Paul de Man: From Resistance to Value

Abstract

As we have just seen, there is a natural desire to try to locate a grid of certainty; authority must be located somewhere and we just have to identify the place. For Matthew Arnold (as we shall see) it is in an Establishment, and for others (not really dissimilar) it is somehow ‘in the words’. But, if it is in the words, we are not told why it is so difficult to get it out of the words. Some kind of value is being asserted when it is said that we can find authority in the words; even if it is not meant that we can find a reason to discipline and punish, it is intended that we should be able to find out what the rules are. It is not, apparently, only a matter of coming to a mutual agreement, making a free choice to compromise and assuming that what we have is a set of rules whose authority lies only in our continued agreement to play by them. Instead it seems that the conventional authority (the contract) must also be a natural authority by somehow having already been ‘in the words’.