Sce Reports 8

SCE REPORTS 8 DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: DIRECTIONS FALL, 1980 SCE REPORTS # 8 FALL, 1980 - "DECONSTRUCT1 VE CRI TIC ISM: DIRECT IONS" Guest Editor's Foreword VINCENT B. LEITCH ............... 3 "Nothing Fails Like Success" BARBARA JOHNSON ...............7 Responses: "What is Deconstruction, and Why Are They Writing All Those Graff-ic Th~ngsAbout l t"? SCE Reports is pub1 ished by The, Society JOSEPH N. R I DDEL ............... 17 for Critical Exchange, a not4owrofit "Retr~evingHeidegger's De-Struction" corporation organized to encourage co- WILL l AM V. SPANOS ...............30 operative research in criticism and theory. Material published in SCE Reports is copy- "The Art of Being Taken By Surpr~se" JERRY AL lNE FL l EGER .............54 righted by the Society, with rights re-assign- ed to authors upon publication. For informa- "Tak~ngand Being Taken" tion, contact: JERROLD E. HOGLE ..............'68 "Of Polit~csand Limits: Derrida Re-Marx" Leroy Searle, Secretary ANDREW PARKER ................83 Society for Critical Exchange 6273 19th Avenue N .E . NEWS AND NOT ICES .................105 Seattle, Washington 981 15 "A Selected Bibliography of Deconstructive Criticism" R1 CHARD A. BARNEY ........Suppl emnt We grateful ly acknowledge the assistance of the English Departments of Mercer University and the University of Washington in the preparatiori of this issue. Special thanks to Allen Dunn and Steve Cole for production assistance. a 1980, SCE SCE REPORTS Some of the best minds of the present genera- tion have taken up deconstruction. Who are these people? Several groups comprise the "corporation" of deconstruction. First, there is a loose band of French intellectuals, associated in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the journal TEL QUEL, including most prominently Roland Baxthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Julia bisteva. All in alpha- betical order. Second, a stellax enclave of Ameri- can literary critics, residing at Yale University since the early 1970s, encompasses Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller. Teaching regularly at Yale since the middle 1970s as a visiting professar, Jacques Derrida binds these two companies. Third, a klatch of young French intellectuals, linked with Derrida during the late Copyright @ 1980 1970s in connection with the Parisian publishing house Flammarion, adds to the group Sylviane Agacin- by ski, Sarah Kofman, Philippe Iacoue-Labarthe a& The Society for Critical Exchange, I nc. Jean-Luc Nancy. Fourth, a small cadre of American literary scholars, identified since the mid 19709 with the journal BOUNDAI1Y 2, involves Paul All rights reserved. The Society for BOG, Joseph Riddel and William V. Spanos. A number of Critical Exchange is a not-for-profit other ranking intellectuals, connected with one or corporation for the advancement of co- more of these groups or people, brings to the "move- operative research in criticism and ment" Gilles Deleuze, Eugenio Donato, Rodolphe Gas- chg , Barbara Johnson, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Rangois theory. For information, contact: Lyotard, Jeffrey Hehlman, EdHard Said and Cayatri The Society for Critical Exchange, Inc. Spivak. The list of "interested parties" is not nearly complete. One could add dedicated transla- 6273 19th Avenue N. E . tors, vehement opponents, emerging British devotees, Seattle, Washington 981 15 and still others. Positively or negatively, many minds are taken with deconstruction. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS As a scholarly group, the "deconstructors" ex- hibit professional ties with or serious interests in and the Society for Critical Ecchange, I decided to phenomenology, structuralism, psychoanalysis, Marx- concentrate the meeting on "Deconstructive Criticism: ism and semiology. Any particular deconstructor may Directions." I convinced my colleagues on the Organ- devote herself to one, several or all of these izing Committee, then set out to recruit Barbara fields. In any case, the major forerunners are Max, Johnson, a young Yale deconstructor, to deliver tho Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure and Heidegger. And the main paper. After Professor Johnson agreed, I in- leading contemporary is unquestionably Jacques Der- vited Joseph Hiddel and William Spanos to serve on rida: his works constitute the canonical texts. the panel as respondents. Meanwhile, I sent out In America the major figure is Paul de Man. The through the MU NEWSLl3TTER a nationwide call for pro- most unforgiving purists might (and lately do) ex- posals on the announced topic, From the numerous communicate numerous pretenders and piddlers, but proposals received, three were selected8 Jerry Derrida and de Man remain singularly above any her- Aline Flieger, Jerrold Hogle and Andrew Parker all esy or vague suspicion. generously offered to contribute written responses to Barbara Johnson's position paper. Finally, T en- When in the mid 1970s deconstruction as a move- listed Richard Barney to put together a Selected ment expanded, taking in new adherents and numerous Bibliography of Deconstructive Criticism, which com- opponents, it reached a crisis stage, which has con- plements existing and forthcoming lists. All these tinued up to the present moment. The "doctrines" materials--the main paper, the responses and the bib- appear in danger of dilution or distortion. Sur- liography--make up Number 8 of the SCE HEPOdTS. prised, shocked or disturbed, the early "founders" sometimes express inchoate regret or knowing pessi- Taking up the topic "Deconstructive Criticism: mism at this turn of events. The charm of their Directions;' Barbara Johnson begins with the contin- churnings emerges in a snippy nostalgia. uing crisis: the diminishment of deconstruction through dilution and dogmatism, She suggests a Coming into the onrush of deconstruction in strategy, a tactics of ignorance, to keep vital the 1976, I was exhilarated to find an energetic alter- analytical energy of deconstruction, For his part native to pallid formalism tinged with histori- Joseph Hiddel questions whether or not deconstruc- cism, which my pooped-out teachers had all more or tion, as rigorously operated by Derrida and de Man, less propounded. What seemed a period of decay to has actually spread beyond a very few other practi- the "founders" of deconstruction struck me as a tioners. Along the way Riddel portrays several dom- time of intellectual frenzy and new freedom. I have inant modcs of reduction that turn deconstruction borne such sentiment for five years now. In this I into a domesticated systematics. Attacking decon- seem one part Miranda and one part Pollyanna. Al- struction frontally, William Spanos dramatizes together too youthful and naive. Withal too cute. Derridean practice as a falling off from Heider- A five-year smile. Yet the spread of deconstruction gerian destruction. He characterizes deconstructive remains good news to me. interpretation as an ahistorical and formalist critical mode, doomed to rapid institutionalization Charged with organizing the fifth annual joint and unavoidable collaboration with technocratic cul- Discussion Session of the Modern Language Association ture. SCE REPORTS SCE REPORTS In her response, Jerry Aline Flieger extends the project of deconstruction by grafting its Barbara Johnson "strange logic" onto the Freudian-Lacanian logic of Yale University the Unconscious. In doing so, she demonstrates a striking consonance between the "analytics" of decon- NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS struction and of contemporary psychoanalysis. Dis- turbed by Johnson's "strategy of ignorance," Jerrold As soon as any radically innovative thought Hogle problematizes the ubiquitous desire-to-say or becomes an -ism, its specific groundbreaking will-to-meaning--the progranunatic intentionality-- force diminishes, its historical notoriety which drives all deconstructive analysis. He urges increases, and its disciples tend to become more inquiry into the suspicious "rational" discursive simplistic, more dogmatic, and ultimately more practices of deconstruction and into its increasingly conservative, at which time its power becomes complacent and predictable lust for sure success, institutional rather than analytical. The fact Taking off from Johnson, Andrew Parker examines the that what is loosely called deconstructionism ambiguous relationship of EIarxiat,discourse to is now being widely institutionalized in the Derridean deconstruction. fiather than confirming United States seems to me both intriguing and the apparent "absence" of Marx in Derrida's texts, paradoxical, but also a bit unsettling, although Parker situates the Marxist problematics, an en- not for the reasons advanced by most of its crypted "thematics," somewhere within the = of the opponents. The question I shall ask is the deconstructionist consciousness. following^ how can the deconstructive impulse retain its critical energy in the face of its In its most virile and virulent form deconstruc- own success? What can a reader who has felt tion shows itself more metacritical than critical: the surprise of intellectual discovery in a its objects of analysis are critical beliefs and work by Jacques Derrida or Paul de Man do practices. When it turns away from metacriticism, to remain in touch not so much with the content all involved--insiders and outsiders, friends and of the discovery kt with the intellectual foes, prophets and pests--get suspicious or uneasy, upheaval of the surprise? And sometimes plain nasty. The dynamics of such disturbance emerge variously and unconsciously in I would like to begin by examining briefly

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