3397700

7/23/2019 3397700

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/3397700 1/6

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.

http://www.jstor.org

Poststructuralism and the "Paraliterary"Author(s): Rosalind KraussSource: October, Vol. 13 (Summer, 1980), pp. 36-40Published by: The MIT Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397700Accessed: 26-09-2015 21:11 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 143.107.252.192 on Sat, 26 Sep 2015 21:11:47 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397700

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp






http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397700

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress

http://www.jstor.org/

7/23/2019 3397700


Poststructuralism and the

"Paraliterary"

ROSALIND

KRAUSS

Last

fall

Partisan

Review

conducted

two-day

ymposium

under

the

general

title The StateofCriticism."Althoughvarious sessionsweredesignedto treat

variety f

topics,

most

presentations

were

dominated

by

one

continuing

theme:

structuralist

nd

poststructuralist

ritical

theory

nd the

threat hat t

somehow

poses for

literature.

My

own

role

in

these

proceedings

was

limited to that

of

discussant;

was to

comment n the

main

paper,

written

y

Morris

Dickstein

nd

delivered

s the

substance

of

a

session

dedicated

o the

nfluence

f

recent ritical

theory

n the

vehicles

of

mass

culture.

As

will

become

obvious,

Dickstein's

paper

was

yet

nother

tatement

f

the

general

ense

that

iterary

riticism

understood

s

an

academic

discipline)

had

fallen

hostage

to an

invading

orce,

hat his

force

was

undermining

critical

practice

understood

as

close

reading)

and,

through

that

corrosive ffect, as eatingaway at our concept of literaturetself.

My

comments

had, then,

a

very

particular

point of

origin.

But the views

against

which

thosecommentswere

directed re

extremely

idespread

within

the

literary

stablishment-both nside

and

outside

the

cademy-where

a

sense

of

the

pernicious

nature

of

poststructuralism

as

led to

more recent

rojects

devoted

o

"How

to Rescue

Literature."'

Thus,

despite

the

specific

ccasion that

gave

rise

to

my

discussion

of

the

"paraliterary,"

believe

this

is

of

much

wider

concep-

tual

interest.

therefore eproduce

n

full

my

remarks.

The title of this

morning's

session-"The Effects

f

Critical Theories

on

Practical

Criticism,

ultural

Journalism,

nd

Reviewing"-suggests

that

what

is

at issue

is the

dissemination,

r

integration,

f certain

heoretical

erspectives

nto

an

apparatus

of

critical

practice

that reaches well

beyond

the

graduate

depart-

ments of

English

or

Comp.

Lit.

at

Harvard,

Yale, Cornell,

and

Johns

Hopkins.

The

subject

appears

to

be the effect f

theory

n

what

Mr.

Dickstein

describes

s

"the

mediating

force

between n

increasingly

ifficultiterature nd

an

increas-

1.

Two

particularly

ociferous ttacks

on

poststructuralism

ave

appeared recently

n The

New

YorkReview

of

Books:

Roger

Shattuck,

How to

Rescue

Literature,"

NYR, XXVI,

6

(April

17,

1980),

29-35;

and

Denis

Donoghue

"Deconstructing

Deconstruction,"

NYR, XXVII,

10

(June

12,

1980),

37-41.




7/23/2019 3397700


37

ingly

diverse

udience,"

a

mediating

force

epresented

n

this

country y

a

long

list

of

magazines

and

journals,

headed,

undoubtedly,

y

The

New

York

Review

of

Books. Now this s a subjecton whichMr. Dickstein'spaper-obsessed bywhathe

sees as the

deepening

technocratlzationf

graduate

tudies-does

not

touch.

f

by

this

omission

he

means

to

imply

that

he thinks

hat dvanced critical

heory

as

had no

effect

hatsoever n that

wider critical

apparatus,

then

he and

I are

in

complete

agreement.

But

the

question

would seem to

be-Mr. Dickstein's

aments

side-why

has

therebeen

no

such effect?

n

order

to

broach

that

subject

I

would

like to recall

briefly

wo

lectures attended

y

two

of the

technocrats

n

Mr.

Dickstein's ccount:

Jacques

Derrida

and

Roland

Barthes. Derrida's

lecturewas the

presentation

f

part

of

an

essay

called

"Restitutions,"

which,

n

examining

the claims

Heidegger

makesin "The Origin of the WorkofArt,"focuseson a paintingbyVan Gogh

commonly

thought

o

be

the

depiction

of

a

pair

of shoes. In that

ecture,

errida

placed

special emphasis

on the

role

of

a

voice

that

continually

nterrupted

he

flow f his

own

more formaldiscourse

as

it

spun

out

the

terms f

philosophical

debate. Enacted

in

a

slight

falsetto,

his

voice

was,

Derrida

explained,

that

of

a

woman

who

repeatedly

breaks

into

the measured

order

of

the

exposition

with

questions

that re

slightly

ysterical,

ery

xasperated,

nd

above

all

short.

What

pair?"

she

keeps

nsisting,

Who

said

they

were

a

pair

of

shoes?"

Now this

voice,

cast as a

woman's,

is

of

course Derrida's

own,

and

it

functions o

telegraph

n a

charged

and

somewhat

disguised way

the central

argument

which for

other

reasons

must

proceed

at a

more

professorialpace.

But

aside from ts

rather

terroristic

eductiveness,

hisvoice functions o

open

and theatricalize he

pace

of

Derrida's

writing,

lerting

us

to

the

dramatic

nterplay

f

levels

and

styles

nd

speakers

thathad

formerly

een the

prerogative

f iterature

ut

not of critical

r

philosophical

discourse.

This

arrogation

f

certain erms nd

ruses

f

iterature

eads me to the

ecture

by

Roland Barthes entitled

Longtemps

je

me

suis

couche de bonne heure"

in

which,

by

analogizing

his own

career to

that

of

Proust,

Barthesmore

explicitly

pointed

to an intention o blur the

distinction

between iterature

nd

criticism.

Indeed,

much

of

Barthes's

recentwork-I

am

thinking

of

The

Pleasure

of

the

Text,

A

Lover's

Discourse,

and

Roland Barthes

by

Roland

Barthes-simply

cannot be called criticism, ut it cannot,forthatmatter, e called not-criticism

either.

Rather,

criticism

finds

tself

caught

in

a

dramatic web of

many

voices,

citations,

asides,

divigations.

And

what

is

created,

s

in

the case of

much of

Derrida,

is a kind of

paraliterature.

ince Barthes's

and

Derrida's

projects

are

extremely

ifferent,

t

is

perhaps only

n

this

matter

f

naugurating

paraliterary

genre

that

theirwork

can

be

juxtaposed.

The

paraliterary pace

is

the

space

of

debate,

quotation,

partisanship,

betrayal,

econciliation;

but it is

not

the

space

of

unity,

oherence,

r resolution

that

we

think of

as

constituting

he work

of literature.

or

both Barthes

and

Derrida have

a

deep

enmity

owards

hat

notion

of

the

iterary

ork.

What

is left




7/23/2019 3397700


OCTOBER

is drama without

the

Play,

voices

without

the

Author,

criticism

without

the

Argument.

t

is

no

wonder

thatthis

country's

ritical stablishment-outside

the

university,hat s-remains unaffectedythiswork, imply annotuse it.Because

the

paraliterary

annot be

a

model for

he

systematic

npacking

of

the

meanings

of a work of

art

that

criticism's ask s

thought

o

be.

The

creation

of the

paraliterary

n

the

more

recentwork

of

these

men

is,

of

course,

the

result

of

theory-their

wn

theories

n

operation,

o to

speak.

These

theories

un

exactly

counter

to

the notion

that

there

s a

work,x,

behind

which

there

tands

a

group

of

meanings,

a,

b,

or

c,

which

the

hermeneutic ask

of the

critic

unpacks,

reveals,

by breaking

hrough, eeling

back the iteral

urface

f the

work.

By

claiming

that

there

s

not,

behind

the

iteral

urface,

setof

meanings

to

which t

points

or models

to

which it

refers,

set of

originary

erms nto

which

t

opens and fromwhich it derives ts own authenticity,histheorys notprolong-

ing

the

ife of

formalism

nd

saying

what

Mr. Dickstein

laims

"we all

know"-

that

writing

s

about

writing.

For in

thatformula

different

bject

s

substituted

for

the term

"about";

instead

of

a

work's

being

"about" the

July

Monarchy

or

death and

money,

it

is

"about" its own

strategies

f

construction,

ts own

linguistic

operations,

ts

own

revelationof

convention,

ts own

surface.

n this

formulation

t

is

the Author

or

Literature

ather

han the World or

Truth

that

s

the source

of

the text's

uthenticity.

Mr.

Dickstein's view

of

this

theory

s that

t is a

jazzed-up,

technocratized

version

f

formalism,

hat

ts

message

s

that

writing

s about

writing,

nd

that

n

a

work

ike

S/Z,

"Barthes's

purpose

is to

preserve

nd

extract he

multiplicity

f

the text's

meanings."

Here

we

arrive

not

only

at the

point

where

there s no

agreement

whatsoever

etween

us,

but

also

at

the

second

reason

why

this

theory

has left hewider critical

stablishment f this

ountry

n

such

virginal

ondition.

For

where that stablishment as not

been

argely

gnorant

f

the

work

of

Barthes

or Derrida

or

Lacan,

it

has

misconceived

r

misconstrued

t.

To

use

the

example

that

Mr.

Dickstein has

provided,

S/Z is

precisely

not the

preservation

nd

extraction

f

"the

multiplicity

f

the

text's

meanings."

Nor

is it what

the

acket

copywriter

or

the American edition

claims: the

semanticdissection

of

a

Balzac

novella,

"in

order o uncover

ayers

f

unsuspected

meanings

and

connotations."

For both

these

notions

"extraction"

and

"dissection"-presuppose

an

activity

that s notBarthes'sown, just as they risefrom viewofthe iterarybjectthat

Bartheswishes

not

so

much

to

attack

s to

dispel.

For

extract nd dissect ssume

a

certainrelation

betweendenotation

nd

connotation

s

they

unction

within the

literary

ext;

they

assume,

that

is,

the

primacy

of

the

denotative,

the

literal

utterance,

beyond

which

lies the rich

vein

of connotation

or

association

or

meaning.

Common

sense

conspires

to

tell

us that

this hould be so.

But Barthes-

for

whom

common

sense

is

the

enemy,

ue

to its unshakable habit

of

fashioning

everything

n

themodel of

nature-demonstrates he

opposite:

that

denotation s

the

effect f

connotation,

he ast block

to

be

put

in

place.

S/Z is

a

demonstration

of the

way

that

ystems

f

connotation,

tereotype,

liche,

gnomic

utterance-in

38




7/23/2019 3397700


Poststructuralism

nd

the

"Paraliterary"

short,

the

always already-known,

lready-experienced,

lready-given-within-a-

culture-concatenate

to

produce

a text.

Further,

e claims

that t

is not

only

this

connotational system hat writesthe text,but that t is, literally,what we read

when we read

the

iterary

work.

Nothing

is buried

thatmust

be

"extracted";

t

is

all

part

of the surface

f

the

text.

Thus,

in

introducing

the

three women

who

surround

the narrator

of

Sarrasine,

Balzac describes

Marianina

as "a

girl

of sixteen

whose

beauty

mbodied

thefabled

maginings

of

the

Eastern

poets

Like

the ultan's

daughter,

n

the

tory

of

the

Magic

Lamp,

she

should have

been

kept

veiled." To this

description

arthes

responds,

This is

a vast

commonplace

of

iterature:

he

Woman

copies

the

Book.

In

other

words,

every

body

is a

citation: of

the

already-written.'

he

origin

of

desire is

the

statue,

the

painting,

the

book." Then

Marianina's mother

is

introducedwith thequestion, "Have you everencountered ne of those women

whose

striking

eauty

defies

he

nroads of

age?"

To

which

Barthes's

esponse

s:

"Mme de

Lanty's body

is

drawn

[with

the words one

of

those

women]

from

another

Book:

the Book

of Life."

Again,

after he

opening

description

f

Mme

de

Rochefide

s

a

woman

"delicately

ormed,

ith

one

of

those

faces

s fresh

s

that

f

a

child,"

Barthes

pounces

again

on

the

term one

of

those

faces":

"The

body

s

a

duplicate

of

the Book: the

young

woman

originates

n

the

Book

of

Life,

the

plural

refers

o a

total

of

stored-up

nd

recorded

xperiences."

The

text's nvocation of

those

books,

those

vast

storehouses

f

cliche,

creates

what

Barthes

efers

o

as the

"stereographic

pace

of

writing,"

s

well

as the llusion

that here

s

a

denotation-

al

object-Marianina,

or

Mme de

Lanty-that precedes

he

connotational

ystem

signaled

by

"one

of

thosefaces."

But f

writing

ets

up

the

pretense

hatdenotation

is

the

first

meaning,

for

Barthes

denotation is

"no

more

than the

last

of the

connotations

the

one

which

seems

both

to

establish

nd to

close the

reading)."

Identifying

hese

connotational

systems

s

codes,

Barthes

writes,

To

depict

s

to

unroll

the

carpet

of

the

codes,

to

refer

ot

from

language

to

a

referent,

ut

from

one

code to

another.

Thus,

realism

consists

not

n

copying

the

real

but

n

copying

a

(depicted)

copy

of

the

real....

This

is

why

realism

cannot

be

designated

a

'copier'

but

rather

'pasticheur'

through

econdary

mimesis,

t

copies

what is

already

a

copy)."

The

painstaking,

almost

hallucinatory

lowness

with

which

Barthes

pro-ceeds throughthetextof Sarrasine

provides

an

extraordinary

emonstration f

this

chattering

f

voices

which

is

that

of

the

codes

at

work. If

Barthes

has

a

purpose,

t

is to

solate these

odes

by

pplying

kind

of

spotlight

o

each instance

of

them,

o

expose

them"as

so

many

fragments

f

something

hat

has

always

been

already

read,

seen,

done,

experienced."

t is

also to

make

them

heard as

voices

"whose

origin,"

he

says,

is

lost

n

the

vast

perspective

f

the

lready-written"

nd

whose

interweaving

cts to

"de-originate

he utterance."

t

is

as

impossible

to

reconcile

this

project

with

formalism

s

it

is to

revivewithin

t

the

heartbeat f

humanism.

To

take

the

demonstration

f

the

de-originated

tterance

eriously

would

obviously

put

a

large segment

f

the

critical

stablishment

ut of

business;

39




7/23/2019 3397700


40

OCTOBER

it

is

thus no

wonderthat

poststructuralist

heory

hould have had so little ffect

n

that

quarter.

There is however anotherplace where this work has met with a rather

different

eception:

in

graduate

schools where

students,

whatever

their other

concerns

might

be,

are

interested

n

reading.

These

students,

aving

experienced

the

collapse

of

modernist

iterature,

have

turned

to

the

literaryproducts

of

postmodernism,

mong

the

most

powerful

examples

of

which

are the

para-

literary

works of Barthes and

Derrida.

If

one

of

the

tenets of

modernist

literature

had been

the

creation of

a work

that

would force

reflection

n the

conditions

of

its own

construction,

hatwould insist

n

reading

as a much

more

consciously

critical

ct,

then t s not

surprising

hat

he

medium

of

postmodern-

ist

iterature hould

be the ritical

ext

wrought

nto

a

paraliterary

orm.And

what

is clear is thatBarthes nd Derrida are thewriters, ot thecritics, hat students

now read.




Documents

3397700