SCE REPORTS # 11 SPRING, 1982
Editorial Board 1 SPECIAL ISSUE: MICHEL FOUCAULT .David Bleich, lndlana University MMCA Representative John Eakin. Indiana University IVIM1.A Representative Prefatory Note ...... L Susan Elliott, Clark University NEMLA Representative ? James Sosnoski, General Editor Marshall Grossman, Fordhant University NEMlA Representative I Introduction ...... 3 Bruce Henricksen, Loyola University SCMIA Representative 1 Peggy Kamuf, Guest Editor Vincent Leltch, Mercer University SAMLA Representative Julie Lepick; Texas ACiM Udiversity SCMLA Representative Life Without Father: What Foucaul~Might Mean for Literary Criticism...... 9 Matthew Marino, ~niversitiof Alabama SAM@ Representative Robert S. Knapp Leroy Searla, University of Washington Pacific Representative The Order of Commentary: Foucault, History and Literature...... 32 Georges Van Den Abbeele Editorial Staff The Anatomo-Politics of Positive Prescription: Materials from the History of Masturbation .....55 James Creech Jane Gallop James Fanto Arthur W. Frank, I I I Patricia Harkin l3ritlon Harwood Peggy Kamuf 77 The Obscuring Clarity of Reason...... Larysa Mykyta Steve Nimis Davrd Shumway Larysa Mykyta Jack Wallace Nat Wing
Eating Words ...... 88 Editoriat Assistants 81 Cynthia Chase Barbara Biesecker Takis Poulakos On Conventions: A Review of the Conference on Theories of Reading ...... 99 SCE Reporto is pubxished by the Society for Critical Richard A. Barney Exchange, Inc., a not for profit corporation dedicated to the discueeion of criticism and theory. For SCE News ...... 111 information about the Society and its projects, pleare write:
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Special thanks for the production of this ieeue to Janet Mercer, Department of French, Miami Ilniveraity.
Copyright (c), 1982, SCE SCE REPOiirS SCE REPORTS -----.--.- .------
INTRODUCTION PREFATORY NOTE Peggy Kamuf This isaue of SCE Reports begins a new phase of tile Society for Critical Exchange. At their business meeting lobit December at HLA in New York, the Board The idea for this collection of essays was of Directors voted to move SCE'e headquarters to prompted by a special conference on Hichel Foucault, sponsored by the Center for the Oxford, Ohio, and to restructr~reSCE Reports. In order to facilitate tbese changes, they appointed Humanitfee at the University of Southern Cali- the following adminis trntive cornittee to handle the fornia in October 1981. It was an occasion day-today business of the Society: Jpmes Creech, for theorists and researchers in many fields special projects secretary; Patricia Har'rtitr, business --philosophy, history, social science and secretary; Steven Nimia, recording secretory; David literature--to converge on the common ground of Shumway, executive secretary; and James Gosnoski, the work of a thinker who has consistently chair. questioned the purpose and effect of disciplinary divisions within the human sciences. It thus Tt is a particular pleasure to inaugurate this also provided an occasion to bring some of these phaee of SCE'e history with a epecial issue on Hictrel questions to a forum on literary theory such as Foucault. Peggy Kacnq~f, the editor of rbis issue, has this one. With one exception, the contributors brought together s group of papers on the work of to this volume are institutionally defined within the literary disciplines, yet their essays defy Foucault from hevdra2 disciplines. In addition this issue includes an essay by Cynthia (Xlase resposrding such definition. One may ask, therefore, what it to her conmelitators from the last SCE MLA session and means that literary scholars such as these (and many others) choose to disregard the narrow defi- a brief account by Rick Barney of last October's SCE Secondly, Indiana University conference on "Theories of Reading." nition of their certified competence. what are the possible implications of this gesture Our next issue of SCE Reports will be guest for literary theory? edited by Susan Elliott end will feature a position paper by Ralph Cohen on literary fonn change with As to the first question, Foucault has argue comentaries by Michael Riffaterre, Llayden White and extensively (especially in Surveiller Punit) that institution8 function to articulate knowl- Murray Schwartz. The 1983 spring/summer iseue will be edited by Steve'Nimis and will feature a poeition edge with power in order to discipline subjects. paper by Fratlric Jamesou uod commentaries on his work. Thie is most clearly demonstrated in the case of social science like psychology which developed ' throughbut the nineteenth century in intimate ,.relation with state penal-judicial institutions. James J. Soartoski However, literature was also institutionalized General Editor beginning in the nineteenth century-that,ie, both a literary canon was defined and set apart SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS ------.I____. __ __
from other sorts of writing; then, increas- literature and its study to a place in the institution. ingly, this canonical discipline has been con- (see G. Van Den Abbeele's essay in particular for a fined to an institution. Yet, while the social discussion of how Foucault' a own "histories" compli- sciences have tended to extend their range cate the relation to 'If ictions".) through proliferating social institutions, the literary discipline has not collaborated in As to the second question about the implica- the establishment of new institutional forms. tions of such heterogeneity for a theory of liter- ature: This question seems particularly pertinent One result is theemarginalization of a eince, as already noted, ~oucault'ecritique is type of study which has relatively little direct most forcefully worked out through an archeology exchange value within the network of other so- of the eocial sciences, although by using the French cial institutions outside the university. The designation "sciences humainee" (particularly in m~~caultiancritique of humanist disciplines dug- M* et lee choeee), this critique tends to dissolve gest that one should read the marginalizatio~lof the Anglo-American division between humanities and "literature" in a much more heterogeneous context social sciences. Foucault's analyses have radically than the one cornonly accepted by recent comenta- changed the questions being asked by empirical tors (for example, by Gerald Graff in Literature researchers and this shif t has produced remarkable &sinst Itself). Paradoxically, the argument that new critical perspectives on a broad range of eocial the atudy of literature has rendered itself largely institutions. (See A. Frank's essay, for example, irrelevant by giving in to theories of autorefer- which effects this shift in examining the discourse entiality is an argument made almost wh~llyin the of sex therapy.) If, however, the implications of context of the recent history of literary criticism this research for Literary thought are less clearly in North America, as if this history could be assumed set out, perhaps they have to be sought in relation to be a self-evident, self-enclosed process. Instead to ~oucault'slarger project. This project has not of thie sort of narrow determinism of literature's always been grasped by his commentators, one reason, placrz, which, because it leaves-unquestioned the no doubt, that during his lecture at the USC confer- historical forces that classify and cloister written ence, Foucault chose to spell things out with words texts, must end up accepting the very closure it to this effect: "I am not writing a history of wants to challenge, Foucault-among others--urges power. What interests me are the historical processes literary scholars, along with all researchere in ' which have produced the human as subject." In the the human eciences, to regard their object of study production of the human as subject (and, consistently as always only provisionally designated and thus ,on in Foucault's work, "subject" must be understood also its way toward redesignation. (see R. ::uapp1e as "subject to," as "subjection"), "literature," that essay far a number of suggestions of how to pro- nineteenth-century invention, has been called to play ceed with this redeeigcatior~.) The eeenya in thie a considerable role. And it is thie role that collection each contribute to this process of re- theoriet~have set out to revise. First, as we have designing the literary object by neglecting to halt seen, by opening up the closed discourse of a disci- at the boundariee which hwe historically confined pline and considering it in the context of other discourses, other folres at work in the production SCE REPORTS -.-.- SCE. REPORTS ..-I__- -.-.
of the subject of literature. Secondly, by letting Folie et deraieon, Histoire de la folie I L'k neither the producer-subject of intentional criti- classique. Paris: Plon, 1961; Histoire $= 2 cism nor the product-subject of formalist criticinm folie. Paris: U.G.E., ~ollection,1961 serve as an unassailable locus of meaning value and (aortened version); Histoire 2 la folie therefore as a center of power. Finally, (and it -l'k classique. 2nd ed. Paris: Gallimard, is here perhaps that current literary theory could 1972 (this edition contains two new appendices, have most to gain by familiarizing itself with the second of which L=~oncorps, ce papier, ce ~oucault'8 historical researches), the subjection of feuy responds to Jacques ~errida'scritique the reader, that is, hielher realization as subject, in "Cogit:, et folie" /L'~critureet la diffe'r- may derive its apparent theoreti a1 necessity from -ence, Paris: Seuil, i967/). the need to maintain and consolif ate power's artic- ulation of itself in identified subjects. To the --Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard. series of such historically produced terms already New York: Pantheon, 1965 (translation of a analyzed--delinquents, inmates, pupils, potie~rts, shortened version with additions from 1st analysands--theorists of reader+response and subjec- edition). tive c,~iticism may even now be in the process of adding a n- class of subject--the "reader." The Naissance %& clinique. Paris: P.U.F., 1963; jux~epuaitionof Foucault's historical analyses with 2nd edition, 1972. a particular discourse on literature, in other words, can disclose how the continued preoccupation with a -----'The Birth of the Clinic trans. Alan sheridan. humanis t, subjective '*ethici' serves to disf igure New York: Pantheon, 1973. texts by attempting to dismantle their resistance to a sure positioning of a subject. And from there, it .Raymond Roussel. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. may become possible to reassert that resistance to subjection which literary language performs for us ----Les Mots et lee choses. Paris: Galimard, 1966. and which is perhaps the only ethic we need to know. (see L. Mykyta's essay for a suggestion of how resist- The Order of Things, trans. Alan Sheridan. New ance may need to be asserted even as one reads York: Pantheon, 1970. Foucault's text.) ~_'~rchgolo~iedu savoir. Paris: Galimard, 1969.
The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. Alan The following brief bi!>liography lists Foucault's Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1972. major works and their EngL.i;lli translations where avail- able. For a compleLe bibliography of work both by and L_Ordre.& discours. Paris: Galimard, 1971 ~oucault'sinaugural address at the collBge de about Foucault., consrllt Alan Sheridan, Foucault: The ~rance). Will to Truth (London and New York: ~ahctock, ' 19m, pp. 227-234. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
"The Discourse on Language," trans. Rupert LIFE WITHOUT FA171 ER : Swyer (included as appendix to trans lation WHAT FOUCAULT MIGHT MEAN of The Archaeology of Knowledge). FOR LITERARY CRITICTSM ~urveilleret punir. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. Robert S. Knapp Diecipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1975. This is a working paper on the kind of work that 1 think Foucault makes necessary for literary La ~olonte'desavoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. critics. I do not pretend to be an expert about Foucault, not that he would appreciate any such -The History of Sexuality, Vol. I, trans. . will on my part to know him. So I attempt no exe- Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978. gesis of his archaeology, even though I doubt that his investigations block exegesis as much as their In addition to the tranelations of the major works, rhetorical posture suggests. Instead, I want to selected essays and interviews with Foucalllt have think about how his Nietzschean meditation on the been translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry problem of knowing has affected my theory and Simon in Lane, Counter Memor , Practice (Ithaca: practice as a teacher and student of literature. cornell ~ZGrrait~ In the first place, it seems to me that the institutional history of English in America has Department of French ideally placed literary critics to profit from Miami University Foucault's analyses of discourse. Why? Because the whole enterprise of English studies looks very like the phantasmatic effect of other disciplinary discourses rather than the outcome of our own integral and systematic disciplinary practice.l Assessed by the criteria normal to other frame- works of research and intellectual empowerment, English studies seem to have contributed surpris- ingly little to either the advancement of learning or the demagogy of knowledge. We have been suc- cessful editors of texts and collectors of textu- ality inside and outside the boundaries of the literary "work"; as O.B. Hardison once observed, we have accumulated a great pile of bricks from which something might he made.2 But apart from the honest janitorial labor of rereading the canon SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
so as to make it available for the next generation Can we give an account of what inward hearing of readers, we have not constructed many edifices irl The dircourre of science ham reemed framed to vhich count as knowledge, which let utr control our keep us from dircovering what much an account "field," predict new patterns ill it, or "see" the might be: one knows, much d'scourreEi rayr, with kinds of hidden goings on that panoptic strategies outward ears, or not at all. Viewed from the real mean to pry into. Reading, make no mistake, world of power, therefore, lSnglirh literature secretly works up this kind of knowledge, but it reemr to be a lhinal enclave within the juridical can't count an such: it is both too private academy, an orthodox delinquency, a primary domain too conununal, and its fragile hypotheses fall far of the reridual, the unfocurred, the interrtitial, more swiftly tr~al~tl~ose in the Kuhnian model of of a11 that knowledge har not yet claimed for its science. But science, I take it, is part of what own. For a11 that, it is a place the authorities we must talk about when we talk of vouloir savoir. have wanted to keep-thir interior place where If literary criticism at all partakes in the symbolic capital ir rtored-80 long a8 the murmur- scientific will to know, until quj-te recently we - ing which we hear never maker it out of the con- have labored--witliout quite knowin3 ~t--at the fessional, 80 long a8 no choric, incertuogr play primitive accumulation of capital. dirruptr the reriour burinerr of waoing. For that, after all, ir what we are paid to prererve. Like every pre-disciplinary enterprise, how- Bi~toricelly,we have preserved that meaning by ever, we have had an art; uan's set of devices vith being cc,cful about what we let ourrelver hear, by which to sort, work over, and preserve the sym- training the best of our rtuGantr to gase care- bolic capital we hove bee,, collecting and etoring. fully into the text am if it were a rirulacrum of At best, ours have been the inspired tactics of the Lacanian Other. A fecund mother, dominated by hricol*; at worst, the sour mannerisms of class Father; we at play in the female field of the dominance; in between, an Richard Oiunann shows us, text, but always restrained, chaste, loyal, know- the dispiriting techniques of fitting out intel- ing what to hear and vhat not. lectual cadres with a prose and habit of mind guaranteed to keep them securely within discip- Whence the appeal of Derridat he appear8 to lined boundaries. As for us, though we may give us our freedom, and by telling us that a11 inflict micro-technical discipline upon others, ve the world's a theater of te~tualityijust foul like to think of ourselves as sons of art: we paperr for rcripting, he letr us play the field, inhabit a certain sacred space, the sounds of By throwing in radical question the very idea of which we hear with preternaturally sensrtive ears. having a porition from which to play or in the Others may travorse that cyace, but only those who persona of which to encounter violent limitr, Der- hear may stay there; and :IS Olln~ann again points rida ercgper the dilemma that Foucault dercribes. out, most of what passes for research in litera- For Foucault, instead, call8 ur to hear romething ture is just a social procedure for certifying else: dimcourse, beating the bounds, conrtructing one's professionally tic~~sitiveears. But what, the world's body, constructing urn. For thir rea- exactly, do we hear inbldt: our own grove? son, Foucault hae a greater and more deeply SCE REPORTS - SCE REPORTS
rubverrive hport for literary criticism. Becauae panoptic practice at issue--seems also to afflict it ir harder to read him as one who would aeathe- the work of Edward Said, surely our leading ticize the force or underestimate the effects of Foucaultian analyst, despite the friendly dirtance dircipline, Foucault compels us to look at &he he bar tried tg put between himself and the French imaginary architecture of our liver, to lirten for "abecedarium." Thir ir no place to mount a dir- the techniquer that keep the show on the road, to cuesion of Beninningr and Orientalism, but it ir feel how the rurfacer of power constrain ur. But worth notiog-without, I hope, seeming furry-that he hra no device for slipping ur part the surfacer Said'r very prolixity betrays a certain perhaps or for cutting through them: no Derridaan trick- willful inrenritivity to textual m, to the rtar, ha finally lur nothing elre to offer but nuancer of his own prose, to the rubterranean rhrper renrer, nothing except the principled mnrkingr which rat off one kind of begiming from rejection of theory and nearly chiliartic virion another, one national mode of Orient81 analyrir of a future when language come6 back into its own from another, and indeed, one region of the (early verrion) or when the rcientia axua1i.r will *Orientn itrelf from another. Said rhovr quite be rubverted, not through more "rex-der're, but brilliantly how dircourre rhaper both literary and bodies and plerrurer* (latert verrion).' Modal, geographical territory, but derpite hir own evi- diremptive anarchy ukea strong claims on our rym- dent intentions, he cannot avoid an hypnotic pathies ar literary criticr; much of the plearure effect of his focus on the story-shaping of the iu reading conrirtr just in thir. But anar~hyof world: inside the space of those stories and that any sort rimply cannot cut through disciplinary shaping, there exists a blank iaitrelfnese. rurfacer: it can only multiply them, uuring us Orientaliam in itrelf lacks differentiation-as tonmake little r Laulacr a (uncanny Derridaan Eqbal Ahmad points out, Said eeems deaf to the abuaer) of discipline within the privatized fubi- relative disinterestedness in Gewan orientalism, cler of our increasingly bureaucratic world. I do and fails to connect that effort at objectivity not think that this conclusion ohould rurprise with Germany's own lack of oriental colonies--and Foucault, for he does qt believe that anything the "orientn itself reeeos on Said's a ount unable exirts exceot rurfaces. Thir belief in turn to rpeak except with a Western voice.E6 But of denier that that there ir anythiug to u-except course; in their own voices, denizens of the Beckettian murmur-vithin the rpace of literature. habitus we have constructed in our acquirition of In rhort, viewed from the would-be (but always both symbolic and real capital rpeak in (dif- really foreclored) perrpactivelerr position of ferent) tongues: in household goerip, let us ray, Foucault'r genealogy, Chere io no female voice or in a literature that reeks out the deadly, within the Wiw: just mire. erotic play between the figurer of oufldircourre and the parfornatives of their liver. Thir ability to make us sensitive to bondage, coupled with un inability to give voice to the The does not permit, nor doer thir setting interior of the bounded rpace-and a100 to the require, the attempt to lay out program for bounded national and generic interiora of the escaping the impane thar these remarkr ruggeet. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS -
thinking that literary criticism ou~htto be part Xndeed, if we read Foucault carefully, we must science, and draw a few consequences from that realize that there ir no way to know in advance belief. Some vill be theoretical, concerning what ouch a program sight be; from thir realizr debates vithin the field. Others vill be practi- tioa comea'Foucault'~chiliartic faith. There ir cal, pointing to areas where a nev kind of work (a nothing elre to be had. Yat Utopiar aeed not be work that has been quietly going on inoide our ro undifferentiatad ar his (surpriringly conver house for a long time) might yield fruit. For tioml) appeal to a uuion of language and bodies, fruit is just the ierue, fruit being a matter of for that would be the rua of hie virionary endingr public rather than private value. As a group of in & Thing and Tha Histor+ pf gexl.talitv. intellectual laborere, ve bave been much in aeed Yet there ir romething slightly arkew in :hi8 of demyrtification. We have had to learn that pairing, vhich ir not quite that of the creating much of what re took for fruit W.8 juet the Word and the undifferentiated flesh, but rather artefact of other'r chaff, that our participation that of pre-reprerentatio~l, dirruptive play with in the meaning industry bas employed ue in the an already romehow differentistad body, one cepr production of &a, not sapientis and not rcientia ble of being pleaned by that play. It would he either. nNaturally" enough, finding ourrelvea mcwe orthodox, though WJ lerr conventional to aeek duped, caught within the bounds of the symbolic whar poets (at leart in the Chrirtian Went) have without having known it, ve chafe; we seek to often sought: a union of language and desire, shov, many of us, that there ie nothing but dozR focussed in the person of a ringing, speaking Hure anywhere, that the play of opinion is freedom, vho inspires. Orthodory can cripple, of cour~c, that the pleasure of textuality is the only real- yet there may be roola reason figured an the rsture ity there ir, and that appeals to the readerly of poetry as well as in the *wtureWuf human facts of nexperiencen can help us break out of the beiqgr that ~orkeagainst keterodoxy, with its iron cage that Uax Weber raw closing in on ue long hplicitly willful choicer. I want therefore to before Ffycault gave it hie more compelling thcor- (re)vrite out at greater length a little fantary ization. For this lesron, we have gone abroad, about this union, a fantary about what a philolog- to the dangeroue continent which the Anglo-Saxonr ical criticirn might look like that could profit bave alwaye tended to tour in their gita nova. from Foucault without ~)tumbliagbehind hir special Foucault-like others of the immeneely literary blindness. *~hilology," tla love of rpeaking, the French schooling to which we have recently rub- love of the logoat we forgot romething when we jected ourrelvee-bar a convenient dislike for begen to name our field "literary criticirn." We ordinary Veetern rcience (which ia not the chher- forgot both language and desire, chooriag inrtead ical rcience of Althusrerianiom, though I ruapcct to concentrate our powerr on that which joins one that this is the iron lav vhich Foucault is really to the other, the text. But it is too late to in flighr from) and a diebelief that hermeneutice regret that choice. can ever lead to knowing eomethiqg (in principle becauee there is nothing but rurface, binding or To Eantaeite. I vill ,$lot my Utopia with a exhilarating, dopending on one'r view of the few bald arrertionr, give couple of reasons for SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS ---
As we all know, error always sneaks into the "subject"). best laid plots: "junk" masquerades as sense, But the view that however bard ve look we crashing the system. "Junk," it seems, is a kind only find surfaces, never depth, need not be of outside that builds up inside; it is dirt, incompatible with knowing something. We can know invasion, distraction, subversion, something which allies the inside of a system with the outside not how surfaces join and divide, in the Derridean. in the expected configuration, but in a way that ddhiecence that figures genetic replication as damages the always precarious integrity of the much as the continuing play uf textuality. What system's -0-d6hiscence. we know--or more strictly, w,for our rspreeen- For in any encelled world-system, two axes of d6hiscence always exist: tation is already too late to be true-is codi- inevitably, one is metonymic, the other meta- guration. To be sure, within the "total," perhaps phoric; one a matter of contiguous dieplacement, looped field of the configural, no privileged the transportation of a wave, the other of discon- panopticon can let us survey the scene. Bit at tinuous exchange, the particulate bytineas of any configural site, we can see at least something interpretation, of setting a price. And when it of the procedures which preserve-which success- comes to setting a price, for each insider every fully reproduce, without catastrophic noise-.one outsider makes noise rather than sense, and vice- or anotlier of the osmotic membranes that encell versa: thus boundaries maintain themselves only When we try to talk about what the world's body. through the erotic, masquerading behavior of their WJ bae happening at tkeee disciplinary juncturee, respective insides, each letting in only those the thresholdo acroe* which som~chingre alwaya tokens which will fit the internally coded pro- being led, a11 ways, we muat rasort to sodele. A cess, which will energize it, make it gudaimonic, model is a kind of miaiLi~ethrough vhicb we rick flourishing. Or which will make the system a pro- coofigural procesBea to flow; and all genuine fit, we might say. explanation, as Ernst Gellner insists, is mechaniotic, a matter of repeatable process. If you want to make a profit, then, the stan- Mimetic, too: for both plays and engines have dard trick is to pretend that you have no inside: plots. And plots, when they work without errors, don't let anyone speak to your women, don't are nothing but chains of logical operators; pro- defecate in public, don't allow that your litera- gram that will run with a predictable, delimited ture has cognitive value. If we let some outsider result. This, I think, uhply reformulates what know about our insides, they might be seduced into that a mvthos is a Aristotle told uo about ploLe: his discipline rather than ours. At the same time, necessary and/or probable concatenation of events; A in the discontinuities of self-preservation, we that drama crucially dapendn upon error. must lure the other to seek his signs in us; we genealogy we might thilllr of as s very long plot thereby--perhaps knowingly--throw up the fictive full of eyraru, not g~ttermiuated, hut bound to image of an inside: a lie, a trope, a mask with be: the line of the Father ia ilways holes in it. And the inevitable result of guard- extinguished, in the, eternity being an intereet- ing against letting some outsider get a subversive ingly different question. SCE REPORTS-- --- SCE REPORTS
hold ou your insides while at the aame time making displacement, but because everything cut6 into gape that lure him in, is a genuine forgetting everything else. sometimer lovingly. sometimes that ve have real insides. In effsct--in fnct--we catastrophically. But the crisis--the cutting cannot eiPlultaneously calculate velocity and posi- which is judgment--will always come. 8r the tion: we can know that we are moving (someone, by tragedians knew; and therefore it is not vise to means of our musk) or that our mask pgy site at try to live without Father. without a constant level 27a of our "persou"ality, thus dividing out- awareness of the father function. and 8 villlljo aide from inside. But we cannot know both facts use and be used by it. be we female or male. at once. Thus we mg& repress the truth about our surfaces: the truth that they are full of holes In fact, it is only by acknowledging the vhich something has made, full of a noiae father function that re can underrtand what the neither ours nor the other's to whom we mpe~k. Ye inride rays. Of course we can never hov anything may, in principle, remember that such holes esist, about the inride except in a (con)figural way: it but in order to act re must forget wbrg they are. throws up a dream. 8 parable, 8 garment of style; Without action, we may attain a kind of contempla- we step into some dircipline that huntr the tive union, may see--in the dark-how configural phallus. that looks for the play of the signifier. surfaces fit, but action necessarily disrupts and try to see what kind of a plot ir going on union, as the mystics of every tradition havo that needs this recurring letter, at these joints. alwnyo known. This, in Lacanian terns, is to for- Though infinite arabeeq:lee seem possible. I would get that we are vrarked hj the Real. And it ia urge that only two kinds of plots exist. ones that also to forget tbat the Real marks us not in rag- renew the integrity of systematic boundaries and don but in provideutial ways, in lawful ways. in ones that store up error. In actual fact, every ways that go on everywhere in thc conf6gurational real-world process involves both plots, vhich is lstachines that reticulate the bcdy of the world. why we can calculate ouch things as rate of decay In civilization as we know it, this function of or stochastic deterioration. But in literary the law appears as what Lacan calls the "paternal fables, we can separate them into comedy and metaphor." tragedy. the plot of systematic conservafpn and It is the metaphor of the One, the And in invisible-and I suspect truly Platonic, in the renewal. the plot of cosmic catastrophe. sense Plato had in mind--King of all, the idea of the institutionalized deployment of knowledge. we the Good. It iu also the figure for Death, who can separate these into the domestic plot of divides, leaving oply thare traces which we some- techn6 and the regal plot of rcience: the discip- times see as corpses. And it is the figure for line of civil/oocial/psvchological engineering, of the dialectician's tuife, which finds the jointr housekeepiu.g, to~etherwith a discipline of in things, vhich makes joirts so tbat we can see detectian systematic errors. This is the same it subjects the how thingd fit. Ye need not continue the idola- discipliad, at a "highern level: trous practice of believing that the One world to judgment. It uses patient negativity to masquerades as a peniia; it ull~eqtieradeu everywhere, find the wounds vhich dirt betrays (the wounde of not just becauee the uncrneci~aeloves original sin, of representational gaps only half
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languages--and the systemr modeled in them- the different genres, the different fows of behave in standard, logical ways. But speech, the different institutional "homee," there begins to be a field in which pattern-seeking can becaues of a linguistic principle enunciated by both Jakobson and Heisenberg, it ia not take place. It is an historical and cross- cultural field, as it must be if we are ever to possible to formalize both analog and digital relationships at the level of abstrae- know something, and it is juet the field where we tion. Current semiotics--which seems to try have always been. In order to see that we have squaring this circle--is thus probably on the been practicing a science here a11 along, we need wrong track. only readjust our vision. There will be as many readjustmenta as there are searchers in the field, 4. Kenneth Burke and Borthrup Frye are the fig- ' but it may be uaeful to list a few that I MI in urea to be reckoned with in trying to see how the process of making, as theses I would be wil- our field works: they are the ones who have ling to defend. tried to be scientific, to see how different rathoi drive different rubsystems in the 1. Literary study has always been genealogical, human world, and to realize that distinctions neither "hiatoricalH nor "criticalu but both. It is genealogical just in the way that the between high culture and lov, or literature and religion, or poetry and history must be study of any evolution is: we study the unfolding of a Yystem which appears to be a both observed and violated if we are to learn sequence of objects (texts, plants, stars) anything. but vhich can only be understood ae modeled in an appropriate language. 5. Karxisr-that recurrent mythoo of a self- destructing process--has a special, but dangerously reductive usefulness in trying to 2. The real object of literary study is neither be scientific about literature. Warx-the "vorks of artn RO~"textuality": it is the furiously active, exiled Harx who is the opening and closing of a representational absent "subject" in every Harxiem-speaks for apace (a species, a genre) in configural the outsider who cannot get at power and the relation with other representational spaces hidden insider who sees hbself/heraelf being (also species and genres, but more familiarly named "kinship syatems," "continents, sacrif iced for aome larger eystem's prof it. islands, and seas," "status groups," From this viewpoint, all the bulwarks of pol- itical and economic domination seem joined ar "economic ciaires," "forces of production," Were there and so on. a seamless, aiibiue-like aurface. a Gqd to see us, he would see this surface 3. dividing mankind from itself, and though he In order to model theee configural relation- vould know that human beings caused their own ship~in the, one must uee several different wounds--by trying to know and accumulate the languagae, some with greater "texture" than Good and the Real--he would also understand others. At root, however, all such SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS --
ie much more dangerous, if it leads intellec- that only magic (or that total self--knowledge tuals on the inside of the current system of which would be the union of the Word and the world-dominance to theorize a necessity for flesh) could heal a divided humanity. Kven others to suffer. That is to want to make an then, he would know that wholeness exacts a art form out of someone-else's death. Intel- priceless price, the price of everything, lectuals on the outside of the current system God-murder, apocalypse, destroying the vil- are not so comfortable ae we professore: lage to save it. As the spokeaman for inev- they can uee Harxism ae the political itable revolution, hrx rebukes us every tine equivalent of the little book St. John ate; ve think we are sdfe, every the we think it is bitter, but those who rwallow it know that something in one part of the vorld can their oom powerleseness, and U8e what the dare to be indifferent to something scrp~where book speaks to warn us, the empire, which has else. But Marxirn ir not a science except in its redoubts inside their colonialired the sense tbat poetry (or psychoanalysis) is natione, and to give weapons of self-analyris a science: the science that showr how every to their ovn people. Then if revolutionr are aelf-reproducing system, ever$ genealogy, made, it will be ar the convulrive, inspired inevitably rerts upon an irresolvable ten- performance of those who suffer, who are the sipn, an unclosable gap between an axis of repressed that must inevitably make itself contiguity and an axis of exchange, between known inside the whole system; not as the forcer and relationr of production. To try knowing, reformist project which we trsdi- to get up a positive, acience fro* Harxism is tional intellectuale would impose upon our as impossible as to Set up one from suffering servants. But if rubjected to the psychoanalysis or poetry. All these are vehi- same aort of self-analyeis to which Freud cles of wisdom or they are nothiq. subjected himself, the knowing Llarx in Harx- iea could become-in the hands of its best 6. The mistake whicb Marxis~makes ie of a piece practitioners, does become-an indibpeneable, with ite usefulnesr. Marx shove us that we negative demon who refuses to be fooled by are not the rational, loving eubjectr we take the ideological sleights of both dominating ourselves to be; that our apparent relf- and dominated groups. And by ite own will to determination ir a fraud. But then it pre- pover . tenda to tell ur that we are wholly-and in principle, k~vahly-determined by the 7. The self-eufficient ego of Enlightenment invisible, allegorical beartr of the wood in rationaliem (if any euch ever existed, except which the 1Snlightenment ego forgets it must in oqr retrospect) will no longer serve a live: modes of production, underclasres, good purpose: we cannot seek there for etc.' Thir ir 4s fooliah (as pseudo- intentione or for reader-responses. But we scientific, as sophistical) an the sort of do oat have lo give up reason for all that, psychoanalyris tbat woirld have ur believe we nor eblindon the notion that the point of can know-end adjust--0uriie1vee. And Harxiam SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS ------
etudying literature ie to become saner, more Notes ratioual persons. We must just. remember that reaaon always involves two: one iaevi~ntly 1. Richard Ohmann makes this point at later than the other, however face to face length, though not quite in these terms, the conversation. Betweeu them moves te'r.tua1- in Ennlish in America (New York: Oxford ity, that delicate (one wauts to say female) University Press, 1976). tissue which connecte things, which reveals between every pair some third thing that is Real beyond knowing, but nut beyond loving 2. Christian Rite and Christian Drama (Bal- performance. We need reason--vhich works by timore: The Johns Hopkins University means of the regal, corrective, invisible Presr, 1965). 34. One-to keep us from mangling that tiesue, LO help us listen clearly when the inside between us speaks. We need-and we lave 3. Kuhn's pre-paradigmatic stage of rcien- always known thir, even when ~ed'ipally, tif ic inquiry, as I mean this rhetorical necessarily ki.lling the father in his most twist to imply, reeme reminiscent of recent name-to be rational actors of the Xarxist analysee of the development of texts which speak in and in betweei us. For capitalism, and thue of the story told we need to put off catastrophe as long an by Albert Sohn-Bethel, Intellectual & poesible, not for ourselves but for our Hanual Labor (Atlantic Highlands, New texts, for the Reality in thein that measures Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978). us and that will eventuailly be deaf to our Soha-Bethel departs at a crucial point subtlest irrational ploys. In the face of from the Althusserian position that Cap- that Reality we have no defense, we are nei- ital appears only at the level of theory ther male nor female, nor can ve (fully) stop and not in material reality; for him, our loving it. the organization of production and exchange is material &mental, at the same "level" (passim, esp. p. 20). Thio Department of English position need not be Uarxist, except in Reed College its sensitivity to the forcible and potentially explosive separation of the intellectual and the manual; Max Weber makes much the game kind of point when . he speaks of bureaucratic organization as an embodiment of mind in the world. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
For a conventionally epistemological 4. niche1 de Certeau makes a similar analysis of the consequencer for point-also in order to discuss ita ful- knovledge of this belief, see Allan laciousnesr: "J,iterature as such i.s now Hegill, "Poucault, Structuralirm, and transformed into the repertory of prac- the Ends of Ilirtory," Journal of Hodern tices vhich lack scientific copy- his tor^, 51 (September, 1979) ,451-503. right...." "on the Oppositional Prac- I think Hegill is vrong in hir tices of Everyday Life: Social Text 3 epirtemology but right to argue that (Fall, 1980), 29. Foucault gives ur myth rather than knowledge. I think that Foucault and Hegill both err in separating myth (or 5. For the notion of the Platonic chora, a genealogy) from rcience, not because receptacle anterior to naming, see Julia rcience &myth but becaure myth is hov Kristeva, "Prom One Identity to science kmvr things. The porition that Another ," in Desire in Language, trans. I rubsequently sketch in this array Thomas Gora et a1. (Hew York: Columbia drave (perhaps in a fashion that both University Press, 19801, 133. For an authors would find illicit) upon the analysis of the interior space vhere mu-representational theory of truth eyutbolic capital is stored, the place of offered by George Bealer, gualit~and the habitus, see Pierre Bourdieu, Out- Concept (Oxford: Oxford University -line --of - a -Theory of Practice, trans. Presr, 1982) and the behaviorist (alro Richard #ice (Ct;abridge, England: Can- non-reprerentational) "epistemology" put bridge University Press, 1971), and the forvard by Richard Rorty, Philoso~hp& essay by de Certesu cited above. the Hirror of Bature (Princeton: Princeton Univerrity Press, 1919).
6. The History l?f Sexuality, tranr. Robert Hurley (blev York: Vintage Books, 1980). Said tries to strike this dirtance in 157. the next-to-last chapter of Beninninne, (lev York: Basic Books, 19751, and in hir essay, "The Problem of Textuality:' 7. For a striking. analysis (though not Two Exemplary Position6 ," in Critical quite in these terms) of this and allied Inquiry, (Summer, 19781, 673-714. phenomena, see the remarkable Reed Col- , lege B.A. thesis by Wendall Scott, "Sex-Symbols: A Crors-Cultural Analysir Personal communication. of Transvestism, Drag, and Bomosexual Style," Reed College (knthr~pology), 1381. . 29 SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
the time, in the course of mimetic play. 11. I have in mind such a novel as Hgugite Petals of Blood. 15. I have taken my entrance into Lacan from an extraordinary essay by Stephen J. 12. In this regard, see the rather loving, Helville, "Psychoanalysis Demands a filial rejoinder which Perry Anderson Mind," Aesthetics Todav, rev. ed., ed. makes to R.P. Thompsonts plea for the Horris Philipson and Paul J. Gudel (New rights of experience as against the York: New American Library, 1980), 434- "Stalinist" constraintu of the 455. Por my purposes, the most per- Althusserian orrery. Arguments yithiti tinent Lacanian texts are The Pour PUP Rnglish JIarxism, (London: New Left damental Concepts ofpsvcho-Analvrir, Books, 1980) . trans. Alan Sheridan (New Yorkr W.W. Norton, 1978). esp. pp. 187-276 and "The Subversion of the Subject and the 13. Legitimation of Belief, (Cambridge: Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Cmbridge University Press, 19741, esp. Unconscious ,* in Bcrits, trans. Alan pp. 63-65. Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton, 19771, pp. 292-325. 14. When it comes to reproducing something, on a phonograph, in a body, with uiaesis 16. For the notion of catastrophe 1 draw in of any sort, an interesting paradox an uninformed but I suspect correct way result.. Reproduction by seans of waves upon Ben6 Thom'r mithematical theory of (analog reproduction/computation) catastrophe, especially as applied to displays itaelf in parallel, hierarchic huplor by John Allen Paulos, Hathematics levels; reproduction by reans of parti- and Rumor, (Chicago: Chicago University cles (digital reproduction/computation) Prees, 1980). 1 owe my awareness of displays itself in unita, .a a broken this book to a remarkably humanistic series of smaller and smaller contiguous colleague in physics at Reed, Nicholas displacements, each logically plotted to Yheeler. This is perhaps also the place the other. Thus reproduction by means to acknowledge a general indebtedness to of Jakobson'r horirontal, temporal, ,hugla8 Hofstadter, Gldel, Escher, Bach: displacing axis yield8 a vertical stack &n Eternal Golden Braid, (Hew Pork: ,of substitutions; reproduction by means Basic Books, 1979). of his vertical, aceuiporal, subrtitutive axis yields a row of points, of dis- placements. Perhaps reality and poetry both map one axis onto the other, all SCE REPORTS -.------.----- SCE REPORTS
THE ORDER OF COMMENTARY : exegesis but the very possibility of any kind of FOUCAULT, HISTORY AND LITERATURE interpretation. It seems pertinent therefore to take Foucault's comments on commentary into Ceorgee Van Den Abbeele account before deciding on how his work is to be approached. In other words, how can one begin to say anything about Michel Foucault when his own Can one take what Michel Foucault eaye about hie work critically analyzes, among other issues, the work eeriouely? The question is a thorny one, way we speak about things in general and about and one which euarmarily etates the rieke for the discourses in particular? would-be commentator of Foucault, rieke which In fact, one need go no further than his inaugural extend beyond thoee generally encountered in lecture at the College de France to fin9 a direct dealing with writere' commente on their work. and detailed discussion of the problem. Firet of all, Foucault presents ue with a thought mere, which ie diverse, often contradictory, and ceaee- Foucault inventories the ways in which discourses are systematically controlled and limited in to the point of imperiling any leeely changing, society. These procedures include both "external generalization about that work--whether it cornea limitation^'^ (which exclude discourses based on from hie mouth or another's. Furthermore, one of taboo subjects, madness, or falsity) and the main thruete of Foucault'e writings hae been "internal" restrictions (among which we find to make ue critically aware not only of the both commentary and the author-function) whose workings of authority in general but aleo of that task it is to master the *+elementof chance1* in specific oppression of discursive possibilities language. Foucault's-argument on commentary runs implied in the understanding of a text in terms of ite "author."l One has also to confront the as follows. Discourse as commentary posits a difference between a primary text which is problems posed by a historical discouree which commented on and a sscondary text which comments not only makes cohspicuoue reference to work of on the primary text. %is relationship between literature but also itself often borders on primary and secondary texts is further complicat- fiction. Finally, given Foucault's indebtedness ed, according to Foucault, in two ways. %e to Nietzeche, we are aleo invited to suepect a first concerns the "top-heavinessw of the primary Nieteechean play of diesimulation a't work in hir text or the attribution of a certain %wealth of discourse. How then can we not extend euch meaning" to it so that there are endless things dieeimulation to ~oucault'eown comente about to say about it. We second (which seems to himeelf? contradict the first) is that '"whatever the techniques employed, commentary's only role is to But there ie another, more immediately formidable say final1 what has silently been articulated obetacle placed before the commentator in hie or deepd(Foucau1t 's emphasis). The novelty ,'I her effotte to determine what can be eaid about states Foucault, "lies no longer in what is said, Foucault. Thie obstacle is that encountered in but in its reappearance." Ihe "ever-changing Foucault's own critique of comentary, which, as and inescapable" paradox of commentary is that it T. hope to demonstrate, calls into question not must "say, for the first time, what has already merely the traditional procedure8 of ncbolarly SCE REPORTS
?n rt under the guise of granting the primary text an been s?i$l: ?qi''ie$+tT hiefkj$ly'h@t'bas:'v ievci--' - insuperable richness of meaning to be recuperated, theless, n,eyvr jQif,.:j::'I$e de5i,rqLtpe%p~:icat+?., ., : - : acts instead to impoverish and limit discursive this Qs&,f9?)9$19fi 13 $rfe's'istfbljt,,' !t;i^;'I,,, .. possibilities: "Commentary averts the chance obscufi$y. jtvd qqar mqy)nglesqtess, beg pr th ' element of discourse by giving it its due: it commk~tgy~$8 $pihupyous$~penoy~c+y+,. Yet 11 ile gives the opportunity to say something other than stilJ wish,-to pursue, a qading,of ~ouchlt,:bf ,, the text itself, but on condition that it is the cannot a$f& tg Rll' into the t~aap'of ' text itself which is uttered and, in some ways, ' Tq ' elaborating a commentar) on $hi'? qtate bnt . '' ' finalised. Ihe difference between primary and say "for the first time. what 'has alrer d$ been secondary text is only allowed if the latter is said8*is ,the ptrp of eve&, gppd c~qmerltatb~who, contained both by and within the former. Com- want9 $0.p*e ,?,fijcoyery about -a 'text ..- %kt' new :", mentary only departs from its object to stay discove~y:can' %P r.bpi, legJSt@\~
L 4 that is, not to provide an interpretation but to 'flrus , rhe ip,tiy@ye-tiye ~~g~ticeof colmnentary, SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
elaborate a description. No longer wotild it be a of commentary. In other words, because of the question of discovering new layers of profundity archaeological focus on discourse, Foucaldian in a text but of analyzing discourses according historiography is inevitably constituted as a to their "exterior" dimensions, of formalizing secondary text whose task it is to "re-state what the rules of their organization as "surfacew has never been saidtq8 in a primary text (namely phenomena. 'his opposition, however, between the field of historical documentation) which it interpretive comentary and archaeological de- collnnen t s on . scription seems difficult to maintain. On the one hand, traditional *commentary, insofar as it My point here in intimating that Foucault is a strives to paraphrase the primary text, thinks of cormnentator ma1 rd lui is not simply to obtain a itself as only a faithful description. On the clever reversa o s position through what can other hand any description, even if it is archae- be construed as an aggressive misreading of the ological, implies already a certain, minimal statement in question. Rather, I wish to suggest interpretation because a choice has been made as that the conditions of possibility not only of to what is *sworthtttalking about and how. Nobody Foucaldian history but also of history writing in should know this better--and n~body,~Ithink, general lie in the structure of commentary. What does know it better--than Foucault. Foucault is criticizing in his critique of com- mentary is historiography. And yet, if his books In fact, one could even argue that nowhere does can still be called histories (which they can be, Foucault state more tellingly what his archae- even if we are not supposed to call them that), ologies do than in that paradoxical phrase in it is because he remains within a certain tradi- which he deristvely describes commentary as what tion of history writing. Indeed, one suspects must "say, for the first time, what has already that it is because he remains within this tradi- been said, and repeat tirelessly what was, never- tion that he can all the more effectively call theless, never said." Ihe description and into question the writing of history. analysis of discutsive practices does tell for the first time what has already been since In its simplest, most mundane sense, history can it makes of the field of utterances itself the be defined as the narrative of past events. When unprecedented object of historical investigation. it is considered that these past events can only At the same time, such analysis tells again or be grasped on the basis of documentary evidence, repeats what was never said: what was excluded the inevitable conclusion is that the status of from or by discursive practices, or the unspoken the document is that of a text to comment on or presuppositions of historically defined fields of interpret. But if history cannot avoid the issue knowledge. One can ask indeed whether the stun- of colnmentary, what can commentary tell us about ning, revelatory force of Foucault*s writing from history? Whence arises commentary? As Foucault the stud of madness (as the "archaeology of a explain; in his inaugural lecture, commentary silencellr;) to his remarkable rork70n sexuality (as springs from a differentiation of discourses sometliing which be spoken of ) should not be according to what should be remembered and what attrit~rtedto his staying within a certain order deserves to be forgot ten : SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
I suspect one could find a kind of gradation because there is conmentary that there can be between different types of discourse within history even though historical writing claims a most societies: discourse 'uttered' in the certain prestige among commentaries. Curiously course of the day and in casual meetings, then, if historical writing can only take place and which disappears with the very act which as what retells a preceding discourse, it also gave rise to it; and those forms of dis- legitimizes its authority to retell that dis- course that lie at the origins of a certain course precisely blthe very retelling of it (in number of new verbal acts, which are re- the form of citations from *primary" sources). iterated, transfdnned or discussed; in Hence, the desire on the part of historians to short, discourse which is spoken and remains shore up their arguments through the discovery of spoken, indefinitely, beyond its formula- new and supposedly conclusive documentary evi- tion, and which remains to be spoken. dence, which will tell for the first time what has already been said. But if there can be Certain texts are discussed and commented on, something like a document available for commen- tary, is it not because a document, any'document, that is repeated; others are not. In its elemental form, commentary would be merely the is alread a commentary invested by the power repetition of a primary text, but a repetition that-5 deci es which utterances shall or shall not which consecrates it somehow as worthy of being become wdocuments,wtexts which can be repeated conserved. This is to say, however, that that and commented upon? Evidently, the level at which such decisions are made remains inacces- repetition is already a commentary on the status sible to historical commentary. of the primary text, which is not "primaryw until it is repeated. It is hard then not to see in this partage between repeated and unrepeated But if historical discourse can only found itself utterances the institutional foundation or pos i- in the citing of what has already been cited, we bility of historical memory, or of an archive. are faced with the consequences of a theory of 1 history writing as recitation, as repetition. At the same time, history writing becomes one Through this repetition, historical discourse form of commentary among others, a particular way only reinforces the constitutive opposition of telling again (or for the first time) what has between the repeated and the unrepeated. History never (dr already) been said. The specificity of is second-degree commentary. Like commentary, historical commentary as opposed to other types history, far from being critical, would be an of commentary would then lie in its claim to a institutionalized technique of power. The very certain authoritativeness based upon the '#object- discourses which we think allow us to call into ivityw with which it narrates past events. This question institutions of power are themselves in objectivity is assured through the intervention the service of those institutions: "[Cohmentaryl of factual references. In other words, history gives us' the opportunity to say something other claims to tell the truth about the past through than the text itself, but on condition that it is an appeal to the documentary evidence wlrich it the text itself which is uttered and, in some iecounts and comments upon. Thus, it is only ways, finalised." SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
But if Foucault's conclusions seem resolutely the terms of the relationship each time, and not pessimistic about the possibilities of critical to suppress the relationship itself?" discourse, it seems to me that contained within those statements lies another possibility. For Another possibility is left unmentioned by historical commentary to be constituted as Foucault, namely that of asserting the difference repetition there must be a difference in that between the commentary and the object of conmtent- repetition, a rupture in that continuity, an ary, that is of asserting the difference consti- otherness in what is thought to be the same. As tutive of commentary itself but which traditional Foucault puts it in the statement just qut~ted, commentary would nonetheless have the task of "something other than the text itself4' is slid in effacing. Instead of an ideal comentary which its commentary. That "something otherv is the seeks to annul itself in the primary text, one secondary text itself insofar as it is different could envision perpetual comentary in the guise from the primary text. This difference, however, of different repetitions of the "primaryw text, also opens up the possibility of there being which, as we remember, was only constituted as differcnt secondary texts, that is of there being "primary" because it was repeated. This is not differ= repetitions. Foucault himself readily to advocate a simple pluralist notion of the concedes the point: The Odyssey as a primary multiplicity of interpretations, all of which text, is repeated in the same epoch, in B6rard1s would be equally well-founded as well as derived translation, in infinite textual explications and from the same primary text. Instead, it is a in Joyce's Ulyssesw (trar~slationmodified). Put question of thinking comentary as constitutive if there can be different repetitions, does this of what it comments on and constitutive of it not reaffirm the possibility of a critical precisely to the degree to which it differs from function in commentary and thus in historical it. The possibility of different commentaries discourse? Could not the writing of history be then confronts us with the possibility of a a (critical) rewriting of it? The question can re-production or different production of what is only be answered if we reconsider the law of commented on. Cormntary would then become commentary as formulated by Foucault: "something radicalized and aggressive in its transformations other" than the text can be .said only lion the of what seemed to have been selfsame and origin- condition that it is the text itself which is ary of the commentary. So if, on the one hand, uttered." Thus, if commentary can function as an the identity of what is commented on is consti- internal limitatiorr of discursive possibilities, tuted by its essential non-identity with the it is only because it obeys a logic of identity comentary, on the other, the non-identity of the whereby the secondary text is subsumed into the different commentaries points to the non-identity primary one. Interestingly, on the previous of the object commented upon with itself. page, Fo,ucault sees such a denial of the differ- ence between commenting and commented text not While stch a radicalized notion of commentary is only as misguided but as possible only in the not explicitly formulrited by Foucault, it does mode of "play, utopia, or anguisl~'~:*'who can help to explain some of the disquieting yet fail to see that this would be to annul one of appealing force of his writing of history. For if roucault4s histories are impressively able to SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
tell or retell history otherwise, their merit fiction. Foucault can say not only that he is a undoubtedly lies in their ability to do it in a "happy positivist"10 but also that he has "never way which opens up that history to being read written anything but fictions."ll What is still otherwise. It should come as no surprise jeopardized by multiple commentaries of what then that his various histories do not combine to should have been self-evident is the historical form a coherent and global history but axe in- narrativels claim to objectivity and authority: stead marked by their essential non-coincidence histoire (as'lhistor edges close to histoire (as with each lother. History, that formerly unprob- story, as fiction). iI lematized field of facts and docun~ents, is suddenly made available to an indefinite and Following a similar argument, Vincent Descombes critiaal rewriting of it in the mode of a co~n- reads in Foucault's writing an unresolved tension mentary understood aggressively. History is no or contradiction between a 'p~sitivistic~~ longer the simple legacy of the past to the Foucault ("with a formidable critical apparatusH) present; it is the past the present gives to and a "nihilisticu or Nietzschean Foucault, for itself. whom all facts are already interprets ons and whose histories are in fact llnovels.l''S At one Such an interpretation does not mean, however, a point, Descombes seems to feel it impossible to simple denial of the document as the basis of decide between these two possibilities: "Nobody can pinpoint the truth or falsehood of these historical writing; on the contrary, it is pre- narrativesw (p. 116). His final judgment, how- cisely the discursive status of the document that Ihe mystifi- ever, favors the Nietzschean Foucault, last seen Foucault has taught us to consider. dissimulating the fictiveness of his discourse cation implied in the traditional understanding beneath "a seductive construct whose play of of the document is that it thinks it is dealing erudite cross-reference lends it an air of veri- with the document as a self-evident fact rather similitude" (p. 117). An external positivism than an an object of commentary in axcourse hides a nihilistic interior. lhis spatial that constitutes the document %document. The relationship is further complicated by the tempo- commentary it nevertheless provides is one that ral one implied in the progression of Descombesl is less willing to acknowledge its interpretive discourse, which portrays an initially positivis- dimension than to claim an authoritative "truthn tic Foucault, the development of whose work leads about its subject matter through the presumed him to the nihilism revealed at last as his coincidence of its discourse with that which it determining orientation. Interestingly, this comments on. Against such positivism, Foucault characterization of Foucault's work also elo- argues in The Archaeology of Knowledge for a quently replicates the organization of Descombes' "positivity of disc~urse~~(p. 125 and passim). own implicitly fictive history of contemporary But again, such a discursive positivism can only French thought. Temporally, the book follows the turn thd entire field of historical documentation historical deve1o:lment from the positivism and into a text to be interpreted and re-interpreted. neo-Kanticn rati!)n>l!s~r%of the early twentieth In other words, the pursuit of this extreme r-entury to the Nietschean nihilism of Deleuze, positivism raises the question of history's Lyotard, ant! Klosc;r.wski. And while the book on status as an interpretive c:onstruct, a5 h SCE REPORTS - SCE REPORTS
the exterior looks like a historical account of If what is here called nihilism "looks like" modern French philosophy, the subject of the traditional history, it is then not merely be- study is in fact "that which was spoken about, cause it provides a clever and seductive masquer- in a given territory and during a given periodg8 ading of fiction as fact but because a rigorous (p. 2, Descombesl emphasis). This glc&monous understanding of the problem of historical com- approach" (p. 2) to the history of philosophy mentary can only lead to the discovery of the begins to sound very much like Foucaultls fictive basis of history. Nevertheless, this 81positivityof discourse.I8 Descombes implies realization does not authorize us to install that that he is less interested in whether something discourse comfortably on one side or the other of like the French interpretation of Hegel is valid the opposition between fact and fiction. To be or not than in the relationship of that interpre- sure, the temptation to decide on the question tation to the field of discourse within which it motivates even as subtle and as sophisticated a operates (pp. 1-8, 27-28). critic as Descombes, who, at the very moment he concludes that the force of Foucault's work lies What Descombes offers then is a commentary on a in its ability to disrupt the good conscience of commentary, a second-degree commentary which is the positivist historian, decides to place also an aggressive commentary destined to take Foucault firmly on the side of fiction: "His its place in and against the field of pre-exist- histories are novels" which pretend to be histo- ing interpretations. Ihe nihilism obtained ries through the seductive *'play of erudite cross- through the positing.of a positivity of discourse reference1* (p. 117). If what is threatening to is then less an epistemological nihilism per se the historian is the possibility revealed in than the taking of a certain attitude towards Foucaldih historiography that all histories are interpretation, namly that of an agonistics of inherently fictive, then the force of the threat interpretation. Ihe aim therefore of that spe- comes not because Foucault carries out a clever cific type of commentary which is historical mystification of fiction as fact but because he discourse is less the recovery of lost origins is himself more of a positivist than the positiv- than the strategic contestation of other histo- ists. His nihilism, in other words, is not a ries, of other commentaries. Insofar as it simple rejection of positivism. Rather it is a comments on the other commentaries, this contest- positivism followed out to its extreme conse- atory commentary or anti-commentary must never- quences as a positivism of the document in its theless take the form of commentary, and it can discursive dimension. The document's existence be seen therefore as a meta-comentary (hence the as discourse then points to its entrapment in an claim to a "surface descriptionH of discourses). agonistics of interpretation which aggressively Traditional historiograptry is all the more deternines it according to its possibilities of effectively called into question by a mode of repet it :on. What Descombes calls Foucault s hi storic'al commentary which remains within that nihilism is thus the consequence of a radicalized tradition and looks like it but which is also notion of commentary obtained through an atten- aware of its own interpretivt? status. tion to the positivity of discourse. But if the difference bctwcen fictional discourse and SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS -- -..-
factual documentation, between histoire as story eminently available for commentary and yet some- and histoire as history, can somehov seen to how different in status from other commentaries. turn around the question of commentary, what can The latter, such as religious or juridical texts, Foucaultls comments on commentary tell us about exercise a clear coercive function in society and this difference? lose their prestige and power the moment their commentaries are no longer seen as mere repeti- Ihe curiosity of To return to the "Discourse on Language," we tions of their original truth. remember that the question of different conunen- the literary text is not only that it is repeated taries, of different repetitions of the commented and repeated in different ways but also that that text, was evoked by the example of a literary repetition points to a difference rather than to text, the Odyssey. whose different repetitions an identity between primary and secondary texts. included translations of the text, literary This difference, which allows for an infinity of analyses of it, and a derived literary text, colmnentaries, precisely for that reason also Joyce's Ulysses. As Foucault's text wo~lldhave makes literary discourse that about which there is nothing to say but its repetition. At the it, the problem of different repetitions or of a limit, we would encounter the Borgesian fantasy commentary which no longer obeys a logic of Now, identity is a problem posed specifically by the of the word-for-word repetition of a text. this very example, a literary one, is used by literary text: a "single work of literature can Foucault in the very same passage to demonstrate give rise, simultaneously, to several di.stinct a form of the denial of commentary, specifically types of discourse." But if the literary work the one which can aspire to nothing more than seems to be that kind of discourse which plays play. The curiosity of the literary text as against the logic of identity implied in the law opposed to sacred or legal texts seems to be that of commentary, it is perhaps because it plays there is no reason to repeat it or not repeat it, that game too well insofar as literature is a to repeat it according to the logic of identity discourse that begs for commentary, indeed that or to repeat it according to a logic of differ- cannot be sufficiently commented upon. Ihe ence. Even more curiously, the literary text conclusion is not Foucault's although perhaps it seems to have placed itself on all sides of the should have been, given the "curious" prominence structure of commentary: it can just as well of the literary text in his canon of commented take the place of the commenting text as the texts: "1 suppose, though I am not altogether commented one, the discourse that repeats as well sure, there is barely a society without its major as the discourse that is to be repeated; it narratives, told, retold and varied; formulae, allows infinite commentary and none but its mere texts, ritualised texts to be spoken in well- recitation and thereby both affirms and denies defined circumstances [. ..]. We know them in our commentary. Literature, it would seem, both own cultbral system: religious or juridical opens up and closes the possibility of comment- texts, as well as some curious texts, from the ary, defines its limits and exhausts its field. point of view of their status, which we tam 'literary1'' (my emphasis). What is l'curio~rs" But before the literary critic swells with pride about the literary text is that it is at once SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
and self-satisfaction at the expense of the from which it differs by its very appropriation historian, the reasons for ascribing such pre- of it. In other words, the non-coincidental eminence to literary discourse should be consid- movement of its paraphrase marks its own disc- ered. After all, in the last passage we cited ruptive potential. Ihe "chance element" of from Foucault, the word, literary, appeared discourse resurfaces in what earlier appeared in between quotation marks. For what can "litera- another form to be an internal limitation on dis- ture" be if it can always be found to subtend course. One could speak then of an order of commentary if not itself an elemental or limit commentary (or disorder of commentary) which case of commentary? Now, if it is agreed that bespeaks the disorder of discourse, that is, its the minimal condition for commentary is a re- disruption or differentiation into discourses. doubling of language upon itself, we find that Commentary thus understood would lie both inside this is in fact how Fouaault haj defined litera- and outside of discourse as what inaugurates the ture on a number of occasions. In his early possibility of different discourses (to say article, "Language to Infinity," he, even goes so nothing of discursive practices) through the far as to propose nn tgontology of literature8# division it institutes between what is to be based upon the notion that "the reduplication of commented upon and what not, what is to be re- language, even if it is concealed, constitutes peated and what not. Commentary is thus as much [the] being [of the literary text] as a work.**15 of an external as it is an internal limitation of Literature is language different from itself in discourse and as much of a disorderly prolifera- itself, its own commentary by dint of its being tion of it as it is a restraint upon it. its own repetition. If wliteraturesvfinds itself among the canon of commented texts and finds As the paraphrase redoubles and disrupts the itself there for no apparent reason, it is be- language alongside of which it moves, so the cause literature is the possibility within literary text slides along the edges of the language of commentary as the turning back of discourse it transgressively repeats. In the language upon itself. This possibility is also literary text, there is then, for the archaeolo- what brings language itself to its limits, what gist pursuing the study of discursive practices, annuls it. Literature, writes Foucault, is a already to be found a commentary on the language language which "appropriates and ~onsume~~all or discursive formations in which that text is other languages in its lightning flash." operating. Thus, in Madness and Civilizatiori, we are told, for example, that whkt "the archaeo- Literature constitutes itself then as an logy of knowledge has been able to teach us bit originary commentary by its taking in of other by bit was already offered to us in a simple languages into itself, by its repeating them in tragic fulguration, in the last words of itself or as itself. This commentary is no long- Androma ue (pp. 111-112). Ihat a text, be it er bound, however, by the logic of identity at +I8 iterary or not, can comment on that in which it work in the kind of commentary Foucault justifi- is entrapped suggests that the text is both ably attacks. Rather the literary redoubling of inside and outside of its episteme, and there- langr~geconstitutes itself af7the aggressive fore as disruptive of it as it is exemplary in COIIMLI~~;~~~or "transgression" of a language SCE REPORTS - SCE REPORTS
its submission to it. Moreover, it is to mark conunentary) must be at least as critical as it is exemplary ruptures in the episteme that Foucault institutionalized. By the same token, though, most consistently refers to literary texts. The it must be at least as fictive as it is factual, Classical Age, for instance, is inaugurated by as literary as it is historical. Don ~uixote-andbrought to a close by the novels of Sade. The disquieting matrix of commentary, history, and literature which Foucault's work thus chal- Yet this manifest use of the literary text as a lenges us to rethink renders us incapable of document should not bl'ind us to its corollary in knowing which sense of the word, histoire, to the becoming literary of the document, whose apply to his work. In response thentos- language becomes redoubled to the extent to which combes' remark about Foucault that "ses histoires it too conunents on the discursive practice in sont des romans1* (p. 139), I feel compelled to which it is produced. What Foucault has done offer the much less satisfying proposition, Itses then is to level the hierarchical differences histoires sont des Aistoires." Far from being a between the various kinds of documents or dis- flaw, though, I see this rigorously determined courses. Any discourse, including literature. indeterminacy as precisely the merit of can attain the documentary status once reserved Foucault's histories and the reason for his for birth registers and letters of state at the stunning impact on the French theoretical scene. same time as the latter cease to mere n*facts'land I suspect, however, that Foucault himself might take on a critical force through their implicit well object to the commentary or reformulation of disclosure and denunciation of the institutional his thought I have carried out here. My response practices that produce them. This aggressive would then be to ask whether, on the basis of reformulation of the documentary field itself what he himself has said about commentary, we can operates as a commentary which allows the docu- do anything more (or less) than say, for the ment to speak different1 If revealed then in first time, what he has already said and repeat the differenceT-- o that discourse is the histori- tirelessly what he has nevertheless never said. city of what was thought to be timeless and self- evident, that historical knowledge (which is pro- duced as an effect of the commentary) is less new Cowell College University oi California, knowledge whichaff irms the progress and con- Cruz tinuity of our traditions than what calls into Santa question the very principles of our knowledge and traditions. Historical commentary of the kind practiced by Foucault does not bring us closer to the past; it forcefully demonstrates th~remokeness of the past and, consequently, rhc precariousness of the present. In other words, if historical commentary can be defined as what undertakes the transgressive redoubling of the (discursive) past, then history land SCE REPORTS -- SCE REPORTS
-Notes in order to formalize what we suppose to be a language, it is not necessary to have practised l~oucault'smost extended critique of the some minimum of exegesis, and at least interpret-
wauthor-functionw is to be found in "What-~ . --is an~ ~- ed all those mute forms as having the intention Author?'' in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, of meaning something?" The order of Things, (New ed. and tr. D. Bouchard [Ithaca: Cornell York: Pantheon Books, 1970), p. 299. Among University Press, 1977), pp. 113-138. Foucaultis works, The Birth of the Clinic in particular lets itself be read as a study of the 2t1The Discourse of Language," tr. R. Swyer, institutional consequences of the play between included as an appendix to The Archaeology of formal description and interpretation. Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). Since Poucault's remarks on the subject of %adness and Civilization, tr. R. Howard (New commentary are rather brief (pp. 220-221), page York: Pantheon Books, 1965), p. xi. numbers will not be indicated. A similar discus- sion of commentary can be found in the preface to 7~heHistory of Sexuality, vol. I, tr. R. Hurley The Birth of the Clinic, tr. A.M.S. Smith (New (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). York: Pantheon Books, 1973), pp. xv-xix. '~irth of the Cli*, p. xvi. 3~tseveral points in this essay, I have found it -. necessary to distinguish more clearly between the 'A similar argument cart be found in Roland ,text that receives commentary and the one that Barthe..;, "Le discours de Ifhistoire," Social performs the commentary. Rather than reEer Science Informatir;n, 6, No. 4 (1967), 9-75. awkwardly to the text that is commented upon and the text that comments upon, I have decided to "~rchaeology of Knowledge, p. 125. speak simply of commented and commenting texts, as if to revert to the archaic, transitive form llssne History of Sexuality," Interview with of the verb, to comment. Lucette Finas, in Power/Knowledge, ed. C. Gordon, tr. C. Gordor), L. Marshall, et (New York: 4~rchaeologyof Knowledge, p. 120. Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 193. '"~nter~retation and formalization have become 121nterestingly, the fictive possibilities of the two great forms of analysis of our time--in commentary are already inscribed in the etymology fact, we know no others. But do we know what of the vord: conmentar from Latin cominiscor, the relations of exegesis and formalization are? comminirci, wh&dins to the Oxford Latin Are we capable of controlling and mastering them? mionafy,can aean to contrive, to invent, or For if ixegesis leads us not so much towards a to fabricate a falsehood. primall discourse as towards the naked existence of something likc a language, will it ~otbe 13hiodem- -Fxpnrh .- -- - - "I-? 1oscplk~,tr. L. Scott-Fox and obliged to express only the pitrc forla, of lang- .J. M. iiardivg (C:~(~l,)ridge: Cambridge University uage even before it has taken on a meaning? And Pres.., r la!)), pp. 110-117. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS ------. ------
THE ANATOMO-POLITICS OF POSITIVE PRESCRIPTION: '"~ee especially the articles collected under the MATERIALS FROM THE HISTORY OF MASTURBATION rubric, "Language and the Birth of 'Literature, 'I' in egilage, Co~~ntcr-Wmory,Practice, pp. 29- Arthur W. Frank, 111. 109, and Raymond Roussel (Paris : Galli~nrd, 1963) .
lSll~anguageto infinity ,*I in -l.an~uage, tyo~~ilter--- - .-Mem% Practice, p. 57.
I / Cf. "Preface to Transgression ,I1 in LEIQI~,C-, --Ccunt~_r:!Iemory, Practice, pp. 29-52. For Foucault watchers, hardly the least interest of The History of Sexuality, Volume I, An Introduction is the apparent shift from an emphasis on the discontinuity of history to an emphasis on continuity (cf. White, 1979:108). Contrast the opening of Wpline and Punish with that of Sexuality. In the foxmer, Foucault grounds the work in two disparate scenes: the public festival of Damiena' torture and execution, and, eighty years later, the private routlnization of daily life in a penal institution. This discontinuity i8 not, in itself, something to be explained for Foucault; it simply is history. The opening of Sexuality takes what common sense holds,.to be a dracontinuity--the contemporary liberation from Victorian sexual repression-and suggests that there never was an age of represeion. To posit such an age, and thus by contrast to posit our present "liberation" from it, is to misapprehend the operations of power which permeate sexuality.
Of cclurse praptices change. But this dircontinrrit-y of p,-.artices is the ruse of power; the opelmtio~'of pmrcr. is the fundamental SCE REPORTS ---- SCE REPORT
continuity of history. This gloss is what I want ~asturbation"; from the American Journal of to explore below. Such an exploration can take Obstetrics, 1876, "On Masturbation and Hysteria two forms. One can explicate Foucault's texts in Young Children"; and from the Journal of themselves as the reflexive embodiments of his Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1879, "Masturbation practice, and certainly the stylistics of as a Cause of Insanity." The mood of these works Sexuality provide ample basls for analysis. I is perhaps best summarized in the title of a book choose another route. Foucault's work also published In 1900, Manhood Wrecked and Ruined directs the reader out of the text, which then (all the above cited in Bullough, 1976:560-1). serves as a point of departure (and perhaps of return) for empirical investigations of the In its most extreme forms medical inter- materials to which the text makes reference. vention against masturbation included castration Particularly the History of Sexuality, since it of boys and surgical removal of the clitoris for is "only" an introduction, points the reader girls. The latter practice continued to be outward towards materials in which the reconrmended in a medical textbook published as programmatic implications of Foucault's epjeram- recently as 1936 (see Bullough and Bullough, matic pronouncements can be located, concretized, 1977:69). Perhaps most suggestive for present and evaluated. ThLo paper suggests such an purposes is the story of a young girl in Ohio empirical specification of Foucault's ideas. The who, in response to her masturbatory practices, materials chosen derive from the history of had her clitoris cauterized. When she continued masturbation and the current construction of masturbate, it was bound In wire sutures, and masturbation in the sexuality therapies. en she ripped these out, the clitoris was gically removed. The final line of the The masturbating child is suggested by crlption of this case (Bullough and Bullough, Foucault (1978:lOS) as one of the four figures 7:69) summarizes one interpretation of this emerging from the 19th century preoccupation with sade: "Later the patient reported that there sex. But although Foucault makes frequent nothing left for her to touch." reference to the "war against onanism" (1978:104), he says little about its specifics, perhaps But what does this line summarize? Was the intending to devote more attention to these in a ective to leave nothing to touch? Was the later volume. Readers not otherwise concerned ical crusade against masturbation a crusade with the history of sexuality may not realize ainst sexuality itself? or against childhood from Foucault's general references the vehemence pressions of sexuality? or against the with wh,ich this war--"crusaden might be a better oticism of sexuality? or against non- tern--against masturbation was fought. A few ' productive sexuality? Or are we simply looking titles can serve as suggestions of this vehemence: ck on an exercise of power, and what counts in £rod1 the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, a exercise of power is the historical 1642, an article titled "Insanity and rleath from ticularjty of a certain micro-technique. And
5 7 SCE REPORTS -----. ------SCE REPOR ------.--
while the particularities of this micro-technique are, Foucault tells us, very important, it seems increase the levels of sensate pleasure should be we must not let these particularities distract us shared freely with the marital partner" (1980: into believing that what took place was about 196). The presuppositions of this statement those particularitieb. Instead the particu- represent an extraordinary reversal of 19th larities should lead us to the display of power century attitudes: masturbation is not only as a system, for the particularities are nothing taken for granted as something "natural," but but a means of displaying power. But before its history has a potentially positive value for becoming programmatic about the materials, let me dyadic sexual involvement. present some more of them. By way of a Foucaultian shift to a later period, I want to Altl~oughMasters and Johnson are quite suggest the attitudes which now surround the xplicit in discussing mutual masturbation as a "secret sin" which, within the working lifetime reatment technique (e.g., for impotence), and of physicians still practicing, was believed to although they are willing to utilize prior cause ills from homosexuality to heteditary self-masturbatory experience for therapeutic insanity. purposes, they seem to stop short of a full prescription of self-masturbation. This The book most responsible for the contem- prescription is made c:cplicit in K~plan(1974), porary sexuality therapies is undoubtedly !~ltlchis probably the standard text read by Masters and Johnson's Human Sexual Inadequacy sexuality therapists and counsellors. While (1980; original edition, 1970). The treatment of Masters and Johnson, at least at the time of masturbation here is perhaps most remarkable in Human Sexual Inadeqclacy, would only admit marital its lack of prefatory remarks. The myth of any dyads to treatment, Kaplan is explicit in harm deriving from masturbation is dismissed by discussing sexuality therapy for patients the authors' silence; apparently the reader is without partners. In such programs, "Heavy expected to be beyond such prejudices. Mastur- emphasis is placed on masturbation" (1974:238). bation is discussed either in term of the diagnostic value of the history of an individual's What is more remarkable about Kaplan's practices (e.g., can a male who ie impotent when work--and what she is perhaps most cited for attempting coitus achieve a full erection when therapeutically--is the innovation of techniques masturbating? thus, are physiological causes of for incorporating self-masturbation into impotence excluded?), or as a source of the heterosexual intercourse (see Kaplan, 1974:407- patient ,in therapy learning about pleasure 408; cf. DeLora and Warren, 1977:485). Kaplan preparatory to coitus. In the latter context is also.explicit about her prescriptions of Masters and Johnson write: "Anything that solitary masturbation, often using a vibrator, husband or wife might have learned from prior as a means of-.-in the language of sexuality masturbatory experience that would tea4 to therapy--.achievinr:evn orgasmic competence (Kaplan, 1974: 393), althortgh in some cases additional
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therapeutic work may be required to make the allow the impression to stand that positive transition from solitary masttrrbatory orgasm to attitudes are nonexistent. (Jordan, 1981: orgasm with a partner present (1974:397). 26)
The works of Masters and Johnson and of The reviewer concludes that the book fails Kaplan represent the "classic" sources of insofar as it "allows students to leave their sexuality therapy and are thus the essential value systems unquestioned." The interest of the references in the documentation of new medical passage for present purposes is that the 19th attitudes toward masturbation. But other voices century attitude on masturbation is not only bear equal consideration. As in ~oucault'~use reversed, it is reversed with a self-seriousness of materials, the importance of these voices is which at leaat suggests the intensity of the 19th not how representative they are, not the extent century anti-onaniste. to which the attitudes they present could be generalized, but rather that these voices True pro-masturbatory fervor is perhaps represent historical possibilities of discourse. most explicit in the work of the radical psychiatrist David Cooper: One provocative voice is found in a book review published in the newsletter of the Sex . . . one can never love another person Information and Education Council of Canada until one can love oneself enough, on every (SIECCAN). A psychologist is reviewing a text level, including the level of proper (i.e., for college students 011 sexuality and expresses full, orgasmic) maaturbation--that is, ' the following criticism: masturbating at least once with joy. . . . Without a secure enough base in self-love, The surface attitude of the book is benign one inevitably and repetitively acts out and humanistically accepting. However, the whole mass of implanted guilt in one's the writing style, the information selected relations with others. (1970:36) from research, and the treatment of subject matter, often permit biases in a "con- Not the least interest of this quotation is the servative" direction to go unquestioned. . linkage of masturbation with a kind of liberation . . Masturbation is discussed. . . . After (from guilt and personal history, in this case), a few paragraphs on frequency and the role an idea to which we will return. What matters of masturbation in childhood, the authors at present is Cooper's unequivocal enunciation of devote most of their space on the subject the positive need to be able to masturbate, at to pointing out tho majority attitude on least once. Although masturbation is still this behavior--that 1s "dcgradj.ng m~d presented as preparatory to dyadic sexuality, it immoral" or "at best iwature." They don't is now essential preparation. Again, the point advocate negative attitudes. the;^ siv~ly is not how widely Cooper's views are shared, but SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
only that a discourse exists in which they can be argument seems only partially convincing. expressed. Second, the 19th century attitudes, in The materials displayed above should be retrospect', concretize relations of power; thus sufficient to suggest the shift from the we can only wonder how present attitudes could proscription of masturbation to its prescription; be functioning otherwise. The 19th century the Foucaultian question is whether what takes attitude8 not only authorized but required what - place is a "shift" at all (what, exactly,'shifts? we can call a system of double surveillance. On what doesn't?), and in what terms it might be one level, parents were enlisted to keep described. The writers of the SIECCAN newsletter surveillance on the sexuality of their children, would probably argue that of course there has and on another level, these parents were been a change in attitude; we have learned better, accountable to physicians who might question the our attitudes have become more "humane" and adequacy of their surveillance. Thus there "humanistically accepting." What* the history existed a double surveillance of children by of attitudes toward masturbation displays is, to parents and of parents by physicians. This use a term sex therapists would not employ but arrangement represents a sort of penultimate which would summarize their accounts, a triumph panopticism, in which state social control, the of the teleology of reason, and a triumph which control of observability, is exercised by the is all the more important since reason in this subjects of this control, physicians and parents, instance is the warm reason of physical pleasure in what they believe to be their own best (no mind/body dichotomy here). This interpre- interests. Note that I am not suggesting the tation is, of course, one which Foucault would system invested power in physicians; rather it either reject out of hand or regard with extreme would be more accurate to say that power operated caution. Let me develop a case for this through physicians. The physicians who carried caution from the materials themselves, rather out the anti-onanist crusade did not, as Szasz than on Foucault's textual authority. argues (1970:205-6) take power, rather they were themselves a modality of power. First, we observe that the concern with masturbation has-remained a constant. Of all the This distinction rests upon understanding topics on which a reviewer might choose to the 19th century crusade against masturbation comment, masturbation is chosen; somehow'an as representing a Foucaultian nexus of parer and author's attitude on this topic is taken to be knowledge: the power of surveillance, inter- indicatave of what that author knows and believes vention, and mutilation, and the knowledge of about sexuality in general. It could be argued medical reason which defines this surveillance that present day concern with masturbation and mutilation as being for the good of those on reflects a continuing need to counteract whom it is imposed. The crucial distinction is remnants of the 19th century taboos, )rut this this: although the knowledge was that of
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physicians, and the power was affected by more debilitating to the system than a whole day's physicians, Foucault's work restrains us from workW(quoted in Bullough and Bullough, 1977:64). going on to believe that what was involved was The economic argument follows logically: the power of medicine. To invoke the physician industrial power in the 19th century was interested as the current embodiment of the Prince, as in workers avoiding the dissipation of their labor Szasz tends to do, is to do precisely what power in masturbation; in the present period of Foucault cautions against (1978 :97) . Instead we surplus labor, this concern loses its intensity. must attempt to maintain a conception of power The contemporary problem may be to create a milieu without a subject. in which workers will find it easy to be diverted in hours off the job. The problem of social The importance of this subjectless version control is no longer that addressed by Tailorism, of power is not Foucault's textual authority, which Foucault would call the creation of bodies but rather that in analyzing the workings of made docile for factory labor; instead it is the power in current attitudes, we must inquire problem of keeping bodies docile in time spent beyond the easy attribution of power to some away from work. group, e.g., medical sex therapy, commercial Instead we must seek to explain the interests. The first problem with the economic theory is existence of these groups themselves as effects that attitudes toward masturbation seem to have of paver. Not only the discontinuity of been class biased in the 19th century and to practices, but the obviousness of explanation by remain SO today, altliough differently. This class agency is the ruse of power. bias is not in the direction which the economic argument would predict. Foucault writes of the The third point then is to attempt to 19th century: "As for the adolescent wasting his suggest how power is operating through the future substance in secret pleasures this contemporary attitudes toward masturbation. If . . . was not the child of the people, the future we can understand the 19th century attitude as worker who had to be taught the disciplines of the part of a micro-technique of power, in what sense body, but rather the schoolboy (1978: is the present attitude also a micro-technique? . . . ." 121). If Foucault is correct, the economic Again, there is tHe.problem of thinking of power argument would have difficulty explaining why. in economic terms, an argument which is so The present attitudes, which are apparently seductively available that it requires a further anomalous with what Foucault says used to occur, In the midst of a 19th century digression. create further problems. Contemporary writers discourse which sounds to the modem ear like rely on-Kinsey's findings that attitudes toward endless moralizing and pseudo-science, one masturbation become more positive the higher the statement is clear. A sex manual--properly, an social class of the individual involved. The anti-sex manual--by a Mrs. Elizabeth Osgood Goodrich percentage differences are not overwhelming, but Willard tells us that ''A sexual orgasm is much the effect is consistent. Without trying to SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
reconcile Foucault and Kinsey (i.e., is what exists today a reaction to the 19th century, or book is "probably well designed for the South did differences in class attitudes then require a Florida political climate where the authors teach" different emphasis of repression?), let me simply (Jordan: 1981:26), this sex/felicity discourse is suggest that those mbst restrained by sexual evident: sex for the reviewer is a means of attitudes are those who are becoming the surplus questioning values and changing political climates, of the labor market, &nd thus those most in need and the text's authors have "failed" to use it as of sexual distraction. Those who seem free to such. enjoy sexual distraction are those who remain most viable economically. So much for one kind This linkage of sex and general felicity, with of economic argument. the intermediate step of overturning global law, is better exemplified in a review which appeared A more profound response to the economic in The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971). The argument is found in the following statement by Catalog quotes a section from Women and Their Foucault : Bodies, a book published by the Boston Women's Health Collective in 1970. The section is a It appears to me that the essential thing detailed description of female masturbatory is not this economic factor, but rather technique, e.g., "Some women masturbate by the existence in our era of a discourse in moistening their finger (with either saliva or which sex, the revelation of truth, the juice from the vagina) and rubbing it around and overturning of global laws, the proclamation over the clitoris. . . ." (quoted in Brand, 1971: of a new day to come, and the promise of o 221). The description itself is not uninterest- certain felicity are linked together. ing in terms of its possible lack of complemen- (1978: 7) tarity to what Masters and Johnson recommend on masturbatory technique (cf. Masters and Johnson, Traditional analyses of power, particularly 1980:292-293). but what concerns us more at Marxist ones, have taught us to look for economic present is the reviewer's comment on the explanations. Foucault--not unlike Weber in his description, and on the book in general (note, time--is not contradicting these explanations again, the decision to quote that section of the so much as he is suggesting more fundamental ones. book which concerns masturbation). She writes: The availability of this discourse in which sex becomes linked to felicity by way of truth and The subject is our [i.e., women's] bodies-- overturning of law has already been displayed in our relationship to them, to ourselves, to the materials above. When the SIECCAN reviewer men; to each other, and to our society. It criticizes a text on sexuality for allowing makes me feel very special but in no way students "to leave their value systems unique--a warm and wonderful feeling. It's unquestioned," and goes on to suggcs? that the a political book in the best sense of bringing it all back home and making it SCE REPORTS - SCE REPORTS
clear how we got here and where we need to ~oucault'sstatement of this paradox rests upon his go. . . . if you're looking for a stronger, making a particular presupposition about the logic clearer sense of yourself as a woman, you'll of proscription: to proscribe something is to be satisfied. What it reminds me of most is inscribe that which the proscription opposes, to a woman's body--intelligent, warm, soft, give that which is proscribed an oppositional force inviting. (Brand, 1971:221) and a reality; to proscribe is to name that which is proscribed, and thus to incite activity in that The syntagmatic chain which emerges from the choice name. Thus the proscription of sexual practices of passage and the terms of the review could be such as masturbation amounted to the inscription suggested as: masturbation, satisfaction, body, of these practices in the imagination of a self, relationships to others, relationship to resistance which thereby found its name. In order society, politics, "where we need to go." These to address the contemporary situation, it is associations more than approximate the linkage necessary to apply this logic of proscription to of which Foucault writes: sex, truth, overturning the practice of prescription. From this law, a new day, a certain felicity. application we can derive at least a hypothesis concerning the present situation of sex in society. The question of the "shift" in attitudes toward masturbation is thus very much a question Although Foucault leads us to the issue of of the emergence of this discursive linkage of the paradox of prescription, we need not rely on sex and felicity; the analytical issue is how his work as a resource on this topic. The cre- this linkage represents a micro-technique of ation of "therapeutic paradox" by means of power. 1 wish to propose that this sexlfelicity prescribing the presenting symptan has been a topic discourse is, in its historical context vie within the therapeutic literature for almost the 19th century, a discourse of legitimation. thirty years (for a recent review of this work, The significance of this legitimation is that it see Hoffman, 1981: Chapters 15 and 16). For has brought with it a new panopticism of the purposes of the present argument, the following sexuality therapies. The double surveillance simplification of the therapeutic model will of the 19th century has not been overthrown, but suffice. The client in therapy presents a symptom. rather has found-its ultimate form. The argument Rather than tell the client how to get rid of that for this panopticism depends on the efficacy of symptom, the therapist in part of his intervention paradox, so let me begin by returning to Foucault's actually prescribes the symptanatic behavior, paradoxical opening of the History of Sexuality. e. g., telling the client to continue his drinking. . . The bas46 of the paradoxical situation thus Foucault argues that there never has been an created is this: if the client continues the age of repression, eince represoion paradoxically behavior, he now does so at the instruction of the brings about incitation. The attempt to repress therapist, whose control is thus acknowledged. sex only made sex a noisier preoccupatfon. If he ceases tht symptomatic behavior, so much SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
the better. In the example, the client has the choice of either drinking at the instruction of where is this leading? As sexuality therapy moves the therapist, or ceasing to drink. The into its second decade, some therapists are important issue is control: once the control of beginning to report a shift in their case loads, the therapist has been established, it can be away from the "dysfunctions" (e.g. , impotence, extended. Specific restrictions can be placed on orgasmic dysfunction) and toward what is called the behavior, e.g., n&w only drink three nights a "loss of interest" and "disorders of desire" (for week. These restrictions are, of course,. the a recent review, see Kaplan, 1981). Setting aside problematic part of the intervention, but by the obvious question of the normative stance from establishing the context of the initial paradox, which "desire" can be labeled "disordered," the the therapist gives himself much greater ccntrol questions of present relevance are two. First, is in the situation. loss of interest the expected, iatrogenic response to the prescription of sex? And second, is the The therapist would claim that he will medical labeling of this condition the ultimate eventually teach the client that* he, the client, extension of therapeutic panopticism? These has control over his own behavior, and the para- questions. however, raise issues beyond the scope dox is a means toward this end. Foucault might of the present exploration, which only requires argue that the paradox creates a control by the that some empirical case be suggested in support therapist which transcends resistance. At of the idea of prescription as a micro-technique present I want only to argue that paradoxical of power. prescription can stop at being a micro-technique of power. The efficacy of this technique is in Returning then to the issues of historical the impossibility of resistance. That which is continuity and the ruses of power, the following proscribed can be practiced as a form of conclusion can be offered. resistance; the proscription which names it also makes it a practical possibility of action. That The materials on masturbation illustrate a which is prescribed has as its complementary shift in practices from proscription to pre- resistance nothing; there is no resistance except scription. The problem is what this shift non-action. In resistance to those who watch in represents: a liberation, as most sexuality order to prevent, it is possible to do that which professionals would understand it, a continuity, they would prevent. In response to those who as the History of Sexuality seems to suggest, or watch in order to be certain you do it correctly, perhaps a change in the form of a discontinuity it is possible only to do nothing. Far from toward repression. The materials certainly becoming a noisy preoccupation, that which is suggest-that Foucault is correct in refuting the prescribed becomes a bore. traditional version of the "repressive hypothesis" by presenting sex as constantly at the nexus of If sex is becoming a matter of prescription, power and knowledge. Sex has remained something to be controlled, with prescription being a more SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
potent technique of control than proscription, Collective (and all the others like it) and today and therein is the question: is prescription so is "suffering" from "loss of interest." And to much more potent a control technique than what does this loss of interest extend? Not just proscription that a qualitative change has taken to sexual orgasms, but to those other verities to place? which the orgasm has become linked: body, self, society, politics, "where we need to go." When Added to this qutistion is the issue of anything is touchable, then "nothing left to touch" Foucault's linkage of sex and broader social and becomes "nothing worth touching." When the scope political issues. What is at stake is not simply of this "nothing" has been vastly expanded, with the pleasures of the body (although such pleasures the forces of "liberation" the ostensible agents have obviously never been simple in their social of this extension, then the micro-technique of construction), but ''the overturning of global sexual proscriptive prescription is more clearly laws, the proclamation of a new day to come." a relay in a larger system of power relationships. The introduction of this sex/f elicity discourse, which the materials also display clearly, raises This "larger system" involves the anatomo- a further question, which is whether this dis- politics of the present. The paradoxical problem course itself--ostensibly the discourse of of anatomo-politics seems always to have been liberation--is not a micro-technique of power. that bodies capable of disciplined performance were also capable of disciplined resistance, e.g., At a time when a more powerful technique of the Spartacus myth and reality. But when power control--prescription--is available, it is in the no longer requires such performance, then interest of power to raise the stakes, and the "liberation" from earlier disciplines amounts to availability of the sexlfelicity discourse is little more than undercutting the possibility of that raise. Only at a time when sex can be resistance. When Foucault writes of past subjected to power is it linked to social and practices of making bodies docile for performance political felicity, this linkage thus providing (e.g., factory labor, military drill), he should for the extension of what we can call the add that these same bodies were simultaneously proscriptive prescription. toughened by resistance to proscriptive discipline. . . The anatomo-politics of prescription involves a When we read the case of the 19th century docility which can extend even to indifference to girl ripping out the sutures around her clitoris, the promise of pletsure. The ultimate linkage in we lrear not only the will to sexual experience, the contemporary micro-technique of power is that but also the possibility of resistance. Who is this docility is officially thematized as a this girl's contemporary? I an proposlng the "problem," and the possibility of its "cure" is young woman who in 1970 learned to appropriate appropriated by the power which brought it into the idle pleasures of her body LC) the tt!ch~rlques being. end politics of the Boston Womerl's llealth
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If the "loss of interest" phenomenon References continues, that will be the final repression. If it does not continue, then the sexuality therapies will claim its "cure" and thereby extend the Brand, Stewart (ed.) The Last Whole Earth legitimacy of their panopticism. Either way, Catalog. Menlo Park, 1971. power never loses. The apparent discontinuity of attitudes toward masturbation is a ruse of power; Bullough, V. L. Sexual Variance in Society and if there is any historical discontinuity, it is History. Chicago: University of Chicago whether the micro-techniques of power have Press, 1976. achieved a sophistication and efficacy which is qualitatively different in its panoptic potential Bullough, V. and Bullough, B. Sin, Sickness, and for social control. To address this issue, it Sanity: A History of Sexual Attitudes. New would be necessary to consider the bio-politics York: Meridian, 1977. to which the anatomo-politics described above are doubtless complementary. Cooper, David. The Death of the Family. New York: Vintage, 1970.
DeLora, Joann S. and Warren, Carol A. B. Department of Sociology Understanding Sexual Interaction. Boston: The University of Calgary Houghton Mifflin, 1977.
Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality, Vol. I, An Introduction. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
Hoffman, Lynn. Foundations of Family Therapy. New York: Basic Books, 1981.
Jordan, N. Review of J. Sandler. M. Myerson. and B. Kinder, Human Sexuality: ~urren; perspectives. -Newsletter,Sex Education 1981, and I&,Information26. Council of Canada
Kaplan, Helen S. The New Sex Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1974. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
Kaplan, Helen S. "Current concepts of human sexuality." Pp. 408-422 in Silvano Arieti Larysa Mykyta and H. Keith H. Brodie (eds.), American Handbook of Psychiatry, Vol. 7, Advances and New Directions. New York: Basic, 1981. In La Volont6 de eavoir he Will to Kdowledge), the first volume of a =tedeeG ;;? studies on Masters, William H. and Johnson, Virginia E. the history of sexuality, Foucault makes audaciously lluman Sexual Inadequacy. New York: Bantam, vest claim that seem to herald the overturning of 1980. traditionally available systems of thought not only about sexuality but about the functioning of power Szasz, Thomas. The Manufacture of Madness. New and the pursuit of knowledge in all fields of inquiry. York: Delta, 1970. In that slim volume he redefines both the natuie of power and of sexuality, offering a hypothesis about White, nayden. "Michel Foucault ." Pp. 81-115 in their relation to knwledge that renders all three John Sturrock (ed.), Structuralism and Since. virtually inseparable thereby upsetting the accepted Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. assumptions about the historical and political func- tion of "sexuality." Moreover his text is convincing and extremely, almost excessively, rational. Foucault seems to saturate his field of investigation by taking everything into account, by scrutinizing and illuminating even seemingly contradictory events and developments to make them function according to the dynamics of a coherent and comprehensive whole within the confines of hie hypothesis. However, in revealing that the "repressive theory of sexuality" is a politico-historical ruse that operates in the framework of a generalized will to knowledge about sexuality, with a proliferation of diecourees, Foucault allows his discourse, as one more discourse on sexuality, to be suspected of operating its own ruses and strategies of deception. The clarity of his inquiry is so brilliant as to become blinding, that is, it conceals a blind spot, an aspect of the problem'left in obscurity and excluded from consider- ation. This shadowy area is all the better concealed since it is positioned behind the veil of another obvious but reasonably justified exclusion. SCE REPORTS . .-.- SCE REPORTS
I am alluding to the neglect of sexual differ- t ence as an important factor within the historical deployment of sexuality and wishes to make eloguen; deployment of sexuality as well as to the absence of the mechaniqm of that ring, of that deployment. He reference to feminist discourses in Foucault's text. wants to demonstrate why it becomes so important t~ Which is not to say that Foucault does not take the speak about sexuality; wants to find a historical history of female sexuality into account. The hyster- origin for the phenomenon that wade sexuality coneti- ization of women's bodies and all the comcomitant tutive of the origins of the self. But in trying to effects of such a development: are duly presented as twist the ring upon itself he aleo twists the fable, one of the four great strategic unities which "begin- --for the magic ring of Prince Mongogul vqe used t,o ning in the eighteenth century formed specific mechan- force only thq female $qq to qpeak the truth about isms of knowledge and power centering on eex."l How- itdelf. The desire fsr eexuel truth was not a deeire ever, this analysis of the specific way in which to master the mysteries of sex but of the female sex. women (as opposed to children and men) became the "targets and anchorage point* for the ventures of What, however, are the consequences of ouch a knowledge" (HS 105) functions in a discourse that has double exclusion? Paradoxic~lly, it is in demon- already, in the very articulation of its goals, delib- s trating the unques tionable legitimacy aqd value of erately excluded sexual difference as pertinent. the exclusion of feminist discourses within o certain context that the significance of the former exclusion Foucault announces that his aim ia "to transcribe can be disclosed. As a result it becomes clear in into history the fable of Lee bijoux indiscrets," what way Foucault'a discouree perpetuates a ruse,> (Hs 77) a fable written by-fjiderot where a bored which a1though going through shif ts and transforma- Prince is given a magic ring by Cucufa, the kingdom's tions, has remained within the parameters and limits good genie. When turned and focused on sexual organs, of available systems of thought, has remained the the stone of this ring obliges sex to speak the truth same through the ruse of the same. In spite of its about itself. In Foucault's terms the problem is "to disavowals, that discourse has remained to a certain know what marvelous ring confers a similar power on degree both "economically and politically coneerva- us, and on which master's finger it has been placed; tive" (HS 37) even if it does indeed force power to what game of power it makes possible or presupposes recompose itself according to different strategies. and how is it that each one of us has become a sort Finally Foucault*e discourse has short-ciycuited its of attentive and imprudent sultan with respect to his own innovative potential precisely to the degree that own sex and that of others. It is this magical ring, it can maintain its arguments only if sexual differ- this jewel which is so indiscreet when it combs to ence is not allowed to operate within them. I shall making others speak but so ineloquent concerning its begin by briefly recanetructing the major premises of own mechanism that we need to render loquacious in its Foucault's hypothesis. turn; it is what we have to talk about. We must write the history of this will to truttl, this petition '0 According to Foucault the theory of repression know that for many centuries has kept us enthrll{cd (which claim that the twentieth century is witnessing by sex . . . (11s 79) In 1,:ior i-, P'o. , .~ltlilrortr a slow decline of t11e prohibition, censorship and Cucufa'a magic ring, which wads others speaK, tr the denial of sexuality operative since the classical age) is a distortion of historical reality. It is part of
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a strategy used to render power less threatening and seem then that psychoanalytic theory has already more acceptable; in other words to conceal the extent revealed the ruses of power; revealed that to some of its domain by presenting itself as a limit on desire extent one is always already trapped in power. How- that would leave some measure of freedom intact (HS ever, in Foucault's view the psychoanalytic position 10, 86). It was the strategy of a bourgeoise that on relations between power and sexuality still falls by late or mid-eighteenth century, an emerging "capi- short of exposing the deceptions of power eince, talist or industrialq',society, made its own body and although it conceives "the nature and dynamics of its precious sexuality function as the principles of drives" (HS 83) differently from the repressive hypoth- class specificity in much the same way and against esis, it nonetheless retains the accepted notion of the "blood" of the nobility (HS 126-27). And it did power as law--as juridico-discursive. Moreover, since this not through a denial of sexuality but by putting the task that psychoanalysis sets itself as a dis- into play "an entire machinery for producing true course of truth is the task of lifting (although not discourses concerning it" (HS 69). The theory of completely effacing) psychical repression, it enables repression was born as an "instrument of social con- the production of a slightly modified version of the trol attd political subjugation" (HS 123) when, at repress ive hypothesis . Inasmuch as i ts technique8 the end of the nineteenth century, this class redefined enabled psychoanalysis to work against repression its sexuality in relation to other classes by ex- it was possible to link this repression "to general plaining the deplo~entof sexuality in terms of a mechanisms of domination and exploitation and to join It was postulated not only rhat generalized taboo. together the processes that enable one to be free of sexuality must be subject to the law but that "you all three" (HS 131). Such binding made possible the will have no sexuality except by subjecting your- birth of what Foucault calls the historico-political the law'' (Hs 128). It is within such a frame self to critiques of repression. that Foucault situates psychoanalysis as "both a theory of the essential interrelatedness of law and - At this juncture the reasons for Foucault's fail- desire, and a technique for relieving the effects ure to deal with feminist discourses become clear of the taboo where its rigor makes it pathogenic" since those discourses are, or can certainly be under- (HS 129). stood as, historico-political critiques of sexual represiion. Thus most of what Foucault says about If power in the repressive hypothesis was tradi- ~eich'scritique of repression could be applied as tionally thought- (or taught) to have only an exterior well to feminist discourses: hold on desire, this relation of exteriority offered the poesibility of liberation from power through The importance of this critique and its impact revolt or resistance. Psychoanalysis, by demonstrating on reality were substantial. But the very thmtpower ae law, "is what constitutes desire and possibility of its success was tied to the fact the lack'on which it is psedicated" (HS 81), and seems that it rlways unfolded within the deployment of also to point ta the illusory nature of the promiae sexuality, and not outside or against it. The of liberation by revealing that in the relation be- fact that so many things were able to change in tveen power and doair* the-a is nv qr~,.h fhing as "8 Te would the sexual behavior of Western societies without repression exerted after ?t t? L'vw,.~'' f?:~21 1. any of the promisee or political conditions --SCE REPORTS -- SCE REPORTS
predicted by Reich being realized is sufficient consequences of that exclusion for his project. An proof that this whole sexual 'revolution,' this elucidation of that importance is found in Jean whole 'anti-repressive' struggle, represented ~audrillard's study of seduction2 in which he describes nothing more, but nothing less-and its impor- how theories of the feminine or theories of feminine tance is undeniable--than a tactical shift and sexuality directly align themselves with the histor- reversal in the great deployment of nexuality. ically current role assigned to the body. He points But it is also apptlrent why one could not expect out that those theories, while resisting or revolting this critique to be the grid for a history of against Freud's phallic theory of anatomical destiny that very deployment. Nor the basis for a move- nonetheless continue to immerse themselves in our ment to dismantle it (HS 131). "culture of the body." In opposition to organ other organs or the body as a whole is "transfigured In other words Foucault ignores feminist discourses by de~ire."~However, this "transfigured body" on sexuality because they insert themselves so com- remains a functional body, a body subjugated to f6rtably into the strategies of the deployment of production. Thus the use of the very terms employed sexuality that has created the)very thing about which to promote the specificity of s female jouiesance can it seemed to be producing knowledge and true dis- place it within the movement of a capitalist economy courses--"The imaginary element that is 'sex' . . . of expenditure that circulates endlessly to produce the desire for sex . . . 'sex' itself as something value : desirable" 156). One could not expect feminist discourses to dismantle this deployment, caught as This contraint to fluidity, to flux, to the they are within it, since they say "yes" to sex, accelerated circulation of the psychic, of the they make an effort "to make us love sex, to make sexual and of bodies is the exact replica of knowledge of it desirable and everything said about the constraint that governs market value: Capi- it precious" (HS 169) as well as focusing on the body tal must circulate, must not have any gravity or as a value. In doing so they follow the line, "laid fixed point; the chain of investment must be out by the general deployment of sexuality" (HS 1571, incessant; value must radiate without obstacles whereby sex, "an imaginary point" determined by the and in all directions-and that is the very form deployment of sexuality, functions as that through of the actual realization of value. That is the which "each individual has to pass in order to have form of capital and sexuality, the sexual pass- access to his own intelligibility . . . to the whole word, the sexual model is its mode of appearance of his body . . . and to hie identity" (HS 155-56). on the level of bodies.4
However, the question that Foucault does not It is impoctant to note that it is not female address himself to is the question of the gender of the whole body that is constitutive of the identity to which he refers. The delineation of the impor- the specificity of female sexuality that triea to tance that gender has in such a constitution further define it in terms of male sexuality, male orgasm. vindicates Foucault'e exclusion of feminist discourses For if female jouissance (bliss, orgasm, enjoyment) from his text but it also eimultaneously unveils the . SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
is different from a man's, it is precisely, as Lacan notes in ~ncore,~as ecstasy, as that which is out if it is a "shadow," a historico-discursive bour- of place, which is useless, that is, it has no use geois construct, the power structtlres within which value. As soon as it is directed toward and evalu- these discourses are situated are not sexually neu- ated in terms of the production of orgasm it begins tral nor do they produce sexually neutral constructs. to function according to male models and male econo- In other words, Foucault's theory of paver, where mies. The kind of specificity and equality that it power is seen as a movement of local but omni-present thereby establishes annuls its difference; it becomes "Tu as un "unbalanced, heterogenous, unstable and tense force subject to another law--the injunction: relationships" (HS 93) based on inequalities and corps et il faut en jouir;" (You have a body and you disequilibriums, actually operates according to a must take pleasure from it). 7 model of homogeneity. Under the guise of anonymous heterogeneities it conceals a power that is mascu- Thus it seems that not only does Foucault make line in nature while putatively unmasking the ruses sense by excluding feminist discourses from consid- of power. eration but that he produces a s,ense that cannot be ignored. By means of its silences, ~oucault'stext Putting a different sexuality into play, address- demonstrates that, as Serge Leclaire notes elsewhere, ing oneself to the nature of sexual difference, the "there is something contradictory in the feminist difference of female sexuality, would render fragile Women fall into the same trap they movement. this (male) structure of power since it would threaten denounce; and in doing so they produce a man's super- the c.oncepts of wholistic identity which the diacourees dis~ourse."~Which is not to say that Foucault would inscribd .d within power e tructures seek to produce. question the limited political efficacy of feminist For a woman' s iouissar?ce.iu not the opposite (equal or positions nor the fact that their discourses change unequal) counterpart of phallic jouissance. reality any more than he questioned the effects of Rather, as Lacan points out, it: is supplementary to it. It is Reich's theories. He does, however, make clear that this efficacy is possible only as a result of forming an extra, an addition, a more that proceeds from the less, the not-all (anatomically) of women. apart of prevailing structures of power, a part of Within the logic of supplementarity, however, the not-all of the deployment of sexuality. Feminist discourses may produce a shift in power tactics but they achieve female 'ouissance makes up for, somchw corupensates nothing more and nothing less than that. And indeed for an orrgrnal deficiency in the all, the wholeness they may end up reproducing phallocentric structures of the male,- therefore putting into question that by replacing them with what Baudrillard calls a wholeness and its concomitant effects. In avoiding ''phallocentric feminine." the problem of sexual difference Foucault repeats the mechanisms of the deployment of sexuality which At .this point, however, it also becomes clear by saying everything about it tries not so much to that what is at stake in Foucault's silence concern- efface differences but to comprehend them, that is , ing feminis t discourses is not so much their possi- envelop them in a comprehensive system, in a system ble complicity with existing power structures but of comprehension so that it would seem that they cannot his own complicity. For if sex is a complex idea and do not make any difference. And in demonstrating formed inside the discursive deplctyment of sexuality; that objective discourse is a male discourse his text becomes an elublem for the logic of all discourses SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
whose truth is sustained by sexual indifference. 'niche1 Foucault, The HieEorv of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (~ewYork: Random House, 19801, p. 103, hereafter cited in parentheses with page num- ber as HS. Department of French Louisiana State University *I am referring to Jean Baudrillard's .a szduction (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1979). It should be noted that I use Baudrillard's work with reserva- tion and only for the limited purposes I mention.
3~audrillardspeaks epecifically of Luce Irigaray'e work but hie comments would apply to any feminist discourse that promulgates a certain concept of equality that effaces difference.
4~eanBaudrillard, Oublier Foucault (Paris : Editions ~alilde,19771, pp. 32-33; my translation.
5~oFwhat is eometiraes defined as female speech in opposition to wale or female discoutse. 6 .. Jdcques Lacan, & Seminaire Livre XX, Encore (Paris: Seuil, 1975), p. 10.
7~audrillard. Oublier Foucault, p. 32.
'serge Leclaire, "Sexuality: A fact of Die- co~~rse,"trans. Helene Klibbe in Homosexualities --and French Literature, George Stambolian and Elaine Marke, eds. (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 19791, p. 53. SCE REPORTS - SCE REPORTS
EATING WORDS abandonment of meaning and emotion for the sake of a still more drastic loss of meaning or Cynthia Chase incursion of emotion. Felicity Baker stresses that this must not be construed as the defense of an indi- vidual subject: "The perverse structure . . , cannot In "Perverse Scenes of Writing," L-SCE Reports be said to arise from the psychic structure of the 10 all, 1981) pp. 57-7-1, Felicity Baker superim- narrator or the young hero (for it is spread across poses psychoanalytic categories on the rhetorical many textual elements, persons, and so on); or from terms of de an's analysis of the purloined ribbon that of Rousseau. That perverse structure is a rhe- episode in Book ii of the Confessions LTn Allegories torical structure of the language of the text" (p. of Reading, ch. 127, with impressive success. What - What does it mean to 70). What happens, though, when the text gets iden- is the effect of this gesture? tified wholly with a rhetorical structure equated characterize a text through a description of the act with a perverse structure which is essentially, if of writing drawing on a psychological discourse? impersonally, defensive? Felicity Baker goes on to That question looms behind the appropriation of the quote Freud and finally Wilfred Bion. "Freud says post-Freudian term "incorporation" in my own paper that 'the inconsjstencies, eccentricities and ("Reading as Writing," SCE Reports 10, pp. 33-56) and follies of men L . . . 7 appear in a similar light no doubt behind Michel Pierssens s "few simple ques- to their sexual perversions, through the acceetance tions" in reaction (ZE Reports 10, pp. 74-61. of whichttley spare themselves repressions.' L . . .-7 A literary text is an eccentricity, a distortion of th The conception of an unconscious structured like this sort. It is a form, a representation that is a language is always susceptible of giving way to the an abandonment of an emotion--which the subject explanation of linguistic structures as unconscious accepte, but does not wholly create or compose, and defensive functions. Felicity Baker proposes to What in psycho- which divides the subject. Writing is a fow of "juxtapose what de Man puts us under: splitting, a form of what Wilfred Bion calls minia- analytic writing is called unconscious structure, and ture psychotic function in the service of sanity'' what de Man, correcting an error, calls linguistic The question is whether this error (p. 71). With this laa t characterization we revert structure.'' to a conception of writing as one action among others remains--or remain--corrected. Thus there emerges can carried out by a psychological subject, and to a con- in "Perverse Scenes of writing1' a tension between two ception of writing as defense. conceptions of the act of writing. On the one hand, he essay evokes "an eruption which breaks across the I would like to try to mark a difference between perverse structure of the writing at the point where the concluding movement of "Perverse Scenes of ststructure itself intolerably represents the writing" and my own proposal (in "Reading as Writing") retl.rnU of what the perverse structure exists to deny. that writing can be conceived as incorporation--a Meri we glimpse a writing that in its very operation problematic matter, certainly, for "miniature pey- disintegrates psychic structures. On the other hand, chotic function" wouLd seem to describe "incorpora- the essay concludes by describing writing as a la3C- tion" very well. For incorporation is defined ditch psychic defense, a radical but localized (starting fro~nFreud's description of melancholia SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
and Abraham and Torok's distinction of incorporation operation of encoding, a mutation of writable signi- from introjection in LiEcorce et le m)as a dras- fiers. Thus what first seems to designate the tic defensive alternative to the normal process of imaginary imitation of a bodily process comes to internationalization, a literalizing of an imagina- describe the encrypting of material signs. It would seem then that in appealing This ia tive function. what encourages me to euspect that the notion of to the concept of incorporation one reverts altogether incorporation can serve to put in question not only emphatically to what I hold to be the unwarranted the supposition that writing is an activity serving assumption of a psychological perspective on writing: the integrity of a subject, but also a more funda- the interpretation of writing as an activity taking mental aesumption: the phenomenality of texts and place in the service of the integrity of a subject, the continuity and solidarity of reading with percep- This assumption may go along with overlooking how tion. writing, since it consists in signs that are at once material and conventional (or arbitrary), involves But the initial replies I would make to Michel another operation than the imagipative functions Pierasens continue to make the second, if not the modeled on perception. Calling writing "incorpora- first, of the above assumptions. For 1 would reca- tion" would seem to succumb to just this assumption pitulate by saying that my paper described an aspect and oversight, by referring, misleadingly, to a of the activity of writing that functions neither as fantasy of actually taking an object into the body. knowing, nor as its antithesis, neither as defending against knowing nor as sublimation; I suggest a con- But "incorporation" also (and this my account ception of writing as a kind of forgetting or memor- in "Reading and Writing" stressed) designates a rhe- torical difference: the dis-f iguration of introjec- ization rather than racreation or remembrance. tion and of the oral metaphor that.marks our concep- In addition my paper is in fact concerned with tion of language as primarily spoken language, as an actual reading of Rousseau by Baudelaire. voice. It is in introjection that a metaphorical Baudelaire read Bousseau's ~&eriesand, in "Le process of internalization and assimilation takes ~ateau," "Le Joujou du pauvre," and 'Morale du place; and the fundamental physical process of taking joujou" (the essay from which he extracted "La nourishment must take place metaphorically to take Joujou du pauvre"), reworked Rousaeau's motif of the place literally (Melanie Klein's work suggests that edible toy. Baudelaire's texts, like Rouseeau's, ingeeation must be accompanied by the conce tion of associate gift-giving and play, with discomfitting nour~ahment,by an idea of what is godin- conditions and consequences. Michel Pieresenr's corporation, this harmony of metaphorical and bodily processes is disrupted. The notion of incorporation remarks valorizing games and gift-giving in contrast to the toy or the commodity-"A game exists outside focuses attention on the conflict between aThe certain notion the circuit of exchange and money, which is why it operation and its phenomenologica~model. is so beautiful" (p. 76); "What can be less mercantile of eating words brings into conflict the idea of Cryptonomie: than a game? Who can be less venal than children?" internalizz and that. of inscription. :(p. 79)--refom~late the truisms that these texts ex- le Verbier de l'irij~~dneaux luups, Abrallam and Torok's ---- pose and ironize. Thus in a passage ostensibly first book, explores incorpn~atjontseffects as an reaffirming the distinction between creative and 90 SCE REPORTS --- SCE REPORTS
mechanical activity, here between playing without ant's that draws on other kinds of eviderlce. The toys and playing with dolls, Baudelaire chooses the problem is rather the very plausibility of the activ- word "diligence" to designate the spontaneous game ity of reading and writing thereby ascribed to he praises--a pun which subverts the distinction in ~auclelaire-its plausibility as experience. Now the very moment of making it; the passage both sum- the notion of experience, in its most complex mani- mons up and refuses the distinction between diligence festations--phenomenological and psychoanalytic and creativity at the'basis of our notion of the theory-was essential to Abraham's and Torok's elab- aesthetic and our "economics of the imagination," in oration of the concept of incorporation. mat ini- Kurt Hzinzelman's phrase (The Economics of the w- tially grounded their notion of incorporated signs -,nation Amherst, 1980). or cryptonyma was their clinical experience of the intensity with which children invee t infantile exper- But my paper is concerned less with a "reading" ience. My paper suggests that in some instance nf-- --- nudel la ire's or Rousseau's essays than with inves- writers invest their reading of earlier writers with tigating how Baudelaire's reading comes out in a comparable intensity, with corresponding effects. writing. Thus I suggest that in addition to under- Thus Baudelaire incorporated, and encrypted in his standing and remembering elements of the nintmerie, essay "Morale du joujou," Rousseau's dual sign Baudelaire also incorporated elements of Rousseau's "oubli(e)," because it was invested with an insist- essay. For Baudelaire's homonym "diligence" can be ence on the disparity between writing and aesthetic analyzed as a cryptonym (Abraham and Torok's term for experience that 9 poet must find insufferable, inas- the linguistic product of an incorporation) of a homo- *(es)-precisely in similablrl by any more asual means. It is the invoca- nym in ~ousseau'sessay: tiou of experieitce that is problematic in this account accordance with the rule worked out in 2ptonomie: -the day the izstigation of a text gets subsumed the cryptonym is a translation or synonym for a homo- beneatt the project of describing a certain albeit phone of the incorporated word. "Seeing" diligence unusual experience of the phenomenal world in one of as such a cryptonym of course depends on "reading Rousseau's text--on reading the which appears its dimensions, language. &It if that is where Abraham and Torok begin, it is not where C tonomie takes us. as a verb later in the same paragraph as a forgetting "lors" (~errida's preface to Cry:;t*kes the or forgoing of forgetting, a forgetting of the for- fo~mof reflections on a sire of incorporation which getting of purpose requisite for aesthetic activity, while it occasions exact linguistic analysis resists which Rousseau's sentence alludes to in inverted form description in phenomenological terms: a "crypt" ("la gentillesse . . . me faisait oublier leur which is the site of an encrypting--of inscription. laideur") . The role of "crypt" in Derrida's text recalls the role of "pyramid" in Hegel's, in the Encyclopedia, where The problem with this account not (as is the vary tern1 associated with the symbol in the Pierssens's remarks appear to suggest) the dubious- Aesthetics (where it belcngs to tile symbolic art of ness of the significant connections between "oublies" Egypt) reappesra as the emblem for the sign. These and "diligence," which are intricate but demonstrable, paspages ic cli? Encyclopedia define thinking-as dis- of and consistent with an interpretation the relation t itlc t from understanding-as the manipulation of between Rousseau's and Baudelaire's writings and signs, and s:\eciii:~lly, as the operation exemplified SCE REPORTS - SCE REPORTS
by memorization. This is described, by Hegel, as insisti.ng on the disparity between writing or reading requiring the forgetting of the meaning of the signs and aesthetic experience. In the light of Hegel's to be repeated. And not only is their meaning for- description of signification or "thinking," that dis- gotten. Memorization entails the loss not only of parity can be construed as the inadequacy of the con- the meaning of the words uttered but also--remarkably cept of experience in general (including the notions --of their substantiality: it will take place effec- of "response" and "reception") for designating rela- tively, according to Hegel, only if the words are tions among texts, collections of written signs consti- only minimally articulated. Such words approach the tuted.as signs by the "forgetting" of their symbolic condition of written signs. For if yoken words sug- and phenomenal dimension. gest the phenomenality of signs, by rmplying their perception on the part of a speaker (if not of a lis- Such a conception of a text does not harmonize, tener), written words, which imply no necessary per- to put it mildly, with an account of intertextual ception, do not automatically require phenomenal relations that invokes Charles Baudelaire's experi- existence, as distinct from the material existence ence of reading the ~Gverie. In trying to share the which they do indubitably possebs. The erosion of a explanatory power of the view of writing as an action, articulation together with the forgetting of meaning an alternative, the description of writing as incor- restores to words the merely material existence of poration, has to overlook what it ought to stress, signs on a piece of paper--writing. &at the subversion of the oral metaphor can suggest, --the conception of a material tsxtuality. The dis- The bizarre descriptions of thinking and unthink- sonant registers of my account of Baudelaire's "reading ing in the Encyclopedia and Cryptonomie display the as writirlg" show up in Cryptonomie too; it appears as eruption of the facts of writing into what is osten- both a sort of translation textbook and as a revised sibly an account of spoken language. The fact of the case history. Michel Pierssens interrogates-"Are we materiality of inscription cannot be made serviceable talking about texts or about subjects?" It might be in a conception of language as phenomenal-as appre- the virtue of the notion of incorporation--always hensible and meaningful, informed by an intention- supposing this is worth the trouble-to display the ality realized in the actualizations of hearing or impossibility of integrity on such a point. For it seeing and understanding, or of a reading continuous does not just reveal that doing both together is inev- And yet with and analogous, to modes of perception. itable, something which, in a wider sense, almost that fact constitutes the "return of the text" in a everyone would concede. It also reveals that doing sense that might have to be acknowledge in some way so does vjolence to the subject and the text-effacing when we are dealing with literary texts, with lang- the phenomenality of the one or the nateriality of uage which we approach at once as art and as writing. the other, if not the specificity of both--in a way The possibility of approaching significant forms as thac one had not quite bargained for. art has yery high stakes. Kant's critical philosophy identifies with aesthetic judgment the possibility of Paradoxically, then, the concept of incorporation judgment as such, the link between the rational facul- exposes the pitfalls of psychoanalytic conceptions of ties and the capacity for action. 'let it is just this literature. For the diu-figuration of the oral meta- crucial mediation which Rousseau puts in doubt, in phur leaves the w:., cyen to a conception of the "text" SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
as inscription which is incompatible, if not with the rigorous even as it became incommunicative. But Freudian text that appears in ~errida's"Freud at la although it moves away from the imagination of cane de l'Ecriture," at least with its usual psycho- reading as an experience it nowhere forgoes another analytic usage--including, certainly, Felicity Baker's misleading simplification. For it cannot dispense engagingly exact explanatory term, "the depressive with describing the relationship between the two . text." In that term I recognize what I would call a texts as a necessary rather than a random one. The text in which the oral metaphor has been subverted. conception of the text as inscription, however, im- But that subversion implies the insufficiencies of any plies that the questions as to whether an intertextual such description of a text. It implies the insuffi- relationship is aleatory or overdetermined is an unde- ciency of descriptions which overlook the text's non- cideable one. functional and material character. If the very explanatory character of the above Describing relationships between texte gets very account makes it misleading, then, I lose very little difficult in these circumstances, once one cannot in replacing it with a more lapidary formula: resort to the habitual idea of an experience of read- Baudelaire eats Rousseau'e words. That too, of course, ing. Thus I would have to renounce what I take to be course, is a story. But the phrase has the virtue of the beet account one can give of the singular connec- drawing a connection between the notion of incorpor- tion between "Morale du joujou" and the ninth ~Sverie, ation and the rhetorical and performative powers of which runs like this: language. To say that someone eats his words is to say chat he takes them back, and not just because they Baudelaire does not understand a certain passage prove iegrettable: because they cannot be made simply in Rousseau's text. For the forgoing of aesthetic true, referring Lo thirrgs io the world, nor culminate experience that it evokes implies no less than the in the fulfillment of their promise. To eat someone ruin of poetry and the lose of the phenomenal world. else's words--that implies that thia action is not Moreover to understand thia passage would be to mis- restricted to the subject who speaks, but that the read, to misconstrue it, since it concerns this dis- words quite apart from a speaker or a subject are parity between the reading of signs and the act of there for the taking; so Romanticism and post-Roman- apprehension and understanding. Instead of compre- ticism together begin with the death of ("pre-Roman- hending and rework.ing this passage, as he does other tic") "Rousseau" : Rousseau' s writing makes commit- features of the ninth ~Gverie,Baudelaire blindly ments that cannot be kept, yet that lay dawn the reinscribes it in his own essay-and this rewriting ouclinee of the situation in which subsequent writing is the sole right reading of such an essay. This will have to take place. Rousseo:~prumises to pay reinscription is also a forgetting--but neither a for o~~bli(es),and Baudelaire eats Rousseau's words. sublimation of nor a defense against--the terror of Filling out this remark with an analysis of the the losa of world. speech-acts in Rousseau's texte ~ndan account of their impact is more than I can do here. One might "Forgetting" in this usage begins to lose con- just briefly recall two promises. There is the com- tact with the possible experience of a subject, and mitment of his life to the truth with the adoption here perhaps such an account would start to be of his davine, "yj=m_ impendere s,"that Rousseau SCE REPORTS -- SCE REPORTS
examines in the fourth ~Sverie. And there is the ON CONVENTIONS: promise implied by Kant as well--in the continuity A REVIEW OF nlE CONFERENCE ON THEORIES OF READING maintained from the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason to the Critique of Judgment-to maintain the connection between man's Richard A. Barney ethical capacities and his capacities for pleasure: the claim to feel good feeling &which appears Just as any critic's interpretation of a liter- ary text implies a general theory of literature, in the ninth ~everie, These commitments cannot be lived up to in writing, but it takes all the energies any individual conference also implies a general of Romantic and post-Romantic literature to live "theory" of conferences held by its sponsors. That them down. We can take the measure of those energies was one of the things, at least, that became clear in Baudelaire's "Morale du joujou;" and seem to find to me while participating in the Conference on there the pasrive force of reading as writing--as Theories of Reading, which waa held at Indiana Unive inscription. sity September 28-30, 1981, and was sponsored by several departments of that university and the Socie for Critical Exchange. It was difficult to attend this conference without taking an active part in the intense exchanges between members of the Department of ~nglish panels and the audience, or in the groups which met Cornell University t3 fox-u~!late questions Tor general discussion, be- cauucl that was how the conference was designed to work. It seems to me that the organizers of this SCE conference-including David Bleick, John Eakin, James Sosnoski, and Patricia Harkih ~~osnoskfl-- ttot only succeeded in preparing a challenging, in- formative meeting, but also realized the most coher- ent design in SCE history to promote its goal of encouraging open exchange amorlg literary scholars and theorists. I want to explain this claim first by sunmarizing briefly the events of the conference, and then by considering why a theory of conferences might be important.
The'confarcnce cons is ted of three phases, each of which includzd a panel and smaller group discus- aions. Phaae One, entitled "Current Theories and Actual Reading Situations," had four parts: 1) a SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
panel discussion on the nature of a theory of read- motivations, the institutional orientations, and ing; 2) a set of small group discussions on topics hidden goals. One of the questions is example related to the panel; 3) a series of interpretive enough: "Why weren't the political implications readings; and 4) a second panel which evaluated of reader-response theory--for instance, the freedom the relation between the theories proposed and of the reader, the formation of interpretive communi- readings given. The first panel revealed a number ties and their selective inclusion and exclusion of of disagreements thattwould spark discussions through- readings, etc.--explored? What are the implications out the conference, especially between Peter Brooke, of this evasion?" These. kinds of questions con- who advocated a general theory of readers, and David fronted everyone with the importance of reading Bleich, who supported a theory grounded on concrete, theory to teaching, students, and social contexts, individual readers. The interpretive readings and while contributing significantly to them, pre- proved varied and entertaining, ranging in approach vented mere elaboration8 of some theoretical detail from Jane Gallop's decoaetructuve analysis of a or problem area. The underlying political nature review by Paul de Man, to Judith Fetterley's femin- of the discweion, especially ae it bore on the ist thesis about Heminpay's "Indian Camp," to economics of the profeeaion, also became particularly Alfred David's concern with pedagogical integrity clear when Barbara Iierrnatein Smith and Peter Brooks, and Lewis Carroll's Adventures in Wonderland. representatives of the nation's more prominent ins t itutions--the University of Pennsylvania and Phase Two, called "Critiques, Alternatives, Yale--were repeatedly singled out by heated criti- Challenges," presented the moet innovative part clsm for their view that studying students was not of the conference. First, all participants met necessarily important for developing a theory of in caucus groups to formulate questions and chal- reading. (One political caucus question to them lenges for any of the previous panelists, choosing read: "Does a disinterest in student *readingss of a representative to present their views, The literature imply a political unwillingness to caucus topics included theories not mentioned, the share power with the young?") politics of reading and reading theory, nonliterary material, and open topics. After hearing questions, The third phase, "Research Proposals ,"included the panelists had the opportunity to respond. This a panel discussion of the priorities for future session was then.followed by small group discussions research in reading, small group presentations of of specific challenges or issues. various projects, and a concluding evaluation of the conference as a whole. Partly because they The exchange between panelists and caucus had appeared together on a previous panel, the members proved to be the most lively and fruitful panelists this time tended to restate their earlier of the conference, and significantly, the discussion positions. The small groups, in contrast to the was sparked to its greatest intensity by questions intensity of the caucwing, were a welcome relief from the caucus on politics. The issues raised by because they involved little discussion, and parti- that group revealed some of the moet important cipants could sit back and enjoy the presentations. problems and differences behind the poaitiow taken The "evaluation session," held on the morning of the earlier by the panelists--the underlying pedagogic last day, provided all the participants with the SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
opportunity to appraise, self-reflexively, the con- reader--often to the detriment of the others. ference as a whole: its program, format, and general Those success. The discussion produced a nwnber of insights critical emphases, in turn, promote conferences and suggestions that I want to consider in the rest that emphasize speakers, their delivered papers, or of this essay. audience participation. The Conference on Theories of Reading, as an example, reflected both ite sub- ject matter and theoretical approach, that is, its focus on the importance of the reader. It was a The way we orgahize and conduct our conferences conference where the audience (as readers) partici- reflects our ideas about literature, the profession pated actively, reconstructed the messages it re- of being teachers and scholars, and its gozls. ceived, and was able, with an advantage unavailable Theories of literature-whether hermeneutic, struc- in the reading of written texts, to question the turalist, or reader-response oriented--influence authors about their intentions. For the most part, not only how critics interpret texts, but also how however, professional gatherings of scholars, they view their roles as prcxfessionals. Critics teachers, and critics, especially the most prod- of a hermeneutic persuasion consider their task nent ones, place their emphasis on the speakers, to be the elucidation of writers' intentions and tltose uho perform and attract the largest audiences. teaching students to locate them in authors' works. In that sense, despite the way teaching and profes- In contrast, structuralists such as Jonathan Culler sional writing has recently been affected by a urge that we should preoccupy ourselves not with variety of critical approaches, our conferences interpreting individual texts but with developing rnmain tied to the oldest of critical emphases--the concepts of intertextuality. And critics using autl~or's intent--ad that attention produces con- reader-response theori- argue that our focus, in ventional conventfons. research and the classroom, shodd be on the process of reading, But conferences also reflect goals and values that go beyond schools of literary theory or criti- These professional differences , warranted by cism. I can hardly imagine a conference that would theories of literature, also tend to produce confer- focus on Jacques Derrida and be genuinely "decon- structive"--each session playing with irreducible entee or sessions .with very different - emphases. We can study those differences by considering litera- differences between speakers, their texts, or ture and conferences as acts of communication, audiences, weaving endless interconnections, and wing a model of comunication in its simplest form: even turning on their head the hierarchical opposi- tions that privilege speakers over listeners or orderliness over pandea~onium. Meetings that might speaker message ,-> listener have potential for such unruly conduct are con- strained by the larger political, economic, or Ae M. H. Abrams has observed, literary criticism social dontexts of the profession, constraints that or theory ten& to emphasize one of these elements-- form the unspoken assumptions about how the profes- authorial intention, the text, or the rolc of the sion (and in turn conferences) should operate. One of those assumptions 3rd the United States, influenced SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
in part by political ideology, bases the profession's (as the Conference on Theories of Reading did), plat- procedures on scholarly competition, a system that ing conferences themeelves within the context of champions a kind of academic individualism by re- exchange between various literary theoretical posi- quiring that scholars must outwit or at least perform better than their colleagues in order to tions or ideas. Conferences would not be construed gain reputation and an audience. AB a result, our as encouraging disagreements for their own sake, nor as attempting to eliminate them, but as the conferences tend to be'meetings where critics must ground on which participants could play out those stress their disagreements with everyone elee at all costs. But given the uncertainties in which differences in exchanges aimed at open discussion, the profession now finds itself--the competing mutual concession, and compromise. theories of literature, the lack of a coherent des- I cannot offer here a complet~itheory of confer- cription of the purpose of teaching literature, and ences, but would like to suggest some guidelines especially the recent economic pressures that have and revealed our unclear sense of what relation the a general model toward that end, wing them to discuss the Conference on Theories of Reading. discipline of being critics has'to the profession as a social, economic, or political enterprise-- By extending the original communication model that given these uncertainties, we need to reconsider I presented above, we can dietinguish not only be- the role conferences can play in beginning to resolve tween conference emphases on the horizontal axis of them. We need confererices to serve as more than a speaker and listener, but also between the kinds of emphasis on the message, talk, or lecture, on a forum for debate, to become occasions where disagree- ments are only the starting point for genuine ex- vertical axis (see below). In doing this we move from a focus on communfcation as a temporal act change among professiouals . to consider a static grid on which we can pinpoint We need, therefore, a theory of conferences kinds of conference orientations. These axes constitute polar tensions between extremes toward just as much as we need one of literature. Such a theory may not need to be as complex as one for which any conference can gravitate, but never reach literature, but I want to challenge convention-plan- as a pure case. Practically any conference can have sessions that alternately stress the speakers' ners (and goers) in a similar way that some of the first literary theorists challenged critics to look and listeners' roles; our concern is with overall beyond the individual text: any single conference orientation. Those conferences which emphasize needs to be planned and conducted by reference to speakers are performance oriented, often having and testing of a theory of conferences which large sessions and a collection of Btar panelists. attempts to account for goals, effectiveness, and Those emphasizing listeners tend to be workshop productivity. Such a theory would not attempt to environments, encouraging discussion and interaction. elevate qonferencee to a neutral position from which various theories or approaches to literature The.distinction in message I want to make is could be impartially examfned: it would instead between conventions that are content/infonnation provide wayu for conferences to borrow useful 4deas oriented and those that are issue oriented. Although from literary theories for their own procedures this distinction may he hard to make, it can be useful. A cootc.rft-or tented conference is nearly SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS
pedagogic in style, emphasizing the knowledge pro- We can find examples of confetencea that belong vided by experts, their explanations of systems, to each of these orientations, and in doing so remela- or the "basics" of their argument, Although speakers ber that the majority of our meetings tend toward at content-oriented conferences may use dieagreement the left-hand side of the model. The MU Convention with other critics tomke their own point, their is clearly both performance and content oriented emphasis is on the information communicated. Issue- (quadrant A) with its gala of reknomed poets, oriented conferences dl80 communicate information, critics, and novelists, and a resulting emphasis of course, but by a different procedure. These on their individual readings or lectures. A number meetings develop ieeues and problems in the course of sessions, it is true, are devoted to specialized of their eeesions while assuming full knowledge of areas, but they do not have the greatest prominence, needed background. Instead of conveying the basics and often, even with a central topic chosen, the of theorists' syetems, for example, such conferences papers never directly address each other or explore presuppose familiarity with them and move to explore similar problems or issues. In quadrant B I would the rmre vexing complicatione, Given these pointa place the International Systemic Workshop, which is of extreme cases, our model would look something intended a8 a forum for exchange, for all who attend, like this : about linguistic topics. The Joseph Conrad Confer- Issue-oriented ence is most appropriate for C, because it will host a number of prominent scholars, and in assuming e solid familiarity with Conrad's works and his critics, will move quickly to special issues. The Conference Caufcrencs on Theories of Reading, while attended by 8 number of well-known theorists, euiphasieed strongly both audience participation and discussion of theoretical issues, and I would place it in the lower left-hand comer of quadrant D. I I lheories of Reading 1 Conference I do not want to suggest that certain orienta- Speaker/ Audienll participation- tions are inherently inferior, but that they are performance- useful in understanding conference goals. A confer- oriented oriented ence stressing speakers and issues has advantages over one that stressea listeners and information, and vice versa. The first can offer in-depth ex- Workshop ploration of specialized areas by reputable experts, Convention while fhe second can promote audience participation in disseipiuating information. But in order to serve the wet divertce group of people-including listeners = with little background as well as recognized experts-- a confere~cenoeds to balance these extremes as much Content /inf ormat ion- at? possible. Such a balance is even more important oriented SCE REPORTS ---- SCE REPORTS
for conferences on literary theory because their which tend to accentuate disagreements (issues) , and sessions can become so quickly abstract and esoteric, instead leave discussion open to less polemical tending to include only an elite group of well-in- questions. In order that participants might be formed partihipants. In order for as many people better informed about background material for as possible to debate theoretical issues, in order a conference, John P. Riquelme proposed sending for literary theorists of different specialities to each prospective participant a list of suggested to be able to engage hach other, or theorists to readings. For similar purposes, James Sosnoski engage less theoretically-informed critics, the suggested publishing an issue of SCE Reports before requisite background information must be provided. the next conference which would iqclude essays and The thrust of the Conference on Theories of Reading a bibliography on the topic at hand. was toward this balance, although at times it was not entirely successful, as we were all reminded Many of the other suggestions offered ways to on one occasion by a participant tJho pointed out streamline audience participation and discussion that the panelists were arguing about an isoue of issues. Most participants agreed that the last related to Umberto Eco's theory of reading without panel on research had consisted of too much restate- thoroughly explaining its basic points. ment of panelists' positions, and that it had been too formal, allowing little engagement by the Appropriately, then, most of the suggestions audience. Robert Crosman was a spokesman for more that were offered during the evaluation session carefully defining the issues on vhich the confer- were ones that could either help balance the confer- ence would focus, and proposed that all the panel- ence (or ones in the future) by moving it toward ists conduct a short meeting before the conference an emphasis on speakers and information, or could began to locate specific issues and disagreements improve the mechanism for alternating the focus between them for further discussion. For the between speakers and audience or theoretical "brisics" caucusing, suggestions included giving group repre- I include my own sugges- and specialized problems. sentatives more tinie to present their questions and tions with those proferred during the discussion. the reasoning behind them, reducing the number of questions for ehcli group from four to one or two, Louise Rosenblatt was one of the chief advocates and finding a way to avoid cutting discussion short of shifting emphdis toward speakers, especially for the sake of the following small groups. She suggested giving the panel I think for the first panel. that the best way to solve the difficulties with a clearer focus and the panelists more time, up For her, the last panel and to make the caucusing more to 30 minutes, for their presentations. productive would be to elianate the panel and this shift would also allow the panelists to "summar- replace it by caucus di grouping and a second exchange ize their systems" more effectively, a shift which with panelists. Flrst, this could avoid panelist could also make the conference more content oriented reiterar:on; and establish the groundwork more clearly for the second, it would allow caucus members From a similar point of to reevaluate their position; and third, it would following discussions. help make clearer the first exchange between panel- view, a number of people said that it orodd help iota and caiuxa reprcseutatives. to eliminate the focus on "challenges" to panelists, I
SCE REPORTS ------SCE REPORTS
These suggestions would odly be ways of improv- SCE NEWS ing &at was already a hi$hly successful conference. More than any other SCE-sponsored project, even Next October 20-22, SCE will again co-sponsor a con- the previous Conference on Theories of Narrative, ference with various departments at Indiana Univer- this one beat accomplished one of SCE's most impor- sity. The topic is "theories of representation" and tant goals: promting open exchange among scholars some of the panelists are Gerald Craff, Barbara of all types, whether'linguists, literary theorists, Johnson, Seigfried Schmidt, Svetlana Alpers, James textual critics, or scholars of philosophy. This Olney, Robin Lakoff, John Eskin and James Creech. project succeeded in becoming more than a convention, Any SCE members interested in participating in small a term that suggests people converging on one spot group sessions on various aspects of this topic who share similar interests, and presented a way to should contact James Creech (~'rench,Mimi University, make our professional meetings true conferences, Oxford, Ohio 45056) or David Bleich (English, where individuals committed to scholarly cooperation ~ndianaUniversity, Bloomington, Indiana 47401). meet to confer with each other about problems and new ideas. Next October, Bruce Henricksen. will chair a session on Theory and Criticism at the SCEaA meeting in San Department of English Antonio entitled "The 'Literary' in Literary History." Univers ity of Virginia For information wcite to Bruce Henricksen, Department of Ecklish, Loyoln University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, (504/865-2295).
On November 4 SCE will sponsor a symposiunr on Fredric Jameson in Oxford, Ohio. Jameson will speak on 'The Ideology of Space" and there will be a series of intensive conversations with him. On the 5th and 6th of November SCE will sponsor a. lecture by Jameson and two SCE sessions on his work at the HHLA meeting in Cincinnati. For hdditional information write James J. Sosnoski, English, Miami University, Oxford, O!lio 45056 (513j529-2328).
Matt Marirlo (Univernity of Alabama) will chair an SCE session at the SAWLA meeting on "Excentric Criticism: A Focus on the Effect of Critical Models --rn thanks to James Sosnoski and Patricia on Literary Study.'' For additional information write to Matt Harino, English, Drawer AL, University Harkin. whose comments and suggeWions helped clarify of Alabania, lhiversity, Alabama 34586. my ideas for this review.
111 SCE REPORTS CONFERENCE EORIES OF REFERENCE
REPRESENTATION 20-22 October 1982 Next December at KLA Susan Elliott will chair a Indiana University session on "Literary ~hangel~riticalChange'' featuring Ralph Cohen with comnentaries by Michael Riffaterre, sponsored by Hayden White and Hurray Schwartz.
An SCE Project of Interest Tho Socloty for Crltlcal Exchange Five members of SCE, ~kesFanto (French), David Shumway (American studies), Steve Nimis (~lassics), Larysa Hykyta (French) and James Sosnoeki (~nglieh) on the basis of conanon concerns formed a Research Group on the Institutionalization and Profession-. alization of literary studies (GRIP). The group ie studying four different but pdrallel forms of "authorization" in their four areas of literary study. The GRIP project takes as its point of de- parture the critiques of profeseional institutions developed in recent years by Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Burton Bledstein, and Steven Toulmin. It focuses upon the interrelationships among authority, power, discipline, training, crit- ical discourse and their forume/arenas in specific historical developments that have resulted in par- ticular modes of the institutionalization and proi fessionalization,of literary study.
David Shumway is chairing an SCE MA session on What la the role of theory "Authority in the Profession of Literary Study." In the underelanding of referance end The papers in this reseion will appear in reprarsnlalion? Reports #14. Inquiries should be addressed to David Shumway, Department of English, Miami Univer- sity, Oxford, Ohio 45056 (5131529-4696). TOwrllen what e~tmtthink thoydo craatlva
Plans are also underway for a conference on "Theories 'rarer" end .nprsrmt"? of Institutionalization and Professionalization" to be held at Indiana University in the Fall of 1983. Write James Soenoski, English, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056 (5131529-2328).
ts wlll be Invltedtocau- lo the vlewr premnlrd