ccrclc
who
"Fatal Swerve," in
had killed God": Edouard Colinct, "Paul de
du Libre Examen,"
in Responses, ed.
Werner Hamacher
Man
and
et al., 431.
176 "Postwar Belgian justice": Wolfgang Holdhcim, Letter to David Lehman,
May
22, 1990.
176 "After curfew": Edouard Colinet reports Esther Sluszny,
time
in
who
telephone conversation with
a
had taken refuge with Anaidc and Paul dc
1942 or 1943." In Responses, ed. Werner Hamacher
176 "Profound lack of moral conscience": "Paul de
Examen," Georges Goriely, quoted 177 "The poor
little
178 "The distinction Voices:
carcass": is
De Man and
in
Man
and the Cercle du Libre
Edouard Colinet,
Edouard Colinet,
ibid.,
Man "some-
et al., 436.
ibid.,
436.
435-36.
almost always blurred": William Flesch, "Ancestral
His Defenders,"
ibid.,
173-74.
— O
N 178 "The literary de
Man
T
critic for a
E
287
S
newspaper": Quoted in Edouard Colinet, "Paul
and the Cerclc du Libre Examen,"
ibid.,
436.
178 "The failure of their Kultur campaign": Anne Somerhausen, Written
in
Darkness, 238.
War Commen-
179 "Any chance of French collaboration": George Orwell, The
W.J. West (New York: Schocken, 1989), 181-83. 179 "An extremely useful instrument": Ortwin de Graef, "Aspects," sponses, ed. Werner Hamacher et al., 116-17. ed.
taries,
180 "His energetic propaganda": See Edouard Colinet "Paul de Cercle du Libre Examen," 181 "The
ibid.,
historians. is
Though
mind and
December
436.
in the
that the genocide
workings of the SS
memorandum
a "transitional step"
himself "the decision of Jews. In any case, the abscess." See
is
one that continues to vex
was
of the Jews
in a ghetto
that he, Friedrich Uebelhoer, reserved for
when and how
Alan Adelson,
planning stages
before then. As early
of Lodz, Poland, declared
that the concentration
—and
final
in the
— long
10, 1939, the Brigadenfiihrer in charge
in a top-secret
was
and the
"the Final Solution" was under wraps until Wannsee,
documentary evidence
in Hitler's as
Re-
Wannsee conference": The question of who knew what when regard-
ing the proposed annihilation of the Jews
there
Man
in
the city of
Lodz
aim must be to burn out
New
Letter, in the
will be cleansed of
entirely this pestilent
York Review of Books,
Decem-
ber 21, 1989.
181 "The Madagascar plan":
The "Final Soktion" 182 ''Volksverwering":
in
Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?:
(New York: Pantheon, 1990), 195-97. Ten-Year War on the Jews (New York: Institute
History
Hitler's
of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress, 1943), 251. 182
"One would have had
December
5,
to live":
Telephone interview with Michael Marrus,
1988.
182 "Aberrant": In Het Vlaamsche Land,
Wa rtim e Journalism,
August
20, 1942, in Paul de
182 "Fantastic Tales": Anne Somerhausen's entry for August
Somerhausen, Written 182 "At
least
Attempt
to
Man,
325.
in Darkness,
8,
1942, in
Anne
147.
25,000 Belgian Jews": Gerald Rcitlingcr, The Final Solution: The Exterminate the Jews of Europe
494; Paul Johnson, in
A
(New York: A. S. Barnes, 1961), (New York: Harper and Row,
History oj the Jews
1987), cites higher figures. "In Belgium, despite local resistance, [the SS] killed 40,(X)0 out
of 65,0(X) Jews and almost wiped out the famous diamond-
trading quarter of
183
"A
Antwerp"
stranger": Geoffrey
(502).
Hartman, "The Longest Shadow,"
in Testimony, ed.
David Rosenberg (New York: Times Books, 1989), 429, 433. 183 "There
is
nothing explanatory": Quoted
in
David Lehman, "Deconstructing
de Man's Life," in Newsweek, February 15, 1988.
O
N
288
T
S
E
(New York: Pocket Books,
183 "Haimish": Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish 1970), 149.
"We
183
were dismayed": Ted Weiss, Letter
David Lehman, October
to
22,
1988.
183 "Some of
Man,"
in the
CHAPTER 186 "At
his best friends":
New
Quoted
in
James
Atlas,
"The Case of Paul de
York Times Magazine, August 28, 1988,
LIKE UNCLE, LIKE SON
8:
least for
Europeans": John Updike, "Michel Tournier,"
New
in the
Yorker, July 10, 1989.
186 "The prosopopeia": Paul de Man, "Autobiography Rhetoric of Romanticism,
Defacement,"
as
m
The
11.
187 "Hermes": Ortwin de Graef, "Aspects,"
in Responses, ed.
Werner Hamacher
et al, 115.
187 "Charming, humorous": Quoted in James Atlas, "The Case of Paul de
Man,"
37.
188 "Jules and Jim": Telephone interview with Marc de Man, July 26, 1989. 188 "As
many
2 million": Alistair
as
Brown,
(Boston: Little,
Home, To
Lose a Battle: France 1940
1969), 451.
190 "Only on that particular day": Hannah Arendt, "Walter Benjamin: 18921940," in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed.
Zohn (New York: Schocken,
Hannah Arendt,
trans.
Harry
1969), 17-18.
190 "He was very private": Quoted
in
James
Atlas,
"The Case of Paul de Man,"
69.
191
"My
191
"Come from
father":
Telephone interview with Marc de Man, July the left": Letter
1955, quoted in Paul de
192 "As
many homelands":
Man,
from Paul de
Man
Critical Writings
to
26, 1989.
Harry Levin, June
6,
1953-197S, Ixv.
Peter Dodge, "Introduction" to
Study ofHendrik de Man, Socialist Critic of Marxism, ed. Peter
A
Documentary
Dodge
(Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 5.
193 "The
German form": Quoted
in Peter
Dodge, Beyond Marxism: The
Faith
and Works of Hendrik de Man (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), 211. 193 "I am not a German nationalist": Quoted in E. Ramon Arango, Leopold III
194
and
"One
in
the Belgian
Royal Question, 111.
can no longer": Zecv Stcrnhell, Neither Right
France,
trans.
Nor
Left: Fascist Ideology
David Maisel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press. 1986), 194.
194 "National revival": David Littlcjohn, The
Patriotic Traitors,
150-51.
194 "Peace with Hitler": Peter Dodge, Beyond Marxism, 190. 195 "Manifesto":
Ibid.,
197-98.
196 "Knowingly and maliciously":
Ibid.,
208-9, 241—43.
196 "Have a government": Zeev Sternhcll, Neither Right Nor
Left,
144. ,V
'
289
196 "Henceforth democracy": Peter Dodge, Beyond Marxism, 201. 197 "Surrendered to a maternal aunt": Peter Dodge, Beyond Marxism,
198
"He knew Camus":
from Donald Hall
Letter
to
1.
David Lehman, September
20, 1988.
199 is
"My
father,
m
quoted
Hendrik de Man": Paul de Man's
m
full
201 "What, after
Responses,
Werner Hamacher
of January 26, 1955, et
al.,
AlS-11.
Richard Klein, "The Blindness of Hyperboles, The
all":
of Insight,"
Ellipses
ed.
letter
in Diacritics
(Summer
1973): 33-44.
202 "The Ninth Commandment": Shoshana Felman, "Paul de Man's Silence," in Critical Inquiry
203
"Why
(Summer
4
15, no.
didn't he": Andrzej
Werner Hamacher
Epigraphs)," in Responses, ed.
203 204
1989): 720-22.
Warminski, "Terrible Reading (Preceded by et
al.,
388.
"Moby Dick": Shoshana Felman, "Paul de Man's Silence," 717-19. "I am not given": Paul de Man, "Forew^ord," in Blindness and Insight,
rev.
ed., xii.
205 "Movement of effacing": Paul de Man, "Shelley Disfigured," in Deconstruction
and
Criticism,
44.
206 "Gatsby": Barry Gross, "F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and
Oswald
Spengler's 'The Decline of the West,' " quoted in A. E. Elmore, ''The
Great Gatsby as Well- Wrought Urn," in Modern American Fiction: Form and
Thomas Daniel Young (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UniverThe article "Germany's New Prophets" by "Henry de Man" is also identified as the work of Hendrik de Man in Peter Dodge, Beyond Marxism, 255. The article appears in the Yale Review 13, no. 4 Quly Function, ed.
sity Press, 1989), 87.
1924): 665-83.
CHAPTER
9:
A
SCANDAL
IN
ACADAME
210 "Morns Zapp": David Lodge, Small World, 43^4, 64. 211
"A preemptive and
Sound of
the Sea
highly tendentious defense": Jacques Derrida, "Like the
Deep within
212 "Camouflage operation":
a Shell:
Paul de Man's War," 597, 634-37.
Ibid., 635.
212 "Students need independence": Jon Wiener, "Deconstructing de Man,"
in
the Nation, January 9, 1988.
213
"A
vast
amnesty project": Quoted
Man's Life,"
in
Newsweek, February
in
David Lehman, "Deconstructing de
15, 1988.
213 "They cannot bear to consider": Jon Wiener, "Deconstructing de Man," 24.
214
"I
am
indignant and worried": Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea
Deep within
a Shell: Paul
de Man's War," 647.
214 "Rife with distortions and insinuations": Cynthia Chase, "In Defense of Kristeva"
(letter), in
the Nation,
April
9,
1988.
214 "The necessary vigilance": Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man's War," 651.
215 "De Man's
O
N
290
article
Newsweek ...
is
pictures of de
Man
Tobin
S
E
about the Jews": "The
by David Lehman
[essay]
especially disturbing because
its
page of Lf Soir where de Man's essay
"Mourning Becomes Paul de Man,"
Siebers,
Werner Hamacher
in
which juxtaposes
layout,
and Nazi soldiers on the march, bears
similarity to the original
In
T
a
remarkable
first
appeared."
in Responses,
ed.
et al., 366.
215 "The rhetorician's didactic effectiveness": Jerome Christensen, "From Rhetoric to Corporate Populism:
of High Gossip," 216 "Reading over
Deep within 216
A
Romantic Critique of the Academy 16, no. 2
in Critical Inquiry his shoulder":
a Shell: Paul de
"A new moment": J.
Age
in an
(Winter 1990): 455.
Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea
Man's War," 647.
"NB,"
Hillis Miller,
in the Times Literary Supplement
(London), June 17-23, 1988.
216 "Wartime journalism": Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man's War," in Critical Inquiry
14, no. 3 (Spring
1988): 594.
217 "The tradition of German Culture": Jonathan Culler, the
Record
Straight about Paul de
Man
in "It's
Time
to Set
and His Wartime Articles for
a
Pro-Fascist Newspaper," Chronicle of Higher Education, July 13, 1988.
217 "The rocks of
their pathologies":
Andrzej Warminski, "Terrible Reading
(Preceded by 'Epigraphs')," in Responses, ed.
Werner Hamacher
et al.,
388-
89.
217 "So he was a Nazi": Jeffrey Mehlman, "Perspectives:
On De Man
and Lc
Soir," ibid., 331.
217 "Anti-historical": "Yale Scholar's Articles Found in Nazi Paper," the un-
New York R. W. B.
signed article in the 1,
1987), quotes
deconstruction
is
Times that broke the de
Lewis of Yale University.
anti-historical.
anything in the realm of
Man
human
...
It
story
(December
seems to
"It
me
encourages skepticism about almost
experience. That's one of the things
I
hold
was possible for
a reporter to hear,
from professors of compara-
ble stature, instant assessments
of deconstruction
that
against
it." It
were
219 "Political activity": Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading, 219 "The bleakest of crimes": Ibid., 293.
far
more
scathing.
156-57.
220 "Linguistic functions": Denis Donoghue, "Deconstructing Deconstruction," in the
New
220 ''True
York Reuicw of Books, June 12, 1980.
Confessions''
\
Alice Yaeger Kaplan, "Paul de
Francophone Collaboration (1940-1942),"
macher
ed.
Soir,
and the
Werner Ha-
et al., 278.
220 "The Nazis received 1978,
Man, Lc
in Responses,
163.
little
support": Paul de
Man,
Critical Writings,
1953-
I
O
N 221
"A
T
E
S
291
sociological problem": Ibid., 163.
222 "The deepest Western tradition": Jeffrey Mehlman, "Writing and Defer-
The
ence:
Politics
of Literary Adulation,"
(Summer
15
in Representations
1986): 3, 7, 8-9, 12.
222 "Maurice Blanchot
in France":
" in Responses, ed. Soir, ten political writings
Werner Hamacher
of the
terrorism," see Jeffrey
222
"No
New
apology for
Literature, History:
The
in Proceedings oj the Northeastern University Center
2 (1984): 33-52.
dead metaphors": Geoffrey Hartman, "Blindness and Insight," in the
March
Republic,
1988.
7,
223 "Narrow-mindedness": Idem, Criticism 223
et al., 329.
1930's, activist, fascist, a protracted
Mehlman, "Deconstruction,
Case o^ L'Arret de mort," for Literary Studies
On De Man and Le On Blanchot's "forgot-
Idem, "Perspectives:
"What was needed was
in the Wilderness,
resistance": Christopher Ricks,
297.
"Theory and Teach-
ing," in Proceedings of the Northeastern University Center for Literary Studies,
1985, 4.
224 "The Walloons of the 1970's": Jeffrey Mehlman, "Perspectives," 327-28. 225 "Morally suspect": Charles L. Griswold, "Deconstruction, the Nazis, and
Man"
Paul de
(letter), in
the
New
York Review of Books, October 12, 1989.
225 "Act of conscience": Geoffrey Hartman, "Blindness and Insight," 26—31.
226 "Anti-Semitic
slurs":
Richard Klein, "De Man's Resistances: of DeManology,"
tion to the Future Science
Hamacher
in Responses,
A
Contribu-
ed.
Werner
et al., 295.
227 "In contact with Jacques Derrida": Jonathan Culler, "Paul de Man's Contribution to Literary Criticism and Theory," in The Future of Literary Theory,
Ralph Cohen (New York: Routledge, 1989), 269. 227 "The same emotional structures": Alice Yaeger Kaplan, "Paul de Man, Le ed.
and the Francophone Collaboration," in Responses, ed. Werner Ha-
Soir,
macher
278-79.
et al.,
228 "The Paul de
Man
of 1940-42": Barbara Johnson,
A
World of Difference,
xvi-xvii.
231 "Heidegger's Nazi involvement": Richard Rorty, "Taking Philosophy Seriously," in the
231
"An
New
erratic
Republic,
April 11, 1988. Atlas,
"The Case of Paul de Man,"
in the
York Times Magazine, August 28, 1988.
231 "There the
New
young man": James
is
a Hitler in each
Second World
of us": Alfred Kazin reports hearing
War was
still
in progress:
this line
while
"This unpolitical excuse for the
Nazis seemed to gratify ex-radicals by confirming their disappointment with
human whose
nature. real
There was
a
positive acceptance
of some
'universal' guilt
purpose was to make the Holocaust ordinary, even to sweep
it
O
N
292
T
under the rug." In Alfred Kazin,
New
E
S
(New York:
York Jew
Vintage, 1989),
95.
232 "As If It Were Yesterday":
Comme
Si C'Etait Hier, dir.
Myriam Abramowicz
and Esther HofFenberg (1980; ninety minutes). 232 "All potentially cowards": Louis Simpson,
letter, in
the
New
York Times
Magazine, September 25, 1988.
232 "All the
trivia questions":
Dispatches from the de
Walter Kendrick, "Blindness and Hindsight:
Man Front,"
in the Voice Literary Supplement,
October
1988.
232 "Undisguised xenophobia":
J.
Hillis Miller,
"NB,"
in the
Times Literary
Supplement (London) June 17-23, 1988. ,
233 "Deconstruction's destined home": Walter Kendrick, "De
Away: Deconstructors on
Man
That Got
the Barricades," in the Voice Literary Supplement,
April 1988.
233 "His chaste academic robes": Idem, "Blindness and Hindsight,"
234 "There could have been no Holocaust": Barbara Johnson, Difference,
in the Voice
October 1988.
Literary Supplement,
A
World of
xv-xvi.
235 "The cautious injunction": Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea
Deep within
a Shell: Paul
de Man's War," 590-91.
235 "The unpardonable violence and confusion": 235 "The right wing revolutions": 235 " 'Double-talk' ance
to
Theory,
":
at
Writmgs,"
Paul de Man, "Dialogue and Dialogism," in The Resist-
ed.
Werner Hamachcr
"On
Night": Stanley Corngold,
De Man's
et al., 7.
Paul dc Man's Collaborationist
ibid., 84.
237 "To accept within
621-23.
107; cited in Ian Balfour, " 'Difficult Reading':
Itineraries," in Responses,
236 ''Music
Ibid.,
Ibid., 628.
a context": Jacques Derrida,
a Shell:
"Like the Sound of the Sea Deep
Paul dc Man's War," in Critical Inquiry
14, no. 3
(Spring
1988), 624-25.
237 "The neighboring
articles": Ibid.,
625-56.
238 "Mein Kampf: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Houghton
240 "The situation of the Jews":
S.
al.,
Ralph Manhcim (Boston:
Know: On the Werner Hamachcr
Heidi Krucgcr, "Opting to
Wartime Journalism of Paul dc Man," et
trans.
Mifflin, 1971), 56, 119-21.
in Responses,
cd.
304-6.
240 "American anti-Semitism": Richard Rand, "Rigor Vitae/'
ibid.,
354.
241 "The occupying forces": Christopher Norris, "Paul dc Man's Past,"
London Review of Books, February
4,
in the
1988.
241 "This collapse of a decrepit world": Hendrik dc Man, "Manifeste aux
J
O
N membres du
T
E
parti ouvricr beige," trans. Peter
of Hendrik de Man,
Socialist Critic
Dodge,
in
A
Documentary Study
of Marxism, 326.
241 "Gibberish": A.J. Ayer, "Fateful Swerve"
the London
(letter), in
Review
February 18, 1988.
of Books,
CHAPTER
293
S
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
10:
249 "The deconstructionist vocabulary": John R.
Upside Dov^n,"
in the
New
Searle,
"The
Word Turned
York Review of Books, October 27, 1983.
249 "Reactions to Derrida's lecture": Patrick Joyce, "Derrida Discusses Political Friendship," in the Cornell Daily Sun,
October
4,
1988.
250 "The position Heraclitus had abandoned": See S0ren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling,
Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University
trans.
Press,
1954), 132.
253 "The terms response and
of the Sea Deep within
responsibility":
a Shell: Paul de
Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound
Man's War," 592-94.
John Brenkman and Jules David Law, "Resetting Inquiry 15, no. 4 (Summer 1989): 805.
253 "The wager will be
lost":
the Agenda," in Critical 253 "De Man's wartime writings": Jonathan Culler, " 'Paul de Man's War' and the Aesthetic Ideology," ibid., 777.
253
"An
official rhetoric":
Jacques Derrida, "Like the Sound of the Sea
Deep
within a Shell: Paul de Man's War," 607. Derrida's emphasis.
254 "The
Jonathan Culler, " 'Paul de Man's War' and the
fascist tendencies":
Aesthetic Ideology," 780.
254 "All texts are undecidable": Jean-Marie Apostolides,
War,"
in Critical Inquiry
254 "The writer
who
Jacques Derrida,"
15, no. 4
Apologia,"
"An
ibid.,
"A
ibid.,
771-75.
W. Wolfgang
Holdheim, "Jacques Derrida's
789, 793, 796.
offensive argument":
Belgian
Paul de Man's
1989): 766.
Jon Wiener, "The Responsibilities of Friendship:
Jacques Derrida on Paul de Man's Collaboration,"
255
"On
helps fellow writers": Marjorie Perloff, "Response to
255 "This dogmatic assumption":
255
(Summer
fascist":
ibid.,
797-98, 801.
John Brenkman and Jules David Law, "Resetting the
Agenda," 806-8. 255 "Derrida's 'eloquence'
":
Marjorie Perloff, "Response to Jacques Derrida,"
767.
255 "In the
way of
lucid analysis":
John Brenkman and Jules David Law,
"Resetting the Agenda," 805.
255 "Five propositions": Walter Kendrick, "Blindness and Hindsight: Dispatches from the de 1988.
Man
Front," in the Voice Literary Supplement, October
256
O
N
294
T
E
''Ne pveulent pas lire": Jacques Derrida,
Fragments,"
Peggy Kamuf,
trans.
S
"Biodegradables: Seven Diary
in Critical Inquiry 15, no. 4
(Summer
1989):
819, 823, 825, 843.
257 " 'Violent journalistic
acts' ":
Ibid.,
817, 823, 832, 839, 841, 843, 845,
850-51, 859, 872.
258 "Traditional philosophical figures and tropes": Richard Rorty, a Transcendental Philosopher?" in the
"Is
Yale Journal of Criticism
Derrida
2,
no. 2
(Sprmg 1989): 207. 259 "You
little
Nazi": Christopher Tilghman, In a Father's Place
260 "The
Theory
at the Present
Literary Theory,
261
"A
Time,"
J.
in
Hillis Miller,
Ralph Cohen,
"The Function of ed..
262 "Party
Siege," in the
October
263 "The other
New
York Times, January
6,
2,
way
S. Literature:
1988.
Lawrence Lipking, "Competitive Reading,"
line":
The Future of
103.
disappearance of those standards": Joseph Berger, "U.
Canon under public,
of men and women":
real lives
Literary
(New York:
and Giroux, 1990), 163, 177, 189.
Farrar, Straus
in the
New
Re-
1989.
around": Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign, 40.
266 "The many excellent
treatises": Henry Fielding, Tom Jones 5.1 (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 160-61. 267 "A sign of the times": Jacques Derrida, "Force and Signification," in Writing
and
Difference,
3.
268 "Forces beyond Sartor Resartus
1970), 3-29.
their control":
Thomas
Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," in
and Selected Prose (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
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INDEX
INDEX
Angell, Roger, 18-20
Abetz, Otto, 192
Abrams, M. H., 30,
Anna Karenina
31, 69-72, 128
(Tolstoi), 85
Absolutism, 110
Anthropology, 34-35, 79, 96, 98, 107
Abyss, the, 56, 93, 96-98, 113, 155-56,
Anti-Semitism, 134, 166, 180-83, 200, 202, 209-10, 213, 226, 234, 241
267 Action, philosophy of, 132
European
varieties of,
Aesthetic criticism, 62-63
in France,
222
Aesthetic ideology, 189, 227, 253, 254
opportunistic, 229
"vulgar," 180, 215, 236-40, 269
Aesthetics, 25
rejection of,
111-12
A^^ainst Deconstruction
Antwerp, University
lb-Id
(Ellis),
147
The"
Aponas,
(Jarrell),
Age of theory, the, 47-52, "AIDS discourse," 84 Alabama, University
of, 36,
69, 94
Apostolides, Jean-Mane, 254
Apostrophe, 247, 249, 251
Arango, E. Ramon, 170
211
Architecture, 35-36
Alienation, analysis of, 56, 201 Allegories of Reading
(dc
Man), 139,
149, 150, 204, 209, 219, 225 in the
Family
(TV show),
Alter, Robert, 72, 73,
25,
68
American Sociological Association, School Children" (Yeats),
129-31. 139
Arendt, Hannah, 70, 190 Aristophanes, 88 Aristotle, 83.
228-29, 246, 247, 249, 250
Armani, Giorgio, 115-16
78
Arnold, Matthew, 62-63
Ambiguity, 54
"Among
55, 103, 126, 129, 237, 238,
247^9
46--^7, 83
All
187
Anxiety about language, 245, Idd-dl
Michaels), 259 Criticism,
of,
Anxiety of Influence, The (Bloom), 146,
"Against Theory" (Knapp and
"Age of
176
21
Art, 25, 32, 132
language
as
modern. 63
medium
of,
86
N
304
Art
Being, history
(cont.)
of,
229
parity of criticism and, 51
Being and Time (Heidegger), 136
postmodernism
Belgium, German occupation
in, 80,
119
"privileging," 84
and rejection of
of, 133,
158, 1-63-82, 188, 189, 191-97, aesthetics,
111-12
199, 222-24, 232, 241, 255
suspicion of, 53, 54
Benda, Julien, 270
transcendent value of, 50
Benjamin, Walter, 111-12, 189-90
truth in, 100
Bentham, Jeremy, 25
Wilde
Bentsen, Lloyd, 116, 119
on, 63
Art historians, 31
Berlin Wall, 116
As
Berlitz language schools, 152, 183
If It Were Yesterday (documentary),
Bernard, Tristan, 270
232 Astor, Mary, 122
Bernstein, Henri, 270
Atheistic fundamentalism, 265
Beyond Culture
Atlas, James, 231,
Beyond Deconstruction
232
Attentisme, 167-71
Auden,
W.
(Trilling), 51
Beyond
(Felperin), 60, 118
the Pleasure Principle
(Freud),
120
H., 112
Auschwitz, 182, 202
Bible, the, 34, 148, 265
Austen, Jane, 27, 57
Biblical studies, 34, 118
Authoritarianism, 100, 193, 195
Binary oppositions, 56, 84, 94, 103, 159, 204, 250, 263
Authority crisis of,
70
in de
Man's wartime
articles,
prerogatives of, 70
between
rebellion against, 73
of sexual discourse, 52
rhetoric of, 149-50, 156
235
and poor, 38
rich
"Biodegradables: Seven Diary
Fragments" (Derrida), 256—58
Authors, 54 death of, 108-10
Biography, 230
deconstructionist, double standard of,
denial of relevance of, 79, 110, 132,
257-58
137, 190, 201
plagiarism and, 59
Birkerts, Sven, 78
psyche
Bitburg military cemetery, 134
146
of,
textual ity and, 106-7
Blackmur, R.P., 49, 50, 117. 124, 131
Autobiographical writing, 186
Blake, William, 48
Aycr, A.
Blanic-thc-mcsscnger strategy, 216, 217
J.,
241
Blanchot, Maurice, 222, 246 Baker, Houston A., 261 Barai^hian, Anaidc,
Blindness and
188-90
"Blood and
Barbie, Klaus, 134
Bard College, 152, 183,
1-9
Baseball, 18, 156,
BBC,
Raymond
Bogart,
dc, 164, 179, 192
Humphrey, 122
Booth, Wayne, 75
Boulay dc
la
229
79
34, 118, 145-48,
213
Boston University, 172, 213
21, 178
Becker,
Man), 145,
17, 20, 37, 44,
Bloom, Harold, 27-28, 150,
246
(dc
soil" ideology, 173,
Bloom, Allan,
Barzun, Jacques, 21
Bate, Walter Jackson, 71, 72
Insi{^lit
149, 153, 187. 225
Meurthe, 170
N
305
(movie), 120-21
Brandcis University, 178
City Lii^hts
Brasillach, Robert, 172, 174, 179, 192
Clark,
Brenkman, John,
Class conflict, 83, 113, 259
166, 173-74, 253, 255
"Clitoral hermeneutics," 52
Britain, Battle of, 181
British
imperialism, 229, 230
Bromwich, David,
Tom, 32-33
Clive, John, 67
25, 74, 153
Closinj^
of the American Mind, The
Brooke, Rupert, 174
(Bloom), 44
Brooks, Cleanth, 49
Colbert, Claudette, 121, 122
Brothers Karamazor,
The (Dostoyevski),
Collaborationism, 163-83, 192-200, 202, 211, 213, 216, 222-24, 225, 226,
110
Brower, Reuben, 152
234, 241, 254, 255 attentisme, 167-71
Brown, Rosellen, 67 (ULB),
Bruxelles, Universitc Libre de
Columbia University,
17, 20, 103, 161
Commentary (Crews), 71
188
Buck, Pearl, 261
Communism,
Burt, Ellen, 144
Confession, rhetoric of, 226
(Rousseau), 219, 225
Confessions
Cahiers du Libre
Examen
(journal),
176-77
Berkeley, 259
Calvino,
Contingencies of
32
Cambridge University, Camus,
Constitutional law,
233
Italo,
Conrad, Joseph, 77, 205-6 Conspiracy theory, 102-3, 105, 267
California, University of
Irvine, 30,
Confluence (journal), 152
Conformism, academic, 262 The (movie), 258
Caitie Mutiny,
226, 227
39^0
Vahe
(Smith), 25, 51
Contradiction, spirit of, 69 90, 100
Conversions,
The (Mathews), 158
Core curriculum, 44
Albert, 198
Canon
Cornell Daily Sun, 249
Law
Review, 39
assault against idea of, 79, 81
Cornell
revision of, 263
Cornell University, 29, 58, 72, 74, 87,
Cantos (Pound), 230
144, 152, 155, 174, 216
Derrida
Capra, Frank, 121 Carlyle,
"Catapostrophe", 247 Causality, deconstruction of,
at,
Comgold,
Thomas, 268
Counterlife,
25-26
Course
246-52
Stanley, 236
The (Roth), 119-20
General Linguistics (Saussure),
in
94
Cavell, Stanley, 139, 152
Cervantes, Miguel, 81
Crews, Frederick, 71-73
Chaplin, Charlie, 120-21
Critical Inquiry
Chiasmus, 159, 197
Critical Legal Studies (CLS), 37-39, 76,
Chomsky, Noam, 152
77, 264
Christian Social Party, 239 Chronicle of Hi