Abstract
Much ‘theory’ has been extracted from the texts of Lacan, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, and diverse attempts have been made to translate it directly into ideas and methods which can be readily adopted and applied by those of us who do not read, write or teach in France. As a result the representations we have been given of their texts have not always been faithful repetitions, even allowing for what Lukacs called ‘normative misunderstandings;’ and signification, connection and context have been lost. They were lost when, as in the case of the Yale critics, translation also involved a considerable amount of transformation. American doctrines of ‘revisionary misreading’ and of the ‘creativity’ of criticism, together with French views of the intrinsic fictionality and supplementarity of academic writing, freed those who introduced French ideas into the Anglo-Saxon world to do their own, often quite diverse, things. It is one of the tenets of ‘theory’ that representations of texts need not be ‘true’ (to them),1 and there is no specific exemption for the French. Signification, connection and context were lost again when, in desperation, some of us sought to abstract from the confusion of texts a few clear and distinct ideas or methods — like the political power of the intellectual, the institutionalisation of academic writing, intertextuality, the decentred subject, the death of the author, demythologising, exclusion or aporia.
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‘Recognise him or not?’ our hero wondered in indescribable anguish, ‘or pretend that I am not myself, but somebody strikingly like me?… I’m alright. I’m quite alright. It’s not I, it’s not I, and that’s the fact of the matter.’ Dostoyevski, The Double
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Notes and References
See especially, Robert Scholes, Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English ( New Haven: Yale UP, 1985 );
Gerald Graff and Reginald Gibbons (eds) Criticism in the University (Northwestern UP 1985);
William E. Cain, The Crisis in Criticism: Theory, Literature and Reform in English Studies ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1984 );
W.J.T. Mitchell (ed.), Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism (U of Chicago P, 1985 );
Frederick Crews, Skeptical Engagements (Oxford UP, 1986).
See Eve Tavor, Scepticism, Society and the 18th Century Novel ( Macmillan & St. Martin’s Press, 1987 ).
Raymond Aron, The Industrial Society: Three Essays on Ideology and Development ( London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967 ) p. 62.
Michel Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (U of Chicago P, 1964).
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society tr. John Wilkinson (London: Jonathan Cape, 1965) p. 284. Originally published in France as La Technique ou l’Enjeu du Siècle in 1954.
In Louis Soubise, Le Marxisme après Marx (1956–65): Quatres marxistes dissidents français ( Paris: Montaigne, 1967 ) p. 46.
Henri Lefebvre, La Vie Quotidienne dans le monde moderne (Paris: Gallimard, 1968) p. 221. What follows is a montage of Lefebvre and Ellul.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (New York: Viking, 1977) pp. xii-xiii. Originally published in France in 1972.
Maurice Schumann, Le Vrai Malaise des Intellectuels de Gauche (Paris: Plon, 1957) p. v.
Henri Bérenger, Les Prolétaires Intellectuels en France (Paris: Eds de la Revue, undated) and in Bon and Burnier, Les Nouveaux Intellectuels ( Paris: Cujas, 1966 );
Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’Enseignement en France, 1800–1967 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968) pp. 77ff, 145ff, 362ff;
Louis Bodin and Jean Touchard, ‘Les Intellectuels dans la société française contemporaine’, Revue Française de Science Politique, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1959) pp. 835–59.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport sur le Savoir (Paris: Minuit, 1979) note p. 14.
For discussions of the situation in the university, see Pierre Naville, La Formation Professionnelle et l’École ( Paris: PUF, 1948 );
Jean Chardonnet, L’ Université en Question ( Paris: France-Empire, 1968 );
Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’Enseignement en France 1800–1967 ( Paris: Armand Colin, 1968 );
P. H. Chombart de Lauwe, Pour L’ Université ( Paris: Payot, 1968 );
Alain Touraine, The May Movement: Revolt and Reform ( New York: Random House, 1971 );
and Marc Zamansky, Mort ou Resurrection de l’Université ( Paris: Plon, 1969 ).
George Lichtheim, Marxism in Modern France ( New York: Columbia UP, 1966 ) p. 2.
See especially Mark Poster, Existential Marxism in Post-War France: From Sartre to Althusser (Princeton UP, 1975);
Richard Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971 );
H. Stuart Hughes The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation 1930–1960 ( New York: Harper & Row, 1968 );
Michelle Perrot and Annie Kriegel, Le Socialisme Français et le Pouvoir ( Paris: EDI, 1966 );
David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals 1914–1960 ( London: Deutsch, 1964 );
and Louis Soubise, Le Marxisme après Marx ( Paris: Montaigne, 1967 ).
Theodore Caplow and Reece J. Mcgee, The Academic Market Place ( New York: Basic Books, 1958 ) p. 4.
For an analysis of the ideological content of the traditional philosophy programme, see François Châtelet, La Philosophie des Professeurs ( Paris: Grasset, 1970 )
and for a critique, see Dominique Grisoni (ed.) Politiques de la Philosophie Châtelet, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Serves ( Paris: Grasset, 1976 ).
Émile Copferman, Problèmes de la Jeunesse ( Paris: Maspéro, 1967 ) p. 37.
Bernard Kouchner and Michel-Antoine Burnier, La France Sauvage ( Paris: Publications Premières, 1970 ) p. 91.
Jean Fourastié, Faillite de l’Université? (Paris: Gallimard, 1972) pp. 107, 115.
Robert Scholes, Semiotics and Interpretation ( New Haven: Yale UP, 1982 ) p. 14.
David Bleich, Subjective Criticism ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978 ) p. 18.
For the canular, see Main Peyrefitte, Rue d’Ulm: Chroniques de la Vie normalienne (Paris: Flammarion, 1977, 3rd edn) esp. pp. 24, 358, 439.
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© 1989 Eve Tavor Bannet
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Bannet, E.T. (1989). Conclusion: Recontextualisations. In: Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19744-6_6
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