The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism [3 ed.] 0393602958, 9780393602951

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The N o r to n A ntkology of T h e o r y and C ritic is m

THIRD EDITION

William E. Cain MARY JEW ETT GAISER PRO FESSO R OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES W ELLESLEY COLLEGE

Laurie A. Finke PRO FESSOR OF W OM EN’S AND GENDER STUDIES KENYON COLLEGE

John McGowan JOHN W. AND ANNA HANES DISTINGUISHED PROFESSO R OF ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL

T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting GERTRUDE CONAWAY VANDERBILT DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND DIASPORA STUDIES AND FRENCH VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

Jeffrey J. Williams PRO FESSO R OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

The N orton Anthology of Theory and Criticism THIRD EDITION

Vincent B. Leitch, General Editor G E O R G E LYNN C R O S S R E S E A R C H P R O F E S S O R E M E R I T U S PAU L A N D C A R O L D A U B E S U T T O N C H A IR E M E R I T U S IN E N G L IS H U N IV E R S IT Y O F O K L A H O M A

TXT W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • New York • London

W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program— trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today— with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year—W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.

Copyright © 2018, 2010, 2001 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. The text of this book is composed in Fairfield Medium with the display set in Bernhard Modern Composition by Westchester Book Group Manufacturing by LSC Crawfordsville Editor: Peter Simon Associate Editor: Gerra Goff Editorial Assistant: Katie Pak Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson Manuscript Editor: Alice Falk Project Editor: Sujin Hong Production Manager: Sean Mintus Text Design: Antonina Krass Permissions Manager: Megan Schindel Permissions Clearing: Margaret Gorenstein Permission to use copyrighted material is included in the credits section. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Leitch, Vincent B., date- author, editor. |Cain, William E., author. |Finke, Laurie A., author. |McGowan, John. |Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. |Williams, Jeffrey J. Title: The Norton anthology of theory and criticism/Vincent B. Leitch, General Editor, George Lynn Cross Research Professor, Paul and Carol Daube Sutton, Chair in English, University of Oklahoma; William E. Cain, Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English and American Studies, Wellesley College; Laurie A. Finke, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Kenyon College; John McGowan, John W. and Anna Hanes, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French, Vanderbilt University; Jeffrey J. Williams, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University. Description: Third edition. |New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company, [2018] Identifiers: LCCN 2018006310 |ISBN 9780393602951 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Criticism. |Literature— History and criticism—Theory, etc. Classification: LCC PN86 .N67 2018 |DDC 801/.95— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006310 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 1 5 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS 2

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C ontents Alternative Table of Contents xxi Preface xxxvii Acknowledgments to the Third Edition

xli

INTRODUCTION TO THEORY AND CRITIC ISM

GORGIAS OF LEONTINI (ca. 483-376 From Encomium of Helen 40 PLATO (ca. 427—ca. 347 b . c . e . ) Ion 46 The Republic 58 From Book II 58 From Book III 65 From Book VII 75 From Book X 78 From Phaedrus 89 ARISTOTLE (384-322 b . c . e . ) Poetics 99 On Rhetoric 127 Book I 127 From Chapter 2 127 From Chapter 3 128 Book II 129 From Chapter 1 129 Book III 130 From Chapter 2 130 HORACE (65-8 Ars Poetica

b .c .e .)

b .c .e .)

43

95

131

133

LONGINUS (first century c . e . ) From On Sublimity 146

144

AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (354-430) On Christian Teaching 166 From Book Two 166 From Book Three 173

164

39

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MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135-1204) 177 The Guide of the Perplexed 180 From [Introduction to the First Part] 180 THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274) Summa Theologica 191 From Question I 191

188

DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321) 11 Convivio 196 Book Two 196 Chapter 1 196 From The Letter to Can Grande

194

198

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO (1313-1375) 200 Genealogy of the Gentile Gods 202 Book 14 202 V. Other Cavillers at the Poets and Their Imputations VII. The Definition of Poetry, Its Origin, and Function XII. The Obscurity of Poetry Is Not Just Cause for Condemning It 206 CHRISTINE DE PIZAN (ca. 1365-ca. 1429) 209 Christine’s Reaction to Jean deMontreuil’s Treatise on the Roman de la Rose 211 The Book of the City of Ladies 218 From Part One 218 From Part Two 223 JOACHIM DU BELLAY (ca. 1522-1560) 224 The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language First Book 227 Chapters 1—7 227 Second Book 234 Chapters 3 -4 234 GIACOPO MAZZONI (1548-1598) 236 On the Defense of the “Comedy” of Dante 238 From Introduction and Summary 238 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586) 260 From The Defence of Poesy 262 PIERRE CORNEILLE (1606-1684) 291 Of the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) 307 From An Essay of Dramatic Poesy 308

295

227

202 204

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BARUCH SPINOZA (1632-1677) 311 Theological-Political Treatise 314 Chapter 7. O f the Interpretation of Scripture

314

APHRA BEHN (1640-1689) 326 The Dutch Lover 329 Epistle to the Reader 329 Preface to The Lucky Chance 334 GIAMBATTISTA VICO (1668-1744) From New Science 340

337

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719) 358 The Spectator, No. 62 [True and False Wit] 360 From The Spectator, No. 412 [On the Sublime] 365 ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) From An Essay on Criticism 370

367

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784) 383 The Rambler, No. 4 [On Fiction] 387 The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia 390 Chapter X. Imlac s History Continued. A Dissertation upon Poetry 390 From Preface to Shakespeare 392 Lives of the English Poets 405 Cowley 405 [On Metaphysical Wit] 405 DAVID HUME (1711-1776) Of the Standard of Taste

408 410

IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804) 425 Critique of Judgment 429 From Introduction 429 From Book I. Analytic of the Beautiful From Book II. Analytic of the Sublime

431 445

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797) 464 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful 467 Part I 467 Sections I—VIII 467 Part III 472 Section XXVII 472 GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING (1729-1781) From Laocoon 476

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FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER (1759-1805) On the Aesthetic Education of Man 494 Second Letter 494 Sixth Letter 496 Ninth Letter 501

492

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797) 504 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 507 From Chapter II. The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed 507 GERMAINE NECKER DE STAEL (1766-1817) From Essay on Fictions 517 On Literature Considered in Its Relationship to Social Institutions 525 On Women Writers (2.4) 525 FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER (1768-1834) Hermeneutics 533 Outline of the 1819 Lectures 533 Introduction 533 Part Two. The Technical Interpretation

515

531

543

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831) Phenomenology of Spirit 549 [The Master-Slave Dialectic] 549 Lectures on Fine Art 555 From Introduction 555

545

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) 563 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) 566 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) Biographia Literaria 590 Volume 1 590 From Chapter 1 590 From Chapter 4 591 From Chapter 13 592 Volume 2 592 Chapter 14 592

587

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) 598 From A Defence of Poetry, or Remarks Suggested by an Essay Entitled “The Four Ages of Poetry” 601 RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) From The American Scholar 622 The Poet 625

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EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) The Philosophy of Composition

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641 643

KARL MARX (1818-1883) and FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895) 652 From Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 655 From The German Ideology 659 From The Communist Manifesto 661 From Grundrisse 665 From Preface to A Contribution to the Critique o f Political Economy 666 Capital, Volume 1 667 From Chapter 1. Commodities 667 From Chapter 10. The Working-Day 675 From Letter from Friedrich Engels to Joseph Bloch 679 MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888) 681 The Function of Criticism at the Present Time 684 Culture and Anarchy 703 From Chapter 1. Sweetness and Light 703 WALTER PATER (1839-1894) 711 Studies in the History of the Renaissance Preface 713 Conclusion 716 HENRY JAMES (1843-1916) The Art of Fiction 721

713

719

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) 737 From The Birth of Tragedy 740 On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense 752 OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900) 762 Preface to The Picture o f Dorian Gray 765 From The Decay of Lying: An Observation 766 The Critic as Artist 770 From Part 1 770 From Part 2 779 SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939) 783 The Interpretation of Dreams 789 From Chapter V. The Material and Sources of Dreams From Chapter VI. The Dream-Work 793 From The “Uncanny” 799 Fetishism 816 FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE (1857-1913) Course in General Linguistics 824 Introduction 824

820

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From Chapter III. The Object of Linguistics 824 Part One. General Principles 826 Chapter I. Nature of the Linguistic Sign 826 Part Two. Synchronic Linguistics 830 Chapter IV. Linguistic Value 830 Chapter V. Syntagmatic and Associative Relations W. E. B. DU BOIS (1868-1963) 841 The Souls of Black Folk 845 From Chapter I. O f Our Spiritual Strivings Criteria of Negro Art 847 VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) A Room of One’s Own 857 [Shakespeare’s Sister] 857 [Chloe Liked Olivia] 859 [Androgyny] 861

837

845

854

GYORGY LUKACS (1885-1971) 866 The Historical Novel 869 From Chapter One. The Classical Form of the Historical Novel 869 T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) 881 Tradition and the Individual Talent The Metaphysical Poets 891

885

JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888-1974) Criticism, Inc. 901 MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976) Language 914 ANTONIO GRAMSCI (1891-1937) The Formation of the Intellectuals

899

912

927 929

ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1891-1960) 936 Characteristics of Negro Expression 938 What White Publishers Won’t Print 950 ERICH AUERBACH (1892-1957) 954 Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature Chapter 1. Odysseus’ Scar 956 WALTER BENJAMIN (1892-1940) 973 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility MIKHAIL M. BAKHTIN (1895-1975) From Discourse in the Novel 999

997

956

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MAX HORKHEIMER (1895-1973) and THEODOR W. ADORNO (1903-1969) 1030 Dialectic of Enlightenment 1033 From The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception 1033 F. R. LEAVIS (1895-1978) 1050 The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad From 1. The Great Tradition 1052

1052

ROMAN JAKOBSON (1896-1982) 1064 From Linguistics and Poetics 1067 Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances V. The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles 1074

1074

FRIEDRICH A. HAYEK (1899-1992) 1079 The Constitution of Liberty 1081 Chapter 6. Equality, Value, and Merit 1081 LEO STRAUSS (1899-1973) What Is Liberal Education?

1095 1100

JACQUES LACAN (1901-1981) 1105 The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience 1111 From The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious 1117 The Signification of the Phallus 1129 LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967) 1138 The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain LIONEL TRILLING (1905-1975) On the Teaching of Modern Literature

1140 1144

1149

HANNAH ARENDT (1906-1975) 1166 The Human Condition 1169 From 24. The Disclosure of the Agent in Speech and Action 1169 25. The Web of Relationships and the Enacted Stories 1171 From Truth and Politics 1176 CLEANTH BROOKS (1906-1994) 1179 The Well Wrought Urn Chapter 11. The Heresy of Paraphrase

1183 1183

WILLIAM K. WIMSATT JR. (1907-1975) and MONROE C. BEARDSLEY (1915-1985) The Intentional Fallacy

1195 1198

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SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR (1908-1986) The Second Sex 1214 Volume I: Facts and Myths 1214 Part Three: Myths 1214 Chapter 3 1214

1211

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS (1908-2009) 1222 Tristes Tropiques 1225 Chapter 28. A Writing Lesson 1225 J. L. AUSTIN (1911-1960) Performative Utterances

1234 1236

NORTHROP FRYE (1912-1991) The Archetypes of Literature

1248 1250

ROLAND BARTHES (1915-1980) 1262 Mythologies 1266 Photography and Electoral Appeal 1266 The Death of the Author 1268 The Reality Effect 1272 From Work to Text 1277 LOUIS ALTHUSSER (1918-1990) 1282 From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

1285

PAUL DE MAN (1919-1983) 1311 Allegories of Reading 1314 Semiology and Rhetoric 1314 C. D. NARASIMHAIAH (1921-2005) 1327 Towards the Formulation of a Common Poetic for Indian Literatures Today 1330 RAYMOND WILLIAMS (1921-1988) 1335 Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory

1337

FRANTZ FANON (1925-1961) 1351 Black Skin, White Masks 1353 From The Fact of Blackness 1353 The Wretched of the Earth 1361 From On National Culture 1361 GILLES DELEUZE (1925-1995) and FELIX GUATTARI (1930-1992) 1367 Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature 1371 From Chapter 3. What Is a Minor Literature? A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia From Introduction: Rhizome 1374

1371 1374

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JEAN-FRANgOIS LYOTARD (1924-1998) Defining the Postmodern 1385

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MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926-1984) 1388 What Is an Author? 1394 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 1409 The Carceral 1409 The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, An Introduction 1421 Part Two: The Repressive Hypothesis 1421 Chapter 1. The Incitement to Discourse 1421 Chapter 2. The Perverse Implantation 1432 “Society Must Be Defended” 1440 Chapter 11. 17 March 1976 1440 [Biopower] 1440 WOLFGANG ISER (1926-2007) 1450 Interaction between Text and Reader 1452 HAYDEN WHITE (1928-2018) 1461 The Historical Text as Literary Artifact JEAN BAUDRILLARD (1929-2007) From The Precession of Simulacra

1463

1480 1483

JURGEN HABERMAS (b. 1929) 1492 The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article Modernity—An Incomplete Project 1502

1496

ADRIENNE RICH (1929-2012) 1513 From Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

1515

CHINUA ACHEBE (1930-2013) 1534 An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart o f Darkness

1536

ADONIS (b. ca. 1930) 1547 An Introduction to Arab Poetics 1552 From Chapter 1. Poetics and Orality in the Jahiliyya From Chapter 4. Poetics and Modernity 1 558

1552

HAROLD BLOOM (1930-2019) 1572 The Anxiety of Influence 1574 Introduction. A Meditation upon Priority, and a Synopsis 1574 Interchapter. A Manifesto for Antithetical Criticism 1581 PIERRE BOURDIEU (1930-2002) 1583 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste 1586 Introduction 1586 The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field 1592 Part I. Three States of the Field 1592 From Chapter 2. The Emergence of a Dualist Structure 1592

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Part III. To Understand Understanding 1595 From Chapter 1. The Historical Genesis of the Pure Aesthetic JA C Q U ES DERRIDA ( 1 9 3 0 - 2 0 0 4 ) Dissemination 1608

1595

1602

Plato’s Pharmacy 1608 I 1608 From 1. Pharmacia 1609 From 2. The Father of Logos 1613 From 4. The Pharmakon 1621 5. The Pharmakeus 1628 II 1631 From 9. Play: From the Pharmakon to the Letter and from Blindness to the Supplement 1631 Specters of Marx 1636 From Chapter 1. Injunctions of Marx 1636 From Chapter 3. Wears and Tears 1641 The Animal That Therefore I Am 1645 From Chapter 1. The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow) 1645 LIZEHOU (b. 1930) 1655 Four Essays on Aesthetics: Toward a Global View Chapter 8. The Stratification of Form and Primitive Sedimentation 1658

1658

TONI MORRISON (b. 1931) 1670 From Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature 1673 RICHARD OHMANN (b. 1931) From The Shaping of a Canon: U.S. Fiction, 1960—1975 STUART HALL ( 1 9 3 2 - 2 0 1 4 )

1684 1686

1702

Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies

1705

SUSAN SONTAG (1933-2004) Against Interpretation 1722

1717

FREDRIC JAMESON (b. 1934) 1731 The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act Preface 1734 From Chapter 1. On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act 1738 Postmodernism and Consumer Society 1758 DAVID HARVEY (b. 1935) 1772 A Brief History of Neoliberalism 1774 Introduction 1774 From Chapter 6. Neoliberalism on Trial

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EDWARD W. SAID (1935-2003) 1780 Orientalism 1783 Introduction 1783 Culture and Imperialism 1805 Chapter Two. Consolidated Vision 1805 II. Jane Austen and Empire 1805 MONIQUE WITTIG (1935-2003) 1821 One Is Not Born a Woman 1823 BENEDICT ANDERSON (1936-2015) 1830 Imagined Communities 1832 Chapter 3. The Origins of National Consciousness

1832

SANDRA M. GILBERT (b. 1936) and SUSAN GUBAR (b. 1944) The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination 1841 From Chapter 2. Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship 1841

1839

E. ANN KAPLAN (b. 1936) 1853 Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature 1856 From Chapter 1. “Why Trauma Now?”: Freud and Trauma Studies 1856 HELENE CIXOUS (b. 1937) The Laugh of the Medusa

1865 1869

GERALD GRAFF (b. 1937) Taking Cover in Coverage

1886 1888

STANLEY E. FISH (b. 1938) 1896 Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities 1898 Chapter 14. How to Recognize a Poem When You See One

189

NGUGI WATHIONG’O (b. 1938), TABAN LO LIYONG (b. 1939), and HENRY OWUOR-ANYUMBA (1933-1992) On the Abolition of the English Department TZVETAN TODOROV (1939-2017) Structural Analysis of Narrative

1909 1912

1916 1918

KARATANI KOJIN (b. 1941) 1925 Origins of Modern Japanese Literature 1929 From Chapter 1. The Discovery of Landscape JULIA KRISTEVA (b. 1941) 1939 Revolution in Poetic Language 1942

1929

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Part I. The Semiotic and the Symbolic 1942 From 2. The Semiotic Chora Ordering the Drives From 5. The Thetic: Rupture and/or Boundary 12. Genotext and Phenotext 1950 LAURA MULVEY (b. 1941) 1952 Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

1942 1948

1954

GIORGIO AGAMBEN (b. 1942) 1966 Means Without End: Notes on Politics 1968 What Is a Camp? 1968 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life 1972 Part Three: The Camp as Biopolitical Paradigm of the Modern § 1. The Politicization of Life 1972 From §2. Biopolitics and the Rights of Man 1977

1972

GLORIA ANZALDUA (1942-2004) 1983 Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza 1986 Chapter 7. La con cien cia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness 1986 GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK (b. 1942) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason 2001 From Chapter 3. History 2001 TERRY EAGLETON (b. 1943) 2013 Literary Theory: An Introduction 2015 From Chapter 1. The Rise of English Culture and the Death of God 2021 From Chapter 6. Modernism and After STEPHEN J. GREENBLATT (b. 1943) From Resonance and Wonder 2029

1997

2015 2021

2027

DONNA HARAWAY (b. 1944) 2040 From A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s 2043 The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness 2065 Companions 2065 From Species 2067 N. KATHERINE HAYLES (b. 1943) 2071 How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine 2073 SUSAN BORDO (b. 1947) 2094 Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body Chapter 5. The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity

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BRUNO LATOUR (b. 1947) 2111 Why Has Critique Run Out of Steamr From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern 2115 MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM (b. 1947) 2136 Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education 2138 From Introduction. The Old Education and the Think-Academy 2138 From Chapter 3. The Narrative Imagination 2141 HOMI K. BHABHA (b. 1949) The Commitment to Theory

2150 2152

LENNARD J. DAVIS (b. 1949) 2171 Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body From Chapter 6. Visualizing the Disabled Body: The Classical Nude and the Fragmented Torso

2173 2173

GAYLE RUBIN (b. 1949) 2192 Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality 2195 I. The Sex Wars 2195 From II. Sexual Thoughts 2203 From VI. The Limits of Feminism 2212 SLAVOJ ZIZEK (b. 1949) 2221 Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture 2225 Chapter 5. The Hitchcockian Blot 2225 HENRY LOUIS GATES JR. (b. 1950) 2242 Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times 2244 FRANCO MORETTI (b. 1950) 2252 Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History Chapter 1. Graphs 2255 EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK (1950-2009) 2277 Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire From Introduction 2279 Epistemology of the Closet 2283 From Introduction: Axiomatic 2283

2255

2279

HAMID DABASHI (b. 1951) 2290 The World of Persian Literary Humanism 2292 From Conclusion: Literary Humanism as an Alternative Theory to Modernity 2292

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DICK HEBDIGE (b. 1951) 2305 Subculture: The Meaning of Style Chapter 6 2309

2309

BELL HOOKS (b. GLORIA JEAN WATKINS, 1952) Postmodern Blackness 2318

2316

ROSI BRAIDOTTI (b. 1954) 2325 The Posthuman 2329 From Introduction 2329 From Chapter 1. Post-Humanism: Life beyond the Self ROB NIXON (b. 1954) 2353 Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor From Introduction 2355 The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea 2369 JUDITH BUTLER (b. Gender Trouble From Preface From Chapter 3.

1956) 2372 2375 2375 Subversive Bodily Acts

2331

2355

2377

PAUL GILROY (b. 1956) 2389 The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness 2391 From Chapter 1. The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of M odernity 2391 ANDREW ROSS (b. 1956) 2410 From The Mental Labor Problem

2412

JANE BENNETT (b. 1957) 2431 Vibrant Matter: A PoliticalEcology of Things Chapter 1. The Force of Things 2434

2434

LAUREN BERLANT (b. 1957) and MICHAEL WARNER (b. 1958) Sex in Public 2452 REY CHOW (b. 1957) 2468 Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility 2471 From Introduction 2471 KENNETH W. WARREN (b. 1957) 2487 Does African-American Literature Exist? KELLY OLIVER (b. 1958) Witnessing and Testimony

2494 2496

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MICHAEL HARDT (b. 1960) and ANTONIO NEGRI (b. 1933) Empire 2510 Part 2. Passages of Sovereignty 2510 From Section 4. Symptoms of Passage 2510

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2506

JUDITH JACK HALBERSTAM (b. 1961) 2525 Female Masculinity 2527 From Chapter 1. An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men 2527 DAVID HERMAN (b. 1962) 2549 Narrative Theory after the Second Cognitive Revolution

2552

MARC BOUSQUET (b. 1963) 2569 From The Waste Product of Graduate Education: Toward a Dictatorship of the Flexible 2572 MARK McGURL (b. 1966) 2586 From The Program Era: Pluralisms of Postwar American Fiction STEPHEN BEST (b. 1969) and SHARON MARCUS (b. 1966) From Surface Reading: An Introduction 2606 TIMOTHY MORTON (b. 1968) 2619 The Ecological Thought 2621 From Introduction: Critical Thinking ALONDRA NELSON (b. 1968) 2631 AfroFuturism: Past-Future Visions 2633 SIANNE NGAI (b. 1971) Ugly Feelings 2641 From Introduction

2638 2641

IAN BOGOST (b. 1976) 2650 The Rhetoric of Video Games

Author Bibliographies

2673

Permissions/Acknowledgments Author/Title Index

2653

2793

2783

2621

2588 2603

A lternative Table of C ontents

Part I: Modern and Contemporary Schools and Movements CULTURAL STUDIES Roland Barthes Walter Benjamin Ian Bogost Susan Bordo Marc Bousquet Rosi Braidotti Rey Chow Frantz Fanon Michel Foucault Paul Gilroy Antonio Gramsci Jurgen Habermas Judith Jack Halberstam Stuart Hall Donna Haraway Dick Hebdige Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno E. Ann Kaplan Bruno Latour Laura Mulvey Alondra Nelson Andrew Ross Edward W. Said Raymond Williams Slavoj Zizek DECONSTRUCTION AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM Roland Barthes Jean Baudrillard Homi K. Bhabha Rosi Braidotti Judith Butler Helene Cixous Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

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Paul de Man Jacques Derrida Michel Foucault Julia Kristeva Jacques Lacan Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak FEMINIST THEORY AND CRITICISM Simone de Beauvoir Susan Bordo Rosi Braidotti Judith Butler Helene Cixous Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar Donna Haraway E. Ann Kaplan Laura Mulvey Alondra Nelson Adrienne Rich Gayle Rubin Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Monique Wittig Virginia Woolf FORMALISM Aristotle Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus Cleanth Brooks T. S. Eliot John Crowe Ransom William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley GAY AND LESBIAN CRITICISM AND QUEER THEORY Gloria Anzaldua Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner Judith Butler Michel Foucault Judith Jack Halberstam Adrienne Rich Gayle Rubin Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Monique Wittig MARXISM Louis Althusser Walter Benjamin Lennard J. Davis Antonio Gramsci Stuart Hall Donna Haraway Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

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David Harvey Dick Hebdige Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno Fredric Jameson Li Zehou Gyorgy Lukacs Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Raymond Williams Slavoj Zizek NEW HISTORICISMS Giorgio Agamben Michel Foucault Stephen J. Greenblatt Karatani Kojin Mark McGurl Kenneth W. Warren Hayden White PHENOMENOLOGY, HERMENEUTICS, AND READER-RESPONSE THEORY Roland Barthes Simone de Beauvoir Jane Bennett Stanley E. Fish N. Katherine Hayles Martin Heidegger Wolfgang Iser Friedrich Schleiermacher Susan Sontag Baruch Spinoza POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND CRITICISM Chinua Achebe Benedict Anderson Homi K. Bhabha Rey Chow Hamid Dabashi Frantz Fanon Paul Gilroy C. D. Narasimhaiah Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Taban Lo Liyong, and Henry Owuor-Anyumba Rob Nixon Edward W. Said Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak PSYCHOANALYSIS Louis Althusser Harold Bloom

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Judith Butler Lennard J. Davis Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Sigmund Freud Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar Judith Jack Halberstam E. Ann Kaplan Julia Kristeva Jacques Lacan Laura Mulvey Kelly Oliver Slavoj Zizek RACE AND ETHNICITY STUDIES Adunls Gloria Anzaldua Rey Chow W. E. B. Du Bois Henry Louis Gates Jr. Paul Gilroy bell hooks Langston Hughes Zora Neale Hurston Toni Morrison Alondra Nelson Kenneth W. Warren STRUCTURALISM AND SEMIOTICS Louis Althusser Roland Barthes Northrop Frye Dick Hebdige Roman Jakobson Claude Levi-Strauss Franco Moretti Ferdinand de Saussure Tzvetan Todorov Hayden White

Part II: Genres EPIC AND ROMANCE Aristotle Erich Auerbach Mikhail M. Bakhtin Northrop Frye Giacopo Mazzoni Plato Giambattista Vico

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DRAMA Aristotle Aphra Behn Pierre Corneille John Dryden Samuel Johnson Friedrich Nietzsche Sir Philip Sidney THE NOVEL Mikhail M. Bakhtin Henry James Samuel Johnson F. R. Leavis Gyorgy Lukacs Mark McGurl Franco Moretti Toni Morrison Richard Ohmann Germaine Necker de Stael Lionel Trilling Kenneth W. Warren POETRY Adunls Harold Bloom Giovanni Boccaccio Hamid Dabashi T. S. Eliot Ralph Waldo Emerson Stanley E. Fish Martin Heidegger Horace Roman Jakobson Julia Kristeva Giacopo Mazzoni Edgar Allan Poe Percy Bysshe Shelley Sir Philip Sidney Giambattista Vico William Wordsworth POPULAR CULTURE Roland Barthes Simone de Beauvoir Walter Benjamin Ian Bogost Susan Bordo Rey Chow Judith Jack Halberstam

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Donna Haraway Dick Hebdige Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno Fredric Jameson Bruno Latour Laura Mulvey Alondra Nelson Richard Ohmann Susan Sontag Slavoj Zizek

Part III: Historical Periods CLASSICAL THEORY AND CRITICISM Aristotle Gorgias Horace Longinus Plato MEDIEVAL THEORY AND CRITICISM Augustine of Hippo Giovanni Boccaccio Christine de Pizan Dante Alighieri Moses Maimonides Thomas Aquinas RENAISSANCE THEORY AND CRITICISM Giovanni Boccaccio Pierre Corneille Joachim du Bellay Giacopo Mazzoni Sir Philip Sidney ENLIGHTENMENT THEORY AND CRITICISM Joseph Addison Aphra Behn Edmund Burke John Dryden David Hume Samuel Johnson Immanuel Kant Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Alexander Pope Friedrich von Schiller Baruch Spinoza Giambattista Vico Mary Wollstonecraft

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ROMANTIC THEORY AND CRITICISM Samuel Taylor Coleridge Ralph Waldo Emerson Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Friedrich von Schiller Friedrich Schleiermacher Percy Bysshe Shelley Germaine Necker de Stael William Wordsworth VICTORIAN THEORY AND CRITICISM Matthew Arnold Henry James Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Walter Pater Edgar Allan Poe Oscar Wilde

Part IV: Issues and Topics AESTHETICS Walter Benjamin Jane Bennett Pierre Bourdieu Edmund Burke Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno David Hume Immanuel Kant Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Li Zehou Longinus Timothy Morton C. D. Narasimhaiah Alondra Nelson Sianne Ngai Walter Pater Friedrich von Schiller AFFECT Joseph Addison Aristotle Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner Edmund Burke Rey Chow Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno Wolfgang Iser Immanuel Kant E. Ann Kaplan

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Julia Kristeva Li Zehou Longinus Sianne Ngai Kelly Oliver Walter Pater Plato Edgar Allan Poe Sir Philip Sidney AUTHORSHIP Roland Barthes Walter Benjamin Christine de Pizan T. S. Eliot Michel Foucault Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar Horace F. R. Leavis Longinus William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley THE BODY Giorgio Agamben Susan Bordo Judith Butler Helene Cixous LennardJ. Davis Michel Foucault Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar Judith Jack Halberstam Donna Haraway N. Katherine Hayles E. Ann Kaplan Julia Kristeva Li Zehou Laura Mulvey C. D. Narasimhaiah THE CANON/TRADITION Matthew Arnold Erich Auerbach Harold Bloom T. S. Eliot Gerald Graff F. R. Leavis Mark McGurl Toni Morrison Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Taban Lo Liyong, and Henry Owuor-Anyumba Richard Ohmann Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Leo Strauss Lionel Trilling Kenneth W. Warren DEFENSES OF CRITICISM Matthew Arnold Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus Homi K. Bhabha Bruno Latour C. D. Narasimhaiah Martha C. Nussbaum Alexander Pope John Crowe Ransom Leo Strauss Oscar Wilde William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley ETHICS Chinua Achebe Hannah Arendt Matthew Arnold Christine de Pizan Friedrich A‘ Hayek Timothy Morton Martha C. Nussbaum Kelly Oliver Plato Percy Bysshe Shelley Sir Philip Sidney Mary Wollstonecraft GENDER AND SEXUALITY Simone de Beauvoir Susan Bordo Judith Butler Helene Cixous Michel Foucault Sigmund Freud Judith Jack Halberstam E. Ann Kaplan Julia Kristeva Jacques Lacan Laura Mulvey Gayle Rubin Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Monique Wittig GLOBALIZATION Adunls Erich Auerbach

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Rey Chow Hamid Dabashi Jacques Derrida Frantz Fanon Paul Gilroy Donna Haraway Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri David Harvey Friedrich A. Hayek Karatani Kojin Claude Levi-Strauss Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Franco Moretti Timothy Morton Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Taban Lo Liyong, and Henry Owuor-Anyumba Rob Nixon Edward W. Said Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Giambattista Vico IDEOLOGY AND HEGEMONY Louis Althusser Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner Ian Bogost Pierre Bourdieu LennardJ. Davis Antonio Gramsci Stuart Hall Fredric Jameson Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Timothy Morton Raymond Williams Slavoj Zizek THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF LITERARY STUDY Marc Bousquet Terry Eagleton Gerald Graff Mark McGurl Toni Morrison Ngugi wa Thiong o, Taban Lo Liyong, and Henry Owuor-Anyumba Richard Ohmann John Crowe Ransom Edward W. Said Lionel Trilling Kenneth W. Warren INTERPRETATION THEORY Augustine of Hippo Dante Alighieri

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Stanley E. Fish Sigmund Freud N. Katherine Hayles Fredric Jameson Moses Maimonides Friedrich Schleiermacher Susan Sontag Baruch Spinoza Thomas Aquinas LANGUAGE Benedict Anderson Augustine of Hippo J. L. Austin Mikhail M. Bakhtin Jean Baudrillard Martin Heidegger Zora Neale Hurston Roman Jakobson Julia Kristeva Jacques Lacan Claude Levi-Strauss Friedrich Nietzsche Ferdinand de Saussure Baruch Spinoza LITERARY HISTORY Erich Auerbach Hamid Dabashi Paul Gilroy F. R. Leavis Gyorgy Lukacs Franco Moretti Toni Morrison Sianne Ngai Edward W. Said Lionel Trilling Kenneth W. Warren MEDIA Louis Althusser Roland Barthes Walter Benjamin Ian Bogost Susan Bordo Rey Chow Lennard J. Davis Jurgen Habermas N. Katherine Hayles Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

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Zora Neale Hurston Laura Mu Ivey Alondra Nelson Richard Ohmann Susan Sontag Slavoj Zizek MODERNITY Adunls Giorgio Agamben Benedict Anderson Walter Benjamin Pierre Bourdieu Rey Chow Hamid Dabashi Joachim du Bellay T. S. Eliot Paul Gilroy Jurgen Habermas Friedrich A. Hayek Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno Fredric Jameson E. Ann Kaplan Karatani Kojin Gyorgy Lukacs Timothy Morton Sianne Ngai Friedrich von Schiller Leo Strauss Lionel Trilling NARRATIVE THEORY Aristotle Erich Auerbach Mikhail M. Bakhtin Roland Barthes Northrop Frye David Herman Roman Jakobson Fredric Jameson F. R. Leavis Gyorgy Lukacs Franco Moretti Laura Mulvey Rob Nixon Martha C. Nussbaum Germaine Necker de Stael Tzvetan Todorov Hayden White

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PHILOLOGY Adunls Erich Auerbach Fredric Jameson C. D. Narasimhaiah Friedrich Nietzsche Edward W. Said Friedrich Schleiermacher Baruch Spinoza Giambattista Vico POSTMODERNITY Jean Baudrillard Marc Bousquet Rosi Braidotti Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Terry Eagleton Donna Haraway Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri David Harvey N. Katherine Hayles bell hooks Fredric Jameson Jean-Fran^ois Lyotard Alondra Nelson Rob Nixon PRINT CULTURE Benedict Anderson Walter Benjamin Pierre Bourdieu Michel Foucault N. Katherine Hayles Zora Neale Hurston Claude Levi-Strauss Franco Moretti Leo Strauss RELIGION Adunls Louis Althusser Matthew Arnold Erich Auerbach Augustine of Hippo Rosi Braidotti Samuel Taylor Coleridge Dante Alighieri Terry Eagleton Ralph Waldo Emerson Northrop Frye

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Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Moses Maimonides Giacopo Mazzoni Plato Gayle Rubin Friedrich Schleiermacher Percy Bysshe Shelley Sir Philip Sidney Baruch Spinoza Thomas Aquinas Giambattista Vico REPRESENTATION AND REALISM Aristotle Erich Auerbach Roland Barthes Jane Bennett Ian Bogost Rey Chow Pierre Corneille Lennard J. Davis Karatani Kojin F. R. Leavis Longinus Gyorgy Lukacs Giacopo Mazzoni Friedrich Nietzsche Rob Nixon Plato Sir Philip Sidney Hayden White RHETORIC Aristotle Augustine of Hippo Ian Bogost Paul de Man Gorgias Zora Neale Hurston Jacques Lacan Longinus Giacopo Mazzoni Giambattista Vico Hayden White SUBJECTIVITY/IDENTITY Giorgio Agamben Louis Althusser Gloria Anzaldua

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Hannah Arendt Susan Bordo Rosi Braidotti Judith Butler W. E. B. Du Bois Franz Fanon Michel Foucault Sigmund Freud Judith Jack Halberstam Donna Haraway Friedrich A. Hayek Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel bell hooks Karatani Kojin Jacques Lacan Timothy Morton Laura Mulvey Alondra Nelson Kelly Oliver Adrienne Rich Friedrich von Schiller Monique Wittig Slavoj Zizek THE VERNACULAR AND NATIONHOOD Benedict Anderson Gloria Anzaldua Pierre Corneille Hamid Dabashi Dante Alighieri Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari Joachim du Bellay Ralph Waldo Emerson Frantz Fanon Langston Hughes F. R. Leavis Gyorgy Lukacs C. D. Narasimhaiah Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Taban Lo Liyong, and Henry Owuor-Anyumba Giambattista Vico Kenneth W. Warren WOMEN'S LITERATURE Aphra Behn Helene Cixous Christine de Pizan Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar Germaine Necker de Stael Mary Wollstonecraft Virginia Woolf

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Preface A wide-ranging and comprehensive collection, The Norton Anthology o f Theory and Criticism offers one or more selections from 159 figures, repre­ senting major developments from ancient to recent times, from Gorgias and Plato to Judith Butler, Franco Moretti, and Sianne Ngai. It provides selections from previously underrepresented fields, such as rhetoric, new historicisms, media studies, and affect theory, along with a full complement of works from canonical figures such as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Cleanth Brooks, Michel Foucault, and Edward W. Said. From canonical authors, it includes classic texts as well as selections newly revalued. The standard works of Western theory and criticism from the ancient Greeks to the present are represented, as are texts from “forgotten” figures such as Moses Maimonides, Baruch Spinoza, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. The anthology is particularly rich in modern and contemporary theory, providing materials from more than a hundred writers and covering all the main schools and movements, ranging from Marxism, psychoanalysis, and formalism to poststructuralism, cultural studies, race and ethnicity studies, queer theory, and many more. We have also drawn from today s most vital currents, including body studies, narrative theory, postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism, plus popular culture studies. This anthology consolidates the many gains won through the expan­ sion of theory in recent decades. In the third edition, contemporary selections from Adunls (Arabic), Hamid Dabashi (Persian), Karatani Kojin (Japanese), Li Zehou (Chinese), and C. D. Narasimhaiah (Indian) represent illuminating intersections of nonEuropean and Western theoretical and literary traditions. These pieces join non-European materials included in the earlier editions from Chinua Achebe, Frantz Fanon, and Ngugi wa Thiongo. In view of current changes, it is worth pausing to consider the configuration and meaning of “theory.” Today the term encompasses significant works not only of poetics, theory of criticism, and aesthetics as of old, but also of rhe­ toric, media studies, race and ethnicity theory, gender theory, and theories of popular culture as well as globalization and modernity. But theory in its newer sense means still more than this broadly expanded body of topics and texts. It entails a mode of questioning and analysis that moves beyond earlier formalist research into the “literariness” of literature without giving up for­ malist techniques of close reading. Because of the effects of poststructural­ ism, cultural studies, and the social movements that emerged in the 1960s and have developed in profound ways since then, especially ongoing womens and civil rights movements, contemporary theory entails skepticism toward systems, institutions, and norms; a readiness to take critical stands and to engage in resistance; an interest in blind spots, contradictions, and distor-

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tions (often discovered to be ineradicable); and a habit of linking local and personal practices and responses to the larger economic, political, historical, and ethical forces of culture. This theory— or cultural critique, as it is more descriptively termed— is less concerned with elaborating conditions of pos­ sibility, as is Kantian critique, than with investigating and criticizing values, practices, representations, and affects embedded in cultural texts and surrounding institutions. To its critics such theory looks like advocacy rather than impartial objective inquiry into poetics and the history of literature. This difference between so-called surface and symptomatic reading high­ lights one among other long-standing fault lines in the field of criticism and theory discussed in the Introduction. The Table of Contents lists figures and texts in chronological order. An Alternative Table of Contents recasts the chronological order, providing lists of figures in four categories commonly used in studying theory: schools and movements; major genres; historical periods; and key issues and topics. Additional ways of organizing the history and subject matter of theory and criticism are possible, to be sure. Other figures in the anthology could be included in the existing categories. We decided against combining proponents and opponents in the popular schools and movements categories, as is some­ times done. Thus, for example, Mikhail Bakhtin does not appear under “Formalism” as one of its most celebrated critics. To list together antagonists and advocates would have created confusion and unduly multiplied the num­ ber of figures in our categories. Within each school and movement, of course, readers will encounter differences and disputes. One of the risks of the cate­ gories we employ in the Alternative Table of Contents is that their groupings of figures and topics from different periods and moments unavoidably deemphasize historical conflicts, evolution, and differences. That noted, the editors believe our readers will find the Alternative Table of Contents sugges­ tive and useful. The Introduction to Theory and Criticism that follows the two Tables of Contents consists of eighteen brief, semiautonomous sections that intro­ duce students to the field of theory through its main historical periods, its major modern and contemporary schools and movements, its perennial issues and problems, and its key terms. Here we provide a quick and wide-ranging overview of the history and nature of the field. Sections have been subtitled for easy reference in making assignments and in following the trajectory of the discussion. Each selection in the anthology is annotated so that students may focus on the texts and not have to consult reference sources for basic information. Headnotes to each figure cover a range of topics. To begin with, they provide biographical information and historical background. They discuss sources and critical reception as well as the relevance of the selections for theoretical questions. They highlight each selection s main arguments, where necessary defining key terms and concepts and pointing out related perennial problems in the field. They refer to other works by the authors and note problems identified by later critics. They position the authors in relation to other figures in the anthology, picturing the history of theory not as a string of isolated pearls but as a mosaic in which each work fits into larger frames of ongoing discussions and arguments. Finally, an annotated bibliography, located at the back of the book, is given for each figure, covering main texts and editions,

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biographical sources (when available), useful secondary sources and criticism, and bibliographies related to the author's works (when available). In choosing the selections the editors have been guided by a range of criteria. We have looked for readable and teachable texts that reflect the scope of the history of theory. This does not mean, however, that challenging and difficult texts are missing. We have favored complete works and selfcontained excerpts; snippets are the exception. Yet in a number of cases we have edited texts to focus on topics germane to the field and to save space for other selections. We have sought out reliable editions and translations. From the outset we have followed the practice that no figure or selection could make it into the anthology without the agreement of at least half the editors. We consulted with colleagues, including a hundred past users who completed a survey. We have made quite a few selections with an eye to pairing or triangulating— for example, we chose the famous closing section on writing from Plato’s Phaedrus, having in mind Derridas landmark critique of that text in his Dissemination. When they occur, such fruitful counter­ points are indicated in the headnotes and in the Alternative Table of Con­ tents. O f course, innumerable combinations and permutations are possible, and our accounts cannot be exhaustive. But we have noted typographically all cross-references in the headnotes and footnotes by putting in small cap­ itals the names of theorists and critics appearing in the anthology. While we have privileged standard works and contemporary classics of theory, we have also sought to present overlooked as well as forgotten texts. In past editions we included a general bibliography of criticism and theory as a supplement, but given the vast profusion of sources and online biblio­ graphical tools, we have decided to forgo it. However, we continue to offer discursive bibliographies of each author, which we now publish together in the final section of the anthology. For convenience in this edition, we have added to all 200 selections Keywords derived from our Alternative Table of Contents. This change of format takes the place of a Subject Index, affording coherence, focus, and economy. In putting this anthology together, we have faced a number of challenges. One difficulty was coping with the impossibility of including every significant theorist. Our original lists of several hundred figures had to be shortened to 159: even a long book such as this one imposes limits. Some of the lengthiest selections— by Longinus, Sir Philip Sidney, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adrienne Rich, and Jacques Derrida, for instance— had to be trimmed, and each edi­ tor had favorite figures omitted. The enclosure of post—World War II theory in the university and its increased professionalization have meant that con­ temporary nonacademic critics, literary journalists, and writers have been largely excluded from the theory canon. While theory remains Eurocentric, our selections from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East begin the opening to wider horizons.

Acknowledgments to tke Tkird Edition We appreciate assistance from the following people: Eve Tavor Bannet (University of Oklahoma), Megan Becker-Leckrone (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Michael Berube (Pennsylvania State University), Paul Bowman (Cardiff University), William Christopher Brown (University of Minnesota Crookston), Danny C. Campbell (Chowan College), Rey Chow (Duke Univer­ sity), Tim Conley (Brock University), William Covey (Slippery Rock University), Jonathan Culler (Cornell University), Daniel Darvay (Colorado State University—Pueblo), Richard Dienst (Rutgers University), Jeffrey R. Di Leo (University of Houston—Victoria), Nancy El Gendy (University of Nevada, Reno), Bruce Gardiner (University of Sydney), William Germano (Cooper Union), Peter Gilgen (Cornell University), Larry Grossberg (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Carolin Hahnemann (Kenyon College), Ann C. Hall (Ohio Dominican University), Brian K. Hudson (Central New Mexico Community College), Walter Kalaidjian (Emory University), John Kirby (Miami University), Reinhold Kramer (Brandon University), Mitchell Lewis (Elmira College), James Liner (University of Washington Tacoma), John Lisovsk, Jennifer Lombard, Hans Lottenbach (Kenyon College), Derek Lowe (University of Southern Alabama), Steven Mailloux (Loyola Marymount Uni­ versity), Regina Martin (Denison University), Luiz Fernando Martins (Brazil), Gunter Meckenstock (University of Kiel), Susan Hollis Merritt, Arash Moradi (Shahid Beheshi University), Christian Moraru (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Timothy Murphy (Oklahoma State University), Pashmina Murthy (Kenyon College), Patrick O’Donnell (Michigan State University), Bruce Robbins (Columbia University), Barry Sarchett (Colorado College), Ronald Schleifer (University of Oklahoma), Anne H. Stevens (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Tauan Fernandes Tinti (University of Campinas), Gyorgy Tury (Budapest Metropolitan University), Gregory Ulmer (University of Florida), H. Aram Veeser (City University of New York), Ariana Vigil (Univer­ ity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Shunzhu Wang (Rider University), James P. Warren (Washington and Lee University), Charles Whitney (Univer­ sity of Nevada, Las Vegas), and Gang Zhu (Nanjing University). For special help we thank both William Covey and John Kirby. Gratitude goes to our consultants on non-Western theory and criticism: Terri DeYoung (University of Washington), Ming Dong Gu (University of Texas at Dallas), Feroza Jussawalla (University of New Mexico), Indra Levy (Stanford University), and Kamran Talattof (University of Arizona). We express our appreciation to reviewers and commentators on the sec­ ond edition, including Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas, Arlington), Lynn

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Alexander (University of Tennessee at Martin), Brigitte Anderson (Univer­ sity of Pikeville), Sarah Appleton (Old Dominion University), Robert Archambeau (Lake Forest College), Andrew Armond (Oklahoma Baptist University), Gretchen Bartels (California Baptist University), Wesley Beal (Lyon College), Rebecca Belcher-Rankin (Olivet Nazarene University), Florence Boos (University of Iowa), Christopher K. Brooks (Wichita State University), David Buehrer (Valdosta State University), Amee Carmines (Hampton University), Laura Carroll (Abilene Christian University), Ranita Chatterjee (California State University, Northridge), Chih-Ping Chen (Alma College), Francis X. Connor (Wichita State University), Sarah Davis (Hunter College), Anthony Dawahare (California State University, Northridge), Robin DeRosa (Plymouth State Universtiy), Molly Desjardins (University of North­ ern Colorado), Eric d’Evegnee (Brigham Young University, Idaho), George Drake (Central Washington University), Julie Dugger (Western Washington University), Elizabeth Duquette (Gettysburg College), Gary Eddy (Winona State University), Marian Eide (Texas A&M University), Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University), Nikolai Endres (Western Kentucky University), Aden Evens (Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies), Cassandra Falke (Norges Arktiske Universitet), Lianna Farber (University of Minnesota), Michael Faris (Texas Tech University), Thomas Festa (SUNY New Paltz), Ellen Friedman (The College of New Jersey), Michael Lee Gardin (Univer­ sity of Texas at San Antonio), Laura George (Eastern Michigan University), Joshua Gooch (D’Youville College), Robert Gorsch (Saint Marys College of California), Evan Gottlieb (Oregon State University), Eric Gray (St. Gregory s University), Willard P. Greenwood II (Hiram College), Heather Hathaway (Marquette University), Chene Heady (Longwood University), Burgsbee Lee Hobbs (Saint Leo University), Jane Hoogestraat (Missouri State Uni­ versity), Matt Hooley (Texas Tech University), Heidi Hosey (Mercyhurst University), Kelly Hurley (University of Colorado, Boulder), Amy Jamgochian (University of California, Berkeley), David Kaloustian (Bowie State Univer­ sity), Gerard Killeen (Marylhurst University), Mary Klages (University of Colorado, Boulder), James Knapp (Loyola University of Chicago), Lesley Kordecki (DePaul University), Joseph Kronick (Louisiana State University), Tonya Krouse (Northern Kentucky University), Barry Laga (Colorado Mesa University), Stephen Lehigh (California State University, San Bernardino), Richard Mace (Pace University), Gregory Maertz (St. John’s University), Susan Jaret McKinstry (Carleton College), Richard Menke (University of Georgia), Gretchen Michlitsch (Winona State University), Debra Monroe (Texas State University), Mary Mullen (Villanova University), Joanne Myers (Gettysburg College), Ode Ogede (North Carolina Central University), Mat­ thew Potolsky (University of Utah), Timothy Richardson (University of Texas, Arlington), Benjamin Robertson (University of Colorado, Boulder), Valerie Rohy (University of Vermont), Arnold Sanders (Goucher College), Stephen Schillinger (Oberlin College & Conservatory), Scott Shershow (University of California, Davis), Anne Stevens (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Meghan Sweeney (University of North Carolina at Wilmington), Sharon Talley (Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi), Slater Juan Thomp­ son (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire), Alan Vardy (Hunter College), Robyn Warhol (Ohio State University), James P. Warren (Washington and Lee University), Jolanta Wawrzycka (Radford University), John Wells

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(Virginia Commonwealth University), Toby Widdicombe (University of Alaska Anchorage), Tyrone Williams (Xavier University), Sarah Winter (University of Connecticut), Sean Witters (University of Vermont), Jessica Wohlschlaeger (Missouri Baptist University), and Nancy Workman (Lewis University). Thanks are due to the following research assistants: Adam Ahlgrim, Terrance Dean, Andrea Lechleitner, and Souri Sompanith. Special thanks go to John-Mark Hart, who spent several years on this project. The editors wish to thank W. W. Norton Associate Editor Gerra Goff, who guided this edition through production, and especially Editor Peter Simon, who has shepherded this book through three editions.

T k e N o r to n A n th o lo g y o f T h e o r y and C ritic is m

THIRD EDITION

Intro d u ction to T L eory and C riticism In recent times, theory and criticism have become central to literary and cultural studies, treated less as aids to the study of literature and culture than as ends in themselves. As Jonathan Culler noted in Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (1988), “Formerly the history of criticism was part of the history of literature (the story of changing conceptions of litera­ ture advanced by great writers), but . . . now the history of literature is part of the history of criticism/’ This dramatic reversal, which occurred gradu­ ally over the course of the twentieth century, means that the history of criticism and theory increasingly provides the general framework for study­ ing literature and culture in colleges and universities. Some literary schol­ ars and writers deplore the shift toward “theory,” regarding it as a turn away from literature and its central concerns. These “antitheorists,” as they are called, advocate a return to studying literature for itself—yet however sensible this position may at first appear, it has problems: it itself presup­ poses a definition of literature, and it promotes a certain way of scrutiniz­ ing literature (“for itself”). In other words, the antitheory position turns out to rely on unexamined— and debatable— theories of literature and criti­ cism. What theory demonstrates, in this case and in others, is that there is no position free of theory, not even the one called “common sense.” The history of theory and criticism from ancient times to the present is one of contending ideas and opinions about such apparently self-evident topics as “literature” and “interpretation.” Historically, interpretation has been conceptualized in a number of different ways: as, for example, objec­ tive textual analysis or moral assessment or emotional response or literary evaluation or cultural critique. The same is also true of literature, which has been defined in terms of its ability to represent reality, or to express its author’s inner being, or to teach morality, or to cleanse our emotions, to name only a few common but conflicting formulations. The history of criticism and theory contains many such arguments. Taken together, the antitheorists themselves adhere to very different, often contradictory understandings of literature and interpretation. Such conflict points to the vitality, the excitement, and the complexity of the field of theory and criti­ cism, whose expansive universe of issues and problems engages ideas not only about literature, language, interpretation, genre, style, meaning, and tradition but also about subjectivity, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, class, culture, nationality, ideology, institutions, and historical periods. In this anthology, students new to literary and cultural studies will discover a wide-ranging interdisciplinary and comparative field whose practitioners

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examine, formulate, and assess all manner of theories and problems related to the study of literature and culture. In addition, students new to criticism and theory will encounter a rich array of technical terms and concepts, critical approaches and schools, and literary and cultural theories and theorists. From signifier to deconstruction to ctdtural studies, from Aristotle to Foucault, the field of theory and criticism is marked by a multitude of signposts sometimes unfamiliar to even the most widely read students. In this introduction as well as in the headnotes to each author, we help students make sense of this complex but rewarding area. We begin by surveying an array of notable answers to two central questions— what is interpretation? and what is literature?— in order to establish our bearings. Shifting direction, we then survey the historical development of theory and criticism, from the classical to the Romantic periods, after which we provide brief overviews of major schools and movements of the last century, plus finally the disaggregation of the field in the twenty-first century. Along the way, we discuss many of the theorists in this anthology, explain perennial problems and issues, define key concepts and terms, and illuminate the underlying structure of the field of theory and criticism, including its most significant conflicts.

WH AT IS I N T E R P R E T A T I O N ?

Within the field of theory and criticism, various terms and concepts are applied to the encounter between the reader and the text. This transaction, which we will provisionally call “reading” or “interpretation,” typically involves such activities as personal response, appreciation, evaluation, his­ torical reception, explication, exegesis, and critique. Not surprisingly, the master words interpretation and reading are themselves debatable. In fact, in choosing a term or terms to characterize the encounter between text and reader, one takes a specific theoretical position regarding the exact nature of reading and interpretation. Consider a few such key terms. Whereas explication and exegesis stress the objective labor of deciphering a text in a methodical way (line by line, in the case of a short poem), personal response and appreciation empha­ size the intimate, casual, and subjective aspects of reading. C ritique and historical reception , in turn, accentuate the distances in values and time between the interpreter and the work. An exegesis of a text is not the same as an appreciation or a critique. Exegesis presumes a dense and enigmatic text in need of elaborate explanation; appreciation implies a reader-friendly work just waiting to be enjoyed here and now; and critique presupposes a hidden set of questionable or dangerous premises and val­ ues undergirding a complex document. In the case of exegesis an inter­ preter needs to be a knowledgeable puzzle solver; appreciation positions the reader as an eager and sympathetic hedonist; and critique calls for a critic at once suspicious and ethical, committed to a set of values differ­ ent from, or directly opposed to, those expressed in the text. In depicting the critical encounter, theories of reading and interpretation invariably assign characteristics to texts and allocate particular roles and tasks to readers.

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Many of the selections in this anthology differ markedly in how they char­ acterize interpretation and reading. For instance, Friedrich Schleiermacher draws a detailed account of interpretation both as historically informed grammatical explication and as psychological identification with the author. His view contrasts with the perspective of Fredric Jameson, who advocates an elaborate three-phase process of interpretation focused specifically on ideology critique of social contradictions, class antagonisms, and historical stages of social development manifested in texts. And Paul de Man instead pictures reading as a mode of exegesis wherein the readers rewriting or restaging of the text replaces the original with an interpretive allegory: read­ ing for him unavoidably becomes “misreading.” That highly competent theo­ rists can propose completely different models of reading fuels continued theoretical debate about interpretation. One of the most famous ways of reading is the mode of textual analysis developed by the New Critics, particularly Cleanth Brooks. During the mid-twentieth century, the New Criticism became the dominant critical practice in many North American and British universities, and it remains influential today, especially in the introductory literature classroom. To interpret as a New Critic is to demonstrate through multiple (re)readings of poetic texts the intricacy of artistic forms. “Meaning” is found neither in a simple paraphrase of the text, nor in propositions extracted from it, but in carefully orchestrated and unified textual elements (for example, images, tropes, tones, and symbols). The literary work is (pre)conceived as an autono­ mous, highly coherent, dramatic artifact (a ‘well-wrought urn”) separate from and above the life of the author and reader as well as separate from its social context and from everyday language. Textual inconsistencies are harmonized by being valorized as artful literary ambiguities, paradoxes, or ironies. Yet there are problems with this seemingly sensible “formalist” method. Some theorists have complained that it posits an overly aestheticized, narrow theory of meaning. The “close reading” or “practical criticism” advocated rules out a great deal, including personal response, authorial intention, propositional meaning, social and historical context, and ideology. It values retro­ spective analysis rather than the risky ongoing experience or actual process of trying to make sense of a work. It privileges both freestanding spatial form over temporal flow and critical distance over the readers personal participa­ tion. It makes textual unity mandatory, finessing gaps and loose ends. It favors well-made and compact rather than sprawling works and genres. The reading practice of New Criticism is an explicit emptying out of literary interpretation in order to highlight intrinsic artistic craft and form while ruling out such extrinsic matters as morality, psychology, and politics. Even without sampling further the many theories of reading and interpre­ tation presented in this anthology, we can see that there are no easy answers to the question “what is interpretation?” New Criticism has been singled out to demonstrate how a practice of reading might be questioned, but many of the other theories in this anthology could have served equally well. The rela­ tionship between interpretation and reading continues to be a major preoc­ cupation in the field of criticism and theory. All who think critically have an opportunity to engage various theories of reading and to define their own views.

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WHAT IS L I T E R A T U R E ?

Another major question— “what is literature?”— can be, and regularly is, answered by associating literature with such keywords as representation, expression, knowledge, poetic or rhetorical language, genre, text, or discourse. In our ordinary understanding, literature represents life; it holds up, as it were, a mirror to nature and is thus “mimetic/’ The expressive theory of literature, which regards literature as stemming from the authors inner being, similarly depends on a notion of mirroring, though here literature reflects the inner soul rather than the external world of the writer. The didactic theory, which sees literature as a source of knowledge, insight, wisdom, purgation, and perhaps prophecy, is compatible with both the mimetic and the expressive theory: literature can depict external and internal realities while at the same time disseminating valuable knowl­ edge and clarifying emotions. The dominant view of literature as both mimetic and didactic, still alive today, arose with the ancient Greeks and was challenged by the Romantics and then the moderns. Though the the­ ory of literature— or “poetics,” as it is sometimes called— has been a con­ tested topic throughout history, the debate has been especially fierce from the late nineteenth century to the present. Modern theorists often insist that the language of literature, unlike that of newspapers and science, foregrounds poetic effects (particularly tropes and figures) that range from alliteration, assonance, metaphor, and paradox to rhythm and rhyme. In this formalist theory of literature or poetics, nei­ ther depiction of external or internal reality nor knowledge about existence or refined emotion distinguishes literature from ordinary and scientific dis­ course: instead, “literariness” (or “poeticity”) renders literature distinctive and special. This theory first emerged during the nineteenth century when poets such as Edgar Allan Poe and Gerard Manley Hopkins started exploring, some­ times extravagantly, the constituent materials of literature (especially sound effects), turning away from the notion of literature as simply a reliable recorder of nature or source of morality. A similar transformation followed in the visual arts; the postimpressionist painters focused on paint textures, brush strokes, and color intensities rather than seeking photographic reali­ ties. Writers and theorists at the time often felt that to justify literature by pointing to its accuracy and realism was to put it in competition with the sciences, social sciences, journalism, and photography— a competition they believed it could not win. Conversely, by emphasizing the literariness of lit­ erature, they would accord it a distinctive and elevated aesthetic status over competing domains and fields, ensuring its survival and dignity in challeng­ ing times. Such a formalist theory of literature prevailed in the early and mid-twentieth century among Anglo-American New Critics and Slavic for­ malists, some of whom are represented in this anthology. A well-known heuristic device conveniently summarizes all the accounts of literature discussed up to this point. Developed by M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), this study aid pictures the literary “work” at the center of a triangular struc­ ture; the outer three points are occupied by the “universe,” the “artist,” and the “audience.” Mimetic theory emphasizes the relations between the work

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UNIVERSE

T WORK ARTIST

AUDIENCE

and the universe; expressive theory foregrounds the link between work and artist; didactic theory highlights the tie between work and audience. For­ malist theory focuses on the work itself; as we have just seen, it deemphasizes connections between the text and the universe, artist, or audience. Until the early Romantic era, literary theory dealt with the poem’s relation­ ship to the universe and the audience; in the nineteenth century it focused on the artist; and in the twentieth century it turned to the work itself. Most theories of criticism and literature, argues Abrams, juggle these four major elements and orientations, tending to privilege one. This classification scheme and its lessons have proven useful, especially in illustrating basic theoretical orientations and in delineating broad historical trends. But the famous diagram has limitations, as any theorist will tell you. Perhaps the most serious is that it stops with modernism: it predates the appearance of such influential postmodern theoretical movements as struc­ turalism, poststructuralism, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies. Abrams maps a progression from mimesis and didacti­ cism to expressionism to formalism, but recent theory and criticism of litera­ ture have moved on to cultural critique. In the process, theorists have focused in turn on the imitation of reality and its lessons, on inner truths and visions, on poetic techniques and their orchestrations, and on sociohistorical and political representations and their values. In this historical development the “old” problems recede from view but never disappear; instead, they undergo reconfiguration and occupy new conceptual relations. Consider, for instance, the structuralist or semiotic theory of literature that fits all literary texts into genre classifications. According to this per­ spective, a genre is defined by arbitrary sets of conventions, such as those governing the haiku— a poem of seventeen syllables in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. These conventions distance literary writing from ordinary reality, even when the conventions are calculated to give the appearance of direct reportage. In seeing literature as genre consist­ ing of complex sets of codes, the structuralist retains the formalist view of literature as a separate mode of discourse that follows its own artistic rules but adds the sociological concept of convention. Because conventions are not only literary but also linguistic and cultural, literature and society are recon­ nected through discourse. Poststructuralist and deconstructive accounts of literature go one step further by problematizing the notion of mirroring, which, as we have seen, undergirds expressive, didactic, and mimetic theories of literature. They do so through a close and technically complex examination of the workings of language— seen as distant and different from reality, for it necessarily con­ tains distorting rhetorical and genre devices. Language is not a simple trans­ parent medium. Any use of language, no matter how typical or everyday,

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employs some combination of historical conventions and figurative devices, which compromises its transparency. Moreover, language separates from "reality” at the very basic level of the sign because, strictly speaking, words are not things. The four letters b, i} r, d are not an actual feathered creature. In linguistic terminology, neither signi­ f i e s (words) nor signifieds (concepts) are referents (things). Because language consists of “floating signifiers” that are detached from reality, it simulates or summons things. Language deals in effects rather than things. The gaps between signifiers, signifieds, and referents render the truthfulness and reli­ ability of language undecidable (a technical term from mathematics bor­ rowed by poststructuralism). Language is thus, to employ technical deconstructive terms, text or textuality, meaning a complex interweaving of self-referential, undecidable rela­ tionships. In extreme forms, this challenging postmodern theory of literature as textuality views language as thoroughly divorced from reality; in more moderate forms, language maintains a relation to reality, albeit a more or less uncertain one. At stake is literature’s ability to reflect reality or impart reliable knowledge— and the uncertainty raises doubts about its truth claims and about earlier theories of literature. This area of inquiry is com­ monly labeled the “crisis of reference” (or “referentiality”). The dizzying deconstructive view of literature as textuality has been opposed by the widespread poststructuralist theory of literature as discourse, a term associated with the influential work of Michel Foucault. Discourse theorists trace the language of literature to its source in the spoken lan­ guage of everyday social life. Conceived by its many advocates as anti-elitist, this materialist theory of discourse— whether it stems from Foucault, Mikhail M. Bakhtin, black aestheticians, New Historicists, cultural materi­ alists, queer theorists, psychoanalytic critics, or cultural studies scholars (all allotted space in this anthology and discussed later in the introduction)— insists that language is uttered by embodied subjects who are situated his­ torically in contentious social spheres that are regulated by powerful institutions. Significantly, this theory of the social text— of language use as dialogical— gives new life to earlier views of literature as mimetic, expres­ sive, and didactic. Literature, according to these recent discourse theories of the social text, re-presents and refracts reality. Indeed, language itself constitutes reality; it also produces distortions. This is mimesis with a difference: literature repre­ sents reality; but reality is grounded in convention, not nature, and it is sub­ ject to illusion. Similarly, discourse theorists affirm that literature expresses the inner life of authors, but life is understood to be a regulated social phe­ nomenon that differs with the time, location, and group of the author. In place of the solitary poet giving unique expression to truths universal to all humankind, we find in recent discourse theories an embattled “scriptor” cre­ atively mixing and matching cultural codes derived from her or his situation, community, and tradition. In this account literature retains didactic as well as mimetic and expressive powers. In addition, the knowledge it conveys is of the “cultural unconscious”— that is, of the archive of historical words, symbols, codes, instincts, wishes, and conflicts characteristic of a people and its era. To treat discourse as social text pluralizes the theory of literature, making a single universal or

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totalizing humanist theory of literature, good for all times and places, appear reductive. In posthumanist thinking, literatures replace literature. Theories of literature and theories of reading have affinities with one another. Here are four instances. First, the formalist idea of literature as a well-made artistic object corresponds to the notion of reading as careful explication and evaluation of dense poetic style. Second, when viewed as the spiritual expression of a gifted seer, poetry elicits a biographical approach to criticism focused on the poet s inner development. Third, dense historical symbolic works presuppose a theory of reading as exegesis or decipherment. Fourth, literature conceived as social text or dialogical discourse calls for cultural critique. While we can separate theories of literature from theories of interpretation, they often work hand in hand.

C L A S S I C A L T H E O R Y AND C R I T I C I S M

Anthologies covering the history of theory and criticism usually begin with the classical theorists, and rightly so, because their influence on its devel­ opment has continued up to the present. The most influential classical theorists in Western culture are Plato and Aristotle, followed distantly by Horace. Recently, a renewed interest in rhetoric has brought Gorgias, Quin­ tilian, and others into the picture— a change that illustrates the mutability of the canon of theory. Taken together, the classical theorists represent a wide range of opinions about literature and its significance developed over a mil­ lennium (from the fifth century b . c . e . to the fifth century c.E.). To sample their groundbreaking work, we will consider here some of their opinions on two leading, often interrelated issues of their time: literary mimesis and didacticism. On these two issues, Plato and his student Aristotle present the bestknown views. Both agree that mimesis (imitation or representation) is a key feature of poetry, but they conceive of and evaluate it differently. Plato has his spokesperson Socrates disapprove of poetrys imitation of reality on the grounds that poetry cannot depict truth and teach morality and that it is irrational— based on inspiration, not knowledge. As an idealist philosopher, he locates reality in a transcendent world of eternal Forms or Ideas that only reason can properly apprehend; this world is distinct from the illusory phe­ nomenal world of our senses, which poetry represents. For Plato, the mate­ rial world is at best an imperfect copy of the original transcendent world of Ideas, and poetry is but a degraded copy of a copy. He concludes that poetic representation threatens social stability by offering false images and unsuit­ able role models. In R epublic, therefore, he has Socrates recommend that it be banished from the ideal society, except perhaps for poetry that praises the gods and avoids representing them in an unseemly fashion. Plato takes this severe position in part because he is reacting against the views of earlier sophists such as Gorgias and Thrasymachus, whom he rep­ resents as concerned less with truth than with persuasion. They saw lan­ guage as not simply representing reality but in effect producing reality by shaping the beliefs of an audience. As a result, in oratory as well as in poetry, what matters most is bringing a particular audience to hold a specific point of view, not imitating an absolute truth. Some sophists even boasted that

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in a debate they could argue any side of an issue and win. Later rhetori­ cians such as Quintilian emphasized that the good orator was also a morally good person, but truth and honesty apparently mattered little to fifth-century Greek sophists, who significantly influenced the formation of Plato’s ethical position. Less transcendental than Plato and Socrates, and more concerned with truth than the sophists, Aristotle asserts that poetic imitation can reveal truth precisely because it does not passively copy appearances: it is a more creative act. Poetry in this view is an organized whole, whose parts are organically related and subordinated to a single objective. Because he focuses on tragic drama, Aristotle takes plot as the major example of the organization of poetry. For him, plot is not a random sequence of incidents but a unified whole with a beginning, middle, and end structured by logical necessity. Unlike history, which is built on accidental details, poetry rises above the description of particulars to represent universal truths about nature. This new view of imitation springs from Aristotle’s belief that human beings have a natural instinct for imitation, which is generally pleasurable and connected with learning. Later developments in classical theory and criticism build on the ground­ breaking work of the Greek rhetoricians, Plato, and Aristotle. Horace, a Roman poet, follows Aristotle in asserting that poets can and must imitate nature, adding that it is also important for young poets to imitate great writ­ ers. As he approves of poetic imitation, Horace stresses morality and deco­ rum. For him, the pleasures of imitation are best yoked with moral teaching: he declares that the primary function of poetry is to combine “pleasure with usefulness.” This famous Horatian maxim has exerted considerable influ­ ence on all subsequent theorizing.

M E D I E V A L T H E O R Y AND C R I T I C I S M

Spanning the course of a millennium (from the fifth through the fifteenth century), medieval theory and criticism contain numerous documents related to the practices of reading and interpretation, to the theory of language, and to the nature and use of literature. Much medieval literary theory evolved out of the interpretation of sacred Scriptures. Drawing on the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and his disciple Proclus, medieval writers explored how to read the Book of God’s Word (the Bible) as a divinely authorized representation of the Book of God’s Works (nature). Hugh of St. Victor, for instance, describes interpretation as the reflection, or imitation, of God’s works in his words. For Hugh, the whole visible world is a book written by the finger of God. Thus, in reading one discovers not a pale imitation of nature, as Plato believed, but the ways in which reading a text and reading the world are parallel activities. This medieval theory of hermeneutics (the art and science of interpreta­ tion) is grounded in Augustine’s notion that human language is a divinely ordained reflection of the Logos (the Word of God), which is said to guaran­ tee the unity of meaning in the Bible and the book of nature, even when that meaning is not readily discernible. Language truthfully portrays the world as it is, in spite of the confusion caused by the multiplication of tongues at

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Babel. According to Augustine, language exists only to convey a meaning that preexists it; it cannot be reflexive or playful (as it may be in poetry); and it must efface itself in pointing to the preexistent truth it represents. Lan­ guage is “transparent.” Most medieval writers accepted the Augustinian theory of language, and they also shared Augustine’s deep distrust of poetic fables and figurative lan­ guage. But they faced serious theoretical contradictions. Try as they might to assert the “truth” of language and the uselessness of poetic fictions, medieval writers could not overlook the presence of both poetry and fables in the mas­ ter text of Christianity, the Bible. The most common if still not entirely satis­ factory response was to argue that the transcendental majesty of God could be represented only indirectly, through poetic or figurative language. In this view, the heroic songs and psalms of the Old Testament, as well as Christ’s parables in the New Testament, function as metaphoric mediations, creating similitudes between this world and the next. Such similitudes are necessary, Augustine argues, so that “by means of corporeal and temporal things we may comprehend the eternal and spiritual.” Ultimately, the medieval defense of poetry was based on Macrobius’s distinction between fables that “merely gratify the ear” and those that “encourage the reader to good works.” In exploring such issues, medieval writers relied primarily on the textual techniques of exegesis. Particularly important were the exegetical genres of the gloss and the commentary, derived from the works of ancient grammar­ ians and expanded for explication of the Bible. Glosses are elucidations of individual words or phrases, written in the margins or between the lines of a text; commentaries are much more extensive textual expositions, appearing at first as local and marginal remarks (like footnotes) but later produced as freestanding continuous texts (for example, Bernardus Sylvestris’s twelfthcentury Com mentary on the First Six Books o f Virgil’s “A en eid”). Known as the enarratio poetarum (exposition of the poets), these interpretive genres shaped the basic approach to all authoritative texts, which were transmit­ ted in manuscripts filled with glosses and commentary that retained space for future textual exegesis. The dominant technique of medieval gloss and commentary is allegory, a method of reading texts for their underlying esoteric meanings. Quintilian’s definition of allegory as meaning “one thing in the words, another in the senses” was the basis of medieval definitions of allegory; but what was for him a figure of speech became, when combined with the Augustinian belief that poetry is a revelation of an otherwise inaccessible transcendent world, a critical tool to explain and control the dissemination of meanings in sacred Scriptures. Only later would it become a literary genre. Following Quintilian, medieval writers eventually elaborated four levels of allegorical interpreta­ tion to be used in the study of the Bible: the literal, or historical; the allegori­ cal, or spiritual; the tropological, or moral; and the anagogical, or mystical. In the New Testament story of Christ’s raising of Lazarus from the dead, for example, the medieval exegete would recognize first that, on the literal level, the story is a record of an event that actually took place. On the allegorical level, the story prefigures Christ’s death, descent into hell, and resurrection. On the tropological level, it represents the sacrament of Penance, whereby the individual soul is raised from the death of sin. And on the anagogical level, it portrays the resurrection of the body after the Last Judgment.

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By the twelfth century, medieval writers had extended allegorical biblical interpretation to the study of pagan mythologies and great classical works of art, such as Virgil’s epic poem, the A eneid. Medieval Christians could not literally accept pagan gods, nor could they simply read the stories as “fables,” but they could see them as expressions of philosophical ideas. Eventually, allegorical interpretation was applied to contemporary writing, as in Dante’s reading of his Divine Comedy in “Letter to Can Grande.” Although it slowly passed out of favor after the Middle Ages, allegorical interpretation reemerged as a significant influence in the late twentieth century— for example, in the work of Northrop Frye and Fredric Jameson, both of whom developed schemes for interpreting texts based on multiple levels of interpretation. Medieval theory and criticism, significantly, are also concerned with pre­ scriptive poetics: that is, with how to write poetry. Inspired by Horace’s Ars Poetica, this pragmatic criticism synthesizes classical views on rhetoric, grammar, and style, often taking the form of guides to composition. For instance, the medieval Horatian poet-critic Geoffrey of Vinsauf adopts and revises Horace’s fundamental principle of decorum for a medieval audience. For Geoffrey, the poet’s objective is not to invent new subject matter but to develop new ways of treating traditional themes. In this regard, the poet is like the medieval exegete, who preserves the past and develops intricate ways of extending it. The poet has definite roles to play in the pursuit of innovation as well as traditional craft.

RENAISSANCE AND NEOCLASSICAL THEORY AND CRI TI CI S M While Renaissance and neoclassical literary theory and criticism display a renewed interest in Greek and Latin classics, they also manifest a new concern with vernacular languages and national literatures. Spanning the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the debates between the ancients and the moderns began in Italy and extended throughout western Europe, setting the framework for much of the theory and criticism of the time— and addressing problems that are still with us today. The defenders of the ancients directed attention to classical genres such as tragic drama and epic, holding them up as models for composition. At first, the ideal was not just to imitate the genres of antiquity but to use their languages, especially Latin. The argument for strictly adhering to classical forms grew out of a unique synthesis of Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars Poetica. From the Poetics, Renaissance critics developed an appreciation for isolating and distinguishing genres, which they tended to treat prescriptively rather than descriptively. The most famous instance is the doctrine of the “three unities” (action, place, and time), which extrapolates from Aristotle’s notion of the unity of action to demand that dramas have not only one action but also one setting and a brief span of fictional time (not exceeding one day). Here Aristotle’s original description of a body of preexisting Greek tragedies is turned into a set of rules for the writing of plays. This position, which first emerged in the commentaries on Aristotle by the Italian Renais­ sance critic Ludovico Castelvetro, found its most influential expression a

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century later in the critical writings of the neoclassical French dramatist Pierre Corneille and the English poet John Dryden— both of whom in their creative works were dedicated to their native languages and literatures and thus combined modern and ancient perspectives. Joined to the doctrine of the three unities was a special Horatian concern with ‘Verisimilitude.” In practice, this meant depicting historical realities and facts and excluding fantastic beings and events, except those that could be explained by Christian beliefs, such as the actions of God and demons. Critics often pointed to significant passages in Horace that stressed the importance of decorum and of copying the techniques and strategies of one’s accomplished literary predecessors. The general sense was that by imi­ tating classics, modern Renaissance and neoclassical writers were also imitating nature. This position was strongly advocated by the Italian critic Julius Caesar Scaliger and was later summed up memorably in one of the many witty neoclassical couplets of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism. Pope notes that the youthful poet Virgil scorned to represent anything except nature when he set out to write the Aeneid: “But when t’examine ev’ry Part he came, / Nature and H om er were, he found, the sam e.” Pope concludes from Virgil’s example, “Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem; /To copy Nature is to copy T hem .” In contrast to the ancients, the moderns in the debates not only appreci­ ated but championed new literary forms that departed from the various clas­ sical genres. One among many examples is Giambattista Giraldi’s defense of the new Renaissance romantic epic, epitomized by Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and later by Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Q ueene. Critics of these long poems pointed out that they lacked unity and verisimilitude and that they deviated markedly from the classical epic, but Giraldi praised the variety of Ariosto’s poem as well as its “marvelous” incidents, claiming that it constituted a new genre not subject to classical rules. In a parallel move, Giacopo Mazzoni supported Dante’s dream allegory in the Divine Com edy, stressing the importance of purely imaginary imitation. Informing both Mazzoni’s and Giraldi’s arguments is a view of the poet’s creative powers as unbounded. Sir Philip Sidney captured the essence of this position, which set the stage for Shakespeare, when he stated, “Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done, neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely: her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.” With this defense by the moderns of the unfettered powers of the poet also came a defense of the use of vernacular languages in place of Latin. Critics and poets began to believe that they could rival the great literary achievements of Greece and Rome with their respective native languages. This trend began as early as Dante, whose Divine Com edy was composed in Italian, but in the Renaissance it spread across western Europe. The Italian language was defended by Giraldi and Mazzoni, the French language by Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard, and the English language by Sid­ ney and George Puttenham. The turn to the vernacular reflected the grow­ ing national consciousness of the time and an increasing preoccupation with distinct national literary traditions.

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R O M A N T I C T H E O R Y AND C R I T I C I S M

The Romantic movement in the arts developed in the latter half of the eigh­ teenth century, inspired in part by the American and French Revolutions, and it flourished in the early nineteenth century, spreading throughout Europe and the New World. Although it manifests a variety of forms in specific social and historical contexts, the major characteristic of Romanti­ cism is arguably its focus on the individual. Romantic theory was influ­ enced by the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s attention to the ways in which subjectivity determines our apprehension of the world. It was also influ­ enced by the developing regard for individual sensibility and originality, a concern first manifested during the mid-eighteenth century. In Romantic theory and criticism, emphasis on the individual led to an unprecedented focus on poetry as the personal expression of the poet— a development that aimed to counter the decorum, traditionalism, and preoc­ cupation with genre that was characteristic of neoclassicism. Romantic poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley all saw their art as intimately bound up with their personal impressions, moods, feelings, and sentiments, while Romantic critics such as Schleiermacher called for readers’ sympathetic identification with the author. In discussions of poetry, Romantics drew attention to how the imagina­ tion transforms and synthesizes discrete sense perceptions, creating unique organic poems. Perhaps the most celebrated instance of this focus appears in Biographia Literaria, where Samuel Taylor Coleridge claims that the poet “diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclu­ sively appropriated the name of imagination.” This Romantic view of the poem as an organic form developed by the individual imagination was con­ trary to the neoclassical dictate that artists must imitate previous works of art and follow the rules of their genre. As exemplified by Coleridge, Eliza­ beth Robinson Montagu, and others, it led to a renewed appreciation of the unique creative genius of Shakespeare, whose unusual and irregular plays were often criticized by neoclassical theorists for ignoring the unities of action, time, and place. Later, the Romantic concept of organic form, shorn of theorizing about the author, would inspire early twentieth-century for­ malist theories of intricate poetic structure and coherence. The Romantic fascination with the synthesizing power of the imagina­ tion paralleled an abiding concern with the symbol, displayed most famously in the writings of Coleridge and Ralph Waldo Emerson. For the Romantics, the poetic symbol expressed universal ideas through particular concrete details, images, and metaphors. Unlike allegory, which they condemned as a mechanical imposition of meaning and morality onto poetry, the poetic symbol manifested its meaning organically, providing aesthetic pleasure and beauty as well as moral truth. According to Friedrich von Schiller, the process of reading a poem was an experience of “play”— a serious play that reconciled the particular and the general and brought an uplifting sense of freedom to the reader and the poet, saving them from the alienation and despair of the modern world. For the Romantics, poetry— through the symbol— humanized an increasingly dehumanized world.

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The genre of choice during the Romantic era in England was the lyric poem, which displaced the epic poem favored by neoclassical writers. Long Romantic poems tended to be arrangements of lyric pieces, as in Word­ sworth’s Prelude. Of all the available genres, the lyric poem was best suited for the expression of individual emotion. Not uncommonly, the lyric appeared as a “fragment,” a technique that further stressed the break with neoclassi­ cism, which valued unity, wholeness, and rational design. Some lyrics aimed to attain the sublime, associated with robust imaginative grandeur, infinity, irrationality, plus fear and terror, which was achieved less through sophis­ ticated style and rhetoric (as in the classical writer Longinus, the earliest theorist of the sublime) than by the force of individual genius. The long struggle of the novel to be regarded as a serious literary form as yet had little effect on theory and criticism, though this genre (especially the Gothic novel) thrived during the Romantic period. The classical hierar­ chy of literary genres— epic followed by tragic drama and then by lyric poetry— left little room for the novel until Victorian times. Even today the novel often cedes pride of place in literary history to epic poetry and tragic drama, though perhaps no longer to lyric poetry. A final significant trait of Romantic theory was an emphasis on historical stages of development. The changing social, political, and economic condi­ tions around them prompted many thinkers to ponder literary and cultural history. In theory and criticism, such attention led to repeated attempts— by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G. W. F. Hegel, Germaine de Stael, and others— to correlate specific forms of literature and the arts to specific historical peri­ ods. Often, poetry was identified— as it had earlier been by Giambattista Vico— with “primitive” forms of society, in which people were purportedly less rational and more intuitive. This concern with the dynamics of history was to have a significant impact on the influential work of Karl Marx.

MARXISM

From ancient times, literature and the arts have portrayed, and criticism and theory have discussed, differences in people’s social class and history. But with the spread and maturation of capitalism through its various stages, economic and other disparities have more visibly polarized wealthy and poor classes, city residents and ghetto dwellers, inhabitants of the first and third worlds, whites and people of color, men and women. Class formations, class consciousness, and class tensions form part of the historical experience of modernization, and theory and criticism have been grappling with these and related issues for several centuries now. Many of the current concepts, terms, and issues related to social class derive from Marxist criticism, a diverse and influential source for literary and cultural theory that stems from the work of the nineteenth-century Ger­ man philosopher and economist Karl Marx. One of its grounding concepts is Marx’s theory of “modes of production.” According to Marxism, human his­ tory is divided into seven successive historical modes of production— tribal hordes, Neolithic kinship societies, oriental despotism, ancient slaveholding societies, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. Class conflict within a specific mode of production follows a basic overall pattern. The capitalist

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or bourgeois mode of modern times has been characterized mainly by the conflict between the industrial working class (the proletariat, or labor) and the owners and manipulators of the means of production (the bourgeoisie). Other classes, including the unemployed and criminals (the lumpenproletariat) as well as the dwindling aristocracy, watch this conflict from the histori­ cal sidelines. Sooner or later, Marx predicted, international labor will win and the communist mode of production will emerge triumphant, leading to a society free from rampant inequality, exploitation, and class struggle. According to Marxist theory, the socioeconomic elements of society con­ stitute its base (or foundation), while its cultural spheres— specifically its politics, law, religion, philosophy, and arts— compose its superstructure. Ideology consists of the ideas, beliefs, forms, and values of the ruling class that circulate through all the cultural spheres. Members of the working class who subscribe to bourgeois ideas and values exhibit “false conscious­ ness,” since such values ignore the socioeconomic realities of their own working-class lives. Hegemony designates the continuous ideological domi­ nation of all classes by the ruling bloc through such nonviolent stabilizing and consensus-building institutions as church, school, family, the media, the mainstream arts, trade unions, business interests, and technoscientific estab­ lishments. These institutions are what Louis Althusser, a leading Marxist theorist, calls “Ideological State Apparatuses” (ISAs): they manage instability and conflict to impose and maintain social order, working for the most part outside of official state power. Culture and the arts in the Marxist view are neither innocent entertain­ ment nor independent of social forces; they play a significant role in trans­ mitting ideology and shoring up the hegemonic order. This is not to say that artists and intellectuals are merely mouthpieces of the dominant social class or bloc, because many explicitly protest the ruling systems and implicitly address their contradictions and shortcomings. The ideological orientations of a literary work can be complicated: a text often contains mixed and con­ tradictory messages that reflect its broad social milieu rather than simply its authors personal philosophy. From a Marxist perspective, artistic works fre­ quently present fugitive, alternative, and counterhegemonic images some­ times suggesting liberatory possibilities and lending them a socially critical undertone. Viewed from the vantage point of stylistics (the branch of linguistics that analyzes literary style), the conflicts of classes and groups in society produce what Bakhtin famously called “heteroglossia”— that is, the complex stratifi­ cation of a language like English into different dialects, generational slangs, professional argots, speech genres, group codes, literary genres, and class mannerisms. Many novels (for example, James Joyce s Ulysses) incorporate such social conflicts in the form of heteroglot discourse, a carnivalization of different “languages” that revolt against official style. With the rise of consumer and multinational capitalism, many have found Karl Marxs concepts of the commodity, commodity fetishism , and com m odi­ ficatio n increasingly useful for understanding culture and society, and thus the terms often appear in the writings of contemporary critics and theorists. Commodities are goods or services produced primarily for monetary exchange and profit— a carpenter may, for example, build a table to sell, not to use. For him or her, this commodity has exchange value, not use value. Labor

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itself has come to be bought and sold in a money economy; rather than being applied by isolated workers during the production of goods for personal use, it is more typically used in the service of another to earn and then exchange money for items necessary for subsistence. The fetishism of the commodity describes both our fascination as we stand before a glittering array of products in a store and our forgetting the paid labor of workers that went into the products. This displacement of use value from the commodity— its transformation into cash exchange— results in the alienation of workers from their own labor: carpenters in the factory care little about the tables they assemble. Moreover, the extraction of high rates of profit by owners from their workers’ labor results in exploitation, which is a key element of commodity exchange. The term com m odification names this whole accelcrating phenomenon of producing goods and services not for their use value but their exchange value, a phenomenon that threatens to overtake every sphere of life in our time. From pollution credits to underground fash­ ion and music to sexual mates, everything and anything can be purchased as a commodity. Marxist critics complain that commodification promotes reification, the tendency to view people and human relations as things or objects with price tags. In the arts, for instance, commodification leads artists to hawk their works anxiously to gain profits in an impersonal, competitive market, and it has positioned critics as the hired advisers to moneyed collectors. Observ­ ing this process, theorists wonder if criticism and the arts can any longer possess a socially critical dimension. Contemporary Marxist critics and cultural studies scholars (who are indebted to Marxism) increasingly worry about the co-optation by the mar­ ket (and the media) of every form of resistance, ranging across the arts and popular culture. If outrageous radical vanguard movements such as surreal­ ism, punk, and gangsta rap can become profitable commodities, is opposi­ tion to hegemony possible? The agencies of commodification and hegemonic incorporation threaten to defuse the radical force of all subversive artistic practices, transforming them into hot news stories and merchandise destined for the market economy. Marxist criticism and cultural studies aim their crit­ ical inquiries at this system and its dynamics.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

It is often said that Sigmund Freud discovered the unconscious, but it is more accurate to say that he and other psychoanalysts mapped its spaces and mechanisms. The findings of psychoanalysis have filtered into literary and cultural criticism and theory, providing a battery of terms, concepts, and problems that reach beyond those critics who describe themselves as psychoanalytic. According to psychoanalysis, the human psyche consists of unconscious and conscious spheres, with most of its contents lodged out of sight in the unconscious and covered over by a relatively smaller and less dense con­ sciousness. The keys to the dark and inaccessible unconscious lie, psycho­ analysts say, in free association, fantasies, slips of the tongue (so-called Freudian slips), and especially dreams, all of which reveal deeply buried,

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repressed, and self-censored wishes. The techniques used to interpret such unconscious materials, particularly dreams, have been useful to literary and cultural critics as well as psychoanalysts, since they are all in the business of deciphering cryptic symbolic texts. The nightly formation of dreams, or the dream -work in Freudian termi­ nology, involves the censorship of unconscious wishes (frequently sexual) that undergo four kinds of deliberate, positive distortion on their way to consciousness: condensation, displacement, symbolization, and secondary revision or elaboration. These unconscious processes explain why dreams usually emerge as garbled “nonsense.” The task of the psychoanalyst is, with the help of the patient, to make sense of dream texts. Here, psychoanalysis asserts that nonsense is meaningful and that distortion is inescapable and creative. Both assertions are taken seriously by many critics and theorists as they work to understand texts, especially since literary discourses are some­ times as seemingly nonsensical and distorted as dreams. Psychoanalytic decoding of symbols has proved particularly illuminating to critics, including those followers of Carl Jung who have made inventories of archetypes— universal symbols such as the garden and the desert, water and fire, the hero and the monster, the river journey and the ordeal, birth and death— that they believe are stored in humanity’s collective unconscious. Many highly influential modern and postmodern theories of literature are indebted to psychoanalysis and its foundational concept of the uncon­ scious. Two examples of such psychopoetics— Harold Blooms “anxiety of influence” and French feminism’s ecriture fem in in e— illustrate the richness and complexity of psychoanalytic theories. According to Bloom, each major poet in the Anglo-American tradition from the early Romantics to the late modernists has suffered a devastating yet productive anxiety of influence, as the newcomer poet selects a role model both to imitate and to compete against, wishing ultimately to emerge as a major poet who triumphs over (but triumphs because of) the poetic precursor. Prior to the neoclassical and Romantic periods, literary influence was almost entirely beneficial (as in the case, say, of Spenser’s influence on Milton). With the rise of the sub­ jective lyric poem as a major genre, influence became baleful, involving the aspiring poet’s primal repression of the precursor plus a series of later psy­ chological defenses against this parent figure, including masochistic rever­ sals, sublimations, introjections, regressions, and projections. These entail what Bloom calls “misprision” (mistaking, misreading, misinterpreting), the inescapable and necessary creative distortion enacted unconsciously in the newcomer’s poems in imitation of, and competition with, the loved but hated precursor. Bloom has been criticized for focusing on competition instead of collaboration, for favoring canonical poets over less well known poets, and for omitting nearly all writing by women, but Bloom’s critics have rarely questioned the usefulness of his theoretical understanding of distortion or of unconscious repression, two psychoanalytical concepts widely used in the field of theory and criticism. The literary theory of ecriture fem inin e (feminine/female writing) derives from the work of the celebrated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as creatively revised by the French feminist Helene Cixous. According to Lacan’s chal­ lenging theory, an infant moves during its earliest psychosocial development from an “Imaginary order”— a mother-centered, non subjugated, presymbolic,

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pre-oedipal space of bodily drives and rhythms (linked with the unconscious)— to a “Symbolic order” of separation between self and (m)other, of law and patriarchal social codes, and of loss and associated desire (linked with con­ sciousness). Ecriture fem in in e is a radical, disruptive mode of “feminine” writing that is opposed to patriarchal discourse with its rigid grammar, bound­ aries, and categories; tapping into the Imaginary, it gives voice to the uncon­ scious, the body, the nonsubjective, and polymorphous drives. Even though such feminine writing can be produced by male as well as female writers (for example, by Jean Genet and James Joyce), it is a psychopoetics posi­ tioned by Cixous explicitly against patriarchal values and practices. In both the anxiety of influence and ecriture fem in in e, as in psychoanaly­ sis generally, Freud’s theory of the “Oedipus complex” plays a central role. According to this theory, an infant must successfully complete various stages of development (oral, anal, oedipal) to ensure later psychological well-being. In the oedipal stage, the (male) child must separate from the mother and identify with the father on his way to entering the Symbolic order. The Oedipus complex is displayed by those males whose failure to negotiate the oedipal stage of development leaves them deeply attached to their mothers and often feeling rivalry with their fathers. Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence presents a parallel rivalry with the father. And ecriture fem in in e is a feminist effort to reconceive the pre-oedipal sphere as a highly positive source of creativity and liberation, rather than simply an infantile domain of irrational instincts that we must abandon. Perhaps the most famous contemporary revision of Freudian oedipal theory appears in Gilles Deleuze and Felix G uattari’s Marxist and psy­ choanalytical A nti-O edipus, a book that criticizes many aspects of Freud’s work— notably, the bourgeois presupposition that the nuclear family is the universal framework for all normal human development. According to Deleuze and Guattari, Freudian theory subjugates the dis­ ruptive unconscious— with its often antisocial desires and flows— to the hegemonic order of the patriarchal family, the rule of law, and the capitalist economy. Freud’s psychoanalysis, focused as it is on the oedipal triangle, is unable to acknowledge the truly complex nature of subjectivity, seen by Deleuze and Guattari as an open-ended process of becoming in which mul­ tiple contradictory positions and roles coexist and clash.

FORM ALISM Formalist criticism rose to prominence in the early twentieth century, usually defining itself as objective in opposition to subjectivist theories of literature such as critical impressionism, which was perceived to be both solipsistic and relativistic. Formalist criticism is not interested in the feel­ ings of poets, the individual responses of readers, or representations of “reality”; instead, it attends to artistic structure and form. It privileges the work over against the artist, audience, and universe. The two best-known schools of formalist criticism are Anglo-American New Criticism and Rus­ sian formalism. As discussed above, New Critics approach literature— particularly poetry— as an autonomous entity. They focus on the form of the literary object,

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self-consciously separating literary criticism from the study of sources, biography, reception, social and historical contexts, politics, and other ‘ extrinsic” matters. They depersonalize poetry and attribute its speaking not to the poet but to the so-called persona (an abstract dramatic character internal to the work). They advocate “intrinsic” analysis or “close reading” (explication) that avoids paraphrase and thematic statements, examining instead the complex stylistic orchestrations that compose poetry. What New Critics seek in their studies of poetic form is a set of “organic” rela­ tionships of literary elements (images, symbols, tropes, features of genre and style, settings, and tones), whose overall unity often depends on artful ambiguity, paradox, or irony. This special state of aesthetic suspension that underwrites the all-important unity— reminiscent of Kant’s earlier “purpo­ siveness without purpose” and Coleridges “balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities”— is for them a defining feature of poetry. It distinguishes the literary from the more ordinary uses of language found in journalism, everyday speech, scientific writing, and so on, where direct communication, not highly wrought aesthetic form, is most important. Similarly, Russian formalist critics such as Roman Jakobson and Boris Eichenbaum distinguish between the literary and the nonliterary. They view literature primarily as a verbal art, rather than as a reflection of reality or an expression of emotions. Separating literary criticism from such fields as psy­ chology, sociology, and intellectual history, they focus on the distinguishing features of literature, its “literariness.” What most separates literature from other modes of discourse is that it draws attention to its own medium, that is, to a complex texture of formal devices and strategies that include versifi­ cation, style, and narrative structure. Whereas New Critics study the artful convergence of elements in a literary structure (aesthetic unity), Russian for­ malists examine the creative deviation of elements from the historical back­ ground of literary norms and conventions. The importance of formalism, especially the Anglo-American variety, cannot be underestimated in Anglophone spheres. Because it is a dominant mode of modern criticism against which much later postmodern theory typically defines itself in whole or in part, we refer to it later in this intro­ duction to develop a fuller account.

REC EPTIO N THEORY AND H ERM EN EU TIC S Contemporary critical theory offers a rich panoply of types of readers— ideal readers, superreaders, implied readers, virtual readers, real readers, historical readers, resisting readers, critical readers, and more. Such terms are usually found in reader-response theory and reception aesthetics, realms that focus on theories of readers and meaning. In reading a novel, we can sometimes extrapolate from it an implied reader, a figure whom the text seems to be addressing and who occasionally func­ tions as a character in the work (for example, the characters to whom Marlow tells his story in Joseph Conrad’s Heart o f Darkness). An implied reader dif­ fers both from a virtual reader, to whom the text is vaguely addressed by the author, and from a historical reader, who actually reads the text at the time of its publication. The hypothetical perfect decoder of the work, who knows

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everything necessary to make sense of it, is the ideal reader; but the most original and innovative texts require a superreader, a special ideal reader endowed not only with extensive linguistic and literary knowledge but also with superior aesthetic sensibility. Both the critical and the resisting reader, situated in definite historical moments and possessing strong values and interests, find themselves opposing and interrogating texts (imagine an aver­ age American or Briton today reading Hitler's Mein Kam pf). Real readers are people whose actual responses to novels, plays, poems, and other texts have been recorded by theorists and, in some cases, analyzed for their individual styles and for the personal psychological quirks that they reveal. Theories of meaning accompany these accounts of various readers. Some reader-response theories construe meaning as an entity located in the text or in a paraphrase of the text and thus view readers as discovering objective textual meanings. But other reader-response theories argue that insofar as reading occurs through time and involves the continuous adjustment of perceptions, ideas, feelings, and evaluations, the meaning of a work is the moment-by-moment experience of it, not something separate or left over. Meaning is therefore a process, not a product; it is an event, not a retro­ spective reconstruction or intellectual reformulation. This subjectivist the­ ory of meaning has limitations, however: it endorses the idea of reading as private consumption, and it construes experience as a straightforward, unconditioned, conscious, and knowable process. Some reception theorists see meaning as a production dependent on pre­ existing social codes and protocols of interpretation. In this view, every interpretive community— for example, psychoanalytical critics— employs a particular set of interpretive strategies for (re)writing (that is, producing) texts and for constituting their properties, intentions, and meanings. Such preestablished strategies determine the shape of meaning, which is neither prior to nor independent of the act of interpretation. The New Critics approach meaning differently. They famously warn against the “heresy of paraphrase,” emphasizing that it is a mistake for a reader to paraphrase a work’s content in order to distill its propositional meaning. Textual paraphrases usually end up being moral or utilitarian statements, putting literature on a level and in competition with other disciplines such as philosophy, religion, or politics. By invoking the “affective fallacy” and “intentional fallacy,” two related and equally famous New Critical concepts, they forbid us to locate meaning in the emotional responses of the reader or in the intentions of the author, respectively. According to the New Critics, the literary artifact does not need the support of such external agents if it is well made. The sense of meaning becomes complex and abstract for these formalists. On the one hand, it is a secondary, relatively unimportant feature of literary structure; on the other, it is an aesthetic concept of organic unity that reconciles textual incongruities with the aid of irony, paradox, and ambi­ guity. New Criticism is celebrated for telling us what meaning is not: it is not propositional truth, nor the author’s intention, nor a reader’s response. To clarify the concept, some theorists, such as the hermeneuticist E. D. Hirsch Jr., have added the notion of significance. While significance changes, meaning does not. Here meaning is construed as a fixed, self-identical, reproducible object derived from the author’s intention. Significance, which builds on meaning, adds the reader’s personal associations, interests, values,

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and contexts. Over time a text may come to have a different significance but not a different meaning. The reader therefore operates on two levels, one sub­ jective and one objective, with the latter seen as higher according to Hirsch. Meaning is often understood as having multiple levels, with the reader playing different roles as part of one complicated task. Consider approaches as different as the medieval hermeneutical division of textual meaning into four levels (literal, allegorical, moral, mystical), which emphasizes the spir­ itual realm, and Fredric Jameson's Marxist attention to three horizons of meaning (social stratification, class struggle, mode of production), which aims to discover the critical utopian elements of cultural texts. Such levels or horizons inevitably are set in hierarchies, a process that leads to dis­ agreements among theorists as they argue over which should take priority. Hermencutics is a discipline that studies understanding and textual inter­ pretation, including scriptural, literary, and legal discourses. Though it spans classical to contemporary times, the dominant tradition stems from modern German philosophy, notably the works of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heideg­ ger, and Gadamer. The conservative philological tradition of Schleiermacher and Hirsch regards meaning as both stable and changeable, the result of objective and personal interpretations, textual reconstruction, and psycho­ logical identifications. But priority is placed firmly on objective historical reconstruction and fixed meaning, not on secondary private associations. The liberal phenomenological tradition, on the other hand, considers mean­ ing an intimate encounter, an open-ended performance, an interested and careful interaction rooted in life experience and expectations. It has interest neither in impersonal, objective textual reconstruction nor in the quest for valid methods to ensure the one correct interpretation. A very influential contribution of hermeneutics to contemporary theory of interpretation is Paul Ricoeur’s distinction between negative suspicious and positive restorative interpretation. Associated with Marxism, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism, the “hermeneutics of suspicion” aims to demystify illusions— for example, to uncover unconscious motivations, to reveal ideol­ ogy, to deconstruct traditional binary concepts. Conversely, positive herme­ neutics seeks to provide access to essential sources of life, such as utopian impulses, possibilities of happiness, communal dialogue. Near the end of The Political Unconscious, Jameson extends Ricoeur and declares that “a Marxist negative hermeneutic, a Marxist practice of ideological analysis proper, must in the practical work of reading and interpretation be exercised simultane­ ously with a Marxist positive hermeneutic, or a decipherment of the Utopian impulses of these same still ideological cultural texts.” To the scrupulous, attentive, historically positioned general reader of hermeneutics, philological and phenomenological, Jameson adds the future-oriented political reader. With the turn of literary studies to cultural studies in recent decades, reader-response criticism and theory morphed into broader reception and audi­ ence studies. Here the focus is on nonacademic, nonelite vernacular interpre­ tive communities and the reading strategies they deploy. Typical groups investigated include women's reading clubs dedicated to popular literature (e.g., romance novels), fan subcultures devoted to specific television series or movies such as Star Trek, and ’zine communities built up around particular music bands. In this work, cultural studies researchers use ethnographic and participant-observer methods borrowed from sociology, privileging sympa­

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thetic insiders views of underground, alternative, and deviant reading com­ munities. In studying a reading club of forty-two lower-middle-class heterosexual women from the Midwest in Reading the Rom ance, Janice Rad­ way documented a wide range of nonacademic reading practices. Consumers of romance novels, it turns out, read rapidly, often skip to the end, pay no attention to literary style, ignore critical distance and objectivity, identify strongly with characters (especially heroines), and care most about story and plot line. They share strong dislikes, which is to say they have prescriptive criteria: no violent heroes, weak heroines, pornography, unhappy or ambigu­ ous endings. Such vernacular readers possess standards that enable them to distinguish good from bad romance. For the members of this group, meaning fuses public and private feelings connected to the compensatory utopian dimensions of romance fiction. This genre of literature is set against a world of often nonexpressive, ungentle husbands preoccupied with work and sports. Here meaning is tied up not only with fantasy, pleasure, escape, and therapy but also with relaxation, restoration, and leisure in the context of being on call 24/7. Speaking hermeneutically, meaning and significance become insep­ arable in this setting. At the start of the twenty-first century a number of literary theorists launched complaints about the dominance of suspicious negative hermeneutics and symptomatic reading associated with Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. Especially prominent were various new formalist advocates of “surface reading,” who construe cultural critique as paranoid and call for reparative and positive, descriptive and appreciative “looking at” rather than “looking through” literature.

STRU CTU RA LISM AND SE M IO T IC S Pioneering concepts and methods of structural linguistics and anthropology strongly influenced how modern theory and criticism understand cultural phenomena. From structuralist methodology has come the discipline of semi­ otics or semiology, a field that studies sign systems, codes, and conventions of all kinds, ranging from human to animal languages, the language of fashion to the lexicon of food, the codes of diagnostic medicine to those of written literature. By extension, literary semiotics construes its primary object of anal­ ysis to be literature as a system, while social (or cultural) semiotics explores culture as a set of interlocking systems and subsystems. The model for structuralist thinking is Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, which centers not on individual utterances but on the underlying rules and conventions that enable language to operate. Saussurean structuralism ana­ lyzes the social or collective dimensions of language, focusing on grammar rather than usage, rules rather than actual expressions, and langue (the sys­ tem of language) rather than parole (actual speech). This linguistics is con­ cerned with the infrastructure of language common to all speakers at a given time (which operates on an unconscious level), and not with surface phenom­ ena or historical change. Thus it attends to the synchronic (that which exists now), not the diachronic (that which exists and changes over time). In valuing deep structure over surface phenomena, structuralism resem­ bles Marxism and psychoanalysis, both of which examine underlying causes

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and transpersonal forces of complex systems, shifting attention away from individual human consciousness and choice. Structuralism thereby shares in the widespread and ongoing modern antihumanism and posthumanism that decenter the individual, portraying the self as a construct and a conse­ quence of impersonal systems. Individuals neither originate nor control the conventions of their social existence, mental life, or mother tongue. Rather, they are created by social and cultural systems, within which they are sub­ jects. For this reason, many contemporary theorists, especially structuralist, Marxist, and psychoanalytical critics, prefer the terms subject and subjectiv­ ity to person or individual. To get a sense of the kinds of projects that structuralism and semiotics might undertake, consider the fashion system. As members of a society, people know which items of clothing, textures, colors, and styles go with which. In most Western societies today, sneakers don’t properly fit with a tuxedo, a top hat doesn’t work with jeans and a T-shirt, and a pair of red shoes, an orange skirt, and a purple blouse simply don’t go together. Few people would be able to sup­ ply a complete written description of all the unconscious but well-known rules of dress, but such a list could be created— by structuralists and semioticians. Similarly, sophisticated literary readers as well as authors possess a consid­ erable amount of knowledge in the form of not-quite-explicit conventions and rules of reading, which structuralist poetics aims to chart. Most stories can be reduced to one of a few underlying basic plots, and most characters are variations on a few types, which structuralist narratology aims to inventory. Like language, literature is a system of conventions most noticeable in the rules of genres.

P O STSTRU C TU RA LISM AND D ECO N STRU CTIO N In the late twentieth century, poststructuralism set the terms and the agenda for many of the major developments and debates in the field of theory and criticism. It played, and continues to play, a significant role in shaping the direction of other schools and movements, particularly feminist criticism, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, film studies, and queer theory. Origi­ nally a vanguard movement of French literary intellectuals and philoso­ phers who came into prominence during the 1960s and 1970s and who were critical of yet indebted to structuralism, it quickly spread to intellectuals around the globe. By the close of the twentieth century, poststructuralism had become the leading edge of postmodernism and was often labeled “post­ modern theory.” We have already touched on many of the main features of poststructural­ ism. They include the problematizing of linguistic referentiality, an empha­ sis on heteroglossia, the decentering of the subject, the rejection of “reason” as universal or foundational, the criticism of humanism, a stress on differ­ ence over sameness, and the theory of the social text. Some poststructuralist accounts of literature derive from deconstructive theory, especially its three interconnected concepts of textuality (or float­ ing signifiers), rhetoricity, and intertextuality. Because the signifier (word) is disconnected from the signified (concept) and the referent (thing), language floats or slides in relation to reality, a condition made more severe with the

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additional sliding introduced by figurative language, such as metaphors and metonymies. Such rhetoricity adds layers of substitutions and supplements (more differences) to floating signifiers. Textuality and rhetoricity are con­ ditioned by a third sliding or differential element, intertextuality— a text s dependence on prior words, concepts, connotations, codes, conventions, unconscious practices, and texts. Every text is an intertext that borrows, knowingly or not, from the immense archive of previous culture. The term (inter)textuality, with the parentheses, captures the sense of textuality as being conditioned by this inescapable historical intertext. The technical term dissemination is commonly employed to name the deconstructive concept of textual meaning; rather than being simply ambig­ uous or paradoxical, as in earlier New Criticism, meaning here is sliding, abyssal, undecidable. The linguistic, rhetorical, and intertextual properties of language undermine or deconstruct stable meaning. Poststructuralist theories of language, whether they focus on floating signifiers, rhetoricity, intertextuality, dissemination, ecriture fem in in e, or elsewhere, bring tradi­ tional mimetic, expressive, didactic, and formalist theories into crisis but do not invalidate their claims. This “undecidability,” a hallmark of Jacques Derrida’s and Paul de Mans deconstruction, galvanizes opponents— particularly when joined to the related poststructuralist claim of the “death of the author,” which disconnects the text from any sure grounding in authorial intention or psychology. Deconstructive conceptions of reading as both misreading and mispri­ sion, discussed earlier, do not signal an end to textual interpretation but change its grounds. The redoubled reading typical of much deconstruction often rests on claims of interest and insight, not of validity or truth. A read­ ing or interpretation of a text does not prove but persuades: it is more or less compelling, productive, original, or useful. Deconstruction originated in the name of a special difference (or differan ce), stemming from both structural linguistics and phenomenological philosophy. It denotes the structure of differences that defines both the sliding (differential) operation of the signifier-signified complex and, more abstractly, the existence of entities that are already differentiated and divided because they necessarily exist in space and in time. Each bluebird is singular. Leftistoriented poststructuralism extends these concepts of ontological difference and differential meaning, adding sociopolitical differences in class, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and nationality. There is no more multifaceted term in contemporary poststructuralist theory than difference. Deconstruction is not just a school and branch of poststructuralism but also an analytic procedure developed by Derrida, a historian of philosophy, that quickly became a methodological instrument widely used by literary and cultural theorists and critics. “A deconstruction” involves inversion and reinscription of a traditional philosophical opposition. First, one locates in a chosen text a significant conceptual opposition (for example, nature/cul­ ture, purity/contamination, animality/humanity, or male/female) at a moment of maximum instability. To invert the binary pair, one shows how the belated second term is actually indispensable and constitutively prior to the primary term. For instance, it is from the vantage point of culture that nature is named and defined; similarly, the idea of purity depends on the prior possibility of contamination. Second, to reinscribe the terms of the

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opposition, one must destabilize and transform— deconstruct— the usual understanding of the concepts, especially their temporal and hierarchical relations. Thus Derrida famously deconstructed the speech/writing opposi­ tion by showing how writing precedes speech; characteristically, he rein­ scribes the concept of writing {ecriture in French) to mean any and all forms of inscription in any medium. In doing so, he undercuts the privileging of speech as face-to-face spontaneous utterance. Certain branches and strands of poststructuralism focus on desire, the body, and subjectivity rather than on textuality, rhetoricity, and deconstruc­ tion. Two cases mentioned earlier (in the discussion of psychoanalytic criti­ cism) are the theories of ecriture fem in in e and anti-Oedipus. In this domain— where psychoanalysis, gender studies, cultural studies, and post­ structuralism intersect— the problems of subject formation, gender identity, and political resistance link poststructuralism not only with cultural studies and feminist theory but also with postcolonial criticism, queer theory, and related movements and schools. To its opponents, the deconstructive strands of poststructuralism concerned with the rhetoricity and undecidability of literary texts seem narrowly focused, conservative, formalistic, and apoliti­ cal. Poststructuralism in its political form is also interested in popular culture, minority literatures, radical politics, “deviant” subjectivities, and the dynamics of hegemonic institutions. A great deal of common ground, therefore, is shared by political poststructuralism, Marxism, and postmod­ ern social activism such as the feminist, lesbian, gay, and ethnic rights movements. The fusion of approaches, disciplines, and movements can be confusing, but it has produced some interesting and original criticism and theory, and is arguably a leading trait of postmodern culture.

FEM IN ISM Feminist criticism is part of the broader feminist political movement that seeks to rectify sexist discrimination and inequalities. Its broad goals include exposing masculinist stereotypes, distortions, and omissions in male-dominated literature; studying female creativity, genres, styles, themes, careers, and literary traditions; discovering and evaluating lost and neglected literary works by women; developing feminist theoretical concepts and methods; examining the forces that shape women’s lives, literature, and crit­ icism, ranging across psychology and politics, biology and cultural history; and creating new ideas of and roles for women, including new institu­ tional arrangements. Feminist theory and criticism have brought revolu­ tionary change to literary and cultural studies by expanding the canon, by critiquing sexist representations and values, by stressing the importance of gender and sexuality, and by advocating institutional and social reforms. Theorists of a “feminist aesthetic” argue that women have a literature of their own, possessing its own images, themes, characters, forms, styles, and canons. In Elaine Showalter’s pioneering account of British novelists from the early nineteenth century to the 1970s, for example, women writers form a subculture sharing distinctive economic, political, and professional reali­ ties, all of which determine specific problems and artistic preoccupations

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that mark women’s literature. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar propose that nineteenth-century women writers had to negotiate alienation and psy­ chological disease in order to attain literary authority, which they achieved by reclaiming the heritage of female creativity, remembering their lost fore­ mothers, and refusing the debilitating cultural roles of angel and monster assigned to them by patriarchal society. Countering Harold Bloom’s masculinist “anxiety of influence,” Gilbert and Gubar’s “anxiety of authorship” depicts the precursor poet as a sister or mother whose example enables the creativity of the latecomer writer to develop collaboratively against the con­ fining and sickening backdrop of forbidding male literary authority. Dis­ eases common among women in male-dominated, misogynistic societies include agoraphobia, anorexia, bulimia, claustrophobia, hysteria, and mad­ ness in general, and they recur in the images, themes, and characters of women’s literature. Judith Fetterley states in The Resisting R eader: A Feminist A pproach to A m erican Fiction that women read differently than men. She examines classic American fiction from Irving and Hawthorne to Hemingway and Mailer and points out that this is not “universal” but masculine literature, which forces women readers to identify against themselves. Such literature neither expresses nor legitimates women’s experiences, and in reading it women have to think as men, identify with male viewpoints, accept male values and interests, and tolerate sexist hostility and oppression. Under such conditions, women must become “resisting readers” rather than assenting ones, using feminist criticism and critique as a way both to challenge male domination of the institutions of literature and to change society. As concepts such as the anxiety of authorship, ecriture fem in in e, and the matriarchal potential of the Imaginary order suggest, psychoanalysis is fun­ damental to much feminist theory and criticism. However, feminist psycho­ analysis is typically revisionist: it has had to work through and criticize the “phallocentric” presuppositions and prejudices of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and other pioneering psychoanalysts. The feminine anxiety of author­ ship— in its opposition to the masculine anxiety of influence— reconfigures the “oedipal” relationship between writers as cooperative and nurturing rather than competitive and rivalrous. Similarly, ecriture fem inin e transforms Lacan’s idea of the Imaginary, casting it not simply as an infantile sphere of primary drives superseded on the way to the patriarchal Symbolic order but as a liberating domain of bodily rhythms and pulsations associated with the mother that permeates literature— for example, modern experimental poetry. Moreover, the pre-Symbolic Imaginary order, a realm of bisexual/androgy­ nous/polymorphous sexuality, opens the possibility of sexual liberation from the suffocating confines of the “compulsory heterosexuality” that dominates patriarchal culture. Within feminist circles, there are political differences and conflicts of inter­ est among women of color and white women, women from different classes, women of different sexualities, women belonging to different nations and regions, and women who are liberals, conservatives, radicals, and revolution­ aries. Black women have asserted that white middle-class women, in aca­ demia as well as in the mass media, often end up speaking for feminism or for all women, even though they tend to represent only their own interests.

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Third world women, abroad and at home (Latinas, Aboriginals, Asian women), feel silenced and unrepresented in mainstream social agendas, which rarely consider their needs or issues. Lesbian women have likewise organized them­ selves to ensure that their voices are heard. The “politics of difference” opens into a world of differences and multiple identities among and within women themselves. A key flash point among feminist critics has been identity politics, by which is meant a politics of difference based on some fixed or definable feature(s) of identity (as in a middle-class white woman, a working-class black woman, a third world brown woman, and so on). Critics of such identity politics have several major points of contention. To begin with, defining feminist identity by giving priority to race or class or geography tends to essentialize these fea­ tures, reducing people to social indicators whose “real essence” is determined by race or class or country of origin. Moreover, an emphasis on the multiplic­ ity of female identities undermines the solidarity and united front of feminists. Advocates of the politics of difference respond, in turn, that the act of herding all women into one homogeneous category (Woman) is a reductive totalization and very unlikely to disturb the dominant order. They argue that alliances and coalitions, in strategic cooperation with other new social movements, will best and most democratically address issues of equality and recognition. In the spheres of theory and criticism, the micropolitics of difference challenges universal notions of traditional humanism and pro­ motes two key ideas: there are many women’s literatures across the globe, and there are many modes of resistance and of resisting reading.

Q UEER THEORY An influential field that has built on ideas from feminism, gender studies, women’s studies, and lesbian and gay studies is queer theory. W hile it is sometimes defined broadly to include all non-straight sexualities, a more focused view exists. It begins by criticizing the dominant heterosexual binary, masculine/feminine, which enthrones “the” two sexes and which casts other sexualities as abnormal, illicit, or criminal. It attacks the homophobic and patriarchal bases of heterosexuality. But it aims beyond lesbian and gay rights philosophies to study other so-called perverse, deviant, and alternative sexu­ alities. For example, queer theorists investigate the historical developments of such categories as sodomite, hermaphrodite, and homosexual, as well as woman and m an, stressing the socially constructed character and hierarchy of sexu­ alities. Of particular interest are transgressive phenomena such as drag, camp, cross-dressing, and transsexuality, all of which highlight the nonbiological, performative aspects of gender construction. To be “masculine” or “feminine” requires practicing an array of rituals, which cross-dressers faithfully mimic and parody in the production of gender identity. Queer theorists point out that heteronormativity is an ideology embedded in social institutions ranging from the family, church, and school to the law, media, and politics. Its functioning relies on the firmness and continuous policing of the binary opposition normal/abnormal, which enables sexual minorities to be stigmatized and criminalized as well as pathologized. Fou­

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cault’s work, especially The History o f Sexuality, highlights the instability and arbitrariness of this crucial binary. In addition, French feminists decon­ struct it in their explorations of the pre-oedipal sphere of the Imaginary order, a primordial realm of polysexuality. Like all identity, sexual identity is a social construct subject to regulations and norms set against instabilities and flu­ idities. It is, moreover, enmeshed with other social differences, including race and ethnicity, social class, and nationality. Queer theory grapples with internal disputes over politics and activism. Such disputes take various forms— for example, street protest versus ivory tower theory, queer separatism versus assimilation (evident in debates over the “join them” strategy of gay marriage), queers of color versus white queers. At the same time, the ongoing worldwide criminalization of queer sexualities, plus the HIV/AIDS crisis during an era of resurgent religious fundamental­ isms, has presented to queer people a threatening and punitive social order, subject to moral panics and waves of intolerance. Not surprisingly, much queer activism and politics rests less on fixed identities than on affinities. Throughout the history of literature, there have been many queer writers, literary characters, and themes. One of the aims of queer theory and criti­ cism is to recover this literature as well as to criticize omissions, distortions, and stereotypes present in mainstream criticism and literature. Another key aim is the broad critique of heteronormative ideology and culture.

PO STCOLO N IAL ST U D IES AND RACE AND ETH N ICITY ST U D IES Postcolonial studies, an interdisciplinary field, examines the global impact of mainly European colonialism, from its beginnings in the fifteenth cen­ tury to the present. Broadly speaking, it aims to describe the mechanisms of colonial power, to recover excluded or marginalized “subaltern” voices, and to theorize the complexities of colonial, neocolonial, and postcolonial iden­ tity, national belonging, and globalization. In our new century, it has branched out to investigate the long histories of other imperial empires across the globe. One major issue concerns the nature of representation. Following the groundbreaking example of Edward Said’s Orientalism, postcolonial critics have investigated the ways in which Western representations of third world countries serve the political interests of their makers. Postcolonial critics problematize “objective” perception, pointing out the unbalanced power rela­ tions that typically shape the production of knowledge. They have argued that the West has constructed the third world as an “Other.” Such ideological pro­ jections become the negative terms of binary oppositions in which the positive terms are normative representations of the West. Further, these damaging stereotypes continue to circulate through anthropological, historical, and lit­ erary texts, as well as mass media such as newspapers, television, and the Internet. A related line of inquiry in postcolonial theory studies how institutions of education function in the spread of imperialism. Historical documents such as Thomas Babington Macaulay s notorious “Minute on Indian Education”

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(1835) show that education— including here the study of English literature and the English language— plays a strategic part in ruling over colonized peoples. As it inculcates Western Eurocentric values, literary education sup­ ports a kind of cultural colonization, creating a class of colonial subjects often burdened by a double consciousness and by divided loyalties. It helps Western colonizers rule by consent rather than by violence. The nature of this enterprise has led some— for example, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Henry Owuor Anyumba, and Taban lo Liyong in “On the Abolition of the English Department”— to call for the dismantling of institutions of Western educa­ tion in the third world. The realization of the extent to which the cultures of colonizers and colo­ nized interact has prompted reflections on the hybrid nature of identity and culture. No culture, one argument goes, is ever pure. This insight is every­ where evident in our own era of globalized postindustrial or neoliberal cap­ italism: the nationalism that undergirds notions of pure culture is daily called into question by the international flows of commodities, money, information, technology, and people. These dynamics of globalization, hybridization, and nationalism preoccupy scholars of postcolonial studies. Postcolonial literary criticism focuses on literatures produced by subjects in the context of colonial domination: for instance, in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Built on knowledge of the institutions of colonial education and the hybrid nature of culture, the analysis of postcolonial literature explores the complex interactions and antagonisms between native, indigenous, “precolonial” cultures and the imperial cultures imposed on them. The concerns of postcolonial literary studies overlap with those of race and ethnicity studies, a broad field that examines a wide array of topics (including literature) related to minority ethnic groups; in North America, for example, these would include African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native peoples, among others. Consider the case of the 43 million African Americans today, whose history has included deportation, slavery, oppression, and struggle. Some scholars argue that the black community in the United States has evolved a distinctive and separate way of life, neither Anglo-Saxon nor African. The character of African American arts is communal rather than individualistic, the psychology is repudiative rather than accommodative of racism, and the tradition is oral-musical rather than textual. African Americans, the argu­ ment goes, possess their own values, styles, customs, themes, techniques, and genres. In the past, mainstream white critics have found the black arts to be grotesque, humorous, entertaining, inferior. African American artists have responded variously— sometimes adopting white values and forms, or reject­ ing them outright, or blending them into a hybrid. Literary critics engaged in race and ethnicity studies analyze the nature and dynamics of minority litera­ tures, usually focusing on one group’s literature but often in the context of dominant cultures (thereby overlapping with postcolonial studies). Among the issues of long-standing concern among ethnic and race critics are racial purity (essence) and mixed blood; the status of racial experience and memory; internal differences of class, gender, and sexual orientation; national versus transnational identities and loyalties; the aesthetic as opposed to the sociological value of literature and the arts; and the place of theory. To what extent do differences of class, gender, sexuality, and skin color (or blood quantum), as well as ties to home, internally divide ethnic and racial com­

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munities? What roles do political separatism, integrationism, and transna­ tional solidarity play? Is racial experience a personal social construction, an inherited and shared legacy, a paranoid projection? Is it reliable as a basis for solidarity and unity? What is the epistemological status of testimony, autobiography, and biography? A great deal of personal criticism has been written by ethnic intellectuals. Why? Is theory sometimes a tool of white Europeans employed to distract ethnic intellectuals? Do academic ethnic intellectuals have a special obligation to go public and address society rather than remaining in their labs and libraries engaged in professional discourse and advancement? Or must they work on both fronts? What is perhaps most worth remarking in this context is the pioneering methodological richness of race and ethnicity studies: it draws from historicism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, formalism, structuralism and poststructural­ ism, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial criticism, and cultural studies. As in so much other contemporary criticism and theory, we encounter in race and ethnic studies innumerable crossovers, the mixing and matching of dif­ ferent strands and traditions of theory.

NEW H IST O R IC ISM S Those who write contemporary criticism and theory often turn toward his­ tory. Among the schools and movements that regularly historicize their top­ ics of inquiry are Marxism, feminism, postcolonial criticism, ethnic and race studies, and queer theory. Reception aesthetics and hermeneutics also construe their objects of study historically. With the contemporary addition to the canon of long-lost literary works by women, people of color, and queers, archival research continues to play a productive role in criticism and the­ ory. A great deal of the social history of minorities is nowadays written from the margins: it is usefully labeled “history from below.” Not surprisingly, minorities feel compelled to (re)discover and (re-)create usable pasts. Such work often produces counterhistories set against weighty mainstream tradi­ tions and accounts. This is history with a critical edge. Capitalism has a history, dating back to the early Renaissance. So too do colonialisms. New chapters in these histories come forth regularly from contemporary critics and theorists. Jameson’s influential story about postmodern third-stage late capitalism and Said’s narrative of modern Western Orientalism are two prominent examples of contemporary historicism. Some contemporary historical critics and theorists exhibit admiration for philology, the study of culture through linguistic analysis. Developed by Vico, Schleiermacher, and others during the Enlightenment, it has been extended in more recent times by Erich Auerbach and Hans Robert Jauss as well as Said and Jameson. Unlike history from below, philologically ori­ ented history aspires to objectivity and uses the broadest possible canvas. Its scope is global rather than regional, and it stands in contrast to more narrowly gauged institutional history, such as we find in Richard Ohmann’s account of the postwar New York publishing business and in Terry Eagleton’s investigation of the late nineteenth-century British discipline of English studies. On a different note, psychohistory typically creates a sequence of case studies (psychological profiles) strung together to illustrate a historical

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thesis. Consider, for instance, the psychohistories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-American male poets and women writers pro­ duced, respectively, by Bloom and by Gilbert and Gubar. One argues for an epochal anxiety of influence and the other for a countervailing anxiety of authorship. Both are broad historical claims. Many contemporary literary scholars have fused the concerns of history from below, of Marxist history, of institutional history, and of psychohis­ tory, examining the evolution of racial and gender codes, class conflict, and hegemonic institutions. They turn to such texts as Shakespeare’s plays, Dickens’s novels, and Whitman’s poetry. Noteworthy in this regard is the American critical movement known as New Historicism, a term coined in the 1980s by Stephen Greenblatt. New Historicists study literary texts not as autonomous objects but as mate­ rial artifacts made in interaction with specific social, cultural, and political forces. This view of literature breaks down the traditional distinction between literary and nonliterary texts and forms. Inspired by Michel Fou­ cault, New Historicists, who are specialists in traditional literary periods, provide thick descriptions of contending social forces not only surrounding but circulating through cultural discourses, notably literary works. They use literary texts as lenses to focus on social questions of authority, agency, and institutional power. Their major preoccupation is the dynamics of social containment and subversion. A favorite formula is “author and theme”— for instance, Shakespeare and exorcism— as they self-consciously use surprise and provocation in establishing new points of view and in designing innovative crit­ ical projects.

CULTURAL ST U D IES Theories concerned with literature and its interpretation inevitably touch on ideas about culture. If we define culture as the aggregate of language, knowledge, belief, morality, law, custom, and art collectively acquired by human beings, then it is easy to see how the contents and forms of culture supply the materials and procedures of literature and criticism. As a way of life and sphere of struggle, culture encompasses elements not only of elite but also of popular and mass arts and practices. Yet the contemporary rec­ ognition of “low-” and “middle-brow” culture is something new in the long history of Western modern cultural criticism, which for several centuries has focused mainly on exceptional and elite forms. Beginning in the 1960s, cul­ tural critics started to pay serious attention to mass, popular, and everyday materials, usually in the context of their ideologies (dominant ideas and val­ ues). Those in the discipline called cultural studies, in particular, study such discourses as television, cinema, advertising, rap music, magazines, minority literatures, and popular literature (thrillers, science fiction, romances, west­ erns, Gothic fiction), focusing on how such materials are produced, distrib­ uted, and consumed. While researchers in cultural studies employ various methods, including surveys, field-based studies, textual interpretations, historical background studies, and participant observations, institutional analysis and ideology critique have been especially important. Critics interested in present-day

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popular romances, for instance, have examined the practices of institutions such as publishing companies in shaping and maintaining the rules of the romance genre as well as in packaging and promoting successful reproduc­ tions of the form. Since institutions overlap and connect with satellite institu­ tions, an investigation into one often leads to another. In the case of romance, a critic who began by scrutinizing the genres presence in television soap operas and women’s magazines would soon find links to publishers, literary agents, booksellers, television programmers, magazine editors, and authors. Because circuits of institutions perform such important roles in creating, con­ ditioning, and commodifying cultural discourses, their analysis is central to the enterprise of cultural studies. Ideology critique critically examines the ideas, feelings, beliefs, values, and representations embedded in, and promoted by, the artifacts and practices of a culture or a group. It overlaps with institutional analysis. In English in A m erica, Richard Ohmann describes how the institution of English studies itself disseminates not only the practical skills of analysis, organization, and literacy but also the values of detachment, caution, and cooperation, all of which aid the smooth operation of contemporary capitalist societies. Associ­ ated with the professional managerial classes, such attitudes and manners (ideology) are invisible yet ever present in English classrooms, as well as in places of employment. Some conservative literary critics have opposed cultural studies, criticiz­ ing the twin displacements of the canon (the body of works traditionally accepted as ‘great”) by popular culture and of formalist poetic explication by sociological analyses, especially ideology critique. Because cultural stud­ ies deals with issues of conflict, domination, class struggle, minorities, state power, and ideology, they fault it for politicizing the field. Often this debate, part of contemporary culture wars, sets multiculturalism and analy­ sis attentive to race, class, and gender against literary appreciation and close reading. Some accuse cultural studies of displaying “political correct­ ness” rather than critical independence. Cultural studies advocates argue that what counts as literature changes from one time, place, and group to another. Before the eighteenth century in western Europe, the word literature designated all books and writing. Only during the late Enlightenment and Romantic eras did literature come to be more narrowly defined as belles lettres. Perhaps postmodern debates over the concept of literature may be seen as staging a return to the older definition; in any case, they explicitly contest the aestheticizing or refining of literature typical of the modern age. Cultural studies offers distinctive answers to the two key questions with which we began— what is interpretation? what is literature? First, literature consists of popular, mass, and minority genres as well as elite canonical works. It includes a wide array of discourses, from writings in standard literary genres to rap lyrics, blues poems, oral legends, diaries, magazines, movies, posters, romances, soap operas, video games (narratives), and so on. With a different population or in another time or place, literary discourse would be differently defined. There is one constant in this culturally relative definition: literature is symptomatic of the state of its society. Second, interpretation employs insti­ tutional analysis, ideology critique, and field-based research, as well as textual explication, exegesis, aesthetic appreciation, and personal response.

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For cultural studies, personhood (or subjectivity) involves three things: the operations of our unconscious, the effects of surrounding sociohistorical forces, and the multiple subject positions that each individual occupies. This complex view of subjectivity applies to the author, not just the critic: authored texts by definition contain unconscious and socially symptomatic materials unique to specific times, places, and persons. It is thus no sur­ prise that cultural studies and formalist literary criticisms are sometimes seen as diametrically opposed, antagonistic critical projects— one expan­ sive and wide-ranging, the other contracted and tightly focused; one engaged with psychology, sociology, and politics, the other wedded to aesthetics and poetics and viewing extrinsic concerns as misplaced.

THEORY FRACTALIZED In the early twenty-first century, theory has increasingly fractalized into niches and now comprises many separate subfields (see Theory Map on pages 34—35). Arguably, among the most noteworthy subfields are body studies, disability studies, ecocritical studies, globalization studies, indigenous studies, media studies, narrative studies, popular culture studies, science and technology studies, transatlantic and transpacific studies, trauma studies, and whiteness studies. Most of these areas are semiautonomous, having their own recog­ nized leading figures, histories and major texts, publication outlets, and rep­ ertoires of issues and concepts. Significantly, the studies model is replacing the long-standing schools and movements model in accounts of the structure and history of the domain of contemporary criticism and theory. However, contemporary schools and movements remain important today as sources and resources for practical criticism and for learning theory. When cultural studies started in the 1990s to replace poststructuralism and deconstruction as the newest thing in Anglophone spheres, some critics began to talk excitedly of a new posttheory moment. The term posttheory refers to two concurrent phenomena: the receding of poststructuralism into the background, along with the rise and dissemination of a multifaceted cultural studies across all fields and periods of literary theory and criticism. While posttheory designates a time “after theory,” where theory is synony­ mous with poststructuralism, it does not mean the death of theory or a movement beyond theory if the word retains its usual meanings: presuppo­ sitions and principles; modern and contemporary schools, movements, and subfields; critical practices and methods (professional know-how). Theory in these ordinary senses lives on, and it has come to designate via short­ hand the field of criticism and theory. In A fter Theory, Terry Eagleton reso­ lutely declares on the opening page: “Those to whom the title of this book suggests that ‘theory’ is now over, and that we can all relievedly return to an age of pre-theoretical innocence, are in for a disappointment. There can be no going back. . . .” Jonathan Culler puts it more tersely near the close of T he Literary in Theory: “We are inexorably in theory, whether we champion or deplore it.” There are very good reasons that contemporary theory continues to frame the study of literature and culture in academic institutions. Theory raises and answers questions about a broad array of fundamental issues, some old

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and some new, pertaining to reading and interpretive strategies, literature and culture, tradition and nationalism, genre and gender, meaning and paraphrase, originality and intertextuality, authorial intention and the unconscious, literary education and social hegemony, standard language and heteroglossia, poetics and rhetoric, representation and truth, and so on. In addition, theory opens literary and cultural studies to neighboring disci­ plines and numerous national traditions. It reinvigorates the field not only by reexamining the canonical list of great works and the tool kit of basic concepts and methods but also by recasting the received interpretations of old texts and frameworks and by revealing interesting new zones of mean­ ing and possibilities for future critical inquiry. Theorists are fond of pointing out that everyone theorizes, about the world as well as about literature and interpretation, and that theories must be examined, debated, and tested. Plato suggested long ago that the unex­ amined life is not worth living, providing a worthy maxim for philosophers— and for students of theory and criticism.

T wenty -F irst -C entury Empire Postcolonial Studies Border Studies

Neoliberalism Late Capitalism The New Economic Criticism Patronage Studies

Diaspora Studies Multiculturalism New American Studies

Resistance Studies Surveillance and Security Studies Body Studies Cyborg Studies

P O LITIC AL ECONOM Y ^

H

I

Subaltern Studies W orking-Class Studies The Multitude Debt Studies

Gender Studies Disability Studies Age Studies Leisure Studies

Cognitive Theory Object Studies Technoscience Studies

New Southern U.S. Studies Whiteness Studies Indigenous Studies Ethnic Studies

IDENTITY

ECOCRITICISM Animal Studies Food Studies Geocriticism

Sinaphone Lusophone Hispanophone Francophone Anglophone

Black Atlantic Transatlantic Transpacific Multilingual Translation Studies

Women's Studies Queer Studies Masculinity Studies Sexuality Studies

T heory M ap Archive Studies Professionalization Studies Publishing Histories Canonization Studies

IIm

Celebrity Studies Public Intellectuals Public Sphere Subcultures

Critical Pedagogy Academic Labor Studies Corporate University Digital Humanities

Popular Music Fashion Studies Sport Studies Gaming Studies

Electronic Literature Religion and Literature Popular Poetries Pulp Fiction Performance Studies

Narrative Studies New History of Novel Life Writing Oratures Outsider Arts

Sound Studies Visual Culture Studies TV Studies Film Studies

Affect Theory Testimony Sentimentality

M EDIA STUDIES

A FFEC M T U D IES

Book History Periodical Studies New Media Social Media

Trauma Studies Memory Studies Holocaust Studies

Literacy Studies Discourse Analysis Composition Studies History of Rhetoric

Tropology Orality Cognitive Poetics Reception Studies

T L eory and C riticism

GORGIAS OF LEONTINI ca.

483-376

b.c.e.

With its observations on the power of speech {logos), Gorgias s “Encomium of Helen” develops a classical rhetoric antithetical to Platonic poetics, one that anticipates j a c q u e s d e r r i d a s twentieth-century critique of p l a t o . Where Plato commends moral content, Gorgias praises elegant form; where Plato is didactic, Gorgias aims to persuade through performance; where Plato— and those who followed him, like a u g u s t i n e — condemns rhetoric as dangerously false, Gorgias embraces it. Speech, Gorgias wrote in another fragment, “summons whoever wishes [to compete], but crowns the one who is able.” The highly wrought style for which he is justly famous, with its frequent use of paradox, antithesis, balancing clauses, and rhyme, has its closest modern parallel in o s c a r w i l d e s celebrated epigrammatic style. Like Wilde, Gorgias raises significant issues about the radical contingency of all truth claims, issues that have been central to contemporary theoretical debates. Gorgias came from a Greek colony in Sicily and, by all accounts, lived to be more than one hundred years old. Nothing is known of his life until he came to Athens in 427 b . c . e . as part of an embassy from his native Leontini. There his dazzling ora­ torical style, whose force is difficult to capture in translation, made him something of a sensation; he quickly became one of the most influential of the sophists, a group of itinerant teachers who went from city to city earning their living by instructing others in subtle argumentation. Although later writers would credit them with phil­ osophical doctrines, in particular a skepticism about the claims of reason to arrive at truth, the sophists were members of a profession and not a school of thought. That we today use the term sophistry to refer to plausible but fallacious arguments reflects the influence of the sophists’ critics, most notably Plato. Gorgias confined himself almost exclusively to the teaching of oratory— rhetoric— which was the main road to success in Greek city-states. In the Meno, Plato writes that he admired Gorgias because he did not claim to be a teacher of arete, or virtue; “in fact, he laughs at others he hears making such promises. He thinks one should make men skillful at speaking.” Only fragments of Gorgias’s rhe­ torical works survive, primarily in the form of commonplaces, or rhetorical exer­ cises that were used to instruct others. The “Encomium of Helen” is an example of this genre, as is the longer fragment in defense of Palamides, a minor Greek hero at Troy. Gorgias concludes his defense of Helen, “I wished to write this speech for Helen’s encomium and my amusement,” suggesting that like the other fragments of his speeches that survive, it was an epideictic composition— a display piece intended to demonstrate the principles of rhetoric to his pupils, presumably accompanied by a verbal commentary that has not survived. The extant “Encomium of Helen” illustrates Gorgias’s flamboyant style, which Plato later parodied in Agathon’s speech in the Symposium. The defense of Helen of

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Troy, a character long vilified by poets, proves a fitting challenge for even the most accomplished rhetorician. But it also serves as a pretext for a discussion of the power of speech, which Gorgias equates with the force of compulsion— an argu­ ment developed in modern times by many critics, most notably F r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e and p a u l d e m a n . Gorgias likens the power of speech to persuade to the power of magical charms or drugs to alter the mind or body. He has none of Plato’s firm belief that right reasoning will ultimately lead to truth. Speech is as likely to lead to “evil persuasion” as to correct action. The elaborate antitheses and paradoxes of Gorgias s style may express the belief that since truth exists but is contingent, a clear expres­ sion of contrasts and alternatives is needed if one is to sift through the competing claims of persuasive speech. In the history of theory and criticism, rhetoric continu­ ally raises such problems as the truth status of language, the power and pleasure of persuasive discourse, and the reliability of figures and tropes. "Encomium of Helen” Keywords: Classical Theory, Language, Rhetoric

From Encomium of H elen 1 [1 ] For a city the finest adornment (kosmos) is a good citizenry, for a body beauty, for a soul wisdom, for an action arete,2 and for a speech truth; and the opposites of these are indecorous. A man, woman, speech, deed, city or action that is worthy of praise should be honored with acclaim, but the unworthy should be branded with blame. For it is equally error and igno­ rance to blame the praiseworthy and praise the blameworthy. [2] The man who speaks correctly what ought to be said has a duty to refute those who find fault with Helen. Among those who listen to the poets a single-voiced, singleminded conviction has arisen about this woman, the notoriety of whose name is now a reminder of disasters. My only wish is to bring reason to the debate, eliminate the cause of her bad reputation, demonstrate that her detractors are lying, reveal the truth, and put an end to ignorance. [3] That the woman I speak of is by nature and birth the foremost of the foremost, men or women, is well known by all .3 Clearly her mother was Leda and her father in fact a god, but in story a mortal: Zeus and Tyndareus. One was thought to be her father because he was, the other was reported to be because he said he was; one was mightiest of men, the other tyrant of all. [4] Born from such as these, she equaled the gods in beauty, not concealed but revealed. Many were the erotic passions she aroused in many men, and her one body brought many bodies full of great ambition for great deeds; some had abundant wealth, some the glory of an old noble lin­ eage, some the vigor of personal valor, and some the power of acquired wisdom. All came for love that desires to conquer and from unconquerable 1. Translated by Michael Gagarin and Paul Wood­ ruff, who occasionally include the Greek in paren­ theses. 2. Excellence or virtue (Greek). 3. According to the Greek myth, H elen was the daughter of Zeus, who took the form o f a swan before raping her mother, Leda. Before he would give her in marriage, H elen’s human father, Tyndareus, made all the Greek princes swear an

oath that if any wrong were done to her husband they would com e to his aid. Thus the Trojan prince Paris’s abduction of Helen from her hus­ band, M enelaus, precipitated the Trojan War. Paris had been asked to judge the beauty o f three goddesses; he declared the fairest to be Aphro­ dite, goddess o f love, who had promised him the love of the world’s most beautiful woman (i.e., Helen) if he chose her.

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desire for honor. [5] Who it was or why or how he took Helen and fulfilled his love, I shall not say. For to tell those who know something they know carries conviction, but does not bring pleasure. Now that my speech has passed over the past, it is to the beginning of my future speech that I pro­ ceed and propose the likely reasons for Helen’s journey to Troy. [6] Either she did what she did because of the will of fortune and the plan of the gods and the decree of necessity, or she was seized by force, or per­ suaded by words, cor captured by love>. If she left for the first reason, then any who blame her deserve blame themselves, for a human’s anticipation cannot restrain a god’s inclination. For by nature the stronger is not restrained by the weaker but the weaker is ruled and led by the stronger: the stronger leads, the weaker follows. Now, a god is stronger than a human in strength, in wisdom, and in other respects; and so if blame must be attached to for­ tune and god, then Helen must be detached from her ill repute. [7] If she was forcibly abducted and unlawfully violated and unjustly assaulted, it is clear that her abductor, her assaulter, engaged in crime; but she who was abducted and assaulted encountered misfortune. Thus, the undertaking undertaken by the barbarian was barbarous in word and law and deed and deserves blame in word, loss of rights in law, and punishment in deed. But she who was violated, from her country separated, from her friends isolated, surely (eikotos) deserves compassion rather than slander. For he did and she suffered terrible things. It is right to pity her but hate him. [8] If speech (logos) persuaded and deluded her mind, even against this it is not hard to defend her or free her from blame, as follows: speech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body.4 It can stop fear, relieve pain, create joy, and increase pity. How this is so, I shall show; [9] and I must demonstrate this to my audience to change their opinion. Poetry (poiesis) as a whole I deem and name “speech (logos) with meter.” To its listeners poetry brings a fearful shuddering, a tearful pity, and a grieving desire, while through its words the soul feels its own feelings for good and bad fortune in the affairs and lives of others. Now, let me move from one argument to another. [10 ] Sacred incantations with words inject pleasure and reject pain, for in associating with the opinion of the mind, the power of an incantation enchants, persuades, and alters it through bewitchment. The twin arts of witchcraft and magic have been discovered, and these are illusions of mind and delusions of judgment. [11] How many men on how many subjects have persuaded and do persuade how many others by shaping a false speech! For if all men on all subjects had memory of the past, of the present, and foresight into the future, speech would not be the same in the same way;5 but as it is, to remember the past, to examine the present, or to prophesy the future is not easy; and so most men on most subjects make opinion an adviser to their minds. But opin­ ion is perilous and uncertain, and brings those who use it to perilous and uncertain good fortune. [12] What reason is there, then, why Helen did not

4. Gorgias seems to be describing speech as if it were a physical body, so small it cannot be seen, moving from person to person.

5. Text uncertain, but the sense clearly is “the same as it is now” [translators’ note],

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go just as unwillingly under the influence of speech as if she were seized by the violence of violators? For persuasion expelled her thought— persuasion, which has the same power, but not the same form as compulsion (ananke). A speech persuaded a soul that was persuaded, and forced it to be per­ suaded by what was said and to consent to what was done. The persuader, then, is the wrongdoer, because he compelled her, while she who was per­ suaded is wrongly blamed, because she was compelled by the speech. [13] To see that persuasion, when added to speech, indeed molds the mind as it wishes, one must first study the arguments of astronomers, who replace opin­ ion with opinion: displacing one but implanting another, they make incred­ ible, invisible matters apparent to the eyes of opinion. Second, compulsory debates with words,6 where a single speech to a large crowd pleases and persuades because written with skill (techn e), not spoken with truth. Third, contests of philosophical arguments, where it is shown that speed of thought also makes it easy to change a conviction based on opinion. [14] The power of speech has the same effect on the disposition of the soul as the disposi­ tion of drugs on the nature of bodies. Just as different drugs draw forth different humors from the body— some putting a stop to disease, others to life— so too with words: some cause pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion. [15] The case has been made: if she was persuaded by speech, her fortune was evil, not her action. The fourth reason, I discuss in my fourth argu­ ment. If it was love that did all these things, she will easily escape blame for the error that is said to have occurred. # *

$

[19] So if Helen’s eye, pleased by Alexander’s7 body, transmitted to her soul an eagerness and striving for love, why is that surprising? If love is a god, with the divine power of gods, how could a weaker person refuse and reject him? But if love is a human sickness and a mental weakness, it must not be blamed as mistake, but claimed as misfortune. For it came, as it came, snared by the mind, not prepared by thought, under the compulsion of love, not the provision of art (techne). [20] How then can the blame of Helen be considered just? Whether she did what she did, invaded by love, persuaded by speech, impelled by force or compelled by divine necessity, she escapes all blame entirely. [21] With my speech I have removed this woman’s ill repute; I have abided by the rule laid down at the beginning of my speech; I have tried to dispel the injustice of blame and the ignorance of opinion; I wished to write this speech for Helen’s encomium and my amusement. ca.

6. This expression probably designates speeches in law courts [translators’ note].

7. Paris’s,

400 b .c .e .

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PLATO ca.

427

—

ca.

347

b .c.e.

A monumental figure in the history of Western philosophy, Plato looms nearly as large in the history of European literary theory. Indeed, for many literary scholars he marks the beginning of the tradition of literary theory, although his choice of the dialogue format, in which historical personages convey particular arguments, sug­ gests that the issues he raises had already been debated before he took them up— as do the extant fragments of the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers. The several dozen dialogues attributed to Plato engage almost every issue that interests philoso­ phers: the nature of being; the question of how we come to know things; the proper ordering of human society; and the nature of justice, truth, the good, love, and beauty. Although Plato did not set out to write systematic literary theory— unlike his student a r i s t o t l e , who produced a treatise on poetics— his consideration of philo­ sophical issues in several of the dialogues leads him to reflect on poetry, and those reflections have often set the terms of literary debate in the West. What binds together Plato’s various discussions of poetry is a distrust of mimesis (representation or imitation). According to Plato, all art— including poetry— is a mimesis of nature, a copy of objects in the physical world. But those objects in the material world, according to the idealist philosophy that Plato propounds, are themselves only mutable copies of timeless universals, called Forms or Ideas. Poetry is merely a copy of a copy, leading away from the truth rather than toward it. Phi­ losophers and literary critics ever since, from Plotinus in the third century c.E. to j a c q u e s d e r r i d a in the late twentieth century, have wrestled with the terms of Plato’s critique of poetry, revising it or attempting to point out inconsistencies in his argument. Plato was born about four years after the beginning of the twenty-five-year-long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and just after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, who had overseen the city’s artistic golden age. His parents both came from distinguished Athenian families, and his stepfather, an asso­ ciate of Pericles, was an active participant in the political and cultural life of fifthcentury Athens. Plato had two older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, who appear as characters in his longest dialogue, Republic (ca. 375 b .c . e . ) . As a young man, growing up in a city at war and in constant political turmoil, he seems to have been destined for a political career. But after the Peloponnesian War ended in 4 0 5 with the defeat and humiliation of Athens, the excesses of Athenian political life under the oligarchi­ cal rule (4 0 4 —4 03) of the so-called Thirty Tyrants and under the restored democracy left Plato disillusioned with political life. The execution in 39 9 of Socrates, on charges of impiety and corrupting the young, was a turning point in his life. The older philosopher was a close friend of Plato’s family, and Plato’s writings attest to Socrates’ great influence on him. Indeed, the position of Socrates in European philosophy is unique. Though he apparently never wrote a word, his influence on subsequent thought through his followers, Plato in particular, is incalculable. After Socrates’ death Plato retired from Athenian political life and traveled for a number of years. In 3 8 8 he journeyed to Italy and Sicily, where he became the friend of Dionysius I, the ruler of Syracuse, and his brother-in-law Dion. The following year Plato returned to Athens, where he founded the Academy, an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences; he taught there for the rest of his life. Plato envisioned the Academy as a school for statesmen where he could train a new kind of philosopher-ruler (or “guardian”) according to the principles set forth in his Republic. Unlike the older sophist g o r g i a s or Plato’s contemporary rival Isocrates, who both taught the arts of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato focused

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primarily in the Academy on mathematics, logic, and philosophy. However, when Dionysius died in 367, Dion invited Plato to return to Syracuse to undertake the philosophical education of the new ruler, Dionysius II. Plato went, perhaps with the hope of putting the theory of Republic into practice; but philosophy proved no match for local politics and Dionysius’s suspicions. Indeed, a return visit resulted in Plato’s brief imprisonment; by 360 he was back at the Academy for good. Plato is recognized as a master of the dialogue form and as one of the great prose stylists of the Greek language. His published writings, apparently all of which are preserved, consist of some twenty-six dramatic dialogues on philosophical and related themes. The central problematic posed by this form is that it becomes virtu­ ally impossible to attribute any statement directly to Plato: he never speaks in his own person. The only exceptions are a series of thirteen letters (whose authenticity is still a matter of scholarly debate) written in the last decades of Plato’s life, most addressing the political situation in Syracuse. Only the seventh— and longest— letter takes up philosophical issues. For the most part, Plato places his arguments in the mouths of characters who may or may not be based on historical persons. The speakers can never be assumed to be voicing Plato’s own views or the views of those whose names they bear. In almost all the dialogues, Socrates is the focal character and Plato’s mouthpiece, but Plato’s Socrates is not the historical Socrates. These complications, which thwart efforts to fix Plato’s thought within a series of propositional statements, have attracted much attention, especially from contem­ porary Continental philosophers like Derrida. The chronology of Plato’s dialogues is highly controversial, but most scholars divide the works roughly into three periods. The earliest works, begun after 399, include the Apology of Socrates and Crito, in which Plato defends Socrates against the charges that led to his death; Gorgias, in which Socrates’ opponent is the soph­ ist Gorgias; and Ion , which examines poetry as a kind of divine madness. Charac­ teristic of these early Platonic dialogues is Socrates’ disarming claim of ignorance and a formal technique of cross-examination called elenchus, a method of question­ ing designed to lead a learner through stages of reasoning and to expose the contra­ dictions in an opponent’s original statement. The middle period, from 380 to 367, includes the Symposium, Cratylus, and Republic, all begun after the founding of the Academy; they develop the theory of Forms or Ideas anticipated in the early dia­ logues. The Forms constitute a realm of unchanging being to which the world of individual mutable objects is subordinate. Because the Forms are immutable, they are more real— and more true— than the changeable material world. The Form of the Good enjoys a unique status, for it is responsible for the being and intelligibility of the world as a whole. Plato’s famous “Allegory of the Cave” in book 7 of Republic (one of our selections) provides a memorable introduction to the Platonic theory of Forms, which is reiterated in book 10’s equally well known critique of artistic imita­ tion. Cratylus is of interest to theorists of language because the dispute in this dia­ logue concerns the “correctness” of names: do they point unproblematically to the “nature of things”— that is, to the Forms— as Hermogenes contends, or are they merely a matter of convention, as Cratylus argues? Socrates concludes that the matter is unresolvable, but that “no one with any understanding will commit him­ self or the education of his soul to names, or trust them or their givers to the point of firmly stating that he knows something.” To the late period (366-360) belong Timaeus, which throughout the Middle Ages was Plato’s most widely known work; Critias; and Sophist. Phaedrus, our final selection, with its notorious attack on writ­ ing, is usually classified as transitional, falling between the middle and late peri­ ods, with themes characteristic of both. In Ion, our opening selection, Plato’s Socrates engages Ion in a debate about the nature of the rhapsode’s knowledge of poetry, about the nature of poetry, and about the status of knowledge itself. Poetry, Socrates maintains, is not an art but instead a

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form of divine madness: “the poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind.” This debate between the claims of inspiration and those of art would subsequently have a long his­ tory in European literary criticism. Is poetry primarily a craft with a set of rules that can be taught and learned, as H o r a c e , the medieval rhetorician Geoffrey of Vinsauf (ca. 1200), and A l e x a n d e r p o p e argue, or is it primarily the result of inspiration or genius, as l o n g i n u s , the Neoplatonist Plotinus (205-270), f r i e d r i c h v o n s c h i l l e r , w i l l i a m w o r d s w o r t h , r a l p h w a l d o e m e r s o n , and others, following Plato, have maintained? Plato’s Socrates goes a step further. Not only is poetry a form of divinely inspired madness, but so is criticism. “You are powerless to speak about Homer,” he tells Ion, “on the basis of knowledge or mastery.” Socrates uses the image of a magnet as a metaphor for divine inspiration: as a magnet attracts iron and passes that attraction along, so the gods inspire the artist, who inspires the interpreter, who, in turn, inspires the audience. For Plato’s Socrates, the work of poet and critic is not divided between inspiration and rational analysis, as it is for most modem critics (see, for instance, m a t t h e w A r n o l d and the New Critic c l e a n t h b r o o k s ) ; rather, it lies on a continuum. The work of the critic is no more rational than that of the poet, the crit­ ic’s knowledge no more truthful. However, it is helpful when reading Plato to remember that his dialogues do not always present a straightforward argument or arrive at a single unambiguous conclu­ sion. The process of elenchus and Socrates’ persistent irony often make it difficult to pin him down to any one position. In Ion, is Socrates making fun of the pomposity of the rhapsode, or does he seriously believe that whatever truth emerges from poetry and the interpretation of poetry results only from divine madness? This method of “emptying out” the question by Socrates to reveal his opponents’ ignorance is evident in our second selection, which brings together those places in Republic in which Plato discusses the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (books 2, 3, and 10). As Socrates and his interlocutors, Adeimantus in book 2 and Glaucon in books 3 and 10, consider the role that literature or “stories” should play in the education of the future rulers or “guardians” of his ideal republic, Plato’s Socrates argues that because poets lie they ought to be banished from the republic— or, at the very least, heavily censored. Plato’s polemic against literature hinges on the nature of its mimesis or imitation of the world. At the simplest level of imitation, Plato raises questions about literature’s content. If it is to be part of the education of young mal­ leable minds, literature must encourage only virtue. It must represent a world in which virtue is rewarded and even the punishment of evil serves virtuous ends. Not surprisingly, whether epic, lyric, or tragedy, the literature Socrates cites falls short of this standard. Literature, however, fails at the level not only of content but also of form. Because its stories are fictional, made up, literature is dangerous; it pro­ duces only lies. Furthermore, because mimesis presents us with an inferior copy of a copy, poetry— performed rather than read in Plato’s time— takes its listeners away from rather than toward the ideal Forms. Both the Allegory of the Cave (book 7) and Republic 10’s infamous critique of mimesis explore the nature of knowledge and its proper objects, the Forms. The world we perceive through the senses, the world that poetry imitates, Socrates argues, is illusory and deceptive. It depends on a prior realm of separately existing Forms, orga­ nized beneath the Form of Good. The realm of Forms is accessible not through the senses, as is the world of appearances, but only through rigorous philosophic discus­ sion and thought, based on mathematical reasoning. For Plato’s Socrates, measuring, counting, and weighing all bring us closer to the realm of Forms than do poetry’s pale representations of nature. All art and poetry, because they represent what is already an inferior representation of the true original (the Forms), can only lead further away from the truth, and further into a world of illusion and deception. Virtually every

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subsequent defense of poetry (memorable examples include those by Aristotle, s i r p h i l i p S id n e y , a p h r a b e h n , and p e r c y b y s s h e s h e l l e y ) has had to come to terms with Plato’s devastating attack on poetry as inferior and deceptive mimesis. Plato’s Phaedrus (from which our final selection is taken) has been of interest to contemporary literary theory for its discussion of the evils of writing. There Plato has Socrates relate the story of the invention of writing by the Egyptian god Theuth (Thoth), who offers it to King Thamus. Thamus declines the offer, deciding that humans are better off without writing because it substitutes an alien inscription— lifeless signs— for the authentic living presence of spoken language. Far from aiding memory, writing will cause it to atrophy. For Plato, the only good memory is anam ­ nesis, the recollection of spiritual truths through genuine, living wisdom: that is, through philosophy. Plato reiterates this point in his Seventh Letter, where he says: “anyone who is seriously studying high matters will be the last to write about them and thus expose his thought to the envy and criticism of men . . . [W]henever we see a book, whether the laws of a legislator or a composition on any other subject, we can be sure that if the author is really serious, the book does not contain his best thoughts; they are stored away with the fairest of his possessions. And if he has committed these serious thoughts to writing, it is because men, not the gods, ‘have taken his wits away.’” Yet Plato’s use of a myth in Phaedrus to frame his philosophical objections to writing raises questions of its own, since presumably myths suffer from the same defects as the texts of the sophists, rhetoricians, poets, and other purveyors of false wisdom whom Plato criticizes elsewhere. Derrida offers a celebrated unraveling of the logic of Plato’s argument against writing in his Dissemination (see below), which may be the most significant encounter between a twentieth-century philosopher and Plato. Plato is the progenitor of Western didactic criticism and theory: the idea that literature should serve moral and social functions. R epublic, where he describes an ideal well-regulated community in which the educational curriculum promotes respect for law, reason, authority, self-discipline, and piety, has been especially influ­ ential. Although Plato’s Socrates loves and regularly cites Homer’s Iliad and Odys­ sey, he calls for the censorship of many passages in these works that represent sacrilegious, sentimental, unlawful, and irrational behavior. Above all else, he requires that literature teach goodness and grace. Plato’s relentless application of this standard to all literature marks one of the most noteworthy beginnings of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. Ion Keywords: Affect, Classical Theory, Epic, Ethics, Poetry, Representation, Rhetoric T h e R e p u b lic Keywords: Aesthetics, Affect, Classical Theory, Drama, Epic, Eth­ ics, Poetry, Religion, Representation P h a ed ru s Keywords: Classical Theory, Language, Rhetoric

Io n 1 Ion! Hello. Where have you come from to visit us this time? From your home in Ephesus? I o n : N o , no, Socrates. From Epidaurus, from the festival of Asclepius .3 [530] S o c r a t e s : 2

1. Translated by Paul W oodruff, who sometimes adds clarifying words or phrases in square brack­ ets. Also in square brackets in the text are the Stephanus numbers used almost universally in citing Plato’s works: they refer to the pages o f a 1578 edition published by Henri Estienne.

2. Greek philosopher ( 4 6 9 -3 9 9 b .c . e .) and Pla­ to’s spokesperson. 3. G reco-Rom an hero and god o f healing; he had a famous 4th-century b .c . e . temple in Epidau­ rus, a small Greek state on a peninsula o f the Saronic Gulf.

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Don’t tell me the Epidaurians hold a contest for rhapsodes4 in honor of the god? Io n : They certainly do! They do it for every sort of poetry and music. S o c r a t e s : Really! Did you enter the contest? And how did it go for you? Io n : First prize, Socrates! We carried it off. S o c r a t e s : T hat’s good to hear. Well, let’s see that we win the big games at Athens, next. I o n : W e’ll do it, Socrates, god willing. S o c r a t e s : Y o u know, Ion, many times I’ve envied you rhapsodes your profession. Physically, it is always fitting for you in your profession to be dressed up to look as beautiful as you can; and at the same time it is necessary for you to be at work with poets— many fine ones, and with Homer5 above all, who’s the best poet and the most divine— and you have to learn his thought, not just his verses! Now that is something to envy! I mean, no one would ever get to be a good rhapsode if he didn’t understand what is meant by the poet. A rhapsode must come to pre­ sent the poet’s thought to his audience; and he can’t do that beautifully unless he knows what the poet means. S o this all deserves to be envied. I o n : T hat’s true, Socrates. And that’s the part of my profession that took the most work. I think I speak more beautifully than anyone else about Homer; neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus nor Stesimbrotus of Thasos nor Glaucon 6 nor anyone else past or present could offer as many beau­ tiful thoughts about Homer as I can. S o c r a t e s : T hat’s good to hear, Ion. Surely you won’t begrudge me a dem­ onstration? Io n : Really, Socrates, it’s worth hearing how well I’ve got Homer dressed up. I think I’m worthy to be crowned by the Sons of Homer7 with a golden crown. S o c r a t e s : Really, I shall make time to hear that later. Now I’d just like an answer to this: [531] Are you so wonderfully clever about Homer alone— or also about Hesiod and Archilochus ? 8 I o n : N o , no. Only about Homer. T hat’s good enough; I think. S o c r a t e s : Is there any subject on which Homer and Hesiod both say the same things? I o n : Yes, I think so. A good many. S o c r a t e s : Then, on those subjects, would you explain Homer’s verse bet­ ter and more beautifully than Hesiod’s? Io n : Just the same Socrates, on those subjects, anyway, where they say the same things. S o c r a t e s : And how about the subjects on which they do not say the same things? Divination, for example. Homer says something about it and so does Hesiod. Io n : Certainly. S o c ra te s:

4. Professional orators who recited poetry, espe­ cially that o f Homer and the other epic poets. 5. Greek epic poet (ca. 8th c. b . c . e .), to whom the Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed. 6. Plato had an elder brother with this name. M etrodorus (ca. 3 3 0 -c a . 277 b . c . e .), a follower and friend of the A thenian philosopher Epicurus and one o f the most important teachers of Epicu­

reanism. Stesimbrotus (active late 5th c. b . c . e .), a biographer o f Homer. 7. The sons of Homer were a guild o f rhapsodes w'ho originally claimed to be descendants of Homer [translator’s note]. 8 . Earliest Greek lyric poet (active ca. 650 b .c . e .). Hesiod (active ca. 7 0 0 b . c . e .), G reek epic didac­ tic poet.

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Well. Take all the places where those two poets speak of div­ ination, both where they agree and where they don’t: who would explain those better and more beautifully, you, or one of the diviners if he’s good? I on : One of the diviners. S o c r a t e s : Suppose you were a diviner: if you were really able to explain the places where the two poets agree, wouldn’t you also know how to explain the places where they disagree? Ion : T h a t’s clear. S o c r a t e s : Then what in the world is it that you’re clever about in Homer but not in Hesiod and the other poets? Does Homer speak of any sub­ jects that differ from those of all the other poets? Doesn’t he mainly go through tales of war, and of how people deal with each other in society— good people and bad, ordinary folks and craftsmen? And of the gods, how they deal with each other and with men? And doesn’t he recount what happens in heaven and in hell, and tell of the births of gods and heroes? Those are the subjects of Homer’s poetry-making, aren’t they? Ion : T hat’s true, Socrates. S o c r a t e s : And how about the other poets? Did they write on the same subjects? Ion : Yes, but Socrates, they didn’t do it the way Homer did. S o c r a t e s : How, then? Worse? Ion : M uch worse. S o c r a t e s : And Homer does it better? Io n : Really b e tt e r . S o c r a t e s : Well now, Ion, dear heart, when a number of people are dis­ cussing arithmetic, and one of them speaks best, I suppose som eon e will know how to pick out the good speaker. I on : Yes. S o c r a t e s : Will it be the same person who can pick out the bad speakers, or someone else? Ion : The same, of course. S o c r a t e s : And that will be someone who has mastered arithmetic, right? Ion : Yes. S o c r a t e s : Well. Suppose a number of people are discussing healthy nutri­ tion, and one of them speaks best. Will one person know that the best speaker speaks best, and another that an inferior speaker speaks worse? Or will the same man know both? Ion : Obviously, the same man. S o c r a t e s : Who is he? What do we call him? Ion : A doctor. S o c r a t e s : S o , to sum it up, this is what we’re saying: when a number of people speak on the same subject, it’s always the same person who will know how to pick out good speakers and bad speakers. [532] If he doesn’t know how to pick out a bad speaker, he certainly won’t know a good speaker— on the same subject, anyway. Ion : That’s so. S o c r a t e s : Then it turns out that the same person is "wonderfully clever” about both speakers. Ion : Yes. S o c ra te s:

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you claim that Homer and the other poets (including Hesiod and Archilochus) speak on the same subjects, but not equally well. H e’s good, and they’re inferior. Io n : Yes, and it’s true.

S o c ra te s : N ow

S o c r a t e s : N ow i f y o u r e a ll y d o k n o w w h o ’s s p e a k in g w e ll, y o u ’ ll k n o w t h a t th e in f e r io r s p e a k e r s a r e s p e a k in g w o r s e .

Apparently so. S o c r a t e s : You’re superb! S o if we say that Ion is equally clever about Homer and the other poets, we’ll make no mistake. Because you agree yourself that the same person will be an adequate judge of all who speak on the same subjects, and that almost all the poets do treat the same subjects. Io n : Then how in the world do you explain what I do, Socrates? When someone discusses another poet I pay no attention, and I have no power to contribute anything worthwhile: I simply doze off. But let someone mention Homer and right away I’m wide awake and I’m paying attention and I have plenty to say. S o c r a t e s : T h a t’s not hard to figure out, my friend. Anyone can tell that you are powerless to speak about Homer on the basis of knowledge or mastery. Because if your ability came by mastery, you would be able to speak about all the other poets as well. Look, there is an art of poetry as a whole, isn’t there? Io n : Yes. S o c r a t e s : And now take the whole of any other subject: won’t it have the same discipline throughout? And this goes for every subject that can be mastered. Do you need me to tell you what I mean by this, Ion? I o n : Lord, yes, I do, Socrates. I love to hear you wise men talk. S o c r a t e s : I wish that were true, Ion. But wise? Surely you are the wise men, you rhapsodes and actors, you and the poets whose work you sing. As for me, I say nothing but the truth, as you’d expect from an ordinary man. I mean, even this question I asked you— look how commonplace and ordinary a matter it is. Anybody could understand what I meant: don’t you use the same discipline throughout whenever you master the whole of a subject? Take this for discussion— painting is a subject to be mastered as a whole, isn’t it? Io n :

Io n : Y es.

And there are many painters, good and bad, and there have been many in the past. I o n : Certainly. S o c r a t e s : Have you ever known anyone who is clever at showing what’s well painted and what’s not in the work of Polygnotus9 but who’s power­ less to do that for other painters? [533] Someone who dozes off when the work of other painters is displayed, and is lost, and has nothing to contribute— but when he has to give judgment on Polygnotus or any other painter (so long as it’s just one), he’s wide awake and he’s paying attention and he has plenty to say— have you ever known anyone like that? Io n : Good lord no, of course not! S o c ra te s:

9. Greek painter from Thasos (ca. 5 0 0 - c a . 4 4 0

b . c . e .),

later an A thenian citizen.

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Well. Take sculpture. Have you ever known anyone who is clever at explaining which statues are well made in the case of Daedalus, son of Metion, or Epeius, son of Panopeus, or Theodorus of Samos,1 or any other single sculptor, but whos lost when he’s among the products of other sculptors, and he dozes off and has nothing to say? Ion : Good lord no. I haven’t. S o c r a t e s : And further, it is my opinion, you’ve never known anyone ever— not in flute-playing, not in cithara-playing, not in singing to the cithara, and not in rhapsodizing— you’ve never known a man who is clever at explaining Olympus or Thamyrus or Orpheus or Phemius,2 the rhapsode from Ithaca, but who has nothing to contribute about Ion, the rhapsode from Ephesus, and cannot tell when he does his work well and when he doesn’t— you’ve never known a man like that. Ion : I have nothing to say against you on that point, Socrates. But this I know about myself: I speak about Homer more beautifully than any­ body else and I have lots to say; and everybody says I do it well. But about the other poets I do not. Now see what that means. S o c r a t e s : I do see, Ion, and I’m going to announce to you what I think that is. As I said earlier, that’s not a subject you’ve mastered— speaking well about Homer; it’s a divine power that moves you, as a “Magnetic” stone moves iron rings. (That’s what Euripides called it; most people call it “Heraclean.”3) This stone not only pulls those rings, if they’re iron, it also puts power in the rings, so that they in turn can do just what the stone does— pull other rings— so that there’s sometimes a very long chain of iron pieces and rings hanging from one another. And the power in all of them depends on this stone. In the same way, the Muse4 makes some people inspired herself, and then through those who are inspired a chain of other enthusiasts is suspended. You know, none of the epic poets, if they’re good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. The same goes for lyric poets if they’re good: just as the Corybantes5 are not in their right minds when they dance, [534] lyric poets, too, are not in their right minds when they make those beautiful lyrics, but as soon as they sail into har­ mony and rhythm they are possessed by Bacchic frenzy. Just as Bacchus worshippers when they are possessed draw honey and milk from rivers,6 but not when they are in their right minds— the soul of a lyric poet does this too, as they say themselves. For of course poets tell us that they gather songs at honey-flowing springs, from glades and gardens of the Muses, and that they bear songs to us as bees carry honey, flying like bees. And what S o c ra te s:

1. Greek a rch ite ct and sculptor (active ca. 550 Daedalus: in G reek mythology, a con­ summ ately skilled A thenian artisan and art­ ist. Epeius: m ythological builder o f the Trojan horse. 2. Court singer in the palace o f Odysseus, king of Ithaca, in H omer’s Odyssey. Olympus: Greek mountain, famed as the home of the gods. Thamyras: mythological Thracian bard who chal­ lenged the M uses. Orpheus: Greek musician unrivaled among mortals. 3. Natural magnets apparently cam e from Mag­ nesia and H eraclia in Caria in Asia Minor, and were called after those places [translator’s note]. b .c . e .).

Euripides (ca. 4 8 5 - c a . 4 0 6 b .c . e .), Athenian tra­ gedian; the phrase appears in a fragment of a lost play. 4. O ne of the 9 daughters of Memory who pre­ side over the arts and all intellectual pursuits. 5. Priests o f the goddess Cybele, the Great M other o f the gods (whose worship spread west from Asia M inor); her followers engaged in wild and sometimes bloody dances. 6. Bacchus worshippers apparently danced them ­ selves into a frenzy in which they found streams flowing with honey and milk (Euripides, B acchae 7 0 8 -1 1 ) [translator’s note]. Bacchus: another name for Dionysus, god of wine and of fertility.

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they say is true. For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him. As long as a human being has his intellect in his possession he will always lack the power to make poetry or sing prophecy. Therefore because its not by mastery that they make poems or say many lovely things about their subjects (as you do about Homer)— but because it’s by a divine gift— each poet is able to compose beautifully only that for which the Muse has aroused him: one can do dithyrambs, another encomia, one can do dance songs, another, epics, and yet another, iambics;' and each of them is worthless for the other types of poetry. You see, it’s not mastery that enables them to speak those verses, but a divine power, since if they knew how to speak beautifully on one type of poetry by mastering the subject, they could do so for all the others also. That’s why the god takes their intellect away from them when he uses them as his servants, as he does prophets and godly diviners, so that we who hear should know that they are not the ones who speak those verses that are of such high value, for their intellect is not in them: the god himself is the one who speaks, and he gives voice through them to us. The best evidence for this account is Tynnichus from Chalcis ,8 who never made a poem anyone would think worth mentioning, except for the praisesong everyone sings, almost the most beautiful lyric-poem there is, and simply, as he says himself, “an invention of the Muses.” In this more than anything, then, I think, the god is showing us, so that we should be in no doubt about it, that these beautiful poems are not human, not even from human beings, but are divine and from gods; that poets are nothing but representatives of the gods, possessed by whoever possesses them. To show that, the god deliberately sang the most beautiful lyric poem through the most worthless poet. [535] Don’t you think I’m right, Ion? Io n : Lord yes, I certainly do. Somehow you touch my soul with your words, Socrates, and I do think it’s by a divine gift that good poets are able to present these poems to us from the gods. S o c r a t e s : And you rhapsodes in turn present what the poets say. I o n : That’s true too. S o c r a t e s : S o you turn out to be representatives of representatives. Io n : Quite right. S o c r a t e s : Hold on, Ion; tell me this. Don’t keep any secrets from m e. When you recite epic poetry well and you have the most stunning effect on your spectators, either when you sing of Odysseus9— how he leapt into the doorway, his identity now obvious to the suitors, and he poured out arrows at his feet— or when you sing of Achilles charging at Hector, or when you sing a pitiful episode about Andromache or Hecuba or Priam ,1 are you at that time in your right mind, or do you get beside yourself? And doesn’t your soul, in its enthusiasm, believe that it is present at the 7. A meter based on the syllabic pattern short-long; iambic trim eter was regularly used in the dialogue and set speeches of tragedy. “Dithyrambs”: choral poems originally sung in honor of Dionysus, later associated with highly excited music and impas­ sioned language. “Encom ia”: hymns of praise. 8. Greek poet known solely for his paean to Apollo, which does not survive. 9. The hero of Homer’s Odyssey ; he pours out

arrows in Odyssey 22, attacking the men who had been pursuing his wife during his long absence. 1. King of Troy; he appears in Homer’s Iliad. A chilles: greatest Greek warrior of the Trojan W ar and central character of the Iliad. Hector: oldest son of Priam and Hecuba and the greatest of the Trojan warriors, slain by A chilles (see Iliad 22); his wife was Andromache.

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actions you describe, whether they’re in Ithaca or in Troy or wherever the epic actually takes place? Io n : What a vivid example you’ve given me, Socrates! I won’t keep secrets from you. Listen, when I tell a sad story, my eyes are full of tears; and when I tell a story that’s frightening or awful, my hair stands on end with fear and my heart jumps. S o c r a t e s : Well, Ion, should we say this man is in his right mind at times like these: when he’s at festivals or celebrations, all dressed up in fancy clothes, with golden crowns, and he weeps, though he’s lost none of his finery— or when he’s standing among millions of friendly people and he’s frightened, though no one is undressing him or doing him any harm? Is he in his right mind then? Io n : Lord no, Socrates. Not at all, to tell the truth. S o c r a t e s : And you know that you have the same effects on most of your spectators too, don’t you? Io n : I know very well that we do. I look down at them every time from up on the rostrum, and they’re crying and looking terrified, and as the sto­ ries are told they are filled with amazement. You see I must keep my wits and pay close attention to them: if I start them crying, I will laugh as I take their money, but if they laugh, I shall cry at having lost money. S o c r a t e s : And you know that this spectator is the last of the rings, don’t you— the ones that I said take their power from each other by virtue of the Heraclean stone [the magnet]? The middle ring is you, [536] the rhapsode or actor, and the first one is the poet himself. The god pulls people’s souls through all these wherever he wants, looping the power down from one to another. And just as if it hung from that stone, there’s an enormous chain of choral dancers and dance teachers and assistant teachers hanging off to the sides of the rings that are suspended from the Muse. One poet is attached to one Muse, another to another (we say he is "possessed,” and that’s near enough, for he is held). From these first rings, from the poets, they are attached in their turn and inspired, some from one poet, some from another: some from Orpheus, some from Musaeus ,2 and many are possessed and held from Homer. You are one of th em , Ion, and you are possessed from Homer. And when anyone sings the work of another poet, you’re asleep and you’re lost about what to say; but when any song of that poet is sounded, you are immediately awake, your soul is dancing, and you have plenty to say. You see it’s not because you’re a master of knowledge about Homer that you can say what you say, but because of a divine gift, because you are possessed. T hat’s how it is with the Corybantes, who have sharp ears only for the specific song that belongs to whatever god possesses them; they have plenty of words and movements to go with that song; but they are quite lost if the music is different. That’s how it is with you, Ion: when anyone mentions Homer, you have plenty to say, but if he mentions the others you are lost; and the explanation of this, for which you ask me— why it is that you have plenty to say about Homer but not about the others— is that it’s not mastering the subject, but a divine gift, that makes you a wonderful singer of Homer’s praises. 2. M ythical singer, closely connected with Orpheus.

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I on : You’re a good speaker, Socrates. Still, I would be amazed if you could speak well enough to convince me that I am possessed or crazed when I praise Homer. I don’t believe you’d think so if you heard me speaking on Homer. S o c r a t e s : And I really do want to hear you, but not before you answer me this: on which of Homer’s subjects do you speak well? I don’t sup­ pose you speak well on all of them. Ion : I do, Socrates, believe me, on every single one! S o c r a t e s : Surely not on those subjects you happen to know nothing about, even if Homer does speak of them. Ion : And these subjects Homer speaks of, but I don’t know about—what are they? [537] S o c r a t e s : But doesn’t Homer speak about professional subjects in many places, and say a great deal? Chariot driving, for example, I’ll show you, if I can remember the lines. Ion : N o, I’ll recite them . I do remember. S o c r a t e s : Then tell me what Nestor says to his son Antilochus, when he advises him to take care at the turning post in the horse race they held for Patroclus ’3 funeral. Ion : “Lean,” he says, Lean yourself over on the smooth-planed chariot Just to the left of the pair. Then the horse on the right— Goad him, shout him on, easing the reins with your hands. At the post let your horse on the left stick tight to the turn So you seem to come right to the edge, with the hub Of your welded wheel. But escape cropping the stone . . . 4 That’s enough. Who would know better, Ion, whether Homer speaks correctly or not in these particular verses— a doctor or a chariot­ eer? Ion : A charioteer, of course. S o c ra te s:

S o c r a t e s : I s t h a t b e c a u s e h e is a m a s t e r o f t h a t p r o f e s s io n , o r fo r s o m e o th e r rea so n ?

Ion : No. It’s because he’s a m aster of it. S o c r a t e s : Then to each profession a god has granted the ability to know a certain function. I mean, the things navigation teaches us— we won’t learn them from medicine as well, will wc? I on : O f course not. S o c r a t e s : And the things medicine teaches us we won’t learn from archi­ tecture. Ion : O f course not. S o c r a t e s : And so it is for every other profession: what we learn by mas­ tering one profession we won’t learn by mastering another, right? But first, answer me this. Do you agree that there are different professions— that one is different from another? Ion : Yes.

3. A chilles’ dearest friend, slain by H ector. Nestor: the oldest of the G reek generals at Troy;

in the Iliad, he often gives advice. 4. Iliad 2 3 .3 3 5 -4 0 [translator’s note].

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And is this how you determine which ones are different? When I find that the knowledge [involved in one case] deals with differ­ ent subjects from the knowledge [in another case], then I claim that one is a different profession from the other. Is that what you do? I o n : Yes. S o c r a t e s : I mean if there is some knowledge of the same subjects, then why should we say there are two different professions?— Especially when each of them would allow us to know the same subjects! Take these fin­ gers: I know there are five of them, and you know the same thing about them than I do. Now suppose I asked you whether it’s the same profession— arithmetic— that teaches you and me the same things, or whether it’s two different ones. O f course you’d say it’s the same one. I o n : Yes. [538] S o c r a t e s : Then tell me now what I was going to ask you earlier. Do you think it’s the same way for every profession— the same profession must teach the same subjects, and a different profession, if it is differ­ ent, must teach not the same subjects, but different ones? I o n : T hat’s how I think it is, Socrates. S o c r a t e s : Then a person who has not mastered a given profession will not be able to be a good judge of the things which belong to that profes­ sion, whether they are things said or things done. I o n : T hat’s true. S o c r a t e s : Then who will know better whether or not Homer speaks beautifully and well in the lines you quoted? You, or a charioteer? I o n : A charioteer. S o c r a t e s : T h at’s because you’re a rhapsode, of course, and not a charioteer. I o n : Yes. S o c r a t e s : And the rhapsode’s profession is different from the chariot­ eer’s. I o n : Yes. S o c r a t e s : If it’s different, then its knowledge is of different subjects also. I o n : Yes. S o c r a t e s : Then what about the time Homer tells how Hecamede, Nestor’s woman, gave barley-medicine to Machaon 5 to drink? He says something like this— S o c ra te s :

Over wine of Pramnos she grated goat’s milk cheese With a brazen grater. . . . And onion relish for the drink . . . 6 Is Homer right or not: would a fine diagnosis here come from a doctor’s profession or a rhapsode’s? I o n : A doctor’s. S o c r a t e s : And what about the time Homer says: Leaden she plunged to the floor of the sea like a weight That is fixed to a field cow’s horn. Given to the hunt It goes among ravenous fish, carrying death .7

5. A fighter and healer in the Iliad. 6. Iliad 1 1 .6 3 9 -4 0 with 6 3 0 [translator’s note].

7. Iliad 2 4 .8 0 —82 [translator's note].

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Should we say it’s for a fisherman’s profession or a rhapsode’s to tell whether or not he describes this beautifully and well? I o n : That’s obvious, Socrates. It’s for a fisherman’s. S o c r a t e s : All right, look. Suppose you were the one asking questions, and you asked me, “Socrates, since you’re finding out which passages belong to each of the professions Homer treats— which are the passages that each profession should judge— come tell me this: which are the passages that belong to a diviner and to divination, passages he should be able to judge as to whether they’re well or badly composed?” Look how easily I can give you a true answer. Often, in the Odyssey, he says things like what Theoclymenus says— the prophet of the sons of Melampus:8 [539] Are you mad? What evil is this that’s upon you? Night Has enshrouded your hands, your faces, and down to your knees. Wailing spreads like fire, tears wash your cheeks. Ghosts fill the dooryard, ghosts fill the hall, they rush To the black gate of hell, they drop below darkness. Sunlight Has died from a sky run over with evil mist.9 And often in the Ilia d , as in the battle at the wall.1 There he says: There came to them a bird as they hungered to cross over. An eagle, a high-flier, circled the army’s left With a blood-red serpent carried in its talons, a monster, Alive, still breathing, it has not yet forgotten its warlust, For it struck its captor on the breast, by the neck; It was writhing back, but the eagle shot it groundwards In agony of pain, and dropped it in the midst of the throng, Then itself, with a scream, soared on a breath of the wind.2 I shall say that these passages and those like them belong to a diviner. They are for him to examine and judge. I o n : That’s a true answer, Socrates. S o c r a t e s : Well, your answers are true, too, Ion. Now yew tell me—just as I picked out for you, from the Odyssey and the Iliad, passages that belong to a diviner and ones that belong to a doctor and ones that belong to a fisherman— in the same way, Ion, since you have more experience with Homer’s work than I do, you pick out for me the passages that belong to the rhapsode and to his profession, the passages a rhapsode should be able to examine and to judge better than anyone else. I o n : My answer, Socrates, is “all of them.” S o c r a t e s : That’s not your answer, Ion. Not “all of them.” Or are you really so forgetful? But no, it would not befit a rhapsode to be forgetful. [540] Ion: What do you think I’m forgetting? S o c r a t e s : Don’t you remember you said that a rhapsode’s profession is different from a charioteer’s? 1 I on: I remember. 8. Legendary seer who ruled in Argos and pro­ genitor of the so-called Sons of Melampus, one of the four clans of seers in ancient G reece. They included Theoclymenus, seer of Argos; he appears in the Odyssey, prophesying for Telem achus,

Odysseus’s son. 9. Odyssey 2 0 .3 5 1 -5 7 ; line 354 is omitted by Plato [translator’s note]. 1. T he city wall o f Troy. 2. Iliad 1 2 .2 0 0 -2 0 7 [translator’s note].

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And didn’t you agree that because they are different they will know different subjects? I o n : Yes. S o c r a t e s : S o a rhapsode’s profession, on your view, will not know every­ thing, and neither will a rhapsode. I o n : But things like that are exceptions, Socrates. S o c r a t e s : By "things like that” you mean that almost all the subjects of the other professions are exceptions, don’t you? But then what sort of thing w ill a rhapsode know, if not everything? I on: My opinion, anyhow, is that he’ll know what it’s fitting for a man or a woman to say— or for a slave or a freeman, or for a follower or a leader. S o c r a t e s : S o — what should a leader say when he’s at sea and his ship is hit by a storm— do you mean a rhapsode will know better than a navigator? I o n : N o , no. A navigator will know that. S o c r a t e s : And when he is in charge of a sick man, what should a leader say— will a rhapsode know better than a doctor? I o n : Not that, either. S o c r a t e s : But he w ill know what a slave should say. Is that what you mean? I on: Yes. S o c r a t e s : For example, what should a slave who’s a cowherd say to calm down his cattle when they’re going wild— will a rhapsode know what a cowherd does not? I on: Certainly not. S o c r a t e s : And what a woman who spins yarn should say about working with wool? I on: No. S o c r a t e s : And what a man should say, if he’s a general, to encourage his troops? I o n : Yes! T hat’s the sort of thing a rhapsode will know. S o c r a t e s : What? Is a rhapsode’s profession the same as a general’s? I o n : Well, I certainly would know what a general should say. S o c r a t e s : Perhaps that’s because you’re also a general by profession, Ion. I mean, if you were somehow both a horseman and a cithara-player at the same time, you would know good riders from bad. But suppose I asked you: "Which profession teaches you good horsemanship— the one that makes you a horseman, or the one that makes you a cithara-player?” Ion: The horseman, I’d say. S o c r a t e s : Then if you also knew good cithara-players from bad, the pro­ fession that taught you that would be the one which made you a citharaplayer, not the one that made you a horseman. Wouldn’t you agree? I on: Yes. S o c r a t e s : N ow , since you know the business of a general, do you know this by being a general or by being a good rhapsode? I on: I don’t think there’s any difference. [541] S o c r a t e s : What? Are you saying there’s no difference? On your view is there one profession for rhapsodes and generals, or two? I o n : One, I think. S o c r a t e s : S o anyone who is a good rhapsode turns out to be a good gen­ eral too. S o c ra te s:

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Certainly, Socrates. It also follows that anyone who turns out to be a good general is a good rhapsode too. I o n : N o . This time I don’t agree. S o c r a t e s : But you do agree to this: anyone who is a good rhapsode is a good general too. I on: I quite agree. S o c r a t e s : And aren’t you the best rhapsode in Greece? Ion: By far, Socrates. S o c r a t e s : Are you also a general, Ion? Are you the best in Greece? I o n : Certainly, Socrates. That, too, I learned from Homer’s poetry. S o c r a t e s : Then why in heaven’s name, Ion, when you’re both the best general and the best rhapsode in Greece, do you go around the country giving rhapsodies but not commanding troops? Do you think Greece really needs a rhapsode who is crowned with a golden crown? And does not need a general? 3 I o n : Socrates, my city is governed and commanded by you [by Athens]; we don’t need a general. Besides, neither your city nor Sparta would choose me for a general. You think you’re good enough for that yourselves. S o c r a t e s : Ion, you’re superb. Don’t you know Apollodorus of Cyzicus? I o n : What does h e do? S o c r a t e s : He’s a foreigner who has often been chosen by Athens to be their general. And Phanosthenes of Andros and Heraclides of Clazomenae— they’re also foreigners; they’ve demonstrated that they are worth noticing, and Athens appoints them to be generals or other sorts of officials. And do you think that this city, that makes such appointments, would not select Ion of Ephesus and honor him, if they thought he was worth noticing? Why? Aren’t you people from Ephesus Athenians of long standing?4 And isn’t Ephesus a city that is second to none? But you, Ion, you’re doing me wrong, if what you say is true that what enables you to praise Homer is knowledge or mastery of a profession. You assured me that you knew many lovely things about Homer, you promised to give a demonstration; but you’re cheating me, you’re a long way from giving a demonstration. You aren’t even willing to tell me what it is that you’re so wonderfully clever about, though I’ve been begging you for ages. Really, you’re just like Proteus,5 you twist up and down and take many different shapes, till finally you’ve escaped me altogether by turning yourself into a general, [542] so as to avoid proving how wonderfully wise you are about Homer. If you’re really a master of your subject, and if, as I said earlier, you’re cheating me of the demonstration you promised about Homer, then you’re doing me wrong. But if you’re not a master of your subject, if you’re pos­ sessed by a divine gift from Homer, so that you make many lovely speeches about the poet without knowing anything— as I said about you— then Io n :

S o c ra te s :

3. T he memory of Athens’ defeat in the Pelopon­ nesian W ar (which ended in 4 0 4 b .c . e .) was per­ haps still fresh in Plato’s mind when he wrote this dialogue. 4. For most o f the 5th century, Ephesus, an important center o f trade founded by Ionian col­

onists on the west coast of Asia Minor, belonged to an alliance led by Athens against the Persians. 5. Proteus was a servant o f Poseidon [god of the sea]. He had the power to take whatever shape he wanted in order to avoid answering questions (Odyssey 4.385ff.) [translator’s note].

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you’re not doing me wrong. So choose, how do you want us to think of you— as a m an who does wrong, or as someone divine} I o n : There’s a great difference, Socrates. It’s much lovelier to be thought divine. S o c r a t e s : Then that is how we think of you, Ion, the lovelier way: it’s as someone divine, and not as master of a profession, that you are a singer of Homer’s praises. ca.

390 b .c .e .

From The Republic 1 From B ook II

The question of education is clearly relevant to our inquiry. In that case, my dear Adeimantus,2 we must not give up on it even though it should detain us for some time. Let us face the question. I suggest we proceed with our guardians’ education in a spirit of leisure. We shall tell tales and recount fables that will serve to educate them. Good. And what better education than that which has been for so long part of our own heritage? That would mean, I suppose, gymnastic for the body and music for the soul.3 Yes. And education in music should begin earlier than gymnastic? It should. And we understand music to include poetry and stories, do we not? Of course. And these, in turn, are of two kinds. They are either true or false .4 Yes. [377] And our students will have to be educated to understand both, beginning with the false? I don’t understand. But surely you realize that we always begin by telling children fables. Of course, the fables contain some elements of truth, but by and large they are false. And so the child is exposed to fable before he is old enough to learn gymnastic. That is what I meant by saying that we must start with music before taking up gymnastic. 1. Translated by Richard W. Sterling and W il­ liam C. Scott. The numbers in square brackets are the Stephanus numbers used almost univer­ sally in citing Plato’s works; they refer to the pages of a 1578 edition published by Henri Estienne. 2. At this point in R epu blic, the philosopher Socrates (469—3 9 9 b . c . e ., Plato’s spokesperson) and Adeimantus are discussing what education the future rulers (or “guardians”) of the perfect state should have. Socrates (speaking here) leads the discussion and Adeimantus follows (Socrates’

other interlocutor in our selections from Republic books 3 and 7 is Adeimantus’s brother Glaucon). 3. T he education Plato describes here is conso­ nant with the kind of education available in 5thcentury Athens, which would include physical education for the body (gymnastic), education for character though reading, writing, and arithm etic (grammata ), and music. Poetry would be taught as part of the music curriculum. 4. Either fiction or nonfiction.

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I understand now. Then you will also understand that the most important part of any work is its beginning. This is especially true for the education of young children. At this tender age they are the most impressionable and therefore most likely to adopt any and all models set before them. True. Then we can hardly afford to let the children listen to just any tales or fables recounted by just any teachers who happen along. We surely don’t want the children to adopt opinions and beliefs that might be largely con­ trary to the kinds of values we deem desirable for them to have when they become adults. Certainly not. Then our program of education must begin with censorship. The censors will approve the fables and stories they deem good and ban those they con­ sider to be harmful. We shall persuade mothers and nurses to tell the children stories from the approved list, assuring them that the training of the soul is far more important than the training of the body. If we apply this criterion, most of the stories they tell now will have to be discarded. Which stories? Let us consider the greatest stories; that will help us to understand the less renowned stories as well. The spirit and pattern will be the same in both. Don't you think so? It is likely. But I have yet to understand what you mean by the greatest stories. Those that have come down to us from Hesiod and Homer5 and the other poets. Men have heard these stories again and again. We still hear them, and I believe that they are false. Which stories do you mean? What fault do you find in them? The most serious fault of all. They tell lies. Still worse, the lies they tell are malevolent. How can we tell when they are lying? Whenever they tell a tale that plays false with the true nature of gods6 and heroes. Then they are like painters whose portraits bear no resemblance to their models. Such things are surely blameworthy. But be specific. What do you mean in particular? First of all, I mean the greatest and most malevolent lies about matters of the greatest concern: what Hesiod said Uranus did to his son Cronos and how Cronos revenged himself on his father. [378] Then there is the tale of Cronos s further doings and how he suffered in his turn at the hands of his own son, Zeus/ Even were these stories true, they ought not to be told indis5. Greek epic poet (ca. 8th c.

b .c . e .),

to whom the

Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed. Hesiod (active ca. 700 b .c . e .), Greek epic didactic poet. 6. Because o f the basic polytheism of Greek reli­ gion, the word for god occurs commonly in both singular and plural. We have consistently spelled the word without capitalization. A reader should be aware that differing conceptions of divinity underlie the ensuing discussion [translators’ note]. 7. Hesiod tells the story of the cosm ic battle among members of three successive generations

of gods in which the sons overthrew their fathers. First, Cronos castrated his father Uranus. Cronos then swallowed each of his children as Rhea gave birth to them. But Zeus she bore secretly and gave him to others to raise. To Cronos she gave a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to swallow in place of the baby. W hen fully grown, Zeus forced Cro­ nos to vomit up the stone and his other offspring, who joined with their liberator Zeus to form the final generation o f ruling gods (Hesiod, T heogony 1 5 4 -2 1 0 and 4 5 3 -5 0 6 ) [translators’ note].

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criminately to young and thoughtless persons. It would be best if they could be buried in silence. If they absolutely must be retold, it should be only to a chosen few under conditions of total secrecy. And this only after performing a sacrifice not of an ordinary pig8 but of some huge and usually unprocurable victim. That should help cut down the number of listeners. I must admit that the stories you cite are extremely objectionable. Yes, they are, Adeimantus, and they are not to be told in our city. No young man should be given to understand that even in the most outrageous crimes there is nothing outrageous. Nor should the child be taught to believe that in abandoning all restraint in order to punish the misdeeds of his father he will only be following the example of the first and greatest gods. By Zeus, I agree. These stories are not fit to be told. Nor can we permit it to be said that gods plot against gods and make war upon each other— which is in any case false— if we want our future guard­ ians to abhor even the thought of quarreling among themselves. Still less shall we make up stories of battles among gods or giants; nor shall we permit the various episodes of their wars to be embroidered on our garments.9 We shall follow the same policy concerning all the other endless quarrels of gods and heroes with their friends and relatives. If we could get them to believe us, we would tell our future guardians that quarreling is a blasphemy, and we would say that to this day there has never been a quarrel among citizens. Now this is the sort of thing that the old men and the old women ought to be telling the children right from the start. As the children grow older, the poets must be compelled to write for them in a similar vein. But the story of Hera put in chains by her own son Hephaestus is inadmissible .1 So is the story of these two on another occasion when Zeus hurled Hephaestus down from heaven for taking his mother's part when she was being beaten .2 Once again, the battles of the gods in Homer’s verse have no place in our city, whether they purport to be allegories or not. Young minds are not able to discriminate between what is allegorical and what is literal. At that age, whatever their minds absorb is likely to become fixed and unalterable. This may be the most important reason why tales for the very young should epit­ omize the fairest thoughts of virtue. I agree with you there. But were someone to ask where we should find these desirable kinds of stories or themes, how should we reply? Adeimantus, at this particular moment we are not poets but founders of a state. [379] Now it is proper that founders of states should be cognizant of the norms governing the general content of poetic compositions and the limits beyond which the poets must not go. But it is not the business of founders to compose the fables themselves. Yes, but that’s the whole point. What are the norms that should govern the telling of tales about the gods?

8. A sacrifice usual before initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, secret cults at Eleusis in honor of Demeter, goddess of grain, and her daughter Persephone. 9. T h e battle of the giants against the gods— the G igantom achia— was depicted on the robe woven for the statue o f Athena at the Parthenon. 1. Hera was bound to a throne containing con ­

cealed chains given to her by her son Hephaes­ tus [translators’ note], the Greek god o f fire and metalworking. 2. According to one legend, Hephaestus was lamed when Zeus cast him out of heaven for defending Hera, queen of the gods (see Iliad 1.591-97). Hera was Zeus’s wife and sister.

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Well, they should be something like this. Whether portrayed in epic, lyric, or tragic form, deity should always be depicted as it truly is. Agreed. And is god not always good? Should he not always be represented as such? Yes. Further, no good thing is harmful? No. And what is not harmful cannot harm? Of course not. And that which does no harm also does no evil? It does no evil. Can that which does no evil itself cause evil? Impossible. Then good produces good and is the source of happiness. Yes. It follows that the good is not the cause of all things but only of good things. It cannot be blamed for those things which are evil. Quite right. If god is good, then, he cannot be the source of all things, as the multitude is prone to say. In the affairs of men god acts as cause but rarely; of most things he is not the cause. This must be true because in human life good things are few and evils are many. The good we receive we must attribute to god alone; for the causes of evil we must look elsewhere. I think what you say is true. Then we cannot countenance the follies and errors in the poets’ descrip­ tions of the gods. Homer, for instance, says: Two urns stand on the palace floor of Zeus filled with destinies he allots, one containing good things and the other evil. He who receives from Zeus both kinds chances upon evil one day and good the next. But when Zeus does not blend the lots and instead gives a man unmixed evil, Hunger drives him, a wanderer everywhere on earth. So we must not have it said that good and evil are alike bestowed by Zeus.3 Nor shall we approve if anyone tries to saddle Zeus or Athena with blame for the broken oaths and treaties that were really Pandarus’s own doing.4 Further, it is inadmissible to assert that Zeus and Themis 5 fomented discord

3. Iliad 2 4 .5 2 7 -3 2 . 4. During a truce in the Trojan War, Athena, dis­ guised as Laodocus [a Trojan warrior], appeared to Pandarus, another Trojan warrior, and per­ suaded him to shoot an arrow at M enelaus— an action that broke the truce and re-ignited the war (Iliad 4 .8 6 -1 0 3 ) [translators’ note]. Athena:

Greek goddess of wisdom and war, and the patron god of Athens. M enelaus: king of Sparta, and a central figure in the Trojan W ar as Helen of Troy’s husband.

5. Greek goddess of justice, wisdom, and good counsel.

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and strife among the gods. [380] And our young people must not be permit­ ted to hear these words of Aeschylus: When a god would utterly destroy a house he implants in men the guilty cause. Such verse the poet uses in writing of the sorrows of Niobe.6 But if he or any poet must concern himself with these and similar themes when recall­ ing the house of Pelops7 or the Trojan War, we must make him conform to one of two requirements. Either he agrees not to ascribe the woes of men to the acts of gods, or he must provide some such explanation as we now are looking for ourselves. That is, what the gods did was just and righteous pun­ ishment, and those mortals upon whom it was inflicted benefited from it. But if instead they are portrayed as having been made miserable by the penalty and the gods declared to be the authors of their misery, this is something no poet will be allowed to say. On the other hand, if a poet should say that the wicked are miserable because they need to be punished and that the gods benefit them by providing the penalty, that we shall allow. The proposition that a god, who is good, should cause evil to anyone is something we must strenuously deny. In a well-governed city it is something neither young nor old will assert or listen to. It must not be said or sung in verse or prose. It is a contradictory, profitless, and impious fiction. I agree. I would vote to make your words law. Then let this be one of the laws and principles in our city concerning the gods to which our speakers and poets must conform: a god is not the author of all things but only of good things. Good. We must consider a further proposition. Do you think that god is a wizard? Do you think he would play insidious games with us, assuming one shape at one time and another at another? Would he actually change himself and pass from his own form into many forms? Or would he deceive us by sometimes only feigning such transformations? Or is god simple? In that case, he would be less likely than any other being to depart from his own true form. I shall need to think about that. But what do you say to this? If something changes its form, it must either have changed itself or else there must have been some external cause. Necessarily. And is it not also true that things in their best condition are least likely to be affected or changed by external causes? The healthy human body, for example, is least likely to suffer adverse effects from food or drink or exer-

6. Niobe had boasted that she, with her twelve children, was the equal of Leto, who had only two divine children, Apollo and Artemis. The two gods killed all twelve of Niobe’s children and left her sorrowing for her lost family [translators’ note]. Aeschylus (5 2 5 -4 5 6 b .c . e .), Greek trage­ dian; the quotation is from his Niobe (a lost play). 7. T h e curse on the house of Pelops was applied to successive generations. Myrtilus, H erm es’ son, cursed Pelops as he threw him into the sea, and this curse was carried out first upon Pelops's sons, Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes seduced Atreus’s wife, but Atreus chopped up several o f

Thyestes’ children and served them to their father in a stew. Atreus’s children are M enelaus, whose wife Helen is given to Paris by Aphrodite, the extram arital gift that provoked the Trojan W ar; and Agamemnon, who is slain by his wife Clytem nestra and her lover Aegisthus (a surviv­ ing son of Thyestes). The children of Agamem­ non and Clytem nestra are O restes and Electra, who must arrange the murder of their mother at the command of Apollo [translators’ note]. W hen writing plays, many Greek tragedians drew on this complex o f myths.

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tion. With plants it is the same. Those in full vigor will be the last to be damaged by high winds or the heat of the sun [381] or any other cause. I agree. Then we can adduce that the soul that is bravest and wisest will be least vulnerable to confusion or disorders originating from external sources? Yes. By analogy, I suppose, the same principle applies to mens artifacts— furniture, clothing, and houses. Those that are well made are least liable to be changed by time and other influences. True. Then we ought to be able to assert a universal truth: everything that is well made in nature or in art is best able to withstand change from without. Apparently. Now, could we agree that god, and everything that belongs to him, is in every way perfect? O f course. It follows that it would be the least of all possibilities that god should be compelled by external pressures to take on many forms. Least indeed. Still, he could will to change and transform himself? Of course. Will he change himself into something better and more beautiful or will the change be in the direction of the bad and the ugly? If god changes, it must necessarily be for the worse, for we cannot sup­ pose him to be initially deficient in any way in either goodness or beauty. Well said, Adeimantus. Now another question: would anyone, whether god or man, willingly make himself worse? Impossible. Then it is impossible for a god even to wish to change himself. Intrinsi­ cally good and beautiful, a god abides simply and forever in his own form. I think that is an unavoidable conclusion. Then, my good friend, we must not suffer any poet to tell us that The gods appear as strangers from far lands and roam men’s cities in many guises.8 Let no one fabricate falsehoods about Proteus and Thetis .9 Neither let any­ one in tragic or other kind of verse introduce Hera disguised as a priestess appealing for alms for the life-giving sons of Inachos ,1 the river of Argos. Many other such lies must also be suppressed. Further, we must not permit mothers under the influence of poets to frighten their children with wrong versions of myths that say certain gods masquerade as strangers from strange lands and haunt the night. Instead, we will make them take heed lest they speak evil of the gods and make cowards of their children. 8. Odyssey 1 7 .4 8 5 -8 6 . 9. Proteus, the old man of the sea, is able to change into a variety of shapes. In the Odyssey (4.455—59) he turns into a lion, a snake, a leop­ ard, a boar, flowing water, a tree, and finally back into a man. Thetis [mother o f the hero Achilles] turned into a fire, a lion, and several more elusive forms in order to escape the em brace o f Peleus

[Achilles’ father] (Pindar, Nem ean Ode 4.62ff., and Ovid, M etamorphoses 9 .2 3 8 -4 6 ) [translators’ note]. 1. Both a river in Argos, a city-state on the Peloponnese, and a river god. T h e “sons” are presum­ ably the river’s tributaries with their “life-giving” water.

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There can be no sanction for any such behavior. Well, then, another question. If we are agreed that the gods are unchang­ ing and do not will to change, could it nonetheless be true that by witch­ craft and sorcery they could make us believe the illusion that they do indeed appear in many forms? Perhaps. [382] But do you really believe that a god would lie in word or deed or would seek to victimize us with illusions? I don't know. Don't you know that the true lie, if one can use such an expression, is hated by men and gods alike? What do you mean? I mean the lie that finds lodging in the inmost part of men's souls and remains there to deceive them about all the things most important to their lives. This is the lie that has no friends. Men hate and fear it above all others. I still don't understand. That is because you think I am trying to say something profound. All I mean is that every man loathes the thought that he might be taken captive by a lie which would prevent him from distinguishing between reality and unreality. That his soul should be possessed by a lie whereby he is continu­ ally deceived and irrevocably ignorant is something no man wants to accept. Now I understand, and I agree. Then it must be correct to say that what I have called the true lie is igno­ rance in the soul of the man deceived. The lie in words, on the other hand, does no more than imitate what the true lie does to the soul. It bears only a somewhat shadowy resemblance to the true lie and is not altogether false. Is that not right? Quite right. We have said, then, that the true lie is hated by both gods and men. I agree. Now what about the lie in words? Could it sometimes be useful to some people and therefore not be considered hateful? Would it be advantageous in dealing with enemies? And how about those we call friends? Should any of these be bent on doing wrong by some act of folly or madness, might not the lie in words be helpful as a sort of medicine, as a means by which we try to divert them and prevent the deed from being done? Consider also the fables and stories from the past that we have just been discussing. Because of our ignorance of the truth about the ancient times, our only recourse is to tell fables, patterning the false on the true as best we can so that our stories may have some use. Yes, we men do all these things. But would god find these kinds of lies useful? Would he lie about the past, for example, because he does not know the truth about it? Such a notion would be absurd. Then in god there is no lying poet. No. Well, then, would he lie because he fears his enemies? Inconceivable. But he may have friends who are mad or given over to folly? Fools and madmen are not friends of god.

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Then god has no motive for lying? None. May we conclude that in all things deity and the divine are entirely free from falsehood? Yes. Then god is simple and true in deed and word. He is unchanging and unchangeable. He doesn't lie. Whether men wake or whether men dream, god never deceives them with visions or with words or by signs. [383] This is also what I think, when I hear you say it. You would also concur, I assume, in a second law or principle to govern representations of the gods in poetry and prose. That is, the gods are neither wizards who confound us by transformations, nor do they deceive us by word or deed. I concur. Despite our esteem for Homer, then, we cannot admire the dream of lies that Zeus imparts to the sleeping Agamemnon.2 Nor can we commend the verse of Aeschylus wherein Thetis alleged that Apollo sang at her wedding, Foretelling the fair fortunes of her progeny: Long would be their days and free from pain and ills. He made complete the tale of heaven's blessings, singing a joyous hymn and gladdening my heart. I believed that Phoebus would not lie, that a prophet would utter only truth. But he himself who sang that wedding night, he himself who feasted with us, he himself who promised these fair things, himself is now the slayer of my son.3 We shall be angry with a poet who writes such lines about the gods and shall forbid their presentation in public. Nor can we permit teachers to make use of such poets in instructing the young if our guardians are to become god-fearing men, and indeed godlike, insofar as that is possible for men. I agree. I accept these laws and principles. $

*

#

From B o o k III [386] From childhood onward, then, these are the kinds of things we shall permit or forbid our guardians to hear about the gods, so that they will honor the gods and their mothers and fathers, and be true friends to each other. I think these are good principles. What next? If they are to be courageous they must learn still other les­ sons. They must learn not to fear death— or do you think anyone could be brave who is afraid of death? No, I don’t. 2. T he dream deceiving Agamemnon tells him to muster the Greeks for battle because the gods have not agreed that Troy can be taken (Iliad 2.1—15) [translators’ note]. Agamemnon: king of

Mycenae and com mander o f the Greek expedi­ tion against Troy. 3. From a lost play. Phoebus: Apollo, god of proph ecy as well as healing and music.

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What about any man who believes the underworld is real and terrible? Will he be likely to be fearless? In battle, will he prefer death to defeat and slavery? He will not. Then we must expand our supervision to those who write and tell stories about these matters, too. We must ask them to speak better of Hades4 rather than worse, for what they tell us now is not true, nor is it edifying for those who are going to be warriors. You are right. Let us begin, then, by expunging the verse that follows and all other writ­ ings and sayings of the same ilk: I would rather be a poor serf on the land of one himself penurious, than be monarch of all who ever died. and this: Lest to mortals and immortals the houses of the dead be conjured up, dark, hideous, dank, and abhorrent to the gods themselves. and this: Ah, woe! So it is true: in Hades’ house are souls and apparitions, but all intelligence is gone. and: He was alone with his wisdom and wit. All the others were shadows and wraiths. and: Unwillingly his soul went forth from his body to bewail its doom in Hades and lament lost manliness and youth. [387] and: Shrilling and gibbering, the soul slipped down like a vapor and vanished underneath the earth. and: Like bats hanging in a darkened cave will cling to a rock together and shriek for the one that falls from the cluster, so their souls will screech and falter .5

4. T he G reek underworld. 5. From Odyssey 1 1 .4 8 9 -9 1 ; Iliad 2 0 . 6 4 - 6 6 ,

2 3 .1 0 3 - 4 ; Odyssey 10.495; Ilia d 2 3 .1 0 0 —101; and Odyssey 2 4 .6 -9 .

1 6 .8 5 6 -5 7 ,

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We shall beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we ban these and all similar passages. Our objection is not that they are not poetic; nor is it that they do not please most hearers. Rather it is because the more poetic they are, the less they are suited to the ears of boys and men being schooled to be free and so to fear slavery more than death. Further, we must suppress the entire vocabulary of terror and fear cus­ tomarily used to describe the world below. Styx, the tide of hate, Cocytus, the river of lamentation ,6 charnel house, withered shades— all such terms that make men tremble will have to go. Horror stories may be all right for other purposes, but our purpose is to prevent our guardians becoming hot­ headed from such stories or else degenerate in nerves and heart. Your concern is well taken. Then let us do away with them. Agreed. And we must require the contrary sentiments in poetry and prose? Clearly. Surely we should expunge the wailing and laments of famous men? They must go with the rest. Consider, however, whether we shall indeed do right in getting rid of them. Our purpose is to affirm that a good man will not think death a ter­ rible thing even should it befall another good man and comrade. That is our purpose. Then he would not lament his friend as if something terrible had hap­ pened to him. No. Further, we would say of him that of all men he is most sufficient to him­ self in leading the good life. He has least need of anybody else. True. So he finds it less terrible than others to endure the loss of a son, a brother, a fortune, or anything else? That follows. And when misfortune overtakes him, he will lament but little and bear his sorrow in moderation? Yes. Then we shall do well to delete the lamentations of famous men. We can attribute them to women— and not to the better sort of women either— and to men of lesser account. [388] We do this so that those we educate to be guardians of the city will disdain such behavior. We shall be right in doing so. Then we must turn once again to Homer and the other poets and ask them not to portray Achilles, himself the son of a goddess, lying on his side, then on his back, and again face down, then rising up distraught and quivering on a beach of the waste and barren sea,

6. Two o f the four rivers of Hades.

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nor scooping up ashes with both hands and pouring them on his head ,7 nor giving way to grief and tears in Homers various descriptions. Neither should Priam, close kin to the gods, be described in suppli­ cation, calling aloud and rolling in the dung, entreating each man by name.8 Most particularly shall we entreat Homer and the others at least to spare us from those descriptions that have the gods themselves given over to lam­ entation and wailing: Alas! Ah, woe is me, unhappy mother, who gave birth to the bravest, and now to my sorrow.9 If they insist on characterizing the gods in this way, they should at least not dare to misrepresent Zeus, greatest of the gods, by putting such words as these into his mouth: Oh, woe! My heart is afflicted that I should behold a man most dear to me being chased around the city of Troy. or these: Oh, Sarpedon, dearest of men to me. Oh, sorrow, he is fated to be slain by Patroclus, Menoetius’s son .1 Now, my dear Adeimantus, supposing our youth should take seriously such nonsense about the gods instead of laughing at it? Would any of them in that case be likely to think such conduct unworthy of themselves? Would they not reflect that they are only men and therefore have no cause to rebuke them­ selves for behaving in the way the gods themselves behave? Would they not be likely to abandon shame and self-control, starting to wail and chant dirges at the slightest provocation? Without doubt. But our previous reasoning has shown that this is the sort of thing we ought not to permit. And I think we better stick to this position until some­ body shows us a better one. I agree. Nor must our young men be too fond of laughter. Anyone who gives way to excessive laughter almost always provokes a violent reaction. So it seems. It follows that persons of importance ought not to be described as over­ come by laughter. [389] Still less should we sanction similar representa­ tions of the gods.

7. Iliad 2 4 .1 0 -1 3 and 18.23—24. A chilles: the greatest o f the Greek warriors at Troy and the central figure o f the Iliad. 8. Iliad 2 2 .4 1 4 -1 5 . Priam : the last king of Troy, descended from Zeus.

9. Iliad 18.54. T he speaker is T hetis. 1. Iliad 2 2 .1 6 8 -6 9 (H ector is being chased by Achilles), 1 6 .4 3 3 -3 4 . Sarpedon: a son o f Zeus who fought with the Trojans. Patroclus: the dearest friend of A chilles.

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Just as you say: such representations of the gods are still less accept­ able. Then these sayings of Homer about the gods are also unacceptable: Irrepressible laughter spread among the blessed gods as they saw their Hephaestus bustling about the palace .2 No, we cannot accept them, according to your view. If you choose to call it my view. At any rate, we must repudiate them. Further: we must prize truth. We said before that gods have no use for lies. If that is right, and if it is also right that lies are useful to men only as a kind of medicine or remedy, then only doctors should be permitted to use them. Lay persons have no business lying. Obviously. Only the rulers of the city— and no others— may tell lies. And their lies, whether directed to enemies or citizens, will be legitimate only if their pur­ pose is to serve the public interest. But no private person may tell lies to rulers. To do so would be a great transgression— greater even than if a patient were to deceive his doctor about the true condition of his body, or if an athlete were to practice a like deception with his trainer. Or, to draw a further analogy, we may liken it to a case where a man conceals from the captain the true condi­ tions prevailing aboard the ship and lies about how he and his fellow sailors fare. I agree. Now if the ruler of a city catches anybody lying— besides himself—any of the craftsmen, whether priest, carpenter, or doctor of medicine,3 he will punish them for subversive practice, as damaging to a city as to a ship. He will, if words are as good as deeds. Next, our young people must learn moderation. Certainly. And would you agree that the main issues for the multitude concerning moderation are obedience to the rulers and self-rule in regard to the bodily appetites? I think so. Then we shall commend what Homer has Diomedes say: Friend, be quiet and obey my word,4 and also what follows: The Greeks marched forward with valor, silent, in fear of their captains ,5 and all similar passages.

2. Iliad 1.599—6 0 0 . 3. Odyssey 1 7 .3 8 3 -8 4 . 4. Iliad 4.412. Diomedes: a lord o f Argos who

was one o f the best Greek fighters at Troy. 5. This couplet com bines Iliad 3.8 and 4.431.

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Yes, these are well said. But what of these lines and those following them? Oh, you, heavy with wine, timorous as a deer, cringing like a dog— 6 [390] Are these and similar impertinences addressed to rulers by private citizens well said or ill? They are ill said. Certainly they are ill suited to prepare the young for the practice of mod­ eration and self-control. But, on the other hand, if listening to such things provides some pleasure, we ought not to be surprised. Or what is your opin­ ion? The same as yours. And here we have the wisest of men saying what he thinks the fairest thing in all the world: Tables laden with bread and meat, the cup bearer drawing wine from the bowl and filling our goblets/ Will these words be conducive to temperance in a young man? Or these? Hunger is the worst of destinies and deaths .8 The same question applies to the tale of Zeus, alone and awake, devising plans while men and the other gods slept, only to forget them in a moment when roused by his lust for Hera. So overcome was he by the sight of her that he did not even want to go to the house, and they made love right there upon the ground. Zeus said to Hera he had not felt so fierce a passion even during their courting days when “deceiving their dear parents .”9 Nor will self-control among our youth be strengthened if they hear the same theme recounted in the story of Hephaestus fastening together the bodies of Ares and Aphrodite.1 By Zeus, I think you are right. But, ah, the words and deeds of famous men enduring against great odds— these are the kinds of things suitable for our young people to see and hear. Consider this example: He smote his breast and admonished thus his heart: Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured.2 Excellent. Next, our men ought not to covet gifts or money. Certainly not. Then they must not hear it sung that

6. These words o f insult are spoken by Achilles to Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks at Troy (Iliad 1.225) [translators’ note]. 7. Odyssey 9 .8 —10. T he lines are spoken by Odys­ seus, who is often described as clever or schem ­ ing. 8. Odyssey 12.342.

9. See Iliad 1 4 .2 9 4 -3 5 1 (quotation, 296). 1. The story o f Hephaestus’s magical bed which entrapped Ares [god of war] and Aphrodite in the act of adultery is told in Book 8 of Homer’s Odyssey [translators’ note]. Aphrodite, the god­ dess of love and beauty, was H ephaestus’s wife. 2. Odyssey 20.17—18.

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Gifts persuade the gods, gifts persuade dread kings.3 Neither can we endorse the counsel Phoenix urged upon his pupil Achil­ les: that he should accept gifts from the Greeks and help them, but if they offered no gifts, he should continue to show them his anger. Neither shall we say or believe of Achilles himself that he was so greedy as to accept gifts from Agamemnon or that he demanded payment to yield up a corpse [391] and would otherwise refuse to do so .4 Such conduct must not be condoned. My regard for Homer makes me hesitate to charge him with outright impiety when he imputes such deeds and sentiments to Achilles. But he does not persuade me. Nor do others who say the same things. I cannot believe, for example, that Achilles would say to Apollo: You have impeded me, O most malignant of the gods. King of the bowmen, I would take revenge upon you, had I the power.5 Neither do I trust those stories of his disobedience to the river god and his readiness to fight with him .6 Nor will I credit the allegation that he prom­ ised and consecrated the locks of his hair to the other river god, Spercheus, and then offered them up instead to the dead Patroclus/ That Achilles actually did all these things is something we must not believe. We shall reject the charges that he dragged Hector s body around the tomb of Patroclus and slew living victims on the funeral pyre.8 We must not suffer our youth to suppose that Achilles, pupil of the most wise Chiron9— Achilles, son of a goddess and of Peleus, the most chaste of men and grand­ son of Zeus— could be so at odds with himself as to suffer from two contradictory maladies: greed such as becomes no free man and a brazen arrogance toward both gods and men. No. These sorts of things we shall neither sanction nor believe. Let us also adopt the same posture concerning those dreadful stories of rape that are told about Theseus, son of Poseidon, and Pirithous, the son of Zeus himself.1 Let us refuse to believe that any other child of a god— or any hero—would dare to do such wicked deeds as people tell us nowadays. What we must do is either to require our poets to deny that such deeds were ever done or else to deny that children of the gods did them. They may speak of the deeds or of the doers, but must not join one to the other. We will not have poets attempting to persuade our youth that the gods beget evil and that heroes are no better than men. As we said earlier, such views are both sacri­ legious and false. Or am I not right in saying we have already proved that gods cannot possibly cause evil? 3. A proverb. 4. The incident alluded to is Achilles’ agreement to release the body of Hector to his father Priam, a story told in Book 24 of the Iliad. It should be noted, however, that Achilles does not demand gifts; he is prepared to return the body in response to the command of the gods [translators’ note]. 5. Iliad 22.15, 20. 6. Homer relates that Achilles ignored the urg­ ing o f the Scam ander River to stop bloodying its waters by the slaughter of so many Trojans (Iliad 21.214ff.) [translators’ note].

7. Achilles’ father Peleus had vowed to offer locks of hair from his son’s head when Achilles returned from Troy safely. Instead Achilles placed them on the pyre of his fallen friend Patroclus because he knew that he would never return home (Iliad 2 3 .1 3 8 -5 1 ) [translators’ note]. 8. Iliad 2 4 .1 4 -1 8 , 2 3 .1 7 5 -7 7 . 9. A wise centaur, whose pupils included many great heroes o f Greek mythology. 1. Theseus and Pirithous joined to carry o ff Helen, M enelaus’s wife, and Persephone, the queen of the underworld [translators’ note].

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You are right. Furthermore, these views are harmful to those who hear them. A person will not fail to be lenient with himself and his own trespasses if he believes that the kinds of shameful deeds we have just been discussing are acts of the gods’ own kin, the relatives of Zeus, of those whose ancestral altar flames high atop Mount Ida and in whose blood line courses still the flame of immortality.2 So let us put an end to all these stories lest our youth [392] sink into moral turpitude. Yes, let us do so. Well, then, what is there still to talk about in the matter of censorship and storytelling? Have we omitted anything? We have already considered gods, daemons, heroes, and the netherworld. We have. Then what we have still to discuss are the stories about men. Right. But, my friend, this is something we cannot possibly do at this point. Why not? Because I suppose we shall again be saying that writers of both poetry and prose speak falsely of men, and in matters of the greatest moment. They will offer numerous examples of unjust men who are happy and just men who are wretched. They will assert that there is profit in injustice if it can be concealed, while justice is invariably your loss and another mans gain. I presume that we shall forbid them to say these things and then com­ pel them to say and sing to the contrary. Do you concur? I am sure of it. «

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Then we can say that good words, good harmony, good grace, and good rhythm follow from the good order and disposition of the soul. By ‘good dis­ position” we don’t mean “good-natured,” a term so often used as indulgent description of someone who is simple-minded. We mean to describe instead a soul in which reason has been educated to govern in goodness and truth. I agree .3 Are these not the things our youth must strive for if they are to fulfill their own true purposes? This is what they must do. [401] And are not many of these things to be found in painting and in all similar arts— weaving, embroidery, furniture making, and architecture? So too in the natural world of animals and plants. In all of these we can find grace and gracelessness. Gracelessness, disharmony, and discord are closely linked to evil words and an evil temper. The opposite qualities are bound together in the same way. You are right. 2. From the N iobe o f Aeschylus.

3. Glaucon is speaking here.

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Should we conclude, then, that our supervision should be confined only to poets, compelling them to summon up the image of goodness in their poems or else to forgo writing poetry among us? Or should we extend our guidance to those in the other arts and forbid representations of any kind of evil dispo­ sition— of what is licentious, illiberal, and graceless— whether in living crea­ tures, in buildings, or in any other product of the arts of man? Here, too, we would penalize disobedience by excluding them from the practice of their art in our city. In this way we could protect our guardians from growing up in the presence of evil, in a veritable pasture of poisonous herbs where by graz­ ing at will, little by little and day by day, they should unwittingly accumulate a huge mass of corruption in their souls. By the same token, we should seek out artists and craftsmen whose natu­ ral gifts enable them to discern true beauty and grace. Then we shall have a salubrious climate in which our young may dwell and benefit from all their surroundings, where works of beauty are conveyed to eye and ear like breezes bringing health from wholesome places. In this way, from early childhood on, they would easily live in harmony and friendship with beauty and reason, coming finally to resemble them. A truly noble concept of education. That is why education in poetry and music is first in importance, Glau­ con. Rhythm and harmonies have the greatest influence on the soul; they penetrate into its inmost regions and there hold fast. If the soul is rightly trained, they bring grace. If not, they bring the contrary. One who is prop­ erly educated in these matters would most quickly perceive and deplore the absence or perversion of beauty in art or nature. With true good taste he would instead delight in beautiful things, praising them and welcoming them into his soul. He would nourish them and would himself come to be beautiful and good. [402] While still young and still unable to understand why, he will reject and hate what is ugly. Then, later, when reason comes to one so educated, his affinity for what is good and beautiful will lead him to recognize and welcome her. You have given the best possible reasons for studying poetry and music. Do you also see that this way of studying them resembles the way we learned to read? We could not become proficient in reading until we knew the individual letters of the alphabet and recognized each of them in all the various word combinations in which they appear. So we learned that it was necessary to pay attention to everything— great or small— and disregard nothing in our texts if we were ever to become letter-perfect and so fully literate. True. Supposing we had seen some letters reflected in a mirror or in water? We should never have known what they were unless we had previously come to know them in their original forms. But is it not also true that knowledge of both original and likeness is attained through one and the same kind of study and discipline? Yes. By the gods, then, I am right. We can have no truly educated men— no true musicians whether we speak of ourselves or of those we want to train to be guardians— unless we can understand the nature of such things as courage,

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temperance, generosity, or nobility, both in their original essential forms and in the resemblances of the forms. We must understand their opposites as well, also in form and image. We must understand them in all the combina­ tions in which they appear— great or small— paying attention to everything and disregarding nothing. And once again we must recognize that we attain this kind of understanding through one and the same kind of study and dis­ cipline. You make a compelling case. Then wherever there is a correspondence between beauty in the soul and in the body, both reflecting beauty in its original form, will that not be the fairest sight of all for those who can see? Surely the fairest. And the fairest is the most beloved? Of course. Then the well-educated man, the true musician, would love this kind of person. But where there is disharmony, there he would not love. He would not love if the defect were in the soul. But if it were a defect of the body, he would not turn away; he would love nonetheless. I understand. You know whereof you speak, and I agree. But let me put another question: can there be any connection between temperance and the extremes of pleasure? How could there be? After all, we know that extreme pleasure drives a man out of his mind no less than extreme pain. And his bonds with virtue are severed? [403] Yes. But there are links between pleasure, insolence, and license? Yes. Do you know of any pleasure more exciting and sensuous than sex? No. Nor any more likely to drive a man mad. But is not true love temperate and harmonious, a love of beauty and order? Indeed. So nothing of madness or license must be allowed to intrude upon true love? No. Then mad or intemperate pleasure cannot be sanctioned. Lover and beloved who love rightly must not have anything to do with it. No, Socrates, they must not. I assume, then, that in the city we are founding you would propose a law whereby a lover is permitted to kiss and touch his beloved with honorable purpose like a father would his son, if the beloved consents thereto. But he would be allowed to go no further; otherwise, by manifesting a want of taste and culture, he would court disgrace. Quite right. Would you also agree that our discussion of music is now finished? What could be more fitting than to complete our analysis by showing that the purpose of poetry and music is to cultivate the love of beauty? It is a fitting conclusion.

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From B ook VII [514] Here allegory may show us best how education— or the lack of it— affects our nature. Imagine men living in a cave with a long passageway stretching between them and the cave’s mouth, where it opens wide to the light. Imagine further that since childhood the cave dwellers have had their legs and necks shackled so as to be confined to the same spot. They are further constrained by blinders that prevent them from turning their heads; they can see only directly in front of them. Next, imagine a light from a fire some distance behind them and burning at a higher elevation. Between the prisoners and the fire is a raised path along whose edge there is a low wall like the partition at the front of a puppet stage. The wall conceals the pup­ peteers while they manipulate their puppets above it. So far I can visualize it .4 Imagine, further, men behind the wall carrying all sorts of objects along its length and holding them above it. The objects include human and ani­ mal images made of stone and wood [515] and all other material. Presum­ ably, those who carry them sometimes speak and are sometimes silent. You describe a strange prison and strange prisoners. Like ourselves. Tell me, do you not think those men would see only the shadows cast by the fire on the wall of the cave? Would they have seen any­ thing of themselves or of one another? How could they if they couldn’t move their heads their whole life long? Could they see the objects held above the wall behind them or only the shadows cast in front? Only the shadows. If, then, they could talk with one another, don’t you think they would impute reality to the passing shadows? Necessarily. Imagine an echo in their prison, bouncing off the wall toward which the prisoners were turned. Should one of those behind the wall speak, would the prisoners not think that the sound came from the shadows in front of them? No doubt of it. By every measure, then, reality for the prisoners would be nothing but shadows cast by artifacts. It could be nothing else. Imagine now how their liberation from bondage and error would come about if something like the following happened. One prisoner is freed from his shackles. He is suddenly compelled to stand up, turn around, walk, and look toward the light. He suffers pain and distress from the glare of the light. So dazzled is he that he cannot even discern the very objects whose shadows he used to be able to see. Now what do you suppose he would answer if he were told that all he had seen before was illusion but that now he was nearer reality, observing real things and therefore seeing more truly? What if someone pointed to the objects being carried above the wall, ques­ tioning him as to what each one is? Would he not be at a loss? Would he not

4. Glaucon is Socrates’ interlocutor here.

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regard those things he saw formerly as more real than the things now being shown him? He would. Again, let him be compelled to look directly at the light. Would his eyes not feel pain? Would he not flee, turning back to those things he was able to discern before, convinced that they are in every truth clearer and more exact than anything he has seen since? He would. Then let him be dragged away by force up the rough and steep incline of the cave’s passageway, held fast until he is hauled out into the light of the sun. Would not such a rough passage be painful? Would he not resent the experience? [516] And when he came out into the sunlight, would he not be dazzled once again and unable to see what he calls realities? He could not see even one of them, at least not immediately. Habituation, then, is evidently required in order to see things higher up. In the beginning he would most easily see shadows; next, reflections in the water of men and other objects. Then he would see the objects themselves. From there he would go on to behold the heavens and the heavenly phenomena— more easily the moon and stars by night than the sun by day. Yes. Finally, I suppose, he would be able to look on the sun itself, not in reflec­ tions in the water or in fleeting images in some alien setting. He would look at the sun as it is, in its own domain, and so be able to see what it is really like. Yes. It is at this stage that he would be able to conclude that the sun is the cause of the seasons and of the year’s turning, that it governs all the visible world and is in some sense also the cause of all visible things. This is surely the next step he would take. Now, supposing he recalled where he came from. Supposing he thought of his fellow prisoners and of what passed for wisdom in the place they were inhabiting. Don’t you think he would feel pity for all that and rejoice in his own change of circumstance? He surely would. Suppose there had been honors and citations those below bestowed upon one another. Suppose prizes were offered for the one quickest to identify the shadows as they go by and best able to remember the sequence and configura­ tions in which they appear. All these skills, in turn, would enhance the ability to guess what would come next. Do you think he would covet such rewards? More, would he envy and want to emulate those who hold power over the pris­ oners and are in turn reverenced by them? Or would he not rather hold fast to Homer’s words that it is “better to be the poor servant of a poor master,”5 bet­ ter to endure anything, than to believe those things and live that way? I think he would prefer anything to such a life. Consider, further, if he should go back down again into the cave and return to the place he was before, would not his eyes now go dark after so abruptly leaving the sunlight behind? They would.

5. Odyssey 11.489.

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Suppose he should then have to compete once more in shadow watching with those who never left the cave. And this before his eyes had become accustomed to the dark [517] and his dimmed vision still required a long period of habituation. Would he not be laughed at? Would it not be said that he had made the journey above only to come back with his eyes ruined and that it is futile even to attempt the ascent? Further, if anyone tried to release the prisoners and lead them up and they could get their hands on him and kill him, would they not kill him? Of course. Now, my dear Glaucon, we must apply the allegory as a whole to all that has been said so far. The prisoners’ cave is the counterpart of our own visible order, and the light of the fire betokens the power of the sun. If you liken the ascent and exploration of things above to the soul’s journey through the intel­ ligible order, you will have understood my thinking, since that is what you wanted to hear. God only knows whether it is true. But, in any case, this is the way things appear to me: in the intelligible world the last thing to be seen— and then only dimly— is the idea of the good. Once seen, however, the conclu­ sion becomes irresistible that it is the cause of all things right and good, that in the visible world it gives birth to light and its sovereign source, that in the intelligible world it is itself sovereign and the author of truth and reason, and that the man who will act wisely in private and public life must have seen it. I agree, insofar as I can follow your thinking. Come join me, then, in this further thought. Don’t be surprised if those who have attained this high vision are unwilling to be involved in the affairs of men. Their souls will ever feel the pull from above and yearn to sojourn there. Such a preference is likely enough if the assumptions of our allegory continue to be valid. Yes, it is likely. By the same token, would you think it strange if someone returning from divine contemplation to the miseries of men should appear ridiculous? What if he were still blinking his eyes and not yet readjusted to the surrounding darkness before being compelled to testify in court about the shadows of jus­ tice or about the images casting the shadows? What if he had to enter into debate about the notions of such matters held fast by people who had never seen justice itself? It would not be strange. [518] Nonetheless, a man with common sense would know that eyesight can be impaired in two different ways by dint of two different causes, namely, transitions from light into darkness and from darkness into light. Believing that the soul also meets with the same experience, he would not thoughtlessly laugh when he saw a soul perturbed and having difficulty in comprehending something. Instead he would try to ascertain whether the cause of its faded vision was the passage from a brighter life to unaccustomed darkness or from the deeper darkness of ignorance toward the world of light, whose brightness then dazzled the soul’s eye. He will count the first happy, and the second he will pity. Should he be minded to laugh, he who comes from below will merit it more than the one who descends from the light above. A fair statement.

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From Book X [595] Indeed. And many other things about our city convince me that we have built it truly. When I say this, I think particularly of the role we assigned to poetry. What do you mean?6 We barred any kind of poetry that is imitative;7 under no circumstances can it be admitted to the city. The reason for excluding it should be still more evident than before now that we have examined the souls several parts. What do you mean? Well, don’t go tattling to the tragic poets and all the other mimics. But, between ourselves, it appears to me that their art corrupts the minds of all who hearken to them, save only those whose knowledge of reality provides an antidote. What do you have in mind when you say that? My love and reverence for Homer since I was a boy makes me hesitate. Yet I must speak out: he seems to have been the first teacher and originator of all these beautiful tragedies. Honoring truth must take precedence over honoring the man. Hence my conviction that one must speak his mind. That much is certain. Then listen. Or, rather, answer. Then ask. Could you tell me in general what imitation is? I myself am hardly able to understand its nature and purpose. Then how should I be able to understand it? Nothing to wonder at. You know that men with duller vision [596] often see things before those with keener sight. True. But in your presence I find myself unwilling to say just anything that occurs to me. So speak up yourself. Very well. Shall we begin the inquiry by following our customary proce­ dure? I think we have generally followed the practice of subsuming multi­ plicities under a single form or idea and then calling them collectively by a single name .8 Do you understand? I understand. Then consider some multiplicity of your choice. For example, there are many beds and tables. Of course. But among these furnishings, I suppose, there are only two forms: one of a bed and one of a table. Agreed. Is it not also our custom to say that the carpenter who makes a bed or table or some other piece of useful furniture looks to the form of each? Presumably no craftsman produces the form itself. How could he? He could not. Now, what would you call this next kind of craftsman? What kind? 6. Glaucon is Socrates’ interlocutor here. 7. Tragedy and epic; insofar as they are imitative, they are by definition removed from reality. T he total ban here seems to contradict R epublic 2

and 3, where Socrates encourages literary representation of behavior that is appropriate and good. 8. That is, the Idea or Form.

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The one who can make all the things that each class of artisan considers its own specialty. I would call him a clever and wonderful man. Wait. Soon you will say even more. Not only is this craftsman able to construct all practical contrivances. He also breeds all plants and animals, including himself. Still more, he creates the earth and sky, the gods and all things in heaven and in Hades under the earth. Now I would call him a wonderful sophist.9 Are you skeptical? Tell me, do you think no such craftsman could exist? Or do you think it possible that in some sense there could be one who makes all these objects but in another sense not? Or don’t you realize that in a certain way you yourself could be the maker of all things? And what way is that? The way is not difficult. It can be quickly managed anywhere on earth— most quickly if you are prepared to carry a mirror with you wherever you go. Quickly you will produce the sun and the things of heaven; quickly the earth; quickly yourself; quickly all the animals, plants, contrivances, and every other object we just mentioned. But only in appearance; not in reality. Excellent. You advance the argument at just the right moment. Now, the painter is one kind of craftsman, is he not? O f course. I suppose you will say that what he creates is unreal. Still, in a certain way, he does make a bed, doesn’t he? Yes. He makes something resembling a bed. [597] Once again, how about the carpenter? Weren’t you just saying that he also does not make a real bed? He simply makes a particular bed and not what we call the real bed, the form of a bed. Yes. I said that. Then he is not making something real but only a facsimile. That is not reality. So if someone should say that the carpenter’s work (or that of other artisans) is the same as reality, he could hardly be called truthful. At least, that would be the view of people who devote their time to these kinds of arguments. No wonder, then, that the one who makes beds also offers only a dim reflection of the truth. No wonder. Shall we now apply these examples to aid us in finding out what an imita­ tor really is? If you wish. Well, then, it turns out there are three kinds of beds. One exists in nature. I suppose we would say god created it. Who else could? No one else, I should think. And then the bed the carpenter made. Yes. And the one made by the painter. Right? All right. 9. An itinerant teacher of the 5th century g o r g i a s ).

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So we have the painter, the carpenter, and god. These three produce three kinds of beds. Three. Right. God, then, whether he willed it or because he felt some constraint not to make more than one bed, did in fact make only one bed, the real bed. Never were two or more beds made by god, nor would they ever be. Why not? I shall explain. Even if he had made only two beds, a third would unavoid­ ably appear. That would be the real bed, of which the other two would only be copies. Right. God, I suppose, knowing this and wishing to be the real creator of the real bed and not some particular craftsman making some particular bed, wrought in nature only one bed. Apparently. Shall we call him something like its true and natural creator? That would be fitting since he has created this and everything else in nature. What about the carpenter? Does he not make a bed? Yes. And the painter? Does he not also create a bed? Certainly not. Then what relationship does he have with the bed? I think it would be most fair to call him an imitator of things that others create. So one who makes something at third remove from nature you call an imitator? Indeed I do. And the maker of tragedies is also thrice removed, as it were, from the king and the truth. He is therefore an imitator like all other imitators? It seems so. Then we agree about the imitator. Now let us return to the painter. [598] Is it his habit to imitate the original in nature or the craftsmen’s products? What the craftsmen make. As they are or as they appear to be? This is a distinction still to be made. What do you mean? This. If you look at a bed from the side or the front or from any other angle, is it any different? Or does it remain the same in fact but different in appearance— and does this not hold for everything else? The latter is true. It looks different, but it’s not different. This, then, is the point we want to consider. Does painting imitate reality or appearance? Does it imitate illusion or truth? Illusion. Then imitation is surely far from truth. This probably explains why the imi­ tator will put his hand to anything; he grasps only a small fragment of what­ ever it is he works with, and even that is unreal. The painter, for example, will portray a shoemaker, a carpenter, or other craftsmen without any understand­ ing of the arts they use. Nonetheless, if he is a good artist and displays his portrait of the carpenter from a distance, he would deceive children and unreasoning men into believing that they were seeing a real carpenter.

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Why not? At any rate, my friend, I think this is what we should keep in mind in all such matters. When anyone tells us that he has met some person who knows all the arts and everything else known to man— that there is nothing he does not know better than everybody else— we must tell him that he is gullible and must have met a magician and been deceived. He was duped into thinking such a person omniscient because of his own inability to test and verify the difference between knowledge, ignorance, and imitation. That is certain. Now let us consider tragedy and Homer as its master. Some say the tragic poets know all the arts, all things human, all things pertaining to virtue and vice, all things divine. They claim that the good poet writing good poetry must know what he is writing about; otherwise he would not be able to be a poet. Therefore we must ask whether those who talk this way may have been keeping company with imitators who deceived them; whether, in conse­ quence, they looked at the works of poets [599] but did not understand that they were thrice removed from reality and could easily be produced without any knowledge of truth. For poets contrive appearances and not reality. Or is there something in what they say? Do good poets really know what many think they say so well? The question certainly requires examination. Then if a man were able to produce both realities and illusions, do you think he would choose to work with illusions and devote himself to them as the best that life could offer? No. I would suppose, if he actually knew the things he imitates, he would do those things and leave off imitating. Would he not try to leave as his memo­ rial a tangible record of many splendid deeds? Would he not rather be the one who is praised than the one who praises? I should think he would. In deeds there is far greater honor and profit. Well, let us not demand an accounting from Homer or any of the other poets whether any of them were really doctors or whether they merely cop­ ied off medical language. Nor will we ask whether any poet, past or present, has ever healed men as Asclepius1 healed them; nor whether he has left behind heirs to his medical knowledge the way Asclepius did. And we shall forgo questions about any of the other arts. But surely it is fair to inquire of Homer concerning the greatest and most estimable things he undertook to speak of: wars, military skills, the governing of cities, and the education of men. “Beloved Homer,” we could say, “if your words about virtue are not at third remove from the truth, if you don’t fit our definition of the imitator as an inventor of dreams— if you are instead next neighbor to truth and can identify the kinds of behavior that make men better or worse in both private and public life— then tell us what city has ever been better governed thanks to you. Sparta owes thanks to Lycurgus. Many other cities, small and great, owe a similar debt of thanks .2 What city gives you credit for having been a

1. Hero and god of healing (in the Iliad, a mortal). 2. The next several lines contain the names o f a series of lawgivers who gained fame for their sue-

cess in designing successful constitutions [translators’ note]. Lycurgus: traditional founder of the Spartan political, social, and legal systems.

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good lawgiver or benefactor? In Italy and Sicily, Charondas is so credited; among us it is Solon .3 Who credits you?” Will there be any he can name? I don’t suppose so. Even Homer’s followers have never mentioned any. [600] Can we recall any war in Homer’s time won under his command or as a result of his advice? None. What about the inventions and practical devices that we expect from men skilled in crafts? Thales the Milesian and Anacharsis from Scythia are credited with many.4 How about Homer? None. Well, if Homer has no record of public service, what report do we have of him as a private educator around whom men gathered because they cher­ ished his teachings? Did he and they pass on to posterity a kind of Homeric way of life after the manner of Pythagoras? 5 Such a legacy is counted among Pythagoras’s greatest achievements. Even now his successors use the term Pythagorean to denote a certain way of life that many of our contemporaries look upon with respect. Once again, Socrates, there is no report. To look on his companion Creophylus as representative of Homeric culture might turn out to be a more promising subject for ridicule than the name Creophylus itself .6 For if the things said about Homer are true, he was neglected by that child of the flesh during most of his lifetime. So tradition tells us. Don’t you suppose then, Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate men and make them better because he was a man of real knowledge and not an imitator, he would have had many com­ panions and been loved and honored by them? After all, Protagoras of Abdera and Prodicus of Ceos' and others are able to attract many of their contemporaries to their private lessons, where they impress upon their lis­ teners that without instruction from them they will be able to govern nei­ ther their cities nor their own homes. This is the wisdom that makes them so beloved that their students all but carry them about on their shoulders. If Homer had helped men to achieve excellence, surely his contemporaries would not have let him and Hesiod live as itinerant reciters of poetry. Would they not sooner have parted with gold than with their poets? Would they not have insisted that they stay with them and dwell in their homes? Failing that, would they not have followed and attended them until they were able to receive from them an adequate education? I think your questions are to the point, Socrates. Then we should be prepared to declare that the entire tribe of poets— beginning with Homer— are mere imitators of illusions of virtue and imita-

3. A thenian statesm an and poet (ca. 6 3 8 —559 b . c . e . ) , who reformed the city’s constitution. Charondas (6th c. b . c . e . ) , lawgiver of Catana and other colonies of Chalcis in Sicily. 4. Thales and Anacharsis are both counted among the seven sages of antiquity. Thales was a philoso­ pher, statesman, and mathematician; his most famous exploit was his calculation of an eclipse that occurred on May 28, 585 b . c . e . Anacharsis is reported to have invented the anchor and the pot­ ter’s wheel [translators’ note]. 5. Pythagoras [6th c . b . c . e . ] based his philosophi­

cal and religious beliefs on mathematical formula­ tions. He provided an education for his followers based on his “way of life.” In southern Italy he founded a religious brotherhood in the city of Cro­ ton [translators’ note]. 6. Creophylus literally means “of the beef tribe”; he is supposed to have been a friend of Homer and an epic poet [translators’ note]. 7. Greek sophist, a contemporary of Socrates. Pro­ tagoras (5th c. b . c . e . ) , Greek philosopher, one of the most successful of the sophists.

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tors as well of the other things they write about. They don’t lay a hand on truth. Instead, as we said a moment ago, they are like the painter who knows nothing about cobbling [601] but who creates what seems to be a shoemaker in the eyes of those who also know nothing of the subject and who judge sim­ ply in terms of shape and color. You are right. I suppose we may say the same of the poet himself. He only knows how to imitate, daubing the several arts with words and phrases but understanding nothing. His imitations speak to those who are equally ignorant and who see things only through words. The poet will use meter, rhythm, and harmony; and no matter whether his subject matter concerns generals or shoemakers, his hearers will call everything praiseworthy. It is true that these embellish­ ments have great charm. But once the poets words are said alone, without the accompanying music and color, I think you know what kind of showing they make. Surely you have observed for yourself. I have. Are his words not like faces that once were young but never beautiful and from which youth is now departed? Exactly. Now consider still another proposition: The imitator, the one who creates illusions, does not understand reality but only what reality appears to be. Would you agree to that? Yes. All right. But we mustn’t leave the matter at midpoint. It ought to be dis­ cussed fully. Go ahead. Well, we might say that the painter paints reins and a bit. Yes? But they are manufactured by a cobbler and a smith? Of course. Does the painter know the true characteristics of reins and bit? Or is it not true that even the artisans, the cobbler and the smith, fail to understand their nature? Is it not true that only the horseman understands how to use them? That is true. Then we can say that the same holds true for everything. What? Everything finds expression in three arts: the art that uses, the art that creates, and the art that imitates. Yes? But judgments about what is true, beautiful, or good in any living thing, any human action, or any human art ought to be made only in terms of the use that nature or the artisan intended them for. True. Then the conclusion must necessarily follow that he who uses anything is the one who knows most about it. He draws on his experience in reporting its merits and defects to the maker. For example, a flutist will tell the flute maker which of his flutes performs best in concert; he will order accord­ ingly, and the flute maker will do his bidding. You are right.

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He who possesses knowledge, then, will make judgments concerning the degree of excellence of the flutes; the other will heed him and make the flutes accordingly. Yes. So the user will have true knowledge. But the maker will also trust his own judgment concerning the merits and defects of the instrument because he associates with, [602] and hence is compelled to listen to, the man who knows. True. But what about the imitator? Will experience or application teach the painter what is beautiful and real? Were he compelled to keep company with the man who knows and who tells him what to paint, would he be persuaded? No. Then neither knowledge nor opinion can help the imitator to arrive at valid judgments about his own imitations. It seems not. So far as understanding his own work, then, the situation of poet and imitator must be truly delightful. Not at all. Quite the reverse. Nonetheless, he will keep on imitating, and never will he understand why something is bad or good. And what he will imitate is all too evident: what­ ever pleases the ignorant masses. O f course. So it seems that we are all but agreed on these matters: the imitator knows hardly anything about the things he imitates; imitation is a kind of game and not to be taken seriously; and those who write tragedies, either in iambic or heroic verse,8 are the most extravagant of all the imitators. Agreed. By heaven, then, it follows that imitation must be concerned with things at the third remove from truth. Agreed. And which part of man responds to imitations power? What do you mean? Let me illustrate. I assume you would agree that the mass of any magni­ tude looks different when viewed from near and then from far? I agree. And that straight things appear bent when seen underwater? And that color can distort our vision so that concave becomes convex? The source of all these illusions is plainly to be found in some part of our souls. There is where we shall find the flaw in our nature that the imitators exploit, where they manipulate light and dark so that their conjuror’s tricks and mario­ nette shows appear to be nothing short of magic. True. Now the full beauty of mans capacity to weigh, to measure, and to num­ ber comes to light. All are antidotes to error. They liberate our souls from illusory perceptions of what is greater or less or more or heavier, so that we may be governed by those things that we can weigh, measure, and reckon. That is unquestionably true. 8. T h e meter of epics (heroic verse) is dactylic hexam eter (a 6-foot line based on the syllabic patterns long-short-short); iambic trim eter (a

3-foot line based on the syllabic pattern shortlong) was the most common m eter of dialogue and set speeches in tragedies.

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And these would obviously be functions of that part of the soul that rea­ sons and calculates. Clearly. But when the reasoning part measures and demonstrates that some things are equal, some are larger, and some smaller, won't it often be contradicted by appearance, by the way these same things seem to be? Yes. And didn’t we judge it impossible that one could simultaneously hold contradictory opinions about the same thing? We did, and rightly so. [603] Then that part of the soul that rejects the evidence of measurement and the part that affirms it cannot be the same. True. Further: the best part of the soul is that which relies on calculation and measurement? Clearly. And the contrary part is to be found among the lesser elements of the soul? Necessarily. This is the point I was getting at when I said that the works produced by painting and imitation are generally far from truth. Such arts appeal to that part in us which is far removed from intelligence. They cannot be our com­ panions or friends for any good or healthy purpose. Very true. Hence imitation is a defective art. It mates with what is also defective, and so it produces defective offspring as well. Apparently. Does all this apply only to vision? Or does it also apply to hearing and hence to poetry? It probably applies to both. But we ought not to rely only on the plausibility of the analogy we drew from painting. Let us instead consider directly that part of the mind to which imitative poetry makes its specific appeal. We must discover whether this part of the mind is superior or inferior. We have an obligation to try. Put it this way. Let us say that imitation simulates the actions of human beings, whether the acts be freely willed or performed under compulsion. It also reports the actors’ judgments whether the results were good or ill, and whether they felt joy or sorrow. Is there anything else to say? Nothing. In all of this, then, is any man of one mind? Or are confusion and contra­ diction evident here just as they were when we were discussing the phenom­ enon of vision? Is a man ever of two minds about the same thing? When it comes to action, is he divided against himself? Does he experience internal strife? But I realize that there is now no need for us to come to an agreement about these matters. We found sufficient agreement in previous discussions9 that our souls are always teeming with ten thousand such contradictions. We were right in making the agreement. 9. In R epu blic 4 .4 3 9 b -4 4 4 a , where Socrates argues that each mind or soul is divided into three distinct and som etim es warring parts (the rational, the spirited, and the desiring).

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Yes. But I think we omitted something then that must be considered now. What is it? We surely said it before this: a good man who has the misfortune to lose a son or suffer some other kind of loss of something most dear to him will bear what he has to bear with greater composure than others. O f course. Now consider this. Will he feel no pain? Or, since that could not be, will he be temperate in giving vent to his grief? The latter is closer to truth. [604] Now tell me this. When will he make the greater effort to fight back and endure the pain? When he is among others or when he is by himself? His struggle will be greater when he is seen by others. But when he is alone, I should think he would dare to utter many things he would be ashamed of were others to hear them? He would do many things that he would rather not have others see him do? True enough. Do not law and reason sustain the will to endure? Is it not the suffering itself that goads a man to give way to his grief? Yes. So when we observe two contradictory impulses simultaneously at work within a man, must we not infer the presence of two distinct motives? Clearly. One of which is ready to follow the precepts of the law? What do you mean? The law, I should imagine, admonishes us to maintain our equanimity in adversity, insofar as that is possible. It bids us shun discontent because we cannot know what is truly good or evil in such situations. No one benefits from despondency, and nothing in mortal life deserves that much concern. Finally, grief prevents us from attaining the thing we need the most and as quickly as possible. What is that? Thought. We need to think about what has happened to us. One must accept the way the dice fall and then order ones life according to the dic­ tates of reason. One ought not to behave like children who have stumbled, wasting time wailing and pressing ones hands to the injured part. Instead, the soul should learn to remedy the hurt forthwith, to restore what has fallen, and to remedy the complaint with the appropriate medicine. Surely that is the best way to deal with whatever chance may bring. The best part of us, we have said, is willing to follow these rules of reason? Clearly. Then must we not also say that the part of us which leads us to dwell on past sufferings and positively revels in lamentation is our idle and irrational side and the very author of cowardice? We will say that. Then that part of our personality given to despondency presents many and diverse occasions for imitation. Much different is our disposition to be rea­ sonable and intelligent. It remains relatively constant and is not easy to imi­ tate. Nor would the imitation be easy to understand (especially by some disorderly mob in a theater) because it would be reflecting a disposition alien to the crowd.

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[605] Very true. It should be evident that the imitative poet is far removed from the better disposition of our souls. Since he covets applause from the multitude, his pursuit of wisdom leads in a different direction. He devotes himself to unstable or choleric characters because they are easier to imitate. That is also true. Hence we would be justified in laying hold of the poet and setting him down as the counterpart of the painter. Like the painter, his works are dis­ tant from reality. Poet and painter also resemble one another in their appeal to the inferior part of the soul and their neglect of the best part. At last, then, we have arrived at a justification for not admitting the poet to a well-ordered state. Because he calls forth the worst elements in the soul and then nour­ ishes them and makes them strong, he destroys the souls reasoning part. All this finds a parallel in any city where someone makes the wicked mighty, appoints them the city’s governors, and corrupts the city’s best elements. The imitative poet has exactly the same impact on the private individual. He cor­ rupts the individual’s character with fabrications far removed from reality and panders to the soul’s fool that cannot even distinguish big from little. Well said. But the gravest indictment remains to be discussed. The poet’s power to corrupt even the best men— with rare exceptions— is surely the most seri­ ous cause for alarm. If the effect is what you say, it surely is. Listen and consider this. When Homer or one of the other tragic poets imitates a grieving hero and causcs him to utter extended lamentations or has him chant and beat his breast, you know that even the best of us enjoy it. We are held captive by the imitation; we suffer with the hero, and who­ ever can most powerfully evoke this mood in us we call the best poet. Of course. I know that. When we experience personal sorrow ourselves, however, quite the con­ trary occurs. We pride ourselves if we are able to maintain our equanimity and bear the burden. We reckon this to be a man’s behavior. But what we found favor with just now in the poem we generally consider to be the behavior of women. I recognize that. Is it right that we should respond in this manner? We see a man imper­ sonate the kind of character that we would despise and reject in our­ selves. Yet we do not disapprove; instead, we enjoy ourselves and praise the performance. By Zeus! That certainly doesn’t seem reasonable. [606] It will seem reasonable enough if we consider what follows. What? Consider how in our own misfortunes we forcibly constrain that part of our soul that hungers for tears and the satisfaction of a cry. This is the part whose nature it is to desire these things; this is the part that finds satisfac­ tion and enjoyment in the poets. And the best part of us, when it observes the suffering of others and has not been sufficiently educated by either reason or habit, will relax its control over the sentiments. After all, there is no disgrace in comforting and pitying what is evidently a good man when he gives way to an excess of grief. Instead, to do so would be counted as a

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vicarious pleasure and pure gain, something one would not willingly forgo by disdaining to hear the whole poem. That happens, I suppose, because only a few men will reflect that the vicarious enjoyment of other people’s sufferings has an effect upon one’s own. Lavishing pity on others makes it hard to contain pity when it comes to our own sufferings. That is true. Must we not apply the same principle to the things that make us laugh? Are there not jokes you would be ashamed to repeat but which provide you with much amusement when you hear them privately or at a comedy? In these circumstances you see no disgrace in laughing at them just as in the other example there seemed no cause for disgrace in giving vent to pity. Here, too, your reason is at work admonishing the comic in you so that you will not gain the reputation of a buffoon. But when others joke, you let your comic sense run loose. Indulging it, you return to your own affairs and dis­ cover that you have unwittingly become a comic poet. Right again. Sex, anger, and all the desires, as well as all the pleasures and pains that make their presence felt in whatever we do— on all these poetry has the same effect. It makes them grow great instead of drying them up. It estab­ lishes them as our governors when instead they should be the ones gov­ erned if we are to become men who are better and happier instead of worse and more miserable. I can’t dispute you. So then, Glaucon, when you encounter admirers of Homer who say that this poet is the tutor of Greece, that to study him is to refine human conduct and culture, and that we should order our entire lives in accordance with his pre­ cepts, [607] you must welcome them and love them as people who are doing the best they can. You can certainly agree that Homer is the greatest of poets and first among tragedians. But you must hold firm to the position that our city will admit no poetry except hymns to the gods and fair words about good men. Once entry is permitted to the honey-tongued Muse, whether in lyric or epic form, pleasure and pain will become kings of the city, law will be displaced, and so will that governing reason which time and opinion have approved. I concur. Having returned to the subject of poetry, let us make her an apology: we acted properly when we exiled her from the city earlier on. Reason con­ strained us to do so. And lest we be convicted of a certain harshness and parochialism, let us remind her that there is an old quarrel between phi­ losophy and poetry. “The bitch that yelps and bays at her master,” “great in the conversation of simpletons,” “a company of overwise fools,” and “refined thinkers who are really beggars”— these and many other reproaches mark the ancient antagonism .1 Even so, we shall declare that if poetry that is imitative and aims to provide pleasure can show cause why it should find a place in a well-governed city, we should be glad to welcome its return from exile. We, too, are very aware of its charms. O f course, we must not be guilty of impiety by betraying what we think is true. But don’t you yourself feel the magic of poetry, especially when Homer is the poet? 1. The identity o f these poets who attacked philosophy is unknown [translators’ note].

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It affects me deeply. Then if poetry, in turn, would make her defense in lyric or some other meter, would it not be just if she should return to us from exile? It certainly would be. And we would certainly offer her partisans— not poets themselves but those who love poetry— an opportunity to plead her case in prose without meter and to argue that poetry is not only delightful but also a blessing to the life of men and well-governed cities. And we shall hear them kindly, for we shall surely be the gainers if the case can be made that poetry is a source of goodness as well as pleasure. It would be a very great gain. But, my friend, if the verdict goes the other way, we must be like men who once loved but now know that their love has played them false. Hard though it is, they will hold themselves aloof. So we, loving this kind of poetry bred into us by the education we have received from our noble cities, [608] will rejoice if poetry appears at its best and truest. But so long as she is unable to offer a tenable defense, we shall chant to ourselves the arguments we have already considered. They will serve as a talisman to protect us from being seduced once again by the rude passions of the masses. In any case, we have learned that this kind of poetry does not deserve to be taken seriously in any meaning­ ful effort to seek truth. On the contrary, one who listens to it must fear for the governance of his soul and must hold to all we have said about poetry. You are right. I agree. My dear Glaucon, we are engaged in a great struggle, a struggle greater than it seems. The issue is whether we shall become good or bad. And nei­ ther money, office, honor, nor poetry itself must be allowed to persuade us to neglect justice or any other virtue. After all that we have discussed I am ready to join you in saying that. I should think anyone else would do the same. #

«

« c a . 3 7 5 b .c .e .

From Phaedrus S o crates:

Is this enough on the subject of rhetorical expertise and its

lack? O f course. S o c r a t e s : But don't we still have to discuss whether or not writing is desirable— what makes it acceptable and what makes it undesirable? P h aed ru s:

1. Translated by Robin W aterfield. The partici­ pants in the dialogue are the philosopher Socrates (4 6 9 -3 9 9 b . c . e ., Plato’s spokesperson) and Phaedrus (ca. 4 5 0 - 4 0 0 b . c . e .), a Socratic philosopher. T he numbers in square brackets are

the Stephanus numbers used almost universally in citing Plato’s works; they refer to the pages of a 1578 edition published by Henri Estienne. Except as indicated, all subsequent notes are W aterfield’s, abridged.

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Yes. do you know the best way for either a theoretical or a prac­ tical approach to speech to please god? P h a e d r u s : N o , I don’t. Do you? S o c r a t e s : Well, I can pass on something I’ve heard from our predeces­ sors. Only they know the truth of the matter, but if we had made this discovery by ourselves, would we any longer have the slightest interest in mere human conjectures? P h a e d r u s : What an absurd question! Please tell me what you say you’ve heard. S o c r a t e s : All right. The story I heard is set in Naucratis in Egypt,2 where there was one of the ancient gods of Egypt— the one to whom the bird they call the ‘ibis’ is sacred, whose name is Theuth .3 This deity was the inventor of number, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, of games involving draughts and dice— and especially of writing. At the time, the king of the whole of Egypt around the capital city of the inland region (the city the Greeks call ‘Egyptian Thebes’4), was Thamous, or Amon, as the Greeks call him .5 Theuth came to Thamous and showed him the branches of expertise he had invented, and suggested that they should be spread throughout Egypt. Thamous asked him what good each one would do, and subjected Theuth’s explanations to criticism if he thought he was going wrong and praise if thought he was right. The story goes that Thamous expressed himself at length to Theuth about each of the branches of expertise, both for and against them. It would take a long time to go through all Thamous’ views, but when it was the turn of writing, Theuth said, ‘Your highness, this science will increase the intelligence of the people of Egypt and improve their memories. For this invention is a potion for memory and intelligence.’ But Thamous replied, ‘You are most ingenious, Theuth. But one person has the ability to bring branches of expertise into existence, another to assess the extent to which they will harm or benefit those who use them. The loy­ alty you feel to writing, as its originator, [275] has just led you to tell me the opposite of its true effect. It will atrophy people’s memories. Trust in writing will make them remember things by relying on marks made by others, from outside themselves, not on their own inner resources, and so writing will make the things they have learnt disappear from their minds. Your invention is a potion for jogging the memory, not for remembering. You provide your students with the appearance of intel­ ligence, not real intelligence. Because your students will be widely read, though without any contact with a teacher, they will seem to be men of P h aed ru s:

S o crates: S o

2. The story is another Platonic invention. He sets it in Egypt because the Egyptians were famous for their records of the ancient past. Naucratis was a Greek trading station in Egypt, established in the sixth century according to Herodotus [Greek historian (ca. 4 8 4 - c a . 425 b . c . e .), chiefly of the Persian W ars; sometimes called “the father of history”— editor’s note]. 3. B etter known as Thoth (or Tahuti), the ibis­ headed Egyptian equivalent to the god Hermes, in his capacity as god of scribes and com m unica­

tion. Plato perhaps uses the name “T h eu th ” to remind his readers o f the end o f the Greek name “Prometheus,” because Prometheus was the inventor of writing in Greek myth. 4. To distinguish it from the main city o f Boeotia on the Greek mainland, which had (and still has) the same name. 5. Not the name of any known Egyptian king, and perhaps a corruption of “Amous” or Amon (Amun), the god who becam e identified with Ra, the Sungod, and became the chief deity of Egypt.

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wide knowledge, when they will usually be ignorant. And this spurious appearance of intelligence will make them difficult company.’ P h a e d r u s : Socrates, it doesn’t take much for you to make up stories from Egypt and anywhere else in the world you feel like. S o c r a t e s : Well, my friend, the people at the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona say that the original prophecies there were spoken by an oak.6 In those days people weren’t as clever as you young ones nowadays, and they were so fool­ ish that they happily listened to oak and rock, as long as they told the truth. But perhaps it matters to you who the speaker is, or what country he’s from, because you are not concerned only with whether or not he is right. P h a e d r u s : You’re right to have told me off— and, yes, I think the Theban king was correct about writing. S o c r a t e s : S o anyone who thinks he can get a branch of expertise to sur­ vive by committing it to writing— and also anyone who inherits the work with the assumption that writing will give him something clear and reliable— would be behaving in a thoroughly foolish manner and really would be ignorant of Amon’s prediction, if he supposed that written words could do more than jog the memory of someone who already knows the topic that has been written about. P h a e d r u s : Quite so. S o c r a t e s : Yes, because there’s something odd about writing, Phaedrus, which makes it exactly like painting. The offspring of painting stand there as if alive, but if you ask them a question they maintain an aloof silence .7 It’s the same with written words: you might think they were speaking as if they had some intelligence, but if you want an explanation of any of the things they’re saying and you ask them about it, they just go on and on for ever giving the same single piece of information. Once any account has been written down, you find it all over the place, hobnobbing with com­ pletely inappropriate people no less than with those who understand it, and completely failing to know who it should and shouldn’t talk to. And faced with rudeness and unfair abuse it always needs its father to come to its assistance, since it is incapable of defending or helping itself. P h a e d r u s : Again, you’re quite right. [276 ] S o c r a t e s : Well, is there any other way of using words? Does the written word have a legitimate brother? Can we see how it is born, and how much better and stronger it grows than its brother? P h a e d r u s : What is this way of using words? How is it born, do you think? S o c r a t e s : It is the kind that is written along with knowledge in the soul of a student. It is capable of defending itself, and it knows how to speak to those it should and keep silent in the company of those to whom it shouldn’t speak. P h a e d r u s : You’re talking about the living, ensouled speech of a man of knowledge. We’d be right to describe the written word as a mere image of this. S o c r a t e s : Absolutely. S o here’s another question for you. Consider a sen­ sible farmer who cares for his seeds and wants to see them come to 6. In a trance, the priestesses would interpret the rustling o f the leaves of an oak tree. [Dodona: town in Epirus, in northwest G reece— editor’s note.]

7. One might also add that the written word ignores all the unspoken aspects such as body language, tone o f voice, and so on, which consti­ tute a major proportion of com m unication.

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fruition. Do you think he’d happily spend time and effort planting them in the summer in gardens of Adonis,8 and watch them grow up in eight days, or would he do this, if at all, as a diversion and for the sake of a festival? Don’t you think that for seeds he was serious about he’d draw on his skill as a farmer, sow them in the appropriate soil, and be content if what he sowed reached maturity in the eighth month? P h a e d r u s : Yes, that’s what he’d do, Socrates. He’d take care of the one lot of seeds and treat the others differently, just as you said. S o c r a t e s : S o are we to say that someone who knows about right and fine and good activities is less sensible than our farmer where his own seeds are concerned? P h a e d r u s : O f course not. S o c r a t e s : Then he won’t spend time and effort writing what he knows in water— in black water9— and sowing them with his pen by means of words which can neither speak in their own defence nor come up with a satisfactory explanation of the truth. P h a e d r u s : N o , it’s hardly likely that he will. S o c r a t e s : N o . He’ll probably sow and write his gardens of letters for amusement, if at all, as a way of storing up things to jog his own mem­ ory when ‘he reaches the age of forgetfulness’, and also the memory of anyone else who is pursuing the same course as him. He’ll happily watch these delicate gardens growing, and he’ll presumably spend his time diverting himself with them rather than the symposia1 and so on with which other people amuse themselves. P h a e d r u s : What a wonderful kind of diversion you’re describing, Socrates— that of a person who can amuse himself with words, as he tells stories about justice and the other things you mentioned— compared with the trivial pastimes of others! S o c r a t e s : Yes, that’s right, my dear Phaedrus. But it’s far better, in my opinion, to treat justice and so on seriously, which is what happens when an expert dialectician takes hold of a suitable soul and uses his knowl­ edge to plant and sow the kinds of words which are capable of defending both themselves and the one who planted them. S o far from being bar­ ren, [277] these words bear a seed from which other words grow in other environments. This makes them capable of giving everlasting life to the original seed, and of making the man who has them as happy as it is pos­ sible for a mortal man to be. P h a e d r u s : Yes, this is certainly far better. S o c r a t e s : With this conclusion in place, Phaedrus, we are at last in a position to reach a verdict about the other issue. P h a e d r u s : What other issue? S o c r a t e s : The one that brought us here. We wanted to investigate why Lysias2 was abused for writing speeches, and the expert or inexpert

8. “Gardens of Adonis” were pots in which plants were forced to mature in time for his festival, when they would wither and die in the midsum­ mer sun to represent the death of Adonis, or the passing o f youth. [Adonis: a Greek mythological figure whose cult was associated with vegetation and fertility— editor’s note.]

9. To write in or on water was proverbially futile. “Black water” is o f course ink. 1. D rinking parties [editor’s note]. 2. A thenian orator (ca. 4 5 6 - c a . 38 0 b . c . e .), whose oration on love provides the occasion for the discussion in Phaedrus [editor’s note].

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composition of the actual speeches. Well, I think weVe made it fairly clear what makes for expertise and its lack. P h a e d r u s : I thought so, but could you remind me again? S o c r a t e s : First, someone has to know the truth of every matter he’s speak­ ing or writing about, which is to say that he has to be capable of defining a whole as it is in itself and then know how to divide it up class by class until he reaches something indivisible. He also has to be able to distin­ guish souls in the same sort of way, discover the kind of speech which naturally fits each kind of soul, and organize and arrange his speeches accordingly— offering a complex soul a complex speech which covers the whole range of modes, and a simple soul a simple speech. Until he can do all this he will be incapable of tackling speeches in as much of a profes­ sional manner as their nature allows, either for teaching or for persua­ sion. This is what the whole of our earlier discussion has shown us. P h a e d r u s : Yes, absolutely. T hat’s pretty much what we found. S o c r a t e s : S o what about the question whether or not it is acceptable to deliver or write speeches, and under what circumstances it would or would not be fair to describe it as a shameful activity? Haven’t our recent conclusions shown . . . P h a e d r u s : What c o n c l u s i o n s ? S o c r a t e s : . . . that if Lysias or anyone else who has in the past written a speech, or will write one in the future, for private or public consumption— that is, in the latter case, when proposing legislation and so composing a political speech— thinks there is any great degree of reliability and clarity in it, this is a source of shame for the author, whether or not anyone has ever said as much to him. For, awake or asleep, ignorance about what activities are right and wrong and good and bad cannot, when seen aright, fail to be a matter for reproach, even if the general mass of people approve of it. P h a e d r u s : I quite agree. S o c r a t e s : But consider someone who thinks that, whatever the subject, a written speech is bound to be largely a source of amusement, and that no speech which has ever been written in verse or in prose deserves to be taken seriously; that the same goes for the declamations of rhapsodes,3 which are designed to produce conviction, but allow no cross-examination and contain no element of teaching; that in actual fact [278] the best speeches do no more than jog the memories of men of knowledge; that clarity and perfection and something worth taking seriously are to be found only in words which are used for explanation and teaching, and are truly written in the soul, on the subject of right and fine and good activi­ ties; that, while he ignores all the rest, words of this kind should be attrib­ uted to him as his legitimate sons— above all the words within himself, if he has found them and they are there, but secondly the words that are at once the offspring and the brothers of these internal ones of his, and have duly grown in others’ souls. It looks, Phaedrus, as though anyone with these views has attained the condition you and I can only pray for. P h a e d r u s : I have no hesitation at all in wishing and praying for what you’ve said. 3. Professional reciters of poetry, especially the Homeric epics, and lecturers on the topic.

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now we’ve diverted ourselves for long enough on the sub­ je ct of speeches. It’s up to you to go and tell Lysias of our excursion to the Nymphs’ spring and the Muses’4 shrine. Explain to him how we listened to speeches which commanded us to tell Lysias (and any other composer of speeches), Homer (and any other author of poetry, whether accompanied or unaccompanied by music), and thirdly Solon 5 (and any­ one else who writes legislation, as he calls it— which is to say, written compositions in the form of political speeches) that if he has written from a position of knowledge of how things truly are, if he can mount a defence when challenged on the content of his work, and if he can pro­ duce arguments of his own to prove the unimportance of what he has written, then he does not deserve a title derived from these pursuits,6 but a description based on the things he takes seriously. P h a e d r u s : What names are you thinking of giving him? S o c r a t e s : I think it’s too much to call him ‘wise’, Phaedrus: only the gods deserve that label. But it would suit him better and be more appro­ priate to call him a lover of wisdom,7 or something like that. P h a e d r u s : Yes, that would fit the bill. S o c r a t e s : On the other hand, wouldn’t you be right to use the titles poet’ or ‘speech-writer’ or iaw-writer’ for someone who has nothing more valuable than the composition or piece of writing he has arrived at by a lengthy process of turning upside down, and by cutting and pasting the various parts into different relations with one another? P h a e d r u s: Of course. S o c r a t e s : Then this is what you should tell your friend. P h a e d r u s : And what about you? What are you going to do? After all, we surely shouldn’t ignore your friend as well. S o c r a t e s : Who’s that? P h a e d r u s : The beautiful Isocrates .8 What are you going to tell him, Socrates? What shall we call him? S o c r a t e s : Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus, but I’d like to tell you what I guess [279] the future holds for him. P h a e d r u s : What? S o c r a t e s : He strikes me as being naturally more talented than Lysias and his crowd, and also to have a nobler temperament. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if, as he matured, he came to stand out among every­ one else who has ever undertaken speech-writing, as an adult among children and more so— and that’s considering the kinds of speeches he is currently engaged on. I think he’d stand out even more if he wasn’t content with his present work, and some more divine impulse were to guide him towards greater things. For he does innately have a certain philosophical cast to his mind, my friend. So that’s the message I shall

S o crates: S o

4. In Greek mythology, 9 daughters of Memory who preside over the arts and all intellectual pur­ suits. Nymphs: goddesses of lower rank, often associated with aspects o f nature (the ocean, trees, etc.) [editor’s note]. 5. Athenian statesm an and poet (ca. 6 3 8 -5 5 9 b . c . e .), who reformed the city’s constitution. Homer (ca. 8th c. b . c . e .), Greek epic poet to whom the Iliad and Odyssey are attributed [edi­

tor’s note]. 6. That is, he should not be called a “speechwriter,” for instance, which Phaedrus said ear­ lier was used as a term of abuse. 7. In Greek, pliilosophos — a philosopher. 8. Athenian orator, rhetorician, and teacher ( 4 3 6 -3 3 8 b . c . e .), whose school attracted pupils from all over G reece and greatly influenced later methods of education [editor’s note].

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bring Isocrates, as my beloved, from the gods of this place, and you already know what to tell your beloved Lysias. P h a e d r u s : All right. But let s go, now that the weather has cooled down. S o c r a t e s : Shouldn't one first pray to the gods here before setting off? P h a e d r u s : O f course. S o c r a t e s : Dear Pan 9 and all gods here, grant that I may become beauti­ ful within and that my external possessions may be congruent with my inner state. May I take wisdom for wealth, and may I have just as much gold as a moderate person, and no one else, could bear and carry by him­ self. Have I missed anything out, Phaedrus? This prayer will do for me. P h a e d r u s : Say the prayer for me too. For friends share everything .1 S o c r a t e s : Let s go. 370 B.C.E. 9. God of shepherds and small-game hunting, a pastoral deity, and therefore named earlier as one o f the deities who might have inspired Socrates

in these rural surroundings. 1. A proverb quite often quoted by Plato.

ARISTOTLE 384-322

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.c .e .

Alongside his teacher p l a t o , Aristotle is the great founding figure of Western phi­ losophy and literary theory. Aristotle invented the scientific method of analysis and, in a wide-ranging series of treatises, codified the divisions of knowledge into disci­ plines and subdisciplines that carry on to the present day, such as physics, chemis­ try, zoology, biology, botany, psychology, politics, logic, and epistemology. Unlike Plato, who uses the dialogue to dramatize paths of thinking in a conversational lit­ erary form, Aristotle relies in his extant works on categorization and logical differ­ entiation in a straightforward propositional manner. He focuses on the distinctive qualities of any given object of study, whether of plants or of plays, systematically describing their specific features and construction. Plato and other ancient writers often commented on literary works, but Aristotle inaugurated the systematic discipline of literary criticism and theory with the Poet­ ics. It is perhaps the most influential work in the history of criticism and theory, shaping future considerations of genre, prosody, style, structure, and form. Its mod­ ern impact began in the Renaissance, when it was rediscovered from fragmentary manuscript sources and taken as a rule book for literary composition. Its descrip­ tions of formal unity influenced seventeenth-century European writers, such as the French dramatist p i e r r e C o r n e i l l e , and eighteenth-century writers reviving its pre­ cepts as “neoclassicism.” In twentieth-century literary theory the Poetics was foun­ dational for formalist methods, which apply objective modes of analysis to linguistic artifacts and discern the structural attributes of literary works; it influenced a wide array of critics, such as the American New Critics (like w i l l i a m k . w i m s a t t j r . and m o n r o e c . b e a r d s l e y ) , the archetypal critics (notably N o r t h r o p f r y e ) , and the French structuralists (like t z v e t a n t o d o r o v ) . Aristotle’s On Rhetoric suggests a different avenue for the study of literature. Rather than seeing literary works in terms of their distinctive features and internal construction, it opens for consideration their affective and political dimensions as

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forms of public speech. Because of its focus on types of public speaking, R hetoric’s influence on literary study has been less direct than that of the Poetics, but its empha­ sis on audience response undergirds subsequent theoretical approaches concerned with the reader, interpretation, and the political effects of literature. Although Aristotle himself does not favor one avenue of investigation over another, his dis­ tinction between poetics and rhetoric reflects a perennial division in literary the­ ory: the split between theories concerned with the internal properties of literature and those concerned with literature’s external effects, especially on readers and society. Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece, which was under the rule of Macedonia. His father, Nicomachus, was the personal physician to and a friend of Amyntus II, the king of Macedonia. Scholars speculate that his fathers practice as a physician inculcated in Aristotle a pragmatic interest in biology and the natural world, and Aristotle’s ties to the Macedonian court affected his subsequent career. In 367 b . c . e . Aristotle went to study at Plato’s Academy in Athens, where he distin­ guished himself as one of Plato’s best students and eventually became a teacher himself. In 347, around the time of Plato’s death, Aristotle left Athens; he traveled first to Assos in Asia Minor, where he taught in a colony of Platonists for three years, and then to the island of Lesbos, where he did the biological research that grounded his later scientific treatises. In 344 or 343, Amyntas’s son, King Philip, invited Aristotle to tutor his heir, Alexander (later known as Alexander the Great), who was then about thirteen years old. While he had contact with and received the patronage of Alexander until his death, Aristotle concluded his tutoring in 340, after which he probably lived in Macedonia or Stagira, perhaps then completing On Rhetoric. In 335, when Alexander acceded to the throne and departed for his cam­ paigns in Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens and began his own school at the Lyceum. He taught poetics, rhetoric, politics, ethics, and metaphysics, and probably at this time worked on his famous treatises, including the Politics, the N icom achean Eth­ ics, and the Poetics. After the death of Alexander in 323, when public sentiment against Macedonia was rising, Aristotle left Athens to live in Chalcis on the island of Euboea, where he died in 322. For Aristotle the life of the philosopher was not reclusive but unfolded in the midst of public affairs. Only about a fifth of Aristotle's 150 reported works survive— transmitted, usu­ ally imperfectly, through manuscript copies in the Middle Ages. His treatises are known as “esoteric” works, because they were not copied by scribes to be distrib­ uted but were available only in libraries for study by others; some seem to be lecture notes or study guides rather than polished works. This accounts for their com­ pressed style and sometimes abrupt transitions, frequent repetitions, and short­ hand references to other works or writers. It also makes the works particularly difficult to date, since they were probably composed and revised over a period of time. The Poetics, very likely gathered from a set of incomplete notes, survived only in a few faulty copies. Scholars speculate that we have just half the original text and that the missing second half dealt with comedy. Aristotle’s early writings, now known only by the reports of ancient writers, were written in the form of dialogues, obviously showing the influence of Plato. His more mature works, however, depart from his teacher’s model in a number of sig­ nificant ways. Stylistically, he replaces the literary approach with systematic expo­ sitions of particular subjects, more in the form of technical manuals than dramatic accounts. Methodologically, Aristotle operates through analysis, which in its root sense entails examining objects by studying their component parts, and through differentiation and classification. For instance, in biology Aristotle starts with the most general category— living organisms; he then examines them according to what differentiates them— as plants, animals, and so on; further classifies them into par­ ticular species; and catalogues their distinctive traits. Philosophically, Aristotle grounds his research on a more empirical basis than Plato, looking at nature and

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the objects of the real world. In so doing, he tacitly rejects Plato’s fundamental concept of transcendent Ideas or Forms that govern and generate reality. In his own terms, Aristotle often works from induction, drawing his general conclusions from the particular objects he observes, whereas Plato usually works from deduc­ tion, drawing particular conclusions from his general metaphysical concept of being. The Poetics, our first selection, demonstrates Aristotle’s analytical method, which parallels that of his examinations of biology or zoology. Aristotle turns to the various categories of human artifacts, differentiating those made in language and eventually focusing on poetry and especially on the species-specific traits of epic and tragedy. He assumes a distinction between the wide class of objects that are humanly made and those that are naturally produced— between, say, a chair and a tree. (The Greek word for “poetry,” poiesis, is itself based on the verb “to make.”) In treating poetry as a craft, Aristotle differs from Plato, who discusses poetry in terms of inspiration and the emotive transport of the poet— a strain that continues in nineteenth-century Romanticism, exemplified by w i l l i a m w o r d s w o r t h ’s defi­ nition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of emotion.” Aristotle limits his study of poetry to its observable kinds and its formal construction, more or less ignoring questions about its affective origins, which he regards as falling under the auspices of other pursuits, such as psychology or rhetoric. Drawing on a wide range of literary examples, especially Sophocles’ celebrated tragedy Oedipus Rex, Aristotle adduces six salient parts of tragedy, in order of their importance— plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle. He spends the most time on the first, specifying the key features of good plots. Central to Aristotle is imitation (mimesis), and he judges the best plots to have verisimilitude: they must be plausible (even if impossible). He also stresses a logically connected order (an appropriate starting point, elaboration, and a dramatic end or resolution), centered on one unified action rather than depicting multiple, divergent, or unnecessary actions. The best kind of resolution is one that shows a reversal (peripeteia) of posi­ tion for the main character, as well as the character’s recognition (anagnorisis) of his or her fate. Aristotle reasons that the characters in tragedy should come from high positions, otherwise their tragic circumstances would not be remarkable; he also prescribes that their fates be linked to their own error (ham artia, literally “missing the mark,” though frequently translated as “flaw”), rather than from some accident or wickedness. Aristotle concludes somewhat technically by classifying parts of speech (in his discussion of diction), sketching solutions to problems of interpretation, and comparing the genres of tragedy and epic. Though rooted in the literature of its time (and focusing especially on a form of drama quite different from ours), the extant Poetics has continued to influence criti­ cism. Aristotle’s systematic categorization of genus and species and his comparison of tragedy and epic underlie all genre theory. Notably, they undergird modern con­ siderations of the historical movement from epic to the novel, such as those of g y o r g y l u k a c s and m i k h a i l m. b a k h t i n . Perhaps most decisively, Aristotle’s system­ atic description of plot and its component parts ground contemporary narrative theory, in particular the technical field of narratology. His scientific examination of poetry has been championed by the New Critics Wimsatt and c l e a n t h b r o o k s as “Aristotle’s answer” to Plato, responding both to Plato’s view of poetry as a degraded imitation twice removed from the reality of eternal Ideas or Forms and to his suspicion of poetry as stirring emotions in a way that is dangerous for society. Instead of directly disagreeing with Plato, Aristotle implicitly validates poetry by examining it as a legitimate branch of study. Counter­ ing Plato’s notion of poetry as degraded imitation, Aristotle sees poetry as a source of universal knowledge of human behavior: unlike history, which produces knowl­ edge only of specific situations, poetry describes the actions of characters who might be any humans. Moreover, he claims that good poetry has a positive emotional

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effect on its audience, which he calls katharsis— perhaps the most important and variously interpreted word in the Poetics. Some commentators have interpreted the term in a medical sense, as a purgative that flushes out the audience’s unwieldy emotion; others see it in terms of moral purification. More recently, critics have equated catharsis with ethical and intellectual clarification. In other treatises, Aristotle analyzes natural objects in terms of four component “causes,” schematized as material, formal, efficient, and final. If we apply this rubric to poetry, the material cause of a poem would be its raw material— language; the formal cause, the shape of the resulting object— the poem; its efficient cause, what makes it— the poet; and the final cause, the end use— its effects on an audience, emotionally as well as educationally and politically. Although Aristotle alludes to audience response in his discussion of catharsis, in the Poetics he is most concerned with the material and formal causes of poetry. This concentrated focus has strongly marked modern literary criticism— notably that of the New Critics, who explicitly disallow considerations of the audience as “the affective fallacy,” in the phrase of Wimsatt and Beardsley. However, Aristotle is by no means so dismissive. Instead, he treats considerations of the audience— the final cause— as a different line of research, taken up in his On Rhetoric. We have come to understand rhetoric as the study of figures of speech, following the medieval and Renaissance traditions (and the modern practice of writers like p a u l d e m a n ), but Aristotle defines it more broadly as the ability to see the available means of persuasion. In typical Aristotelian fashion, On Rhetoric begins in book 1 by differentiating three elements of persuasion in public speech: the arguments a speaker uses, the ethos or character of the speaker, and the disposition of the audi­ ence. Additionally, it differentiates three species of public speeches: deliberative, which deal with future events, as in politics; judicial, which concern past events, as in law courts; and epideictic, which are concerned with the present as they praise or blame a person, as in a eulogy or declamatory attack. Aristotle stresses the impor­ tance of argument in part to challenge the then prevalent teachings of the sophists, such as g o r g i a s in an earlier generation, who he believed used rhetoric irresponsi­ bly, lacking concern for valid reasoning. However, Aristotle also acknowledges the elements of persuasion outside the realm of reasoning, paying particular attention to the emotions that speeches induce in their audiences. In book 2, he adduces the first systematic study of affect, differ­ entiating emotions such as anger, calmness, fear, confidence, shame, pity, indigna­ tion, envy, and emulation. In book 3, paralleling his examination of diction in the Poetics, Aristotle concludes with a discussion of lexis (variously translated as “style,” “word choice,” or “form of expression”). Perhaps the most important term in On Rhet­ oric is telos— the final cause, end, objective, or goal of persuasion— effected through emotion and style as well as argument. On Rhetoric highlights the public ends of language rather than its formal properties. Although its influence has not been as sustained or decisive as that of the Poetics, On Rhetoric considers how response is a factor in interpretation. In its delineations of emotions, it presages the aesthetic tradition, whose concern is the affective dimensions of literary works, and it provides a grounding for reader-response the­ ory, which centers on subjective audience interaction rather than the objective fea­ tures of the work itself. Perhaps most significantly, it suggests the historical and political significance of literature in its role as public discourse. Whether acknowledged or not, Aristotle’s seminal distinction between poetics and rhetoric has been crucial in contemporary debates over the proper object of literary criticism. Against the tendency fostered by the New Critics and later by certain decon­ structive critics who advocated a narrow' linguistic study of literature, recent decades have witnessed a “rhetorical turn” toward methods favoring attention to the personal, historical, and social effects of literary texts. Some object that such approaches address topics outside the purview of literary study. That is, they urge a strict poetic view,

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arguing that literary criticism should focus on the distinctive attributes of literary works. But when we take account of On Rhetoric alongside the Poetics, we see that Aristotle does not disallow these other topics; he opens literary study to a consider­ ation of its pedagogical and social ends as well as its distinctive formal properties. P oetics Keywords: Classical Theory, Drama, Epic, Formalism, Language, Narrative Theory, Poetry, Representation On R h e to r ic Keywords: Affect, Classical Theory, Language, Reception Theory, Rhetoric

Poetics 1 [1, 1447a] The art of poetry, both in its general nature and in its various specific forms, is the subject here proposed for discussion. And with regard to each of the poetic forms, I wish to consider what characteristic effect it has, how its plots should be constructed if the poets work is to be good, and also the number and nature of the parts of which the form consists. Such other matters as may be relevant to this field of study will likewise be included. Let us, then, follow the order of nature, and begin by taking up that which is by nature first. Epic poetry and Tragedy, also Comedy, the Dithyramb,2 and most of the music performed on the flute and the lyre are all, in a collective sense, Imi­ tations.3 However, they differ from one another in three ways— either ( 1 ) by using different means [or media] of imitation; or (2 ) by imitating different objects; or (3) by imitating in a different manner and not in the same mode of presentation. Just as certain persons, by rule of art or mere practice, make likenesses of various objects by imitating them in colors and forms, and others again imi­ tate by means of the voice, so, taken as a whole, the arts I have mentioned have as their means of imitation rhythm, language, and melody. These, how­ ever, they employ either separately or in combination. For example, the arts of the flutist and citharist employ only rhythm and melody, as do other arts of similar effect such as that of the panpipes; and rhythm alone without melody is the medium of the dance— dancers simply by means of a rhythmical pattern of movement succeed in imitating mens characters, emotions, and actions. The art that imitates in language alone, in prose or in [nonlyrical] verse [1447b] (whether combining different meters or using only one of them), remains to this day without a name. For there is no common name under which we can bring the prose mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues,4 nor would there be even if the imitation they embody 1. Translated by Jam es Hutton, who adds clarify­ ing words or phrases in square brackets and includes Greek terms in parentheses. Also in square brackets in the text are both the tradi­ tional chapter divisions inserted by Renaissance editors and the Bekker numbers, used almost universally in citing A ristotle’s works; they refer to the page numbers and columns of an 1831 edi­ tion by Immanuel Bekker. 2. Greek choral poetry originally sung in honor o f Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility wor­

shipped in an ecstatic cult. 3. From the Greek mimesis, translated as “im ita­ tion” or “representation.” 4. The philosophical works of p i . a t o (ca. 427— ca. 347 b . c . e .), which are written as dialogues usually featuring his teacher, Socrates (4 6 9 -3 9 9 b . c . e .), and one or more interlocutors. “M imes”: imitative perform ances usually featuring short scenes from daily life. Sophron of Syracuse (5th c. B .C .E .) wrote mimes in rhythmic prose; his son Xenarchus also wrote mimes.

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were made in iambic trimeters, elegiac couplets,’ or any other such verse— except, indeed, that people in general attach the word “poet” to the name of a particular meter and speak, for example, of elegiac poets and epic poets, calling them poets, not on the basis of imitation, but indiscriminately accord­ ing to the meter they use. This is customary even when what is produced is a versified treatise on medicine or natural science. But Homer and Empedo­ cles 6 have nothing in common except just their meter, and it is right, there­ fore, to call the one a poet and the other a physical philosopher rather than a poet. Similarly, anyone who produces an imitation, even if it is in a mixture of all the verse forms, as in the case of Chaeremon’s7 Centaur, which is a mixed rhapsody in all the meters, must in virtue of his imitation be called a poet. In these matters, then, the distinctions thus made may suffice. There are, however, certain arts that make use of all the stated media, viz., rhythm, song, and metrical language, and among these are dithyrambic poetry, nomic poetry,8 tragedy, and comedy. Here the distinction is that dithyramb and nome employ all three media continuously throughout, while tragedy and comedy employ first one means and then the other. This completes what I have to say about the differences among the arts in respect to the means they employ in effecting the imitation. [2, 1448a] Since the objects that the imitators represent are persons engaged in action, and since these persons will necessarily be persons of either a higher or a lower moral type (for this is the one division that characters submit to almost without exception, goodness and badness being universal criteria of character), they represent them accordingly as either better than we are or worse or about the same. For example, among painters, Polygnotus portrayed men better than we are, Pauson men inferior to the norm, and Dionysius9 men like ourselves. And clearly, each of the aforementioned kinds of imitation will have these variations, and will be different by virtue of imitating objects that differ in this way. Thus it is possible for these differences to arise in dancing and in flute and lyre playing, and also in the art that employs prose and unsung verse. Homer, for example, represents men better than we are, Cleophon men like ourselves, and Hegemon of Thasos, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares,1 author of the Deiliad, men worse than the norm. Similarly, one could represent different types in dithyrambs and nomes, as . . . Timotheus and Philoxenus do in their treatment of the Cyclops.2 And it is upon the same point of difference also that tragedy parts company with comedy, since comedy prefers to imitate persons who are worse, tragedy persons who are better, than the present generation. 5. A verse form consisting of couplets whose first line is in dactylic hexameter (i.e., a 6-foot line based on the syllabic pattern long-short-short), the meter o f epic, and whose second line replaces the 3rd and 6th foot with one long syllable. “Iam ­ bic trim eters”: the verse form of most dialogue and set speeches in tragedies (a 3-foot line based on the syllabic pattern short-long). 6. P re-Socratic Greek natural philosopher (ca. 4 9 3 —433 b . c . e .), who wrote in epic meter (dac­ tylic hexameter). Homer (ca. 8th c. b . c . e .), Greek epic poet to whom is attributed the Iliad and the Odyssey; the ancient Greeks also credited him with a number o f lost shorter epics, including the com ic Margites. 7. Greek tragedian (mid-4th c . b . c . e .).

8. Originally, melodies (for lyre or flute) created to accompany epic texts; later, choral composi­ tions. 9. Painter from Colophon. Polygnotus (ca. 5 0 0 - c a . 4 4 0 b . c . e .) , one o f the first great Greek painters. Pauson (late 5th c. b . c . e .) , A thenian caricatu rist. 1. Athenian com ic poet (active ca. 390 b . c . e .), whose D eiliad (deilos means “cowardly”) paro­ died heroic epic. Cleophon (4th c. b . c . e .), A the­ nian tragic poet. Hegemon (5th c. b . c . e .), poet whose parodies won com petitions in Athens. 2. Mythical one-eyed giants. Timotheus of Miletus (ca. 4 5 0 -c a . 360 b . c . e .) and Philoxenus of Cythera (ca. 435—ca. 3 8 0 b .c . e .) were both Greek dithy­ rambic poets.

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[3] The third difference in these arts has to do with the manner in which any one of these objects may be imitated; for it is possible to represent the same objects in the same medium but in different modes. Thus they may be imitated either in narration (whether the narrator speaks at times in an assumed role, which is Homers way, or always in his own person without change) or in a mode in which all the characters are presented as function­ ing and in action. It is in these three ways, then, as we said at the beginning, that imitation is differentiated— by the means, by the objects, and by the manner of presen­ tation. So in one way Sophocles would be the same kind of imitator as Homer, in that both represent noble characters, and in another way the same as Aristophanes,3 since both present their characters as acting and doing. Indeed, some say that dramas are so called, because their authors repre­ sent the characters as “doing” them (drontes). And it is on this basis that the Dorians4 lay claim to the invention of both tragedy and comedy. For comedy is claimed by the Megarians5 here in Greece, who say it began among them at the time when they became a democracy, and by the Megarians of Sicily on the grounds that the poet Epicharmus came from there and was much ear­ lier than Chionides and Magnes;6 while tragedy is claimed by certain Dorians of the Peloponnese. They offer the words as evidence, noting that outlying villages, called dem oi by the Athenians, are called kom ai by them, and alleg­ ing that kom odoi [comedians] acquired their name, not from kom azein [to revel], but from the fact that, being expelled in disgrace from the city, they wandered from village to village. [1448b] The Dorians further point out that their word for “to do” is dran> whereas the Athenians use prattein. Let this be our account, then, of the number and nature of the differ­ ences imitation admits of. [4] For the beginnings of poetry in general, there appear to have been two causes, both rooted in human nature. Thus from childhood it is instinctive in human beings to imitate, and man differs from the other animals as the most imitative of all and getting his first lessons by imitation, and by instinct also all human beings take pleasure in imitations. We have evidence of this in actual experience, for the forms of those things that are distressful to see in reality— for example, the basest animals and corpses— we contemplate with pleasure when we find them represented with perfect realism in images. For this again the reason is that the experience of learning things is highly enjoyable, not only for philosophers but for other people as well, only their share in it is limited; when they enjoy seeing images, therefore, it is because as they look at them they have the experience of learning and reasoning out what each thing repre­ sents, concluding, for example, that “this figure is so and so”; for if the image depicts something one has not seen before, the pleasure it gives will not be that of an imitation but will come from its workmanship or coloring or some other such source. Imitation, then, being something that we have by nature, and the

3. G reatest poet of Greek Old Comedy (4 5 0 -3 8 5 .). Sophocles (ca. 4 9 6 - 4 0 6 b . c . e .), great Greek tragedian. 4. A people (probably originally from southwest M acedonia) that invaded G reece ca. 1100—1000 b . c . e ., reaching south into the Peloponnese. 5. Residents o f a Dorian city on the Isthmus of b .c . e

Corinth (west of Athens); it was a democracy in the 6th century b . c . e . 6. A ristotle names three early com ic poets: Epi­ charm us was Sicilian (active early 5th ca. b . c . e .) and wrote in Doric Greek, while Chionides (active ca. 485 b . c . e .) and M agnes (active ca. 470 b . c . e .) were Athenian.

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same being true of melody and rhythm (verses clearly are segments of the vari­ ous rhythms), at the outset, persons who had a special aptitude for these things, making improvements bit by bit, produced out of their improvisations the beginnings of poetry. And in accordance with their individual types of character, poetry split into two kinds; for the graver spirits tended to imitate noble actions and noble persons performing them, and the more frivolous poets the doings of baser persons, and as the more serious poets began by composing hymns and encomia, so these began with lampoons. To be sure, we cannot men­ tion any poem of this type by a pre-Homeric poet, though doubtless many composed them, but beginning with Homer we can— his own M argites, for example, among other similar works. In these invectives the iambic meter came into use as something suited to their character— in fact, we now call this particular meter iambic because it was the meter in which men lam­ pooned (iambized) one another. Thus among the early poets, some became poets of heroic verse and others again of iambic verse. Homer was not only the master poet of the serious vein, unique in the general excellence of his imitations and especially in the dramatic quality he imparts to them, but was also the first to give a glimpse of the idea of comedy by avoiding personal abuse and giving dramatic treat­ ment to the ridiculous; for his Margites is analogous to the comedies just as the Iliad and the Odyssey are to the tragedies. [1449a] And once tragedy and comedy had made their appearance, those who were drawn to one or the other of the branches of poetry, true to their natural bias, became either comic poets instead of iambic poets or tragic poets instead of epic poets because the new types were more important— i.e., got more favorable atten­ tion, than the earlier ones. Whether tragedy has, then, fully realized its possible forms or has not yet done so is a question the answer to which both in the abstract and in rela­ tion to the audience [or the theater] may be left for another discussion. Its beginnings, certainly, were in improvisation, as were also those for comedy, tragedy originating in impromptus by the leaders of the dithyrambic chorus, and comedy in those of the leaders of the phallic performances which still remain customary in many cities. Little by little tragedy grew greater as the poets developed whatever they perceived of its emergent form, and after passing through many changes, it came to a stop, being now in possession of its specific nature. It was Aeschylus' who first increased the number of the actors from one to two and reduced the role of the chorus, giving first place to the dialogue. Sophocles [added] the third actor and [introduced] painted scenery. Again, [there was a change] in magnitude; from little plots and ludicrous language (since the change was from the satyr play8), tragedy came only late in its development to assume an air of dignity, and its meter changes from the trochaic tetrameter 9 to the iambic trimeter. Indeed, the reason why they 7. The earliest of the 3 great Greek tragedians (5 2 5 -4 5 6 b .c .e .). 8. A type of play that formed part of the spring festival o f Dionysus in early 5th-century b . c . e . Athens. Each o f the poets com peting wrote three tragedies and one satyr play; the latter presented grotesque versions of ancient legends, with the

chorus dressed as satyrs (half-man, half-goat, and wearing a phallus). 9. A 4-foot line based on the syllabic pattern long-short; though occasionally used for dialogue in tragedies, this fast-moving line was thought less stately than iambic meter. The choruses in tragedies used other meters.

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used the tetrameter at first was that their form of poetry was satiric [i.e., for “satyrs”] and hence more oriented toward dancing; but as the spoken parts developed, natural instinct discovered the appropriate meter, since of all the metrical forms the iambic trimeter is best adapted for speaking. (This is evident, since in talking with one another we very often utter iambic trim­ eters, but seldom dactylic hexameters, or if we do we depart from the tonal­ ity of normal speech. Again, [there was a change] in the number of episodes1— but as for this and the way in which reportedly each of the other improvements came about, let us take it all as said, since to go through the several details would no doubt be a considerable task. [5] Comedy, as we have said, is an imitation of persons worse than the average. Their badness, however, does not extend to the point of utter depravity; rather, ridiculousness is a particular form of the shameful and may be described as the kind of error and unseemliness that is not painful or destructive. Thus, to take a ready example, the comic mask is unseemly and distorted but expresses no pain. (While the changes marking the development of tragedy, and the persons responsible for them, did not pass unnoticed, no attention was paid to com­ edy in its early stages because comedy was not regarded as important; [1449b] only rather late in its history did the archon 2 begin granting a chorus of comedians, the performers having previously been volunteers. Thus when there begins to be any record of comic poets, so designated, comedy already possessed its general outlines, and we do not know who introduced masks or prologues or the accepted number of actors or anything of that sort. However, the practice of composing comic plots originally came from Sic­ ily, and in Athens Crates3 was the first to discard the abusive mode and construct a universalized type of plot or fable.) Epic poetry followed tragedy to the extent of being an imitation of good men in the medium of metrical language; where they differ is in the narra­ tive manner of epic and its use of a single meter. There is also a difference in length: tragedy endeavors as far as possible to keep within one revolution of the sun, or to exceed this limit but little, whereas the epic is without restric­ tion as to time and herein differs from tragedy, although at first the treatment of time in tragedies was just the same as in epic poems. Their constituent parts are the same, except that there are two [Music and Spectacle] which are peculiar to tragedy; and consequently anyone who knows how to distinguish good tragedy from bad can do the same with epic, since tragedy has all the parts that epic has, but epic not all those that make up tragedy. [6] The mimetic art in hexameters [epic poetry] and comedy will be dis­ cussed later on; but at this point I wish to speak about tragedy and to begin by gathering up from what I have already said the definition of its nature that emerges from that. Thus, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and possessing magnitude; in embellished language, each kind of which is used separately in the different parts, in the mode of action and not narrated; and effecting through pity and fear [what we call] the catharsis4 of 1. T he sections o f a tragedy that are positioned between two choruses. 2. The chief magistrate in ancient Greek citystates. 3. Athenian com ic poet (active ca. 4 5 0 —ca. 4 30

B .C .E .).

4. A much-debated Greek term , related to a verb meaning “to clean se” or “purify”; usually left untranslated and understood as “purgation,” it can also mean “clarificatio n .”

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such emotions. By “embellished language” I mean language having rhythm and melody, and by “separately in different parts” I mean that some parts of a play are carried on solely in metrical speech while others again are sung. Since the imitation is carried out in the dramatic mode by the personages themselves, it necessarily follows, first, that the arrangement of Spectacle will be a part of tragedy, and next, that Melody and Language will be parts, since these are the media in which they effect the imitation. By “language” I mean precisely the composition of the verses, by “melody” only that which is per­ fectly obvious. And since tragedy is the imitation of an action and is enacted by men in action, these persons must necessarily possess certain qualities of Character and Thought, since these are the basis for our ascribing qualities to the actions themselves [1450a]— character and thought are natural causes of actions— and it is in their actions that men universally meet with success or failure. The imitation of the action is the Plot. By plot I here mean the combi­ nation of the events; Character is that in virtue of which we say that the per­ sonages are of such and such a quality; and Thought is present in everything in their utterances that aims to prove a point or that expresses an opinion. Necessarily, therefore, there are in tragedy as a whole, considered as a special form, six constituent elements, viz. Plot, Character, Language, Thought, Spectacle, and Melody. Of these elements, two [Language and Melody] are the m edia in which they effect the imitation, one [Spectacle] is the manner, and three [Plot, Character, Thought] are the objects they imitate; and besides these there are no other parts. So then they employ these six forms, not just some of them so to speak; for every drama has spectacle, character, plot, lan­ guage, melody, and thought in the same sense, but the most important of them is the organization of the events [the plot]. For tragedy is not an imitation of men but of actions and of life. It is in action that happiness and unhappiness are found, and the end we aim at is a kind of activity, not a quality, in accordance with their characters men are of such and such a quality, in accordance with their actions they are fortu­ nate or the reverse. Consequently, it is not for the purpose of presenting their characters that the agents engage in action, but rather it is for the sake of their actions that they take on the characters they have. Thus, what happens— that is, the plot— is the end for which a tragedy exists, and the end or purpose is the most important thing of all. What is more, without action there could not be a tragedy, but there could be without characterization. In fact, the trage­ dies of most of our recent playwrights are lacking in the ethical element, and generally speaking many poets [of all kinds] show a similar tendency. So too among painters, Zeuxis5 stands in contrast with Polygnotus, the latter being an excellent portrayer of character, whereas there is no delineation of charac­ ter at all in the painting of Zeuxis. And again, merely by stringing together a succession of speeches full of character and well composed in point of lan­ guage and thought, one will never create the effect we said was proper to tragedy, but this effect is much more apt to be achieved with a tragedy pos­ sessing a plot and coordinated events, even though it may be relatively defi­ cient in its treatment of these other elements. A further point: the principal means by which tragedy exerts its fascina­ tion are parts of the plot, that is to say reversals and recognitions. Finally, it 5. Greek painter from H eraclea in southern Italy; he was in Athens ca. 4 0 0

b .c .e

.

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is significant that beginning authors are able to attain proficiency in lan­ guage and character portrayal sooner than in plot construction— a point that may also be illustrated from nearly all the early dramatists. Clearly, then, the first principle and, as it were, the soul of tragedy is the plot, and second in importance is character. In painting, too, it is much the same [1450b]— a painter who smeared on the most beautiful colors at random would give less pleasure than he would by making a likeness of something in black and white. Tragedy is an imitation of an action, and it is an imita­ tion of the agents chiefly owing to the action. Third in order of importance comes the element of Thought. This is the ability to say what it is possible and appropriate to say [on any subject], which in oratory is the function of the arts of statesmanship and rhetoric. [I name both], since the early poets made their personages speak in the manner of statesmen, whereas those of our time make theirs speak rhetorically. [Thought must be distinguished from Character.] “Character” is whatever reveals a person s habit of moral choice— whatever he tends to choose or reject when the choice is not obvious— and this element is, therefore, absent from speeches in which there is absolutely no choosing or rejecting of any­ thing by the speaker. “Thought,” on the other hand, is present whenever speakers are engaged in proving that something is so or not so, or when they are making some general pronouncement. The fourth element is Language. I define Language, as I said earlier, to be the expression of meaning by the use of words, and the definition is as valid for verse as for prose. O f the remaining elements, Melody is the most impor­ tant of the pleasurable accessories, while Spectacle, though fascinating in itself, is of all the parts the least technical in the sense of being least ger­ mane to the art of poetry. For tragedy fulfills its function even without a public performance and actors, and, besides, in the realization of the spec­ tacular effects the art of the property man counts for more than the art of the poets. [7] Now that the parts are established, let us next discuss what qualities the plot should have, since plot is the primary and most important part of tragedy. I have posited that tragedy is an imitation of an action that is a whole and complete in itself and of a certain magnitude— for a thing may be a whole, and yet have no magnitude to speak of. Now a thing is a whole if it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not come necessarily after something else, but after which it is natural for another thing to exist or come to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which naturally comes after something else, either as its necessary sequel or as its usual [and hence probable] sequel, but itself has nothing after it. A middle is that which both comes after something else and has another thing following it. A wellconstructed plot, therefore, will neither begin at some chance point nor end at some chance point, but will observe the principles here stated. Now as for magnitude: In order to be beautiful, a living creature or any­ thing else made up of parts not only must have its parts organized but must also have just the size that properly belongs to it. Beauty depends on size and order; hence an extremely minute creature could not be beautiful, for our vision becomes blurred as it approaches the point of imperceptibility, nor could an utterly huge creature be beautiful, for, [1451a] unable to take it in all at once, the viewer finds that its unity and wholeness have escaped

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his field of vision— if, for example, it were an animal a thousand miles long. Therefore, just as organized bodies and animals, if they are to be beautiful, must have size and such size as to be easily taken in by the eye, so plot, for the same reason, must have length and such length as to be easily held in the memory. The limit of length considered in relation to the public con­ tests and production in sensible form has nothing to do with the art of poetry— if a hundred tragedies had to be presented in the contest, the per­ formance would be timed by water clocks, as was actually done at one time, they say. But considered in relation to the very nature of the thing itself, the limit is this: Invariably, the larger the plot is, while still remaining perspicu­ ous, the more beautiful it is in virtue of its magnitude. Or, to express it in a simple formulation: If the length is sufficient to permit a change from bad fortune to good or from good fortune to bad to come about in an inevitable or probable sequence of events, this is a satisfactory limit of magnitude. [8] Contrary to what some people think, a plot is not ipso facto a unity if it revolves about one man. Many things, indeed an endless number of things, happen to any one man some of which do not go together to form a unity, and similarly among the actions one man performs there are many that do not go together to produce a single unified action. Those poets seem all to have erred, therefore, who have composed a H eracleid, a Theseid ,6 and other such poems, it being their idea evidently that since Hera­ cles was one man, their plot was bound to be unified. But Homer, just as he excels in every other respect, seems in this matter also, either by art or natural instinct, to have taken the right view. In composing his Odyssey, he did not put into it every event that had befallen Odysseus'— his being wounded on Mount Parnassus, for example, and his feigning madness when the host was assembling, neither of which events was at all a necessary or probable consequence of the other— but instead he constructed the Odys­ sey around a single action such as I am describing, and he did the same with the Iliad. Consequently, just as in the other mimetic arts an imitation is unified when it is the imitation of a unified object, so in poetry the plot, since it is the imitation of an action, must be the imitation of a unified action comprising a whole; and the events which are the parts of the plot must be so organized that if any one of them is displaced or taken away, the whole will be shaken and put out of joint; for if the presence or absence of a thing makes no discernible difference, that thing is not part of the whole. [9] From what has already been said, it will be evident that the poet s function is not to report things that have happened, but rather to tell of such things as might happen, things that are possibilities by virtue of being in themselves inevitable or probable. Thus the difference between [1451b] the historian and the poet is not that the historian employs prose and the poet verse— the work of Herodotus8 could be put into verse, and it would be no less a history with verses than without them; rather the difference is that the one tells of things that have been and the other of such things as might be. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than 6. In ancient Greece, there were several epic Hera cleid s and T heseids — poems depicting, respec­ tively, the heroes Heracles and Theseus. 7. The wily king o f Ithaca whose efforts to return home to G reece after the Trojan W ar are chroni­

cled in the Odyssey. 8 . Greek historian (ca. 4 8 4 -c a . 425 b . c . e .), chiefly of the Persian Wars; sometimes called “the father of history.”

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history, in that poetry tends rather to express the universal, history rather the particular fact. A universal is: The sort of thing that (in the circum­ stances) a certain kind of person will say or do either probably or necessarily, which in fact is the universal that poetry aims for (with the addition of names for the persons); a particular, on the other hand is: What Alcibiades9 did or had done to him. This [generalizing tendency] has now come out clearly in the case of comedy, where the poets, having constructed their plots out of probable incidents, then supply any names that may occur to them, and do not, like the iambic poets, take a particular individual as their subject. In tragedy, however, the historical names are retained. Basically this is because possibility means credibility; until something happens we remain uncertain of its possibility, but what has happened obviously is possible, since if impos­ sible, it would not have happened. Yet as a matter of fact there are some trag­ edies in which only one or two of the well-known names occur, the rest being invented, and other tragedies again in which there are no famous names at all. An example is Agathon’s1 Antheus. In this play, plot and names alike are invented, and yet it gives no less pleasure on that account. So there certainly is no need to make a point of adhering to the traditional stories on which tragedies are based. Indeed, it would be absurd to do so, since the well-known tales are well known only to a few, and nevertheless they give pleasure to all. It is clear, then, from the foregoing remarks that the poet should be a maker of plots more than a maker of verses, in that he is a poet by virtue of his imita­ tion and he imitates actions. So even if on occasion he takes real events as the subject of a poem, he is none the less a poet, since nothing prevents some of the things that have actually happened from being of the sort that might prob­ ably or possibly happen, and it is in accordance with this that he is their poet. Among plots and actions of the simple type, the episodic form is the worst. I call episodic a plot in which the episodes follow one another in no probable or inevitable sequence. Plots of this kind are constructed by bad poets on their own account, and by good poets on account of the actors; since they are composing entries for a competitive exhibition, they stretch the plot beyond what it can bear and [1452a] are often compelled, therefore, to dislocate the natural order. And it is not only an action complete in itself that tragedy represents; it also represents incidents involving pity and fear, and such incidents are most effective when they come unexpectedly and yet occur in a causal sequence in which one thing leads to another. For occur­ ring in this way, they will have more of the marvelous about them than if they came to pass of themselves and by accident. (Indeed, things that actu­ ally do happen by accident seem most marvelous when they appear to be intentional, as when at Argos the statue of Mitys2 killed the man who had caused Mitys’ death by falling down on him as he stood looking at it. It is hard to believe that such things happen without design.) Plots of this kind, therefore, are necessarily better than others. [10 ] Some plots are simple, others complex; indeed the actions of which the plots are imitations are at once so differentiated to begin with. Assuming the action to be continuous and unified, as already defined, I call that action

9. Athenian politician and general (ca. 4 5 0 - 4 0 4 b .c . e

.).

1. Innovative Athenian tragedian (d. ca. 401

b . c . e .); fewer than 40 lines of his 2 . M itys’s murderer was killed in

374

b .c . e

.

works rem ain. this fashion ca.

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simple in which the change of fortune takes place without a reversal or rec­ ognition, and that action complex in which the change of fortune involves a recognition or a reversal or both. These events [recognitions and reversals] ought to be so rooted in the very structure of the plot that they follow from the preceding events as their inevitable or probable outcome; for there is a vast difference between following from and merely following after. [11] Reversal (Peripety) is, as aforesaid, a change from one state of affairs to its exact opposite, and this, too, as I say, should be in conformance with probability or necessity. For example, in Oedipus ,3 the messenger comes to cheer Oedipus by relieving him of fear with regard to his mother, but by revealing his true identity, does just the opposite of this. In Lynceus4 again, Lynceus is brought on expecting to die and Danaiis follows intending to put him to death, but as a result of what has gone before, it turns out that Danaiis is put to death and Lynceus is saved. Recognition, as the word itself indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, leading either to friendship or to hostility on the part of those persons who are marked for good fortune or bad. The best form of recogni­ tion is that which is accompanied by a reversal, as in the example from Oedi­ pus. There are, to be sure, other forms of recognition— and, indeed, what I have just said may occur in reference to inanimate objects or anything whatever, and it is possible to discover that someone has or has not done something— but the form that has most to do with the plot, and most to do with the action, is the one I have mentioned; for a recognition joined thus with a reversal [1452b] will be fraught with pity or with fear (the type of action tragedy is presumed to imitate) because misery and happiness alike will come to be realized in recognitions of this kind. Now since recognition involves more than one person, there are cases in which one of two persons already knows the other and the recognition is on one side only, and other cases in which recognition has to take place on both sides. Iphigeneia, for example, was recognized by Orestes5 from the sending of her letter, but a sec­ ond recognition was required to reveal his identity to her. Two elements of the tragic plot, then, are Reversal and Recognition. A third element is Suffering (pathos). We have said what reversal and recogni­ tion are; Suffering is an action of a destructive or painful description, such as the deaths that take place in the open [and not behind the scenes], ago­ nies of pain, wounds, and so on. [12] Earlier I spoke of the parts of tragedy that are to be employed as for­ mative elements. The following are the parts or separate sections into which it is divided quantitatively: Prologue, Episode, Exode, and Choral part, this last again being divided into Parodos and Stasimon, which are found in all tragedies, and songs from the stage6 and Kommoi, found only in some. The

3. Oedipus Rex (ca. 430 b . c . e .), by Sophocles— a play to which Aristotle frequently refers as a model for his definition of tragedy. Unknowingly, Oedipus kills his father, Laius; takes his father’s place as king of Thebes; and marries his mother, Jocasta. W hen he learns that he has not escaped the fate foretold, he gouges out his eyes and ban­ ishes himself, hence undergoing a reversal from king to outcast. 4. Lost tragedy by the orator and tragic poet Theo-

dectes (ca. 3 7 5 -3 3 4 b . c . e .), about the daughters of King Danaus of Argos, who ordered them to kill their husbands (all obeyed except Hypermnestra, whose husband was Lynceus). 5. In Iphigenia in Tauris (ca. 413 b . c . e .), by Euripides (ca. 4 8 5 —ca. 4 0 6 b . c . e .) , the youngest of the three great Greek tragedians; the two are siblings. 6. T h at is, songs sung by the actors (not the chorus).

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Prologue is the whole section preceding the entrance song (Parodos) of the chorus; an Episode a whole section between two complete choral odes; and the Exode the whole section after which there is no choral ode. In the choral part, the Parodos is the first continuous utterance of the chorus; a Stasimon is a choral ode without anapaestic and trochaic lines;7 a Kommos is a lament in which chorus and actors both take part. Earlier I spoke of the parts of tragedy that are to be employed as formative elements; these are the parts or separate sections into which it is divided quantitatively. [13] Next in order after the points I have just dealt with, it would seem necessary to specify what one should aim at and what avoid in the construc­ tion of plots, and what it is that will produce the effect proper to tragedy. Now since in the finest kind of tragedy the structure should be complex and not simple, and since it should also be a representation of terrible and piteous events (that being the special mark of this type of imitation), in the first place, it is evident that good men ought not to be shown passing from prosperity to misfortune, for this does not inspire either pity or fear, but only revulsion; nor evil men rising from ill fortune to prosperity, for this is the most untragic plot of all— it lacks every requirement, in that it neither elicits human sympathy nor stirs pity or fear. [1453a] And again, neither should an extremely wicked man be seen falling from prosperity into misfortune, for a plot so constructed might indeed call forth human sympathy, but would not excite pity or fear, since the first is felt for a person whose misfortune is unde­ served and the second for someone like ourselves— pity for the man suffering undeservedly, fear for the man like ourselves— and hence neither pity nor fear would be aroused in this case. We are left with the man whose place is between these extremes. Such is the man who on the one hand is not pre­ eminent in virtue and justice, and yet on the other hand does not fall into misfortune through vice or depravity, but falls because of some mistake, one among the number of the highly renowned and prosperous, such as Oedipus and Thyestes8 and other famous men from families like theirs. It follows that the plot which achieves excellence will necessarily be single in outcome and not, as some contend, double, and will consist in a change of fortune, not from misfortune to prosperity, but the opposite, from prosperity to misfortune, occasioned not by depravity, but by some great mistake on the part of one who is either such as I have described or better than this rather than worse. (What actually has taken place confirms this; for though at first the poets accepted whatever myths came to hand, today the finest tragedies are founded upon the stories of only a few houses, being concerned, for example, with Alcmeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus,9 and such others as have chanced to suffer terrible things or to do them.) So, then, tragedy having this construction is the finest kind of tragedy from an

7. Lines based on the syllabic pattern short-shortlong (often used in the parados) or long-short. 8. Like Oedipus, a popular subject for Greek trag­ edy, though none survives; his story has numerous variants. He unknowingly ate the flesh of his own sons, served by his brother Atreus; and following the advice o f an oracle, he com mitted incest with his daughter to beget the son who would avenge him. 9. Few o f the tragedies involving these ch arac­

ters survive. Telephus, fated to kill his greatuncles, is exposed by his grandfather (a tragedy by Euripides told o f Telephus’s wound, received from A chilles as the Greeks were preparing to sail for Troy, that would not heal); Alcmeon and O restes kill their mothers, Eriphyle and Clytem­ nestra, to avenge their fathers’ deaths and are driven mad by the Furies (female demons who punish kin-murderers); and M eleager kills his uncles, and as a result his mother kills him.

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artistic point of view. And consequently, those persons fall into the same error who bring it as a charge against Euripides that this is what he does in his tragedies and that most of his plays have unhappy endings. For this is in fact the right procedure, as I have said; and the best proof is that on the stage and in the dramatic contests, plays of this kind seem the most tragic, pro­ vided they are successfully worked out, and Euripides, even if in everything else his management is faulty, seems at any rate the most tragic of the poets. Second to this is the kind of plot that some persons place first, that which like the Odyssey has a double structure and ends in opposite ways for the better characters and the worse. If it seems to be first, that is attributable to the weakness of the audience, since the poets only follow their lead and compose the kind of plays the spectators want. The pleasure it gives, how­ ever, is not that which comes from tragedy, but is rather the pleasure proper to comedy; for in comedy those who in the legend are the worst of enemies— Orestes and Aegisthus,1 for example— end by leaving the scene as friends, and nobody is killed by anybody. [14, 1453b] The effect of fear and pity may be created by spectacle; but it may also be created by the very structure of the events, and this method has priority and is the way of a better poet. For the plot should be so constructed that even without seeing the play, anyone who merely hears the events unfold will shudder and feel pity as a result of what is happening—which is precisely what one would experience in listening to the plot of Oedipus. To procure this effect by means of spectacle is less artistic in that it calls for external apparatus, while those who produce through spectacle something that is not terrifying but only portentous in effect have no part in tragedy at all, for not every sort of pleasure is to be sought from tragedy, but only that which properly belongs to it. And since the pleasure the poet is to provide is that which comes from pity and fear through an imitation, clearly this effect must be embodied in the events of the plot. Let us consider, therefore, the kinds of occurrences that seem terrible or pitiful. Actions of this sort must, of course, happen between persons who are either friends to one another or enemies or neither. Now if enemy harms enemy, there is nothing to excite pity either in his doing the deed or in his being on the point of doing it— nothing, that is, but the actual suffering; and the same is true if the parties are neither friends nor enemies. When, how­ ever, the tragic event occurs within the sphere of the natural affections— when, for instance, a brother kills or is on the point of killing his brother, or a son his father, or a mother her son, or a son his mother, or something equally drastic is done— that is the kind of event a poet must try for. There is, of course, no possibility of altering the traditional stories— I mean Clytem­ nestra being murdered by Orestes and Eriphyle by Alcmeon— but it is the poet’s duty to find a way of using even these traditional subjects well. Let me say more clearly what I mean by using them well. It is possible to have the action occur with full knowledge and awareness on the part of those involved, as the early poets used to do and as Euripides does when he has Medea2 kill her children. It is possible also to do the awful thing, but to 1. Clytemnestra’s lover (and Agamemnon’s cousin), whom (in the version told in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon) O restes also kills. 2. A sorceress from Colchis. In M edea (431 b . c . e .),

to avenge herself on Jason, who has deserted her for the daughter o f a king, she kills his— and her— children.

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do it in ignorance and then discover the relationship of the victim later, as Sophocles’ Oedipus does. In this case, to be sure, the deed is done outside the play, but it is done in the tragedy itself, for example, by the Alcmeon of Astydamas and by Telegonus in Odysseus W ounded .3 A third possibility is for one who is about to do one of these atrocious deeds in ignorance to discover the relationship before he does it. There are no other possibilities, for the deed has either to be done or not done and with knowledge or without knowl­ edge. Of these situations, the worst is for someone to be on the point of doing the deed with knowledge, and then not do it. This is revolting in itself, and is not tragic, since no suffering is involved. It is not employed, therefore, by the poets [1454a] except occasionally, as when Haemon in Antigone 4 fails to kill Creon. The doing of the deed comes next in order. The better way is for it to be done in ignorance, with the recognition following afterward; there is then nothing revolting in the act, and the recognition astounds us. The best situa­ tion, however, is the last mentioned. It is exemplified in Chresphontes, where Merope is on the point of murdering her son, when she recognizes him and desists, and in Iphigen eia, where the sister is about to slay her brother; and in H elle ,5 where the son is about to give his mother up to the enemy when he learns who she is. These considerations account for the fact mentioned earlier, that not many families provide subjects for tragedies. The poets, that is, in seeking out tragic situations, discovered more by luck than lore how to contrive in their plots the kind of situation we have described. And this obliges them to keep returning for subjects to those few houses that have had such dire events befall them. Enough, then, has now been said about the construction of the events and what the plots should be like in tragedy; [and hence we turn next to Character]. [15] With regard to the Characters there are four things to aim at. First and foremost is that the characters be good. The personages will have character if, as aforesaid, they reveal in speech or in action what their moral choices are, and a good character will be one whose choices are good. It is possible to por­ tray goodness in every class of persons; a woman may be good and a slave may be good, though perhaps as a class women are inferior and slaves utterly base. The second requisite is to make the character appropriate. Thus it is possible to portray any character as manly, but inappropriate for a female character to be manly or formidable in the way I mean. Third is to make the characters lifelike, which is something different from making them good and appropri­ ate, as described above. Fourth is to make them consistent. Even if the person being imitated is inconsistent and this is what the character is supposed to be, he should nevertheless be portrayed as consistently inconsistent. There is an example of unnecessary baseness in the character of Menelaus in Orestes,6 of the unsuitable and inappropriate in the lamentation of Odysseus 3. A lost play by Sophocles in which Telegonus, the son o f Odysseus and C irce, fatally wounds his father without knowing his victim ’s identity. Astydamas (active ca. 3 9 0 b . c . e .), a prolific Athenian tragedian; A lcm eon (and all but a few lines o f his works) is lost. 4. By Sophocles (ca. 441 b . c . e .). Haemon, who loves Antigone, tries to kill his father (Creon,

king o f Thebes), who is responsible for her sui­ cide. 5. Nothing more is known of this play. The C hresphontes (now lost) and Iphigenia in Tauris are both by Euripides. 6. In Euripides’ play Orestes (408 b . c . e .), M ene­ laus basely refuses to help his nephew.

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in Scylla and in the declamation of Melanippe;7 and of inconsistency in Iphigeneia in Aulis,8 where the Iphigeneia who begs to be spared bears no resemblance to the Iphigeneia who appears thereafter. In the characters and the plot construction alike, one must strive for that which is either necessary or probable, so that whatever a character of any kind says or does may be the sort of thing such a character will inevitably or probably say or do and the events of the plot may follow one after another either inevitably or with probability. (Obviously, then, the denouement of the plot should arise from the plot itself and not be brought about “from the machine,” [1454b] as it is in M edea and in the embarkation scene in the Iliad.9 The machine is to be used for matters lying outside the drama, either antecedents of the action which a human being cannot know, or things subsequent to the action that have to be prophesied and announced; for we accept it that the gods see everything. Within the events of the plot itself, however, there should be nothing unreasonable, or if there is, it should be kept outside the play proper, as is done in the Oedipus of Sophocles.) Inasmuch as tragedy is an imitation of persons who are better than the average, the example of good portrait painters should be followed. These, while reproducing the distinctive appearance of their subjects in a recog­ nizable likeness, make them handsomer in the picture than they are in real­ ity. Similarly, the poet when he comes to imitate men who are irascible or easygoing or have other defects of character should depict them as such and yet as good men at the same time. An example involving harshness is the way Agathon and Homer portray Achilles .1 These, then, are matters to be carefully observed, as also are matters appertaining to the sense perceptions that the poet’s art necessarily entails, for in respect to these, too, it is often possible to miss the mark. A sufficient account of them has been given in my published discourse .2 [16] What Recognition is in general has already been explained. To turn now to its several species, first ( 1 ) there is the form that is least artistic and, from poverty of invention, the one they use most— that is, recognition by marks or tokens. Such marks are sometimes congenital, as “the lance the earth-born bear,” or the “stars” in Carcinus’3 Thyestes, and sometimes acquired, either something on the person, like a scar, or external tokens such as necklaces or the boat in Tyro.4 Even these, however, can be used in better or worse ways. Thus Odysseus is recognized by means of his scar in one way by the nurse and in another way by the swineherds.5 The recognitions by the herdsmen, and 7. In M elanippe the Wise, a lost play by Euripides, the heroine apparently argues with a philosophi­ cal sophistication inappropriate for a woman. Scylla: a lost dithyramb by Tim otheus, in which Odysseus weeps in an unmanly way for his crew members killed by the monster Scylla. 8. A play by Euripides set at Aulis (ca. 405 b . c . e .), depicting Iphigenia about to be sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, so that the Greeks may have fair winds as they sail to Troy; according to one version of the myth, she was saved by Artemis and transported far away to Tauris, where she becomes high priestess (and where Orestes later arrives). 9. In Iliad 8 .1 5 5 -8 1 , only the arbitrary interven­ tion of the goddess Athena prevents the Greeks from giving up the fight at Troy and going home. In M edea, after killing her children Medea flies off in the chariot of the sun god Helios, her grandfather; this is the “god from the (theatrical)

m achine” (in Latin, the deus ex machina), an unexpected event that resolves the plot. 1. T he greatest warrior among the Greeks and the central character o f the Iliad. 2. Presumably referring to the dialogue On Poets, esp. fragments 4 —7. 3. Prolific Greek tragic poet (early 4th c. b .c . e .). T he preceding quotation may be from Euripides’ lost Antigone. 4. A lost play by Sophocles; Tyro’s sons are aban­ doned in a small boat that leads to their later recognition. 5. Odysseus is recognized artfully (because inev­ itably) by his nurse when she notices his scar in the “bath scen e” (Odyssey 19.386—475); but his declaration of his identity to the swineherds, when he shows them the scar as proof (2 1 .2 0 5 25), is manufactured by the poet.

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all such recognitions as use tokens as proofs of identity, are artistically worse, while those that occur spontaneously like the one in the Bath Scene are better. Second (2) are recognitions obviously managed by the poet and inartistic for that reason. An instance is the way Orestes in Iphigeneia gets himself recognized as Orestes: Iphigeneia is spontaneously recognized through the letter, but Orestes speaks for himself in terms imposed by the poet and not by the plot. The fault here is close to the one just mentioned, since he might just as well have had a few marks or tokens on him. Another example is the “voice of the shuttle” in Sophocles’ Tereus.6 A third type of recognition (3) is that which comes about through memory— i.e., a person’s reaction upon seeing something. [1455a] Thus in Dicaeogenes’ Cyprians, the hero bursts into tears upon seeing the picture, and in the Alcinous7 episode Odysseus, when he hears the minstrel, is reminded of the past and weeps, therewith in both cases they are recognized. Fourth (4) is recogni­ tion through reasoning. This is exemplified in the C h oep h o ri:8 “Someone resembling me has come; no one but Orestes resembles me; therefore Orestes has come.” Another example is the recognition suggested for Ip h i­ g en eia by Polyidus the Sophist.9 It would be natural, he said, for Orestes to reflect that his sister had been sacrificed and here he was himself about to be sacrificed in turn. Again, in the Tydeus of Theodectes, the father says that he had come in search of his son only to meet with death himself. In the P hin idae,] the women upon seeing the place drew this conclusion about their fate: that here they were doomed to die, since this was the place where they had been exposed in infancy. There is also (5) a composite kind of recognition resulting from faulty inference by one party or the other. For instance, in Odysseus the False Messenger,2 the point that Odysseus and no one else can string the bow3 is something set up by the poet and is the basic premise, [and it remains so] even if the messenger did say that he would know the bow which he had not seen; but having him gain recognition by this second means [i.e., by identifying the bow] on the assumption that he was going to be recognized by the first means [stringing the bow] is a fal­ lacy. Of all the forms of recognition, however, the best is that which springs from the events themselves, the shock of surprise having thus a probable basis. Such are the recognitions in the Oedipus of Sophocles and in Iphige­ neia: it is probable that Iphigeneia should wish to send a letter. Only recog­ nitions of this kind escape the artificiality of tokens and necklaces. Next best are recognitions that result from reasoning. [17] The poet, as he constructs his plots and is working them out com­ plete with language, should as far as possible place the action before his eyes; for in this way, seeing the events with the utmost vividness, as if they were taking place in his very presence, he will discern what is appropriate and will be least likely to overlook discrepancies. Witness to this point is the mistake that brought censure upon Carcinus. Amphiaraus came back 6. A lost play. Philomela tells her sister the story o f her rape by Tereus— her brother-in-law, who has torn out her tongue to silence her— by weav­ ing a picture of it. 7. King of the Phaeacians and Odysseus’s host in Iliad 7 -1 2 (for the telltale weeping, see 8 .5 2 1 34). Dicaeogenes (late 5th c. b . c . e .), a minor Greek tragedian.

8. Aeschylus’s C h oep h o ri , or Libation Bearers (458 b . c . e .) , lines 168—234. 9. Polyidus (early 4th c. b . c . e .), perhaps the poet and critic Polyidus o f Selymbria. 1. Lost, as is Tydeus. 2. A lost play by an unknown author. 3. For Odysseus’s bow, see Odyssey 21.

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from the sanctuary .4 This was not noticed if one did not visualize the action, but on the stage the play collapsed when the audience would not tolerate the oversight. Also the poet should as far as possible work out the play with the appropriate dramatic gestures, for among poets of equal abil­ ity, those who themselves are in the emotional states they depict are the most convincing; that is, one who is in the throes of distress conveys dis­ tress and one who is in a rage conveys anger most truthfully and accurately. For this reason, poetry is the art of a man of genius or of one having a touch of madness— the first sort are versatile, the second excitable. Whether one is using a traditional story or an invented story and compos­ ing it oneself, [1455b] one should first set it down in a general outline, and only then proceed to expand it by fashioning the episodes. What I mean by taking this general view of the whole may be illustrated from Iphigen eia, thus: A certain young girl who had been offered in sacrifice vanished mys­ teriously from the sight of the sacrificers, and having been set down in another country where it was the custom to sacrifice foreigners to the goddess, became the priestess of this rite. Some time later it happened that the priestess’s brother arrived. (The fact that he went there because the oracle for a certain reason commanded it, and what he went for, are matters external to the plot.) Upon his arrival, he was seized and was on the point of being sacrificed when he revealed who he was (either in Euripides’ way of managing it, or in that of Polyidus with the quite natural remark that evidently not only his sister but he also had to be sacrificed); and thereby his life was saved. This done, it is now time to put in the characters’ names and to fashion the episodes, taking care to see that the episodes are appropriate, as are, for example, in Orestes the fit of madness that leads to Orestes’ capture and the ritual cleansing that leads to the escape. Note that in drama the epi­ sodes are short, whereas in epic poetry episodes are used to give the poem length. Thus the argument of the Odyssey is not long: A certain man has been absent from home for many years; he is kept under hostile surveillance by Poseidon;5 and he is alone. Besides, the situation at home is that suitors are dissipating his property and plotting against his son. But after suffering from storms at sea, the man returns, reveals himself to certain persons, and attacking his enemies comes off safe himself and destroys them. This is the essential story; and all the rest consists of episodes. [18] In every tragedy there is first the Complication and then the Denoue­ ment. The complication comprises the events outside the play itself and often also some of the events within the play, and the remainder is the denouement. I mean that the complication extends from the beginning up to the last moment before the change to good or bad fortune occurs, and that the denouement begins with that change and extends to the end of the 4. In a lost play; Amphiaraus, a ruler in Argos, was a seer and was one of the Seven against T hehes, who unsuccessfully sought to help one of Oedipus’s sons take the rule of T hebes from the

other. 5. Greek god of the sea and the father o f the Cyclops, whom Odysseus blinded and mocked.

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play. For example, in the Lynceus of Theodectes, the complication includes the antecedent events and, within the play, the seizure of the child and that in turn of [the parents]; the denouement extends from the indictment for murder to the end. There are four types of tragedy, corresponding in number to the “parts” already mentioned. There is complex tragedy, the whole of which consists of reversal and recognition; tragedy of passion— for example, the various plays entitled Ajax or [1456a] Ixion;6 tragedy of character, such as the W omen o f Phthia and Peleus;' and fourth * ** , such as the Daughters o f Phorcys and Prometheus 8 and all plays the scene of which is in Hades. One should by all means endeavor to have all these types at his command, or at least most of them and the most important— especially in view of the way they harass the poets nowadays; good poets having existed in each case in the past, they now expect the single poet to surpass each one of these in his point of excellence. The right way to compare tragedy with tragedy is to consider no feature so much as the plot— that is, in plays having the same complication and denouement. Many poets do well with the complication, only to fail with the denouement, but the one capacity should be brought into line with the other. One must bear in mind also what has been said repeatedly, and not con­ struct a tragedy on the plan of an epic poem (by epic I mean, having a mul­ tiplicity of stories)— as if, for example, someone were to dramatize the story of the Iliad in its entirety. In the epic, thanks to the length of the poem, the parts all assume their due proportions, but in plays the result of such a mul­ tiplicity is far from what was expected. One has only to note that those who have dramatized the Sack o f Troy entire, instead of taking one part at a time as Euripides did, or the whole Niobe story9 instead of doing as Aeschy­ lus did, invariably either have their plays hissed off or make but a poor showing in the competition. In fact, the one occasion when even Agathon was driven from the stage was when he did this. It is remarkable how both in peripeties [i.e., complex plots] and in simple plots the poets keep their aim fixed on the effects they wish to produce— the tragic effect, that is, and the effect of human sympathy. The latter is our feeling when a clever but villainous man is outwitted, Sisyphus1 for example, or when a brave but unjust man is defeated. This even has a kind

6. No play of this name survives. In Greek mythol­ ogy, Ixion was the first to murder kin and attempted to rape Hera, queen of the gods; as punishment for the second crim e, he is chained forever to a wheel in Hades, the underworld. Ajax: Sophocles’ play (ca. 445 b . c . e .) tells the story of the Greek warrior who, after being driven mad by Athena, commits suicide out of shame. 7. Both lost works revolve around the family of A chilles, who was the son of Peleus and cam e from Phthia. W omen o f Phthia is by Sophocles; both Sophocles and Euripides wrote plays titled

Peleus. 8. Perhaps Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, whose hero speaks w hile bound to the rocks in the Cau­ casus. Daughters o f Phorcys: perhaps by Aeschy­ lus. Phorcys was a sea god, and his daughters

were monsters: the 3 G raeae, old women who shared one tooth and one eye, and the 3 serpent­ haired Gorgons, the sight of whom turned humans to stone. 9. There are no known epics concerning Niobe; Aeschylus’s N iobe is lost. S ack o f Troy: a poem in the epic cycle, by Lesches of M ytiline (ca. 7th c. b . c . e .) or Arctinus of Miletus (ca. 8th c. b . c . e .). Euripides treated some of the same events in his Trojan Women and Hecuba. 1. A sly trickster who murdered travelers and once even chained the god of death, he is punished eternally for betraying Zeus’s secrets; he tries to roll a stone over the top of a steep hill, but always fails and must try again from the bottom. Aeschy­ lus, Sophocles, and Euripides all wrote plays on Sisyphus.

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of probability, if only in the sense of Agathon s comment,2 for it is probable that many improbable things will happen. The chorus ought to be regarded as one of the actors, and as being part of the whole and integrated into performance, not in Euripides’ way but in that of Sophocles. In the other poets, the choral songs have no more relevance to the plot than if they belonged to some other play. And so nowadays, following the practice introduced by Agathon, the chorus merely sings interludes. But what difference is there between the singing of interludes and taking a speech or even an entire episode from one play and inserting it into another? [19] Now that the other elements have been discussed, it remains to speak of Language and Thought. As for Thought, this subject may best find its place in my discussion of rhetoric,3 since it belongs more properly to that field of study. Under Thought come all the effects that are to be obtained through speech, and these fall under the heads of proving and refuting, stirring up emotions [1456b] (pity, fear, anger, and the rest), and enlarging or belittling the importance of things. Obviously, in their actions as well as in their utter­ ances, the personages will employ Thought in these same categories whenever they have to inspire pity or terror or convey a sense of importance or plausibil­ ity simply by what they do; the only difference being that the acts must make their impression immediately without verbal explanation, while the effects of the speech must be procured by the speaker and be the result of what he says, for if the intended impression were to be made independently of the speech and not by means of it, what need would there be for the speaker? To come to Language, one technical study relating to it concerns the Forms of Expression, knowledge of which properly belongs to the art of Elocution and to the specialist in that sort of thing—what is a command, what is a prayer, a statement, a question, an answer, and the like. A poet s knowledge or ignorance of these matters is not a point on which criticism of any conse­ quence is directed against his art. For what error would anyone suppose there to be in the words “Sing, goddess, the wrath,” which Protagoras,4 however, criticizes on the grounds that Homer thinks he is uttering a prayer when he is really giving an order. According to Protagoras, to bid someone do or not do something is a command. Let us, therefore, leave this technicality aside as belonging to some other art and not to the art of poetry. [20] Language, taken as a whole, is divisible into the following parts: the single letter, the syllable, the connective particle, the article[?], the noun, the verb, the inflection, the unified uterance. A letter is an indivisible sound— not every such sound, however, but one capable of uniting with others in a complex sound; the lower animals utter indivisible sounds, but not what I call a letter. These primary sounds are divided into vowels, semivowels, and mutes. A vowel is a letter having audi­ ble sound without the application [of the tongue or lips]; a semivowel is one having audible sound with such application— e.g., S and R; a mute— e.g., G and D— is one which, though made by application [of these organs], has no

2. Agathon’s com m ent occurred in a play, and is quoted in its original form in A ristotle’s O n R h e­ toric 1402a: “Perhaps someone may say that this is probable, that many things may befall mortals that are not probable” [translator’s note]. 3. For A ristotle’s discussion o f types of argu­

ment, see On R hetoric 1356 a -1 3 5 8 a (see below). 4. Pre-Socratic philosopher (5th c. b . c . e .), who was one of the most successful of the sophists, or itinerant teachers. “Sing . . the first words of the Iliad.

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sound by itself but becomes audible when combined with letters having a sound. The letters owe their variety to their being produced by different conformations of the mouth or the different parts of it, to their being aspi­ rated or not aspirated, to their being long or short, and, finally, to their being uttered with acute, grave, or intermediate tones. Detailed study of these matters belongs to the subject of metrics. A syllable is a nonsignificant sound composed of a mute and a letter hav­ ing sound [vowel or semivowel]; for GR without A is a syllable as well as GRA. But differences of syllables is also a subject for metrics. The Connective Particle is (a) a nonsignificant sound— e.g. m en , etoi, d e — which neither prevents [1457a] nor causes formation of one significant sound [expression] out of two or more others, and which cannot correctly stand by itself at the beginning of a phrase; or (b) it is a nonsignificant sound, such as am phi, p eri,5 etc., which functions to make one significant sound [expression] out of two or more significant sounds. An Article[?] is a nonsignificant sound which marks the beginning or end or a division [of an expression]. A Noun is a composite significant sound, not indicating time, no part of the composite being by itself significant; for even when a noun is composed of two others we do not treat these as separately significant; e.g., in the name Theodore -dore [“gift”] is not significant. A Verb is a composite significant sound, indicating time, no part of the composite being by itself significant, just as in nouns. Thus “men” or “white” gives no indication of “when,” but “walks” and “has walked” add to their meaning the indication respectively of present and past time. Inflection applies to nouns or verbs, as when the meaning is “of” or “to” something, and so forth; or when the reference is to one or more than one, as “man” and “men”; or again it may be a mode of utterance, for example, a question or a command: “walked?” and “Walk!” being inflections of the verb in these two forms of utterance. A unified utterance is a composite significant sound, some parts of which have independent meaning. Not every such utterance is a combination of nouns and verbs; it can exist without verbs, as, for example, the definition of man. However, it will always include a member having independent meaning, as “Cleon” in “Cleon walks.” The unified utterance is a unit in either of two ways, either because what it signifies is itself a unit or because it is a combination of several parts. Thus the Iliad is unified by combina­ tion, the definition of man by signifying one thing. [21] Words are of two kinds, simple words— those likege (earth) that are not compounds of significant parts— and double words. The latter are com­ pounds consisting either of a significant and a nonsignificant part (though in the compound these are not recognized as significant or nonsignificant), or of two parts both of which have meaning. There may also be triple and qua­ druple words and indeed multiple words, as, for example, most of the names of the people of Marseilles [? in a mock heroic poem]— Hermocaicoxanthus.6 [1457b]

5. Around, about; in Greek, these are both prepositions and prefixes. 6. A com ical name compounded from the names

o f three rivers (Hermus, C aicus, and Xanthus) in w estern Asia M inor, where the founders o f M arseilles (then called M assalia) originated.

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Every word is either ( 1 ) the ordinary current word, or (2 ) a foreign word, or (3) a metaphor, or (4) an ornamental word, or (5) a coined word, or a word (6) lengthened or (7) curtailed or (8 ) otherwise altered in form. By “current word” I mean a word used by everyone [in any particular region], and by “foreign word” a word used by others elsewhere. Obviously, the same word may be both current and foreign, but not for the same people; sigynon (lance) is a current word in Cyprus but a foreign word for us/ Metaphor is the application to one thing of the name belonging to another. We may apply (a) the name of a genus to one of its species, or (b) the name of a species to its genus, or (c) the name of one species to another of the same genus, or (d) the transfer may be based on a proportion. Examples: (a) From genus to species: “Here stands my ship,” since to be at an ch or is a special form of standing still. (b) From species to genus: “Truly ten thousand noble deeds hath Odys­ seus done,” for ten thousand is a large number and is here used in place of the generic many. (c) From species to species: “drawing off the life with bronze” and “cutting off [streams of water?] with unwearied bronze [vessels?],” where “drawing off” is put for “cutting off” and “cutting off” for “drawing off,” both expres­ sions being species of the genus “take away.” (d) The meaning of metaphor by analogy [or proportional metaphor] is that when among four things the second is related to the first as the fourth is related to the third, one may substitute the fourth for the second or the second for the fourth. And sometimes the term related to the proper term in the analogy is added to the metaphor, thus: The wine cup is to Dionysus as the shield is to Ares,8 and therefore one may call a wine cup “the shield of Dionysus” and the shield “the wine cup of Ares.” Again, old age is to life what evening is to day; and one may speak of evening as “the old age of the day” (either thus or as Empedocles puts it) and of old age as “the evening of life” or “the sunset of life.” In some cases there are terms of the proportion for which actually we have no word but which nevertheless will find expres­ sion in metaphor. Thus to cast seed is to sow, but there is no special word for the casting of its rays by the sun; this, however, is to sunlight what sow­ ing is to seed, and hence the expression: “sowing a god-created flame.” There is still another way in which this type of metaphor may be used. Having called one thing by the name of another, we can deny it some special attri­ bute of this thing— as one might call a shield not the wine cup “of Ares,” but the “wineless” wine cup. A coined word is a word not used at all by any group of speakers but sim­ ply invented by the poet; for apparently there are some words of this kind, as ernygas (“sprouters”?) for kerata (“horns”) and areter (“supplicator”) for hiereus (“priest”). An Expanded [1458a] Word is one in which a vowel that is usually short is treated as long, or one in which an extra syllable has been inserted. A Cur­ tailed Word is one from which some part has been taken away. Examples of expanded words: poleos for poleos, Peleiadeo for Peleidou; of curtailed words: kri (for krithe), do (for doma), and ops (for opsis) in m ia ginetai am photeron 7. That is, though speaking Greek, those on the island of Cyprus speak a different dialect.

8. Greek god of war.

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ops.9 A word is Altered when part of the usual form is kept and part is refashioned. Example, dexiteron kata m azon for d ex ion .] Nouns themselves are masculine or feminine, or else intermediate between these .2 Masculine [and not feminine] are all that end in nu, rho, or sigma or compounds of sigma (i.e., psi and ksi); feminine are those ending in vowels that are always long (i.e., eta and omega) or in alpha among vowels that may be long or short. Thus the masculine and feminine terminations are equal in number, the compounds psi and ksi counting as sigma. No noun ends in a mute or in an invariably short vowel [epsilon or omicron]; only three end in iota, namely melt (honey), kommi (gum), and peperi (pepper); and five end in upsilon: . The inter­ mediates end in these vowels and in nu and sigma. [22] Of Diction the prime virtue is to be clear without being commonplace. Diction is at its clearest when composed of words in everyday use, but then it is commonplace, as is exemplified by the poetry of Cleophon and Sthenelus.3 On the other hand, an impressive diction, one that escapes the ordinary, results from the use of strange words, by which I mean foreign words, meta­ phors, expanded words, and whatever departs from normal usage. However, anything composed entirely in such language will either be a riddle or a bar­ barism— a riddle if composed in metaphors, a barbarism if in foreign words alone. In fact, the very idea of a riddle is to describe a given object by means of a string of absurdities, a thing that cannot of course be done by any combi­ nation of the proper terms, but can be done if you combine the corresponding metaphors, as in “I saw a man welding bronze on another man with fire / ’4 and similar riddles. In like manner, a combination of foreign words produces a barbarism. What is needed, therefore, is a blend, so to speak, of these ingredients, since the unfamiliar element (the foreign word, the metaphor, the ornamen­ tal word, and the other types mentioned) will save the diction from being commonplace and drab, while the colloquial element will ensure its clarity. [1458b] By no means least important in what they contribute at once to clarity and to unfamiliarity are the expanded, curtailed, and altered forms of words. These will provide the element of unfamiliarity insofar as deviation from the normal forms makes them unusual, while the fact that they are in part ordi­ nary words will ensure clarity. Unwarranted, therefore, are the objections of those who censure this kind of expression and hold the poet up to ridicule for using it, as for instance the elder Eucleides5 does. Making poetry is easy, he says, if they let you stretch out the words as much as you please, and therewith he produces some burlesque lines in the style in question. Epicharen eidon Marathonade badizonta, and

9. One vision (ops, “face,” “eye”) comes into being from two [eyes] (quoted from a fragment of Emped­ ocles). The expanded words mean “of the city,” “son of Peleus”; the curtailed words mean "barley,” “mansion,” and “seeing.” 1. The Greek literally means “in the righter [instead o f ‘right’] breast” (Iliad 5.393). 2. Some editors condemn this paragraph (which contains much that is inaccurate) as spurious.

3. Probably a tragic poet whose poor style is ridi­ culed by A ristophanes. 4. In On R hetoric 1405b, A ristotle uses the same example and explains that it refers to the process of cupping. 5. Identity unknown, although both an Athenian magistrate and a Megaran philosopher of that name were active ca. 4 0 0 b . c . e .

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Ouk an g’eramenos [?] ton ekeinou elleboron .6 Agreed that too obvious a use of lengthened words becomes ridiculous, but moderation has its place in all the stylistic devices, and Eucleides might have achieved the same effect with metaphors, foreign words, and the rest, if he had treated them abusively with the express purpose of raising a laugh. Try substituting the normal words in a verse of epic poetry, and you will realize what a difference the lengthened forms make when handled properly. The same with foreign words, metaphors, and the other forms, anyone who replaced them with the regular words would see that what I say is right. To illustrate: The same iambic line is found both in Aeschylus and in Euripides, but Euripides has altered just one word, putting a strange word in place of a common everyday one, and as a result his line seems fine and the other poor in comparison. Aeschylus in his Philoctetes has it thus: phagedaina he mou sarkas esthiei podos7 and what Euripides did was to change iaOiei (“eats”) to Qoivami (“feasts on”). Again, in the line, nun de m’eon oligos te kai outidanos kai aeikes8 suppose one were to substitute the ordinary words and say: nun de meon mikros te kai asthenikos kai aeikes9 and similarly in diphron aeikelion katatheis oligen te trapezan Say: diphron mochtherou katatheis mikran te trapezan.1 And suppose eiones bodsin (“the sea beaches bellow”) to be replaced by eiones krazousin (“the sea beaches cry out”). Also, Ariphrades2 made fun of the tragic poets for using locutions that no one would employ in ordinary speech, such as dom aton apo (“from the houses away”) instead of apo dom aton (“away from the houses”) and sethen (“of thine”) and ego de nin [where nin is an archaic third-person pronoun] [1459a] and Achilleos peri (“Achilles about”) for peri Achilleos (“about Achilles”), and so on. But all such expressions, just because they are not in the current vocabulary, give distinction to the poet s language; and that is what Ariphrades failed to understand. To give appropriate treatment to the kinds of words here discussed, including compounds and foreign words, is in every case important, but 6. The first line translates as “I saw Epichares walk­ ing to M arathon” and the second, only fragmen­ tary, “would not, in love(?). . . that man’s hellebore.” The two phrases are unrelated; both contain words with arbitrarily lengthened syllables. Epi­ chares: a common name in Athens. M arathon: a large Attic city on the northeast coast. “Helle­ bore”: an herb thought to be a cure for madness. 7. “The gnawing ulcer that eats the flesh of my foot,” from a lost play by Euripides. The Philoctetes of Sophocles but not Euripides survives, in which Philoctetes, an outstanding archer who used the

bow and arrows of Heracles, sailed with Greeks for Troy but was left behind on an island because a wound on his foot, caused by snakebite, pro­ duced a horrible smell. 8. “But now a paltry man, a weakling, in aspect ill-favored (has blinded me)” (Odyssey 9.515). 9. “But now a little man, a man who is weak and unpleasing.” 1. “A wretched stool and a little table”; the first line, “Having placed (for him) an unseemly stool and a paltry table,” is from Odyssey 2 0.259. 2. An unknown com ic poet.

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most important by far is to have an aptitude for metaphor. This alone can­ not be had from another but is a sign of natural endowment; since being good at making metaphors is equivalent to being perceptive of resem­ blances. And among these verbal forms, compounds are best fitted for dith­ yrambs, foreign words for heroic verse,3 and metaphors for iambic verse. In heroic verse all the forms may be used; but in iambic verse, where the aim is to imitate the spoken language as closely as possible, only those forms are appropriate which would also be used in prose— that is, the current word, the metaphor, and the ornamental word. Let us regard the foregoing as a sufficient account of tragedy and of imi­ tation in the mode of direct action. [23] But as for the imitative art that is narrative [in manner] and employs metrical language [as its medium],4 it is evident that, just as in tragedies, its plots should be dramatic in structure— that is, should involve a single action, whole and complete in itself, having a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that like one whole living creature it may produce its appropriate pleasure—and that its structure should not resemble histories, which necessarily present not a single action but a single period of time with all that happened therein to one or more persons, no matter how little relation one event may have had with another. (Thus though occurring at the same time, the naval battle at Salamis and the battle with the Carthaginians in Sicily did not converge to a common end,5 and similarly in a time sequence there are cases in which one event follows another without uniting in a single issue.) Yet perhaps the major­ ity of the poets do precisely that. Hence on this point also, Homer, as we have said of him before, might seem divine compared with the others, in that, though the war had indeed a beginning and an end, even so he did not attempt to make the whole of it the subject of his poem, since he realized that if he did so, the narrative was going to be too vast to be easily embraced in one view, or if he limited its extent, the variety of incidents would make it too complicated. As it is, he has selected one part of the war as his theme and used many of the other parts as episodes, the Catalogue of Ships,6 for example, and the other episodes with which he spaces out his poem. The others make their poems about one man, or about one period of time, or else about one action that has many parts, as is done by the authors of the [1459b] Cypria and the Little Iliad J And so, while the Iliad and the Odyssey each furnish the subject for but a single tragedy, or at most for two, the Cypria has furnished themes for many tragedies and the Little Iliad themes for more than eight— an Award o f the Arms, a Philoctetes, a Neoptolemus, a Eurypylus, a Beggary, a Laconian W omen, a Sack o f Troy, a Sailing o f the Fleet, a Sinon, and a Trojan W om en 8 [24] Likewise, epic poetry should include the same types as tragedy— the simple, the complex, the poem of character, and the poem of passion; and should have the same essential elements, except music and spectacle, since an epic poem needs reversals and recognitions and sufferings, and ought 3. That is, verses in the meter o f epic (dactylic hexameter). 4. A ristotle turns here from drama to epic. 5. According to Herodotus (7.166.1), the victory o f the Greek fleet over the Persians at Salam is and the victory of the Sicilian Greeks led by Gelon over the C arthaginians occurred on the same day in 4 8 0 b . c . e .

6. Iliad 2 .4 8 4 -7 5 9 . 7. Poems in the epic cycle, o f unknown author­ ship: the Cypria related the origins of the Trojan W ar; the L ittle Iliad, events after the end o f the

Iliad. 8. Only Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Euripides’ Tro­ ja n Women are extant; some editors doubt that Aristotle is responsible for all the titles in this list.

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also to have a good quality of thought and language. All these things Homer was the first to use, and he used them fully; for his two poems are comple­ mentary in structure, the Iliad being simple in plot and a poem of passion, and the Odyssey complex (it has recognitions throughout) and a poem of character; moreover they surpass all other poems in excellence of language and thought. However, epic poetry differs from tragedy in the length of the composition and in meter. As to length, the formulation we have already made is valid— that it should be possible to embrace the beginning and the end in one view. Such would be the case if the poems were shorter than the old epic poems and approached the length of the group of tragedies presented at a single hearing. Yet relative to its extension in magnitude, epic poetry has a very distinct advantage in that in tragedy it is not possible to represent various parts [of the story] as being enacted simultaneously, but only the one that the players have in hand on the stage, whereas in epic the narrative form makes it possible to describe many parts as completed within the same time, and through these, if they are appropriate, the bulk of the poem is enlarged. This, accordingly, is an advantage that epic poetry has, making for grandeur and the diversion of the hearer through the introduction of episodes of dissimilar character; for uni­ formity soon palls and is a reason for failure in the case of tragedies. As for the meter, the heroic [hexameter] proved, as the result of trial, to be the fitting one. Indeed, it would seem out of keeping if anyone were to com­ pose a narrative imitation in some other meter or in a combination of meters, since in comparison with the other verse forms the heroic [hexameter] is the most deliberate and weighty. (These qualities make it especially receptive of foreign words and metaphors— for in this respect narrative imitation goes beyond the other kinds.) The iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter, [1460a] on the other hand, are verses of movement, the latter being proper to the dance and the former to [dramatic] action. To combine these meters, as Chaeremon does, would be still more out of place in epic. No one, therefore, has ever composed a long poem in any other meter than the heroic; but nature herself, as we have said, teaches us to choose the meter appropriate to it. In addition to the many other reasons why Homer deserves admiration, there is this in particular, that he alone among the epic poets has not failed to understand the part the poet himself should take in his poem. The poet should, in fact, speak as little as possible in his own person, since in what he himself says he is not an imitator. Now the other poets are themselves on the scene throughout their poems, and their moments of imitation are few and far between, but Homer, after a few introductory words, at once brings on a man or a woman or some other personage, and not one of them characterless but each with a character of his own. The marvelous is an element that should of course be embodied in trag­ edies, but that which is a prime source of the marvelous— namely, the irrational— can be more freely introduced in epic poetry where we do not have the performer of the act directly before our eyes; for the Pursuit of Hector9 would seem ridiculous if it took place on the stage— the army just standing by and taking no part in the chase and Achilles shaking his head 9. Iliad 2 2 .1 3 1 -2 0 7 ; Hector, eldest son of the king of Troy and the greatest Trojan warrior, initially flees Achilles.

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at them— hut in the poem the absurdity goes unnoticed. And the marvelous is enjoyable; note how everyone in reporting a piece of news adds his own embellishments with the idea of pleasing the listener. It is Homer especially who has taught the other poets how to tell lies as they should be told. This is done by the use of paralogism. That is, when the existence of one thing entails the existence of a second thing, or one occur­ rence entails a second occurrence, people assume that if this second thing exists, the antecedent also exists or occurs; but this is not so. If, then, the antecedent is a lie, but there is something else that would necessarily exist or happen if it were the truth, one should add this thing to the lie, for know­ ing this second thing to be true, our mind wrongly infers that the anteced­ ent is true also. The Bath Scene provides an example.1 What is impossible yet probable should be preferred to that which is possi­ ble but incredible; plots should never be constructed out of irrational parts. Best that there should not be anything irrational in them at all, but if there is, let it be outside the story told, as, in Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipuss not know­ ing how Laius died, and not something in the play, as their reporting of the Pythian Games in Electra or in the Mysians2 the mans having come all the way from Tegea to Mysia without uttering a word. To argue that without the part in question the plot would be ruined is ridiculous; no such plots should be constructed in the first place. If, however, such a part has been included, and is made to appear relatively plausible, it may be accepted in spite of its absurdity; since, even in the Odyssey, the irrational features of the Landing Scene 3 would in themselves not have been tolerable, [1460b] as would be apparent if a bad poet were to handle them, but as it is, with the aid of the other good features, the poet obliterates these and mitigates the absurdity. The place for elaborate diction is in the less vital passages— that is, pas­ sages not intended to reveal either character or thought; for, the other way round, where character and thought are to be revealed, too brilliant a dic­ tion will obscure them. [25] Critical problems and their solutions fall into different classes, the number and nature of which will be made clear by the considerations that follow. Since the poet is an imitator, exactly like a painter or any other maker of images, he must necessarily in every case be imitating one of three objects: things as they once were or now are; or things as people say or suppose they were or are; or things as they ought to be. The language in which these things are narrated will include foreign words and metaphors and various abnor­ malities of diction, for this is a license we grant to the poets. And further, correctness in politics is not the same thing as correctness in poetry, nor is correctness in any other art the same as in poetry, but in poetry itself error is of two kinds, that which involves the art itself and that which is incidental. Thus the art itself is involved if one has decided to imitate [a certain object 1. That is, Penelope’s false inference, from the disguised Odysseus’s accurate description of some clothing, that his tale o f being a Cretan who met her husband Odysseus is true (Odyssey 19.165-250). 2. A play of Aeschylus or Sophocles; Tegea in the Peloponnese is distant from Mysia in northwest Asia Minor. E lectra : Sophocles’ tragedy (ca. 414

b . c . e .) contains a false account (lines 6 8 0 —763) o f O restes’ death in a chariot crash in the Pythian Gam es, which were founded centuries after the events of the play. 3. Odyssey 13.116-25. After the Phaeacians rowed the sleeping Odysseus home to Ithaca w'ith magi­ cal speed, he remained asleep as they lifted him out of the ship when it landed.

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and fails to represent it correctly through] incompetence; but it is a nones­ sential error if one decides by mistake to represent a horse with both right legs thrown forward, or if the fault involves a particular art, medicine, for example, or any other art whatsoever. So then, it is in the light of the forego­ ing postulates that one should examine the criticisms that fall within the general problems, and find the answers to them. First, criticisms relating to the art itself: 1 . “The thing represented is impossible.” That is indeed a fault, but it is justified if doing so achieves the artistic purpose— this has already been stated: if doing so makes this or some other part of the poem more exciting. An example is the Pursuit of Hector. It is not justified, however, if the end could have been achieved equally well or better in strict conformity with the special art there relevant; for, if possible, no mistakes should be made at all. 2. Also we should inquire whether the mistake involves the art itself or is incidental. Thus, the error is less if the artist did not know that female deer have no horns than if he failed to draw a recognizable picture. 3. Again, if something is criticized as not being true to fact, the answer may be: Yes, but that is how it ought to be—just as Sophocles, too, said that he portrayed men as they ought to be, while Euripides portrayed them as they are. 4. But if the representation is neither true to fact nor an idealization, the solution may be that it accords with what men say. So with what [the poets] tell about the gods; this is perhaps neither the better way of speaking about them, nor the truth; it may be [as reprehensible; 1461a] as Xenophanes4 thought it was— still, it is what men say. 5. In other cases, perhaps not “better than mere fact” but “thus it once was” is the answer. So in the problem about the arms— “Their spears stood pointed upward, butts in the ground”5 that was the custom in those days— and still is the custom in Illyria. 6 . In dealing with the question whether that which has been said or done by someone is right or wrong, we must not only have regard to the moral quality, good or bad, of the act or utterance in and for itself, but must con­ sider who says or does it, to whom it is said or done, on what occasion, how, and from what motive— whether, for example, the purpose is to bring about a greater good or to avert a greater evil. In meeting other criticisms, one should pay attention to the use of lan­ guage. 7. The criticism may be met by applying the category “foreign word.” Thus in ovpfjaand the City, sees Austen’s novels as portraits of British society on the brink of change. Austen is beloved because she presented the passing values of rural English life rather than those of the new order, based in urban centers and industry, that was emerging. Said demonstrates that though Mansfield Park seems to be an isolated, domestic enclave, it depends on imperialism, which stretches across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. In the midst of the action, the head of the family, Lord Bertram, has to travel twice to Antigua to manage affairs on his plantation. His leaving is usually taken as a plot device: freedom from his watchful eye leads to his children’s social entanglements (set aright by the end, when Bertram returns). But Said argues that his leaving foregrounds the colonial situation essential to maintaining Mansfield Park. Much narrative theory, especially of modern literature, focuses on time and time-oriented themes like memory. Said instead calls us to pay attention to location

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and geography, so that we can see how a house in the countryside of England rested on the global interconnections of empire. Some critics have claimed that such a reading judges classic works of literature too harshly and anachronistically, foisting contemporary standards on past eras. Said is careful to head off this charge. He notes that representations such as Austens did not cause imperialism; rather, they record the role of imperialism in their society. Said also unequivocally calls Mansfield Park a great work, and he acknowledges the value of the humanistic tradition. In this, he is surprisingly allied with Arnold and his celebration of “the best that is known and thought.” However, Said does not mince words about the wrongs that imperialism sponsored, such as the slavery on which plantations like Lord Bertram’s relied. This is a more measured position than that of many other postcolonial writers or critics, c h i n u a a c h e b e , for example, points out the racism of Heart o f Darkness and then concludes that we should no longer teach or read the work. In Said’s view, we should continue to subject it to interpreta­ tion, understanding both its humanistic value and its participation in injustice and oppression. Said’s work has exerted considerable influence, especially in the development of postcolonial studies. Orientalism was immediately recognized as a critical classic, with an impact not only on literary studies but also on anthropology, history, interna­ tional studies, and the discipline known as Orientalism. Culture and Imperialism was also hailed as a major work, capping Said’s career and showing the reach of imperial­ ism through its erudite readings of a broad selection of literary and other cultural works. Said himself was praised as an exemplary intellectual, having crossed the boundary between the academic world and the pubjic sphere and speaking out on contemporary politics. His advocacy on behalf of a Palestinian state provoked attacks, sometimes vehement. Within the field of literary studies, various scholars criticized different aspects of his work: his residual humanism and belief in individual will, his liberal rather than radical views, his eschewal of professionalism for amateurism, his inattention to feminism, and his primary focus on the high Western literary tradition. However, most critics acknowledge his pivotal role in contemporary theory and his success in forging a path that crossed disciplinary boundaries and in combining political commitment and intellectual work. As demonstrated in Orientalism, he per­ sistently underscored the relation of literary study to the world, especially the relation of culture to the “brute reality” of imperialism. O rien talism Keywords: Cultural Studies, Institutional Studies, Philology, Post­ colonial Theory, Poststructuralism, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Representation C u lture a n d Im p eria lism Keywords: The Canon/Tradition, Globalization, Literary History, The Novel, Postcolonial Criticism, Representation

From Orientalism Introduction i

On a visit to Beirut during the terrible civil war of 1975—1976 a French jour­ nalist wrote regretfully of the gutted downtown area that “it had once seemed to belong to . . . the Orient of Chateaubriand and Nerval/’1 He was right 1. Thierry Desjardins, Le Martyre du Libati (Paris: Plon, 1976), p. 14 [Said’s note]. Fran^ois-Rene, vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768—1848), French writer and statesman. Gerard de Nerval (1808—

1855), French poet and journalist; he wrote an account of a journey to the Middle East, Le Voyage en Orient (1851).

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about the place, of course, especially so far as a European was concerned. The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remark­ able experiences. Now it was disappearing; in a sense it had happened, its time was over. Perhaps it seemed irrelevant that Orientals themselves had something at stake in the process, that even in the time of Chateaubriand and Nerval Orientals had lived there, and that now it was they who were suf­ fering; the main thing for the European visitor was a European representa­ tion of the Orient and its contemporary fate, both of which had a privileged communal significance for the journalist and his French readers. Americans will not feel quite the same about the Orient, which for them is much more likely to be associated very differently with the Far East (China and Japan, mainly). Unlike the Americans, the French and the British— less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Swiss— have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient s special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experi­ ence. Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. In contrast, the American under­ standing of the Orient will seem considerably less dense, although our recent Japanese, Korean, and Indochinese adventures2 ought now to be creating a more sober, more realistic “Oriental” awareness. Moreover, the vastly expanded American political and economic role in the Near East (the Middle East) makes great claims on our understanding of that Orient. It will be clear to the reader (and will become clearer still throughout the many pages that follow) that by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designa­ tion for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient— and this applies whether the person is an anthropol­ ogist, sociologist, historian, or philologist— either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. Compared with Oriental studies or area studies, it is true that the term Orientalism is less preferred by specialists today, both because it is too vague and general and because it connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenthcentury and early-twentieth-century European colonialism. Nevertheless books are written and congresses held with “the Orient” as their main focus, with the Orientalist in his new or old guise as their main authority. The point is that even if it does not survive as it once did, Orientalism lives on

2. T hat is, the Pacific T h eater o f World W ar II (1 9 4 1 -4 5 ), the Korean W ar (1 9 5 0 —53), and the Vietnam War (1964—75), respectively.

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academically through its doctrines and theses about the Orient and the Oriental. Related to this academic tradition, whose fortunes, transmigrations, spe­ cializations, and transmissions are in part the subject of this study, is a more general meaning for Orientalism. Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction3 made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.” Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinc­ tion between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Ori­ ent, its people, customs, “mind,” destiny, and so on. This Orientalism can accommodate Aeschylus, say, and Victor Hugo, Dante and Karl Marx.4 A lit­ tle later in this introduction I shall deal with the methodological problems one encounters in so broadly construed a “field” as this. The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of Orientalism is a constant one, and since the late eighteenth century there has been a considerable, quite disciplined— perhaps even regulated— traffic between the two. Here I come to the third meaning of Orientalism, which is something more historically and materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient— dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for domi­ nating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. I have found it useful here to employ Michel Foucault s notion of a discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology o f Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish,5 to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without examining Oriental­ ism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously system­ atic discipline by which European culture was able to manage— and even produce— the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scien­ tifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. Moreover, so authoritative a position did Orientalism have that I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism. In brief, because of Orientalism the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action. This is not to say that Orientalism unilaterally determines what can be said about the Orient, but that it is the whole network of interests inevita­ bly brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any occasion when that peculiar entity “the Orient” is in question. How this happens is what this book tries to demonstrate. It also tries to show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of sur­ rogate and even underground self. 3. That is, a difference in their essential being and how they are known. 4. Said names writers not generally viewed as treatin g the “O rie n ta l”: A eschylus (5 2 5 —45 6 b . c . e .), G reek tragedian; Hugo (1 8 0 2 -1 8 8 5 ), French Rom antic poet, novelist, and dram atist; d a n t e a l i g h i e r i (1265-1321), Italian poet; and

m a r x (1818—1883), German econom ic, social, and political philosopher. 5. Books published in 1969 and 1975, respectively, by f o u c a u l t (1 9 2 6 -1 9 8 4 ), French philosopher and histo rian , who explores the con n ectio n s between knowledge, discourse, and power.

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Historically and culturally there is a quantitative as well as a qualitative difference between the Franco-British involvement in the Orient and— until the period of American ascendancy after World War II— the involve­ ment of every other European and Atlantic power. To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant,6 the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental “experts” and “hands,” an Oriental professorate, a complex array of “O riental” ideas (Oriental despotism, Oriental splendor, cruelty, sensuality), many Eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdoms domes­ ticated for local European use— the list can be extended more or less indefi­ nitely. My point is that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II France and Britain dominated the Orient and Orientalism; since World War II America has dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Brit­ ain once did. Out of that closeness, whose dynamic is enormously produc­ tive even if it always demonstrates the comparatively greater strength of the Occident (British, French, or American), comes the large body of texts I call Orientalist. It should be said at once that even with the generous number of books and authors that I examine, there is a much larger number that I simply have had to leave out. My argument, however, depends neither upon an exhaustive catalogue of texts dealing with the Orient nor upon a clearly delimited set of texts, authors, and ideas that together make up the Orientalist canon. I have depended instead upon a different methodological alternative— whose back­ bone in a sense is the set of historical generalizations I have so far been mak­ ing in this Introduction— and it is these I want now to discuss in more analytical detail. II

I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. We must take seriously Vicos7 great observation that men make their own history; that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities— to say nothing of historical entities— such locales, regions, geographical sectors as “Orient” and “Occident” are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.

6. The countries bordering the eastern coast of the M editerranean Sea from Turkey to Egypt, including present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

7. G i a m b a t t i s t a v i c o (1 6 6 8 -1 7 4 4 ), Italian philosopher and historian,

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Having said that, one must go on to state a number of reasonable qualifica­ tions. In the first place, it would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality. When Disraeli said in his novel Tancred8 that the East was a career, he meant that to be interested in the East was something bright young Westerners would find to be an all-consuming passion; he should not be interpreted as saying that the East was only a career for Westerners. There were— and are— cultures and nations whose location is in the East, and their lives, histories, and customs have a brute reality obviously greater than anything that could be said about them in the West. About that fact this study of Orientalism has very little to contribute, except to acknowledge it tacitly. But the phenomenon of Oriental­ ism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient (the East as career) despite or beyond any corre­ spondence, or lack thereof, with a “real” Orient. My point is that Disraelis statement about the East refers mainly to that created consistency, that regu­ lar constellation of ideas as the pre-eminent thing about the Orient, and not to its mere being, as Wallace Stevenss9 phrase has it. A second qualification is that ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seri­ ously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied. To believe that the Orient was created— or, as I call it, “Orientalized”— and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony, and is quite accu­ rately indicated in the title of K. M. Panikkar’s classic Asia and Western D om inance.1 The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discov­ ered to be “Oriental” in all those ways considered commonplace by an aver­ age nineteenth-century European, but also because it could b e— that is, submitted to being— m ade Oriental. There is very little consent to be found, for example, in the fact that Flaubert’s2 encounter with an Egyptian courte­ san produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was “typically Oriental.” My argument is that Flau­ bert’s situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an iso­ lated instance. It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled. This brings us to a third qualification. One ought never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of lies or of myths which, were the truth about them to be told, would simply blow away.

8. An 1847 novel whose hero leaves 19th-century England for the East, by Benjamin Disraeli (1804— 1881), English politician and novelist. 9. American poet (1879—1955); one of his poems is titled “O f M ere Being.” 1. K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western D om inance (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959) [Said’s note].

Panikkar (18 9 5 -1 9 6 3 ), Indian diplomat and his­ torian. 2. Gustave Flaubert (1 8 2 1 -1 8 8 0 ), French novel­ ist; his travels in Egypt and the O rien t are recounted in his letters, and his novel Salam m bo (1862) is set in ancient Carthage (in modern-day Tunisia).

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I myself believe that Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient (which is what, in its academic or scholarly form, it claims to be). Nevertheless, what we must respect and try to grasp is the sheer knitted-together strength of Orientalist discourse, its very close ties to the enabling socio-economic and political institutions, and its redoubtable dura­ bility. After all, any system of ideas that can remain unchanged as teachable wisdom (in academies, books, congresses, universities, foreign-service insti­ tutes) from the period of Ernest Renan3 in the late 1840s until the present in the United States must be something more formidable than a mere collec­ tion of lies. Orientalism, therefore, is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment. Continued investment made Orientalism, as a system of knowledge about the Orient, an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into W estern con­ sciousness, just as that same investment multiplied— indeed, made truly productive— the statements proliferating out from Orientalism into the gen­ eral culture. Gramsci4 has made the useful analytic distinction between civil and politi­ cal society in which the former is made up of voluntary (or at least rational and noncoercive) affiliations like schools, families, and unions, the latter of state institutions (the army, the police, the central bureaucracy) whose role in the polity is direct domination. Culture, of course, is to be found operating within civil society, where the influence of ideas, of institutions, and of other persons works not through domination but by what Gramsci calls consent. In any society not totalitarian, then, certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what Gramsci has identified as hegemony, an indis­ pensable concept for any understanding of cultural life in the industrial West. It is hegemony, or rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism the durability and the strength I have been speaking about so far. Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay has called the idea of Europe,5 a collective notion identifying “us” Europeans as against all “those” non-Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major component in European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in com­ parison with all the non-European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness, usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter. In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexi­ ble positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of pos­ sible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. And why should it have been otherwise, especially during the period of

3. French historian (1823—1892), who wrote on the O riental origins of Christianity. 4. a n t o n i o g r a m s c i (18 9 1 -1 9 3 7 ), Italian Marx­ ist whose concept o f cultural hegemony has been

highly influential. 5. Denys Hay, Europe: T he E m ergence o f an Idea, 2d ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968) [Said’s note].

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extraordinary European ascendancy from the late Renaissance to the pres­ ent? The scientist, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about, the Orient because he could be there, or could think about it, with very little resistance on the Orient’s part. Under the general heading of knowledge of the Orient, and within the umbrella of Western hegemony over the Orient during the period from the end of the eighteenth century, there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theo­ retical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and his­ torical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national or religious character. Additionally, the imaginative examination of things Oriental was based more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an Oriental world emerged, first according to general ideas about who or what was an Oriental, then according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections. If we can point to great Orientalist works of genuine scholarship like Silvestre de Sacy s Chrestomathie arabe or Edward William Lanes Account o f the Manners and Customs o f the M odern Egyptians, we need also to note that Renan’s and Gobineau’s6 racial ideas came out of the same impulse, as did a great many Victorian pornographic novels (see the analysis by Steven Marcus of “The Lustful Turk”7). And yet, one must repeatedly ask oneself whether what matters in Orien­ talism is the general group of ideas overriding the mass of material— about which who could deny that they were shot through with doctrines of Euro­ pean superiority, various kinds of racism, imperialism, and the like, dogmatic views of “the Oriental” as a kind of ideal and unchanging abstraction?— or the much more varied work produced by almost uncountable individual writ­ ers, whom one would take up as individual instances of authors dealing with the Orient. In a sense the two alternatives, general and particular, are really two perspectives on the same material: in both instances one would have to deal with pioneers in the field like William Jones,8 with great artists like Ner­ val or Flaubert. And why would it not be possible to employ both perspectives together, or one after the other? Isn’t there an obvious danger of distortion (of precisely the kind that academic Orientalism has always been prone to) if either too general or too specific a level of description is maintained system­ atically? My two fears are distortion and inaccuracy, or rather the kind of inaccu­ racy produced by too dogmatic a generality and too positivistic a localized focus. In trying to deal with these problems I have tried to deal with three main aspects of my own contemporary reality that seem to me to point the way out of the methodological or perspectival difficulties I have been discussing,

6. Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau (1816— 1882), French diplomat and author of Essay on the Inequality o f the Human Races (1853—55). The French Orientalist Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838) published his Arab Chrestomathy in 1806; Lane (1801-1876), an English scholar of Arabic, published his Account in 1836.

7. Steven M arcus, T he O ther Victorians: A Study o f Sexuality and Pornography in M id-NineteenthC entury E ngland (New York: B antam , 1967), pp. 2 0 0 —219 [Said’s note]. 8. English philologist and judge (1 7 4 6 -1 7 9 4 ); he was the first to observe the close resem blance of Sanskrit to Greek and Latin.

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difficulties that might force one, in the first instance, into writing a coarse polemic on so unacceptably general a level of description as not to be worth the effort, or in the second instance, into writing so detailed and atomistic a series of analyses as to lose all track of the general lines of force informing the field, giving it its special cogency. How then to recognize individuality and to reconcile it with its intelligent, and by no means passive or merely dictatorial, general and hegemonic context? hi

I mentioned three aspects of my contemporary reality: I must explain and briefly discuss them now, so that it can be seen how I was led to a particular course of research and writing. 1. The distinction between pure and political knowledge. It is very easy to argue that knowledge about Shakespeare or Wordsworth9 is not political whereas knowledge about contemporary China or the Soviet Union is. My own formal and professional designation is that of “humanist,” a title which indicates the humanities as my field and therefore the unlikely eventuality that there might be anything political about what I do in that field. O f course, all these labels and terms are quite unnuanced as I use them here, but the general truth of what I am pointing to is, I think, widely held. One reason for saying that a humanist who writes about Wordsworth, or an editor whose specialty is Keats,1 is not involved in anything political is that what he does seems to have no direct political effect upon reality in the everyday sense. A scholar whose field is Soviet economics works in a highly charged area where there is much government interest, and what he might produce in the way of studies or proposals will be taken up by policymakers, government offi­ cials, institutional economists, intelligence experts. The distinction between “humanists” and persons whose work has policy implications, or political significance, can be broadened further by saying that the former s ideological color is a matter of incidental importance to politics (although possibly of great moment to his colleagues in the field, who may object to his Stalinism2 or fascism or too easy liberalism), whereas the ideology of the latter is woven directly into his material— indeed, economics, politics, and sociology in the modern academy are ideological sciences— and therefore taken for granted as being “political.” Nevertheless the determining impingement on most knowledge produced in the contemporary West (and here I speak mainly about the United States) is that it be nonpolitical, that is, scholarly, academic, impartial, above parti­ san or small-minded doctrinal belief. One can have no quarrel with such an ambition in theory, perhaps, but in practice the reality is much more prob­ lematic. No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from the fact of his involvement (conscious or uncon­ scious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or from the mere activ­ ity of being a member of a society. These continue to bear on what he does

9. w i l l i a m w o r d s w o r t h (1770—1850), English Rom antic poet. l.Jo h n Keats (1 7 9 5 -1 8 2 1 ), English Rom antic poet.

2. T hat is, hard-line authoritarianism sim ilar to that of the oppressive Soviet regime (1 9 2 4 —53) of Joseph Stalin (1 8 7 9 -1 9 5 3 ).

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professionally, even though naturally enough his research and its fruits do attempt to reach a level of relative freedom from the inhibitions and the restrictions of brute, everyday reality. For there is such a thing as knowledge that is less, rather than more, partial than the individual (with his entangling and distracting life circumstances) who produces it. Yet this knowledge is not therefore automatically nonpolitical. Whether discussions of literature or of classical philology are fraught with— or have unmediated— political significance is a very large question that I have tried to treat in some detail elsewhere.3 What I am interested in doing now is suggesting how the general liberal consensus that “true” knowledge is fundamentally nonpolitical (and conversely, that overtly politi­ cal knowledge is not “true” knowledge) obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced. No one is helped in understanding this today when the adjective “political” is used as a label to discredit any work for daring to violate the protocol of pretended suprapolitical objectivity. We may say, first, that civil society rec­ ognizes a gradation of political importance in the various fields of knowl­ edge. To some extent the political importance given a field comes from the possibility of its direct translation into economic terms; but to a greater extent political importance comes from the closeness of a field to ascertain­ able sources of power in political society. Thus an economic study of long­ term Soviet energy potential and its effect on military capability is likely to be commissioned by the Defense Department, and thereafter to acquire a kind of political status impossible for a study of Tolstois4 early fiction financed in part by a foundation. Yet both works belong in what civil society acknowledges to be a similar field, Russian studies, even though one work may be done by a very conservative economist, the other by a radical liter­ ary historian. My point here is that “Russia” as a general subject matter has political priority over nicer distinctions such as “economics” and “literary history,” because political society in Gramsci s sense reaches into such realms of civil society as the academy and saturates them with significance of direct concern to it. I do not want to press all this any further on general theoretical grounds: it seems to me that the value and credibility of my case can be demon­ strated by being much more specific, in the way, for example, Noam Chom­ sky has studied the instrumental connection between the Vietnam War and the notion of objective scholarship as it was applied to cover state-sponsored military research.5 Now because Britain, France, and recently the United States are imperial powers, their political societies impart to their civil soci­ eties a sense of urgency, a direct political infusion as it were, where and whenever matters pertaining to their imperial interests abroad are con­ cerned. I doubt that it is controversial, for example, to say that an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century took an interest in those countries that was never far from their status in his mind as British colo­ nies. To say this may seem quite different from saying that all academic 3. See my T he World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983) [Said’s note]. 4. Leo Tolstoy (1 8 2 8 —1910), Russian novelist. 5. Principally in his Am erican Power and the New

Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays (New York: Pantheon, 1969) and For Reasons o f State (New York: Pantheon, 1973) [Said’s note]. Chom ­ sky (b. 1928), American linguist and radical social critic.

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knowledge about India and Egypt is somehow tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact— and yet that is what I am saying in this study of Orientalism. For if it is true that no production of knowledge in the human sciences can ever ignore or disclaim its authors involvement as a human subject in his own circumstances, then it must also be true that for a European or American studying the Orient there can be no disclaiming the main circumstances of his actuality: that he comes up against the Ori­ ent as a European or American first, as an individual second. And to be a European or an American in such a situation is by no means an inert fact. It meant and means being aware, however dimly, that one belongs to a power with definite interests in the Orient, and more important, that one belongs to a part of the earth with a definite history of involvement in the Orient almost since the time of Homer.6 Put in this way, these political actualities are still too undefined and gen­ eral to be really interesting. Anyone would agree to them without necessar­ ily agreeing also that they mattered very much, for instance, to Flaubert as he wrote Salam m ho, or to H. A. R. Gibb as he wrote M odern Trends in Islam.7 The trouble is that there is too great a distance between the big dominating fact, as I have described it, and the details of everyday life that govern the minute discipline of a novel or a scholarly text as each is being written. Yet if we eliminate from the start any notion that “big” facts like imperial domination can be applied mechanically and deterministically to such complex matters as culture and ideas, then we will begin to approach an interesting kind of study. My idea is that European and then American interest in the Orient was political according to some of the obvious his­ torical accounts of it that I have given here, but that it was the culture that created that interest, that acted dynamically along with brute political, eco­ nomic, and military rationales to make the Orient the varied and compli­ cated place that it obviously was in the field I call Orientalism. Therefore, Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. It is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aes­ thetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of “interests” which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological descrip­ tion, it not only creates but also maintains; it is, rather than expresses, a cer­ tain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or Ca. 8 t h c e n t u r y b . c . e . 7. Published in 1947; Gibb (1895—1971) was an English scholar of Arabic language and history.

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anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with ortho­ doxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what “we” do and what “they” cannot do or understand as “we” do). Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is— and does not simply represent— a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with “our” world. Because Orientalism is a cultural and a political fact, then, it does not exist in some archival vacuum; quite the contrary, I think it can be shown that what is thought, said, or even done about the Orient follows (perhaps occurs within) certain distinct and intellectually knowable lines. Here too a considerable degree of nuance and elaboration can be seen working as between the broad superstructural pressures and the details of composi­ tion, the facts of textuality. Most humanistic scholars are, I think, perfectly happy with the notion that texts exist in contexts, that there is such a thing as intertextuality, that the pressures of conventions, predecessors, and rhe­ torical styles limit what Walter Benjamin once called the “overtaxing of the productive person in the name o f . . . the principle of ‘creativity/” in which the poet is believed on his own, and out of his pure mind, to have brought forth his work.8 Yet there is a reluctance to allow that political, institu­ tional, and ideological constraints act in the same manner on the individual author. A humanist will believe it to be an interesting fact to any interpreter of Balzac that he was influenced in the C om edie hum aine9 by the conflict between Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier,1 but the same sort of pressure on Balzac of deeply reactionary monarchism is felt in some vague way to demean his literary “genius” and therefore to be less worth serious study. Similarly— as Harry Bracken2 has been tirelessly showing— philosophers will conduct their discussions of Locke, Hume, and empiricism3 without ever taking into account that there is an explicit connection in these classic writers between their “philosophic” doctrines and racial theory, justifica­ tions of slavery, or arguments for colonial exploitation.4 These are common enough ways by which contemporary scholarship keeps itself pure. Perhaps it is true that most attempts to rub cultures nose in the mud of politics have been crudely iconoclastic; perhaps also the social interpretation of literature in my own field has simply not kept up with the enormous tech­ nical advances in detailed textual analysis. But there is no getting away from the fact that literary studies in general, and American Marxist theorists in particular, have avoided the effort of seriously bridging the gap between the superstructural and the base levels in textual, historical scholarship; on another occasion I have gone so far as to say that the literary-cultural estab­ lishment as a whole has declared the serious study of imperialism and culture

8. W alter Benjam in, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era o f High Capitalism, trans. Harry Zohn (London: New Left Books, 1973), p. 71 [Said’s note], b e n j a m i n (1 8 9 2 -1 9 4 0 ), German lit­ erary and cultural critic. 9. The Human Comedy, the title given to the total­ ity of his short stories and novels by the French novelist Honore de Balzac (1799—1850); most por­ tray contemporary French society and many are linked by recurring characters. l.A debate on comparative anatomy in 1830

between the prominent French zoologists Etienne Geoffroy Saint-H ilaire (1772—1844) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). 2. Am erican philosopher (1 9 2 6 —2011). 3. The view, held by the British philosophers John Locke (1 6 3 2 -1 7 0 4 ) and d a v i d h u m e (1711-1776), that all knowledge derives from sensory experi­ ence. 4. Harry Bracken, “Essence, Accident, and Race,” H erm athena 116 (winter 1973): 8 1 - 9 6 [Said’s note].

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off limits.5 For Orientalism brings one up directly against that question— that is, to realizing that political imperialism governs an entire field of study, imagination, and scholarly institutions— in such a way as to make its avoid­ ance an intellectual and historical impossibility. Yet there will always remain the perennial escape mechanism of saying that a literary scholar and a philos­ opher, for example, are trained in literature and philosophy respectively, not in politics or ideological analysis. In other words, the specialist argument can work quite effectively to block the larger and, in my opinion, the more intel­ lectually serious perspective. Here it seems to me there is a simple two-part answer to be given, at least so far as the study of imperialism and culture (or Orientalism) is concerned. In the first place, nearly every nineteenth-century writer (and the same is true enough of writers in earlier periods) was extraordinarily well aware of the fact of empire: this is a subject not very well studied, but it will not take a modern Victorian specialist long to admit that liberal cultural heroes like John Stuart Mill, Arnold, Carlyle, Newman, Macaulay, Ruskin, George Eliot, and even Dickens6 had definite views on race and imperialism, which are quite easily to be found at work in their writing. So even a specialist must deal with the knowledge that Mill, for example, made it clear in On Liberty and Representative Government that his views there could not be applied to India (he was an India Office functionary for a good deal of his life, after all) because the Indians were civilizationally, if not racially, inferior. The same kind of paradox is to be found in Marx, as I try to show in this book. In the second place, to believe that politics in the form of imperialism bears upon the production of literature, scholarship, social theory, and history writing is by no means equivalent to saying that culture is therefore a demeaned or denigrated thing. Quite the contrary: my whole point is to say that we can better understand the persistence and the durability of saturating hegemonic systems like culture when we realize that their internal constraints upon writers and thinkers were productive, not unilaterally inhibiting. It is this idea that Gramsci, certainly, and Foucault and Raymond Williams in their very different ways have been trying to illustrate. Even one or two pages by Williams on “the uses of the Empire” in The Long Revolution tell us more about nineteenth-century cultural richness than many volumes of hermetic textual analyses.7 Therefore I study Orientalism as a dynamic exchange between individual authors and the large political concerns shaped by the three great empires— British, French, American— in whose intellectual and imaginative territory the writing was produced. What interests me most as a scholar is not the gross political verity but the detail, as indeed what interests us in someone

5. In an interview published in D iacritics 6, no. 3 (fall 1976): 38 [Said s note]. T h e terms super­ structure and base allude to the M arxist view that all aspects o f a society— literature, arts, politics, and so on— depend on its econom ic form of pro­ duction. 6. All major Victorian writers and thinkers: M ill (1 8 0 6 -1 8 7 3 ), philosopher and social reformer, who published On Liberty in 1859 and C onsider­ ations on Representative Governm ent in 1861; M A T T H E W A R N O L D (1 8 2 2 -1 8 8 8 ), poet and critic;

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), historian and essay­ ist; John Henry Newman (1801-1890), prelate and theologian; Thom as Babington M acaulay (1 8 0 0 — 1859), historian and statesm an; John Ruskin (1819-1900), art critic; Eliot (pen name of Marian Evans, 1819—1880), novelist; and Charles Dickens (1812-1870), novelist. 7. Raymond W illiams, T he Long Revolution (Lon­ don: Chatto and Windus, 1961), pp. 6 6 - 6 7 [Said’s note], w i l l i a m s (1921-1988), British Marxist lit­ erary critic.

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like Lane or Flaubert or Renan is not the (to him) indisputable truth that Occidentals are superior to Orientals, but the profoundly worked over and modulated evidence of his detailed work within the very wide space opened up by that truth. One need only remember that Lanes Manners and Customs o f the Modern Egyptians is a classic of historical and anthropological observa­ tion because of its style, its enormously intelligent and brilliant details, not because of its simple reflection of racial superiority, to understand what I am saying here. The kind of political questions raised by Orientalism, then, are as follows: What other sorts of intellectual, aesthetic, scholarly, and cultural energies went into the making of an imperialist tradition like the Orientalist one? How did philology, lexicography, history, biology, political and economic the­ ory, novel-writing, and lyric poetry come to the service of Orientalisms broadly imperialist view of the world? What changes, modulations, refine­ ments, even revolutions take place within Orientalism? What is the meaning of originality, of continuity, of individuality, in this context? How does Orien­ talism transmit or reproduce itself from one epoch to another? In fine, how can we treat the cultural, historical phenomenon of Orientalism as a kind of willed human work— not of mere unconditioned ratiocination— in all its his­ torical complexity, detail, and worth without at the same time losing sight of the alliance between cultural work, political tendencies, the state, and the specific realities of domination? Governed by such concerns a humanistic study can responsibly address itself to politics and culture. But this is not to say that such a study establishes a hard-and-fast rule about the relation­ ship between knowledge and politics. My argument is that each humanistic investigation must formulate the nature of that connection in the specific context of the study, the subject matter, and its historical circumstances. 2. T he m ethodological question. In a previous book I gave a good deal of thought and analysis to the methodological importance for work in the human sciences of finding and formulating a first step, a point of departure, a beginning principle.8 A major lesson I learned and tried to present was that there is no such thing as a merely given, or simply available, starting point: beginnings have to be made for each project in such a way as to enable what follows from them. Nowhere in my experience has the difficulty of this lesson been more consciously lived (with what success— or failure— I cannot really say) than in this study of Orientalism. The idea of beginning, indeed the act of beginning, necessarily involves an act of delimitation by which something is cut out of a great mass of material, separated from the mass, and made to stand for, as well as be, a starting point, a beginning; for the student of texts one such notion of inaugural delimitation is Louis Althussers idea of the problem atic, a specific determinate unity of a text, or group of texts, which is something given rise to by analysis.9 Yet in the case of Orientalism (as opposed to the case of Marx’s texts, which is what Althusser studies) there is not simply the problem of finding a point of departure, or problematic, but also the question of designating which texts, authors, and periods are the ones best suited for study.

8. In my Beginnings: Intention and M ethod (New York: Basic, 1975) [Said’s note]. 9. Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster

(New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), pp. 65—67 jS aid ’s note], a l t h u s s e r (1918—1990), French M arxist philosopher.

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It has seemed to me foolish to attempt an encyclopedic narrative history of Orientalism, first of all because if my guiding principle was to be “the Euro­ pean idea of the Orient” there would be virtually no limit to the material I would have had to deal with; second, because the narrative model itself did not suit my descriptive and political interests; third, because in such books as Raymond Schwab’s La Renaissance orientate, Johann Fuck’s Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, and more recently, Dorothee Metlitzki’s The Matter ofA raby in M edieval England1 there already exist encyclopedic works on certain aspects of the European-Oriental encoun­ ter such as make the critic’s job, in the general political and intellectual con­ text I sketched above, a different one. There still remained the problem of cutting down a very fat archive to manageable dimensions, and more important, outlining something in the nature of an intellectual order within that group of texts without at the same time following a mindlessly chronological order. My starting point therefore has been the British, French, and American experience of the Orient taken as a unit, what made that experience possible by way of historical and intel­ lectual background, what the quality and character of the experience has been. For reasons I shall discuss presently I limited that already limited (but still inordinately large) set of questions to the Anglo-French-American expe­ rience of the Arabs and Islam, which for almost a thousand years together stood for the Orient. Immediately upon doing that, a large part of the Orient seemed to have been eliminated— India, Japan, China, and other sections of the Far East— not because these regions were not important (they obviously have been) but because one could discuss Europe’s experience of the Near Orient, or of Islam, apart from its experience of the Far Orient. Yet at certain moments of that general European history of interest in the East, particular parts of the Orient like Egypt, Syria, and Arabia cannot be discussed without also studying Europe’s involvement in the more distant parts, of which Persia and India are the most important; a notable case in point is the connection between Egypt and India so far as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Brit­ ain was concerned. Similarly the French role in deciphering the Zend-Avesta, the pre-eminence of Paris as a center of Sanskrit studies during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the fact that Napoleon’s2 interest in the Orient was contingent upon his sense of the British role in India: all these Far Eastern interests directly influenced French interest in the Near East, Islam, and the Arabs. Britain and France dominated the Eastern Mediterranean from about the end of the seventeenth century on. Yet my discussion of that domination and systematic interest does not do justice to {a) the important contributions to Orientalism of Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and Portugal and (b) the fact that one of the important impulses toward the study of the Orient in the

1. Raymond Schwab, La Renaissance orientale [The Oriental Renaissance, French] (Paris: Payot, 1950); Johann W. Fuck, Die A rabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts [Arabic Studies in Europe from Its Origins through the Twentieth Century, German] (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955); Dorothee M etlitzki, The Matter o f Araby in Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977) [Said’s note].

2. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), general and emperor of France (1 8 0 4 —15), who campaigned in Egypt (1798—99) in an attempt to damage B ritain’s trade with India. The Zend-Avesta: the Avesta, a book o f sacred w'ritings from eastern Iran (begun ca. 6 0 0 b . c . e ., fixed in form ca. 4 t h 6th c. c . e .) that collects the teachings o f the reli­ gious leader and prophet Zoroaster.

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eighteenth century was the revolution in Biblical studies stimulated by such variously interesting pioneers as Bishop Lowth, Eichhorn, Herder, and Michaelis.3 In the first place, I had to focus rigorously upon the BritishFrench and later the American material because it seemed inescapably true not only that Britain and France were the pioneer nations in the Orient and in Oriental studies, but that these vanguard positions were held by virtue of the two greatest colonial networks in pre-twentieth-century history; the American Oriental position since World War II has fit— I think, quite self­ consciously— in the places excavated by the two earlier European powers. Then too, I believe that the sheer quality, consistency, and mass of British, French, and American writing on the Orient lifts it above the doubtless cru­ cial work done in Germany, Italy, Russia, and elsewhere. But I think it is also true that the major steps in Oriental scholarship were first taken in either Britain and France, then elaborated upon by Germans. Silvestre de Sacy, for example, was not only the first modern and institutional European Oriental­ ist, who worked on Islam, Arabic literature, the Druze religion, and Sassanid Persia; he was also the teacher of Champollion and of Franz Bopp,4 the founder of German comparative linguistics. A similar claim of priority and subsequent pre-eminence can be made for William Jones and Edward William Lane. In the second place— and here the failings of my study of Orientalism are amply made up for— there has been some important recent work on the background in Biblical scholarship to the rise of what I have called modern Orientalism. The best and the most illuminatingly relevant is E. S. Shaffer’s impressive “Kubla K han” and T he Fall o f Jerusalem ,5 an indispensable study of the origins of Romanticism, and of the intellectual activity underpinning a great deal of what goes on in Coleridge, Browning,6 and George Eliot. To some degree Shaffer’s work refines upon the outlines provided in Schwab, by articulating the material of relevance to be found in the German Biblical scholars and using that material to read, in an intelligent and always interest­ ing way, the work of three major British writers. Yet what is missing in the book is some sense of the political as well as ideological edge given the Ori­ ental material by the British and French writers I am principally concerned with; in addition, unlike Shaffer I attempt to elucidate subsequent develop­ ments in academic as well as literary Orientalism that bear on the connec­ tion between British and French Orientalism on the one hand and the rise of an explicitly colonial-minded imperialism on the other. Then too, I wish to show how all these earlier matters are reproduced more or less in American Orientalism after the Second World War. 3. Johann David M ichaelis (1717-1791), German theologian. Robert Lowth (1710—1787), English grammarian and biblical translator. Johann Gott­ fried Eichhorn (17 5 2 -1 8 2 7 ), German biblical scholar and professor o f Oriental languages. Johann Gottfried Herder (1 7 44-1803), German critic and philologist. 4. German philologist and Sanskrit scholar (1791—1867). Druze: a Muslim sect (founded in the early 11th c.) whose members live mainly in the mountains of Lebanon and southern Syria. Sassanid Persia: an empire (2 2 4 —651) founded by Ardashir 1, who made Zoroastrianism the official religion. Jean-Fran^ois Champollion (1790—

1823), French founder of Egyptology, who deci­ phered the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone. 5. E. S. Shaffer, "Kubla K han” and the Fall o f Je ru ­

salem: T he Mythological School in B iblical Criti­ cism and Secular Literature, 1770—1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) [Said’s note]. 6. Robert Browning (1812—1889), English poet. SA M L’ E L TA YL O R C O L E R ID G E (1 7 72-1834), English Romantic poet and critic; his works include “Kubla Khan” (written 1797; published 1816), while The Fall o f Jerusalem is an epic that he never wrote.

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Nevertheless there is a possibly misleading aspect to my study, where, aside from an occasional reference, I do not exhaustively discuss the German developments after the inaugural period dominated by Sacy. Any work that seeks to provide an understanding of academic Orientalism and pays little attention to scholars like Steinthal, Muller, Becker, Goldziher, Brockelmann, Noldeke7— to mention only a handful— needs to be reproached, and I freely reproach myself. I particularly regret not taking more account of the great scientific prestige that accrued to German scholarship by the middle of the nineteenth century, whose neglect was made into a denunciation of insular British scholars by George Eliot. I have in mind Eliot s unforgettable portrait of Mr. Casaubon in M iddlemarch. One reason Casaubon cannot finish his Key to All Mythologies is, according to his young cousin Will Ladislaw, that he is unacquainted with German scholarship. For not only has Casaubon chosen a subject “as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view”: he is undertaking a job similar to a refutation of Paracelsus because “he is not an Orientalist, you know.”8 Eliot was not wrong in implying that by about 1830, which is when M iddle­ march is set, German scholarship had fully attained its European pre­ eminence. Yet at no time in German scholarship during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century could a close partnership have developed between Orientalists and a protracted, sustained national interest in the Orient. There was nothing in Germany to correspond to the Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa. Moreover, the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual, the way Egypt and Syria were actual for Chateaubriand, Lane, Lamartine, Burton,9 Dis­ raeli, or Nerval. There is some significance in the fact that the two most renowned German works on the Orient, Goethe s Westostlicher Diwan and Friedrich Schlegels Uher die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier,' were based respectively on a Rhine journey and on hours spent in Paris libraries. What German Oriental scholarship did was to refine and elaborate techniques whose application was to texts, myths, ideas, and languages almost literally gathered from the Orient by imperial Britain and France. Yet what German Orientalism had in common with Anglo-French and later American Orientalism was a kind of intellectual authority over the Ori­ ent within Western culture. This authority must in large part be the subject of any description of Orientalism, and it is so in this study. Even the name Orientalism suggests a serious, perhaps ponderous style of expertise; when I

7. Except for the Hungarian Goldziher (who also wrote in German), all those named are German: H eymann S tein th al (1 8 2 3 -1 8 9 9 ), philologist; Friedrich Max M uller (1 8 2 3 -1 9 0 0 ), philologist and scholar o f Hinduism and Buddhism ; Carl H einrich B ecker (1 8 7 6 -1 9 3 3 ), politician and scholar o f Islam ic civilization; Ignac Goldziher (1 8 5 0 -1 9 2 1 ), scholar of Islamic civilization; Carl B rockelm ann (1 8 6 8 —1956), scholar o f Sem itic languages and A rabic literatu re; and Theodor Noldeke (1 8 3 6 -1 9 3 0 ), scholar of S em itic lan­ guages and Arabic history. 8. George Eliot, M iddlem arch: A Study o f Provin­ cial Life [1871—72] (Boston: Houghton M ifflin, 1956), p. 164 [Said’s note]. Paracelsus: pseudonym

of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), German physician and chem ist who was obsessed with alchemy. 9. S ir R ichard Fran cis B urton (1 8 2 1 -1 8 9 0 ), English explorer and linguist who made a pil­ grimage to M ecca in disguise and translated Ara­ bian Nights (1 8 8 5 -8 8 ). Alphonse de Lamartine (179 0 -1 8 6 9 ), French Romantic poet, historian, and statesman. I. On the Language and Wisdom o f India (1808) by the Germ an Romantic critic Friedrich von Schlegel (1772—1829). West-Eastern Divan (1819), a volume of lyric poems by the G erm an poet and dramatist Johann Wolfgang von G oethe (1749— 1832).

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apply it to modern American social scientists (since they do not call them­ selves Orientalists, my use of the word is anomalous), it is to draw attention to the way Middle East experts can still draw on the vestiges of Orientalism’s intellectual position in nineteenth-century Europe. There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradi­ ated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it estab­ lishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. Above all, authority can, indeed must, be ana­ lyzed. All these attributes of authority apply to Orientalism, and much of what I do in this study is to describe both the historical authority in and the personal authorities of Orientalism. My principal methodological devices for studying authority here are what can be called strategic location, which is a way of describing the author’s posi­ tion in a text with regard to the Oriental material he writes about, and strate­ gic form ation, which is a way of analyzing the relationship between texts and the way in which groups of texts, types of texts, even textual genres, acquire mass, density, and referential power among themselves and thereafter in the culture at large. I use the notion of strategy simply to identify the problem every writer on the Orient has faced: how to get hold of it, how to approach it, how not to be defeated or overwhelmed by its sublimity, its scope, its awful dimensions. Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-avis the Orient; translated into his text, this location includes the kind of nar­ rative voice he adopts, the type of structure he builds, the kinds of images, themes, motifs that circulate in his text— all of which add up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader, containing the Orient, and finally, represent­ ing it or speaking in its behalf. None of this takes place in the abstract, how­ ever. Every writer on the Orient (and this is true even of Homer2) assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affili­ ates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some par­ ticular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation— for example, that of philological studies, of anthologies of extracts from Oriental literature, of travel books, of Oriental fantasies— whose presence in time, in discourse, in institutions (schools, libraries, foreign services) gives it strength and authority. It is clear, I hope, that my concern with authority does not entail analysis of what lies hidden in the Orientalist text, but analysis rather of the text’s surface, its exteriority to what it describes. I do not think that this idea can be overemphasized. Orientalism is premised upon exteriority, that is, on the fact that the Orientalist, poet or scholar, makes the Orient speak, describes the Orient, renders its mysteries plain for and to the West. He is never con­ cerned with the Orient except as the first cause of what he says. What he says and writes, by virtue of the fact that it is said or written, is meant to indicate that the Orientalist is outside the Orient, both as an existential and as a moral fact. The principal product of this exteriority is of course

2. Homer’s Iliad takes place at Troy, in northwestern Asia M inor (present-day Turkey).

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representation: as early as Aeschylus’s play T he Persians3 the Orient is trans­ formed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that are relatively familiar (in Aeschylus’s case, grieving Asiatic women). The dramatic immediacy of representation in The Persians obscures the fact that the audience is watching a highly artificial enactment of what a non-Oriental has made into a symbol for the whole Orient. My analysis of the Orientalist text therefore places emphasis on the evidence, which is by no means invis­ ible, for such representations as representations, not as “natural” depictions of the Orient. This evidence is found just as prominently in the so-called truthful text (histories, philological analyses, political treatises) as in the avowedly artistic (i.e., openly imaginative) text. The things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social cir­ cumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original. The exteriority of the representation is always governed by some version of the truism that if the Orient could represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the West, and fau te de m ieux ,4 for the poor Orient. “Sie konnen sich nicht vertreten, sie mussen vertreten werden,”5 as Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire o f Louis Bonaparte. Another reason for insisting upon exteriority is that I believe it needs to be made clear about cultural discourse and exchange within a culture that what is commonly circulated by it is not “truth” but representations. It hardly needs to be demonstrated again that language itself is a highly orga­ nized and encoded system, which employs many devices to express, indi­ cate, exchange messages and information, represent, and so forth. In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a represence, or a representation. The value, efficacy, strength, apparent veracity of a written statement about the Orient therefore relies very little, and cannot instrumentally depend, on the Orient as such. On the contrary, the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as “the Orient.” Thus all of Orientalism stands forth and away from the Orient: that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Ori­ ent, and this sense is directly indebted to various Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible, clear, “there” in discourse about it. And these representations rely upon institutions, traditions, conventions, agreed-upon codes of understanding for their effects, not upon a distant and amorphous Orient. The difference between representations of the Orient before the last third of the eighteenth century and those after it (that is, those belonging to what I call modern Orientalism) is that the range of representation expanded enor­ mously in the later period. It is true that after William Jones and AnquetilDuperron,6 and after Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, Europe came to know the Orient more scientifically, to live in it with greater authority and disci-

3. A tragedy originally staged in 472 b . c . e . that portrays the return o f Xerxes, king of Persia, to his capital after his defeat by the Greeks in the second Persian W ar (4 8 2 -4 7 8 ). 4. For want of anything better (French). 5. “They cannot represent them selves; they must

be represented” (German). Eighteenth Brumaire was published in 1852. This quotation is also the epigraph of the entire book. 6. Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731— 1805), French scholar of Oriental languages who translated the Avesta into French in 1771.

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pline than ever before. But what mattered to Europe was the expanded scope and the much greater refinement given its techniques for receiving the Ori­ ent. When around the turn of the eighteenth century the Orient definitively revealed the age of its languages— thus outdating Hebrew s divine pedigree— it was a group of Europeans who made the discovery, passed it on to other scholars, and preserved the discovery in the new science of Indo-European philology. A new powerful science for viewing the linguistic Orient was born, and with it, as Foucault has shown in The Order o f Things,1 a whole web of related scientific interests. Similarly William Beckford, Byron,8 Goethe, and Hugo restructured the Orient by their art and made its colors, lights, and people visible through their images, rhythms, and motifs. At most, the “real” Orient provoked a writer to his vision; it very rarely guided it. Orientalism responded more to the culture that produced it than to its putative object, which was also produced by the West. Thus the history of Orientalism has both an internal consistency and a highly articulated set of relationships to the dominant culture surrounding it. My analyses conse­ quently try to show the fields shape and internal organization, its pioneers, patriarchal authorities, canonical texts, doxological9 ideas, exemplary fig­ ures, its followers, elaborators, and new authorities; I try also to explain how Orientalism borrowed and was frequently informed by “strong” ideas, doctrines, and trends ruling the culture. Thus there was (and is) a linguistic Orient, a Freudian Orient, a Spenglerian Orient, a Darwinian Orient,1 a racist Orient— and so on. Yet never has there been such a thing as a pure, or unconditional, Orient; similarly, never has there been a nonmaterial form of Orientalism, much less something so innocent as an “idea” of the Orient. In this underlying conviction and in its ensuing methodological consequences do I differ from scholars who study the history of ideas. For the emphases and the executive form, above all the material effectiveness, of statements made by Orientalist discourse are possible in ways that any hermetic history of ideas tends completely to scant. Without those empha­ ses and that material effectiveness Orientalism would be just another idea, whereas it is and was much more than that. Therefore I set out to examine not only scholarly works but also works of literature, political tracts, jour­ nalistic texts, travel books, religious and philological studies. In other words, my hybrid perspective is broadly historical and “anthropological,” given that I believe all texts to be worldly and circumstantial in (of course) ways that vary from genre to genre, and from historical period to historical period. Yet unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like

7. Published in 1966 (titled Les Mots et les choses, or T he Words and the Things). 8. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788—1824), English Rom antic poet whose works include such “Eastern tales” as The G iaour (1814). Beckford (1 7 6 0 -1 8 4 4 ), English travel writer and art collec­ tor who also wrote the G othic novel Vathek, an Arabian Tale (1786). 9. Expressing praise to God in established ways. 1. T hat is, an O rient as perceived through the

lenses of the psychological theory of s i g m u n d f r e l d (1 8 5 6 -1 9 3 9 ), Austrian founder o f psycho­ analysis; the historical theory of Oswald Spengler (1 8 8 0 —1936), Germ an historian who argued in T he D ecline o f the West (1 9 1 8 -2 2 ) that cu l­ tures grow and decay in a natural cycle (the Eastern having given way to the W estern, which he believed was itself in its last stage); and the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin (1 8 0 9 — 1882), English naturalist.

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Orientalism. The unity of the large ensemble of texts I analyze is due in part to the fact that they frequently refer to each other: Orientalism is after all a system for citing works and authors. Edward William Lane’s Manners and Customs o f the M odern Egyptians was read and cited by such diverse figures as Nerval, Flaubert, and Richard Burton. He was an authority whose use was an imperative for anyone writing or thinking about the Ori­ ent, not just about Egypt: when Nerval borrows passages verbatim from M odern Egyptians it is to use Lane’s authority to assist him in describing village scenes in Syria, not Egypt. Lane’s authority and the opportunities provided for citing him discriminately as well as indiscriminately were there because Orientalism could give his text the kind of distributive cur­ rency that he acquired. There is no way, however, of understanding Lane’s currency without also understanding the peculiar features of his text; this is equally true of Renan, Sacy, Lamartine, Schlegel, and a group of other influential writers. Foucault believes that in general the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism (and perhaps nowhere else) I find this not to be so. Accordingly my analyses employ close textual readings whose goal is to reveal the dialectic between individual text or writer and the complex collective formation to which his work is a contribution. Yet even though it includes an ample selection of writers, this book is still far from a complete history or general account of Orientalism. O f this failing I am very conscious. The fabric of as thick a discourse as Orientalism has survived and functioned in Western society because of its richness: all I have done is to describe parts of that fabric at certain moments, and merely to sug­ gest the existence of a larger whole, detailed, interesting, dotted with fasci­ nating figures, texts, and events. I have consoled myself with believing that this book is one installment of several, and hope there are scholars and critics who might want to write others. There is still a general essay to be written on imperialism and culture; other studies would go more deeply into the con­ nection between Orientalism and pedagogy, or into Italian, Dutch, German, and Swiss Orientalism, or into the dynamic between scholarship and imagi­ native writing, or into the relationship between administrative ideas and intellectual discipline. Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to Orientalism, to ask how one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or a nonrepressive and nonmanipulative, perspective. But then one would have to rethink the w'hole complex problem of knowledge and power. These are all tasks left embarrassingly incomplete in this study. The last, perhaps self-flattering, observation on method that I want to make here is that I have written this study with several audiences in mind. For stu­ dents of literature and criticism, Orientalism offers a marvelous instance of the interrelations between society, history, and textuality; moreover, the cul­ tural role played by the Orient in the West connects Orientalism with ideology, politics, and the logic of power, matters of relevance, I think, to the literary community. For contemporary students of the Orient, from university scholars to policymakers, I have written with two ends in mind: one, to pres­ ent their intellectual genealogy to them in a way that has not been done; two, to criticize— with the hope of stirring discussion— the often unquestioned assumptions on which their work for the most part depends. For the general

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reader, this study deals with matters that always compel attention, all of them connected not only with Western conceptions and treatments of the Other but also with the singularly important role played by Western culture in what Vico called the world of nations. Lastly, for readers in the so-called Third World,2 this study proposes itself as a step towards an understanding not so much of Western politics and of the non-Western world in those politics as of the strength of Western cultural discourse, a strength too often mistaken as merely decorative or “superstructural.” My hope is to illustrate the formidable structure of cultural domination and, specifically for formerly colonized peo­ ples, the dangers and temptations of employing this structure upon them­ selves or upon others. The three long chapters and twelve shorter units into which this book is divided arc intended to facilitate exposition as much as possible. Chapter One, “The Scope of Orientalism,” draws a large circle around all the dimen­ sions of the subject, both in terms of historical time and experiences and in terms of philosophical and political themes. Chapter Two, “Orientalist Struc­ tures and Restructures,” attempts to trace the development of modern Orien­ talism by a broadly chronological description, and also by the description of a set of devices common to the work of important poets, artists, and scholars. Chapter Three, “Orientalism Now,” begins where its predecessor left off, at around 1870. This is the period of great colonial expansion into the Orient, and it culminates in World War II. The very last section of Chapter Three characterizes the shift from British and French to American hegemony; I attempt there finally to sketch the present intellectual and social realities of Orientalism in the United States. 3. T he personal dim ension. In the Prison N otebooks Gramsci says: “The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inven­ tory.” The only available English translation inexplicably leaves Gramsci’s comment at that, whereas in fact Gramsci’s Italian text concludes by add­ ing, “therefore it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.”3 Much of the personal investment in this study derives from my awareness of being an “Oriental” as a child growing up in two British colonies. All of my education, in those colonies (Palestine and Egypt) and in the United States, has been Western, and yet that deep early awareness has persisted. In many ways my study of Orientalism has been an attempt to inventory the traces upon me, the Oriental subject, of the culture whose domination has been so powerful a factor in the life of all Orientals. This is why for me the Islamic Orient has had to be the center of attention. Whether what I have achieved is the inventory prescribed by Gramsci is not for me to judge, although I have felt it important to be conscious of trying to produce one. Along the way, as severely and as rationally as I have been able, I have tried to maintain a criti­ cal consciousness, as well as employing those instruments of historical, humanistic, and cultural research of which my education has made me the

2. The “underdeveloped” countries, many of them former colonies, now dominated by highly indus­ trialized “first world” (largely Western) nations in a global economy.

3. Antonio Gram sci, T he Prison Notebooks: S elec­ tions, trans. and ed. Q uintin Hoare and Geoffrey Now'ell Sm ith (New York: International Publish­ ers, 1971), p. 324 [Said’s note].

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fortunate beneficiary. In none of that, however, have I ever lost hold of the cultural reality of, the personal involvement in having been constituted as, “an Oriental.” The historical circumstances making such a study possible are fairly com­ plex, and I can only list them schematically here. Anyone resident in the West since the 1950s, particularly in the United States, will have lived through an era of extraordinary turbulence in the relations of East and West. No one will have failed to note how “East” has always signified danger and threat during this period, even as it has meant the traditional Orient as well as Russia. In the universities a growing establishment of area-studies pro­ grams and institutes has made the scholarly study of the Orient a branch of national policy. Public affairs in this country include a healthy interest in the Orient, as much for its strategic and economic importance as for its tradi­ tional exoticism. If the world has become immediately accessible to a West­ ern citizen living in the electronic age, the Orient too has drawn nearer to him, and is now less a myth perhaps than a place crisscrossed by Western, especially American, interests. One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. Television, the films, and all the media’s resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds. So far as the Orient is concerned, standardiza­ tion and cultural stereotyping have intensified the hold of the nineteenthcentury academic and imaginative demonology of “the mysterious Orient.” This is nowhere more true than in the ways by which the Near East is grasped. Three things have contributed to making even the simplest percep­ tion of the Arabs and Islam into a highly politicized, almost raucous matter: one, the history of popular anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice in the West, which is immediately reflected in the history of Orientalism; two, the strug­ gle between the Arabs and Israeli Zionism,4 and its effects upon American Jews as well as upon both the liberal culture and the population at large; three, the almost total absence of any cultural position making it possible either to identify with or dispassionately to discuss the Arabs or Islam. Fur­ thermore, it hardly needs saying that because the Middle East is now so identified with Great Power politics, oil economics, and the simple-minded dichotomy of freedom-loving, democratic Israel and evil, totalitarian, and terroristic Arabs, the chances of anything like a clear view of what one talks about in talking about the Near East are depressingly small. My own experiences of these matters are in part what made me write this book. The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West, particularly in America, is disheartening. There exists here an almost unanimous consensus that politically he does not exist, and when it is allowed that he does, it is either as a nuisance or as an Oriental. The web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed, and it is this web which every Palestinian has come to feel as his uniquely punishing destiny. It has made matters worse for him to remark that no person academically involved with the Near East— no Orientalist, that is— has ever in the United States culturally and 4. A political movement, originating in central and eastern Europe in the late 19th century, to reestab­ lish and m aintain a Jew ish national state in Palestine.

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politically identified himself wholeheartedly with the Arabs; certainly there have been identifications on some level, but they have never taken an “acceptable” form as has liberal American identification with Zionism, and all too frequently they have been radically flawed by their association either with discredited political and economic interests (oil-company and State Department Arabists, for example) or with religion. The nexus of knowledge and power creating “the Oriental” and in a sense obliterating him as a human being is therefore not for me an exclusively aca­ demic matter. Yet it is an intellectual matter of some very obvious importance. I have been able to put to use my humanistic and political concerns for the analysis and description of a very worldly matter, the rise, development, and consolidation of Orientalism. Too often literature and culture are presumed to be politically, even historically innocent; it has regularly seemed otherwise to me, and certainly my study of Orientalism has convinced me (and I hope will convince my literary colleagues) that society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together. In addition, and by an almost inescap­ able logic, I have found myself writing the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western anti-Semitism. That anti-Semitism and, as I have discussed it in its Islamic branch, Orientalism resemble each other very closely is a histori­ cal, cultural, and political truth that needs only to be mentioned to an Arab Palestinian for its irony to be perfectly understood. But what I should like also to have contributed here is a better understanding of the way cultural domination has operated. If this stimulates a new kind of dealing with the Orient, indeed if it eliminates the “Orient” and “Occident” altogether, then we shall have advanced a little in the process of what Raymond Williams has called the “unlearning” of “the inherent dominative mode.”5 1978

From Culture and Imperialism From C hapter Two. C onsolidated Vision II. JANE AUSTEN AND EMPIRE

We are on solid ground with V. G. Kiernan when he says that “empires must have a mould of ideas or conditioned reflexes to flow into, and youthful nations dream of a great place in the world as young men dream of fame and fortunes.”1 It is, as I have been saying throughout, too simple and reductive to argue that everything in European or American culture therefore prepares for or consolidates the grand idea of empire. It is also, however, historically inaccurate to ignore those tendencies—whether in narrative, political theory, or pictorial technique— that enabled, encouraged, and otherwise assured the W ests readiness to assume and enjoy the experience of empire. If there was cultural resistance to the notion of an imperial mission, there was not much support for that resistance in the main departments of cultural thought. W illiam s, Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (London: C hatto and W indus, 1958),

5. Raymond

p. 376 [Said’s note].

l.V . G. Kiernan, Marxism and Im perialism (New York: St. M artins Press, 1974), p. 100 [Said’s note]. Kiernan (1913—2009), British historian.

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Liberal though he was, John Stuart Mill— as a telling case in point— could still say, “The sacred duties which civilized nations owe to the independence and nationality of each other, are not binding towards those to whom nation­ ality and independence are certain evil, or at best a questionable good.”2 Ideas like this were not original with Mill; they were already current in the English subjugation of Ireland during the sixteenth century and, as Nicholas Canny3 has persuasively demonstrated, were equally useful in the ideology of English colonization in the Americas. Almost all colonial schemes begin with an assumption of native backwardness and general inadequacy to be inde­ pendent, “equal,” and fit. Why that should be so, why sacred obligation on one front should not be binding on another, why rights accepted in one may be denied in another, are questions best understood in the terms of a culture well-grounded in moral, economic, and even metaphysical norms designed to approve a satis­ fying local, that is European, order and to permit the abrogation of the right to a similar order abroad. Such a statement may appear preposterous or extreme. In fact, it formulates the connection between Europe’s well­ being and cultural identity on the one hand and, on the other, the subjuga­ tion of imperial realms overseas rather too fastidiously and circumspectly. Part of our difficulty today in accepting any connection at all is that we tend to reduce this complicated matter to an apparently simple causal one, which in turn produces a rhetoric of blame and defensiveness. I am not saying that the major factor in early European culture was that it caused late-nineteenthcentury imperialism, and I am not implying that all the problems of the formerly colonial world should be blamed on Europe. I am saying, however, that European culture often, if not always, characterized itself in such a way as simultaneously to validate its own preferences while also advocating those preferences in conjunction with distant imperial rule. Mill certainly did: he always recommended that India not be given independence. When for vari­ ous reasons imperial rule concerned Europe more intensely after 1880, this schizophrenic habit became useful. The first thing to be done now is more or less to jettison simple causality in thinking through the relationship between Europe and the non-European world, and lessening the hold on our thought of the equally simple temporal sequence. We must not admit any notion, for instance, that proposes to show that Wordsworth, Austen, or Coleridge,4 because they wrote before 1857, actually caused the establishment of formal British governmental rule over India after 1857. We should try to discern instead a counterpoint between overt patterns in British writing about Britain and representations of the world beyond the British Isles. The inherent mode for this counterpoint is not temporal but spatial. How do writers in the period before the great age of explicit, programmatic colonial expansion— the “scramble for Africa,”5 say— 2. John Stuart M ill, Disquisitions and Discussions, Vol. 3 (London: Longm ans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1875), pp. 167—68. For an earlier version of this see the discussion by Nicholas Canny, “The Ideology o f English Colonization: From Ireland to America,” W illiam and Mary Quarterly 30 (1973), 5 7 5 -9 8 [Said’s note]. Mill (1 8 0 6 -1 8 7 3 ), British philosopher; the quotation comes from “A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” an essay that origi­ nally appeared in 1859.

3. Irish historian (b. 1944). 4. S A M U E L TA YL OR C O L E R I D G E (1772-1834) and w i l l i a m w o r d s w o r t h (1770-1850), major English poets of the Romantic period. Jane Austen (1775— 1817), major English novelist whose works include Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Mansfield Park (1814), discussed below. 5. The competing attempts by more than a halfdozen European powers to lay claim to African territory at the end of the 19th century.

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situate and see themselves and their work in the larger world? We shall find them using striking but careful strategies, many of them derived from expected sources— positive ideas of home, of a nation and its language, of proper order, good behavior, moral values. But positive ideas of this sort do more than validate “our” world. They also tend to devalue other worlds and, perhaps more significantly from a retro­ spective point of view, they do not prevent or inhibit or give resistance to hor­ rendously unattractive imperialist practices. No, cultural forms like the novel or the opera do not cause people to go out and imperialize— Carlyle did not drive Rhodes6 directly, and he certainly cannot be “blamed” for the problems in today’s southern Africa— but it is genuinely troubling to see how little Brit­ ain’s great humanistic ideas, institutions, and monuments, which we still cel­ ebrate as having the power ahistorically to command our approval, how little they stand in the way of the accelerating imperial process. We are entitled to ask how this body of humanistic ideas co-existed so comfortably with imperi­ alism, and why— until the resistance to imperialism in the imperial dom ain, among Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, developed— there was little sig­ nificant opposition or deterrence to empire at home. Perhaps the custom of distinguishing “our” home and order from “theirs” grew into a harsh political rule for accumulating more of “them” to rule, study, and subordinate. In the great, humane ideas and values promulgated by mainstream European cul­ ture, we have precisely that “mould of ideas or conditioned reflexes” of which Kiernan speaks, into which the whole business of empire later flowed. The extent to which these ideas are actually invested in geographical dis­ tinctions between real places is the subject of Raymond Williams’s richest book, The Country and the City.7 His argument concerning the interplay between rural and urban places in England admits of the most extraordinary transformations— from the pastoral populism of Langland, through Ben Jon­ son’s country-house poems and the novels of Dickens’s8 London, right up to visions of the metropolis in twentieth-century literature. Mainly, of course, the book is about how English culture has dealt with land, its possession, imagination, and organization. And while he does address the export of England to the colonies, Williams does so, as I suggested earlier, in a less focussed way and less expansively than the practice actually warrants. Near the end of The Country and the City he volunteers that “from at least the mid­ nineteenth century, and with important instances earlier, there was this larger context [the relationship between England and the colonies, whose effects on the English imagination “have gone deeper than can easily be traced”] within which every idea and every image was consciously and uncon­ sciously affected.”9 He goes on quickly to cite “the idea of emigration to the colonies” as one such image prevailing in various novels by Dickens, the

6. Cecil Rhodes (18 5 3 -1 9 0 2 ), British imperialist who was prime minister of the Cape Town colony in South Africa in the early 1890s and profited from the diamond mines there. Thom as Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian and essayist; in “An O ccasional Discourse on the Nigger Q ues­ tion” (1849), he asserted that blacks should be disciplined and governed by whites. 7. Published in 1973 by w i l l i a m s (1 9 2 1 -1 9 8 8 ),

influential British critic and cultural theorist. 8. Charles Dickens (1 8 1 2 -1 8 7 0 ), most popular English novelist of the 19th century. W illiam Langland (ca. 1 3 3 0 -1 3 8 7 ), probable author of one of the earliest English poems, Piers Plowman. Jonson (1 572-1637), English poet and playwright. 9. The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 281 [Said’s note and brackets].

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Brontes, Gaskell,1 and rightly shows that “new rural societies,” all of them colonial, enter the imaginative metropolitan economy of English literature via Kipling, early Orwell, Maugham.2 After 1880 there comes a “dramatic extension of landscape and social relations”: this corresponds more or less exactly with the great age of empire. It is dangerous to disagree with Williams, yet I would venture to say that if one began to look for something like an imperial map of the world in English literature, it would turn up with amazing insistence and frequency well before the mid-nineteenth century. And turn up not only with the inert regu­ larity suggesting something taken for granted, but— more interestingly— threaded through, forming a vital part of the texture of linguistic and cultural practice. There were established English offshore interests in Ireland, Amer­ ica, the Caribbean, and Asia from the sixteenth century on, and even a quick inventory reveals poets, philosophers, historians, dramatists, statesmen, nov­ elists, travel writers, chroniclers, soldiers, and fabulists who prized, cared for, and traced these interests with continuing concern. (Much of this is well discussed by Peter Hulme in Colonial Encounters.)3 Similar points may be made for France, Spain, and Portugal, not only as overseas powers in their own right, but as competitors with the British. How can we examine these interests at work in modern England before the age of empire, i.e., during the period between 1800 and 1870? We would do well to follow Williams’s lead, and look first at that period of crisis following upon England’s wide-scale land enclosure at the end of the eighteenth century. The old organic rural communities were dissolved and new ones forged under the impulse of parliamentary activity, industrializa­ tion, and demographic dislocation, but there also occurred a new process of relocating England (and in France, France) within a much larger circle of the world map. During the first half of the eighteenth century, Anglo-French competition in North America and India was intense, in the second half there were numerous violent encounters between England and France in the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Levant, and of course in Europe itself. The major pre-Romantic literature in France and England contains a constant stream of references to the overseas dominions: one thinks not only of vari­ ous Encyclopedists, the Abbe Raynal, de Brosses, and Volney, but also of Edmund Burke, Beckford, Gibbon, Johnson, and William Jones.4 In 1902 J. A. Hobson described imperialism as the expansion of national­ ity, implying that the process was understandable mainly by considering expansion as the more important of the two terms, since “nationality” was a 1. Elizabeth Gaskell (18 1 0 -1 8 6 5 ), English writer. “T h e B rontes”: W illiam s discusses the English novels Shirley (1849) and W uthering Heights (1847) by the sisters C h arlotte (1816—1855) and Emily Bronte (1 8 1 8 -1 8 4 8 ). 2. W illiam Som erset Maugham (1 8 7 4 -1 9 6 5 ), English novelist. Rudyard Kipling (1 8 6 5 -1 9 3 6 ), English novelist and poet known for writings set in India. George Orwell (pen name of Eric Blair, 1 9 0 3 -1 9 5 0 ), English novelist and essayist who was an imperial police officer in Burm a. 3. Peter H ulm e, C olon ial E ncounters: E urope and the Native C aribbean , 1492—1797 (London: M ethuen, 1986). See also his anthology with Neil L. W hitehead, Wild Majesty: Encounters with C aribsfrom Columbus to the Present Day (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1992) [Said's note]. Hulme (b. 1948), British cultural critic. 4. English philologist and judge in India (1746— 1794). Encyclopedists: 18th-century French intel­ lectuals who attempted to compile a comprehensive encyclopedia. Abbe Raynal (1713-1796), French historian and philosopher. C harles de Brosses (1709—1777), French scholar. Constantin-Fran^ois Chassebceuf, comte de Volney (1757-1820), French historian and politician, b u r k e (1729-1797), Brit­ ish writer and statesman. W illiam Thom as Beck­ ford (1 7 6 0 -1 8 4 4 ), English novelist and dilettante. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), English historian. S a m u e l J o h n s o n (1709-1784), English essayist, poet, and lexicographer; his single novel, Rasselas (1759), is set in the Orient.

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fully formed, fixed quantity,5 whereas a century before it was still in the pro­ cess of being form ed, at home and abroad as well. In Physics and Politics (1887) Walter Bagehot6 speaks with extraordinary relevance of “nationmaking.” Between France and Britain in the late eighteenth century there were two contests: the battle for strategic gains abroad— in India, the Nile delta, the Western Hemisphere— and the battle for a triumphant nationality. Both battles contrast “Englishness” with “the French,” and no matter how intimate and closeted the supposed English or French “essence” appears to be, it was almost always thought of as being (as opposed to already) made, and being fought out with the other great competitor. Thackerays Becky Sharp,7 for example, is as much an upstart as she is because of her halfFrench heritage. Earlier in the century, the upright abolitionist posture of Wilberforce and his allies developed partly out of a desire to make life harder for French hegemony in the Antilles.8 These considerations suddenly provide a fascinatingly expanded dimen­ sion to Mansfield Park (1814), the most explicit in its ideological and moral affirmations of Austen’s novels. Williams once again is in general dead right: Austen’s novels express an “attainable quality of life,” in money and property acquired, moral discriminations made, the right choices put in place, the cor­ rect “improvements’’ implemented, the finely nuanced language affirmed and classified. Yet, Williams continues, What [Cobbett] names, riding past on the road, are classes. Jane Austen, from inside the houses, can never see that, for all the intricacy of her social description. All her discrimination is, understandably, internal and exclusive. She is concerned with the conduct of people who, in the complications of improvement, are repeatedly trying to make themselves into a class. But where only one class is seen, no classes are seen.9 As a general description of how Austen manages to elevate certain “moral discriminations” into “an independent value,” this is excellent. Where Mans­ field Park is concerned, however, a good deal more needs to be said, giving greater explicitness and width to Williams’s survey. Perhaps then Austen, and indeed, pre-imperialist novels generally, will appear to be more implicated in the rationale for imperialist expansion than at first sight they have been. After Lukacs and Proust,1 we have become so accustomed to thinking of the novel’s plot and structure as constituted mainly by temporality that we have overlooked the function of space, geography, and location. For it is not

5. J. A. Hobson, Im perialism: A Study (1902; rpt. Ann Arbor: University of M ichigan Press, 1972), p. 6 [Said’s note]. Hobson (1858—1940), English econom ist. 6. English econom ist and critic (1 8 2 6 —1877). 7. The social-clim bing antiheroine of Vanity Fair (1848), the best-known work by the English novel­ ist W illiam M akepeace Thackeray (1811-1863). 8. This is most memorably discussed in C. L. R. Jam es’s T he B lack Jacobin s : Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1963), especially Chapter 2, “The O w ners.” See also Robin Blackburn, T he Over­ throw o f C olonial Slavery 1776-1848 (London: Verso, 1988), pp. 1 4 9 -5 3 [Said ’s note]. Jam es

(1901—1989), Trinidadian critic. Blackburn (b. 1940), British historian. W illiam W ilberforce (1759—1833), English politician and abolitionist. 9. W illiam s, Country and the City, p. 117 [Said’s note]. W illiam Cobbett (1763-1835), English rad­ ical journalist and reformer; his Rural Rides (1830) focuses on rural workers. 1. M arcel Proust (1871—1922), French novelist whose great work was the multivolume A la recherche du temps perdu (1913—27, In Search o f Lost Time; first translated into English with the title R em em brance o f Things Past), g y o r g y l u k a c s (1 885-1971), M arxist critic and theorist; one of his best-known works is The Historical Novel (1955; see above).

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only the very young Stephen Dedalus,2 but every other young protagonist before him as well, who sees himself in a widening spiral at home, in Ire­ land, in the world. Like many other novels, M ansfield Park is very precisely about a series of both small and large dislocations and relocations in space that occur before, at the end of the novel, Fanny Price, the niece, becomes the spiritual mistress of Mansfield Park.3 And that place itself is located by Austen at the center of an arc of interests and concerns spanning the hemi­ sphere, two major seas, and four continents. As in Austen’s other novels, the central group that finally emerges with marriage and property “ordained” is not based exclusively upon blood. Her novel enacts the disaffiliation (in the literal sense) of some members of a family, and the affiliation between others and one or two chosen and tested outsiders: in other words, blood relationships are not enough to assure con­ tinuity, hierarchy, authority, both domestic and international. Thus Fanny Price— the poor niece, the orphaned child from the outlying city of Ports­ mouth, the neglected, demure, and upright wallflower— gradually acquires a status commensurate with, even superior to, that of most of her more fortunate relatives. In this pattern of affiliation and in her assumption of authority, Fanny Price is relatively passive. She resists the misdemeanors and the importunings of others, and very occasionally she ventures actions on her own: all in all, though, one has the impression that Austen has designs for her that Fanny herself can scarcely comprehend, just as through­ out the novel Fanny is thought of by everyone as “comfort” and “acquisition” despite herself. Like Kipling’s Kim O ’Hara,4 Fanny is both device and instru­ ment in a larger pattern, as well as a fully fledged novelistic character. Fanny, like Kim, requires direction, requires the patronage and outside authority that her own impoverished experience cannot provide. Her con­ scious connections are to some people and to some places, but the novel reveals other connections of which she has faint glimmerings that never­ theless demand her presence and service. She comes into a situation that opens with an intricate set of moves which, taken together, demand sorting out, adjustment, and rearrangement. Sir Thomas Bertram has been capti­ vated by one Ward sister, the others have not done well, and “an absolute breach” opens up; their “circles were so distinct,” the distances between them so great that they have been out of touch for eleven years;5 fallen on hard times, the Prices seek out the Bertrams. Gradually, and even though she is not the eldest, Fanny becomes the focus of attention as she is sent to Mansfield Park, there to begin her new life. Similarly, the Bertrams have given up London (the result of Lady Bertram’s “little ill health and a great deal of indolence”) and come to reside entirely in the country.

2. T he protagonist of Portrait o f the Artist as a Young Man (1914-15) and Ulysses (1922), by Jam es Joyce. 3. The estate of the wealthy Sir Thom as Bertram, in a county about 70 miles northwest of London. Fanny Price, his niece, is the novel’s heroine; at age 10, she comes to live at Mansfield Park with her 4 older cousins: Tom, Edm und, M aria, and Julia. 4. The protagonist of Kipling’s Kim (1901), a novel about the orphaned son of an Irish soldier in

India. 5. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, ed. Tony Tanner (1814; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), p. 42. The best account of the novel is in Tony Tan­ ner’s Ja n e Austen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986) [Said’s note]. There were three Ward sisters; one married Sir Thom as Ber­ tram, the second his friend the Rev. Mr. Norris (who becam e minister in a nearby church), and the third an officer in the marines, Mr. Price.

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What sustains this life materially is the Bertram estate in Antigua, which is not doing well. Austen takes pains to show us two apparently disparate but actually convergent processes: the growth of Fanny's importance to the Ber­ trams’ economy, including Antigua, and Fanny’s own steadfastness in the face of numerous challenges, threats, and surprises. In both, Austens imag­ ination works with a steel-like rigor through a mode that we might call geo­ graphical and spatial clarification. Fanny’s ignorance when she arrives at Mansfield as a frightened ten-year-old is signified by her inability to “put the map of Europe together/’6 and for much of the first half of the novel the action is concerned with a whole range of issues whose common denomina­ tor, misused or misunderstood, is space: not only is Sir Thomas in Antigua to make things better there and at home, but at Mansfield Park, Fanny, Edmund, and her aunt Norris negotiate where she is to live, read, and work, where fires are to be lit; the friends and cousins concern themselves with the improvement of estates, and the importance of chapels (i.e., religious author­ ity) to domesticity is envisioned and debated. When, as a device for stirring things up, the Crawfords7 suggest a play (the tinge of France that hangs a little suspiciously over their background is significant), Fanny’s discomfi­ ture is polarizingly acute. She cannot participate, cannot easily accept that rooms for living are turned into theatrical space, although, with all its confusion of roles and purposes, the play, Kotzebue’s Lovers’ Vows,8 is pre­ pared for anyway. We are to surmise, I think, that while Sir Thomas is away tending his colonial garden, a number of inevitable mismeasurements (explicitly associ­ ated with feminine “lawlessness”) will occur. These are apparent not only in innocent strolls by the three pairs of young friends through a park, in which people lose and catch sight of one another unexpectedly, but most clearly in the various flirtations and engagements between the young men and women left without true parental authority, Lady Bertram being indif­ ferent, Mrs. Norris unsuitable. There is sparring, innuendo, perilous taking on of roles: all of this of course crystallizes in preparations for the play, in which something dangerously close to libertinage is about to be (but never is) enacted. Fanny, whose earlier sense of alienation, distance, and fear derives from her first uprooting, now becomes a sort of surrogate con­ science about what is right and how far is too much. Yet she has no power to implement her uneasy awareness, and until Sir Thomas suddenly returns from “abroad,” the rudderless drift continues. When he does appear, preparations for the play are immediately stopped, and in a passage remarkable for its executive dispatch, Austen narrates the re-establishment of Sir Thomas’s local rule: It was a busy morning with him. Conversation with any of them occu­ pied but a small part of it. He had to reinstate himself in all the wonted concerns of his Mansfield life, to see his steward and his bailiff—to examine and compute— and, in the intervals of business, to walk into his

6. Ibid., p. 54 [Said ’s note]. 7. Henry and Mary Crawford, well-off siblings who, as young adults, come to live in Mansfield. 8. A very successful English adaptation (1798) by Elizabeth Inchbald of Das Kind der Liebe (1780,

The Child o f Love) by the German playwright August von Kotzebue (1761-1819); the play’s sub­ je c t matter (extramarital sex, illegitimacy) made it particularly unsuitable.

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stables and his gardens, and nearest plantations; but active and methodi­ cal, he had not only done all this before he resumed his seat as master of the house at dinner, he had also set the carpenter to work in pulling down what had been so lately put up in the billiard room, and given the scene painter his dismissal, long enough to justify the pleasing belief of his being then at least as far off as Northampton. The scene painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room, ruined all the coachman’s sponges, and made five of the under-servants idle and dissatisfied; and Sir Thomas was in hopes that another day or two would suffice to wipe away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of every unbound copy o f ‘Lovers’ Vows’ in the house, for he was burning all that met his eye.9 The force of this paragraph is unmistakable. Not only is this a Crusoe1 set­ ting things in order: it is also an early Protestant eliminating all traces of frivolous behavior. There is nothing in Mansfield Park that would contradict us, however, were we to assume that Sir Thomas does exactly the same things— on a larger scale— in his Antigua “plantations.” Whatever was wrong there— and the internal evidence garnered by Warren Roberts suggests that economic depression, slavery, and competition with France were at issue2— Sir Thomas was able to fix, thereby maintaining his control over his colonial domain. More clearly than anywhere else in her fiction, Austen here synchro­ nizes domestic with international authority, making it plain that the values associated with such higher things as ordination, law, and propriety must be grounded firmly in actual rule over and possession of territory. She sees clearly that to hold and rule Mansfield Park is to hold and rule an imperial estate in close, not to say inevitable association with it. What assures the domestic tranquility and attractive harmony of one is the productivity and regulated discipline of the other. Before both can be fully secured, however, Fanny must become more actively involved in the unfolding action. From frightened and often victim­ ized poor relation she is gradually transformed into a directly participating member of the Bertram household at Mansfield Park. For this, I believe, Austen designed the second part of the book, which contains not only the failure of the Edmund—Mary Crawford romance as well as the disgraceful profligacy of Lydia3 and Henry Crawford, but Fanny Price’s rediscovery and rejection of her Portsmouth home, the injury and incapacitation of Tom Ber­ tram (the eldest son), and the launching of William Price’s4 naval career. This entire ensemble of relationships and events is finally capped with Edmund’s marriage to Fanny, whose place in Lady Bertram’s household is taken by Susan Price, her sister. It is no exaggeration to interpret the concluding sec­ tions of Mansfield Park as the coronation of an arguably unnatural (or at very least, illogical) principle at the heart of a desired English order. The audacity

9. Austen, Mansfield. Park, p. 2 0 6 [Said’s note]. 1 .T h a t is, Robinson Crusoe, the title character in Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel about an English castaway who spends 28 years on a deserted island, where he creates a version of British rule. 2. Warren Roberts, Ja n e Austen and the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 97—98. See also Avrom Fleishm an, A Reading o f Mans­

field Park: An Essay in Critical Synthesis (M inne­ apolis: University of M innesota Press, 1967), pp. 3 6 - 3 9 and passim [Said’s note]. 3. Said ’s error for Maria (Bertram ), who, soon after her wedding, leaves her husband for Henry Crawford. 4. Fanny’s estim able older brother.

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of Austens vision is disguised a little by her voice, which despite its occa­ sional archness is understated and notably modest. But we should not mis­ construe the limited references to the outside world, her lightly stressed allusions to work, process, and class, her apparent ability to abstract (in Ray­ mond Williams’s phrase) “an everyday uncompromising morality which is in the end separable from its social basis.”5 In fact Austen is far less diffident, far more severe. The clues are to be found in Fanny, or rather in how rigorously we are able to consider her. True, her visit to her original Portsmouth home, where her immediate family still resides, upsets the aesthetic and emotional bal­ ance she has become accustomed to at Mansfield Park, and true she has begun to take its wonderful luxuries for granted, even as being essential. These are fairly routine and natural consequences of getting used to a new place. But Austen is talking about two other matters we must not mistake. One is Fanny’s newly enlarged sense of what it means to be at h o m e; when she takes stock of things after she gets to Portsmouth, this is not merely a matter of expanded space. Fanny was almost stunned. The smallness of the house, and thinness of the walls, brought every thing so close to her, that, added to the fatigue of her journey, and all her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to bear it. W ithin the room all was tranquil enough, for Susan having dis­ appeared with the others, there were soon only her father and herself remaining; and he taking out a newspaper— the accustomary loan of a neighbour, applied himself to studying it, without seeming to recollect her existence. The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper, without any reference to her possible convenience; but she had nothing to do, and was glad to have the light screened from her aching head, as she sat in bewildered, broken, sorrowful contemplation. She was at home. But alas! it was not such a home, she had not such a welcome, as— she checked herself; she was unreasonable. . . . A day or two might shew the difference. She only was to blame. Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield. No, in her uncle’s house there would have been a consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject, a propriety, an attention towards every body which there was not here.6 In too small a space, you cannot see clearly, you cannot think clearly, you cannot have regulation or attention of the proper sort. The fineness of Aus­ ten’s detail (“the solitary candle was held between himself and the paper, without any reference to her possible convenience”) renders very precisely the dangers of unsociability, of lonely insularity, of diminished awareness that are rectified in larger and better administered spaces. That such spaces are not available to Fanny by direct inheritance, legal title, by propinquity, contiguity, or adjacence (Mansfield Park and Ports­ mouth are separated by many hours’ journey) is precisely Austen’s point. To earn the right to Mansfield Park you must first leave home as a kind of inden­ tured servant or, to put the case in extreme terms, as a kind of transported commodity— this, clearly, is the fate of Fanny and her brother William— but

5. W illiam s, T he Country and the City, p. 116.

6. Austen, Mansfield Park, pp. 3 7 5 -7 6 [Said’s note].

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then you have the promise of future wealth. I think Austen sees what Fanny does as a domestic or small-scale movement in space that corresponds to the larger, more openly colonial movements of Sir Thomas, her mentor, the man whose estate she inherits. The two movements depend on each other. The second more complex matter about which Austen speaks, albeit indi­ rectly, raises an interesting theoretical issue. Austen’s awareness of empire is obviously very different, alluded to very much more casually, than Conrad’s7 or Kipling’s. In her time the British were extremely active in the Caribbean and in South America, notably Brazil and Argentina. Austen seems only vaguely aware of the details of these activities, although the sense that exten­ sive West Indian plantations were important was fairly widespread in metro­ politan England. Antigua and Sir Thomas’s trip there have a definitive function in M ansfield P ark, which, I have been saying, is both incidental, referred to only in passing, and absolutely crucial to the action. How are we to assess Austen’s few references to Antigua, and what are we to make of them interpretatively? My contention is that by that very odd combination of casualness and stress, Austen reveals herself to be assuming (just as Fanny assumes, in both senses of the word) the importance of an empire to the situation at home. Let me go further. Since Austen refers to and uses Antigua as she does in Mans­ field Park, there needs to be a commensurate effort on the part of her readers to understand concretely the historical valences in the reference; to put it differently, we should try to understand what she referred to, why she gave it the importance she did, and why indeed she made the choice, for she might have done something different to establish Sir Thomas’s wealth. Let us now calibrate the signifying power of the references to Antigua in Mansfield Park; how do they occupy the place they do, what are they doing there? According to Austen we are to conclude that no matter how isolated and insulated the English place (e.g., Mansfield Park), it requires overseas suste­ nance. Sir Thomas’s property in the Caribbean would have had to be a sugar plantation maintained by slave labor (not abolished until the 1830s): these are not dead historical facts but, as Austen certainly knew, evident histori­ cal realities. Before the Anglo-French competition the major distinguishing characteristic of Western empires (Roman, Spanish, and Portuguese) was that the earlier empires were bent on loot, as Conrad puts it,8 on the trans­ port of treasure from the colonies to Europe, with very little attention to development, organization, or system within the colonies themselves; Britain and, to a lesser degree, France both wanted to make their empires long-term, profitable, ongoing concerns, and they competed in this enterprise, nowhere more so than in the colonies of the Caribbean, where the transport of slaves, the functioning of large sugar plantations, and the development of sugar mar­ kets, which raised the issues of protectionism, monopolies, and price— all these were more or less constantly, competitively at issue. Far from being nothing much “out there,” British colonial possessions in the Antilles and Leeward Islands were during Jane Austen’s time a crucial 7. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish-born English novelist, who w'orked as a sailor when young and whose novels are almost all set in remote colonies of European powers. 8. In “Geography and Some Explorers” (1924),

Conrad calls the carving up of A frica by E uro­ peans the “vilest scram ble for loot that ever dis­ figured the history o f human co n scien ce and geographical exploration.”

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setting for Anglo-French colonial competition. Revolutionary ideas from France were being exported there, and there was a steady decline in British profits: the French sugar plantations were producing more sugar at less cost. However, slave rebellions in and out of Haiti9 were incapacitating France and spurring British interests to intervene more directly and to gain greater local power. Still, compared with its earlier prominence for the home market, Brit­ ish Caribbean sugar production in the nineteenth century had to compete with alternative sugar-cane supplies in Brazil and Mauritius, the emergence of a European beet-sugar industry, and the gradual dominance of free-trade ideology and practice. In Mansfield Park— both in its formal characteristics and in its contents— a number of these currents converge. The most important is the avowedly com­ plete subordination of colony to metropolis. Sir Thomas, absent from Mans­ field Park, is never seen as present in Antigua, which elicits at most a half dozen references in the novel. There is a passage, a part of which I quoted earlier, from John Stuart M ills Principles o f Political Economy that catches the spirit of Austen’s use of Antigua. I quote it here in full: These [outlying possessions of ours] are hardly to be looked upon as countries, carrying on an exchange of commodities with other countries, but more properly as outlying agricultural or manufacturing estates belonging to a larger community. Our West Indian colonies, for example, cannot be regarded as countries with a productive capital of their own . . . [but are rather] the place where England finds it convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee and a few other tropical com­ modities. All the capital employed is English capital; almost all the industry is carried on for English uses; there is little production of any­ thing except for staple commodities, and these are sent to England, not to be exchanged for things exported to the colony and consumed by its inhabitants, but to be sold in England for the benefit of the proprietors there. The trade with the West Indies is hardly to be considered an exter­ nal trade, but more resembles the traffic between town and country.1 To some extent Antigua is like London or Portsmouth, a less desirable set­ ting than a country estate like Mansfield Park, but producing goods to be consumed by everyone (by the early nineteenth century every Britisher used sugar), although owned and maintained by a small group of aristocrats and gentry. The Bertrams and the other characters in Mansfield Park are a sub­ group within the minority, and for them the island is wealth, which Austen regards as being converted to propriety, order, and, at the end of the novel, comfort, an added good. But why “added”? Because, Austen tells us pointedly in the final chapters, she wants to “restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”2 This can be interpreted to mean first that the novel has done enough in the way of destabilizing the lives of “every body” and must now set them at rest: actually Austen says this explicitly, in a bit of meta-fictional impatience, the 9. Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, after a bloody revolt by mulattoes and freed blacks. l.Jo h n Stuart M ill, Principles o f Political E con­ omy, Vol. 3, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto: University

of Toronto Press, 1965), p. 693. The passage is quoted in Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place o f Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking, 1985), p. 42 [Said’s note]. 2. Austen, M ansfield Park, p. 4 4 6 [Said’s note].

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novelist commenting on her own work as having gone on long enough and now needing to be brought to a close. Second, it can mean that “every body” may now be finally permitted to realize what it means to be properly at home, and at rest, without the need to wander about or to come and go. (This does not include young William, who, we assume, will continue to roam the seas in the British navy on whatever commercial and political missions may still be required. Such matters draw from Austen only a last brief gesture, a pass­ ing remark about Williams “continuing good conduct and rising fam e”) As for those finally resident in Mansfield Park itself, more in the way of domes­ ticated advantages is given to these now fully acclimatized souls, and to none more than to Sir Thomas. He understands for the first time what has been missing in his education of his children, and he understands it in the terms paradoxically provided for him by unnamed outside forces, so to speak, the wealth of Antigua and the imported example of Fanny Price. Note here how the curious alternation of outside and inside follows the pattern identified by Mill of the outside becom ing the inside by use and, to use Austens word, “disposition”: Here [in his deficiency of training, of allowing Mrs. Norris too great a role, of letting his children dissemble and repress feeling] had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education. Some thing must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting, that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers, by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments— the authorized object of their youth— could have had no useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed to the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any lips that could profit them.3 What was wanting within was in fact supplied by the wealth derived from a West Indian plantation and a poor provincial relative, both brought in to Mansfield Park and set to work. Yet on their own, neither the one nor the other could have sufficed; they require each other and then, more impor­ tant, they need executive disposition, which in turn helps to reform the rest of the Bertram circle. All this Austen leaves to her reader to supply in the way of literal explication. And that is what reading her entails. But all these things having to do with the outside brought in seem unmistakably there in the suggestiveness of her allusive and abstract language. A principle “wanting within * is, I believe, intended to evoke for us memories of Sir Thomas’s absences in Antigua, or the sentimental and near-whimsical vagary on the part of the three variously deficient Ward sisters by which a niece is displaced from one household to another. But that the Bertrams did become better if not altogether good, that

3. Ibid., p. 4 4 8 [Said’s note].

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some sense of duty was imparted to them, that they learned to govern their inclinations and tempers and brought religion into daily practice, that they “directed disposition”: all of this did occur because outside (or rather outly­ ing) factors were lodged properly inward, became native to Mansfield Park, with Fanny the niece its final spiritual mistress, and Edmund the second son its spiritual master.4 An additional benefit is that Mrs. Norris is dislodged; this is described as “the great supplementary comfort of Sir Thomas’s life.” ’ Once the principles have been interiorized, the comforts follow: Fanny is settled for the time being at Thornton Lacey “with every attention to her comfort”; her home later becomes “the home of affection and comfort”; Susan is brought in “first as a comfort to Fanny, then as an auxiliary, and at last as her substitute”6 when the new import takes Fanny’s place by Lady Bertram’s side. The pattern established at the outset of the novel clearly continues, only now it has what Austen intended to give it all along, an internalized and retrospectively guar­ anteed rationale. This is the rationale that Raymond Williams describes as “an everyday, uncompromising morality which is in the end separable from its social basis and which, in other hands, can be turned against it.” I have tried to show that the morality in fact is not separable from its social basis: right up to the last sentence, Austen affirms and repeats the geograph­ ical process of expansion involving trade, production, and consumption that predates, underlies, and guarantees the morality. And expansion, as Galla­ gher reminds us, whether “through colonial rule was liked or disliked, [its] desirability through one mode or another was generally accepted. So in the event there were few domestic constraints upon expansion.”7 Most critics have tended to forget or overlook that process, which has seemed less impor­ tant to critics than Austen herself seemed to think. But interpreting Jane Austen depends on who does the interpreting, when it is done, and no less important, from where it is done. If with feminists, with great cultural critics sensitive to history and class like Williams, with cultural and stylistic inter­ preters, we have been sensitized to the issues their interests raise, we should now proceed to regard the geographical division of the world— after all sig­ nificant to Mansfield Park— as not neutral (any more than class and gender are neutral) but as politically charged, beseeching the attention and elucida­ tion its considerable proportions require. The question is thus not only how to understand and with what to connect Austen’s morality and its social basis, but also what to read of it. Take once again the casual references to Antigua, the ease with which Sir Thomas’s needs in England are met by a Caribbean sojourn, the uninflected, unreflective citations of Antigua (or the Mediterranean, or India, which is where Lady Bertram, in a fit of distracted impatience, requires that William should go “‘that I may have a shawl. I think I will have two shawls.’”8 They stand for a significance “out there” that frames the genuinely important action here, but not for a great significance. Yet these signs of “abroad”

4. Fanny and Edmund marry, and at the novel’s end they are living in the parsonage in Mansfield (not at Mansfield Park itself). 5. Austen, M ansfield Park, p. 4 5 0 [Said’s note]. 6. Ibid., p. 456 [Said’s note]. Thornton Lacey: the house attached to Edm und’s first post as a cler­

gyman. 7. John Gallagher, T he D ecline, Revival and Fall o f the British Em pire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 76 [Said’s note]. G al­ lagher (1 9 1 9 -1 9 8 0 ) British historian. 8. Austen, M ansfield Park, p. 3 0 8 [Said’s note].

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include, even as they repress, a rich and complex history, which has since achieved a status that the Bertrams, the Prices, and Austen herself would not, could not recognize. To call this “the Third World”9 begins to deal with the realities but by no means exhausts the political or cultural history. We must first take stock of Mansfield Park’s prefigurations of a later English history as registered in fiction. The Bertrams' usable colony in Mansfield Park can be read as pointing forward to Charles Gould’s San Tome mine in Nostromo, or to the Wilcoxes’ Imperial and West African Rubber Com­ pany in Forster’s Howards End, or to any of these distant but convenient treasure spots in Great Expectations, Jean Rhys’s W ide Sargasso Sea, Heart o f Darkness1— resources to be visited, talked about, described, or appreciated for domestic reasons, for local metropolitan benefit. If we think ahead to these other novels, Sir Thomas’s Antigua readily acquires a slightly greater density than the discrete, reticent appearances it makes in the pages of M an­ sfield Park. And already our reading of the novel begins to open up at those points where ironically Austen was most economical and her critics most (dare one say it?) negligent. Her “Antigua” is therefore not just a slight but a definite way of marking the outer limits of what Williams calls domestic improvements, or a quick allusion to the mercantile venturesomeness of acquiring overseas dominions as a source for local fortunes, or one reference among many attesting to a historical sensibility suffused not just with man­ ners and courtesies but with contests of ideas, struggles with Napoleonic France,2 awareness of seismic economic and social change during a revolu­ tionary period in world history. Second, we must see “Antigua” held in a precise place in Austen’s moral geography, and in her prose, by historical changes that her novel rides like a vessel on a mighty sea. The Bertrams could not have been possible with­ out the slave trade, sugar, and the colonial planter class; as a social type Sir Thomas would have been familiar to eighteenth- and early-nineteenthcentury readers who knew the powerful influence of the class through poli­ tics, plays (like Cumberland’s T he West Indian3), and many other public activities (large houses, famous parties and social rituals, well-known com­ mercial enterprises, celebrated marriages). As the old system of protected monopoly gradually disappeared and as a new class of settler-planters dis­ placed the old absentee system, the West Indian interest lost dominance: cotton manufacture, an even more open system of trade, and abolition of the slave trade reduced the power and prestige of people like the Bertrams, whose frequency of sojourn in the Caribbean then decreased.

9. T he “underdeveloped” countries, many of them former colonies, now dominated by highly indus­ trialized “first world” (largely Western) nations in a global economy. 1. Conrad’s Heart o f Darkness (1902) is set in the Belgian Congo, from which trading companies extract ivory; his Nostromo (1904), set in South America, features a mineral mine controlled by a character named Charles Gould. Howards End (1910), by the English novelist E. M. Forster (1879—1970), depicts three families; the richest of them, the Wilcoxes, own the Imperial and West A frican Rubber Company. The secret benefactor of the protagonist of Dickens’s Great Expectations

(1 8 6 0 —61) is an escaped convict who has made his fortun e in A ustralia. W ide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Rhys (1 8 9 0 -1 9 7 9 ), a novelist born in Dom inica, is a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Ja n e Eyre (1847); it focuses on a white Creole from Jam aica, the mad first wife of Edward Rochester. 2. That is, France under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), who was proclaimed emperor of the French (1 8 0 4 -1 5 ); Britain waged war against him from 1803 until his final defeat in 1815. 3. A com edic 1771 play by the English dramatist Richard Cum berland (1732—1811).

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Thus Sir Thomas’s infrequent trips to Antigua as an absentee plantation owner reflect the diminishment in his class’s power, a reduction directly expressed in the title of Lowell Ragatz’s4 classic T h e Fall o f the Planter Class in the British C aribbean, 1763-1833 (1928). But is what is hidden or allusive in Austen made sufficiently explicit more than one hundred years later in Ragatz? Does the aesthetic silence or discretion of a great novel in 1814 receive adequate explication in a major work of historical research a full century later? Can we assume that the process of interpretation is ful­ filled, or will it continue as new material comes to light? For all his learning Ragatz still finds it in himself to speak of “the Negro race” as having the following characteristics: “he stole, he lied, he was sim­ ple, suspicious, inefficient, irresponsible, lazy, superstitious, and loose in his sexual relations.”5 Such “history” as this therefore happily gave way to the revisionary work of Caribbean historians like Eric Williams6 and C.L.R. James, and more recently Robin Blackburn, in T he Overthrow o f Colonial Slavery, 1776—1848; in these works slavery and empire are shown to have fostered the rise and consolidation of capitalism well beyond the old planta­ tion monopolies, as well as to have been a powerful ideological system whose original connection to specific economic interests may have gone, but whose effects continued for decades. The political and moral ideas of the age are to be examined in the very closest relation to the economic development. . . . An outworn interest, whose bankruptcy smells to heaven in historical perspective, can exercise an obstructionist and disruptive effect which can only be explained by the powerful services it had previously ren­ dered and the entrenchment previously gained. . . . The ideas built on these interests continue long after the interests have been destroyed and work their old mischief, which is all the more mis­ chievous because the interests to which they corresponded no longer exist.7 Thus Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery (1961). The question of inter­ pretation, indeed of writing itself, is tied to the question of interests, which we have seen are at work in aesthetic as well as historical writing, then and now. We must not say that since Mansfield Park is a novel, its affiliations with a sordid history are irrelevant or transcended, not only because it is irrespon­ sible to do so, but because we know too much to say so in good faith. Having read M ansfield Park as part of the structure of an expanding imperialist ven­ ture, one cannot simply restore it to the canon of “great literary master­ pieces”— to which it most certainly belongs— and leave it at that. Rather, I think, the novel steadily, if unobtrusively, opens up a broad expanse of domestic imperialist culture without which Britain’s subsequent acquisition of territory would not have been possible.

4. Am erican econom ic historian and pioneer of A frican studies (1 8 9 7 -1 9 7 8 ). 5. Lowell Joseph Ragatz, T he Fall o f the Planter

of independent Trinidad (1911-1981). 7. Eric W illiam s, Capitalism and Slaver)' (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961), p. 211. See also his

Class in the British C aribbean, 1763-1833: A Study in Social an d E conom ic Flistory (1928; rpt.

From Columbus to Castro: The Flistory o f the Carib­ bean , 1 4 92-1969 (London: D eutsch, 1970), pp.

New York: O ctagon, 1963), p. 27 [Said’s note]. 6. Caribbean historian and first prime m inister

177—254 [Said’s note].

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I have spent time on Mansfield Park to illustrate a type of analysis infre­ quently encountered in mainstream interpretations, or for that matter in readings rigorously based in one or another of the advanced theoretical schools. Yet only in the global perspective implied by Jane Austen and her characters can the novels quite astonishing general position be made clear. I think of such a reading as completing or complementing others, not dis­ counting or displacing them. And it bears stressing that because Mansfield Park connects the actualities of British power overseas to the domestic imbro­ glio within the Bertram estate, there is no way of doing such readings as mine, no way of understanding the “structure of attitude and reference” except by working through the novel. Without reading it in full, we would fail to understand the strength of that structure and the way it was activated and maintained in literature. But in reading it carefully, we can sense how ideas about dependent races and territories were held both by foreign-office execu­ tives, colonial bureaucrats, and military strategists and by intelligent novelreaders educating themselves in the fine points of moral evaluation, literary balance, and stylistic finish. There is a paradox here in reading Jane Austen which I have been impressed by but can in no way resolve. All the evidence says that even the most routine aspects of holding slaves on a West Indian sugar plantation were cruel stuff. And everything we know about Austen and her values is at odds with the cruelty of slavery. Fanny Price reminds her cousin that after asking Sir Thomas about the slave trade, “There was such a dead silence”8 as to suggest that one world could not be connected with the other since there simply is no common language for both. That is true. But what stimu­ lates the extraordinary discrepancy into life is the rise, decline, and fall of the British empire itself and, in its aftermath, the emergence of a postcolo­ nial consciousness. In order more accurately to read works like M ansfield Park, we have to see them in the main as resisting or avoiding that other setting, which their formal inclusiveness, historical honesty, and prophetic suggestiveness cannot completely hide. In time there would no longer be a dead silence when slavery was spoken of, and the subject became central to a new understanding of what Europe was. It would be silly to expect Jane Austen to treat slavery with anything like the passion of an abolitionist or a newly liberated slave. Yet what I have called the rhetoric of blame, so often now employed by subaltern,9 minority, or dis­ advantaged voices, attacks her, and others like her, retrospectively, for being white, privileged, insensitive, complicit. Yes, Austen belonged to a slaveowning society, but do we therefore jettison her novels as so many trivial exercises in aesthetic frumpery? Not at all, I would argue, if we take seriously our intellectual and interpretative vocation to make connections, to deal with as much of the evidence as possible, fully and actually, to read what is there or not there, above all, to see complementarity and interdependence instead of isolated, venerated, or formalized experience that excludes and forbids the hybridizing intrusions of human history.

8. Austen, M ansfield Park, p. 213 [Said’s note]. 9. A term from the Italian Marxist critic and theorist a n t o n i o g r a m s c i (1891-1937), referring to

those subordinated by the hegemonic power structure (and, since the 1980s, especially to colonized peoples).

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Mansfield Park is a rich work in that its aesthetic intellectual complexity requires that longer and slower analysis that is also required by its geograph­ ical problematic, a novel based in an England relying for the maintenance of its style on a Caribbean island. When Sir Thomas goes to and comes from Antigua, where he has property, that is not at all the same thing as coming to and going from Mansfield Park, where his presence, arrivals, and departures have very considerable consequences. But precisely because Austen is so summary in one context, so provocatively rich in the other, precisely because of that imbalance we are able to move in on the novel, reveal and accentuate the interdependence scarcely mentioned on its brilliant pages. A lesser work wears its historical affiliation more plainly; its worldliness is simple and direct, the way a jingoistic ditty during the Mahdist uprising or the 1857 Indian Rebellion1 connects directly to the situation and constituency that coined it. Mansfield Park encodes experiences and does not simply repeat them. From our later perspective we can interpret Sir Thomas’s power to come and go in Antigua as stemming from the muted national experience of individual identity, behavior, and “ordination,” enacted with such irony and taste at Mansfield Park. The task is to lose neither a true historical sense of the first, nor a full enjoyment or appreciation of the second, all the while see­ ing both together. 1993 1. Two well-known colonial rebellions: a revolt in Sudan (1 8 8 2 -9 8 ) against Anglo-Egyptian rule, initially led by the Muslim religious leader Muham-

mad Ahmad (the M ahdi), and a widespread uprising (1857-58) by Indian soldiers against the British rule of the East India Company.

M O N IQ U E W ITTIG 1 9 3 5 - 2 0 0 3

When the French writer and radical lesbian theorist Monique Wittig concluded “The Straight Mind,” her 1978 presentation at the Modern Language Association convention in New York, with the statement that “lesbians are not women,” she was greeted with stunned silence. Not all feminists, or all lesbians, were ready to aban­ don a division between the sexes that has seemed so natural and inevitable. Most feminists, as Wittig notes in “One Is Not Born a Woman” (1981), “still believe that the basis of womens oppression is biological as well as historical.” But for a lesbian like Wittig to refuse to be heterosexual means that she refuses to become a “man” or a “woman”— categories that she regards as political, not as natural givens. For this reason, she has been a central figure in the debate between those feminists who see “woman” as a transhistorical and eternal essence (see, for instance, h e l e n e c i x o u s ) and those who believe that the idea of “woman” is a social construct (see, for instance, j u d i t h b u t l e r ). Although Wittig is better known for her fiction than her theoretical writing, her fiction frequently blurs the distinction between litera­ ture and theory. Feminists have read her second novel, Les Guerilleres (1969), which describes a postholocaust world where Amazon fighters attempt to create a new society, as an important and inspiring source of theory about language and women’s writing.

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Wittig was born in Alsace, France, and studied Oriental languages, literatures, history, and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. She won the Prix Medici for her first novel, L’Opoponax (1964). Her political views were shaped by the left-wing French intellectual milieu of Paris in the 1950s and 1960s; her participation in the May 1968 student-worker uprisings partly inspired Les Guerilleres. Active in the French women’s movement from its inception, Wittig was a co-founder of the Move­ ment de liberation des femmes (MLF, the Womens Liberation Movement), the founder of the Feministes Revolutionaires in 1970, and an active member of Gouines rouges (Red Dykes) in 1971. In 1976 she relocated to the United States, though she continued to explore her materialist theories of lesbianism as a member of the Parisian Marxist-feminist editorial collective Questions Feministes from 1977 until 1980. She received a Ph.D. in literary languages from the Sorbonne in 1986, and she taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Southern California, Vassar College, Duke University, New York University, and the University of Arizona. Wittig served from 1980 to 1991 on the advisory board of Feminist Issues, where she published many of her influential essays, including “The Straight Mind” (1980), “The Mark of Gender” (1985), and our selection, “One Is Not Born a Woman.” In 1999 she published a collection of stories under the title Paris-la-politique et autres histoires (Paris-Politics and Other Stories). In 2000, with her partner and collaborator Sande Zieg, she released a film of her English novella “The Girl,” her last work before her death in 2003 of a heart attack. With a nod toward the best-known work of France s most famous feminist, s i m o n e d e b e a u v o i r , “One Is Not Born a Woman” rejects biological explanations for inequal­ ities and differences between the sexes. The “immediate given,” “the sensible given,” even those physical features that appear to constitute the standard categories of sex or race are not, in fact, the result of direct physical perception, as we might intuit; rather they are “mythic constructions,” which “reinterpret physical features . . . through the network of relationships in which they are perceived.” For this reason, Wittig is critical of feminist speculations about prehistorical matriarchies in which women were the creators of civilization. This approach, she argues, only further imprisons women within the category of sex. From a lesbian vantage point, matriar­ chy and patriarchy are equally oppressive because equally heterosexist. All “naturalizing” explanations for the differences between men and women, according to Wittig, presume that the foundation of sex difference is heterosexuality, which she redefines as a tacit, unquestioned, and forced social contract. Because lesbians are not dependent on men, they cannot be “real” women; but because they lack economic, ideological, and political privilege, they cannot be men. Like a d r i e n n e r i c h , Wittig argues that the very existence of lesbians— a class of individuals who are “not-woman, not-man”— refutes the naturalized division between the sexes that supports institutionalized heterosexuality, thereby exposing the artificiality of the ruling sex/gender system. For this reason, “One Is Not Born a Woman” became a foundational text both for gay and lesbian studies and for queer theory in the 1990s. The Marxist analysis of class offers, for Wittig, at least a starting point for a nonessentialist feminism in which socioeconomic relations, rather than biological neces­ sity, provide the common ground for political struggle. The Marxist model, however, is not without problems of its own, and Wittig identifies two. First, m a r x ’s analysis of the proletariat (industrial workers) as a class itself depends on an already naturalized sexual division of labor that obscures the class conflict between men and women (constituted not as natural categories but on the basis of their different relations to the economic foundations of society). The subordination of women cannot simply be subsumed under the class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; it must rather be understood as an independent, if related, historical development. Sec­ ond, Marxism has failed to develop a model of subjectivity that might enable women and other oppressed groups to constitute themselves as individual historical subjects. While Marxism allows for class consciousness, it has usefully rejected as idealist the

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“transcendental subject” of Western philosophy. Wittig sets feminism the difficult task of defining the individual subject of feminist struggle in materialist terms, though she is less clear about how to coordinate the various— sometimes conflicting— class identifications that women have (different races, social classes, nationalities). Just as Marxism occludes the different investments of men and women in economic class, feminism runs the risk of obscuring the different ways in which women of dif­ ferent races and classes experience gender. Yet despite its problems, Wittig’s challeng­ ing essay remains a central document in the essentialism debate within feminism that has continued since the 1980s. “One Is Not Born a W om an” Keywords: The Body, Feminist Theory, Gender, Identity, Ideology, Marxism, Queer Theory, Sexuality, Subjectivity

One Is Not Born a Woman A materialist feminist1 approach to women’s oppression destroys the idea that women are a “natural group”: “a racial group of a special kind, a group per­ ceived as natural, a group of men considered as materially specific in their bodies.”2 What the analysis accomplishes on the level of ideas, practice makes actual at the level of facts: by its very existence, lesbian society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a “natural group.” A lesbian soci­ ety3 pragmatically reveals that the division from men of which women have been the object is a political one and shows that we have been ideologically rebuilt into a “natural group.” In the case of women, ideology goes far since our bodies as well as our minds are the product of this manipulation. We have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us. Distorted to such an extent that our deformed body is what they call “natural,” what is supposed to exist as such before oppression. Distorted to such an extent that in the end oppression seems to be a consequence of this “nature” within our­ selves (a nature which is only an idea). What a materialist analysis does by reasoning, a lesbian society accomplishes practically: not only is there no natural group “women” (we lesbians are living proof of it), but as individuals as well we question “woman,” which for us, as for Simone de Beauvoir, is only a myth. She said: “One is not born, but becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society: it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.”4 However, most of the feminists and lesbian-feminists in America and else­ where still believe that the basis of women’s oppression is biological as well as

1. Christine Delphy, “Pour un feminisme materialiste,” L’A rc 61 (1975). Translated as “F o ra M ate­ rialist Fem inism ,” Feminist Issues 1, no. 2 (winter 1981) [except as indicated, all notes are W ittig’s]. 2. Colette Guillaum in, “Race et Nature: Syst£me des marques, idee de groupe naturel et rapports sociaux,” Pluriel, no. 11 (1977). Translated as “Race and Nature: The System of M arks, the Idea o f a Natural Group and Social Relationships,” Feminist Issues 8, no. 2 (fall 1988).

3. I use the word society with an extended anth ro­ pological m eaning; strictly speaking, it does not refer to societies, in that lesbian societies do not exist completely autonomously from heterosex­ ual social systems. 4. Simone de Beauvoir, T he Second Sex [trans. H. M. Parshley] (New York: Bantam , 1952), p. 249. [ b e a u v o i r (1908—1986), French novelist, philoso­ pher, and feminist— editor’s note.]

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historical. Some of them even claim to find their sources in Simone de Beau­ voir.5 The belief in mother right and in a “prehistory” when women created civilization (because of a biological predisposition) while the coarse and bru­ tal men hunted (because of a biological predisposition) is symmetrical with the biologizing interpretation of history produced up to now by the class of men. It is still the same method of finding in women and men a biological explanation of their division, outside of social facts. For me this could never constitute a lesbian approach to women’s oppression, since it assumes that the basis of society or the beginning of society lies in heterosexuality. Matri­ archy is no less heterosexual than patriarchy: it is only the sex of the oppres­ sor that changes. Furthermore, not only is this conception still imprisoned in the categories of sex (woman and man), but it holds onto the idea that the capacity to give birth (biology) is what defines a woman. Although practical facts and ways of living contradict this theory in lesbian society, there are lesbians who affirm that “women and men are different species or races (the words are used interchangeably): men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability . . .”6 By doing this, by admitting that there is a “natural” division between women and men, we naturalize history, we assume that “men” and “women” have always existed and will always exist. Not only do we naturalize history, but also consequently we naturalize the social phenomena which express our oppression, making change impossible. For example, instead of seeing giving birth as a forced production, we see it as a “natural,” “biological” process, forgetting that in our societies births are planned (demography), forgetting that we ourselves are programmed to pro­ duce children, while this is the only social activity “short of war”' that pres­ ents such a great danger of death. Thus, as long as we will be “unable to abandon by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-old commitment to child­ bearing as the female creative act,”8 gaining control of the production of chil­ dren will mean much more than the mere control of the material means of this production: women will have to abstract themselves from the definition “woman” which is imposed upon them. A materialist feminist approach shows that what we take for the cause or origin of oppression is in fact only the m ark9 imposed by the oppressor: the “myth of woman,”1 plus its material effects and manifestations in the appro­ priated consciousness and bodies of women. Thus, this mark does not pre­ date oppression: Colette Guillaumin2 has shown that before the socioeconomic reality of black slavery, the concept of race did not exist, at least not in its modern meaning, since it was applied to the lineage of families. However, now, race, exactly like sex, is taken as an “immediate given,” a “sensible given,” “physical features,” belonging to a natural order. But what we believe to be a physical and direct perception is only a sophisticated and mythic con­ struction, an “imaginary formation,”3 which reinterprets physical features (in themselves as neutral as any others but marked by the social system) through

5. Redstockings, Feminist Revolution (New York: Random House, 1978), p. 18. 6. Andrea Dworkin, “Biological Superiority: T h e W orld’s Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea,” H er­ esies 6 (1989): 46. 7. Ti-G race Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey (New York: Links Books, 1974), p. 15.

8. Dworkin, op. cit. 9. Guillaum in, op. cit. 1. Beauvoir, op. cit. 2. French sociologist and feminist theorist (1934— 2017), author of Racism, Sexism, Power, and Id e­ ology (1995) [editor’s note]. 3. Guillaum in, “Race and N ature.”

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the network of relationships in which they are perceived. (They are seen as b lack, therefore they are black; they are seen as w om en, therefore, they are women. But before being seen that way, they first had to be m ade that way.) Lesbians should always remember and acknowledge how “unnatural,” com­ pelling, totally oppressive, and destructive being “woman” was for us in the old days before the womens liberation movement. It was a political con­ straint, and those who resisted it were accused of not being “real” women. But then we were proud of it, since in the accusation there was already some­ thing like a shadow of victory: the avowal by the oppressor that “woman” is not something that goes without saying, since to be one, one has to be a “real” one. We were at the same time accused of wanting to be men. Today this double accusation has been taken up again with enthusiasm in the con­ text of the womens liberation movement by some feminists and also, alas, by some lesbians whose political goal seems somehow to be becoming more and more “feminine.” To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man. Besides, if we take as an example the perfect “butch,” the classic example which provokes the most horror, whom Proust4 would have called a woman/man, how is her alienation different from that of some­ one who wants to become a woman? Tweedledum and Tweedledee.5 At least for a woman, wanting to become a man proves that she has escaped her ini­ tial programming. But even if she would like to, with all her strength, she cannot become a man. For becoming a man would demand from a woman not only a mans external appearance but his consciousness as well, that is, the consciousness of one who disposes by right of at least two “natural” slaves during his life span. This is impossible, and one feature of lesbian oppression consists precisely of making women out of reach for us, since women belong to men. Thus a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature in society. The refusal to become (or to remain) heterosexual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, consciously or not. For a lesbian this goes fur­ ther than the refusal of the role “woman.” It is the refusal of the economic, ideological, and political power of a man. This, we lesbians, and nonlesbians as well, knew before the beginning of the lesbian and feminist movement. However, as Andrea Dworkin emphasizes, many lesbians recently “have increasingly tried to transform the very ideology that has enslaved us into a dynamic, religious, psychologically compelling celebration of female bio­ logical potential.”6 Thus, some avenues of the feminist and lesbian move­ ment lead us back to the myth of woman which was created by men especially for us, and with it we sink back into a natural group. Having stood up to fight for a sexless society,7 we now find ourselves entrapped in the familiar deadlock of “woman is wonderful.” Simone de Beauvoir underlined par­ ticularly the false consciousness8 which consists of selecting among the

4. M arcel Proust (1871—1922), French novelist [editor’s note]. 5. Proverbial names for indistinguishable enti­ ties, personified as two brothers in Lewis Car­ roll’s Through the Looking-G lass (1872) [editor’s note]. 6. Dworkin, op. cit. [Dworkin (1 9 4 6 -2 0 0 5 ), Amer­ ican feminist writer known for opposition to por­ nography and for the claim that there is no such

thing as consensual (heterosexual) sex— editor’s note.] 7. Atkinson, p. 6: “If feminism has any logic at all, it must be working for a sexless society.” 8. Marxist term referring to the tendency to view reality in ways congruent with the interests of the dominant orthodoxy rather than in ways that reflect an individual’s class interest [editor’s note].

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features of the myth (that women are different from men) those which look good and using them as a definition for women. What the concept “woman is wonderful” accomplishes is that it retains for defining women the best features (best according to whom?) which oppression has granted us, and it does not radically question the categories “man” and “woman,” which are political categories and not natural givens. It puts us in a position of fight­ ing within the class “women” not as the other classes do, for the disappear­ ance of our class, but for the defense of “woman” and its reenforcement. It leads us to develop with complacency “new” theories about our specificity: thus, we call our passivity “nonviolence,” when the main and emergent point for us is to fight our passivity (our fear, rather, a justified one). The ambiguity of the term “feminist” sums up the whole situation. What does “feminist” mean? Feminist is formed with the word “femme,” “woman,” and means: someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fights for woman and her defense— for the myth, then, and its reenforcement. But why was the word “feminist” chosen if it retains the least ambiguity? We chose to call ourselves “femi­ nists” ten years ago, not in order to support or reenforce the myth of woman, nor to identify ourselves with the oppressor s definition of us, but rather to affirm that our movement had a history and to emphasize the political link with the old feminist movement. It is, then, this movement that we can put in question for the meaning that it gave to feminism. It so happens that feminism in the last century could never resolve its contradictions on the subject of nature/culture, woman/soci­ ety. Women started to fight for themselves as a group and rightly considered that they shared common features as a result of oppression. But for them these features were natural and biological rather than social. They went so far as to adopt the Darwinist theory of evolution. They did not believe like Darwin, however, “that women were less evolved than men, but they did believe that male and female natures had diverged in the course of evolution­ ary development and that society at large reflected this polarization.”9 “The failure of early feminism was that it only attacked the Darwinist charge of female inferiority, while accepting the foundations of this charge— namely, the view of woman as ‘unique.’”1And finally it was women scholars— and not feminists— who scientifically destroyed this theory. But the early feminists had failed to regard history as a dynamic process which develops from con­ flicts of interests. Furthermore, they still believed as men do that the cause (origin) of their oppression lay within themselves. And therefore after some astonishing victories the feminists of this first front found themselves at an impasse out of a lack of reasons to fight. They upheld the illogical principle of “equality in difference,” an idea now being born again. They fell back into the trap which threatens us once again: the myth of woman. Thus it is our historical task, and only ours, to define what we call oppres­ sion in materialist terms, to make it evident that women are a class, which is to say that the category “woman” as well as the category “man” are political

9. Rosalind Rosenberg, “In S earch of W om an’s N ature,” Fem inist Studies 3, nos. 1/2 (1975): 144. [Charles D arw in (1 8 0 9 -1 8 8 2 ), English

natu ralist— editor’s note.] 1. Ibid., p. 146.

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and economic categories not eternal ones. Our fight aims to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle. Once the class “men” disappears, “women” as a class will disappear as well, for there are no slaves without masters. Our first task, it seems, is to always thoroughly dissociate “women” (the class within which we fight) and “woman,” the myth. For “woman” does not exist for us: it is only an imaginary formation, while “women” is the product of a social relationship. We felt this strongly when everywhere we refused to be called a “w om an’s liberation movement.” Furthermore, we have to destroy the myth inside and outside ourselves. “Woman” is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates “women” (the product of a relation of exploitation). “Woman” is there to confuse us, to hide the reality “women.” In order to be aware of being a class and to become a class we first have to kill the myth of “woman” including its most seductive aspects (I think about Virginia Woolf2 when she said the first task of a woman writer is to kill “the angel in the house”). But to become a class we do not have to suppress our individual selves, and since no individual can be reduced to her/his oppression we are also confronted with the historical necessity of constituting ourselves as the individual subjects of our history as well. I believe this is the reason why all these attempts at “new” definitions of woman are blossoming now. What is at stake (and of course not only for women) is an individual definition as well as a class definition. For once one has acknowledged oppression, one needs to know and experience the fact that one can constitute oneself as a subject (as opposed to an object of oppres­ sion), that one can become som eone in spite of oppression, that one has one’s own identity. There is no possible fight for someone deprived of an identity, no internal motivation for fighting, since, although I can fight only with others, first I fight for myself. The question of the individual subject is historically a difficult one for everybody. Marxism, the last avatar of materialism, the science which has politically formed us, does not want to hear anything about a “subject.” Marx­ ism has rejected the transcendental subject, the subject as constitutive of knowledge, the “pure” consciousness. All that thinks per se, before all experi­ ence, has ended up in the garbage can of history, because it claimed to exist outside matter, prior to matter, and needed God, spirit, or soul to exist in such a way. This is what is called “idealism.” As for individuals, they are only the product of social relations, therefore their consciousness can only be “alienated.” (Marx,3 in The German Ideology, says precisely that individuals of the dominating class are also alienated, although they are the direct pro­ ducers of the ideas that alienate the classes oppressed by them. But since they draw visible advantages from their own alienation they can bear it with­ out too much suffering.) There exists such a thing as class consciousness, but a consciousness which does not refer to a particular subject, except as par­ ticipating in general conditions of exploitation at the same time as the other subjects of their class, all sharing the same consciousness. As for the practi­ cal class problems— outside of the class problems as traditionally defined—

2. English writer (1882-1941). The reference is to “Professions for Women” (lecture, 1931; published 1942); the “Angel” is the Victorian ideal of self-sacrificing womanhood [editors note].

w o o l f ’s

3. k.a r l m a r x (1818—1883), Germ an econom ic, social, and political philosopher; T he German Ideology was w ritten in 1845—4 6 and published in 1932 [editor’s note].

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that one could encounter (for example, sexual problems), they were considered “bourgeois” problems that would disappear with the final victory of the class struggle. “Individualistic,” “subjectivist,” “petit bourgeois,” these were the labels given to any person who had shown problems which could not be reduced to the “class struggle” itself. Thus Marxism has denied the members of oppressed classes the attribute of being a subject. In doing this, Marxism, because of the ideological and political power this “revolutionary science” immediately exercised upon the workers' movement and all other political groups, has prevented all catego­ ries of oppressed peoples from constituting themselves historically as sub­ jects (subjects of their struggle, for example). This means that the “masses” did not fight for themselves but for the party or its organizations. And when an economic transformation took place (end of private property, constitu­ tion of the socialist state), no revolutionary change took place within the new society, because the people themselves did not change. For women, Marxism had two results. It prevented them from being aware that they are a class and therefore from constituting themselves as a class for a very long time, by leaving the relation “women/men” outside of the social order, by turning it into a natural relation, doubtless for Marxists the only one, along with the relation of mothers to children, to be seen this way, and by hiding the class conflict between men and women behind a natural divi­ sion of labor {The German Ideology). This concerns the theoretical (ideologi­ cal) level. On the practical level, Lenin,4 the party, all the communist parties up to now, including all the most radical political groups, have always reacted to any attempt on the part of women to reflect and form groups based on their own class problem with an accusation of divisiveness. By uniting, we women are dividing the strength of the people. This means that for the Marx­ ists women belong either to the bourgeois class or to the proletariat class, in other words, to the men of these classes. In addition, Marxist theory does not allow women any more than other classes of oppressed people to constitute themselves as historical subjects, because Marxism does not take into account the fact that a class also consists of individuals one by one. Class consciousness is not enough. We must try to understand philosophically (politically) these concepts of “subject” and “class consciousness” and how they work in relation to our history. When we discover that women are the objects of oppression and appropriation, at the very moment that we become able to perceive this, we become subjects in the sense of cognitive subjects, through an operation of abstraction. Consciousness of oppression is not only a reaction to (fight against) oppression. It is also the whole conceptual reeval­ uation of the social world, its whole reorganization with new concepts, from the point of view of oppression. It is what I would call the science of oppres­ sion created by the oppressed. This operation of understanding reality has to be undertaken by every one of us: call it a subjective, cognitive practice. The movement back and forth between the levels of reality (the conceptual reality and the material reality of oppression, which are both social realities) is accomplished through language.

4. V. I. Lenin (1 8 7 0 -1 9 2 4 ), M arxist revolutionary leader and theorist o f the Bolshevik revolution and first head o f the new Soviet government [editor’s note].

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It is we who historically must undertake the task of defining the individual subject in materialist terms. This certainly seems to be an impossibility since materialism and subjectivity have always been mutually exclusive. Neverthe­ less, and rather than despairing of ever understanding, we must recognize the need to reach subjectivity in the abandonment by many of us to the myth “woman” (the myth of woman being only a snare that holds us up). This real necessity for everyone to exist as an individual, as well as a member of a class, is perhaps the first condition for the accomplishment of a revolution, without which there can be no real fight or transformation. But the opposite is also true; without class and class consciousness there are no real subjects, only alienated individuals. For women to answer the question of the individual subject in materialist terms is first to show, as the lesbians and feminists did, that supposedly “subjective,” “individual,” “private” problems are in fact social problems, class problems; that sexuality is not for women an individual and subjective expression, but a social institution of violence. But once we have shown that all so-called personal problems are in fact class problems, we will still be left with the question of the subject of each singular woman— not the myth, but each one of us. At this point, let us say that a new personal and subjective definition for all humankind can only be found beyond the catego­ ries of sex (woman and man) and that the advent of individual subjects demands first destroying the categories of sex, ending the use of them, and rejecting all sciences which still use these categories as their fundamentals (practically all social sciences). To destroy “woman” does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruc­ tion, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with the categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically, or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we have previ­ ously called servitude,5 a relation which implies personal and physical obliga­ tion as well as economic obligation (“forced residence,”6 domestic corvee, conjugal duties, unlimited production of children, etc.), a relation which les­ bians escape by refusing to become or to stay heterosexual. We are escapees from our class in the same way as the American runaway slaves were when escaping slavery and becoming free. For us this is an absolute necessity; our survival demands that we contribute all our strength to the destruction of the class of women within which men appropriate women. This can be accom­ plished only by the destruction of heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression. 1981

5. In an article published in L’ldiot International (mai 1970), whose original title was “Pour un mouvement de liberation des fem m es” (For a

W om an’s Liberation Movement). 6. C hristiane Rochefort, Les stances (Paris: G rasset, 1963).

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B EN ED IC T AN DERSON 1 9 3 6 - 2 0 1 5

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983) provides a highly influential account of the origins and causes of nationalism. Anderson defines “the nation” as “an imagined political community— and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The book’s title has passed into the theoretical lexicon to designate any group of people who, without knowing each other personally or encountering each other physically, still consider themselves members of the same community. Ander­ son asks, How is this act of imagination possible? And why, from around 1760 onward, did nationalism become the most potent form in the West of shared mem­ bership? Anderson was born in China to an Irish father and English mother, but grew up mainly in California and Ireland. Following his undergraduate studies at Cambridge University in England, in 1958 he came to Cornell University in upstate New York to pursue Ph.D. research on Indonesia. While working on his doctoral dissertation on post—World War II Indonesian politics, Anderson ran afoul of the country’s mil­ itary leader by challenging Suharto’s version of the alleged leftist coup attempt in 1965 that led to his rise to power and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civil­ ians. Anderson was banned from Indonesia and did not return until after Suhartos resignation from the presidency in 1998. After completing his Ph.D. in 1967, Anderson joined the faculty at Cornell, where he remained until his retirement in 2002. His extensive written work fits mainly under the rubric of Southeast Asian studies. Imagined Communities is his most notable foray into more general theo­ retical speculations and transnational historical accounts. His brother Perry Ander­ son is a noted Marxist intellectual and longtime editor of the New Left Review. Anderson’s work on nationalism came in the wake of e d w a r d w. s a i d ’s Orientalism (1978), and it reflects an engagement with two historical movements: the pretwentieth-century establishment by Western powers of colonies around the globe and the late twentieth-century end of most colonialism, f r a n t z f a n o n , in the 1950s, had already identified nationalist feeling as a potent weapon against the colonizer. Ander­ son begins with the question of how nationalist sentiment is generated in a geograph­ ical territory like a colony that has never been a nation. To answer it, he turns from the colonial situation to the origins of nationalism in Europe itself. Not uniquely, but very influentially, Anderson insists that nationalism appeared first in Europe before manifesting itself elsewhere in the world. Equally crucial is his insistence that nation­ alism is a modern phenomenon, which took shape (after various earlier stirrings) in the eighteenth century. He identifies several key elements of nationalism, including the political institution of the centralized nation-state and its citizens’ genuinely felt attachment to that nation. Even when critical of their current government or of a par­ ticular set of political leaders, citizens of modern nations are emotionally committed to the preservation and success of their nation. Their act of identification makes their membership in that political entity central to how they understand their own indi­ vidual identities. In modern times patriotism has proved a remarkably potent emotion, one that often unleashes demons of intolerance and violence. “The nation,” Anderson writes, “is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this frater­ nity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.” Ander­ son’s wide-ranging historical account of the required conditions for the birth of nationalism places affect near the center. For a nation to exist, a sizable group of people must be able to experience themselves as “a people,” bound together by spe­ cial ties and distinct from other peoples. As becomes immediately evident to any­

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one who tries to identify what “a people” shares, there are some obvious candidates for the unifying principle but no sure winner. In some nations, strong patriotic feelings coexist with ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity. No one essential characteristic can be identified that, if missing, makes nationhood impos­ sible. Rather, under different historical, cultural, and geographic circumstances, the shared feeling essential to nationhood can be constructed differently. Likewise, nations can manage to survive while also experiencing considerable racial, regional, religious, ethnic, and class animosities. What does seem crucial is some sense of a common destiny, of the conviction that “we” citizens, for better and for worse, are in the same boat together. Anderson’s great insight is that however it is constructed, fellow feeling must be im agined. To use language that Anderson does not, we can say that a nation is always a virtual community. It is never embodied or instantiated in a real time or a real place. It thus stands in contrast to what R a y m o n d w i l l i a m s called “knowable communities,” the small groupings where every member knows each other mem­ ber through face-to-face interactions. In the nation each citizen’s relation to his or her fellow citizens and to the nation as a whole (as an idea) is experienced through an image of simultaneity (I am voting today as millions of my compatriots are) and of shared knowledge and feelings (I vote on the basis of information and a love of country that my compatriots also possess). The nation is an abstraction that is made real only through the actual practices of citizens who imagine those prac­ tices as meaningful precisely because of their relation to that abstraction. It is no accident that the broad, often nebulous, concept of culture as a shared way of life dates from the mid-eighteenth century as well. What “culture” struggles to name is individuals’ new sense of participating in something larger than themselves when they act, even though it is difficult to specify what that “something larger” actually is. In our selection, chapter 3 of Imagined Com m unities, Anderson sets out to explain what makes this act of imagination possible. What needs and what histori­ cal innovations call this emotional identification into existence? Part of Anderson’s answer involves the decline of Catholicism as a single religion prevailing through­ out most of Europe. Its loss of control makes possible the rise of more localized political power, leads to the replacement of Latin by various vernaculars as the official languages of church and state, and, most importantly, creates a need for a unifying basis for communal identity. During the Renaissance, Latin becomes increasingly rarefied and the province of humanists. Religious unanimity is gone forever from Europe after the Protestant Reformation, and the modern notion of religious tolerance begins to slowly emerge. To maintain the civil peace, a political version of shared identity is needed that can establish communal bonds among fel­ low citizens who disagree deeply on religious matters. Religion is still important, but modern political communities are organized around shared identifications with secular states. In Anderson’s view, the mechanism for creating this allegiance to the nation is print capitalism. Europe was a loosely organized congeries of local communities under both the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church; each community was connected hierarchically to Rome, with few ties to one another. Only when aided by print media, Anderson argues, can strangers imagine themselves as partaking simultaneously in the same set of unfolding events. The repetitions and cycles of religious ritual yield to the narrative, linear time of national history. Through the almost instantaneous representation of historical events in newspapers and books, each citizen has the sense of being a participant in the nation’s unfolding destiny. This feeling of connection is “limited”— that is, given specific borders— both geo­ graphically and linguistically. Print is connected to the establishment of national languages, as the vernacular replaces Latin in almost all contexts and as widely circu­ lated texts stabilize language use and aid in the emergence of a national, standard

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version of the dominant language. Capitalism is also crucial: the technology of print­ ing did not have the same effects in China as in Europe. Books and newspapers transform society only when they are widely circulated and are connected to money­ making enterprises that have a stake in expanding their market by increasing literacy. Nationalism— at least prior to radio and television— depends on a literate citizenry that experiences its membership in the nation through the printed word. By focusing on the central role of media— whether print journalism, novels, or the nonprint forms of our own time— Anderson emphasizes that a nation groups together people who tell a certain story about themselves. Citizens are at once the producers, subjects, and consumers of this story. Their membership consists in their experience of themselves as both the proper agents and the appropriate audience for these tales. These national stories may be (and in fact usually are) shot through with conflicts and disagreements; members of a nation need not agree with each other, just as they need not share a religion or an ethnicity. But they must each experience themselves as fully entitled participants in the ongoing and unfolding history of the nation— and recognize even their antagonists as similarly fully entitled participants. Civil war, the undoing of the nation, results when any subgroup within the nation (whether religious, regional, ethnic, racial, or tribal) tries to exclude other subgroups as citizens or to separate itself by secession from political unity with other groups. Increasingly since 1800, the nation has become the only internationally recognized form of political organization— and when former colonies gain independence they invariably seek to re-create themselves as nation-states. Yet contemporary separatist movements, ranging from the Scots and Catalans in Europe to the Kurds in the {Mid­ dle East and indigenous peoples in North and South America, suggest that the nation is not necessarily a very stable or successful political form. Successful or not as a political form, the nation figures prominently in literature as an emotional fact, whether as a national consciousness some writers want to engender or as an emotional roadblock to alternative visions dear to others. The decision to celebrate or denigrate nationalist feeling does not consistently corre­ spond to the writers political positions, left or right. Current interest in “cosmopoli­ tanism” does register a sense that nationalism s sometimes murderous passions are inappropriate in a world where mobility across national borders continues to grow. Yet the very persistence of strong national feelings makes claims that we now occupy a “transnational” or “postnational” globalized world seem premature. Perhaps our time is witnessing the final gasp of the nation as it developed between 1500 and 1800 in Europe and then solidified across the globe from 1800 onward. But Benedict Anderson’s work will remain indispensable to any understanding of the nation as the crucial political form of modernity, a form closely linked to literacy and print media. Im a g in ed C om m u n ities Keywords: Modernity, Nationhood, Postcolonial Theory, Print Culture, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Vernacular Language

From Imagined Communities C hapter 3. The Origins o f N ational Consciousness If the development of print-as-commodity is the key to the generation of wholly new ideas of simultaneity, still, we are simply at the point where com­ munities of the type ‘horizontal-secular, transverse-time’ become possible.1 1. In the previous chapter, Anderson distinguishes secular societies, where lines of authority must be developed from a starting point in which the members are basically equal (horizontal), from those with a vertical hierarchy grounded in a distinction

between the sacred and the nonsacred. He also contrasts societies that develop a sense of simultaneity as well as continuity extending beyond a single lifetime from societies that lack such time frames.

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Why, within that type, did the nation become so popular? The factors involved are obviously complex and various. But a strong case can be made for the primacy of capitalism. As already noted, at least 20,000,000 books had already been printed by 1500,2 signalling the onset of Benjamin’s age of mechanical reproduction.’3 If manuscript knowledge was scarce and arcane lore, print knowledge lived by reproducibility and dissemination.4 If, as Febvre and Martin believe, possibly as many as 200,000,000 volumes had been manufactured by 1600, it is no wonder that Francis Bacon believed that print had changed ‘the appearance and state of the world.’5 One of the earlier forms of capitalist enterprise, book-publishing felt all of capitalism’s restless search for markets. The early printers established branches all over Europe: ‘in this way a veritable “international” of publish­ ing houses, which ignored national [sic] frontiers, was created.’6 And since the years 1500—1550 were a period of exceptional European prosperity, pub­ lishing shared in the general boom. ‘More than at any other time’ it was ‘a great industry under the control of wealthy capitalists.’7 Naturally, ‘booksell­ ers were primarily concerned to make a profit and to sell their products, and consequently they sought out first and foremost those works which were of interest to the largest possible number of their contemporaries.’8 The initial market was literate Europe, a wide but thin stratum of Latinreaders. Saturation of this market took about a hundred and fifty years. The determinative fact about Latin— aside from its sacrality—was that it was a language of bilinguals. Relatively few were born to speak it and even fewer, one imagines, dreamed in it. In the sixteenth century the proportion of bilin­ guals within the total population of Europe was quite small; very likely no larger than the proportion in the world’s population today, and— proletarian internationalism notwithstanding— in the centuries to come. Then and now the bulk of mankind is monoglot. The logic of capitalism thus meant that once the elite Latin market was saturated, the potentially huge markets repre­ sented by the monoglot masses would beckon. To be sure, the CounterReformation9 encouraged a temporary resurgence of Latin-publishing, but by the mid-seventeenth century the movement was in decay, and fervently Cath­ olic libraries replete. Meantime, a Europe-wide shortage of money made printers think more and more of peddling cheap editions in the vernaculars.1 2. The population of that Europe where print was then known was about 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 . Lucien Feb­ vre and Henri-Jean M artin, The Coming o f the Book: T he Impact o f Printing, 1450-1800 (1976), pp. 2 4 8 - 4 9 [Anderson’s note]. 3. An allusion to “The Work of Art in the Age o f Its Tech nological R eproducibility” (1 9 3 6 —39; see above), by the G erm an cultu ral critic Wa l t e r b e n j a m i n (1 8 9 2 -1 9 4 0 ); as translated in its first publication in English, the essay’s title ended “Age of M echanical Reproduction.” 4. Emblematic is Marco Polo’s Travels, which remained largely unknown till its first printing in 1559 [Anderson’s note]. Polo (1 2 5 4 -1 3 2 4 ), Vene­ tian traveler; his account o f his journey to China, usually known as T he Travels o f Marco Polo, was first published in 1299. 5. Quoted in Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, “Som e C onjectures about the Impact o f Printing on W estern Society and Thought,” Jou rn al o f M od­

ern History 40.1 (M arch 1968): 56 [Anderson’s note]. Bacon (1561—1626), English philospher and scientist; the quotation is from his Novum Organum (1620), book I, aphorism 129. 6. Febvre and M artin, T he Coming o f the B ook, p. 122 [Anderson’s note]. 7. Ibid., p. 187 [Anderson’s note]. 8. “H ence the introduction of printing was in this respect a stage on the road to our present society of mass consumption and standardiza­ tion.” Ibid., pp. 2 5 9 —6 0 [Anderson’s note]. 9. The 16th-century reform movement within the Catholic Church, undertaken in response to the Protestant Reform ation— the movement in west­ ern Europe critical of the church that led to reli­ gious schism and the establishment of Protestant churches. 1. Febvre and M artin, p. 195 [Anderson’s note]. “V ern acu lars”: native languages or d ialects in everyday use.

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The revolutionary vernacularizing thrust of capitalism was given further impetus by three extraneous factors, two of which contributed directly to the rise of national consciousness. The first, and ultimately the least important, was a change in the character of Latin itself. Thanks to the labours of the Humanists2 in reviving the broad literature of pre-Christian antiquity and spreading it through the print-market, a new appreciation of the sophisti­ cated stylistic achievements of the ancients was apparent among the transEuropean intelligentsia. The Latin they now aspired to write became more and more Ciceronian,3 and, by the same token, increasingly removed from ecclesiastical and everyday life. In this way it acquired an esoteric quality quite different from that of Church Latin in mediaeval times. For the older Latin was not arcane because of its subject matter or style, but simply because it was written at all, i.e. because of its status as text. Now it became arcane because of what was written, because of the language-in-itself. Second was the impact of the Reformation, which, at the same time, owed much of its success to print-capitalism. Before the age of print, Rome easily won every war against heresy in Western Europe because it always had better internal lines of communication than its challengers. But when in 1517 Mar­ tin Luther4 nailed his theses to the chapel-door in Wittenberg, they were printed up in German translation, and ‘within 15 days [had been] seen in every part of the country/5 In the two decades 1520—1540 three times as many books were published in German as in the period 1500—1520, an astonishing transformation to which Luther was absolutely central. His works represented no less than one third of all German-language books sold between 1518 and 1525. Between 1522 and 1546, a total of 430 editions (whole or partial) of his Biblical translations appeared. ‘We have here for the first time a truly mass readership and a popular literature within everybody’s reach.’6 In effect, Luther became the first best-selling author so known. Or, to put it another way, the first writer who could sell’ his new books on the basis of his name.7 Where Luther led, others quickly followed, opening the colossal religious propaganda war that raged across Europe for the next century. In this titanic ‘battle for men’s minds’, Protestantism was always fundamentally on the offen­ sive, precisely because it knew how to make use of the expanding vernacular print-market being created by capitalism, while the Counter-Reformation defended the citadel of Latin. The emblem for this is the Vatican’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum8— to which there was no Protestant counterpart— a novel catalogue made necessary by the sheer volume of printed subversion. Nothing gives a better sense of this siege mentality than F ra n cis Is9 panicked 2. T he European scholars who, beginning in the late 14th century, em phasized c la ssica l Latin and G reek literatu re, w hich had been newly rediscovered. 3. T hat is, with many subordinate clauses, like the complex style of the great Rom an orator and statesm an Cicero (1 0 6 -4 3 b . c . e .). 4. Religious reform er (1 4 8 3 -1 5 4 6 ), whose break with the Catholic Church in 1517 set the Protes­ tant Reform ation in motion; he also translated the New Testam ent into G erm an, and collabo­ rated on a translation of the Old Testam ent. 5. Febvre and M artin, pp. 2 8 9 —9 0 [Anderson’s note]. 6. Ibid., pp. 2 9 1 -9 5 [Anderson’s note].

7. From this point it was only a step to the situa­ tion in 17th-century France where C o rn eille, Moliere, and La Fontaine could sell their manu­ script tragedies and comedies directly to publish­ ers, who bought them as excellent investments in view of their authors’ market reputations. Ibid., p. 161 [Anderson’s note], p i e r r e c o r n e i l l e (1 6 0 6 -1 6 8 4 ), French tragic playwright. Moliere (pen name of Jean-B aptiste Poquelin, 1622— 1673), French com ic playwright and actor. Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695), French poet best remembered today for his Fables. 8. Index of Forbidden Books (Latin). 9. C atholic king o f France (1 4 9 4 -1 5 4 7 ; reigned 15 1 5 -4 7 ).

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1535 ban on the printing of any books in his realm— on pain of death by hang­ ing! The reason for both the ban and its unenforceability was that by then his realm’s eastern borders were ringed with Protestant states and cities produc­ ing a massive stream of smugglable print. To take Calvin’s1 Geneva alone: between 1533 and 1540 only 42 editions were published there, but the num­ bers swelled to 527 between 1550 and 1564, by which latter date no less than 40 separate printing-presses were working overtime.2 The coalition between Protestantism and print-capitalism, exploiting cheap popular editions, quickly created large new reading publics— not least among merchants and women, who typically knew little or no Latin— and simulta­ neously mobilized them for politico-religious purposes. Inevitably, it was not merely the Church that was shaken to its core. The same earthquake pro­ duced Europe’s first important non-dynastic, non-city states in the Dutch Republic and the Commonwealth of the Puritans.3 (Francois I’s panic was as much political as religious.) Third was the slow, geographically uneven, spread of particular vernacu­ lars as instruments of administrative centralization by certain well-positioned would-be absolutist monarchs. Here it is useful to remember that the univer­ sality of Latin in mediaeval Western Europe never corresponded to a univer­ sal political system. The contrast with Imperial China, where the reach of the mandarinal bureaucracy and of painted characters largely coincided,4 is instructive. In effect, the political fragmentation of Western Europe after the collapse of the Western Empire5 meant that no sovereign could monopolize Latin and make it his-and-only-his language-of-state, and thus Latin’s reli­ gious authority never had a true political analogue. The birth of administrative vernaculars predated both print and the reli­ gious upheaval of the sixteenth century, and must therefore be regarded (at least initially) as an independent factor in the erosion of the sacred imagined community. At the same time, nothing suggests that any deep-seated ideo­ logical, let alone proto-national, impulses underlay this vernacularization where it occurred. The case of ‘England’— on the northwestern periphery of Latin Europe— is here especially enlightening. Prior to the Norman Conquest,6 the language of the court, literary and administrative, was AngloSaxon. For the next century and a half virtually all royal documents were composed in Latin. Between about 1200 and 1350 this state-Latin was superseded by Norman French. In the meantime, a slow fusion between this language of a foreign ruling class and the Anglo-Saxon of the subject population produced Early English. The fusion made it possible for the new language to take its turn, after 1362, as the language of the courts— and for the opening of Parliament. Wycliffe’s vernacular manuscript Bible followed

1.Jo h n Calvin (1 5 0 9 -1 5 6 4 ), French Protestant theologian. Followers of Calvin dominated the government of Geneva during the 1540s and 1550s. 2. Febvre and M artin, pp. 310—15 [Anderson’s note]. 3. The republic established in 1649 in England following the Civil W ar and the execution of Charles I; it lasted until the monarchy was restored in 1660. D utch Republic: the p recursor state (1581—1795) o f the N etherlands, formed from 7 provinces that declared th eir independence from

C atholic Spain. 4. Beginning in the 7th century, the officials in imperial China (mandarins) were selected by civil examinations that focused on literary and philo­ sophical texts and on knowledge of classical C hi­ nese. 5. The western part of the Roman Empire, whose capital was Rome; the last emperor fell in 476 c . E . 6. T he m ilitary conquest of England in 1066 by the French (the Normans, or N orsem en, who had earlier conquered Normandy, the northwest region of France).

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in 1382/ It is essential to bear in mind that this sequence was a series of state/ not national/ languages; and that the state concerned covered at vari­ ous times not only today’s England and Wales, but also portions of Ireland, Scotland and France. Obviously, huge elements of the subject populations knew little or nothing of Latin, Norman French, or Early English.8 Not till almost a century after Early English’s political enthronement was Londons power swept out of ‘France’. On the Seine,9 a similar movement took place, if at a slower pace. As Bloch wryly puts it, ‘French, that is to say a language which, since it was regarded as merely a corrupt form of Latin, took several centuries to raise itself to literary dignity’,1 only became the official language of the courts of justice in 1539, when Francois I issued the Edict of Villers-Cotterets.2 In other dynastic realms Latin survived much longer— under the Habsburgs3 well into the nineteenth century. In still others, ‘foreign’ vernaculars took over: in the eighteenth century the languages of the Romanov court were French and German.4 In every instance, the ‘choice’ of language appears as a gradual, unselfconscious, pragmatic, not to say haphazard development. As such, it was utterly different from the selfconscious language policies pursued by nineteenthcentury dynasts confronted with the rise of hostile popular linguisticnationalisms. One clear sign of the difference is that the old administrative languages were just that: languages used by and for officialdoms for their own inner convenience. There was no idea of systematically imposing the lan­ guage on the dynasts’ various subject populations.5 Nonetheless, the eleva­ tion of these vernaculars to the status of languages-of-power, where, in one sense, they were competitors with Latin (French in Paris, [Early] English in London), made its own contribution to the decline of the imagined commu­ nity of Christendom. At bottom, it is likely that the esotericization of Latin, the Reformation, and the haphazard development of administrative vernaculars are significant, in the present context, primarily in a negative sense— in their contributions to the dethronement of Latin. It is quite possible to conceive of the emer­ gence of the new imagined national communities without any one, perhaps all, of them being present. What, in a positive sense, made the new commu­ nities imaginable was a half-fortuitous, but explosive, interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity.6 7. The first translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible into English, promoted (and in part carried out) by the English theologian and reformer John W ycliffe (ca. 1 3 2 8 -1 3 8 4 ). 8. Hugh Seton-W atson, Nations and States: An

Inquiry into the Origins o f Nations and the Politics o f N ationalism (1 977), pp. 2 8 - 2 9 ; M arc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. I. A. Manyon (1961), vol. I, p. 75 [Anderson’s note]. The Welsh, Irish, and Scots had their own languages. 9. River that runs through Paris. 1. Bloch, Feudal Society, I, p. 98 [Anderson’s note]. 2. A law that mandated the use of French, instead of Latin or local dialects, in all official govern­ mental and ecclesiastical documents. 3. The ruling dynasty of Austria from 1282 to 1918. 4. Seton-Watson, Nations and States, p. 48 [Ander­

son’s note]. The Romanovs were the ruling dynasty of Russia from 1613 to 1917. 5. An agreeable confirm ation of this point is pro­ vided by F r a n c is I, who, as we have seen, banned all printing o f books in 1535 and made French the language of his courts four years later! [Anderson’s note]. 6. It was not the first “accident” of its kind. Febvre and M artin note that while a visible bourgeoisie already existed in Europe by the late 13th cen­ tury, paper did not come into general use until the end of the 14th. Only paper’s smooth plane sur­ face made the mass reproduction of texts and pic­ tures possible— and this did not o ccur for still another 75 years. But paper was not a European invention. It floated in from another history— C hina’s— through the Islamic world. T he Coming o f the B ook, pp. 22, 30, and 45 [Anderson’s note].

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The element of fatality is essential. For whatever superhuman feats capi­ talism was capable of, it found in death and languages two tenacious adver­ saries.7 Particular languages can die or be wiped out, but there was and is no possibility of humankind s general linguistic unification. Yet this mutual incomprehensibility was historically of only slight importance until capital­ ism and print created monoglot mass reading publics. While it is essential to keep in mind an idea of fatality, in the sense of a general condition of irremediable linguistic diversity, it would be a mistake to equate this fatality with that common element in nationalist ideologies which stresses the primordial fatality of particular languages and their association with particular territorial units. The essential thing is the inter­ play between fatality, technology, and capitalism. In pre-print Europe, and, of course, elsewhere in the world, the diversity of spoken languages, those languages that for their speakers were (and are) the warp and woof of their lives, was immense; so immense, indeed, that had print-capitalism sought to exploit each potential oral vernacular market, it would have remained a capitalism of petty proportions. But these varied idiolects were capable of being assembled, within definite limits, into print-languages far fewer in number. The very arbitrariness of any system of signs for sounds facilitated the assembling process.8 (At the same time, the more ideographic the signs, the vaster the potential assembling zone. One can detect a sort of descend­ ing hierarchy here from algebra through Chinese and English, to the regu­ lar syllabaries of French or Indonesian.)9 Nothing served to assemble’ related vernaculars more than capitalism, which, within the limits imposed by grammars and syntaxes, created mechanically reproduced print-languages capable of dissemination through the market.1 These print-languages laid the bases for national consciousnesses in three distinct ways. First and foremost, they created unified fields of exchange and communication below Latin and above the spoken vernaculars. Speakers of the huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, or Spanishes, who might find it dif­ ficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. In the process, they gradually became aware of the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their particular language-field, and at the same time that only those hundreds of thousands, or millions, so belonged. These fellow-readers, to whom they were connected through print, formed, in their secular, particu­ lar, visible invisibility, the embryo of the nationally imagined community. 7. We still have no great m ultinationals in the world of publishing [Anderson’s note]. Perhaps true when Anderson wrote his book in 1983, but certainly not true in recent years. 8. For a useful discussion of this point, see S. H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years o f Printing (1966), chapter 5. T hat the sign ough is pronounced dif­ ferently in the words although, bough, lough, rough, cough, and hiccough, shows both the idiolectic variety out of which the now-standard spell­ ing of English emerged, and the ideographic quality of the final product [Anderson’s note]. 9. That is, from the purely symbolic representa­ tions of algebra to the ideograms of C hinese writ­ ing, which represent syllables but not particular sounds, to English spellings that correspond some­ what unpredictably to sounds to the highly regular

pronunciation of words spelled in such languages as French and Indonesian. Chinese has a poten­ tially vast “assembling zone,” because those whose spoken dialects are mutually incomprehensible can nervertheless read the same text. 1. I say “nothing served . . . more than capitalism” advisedly. Both Steinberg and Eisenstein come close to theomorphizing “print” qua print as the genius of modern history. Febvre and M artin never forget that behind print stands printers and publishing firms. It is worth remembering in this context that although printing was invented first in China, possibly 500 years before its appear­ ance in Europe, it had no major, let alone revolu­ tionary impact— precisely because of the absence of capitalism there [Anderson’s note].

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Second, print-capitalism gave a new fixity to language, which in the long run helped to build that image of antiquity so central to the subjective idea of the nation. As Febvre and Martin remind us, the printed book kept a perma­ nent form, capable of virtually infinite reproduction, temporally and spatially. It was no longer subject to the individualizing and unconsciously moderniz­ ing’ habits of monastic scribes. Thus, while twelfth-century French differed markedly from that written by Villon2 in the fifteenth, the rate of change slowed decisively in the sixteenth. ‘By the 17th century languages in Europe had generally assumed their modern forms.’3 To put it another way, for three centuries now these stabilized print-languages have been gathering a darken­ ing varnish; the words of our seventeenth-century forebears are accessible to us in a way that to Villon his twelfth-century ancestors were not. Third, print-capitalism created languages-of-power of a kind different from the older administrative vernaculars. Certain dialects inevitably were ‘closer’ to each print-language and dominated their final forms. Their disadvantaged cousins, still assimilable to the emerging print-language, lost caste, above all because they were unsuccessful (or only relatively successful) in insisting on their own print-form. ‘Northwestern German’ became Platt Deutsch, a largely spoken, thus sub-standard, German, because it was assimilable to print-German in a way that Bohemian spoken-Czech was not. High German, the King’s English, and, later, Central Thai,4 were correspondingly elevated to a new politico-cultural eminence. (Hence the struggles in late-twentiethcentury Europe by certain ‘sub-’ nationalities to change their subordinate status by breaking firmly into print— and radio.) It remains only to emphasize that in their origins, the fixing of printlanguages and the differentiation of status between them were largely unself­ conscious processes resulting from the explosive interaction between capitalism, technology and human linguistic diversity. But as with so much else in the history of nationalism, once ‘there,’ they could become formal models to be imitated, and, where expedient, consciously exploited in a Machiavellian spirit.5 Today, the Thai government actively discourages attempts by foreign missionaries to provide its hill-tribe minorities with their own transcription-systems and to develop publications in their own lan­ guages: the same government is largely indifferent to what these minorities speak. The fate of the Turkic-speaking peoples in the zones incorporated into today’s Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and the USSR is especially exemplary. A fam­ ily of spoken languages, once everywhere assemblable, thus comprehensible, within an Arabic orthography, has lost that unity as a result of conscious manipulations. To heighten Turkish-Turkey’s national consciousness at the expense of any wider Islamic identification, Atatiirk imposed compulsory romanization.6 The Soviet authorities followed suit, first with an anti-Islamic, 2. Francois Villon (1 4 3 1 -ca . 1473), French poet. 3. Febvre and M artin, T he Coming o f the B ook, p. 319 [Anderson’s note]. 4. All dialects that becam e the official forms of their respective languages. Platt D eutsch: Low Germ an, spoken in northern Germany. 5. Marked by the amoral cunning and opportun­ ism associated with observations made by the Italian political philosopher Niccolo M achiavelli (1 4 6 9 -1 5 2 7 ). 6. Hans Kohn, The Age o f Nationalism (1962), p.

108. It is probably only fair to add that Kemal also hoped thereby to align Turkish nationalism with the modern, romanized civilization of Western Europe [Anderson’s note]. Romanization: use of the Latin alphabet to represent words (Turkish had been written in Arabic script). Kemal Atatiirk (1881-1938), Turkish army officer who founded the Republic of Turkey as a secular nation-state after World War I and served as the nation’s first prime minister.

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anti-Persian compulsory romanization, then, in Stalin’s 1930s, with a Russi­ fying compulsory Cyrillicization.7 We can summarize the conclusions to be drawn from the argument thus far by saying that the convergence of capitalism and print technology on the fatal diversity of human language created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation. The potential stretch of these communities was inherently limited, and, at the same time, bore none but the most fortuitous relation­ ship to existing political boundaries (which were, on the whole, the highwater marks of dynastic expansionisms). Yet it is obvious that while today almost all modern self-conceived nations— and also nation-states— have national print-languages’, many of them have these languages in common, and in others only a tiny fraction of the popula­ tion uses’ the national language in conversation or on paper. The nation­ states of Spanish America or those of the ‘Anglo-Saxon family’ are conspicuous examples of the first outcome; many ex-colonial states, particularly in Africa, of the second. In other words, the concrete formation of contemporary nation-states is by no means isomorphic with the determinate reach of par­ ticular print-languages. To account for the discontinuity-in-connectedness between print-languages, national consciousness, and nation-states, it is nec­ essary to turn to the large cluster of new political entities that sprang up in the Western hemisphere between 1776 and 1838, all of which selfconsciously defined themselves as nations, and, with the interesting exception of Brazil,8 as (non-dynastic) republics. For not only were they historically the first such states to emerge on the world stage, and therefore inevitably provided the first real models of what such states should iook like,’ but their numbers and contemporary births offer fruitful ground for comparative enquiry. 1983, 2006 7. Seton-Watson, Nations and States, p. 317 [Anderson’s note]. Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), Russian revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union (1924—53); he solidified his rule over the country in the 1930s. Cyrillicization: the use of

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the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet to represent words. 8. W hen Brazil gained its independence from Portugal in 1822, it was ruled by an emperor; a republic was not established until 1889.

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Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubars M adwoman in the Attic (1979) is a landmark of 1970s American feminism. The book encapsulates both the strengths and limita­ tions of that first decade of “second-wave feminism.” (First-wave feminism pro­ duced the Declaration of Women’s Rights of 1848 and culminated in the ultimately successful campaign for female suffrage during the early twentieth century.) An outgrowth of the civil rights and student protest movements of the 1960s, secondwave feminism has proved to be among the most durable of the sixties’ legacies. In its initial phase, contemporary feminists were pulled between its separatist and assimilationist tendencies. They debated whether women were better off disavowing

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the given order altogether, choosing instead to form their own communities, or striving for equal treatment within patriarchal institutions while working to reform them. The Madwoman in the Attic reflects the pressures from both sides. All parties to the dispute, however, assumed that every woman shares a set of similar experi­ ences and that patriarchy— the male-dominated social order— is everywhere essen­ tially the same. These assumptions became problematic later on, and they have been challenged by feminists such as a d r i e n n e r i c h , b e l l h o o k s , g l o r i a a n z a l d u a , and j u d i t h b u t l e r . Born in New York City, Sandra M. Gilbert attended Cornell University, where she was active in undergraduate literary circles. She received her M.A. from New York University and her Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University. The author of nine books of poetry along with her literary criticism, Gilbert has taught at Cali­ fornia State University at Hayward, Indiana University, Princeton University, Stan­ ford University, and the University of California at Davis. She and Susan Gubar (who was also born in New York City, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1972) met in 1973; both were young professors at Indiana University, where Gubar taught until her retirement in 2009. The Madwoman in the Attic grew out of the course in womens literature that the two team-taught. Gilbert and Gubar con­ tinued to collaborate for decades, while also writing single-authored books. They were jointly named Ms. magazines “Woman of the Year” in 1986 for their work as editors of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. In 2012, they were awarded the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Book Critics Circle. Building on the earlier 1970s feminist books by Ellen Moers and Elaine Showalter, The Madwoman in the Attic develops the notion that women writers can be under­ stood as a group— and understood as “participating] in a quite different literary sub­ culture from that inhabited by male writers.” Such separation is ambiguous: “exhilarating” at its best, “profoundly debilitating” at its worst. Gilbert and Gubar argue that the influential oedipal model developed by h a r o l d b l o o m to describe the relation of post-Enlightenment male writers to each other does not fit the entirely dif­ ferent situation of women in a male-dominated literary tradition. The female “anxiety of authorship” described by Gilbert and Gubar was an “isolation that felt like illness, [an] alienation that felt like madness” as women writers of the eighteenth and nine­ teenth centuries wielded their pens in defiance of the social injunction that writing was not women’s work. Each woman writer had to steal (at great risk and great cost to herself) a right to write that society extended only to men— and she looked to earlier women writers to see how such a theft could be pulled off. These “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century foremothers” enable the work of contemporary women [who] . . . attempt the pen with energy and authority.” “We now began to see,” Gilbert and Gubar write, that “women of letters from Anne Bradstreet to Anne Bronte and on through Gertrude Stein to Sylvia Plath had engaged in a complex, sometimes con­ spiratorial, sometimes convivial conversation that crossed national as well as tempo­ ral boundaries. And that conversation had been far more energetic, indeed far more rebellious, than we had realized.” For the aggression and competitiveness found in Bloom’s account of the relation between male authors, Gilbert and Gubar thus substitute “the secret sisterhood” of role models who show that women can write. (Their own collaboration breaks with the model of the isolated, individual scholar.) The connection remains “secret” because the early women writers they discuss still “fear . . . the antagonism of male readers” and “dread” assuming “the patriarchal authority of art.” But the tradition of women writers does provide resources for each new woman author. Gilbert and Gubar famously make evident the high costs women writers pay for success. The madwoman in the attic (a reference to Bertha, Rochester’s hidden first wife, in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre) stands for everything the woman writer must try to repress— though never with complete success— in order to write books accept­ able by male standards. In detailing the various illnesses that women suffer, Gilbert

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and Gubar open up questions of bodily experience and mainstream medicine that are also pursued by Elaine Showalter, m i c h e l f o u c a u l t , and s u s a n b o r d o . Employing a psychological approach to literature, they focus on the psychic cost of repression and on bodily symptoms that are interpreted as responses to societal oppression. For Gil­ bert and Gubar, women need to speak and write, but they must do so in a world that strives to keep them silent. The woman who speaks out is branded ‘an active mon­ ster”; the woman who remains silent risks madness. As feminism moved into the 1980s, Gilbert and Gubar’s approach was sometimes derided as “Anglo-American” or “liberal” feminism, defined as the effort to achieve equal status for women within existing social institutions. Their treatment of “woman” as a unitary category was also challenged. In placing Anne Sexton, an American poet of the 1960s, alongside Charlotte Bronte, a Victorian novelist, they looked historically naive, while their omission of nonwhite women writers seemed to point to an additional blind spot. Differences of race, class, sexual orientation, eth­ nicity, and historical period not only meant that not all women had the same funda­ mental experiences but also suggested that women writers could not be judged and valued according to one universal standard. The intensified exploration of difference challenged the notion of “sisterhood,” the heady 1970s assumption that all woman shared certain basic similarities and would gain political unity through their common experience of being oppressed. But we should not consign The Madwoman in the Attic to a now-surpassed moment of feminism, as is sometimes done. Gilbert and Gubar attend to the strategies women have adopted to survive in a male-dominated society, thus focusing on the world that most women inhabit. The recovery of women’s histories and the celebration of wom­ en’s successes within that male world have proven useful. Traditions are constructed, not discovered, and Gilbert and Gubar offer one remarkable example of how feminist critics can create a usable past, can uncover the achievements and resistances unre­ corded by official histories. By being alert both to what women writers have so glori­ ously done and to the high costs paid for those successes, Gilbert and Gubar offer a nuanced view of what it means to dwell in relatively powerless positions within a world one did not make. T h e M adw om an in the A ttic: T h e W om an W riter a n d th e N in eteen th-C en tu ry L itera ry Im a g in a tio n Keywords: Authorship, The Body, The Canon/Tradition, Feminist Criticism, Feminist Theory, Literary History, Sexuality, Women’s Literature

From The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination From C hapter 2. Infection in the Sentence: T he W oman W riter and the Anxiety o f Authorship The man who does not know sick women does not know women. — S. Weir Mitchell I try to describe this long limitation, hoping that with such power as is now mine, and such use of language as is within that power, this will convince any one who cares about it that this “living” of mine had been done under a heavy handicap. . . . — Charlotte Perkins Gilman A Word dropped careless on a Page May stimulate an eye When folded in perpetual seam

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The Wrinkled Maker lie Infection in the sentence breeds We may inhale Despair At distances of Centuries From the Malaria— — Emily Dickinson I stand in the ring in the dead city and tie on the red shoes They are not mine, they are my mothers, her mothers before, handed down like an heirloom but hidden like shameful letters. — Anne Sexton1

What does it mean to be a woman writer in a culture whose fundamental definitions of literary authority are, as we have seen, both overtly and covertly patriarchal? If the vexed and vexing polarities of angel and monster, sweet dumb Snow White and fierce mad Queen, are major images literary tradition offers women, how does such imagery influence the ways in which women attempt the pen? If the Queen’s looking glass speaks with the King s voice,2 how do its perpetual kingly admonitions affect the Queens own voice? Since his is the chief voice she hears, does the Queen try to sound like the King, imitating his tone, his inflections, his phrasing, his point of view? Or does she “talk back” to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint? We believe these are basic questions femi­ nist literary criticism— both theoretical and practical— must answer, and consequently they are questions to which we shall turn again and again, not only in this chapter but in all our readings of nineteenth-century literature by women. That writers assimilate and then consciously or unconsciously affirm or deny the achievements of their predecessors is, of course, a central fact of literary history, a fact whose aesthetic and metaphysical implications have been discussed in detail by theorists as diverse as T. S. Eliot, M. H. Abrams, Erich Auerbach, and Frank Kermode.3 More recently, some literary theo­ rists have begun to explore what we might call the psychology of literary history— the tensions and anxieties, hostilities and inadequacies writers feel 1. Epigraphs: Doctor on Patient (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1888), quoted in Ilza Veith, Hysteria: The History o f a Disease (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 2 1 9 -2 0 ; The Living o f Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 104; J. 1261 in The Poems o f Emily Dickinson, ed. Thom as Joh n ­ son, 3 vols. (Cam bridge, M ass.: Belknap Press o f Harvard University Press, 1955); “T h e Red Shoes,” in T he B ook o f Folly (Boston: Houghton M ifflin, 1972), pp. 2 8 —29 [G ilbert and G ubar’s note; except as indicated, all subsequent notes are theirs]. M itchell (1829-1914), American physi­ cian and author, specializing in nervous diseases. Gilman (1 8 6 0 -1 9 3 5 ), American feminist author and lecturer who underwent and strongly criti­ cized M itch e ll’s “rest cu re.” D ickinson (1 8 3 0 — 1886), A m erican poet. Sexton (1 9 2 8 —1974),

A m erican feminist poet. 2. Gilbert and Gubar make this argument in chap­ ter 1 of M adw om an in the Attic, “T h e Q u een’s Looking Glass” [editor’s note]. 3. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent” [1919], Eliot of course considers these matters; in M ime­ sis [1946] Auerbach traces the ways in which the realist includes what has been previously excluded from art; and in T he Sense o f an Ending [1967] Frank Kermode shows how poets and novelists lay bare the literariness of their predecessors’ forms in order to explore the dissonance between fic­ tion and reality, [e l i o t (1888—1965), Am ericanborn English poet and critic; for “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” see above. Abrams (1912— 2 0 1 5 ), A m erican literary c ritic , a u e r b a c h (1 8 9 2 -1 9 5 7 ), G erm an literary c ritic. Kermode (1919-2010), English literary critic— editor’s note.]

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when they confront not only the achievements of their predecessors but the traditions of genre, style, and metaphor that they inherit from such “forefa­ thers.” Increasingly, these critics study the ways in which, as J. Hillis Miller has put it, a literary text “is inhabited . . . by a long chain of parasitical pres­ ences, echoes, allusions, guests, ghosts of previous texts.”4 As Miller himself also notes, the first and foremost student of such liter­ ary psychohistory has been Harold Bloom.5 Applying Freudian structures to literary genealogies, Bloom has postulated that the dynamics of literary history arise from the artist s “anxiety of influence,” his fear that he is not his own creator and that the works of his predecessors, existing before and beyond him, assume essential priority over his own writings. In fact, as we pointed out in our discussion of the metaphor of literary paternity, Bloom s paradigm of the sequential historical relationship between literary artists is the relationship of father and son, specifically that relationship as it was defined by Freud. Thus Bloom explains that a “strong poet” must engage in heroic warfare with his “precursor,” for, involved as he is in a literary Oedipal struggle, a man can only become a poet by somehow invalidating his poetic father. Bloom’s model of literary history is intensely (even exclusively) male, and necessarily patriarchal. For this reason it has seemed, and no doubt will continue to seem, offensively sexist to some feminist critics. Not only, after all, does Bloom describe literary history as the crucial warfare of fathers and sons, he sees Miltons fiercely masculine fallen Satan as the type of the poet in our culture, and he metaphorically defines the poetic process as a sexual encounter between a male poet and his female muse. Where, then, does the female poet fit in? Does she want to annihilate a “forefather” or a “foremother”? What if she can find no models, no precursors? Does she have a muse, and what is its sex? Such questions are inevitable in any female consideration of Bloomian poetics.6 And yet, from a feminist per­ spective, their inevitability may be just the point; it may, that is, call our attention not to what is wrong about Blooms conceptualization of the dynamics of Western literary history, but to what is right (or at least sugges­ tive) about his theory. For Western literary history is overwhelmingly male— or, more accurately, patriarchal— and Bloom analyzes and explains this fact, while other theorists have ignored it, precisely, one supposes, because they assumed literature had to be male. Like Freud, whose psychoanalytic postulates permeate Bloom s literary psychoanalyses of the “anxiety of influence,” Bloom has defined pro­ cesses of interaction that his predecessors did not bother to consider because, among other reasons, they were themselves so caught up in such processes. Like Freud, too, Bloom has insisted on bringing to consciousness assumptions readers and writers do not ordinarily examine. In doing so, he has clarified the implications of the psychosexual and sociosexual contexts 4. J . H illis M iller, “T h e Lim its o f Pluralism , III: T h e C ritic as H ost,” C ritical Inquiry 3, no. 3 (spring 1977): 4 4 6 . [M iller (b. 1928), A m erican literary critic— editor’s note.] 5. American literary critic (b. 1930; see above), author of The Anxiety o f Influence (1972). On S i g ­ m u n d f r e u d (18 5 6 -1 9 3 9 ), the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, see above [editor’s note].

6. For a discussion of the woman writer and her place in Bloomian literary history, see Joanne Feit Diehl, ‘“ Com e Slowly— Eden’: An Exploration of W omen Poets and T h eir M use,” Signs 3, no. 3 (spring 1978): 5 7 2 -8 7 . See also the responses to Diehl in Signs 4, no. 1 (autum n 1978): 1 8 8 -9 6 . [For Jo h n M ilto n ’s S atan , see Paradise Lost (1667)— editor’s note.]

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by which every literary text is surrounded, and thus the meanings of the “guests” and “ghosts” which inhabit texts themselves. Speaking of Freud, the feminist theorist Juliet Mitchell has remarked that “psychoanalysis is not a recommendation fo r a patriarchal society, but an analysis of one.”7 The same sort of statement could be made about Blooms model of literary history, which is not a recommendation for but an analysis of the patriarchal poetics (and attendant anxieties) which underlie our cultures chief literary move­ ments. For our purposes here, however, Blooms historical construct is useful not only because it helps identify and define the patriarchal psychosexual context in which so much Western literature was authored, but also because it can help us distinguish the anxieties and achievements of female writers from those of male writers. If we return to the question we asked earlier— where does a woman writer “fit in” to the overwhelmingly and essentially male liter­ ary history Bloom describes?—we find we have to answer that a woman writer does not “fit in.” At first glance, indeed, she seems to be anomalous, indefinable, alienated, a freakish outsider. Just as in Freuds theories of male and female psychosexual development there is no symmetry between a boys growth and a girls (with, say, the male “Oedipus complex” balanced by a female “Electra complex”)8 so Bloom s male-oriented theory of the “anxiety of influence” cannot be simply reversed or inverted in order to account for the situation of the woman writer. Certainly if we acquiesce in the patriarchal Bloomian model, we can be sure that the female poet does not experience the “anxiety of influence” in the same way that her male counterpart would, for the simple reason that she must confront precursors who are almost exclusively male, and there­ fore significantly different from her. Not only do these precursors incarnate patriarchal authority (as our discussion of the metaphor of literary pater­ nity argued), they attempt to enclose her in definitions of her person and her potential which, by reducing her to extreme stereotypes (angel, mon­ ster) drastically conflict with her own sense of her self— that is, of her sub­ jectivity, her autonomy, her creativity. On the one hand, therefore, the woman writer's male precursors symbolize authority; on the other hand, despite their authority, they fail to define the ways in which she experiences her own identity as a writer. More, the masculine authority with which they construct their literary personae, as well as the fierce power struggles in which they engage in their efforts of self-creation, seem to the woman writer directly to contradict the terms of her own gender definition. Thus the “anxiety of influence” that a male poet experiences is felt by a female poet as an even more primary “anxiety of authorship”— a radical fear that she cannot create, that because she can never become a “precursor” the act of writing will isolate or destroy her. This anxiety is, of course, exacerbated by her fear that not only can she not fight a male precursor on “his” terms and win, she cannot “beget” art upon the (female) body of the muse. As Juliet Mitchell notes, in a concise summary 7. Ju liet M itchell, Psychoanalysis and Fem inism (New York: Vintage, 1975), p. xiii. 8. In Greek mythology, Electra wishes to avenge the death of her father, Agamemnon, whom her mother, Clytem nestra, has helped to murder on his return from leading the Greek armies in the

Trojan War. Some psychologists have argued that a girl has an Electra complex that parallels the boy’s Oedipus complex, meaning that she feels aggressive toward her mother and desires her father [editor’s note].

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of the implications Freud’s theory of psychosexual development has for women, both a boy and a girl, “as they learn to speak and live within society, want to take the father’s [in Bloom’s terminology the precursors] place, and only the hoy will one day he allowed to do so. Furthermore both sexes are born into the desire of the mother, and as, through cultural heritage, what the mother desires is the phallus-turned-baby, both children desire to be the phallus for the mother. Again, only the hoy can fully recognize him self in his m others desire. Thus both sexes repudiate the implications of femininity,” but the girl learns (in relation to her father) “that her subjugation to the law of the father entails her becoming the representative of nature’ and ‘sexuality,’ a chaos of spontaneous, intuitive creativity.”9 Unlike her male counterpart, then, the female artist must first struggle against the effects of a socialization which makes conflict with the will of her (male) precursors seem inexpressibly absurd, futile, or even— as in the case of the Queen in “Little Snow White”— self-annihilating. And just as the male artist’s struggle against his precursor takes the form of what Bloom calls revi­ sionary swerves, flights, misreadings, so the female writer’s battle for self­ creation involves her in a revisionary process. Her battle, however, is not against her (male) precursor’s reading of the world but against his reading of her. In order to define herself as an author she must redefine the terms of her socialization. Her revisionary struggle, therefore, often becomes a strug­ gle for what Adrienne Rich has called “Re-vision— the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction . . . an act of survival.”1 Frequently, moreover, she can begin such a struggle only by actively seeking a fem a le precursor who, far from representing a threaten­ ing force to be denied or killed, proves by example that a revolt against patri­ archal literary authority is possible. For this reason, as well as for the sound psychoanalytic reasons Mitchell and others give, it would be foolish to lock the woman artist into an Electra pattern matching the Oedipal structure Bloom proposes for male writers. The woman writer— and we shall see women doing this over and over again— searches for a female model not because she wants dutifully to comply with male definitions of her “femininity” but because she must legitimize her own rebellious endeavors. At the same time, like most women in patriarchal soci­ ety, the woman writer does experience her gender as a painful obstacle, or even a debilitating inadequacy; like most patriarchally conditioned women, in other words, she is victimized by what Mitchell calls “the inferiorized and alternative’ (second sex) psychology of women under patriarchy.”2 Thus the loneliness of the female artist, her feelings of alienation from male predeces­ sors coupled with her need for sisterly precursors and successors, her urgent sense of her need for a female audience together with her fear of the antago­ nism of male readers, her culturally conditioned timidity about self­ dramatization, her dread of the patriarchal authority of art, her anxiety about the impropriety of female invention— all these phenomena of “inferiorization” mark the woman writer’s struggle for artistic self-definition and differentiate her efforts at self-creation from those of her male counterpart. 9. M itchell, Psychoanalysis and Fem inism, pp. 4 0 4 -5 . 1. Adrienne Rich, “W hen We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” in Adrienne R ich’s Poetry,

ed. Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 90. [ r i c h (1 9 2 9 2012), feminist poet and essayist— editor’s note.] 2. M itchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, p. 4 0 2 .

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As we shall see, such sociosexual differentiation means that, as Elaine Showalter has suggested, women writers participate in a quite different liter­ ary subculture from that inhabited by male writers, a subculture which has its own distinctive literary traditions, even— though it defines itself in rela­ tion to the “main,” male-dominated, literary culture— a distinctive history.3 At best, the separateness of this female subculture has been exhilarating for women. In recent years, for instance, while male writers seem increasingly to have felt exhausted by the need for revisionism which Bloom s theory of the “anxiety of influence” accurately describes, women writers have seen them­ selves as pioneers in a creativity so intense that their male counterparts have probably not experienced its analog since the Renaissance, or at least since the Romantic era. The son of many fathers, todays male writer feels hope­ lessly belated; the daughter of too few mothers, today s female writer feels that she is helping to create a viable tradition which is at last definitively emerging. There is a darker side of this female literary subculture, however, espe­ cially when womens struggles for literary self-creation are seen in the psy­ chosexual context described by Blooms Freudian theories of patrilineal literary inheritance. As we noted above, for an “anxiety of influence” the woman writer substitutes what we have called an “anxiety of authorship,” an anxiety built from complex and often only barely conscious fears of that authority which seems to the female artist to be by definition inappropriate to her sex. Because it is based on the woman’s socially determined sense of her own biology, this anxiety of authorship is quite distinct from the anxi­ ety about creativity that could be traced in such male writers as Haw­ thorne or Dostoevsky. Indeed, to the extent that it forms one of the unique bonds that link women in what we might call the secret sisterhood of their literary subculture, such anxiety in itself constitutes a crucial mark of that subculture. In comparison to the “male” tradition of strong, father-son combat, how­ ever, this female anxiety of authorship is profoundly debilitating. Handed down not from one woman to another but from the stern literary “fathers” of patriarchy to all their “inferiorized” female descendants, it is in many ways the germ of a dis-ease or, at any rate, a disaffection, a disturbance, a dis­ trust, that spreads like a stain throughout the style and structure of much literature by women, especially— as we shall see in this study— throughout literature by women before the twentieth century. For if contemporary women do now attempt the pen with energy and authority, they are able to do so only because their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century foremothers struggled in isolation that felt like illness, alienation that felt like madness, obscurity that felt like paralysis to overcome the anxiety of authorship that was endemic to their literary subculture. Thus, while the recent feminist emphasis on posi­ tive role models has undoubtedly helped many women, it should not keep us from realizing the terrible odds against which a creative female subculture was established. Far from reinforcing socially oppressive sexual stereotyping, only a full consideration of such problems can reveal the extraordinary strength of women’s literary accomplishments in the eighteenth and nine­ teenth centuries. 3. See Elaine Showalter, A Literature o f T heir Own (P rin ceto n : P rin ceto n U niversity P ress, 1977). [Showalter (b. 1941), Am erican fem inist literary c ritic— editor’s note.]

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Emily Dickinsons acute observations about “infection in the sentence/’ quoted in our epigraphs, resonate in a number of different ways, then, for women writers, given the literary woman’s special concept of her place in lit­ erary psychohistory. To begin with, the words seem to indicate Dickinson’s keen consciousness that, in the purest Bloomian or Millerian sense, perni­ cious “guests” and “ghosts” inhabit all literary texts. For any reader, but espe­ cially for a reader who is also a writer, every text can become a “sentence” or weapon in a kind of metaphorical germ warfare. Beyond this, however, the fact that “infection in the sentence breeds” suggests Dickinson’s recognition that literary texts are coercive, imprisoning, fever-inducing; that, since litera­ ture usurps a reader’s interiority, it is an invasion of privacy. Moreover, given Dickinson’s own gender definition, the sexual ambiguity of her poem s “Wrin­ kled Maker” is significant. For while, on the one hand, “we” (meaning espe­ cially women writers) “may inhale Despair” from all those patriarchal texts which seek to deny female autonomy and authority, on the other hand “we” (meaning especially women writers) “may inhale Despair” from all those “foremothers” who have both overtly and covertly conveyed their traditional authorship anxiety to their bewildered female descendants. Finally, such tra­ ditional, metaphorically matrilineal anxiety ensures that even the maker of a text, when she is a woman, may feel imprisoned within texts— folded and “wrinkled” by their pages and thus trapped in their “perpetual seam[s]” which perpetually tell her how she seems. Although contemporary women writers are relatively free of the infection of this “Despair” Dickinson defines (at least in comparison to their nineteenthcentury precursors), an anecdote recently related by the American poet and essayist Annie Gottlieb summarizes our point about the ways in which, for all women, “Infection in the sentence breeds”: When I began to enjoy my powers as a writer, I dreamt that my mother had me sterilized! (Even in dreams we still blame our mothers for the punitive choices our culture forces on us.) I went after the motherfigure in my dream, brandishing a large knife; on its blade was writing. I cried, “Do you know what you are doing? You are destroying my female­ ness, my fem a le pow er, which is important to me because o f you\ ”4 Seeking motherly precursors, says Gottlieb, as if echoing Dickinson, the woman writer may find only infection, debilitation. Yet still she must seek, not seek to subvert, h er(ifem a le power, which is important” to her because of her lost literary matrilineage. In this connection, Dickinson’s own words about mothers are revealing, for she alternately claimed that “I never had a mother,” that “I always ran Home to Awe as a child. . . . He was an awful Mother but I liked him better than none,” and that “a mother [was] a miracle.”5 Yet, as we shall see, her own anxiety of authorship was a “Despair” inhaled not only from the infections suffered by her own ailing physical mother, and her many tormented literary mothers, but from the literary fathers who spoke to her— even “lied” to her— sometimes near at hand, sometimes “at distances of Cen­ turies,” from the censorious looking glasses of literary texts.

4. Annie G ottlieb, “Fem inists Look at M otherhood,” M other Jon es, November 1976, p. 53. 5. The Letters o f Emily Dickinson, ed. Thom as

Johnson, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958), 2:475, 518.

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It is debilitating to be any woman in a society where women are warned that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters. Recently, in fact, social scientists and social historians like Jessie Bernard, Phyllis Chesler, Naomi Weisstein, and Pauline Bart have begun to study the ways in which patriarchal socialization literally makes women sick, both physi­ cally and mentally.6 Hysteria, the disease with which Freud so famously began his investigations into the dynamic connections between psyche and som a,7 is by definition a “female disease,” not so much because it takes its name from the Greek word for womb, hyster (the organ which was in the nineteenth century supposed to “cause” this emotional disturbance), but because hysteria did occur mainly among women in turn-of-the-century Vienna, and because throughout the nineteenth century this mental ill­ ness, like many other nervous disorders, was thought to be caused by the female reproductive system, as if to elaborate upon Aristotle’s notion that femaleness was in and of itself a deformity.8 And, indeed, such diseases of maladjustment to the physical and social environment as anorexia and ago­ raphobia did and do strike a disproportionate number of women. Sufferers from anorexia— loss of appetite, self-starvation— are primarily adolescent girls. Sufferers from agoraphobia— fear of open or “public” places— are usually female, most frequently middle-aged housewives, as are sufferers from crippling rheumatoid arthritis.9 Such diseases are caused by patriarchal socialization in several ways. Most obviously, of course, any young girl, but especially a lively or imaginative one, is likely to experience her education in docility, submissiveness, self-lessness as in some sense sickening. To be trained in renunciation is almost necessar­ ily to be trained to ill health, since the human animal’s first and strongest urge is to his/her own survival, pleasure, assertion. In addition, each of the “subjects” in which a young girl is educated may be sickening in a specific way. Learning to become a beautiful object, the girl learns anxiety about— perhaps even loathing of—her own flesh. Peering obsessively into the real as well as metaphoric looking glasses that surround her, she desires literally to “reduce” her own body. In the nineteenth century, as we noted earlier, this desire to be beautiful and “frail” led to tight-lacing and vinegar-drinking. In 6. See Jessie Bernard, “T h e Paradox of the Happy M arriage,” Pauline B. B art, “Depression in Middle-Aged W omen,” and Naomi W eisstein, “Psychology C onstructs the Fem ale,” all in Viv­ ian G ornickand Barbara K. M oran, eds., Woman in Sexist Society (New York: Basic Books, 1971). See also Phyllis Chesler, W omen and Madness (New York: Doubleday, 1972), and— for a sum­ mary of all these m atters— Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, C om plaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics o f Sickness (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Fem inist Press, 1973). 7. Body (Greek) [editor’s note]. 8. In Hints on Insanity (1861) John M illar wrote that “M ental derangement frequently occurs in young females from Amenorrhoea, especially in those who have any strong hereditary predisposi­ tion to insanity,” adding that “an occasional warm hipbath or leeches to the pubis will . . . be followed by complete mental recovery.” In 1873, Henry Mauldsey wrote in Body and Mind that “the monthly activity of the ovaries . . . has a notable effect upon the mind and body; wherefore

it may become an important cause of mental and physical derangem ent.” See especially the medi­ cal opinions of John Millar, Henry Maudsley, and Andrew W ynter in Madness and Morals: Ideas on Insanity in the N ineteenth Century, ed. Vieda Skultans (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 2 3 0 - 3 5 . [See the Greek philosopher a r i s t o t l e (3 8 4 -3 2 2 b . c . e .), On the G eneration o f Animals — editor’s note.] 9. See Marlene Boskind-Lodahl, “Cinderella’s Stepsisters: A Fem inist Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa and Bulim ia,” Signs 2, no. 2 (winter 1976): 3 4 2 -5 6 ; W alter Blum, “The T hirteenth G uest” (on agoraphobia), in California Living, The

San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, 17 April 1977, pp. 8 —12; Joan Arehart-Treichel, “Can Your Personality Kill You?” (on female rheu­ matoid arthritis, among other diseases), New York 10, no. 48 (28 November 1977): 45: “According to studies conducted in recent years, four out of five rheumatoid victim s are women, and for good reason: T h e disease appears to arise in those unhappy with the traditional female-sex role.”

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our own era it has spawned innumerable diets and *controlled” fasts, as well as the extraordinary phenomenon of teenage anorexia.1 Similarly, it seems inevitable that women reared for, and conditioned to, lives of privacy, reti­ cence, domesticity, might develop pathological fears of public places and unconfined spaces. Like the comb, stay-laces, and apple which the Queen in “Little Snow White” uses as weapons against her hated stepdaughter, such afflictions as anorexia and agoraphobia simply carry patriarchal definitions of “femininity” to absurd extremes, and thus function as essential or at least inescapable parodies of social prescriptions. In the nineteenth century, however, the complex of social prescriptions these diseases parody did not merely urge women to act in ways which would cause them to become ill; nineteenth-century culture seems to have actually admonished women to be ill. In other words, the “female diseases” from which Victorian women suffered were not always byproducts of their training in femininity; they were the goals of such training. As Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have shown, throughout much of the nineteenth cen­ tury “Upper- and upper-middle-class women were [defined as] sick’ [frail, ill]; working-class women were [defined as] ‘sickening’ [infectious, diseased].” Speaking of the “lady,” they go on to point out that “Society agreed that she was frail and sickly,” and consequently a “cult of female invalidism” devel­ oped in England and America. For the products of such a cult, it was, as Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi wrote in 1895, “considered natural and almost laudable to break down under all conceivable varieties of strain— a winter dissipation, a houseful of servants, a quarrel with a female friend, not to speak of more legitimate reasons. . . . Constantly considering their nerves, urged to con­ sider them by well-intentioned but short-sighted advisors, [women] pretty soon become nothing but a bundle of nerves.”2 Given this socially conditioned epidemic of female illness, it is not sur­ prising to find that the angel in the house of literature frequently suffered not just from fear and trembling but from literal and figurative sickness unto death.3 Although her hyperactive stepmother dances herself into the grave, after all, beautiful Snow White has just barely recovered from a cata­ tonic trance in her glass coffin. And if we return to Goethes Makarie, the “good” woman of W ilhelm M eister’s Travels whom Hans Eichner has described as incarnating her author’s ideal of “contemplative purity,” we find that this “model of selflessness and of purity of heart . . . this embodiment of das Ew ig-W eibliche, suffers from migraine headaches.”4 Implying ruth­ less self-suppression, does the “eternal feminine” necessarily imply illness?

1. More recent discussions of the etiology and treatment of anorexia are offered in Hilde Bruch, M .D., T he Golden Cage: The Enigma o f Anorexia Nervosa (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), and in Salvador M inuchin, Bernice L. Rosman, and Lester Baker, Psychosomatic Fam ­ ilies: Anorexia Nervosa in Context (Cambridge, M ass.: Harvard University Press, 1978). [G ilbert and Gubar discuss “tight-lacing and vinegardrinking” in chapter 1— editor’s note.] 2. Quoted in Ehrenreich and English, Complaints and Disorders, p. 19. 3. Fear and Trembling (1843) and T he Sickness unto Death (1849) are works on religious faith and despair by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierke­

gaard; “the angel in the house” is the heroine of the long poem of that title (1 8 5 4 -6 3 ), celebrating domesticity, by Coventry Patmore and is the fic­ tional figure whom V i r g i n i a w o o l f , in her talk “Professions for W omen” (1931; published 1942), declared that she had to kill in order to be free to write [editor’s note]. 4. Eichner, “The Eternal Fem ale,” in Faust, ed. Cyrus Hamlin, Norton C ritical Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), p. 620. [Johann Wolf­ gang von Goethe (1749—1832), Germ an poet, nov­ elist, and playwright, author o f Faust (1808, 1832) and W ilhelm M eister’s Travels (1829). Das EwigWeibliche: the eternal feminine (German)— editor’s note.]

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If so, we may have found yet another meaning for Dickinson’s assertion that “Infection in the sentence breeds.” The despair we “inhale” even “at dis­ tances of centuries” may be the despair of a life like Makarie’s, a life that “has n o story.” At the same time, however, the despair of the monster-woman is also real, undeniable, and infectious. The Queen’s mad tarantella is plainly unhealthy and metaphorically the result of too much storytelling. As the Romantic poets feared, too much imagination may be dangerous to anyone, male or female, but for women in particular patriarchal culture has always assumed mental exercises would have dire consequences. In 1645 John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, noted in his journal that Anne Hopkins “has fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giv­ ing herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books,” add­ ing that “if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women . . . she had kept her wits.”5 And as Wendy Martin has noted in the nineteenth century this fear of the intellectual woman became so intense that the phenomenon . . . was recorded in medical annals. A thinking woman was considered such a breach of nature that a Har­ vard doctor reported during his autopsy on a Radcliffe graduate he dis­ covered that her uterus had shrivelled to the size of a pea.6 If, then, as Anne Sexton suggests (in a poem parts of which we have also used here as an epigraph), the red shoes passed furtively down from woman to woman are the shoes of art, the Queen’s dancing shoes, it is as sickening to be a Queen who wears them as it is to be an angelic Makarie who repudi­ ates them. Several passages in Sexton’s verse express what we have defined as “anxiety of authorship” in the form of a feverish dread of the suicidal tarantella of female creativity: And those girls, who wore red shoes, each boarded a train that would not stop. They tore off their ears like safety pins. Their arms fell off them and became hats. Their heads rolled off and sang down the street. And their feet— oh God, their feet in the market place— . . . the feet went on. The feet could not stop. They could not listen. They could not stop. What they did was the death dance. What they did would do them in. Certainly infection breeds in these sentences, and despair: female art, Sex­ ton suggests, has a “hidden” but crucial tradition of uncontrollable madness. 5. John W inthrop, T he History o f New England from 1630 to 1649, ed. Jam es Savage (Boston, 1826), 2:216. 6. Wendy M artin, “Anne B rad street’s Poetry: A

Study o f Subversive Piety,” in S h a k esp ea re’s Sisters, ed. Sandra M. G ilbert and Susan Gubar (Bloom ington: Indiana University Press, 1979), pp. 19-31.

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Perhaps it was her semi-conscious perception of this tradition that gave Sex­ ton herself “a secret fear” of being “a reincarnation” of Edna Millay,7 whose reputation seemed based on romance. In a letter to DeWitt Snodgrass she confessed that she had “a fear of writing as a woman writes,” adding, “I wish I were a man— I would rather write the way a man writes.”8 After all, dancing the death dance, “all those girls / who wore the red shoes” dismantle their own bodies, like anorexics renouncing the guilty weight of their female flesh. But if their arms, ears, and heads fall off, perhaps their wombs, too, will “shrivel” to “the size of a pea”? In this connection, a passage from Margaret Atwood’s9 Lady Oracle acts almost as a gloss on the conflict between creativity and “femininity” which Sexton’s violent imagery embodies (or dis-embodies). Significantly, the pro­ tagonist of Atwood’s novel is a writer of the sort of fiction that has recently been called “female gothic,” and even more significantly she too projects her anxieties of authorship into the fairy-tale metaphor of the red shoes. Step­ ping in glass, she sees blood on her feet, and suddenly feels that she has discovered The real red shoes, the feet punished for dancing. You could dance, or you could have the love of a good man. But you were afraid to dance, because you had this unnatural fear that if you danced they’d cut your feet off so you wouldn’t be able to dance. . . . Finally you overcame your fear and danced, and they cut your feet off. The good man went away too, because you wanted to dance.1 Whether she is a passive angel or an active monster, in other words, the woman writer feels herself to be literally or figuratively crippled by the debilitating alternatives her culture offers her, and the crippling effects of her conditioning sometimes seem to “breed” like sentences of death in the bloody shoes she inherits from her literary foremothers. Surrounded as she is by images of disease, traditions of disease, and invi­ tations both to disease and to dis-ease, it is no wonder that the woman writer has held many mirrors up to the discomforts of her own nature. As we shall see, the notion that “Infection in the sentence breeds” has been so central a truth for literary women that the great artistic achievements of nineteenth-century novelists and poets from Austen and Shelley to Dickin­ son and Barrett Browning2 are often both literally and figuratively con­ cerned with disease, as if to emphasize the effort with which health and wholeness were won from the infectious “vapors” of despair and fragmenta­ tion. Rejecting the poisoned apples her culture offers her, the woman writer often becomes in some sense anorexic, resolutely closing her mouth on silence (since— in the words of Jane Austen’s Henry Tilney— “a woman’s only power is the power of refusal”3), even while she complains of starvation.

7. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1 8 9 2 -1 9 5 0 ), A m eri­ can poet [editor’s note], 8. “The Uncensored Poet: Letters of Anne Sex­ ton,” Ms. 6, no. 5 (November 1977): 53. 9. Canadian novelist and poet (b. 1939) [editor’s note]. 1. M argaret Atwood, Lady O racle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), p. 335.

2. E lizabeth B arre tt Brow ning (1 8 0 6 -1 8 6 1 ), English poet. Jan e Austen (1775—1817), English novelist. Mary Shelley (1797—1851), English nov­ elist [editor’s note]. 3. See Northangcr Abbey [1818], chapter 10: “You will allow, that in both [matrimony and danc­ ing], man has the advantage o f choice, woman only the power o f refusal.”

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Thus both Charlotte and Emily Bronte4 depict the travails of starved or starving anorexic heroines, while Emily Dickinson declares in one breath that she “had been hungry, all the Years,” and in another opts for “Sumptu­ ous Destitution.” Similarly, Christina Rossetti5 represents her own anxiety of authorship in the split between one heroine who longs to “suck and suck” on goblin fruit and another who locks her lips fiercely together in a gesture of silent and passionate renunciation. In addition, many of these literary women become in one way or another agoraphobic. Trained to reticence, they fear the vertiginous openness of the literary marketplace and rational­ ize with Emily Dickinson that “Publication— is the Auction / O f the Mind of Man” or, worse, punningly confess that “Creation seemed a mighty Crack— /To make me visible.”6 As we shall also see, other diseases and dis-eases accompany the two clas­ sic symptoms of anorexia and agoraphobia. Claustrophobia, for instance, agoraphobia’s parallel and complementary opposite, is a disturbance we shall encounter again and again in women’s writing throughout the nineteenth century. Eye “troubles,” moreover, seem to abound in the lives and works of literary women, with Dickinson matter-of-factly noting that her eye got “put out,” George Eliot7 describing patriarchal Rome as “a disease of the retina,” Jane Eyre and Aurora Leigh8 marrying blind men, Charlotte Bronte deliber­ ately writing with her eyes closed, and Mary Elizabeth Coleridge writing about “Blindness” that came because “Absolute and bright, / The Sun’s rays smote me till they masked the Sun.”9 Finally, aphasia and amnesia— two ill­ nesses which symbolically represent (and parody) the sort of intellectual incapacity patriarchal culture has traditionally required of women— appear and reappear in women’s writings in frankly stated or disguised forms. “Fool­ ish” women characters in Jane Austen’s novels (Miss Bates in Em m a, for instance) express Malapropish confusion about language, while Mary Shel­ ley’s monster1 has to learn language from scratch and Emily Dickinson her­ self childishly questions the meanings of the most basic English words: “Will there really be a ‘Morning’? / Is there such a thing as ‘Day’?”2 At the same time, many women writers manage to imply that the reason for such igno­ rance of language— as well as the reason for their deep sense of alienation and inescapable feeling of anomie— is that they have forgotten something. Deprived of the power that even their pens don’t seem to confer, these women resemble Doris Lessing’s3 heroines, who have to fight their internalization of patriarchal strictures for even a faint trace memory of what they might have become.

4. English poet and novelist (1818—1848). Char­ lotte Bronte (1816—1855), English novelist [edi­ tor’s note]. 5. English poet (1 8 3 0 -1 8 9 4 ) [editor’s note]. 6. See D ickinson, Poem s , J. 579 (“I had been hungry, all the Years”), J. 70 9 (“Publication— is the Auction”), and J. 891 (“To my quick ear the Leaves— con ferred ”); see also C h ristina Ros­ setti, “Goblin M arket” [1862]. 7. English novelist (pen name of M arian Evans, 1819 -1 8 8 0 ) [editor’s note]. 8. Heroine of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “novel in verse” Aurora Leigh (1856). Jan e Eyre: heroine of Charlotte B ronte’s novel Ja n e Eyre (1847) [edi­ tor’s note].

9. See Dickinson, Poems, J. 327 (“Before I got my eye put out), George Eliot, M iddlemarch [1871— 72], book 2, chap ter 2 0 , and M. E. Coleridge, “Doubt,” in Poems by Mary E. Coleridge (London: Elkin Mathews, 1908), p. 40. [Coleridge (1861 — 1907), English poet and novelist— editor’s note.] 1. That is, the monster created in Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818). Malapropish: like Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Sheridan’s comic play The Rivals (1775), who humorously and unin­ tentionally misuses language [editor's note]. 2. See D ickinson, Poems, J. 101. 3. Rhodesian and later English novelist (1919— 2013) [editor’s note].

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“Where are the songs I used to know, / Where are the notes I used to sing?” writes Christina Rossetti in “The Key-Note,” a poem whose title indi­ cates its significance for her. “I have forgotten everything / I used to know so long ago.”4 As if to make the same point, Charlotte Bronte’s Lucy Snowe5 conveniently “forgets” her own history and even, so it seems, the Christian name of one of the central characters in her story, while Bronte’s orphaned Jane Eyre seems to have lost (or symbolically “forgotten”) her family heri­ tage. Similarly, too, Emily Bronte’s H eathcliff6 “forgets” or is made to for­ get who and what he was; Mary Shelley’s monster is “born” without either a memory or a family history; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh is early separated from— and thus induced to “forget”— her “mother land” of Italy. As this last example suggests, however, what all these characters and their authors really fear they have forgotten is precisely that aspect of their lives which has been kept from them by patriarchal poetics: their matrilineal heritage of literary strength, their “female power” which, as Annie Gottlieb wrote, is important to them because o f (not in spite of) their mothers. In order, then, not only to understand the ways in which “Infection in the sentence breeds” for women but also to learn how women have won through disease to artistic health we must begin by redefining Bloom’s sem­ inal definitions of the revisionary “anxiety of influence.” In doing so, we will have to trace the difficult paths by which nineteenth-century women over­ came their “anxiety of authorship,” repudiated debilitating patriarchal pre­ scriptions, and recovered or remembered the lost foremothers who could help them find their distinctive female power. *

*

*

1979 4 .T h e P oetical Works o f Christina Rossetti, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1909), 2:11. 5. The heroine o f Charlotte B ronte’s novel Villette (1853) [editor’s note].

6. The dark hero of Emily B ronte’s novel Wuthering Heights (1847) [editor’s note].

E. A N N K A P L A N b.

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In the 2009 film Brothers, the main character, played by Tobey Maguire, is a Marine captain who returns home to the United States after being captured and tortured by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the climactic scene, he destroys a new kitchen, holds a gun to his wife and his brother, and threatens suicide. We immediately under­ stand that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a syndrome for­ mally recognized by the American Psychiatric Association only in 1980. Now most often associated with combat, PTSD can also be spurred by other severe events, such as accidents or physical and sexual abuse. While doctors diagnosed some soldiers in World War I with 'shell shock,” and early psychologists identified “hysteria” in some patients, researchers and scholars from various fields began to explore the effects of trauma more deeply in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. Their

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work prepared for the emergence in the 1990s of trauma theory, a new field that draws particularly on psychology and psychoanalysis in forming interdisciplinary links between humanists, social scientists, and scientists. In Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (2005), E. Ann Kaplan takes for her point of departure the origins of trauma studies in the writings of s i g m u n d f r e u d , the founder of psychoanalysis. In our selection, she develops via Freud both an account of trauma and a critique of trauma theory. Best known for her books in film and cultural studies, Kaplan earned a B.A. in English literature from the University of Birmingham in England (1958), a post­ graduate diploma in English from the University of London (1959), and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Rutgers University (1970). She taught first in England, including as a lecturer in film at London’s British Film Institute, before moving to the United States in 1980; she has held positions at Monmouth College, Rutgers University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where since 2005 she has been Distinguished Professor of English and Cultural Analysis and Theory and was also the founding director of the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook (1987-2014). From 2003 to 2005, Kaplan served as president of the Society for Cin­ ema and Media Studies, and she received its Distinguished Career Award in 2009. Much of Kaplan’s early work focuses on cinema and feminism; her scope later broad­ ened to popular culture (publishing the first academic study of MTV) and especially trauma in various forms. Trauma, the Greek word meaning “wound,” was at first strictly a specialists’ term for an external injury or the condition caused by such an injury, cited by The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in a medical dictionary of 1693; the adjective “traumatic” appeared in 1656. It is not included in s a m u e l J o h n s o n s great dictionary, published in 1755, but in the nineteenth century its application expanded not just to an inter­ nal brain injury, which may result in behavioral change, but also to a psychic injury— cited by the OED in this sense (“traumatic psychosis”) first in an 1889 trans­ lation of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, with whom Freud briefly studied. The word soon came to refer especially to a psychic injury caused by an “emotional shock the memory of which is repressed and remains unhealed.” Trauma is thus a wound either external or internal, as well as the deep distress and distur­ bance that accompany it. When that disturbance lingers, it can become what we now call PTSD. “The idea,” according to the historian Ruth Leys, “is that, owing to the emotions of terror and surprise caused by certain events, the mind is split or dissoci­ ated: it is unable to register the wound to the psyche because the ordinary mecha­ nisms of awareness and cognition are destroyed. . . . The experience of the trauma, fixed or frozen in time, refuses to be represented as past, but is perpetually re­ experienced in a painful, dissociated, traumatic present.” As a result, individuals can suffer nightmares, flashbacks, changes in physical and emotional reactions, periods of extreme depression, suicidal impulses, and worse. The serious theorizing of trauma is a modern phenomenon. But it is tempting sim­ ply to say at the outset that the experience of trauma is as old as the human race, with traces everywhere in world literature: for instance, in the combat and aftermath of Homer’s Iliad and the masterpieces of Greek tragedy. And what could be more trau­ matic than the experiences of Hamlet and King Lear? In our time, examples abound, both in memoirs— such as the Holocaust testimonies of Eli Wiesel and Primo Levi and the horrifying account of sexual assault recounted by Alice Sebold in Lucky (1999)— and in fiction, from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), about the firebombing of Dresden in World War II, to t o n i m o r r i s o n s Beloved (1987), on the ramifications of slavery and the murder of a two-year-old child by her mother. The range of materials is so extensive and deep, and offers so many perspectives, that the historian Andreas Killen sees trauma as “becoming institutionalized. . . . The aftermath of trauma is being researched in laboratories and analyzed by histori­ ans, literary critics and experts in media, law and psychiatry.” It is at once pro­

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foundly personal, registering its impact on individuals, and also collective, as the brutal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries attests— world wars, geno­ cides, atomic bombs, famines, migrations, and natural disasters. Not surprisingly, trauma is collective even when it is personal, because it is so implicated in and woven into familial, social, and political contexts and dependent for its understand­ ing on the interpretive categories brought to it. Among the theorists and critics who have been active in developing the con­ temporary field of trauma studies are Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, and Dominick LaCapra. But the inevitable point of departure is much earlier, with Sigmund Freud, as Kaplan indicates in our selection from her Trauma Culture, an interdisciplinary study in which she analyzes the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms through which individuals and collectives undergo, represent, and describe the experience of trauma. Opening her book with a discussion of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and reflecting on research about the Holocaust, Kaplan proceeds to consider a num­ ber of case studies: Freud s Moses and Monotheism (1939), Marguerite Duras’s La Douleur (1985; trans. as The War: A Memoir, 1986), Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Lahat (1994; trans. 1996), Alfred Hitchcock’s postwar melodrama Spellbound (1945), and Tracey Moffatt’s short film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1989). Her use of the tools and techniques of literary criticism, media studies, feminist psycho­ analysis, and neuroscience in examining them helps to suggest the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary nature of research in this field. Kaplan also devotes attention to media images of Iraq and Rwanda and to films that show the “diverse traumas” expe­ rienced by indigenous peoples in the United States and Australia. Yet her primary concern, she explains, is not “the huge catastrophes” that have been extensively and eloquently reported and studied but rather “traumas of loss, abandonment, rejec­ tion, betrayal” in specific films and texts. Kaplan emphasizes the complexity of the term “trauma.” In her view, it should be attached not only to victims and survivors but also to those who “suffer terror.” Trauma is crucially related to the position of the affected individuals, to social and political contexts, and to institutions (above all, the media) that represent and circu­ late catastrophe and disaster nationally and internationally. Kaplan speaks of trauma as being “registered” consciously and unconsciously, and she stresses the difficulty— so affected are our lives by all forms of media, social and other— of separating and making distinctions between trauma and vicarious trauma, primary and secondary trauma. Invoking her own response to 9/11, Kaplan asks whether this event was for her a new trauma or was rather a trigger that recalled her frightening childhood memories of growing up in London during the Blitz. Kaplan also experienced 9/11 directly, as did all Americans— “everyone was in shock”: the trauma, in all of its dimensions and reverberations, was at once personal and communal, local and national. It was depicted in stories, commentaries, symbols, and images on TV and radio, in newspa­ pers and magazines, and on the Internet. It was unprecedented, but then again it was not, because for countless people it reverberated with the memories of prior traumas that they had experienced and that remained painfully immediate to them. The selection below is excerpted from Kaplans first chapter, “‘Why Trauma Now?’: Freud and Trauma Studies,” where she gives a critical overview of Freud s work on trauma as it emerged gradually from his explorations of sexuality, unconscious moti­ vation, and neurosis. Kaplan reminds us that Freud and his followers were students first of hysteria and that their work on trauma developed from it— or, rather, that the concept of trauma was already implicit in it. Freud and others saw that the symptoms of trauma may arise belatedly, well after the event; and in their studies of women, they connected traumatic memory, repression, fantasy, and hysteria to sexuality and sexual abuse. One of the limitations of their work done in the 1890s and early 1900s, Kaplan observes, is its lack of attention to social constructions of gender, which in cases of sexual trauma lead to different neuroses. We can see a shift in Freud s

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thinking during World War I and later, when he and others began to study the trauma suffered by soldiers. Kaplan raises other criticisms of trauma theory. She conceives each case of trauma to be individual— that is, rooted in the singular experience, sensitivity, and uncon­ scious of each afflicted person. Thus one size does not fit all, and in her view diagno­ ses and treatments have to be individualized. Like Freud, Kaplan is skeptical of the early general application of electric shock therapy and brain surgery and more sympa­ thetic to highly personalized talk cures. Still, Freud comes in for direct critique, for being “wary of mentioning the codes of his social, medical, and political milieu.” Kaplan’s point is that historical context shapes the experience of trauma, which is why she emphasizes the impacts of the Victorian-era middle-class patriarchal family, the industrial revolution, large-scale mechanized war, and the different social posi­ tions of men and women. For all his pioneering insights into trauma, Freud is not immune to this broad criticism— nor is subsequent trauma theory. To extend her discussion, Kaplan cites the Regeneration Trilogy by the English writer Pat Barker— Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993), and T he Ghost Road (1995)— an exemplary series of novels that focus on the aftermath of trauma through exploring the history of World War I. Kaplan closes by reflecting on the theory of trauma that Freud articulates in a late work, Moses and M onotheism , pub­ lished in the year of his death. That year also marked the beginning of World War II, whose events remain present in cultural memory and have been extended and reinforced by the traumatic events of subsequent decades. As much or more than any other field of theory and criticism, trauma studies arises from and is always connected to real-world experiences— the victimization and pain of human beings who have endured and witnessed events which discourse cannot fully express and to which it can never do complete justice. We are more than a century beyond Freud’s investigations of trauma, yet in a sense we are still con­ fronting the fundamental questions that he articulated and engaged: what is trauma, how is it experienced, and how do those who suffer from trauma, and who treat the traumatized, speak and write about it? As these questions imply, at the center of trauma studies are issues of and debates about authority and power, the persons who claim to possess the knowledge (and the right) to speak and write about trauma and those living with it, and the institutions where this study, interpretation, and treat­ ment occur. T raum a C u lture: T h e P olitics o f T error a n d Loss in M edia a n d L iteratu re Keywords: Affect, The Body, Cultural Studies, Feminist Criticism, Gender, Media, Modernity, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity

From Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature From C hapter 1. “Why Trauma Now?”: Freud and Trauma Studies FREUD AND TRAUMA

It all begins with Freud, of course. And the more I read of contemporary trauma theories, the more I believe that Freud had already said a great deal.1 I. I am not alone in thinking that Freud indeed had anticipated much that is being “discovered” by neuroscientists today. See Fred G uteril’s essay, “W hat Freud Got Right,” Newsweek, November II, 200 2 : 5 0 -5 2 . T he subheading reads: “His the­

ories, long discredited, are finding support from neurologists using modern brain imaging,” and an insert reads: “Unconscious drives, sim ilar to libido and aggression, have now been located in the most primitive parts of the brain” (50). There is even a

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At least, along with Freud’s contemporaries and the pioneering clinicians who preceded him, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thinkers had discovered the basic phenomena and structures of trauma. It took the more sophisticated scientific technologies of the late twentieth century to prove what these pioneers could only theorize about brain circuitry and mecha­ nisms, sometimes, though, at the cost of Freud’s insistence on unconscious fantasy as also involved in traumatic effects. The phenomena of trauma, particularly hysteria, that interested clinicians did not arise in a vacuum. The phenomena were closely linked to modernity, especially to the industrial revolution and its dangerous new machines (the railway, the factory), as well as to the linked growth of the bourgeois family. This family became the site for female hysteria (caused partly by that family’s patriarchal and puritanical codes), while industrialization (that required the bourgeois class and was, circularly, produced by that class) provided the social conditions for the train and machine accidents, and for large-scale wars. These in turn prompted attention to the traumatic symptoms such accidents and wars produced in men.2 What’s interesting is that unlike psychologists and others writing today, Freud and his peers did not set out to write a theory of trauma. The concept of trauma emerges in their work on hysteria as if already assumed. It is used to explain processes in hysteria, rather than as a concept that has itself to be theorized. French clinicians, mainly J. M. Charcot and his student Pierre Janet,3 pioneered research on hysteria and hypnosis. Charcot’s research in neuropathology at his Salpetriere clinic (significantly, most of the patients were women, although Charcot argued that men also suffered from hyste­ ria) produced students such as Janet whose case studies were central to ideas of hysteria at the time. Charcot and Janet inspired Freud and Breuer,4 who visited the Salpetriere in 1890 (see Freud’s 1893 moving obituary to Charcot who died soon after), although Breuer, a noted Viennese physician, had already begun research on hysteria in his treatment of Fraulein Anna O. Following the practices developed by Charcot and Janet, Freud and Breuer used hypnosis in their work with their hysterical patients, although shortly thereafter Freud began to experiment with his “talking cure,” and in many ways was already moving beyond Charcot. The influence of French theories and experiments is cited in an essay, “On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena,” written in collabora-

jo u rn al, N europsychoanalysis, and in G u teril’s essay A ntonio Dam asio is quoted as saying that “Freud’s insights on the nature o f con sciou s­ ness are consonant with the most advanced contem porary neuroscience views” [Kaplan’s note]. Damasio (b. 1944), renowned neuroscien­ tist and director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern C alifor­ nia. For S I G M U N D F R E U D (1 8 5 6 -1 9 3 9 ), the Aus­ trian founder o f psychoanalysis, see above. 2. Freud developed his theories of trauma from studying fem ale hysteria and then the impact of train accidents and wars. Late in life, he also hypothesized that a violent historical act can remain in cultural consciousness and continue to have a traum atic impact. For more discussion o f the history and development o f the concept of trauma by Freud, see Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed

Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (B al­ timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). See also essays in Cathy C aruth, ed., Trauma and

E xperience: Explorations in Trauma and M emory (Ith a ca , NY: C ornell University P ress, 1985) [Kaplan’s note]. 3. French psychologist, philosopher, and psycho­ therapist (1859—1947), who focused on dissocia­ tion and traumatic memory. Jean-M artin Charcot (1825—1893), French neurologist and professor o f anatom ical pathology, whose work included research at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. 4. Jo s e f Breuer (1 8 4 2 -1 9 2 5 ), A ustrian physi­ cia n ; while working with a patient known as A nna O. in the 1880s, he developed the talking cure and helped establish the basis of Freudian psychoanalysis.

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tion with Breuer and published in their joint volume, Studies in Hysteria.5 Here the clinicians distinguish between ordinary hysteria and traumatic neu­ roses, and introduce the concept of “traumatic hysteria.” Already the doctors understand that whether a person experiencing a distressing affect “of fright, shame or psychical pain” will be traumatized depends on the particular sen­ sitivity of the person— something even now not sufficiently recognized. In addition, they hint at the belatedness of the onset of symptoms, attributing this to the fact that traumatic memories are not available to the patient in the way his commonplace ones are, but act “as a kind of foreign body” in the psyche, “an affective agent in the present even long after it first penetrated” (6). The famous statement that “hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences” appears in this essay. In this work, Freud and Breuer specifically note that the symptoms of hysteria are the result of trauma. The physical phenomena they cite, includ­ ing what happens to memory in trauma, anticipate by many years the now so familiar litany of effects labeled in American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical M anual o f M ental Disorders: III-R 6 as PostTraumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD). In the same essay in Studies in Hyste­ ria, the clinicians note the way in which other ideas including fantasies get attached to the traumatic event. “A memory,” they say, “of such a trauma . . . enter[s] the great complex of associations, it comes alongside other experi­ ences, which may contradict it, and is subjected to rectification by other ideas” (9). They note that after an accident, memory of the danger and rep­ etition of the fright “becomes associated with the memory of what happened afterwards— rescue and the consciousness of present safety.” Freud and Breuer implicitly gender trauma in accordance with the way the bourgeois family in Europe was organized in their day: Males largely have traumatic effects from accidents, women from watching by the bedside of sick parents or children, or (at first only implied) from extreme sexual repres­ sion. The three early case studies published in Studies in Hysteria— those of Anna O. (Breuer), Emily von N. (Freud), and Miss Lucy (Freud)— set the stage for Freud s later case studies while still revealing the legacy of Char­ cot (especially in Breuers text) in focusing on detailed descriptions of the women’s physical symptoms and treatments with massage, hydrotherapy, and electrotherapy, and in insisting on dissociation as a major symptom. Freud does indicate traumatic sexual origins for the hysteria in his cases, but it was not until the Dora7 case history that Freud provided a detailed investigation into female hysteria and its traumatic symptoms as occasioned by sexual incidents in an environment of rigid sexual repression such as characterized Freud s nineteenth-century Austria.8 In the case of Dora, Freud concludes that the hysteria was due to shame triggered by her arousal in response to 5. T h is volume, published only in Germ an in 1895, was later translated by Jam es Strachey and published in volume 2 of the Standard Edition in 1955. A separate English volume, Studies in Hys­ teria, of the SE section, was published in 1957 [Kaplan’s note]. 6. Published in 1987 (the current edition is the 5th, 2013). 7. T h e pseudonym given by Freud to Ida Bauer (1 8 8 2 —1945), a patient whom he treated for hys­ teria for nearly three months in 1900. He pub­

lished her “case history” as An Analysis o f a Case

o f Hysteria (1905). 8. As the editors of the Standard Edition point out, Freud m entioned in a letter to Fliess at the tim e that he had om itted reference to the fath er’s abuse o f the women in his and B reu er’s Studies in Hysteria [Kaplan’s note]. W ilhelm Fliess (1 8 5 8 -1 9 2 8 ), one of F reu d s colleagues and an important figure in the history of psycho­ analysis.

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inappropriate advances of a friend of her father, and further stimulation by attraction to, including sexual discussion with, this mans wife. In Dora’s case, hysterical phenomena result from both “seduction” and fantasies. In their essay introducing Studies in Hysteria, Freud and Breuer only mention sexuality as a precipitating cause for traumatic hysteria, asserting that “the determining causes which lead to the acquisition of neuroses, their aetiology . . . is to be looked for in sexual factors” (257). But a few years later in several papers written in 1894 and 1896 Freud baldly states that sexual abuse lies behind female hysteria. In his paper on “Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses,” Freud is fully aware that his audience would find this provocative.9 He argues that hysteria comes from “memory relat­ ing to a sexual life,” stating further that “the subject has retained an uncon­ scious memory of a precocious experience o f sexual relations with actual excitem ent o f the genitals, resulting from sexual ahuse com m itted hy another person; and the period o f life at which this fatal event takes place is earliest youth— the years up to the age of eight to ten, before the child has reached sexual maturity” (154, italics in original). While these early essays deal mainly with trauma’s processes and symp­ toms rather than their causes, and often imply female patients and situa­ tions, they sometimes include examples of male trauma but not hysteria. In “Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses,” Freud suggests why women resort to hysteria while men manifest obsessional neuroses by distinguish­ ing the kinds of infantile sexual abuse boys and girls receive (women receive it “passively,” males “actively”). Yet he does not realize the implicit accep­ tance of prevailing concepts of gender in this statement. That is, Freud does not go on to ask how cultural, political, and social roles laid down for men and women produce different neuroses in the case of sexual trauma. Indeed, Freud and others of his time rarely ask if trauma impacts differently on males and females. When the war neuroses force attention to male hyste­ ria, as we’ll see, clinicians do not ask if hysteria in men and women is the same. Yet, how the contrasting positions for men and women within national imaginaries result in different traumatic syndromes is important. These are questions I return to throughout this volume. Trauma, then, was at first closely linked to the sexual experiences of young women within a close-knit bourgeois family and circle of friends such as was common at the turn of the nineteenth century. However, Freud soon questioned the degree to which the trauma depended on actual sexual abuse (not necessarily out of fear of offending his male friends and colleagues whose children he was treating, as is often assumed),1 and theorized that fantasies of forbidden sexual desires could produce the same symptoms.2

9. A fter stating his notion that all major neuro­ ses “have as their common source the su bject’s sexual life,” he com ments: “I am quite sure that this theory will call up a storm of contradictions from contemporary physicians” (Freud, “Hered­ ity,” 151) [Kaplan’s note]. 1. In his essay on “Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses,” Freud mentions siblings, other children, and nannies as the figures involved in genital activity with small children. However, this does not prove, as Richard McNally suggests, that Freud was not protecting his colleagues in his

later abandoning of the seduction theory, for in a letter to Fliess discussing his patients at the same time, as the editors of the Standard Edition point out, Freud noted that “in every case it was the father who had to be held responsible (for perverse acts with children”) (SE 1: 160). Freud later admit­ ted to suppressing the father’s abuse in cases in Studies in Hysteria (see SE 1: 164) [Kaplan’s note]. McNally (b. 1954), American clinical psychologist who studies anxiety disorders. 2. As most readers will know, a huge bibliography surrounds this move by Freud— a bibliography

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Freud moved on to develop other aspects of his psychoanalytic theories, and when he returned to trauma, it was now in relation to the symptoms of soldiers in World War I. At this point, interest in trauma focused on men involved in public catastrophes, such as defending the nation at war. A great deal of research and debate in Europe followed the increasing number of soldiers reporting paralysis and other hysterical symptoms preventing them from fighting. Doctors in England, France, and Germany studied these symptoms of soldiers unable to continue in battle (they were often termed “malingerers”). Articles published in the Lancet, a British medical journal, between 1895 and 1915 amply reveal the different hypotheses advanced about the soldiers’ symptoms, and show how debates drew upon research carried out earlier in regard to industrial accidents and factory workers also described as malingerers.3 British doctors faced with traumatized soldiers, apparently applied theo­ ries of female hysteria caused by sexual trauma to battle trauma.4 It is unclear whether they arrived independently at their conclusions about war trauma as hysteria or simply did not mention Freuds views on hysteria because it would require discussion of female sexuality. Elaine Showalter quotes W. H. Rivers5 in 1917, also in the Lancet, noting the “correspondence between Freudian theory and his [Rivers’s] clinical practice, and especially the ideas of the unconscious.” Rivers concluded that “the advent of the war presented psychiatry with an extraordinary demonstration of the validity of Freudian theory in general” (Showalter, The Fem ale Malady 188-189).6

that reentered public consciousness when issues relating to child abuse surfaced in the United States around highly visible cases in the late 1980s. Trauma theory and P T SD were central to these debates, since the cases relied on traumatic phenomena as evidence of abuse. Many case studies take up other kinds of family traumas, but readers can find a thorough survey of Freud’s theories and writings, as well as discussion of the recent so-called “false memory syndrome” in Richard J. M cN ally’s Rem em bering Trauma (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003) [Kaplan’s note]. 3. War trauma greatly stimulated medical doctors and those interested in psychoanalysis in World War I. W hile concepts of trauma were first inves­ tigated in regard to industrial agents and acci­ dents, it was the research opportunity afforded by traumatized soldiers that impelled work on trauma forward. Indeed, the work done in regard to World War I set the stage for concern about traumatic reactions in World War II, and then most recently and in its most elaborated form, in relation to the Vietnam War, as noted earlier. See articles dealing with war trauma in the Lancet, such as Dr. David Forsyth’s essay review­ ing ongoing debates, i.e., “Functional Nerve Dis­ ease and the Shock of Battle: T he So-C alled Traum atic N euroses Arising in Connexion with the W ar,” (Lancet 2 [Decem ber 25, 1915]: 1399) [Kaplan’s note]. 4. Since Studies in Hysteria w'as published in 1909 in English, the doctors writing in the Lan­ cet were no doubt drawing on Freud and Breuer’s ideas (significantly, the English edition, trans­ lated by A. A. B rill, omitted the case histories of

Anna O., Emmy Von N., and Katharina, as well as Breuer’s theoretical chapter). But they were also drawing on much earlier research on railway and industrial accidents, such as 1864 research by J. Eric Erichsen, “On the Concussion of the Spine,” mentioned in an article by Thom as R. Glynn, “T h e Trau m atic N euroses,” in the L an ­ cet 2 (November 5, 1910): 1332. Glynn awards to two American physicians the insight that since the symptoms of railway spine were cerebral more than spinal disturbances, the term “railway brain” would be more appropriate [Kaplan’s note]. 5. English anthropologist and psychologist (1 8 6 4 -1 9 2 2 ); he treated World W ar I officers suffering from shell shock. Show alter (b. 1941), American fem inist literary critic. 6. In a series of novels, Pat Barker (1991, 1995, 1996) has written convincing fictional accounts of Rivers’s psychotherapy with soldiers suffering what was then called “shell shock” in the military hospital in Craiglockhart, Scotland. Doctors were supposed to get these men ready to return to the battlefront, and the soldiers knew this, but Barker shows the very difficult position doctors found themselves in, since their empathy for the men went deep, and they did not necessarily believe in the war. No man wanted to be accused of “malin­ gering.” Freud found him self having to judge ju st such a case, as I go on to show [Kaplan’s note]. The three novels by the English writer Pat Barker (b. 1943) are Regeneration (1991), T he Ghost Road (1995), and The Eye in the Door (1996). The full title of Showalter’s book is The Fem ale Malady:

Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830— 1980 (London: Virago, 1987).

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It is significant that Freud’s development of his ideas about trauma was only belatedly prompted by what happened to soldiers in World War I. His first writings on World War I, namely “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” and “Why War?” deal with man’s binary instincts for love and hate.7 It is not surprising that both essays reflect the broader cultural and social thinking that Freud developed in his 1920 Civilization and Its Discontents, rather than relating to his clinical and more technical research. The essays were written for a broad audience, after all, and one of them was directly addressed to Albert Einstein. Freud often implicitly (if not explicitly) relates his patients’ symptoms to the larger cultural (implicitly ideological) think­ ing that these general essays reveal. Such insights appear in short parenthe­ ses (such as reference to the social repression of sexuality). But Freud was wary of mentioning the codes of his social, medical, and political milieu, not wanting to hamper acceptance of his theories by challenging social mores of the day. Toward the end of World War I Freud and his colleagues published papers that Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, and Ernst Simmel8 had presented on war neuroses at the proceedings of the Fifth International Psycho-Analytical Congress, held in Budapest on September 28 and 29, 1918, with an intro­ duction by Freud. The congress was concerned about the treatment of sol­ diers and, not knowing the war was about to end, wanted to set up special psychoanalytically oriented clinics for traumatized men. In his short introduction to the volume, Freud observes what essays in the Lancet had already observed, namely that war conditions had “an important influence on the spread of psycho-analysis.” Freud goes on to note that “medical men who had hitherto held back from any approach to psychoana­ lytic theories were brought into closer contact with them when, in the course of their duties as army doctors, they were obliged to deal with war neuroses” (Freud, Standard Edition 17: 207). Indeed, Freud takes the opportunity to communicate his irritation with doctors (he may well have some of those in the Lancet in mind) who are only ready to use psychoanalysis when it is a matter of the war neuroses, which do not (at least obviously) involve sexual­ ity. In his words, war neuroses do not appear to involve “the conflict between the ego and the sexual instincts which it repudiates” that Freud has been arguing is the basis of “the ordinary neuroses of peace-time” (208). In the rest of the essay, Freud is at pains to find a link between the trau­ matic neuroses of war and of peacetime (also termed transference neuroses), which he does by arguing that in both cases there is a conflict in the ego. In the case of war, it is between the soldier’s “old peaceful ego and his new war­ like one, and it becomes acute as soon as the peace-ego realizes what danger it runs of losing its life owing to the rashness of its newly formed, parasitic double” (209). But Freud does not want to relinquish the possibility that even war trauma has something to do with sexuality, while at the same time fully understanding that he does not have evidence yet of “the relations which

7. “Thoughts for the Tim es on W ar and D eath” (1915) was w ritten six months after the war began. “W hy W ar?” was part of a 1933 exchange o f letters between Freud and Albert Einstein (1 8 7 9 -1 9 5 5 ), the Germ an-born theoretical phys­ icist who also was a strong advocate for peace

and social ju stice. 8. All psychoanalysts: Ferenczi (1873—1933), a Hungarian who worked closely with Freud; Abraham (1877—1925), a G erm an; and Sim mel (1882—1947), a Germ an who was also a neurologist.

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undoubtedly exist between fright, anxiety and narcissistic libido” (210).9 He tantalizingly ends his essay by asserting that, in the case of both the war and peacetime neuroses, ‘ what is feared is nevertheless an internal enemy” (210). He asserts that it is possible that repression underlies all reaction to trauma, whether sexual or external. Freud’s statements here are “tantalizing” in that he begs the question of whether there is any difference between ordinary neurosis and trauma— a difference that involves the difference between neurotic repression and traumatic dissociation that has plagued recent trauma theorists. But these same comments by Freud are important in linking so-called peacetime neu­ roses and war neuroses, and in challenging his theory of female hysteria as about repressed fantasies, not m em ories. If hysteria is the result o f fantasies, then it cannot be the same phenomenon as war trauma, which has a clear external cause. War trauma seemed to be of an entirely different order than female hysteria— closer to the delayed impact of train accidents Freud was later to theorize, and not involving fantasies as such. Yet Freud’s early theory that hysterical women suffered from memories of sexual abuse (not fanta­ sies as he later claimed) did match the traumatic phenomenon of soldiers, namely that they too suffered from memories of an overwhelming event that they had been unable to cognitively register at the time it happened.1 Freud cannot in the short space of such an introduction go further into the complexities of his thought about links between the peacetime and war neuroses, neatly gendered as they are in Freud’s account. There is no evi­ dence that Freud had ever treated any patients suffering from war neuroses (as had Simmel and the others contributing full papers to the volume), but he was nevertheless called upon to be an “Expert W itness” about such neuroses at the investigation of his renowned colleague, Professor WagnerJauregg (at the time of the investigation director of the clinic at the Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna).2 This investigation came about as a result of allegations in a newspaper, Der Freie Soldat,3 about military abuses as World War I came to an end. A commission, presided over by Professor Lofler,4 was set up to investigate neglect of military duty during the war. Several articles accused the medical profession of “knowingly supporting the army’s harsh and inhumane treatment of soldiers during the war” (Eissler 14). Extracts from a diary by Walter Kauders,5 who was treated by Wagner-Jauregg, had been published, and an investigation began. Freud’s 1915 essay “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” perhaps, taken together with the introduction discussed above and his status as the 9. Pat Barker’s novels are interesting in light of this. More than one of Barker’s major characters describe sexual arousal in moving out to a d an ­ gerous con frontation with G erm an troops in tren ch es across from the B ritish ones. Som e characters are gay, others bisexual. W hile Rivers appears to leave such sexual them es unexplored in his therapy sessions, the “data” is there for readers to see [Kaplan’s note]. 1. Pat Barker’s novels, again, dramatize clearly the ways in which traum atic battle events haunt the soldiers in dreams and hallucinations. W hile som etim es the men can recall the dreams and precipitating events, they prefer not to. O thers suffer from total am nesia as a symptom. Partial dissociation, then, is observed in Barker’s repre­

senting of Rivers’s cases in her fiction [Kaplan’s note]. 2. For full details of this investigation, see Kurt R. Eissler, Freud as an Expert Witness: T he

Discussion o f War Neuroses B etw een Freud and W agner-Jauregg (M adison, W I: International University Press, 1986) [K aplan’s note]. Ju liu s Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940), Austrian physician. 3. T he Free Soldier, an Austrian Social Demo­ cratic weekly. 4. Alexander Loffler (1 8 6 6 -1 9 2 9 ), an Austrian crim inologist. 5. An Austrian officer who suffered a head injury early in the war and charged that he was subse­ quently severely mistreated by W agner-Jauregg and his assistants at a psychological clinic.

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“inventor” of psychoanalysis, evidently was seen to qualify him to be an “Expert Witness” in this case. But Freud was in a delicate position in testify­ ing since he could not say anything that would harm the career of this renowned medical man, and yet he also could not agree with the nonpsychoanalytic treatment (usually electrical charges and isolation) that WagnerJauregg (like most of his colleagues) used for traumatized soldiers. Freud’s “Memorandum on the Electrical Treatment of War Neurotics,” submitted to Professor Lofler, allows us to see Freud treading elegantly around similar issues to those that had preoccupied the doctors writing in the Lancet. The debate was over whether the soldier s symptoms resulted from organic inju­ ries to the nervous system or were caused by psychic changes such as we understand happens in trauma. Freud comes down clearly on the latter side, noting that “what is known as the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry, which was brought into being by me, had taught for the last twenty-five years that the neuroses of peace could be traced back to disturbances of emotional life. . . . It was therefore easy to infer that the immediate cause of all war neuroses was an unconscious inclination in the soldier to with­ draw from the demands, dangerous or outrageous to his feelings, made upon him by active service” (Freud in Eissler 24—25). Freud insists, against claims by Wagner-Jauregg, that only a very small proportion of soldiers with trau­ matic symptoms were “malingerers.” He is careful to note that the physician had a conflict, namely between his duty as a medical man and his military duty to get the soldiers back on the front line, in giving electrical treatment for a “fast fix,” as we might say. “Medicine,” says Freud, “was serving purposes foreign to its essence” (27). Deaths resulted from the treatment, although Freud will not say that Wagner-Jauregg s clinic used dangerous levels of electrical current. He concludes by referring to Ernst Simmels success with psychotherapeutic methods (“introduced by me,” Freud has to add) in treat­ ing war neuroses. Significantly, Freud found himself returning to the issue of war neuroses in the year following his appearance as an Expert Witness in the WagnerJauregg investigation as he was writing Beyond the Pleasure P rinciple.6 In attempting to understand how the mental apparatus produces pleasure and unpleasure, he began to distinguish between unpleasure from the pressure of internal unsatisfied instincts and unpleasure from an external perception recognized by the mental apparatus as a danger (Beyond 28). This leads him to mention the “mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving risk to life,” that have been given the name of “traumatic neurosis” (28). But his thought immediately turns to the war, as he notes, “The terrible war that has just ended gave rise to a great number of illnesses of this kind,” and he footnotes the introduction noted above. Freud continues to reflect on similarities between the traumatic neurosis of war and that of hysteria, as if he continues to be puzzled by these similarities. Referring back to his earliest work with Breuer on female hysteria, Freud notes that war neurotics too “suffer mainly from reminiscences” (29).

6. A 1920 work in which Freud describes the struggle in human beings between eros (sexual love; Greek) and thanatos (death; Greek). It is a revision of his earlier theories.

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But at this point he makes a sharp break to discuss child’s play and the famous fort-da game' of his grandson. However, he returns later in the vol­ ume to the issue of internal versus external assault on the ego that had led him to the war neuroses in the first place. He is still trying to understand the different kinds of unpleasure involved in the different contexts, only now he theorizes that trauma results from a breach in a protective shield that the mental apparatus sets up to ward against overviolent stimuli. It seems throughout this discussion (52—61) that he has in mind the situation of war for the external assault on the mental apparatus and hysteria for the internal “assault” being theorized. This assumption seems to be valid since Freud refers explicitly again to the war neuroses and to his idea in the 1919 introduction that war neuroses result from a conflict in the ego, as much as from fear or, as he now notes is a more correct term “fright” (62).8 But Freud’s most significant, and most complete discussion of trauma occurs, not incidentally, at the end of his life, in Moses and M onotheism ,9 when Freud was forced to leave his homeland and take up exile in England. At the end of Moses, Freud repeats his well-known theories about the etiology of the neuroses, only now in a way never quite articulated before he specifically includes the issue of trauma. He likens the latency of the man who walks away from the train accident apparently unharmed, only later to develop psychical and motor symptoms, to the “forgetting” of monotheism in the Jewish religion, only to have it return later as something insistent. But more importantly, he links common infant traumata to the latency phenom­ enon. He summarizes: “These three points— early happenings, within the first five years of life, the forgetting, and the characteristic of sexuality and aggressiveness— belong close together. The traumata are either bodily expe­ riences or perceptions, especially those heard or seen.” But not everyone responds in the same way to similar experiences, so Freud conceives of a slid­ ing scale and slow series of developments that result in trauma symptoms.1 It is not too much to infer from what Freud says here that the difference in how soldiers react to similar war traumas may depend on how far the war situa­ tion triggered prior psychic conflicts. In war, such internal conflicts, together with intense fear for his life or that of close ones, threatened the soldier’s

7. Literally, “there-gone game” (German). In chapter 2 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud describes his 18-month-old grandson throwing a wooden reel out of his cot while exclaiming “o-oo-o” (interpreted as “fort”), then pulling it back by a string with a joyful “da.” This game illustrates the impetus behind repetition compulsions. 8. One o f the problems with Beyond the Pleasure Principle is that Freud is trying to do too many things. T he entire discussion involves Freud’s working out of d ifferences among anxiety, fear, and fright (som ething he will take up later on) and he is also continuing an earlier discussion of the com pulsion to repeat. M ost significantly, Beyond is also where Freud begins to theorize the death drive. However, his introduction of the traumatic war neuroses, when these neuroses are not the main discussion, highlights how bothered Freud was about the challenge to his prior theo­ ries that the existence of war neuroses had pro­ duced [Kaplan’s note]. 9. Published in 1939.

1. Ju liet M itchell makes a sim ilar point, perhaps expanding on Freud’s insight. Focusing on trauma from the perspective o f the person who experi­ ences it, she says: “T h is m eans both that the same event will not always be traum atic for dif­ ferent people, and that the experience of differ­ ent events, if they are experienced as trauma, will be the same w hatever the event and whoever the sufferer.” M itchell also seems to agree with Freud’s later ideas about trauma when she says that trauma represents a breach in conscious­ ness: “A traum a, whether physical or psychical, must create a breach in a protective covering of such severity that it cannot be coped with by the usual m echanism s by which we deal with pain or loss. . . . In trauma, we are untimely ripped” (121). See her “Traum a, Recognition, and the Place of Language,” in D iacritics 28, no. 4 (winter 1998): 121 —133 [Kaplan’s note]. In Shakespeare’s play M acbeth (1606), M acduff is “from his mother's womb/untimely ripped” (5 .8 .1 5 -1 6 ).

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identity and hence the dizzy panic or paralysis that followed, and that is described by many treating such neuroses. Central to this Freudian theory of trauma is a motivated unconscious. In this case, the traumatic event may trigger early traumatic happenings, already perhaps mingled with fantasy, and shape how the current event is experienced. There may, for instance, in the case of battle trauma, be unconscious guilt at surviving an attack; or events in battle may uncon­ sciously recall childhood violence where the victim wished for a sibling’s death, etc. The events may in this case fall into the arena of repression and be recoverable in therapy.2 Thus, Freud’s ideas about trauma gradually grew in complexity and pre­ ciseness from the early Studies in Hysteria to Moses and M onotheism , the latter work bringing together finally the long nurturing of his early concepts into a theory that anticipates much that clinicians working on combat fatigue and PTSD are now researching. We see Freud, especially in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, struggling to develop models of the brain that neuro­ scientists have only recently been able to produce through new technologies and lab experiments unavailable in Freud’s day. Indeed, I have discussed Freud’s ideas at such length because they seem to me to still be valuable for the work in this book. The specific complexities of brain circuitry, discussed below in the context of vicarious trauma, Freud could not know, since it has taken intricate modern neuroscience research to determine such circuitry. But he anticipated such circuits without the knowledge new technologies have made possible. *

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2005 2. Fictional psychotherapy interviews in Pat Barker’s novels between a character modeled on W illiam H. Rivers, the British World W ar 1 an a­ lyst who treated traumatized soldiers including the poet Siegfried Sassoon, dem onstrate pre­ cisely this interm ixture of fantasy with the trau­ m atic battle happening. Her characters suffer P T SD , and again Barker is able to represent the flashbacks and intrusive memories brilliantly.

See, for example, T he Eye in the Door (Penguin, 1993): 67—76, for an example of such an inter­ view. Following pages provide for examples of P T SD , as does also the earlier novel, Regenera­ tion (Viking, 1991), where much o f the action takes place in C raiglockhart, the m ilitary hospi­ tal to which soldiers suffering from war neurosis were sent to be treated by Rivers [Kaplan’s note].

H E L E N E C IX O U S

b. 1937 “I have nothing to write except what I don't know,” says Helene Cixous in her essay “Coming to Writing” (1977). And in her autobiographical Rootprints (1994), she declares: “No sooner do I write . . . it is not true. And yet, I write hanging on to Truth.” Like Socrates, Cixous claims to know only that she does not know. Unlike Socrates, she writes what she does not know. Transgressing the laws of genre, Cixous’s writing defies categorization, but it nevertheless reinvigorates and reexamines many of the conventions of critical essays, novels, plays, and memoirs. In both form

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and content, Cixous has attempted to put in practice the freedom from any given­ ness that such radical ignorance (“uncovery”) entails. Cixous (pronounced “seek-soo”) is known in the English-speaking world primarily as a mid-1970s feminist theorist, a leading practitioner of what is called ecriture fem in in e— feminine writing. The word fem inine has been subject to energetic debates among feminists, nonfeminists, and antifeminists ever since Cixous first published her celebrated manifesto, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” in 1975 in a special issue of L’A rc magazine devoted to sim o n e de beauvoir and the women’s movement (Cixous’s text was translated in a 1976 issue of Signs: Journal o f W omen in Culture and Society, and has been reprinted many times since). Those debates, central to feminist criti­ cism, will be summarized below. But with all the interrogation of the word fem inine, one sometimes forgets that in France in the late 1960s, it was the word ecriture (writ­ ing) that was the common denominator for a wide range of explosive new practices and publications. Ecriture may be the best name for what distinguishes contemporary “French the­ ory” from “German idealism” or “Anglo-American pragmatism.” It describes every­ thing about writing that can neither be subsumed into an idea nor made to correspond exactly to empirical reality. In the late 1960s, a number of important thinkers in France — ja c q u es d e r r id a , j u l i a k ris tev a , and roland ba r t h e s among them— began to investigate what would happen to Western thought if the fact that it exists mainly in writing were taken seriously. Philippe Sollers, editor of the journal Tel Quel, proclaimed that a new “science o f ecriture,” concentrating on the “textuality” of all discourses and inflected by Marxism, promised revolutionary change. The year was 1968, a time of social and political revolt on all levels of French society. Helene Cixous, a young English professor, was at the very heart of the intellec­ tual and institutional ferment. Born in Oran, Algeria, to a multicultural, diasporic Jewish family that spoke German and French, she was surrounded by Spanish and Arabic, experienced anti-Semitism during the Vichy regime of the early 1940s, and saw French colonialism firsthand from a position neither French nor Arab. When her father died in 1948, her mother (appropriately named Eve) studied to become a midwife, and was often accompanied by her daughter as she performed her tasks. Helene, married at eighteen to Guy Berger, with whom she had two children and whom she divorced in 1964, moved to Paris during the Algerian War of Indepen­ dence, in which her husband was conscripted on the French side while her brother fought for the Algerian side. Pursuing her studies in English, a language not spoken in her family, she became agregee (received the advanced teaching degree) in 1959 and started to teach at the University of Bordeaux, while beginning work on a doc­ toral dissertation on James Joyce. Joyce’s late style is perhaps the closest thing in the English tradition to ecriture. As Cixous was writing her dissertation (published in 1969; trans. 1976, T he Exile o f Jam es Joyce), she often discussed Joyce with Derrida, whom she had met in 1962, and with ja c q u e s lacan , who was looking for a tutor on Joyce. She went on to teach at the Sorbonne, and then obtained a chair in English literature at the University of Nanterre near Paris, all before having completed her doctorate. When protests and strikes erupted both within and outside the university in May 1968, Cixous was charged by the minister of education to head a committee to cre­ ate an experimental branch of the University of Paris (so-called Paris VIII) in the outlying Bois de Vincennes. Many of the country’s most innovative writers and thinkers in literature and philosophy came to teach there, including tzvetan todorov , m i c h e l foucault , and g i l l e s d e l e u z e . The first department of psycho­ analysis in France was also established there (a department in which the psycho­ analytic feminist Luce Irigaray taught until 1974, when she was expelled by the Lacanians for her book Speculum o f the Other Woman). With Gerard Genette and Todorov, Cixous created the influential journal Poetique. At the University of Paris

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VIII, first at Vincennes and then at St. Denis, she went on to create and run the only doctoral program in France in Etudes Feminines (Womens Studies), a program that was abolished in the late 1970s by the Barre government and reestablished in the 1980s by the Socialists. But in 1968, she was in the process of completing her doctorat d ’e tat in English. She became the youngest “doctor” in France. So what was this ecriture that was so much a part of the 1968 moment, and how did it lead to ecriture fem in in e} Ever since Socrates (who did not write) was described in the works of plato (who did), writing had been considered a secondary notation of a primary activity, speech. The theory of ecriture— developed especially in Derridas O f Grammatology (1967) and Writing and D ifference (1967), where it has come to be known as deconstruction— did not simply reverse the hierarchy between speech and writing; it redefined the terms of that hierarchy. Whereas “speech” had been made to stand for immediacy, presence, truth, Logos (i.e., the “Word”), God, and Oneness (and “writing” had stood for deferral, difference, absence, lack, lawlessness, multiplicity, and heterogeneity), Derrida argued that speech itself had never actually manifested Truth directly; instead, like writing, it was structured through the difference, first named by Fe r d i ­ nand de sa ussure (1857—1913), between the signifier (the word) and the signified (the meaning). In any act of language, there was a lag, a discrepancy, between a sign and what it meant. To the extent that there was meaning at all, the two things could not be the same. Thus, to the extent that philosophy existed in language (spoken or written), it was structured like “writing.” No actual language could achieve the simul­ taneity of signifier and signified, an idealization that was a consequence of the way in which Platonism and Christianity characterized the divine. Western philosophy after Plato was centered around the impossible but irresistible search for a fundamental Truth or Logos. Derrida calls this search “logocentrism.” Brought to clearest conceptualization in the philosophical work of G. w. F. h e g e l in the early nineteenth century, logocentric structures were organized through a series of binary oppositions (mind/matter, light/darkness, presence/absence, nature/culture, good/evil, etc.), the first term of each being desirable and the other shunned, karl marx had already claimed to turn Hegel on his head by reversing the relations between materiality and spirituality. But language was neither exactly material nor exactly spiritual. Theorists of ecriture thus had to find new ways of making readable everything that had been repressed, obscured, or unacknowledged in Western thought. In the course of that project, many male writers made use of figures of femininity to bring out what had been marginalized from traditional philosophical discourse. These figures— veils, shadows, enigmas, figurative language itself—represented resistance to the One, the Light, the Truth, and, implicitly, the idealization of the Male itself. In a way, therefore, we could say that all ecriture was already ecriture fem in in e— it was just being theorized mainly by men. In part, Cixous aimed at rendering literal the figures of femininity in the theory of ecriture and exploring the consequences of that literalization. She did not simply privilege the “female” half of an existing binary opposition between “male” and “female”; like other theorists of ecriture, she questioned the very adequacy of either/ or logics to name the complexity of cultural realities. But while Derrida did so by demystifying the “metaphysics of presence” involved in the notion of “voice,” Cixous did so by describing the physical (as opposed to metaphysical) sensations of a woman who is speaking for the first time in public. Structuralism had analyzed the fundamental importance of binary oppositions; it now seemed urgent for poststruc­ turalists to analyze all the things that those oppositions had obscured— and not only to analyze them but also to perform them, to transform them. The real scandal of Cixous’s work lay in her insistence on its two incompatible logics. On the one hand, she claimed that ecriture fem in in e was characterized by

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the explicitly female body parts that had been repressed by traditional discourse and were being ex-pressed by the woman writer: “There is always within her at least a little of that good mother’s milk. She writes in white ink.” Yet on the other hand, she claimed that both men and women could write ecriture fem in in e. How can both claims be true at the same time? The binary logic that structures the opposition between “male” and “female” is set up as a relation not between “A” and “B” but between “A” and “not-A.” sig mund f r e u d ’s geometrical concept of castration, refined but not substantially changed by Lacan, defines “woman” not in terms of what she has but in terms of what she lacks— that is, a penis. “Is the fact that Logocentrism subjects thought— all concepts, codes, and values— to a binary system, related to ‘the’ couple, man/woman?” Cixous asks in “Sorties,” published the same year as “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Yes, she answers, and the consequences for the structure of all thought, not just thought having to do with sexual difference, are far-reaching. One half of the opposition is essentially destroyed for the other half to make “sense.” If this is so, then hoth sides of an opposi­ tion are defined in terms of one of its elements. Thus anyone simply trying to unre­ press the obscured term— here, the feminine— is likely to reproduce the very structures he or she is resisting. This is why Cixous declares, “I am not a feminist.” Feminism, for her, participates in the same logic of opposition as traditional logocen­ trism or its companion, phallocentrism (the description of sexual difference as a dif­ ference between having and lacking the phallus). Nonetheless, she acknowledges, the female body has been repressed. Indeed, any transgressive, desiring body— and perhaps the body itself—has been repressed. But maybe there is no “body itself,” only bodies that have had power and bodies that haven’t. Granted, power and authority and law have presupposed the male body— but on the condition that no actual body be represented at all. Thus, both men and women would have everything left to say about the body, and that “everything” would no longer fall neatly into any given category. By writing as if the female body could be asserted, Cixous’s ecriture fem in in e frees it from invisibility and, at the same time, does not make it into a new model for the universal human being. The new opposition is not between male and female, but between a logic of the One and a logic of heterogeneity and multiplicity. The incompatibility between ecriture fem inine as assertion of the female body and ecriture fem inin e as capable of being written by men creates an impossible logic that is ecriture fem inine. Such a writing practice is bound to seem outrageous almost all the time. Responding mainly to “The Laugh of the Medusa,” many Anglo-American femi­ nists have accused Cixous of promoting “essentialism”— that is, of equating female writing with an idealized and unhistoricized “femininity.” And by making such claims as “women are multiple,” “women are open to the other,” “women write in white ink,” she does seem to be affirming some sort of “essence” of woman. It could be argued that these claims are mythic, performative, and critical rather than descriptive. In her puns (voler as “steal” and “fly,” depenser as “spend” and “unthink,” and blanc as both “white” and “blank”), she works on and in language, not in the empirical world. “Essentialism” or “anatomical destiny” is in one sense exactly what Cixous is arguing against. “The Laugh o f the M edusa” Keywords: The Body, Feminist Theory, Gender, Identity, Language, Psychoanalysis, Representation, Sexuality, Subjectivity

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The Laugh of the M edusa 1 I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies— for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text— as into the world and into history— by her own move­ ment. The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of des­ tiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation is imperative. Since these reflections are taking shape in an area just on the point of being discovered, they necessarily bear the mark of our time— a time during which the new breaks away from the old, and, more precisely, the (feminine) new from the old (la nouvelle de Vancien).2 Thus, as there are no grounds for establishing a discourse, but rather an arid millennial ground to break, what I say has at least two sides and two aims: to break up, to destroy; and to fore­ see the unforeseeable, to project. I write this as a woman, toward women. When I say “woman,” I’m speak­ ing of woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man; and of a universal woman subject who must bring women to their senses and to their meaning in history. But first it must be said that in spite of the enor­ mity of the repression that has kept them in the “dark”— that dark which people have been trying to make them accept as their attribute— there is, at this time, no general woman, no one typical woman. What they have in com m on I will say. But what strikes me is the infinite richness of their indi­ vidual constitutions: you can’t talk about a female sexuality, uniform, homogeneous, classifiable into codes— any more than you can talk about one unconscious resembling another. Women’s imaginary is inexhaustible, like music, painting, writing: their stream of phantasms is incredible. I have been amazed more than once by a description a woman gave me of a world all her own which she had been secretly haunting since early child­ hood. A world of searching, the elaboration of a knowledge, on the basis of a systematic experimentation with the bodily functions, a passionate and pre­ cise interrogation of her erotogeneity. This practice, extraordinarily rich and inventive, in particular as concerns masturbation, is prolonged or accompa­ nied by a production of forms, a veritable aesthetic activity, each stage of rapture inscribing a resonant vision, a composition, something beautiful. Beauty will no longer be forbidden. I wished that that woman would write and proclaim this unique empire so that other women, other unacknowledged sovereigns, might exclaim: I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of songs. Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous tor­ rents that I could burst— burst with forms much more beautiful than those

1. Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, who occasionally include the original French in parentheses.

2. In French la nouvelle (the new, the news) is gram m atically fem inine, while Vancien (the old, the former) is m asculine.

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which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! W hat’s the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naivete, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism,3 hasn’t been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantas­ tic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a . . . divine composure), hasn’t accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble. And why don’t you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven’t written. (And why I didn’t write before the age of twenty-seven.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it’s reserved for the great— that is, for “great men”; and it’s “silly.” Besides, you’ve written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty— so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time. Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; and not yourself. Smug-faced readers, manag­ ing editors, and big bosses don’t like the true texts of women— female-sexed texts. That kind scares them. I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man. So only an oblique consideration will be found here of man; it’s up to him to say where his masculinity and femininity are at: this will concern us once men have opened their eyes and seen themselves clearly.4 Now women return from afar, from always: from “without,” from the heath where witches are kept alive; from below, from beyond “culture”; from their 3. The psychoanalytic system in which sexual dif­ ference is defined as the difference between hav­ ing and lacking the phallus; the term has come to refer to the patriarchal cultural system as a whole insofar as that system privileges the phallus as the symbol and source of power. It is closely related to logocentrism, a term coined by the French philos­ opher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 4 ); the two are sometimes combined as phallogocentrism. 4. Men still have everything to say about their sexuality, and everything to write. For what they have said so far, for the most part, stems from the opposition activity/passivity, from the power rela­ tion between a fantasized obligatory virility meant to invade, to colonize, and the consequential phantasm of woman as a “dark continent” to pen­ etrate and to “pacify.” (We know what “pacify”

means in terms o f scotomizing the other and misrecognizing the self.) Conquering her, they’ve made haste to depart from her borders, to get out of sight, out of body. The way man has of getting out of him self and into her whom he takes not for the other but for his own, deprives him, he knows, o f his own bodily territory. One can understand how man, confusing him self with his penis and rushing in for the attack, might feel resentment and fear of being “taken” by the woman, of being lost in her, absorbed, or alone [Cixous’s note]. “Dark continent”: a metaphor used by s i g m u n d f r e u d in his essay “T he Question of Lay Analy­ sis” (1926) to describe wfoman as unexplored and mysterious. “Scotomizing”: forming a mental blind spot about (a psychoanalytic term).

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childhood which men have been trying desperately to make them forget, con­ demning it to “eternal rest.” The little girls and their “ill-mannered” bodies immured, well-preserved, intact unto themselves, in the mirror. Frigidified. But are they ever seething underneath! What an effort it takes— there’s no end to it— for the sex cops to bar their threatening return. Such a display of forces on both sides that the struggle has for centuries been immobilized in the trembling equilibrium of a deadlock. Here they are, returning, arriving over and again, because the unconscious is impregnable. They have wandered around in circles, confined to the narrow room in which they’ve been given a deadly brainwashing. You can incarcerate them, slow them down, get away with the old Apartheid5 routine, but for a time only. As soon as they begin to speak, at the same time as they’re taught their name, they can be taught that their territory is black: because you are Africa, you are black. Your continent is dark. Dark is dangerous. You can’t see anything in the dark, you’re afraid. Don’t move, you might fall. Most of all, don’t go into the forest. And so we have internalized this horror of the dark. Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, vio­ lently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobi­ lize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs. They have made for women an antinarcissism! A narcis­ sism which loves itself only to be loved for what women haven’t got! They have constructed the infamous logic of antilove. We the precocious, we the repressed of culture, our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, our wind knocked out of us, we the labyrinths, the ladders, the trampled spaces, the bevies— we are black and we are beautiful.6 We’re stormy, and that which is ours breaks loose from us without our fearing any debilitation. Our glances, our smiles, are spent; laughs exude from all our mouths; our blood flows and we extend ourselves without ever reaching an end; we never hold back our thoughts, our signs, our writing; and we’re not afraid of lacking.' What happiness for us who are omitted, brushed aside at the scene of inheritances; we inspire ourselves and we expire without running out of breath, we are everywhere! From now on, who, if we say so, can say no to us? We’ve come back from always. It is time to liberate the New Woman from the Old by coming to know her— by loving her for getting by, for getting beyond the Old without delay, by going out ahead of what the New Woman will be, as an arrow quits the bow with a movement that gathers and separates the vibrations musically, in order to be more than her self. I say that we must, for, with a few rare exceptions, there has not yet been any writing that inscribes femininity; exceptions so rare, in fact, that, after

5. Apartness (Afrikaans), the form er official pol­ icy of racial segregation and discrim ination in South A frica (1 9 4 8 -9 3 ). 6. A reference to the Song of Solomon (1.5) and, perhaps, to a slogan of the U .S. black power movement of the 1960s. 7. A reference to the reinterpretation of Freud’s

theory of sexual difference by the French psy­ choanalyst j a c q u e s l a c a n (1 901-1981). For Freud, men have a penis, and women don’t. For Lacan, men and women are both structured through a fundam ental “lack,” but that lack is first perceived on the body of the mother.

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plowing through literature across languages, cultures, and ages,8 one can only be startled at this vain scouting mission. It is well known that the num­ ber of women writers (while having increased very slightly from the nine­ teenth century on) has always been ridiculously small. This is a useless and deceptive fact unless from their species of female writers we do not first deduct the immense majority whose workmanship is in no way different from male writing, and which either obscures women or reproduces the classic representations of women (as sensitive— intuitive— dreamy, etc.).9 Let me insert here a parenthetical remark. I mean it when I speak of male writing. I maintain unequivocally that there is such a thing as m arked writ­ ing; that, until now, far more extensively and repressively than is ever sus­ pected or admitted, writing has been run by a libidinal and cultural— hence political, typically masculine— economy;1 that this is a locus where the repression of women has been perpetuated, over and over, more or less con­ sciously, and in a manner that’s frightening since it’s often hidden or adorned with the mystifying charms of fiction; that this locus has grossly exaggerated all the signs of sexual opposition (and not sexual difference), where woman has never her turn to speak—this being all the more serious and unpardon­ able in that writing is precisely the very possibility o f change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures. Nearly the entire history of writing is confounded with the history of rea­ son, of which it is at once the effect, the support, and one of the privileged alibis. It has been one with the phallocentric tradition. It is indeed that same self-admiring, self-stimulating, self-congratulatory phallocentrism. With some exceptions, for there have been failures— and if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be writing (I-woman, escapee)— in that enormous machine that has been operating and turning out its “truth” for centuries. There have been poets who would go to any lengths to slip something by at odds with tradition— men capable of loving love and hence capable of loving others and of wanting them, of imagining the woman who would hold out against oppression and constitute herself as a superb, equal, hence “impossible” subject, untenable in a real social framework. Such a woman the poet could desire only by breaking the codes that negate her. Her appearance would necessarily bring on, if not revolution— for the bastion was supposed to be immutable— at least harrowing explosions. At times it is in the fissure caused by an earthquake, through that radical mutation of things brought on by a material up-heaval when every structure is for a moment thrown off

8. I am speaking here only o f the place “reserved” for women by the W estern world [Cixous’s note]. 9. W hich works, then, might be called fem inine? I’ll ju st point out some examples: one would have to give them full readings to bring out what is pervasively fem inine in their significance. W hich I shall do elsew here. In France (have you noted our infinite poverty in this field?— the AngloSaxon cou ntries have shown resources of dis­ tin ctly greater consequence), leafing through what’s come out o f the 20th century— and it’s not m uch— the only inscriptions of fem ininity that I have seen were by Colette, M arguerite Duras, . . .

and Jean G enet [Cixous’s note]. G enet (1910— 1986), male French novelist and playwright. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette (1873—1954), French novelist. Duras (pseudonym o f M arguerite Donnadieu, 1 9 1 4 -1 9 9 6 ), French novelist, screen ­ writer, playwright, and film director. l .T h e “libidinal econom y” is the system of exchanges having to do with sexual desire (libido), which Freud characterized as inherently masculine to the extent that it was active, not passive; in this view, only one desire can fu n c­ tion at a time.

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balance and an ephemeral wildness sweeps order away, that the poet slips something by, for a brief span, of woman. Thus did Kleist2 expend himself in his yearning for the existence of sister-lovers, maternal daughters, mothersisters, who never hung their heads in shame. Once the palace of magistrates is restored, its time to pay: immediate bloody death to the uncontrollable elements. But only the poets— not the novelists, allies of representationalism. Because poetry involves gaining strength through the unconscious and because the unconscious, that other limitless country, is the place where the repressed manage to survive: women, or as Hoffmann3 would say, fairies. She must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history, first at two levels that cannot be separated. (a) Individually. By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display— the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth. Our naphtha4 will spread, throughout the world, without dollars— black or gold— nonassessed values that will change the rules of the old game. To write. An act which will not only “realize” the decensored relation of woman to her sexuality, to her womanly being, giving her access to her native strength; it will give her back her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal; it will tear her away from the superegoized structure5 in which she has always occupied the place reserved for the guilty (guilty of everything, guilty at every turn: for having desires, for not having any; for being frigid, for being “too hot”; for not being both at once; for being too motherly and not enough; for having chil­ dren and for not having any; for nursing and for not nursing . . . )— tear her away by means of this research, this job of analysis and illumination, this emancipation of the marvelous text of her self that she must urgently learn to speak. A woman without a body, dumb, blind, can’t possibly be a good fighter. She is reduced to being the servant of the militant male, his shadow. We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing. Inscribe the breath of the whole woman. (b) An act that will also be marked by woman’s seizing the occasion to speak, hence her shattering entry into history, which has always been based on her suppression. To write and thus to forge for herself the antilogos weapon. To become at will the taker and initiator, for her own right, in every symbolic system, in every political process.

2. H einrich von Kleist (1777-1811), Germ an dram atist and poet. 3. E. T. A. Hoffmann (1 7 76-1822), German writer known especially for his fantastic tales (Freud discusses “T he Sandm an” in his influen­ tial 1919 essay “The ‘U ncanny’”; see above). 4. A volatile petroleum product; the term was

used by alchem ists to refer to liquids with low boiling points. 5. The superego, according to Freud, is the part o f the psyche that develops through the incorpo­ ration o f the moral standards of the ch ild ’s par­ ents and community.

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It is time for women to start scoring their feats in written and oral lan­ guage. Every woman has known the torment of getting up to speak. Her heart rac­ ing, at times entirely lost for words, ground and language slipping away— that’s how daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman to speak— even just open her mouth— in public. A double distress, for even if she transgresses, her words fall almost always upon the deaf male ear, which hears in language only that which speaks in the masculine. It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic,6 that is, in a place other than silence. Women should break out of the snare of silence. They shouldn’t be conned into accepting a domain which is the mar­ gin or the harem. Listen to a woman speak at a public gathering (if she hasn’t painfully lost her wind). She doesn’t “speak,” she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it’s with her body that she vitally supports the “logic” of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she physically materializes what she’s thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes what she’s saying, because she doesn’t deny her drives the intractable and impas­ sioned part they have in speaking. Her speech, even when “theoretical” or political, is never simple or linear or “objectified,” generalized: she draws her story into history. There is not that scission, that division made by the common man between the logic of oral speech and the logic of the text, bound as he is by his anti­ quated relation— servile, calculating— to mastery. From which proceeds the niggardly lip service which engages only the tiniest part of the body, plus the mask. In women’s speech, as in their writing, that element which never stops reso­ nating, which, once we’ve been permeated by it, profoundly and imperceptibly touched by it, retains the power of moving us— that element is the song: first music from the first voice of love which is alive in every woman. Why this privileged relationship with the voice? Because no woman stockpiles as many defenses for countering the drives as does a man. You don’t build walls around yourself, you don’t forego pleasure as “wisely” as he. Even if phallic mystifica­ tion has generally contaminated good relationships, a woman is never far from “mother” (I mean outside her role functions: the “mother” as nonname and as source of goods). There is always within her at least a little of that good mother’s milk. She writes in white ink. W oman fo r w om en.—There always remains in woman that force which produces/is produced by the other— in particular, the other woman. In her, matrix, cradler; herself giver as her mother and child; she is her own sisterdaughter. You might object, “What about she who is the hysterical offspring of a bad mother?” Everything will be changed once woman gives woman to the other woman. There is hidden and always ready in woman the source; the

6. A reference to Lacan’s theory of the psyche. “T he Sym bolic” is the dimension of language, law, and the father; in contrast, “the Imaginary” is

modeled on the mother-child dyad, or on the relation between an infant and its mirror image,

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locus for the other. The mother, too, is a metaphor. It is necessary and suffi­ cient that the best of herself be given to woman by another woman for her to be able to love herself and return in love the body that was “born” to her. Touch me, caress me, you the living no-name, give me my self as myself. The relation to the “mother,” in terms of intense pleasure and violence, is cur­ tailed no more than the relation to childhood (the child that she was, that she is, that she makes, remakes, undoes, there at the point where, the same, she others herself). Text: my body— shot through with streams of song; I don’t mean the overbearing, clutchy “mother” but, rather, what touches you, the equivoice that affects you, fills your breast with an urge to come to language and launches your force; the rhythm that laughs you; the intimate recipient who makes all metaphors possible and desirable; body (body? bodies?), no more describable than god, the soul, or the Other; that part of you that leaves a space between yourself and urges you to inscribe in language your womans style. In women there is always more or less of the mother who makes every­ thing all right, who nourishes, and who stands up against separation; a force that will not be cut off but will knock the wind out of the codes. We will rethink womankind beginning with every form and every period of her body. The Americans remind us, “We are all Lesbians”;' that is, don’t denigrate woman, don’t make of her what men have made of you. Because the “economy” of her drives is prodigious, she cannot fail, in seiz­ ing the occasion to speak, to transform directly and indirectly all systems of exchange based on masculine thrift. Her libido will produce far more radical effects of political and social change than some might like to think. Because she arrives, vibrant, over and again, we are at the beginning of a new history, or rather of a process of becoming in which several histories intersect with one another. As subject for history, woman always occurs simultaneously in several places. Woman un-thinks8 the unifying, regulating history that homogenizes and channels forces, herding contradictions into a single battlefield. In woman, personal history blends together with the his­ tory of all women, as well as national and world history. As a militant, she is an integral part of all liberations. She must be farsighted, not limited to a blow-by-blow interaction. She foresees that her liberation will do more than modify power relations or toss the ball over to the other camp; she will bring about a mutation in human relations, in thought, in all praxis: hers is not simply a class struggle, which she carries forward into a much vaster move­ ment. Not that in order to be a woman-in-struggle(s) you have to leave the class struggle or repudiate it; but you have to split it open, spread it out, push it forward, fill it with the fundamental struggle so as to prevent the class struggle, or any other struggle for the liberation of a class or people, from operating as a form of repression, pretext for postponing the inevitable, the staggering alteration in power relations and in the production of individuali­ ties. This alteration is already upon us— in the United States, for example, where millions of night crawlers are in the process of undermining the family and disintegrating the whole of American sociality. 7. Compare the American feminist slogan attrib­ uted to Ti-G race Atkinson (b. 1938), “Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice”; see also the opening of the Radicalesbians’ manifesto, “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970): “A lesbian is

the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.” 8. “D e-pen se ,” a neologism formed on the verb p en ser [to think], hence “u n th in k s,” but also “spends” (from depenser) [translators’ note].

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The new history is coming; it’s not a dream, though it does extend beyond men’s imagination, and for good reason. It’s going to deprive them of their conceptual orthopedics,9 beginning with the destruction of their entice­ ment machine. It is impossible to define a feminine practice of writing, and this is an impossibility that will remain, for this practice can never be theorized, enclosed, coded— which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. But it will always surpass the discourse that regulates the phallocentric system; it does and will take place in areas other than those subordinated to philosophico-theoretical domination. It will be conceived of only by subjects who are breakers of automatisms, by peripheral figures that no authority can ever subjugate. Hence the necessity to affirm the flourishes of this writing, to give form to its movement, its near and distant byways. Bear in mind to begin with (1) that sexual opposition, which has always worked for man’s profit to the point of reducing writing, too, to his laws, is only a historico-cultural limit. There is, there will be more and more rapidly pervasive now, a fiction that produces irreducible effects of femininity. (2) That it is through ignorance that most readers, critics, and writers of both sexes hesitate to admit or deny outright the possibility or the pertinence of a distinction between feminine and mas­ culine writing. It will usually be said, thus disposing of sexual difference: either that all writing, to the extent that it materializes, is feminine; or, inversely— but it comes to the same thing— that the act of writing is equiva­ lent to masculine masturbation (and so the woman who writes cuts herself out a paper penis); or that writing is bisexual, hence neuter, which again does away with differentiation. To admit that writing is precisely working (in) the in-between, inspecting the process of the same and of the other without which nothing can live, undoing the work of death— to admit this is first to want the two, as well as both, the ensemble of the one and the other, not fixed in sequences of struggle and expulsion or some other form of death but infinitely dynamized by an incessant process of exchange from one subject to another. A process of different subjects knowing one another and beginning one another anew only from the living boundaries of the other: a multiple and inexhaustible course with millions of encounters and transformations of the same into the other and into the in-between, from which woman takes her forms (and man, in his turn; but that’s his other history). In saying “bisexual, hence neuter,” I am referring to the classic conception of bisexuality, which, squashed under the emblem of castration fear1 and along with the fantasy of a “total” being (though composed of two halves), would do away with the difference experienced as an operation incurring loss, as the mark of dreaded sectility. To this self-effacing, merger-type bisexuality, which would conjure away castration (the writer who puts up his sign: “bisexual written here, come and see,” when the odds are good that it’s neither one nor the other), I oppose the other bisexuality on which every subject not enclosed in the false 9. An allusion to L acan’s term orthopedic, which refers to any training process that “corrects” the infant’s imagination. l .T h e fear that Freud attributes to every male child imagining the punishment for desiring his

mother; more generally, the fear of losing some­ thing, o f not being “whole,” that leads men to cling to masculinity for fear of becoming “castrated” like women.

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theater of phalloeentric representationalism has founded his/her erotic universe. Bisexuality; that is, each ones location in self (reperage en soi) of the presence— variously manifest and insistent according to each person, male or female— of both sexes, nonexclusion either of the difference or of one sex, and, from this “self-permission,” multiplication of the effects of the inscription of desire, over all parts of my body and the other body. Now it happens that at present, for historico-cultural reasons, it is women who are opening up to and benefiting from this vatic bisexuality which doesn’t annul differences but stirs them up, pursues them, increases their number. In a certain way, “woman is bisexual”;2 man— it’s a secret to no one— being poised to keep glorious phallic monosexuality in view. By virtue of affirming the primacy of the phallus and of bringing it into play, phallocratic ideology has claimed more than one victim. As a woman, I’ve been clouded over by the great shadow of the scepter and been told: idolize it, that which you cannot brandish. But at the same time, man has been handed that grotesque and scarcely enviable destiny (just imagine) of being reduced to a single idol with clay balls. And consumed, as Freud and his followers note, by a fear of being a woman! For, if psychoanalysis was constituted from woman, to repress femininity (and not so successful a repression at that— men have made it clear), its account of masculine sexuality is now hardly refutable; as with all the “human” sciences, it reproduces the masculine view, of which it is one of the effects. Here we encounter the inevitable man-with-rock, standing erect in his old Freudian realm, in the way that, to take the figure back to the point where linguistics is conceptualizing it “anew,” Lacan preserves it in the sanctuary of the phallos (o)3 “sheltered” from castrations lackl Their “symbolic” exists, it holds power— we, the sowers of disorder, know it only too well. But we are in no way obliged to deposit our lives in their banks of lack, to consider the con­ stitution of the subject in terms of a drama manglingly restaged, to reinstate again and again the religion of the father. Because we don’t want that. We don’t fawn around the supreme hole. We have no womanly reason to pledge allegiance to the negative. The feminine (as the poets suspected) affirms: “. . . And yes,” says Molly, carrying Ulysses off beyond any book and toward the new writing; “I said yes, I will Yes.”4 The Dark Continent is neither dark nor unexplorahle.5— It is still unex­ plored only because we’ve been made to believe that it was too dark to be explorable. And because they want to make us believe that what interests us is the white continent, with its monuments to Lack. And we believed. They riveted us between two horrifying myths: between the Medusa6 and the

2. Freud claimed that because the mother was the first object of desire for both sexes, women (who had to change their object of desire) were more inherently bisexual than men. 3. The symbol (the Greek letter phi) representing the phallic function, in Lacanian terminology. 4. T he final words of Jam es Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), spoken by Molly Bloom. 5. Q ualities suggested by Freud, who also saw female sexuality (the “dark con tin ent”) as a “rid­ dle” (see “Fem ininity,” 1932). 6. In Greek mythology, the most famous of the monstrous Gorgon sisters; her head was covered

with snakes, and anyone who looked at her was turned to stone (Perseus looked at her reflection in his shield to decapitate her). Freud, in his short essay “Medusa’s Head” (1922), associates Medusa with castration ( = decapitation) and analyzes the ambiguity of the image: the snakes on her head are a denial of the castration she represents, while the notion of being turned to stone represents both castration and arousal. Cixous may also be referring to Lacan as Perseus, capable o f look­ ing at things only in a mirror (see above his famous essay “The Mirror Stage,” 1949).

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abyss. That would be enough to set half the world laughing, except that its still going on. For the phallologocentric sublation7 is with us, and it’s mili­ tant, regenerating the old patterns, anchored in the dogma of castration. They haven’t changed a thing: they’ve theorized their desire for reality! Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!8 Too bad for them if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren’t men, or that the mother doesn’t have one. But isn’t this fear convenient for them? Wouldn’t the worst be, isn’t the worst, in truth, that women aren’t castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens9 (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing.1 Men say that there are two unrepresentable things: death and the feminine sex. That’s because they need femininity to be associated with death; it’s the jitters that gives them a hard-on! for themselves! They need to be afraid of us. Look at the trembling Perseuses moving backward toward us, clad in apotropes.2 What lovely backs! Not another minute to lose. Let’s get out of here. Let’s hurry: the continent is not impenetrably dark. I’ve been there often. I was overjoyed one day to run into Jean Genet. It was in Pompes fu n e b r e s 3 He had come there led by his Jean. There are some men (all too few) who aren’t afraid of femininity. Almost everything is yet to be written by women about femininity: about their sexuality, that is, its infinite and mobile complexity, about their eroticization, sudden turn-ons of a certain minuscule-immense area of their bodies; not about destiny, but about the adventure of such and such a drive, about trips, crossings, trudges, abrupt and gradual awakenings, discoveries of a zone at one time timorous and soon to be forthright. A woman’s body, with its thousand and one thresholds of ardor— once, by smashing yokes and censors, she lets it articulate the profusion of meanings that run through it in every direction— will make the old single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with more than one language. We’ve been turned away from our bodies* shamefully taught to ignore them, to strike them with that stupid sexual modesty; we’ve been made vic­ tims of the old fool’s game: each one will love the other sex. I’ll give you your body and you’ll give me mine. But who are the men who give women the body that women blindly yield to them? Why so few texts? Because so few women have as yet won back their body. Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must sub­ merge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word “silence,” the

7. T he standard English translation of Aufhebung, a term used by the Germ an philosopher F R I E D R I C H H E G E L (1 770-1831) to refer to the d ialectical progression from a con­ tradiction to a higher synthesis. Here, “woman” has been sublated into the general category “m an,” and “m an,” at first opposed to “woman,” has risen up to becom e the generic name for all o f humankind. 8. “Showing our sexts” represents a new articu ­ lation of sex and text (as does ecriture fem inine), as women who no longer repress their sexuality GEORG W ILH ELM

can talk about everything. 9. In Greek mythology, nymphs with a woman’s head and a bird’s body who lived on an island surrounded by rocks; the Sirens’ enchanting song lured sailors to their death. 1. In redescribing Medusa as beautiful rather than horrible, Cixous is revising the notion of fem ininity itself. 2. Charm s with the power to turn away evil. 3. Jean G enet, Pompes fu n ebres [Funeral Rites] (Paris, 1948), p. 185 [Cixous’s note].

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one that, aiming for the impossible, stops short before the word “impossi­ ble” and writes it as “the end.” Such is the strength of women that, sweeping away syntax, breaking that famous thread (just a tiny little thread, they say) which acts for men as a surrogate umbilical cord, assuring them— otherwise they couldn’t come— that the old lady is always right behind them,4 watching them make phal­ lus, women will go right up to the impossible. When the “repressed” of their culture and their society returns, it’s an explosive, utterly destructive, staggering return, with a force never yet unleashed and equal to the most forbidding of suppressions. For when the Phallic period comes to an end, women will have been either annihilated or borne up to the highest and most violent incandescence. Muffled throughout their history, they have lived in dreams, in bodies (though muted), in silences, in aphonic5 revolts. And with such force in their fragility; a fragility, a vulnerability, equal to their incomparable intensity. Fortunately, they haven’t sublimated; they’ve saved their skin, their energy. They haven’t worked at liquidating the impasse of lives without futures. They have furiously inhabited these sumptuous bodies: admirable hysterics who made Freud succumb to many voluptuous moments impossible to confess, bombarding his Mosaic statue6 with their carnal and passionate body words, haunting him with their inaudible and thundering denunciations, dazzling, more than naked underneath the seven veils of modesty. Those who, with a single word of the body, have inscribed the vertiginous immensity of a history which is sprung like an arrow from the whole history of men and from biblico-capitalist society, are the women, the supplicants of yesterday, who come as forebears of the new women, after whom no intersubjective relation will ever be the same. You, Dora, you the indomitable, the poetic body, you are the true “mistress” of the Signi­ fier. 7 Before long your efficacity will be seen at work when your speech is no longer suppressed, its point turned in against your breast, but written out over against the other. In body.— More so than men who are coaxed toward social success, toward sublimation, women are body. More body, hence more writing. For a long time it has been in body that women have responded to persecution, to the familial-conjugal enterprise of domestication, to the repeated attempts at castrating them. Those who have turned their tongues 10,000 times seven times before not speaking are either dead from it or more familiar with their tongues and their mouths than anyone else. Now, I-woman am going to blow

4. An allusion to two Greek myths: the story of Theseus, led out of the M inotaur’s labyrinth by Ariadne’s thread, and the story of the poet Orpheus, who won the release of his dead wife from the underworld on the condition (which he does not keep) that he not turn around and look at her as they ascended. 5. Speechless; an allusion to Freud’s patient Dora, one of whose symptoms was aphonia (loss of voice); she is often considered an exemplary case of the misunderstood hysterical woman (Dora left Freud before the end of the analysis).

6. M ichelangelo’s statue o f M oses (ca. 1515), which fascinated Freud, who here stands as the patriarchal Lawgiver himself. 7. The capitalization of the term , coined by the Swiss linguist F e r d i n a n d d e s a u s s u r e (1857— 1913) to explain the functioning of signs (divided into signifier, the form a sign takes, and signified, the concept it represents), indicates that Cixous is here referring specifically to L acan’s designa­ tion of the phallus as privileged Signifier within the field of sexuality.

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up the Law: an explosion henceforth possible and ineluctable; let it be done, right now, in language. Let us not be trapped by an analysis still encumbered with the old automa­ tisms. It’s not to be feared that language conceals an invincible adversary, because it’s the language of men and their grammar. We mustn’t leave them a single place that’s any more theirs alone than we are. If woman has always functioned “within” the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this “within,” to explode it, turn it around, and seize it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it in her own mouth, biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a language to get inside of. And you’ll see with what ease she will spring forth from that “within”— the “within” where once she so drowsily crouched— to overflow at the lips she will cover the foam. Nor is the point to appropriate their instruments, their concepts, their places, or to begrudge them their position of mastery. Just because there’s a risk of identification doesn’t mean that we’ll succumb. Let’s leave it to the worriers, to masculine anxiety and its obsession with how to dominate the way things work— knowing “how it works” in order to “make it work.” For us the point is not to take possession in order to internalize or manipulate, but rather to dash through and to “fly.”8 Flying is woman’s gesture— flying in language and making it fly. We have all learned the art of flying and its numerous techniques; for centuries we’ve been able to possess anything only by flying; we’ve lived in flight, stealing away, finding, when desired, narrow passageways, hidden crossovers. It’s no accident that voler has a double meaning, that it plays on each of them and thus throws off the agents of sense. It’s no accident: women take after birds and robbers just as robbers take after women and birds. They (illes)9 go by, fly the coop, take pleasure in jumbling the order of space, in disorienting it, in changing around the furniture, dislocating things and values, breaking them all up, emptying structures, and turning propriety upside down. What woman hasn’t flown/stolen? Who hasn’t felt, dreamt, performed the gesture that jams sociality? Who hasn’t crumbled, held up to ridicule, the bar of separation?1 Who hasn’t inscribed with her body the differential, punctured the system of couples and opposition? Who, by some act of trans­ gression, hasn’t overthrown successiveness, connection, the wall of circumfusion? A feminine text cannot fail to be more than subversive. It is volcanic; as it is written it brings about an upheaval of the old property crust, carrier of masculine investments; there’s no other way. There’s no room for her if she’s not a he. If she’s a her-she, it’s in order to smash everything, to shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the “truth” with laughter.

8. Also, “to steal.” Both meanings o f the verb voler are played on, as the text itself explains in the fol­ lowing paragraph [translators’ note]. 9. Illes is a fusion o f the m asculine pronoun ils, which refers back to birds and robbers, with the fem inine pronoun elles, which refers to women

[translators’ note]. 1. An allusion to L acan’s revision of Saussure in “T h e Agency o f the L ette r in the U ncon sciou s” (1957; see above): the “b ar” betw een signifier and signified is identical with the structuring function of civilization.

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For once she blazes her trail in the symbolic, she cannot fail to make of it the chaosmos2 of the “personal”— in her pronouns, her nouns, and her clique of referents. And for good reason. There will have been the long his­ tory of gynocide.3 This is known by the colonized peoples of yesterday, the workers, the nations, the species off whose backs the history of men has made its gold; those who have known the ignominy of persecution derive from it an obstinate future desire for grandeur; those who are locked up know better than their jailers the taste of free air. Thanks to their history, women today know (how to do and want) what men will be able to conceive of only much later. I say woman overturns the “personal,” for if, by means of laws, lies, blackmail, and marriage, her right to herself has been extorted at the same time as her name, she has been able, through the very move­ ment of mortal alienation, to see more closely the inanity of “propriety,” the reductive stinginess of the masculine-conjugal subjective economy, which she doubly resists. On the one hand she has constituted herself necessarily as that “person” capable of losing a part of herself without losing her integ­ rity. But secretly, silently, deep down inside, she grows and multiplies, for, on the other hand, she knows far more about living and about the relation between the economy of the drives and the management of the ego than any man. Unlike man, who holds so dearly to his title and his titles, his pouches of value, his cap, crown, and everything connected with his head, woman couldn’t care less about the fear of decapitation (or castration), adventuring, without the masculine temerity, into anonymity, which she can merge with without annihilating herself: because she’s a giver. I shall have a great deal to say about the whole deceptive problematic of the gift.4 Woman is obviously not that woman Nietzsche dreamed of who gives only in order to.5 Who could ever think of the gift as a gift-that-takes? Who else but man, precisely the one who would like to take everything? If there is a “propriety of woman,” it is paradoxically her capacity to depropriate unselfishly: body without end, without appendage, without principal “parts.” If she is a whole, it’s a whole composed of parts that are wholes, not simple partial objects but a moving, limitlessly changing ensemble, a cosmos tirelessly traversed by Eros, an immense astral space not organized around any one sun that’s any more of a star than the others. This doesn’t mean that she’s an undifferentiated magma, but that she doesn’t lord it over her body or her desire. Though masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized body (in political anatomy) under the dictatorship of its parts, woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within boundaries. Her libido is cosmic, just as her uncon­ scious is worldwide. Fler writing can only keep going, without ever inscribing 2. A coinage from Jam es Joyce’s Finnegans W ake (1939) blending chaos and cosmos. 3. T he killing of women. 4. As explored by the French anthropologist Mar­ cel Mauss in Essay on the Gift (1924). A key con­ cept in Cixous’s critique of ownership, property, and exchange, the gift functions as excess, as spending, and as abundance— which all become, for Cixous, women’s attributes. 5. Reread Derrida’s text, “Le Style de la femme,” in Nietzsche aujourd’hui (Paris: Union Generale

d’F.ditions, Coll. 10/18, [1973]), where the philos­ opher can be seen operating an Aufhebung of all philosophy in its systematic reducing of woman to the place of seduction: she appears as the one who is taken for; the bait in person, all veils unfurled, the one who doesn’t give but who gives only in order to (take) [Cixous’s note]. Translated in Jacques Derrida, Spurs: N ietzsche’s Styles (1978). F r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e (1 8 4 4 -1 9 0 0 ), German phi­ losopher.

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or discerning contours, daring to make these vertiginous crossings of the other(s) ephemeral and passionate sojourns in him, her, them, whom she inhabits long enough to look at from the point closest to their unconscious from the moment they awaken, to love them at the point closest to their drives; and then further, impregnated through and through with these brief, identificatory embraces, she goes and passes into infinity. She alone dares and wishes to know from within, where she, the outcast, has never ceased to hear the resonance of fore-language. She lets the other language speak— the language of 1,000 tongues which knows neither enclosure nor death. To life she refuses nothing. Her language does not contain, it carries; it does not hold back, it makes possible. When id6 is ambiguously uttered— the wonder of being several— she doesn’t defend herself against these unknown women whom she’s surprised at becoming, but derives pleasure from this gift of alterability. I am spacious, singing flesh, on which is grafted no one knows which I, more or less human, but alive because of transformation. Write! and your self-seeking text will know itself better than flesh and blood, rising, insurrectionary dough kneading itself, with sonorous, per­ fumed ingredients, a lively combination of flying colors, leaves, and rivers plunging into the sea we feed. “Ah, there’s her sea,” he will say as he holds out to me a basin full of water from the little phallic mother' from whom he’s inseparable. But look, our seas are what we make of them, full of fish or not, opaque or transparent, red or black, high or smooth, narrow or bankless; and we are ourselves sea, sand, coral, seaweed, beaches, tides, swimmers, children, waves. . . . More or less wavily sea, earth, sky— what matter would rebuff us? We know how to speak them all. Heterogeneous, yes. For her joyous benefit she is erogenous; she is the erotogeneity of the heterogeneous: airborne swimmer, in flight, she does not cling to herself; she is dispersible, prodigious, stunning, desirous and capable of others, of the other woman that she will be, of the other woman she isn’t, of him of you. Woman be unafraid of any other place, of any same, or any other. My eyes, my tongue, my ears, my nose, my skin, my mouth, my body-for-(the)-other— not that I long for it in order to fill up a hole, to provide against some defect of mine, or because, as fate would have it, I’m spurred on by feminine “jeal­ ousy”; not because I’ve been dragged into the whole chain of substitutions that brings that which is substituted back to its ultimate object. That sort of thing you would expect to come straight out of “Tom Thumb,” out of the Penisneid8 whispered to us by old grandmother ogresses, servants to their father-sons. If they believe, in order to muster up some self-importance, if they really need to believe that we’re dying of desire, that we are this hole fringed with desire for their penis— that’s their immemorial business. Unde­ niably (we verify it at our own expense— but also to our amusement), it’s their

6. The first of three components of the infant’s psyche (the others being the ego and superego), as theorized by Freud; it is governed by the most primitive unconscious urges for gratification, ruled by no laws o f logic, and unconstrained by external reality. 7. The child ’s fantasy o f what the m other must

have been like before she was castrated, theo­ rized by both Freud and Lacan. 8. Penis envy (Germ an); Freud’s name for the lifelong wish to have a penis, which he attributed to women. “Tom Thu m b”: the old nursery tale featuring the diminutive hero of the same name.

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business to let us know they’re getting a hard-on, so that we’ll assure them (we the maternal mistresses of their little pocket signifier) that they still can, that it’s still there— that men structure themselves only by being fitted with a feather.9 In the child it’s not the penis that the woman desires, it’s not that famous bit of skin around which every man gravitates. Pregnancy cannot be traced back, except within the historical limits of the ancients, to some form of fate, to those mechanical substitutions brought about by the unconscious of some eternal “jealous woman”; not to penis envies; and not to narcissism or to some sort of homosexuality linked to the ever-present mother! Begetting a child doesn’t mean that the woman or the man must fall ineluctably into patterns or must recharge the circuit of reproduction. If there’s a risk there’s not an inevitable trap: may women be spared the pressure, under the guise of consciousness-raising, of a supplement of interdictions. Either you want a kid or you don’t— that’s your business.’ Let nobody threaten you; in satisfying your desire, let not the fear of becoming the accomplice to a sociality succeed the old-time fear of being “taken.” And man, are you still going to bank on everyone’s blindness and passivity, afraid lest the child make a father and, consequently, that in having a kid the woman land herself more than one bad deal by engendering all at once child— mother— father— family? No; it’s up to you to break the old circuits. It will be up to man and woman to render obsolete the former relationship and all its consequences, to consider the launching of a brand-new subject, alive, with defamilialization. Let us demater-paternalize rather than deny woman, in an effort to avoid the co­ optation of procreation, a thrilling era of the body. Let us defetishize. Let’s get away from the dialectic which has it that the only good father is a dead one, or that the child is the death of his parents. The child is the other, but the other without violence, bypassing loss, struggle. We’re fed up with the reuniting of bonds forever to be severed, with the litany of castration that’s handed down and genealogized. We won’t advance backward anymore; we’re not going to repress something so simple as the desire for life. Oral drive, anal drive, vocal drive— all these drives are our strengths, and among them is the gestation drive—just like the desire to write: a desire to live self from within, a desire for the swollen belly, for language, for blood. We are not going to refuse, if it should happen to strike our fancy, the unsurpassed plea­ sures of pregnancy which have actually been always exaggerated or conjured away— or cursed— in the classic texts. For if there’s one thing that’s been repressed here’s just the place to find it: in the taboo of the pregnant woman. This says a lot about the power she seems invested with at the time, because it has always been suspected, that, when pregnant, the woman not only dou­ bles her market value, but— what’s more important— takes on intrinsic value as a woman in her own eyes and, undeniably, acquires body and sex. There are thousands of ways of living one’s pregnancy; to have or not to have with that still invisible other a relationship of another intensity. And if you don’t have that particular yearning, it doesn’t mean that you’re in any way lacking. Each body distributes in its own special way, without model or

9. In the French s’em penner, “to sprout feathers”: a referen ce to p l a t o ’s d escription o f the so u l’s return to its original p erfectio n by regrow ing its lost wings; see P haedrus (ca. 3 70 b . c . e . ) ,

2 4 6 a —2 52a. 1. Abortion was legalized in France in 1974, a year before this essay was published,

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norm, the nonfinite and changing totality of its desires. Decide for yourself on your position in the arena of contradictions, where pleasure and reality embrace. Bring the other to life. Women know how to live detachment; giv­ ing birth is neither losing nor increasing. It’s adding to life an other. Am I dreaming? Am I mis-recognizing? You, the defenders of “theory,” the sacro­ sanct yes-men of Concept, enthroners of the phallus (but not of the penis): Once more you’ll say that all this smacks of “idealism,” or what’s worse, you’ll splutter that I’m a “mystic.” And what about the libido? Haven’t I read the “Signification of the Phal­ lus”?2 And what about separation, what about that bit of self for which, to be born, you undergo an ablation— an ablation, so they say, to be forever commemorated by your desire? Besides, isn’t it evident that the penis gets around in my texts, that I give it a place and appeal? Of course I do. I want all. I want all of me with all of him. Why should I deprive myself of a part of us? I want all of us. Woman of course has a desire for a “loving desire” and not a jealous one. But not because she is gelded; not because she’s deprived and needs to be filled out, like some wounded person who wants to console herself or seek vengeance: I don’t want a penis to decorate my body with. But I do desire the other for the other,3 whole and entire, male or female; because living means wanting everything that is, everything that lives, and wanting it alive. Castration? Let others toy with it. What’s a desire originating from a lack? A pretty meager desire. The woman who still allows herself to be threatened by the big dick, who’s still impressed by the commotion of the phallic stance, who still leads a loyal master to the beat of the drum: that’s the woman of yesterday. They still exist, easy and numerous victims of the oldest of farces: either they’re cast in the original silent version in which, as titanesses lying under the mountains they make with their quivering, they never see erected that theoretic monu­ ment to the golden phallus looming, in the old manner, over their bodies. Or, coming today out of their infans4 period and into the second, “enlightened” version of their virtuous debasement, they see themselves suddenly assaulted by the builders of the analytic empire and, as soon as they’ve begun to formu­ late the new desire, naked, nameless, so happy at making an appearance, they’re taken in their bath by the new old men, and then, whoops! Luring them with flashy signifiers, the demon of interpretation— oblique, decked out in modernity— sells them the same old handcuffs, baubles, and chains. Which castration do you prefer? Whose degrading do you like better, the father’s or the mother’s? Oh, what pwetty eyes, you pwetty little girl. Here, buy my glasses and you’ll see the Truth-Me-Myself5 tell you everything you should know. Put them on your nose and take a fetishist’s look (you are me, the other analyst— that’s what I’m telling you) at your body and the body of the other. You see? No? Wait, you’ll have everything explained to you, and you’ll know at last which sort of neurosis you’re related to. Hold still, we’re going to do your portrait, so that you can begin looking like it right away.

2. A 1958 essay by Jacques Lacan (see above). 3. The non-me, the non-self. In The Second Sex (1949), siiMONE d e BE A U V O IR was the first to ana­ lyze how society positions woman as m an’s other. 4. Incapable of speech (Latin). L acan uses the word to describe the child at the m irror stage.

5. A reference to Lacan, who had written in his essay “The Freudian Thing” (1955), “Moi, la verite, je parle" (I, the Truth, speak). “My glasses” alludes to the sinister eyeglass salesman in Hoff­ mann’s “Sandm an” (1816) whom Freud analyzes in “The ‘Uncanny.’”

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Yes, the naives to the first and second degree are still legion. If the New Women, arriving now, dare to create outside the theoretical, they re called in by the cops of the signifier, fingerprinted, remonstrated, and brought into the line of order that they are supposed to know; assigned by force of trickery to a precise place in the chain that’s always formed for the benefit of a privileged signifier. We are pieced back to the string which leads back, if not to the Name-of-the-Father, then, for a new twist, to the place of the phallic-mother.6 Beware, my friend, of the signifier that would take you back to the author­ ity of a signified! Beware of diagnoses that would reduce your generative pow­ ers. “Common” nouns are also proper nouns that disparage your singularity by classifying it into species. Break out of the circles; don’t remain within the psychoanalytic closure. Take a look around, then cut through! And if we are legion, it’s because the war of liberation has only made as yet a tiny breakthrough. But women are thronging to it. I’ve seen them, those who will be neither dupe nor domestic, those who will not fear the risk of being a woman; will not fear any risk, any desire, any space still unexplored in themselves, among themselves and others or anywhere else. They do not fetishize, they do not deny, they do not hate. They observe, they approach, they try to see the other woman, the child, the lover— not to strengthen their own narcissism or verify the solidity or weakness of the master, but to make love better, to invent. Other love.— In the beginning are our differences. The new love dares for the other, wants the other, makes dizzying, precipitous flights between knowledge and invention. The woman arriving over and over again does not stand still; she’s everywhere, she exchanges, she is the desire-that-gives. (Not enclosed in the paradox of the gift that takes nor under the illusion of unitary fusion. We’re past that.) She comes in, comes-in-between herself me and you, between the other me where one is always infinitely more than one and more than me, without the fear of ever reaching a limit; she thrills in our becom­ ing. And we’ll keep on becoming! She cuts through defensive loves, motherages, and devourations: beyond selfish narcissism, in the moving, open, transitional space, she runs her risks. Beyond the struggle-to-the-death that’s been removed to the bed, beyond the love-battle that claims to represent exchange, she scorns at an Eros dynamic that would be fed by hatred. Hatred: a heritage, again, a remainder, a duping subservience to the phallus. To love, to watch-think-seek the other in the other, to despecularize, to unhoard. Does this seem difficult? It’s not impossible, and this is what nourishes life— a love that has no commerce with the apprehensive desire that provides against the lack and stultifies the strange; a love that rejoices in the exchange that multiplies. Wherever history still unfolds as the history of death, she does not tread. Opposition, hierarchizing exchange, the struggle for mastery which can end only in at least one death (one master— one slave, or two non­ masters ^ two dead)'— all that comes from a period in time governed by phallocentric values. The fact that this period extends into the present doesn’t 6. In his seminars of the 1970s, Lacan had attempted to demonstrate the relations among the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real by means of knots made of string. Name-of-the-Father: the Lacanian term for the function of the father in

the Symbolic. 7. In the Master-Slave dialectic described by Hegel in Phenom enology o f Spirit (1807; see above), the m aster is the one who is w illing to fight to the death for freedom ; the slave chooses life.

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prevent woman from starting the history of life somewhere else. Elsewhere, she gives. She doesn’t “know” what she’s giving, she doesn’t measure it; she gives, though, neither a counterfeit impression nor something she hasn’t got. She gives more, with no assurance that she’ll get back even some unexpected profit from what she puts out. She gives that there may be life, thought, transformation. This is an “economy” that can no longer be put in economic terms. Wherever she loves, all the old concepts of management are left behind. At the end of a more or less conscious computation, she finds not her sum but her differences. I am for you what you want me to be at the moment you look at me in a way you’ve never seen me before: at every instant. When I write, it’s everything that we don’t know we can be that is written out of me, without exclusions, without stipulation, and everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one another we will never be lacking. 1 9 7 5 ,1 9 7 6

GERALD GRAFF b.

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In “Taking Cover in Coverage” (1986), Gerald Graff turns a theoretical eye on the institutional structures within English departments. Why divide literature into sepa­ rate fields? How do subspecialties affect the way professors work and students learn? Worried, as he declares in Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society (1979), that academic approaches to literature have undermined “the power of lan­ guage to connect us with the world,” Graff recommends a novel and subsequently influential method for bringing coherence to what he sees as an increasingly dis­ jointed curriculum, a method he calls “teaching the conflicts.” Born in Chicago, Graff received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1959. He did graduate work at Stanford University, where he studied with the New Critic Yvor Winters and the New York Intellectual Irving Howe, receiving his Ph.D. in 1963. He taught at the University of New Mexico from 1963 to 1966, then returned to Illi­ nois to teach at Northwestern University (1966—91) and at the University of Chicago (1991-98). In 1999 he took a deanship at the University of Illinois at Chicago to develop undergraduate curricula and coordinate teacher education programs, retiring in 2016. Among other honors, he served as president of the Modern Language Association in 2008. In his writing, Graff is an iconoclast. While he has been a prominent participant in debates on contemporary theory, he does not readily fit into any definable camp. He is also an unapologetic polemicist, persistently arguing against literary criti­ cism’s disconnection from society. In his early work, he attacked the New Critical axiom that “a poem, as a poem, does not say anything about the world.” In his pro­ vocative Literature against Itself Graff turned his sights on a range of contemporary theories and claimed that their excessive focus on language fostered the ineffectu­ ality of literary intellectuals. Overall, Graff shows a consistent concern with the social dimensions of intellectual work, without advocating a particular approach and avoiding orthodoxy.

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“Taking Cover in Coverage” looks at the ways in which the university institution­ ally and historically has shaped intellectual work. Graff begins with a defense of theory. His argument is tacitly directed at antitheorists, ranging from traditionalists who believe, in the phrase of the New Critic Rene Wellek, that contemporary theory is “destroying literary studies” to neopragmatists such as S t a n l e y f i s h , who claims that theory has no consequences. Despite G raff’s earlier rough handling of theory, he here sees it as enriching our thought and thus advocates putting it at the center of the curriculum. Although Graff had been an opponent of deconstruction, his defense of theory parallels that in p a u l d e m a n ’s “Resistance to Theory” (1982), which similarly responds to antitheorists and argues for the importance of theory. However, Graff takes to task much contemporary theory for failing to reflect on its own institutional location, willing to “apply theory within the existing structure b u t. . . fail[ing] to make a theoretical examination of the structure itself.” Moving to his main topic, Graff gives thumbnail sketches of the history of U.S. English departments (born in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and the “field coverage” model on which they rely. Specialized fields both engender disconnections and insularities that thwart intellectual community and encourage efficiency, innovation, and autonomy— the benefits that led to the model’s success. While institutional structures in English departments have given faculty a relative degree of freedom to pursue new topics (including contemporary theory), they have also essentially quarantined individual scholars in their particular fields; as a result, there is no common ground for discussion, conflicts are suppressed, the curriculum is incoherent, and students lose out. G raff’s recommendation to faculty, which has since become something of a slogan, is to “teach the conflicts” and make such divi­ sions the organizing basis of curriculum. Graff fleshed out his argument about English departments and field coverage in an important book, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (1987; 20th anniv. ed., 2007), which traces the discipline’s history from the nineteenth century to the 1980s. He sees contemporary conflicts over theory as part of a historical process often alter­ nating between traditionalism and new approaches. In the 1990s Graff focused increasingly on pedagogy. He has responded to public debates over the canon, theory, and “political correctness” by extolling their potential as a resource for teaching. Con­ tinuing his argument from “Taking Cover in Coverage,” particularly in his popular Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize Higher Educa­ tion (1992), Graff advocates foregrounding critical controversies in the classroom rather than hiding them from students. Citing his own experience as a student, he admits that class discussions of literature bored him until he discovered that litera­ ture was something to argue over. Graff’s consistent attention to teaching is unusual among contemporary theorists. It culminated in his coauthoring a textbook, “They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (3d ed., 2016), for basic writing classes. His prose style also sets his work apart. Graff argues for theory in plain, colloquial language (such as “literature departments should stop kidding themselves,” in our selection) rarely seen in contem­ porary theory. His book Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (2003) emphasizes not conflict but making criticism more comprehensible. Although Graff’s conflictual model has been widely accepted as a productive teach­ ing method and as a useful account of theoretical change, several critics have noted its limitations. Some criticize Graff’s nostalgia for a vibrant literary culture outside the university, even as he supplies prescriptions that apply only to the academy. Others note the reductiveness of seeing all change in terms of a repeated conflict between tradition and new movements. Some feminists call for cooperation rather than con­ frontation and see Graff’s embrace of conflict as reflecting a masculinist bias— perhaps making the discipline akin to a contact sport. From a postcolonial perspective, critics like n g u g i w A t h i o n g ’o argue that “English” departments propagate imperi­ alism, and therefore call for their abolition. G raff mentions that the division of

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departments by language is arbitrary, but he does not continue this analysis to critique the nationalistic origins and purposes of English departments. Nevertheless, Graff’s history of English departments is a pathbreaking investigation showing how our insti­ tutions shape literary thought and proposing how they might be changed. “Taking Cover in Coverage0 Keywords: The Canon/Tradition, Defense of Criticism, Institutional Studies, Rhetoric

Taking Cover in Coverage In addressing the topic “The Value of Theory in English Studies,”1 I want to say at the outset that the antagonism usually presumed to exist between lit­ erary theory and humanistic tradition has been exaggerated. It is perfectly possible to defend the infusion of theory into the curriculum on traditional grounds, namely, that students need theoretical frameworks in order to con­ ceptualize, and talk about, literature. Until recently, in fact, it was tradition­ alists like Irving Babbitt and Norman Foerster2 who called for more “theory,” in opposition to the disconnected empiricism of positivist literary history and formalist explication, where the faith seemed to be that “the facts, once in, would of themselves mean something.”3 Most scholars “have left virtu­ ally uninspected the theory upon which their practice rests” or have pro­ ceeded “as if that theory were an absolute good for all time.”4 While a great deal of current theory does radically attack the premises and values of tradi­ tional literary humanism, that attack revives the kinds of questions about literature and its cultural functions that used to concern traditional human­ istic critics. The real enemy of tradition has been the established form of literary study, which has neglected traditional theoretical questions about the ends and social functions of literature and criticism. There is something strange about the belief that we are being traditional when we isolate literary works from their contexts and explicate them in a vacuum or with a modicum of back­ ground information. Matthew Arnold5 would have recognized little tradi­ tional or humanistic in these established forms of pedagogy. Obviously I am not saying that recent literary theory is nothing more than the application of Arnoldian culture by other means. What I am saying is that recent theory has reawakened some of the large questions that Arnold raised, while rejecting the Arnoldian answers as no longer sufficient. In fact, it was the breakdown of agreement on the Arnoldian answers that inspired the current popularity of theory and ensures, I think, that this interest will not be a passing fad. By one definition that seems to me valid, “literary theory” is simply the kind of discourse that is generated when pre-

1. T he essay was originally presented at a 1986 sem inar run by the A ssociation of D epartm ents of English on this topic. 2. Literary critics and Harvard University pro­ fessors who espoused the hum anistic value of studying literature: Foerster (1887—1972) was a protege o f Babbitt’s (1 8 6 5 -1 9 3 3 ). 3. Norman Foerster, “The Study of Letters,” in

Literary Scholarship: Its Aims and Methods, by Norman Foerster et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 11-12 [G raff’s note]. 4. Norman Foerster et al., introduction, in ibid., v [G raff’s note]. 5. Leading V ictorian poet and critic (1 8 2 2 —1888; see above).

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suppositions that were once tacitly shared about literature, criticism, and culture become open to question. Theory is what breaks out when agree­ ment about such terms as text, reading, history, interpretation, tradition, and literature can no longer be taken for granted, so that their meanings have to be formulated and debated. Admittedly, the term theory is used here in a very broad sense, denoting an examination of legitimating presuppositions, beliefs, and ideologies. By this definition, even antitheorists like Arnold and F. R. Leavis6 qualify as theorists, having theorized about the premises of literature and culture and the place of literature and culture in modern soci­ eties. And in this sense all teachers of literature operate on theories, whether they choose to examine these theories or not. Clearly, we need to reserve another sense of theory to denote the technical, abstruse, and systematic speculation typical of recent Continental thought. But here is another misconception— that theory is necessarily obscure, tech­ nical and abstruse, and therefore too advanced or esoteric for the average college or high school student of literature. This belief fails to recognize that all teaching involves popularization and that even the most difficult current theories are not intrinsically more resistant to popularization than the New Criticism, which had its own abstruse conceptual origins in Kant, Coleridge, and Croce.7 It is the average-to-poor student who suffers most from the established curriculum’s poverty of theory, for such a student lacks command of the con­ ceptual contexts that make it possible to integrate perceptions and generalize from them. All the close concentration in the world on the particularities of literary texts will not help a student make sense of these particularities with­ out the categories that give them meaning. Current antitheorists have things exactly backward when they oppose the­ ory to tradition and to close literary analysis and demand that we minister to the ills of literary studies by desisting from theoretical chatter and getting back to teaching literature itself. It was the isolation of “literature itself” in a conceptual vacuum that stranded students without a context for talking about literature and that still forces many of them to resort to Cliffs Notes and other such cribs. It is easy to disdain these cribs, but marketing pressures have actually forced their producers to think through the problems facing the average literature student more realistically than have many department curricular planners. Cliffs Notes supply students with the generalized things to say about literary works that the literature program takes for granted they will somehow get on their own. The irony of the current cry of “back to literature itself” is that it was the exclusive concentration on literature itself that helped create a situation in which the Cliffs Notes on given works of literature are more readily available in campus bookstores than are the works themselves. Perhaps I am naive to suggest that a more theoretically contextualized curriculum would cause such

6. Influential English literary critic (1895—1978; see above), who extolled “the great tradition.” 7. Three important and sometimes abstruse wait­ ers on aesthetics: i m m a n u e l k a n t (1 7 2 4 -1 8 0 4 ), a German philosopher; s a m u e l t a y l o r c o l e r i d g e (1 7 7 2 -1 8 3 4 ), a British Rom antic poet and th eo ­ rist; and Benedetto Croce (1866—1952), an Italian

philosopher and literary critic . T h e New C riti­ cism : an approach (cham pioned by c l e a n t h b r o o k s , w i l l i a m k . w i m s a t t j r ., and others) that emphasizes close reading of the text considered as an autonomous whole; it has greatly influenced teaching from the mid-20th century onward.

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cribs to wither away. I can certainly imagine a Cliffs Notes on deconstruction, supplementing the ones on Keats and Dickens.8 But for the moment I think we should view this eventuality as a possibility to be recognized and avoided rather than as an inevitability. These opening reflections will probably persuade only those who agree with them. My purpose here, however, is not to make a case for theory in the literature program but to point up some difficulties that arise once we have decided that such a goal is desirable. In addressing the pedagogical uses of recent literary theory, we tend to treat the issue as if it were primarily a mat­ ter of figuring out how to integrate this theory into individual classrooms. We form conference “workshops,” which concentrate on technical questions like how to use reader-response criticism to teach H am let, or poststructural­ ist theory to teach the romantic lyric, or feminist critiques of the established canon to restructure the nineteenth-century-novel course. Such reforms can be useful and necessary, but if we do not go beyond them we will limit theory to its instrumental uses, making it into a means of sprucing up ritual­ ized procedures of explication. We will apply theory within the existing structure but will fail to make a theoretical examination of the structure itself. I want to suggest that one of the first things we need to do with literary theory is to train it on the literature department itself, particularly on the way that the department and other departments and the university are organized. Insofar as a literature department represents a certain organiza­ tion of literature, it is itself a kind of theory, though it has been largely an incoherent theory, and this incoherence in fact has reinforced the impres­ sion that the department has no theory. In deciding to call ourselves departments of English, French, and German— rather than of literature, cultural studies, or something else— and in subdividing these national units into periods and genres, we have already made significant theoretical choices. But we do not see these choices as choices, much less as theoretical ones, because the categories that mark them— English, eighteenth century, poetry, novel— operate as administrative conveniences and eventually as facts of nature that we can take for granted. We need to recognize that the way we organize and departmentalize literature is not only a crucial theoretical choice but one that largely determines our professional activity and the way students and the laity see it or fail to see it. To make this statement is not to agree with those who think that the departmentalization of literature itself was a kind of original sin and who look back nostalgically to the days before the creative imagination was bureaucratized. Anyone seriously committed to the idea of democratic mass education has to acknowledge the obvious necessity for some form of bureau­ cratic departmental organization and the specialized division of labor that that entails. But the form that organization takes is neither self-evident nor inevitable, and it will have a lot to do with considerations of theory. I use the term field coverage as a convenient description of the model of organization that has governed literature departments since the dawn of the modern university, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Accord­ ing to the field-coverage model, a department considers itself adequately 8. Charles Dickens (1 8 1 2 -1 8 7 0 ), V ictorian novelist. John Keats (1 7 9 5 -1 8 2 1 ), English Rom antic poet.

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staffed when it has acquired the personnel to “cover” an adequate number of designated fields of literature, and it assumes that the core of the curriculum will consist of the student s coverage of some portion of those fields. The field-coverage model arose as an adaptation to the modern university’s ideal of research specialization, for dividing the territory of literature into fields supervised by specialists imitated the organizational form that had made the sciences efficient in producing advanced research. But the field-coverage principle had a humanistic justification as well, the argument that a student who covered the fields represented by the average department would get a reasonably balanced exposure to the literary-humanistic tradition. It was the operational advantages, however, that made the field-coverage model irresistible, especially in a newly expanding university where short­ term expediency rarely afforded leisure for discussion of first principles and where first principles in any case were becoming increasingly open to dis­ pute. One of the most conspicuous operational advantages was the way field coverage made the department virtually self-regulating. By assigning instruc­ tors the roles predetermined by their literary fields, the model created a sys­ tem in which the job of instruction could proceed as if on automatic pilot, with no need for instructors to confer with their peers or superiors. Assuming that individual instructors had been competently trained— and by about 1900 or so the American system of graduate study had matured sufficiently to see to that— they could be left on their own to carry out their teaching and research jobs without elaborate supervision and management. A second advantage of the field-coverage model was that it made the department immensely flexible to innovation. By making individuals func­ tionally independent of one another in carrying out their tasks, the model enabled the department to assimilate new subjects, ideas, and methodologies without risking the conflicts that would otherwise have had to be debated and worked through. It thus allowed the modern university to overcome the chronic stagnation that had beset the old nineteenth-century college, where new ideas that challenged the established Christian orthodoxy were usually excluded or suppressed. The coverage model solved the problem of how to make the university open to innovation and diverse viewpoints without incur­ ring paralyzing conflicts. Unfortunately, these advantages came at a severe cost that we have been paying ever since. The same arrangements that allowed instructors to do their jobs efficiently and independently also relieved them of the need to discuss and reflect on the values and implications of their practices. This form of organization left literature departments without any need to discuss matters of fundamental direction either with their own members or with members of other departments, and it is a rule of bureaucratic organizations that whatever these organizations are not structurally required to do they will tend not to do. Moral exhortation unaccompanied by structural change will be largely wasted. The department was open to innovation as the college had not been before, but under circumstances that were almost as effective in muffling the confrontations provoked by innovation as the old system of repressive control had been. Previously there had been little open debate over first principles because dissenters had been excluded. Now dissenters were invited in, but the departmental structure kept them too isolated from their colleagues for open debate to take place.

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Vigorous controversy did arise, but usually only behind the scenes of edu­ cation, in specialized journals, department meetings, or private gossip— all places where students derived little benefit from it, usually knew nothing of its existence, and certainly did not participate in it. Instructors were freer than they had been from administrative tyranny, but at the sacrifice of cer­ tain possibilities of intellectual community. To put it another way, the field-coverage model solved the problem of the­ ory. Departmental organization took the place of theory, for the presence of an ordered array of fields, fully staffed, made it unnecessary for anyone to have a theory about what the department should do to permit the work of teaching and research to go on. The theoretical choices had already been taken care of in the grid of periods, genres, and other catalog rubrics, which embodied a clear and seemingly uncontroversial conceptualization of what the department was about. With literature courses ranged in periods and genres, instructors did not need to ask what “period” or “genre” meant or what justified the established demarcations. The connections and contrasts between periods and genres, so important for understanding these catego­ ries, fell between the cracks, as did other large issues in the university, such as the relation between the sciences and the humanities, which was the responsibility of neither the sciences nor the humanities. Latent conflicts of method and ideology that had divided the faculty from the outset and the cultural conflicts that these often exemplified did not have to be confronted and taught. Fundamental disagreements over the study of literature were embodied, for example, in the conflict between the research “scholar,” who adhered to a positivistic methodology, and the generalist man or woman of letters, who scorned this methodology, and, later, in the conflict between both these types and the hyperanalytical New Critic. But while the department enacted these conflicts, it did not explicitly foreground and engage them. As long as scholars, generalists, and critics covered their turfs within self-enclosed classrooms, the average student did not need to be aware of the clashes of principle, much less use them as a larger context for literary study. This explanation accounts for the otherwise inexplicable persistence of the fiction of shared humanistic values and purposes during a period when conflicts in method and ideology were becoming progressively more fre­ quent and antagonistic. Since the official premise that humanistic values governed the department did not have to be theorized or subjected to peri­ odical review and discussion, there was no particular reason to acknowl­ edge that the premise was wearing increasingly thin. Not only did the structure provide no necessary occasion for questioning the content of that humanism which, according to the catalog, theoretically held the diverse and conflicting viewpoints of departments together, but the illusion could be maintained that nobody even had a theory. And of course it was true that the department did not have a theory, for it harbored many theories without any clear way to integrate them. Here we arrive at the central problem: How does a department institutionalize theory when there is no agreement on what the theory is to be? The question becomes unanswerable, however, only if it is assumed that a department must achieve theoretical consensus before it can achieve theoretical coherence. The perennial assumption seems to have been that professional and cultural conflicts have to be resolved before they can be presented to the

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students: students, apparently, must be exposed only to the results of the conflicts dividing their teachers, not to the process of conflict itself, which presumably would confuse or demoralize them. Surely one reason why we tend, as I noted earlier, to reduce pedagogical questions to questions about workshop techniques for individual courses is that we doubt the possibility of agreement on larger collective goals. Our doubts are well founded in experi­ ence, but why need we assume that we have to agree in order to integrate our activities? Must we have consensus to have coherence? The unfortunate thing is not that our conflicts of method and ideology have often proved unresolvable but that we have been able to exploit so lit­ tle of the potential educational value of our unresolved conflicts. Part of the reason stems from the literary mind’s temperamental resistance to air­ ing differences; the old-fashioned version of this attitude held that open debate is unseemly, while the more up-to-date version holds that there are no privileged metalanguages, or no fact-of-the-matter outside interpreta­ tions, or no “decidable” answers to questions, so that there is nothing to argue about anyway. But even if these sources of resistance to debate were to disappear, there would remain a problem of structure. Our structure prevents exemplary differences of method, ideology, and value from emerg­ ing into view even when we want them to. The literature curriculum mirrors and reproduces the evasion of conflict characteristic of the departmental structure. Hypothetically, the curricu­ lum expresses a unified humanistic tradition, yet anyone who looks at it can see that in every era down to the present it has never expressed a unity of humanistic values but always a set of political trade-offs and compromises among competing professional factions. We need not enter into the now disputed question of whether the curriculum can or should be determined by any more lofty principle than political trade-offs, for again this is pre­ cisely the type of theoretical and cultural question that does not have to be resolved in order to play an effective part in education. If the curriculum is going to continue to express political trade-offs, as it seems likely to do unless one faction in the current disciplinary conflict can wholly liquidate its opposition, then why not bring students in on whatever may be instruc­ tive in the conflict of political principles involved? Instead of confronting such conflicts and building them into the curricu­ lum, however, the department (and the university at large) has always responded to pressures by adding new subjects and keeping them safely sealed off from one another. This practice can be justified educationally only on the increasingly hollow pretense that exposure to an aggregate of teachers, periods, genres, methods, and points of view figures to come together in the student’s mind as a coherent humanistic experience. The tacit faith is that students will make sense of the aggregate even if their instructors cannot. The surprising thing is that some students manage to do just that, but most do not. Recognition of this failure stimulates further curricular innovation, which in turn, however, is assimilated to the cycle of accretion and marginalization. So we beat on, boats against the current,9 etc., etc.

9. The last sentence of T he Great Gatshy (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald (it ends, “borne back ceaselessly into the past”).

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Over the hundred-year span of our institutional history we have had a suc­ cession of methodological models, each with a corresponding pedagogy, from linguistic philology to positivist literary history to New Critical explication, all of which now remain as geological strata overlaid by the new theories and methodologies. Each of these revisions has marked a paradigm shift in which the conception of what counts as “literature,” “scholarship,” and “criticism” altered radically. Yet, as 1 attempt to show in a forthcoming institutional his­ tory of academic literary studies in the United States,1 the one constant through all this change has been the field-coverage model. The contents have been radically reshuffled, but the envelope has remained the same, and with it the method of assimilating innovation. Arguably the changes represent considerable progress in critical sophistication and cultural range, but if I am correct the benefits for the average student have been less than they might have been. Nor is it just the students who have paid a price under the field-coverage system, it is the faculty as well. The principles of selection for amassing a literature faculty have systematically screened out intellectual commonal­ ity and programmed professional loneliness. A self-destructive principle is built into the mighty effort departments make to achieve a balanced spread of interests. If the interests of candidate X overlap those of faculty member Y, their shared ground is an argument for not hiring X— “We already have Y who does that.” The calculus of needs determining appointment priorities thus tends to preselect exactly those instructors who have the least basis for talking to one another. In compensation the department gets a salutary diversity, but the potential benefits of diversity are not really exploited. Nor is the problem merely abstract: the recent proliferation of humanities con­ ferences and symposia suggests that these gatherings have become substi­ tutes for the kind of general discussion that does not take place at home. The moral is that if the introduction of theory is to make a real difference at the average student s level, we must find some way to modify the fieldcoverage model, if not to scrap it entirely. Otherwise, theory will be institu­ tionalized as yet another field, equivalent to literary periods and genres— which is to say, it will become one more option that can safely be ignored. We will lose theory’s potential for drawing the disconnected parts of the literature curriculum into relation and providing students with the needed contexts. So, I would argue, the real threat that theory faces today comes not from its outright opponents, some of whom are at least willing to argue with it, but from those who are perfectly willing to grant theory an honored place in the scheme of departmental coverage so that they can then forget about it. This pattern seems to be establishing itself now, as departments clamor to hire theorists to get the new field covered, after which they sit back and assume that the relation of theory to the interests of the rest of the depart­ ment will take care of itself. In practice, this policy passes the buck to the students, leaving them to figure out how theory courses correlate with the others. And of course as long as theory is conceived as a special field, the rest of the department can go on thinking that its work has no connection with theory.

1. Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1987).

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Offering students doses of theory in individual courses without helping them make the requisite connections and relations between courses will tend to produce a confused response, which antitheorists will quickly take as proof that theory is inherently over the head of the average student. For the average student to profit from theory, especially from recent theory, the courses that incorporate it must be not only linked with other courses, both theoretical and untheoretical, but also positioned to operate as a central means of correlation and contextualization. In other words, literature departments should stop kidding themselves. They should stop pretending that, as long as individual courses are reason­ ably well conceived and well taught, the aggregate can be counted on to take care of itself. If they are serious about incorporating theory, they should not let it remain an option but should make it central to all their activities, not by putting theory specialists in charge but by recognizing that all their members are theorists. To put it another way, introducing more theory will only compound our problems unless we rethink the assumption that the essential unit of all teaching has to be the single, self-sufficient course that the students corre­ late with other courses on their own. We can fail just as badly teaching a new canon in a theoretical way as we have failed in teaching an old canon in a nontheoretical way. Unless literature teachers change their means of con­ necting institutionally with one another, I am afraid that even the most radi­ cal theories and canon revisions will not significantly affect the way most students take in what is put before them. To close, then, I offer a few schematic suggestions: 1. In relation to other courses in the department, theory courses should be central, not peripheral; their function should be to contextualize and pull together the students’ work in other courses (outside as well as inside the literature department). Wherever possible, therefore, they should be required courses rather than electives. 2. In taking stock of its strengths, a department should evaluate not just how well it is covering standard fields and approaches but also what potential conflicts of ideological and methodological perspectives it harbors; it should then ask itself what curricular arrangements might exploit these conflicts. There need be no single way of doing this— but one idea (sug­ gested by Brook Thomas2) is to couple courses to bring out conceptual relations and contrasts— between, say, views of literature in earlier and modern literary periods or between competing and complementary meth­ odologies of interpretation. 3. A department harboring a conflict between theorists and antitheorists should look for ways to build this conflict into its courses, so that stu­ dents can situate themselves in relation to the controversy and eventu­ ally participate in it. The department should also look for ways such disputes can be used to complicate and challenge period and genre dis­ tinctions without necessarily eliminating them. 4. A department should consider the unit of teaching to be the issue or context, not the isolated text; texts to be taught should be chosen not 2. Am erican New H istoricist critic (b. 1947).

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only for their intrinsic value but for their usefulness in illustrating exem­ plary problems and issues. 5. As a means of accomplishing goal 4 on a structural scale, the university should subsume literary studies under cultural studies and cultural his­ tory, conceived not as a privileged approach but as a framework that encourages ideological dialectic while retaining enough chronological structure to keep focus and continuity from being lost. The point is that theory is not only a field to be covered, though it is that at one level. It is something that all teachers of literature and all readers practice and that all have a stake in. The worst thing we could do would be to institutionalize theory in a compartmentalized way that would keep the­ orists and antitheorists from having to hear what they are saying about each other— and would keep students from observing and joining in the battle. 1986

STANLEY E. FISH b.

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Stanley Fish has been the agent provocateur of contemporary American literary theory. The leading critic of John Milton of his generation, the self-proclaimed inventor of reader-response theory, the progenitor of antifoundationalism and neo­ pragmatism in literary studies, a pioneer of critical legal studies, and a spirited defender of the humanities amid public attacks over political correctness, Fish is perhaps best known for the brio of his intellectual style, which he practices with the energy of a sport. Debunking standard notions of interpretation, Fish’s essay “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One” (1980) argues for his seminal con­ cept, “interpretive communities,” which radically revises interpretive theory by locating meaning not in texts but in readers, and not in individual response but in the protocols of communities. Fish was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where his father was a plumbing con­ tractor. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. in 1959, and went on to do graduate work at Yale University, then the bastion of the American New Critics (such as c l e a n t h b r o o k s and w i l l i a m k . w i m s a t t j r . ) , quickly completing an M.A. and Ph.D., in 1960 and 1962. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1962 to 1974 and published two books before he was thirty, most nota­ bly a touchstone of Milton criticism, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost” (1967; 2d ed., 1999). While at Berkeley, he also wrote Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature (1972), which was nominated for a National Book Award. From 1974 to 1985 he was Kenan Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, publishing another pioneering reader-response work, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980), which includes our selection. Concerned with interpretation and its consequences, at Johns Hopkins he also began to teach in the law school, pursuing an interest in legal theory that became more central to his work through the next two decades.

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In 1985 Fish moved to Duke University as Arts and Sciences Distinguished Pro­ fessor of English and Law and as chair of the English department. As chair, he was instrumental in building the most famous— if sometimes controversial— department of its time. In 1998 he took a position as dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was again an institutional catalyst, helping to build its programs and reputation. In part because he was both an administrator and a prominent critic, through this latter part of his career Fish became a public spokes­ person for the humanities, writing opinion pieces in the New York Times and elsewhere, and occasionally appearing on television. Meanwhile he also published several notable books on theory, professionalism, law, and politics. In 2005 he moved to Florida International University as Davidson-Kahn Distinguished Univer­ sity Professor of Humanities and Professor of Law, retiring in 2013. A formative factor of Fish’s work was his response to the New Criticism. Like other theorists who were trained under its auspices, he rebelled against its belief in the autonomy of the text and its sole focus on literary form and language, h a r o l d b l o o m , for instance, asserted the centrality of the author and the author’s “anxiety of influence” in the face of the New Critical prohibition of the “intentional fallacy”; S t e p h e n g r e e n b l a t t , who like Fish and Bloom received his graduate training at Yale University, asserted the significance of historical context against the New Crit­ ical view of texts as self-sufficient “verbal icons.” Countering Wimsatt and m o n r o e B e a r d s l e y ’s declaration in “The Affective Fallacy” (1949) that the audience of a literary work is irrelevant, Fish declared that declaration to be a fallacy itself. An abiding concern throughout Fish’s work is the rhetorical force of texts and their effects on readers. In Surprised by Sin, Fish focuses on the experience of the reader as he or she encounters Milton’s Paradise Lost. He upends conventional interpretations of Mil­ ton, arguing that the poem’s meaning is located not in our final assessment but in the process of struggling through Milton’s difficult grammar and rhetoric, which didactically makes readers repeat the Fall. Though he continued to write about lit­ erature (and Milton remained a constant point of reference), through the late 1970s and 1980s Fish engaged in broader theoretical speculations on interpretation and rhetoric, exemplified by Is There a Text in This Class? In it, he introduces his con­ cept of interpretive communities to explain how readers come to their views— not in idiosyncratic ways, but through social and institutional conventions. He reverses the customary model of interpretation, arguing that we do not discern the inherent features of a literary work but instead construct it through the strategies of our interpretive community. In “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” he offers one illustration of this process: he provides students with a list of names, and following his direction they interpret it as a religious poem. A perennial question of literary theory has been what makes a work literary, which is usually thought to be some aspect of literary language or form, distinct from ordinary language, that the critic then explicates. Fish turns this thinking on its head: in his view, literariness stems not from an inherent quality but from the premises that readers bring to a text. Fish’s list of names is seemingly unliterary, but it resembles a “found poem”— that is, a poem that comes from language in everyday life, like William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” (1934), which begins: “I have eaten /the plums /that were in /the icebox.” If we see the lines as a poem rather than a personal note, we understand them differently, and Williams’s poem is in fact acknowledged as a modern American classic. Literari­ ness arises because of our interpretive conventions, not because it is an innate qual­ ity. One can see how this approach might extend to contemporary genres like science fiction: formerly disparaged as a trash genre, it now includes some works that are considered literary. Claiming the contrary of a standard view, and laying out its argument clearly and step-by-step, “How to Recognize a Poem” epitomizes Fish’s style. While some

1898

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poststructuralist theory can be obscure, Fish uses plain, straightforward terms as he argues almost like a lawyer. He also anticipates a standard attack on reader response, that it relies too much on the subjective and thereby opens the door to allowing anything and everything. Instead, Fish grounds his version of response in interpretive communities, which are social, not individual; institutional, not psy­ chological. Fish does not fully work out how the institution operates— for instance, how many communities exist at any one time, how they form, and how institutions adjudicate among themselves— but he does provide a powerful challenge to formal­ ist theory. Fish also heads off charges of radical relativism: while communities may be variously constituted, they are not arbitrary, and in fact they enact constraints as well as fostering productivity. Interpretation enables a multitude of plays in the sport, but a known number of teams participate in the league of interpretation. In his later work Fish takes on the perennial problem of the relation of theory to practice. He persistently attacks the assumption that we generate our interpretations from the principles or theories we hold. Instead, in a trademark reversal, he argues that theory stems from our practices, occurs only after the fact, and has no conse­ quences. Extending this notion to law, Fish makes a characteristically provocative claim that judges do not derive their decisions from legal principles, such as the doc­ trine of free speech, but accrue legal precedents to justify their practical judgments. This view is called antifoundationalism: the denial that practice derives from a prede­ termined foundation of theory or principle. Probably because of his contrarian style as well as the nature of his claims, Stan­ ley Fish has prompted both admiration and ire. Traditionalists have denounced him as a relativist who believes in nothing. Leftist critics have attacked him for espous­ ing a circular position that makes principled political action impossible. Defenders of theory have countered that Fishs argument itself has consequences in delegitimating the study of theory in the academy. Critics of his concept of interpretive communities note that it does not explain one’s entrance into or departure from a particular community; there are social and political factors that influence what com­ munity one might enter. Within the reader-response camp itself, W o l f g a n g i s e r poses the question: “It is quite true that membership of the community helps to prevent arbitrary ideation, but if there is no subjectivist element in reading, how on earth does Professor Fish account for different interpretations of one and the same text?” Rather than troubling Fish, such rebuttals spur his further argument. His work has indelibly marked contemporary literary theory, especially the concept of interpretation. Is T h e r e a Text in T h is Class? T h e A u thority o f In terp retiv e C o m m u n ities Keywords: Hermeneutics, Institutional Studies, Interpretation Theory, Poetry

From Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Com m unities C hapter 14. How to R ecognize a Poem W hen You See One Last time1 I sketched out an argument by which meanings are the property neither of fixed and stable texts nor of free and independent readers but of

l.T h i s was the second of four talks that Fish delivered in April 1979 as part of the John Crowe Ransom M emorial Lectures series at Kenyon College; ironically, r a n s o m was a leader of the

New Critics, who advocated formalism, whereas Fish argues that meaning resides not in form but in the interpretive conventions that we bring to texts.

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1899

interpretive communities that are responsible both for the shape of a readers activities and for the texts those activities produce. In this lecture I propose to extend that argument so as to account not only for the meanings a poem might be said to have but for the fact of its being recognized as a poem in the first place. And once again I would like to begin with an anec­ dote. In the summer of 1971 I was teaching two courses under the joint auspices of the Linguistic Institute of America and the English Department of the State University of New York at Buffalo. I taught these courses in the morn­ ing and in the same room. At 9:30 I would meet a group of students who were interested in the relationship between linguistics and literary criticism. Our nominal subject was stylistics2 but our concerns were finally theoretical and extended to the presuppositions and assumptions which underlie both lin­ guistic and literary practice. At 11:00 these students were replaced by another group whose concerns were exclusively literary and were in fact confined to English religious poetry of the seventeenth century. These students had been learning how to identify Christian symbols and how to recognize typological patterns3 and how to move from the observation of these symbols and pat­ terns to the specification of a poetic intention that was usually didactic or homiletic. On the day I am thinking about, the only connection between the two classes was an assignment given to the first which was still on the black­ board at the beginning of the second. It read: Jacobs—Rosenbaum Levin Thorne Hayes Ohman (?) I am sure that many of you will already have recognized the names on this list, but for the sake of the record, allow me to identify them. Roderick Jacobs and Peter Rosenbaum are two linguists who have coauthored a num­ ber of textbooks and co-edited a number of anthologies. Samuel Levin is a linguist who was one of the first to apply the operations of transformational grammar to literary texts. J. P. Thorne is a linguist at Edinburgh who, like Levin, was attempting to extend the rules of transformational grammar to the notorious irregularities of poetic language. Curtis Hayes is a linguist who was then using transformational grammar in order to establish an objective basis for his intuitive impression that the language of Gibbon s Rise and Fall o f the Rom an Empire is more complex than the language of Hemingways novels.4 And Richard Ohmann5 is the literary critic who, more than any other, was responsible for introducing the vocabulary of transformational

2. A form of literary criticism that draws on devel­ opments in lin gu istics. In the 1960s, it looked esp ecially to Noam Chom sky’s recent theory of transform ational gramm ar (language rests on a deep structure, from which sentences in specific languages are generated by processes or transfor­ mations). 3. That is, the prefiguration of New Testam ent persons, objects, or events in the Old Testam ent, or Hebrew Bible.

4. The American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899— 1961) is known for his spare and d irect sen ­ tences, whereas the B ritish h istorian Edward G ibbon (1 7 3 7 -1 7 9 4 ) has a b rillian t but elabo ­ rate style. T he History o f the D ecline and Fall o f the Roman Empire (6 vols., 1776—88) is Gibbon’s m asterpiece. 5. A m erican c ritic (b. 1931; see above), whose early work focused on linguistics; he later shifted to institutional studies.

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grammar to the literary community. Ohmanns name was spelled as you see it here because I could not remember whether it contained one or two n s. In other words, the question mark in parenthesis signified nothing more than a faulty memory and a desire on my part to appear scrupulous. The fact that the names appeared in a list that was arranged vertically, and that Levin, Thorne, and Hayes formed a column that was more or less centered in rela­ tion to the paired names of Jacobs and Rosenbaum, was similarly accidental and was evidence only of a certain compulsiveness if, indeed, it was evi­ dence of anything at all. In the time between the two classes I made only one change. I drew a frame around the assignment and wrote on the top of that frame “p. 43.” When the members of the second class filed in I told them that what they saw on the blackboard was a religious poem of the kind they had been studying and I asked them to interpret it. Immediately they began to perform in a manner that, for reasons which will become clear, was more or less predict­ able. The first student to speak pointed out that the poem was probably a hieroglyph, although he was not sure whether it was in the shape of a cross or an altar. This question was set aside as the other students, following his lead, began to concentrate on individual words, interrupting each other with sug­ gestions that came so quickly that they seemed spontaneous. The first line of the poem (the very order of events assumed the already constituted status of the object) received the most attention: Jacobs was explicated as a reference to Jacob’s ladder,6 traditionally allegorized as a figure for the Christian ascent to heaven. In this poem, however, or so my students told me, the means of ascent is not a ladder but a tree, a rose tree or rosenbaum.7 This was seen to be an obvious reference to the Virgin Mary who was often characterized as a rose without thorns, itself an emblem of the immaculate conception.8 At this point the poem appeared to the students to be operating in the familiar man­ ner of an iconographic riddle. It at once posed the question, “How is it that a man can climb to heaven by means of a rose tree?” and directed the reader to the inevitable answer: by the fruit of that tree, the fruit of Marys womb, Jesus. Once this interpretation was established it received support from, and conferred significance on, the word “thorne,” which could only be an allusion to the crown of thorns, a symbol of the trial suffered by Jesus and of the price he paid to save us all. It was only a short step (really no step at all) from this insight to the recognition of Levin as a double reference, first to the tribe of Levi,9 of whose priestly function Christ was the fulfillment, and second to the unleavened bread carried by the children of Israel on their exodus from Egypt, the place of sin, and in response to the call of Moses,1 perhaps the most familiar of the old testament types of Christ. The final word of the poem was given at least three complementary readings: it could be “omen,” especially since so much of the poem is concerned with foreshadowing and prophecy; it could be Oh Man, since it is mans story as it intersects with the divine plan that is the poems subject; and it could, of course, be simply 6. T he ladder to heaven of which Jacob dreams in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 2 8 .1 2 —15). 7. In G erm an, “rose tree.” 8. T he C hristian doctrine that Mary, mother of Jesu s, was uniquely born free from the stain of original sin. 9. One of the 12 biblical tribes of ancien t Israel,

descended from Ja c o b ’s son Levi; traditionally, the Levites performed religious functions (mem­ bers of the priesthood were descendants of Moses’s brother Aaron, him self a descendant of Levi). 1. Hebrew prophet who led the exodus; his “c a ll” is his address by God from the burning bush (see Exodus 3 .1 -4 .1 7 ).

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1901

“amen,” the proper conclusion to a poem celebrating the love and mercy shown by a God who gave his only begotten son so that we may live. In addition to specifying significances for the words of the poem and relat­ ing those significances to one another, the students began to discern larger structural patterns. It was noted that of the six names in the poem three— Jacobs, Rosenbaum, and Levin— are Hebrew, two—Thorne and Hayes— are Christian, and one— Ohman— is ambiguous, the ambiguity being marked in the poem itself (as the phrase goes) by the question mark in parenthesis. This division was seen as a reflection of the basic distinction between the old dis­ pensation and the new, the law of sin and the law of love. That distinction, however, is blurred and finally dissolved by the typological perspective which invests the old testament events and heroes with new testament meanings. The structure of the poem, my students concluded, is therefore a double one, establishing and undermining its basic pattern (Hebrew vs. Christian) at the same time. In this context there is finally no pressure to resolve the ambiguity of Ohman since the two possible readings— the name is Hebrew, the name is Christian— are both authorized by the reconciling presence in the poem of Jesus Christ. Finally, I must report that one student took to counting letters and found, to no ones surprise, that the most prominent letters in the poem were S, O, N. Some of you will have noticed that I have not yet said anything about Hayes. This is because of all the words in the poem it proved the most recal­ citrant to interpretation, a fact not without consequence, but one which I will set aside for the moment since I am less interested in the details of the exercise than in the ability of my students to perform it. What is the source of that ability? How is it that they were able to do what they did? What is it that they did? These questions are important because they bear directly on a question often asked in literary theory, What are the distinguishing features of literary language? Or, to put the matter more colloquially, How do you recognize a poem when you see one? The commonsense answer, to which many literary critics and linguists are committed, is that the act of recogni­ tion is triggered by the observable presence of distinguishing features. That is, you know a poem when you see one because its language displays the characteristics that you know to be proper to poems. This, however, is a model that quite obviously does not fit the present example. My students did not proceed from the noting of distinguishing features to the recognition that they were confronted by a poem; rather, it was the act of recognition that came first— they knew in advance that they were dealing with a poem— and the distinguishing features then followed. In other words, acts of recognition, rather than being triggered by formal characteristics, are their source. It is not that the presence of poetic qualities compels a certain kind of attention but that the paying of a certain kind of attention results in the emergence of poetic qualities. As soon as my students were aware that it was poetry they were seeing, they began to look with poetry-seeing eyes, that is, with eyes that saw everything in relation to the properties they knew poems to possess. They knew, for example (because they were told by their teachers), that poems are (or are supposed to be) more densely and intricately organized than ordinary communications; and that knowledge translated itself into a willingness— one might even says a deter­ mination— to see connections between one word and another and between

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every word and the poem’s central insight. Moreover, the assumption that there is a central insight is itself poetry-specific, and presided over its own realization. Having assumed that the collection of words before them was unified by an informing purpose (because unifying purposes are what poems have), my students proceeded to find one and to formulate it. It was in the light of that purpose (now assumed) that significances for the individual words began to suggest themselves, significances which then fleshed out the assumption that had generated them in the first place. Thus the mean­ ings of the words and the interpretation in which those words were seen to be embedded emerged together, as a consequence of the operations my stu­ dents began to perform once they were told that this was a poem. It was almost as if they were following a recipe— if it’s a poem do this, if it’s a poem, see it that way— and indeed definitions of poetry are recipes, for by directing readers as to what to look for in a poem, they instruct them in ways of looking that will produce what they expect to see. If your definition of poetry tells you that the language of poetry is complex, you will scrutinize the language of something identified as a poem in such a way as to bring out the complexity you know to be “there.” You will, for example, be on the look­ out for latent ambiguities; you will attend to the presence of alliterative and consonantal patterns (there will always be some), and you will try to make something of them (you will always succeed); you will search for meanings that subvert, or exist in a tension with the meanings that first present them­ selves; and if these operations fail to produce the anticipated complexity, you will even propose a significance for the words that are not there, because, as everyone knows, everything about a poem, including its omissions, is signifi­ cant. Nor, as you do these things, will you have any sense of performing in a willful manner, for you will only be doing what you learned to do in the course of becoming a skilled reader of poetry. Skilled reading is usually thought to be a matter of discerning what is there, but if the example of my students can be generalized, it is a matter of knowing how to produ ce what can thereafter be said to be there. Interpretation is not the art of constru­ ing but the art of constructing. Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them. To many, this will be a distressing conclusion, and there are a number of arguments that could be mounted in order to forestall it. One might point out that the circumstances of my students’ performance were special. After all, they had been concerned exclusively with religious poetry for some weeks, and therefore would be uniquely vulnerable to the deception I had practiced on them and uniquely equipped to impose religious themes and patterns on words innocent of either. I must report, however, that I have duplicated this experiment any number of times at nine or ten universities in three coun­ tries, and the results were always the same, even when the participants know from the beginning that what they are looking at was originally an assign­ ment. O f course this very fact could itself be turned into an objection: doesn’t the reproducibility of the exercise prove that there is something about these words that leads everyone to perform in the same way? Isn’t it just a happy accident that names like Thorne and Jacobs have counterparts or near counterparts in biblical names and symbols? And wouldn’t my students have been unable to do what they did if the assignment I gave to the first class had been made up of different names? The answer to all of these questions is no.

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1903

Given a firm belief that they were confronted by a religious poem, my stu­ dents would have been able to turn any list of names into the kind of poem we have before us now, because they would have read the names within the assumption that they were informed with Christian significances. (This is nothing more than a literary analogue to Augustine’s rule of faith.2) You can test this assertion by replacing Jacobs-Rosenbaum, Levin, Thorne, Hayes, and Ohman with names drawn from the faculty of Kenyon College—Temple, Jordan, Seymour, Daniels, Star, Church.3 I will not exhaust my time or your patience by performing a full-dress analysis, which would involve, of course, the relation between those who saw the River Jordan and those who saw more by seeing the Star of Bethlehem,4 thus fulfilling the prophecy by which the temple of Jerusalem was replaced by the inner temple or church built up in the heart of every Christian. Suffice it to say that it could easily be done (you can take the poem home and do it yourself) and that the shape of its doing would be constrained not by the names but by the interpretive assumptions that gave them a significance even before they were seen. This would be true even if there were no names on the list, if the paper or blackboard were blank; the blankness would present no problem to the interpreter, who would immediately see in it the void out of which God created the earth, or the abyss into which unregenerate sinners fall, or, in the best of all possible poems, both. Even so, one might reply, all you’ve done is demonstrate how an interpreta­ tion, if it is prosecuted with sufficient vigor, can impose itself on material which has its own proper shape. Basically, at the ground level, in the first place, when all is said and done, “Jacobs-Rosenbaum Levin Thorne Hayes Ohman(?)” is an assignment; it is only a trick that allows you to transform it into a poem, and when the effects of the trick have worn off, it will return to its natural form and be seen as an assignment once again. This is a powerful argument because it seems at once to give interpretation its due (as an act of the will) and to maintain the independence of that on which interpretation works. It allows us, in short, to preserve our commonsense intuition that interpretation must be interpretation of something. Unfortunately, the argu­ ment will not hold because the assignment we all see is no less the product of interpretation than the poem into which it was turned. That is, it requires just as much work, and work of the same kind, to see this as an assignment as it does to see it as a poem. If this seems counterintuitive, it is only because the work required to see it as an assignment is work we have already done, in the course of acquiring the huge amount of background knowledge that enables you and me to function in the academic world. In order to know what an assigment is, that is, in order to know what to do with something identi­ fied as an assignment, you must first know what a class is (know that it isn’t an economic grouping) and know that classes meet at specified times for so many weeks, and that one’s performance in a class is largely a matter of per­ forming between classes.

2. The early Christian theologian and philoso­ pher a u g u s t i n e (354—4 3 0 C .E . ) defined faith as belief in “things not seen.” 3. Faculty members of Kenyon College at the time of Fish’s lecture. 4. The star whose appearance signified the birth

of Jesus and later led the Magi to him (M atthew 2 .2 , 7—9). T he Jordan was the river that the Isra­ elites crossed to enter the land promised to them by God (Deuteronomy 34.1—4; Joshua 1.13—17). T his is presented as another example of typologi­ cal interpretation.

1904

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Think for a moment of how you would explain this last to someone who did not already know it. “Well,” you might say, “a class is a group situation in which a number of people are instructed by an informed person in a par­ ticular subject.” (Of course the notion of “subject” will itself require expli­ cation.) “An assignment is something you do when you’re not in class.” “Oh, I see,” your interlocutor might respond, “an assignment is something you do to take your mind off what you’ve been doing in class.” “No, an assignment is a part of a class.” “But how can that be if you only do it when the class is not meeting?” Now it would be possible, finally, to answer that question, but only by enlarging the horizons of your explanation to include the very concept of a university, what it is one might be doing there, why one might be doing it instead of doing a thousand other things, and so on. For most of us these matters do not require explanation, and indeed, it is hard for us to imagine someone for whom they do; but that is because our tacit knowledge of what it means to move around in academic life was acquired so gradually and so long ago that it doesn’t seem like knowledge at all (and therefore some­ thing someone else might not know) but a part of the world. You might think that when you’re on campus (a phrase that itself requires volumes) that you are simply walking around on the two legs God gave you; but your walking is informed by an internalized awareness of institutional goals and prac­ tices, of norms of behavior, of lists of do’s and don’t’s, of invisible lines and the dangers of crossing them; and, as a result, you see everything as already organized in relation to those same goals and practices. It would never occur to you, for example, to wonder if the people pouring out of that build­ ing are fleeing from a fire; you know that they are exiting from a class (what could be more obvious?) and you know that because your perception of their action occurs within a knowledge of what people in a university could possibly be doing and the reasons they could have for doing it (going to the next class, going back to the dorm, meeting someone in the student union). It is within that same knowledge that an assignment becomes intelligible so that it appears to you immediately as an obligation, as a set of directions, as something with parts, some of which may be more significant than others. That is, it is a proper question to ask of an assignment whether some of its parts might be omitted or slighted, whereas readers of poetry know that no part of a poem can be slighted (the rule is “everything counts”) and they do not rest until every part has been given a significance. In a way this amounts to no more than saying what everyone already knows: poems and assignments are different, but my point is that the differ­ ences are a result of the different interpretive operations we perform and not of something inherent in one or the other. An assignment no more compels its own recognition than does a poem; rather, as in the case of a poem, the shape of an assignment emerges when someone looks at something identi­ fied as one with assignment-seeing eyes, that is, with eyes which are capable of seeing the words as already embedded within the institutional structure that makes it possible for assignments to have a sense. The ability to see, and therefore to make, an assignment is no less a learned ability than the ability to see, and therefore to make, a poem. Both are constructed artifacts, the products and not the producers of interpretation, and while the differences between them are real, they are interpretive and do not have their source in some bedrock level of objectivity.

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1905

Of course one might want to argue that there is a bedrock level at which these names constitute neither an assignment or a poem but are merely a list. But that argument too falls because a list is no more a natural object— one that wears its meaning on its face and can be recognized by anyone— than an assignment or a poem. In order to see a list, one must already be equipped with the concepts of seriality, hierarchy, subordination, and so on, and while these are by no mean esoteric concepts and seem available to almost every­ one, they are nonetheless learned, and if there were someone who had not learned them, he or she would not be able to see a list. The next recourse is to descend still lower (in the direction of atoms) and to claim objectivity for letters, paper, graphite, black marks on white spaces, and so on; but these entities too have palpability and shape only because of the assumption of some or other system of intelligibility, and they are therefore just as available to a deconstructive dissolution as are poems, assignments, and lists. The conclusion, therefore, is that all objects are made and not found, and that they are made by the interpretive strategies we set in motion. This does not, however, commit me to subjectivity because the means by which they are made are social and conventional. That is, the “you” who does the inter­ pretative work that puts poems and assignments and lists into the world is a communal you and not an isolated individual. No one of us wakes up in the morning and (in French fashion) reinvents poetry5 or thinks up a new educa­ tional system or decides to reject seriality in favor of some other, wholly orig­ inal, form of organization. We do not do these things because we could not do them, because the mental operations we can perform are limited by the institutions in which we are already embedded. These institutions precede us, and it is only by inhabiting them, or being inhabited by them, that we have access to the public and conventional senses they make. Thus while it is true to say that we create poetry (and assignments and lists), we create it through interpretive strategies that are finally not our own but have their source in a publicly available system of intelligibility. Insofar as the system (in this case a literary system) constrains us, it also fashions us, furnishing us with catego­ ries of understanding, with which we in turn fashion the entities to which we can then point. In short, to the list of made or constructed objects we must add ourselves, for we no less than the poems and assignments we see are the products of social and cultural patterns of thought. To put the matter in this way is to see that the opposition between objec­ tivity and subjectivity is a false one because neither exists in the pure form that would give the opposition its point. This is precisely illustrated by my anecdote in which we do not have free-standing readers in a relationship of perceptual adequacy or inadequacy to an equally free-standing text. Rather, we have readers whose consciousnesses are constituted by a set of conven­ tional notions which when put into operation constitute in turn a conven­ tional, and conventionally seen, object. My students could do what they did, and do it in unison, because as members of a literary community they knew what a poem was (their knowledge was public), and that knowledge led them to look in such a way as to populate the landscape with what they knew to be poems. 5. Probably an allusion to A rthur Rimbaud (1 8 5 4 -1 8 9 1 ), who was the first im portant French poet to write in free verse.

1906

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Of course poems are not the only objects that are constituted in unison by shared ways of seeing. Every object or event that becomes available within an institutional setting can be so characterized. I am thinking, for example, of something that happened in my classroom just the other day. While I was in the course of vigorously making a point, one of my students, William Newlin by name, was just as vigorously waving his hand. When I asked the other members of the class what it was that Mr. Newlin was doing, they all answered that he was seeking permission to speak. I then asked them how they knew that. The immediate reply was that it was obvious; what else could he be thought to be doing? The meaning of his gesture, in other words, was right there on its surface, available for reading by anyone who had the eyes to see. That meaning, however, would not have been available to someone without any knowledge of what was involved in being a student. Such a person might have thought that Mr. Newlin was pointing to the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, or calling our attention to some object that was about to fall (“the sky is falling,” “the sky is falling”6). And if the someone in question were a child of elementary or middle-school age, Mr. Newlin might well have been seen as seeking permission not to speak but to go to the bathroom, an inter­ pretation or reading that would never occur to a student at Johns Hopkins or any other institution of “higher learning” (and how would we explain to the uninitiated the meaning of that phrase). The point is the one I have made so many times before: it is neither the case that the significance of Mr. Newlin s gesture is imprinted on its surface where it need only be read off, or that the construction put on the gesture by everyone in the room was individual and idiosyncratic. Rather, the source of our interpretive unanimity was a structure of interests and understood goals, a structure whose categories so filled our individual consciousnesses that they were rendered as one, immediately investing phenomena with the sig­ nificance they must have, given the already-in-place assumptions about what someone could possibly be intending (by word or gesture) in a classroom. By seeing Mr. Newlin’s raised hand with a single shaping eye, we were demon­ strating what Harvey Sacks has characterized as “the fine power of a culture. It does not, so to speak, merely fill brains in roughly the same way, it fills them so that they are alike in fine detail.”7 The occasion of Sacks’s observa­ tion was the ability of his hearers to understand a sequence of two sentences— “The baby cried. The mommy picked it up.”— exactly as he did (assuming, for example that “the mommy’ who picks up the ‘baby’ is the mommy of that baby”), despite the fact that alternative ways of understanding were demon­ strably possible. That is, the mommy of the second sentence could well have been the mommy of some other baby, and it need not even have been a baby that this “floating” mommy was picking up. One is tempted to say that in the absence of a specific context we are authorized to take the words literally, which is what Sacks’s hearers do; but as Sacks observes, it is within the assumption of a context— one so deeply assumed that we are unaware of it— that the words acquire what seems to be their literal meaning. There is noth6. A phrase from the folktale “Henny Penny” (better known in the United States as “Chicken L ittle”), whose title character warns that the world is ending, panicking because some natural object fell on it.

7. “On the Analysability of Stories by C hildren,” in Ethnom ethodology, ed. Roy Turner (B alti­ more: Penguin, 1974), p. 218 [Fish’s note]. Sacks (1935—1975), Am erican sociologist.

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ing in the words that tells Sacks and his hearers how to relate the mommy and the baby of this story, just as there is nothing in the form of Mr. Newlin’s gesture that tells his fellow students how to determine its significance. In both cases the determination (of relation and significance) is the work of cat­ egories of organization— the family, being a student— that are from the very first giving shape and value to what is heard and seen. Indeed, these categories are the very shape of seeing itself, in that we are not to imagine a perceptual ground more basic than the one they afford. That is, we are not to imagine a moment when my students “simply see” a physical configuration of atoms and then assign that configuration a significance, according to the situation they happen to be in. To be in the situation (this or any other) is to “see” with the eyes of its interests, its goals, its understood practices, values, and norms, and so to be conferring significance by seeing, not after it. The categories of my students’ vision are the categories by which they understand themselves to be functioning as students (what Sacks might term “doing studenting”), and objects will appear to them in forms related to that way of functioning rather than in some objective or preinterpretive form. (This is true even when an object is seen as not related, since nonrelation is not a pure but a differential category— the specification of something by enu­ merating what it is not; in short, nonrelation is merely one form of relation, and its perception is always situation-specific.) Of course, if someone who was not functioning as a student was to walk into my classroom, he might very well see Mr. Newlin’s raised hand (and “raised hand” is already an interpretation-laden description) in some other way, as evidence of a disease, as the salute of a political follower, as a muscleimproving exercise, as an attempt to kill flies; but he would always see it in som e way, and never as purely physical data waiting for his interpretation. And, moreover, the way of seeing, whatever it was, would never be individual or idiosyncratic, since its source would always be the institutional structure of which the “see-er” was an extending agent. This is what Sacks means when he says that a culture fills brains “so that they are alike in fine detail”; it fills them so that no one’s interpretive acts are exclusively his own but fall to him by virtue of his position in some socially organized environment and are therefore always shared and public. It follows, then, that the fear of solipsism, of the imposition by the unconstrained self of its own prejudices, is unfounded because the self does not exist apart from the communal or conventional categories of thought that enable its operations (of thinking, seeing, reading). Once one realizes that the conceptions that fill conscious­ ness, including any conception of its own status, are culturally derived, the very notion of an unconstrained self, of a consciousness wholly and danger­ ously free, becomes incomprehensible. But without the notion of the unconstrained self, the arguments of Hirsch, Abrams,8 and the other proponents of objective interpretation are deprived of their urgency. They are afraid that in the absence of the controls

8. M. H. Abrams (1 9 1 2 -2 0 1 5 ), Am erican literary critic and founding editor of T he Norton Anthol­ ogy o f English Literature ; in a preface to his lec­ tures, Fish reports that he was responding to Abrams’s essay “How to Do Things with Texts” (1978; published 1979). E. D. H irsch (b. 1928),

Am erican educational and literary theorist w'ho elaborated on objective standards in Validity in Interpretation (1967); he later becam e more widely known for his argum ents promoting the canon and “cultural literacy.”

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afforded by a normative system of meanings, the self will simply substitute its own meanings for the meanings (usually identified with the intentions of the author) that texts bring with them, the meanings that texts “have”; how­ ever, if the self is conceived of not as an independent entity but as a social construct whose operations are delimited by the systems of intelligibility that inform it, then the meanings it confers on texts are not its own but have their source in the interpretive community (or communities) of which it is a function. Moreover, these meanings will be neither subjective nor objective, at least in the terms assumed by those who argue within the traditional framework: they will not be objective because they will always have been the product of a point of view rather than having been simply “read off”; and they will not be subjective because that point of view will always be social or institutional. Or by the same reasoning one could say that they are both sub­ jective and objective: they are subjective because they inhere in a particular point of view and are therefore not universal; and they are objective because the point of view that delivers them is public and conventional rather than individual or unique. To put the matter in either way is to see how unhelpful the terms “subjec­ tive” and “objective” finally are. Rather than facilitating inquiry, they close it down, by deciding in advance what shape inquiry can possibly take. Specifi­ cally, they assume, without being aware that it is an assumption and there­ fore open to challenge, the very distinction I have been putting into question, the distinction between interpreters and the objects they interpret. That dis­ tinction in turn assumes that interpreters and their objects are two different kinds of acontextual entities, and within these twin assumptions the issue can only be one of control: will texts be allowed to constrain their own inter­ pretation or will irresponsible interpreters be allowed to obscure and over­ whelm texts. In the spectacle that ensues, the spectacle of Anglo-American critical controversy, texts and selves fight it out in the persons of their respec­ tive champions, Abrams, Hirsch, Reichert, Graff on the one hand, Holland, Bleich, Slatoff, and (in some characterizations of him) Barthes9 on the other. But if selves are constituted by the ways of thinking and seeing that inhere in social organizations, and if these constituted selves in turn constitute texts according to these same ways, then there can be no adversary relationship between text and self because they are the necessarily related products of the same cognitive possibilities. A text cannot be overwhelmed by an irresponsi­ ble reader and one need not worry about protecting the purity of a text from a reader s idiosyncracies. It is only the distinction between subject and object that gives rise to these urgencies, and once the distinction is blurred they simply fall away. One can respond with a cheerful yes to the question “Do readers make meanings?” and commit oneself to very little because it would be equally true to say that meanings, in the form of culturally derived inter­ pretive categories, make readers. 9. Those in the latter group focused on the reader and subjectivity in some o f their writings: Norman Holland (1927—2017), psychoanalytic and reader-response theorist; David Bleich (b. 1940), American literary critic whose works include Subjective Criticism (1978); W alter Slatoff (1 9 2 2 -1 9 9 1 ), A m erican reader-response c ritic; and ROLAND BARTHES (1915-1980), French liter­

ary critic. In different ways, Abrams, Hirsch, the American cultural critic g e r a l d g r a f f (b. 1937), and John Reichert (1935—20 0 4 ), an American lit­ erary critic who argued against Fish’s view of interpretive communities in “But T hat Was in Another Ball Park: A Reply to Stanley Fish” (1979), were invested in defending objective stan­ dards in criticism.

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Indeed, many things look rather different once the subject-object dichot­ omy is eliminated as the assumed framework within which critical discussion occurs. Problems disappear, not because they have been solved but because they are shown never to have been problems in the first place. Abrams, for example, wonders how, in the absence of a normative system of stable mean­ ings, two people could ever agree on the interpretation of a work or even of a sentence; but the difficulty is only a difficulty if the two (or more) people are thought of as isolated individuals whose agreement must be compelled by something external to them. (There is something of the police state in Abramss vision, complete with posted rules and boundaries, watchdogs to enforce them, procedures for identifying their violators as criminals.) But if the understandings of the people in question are informed by the same notions of what counts as a fact, of what is central, peripheral, and worthy of being noticed— in short, by the same interpretive principles— then agree­ ment between them will be assured, and its source will not be a text that enforces its own perception but a way of perceiving that results in the emer­ gence to those who share it (or those whom it shares) of the same text. That text might be a poem, as it was in the case of those who first “saw” “JacobsRosenbaum Levin Hayes Thorne Ohman(?),” or a hand, as it is every day in a thousand classrooms; but whatever it is, the shape and meaning it appears immediately to have will be the “ongoing accomplishment”1 of those who agree to produce it. 1980 1. A phrase used by the ethnom ethodologists to characterize the interpretive activities that ereate and m aintain the features of everyday life.

S ee, for example, Don H. Zim m erm an, “Fact as Practical A ccom plishm ent,” in Ethnom ethodology, pp. 128—143 [Fish’s note].

NGUGI W A T H I O N G ’O b.

TABAN LO LIYONG

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HENRY OWUOR-ANYUMBA 1 9 3 3 - 1 9 9 2

English departments are a relatively recent historical development, arising only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Before that, academic literary study in the West centered on the Greek and Latin classics and focused on ele­ ments of rhetoric and philology. During the Victorian era in England, as t e r r y e a g l e t o n points out in the first chapter of Literary Theory (1983; see below), English arose as a discipline to foster an appreciation for culture in the less educated classes, who were not trained in Greek and Latin. But as Eagleton also argues, English was enmeshed with nationalism and designed to instill national pride— hence the subject was “English” rather than simply “literature”— particularly in

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the face of European conflicts (such as World War I) and competition for colonies. Moreover, the teaching of English language and literature was a prominent part of the administration of the British Empire in its many colonies around the globe— in India, Africa, and elsewhere. “On the Abolition of the English Department” (1968), our selection here, stages a revolt against this vestige of British colonial rule: it depicts English not as a neutral or natural subject but as an instrument of imperial­ ism, and promotes the study of indigenous national literatures and languages. Origi­ nally a university memorandum, it today is seen as an important inaugural statement of postcolonial literary criticism. Its lead author, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (James Ngugi), is an internationally renowned novelist, dramatist, and critic. Born in Kenya, which was under British rule from 1895 until 1963, Ngugi witnessed the effects of colonialism firsthand. He attended an independent mission school where the teachers were native Kenyans; but in 1954, in response to the Mau Mau uprising against colonial rule, the British government took control of it and made instruction in English mandatory. In the political turmoil leading to independence, one of his stepbrothers was killed and his mother tortured, and an older brother joined the Mau Mau rebellion. In 1959 Ngugi entered Makerere University in Uganda, receiving his B.A. in 1964; there he also began his writing career, publishing the acclaimed novel Weep Not, Child (1964) about the Mau Mau war and East African culture. After attending Leeds University on a British council scholarship (1964—67), he returned to Africa to take a position at Nairobi University, but soon resigned in protest over governmental interference in the university. He rejoined the faculty in 1971, becoming in 1973 head of the Department of Literature, newly formed in response to his and his colleagues’ criticism of English. He also renounced his anglicized name, James Ngugi, which he held to be a sign of colonial­ ism; taking his name in his native Kikuyu language, he thereafter wrote first in Kikuyu and then translated his own work into English. In 1977 he was arrested by Kenyan police after the production of one of his plays that was critical of the govern­ ment. Protests from international literary groups led to his release after he had been imprisoned for a year without being charged. Ngugi eventually left the country, tak­ ing professorships at Yale University, New York University, and, since 2004, the Uni­ versity of California at Irvine, where he is now Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature. Born in northern Uganda, which was under British rule from 1896 until 1962, Taban lo Liyong received his B.A. from the Ugandan National Teachers College in 1962. He traveled to the United States to study political science, but changed paths in 1965 to attend the prestigious writers’ workshop at the University of Iowa; in 1968 he became its first African graduate. He was an important early critic of the paucity of African literature, attributing it to British colonial rule: “I blame the British. The education they came to offer was aimed at recruiting candidates for a Christian Heaven” and at “produc[ing] clerks, teachers, servants.” In 1968 he returned to Africa on a fellowship offered by the Institute for African Studies at Nairobi Univer­ sity, where he also lectured in the English department and joined forces with Ngugi and Owuor-Anyumba. Since 1978 he has held positions at the University of Juba in the Sudan. Born in Kenya, Henry Owuor-Anyumba received a degree in education from the University of East Africa and his B.A. from Cambridge University in 1966. There­ after he taught at Nairobi University until his death in 1992. Less widely known than his coauthors, he was a folklorist, especially of African music. After World War II, almost all of the many colonies of the European powers gained their national independence, sometimes through negotiation and sometimes through revolt and war. But political independence did not necessarily entail economic or cultural autonomy, and the effects of colonialism lingered in language, education, and religion, as well as in economic and political structures. The residual effects of

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imperialism are variously called “postcolonial,” “neo-colonial” (the term that Ngugi most frequently uses), or simply “colonial” (the term favored by the celebrated Nige­ rian novelist c h i n u a a c h e b e ). Inaugurated as a critique of the results of decoloniza­ tion, postcolonial studies addresses the perennial theoretical issue of the relation of culture and society, particularly the role that culture— notably language, literature, and education— plays in furthering imperialism. In “Literature and Society” (1973), Ngugi views culture as a central vehicle for continued colonial control, or “cultural imperialism,” “which during classical colonialism supplemented direct military and political occupation [but now] becomes the major agency of control under neo­ colonialism.” “On the Abolition of the English Department” deals with how literary education and academic institutions have helped implement cultural imperialism in Africa. As Ngugi elaborates in “Literature and Society,” “the content of our literature syllabus, its presentation, the machinery for determining the choice of texts and their interpre­ tation were all an integral part of imperialism and domination in the colonial phase, and they are today an integral part of the imperialism and domination in the neo­ colonial phase.” To remedy this, “On the Abolition of the English Department” offers a straightforward set of proposals for African universities: first, dismantle depart­ ments centered on English language and literature; second, create departments cen­ tered on the study of indigenous African languages and literature, as well as relevant foreign ones; third, study neglected topics such as the African oral tradition; and, fourth, study modern African literature, which includes Caribbean and African American literature. Ngugi, Liyong, and Owuor-Anyumba are careful not to discredit English or European literature, but argue for the benefits of opening literary study to wider currents. Within the debate over the literary canon, they take an expansionist position, recommending that the canon encompass more texts from different cul­ tures rather than be artificially limited, and that we study representative rather than “classic” texts. A contentious issue among writers and critics during the early days of decoloni­ zation was whether to write in native languages or in the dominant colonial lan­ guage, usually English or French. European authors similarly had to grapple with the status of vernacular languages in the early Renaissance, when Latin was the dominant language of learning (for example, see j o a c h i m d u b e l l a y , above). In his other work, Ngugi argues for the primary use of native traditions and languages; in contrast, his coauthor Liyong contends that African writers must write in a European language to capture a wide readership— with the qualification that “we will not have to stick to Queen’s English[;J . . . we have to tame the shrew and natu­ ralize her,” a point also made by Achebe. Since the 1980s postcolonial and cultural critics have questioned the nationalistic character of such struggles for independence, arguing that nationalism participates in the logic of imperialism and that it rests on a fictive construct, an “imagined com­ munity,” without an essential core. Set amid debates over decolonization and Afrocentrism, “On the Abolition of the English Department” provides a glimpse into the political effects of literature and the seemingly neutral institutions of education. Ngugi challenges us to consider such questions more closely, declaring, “Every writer is a writer in politics. The only question is what and whose politics.” “On the Abolition of the English D epartm ent” Keywords: The Canon/Tradition, Institutional Studies, Nationhood, Postcolonial Theory, Vernacular Language

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On the Abolition of the English D epartm ent1 1. This is a comment on the paper presented by the Acting Head of the English Department at the University of Nairobi2 to the 42nd meeting of the Arts Faculty Board on the 20th September, 1968. 2. (a) That paper was mainly concerned with possible developments within the Arts Faculty and their relationship with the English Department, par­ ticularly: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

The The The The

place of modern languages, especially French; place and role of the Department of English; emergence of a Department of Linguistics and Languages; place of African languages, especially Swahili.

(b) In connection with the above, the paper specifically suggested that a department of Linguistics and Languages, to be closely related to English, be established. (c) A remote possibility of a Department of African literature, or alterna­ tively, that of African literature and culture, was envisaged. 3. The paper raised important problems. It should have been the subject of a more involved debate and discussion, preceding the appointment of a com­ mittee with specific tasks, because it raises questions of value, direction and orientation. 4. For instance, the suggestions, as the paper itself admits, question the role and status of an English Department in an African situation and envi­ ronment. To quote from his paper: The English Department has had a long history at this College and has built up a strong syllabus which by its study of the historic continuity o f a single culture throughout the period o f em ergence o f the m odern west, makes it an important companion to History and to Philosophy and Reli­ gious Studies. However, it is bound to becom e less ‘British’, m ore open to other writing in English (American, Caribbean, African, Commonwealth) and also to continental writing, fo r comparative purposes. 5. Underlying the suggestions is a basic assumption that the English tradition and the emergence of the modern west is the central root of our consciousness and cultural heritage. Africa becomes an extension of the west, an attitude which, until a radical reassessment, used to dictate the teaching and organiza­ tion of History in our University.3 Hence, in fact, the assumed centrality of the English Department, into which other cultures can be admitted from time to time, as fit subjects for study, or from which other satellite departments can

1. T his debate resulted in the establishment of two departments: Languages and Literature. In both, A frican languages and literature were to form the core. In the case of the Literature Department, Caribbean and black American literature were to be emphasized. It thus represents a radical depar­ ture in the teaching of literature in Africa [Ngugi, Liyong, and Owuor-Anyumba’s note]. 2. A focal point of the political tension that co n ­

tinued to beset Kenya after independence was gained in 1964. 3. Then the University of East A frica with three constituent colleges at Makerere, Dar es Salaam , and Nairobi. Since then the three have become autonomous universities [Ngugi, Liyong, and Owuor-Anyumba’s note]. Makerere is in Uganda; Dar es Salaam is the capital of Tanzania.

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spring as time and money allow. A small example is the current, rather apolo­ getic attempt to smuggle African writing into an English syllabus in our three colleges. 6. Here then, is our main question: If there is need for a study of the historic continuity of a single culture’, why can’t this be African? Why can’t African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it? This is not mere rhetoric: already African writing, with the sister connec­ tions in the Caribbean and the Afro-American literatures, has played an important role in the African renaissance, and will become even more and more important with time and pressure of events. Just because for reasons of political expediency we have kept English as our official language, there is no need to substitute a study of English culture for our own. We reject the pri­ macy of English literature and culture. 7. The aim, in short, should be to orientate ourselves towards placing Kenya, East Africa, and then Africa in the centre. All other things are to be consid­ ered in their relevance to our situation, and their contribution towards under­ standing ourselves. 8. We therefore suggest: A. That the English Department be abolished; B. That a Department of African Literature and Languages be set up in its place. The primary duty of any literature department is to illuminate the spirit animating a people, to show how it meets new challenges, and to investi­ gate possible areas of development and involvement. In suggesting this name, we are not rejecting other cultural streams, espe­ cially the western stream. We are only clearly mapping out the directions and perspectives the study of culture and literature will inevitably take in an Afri­ can university. 9. We know that European literatures constitute one source of influence on modern African literatures in English, French, and Portuguese; Swa­ hili,4 Arabic, and Asian literatures constitute another, an important source, especially here in East Africa; and the African tradition, a tradition as active and alive as ever, constitutes the third and the most significant. This is the stuff on which we grew up, and it is the base from which we make our cultural take-off into the world. 10. Languages and linguistics should be studied in the department because in literature we see the principles of languages and linguistics in action. Con­ versely, through knowledge of languages and linguistics we can get more from literature. For linguistics not to become eccentric, it should be studied in the Department of African Literature and Languages. In addition to Swahili, French, and English, whenever feasible other lan­ guages such as Arabic, Hindustani, Kikuyu, Luo, Akamba,5 etc., should be introduced into the syllabus as optional subjects.

4. One of the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania.

5. Some o f the diverse languages of the different ethnic groups in and around Kenya.

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11. On the literature side, the Department ought to offer roughly: (a) The oral tradition, which is our primary root; (b) Swahili literature (with Arabic and Asian literatures): this is another root, especially in East Africa; (c) A selected course in European literature: yet another root; (d) Modern African literature. For the purposes of the Department, a knowledge of Swahili, English, and French should be compulsory. The largest body of writing by Africans is now written in the French language. Africans writing in the French language have also produced most of the best poems and novels. In fact it makes no sense to talk of modern African literature without French. 12. T he Oral Tradition The Oral tradition is rich and many-sided. In fact ‘Africa is littered with Oral Literature’. But the art did not end yesterday; it is a living tradition. Even now there are songs being sung in political rallies, in churches, in night clubs by guitarists, by accordion players, by dancers, etc. Another point to be observed is the interlinked nature of art forms in traditional practice. Verbal forms are not always distinct from dance, music, etc. For example, in music there is close correspondence between verbal and melodic tones; in metrical lyrics’ it has been observed that poetic text is inseparable from tune; and the ‘folk tale’ often bears an ‘operatic’ form, with sung refrain as an integral part. The distinction between prose and poetry is absent or very fluid. Though tale, dance, song, myth, etc. can be performed for individual aes­ thetic enjoyment, they have other social purposes as well. Dance, for exam­ ple, has been studied as symbolic expression of social reality reflecting and influencing the social, cultural and personality systems of which it is a part’. The oral tradition also comments on society because of its intimate relation­ ship and involvement. The study of the oral tradition at the University should therefore lead to a multi-disciplinary outlook: literature, music, linguistics, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Psychology, Religion, Philosophy. Secondly, its study can lead to fresh approaches by making it possible for the student to be familiar with art forms different in kind and historical development from Western literary forms. Spontaneity and liberty of communication inherent in oral transmission— openness to sounds, sights, rhythms, tones, in life and in the environment— are examples of traditional elements from which the student can draw. More specifically, his familiarity with oral lit­ erature could suggest new structures and techniques; and could foster atti­ tudes of mind characterized by the willingness to experiment with new forms, so transcending ‘fixed literary patterns’ and what that implies— the preconceived ranking of art forms. The study of the Oral Tradition would therefore supplement (not replace) courses in Modern African Literature. By discovering and proclaiming loy­ alty to indigenous values, the new literature would on the one hand be set in the stream of history to which it belongs and so be better appreciated; and on the other be better able to embrace and assimilate other thoughts without losing its roots.

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13. Swahili Literature There is a large amount of oral and written classical Swahili Literature of high calibre. There is also a growing body of modern Swahili literature: both written and oral. 14. European Literature Europe has influenced Africa, especially through English and French cul­ tures. In our part of Africa there has been an over-concentration on the English side of European life. Even the French side, which is dominant in other countries of Africa, has not received the importance it deserves. We therefore urge for freedom of choice so that a more representative course can be drawn up. We see no reason why English literature should have priority over and above other European literatures where we are concerned. The Rus­ sian novel of the nineteenth century should and must be taught. Selections from American, German, and other European literatures should also be introduced. In other words English writings will be taught in their European context and only for their relevance to the East African perspective. 15. M odern A frican Literature The case for the study of Modern African Literature is self-evident. Its possible scope would embrace: (a) The African novel written in French and English; (b) African poetry written in French and English, with relevant transla­ tions of works written by Africans in Portuguese and Spanish; (c) The Caribbean novel and poetry: the Caribbean involvement with Africa can never be over-emphasized. A lot of writers from the West Indies have often had Africa in mind. Their works have had a big impact on the African renaissance— in politics and literature. The poetry of Negritude6 indeed cannot be understood without studying its Caribbean roots. We must also study Afro-American literature. 16. Drama Since drama is an integral part of literature, as well as being its extension, various dramatic works should be studied as parts of the literature of the people under study. Courses in play-writing, play-acting, directing, lighting, costuming, etc. should be instituted. 17. Relationship with other Departments From things already said in this paper, it is obvious that African Oral and Modern literatures cannot be fully understood without some understanding of social and political ideas in African history. For this, we propose that either with the help of other departments, or within the department, or both, courses on mutually relevant aspects of African thought be offered. For instance, an introductory course on African art— sculpture, painting— could be offered in co-operation with the Department of Design and Architecture. 18. The 3.1.17 should be abolished. We think an undergraduate should be exposed to as many general ideas as possible. Any specialization 6. A literary movement o f the 1930s through 1950s that began in Paris among black Frenchspeaking A frican and C aribbean w riters; pro­ testing French colonist ru le and assim ilationist policies, they declared the value o f black A frican

identity, culture, and traditions. 7. This is a course for those who want to special­ ize in literature: 1st year— three subjects; 2d and 3d years— literature only [Ngugi, Liyong, and Ow'uor-Anyumba’s note].

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should come in a graduate school where more specialized courses can be offered. 19. In other words we envisage an active Graduate School will develop, which should be organized with such departments as the Institute for Devel­ opment studies. 20. Conclusion One of the things which has been hindering a radical outlook in our study of literature in Africa is the question of literary excellence; that only works of undisputed literary excellence should be offered. (In this case it meant virtually the study of disputable peaks’ of English literature.) The question of literary excellence implies a value judgment as to what is literary and what is excellence, and from whose point of view. For any group it is better to study representative works which mirror their society rather than to study a few isolated classics’, either of their own or of a foreign culture. To sum up, we have been trying all along to place values where they belong. We have argued the case for the abolition of the present Department of English in the College, and the establishment of a Department of African Literature and Languages. This is not a change of names only. We want to establish the centrality of Africa in the department. This, we have argued, is justifiable on various grounds, the most important one being that education is a means of knowledge about ourselves. Therefore, after we have examined ourselves, we radiate outwards and discover peoples and worlds around us. With Africa at the centre of things, not existing as an appendix or a satellite of other countries and literatures, things must be seen from the African per­ spective. The dominant object in that perspective is African literature, the major branch of African culture. Its roots go back to past African literatures, European literatures, and Asian literatures. These can only be studied mean­ ingfully in a Department of African Literature and Languages in an African University. We ask that this paper be accepted in principle; we suggest that a repre­ sentative committee be appointed to work out the details and harmonize the various suggestions into an administratively workable whole. 1968

TZVETAN T O D O R O V 1 9 3 9 - 2 0 1 7

A central figure in French structuralism, Tzvetan Todorov is best known for advo­ cating the scientific study of narrative, modeled on linguistics, for which he coined the now-standard term narratology. He was responsible for renewing attention to the narrative theory put forth in the early twentieth century by the Russian formal­ ists, such as Boris Eichenbaum and Viktor Shklovsky, and for an effort, with his mentor r o l a n d b a r t h e s , to establish a universal “grammar” of narrative. In “Struc­ tural Analysis of Narrative” (1969), Todorov presents a condensed manifesto for the narratological approach.

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Born in Bulgaria, Todorov emigrated to France in 1963 to study literature and language at the University of Paris, where he did his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Barthes. From 1968 until his death he held an appointment at the Cen­ tre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research) in Paris. His writing was prolific and varied. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, he focused on questions of literary structure; he later turned to questions of inter­ pretation and social history. The 1960s witnessed a flourishing of structuralism in fields as diverse as anthro­ pology, psychology, philosophy, and literature. Influenced by F e r d i n a n d d e s a u s s u r e (1857—1913) as well as by contemporary linguists, structuralists applied the scien­ tific model of linguistics to other aspects of human culture, seeking to chart their underlying structures and rules. For instance, fashion or courtship rituals might be seen as operating according to their own distinctive codes. The Saussurean model treats words and other minimal linguistic elements not as freestanding units but as components of a larger, abstract system; the overall system of language rather than individual speech utterances thus becomes the primary object of anal­ ysis. The anthropologist c l a u d e l e v i - s t r a u s s became famous for applying struc­ turalist methods to the analysis of the myths and rituals of the primitive societies he observed, and his “Structural Analysis of Myth” (1958) provided an influential early example for work in literary studies. Defining literary study as one of the “human sciences” instead of a humanistic pursuit, structuralist critics aimed to describe and categorize the systematic operation of literature, whose general codes were exhibited and instantiated in individual literary works. Encapsulating the tenets of Todorov s books Grammaire du Decameron (1969, Grammar of the Decameron) and Poetics of Prose (1971; trans. 1977), “Structural Analysis of Narrative” seeks to develop a “poetics,” that is, a theoretical study of literary techniques and categories. Todorov is quick to distinguish his version of structural analysis from the New Criticism, the predominant Anglo-American crit­ ical approach of the mid-twentieth century. While both focus on internal literary features of works rather than on external concerns such as historical context, he notes that the New Criticism deals only with the individual work itself. The struc­ turalist method proposes instead to understand the overall system in which the work is a part. In his analyses of B o c c a c c i o ' s Decameron (1351-53), for example, Todor­ ov s interest is not in any individual tale, but in the general and abstract plot struc­ tures that govern all the tales. For Todorov, the New Critical method results only in paraphrase and thus does not create new knowledge; the structuralist method, in contrast, charts the systematic laws and patterns that generate literary works. It therefore yields a scientific knowledge of literature, as physics yields a scientific knowledge of the laws of nature, or as linguistics yields a scientific knowledge of the laws of language. Following A r i s t o t l e ’s view of plot as the prime category of tragedy, Todorov (and narratology in general) takes plot as the central abstract structure of narra­ tive, analyzing the hundred tales in the Decameron on the basis of the similarity of their plots. They lead him to the insight that plot moves from an equilibrium to a disequilibrium— hence the action of the narrative— and concludes in a new equilibrium, which displays either “avoided punishment” or “conversion.” As he states, “All of the stories of the Decameron can be entered into this very broad schema.” In privileging and schematizing plot, Todorov also shows the influence of the Russian formalists, particularly the folklorist Vladimir Propp, whose Mor­ phology of the Folktale (1928) charts basic plot motifs or patterns common to folktales. Todorov designates the specific elements of each plot, on the model of the sentence, as subject, predicate, and adjective. In an effort to adopt the technical precision of linguistics, he discerns the “grammar” rather than semantic meaning of narrative.

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With the critiques of structuralism and the development of poststructuralism by thinkers such as j a c q u e s d e r r i d a through the 1970s, structuralism waned as a van­ guard theoretical approach. However, the structuralist theory of narrative has been less discredited than displaced, supplanted by more socially engaged approaches— among them, Marxism, feminism, the New Historicism, and cultural studies. Todorov’s own work broadened to consider larger cultural and interpretive issues, as did that of Barthes, who in the 1970s became a leading proponent of poststructuralist literary criticism, extolling the richness of textual interpretation. Yet as Todorov notes in “Structural Analysis of Narrative,” poetics does not deny “the relation between lit­ erature and . . . social life”; therefore it does not contradict “external” approaches, but serves a different purpose. Narratology remains an active though technical subfield in literary studies, and Todorov s work is still regarded as foundational. “Stru ctural Analysis of Narrative” Keywords: Narrative Theory, The Novel, Structuralism

Structural Analysis of Narrative1 The theme I propose to deal with is so vast that the few pages which follow will inevitably take the form of a resume. My title, moreover, contains the word “structural,” a word more misleading than enlightening today. To avoid misunderstandings as much as possible, I shall proceed in the following fash­ ion. First, I shall give an abstract description of what I conceive to be the structural approach to literature. This approach will then be illustrated by a concrete problem, that of narrative, and more specifically, that of plot. The examples will all be taken from the D ecam eron of Boccaccio.2 Finally, I shall attempt to make several general conclusions about the nature of narrative and the principles of its analysis. First of all, one can contrast two possible attitudes toward literature: a theoretical attitude and a descriptive attitude. The nature of structural analy­ sis will be essentially theoretical and non-descriptive; in other words, the aim of such a study will never be the description of a concrete work. The work will be considered as the manifestation of an abstract structure, merely one of its possible realizations; an understanding of that structure will be the real goal of structural analysis. Thus, the term “structure” has, in this case, a logical rather than spatial significance. Another opposition will enable us to focus more sharply on the critical position which concerns us. If we contrast the internal approach to a literary work with the external one, structural analysis would represent an internal approach. This opposition is well known to literary critics, and Wellek and Warren have used it as the basis for their Theory o f Literature.3 It is neces­ sary, however, to recall it here, because, in labeling all structural analysis “theoretical,” I clearly come close to what is generally termed an “external” approach (in imprecise usage, “theoretical” and “external,” on the one hand, 1. Translated by Arnold W einstein. 2. g i o v a n n i b o c c a c c i o (1 3 1 3 -1 3 7 5 ), Italian w riter; the D ecam eron (1351—53), his m ajor achievement, is a collection of 100 tales. 3. First published in 1949 and for decades a stan­

dard introduction to literary criticism ; the coau­ thors, A ustrian-born Rene W ellek (1 9 0 3 -1 9 9 5 ) and Austin W arren (1 8 9 9 -1 9 8 6 ), were two Amer­ ican literary critics.

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and “descriptive” and “internal,” on the other, are synonyms). For example, when Marxists or psychoanalysts deal with a work of literature, they are not interested in a knowledge of the work itself, but in the understanding of an abstract structure, social or psychic, which manifests itself through that work. This attitude is therefore both theoretical and external. On the other hand, a New Critic4 (imaginary) whose approach is obviously internal, will have no goal other than an understanding of the work itself; the result of his efforts will be a paraphrase of the work, which is supposed to reveal the meaning better than the work itself. Structural analysis differs from both of these attitudes. Here we can be satisfied neither by a pure description of the work nor by its interpretation in terms that are psychological or sociological or, indeed, philosophical. In other words, structural analysis coincides (in its basic tenets) with theory, with poetics of literature. Its object is the literary discourse rather than works of literature, literature that is virtual rather than real. Such analysis seeks no longer to articulate a paraphrase, a rational resume of the concrete work, but to propose a theory of the structure and operation of the literary discourse, to present a spectrum of literary possibilities, in such a manner that the existing works of literature appear as particular instances that have been realized. It must immediately be added that, in practice, structural analysis will also refer to real works: the best stepping-stone toward theory is that of precise, empirical knowledge. But such analysis will discover in each work what it has in common with others (study of genres, of periods, for example), or even with all other works (theory of literature); it would be unable to state the individual specificity of each work. In practice, it is always a question of going continually back and forth, from abstract literary properties to indi­ vidual works and vice versa. Poetics and description are in fact two comple­ mentary activities. On the other hand, to affirm the internal nature of this approach does not mean a denial of the relation between literature and other homogeneous series, such as philosophy or social life. It is rather a question of establishing a hierarchy: literature must be understood in its specificity, as literature, before we seek to determine its relation with anything else. It is easily seen that such a conception of literary analysis owes much to the modern notion of science. It can be said that structural analysis of lit­ erature is a kind of propaedeutic5 for a future science of literature. This term “science,” used with regard to literature, usually raises a multitude of pro­ tests. It will therefore perhaps be fitting to try to answer some of those protests right now. Let us first of all reread that page from Henry James’s6 famous essay on “The Art of Fiction,” which already contains several criticisms: “Nothing, for instance, is more possible than that he [the novelist] be of a turn of mind for which this odd, literal opposition of description and dialogue, incident and description, has little meaning and light. People often talk of these

4. An adherent of the dominant Anglo-American academic approach to literary study in the mid20th century, which focuses on the text itself and stresses close reading. Prom inent New C ritics include c l e a n t h b r o o k s (1 9 0 6 -1 9 9 4 ) and w i l ­ l i a m k . w i m s a t t j r . (1 9 0 7 -1 9 7 5 ); W arren and

Wellek were loosely associated with the move­ ment. 5. Analysis prelim inary to some other study. 6. A m erican novelist and critic (1 8 4 3 -1 9 1 6 ); for his programm atic “Art o f Fiction” (1884), see above.

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things as if they had a kind of internecine distinctness, instead of melting into each other at every breath, and being intimately associated parts of one general effort of expression. I cannot imagine composition existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel worth discussing at all, of a pas­ sage of description that is not in its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not partake of the nature of incident, or an incident that derives its interest from any other source than the general and only source of the success of a work of art— that of being illustrative. A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts. The critic who over the close texture of a finished work shall pretend to trace a geography of items will mark some frontiers as artificial, I fear, as any that have been known to history.” In this excerpt, the critic who uses such terms as “description,” “narra­ tion,” “dialogue,” is accused by Henry James of committing two sins. First, there will never be found, in a real text, a pure dialogue, a pure description, and so on. Secondly, the very use of these terms is unnecessary, even harm­ ful, since the novel is “a living thing, all one and continuous.” The first objection loses all its weight as soon as we put ourselves in the perspective of structural analysis; although it does aim at an understanding of concepts like “description” or “action,” there is no need to find them in a pure state. It seems rather natural that abstract concepts cannot be analyzed directly, at the level of empirical reality. In physics, for example, we speak of a property such as temperature although we are unable to isolate it by itself and are forced to observe it in bodies possessing many other qualities also, like resistance and volume. Temperature is a theoretical concept, and it does not need to exist in a pure state; such is also true for description. The second objection is still more curious. Let us consider the already dubious comparison between a work and a living thing. We all know that any part of our body will contain blood, nerves, muscles— all at the same time; we nonetheless do not require the biologist to abandon these misleading abstrac­ tions, designated by the words: blood, nerves, muscles. The fact that we find them together does not prevent us from distinguishing them. If the first argu­ ment of James had a positive aspect (it indicated that our objective should be composed of abstract categories and not concrete works), the second repre­ sents an absolute refusal to recognize the existence of abstract categories, of whatever is not visible. There is another very popular argument against the introduction of scien­ tific principles in literary analysis. We are told in this instance that science must be objective, whereas the interpretation of literature is always subjec­ tive. In my opinion this crude opposition is untenable. The critic s work can have varying degrees of subjectivity; everything depends on the perspective he has chosen. This degree will be much lower if he tries to ascertain the properties of the work rather than seeking its significance for a given period or milieu. The degree of subjectivity will vary, moreover, when he is examin­ ing different strata of the same work. There will be very few discussions concerning the metrical or phonic scheme of a poem; slightly more concern­ ing the nature of its images; still more with regard to the more complex seman­ tic patterns.

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On the other hand there is no social science (or science whatsoever) which is totally free of subjectivity. The very choice of one group of theoretical concepts instead of another presupposes a subjective decision; but if we do not make this choice, we achieve nothing at all. The economist, the anthro­ pologist, and the linguist must be subjective also; the only difference is that they are aware of it and they try to limit this subjectivity, to make allowance for it within the theory. One can hardly attempt to repudiate the subjectivity of the social sciences at a time when even the natural sciences are affected by it. It is now time to stop these theoretical speculations and to give an exam­ ple of the structural approach to literature. This example will serve as illus­ tration rather than proof: the theories which I have just exposed will not be necessarily contested if there are some imperfections in the concrete analy­ sis based on them. The abstract literary concept I would like to discuss is that of plot. Of course, that does not mean that literature, for me, is reduced to plot alone. I do think, however, that plot is a notion that critics undervalue and, hence, often disregard. The ordinary reader, however, reads a book above all as the narration of a plot; but this naive reader is uninterested in theoretical prob­ lems. My aim is to suggest a certain number of useful categories for exam­ ining and describing plots. These categories can thus implement the meager vocabulary at our command with regard to the analysis of narrative; it con­ sists of such terms as action, character, recognition. The literary examples that I shall use are taken from the D ecam eron of Boccaccio. I do not intend, however, to give an analysis of the D ecam eron: these stories will be used only to display an abstract literary structure, that is, plot. I shall begin by stating the plots of several of the tales. A monk introduces a young girl into his cell and makes love to her. The abbot detects this misbehavior and plans to punish him severely. But the monk learns of the abbots discovery and lays a trap for him by leaving his cell. The abbot goes in and succumbs to the charms of the girl, while the monk tries his turn at watching. At the end when the abbot intends to punish him, the monk points out that he has just committed the same sin. Result: the monk is not punished (I,4).7 Isabetta, a young nun, is with her lover in her cell. Upon discovering this, the other nuns become jealous and go to wake up the abbess and have Isa­ betta punished. But the abbess was in bed with an abbot; because she has to come out quickly, she puts the under-shorts of the abbot on her head instead of her coif. Isabetta is led into the church; as the abbess begins to lecture her, Isabetta notices the garment on her head. She brings this evidence to everyone’s attention and thus escapes punishment (IX,2). Peronnella receives her lover while her husband, a poor mason, is absent. But one day he comes home early. Peronnella hides the lover in a cask; when the husband comes in, she tells him that somebody wanted to buy the cask and that this somebody is now in the process of examining it. The hus­ band believes her and is delighted with the sale. The lover pays and leaves with the cask (VII,2). 7. There are 10 characters in the D ecam eron, and each in turn tells one story a day for 10 days; “1,4” refers to the 4th story on the 1st day.

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A married woman meets her lover every night in the family’s country house, where she is usually alone. But one night the husband returns from town; the lover has not come yet; he arrives a little later and knocks at the door. The wife asserts that this is a ghost who comes to annoy her every night and must be exorcised. The husband pronounces the formula which the wife has improvised; the lover figures out the situation and leaves, pleased with the ingenuity of his mistress (VII, 1). It is easy to recognize that these four plots (and there are many others like them in the Decameron) have something in common. In order to express that, I shall use a schematic formulation which retains only the common elements of these plots. The sign —» will indicate a relation of entailment between two actions. X violates a law —>Y must punish X —» X tries to avoid being punished —» Y violates a law —» Y does not punish X

{

Y believes that X is not violating the law

This schematic representation requires several explanations. 1. We first notice that the minimal schema of the plot can be shown naturally by a clause. Between the categories of language and those of nar­ rative there is a profound analogy which must be explored. 2. Analysis of this narrative clause leads us to discover the existence of two entities which correspond to the “parts of speech.” (a) The agents, designated here by X and Y, correspond to proper nouns. They serve as sub­ ject or object of the clause; moreover, they permit identification of their refer­ ence without its being described, (b) The predicate, which is always a verb here: violate, punish, avoid. The verbs have a semantic characteristic in common: they denote an action which modifies the preceding situation, (c) An analysis of other stories would have shown us a third part of narrative speech, which corresponds to quality and does not alter the situation in which it appears: the adjective. Thus in 1,8: at the beginning of the action Ermino is stingy, whereas Guillaume is generous. Guillaume finds a way to ridicule Ermino’s stinginess, and since then Ermino is “the most gener­ ous and pleasant of gentlemen.” The qualities of the two characters are examples of adjectives. 3. Actions (violate, punish) can have a positive or a negative form; thus, we shall also need the category of status, negation being one possible status. 4. The category of modality8 is also relevant here. When we say “X must punish Y,” we denote thereby an action which has not yet taken place (in the imaginary universe of the story) but which is nonetheless present in a virtual state. Andre Jolles9 suggested that entire genres could be character­ ized by their mood; legends would be the genre of the imperative, to the extent that they offer us an example to follow; the fairy tale is, as is often said, the genre of the optative, of the fulfilled wish. 5. When we write “Y believes that X is not violating the law,” we have an example of a verb (“believe”) which differs from the others. It is not a ques­ 8. T h at is, the determ ination o f whether a sentence expresses a fact, a com mand, a wish, and so on, as set by the form (the mood) of the verb and its auxiliaries.

9. Dutch literary and art historian (1 8 7 4 -1 9 4 6 ); the reference is to his E infache Form en (1930,

Sim ple Forms).

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tion of a different action here but of a different perception of the same action. We could therefore speak of a kind of “point of view” which refers not only to the relation between reader and narrator, but also to the characters. 6. There are also relations between the clauses; in our example this is always a causal relation; but a more extensive study would distinguish at least between entailment and presupposition (for example, the relation introduc­ ing modal punishment). Analysis of other stories shows that there are also purely temporal relations (succession) and purely spatial ones (parallelism). 7. An organized succession of clauses forms a new syntagmatic pattern,1 sequence. Sequence is perceived by the reader as a finished story; it is the minimal narrative in a completed form. This impression of completion is caused by a modified repetition of the initial clause; the first and the last clause will be identical but they will either have a different mood or status, for instance, or they will be seen from different points of view. In our exam­ ple it is punishment which is repeated: first changed in modality, then denied. In a sequence of temporal relations, repetition can be total. 8. We might also ask: is there a way back? How does one get from the abstract, schematic representation to the individual tale? Here, there are three answers: (a) The same kind of organization can be studied at a more concrete level: each clause of our sequence could be rewritten as an entire sequence itself. We would not thereby change the nature of the analysis, but rather the level of generality. (b) It is also possible to study the concrete actions that incorporate our abstract pattern. For instance, we may point out the different laws that become violated in the stories of the D ecam eron or the different punish­ ments that are meted out. That would be a thematic study. (c) Finally, we can examine the verbal medium which composes our abstract patterns. The same action can be expressed by means of dialogue or descrip­ tion, figurative or literal discourse; moreover, each action can be seen from a different point of view. Here we are dealing with a rhetorical study. These three directions correspond to the three major categories of narra­ tive analysis: study of narrative syntax, study of theme, study of rhetoric. At this point we may ask: what is the purpose of all this? Has this analysis taught us anything about the stories in question? But that would be a bad question. Our goal is not a knowledge of the D ecam eron (although such analysis will also serve that purpose), but rather an understanding of litera­ ture or, in this specific instance, of plot. The categories of plot mentioned here will permit a more extensive and precise description of other plots. The object of our study must be narrative mood, or point of view, or sequence, and not this or that story in and for itself. From such categories we can move forward and inquire about the possibil­ ity of a typology of plots. For the moment it is difficult to offer a valid hypoth­ esis; therefore I must be content to summarize the results of my research on the Decameron.

1. T h e relationship between linguistic items that com bine to form a m eaningful whole (e.g., the words in a given sentence); in contrast, paradig-

matic relationships obtain between items that can be substituted for one another in a given context (e.g., two adverbs).

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The minimal complete plot can be seen as the shift from one equilibrium to another. This term “equilibrium,” which I am borrowing from genetic psychology, means the existence of a stable but not static relation between the members of a society; it is a social law, a rule of the game, a particular system of exchange. The two moments of equilibrium, similar and differ­ ent, are separated by a period of imbalance, which is composed of a process of degeneration and a process of improvement. All of the stories of the D ecam eron can be entered into this very broad schema. From that point, however, we can make a distinction between two kinds of stories. The first can be labeled “avoided punishment”; the four stories I mentioned at the beginning are examples of it. Here we follow a complete cycle: we begin with a state of equilibrium which is broken by a violation of the law. Punishment would have restored the initial balance; the fact that punishment is avoided establishes a new equilibrium. The other type of story is illustrated by the tale about Ermino (1,8), which we may label “conversion.” This story begins in the middle of a complete cycle, with a state of imbalance created by a flaw in one of the characters. The story is basically the description of an improvement process— until the flaw is no longer there. The categories which help us to describe these types tell us much about the universe of a book. With Boccaccio, the two equilibriums symbolize (for the most part) culture and nature,2 the social and the individual; the story usually consists in illustrating the superiority of the second term over the first. We could also seek even greater generalizations. It is possible to contrast a specific plot typology with a game typology and to see them as two vari­ ants of a common structure. So little has been done in this direction that we do not even know what kinds of questions to ask. I would like to return now to the beginning argument and to look at the initial question again: what is the object of structural analysis of literature (or, if you wish, of poetics)? At first glance, it is literature or, as Jakobson3 would have said, literariness. But let us look more closely. In our discussion of literary phenomena, we have had to introduce a certain number of notions and to create an image of literature; this image constitutes the constant pre­ occupation of all research on poetics. “Science is concerned not with things but with the system of signs it can substitute for things,” wrote Ortega y Gas­ set.4 The virtualities which make up the object of poetics (as of all other sci­ ences), these abstract qualities of literature exist only in the discourse of poetics itself. From this perspective, literature becomes only a mediator, a language, which poetics uses for dealing with itself. We must not, however, conclude that literature is secondary for poetics or that it is not, in a certain sense, the object of poetics. Science is character­ ized precisely by this ambiguity concerning its object, an ambiguity that need not be resolved, but rather used as the basis for analysis. Poetics, like litera­ ture, consists of an uninterrupted movement back and forth between the two poles: the first is auto-reference, preoccupation with itself; the second is what we usually call its object. 2. T he opposition between nature and culture is foundational in structuralism , notably in the work of the French anthropologist c l a l ' d e LE VIs t r a u s s ( 1 9 0 8 -2 0 0 9 ).

3. r o m a n j a k o b s o n (1 8 9 6 -1 9 8 2 ), Russian-born Am erican linguist and literary theorist, 4. Jose Ortega y G asset (1883—1955), Spanish philosopher and critic.

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There is a practical conclusion to be drawn from these speculations. In poetics as elsewhere, discussions of methodology are not a minor area of the larger field, a kind of accidental by-product: they are rather its very center, its principal goal. As Freud5 said, “The important thing in a scientific work is not the nature of the facts with which it is concerned, but the rigor, the exactness of the method which is prior to the establishment of these facts, and the research of a synthesis as large as possible.” 1969 5.

S IG M U N D F R E U D

(185 6 -1 9 3 9 ), Austrian founder of psychoanalysis.

K A R A TA N I K O J I N b.

1941

Karatani Kojin is widely regarded as the most influential critic and philosopher of contemporary Japan. His major theme is alterity— understood as a necessarily elusive realm of otherness that can be glimpsed only rarely through ruptures in a world tightly enclosed within the formal systems of signs, Western metaphysics, and capi­ talism. This pursuit has led to Karatani’s engagements with a wide range of disci­ plines: literature, art and art history, architecture, city planning, linguistics, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, mathematics, philosophy, and political economy. From his literary criticism to his rereadings of i m m a n u e l k a n t and k a r l m a r x , Karatani’s work has been guided by the conviction that true insight derives solely from confron­ tation with that which is external to the thinking self, to the degree that it is not subsumed by that self. The key is to “see things neither from one’s own viewpoint, nor from the viewpoint of others, but to face the reality that is exposed through the dif­ ference between the two.” Karatani Yoshio (Karatani is his family name) was born in 1941 in Amagasaki City, midway between the major urban centers of Kobe and Osaka. In 1960, during his freshman year at Tokyo University, he joined a student group called the Com­ munist League, popularly known as the Bund. One of many such groups in Japan in an era of widespread student activism, the Bund disavowed Japanese Communist Party orthodoxy. It was actively supported by the New Left poet and literary critic Yoshimoto Takaaki (1924—2012), whom Karatani has cited as one of the inspira­ tions for his decision to pursue a career as a critic. The year 1960 is pivotal in postwar Japanese history, marked by large-scale but unsuccessful demonstrations against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1951. Karatani’s experience of these events and their aftermath forms the basis for his later insights into the relationships between political defeat, the formation of interiority, and the institu­ tionalization of discourse. Eventually withdrawing from the arena of student political activism, Karatani completed a B.A. in economics in 1964; he continued his studies at Tokyo University, earning an M.A. in English literature in 1967. His career as a public intellectual was launched in 1969, when he was awarded the prestigious Gunzo Literary Prize for an essay on the status of consciousness and nature in the work of Natsume Soseki (1867—1916), a key figure in modern Japanese literature. Along with Kant, Marx, f r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e , and s i g m u n d f r e u d , Soseki would become one of Karatani’s

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major reference points; he took the name “Kojin” from the title of a Soseki novel (translated into English as The Wayfarer). Karatani taught at Hosei University in Tokyo from 1970 to 1997, and at Kinki University in Osaka from 1997 until his retire­ ment in 2006. From 1975 to 1977, he was invited to Yale University as a visiting pro­ fessor of modern Japanese literature, where he met j a c q u e s d e r r i d a , p a u l d e m a n , and f r e d r i c j a m e s o n . Between 1990 and 2004 Karatani also taught regularly at Columbia University as a visiting professor of comparative literature. It was during his two-year residence at Yale that Karatani initially conceived of Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1980; trans. 1993), the work from which we draw our selection. One of the most widely read and frequently cited texts in Japa­ nese literary studies today, Origins was published in translation by Duke University Press in the Post-Contemporary Interventions Series, whose editors include S t a n l e y f i s h and Jameson. Karatani has likened his “existence as a stranger in the United States” to that of Soseki, who lived in London from 1900 to 1903. This sojourn initi­ ated both a wide-ranging critical inquiry into the meaning of “literature” and a liter­ ary practice that, in Karatani’s view, resisted the dominant modern epistemological paradigm in which the exterior space of “landscape” and the interior space of “the self” had come to be taken as self-evident realities. Karatani launched his own revi­ sionist account of the origins of modern Japanese literature while reconsidering Soseki’s theoretical work, which had long been dismissed as a “failure” abandoned for the actual writing of literature itself. By resuscitating Soseki’s work as an early twentieth-century Japanese theorist, Karatani implicitly overturned two widespread assumptions: that “theory” is exclusive to “the West” and that “literature” has always existed everywhere in much the same form. Japan’s encounter with the modern West in the late nineteenth century occasioned a profound reorganization of knowledge that affected all fields of intellectual inquiry and cultural practice. It was during this time that the modern Western categories of “literature,” “self-expression,” and “external object” became firmly established, effac­ ing earlier concepts and practices of writing that were very different. In Europe these categories emerged gradually over two centuries, and thus came to seem completely natural and inevitable. By contrast, Japan’s rapid transition threw into doubt the assumed universality of “literature,” “self,” and “object” in both European and Japa­ nese contexts. It also opened to question the Eurocentric notion of linear historical development that typifies narrative accounts of “modernity.” Origins of Modern Japanese Literature employs the genealogical method of Nietz­ sche and m i c h e l f o u c a u l t to expose the historicity of these concepts. In an ironic reversal of the rhetoric of Western expansion— according to which, for instance, Christopher Columbus is said to have “discovered” the Americas— Origins presents a series of traumatic discoveries that incorporated the Japanese people into modernity: its chapter titles include “The Discovery of Landscape,” “The Discovery of Inferiority,” and “The Discovery of the Child,” implying that these concepts were new to Japan. In our selection Karatani Kojin depicts correspondences between a wide array of phenomena occurring during the Meiji era (1868—1912). He establishes links between contact with the West, a changing political system in Japan, the emer­ gence of the isolated individual endowed with an inner life, the rise of psychology, the appearance of landscape painting (an external tableau seen from an individual viewpoint), and new concepts of literature. The subject-object dichotomy of modern (post-1650) Western philosophy sets a self-expressive subject against an inert and measurable external world. This division brought about a new mode of perception— what T. s. e l i o t once called a “dissociation of sensibility”— which displaced the holistic, ordered world of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Analogous shifts occurred during the late Meiji period, when Japanese seasonal paintings (shiki-e and tsukinami) became landscapes; written classical language (gahun) lost ground to vernacular spoken language (genbun itchi); and literature narrowed. In the last

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case, a broad, varied corpus of texts and styles written in classical Chinese with many Japanese permutations (kanbungaku) changed to a smaller, national canon of works in Japanese (kokubungaku). What counts as “literature” prior to and after the Meiji era is quite different— but before Karatani, most critics had overlooked this transformation. While drawing numerous, often unexpected parallels with and contrasts between European and Japanese cultural formations, Karatani does more than simply hold up a Japanese mirror to Western modernity. In “The Discovery of Landscape,” our selection, the term landscape refers to the notion of “objective description” that has played a central role in modern definitions of literature. The use of a term primarily associated with (Western) painting enables Karatani to identify an overarching structure of modern perception, premised on the split between an interiorized “self” and an exteriorized “outside” from which that self has already been alienated. Once they accepted this split, the general public could see “landscape” as nothing more or less than that which exists outside of themselves. Surprisingly, this modern Western view is contrasted with medieval European and pre-twentieth-century Japanese per­ ceptions of place, which valued the general, often transcendental meanings attached to a location rather than any putatively empirical impressions of it. Karatani thus uses landscape deconstructively to signify both a representational practice (the “realistic representation” of “nature”) and the transformation of perception that made the prac­ tice possible. This transformation, once established, represses its own “origins” or historicity and comes to seem natural. One of Karatani s signal contributions to the discourse on non-Western moder­ nity is his focus on the ideological role of “literature”— its simultaneous production of the expressing self and of the external objects that the self describes. In the pro­ cess, he attempts to expose the modern nation-state of Japan itself as a construct, in whose production this aesthetic apparatus played a role. His account connects the origins of landscape in Japan to the emergence of the inner self in the 1890s, not long after the complete suppression of the People’s Rights movement by the Japa­ nese state. Both citing and historicizing Freud’s theory that consciousness derives from an experience of trauma that redirects the libido inward, Karatani suggests that this political defeat helped create the necessary conditions for a new structure of perception, within which both landscape and the inner self of literature suddenly appeared as a priori givens. Though modern Japan has been shaped since the late nineteenth century by the threat of Western domination, it was also the first Asian country to join the exclu­ sive club of modern nation-states. This development led to a reversal in its relations with China (regarded by Japan for more than a millennium as the center of civiliza­ tion); it also led to Japan’s aggressive participation in the originally Western project of colonizing Asia, which finally culminated in its disastrous defeat in World War II. During the 1930s and 1940s, Japanese expansion in Asia, China included, was ideologically justified as the liberation of Asia from Western domination, a discur­ sive strategy made possible by Japanese attacks on (Western) modernity. Karatani’s steadfast refusal to offer a non-Western alternative to modernity stems from his keen awareness of the ease with which the critique of (Western) modernity— as necessary as it is— can be appropriated by reactionary politics. Because of its insights into the nature and formation of modern literature in a non-Western context, Origins has enjoyed a broad international readership; it has been translated into Korean, Chinese, German, and Turkish in addition to English. The work presents a critical challenge to the story of a gradual, if always somehow incomplete, development of “Western-style” realism and the literary self in Japan— a historiographical approach previously standard on both sides of the Pacific. Indeed, contrary to the author’s intentions, this text now serves as the new “standard his­ tory” in Japanese literary studies, shaping the work of today’s younger critics.

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Karatani explicitly defines himself as a critic and not a theorist— a distinction that locates his writings in the context of, and as a critical response to, the present moment, rather than in a purely hypothetical or timeless objective vantage point from which the present and past might be considered. In this regard, Karatani’s inquiry into the relationship between landscape, self, literature, and politics in 1890s Japan constitutes his critical response to the discursive space of 1970s Japan, an era that repeats the same “pattern of retreat to interiority and literature after political setback.” After he wrote Origins, Karatani’s own trajectory would move in the opposite direction, away from interiority and literature and toward exteriority and political action. His Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2001; trans. 2003) laid the philosophical groundwork for the ethico-economic New Association Movement (NAM), which he founded in 2000. Boldly proclaiming that “Communism without economic basis is empty, while communism without moral basis is blind,” Transcri­ tique garnered much attention, particularly in radical philosophy circles, for its alternative vision of Kant and Marx, and for the possibility it raises of superseding capitalism, nation, and state. Although NAM was dissolved in 2003, Karatani has continued his engagement with political activism, most notably in the antinuclear movement that emerged in response to the nuclear disaster that followed Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. A more recent work available in English, T he Structure o f World History: From Modes o f Production to Modes o f Exchange (2010; trans. with revisions, 2014), builds on core aspects o f Transcritique by proposing that “rethinking the history of social formations from the perspective of modes of exchange” rather than that of Marx’s modes of production is crucial to any attempt to “move beyond the present-day Capital-Nation-State system.” Some scholars have taken issue with Karatani’s characterization of Japanese modernity as a fundamental break from the past, citing continuities over Japan’s long cultural history. Behind this general objection are two complicated questions. First, does a sharp focus on the rise of modern epistemological constellations in a late-developing nation-state underplay or efface the co-presence of other modes of perception and practice, in effect reproducing the same universalism and homoge­ nization that it seeks to undermine? And second, can the notion of cultural conti­ nuity itself be separated from the ideology of modern, linear historiography, with its political interest in locating the origins of modern nations in the distant past? Because Karatani conceives of history as a series of ruptures that immediately repress their own origins, and because, like Foucault, he characterizes modernity as a system that has “no outside,” his work has also been subject to a general epistemo­ logical criticism. If a structure of perception is thoroughly ensconced within the epis­ temological constellation that produced it, then how can anyone within that constellation gain critical insight into it or break from it? Whereas Foucault denies that the individual subject can be a locus of such insight, Karatani privileges the writer Soseki as the rare example of someone who, caught between historical para­ digms, became “aware that the structure of his perceptions had been fundamentally altered.” He thus treats Soseki as an exception to the general rule that epistemologi­ cal reversals, such as the one that produced the modern concept of “literature,” hide themselves as soon as they are established, e d w a r d w. s a i d also allows such creative individuals to be rare exceptions. In an implicit critique of the Foucauldian approach, Karatani defends this apparent inconsistency by asserting that “it was not my aim to write about the construction of modern Japanese literature from a position of histori­ cal transcendence.” O rigins o f M o d ern J a p a n e s e L itera tu re Keywords: Globalization, Literary History, Modernity, Nationhood, New Historicism, Realism, Subjectivity, Vernacular Language

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From Origins o f Modern Japanese L iteratu re1 From C hapter 1. T he Discovery o f Landscape 2

The strongly personal tone of Soseki’s2 preface to the Theory o f Literature suggests that the role of theoretician was something he embraced reluctantly and as if perforce. He explains how he came to entertain the question “What is the nature of literature?” As a child I enjoyed studying the Chinese classics.3 Although the time I spent in this kind of study was not long, it was from the Chinese classics that I learned, however vaguely and obscurely, what literature was. In my heart, I hoped that it would be the same way when I read English litera­ ture, and that I would not necessarily begrudge giving my whole life, if that were necessary, to its study. I had years ahead of me. I cannot say that I lacked the time to study English literature. But what I resent is that despite my study I never mastered it. When I graduated I was plagued by the fear that somehow I had been cheated by English litera­ ture.4 There was a basis for Soseki’s fear that he had been “cheated” by English literature. Only those who have come to accept “literature” as natural cannot detect this “cheating.” Nor should we invoke vague generalizations about the identity crisis of one who confronts an alien culture. To do this would be to assume there was something self-evident about “literature” and to lose sight of its ideological nature. Soseki had some inkling of the ideological nature of literature because of his familiarity with kanhungaku .5 Of course, kanbungaku as Soseki knew it was not simply the “literature of China,” nor was he attempting to compare it with Western literature. Soseki was in no position to pursue idle comparisons between kanbungaku and Western literature. In point of fact, Soseki himself could not even grasp kanbungaku as a tangible existence, for by his own time it had already become something uncertain and irretrievable, something which could only be imagined on the other shore, as it were, of “literature.” Soseki uses the term kanbungaku in a manner very similar to the way in which the word sansuiga (literally, “mountain-water pictures” or “landscape paintings”) was used in Meiji Japan6 to denote paintings of natural scenes done in traditional styles. It was only after the Japanese had been introduced

1. Translated by Brett de Bary, who occasionally retains the Japanese words or adds inform ation in parentheses. 2. Natsume Soseki (1867—1916), one o f the most important novelists of his tim e; Theory o f Litera­ ture (1906) is based on his lectures on English literature at Tokyo University. 3. Foundational works o f history, philosophy, ethics, and poetry, w'hich constituted the core syllabus of elite education in Japan for more than a m illennium . 4. Natsume Soseki, Bungakuron, in Natsume

Soseki zenshu, vol. 16, pp. 8 - 9 [translator’s note]. 5. Both the techniques used to make classical Chinese works accessible to Japanese readers and writing in Japanese that imitates those works. Hence the term neither corresponds to the 19thcentury European concept of “literature” nor sup­ ports a sharp distinction between “C h in ese” and “Japanese” texts. 6. The years of the reign of Mutsuhito (as emperor, he took the reign name Meiji), 1868—1912, which ended Japan’s feudalism and began its rise as a modern nation-state.

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to Western landscape painting that the word sansuiga became widely used. As Usami Keiji/wrote in an essay on a recent exhibit of such paintings: The word sansuiga was not actually used in the period when the works exhibited here were painted. At that time they were referred to as shiki-e or tsukinami (seasonal paintings). Ernest Fenollosa,8 who played a lead­ ing role in Japan s modernization during the Meiji period, coined the term sansuiga and established it as a descriptive category for paintings. The very concept of traditional “landscape paintings” arose out of the disjuncture between Japanese culture and modern Western consciousness.9 The same may be said of kanbungaku. Although Soseki uses the term to differentiate certain practices from those of modern literature, it is itself rooted in the consciousness that produced the category “literature” and has no existence apart from it. Literature makes the objectification of kan bu n­ gaku possible. In this sense to compare kanbungaku and English literature is to ignore the historicity of literature itself— of “literature” as a kind of “landscape.” It is to fail to take into account the fact that, through the emergence of “literature” and “landscape,” the very structure of our per­ ceptions has been transformed. I would like to propose that the notion of “landscape” developed in Japan sometime during the third decade of the Meiji period.1 O f course, there were landscapes long before they were “discovered.” But “landscapes” as such did not exist prior to the 1890s, and it is only when we think about it in this way that the layers of meaning entailed in the notion of a “discovery of landscape” become apparent. It was precisely this period of transition that Soseki lived through. Yet to invoke the concept of a “transitional period” is merely to fall back on a con­ struct of linear history. It was only after Soseki had already decided to study English literature that he became aware that the structure of his percep­ tions had been fundamentally altered. Nor was there a kind of static trian­ gular relationship established in Soseki’s mind between himself, English literature, and kanbungaku. As with his character Daisuke in the novel Sore Kara,2 it would dawn on Soseki unpredictably at certain moments that he had already made a decision. Similarly, we cannot describe the Japanese discovery of “landscape” as a process that unfolded in a linear pattern from past to present. “Time” has been refracted and turned upside down. A person who sees landscape as natural will not perceive this reversal. But it is here that we can find the origin of Soseki’s doubt. Soseki s fear that he had been cheated by English literature expresses the anxiety of a man who suddenly finds himself in the midst of a “landscape.” It is interesting that Soseki referred to his native literature as kanbungaku rather than Nihon no bungaku (Japanese literature). The protests of eigh-

7. Prominent Japanese oil painter (1 9 4 0 -2 0 1 2 ), author of several works of art theory and criticism. 8. American poet and art scholar (1 8 5 3 -1 9 0 8 ), who served as curator for the Imperial Museum of Japan from 1888 to 1890. He profoundly affected how the concept of “fine a rt” developed and was institutionalized in Japan.

9. Usami Keiji, “Sansuiga ni zetsubo o miru” (The despair of Japanese landscape painting), Gendai shiso, May 1977 [Karatani’s note]. 1. T hat is, 1 8 8 8 -1 8 9 7 . 2. Published in 1909 (translated into English as And Then, 1978).

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teenth century nativist3 scholars notwithstanding, kanbungaku has surely been the orthodox literature of Japan. As Yoshimoto Takaaki4 has pointed out, even the existence of the first imperial poetry anthology, the Manyoshu, in the mid-eighth century can be traced to the impact on Japan of Chinese characters and literature in Chinese.5 We all recognize that it was in Chi­ nese literature that we were introduced to “flowers, birds, wind, and moon” (.kacho fugetsu),6 yet even those things which nativist scholars posited as purely indigenous were intimately related to the structure of perception we refer to as kanbungaku. It was only after this structure of perception crystal­ lized that Japanese in the classical period began to compose jo k e i1 (f&JI; compositions about places)— their equivalent of discovering “landscape.” Our search for the origins of writing will never take us beyond writing, beyond ccriture.8 My discussion is complicated by the fact that the discovery of “landscape” in the third decade of the Meiji period is similar to the premodern discov­ ery of Chinese literature, so that we now confront successive layers of inversions.9 Just as nativist scholars, when they posited the existence of a literature that existed before Chinese literature, could only do so from within the epistemological constellation we now call kanbungaku, Meiji Japa­ nese who searched for a landscape that predated “landscape” faced the con­ tradiction of being able to envision it only in relation to “landscape.” The very question “What is a Japanese landscape painting?” is by definition predicated on an inversion. The following remarks by Usami Keiji express a profound awareness of this difficulty: We must investigate the nature of “time” and place in sansuiga in order to understand its spatial dimension. For the depiction of place in this Japanese landscape painting cannot be reduced to the notion of “posi­ tion” as defined by European principles of perspective. Position, as estab­ lished by these principles, is the totality of what can be apprehended by a single person with a fixed point of vision. The relationships between all the things that can be apprehended from this point of view at one instant in time are determined objectively on a grid of coordinates. These are the laws of perspective which have conditioned the modern visual sensibility.

3. T he term nativism, or kokugaku (often trans­ lated as National Learning), refers to the broadranging 18th-century discourse which sought to define a distinct Japanese identity while contest­ ing the influence of Chinese culture on Japan [translator’s note], 4. Japanese poet and literary critic (1 924—2012). 5. T h e anthology o f Japanese poetry (C ollection o f a Myriad Ages or Myriad Leaves) was origi­ nally written entirely in C hin ese ch aracters or ideograms, chosen som etim es for their co rre­ spondence to the poem ’s ideas and som etim es to represent its sounds. 6. A classical C hinese term, used when a speaker of English might say “the beauty of nature.” 7. Description of place (Modern Japanese).

Karatani gives the term a double meaning by making it also refer to the convention in classical {7th- to I9th -c.) Japanese poetry o f alluding to famous places (m eisho ), which in his view dis­ played greater concern with the figures of writ­ ing than with the representation of actual places. 8. An allusion to the inversion of the conventional hierarchy of speech and writing by the French philosopher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 4 ), who showed that ecriture (any and all forms of inscrip­ tion) precedes speech. 9. Karatani uses the term inversion to signify the reversal o f an epistemological or semiotic constel­ lation that, once established, represses its own historicity and assumes an appearance of natural­ ness or inevitability.

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By contrast to this, place in the landscape paintings we now call sansuiga is not concerned with the relationship between the individual and “things,” but presents a transcendental metaphysical “model.” This mode of existence of place, and its transcendental nature, is something sansuiga has in common with medieval European painting. In the for­ mer, the transcendental place is an ideal realm to which the enlightened sages awakened; in the latter, it is the realm of Scripture and the divine.1 In sansuiga the painter is not looking at an object but envisioning the transcendental. Similarly, poets like Basho and Sanetomo2 were not look­ ing at “landscapes.” As Yanagita Kunio3 has said, there is not a single line of description in Bashos Oku no hosom ichi (Narrow road to the deep north, 1694).4 Even what looks like description is not. If we can follow the subtle yet crucial distinction Yanagita has drawn here, we will be able to see both the process of the Japanese discovery of “landscape” and the literary “his­ tory” that paralleled that transformation of perception. In literature, for example, it was only when Japanese naturalism5 (and the rejection of Bakin6) had become a mainstream trend that Saikaku7 was dis­ covered to be a “realist.” But it is doubtful that Saikaku s writing conformed to our contemporary definition of realism. Saikaku did not “see things as they are” any more than did Shakespeare, whose dramas were based on classical models and written within the framework of the morality play. Similarly, the Meiji poet Shiki praised Buson’s8 haiku for being almost like paintings. But Busons haiku were in no way related to the sensibility of Shiki and his “sketches”; they were closer in spirit to his own sansuiga. This is not to deny that Buson was different from Basho. But what differentiated them was not what we perceive it to be today. Shiki himself acknowledged this. He described, for example, the “painterly” quality of the poetry produced by Buson’s bold incorporation of Chinese compounds into his poetry.9 The fol­ lowing poem, Shiki held, is enlivened by an intense dynamism because the characters (^CM) are not given their Japanese reading (okaw a) but the Sini-

1. Usami Keiji, ibid. [Karatani s note]. 2. Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192-1219), third shogun o f the Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333) and renowned poet. Matsuo Basho (1644—1694), Japanese poet, critic, and essayist, best known for his major role in the development of the Japanese genre of poetry called haiku (a 3-unit form, with the syllabic pattern 5-7-5). 3. Bureaucrat and scholar (187 5 -1 9 6 2 ), a major figure in Japanese ethnology and folklore studies. 4. This text is the travel diary recording the poet Matsuo Basho’s journey to the remote northern provinces of the island of Honshu in 1689. The text includes, along with its narrative sections, many famous haiku about sites associated with Japanese literature and history and, allusively, with Chinese poetic and historical texts [translator’s note]. 5. Naturalism was introduced to Japan from Europe in the early 20th century, when Japanese proponents o f the movement dominated both literary criticism and production. Japanese natu­ ralism has been seen as culm inating in the domi­ nance o f the prose narrative over previously privileged poetic literary form s, o f the modern vernacular style over classical written styles, and o f conventions of realism [translator’s note].

6. Takizawa Bakin (1767—1848), author of fiction that remained highly popular into the early Meiji period; his rejection was signaled by attacks on his work in Tsubouchi Shoyo’s Essence o f the Novel (1885—86), which introduced Western realism to Japan. 7. Ihara Saikaku (1 6 4 2 -1 6 9 3 ), influential and prolific writer best known for his ukiyo zoshi (lit­ erally, “tales o f the floating world”), entertaining prose that focused on the lives o f merchants and samurai, especially their activities in the plea­ sure quarters. In the late 19th century, his fiction was championed by Japanese naturalists for its “realistic” depiction o f the “nature” of sexuality. 8. Yosa Buson (1716—1783), Japanese painter and master o f haiku poetry rich in visual detail. M asaoki Shiki (1867—1902), Japanese poet and author o f influential treatises that advocated a realistic, descriptive style o f poetry; he attacked the work of Basho, argued in favor o f shasei (copying life, sketching), and helped modernize both haiku and tanka (a 5-unit form, in the syl­ labic pattern 5-7-5-7-7). 9. For centuries, classical Japanese poetic con­ ventions had strictly limited the poetic lexicon to “Japanese” words.

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cized reading “taiga.”1 But what this example really reveals is that Buson was fascinated, not so much by landscape, as by the written word. Early summer rains! Facing the swollen river Two houses Samidare ya Taiga o mae ni le niken The concept of Japanese literature (kokubungaku)2 took firm root during the third decade of the Meiji period. Needless to say, this was both made possible by and interpreted in terms of the newly institutionalized litera­ ture. It is not my aim in this essay to discuss the concept of “the history of Japanese literature.” But I do want to point out that this very concept of a history of Japanese literature, which seems so self-evident to us today, took shape in the midst of our discovery of landscape. Perhaps it was only Soseki who regarded this development with suspicion. Yet it is precisely because our discovery of landscape was the type of phenomenon I have described that I cannot refer to it in terms of the chronological sequence of a so-called “his­ tory of Japanese literature.” “Meiji literary history” certainly appears to pro­ gress according to a temporal sequence. But it is only by distorting this temporal sequence that we can perceive the inversion we have repressed from our memories: our discovery of landscape. *

*

*

6

Once a landscape has been established, its origins are repressed from mem­ ory. It takes on the appearance of an “object” which has been there, outside us, from the start. An “object,” however, can only be constituted within a landscape. The same may be said of the “subject” or self. The philosophical standpoint which distinguishes between subject and object came into exis­ tence within what I refer to as “landscape.” Rather than existing prior to landscape, subject and object emerge from within it.3 It has been said that Edo painting4 had no concept of landscape, since it lacked techniques for creating depth and perspective. Yet this is also true of medieval European painting (despite the fact that, as I have already sug­ gested, the differences between these two types of painting are more salient.) In both cases developments in painting were paralleled by developments in philosophy. Cartesian philosophy, for example, can be seen as a product of principles of perspective. For the subject of Descartes’s “cogito ergo sum”5 is 1. Many Chinese characters can be given either a Japanese or a Chinese-style (Sinicized) pronun­ ciation; the latter emphasizes the written deriva­ tion of the word. 2. W ritings in the Japanese language without connections to Chinese (thus a national literature, and distinct from kanbungaku). 3. Karatani’s assertion rests on his discussion of European landscape painting earlier in the chap­ ter, where the new view of landscape as pure object

was described as marking an alienation from the external world— which was also the very precon­ dition for the emergence of the “inner self.” 4. That is, painting during the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, 1603—1867. 5. I think, therefore I am (Latin), the foundational statement of the French philosopher Rene Des­ cartes (1596—1650)— that is, the occurrence of thought guarantees the existence of the thinker.

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confined, ineluctably, within the schema established by the conventions of perspective. It was in precisely the same period that the *'‘object” of thought came to be conceived of as a homogeneous, scientifically measurable entity— that is, as an extension of the principles of perspective. All of these devel­ opments paralleled the emergence of “background” as a dehumanized “landscape” in the Mona Lisa.6 In her work, Philosophy in a New Key, Suzanne Langer7 described the culde-sac of modern European philosophy, which is still preoccupied with the philosophical issues posed by “landscape.” After several centuries of sterile tradition, logic-chopping, and parti­ sanship in philosophy, the wealth of nameless, heretical, often incon­ sistent notions born of the Renaissance crystallized into general and ultimate problems. A new outlook on life challenged the human mind to make sense out of its bewildering world; and the Cartesian age of “natural and mental” philosophy succeeded to the realm. This new epoch had a mighty and revolutionary generative idea: the dichotomy of all reality into inner experience and outer world, subject and object, private reality and public truth. The very language of what is now traditional epistemology betrays this basic notion; when we speak of “the given,” of “sense data,” “the phenomenon,” or “other selves,” we take for granted the immediacy of an internal experience and the continuity of the external world. Our fundamental questions are framed in these terms: What is actually given to the mind? What guarantees the truth of sensedata? What lies behind the observable order of phenomena? What is the relation of the mind to the brain? How can we know other selves?— All these are familiar problems of today. Their answers have been elaborated into whole systems of thought: empiricism, idealism, realism, phenome­ nology, Existenz Philosophie, and logical positivism. The most complete and characteristic of all these doctrines are the earliest ones: empiricism and idealism. They are the full, unguarded, vigorous formulations of the new generative notion, Experience: their proponents were the enthusi­ asts inspired by the Cartesian method, and their doctrines are the obvi­ ous implications derived by that principle, from such a starting point. Each school in its turn took the intellectual world by storm. Not only universities, but all the literary circles, felt the liberation from time­ worn, oppressive concepts, from baffling limits of inquiry, and hailed the new world-picture with a hope of truer orientation in life, art, and action. After a while, the confusion and shadows inherent in the new vision became apparent, and subsequent doctrines sought in various ways to escape between the horns of the dilemma created by the subject-object dichotomy, which Professor Whitehead8 has called the “bifurcation of nature.” Since then our theories have become more and more refined, circumspect, and clever; no one can be quite frankly an idealist, or go the whole way with empiricism; the early forms of realism are now known as 6. The painting (ca. 1504) by Leonardo da Vinci; earlier in the chapter, Karatani quotes the Dutch psychiatrist Jan Hendrik Van den Berg, who sees the work as breaking sharply with the old view of landscape (The Changing Nature o f Man: Introduc­ tion to Historical Psychology, M etabletica, 1956).

7. American philosopher and aesthetician (1895— 1985); Philosophy in a New Key (1941) is her bestknown work. 8. Alfred North W hitehead (1861—1947), English mathem atician and philosopher; the quotation is from T he C oncept o f Nature (1920).

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the “naive” varieties, and have been superseded by “critical” or “new” realisms. Many philosophers vehemently deny any systematic Weltan­ schauung, and repudiate metaphysics in principle.9 But will contemporary philosophers, who are trying to break out of a Car­ tesian Weltanschauung even as they operate within it, really succeed in mak­ ing their escape? Modern artists, when they studied primitive art, or thinkers like Claude Levi-Strauss,1 in his work on the “savage mind,” faced the same dilemma. Sophisticated technology and Rousseauian romanticism2 are par­ adoxically intertwined in Levi-Strauss’s thought. But both these elements had their origins in the modern “landscape.” It is the historicity of that land­ scape that must be exposed. In Western Europe it was Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud3 who, albeit from differing perspectives, first exposed the problematic nature of the European conception of landscape. Nietzsche, for example, claimed that European epistemology itself was “an illusion based on the principles of linear per­ spective.” As a product of interiorization, according to Nietzsche, the very notion of linear perspective was “an illusion of itself.” The “self,” the “inner,” “consciousness,” and “cogito” in Cartesian philosophy were all based on an inversion of subjectivity. In order to expose the historicity of European culture Soseki did not need to look back to ancient Greece, as Nietzsche did. Rather, he maintained within himself a certain attitude toward life that had existed prior to “land­ scape” and “modern Japanese literature.” Soseki was able to do this because he lived through the discovery of “landscape.” Wc Japanese witnessed with our own eyes and within a limited period of time the occurrence in con­ densed form of a process which, because it had extended over many centu­ ries, had been repressed from memory in the West. Various institutions of the modern nation-state were consolidated, in pre­ liminary form, during the third decade of the Meiji period, starting with the promulgation of the Meiji constitution.4 As Nakamura Mitsuo5 has written, “if we see the second decade of the Meiji period as one of turbulence, the third was one of unification and stability.” In the eyes of those born after the Meiji Restoration,6 this order appeared to be something that had already solidified. What had been malleable possibilities just after the Restoration now appeared shut off to them. In his Meiji Literature, Nakamura Mitsuo describes the People’s Rights movement of the 1880s as follows: For the movement was a logical extension of that great reform which was the Meiji Restoration, and it had been entrusted with the great hope that this social revolution had awakened in the people. It was 9. Suzanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York: New American Library, 1951), pp. 11—12 [translator’s note]. 1. French anthropologist (1 9 0 8 -2 0 0 9 ; see above); The Savage Mind was published in 1962. 2. The philosophy of the Swiss-born French politi­ cal philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712— 1778), which idealized the concept of the “noble savage.” 3. All figures with enormous influence on modern W estern thought: k a r l m a r x (1818-1883), Ger­ man economic, social, and political philosopher; F r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e (1 8 4 4 -1 9 0 0 ), German phi­

losopher; and S i g m u n d f r e u d (1856-1939), Aus­ trian founder of psychoanalysis. 4. Jap an’s first constitution (1889), intended to define Japan as a modern nation on the model of Prussia’s constitutional monarchy (it remained in force until 1947). 5. Literary critic and playwright (1911-1988). 6. The revolution (1 8 6 7 -6 8 ) that restored the emperor to power and ended the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate. 7. A political movement launched in 1874 that agitated for civil rights, reduced taxes, and an elected legislature.

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through the People’s Rights movement that the spirit of the Restoration which until that time had been the sole possession of the warrior class8 gradually came to infiltrate the popular consciousness. The setback of the movement, therefore, meant the destruction of that vital compo­ nent of all revolutions, the idealism which is contained within them and which can be transformed into something else at any point in the revolutionary process. The straitened circumstances of the warrior class became a grave social problem in the early years of Meiji. For the few who found themselves in an advantageous situation there were many who had fallen into despair, yet this very fact meant that control of political and cultural life remained the uncontested prerogative of that class. But by 1885 or so, the dissolution of the warrior class became a pronounced trend, the children of commoners began to swell the ranks of students, and Meiji society began to show its true face as a mercantile state created by the offspring of the warrior class. Vis-a-vis this emerging militarist state dominated by pragmatism and the pursuit of worldly success, the phantoms of freedom and people’s rights became the last ideals for which young men who were heirs of the Restoration could risk their lives. The loss of these ideals created a spir­ itual vacuum which could not be banished and which found expression in a form which was completely different from the political novel.9 This insight may also be applied to Soseki. While contemporary writers like Masaoka Shiki, Futabatei Shimei, Kitamura Tokoku, and Kunikida Doppo1 were agonizing over questions of artistic practice, Soseki stood at the head of the Meiji government’s corps of students of the West constantly pursued by a desire to flee from their ranks. What he wrote while he was in their midst had to be “theoretical,” for it represented certain conclusions he had reached with reference to the English literature which he had already decided to study. Later, as a novelist, Soseki appeared obsessed with the phenomenon of the “belated” nature of choice, a problem which he had confronted during this period. In this sense, kanbungaku probably symbol­ ized for Soseki not so much a corpus of texts as a certain atmosphere that existed prior to the establishment of various modern systems. This was dur­ ing the same period when the political novel was at the height of its popu­ larity. Soseki’s sense that he had been “cheated” by English literature may have corresponded to his observation that the institutions which were set up in the third decade of Meiji were nothing but a sham. But such interpretive notions as “political disillusionment” or “the influence of Christianity” cannot be interjected into our consideration of the Japanese discovery of “landscape.” These ideas suggest a psychological motivation for the process, but the concept of human psychology itself appeared at precisely this time. To treat the psychological as an autonomous sphere, as the science

8. The gentry (samurai), who had ruled Japan during the shogunate (1 1 8 5 -1 8 6 7 ). 9. Nakamura Mitsuo, “Meiji bungakushi” (H is­ tory of M eiji literature), in Nakamura Mitsuo zenshu (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1973), pp. 1 6 9 70 [translator’s note]. Political novels, extremely popular throughout the 1880s, disseminated the ideas of the People’s Rights movement.

1. Influential modern figures: Futabatei (1864— 1909), literary critic, translator of Russian fiction, and novelist who pioneered the style known as genbun itchi (discussed below); Kitamura (1868— 1894), free-verse poet and major theorist of Meiji romanticism; and Kunikida (1871-1908), a writer of poetry and short fiction who was a forerunner of naturalism in Japan.

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of psychology does, is a historical, not a timeless, phenomenon. The most sig­ nificant development in the third decade of the Meiji period was rather the consolidation of modern systems and the emergence of “landscape,” not so much as a phenomenon contesting such systems, but as itself a system. Academic historians of modern literature write of the “modern self’” as if it were something that existed purely within the mind. But certain conditions are necessary for the production of this “self.” Freud, like Nietzsche, viewed consciousness not as something which existed from the start, but as a deriv­ ative of “introjection.”2 According to Freud, it is at a stage when there is no distinction between inner and outer, when the outer is purely a projection of the inner, that the experience of trauma results in a redirection of the libido inward. With this, for the first time, outer and inner are separated. As Freud wrote in Totem and Taboo, “It is only after abstract language and thought come into existence that the perceptual residue of language links up with subjective material in such a way that we first become aware of subjective phenomena.” To speak in Freudian terms, the libido3 which was once directed toward the People’s Rights movement and the writing of political novels lost its object and was redirected inward, at which point “landscape” and “the inner life” appeared. Let me repeat, however, that Freud himself was not aware of the historicity of psychology and of the fact that, like “landscape,” it was the product of a specific historical order. The Meiji novelist Mori Ogai,4 for example, created characters that appear “a-psychological” in his historical fiction. Toward the end of his life, Ogai tried as much as possible to return to an awareness that predated modern conceptions of psychology and land­ scape. We may legitimately use a psychological approach in dealing with writers who emerged after the third decade of the Meiji period, but we must keep in mind that such an approach will not expose the conditions which produced the science of psychology itself. However, what I find most significant in Freud’s thought is the notion of the simultaneous emergence in the human being of the capacity for “abstract thought and language” and of “interiority” (accompanied by an awareness of the external as external). What does “abstract thought and language” correspond to in the Japanese context? Perhaps to the concep­ tion of writing which evolved in the Meiji period, known as genbun itch i.5 For genbun itchi was a manifestation in the linguistic realm of the estab­ lishment, around 1890, of the various institutions of the modern state. It goes without saying that the meaning of this concept was hardly that of bringing “writing” (bun) into conformity with “speech” (gen), or speech into conformity with writing, as is usually maintained. G enbun itchi rep­ resented the invention of a new conception of writing as equivalent with speech.6 2. The unconscious process by which the outside world is taken into the self and represented in its internal structure; Freud defines this psychoan­ alytic term in Totem and Taboo (1912—13). 3. In stin ctu al psychic energy that drives all behavior. 4. W riter of criticism , plays, and poetry as well as fiction (1 8 6 2 -1 9 2 2 ). 5. Literally, the unification (itchi) of speech (gen) and writing (bun); a neologism widely used by lan­

guage reform activists, who saw vernacular writ­ ing as critical to the spread of literacy and modern education. 6. In chapter 2, “T h e Discovery o f Interiority,” K aratani argues that genbun itchi is premised on an inversion in the conception o f language. W hereas kanbungaku placed supreme value in the written word, genbun itchi assumed that writ­ ten language is derivative of, and therefore second­ ary to, spoken language.

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O f course, insofar as genbun itchi was an effort towards modernization similar to the Meiji constitution, it could not be a purely “inner” speech. Writers considered to be introverts in the third decade of the Meiji period— Ogai and Tokoku, for example— preferred to write in the classical style,7 and the genbun itchi movement quickly lost momentum. Interest did not revive until the end of the decade, which was already the era of Kunikida Doppo and Takahama Kyoshi.8 Of course, Futabatei Shimei's novel Ukigumo (Drifting clouds),9 which appeared between 1886 and 1889, may be cited as an exception to this trend. Notions of landscape and the inner self which Futabatei could elaborate when he was writing in Russian,1 however, seemed to slip through his fingers when he tried to write about them in Japanese, when somehow the language of Shikitei Samba and other kokkeibon 2 writers took possession of him. The agony of Futabatei was to have discovered “landscape” without being able to locate it in the Japanese language. By Doppo’s time this dilemma had disap­ peared. What influenced Doppo was not the style of Ukigumo but the trans­ lation of Turgenev s Rendez-vous.3 For Doppo the “inner” was the word (the voice), and expression was the projection outward of that voice. In Doppo s work the concept of “expression” came into being for the first time in Japanese literature. Before this time, no one spoke of literature in terms of expression. It was the identification of writing with speech which made such a concept possible. But it was only because Doppo, unlike Futabatei, was oblivious to the fact that genbun itchi was a modern system that he was spared the dilemma of Futabatei. That the “inner self” was historical, that it was a system, had by that time been forgot­ ten. Needless to say, we live today on the same soil that Doppo did. In order to know what holds us there, we must uncover its source; we must investigate further this historical period when language was simultaneously exposed and hidden. 1980

7. A style that adhered to ancient models of writ­ ing and thus bore little resem blance to spoken Japanese. 8. Novelist and poet (18 7 4 -1 9 5 9 ), best known for his haiku. 9. O ne o f the first attem pts (1 8 8 7 -8 9 ) to write fiction in the genbun itchi style. l.A n allusion to F u tab atei’s claim that when he reached an im passe in com posing Ukigumo, he would write in Russian and then translate the

draft into Japanese. 2. Com ic or funny book, a genre o f fiction popu­ lar during the Edo period. Shikitei (1 7 7 6 -1 8 2 2 ), writer of popular fiction, including kokkeibon . 3. “Svidanie” (1850, “Tryst”), a short story by the R ussian novelist and dram atist Ivan Turgenev (1 8 1 8 -1 8 8 3 ); F u tab atei’s 1887 version was the first Japanese literary translation to employ the genbun itchi style.

1939

JULIA KRISTEVA b.

19 4 1

Linguist, literary critic, cultural theorist, and psychoanalyst, Julia Kristeva has been one of the central figures of French intellectual life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Kristeva’s main contribution to contemporary theory resides in her elucidation of the processes by which preverbal experience— bodily drives and affects— enters into language and activates creative, transformative, and at times revolutionary modes of cultural production. Like other structuralist and poststruc­ turalist theorists— most notably j a c q u e s l a c a n , r o l a n d b a r t h e s , and j a c q u e s d e r r i d a — Kristeva has a long-standing interest in the relationship of subjectivity to language, in how the speaking subject is both constituted through and threatened by the logic of signification. But Kristeva diverges from other contemporary theorists in her insistence on the corporeal origins of subjectivity and of artistic practice. In con­ trast to the Saussurean linguistic models of Lacanian psychoanalysis, for instance, Kristeva has emphasized the importance of prelinguistic, instinctual, and sensory components of both subjectivity and signification. Indeed, while Kristeva’s thinking has undergone major transformations over the past four decades, progressively mov­ ing away from abstract linguistics and toward more classically psychoanalytic con­ cerns, her writings nevertheless exhibit a remarkable degree of continuity insofar as they have consistently sought to articulate— without completely departing from language— the force of the body and its drives. Born in Bulgaria in 1941, Kristeva arrived in France on a doctoral research fellow­ ship in December 1965. Since her francophone parents were not members of Bul­ garia’s ruling Communist Party, she had been excluded from the foreign-language schools available to the children of the “red bourgeoisie.” Nevertheless, she acquired a French as well as a Bulgarian education from an early age by attending two schools— Bulgarian in the morning and French in the afternoon. In Paris she became a student of Roland Barthes and quickly established herself as a major participant in the lively avant-garde milieu of the late 1960s. By the spring of 1967, Kristeva’s articles were being published in such leading journals as Critique, Langages, and Tel Quel, and in 1970 she was appointed to the editorial board of Tel Quel, the intellectual venue for the young generation of structuralist and poststructuralist theorists. Tel Q uel was edited by the charismatic writer and theorist Philippe Sollers, whom she later mar­ ried and with whom she had a son. In 1974 she was appointed professor of lin­ guistics at the University of Paris VII, where she is now professor emerita and, co-directs the interdisciplinary Centre Roland Barthes, which she created in 2000. In 2004 she was awarded Norway’s prestigious Holberg International Memorial Prize for outstanding scholarly work, and in 2008 she was named an Officer of the Legion of Honor. Besides Barthes, Lucien Goldmann (an influential sociological critic), and c l a u d e l e v i - s t r a u s s , who were her teachers, Kristeva acknowledges intellectual debts to other twentieth-century figures: m i k h a i l b a k h t i n , Emile Benveniste (an important linguist), Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein (a theorist of pre-oedipal development), and, of course, s i g m u n d f r e u d . With t z v e t a n t o d o r o v , Kristeva brought the work of Bakhtin into prominence in the French context. In 1970 she published an introduc­ tion to the French translation of Bakhtin’s work on Dostoyevsky, and she combined his concept of “dialogism” (the idea that a text contains language from more than one “world”) with F e r d i n a n d d e s a u s s u r e ’s notebooks on anagrams in poetry (which had recently been discovered and were being published by Jean Starobinski in Tel Q uel) into a general theory of “intertextuality.” The intertextual sense of the multiplicity of origins and meanings in language informs the theory of the sign set forth in Kristeva’s first book, HrjjueKDTLicij

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(Semeiotike): Recherches pour une Semanalyse (1969, Research toward a Sem-analysis, where the prefix sem- is from the Greek word for “sign”). This was followed in 1974 by Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva’s doctoral dissertation, in which she devel­ oped a theory of poetic language based on the writings of Stephane Mallarme (1842— 1898) and Isidore Ducasse (better known as the comte de Lautreamont, 1846—1870). We print several sections from this book as our selection, below. The “revolution” in poetic language Kristeva analyzed in the work of these late nineteenth-century French poets quickly became a revolution brought about by Kristeva herself in the analysis of poetic language as such. Kristeva finds two forces competing for expression in the language of poetry: the symbolic and the semiotic. The symbolic is that aspect of language that allows it to refer. It is systematic, propositional, rule-bound, tied to the social order, dependent on a functional separation between the subject and the object, and capable of existing independently of its referent. The linguistics of Saussure focused on this dimension, treating language as a theoretical fiction studied in the absence of any particular speaker. The semiotic dimension of language— which cannot be known except in the moments where it breaks through the symbolic— is that aspect that bears the trace of the language user’s own body and of the mother’s protolinguistic presence— the babbling of the infant who tries out the vocal repertoire before he or she learns to speak, for instance, or the mother’s voice prior to the baby’s acquisi­ tion of language: poetic language in this sense has been called “babble, doodle, and riddle.” The “music” of poetry (and indeed prosody itself), Kristeva contends, arises out of this dimension. It is important to avoid two possible misunderstandings of Kristeva’s use of these terms. Her “symbolic” is similar to Lacan’s, insofar as it is not symbolic of anything— not a collection of meaning-filled symbols as, say, Carl Jung might conceive it— but is a structure. And “the semiotic” is not the same as semiot­ ics, which is the study of the functioning of signs. In Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva thus maintains that all signification entails the dialectical interaction of the symbolic and the semiotic. The semiotic rep­ resents the discharge of pre-oedipal instinctual energies and drives within language; it is associated with what Kristeva, following p l a t o , designates as the chora (literally, “space”; Greek)— receptacle, space, womb. This semiotic chora, which “precedes and underlies figuration,” is, in turn, connected to the maternal body, to the feminine in general, and to what remains mysterious, unintelligible, and unsignifiable. Kristeva’s thesis is that the eruption of the semiotic within the symbolic is what provides the creative and innovative impulse of modern poetic language. Ordinary language use depends on a thetic or positing structure (Kristeva borrows the term from the Ger­ man phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, 1859—1938): that is, it is positional and propositional. Artistic practice, capable of transgressing the thetic boundary between the symbolic and the semiotic, fractures and disrupts established modes of significa­ tion so as to retrieve the surmounted semiotic energies and thus create an opening for new, polyvalent cultural meanings. This thetic rupture, then, is profoundly sub­ versive, not only implying an upheaval of art forms (such as that effected by Mallarme and Lautreamont, according to Kristeva, on traditional literary discourse) but also calling for a reconfiguration of the notion of subjectivity. Distinguishing between the genotext (the energies that bring a text about) and the phenotext (the linguistic struc­ ture that results), Kristeva tries to capture the trace of what in a subject brings a text into being, not just what the text signifies. The genotext corresponds roughly to Freud’s primary (unconscious) processes— a dream’s “latent content.” But while a dream’s “manifest content” obeys only the rule of representability, a text is shaped by all the linguistic and social structures of the symbolic order. The “revolution” of Kristeva’s title therefore both refers to a transformation in poetic practice and heralds the emergence of what Kristeva, throughout her writings, refers to as the sujet-en-proces. Proces, in French, means both “process” and “trial.”

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Hence, this expression can be translated “subject in process” or “subject on trial.” The phrase itself expresses what Kristeva sees as the double bind of subjecthood: it com­ bines the incompatible forces of constant change and constant judgment. The subject both cannot and must present itself in stasis. The semiotic dimension frees the sub­ ject from stasis and, according to Kristeva, “gives us a vision of the human venture as a venture of innovation, of creation, of opening, of renewal” (Interviews, 1996). But the breakthroughs of the semiotic have their dark as well as their playful side. The theories of psychoanalysis have enabled Kristeva— who completed her training as a psychoanalyst in 1979— to analyze in more detail the consequences of those breakthroughs for life and writing. Her many book-length studies— treating horror, anti-Semitism, melancholy, and abjection— attend to the destructive as well as the creative consequences of breaking through the symbolic, which is the repository of civilization in both its repressive and its protective guises. Indeed, for Kristeva psychoanalysis is the practice of the difficulty in tearing apart the two “sides.” The abject, for instance, is for her as important to the constitution of the “subject” as its “object.” The abject is what the subject’s consciousness has to expel or disregard in order to create the proper separation between subject and object. The mother splits into two parts: she is the prototype of subsequent objects that the subject will desire or hate, but she is also the despised ground of infantile dependency and bodily need. Another way of putting this is that the abject is still unconsciously desired and thereby transformed into something undesirable, filthy, and disgusting, like the bodily processes for which it stands. Both matter and mother are objects for the fantasy of self-creation. Kristeva’s publications after 1979 thus take an explicitly psychoanalytic approach to what she calls “the maladies of the soul.” Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1980; trans. 1982), Tales of Love (1983; trans. 1987), Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1987; trans. 1989), and New Maladies of the Soul (1993; trans. 1995) often feature case studies from her clinical practice. At the same time, Kristeva began enlarging and loos­ ening her compact, difficult, and rather abstract style to attempt new kinds of writing. In a special 1977 issue of Tel Quel titled Recherches feminines {Research by and about Women), she published a celebrated essay about motherhood (“Herethique de 1’amour” or “Love’s Herethics1”; later translated as “Stabat Mater”) written in two columns juxta­ posed irregularly on the page. She went on to write several novels, the first of which, The Samurai (1990), is a thinly disguised account of the Tel Quel milieu. Its Japanese title is a wink at the Chinese title used by s i m o n e d e b e a u v o i r (an important precursor for Kristeva) for a similar roman a clef, The Mandarins (1954). Kristeva has published more explicitly political writings as well, from her early About Chinese Women (1974)— based on a trip to China taken by several members of Tel Quel during its period of interest in Maoism— to the later Strangers to Our­ selves (1989) and Nations without Nationalism (1990). In Strangers to Ourselves, Kristeva rediscovers Freud’s notion of the “uncanny” in the context of the encounter between the self and the “foreigner”: by recognizing that the foreignness lies within the self, it might be possible, she suggests, to avoid the violence entailed by its projec­ tion outward onto others. The famous essay “Women’s Time” (1979; trans. 1981), a synthesis of Kristeva’s analysis of language, the social contract, and feminism, has been much reprinted. It addresses the question of female subjectivity by interrogating the position that women are said to occupy in the social structure. If, according to Levi-Strauss, women are circulated on the marriage market between men of different groups like the words of a system of communication, what happens when women are seen not as the objects but as the subjects of communication? If women have had to bear the sacrificial weight of the social contract in patriarchy, does that mean that lifting the weight of patriarchy would provide free, unfettered enjoyment and fulfillment for women? It is 1. H erethics: an ethics tied to the fem inine, which would represent a heretical or transgressive ethics.

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Kristeva’s contention that a liberating change in the social order, however necessary and desirable, would nevertheless not give access to the fulfillment whose attainment appears to be blocked by specific structures of subjectivity. The fantasy of wholeness is a function of those obstacles, not something beyond them. Kristeva’s ideal could be said to be postfeminist in the sense that it implies the demolition of “Woman” as an identifiable social category. To the extent that feminism depends on the difference between men and women conceived as an opposition, she has resisted being called a “feminist.” This has estranged her from some feminists committed to an oppositional notion of political action. When asked what constitutes her distinctiveness, however, she responds by calling herself “a female intellectual,” committed to exploring the oxymoronic exclusiveness inherent in the traditional understanding of those catego­ ries but refusing to conceive of either one as an “identity.” The attempt to bridge the gap between French and Anglo-American feminisms has contributed to the introduction and dissemination of Kristeva’s work to the English-speaking world— see, notably, Toril Moi’s Sexual/Textual Politics: Fem i­ nist Literary Theory (1985)— but Kristeva herself tends to view institutionalized forms of feminism (like all institutionalized groups) as totalizing, at times even as totalitarian, forms of cultural discourse. In “Womens Time” she wonders whether feminism is not in the process of becoming a sort of religion; and she remains highly critical of any feminist politics based on universalist or essentialist notions of femininity. Although Kristeva, in Anglo-American writings, frequently gets grouped together with h e l e n e c ix o u s and Luce Irigaray as a representative of “French feminism,” the three writers are really very different, united only by the extent to which each is influenced by the 1968 upheaval in French society. Yet Kristeva’s rich and provocative writings— particularly her reflections on love, abjec­ tion, melancholy, maternity, and the preverbal semiotic— are directly relevant to feminist theorists and continue to generate a sizable body of criticism. Drawing together linguistics, psychoanalysis, political science, and feminism, Julia Kristevas work has repeatedly revealed aspects of textuality that literary the­ ory is in danger of glossing over. In insisting that the speaking subject’s investment in language is neither transcendental nor entirely conscious, she has enlarged, enriched, and complicated our sense of what goes on in a literary text. R evolu tion in P oetic L an g u ag e Keywords: Affect, The Body, Feminist Theory, Identity, Language, Literary History, Poetry, Psychoanalysis, Semiotics, Subjectivity

From Revolution in Poetic Language1 From Part I. The Sem iotic and the Symbolic FRO M 2 . TH E SEM IO TIC CHORA O RD ERIN G TH E D RIVES

We understand the term “semiotic”2 in its Greek sense: crr]|Li£Tov=distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign, imprint, trace, figuration. This etymological reminder would be a mere archaeologi­ cal embellishment (and an unconvincing one at that, since the term ulti­ mately encompasses such disparate meanings), were it not for the fact that the preponderant etymological use of the word, the one that implies a dis­ tinctiveness, allows us to connect it to a precise modality in the signifying 1. Translated by M argaret W aller, who occasionally inserts the original French in brackets. 2. In Kristeva’s usage, pre-oedipal— that is, before

the infant’s discovery of sexual difference— preverbal drives and affects.

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process. This modality is the one Freudian psychoanalysis points to in pos­ tulating not only the facilitation and the structuring disposition of drives, but also the so-called primary processes3 which displace and condense both energies and their inscription. Discrete quantities of energy move through the body of the subject who is not yet constituted as such and, in the course of his development, they are arranged according to the various constraints imposed on this body— always already involved in a semiotic process— by family and social structures. In this way the drives, which are “energy” charges as well as “psychical” marks, articulate what we call a chora: a nonexpressive totality formed by the drives and their stases in a motility that is as full of movement as it is regulated. We borrow the term chora4 from Platos Timaeus5 to denote an essentially mobile and extremely provisional articulation constituted by movements and their ephemeral stases. We differentiate this uncertain and indeterminate articulation from a disposition that already depends on representation, lends itself to phenomenological, spatial intuition,6 and gives rise to a geometry. Although our theoretical description of the chora is itself part of the dis­ course of representation that offers it as evidence, the chora, as rupture and articulations (rhythm), precedes evidence, verisimilitude, spatiality, and tem­ porality. Our discourse— all discourse— moves with and against the chora in the sense that it simultaneously depends upon and refuses it. Although the chora can be designated and regulated, it can never be definitively posited: as a result, one can situate the chora and, if necessary, lend it a topology, but one can never give it axiomatic form.7 The chora is not yet a position that represents something for someone (i.e., it is not a sign); nor is it a position that represents someone for another posi­ tion (i.e., it is not yet a signifier either8); it is, however, generated in order to attain to this signifying position. Neither model nor copy, the chora precedes

3. The most primitive of unconscious m echa­ nisms, according to s i g m u n d f r e u d (1856-1939), Austrian founder of psychoanalysis. “Facilitation” (French frayage, from Freud’s German Bahnung) and “disposition” are the processes that shape habits of desire. 4. The term “chora” has recently been criticized for its ontological essence by Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. and annot. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 75, 106 n. 39 [Kristeva’s note]. Some of the author’s notes have been omitted, d e r r i d a (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 4 ), French philosopher. 5. One of the later dialogues by the Greek philos­ opher p l a t o (ca. 4 2 7 -c a . 347 b . c . e .). 6 . P h e n o m e n o lo g y

is

a

p h ilo s o p h ic a l

m e th o d

r e s t r ic t e d to a n a ly z in g th e i n t e lle c t u a l p r o c e s s e s o f w h ic h

we

are

in tro s p e c tiv e ly

a w are

(w h ile

ig n o r i n g e x t e r n a l o b je c t s , t h e q u e s t i o n o f w h o s e e x i s t e n c e is “ b r a c k e t e d ”).

7. Plato em phasizes th at the recep tacle (ujiodoxetov), which is also called space (^copa) vis-a-vis reason, is necessary— but not divine since it is unstable, uncertain, ever changing and becom ing; it is even unnam eable, improbable, bastard: “Space, which is everlasting, not admit­ ting destruction; providing a situation for all things that come into being, but itself apprehended with­ out the senses by a sort of bastard reasoning, and hardly an object of belief. This, indeed, is that

w'hich we look upon as in a dream and say that anything that is must needs be in some place and occupy some room . . .” (Tim aeus , trans. Francis M. Cornford, 52a—b). Is the receptacle a “thing” or a mode of language? Plato’s hesitation between the two gives the receptacle an even more uncer­ tain status. It is one of the elements that antedate not only the universe but also names and even syl­ lables: “We speak . . . positing them as original principles, elements (as it were, letters) o f the uni­ verse; whereas one who has ever so little intelli­ gence should not rank them in this analogy even so low as syllables” (48b). “It is hard to say, with respect to any one of these, which we ought to call really water rather than fire, or indeed which we should call by any given name rather than by all the names together or by each severally, so as to use language in a sound and trustworthy way. . . . Since, then, in this way no one of these things ever makes its appearance as the sam e thing, which of them can we steadfastly affirm to be this— whatever it may be— and not something else, without blushing for ourselvesr It cannot be done” (49b -d ) [Kristeva’s note]. 8. A reference to the statem ent by the French psy­ choanalyst j a c q u e s l a c a n (1901-1981) that “a signifier represents a subject for another signi­ fier”; see Sem inar XI (1964), T he Four Fundam en­ tal Concepts o f Psychoanalysis (1973; trans. 1977).

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and underlies figuration and thus specularization, and is analogous only to vocal or kinetic rhythm. We must restore this motility’s gestural and vocal play (to mention only the aspect relevant to language) on the level of the socialized body in order to remove motility from ontology and amorphous­ ness9 where Plato confines it in an apparent attempt to conceal it from Democritean rhythm.1 The theory of the subject proposed by the theory of the unconscious will allow us to read in this rhythmic space, which has no thesis and no position, the process by which signifiance2 is constituted. Plato him­ self leads us to such a process when he calls this receptacle or chora nourish­ ing and maternal,3 not yet unified in an ordered whole because deity is absent from it. Though deprived of unity, identity, or deity, the chora is nevertheless subject to a regulating process [reglementation], which is different from that of symbolic law but nevertheless effectuates discontinuities by temporarily articulating them and then starting over, again and again. The chora is a modality of signifiance in which the linguistic sign is not yet articulated as the absence of an object and as the distinction between real and symbolic. We emphasize the regulated aspect of the chora: its vocal and gestural organization is subject to what we shall call an objective order­ ing [ordon n an cem en t], which is dictated by natural or socio-historical constraints such as the biological difference between the sexes or family structure. We may therefore posit that social organization, always already

9. There is a fundamental ambiguity: on the one hand, the receptacle is mobile and even contradic­ tory, without unity, separable and divisible: pre­ syllable, pre-word. Yet, on the other hand, because this separability and divisibility antecede numbers and forms, the space or receptacle is called am or­ phous-, thus its suggested rhythmicity will in a cer­ tain sense be erased, for how can one think an articulation of what is not yet singular but is nev­ ertheless necessary? All we may say of it, then, to make it intelligible, is that it is amorphous but that it “is of such and such a quality,” not even an index or something in particular (“this” or “that”). Once named, it immediately becomes a container that takes the place of infinitely repeatable separabil­ ity. This amounts to saying that this repeated separability is “ontologized” the moment a name or a word replaces it, making it intelligible: “Are we talking idly whenever we say that there is such a thing as an intelligible Form of anything? Is this nothing more than a word?” (Timaeus 51c). Is the Platonic chora the “nom inability” of rhythm (of repeated separation)? Why then borrow an ontologized term in order to designate an articulation that antecedes posit­ ing? First, the Platonic term makes explicit an insurmountable problem for discourse: once it has been named, that functioning, even if it is presymbolic, is brought back into a symbolic position. All discourse can do is differentiate, by means of a “bastard reasoning,” the receptacle from the motility, which, by contrast, is not being posited as being “a certain something” [“une telle"]. Second, this motility is the precondition for symbolicity, heterogeneous to it, yet indispensable. Therefore what needs to be done is to try and differentiate, always through a “bastard reasoning,” the specific arrangements of this motility, without seeing them as recipients of accidental singularities, or a Being always posited in itself, or a projection of

the One. Moreover, Plato invites us to differenti­ ate in this fashion when he describes this, while gathering it into the receiving membrane: “But because it was filled with powers that were neither alike nor evenly balanced, there was no equipoise in any region of it; but it was everywhere swayed unevenly and shaken by these things, and its motion shook them in turn. And they, being thus moved, were perpetually being separated and car­ ried in different directions; just as when things are shaken and winnowed by means of winnow­ ing baskets and other instrum ents for cleaning corn [i.e., wheat] . . . it separated the most unlike kinds farthest apart from one another, and thrust the most alike closest together; whereby the dif­ ferent kinds came to have different regions, even before the ordered whole consisting o f them came to be . . . but were altogether in such a condition as we should expect for anything when deity is absent from it” (52d—53b). Indefinite “conjunc­ tions” and “disjunctions” (functioning, devoid of M eaning), the chora is governed by a necessity that is not God’s law [Kristeva’s note]. 1. T hat is, the eternal motion of atoms in hap­ hazard collision postulated by the Greek philoso­ pher Dem ocritus (ca. 4 6 0 —ca. 370 b . c . e . ) , a concept here presented as a precursor of the sem iotic. 2. Kristeva’s coinage: the fact or process o f signi­ fication, encompassing both the symbolic and the semiotic. 3. The Platonic space or receptacle is a mother and wet nurse: “Indeed we may fittingly compare the Recipient to a mother, the model to a father, and the nature that arises between them to their offspring” (Tim aeus 50d); “Now the wet nurse of Becom ing was made watery and fiery, received the characters of earth and air, and was qualified by all the other affections that go with these . . .” (52d; translation modified) [Kristeva’s note].

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symbolic, imprints its constraint in a mediated form which organizes the chora not according to a law (a term we reserve for the symbolic) but through an ordering.4 What is this mediation? According to a number of psycholinguists, ‘concrete operations” precede the acquisition of language, and organize preverbal semiotic space accord­ ing to logical categories, which are thereby shown to precede or transcend language. From their research we shall retain not the principle of an opera­ tional state-’ but that of a preverbal functional state that governs the con­ nections between the body (in the process of constituting itself as a body proper), objects, and the protagonists of family structure.6 But we shall distinguish this functioning from symbolic operations that depend on language as a sign system— whether the language [langue]1 is vocalized or gestural (as with deaf-mutes). The kinetic functional stage of the sem iotic precedes the establishment of the sign; it is not, therefore, cognitive in the sense of being assumed by a knowing, already constituted subject. The gen­ esis of the fun ction s organizing the semiotic process can be accurately elu­ cidated only within a theory of the subject that does not reduce the subject to one of understanding, but instead opens up within the subject this other scene of pre-symbolic functions. The Kleinian theory8 expanding upon Freud’s positions on the drives will momentarily serve as a guide. Drives involve pre-Oedipal semiotic functions and energy discharges that connect and orient the body to the mother. We must emphasize that “drives” are always already ambiguous, simultaneously assimilating and destructive; this dualism, which has been represented as a tetrad9 or as a double helix, as in the configuration of the DNA and RNA molecule,1 makes the semiotized body a place of permanent scission. The oral and anal drives,2 both of which are oriented and structured around the mother’s body,3 dominate 4. “Law," which derives etym ologically from lex (Latin), necessarily implies the act o f judgm ent whose role in safeguarding society was first devel­ oped by the Roman law cou rts. “O rdering,” on the other hand, is closer to the series “ru le,” “norm” (from the G reek yvcb|.icov, m eaning “dis­ cern in g ” [adj.], “c a rp e n te r’s sq u are” [noun]), e tc., w hich im plies a n u m erical or geom etrical necessity. On norm ativity in lin gu istics, see Alain Rey, “U sages, ju dgm ents et prescriptions lin guistiqu es” [L in guistic Usage, Judgm ent, and Prescription], Langtie Franqaise (D ecem ber 1972), 16:5. But the tem porary ordering of the chora is not yet even a ru le : the arsenal of geom­ etry is posterior to the chora' s motility; it fixes the chora in place and reduces it [Kristeva’s note]. 5. Operations are, rather, an act of the subject of understanding [Kristeva’s note]. Hans G. Furth, in Piaget and Knowledge: T heoretical Founda­ tions (Englewood C liffs, N.J.: Prentice-H all, 1969), offers the following definition of “concrete operations”: “C haracteristic of the first stage of operational intelligence. A concrete operation implies underlying general systems or ‘groupings’ such as classificatio n , seriatio n , number. Its applicability is limited to objects considered as real (concrete)” (p. 260) [translator’s note]. 6. Piaget stresses that the roots of sensorim otor operations precede language and that the acqui­ sition of thought is due to the symbolic function, which, for him, is a notion separate from that of language per se. See Je an Piaget, “Language and

Sym bolic O perations,” in Piaget and Knowledge, pp. 121—30 [Kristeva’s note]. 7. T hat is, language as an abstract system, as dis­ tinguished from the speech or hand signs of any particular language user (parole) — a distinction first drawn by the Swiss linguist F e r d i n a n d d e s a u s s u r e (1857-1913). 8. The theory o f m other-child relations held by M elanie Klein (1 8 8 2 -1 9 6 0 ), A ustrian-born English psychoanalyst. 9. Such a position has been formulated by Lipot Szondi, Experim ental Diagnostic o f Drives, trans. Gertrude Aull (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1952) [Kristeva’s note]. “T etrad”: group o f four. 1. See Jam es D. Watson, T he Double Helix: A Per­

sonal Account o f the Discovery o f the Structure o f DNA (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968) [Kristeva’s note]. 2. T he first and second phases of Freud’s discus­ sion of infantile sexuality; the “oral” is associated with sucking, the “an al” with the start o f toilet training. 3. Throughout her writings, Melanie Klein empha­ sizes the “pre-O edipal” phase, i.e., a period of the subject’s development that precedes the “discov­ ery” of castration and the positing of the super­ ego, which itself is subject to (paternal) Law. The processes she describes for this phase correspond, hut on a gen etic level, to what we call the sem i­ otic as opposed to the symbolic, w'hich underlies and conditions the sem iotic. Significantly, these pre-Oedipal processes are organized through

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this sensorimotor organization. The mothers body is therefore what medi­ ates the symbolic law organizing social relations and becomes the ordering principle of the semiotic chora,4 which is on the path of destruction, aggressivity, and death. For although drives have been described as disunited or contradictory structures, simultaneously “positive” and “negative,” this dou­ bling is said to generate a dominant “destructive wave” that is drive’s most characteristic trait: Freud notes that the most instinctual drive is the death drive.5 In this way, the term “drive” denotes waves of attack against stases, which are themselves constituted by the repetition of these charges; together, charges and stases lead to no identity (not even that of the “body proper”) that could be seen as a result of their functioning. This is to say that the semiotic chora is no more than the place where the subject is both generated and negated, the place where his unity succumbs before the process of charges and stases that produce him. We shall call this process of charges and stases a negativity to distinguish it from negation, which is the act of a judging subject (see below, part II). Checked by the constraints of biological and social structures, the drive charge thus undergoes stases. Drive facilitation, temporarily arrested, marks discontinuities in what may be called the various material supports [m ateriaux] susceptible to semiotization: voice, gesture, colors. Phonic (later phone­ mic), kinetic, or chromatic units and differences are the marks of these stases in the drives. Connections orfunctions are thereby established between these discrete marks which are based on drives and articulated according to their resemblance or opposition, either by slippage or by condensation. Here we find the principles of metonymy and metaphor6 indissociable from the drive economy underlying them. Although we recognize the vital role played by the processes of displace­ ment and condensation in the organization of the semiotic, we must also projection onto the mother’s body, for girls as well as for boys: “at this stage of development children o f both sexes believe that it is the body of their mother which contains all that is desirable, espe­ cially their father’s penis.” T he Psycho-analysis o f Children, trans. Alix Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1932), p. 269. Our own view of this stage is as follows: W ithout “believing” or “desiring” any “object” whatsoever, the subject is in the process of constituting h im self vis-a-vis a non-object. He is in the process o f separating from this non­ object so as to make that non-object “one” and posit him self as “other”: the mother’s body is the not-yet-one that the believing and desiring subject will imagine as a “receptacle” [Kristeva’s note]. 4. As for what situ ates the m other in symbolic space, we find the phallus again (see Jacqu es L acan, “La R elation d’objet et les structures freu diennes” [O bject Relations and Freudian Structures], Bulletin de Psychologie, April 1957, pp. 4 2 6 —30), represented by the m other’s father, i.e., the su b je ct’s m aternal grandfather (see M arie-C laire Boons, “Le M eurtre du P£re chez Freud” [Killing the Father in Freud], L’lnconscient, January-M arch 1968, 5: 101—29) [Kristeva’s note]. 5. Though disputed and inconsistent, the Freud­ ian theory of drives is of interest here because of the predominance Freud gives to the death drive in both “living m atter” and the “human being.” The death drive is transversal to identity and tends to disperse “narcissism s” whose constitu­

tion ensures the link between structures and, by extension, life. But at the same tim e and con­ versely, narcissism and pleasure are only tempo­ rary positions from which the death drive blazes new paths [se fraye de nouveaux passages]. Nar­ cissism and pleasure are therefore inveiglings and realizations of the death drive. T he sem iotic chora, converting drive discharges into stases, can be thought of both as a delaying of the death drive and as a possible realization of this drive, which tends to return to a hom eostatic state. This hypothesis is consistent with the following remark: “at the beginning of mental life,” writes Freud, “the struggle for pleasure w>as far more intense than later but not so unrestricted: it had to submit to frequent interruptions.” Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in T he Standard Edition o f

the C om plete Psycho-Analytic Works o f Sigmund Freud, ed. Jam es Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), 18:63 [Kristeva’s note]. 6. Tw'o figures (dependent on resem blance and association, respectively), most influentially dis­ cussed by the Russian-born American linguist r o m a n j a k o b s o n in “Two Aspects o f Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances” (1956; see above); Lacan (in “The Agency o f the Letter in the Unconscious,” 1957; see above) and others connected them to Freud’s dream-work processes of condensation and displacement, as described in The Interpretation o f Dreams (1 9 0 0 ; see above).

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add to these processes the relations (eventually representable as topological spaces) that connect the zones of the fragmented body to each other and also to “external” “objects” and “subjects,” which are not yet constituted as such. This type of relation makes it possible to specify the semiotic as a psychoso­ matic modality of the signifying process; in other words, not a symbolic modality but one articulating (in the largest sense of the word) a continuum: the connections between the (glottal and anal) sphincters in (rhythmic and intonational) vocal modulations, or those between the sphincters and family protagonists, for example. All these various processes and relations, anterior to sign and syntax, have just been identified from a genetic perspective as previous and neces­ sary to the acquisition of language, but not identical to language. Theory can “situate” such processes and relations diachronically within the process of the constitution of the subject precisely because they fu n ction synchronically within the signifying process o f the subject him self i.e., the subject of cogitatio? Only in dream logic, however, have they attracted attention, and only in certain signifying practices, such as the text, do they dominate the signifying process. It may be hypothesized that certain semiotic articulations are transmitted through the biological code or physiological “memory” and thus form the inborn bases of the symbolic function. Indeed, one branch of generative lin­ guistics asserts the principle of innate language universals. As it will become apparent in what follows, however, the symbolic— and therefore syntax and all linguistic categories— is a social effect of the relation to the other, estab­ lished through the objective constraints of biological (including sexual) dif­ ferences and concrete, historical family structures. Genetic programmings are necessarily semiotic: they include the primary processes such as displace­ ment and condensation, absorption and repulsion, rejection and stasis, all of which function as innate preconditions, “memorizable” by the species, for language acquisition. Mallarme8 calls attention to the semiotic rhythm within language when he speaks of “The Mystery in Literature” [“Le Mystere dans les lettres”]. Indifferent to language, enigmatic and feminine, this space underlying the written is rhythmic, unfettered, irreducible to its intelligible verbal transla­ tion; it is musical, anterior to judgment, but restrained by a single guaran­ tee: syntax. As evidence, we could cite “The Mystery in Literature” in its entirety.9 For now, however, we shall quote only those passages that ally the functioning of that “air or song beneath the text” with woman: And the instrument of Darkness, whom they have designated, will not set down a word from then on except to deny that she must have been the enigma; lest she settle matters with a wisk of her skirts; ‘I don’t get it!’ —They [the critics] play their parts disinterestedly or for a minor gain: leaving our Lady and Patroness exposed to show her dehiscence or lacuna, with respect to certain dreams, as though this were the standard to which everything is reduced.1 7. Thinking (Latin). 8. Stephane M allarme (1842—1898), French poet. 9. M allarme, Oeuvres com pletes [Complete Works ]

(Paris: Gallimard, 1945), pp. 3 8 2 - 8 7 note]. 1. Ibid., p. 383 [Kristeva’s note].

[Kristeva’s

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To these passages we add others that point to the “mysterious” functioning of literature as a rhythm made intelligible by syntax: “Following the instinct for rhythms that has chosen him, the poet does not deny seeing a lack of proportion between the means let loose and the result.” “I know that there are those who would restrict Mystery to Music’s domain; when writing aspires to it.”2 What pivot is there, I mean within these contrasts, for intelligibility? a guarantee is needed— Syntax— . . . an extraordinary appropriation of structure, limpid, to the primi­ tive lightning bolts of logic. A stammering, what the sentence seems, here repressed [ . . . ] The debate—whether necessary average clarity deviates in a detail— remains one for grammarians.3 Our positing of the semiotic is obviously inseparable from a theory of the subject that takes into account the Freudian positing of the unconscious. We view the subject in language as decentering the transcendental ego,4 cutting through it, and opening it up to a dialectic in which its syntactic and categori­ cal understanding is merely the liminary moment of the process, which is itself always acted upon by the relation to the other dominated by the death drive and its productive reiteration of the “signifier.” We will be attempting to formu­ late the distinction between semiotic and symbolic within this perspective, which was introduced by Lacanian analysis, but also within the constraints of a practice— the text—which is only of secondary interest to psychoanalysis. *

FRO M

*

«

5 . TH E T H E T IC : RU PTU RE AND/OR BOUNDARY

We shall distinguish the semiotic (drives and their articulations) from the realm of signification, which is always that of a proposition or judgment, in other words, a realm of positions. This positionality, which Husserlian phe­ nomenology orchestrates through the concepts of doxa, position, and thesis, is structured as a break in the signifying process, establishing the identification of the subject and its object as preconditions of propositionality. We shall call this break, which produces the positing of signification, a thetic5 phase. All enunciation, whether of a word or of a sentence, is thetic. It requires an iden­ tification; in other words, the subject must separate from and through his image, from and through his objects. This image and objects must first be posited in a space that becomes symbolic because it connects the two sepa­ rated positions, recording them or redistributing them in an open combinato­ rial system. The child’s first so-called holophrastic enunciations include gesture, the object, and vocal emission. Because they are perhaps not yet sentences 2. Ibid., pp. 383, 385 [Kristeva’s note]. 3. Ibid., pp. 3 8 5 —86 [Kristeva’s note]. 4. T he autonomous, abstract subject implicit in perception and cognition, as defined by the Ger­

man philosopher Edmund Husserl (1 8 59-1938), a founder of phenomenology. 5. Propositional (from thesis), also a term from Husserl.

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(NP-VP),6 generative grammar is not readily equipped to account for them. Nevertheless, they are already thetic in the sense that they separate an object from the subject, and attribute to it a semiotic fragment, which thereby becomes a signifier. That this attribution is either metaphoric or metonymic (“woof-woof” says the dog, and all animals become “woof-woof”) is logically secondary to the fact that it constitutes an attribution, which is to say, a posit­ ing of identity or difference, and that it represents the nucleus of judgment or proposition. We shall say that the thetic phase of the signifying process is the “deep­ est structure” of the possibility of enunciation, in other words, of significa­ tion and the proposition. Husserl theologizes this deep logic of signification by making it a productive origin of the “free spontaneity” of the Ego: Its fr ee spontaneity and activity consists in positing, positing on the strength of this or that, positing as an antecedent or a consequent, and so forth; it does not live within the theses as a passive indweller; the the­ ses radiate from it as from a primary source of generation [Erzeugungen]. Every thesis begins with a point o f insertion [Einsatzpunkt] with a point at which the positing has its origin [Ursprungssetzung]; so it is with the first thesis and with each further one in the synthetic nexus. This ‘insert­ ing’ even belongs to the thesis as such, as a remarkable modus of original actuality. It somewhat resembles the fia t / the point of insertion of will and action.8 In this sense, there exists only on e signification, that of the thetic phase, which contains the object as well as the proposition, and the complicity between them. There is no sign that is not thetic and every sign is already the germ of a “sentence,” attributing a signifier to an object through a “copula”9 that will function as a signified. Stoic semiology, which was the first to for­ mulate the matrix of the sign, had already established this complicity between sign and sentence, making them proofs of each other. Modern philosophy recognizes that the right to represent the founding thesis of signification (sign and/or proposition) devolves upon the transcen­ dental ego. But only since Freud have we been able to raise the question not of the origin of this thesis but rather of the process of its production. To brand the thetic as the foundation of metaphysics is to risk serving as an antechamber for metaphysics— unless, that is, we specify the way the thetic is produced. In our view, the Freudian theory of the unconscious and its Lacanian development show, precisely, that thetic signification is a stage attained under certain precise conditions during the signifying process, and that it constitutes the subject without being reduced to this process pre­ cisely because it is the threshold of language. Such a standpoint constitutes neither a reduction of the subject to the transcendental ego, nor a denial [denegation] of the thetic phase that establishes signification.

6. Noun-phrase, verb-phrase; nom enclature from the generative and transform ational grammar of the American linguist Noam Chomsky (b. 1928). 7. Literally “let there be” (Latin); this is the form of G od’s creative pronouncements in G enesis, in the Vulgate Bible.

8. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: G eneral Introduction to Pure Phenom enology, trans. W. R. Boyce G ib­ son (London: A llen and Unwin, 1969), p. 342 [Kristeva’s notej. 9. L in king verb (which jo in s the su b ject and predicate).

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1 2 . G EN O TEXT AND PH EN O TEXT In light of the distinction we have made between the semiotic chora and the symbolic, we may now examine the way texts function. What we shall call a genotext will include semiotic processes but also the advent of the symbolic. The former includes drives, their disposition, and their division of the body, plus the ecological and social system surrounding the body, such as objects and pre-Oedipal relations with parents. The latter encompasses the emer­ gence of object and subject, and the constitution of nuclei of meaning involv­ ing categories: semantic and categorial fields. Designating the genotext in a text requires pointing out the transfers of drive energy that can be detected in phonematic devices (such as the accumulation and repetition of pho­ nemes1 or rhyme) and melodic devices (such as intonation or rhythm), in the way semantic and categorial fields are set out in syntactic and logical fea­ tures, or in the economy of mimesis (fantasy, the deferment of denotation, narrative, etc.). The genotext is thus the only transfer of drive energies that organizes a space in which the subject is not yet a split unity that will become blurred, giving rise to the symbolic. Instead, the space it organizes is one in which the subject will be generated as such by a process of facilitations2 and marks within the constraints of the biological and social structure. In other words, even though it can be seen in language, the genotext is not linguistic (in the sense understood by structural or generative linguistics). It is, rather, a process, which tends to articulate structures that are ephemeral (unstable, threatened by drive charges, “quanta” rather than “marks”) and nonsignifying (devices that do not have a double articulation).3 It forms these structures out of: (a) instinctual dyads, (b) the corporeal and ecological con­ tinuum, (c) the social organism and family structures, which convey the con­ straints imposed by the mode of production, and (d) matrices of enunciation, which give rise to discursive “genres” (according to literary history), “psychic structures” (according to psychiatry and psychoanalysis), or various arrange­ ments of “the participants in the speech event” (in Jakobson’s notion of the linguistics of discourse).4 We may posit that the matrices of enunciation are the result of the repetition of drive charges (a) within biological, ecological, and socio-familial constraints (b and c), and the stabilization of their facilita­ tion into stases whose surrounding structure accommodates and leaves its mark on symbolization. The genotext can thus be seen as language’s underlying foundation. We shall use the term phenotext to denote language that serves to communi­ cate, which linguistics describes in terms of “competence” and “perfor­ mance.”5 The phenotext is constantly split up and divided, and is irreducible 1. Units of sound. The translator previously noted: “‘Device’ is Kristeva’s own choice for the transla­ tion of dispositif: something devised or constructed for a particular purpose.” 2. The translation of Freud’s German Bahnungen. According to Freud, it was easier to repeat an experience than to have a new one; repetition thus lays down or “facilitates” a pattern for future experiences. 3. To signify som ething else, language must both

link the sign to the thing (referent) and articulate the two parts of the sign (signifier and signifier). 4. See “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Rus­ sian Verb,” in Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings, 2 vols. (T h e Hague: M outon, 1971), 2 :1 3 0 - 4 7 [Kristeva’s note]. 5. Chom sky’s term s, corresp onding roughly to S au ssu re’s langue and p arole: “co m p eten ce” is knowledge of language as a system; “perform ance” involves linguistic acts by particular speakers.

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to the semiotic process that works through the genotext. The phenotext is a structure (which can be generated, in generative grammars sense); it obeys rules of communication and presupposes a subject of enunciation and an addressee. The genotext, on the other hand, is a process; it moves through zones that have relative and transitory borders and constitutes a path that is not restricted to the two poles of univocal information between two full-fledged subjects. If these two terms— genotext and phenotext— could be translated into a metalanguage that would convey the difference between them, one might say that the genotext is a matter of topology, whereas the phenotext is one of algebra.6 This distinction may be illustrated by a particular signifying system: written and spoken Chinese, particularly classical Chinese. Writing represents-articulates the signifying process into specific networks or spaces; speech (which may correspond to that writing) restores the diacritical elements necessary for an exchange of meaning between two subjects (temporality, aspect, specification of the protagonists, morpho-semantic identifiers, and so forth).7 The signifying process therefore includes both the genotext and the phe­ notext; indeed it could not do otherwise. For it is in language that all signi­ fying operations are realized (even when linguistic material is not used), and it is on the basis of language that a theoretical approach may attempt to perceive that operation. In our view, the process we have just described accounts for the way all signifying practices are generated.8 But every signifying practice does not encompass the infinite totality of that process. Multiple constraints— which are ultimately sociopolitical— stop the signifying process at one or another of the theses that it traverses; they knot it and lock it into a given surface or structure; they discard practice under fixed, fragmentary, symbolic m atri­ ces, the tracings of various social constraints that obliterate the infinity of the process: the phenotext is what conveys these obliterations. Among the capitalist mode of production s numerous signifying practices only certain literary texts of the avant-garde (Mallarme, Joyce9) manage to cover the infinity of the process, that is, reach the semiotic chora, which modifies linguistic structures. It must be emphasized, however, that this total explo­ ration of the signifying process generally leaves in abeyance the theses that are characteristic of the social organism, its structures, and their political transformation: the text has a tendency to dispense with political and social signifieds. It has only been in very recent years or in revolutionary periods that sig­ nifying practice has inscribed within the phenotext the plural, heteroge-

6. T hat is, the genotext is the shape taken by existing space, while the phenotext translates the relations discovered into a formal language. 7. See Joseph N eedham , S cien ce and Civilisation in China, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1960), vol. 1 [Kristeva’s note]. 8. From a similar perspective, Edgar Morin writes: “We can think of magic, mythologies, and ideolo­ gies both as mixed systems, making affectivity rational and rationality affective, and as outcomes o f combining: (a) fundamental drives, (b) the chancy play of fantasy, and (c) logico-constructive systems. (To our mind, the theory of myth must be

based on triunic syncretism rather than unilateral logic.)” He adds, in a note, that “myth does not have a single logic but a synthesis of three kinds of logic.” “Le Paradigme perdu: La Nature humaine” [Paradigm Lost: Human Nature], paper presented at the “Invariants biologiques et universaux culturels” [Biological Invariants and Cultural Universals] Colloquium, Royaumont, September 6 —9, 1972 [Kristeva’s note]. 9. Jam es Joyce (18 8 2 -1 9 4 1 ), Irish writer known for his innovations in the form and language of the novel.

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neous, and contradictory process of signification encompassing the flow of drives, material discontinuity, political struggle, and the pulverization of language.1 Lacan has delineated four types of discourse in our society: that of the hysteric, the academic, the master, and the analyst.2 Within the perspective just set forth, we shall posit a different classification, which, in certain respects, intersects these four Lacanian categories, and in others, adds to them. We shall distinguish between the following signifying practices: nar­ rative, metalanguage, contemplation, and text-practice. Let us state from the outset that this distinction is only provisional and schematic, and that although it corresponds to actual practices, it interests us primarily as a didactic implement [outil]— one that will allow us to specify some of the modalities of signifying dispositions. The latter interest us to the extent that they give rise to different practices and are, as a consequence, more or less coded in modes of production. O f course narrative and con­ templation could also be seen as devices stemming from (hysterical and obsessional) transference neurosis; and metalanguage and the text as prac­ tices allied with psychotic (paranoid and schizoid) economies.3 1974 1. An allusion to L e Poem e pulverise (1947, The Pulverized Poem), a volume o f prose poems by the French poet Rene Char. 2. Lacan presented this typology of discourse at his 1969 and 1970 sem inars [Kristeva’s note].

3. Suggesting parallels between creativity and madness, Kristeva connects narrative with hyste­ ria, contemplation with obsession, metalanguage with paranoia, and textuality with schizophrenia.

LAURA MULVEY b. 1941 The writer and filmmaker Laura Mulvey is widely regarded as one of the most chal­ lenging and incisive contemporary feminist cultural theorists. Belonging to the 1970s generation of British film theorists and independent filmmakers, she came to prominence with “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” a foundational text in feminist film criticism. This essay, published in 1975 in the vanguard British film journal Screen and frequently anthologized since, was groundbreaking as one of the earliest pieces of feminist criticism to go beyond cataloguing images of women in films. Extending the psychoanalytic insights of both s i g m u n d f r e u d and j a c q u e s l a c a n , Mulvey describes how sexual difference and inequality are inscribed not only in the content or subject matter of a film but in its formal visual apparatus— its characteristic ways of looking— as well. Born in Oxford, England, Mulvey received a B.A. in history from Oxford Univer­ sity in 1963. In 1972, with Claire Johnston and Linda Myles, she organized the women’s events at the Edinburgh Film Festival. She has taught classes at Bulmershe College in Reading, England; the London Institute; the University of East Anglia; Cornell University; the University of California at Davis; and the British Film Institute. Since 1999 she has been a professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She has co-directed several avant-garde films with her husband, Peter Wollen, including Penthesileia: Q ueen o f the Amazons (1974),

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Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), Amy! (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), and The Bad Sister (1983), all of which attempt to undermine conventional cinematic methods of film­ ing women. With Mark Lewis, she co-directed Disgraced Monuments (1991). In addition, her essays on a wide variety of subjects have been published in Visual and Other Pleasures (1989) and Fetishism and Curiosity (1996). In 1975 Mulvey s essay on visual pleasure and narrative cinema was revolu­ tionary. It was written at a time when feminist literary criticism was beginning to establish itself as a field of study in many English departments and when womens studies programs were just getting off the ground. Few of the works now considered canonical in feminist literary criticism had been written. Anglo-American femi­ nists, documenting images of women in literature, focused mainly on the content rather than the form of the texts they examined. Furthermore, many were hostile toward psychoanalysis, though a few were already exploring the potential connec­ tions between Freud and feminism. In France the theorists who would come to be known in the United States as the French feminists— j u l i a k r i s t e v a , h e l e n e c i x ­ o u s , and Luce Irigaray— were using psychoanalytic theory as a means of exploring sexual difference and inequality, but their work would not begin to have a signifi­ cant impact on American feminism until the 1980s. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” describes the manner in which the tradi­ tional visual apparatus of mainstream Hollywood “narrative” film looks at women as passive objects subordinated to the male gaze. Using a dense but illuminating psychoanalytic framework, Mulvey explores how the male unconscious shapes the erotic pleasures involved in looking. While she concedes that psychoanalysis might not offer a way out of the inequalities between the sexes or the oppression of women, she argues that it does provide a useful political tool for illustrating the mechanisms of pleasure on which the cinematic objectification of women depends. According to Mulvey, the visual techniques of cinema afford viewers two con­ tradictory pleasures. First, through the process Freud terms scopophilia (pleasure in looking), we enjoy making others the object of a controlling gaze. Second, through a process of identification that parallels Lacan’s famous mirror stage (theo­ rized in “The Mirror Stage,” 1949; see above), we derive pleasure from identifying with an ideal image on the screen. Both have their origins in infantile processes by which we learned to separate ourselves from others. As described to this point, the two processes seem to structure the visual pleasure of men and women in the same way. However, Mulvey argues that because the male viewer cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification, he (the viewer is specifically male) deflects the tension by splitting his gaze between spectacle and narrative. A woman on-screen typically functions as the primary erotic object for both screen characters and audience members, becoming the object of the dominant, male gaze; as such, she exists outside the narrative illusions of time and space the film creates. At the same time, specta­ tors identify with the male protagonist, who acts within the parameters of time and space— the diegesis— created by the film’s story line. The visual apparatus of mainstream film is further complicated because the pro­ cess of gazing on the female object of desire is both pleasurable and threatening. While film creates an illusionistic world that allows for the free play of desire, in actuality the viewer is never free from the circumstances that gave rise to those desires within the symbolic social order, especially from the castration complex. The female object of the gaze, because she lacks a penis, is associated with the primordial fear of castration; although that threat initiates the male subject’s integration into the symbolic social order, it also creates considerable anxiety. For this reason, the con­ trolling male ego must attempt to escape the threat of castration evoked by the very gaze that gives it pleasure. Mulvey maintains that the male unconscious has two means of disarming the threat. The first is a form of voyeurism— investigating the female, demystifying her, and either denouncing, punishing, or saving her. The sec­ ond is male disavowal, achieved by the substitution of a fetish object that becomes

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reassuring rather than dangerous. She examines these processes in the films of the directors Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969) and Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). Before the pleasures of mainstream film can be challenged, Mulvey argues, view­ ers must be able to break down the cinematic codes that create the controlling male gaze and the illusionistic world that satisfies the desires it invokes. The cinema depends on three looks: that of the camera, that of the audience, and that of the film’s characters. It achieves its illusion of truth and reality (mimesis) by denying or downplaying the first two (the material process of recording and the critical reading of the viewer) and by emphasizing the last. Only by disrupting the seamlessness of this whole visual illusion can women’s subordination to the male gaze be defied. The visual dynamics described in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” have been widely applied not only to film but to other media as well, including photogra­ phy, advertising, painting, and television, making this essay a landmark text for visual culture and media studies generally. But Mulvey’s description of the male gaze has not been without its critics— feminists included— who have pointed out limitations. For many, the spatial logic of the male gaze limits the ways in which vision (and visual pleasure) can be understood. Because the masculine gaze is always posited as the site of mastery and control, while the feminine is marked by submission to the gaze, little room is left within mainstream narrative cinema for resistances or alternative prac­ tices. Nor does avant-garde cinema, where Mulvey locates the alternative to the male gaze, offer much evidence of being any more responsive to feminist critique than Hol­ lywood filmmaking. Others argue that her paradigm locks the activity of looking into a traditional oedipal heterosexuality. Moreover, theories drawing on a visual appara­ tus based on a gendered split between female object and male voyeur cannot describe the visual pleasure of female viewers, or account for the male gaze at another male. Mulvey herself has recognized the validity of such objections, attempting to address many of them in a later essay, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun” (1981). Despite such criticism, Mulvey’s 1975 essay continues to inspire important work in feminist film studies. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinem a” Keywords: The Body, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Media, Narrative Theory, Popular Culture, Psychoanalysis, Representation, Sexuality

Visual Pleasure and Narrative C in em a1 I. Introduction ( a ) A POLITICAL USE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

This paper intends to use psychoanalysis to discover where and how the fas­ cination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual subject and the social formations that have moulded him. It takes as its starting-point the way film reflects, reveals and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual dif­ ference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle. It is helpful to understand what the cinema has been, how its magic has worked in the past, while attempting a theory and a practice which will challenge this cinema of the past. Psychoanalytic theory is thus appropriated here as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form. 1. All notes are written by the editor.

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The paradox of phallocentrism2 in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. An idea of woman stands as linchpin to the system: it is her lack that pro­ duces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies. Recent writing in Screen3 about psychoanaly­ sis and the cinema has not sufficiently brought out the importance of the representation of the female form in a symbolic order4 in which, in the last resort, it speaks castration and nothing else. To summarise briefly: the func­ tion of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is twofold: she firstly symbolises the castration threat by her real lack of a penis and secondly thereby raises her child into the symbolic. Once this has been achieved, her meaning in the process is at an end. It does not last into the world of law and language except as a memory, which oscillates between memory of maternal plenitude and memory of lack. Both are posited on nature (or on anatomy in Freud s famous phrase5). Woman’s desire is subjugated to her image as bearer of the bleeding wound; she can exist only in relation to castration and cannot transcend it. She turns her child into the signifier of her own desire to pos­ sess a penis (the condition, she imagines, of entry into the symbolic). Either she must gracefully give way to the word, the name of the father and the law, or else struggle to keep her child down with her in the half-light of the imag­ inary. Woman then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier6 for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer, not maker, of meaning. There is an obvious interest in this analysis for feminists, a beauty in its exact rendering of the frustration experienced under the phallocentric order. It gets us nearer to the roots of our oppression, it brings closer an articulation of the problem, it faces us with the ultimate challenge: how to fight the unconscious structured like a language (formed critically at the moment of arrival of language) while still caught within the language of the patriarchy? There is no way in which we can produce an alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it pro­ vides, of which psychoanalysis is not the only but an important one. We are still separated by a great gap from important issues for the female uncon­ scious which are scarcely relevant to phallocentric theory: the sexing of the female infant and her relationship to the symbolic, the sexually mature woman as non-mother, maternity outside the signification of the phallus, the vagina.

2. The psychoanalytic system in which sexual dif­ ference is defined as the difference between hav­ ing and lacking the phallus; the term has come to refer to the patriarchal cultural system as a whole insofar as that system privileges the phallus as the symbol and source of power. Because of that priv­ ilege, women suffer “penis envy” and men suffer the “castration complex” (the fear of every male child that his desire for his mother will be pun­ ished by castration by his father; more generally, the fear of becoming “castrated” like women that leads men to cling to masculinity); both terms are originally from the theories of s i g m u n d f r e u d (1856-1939). 3. Vanguard B ritish film jo u rn a l, founded in 1969 by the British Society for Education in Film

and Television. 4. In the theories of the psyche put forward by the French psychoanalyst j a c q u e s l a c a n ( 1 9 0 1 — 1981), the Symbolic is the dimension of language, law, and the father; in contrast, the Imaginary is modeled on the preverbal m other-child dyad, or on the relation between an infant and its mirror image. 5. T hat is, “anatomy is destiny” (“T he Dissolu­ tion of the Oedipus Com plex,” 1924). 6. Term used by structuralist and poststructural­ ist theorists that was coined by the Swiss linguist F E R D I N A N D d e s a u s s u r e (1857-1913) to explain the functioning of signs, which he divided into a signifier (the form a sign takes) and a signified (the concept it represents).

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But, at this point, psychoanalytic theory as it now stands can at least advance our understanding of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in which we are caught. ( b ) DESTRUCTION OF PLEASURE AS A RADICAL WEAPON

As an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions about the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of see­ ing and pleasure in looking. Cinema has changed over the last few decades. It is no longer the monolithic system based on large capital investment exempli­ fied at its best by Hollywood in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Technological advances (16mm and so on) have changed the economic conditions of cin­ ematic production, which can now be artisanal as well as capitalist. Thus it has been possible for an alternative cinema to develop. However selfconscious and ironic Hollywood managed to be, it always restricted itself to a formal mise en scen e1 reflecting the dominant ideological concept of the cinema. The alternative cinema provides a space for the birth of a cin­ ema which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and chal­ lenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream film. This is not to reject the latter moralistically, but to highlight the ways in which its formal pre­ occupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the society which produced it and, further, to stress that the alternative cinema must start specifically by reacting against these obsessions and assumptions. A politically and aesthetically avant-garde cinema is now possible, but it can still only exist as a counterpoint. The magic of the Hollywood style at its best (and of all the cinema which fell within its sphere of influence) arose, not exclusively, but in one impor­ tant aspect, from its skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure. Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order. In the highly developed Hollywood cinema it was only through these codes that the alienated subject, torn in his imag­ inary memory by a sense of loss, by the terror of potential lack in fantasy, came near to finding a glimpse of satisfaction: through its formal beauty and its play on his own formative obsessions. This article will discuss the inter­ weaving of that erotic pleasure in film, its meaning and, in particular, the central place of the image of woman. It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article. The satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego8 that represent the high point of film history hith­ erto must be attacked. Not in favour of a reconstructed new pleasure, which cannot exist in the abstract, nor of intellectualised unpleasure, but to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film. The alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without simply rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, and daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new lan­ guage of desire.

7. In film, everything w ithin the fram e of a shot, including actors, settings, costum es, action, and lighting.

8. T he part of the psyche, as described by Freud, that is conscious, controls behavior, and is in touch with external reality.

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II. Pleasure in Looking / Fascination w ith the H um an Form A The cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia (pleasure in looking). There are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at. Originally, in his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point he associ­ ated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. His particular examples centre on the voyeur­ istic activities of children, their desire to see and make sure of the private and forbidden (curiosity about other peoples genital and bodily functions, about the presence or absence of the penis and, retrospectively, about the primal scene9). In this analysis scopophilia is essentially active. (Later, in instincts and Their Vicissitudes’, Freud developed his theory of scopophilia further, attaching it initially to pre-genital auto-eroticism, after which, by analogy, the pleasure of the look is transferred to others. There is a close working here of the relationship between the active instinct and its further development in a narcissistic form.) Although the instinct is modified by other factors, in particular the constitution of the ego, it continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voy­ eurs and Peeping Toms whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watch­ ing, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other. At first glance, the cinema would seem to be remote from the undercover world of the surreptitious observation of an unknowing and unwilling victim. What is seen on the screen is so manifestly shown. But the mass of main­ stream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy. Moreover the extreme contrast between the darkness in the auditorium (which also isolates the spectators from one another) and the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps to promote the illusion of voyeuristic separation. Although the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world. Among other things, the position of the spectators in the cin­ ema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire onto the performer. B The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect. The conven­ tions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form. Scale, space, stories are all anthropomorphic. Here, curiosity and the wish to look inter­ mingle with a fascination with likeness and recognition: the human face, the human body, the relationship between the human form and its surroundings, the visible presence of the person in the world. Jacques Lacan has described

9. The scene of the ch ild ’s parents engaged in sexual intercourse. Freud published T hree Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality in 1905 and “Instincts and T heir Vicissitudes” in 1915.

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how the moment when a child recognises its own image in the mirror is crucial for the constitution of the ego.1 Several aspects of this analysis are relevant here. The mirror phase occurs at a time when children’s physical ambitions outstrip their motor capacity, with the result that their recognition of themselves is joyous in that they imagine their mirror image to be more complete, more perfect than they experience in their own body. Recognition is thus overlaid with misrecognition: the image recognised is conceived as the reflected body of the self, but its misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself as an ideal ego, the alienated subject which, re-introjected2 as an ego ideal, prepares the way for identification with others in the future. This mirror moment predates language for the child. Important for this article is the fact that it is an image that constitutes the matrix of the imaginary, of recognition/misrecognition and identification, and hence of the first articulation of the I, of subjectivity. This is a moment when an older fascination with looking (at the mother’s face, for an obvious example) collides with the initial inklings of self-awareness. Hence it is the birth of the long love affair/despair between image and self-image which has found such intensity of expression in film and such joyous recognition in the cinema audience. Quite apart from the extraneous similarities between screen and mirror (the framing of the human form in its surroundings, for instance), the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing it. The sense of for­ getting the world as the ego has come to perceive it (I forgot who I am and where I was) is nostalgically reminiscent of that pre-subjective moment of image recognition. While at the same time, the cinema has distinguished itself in the production of ego ideals, through the star system for instance. Stars provide a focus or centre both to screen space and screen story where they act out a complex process of likeness and difference (the glamorous impersonates the ordinary). C Sections A and B have set out two contradictory aspects of the pleasur­ able structures of looking in the conventional cinematic situation. The first, scopophilic, arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image seen. Thus, in film terms, one implies a separation of the erotic identity of the subject from the object on the screen (active scopophilia), the other demands identification of the ego with the object on the screen through the spectator’s fascination with and recognition of his like. The first is a function of the sexual instincts, the second of ego libido.3 This dichotomy was crucial for Freud. Although he saw the two as interacting and overlaying each other, the tension between instinctual drives and self-preservation polarises in terms of pleasure. But both are formative structures, mechanisms without intrinsic meaning. In themselves they have no signification, unless attached to an ide­ alisation. Both pursue aims in indifference to perceptual reality, and moti1. Lacan, in “T he M irror Stage” (1949; see above), describes the development of selfhood in children between 6 and 18 months old. 2. A psychoanalytic term; introjection is the unconscious process by which the outside world is

taken into the self and represented in its internal structure. 3. N arcissistic libido, a pleasure derived from idealizing the self.

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vate eroticised phantasmagoria that affect the subject’s perception of the world to make a mockery of empirical objectivity. During its history, the cinema seems to have evolved a particular illusion of reality in which this contradiction between libido and ego has found a beautifully complementary fantasy world. In reality the fantasy world of the screen is subject to the law which produces it. Sexual instincts and identifi­ cation processes have a meaning within the symbolic order which articu­ lates desire. Desire, born with language, allows the possibility of transcending the instinctual and the imaginary, but its point of reference continually returns to the traumatic moment of its birth: the castration complex. Hence the look, pleasurable in form, can be threatening in content, and it is woman as representation/image that crystallises this paradox. III. W oman as Im age, M an as B earer o f the L ook A In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-he-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leitm otif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley,4 she holds the look, and plays to and signi­ fies male desire. Mainstream film neatly combines spectacle and narrative. (Note, however, how in the musical song-and-dance numbers interrupt the flow of the diegesis.5) The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story-line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. This alien presence then has to be inte­ grated into cohesion with the narrative. As Budd Boetticher6 has put it: What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she repre­ sents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance. (A recent tendency in narrative film has been to dispense with this problem altogether; hence the development of what Molly Haskell7 has called the ‘buddy movie’, in which the active homosexual eroticism of the central male figures can carry the story without distraction.) Traditionally, the woman dis­ played has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen. For instance, the device of the show-girl allows the two looks to be unified technically without any apparent break in the diegesis. A woman performs

4. A m erican choreographer and film d irector (1 8 9 5 -1 9 7 6 ), famous for his musical productions. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1867—1932), American the­ atrical producer, best known for extravagant revues featuring showgirls. 5. T he ongoing story or narrative.

6. A m erican film d irector (1 9 1 6 -2 0 0 1 ), best known for his westerns. 7. A m erican film critic (b. 1939); she discusses “buddy movies” in From Reverence to Rape: T he Treatment o f W omen in the Movies (1974).

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within the narrative; the gaze of the spectator and that of the male char­ acters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisi­ militude. For a moment the sexual impact of the performing woman takes the film into a no mans land outside its own time and space. Thus Marilyn Monroes first appearance in T he River o f No Return and Lauren Bacalls songs in To Have and Have N ot.8 Similarly, conventional close-ups of legs (Dietrich, for instance) or a face (Garbo)9 integrate into the narrative a different mode of eroticism. One part of a fragmented body destroys the Renaissance space, the illusion of depth demanded by the narrative; it gives flatness, the quality of a cut-out or icon, rather than verisimilitude, to the screen. B An active/passive heterosexual division of labour has similarly controlled narrative structure. According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like. Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man’s role as the active one of advancing the story, making things happen. The man con­ trols the film fantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extra-diegetic1 tendencies represented by woman as spectacle. This is made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the specta­ tor can identify. As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. A male movie stars glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more power­ ful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror. The character in the story can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator, just as the image in the mirror was more in control of motor co-ordination. In contrast to woman as icon, the active male figure (the ego ideal of the identification process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to that of the mirror recognition, in which the alienated subject internalised his own representation of his imaginary existence. He is a figure in a land­ scape. Here the function of film is to reproduce as accurately as possible the so-called natural conditions of human perception. Camera technology (as exemplified by deep focus in particular) and camera movements (deter­ mined by the action of the protagonist), combined with invisible editing (demanded by realism), all tend to blur the limits of screen space. The male protagonist is free to command the stage, a stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action. (There are films with a woman as main protagonist, of course. To analyse this phenomenon seri8. The 1944 Am erican film (dir. Howard Hawks) that was the film debut of the actress Bacall (1 9 2 4 -2 0 1 4 ). River o f No Return (dir. O tto Prem ­ inger, 1954), Am erican film that stars the actress Monroe (1926—1962) as a beautiful saloon singer.

9. Greta Garbo (1 9 0 5 -1 9 9 0 ), Swedish-born Amer­ ican film actress. Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), German-born American actress. 1. Outside the story or the fram e of the cam era.

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ously here would take me too far afield. Pam Cook and Claire Johnstons study of T he Revolt o f M amie Stover2 in Phil Hardy (ed.), R aoul Walsh (Edinburgh, 1974), shows in a striking case how the strength of this female protagonist is more apparent than real.) C l Sections III A and B have set out a tension between a mode of represen­ tation of woman in film and conventions surrounding the diegesis. Each is associated with a look: that of the spectator in direct scopophilic contact with the female form displayed for his enjoyment (connoting male fantasy) and that of the spectator fascinated with the image of his like set in an illusion of natu­ ral space, and through him gaining control and possession of the woman within the diegesis. (This tension and the shift from one pole to the other can structure a single text. Thus both in Only Angels Have Wings3 and in To Have and Have Not, the film opens with the woman as object of the combined gaze of spectator and all the male protagonists in the film. She is isolated, glamor­ ous, on display, sexualised. But as the narrative progresses she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalised sexuality, her show-girl connota­ tions; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone. By means of identifica­ tion with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too.) But in psychoanalytic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. Ultimately, the meaning of woman is sexual difference, the visu­ ally ascertainable absence of the penis, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organisation of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified. The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demysti­ fying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or sav­ ing of the guilty object (an avenue typified by the concerns of the film noir4); or else complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reas­ suring rather than dangerous (hence overvaluation, the cult of the female star). This second avenue, fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. The first avenue, voyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt (immediately associated with castration), asserting control and subjugating the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness. This sadistic side fits in well with narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a 2. A 1956 Am erican film (dir. Raoul starring Jan e Russell in the title role. 3. A 1939 Am erican film (dir. Howard the female “o b je ct” is Je a n Arthur.

W alsh), Hawks);

4. Literally, “black film” (French), a post-WWH genre characterized by dark settings, by shady or disturbed characters who are alienated and isolated, and by a view of society from its underside.

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beginning and an end. Fetishistic scopophilia, on the other hand, can exist outside linear time as the erotic instinct is focused on the look alone. These contradictions and ambiguities can be illustrated more simply by using works by Hitchcock and Sternberg,5 both of whom take the look almost as the con­ tent or subject matter of many of their films. Hitchcock is the more complex, as he uses both mechanisms. Sternbergs work, on the other hand, provides many pure examples of fetishistic scopophilia. C2 Sternberg once said he would welcome his films being projected upsidedown so that story and character involvement would not interfere with the spectator’s undiluted appreciation of the screen image. This statement is revealing but ingenuous: ingenuous in that his films do demand that the fig­ ure of the woman (Dietrich, in the cycle of films with her, as the ultimate example) should be identifiable; but revealing in that it emphasises the fact that for him the pictorial space enclosed by the frame is paramount, rather than narrative or identification processes. While Hitchcock goes into the investigative side of voyeurism, Sternberg produces the ultimate fetish, tak­ ing it to the point where the powerful look of the male protagonist (character­ istic of traditional narrative film) is broken in favour of the image in direct erotic rapport with the spectator. The beauty of the woman as object and the screen space coalesce; she is no longer the bearer of guilt but a perfect prod­ uct, whose body, stylised and fragmented by close-ups, is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator s look. Sternberg plays down the illusion of screen depth; his screen tends to be one-dimensional, as light and shade, lace, steam, foliage, net, streamers and so on reduce the visual field. There is little or no mediation of the look through the eyes of the main male protagonist. On the contrary, shadowy presences like La Bessiere in M orocco6 act as surrogates for the director, detached as they are from audience identification. Despite Sternberg s insistence that his stories are irrelevant, it is significant that they are concerned with situation, not suspense, and cyclical rather than linear time, while plot complications revolve around misunderstanding rather than conflict. The most important absence is that of the controlling male gaze within the screen scene. The high point of emotional drama in the most typical Dietrich films, her supreme moments of erotic meaning, take place in the absence of the man she loves in the fiction. There are other witnesses, other spectators watching her on the screen, their gaze is one with, not standing in for, that of the audience. At the end of M orocco, Tom Brown has already disappeared into the desert when Amy Jolly kicks off her gold sandals and walks after him. At the end of Dishonoured/ Kranau is indifferent to the fate of Magda. In both cases, the erotic impact, sanctified by death, is displayed as a spectacle for the audience. The male hero misunderstands and, above all, does not see. In Hitchcock, by contrast, the male hero does see precisely what the audi­ ence sees. However, although fascination with an image through scopophilic 5. Jo sef von Sternberg (1894—1969), Austrian-born American film director; he brought the actress Marlene Dietrich to the United States and fea­ tured her in a number of films in the early 1930s. Alfred H itchcock (1899-1980), English film direc­ tor known as a master of suspense; many of his most important films were made in Hollywood.

6. A 1930 American film directed by Sternberg; La Bessiere is played by Adolphe Menjou, Tom Brown by Gary Cooper, and Amy Jolly by Dietrich. 7. A 1931 American film directed by Sternberg; Kranau is played by Victor M cLaglen and M arie (not “Magda”), a spy, by D ietrich.

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eroticism can be the subject of the film, it is the role of the hero to portray the contradictions and tensions experienced by the spectator. In Vertigo in par­ ticular, but also in M am ie and Rear W indow,8 the look is central to the plot, oscillating between voyeurism and fetishistic fascination. Hitchcock has never concealed his interest in voyeurism, cinematic and non-cinematic. His heroes are exemplary of the symbolic order and the law— a policeman (Ver­ tigo), a dominant male possessing money and power (M am ie)— but their erotic drives lead them into compromised situations. The power to subject another person to the will sadistically or to the gaze voyeuristically is turned onto the woman as the object of both. Power is backed by a certainty of legal right and the established guilt of the woman (evoking castration, psychoanalytically speaking). True perversion is barely concealed under a shallow mask of ideological correctness— the man is on the right side of the law, the woman on the wrong. Hitchcock’s skillful use of identification processes and liberal use of subjective camera from the point of view of the male pro­ tagonist draw the spectators deeply into his position, making them share his uneasy gaze. The spectator is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene and diegesis, which parodies his own in the cinema. In an analysis of R ear W indow, Douchet9 takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience, the events in the apartment block oppo­ site correspond to the screen. As he watches, an erotic dimension is added to his look, a central image to the drama. His girlfriend Lisa had been of little sexual interest to him, more or less a drag, so long as she remained on the spectator side. When she crosses the barrier between his room and the block opposite, their relationship is reborn erotically. He does not merely watch her through his lens, as a distant meaningful image, he also sees her as a guilty intruder exposed by a dangerous man threatening her with pun­ ishment, and thus finally giving him the opportunity to save her. Lisa’s exhi­ bitionism has already been established by her obsessive interest in dress and style, in being a passive image of visual perfection; Jeffriess voyeurism and activity have also been established through his work as a photo-journalist, a maker of stories and captor of images. However, his enforced inactivity, binding him to his seat as a spectator, puts him squarely in the fantasy posi­ tion of the cinema audience. In Vertigo, subjective camera predominates. Apart from one flashback from Judy’s point of view, the narrative is woven around what Scottie sees or fails to see.1 The audience follows the growth of his erotic obsession and subsequent despair precisely from his point of view. Scotties voyeurism is blatant: he falls in love with a woman he follows and spies on without speaking to. Its sadistic side is equally blatant: he has chosen (and freely chosen, for he had been a successful lawyer) to be a policeman, with all the attendant possibilities of pursuit and investigation. As a result, he follows, watches and falls in love with a perfect image of female beauty and mystery.

8. T hree Am erican films directed by H itchcock: Vertigo (1958), M am ie (1964), and Rear W indow (1954). 9. Je an D ouchet (b. 1929), French film d irector and c ritic , author o f Alfred H itch cock (1967). Je ffrie s , tem porarily im m obilized by a broken leg, is played by Jam es Stew art; Lisa is played by

G race Kelly. 1. Scottie (Jam es Stewart) is hired to watch Mad­ eleine (Kim Novak), a wealthy man’s wife; he becomes obsessed with her, and after her suicide, he finds another woman who resembles her (Judy, also played by Novak).

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Once he actually confronts her, his erotic drive is to break her down and force her to tell by persistent cross-questioning. In the second part of the film, he re-enacts his obsessive involvement with the image he loved to watch secretly. He reconstructs Judy as Madeleine, forces her to conform in every detail to the actual physical appearance of his fetish. Her exhibitionism, her masochism, make her an ideal passive coun­ terpart to Scotties active sadistic voyeurism. She knows her part is to per­ form, and only by playing it through and then replaying it can she keep Scottie’s erotic interest. But in the repetition he does break her down and succeeds in exposing her guilt. His curiosity wins through; she is punished. Thus, in Vertigo, erotic involvement with the look boomerangs: the specta­ tor’s own fascination is revealed as illicit voyeurism as the narrative content enacts the processes and pleasures that he is himself exercising and enjoying. The Hitchcock hero here is firmly placed within the symbolic order, in narra­ tive terms. He has all the attributes of the patriarchal superego.2 Hence the spectator, lulled into a false sense of security by the apparent legality of his surrogate, sees through his look and finds himself exposed as complicit, caught in the moral ambiguity of looking. Far from being simply an aside on the perversion of the police, Vertigo focuses on the implications of the active/ looking, passive/looked-at split in terms of sexual difference and the power of the male symbolic encapsulated in the hero. Marnie, too, performs for Mark Rutland’s gaze and masquerades as the perfect to-be-looked-at image.3 He, too, is on the side of the law until, drawn in by obsession with her guilt, her secret, he longs to see her in the act of committing a crime, make her confess and thus save her. So he, too, becomes complicit as he acts out the implica­ tions of his power. He controls money and words; he can have his cake and eat it. IV. Summary The psychoanalytic background that has been discussed in this article is rel­ evant to the pleasure and unpleasure offered by traditional narrative film. The scopophilic instinct (pleasure in looking at another person as an erotic object) and, in contradistinction, ego libido (forming identification processes) act as formations, mechanisms, which mould this cinema’s formal attributes. The actual image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the argument a step further into the content and structure of representation, adding a further layer of ideological significance demanded by the patriarchal order in its favourite cinematic form— illusionistic4 narra­ tive film. The argument must return again to the psychoanalytic background: women in representation can signify castration, and activate voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent this threat. Although none of these interacting layers is intrinsic to film, it is only in the film form that they can reach a perfect and beautiful contradiction, thanks to the possibility in the cinema of shifting the emphasis of the look. The place of the look defines cinema, the possibility of varying it and exposing it. This is what makes cin2. T h e part of the psyche, as described by Freud, that develops through the incorporation of the moral standards o f the parents and community. 3. In Marnie, the title character (Tippi Hedren) is

a habitual thief and liar who steals from her employers and then changes her identity; Rutland (Sean Connery) hires her despite recognizing her. 4. Relying on illusion to convey realism.

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ema quite different in its voyeuristic potential from, say, strip-tease, theatre, shows and so on. Going far beyond highlighting a woman’s to-be-looked-atness, cinema builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself. Playing on the tension between film as controlling the dimension of time (editing, narrative) and film as controlling the dimension of space (changes in distance, editing), cinematic codes create a gaze, a world and an object, thereby producing an illusion cut to the measure of desire. It is these cine­ matic codes and their relationship to formative external structures that must be broken down before mainstream film and the pleasure it provides can be challenged. To begin with (as an ending), the voyeuristic-scopophilic look that is a cru­ cial part of traditional filmic pleasure can itself be broken down. There are three different looks associated with cinema: that of the camera as it rec­ ords the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion. The con­ ventions of narrative film deny the first two and subordinate them to the third, the conscious aim being always to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience. Without these two absences (the material existence of the recording process, the critical reading of the spectator), fictional drama cannot achieve reality, obviousness and truth. Nevertheless, as this article has argued, the structure of looking in nar­ rative fiction film contains a contradiction in its own premises: the female image as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish. Thus the two looks materially present in time and space are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego. The camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion of Renaissance space, flowing move­ ments compatible with the human eye, an ideology of representation that revolves around the perception of the subject; the camera’s look is disavowed in order to create a convincing world in which the spectator’s surrogate can perform with verisimilitude. Simultaneously, the look of the audience is denied an intrinsic force: as soon as fetishistic representation of the female image threatens to break the spell of illusion, and the erotic image on the screen appears directly (without mediation) to the spectator, the fact of fetishisation, concealing as it does castration fear, freezes the look, fixates the spec­ tator and prevents him from achieving any distance from the image in front of him. This complex interaction of looks is specific to film. The first blow against the monolithic accumulation of traditional film conventions (already under­ taken by radical film-makers) is to free the look of the camera into its mate­ riality5 in time and space and the look of the audience into dialectics6 and passionate detachment. There is no doubt that this destroys the satisfaction, pleasure and privilege of the ‘invisible guest’, and highlights the way film has depended on voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms. Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret. 1975 5. Actual m echanism s.

6. Analysis of interaction.

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G I O R G I O AGAMBEN b.

19 4 2

Written before the events of 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror,” the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer (1995) captures for many the form that state sovereignty and political power have assumed in the current era. Drawing on m i c h e l F o u c a u l t ’s concept of “biopower,” Wa l t e r b e n j a m i n s critique of violence, and the German political theorist Carl Schm itt’s work on “the state of exception,” Agamben considers how power differentiates between those whose lives should be protected and those who should be stripped of all rights, including a right to live. His pursuit of these questions illuminates the complex political and legal dynamics of modernity and the nation-state. His work contributes to the heightened focus on the term life in contemporary theory and to the suspicion of “human rights” discourse among the critics of the war on terror. Agamben studied law and philosophy at the University of Rome, writing his Ph.D. thesis on the political philosophy of the French mystic and activist Simone Weil. In 1966, 1968, and 1969, he attended small seminars conducted by m a r t i n h e i d e g g e r in France. He collaborated during the 1960s and ’70s on several projects with the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Italian author Italo Calvino. Agam­ ben has taught at several universities in Italy, including the Universities of Macerata and Verona, and at the College Internationale de Paris and the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Prior to 9/11 he held visiting positions at the University of California at Berkeley and Northwestern University, among other U.S. institutions. After Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2004, which required certain foreign visitors to undergo biometric scanning to receive a visa, Agamben refused to return to America. The writing of Homo Sacer in 1995 inaugurated a series on which Agamben worked for twenty years; he published the ninth and final volume of the Homo Sacer project, The Use of Bodies, in 2014. In “What Is a Camp?,” our first selection, Agamben asserts that the concentration camp is the “nomos of the political space in which we live.” Nomos literally means “law” (Greek) or, more broadly, the prevailing customs and norms of a society. To explain what it means to live, Agamben turns to Ar i s t o t l e ’s Politics, which he sees as differentiating between two understandings of life: zoe, which is the physical life of the body and which Agamben calls “bare life” or “naked life,” and bios, which is the life shaped by an individual as a meaningful product of her interactions with others. Agamben accepts Foucaults contention that in modern societies, the state undertakes to protect and even nurture life. Modern sovereignty rests on this “biopower”— the deployment of power in the name of “life.” But Agamben insists, in a theoretical move akin to the logic of deconstruction, that this attention to the life of citizens is enabled, even constituted, by the exclusion of those deemed unworthy of life. The law is always accompanied by a “state of exception,” in which its rights and protections are suspended for some people. The favored ones, citizens, benefit from a bios guaranteed by law; but the excluded, who are stripped of or denied citizenship, are reduced to “bare life” and removed to a space apart from the legal, political realm, a space called “the camp.” Designated as threats to the citizens’ ability to live a full life, the inhabitants of the camp are held by a power that can, because it is outside of the law even as it is legally established by that law, do anything to them. Furthermore, the camp is extraterritorial, often located outside the proper jurisdictional territory of the state that establishes it— and thus, in Agamben s reading, quite literally the “out­ side” that constitutes the “inside.” The United States’ relegation of suspected ter­ rorists to the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba beginning in 2002 provided a dramatic manifestation of the scenario that Agamben outlines.

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Our second selection, from Homo Sacer, shows how Agamben deploys the Foucauldian notion of biopower. Unlike Foucault, Agamben is mostly interested in the power deployed by the state, and not in nonstate power diffused through any num­ ber of social actors and institutions. But like Foucault, he understands power as pro­ ductive. Biopower uses its focus on life to create a new kind of political subject, one that depends on the state to protect the life of citizens against threats such as epi­ demics, famine, environmental hazards, and infant mortality. This new kind of power gives the state unprecedented access to the body. It is now a matter of state interest that someone be well fed and free of disease. This “politicization of life” can be based on the notion that “life” is “sacred” and therefore should be protected and preserved, but it also leads to the distinction between “bare life,” which is merely bodily and derided as “animalistic,” and bios, a fully human life. Sovereignty, traditionally the power of the king to order the death of his subjects, has now become the power to provide a fully human life to those subjects. This transformation makes the distinc­ tion between subjects (citizens) and nonsubjects momentous. The noncitizen is not entitled to the state-provided means for bios, but instead exists only in the realm of bare life. The multiple refugees and displaced persons created by contemporary wars exist in this minimalist condition. Agamben takes the ancient Roman legal category of the homo sacer as the emblem of this fundamental contradiction at the heart of our current situation. An accursed man or outlaw, the homo sacer may be killed by anyone who encounters him. But, displaying the fundamental ambivalence of core religious terms, the homo sacer is also sacred, since his extralegal status places him outside of worldly power. The state may not sacrifice him, just as he (as a noncitizen) cannot sacrifice himself (as a sol­ dier or otherwise) for his country. As a nonperson, he does not exist for the state, which is why others can kill him with impunity. Agamben contends that biopower cannot exist without this category of the nonperson, the one who has only zoe and whose life is not protected. In the modern era, the homo sacer is the inhabitant of the camps. That is why, as h a n n a h a r e n d t was the first to highlight, the Nazis had to strip German Jews of citizenship before sending them to the camps. Citizens have “rights” that limit what the state can do to them. Agamben links the rise of biopower to the reliance since the American and French Revolutions on the discourse of rights to legitimate politi­ cal regimes. While rights might be viewed as liberating, in Agamben’s view they firmly locate the subject of those rights within the legal system and, hence, make that subject answerable to its demands. That there is barely any life outside of rights is true, but the subjection to rights creates the nation-state s sovereignty. And the notion of rights, Agamben contends, is contradictory from its very origins. Rights are meant, in part, to protect subjects against state tyranny. But the enforcer of rights is the state itself. Furthermore, the state is obliged to protect only the rights of citizens, of its own subjects. So by submitting to the state as its subject, the citizen is supposed to get protection against the state. This doesn’t make sense— and, for that reason, the rights enjoyed by virtue of being a citizen are always supplemented by other rights (perhaps more fundamental ones) assumed to be enjoyed by virtue of being human. “Human rights” are contrasted to “political rights,” but the idea of human rights (even when the lack the concept is meant to fill is clear) has proved terribly ineffec­ tive in protecting those persons that states deem outside the law. At times, Agamben seems to accept, as do Benjamin and j a c q u e s d e r r i d a , that there is an originary violence at the heart of the law, that the valuing of “life” by biopower must always be shadowed or even constituted by the category of “bare life” and the extralegal homo sacer. But as the Homo Sacer series has unfolded, Agam­ ben has struggled to imagine ways of being that are nonviolent and offer an alterna­ tive to the nomos of the state of exception, with its camps. His insistence that democracy and totalitarianism are only inches apart can seem hyperbolic, just as his refusal to acknowledge the successes of rights discourse and humanitarianism

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in alleviating tyranny and suffering can seem obtuse. But there is no denying that power, concentrated mostly in the hands of nation-states, has persistently over the past one hundred years refused to countenance more than bare life for millions who cannot gain citizenship in the world’s more prosperous countries.

Means Without End: Notes on Politics Keywords: The Body, Institutional Studies, Modernity, Nationhood, Subjectivity

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life Keywords: The Body, Institutional Studies, Modernity, Nationhood, Subjectivity

From M eans W ithout End: Notes on Politics1 W hat Is a Camp? What happened in the camps exceeds the juridical concept of crime to such an extent that the specific political-juridical structure within which those events took place has often been left simply unexamined. The camp is the place in which the most absolute conditio inhum ana2 ever to appear on Earth was realized: this is ultimately all that counts for the victims as well as for posterity. Here I will deliberately set out in the opposite direction. Rather than deducing the definition of camp from the events that took place there, I will ask instead: W hat is a camp? W hat is its political-juridical structure? How could such events have taken place there? This will lead us to look at the camp not as a historical fact and an anomaly that— though admittedly still with us— belongs nonetheless to the past, but rather in some sense as the hidden matrix and nom os3 of the political space in which we still live. Historians debate whether the first appearance of camps ought to be iden­ tified with the cam pos de c o n c e n tr a tio n s 4 that were created in 1896 by the Spaniards in Cuba in order to repress the insurrection of that colony’s pop­ ulation, or rather with the concentration camps into which the English herded the Boers5 at the beginning of the twentieth century. What matters here is that in both cases one is dealing with the extension to an entire civilian population of a state of exception6 linked to a colonial war. The camps, in other words, were not born out of ordinary law, and even less were they the product— as one might have believed— of a transformation and a develop­ ment of prison law; rather, they were born out of the state of exception and martial law. This is even more evident in the case of the Nazi Lager,7 whose origin and juridical regime is well documented. It is well known that the juridical foundation of internment was not ordinary law but rather the Schutzhaft (literally, protective custody), which was a juridical institution of Prussian derivation that Nazi jurists sometimes considered a measure of preventive policing inasmuch as it enabled the “taking into custody” of indi1. Translated by Vincenzo B in etti and C esare C asarino. 2. Inhuman condition (Latin). Agamben is refer­ ring to the Nazi concentration camps, first estab­ lished in 1933 and turned into mass exterm ination camps during World War II. 3. Law (G reek); more generally, the prevailing custom s or norms o f a society. 4. Concentration camps (Spanish).

5. South A fricans of Dutch, German, and Hugue­ not descent, defeated by the British in a war (1 8 9 9 -1 9 0 2 ) for political dom inance o f South A frica. 6. For Agamben a key term of governance theory, designating the suspension of legal protection and of rights for certain persons. 7. C oncentration camp (literally, “storeroom ” or “w arehouse”; Germ an).

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viduals regardless of any relevant criminal behavior and exclusively in order to avoid threats to the security of the state. The origin of the Schutzhaft, however, resides in the Prussian law on the state of siege that was passed on June 4, 1851, and that was extended to the whole of Germany (with the exception of Bavaria) in 1871, as well as in the earlier Prussian law on the “protection of personal freedom” (Schutz der personlichen Freiheit) that was passed on February 12, 1850. Both these laws were applied widely during World War I. One cannot overestimate the importance of this constitutive nexus between state of exception and concentration camp for a correct understand­ ing of the nature of the camp. Ironically, the “protection” of freedom that is in question in the Schutzhaft is a protection against the suspension of the law that characterizes the state of emergency. What is new here is that this institution is dissolved by the state of exception on which it was founded and is allowed to continue to be in force under normal circumstances. T he cam p is the space that opens up w hen the state o f exception starts to becom e the rule. In it, the state of exception, which was essentially a temporal sus­ pension of the state of law, acquires a permanent spatial arrangement that, as such, remains constantly outside the normal state of law. When Himmler8 decided, in March 1933, on the occasion of the celebrations of Hitler’s elec­ tion to the chancellorship of the Reich, to create a “concentration camp for political prisoners” at Dachau, this camp was immediately entrusted to the SS and, thanks to the Schutzhaft, was placed outside the jurisdiction of crim­ inal law as well as prison law, with which it neither then nor later ever had anything to do. Dachau, as well as the other camps that were soon added to it (Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Lichtenberg),9 remained virtually always operative: the number of inmates varied and during certain periods (in par­ ticular, between 1935 and 1937, before the deportation of the Jews began) it decreased to 7,500 people; the camp as such, however, had become a permanent reality in Germany. One ought to reflect on the paradoxical status of the camp as space of excep­ tion: the camp is a piece of territory that is placed outside the normal jurid­ ical order; for all that, however, it is not simply an external space. According to the etymological meaning of the term exception (ex-capere1), what is being excluded in the camp is captured outside, that is, it is included by virtue of its very exclusion. Thus, what is being captured under the rule of law is first of all the very state of exception. In other words, if sovereign power is founded on the ability to decide on the state of exception, the camp is the structure in which the state of exception is permanently realized. Hannah Arendt2 observed once that what comes to light in the camps is the principle that supports totalitarian domination and that common sense stubbornly refuses to admit to, namely, the principle according to which anything is possible. 8. H einrich H im m ler (1 9 0 0 -1 9 4 5 ), head of the Schutzstaffel (protection squad; Germ an), or S S, the elite param ilitary organization founded as H itler’s personal bodyguard (1925). Eventually members of the S S becam e responsible for pop­ ulating and adm inistering the concentration camps, the first of which was Dachau, about 12 miles north of M unich.

9. All con centration camps in G erm any itself, established in 1936, 1937, and 1933, respectively. 1. T h e L atin verb from w hich “exception” is derived, broken into its com ponents (which liter­ ally mean “to seize out o f”). 2. G erm an-born A m erican p olitical th eo rist (1 9 0 6 -1 9 7 5 ; see above); she makes this observa­ tion in T he Origins o f Totalitarianism. (1951).

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It is only because the camps constitute a space of exception— a space in which the law is completely suspended— that everything is truly possible in them. If one does not understand this particular political-juridical structure of the camps, whose vocation is precisely to realize permanently the excep­ tion, the incredible events that took place in them remain entirely unintel­ ligible. The people who entered the camp moved about in a zone of indistinction between the outside and the inside, the exception and the rule, the licit and the illicit, in which every juridical protection had disappeared; moreover, if they were Jews, they had already been deprived of citizenship rights by the Nuremberg Laws3 and were later completely denationalized at the moment of the “final solution.’4 Inasmuch as its inhabitants have been stripped o f every political status and reduced com pletely to n a k ed life,5 the cam p is also the most absolute biopolitical space that has ever been realized— a space in w hich pow er confronts nothing other than pure biological life w ith­ out any m ediation. The camp is the paradigm itself of political space at the point in which politics becomes biopolitics and the hom o sacer6 becomes indistinguishable from the citizen. The correct question regarding the hor­ rors committed in the camps, therefore, is not the question that asks hypo­ critically how it could have been possible to commit such atrocious horrors against other human beings; it would be more honest, and above all more useful, to investigate carefully how— that is, thanks to what juridical proce­ dures and political devices— human beings could have been so completely deprived of their rights and prerogatives to the point that committing any act toward them would no longer appear as a crime (at this point, in fact, truly anything had become possible). If this is the case, if the essence of the camp consists in the materializa­ tion of the state of exception and in the consequent creation of a space for naked life as such, we will then have to admit to be facing a camp virtually every time that such a structure is created, regardless of the nature of the crimes committed in it and regardless of the denomination and specific topography it might have. The soccer stadium in Bari in which the Italian police temporarily herded Albanian illegal immigrants in 1991 before send­ ing them back to their country, the cycle-racing track in which the Vichy authorities rounded up the Jews before handing them over to the Germans,7 the refugee camp near the Spanish border where Antonio Machado8 died in 1939, as well as the zones d ’a ttente9 in French international airports in which foreigners requesting refugee status are detained will all have to be consid­ ered camps. In all these cases, an apparently anodyne place (such as the Hotel Arcade near the Paris airport) delimits instead a space in which, for all intents and purposes, the normal rule of law is suspended and in which 3. Laws passed in a 1935 convention in Niirnberg that deprived Jews of G erm an citizenship and banned sexual relations between Jews and those o f “Germ an or kindred blood.” 4. That is, to the “Jew ish question”: the solution, adopted in 1942, was to send all Jew s within G erm an-controlled territories to labor and exter­ mination camps. 5. Also “bare life,” a key term for Agamben: the minimal existence o f a human being, apart from any attributes, accom plishm ents, or rights that attend recognized mem bership in a political or social community.

6. Sacred/accursed man (Latin): in ancient Roman law, a man who is banned and therefore can be killed with impunity because he is placed outside the law', but who could not be offered as a sacri­ fice in religious rites. 7. Thousands o f Jews were rounded up in Paris by French police on July 16—17, 1942, and most were held in a bicycle racing track and stadium before being shipped to Auschw itz. 8. Spanish poet and playwright (1 8 7 5 -1 9 3 9 ); he was fleeing after the Republican defeat in the Spanish Civil War. 9. W aiting zones (French).

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the fact that atrocities may or may not be committed does not depend on the law but rather on the civility and ethical sense of the police that act tem­ porarily as sovereign. This is the case, for example, during the four days foreigners may be kept in the zone dattente before the intervention of French judicial authorities. In this sense, even certain outskirts of the great postin­ dustrial cities as well as the gated communities of the United States are beginning today to look like camps, in which naked life and political life, at least in determinate moments, enter a zone of absolute indeterminacy. From this perspective, the birth of the camp in our time appears to be an event that marks in a decisive way the political space itself of modernity. This birth takes place when the political system of the modern nation-state— founded on the functional nexus between a determinate localization (terri­ tory) and a determinate order (the state), which was mediated by automatic regulations for the inscription of life (birth or nation)— enters a period of permanent crisis and the state decides to undertake the management of the biological life of the nation directly as its own task. In other words, if the structure of the nation-state is defined by three elements— territory, order, and birth— the rupture of the old nom os does not take place in the two aspects that, according to Carl Schm itt,1 used to constitute it (that is, local­ ization, Ortung, and order, Ordnung),2 but rather at the site in which naked life is inscribed in them (that is, there where inscription turns hirth into nation). There is something that no longer functions in the traditional mech­ anisms that used to regulate this inscription, and the camp is the new hid­ den regulator of the inscription of life in the order— or, rather, it is the sign of the system s inability to function without transforming itself into a lethal machine. It is important to note that the camps appeared at the same time that the new laws on citizenship and on the denationalization of citizens were issued (not only the Nuremberg Laws on citizenship in the Reich but also the laws on the denationalization of citizens that were issued by almost all the European states, including France, between 1915 and 1933).3 The state of exception, which used to be essentially a temporary suspension of the order, becomes now a new and stable spatial arrangement inhabited by that naked life that increasingly cannot be inscribed into the order. T he increas­ ingly widening gap betw een hirth (naked life) and nation-state is the new fa ct o f the politics o f our time and what we are calling “cam p” is this disparity. To an order without localization (that is, the state of exception during which the law is suspended) corresponds now a localization without order (that is, the camp as permanent space of exception). The political system no longer orders forms of life and juridical norms in a determinate space; rather, it contains within itself a dislocating localization that exceeds it and in which virtually every form of life and every norm can be captured. The camp intended as a dislocating localization is the hidden matrix of the politics in which we still live, and we must learn to recognize it in all of its metamor-

1. G erm an ju rist and political theorist (1 8 8 8 — 1985); he is Agamben’s source for the concept of “state of exception.” 2. S ch m itt’s terms to designate the key feature of the nation-state: namely, its imposition o f order over a specific territory or locality.

3. T h e French citizenship law o f 1933 revoked citizenship by birth, requiring children born in France o f non-French parents to request French citizenship upon reaching adulthood at the age of 18. Citizenship requirements were similarly tight­ ened in Great Britain, Italy, and Austria.

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phoses. The camp is the fourth and inseparable element that has been added to and has broken up the old trinity of nation (birth), state, and territory. It is from this perspective that we need to see the reappearance of camps in a form that is, in a certain sense, even more extreme in the territories of the former Yugoslavia.4 What is happening there is not at all, as some inter­ ested observers rushed to declare, a redefinition of the old political system according to new ethnic and territorial arrangements, that is, a simple rep­ etition of the processes that culminated in the constitution of the European nation-states. Rather, we note there an irreparable rupture of the old nomos as well as a dislocation of populations and human lives according to entirely new lines of flight. That is why the camps of ethnic rape are so crucially important. If the Nazis never thought of carrying out the “final solution” by impregnating Jewish women, that is because the principle of birth, which ensured the inscription of life in the order of the nation-state, was in some way still functioning, even though it was profoundly transformed. This principle is now adrift: it has entered a process of dislocation in which its functioning is becoming patently impossible and in which we can expect not only new camps but also always new and more delirious normative defini­ tions of the inscription of life in the city. The camp, which is now firmly settled inside it, is the new biopolitical nom os of the planet. 1994

From Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare L ife1 From Part Three: T he C am p as Biopolitical Paradigm o f the M odern § 1 TH E POLITICIZA TIO N OF L IF E 1.1. In the last years of his life, while he was working on the history of sexu­ ality and unmasking the deployments of power at work within it, Michel Fou­ cault2 began to direct his inquiries with increasing insistence toward the study of what he defined as biopolitics, that is, the growing inclusion of mans natural life in the mechanisms and calculations of power. At the end of the first volume of T he History o f Sexuality ,3 Foucault, as we have seen, sum­ marizes the process by which life, at the beginning of the modern age, comes to be what is at stake in politics: “For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for political exis­ tence; modern man is an animal whose politics calls his existence as a liv­ ing being into question.”4 Until the very end, however, Foucault continued to investigate the “processes of subjectivization” that, in the passage from the ancient to the modern world, bring the individual to objectify his own self, constituting himself as a subject and, at the same time, binding him4. As part of the ethnic cleansing undertaken by Serbs to drive out or kill Bosnian M uslim s and Croats after Yugoslavia broke apart in 1991, mass executions and system atic rapes occurred in con­ centration camps. 1. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, who occa­ sionally retains Agam ben’s Italian in square brackets.

2. French historian and philosopher (1 9 2 6 —1984; see above). 3. A 3-volume work (1 9 7 9 -8 4 ). 4. History o f Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1980), p. 143. For the G reek philosopher a r i s t o t l e (3 8 4 -3 2 2 b . c . e .), see above.

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self to a power of external control. Despite what one might have legitimately expected, Foucault never brought his insights to bear on what could well have appeared to be the exemplary place of modern biopolitics: the politics of the great totalitarian states of the twentieth century. The inquiry that began with a reconstruction of the grand enferm em ent5 in hospitals and pris­ ons did not end with an analysis of the concentration camp. If, on the other hand, the pertinent studies that Hannah Arendt6 dedi­ cated to the structure of totalitarian states in the postwar period have a limit, it is precisely the absence of any biopolitical perspective. Arendt very clearly discerns the link between totalitarian rule and the particular condition of life that is the camp: “The supreme goal of all totalitarian states/’ she writes, in a plan for research on the concentration camps, which, unfortunately, was not carried through, “is not only the freely admitted, long-ranging ambition to global rule, but also the never admitted and immediately realized attempt at total domination. The concentration camps are the laboratories in the experiment of total domination, for human nature being what it is, this goal can be achieved only under the extreme circumstances of human made hell” (Essays, p. 240). Yet what escapes Arendt is that the process is in a certain sense the inverse of what she takes it to be, and that precisely the radical transformation of politics into the realm of bare life7 (that is, into a camp) legitimated and necessitated total domination. Only because politics in our age had been entirely transformed into biopolitics was it possible for poli­ tics to be constituted as totalitarian politics to a degree hitherto unknown. The fact that the two thinkers who may well have reflected most deeply on the political problem of our age were unable to link together their own insights is certainly an index of the difficulty of this problem. The concept of “bare life” or “sacred life” is the focal lens through which we shall try to make their points of view converge. In the notion of bare life the interlacing of politics and life has become so tight that it cannot easily be analyzed. Until we become aware of the political nature of bare life and its modern avatars (biological life, sexuality, etc.), we will not succeed in clarifying the opac­ ity at their center. Conversely, once modern politics enters into an intimate symbiosis with bare life, it loses the intelligibility that still seems to us to characterize the juridico-political foundation of classical politics. 1.2. Karl Lowith8 was the first to define the fundamental character of total­ itarian states as a “politicization of life” and, at the same time, to note the curious contiguity between democracy and totalitarianism: Since the emancipation of the third estate,9 the formation of bourgeois democracy and its transformation into mass industrial democracy, the neutralization of politically relevant differences and postponement of a decision about them has developed to the point of turning into its opposite: a total politicization [totale Politisierung] of everything, even 5. Grand (or mass) confinem ent (French). 6. G erm an-born A m erican political theorist (1 9 0 6 —1975; see above). Agamben quotes from her Essays in Understanding, 1930—1954: Form a­ tion, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerom e Kohn (New York: Sch ocken , 2005). 7. Also “naked life,” a key term for Agamben: the

minimal existence of a human being, apart from any attrib u tes, accom plishm ents, or rights that attend recognized mem bership in a political or social community. 8. Germ an philosopher and intellectual historian (1 8 9 7 -1 9 7 3 ). 9. T hat is, the commons.

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of seemingly neutral domains of life. Thus in Marxist Russia there emerged a worker-state that was “more intensively state-oriented than any absolute monarchy”; in fascist Italy, a corporate state normatively regulating not only national work, but also “after-work” [Dopolavoro\ and all spiritual life; and, in National Socialist Germany, a wholly integrated state, which, by means of racial laws and so forth, politi­ cizes even the life that had until then been private. (Der okkasion elle Dezionismus, p. 33)1 The contiguity between mass democracy and totalitarian states, neverthe­ less, does not have the form of a sudden transformation (as Lowith, here following in Schm itt’s2 footsteps, seems to maintain); before impetuously coming to light in our century, the river of biopolitics that gave hom o sacer3 his life runs its course in a hidden but continuous fashion. It is almost as if, starting from a certain point, every decisive political event were double-sided: the spaces, the liberties, and the rights won by individuals in their conflicts with central powers always simultaneously prepared a tacit but increasing inscription of individuals’ lives within the state order, thus offering a new and more dreadful foundation for the very sovereign power from which they wanted to liberate themselves. “The ‘right’ to life,” writes Foucault, explain­ ing the importance assumed by sex as a political issue, “to one’s body, to health, to happiness, to the satisfaction of needs and, beyond all the oppres­ sions or alienation,’ the right’ to rediscover what one is and all that one can be, this 'right’— which the classical juridical system was utterly incapable of comprehending— was the political response to all these new procedures of power” (La volonte, p. 191).4 The fact is that one and the same affirmation of bare life leads, in bourgeois democracy, to a primacy of the private over the public and of individual liberties over collective obligations and yet becomes, in totalitarian states, the decisive political criterion and the exem­ plary realm of sovereign decisions. And only because biological life and its needs had become the 'politically decisive fact is it possible to understand the otherwise incomprehensible rapidity with which twentieth-century par­ liamentary democracies were able to turn into totalitarian states and with which this century’s totalitarian states were able to be converted, almost without interruption, into parliamentary democracies. In both cases, these transformations were produced in a context in which for quite some time politics had already turned into biopolitics, and in which the only real ques­ tion to be decided was which form of organization would be best suited to the task of assuring the care, control, and use of bare life. Once their fun­ damental referent becomes bare life, traditional political distinctions (such as those between Right and Left, liberalism and totalitarianism, private and public) lose their clarity and intelligibility and enter into a zone of indistinc­ tion. The ex-communist ruling classes’ unexpected fall into the most extreme

1. Lowith, Der okkasion elle Dezionismus von Carl Schm itt [The Opportunistic Decisionism o f Carl Schmitt], in his Samtliche Schriften, ed. Klaus Stichweh and M arc B. de Launey, vol. 8 (Stutt­ gart: Metzler, 1984). 2. Carl Sch m itt (1 8 8 8 —1985), G erm an ju rist and political theorist who openly supported Nazism. 3. Sacred/accursed man (L atin); in ancien t

Roman law, a man who is banned and therefore can be killed with impunity because he is placed outside the law, but who could not be offered as a sacrifice in religious rites. 4. Foucault, La volonte de savoir [The Will to Knowledge] (Paris: Gallimard, 1976); this is vol. 1 o f History o f Sexuality.

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racism (as in the Serbian program of “ethnic cleansing”)5 and the rebirth of new forms of fascism in Europe also have their roots here. Along with the emergence of biopolitics, we can observe a displacement and gradual expansion beyond the limits of the decision on hare life, in the state of exception, in which sovereignty consisted. If there is a line in every modern state marking the point at which the decision on life becomes a deci­ sion on death, and biopolitics can turn into thanatopolitics,6 this line no longer appears today as a stable border dividing two clearly distinct zones. This line is now in motion and gradually moving into areas other than that of political life, areas in which the sovereign is entering into an ever more intimate symbiosis not only with the jurist but also with the doctor, the sci­ entist, the expert, and the priest. In the pages that follow, we shall try to show that certain events that are fundamental for the political history of modernity (such as the declaration of rights), as well as others that seem instead to represent an incomprehensible intrusion of biologico-scientific principles into the political order (such as National Socialist eugenics and its elimination of “life that is unworthy of being lived,” or the contemporary debate on the normative determination of death criteria), acquire their true sense only if they are brought back to the common biopolitical (or thanatopolitical) context to which they belong. From this perspective, the camp— as the pure, absolute, and impassable biopolitical space (insofar as it is founded solely on the state of exception7)— will appear as the hidden paradigm of the political space of modernity, whose metamorphoses and disguises we will have to learn to recognize. 1.3. The first recording of bare life as the new political subject is already implicit in the document that is generally placed at the foundation of mod­ ern democracy: the 1679 writ of habeas corpus.8 Whatever the origin of this formula, used as early as the eighteenth century to assure the physical pres­ ence of a person before a court of justice, it is significant that at its center is neither the old subject of feudal relations and liberties nor the future citoyen, but rather a pure and simple corpus.9 When John the Landless con­ ceded Magna Carta to his subjects in 1215,1 he turned his attention to the “archbishops, bishops, abbots, counts, barons, viscounts, provosts, officials and bailiffs,” to the “cities, towns, villages,” and, more generally, to the “free men of our kingdom,” so that they might enjoy “their ancient liberties and free customs” as well as the ones he now specifically recognized. Article 29, whose task was to guarantee the physical freedom of the subjects, reads: “No free man [homo liber] may be arrested, imprisoned, dispossessed of his goods, or placed outside the law [utlagetur] or molested in any way; we will not place our hands on him nor will have others place their hands on him [nec super

5. T he Serbian attempt during the Bosnian W ar (1 9 9 2 —95) to drive out or kill all M uslim s and Croats in Bosnia. 6. A politics o f death (in G reek, thanatos), the reverse of a politics of life (bios). 7. T h e suspension of the law under what are deemed extraordinary circu m stan ces, thereby allowing the state to deprive people o f all rights. 8. You should have the body (L atin), the first words of a writ directing the production in court

of a person being detained. Although it was in use in England in the Middle Ages, many procedures were form alized in the H abeas Corpus Act o f 1679. 9. Body (Latin), as contrasted to a citizen (citoyen, French). 1. T h e “Great C h arter,” issued to his barons by England’s K ingjoh n (1167-1216), is often seen as the first legal statem ent o f rights granted to citi­ zens by a sovereign.

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eum ibimis, nec super eum mittemus], except after a legal judgment by his peers according to the law of the realm.” Analogously, an ancient writ that preceded the habeas corpus and was understood to assure the presence of the accused in a trial bears the title de hom ine replegiando (or repigliando).2 Consider instead the formula of the writ that the act of 1679 generalizes and makes into law: Praecipimus tibi quod Corpus X, in custodia vestra detentum, ut dicitur, una cum causa captionis et detentionis, quodcum que nom ine idem X censeatur in eadem , habeas coram nobis, apud Westminster; ad subjici­ endum, “We command that you have before us to show, at Westminster, that body X, by whatsoever name he may be called therein, which is held in your custody, as it is said, as well as the cause of the arrest and the detention.” Nothing allows one to measure the difference between ancient and medieval freedom and the freedom at the basis of modern democracy better than this formula. It is not the free man and his statutes and prerogatives, nor even simply homo, but rather corpus that is the new subject of politics. And democ­ racy is born precisely as the assertion and presentation of this “body”: habeas corpus ad subjiciendum , “you will have to have a body to show.” The fact that, of the all the various jurisdictional regulations concerned with the protection of individual freedom, it was habeas corpus that assumed the form of law and thus became inseparable from the history of Western democracy is surely due to mere circumstance. It is just as certain, however, that nascent European democracy thereby placed at the center of its battle against absolutism not bios, the qualified life of the citizen, but zoe— the bare, anonymous life that is as such taken into the sovereign ban (“the body of being taken . . . ,” as one still reads in one modern formulation of the writ, “by whatsoever name he may be called therein”).3 What comes to light in order to be exposed apu d W estminster is, once again, the body of hom o sacer, which is to say, bare life. This is modern democracy’s strength and, at the same time, its inner contradiction: mod­ ern democracy does not abolish sacred life but rather shatters it and dissemi­ nates it into every individual body, making it into what is at stake in political conflict. And the root of modern democracy’s secret biopolitical calling lies here: he who will appear later as the bearer of rights and, according to a curious oxymoron, as the new sovereign subject (subiectus superaneus, in other words, what is below and, at the same time, most elevated) can only be constituted as such through the repetition of the sovereign exception and the isolation of corpus, bare life, in himself. If it is true that law needs a body in order to be in force, and if one can speak, in this sense, of “law’s desire to have a body,” democracy responds to this desire by compelling law to assume the care of this body. This ambiguous (or polar) character of democracy appears even more clearly in the habeas corpus if one considers the fact that the same legal procedure that was originally intended to assure the presence of the accused at the trial and, therefore, to keep the accused from avoiding judgment, turns— in its new and definitive form— into grounds for the sheriff to detain and exhibit the body of the accused. Corpus is a two2. For replevying a man: i.e., for releasing a pris­ oner upon bail. 3. Both zoe and bios m ean “life ” in G reek, but Agamben finds in A ristotle’s Politics a distinction between the terms. Zoe (Agamben’s “bare life” or

“naked life”) is physical life, our animal existence; bios is our social or political life, the personhood we create (our biography) through our interaction with others.

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fa c e d being, the hearer both o f subjection to sovereign pow er and o f individ­ ual liberties. This new centrality of the “body” in the sphere of politico-juridical termi­ nology thus coincides with the more general process by which corpus is given such a privileged position in the philosophy and science of the Baroque age, from Descartes to Newton, from Leibniz to Spinoza.4 And yet in political reflection corpus always maintains a close tie to bare life, even when it becomes the central metaphor of the political community, as in Leviathan or T he Social Contract.5 Hobbes’s use of the term is particularly instructive in this regard. If it is true that in De hom in e6 he distinguishes mans natural body from his political body (hom o enim non m odo corpus naturale est, sed etiam civitatis, id est, ut ita loquar, corporis politici pars, “Man is not only a natural body, but also a body of the city, that is, of the so-called political part” [De hom ine, p. 1]), in the De cive' it is precisely the body’s capacity to be killed that founds both the natural equality of men and the necessity of the “Commonwealth”: If we look at adult men and consider the fragility of the unity of the human body (whose ruin marks the end of every strength, vigor, and force) and the ease with which the weakest man can kill the strongest man, there is no reason for someone to trust in his strength and think himself superior to others by nature. Those who can do the same things to each other are equals. And those who can do the supreme thing— that is, kill— are by nature equal among themselves. (De cive, p. 93) The great metaphor of the Leviathan, whose body is formed out of all the bodies of individuals, must be read in this light. The absolute capacity of the subjects’ bodies to be killed forms the new political body of the West. FRO M §2 BIOPOLITICS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN

2.1. Hannah Arendt entitled the fifth chapter of her book on imperialism,8 which is dedicated to the problem of refugees, “The Decline of the NationState and the End of the Rights of Man.” Linking together the fates of the rights of man and of the nation-state, her striking formulation seems to imply the idea of an intimate and necessary connection between the two, though the author herself leaves the question open. The paradox from which Arendt departs is that the very figure who should have embodied the rights of man par excellence— the refugee— signals instead the concept’s radical crisis. “The conception of human rights,” she states, “based upon the assumed exis­ tence of a human being as such, broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with 4. B A R U C H S P I N O Z A (1 6 3 2 -1 6 7 7 ), Jew ish-born Dutch philosopher. Rene D escartes (1 5 9 6 -1 6 5 0 ), French philosopher. Isaac Newton (1 6 4 2 -1 7 2 7 ), English scien tist and m athem atician. G o ttfried Leibniz (1 6 4 6 —1716), G erm an philosopher and m athem atician. 5. A classic of political philosophy (1762) by the Sw iss-born French philosopher Jean -Jacq u es Rousseau (1717—1778). Leviathan (1651), a work by the English political philosopher Thom as Hobbes (1 5 8 8 -1 6 7 9 ); it was the first to suggest that government originates in a social con tract of

all its members. 6. Concerning Man (1658). Agamben quotes the L atin text from Thom as H obbes, Opera philo-

sophica qu ae latine scripsit om nia in unum cor­ pus, ed. W illiam M olesworth, vol. 2 (London: J. Bohn, 1983). 7. C oncerning the C itizen (1642); Agamben quotes from De cive: T he Latin Version, ed. How­ ard W arrender (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). 8. “Im perialism ” is the title of part 2 o f A rendt’s Origins o f Totalitarianism (1951; reprint, New York: H arcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979).

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people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships— except that they were still human” (Origins, p. 299). In the system of the nation-state, the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man show them­ selves to lack every protection and reality at the moment in which they can no longer take the form of rights belonging to citizens of a state. If one considers the matter, this is in fact implicit in the ambiguity of the very title of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, of 1789. In the phrase La decla­ ration des droits de Vhomme et du citoyen, it is not clear whether the two terms hom m e and citoyen name two autonomous beings or instead form a unitary system in which the first is always already included in the second. And if the latter is the case, the kind of relation that exists between hom m e and citoyen still remains unclear. From this perspective, Burkes boutade9 according to which he preferred his “Rights of an Englishman” to the inalienable rights of man acquires an unsuspected profundity. Arendt does no more than offer a few, essential hints concerning the link between the rights of man and the nation-state, and her suggestion has therefore not been followed up. In the period after the Second World War, both the instrumental emphasis on the rights of man and the rapid growth of declarations and agreements on the part of international organizations have ultimately made any authentic understanding of the historical signifi­ cance of the phenomenon almost impossible. Yet it is time to stop regarding declarations of rights as proclamations of eternal, metajuridical1 values bind­ ing the legislator (in fact, without much success) to respect eternal ethical principles, and to begin to consider them according to their real historical function in the modern nation-state. Declarations of rights represent the originary figure of the inscription of natural life in the juridico-political order of the nation-state. The same bare life that in the an cien regim e2 was politi­ cally neutral and belonged to God as creaturely life and in the classical world was (at least apparently) clearly distinguished as zoe from political life (bios) now fully enters into the structure of the state and even becomes the earthly foundation of the state s legitimacy and sovereignty. A simple examination of the text of the Declaration of 1789 shows that it is precisely bare natural life— which is to say, the pure fact of birth— that appears here as the source and bearer of rights. “Men,” the first article declares, “are born and remain free and equal in rights” (from this perspec­ tive, the strictest formulation of all is to be found in La Fayette’s3 project elaborated in July 1789: “Every man is born with inalienable and indefeasi­ ble rights”). At the same time, however, the very natural life that, inaugu­ rating the biopolitics of modernity, is placed at the foundation of the order vanishes into the figure of the citizen, in whom rights are “preserved” (accord­ ing to the second article: “The goal of every political association is the pres­ ervation of the natural and indefeasible rights of man”). And the Declaration can attribute sovereignty to the “nation” (according to the third article: “The 9. O utburst, sally (French). T h e English philoso­ pher and statesm an e d m u n d b u r k e (1 7 2 9 -1 7 9 7 ) assailed the French Revolution and, specifically, its declaration of rights in Reflections on the Rev­ olution in France (1790). 1. Outside or beyond the realm of law established by governmental authority. 2. Old regim e (Fren ch ); specifically, France

before the revolution o f 1789. 3. T h e marquis de Lafayette (1 7 5 7 -1 8 3 4 ), who after fighting against the British in the Am erican Revolution becam e a member of France’s revolu­ tionary National Assembly, to which in July 1789 he presented his draft of a declaration of rights (written with the aid of Thom as Jefferson).

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principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation”) precisely because it has already inscribed this element of birth in the very heart of the politi­ cal community. The nation— the term derives etymologically from nascere (to be born)— thus closes the open circle of man’s birth. 2.2. Declarations of rights must therefore be viewed as the place in which the passage from divinely authorized royal sovereignty to national sovereignty is accomplished. This passage assures the exceptio4 of life in the new state order that will succeed the collapse of the an cien regime. The fact that in this process the “subject” is, as has been noted, transformed into a “citizen” means that birth—which is to say, bare natural life as such— here for the first time becomes (thanks to a transformation whose biopolitical conse­ quences we are only beginning to discern today) the immediate bearer of sovereignty. The principle of nativity and the principle of sovereignty, which were separated in the ancien regime (where birth marked only the emergence of a sujety a subject), are now irrevocably united in the body of the “sovereign subject” so that the foundation of the new nation-state may be constituted. It is not possible to understand the “national” and biopolitical development and vocation of the modern state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries if one forgets that what lies at its basis is not man as a free and conscious political subject but, above all, man’s bare life, the simple birth that as such is, in the passage from subject to citizen, invested with the principle of sover­ eignty. The fiction implicit here is that birth immediately becomes nation such that there can be no interval of separation [scarto] between the two terms. Rights are attributed to man (or originate in him) solely to the extent that man is the immediately vanishing ground (who must never come to light as such) of the citizen. Only if we understand this essential historical function of the doctrine of rights can we grasp the development and metamorphosis of declarations of rights in our century. When the hidden difference [scarto] between birth and nation entered into a lasting crisis following the devastation of Europe’s geopolitical order after the First World War, what appeared was Nazism and fascism, that is, two properly biopolitical movements that made of natural life the exemplary place of the sovereign decision. We are used to condens­ ing the essence of National Socialist ideology into the syntagm “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden). When Alfred Rosenberg5 wanted to express his par­ ty’s vision of the world, it is precisely to this hendiadys6 that he turned. “The National Socialist vision of the world,” he writes, “springs from the convic­ tion that soil and blood constitute what is essential about Germanness, and that it is therefore in reference to these two givens that a cultural and state politics must be directed” (Blut und E hre, p. 242). Yet it has too often been forgotten that this formula, which is so highly determined politically, has, in truth, an innocuous juridical origin. The formula is nothing other than the concise expression of the two criteria that, already in Roman law, served to identify citizenship (that is, the primary inscription of life in the state 4. Exception (Latin). 5. G erm an Nazi ideologist (1893—1946), hanged as a war crim inal after the war. Agamben quotes from his Blut und Ehre, Ein K a m p ffiir deutsche

W iedergeburt: R eden und Aufsatze 1919-1933 [Blood and Honor, A War fo r G erm an R ebirth:

S peeches and A rticles, 1919—1933] (M unich: F. Eher, 1936). 6. A figure o f speech in w hich a single idea is expressed by two terms joined together by “and,” rather than one term modified by the other.

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order): ius soli (birth in a certain territory) and ius sanguinis (birth from citi­ zen parents).7 In the an cien regime, these two traditional juridical criteria had no essential meaning, since they expressed only a relation of subjuga­ tion. Yet with the French Revolution they acquire a new and decisive impor­ tance. Citizenship now does not simply identify a generic subjugation to royal authority or a determinate system of laws, nor does it simply embody (as Chalier8 maintained when he suggested to the convention on September 23, 1792, that the title of citizen be substituted for the traditional title m onsieur or sieur9 in every public act) the new egalitarian principle; citizenship names the new status of life as origin and ground of sovereignty and, therefore, lit­ erally identifies— to cite Jean-Denis Lanjuinais s1 words to the convention— les m em bers du souverain, “the members of the sovereign.” Hence the centrality (and the ambiguity) of the notion of “citizenship” in modern politi­ cal thought, which compels Rousseau to say, “No author in France . . . has understood the true meaning of the term citizen.’ ”2 Hence too, however, the rapid growth in the course of the French Revolution of regulatory provisions specifying which man was a citizen and which one not, and articulating and gradually restricting the area of the ius soli and the ius sanguinis. Until this time, the questions “What is French? What is German?” had constituted not a political problem but only one theme among others discussed in philosophical anthropologies. Caught in a constant work of redefinition, these questions now begin to become essentially political, to the point that, with National Socialism, the answer to the question “Who and what is German?” (and also, therefore, “Who and what is not German?”) coincides immediately with the highest political task. Fascism and Nazism are, above all, redefinitions of the relations between man and citizen, and become fully intelligible only when situated— no matter how paradoxical it may seem— in the biopolitical con­ text inaugurated by national sovereignty and declarations of rights. Only this tie between the rights of man and the new biopolitical determi­ nation of sovereignty makes it possible to understand the striking fact, which has often been noted by historians of the French Revolution, that at the very moment in which native rights were declared to be inalienable and indefea­ sible, the rights of man in general were divided into active rights and passive rights. In his Preliminaire de la constitution, Sieyes3 already clearly stated: Natural and civil rights are those rights fo r whose preservation society is formed, and political rights are those rights by which society is formed. For the sake of clarity, it would be best to call the first ones passive rights, and the second ones active rights. . . . All inhabitants of a country must enjoy the rights of passive citizens . . . all are not active citizens. Women, at least in the present state, children, foreigners, and also those who would not at all contribute to the public establishment must have no active influence on public matters. (Ecrits politiques, pp. 189—206) 7. Literally, the Latin phrases mean “right of the soil” and “right of blood.” 8. Joseph C halier (1747-1793), French revolu­ tionary. 9. Literally, “my lord” or “lord” (French); in com ­ mon usage, titles o f address roughly equivalent to the English “M ister” and “Sir.” 1. French politician and ju rist (1753—1827). 2. Rousseau, Social Contract 1.6 (Rousseau cred­

its one contemporary author, Jean d’Alem bert, with understanding the term). 3. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1748-1836), or Abbe Sieyes: French Roman Catholic cleric and politi­ cal theorist. Agamben quotes his “Prelim inary to the C onstitution” (1789) from Ecrits politiques (Paris: Editions des Archives contem porains, 1985).

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And after defining the membres du souverain, the passage of Lanjuinais cited above continues with these words: “Thus children, the insane, minors, women, those condemned to a punishment either restricting personal free­ dom or bringing disgrace [punition afflictive ou inflamm ante] . . . will not be citizens” (quoted in Sewell, “Le citoyen,”4 p. 105). Instead of viewing these distinctions as a simple restriction of the demo­ cratic and egalitarian principle, in flagrant contradiction to the spirit and letter of the declarations, we ought first to grasp their coherent biopolitical meaning. One of the essential characteristics of modern biopolitics (which will continue to increase in our century) is its constant need to redefine the threshold in life that distinguishes and separates what is inside from what is outside. Once it crosses over the walls of the oikos5 and penetrates more and more deeply into the city, the foundation of sovereignty— nonpolitical life— is immediately transformed into a line that must be constantly redrawn. Once zoe is politicized by declarations of rights, the distinctions and thresh­ olds that make it possible to isolate a sacred life must be newly defined. And when natural life is wholly included in the polis— and this much has, by now, already happened— these thresholds pass, as we will see, beyond the dark boundaries separating life from death in order to identify a new living dead man, a new sacred man. 2.3. If refugees (whose number has continued to grow in our century, to the point of including a significant part of humanity today) represent such a dis­ quieting element in the order of the modern nation-state, this is above all because by breaking the continuity between man and citizen, nativity and nationality, they put the originary fiction of modern sovereignty in crisis. Bringing to light the difference between birth and nation, the refugee causes the secret presupposition of the political domain— bare life— to appear for an instant within that domain. In this sense, the refugee is truly “the man of rights,” as Arendt suggests, the first and only real appearance of rights outside the fiction of the citizen that always covers them over. Yet this is pre­ cisely what makes the figure of the refugee so hard to define politically. Since the First World War, the birth-nation link has no longer been capa­ ble of performing its legitimating function inside the nation-state, and the two terms have begun to show themselves to be irreparably loosened from each other. From this perspective, the immense increase of refugees and stateless persons in Europe (in a short span of time 1,500,000 White Rus­ sians, 700,000 Armenians, 500,000 Bulgarians, 1,000,000 Greeks, and hun­ dreds of thousands of Germans, Hungarians, and Rumanians were displaced from their countries) is one of the two most significant phenomena. The other is the contemporaneous institution by many European states of jurid­ ical measures allowing for the mass denaturalization and denationalization of large portions of their own populations. The first introduction of such rules into the juridical order took place in France in 1915 with respect to naturalized citizens of “enemy” origin; in 1922, Belgium followed the

4. W. H. Sewell, “Le citoyen/La citoyenne: Activ­ ity, Passivity, and the Revolutionary Concept of C itizenship,” in T he F ren ch Revolution and the C reation o f M odern P olitical Culture, ed. Lucas

Colin (Oxford: Pergamon, 1988). 5. Household (Greek), a term used by Aristotle in his Politics to designate the nonpolitical domestic sphere.

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French example and revoked the naturalization of citizens who had com­ mitted “antinational” acts during the war; in 1926, the fascist regime issued an analogous law with respect to citizens who had shown themselves to be “unworthy of Italian citizenship”; in 1933, it was Austria’s turn; and so it con­ tinued until the Nuremberg laws6 on “citizenship in the Reich” and the “protection of German blood and honor” brought this process to the most extreme point of its development, introducing the principle according to which citizenship was something of which one had to prove oneself worthy and which could therefore always be called into question. And one of the few rules to which the Nazis constantly adhered during the course of the “Final Solution”7 was that Jews could be sent to the extermination camps only after they had been fully denationalized (stripped even of the residual citizenship left to them after the Nuremberg laws). These two phenomena— which are, after all, absolutely correlative— show that the birth-nation link, on which the declaration of 1789 had founded national sovereignty, had already lost its mechanical force and power of self­ regulation by the time of the First World War. On the one hand, the nation­ states become greatly concerned with natural life, discriminating within it between a so-to-speak authentic life and a life lacking every political value. (Nazi racism and eugenics are only comprehensible if they are brought back to this context.) On the other hand, the very rights of man that once made sense as the presupposition of the rights of the citizen are now progressively separated from and used outside the context of citizenship, for the sake of the supposed representation and protection of a bare life that is more and more driven to the margins of the nation-states, ultimately to be recodified into a new national identity. The contradictory character of these processes is certainly one of the reasons for the failure of the attempts of the various committees and organizations by which states, the League of Nations, and, later, the United Nations confronted the problem of refugees and the protec­ tion of human rights, from the Bureau Nansen8 (1922) to the contemporary High Commission for Refugees (1951), whose actions, according to statute, are to have not a political but rather a “solely humanitarian and social” mis­ sion. What is essential is that, every time refugees represent not individual cases but— as happens more and more often today— a mass phenomenon, both these organizations and individual states prove themselves, despite their solemn invocations of the “sacred and inalienable” rights of man, absolutely incapable of resolving the problem and even of confronting it adequately. 2.4. The separation between humanitarianism and politics that we are expe­ riencing today is the extreme phase of the separation of the rights of man from the rights of the citizen. In the final analysis, however, humanitarian organizations— which today are more and more supported by international commissions— can only grasp human life in the figure of bare or sacred life,

6. Laws passed in a 1935 convention in Niirnberg that deprived Jew s of G erm an citizenship and banned sexual relations between Jews and those of “G erm an or kindred blood.” 7. That is, to the “Jew ish question”: the solution, adopted in 1942, was to send all Jew s within

Germ an-controlled territories to labor and exter­ mination camps. 8. The office, led by the Norwegian explorer and hum anitarian Frid tjof Nansen, that issued travel documents to refugees following World W ar I.

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and therefore, despite themselves, maintain a secret solidarity with the very powers they ought to fight. It takes only a glance at the recent publicity cam­ paigns to gather funds for refugees from Rwanda9 to realize that here human life is exclusively considered (and there are certainly good reasons for this) as sacred life— which is to say, as life that can be killed but not sacrificed— and that only as such is it made into the object of aid and protection. The “imploring eyes” of the Rwandan child, whose photograph is shown to obtain money but who “is now becoming more and more difficult to find alive,” may well be the most telling contemporary cipher of the bare life that humanitarian organizations, in perfect symmetry with state power, need. A humanitarianism separated from politics cannot fail to reproduce the isolation of sacred life at the basis of sovereignty, and the camp— which is to say, the pure space of exception— is the biopolitical paradigm that it cannot master. The concept of the refugee (and the figure of life that this concept repre­ sents) must be resolutely separated from the concept of the rights of man, and we must seriously consider Arendts claim that the fates of human rights and the nation-state are bound together such that the decline and crisis of the one necessarily implies the end of the other. The refugee must be con­ sidered for what he is: nothing less than a limit concept that radically calls into question the fundamental categories of the nation-state, from the birthnation to the man-citizen link, and that thereby makes it possible to clear the way for a long-overdue renewal of categories in the service of a politics in which bare life is no longer separated and excepted, either in the state order or in the figure of human rights. *

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1995 9. Follow ing the genocidal violence in the A frican nation o f Rwanda in 1994, during w hich as many as 2 m illion Rwandans fled the country.

G L O R I A A N ZA LD U A 1 9 4 2 - 2 0 0 4

The Mexican American writer and activist Gloria Anzaldua self-consciously embod­ ied the longings, critical consciousness, and contradictions of so-called identity politics. She both spoke from her perspective as a lesbian Mexican American and contradicted any simple categorization of individuals through their ethnic origins or sexual orientation. We are all mixtures, she insisted, and she called for a new mestiza (mixed or hybrid) consciousness to replace “the policy of racial purity that white America practices.” Her work simultaneously celebrates and explores the dif­ ficulties of multicultural identity. Anzaldua came from a seventh-generation Mexican American family that settled in the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas. After her father died when she was fifteen, she worked as a farm laborer for a time to help support her family. The only member of her family with any education beyond high school, she received her B.A. from Pan-American University in 1969 and an M.A. in English and education from

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the University of Texas at Austin in 1972. After teaching at a high school for migrant workers in Indiana, Anzaldua returned to Texas to pursue a Ph.D. in com­ parative literature, but quit when she met resistance to her desire to focus on Chicano (Mexican American) studies. She subsequently did additional graduate work at the University of California at Santa Cruz while teaching at both San Francisco State University and Santa Cruz. Along with occasional visiting positions at univer­ sities, in her later years she devoted herself primarily to writing and social activism. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Award as well as the 1991 Lesbian Rights Award. When she died from complications from diabetes in 2004, she was a few weeks away from receiving her Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz. Anzaldua’s work is important— and has been widely read and taught— not only because she effectively articulates the radical understandings and aspirations of the ethnic, feminist, and gay liberation movements born in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also because she faced the ambivalences and contradictions of these movements. For literary studies, the most obvious result of such liberation efforts (often referred to as “the new social movements”) has been the overt politicization of teaching and criticism. To the bafflement of many and the outrage of some, reading lists and teaching methods in literature classes have been opened to political scru­ tiny. A formerly vague and innocuous idea— culture— is now a battleground. At stake is “identity”— especially the relative status accorded different identities within a multiethnic society. The new social movements demand not just equal rights and economic opportunity but also respect and recognition. They aim at affirming racial, sexual, and class identities in all their difference from prevailing norms. Anzalduas writings speak to this call for affirmation and acknowledgement. The political energies of the new social movements interacted with developments in literary studies in three especially salient ways. First, the new interest in different identities within American culture arose at the same time that French poststructur­ alism arrived in literature departments. Although distinct from the “multiculturalist” emphasis on inter- and intracultural differences, the poststructuralist concept of “difference” (especially in the work of j a c q u e s d e r r i d a ) provided a favorable theoretical environment for exploring the heterogeneity of identity. In particular, the poststructuralist questioning of boundaries and of the integrity of defined enti­ ties encouraged the interest in mixed, hybrid identities found in ethnic theory like Anzalduas. The second conjunction of the new social movements with developments in literary studies centered on the term voice. Mid-twentieth-century New Criticism tried to sever the content expressed in literary w'orks from the intention and voice of the author through an insistence on the “intentional fallacy” (see w i l l i a m k . w i m s a t t j r . and m o n r o e c. b e a r d s l e y ), which states that the narrator in a novel or the speaker in a lyric poem is always a mask, a “persona,” never the author. With the increasing interest of the 1960s in the personal (culminating in feminism s declaration that “the personal is political”) and the growing desire to recover lost and oppressed “voices” in American history, the new social movements stressed the voices of testimony and experience at the exact time when literary critics were striving to reconnect literary expressions to their authors. “Recovery work,” which resurrected neglected or forgot­ ten works by nonwhite, nonmale, and nonheterosexual authors, was combined with a new valuing of narratives of personal experience in both historical and contemporary texts. Anzalduas text, in our selection taken from her book Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), mixes cultural analysis with history, private memories, poems, and politics, demonstrating the stylistic possibilities opened up by the new interest in personal voice. Furthermore, her preoccupation with the difficulties faced by writers who use the “master s tongue” (in her case, English) resonates with similar concerns in post­ colonial theory. Anzaldua wants to combat the suppression of Spanish in America by creating a space for Spanish voices within American literature and culture, but she

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also recognizes that she must use English to reach the widest possible audience. So her literary voice mixes languages as well as genres. At her request, we have not trans­ lated the Spanish phrases and sentences in our selection. Third, and finally, the dual focus of the new social movements on “identity” and “culture” coincides with the general shift in literary studies after 1965 from text to context, a movement partly reflected in the broad (and often loosely used) term cultural studies. The literary work is studied as a product and symptom of its cul­ ture or of its author’s identity and not as a self-enclosed unit of purely aesthetic elements. In addition, the writing and reading (interpreting) of literary texts are understood as dynamic processes through which identities and cultures are pro­ duced, reproduced, maintained, and transformed. Cultural representations are the very stuff of which identities are made, and literature is one crucial arena in which that making is done. As Anzaldua put it, “culture” is a “story to explain the world and our participation in it, a . . . value system with images and symbols to connect us to each other and to the planets.” She saw her cultural work as the production of a “new” culture, a new story with new images. Cultural representations, such as the stereotypes that undergird contempt for others who are different, can hurt. They are powerful in every sense of that word, coming to us invested with authority and upheld by the social institutions that pro­ mulgate them. Those representations, those images, occupy us; they are ours, they are us. That’s what it means to be immersed in a culture. For that reason, Anzaldua insists that the primary political work is “inner.” “The struggle,” she writes, “has always been inner, and is played out in outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the ‘real’ world unless it first happens in our heads.” This focus on changing images and representations is sometimes called “cultural politics,” which means emphasizing the transformation of values and beliefs more than changes in elected officials, laws, or working conditions. It is not surprising that Anzaldua and other literary people would put their energy and faith into cultural politics. Words and images are their stock-in-trade, what most influences them, and where they have some chance of wielding influence. But cultural politics in the late twentieth-century United States was also a direct response to the civil rights movement, which succeeded in changing the laws and institutional structures of a legally racist society. People discovered, however, that abolishing the legality of racism was hardly the same thing as creating a nonracist society. Cultural politics is often criticized as vague, as nonconcrete, as ignoring bread-and-butter issues. But a cultural politics like Anzaldua’s is developed to fore­ ground and contest the nebulous quality of racism and sexism in her America, prej­ udices that often do not manifest themselves in overt ways yet have persistent concrete effects in the continued poverty of and the differential opportunities in housing, education, and employment available to nonwhites and women. Anzaldua’s work, then, is largely concerned with conveying what it feels like for a nonwhite, nonheterosexual woman to live in post—civil rights movement North America. She explores the ambiguities and ambivalences lived by a “hyphenated” Mexican American. The United States both is obsessed with this presence of non­ whites in its midst and tries to act as if they do not exist. On one level, she simply calls for recognition, for the acknowledgment by the culture at large, and Anglos in partic­ ular, that she and her people— part Native American, part European, part American— exist. They have been here a long time and are going to be here even longer; meanwhile, “the dominant white culture is killing us slowly with its ignorance.” Anzaldua calls our attention to the 34 million Mexican Americans in the United States. But on another level, Anzaldua is arguing that our whole understanding of identity has to be revised. The old notion that we can know who we are by tracing our roots, by

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referring back to some stable point of origin, has to be abandoned. There is no pure, single source. All identities are hybrids, formed over time through the interaction of multiple cultures and constantly being transformed by new encounters in the “bor­ derlands” between one culture and another. Anzaldua’s work here parallels contem­ porary postcolonial criticism, particularly that of h o m i k . b h a b h a . The nostalgic demand for unitary, isolated cultures can only do harm in a world in which each of us is always already a mixture and we constantly come into contact with, and must live among, others who are mixed in different ways. Identity politics is often criticized for its contradictions, especially for joining a celebration of difference with simplistic notions of group solidarity. Anzaldua’s work addresses the complex emotional core of identity politics: the deep desire felt throughout the contemporary world for an identity that can be asserted, recog­ nized, affirmed, and respected in the public sphere. In addition, she describes the very forces of cultural mixing and powerful blindnesses that make an unambigu­ ous, clear identity so attractive, especially to those who are least visible within the current order. In trying to negotiate these contrary pressures and achieve a coher­ ent identity in the face of the myriad cultural influences that shape us, Anzaldua necessarily becomes a writer of ambiguity and ambivalence. “It makes us crazy constantly,” she writes, “but if the center holds, weve made some kind of evolution­ ary step forward.” B o rd erla n d s/La Frontera: T h e N ew M estiza Keywords: Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Identity, Queer Theory, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Vernacular Language

From Borderlands /La Frontera : The New Mestiza C hapter 7. La conciencia de la mestiza/Towards a

New Consciousness Por la mujer de mi raza hablara el espfritu.

Jose Vasconcelos, Mexican philosopher, envisaged una raza mestiza, una mezcla de razas afines, una raza de color— la primera raza sintesis del globo. He called it a cosmic race, la raza cosm ica, a fifth race embracing the four major races of the world.1 Opposite to the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the policy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is one of inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more genetic streams, with chromo­ somes constantly “crossing over,” this mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid progeny, a mutable, more malleable spe­ cies with a rich gene pool. From this racial, ideological, cultural and biologi­ cal cross-pollinization, an “alien” consciousness is presently in the making— a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands.

1. This is my own “take o ff” on Jose Vasconcelos’ idea. Jose Vasconcelos, La Raza Cosmica: Mision de la Raza Ibero-Americana (M exico City: Aguilar

S.A. de Ediciones, 1961) [Anzaldua’s note]. At Anzaldua’s request, we have not translated the Spanish passages in her text.

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UNA LU CH A D E FR O N TER A S/a STRUGGLE OF BORDERS Because I, a mestiza, continually walk out of one culture and into another, because I am in all cultures at the same time,

alma entre dos mundos, tres, cuatro, me zumba la cabeza con lo contradictorio. Estoy norteada por todas las voces que me hablan simultaneamente.

The ambivalence from the clash of voices results in mental and emotional states of perplexity. Internal strife results in insecurity and indecisiveness. The mestiza s dual or multiple personality is plagued by psychic restlessness. In a constant state of mental nepantilism, an Aztec2 word meaning torn between ways, la mestiza is a product of the transfer of the cultural and spiri­ tual values of one group to another. Being tricultural, monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speaking a patois, and in a state of perpetual transition, the mestiza faces the dilemma of the mixed breed: which collectivity does the daughter of a darkskinned mother listen to? El choque de un alm a atrapado entre el mundo del espiritu y el mundo de la tecnica a veces la deja entullada. Cradled in one culture, sandwiched between two cultures, straddling all three cultures and their value systems, la mestiza undergoes a struggle of flesh, a struggle of borders, an inner war. Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference3 causes un choque, a cultural collision. Within us and within la cultura chicana,4 commonly held beliefs of the white culture attack commonly held beliefs of the Mexican culture, and both attack commonly held beliefs of the indigenous culture. Subconsciously, we see an attack on ourselves and our beliefs as a threat and we attempt to block with a counterstance. But it is not enough to stand on the opposite river bank, shouting ques­ tions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions. A counterstance locks one into a duel of oppressor and oppressed; locked in mortal combat, like the cop and the criminal, both are reduced to a common denominator of violence. The counterstance refutes the dominant culture s views and beliefs, and, for this, it is proudly defiant. All reaction is limited by, and dependent on, what it is reacting against. Because the counterstance stems from a problem with authority— outer as well as inner— it’s a step towards liberation from cultural domination. But it is not a way of life. At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory. Or 2. One of the major native groups in M exico before the arrival of Europeans. 3. Arthur Koestler termed this “bisociation.” Albert Rothenberg, T he Creative Process in Art, Science, and Other Fields (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 12 [Anzaldua’s note]. Koes­

tler (1 9 0 5 -1 9 8 3 ), Hungarian-born English novel­ ist, journalist, and critic. 4. C hicanos are portrayed by Anzaldua as exist­ ing between Anglo (white European) U .S. cu l­ ture and the indigenous Native American culture of both M exico and the United States.

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we might go another route. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react. A TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY

These numerous possibilities leave la mestiza floundering in uncharted seas. In perceiving conflicting information and points of view, she is subjected to a swamping of her psychological borders. She has discovered that she can’t hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries. The borders and walls that are sup­ posed to keep the undesirable ideas out are entrenched habits and patterns of behavior; these habits and patterns are the enemy within. Rigidity means death. Only by remaining flexible is she able to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically. La mestiza constantly has to shift out of habitual formations; from convergent thinking, analytical reasoning that tends to use rationality to move toward a single goal (a Western mode), to divergent thinking,5 charac­ terized by movement away from set patterns and goals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes. The new mestiza copes by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity. She learns to be an Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view. She learns to juggle cultures. She has a plural personality, she operates in a pluralistic mode— nothing is thrust out, the good the bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into some­ thing else. She can be jarred out of ambivalence by an intense, and often painful, emotional event which inverts or resolves the ambivalence. I’m not sure exactly how. The work takes place underground— subconsciously. It is work that the soul performs. That focal point or fulcrum, that juncture where the mestiza stands, is where phenomena tend to collide. It is where the possibility of uniting all that is separate occurs. This assembly is not one where severed or separated pieces merely come together. Nor is it a balancing of opposing powers. In attempting to work out a synthesis, the self has added a third ele­ ment which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. That third element is a new consciousness— a mestiza consciousness— and though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm. En unas pocas centurias, the future will belong to the mestiza. Because the future depends on the breaking down of paradigms, it depends on the straddling of two or more cultures. By creating a new mythos— that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave— la mestiza creates a new consciousness. The work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our cul­ ture, our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic think­ ing in the individual and collective consciousness is the beginning of a long 5. In part, I derive my definitions for “convergent” and “divergent” thinking from Rothenberg, 12—13 [Anzaldua’s note].

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struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war. LA EN CR U CIJA D A /rHE CROSSROADS A chicken is being sacrificed at a crossroads, a simple mound of earth a mud shrine for Eshu, Yoruba6 god of indeterminacy, who blesses her choice of path. She begins her journey.

Su cuerpo es una bocacalle. La mestiza has gone from being the sacrificial goat to becoming the officiating priestess at the crossroads. As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but 1 am all races because there is the queer of me in all races.) I am cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of IndoHispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it, a new value system with images and symbols that con­ nect us to each other and to the planet. Soy un am asam iento, I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings. We are the people who leap in the dark, we are the people on the knees of the gods. In our very flesh, (Revolution works out the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if the center holds, we’ve made some kind of evolutionary step forward. Nuestra alma el trabajo, the opus, the great alchem­ ical work; spiritual mestizaje, a “morphogenesis,”7 an inevitable unfolding. We have become the quickening serpent movement. Indigenous like corn, like corn, the mestiza is a product of crossbreeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions. Like an ear of corn— a female seed-bearing organ— the mestiza is tenacious, tightly wrapped in the husks of her culture. Like kernels she clings to the cob; with thick stalks and strong brace roots, she holds tight to the earth— she will survive the cross­ roads. Lavando y rem ojando el maiz en agua de cal} despojando el pellejo. Moliendo, m ixteando, amasando, haciendo tortillas de m asa.8 She steeps the corn 6. One of the three largest ethnic groups in Nige­ ria; many Caribbean and Latin Am erican blacks are descended from the Yoruba and have retained elem ents of their ancestral culture. 7. To borrow chem ist Ilya Prigogine’s theory of “dissipative structures.” Prigogine [1917—2003] discovered that substances interact not in predict­ able ways as it was taught in science, but in differ­ ent and fluctuating ways to produce new and more complex structures, a kind of birth he called “mor­ phogenesis,” which created unpredictable innova­

tion. Harold Gilliam , “Searching for a New World View,” This World, January 1981, 23 [Anzaldua’s note]. 8. Tortillas d e masa: corn tortillas are of two types, the smooth uniform ones made in a tortilla press and usually bought at a tortilla factory or supermarket, and gorditas, made by mixing masa with lard or shortening or butter (my mother sometimes puts in bits of bacon or chicarrones) [Anzaldua’s note].

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in lime, it swells, softens. With stone roller on m etate she grinds the corn, then grinds again. She kneads and moulds the dough, pats the round balls into tortillas. We are the porous rock in the stone m etate squatting on the ground We are the rolling pin, el matz y agua, la masa harina. Somos el amasijo. Somos lo m olido en el m etate. We are the com al sizzling hot, the hot tortilla, the hungry mouth. We are the coarse rock. We are the grinding motion, the mixed potion, somos el m olcajete. We are the pestle, the com ino, ajo, pim ien ta, We are the chile Colorado the green shoot that cracks the rock. We will abide.

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E L CAM INO D E LA M ESTIZ a / t H E MESTIZA WAY Caught between the sudden contraction, the breath sucked in and the endless space, the brown woman stands still, looks at the sky. She decides to go down, digging her way along the roots of trees. Sifting through the bones, she shakes them to see if there is any marrow in them. Then, touching the dirt to her forehead, to her tongue, she takes a few bones, leaves the rest in their burial place. She goes through her backpack, keeps her journal and address book, throws away the muni-bart metromaps.9 The coins are heavy and they go next, then the greenbacks flutter through the air. She keeps her knife, can opener and eyebrow pencil. She puts bones, pieces of bark, hierbas, eagle feather, snakeskin, tape recorder, the rattle and drum in her pack and she sets out to become the com­ plete tolteca.1

Her first step is to take inventory. Despojando, desgranando, quitando paja. Just what did she inherit from her ancestors? This weight on her back— which is the baggage from the Indian mother, which the baggage from the Spanish father, which the baggage from the Anglo? Pero es diftcil differentiating between lo heredado, lo adquirido, lo impuesto. She puts history through a sieve, winnows out the lies, looks at the forces that we as a race, as women, have been a part of. Luego hota lo que no vale, los desmientos, los desencuentos, el embrutecimiento. Aguarda el juicio, hondo y enratzado, de la gente antigua. This step is a conscious rupture with all oppres­ sive traditions of all cultures and religions. She communicates that rupture, documents the struggle. She reinterprets history and, using new symbols, she shapes new myths. She adopts new perspectives toward the darkskinned, women and queers. She strengthens her tolerance (and intolerance) for ambi­ guity. She is willing to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of 9. Maps of San Francisco’s bus and subway routes. 1. Gina Valdes, Puentes y Fronteras: C oplas Chi-

canas (Los Angeles C astle Lithograph, 1982), 2 [Anzaldua’s note].

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seeing and thinking. She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar. Deconstruct, construct. She becomes a nahual, able to transform herself into a tree, a coyote, into another person. She learns to transform the small “I” into the total Self. Se hace m oldeadora de su alma. Segun la con ception que tiene de si misma, ast sera. Q UE NO SE NOS O LV ID E LO S H O M BRES Tu no sirves pa’ nada— you’re good for nothing. Eres pura vieja.

“You re nothing but a woman” means you are defective. Its opposite is to be un m acho. The modern meaning of the word “machismo,” as well as the con­ cept, is actually an Anglo invention. For men like my father, being “macho” meant being strong enough to protect and support my mother and us, yet being able to show love. Todays macho has doubts about his ability to feed and protect his family. His “machismo” is an adaptation to oppression and poverty and low self-esteem. It is the result of hierarchical male dominance. The Anglo, feeling inadequate and inferior and powerless, displaces or trans­ fers these feelings to the Chicano by shaming him. In the Gringo world, the Chicano suffers from excessive humility and self-effacement, shame of self and self-depreciation. Around Latinos he suffers from a sense of language inadequacy and its accompanying discomfort; with Native Americans he suf­ fers from a racial amnesia which ignores our common blood, and from guilt because the Spanish part of him took their land and oppressed them. He has an excessive compensatory hubris when around Mexicans from the other side. It overlays a deep sense of racial shame. The loss of a sense of dignity and respect in the macho breeds a false machismo which leads him to put down women and even to brutalize them. Coexisting with his sexist behavior is a love for the mother which takes prece­ dence over that of all others. Devoted son, macho pig. To wash down the shame of his acts, of his very being, and to handle the brute in the mirror, he takes to the bottle, the snort, the needle, and the fist. Though we “understand” the root causes of male hatred and fear, and the subsequent wounding of women, we do not excuse, we do not condone, and we will no longer put up with it. From the men of our race, we demand the admission/acknowledgment/disclosure/testimony that they wound us, vio­ late us, are afraid of us and of our power. We need them to say they will begin to eliminate their hurtful put-down ways. But more than the words, we demand acts. We say to them: We will develop equal power with you and those who have shamed us. It is imperative that mestizas support each other in changing the sexist ele­ ments in the Mexican-Indian culture. As long as woman is put down, the Indian and the Black in all of us is put down. The struggle of the mestiza is above all a feminist one. As long as los homhres think they have to chingar mujeres and each other to be men, as long as men are taught that they are superior and therefore culturally favored over la mujer, as long as to be a vieja is a thing of derision, there can be no real healing of our psyches. We re halfway

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there— we have such love of the Mother, the good mother. The first step is to unlearn the puta/virgen dichotomy and to see Coatlapopeuh-Coatlicue in the Mother, G uadalupe.2 Tenderness, a sign of vulnerability, is so feared that it is showered on women with verbal abuse and blows. Men, even more than women, are fet­ tered to gender roles. Women at least have had the guts to break out of bondage. Only gay men have had the courage to expose themselves to the woman inside them and to challenge the current masculinity. I’ve encoun­ tered a few scattered and isolated gentle straight men, the beginnings of a new breed, but they are confused, and entangled with sexist behaviors that they have not been able to eradicate. We need a new masculinity and the new man needs a movement. Lumping the males who deviate from the general norm with man, the oppressor, is a gross injustice. Asombra pensar que nos hemos quedado en ese pozo oscuro donde el mundo encierra a las lesbianas. Asombra pensar que hemos, com o fem enistas y lesbianas, cerrado nuestros corazdnes a los hombres, a nuestros hermanos losjotos, desheredados y marginales com o nosotros. Being the supreme crossers of cultures, homosexuals have strong bonds with the queer white, Black, Asian, Native American, Latino, and with the queer in Italy, Australia and the rest of the planet. We come from all colors, all classes, all races, all time periods. Our role is to link people with each other— the Blacks with Jews with Indians with Asians with whites with extraterrestrials. It is to transfer ideas and information from one culture to another. Colored homosexuals have more knowledge of other cultures; have always been at the forefront (although sometimes in the closet) of all liberation struggles in this country; have suffered more injustices and have survived them despite all odds. Chicanos need to acknowledge the political and artistic contributions of their queer. People, listen to what your jo ten a is saying. The mestizo and the queer exist at this time and point on the evolutionary continuum for a purpose. We are a blending that proves that all blood is intricately woven together, and that we are spawned out of similar souls. SOM OS UNA G EN T E Hay tantisimas fronteras que dividen a la gente, pero por cada frontera existe tambien un puente. —Gina Valdes3

Divided Loyalties. Many women and men of color do not want to have any dealings with white people. It takes too much time and energy to explain to the downwardly mobile, white middle-class women that it s okay for us to want to own “possessions,” never having had any nice furniture on our dirt floors or “luxuries” like washing machines. Many feel that whites should help their own people rid themselves of race hatred and fear first. I, for one, choose to use some of my energy to serve as mediator. I think we 2. Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin Mary (who is said to have appeared to a Native A m erican in that Mexican city in 1531). Coatlapopeuh-

C oatlicu e : Aztec earth goddess who is the mother of the gods. 3. Valdes, Puentesy Fronteras, 2 [Anzaldua’s note].

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need to allow whites to be our allies. Through our literature, art, corridos, and folktales we must share our history with them so when they set up committees to help Big Mountain Navajos or the Chicano farmworkers or los Nicaragiienses4 they won’t turn people away because of their racial fears and ignorances. They will come to see that they are not helping us but fol­ lowing our lead. Individually, but also as a racial entity, we need to voice our needs. We need to say to white society: We need you to accept the fact that Chicanos are different, to acknowledge your rejection and negation of us. We need you to own the fact that you looked upon us as less than human, that you stole our lands, our personhood, our self-respect. We need you to make public restitu­ tion: to say that, to compensate for your own sense of defectiveness, you strive for power over us, you erase our history and our experience because it makes you feel guilty— you’d rather forget your brutish acts. To say you’ve split yourself from minority groups, that you disown us, that your dual con­ sciousness splits off parts of yourself, transferring the “negative” parts onto us. (Where there is persecution of minorities, there is shadow projection. Where there is violence and war, there is repression of shadow.) To say that you are afraid of us, that to put distance between us, you wear the mask of contempt. Admit that Mexico is your double, that she exists in the shadow of this country, that we are irrevocably tied to her. Gringo, accept the doppelganger in your psyche. By taking back your collective shadow the intracultural split will heal. And finally, tell us what you need from us. BY Y O U R T R U E F A C E S W E W IL L K N O W YOU

I am visible— see this Indian face— yet I am invisible. I both blind them with my beak nose and am their blind spot. But I exist, we exist. They’d like to think I have melted in the pot. But I haven’t, we haven’t. The dominant white culture is killing us slowly with its ignorance. By taking away our self-determination, it has made us weak and empty. As a people we have resisted and we have taken expedient positions, but we have never been allowed to develop unencumbered— we have never been allowed to be fully ourselves. The whites in power want us people of color to barri­ cade ourselves behind our separate tribal walls so they can pick us off one at a time with their hidden weapons; so they can whitewash and distort his­ tory. Ignorance splits people, creates prejudices. A misinformed people is a subjugated people. Before the Chicano and the undocumented worker and the Mexican from the other side can come together, before the Chicano can have unity with Native Americans and other groups, we need to know the history of their struggle and they need to know ours. Our mothers, our sisters and brothers, the guys who hang out on street corners, the children in the play­ grounds, each of us must know our Indian lineage, our afro-mestisaje, our history of resistance. To the immigrant m exicano and the recent arrivals we must teach our history. The 80 million m exicanos and the Latinos from Central and South 4. In the 1980s the U .S. government funded param ilitary forces engaged in a guerrilla war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

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America must know of our struggles. Each one of us must know basic facts about Nicaragua, Chile and the rest of Latin America.5 The Latinoist move­ ment (Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Spanish-speaking peo­ ple working together to combat racial discrimination in the market place) is good but it is not enough. Other than a common culture we will have noth­ ing to hold us together. We need to meet on a broader communal ground. The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, m ojado, m exican o, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian— our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle has always been inner, and is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “rear’ world unless it first happens in the images in our heads. E L DIA D E LA CH ICA N A I will not be shamed again Nor will I shame myself.

I am possessed by a vision that we Chicanas and Chicanos have taken back or uncovered our true faces, our dignity and self-respect. Its a validation vision. Seeing the Chicana anew in light of her history. I seek an exoneration, a seeing through the fictions of white supremacy, a seeing of ourselves in our true guises and not as the false racial personality that has been given to us and that we have given to ourselves. I seek our woman’s face, our true fea­ tures, the positive and the negative seen clearly, free of the tainted biases of male dominance. I seek new images of identity, new beliefs about ourselves, our humanity and worth no longer in question. Estamos viviendo en la noche de la Raza, un tiem po cuando el trabajo se hace a lo quieto, en el oscuro. El dia cuando aceptam os tal y com o somos y para en donde vamos y porque— ese dia sera de la Raza. Yo tengo el conprom iso de expresar mi vision, mi sensibilidad, mi percepion de la revalidacion de la gente m exicana, su m erito estim ation, honra, aprecio, y validez. On December 2nd when my sun goes into my first house, I celebrate el dia de la C hicana y el Chicano. On that day I clean my altars, light my Coatlalopeuh candle, burn sage and copal, take el bano para espantar basura, sweep my house. On that day I bare my soul, make myself vulnerable to friends and family by expressing my feelings. On that day I affirm who we are. On that day I look inside our conflicts and our basic introverted racial temperament. I identify our needs, voice them. I acknowledge that the self and the race have been wounded. I recognize the need to take care of our personhood, of our racial self. On that day I gather the splintered and dis­ owned parts of la gente m exicana and hold them in my arms. Todas las partes de nosotros valen. 5. This history includes U .S. government interventions in Latin and Central American countries from 1950 to 1990, undermin ing governments

thought to be too leftist and supporting right-wing governments,

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On that day I say, “Yes, all you people wound us when you reject us. Rejec­ tion strips us of self-worth; our vulnerability exposes us to shame. It is our innate identity you find wanting. We are ashamed that we need your good opinion, that we need your acceptance. We can no longer camouflage our needs, can no longer let defenses and fences sprout around us. We can no longer withdraw. To rage and look upon you with contempt is to rage and be contemptuous of ourselves. We can no longer blame you, nor disown the white parts, the male parts, the pathological parts, the queer parts, the vul­ nerable parts. Here we are weaponless with open arms, with only our magic. Lets try it our way, the mestiza way, the Chicana way, the woman way. On that day, I search for our essential dignity as a people, a people with a sense of purpose— to belong and contribute to something greater than our p u eblo. On that day I seek to recover and reshape my spiritual identity. jAmmate! Raza, a celebrar el dta de la C hicana. E L RETO RN O

All movements are accomplished in six stages, and the seventh brings return. —I Ching6 Tanto tiempo sin verte casa mia, mi cuna, mi hondo nido de la huerta. —“Soledad”7

I stand at the river, watch the curving, twisting serpent, a serpent nailed to the fence where the mouth of the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf. I have come back. Tanto dolor m e costo el alejam iento. I shade my eyes and look up. The bone beak of a hawk slowly circling over me, checking me out as potential carrion. In its wake a little bird flickering its wings, swimming sporadically like a fish. In the distance the expressway and the slough of traffic like an irritated sow. The sudden pull in my gut, la tierra, los aguaceros. My land, el viento soplando la arena, el lagartijo debajo de un nopalito. Me acuerdo com o era antes. Una region desertica de vasta llanuras, costeras de baja altura, de escasa lluvia, de chaparrales form ados por mesquites y huizaches. If I look real hard I can almost see the Spanish fathers who were called “the cavalry of Christ” enter this valley riding their burros, see the clash of cultures commence. Tierra natal. This is home, the small towns in the Valley, los pueblitos with chicken pens and goats picketed to mesquite shrubs. En las colonias on the other side o f the tracks, ju n k cars line the fron t yards o f hot pink and lavender-trim m ed houses— C hicano architecture we call it, self-consciously. I have missed the TV shows where hosts speak in h a lf and h a lf and w here awards are given in the category o f Tex-Mex music. I have missed the M exi­ can cem eteries bloom ing with artificial flow ers, the field s o f aloe vera and red pepper, rows o f sugar cane, o f corn hanging on the stalks, the cloud ofp olv areda in the dirt roads behind a speeding pickup truck, el sabor de tamales de

6. Richard W ilhelm , T he I Ching or B ook o f Changes, trans. Cary F. Baynes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 98 [Anzaldua’s note].

7. “Soledad” is sung by the group Haciendo Punto and O tto Son [Anzaldua’s note],

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rez y venado. I have missed la yegua colorada gnawing the wooden gate of her stall, the smell of horse flesh from Carito s corrals. He h echo m enos las noches calientes sin aire, noches de linternas y lechuzas making holes in the night. I still feel the old despair when I look at the unpainted, dilapidated, scrap lumber houses consisting mostly of corrugated aluminum. Some of the poor­ est people in the U.S. live in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, an arid and semiarid land of irrigated farming, intense sunlight and heat, citrus groves next to chaparral and cactus. I walk through the elementary school I attended so long ago, that remained segregated until recently. I remember how the white teachers used to punish us for being Mexican. How I love this tragic valley of South Texas, as Ricardo Sanchez8 calls it; this borderland between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. This land has survived possession and ill-use by five countries: Spain, Mexico, the Repub­ lic of Texas, the U.S., the Confederacy, and the U.S. again. It has survived Anglo-Mexican blood feuds, lynchings, burnings, rapes, pillage. Today I see the Valley still struggling to survive. Whether it does or not, it will never be as I remember it. The borderlands depression that was set off by the 1982 peso devaluation in Mexico resulted in the closure of hundreds of Valley businesses. Many people lost their homes, cars, land. Prior to 1982, U.S. store owners thrived on retail sales to Mexicans who came across the border for groceries and clothes and appliances. While goods on the U.S. side have become 10, 100, 1000 times more expensive for Mexican buyers, goods on the Mexican side have become 10, 100, 1000 times cheaper for Ameri­ cans. Because the Valley is heavily dependent on agriculture and Mexican retail trade, it has the highest unemployment rates along the entire border region; it is the Valley that has been hardest hit.9 “It’s been a bad year for corn,” my brother, Nune, says. As he talks, I remember my father scanning the sky for a rain that would end the drought, looking up into the sky, day after day, while the corn withered on its stalk. My father has been dead for 29 years, having worked himself to death. The life span of a Mexican farm laborer is 56— he lived to be 38. It shocks me that I am older than he. I, too, search the sky for rain. Like the ancients, I worship the rain god and the maize goddess, but unlike my father I have recovered their names. Now for rain (irrigation) one offers not a sacrifice of blood, but of money. “Farming is in a bad way,” my brother says. “Two to three thousand small and big farmers went bankrupt in this country last year. Six years ago the price of corn was $8.00 per hundred pounds,” he goes on. “This year it is $3.90 per hundred pounds.” And, I think to myself, after taking inflation into account, not planting anything puts you ahead.

8. American poet and critic (194 1 -1 9 9 5 ). 9. Out o f the 22 border counties in the four bor­ der states, Hidalgo County (named for Father Hidalgo who was shot in 1810 after instigating M exico’s revolt against Spain under the banner of la Virgen de G uadalupe) is the most poverty-

stricken county in the nation as well as the larg­ est home base (along with Imperial in California) for migrant farm-workers. It was here that I was born and raised. I am amazed that both it and I have survived [Anzaldua’s note].

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I walk out to the back yard, stare at los rosales de mama. She wants me to help her prune the rose bushes, dig out the carpet grass that is choking them. Mamagrande Ram ona tam bien tenia rosales. Here every Mexican grows flow­ ers. If they don’t have a piece of dirt, they use car tires, jars, cans, shoe boxes. Roses are the Mexican’s favorite flower. I think, how symbolic— thorns and all. Yes, the Chicano and Chicana have always taken care of growing things and the land. Again I see the four of us kids getting off the school bus, chang­ ing into our work clothes, walking into the field with Papi and Mamf, all six of us bending to the ground. Below our feet, under the earth lie the water­ melon seeds. We cover them with paper plates, putting terremotes on top of the plates to keep them from being blown away by the wind. The paper plates keep the freeze away. Next day or the next, we remove the plates, bare the tiny green shoots to the elements. They survive and grow, give fruit hundreds of times the size of the seed. We water them and hoe them. We harvest them. The vines dry, rot, are plowed under. Growth, death, decay, birth. The soil prepared again and again, impregnated, worked on. A constant changing of forms, renacimientos de la tierra madre. This land was Mexican once was Indian always and is. And will be again. 1987

GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK b. 1 9 4 2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an unsettling voice in literary theory and, especially, postcolonial studies. She has described herself as a “practical deconstructionist feminist Marxist” and as a “gadfly.” She uses deconstruction to examine “how truth is constructed” and to deploy the assertions of one intellectual and political posi­ tion (such as Marxism) to “interrupt” or “bring into crisis” another (feminism, for example). In her work, she combines passionate denunciations of the harm done to women, non-Europeans, and the poor by the privileged West with a persistent ques­ tioning of the grounds on which radical critique takes its stand. Her continual interrogation of assumptions can make Spivak difficult to read. But her restless critiques connect directly to her ethical aspiration for a “politics of the open end,” in which deconstruction acts as a “safeguard” against the repression or exclusion of “alterities”— that is, people, events, or ideas that are radically “other” to the dominant worldview. Deconstruction, according to Spivak, “is constantly and persistently looking into how truths are produced. That’s why deconstruction doesn’t say logocentrism is a pathology, or metaphysical enclosures are something you can escape. Deconstruction, if one wants a formula, is among other things, a persistent critique of what one cannot not want.” She writes against the “epistemic violence” done by discourses of knowledge that carve up the world and condemn to

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oblivion the pieces that do not easily fit. Characteristically, she does not claim to avoid such violence herself; rather, she self-consciously explores structures of vio­ lence without assuming a final, settled position. Spivak was born in Calcutta, India, and received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta. She came to the United States and completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature at Cornell University, where paul de man was one of her mentors. She has taught at various American universities, including the University of Iowa, the University of Texas, Emory University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University. Her earliest important work was her introduction to and translation of jacques d er rid a s O f Grammatology (1977), the first of his major books to be ren­ dered in full into English. Spivak played a key role in introducing French “theory” into North American and British literature departments between 1975 and 1982. Almost from the start, she emphasized how deconstruction’s interest in the “violence” of traditional hierarchical binary oppositions (between male and female, the West and the rest, etc.) afforded a passage from literary theory to radical politics. Spivak joined feminisms interest in silenced women to a Marxist global concern with the political, economic, and cultural oppression of nonwhite people. The result was a series of highly influential essays that helped set the agenda for feminism and for postcolonial theory in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997 Spivak founded the Pares Chan­ dra and Sivani Chakravorty Memorial Literacy Project, a charitable foundation that trains teachers and runs schools in rural India. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” may be Spivak s best-known essay; it is certainly her most controversial. First given as a lecture in 1983 and published in different ver­ sions in 1985 and 1988, Spivak offers a greatly expanded revision (more than one hundred pages) in her Critique o f Postcolonial Reason (1999). Our selection offers three sections from this revised version, beginning with the sentence in which Spi­ vak poses a central concern: “the possibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution of the Other as the Self’s shadow.” Her essay insists “on marking [critics’] positionality as investigating subjects.” Postcolonial critics, like many feminists, want to give silenced others a voice. But Spivak worries that even the most benevolent effort merely repeats the very silencing it aims to combat. The outsider creates the framework within which the “native” speaks and, thus, for Spi­ vak constitutes that native in ways that undermine any claim to authentic contact. After all, colonialists often thought of themselves as well-intentioned. Spivak points to the British outlawing of sati, the Hindu practice of burning a widow on her hus­ band’s funeral pyre. While this intervention saved some lives and may have given women a modicum of free choice, it also served to secure British power in India and to underscore the asserted difference between British “civilization” and Indian “barbarism.” Hindu culture was driven underground, written out of law, denied any legitimacy. Can today’s intellectuals avoid a similar condescension when they rep­ resent the oppressed? Spivak articulates her reasons for her worries in the first part of our selection, applying m ic h e l Foucault ’s understanding of “epistemic violence” to the “remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other.” Foucault views intellectual power as functioning discursively to produce the very subject over which it then exercises mastery. Of course, no discourse suc­ ceeds in obliterating all alternative discourses. Intellectuals have frequently tried to create counterdiscourses that contest the dominant discourses, with the hope of con­ necting with the oppressed’s own acts of resistance. Spivak sees postcolonial studies as a new instance of this attempt to liberate the other and to enable that other to experience and articulate those parts of itself that fall outside what the dominant discourse has constituted as its subjecthood. She asks whether such work can suc­ ceed. Can—with or without the intervention of well-intentioned intellectuals— the “subaltern” speak? Her blunt answer is no.

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A subaltern, according to the dictionary, is a person holding a subordinate position, originally a junior officer in the British army. But Spivak draws on the term’s nuances. It has particularly rich connotations for the Indian subcontinent because the AngloIndian writer Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936) so often viewed imperialism from the ambivalent position of the subaltern functionary in the complex colonial hierarchy, caught between detested superiors and feared “natives.” The Italian Marxist theorist antonio gram sci later applied the term to the unorganized masses that must be politicized for the workers’ revolution to succeed. In the 1980s the Subaltern Studies Group (a collective of radical historians in India with whom Spivak maintains ties) appropriated the term, focusing their attention on the disenfranchised peoples of India. The “subaltern” always stands in an ambiguous relation to power— subordinate to it but never fully consenting to its rule, never adopting the dominant point of view or vocabulary as expressive of its own identity. “One must nevertheless insist that the colonized subaltern subject is irretrievably heterogeneous,” declares Spivak. Can this difference be articulated? And if so, by whom? Because subalterns exist, to some extent, outside power, theorists and advocates of political transformation have consistently looked to them as a potential source of change. Marxists speak of and for the proletariat, feminists of and for oppressed women, and anticolonialists of and for third world peoples. In part, Spivak is reacting against the persistent tendency of radical political movements to romanticize the other, especially against the notion that third world peoples must lead the fight against multinational global capitalism. To assign them that role is to repeat colonial­ ism’s basic violence, which views non-Europeans as important only insofar as they follow Western scripts. Furthermore, when most of the power resides in the West, why should the least powerful of those caught up in globalization be responsible for halting its advance? Finally, Spivak points out that the suggestion that all third world peoples stand in the same relation to global capitalism and should respond to it in the same way is “essentialist.” Essentialism names the belief that certain people or entities share some essential, unchanging “nature” that secures their membership in a category. In the 1980s, essentialism was the target of much feminist criticism because activists recognized that generalizations about “woman” inevitably exclude some women. One response was “difference feminism,” which stressed alliances among women across their dif­ ferences and hoped to replace a solidarity based on shared essential qualities and experiences. Spivak’s landmark contribution to this debate was the concept of “stra­ tegic essentialism.” In some instances, she argued, it was important strategically to make essentialist claims, even while one retained an awareness that those claims were, at best, crude political generalizations. For example, feminists must publicize “the feminization of poverty”— the ways in which employment practices and wages, divorce law and settlements, and social policies ensure that in many societies women make up the majority of poor adults. Of course, many women are not poor, and pov­ erty has causes other than an individual’s sex, but to battle effectively against the poverty of some women requires the strategic essentialism of highlighting the gen­ dered nature of economic inequality. Leftist intellectuals who romanticize the oppressed, Spivak argues, essentialize the subaltern and thus replicate the colonialist discourses they purport to critique. To replace this leftist fantasy of an untouched or essential purity lodged in a par­ ticular group, Spivak reminds us (citing Ranajit Guha, a founding member of the Subaltern Studies Group) that a person’s or group’s identity is relational, a func­ tion of its place in a system of differences. There is no true or pure other; instead, the other always already exists in relation to the discourse that would name it as other. But does the differential position of otherness afford it some resources it can use to articulate its singularity, its nonidentity with power? Spivak seems doubtful; her

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historical and political analysis describes Western capitalism and colonialism as triumphant. The whole world is now organized economically, politically, and culturally along the lines of Western discourses. Although those discourses are not perfectly aligned, their multiplicity generally reinforces rather than undercuts the marginal­ ization of nonwhite peoples and the dual marginalization of nonwhite women. Given this bleak picture, Spivak turns (in the second part of our selection) to Sig ­ mu nd f r e u d in an effort to develop an appropriate model of intellectual work. Freud furthers the analysis of colonialism by helping us see how the very identity of whiteness itself is created in part through the self-proclaimed benevolence of colonial action. More important, he implicitly cautions us against scapegoating or, conversely, creating saviors. Spivak’s “sentence”— “White men are saving brown women from brown men”— serves to justify colonial interventions if white men are taken as saviors and brown men are scapegoated as oppressors of brown women. A postcolonialist dis­ course could just as easily scapegoat white men, with the inevitable consequence of presenting either brown men or brown women as the saviors. Spivak thinks that Freud (as both a positive and a negative example, since he himself didn’t always avoid scape­ goating) can aid us to keep the “sentence” open, to explore the dynamics of the unfold­ ing human relationships without foreclosing narratives by assigning determinate roles. She remains leery of any attempt to fix and celebrate the subaltern’s distinctive voice by claims that the subaltern occupies the position of victim, abjected other, scapegoat, savior, and so on. The critic must remain attentive to the fluidity of possible relations and actions. Spivak’s discussion of Freud is offered not “as a solution” but “in acknow­ ledgment of these dangers” of interpreting and representing the other. Neither Freud nor Spivak is silent. They each make various determinate claims and, Spivak says, reveal their “political interests” in those claims. As intellectuals, both are at home (although their belonging is qualified by Freud’s being Jewish and Spivak’s being a nonwhite woman) within the dominant discourse. The subaltern is not similarly privileged, and does not speak in a vocabulary that will get a hearing in institutional locations of power. The subaltern enters official and intellectual discourse only rarely and usually through the mediating commentary of someone more at home in those discourses. If the problematic is understood this way, it is hard to see how the subaltern can be capable of speaking. In the third part of our selection, Spivak offers yet a further twist. She tells the story of Bhubaneswari Bhaduri’s suicide not as an example of the Indian woman’s inability to speak within Western discourse, but to show that Indian discourse has been so battered by the storms of (colonial) history that it, too, offers no resources for successful communication. Bhubaneswari’s suicide is misunderstood by everyone, including her own family— and no one in India seems interested in Spivak’s return to and reinterpretation of the event. “Unnerved by this failure of communication,” Spi­ vak wrote her “passionate lament: the subaltern cannot speak!” Fifteen years later, Spivak comments: “It was an inadvisable remark.” What scraps of comfort has Spivak unearthed in the meantime to challenge her first, despairing conclusion? She has reminded herself that “speaking” always occurs within the nexus of actions that include listening, responding, interpreting, and qual­ ifying. One’s words can be taken up in any number of possible ways. The ongoing effects of an utterance, not its singular expression or any one response, produces its character as a speech act. Much of the point of revisionist history, of returning to scenes of domination and oppression, is to reactivate attempts at speaking that other forces tried to obliterate and keep from having effects. In revisiting Bhubaneswari’s suicide, Spivak makes it speak in new ways. To deny that this retelling is a form of speaking would be to hold on to a criterion of “authenticity” that runs counter to Spivak’s whole argument about identity. The historian who tries to recover the past should sketch “the itinerary of the trace” that the silenced subaltern has left, should mark the sites where the subaltern was effaced, and should delineate the discourses that did the effacing.

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Spivak remains wary of all representations, even while accepting that the opening of “a line of communication” is “to be desired” and “allows us to take pride in our work without making missionary claims.” On theoretical and ethical grounds, she insists that any system, any discourse, inevitably excludes something, and she will “reserve” the word subaltern to point toward “the sheer heterogeneity of decolonized space.” She very much wants the “traces” of those exclusions to haunt us. In every utterance she urges us to hear the faint whisper of what could not be said. And she asks us to be ready to change our current discourse for a new one that would get closer to what the old one leaves unspoken— although the new discourse will have its own silences. This attunement to the unheard is what Spivak, following the philosopher Bimal Krishna Matilal, calls “moral love.” A persistent complaint against Spivak, aside from her difficult style, is that she leaves us no place to stand. Her political pronouncements are unambiguous, but she steadfastly refuses to advocate solutions beyond an openness to the other that can appear vague, undiscriminating, and indeed theatrical. To continually dismantle one’s own assumptions seems itself an act of privilege, a deconstructionist’s luxury that few can afford, especially those who have to make decisions here and now (a point somewhat conceded by Spivak in her concept of “strategic essentialism”). As an antidote to complacency, however, Spivak’s work is exemplary. She never lets anyone, including herself, smugly assume that he or she is on the side of the angels. Her rest­ less probing is unsettling, but invigorating. Like the stranger whose name is “trouble,” she shakes things up and gets them moving. No topic is ever quite the same or quite so easy after Spivak has come through town. A C ritiq u e o f P o stco lo n ial R eason Keywords: Deconstruction, Feminist Theory, Globalization, Marxism, Postcolonial Theory, Poststructuralism, Psychoanalysis, Representation

From A Critique of Postcolonial Reason From C hapter 3. History [CAN THE SUBALTERN SPEAK?]

In the face of the possibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution of the Other as the Self’s shadow, a possibility of political prac­ tice for the intellectual would be to put the economic “under erasure,” to see the economic factor as irreducible as it reinscribes the social text, even as it is erased, however imperfectly, when it claims to be the final determinant or the transcendental signified.1 1. This argument is developed further in Spivak, “Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value,” in In O ther Worlds: Essays in Cultural Poli­ tics (New York: M ethuen, 1987), pp. 154-75. O nce again, the Anti-Oedipus did not ignore the economic text, although the treatment was per­ haps too allegorical. In this respect, the move from schizo- to rhyzo-analysis in A Thousand Pla­ teaus was not, perhaps, salutary [Spivak’s note]. Some of the author’s notes have been edited, and some omitted. Spivak here argues against regard­ ing the economic as all-powerful or as negligible; instead, the econom ic factor has a discernible impact on society and its discourses (the “social

text”). In A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the French philosopher g i l l e s d e l e u z e (1 9 2 5 -1 9 9 5 ) and the French psychoanalyst f e l i x g u a t t a r i (1 9 3 0 1992) argue for a model of knowledge patterned not on plants with roots (as is traditional) but on fungal rhizomes, which lack centralized control or structure; their earlier Anti-Oedipus: Capital­ ism and Schizophrenia (1972) critiques both orthodox M arxism and institutional Freudianism. Earlier in her book, Spivak faults them for ignor­ ing sociohistorical specificities, an omission that leads them to posit an essentialized psychological “subject of desire” in place of a historically consti­ tuted subject.

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Until very recently, the clearest available example of such epistemic vio­ lence2 was the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other. This project is also the asym­ metrical obliteration of the trace of that Other in its precarious Subject­ ivity. It is well known that Foucault locates one case of epistemic violence, a complete overhaul of the episteme, in the redefinition of madness at the end of the European eighteenth century.3 But what if that particular redef­ inition was only a part of the narrative of history in Europe as well as in the colonies? What if the two projects of epistemic overhaul worked as dislo­ cated and unacknowledged parts of a vast two-handed engine? Perhaps it is no more than to ask that the subtext of the palimpsestic narrative of impe­ rialism be recognized as “subjugated knowledge,” “a whole set of knowl­ edges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity.”4 This is not to describe “the way things really were” or to privilege the narra­ tive of history as imperialism as the best version of history. It is, rather, to continue the account of how one explanation and narrative of reality was established as the normative one. A comparable account in the case(s) of Cen­ tral and Eastern Europe is soon to be launched. To elaborate on this, let us consider for the moment and briefly the underpinnings of the British codifica­ tion of Hindu Law. Once again, I am not a South Asianist. I turn to Indian material because I have some accident-of-birth facility there. Here, then, is a schematic summary of the epistemic violence of the codi­ fication of Hindu Law. If it clarifies the notion of epistemic violence, my final discussion of widow-sacrifice5 may gain added significance. At the end of the eighteenth century, Hindu Law, insofar as it can be described as a unitary system, operated in terms of four texts that “staged” a four-part episteme defined by the subject’s use of memory: sruti (the heard), smriti (the remembered), sastra (the calculus), and vyavahara (the performance). The origins of what had been heard and what was remembered were not nec­ essarily continuous or identical. Every invocation of sruti technically recited (or reopened) the event of originary “hearing” or revelation. The second two texts— the learned and the performed— were seen as dialectically continuous. Legal theorists and practitioners were not in any given case certain if this structure described the body of law or four ways of settling a dispute. The legitimation, through a binary vision, of the polymorphous structure of legal performance, “internally” noncoherent and open at both ends, is the narrative of codification I offer as an example of epistemic violence.6 2. That is, the forcible replacement of one struc­ ture of beliefs with another; the term is borrowed from the writings of the French philosopher and historian o f ideas m i c h e l f o u c a u l t (1 9 2 6 -1 9 8 4 ), who meant by epistem e (literally, “knowledge”; Greek) the underlying structure of knowledge and beliefs during a historical period. 3. See Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A His­ tory o f Insanity in the Age o f Reason, trans. R ich­ ard Howard (New'York: Pantheon, 1965), pp. 251, 262, 269 [Spivak’s note]

4. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Inter­ views and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 82 [Spi­ vak’s note]. 5. Su ttee (from the Hindu sati, literally “devoted woman”), the Hindu custom of a widow^’s being crem ated on the funeral pyre of her husband. 6. That is, the British Empire’s imposition of “binary vision” in place of the existing set of beliefs, the “polymorphous” Hindu Law.

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Consider the often-quoted programmatic lines from Macaulays infamous “Minute on Indian Education” (1835): We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population/ The education of colonial subjects complements their production in law. One effect of establishing a version of the British system was the development of an uneasy separation between disciplinary formation in Sanskrit studies and the native, now alternative, tradition of Sanskirt “high culture.” In the first section, I have suggested that within the former, the cultural explana­ tions generated by authoritative scholars matched the epistemic violence of the legal project.8 Those authorities would be the very best of the sources for the nonspecial­ ist French intellectual’s entry into the civilization of the Other.9 I am, how­ ever, not referring to intellectuals and scholars of colonial production, like Shastri,1 when I say that the Other as Subject is inaccessible to Foucault and Deleuze. I am thinking of the general nonspecialist, nonacademic population across the class spectrum, for whom the episteme operates its silent program­ ming function. Without considering the map of exploitation,2 on what grid of “oppression” would they place this motley crew? Let us now move to consider the margins (one can just as well say the silent, silenced center) of the circuit marked out by this epistemic violence, men and women among the illiterate peasantry, Aboriginals, and the lowest strata of the urban subproletariat. According to Foucault and Deleuze (in the First World,3 under the standardization and regimentation of socialized capital, though they do not seem to recognize this) and mutatis mutandis the met­ ropolitan4 “third world feminist” only interested in resistance within capital logic, the oppressed, if given the chance (the problem of representation cannot be bypassed here), and on the way to solidarity through alliance politics (a Marxist thematic is at work here) can speak and know their con ­ ditions. We must now confront the following question: On the other side of 7. Thom as Babington M acaulay, “Minute on Indian Education,” in Selected Writings, ed. John Clive and Thom as Pinney (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 249 [Spivak’s note]. M acaulay (1 8 0 0 -1 8 5 9 ), English historian and statesman. 8. In suggesting that the organization and pro­ duction of knowledge w ithin academ ic disci­ plines acts with and reinforces more overtly political and legal accum ulations of power, Spi­ vak follows Foucault. 9. I have discussed this issue in greater detail with reference to Ju lia Kristeva’s About Chinese W omen, trans. Anita Barrows (New York: Urizen, 1977), in “French Fem inism in an Interna­ tional Fram e,” in In O ther Worlds, pp. 1 3 6 -4 1

[Spivak’s note], k r i s t e v a (b. 1941), Bulgarianborn French philosopher and psychoanalyst. 1. Mahamahopadhyaya Shastri (active 1920s), described by Spivak earlier in the chapter as a “learned In d ian ist, [and] brillian t rep resen ­ tative of the indigenous elite within colonial production.” 2. T hat is, the map of the colonized non-W estern world, a map absent from W estern thought. 3. The highly industrialized (largely W estern) nations in a global economy, which dominate the “underdeveloped” countries of the “third world,” many of which are former colonies. 4. O f or pertaining to the “mother country,” as distinguished from its colony.

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the international division of labor from socialized capital, inside and outside the circuit of the epistemic violence of imperialist law and education supple­ menting an earlier economic text, can the subaltern speak? We have already considered the possibility that, given the exigencies of the inauguration of colonial records, the instrumental woman (the Rani of Sirmur) is not fully written.5 Antonio Gramsci’s6 work on the “subaltern classes” extends the classposition/class-consciousness argument isolated in T he Eighteenth Brumaire.7 Perhaps because Gramsci criticizes the vanguardistic position of the Leninist intellectual,8 he is concerned with the intellectual’s role in the subaltern’s cultural and political movement into the hegemony. This movement must be made to determine the production of history as narrative (of truth).9 In texts such as T he Southern Question, Gramsci considers the movement of historical-political economy in Italy within what can be seen as an allegory of reading taken from or prefiguring an international division of labor.1 Yet an account of the phased development of the subaltern is thrown out of joint when his cultural macrology2 is operated, however remotely, by the epistemic interference with legal and disciplinary definitions accompanying the imperi­ alist project. When I move, at the end of this essay, to the question of woman as subaltern, I will suggest that the possibility of collectivity itself is persis­ tently foreclosed through the manipulation of female agency.3 The first part of my proposition— that the phased development of the sub­ altern is complicated by the imperialist project— is confronted by the “Subal­ tern Studies” group.4 They must ask, Can the subaltern speak? Here we are within Foucault’s own discipline of history and with people who acknowledge his influence. Their project is to rethink Indian colonial historiography from the perspective of the discontinuous chain of peasant insurgencies during the colonial occupation. This is indeed the problem of “the permission to narrate” discussed by Said.5 As Ranajit Guha, the founding editor of the col­ lective, argues, 5. In an earlier chapter, Spivak discusses at length how the British in 1815 prevented the widowsuicide of the widow of the deposed leader of the province of Sirmur, arguing that their interven­ tion was based on a misunderstanding of Hindu practice, served the B ritish’s administrative needs in Sirmur, was conducted with an almost parodic British reverence for “legality,” and completely obscured the R ani’s motives and wishes. 6. Italian Marxist (1891-1937; see above), best known for his notions of “cultural hegemony” (the manufactured consent that legitim ates a dominant group and unifies a society) and the “organic in tellectu al” (someone, regardless of profession, who directs the ideas and aspirations of the particular social class to which he or she “organically” belongs). In his Prison Notebooks (published 1 9 4 8 -5 1 ), he applies the word subal­ tern to the proletariat. 7. T he Eighteenth Brumaire o f Louis Napoleon (1852), an analysis by the Germ an social, eco­ nomic, and political theorist k a r l m a r x (1818— 1883) of the dictatorship (later emperorship) declared by President Louis Bonaparte of France in 1851. Spivak argues earlier in her text that Marx explores the “gap” between “class-position” (a group’s location in the economic relations of production) and “class-consciousness” (a group’s

ability to represent to itself the interests that stem from its class position). 8. T hat is, the position of the Russian revolu­ tionary V. I. Lenin (1 8 7 0 -1 9 2 4 ), contrary to M arx’s own theory, that the proletarian revolu­ tion must be led by a vanguard (i.e., the Bolshe­ viks). 9. T hat is, a way of seeing the world shared by those individuals won over to the hegemonic view. 1. Antonio Gramsci, T he Southern Question, trans. Pasquale Verdicchio (West Lafayette, Ind.: Bordighera, 1995) [Spivak’s note]. 2. Prolonged discourse. 3. T h at is, by colonial and postcolonial econom ic and political arrangem ents that place women and men at odds with one another. 4. A group of radical historians in India— in par­ ticular, the editorial collective of the annual publi­ cation Subaltern Studies (founded in 1982)— who have worked to recover the struggles o f the poor independent of elite nationalism and to reconstruct peasant consciousness. 5. Edward W. Said, “Permission to N arrate,” London Review o f Books, February 16, 1984 [Spi­ vak’s note], s a i d (1 9 3 5 -2 0 0 3 ), Palestinian-born American theorist of postcolonialism and politi­ cal activist.

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The historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been domi­ nated by elitism— colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elit­ ism . . . shar[ing] the prejudice that the making of the Indian nation and the development of the consciousness— nationalism—which confirmed this process were exclusively or predominantly elite achievements. In the colonialist and neo-colonialist historiographies these achievements are credited to British colonial rulers, administrators, policies, institutions, and culture; in the nationalist and neo-nationalist writings— to Indian elite personalities, institutions, activities and ideas.6 Certain members of the Indian elite are of course native informants for firstworld intellectuals interested in the voice of the Other. But one must never­ theless insist that the colonized subaltern subject is irretrievably heterogeneous. Against the indigenous elite we may set what Guha calls “the politics of the people,” both outside (“this was an autonomous domain, for it neither origi­ nated from elite politics nor did its existence depend on the latter”) and inside (“it continued to operate vigorously in spite of [colonialism], adjusting itself to the conditions prevailing under the Raj7 and in many respects developing entirely new strains in both form and content”) the circuit of colonial produc­ tion. I cannot entirely endorse this insistence of determinate vigor and full autonomy, for practical historiographic exigencies will not allow such endorsements to privilege subaltern consciousness. Against the possible charge that his approach is essentialist, Guha constructs a definition of the people (the place of that essence) that can be only an identity-in-differential. He proposes a dynamic stratification grid describing colonial social produc­ tion at large. Even the third group on the list, the buffer group, as it were, between the people and the great macro-structural dominant groups, is itself defined as a place of in-betweenness. The classification falls into: “dominant foreign groups,” and “dominant indigenous groups at the all-India and at the regional and local levels” representing the elite; and “[t]he social groups and elements included in [the terms “people” and “subaltern classes”] representing] the demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the “elite.”8 “The task of research” projected here is “to investigate, identify and mea­ sure the specific nature and degree of the deviation of [the] elements [consti­ tuting item 3] from the ideal and situate it historically.” “Investigate, identify, and measure the specific”: a program could hardly be more essentialist and taxonomic. Yet a curious methodological imperative is at work. I have argued that, in the Foucault-Deleuze conversation, a post-representationalist vocab­ ulary9 hides an essentialist agenda. In subaltern studies, because of the vio­ lence of imperialist epistemic, social, and disciplinary inscription, a project understood in essentialist terms1 must traffic in a radical textual practice of differences. The object of the group s investigation, in this case not even of the people as such but of the floating buffer zone of the regional elite— is a deviation from an ideal— the people or subaltern— which is itself defined as a difference from the elite. It is toward this structure that the research is 6. Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies 1 (1982): 1 [Spivak s note]. 7. British colonial rule in India. 8. Guha, pp. 4, 8 [Spivak’s note].

9. T h at is, a vocabulary that champions differ­ ence and the undecidable. I. In terms of a search for the “tru e” or “essen­ tia l” voice of Indian resistance to the British.

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oriented, a predicament rather different from the self-diagnosed transpar­ ency of the first-world radical intellectual. What taxonomy can fix such a space? Whether or not they themselves perceive it— in fact Guha sees his definition of “the people” within the master-slave dialectic2— their text artic­ ulates the difficult task of rewriting its own conditions of impossibility as the conditions of its possibility. “At the regional and local levels [the dominant indigenous groups] . . . if belonging to social strata hierarchically inferior to those of the dominant all-Indian groups acted in the interests o f the latter and not in conformity to interests corresponding truly to their own social being.’3 When these writers speak, in their essentializing language, of a gap between interest and action in the intermediate group, their conclusions are closer to Marx than to the self-conscious naivete of Deleuze’s pronouncement on the issue. Guha, like Marx, speaks of interest in terms of the social rather than the libidinal being. The Name-of-the-Father imagery in The Eighteenth Bru­ maire can help to emphasize that, on the level of class or group action, “true correspondence to own being” is as artificial or social as the patronymic.4 It is to this intermediate group that the second woman in this chapter belongs.5 The pattern of domination is here determined mainly by gender rather than class. The subordinated gender following the dominant within the challenge of nationalism while remaining caught within gender oppres­ sion is not an unknown story. For the (gender-unspecified) “true” subaltern group, whose identity is its difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itself; the intellectuals solution is not to abstain from representation. The problem is that the subject s itinerary6 has not been left traced so as to offer an object of seduction to the representing intellectual. In the slightly dated language of the Indian group, the question becomes, How can we touch the consciousness of the people, even as we investigate their politics? With what voice-consciousness can the subaltern speak? My question about how to earn the “secret encounter” with the contempo­ rary hill women of Sirmur7 is a practical version of this. The woman of whom I will speak in this section was not a “true” subaltern, but a metropolitan middle-class girl. Further, the effort she made to write or speak her body was in the accents of accountable reason, the instrument of self-conscious responsibility. Still her Speech Act8 was refused. She was made to unspeak herself posthumously, by other women. In an earlier version of this chapter, I had summarized this historical indifference and its results as: the subaltern cannot speak. The critique by Ajit K. Chaudhury, a West Bengali Marxist, of Guhas search for the subaltern consciousness can be taken as representative of a 2. As set forth by the Germ an philosopher g e o r g f r i e d r i c h h e g e l in Phenom enology o f Spirit (1807; see above): he tells o f two selfconsciousnesses that confront each other and fight for mutual recognition. One w'ins the battle and the other loses, but each gets recognition and thereby identifies him- or h erself through the eyes of the other. 3. Guha, 1 [Spivak’s note]. 4. That is, the Name-of-the-Father, a term used by the French psychoanalyst j a c q u e s l a c a n (1901-1981) to refer to the father in the Symbolic realm (not a biological entity), which marks the

w il h e lm

child’s entrance into language-based experience. 5. Bhunaneswari Bhaduri, discussed later in this selection. 6. T hat is, the history of its constitution as a subject— and hence the erasure of its heterogene­ ity— by epistemically violent discourses. 7. T hat is, the contemporary equivalents of the Rani of Sirmur. 8. An allusion to the speech act theory of the English philosopher j. L. Au s t i n (1911-1960), who considered all the actions typically performed in speaking (here the reverse is suggested: an action serves as an utterance).

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moment of the production process that includes the subaltern.9 Chaudhury’s perception that the Marxist view of the transformation of consciousness involves the knowledge of social relations seems, in principle, astute. Yet the heritage of the positivist ideology1 that has appropriated orthodox Marxism obliges him to add this rider: “This is not to belittle the importance of under­ standing peasants’ consciousness or workers’ consciousness in its pure form . This enriches our knowledge of the peasant and the worker and, possibly, throws light on how a particular mode takes on different forms in different regions, w hich is considered a problem o f second order im portance in classical Marxism.”2 This variety of “internationalist Marxism,” which believes in a pure, retrievable form of consciousness only to dismiss it, thus closing off what in Marx remain moments of productive bafflement, can at once be the occasion for Foucault’s and Deleuze’s rejection of Marxism and the source of the criti­ cal motivation of the subaltern studies groups. All three are united in the assumption that there is a pure form of consciousness. On the French scene, there is a shuffling of signifiers: “the unconscious” or “the subject-inoppression” clandestinely fills the space of “the pure form of consciousness.” In orthodox “internationalist” intellectual Marxism, whether in the First World or the Third, the pure form of consciousness remains, paradoxically, a material effect, and therefore a second-order problem. This often earns it the reputation of racism and sexism. In the subaltern studies group it needs development according to the unacknowledged terms of its own articulation. Within the effaced itinerary of the subaltern subject, the track of sexual difference is doubly effaced.3 The question is not of female participation in insurgency, or the ground rules of the sexual division of labor, for both of which there is “evidence.” It is, rather, that, both as object of colonialist his­ toriography and as subject of insurgency, the ideological construction of gen­ der keeps the male dominant. If, in the contest of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow. In the first part of this chapter we meditate upon an elusive female figure called into the service of colonialism. In the last part we will look at a compa­ rable figure in anti-colonialist nationalism. The regulative psychobiography of widow self-immolation will be pertinent in both cases. In the interest of the invaginated spaces4 of this book, let us remind ourselves of the gradual emergence of the new subaltern in the New World Order.5 #

9. Since then, in the disciplinary fallout after the serious electoral and terrorist augmentation of Hindu nationalism in India, more alarm ing charges have been leveled at the group. See Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literature (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 68, 194, 2 0 7 -1 1 ; and Sum it Sarkar, “The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar,” E conom ic and Political Weekly, January 30, 1993, pp. 163—67 [Spivak’s note]. 1. The sociopolitical program that takes knowl­ edge and m eaning to derive solely from what can be empirically observed. 2. Ajit K. Chaudhury, “New Wave Social S ci­ en ce,” Frontier 16.24 (January 28, 1984), p. 10. Emphasis mine [Spivak’s note].

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3. I do not believe that the recent trend of rom anticizing anything w ritten by the Aborigi­ nal or outcaste intellectual has lifted the efface­ ment [Spivak’s note]. 4. An allusion to the ecriture fem in in e (feminine writing) championed by the French feminist h £ l e n e c i x o u s (b. 1937) and a description of Spi­ vak’s method, which folds together various argu­ ments rather than laying them out in a linear progression. 5. A phrase used by George H. W. Bush (b. 1924; 41st U.S. president, 1 9 8 9 -9 3 ) to describe what was needed to replace East-West cold war rival­ ries after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

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I am generally sympathetic with the call to make U.S. feminism more “theo­ retical.” It seems, however, that the problem of the muted subject of the sub­ altern woman, though not solved by an “essentialist” search for lost origins, cannot be served by the call for more theory in Anglo-America either. That call is often given in the name of a critique of “positivism,” which is seen here as identical with “essentialism.” Yet Hegel, the modern inaugurator of “the work of the negative,” was not a stranger to the notion of essences. For Marx, the curious persistence of essentialism within the dialectic was a pro­ found and productive problem. Thus, the stringent binary opposition between positivism/essentialism (read, U.S.) and “theory” (read, French or FrancoGerman via Anglo-American) may be spurious. Apart from repressing the ambiguous complicity between essentialism and critiques of positivism (acknowledged by Derrida in “O f Grammatology as a Positive Science”6), it also errs by implying that positivism is not a theory. This move allows the emergence of a proper name, a positive essence, Theory. And once again, the position of the investigator remains unquestioned. If and when this territorial debate turns toward the Third World, no change in the question of method is to be discerned. This debate cannot take into account that, in the case of the woman as subaltern, rather few ingredients for the constitution of the itiner­ ary of the trace of a sexed subject (rather than an anthropological object) can be gathered to locate the possibility of dissemination.7 Yet I remain generally sympathetic to aligning feminism with the critique of positivism and the defetishization of the concrete. I am also far from averse to learning from the work of Western theorists, though I have learned to insist on marking their positionality as investigating subjects. Given these conditions, and as a literary critic, I tactically confronted the immense prob­ lem of the consciousness of the woman as subaltern. I reinvented the prob­ lem in a sentence and transformed it into the object of a simple semiosis.8 What can such a transformation mean? This gesture of transformation marks the fact that knowledge of the other subject is theoretically impossible. Empirical work in the discipline constantly performs this transformation tacitly. It is a transformation from a first-second person performance to the constatation in the third person.9 It is, in other words, at once a gesture of control and an acknowledgement of limits. Freud provides a homology1 for such positional hazards. Sarah Kofman has suggested that the deep ambiguity of Freud’s use of women as a scapegoat may be read as a reaction-formation to an initial and continuing desire to give the hysteric a voice, to transform her into the sub­ ject of hysteria.2 The masculine-imperialist ideological formation that shaped 6. A section of O f Grammatology (1967; trans. 1977 by Spivak), by the French deconstructive philosopher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 4 ). 7. An allusion to Derrida, one of whose impor­ tant works is titled Dissemination (1972). 8. Process of meaning making, of producing signs. T he “sentence," given below, is “W hite men are saving brown women from brown men.” 9. In speech act theory, an utterance that describes a condition, fact, or state of affairs; in contrast, a performative utterance does some­ thing (e.g., saying, “I promise to . . .” makes a promise). By writing in the 3d person, W estern scholars hide the performative nature of their

work, which creates a particular way of seeing the “facts.” 1. An example of sim ilarity in structure due to sim ilar development; like the scholars, the psy­ choanalyst S I G M U N D F R E U D (1 8 5 6 -1 9 3 9 ) turned the perform atives of his own lst-person claim s and his patients’ appropriated 2d-person accounts into 3d-personal “em pirical” statem ents o f scien­ tific “fact.” 2. Sarah Kofman, T he Enigma o f Woman: Woman in Freud’s Writings, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985) [Spivak’s note].

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that desire into “the daughter s seduction”3 is part of the same formation that constructs the monolithic “third-world woman.” No contemporary metropoli­ tan investigator is not influenced by that formation. Fart of our “unlearning” project is to articulate our participation in that formation— by measuring silences, if necessary— into the object of investigation. Thus, when con­ fronted with the questions, Can the subaltern speak? and Can the subaltern (as woman) speak? our efforts to give the subaltern a voice in history will be doubly open to the dangers run by Freud’s discourse. It is in acknowledgment of these dangers rather than as solution to a problem that I put together the sentence “White men are saving brown women from brown men,” a sentence that runs like a red thread through today’s “gender and development.” My impulse is not unlike the one to be encountered in Freud's investigation of the sentence “A child is being beaten.”4 The use of Freud here does not imply an isomorphic analogy between subject-formation and the behavior of social collectives, a frequent practice, often accompanied by a reference to Reich,5 in the conversation between Deleuze and Foucault. I am, in other words, not suggesting that “White men are saving brown women from brown men” is a sentence indicating a collec­ tive fantasy symptomatic of a collective itinerary of sadomasochistic repres­ sion in a collective imperialist enterprise. There is a satisfying symmetry in such an allegory, but I would rather invite the reader to consider it a problem in “wild psychoanalysis” than a clinching solution.6 Just as Freud’s insistence on making the woman the scapegoat in “A child is being beaten” and else­ where discloses his political interests, however imperfectly, so my insistence on imperialist subject-production as the occasion for this sentence discloses a politics that I cannot step around.

A young woman of sixteen or seventeen, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri, hanged herself in her fathers modest apartment in North Calcutta in 1926. The suicide was a puzzle since, as Bhubaneswari was menstruating at the time, it was clearly not a case of illicit pregnancy. Nearly a decade later, it was discovered, in a letter she had left for her elder sister, that she was a member of one of the many groups involved in the armed struggle for Indian inde­ pendence. She had been entrusted with a political assassination. Unable to confront the task and yet aware of the practical need for trust, she killed herself. Bhubaneswari had known that her death would be diagnosed as the outcome of illegitimate passion. She had therefore waited for the onset of menstruation. 3. A reference both to Freud’s work on female hysteria (viewed as a symptom of frustrated sex­ ual desire for a male authority figure) and to T he D aughter’s Seduction (1982), a book by Jan e G al­ lop that describes fem inist appropriations of Freud. 4. Freud, ‘“A Child Is Being Beaten’: A Contribu­ tion to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perver­ sion,” in T he Standard Edition o f the Com plete Psychological Works o f Sigmund Freud, ed. Jam es Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1953-74), 17:175—204. For a list of ways in which W estern criticism constructs “third world women,” see Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under W estern Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,”

in Third World W omen and the Politics o f Fem i­ nism, ed. Mohanty et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 5 1 -8 0 [Spivak’s note]. 5. W ilhelm Reich (1 8 9 7 -1 9 5 7 ), Austrian psycho­ analyst whose Mass Psychology o f Fascism (1933) exemplifies a radical attempt to psychoanalyze a whole society. 6. Freud, “‘W ild ’ Psycho-Analysis,” in Standard E dition, 11:221—27. A good deal o f psychoana­ lytic social critique would fit this description [Spivak’s note]. Freud warns against “wild” psy­ choanalysis that jum ps to conclusions without the slow accum ulation o f inform ation and the relationship between patient and therapist n ec­ essary for psychoanalytic treatm ent.

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While waiting, Bhubaneswari, the brahm acarini7 who was no doubt looking forward to good wifehood, perhaps rewrote the social text of sati-suicide in an interventionist way. (One tentative explanation of her inexplicable act had been a possible melancholia brought on by her father s death and her brotherin-law s repeated taunts that she was too old to be not-yet-a-wife.) She general­ ized the sanctioned motive for female suicide by taking immense trouble to displace (not merely deny), in the physiological inscription of her body, its imprisonment within legitimate passion by a single male. In the immediate context, her act became absurd, a case of delirium rather than sanity. The dis­ placing gesture—waiting for menstruation— is at first a reversal of the interdict against a menstruating widow s right to immolate herself; the unclean widow must wait, publicly, until the cleansing bath of the fourth day, when she is no longer menstruating, in order to claim her dubious privilege. In this reading, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri’s suicide is an unemphatic, ad hoc, subaltern rewriting of the social text of sati-suicide as much as the hegemonic account of the blazing, fighting, familial Durga.8 The emergent dissenting possibilities of that hegemonic account of the fighting mother are well documented and popularly well remembered through the discourse of the male leaders and participants in the Independence movement. The subaltern as female cannot be heard or read. I know of Bhubaneswari s life and death through family connections. Before investigating them more thoroughly, I asked a Bengali woman, a phi­ losopher and Sanskritist whose early intellectual production is almost identi­ cal to mine, to start the process. Two responses: (a) Why, when her two sisters, Saileswari and Raseswari, led such full and wonderful lives, are you interested in the hapless Bhubaneswari? (b) I asked her nieces. It appears that it was a case of illicit love. I was so unnerved by this failure of communication that, in the first ver­ sion of this text, I wrote, in the accents of passionate lament: the subaltern cannot speak! It was an inadvisable remark. In the intervening years between the publication of the second part of this chapter in essay form and this revision, I have profited greatly from the many published responses to it. I will refer to two of them here: “Can the Subaltern Vote?” and “Silencing Sycorax.”9 As I have been insisting, Bhubaneswari Bhaduri was not a “true” subaltern. She was a woman of the middle class, with access, however clandestine, to the bourgeois movement for Independence. Indeed the Rani of Sirmur, with her claim to elevated birth, was not a subaltern at all. Part of what I seem to have argued in this chapter is that woman’s interception of the claim to subalternity can be staked out across strict lines of definition by virtue of their muting by heterogeneous circumstances. Gulari1 cannot speak to us because indigenous

7. Fem ale member of the Brahm in (upper) caste (Hindi). 8. In Hindu mythology and religion, one o f the many forms of Devi (the divine m other goddess). She is a warrior, often represented with 8 or 10 arm s; each hand holds the special weapon of the other gods. 9. Leerom Medovoi et al., “Can the Subaltern V ote?” Socialist Review 2 0 .3 (Ju ly -S e p te m b e r

1990): 1 3 3 -4 9 ; and Abena Busia, “Silencing Syco­ rax: On African Colonial Discourse and the Unvoiced Fem ale,” Cultural Critique, no. 14 (win­ ter 1 9 8 9 -9 0 ): 81—104 [Spivak’s note]. Spivak’s original essay was “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation o f Cidture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 2 7 1 -3 1 3 . 1. T h e family name of the Rani of Sirmur.

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patriarchal “history” would only keep a record of her funeral and colonial his­ tory only needed her as an incidental instrument. Bhubaneswari attempted to “speak” by turning her body into a text of woman/writing. The immediate pas­ sion of my declaration “the subaltern cannot speak ” came from the despair that, in her own family, among women, in no more than fifty years, her attempt had failed. I am not laying the blame for the muting on the colonial authorities here, as Busia seems to think: “Gayatri Spivak s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’— section 4 of which is a compelling explication of this role of disappearing in the case of Indian women in British legal history.”2 I am pointing, rather, at her silencing by her own more emancipated grand­ daughters: a new mainstream. To this can be added two newer groups: one, the liberal multiculturalist metropolitan academy, Susan Bartons3 greatgranddaughters; as follows: As I have been saying all along, I think it is important to acknowledge our complicity in the muting, in order precisely to be more effective in the long run. Our work cannot succeed if we always have a scapegoat. The postcolonial migrant investigator is touched by the colonial social formations. Busia strikes a positive note for further work when she points out that, after all, I am able to read Bhubaneswaris case, and therefore she has spoken in some way. Busia is right, of course. All speaking, even seemingly the most immediate, entails a distanced decipherment by another, which is, at best, an interception. That is what speaking is. I acknowledge this theoretical point, and also acknowledge the practical importance, for oneself and others, of being upbeat about future work. Yet the moot decipherment by another in an academic institution (willy-nilly a knowledge-production factory) many years later must not be too quickly iden­ tified with the “speaking” of the subaltern. It is not a mere tautology to say that the colonial or postcolonial subaltern is defined as the being on the other side of difference, or an epistemic fracture, even from other groupings among the colonized. What is at stake when we insist that the subaltern speaks? In “Can the Subaltern Vote?” the three authors apply the question of stakes to “political speaking.” This seems to me to be a fruitful way of extending my reading of subaltern speech into a collective arena. Access to “citizenship” (civil society) by becoming a voter (in the nation) is indeed the symbolic cir­ cuit of the mobilizing of subalternity into hegemony. This terrain, ever nego­ tiating between national liberation and globalization, allows for examining the casting of the vote itself as a performative convention given as constative “speech” of the subaltern subject. It is part of my current concerns to see how this set is manipulated to legitimize globalization; but it is beyond the scope of this book. Here let us remain confined to the field of academic prose, and advance three points: 1. Simply by being postcolonial or the member of an ethnic minority, we are not “subaltern.” That word is reserved for the sheer heterogeneity of decol­ onized space. 2. Busia, “Silencing Sycorax,” p. 102 [Spivak’s note]. 3. The daughter whose mother refuses to acknowledge her as her own in Daniel Defoe’s novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724). The South A frican writer J. M. Coetzee (b. 1940) uses

Susan Barton as the narrator for much (but not all) of his retelling of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe story (1719) in his novel Foe (1987), a retelling that Spivak discusses at length in chapter 2 of A

Critique o f Postcolonial Reason.

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2. When a line of communication is established between a member of subal­ tern groups and the circuits of citizenship or institutionality, the subaltern has been inserted into the long road to hegemony. Unless we want to be romantic purists or primitivists about “preserving subalternity”— a con­ tradiction in terms— this is absolutely to be desired. (It goes without say­ ing that museumized or curricularized access to ethnic origin— another battle that must be fought— is not identical with preserving subalternity.) Remembering this allows us to take pride in our work without making missionary claims. 3. This trace-structure (effacement in disclosure) surfaces as the tragic emo­ tions of the political activist, springing not out of superficial utopianism, but out of the depths of what Bimal Krishna Matilal has called “moral love.” Mahasweta Devi,4 herself an indefatigable activist, documents this emotion with exquisite care in “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha.” And finally, the third group: Bhubaneswari’s elder sisters eldest daughter’s eldest daughter’s eldest daughter is a new U.S. immigrant and was recently promoted to an executive position in a U.S.-based transnational. She will be helpful in the emerging South Asian market precisely because she is a wellplaced Southern diasporic. For Europe, the time when the new capitalism definitely superseded the old can be established with fair precision: it was the beginning of the twentieth century . . . [With t]he boom at the end of the nineteenth cen­ tury and the crisis of 1900—03 . . . [c]artels become one of the founda­ tions of the whole of economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into imperialism.5 Today’s program of global financialization carries on that relay. Bhu­ baneswari had fought for national liberation. Her great-grandniece works for the New Empire. This too is a historical silencing of the subaltern. When the news of this young woman’s promotion was broadcast in the fam­ ily amidst general jubilation I could not help remarking to the eldest surviv­ ing female member: “Bhubaneswari”— her nickname had been Talu— “hanged herself in vain,” but not too loudly. Is it any wonder that this young woman is a staunch multiculturalist, believes in natural childbirth, and wears only cotton? 1983

4. Indian author (1 9 2 6 -2 0 1 6 ), who wrote in Ben­ gali; some o f her work— including “Pterodactyl,” in Imaginary Maps (1995)— has been translated into English by Spivak. Matilal (1935-1991), Indian philosopher who taught at Oxford Univer­

1 9 8 5 ,1 9 9 9

sity for many years. 5. V. I. Lenin, Im perialism : T he Highest Stage o f Capitalism: A Popular Outline (London: Junius; Chicago: Pluto, 1996), pp. 15, 17 [Spivak’s note].

2013

TERRY EAGLETON b.

19 4 3

Since the 1970s, Terry Eagleton has been perhaps the most prominent and prolific commentator on criticism and theory in English. From an unabashed Marxist per­ spective, he has taken to task the quietism of other kinds of criticism, and unlike most academically trained critics, he has written with puckish humor and in a vari­ ety of genres. For instance, in our first selection, “The Rise of English,” from his landmark Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983; 3d ed., 2008), he mocks the assumption that culture is edifying, noting instead the use of English literary stud­ ies as a form of social control: “If the masses are not thrown a few novels, they may react by throwing up a few barricades.” He has in mind the canonical view of m a t t h e w A r n o l d (see above), who argued that high culture is ennobling; answering the perennial question of the role of literature in society differently, Eagleton holds that it, like formal religion, helps reproduce the dominant social order. In our sec­ ond selection, from his book Culture and the Death of God (2014), Eagleton turns to condemn postmodern theory in general, finding that it gives up both the ethical core of religion and the critical perspective of modernism. A student of the Marxist literary and cultural critic R a y m o n d w i l l i a m s , Eagleton has introduced contemporary theory and its concepts to a wide Anglophone audi­ ence, as well as worked as a literary journalist, novelist, and playwright. Born in a working-class community in Salford, England, he attended Cambridge University on a scholarship, receiving his B.A. in 1964 and his Ph.D. in 1968. He taught at Cambridge for a year, held various appointments at Oxford University until 2001, and since has been a distinguished professor at the University of Manchester, Lan­ caster University, and the University of Notre Dame. During the politically vibrant late 1960s, Eagleton was active in the Catholic Left— among other things, he helped found a journal, Slant— and he published three books before he was thirty. It was not until the mid-1970s, however, that he established himself as a leading expositor of Marxism within the emerging field of contemporary literary theory, most notably with Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory (1976). It extends l o u i s A l t h u s s e r ’s theory of ideology to literature, revising the conven­ tional Marxist view, espoused by Leon Trotsky, that texts directly reflect social real­ ity; Eagleton argues instead that texts actively produce ideology. Eagleton subsequently turned away from the pursuit of an overarching theoretical model, or what the American sociologist C. Wright Mills (1916—1962) termed “Grand Theory.” As he remarked in a 1990 interview, “I think that back in the seventies we used to suffer from a certain fetishism of method; we used to think that we have to get a certain kind of systematic method right, and this would be the way of proceed­ ing. I think some of my early work, certainly Criticism and Ideology, would fall within that general approach.” Rather than dispensing with Marxism, however, he distin­ guishes between theoretical methods and political goals: “[A] Marxist has to define certain urgent political goals and allow, as it were, those to determine questions of method rather than the other way around.” In eschewing large-scale theoretical mod­ els, Eagleton resembles the twentieth-century neopragmatists such as S t a n l e y f i s h , who insists that method cannot be determined in advance but derives from practice. But whereas they argue that literary studies are politically ineffectual, Eagleton advo­ cates a political focus. Another element of Eagletons turn from Grand Theory is his style, which is lively, witty, clear, and frequently opinionated, combining theory and literary jour­ nalism. Eagleton unabashedly states his opinions— often in audacious one-liners, such as “deconstruction is the death drive at the level of theory”— and injects

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humor into his writing; for instance, he calls Fish “the Donald Trump of American academia.” In his Function of Criticism: From the “Spectator” to Post-Structuralism (1984), Eagleton declares that contemporary criticism has lost its social purpose and become marginalized through the technocratic fetishizing of Grand Theory. Drawing on j u r g e n H a b e r m a s ’s concept of the public sphere, he notes that mod­ ern criticism arose in the eighteenth century in opposition to the absolutist state, and he calls for the renewed oppositional role of criticism in the public sphere. To that end, Eagleton became known as the foremost popularizer of contemporary literary theory in the 1980s. His Literary Theory has been an academic bestseller and probably the most influential introduction to contemporary theory for students and curious readers. It conducts a knowledgeable but fast-paced, readable, and pithy survey of reader-response and reception theory, structuralism, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis. Rather than presenting a dispassionate history, Literary Theory bluntly states Eagleton’s preferences and value judgments. Finding fault with most contemporary theories for their lack of attention to politics, he praises Marxist and feminist criticism for their concern with the political effects of lit­ erature. Accessible and polemical, “The Rise of English” illustrates Eagleton’s trademark style. It combines broad historical overview and ideological analysis. Eagleton sees English, which became an academic subject only in the late nineteenth century, as an outgrowth of nationalism as well as a replacement for religion as a crucial ideo­ logical apparatus. While lacking nuance, Eagletons analysis succinctly answers a major theoretical question, proposing that literature has social significance not simply as an innocent, pleasurable entertainment but as a primary means of rein­ forcing the dominant social order. In our selection from Culture and the Death of God, Eagleton tallies up a balance sheet on postmodern theory, and he finds it lacking. As in “The Rise of English,” he employs a large historical frame, placing postmodernism in a lineage reaching back to modernism and earlier. In his view, a chief problem with postmodernism— as he suggests here and explains in other books, especially The Idea of Culture (2000)— is that its relativism forces it to vacate a critical stance, resulting in an immersion in identity politics rather than class politics. While he acknowledges that the previous mode of modernism was elitist, he finds that its emphasis on Kulturkritik, or “culture critique,” gave it a stronger position in opposition to capitalism. His assessment differs from that of other figures, notably f r e d r i c j a m e s o n , who sees the critical potential of postmodernism more dialectically at the conclusion of “Postmodernism and Con­ sumer Society” (see above). Eagleton s mode is more polemical than dialectical. Another element of Culture and the Death of God is a focus on religion. As Eagleton remarks in Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Dehate (2009), we should not simply dismiss religion as irrational— arguing that it fails according to standards of scientific proof—but should judge it as a different mode of meaning than science. While in our selection he does not assert a faith, he holds that the idea of God presents a more promising view of human potential that postmodernism evac­ uates. As he remarks in an interview with Matthew Beaumont in The Task of the Critic: Terry Eagleton in Dialogue (2009), “I stopped calling myself a Roman Catho­ lic, even though I continue to value aspects of that cultural context and tradition.” In part because of his popularizations of theory, and in part because of the often sweeping, polemical nature of his arguments, Eagleton has occasionally been dis­ missed by specialist commentators on theory. His influence among theorists is much less pronounced than that of Jameson, the most prominent U.S. Marxist critic. How­ ever, Eagleton has made theory accessible to students and nonspecialists, persistently reminding readers of its social role in the public sphere. He has provided a model for younger literary critics who self-consciously choose to write in a more journalistic mode, turning from the dense language and specialist focus of Grand Theory to

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address a larger public in discussing cultural issues. The tension in criticism between specialization and accessibility, which itself became a central theoretical issue in the 1990s, mirrors a perennial debate in literary studies— whether literature demon­ strates special qualities available only to connoisseurs who have expert knowledge of the tradition, as articulated by the modernist T. s. e l i o t , or it can reach the com­ mon reader, in what the Romantic poet w i l l i a m w o r d s w o r t h calls “the real lan­ guage of men.” L iterary T h eory : An In tro d u ctio n Keywords: Ideology, Institutional Studies, Literary History, Marxism, Nationhood, Religion C u lture a n d th e D eath o f G od Keywords: Literary History, Modernity, Popular Culture, Postmodernity, Religion, Subjectivity

From Literary Theory: An Introduction From C hapter 1. The Rise o f English $

*

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To speak of ‘literature and ideology’ as two separate phenomena which can be interrelated is, as I hope to have shown, in one sense quite unnecessary. Literature, in the meaning of the word we have inherited, is an ideology.1 It has the most intimate relations to questions of social power. But if the reader is still unconvinced, the narrative of what happened to literature in the later nineteenth century might prove a little more persuasive. If one were asked to provide a single explanation for the growth of English studies in the later nineteenth century, one could do worse than reply: ‘the failure of religion’. By the mid-Victorian period, this traditionally reliable, immensely powerful ideological form was in deep trouble. It was no longer winning the hearts and minds of the masses, and under the twin impacts of scientific discovery and social change its previous unquestioned dominance was in danger of evaporating. This was particularly worrying for the Victorian ruling class, because religion is for all kinds of reasons an extremely effective form of ideological control. Like all successful ideolo­ gies, it works much less by explicit concepts or formulated doctrines than by image, symbol, habit, ritual and mythology. It is affective and experien­ tial, entwining itself with the deepest unconscious roots of the human sub­ ject; and any social ideology which is unable to engage with such deep-seated a-rational fears and needs, as T. S. Eliot2 knew, is unlikely to survive very long. Religion, moreover, is capable of operating at every social level: if there is a doctrinal inflection of it for the intellectual elite, there is also a pietistic brand of it for the masses. It provides an excellent social cement’, encompassing pious peasant, enlightened middle-class liberal and theologi­ cal intellectual in a single organization. Its ideological power lies in its capacity to ‘materialize’ beliefs as practices: religion is the sharing of the chalice and the blessing of the harvest, not just abstract argument about

l.T h a t is, a system of specific class beliefs, images, values, and practices that functions to reproduce the dominant social order.

2. A m erican-born English poet, critic, and dramatist (1 8 8 8 -1 9 6 5 ; see above),

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consubstantiation or hyperdulia.3 Its ultimate truths, like those mediated by the literary symbol, are conveniently closed to rational demonstration, and thus absolute in their claims. Finally religion, at least in its Victorian forms, is a 'pacifying influence, fostering meekness, self-sacrifice and the contemplative inner life. It is no wonder that the Victorian ruling class looked on the threatened dissolution of this ideological discourse with some­ thing less than equanimity. Fortunately, however, another remarkably similar discourse lay to hand: English literature. George Gordon,4 early professor of english literature at Oxford, commented in his inaugural lecture that ‘England is sick, and . . . English literature must save it. The Churches (as I understand) having failed, and social remedies being slow, English literature has now a triple function: still, I suppose, to delight and instruct us, but also, and above all, to save our souls and heal the State.’5 Gordon’s words were spoken in our own century, but they find a resonance everywhere in Victorian England. It is a striking thought that had it not been for this dramatic crisis in mid-nineteenthcentury ideology, we might not today have such a plentiful supply of Jane Austen casebooks and bluffer’s guides to Pound.6 As religion progressively ceases to provide the social cement’, affective values and basic mythologies by which a socially turbulent class-society can be welded together, ‘English’ is constructed as a subject to carry this ideological burden from the Victorian period onwards. The key figure here is Matthew Arnold/ always preternaturally sensitive to the needs of his social class, and engagingly candid about being so. The urgent social need, as Arnold recognizes, is to ‘Hellenize’ or cultivate the philistine middle class, who have proved unable to underpin their political and economic power with a suitably rich and subtle ideology. This can be done by transfusing into them something of the traditional style of the aristocracy, who as Arnold shrewdly perceives are ceasing to be the dominant class in England, but who have something of the ideological where­ withal to lend a hand to their middle-class masters. State-established schools, by linking the middle class to ‘the best culture of their nation’, will confer on them ‘a greatness and a noble spirit, which the tone of these classes is not of itself at present adequate to impart’.8 The true beauty of this manoeuvre, however, lies in the effect it will have in controlling and incorporating the working class: It is of itself a serious calamity for a nation that its tone of feeling and grandeur of spirit should be lowered or dulled. But the calamity appears 3. The particular veneration of the Virgin Mary by Roman C atholics. “Consubstantiation”: the Lutheran doctrine that the body and blood of Christ coexist with the elem ents o f bread and wine during Holy Com munion (a point o f argu­ ment with the Roman C atholic b elief in transubstantiation, the literal transform ation of the consecrated bread and wine into the body and blood of C hrist). 4. Oxford professor and critic (1 8 8 1 -1 9 4 2 ). 5. Quoted by C hris Baldick, T he Social Mission o f English Criticism, 1848—1932 (Oxford, 1983), p. 105 [Eagleton’s note]. “To delight and instruct” are the traditional functions of litera­ ture; see H o r a c e , Ars Poetica (ca. 10 b . c . e .), lines 3 4 3 - 4 4 , above.

6. Ezra Pound (1 8 8 5 —1972), A m erican poet, edi­ tor, and critic, notable for his difficulty and abstruse range of literary references. Austen (1 7 7 5 -1 8 1 7 ), English novelist. 7. English critic, poet, and school inspector (1 8 2 2 -1 8 8 8 ; see above), who greatly influenced modern views of literature. In Culture and A nar­ chy (1869; see above) he divided England into Barbarians (the aristocracy), Philistines (the materialist middle classes), and the Populace; he also opposed “Hellenism” to “Hebraism,” favoring the form er (and classical Greek culture gener­ ally). 8. “The Popular Education of France,” in D em o­ cratic Education, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 22 [Eagleton’s note].

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far more serious still when we consider that the middle classes, remain­ ing as they are now, with their narrow, harsh, unintelligent, and unat­ tractive spirit and culture, will almost certainly fail to mould or assimilate the masses below them, whose sympathies are at the present moment actually wider and more liberal than theirs. They arrive, these masses, eager to enter into possession of the world, to gain a more vivid sense of their own life and activity. In this their irrepressible development, their natural educators and initiators are those immediately above them, the middle classes. If these classes cannot win their sympathy or give them their direction, society is in danger of falling into anarchy.9 Arnold is refreshingly unhypocritical: there is no feeble pretence that the education of the working class is to be conducted chiefly for their own ben­ efit, or that his concern with their spiritual condition is, in one of his own most cherished terms, in the least ‘disinterested’. In the even more disarmingly candid words of a twentieth-century proponent of this view: ‘Deny to working-class children any common share in the immaterial, and presently they will grow into the men who demand with menaces a communism of the material’.1 If the masses are not thrown a few novels, they may react by throwing up a few barricades. Literature was in several ways a suitable candidate for this ideological enterprise. As a liberal, ‘humanizing’ pursuit, it could provide a potent anti­ dote to political bigotry and ideological extremism. Since literature, as we know, deals in universal human values rather than in such historical trivia as civil wars, the oppression of women or the dispossession of the English peas­ antry, it could serve to place in cosmic perspective the petty demands of working people for decent living conditions or greater control over their own lives, and might even with luck come to render them oblivious of such issues in their high-minded contemplation of eternal truths and beauties. English, as a Victorian handbook for English teachers put it, helps to promote sympa­ thy and fellow feeling among all classes’; another Victorian writer speaks of literature as opening a ‘serene and luminous region of truth where all may meet and expatiate in common’, above ‘the smoke and stir, the din and tur­ moil of man’s lower life of care and business and debate’.2 Literature would rehearse the masses in the habits of pluralistic thought and feeling, persuad­ ing them to acknowledge that more than one viewpoint than theirs existed— namely, that of their masters. It would communicate to them the moral riches of bourgeois civilization, impress upon them a reverence for middle-class achievements, and, since reading is an essentially solitary, contemplative activity, curb in them any disruptive tendency to collective political action. It would give them a pride in their national language and literature: if scanty education and extensive hours of labour prevented them personally from pro­ ducing a literary masterpiece, they could take pleasure in the thought that others of their own kind— English people— had done so. The people, accord­ ing to a study of English literature written in 1891, ‘need political culture, instruction, that is to say, in what pertains to their relation to the State, to 9. Ibid., p. 26 [Eagleton’s note]. 1. George Sampson, English fo r the English (1921), quoted by Baldick, T he Social Mission o f English Criticism, p. 103 [Eagleton’s note]. 2. H. G. Robinson, “On the Use of English Classi-

cal Literature in the Work of Education,” Macmillun’s Muguzine 11 (1860), quoted by Baldick, The Social Mission o f English Criticism, p. 66 [Eagleton’s note].

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their duties as citizens; and they need also to be impressed sentimentally by having the presentation in legend and history of heroic and patriotic exam­ ples brought vividly and attractively before them’.3 All of this, moreover, could be achieved without the cost and labour of teaching them the Classics: English literature was written in their own language, and so was conveniently available to them. Like religion, literature works primarily by emotion and experience, and so was admirably well-fitted to carry through the ideological task which religion left off. Indeed by our own time literature had become effectively identical with the opposite of analytical thought and conceptual enquiry: whereas sci­ entists, philosophers and political theorists are saddled with these drably dis­ cursive pursuits, students of literature occupy the more prized territory of feeling and experience. Whose experience, and what kinds of feeling, is a different question. Literature from Arnold onwards is the enemy o f ‘ideologi­ cal dogma’, an attitude which might have come as a surprise to Dante, Milton and Pope;4 the truth or falsity of beliefs such as that blacks are inferior to whites is less important than what it feels like to experience them. Arnold himself had beliefs, of course, though like everybody else he regarded his own beliefs as reasoned positions rather than ideological dogmas. Even so, it was not the business of literature to communicate such beliefs directly— to argue openly, for example, that private property is the bulwark of liberty. Instead, literature should convey timeless truths, thus distracting the masses from their immediate commitments, nurturing in them a spirit of tolerance and generosity, and so ensuring the survival of private property. Just as Arnold attempted in Literature and Dogma and God and the B ible5 to dissolve away the embarrassingly doctrinal bits of Christianity into poetically sugges­ tive sonorities, so the pill of middle-class ideology was to be sweetened by the sugar of literature. There was another sense in which the experiential’ nature of literature was ideologically convenient. For ‘experience’ is not only the homeland of ideology, the place where it takes root most effectively; it is also in its literary form a kind of vicarious self-fulfillment. If you do not have the money and leisure to visit the Far East, except perhaps as a soldier in the pay of British imperialism, then you can always ‘experience’ it at second hand by reading Conrad or Kipling.6 Indeed according to some literary theories this is even more real than strolling round Bangkok. The actually impoverished experi­ ence of the mass of people, an impoverishment bred by their social condi­ tions, can be supplemented by literature: instead of working to change such conditions (which Arnold, to his credit, did more thoroughly than almost any of those who sought to inherit his mantle), you can vicariously fulfil some­ one’s desire for a fuller life by handing them Pride and Prejudice.7 It is significant, then, that ‘English’ as an academic subject was first insti­ tutionalized not in the Universities, but in the Mechanics’ Institutes, working 3 . J . C. Collins, The Study o f English Literature (1891), quoted by Baldick, The Social Mission o f English Criticism, pp. 6 4 - 6 5 [Eagleton’s note]. 4. All three major poets— the Italian o a n t e a l i g h i e r i (1 2 6 5 -1 3 2 1 ), the English John Milton (1608-1674), and ALEXANDER p o p e (1 6 8 8 -1 7 4 4 )— held strong political views. 5. Published in 1873 and 1875, respectively.

6. Both these English writers— the Polish-born novelist Joseph Conrad (1857—1924) and the short story writer, poet, and novelist Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)— often set their works in places under colonial rule (though not usually the Far East). 7. Jan e A usten’s best-known novel (published 1813).

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mens colleges and extension lecturing circuits.8 English was literally the poor man’s Classics— a way of providing a cheapish ‘liberal’ education for those beyond the charmed circles of public school and Oxbridge.9 From the outset, in the work o f ‘English’ pioneers like F. D. Maurice and Charles King­ sley,1 the emphasis was on solidarity between the social classes, the cultivation o f‘larger sympathies’, the instillation of national pride and the transmission of ‘moral’ values. This last concern— still the distinctive hallmark of literary studies in England, and a frequent source of bemusement to intellectuals from other cultures— was an essential part of the ideological project; indeed the rise of ‘English’ is more or less concomitant with an historic shift in the very meaning of the term ‘moral’, of which Arnold, Henry James and F. R. Leavis2 are the major critical exponents. Morality is no longer to be grasped as a formulated code or explicit ethical system: it is rather a sensitive preoccupa­ tion with the whole quality of life itself, with the oblique, nuanced particulars of human experience. Somewhat rephrased, this can be taken as meaning that the old religious ideologies have lost their force, and that a more subtle communication of moral values, one which works by ‘dramatic enactment’ rather than rebarbative abstraction, is thus in order. Since such values are nowhere more vividly dramatized than in literature, brought home to ‘felt experience’ with all the unquestionable reality of a blow on the head, litera­ ture becomes more than just a handmaiden of moral ideology: it is moral ide­ ology for the modern age, as the work of F. R. Leavis was most graphically to evince. The working class was not the only oppressed layer of Victorian society at whom ‘English’ was specifically beamed. English literature, reflected a Royal Commission witness in 1877, might be considered a suitable subject for ‘women . . . and the second- and third-rate men who [. . . ] become school­ masters.’3 The ‘softening’ and ‘humanizing’ effects of English, terms recurrently used by its early proponents, are within the existing ideological stereotypes of gender clearly feminine. The rise of English in England ran parallel to the gradual, grudging admission of women to the institutions of higher education; and since English was an untaxing sort of affair, concerned with the finer feel­ ings rather than with the more virile topics of bona fid e academic ‘disciplines’, it seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to palm off on the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science and the professions. Sir Arthur Quiller Couch,4 first professor of english at Cambridge University, would open with the word ‘Gentlemen’ lectures addressed to a hall filled largely with women. Though modern male lecturers may have changed their manners, the ideo­ logical conditions which make English a popular University subject for women to read have not. If English had its feminine aspect, however, it also acquired a masculine one as the century drew on. The era of the academic establishment of English

8. See Lionel Gossman, “Literature and Educa­ tion," New Literary History 13.2 (1982): 34 1 -7 1 . See also D. J. Palmer, The Rise o f English Studies (London, 1965) [Eagleton’s note]. 9. Oxford and Cambridge Universities; both date to the 12th century. “Public school”: in Great Britain, endowed boarding schools, whose cur­ riculum traditionally has been largely classical. 1. English clergyman, social reformer, and novel­

ist (1819-1875). M aurice (1 8 0 5 -1 8 7 2 ), English theologian, clergyman, and writer. 2. English literary critic (1895—1978; see above) and editor of the influential jou rn al Scrutiny. j a m e s (18 4 3 -1 9 1 6 ), Am erican novelist and critic. 3. Quoted by Gossm an, “Literature and Educa­ tion,” pp. 341—42 [Eagleton’s note]. 4. English critic (1 8 6 3 -1 9 4 4 ).

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is also the era of high imperialism in England. As British capitalism became threatened and progressively outstripped by its younger German and Ameri­ can rivals, the squalid, undignified scramble of too much capital chasing too few overseas territories, which was to culminate in 1914 in the first imperial­ ist world war, created the urgent need for a sense of national mission and identity. What was at stake in English studies was less English literature than English literature: our great national poets’ Shakespeare and Milton, the sense of an organic’ national tradition and identity to which new recruits could be admitted by the study of humane letters. The reports of educational bodies and official enquiries into the teaching of English, in this period and in the early twentieth century, are strewn with nostalgic back-references to the ‘organic’ community of Elizabethan England5 in which nobles and ground­ lings found a common meeting-place in the Shakespearian theatre, and which might still be reinvented today. It is no accident that the author of one of the most influential Government reports in this area, The Teaching o f English in England (1921), was none other than Sir Henry Newbolt,6 minor jingoist poet and perpetrator of the immortal line ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’ Chris Baldick has pointed to the importance of the admission of English lit­ erature to the Civil Service examinations in the Victorian period: armed with this conveniently packaged version of their own cultural treasures, the ser­ vants of British imperialism could sally forth overseas secure in a sense of their national identity, and able to display that cultural superiority to their envying colonial peoples.7 It took rather longer for English, a subject fit for women, workers and those wishing to impress the natives, to penetrate the bastions of rulingclass power in Oxford and Cambridge. English was an upstart, amateurish affair as academic subjects went, hardly able to compete on equal terms with the rigours of Greats or philology;8 since every English gentleman read his own literature in his spare time anyway, what was the point of submit­ ting it to systematic study? Fierce rearguard actions were fought by both ancient Universities against this distressingly dilettante subject: the defini­ tion of an academic subject was what could be examined,9 and since English was no more than idle gossip about literary taste it was difficult to know how to make it unpleasant enough to qualify as a proper academic pursuit. This, it might be said, is one of the few problems associated with the study of English which have since been effectively resolved. The frivolous con­ tempt for his subject displayed by the first really ‘literary’ Oxford professor, Sir Walter Raleigh, has to be read to be believed.1 Raleigh held his post in the years leading up to the First World War; and his relief at the outbreak of the war, an event which allowed him to abandon the feminine vagaries of literature and put his pen to something more manly— war propaganda— is palpable in his writing. The only way in which English seemed likely to justify its existence in the ancient Universities was by systematically mistaking itself 5. That is, England during the reign (1 5 58-1603) of Queen Elizabeth I (1 5 3 3 -1 6 0 3 ), the period during which Shakespeare wrote many of his plays. 6. English poet, historian, and novelist (1 8 6 2 1938); Eagleton quotes “Vital Lampada” from T he Island R ace (1898). 7. See Baldick, T he Social Mission o f English

Criticism, pp. 7 0 - 7 2 [Eagleton’s note]. 8. The study o f cultures through historical analy­ ses of their languages. “Greats”: studies of Greek and Latin literature, history, and philosophy. 9. Tested. 1. See Baldick, T he Social Mission o f English Crit­ icism, pp. 76—79 [Eagleton’s note]. Raleigh (1861— 1922), English scholar, essayist, and critic.

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for the Classics; but the classicists were hardly keen to have this pathetic parody of themselves around. If the first imperialist world war more or less put paid to Sir Walter Raleigh, providing him with an heroic identity more comfortingly in line with that of his Elizabethan namesake,2 it also signalled the final victory of English studies at Oxford and Cambridge. One of the most strenuous antag­ onists of English— philology— was closely bound up with Germanic influ­ ence; and since England happened to be passing through a major war with Germany, it was possible to smear classical philology as a form of ponderous Teutonic nonsense with which no self-respecting Englishman should be caught associating.3 England’s victory over Germany meant a renewal of national pride, an upsurge of patriotism which could only aid Englishs cause; but at the same time the deep trauma of the war, its almost intolera­ ble questioning of every previously held cultural assumption, gave rise to a spiritual hungering’, as one contemporary commentator described it, for which poetry seemed to provide an answer. It is a chastening thought that we owe the University study of English, in part at least, to a meaningless massacre. The Great War, with its carnage of ruling-class rhetoric, put paid to some of the more strident forms of chauvinism on which English had previously thrived: there could be few more Walter Raleighs after Wilfred Owen.4 English Literature rode to power on the back of wartime national­ ism; but it also represented a search for spiritual solutions on the part of an English ruling class whose sense of identity had been profoundly shaken, whose psyche was ineradicably scarred by the horrors it had endured. Litera­ ture would be at once solace and reaffirmation, a familiar ground on which Englishmen could regroup both to explore, and to find some alternative to, the nightmare of history. *

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From Culture and the Death of God From C hapter 6. M odernism and After As the power of religion begins to fail, its various functions are redistrib­ uted like a precious legacy to those aspiring to become its heirs. Scientific rationalism takes over its doctrinal certainties, while radical politics inher­ its its mission to transform the face of the earth. Culture in the aesthetic sense safeguards something of its spiritual depth. Indeed, most aesthetic ideas (creation, inspiration, unity, autonomy, symbol, epiphany and so on) are really displaced fragments of theology. Signs which accomplish what they signify are known as poetry to aesthetics and as sacraments to theology. Meanwhile, culture in the wider sense of the word retains something of 2. T he soldier, courtier, and poet Sir W alter Ralegh (1552—1618). “Put paid to”: dealt effectu ally with; put an end to. 3. See Francis Mulhern, T he M oment o f “Scru-

tiny” (London, 1979), pp. 2 0 - 2 2 [Eagleton's note]. 4. English poet (1 8 9 3 -1 9 1 8 ), who wrote about his experiences as a soldier in World War I; he died in com bat.

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religions communitarian ethos. Science, philosophy, culture and politics, needless to say, survive the decline of religion as enterprises in their own right. Yet they are also called on to shoulder some of its offices, alongside their own proper business. Like religion, high culture plays a double role, offering a critique of mod­ ern civilisation but also a refuge from its degeneracy. * * * It is remarkable how resilient the faith that art might prove our salvation turns out to be. It is Nietzsche’s1 theme from start to finish. It is a hope which is able to survive the collapse of the high Victorian consensus and the car­ nage of the First World War. Versions of it are to be found in both Blooms­ bury and Scrutiny,2 sworn enemies in so much else. Art is a fortress against an encroaching barbarism. ‘Poetry,’ writes I. A. Richards with stunning cre­ dulity, ‘is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcom­ ing chaos/3 F. R. Leavis speaks of confronting a crassly materialistic society with the ‘religious depth of thought and feeling’ to be found in great litera­ ture.4 ‘After one has abandoned a belief in God,’ remarks Wallace Stevens, ‘poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.’5 ‘Poetry / Exceeding music must take the place / O f empty heaven and its hymns’, he writes in ‘The Man with the Blue Guitar.’ It is a note one can hear sounded as early as Mallarme,6 for whom the proper role of art is to succeed religion. Having done service for theology in its time, the aesthetic now makes a bid to supplant it. High modernism is numinous through and through, as the work of art provides one of the last outposts of enchantment in a spiritually degenerate world. Postmodernism, with its notorious absence of affect, is post-numinous. It is also in a sense post-aesthetic, since the aestheticisation of everyday life extends to the point where it undermines the very idea of a special phenomenon known as art. Stretched far enough, the category of the aesthetic cancels itself out. The imagination as a means of grace is one of modernism’s abiding motifs, from the redemptive power of memory in Proust’s great novel to the priestly vocation of the Joycean artist.7 Henry James8 finds in art a form of saintly self-immolation. Epiphanies of transcendence haunt the fiction of Woolf and the poetry of Rilke.9 An anthropology based on death, sacrifice and rebirth underlies the most renowned of English modernist poems. Its author will argue later in his Notes Towards the Definition o f Culture1 that the culture 1. f r i e d r i c h N i e t z s c h e (1 8 4 4 -1 9 0 0 ), G erm an philosopher who notoriously declared that “God is dead” and debunked metaphysical conceptions o f existence; he stressed the value of art and art­ istry. 2. The most influential English critical journal o f its tim e (active 1932—53), principally edited by F. r . l e a v i s (1 8 9 5 -1 9 7 8 ), a major British critic who found fundam ental moral value in literature; critics associated with it were somewhat mock­ ingly called “Scru tineers.” “Bloom sbury” is shorthand for the Bloomsbury group, a circle of writers, artists, and critics highly skeptical of traditional values (notably the novelist and critic V i r g i n i a w o o l f , 1 8 8 2 -1 9 4 1 ), several of whom lived near London’s Bloom sbury Square, who met from about 1910 to the early 1930s. 3. I. A. Richards, S cien ce and Poetry (London, 1926), pp. 8 2 —83 [E agleton’s note]. Richards (1 8 9 3 -1 9 7 9 ), English literary critic and theorist.

4. F. R. Leavis, Two Cultures? T he Significance o fC . P. Snow (London, 1962), p. 23 [E agleton’s note]. 5. Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous (New York, 1977), p. 158 [Eagleton’s note]. Stevens (1879— 1955), Am erican modernist poet. 6. Stephane M allarm e (1842—1898), French symbolist poet and critic. 7. In A Portrait o f the Artist as a Young Man (1916), the Irish novelist Jam es Joyce (1882—1941) sanc­ tifies the role o f the writer. T h e great novel by the French novelist M arcel Proust (1 8 7 1 -1 9 2 2 ) is In Search o f Lost Tim e (7 vols., 1913—27). 8. Major American writer (1843-1916); see above. 9. Rainer M aria Rilke (1 8 7 5 —1926), Austrian modernist poet. 1. Work of criticism (1948) by T. s. e l i o t (1 8 8 8 — 1965), American-born British poet and critic, who converted to the Church of England in 1927. His most renowned poem is T he Waste Land (1922).

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of a people must be founded on religion if it is to thrive. Not many modern­ ist artists, however, happened to be devout Anglo-Catholics, and their pre­ ferred strategy was accordingly for culture to replace religion rather than to rest upon it. The shadow of the death of God still falls over the work of one of the most resolutely secular of twentieth-century critics, Frank Kermode, for whose Sense o f an Ending2 myths, both religious and political, must give way to self-conscious fictions. God is not exactly dead, but he has turned his hinderparts to humanity, who can now sense his unbearable presence only in his ominous absence. * * * With the advent of modernism, the two main senses of culture, aesthetic and anthropological, are increasingly riven apart. They can converge only in such imaginary worlds as Lawrence’s Mexico, Yeats’s Anglo-Irish estate, the organic society of the Scrutineers, Eliot’s stratified Christian society, the aesthetic South of the American New Critics or Heidegger’s vision of a phil­ osophical inquiry conducted among the peasantry.3 (Adorno4 retorted that one would like to know the peasants’ opinion of that.) The contest between culture as art and culture as form of life is one between minority and popu­ lar culture, which from now on confront one another as mortal rivals. Mod­ ernism is among other things a defensive reaction to the culture industry, with which it was twinned at birth. The dream of the radical Enlighten­ ment— of a culture which would be both learned and popular, resourceful enough to challenge the reigning powers but sufficiently lucid to rally the common people to its standard— would now seem definitively over. So would the radical-Romantic hope of uniting art, culture and politics in a common project. It was a time for distinctions rather than syntheses. «

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* * * From the 1980s onward, culture in the sense of art became increas­ ingly populist, streetwise and vernacular, while culture as a form of life was aestheticised from end to end. For the Hellenists and Romantics,5 the latter meant the kind of common life that was creatively fulfilling; for postmod­ ernism, rather less euphorically, it meant a politics and economy dependent on the image. The long-dreamt-of marriage of art and everyday life, which for the revolutionary avant-garde was consummated in political murals or agitprop theatre, could be found instead in fashion and design, the media and public relations, advertising agencies and recording studios. Culture opened its arms to the everyday life that Kulturkritik6 had regarded as its nemesis. 2. A book (1967) by Kermode (1 9 1 9 -2 0 1 0 ), a British literary c ritic , that d escribes the mod­ ernist feeling o f exhaustion. 3. The G erm an philosopher m a r t i n h e i d e g g e r (1 8 8 9 -1 9 7 6 ) presents peasants as closer than others to the relation between earth and world in a m ajor essay, “T h e O rigin o f the Work of A rt" (1937). T he English writer D. H. Lawrence (1 8 8 5 —1930) paints an idealized picture in his travel essays in Mornings in M exico (1927). The ruined castle purchased by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1 8 6 5 —1939) was an im portant symbol in some o f his best poems. Eliot espoused hierarchi­ cal Anglican views, notably in “T h e Idea of a C hristian S o ciety” (1939). A number o f the New C ritics, such as j o h n c r o w e r a n s o m and

cleanth b r o o k s , found special value in the agrarian South of the United States. 4. T H E O D O RE a d o r n o (1 9 0 3 -1 9 6 9 ), Germ an phi­ losopher and m em ber o f the Fran kfu rt School, which stressed M arxist criticism o f mass society. 5. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Rom antic poets such as w i l l i a m w o r d s w o r t h foregrounded the value o f ordinary life and the “language o f the common m an.” H ellenists embraced classical G reece as providing ideals of beauty and democracy. 6. C ultural criticism (G erm an): specifically, a form of it produced in the early 2 0 th century and variously espoused by Adorno, Eliot, and Leavis that, influenced by m odernism , excoriated the dangers o f mass society and popular taste.

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What it gained in democratic terms, however, it abandoned in critical ones. Kulturkritik, with its high-minded contempt for everyday habits, was an elit­ ist vein of conservatism; postmodernism, with its fusion of art and commerce, is a populist one. If Kulturkritik is too caustic in its view of the commonplace, postmodernism is too complicit. Both look askance at the way of life of the majority— Kulturkritik because of what it sees as its dreary mediocrity, post­ modernism because it falsely assumes that consensuses and majorities are inherently benighted, and thus has an ideological preference for margins and minorities. Kulturkritik is disdainful of such humdrum questions as state, class, economy and political organisation; postmodernism, entranced by the liminal, aberrant and transgressive, can muster scarcely more enthusi­ asm for them. * * * Modernism involves a readiness to encounter dark, Dionysian forces,7 even the possibility of total dissolution, in its zealous pursuit of the truth. Postmodernism sees no such necessity. It is too young to recall a time when there was (so it is alleged) truth, unity, totality, objectivity, universals, abso­ lute values, stable identities and rock-solid foundations, and thus finds noth­ ing disquieting in their apparent absence. It differs in this sense from its modernist precursors, who are close enough to the original catastrophe to be still reeling from the shock waves. For postmodernism, by contrast, there is no fragmentation, since unity was an illusion all along; no false conscious­ ness, because no unequivocal truth; no shaking of the foundations, since there were none to be dislodged. It is not as though truth, identity and foun­ dations are tormentingly elusive, simply that they never were. They have not vanished for ever, leaving only a spectre behind them. There is no phan­ tom limb syndrome here. Their absence is no more palpable than the absence of a hairdryer in the hands of the Mona Lisa.8 One would no more mourn the lack of these things than one would lament the fact that a pig cannot recite Paradise Lost.9 As Richard Rorty1 might put it, there is no point in scratching where it doesn’t itch. Whereas modernism experiences the death of God as a trauma, an affront, a source of anguish as well as a cause for celebration, postmodernism does not experience it at all. There is no God-shaped hole at the centre of its uni­ verse, as there is at the centre of Kafka, Beckett or even Philip Larkin.2 Indeed, there is no gap of any kind in its universe. This is one of several reasons why postmodernism is post-tragic. Tragedy involves the possibility of irretrievable loss, whereas for postmodernism there is nothing momen­ tous missing. It is just that we have failed to register this fact in our compul­ sively idealising hunt for higher, nobler, deeper things. In any case, tragedy is thought to require a certain depth of subjectivity, which is one reason why

7. T hat is, the frenzied, ecstatic chaotic creative forces associated with Dionysus, the Greek god of w ine and vegetation, w hich N ietzsch e sets against

Apollonian order and individuation in T he Birth o f Tragedy (1872; see above). 8. Iconic painting of a woman (ca. 1510), seated with folded hands, by Leonardo da Vinci. 9. Epic poem (1667, 1674) b y jo h n M ilton, gener­ ally viewed as one of the greatest poems in the English language. 1. A m erican philosopher (1 9 3 1 -2 0 0 7 ) who argued against metaphysical or epistem ological

foundationalism, favoring instead a form of prag­ matism. 2. English poet (1 9 2 2 —1985), known for antiRom antic, colloquial, and often dark verse. Sam ­ uel Beckett (1 9 0 6 -1 9 8 9 ), Irish-born writer who published in both English and French; in his bestknown work, the play Waiting fo r Godot (1952), two characters vainly await the arrival of “Godot.” Franz K afka (1 8 8 3 -1 9 2 4 ), Austrian w riter who lived most of his life in Prague and wrote in G er­ man; his fictions are often strange and sometimes nightm arish parables o f anxiety and alienation.

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it might appear to be lacking in Beckett. The postmodern subject is hardpressed to find enough depth and continuity in itself to be a suitable candi­ date for tragic self-dispossession. You cannot give away a self you never had. If there is no longer a God, it is partly because there is no longer any secret interior place where he might install himself. Depth and interiority belong to a clapped-out metaphysics, and to eradicate them is to abolish God by rooting out the underground places where he has been concealing himself. For psychoanalysis, by contrast, the human subject is diffused and unstable yet furnished with inner depths. Indeed, the two facts are closely allied. It thus ranks among the latter-day inheritors of the tragic sense, as postmod­ ernism does not. #

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If postmodern culture is depthless, anti-tragic, non-linear, anti-numinous, non-foundational and anti-universalist, suspicious of absolutes and averse to interiority, one might claim that it is genuinely post-religious, as modern­ ism most certainly is not. Most religious thought, for example, posits a uni­ versal humanity, since a God who concerned himself with only a particular section of the species, say Bosnians or people over five foot eight inches tall, would appear lacking in the impartial benevolence appropriate to a Supreme Being. There must also be some common ground between ourselves and Abraham3 for the Hebrew Scriptures to make sense. Postmodernism, how­ ever, is notoriously nervous of universals, despite its claim that grand nar­ ratives have everywhere disappeared from the earth, or that there are no stable identities to be found, wherever one looks. As a current of thought, it inherits most of those aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy that make for athe­ ism; but since in its streetwise style it rejects the notion of the U berm ensch,4 it refuses to smuggle in a new form of divinity to replace the old. Sceptical of the whole concept of a universal humanity, it repudiates Man as well as God, and in doing so refuses the quasi-religious consolations of humanism. In this sense, Nietzsche s warning that the Almighty will only rest quiet in his grave when Man lies alongside him is finally taken seriously. *

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Since Man is no longer to be seen primarily as agent or creator, he is no longer in danger of being mistaken for the Supreme Being. He has finally attained maturity, but only at the cost of relinquishing his identity. He is not to be seen as self-determining, which is what freedom means for the likes of Kant and Hegel.5 The self is no longer coherent enough to be so. This is certainly one way in which postmodernism is post-theological, since it is God above all who is One, and who is the ground of his own being. It follows that if you want to be shot of6 him, you need to refashion the concept of subjectivity itself, which is just what postmodernism seeks to do. It is easier to accomplish this if the capitalist system happens to be in transit from the subject as producer to the subject as consumer. Consumers are passive, dif­ 3. T he first of the three biblical patriarchs. 4. Overm an (G erm an), a concept from N ietzsch e’s Thus S poke Zarathustra (1 8 8 3 -8 5 ) that signifies a goal toward which superior hum ans should strive.

5. Two m ajor G erm an idealist philosophers, k a n t (1 7 2 4 -1 8 0 4 ) and g e o r g w i l h e l m f r i e d r i c h h e g e l (17 7 0 -1 8 3 1 ). 6. Rid of. im m a n u e l

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fuse, provisional subjects, which is not quite how the Almighty is tradition­ ally portrayed. As long as men and women are seen as producers, labourers, manufacturers or self-fashioners, God can never quite expire. Behind every act of production lurks an image of Creation, and one act of production in particular— art— rivals that of the Almighty himself. Not even he, however, can survive the advent of Man the Eternal Consumer. Perhaps, then, the latter decades of the twentieth century will be seen as the time when the deity was finally put to death. With the advent of post­ modern culture, a nostalgia for the numinous is finally banished. It is not so much that there is no redemption as that there is nothing to be redeemed. Religion, to be sure, lives on, since there is more to late modern civilisation than postmodernism. Even so, after a long succession of botched projects, flawed strategies and theoretical cul-de-sacs, it would not be too much to claim that with the emergence of postmodernism, human history arrives for the first time at an authentic atheism. It is true that postmodern thought pays an enormous price for this coming of age, if coming of age it is. In writ­ ing off religion, it also dismisses a good many other momentous questions as so much metaphysical illusion. If it abjures religion, it does so, as we have seen, at the cost of renouncing depth, of which it is notably nervous. It thereby abandons a good deal else of value. It is true that postmodernism retains the odd trace of transcendence, not least in its somewhat fetishistic cult of otherness. Yet though there is other­ ness in plenty, there is no Big Other, no grand totality or transcendental sig­ nifier. Besides, though other cultures may be incommensurate with one’s own, there is no other to culture itself. Culture goes all the way down, as God himself was once thought to do. It is a shamefaced form of foundationalism. Culture is what you cannot peer behind or dig beneath, since the peer­ ing and digging would themselves be cultural procedures. It thus operates as a kind of absolute, as culture in a loftier sense of the term did for Arnold.7 Yet this is culture as transcendental rather than transcendent— as the con­ dition of possibility of all phenomena, rather than as some sacred domain beyond their orbit. There are also traces of the transcendent in the bogus spirituality of some postmodern cultures. It is the kind of soft-centred, cut-price religiosity one would expect from a thoroughly materialist society. A muddled sense of mys­ tery is the only form of faith to which such hard-headed societies can aspire, rather as broad humour is the only comedy with which the humour­ less feel at ease. So it is that those who cannot conceive of an end to Wall Street are perfectly capable of believing in Kabbalah.8 It comes as no sur­ prise that Scientology, packaged Sufism,9 off-the-peg occultism and readyto-serve transcendental meditation should figure as fashionable pastimes among the super-rich, or that Hollywood should turn its eyes to Hinduism. The hard-boiled who believe in nothing turn out to be the kind of fantasists who will believe in anything. It is the worldly and well-heeled who think of

7. m a t t h e w A r n o l d (1 8 2 2 -1 8 8 8 ), English poet and critic who stressed— esp ecially in Culture and Anarchy (1867; see above)— that culture, composed of “the best that has been known and thought,” serves an important social purpose of preventing anarchy.

8. An esoteric school of Jew ish mysticism (liter­ ally, “Tradition”; Hebrew). 9. Mystical Islamic beliefs and practice. Scientol­ ogy: a body of religious beliefs promulgated by a church founded in 1954 by the A m erican science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard.

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religion as cosmic harmony and esoteric cult, rather as the idea of the artist as a shock-haired bohemian, so James Joyce once pointed out, is the respect­ able burgher s view of him. Feeding the hungry is too close to filling in one’s tax return for those in search of an escape from the mundane. The point of spirituality is to cater for needs that ones stylist or stockbroker cannot ful­ fil. Yet all this reach-me-down otherworldliness is really a form of atheism. It is a way of feeling uplifted without the gross inconvenience of God. *

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STEPHEN J. GREENBLATT b. 1 9 4 3 In 1980 literary discussion in the United States was dominated by debates over theory, especially over the status of language, as scholars questioned its referential value and its power to construct or undo meaning. A group of younger critics, several of them at the University of California at Berkeley, were instead turning their attention to the concrete particularities of history. But rather than simply amassing facts, as did tradi­ tional literary historians, they used more creative methods, most notably drawing on anecdotes, to illuminate the context of literature. A leading member of that group was Stephen J. Greenblatt, who coined the term “the new historicism” to describe the kind of literary history that he and his colleagues were writing, and who has become the leading critic of Shakespeare of his generation. In our selection, from his essay “Reso­ nance and Wonder” (1990), he explains his sense of literary history, which accounts for the aesthetic wonder that texts arouse as well as their historical resonance. Born in the Boston area, Greenblatt is the son of a lawyer and grandson of Lithu­ anian immigrants, as he recounts in some of his essays. He received his B.A. in 1964 from Yale University, where his undergraduate thesis on modern British novelists won a Yale College award and was published in 1965, and where he earned his Ph.D. in 1969. In between undergraduate and graduate work, he spent two years at Cam­ bridge University in England, attending lectures with Raymond w i l l i a m s and devel­ oping his interest in Renaissance literature. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1969 to 1997; he then moved to Harvard University, where he holds a University Professorship of the Humanities. Among his many honors, he served as president of the Modern Language Association in 2002. Building from his studies of Renaissance literature, he has become a prominent public figure in the humanities, serving as general editor of The Norton Shakespeare (1997; 3d ed., 2015) and writing the popular biographical study Will in the World (2004), which was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize; taking over the editorship of the major college textbook in English, The Norton Anthology o f English Literature, in 1999; and lecturing around the globe. The dominant mode of criticism in the United States when Greenblatt was in col­ lege was the New Criticism, and in fact several influential New Critics were at Yale, notably clea n th brooks and w ill ia m k . w im sa t t j r . They were formalists, holding that literary criticism should attend only to the “verbal icon” and its internal features, and ruling out attention to the works author, audience, or context. Three Yale Ph.D. students eventually gained fame by turning those formalist prohibitions on their

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head. In the face of the “intentional fallacy,” harold bloom focused on the author and his psychic struggle with his predecessors to establish himself in the great tradi­ tion. In the face of the “affective fallacy,” Stanley fish posited that meaning was not in the poem but in the reader. And in the face of bans against considering external matter, Greenblatt focused on both the biographical and historical circumstances surrounding literary works. While not avoiding aesthetic analysis, he showed how history enhanced the interpretation of, for instance, a Shakespeare play. In a famous chapter in Shakespearean Negotiations (1988), he tells the story of a trial of a transves­ tite in France during the Renaissance as a way to explain some of the dilemmas of marriage and gender in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1601). Though he named the New Historicism, Greenblatt has been less invested in elaborating a theoretical program than in practical criticism. Still, he has assimilated a variety of theoretical positions along the way. He remarks that studying at Cam­ bridge, especially with Raymond Williams, opened his eyes to the social aspects of literature. But he did not become a Marxist, as Williams was, and he also drew from m ic h e l F oucault and from cultural anthropology. Like Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975; see above), which starts its examination of the way that modern soci­ ety exerts control through subtle discipline rather than overt force with a striking story of an execution, Greenblatt’s analyses often begin with an anecdote, unusual detail, or incidental object, like Cardinal Wolsey’s cap in “Resonance and Wonder.” From Foucault he and many of the New Historicists developed the idea that mod­ ern society operates through “subversion and containment”— that is, while it seems that some practices subvert discipline, such resistance is regularly incorporated back into the system. For instance, we might protest an unjust action of our govern­ ment, but our act of protesting affirms that we have a free society, and therefore reinforces society’s overall control rather than disturbing it. From anthropologists, Greenblatt takes ideas of the circulation and exchange of cultural practices, which he uses in showing how a play might represent the dynamics of gender. Greenblatt also is a fellow traveler of poststructuralists, holding that history is textual, con­ structed, and self-contradictory rather than offering a record of events as they actu­ ally happened, as he notes in our selection. We “know” the reign of Henry VIII only through Shakespeare’s plays and other texts, and through artifacts like Wolsey’s hat. In “Resonance and Wonder,” Greenblatt defines the New Historicism as “an interest. . . in the embeddedness of cultural objects in the contingencies of history.” While usually less interested in elaborating a theory than in bringing past texts to life, in this essay Greenblatt programmatically reflects on his position. His stress on history departs from the New Criticism as well as from more recent modes of criti­ cism, like deconstruction, that concentrate on the linguistic attributes of literature. The main target of “Resonance and Wonder,” though, is traditional historicism, and he rebuts three standard views. By stressing contingency, Greenblatt distances him­ self from more deterministic views, such as Marxism, which hold that history follows a teleological path rooted in class struggle. He also counters the idea of scholarly objectivity, the notion that one merely reports facts; rather, New Historicists see their work as interested and aim to intervene in cultural debates— for instance, to dispel rigid, normative ideas of gender. His third attack is on the veneration of history as stable and coherent fact. As he remarks, New Historicists are “as concerned with the margins as with the center,” examining the contradictions and conflicts as well as the resolutions. Though Greenblatt is known for revivifying the study of history, one key that undergirds “Resonance and Wonder” and his work overall is his interest in the liter­ ary. While his stress on “resonance” reminds us that literary works are not icons but historical objects spun from a web of cultural practices, his stress on “wonder” fore­ stalls the reduction of a work to its historical context. Rather, it reaffirms the unique­ ness of the literary object, through its aesthetic power “to stop the viewer in his

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tracks.” In this regard, Greenblatt represents a revival of literary criticism and aes­ thetic appreciation over theory; often overlooked is the influence on his work of e rich a uerbach , who studied literary masterpieces across Western culture in his classic Mimesis (1953; see above). Auerbach opens each chapter with a brief quotation from a literary work, from which he builds his arguments about the shift in cultural repre­ sentation over two thousand years. As Greenblatt discusses in Practicing New His­ toricism (2000), anecdotes play a similar role for him. They sometimes seem random, but from them Greenblatt builds a sense of an era. Greenblatt’s anecdotes try to effect what he has called “the touch of the real,” re-creating the social and cultural negotiations of a historical moment. Although Greenblatt has largely avoided theoretical battles, his work has been criticized on various grounds. Traditionalists appreciate his high valuation of litera­ ture, but feel he brings extraneous material into the field. More radical critics, often from the Marxist side, have attacked him for not taking a strong political stand and for having a vague sense of historical causality; he often juxtaposes objects or events that lack a verifiable historical connection— for example, a trial in France and an English play. Ironically, it is probably because he takes a nonpolemical stance, and maintains the importance of literature, that Greenblatt has become a leading representative of literary studies and the world s leading commentator on Shakespeare. “Resonance and W onder” Keywords: Aesthetics, The Canon/Tradition, Drama, Formalism, Literary History, Marxism, New Historicism, Poststructuralism

From Resonance and Wonder In a small glass case in the library of Christ Church, Oxford, there is a round, red priests hat; a note card identifies it as having belonged to Cardi­ nal Wolsey.1 It is altogether appropriate that this hat should have wound up at Christ Church, for the college owed its existence to Wolsey, who had decided at the height of his power to found in his own honor a magnificent new Oxford college. But the hat was not a direct bequest; historical forces, as we sometimes say— in this case taking the ominous form of Henry VIII— intervened, and Christ Church, like Hampton Court Palace,2 was cut off from its original benefactor. Instead, the note informs us, the hat was acquired for Christ Church in the eighteenth century, purchased, we are told, from a company of players. If this miniature history of an artifact is too vague to be of much consequence— I do not know the name of the company of players, or the circumstances in which they acquired their curious stage property, or whether it was ever used, for example, by an actor playing Wolsey in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII,3 or when it was placed under glass, or even whether it was anything but a clever fraud— it nonetheless evokes a vision of cultural production that I find compelling. The peregrinations of Wolsey’s 1. Thomas Wolsey (ca. 1475-1530), English prel­ ate and statesman who was both a Roman Catho­ lic cardinal (1515-30) and Lord Chancellor (1515-29) under Henry V III, king of England (1491-1547; reigned 1509—47). Wolsey was charged with treason after failing to obtain the divorce from Catherine of Aragon sought by Henry V III, but he died before his trial. Wolsey

founded Cardinal College in 1525; it was refounded as Christ Church in 1546. 2. A huge palace complex, in outer London, built by Wolsey, then taken over and expanded by Henry V III. 3. A history play (1613), w ritten in collaboration with John Fletcher.

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hat suggest that cultural artifacts do not stay still, that they exist in time, and that they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotia­ tions, and appropriations. The term culture has, in the case of the hat, a convenient material referent— a bit of red cloth stitched together— but that referent is only a tiny element in a complex symbolic construction that originally marked the trans­ formation of Wolsey from a butcher’s son to a prince of the church. Wolsey’s gentleman usher, George Cavendish,4 has left a remarkably circumstantial contemporary account of that construction, an account that enables us even to glimpse the hat or as Cavendish terms it, the “pillion,” in its place, on the Cardinals head. And after Mass he would return in his privy chamber again and, being advertised of the furniture of his chamber without5 with noblemen and gentlemen . . . , would issue out into them apparelled all in red in the habit of a Cardinal; which was either of fine scarlet or else of crimson satin, taffeta, damask, or caffa [a rich silk cloth], the best that he could get for money; and upon his head a round pillion with a neck of black velvet, set to the same in the inner side. . . . There was also borne before him first the Great Seal of England, and then his Cardinal’s hat by a nobleman or some worthy gentleman right solemnly, bareheaded. And as soon as he was entered into his chamber of presence6 where was attend­ ing his coming to await upon him to Westminster Hall, as well noblemen and other worthy gentlemen as noblemen and gentlemen of his own fam­ ily; thus passing forth with two great crosses of silver borne before him, with also two great pillars of silver, and his sergeant at arms with a great mace of silver gilt. Then his gentlemen ushers cried and said, ‘On my lords and masters, make way for my lord’s grace!”’7 The extraordinary theatricality of this manifestation of clerical power did not escape the notice of the Protestant reformers who called the Catholic church “the Pope’s playhouse.” When the Reformation in England8 disman­ tled the histrionic apparatus of Catholicism, they sold some of its gorgeous properties to the professional players— not only a mark of thrift but a polem­ ical gesture, signifying that the sanctified vestments were in reality mere trumpery whose proper place was a disreputable world of illusion-mongering. In exchange for this polemical service, the theatrical joint-stock companies received more than an attractive, cut-rate wardrobe; they acquired the tar­ nished but still potent charisma that clung to the old vestments, charisma 4. English poet (1 4 9 4 -c a . 1561); a member of W olsey’s household until the cardinal’s death and author of T he Life and Death o f Cardinal Wolsey (written ca. 1554—58, and widely circu ­ lated in manuscript; printed 1641). 5. That is, being told that the cham ber outside his private room was occupied. 6. T hat is, the cerem onial room where others waited for (attended) him. 7. George Cavendish, The Life and Death o f Car­ dinal Wolsey, in Two Early Tudor Lives, ed. R ich­ ard S. Sylvester and Davis P. Harding (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), pp. 2 4 -2 5 . We get another glimpse o f the symbol­ ism o f hats later in the text, when Wolsey is begin­ ning his precipitous fall from power: “And talking

with M aster Norris upon his knees in the mire, he would have pulled o ff his under cap of velvet, but he could not undo the knot under his chin. W herefore with violence he rent the laces and pulled it from his head and so kneeled bare­ headed” (p. 106) [Greenblatt’s note]. T he Great Seal of England, now the Great Seal of the Realm, is used by the presiding monarch to authorize official documents. W estm inster Hall served many governmental purposes and now is where the houses of Parliament meet. 8. T he break with the C atholic Church by Henry V III, who issued the Act of Supremacy (1534) that rejected papal control and created the national Church of England.

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that in paradoxical fashion the players at once emptied out and heightened. By the time Wolsey s hat reached the library at Christ Church, its charisma must have been largely exhausted, but the college could confer upon it the prestige of an historical curiosity, as a trophy of the distant founder. And in its glass case it still radiates a tiny quantum of cultural energy. Tiny indeed— I may already have seemed to make much more of this trivial relic than it deserves. But I am fascinated by transmigrations of the kind I have just sketched here— from theatricalized rituals to the stage to the uni­ versity library or museum— because they seem to reveal something critically important about the textual relics with which my profession is obsessed. They enable us to glimpse the social process through which objects, gestures, ritu­ als, and phrases are fashioned and moved from one zone of display to another. The display cases with which I am most involved— books— characteristically conceal this process, so that we have a misleading impression of fixity and little sense of the historical transactions through which the great texts we study have been fashioned. Let me give a literary example, an appropriately tiny textual equivalent of Wolsey s hat. At the close of Shakespeare’s Midsum­ m er Night’s D ream ,9 the Fairy King Oberon declares that he and his atten­ dants are going to bless the beds of the three couples who have just been married. This ritual of blessing will ensure the happiness of the newlyweds and ward off moles, harelips, and other prodigious marks that would dis­ figure their offspring. “With this field-dew consecrate,” the Fairy King concludes, Every fairy take his gait, And each several chamber bless, Through this palace, with sweet peace, And the owner of it blest Ever shall in safety rest. (5.1.415-20) Oberon himself, we are told, will conduct the blessing upon the “best bridebed,” that of the ruler Theseus and his Amazon queen Flippolyta. The ceremony— manifestly the sanctification of ownership and caste, as well as marriage— is a witty allusion to the traditional Catholic blessing of the bride-bed with holy water, a ceremony vehemently attacked as pagan superstition and banned by English Protestants. But the conventional critical term “allusion” seems inadequate, for the term usually implies a bloodless, bodiless thing, while even the tiny, incidental detail of the field dew bears a more active charge. Here, as with Wolsey’s hat, I want to ask what is at stake in the shift from one zone of social practice to another, from the old religion to public theater, from priests to fairies, from holy water to field dew, or rather to theatrical fairies and theatrical field dew on the London stage. When the Catholic ritual is made into theatrical representation, the transpo­ sition at once naturalizes, denaturalizes, mocks, and celebrates. It natural­ izes the ritual by transforming the specially sanctified water into ordinary

9. A comedy (ca. 1595) that focuses on the love intrigues of two young couples, framed by the mature relationships of two other couples— the king and queen o f the Fairies, Oberon and Titania, as well as Theseus, duke of Athens, and his

wife Hippolyta. In Greek mythology, Theseus was king of Athens and had a son with an Amazon whose name is given variously as Antiope, Melanippe, or Hippolyte (who was not the queen).

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dew; it denaturalizes the ritual by removing it from human agents and attrib­ uting it to the fairies; it mocks Catholic practice by associating it with notori­ ous superstition and then by enacting it on the stage where it is revealed as a histrionic illusion; and it celebrates such practice by reinvesting it with the charismatic magic of the theater. Several years ago, intending to signal a turn away from the formal, decontextualized analysis that dominates new criticism, I used the term “new historicism”1 to describe an interest in the kinds of issues I have been raising— in the embeddedness of cultural objects in the contingencies of history— and the term has achieved a certain currency. But like most labels, this one is misleading. The new historicism, like the Holy Roman Empire,2 constantly belies its own name. T he Am erican Heritage Dictionary gives three meanings for the term “historicism”: 1. The belief that processes are at work in history that man can do little to alter. 2. The theory that the historian must avoid all value judgments in his study of past periods or former cultures. 3. Veneration of the past or of tradition. Most of the writing labeled new historicist, and certainly my own work, has set itself resolutely against each of these positions. 1. T he b elief that processes are at w ork in history that man can do little to alter. This formulation rests upon a simultaneous abstraction and evacua­ tion of human agency. The men and women who find themselves making concrete choices in given circumstances at particular times are transformed into something called “man.” And this colorless, nameless collective being cannot significantly intervene in the “processes . . . at work in history,” pro­ cesses that are thus mysteriously alienated from all of those who enact them. New historicism, by contrast, eschews the use of the term “man”; interest lies not in the abstract universal but in particular, contingent cases, the selves fashioned and acting according to the generative rules and conflicts of a given culture. And these selves, conditioned by the expectations of their class, gender, religion, race and national identity, are constantly effecting changes in the course of history. Indeed if there is any inevitability in the new historicism’s vision of history it is this insistence on agency, for even inaction or extreme marginality is understood to possess meaning and there­ fore to imply intention. Every form of behavior, in this view, is a strategy: taking up arms or taking flight is a significant social action, but so is staying put, minding one’s business, turning one’s face to the wall. Agency is virtu­ ally inescapable. 1. A term coined in G reen blatt’s introduction to

T he Power o f Forms in the English Renaissance (1982). New C riticism : an approach (champi­ oned by C L E A N T H B R O O K S , W I L L I A M K. W I M S A T T j r ., and others) that emphasizes close reading of the text considered as an autonomous whole; it has greatly influenced teaching from the mid2 0th century onward.

2. A G erm anic union of G erm an territories in western and central Europe, founded by Char­ lemagne in 8 0 0 C . e . and dissolved in 1806 by the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II; in 1756 it was famously described by the French writer and philosopher Voltaire as neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.

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Inescapable but not simple: new historicism, as I understand it, does not posit historical processes as unalterable and inexorable, but it does tend to discover limits or constraints upon individual intervention. Actions that appear to be single are disclosed as multiple; the apparently isolated power of the individual genius turns out to be bound up with collective, social energy; a gesture of dissent may be an element in a larger legitimation process, while an attempt to stabilize the order of things may turn out to subvert it. And political valences may change, sometimes abruptly: there are no guarantees, no absolute, formal assurances that what seems progressive in one set of con­ tingent circumstances will not come to seem reactionary in another. The new historicism’s insistence on the pervasiveness of agency has appar­ ently led some of its critics to find in it a Nietzschean celebration of the ruth­ less will to power,3 while its ironic and skeptical reappraisal of the cult of heroic individualism has led others to find in it a pessimistic doctrine of human helplessness. Hence, for example, from a Marxist perspective one critic charac­ terizes the new historicism as a “liberal disillusionment” that finds that “any apparent site of resistance ultimately serves the interests of power” (33), while from a liberal humanist perspective, another critic proclaims that “anyone who, like me, is reluctant to accept the will to power as the defining human essence will probably have trouble with the critical procedures of the new historicists and with their interpretive conclusions.”4 But the very idea of a “defining human essence” is precisely what new historicists find vacuous and untenable, as I do the counter-claim that love rather than power makes the world go round. The Marxist critique is more plausible, but it rests upon an assertion that new historicism argues that “any apparent site of resistance” is ultimately coopted. Some are, some aren’t. I argued in an essay published some years ago that the sites of resistance in Shakespeare’s second tetralogy5 are coopted in the plays’ ironic, complex, but finally celebratory affirmation of charismatic kingship. That is, the formal structure and rhetorical strategy of the plays make it difficult for audiences to withhold their consent from the triumph of Prince Hal. Shakespeare shows that the triumph rests upon a claustrophobic narrowing of pleasure, a hypo­ critical manipulation of appearances, and a systematic betrayal of friendship, and yet these manifestations of bad faith only contrive to heighten the spec­ tators’ knowing pleasure and the ratification of applause. The subversive per­ ceptions do not disappear, but insofar as they remain within the structure of the play, they are contained and indeed serve to heighten a power they would appear to question.

3. A central concept in the work of the Germ an philosopher f r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e (1 8 4 4 -1 9 0 0 ); the phrase, which supplies the title of his posthu­ mously collected notes, The Will to Power (1900), appears in his earlier writings as well. 4. Walter Cohen, “Political Criticism of Shake­ speare,” in Shakespeare Reproduced: T he Text in History and Ideology, ed. Jean E. Howard and Mar­ ion F. O ’Connor (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), p. 33; Edward Pechter, “The New Histori­ cism and Its Discontents,” in PMLA 102 (1987), p. 301 [Greenblatt’s note]. A perspective inspired by the writings of k a r l m a r x (1818-1883) would not only analyze the dynamic of pow'er but would also

emphasize the importance of class struggle and revolution. 5. Shakespeare’s tetralogies are 8 plays covering the reigns of English kings from Richard II to Richard III (1377—1485). The second in time of com pletion (though portraying earlier events) consists o f Richard II (1595), the 2 parts of Henry IV (1597, 1598), and Henry V (1599). Prince Hal, the young hero o f the Henry IV plays, triumphs as he ascends to the throne as Henry V, and then brutally rejects the friendship o f his form er com panion, Falstaff. G reenblatt’s essay is “Invisible Rullets: Renaissance Author­ ity and Its Subversion” (1981).

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I did not propose that all manifestation of resistance in all literature (or even in all plays by Shakespeare) were coopted— one can readily think of plays where the forces of ideological containment break down. And yet characterizations of this essay in particular, and new historicism in general, repeatedly refer to a supposed argument that any resistance is impossible.6 A particularizing argument about the subject position projected by a set of plays is at once simplified and turned into a universal principle from which contingency and hence history itself is erased. Moreover, even my argument about Shakespeare’s second tetralogy is misunderstood if it is thought to foreclose the possibility of dissent or change or the radical alteration of the processes of history. The point is that certain aesthetic and political structures work to contain the subversive perceptions they generate, not that those perceptions simply wither away. On the contrary, they may be pried loose from the order with which they were bound up and may serve to fashion a new and radically different set of structures. How else could change ever come about? No one is forced— except perhaps in school— to take aesthetic or political wholes as sacro­ sanct. The order of things is never simply a given: it takes labor to produce, sustain, reproduce, and transmit the way things are, and this labor may be withheld or transformed. Structures may be broken in pieces, the pieces altered, inverted, rearranged. Everything can be different than it is; every­ thing could have been different than it was. But it will not do to imagine that this alteration is easy, automatic, without cost or obligation. My objec­ tion was to the notion that the rich ironies in the history plays were them­ selves inherently liberating, that to savor the tetralogy’s skeptical cunning was to participate in an act of political resistance. In general I find dubious the assertion that certain rhetorical features in much-loved literary works constitute authentic acts of political liberation; the fact that this assertion is now heard from the left, where in my college days it was more often heard from the right, does not make it in most instances any less fatuous and presumptuous. I wished to show, at least in the case of Shakespeare’s histories and in several analogous discourses, how a set of representational and political practices in the late sixteenth century could produce and even batten upon what appeared to be their own subversion. To show this is not to give up on the possibility of altering historical processes— if this is historicism I want no part of it— but rather to eschew an aestheticized and idealized politics of the imagination. 2. T he theory>that the historian must avoid all value judgments in his study o f past periods or form er cultures. Once again, if this is an essential tenet of historicism, then the new historicism belies its name. My own critical prac­ tice and that of many others associated with new historicism was decisively shaped by the American 1960s and early 70s, and especially by the opposi6. “The new historicists and cultural materialists,” one typical summary puts it, “represent, and by representing, reproduce in their new history of ideas, a world which is hierarchical, authoritarian, hegemonic, unsubvertable. . . . In this world pic­ ture, Stephen Greenblatt has poignantly asserted, there can be no subversion— and certainly not for us!” [C. T. Neely, “Constructing the Subject: Femi­

nist Practice and the New Renaissance Dis­ courses,” English Literary Renaissance 18 (1988), p. 10.] Poignantly or otherwise, I asserted no such thing; I argued that the spectator of the history plays was continually tantalized by a resistance simultaneously powerful and deferred [Greenblatt’s note].

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tion to the Viet Nam War.7 Writing that was not engaged, that withheld judg­ ments, that failed to connect the present with the past seemed worthless. Such connection could be made either by analogy or causality; that is, a par­ ticular set of historical circumstances could be represented in such a way as to bring out homologies with aspects of the present or, alternatively, those circumstances could be analyzed as the generative forces that led to the mod­ ern condition. In either mode, value judgments were implicated, because a neutral or indifferent relation to the present seemed impossible. Or rather it seemed overwhelmingly clear that neutrality was itself a political position, a decision to support the official policies in both the state and the academy. To study the culture of sixteenth-century England did not present itself as an escape from the turmoil of the present; it seemed rather an intervention, a mode of relation. The fascination for me of the Renaissance was that it seemed to be powerfully linked to the present both analogically and causally. This doubled link at once called forth and qualified my value judgments: called them forth because my response to the past was inextricably bound up with my response to the present; qualified them because the analysis of the past revealed the complex, unsettling historical genealogy of the very judg­ ments I was making. To study Renaissance culture then was simultaneously to feel more rooted and more estranged in my own values.8 Other critics associated with the new historicism have written directly and forcefully about their own subject position and have made more explicit than I the nature of this engagement.9 If I have not done so to the same extent, it is not because I believe that my values are somehow suspended in my study of the past but because I believe they are pervasive: in the textual and visual traces I choose to analyze, in the stories I choose to tell, in the cultural con­ junctions I attempt to make, in my syntax, adjectives, pronouns. “The new historicism/’ someone has written in a lively critique, “needs at every point to be more overtly self-conscious of its methods and its theoretical assumptions, since what one discovers about the historical place and function of literary texts is in large measure a function of the angle from which one looks and the assumptions that enable the investigation.”1 I am certainly not opposed to methodological self-consciousness, but I am less inclined to see overt­ ness— an explicit articulation of one’s values and methods— as inherently necessary or virtuous. Nor, though I believe that my values are everywhere engaged in my work, do I think that there need be a perfect integration of those values and the objects I am studying. On the contrary, some of the most interesting and powerful ideas in cultural criticism occur precisely at 7. As U .S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam escalated throughout the 1960s, opposition to the war also grew, especially among draft-age university students. The last American forces left in 1973, and South Vietnam fell to the com munist North in 1975. 8. See my Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chi­ cago Press, 1980), pp. 174-75: “We are situated at the close of the cultural movement initiated in the Renaissance; the place in which our social and psychological world seems to be cracking apart are those structural joints visible when it was first constructed” [Greenblatt’s note]. 9. Louis Adrian Montrose, “Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of History,” in English

Literary Renaissance 16 (1986), pp. 5—12; Don Wayne, “Power, Politics, and the Shakespearean Text: Recent Criticism in England and the United States,” in Shakespeare Reproduced: T he Text in History and Ideology, ed. Howard and O ’Connor, pp. 4 7 -6 7 ; Catherine Gallagher, “Marxism and the New Historicism ,” in T he New Historicism, ed. Harold Veeser (New York and London: Routledge, 1989) [Greenblatt’s note]. l.Je a n E. Howard, "The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies,” in Renaissance Historicism: Selections from "English Literary Renaissance,” ed. Arthur F. Kinney and Dan S. Collins (Amherst: University o f M assachusetts Press, 1987), pp. 3 2 -3 3 [Greenblatt’s note].

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moments of disjunction, disintegration, unevenness. A criticism that never encounters obstacles, that celebrates predictable heroines and rounds up the usual suspects, that finds confirmation of its values everywhere it turns, is quite simply boring.2 3. Veneration o f the past or o f tradition. The third definition of historicism obviously sits in a strange relation to the second, but they are not simply alternatives. The apparent eschewing of value judgments was often accompa­ nied by a still more apparent admiration, however cloaked as objective description, of the past. One of the more irritating qualities of my own liter­ ary training had been its relentlessly celebratory character: literary criticism was and largely remains a kind of secular theodicy. Every decision made by a great artist could be shown to be a brilliant one; works that had seemed flawed and uneven to an earlier generation of critics bent on displaying dis­ criminations in taste were now revealed to be organic masterpieces. A stan­ dard critical assignment in my student years was to show how a text that seemed to break in parts was really a complex whole: thousands of pages were dutifully churned out to prove that the bizarre subplot of The Changeling was cunningly integrated into the tragic mainplot or that every tedious bit of clowning in Doctor Faustus3 was richly significant. Behind these exercises was the assumption that great works of art were triumphs of resolution, that they were, in Bakhtin’s term, monological4— the mature expression of a sin­ gle artistic intention. When this formalism was combined, as it often was, with both ego psychology and historicism, it posited aesthetic integration as the reflection of the artist’s psychic integration and posited that psychic inte­ gration as the triumphant expression of a healthy, integrated community. Accounts of Shakespeare’s relation to Elizabethan culture were particularly prone to this air of veneration, since the Romantic cult of poetic genius could be conjoined with the still older political cult that had been created around the figure of the Virgin Queen.5 Here again new historicist critics have swerved in a different direction. They have been more interested in unresolved conflict and contradiction than in integration; they are as concerned with the margins as with the cen­ ter; and they have turned from a celebration of achieved aesthetic order to an exploration of the ideological and material bases for the production of this order. Traditional formalism and historicism, twin legacies of early nineteenth-century Germany, shared a vision of high culture as a harmoniz2. If there is then no suspension of value judg­ ments in the new historicism, there is at the same time a complication of those judgments, what I have called a sense of estrangement. This estrangem ent is bound up with the abandonment of a belief in historical inevitability, for, with this abandonment, the values of the present could no longer seem the necessary outcome of an irrevers­ ible teleological progression, whether of enlight­ enm ent or decline. An older historicism that proclaimed self-consciously that it had avoided all value judgments in its account of the past— that it had given us historical reality w ie es eigentlich gewesen [“as it really was”; Germ an]— did not thereby avoid all value judgments; it simply pro­ vided a misleading account of what it had actually done. In this sense the new historicism , for all its

acknowledgment of engagement and partiality, may be slightly less likely than the older histori­ cism to impose its values belligerently on the past, for those values seem historically contingent [Greenblatt’s note]. 3. T he Tragical History o f Doctor Faustus (1604), an English drama by Christopher Marlowe. T he Changeling (1622), an English tragedy by Thom as Middleton and W illiam Rowley with a comic rom antic subplot. 4. See especially “Discourse in the Novel” (1934— 35; above), by the Russian theorist m i k h a i l b a k h t i n (1895-1975). 5. T hat is, Elizabeth I (1 5 3 3 -1 6 0 3 ; reigned 1558— 1603), who never married and who gave her name to England’s Elizabethan era.

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ing domain of reconciliation based upon an aesthetic labor that transcends specific economic or political determinants. What is missing is psychic, social, and material resistance, a stubborn, unassimilable otherness, a sense of distance and difference. New historicism has attempted to restore this distance; hence its characteristic concerns have seemed to some critics offcenter or strange. “New historicists,” writes a Marxist observer, “are likely to seize upon something out of the way, obscure, even bizarre: dreams, popular or aristocratic festivals, denunciations of witchcraft, sexual treatises, diaries and autobiographies, descriptions of clothing, reports on disease, birth and death records, accounts of insanity.”6 What is fascinating to me is that con­ cerns like these should have come to seem bizarre, especially to a critic who is committed to the historical understanding of culture. That they have done so indicates how narrow the boundaries of historical understanding had become, how much these boundaries needed to be broken. For none of the cultural practices on this list (and one could extend it con­ siderably) is or should be “out of the way” in a study of Renaissance literature or art; on the contrary, each is directly in the way of coming to terms with the period s methods of regulating the body, its conscious and unconscious psy­ chic strategies, its ways of defining and dealing with marginals and deviants, its mechanisms for the display of power and the expression of discontent, its treatment of women. If such concerns have been rendered “obscure,” it is because of a disabling idea of causality that confines the legitimate field of historical agency within absurdly restrictive boundaries. The world is par­ celled out between a predictable group of stereotypical causes and a large, dimly lit mass of raw materials that the artist chooses to fashion. The new historicist critics are interested in such cultural expressions as witchcraft accusations, medical manuals, or clothing not as raw materials but as “cooked”7— complex symbolic and material articulations of the imagi­ native and ideological structures of the society that produced them. Conse­ quently, there is a tendency in at least some new historicist writings (certainly in my own) for the focus to be partially displaced from the work of art that is their formal occasion onto the related practices that had been adduced osten­ sibly in order to illuminate that work. It is difficult to keep those practices in the background if the very concept of historical background has been called into question. I have tried to deal with the problem of focus by developing a notion of cultural negotiation and exchange, that is, by examining the points at which one cultural practice intersects with another, borrowing its forms and inten­ sities or attempting to ward off unwelcome appropriations or moving texts and artifacts from one place to another. But it would be misleading to imag­ ine that there is a complete homogenization of interest; my own concern remains centrally with imaginative literature, and not only because other cul­ tural structures resonate powerfully within it. If I do not approach works of art in a spirit of veneration, I do approach them in a spirit that is best described as wonder. Wonder has not been alien to literary criticism, but it has been associated (if only implicitly) with formalism rather than histori-

6. Cohen, in Shakespeare R eproduced, pp. 3 3 - 3 4 [G reenblatt’s note]. 7. This distinction between the natural world and

the world of human culture was famously drawn by the French anthropologist c l a u d e l e v i s t r a u s s in T he Raw and the C ooked (1964).

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cism. I wish to extend this wonder beyond the formal boundaries of works of art, just as I wish to intensify resonance within those boundaries. It will be easier to grasp the concepts of resonance and wonder if we think of the way in which our culture presents to itself not the textual traces of its past but the surviving visual traces, for the latter are put on display in galler­ ies and museums specially designed for the purpose. By resonance I mean the power of the object displayed to reach out beyond its formal boundaries to a larger world, to evoke in the viewer the complex, dynamic cultural forces from which it has emerged and for which as metaphor or more simply as metonymy it may be taken by a viewer to stand. By wonder I mean the power of the object displayed to stop the viewer in his tracks, to convey an arresting sense of uniqueness, to evoke an exalted attention. The new historicism obviously has distinct affinities with resonance; that is, its concern with literary texts has been to recover as far as possible the historical circumstances of their original production and consumption and to analyze the relationship between these circumstances and our own. New historicist critics have tried to understand the intersecting circumstances not as a stable, prefabricated background against which the literary texts can be placed, but as a dense network of evolving and often contradictory social forces. The idea is not to find outside the work of art some rock onto which literary interpretation can be securely chained but rather to situate the work in relation to other representational practices operative in the culture at a given moment in both its history and our own. In Louis Montrose’s8 conve­ nient formulation, the goal has been to grasp simultaneously the historicity of texts and the textuality of history. Insofar as this approach, developed for literary interpretation, is at all applicable to visual traces, it would call for an attempt to reduce the isola­ tion of individual “masterpieces,” to illuminate the conditions of their mak­ ing, to disclose the history of their appropriation and the circumstances in which they come to be displayed, to restore the tangibility, the openness, the permeability of boundaries that enabled the objects to come into being in the first place. An actual restoration of tangibility is obviously in most cases impossible, and the frames that enclose pictures are only the ultimate formal confirmation of the closing of the borders that marks the finishing of a work of art. But we need not take that finishing so entirely for granted; museums can and on occasion do make it easier imaginatively to recreate the work in its moment of openness. That openness is linked to a quality of artifacts that museums obviously dread, their precariousness. But though it is perfectly reasonable for museums to protect their objects— I would not wish it any other way— precariousness is a rich source of resonance. Thomas Greene, who has written a sensitive book on what he calls the “vulnerable text,” suggests that the symbolic wounding to which literature is prone may confer upon it power and fecundity. “The vul­ nerability of poetry,” Greene argues, “stems from four basic conditions of lan­ guage: its historicity, its dialogic function, its referential function, and its 8. Prom inent New H istoricist critic (b. 1941); his “form ulation” appears in “The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text” (1986).

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dependence on figuration/’9 Three of these conditions are different for the visual arts, in ways that would seem to reduce vulnerability: painting and sculpture may be detached more readily than language from both referentiality and figuration, and the pressures of contextual dialogue are diminished by the absence of an inherent logos,1 a constitutive word. But the fourth condition— historicity— is in the case of material artifacts vastly increased, indeed virtually literalized. Museums function, partly by design and partly in spite of themselves, as monuments to the fragility of cultures, to the fall of sustaining institutions and noble houses, the collapse of rituals, the evacua­ tion of myths, the destructive effects of warfare, neglect, and corrosive doubt. I am fascinated by the signs of alteration, tampering, even destructiveness which many museums try simply to efface: first and most obviously, the act of displacement that is essential for the collection of virtually all older arti­ facts and most modern ones— pulled out of chapels, peeled off church walls, removed from decaying houses, seized as spoils of war, stolen, “purchased” more or less fairly by the economically ascendent from the economically naive, the poor, the hard-pressed heirs of fallen dynasties and impoverished religious orders. Then too there are the marks on the artifacts themselves: the attempt to scratch out or deface the image of the devil in numerous latemedieval and Renaissance paintings, the concealing of the genitals in sculp­ tured and painted figures, the iconoclastic2 smashing of human or divine representations, the evidence of cutting or reshaping to fit a new frame or purpose, the cracks or scorch marks or broken-off noses that indifferently record the grand disasters of history and the random accidents of trivial incompetence. Even these accidents— the marks of a literal fragility— can have their resonance: the climax of an absurdly hagiographical Proust exhi­ bition several years ago was a display case holding a small, patched, modest vase with a notice, “This vase broken by Marcel Proust.”3 As this comical example suggests, wounded artifacts may be compelling not only as witnesses to the violence of history but as signs of use, marks of the human touch, and hence links with the openness to touch that was the condition of their creation. The most familiar way to recreate the openness of aesthetic artifacts without simply renewing their vulnerability is through a skillful deployment of explanatory texts in the catalogue, on the walls of the exhibit, or on cassettes. The texts so deployed introduce and in effect stand in for the context that has been effaced in the process of moving the object into the museum. But insofar as that context is partially, often primarily, visual as well as verbal, textual contextualism has its limits. Hence the mute eloquence of the display of the palette, brushes, and other implements that an artist of a given period would have employed or of objects that are represented in the exhibited paintings or of materials and images that in some way parallel or intersect with the formal works of art. Among the most resonant moments are those in which the supposedly contextual objects take on a life of their own, make a claim that rivals that 9. Thom as G rccnc, T he Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance Literature (New York: Columbia Uni­ versity Press, 1986), p. 100 [Greenblatt’s note]. Greene (1926—2003), American scholar o f English and comparative literature.

1. W ord, sp e ech ; reason (G reek ).

2. Literally, “destroying religious im ages.” 3. M arcel Proust (1 8 7 1 -1 9 2 2 ), major French novelist.

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of the object that is formally privileged. A table, a chair, a map, often seem­ ingly placed only to provide a decorative setting for a grand work, become oddly expressive, significant not as “background” but as compelling represen­ tational practices in themselves. These practices may in turn impinge upon the grand work, so that we begin to glimpse a kind of circulation: the cultural practice and social energy implicit in map-making drawn into the aesthetic orbit of a painting which has itself enabled us to register some of the repre­ sentational significance of the map. Or again the threadbare fabric on the old chair or the gouges in the wood of a cabinet juxtapose the privileged painting or sculpture with marks not only of time but of use, the imprint of the human body on the artifact, and call attention to the deliberate removal of certain exalted aesthetic objects from the threat of that imprint. For the effect of resonance does not necessarily depend upon a collapse of the distinction between art and non-art; it can be achieved by awakening in the viewer a sense of the cultural and historically contingent construc­ tion of art objects, the negotiations, exchanges, swerves, exclusions by which certain representational practices come to be set apart from other representational practices that they partially resemble. A resonant exhibi­ tion often pulls the viewer away from the celebration of isolated objects and toward a series of implied, only half-visible relationships and questions. How have the objects come to be displayed? What is at stake in categorizing them as of “museum-quality”? How were they originally used? What cul­ tural and material conditions made possible their production? What were the feelings of those who originally held these objects, cherished them, col­ lected them, possessed them? What is the meaning of my relationship to these same objects now that they are displayed here, in this museum, on this day? *

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« 1990

DONNA HARAWAY b. 1 9 4 4 In the introduction to her book Simians, Cyborgs, and W omen: The Reinvention o f Nature (1991), Donna Haraway describes her transformation from a “proper, U.S. socialist feminist, white, female, hominid biologist” into a “multiply marked cyborg feminist” whose writings range freely from cyborgs and monsters to apes and dogs, productive assemblages that in her later work she comes to call “companion spe­ cies.” Haraway s challenging and innovative theoretical work is part of the cultural studies of science and technology, a thriving subdiscipline interested in the history, sociology, and politics of technoscience. Her best-known text, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1985), has been hailed as the central text of cyberfeminism— an often iconoclastic wave of feminist theory and practice that is seeking to reclaim techno­ science. As she attempts to understand the place of technology within a postmod­

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ern, socialist feminism, Haraway argues that far from being antithetical to the human organism, technology is a material and symbolic apparatus that is already deeply involved in what it means to be human. The old political strategies— Marxist, liberal, and conservative— have become obsolete in the face of a global technosci­ ence that is outpacing the ethical and political mechanisms we have devised for containing it. Her landmark essay is a call for “reconstructing socialist-feminist politics . . . through theory and practice addressed to the social relations of science and technology.” In this manifesto, she introduces the mysterious boundary crea­ ture and new myth: the cyborg, a “hybrid of machine and organism” that, for Har­ away, becomes a metaphor for the “disassembled and reassembled, post-modern collective and personal self” of contemporary cultural theory suited to the West’s late capitalist social order. Haraway s educational history illuminates the broad range of her scholarship. With the aid of a Boettcher Foundation scholarship, she earned a degree in zoology and philosophy in 1966 from Colorado College, where she also fulfilled the require­ ments for an English major. She studied philosophies of evolution in Paris for a year on a Fulbright scholarship before beginning graduate studies in biology at Yale University; in 1972 she earned a Ph.D. for an interdisciplinary dissertation on the functions of metaphor in shaping twentieth-century research in developmental biology. She has taught at the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins University and, from 1980 until her retirement in 2011, in the History of Conciousness Pro­ gram at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is also a professor of femi­ nist theory and technoscience in the Media and Communications Program of the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Although best known for the frequently anthologized “A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” Haraway has published on an impressive array of topics, including primatology, sci­ ence fiction, animal studies, dogs, technoscience, ecofeminism, globalization, and immunity. As befits someone who received a special dispensation to write a disserta­ tion on metaphors in science, what provides coherence to her eclectic body of work is a fascination with the power of tropes— figures of speech, metaphors— to shape and organize the complex interrelationships between the material world and semiosis, the study of signs and meaning. Haraway s writing draws on a series of tropes— the cyborg, the monster, the ape, the dog— to embody the border skirmishes and disar­ ticulated identities that trouble late capitalism. She sees her work as both in alliance and in tension with that of other thinkers of the “posthuman,” including n . Ka ther ­ ine hayles , rosi b r a i d o t t i , bruno l atour , and Cary Wolfe. She is particularly interested in bridging the rift between the so-called two cultures— the arts and the sciences— and in bringing science studies to feminism and feminism to science stud­ ies. Haraway is at home in the genre of the manifesto, a speculative form of writing that attempts to imagine the world differently, a form that produces risky readings designed to unsettle commonplace ways of thinking about the world. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” our first selection, attempts to appropriate the resources of contemporary technoscience as a means of constructing “an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism.” The icon of this new feminist mythology is the cyborg, the hybrid creation of modern science— part human, part machine. Like the feminist theorist gloria anzaldua , Haraway is interested in exploring those boundaries, borders, and borderlands where our jumbled personal and collective identities are constructed and contested. By adopting the cyborg as a political myth, feminism, she believes, might be able to initiate effective political action without recourse to essentialism or identity politics; she argues “for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.” While Anzaldua investigates boundary confusion in geographical space and racial identity, Haraway explores and affirms the breakdowns in three crucial boundaries that have resulted from post-World War II technoscience: those between human and animal, organism and machine, and the physical and non-physical.

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Because they are situated on the boundary between organism and machine, Har­ away argues, cyborgs do not participate in the various traditional mythologies that have defined the West. Most pernicious among these are the myths of essential iden­ tity and original unity— the myth of the garden of Eden, a belief in a pure, coherent social identity that separates the truly human from animals and machines, as well as from other races and ethnic groups. Haraway joins postmodern feminists such as ju d ith b u t l e r and eve kosofsky sedgw ic k in the critique of essentialism, arguing that totalizing formulations of pure identity often associated with Marxism, the femi­ nism of Catharine MacKinnon, and other movements are based on exclusion and marginalization. Because the cyborg is postgender, post-Western, post-Marxist, and post-oedipal, it serves as a viable image for a new partial and heterogeneous subjectiv­ ity that reconceptualizes identity politics. Cyborgs, being “wary of holism, but needy for connection,” offer a new kind of community and politics based not on unity but on affinity, not on the party but on the coalition, not on the totalized conception of the category “woman” (central to many feminisms) but on partial explanations based on a careful understanding of difference. Yet Haraway warns that “difference” is not inherently liberating: “some differences are playful; some are poles of world histori­ cal systems of domination.” Haraway s post-Marxist call for new political strategies follows from her per­ ception of new forms of political domination. The old forms of domination endemic to an industrial society— to white patriarchal capitalism— are rapidly being rendered obsolete by new technologies. The emerging new networks of power, which she calls the “informatics of domination,” are adapted to technoscientific economies based on information systems. Haraway s focus on the meta­ phor of the cyborg does not, as a few of her critics have unfairly charged, ignore the real material oppression of women worldwide— their poverty and exploitation; it is not a flight away from the “real world” into a poststructuralist utopia, even though her poststructuralist language is very difficult and highly theoretical. Her exploration of the informatics of domination rests on an analysis of the social and material relations of science and technology. These real and frequently oppressive relations, promoted by laissez-faire late capitalism, include the “homework econ­ omy” (that is, the restructuring and feminization of the workplace), encroaching privatization and the loss of public life, growing insecurity even among the wellto-do, cultural impoverishment, and the “failure of subsistence networks for the most vulnerable.” While best known for the trope of the cyborg, Haraway has always evinced a keen interest in the ways in which the divide between human and animal has been used to determine what it means to be human. Most recently, she has engaged with the emerging field of animal studies, a subject that also occupied ja c q u e s d e r r id a in his later work (see above). In our excerpt from The Com panion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003), Haraway argues that dogs and humans have become inextricably interwoven into a single “companion species,” a symbiotic relation “in which none of the partners pre-exist the relat­ ing.” She sees her work on dogs as a “branch of feminist theory.” Haraway believes that by taking dog-human relationships seriously as an object of study, we might develop “an ethics and politics committed to the flourishing of significant other­ ness.” The trope of companion species links this essay to her earlier essay on the cyborg, enabling her to trouble the boundaries between “the human and non­ human, the organic and technological, carbon and silicon, freedom and structure, history and myth, the rich and the poor, the state and the subject, diversity and depletion, modernity and postmodernity, and nature and culture.” T he C om panion Species M anifesto marks a significant intervention in the traditional divide between nature and culture. Haraway coins the term natureculture to underscore the inex­ tricable entanglements of nature and culture, of the material and semiotic, and of body and mind.

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Haraway has been criticized for the exuberance with which she embraces the “monstrous” mixed identity of the cyborg, but her enthusiasm is qualified by sober­ ing discussions of the various impacts of modern and postmodern technoscience on our lives. Where critics sometimes found “Manifesto for Cyborgs” abstruse, they find The Com panion Species Manifesto cobbled together and inconsistent. Some animal studies scholars have accused her of ignoring animal rights issues, while feminists have complained that she leaves the relationship between dogs and feminism ambiguous. However, Haraway draws on the notion of partial connections, articu­ lated by the anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, insisting that if the parts of her manifestos don’t add up to a whole, neither does natureculture. If the relationship to feminism remains latent, it also tantalizes, demanding a response. None of us sees the world as a whole; all we can do is track out networks of connections in a project that is ultimately collaborative. Haraway’s cyborg myth, which recognizes that monsters always mark the limits of community, attempts to integrate women and machines into a new “science” fic­ tion. Her “dog stories” relate tales of biopower and biosociality. Writing and lan­ guage are crucial to both technoscience and feminist politics. Yet she advocates not the “dream of a common language” embraced by a d r ie n n e rich or the purified ecriture fem in in e (feminine writing) described by h e l e n e c ix o u s , but a “powerful infidel heteroglossia,” derived from the writings of m ik h a il b a k h t in , that enables us to theorize the complications of language, the frustrations of communicating experience, and the necessity of negotiating rather than policing boundaries that are becoming increasingly unstable. “A M anifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” Keywords: The Body, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Globalization, Marxism, Popular Culture, Postmodernity T h e C o m p a n io n S p ec ies M an ifesto: Dogs, P eo p le, a n d S ig n ifican t O therness Keywords: The Body, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Identity, Ideology, Language, Narrative Theory, Rhetoric

From A M anifesto for Cyborgs: Scien ce, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s An Ironic D ream o f a C om m on Language fo r W omen in the Integrated C ircu it1 This essay is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist-feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blas­ phemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about

1. A reference to the feminism o f a d r i e n n e r i c h and of a 1978 collection o f poetry titled T he (1 9 2 9 -2 0 1 2 ), author o f “Compulsory HeterosexDream o f a C om m on Language. uality and Lesbian E xistence” (1980; see above)

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humor and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honored within socialist feminism. At the cen­ ter of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international womens movements have constructed “women’s experience,” as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective object. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Lib­ eration rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative appre­ hension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as womens experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. Contemporary science fiction is full of cyborgs— creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted. Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg “sex” restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice organic pro­ phylactics against heterosexism). Cyborg replication is uncoupled from organic reproduction. Modern production seems like a dream of cyborg colonization of work, a dream that makes the nightmare of Taylorism2 seem idyllic. And modern war is a cyborg orgy, coded by c 3i, command-control-communicationintelligence, an $84 billion item in 1984s U .S . defense budget. I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily real­ ity and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Foucaults biopolitics3 is a flaccid premonition of cyborg politics, a very open field. By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology;4 it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centers structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the tradi­ tions of “Western” science and politics— the tradition of racist, maledominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tra­ dition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other— the rela­ tion between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This essay is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to 2. A system of industrial management, devised by the A m erican inventor and engineer Frederick Taylor (1 8 56-1916), that seeks to maximize work­ ers’ efficiency in order to optimize production. 3. A term used in T he History o f Sexuality (1976) by the French philosopher and cultural historian M I C H E L F O U C A U L T (1 9 2 6 -1 9 8 4 ) to describe the social m echanism s o f power that regulate the

body, extending the methods o f power and knowl­ edge over life itself. 4. T he branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being. C him era : in Greek mythology, a fem ale monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail; more generally, any monster made o f incongruous parts.

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contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a post-modernist, non­ naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisex­ uality, pre-Oedipal symbiosis,5 unalienated labor,6 or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the West­ ern sense; a “final” irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the “West s” escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space. An origin story in the “Western,” humanist sense depends on the myth of original unity, fullness, bliss and terror, represented by the phallic mother from whom all humans must separate, the task of individual development and of history, the twin potent myths inscribed most powerfully for us in psychoanalysis and Marxism. Hilary Klein has argued7 that both Marxism and psychoanalysis, in their con­ cepts of labor and of individuation and gender formation, depend on the plot of original unity out of which difference must be produced and enlisted in a drama of escalating domination of woman/nature. The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. This is its illegitimate promise that might lead to subversion of its teleology as star wars.8 The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and per­ versity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technological polis based partly on a revolution of social relations in the oikos,9 the household. Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other. The relationships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical domination, are at issue in the cyborg world. Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster,1 the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; i.e., through the fabrication of a het­ erosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cos­ mos. The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the Oedipal project.2 The cyborg would not recog­ nize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of return­ ing to dust.3 Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. 5. In psychoanalytic theory, a period of m aternal dependence, narcissistic identification, and poly­ morphous erotic drives that occurs during earliest infancy, preceding the oedipal phase when con ­ flict with the father and the social order emerge. This period of intense attachm ent to the maternal has been of great interest to contemporary femi­ nist psychoanalytic theorists (e.g., j u l i a k r i s t e v a and h e l e n e c i x o u s ) . 6. In M arxist theory, labor that does not occu r within the exploitative relationships o f slavery, feudalism, colonialism , or capitalism . 7. See K lein’s “M arxism , Psychoanalysis, and M other N ature,” Feminist Studies 15 (1989). 8. The Strategic D efense Initiative, proposed by

President Ronald Reagan in 1983, to create a shield against incom ing missiles. 9. House (Greek), part of the root o f the English word econom y. 1. T hat is, the creature constructed in Mary Shel­ ley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), who begs his cre ­ ator for a mate. 2. Psychoanalysis describes the task of early childhood— the form ation o f a d istin ct ego or identity— as separation from the mother, accom ­ plished through the oedipal stage in which the paternal figure intervenes betw een the motherchild dyad. 3. The book o f Genesis describes the creation of man (in Hebrew, adam) from dust (2.7).

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They are wary of holism, but needy for connection— they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party.4 The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate off­ spring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state social­ ism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. I will return to the science fiction of cyborgs at the end of this essay, but now I want to signal three crucial boundary breakdowns that make the fol­ lowing political fictional (political scientific) analysis possible. By the late twentieth century in United States scientific culture, the boundary between human and animal is thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of unique­ ness have been polluted if not turned into amusement parks— language, tool use, social behavior, mental events, nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need of such a separation; indeed, many branches of feminist culture affirm the pleasure of connection of human and other living creatures. Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness; they are clear­ sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture. Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social sci­ ences. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse. Biological-determinist ideology is only one position opened up in scientific culture for arguing the meanings of human animality. There is much room for radical political people to contest for the meanings of the breached bound­ ary.5 The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed. Far from signaling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal disturbingly and pleasurably tight coupling. Bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange. The second leaky distinction is between animal-human (organism) and machine. Pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the specter of the ghost in the machine.6 This dualism structured the dialogue 4. Haraway alludes to Soviet history. “Vanguard party”: party intended to lead and control the revolution o f the workers (e.g., the Bolshevik Party, established during the Russian Revolu­ tion). “United front politics”: coalitions (e.g., the united fronts set up by the Com intern during the 1930s). 5. Useful references to left and/or fem inist radi­ cal science movements and theory and to biologi­ cal/biotechnological issues include: Ruth Bleier,

Science and G ender: A C ritique o f Biology and Its Them es on W omen (New York: Pergamon, 1984); Elizabeth Fee, “Critiques of Modern Science: The Relationship of Fem inist and O ther Radical Epistemologies,” and Evelyn Hammonds, “Women of Color, Fem inism , and S cien ce,” papers for Sym­ posium on Fem inist Perspectives on Scien ce, University of W isconsin, 11-13 April 1985 (pro­ ceedings to be published by Pergam on) [Ruth Bleier, ed., Feminist A pproaches to S cien ce (New

York:

Pergam on,

1986)]; Stephen J.

Gould,

M ismeasure o f Man (New York: Norton, 1981); Ruth Hubbard, M ary Sue H enifin and Barbara Fried, eds., B iological W oman, the C onvenient Myth (Cam bridge, M ass.: Sch en km an, 1982); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on G ender and Sci­ en ce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); R. C. Lew ontin, Steve Rose, and Leon Kam in, Not in Our G enes (New York: Pantheon, 1984); Radical S cience Journal, 26 Freegrove Road, Lon­ don N7 9R Q ; S cien ce fo r the People, 897 Main S t., Cam bridge, MA 0 2 1 3 9 [Haraway’s note]. Haraway’s original references are, where appro­ priate, updated in square brackets. 6. T he phrase used by the English analytic phi­ losopher Gilbert Ryle (1 9 0 0 -1 9 7 6 ) to criticize the mind-body dualism o f the French philosopher Rene D escartes (1596—1650), who separated the publicly observable (m aterial, physical) from the private mind (spiritual).

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between materialism and idealism that was settled by a dialectical progeny, called spirit or history, according to taste. But basically machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve mans dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream. To think they were other­ wise was paranoid. Now we are not so sure. Late-twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally-designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. Technological determinism is only one ideological space opened up by the reconceptions of machine and organism as coded texts through which we engage in the play of writing and reading the world/ “Textualization” of everything in post-structuralist, post-modernist theory has been damned by Marxists and socialist feminists for its utopian disregard for lived relations of domination that ground the “play” of arbitrary reading.8 It is certainly true that post-modernist strategies, like my cyborg myth, subvert myriad organic wholes (e.g., the poem, the primitive culture, the biological organism). In short, the certainty of what counts as nature— a source of insight and a promise of innocence— is undermined, probably fatally. The transcendent 7. S tartin g points for left and/or fem inist approaches to technology and politics include: Ruth Schw artz Cowan, More Work fo r M other:

T he Ironies o f H ousehold Technology fro m the O pen Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Joan Rothschild, M achina ex Dea: Fem inist Perspectives on Technology (New York: Pergam on, 1983); Sharon Traweek, [Beantim es and Lifetimes: The World o f High Energy Physics (Cam bridge, M ass.: Harvard University Press, 1988)]; R. M. Young and Les Levidov, eds., S ci­ e n c e , Technology, and the L abou r Process, vols. 1—3 (London: C SE Books); Joseph W eizenbaum, C om puter Power and Human Reason (San Fran­ cisco: Freem an, 1976); Langdon W inner, Auton­

om ous Technology: Technics out o f Control as a T h em e in Political Thought (Cam bridge, M ass.: M IT Press, 1977); Langdon W inner, [The W hale and the R eactor (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1986)]; Jan Zim m erm an, ed., T he T echno­ logical Woman: Interfacing with Tomorrow (New York: Praeger, 1983); G lobal Electronics Newslet­ ter, 867 W est Dana St., # 204, M ountain View, CA 9 4 0 4 1 ; Processed World, 55 Sutter S t., San Fran­ cisco , CA 9 4 1 0 4 ; ISIS, W om en’s International Inform ation and C om m unication Serv ice, P.O. Box 50 (Cornavin), 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland, and Via Santa Maria dell’A nima 30, 00 1 8 6 Rome, Italy. Fundamental approaches to modern social studies of science that do not continue the liberal m ystification that it all started with Thom as Kuhn, include: Karin K norr-C etina, T he M anu­ factu re o f Knowledge (Oxford: Pergamon, 1981); K. D. K norr-C etina and M ichael Mulkay, eds.,

Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study o f S cien ce (Beverly H ills, C alif.: Sage, 1983); b r u n o l a t o u r and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: T he S ocial C onstruction o f Scientific Facts (Beverly H ills, C alif.: Sage, 1979); Robert M. Young, “Interpreting the Production o f S cie n ce ,” New Scientist, vol. 29 (M arch 1979), pp. 1026— 28 . More is claimed than is known about room for con testing productions o f science in the

mythic/material space of “the laboratory”: the 1984 D irectory o f the Network for the E th n o ­ graphic Study of S cien ce, Technology, and O rganizations lists a wide range o f people and projects crucial to better radical analysis; avail­ able from N B S S T O , P.O. Box 11442, Stanford, CA 9 4 3 0 5 [Haraway’s note]. Kuhn (1 9 2 2 -1 9 9 6 ), American historian of science; his book that some view as starting modern social studies o f science is T he Structure o f Scientific Revolutions (1962). 8. Fredric Jam eson, “Postm odernism , or, T he C ultural Logic o f Late C ap italism ,” New L eft Review, July/August 1984, pp. 5 3 -9 4 . See M arjo­ rie Perloff, “‘D irty’ Language and Scram ble Sys­ tem s,” Sulfur 11 (1984), pp. 178—83; K athleen Fraser, Som ething (Even Human Voices) in the Foreground, a L a k e (Berkeley, C alif.: Kelsey S t. Press, 1984). A provocative, com prehensive argument about the policies and theories of “post­ modernism” is made by Fredric Jam eson, who argues that post-m odernism is not an option, a style among others, but a cultural dom inant requiring radical reinvention of left politics from w ithin; there is no longer any place from without that gives m eaning to the com forting fiction of critical distance. Jam eson also makes clear why one cannot be for or against post-modernism, an essentially m oralist move. My position is that fem inists (and others) need continuous cultural reinvention, post-modernist critique, and histor­ ical m aterialism ; only a cyborg would have a chance. T h e old dominations o f white capitalist patriarchy seem nostalgically innocent now: they norm alized heterogeneity, e.g., into man and woman, white and black. “Advanced capitalism ” and post-modernism release heterogeneity w ith­ out a norm, and we are flattened, without subjec­ tivity, which requires depth, even unfriendly and drowning depths. It is time to write T h e Death o f the Clinic. T h e clin ic ’s methods required bodies and works; we have texts and surfaces. O ur dom­ inations don’t work by m edicalization and nor­ malization anymore; they work by networking,

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authorization of interpretation is lost, and with it the ontology grounding “Western” epistemology.9 But the alternative is not cynicism or faithlessness, i.e., some version of abstract existence, like the accounts of technological determinism destroying “man” by the “machine” or “meaningful political action” by the “text.” Who cyborgs will be is a radical question; the answers are a matter of survival. Both chimpanzees and artifacts have politics, so why shouldn’t we?1 The third distinction is a subset of the second: the boundary between physical and non-physical is very imprecise for us. Pop physics books on the consequences of quantum theory and the indeterminacy principle are a kind of popular scientific equivalent to the Harlequin2 romances as a marker of radical change in American white heterosexuality: they get it wrong, but they are on the right subject. Modern machines are quintessentially microelec­ tronic devices: they are everywhere and they are invisible. Modern machin­ ery is an irreverent upstart god, mocking the Fathers ubiquity and spirituality. The silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atomic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. Miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as pre-eminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. Con­ trast the t v sets of the 1950s or the news cameras of the 1970s with the t v wrist bands or hand-sized video cameras now advertised. Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum. And these machines are eminently portable, mobile— a matter of immense human pain in Detroit and Singapore. People are nowhere near so fluid, being both mate­ rial and opaque. Cyborgs are ether, quintessence.3 The ubiquity and invisibility of cyborgs is precisely why these sunshine-belt machines are so deadly. They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness— or its simulation.4 They are floating signicom m unications redesign, stress m anagem ent. N orm alization gives way to autom ation, utter redundancy. M ichel Foucault’s Birth o f the Clinic [1963], History o f Sexuality, and D iscipline and Punish [1975] name a form of power at its moment o f implosion. T h e discourse o f biopolitics gives way to technobabble, the language of the spliced substantive; no noun is left whole by the multina­ tionals. T hese are their nam es, listed from one issue of Science: Tech-Knowledge, G enentech, Allergen, Hybritech, Compupro, Genencor, Syntex, Allelix, Agrigenetics Corp., Syntro, Codon, Repligen, Micro-Angelo from Scion Corp., Percom Data, Inter Systems, Cyborg Corp., Statcom Corp., Intertec. If we are imprisoned by language, then escape from that prison house requires lan­ guage poets, a kind o f cultural restriction enzyme to cut the code; cyborg heteroglossia is one form o f radical cu ltu re politics [Haraway’s note]. On the A m erican M arxist literary c ritic j a m e s o n (b. 1934), whose works include The Prison-House o f Language (1972), see above. “H eteroglossia”: an allusion to the highly influential theories of MIKHAIL M. BAKHTIN (1 8 9 5 -1 9 7 5 ). 9. T he branch o f philosophy concerned with ways of knowing.

1. Frans de Waal, C him panzee Politics: Power and Sex among the Apes (New York: H arper & Row, 1982); Langdon W inner, “Do A rtifacts Have Pol­ itics?” Daedalus, winter 1980 [Haraway’s note]. 2. Canada-based publisher that by the 1960s was exclusively publishing mass-market romance nov­ els; over tim e, its offerings have becom e more varied and more sexually explicit. “T he indeter­ minacy principle”: that is, the theory formulated in 1927 by the Germ an physicist W erner H eisen­ berg that one can n ot specify both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle. 3. In classical and medieval philosophy, the 5th and highest elem ent, which makes up the heav­ enly bodies (all terrestrial things were believed to be compounds of the other 4 elem ents). 4. Jean Baudrillard, Sim ulations, trans. P. Foss, P. Patton, P. Beitchm an (New York: Sem iotext(e), 1983). Jam eson (“Postm odernism ,” p. 66) points out that P lato’s definition of the sim ulacrum is the copy for which there is no original, i.e., the world of advanced capitalism ; o f pure exchange [Haraway’s note]. On the French social critic and theorist b a u d r i l l a r d (1 9 2 9 —2 0 0 7 ) and the Greek philosopher p l a t o (ca. 4 2 7 -c a . 327 b . c . e .), see above.

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fiers moving in pickup trucks across Europe, blocked more effectively by the witch-weavings of the displaced and so unnatural Greenham women,5 who read the cyborg webs of power very well, than by the militant labor of older masculinist politics, whose natural constituency needs defense jobs. Ultimately the “hardest” science is about the realm of greatest boundary con­ fusion, the realm of pure number, pure spirit, c 3i, cryptography, and the preservation of potent secrets. The new machines are so clean and light. Their engineers are sun-worshipers mediating a new scientific revolution associated with the night dream of post-industrial society. The diseases evoked by these clean machines are “no more” than the miniscule coding changes of an antigen in the immune system, “no more” than the experi­ ence of stress. The nimble little fingers of “Oriental” women, the old fasci­ nation of little Anglo-Saxon Victorian girls with doll houses, women’s enforced attention to the small take on quite new dimensions in this world. There might be a cyborg Alice6 taking account of these new dimensions. Ironically, it might be the unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia and spiral dancing in Santa Rita7 whose constructed unities will guide effec­ tive oppositional strategies. So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work. One of my premises is that most American social­ ists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formu­ lations, and physical artifacts associated with “high technology” and scien­ tific culture. From O ne-D im ensional Man to T he Death o f N ature,8 the analytic resources developed by progressives have insisted on the necessary domination of technics and recalled us to an imagined organic body to inte­ grate our resistance. Another of my premises is that the need for unity of people trying to resist worldwide intensification of domination has never been more acute. But a slightly perverse shift of perspective might better enable us to contest for meanings, as well as for other forms of power and pleasure in technologically-mediated societies. From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star War apocalypse waged in the name of defense, about the final appropriation of womens bodies in a masculinist orgy of war.9 From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both

5. British women’s group that protested the place­ ment of nuclear cruise missiles at the U.S. Air Force base at G reenham Common for nearly two decades, beginning in 1982. 6. A reference to the heroine of Lewis C arroll’s A lice’s Adventure in W onderland (1865), who becam e both very small and very large. 7. Jail in Alameda County, C alifornia, which in 1982 held more than 1,300 antinuclear protestors who were arrested during a nonviolent demon­

stration at Law rence Liverm ore N ational L abo­ ratory in Livermore, C alifornia. 8. Herbert M arcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Bos­ ton: Beacon, 1964); Carolyn M erchant, T he Death o f Nature (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980) [Haraway’s note]. 9. Zoe Sofia, “Exterm inating Fetuses,” Diacritics, vol. 14, no. 2 (sum m er 1984), pp. 47 —59, and “Jupiter Sp ace” (Pom ona, C alif.: A m erican Stud­ ies A ssociation, 1984) [Haraway’s note].

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dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Sin­ gle vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed mon­ sters. Cyborg unities are monstrous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling. I like to imagine l a g , the Livermore Action Group,1 as a kind of cyborg society, dedicated to realistically converting the laboratories that most fiercely embody and spew out the tools of technological apocalypse, and com­ mitted to building a political form that actually manages to hold together witches, engineers, elders, perverts, Christians, mothers, and Leninists2 long enough to disarm the state. Fission Impossible is the name of the affinity group in my town. (Affinity: related not by blood but by choice, the appeal of one chemical nuclear group for another, avidity.) Fractured Identities It has become difficult to name ones feminism by a single adjective— or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun. Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gender, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in “essential” unity. There is nothing about being “female” that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as “being” female, itself a highly complex category con­ structed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices. Gender, race, or class consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriar­ chy, colonialism, and capitalism. And who counts as “us” in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called “us,” and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity? Painful frag­ mentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every pos­ sible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of womens dominations of each other. For me— and for many who share a similar historical location in white, professional middle class, female, radical, North American, mid-adult bodies— the sources of a crisis in politi­ cal identity are legion. The recent history for much of the U .S . left and U .S . feminism has been a response to this kind of crisis by endless splitting and searches for a new essential unity. But there has also been a growing recogni­ tion of another response through coalition— affinity, not identity.3 «

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It is important to note that the effort to construct revolutionary stand­ points, epistemologies as achievements of people committed to changing the

1. A group organized to protest the development o f nuclear weapons technology at Livermore Lab­ oratory. 2. Adherents of the militant offshoot of commu­ nism associated with Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), founder of the Russian Bolshevik Party. 3. Powerful developments o f coalition politics emerge from “third world” speakers, speaking from nowhere, the displaced center o f the uni­ verse, earth: “We live on the third planet from

the sun ”— Sun Poem by Jam aican writer Edward Kamau Braithwaite, review by Nathaniel Mackey, Sulfur 11 (1984), pp. 2 0 0 - 2 0 5 . H om e Girls , ed. Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983), ironically subverts natural­ ized identities precisely while constructing a place from which to speak called home. See esp. B ernice Reagan, “Coalition Politics, Turning the Century,” pp. 3 5 6 —68 [Haraway’s note].

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world, has been part of the process showing the limits of identification. The acid tools of post-modernist theory and the constructive tools of ontological discourse about revolutionary subjects might be seen as ironic allies in dis­ solving Western selves in the interests of survival. We are excruciatingly con­ scious of what it means to have a historically constituted body. But with the loss of innocence in our origin, there is no expulsion from the Garden either. Our politics lose the indulgence of guilt with the naivete of innocence. But what would another political myth for socialist feminism look like? What kind of politics could embrace partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed constructions of personal and collective selves and still be faithful, effective— and, ironically, socialist feminist? I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of “race,” “gender,” “sexuality,” and “class.” I also do not know of any other time when the kind of unity we might help build could have been possible. None of “us” have any longer the symbolic or material capability of dictating the shape of real­ ity to any of “them.” Or at least “we” cannot claim innocence from practic­ ing such dominations. White women, including socialist feminists, discovered (i.e., were forced kicking and screaming to notice) the non-innocence of the category “woman.” That consciousness changes the geography of all previ­ ous categories; it denatures them as heat denatures a fragile protein. Cyborg feminists have to argue that “we” do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. Innocence, and the corollary insis­ tence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough dam­ age. But the constructed revolutionary subject must give late-twentieth-century people pause as well. In the fraying of identities and in the reflexive strate­ gies for constructing them, the possibility opens up for weaving something other than a shroud for the day after the apocalypse that so prophetically ends salvation history. Both Marxist/socialist feminisms and radical feminisms have simulta­ neously naturalized and denatured the category “woman” and conscious­ ness of the social lives of “women.” Perhaps a schematic caricature can highlight both kinds of moves. Marxian socialism is rooted in an analysis of wage labor which reveals class structure. The consequence of the wage rela­ tionship is systematic alienation, as the worker is dissociated from his (sic) product. Abstraction and illusion rule in knowledge, domination rules in practice. Labor is the pre-eminently privileged category enabling the Marx­ ist to overcome illusion and find that point of view which is necessary for changing the world. Labor is the humanizing activity that makes man; labor is an ontological category permitting the knowledge of a subject, and so the knowledge of subjugation and alienation. In faithful filiation, socialist feminism advanced by allying itself with the basic analytic strategies of Marxism. The main achievement of both Marx­ ist feminists and socialist feminists was to expand the category of labor to accommodate what (some) women did, even when the wage relation was sub­ ordinated to a more comprehensive view of labor under capitalist patriar­ chy. In particular, womens labor in the household and womens activity as mothers generally, i.e., reproduction in the socialist feminist sense, entered theory on the authority of analogy to the Marxian concept of labor. The unity of women here rests on an epistemology based on the ontological structure

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of “labor.” Marxist/socialist feminism does not “naturalize” unity; it is a pos­ sible achievement based on a possible standpoint rooted in social relations. The essentializing move is in the ontological structure of labor or of its ana­ logue, women’s activity.4 The inheritance of Marxian humanism, with its pre-eminently Western self, is the difficulty for me. The contribution from these formulations has been the emphasis on the daily responsibility of real women to build unities, rather than to naturalize them. $

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The Inform atics o f D om ination In this attempt at an epistemological and political position, I would like to sketch a picture of possible unity, a picture indebted to socialist and femi­ nist principles of design. The frame for my sketch is set by the extent and importance of rearrangements in worldwide social relations tied to science and technology. I argue for a politics rooted in claims about fundamental changes in the nature of class, race, and gender in an emerging system of world order analogous in its novelty and scope to that created by industrial capitalism; we are living through a movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system— from all work to all play, a deadly game. Simultaneously material and ideological, the dichotomies may be expressed in the following chart of transitions from the comfortable old hierarchical dominations to the scary new networks I have called the infor­ matics of domination: Representation Bourgeois novel, realism Organism Depth, integrity Heat Biology as clinical practice Physiology Small group Perfection

4. T h e fem inist standpoint argum ent is being developed by: Jan e Flax, “Political Philosophy and the P atriarch al U ncon sciou sn ess,” in Sandra Harding and M errill H intikka, eds., Discovering Reality (D ordrecht: Reidel, 1983); Sandra Hard­ ing, “T h e C on tradictions and Am bivalence o f a Fem inist S cie n c e ,” m s.; Harding and H intikka, Discovering Reality, Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex, and Power (New York: Longm an, 1983) and “The Fem inist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Fem inist H istorical M aterialism ,” in H arding and H intikka, D iscovering R eality ; M ary O ’Brien, T h e Politics o f R eproduction (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); Hilary Rose, “Hand, B rain, and H eart: A Fem inist Epistemology for the N atural S cien ces,” Signs, vol. 9, no. 1 (1983), pp. 7 3 —9 0 ; Dorothy Sm ith, “W om en’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology,” Sociological Inquiry 4 4 (1974), and “A

Simulation Science fiction, post-modernism Biotic component Surface, boundary Noise Biology as inscription Communications engineering Subsystem Optimization

Sociology of W om en,” in J . Sherm an and E. T. Beck, eds., The Prism o f Sex (Madison: University of W isconsin Press, 1979). T h e cen tral role of object-relations versions o f psychoanalysis and related strong universalizing moves in discussing reproduction, carin g work, and m othering in many approaches to epistemology underline their authors’ resistance to what I am calling post­ modernism. For me, both the universalizing moves and the versions of psychoanalysis make analysis of “women’s place in the integrated cir­ cu it” difficult and lead to system atic difficulties in accounting or even seeing m ajor aspects o f the con struction o f gender and gender social life [Haraway’s note]. Haraway’s m ain target in object-relations theory is N ancy Chodorow ’s influential book T he R eproduction o f Mothering (1978).

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Eugenics Decadence, Magic M ountain Hygiene Microbiology, tuberculosis Organic division of labor Functional specialization Reproduction Organic sex role specialization Biological determinism Community ecology Racial chain of being Scientific management in home/factory Family/Market/Factory Family wage Public/Private Nature/Culture Cooperation Freud Sex Labor Mind World War II White Capitalist Patriarchy

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Population control Obsolescence, Future S h ock5 Stress Management Immunology, a i d s Ergonomics/cybernetics of labor Modular construction Replication Optimal genetic strategies Evolutionary inertia, constraints Ecosystem Neo-imperialism, United Nations humanism Global factory/Electronic cottage Women in the Integrated Circuit Comparable worth6 Cyborg citizenship Fields of difference Communications enhancement Lacan7 Genetic engineering Robotics Artificial Intelligence Star Wars Informatics of Domination

This list suggests several interesting things.8 First, the objects on the righthand side cannot be coded as “natural,” a realization that subverts naturalis­ tic coding for the left-hand side as well. We cannot go back ideologically or materially. Its not just that “god” is dead; so is the “goddess.” In relation to objects like biotic components, one must think not in terms of essential prop­ erties, but in terms of strategies of design, boundary constraints, rates of flows, systems logics, costs of lowering constraints. Sexual reproduction is one kind of reproductive strategy among many, with costs and benefits as a function of the system environment. Ideologies of sexual reproduction can no longer reasonably call on the notions of sex and sex role as organic aspects in natural objects like organisms and families. Such reasoning will be unmasked as irrational, and ironically corporate executives reading Playboy and anti-

5. A 1970 book of social history and production by Alvin Toffler. T he Magic M ountain (1924), a novel by Thom as M ann set in a tuberculosis san­ atorium. 6. The concept that male and female workers holding different jobs that are comparable in dif­ ficulty and responsibility should receive equal pay. “Family wage”: a wage high enough that a single (usually male) breadwinner can support a family. 7. j a c q u e s l a c a n (1901-1981), French psychoan­ alyst who argued that the unconscious is struc­ tured like a language and claim ed to be the intellectual heir of s i g m u n d f r e u d (1 8 5 6 -1 9 3 9 ), the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis. 8. My previous efforts to understand biology as a

cybernetic command-control discourse and organisms as “natural-technical objects of knowl­ edge” are: “The High Cost of Information in P ostWorld War II Evolutionary Biology,” Philosophical Forum, vol. 13, nos. 2 - 3 (1979), pp. 2 0 6 -3 7 ; “Signs of Dominance: From a Physiology to a Cybernetics of Primate Society,” Studies in History o f Biology 6 (1983), pp. 129—219; “Class, Race, Sex, Scientific O bjects of Knowledge: A SocialistFem inist Perspective on the Social Construction of Productive Knowledge and Some Political Con­ sequences,” in Violet Haas and Carolyn Perucci, eds., Women in Scientific and Engineering Profes­ sions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), pp. 212—29 [Haraway’s note].

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porn radical feminists will make strange bedfellows in jointly unmasking the irrationalism. *

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One should expect control strategies to concentrate on boundary condi­ tions and interfaces, on rates of flow across boundaries— and not on the integrity of natural objects. “Integrity” or “sincerity” of the Western self gives way to decision procedures and expert systems. For example, control strate­ gies applied to women’s capacities to give birth to new human beings will be developed in the languages of population control and maximization of goal achievement for individual decision-makers. Control strategies will be for­ mulated in terms of rates, costs of constraints, degrees of freedom. Human beings, like any other component or subsystem, must be localized in a sys­ tem architecture whose basic modes of operation are probabilistic, statisti­ cal. No objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves; any component can be interfaced with any other if the proper standard, the proper code, can be constructed for processing signals in a common language. Exchange in this world transcends the universal translation effected by capitalist mar­ kets that Marx analyzed so well.9 The privileged pathology affecting all kinds of components in this universe is stress— communications breakdown.1 The cyborg is not subject to Foucault’s biopolitics; the cyborg simulates pol­ itics, a much more potent field of operations. This kind of analysis of scientific and cultural objects of knowledge which have appeared historically since World War II prepares us to notice some important inadequacies in feminist analysis which has proceeded as if the organic, hierarchical dualisms ordering discourse in “the West” since Aris­ totle2 still ruled. They have been cannibalized, or as Zoe Sofia (Sofoulis) might put it, they have been “techno-digested.” The dichotomies between mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine, public and pri­ vate, nature and culture, men and women, primitive and civilized are all in question ideologically. The actual situation of women is their integration/ exploitation into a world system of production/reproduction and communi­ cation called the informatics of domination. The home, workplace, market, public arena, the body itself—all can be dispersed and interfaced in nearly infinite, polymorphous ways, with large consequences for women and others— consequences that themselves are very different for different people and which make potent oppositional international movements difficult to imagine and essential for survival. One important route for reconstructing socialist-feminist politics is through theory and practice addressed to the social relations of science and technology, including crucially the systems of myth and meanings structuring our imaginations. The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, post-modern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code.

9. T h at is, the translation of individual labor power into com m odities. On the Germ an politi­ cal theorist, econom ist, and revolutionary k a r l m a r x (1 8 1 8 -1 8 8 3 ), see above. 1. E. Rusten Hogness, “Why Stress? A Look at the M aking o f Stress, 1 9 3 6 -5 6 ,” available from the

author, 4 4 3 7 M ill Creek Rd., H ealdsburg, CA 9 5 4 4 8 [Haraway’s note]. 2. Greek philosopher ( 3 8 4 - 3 2 2 b . c . e .; see above) whose scientific system dominated W estern thought until the Renaissance.

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Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women worldwide. Technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instru­ ments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other. Furthermore, communications sciences and modern biologies are con­ structed by a common move— the translation o f the world into a problem o f coding, a search for a common language in which all resistance to instru­ mental control disappears and all heterogeneity can be submitted to disas­ sembly, reassembly, investment, and exchange. In communications sciences, the translation of the world into a problem in coding can be illustrated by looking at cybernetic (feedback controlled) systems theories applied to telephone technology, computer design, weapons deployment, or data base construction and maintenance. In each case, solution to the key questions rests on a theory of language and control; the key operation is determining the rates, directions, and probabilities of flow of a quantity called information. The world is subdivided by boundaries dif­ ferentially permeable to information. Information is just that kind of quan­ tifiable element (unit, basis of unity) which allows universal translation, and so unhindered instrumental power (called effective communication). The biggest threat to such power is interruption of communication. Any system breakdown is a function of stress. The fundamentals of this technology can be condensed into the metaphor c 3i, command-control-communicationintelligence, the military’s symbol for its operations theory. In modern biologies, the translation of the world into a problem in coding can be illustrated by molecular genetics, ecology, socio-biological evolution­ ary theory, and immunobiology. The organism has been translated into problems of genetic coding and read-out. Biotechnology, a writing technol­ ogy, informs research broadly.3 In a sense, organisms have ceased to exist as objects of knowledge, giving way to biotic components, i.e., special kinds of information processing devices. The analogous moves in ecology could be examined by probing the history and utility of the concept of the ecosys­ tem. Immunobiology and associated medical practices are rich exemplars of the privilege of coding and recognition systems as objects of knowledge, as constructions of bodily reality for us. Biology is here a kind of cryptography. Research is necessarily a kind of intelligence activity. Ironies abound. A stressed system goes awry; its communication processes break down; it fails to recognize the difference between self and other. Human babies with baboon hearts4 evoke national ethical perplexity— for animal-rights activ­ ists at least as much as for guardians of human purity. Gay men, Haitian

3. A left entry to the biotechnology debate: G eneWatch, a Bulletin o f the C om m ittee fo r Responsi­ ble G enetics, 5 Doane St. 4th floor, Boston, MA 0 2 1 0 9 ; Susan W right, [“Recom binant DNA Technology and Its Social Transform ation, 1972— 8 2 ,” Osiris, 2d ser., vol. 2 (1996), pp. 3 0 3 —60] and

“Recom binant DNA: The Status of Hazards and C on trols,” Environm ent, July/August 1982; Edward Yoxen, T he G en e Business (New York: Harper & Row, 1983) [Haraway’s note]. 4. A transplant performed in 1984; the infant died 21 days later.

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immigrants, and intravenous drug users5 are the “privileged” victims of an awful immune-system disease that marks (inscribes on the body) confu­ sion of boundaries and moral pollution. But these excursions into communications sciences and biology have been at a rarefied level; there is a mundane, largely economic reality to support my claim that these sciences and technologies indicate fundamental transforma­ tions in the structure of the world for us. Communications technologies depend on electronics. Modern states, multinational corporations, military power, welfare-state apparatuses, satellite systems, political processes, fabri­ cation of our imaginations, labor-control systems, medical constructions of our bodies, commercial pornography, the international division of labor, and religious evangelism depend intimately upon electronics. Microelectronics is the technical basis of simulacra, i.e., of copies without originals. Microelectronics mediates the translations of labor into robotics and word processing; sex into genetic engineering and reproductive technologies; and m ind into artificial intelligence and decision procedures. The new biotech­ nologies concern more than human reproduction. Biology as a powerful engi­ neering science for redesigning materials and processes has revolutionary implications for industry, perhaps most obvious today in areas of fermenta­ tion, agriculture, and energy. Communications sciences and biology are con­ structions of natural-technical objects of knowledge in which the difference between machine and organism is thoroughly blurred; mind, body, and tool are on very intimate terms. The “multinational” material organization of the production and reproduction of daily life and the symbolic organization of the production and reproduction of culture and imagination seem equally implicated. The boundary-maintaining images of base and super-structure,6 public and private, or material and ideal never seemed more feeble. I have used Rachel Grossman s image of women in the integrated circuit to name the situation of women in a world so intimately restructured through the social relations of science and technology/ I use the odd circumlocution, “the social relations of science and technology,” to indicate that we are not dealing with a technological determinism, but with a historical system depending upon structured relations among people. But the phrase should also indicate that science and technology provide fresh sources of power, that we need fresh sources of analysis and political action.8 Some of the rearrange-

5. T hese three groups were the focus of medical attention when A ID S was first identified in the 1980s. 6. “Base” and “superstructure” are Marxist terms: a society’s base is its econom ic mode o f produc­ tion, which conditions its su p erstru ctu re— its social, political, ju rid ical, and intellectu al life generally. 7. S tartin g references for “women in the in te­ grated c ircu it”: Pamela D’O nofrio-Flores and Sheila M. Pfafflin, eds., Scientific-Technological

Change and the Role o f W omen in D evelopm ent (Boulder, C olo.: W estview P ress, 1982); M aria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, For We Are Sold, I and My P eople (Albany, N.Y.: SU N Y Press, 1983); A nnette Fuentes and B arbara E hrenreich, W omen in the Global Factory (Boston: South End P ress, 1983), with an esp ecially useful list of resources and organizations; Rachael Grossm an,

“W om en’s Place in the Integrated C ircuit,” R adi­ cal America, vol. 14, no. 1 (1980), pp. 2 9 - 5 0 ; June Nash and M. P. Fernandez-Kelly, eds., W omen and Men and the International Division o f Labor (Albany, N.Y.: SU N Y Press, 1983); Aihwa Ong, “Japanese Factories, Malay Workers: Industrial­ ization and the Cultural Construction of G ender in W est M alaysia,” in [Jane Atkinson and Shelly Errington, eds., Power and D ifference: G en der in Island Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford Univer­ sity Press, 1990)]; Science Policy Research Unity, M icroelectronics and W om en’s Em ploy­ m ent in Britain (University o f Sussex, 1982) [Haraw'ay’s note]. 8. T h e best exam ple is Bruno Latour, Les

M icrobes: G uerre et Paix, suivi de Irreductions [M icrobes: War and P eace, Follow ed by Irreduc­ tions] (Paris: M etailie, 1984) [Haraway’s note].

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ments of race, sex, and class rooted in high-tech-facilitated social relations can make socialist feminism more relevant to effective progressive politics. T he H om ew ork Econom y The “New Industrial Revolution” is producing a new worldwide working class. The extreme mobility of capital and the emerging international divi­ sion of labor are intertwined with the emergence of new collectivities, and the weakening of familiar groupings. These developments are neither gen­ der- nor race-neutral. White men in advanced industrial societies have become newly vulnerable to permanent job loss, and women are not disap­ pearing from the job rolls at the same rates as men. It is not simply that women in third-world countries are the preferred labor force for the sciencebased multinationals in the export-processing sectors, particularly in elec­ tronics. The picture is more systematic and involves reproduction, sexuality, culture, consumption, and production. In the prototypical Silicon Valley, many women’s lives have been structured around employment in electronicsdependent jobs, and their intimate realities include serial heterosexual monogamy, negotiating childcare, distance from extended kin or most other forms of traditional community, a high likelihood of loneliness and extreme economic vulnerability as they age. The ethnic and racial diversity of women in Silicon Valley structures a microcosm of conflicting differences in cul­ ture, family, religion, education, language. Richard Gordon has called this new situation the homework economy.9 Although he includes the phenomenon of literal homework emerging in con­ nection with electronics assembly, Gordon intends “homework economy” to name a restructuring of work that broadly has the characteristics formerly ascribed to female jobs, jobs literally done only by women. Work is being redefined as both literally female and feminized, whether performed by men or women. To be feminized means to be made extremely vulnerable; able to be disassembled, reassembled, exploited as a reserve labor force; seen less as workers than as servers; subjected to time arrangements on and off the paid job that make a mockery of a limited work day; leading an existence that always borders on being obscene, out of place, and reducible to sex. Deskilling is an old strategy newly applicable to formerly privileged work­ ers. However, the homework economy does not refer only to large-scale deskilling, nor does it deny that new areas of high skill are emerging, even for women and men previously excluded from skilled employment. Rather, the concept indicates that factory, home, and market are integrated on a new scale and that the places of women are crucial— and need to be analyzed

9. For the homework economy and some support­ ing argum ents: Richard Gordon, “T h e Comput­ erization o f Daily L ife, the Sexual Division of Labor, and the Homework Economy,” in R. Gor­ don, ed., M icroelectronics in Transition (Nor­ wood, N .J.: Ablex, 1985); Patricia Hill C ollins, “Third World Women in A m erica,” and Sara G. Burr, “Woman and W ork,” in Barbara K. Haber, ed., T he W om en’s A nnual, 1981 (Boston: G. K. H all, 1982); Ju d ith Gregory and Karen Nussbaum, “Race against Tim e: Automation of the

O ffice,” O ffice: Technology and P eople 1 (1982), pp. 1 9 7 -2 3 6 ; Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, T he New Class War: R eagan’s A ttack on the W elfare State and Its C on sequ en ces (New York: Pantheon, 1982); M icroelectronics Group,

M icroelectronics: C apitalist Technology an d the Working Class (London: C S E , 1980); Karin Stallard, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Holly Sklar, Pov­ erty in the A m erican Dream (Boston: South End Press, 1983), including a useful organization and resource list [Haraway’s note].

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for differences among women and for meanings for relations between men and women in various situations. The homework economy as a world capitalist organizational structure is made possible by (not caused by) the new technologies. The success of the attack on relatively privileged, mostly white, mens unionized jobs is tied to the power of the new communications technologies to integrate and control labor despite extensive dispersion and decentralization. The consequences of the new technologies are felt by women both in the loss of the family (male) wage (if they ever had access to this white privilege) and in the char­ acter of their own jobs, which are becoming capital-intensive, e.g., office work and nursing. The new economic and technological arrangements are also related to the collapsing welfare state and the ensuing intensification of demands on women to sustain daily life for themselves as well as for men, children, and old people. The feminization of poverty— generated by dismantling the wel­ fare state, by the homework economy where stable jobs become the excep­ tion, and sustained by the expectation that women’s wage will not be matched by a male income for the support of children— has become an urgent focus. The causes of various women-headed households are a function of race, class, or sexuality; but their increasing generality is a ground for coalitions of women on many issues. That women regularly sustain daily life partly as a function of their enforced status as mothers is hardly new; the kind of inte­ gration with the overall capitalist and progressively war-based economy is new. The particular pressure, for example, on U .S . black women, who have achieved an escape from (barely) paid domestic service and who now hold clerical and similar jobs in large numbers, has large implications for contin­ ued enforced black poverty with employment. Teenage women in industri­ alizing areas of the third world increasingly find themselves the sole or major source of a cash wage for their families, while access to land is ever more problematic. These developments must have major consequences in the psy­ chodynamics and politics of gender and race. Within the framework of three major stages of capitalism (commercial/ early industrial, monopoly, multinational)— tied to nationalism, imperialism, and multinationalism, and related to Jameson’s three dominant aesthetic periods of realism, modernism, and post-modernism— I would argue that specific forms of families dialectically relate to forms of capital and to its political and cultural concomitants. Although lived problematically and unequally, ideal forms of these families might be schematized as (1) the patriarchal nuclear family, structured by the dichotomy between public and private and accompanied by the white bourgeois ideology of separate spheres1 and nineteenth-century Anglo-American bourgeois feminism; (2) the mod­ ern family mediated (or enforced) by the welfare state and institutions like the family wage, with a flowering of a-feminist heterosexual ideologies, including their radical versions represented in Greenwich Village2 around World War I; and (3) the “family” of the homework economy with its oxymoronic structure of women-headed households and its explosion of femi­ nisms and the paradoxical intensification and erosion of gender itself. l .T h a t is, the division o f life into the public sphere o f work and the private sphere of the home, where authority was said to be held by men and by women, respectively.

2. A neighborhood in New York C ity (in Lower M anhattan), which for much of the 20th century was associated with unconventional artists and radicals.

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This is the context in which the projections for worldwide structural unemployment stemming from the new technologies are part of the pic­ ture of the homework economy. As robotics and related technologies put men out of work in “developed” countries and exacerbate failure to generate male jobs in third-world “development,” and as the automated office becomes the rule even in labor-surplus countries, the feminization of work intensi­ fies. Black women in the United States have long known what it looks like to face the structural underemployment (“feminization”) of black men, as well as their own highly vulnerable position in the wage economy. It is no longer a secret that sexuality, reproduction, family, and community life are inter­ woven with this economic structure in myriad ways which have also differ­ entiated the situations of white and black women. Many more women and men will contend with similar situations, which will make cross-gender and race alliances on issues of basic life support (with or without jobs) neces­ sary, not just nice. The new technologies also have a profound effect on hunger and on food production for subsistence worldwide. Rae Lessor Blumberg estimates that women produce about fifty per cent of the worlds subsistence food.3 Women are excluded generally from benefiting from the increased high-tech com­ modification of food and energy crops, their days are made more arduous because their responsibilities to provide food do not diminish, and their reproductive situations are made more complex. Green Revolution technol­ ogies interact with other high-tech industrial production to alter gender divisions of labor and differential gender migration patterns. The new technologies seem deeply involved in the forms of “privatization” that Ros Petchesky has analyzed, in which militarization, right-wing family ideologies and policies, and intensified definitions of corporate property as private synergistically interact.4 The new communications technologies are fundamental to the eradication of “public life” for everyone. This facilitates 3. Rae Lessor Blum berg, “A G eneral Theory of Sex and Its Application to the Position of Women in Today’s World Econom y,” paper delivered to Sociology Board, U C SC , February 1983 [“A G en­ eral Theory of Gender S tratification,” S ociologi­ cal T heory 2 (1984): 2 3 -1 0 1 ]. Also Blum berg,

Stratification: S ocioecon om ic and Sexual Inequality (Boston: Brown, 1981). See also Sally H acker, “Doing It the Hard Way: Ethnographic Studies in the Agribusiness and Engineering Classroom,” California American Studies Associ­ ation, Pomona, 1984 [in her “Doing It the Hard

Way”: Investigations o f G en der an d Technology (B oston: Unwin Hyman, 1990)]; S. H acker and Lisa Bovit, “A griculture to Agribusiness: T ech ni­ cal Imperatives and Changing Roles,” Proceedings o f the Society fo r the History o f Technology, M il­ waukee, 1981; Law rence Busch and W illiam Lacy, S cien ce, Agriculture, and the Politics o f Research (Boulder, Colo.: W estview Press, 1983); Denis W ilfred , “Capital and A griculture, a Review o f M arxian P roblem atics,” Studies in Political Economy, no. 7 (1982), pp. 1 2 7 -5 4 ; Car­ olyn Sachs, T he Invisible Farmers: W omen in Agricultural Production (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & A llanheld, 1983). Than ks to Elizabeth Bird, “Green Revolution Im perialism ,” I & II, ms., U C SC , 1984. The conjunction of the Green Rev­ olution's social relations with biotechnologies like

plant genetic engineering makes the pressures on land in the third world increasingly intense. A ID ’s [Agency for International Development] e sti­ mates (New York Times, 14 O ctober 1984) used at the 1984 World Food Day are that in A frica, women produce about 9 0 per cent of rural food supplies, about 6 0 —8 0 per cent in Asia, and pro­ vide 40 per cent o f agricultural labor in the Near East and Latin Am erica. Blumberg charges that world organizations’ agricultural politics, as well as those o f m ultinationals and national govern­ ments in the third world, generally ignore funda­ mental issues in the sexual division of labor. T he present tragedy o f fam ine in A frica might owe as much to male supremacy as to capitalism , colo­ nialism, and rain patterns. More accurately, cap­ italism and racism are usually structurally male dom inant [Haraway’s note]. T h e G reen Revolu­ tion: the W estern campaign of the 1960s that introduced high-yield varieties o f specific staple crops and promoted pesticides to increase food production in developing countries. 4. Cynthia Enloe, “Women Textile Workers in the M ilitarization of Southeast A sia,” in Nash and Fernandez-Kelly, W omen and M en; Rosalind Petchesky, “A bortion, A nti-Fem inism , and the Rise of the New Right,” Feminist Studies, vol. 7, no. 2 (1981) [Haraway’s note].

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the mushrooming of a permanent high-tech military establishment at the cultural and economic expense of most people, but especially of women. Technologies like video games and highly miniaturized television seem cru­ cial to production of modern forms of “private life.” The culture of video games is heavily oriented to individual competition and extraterrestrial war­ fare. High-tech, gendered imaginations are produced here, imaginations that can contemplate destruction of the planet and a sci-fi escape from its consequences. More than our imaginations is militarized; and the other real­ ities of electronic and nuclear warfare are inescapable. The new technologies affect the social relations of both sexuality and of reproduction, and not always in the same ways. The close ties of sexuality and instrumentality, of views of the body as a kind of private satisfactionand utility-maximizing machine, are described nicely in sociobiological ori­ gin stories that stress a genetic calculus and explain the inevitable dialectic of domination of male and female gender roles.5 These sociobiological sto­ ries depend on a high-tech view of the body as a biotic component or cyber­ netic communications system. Among the many transformations of reproductive situations is the medical one, where women’s bodies have boundaries newly permeable to both ‘Visualization” and “intervention.” Of course, who controls the interpretation of bodily boundaries in medical hermeneutics is a major feminist issue. The speculum6 served as an icon of women’s claiming their bodies in the 1970s; that hand-craft tool is inade­ quate to express our needed body politics in the negotiation of reality in the practices of cyborg reproduction. Self-help is not enough. The technologies of visualization recall the important cultural practice of hunting with the camera and the deeply predatory nature of a photographic consciousness.7 Sex, sexuality, and reproduction are central actors in high-tech myth sys­ tems structuring our imaginations of personal and social possibility. *

«

*

W omen in the Integrated Circuit Let me summarize the picture of women’s historical locations in advanced industrial societies, as these positions have been restructured partly through the social relations of science and technology. If it was ever possible ideo­ logically to characterize women’s lives by the distinction of public and pri­ vate domains— suggested by images of the division of working-class life into

5. For a fem inist version o f this logic, see Sarah B laffer Hrdy, T h e W oman T hat Never Evolved (Cam bridge, M ass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). For an analysis of scientific women’s sto­ rytelling practices, especially in relation to socio­ biology, in evolutionary debates around child abuse and infanticide, see Donna Haraway, “The C ontest for Prim ate Nature: Daughters of Man the Hunter in the Field, 1 9 6 0 - 8 0 ,” in M ark Kann, ed., T he Future o f A m erican D em ocracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), pp. 1 7 5 -2 0 8 [Haraway’s note]. 6. A medical instrument used in vaginal examina­ tions; feminist books such as Our Bodies, Ourselves (3 eds. in the 1970s) advocated self-examination.

7. For the moment o f transition o f hunting with guns to hunting with cam eras in the con struc­ tion of popular meanings of nature for an Ameri­ can urban immigrant public, see Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy,” Social Text, [no. 11 (W inter 1 9 8 4 -8 5 ), pp. 2 0 - 6 4 ] ; Roderick Nash, “T h e Exporting and Im porting o f Nature: Nature-Appreciation as a Commodity, 1850— 1980,” Perspectives in Am erican History, vol. 3 (1979), pp. 517—6 0 ; Susan Sontag, On Photogra­ phy (New York: Dell, 1977); and Douglas P res­ ton, “Shooting in Paradise,” Natural History, vol. 93, no. 12 (Decem ber 1984), pp. 14—19 [Haraway’s note].

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factory and home, of bourgeois life into market and home, and of gender existence into personal and political realms— it is now a totally misleading ideology, even to show how both terms of these dichotomies construct each other in practice and in theory. I prefer a network ideological image, sug­ gesting the profusion of spaces and identities and the permeability of bound­ aries in the personal body and in the body politic. “Networking” is both a feminist practice and a multinational corporate strategy— weaving is for oppositional cyborgs. The only way to characterize the informatics of domination is as a mas­ sive intensification of insecurity and cultural impoverishment, with common failure of subsistence networks for the most vulnerable. Since much of this picture interweaves with the social relations of science and technology, the urgency of a socialist-feminist politics addressed to science and technology is plain. There is much now being done, and the grounds for political work are rich. For example, the efforts to develop forms of collective struggle for women in paid work, like s e i u ’s District 925,8 should be a high priority for all of us. These efforts are profoundly tied to technical restructuring of labor processes and reformations of working classes. These efforts also are pro­ viding understanding of a more comprehensive kind of labor organization, involving community, sexuality, and family issues never privileged in the largely white male industrial unions. The structural rearrangements related to the social relations of science and technology evoke strong ambivalence. But it is not necessary to be ulti­ mately depressed by the implications of late-twentieth-century women’s rela­ tion to all aspects of work, culture, production of knowledge, sexuality, and reproduction. For excellent reasons, most Marxisms see domination best and have trouble understanding what can only look like false conscious­ ness9 and people’s complicity in their own domination in late capitalism. It is crucial to remember that what is lost, perhaps especially from women’s points of view, is often virulent forms of oppression, nostalgically naturalized in the face of current violation. Ambivalence toward the disrupted unities medi­ ated by high-tech culture requires not sorting consciousness into categories of “clear-sighted critique grounding a solid political epistemology” versus “manipulated false consciousness,” but subtle understanding of emerging pleasures, experiences, and powers with serious potential for changing the rules of the game. There are grounds for hope in the emerging bases for new kinds of unity across race, gender, and class, as these elementary units of socialist-feminist analysis themselves suffer protean transformations. Intensifications of hard­ ship experienced worldwide in connection with the social relations of sci­ ence and technology are severe. But what people are experiencing is not transparently clear, and we lack sufficiently subtle connections for collec­ tively building effective theories of experience. Present efforts— Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, anthropological— to clarify even “our” experience are rudimentary. 8. The division of the Service Employees Inter­ national Union formed in 1981 that represents librarians, college and university support staff, employees of local government, and other office workers.

9. A M arxist term referring to an individual’s ten­ dency to view reality in ways congruent with the interests of the dominant orthodoxy rather than in ways that reflect his or her own class interest.

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I am conscious of the odd perspective provided by my historical position— a Ph.D. in biology for an Irish Catholic girl was made possible by Sputniks1 impact on u.s. national science-education policy. I have a body and mind as much constructed by the post—World War II arms race and cold war as by the womens movements. There are more grounds for hope by focusing on the contradictory effects of politics designed to produce loyal American tech­ nocrats, which as well produced large numbers of dissidents, rather than by focusing on the present defeats. The permanent partiality of feminist points of view has consequences for our expectations of forms of political organization and participation. We do not need a totality in order to work well. The feminist dream of a common lan­ guage, like all dreams for a perfectly true language, of perfectly faithful naming of experience, is a totalizing and imperialist one. In that sense, dialectics2 too is a dream language, longing to resolve contradiction. Perhaps, ironically, we can learn from our fusions with animals and machines how not to be Man, the embodiment of Western logos.3 From the point of view of pleasure in these potent and taboo fusions, made inevitable by the social relations of sci­ ence and technology, there might indeed be a feminist science. Cyborgs: A Myth o f Political Identity *

*

To recapitulate, certain dualisms have been persistent in Western traditions; they have all been systemic to the logics and practices of domination of women, people of color, nature, workers, animals— in short, domination of all constituted as others, whose task is to mirror the self. Chief among these troubling dualisms are self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/ made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man. The self is the One who is not dominated, who knows that by the service of the other; the other is the one who holds the future, who knows that by the experience of domination, which gives the lie to the autonomy of the self. To be One is to be autonomous, to be powerful, to be God; but to be One is to be an illusion, and so to be involved in a dialectic of apocalypse with the other. Yet to be other is to be multiple, without clear boundary, frayed, insub­ stantial. One is too few, but two are too many. High-tech culture challenges these dualisms in intriguing ways. It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body in machines that resolve into coding practices. Insofar as we know ourselves in both formal discourse (e.g., biology) and in daily practice (e.g., the homework economy in the inte­ grated circuit), we find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras.

1 .T h e first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on O ctober 4, 1957; its launch spurred the United States to invest in science and science education and to begin the space race. 2. M arxist d ialectics relates so ciety ’s cultural sphere (its politics, arts, philosophy, and religion) directly to its socioeconom ic foundations, depict­

ing society— including its apparent contradic­ tions— as a coherent total system. 3. Haraway alludes to the French philosopher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a (1930—20 0 4 ), who deconstructs W estern logos (literally, “word, discourse, rea­ son,” from the Greek) and its partial conception of “M an.”

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Biological organisms have become biotic systems, communications devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic. One consequence is that our sense of connection to our tools is height­ ened. The trance state experienced by many computer users has become a staple of science-fiction film and cultural jokes. Perhaps paraplegics and other severely handicapped people can (and sometimes do) have the most intense experiences of complex hybridization with other communication devices. Anne McCaffrey s T he Ship W ho Sang4 explored the consciousness of a cyborg, hybrid of girls brain and complex machinery, formed after the birth of a severely handicapped child. Gender, sexuality, embodiment, skill: all were reconstituted in the story. Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? From the seventeenth century till now, machines could be animated— given ghostly souls to make them speak or move or to account for their orderly development and mental capacities. Or organisms could be mechanized— reduced to body understood as resource of mind. These machine/organism relationships are obsolete, unnecessary. For us, in imagination and in other practice, machines can be prosthetic devices, intimate components, friendly selves. We don’t need organic holism to give impermeable wholeness, the total woman and her fem­ inist variants (mutants?). #

Jjc

#

Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imagina­ tions. The Centaurs and Amazons5 of ancient Greece established the limits of the centered polis of the Greek male human by their disruption of mar­ riage and boundary pollutions of the warrior with animality and woman. Unseparated twins and hermaphrodites were the confused human material in early modern France who grounded discourse on the natural and super­ natural, medical and legal, portents and diseases— all crucial to establish­ ing modern identity.6 The evolutionary and behavioral sciences of monkeys and apes have marked the multiple boundaries of late-twentieth-century industrial identities. Cyborg monsters in feminist science fiction define quite different political possibilities and limits from those proposed by the mun­ dane fiction of Man and Woman. There are several consequences to taking seriously the imagery of cyborgs as other than our enemies. Our bodies, ourselves; bodies are maps of power and identity. Cyborgs are no exceptions. A cyborg body is not innocent; it was not born in a garden; it does not seek unitary identity and so generate antagonistic dualisms without end (or until the world ends); it takes irony for granted. One is too few, and two is only one possibility. Intense pleasure in skill, machine skill, ceases to be a sin, but an aspect of embodiment. The machine is not an it to be animated, worshiped and dominated. The machine 4. A 1969 novel by M cC affrey (1 9 2 6 —2011). 5. In G reek mythology, fem ale warriors. C en ­ taurs: creatures with the body of a horse and the torso and upper body of a man. 6. Page D uBois, Centaurs and Amazons (Ann Arbor: University of M ichigan Press, 1982); Lor­ raine Daston and Katharine Park, “Herm aphro­

dites in Renaissance France,” [Critical Matrix 1, no. 5 (1985), pp. 1—19]; K atharine Park and Lor­ raine D aston, “U nnatural C onceptions: T he Study o f M onsters in 16th and 17th Century France and England,” Past an d Present, no. 92 (August 1981), pp. 2 0 - 5 4 [Haraway’s note].

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is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they. Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females. Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sex­ ual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all. The ideologically charged question of what counts as daily activity, as experience, can be approached by exploiting the cyborg image. Feminists have recently claimed that women are given to dailiness, that women more than men somehow sustain daily life, and so have a privileged epistemologi­ cal position potentially. There is a compelling aspect to this claim, one that makes visible unvalued female activity and names it as the ground of life. But the ground of life? What about all the ignorance of women, all the exclu­ sions and failures of knowledge and skill? What about men’s access to daily competence, to knowing how to build things, to take them apart, to play? What about other embodiments? Cyborg gender is a local possibility taking a global vengeance. Race, gender, and capital require a cyborg theory of wholes and parts. There is no drive in cyborgs to produce total theory, but there is an intimate experience of boundaries, their construction and decon­ struction. There is a myth system waiting to become a political language to ground one way of looking at science and technology and challenging the informatics of domination. One last image: organisms and organismic, holistic politics depend on metaphors of rebirth and invariably call on the resources of reproductive sex. I would suggest that cyborgs have more to do with regeneration and are sus­ picious of the reproductive matrix and of most birthing. For salamanders, regeneration after injury, such as the loss of a limb, involves regrowth of structure and restoration of function with the constant possibility of twin­ ning or other odd topographical productions at the site of former injury. The regrown limb can be monstrous, duplicated, potent. We have all been injured, profoundly. We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender. Cyborg imagery can help express two crucial arguments in this essay: (1) the production of universal, totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality, probably always, but certainly now; (2) taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti­ science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skillful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial con­ nection with others, in communication with all of our parts. It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of complex dominations. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia. It is an imagination of a feminist speaking in tongues to strike fear into the circuits of the super-savers of the new right. It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, rela­

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tionships, spaces, stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. 1985

From The Com panion Species M anifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness C om panions In “The Cyborg Manifesto,”1 I tried to write a surrogacy agreement, a trope,2 a figure for living within and honoring the skills and practices of con­ temporary technoculture without losing touch with the permanent war apparatus of a non-optional, post-nuclear world and its transcendent, very material lies. Cyborgs can be figures for living within contradictions, atten­ tive to the naturecultures3 of mundane practices, opposed to the dire myths of self-birthing, embracing mortality as the condition for life, and alert to the emergent historical hybridities actually populating the world at all its contingent scales. However, cyborg refigurations hardly exhaust the tropic work required for ontological4 choreography in technoscience. I have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in the much bigger, queer family of companion species, in which reproductive biotechnopolitics are generally a surprise, sometimes even a nice surprise. I know that a US middle-aged white woman with a dog playing the sport of agility is no match for the automated warriors, terror­ ists, and their transgenic kin in the annals of philosophical inquiry or the ethnography5 of naturecultures. Besides, (1) self-figuration is not my task; (2) transgenics are not the enemy; and (3) contrary to lots of dangerous and unethical projection in the Western world that makes domestic canines into furry children, dogs are not about oneself. Indeed, that is the beauty of dogs. They are not a projection, nor the realization of an intention, nor the telos of anything. They are dogs; i.e., a species in obligatory, constitutive, histori­ cal, protean relationship with human beings. The relationship is not espe­ cially nice; it is full of waste, cruelty, indifference, ignorance, and loss, as well as of joy, invention, labor, intelligence, and play. I want to learn how to narrate this co-history and how to inherit the consequences of co-evolution in natureculture. There cannot be just one companion species; there have to be at least two to make one. It is in the syntax; it is in the flesh. Dogs are about the ines­ capable, contradictory story of relationships— co-constitutive relationships in which none of the partners pre-exist the relating, and the relating is never done once and for all. Historical specificity and contingent mutability rule

1. “A M anifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and So cialist Fem inism in the 19 8 0 s,” Socialist Review 15.2 (1985): 6 5 -1 0 7 (excerpted above). 2. A figure of speech. “Surrogacy agreem ent”: a legal contract of the kind that governs surrogate motherhood. 3. Haraway’s coinage that emphasizes the inextri­ cable entanglem ents of nature and culture, of

the m aterial and sem iotic, and of body and mind. “Cyborgs”: cybernetic organism s, both m echani­ cal and organic. 4. Concerned with the nature o f being. 5. Descriptive study of a culture or people (a form o f anthropology). “Transgenic kin”: those whose genom es have been altered by the addition o f a gene from an unrelated species.

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all the way down, into nature and culture, into naturecultures. There is no foundation; there are only elephants supporting elephants all the way down.6 Companion animals comprise only one kind of companion species, and neither category is very old in American English. In United States English, the term “companion animal” emerges in medical and psycho-sociological work in veterinary schools and related sites from the middle 1970s. This research told us that, except for those few non-dog loving New Yorkers who obsess about unscooped dog shit in the streets, having a dog lowers one’s blood pressure and ups one’s chances of surviving childhood, surgery, and divorce. Certainly, references in European languages to animals serving as com­ panions, rather than as working or sporting dogs, predate this US biomedi­ cal, techno-scientific literature by centuries. Further, in China, Mexico, and elsewhere in the ancient and contemporary world, the documentary, archae­ ological, and oral evidence for dogs as pets, in addition to a myriad of other jobs, is strong. In the early Americas dogs assisted in hauling, hunting, and herding for various peoples. For others, dogs were food or a source of fleece. Dog people like to forget that dogs were also lethal guided weapons and instruments of terror in the European conquest of the Americas, as well as in Alexander the Greats' paradigm-setting imperial travels. With combat his­ tory in Viet Nam as an officer in the US marines,8 Akita breeder and dog writer John Cargill reminds us that before cyborg warfare, trained dogs were among the best intelligent weapons systems. And tracking hounds terror­ ized slaves and prisoners, as well as rescued lost children and earthquake victims. Listing these functions does not begin to get at the heterogeneous his­ tory of dogs in symbol and story all over the world, nor does the list of jobs tell us how dogs were treated or how they regarded their human associates. In A History o f Dogs in the Early Am ericas (Yale, 1997), Marion Schwartz writes that some American Indian hunting dogs went through similar ritu­ als of preparation as did their humans, including among the Achuar9 of South America the ingestion of an hallucinogen. In In the Com pany o f Ani­ mals (Cambridge, 1986), James Serpell relates that for the nineteenth-century Comanche1 of the Great Plains, horses were of great practical value. But horses were treated in a utilitarian way, while dogs, kept as pets, merited fond stories and warriors mourned their deaths. Some dogs were and are vermin; some were and are buried like people. Contemporary Navajo2 herd­ ing dogs relate to their landscape, their sheep, their people, coyotes, and dog or human strangers in historically specific ways. In cities, villages, and rural areas all over the world, many dogs live parallel lives among people, more or less tolerated, sometimes used and sometimes abused. No one term can do justice to this history.

6. T h is phrase com bines a view about Hindu cosmology— that the world is supported on the backs of elephants who stand on a tu rtle— with the more common expression of infinite regress, “Turtles all the way down.” 7. T h e greatest general o f antiquity (3 5 6 —323 b .c . e .); king of M acedonia, his conquests extended as far as Egypt and India. 8. U .S. combat troops were overtly engaged in the

conflict between North and South Vietnam from 1964 to 1975. 9. Indigenous A m azonian co m m u n ity dw elling on

the border between Ecuador and Peru. 1. Indigenous tribe of North Am erica, who in the 18th and 19th centuries were equestrian nomads ranging over the southern Great Plains. 2. An indigenous tribe of the southw estern United States.

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However, the term “companion animal” enters US technoculture through the post—Civil War land-grant academic institutions housing the vet schools. That is, “companion animal” has the pedigree of the mating between technoscientific expertise and late industrial pet-keeping practices, with their democratic masses in love with their domestic partners, or at least with the non-human ones. Companion animals can be horses, dogs, cats, or a range of other beings willing to make the leap to the biosociality of service dogs, family members, or team members in cross-species sports. Generally speak­ ing, one does not eat ones companion animals (nor get eaten by them); and one has a hard time shaking colonialist, ethnocentric, ahistorical attitudes toward those who do (eat or get eaten). From Species “Companion species” is a bigger and more heterogeneous category than com­ panion animal, and not just because one must include such organic beings as rice, bees, tulips, and intestinal flora, all of whom make life for humans what it is— and vice versa. I want to write the keyword entry for “compan­ ion species” to insist on four tones simultaneously resonating in the linguis­ tic, historical voice box that enables uttering this term. First, as a dutiful daughter of Darwin,3 1 insist on the tones of the history of evolutionary biol­ ogy, with its categories of populations, rates of gene flow, variation, selection, and biological species. The debates in the last 150 years about whether the category “species” denotes a real biological entity or merely fig­ ures a convenient taxonomic box sound the over- and undertones. Species is about biological kind, and scientific expertise is necessary to that kind of reality. Post-cyborg, what counts as biological kind troubles previous cate­ gories of organism. The machinic and the textual are internal to the organic and vice versa in irreversible ways. Second, schooled by Thomas Aquinas and other Aristotelians,4 I remain alert to species as generic philosophical kind and category. Species is about defining difference, rooted in polyvocal fugues of doctrines of cause. Third, my soul indelibly marked by a Catholic formation, I hear in spe­ cies the doctrine of the Real Presence5 under both species, bread and wine, the transubstantiated signs of the flesh. Species is about the corporeal join of the material and the semiotic in ways unacceptable to the secular Prot­ estant sensibilities of the American academy and to most versions of the human science of semiotics. Fourth, converted by Marx and Freud6 and a sucker for dubious etymolo­ gies, I hear in species filthy lucre, specie, gold, shit, filth, wealth. In Love’s Body, Norman O. Brown7 taught me about the join of Marx and Freud in shit and gold, in primitive scat and civilized metal, in specie. I met this join 3. Charles Darwin (1 8 0 9 -1 8 8 2 ), English natural­ ist and theorist o f evolution. 4. Followers of the Greek philosopher a r i s t o t l e (3 8 4 —322 b .c . e .), whose writings on science dom­ inated European thought until the Renaissance. a q u i n a s (1 2 2 5 —1274 c . E . ) , medieval Sch o lastic philosopher and Dom inican theologian. 5. The belief, in some Christian religions, that the flesh-and-blood Jesu s C hrist is in reality and not merely symbolically present in E ucharistic bread

and wine. In the C atholic Church, this is called the doctrine of transubstantiation. 6. s i g m u n d f r e u d (1 8 5 6 -1 9 3 9 ), Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, k a r l m a r x (1 8 1 8 -1 8 8 3 ), G er­ man econom ic and political theorist and revolu­ tionary. 7. A m erican philosopher (1 9 1 3 -2 0 0 2 ) whose work wedded psychoanalysis and Marxism. L ove’s Body (1966) explores the role of eroticism in human history.

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again in modern US dog culture, with its exuberant commodity culture; its vibrant practices of love and desire; its structures that tie together the state, civil society, and the liberal individual; its mongrel technologies of purebred subject- and object-making. As I glove my hand in the plastic film— courtesy of the research empires of industrial chemistry— that protects my morning New York Times to pick up the microcosmic ecosystems, called scat, pro­ duced anew each day by my dogs, I find pooper scoopers quite a joke, one that lands me back in the histories of the incarnation, political economy, technoscience, and biology. In sum, “companion species” is about a four-part composition, in which co-constitution, finitude, impurity, historicity, and complexity are what is. T he C om panion Species M anifesto is, thus, about the implosion of nature and culture in the relentlessly historically specific, joint lives of dogs and people, who are bonded in significant otherness. Many are interpellated into that story, and the tale is instructive also for those who try to keep a hygienic distance. I want to convince my readers that inhabitants of technoculture become who we are in the symbiogenetic tissues of naturecultures, in story and in fact. I take “interpellation” from the French post-structuralist and Marxist phi­ losopher Louis Althusser’s8 theory for how subjects are constituted from con­ crete individuals by being “hailed” through ideology into their subject positions in the modern state. Today, through our ideologically loaded narra­ tives of their lives, animals “hail” us to account for the regimes in which they and we must live. We “hail” them into our constructs of nature and culture, with major consequences of life and death, health and illness, longevity and extinction. We also live with each other in the flesh in ways not exhausted by our ideologies. Stories are much bigger than ideologies. In that is our hope. In this long philosophical introduction, I am violating a major rule of “Notes of a Sports Writer’s Daughter,” my doggish scribblings in honor of my sports writer father, which pepper this manifesto. The “Notes” require there to be no deviation from the animal stories themselves. Lessons have to be inextricably part of the story; it’s a rule of truth as a genre for those of us— practicing and lapsed Catholics and their fellow travelers— who believe that the sign and the flesh are one. Reporting the facts, telling a true story, I write “Notes of a Sports Writ­ er’s Daughter.” A sports writer’s job is, or at least was, to report the game story. I know this because as a child I sat in the press box in the AAA base­ ball club’s Denver Bears’9 Stadium late at night watching my father write and file his game stories. A sports writer, perhaps more than other news people, has a curious job— to tell what happened by spinning a story that is just the facts. The more vivid the prose, the better; indeed, if crafted faith­ fully, the more potent the tropes, the truer the story. My father did not want to have a sports column, a more prestigious activity in the newspaper busi­ ness. He wanted to write the game stories, to stay close to the action, to tell it like it is, not to look for the scandals and the angles for the meta-story, the column. My father’s faith was in the game, where fact and story cohabit.

8. French philosopher (1 9 1 8 -1 9 9 0 ); see above. 9. A team that played in Denver, Colorado, in what was called Bears Stadium from 1948 until

1968; it was the highest-level minor league affiliate of a number of different major league teams,

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I grew up in the bosom of two major institutions that counter the mod­ ernist belief in the no-fault divorce, based on irrevocable differences, of story and fact. Both of these institutions— the Church and the Press— are famously corrupt, famously scorned (if constantly used) by Science, and nonetheless indispensable in cultivating a people’s insatiable hunger for truth. Sign and flesh; story and fact. In my natal house, the generative partners could not separate. They were, in down-and-dirty dog talk, tied. No wonder culture and nature imploded for me as an adult. And nowhere did that implosion have more force than in living the relationship and speaking the verb that passes as a noun: companion species. Is this what John meant when he said, “The Word was made flesh”?1 In the bottom of the ninth inning, the Bears down by two runs, with three on, two out, and two strikes, with the time deadline for filing the story five minutes away? I also grew up in the house of Science and learned at around the time my breast buds erupted about how many underground passages there are con­ necting the Estates2 and how many couplings keep sign and flesh, story and fact, together in the palaces of positive knowledge, falsifiable hypothesis, and synthesizing theory. Because my science was biology, I learned early that accounting for evolution, development, cellular function, genome complex­ ity, the molding of form across time, behavioral ecology, systems communi­ cation, cognition— in short, accounting for anything worthy of the name of biology— was not so different from getting a game story filed or living with the conundrums of the incarnation.3 To do biology with any kind of fidelity, the practitioner must tell a story, must get the facts, and must have the heart to stay hungry for the truth and to abandon a favorite story, a favorite fact, shown to be somehow off the mark. The practitioner must also have the heart to stay with a story through thick and thin, to inherit its discordant resonances, to live its contradictions, when that story gets at a truth about life that matters. Isn’t that kind of fidelity what has made the science of evo­ lutionary biology flourish and feed my people’s corporeal hunger for knowl­ edge over the last hundred and fifty years? Etymologically, facts refer to performance, action, deeds done— feats, in short. A fact is a past participle,4 a thing done, over, fixed, shown, performed, accomplished. Facts have made the deadline for getting into the next edi­ tion of the paper. Fiction, etymologically, is very close, but differs by partof-speech and tense. Like facts, fiction refers to action, but fiction is about the act of fashioning, forming, inventing, as well as feigning or feinting. Drawn from a present participle,5 fiction is in process and still at stake, not finished, still prone to falling afoul of facts, but also liable to showing some­ thing we do not yet know to be true, but will know. Living with animals, inhabiting their/our stories, trying to tell the truth about relationship, co­ habiting an active history: that is the work of companion species, for whom “the relation” is the smallest possible unit of analysis. 1. John 1.14, a gospel traditionally attributed to th e a p o stle S t. Jo h n (1st c . c e n tu ry c.E.). “T h e

W ord”: identified with Jesu s C hrist. 2. The orders (etats ) of the realm in France before the Revolution of 1789: the clergy, the nobility, and com m oners. (In the 19th century, British writers began referring to the press as the “fourth estate.”)

3. T h e C h ristian d octrine according to which God “becam e flesh” in M ary’s womb as Jesu s C hrist, at once fully human and divine. 4. “F act” is derived from factu m , the past parti­ ciple of the Latin verb meaning “to do” (facere ). 5. “Fiction” is derived from fictio, the noun m ean­ ing “fashioning, form ing,” itself derived from the verb “to fashion” (fingere ).

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So, I file dog stories for a living these days. All stories traffic in tropes, i.e., figures of speech necessary to say anything at all. Trope (Greek: tropos) means swerving or tripping. All language swerves and trips; there is never direct meaning; only the dogmatic think that trope-free communication is our province. My favorite trope for dog tales is “metaplasm.” Metaplasm means a change in a word, for example by adding, omitting, inverting, or transposing its letters, syllables, or sounds. The term is from the Greek metaplasmos, meaning remodeling or remolding. Metaplasm is a generic term for almost any kind of alteration in a word, intentional or unintentional. I use metaplasm to mean the remodeling of dog and human flesh, remolding the codes of life, in the history of companion-species relating. Compare and contrast “protoplasm,” “cytoplasm,” “neoplasm,” and “germplasm.”6 There is a biological taste to “metaplasm”—just what I like in words about words. Flesh and signifier, bodies and words, stories and worlds: these are joined in naturecultures. Metaplasm can signify a mistake, a stum­ bling, a troping that makes a fleshly difference. For example, a substitution in a string of bases in a nucleic acid/ can be a metaplasm, changing the meaning of a gene and altering the course of a life. Or, a remolded practice among dog breeders, such as doing more outcrosses and fewer close line breedings,8 could result from changed meanings of a word like “population” or “diversity.” Inverting meanings; transposing the body of communication; remolding, remodeling; swervings that tell the truth: I tell stories about sto­ ries, all the way down. Woof. Implicitly, this manifesto is about more than the relation of dogs and people. Dogs and people figure a universe. Clearly, cyborgs— with their his­ torical congealings of the machinic and the organic in the codes of infor­ mation, where boundaries are less about skin than about statistically defined densities of signal and noise— fit within the taxon9 of companion species. That is to say, cyborgs raise all the questions of histories, politics, and eth­ ics that dogs require. Care, flourishing, differences in power, scales of time— these matter for cyborgs. For example, what kind of temporal scale-making could shape labor systems, investment strategies, and consumption patterns in which the generation time of information machines became compatible with the generation times of human, animal, and plant communities and ecosystems? What is the right kind of pooper-scooper for a computer or a personal digital assistant? At the least, we know it is not an electronics dump in Mexico or India, where human scavengers get paid less than nothing for processing the ecologically toxic waste of the well informed. *

*

*

So, in T he Com panion Species M anifesto, I want to tell stories about relat­ ing in significant otherness, through which the partners come to be who we are in flesh and sign. The following shaggy dog stories about evolution, love, training, and kinds or breeds help me think about living well together with

6. Living genetic m aterial preserved for the pur­ poses of breeding or research. “Protoplasm ”: a general term for cytoplasm, the liquid that fills all cells and is surrounded by the cell mem brane. “Neoplasm”: a new or abnormal growth of tissue in the body, generally associated with cancer.

7. A complex organic acid composed of nucleotide chains (e.g., DNA); these acids are the main inform ation-carrying molecules in the cell. 8. The matings of related dogs. “O utcrosses”: the matings of unrelated dogs. 9. T hat is, the classification.

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the host of species with whom human beings emerge on this planet at every scale of time, body, and space. The accounts I offer are idiosyncratic and indicative rather than systematic, tendentious more than judicious, and rooted in contingent foundations rather than clear and distinct premises. Dogs are my story here, but they are only one player in the large world of companion species. Parts don’t add up to wholes in this manifesto— or in life in naturecultures. Instead, I am looking for Marilyn Stratherns “partial connections/’1 which are about the counter-intuitive geometries and incongruent translations necessary to getting on together, where the god-tricks of self certainty and deathless communion are not an option. 2003 1. The title of a 1991 book by the British anthropologist Strath ern (b. 1941); it argues that our accounts of the relations between entities, people, and cultures are always partial, never whole.

N. KATHERINE HAYLES b. 1943 Repeating a memorable phrase from William Gibsons Neuromancer (1984), the founding novel of cyberpunk fiction, N. Katherine Hayles describes the posthuman body as “data made flesh.” She argues that the post—World War II era marks an epistemic shift in the history of science and technology. This new cultural condi­ tion of virtuality is characterized by the increasing permeation of material reality by information codes and patterns. In the wake of cybernetic theories that erase the boundaries between human existence and computer simulation, subjectivity comes to be recast in terms of information paradigms. For Hayles, the contempo­ rary technoscientific mutation of subjectivity initiates a dismantling of the liberal humanist individual and the birth of a new age of the posthuman. But unlike other posthumanists, who entertain dehumanizing fantasies of scientific power and of immortality, Hayles stresses the importance of concrete material embodiment. This emphasis ensures that the subject retains both agency and singularity. Liter­ ary texts play a central role for Hayles: as cultural documents, revealing and often prophetic, they cast light on today’s ongoing transformations at the intersection of technology, the body, and culture. But literary reading in our time has undergone mutations. Hayles holds degrees in science and literature. She received a B.S. in chemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1966, an M.S. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1969, an M.A. in English from Michigan State University in 1970, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester in 1977. After teaching at Dartmouth College, the University of Missouri at Rolla, the Uni­ versity of Iowa, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Califor­ nia at Los Angeles, where she was a professor of English and design/media arts from 1992 to 2008, she joined Duke University’s Program in Literature. Hayles s numer­ ous honors and awards include two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fellowship at the National Humanities Center, and a Medal of Honor from the University of Helsinki. Her influential book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (1999) received the Rene Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Literary

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Theory from the American Comparative Literature Association and the Eaton Award for the Best Book in Science Fiction Criticism and Theory from the Univer­ sity of California at Riverside. Hayles is past president of the Society for Litera­ ture, Science, and the Arts. She was elected in 2015 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Like d o n n a h a r a w a y s pioneering writings on cyborg theory, Hayles’s work treats the miscegenation of human and machine as an occasion for reconsidering tradi­ tional humanist accounts of subjectivity and reading. While Haraway adopts the cyborg (human + machine) as an “ironic political myth” in the service of socialist feminism, Hayles uses it to examine the philosophical assumptions underlying cyber­ netic research and textual analysis. In How We Becam e Posthuman, for example, she sees the cyborg as a cultural icon of postmodern society that is closely linked to devel­ opments in science— specifically, how “information lost its body.” She posits three historical phases of human and machine relations in cybernetics: homeostasis or autonomy of the human body, from 1945 to 1960; reflexivity or integration of machine and body, from 1960 to 1980; and virtuality or symbiosis, from 1980 to the present. The progression is toward increasingly disembodied states of human existence. But Hayles warns against dematerialized definitions of information and corporeality, which she condemns as ill-advised philosophical extensions of the Cartesian separa­ tion of mind and body. Characteristically, she seeks balance, reconciliation, and syn­ thesis. Hayles’s posthuman theory resonates with the critique of the unified, universal human subject— a legacy of the Enlightenment— that has been mounted in con­ temporary times by poststructuralist, feminist, postcolonial, and other postmodern thinkers, notably r o s i b r a i d o t t i . It amplifies the conception of subjectivity as frag­ mented and heterogeneous, embedded at once in embodied existence, in material­ ized sets of cultural codes, in social institutions, and in technoscientific devices. In emphasizing posthuman em bodim ent, Hayles sees her project as a “rememory” of the sometimes overlooked engineering as well as broader cultural factors conducive to the condition of virtuality. The multiple interchanges between science and litera­ ture help illuminate these historical contingencies of virtuality. To counter abstract models of cybernetics, Hayles draws on narrative fiction such as Bernard Wolfe’s Lim bo (1952) and Philip K. Dick’s major novels of the 1960s. These texts offer, in her view, “embodied forms of discourse” that broach a range of social, political, and psychological issues by connecting scientific concepts to particular real-life situa­ tions. Like other leading theorists of the posthuman body, Hayles works in the context of postindustrial society. This is a world in which water is fluoridated; the air inside and outside buildings is tainted by innumerable chemicals (human-made and natu­ ral); and food is subjected to genetic modifications as well as other enhancements such as chemical fertilizers and antibiotics. Beginning at an early age, individuals receive multiple immunizations. Prostheses— from dental fillings and contact lenses to stents and hip replacements to transplanted body parts— modify human flesh. Under such conditions the sharply etched classical binary distinctions— man/ machine, nature/culture, purity/contamination, private/public— implode and inter­ mix. Where some theorists of the posthuman body see utopia over the horizon, others glimpse dystopia. Hayles characteristically takes a middle road, expressing both exal­ tation and concern, wonder and anxiety. In our selection, “How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine,” Hayles argues that digital media create new challenges but also new possibilities when it comes to established reading practices and paradigms that have long defined and shaped liter­ ary studies in the United States. Gently casting present-day zealots of print-based close and surface reading as remnants of a bygone era while also cautioning against unbridled faith in digital forms of literacy, such as hyperreading and machine read­ ing, Hayles maintains that all reading practices can and should complement each

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other, especially if we are to do justice to the tangible cultural and neurological effects of living with and alongside new media. The reality is that students who are expected to develop deep attention by performing close readings of canonical print texts in the classroom may find doing so difficult and even meaningless, for they are in fact already quite skilled in the hyperattention they need in order to skim through the Web in search of keywords and to read fragments of digital texts in truncated contexts. As these new forms of reading have increasingly become mainstream, evi­ dence suggests that digital literacy leads to significant changes in brain architecture in ways that make traditional close reading perhaps more arduous than ever before. Where others might see an unbridgeable gulf between different modes of reading, however, Hayles discerns new prospects for transforming the discipline of literary studies. In this respect, her work resonates with f r a n c o m o r e t t i s computational criticism, which seeks to find new ways for processing massive amounts of data through distant reading aided by computers. But unlike Moretti, who seems to aban­ don close reading altogether, Hayles adopts a more balanced approach, one that rec­ ognizes distinct advantages and disadvantages of print, digital, and machine literacies, believing the interaction among them to be mutually beneficial and to lead to increased effectiveness in analyzing texts. As her essay unfolds, Hayles carefully defines close reading, hyperreading, and machine reading in the context of the mounting information overload and distraction of twenty-first-century life. Her aim is to reconfigure reading to encompass all its modes and techniques. As a result, she does not fret, as do some of the respected literacy theo­ rists she cites, over ubiquitous skimming, rapid scrolling, and endless hyperlinks. Yet as broad as her definition of reading turns out to be, Hayles quickly dispatches the “sur­ face reading” famously advocated by S t e p h e n b e s t and s h a r o n m a r c u s , which she reduces in passing to pleasurable and appreciative reading. Similarly, her plan for reading gives short shrift to ideology critique, also known as symptomatic reading, or cultural critique. In the end, no space is allotted for critical reading, its definition, its dynamics, or its value. But despite these shortcomings, Hayles addresses head-on the growing crisis in present-day traditional literary reading prompted by the rise of both hyper and machine reading while taking into account tweets, blogs, email, and Facebook as well as the powerful computer programs that aggregate keywords, phrase frequencies, and all manner of patterns relevant to literature. “How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine” Keywords: The Body, Interpretation Theory, Media, Postmodernity, Print Culture, Reception Theory

How We Read: Close, Hyper, M achine The evidence is mounting: people in general, and young people in particu­ lar, are doing more screen reading of digital materials than ever before. Meanwhile, the reading of print books and of literary genres (novels, plays, and poems) has been declining over the last twenty years. Worse, reading skills (as measured by the ability to identify themes, draw inferences, etc.) have been declining in junior high, high school, college, and even graduate schools for the same period. Two flagship reports from the National Endow­ ment for the Arts,1 Reading at Risk, reporting the results of their own sur­ veys, and To Read or Not to Read, drawing together other large-scale surveys, 1. An independent federal agency established by Congress in 1965 that offers funding and support for projects exhibiting artistic excellence.

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show that over a wide range of data-gathering instruments the results are consistent: people read less print, and they read print less well [see Works Cited]. This leads the NEA chairman, Dana Gioia,2 to suggest that the cor­ relation between decreased literary reading and poorer reading ability is indeed a causal connection. The NEA argues (and I of course agree) that literary reading is a good in itself, insofar as it opens the portals of a rich literary heritage (see Griswold, McDonnell, and Wright for the continued high cultural value placed on reading). When decreased print reading, already a cultural concern, is linked with reading problems, it carries a dou­ ble whammy. Fortunately, the news is not all bad. A newer NEA report, Reading on the Rise, shows for the first time in more than two decades an uptick in novel reading (but not plays or poems), including among the digitally native young adult cohort (ages 18—24). The uptick may be a result of the Big Read initia­ tive by the NEA and similar programs by other organizations; whatever the reason, it shows that print can still be an alluring medium. At the same time, reading scores among fourth and eighth graders remain flat, despite the No Child Left Behind initiative.3 Notwithstanding the complexities of the national picture, it seems clear that a critical nexus occurs in the juncture of digital reading (exponentially increasing among all but the oldest cohort) and print reading (downward trending with a slight uptick recently). The cru­ cial questions are these: how to convert the increased digital reading into increased reading ability and how to make effective bridges between digital reading and the literacy traditionally associated with print. Mark Bauerlein (a consultant on the Reading at Risk report), in the offen­ sively titled T he Dumbest G eneration: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young A m ericans and Jeopardizes Our Future, makes no apology for linking the decline of reading skills directly to a decrease in print reading, issuing a stinging indictment to teachers, professors, and other mentors who think digital reading might encourage skills of its own. Not only is there no trans­ fer between digital reading and print reading skills in his view, but digital reading does not even lead to strong digital reading skills (93—111). I found T he Dumbest G eneration intriguing and infuriating in equal measure. The book is valuable for its synthesis of a great deal of empirical evidence, going well beyond the 2009 NEA report in this regard; it is infuriating in its ten­ dentious refusal to admit any salutary effects from digital reading. As Bau­ erlein moves from the solid longitudinal data on the decline in print reading to the digital realm, the evidence becomes scantier and the anecdotes more frequent, with examples obviously weighted toward showing the inanity of online chats, blogs, and F acebook4 entries. It would, of course, be equally possible to harvest examples showing the depth, profundity, and brilliance of online discourse, so Bauerlein’s argument here fails to persuade. The two earlier NEA reports (Reading at Risk; To Read) suffer from their own prob­ lems; their data do not clearly distinguish between print and digital read­ ing, and they fail to measure how much digital reading is going on or its effects on reading abilities (Kirschenbaum). Nevertheless, despite these lim­ 2. A m erican poet and critic (b. 1950); form er chairm an of the NEA ( 2 0 0 3 -0 9 ). 3. Legislation passed by Congress in 2001 that increased the federal governm ent’s role in hold-

ing public elem entary and secondary schools accountable for student outcomes. 4. T h e world’s largest online and social networking service, launched in 2 0 0 4 .

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itations and distortions, few readers are likely to come away unconvinced that there is something like a national crisis in reading and that it is espe­ cially acute with teen and young adult readers. At this point, scholars in literary studies should be jumping on their desks and waving their hands in the air, saying “Hey! Look at us! We know how to read really well, and we know how to teach students to read. There’s a national crisis in reading? We can help.” Yet there is little evidence that the profes­ sion of literary studies has made a significant difference in the national pic­ ture, including on the college level, where reading abilities continue to decline even into graduate school. This is strange. The inability to address the crisis successfully no doubt has multiple causes, but one in particular strikes me as vitally important. W hile literary studies continues to teach close reading to students, it does less well in exploiting the trend toward the digital. Students read incessantly in digital media and write in it as well, but only infrequently are they encouraged to do so in literature classes or in environments that encourage the transfer of print reading abilities to digi­ tal and vice versa. The two tracks, print and digital, run side by side, but messages from either track do not leap across to the other side. Close Reading and Disciplinary Identity To explore why this should be so and open possibilities for synergistic interac­ tions,5 I begin by revisiting that sacred icon of literary studies, close reading. When literary studies expanded its purview in the 1970s and 1980s, it turned to reading many different kinds of “texts,” from Donald Duck6 to fashion clothing, television programs to prison architecture (see Scholes). This expansion into diverse textual realms meant that literature was no longer the de facto center of the field. Faced with the loss of this traditional center, liter­ ary scholars found a replacement in close reading, the one thing virtually all literary scholars know how to do well and agree is important. Close reading then assumed a preeminent role as the essence of the disciplinary identity. Jane Gallop undoubtedly speaks for many when she writes, “I would argue that the most valuable thing English ever had to offer was the very thing that made us a discipline, that transformed us from cultured gentlemen into a profession [i.e., close reading]. . . . Close reading— learned through prac­ tice with literary texts, learned in literature classes— is a widely applicable skill, of real value to students as well as to scholars in other disciplines” (15). Rarbara Johnson, in her well-known essay “Teaching Deconstructively,” goes further: “This [close reading] is the only teaching that can properly be called literary; anything else is history of ideas, biography, psychology, ethics, or bad philosophy” (140). For Gallop, Johnson, and many others, close reading not only assures the professionalism of the profession but also makes liter­ ary studies an important asset to the culture. As such, close reading justi­ fies the discipline’s continued existence in the academy, including the monies spent to support literature faculty and departments. More broadly, close reading in this view constitutes the major part of the cultural capital that literary studies relies on to prove its worth to society. 5. T h at is, interactions of discrete agencies, agents, or conditions such that the total effect is greater than the sum of the individual effects.

6. Cartoon character created in 1934 by Walt Disney, a cartoonist and founder o f an entertainment conglom erate.

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Literary scholars generally think they know what is meant by close read­ ing, but, looked at more closely, it proves not so easy to define or exemplify. Jonathan Culler, quoting Peter Middleton, observes that “close reading is our contemporary term for a heterogeneous and largely unorganized set of practices and assumptions” (20). John Guillory is more specific when he historicizes close reading, arguing that “close reading is a modern academic practice with an inaugural moment, a period of development, and now per­ haps a period of decline” (“Close Reading” 8). He locates its prologue in the work of I. A. Richards/ noting that Richards contrasted close reading with the media explosion of his day, television. If that McLuhanesque view8 of media is prologue, then digital technologies, Guillory suggests, may be launching the epilogue. Citing my work on hyperattention (more on that shortly), Guillory sets up a dichotomy between the close reading recogniz­ able to most literary scholars— detailed and precise attention to rhetoric, style, language choice, and so forth through a word-by-word examination of a texts linguistic techniques— to the digital world of fast reading and sporadic sampling. In this he anticipates the close versus digital reading flagrantly on display in Bauerlein’s book. Amid the heterogeneity of close reading techniques, perhaps the domi­ nant one in recent years has been what Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus call “symptomatic reading.” In a special issue of Representations, Best and Marcus launch a frontal assault on symptomatic reading as it was inaugu­ rated by Fredric Jameson’s immensely influential T he Political Unconscious.9 For Jameson, with his motto “Always historicize,” the text is an alibi for ideo­ logical formations that are subtextual. The heroic task of the critic is to wrench a texts ideology into the light, “massy and dripping,” as Jameson puts it (245; qtd. in Crane 92), so that it can be unveiled and resisted (see Crane for a close analysis of Jameson s metaphors). The trace of symptomatic read­ ing may be detected in Johnson: listing textual features that merit special attention for close reading, she includes such constructions as “ambiguous words,” “undecidable syntax,” and “incompatibilities between what a text says and what it does” (141—42). Most if not all these foci are exactly the places where scholars doing symptomatic reading would look for evidence of a texts subsurface ideology. After more than two decades of symptomatic reading, however, many lit­ erary scholars are not finding it a productive practice, perhaps because (like many deconstructive readings1) its results have begun to seem formulaic, leading to predictable conclusions rather than compelling insights. In a para­ phrase of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s famous remark, “We are tired of trees,”2 the Representations special issue declared, We are tired of symp-

7. Influential English literary critic and rhetori­ cian (1892-1979) who is often labeled the father of New Criticism, a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the m id-20th century. 8. C h aracteristic o f M arshall M cL uhan (1911— 1980), influential C anadian com m unications theorist who famously declared that the medium is the message. 9. For this essay by b e s t (b. 1967) and m a r c u s (b. 1966), see below; for the Marxist critic j a m e s o n (b. 1934), see above.

1. Philosophical and literary textual analyses of a type developed mainly from the work of the French philosopher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a (1 9 3 0 2 0 0 4 ), involving the inversion and reinscription of a traditional philosophical opposition. 2. A reference to A Thousand Plateaus: C apital­ ism and Schizophrenia (1980; see above), by the French philosopher g i l l e s d e l e u z e (1925—1995) and the French psychoanalyst f e l i x g u a t t a r i (1 9 3 0 -1 9 9 2 ), who replace the metaphor o f the “tre e ” (a vertical com mand structure) with the horizontal “rhizom e.”

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tomatic reading. The issue s contributors are not the only ones who feel this way. In panel after panel at the conference sponsored by the National Humanities Center3 in spring 2010, entitled “The State and Stakes of Liter­ ary Studies,” presenters expressed similar views and urged a variety of other reading modes, including “surface reading,” in which the text is examined not for hidden clues but its overt messages; reading aimed at appreciation and articulation of the text's aesthetic value; and a variety of other reading strategies focusing on affect, pleasure, and cultural value. Digital and Print Literacies If one chapter of close reading is drawing to an end, what new possibilities are arising? Given the increase in digital reading, obvious sites for new kinds of reading techniques, pedagogical strategies, and initiatives are the inter­ actions between digital and print literacies. Literary studies has been slow to address these possibilities, however, because it continues to view close reading of print texts as the field s essence. As long as this belief holds sway, digital reading will at best be seen as peripheral to our concerns, pushed to the margins as not “really” reading or at least not compelling or interesting reading. Young people, who vote with their feet in college, are marching in another direction— the digital direction. No doubt those who already read well will take classes based on close reading and benefit from them, but what about others whose print-reading skills are not as highly developed? To reach them, we must start close to where they are, rather than where we imagine or hope they might be. As David Laurence observes, “good teachers deliber­ ately focus on what the reader can do, make sure that both teacher and stu­ dent recognize and acknowledge it, and use it as a platform of success from which to build” (4). This principle was codified by the Belarusian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky in the 1930s as the “zone of proximal development.” In Mind in Society: T he D evelopm ent o f Higher Psychological Processes, he defined this zone as “[t]he distance between the actual developmental level as determined by indepen­ dent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers” (86). The concept implies that if the distance is too great between what one wants someone else to learn and where instruction begins, the teaching will not be effective. Imagine, for example, trying to explain H am let4 to a three-year-old (an endless string of “Why?” would no doubt result, the all-purpose response of young children to the mysterious workings of the adult world). More recent work on “scaffolding” (Robert­ son, Fluck, and Webb) and Ron Tinsley and Kimberly Lebak on the “zone of reflective capacity” extends the idea and amplifies it with specific learning strategies. These authors agree that for learning to occur, the distance between instruction and available skills must be capable of being bridged, either through direct instruction or, as Vygotsky notes, through working with “more capable” peers. Bauerlein instances many responses from young people as they encounter difficult print texts to the effect the works are “boring” or 3. A private, nonprofit U .S. organization dedicated to advanced study in the hum anities (established in 1978).

4. English tragedy (ca. 1600) by W illiam Shakespeare, one o f the best-known and most exhaustively interpreted works in world literature.

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not worth the trouble. How can we convey to such students the deep engage­ ment we feel with challenging literary texts? I argue that we cannot do this effectively if our teaching does not take place in the zone of proximal devel­ opment, that is, if we are focused exclusively on print close reading. Before opinion solidifies behind new versions of close reading, I want to argue for a disciplinary shift to a broader sense of reading strategies and their inter­ relation. In 1999, James Sosnoski presciently introduced the concept of hyperread­ ing, which he defined as “reader-directed, screen-based, computer-assisted reading” (167). Examples include search queries (as in a G oogle5 search), fil­ tering by keywords, skimming, hyperlinking, “pecking” (pulling out a few items from a longer text), and fragmenting (163—72). Updating his model, we may add juxtaposing, as when several open windows allow one to read across several texts, and scanning, as when one reads rapidly through a blog to identify items of interest. There is considerable evidence that hyperread­ ing differs significantly from typical print reading, and moreover that hyper­ reading stimulates different brain functions than print reading. For example, Jakob Nielsen s consulting team, which advises companies and others on effective Web design, does usability research by asking test subjects to deliver running verbal commentaries as they encounter Web pages. Their reactions are recorded by a (human) tester; at the same time, eye-tracking equipment records their eye movements. The research shows that Web pages are typically read in an F pattern (Nielsen, “F-Shaped”). A person reads the first two or three lines across the page, but as the eye trav­ els down the screen, the scanned length gets smaller, and, by the time the bottom of the page is reached, the eye is traveling in a vertical line aligned with the left margin. (Therefore the worst location for important informa­ tion on a Web page is on the bottom right corner.) In Bauerlein’s view, this research confirms that digital reading is sloppy in the extreme; Bauerlein would no doubt appreciate Woody Allen’s6 quip, “I took a speed reading course and was able to read War and P eace7 in twenty minutes. It involves Russia” (qtd. in Dehaene 18). Nevertheless, other research not cited by Bau­ erlein indicates that this and similar strategies work well to identify pages of interest and to distinguish them from pages with little or no relevance to the topic at hand (Sillence, Briggs, Harris, and Fishwick). As a strategic response to an information-intensive environment, hyper­ reading is not without precedent. John Guillory, in “How Scholars Read,” notes that “[t]he fact of quantity is an intractable empirical given that must be managed by a determined method if analysis or interpretation is to be undertaken” (13). He is not talking here about digital reading but about archival research that requires a scholar to move through a great deal of material quickly to find the relevant texts or passages. He identifies two tech­ niques in particular, scanning (looking for a particular keyword, image, or other textual feature) and skimming (trying to get the gist quickly). He also mentions the book wheel, a physical device invented in the Renaissance to cope with the information explosion when the number of books increased

5. T he software, created by Google, Inc., that is the most commonly used Web search engine. 6. Am erican writer, actor, and director (b. 1935).

7. Leo Tolstoy’s great (and very long) Russian novel (1 8 6 5 -6 9 ).

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exponentially with the advent of print. Resembling a five-foot-high Ferris wheel,8 the book wheel held several books on different shelves and could be spun around to make different texts accessible, in a predigital print version of hyperreading. In contemporary digital environments, the information explosion of the Web has again made an exponentially great number of texts available, dwarf­ ing the previous amount of print materials by several orders of magnitude. In digital environments, hyperreading has become a necessity. It enables a reader quickly to construct landscapes of associated research fields and sub­ fields; it shows ranges of possibilities; it identifies texts and passages most relevant to a given query; and it easily juxtaposes many different texts and passages. Google searches and keyword filters are now as much part of the scholar’s tool kit as hyperreading itself. Yet hyperreading may not sit easily alongside close reading. Recent studies indicate that hyperreading not only requires different reading strategies than close reading but also may be involved with changes in brain architecture that makes close reading more difficult to achieve. Much of this evidence is summarized by Nicholas Carr in T he Shallows: W hat the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. More judicious than Bauerlein, he readily admits that Web reading has enormously increased the scope of information available, from global politics to scholarly debates. He worries, however, that hyperreading leads to changes in brain function that make sustained concentration more difficult, leaving us in a constant state of dis­ traction in which no problem can be explored for very long before our need for continuous stimulation kicks in and we check e-mail, scan blogs, mes­ sage someone, or check our RSS feeds.9 The situation is reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical short story “Harrison Bergeron,”1 in which the pursuit of equality has led to a society that imposes handicaps on anyone with excep­ tional talents. The handsome, intelligent eponymous protagonist must among other handicaps wear eyeglasses that give him headaches; other brainiacs have radio transmitters implanted in their ears, which emit shrieking sounds two or three times every minute, interrupting their thoughts and preventing sustained concentration. The final satirical punch comes in framing the story from the perspective of Bergeron’s parents, Hazel and George, who see their son on TV when he proclaims his anti-handicap manifesto (with fatal results for him), but, hampered by their own handi­ caps, they cannot concentrate enough to remember it. The story’s publication in 1961 should give us a clue that a media-induced state of distraction is not a new phenomenon. Walter Benjamin2 in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1968), wrote about the ability of mass entertainment forms such as cinema to make distracted viewing into a habit (as opposed to the contemplative viewing of a single work of art). Even though distraction, as Jonathan Crary (2001) has shown, has been a social concern since the late 1800s, there are some new features of

8. A rotating upright wheel carrying seats that rem ain horizontal as it moves; this am usem ent park ride, invented by George Ferris, debuted at C hicago’s World Colum bian Exhibition (1893). 9. Rich Site Sum mary feeds, which provide sub­ scribers with updated inform ation from sites of

their choosing. 1. A dystopian science fiction story (1961) by the A m erican author Vonnegut (1922—2 0 0 7 ). 2. G erm an literary and cultural critic (1 8 9 2 — 1940); for his influential 1936 essay, under a slightly different title, see above.

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Web reading that make it a powerful practice for rewiring the brain (see Greenfield for a summary). Among these are hyperlinks that draw attention away from the linear flow of an article, very short forms such as tweets that encourage distracted forms of reading, small habitual actions such as click­ ing and navigating that increase the cognitive load, and, most pervasively, the enormous amount of material to be read, leading to the desire to skim everything because there is way too much material to pay close attention to anything for very long. Reading on the Web What evidence indicates that these Web-specific effects are making distrac­ tion a contemporary cultural condition? Several studies have shown that, contrary to the claims of early hypertext enthusiasts such as George Landow,3 hyperlinks tend to degrade comprehension rather than enhance it. The fol­ lowing studies, cited by Carr in T he Shallows, demonstrate the trend. Erping Zhu, coordinator of instructional development at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan, had test subjects read the same online passage but varied the number of links. As the num­ ber of links increased, comprehension declined, as measured by writing a summary and completing a multiple-choice test. Similar results were found by two Canadian scholars, David S. Miall and Teresa Dobson, who asked seventy people to read Elizabeth Bowens short story “The Demon Lover.”4 One group read it in a linear version, and a second group with links. The first group outperformed the second on comprehension and grasp of the sto­ ry’s plot; it also reported liking the story more than the second group. We may object that a print story would of course be best understood in a print­ like linear mode; other evidence, however, indicates that a similar pattern obtains for digital-born material. D. S. Niederhauser, R. E. Reynolds, D. J. Salmen, and R Skolmoski had test subjects read two online articles, one arguing that “knowledge is objective,” and the other that “knowledge is rel­ ative.” Each article had links allowing readers to click between them. The researchers found that those who used the links, far from gaining a richer sense of the merits and limitations of the two positions, understood them less well than readers who chose to read the two in linear fashion. Compa­ rable evidence was found in a review of thirty-eight experiments on hyper­ text reading by Diana DeStefano and Jo-Anne LeFevre, psychologists with the Centre for Applied Cognitive Research at Canadas Carleton University. Carr summarizes their results, explaining that in general the evidence did not support the claim that hypertext led to “an enriched experience of the text” (qtd. in Carr 129). One of their conclusions was that “increased demands of decision-making and visual processing in hypertext impaired reading per­ formance,” especially in relation to “traditional print presentation” (qtd. in Carr 129). Why should hypertext and Web reading in general lead to poorer compre­ hension? The answer, Carr believes, lies in the relation of working memory (i.e., the contents of consciousness) to long-term memory. Material is held 3. A scholar of Victorian literature and art history (b. 1940), who helped pioneer hypermedia studies; his book Hypertext (1992) was the first to com -

bine literary theory and com puter technology, 4. Published in 1941 by the A nglo-Irish novelist and short story writer Bowen (1 8 9 9 -1 9 7 3 ).

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in working memory for only a few minutes, and the capacity of working mem­ ory is severely limited. For a simple example, I think of the cell-phone direc­ tory function that allows me to get phone numbers, which are given orally (there is an option to have a text message sent of the number, but for this the company charges an additional fee, and being of a frugal disposition, I don’t go for that option). I find that if I repeat the numbers out loud several times so they occupy working memory to the exclusion of other things, I can retain them long enough to punch the number. For retention of more com­ plex matters, the contents of working memory must be transferred to long­ term memory, preferably with repetitions to facilitate the integration of the new material with existing knowledge schemas. The small distractions involved with hypertext and Web reading— clicking on links, navigating a page, scrolling down or up, and so on— increase the cognitive load on work­ ing memory and thereby reduce the amount of new material it can hold. With linear reading, by contrast, the cognitive load is at a minimum, precisely because eye movements are more routine and fewer decisions need to be made about how to read the material and in what order. Hence the transfer to long-term memory happens more efficiently, especially when readers reread passages and pause to reflect on them as they go along. Supplementing this research are other studies showing that small habit­ ual actions, repeated over and over, are extraordinarily effective in creating new neural pathways. Carr recounts the story told by Norman Doidge in T he Brain That Changes Itself * of an accident victim, Michael Bernstein, who had a stroke that damaged his brain’s right side, rendering his left hand and leg crippled (30-31). He entered an experimental therapy program that had him performing routine tasks with his left arm and leg over and over, such as washing a window and tracing alphabet letters. “The repeated actions,” Carr reports, “were a means of coaxing his neurons and synapses to form new circuits that would take over the functions once carried out by the cir­ cuits in the damaged area in his brain” (30). Eventually, Bernstein was able to regain most of the functionality of his unresponsive limbs. We may remem­ ber in T he Karate Kid film (1984) when Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is made to do the same repetitive tasks over and over again by his kung fu teacher, Mr. Miagi (Pat Morita). In contemporary neurological terms, Mr. Miagi is retraining the young man’s neural circuits so he can master the essentials of kung fu movements. These results are consistent with a large body of research on the impact of (print) reading on brain function. In a study cited by the French neuro­ physiologist Stanislas Dehaene, a world-renowned expert in this area, researchers sought out siblings from poor Portuguese families that had fol­ lowed the traditional custom of having an elder sister stay home and watch the infant children while her younger sister went to school. Raised in the same family, the sisters could be assumed to have grown up in very similar environments, thus serving as a way to control other variables. Using as test subjects six pairs of illiterate-literate sisters, researchers found that literacy had strengthened the ability to understand the phonemic structure of lan­ guage. Functional magnetic resonance (fM RI) scans showed pronounced 5. Best-selling book on neuroplasticity (20 0 7 ) by the C anadian-born psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Doidge.

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differences in the anterior insula, adjacent to Broca s area (a part of the brain associated with language use). “The literate brain,” Dehaene summarizes, “obviously engages many more left hemispheric resources than the illiterate brain, even when we only listen to speech. . . . The macroscopic finding implies a massive increase in the exchange of information across the two hemispheres” (209). Equally intriguing is Dehaene’s “neural recycling” hypothesis, which sug­ gests that reading repurposes existing brain circuits that evolved indepen­ dently of reading (because literacy is a mere eye blink in our evolutionary history, it did not play a role in shaping the genetics of our Pleistocene6 brains but rather affects us epigenetically7 through environmental factors). Cru­ cial in this regard is an area he calls the brains’ “letterbox,” located in the left occipito-temporal region at the back of the brain. This area, fM RI data show, is responsible for letter and phonemic recognition, transmitting its results to other distant areas through fiber bundles. He further argues that brain architecture imposes significant constraints on the physical shapes that will be easily legible to us. He draws on research demonstrating that 115 of the world’s diverse writing systems (alphabetical and ideographic8) use visual symbols consisting mostly of three strokes (plus or minus one). Moreover, the geometry of these strokes mirrors in their distribution the geometry of shapes in the natural environment. The idea, then, is that our writing systems evolved in the context of our ability to recognize natural shapes and that scribal experimentation used this correspondence to craft writing systems that would most effectively repurpose existing neural cir­ cuitry. Dehaene thus envisions “a massive selection process: over time, scribes developed increasingly efficient notations that fitted the organization of our brains. In brief, our cortex did not specifically evolve for writing. Rather, writing evolved to fit the cortex” (171). Current evidence suggests that we are now in a new phase of the dance between epigenetic changes in brain function and the evolution of new read­ ing and writing modalities on the Web. Think, for example, of the F pattern of Web reading that the Nielsen research revealed. Canny Web designers use this information to craft Web pages, and reading such pages further intensifies this mode of reading. How quickly neural circuits may be repur­ posed by digital reading is suggested by Gary Small’s experiments at the Uni­ versity of California, Los Angeles, on the effects of Web reading on brain functionality. Small and his colleagues were looking for digitally naive sub­ jects; they recruited three volunteers in their fifties and sixties who had never performed Google searches (Small and Vorgan 15—17). This group was first tested with fMRI brain scans, wearing goggles onto which were projected Web pages. Their scans differed significantly from another group of compa­ rable age and background who were Web savvy. Then the naive group was asked to search the Internet for an hour a day for five days. When retested, their brain scans showed measurable differences in some brain areas, which the exper-

6. T h at is, earliest human: during this geological epoch, w hich lasted from about 2 .6 m illion to about 11,700 years ago, the first members of the genus H om o appeared and developed into our own species, Hom o sapiens. 7. T h at is, through heritable changes in gene

fun ction that do not involve changes in the underlying DNA sequence. 8. T h at is, relying on a picture or symbol to rep­ resent a thing or an idea instead o f spelling a par­ ticu lar word or phrase.

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imenters attributed to new neural pathways catalyzed by Web searching. Cit­ ing this study among others, Carr concludes that “[k]nowing what we know today, if you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Internet” (116). How valid is this conclusion? Although Carr’s book is replete with many different kinds of studies, we should be cautious about taking his conclu­ sions at face value. For example, in the fM RI study done by Small and his colleagues, many factors might skew the results. I don’t know if you have had a brain scan, but I have. As Small mentions, brain scans require that you be shoved into a tube just big enough to accommodate your supine body but not big enough for you to turn over. When the scan begins, supercooled powerful electromagnets generate a strong magnetic field, which, combined with a radio frequency emitter, allows minute changes in blood oxygen lev­ els in the brain to be detected and measured. When the radio frequency emitter begins pulsing, it sounds as though a jackhammer is ripping up pave­ ment next to your ear. These are hardly typical conditions for Web reading. In addition, there is considerable evidence that fM RI scans, valuable as they are, are also subject to a number of interpretive errors and erroneous con­ clusions (Sanders). Neural activity is not measured directly by fM RI scans (as a microelectrode might, for example). Rather, the most widely used kind of fM RI, BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent), measures tiny changes in oxygenated blood as a correlate for brain activity. BOLD research assumes that hardworking neurons require increased flows of oxygen-rich blood and that protons in hemoglobin molecules carrying oxygen respond differently to magnetic fields than protons in oxygen-depleted blood. These differences are tabulated and then statistically transformed into colored images, with different colors showing high levels of oxygen-rich compared with oxygendepleted blood. The chain of assumptions that led Small, for example, to conclude that brain function changed as a result of Google searches can go wrong in sev­ eral different ways (see Sanders for a summary of these criticisms). First, researchers assume that the correlation between activity in a given brain area is caused by a particular stimulus; however, most areas of the brain respond similarly to several different kinds of stimuli, so another stimulus could be activating the change rather than the targeted one. Second, fM RI data sets typically have a lot of noise, and if the experiment is not repeated, the observed phenomenon may be a chimera rather than a genuine result (in Smalls case, the experiment was repeated later with eighteen additional volunteers). Because the data sets are large and unwieldy, researchers may resort to using sophisticated statistical software packages they do not entirely understand. Finally, they may be using a circular methodology in which the hypothesis affects how the data is seen (an effect called nonindependence). When one group of researchers went back through fMRI research that had been pub­ lished in the premier journals Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, and the Journal o f Neuroscience, it found interpretive errors resulting from nonindependence in forty-two percent of the papers (Sanders). Relying on summaries of research in books such as Carrs creates addi­ tional hazards. I mentioned earlier a review of hypertext experiments (DeStefano and LeFevre) cited by Carr, which he uses to buttress his claim that

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hypertext reading is not as good as linear reading. Consulting the review itself reveals that Carr has tilted the evidence to support his view. The authors state, for example, that “[t]here may be cases in which enrichment or complexity of the hypertext experience is more desirable than maximizing comprehension and ease of navigation,” remarking that this may be espe­ cially true for students who already read well. They argue not for abandoning hypertext but rather for “good hypertext design” that takes cognitive load into account “to ensure hypermedia provide at least as good a learning environ­ ment as more traditional text” (1636; emphasis added). Having read through most of Carrs primary sources, I can testify that he is generally conscien­ tious in reporting research results; nevertheless, the example illustrates the unsurprising fact that reading someone else’s synthesis does not give as detailed or precise a picture as reading the primary sources themselves. The Im portance o f A necdotal Evidence Faced with these complexities, what is a humanist to do? Obviously, few scholars in the humanities have the time— or the expertise— to backtrack through cited studies and evaluate them for correctness and replicability. In my view, these studies may be suggestive indicators but should be sub­ ject to the same kind of careful scrutiny we train our students to use with Web research (reliability of sources, consensus among many different researchers, etc.). Perhaps our most valuable yardstick for evaluating these results, however, is our own experience. We know how we react to intensive Web reading, and we know through repeated interactions with our students how they are likely to read, write, and think as they grapple with print and Web materials. As teachers (and parents), we make daily observations that either confirm or disconfirm what we read in the scientific literature. The scientific research is valuable and should not be ignored, but our experiences are also valuable and can tell us a great deal about the advantages and dis­ advantages of hyperreading compared with close reading, as well as the long­ term effects of engaging in either or both of these reading strategies. Anecdotal evidence hooked me on this topic five years ago, when I was a Phi Beta Scholar9 for a year and in that capacity visited many different types of colleges and universities. Everywhere I went, I heard teachers reporting similar stories: “I can’t get my students to read long novels any­ more, so I’ve taken to assigning short stories”; “My students won’t read long books, so now I assign chapters and excerpts.” I hypothesized then that a shift in cognitive modes is taking place, from the deep attention characteristic of humanistic inquiry to the hyperattention characteristic of someone scanning Web pages (Hayles, “Hyper and Deep Attention”). I further argued that the shift in cognitive modes is more pronounced the younger the age cohort. Drawing from anecdotal evidence as well as such surveys as the Kaiser Foundation’s1 G en M report (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout), I suggested that the shift toward hyperattention is now notice­ able with college students. Since then, the trend has become even more 9. A p a rticip a n t in a p rogram o v erseen by Phi

B e ta K appa ch a p ters.

Beta Kappa, the U .S. academ ic honor society for college and university students, in which distinguished scholars lecture at institutions with Phi

1. An A m erican nonprofit organization focused on national health issues as well as the U .S. role in global health policy.

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apparent, and the flood of surveys, books, and articles on the topic of dis­ traction is now so pervasive as to be, well, distracting. For me, the topic is much more than the latest research fad, because it hits me where I live: the college classroom. As a literary scholar, I deeply believe in the importance of writing and reading, so any large-scale change in how young people read and write is bound to capture my attention. In my work on hyperattention (published just when the topic was beginning to appear on the national radar), I argued that deep and hyperattention each have distinctive advantages. Deep attention is essential for coping with com­ plex phenomena such as mathematical theorems, challenging literary works, and complex musical compositions; hyperattention is useful for its flexibility in switching between different information streams, its quick grasp of the gist of material, and its ability to move rapidly among and between different kinds of texts.2 As contemporary environments become more infor­ mation intensive, it is no surprise that hyperattention (and its associated reading strategy, hyperreading) is growing and that deep attention (and its correlated reading strategy, close reading) is diminishing, particularly among young adults and teens. The problem, as I see it, lies not in hyperattention/ hyperreading as such, but rather in the challenges the situation presents for parents and educators to ensure that deep attention and close reading con­ tinue to be vibrant components of our reading cultures and interact synergistically with the kind of Web and hyperreading in which our young people are increasingly immersed. Yet hyper- and close reading are not the whole story. I earlier referred to Sosnoski’s definition of hyperreading as “computer-assisted.” More precisely, it is computer-assisted human reading. The formulation alerts us to a third component of contemporary reading practices: human-assisted computer reading, that is, computer algorithms used to analyze patterns in large tex­ tual corpora where size makes human reading of the entirety impossible. Machine reading ranges from algorithms for word-frequency counts to more sophisticated programs that find and compare phrases, identify topic clus­ ters, and are capable of learning. Given the scope, pervasiveness, and sophis­ tication of contemporary programs used to parse texts, it seems to me quite reasonable to say that machines can read. One could, of course, restrict “read” to human beings, arguing that reading implies comprehension and that machines calculate but do not comprehend. Flowever, some human readers (beginners, for example) may also read with minimum or no compre­ hension. Moreover, the line between (human) interpretation and (machine) pattern recognition is a porous boundary, with each interacting with the other. Hypotheses about meaning help shape the design of computer algo­ rithms, and the results of algorithmic analyses refine, extend, and occasion­ ally challenge intuitions about meaning that formed the starting point for algorithmic design. Putting human reading in a leakproof container and iso­ lating machine reading in another makes it difficult to see these interactions

2. R esearch ers in the field of attention studies identify three major types of attention: controlled attention, capable of being focused through con­ scious effort; stimulus-driven attention, a mode o f attentiveness involuntarily attracted by envi­ ronmental events, such as a loud noise; and

arousal, a general level of alertness (see Klingberg 21 for a summary). In these terms, deep attention is a subset of controlled attention, and hyperat­ tention bridges controlled and stim ulus-driven attention [Hayles’s note].

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and understand their complex synergies. Given these considerations, saying computers cannot read is from my point of view merely species chauvinism. In a field like literary studies, misunderstandings of the efficacy and importance of machine reading are commonplace. Even such a perceptive critic as Culler falls back on caricature when, in writing about close read­ ing, he suggests, “It may be especially important to reflect on the varieties of close reading and even to propose explicit models, in an age where elec­ tronic resources make it possible to do literary research without reading at all: find all the instances of the words beg and beggar in novels by two dif­ ferent authors and write up your conclusions” (24). In other words, close reading is the garlic that will ward off the vampire of machine reading. The anxiety here is palpable, nowhere more so than in his final phrase (“write up your conclusions”), which implies that drawing conclusions from machine analysis is a mechanical exercise devoid of creativity, insight, or literary value. Even Guillory, a brilliant theorist and close reader, while acknowledging that machine reading is a useful “prosthesis for the cogni­ tive skill of scanning,” concludes that “the gap in cognitive level between the keyword search and interpretation is for the present immeasurable” (“How” 13). There are two misapprehensions here: that keyword searches exhaust the repertoire of machine reading and that the gap between analy­ sis and interpretation yawns so wide as to form an unbridgeable chasm rather than a dynamic interaction. Given these misconceptions, explicit recapitulation of the value of machine reading is useful. Although it may be used with a single text and reveal inter­ esting patterns, its more customary use is in analyzing large corpora too vast to be read by a single person. Preeminent in this regard is the work of Franco Moretti,3 who uses the term “distant reading,” an obvious counter­ poise to close reading (Graphs). Careful reading of his work reveals that this construction lumps together human and machine reading; both count as “distant” if the scale is large. I think it is useful to distinguish between human and machine reading because the two situations (one done by a human assisted by machines, the other done by computer algorithms assisted by humans) have different functionalities, limitations, and possibilities. Hyperreading may not be useful for large corpora, and machine algorithms have limited interpretive capabilities. If we look carefully at Moretti’s methodology, we see how firmly it refutes the misunderstandings referred to above. His algorithmic analysis is usu­ ally employed to pose questions. Why are the lifetimes of many different genres limited to about thirty years (Graphs)? Why do British novels in the mid-eighteenth century use many words in a title and then, within a few decades, change so that titles are no more than three or four words long (“Style”)? How to explain changes in narrative conventions such as free indi­ rect discourse4 when the novel moves from Britain to British colonies (Graphs)} I find Morettifs work intriguing for the patterns he uncovers, but I am flat out delighted by the ingenious explanations he devises to account for them. So far beyond the mechanical exercises Culler imagines are these explanations that

3. Italian literary theorist and historian (b. 1950); his Graphs, Maps, Trees is excerpted below. 4. A mode of third-person narration in which

characters’ thoughts and feelings are reported in their own voice.

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I would not hesitate to call many of them brilliant. When the explanations fail to persuade (as Moretti candidly confesses is sometimes the case even for him), the patterns nevertheless stand revealed as entry points for interpreta­ tions advanced by other scholars who find them interesting. I now turn to explore the interrelations between the components of an expanded repertoire of reading strategies that includes close, hyper, and machine reading. The overlaps between them are as revealing as the differ­ ences. Close and hyperreading operate synergistically when hyperreading is used to identify passages or to home in on a few texts of interest, where­ upon close reading takes over. As Guillory observed, skimming and scan­ ning here alternate with in-depth reading and interpretation (“How”). Hyperreading overlaps with machine reading in identifying patterns. This might be done in the context of a Google keyword search, for example when one notices that most of the work on a given topic has been done by X, or it might be done when machine analysis confirms a pattern already detected by hyper (or close) reading. Indeed, skimming, scanning, and pattern iden­ tification are likely to occur with all three reading strategies; their preva­ lence in one or another is a matter of scale and emphasis rather than clear-cut boundary. Since patterns have now entered the discussion, we may wonder what a pattern is. This is not a trivial question, largely because of the various ways in which patterns become manifest. Patterns in large data sets may be so subtle that only sophisticated statistical analysis can reveal them; complex patterns may nevertheless be apprehended quickly and easily when columns of numbers are translated into visual forms, as with fM RI scans. Verbal pat­ terns may be discerned through the close reading of a single textual pas­ sage or grasped through hyperreading of an entire text or many texts. An anecdote may be useful in clarifying the nature of pattern. I once took a pottery class, and the instructor asked each participant to make several objects that would constitute a series. The series might, for example, con­ sist of vases with the same shapes but different sizes, or it might be vases of the same size in which the shapes underwent a consistent set of deforma­ tions. The example shows that differences are as important as similarities, for they keep a pattern from being merely a series of identical items. I there­ fore propose the following definition: a pattern consists of regularities that appear through a series of related differences and similarities. Related to the idea of pattern is the question of meaning. Since entire books have been written on the subject, I will not attempt to define mean­ ing but merely observe that wherever and however it occurs, meaning is sen­ sitively dependent on context. The same sentence, uttered in two different contexts, may mean something entirely different in one compared with the other. Close reading typically occurs in a mono-local context (that is, with a single text). Here the context is quite rich, including the entire text and other texts connected with it through networks of allusions, citations, and iterative quotations. Hyperreading, by contrast, typically occurs in a mul­ tilocal context. Because many textual fragments are juxtaposed, context is truncated, often consisting of a single phrase or sentence, as in a Google search. In machine reading, the context may be limited to a few words or eliminated altogether, as in a word-frequency list. Relatively context-poor, machine reading is enriched by context-rich close reading when close read­

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ing provides guidance for the construction of algorithms; Margaret Cohen points to this synergy when she observes that for computer programs to be designed, “the patterns still need to be observed [by close reading]” (59). On the other hand, machine reading may reveal patterns overlooked in close reading, a point Willard McCarty makes in relation to his work on personi­ fication in Ovid’s M etam orphoses5 (53—72). The more the emphasis falls on pattern (as in machine reading), the more likely it is that context must be supplied from outside (by a human interpreter) to connect pattern with meaning; the more the emphasis falls on meaning (as in close reading), the more pattern assumes a subordinate role. In general, the different distribu­ tions between pattern, meaning, and context provide a way to think about interrelations between close, hyper, and machine reading. The larger point is that close, hyper, and machine reading each have dis­ tinctive advantages and limitations: nevertheless, they also overlap and can be made to interact synergistically with one another. Maryanne Wolfe reaches a similar conclusion when, at the end of Proust and the Squid, she writes, We must teach our children to be bitextual or multitextual, able to read and analyze texts flexibly in different ways, with more deliberate instruction at every stage of development on the inferential, demand­ ing aspects of any text. Teaching children to uncover the invisible world that resides in written words needs to be both explicit and part of a dialogue between learner and teacher, if we are to promote the processes that lead to fully formed expert reading in our citizenry. (226) I agree wholeheartedly with the goal: the question is how, precisely, to accom­ plish it? Synergies betw een Close, Hyper-, and M achine Reading Starting from a traditional humanistic basis in literature, Alan Liu in the English department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses that he calls Literature-1-, which adopt as a pedagogical method the interdisciplinarity facilitated by dig­ ital media. He asks students “to choose a literary work and treat it according to one or more of the research paradigms prevalent in other fields of study,” includ­ ing visualization, storyboarding, simulation, and game design. Starting with close reading, he encourages students to compare it with methodologies in other fields, including the sciences and engineering. He also has constructed a “tool kit” on his Web site that includes links to software packages enabling students with little or no programming experience to create different modes of representation of literary texts, including tools for text analysis, visual­ ization, mapping, and social-network diagramming. The approach is three­ fold: it offers students traditional literary training; it expands their sense of how they can use digital media to analyze literary texts; and it encour­ ages them to connect literary methodologies with those of other fields they

5. The M etamorphoses (ca. 10 c.E.) by the Roman poet Ovid (43 of stories from classical myth and legend.

b .c .e

.-17

c . e .),

an epic-length collection

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may be entering. It offers close reading not as an unquestioned good but as one methodology among several, with distinctive capabilities and limita­ tions. Moreover, because decisions about how to encode and analyze texts using software programs require precise thinking about priorities, goals, and methodologies, it clarifies the assumptions that undergird close read­ ing by translating them into algorithmic analysis. An example of how the “Literature+” approach works in practice is the project entitled “R om eo and Ju liet: A F acebook Tragedy” (Skura, Nierle, and Gin). Three students working collaboratively adapted Shakespeare’s play to the F aceb ook model, creating maps of social networks using the Friend W heel6 (naturally, the Montagues are all “friends” to each other, and so are the Capulets7), filling out profiles for the characters (Romeo is interpreted as a depressive personality who has an obsessive attachment to his love object and who has corresponding preferences for music, films, and other cultural artifacts that express this sensibility), and having a fight break out on the message-board forum using a Group called The Streets of Verona. The Wall feature8 was used to incorporate dialogue in which char­ acters speak directly to one another, and the Photos section allowed one character to comment on the attributes of another. The masque at which Romeo and Juliet meet became an Event,9 to which Capulet invited friends in his Friend Wheel. From a pedagogical point of view, the students were encouraged to use software with which they were familiar in unfamiliar ways, thus increasing their awareness of its implications. The exercise also required them to make interpretive judgments about which features of the play were most essential (since not everything could be included) and to be precise about interactions between relationships, events, and characters. Linking traditional literary reading skills with digital encoding and analy­ sis, the “Literature-!-” approach strengthens the ability to understand com­ plex literature at the same time it encourages students to think reflectively on digital capabilities. Here digital and print literacies mutually reinforce and extend each other. Lev Manovich s “Cultural Analytics” is a series of projects that starts from the premise that algorithmic analyses of large data sets (up to several terabytes in size), originally developed for work in the sciences and social sciences, should be applied to cultural objects, including the analysis of real-time data flows. In many academic institutions, high-end computa­ tional facilities have programs that invite faculty members and graduate students in the arts and humanities to use them. For example, at the Uni­ versity of California, San Diego, where Manovich teaches, the Supercom­ puter Center sponsored a summer workshop in 2006, Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. At Duke University, where

6. An application in Facebook that shows in a color diagram the links between all the friends of a particular user. 7. T h e play’s two feuding fam ilies, who make peace only after Romeo (a M ontague) and Ju liet (a Capulet) meet, fall in love, and die. 8. T h at is, the original profile space where Face­ book users’ content was displayed until D ecem ­

ber 2011, when it was replaced by Tim eline, the new virtual space in which all the content o f Facebook users is organized and shown. 9. Facebook application that enables mem bers to let their friends know about upcom ing events in th eir com m unity and to organize social gatherings.

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I teach, the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) offers accounts to faculty members and students in the arts and humanities that allow them to use computationally intense analysis. In my experience, researchers at these kinds of facilities are delighted when humanists come to them with projects. Because their mission is to encourage widespread use across and among campuses and to foster collaborations among academic, govern­ ment, corporate, and community stakeholders, they see humanistic inquiry and artistic creation as missing parts of the picture that enrich the mix. This opens the door to analysis of large cultural data sets such as visual images, media content, and geospatial mapping combined with various historical and cultural overlays. An example is Manovich’s analysis of Time magazine covers from 1923—89. As Manovich observes, ideal sites for cultural analytics are large data sets that are well structured and include metadata about date, publication venue, and so forth. The visualization tools that he uses allow the Time covers to be analyzed according to subject (for example, portraits versus other types of covers), color gradients, black-and-white gradients, amount of white space, and in other ways. One feature is particularly useful for building bridges between close reading and machine analysis: the visualization tool allows the user both to see large-scale patterns and to zoom in to see a particular cover in detail, thus enabling analyses across multiple scale levels. Other examples include Manovich’s analysis of one million manga pages using the Mondrian software,1 sorted according to gray-scale values; another project analyzes scene lengths and gray scale values in classic black-andwhite films. While large-scale data analyses are not new, their applications in the humanities and arts are still in their infancy, making cultural analyt­ ics a frontier of knowledge construction. O f course, not everyone has access to computation-intensive facilities, including most parents and teachers at smaller colleges and universities. A small-scale example that anyone could implement will be helpful. In teach­ ing an honors writing class, I juxtaposed Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl,2 an electronic hypertext fiction written in proprietary Storyspace software.3 Since these were honors students, many of them had already read Frankenstein and were, moreover, practiced in close reading and literary analysis. When it came to digital reading, however, they were accustomed to the scanning and fast skimming typical of hyperread­ ing; they therefore expected that it might take them, oh, half an hour to go through Jackson’s text. They were shocked when I told them a reasonable time to spend with Jackson’s text was about the time it would take them to read Frankenstein, say, ten hours or so. I divided them into teams and assigned a section of Jackson’s text to each team, telling them that I wanted them to discover all the lexias (i.e., blocks of digital text) in their section

1. General-purpose statistical data visualization softw are for interactive data visualization. “M anga”: com ics originating in a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century (literally, “whim­ sical, impromptu”; Japanese). 2. A 1995 work by the Am erican author Jackson (b. 1963) that uses as its jum ping-off point Shel­

ley’s (1797-1851) 1818 tale of the young doctor, V ictor Franken stein, who reanim ates a piecedtogether human body. 3. Computer program written in the 1980s by Jay David Bolter and M ichael Joyce for creating, edit­ ing, and reading hypertext fiction.

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and warning them that the Storyspace software allows certain lexias to be hidden until others are read. Finally, 1 asked them to diagram interrelations between lexias, drawing on all three view's that the Storyspace software enables. As a consequence, the students were not only required to read closely but also to analyze the narrative strategies Jackson uses to construct her text. Jackson focuses some of her textual sections on a narrator modeled on the female creature depicted in Frankenstein, when Victor, at the male crea­ ture’s request, begins to assemble a female body as a companion to his first creation (Hayles, “Invention”). As Victor works, he begins to think about the two creatures mating and creating a race of such creatures. Stricken with sexual nausea, he tears up the female body while the male creature watches, howling, from the window; throws the pieces into a basket; and rows out onto a lake, where he dumps them. In her text Jackson reassem­ bles and reanimates the female creature, playing with the idea of fragmen­ tation as an inescapable condition not only for her narrator but for all human beings. The idea is reinforced by the visual form of the narrative, which (in the Storyspace map view) is visualized as a series of titled text blocks connected by webs of lines. Juxtaposing this text with Frankenstein encouraged discussions about narrative framing, transitions, strategies, and characterization. By the end the students, who already admired Fran­ kenstein and were enthralled by Mary Shelley’s narrative, were able to see that electronic literature might be comparably complex and would also repay close attention to its strategies, structure, form, rhetoric, and themes. Here already-existing print literacies were enlisted to promote and extend digital literacy. These examples merely scratch the surface of what can be done to create productive interactions between close, hyper, and machine reading. Close and hyperreading are already part of a literary scholar’s tool kit (although hyperreading may not be recognized or valued as such). Many good pro­ grams are now available for machine reading, such as W ordle, which cre­ ates word clouds4 to display word-frequency analysis, the advanced version of the Fiermetic Word Frequency Counter, which has the ability to count words in multiple files and to count phrases as well as words, and other text-analysis tools available through the TAPoR text-analysis portal5 (http:// digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/Text+Analysis+Tools). Most of these pro­ grams are not difficult to use and provide the basis for wide-ranging experimentation by students and teachers alike. As Manovich says about cultural analytics and Moretti proclaims about distant reading, machine analysis opens the door to new kinds of discoveries that were not possible before and that can surprise and intrigue scholars accustomed to the delights of close reading. What transformed disciplinary coherence might literary studies embrace? Here is a suggestion: literary studies teaches literacies across a range of

4. Visual representations o f text data that give greater prom inence to words that appear more frequently in the source text (also called “tag clouds” or “weighted lists”).

5. Web portal based and developed at MclVIaster University where researchers can experim ent with text analysis tools,

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media forms, including print and digital, and focuses on interpretation and analysis of patterns, meaning, and context through close, hyper-, and machine reading practices. Reading has always been constituted through complex and diverse practices. Now it is time to rethink what reading is and how it works in the rich mixtures of words and images, sounds and anima­ tions, graphics and letters that constitute the environments of twenty-firstcentury literacies. W O R K S C IT E D

Bauerlein, Mark. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Ameri­ cans and Jeopardizes Our Future. New York: Penguin, 2009. Print. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illu­ minations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1968. 217-51. Print. Best, Stephen, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” The Way We Read Now. Ed. Best and Marcus. Spec, issue of Representations 108 (2009): 1-2 1 . Print. Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: Norton, 2010. Print. Cohen, Margaret. “Narratology in the Archive of Literature.” Spec, issue of Repre­ sentations 108 (2009): 51—75. Print. Crane, Mary Thomas. “Surface, Depth, and the Spatial Imaginary: A Cognitive Reading of The Political Unconscious.” Spec, issue of Representations 108 (2009): 76-97. Print. Crary, Jonathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Cul­ ture. Cambridge: M U ’ P, 2001. Print. Culler, Jonathan. “The Closeness of Close Reading.” ADE Bulletin 149 (2010): 2 0 -2 5 . Print. Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. New York: Viking, 2009. Print. DeStefano, Diana, and Jo-Anne LeFevre. “Cognitive Load in Hypertext Reading: A Review.” Computers in Human Behavior 23.3 (2007): 1616—41. Print. Gallop, Jane. “Close Reading in 2009.” ADE Bulletin 149 (2010): 15—19. Print. Greenfield, Patricia M. “Technology and Informal Education: What Is Taught, What Is Learned.” Science 323.5910 (2009): 69-71. Print. Griswold, Wendy, Terry McDonnell, and Nathan Wright. “Reading and the Read­ ing Class in the Twenty-First Century.” Annual Review of Sociology 31 (2005): 127-42. Print. Guillory, John. “Close Reading: Prologue and Epilogue.” ADE Bulletin 149 (2010): 8-14. Print. --------- . “How Scholars Read.” ADE Bulletin 146 (2008): 8—17. Print. Hayles, N. Katherine. “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.” Profession (2007): 187—99. Print. --------- . “The Invention of Copyright and the Birth of Monsters: Flickering Con­ nectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl.” Journal of Postmodern Culture 10.2 (2001): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. Print. Johnson, Barbara. “Teaching Deconstructively.” Writing and Reading Differently: Deconstruction and the Teaching of Composition and Literature. Ed. G. Doug­ las Atkins and Michael L. Johnson. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1985. 140—48. Print.

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Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “Reading at Risk: A Response.” Learning Technologies. U of Maryland, 21 July 2004. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Klingberg, Torkel. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Laurence, David. “Learning to Read.” ADE Bulletin 145 (2008): 3—7. Print. Liu, Alan. “Re-doing Literary Interpretation: A Pedagogy.” Currents in Electronic Literacy. Digital Writing and Research Lab, U of Texas at Austin, 2008. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Manovich, Lev. “Cultural Analytics: Analysis and Visualization of Large Cultural Data Sets.” Manovich.net. Manovich, 30 Sept. 2007. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. McCarty, Willard. Humanities Computing. London: Palgrave, 2005. Print. Miall, David S., and Teresa Dobson. “Reading Hypertext and the Experience of Liter­ ature.”Journal of Digital Information 2.1 (2001): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History. New York: Verso, 2007. Print. --------- . “Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740— 1850).” Critical Inquiry 36 (2009): 134-58. Print. National Endowment for the Arts. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. NEA, June 2004. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. ----------. Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy. NEA, Jan. 2009. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. ----------. To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence. NEA, Nov. 2007. Web. 27 Aug. 2010. Niederhauser, D. S., R. E. Reynolds, D. J. Salmen, and P. Skolmoski. “The Influ­ ence of Cognitive Load on Learning from Hypertext.” Journal of Educational Computing Research 23.3 (2000): 237-55. Print. Nielsen, Jakob. “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content.” Alertbox (2006): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. --------- . “How Little Do Users Read?” Alertbox (2008): n. pag. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Roberts, D. F., U. G. Foehr, and V. Rideout. Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8—18 Year Olds: A Kaiser Family Foundation Study. Kaiser Family Foundation, Mar. 2005. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Robertson, Margaret, Andrew Fluck, and Ivan Webb. Children, On-line Learning and Authentic Teaching Skills in Primary Education. University of Tasmania. U of Tasmania, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. Sanders, Laura. “Trawling the Brain.” Science News 176.13 (2009): Web. 23 Feb. 2011. Scholes, Robert. The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Disci­ pline. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999. Print. Sillence, E., P. Briggs, P. R. Harris, and L. Fishwick. “How Do Patients Evaluate and Make Use of Online Health Information?” Social Science and Medicine 64 (2007): 1853-62. Print. Skura, Helen, Katia Nierle, and Gregory Gin. “Romeo and Juliet: A Facebook Trag­ edy.” Literature and Cross-Disciplinary Models of Literary Interpretation. PBWorks, 2008. Web. 1 Sept. 2010. Small, Gary, and Gigi Vorgan. iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. New York: Harper, 2008. Print. Sosnoski, James. “Hyper-readers and Their Reading Engines.” Passions, Pedagogies, and Twenty-First Century Technologies. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Logan: Utah State UP; Urbana: Natl. Council of Teachers of English, 1999. 161-77. Print. Tinsley, Ron, and Kimberly Lebak. “Expanding the Zone of Reflective Capacity: Taking Separate Journeys Together.” Networks 11.2 (2009): 1—11. Web. 1 Sept. 2010 .

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Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron.” Welcome to the Monkey House. 1961. New York: Dell, 1998. 7-14. Print. Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Ed. Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, and Ellen Souberman. 14th ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1978. Print. Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. New York: Harper, 2007. Print. Zhu, Erping. “Hypermedia Interface Design: The Effects of Number of Links and Granularity of Nodes.” Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 8.3 (1999): 331-58. Print.

2010

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Among the founders of “body studies,” Susan Bordo stands out for her work’s close attention to the ways that cultural images and expectations shape how both sexes understand a female body as “desirable.” Although strongly influenced by m i c h e l f o u c a u l t , Bordo is wary of theory and the academy. She advocates a politically active feminism that highlights the concrete impact of social forces on womens bodies and considers possible forms of resistance. Writing in a steely, lucid prose that reaches out to nonacademic audiences, she works against both cultural self-congratulation (“you’ve come a long way, baby”) and the abstractions of French feminism. She insists on the practical consequences for women’s daily lives of feminism’s analyses of con­ temporary culture. Bordo’s work introduces a crucial gendered element into contem­ porary literary and cultural theory’s interest in the processes involved in the formation of social subjects. Bordo was educated at Carleton College and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, from which she received her Ph.D. in 1982. She has taught at Le Moyne College and the University of Kentucky. Her Unbearable Weight (1993) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Trained as a philosopher, she now describes her work as “gender studies,” which is “part of cultural studies.” “But neither gender stud­ ies nor cultural studies,” she writes, “can be of much significance unless they reach outside the academic world.” She calls the “slow unlearning” of the “language” and “arrogance” of the academy her “second and ongoing education.” Bordo’s early work explored the exclusionary use of terms such as “rationality” and “objectivity” in the philosophical tradition. Like others studying what came to be called “feminist epistemology,” she argued that knowledge is not something achieved by a pure mind that “distances” itself from the object it studies. Rather, knowledge is “embodied,” produced from a “standpoint” by a body that is located as a material entity among other material entities. It was a short step from standpoint theory to body studies. Not all bodies are alike. Different bodies are assigned to different locations, are represented differently in prevailing cultural codes, and are accorded different authority as producers of knowledge. One crucial way to differentiate bodies is, of course, gender. Bordo turns her attention to the ways in which the body is a “text of culture.” Prevailing and enforced cultural notions of gender differences are inscribed on the body, as it shapes itself to fit conventions of proper appearance, deportment, and physical activity.

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Psychoanalytic feminists tend to discuss the shaping of the girl's body and of her relation to it in generalized terms that posit a triangular familial relation (motherfather-daughter) and an overarching patriarchal Law (the law of the father, com­ pulsory heterosexuality, or the incest taboo). Bordo eschews this focus on the family, contending instead that a variety of social forces converge in the shaping of bodies— and that this constellation of forces shifts over time and from one society to another. The decline in hysteria and the recent rise in anorexia and bulimia point to changes in the cultural nexus within which bodies are produced. Like oth­ ers who adopt a “social constructivist” position, Bordo argues that the body does not have a fixed and enduring nature; bodies are plastic and change in response to the social demands placed on them. Bordo follows other contemporary feminists (such as s a n d r a m . g i l b e r t and s u s a n g u b a r ) in noting that women over the past two hundred years are more prone than men to suffer from a number of illnesses that occupy an ill-defined terrain between the physical and the psychological. In our selection from her book Unbearable Weight, Bordo focuses on three such illnesses: hysteria (extreme emotional excitability), anorexia (inability or refusal to eat), and agoraphobia (inability to enter public places). She strives to demonstrate that these “pathologies of resistance” mark the ways indi­ vidual women both insert their bodies into “the network of practices, institutions, and technologies” within which bodies are produced and struggle against those very networks. Her analysis of anorexia provides an example of this doubleness. Contemporary women in the United States, Bordo argues, are pulled in multiple directions as com­ peting demands are made on them. The anorectic’s refusal to eat is tied directly to the peculiar “double bind” in which today’s young woman is placed. She is expected to emulate the impossibly thin body that is presented as the ideal in countless media images, while she is also urged— in a kind of demonic parody of feminism— to take control of her own life, to be strong, to become a superwoman. The conflicting mes­ sage is that only one ideal is acceptable, but you are supposed to be your own woman. Anorexia for Bordo is not solely, as in some popular accounts, the result of an obses­ sion with thinness; it is also, crucially, a comprehensible response to powerlessness. The young woman dramatically enacts her powerlessness by playing the female role to its extreme, making its destructive underpinnings obvious. Paradoxically, this strategy also secures for her a modicum of power as she gains control over her appe­ tite and directly resists (albeit in a self-destructive way) the family, friends, and thera­ pists who urge her to eat. Bordo is careful to say that cultural images are not everything. “Anorexia,” she writes, “clearly contains a dimension of physical addiction to the biochemical effects of starvation.” But like Foucault, she focuses on the discourses through which society produces, understands, defines, and interprets the female body. Social codings of beauty, of motherhood, of sexual modesty or its opposite place the individual woman in relation to the prevailing images and conventions. Even if that relation is one of negation and resistance, the power of the categories is still felt as the individ­ ual struggles against them. Every body is marked by its relation to the “constitu­ tive mechanisms” of a “power” that “shapes.” Femininity, for Bordo, is ideology (a culture’s dominant notions of the feminine) inscribed on the body. In presenting anorexia as a parodic demonstration of the destructive energy stored in our cultural categories, Bordo appears close to j u d i t h b u t l e r ’s influential discus­ sion of how homosexual cross-dressing “troubles” gender categories. But Bordo has been sharply critical of Butler because she believes that Butler vastly underestimates the suffering the parodic body endures and vastly overestimates the cultural or politi­ cal effectiveness of parody. Anorexia, as analyzed by Bordo, may be an eloquent bodily articulation of the unreasonable demands our society places on women, but that articulation through parody can hardly be celebrated or encouraged when its practical effects “utterly defeat rebellion and subvert protest.” Anorexia is self-destructive and

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does nothing in itself to alter the cultural order that calls it forth. Action, Bordo insists, must come on other fronts, especially those of feminist critique and feminist political activism. In this respect, Bordo self-consciously looks back to the feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a model. The fundamental dispute between Bordo and Butler, or more widely between Anglo-American and French-oriented feminisms, rests on the question of how politi­ cal and cultural transformation should be attempted. Bordo honors “female praxis”: individual and collective action with clear, conscious goals that are pursued through a series of purposive strategies. Similarly, she aims for subjects who are reasonably at home in their bodies, who can experience their bodies as aligned with their purposes and aspirations in life. The anorectic demonstrates how difficult American culture makes it for women to achieve such selfhood and such a relation to their bodies, but the example of the anorectic does not lead Bordo to think the basic goal unattainable. French feminists and those influenced by them believe that such desires for self-unity are themselves symptoms of the repressive patriarchal cultural order of intelligibilty that must be transformed. All ideals of coherence, of unity, of conscious control must be problematized if we are not to repeat endlessly the enforcement of differences that characterizes existing male cultural domination. The two sides share the conviction that cultural codings are powerful and that feminism begins with an analysis of how those codings exercise power, especially over the ongoing social construction of bod­ ies. Their disagreements over the site of the most effective cultural and political interventions continue to resonate throughout feminist theory. U n bearable W eight: F em inism , W estern Culture, a n d the Body Keywords: The Body, Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, Gender, Identity, Ideology, Popular Culture

From Unbearable Weight: Feminism, W estern Culture, and the Body C hapter 5. The Body and the R eproduction o f Femininity RECONSTRUCTING FEMINIST DISCOURSE ON THE BODY

The body— what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to the body— is a medium of culture. The body, as anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued, is a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced through the concrete language of the body.1The body may also operate as a metaphor for culture. From quar­ ters as diverse as Plato and Hobbes to French feminist Luce Irigaray,2 an imagination of body morphology has provided a blueprint for diagnosis and/ or vision of social and political life. The body is not only a text of culture. It is also, as anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu and philosopher Michel Foucault3 (among others) have argued, a practical, direct locus of social control. Banally, through table manners and

1. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (New York: Pantheon, 1982) and Purity and Danger (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966) [except as indi­ cated, all notes are Bordo’s]. 2. French fem inist theorist (b. 1930). p l a t o (ca. 427—ca. 347 b . c . e .), Greek philosopher. Thom as

Hobbes (1588—1679), English political philoso­ pher [editor’s note], 3. French philosopher and historian of ideas (1 9 2 6 -1 9 8 4 ; see above), b o u r d i e u (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 2 ), French social theorist [editor’s note].

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toilet habits, through seemingly trivial routines, rules, and practices, cul­ ture is “m ade body,” as Bourdieu puts it— converted into automatic, habitual activity. As such it is put “beyond the grasp of consciousness . . . [untouch­ able] by voluntary, deliberate transformations.”4 Our conscious politics, social commitments, strivings for change may be undermined and betrayed by the life of our bodies— not the craving, instinctual body imagined by Plato, Augustine, and Freud,5 but what Foucault calls the “docile body,” regulated by the norms of cultural life.6 Throughout his later “genealogical” works (Discipline and Punish, The His­ tory o f Sexuality), Foucault constantly reminds us of the primacy of practice over belief. Not chiefly through ideology, but through the organization and regulation of the time, space, and movements of our daily lives, our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity. Such an emphasis casts a dark and disquieting shadow across the contemporary scene. For women, as study after study shows, are spending more time on the management and discipline of our bodies than we have in a long, long time. In a decade marked by a reopening of the public arena to women, the intensification of such regi­ mens appears diversionary and subverting. Through the pursuit of an everchanging, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity— a pursuit without a terminus, requiring that women constantly attend to minute and often whim­ sical changes in fashion— female bodies become docile bodies— bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, “improvement.” Through the exacting and normalizing disci­ plines of diet, makeup, and dress— central organizing principles of time and space in the day of many women—we are rendered less socially oriented and more centripetally focused on self-modification. Through these disciplines, we continue to memorize on our bodies the feel and conviction of lack, of insuffi­ ciency, of never being good enough. At the farthest extremes, the practices of femininity may lead us to utter demoralization, debilitation, and death. Viewed historically, the discipline and normalization of the female body— perhaps the only gender oppression that exercises itself, although to different degrees and in different forms, across age, race, class, and sexual orientation— has to be acknowledged as an amazingly durable and flexible strategy of social control. In our own era, it is difficult to avoid the recognition that the contemporary preoccupation with appearance, which still affects women far more powerfully than men, even in our narcissistic and visually oriented cul­ ture, may function as a backlash phenomenon, reasserting existing gender configurations against any attempts to shift or transform power relations.7 Routledge, 1990); see also Susan Brownmiller,

4. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline o f a Theory o f Prac­ tice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

Femininity (New York: Ballantine, 1984).

1977), p. 94 (emphasis in original). 5. s i g m u n d f r e u d (1856-1939), Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, a u g u s t i n e (3 5 4 -4 3 0 ), C hris­ tian theologian. The three thinkers all evidenced a disgust with the body, especially the female body [editor’s note]. 6. On docility, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 135— 69. For a Foucauldian analysis of fem inine prac­ tice, see Sandra Bartky, “Foucault, Fem ininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power,” in her Femininity and Domination (New York:

7. During the late 1970s and 1980s, male concern over appearance undeniably increased. Study after study confirms, however, that there is still a large gender gap in this area. Research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 found men to be generally satisfied with their appear­ ance, often, in fact, “distorting their perceptions [of themselves] in a positive, self-aggrandizing way” (“Dislike of Own Bodies Found Common among W omen,” New York Times, March 19, 1985, p. C l). Women, however, were found to exhibit extreme negative assessments and distor-

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Surely we are in the throes of this backlash today. In newspapers and magazines we daily encounter stories that promote traditional gender relations and prey on anxieties about change: stories about latch-key chil­ dren, abuse in day-care centers, the “new woman’s” troubles with men, her lack of marriageability, and so on. A dominant visual theme in teenage magazines involves women hiding in the shadows of men, seeking solace in their arms, willingly contracting the space they occupy. The last, of course, also describes our contemporary aesthetic ideal for women, an ideal whose obsessive pursuit has become the central torment of many women’s lives. In such an era we desperately need an effective political discourse about the female body, a discourse adequate to an analysis of the insidious, and often paradoxical, pathways of modern social control. Developing such a discourse requires reconstructing the feminist paradigm of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with its political categories of oppressors and oppressed, villains and victims. Here I believe that a feminist appropria­ tion of some of Foucault’s later concepts can prove useful. Following Fou­ cault, we must first abandon the idea of power as something possessed by one group and leveled against another; we must instead think of the network of practices, institutions, and technologies that sustain positions of dominance and subordination in a particular domain. Second, we need an analytics adequate to describe a power whose central mechanisms are not repressive, but constitutive: “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.” Particularly in the realm of femininity, where so much depends on the seemingly willing accep­ tance of various norms and practices, we need an analysis of power “from below,” as Foucault puts it; for example, of the mechanisms that shape and proliferate— rather than repress— desire, generate and focus our energies, construct our conceptions of normalcy and deviance.8 And, third, we need a discourse that will enable us to account for the sub­ version of potential rebellion, a discourse that, while insisting on the necessity of objective analysis of power relations, social hierarchy, political backlash, and so forth, will nonetheless allow us to confront the mechanisms by which the subject at times becomes enmeshed in collusion with forces that sustain her own oppression. This essay will not attempt to produce a general theory along these lines. Rather, my focus will be the analysis of one particular arena where the inter­ play of these dynamics is striking and perhaps exemplary. It is a limited and unusual arena, that of a group of gender-related and historically localized

tions of body perception. Other studies have sug­ gested that women are judged more harshly than men when they deviate from dominant social standards of attractiveness. Thom as Cash et al., in "The Great American Shape-Up,” Psychology Today, April 1986, p. 34, report that although the situation for men has changed, the situation for women has more than proportionally worsened. Citing results from 3 0 ,0 0 0 responses to a 1985 survey of perceptions of body image and compar­ ing similar responses to a 1972 questionnaire, they report that the 1985 respondents were con­

siderably more dissatisfied with their bodies than the 1972 respondents, and they note a marked intensification of concern among men. Among the 1985 group, the group most dissatisfied of all with their appearance, however, were teenage women. Women today constitute by far the largest number of consumers of diet products, attenders of spas and diet centers, and subjects of intestinal by-pass and other fat-reduction operations. 8. M ichel Foucault, T he History o f Sexuality, vol. 1, Art Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1980), pp. 136, 94.

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disorders: hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia nervosa.9 I recognize that these disorders have also historically been class- and race-biased, largely (although not exclusively) occurring among white middle- and upper-middle-class women. Nonetheless, anorexia, hysteria, and agoraphobia may provide a paradigm of one way in which potential resistance is not merely undercut but utilized in the maintenance and reproduction of existing power rela­ tions.1 The central mechanism I will describe involves a transformation (or, if you wish, duality) of meaning, through which conditions that are objectively (and, on one level, experientially) constraining, enslaving, and even murder­ ous, come to be experienced as liberating, transforming, and life-giving. I offer this analysis, although limited to a specific domain, as an example of how various contemporary critical discourses may be joined to yield an understanding of the subtle and often unwitting role played by our bodies in the symbolization and reproduction of gender. THE BODY AS A TEXT OF FEMININITY

The continuum between female disorder and “normal” feminine practice is sharply revealed through a close reading of those disorders to which women have been particularly vulnerable. These, of course, have varied histori­ cally: neurasthenia2 and hysteria in the second half of the nineteenth cen­ tury; agoraphobia and, most dramatically, anorexia nervosa and bulimia in the second half of the twentieth century. This is not to say that anorectics did not exist in the nineteenth century— many cases were described, usu­ ally in the context of diagnoses of hysteria3— or that women no longer suf­ fer from classical hysterical symptoms in the twentieth century. But the taking up of eating disorders on a mass scale is as unique to the culture of the 1980s as the epidemic of hysteria was to the Victorian era.4 The symptomatology of these disorders reveals itself as textuality. Loss of mobility, loss of voice, inability to leave the home, feeding others while

9. On the gendered and historical nature of these disorders: the number of female to male hysterics has been estimated at anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1, and as many as 8 0 percent of all agoraphobics are female (Annette Brodsky and Rachel HareM ustin, W omen and Psychotherapy [New York: G uilford Press, 1980], pp. 116, 122). Although more cases of male eating disorders have been reported in the late eighties and early nineties, it is estimated that close to 9 0 percent of all anorec­ tics are female (Paul Garfinkel and David Garner,

Anorexia Nervosa: A M ultidimensional Perspective [New York: Brunner/M azel, 1982], pp. 112-13). For a sophisticated account of female psychopa­ thology, with particular attention to nineteenthcentury disorders but, unfortunately, little mention o f agoraphobia or eating disorders, see Elaine Showalter, T he Fem ale Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830—1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1985). For a discussion of social and gender issues in agoraphobia, see Robert Seidenberg and Karen DeCrow, W omen W ho

Marry Houses: Panic and Protest in Agoraphobia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983). On the history of anorexia nervosa, see Joan Jacob s Brum berg,

Fasting Girls: T he Emergence o f Anorexia Ner­

vosa as a Modern Disease (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). [“H ysteria”: a psycho­ neurosis marked by em otional excitability. T he word derives from the G reek word for womb; it was thought that such ailm ents were peculiar to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus—editor’s note.] 1. In con stru ctin g such a paradigm I do not pre­ tend to do ju stice to any of these disorders in its individual complexity. My aim is to chart some points of intersection , to describe some sim ilar patterns, as they emerge through a particular reading of the phenomenon— a political reading, if you will. 2. An emotional and psychic disorder character­ ized by easy fatigability and often by lack of motivation, as well as feelings of inadequacy [editor’s note], 3. Showalter, T he Fem ale Malady, pp. 1 2 8 -2 9 . 4. On the epidemic of hysteria and neurasthenia, see Showalter, The Fem ale Malady, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “T he Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America,” in her Disorderly Conduct: Visions o f G ender in Victorian America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

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starving oneself, taking up space, and whittling down the space one’s body takes up— all have symbolic meaning, all have political meaning under the varying rules governing the historical construction of gender. Working within this framework, we see that whether we look at hysteria, agoraphobia, or anorexia, we find the body of the sufferer deeply inscribed with an ideo­ logical construction of femininity emblematic of the period in question. The construction, of course, is always homogenizing and normalizing, erasing racial, class, and other differences and insisting that all women aspire to a coercive, standardized ideal. Strikingly, in these disorders the construction of femininity is written in disturbingly concrete, hyperbolic terms: exaggerated, extremely literal, at times virtually caricatured presentations of the ruling feminine mystique. The bodies of disordered women in this way offer them­ selves as an aggressively graphic text for the interpreter— a text that insists, actually demands, that it be read as a cultural statement, a statement about gender. Both nineteenth-century male physicians and twentieth-century feminist critics have seen, in the symptoms of neurasthenia and hysteria (syndromes that became increasingly less differentiated as the century wore on), an exag­ geration of stereotypically feminine traits. The nineteenth-century “lady” was idealized in terms of delicacy and dreaminess, sexual passivity, and a charm­ ingly labile and capricious emotionality.5 Such notions were formalized and scientized in the work of male theorists from Acton and Krafft-Ebing6 to Freud, who described “normal,” mature femininity in such terms.7 In this context, the dissociations, the drifting and fogging of perception, the ner­ vous tremors and faints, the anesthesias,8 and the extreme mutability of symptomatology associated with nineteenth-century female disorders can be seen to be concretizations of the feminine mystique of the period, pro­ duced according to rules that governed the prevailing construction of femininity. Doctors described what came to be known as the hysterical per­ sonality as “impressionable, suggestible, and narcissistic; highly labile, their moods changing suddenly, dramatically, and seemingly for inconsequen­ tial reasons . . . egocentric in the extreme . . . essentially asexual and not uncommonly frigid”9— all characteristics normative of femininity in this era. As Elaine Showalter points out, the term hysterical itself became almost interchangeable with the term fem in in e in the literature of the period.1

5. M artha Vicinus, “Introduction: The Perfect Victorian Lady,” in M artha Vicinus, ed., Suffer and Be Still: W omen in the Victorian Age (Bloom­ ington: Indiana University Press, 1972), pp. x-xi. 6. Richard von K rafft-Ebing (1 8 4 0 -1 9 0 2 ), Ger­ man physician who wrote about sexual behavior, especially sexual “pathologies.” W illiam Acton (1 8 1 3 -1 8 7 5 ), English doctor and civil servant who wrote physician’s manuals on sexuality that codify Victorian stereotypes [editor’s note]. 7. See Carol Nadelson and M alkah Notman, The Fem ale Patient (New York: Plenum, 1982), p. 5; E. M. Sigsworth and T. J. Wyke, “A Study of Vic­ torian Prostitution and Venereal Disease,” in Vic­ inus, Suffer and Be Still, p. 82. For more general discussions, see Peter Gay, T he Bourgeois Experi­ ence: Victoria to Freud, vol. 1, Education o f the Senses (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984),

esp. pp. 1 0 9 -6 8 ; Showalter, T he Fem ale Malady, esp. pp. 121—44. T he delicate lady, an ideal that had very strong class connotations (as does slen­ derness today), is not the only conception of femi­ ninity to be found in Victorian cultures. But it was arguably the single most powerful ideological representation of femininity in that era, affecting women of all classes, including those without the material means to realize the ideal fully. See Hel­ ena M itchie, T he Flesh M ade Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), for discussions of the control of female appetite and Victorian con­ structions of femininity. 8. Losses of feeling in various parts of the body [editor’s note]. 9. Sm ith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, p. 203. 1. Showalter, T he Fem ale Malady, p. 129.

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The hysteric’s embodiment of the feminine mystique of her era, however, seems subtle and ineffable compared to the ingenious literalism of agora­ phobia and anorexia. In the context of our culture this literalism makes sense. With the advent of movies and television, the rules for femininity have come to be culturally transmitted more and more through standardized visual images. As a result, femininity itself has come to be largely a matter of constructing, in the manner described by Erving Goffman, the appropriate surface presentation of the self.2 We are no longer given verbal descriptions or exemplars of what a lady is or of what femininity consists. Rather, we learn the rules directly through bodily discourse: through images that tell us what clothes, body shape, facial expression, movements, and behavior are required. In agoraphobia and, even more dramatically, in anorexia, the disorder presents itself as a virtual, though tragic, parody of twentieth-century con­ structions of femininity. The 1950s and early 1960s, when agoraphobia first began to escalate among women, was a period of reassertion of domesticity and dependency as the feminine ideal. C areer w om an became a dirty word, much more so than it had been during the war, when the economy depended on women’s willingness to do “men’s work.” The reigning ideology of femi­ ninity, so well described by Betty Friedan and perfectly captured in the movies and television shows of the era, was childlike, nonassertive, helpless without a man, “content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies and home.”3 The housebound agoraphobic lives this construction of femininity literally. “You want me in this home? You’ll have me in this home— with a vengeance!” The point, upon which many therapists have commented, does not need belaboring. Agoraphobia, as I. G. Fodor has put it, seems “the logical— albeit extreme— extension of the cultural sex-role stereotype for women” in this era.4 The emaciated body of the anorectic, of course, immediately presents itself as a caricature of the contemporary ideal of hyperslenderness for women, an ideal that, despite the game resistance of racial and ethnic difference, has become the norm for women today. But slenderness is only the tip of the iceberg, for slenderness itself requires interpretation. “C ’est le sens qui fait vendre,” said Barthes, speaking of clothing styles— it is meaning that makes the sale.5 So, too, it is meaning that makes the body admirable. To the degree that anorexia may be said to be “about” slenderness, it is about slenderness, as a citadel of contemporary and historical meaning, not as an empty fash­ ion ideal. As such, the interpretation of slenderness yields multiple readings, some related to gender, some not. For the purposes of this essay I will offer an abbreviated, gender-focused reading. But I must stress that this read­ ing illuminates only partially, and that many other currents not discussed 2. Erving G offm an, T he Presentation o f S elf in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Dou­ bleday, 1959). 3. Betty Friedan, T he Fem inine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1962), p. 36. The theme song o f one such show ran, in part, “1 married Joan . . . W hat a girl . . . what a whirl . . . what a life! 1 married Jo an . . . W hat a mind . . . love is blind . . . what a w ife!” [From I M arried Joa n , an N BC sitcom (1 9 5 2 -5 5 )— editor’s note.] 4. See I. G. Fodor, “The Phobic Syndrome in

W om en,” in V. Franks and V. Burtle, eds., W omen in Therapy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1974), p. 119; see also K athleen Brehony, “Women and Agoraphobia,” in Violet Franks and E sther Rothblum, eds., T he Stereotyping o f W omen (New York: Springer, 1983). 5. In Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 74. [ b a r t h e s (1 9 1 5 -1 9 8 0 ), French literary critic— editor’s note.]

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here— economic, psychosocial, and historical, as well as ethnic and class dimensions— figure prominently.6 We begin with the painfully literal inscription, on the anorectics body, of the rules governing the construction of contemporary femininity. That construction is a double bind7 that legislates contradictory ideals and direc­ tives. On the one hand, our culture still widely advertises domestic concep­ tions of femininity, the ideological moorings for a rigorously dualistic sexual division of labor that casts woman as chief emotional and physical nurturer. The rules for this construction of femininity (and I speak here in a lan­ guage both symbolic and literal) require that women learn to feed others, not the self, and to construe any desires for self-nurturance and self-feeding as greedy and excessive.8 Thus, women must develop a totally other-oriented emotional economy. In this economy, the control of female appetite for food is merely the most concrete expression of the general rule governing the construction of femininity: that female hunger— for public power, for inde­ pendence, for sexual gratification— be contained, and the public space that women be allowed to take up be circumscribed, limited. * * *9 [S]lenderness, set off against the resurgent muscularity and bulk of the current male bodyideal, carries connotations of fragility and lack of power in the face of a decisive male occupation of social space. On the body of the anorexic woman such rules are grimly and deeply etched. On the other hand, even as young women today continue to be taught tra­ ditionally “feminine” virtues, to the degree that the professional arena is open to them they must also learn to embody the “masculine” language and values of that arena— self-control, determination, cool, emotional discipline, mastery, and so on. Female bodies now speak symbolically of this necessity in their slender spare shape and the currently fashionable mens-wear look. * * * Our bodies, too, as we trudge to the gym every day and fiercely resist both our hungers and our desire to soothe ourselves, are becoming more and more practiced at the “male” virtues of control and self-mastery. * * * The anorec­ tic pursues these virtues with single-minded, unswerving dedication. “Energy, discipline, my own power will keep me going,” says ex-anorectic Aimee Liu, recreating her anorexic days. “I need nothing and no one else. . . . I will be master of my own body, if nothing else, I vow.”1 The ideal of slenderness, then, and the diet and exercise regimens that have become inseparable from it offer the illusion of meeting, through the body, the contradictory demands of the contemporary ideology of feminin­ ity. Popular images reflect this dual demand. In a single issue of C om plete Woman magazine, two articles appear, one on “Feminine Intuition,” the other

6. For other interpretive perspectives on the slen­ derness ideal, see “Reading the Slender Body” in Unbearable Weight (1993); Kim Chernin, The

Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny o f Slender­ ness (New York: Harper and Row, 1981); Susie Orbach, Hunger Strike: T he A norectic’s Struggle as a M etaphor fo r Our Age (New York: W. W. Nor­ ton, 1985). 7. A psychological predicam ent in which a per­ son receives from a single source conflicting messages that allow no appropriate response. First coined in 1956 by the Scottish psychologist R. D. Laing in his study of schizophrenic ch il­

dren, the term is now used more broadly [editor’s note]. 8. See my “Hunger as Ideology” in Unbearable Weight for a discussion of how this construction o f fem ininity is reproduced in contemporary com m ercials and advertisements concerning food, eating, and cooking. 9. In this selection, all ellipses replace refer­ ences to figures not reproduced here [editor’s note]. 1. Aimee Liu, Solitaire (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 123.

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asking, “Are You the New Macho Woman?” In Vision Quest,2 the young male hero falls in love with the heroine, as he says, because “she has all the best things I like in girls and all the best things I like in guys,” that is, she's tough and cool, but warm and alluring. In the enormously popular Aliens, the hero­ ine’s personality has been deliberately constructed, with near-com ic book explicitness, to embody traditional nurturant femininity alongside breathtak­ ing macho prowess and control; Sigourney Weaver, the actress who portrays her, has called the character “Rambolina.”3 In the pursuit of slenderness and the denial of appetite the traditional construction of femininity intersects with the new requirement for women to embody the “masculine” values of the public arena. The anorectic, as I have argued, embodies this intersection, this double bind, in a particularly painful and graphic way.4 I mean double bind quite literally here. “Mascu­ linity” and “femininity,” at least since the nineteenth century and arguably before, have been constructed through a process of mutual exclusion. One cannot simply add the historically feminine virtues to the historically mas­ culine ones to yield a New Woman, a New Man, a new ethics, or a new cul­ ture. Even on the screen or on television, embodied in created characters like the Aliens heroine, the result is a parody. Unfortunately, in this imagebedazzled culture, we find it increasingly difficult to discriminate between parodies and possibilities for the self. Explored as a possibility for the self, the “androgynous” ideal ultimately exposes its internal contradiction and becomes a war that tears the subject in two— a war explicitly thematized, by many anorectics, as a battle between male and female sides of the self.5 PROTEST AND RETREAT IN THE SAME GESTURE

In hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia, then, the woman’s body may be viewed as a surface on which conventional constructions of femininity are exposed starkly to view, through their inscription in extreme or hyperliteral form. They are written, of course, in languages of horrible suffering. It is as though these bodies are speaking to us of the pathology and violence that lurks just around the corner, waiting at the horizon of “normal” femininity. It is no wonder that a steady motif in the feminist literature on female dis­ order is that of pathology as embodied protest— unconscious, inchoate, and counterproductive protest without an effective language, voice, or politics, but protest nonetheless.

2. A 1985 film directed by Harold Becker [edi­ tor’s note]. 3. That is, a fem inine version of the excessively masculine hero (played by Sylvester Stallone) of the popular Rambo movies: First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), and Rambo III (1988). Aliens (1986), a film directed by Jam es Cam eron [editor’s note]. 4. Striking, in connection with this, is Catherine Steiner-Adair’s 1984 study of high-school women, which reveals a dramatic association between problems with food and body image and emula­ tion of the cool, professionally “together” and gor­ geous superwoman. On the basis of a series of interviews, the high schoolers were classified into

two groups: one expressed skepticism over the superwoman ideal, the other thoroughly aspired to it. Later administrations of diagnostic tests revealed that 9 4 percent o f the pro-superwoman group fell into the eating-disordered range of the scale. O f the other group, 100 percent fell into the noneating-disordered range. iMedia images notw ithstanding, young women today appear to sense, either consciously or through their bodies, the impossibility of simultaneously meeting the demands of two spheres whose values have been historically defined in utter opposition to each other. 5. See my “Anorexia Nervosa” in Unbearable

Weight.

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American and French feminists6 alike have heard the hysteric speaking a language of protest, even or perhaps especially when she was mute. Dianne Hunter interprets Anna O.’s7 aphasia, which manifested itself in an inability to speak her native German, as a rebellion against the linguistic and cultural rules of the father and a return to the “mother-tongue”: the semiotic bab­ ble of infancy, the language of the body. For Hunter, and for a number of other feminists working with Lacanian categories, the return to the semi­ otic level is both regressive and, as Hunter puts it, an “expressive” communi­ cation “addressed to patriarchal thought,” “a self-repudiating form of feminine discourse in which the body signifies what social conditions make it impos­ sible to state linguistically.”8 “The hysterics are accusing; they are pointing,” writes Catherine Clement in T he Newly Born W om an; they make a “mock­ ery of culture.”9 In the same volume, Helene Cixous speaks of “those won­ derful hysterics, who subjected Freud to so many voluptuous moments too shameful to mention, bombarding his mosaic statute/law of Moses with their carnal, passionate body-words, haunting him with their inaudible thundering denunciations.” For Cixous, Dora, who so frustrated Freud, is “the core example of the protesting force in women.”1 The literature of protest includes functional as well as symbolic approaches. Robert Seidenberg and Karen DeCrow, for example, describe agoraphobia as a “strike” against “the renunciations usually demanded of women” and the expectations of housewifely functions such as shopping, driving the children to school, accompanying their husband to social events.2 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg presents a similar analysis of hysteria, arguing that by pre­ venting the woman from functioning in the wifely role of caretaker of others, of “ministering angel” to husband and children, hysteria “became one way in which conventional women could express— in most cases unconsciously— dissatisfaction with one or several aspects of their lives.”3 A number of femi­ nist writers, among whom Susie Orbach is the most articulate and forceful, have interpreted anorexia as a species of unconscious feminist protest. The anorectic is engaged in a “hunger strike,” as Orbach calls it, stressing that this is a political discourse, in which the action of food refusal and dramatic transformation of body size “expresses with [the] body what [the anorectic] is unable to tell us with words”— her indictment of a culture that disdains and suppresses female hunger, makes women ashamed of their appetites and

6. T hat is, fem inists whose approach is primarily sociological (“A m erican”) and fem inists whose orientation is more psychoanalytic (“Fren ch ”) [editor’s note]. 7. The pseudonym for the hysteric patient dis­ cussed in Freud’s first published case history (co­ written with Joseph Breuer, 1895) [editor’s note]. 8. Dianne Hunter, “Hysteria, Psychoanalysis and Fem inism,” in Shirley Garner, Claire Kahane, and Madelon Sprengnether, eds., The (M)Other Tongue (Ith aca: C ornell University Press, 1986), p. 42. [“Lacanian”: derived from the work of the French psychoanalyst j a c q u e s l a c a n (1901— 1981). “Sem iotic level”: a mother-oriented use of language postulated by the French feminist j u l i a k r i s t e v a (b. 1941)— editor’s note.] 9. C ath erin e C lem ent and H elene Cixous, T he

Newly Born W oman, trans. Betsy W ing (M in­ neapolis: University o f M innesota Press, 1986), p. 42. 1. Clement and Cixous, The Newly Born Woman, p. 95. [Dora: the pseudonym of the patient dis­ cussed in Freud’s Dora: An Analysis o f a Case o f Hysteria (1904). The case has attracted much feminist attention because Freud discounts what seems the fairly obvious sexual abuse of the young Dora by several older men in her circle while imputing various deviant sexual desires to Dora herself. T he French feminist cixou s (b. 1937) wrote a play about Dora— editor’s note.] 2. Seidenberg and DeCrow, W omen W ho Marry Houses, p. 31. 3. Sm ith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, p. 2 0 8 .

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needs, and demands that women constantly work on the transformation of their body.4 The anorectic, of course, is unaware that she is making a political state­ ment. She may, indeed, be hostile to feminism and any other critical perspec­ tives that she views as disputing her own autonomy and control or questioning the cultural ideals around which her life is organized. Through embodied rather than deliberate demonstration she exposes and indicts those ideals, precisely by pursuing them to the point at which their destructive potential is revealed for all to see. The same gesture that expresses protest, moreover, can also signal retreat; this, indeed, may be part of the symptom’s attraction. Kim Chernin, for example, argues that the debilitating anorexic fixation, by halting or mitigat­ ing personal development, assuages this generations guilt and separation anxiety over the prospect of surpassing our mothers, of living less circum­ scribed, freer lives.5 Agoraphobia, too, which often develops shortly after marriage, clearly functions in many cases as a way to cement dependency and attachment in the face of unacceptable stirrings of dissatisfaction and restlessness. Although we may talk meaningfully of protest, then, I want to emphasize the counterproductive, tragically self-defeating (indeed, self-deconstructing) nature of that protest. Functionally, the symptoms of these disorders isolate, weaken, and undermine the sufferers; at the same time they turn the life of the body into an all-absorbing fetish, beside which all other objects of attention pale into unreality. On the symbolic level, too, the protest col­ lapses into its opposite and proclaims the utter capitulation of the subject to the contracted female world. The muteness of hysterics and their return to the level of pure, primary bodily expressivity have been interpreted, as we have seen, as rejecting the symbolic order of the patriarchy and recovering a lost world of semiotic, maternal value. But at the same tim e, of course, mute­ ness is the condition of the silent, uncomplaining woman— an ideal of patri­ archal culture. Protesting the stifling of the female voice through one’s own voicelessness— that is, employing the language of femininity to protest the conditions of the female world— will always involve ambiguities of this sort.

4. Orbach, Hunger Strike, p. 102. W hen we look into the many autobiographies and case studies of hysterics, anorectics, and agoraphobics, we find that these are indeed the sorts of women one might expect to be frustrated by the con ­ straints of a specified female role. Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer, in Studies on Hysteria (New York: Avon, 1966), and Freud, in the later Dora: An Analysis o f a Case o f Hysteria (New York: M acm illan, 1963), constantly remark on the ambitiousness, independence, intellectual ability, and creative strivings of their patients. We know, moreover, that many women who later becam e leading social activists and fem inists of the nineteenth century were among those who fell ill with hysteria and neurasthenia. It has become a virtual cliche that the typical anorec­ tic is a perfectionist, driven to excel in all areas o f her life. Though less prominently, a sim ilar theme runs throughout the literature on agora­ phobia.

One must keep in mind that in drawing on case studies, one is relying on the perceptions of other acculturated individuals. One suspects, for exam­ ple, that the popular portrait of the anorectic as a relentless overachiever may be colored by the lingering or perhaps resurgent Victorianism of our culture’s attitudes toward ambitious women. O ne does not escape this herm eneutic problem by turning to autobiography. But in autobiography one is at least dealing with social constructions and attitudes that anim ate the su b ject’s own psychic reality. In this regard the autobiograph­ ical literature on anorexia, drawn on in a variety of places in U nbearable Weight, is strikingly full of anxiety about the domestic world and other them es that suggest deep rebellion against tradi­ tional notions o f femininity. 5. Kim C h ernin, T he Hungry Self: W omen, E at­ ing, and Identity (New York: H arper and Row, 1985), esp. pp. 4 1 -9 3 .

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Perhaps this is why symptoms crystallized from the language of femininity are so perfectly suited to express the dilemmas of middle-class and upper-middleclass women living in periods poised on the edge of gender change, women who have the social and material resources to carry the traditional construc­ tion of femininity to symbolic excess but who also confront the anxieties of new possibilities. The late nineteenth century, the post—World War II period, and the late twentieth century are all periods in which gender becomes an issue to be discussed and in which discourse proliferates about “the Woman Question/’ “the New Woman,” “What Women Want,” “What Femininity Is.” C O L L U S IO N , R E S IS T A N C E , AND T H E BO D Y

The pathologies of female protest function, paradoxically, as if in collusion with the cultural conditions that produce them, reproducing rather than transforming precisely that which is being protested. In this connection, the fact that hysteria and anorexia have peaked during historical periods of cultural backlash against attempts at reorganization and redefinition of male and female roles is significant. Female pathology reveals itself here as an extremely interesting social formation through which one source of poten­ tial for resistance and rebellion is pressed into the service of maintaining the established order. In our attempt to explain this formation, objective accounts of power rela­ tions fail us. For whatever the objective social conditions are that create a pathology, the symptoms themselves must still be produced (however uncon­ sciously or inadvertently) by the subject. That is, the individual must invest the body with meanings of various sorts. Only by examining this productive process on the part of the subject can we, as Mark Poster has put it, “illumi­ nate the mechanisms of domination in the processes through which meaning is produced in everyday life”; that is, only then can we see how the desires and dreams of the subject become implicated in the matrix of power relations.6 Here, examining the context in which the anorexic syndrome is produced may be illuminating. Anorexia will erupt, typically, in the course of what begins as a fairly moderate diet regime, undertaken because someone, often the father, has made a casual critical remark. Anorexia begins in , emerges out of, what is, in our time, conventional feminine practice. In the course of that practice, for any number of individual reasons, the practice is pushed a little beyond the parameters of moderate dieting. The young woman discovers what it feels like to crave and want and need and yet, through the exercise of her own will, to triumph over that need. In the process, a new realm of mean­ ings is discovered, a range of values and possibilities that Western culture has traditionally coded as “male” and rarely made available to women: an ethic and aesthetic of self-mastery and self-transcendence, expertise, and power over others through the example of superior will and control. The experience is intoxicating, habit-forming. At school the anorectic discovers that her steadily shrinking body is admired, not so much as an aesthetic or sexual object, but for the strength of will and self-control it projects. At home she discovers, in the inevitable bat­ tles her parents fight to get her to eat, that her actions have enormous power 6. Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism, and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), p. 28.

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over the lives of those around her. As her body begins to lose its traditional feminine curves, its breasts and hips and rounded stomach, begins to feel and look more like a spare, lanky male body, she begins to feel untouchable, out of reach of hurt, “invulnerable, clean and hard as the bones etched into my silhouette,” as one student described it in her journal. She despises, in particular, all those parts of her body that continue to mark her as female. “If only I could eliminate [my breasts],” says Liu, “cut them off if need be.”7 For her, as for many anorectics, the breasts represent a bovine, unconscious, vul­ nerable side of the self. Liu s body symbolism is thoroughly continuous with dominant cultural associations. Brett Silverstein’s studies on the “Possible Causes of the Thin Standard of Bodily Attractiveness for Women”8 testify empirically to what is obvious from every comedy routine involving a dra­ matically shapely woman: namely, our cultural association of curvaceousness with incompetence. The anorectic is also quite aware, of course, of the social and sexual vulnerability involved in having a female body; many, in fact, were sexually abused as children. Through her anorexia, by contrast, she has unexpectedly discovered an entry into the privileged male world, a way to become what is valued in our culture, a way to become safe, to rise above it all— for her, they are the same thing. She has discovered this, paradoxically, by pursuing conventional fem­ inine behavior— in this case, the discipline of perfecting the body as an object— to excess. At this point of excess, the conventionally feminine deconstructs, we might say, into its opposite and opens onto those values our culture has coded as male. No wonder the anorexia is experienced as liberating and that she will fight family, friends, and therapists in an effort to hold onto it— fight them to the death, if need be. The anorectic s experi­ ence of power is, of course, deeply and dangerously illusory. To reshape one’s body into a male body is not to put on male power and privilege. To fe e l autonomous and free while harnessing body and soul to an obsessive body-practice is to serve, not transform, a social order that limits female possibilities. And, of course, for the female to become male is only for her to locate herself on the other side of a disfiguring opposition. The new “power look” of female body-building, which encourages women to develop the same hulk-like, triangular shape that has been the norm for male body-builders, is no less determined by a hierarchical, dualistic con­ struction of gender than was the conventionally “feminine” norm that tyr­ annized female body-builders such as Bev Francis for years.9 Although the specific cultural practices and meanings are different, simi­ lar mechanisms, I suspect, are at work in hysteria and agoraphobia. In these cases too, the language of femininity, when pushed to excess— when shouted and asserted, when disruptive and demanding— deconstructs into its opposite and makes available to the woman an illusory experience of power previously forbidden to her by virtue of her gender. In the case of nineteenthcentury femininity, the forbidden experience may have been the bursting of fetters— particularly moral and emotional fetters. John Conolly, the asylum 7. Liu, Solitaire , p. 99. 8. Brett Silverstein, “Possible Causes of the T h in Standard o f Bodily A ttractiveness for W om en,”

International Jou rn al o f Eating Disorders (1986): 9 0 7 -1 6 .

5

9. B ecau se Francis (b. 1955), a m uscular Aus­ tralian pow erlifter, was judged insufficiently “fem in in e,” she repeatedly failed to win m ajor professional bodybuilding com petitions [edi­ tor’s note].

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reformer, recommended institutionalization for women who “want that restraint over the passions without which the female character is lost.”1 Hys­ terics often infuriated male doctors by their lack of precisely this quality. S. Weir Mitchell described these patients as “the despair of physicians,” whose “despotic selfishness wrecks the constitution of nurses and devoted relatives, and in unconscious or half-conscious self-indulgence destroys the comfort of everyone around them.”2 It must have given the Victorian patient some illicit pleasure to be viewed as capable of such disruption of the staid nineteenthcentury household. A similar form of power, I believe, is part of the experi­ ence of agoraphobia. This does not mean that the primary reality of these disorders is not one of pain and entrapment. Anorexia, too, clearly contains a dimension of physical addiction to the biochemical effects of starvation. But whatever the physiol­ ogy involved, the ways in which the subject understands and thematizes her experience cannot be reduced to a mechanical process. The anorectic’s abil­ ity to live with minimal food intake allows her to feel powerful and worthy of admiration in a “world,” as Susie Orbach describes it, “from which at the most profound level [she] feels excluded” and unvalued.3 The literature on both anorexia and hysteria is strewn with battles of will between the sufferer and those trying to “cure” her; the latter, as Orbach points out, very rarely understand that the psychic values she is fighting for are often more impor­ tant to the woman than life itself. TEXTUALITY, PRAXIS, AND THE BODY

The “solutions” offered by anorexia, hysteria, and agoraphobia, I have sug­ gested, develop out of the practice of femininity itself, the pursuit of which is still presented as the chief route to acceptance and success for women in our culture. Too aggressively pursued, that practice leads to its own undoing, in one sense. For if femininity is, as Susan Brownmiller has said, at its core a “tradition of imposed limitations,”4 then an unwillingness to limit oneself, even in the pursuit of femininity, breaks the rules. But, of course, in another sense the rules remain fully in place. The sufferer becomes wedded to an obsessive practice, unable to make any effective change in her life. She remains, as Toril Moi has put it, “gagged and chained to [the] feminine role,” a reproducer of the docile body of femininity.5 This tension between the psychological meaning of a disorder, which may enact fantasies of rebellion and embody a language of protest, and the practical life of the disordered body, which may utterly defeat rebellion and subvert protest, may be obscured by too exclusive a focus on the symbolic dimension and insufficient attention to praxis. As we have seen in the case of some Lacanian feminist readings of hysteria, the result of this can be a one-sided interpretation that romanticizes the hysteric’s symbolic subver­ sion of the phallocentric6 order while confined to her bed. This is not to say 1. Showalter, T he F em ale Malady, p. 48. 2. Sm ith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, p. 207. 3. O rbach, Hunger Strike, p. 103. 4. Brownmiller, Femininity, p. 14. 5. Toril Moi, “Representations of Patriarchy: Sex and Epistemology in Freud’s Dora,” in Charles Bernheim er and Claire Kahane, eds., In Dora's

Case: Freud— Hysteria— Feminism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 192. 6. Patriarchal; specifically, characterized by the authority of the phallus in the primal family made up o f the dominant father and the subordi­ nate mother and child [editor’s note].

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that confinement in bed has a transparent, univocal meaning— in power­ lessness, debilitation, dependency, and so forth. The “practical” body is no brute biological or material entity. It, too, is a culturally mediated form; its activities are subject to interpretation and description. The shift to the prac­ tical dimension is not a turn to biology or nature, but to another “register,” as Foucault puts it, of the cultural body, the register of the “useful body” rather than the “intelligible body.”7 The distinction can prove useful, I believe, to feminist discourse. The intelligible body includes our scientific, philosophic, and aesthetic representations of the body— our cultural conceptions of the body, norms of beauty, models of health, and so forth. But the same representations may also be seen as forming a set of practical rules and regulations through which the living body is “trained, shaped, obeys, responds,” becoming, in short, a socially adapted and “useful body.”8 Consider this particularly clear and appropriate example: the nineteenth-century hourglass figure, emphasizing breasts and hips against a wasp waist, was an intelligible sym bolic form, representing a domestic, sexualized ideal of femininity. The sharp cultural contrast between the female and the male form, made possible by the use of corsets and bustles, reflected, in symbolic terms, the dualistic division of social and economic life into clearly defined male and female spheres. At the same time, to achieve the specified look, a particular feminine praxis was required— straitlacing, minimal eating, reduced mobility— rendering the female body unfit to perform activities outside its designated sphere. This, in Foucauldian terms, would be the “useful body” corresponding to the aesthetic norm. The intelligible body and the useful body are two arenas of the same dis­ course; they often mirror and support each other, as in the above illustration. Another example can be found in the seventeenth-century philosophic conception of the body as a machine, mirroring an increasingly more auto­ mated productive machinery of labor. But the two bodies may also contra­ dict and mock each other. A range of contemporary representations and images, as noted earlier, have coded the transcendence of female appetite and its public display in the slenderness ideal in terms of power, will, mastery, the possibilities of success in the professional arena. These associations are car­ ried visually by the slender superwomen of prime-time television and pop­ ular movies and promoted explicitly in advertisements and articles appearing routinely in women’s fashion magazines, diet books, and weight-training publications. Yet the thousands of slender girls and women who strive to embody these images and who in that service suffer from eating disorders, exercise compulsions, and continual self-scrutiny and self-castigation are anything but the “masters” of their lives. Exposure and productive cultural analysis of such contradictory and mys­ tifying relations between image and practice are possible only if the analysis includes attention to and interpretation of the “useful” or, as I prefer to call it, the practical body. Such attention, although often in inchoate and theoreti­ cally unsophisticated form, was central to the beginnings of the contempo­ rary feminist movement. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the objectification

7. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 136.

8. Foucault, D iscipline and Punish, p. 136.

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of the female body was a serious political issue. All the cultural parapher­ nalia of femininity, of learning to please visually and sexually through the practices of the body— media imagery, beauty pageants, high heels, girdles, makeup, simulated orgasm— were seen as crucial in maintaining gender domination. Disquietingly, for the feminists of the present decade, such focus on the politics of feminine praxis, although still maintained in the work of individ­ ual feminists, is no longer a centerpiece of feminist cultural critique.9 On the popular front, we find Ms. magazine1 presenting issues on fitness and “style,” the rhetoric reconstructed for the 1980s to pitch “self-expression” and “power.” Although feminist theory surely has the tools, it has not provided a critical discourse to dismantle and demystify this rhetoric. The work of French feminists has provided a powerful framework for understanding the inscription of phallocentric, dualistic culture on gendered bodies, but it has offered very little in the way of concrete analyses of the female body as a locus of practical cultural control. Among feminist theorists in this country, the study of cultural representations of the female body has flourished, and it has often been brilliantly illuminating and instrumental to a feminist rereading of culture.2 But the study of cultural representations alone, divorced from consideration of their relation to the practical lives of bodies, can obscure and mislead. Here, Helena Mitchie’s significantly titled The Flesh M ade Word offers a striking example. Examining nineteenth-century representations of women, appetite, and eating, Mitchie draws fascinating and astute metaphorical connections between female eating and female sexuality. Female hunger, she argues, and I agree, “figures unspeakable desires for sexuality and power.”3 The Victorian novel’s “representational taboo” against depicting women eat­ ing (an activity, apparently, that only “happens offstage,” as Mitchie puts it) thus functions as a “code” for the suppression of female sexuality, as does the general cultural requirement, exhibited in etiquette and sex manuals of the day, that the well-bred woman eat little and delicately. The same coding is drawn on, Mitchie argues, in contemporary feminist “inversions” of Vic­ torian values, inversions that celebrate female sexuality and power through images exulting in female eating and female hunger, depicting it explicitly, lushly, and joyfully. Despite the fact that Mitchie’s analysis centers on issues concerning wom­ en’s hunger, food, and eating practices, she makes no mention of the grave eating disorders that surfaced in the late nineteenth century and that are ravaging the lives of young women today. The practical arena of women diet­ ing, fasting, straitlacing, and so forth is, to a certain extent, implicit in her

9. A focus on the politics of sexualization and o bjectification rem ains cen tral to the an ti­ pornography movement (e.g., in the work of Andrea Dworkin, Catharine M acKinnon). Fem i­ nists exploring the politics of appearance include Sandra Bartky, Susan Brownmiller, Wendy Chapkis, Kim Chernin, and Susie O rbach. And a devel­ oping feminist interest in the work o f Michel Foucault has begun to produce a poststructuralist feminism oriented toward practice; see, for exam­ ple, Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance (Boston:

Northeastern University Press, 1988). 1.A t first a mass-market magazine (founded 1972) that also took a fairly consistent fem inist approach, Ms. becam e more and more like a tra­ ditional “woman’s magazine” before folding in 1989. It was revived in an advertising-free form closer to its original in 1990 [editor’s note]. 2. See, for example, Susan Suleim an, ed., The Fem ale Body in Western Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). 3. M itchie, T he Flesh M ade W ord , p. 13.

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examination of Victorian gender ideology. But when Mitchie turns, at the end of her study, to consider contemporary feminist literature celebrating female eating and female hunger, the absence of even a passing glance at how women are actually managing their hungers today leaves her analysis adrift, lacking any concrete social moorings. Mitchies sole focus is on the inevitable failure of feminist literature to escape “phallic representational codes.”4 But the feminist celebration of the female body did not merely deconstruct on the written page or canvas. Largely located in the feminist counterculture of the 1970s, it has been culturally displaced by a very different contemporary real­ ity. Its celebration of female flesh now presents itself in jarring dissonance with the fact that women, feminists included, are starving themselves to death in our culture. This is not to deny the benefits of diet, exercise, and other forms of body management. Rather, I view our bodies as a site of struggle, where we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of resistance to gender domi­ nation, not in the service of docility and gender normalization. This work requires, I believe, a determinedly skeptical attitude toward the routes of seeming liberation and pleasure offered by our culture. It also demands an awareness of the often contradictory relations between image and prac­ tice, between rhetoric and reality. Popular representations, as we have seen, may forcefully employ the rhetoric and symbolism of empowerment, personal freedom, “having it all.” Yet female bodies, pursuing these ideals, may find themselves as distracted, depressed, and physically ill as female bodies in the nineteenth century were made when pursuing a feminine ideal of dependency, domesticity, and delicacy. The recognition and analysis of such contradictions, and of all the other collusions, subversions, and entice­ ments through which culture enjoins the aid of our bodies in the reproduc­ tion of gender, require that we restore a concern for female praxis to its formerly central place in feminist politics. 1989, 1993 4. M itchie, T he Flesh M ade Word, p. 149.

BRUNO LATOUR b.

19 4 7

Bruno Latour has been one of the most innovative thinkers in science studies, an interdisciplinary field that situates the sciences within their social, historical, political, and philosophic contexts as it examines how scientific knowledge is cre­ ated, circulated, and put into practice. While the ostensible subject of most of Latour s writing is technoscience, the consequences of his ideas go beyond disci­ plinary boundaries. His work draws on and illuminates several important concepts in cultural theory, especially in its reassessment of the relationships between nature and culture, fact and fable, existence and language, and “realism” (the belief in a mind-independent reality) and social constructivism (the idea that reality and

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knowledge are constructed through human activity). Initially associated with social constructivism, Latour, in recent years, has softened and complicated his position. In “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern” (2004), he laments the appropriation of contemporary critique by con­ spiracy theorists, global capitalists, and right-wing extremists to such ends as debunking global warming. Both the demystifying iconoclasm and the social con­ structivism of the modern critique disseminated by university intellectuals, whether stemming from Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, deconstruction, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, or some combination of those approaches, have lately lost their critical function and are now used to jeopardize our lives. But despite his sus­ picion of popularizations of critique, Latour still describes his interdisciplinary project as an attempt “to account for the various ways in which truth is built.” Our world, he writes in We Have Never Been Modern (1991; trans. 1993), is “simultane­ ously real, like nature, narrated, like discourse, and collective, like society.” Born in Beaune in Burgundy into a wine-growing family, Latour initially studied philosophy and theology in Dijon. After passing the agregation, which certified him to teach philosophy, he received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Tours in 1975. While stationed in Africa for military service, he developed an inter­ est in anthropology, learning through practice by undertaking fieldwork in Cote d’Ivoire. In the mid-1970s he completed an ethnographic study of French methods of industrial education used in the country’s largest city and then-capital, Abidjian. In the late 1970s he turned his anthropological lens onto laboratory scientists, attempting the first detailed study of the daily activities of scientists in their natural habitat. It resulted in the 1979 publication of the book that first brought him to prominence: Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, written with Steve Woolgar. From 1982 until 2006 Latour was a professor at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines (National Advanced School of Mines) in Paris. In 2006 he moved to the Institute d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Institute for Political Studies of Paris, familiarly known as Sciences Po). Since 2013, he has been parttime Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, as well as Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. In addition, he has curated two international exhibits in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie (Center for Art and Media Technology): Iconoclash (2002) and, with Peter Weibel, Making Things Public (2005). Among his numerous awards are the Legion of Honor (2012) and the Holberg Memorial Prize (2013). Based on two years of ethnographic study at the Salk Institute in California, Labo­ ratory Life analyzes scientists at work. This innovative study combined the participantobserver methods of anthropology with paradigms borrowed from the emerging fields of social constructivism and the sociology of scientific knowledge to examine not the ways in which scientists describe what they do— the scientific method— but what scientists working in their laboratories actually do. In the 1980s his focus shifted to history and theory building, and he produced two other groundbreaking studies of science in action. In 1984 he published a volume about France’s most famous scientist, Louis Pasteur, and the discovery of microbes titled Les Microbes: Guerre et paix (Microbes: War and Peace), which challenged the lone genius model of scientific discovery; it was translated into English as The Pasteurization of France (1988). In 1987 he published perhaps his most direct statement about how science really works— Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society; it examines the rhetoric of scientific literature and collaborative networking between human and nonhuman actors. This book is the earliest elaboration of what he later would call Actor Network Theory (ANT). His next major work, We Have Never Been Modern (1991; trans. 1993), does not so much abandon science studies as seek to supplement and expand it by uncovering the ways in which modernity was con­ structed during the Enlightenment on a spurious break between politics and sci­

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ence, culture and nature. Here Latour’s readings of the seventeenth-century figures Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle, the latter both a political theorist and a chemist, explore the complex interrelations between the two realms. More recently, Latour has begun to question his own social constructivism, complicating it in order to fash­ ion a new realism. In Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (1999), Latour revisits the relationship between nature, culture, and artifacts to articulate a view of reality that avoids the oversimplifications both of traditional realism and of constructivism. In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory (2005), Latour provides a systematic, ordered, and detailed introduction to his material-semiotic approach, ANT. He covers its methodological rules, key concepts, and relationships with other theoretical positions. The work analyzes ANT s consequences— theoretical, methodological, and political— for social theory in general. Latour’s influences are eclectic and wide-ranging. The nineteenth-century French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, who was overshadowed by his younger rival, Emile Durkheim, appeared to Latour to lay the groundwork for Actor Network Theory, espe­ cially by arguing that the nature/culture divide is irrelevant to the study of human interaction. In the sciences Latour draws from the English mathematician and phi­ losopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861—1947), founder of process philosophy; from Alan Turing (1912—1954), the English cryptologist and pioneer of computer theory; and from a number of twentieth-century thinkers, including the French philosophers of science Gaston Bachelard and Michel Serres, and the Lithuanian semiotician and linguist A. J. Greimas. While he is sometimes critical of literary theory, Latour’s work in science studies bears some resemblance to S t a n l e y f i s h ’s notion of interpretive communities and m i c h e l F o u c a u l t ’s idea of discursive for­ mations. Latour himself has influenced a generation of scholars in the cultural studies of science, including Steve Woolgar and members of the so-called Edin­ burgh School of the sociology of science studies, as well as d o n n a h a r a w a y and n . KATHERINE HAYLES.

Our selection, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?,” is a good example of Latour’s mature attempts to rethink his commitment to the social constructionist viewpoint in the sciences. Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowl­ edge; it argues that things in the world— from microbes to bodies to gender roles— that appear to have an independent biological existence are the product of ongoing social and historical processes of interaction and thus possess neither fixed mean­ ings nor the status of isolated objects. Latour opposes this perspective to philosoph­ ical realism, which posits a reality (or nature) independent of social, psychological, and historical apprehensions and argues for the objective existence of what philoso­ phers call “natural kinds.” These two positions set the terms of the so-called science wars— the debate in recent decades between those scholars in the social studies of science who draw on discourse and cultural theory to understand how science works and those who want to hold on to a traditional positivist ideal of science. Though social constructivism has always been controversial in the sciences, it is closely asso­ ciated in literary theory with poststructuralism, feminism, cultural studies, queer theory, and the New Historicism. In recent years, theorists have relied on social con­ structivism to deconstruct fixed truths and master narratives based on naturalized facts (about gender, race, law, canons, history, and so on). This process is what Latour calls “critique,” whose proponents— especially Stanley Fish and j e a n b a u d r i l l a r d — are the main unnamed targets of his essay. Latour also takes to task conservative writers who use simplified versions of social constructivism to dismiss scientific work in areas such as global warming and evolution as merely unproven theories. Having dedicated his career to explor­ ing the lack of scientific certainty inherent in the constitution of scientific facts, he is dismayed by the strategic use of the claim that one cannot know anything in

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science with certainty to artificially maintain controversies. Latour does not want simply to overlook or dismiss these abuses of critique by individuals who will “use any weapon at hand, naturalized facts when it suits them and social construction when it suits them.” Rather, he insists that we should “bring the sword of criti­ cism to criticism itself.” Like Donna Haraway, he advocates a more sophisticated understanding of realism that recognizes the historical contingency of knowledge claims and the semiotic technologies for making meaning of the world, but at the same time allows us to make the claim that some versions of reality work better than others, and that some controversies can at least provisionally be considered closed. In “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?” Latour attempts to articulate a sophisti­ cated and useful concept of realism by distinguishing between matters of fact and matters of concern. The Enlightenment, he argues, accepted a too uncritical view that reduced reality to matters of fact. Because they are abstractions of reality, generalizable and universal, facts, for Latour, are partial, polemical, and interested render­ ings of reality: they are reality reduced to a bare minimum. A fact is an utterance that renders invisible a “gathering,” a network of human and nonhuman actors, as well as the many controversies, struggles, conflicts, debates, alliances, negotiations, and tri­ als of strength that went into the network s making. So it merely appears that the fact “speaks for itself” and is self-evident. ANT shows otherwise. The task of science studies— and theories of knowledge— should be to unpack the process by which mat­ ters of fact emerge out of matters of concern. Here Latour provocatively subverts common sense and understanding. To elucidate the difference between matters of fact and matters of concern, he explores the etymology of the word thing, which in all European languages denotes both an object in the world and a “gathering”: it refers not just to an object, act, deed, or event but also to an affair, a lawsuit, a case, the subject of debate in an assembly, and the legislative assembly itself (for instance, Iceland’s Althing, the worlds oldest parliament). The word etymologically reconnects the realm of nature (of science and already-constituted objects) to the world of culture (politics, association, and debate). Broadening his frame, Latour argues that modernity enabled us to forget tempo­ rarily the complexity of the Thing. Modernity was constituted by the Enlighten­ ment break between mind and body, subject and object, nature and culture, the spheres of science and politics. It separated a world of social phenomena shaped by human actors (politics) from a natural world that science was supposed to uncover, a world of generalizable facts. At one level, our theories of knowledge struggle to keep these two realms distinct. At another, Latour declares, we have never really been modern, because we are constantly creating monstrous hybrids of nature/culture that trouble all neat epistemological distinctions. “Things” or “gatherings”— like global warming or AIDS drugs— are, of necessity, “simultaneously real, social, and narrative.” Either we can continue to hurl rocks at one another to convince ourselves that clear and simple reality exists, or we can more sensibly try to unravel the complex social and technoscientific networks— the gatherings of science, economy, politics, law, religion, technology, and narrative— that make up such controversies as global warming and evolution, or even “things” like moon rocks. Yet the project of articulating (in both senses of the word) these technoscientific gatherings, these matters of concern, seems often to detract from rather than add to reality. Latour blames this problem, in part, on the excesses of critique, issuing a scathing indictment of what he sees as inconsistencies in the social constructionist debate. Such debates have come to rely on two contradictory critical gestures whose contradictions go unnoticed because the moves are never performed at the same time. In one critical gesture, objects are dismissed as mere fetishes onto which indi­ viduals project their own desires. In a second, individuals are shown to be at the

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mercy of objective forces— genes, drives, race, class, gender— over which they have no control. Thus the rather vague targets of Latour’s criticism (he rarely names spe­ cific approaches or critics) end up being at one and the same time both constructiv­ ist and realist. Latour is not the first theorist to notice the ways in which arguments in the social sciences veer between voluntarism and determinism, between agency and structure, between representations of powerful subjects acting on weak objects and weak subjects being acted on by powerful social forces. However, the failure to develop more complex conceptions of reality that join mat­ ters of fact with matters of concern cannot be blamed solely on the shortcomings of the social sciences. Scientific ways of understanding reality are grounded in a long philosophic tradition, stemming from Rene Descartes’s Meditations (1641—42), that sets up the disembodied mind as observer, detached from the very world at which it gazes. This tradition favors the general over the specific, the universal over the par­ ticular, the static object over change. It attempts to understand reality at its broad­ est, most general, most comprehensive level. Such an attitude relegates process to mere accident, history to a mere record. For an alternative tradition Latour looks to Alfred North Whitehead and his process philosophy, in which a plausible account of reality requires not only matters of fact but also matters of concern. Here, critics no longer simply debunk; instead, they gather and assemble. The work of science stud­ ies, and by extension of literary theory as well, is to study associations— gatherings of actors, both human and nonhuman, along with their interchanges, conflicts, alli­ ances, negotiations, and trials of strength. Although Latour has been influential in the emerging fields of science studies and of literature and science, his work has been controversial among scientists, whose response is often an almost visceral rejection. Latour has repeatedly denied that he dismisses reality as mere fiction, asserting that he seeks only a more com­ plex and comprehensive description of reality than that offered by the dominant philosophical tradition. Yet his most vehement critics deplore what they perceive as his refusal to ground science in the investigation of an independent reality, without which, they argue, science becomes meaningless. Latour’s casual and, at times, even flippant style contributes at least in part to the extreme reactions to his arguments. Furthermore, despite the sophistication of his ideas and the complexity of the technoscientific networks he tracks, his prose abounds in militaristic meta­ phors that characterize both science and criticism as arenas of conflict and even open warfare in which only the strongest survive. In spite of the polarized responses he evokes, Latour remains a significant presence in cultural theory for his ingenious attempts to bridge the two-cultures model that divides the humanities from the sciences. “Why Has C ritique Run Out o f Steam ? From M atters o f Fact to M atters of C oncern” Keywords: Cultural Studies, Defense of Criticism, Ethics, Institutional Studies, Modernity, Popular Culture, Realism, Representation

W hy Has Critique Run Out of Steam ? From M atters of Fact to M atters of C oncern Wars. So many wars. Wars outside and wars inside. Cultural wars, science wars, and wars against terrorism. Wars against poverty and wars against the poor. Wars against ignorance and wars out of ignorance. My question is simple: Should we be at war, too, we, the scholars, the intellectuals? Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? Is it really the task of

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the humanities to add deconstruction to destruction? More iconoclasm to iconoclasm? What has become of the critical spirit? Has it run out of steam?1 Quite simply, my worry is that it might not be aiming at the right target. To remain in the metaphorical atmosphere of the time, military experts constantly revise their strategic doctrines, their contingency plans, the size, direction, and technology of their projectiles, their smart bombs, their mis­ siles; I wonder why we, we alone, would be saved from those sorts of revi­ sions. It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are we not like those mechanical toys that endlessly make the same gesture when everything else has changed around them? Would it not be rather terrible if we were still training young kids— yes, young recruits, young cadets— for wars that are no longer possible, fighting enemies long gone, conquering territories that no longer exist, leaving them ill-equipped in the face of threats we had not anticipated, for which we are so thoroughly unprepared? Generals have always been accused of being on the ready one war late— especially French generals,2 especially these days. Would it be so surprising, after all, if intellectuals were also one war late, one critique late— especially French intellectuals, especially now? It has been a long time, after all, since intellectuals were in the vanguard. Indeed, it has been a long time since the very notion of the avant-garde— the proletariat, the artistic— passed away, pushed aside by other forces, moved to the rear guard, or maybe lumped with the baggage train.3 We are still able to go through the motions of a criti­ cal avant-garde, but is not the spirit gone? In these most depressing of times, these are some of the issues I want to press, not to depress the reader but to press ahead, to redirect our meager capacities as fast as possible. To prove my point, I have, not exactly facts, but rather tiny cues, nagging doubts, disturbing telltale signs. What has become of critique, I wonder, when an editorial in the New York Times con­ tains the following quote? Most scientists believe that [global] warming is caused largely by manmade pollutants that require strict regulation. Mr. Luntz [a Republican strategist] seems to acknowledge as much when he says that “the scien­ tific debate is closing against us.” His advice, however, is to emphasize that the evidence is not complete. “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled,” he writes, “their views about global warming will change accordingly.

1. For Graham H arm an. T h is text was w ritten for the Stanford presidential lecture held at the hum anities center, 7 Apr. 2 0 0 3 . I warmly thank Harvard history of science doctoral students for many ideas exchanged on those topics during this sem ester [Latour’s note]. H arm an (b. 1968), Am erican philosopher o f metaphysics. 2. France is often used to exemplify the tendency of generals to “fight the last war"; after World War I, France constructed the Maginot Line, border fortifications that provided little defense against

the blitzkrieg— a new form of warfare employed by the Germ ans in World War II. 3. On what happened to the avant-garde and cri­ tique generally, see Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in S cien ce, Religion, an d Art, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter W eibel (Cam bridge, M ass., 2 0 0 2 ). T h is article is very much an exploration of what could happen beyond the image wars [Latour’s note]. “Image wars”: the sim ultaneous desire in religion, science, and art to produce and destroy images.

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Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack o f scientific cer­ tainty a primary issue.”4 Fancy that? An artificially maintained scientific controversy to favor a “brownlash,” as Paul and Anne Ehrlich would say.5 Do you see why I am worried? I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show “‘the lack o f scientific c e r t a i n t y inherent in the construction of facts. I too made it a “‘primary issue/” But I did not exactly aim at fool­ ing the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument— or did I? After all, I have been accused of just that sin. Still, I’d like to believe that, on the contrary, I intended to em ancipate the public from prematurely natu­ ralized objectified facts. Was I foolishly mistaken? Have things changed so fast? In which case the danger would no longer be coming from an excessive confidence in ideological arguments posturing as matters of fact— as we have learned to combat so efficiently in the past— but from an excessive distrust of good matters of fact disguised as bad ideological biases! While we spent years trying to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incon­ trovertible facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices? And yet entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always pris­ oners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?6 Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for good? Should I reassure myself by simply saying that bad guys can use any weapon at hand, naturalized facts when it suits them and social construction when it suits them? Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: what were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts? Nothing guarantees, 4. “Environmental Word Gam es,” New York Times, 15 Mar. 200 3 , p. A16. Luntz seems to have been very successful; I read later in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal: There is a better way [than passing a law that restricts business], which is to keep fighting on the merits. There is no scientific consensus that greenhouse gases cause the world’s mod­ est global warming trend, much less whether that warming will do more harm than good, or whether we can even do anything about it. O nce Republicans concede that greenhouse gases must be controlled, it will only be a mat­ ter of time before they end up endorsing more econom ically damaging regulation. They could always stand on principle and attempt to educate the public instead. [“A Republican

Kyoto,” Wall Street Jou rn al, 8 Apr. 2 0 0 3 , p. A14.] And the same publication complains about the “pathological relation” of the “Arab street” with truth! [Latour’s note; bracketed material his]. 5. Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich, Betrayal o f Sci­

en ce and Reason: How Anti-Environmental R heto­ ric Threatens Our Future (Washington D.C., 1997), p. 1 [L atou r’s note], Paul (b. 1932) and Anne E h rlich (b. 1933) are A m erican popula­ tion researchers; they define “brownlash” as lit­ erature that attempts to minimize the seriousness of environmental problems. 6. An interdisciplinary field that situates the sci­ ences within a broad social, historical, cultural, and political context.

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after all, that we should be right all the time. There is no sure ground even for criticism.7 Isn’t this what criticism intended to say: that there is no sure ground anywhere? But what does it mean when this lack of sure ground is taken away from us by the worst possible fellows as an argument against the things we cherish? Artificially maintained controversies are not the only worrying sign. What has critique become when a French general, no, a marshal of critique, namely, Jean Baudrillard, claims in a published book that the Twin Towers destroyed themselves under their own weight, so to speak, undermined by the utter nihilism inherent in capitalism itself— as if the terrorist planes were pulled to suicide by the powerful attraction of this black hole of nothingness?8 What has become of critique when a book that claims that no plane ever crashed into the Pentagon can be a bestseller? I am ashamed to say that the author was French, too.9 Remember the good old days when revisionism arrived very late, after the facts had been thoroughly estab­ lished, decades after bodies of evidence had accumulated? Now we have the benefit of what can be called instant revisionism. The smoke of the event has not yet finished settling before dozens of conspiracy theories begin revising the official account, adding even more ruins to the ruins, adding even more smoke to the smoke. What has become of critique when my neighbor in the little Bourbonnais1 village where I live looks down on me as someone hope­ lessly naive because I believe that the United States had been attacked by terrorists? Remember the good old days when university professors could look down on unsophisticated folks because those hillbillies naively believed in church, motherhood, and apple pie? Things have changed a lot, at least in my village. I am now the one who naively believes in some facts because I am educated, while the other guys are too unsophisticated to be gullible: “Where have you been? Don’t you know that the Mossad and the CIA did it?”2 What has become of critique when someone as eminent as Stanley Fish, the “enemy of promises” as Lindsay Waters calls him, believes he defends science studies, my field, by comparing the laws of physics to the rules of baseball?3 What has become of critique when there is a whole industry denying that the Apollo program landed on the moon? What has become of critique when DARPA uses for its Total Information Awareness project the Baconian slogan Scientia est p o te n tia l Didn’t I read that somewhere in

7. The metaphor o f shifting sand was used by neomodernists in their critique of science stud­ ies; see A House Built on Sand: Exposing Post­ modernist Myths about S cien ce, ed. Noretta Koertge (Oxford, 1998). The problem is that the authors of this book looked backward, attempt­ ing to reenter the solid rock castle of modernism, and not forward to what I call, for lack of a better term , nonm odernism [Latour’s note]. 8. See Jean Baudrillard, " T he Spirit o f Terrorism" and "Requiem fo r the Twin Towers” (New York, 2002) [Latour’s note], b a u d r i l l a r d (1929— 20 0 7 ), French sociologist and philosopher; a marshal outranks a general. Twin Towers: One and Two World Trade Center in New York City, destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September

11, 2001 . 9. See Thierry M eyssan, 9/11: T he Big L ie (Lon­ don, 2 0 0 2 ). Conspiracy theories have always

existed; what is new in instant revisionism is how much scientific proof they claim to imitate [Latour’s note]. 1. H istorical region of central France. 2. T hat is, the intelligence services of, respec­ tively, Israel and the United States were respon­ sible for 9/11. 3. See Lindsay Waters, Enemy o f Promises (forth­ coming [Chicago, 2004]); see also Nick Paumgarten, “Dept, of Super Slo-Mo: No Flag on the Play,” The New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2 0 0 3 , p. 32 [Latour’s note], f i s h (b. 1938), American literary theorist; his comparison appeared in the New York Times, May 21, 1996. 4. Knowledge is power (Latin), a paraphrase of an aphorism by the English statesm an and philoso­ pher Francis Bacon (1561—1626), “Knowledge itself is power” (Religious M editations, 1597). The phrase was used in the seal of the Information

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Michel Foucault? Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency? Has D iscipline and Punish become the bedtime reading of Mr. Ridge5? Let me be mean for a second. W hats the real difference between conspiracists and a popularized, that is a teachable version of social critique inspired by a too quick reading of, lets say, a sociologist as eminent as Pierre Bour­ dieu6 (to be polite I will stick with the French field commanders)? In both cases, you have to learn to become suspicious of everything people say because of course we all know that they live in the thralls of a complete illusio7 of their real motives. Then, after disbelief has struck and an explanation is requested for what is really going on, in both cases again it is the same appeal to powerful agents hidden in the dark acting always consistently, con­ tinuously, relentlessly. Of course, we in the academy like to use more elevated causes— society, discourse, knowledge-slash-power, fields of forces, empires, capitalism— while conspiracists like to portray a miserable bunch of greedy people with dark intents, but I find something troublingly similar in the structure of the explanation, in the first movement of disbelief and, then, in the wheeling of causal explanations coming out of the deep dark below. What if explanations resorting automatically to power, society, discourse had out­ lived their usefulness and deteriorated to the point of now feeding the most gullible sort of critique?8 Maybe I am taking conspiracy theories too seri­ ously, but it worries me to detect, in those mad mixtures of knee-jerk disbe­ lief, punctilious demands for proofs, and free use of powerful explanation from the social neverland many of the weapons of social critique. O f course conspiracy theories are an absurd deformation of our own arguments, but, like weapons smuggled through a fuzzy border to the wrong party, these are our weapons nonetheless. In spite of all the deformations, it is easy to recog­ nize, still burnt in the steel, our trademark: M ade in Criticalland. Do you see why I am worried? Threats might have changed so much that we might still be directing all our arsenal east or west while the enemy has now moved to a very different place. After all, masses of atomic missiles are transformed into a huge pile of junk once the question becomes how to defend against militants armed with box cutters or dirty bombs.9 Why

Awareness O ffice (2 0 0 2 -0 3 ), which lost its fund­ ing after only a year of existence when its “Total Inform ation Awareness Program ” raised fears o f dom estic surveillance; it operated w ithin the D efense Advanced P rojects Agency (DARPA), which was founded in 1958 to develop advanced technology for the U .S. Department of Defense. (Latour reproduced lAO’s seal as figure 1, not included here.) “Apollo program”: program (1961— 72) undertaken by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration with the goal— achieved in 1969— of conducting crewed mis­ sions to the moon. 5. Thom as J. Ridge (b. 1945), first secretary (2 0 0 3 -0 5 ) of the Department of Homeland Secu ­ rity, which was formed in response to the attacks o f 9/11. f o u c a u l t (1 9 2 6 -1 9 8 4 ), French philoso­ pher and historian of ideas; his works include Dis­ cipline and Punish: The Birth o f the Prison (1975) and Power/Knowledge (1980). 6. French sociologist (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 2 ; see above).

7. Illusion (Latin). 8. Their serious as well as their popularized ver­ sions have the defect of using society as an already existing cause instead of as a possible consequence. This was the critique that Gabriel Tarde always made against Durkheim. It is prob­ ably the whole notion of social and society that is responsible for the w eakening o f critiqu e. I have tried to show that in Latour, “G abriel Tarde and the End of the Social,” in T he Social in Question:

New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences, ed. Patrick Joyce (London, 2 002), pp. 117-32 [Latour’s note]. Tarde (1 8 4 3 -1 9 0 4 ), French soci­ ologist and social psychologist, w'hom Latour sees as a potential precursor of his Actor Network Theory. Emile Durkheim (1858—1917), French sociologist often viewed as a founder of sociology. 9. Bombs that use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material. “Box cutters”: the weapons used by the 9/11 terrorists to hijack 4 airplanes.

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would it not be the same with our critical arsenal, with the neutron bombs of deconstruction, with the missiles of discourse analysis? Or maybe it is that critique has been miniaturized like computers have. I have always fancied that what took great effort, occupied huge rooms, cost a lot of sweat and money, for people like Nietzsche and Benjamin,1 can be had for nothing, much like the supercomputers of the 1950s, which used to fill large halls and expend a vast amount of electricity and heat, but now are accessible for a dime and no bigger than a fingernail. As the recent advertisement of a Hol­ lywood film2 proclaimed, “Everything is suspect . . . Everyone is for sale . . . And nothing is what it seems.” W hats happening to me, you may wonder? Is this a case of midlife crisis? No, alas, I passed middle age quite a long time ago. Is this a patrician spite for the popularization of critique? As if critique should be reserved for the elite and remain difficult and strenuous, like mountain climbing or yachting, and is no longer worth the trouble if everyone can do it for a nickel? What would be so bad with critique for the people? We have been complaining so much about the gullible masses, swallowing naturalized facts, it would be really unfair to now discredit the same masses for their, what should I call it, gullible criticism? Or could this be a case of radicalism gone mad, as when a revolution swallows its progeny? Or, rather, have we behaved like mad scien­ tists who have let the virus of critique out of the confines of their laboratories and cannot do anything now to limit its deleterious effects; it mutates now, gnawing everything up, even the vessels in which it is contained? Or is it another case of the famed power of capitalism for recycling everything aimed at its destruction? As Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello say, the new spirit of capitalism has put to good use the artistic critique that was supposed to destroy it.3 If the dense and moralist cigar-smoking reactionary bourgeois can transform him- or herself into a free-floating agnostic bohemian, mov­ ing opinions, capital, and networks from one end of the planet to the other without attachment, why would he or she not be able to absorb the most sophisticated tools of deconstruction, social construction, discourse analysis, postmodernism, postology4? In spite of my tone, I am not trying to reverse course, to become reaction­ ary, to regret what I have done, to swear that I will never be a constructivist any more. I simply want to do what every good military officer, at regular periods, would do: retest the linkages between the new threats he or she has to face and the equipment and training he or she should have in order to meet them— and, if necessary, to revise from scratch the whole parapher­ nalia. This does not mean for us any more than it does for the officer that we were wrong, but simply that history changes quickly and that there is no greater intellectual crime than to address with the equipment of an older period the challenges of the present one. Whatever the case, our critical equipment deserves as much critical scrutiny as the Pentagon budget. 1. WALTER BENJAMIN (1 8 9 2 -1 9 4 0 ), G erm an liter­ ary and cultural theorist, f r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e (1 8 4 4 -1 9 0 0 ), German philosopher. 2. L.A. Confidential (1997; dir. C urtis Hanson), a film about murder and police corruption in the early 1950s. 3. See Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, Le Nou-

vel Esprit du capitalism e [The New Spirit o f C api­ talism] (Paris, 1999) [Latour’s note]. Boltanski (b. 1940), French professor of social sciences. C hia­ pello (b. 1965), French professor of management and sociology. 4. Latour’s com ic coinage.

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My argument is that a certain form of critical spirit has sent us down the wrong path, encouraging us to fight the wrong enemies and, worst of all, to be considered as friends by the wrong sort of allies because of a little mis­ take in the definition of its main target. The question was never to get away from facts but closer to them, not fighting empiricism but, on the contrary, renewing empiricism. What I am going to argue is that the critical mind, if it is to renew itself and be relevant again, is to be found in the cultivation of a stubbornly realist attitude— to speak like William James5— but a realism dealing with what I will call matters o f concern, not matters o f fact. The mistake we made, the mistake I made, was to believe that there was no efficient way to criticize matters of fact except by moving away from them and directing one’s attention toward the conditions that made them possible. But this meant accepting much too uncrit­ ically what matters of fact were. This was remaining too faithful to the unfor­ tunate solution inherited from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.6 Critique has not been critical enough in spite of all its sore-scratching. Reality is not defined by matters of fact. Matters of fact are not all that is given in experience. Mat­ ters of fact are only very partial and, I would argue, very polemical, very politi­ cal renderings of matters of concern and only a subset of what could also be called states o f affairs. It is this second empiricism, this return to the realist attitude, that I’d like to offer as the next task for the critically minded. To indicate the direction of the argument, I want to show that while the Enlightenment profited largely from the disposition of a very powerful descriptive tool, that of matters of fact, which were excellent for debunking quite a lot of beliefs, powers, and illusions, it found itself totally disarmed once matters of fact, in turn, were eaten up by the same debunking impe­ tus. After that, the lights of the Enlightenment were slowly turned off, and some sort of darkness appears to have fallen on campuses. My question is thus: Can we devise another powerful descriptive tool that deals this time with matters of concern and whose import then will no longer be to debunk but to protect and to care, as Donna Haraway7 would put it? Is it really pos­ sible to transform the critical urge in the ethos of someone who adds reality to matters of fact and not subtract reality? To put it another way, what’s the difference between deconstruction and constructivism? “So far,” you could object, “the prospect doesn’t look very good, and you, Monsieur Latour, seem the person the least able to deliver on this promise because you spent your life debunking what the other more polite critics had at least respected until then, namely matters of fact and science itself. You can dust your hands with flour as much as you wish, the black fur of the critical wolf will always betray you; your deconstructing teeth have been sharpened on too many of our innocent labs— I mean lambs!— for us to believe you.” Well, see, that’s just the problem: I have written about a dozen books to inspire respect for, some people have said to uncritically glorify, the objects of science and technology, of art, religion, and, more recently, law, showing every time in great detail the complete 5. American psychologist and philosopher of pragmatism (1842—1910). 6. German philosopher (1724—1804; see above); his “solution” to skepticism about the nature of reality was to set forth the conditions that must be

in place within the perceiving subject if the exter­ nal world is to be apprehended (see T he Critique o f Pure Reason, 1781). 7. Am erican biologist and fem inist theorist of science and technology (b. 1944; see above).

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implausibility of their being socially explained, and yet the only noise read­ ers hear is the snapping of the wolfs teeth. Is it really impossible to solve the question, to write not matter-of-factually but, how should I say it, in a matterof-concern way?8 Martin Heidegger,9 as every philosopher knows, has meditated many times on the ancient etymology of the word thing. We are now all aware that in all the European languages, including Russian, there is a strong connection between the words for thing and a quasi-judiciary assembly. Icelanders boast of having the oldest Parliament, which they call Althing, and you can still visit in many Scandinavian countries assembly places that are designated by the word Ding or Thing. Now, is this not extraordinary that the banal term we use for designating what is out there, unquestionably, a thing, what lies out of any dispute, out of language, is also the oldest word we all have used to designate the oldest of the sites in which our ancestors did their dealing and tried to settle their disputes?1 A thing is, in one sense, an object out there and, in another sense, an issue very much in there, at any rate, a gathering. To use the term I introduced earlier now more precisely, the same word thing designates matters of fact and matters of concern. Needless to say, although he develops this etymology at length, this is not the path that Heidegger has taken. On the contrary, all his writing aims to make as sharp a distinction as possible between, on the one hand, objects, Gegenstand,2 and, on the other, the celebrated Thing. The handmade jug can be a thing, while the industrially made can of Coke remains an object. While the latter is abandoned to the empty mastery of science and technol­ ogy, only the former, cradled in the respectful idiom of art, craftsmanship, and poetry, could deploy and gather its rich set of connections.3 This bifur­ cation is marked many times but in a decisive way in his book on Kant: Up to this hour such questions have been open. Their questionability is concealed by the results and the progress of scientific work. One of these burning questions concerns the justification and limits of math­ ematical formalism in contrast to the demand for an immediate return to intuitively given nature.4 What has happened to those who, like Heidegger, have tried to find their ways in immediacy, in intuition, in nature would be too sad to retell— and is well known anyway. What is certain is that those pathmarks off the beaten track led indeed nowhere. And, yet, Heidegger, when he takes the jug seri­ ously, offers a powerful vocabulary to talk also about the object he despises so much. What would happen, I wonder, if we tried to talk about the object

8. This is the achievement of the great novelist Richard Powers, whose stories are a careful and, in my view, m asterful enquiry into this new “real­ ism.” Especially relevant for this paper is Richard Powers, Plowing the Dark (New York, 2 0 0 0 ) [Latour’s note]. Powers (h. 1957), American nov­ elist whose work explores the effects of science and technology. 9. Germ an philosopher (1 8 8 9 -1 9 7 6 ; see above). 1. See the erudite study by the remarkable French scholar of Roman law, Yan Thom as, “Res, chose, et patrimoine (note sur le rapport sujet-object en droit romain)” [“M atter, Thing, and Inheritance

(Note on the Subject-O bject Ratio in Roman Law)”], Archives de philosophic de droit [Archives o f the Philosophy o f Law ] 25 (1980): 4 1 3 -2 6 [Latour’s note]. 2. O bject (German): that is, som ething m anufac­ tured rather than handcrafted. 3. See Graham H arman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics o f Objects (Chicago, 20 0 2 ) [Latour’s note]. 4. M artin Heidegger, W hat Is a Thing? trans. W. B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch (Chicago, 1967), p. 95 [Latour’s note].

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of science and technology, the Gegenstand, as if it had the rich and compli­ cated qualities of the celebrated Thing? The problem with philosophers is that because their jobs are so hard they drink a lot of coffee and thus use in their arguments an inordinate quantity of pots, mugs, and jugs— to which, sometimes, they might add the occasional rock. But, as Ludwik Fleck remarked long ago, their objects are never com­ plicated enough; more precisely, they are never simultaneously m ade through a complex history and new, real, and interesting participants in the uni­ verse.5 Philosophy never deals with the sort of beings we in science studies have dealt with. And that’s why the debates between realism and relativism never go anywhere. As Ian Hacking has recently shown, the engagement of a rock in philosophical talk is utterly different if you take a banal rock to make your point6 (usually to lapidate a passing relativist!) or if you take, for instance, dolomite, as he has done so beautifully.7 The first can be turned into a matter of fact but not the second. Dolomite is so beautifully complex and entangled that it resists being treated as a matter of fact. It too can be described as a gathering; it too can be seen as engaging the fourfold.8 Why not try to portray it with the same enthusiasm, engagement, and complexity as the Heideggerian jug? Heidegger’s mistake is not to have treated the jug too well, but to have traced a dichotomy between Gegenstand and Thing that was justified by nothing except the crassest of prejudices. Several years ago another philosopher, much closer to the history of sci­ ence, namely Michel Serres,9 also French, but this time as foreign to critique as one can get, meditated on what it would mean to take objects of science in a serious anthropological and ontological fashion. It is interesting to note that every time a philosopher gets closer to an object of science that is at once historical and interesting, his or her philosophy changes, and the specifica­ tions for a realist attitude become, at once, more stringent and completely different from the so-called realist philosophy of science concerned with rou­ tine or boring objects. I was reading his passage on the Challenger disaster in his book Statues when another shuttle, Colum bia, in early 2003 offered me a tragic instantiation of yet another metamorphosis of an object into a thing.1 What else would you call this sudden transformation of a completely mas­ tered, perfectly understood, quite forgotten by the media, taken-for-granted, matter-of-factual projectile into a sudden shower of debris falling on the United States, which thousands of people tried to salvage in the mud and 5. Although Fleck is the founder of science stud­ ies, the impact of his work is still very much in the future because he has been so deeply m isun­ derstood by Thom as Kuhn; see Thom as Kuhn, foreword to Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and D evelop­ ment o f a Scientific Fact (1935; Chicago, 1979), pp. v ii-xi [Latour’s note]. Fleck (1 8 9 6 -1 9 6 1 ), Polish physician and biologist. Kuhn (1 9 2 2 — 1996), Am erican historian and philosopher of science; his best-known work is The Structure o f Scientific Revolutions (1962; 2d ed., 1970). 6. An approach taken perhaps most famously by SAMUEL JOHNSON (1 7 0 9 -1 7 8 4 ), who, according to his biographer Jam es Boswell, responded to the idealist philosophy of George Berkeley by kicking a rock mightily and exclaim ing, “I refute it thus." 7. See Ian Hacking, T he Social Construction o f What? (Cambridge, M ass., 1999), in particular

the last chapter [Latour’s note]. Hacking (b. 1936), Canadian philosopher o f science. “Lapi­ d ate”: throw stones at. 8. Latour quotes Heidegger on “the fourfold” below'. 9. French philosopher of both science and the hum anities (b. 1930). 1. See Michel Serres, Statues: Le Second Livre des

fondations [Statues: T he Second B ook o f Founda­ tions] (Paris, 1987). On the reasons why Serres was never critical, see Serres with Latour, C on­ versations on Science, Culture, and Time, trans. Roxanne Lapidus (Ann Arbor, M ich., 1995) [Latour’s note]. The Challenger disaster: the explosion of the U.S. space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, shortly after liftoff. The Colum bia broke apart over the southern United States during reentry on February 1, 2003. In both cases, all crew members were killed.

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rain and collect in a huge hall to serve as so many clues in a judicial scientific investigation? Here, suddenly, in a stroke, an object had become a thing, a matter of fact was considered as a matter of great concern. If a thing is a gath­ ering, as Heidegger says, how striking to see how it can suddenly disband. If the “thinging of the thing” is a gathering that always connects the “united four, earth and sky, divinities and mortals, in the simple onefold of their self­ unified fourfold,”2 how could there be a better example of this making and unmaking than this catastrophe unfolding all its thousands of folds? How could we see it as a normal accident of technology when, in his eulogy for the unfortunate victims, your president said: “The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home”?3 As if no shuttle ever moved simply in space, but also always in heaven. This was on C-Span 1, but on C-Span 2,4 at the very same time, early Feb­ ruary 2003, another extraordinary parallel event was occurring. This time a Thing— with a capital T—was assembled to try to coalesce, to gather in one decision, one object, one projection of force: a military strike against Iraq.5 Again, it was hard to tell whether this gathering was a tribunal, a parliament, a command-and-control war room, a rich man’s club, a scientific congress, or a TV stage. But certainly it was an assembly where matters of great concern were debated and proven— except there was much puzzlement about which type of proofs should be given and how accurate they were. The difference between C-Span 1 and C-Span 2, as I watched them with bewilderment, was that while in the case of Colum bia we had a perfectly mastered object that suddenly was transformed into a shower of burning debris that was used as so much evidence in an investigation, there, at the United Nations, we had an investigation that tried to coalesce, in one unifying, unanimous, solid, mas­ tered object, masses of people, opinions, and might. In one case the object was metamorphosed into a thing; in the second, the thing was attempting to turn into an object. We could witness, in one case, the head, in another, the tail of the trajectory through which matters of fact emerge out of matters of concern. In both cases we were offered a unique window into the number of things that have to participate in the gathering of an object. Heidegger was not a very good anthropologist of science and technology; he had only four folds, while the smallest shuttle, the shortest war, has millions. How many gods, passions, controls, institutions, techniques, diplomacies, wits have to be folded to connect “earth and sky, divinities and mortals”— oh yes, especially mortals. (Frightening omen, to launch such a complicated war, just when such a beautifully mastered object as the shuttle disinte­ grated into thousands of pieces of debris raining down from the sky— but the omen was not heeded; gods nowadays are invoked for convenience only.)

2. Heidegger, “The Thing,” Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, 1971), p. 178 [Latour’s note]. 3. “Bush Talking More about Religion: Faith to Solve the N ation’s Problem s,” CNN website, 18 Feb 2 0 0 3 , www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/ 02/18/bush.faith/ [Latour’s note]. T h e quotation is from a speech by George W. Bush (b. 1946; 43d U .S. president, 2 0 0 1 —09), given hours after the C olum bia disaster.

4. Two channels o f the nonprofit U .S. cable com ­ pany that provides public access to governmental proceedings. 5. That is, the second channel was broadcasting the debate at the United Nations on authorizing the use of force against Iraq; though the resolu­ tion failed, the United States and a number of allies sent ground troops into Iraq on M arch 20, 2 003.

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My point is thus very simple: things have become Things again, objects have reentered the arena, the Thing, in which they have to be gathered first in order to exist later as what stands apart. The parenthesis that we can call the modern parenthesis during which we had, on the one hand, a world of objects, Gegenstand, out there, unconcerned by any sort of parliament, forum, agora,6 congress, court and, on the other, a whole set of forums, meeting places, town halls where people debated, has come to a close. What the etymology of the word thing— chose, causa, res, aitia7— had conserved for us mysteriously as a sort of fabulous and mythical past has now become, for all to see, our most ordinary present. Things are gathered again. Was it not extraordinarily moving to see, for instance, in the lower Man­ hattan reconstruction project, the long crowds, the angry messages, the pas­ sionate emails, the huge agoras, the long editorials that connected so many people to so many variations of the project to replace the Twin Towers? As the architect Daniel Libeskind8 said a few days before the decision, building will never be the same. I could open the newspaper and unfold the number of former objects that have become things again, from the global warming case I mentioned ear­ lier to the hormonal treatment of menopause, to the work of Tim Lenoir, the primate studies of Linda Fedigan and Shirley Strum, or the hyenas of my friend Steven Glickman.9 Nor are those gatherings limited to the present period as if only recently objects had become so obviously things. Every day historians of science help us realize to what extent we have never been modern because they keep revising every single element of past matters of fact from Mario Biagioli’s Galileo, Steven Shapins Boyle, and Simon Schaffer’s Newton, to the incredibly intricate linkages between Einstein and Poincare that Peter Galison has narrated in his latest masterpiece.1 Many others of course could be cited, but the crucial point for me now is that what allowed histo­ rians, philosophers, humanists, and critics to trace the difference between modern and premodern, namely, the sudden and somewhat miraculous appearance of matters of fact, is now thrown into doubt with the merging of matters of fact into highly complex, historically situated, richly diverse matters

6. M arketplace; in Greek city-states, the place of open assembly. 7. All words that mean “thing” {chose, French; res, Latin) or “cau se” {causa, L atin; aitia, Greek). 8. Polish-born A m erican arch itect (b. 1946), who in 2 0 0 3 won the com petition to provide the master plan for rebuilding the World Trade C en ­ ter site after the attacks of 9/11. 9. Serres proposed the word quasi-object to cover this intermediary phase between things and objects— a philosophical question much more interesting than the tired old one o f the relation between words and worlds. On the new way ani­ mals appear to scientists and the debate it trig­ gers, see Primate Encounters: M odels o f Science, Gender, and Society, ed. Shirley Strum and Linda Fedigan (Chicago, 2 0 0 0 ), and Vinciane Despret, Quand le loup habitera avec I'agneau

sor of primatology. Strum (b. 1947), a primatologist and professor of anthropology, who has collaborated with Latour. Stephen Glickm an (b. 1933), professor of biology and director of the Berkeley Spotted Hyena Project. 1. See Peter Galison, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires o f Time (New York, 2003) [Latour’s note]. In addition to the one study named— of the German-born American physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and the French physicist Henri Poin­ care (1854-1912), by the American historian of science Galison (b. 1955)— Latour alludes to stud­ ies of three other great scientists, Galileo Galilei (1 5 6 4 -1 6 4 2 ; Italian), Robert Boyle (1627-1692; British), and Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727; English): Biagioli’s Galileo, Courtier: The Practice o f Science in the Cidture o f Absolutism (1993), Shapin and Sch affer’s Leviathan and the Air-

[W hen the W olf Lies Down with the L am bJ

Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

(Paris, 2 0 0 2 ) [Latour’s note]. Lenoir (b. 1948), professor o f the history and philosophy of sci­ ence and technology. Fedigan (b. 1949), profes­

(1985), and Sch affer’s “Glass Works: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment” (1989).

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of concern. You can do one sort of thing with mugs, jugs, rocks, swans, cats, mats but not with Einstein’s Patent Bureau electric coordination of clocks in Bern.2 Things that gather cannot be thrown at you like objects. And, yet, I know full well that this is not enough because, no matter what we do, when we try to reconnect scientific objects with their aura, their crown, their web of associations, when we accompany them back to their gathering, we always appear to w eaken them, not to strengthen their claim to reality. I know, I know, we are acting with the best intentions in the world, we want to add reality to scientific objects, but, inevitably, through a sort of tragic bias, we seem always to be subtracting some bit from it. Like a clumsy waiter setting plates on a slanted table, every nice dish slides down and crashes on the ground. Why can we never discover the same stubbornness, the same solid realism by bringing out the obviously webby, “thingy” qualities of mat­ ters of concern? Why can’t we ever counteract the claim of realists that only a fare of matters of fact can satisfy their appetite and that matters of con­ cern are much like nouvelle cuisine— nice to look at but not fit for voracious appetites? One reason is of course the position objects have been given in most social sciences, a position that is so ridiculously useless that if it is employed, even in a small way, for dealing with science, technology, religion, law, or literature it will make absolutely impossible any serious consideration of objectivity— I mean of “thinginess.” Why is this so? Let me try to portray the critical landscape in its ordinary and routine state.3 We can summarize, I estimate, 90 percent of the contemporary critical scene by the following series of diagrams that fixate the object at only two positions, what I have called the fa ct position and the fairy position—fa ct and fairy are etymologically related but I won’t develop this point here.4 The fairy position is very well known and is used over and over again by many social scientists who associate criticism with antifetishism. The role of the critic is then to show that what the naive believers are doing with objects is simply a projection of their wishes onto a material entity that does nothing at all by itself. Here they have diverted to their petty use the prophetic fulmination against idols “they have mouths and speak not, they have ears and hear not,”5 but they use this prophecy to decry the very objects of belief— gods, fashion, poetry, sport, desire, you name it— to which naive believers cling with so much intensity.6 And then the courageous critic, who alone remains aware and attentive, who never sleeps, turns those false objects into fetishes7 that are supposed to be nothing but mere empty white screens

2. While working as a patent examiner in Bern (1902—08), Einstein evaluated new inventions to synchronize clocks, and the idea o f synchronizing clocks was key to his revolutionary 1905 paper on special relativity. 3. I summarize here some of the results of my already long anthropological inquiry into the icon­ oclastic gesture, from Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cam­ bridge, Mass., 1993) to Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality o f Science Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1999) and of course Iconoclash [Latour’s note]. 4. The English word fa c t derives from fa c ere, a

Latin verb m eaning “to do”; fairy is usually traced back to fa ri, a Latin verb meaning “to say.” 5. Psalm 115.5 (“and” is usually translated “but,” in both clauses). 6. See W illiam Pietz, “T he Problem of the Fetish, I,” Res 9 (Spring 1985): 5—17, “T he Prob­ lem of the Fetish, II: T he O rigin of the Fetish ,” Res 13 (Spring 1987): 2 3 - 4 5 , and “T h e Problem o f the Fetish, Ilia : Bosm an’s Guinea and the Enlightenm ent Theory o f Fetishism ,” Res 16 (Autumn 1988): 105—23 [Latour’s note]. 7. Inanim ate objects invested with magical, reli­ gious, or sexual qualities.

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Critical Gesture: Move One ...that merely projects onto an indifferent matter your own power.

You believe in the power of an idol...

...but in fact it is only the power of your own ingenuity

...to make you do things...

Figure 1

on which is projected the power of society, domination, whatever. The naive believer has received a first salvo (figure 1). But, wait, a second salvo is in the offing, and this time it comes from the fact pole. This time it is the poor bloke, again taken aback, whose behavior is now “explained” by the powerful effects of indisputable matters of fact: “You, ordinary fetishists, believe you are free but, in reality, you are acted on by forces you are not conscious of. Look at them, look, you blind idiot” (and here you insert whichever pet facts the social scientists fancy to work with, taking them from economic infrastructure, fields of discourse, social domination, race, class, and gender, maybe throwing in some neurobiology, evolutionary psychology,8 whatever, provided they act as indisputable facts whose origin, fabrication, mode of development are left unexamined) (figure 2). Do you see now why it feels so good to be a critical mind? Why critique, this most ambiguous 'pharmakon,9 has become such a potent euphoric drug? You are always right! When naive believers are clinging forcefully to their objects, claiming that they are made to do things because of their gods, their poetry, their cherished objects, you can turn all of those attachments into so many fetishes and humiliate all the believers by showing that it is nothing but their own projection, that you, yes you alone, can see. But as soon as naive believers are thus inflated by some belief in their own importance, in their own projective capacity, you strike them by a second uppercut and humiliate them again, this time by showing that, whatever they think, their behavior is entirely determined by the action of powerful causalities coming from objec­ tive reality they don’t see, but that you, yes you, the never sleeping critic, alone can see. Isn’t this fabulous? Isn’t it really worth going to graduate school to study critique? “Enter here, you poor folks. After arduous years of 8. A field of study that attempts to investigate psychological traits, such as memory, perception, or language, in terms of evolutionary processes.

9. Drug, whether healing or harmful (Greek); an allusion to j a c q u e s d e r r i d a ’s “Plato’s Pharmacy,” from Dissemination (1972; see above),

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Critical Gesture: Move Two ...to make you do things out of an indifferent matter... You believe in the free power of your own will...

Q

...but in fact you are unwillingly activated to do things...

...by the necessary power of genes, interests, drives, etc.

Figure 2

reading turgid prose, you will be always right, you will never be taken in any more; no one, no matter how powerful, will be able to accuse you of naivete, that supreme sin, any longer? Better equipped than Zeus1 himself you rule alone, striking from above with the salvo of antifetishism in one hand and the solid causality of objectivity in the other.” The only loser is the naive believer, the great unwashed, always caught off balance (figure 3). Is it so surprising, after all, that with such positions given to the object, the humanities have lost the hearts of their fellow citizens, that they had to retreat year after year, entrenching themselves always further in the narrow barracks left to them by more and more stingy deans? The Zeus of Critique rules absolutely, to be sure, but over a desert. One thing is clear, not one of us readers would like to see our own most cherished objects treated in this way. We would recoil in horror at the mere suggestion of having them socially explained, whether we deal in poetry or robots, stem cells, black holes, or impressionism, whether we are patriots, revolutionaries, or lawyers, whether we pray to God or put our hope in neuro­ science. This is why, in my opinion, those of us who tried to portray sciences as matters of concern so often failed to convince; readers have confused the treatment we give of the former matters of fact with the terrible fate of objects processed through the hands of sociology, cultural studies, and so on. And I cant blame our readers. What social scientists do to our favorite objects is so horrific that certainly we don’t want them to come any nearer. “Please,” we exclaim, “don’t touch them at all! Don’t try to explain them!” Or we might suggest more politely: “Why don’t you go further down the corridor to this other department? They have bad facts to account for; why don’t you explain away those ones instead of ours?” And this is the reason why, when we want respect, solidity, obstinacy, robustness, we all prefer to stick to the language of matters of fact no matter its well-known defects. 1. In Greek mythology, the king of the gods, whose weapon is the thunderbolt.

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...but the critic is always right!

When he or she debunks the claims of the fetishist by showing the work of his or her hands...

debunks the naive belief in freedom by showing the weight of determination.

Figure 3

The Critical Trick: Two Objects—Two Subjects The object is either nothing but a screen on which to project human free will...

The subject is either so powerful that he or she can create everything out of his her own labor... Fetish Fact

...or so powerful that it causally determines what humans think and do.

...or nothing but a mere receptacle for the forces of determinations known by natural and social sciences.

Figure 4

And yet this is not the only way because the cruel treatment objects undergo in the hands of what I’d like to call critical barbarity is rather easy to undo. If the critical barbarian appears so powerful, it is because the two mechanisms I have just sketched are never put together in one single diagram (figure 4). Antifetishists debunk objects they don’t believe in by showing the productive and projective forces of people; then, with­ out ever making the connection, they use objects they do believe in to

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resort to the causalist or mechanist explanation and debunk conscious capacities of people whose behavior they don’t approve of. The whole rather poor trick that allows critique to go on, although we would never confine our own valuables to their sordid pawnshop, is that there is never any crossover betw een the two lists o f objects in the fact position and the fairy position. This is why you can be at once and without even sensing any contradiction (1) an antifetishist for everything you don’t believe in— for the most part religion, popular culture, art, politics, and so on; (2) an unrepentant positivist for all the sciences you believe in— sociology, eco­ nomics, conspiracy theory, genetics, evolutionary psychology, semiotics, just pick your preferred field of study; and (3) a perfectly healthy sturdy realist for what you really cherish— and of course it might be criticism itself, but also painting, bird-watching, Shakespeare, baboons, proteins, and so on. If you think I am exaggerating in my somewhat dismal portrayal of the critical landscape, it is because we have had in effect almost no occasion so far to detect the total mismatch of the three contradictory repertoires— antifetishism, positivism, realism— because we carefully manage to apply them on different topics. We explain the objects we don’t approve of by treat­ ing them as fetishes; we account for behaviors we don’t like by discipline whose makeup we don’t examine; and we concentrate our passionate interest on only those things that are for us worthwhile matters of concern. But of course such a cavalier attitude with such contradictory repertoires is not possible for those of us, in science studies, who have to deal with states of affairs that fit neither in the list of plausible fetishes— because everyone, including us, does believe very strongly in them— nor in the list of undisputable facts because we are witnessing their birth, their slow construction, their fascinating emergence as matters of concern. The metaphor of the Copernican revolution,2 so tied to the destiny of critique, has always been for us, science students, simply moot. This is why, with more than a good dose of field chauvinism, I consider this tiny field so important; it is the little rock in the shoe that might render the routine patrol of the critical barbar­ ians more and more painful. The mistake would be to believe that we too have given a social explana­ tion of scientific facts. No, even though it is true that at first we tried, like good critics trained in the good schools, to use the armaments handed to us by our betters and elders to crack open— one of their favorite expressions, meaning to destroy— religion, power, discourse, hegemony. But, fortunately (yes, fortunately!), one after the other, we witnessed that the black boxes3 of science remained closed and that it was rather the tools that lay in the dust of our workshop, disjointed and broken. Put simply, critique was useless against objects of some solidity. You can try the projective game on UFOs or exotic divinities, but don’t try it on neurotransmitters, on gravitation, on

2. That is, a paradigm shift in how the world is viewed, sim ilar to the change from the cosmol­ ogy of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy (active 127—148 c . e .) , according to which all heavenly bodies revolved around Earth, to that of the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473—1543),

who argued that the sun is the center of our solar system. 3. In cybernetics, complex systems or devices represented only in terms of input and output, without concern for their internal processes.

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Monte Carlo calculations.4 But critique is also useless when it begins to use the results of one science uncritically, be it sociology itself, or economics, or postimperialism, to account for the behavior of people. You can try to play this miserable game of explaining aggression by invoking the genetic makeup of violent people, but try to do that while dragging in, at the same time, the many controversies in genetics, including evolutionary theories in which geneticists find themselves so thoroughly embroiled.5 On both accounts, matters of concern never occupy the two positions left for them by critical barbarity. Objects are much too strong to be treated as fetishes and much too weak to be treated as indisputable causal explana­ tions of some unconscious action. And this is not true of scientific states of affairs only; this is our great discovery, what made science studies commit such a felicitous mistake, such a felix culpa.6 Once you realize that scien­ tific objects cannot be socially explained, then you realize too that the socalled weak objects, those that appear to be candidates for the accusation of antifetishism, were never mere projections on an empty screen either/ They too act, they too do things, they too m ake you do things. It is not only the objects of science that resist, but all the others as well, those that were supposed to have been ground to dust by the powerful teeth of automated reflex-action deconstructors. To accuse something of being a fetish is the ultimate gratuitous, disrespectful, insane, and barbarous gesture.8 Is it not time for some progress? To the fact position, to the fairy position, why not add a third position, a fa ir position? Is it really asking too much from our collective intellectual life to devise, at least once a century, some new critical tools? Should we not be thoroughly humiliated to see that military personnel are more alert, more vigilant, more innovative than we, the pride of academia, the creme de la creme, who go on ceaselessly transforming the whole rest of the world into naive believers, into fetishists, into hapless victims of domination, while at the same time turning them into the mere superficial consequences of powerful hidden causalities coming from infrastructures whose makeup is never interrogated? All the while being intimately certain that the things really close to our hearts would in no way fit any of those roles. Are you not all tired of those “explanations”? I am, I have always been, when I know, for instance, that the God to whom I pray, the works of art I cherish, the colon cancer I have been fighting, the piece of law I am studying, the desire I feel, indeed, the very book I am writing could in no way be accounted for by fetish or fact, nor by any combination of those two absurd positions. To retrieve a realist attitude, it is not enough to dismantle critical weapons so uncritically built up by our predecessors as we would obsolete but still 4. A class o f computational algorithm s whose results are calculated by repeated random sam ­ pling; they are used in fields ranging from finance to medicine. 5. For a striking example, see Jean-Jacques Kupiec and Pierre Sonigo, Ni Dieu ni g&ne: Pour une autre

7. 1 have attempted to use this argument recently on two most difficult types of entities, Christian divinities (Latour, Ju biler ou les tourments de la

theorie de I'heredite [Neither God nor Gene: Toward Another Theory o f Heredity] (Paris, 20 0 0 ); see also Evelyn Fox-Keller, T he Century< o f the G ene (Cambridge, Mass., 2000) [Latour’s note].

parole religieuse [To Exalt or the Torments o f Reli­ gious Words] [Paris, 2002]), and law (Latour, La Fabrique du droit: Une Ethnographic du Conseil d ’etat [The Fabric o f Law: An Ethnography o f the Council o f State] [Paris, 2002]) [Latour’s note]. 8. The exhibition in Karlsruhe, Germany, Iconoclash, was a sort of belated ritual in order to atone

6. Happy or lucky fault (Latin).

for so much wanton destruction [Latour’s note].

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dangerous atomic silos. If we had to dismantle social theory only, it would be a rather simple affair; like the Soviet empire, those big totalities have feet of clay. But the difficulty lies in the fact that they are built on top of a much older philosophy, so that whenever we try to replace matters of fact by mat­ ters of concern, we seem to lose something along the way. It is like trying to fill the mythical Danaid’s barrel9— no matter what we put in it, the level of realism never increases. As long as we have not sealed the leaks, the realist attitude will always be split; matters of fact take the best part, and matters of concern are limited to a rich but essentially void or irrelevant history. More will always seem less. Although I wish to keep this paper short, I need to take a few more pages to deal with ways to overcome this bifurcation. Alfred North Whitehead famously said, “The recourse to metaphysics is like throwing a match into a powder magazine. It blows up the whole arena.”1 I cannot avoid getting into it because I have talked so much about weapon systems, explosions, iconoclasm, and arenas. Of all the modern philosophers who tried to overcome matters of fact, Whitehead is the only one who, instead of taking the path of critique and directing his attention away from facts to what makes them possible as Kant did; or adding something to their bare bones as Husserl2 did; or avoiding the fate of their domination, their Gestell,3, as much as possible as Heidegger did; tried to get closer to them or, more exactly, to see through them the reality that requested a new respectful real­ ist attitude. No one is less a critic than Whitehead, in all the meanings of the word, and it’s amusing to notice that the only pique he ever directed against someone else was against the other W., the one considered, wrongly in my view, as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, not W. as in Bush but W. as in Wittgenstein.4 What set Whitehead completely apart and straight on our path is that he considered matters of fact to be a very poor rendering of what is given in experience and something that muddles entirely the question, What is there? with the question, How do we know it? as Isabelle Stengers has shown recently in a major book about Whitehead’s philosophy.5 Those who now mock his philosophy don’t understand that they have resigned themselves to what he called the “bifurcation of nature.” They have entirely forgotten what it would require if we were to take this incredible sentence seriously: “For natural philosophy everything perceived is in nature. We may not pick up and choose. For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon” (CIV, pp. 28—29).

9. T hat is, an impossible task. In G reek mythol­ ogy, all but 1 of the 50 Danaids (daughters of Danaus) killed their husbands on their wedding night; according to the later poets, their eternal punishment in the underw'orld is to carry water to a leaky ja r that they can never fill. 1. Alfred North W hitehead, The Concept o f Nature (Cambridge, 1920), p. 29; hereafter abbre­ viated CN [Latour’s note]. W hitehead (1 8 6 1 1947), English mathematician and philosopher. 2. Edmund Husserl (1 8 5 9 -1 9 3 8 ), Germ an phi­ losopher and founder of phenomenology. 3. A technical term (roughly, “enfram ing”; Ger­ man) used by Heidegger to describe the essence

of technology as a peculiarly dehumanizing and dangerous orientation to the world. 4. Ludwig W ittgenstein (1 8 8 9 -1 9 5 1 ), Austrianborn British philosopher who was highly influen­ tial in both philosophy o f mind and philosophy of language. 5. See Isabelle Stengers, Penser avec W hitehead:

Une Libre et sauvage creation de concepts [Think­ ing with W hitehead: A Free and Wild Creation o f Concepts] (Paris, 20 0 2 ), a book which has the great advantage of taking seriously W hitehead’s science as well as his theory of God [Latour’s note]. Stengers (b. 1949), Belgian philosopher of science.

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All subsequent philosophies have done exactly the opposite: they have picked and chosen, and, worse, they have remained content with that limited choice. The solution to this bifurcation is not, as phenomenologists6 would have it, adding to the boring electric waves the rich lived world of the glowing sun. This would simply make the bifurcation greater. The solution or, rather, the adventure, according to Whitehead, is to dig much further into the real­ ist attitude and to realize that matters of fact are totally implausible, unreal­ istic, unjustified definitions of what it is to deal with things: Thus matter represents the refusal to think away spatial and temporal characteristics and to arrive at the bare concept of an individual entity. It is this refusal which has caused the muddle o f importing the m ere procedure o f thought into the fa ct o f nature. The entity, bared of all char­ acteristics except those of space and time, has acquired a physical status as the ultimate texture of nature; so that the course of nature is con­ ceived as being merely the fortunes of matter in its adventure through space. [CN, p. 20] It is not the case that there would exist solid matters of fact and that the next step would be for us to decide whether they will be used to explain something. It is not the case either that the other solution is to attack, criticize, expose, historicize those matters of fact, to show that they are made up, interpreted, flexible. It is not the case that we should rather flee out of them into the mind or add to them symbolic or cultural dimensions; the question is that matters of fact are a poor proxy of experience and of experimentation and, I would add, a confusing bundle of polemics, of epistemology, of modernist politics that can in no way claim to represent what is requested by a realist attitude.7 Whitehead is not an author known for keeping the reader wide awake, but I want to indicate at least the direction of the new critical attitude with which I wish to replace the tired routines of most social theories. The solution lies, it seems to me, in this promising word gathering that Heidegger had introduced to account for the “thingness of the thing.” Now, I know very well that Heidegger and Whitehead would have nothing to say to one another, and, yet, the word the latter used in Process and R ea l­ ity8 to describe “actual occasions,” his word for my matters of concern, is the word societies. It is also, by the way, the word used by Gabriel Tarde, the real founder of French sociology, to describe all sorts of entities. It is close enough to the word association that I have used all along to describe the objects of science and technology. Andrew Pickering would use the words “mangle of practice.”9 Whatever the words, what is presented here is an entirely 6. Philosophers who practice phenomenology, a philosophical method restricted to analyzing the intellectual processes of w hich we are introspectively aware. 7. That matters of fact represent now a rather rare and complicated historical rendering of experi­ ence has been made powerfully clear by many writers; see, for telling segments of this history, Christian Licoppe, La Form ation de la pratique

scientifique: Le Discourse de Vexperience en France et en Angleterre (1630—1820) [The Form a­ tion o f Scientific Practice: T h e Discourse o f Exper­ iment in France and England] (Paris, 1996); Mary Poovey, A History o f the M odern Fact: Problems o f

Knowledge in the Sciences o f Wealth and Society (Chicago, 1999); Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order o f Nature, 1150— 1750 (New York, 1998); and Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. Catherine A. Jones, Galison, and Amy Slaton (New York, 1998) [Latour’s note]. 8. A work published in 1929, in which W h ite­ head argues for the primacy of process in con sti­ tuting objects (reality). 9. See Andrew Pickering, T he Mangle o f Prac­ tice: Time, Agency, and S cien ce (Chicago, 1995) [Latour’s note]. Pickering (b. ca. 1950), British sociologist and historian of science.

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different attitude than the critical one, not a flight into the conditions of possibility of a given matter of fact, not the addition of something more human that the inhumane matters of fact would have missed, but, rather, a multifarious inquiry launched with the tools of anthropology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, sociology to detect how many participants are gath­ ered in a thing to make it exist and to maintain its existence. Objects are simply a gathering that has failed— a fact that has not been assembled according to due process.1 The stubbornness of matters of fact in the usual scenography of the rock-kicking objector— “It is there whether you like it or not”— is much like the stubbornness of political demonstrators: “the U.S., love it or leave it,” that is, a very poor substitute for any sort of vibrant, articulate, sturdy, decent, long-term existence.2 A gathering, that is, a thing, an issue, inside a Thing, an arena, can be very sturdy, too, on the condition that the number of its participants, its ingredients, nonhumans as well as humans, not be limited in advance.3 It is entirely wrong to divide the collec­ tive, as I call it, into the sturdy matters of fact, on the one hand, and the dispensable crowds, on the other. Archimedes4 spoke for a whole tradition when he exclaimed: “Give me one fixed point and I will move the Earth,” but am I not speaking for another, much less prestigious but maybe as respectable tradition, if I exclaim in turn “Give me one matter of concern and I will show you the whole earth and heavens that have to be gathered to hold it firmly in place”? For me it makes no sense to reserve the realist vocab­ ulary for the first one only. The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naive believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather. The critic is not the one who alternates haphazardly between antifetishism and positivism like the drunk iconoclast drawn by Goya,5 but the one for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile and thus in great need of care and caution. I am aware that to get at the heart of this argument one would have to renew also what it means to be a constructiv­ ist, but I have said enough to indicate the direction of critique, not away but toward the gathering, the Thing.6 Not westward, but, so to speak, eastward/ The practical problem we face, if we try to go that new route, is to associ­ ate the word criticism with a whole set of new positive metaphors, gestures, attitudes, knee-jerk reactions, habits of thoughts. To begin with this new habit forming, I’d like to extract another definition of critique from the most unlikely source, namely, Alan Turing’s original paper on thinking 1. See Latour, Politics o f Nature: How to Bridge the Sciences into Democracy, trans. Porter (Cam ­ bridge, M ass., 2 0 0 4 ) [Latour’s note]. 2. See the marvelously funny rendering of the realist gesture in Malcolm Ashmore, Derek Edwards, and Jonathan Potter, “The Bottom Line: The Rhetoric of Reality Demonstrations,” Config­ urations 2 (W inter 1994): 1-14 [Latour’s note]. 3. This is the challenge of a new exhibition I am curating with Peter Weibel in Karlsruhe and that is supposed to take place in 2 0 0 4 under the pro­ visional title “M aking Things Public.” This exhi­ bition will explore what Icon oclash had simply pointed at, namely, beyond the image wars [Latour’s note]. S ee Latour and W eibel, eds.,

Making Things Public: Atmospheres o f Democracy (2005).

4. Greek m athem atician and inventor (ca. 2 8 7 212 b . c . e . ) ; the quotation is from Sim plicius’s com mentary (6th c. c . e . ) on A r i s t o t l e ’s Physics. 5. Francisco Goya (174 6 -1 8 2 8 ), Spanish painter. 6. This paper is a companion of another one: Latour, “T he Promises o f C onstructivism ,” in

Chasing T echnoscience: Matrix fo r Materiality, ed. Don Ihde and Evan Selinger (Bloom ington, Ind., 2003), pp. 2 7 - 4 6 [Latour’s note]. 7. This is why, although I share all the worries of Thom as de Zengotita, “Common Ground: Find­ ing Our Way Back to the Enlightenm ent,” Harp­ er ’s 30 6 (Jan. 2003): 3 3 - 4 5 , I think he is entirely mistaken in the direction of the move he pro­ poses back to the future; to go back to the “natu­ ral” attitude is a sign o f nostalgia [Latour’s note].

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machines.8 I have a good reason for that: here is the typical paper about formalism, here is the origin of one of the icons— to use a cliche of antife­ tishism— of the contemporary age, namely, the computer, and yet, if you read this paper, it is so baroque, so kitsch, it assembles such an astounding number of metaphors, beings, hypotheses, allusions, that there is no chance that it would be accepted nowadays by any journal. Even Social Text would reject it out of hand as another hoax!9 “Not again,” they would certainly say, “once bitten, twice shy.” Who would take a paper seriously that states some­ where after having spoken of Muslim women, punishment of boys, extra­ sensory perception: “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping [God’s] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instru­ ments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates” (“CM,” p. 443). Lots of gods, always in machines.1 Remember how Bush eulogized the crew of the C olum bia for reaching home in heaven, if not home on earth? Here Turing too cannot avoid mentioning God’s creative power when talking of this most mastered machine, the computer that he has invented. T hat’s precisely his point. The computer is in for many surprises; you get out of it much more than you put into it. In the most dramatic way, Turing’s paper demonstrates, once again, that all objects are born things, all matters of fact require, in order to exist, a bewildering variety of matters of concern.2 The surprising result is that we don’t master what we, ourselves, have fabricated, the object of this definition of critique.3 Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s4 objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can “inject” an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string

8. See A. M. Turing, “Computing M achinery and Intelligence,” Mind 59 (Oct. 1950): 4 3 3 —6 0 ; here­ after abbreviated “CM .” See also what Powers in Galatea 2.2 (New York, 1995) did with this paper; this is critique in the most generous sense of the word. For the context of this paper, see Andrew Hodges, Alan Turning: T he Enigma (New York, 1983) [Latour’s note]. Turing (1912-1954), English mathematician, cryptographer, and pio­ neer of computer theory. 9. In 1996 the physicist Alan Sokal submitted to the cultural studies journal Social Text an article that parodied postmodern science critique; after it was published, he announced the hoax, designed to prove that such analyses were non­ sense. 1. The phrase evokes both the deus ex m achina of classical drama— a god who unexpectedly appears and makes possible a resolution— and “the ghost in the m achine,” the dismissive phrase applied in The C oncept o f Mind (1949) by the English philosopher G ilbert Ryle to the mind-body dualism proposed bv Rene D escartes (1 5 9 6 -1 6 5 0 ). 2. A nonform alist definition of formalism has been proposed by Brian Rotm an, Ad Infinitum:

T he Ghost in Turing’s M achine: Taking God out o f M athematics and Putting the Body B ack in (Stanford, C alif., 1993) [Latour’s note].

3. Sin ce Turing can be taken as the first and best programmer, those who believe in defining m achines by inputs and outputs should meditate his confession: M achines take me by surprise with great fre­ quency. This is largely because I do not do suf­ ficient calculation to decide what to expect them to do, or rather because, although I do a calculation, I do it in a hurried, slipshod fash­ ion, taking risks. Perhaps I say to myself, “I sup­ pose the voltage here ought to be the same as there: anyway let’s assume it is.” Naturally I am often wrong, and the result is a surprise for me for by the time the experiment is done these assumptions have been forgotten. These admis­ sions lay me open to lectures on the subject of my vicious ways, but do not throw any doubt on my credibility when 1 testify to the surprises I experience. (“C M ,” pp. 4 5 0 —51) On this nonform alist definition of com puters, see Brian Cantwell Sm ith, On the Origin o f Objects (Cambridge, M ass., 1997) [Latour’s note]. 4. Augusta Ada King, countess of Lovelace (1815—1852), an English m athem atician and pio­ neer of early computers, who com mented that Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine has no pretension whatever to originate anything.”

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struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron enter­ ing the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain dis­ turbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be “sub-critical,” i.e. to corre­ spond in this analogy to piles of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are supercritical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole “theory” consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals’ minds seem to be very definitely subcritical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, “Can a machine be made to be super-critical?” [“CM,” p. 454] We all know subcritical minds, that’s for sure! What would critique do if it could be associated with more, not with less, with multiplication, not subtrac­ tion. Critical theory died away long ago; can we become critical again, in the sense here offered by Turing? That is, generating more ideas than we have received, inheriting from a prestigious critical tradition but not letting it die away, or “dropping into quiescence” like a piano no longer struck. This would require that all entities, including computers, cease to be objects defined sim­ ply by their inputs and outputs and become again things, mediating, assem­ bling, gathering many more folds than the “united four.” If this were possible then we could let the critics come ever closer to the matters of concern we cherish, and then at last we could tell them: “Yes, please, touch them, explain them, deploy them.” Then we would have gone for good beyond iconoclasm. 2 003, 2004

M A R T H A C. N U S S B A U M b.

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Martha C. Nussbaum takes philosophy out of the academic realm and applies it to public issues of our day. While many contemporary philosophers focus on relatively technical issues of language or cognition, Nussbaum explores the therapeutic good that philosophy brings society. In pursuit of this wider aim, she draws on several other fields, such as law, public policy, international development, and, perhaps most surprisingly, literature. In our selections from Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense o f Reform in Liberal Education (1997), Nussbaum argues that American higher education should produce “citizens of the world,” and that literature plays a key role in achieving that goal because of its special efficacy in helping us to under­ stand others. Born in 1947, Nussbaum grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where her father was an attorney. After attending Wellesley College, she completed her B.A.

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at New York University in 1969. She did graduate work in classics at Harvard Uni­ versity, earning her M.A. in 1971; she was the first woman to receive a prestigious junior fellowship at Harvard’s Society of Fellows, and completed her Ph.D. in 1975. Nussbaum then taught classics and philosophy at Harvard from 1975 to 1983; in 1984 she joined the faculty of Brown University and held a prestigious University Professorship from 1988 to 1995. In addition, she was research adviser to the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki, a division of the United Nations University, from 1987 to 1993. She moved to the University of Chicago in 1995, where she is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics. Many contemporary critics have espoused poststructuralist theory, but Nussbaum represents a different tradition of thought, grounding her work in moral philosophy. Touchstones for her are the ancient Stoic philosophers, such as the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121—180 c . e .), who reflected on how to live deliberately and honor­ ably. One of Nussbaum’s concerns has been the emotions, particularly their relation to ethics and politics; rather than dismissing them as irrational or irrelevant to judg­ ment, as many thinkers have, she shows their role in evaluation and ethical judgment. For instance, justified anger at inequality, or compassion for those in poverty, works to spur needed social change. Another concern has been the philosophical import of literature, as she has paid particular attention to its capacity to represent emotion and to portray good and bad moral choices. Much of Nussbaum’s work deals with ethics, emotion, and literature, but through the 1990s her work expanded to consider politics more explicitly. Her participation in W IDER and travels to India, where she witnessed the inequalities experienced by many of the women of the world, affected her powerfully; as she remarks in her 2000 book W om en and Human D evelopm ent, these influences “transformed my work, making me aware of urgent problems and convincing me that philosophy had a con­ tribution to make toward their solution.” In collaboration with the Nobel P rizewinning economist Amartya Sen, she has promoted “the capabilities approach,” which redefines social good as assessed not by measuring wealth or a country’s per capita gross national product, as many economists and policy makers do, but by determining what capabilities people can exercise and how likely they are to flour­ ish. This new metric entails attention to literacy, health care, and freedom of reli­ gion, which she sees as minimal requirements for a decent society. In foregrounding traditional humanist concerns— in her emphasis on universal human capabilities, as well as in her defense of the tradition of literature and liberal learning— Nussbaum departs from much poststructuralist theory, which espouses antihumanism and stresses the ways in which abstract structures, such as language or ideology, determine human life. Nussbaum also asserts normative standards, believ­ ing, for instance, that all people should have health care and “liberty of conscience” (freedom of religion), at a time when much theory rejects normative standards and universal ideals to embrace difference. A central element in creating a better society for Nussbaum, as it was for plato in his Republic, is the education of citizens; in our selections from Cultivating Humanity, Nussbaum contends that an important purpose of higher education is not just job training but to train citizens of the world who are sensitive to social justice. She believes that one way to achieve such sensitivity is through exposure to literature, especially drama and fiction. Literature makes us better citizens because it helps train us to understand others. Rather than being simply a private pursuit, as is often thought, “narrative imagination is an essential preparation for moral interaction.” It makes us more “capable of compassion,” which “involves the recognition that another person, in some ways similar to [ourselves], has suffered some significant pain or misfortune.” Thus one might vote for universal health care not only out of self-interest but also out of empathy for those who have the misfortune of suffering ill health and lacking insurance.

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In the background of Nussbaums argument are the “culture wars” and debates over the literary canon in the United States during the late 1980s and the 1990s, when conservatives charged that higher education had become politicized and, led by liberals, had abandoned the classics. Nussbaum counters by not only attacking their assumptions about the goal of education but also by grounding her argument that education should be political and cosmopolitan in the very tradition that they esteem— the literature and philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Nuss­ baum also criticizes the identity politics favored by liberals, asserting that the goals of education are universal. She further diverges from contemporary theorists in refusing to join the widespread critique, inspired by m i c h e l f o u c a u l t and others, of the Enlightenment and its stress on reason; instead, she strongly defends rational argument and its key role in a deliberative democracy. One other way that Nussbaum differs from many contemporary theorists is in the accessibility of her writing. She employs philosophical concepts without jargon, deter­ mined to convey to a general readership how theory contributes to making a good society. One of her most impassioned critiques, published in the New Republic in 1999, was of j u d i t h b u t l e r , whose writing she finds esoteric and whose arguments for subversion without a vision of normative justice she finds irresponsible, contribut­ ing to counterproductive social goals. Nussbaum, in turn, has been criticized from both the right and the left. From the right, she has been attacked for espousing multiculturalism under cover of the classics. From the left, she has been criticized for holding a traditional and unoriginal view of education, as well as for defending nor­ mative values. Because Nussbaum advocates cosmopolitanism, the postcolonial theo­ rist g a y a t r i c h a k r a v o r t y s p i v a k has charged her with carrying out an imperialist, “civilizing mission” directed at other cultures. The pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, who joined Nussbaum in calling for the public use of philosophy, nevertheless has criticized her argumentative stance, remarking that “her tone sometimes suggests that to differ from her is to imperil the social bond.” Through all of these debates, Nussbaum has been tireless in defending moral values and capabilities, and in insist­ ing on the public role of philosophy and criticism. C ultivating H um anity: A C la ssica l D efen se o f R efo rm in L ib e r a l E d u ca tio n Keywords: The Canon/Tradition, Classical Theory, Ethics, Institutional Studies, The Novel

From Cultivating Humanity: A Classical D efense of Reform in Liberal Education From Introduction. T he Old Education and the Think-A cadem y if

if.

if.

Our campuses are producing citizens, and this means that we must ask what a good citizen of the present day should be and should know. The present-day world is inescapably multicultural and multinational. Many of our most pressing problems require for their intelligent, cooperative solu­ tion a dialogue that brings together people from many different national and cultural and religious backgrounds. Even those issues that seem closest to home— issues, for example, about the structure of the family, the regula­ tion of sexuality, the future of children— need to be approached with a broad historical and cross-cultural understanding. A graduate of a U.S. university or college ought to be the sort of citizen who can become an intelligent participant in debates involving these differences, whether pro­ fessionally or simply as a voter, a juror, a friend.

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When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western philosophical tradi­ tion. We are drawing on Socrates concept of “the examined life,” on Aristot­ le’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions1 of an education that is “liberal” in that it liberates the mind from the bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensi­ tivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world. This is what Seneca2 means by the cultivation of humanity. The idea of the well-educated person as a “citizen of the world” has had a formative influence on Western thought about education: on David Hume and Adam Smith in the Scottish/English tradition, on Immanuel Kant in the continental Enlightenment tradition, on Thomas Paine3 and other Founding Fathers in the American tradition. Understanding the classical roots of these ideas helps us to recover powerful arguments that have exercised a formative influence on our own democracy. Our democracy, indeed, has based its institutions of higher learning on these ideals to a degree unparalleled in the world. In most nations students enter a university to pursue a single subject, and that is all they study. The idea of “liberal education”— a higher education that is a cultivation of the whole human being for the functions of citizenship and life generally— has been taken up most fully in the United States. This noble ideal, however, has not yet been fully realized in our colleges and universities. Some, while using the words “liberal education,” subordinate the cultivation of the whole person to technical and vocational education. Even where education is ostensibly “liberal,” it may not contain all that a citizen really needs to know. We should ask, then, how well our nation is really fulfilling a goal that it has chosen to make its own. What does the “cultivation of humanity” require? The classical ideal of the “world citizen” can be understood in two ways, and “cultivation of humanity” along with it. The sterner, more exigent ver­ sion is the ideal of a citizen whose 'primary loyalty is to human beings the world over, and whose national, local, and varied group loyalties are consid­ ered distinctly secondary. Its more relaxed version allows a variety of differ­ ent views about what our priorities should be but says that, however we order our varied loyalties, we should still be sure that we recognize the worth of human life wherever it occurs and see ourselves as bound by com­ mon human abilities and problems to people who lie at a great distance from us. These two different versions have existed at least since ancient Rome, when statesman and philosopher Cicero4 softened the stern demands of Greek Stoicism for a Roman audience. Although I do sympathize with the sterner thesis, it is the more relaxed and inclusive thesis that will con­ cern me here. What, then, does this inclusive conception ask us to learn?

1. Ideas associated with followers o f the Greek philosopher Zeno (3 3 5 -2 6 3 b . c . e . ) ; later, in a passage not included here, Nussbaum observes that the Stoics were interested in “sympathetic perception” and “asked the world citizen to gain an empathic understanding of people who are d ifferent." Socrates ( 4 6 9 -3 9 9 b . c . e . ) , Greek phi­ losopher known for relentless questioning, as depicted in the dialogues o f his pupil p l a t o (ca. 427—ca. 347 b . c . e . ) . a r i s t o t l e (3 8 4 -3 2 2 b . c . e .), Greek philosopher who considers citizenship especially in his N icom achean Ethics and Politics

(both ca. 3 3 0 b . c . e .). Roman Stoic philosopher and dram atist

2.

b . c . e . - 6 5 C .E .). 3 . British-born

(4

American political theorist and polemicist for American independence ( 1 7 3 7 — 1 8 0 9 ) . h u m e ( 1 7 1 1 - 1 7 7 6 ) , S cottish philosopher and historian. Sm ith ( 1 7 2 3 —1 7 9 0 ) , Scottish moral philosopher and founding figure in eco ­ nomics. k a n t ( 1 7 2 4 - 1 8 0 4 ) , Germ an idealist phi­ losopher. 4 . The great Roman orator ( 1 0 6 - 4 3 b . c . e .).

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Three capacities, above all, are essential to the cultivation of humanity in today’s world. First is the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one’s traditions— for living what, following Socrates, we may call “the examined life.” This means a life that accepts no belief as authoritative simply because it has been handed down by tradition or become familiar through habit, a life that questions all beliefs and accepts only those that survive reason’s demand for consistency and for justification. Training this capacity requires developing the capacity to reason logically, to test what one reads or says for consistency of reasoning, correctness of fact, and accuracy of judgment. Testing of this sort frequently produces challenges to tradition, as Socrates knew well when he defended himself against the charge of “corrupting the young.”5 But he defended his activity on the grounds that democracy needs citizens who can think for themselves rather than simply deferring to authority, who can reason together about their choices rather than just trading claims and counterclaims. Like a gadfly on the back of a noble but sluggish horse, he said, he was waking democracy up so that it could conduct its business in a more reflective and reasonable way. Our democracy, like ancient Athens, is prone to hasty and sloppy rea­ soning, and to the substitution of invective for real deliberation. We need Socratic teaching to fulfill the promise of democratic citizenship. Citizens who cultivate their humanity need, further, an ability to see themselves not simply as citizens of some local region or group but also, and above all, as human beings bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern. The world around us is inescapably international. Issues from business to agriculture, from human rights to the relief of fam­ ine, call our imaginations to venture beyond narrow group loyalties and to consider the reality of distant lives. We very easily think of ourselves in group terms— as Americans first and foremost, as human beings second— or, even more narrowly, as Italian-Americans, or heterosexuals, or AfricanAmericans first, Americans second, and human beings third if at all. We neglect needs and capacities that link us to fellow citizens who live at a distance or who look different from ourselves. This means that we are unaware of many prospects of communication and fellowship with them, and also of responsibilities we may have to them. We also sometimes err by neglect of differences, assuming that lives in distant places must be like ours and lacking curiosity about what they are really like. Cultivating our humanity in a complex, interlocking world involves understanding the ways in which common needs and aims are differently realized in different cir­ cumstances. This requires a great deal of knowledge that American college students rarely got in previous eras, knowledge of non-Western cultures, of minorities within their own, of differences of gender and sexuality. But citizens cannot think well on the basis of factual knowledge alone. The third ability of the citizen, closely related to the first two, can be called the narrative imagination. This means the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story, and to understand the emotions and wishes and desires that someone so placed might have. The narrative imagination is not uncritical, for we always bring ourselves and our own judgments to 5. Tried by an A thenian jury, Socrates was condemned to death. During his trial, recounted in Plato’s Apology (ca. 395 b . c . e . ), he declared that

“the unexamined life is not worth living” (38a); for his description of h im self as a gadfly, see 30e.

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the encounter with another; and when we identify with a character in a novel, or with a distant person whose life story we imagine, we inevitably will not merely identify; we will also judge that story in the light of our own goals and aspirations. But the first step of understanding the world from the point of view of the other is essential to any responsible act of judg­ ment, since we do not know what we are judging until we see the meaning of an action as the person intends it, the meaning of a speech as it expresses something of importance in the context of that person s history and social world. The third ability our students should attain is the ability to decipher such meanings through the use of the imagination. Intelligent citizenship needs more than these three abilities. Scientific understanding is also of the first importance. My excuse for not dwelling on this aspect of a liberal education is that others are far better placed to describe it than I. The same is true of economics, which I shall approach only in its relationship to philosophy and political theory. I focus on the parts of a liberal education that have by now become associated with “the humanities” and to some extent “the social sciences”: above all, then, on philosophy, political science, religious studies, history, anthropology, soci­ ology, literature, art, music, and studies of language and culture. Nor do I describe everything in these areas that a good citizen should know. I focus on areas of current urgency and controversy. (Even within the areas of con­ troversy I am selective, allowing the example of African-American studies to stand for more complex debates about ethnic studies generally. Issues of poverty and social class, which I have treated elsewhere, are treated selec­ tively, within chapters organized along other lines.) It was through ancient Greek and Roman arguments that I came upon these ideas in my own history. The Greek and Roman versions of these ideas are immensely valuable to us as we pursue these debates today, and I shall focus on that contribution. But ideas of this sort have many sources in many traditions. Closely related notions can be found in India, in Africa, in Latin America, and in China. One of the errors that a diverse education can dispel is the false belief that one’s own tradition is the only one that is capable of self-criticism or universal aspiration. *

*

«

From C hapter 3. The Narrative Im agination [There] are many forms of thought and expression within the range of human communications from which the voter derives the knowledge, intelligence, sensitivity to human values: the capacity for sane and objective judgement which, so far as possi­ ble, a ballot should express. [The] people do need novels and dra­ mas and paintings and poems, “because they will be called upon to vote.” — Alexander Meiklejohn,6 “The First Amendment Is an Absolute”

The world citizen needs knowledge of history and social fact. We have begun to see how those requirements can be met by curricula of different 6. British-born American philosopher (1872—1964), who as a university president becam e an influential advocate of a liberal education. T he article quoted was published in 1961.

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types. But people who know many facts about lives other than their own are still not fully equipped for citizenship. As Heraclitus7 said 2,500 years ago, “Learning about many things does not produce understanding.” Marcus Aurelius8 insisted that to become world citizens we must not simply amass knowledge; we must also cultivate in ourselves a capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves, seeing them not as forbiddingly alien and other, but as sharing many problems and possibilities with us. Differences of religion, gender, race, class, and national origin make the task of under­ standing harder, since these differences shape not only the practical choices people face but also their “insides,” their desires, thoughts, and ways of looking at the world. Here the arts play a vital role, cultivating powers of imagination that are essential to citizenship. As Alexander Meiklejohn, the distinguished consti­ tutional scholar and theorist of “deliberative democracy,” put it fifty years ago, arguing against an opponent who had denied the political relevance of art, the people of the United States need the arts precisely because they will be called upon to vote. That is not the only reason why the arts are important, but it is one significant reason. The arts cultivate capacities of judgment and sensitivity that can and should be expressed in the choices a citizen makes. To some extent this is true of all the arts. Music, dance, painting and sculpture, architecture— all have a role in shaping our under­ standing of the people around us. But in a curriculum for world citizenship, literature, with its ability to represent the specific circumstances and prob­ lems of people of many different sorts, makes an especially rich contribu­ tion. As Aristotle said in chapter 9 of T he Poetics, literature shows us “not something that has happened, but the kind of thing that might happen.”9 This knowledge of possibilities is an especially valuable resource in the political life. To begin to understand how literature can develop a citizen’s imagina­ tion, let us consider two literary works widely separated in place and time. In both cases, the literary work refers to its own distinctive capacity to pro­ mote adequate civic perception. Sophocles’1 Philoctetes, produced in 409 B .C ., during a crisis in the Athe­ nian democracy, concerns the proper treatment of a citizen who has become an outcast, crippled by a disfiguring illness. On his way to Troy to fight with the Greeks in the Trojan War, Philoctetes stepped by mistake into a sacred shrine. His foot, bitten by the serpent who guards the shrine, began to ooze with an ulcerous sore, and his cries of pain disrupted the army’s religious festivals. So the commanders abandoned him on the deserted island of Lemnos, with no companions and no resources but his bow and arrows. Ten years later, learning that they cannot win the war without his magical bow, they return, determined to ensnare him by a series of lies into partici­ pating in the war. The commander Odysseus shows no interest in Philoctetes

7. Greek philosopher (active ca. 5 0 0 b . c . e .), best known for his insistence that the only perma­ nent reality is change; Nussbaum quotes his fragment 40. 8. Roman emperor and philosopher (1 2 1 -1 8 0 c . E . ; emperor, 161-180); his M editations is an

influential expression o f Stoic philosophy, emphasizing the ideal of the wise and virtuous man in a society in which all share in a common nature. 9. For A ristotle’s Poetics, see above. 1. Greek tragedian (ca. 4 9 6 - 4 0 6 b . c . e .).

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as a person; he speaks of him only as a tool of public ends. The chorus of common soldiers has a different response (lines 169-176): For my part, I have compassion for him. Think how with no human company or care, no sight of a friendly face, wretched, always alone, he wastes away with that savage disease, with no way of meeting his daily needs. How, how in the world, does the poor man survive? Unlike their leader, the men of the chorus vividly and sympathetically imagine the life of a man whom they have never seen, picturing his loneliness, his pain, his struggle for survival. In the process they stand in for, and allude to, the imaginative work of the audience, who are invited by the play as a whole to imagine the sort of needy, homeless life to which prosperous people rarely direct their attention. The drama as a whole, then, cultivates the type of sympathetic vision of which its characters speak. In the play, this kind of vivid imagining prompts a political decision against using Philoctetes as a means, and the audience is led to believe this to be a politically and morally valuable result. In this way, by showing the public benefits of the very sort of sympathy it is currently awakening in its spectators, the drama commends its own resources as valuable for the formation of decent citizenship and informed public choice. Although the good of the whole should not be neglected, that good will not be well served if human beings are seen simply as instruments of one another’s purposes. Ralph Ellison’s2 Invisible Man (1952) develops this tradition of reflection about our failures of perception and recognition. Its hero describes himself as “invisible” because throughout the novel he is seen by those he encoun­ ters as a vehicle for various race-inflected stereotypes: the poor, humiliated black boy who snatches like an animal at the coins that lie on an electrified mat; the good student trusted to chauffeur a wealthy patron; the listening ear to whom this same patron unburdens his guilt and anxiety; the rabblerousing activist who energizes an urban revolutionary movement; the vio­ lent rapist who gratifies the sexual imagination of a woman brought up on racially charged sexual images— always he is cast in a drama of someone else’s making, “never more loved and appreciated” than when he plays his assigned role. The “others,” meanwhile, are all “lost in a dream world”— in which they see only what their own minds have created, never the reality of the person who stands before them. “You go along for years knowing some­ thing is wrong, then suddenly you discover that you’re as transparent as air.” Invisibility is “a matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.”3 Ellison’s grotesque, surreal world is very unlike the classical world of Sophocles’ play. Its concerns, however, are closely linked: social stratifica­ tion and injustice, manipulation and use, and above all invisibility and the condition of being transparent to and for one’s fellow citizens. Like Sophocles’

2. A frican American novelist (1 9 1 4 -1 9 9 4 ); Invisible Man, the only novel he published in his lifetim e, is widely recognized as a modern classic.

3. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1992), pp. 563, 566, 3 [Nussbaum’s note].

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drama, it explores and savagely excoriates these refusals to see. Like that drama, it invites its readers to know and see more than the unseeing char­ acters. “Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through?”4 In this way, it works upon the inner eyes of the very readers whose moral failures it castigates, although it refuses the easy notion that mutual visibility can be achieved in one heartfelt leap of brotherhood. Ellison explicitly linked the novelist’s art to the possibility of democracy. By representing both visibility and its evasions, both equality and its refusal, a novel, he wrote in an introduction, “could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation’s vacillating course toward and away from the democratic idea.” This is not, he continued, the only goal for fiction; but it is one proper and urgent goal. For a democracy requires not only institutions and procedures; it also requires a particular quality of vision, in order “to defeat this national tendency to deny the com­ mon humanity shared by my character and those who might happen to read of his experience.”5 The novel’s mordantly satirical treatment of stereo­ types, its fantastic use of image and symbol (in, for example, the bizarre dreamlike sequence in the white-paint factory), and its poignant moments of disappointed hope, all contribute to this end. As Ellison says, forming the civic imagination is not the only role for lit­ erature, but it is one salient role. Narrative art has the power to make us see the lives of the different with more than a casual tourist’s interest— with involvement and sympathetic understanding, with anger at our society’s refusals of visibility. We come to see how circumstances shape the lives of those who share with us some general goals and projects; and we see that circumstances shape not only people’s possibilities for action, but also their aspirations and desires, hopes and fears. All of this seems highly pertinent to decisions we must make as citizens. Understanding, for example, how a history of racial stereotyping can affect self-esteem, achievement, and love enables us to make more informed judgments on issues relating to affirma­ tive action and education. Higher education should develop students’ awareness of literature in many different ways. But literature does play a vital role in educating citi­ zens of the world. It makes sense, then, to ask how it can perform this func­ tion as well as possible— what sorts of literary works, and what sort of teaching of those works, our academic institutions should promote in order to foster an informed and compassionate vision of the different. When we ask this question, we find that the goals of world citizenship are best pro­ moted by a literary education that both adds new works to the well-known “canon” of Western literature and considers standard texts in a deliberative and critical spirit. It is frequently claimed that it is inappropriate to approach literature with a “political agenda.” Yet it is hard to justify such a claim without embracing an extreme kind of aesthetic formalism that is sterile and unap­

4. Ibid., p. 572 [Nussbaum’s note].

5. Ibid., pp. xxiv—xxv, xxvi [Nussbaum’s note].

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pealing. The Western aesthetic tradition has had throughout its history an intense concern with character and community. The defense of that tradi­ tion in the contemporary “culture wars” should enlist our support. FA N C Y AND W O N D E R

When a child and a parent begin to tell stories together, the child is acquir­ ing essential moral capacities. Even a simple nursery rhyme such as “Twin­ kle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are” leads children to feel wonder— a sense of mystery that mingles curiosity with awe. Children won­ der about the little star. In so doing they learn to imagine that a mere shape in the heavens has an inner world, in some ways mysterious, in some ways like their own. They learn to attribute life, emotion, and thought to a form whose insides are hidden. As time goes on, they do this in an increasingly sophisticated way, learning to hear and tell stories about animals and humans. These stories interact with their own attempts to explain the world and their own actions in it. A child deprived of stories is deprived, as well, of certain ways of viewing other people. For the insides of people, like the insides of stars, are not open to view. They must be wondered about. And the conclusion that this set of limbs in front of me has emotions and feel­ ings and thoughts of the sort I attribute to myself will not be reached with­ out the training of the imagination that storytelling promotes. Narrative play does teach children to view a personlike shape as a house for hope and fear and love and anger, all of which they have known them­ selves. But the wonder involved in storytelling also makes evident the limits of each person’s access to every other. “How I wonder what you are,” goes the rhyme. In that simple expression is an acknowledgment of the lack of completeness in one’s own grasp of the fear, the love, the sympathy, the anger, of the little star, or of any other creature or person. In fact the child adept at storytelling soon learns that people in stories are frequently easier to know than people in real life, who, as Proust puts it in T he Past R ecap­ tured,6 frequently offer “a dead weight that our sensitivity cannot remove,” a closed exterior that cannot be penetrated even by a sensitive imagination. The child, wondering about its parents, soon learns about these obstacles, just as it also learns that its parents need not know everything that goes on in its own mind. The habits of wonder promoted by storytelling thus define the other person as spacious and deep, with qualitative differences from oneself and hidden places worthy of respect. In these various ways, narrative imagination is an essential preparation for moral interaction. Habits of empathy and conjecture conduce to a cer­ tain type of citizenship and a certain form of community: one that culti­ vates a sympathetic responsiveness to another’s needs, and understands the way circumstances shape those needs, while respecting separateness and privacy. This is so because of the way in which literary imagining both inspires intense concern with the fate of characters and defines those char­ acters as containing a rich inner life, not all of which is open to view; in the process, the reader learns to have respect for the hidden contents of that

6. T he 7th and final volume (1927) o f one of the great narratives o f the 20th century — In Search o f Lost

Tim e (1913—27), by the French novelist M arcel Proust (187 1 -1 9 2 2 ).

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inner world, seeing its importance in defining a creature as fully human. It is this respect for the inner life of consciousness that literary theorist Lio­ nel Trilling describes when he calls the imagination of the novel-reader a “liberal imagination”7— meaning by this that the novel-reader is led to attri­ bute importance to the material conditions of happiness while respecting human freedom. As children grow older, the moral and social aspects of these literary sce­ narios become increasingly complex and full of distinctions, so that they gradually learn how to ascribe to others, and recognize in themselves, not only hope and fear, happiness and distress— attitudes that are ubiquitous, and comprehensible without extensive experience— but also more complex traits such as courage, self-restraint, dignity, perseverance, and fairness. These notions might be defined for the child in an abstract way; but to grasp their full meaning in ones own self-development and in social inter­ actions with others requires learning their dynamics in narrative settings. As children grasp such complex facts in imagination, they become capa­ ble of compassion. Compassion involves the recognition that another per­ son, in some ways similar to oneself, has suffered some significant pain or misfortune in a way for which that person is not, or not fully, to blame. As many moral traditions emphasize— the analysis of compassion is remark­ ably constant in both Western and non-Western philosophy— it requires estimating the significance of the misfortune as accurately as one can— usually in agreement with the sufferer, but sometimes in ways that depart from that person’s own judgment. Adam Smith points out that people who lose their mental faculties are the objects of our compassion even though they themselves are not aware of this loss: what is significant is the magni­ tude of the loss, as the onlooker estimates its role in the life of the loser.8 This requires, in turn, a highly complex set of moral abilities, including the ability to imagine what it is like to be in that person’s place (what we usually call empathy), and also the ability to stand back and ask whether the per­ son’s own judgment has taken the full measure of what has happened. Compassion requires one thing more: a sense of one’s own vulnerability to misfortune. To respond with compassion, I must be willing to entertain the thought that this suffering person might be me. And this I will be unlikely to do if I am convinced that I am above the ordinary lot and no ill can befall me. There are exceptions to this, in some religious traditions’ portrayals of the compassion of God; but philosophers such as Aristotle and Rousseau9 have plausibly claimed that imperfect human beings need the belief that their own possibilities are similar to those of the suffering per­ son, if they are to respond with compassion to another’s plight. This recog­ nition, as they see it, helps explain why compassion so frequently leads to generous support for the needs of others: one thinks, “That might have been me, and that is how I should want to be treated.”

7. See Lionel Trilling, T he Liberal Im agination (New York: Scrib n er’s, 1953) [Nussbaum’s note]. t r i l l i n g (1905—1975), influential A m erican lit­ erary critic during the m id-20th century and leading member of the New York Intellectu als, a group o f writers and literary critics.

8. See Sm ith, T he Theory o f Moral Sentiments (1759), 1.1.1. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778), Swissborn French political philosopher; his writings include E m ile (1762), a novel that sets forth his theory of education.

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Compassion, so understood, promotes an accurate awareness of our com­ mon vulnerability. It is true that human beings are needy, incomplete crea­ tures who are in many ways dependent on circumstances beyond their control for the possibility of well-being. As Rousseau argues in Em ile, people do not fully grasp that fact until they can imagine suffering vividly to them­ selves, and feel pain at the imagining. In a compassionate response to the suffering of another, one comprehends that being prosperous or powerful does not remove one from the ranks of needy humanity. Such reminders, the tradition argues, are likely to lead to a more beneficent treatment of the weak. Philoctetes, in Sophocles’ play, asks for aid by reminding the soldiers that they themselves might suffer what he has suffered. They accept because they are able to imagine his predicament. It seems, then, to be beneficial for members of a society to see themselves as bound to one another by similar weaknesses and needs, as well as by similar capacities for achievement. As Aristotle argues in chapter 9 of T he Poetics, literature is “more philosophical than history”— by which he means more conducive to general human understanding— precisely because it acquaints us with “the kind of thing that might happen,” general forms of possibility and their impact on human lives. Compassion requires demarcations: which creatures am I to count as my fellow creatures, sharing possibilities with me? One may be a person of refined feeling and still treat many people in one’s world as invisible, their prospects as unrelated to one’s own. Rousseau argues that a good education, which acquaints one with all the usual vicissitudes of fortune, will make it difficult to refuse acknowledgment to the poor or the sick, or slaves, or mem­ bers of lower classes. It is easy to see that any one of those might really have been me, given a change of circumstances. Boundaries of nationality can similarly be transcended in thought, for example by the recognition that one of the frequent hazards of wartime is to lose one’s nation. Boundaries of race, of gender, and of sexual orientation prove, historically, more recalcitrant: for there might appear to be little real-life possibility of a mans becoming a woman, a white person’s becoming black, or even (pace earlier psychiatry) a straight person’s becoming gay or lesbian. In these cases, then, it is all the more urgent to cultivate the basis for compassion through the fictional exer­ cise of imagination— for if one cannot in fact change one’s race, one can imagine what it is like to inhabit a race different from one’s own, and by becoming close to a person of different race or sexual orientation, one can imagine what it would be like for someone one loves to have such a life. Rousseau thought that people differed only in circumstances: under­ neath, their desires, aims, and emotions were the same. But in fact one of the things imagining reveals to us is that we are not all brothers under the skin, that circumstances of oppression form desire and emotion and aspira­ tion. Some characters feel like us, and some repel easy identification. But such failures to identify can also be sources of understanding. Both by identification and by its absence, we learn what life has done to people. A society that wants to foster the just treatment of all its members has strong reasons to foster an exercise of the compassionate imagination that crosses social boundaries, or tries to. And this means caring about literature.

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WORLD CITIZENSHIP, RELATIVISM, AND IDENTITY POLITICS #

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The really grave cause for concern in the current teaching of literature, however, is not the presence of defective arguments, which can easily be criticized. It is, instead, the prevalence of an approach to literature that questions the very possibility of a sympathy that takes one outside one’s group, and of common human needs and interests as a basis for that sym­ pathy. The goal of producing world citizens is profoundly opposed to the spirit of identity politics, which holds that one’s primary affiliation is with one’s local group, whether religious or ethnic or based on sexuality or gen­ der. Much teaching of literature in the current academy is inspired by the spirit of identity politics. Under the label “multiculturalism”— which can refer to the appropriate recognition of human diversity and cultural com­ plexity— a new antihumanist view has sometimes emerged, one that cele­ brates difference in an uncritical way and denies the very possibility of common interests and understandings, even of dialogue and debate, that take one outside one’s own group. In the world-citizen version of multicul­ turalism, the ethical argument for adding a work such as Invisible Man to the curriculum will be Ellison’s own argument: that our nation has a his­ tory of racial obtuseness and that this work helps all citizens to perceive racial issues with greater clarity. In the identity-politics version of multicul­ turalism, by contrast, the argument in favor of Invisible Man will be that it affirms the experience of African-American students. This view denies the possibility of the task Ellison set himself: “of revealing the human univer­ s a l hidden within the plight of one who was both black and American.”1 These different defenses of literature are connected with different con­ ceptions of democracy. The world-citizen view insists on the need for all citizens to understand differences with which they need to live; it sees citi­ zens as striving to deliberate and to understand across these divisions. It is connected with a conception of democratic debate as deliberation about the common good. The identity-politics view, by contrast, depicts the citizen body as a marketplace of identity-based interest groups jockeying for power, and views difference as something to be affirmed rather than understood. Indeed, it seems a bit hard to blame literature professionals for the current prevalence of identity politics in the academy, when these scholars simply reflect a cultural view that has other, more powerful sources. Dominant economic views of rationality within the political culture have long power­ fully promoted the idea that democracy is merely a marketplace of compet­ ing interest groups, without any common goals and ends that can be rationally deliberated. Economics has a far more pervasive and formative influence on our lives than does French literary theory, and it is striking that conservative critics who attack the Modern Language Association2 are slow to criticize the far more powerful sources of such anticosmopolitan ideas when they are presented by market economists. It was no postmod­ 1. Ellison, Invisible Man, p. xxvi. 2. T he primary North A m erican professional organization for academ ics in English and foreign languages and literatures; at its annual con-

vention, scholarly papers (whose titles occasion elicit outrage from conservatives) presented in hundreds of panels.

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ernist, but Milton Friedman, who said that about matters of value, “men can ultimately only fight.”3 This statement is false and pernicious. World citizens should vigorously criticize these ideas wherever they occur, insist­ ing that they lead to an impoverished view of democracy. An especially damaging consequence of identity politics in the literary academy is the belief, which one encounters in both students and scholars, that only a member of a particular oppressed group can write well or, per­ haps, even read well about that group s experience. Only female writers understand the experience of women; only African-American writers understand black experience. This claim has a superficial air of plausibility, since it is hard to deny that members of oppressed groups frequently do know things about their lives that other people do not know. Neither indi­ viduals or groups are perfect in self-knowledge, and a perceptive outsider may sometimes see what a person immersed in an experience fails to see. But in general, if we want to understand the situation of a group, we do well to begin with the best that has been written by members of that group. We must, however, insist that when we do so it may be possible for us to expand our own understanding— the strongest reason for including such works in the curriculum. We could learn nothing from such works if it were impos­ sible to cross group boundaries in imagination. Literary interpretation is indeed superficial if it preaches the simplistic message that we are all alike under the skin. Experience and culture shape many aspects of what is “under the skin,” as we can easily see if we reflect and read. It is for this reason that literature is so urgently important for the citizen, as an expansion of sympathies that real life cannot cultivate suffi­ ciently. It is the political promise of literature that it can transport us, while remaining ourselves, into the life of another, revealing similarities but also profound differences between the life and thought of that other and myself and making them comprehensible, or at least more nearly comprehensible. Any stance toward criticism that denies that possibility seems to deny the very possibility of literary experience as a human social good. We should energetically oppose these views wherever they are found, insisting on the world-citizen, rather than the identity-politics, form of multiculturalism as the basis for our curricular efforts. Literature makes many contributions to human life, and the undergradu­ ate curriculum should certainly reflect this plurality. But the great contri­ bution literature has to make to the life of the citizen is its ability to wrest from our frequently obtuse and blunted imaginations an acknowledgment of those who are other than ourselves, both in concrete circumstances and even in thought and emotion. As Ellison put it, a work of fiction may con­ tribute “to defeat this national tendency to deny the common humanity shared by my character and those who might happen to read of his experi­ ence.”4 This contribution makes it a key element in higher education.

3. Milton Friedm an, “The Methodology of Posi­ tive Econom ics,” reprinted in Daniel M. Hausman, ed., T he Philosophy o f Econom ics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 212 [Nussbaum’s note]. Friedm an (1912—

2 0 0 6 ), Am erican econom ist whose advocacy of free markets was highly influential. 4. Ellison, Invisible Man, p. xxvi [Nussbaum’s note].

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We are now trying to build an academy that will overcome defects of vision and receptivity that marred the humanities departments of earlier eras, an academy in which no group will be invisible in Ellison s sense. That is in its way a radical political agenda; it is always radical, in any society, to insist on the equal worth of all human beings, and people find all sorts of ways to avoid the claim of that ideal, much though they may pay it lip ser­ vice. The current agenda is radical in the way that Stoic world citizenship was radical in a Rome built on hierarchy and rank, in the way that the Christian idea of love of one’s neighbor was and is radical, in a world anx­ ious to deny our common membership in the kingdom of ends or the king­ dom of heaven. We should defend that radical agenda as the only one worthy of our conception of democracy and worthy of guiding its future. 1997

H O M I K. B H A B H A b.

1949

A prominent figure in postcolonial studies, Homi K. Bhabha has infused thinking about nationality, ethnicity, and politics with poststructuralist theories of identity and indeterminacy. Drawing on a wide range of theorists, particularly the decon­ structive philosopher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a , Bhabha’s essay “The Commitment to The­ ory” (1989) revises conventional notions of nationality and the colonial subject, showing how both are shifting, hybrid cultural constructions. It also provides a pow­ erful argument for the importance of theory, for the indelible link between theory and politics, and for the use of poststructuralist theory in the tacitly anti-imperialist cause of postcolonial studies. Bhabha was born two years after India gained national independence from British colonial rule, and his life exemplifies some of the hybrid subject positions of the post­ colonial world. He was raised in the Parsi community of Bombay, India, where his father was an important constitutional lawyer. After receiving a B.A. from Bombay University, he traveled to England to earn his M.A., M.Phil., and D.Phil. from Oxford University. Beginning in 1978, he taught at Sussex University for sixteen years; he also held visiting appointments in the United States. In 1994 he took a professorship at the University of Chicago, and in 2001 he moved to Harvard University, where he is Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and director of the Humanities Center. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at University College, London. Postcolonial criticism arose in the wake of the turbulent struggles for national independence of many African, Asian, and Latin American countries that were under the rule of European colonial empires through the middle of the twentieth century. Many early anticolonialist critics— among them, c. d . n a r a s i m h a i a h in India— promoted autonomous, nationalistic literary traditions to counteract the cultural as well as material domination of imperialism. Later, postcolonial theorists turned to analyze the ideological bases of colonial domination. Perhaps the two most influential figures in this development of contemporary postcolonial theory were e d w a r d w . s a i d and g a y a t r i c h a k r a v o r t y s p i v a k . In Orientalism (1978; see above), a foundational text of postcolonial studies, Said diagnosed the paths of cul­

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tural domination that projected non-Western people as the “Other.” In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988; see above), Spivak argued that postcolonial subjects have no voice under the dominant regime of colonial discourse. Extending the work of Said and Spivak, Bhabha starts with a deconstructive cri­ tique of the dichotomies of the West and the Orient, the center and the periphery, the empire and the colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed, and the self and the other. He adapts Derrida’s analysis of how binary oppositions structure Western thought, arguing that such dichotomies are too reductive because they imply that any national culture is unitary, homogeneous, and defined by “fixity” or an essential core. Instead, Bhabha proposes that nationalities, ethnicities, and identities are dialogic, indeterminate, and characterized by “hybridity”— one of his key terms. In “The Com­ mitment to Theory,” he defines hybridity as what “is new, neither the one nor the other," which emerges from a “Third Space.” To reinforce this fluid sense of national­ ity and identity, Bhabha employs a vocabulary of process-oriented terms, including dialogic, translation, negotiation, in-between, cross-reference, and ambivalence. Although “the wit and wisdom of Jacques Derrida” (as he calls it in another essay) is fundamental to his work, Bhabha draws on a wide array of twentieth-century theo­ rists throughout “The Commitment to Theory.” Building on the influential concept of nations set forth by b e n e d i c t a n d e r s o n in Imagined Communities (1983), Bhabha stresses how nationality is narratively produced, rather than arising from an intrinsic essence. From m i k h a i l m . b a k h t i n , he takes the concept of dialogue to stress that colonialism is not a one-way street but entails an interaction between colonizer and colonized. Regarding identity, he draws on f r a n t z f a n o n ’s psychoanalytic model of colonialism and j a c q u e s l a c a n ’s concepts of “mimicry” and the split subject, arguing that there is always an “excess” in the cultural imitation that the colonial subject is forced to produce. This mimicry in turn both revises colonial discourse and creates a new, hybrid identity for the colonial subject. The goal of Bhabha s theorizing of hybridity is not simply to modify the terms of debate in postcolonial studies but to make a political intervention. In general, Bhabha contends that theory is not separate from or opposed to political activism, but works hand in hand with it. Employing a deconstructive reversal of the opposition between textuality and the world, Bhabha claims that political events— he uses the example of a famous British strike— are in fact textual and discursive, often generated and spurred by “oppositional cultural practices.” More specifically, the concept of hybrid­ ity militates against “restrictive notions of cultural identity” that result in political separatism, as seen in nationalistic movements or in identity politics. For Bhabha, hybridity fosters the larger goal of “socialist community” while acknowledging cul­ tural differences. Such socialist community arises from the solidarity of different groups and movements working in coalition to create a new, progressive hegemony, as s t u a r t h a l l similarly urges. Although preoccupied with postcolonialism, “The Commitment to Theory” also addresses another field of critical debate. In his unabashed advocacy of poststruc­ turalist theory, Bhabha tacitly responds to many critics of the 1980s and 1990s. Their attacks came both from within the academy and from outside, in claims that theory was too obscure, detracted from literature, and represented a solipsistic aca­ demic pursuit. Like p a u l d e m a n ’s “Resistance to Theory” (1982), which asserts theory’s philosophical inevitability, “The Commitment to Theory” offers a staunch defense; but unlike de Man, Bhabha argues for theory’s political relevance. While rooted in contemporary debates, “The Commitment to Theory” also takes part in the larger tradition of defenses of literary practices, which starts with Ar i s t o t l e ’s defense of poetry in the Poetics (see above) and extends to nineteenth- and twentiethcentury defenses of criticism, such as o s c a r w i l d e ’s claims for the artistic value of criticism, “The Critic as Artist” (1890; see above), and j o h n c r o w e r a n s o m ’s argu­ ment for the value of professional criticism, “Criticism, Inc.” (1938; see above). Such works shield literature and criticism against accusations that they lack utility, social

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relevance, and moral good. Bhabha updates the tradition by declaring the political efficacy of literary theory. This debate continues to the present day, and Bhabha has frequently been criti­ cized for his embrace of theory at the expense of practice, his dense jargon, and his copiously allusive writing style. His sharpest critics have come from the left, taking to task his view of politics as textual. In particular, the Marxist critic Aijaz Ahmad has criticized him for detaching politics from specific locations and political situations. Ahmad also upbraids him for ignoring class and caste, charging that Bhabha s con­ cept of hybridity applies more aptly to privileged postcolonial intellectuals who have gained success in the Western world, like Bhabha himself, than to those in colonial situations. Other commentators, more concerned with theoretical consistency, have noted that the notion of a hybrid identity is too broad and amorphous, applying ulti­ mately to all identities. But within the context of debates in postcolonial studies, the concept of hybridity has decisively altered thinking about nations and identities. “The Commitment to Theory” Keywords: Deconstruction, Defense of Criticism, Hegemony, Nationhood, Postcolonial Theory, Poststructuralism, Race and Ethnicity Studies

The Commitment to Theory I There is a damaging and self-defeating assumption that theory is necessarily the elite language of the socially and culturally privileged. It is said that the place of the academic critic is inevitably within the Eurocentric archives of an imperialist or neo-colonial West. The Olympian realms of what is mistak­ enly labelled pure theory’ are assumed to be eternally insulated from the historical exigencies and tragedies of the wretched of the earth.1 Must we always polarize in order to polemicize? Are we trapped in a politics of struggle where the representation of social antagonisms and historical contradictions can take no other form than a binarism of theory vs politics? Can the aim of freedom of knowledge be the simple inversion of the relation of oppressor and oppressed, centre and periphery, negative image and positive image? Is our only way out of such dualism the espousal of an implacable oppositionality or the invention of an originary counter-myth of radical purity? Must the project of our liberationist aesthetics be forever part of a totalizing Utopian vision of Being and History that seeks to transcend the contradictions and ambivalences that constitute the very structure of human subjectivity and its systems of cultural representation? Between what is represented as the ‘larceny’ and distortion of European ‘metatheorizing’ and the radical, engaged, activist experience of Third World creativity,2 one can see the mirror image (albeit reversed in content and intention) of that ahistorical nineteenth-century polarity of Orient and 1. An allusion to The Wretched o f the Earth (1961; see above), by the M artinique-born French psy­ choanalyst and postcolonial theorist f r a n t z f a n o n (19 2 5 -1 9 6 1 ). 2. See C. Taylor, “Eurocentrics vs. New Thought at Edinburgh,” Framework 34 (1987), for an illus­ tration of this style of argument. See particularly

footnote 1 (p. 148) for an exposition of his use of “larceny” (“the judicious distortion of African truths to fit western prejudices”) [Bhabha’s note]. Third World: “underdeveloped” nations, many of which were formerly colonies of "First World” nations (countries of the industrialized West).

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Occident which, in the name of progress, unleashed the exclusionary impe­ rialist ideologies of self and other. This time round, the term Critical theory’, often untheorized and unargued, is definitely the Other, an otherness that is insistently identified with the vagaries of the depoliticized Eurocentric critic. Is the cause of radical art or critique best served, for instance, by a fulminat­ ing professor of film who announces, at a flashpoint in the argument, ‘We are not artists, vve are political activists?’ By obscuring the power of his own practice in the rhetoric of militancy, he fails to draw attention to the specific value of a politics of cultural production; because it makes the surfaces of cinematic signification the grounds of political intervention, it gives depth to the language of social criticism and extends the domain of ‘politics’ in a direction that will not be entirely dominated by the forces of economic or social control. Forms of popular rebellion and mobilization are often most subversive and transgressive when they are created through oppositional cultural practices. Before I am accused of bourgeois voluntarism, liberal pragmatism, academicist pluralism and all the other ‘-isms’ that are freely bandied about by those who take the most severe exception to ‘Eurocentric’ theoreticistw (Derrideanism, Lacanianism,3 poststructuralism . . . ), I would like to clar­ ify the goals of my opening questions. I am convinced that, in the language of political economy, it is legitimate to represent the relations of exploita­ tion and domination in the discursive division between the First and Third World, the North and the South. Despite the claims to a spurious rhetoric of ‘internationalism’ on the part of the established multinationals and the networks of the new communications technology industries, such circula­ tions of signs and commodities as there are, are caught in the vicious circuits of surplus value that link First World capital to Third World labour markets through the chains of the international division of labour, and national com­ prador4 classes. Gayatri Spivak is right to conclude that it is ‘in the interest of capital to preserve the comprador theatre in a state of relatively primitive labour legislation and environmental regulation’.5 I am equally convinced that, in the language of international diplomacy, there is a sharp growth in a new Anglo-American nationalism which increas­ ingly articulates its economic and military power in political acts that express a neo-imperialist disregard for the independence and autonomy of peoples and places in the Third World. Think of America’s ‘backyard’ policy towards the Caribbean and Latin America, the patriotic gore and patrician lore of Britain’s Falklands Campaign or, more recently, the triumphalism of the American and British forces during the Gulf War.6 I am further convinced that such economic and political domination has a profound hegemonic influ-

3. The influential poststructuralist lines of think­ ing inspired by, respectively, the French decon­ structive philosopher j a c q u e s d e r r i d a (1 930-2004) and the French psychoanalyst j a c q u e s l a c a n (1901-1981). 4. Native intermediary employed by a European business to supervise native employees. 5. G. C. Spivak, In O ther Worlds (London: M ethuen, 1987), pp. 166—67 [Bhabha’s note]. s p i v a k (b. 1942), U .S.-based Indian postcolonial theorist. 6. The international conflict (1 9 9 0 -9 1 ) triggered

by Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of oil-rich Kuwait; a U.S.-led coalition decisively defeated the Iraqi forces. The Falklands Campaign: a brief, unde­ clared war in 1982 between Great Britain and Argentina over control of the Falkland Islands (off the coast o f Argentina), occupied and admin­ istered by the British since 1833; the ignominious defeat of the Argentine forces led to a landslide victory for Prime M inister Margaret T hatcher’s Conservative Party in that year’s parliamentary elections in Britain (and to the fall o f the military government in Argentina the following year).

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ence on the information orders of the Western world, its popular media and its specialized institutions and academics. So much is not in doubt. What does demand further discussion is whether the ‘new’ languages of theoretical critique (semiotic, poststructuralist, deconstructionist and the rest) simply reflect those geopolitical divisions and their spheres of influ­ ence. Are the interests of ‘Western’ theory necessarily collusive with the hegemonic role of the West as a power bloc? Is the language of theory merely another power ploy of the culturally privileged Western elite to pro­ duce a discourse of the Other that reinforces its own power—knowledge equation? A large film festival in the West— even an alternative or counter-cultural event such as Edinburgh’s ‘Third Cinema’ Conference7— never fails to reveal the disproportionate influence of the West as cultural forum, in all three senses of that word: as place of public exhibition and discussion, as place of judgement, and as market-place. An Indian film about the plight of Bom­ bay’s pavement-dwellers wins the Newcastle Festival8 which then opens up distribution facilities in India. The first searing expose of the Bhopal disas­ ter is made for Channel Four.9 A major debate on the politics and theory of Third Cinema first appears in Screen, published by the British Film Insti­ tute. An archival article on the important history of neo-traditionalism and the ‘popular’ in Indian cinema sees the light of day in Fram ew orkJ Among the major contributors to the development of the Third Cinema as precept and practice are a number of Third World film-makers and critics who are exiles or emigres in the West and live problematically, often dangerously, on the ‘left’ margins of a Eurocentric, bourgeois liberal culture. I don’t think I need to add individual names or places, or detail the historical reasons why the West car­ ries and exploits what Bourdieu2 would call its symbolic capital. The condition is all too familiar, and it is not my purpose here to make those important dis­ tinctions between different national situations and the disparate political causes and collective histories of cultural exile. I want to take my stand on the shifting margins of cultural displacement— that confounds any profound or ‘authentic’ sense of a ‘national’ culture or an ‘organic’ intellectual*— and ask what the function of a committed theoretical perspective might be, once the cultural and historical hybridity of the postcolonial world is taken as the para­ digmatic place of departure. Committed to what? At this stage in the argument, I do not want to iden­ tify any specific ‘object’ of political allegiance— the Third World, the working 7. A showcase for films by Latin Am erican, A fri­ can, Middle Eastern, and Asian filmmakers at the Edinburgh International Film Festival; Bhabha is referring to the 40th festival (August 1 1 -1 3 ,1 9 8 6 ). 8. Arts festival in northeastern England. 9. A British com m ercially supported network, created in 1982 and intended to increase the representation of m inorities on television; it is known for high-quality dramas and docum enta­ ries. “Bhopal disaster”: the leakage of tons of poisonous gas in Decem ber 1984 from a pesti­ cide plant in central India owned by Union Car­ bide, a U.S. m ultinational, which was one of the worst industrial disasters in history; thousands died and tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands were injured.

1. See T. H. G abriel, “Teaching Third World C inem a,’* and Ju lian n e Burton, “T h e Politics of A esthetic D istan ce— Sao B ernand o,” both in Screen 24 .2 (1983), and A. Rajadhyaksha, “N eo­ traditionalism : Film as Popular Art in India,” Fram ew ork, nos. 32/33 (1986) [Bhabha’s note]. 2. P I E R R E B O U R D I E U (1 9 3 0 -2 0 0 2 ), French soci­ ologist; one of his key terms is “symbolic capi­ tal,” the tools used by individuals and institutions within a given environment to gain dom inance and thus to reproduce themselves over time. 3. Someone (regardless of profession) who directs the ideas and aspirations of the particular social class to which he or she “organically” belongs, as described by the Italian M arxist theorist A n t o ­ n i o G R A M S C I (189 1 -1 9 3 7 ). “National culture”: a term associated with Fanon.

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class, the feminist struggle. Although such an objectification of political activity is crucial and must significantly inform political debate, it is not the only option for those critics or intellectuals who are committed to progressive political change in the direction of a socialist society. It is a sign of political maturity to accept that there are many forms of political writing whose dif­ ferent effects are obscured when they are divided between the ‘theoretical’ and the ‘activist’. It is not as if the leaflet involved in the organization of a strike is short on theory, while a speculative article on the theory of ideology ought to have more practical examples or applications. They are both forms of discourse and to that extent they produce rather than reflect their objects of reference. The difference between them lies in their operational qualities. The leaflet has a specific expository and organizational purpose, temporally bound to the event; the theory of ideology makes its contribution to those embedded political ideas and principles that inform the right to strike. The latter does not justify the former; nor does it necessarily precede it. It exists side by side with it— the one as an enabling part of the other— like the recto and verso of a sheet of paper, to use a common semiotic analogy in the uncommon context of politics. My concern here is with the process o f‘intervening ideologically’, as Stuart Hall describes the role of ‘imagining’ or representation in the practice of politics in his response to the British election of 1987.4 For Hall, the notion of hegemony implies a politics of identification of the imaginary? This occupies a discursive space which is not exclusively delimited by the history of either the right or the left. It exists somehow in-between these political polarities, and also between the familiar divisions of theory and political practice. This approach, as I read it, introduces us to an exciting, neglected moment, or movement, in the ‘recognition* of the relation of politics to theory; and con­ founds the traditional division between them. Such a movement is initiated if we see that relation as determined by the rule of repeatable materiality, which Foucault describes as the process by which statements from one insti­ tution can be transcribed in the discourse of another.6 Despite the schemata of use and application that constitute a field of stabilization for the statement, any change in the statement’s conditions of use and reinvestment, any altera­ tion in its field of experience or verification, or indeed any difference in the problems to be solved, can lead to the emergence of a new statement: the difference of the same. In what hybrid forms, then, may a politics of the theoretical statement emerge? What tensions and ambivalences mark this engimatic place from which theory speaks? Speaking in the name of some counter-authority or horizon of ‘the true’ (in Foucault’s sense of the strategic effects of any appa­ ratus or dispositif7), the theoretical enterprise has to represent the adver­ sarial authority (of power and/or knowledge) which, in a doubly inscribed move, it simultaneously seeks to subvert and replace. In this complicated

4. S. Hall, “Blue Election, Election Blues,” Marx­ ism Today, July 1987, pp. 3 0 —35 [Bhabha’s note]. h a l l (1 9 3 2 -2 0 1 4 ), a leading figure in British cultural studies. 5. The notion of hegemony— the manufactured consent that legitim ates a dominant group and unifies a society— derives from Gram sci.

6. M. Foucault, The Archaeology o f Knowledge, [trans. A. M. Sheridan] (London: Tavistock, 1972), pp. 1 0 2 -5 [Bhabha’s note], m i c h e l F o u ­ c a u l t (1 9 2 6 -1 9 8 4 ), French philosopher and his­ torian of ideas. 7. Apparatus, device (French).

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formulation I have tried to indicate something of the boundary and location of the event of theoretical critique which does not contain the truth (in polar opposition to totalitarianism, ‘bourgeois liberalism’ or whatever is sup­ posed to repress it). The ‘true’ is always marked and informed by the ambiv­ alence of the process of emergence itself, the productivity of meanings that construct counter-knowledges in m edias res, in the very act of agonism,8 within the terms of a negotiation (rather than a negation) of oppositional and antagonistic elements. Political positions are not simply identifiable as progressive or reactionary, bourgeois or radical, prior to the act of critique en g a g ee9 or outside the terms and conditions of their discursive address. It is in this sense that the historical moment of political action must be thought of as part of the history of the form of its writing. This is not to state the obvious, that there is no knowledge— political or otherwise— outside representation. It is to suggest that the dynamics of writing and textuality require us to rethink the logics of causality and determinacy through which we recognize the ‘political’ as a form of calculation and stra­ tegic action dedicated to social transformation. ‘What is to be done?’1 must acknowledge the force of writing, its metaphoricity and its rhetorical discourse, as a productive matrix which defines the ‘social’ and makes it available as an objective of and for, action. Textual­ ity is not simply a second-order ideological expression or a verbal symptom of a pre-given political subject. That the political subject— as indeed the subject of politics— is a discursive event is nowhere more clearly seen than in a text which has been a formative influence on Western democratic and socialist discourse— M ill’s essay ‘On Liberty’.2 His crucial chapter, ‘On The Liberty of Thought and Discussion’, is an attempt to define political judge­ ment as the problem of finding a form of public rhetoric able to represent different and opposing political ‘contents’ not as a priori preconstituted principles but as a dialogical discursive exchange; a negotiation of terms in the on-going present of the enunciation of the political statement. What is unexpected is the suggestion that a crisis of identification is initiated in the textual performance that displays a certain ‘difference’ within the sig­ nification of any single political system, prior to establishing the substan­ tial differences betw een political beliefs. A knowledge can only become political through an agonistic process: dissensus, alterity and otherness are the discursive conditions for the circulation and recognition of a politi­ cized subject and a public ‘truth’: [If] opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them . . . [He] must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess him self o f the portion o f truth which meets and removes that difficulty. . . . Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them . . . and consequently

8. Combat, contest. In medias res : in the middle of things (Latin); usually, in the midst of a narrative. 9. Engaged criticism (French), a term associated with the French philosopher, playwright, and political activist Jean-P aul S artre (1 9 0 5 -1 9 8 0 ).

1 .T h e title of a famous 1902 pamphlet by the Russian M arxist revolutionary V. I. Lenin. 2. Published in 1859 by the English philosopher and social reformer John Stuart Mill (1806—1873).

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they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.3 (My emphases) It is true that Mill’s ‘rationality’ permits, or requires, such forms of conten­ tion and contradiction in order to enhance his vision of the inherently pro­ gressive and evolutionary bent of human judgement. (This makes it possible for contradictions to be resolved and also generates a sense of the whole truth’ which reflects the natural, organic bent of the human mind.) It is also true that Mill always reserves, in society as in his argument, the unreal neutral space of the Third Person as the representative of the people’, who witnesses the debate from an ‘epistemological distance’ and draws a reasonable conclu­ sion. Even so, in his attempt to describe the political as a form of debate and dialogue— as the process of public rhetoric— that is crucially mediated through this ambivalent and antagonistic faculty of a political ‘imagination’, Mill exceeds the usual mimetic sense of the battle of ideas. He suggests something much more dialogical: the realization of the political idea at the ambivalent point of textual address, its emergence through a form of political projection. Rereading Mill through the stategies o f‘writing’ that I have suggested, reveals that one cannot passively follow the line of argument running through the logic of the opposing ideology. The textual process of political antagonism initiates a contradictory process of reading between the lines; the agent of the discourse becomes, in the same time of utterance, the inverted, projected object of the argument, turned against itself. It is, Mill insists, only by effec­ tively assuming the mental position of the antagonist and working through the displacing and decentring force of that discursive difficulty that the politicized ‘portion of truth’ is produced. This is a different dynamic from the ethic of tolerance in liberal ideology which has to imagine opposition in order to con­ tain it and demonstrate its enlightened relativism or humanism. Reading Mill, against the grain, suggests that politics can only become representative, a truly public discourse, through a splitting in the signification of the subject of representation; through an ambivalence at the point of the enunciation of a politics. I have chosen to demonstrate the importance of the space of writing, and the problematic of address, at the very heart of the liberal tradition because it is here that the myth of the ‘transparency’ of the human agent and the rea­ sonableness of political action is most forcefully asserted. Despite the more radical political alternatives of the right and the left, the popular, common­ sense view of the place of the individual in relation to the social is still sub­ stantially thought and lived in ethical terms moulded by liberal beliefs. What the attention to rhetoric and writing reveals is the discursive ambivalence that makes ‘the political’ possible. From such a perspective, the problematic of political judgement cannot be represented as an epistemological problem of appearance and reality or theory and practice or word and thing. Nor can it be represented as a dialectical problem or a symptomatic contradiction con­ stitutive of the materiality of the ‘real’. On the contrary, we are made excruci­ atingly aware of the ambivalent juxtaposition, the dangerous interstitial relation of the factual and the projective, and, beyond that, of the crucial 3 . J . S. M ill, “On Liberty,” in Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (London: Dent and Sons, 1972), pp. 9 3 - 9 4 [Bhabha’s note].

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function of the textual and the rhetorical. It is those vicissitudes of the move­ ment of the signifier,4 in the fixing of the factual and the closure of the real, that ensure the efficacy of stategic thinking in the discourses of Realpolitik. It is this to-and-fro, this fort/da5 of the symbolic process of political negotia­ tion, that constitutes a politics of address. Its importance goes beyond the unsettling of the essentialism or logocentricism of a received political tradi­ tion, in the name of an abstract free play of the signifier.6 A critical discourse does not yield a new political object, or aim, or knowl­ edge, which is simply a mimetic reflection of an a priori political principle or theoretical commitment. We should not demand of it a pure teleology of anal­ ysis whereby the prior principle is simply augmented, its rationality smoothly developed, its identity as socialist or materialist (as opposed to neo-imperialist or humanist) consistently confirmed in each oppositional stage of the argu­ ment. Such identikit7 political idealism may be the gesture of great individual fervour, but it lacks the deeper, if dangerous, sense of what is entailed by the passage of history in theoretical discourse. The language of critique is effective not because it keeps forever separate the terms of the master and the slave,8 the mercantilist and the Marxist, but to the extent to which it overcomes the given grounds of opposition and opens up a space of translation: a place of hybridity, figuratively speaking, where the construction of a political object that is new, neither the one nor the other, properly alienates our political expec­ tations, and changes, as it must, the very forms of our recognition of the moment of politics. The challenge lies in conceiving of the time of political action and understanding as opening up a space that can accept and regulate the differential structure of the moment of intervention without rushing to produce a unity of the social antagonism or contradiction. This is a sign that history is happening— within the pages of theory, within the systems and structures we construct to figure the passage of the historical. When I talk of negotiation rather than negation, it is to convey a temporal­ ity that makes it possible to conceive of the articulation of antagonistic or contradictory elements: a dialectic without the emergence of a teleological or transcendent History,9 and beyond the prescriptive form of symptomatic reading where the nervous tics on the surface of ideology reveal the real materialist contradiction’ that History embodies. In such a discursive tempo­ rality, the event of theory becomes the negotiation of contradictory and antag­ onistic instances that open up hybrid sites and objectives of struggle, and

4. The symbol or sound that conveys meaning (what is conveyed is the signified), as described in the analysis of signs by the Swiss linguist F e r ­ d i n a n d d e s a u s s u r e (1857-1913). 5. Gone/here (Germ an). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), s i g m u n d f r e u d describes how his 18-month-old nephew would throw a spool tied to a piece of yarn, saying “Fo rt,” and then pull it back in, saying “Da”; for Freud this game was a way for the child to work out his anxiety about his m other’s absence. In “T he M irror Stage" (1949; see above), Lacan argues that the game is about the ch ild ’s entry into the Symbolic (the structure of language itself). 6. “The free play o f the signifier,” like “logocentrism ” (the privileging of speech, the assumption that knowledge is organized around some central Truth), is a concept developed by Jacques Der­

rida in O f Grammatology (1967). 7. Likeness of a person’s face constructed from descriptions (used by the police to help identify a suspect). 8. An allusion to the M aster-Slave dialectic developed by the Germ an philosopher g e o r g f r i e d r i c h w i l h e l m h e g e l in Phenom enology o f Spirit (1807; see above), which describes two self-consciousnesses that confront each other and fight for mutual recognition; each identifies him- or herself through the eyes o f the other as ruler and ruled. 9. T hat is, a process of change through contest of opposites that— unlike in the systems of Hegel or the German political and economic theorist k a r l m a r x (1818-1883), in which the dialectic plays a key role— does not necessarily lead to a predeter­ mined end.

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destroy those negative polarities between knowledge and its objects, and between theory and practical-political reason.1 If I have argued against a pri­ mordial and previsionary division of right or left, progressive or reactionary, it has been only to stress the fully historical and discursive differance2 between them. I would not like my notion of negotiation to be confused with some syndicalist sense of reformism because that is not the political level that is being explored here. By negotiation I attempt to draw attention to the struc­ ture of iteration3 which informs political movements that attempt to articulate antagonistic and oppositional elements without the redemptive rationality of sublation or transcendence.4 The temporality of negotiation or translation, as I have sketched it, has two main advantages. First, it acknowledges the historical connectedness between the subject and object of critique so that there can be no simplistic, essential­ ist opposition between ideological miscognition and revolutionary truth. The progressive reading is crucially determined by the adversarial or agonistic situation itself; it is effective because it uses the subversive, messy mask of camouflage and does not come like a pure avenging angel speaking the truth of a radical historicity and pure oppositionality. If one is aware of this hetero­ geneous emergence (not origin) of radical critique, then— and this is my sec­ ond point— the function of theory within the political process becomes double-edged. It makes us aware that our political referents and priorities— the people, the community, class struggle, anti-racism, gender difference, the assertion of an anti-imperialist, black or third perspective— are not there in some primordial, naturalistic sense. Nor do they reflect a unitary or homoge­ neous political object. They make sense as they come to be constructed in the discourse of feminism or Marxism or the Third Cinemas or whatever, whose objects of priority— class or sexuality or ‘the new ethnicity’— are always in historical and philosophical tension, or cross-reference with other objectives. Indeed, the whole history of socialist thought which seeks to ‘make it new and better seems to be a different process of articulating priorities whose political objects can be recalcitrant and contradictory. Within contemporary Marxism, for example, witness the continual tension between the English, humanist, labourist faction and the ‘theoreticist’, structuralist, new left ten­ dencies. Within feminism, there is again a marked difference of emphasis between the psychoanalytic/semiotic tradition and the Marxist articulation of gender and class through a theory of cultural and ideological interpella­ tion.6 I have presented these differences in broad brush-strokes, often using the language of polemic to suggest that each position is always a process of 1. For a significant elaboration of a similar argu­ ment, see E. Laclau and C. M ouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, [trans. W. Moore and P. Cammack] (London: Verso, 1985), chap. 3 [Bhab­ ha’s note]. Ernesto Laclau (1935—2014), Argentine political theorist, and his wife Chantal M ouffe (b. 1943), Belgian political theorist, are known for their elaboration of “post-Marxism.” 2. Derrida’s term , drawing on the two senses of the French verb differer, that com bines spatial difference and temporal deferral. 3. Repetition; Derrida applies the term to the repetitious structure of signification. 4. For a philosophical underpinning of some of the

concepts I am proposing here see R. G asche, The Tain o f the Mirror (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986) [Bhabha’s note]. “Subla­ tion”: in Hegel, the negation but partial incorpora­ tion of an element in the dialectic process. 5. A movement calling for political, anticolonial filmmaking in the third world, independent of com mercial models; it began in Latin America in the late 1960s. 6. The term used by the French Marxist philoso­ pher l o u i s a l t h u s s e r (1 9 1 8-1990) to refer to how ideology “hails” or creates individuals as sub­ je c ts , in “Ideology and Ideological State Appara­ tuses” (1970; see above).

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translation and transference of meaning. Each objective is constructed on the trace of that perspective that it puts under erasure; each political object is determined in relation to the other, and displaced in that critical act. Too often these theoretical issues are peremptorily transposed into organizational terms and represented as sectarianism. I am suggesting that such contradic­ tions and conflicts, which often thwart political intentions and make the question of commitment complex and difficult, are rooted in the process of translation and displacement in which the object of politics is inscribed. The effect is not stasis or a sapping of the will. It is, on the contrary, the spur of the negotiation of socialist democratic politics and policies which demand that questions of organization are theorized and socialist theory is orga­ nized’, because there is no given community or body o f the people whose inher­ ent, radical historicity emits the right signs. This emphasis on the representation of the political, on the construction of discourse, is the radical contribution of the translation of theory. Its concep­ tual vigilance never allows a simple identity between the political objective and its means of representation. This emphasis on the necessity of heteroge­ neity and the double inscription of the political objective is not merely the repetition of a general truth about discourse introduced into the political field. Denying an essentialist logic and a mimetic referent to political repre­ sentation is a strong, principled argument against political separatism of any colour, and cuts through the moralism that usually accompanies such claims. There is literally, and figuratively, no space for the unitary or organic political objective which would offend against the sense of a socialist community of interest and articulation. In Britain, in the 1980s, no political struggle was fought more powerfully, and sustained more poignantly, on the values and traditions of a socialist community than the miners’ strike of 1984—5.7 The battalions of monetarist figures and forecasts on the profitability of the pits were starkly ranged against the most illustrious standards of the British labour movement, the most cohesive cultural communities of the working class. The choice was clearly between the dawning world of the new Thatcherite city gent and a long history of the working man, or so it seemed to the traditional left and the new right. In these class terms the mining women involved in the strike were applauded for the heroic supporting role they played, for their endurance and initiative. But the revolutionary impulse, it seemed, belonged securely to the working-class male. Then, to commemorate the first anniversary of the strike, Beatrix Campbell,8 in the Guardian, interviewed a group of women who had been involved in the strike. It was clear that their experience of the historical struggle, their understanding of the historic choice to be made, was startlingly different and more complex. Their testimonies would not be contained simply or singly within the priorities of the politics of class or the histories of industrial struggle. Many of the women began to question their

7. A yearlong struggle, sometimes violent, between the United Kingdom’s Conservative government and the National Union of Mineworkers, which went on strike after the government announced that it would close uneconom ic coal pits; the union defeat capped Margaret T h atch er’s efforts,

begun when she becam e prime m inister in 1979, to impose legal restrictions on British unions. 8. English jou rn alist, fem inist, and socialist (b. 1947); the Guardian is a major daily newspaper in England.

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roles within the family and the community— the two central institutions which articulated the meanings and mores of the tradition of the labouring classes around which ideological battle was enjoined. Some challenged the symbols and authorities of the culture they fought to defend. Others dis­ rupted the homes they had struggled to sustain. For most of them there was no return, no going back to the good old days’. It would be simplistic to sug­ gest either that this considerable social change was a spin-off from the class struggle or that it was a repudiation of the politics of class from a socialistfeminist perspective. There is no simple political or social truth to be learned, for there is no unitary representation of a political agency, no fixed hierarchy of political values and effects. My illustration attempts to display the importance of the hybrid moment of political change. Here the transformational value of change lies in the rearticulation, or translation, of elements that are neither the One (unitary working class) nor the Other (the politics of gender) hut something else besides, which contests the terms and territories of both. There is a negotia­ tion between gender and class, where each formation encounters the dis­ placed, differentiated boundaries of its group representation and enunciative sites in which the limits and limitations of social power are encountered in an agonistic relation. When it is suggested that the British Labour Party should seek to produce a socialist alliance among progressive forces that are widely dispersed and distributed across a range of class, cul­ ture and occupational forces— without a unifying sense of the class for itself— the kind of hybridity that I have attempted to identify is being acknowledged as a historical necessity. We need a little less pietistic articu­ lation of political principle (around class and nation); a little more of the principle of political negotiation. This seems to be the theoretical issue at the heart of Stuart Hall’s argu­ ments for the construction of a counter-hegemonic power bloc through which a socialist party might construct its majority, its constituency; and the Labour Party might (in)conceivably improve its image. The unemployed, semi-skilled and unskilled, part-time workers, male and female, the low paid, black people, underclasses: these signs of the fragmentation of class and cultural consen­ sus represent both the historical experience of contemporary social divisions, and a structure of heterogeneity upon which to construct a theoretical and political alternative. For Hall, the imperative is to construct a new social bloc of different constituencies, through the production of a form of sym­ bolic identification that would result in a collective will. The Labour Party, with its desire to reinstate its traditionalist image— white, male, working class, trade union based— is not hegemonic enough, Hall writes. He is right; what remains unanswered is whether the rationalism and intentionality that propel the collective will are compatible with the language of symbolic image and fragmentary identification that represents, for Hall and for ‘hegemony’/ counter-hegemony’, the fundamental political issue. Can there ever be hegemony enough, except in the sense that a two-thirds majority will elect us a socialist government? It is by intervening in Hall’s argument that the necessities of negotiation are revealed. The interest of Hall’s position lies in his acknowledgement, remarkable for the British left, that, though influential, ‘material interests

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on their own have no necessary class belongingness.’9 This has two signifi­ cant effects. It enables Hall to see the agents of political change as discon­ tinuous, divided subjects caught in conflicting interests and identities. Equally, at the historical level of a Thatcherite population, he asserts that divisive rather than solidary forms of identification are the rule, resulting in undecidabilities and aporia1 of political judgement. What does a working woman put first? Which of her identities is the one that determines her political choices? The answers to such questions are defined, according to Hall, in the ideological definition of materialist interests; a process of sym­ bolic identification achieved through a political technology of imaging that hegemonically produces a social bloc of the right or the left. Not only is the social bloc heterogeneous, but, as I see it, the work of hegemony is itself the process of iteration and differentiation. It depends on the production of alternative or antagonistic images that are always produced side by side and in competition with each other. It is this side-by-side nature, this partial presence, or metonymy of antagonism, and its effective significations, that give meaning (quite literally) to a politics of struggle as the struggle o f identifications and the war of positions. It is therefore problematic to think of it as sublated into an image of the collective will. Hegemony requires iteration and alterity to be effective, to be productive of politicized populations: the (non-homogeneous) symbolic-social bloc needs to represent itself in a solidary collective will— a modern image of the future— if those populations are to produce a progressive government. Both may be necessary but they do not easily follow from each other, for in each case the mode of representation and its temporality are different. The contri­ bution of negotiation is to display the ‘in-between’ of this crucial argument; it is not self-contradictory but significantly performs, in the process of its dis­ cussion, the problems of judgement and identification that inform the politi­ cal space of its enunciation. For the moment, the act of negotiation will only be interrogatory. Can such split subjects and differentiated social movements, which display ambivalent and divided forms of identification, be represented in a collective will that distinctively echoes Gramsci’s enlightenment inheritance and its rational­ ism?2 How does the language of the will accommodate the vicissitudes of its representation, its construction through a symbolic majority where the havenots identify themselves from the position of the haves? How do we construct a politics based on such a displacement of affect or strategic elaboration (Foucault), where political positioning is ambivalently grounded in an actingout of political fantasies that require repeated passages across the differential boundaries between one symbolic bloc and an other, and the positions avail­ able to each? If such is the case, then how do we fix the counter-image of socialist hegemony to reflect the divided will, the fragmented population? If the policy of hegemony is, quite literally, unsignifiahle without the metonymic representation of its agonistic and ambivalent structure of articulation, then how does the collective will stabilize and unify its address as an agency of representation, as representative of a people? How do we avoid the mixing 9. H all, “Blue E lectio n,” p. 33 [Bhabha’s note]. 1. Difficulty, logical impasse (a term often used in deconstructive criticism to indicate the point in a text where inherent contradictions render inter-

pretation undecidable). 2 .1 owe this point to note],

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or overlap of images, the split screen, the failure to synchronize sound and image? Perhaps we need to change the ocular language of the image in order to talk of the social and political identifications or representations of a peo­ ple. It is worth noting that Laclau and Mouffe have turned to the language of textuality and discourse, to differance and enunciative modalities, in attempt­ ing to understand the structure of hegemony.3 Paul Gilroy also refers to Bakhtin’s theory of narrative when he describes the performance of black expressive cultures as an attempt to transform the relationship between per­ former and crowd ‘in dialogic rituals so that spectators acquire the active role of participants in collective processes which are sometimes cathartic and which may symbolize or even create a community’ (my emphasis).4 Such negotiations between politics and theory make it impossible to think of the place of the theoretical as a metanarrative claiming a more total form of generality. Nor is it possible to claim a certain familiar episte­ mological distance between the time and p lace of the intellectual and the activitist, as Fanon suggests when he observes that ‘while politicians situate their action in actual present-day events, men of culture take their stand in the field of history’.5 It is precisely that popular hinarism between theory and politics, whose foundational basis is a view of knowledge as totalizing generality and everyday life as experience, subjectivity or false conscious­ ness,6 that I have tried to erase. It is a distinction that even Sartre sub­ scribes to when he describes the committed intellectual as the theoretician of practical knowledge whose defining criterion is rationality and whose first project is to combat the irrationality of ideology.7 From the perspective of negotiation and translation, contra Fanon and Sartre, there can be no final discursive closure of theory. It does not foreclose on the political, even though battles for power-knowledge8 may be won or lost to great effect. The corollary is that there is no first or final act of revolutionary social (or social­ ist) transformation. I hope it is clear that this erasure of the traditional boundary between theory/politics, and my resistance to the en-closure of the theoretical, whether it is read negatively as elitism or positively as radical supra-rationality, do not turn on the good or bad faith of the activist agent or the intellectual agent provocateur. I am primarily concerned with the conceptual structuring of the terms— the theoretical/the political— that inform a range of debates around the place and time of the committed intellectual. I have therefore argued for a certain relation to knowledge which I think is crucial in structuring our sense of what the object of theory may be in the act of determining our spe­ cific political objectives.

3. Laclau and M ouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, chap. 3 [Bhabha’s note]. 4. P. Gilroy, T here Ain't No B lack in the Union Ja c k (London: Hutchinson, 1987), p. 214 [Bhab­ ha’s note],

(b. 1956), British cultural critic. (189 5 -1 9 7 5 ), Russian liter­ ary theorist and philosopher of language, associ­ ated with the “dialogic.” 5. F. Fanon, T he W retched o f the Earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 168 [Bhabha’s note]. m ik h a il

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6. A M arxist term referring to an individual’s tendency to view reality in ways congruent with the interests o f the dominant orthodoxy rather than in ways that reflect his or her own class interest. 7. J.-P. Sartre, Politics and Literature [trans. J. A. Underwood, J. Calder] (London: Calder and Boyars, 1973), pp. 1 6 -1 7 [Bhabha’s note]. 8. An allusion to the work o f Foucault, which investigates the interrelation of political power and disciplines of knowledge.

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II What is at stake in the naming of critical theory as ‘Western’? It is, obviously, a designation of institutional power and ideological Eurocentricity. Critical theory often engages with texts within the familiar traditions and conditions of colonial anthropology either to universalize their meaning within its own cultural and academic discourse, or to sharpen its internal critique of the Western logocentric sign, the idealist subject, or indeed the illusions and delusions of civil society. This is a familiar manoeuvre of theoretical knowl­ edge, where, having opened up the chasm of cultural difference, a mediator or metaphor of otherness must be found to contain the effects of difference. In order to be institutionally effective as a discipline, the knowledge of cul­ tural difference must be made to foreclose on the Other; difference and oth­ erness thus become the fantasy of a certain cultural space or, indeed, the certainty of a form of theoretical knowledge that deconstructs the epistemological ‘edge’ of the West. More significantly, the site of cultural difference can become the mere phantom of a dire disciplinary struggle in which it has no space or power. Montesquieu’s Turkish Despot, Barthes’s Japan, Kristeva’s China, Derrida’s Nambikwara Indians, Lyotard’s Cashinahua pagans9 are part of this strategy of containment where the Other text is forever the exegetical horizon of dif­ ference, never the active agent of articulation. The Other is cited, quoted, framed, illuminated, encased in the shot/reverse-shot strategy of a serial enlightenment. Narrative and the cultural politics of difference become the closed circle of interpretation. The Other loses its power to signify, to negate, to initiate its historic desire, to establish its own institutional and opposi­ tional discourse. However impeccably the content of an other’ culture may be known, however anti-ethnocentrically it is represented, it is its location as the closure of grand theories, the demand that, in analytic terms, it be always the good object of knowledge, the docile body of difference, that reproduces a relation of domination and is the most serious indictment of the institu­ tional powers of critical theory. There is, however, a distinction to be made between the institutional his­ tory of critical theory and its conceptual potential for change and innovation. Althusser’s critique of the temporal structure of the Hegelian-Marxist expres­ sive totality, despite its functionalist limitations, opens up the possibilities of thinking the relations of production in a time of differential histories. Lacan’s location of the signifier of desire, on the cusp of language and the law, allows the elaboration of a form of social representation that is alive to the ambiva­ lent structure of subjectivity and sociality. Foucault’s archaeology of the emer­ gence of modern, Western man as a problem of finitude, inextricable from its afterbirth, its Other, enables the linear, progressivist claims of the social 9. Bhabha gives examples of cultural others used by French cultural critics and philosophers to fur­ ther their own arguments: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), employs the “Turkish Despot” in his Persian Letters (1721), which satirizes French society; his observations on Japan, presented in Empire o f Signs (1970), convinced r o l a n d b a r t h e s (1915—1980) that some signs have no sig­ nified; j u l i a k r i s t e v a (b. 1941) treats China in

About Chinese Women (1974); in O f Grammatology, Derrida finds in c l a u d e l e v i - s t r a u s s ’s anthropological descriptions of Brazil’s Nambik­ wara in Tristes Tropiques (1955; see above) evi­ dence of internal resistance to coercive naming practices; and j e a n - f r a n History 20 (2008). Life Writing as Intim ate Publics, edited by M argaretta Jolly, a special issue of Biography (34.1 [2011]), starts from B erlan t’s ideas of senti­ mentality, affect, and the public. For a lesssympathetic response, see Tim Dean, “No Sex Please, W e’re Am erican,” A m erican Literary His­ tory 27 (2015). For responses to W arner’s influen­ tial work in queer theory, see John Nguyet Erni, “Eternal Excesses: Toward a Q ueer Mode o f Ar­ ticulation in Social Theory,” A m erican Literary History 8 (1996); and Jeffrey Escoffier, chapter 8 of American Homo: Community and Perversity (1998). For considerations of W arner’s analysis of the pub­ lic sphere, see Jodi D ean, “T he Lure of the Pub­ lic,” Theory and Event 6.3 (2003), and Sandra M. Gustafson, “A m erican Literature and the Public S p h ere,” A m erican Literary History 2 0 (2 0 0 8 ). There are no bibliographies of Berlant and W arner to date.

S t e p h e n B e s t a n d S h a r o n M a rc u s Stephen Best exam ines law and literature, par­ ticularly in relation to slavery, in a num ber o f

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essays and in T he Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics o f Possession (2004). He also serves on the editorial board o f R epresentations and co-edited its special issue Redress (no. 92 [2005]), as well as T he Way We R ead Now (no. 108 [2009]), for which he co-w rote our selection, “Surface Read­ ing: An Introduction,” with Sharon M arcus. M ar­ cus is a scholar o f comparative literature, study­ ing nineteenth-century literature and culture in England and France. Her first book, Apartm ent

Stories: City and H om e in N ineteenth-C entury Paris and London (1999), exam ines architecture, planning, and the dom estic sphere; her next book, B etw een W om en: F riendship, Desire, and M arriage in V ictorian England (2 0 0 7 ), studies the relations that women had in the era. In B e­ tw een W om en, she explains the value of “ju st read ing” as opposed to Fredric Jam eso n ’s and other theorists’ symptomatic approaches. She has also examined the rise of modern celebrity in ar­ ticles such as “Salom e!! Sarah Bernhardt, O scar W ilde, and the Dram a of Celebrity,” PM LA 126 (2011). For her thinking about the controversy over “surface reading” as well as her work overall, see Jeffrey J. W illiam s’s “Ways of Reading: An In­ terview with Sharon M arcus,” M innesota Review, no. 89 (2017). Though “Surface Reading” was an introduction to a special issue, not a featured article, it has drawn a great deal of response. For criticism of the absence of politics in it, see Crystal Bartolovich, “Hum anities of Scale: M arxism, Surface Reading— and M ilton,” PMLA 127 (2012), and E l­ len Rooney, “Live Free or Describe: T he Reading E ffect and the Persistence of Form ,” differences 21.3 (2010). Carolyn L esjak’s “Reading D ialectically,” Criticism 55 (2013), provides a useful sur­ vey of the different senses of “reading,” finally ar­ guing against reading on the surface. The journal Eighteenth Century 54 (2013) featured a cluster of five responses, and in 2015 a group of Victorianists under the nam e “V21” (“21” indicates their stance in the twenty-first century) issued an on­ line “M anifesto of the V21 Collective” criticizing the “positivist historicism ” suggested by surface reading and reasserting the importance of theory. A more sym pathetic line of response has agreed with surface reading’s eschewal of “critique” and its nod to emerging methods. N. Katherine Hayles, in “How We Read: Close, Hyper, M achine,” ADE B ulletin 150 (2010), places surface reading in the context of digital approaches. For H eather Love, in “Close But Not Deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn,” NLH 41 (2010), it accords with her interest in sociological description rather than critique. Rita Felski, in both “Suspicious M inds,” Poetics Today 32 (2011), and T he Limits o f Critique (2015), finds surface reading to be a salutary sign of moving past the “herm eneutics of suspicion.” For a general account, see Jeffrey J. W illiam s, “T he New M odesty in Literary C riticism ,” C hron­ icle o f Higher Education, January 5, 2015.

H o m i K. B h a b h a Bhabha’s reputation primarily rests on his essays, twelve of which are collected in his book The L o­ cation o f Culture (1994; new ed., 2 0 0 4 ), which in­ cludes “T he Commitment to Theory.” He has also edited an influential anthology on the cultural construction of nationality, Nation and Narration (1990). Many of his later essays, as yet uncollected, focus on globalization, identity, and what he calls “vernacular cosmopolitanism.” In addition, he was among four editors of the collection Cosmopolitan­ ism (2002) and co-edited, with W. J. T. M itchell, Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation (2005), to which he contributed an essay, “Adagio.” He also writes regularly on art, with contributions to Artforum and a number of exhibition catalogs or collections, including Negotiating Rapture: T he Power o f Art to Transform Lives (ed. Richard Francis, 1996), Intervention Architecture: Building fo r Change ([ed. Aga Khan Foundation,] 2007), Ira­ nian Photography Now (ed. Rose Issa, 2009), Anish Kapoor (2009), Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after In d ep en d en ce (ed. Susan S. Bean, 2013), and Matthew Barney: River o f Fundament (ed. Okwui Enwezor, 2014). Bhabha is the subject of a growing body of crit­ icism. Robert Young’s “T he Ambivalence of B hab­ ha,” in his W hite M ythologies: W riting History and the West (1990), is a useful discussion of Bhabha’s overall project. From the left, Aijaz Ah­ mad’s “T he Politics of Literary Postcoloniality,”

Race and Class 36.3 (1995), criticizes Bhabha’s philosophical conception of politics and his elision of the concrete relations of class and caste. Bart M oore-Gilbert, in Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (1997), situates B habha’s work among that o f other prom inent p ostcolonial theorists and com m ents on its “b ab elian ” or many-voiced perform ance. Anthony E asth o p e’s “Bhabha, Hybridity, and Identity,” Textual P rac­ tice 12.2 (1998), uncovering its Derridean roots, criticizes the amorphous nature of “hybridity.” Two books titled Homi K. Bhabha, by David Huddart (2006) and Eleanor Byrne (2009), provide useful overviews. Patricia Pisters’s “Homi K. Bhabha,” in Film, Theory and Philosophy: The Key Thinkers (ed. Felicity C olem an, 2 0 0 9 ), assesses B hab ha’s rele­ vance to film and art criticism ; see also Felix H ernandez, B habha fo r A rchitects (2010). Shai Ginsburg, “Signs and Wonders: Fetishism and Hy­ bridity in Homi Bhabha’s The Location o f Culture,” New C entennial Review 9.3 (2 0 0 9 ), argues that Bhabha does not escape conventional thinking about colonialism with his neologisms but instead produces a new fetish for theory. Alan Ramon Ward, “Sartre as Silent Partner: Reading Bhabha’s Existential Turn,” Cultural Critique 83 (2013), ex­ plores a surprising connection to the French philos­ opher Jean-Paul Sartre, via Bhabha’s use of Fanon and Lacan. See also a special section of PMLA 132.1 (2017) reassessing Bhabha’s Location o f Culture. Huddart’s volume includes a good select­

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ed, annotated bibliography of Bhabha’s work and critical responses to it.

H a ro ld B lo o m Bloom began as a critic of Rom antic poetry, with

Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), T he Visionary C om ­ pany: A Reading o f English Rom antic Poetry (1961; rev. ed., 1971), B la k e ’s A pocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument (1963), Yeats (1970), Rom anti­ cism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism (1970), and The Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition (1971). The Anxiety o f Influence: A T h eo­ ry o f Poetry (1973; 2d ed., 1997) introduced his theoretical view of the poet’s struggle w ith tradi­ tion, which was elaborated in A Map o f Misreading (1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (1975), Poetry and

Repression: Revisionism from B lake to Stevens (1976), Figures o f C apable Imagination (1976), and Agon: Towards a Theory o f Revisionism (1982). O ther books are W allace Stevens: The Poems o f Our Climate (1977), the novel T he Flight to Luci­ fer: A Gnostic Fantasy (1979), The Breaking o f the Vessels (1982), Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and B elief from the Bible to the Present (1989), The Book o f j (1990), The American Religion: The Emergence o f a Post-Christian Nation (1992), The Western Canon: The Books and School o f the Ages (1994), Om ens o f M illennium : T h e Gnosis o f Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996), Shakespeare: The Invention o f the Human (1998), How to Read and Why (2 0 0 0 ), Genius: A Mosaic o f One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (20 0 2 ), Hamlet: Poem Unlimited (2003), W here Shall Wisdom Be Found? (2004), The Art o f Reading Poetry (2005), Jesus and Yahweh: T he Names Divine (2005), Fallen Angels (2007), T he Shadow o f a Great Rock: A Literary Ap­ preciation o f the King Jam es Bible (2011), The Anatomy o f Influence: Literature as a Way o f Life (2011), and The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime (2015). Two excellent interviews are the best place to find biographical information and to sample Bloom’s characteristic tone and obsessions: with Cassandra Atherton in Writing on the Edge 17 (2007), and with Adam Fitzgerald in Boston Review, April 27, 2011. Graham A llen’s H arold B loom : A Poetics o f C on flict (1994) offers the fullest engagement with Bloom’s works on poetic influence. The Salt Com panion to Harold Bloom , edited by Allen and Roy Sellars (2007), provides a generous sampling of critical responses to Bloom’s work and can be paired with Reading, Writing, and the Influence o f Harold Bloom , edited by Alan Rawes and Jonathon Shears (2010). Two specialized monographs serve those interested in Bloom’s place in contemporary theory: Agata Bielik-Robson’s The Saving Lie: Har­ old Bloom and Deconstruction (2011) and Alistair Heys’s T he Anatomy o f Bloom : Harold Bloom and the Study o f Influence and Anxiety (2014). Cynthia O zick’s shrewd evaluation of Bloom’s whole career in her review of The Daemon Knows (New York Times, May 18, 2015) is well worth consulting.

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G io v a n n i B o c c a c c io A modern Italian edition of the complete works of Giovanni Boccaccio was published under the edito­ rial direction of Vittore Branca, Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio (10 vols., 1964—98). For the Latin text of Genealogy o f the Gentile Gods, consult the definitive edition by Vincenzo Romano (1951). Jon Solomon is preparing a new English translation of Genealogy o f the Pagan Gods; volume 1 (2011) contains books 1—5. An English translation of books 14 and 15 of Genealogy o f the Gentile Gods is avail­ able in Charles G. Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry (1930). O ther of B o ccaccio ’s critical works in English include his Life o f Dante, translated by J. G. Nichols (2002); Famous Women, edited and translated by Virginia Brown (2001); and De casibus: T h e Fates o f Illustrious M en, translated in an abridged version by Louis Brewer Hall (1965). For an intellectual biography of Boccaccio in English with important primary material translated, see Vittore Branca, Boccaccio: The Man and His Works (1976). Much of the secondary criticism of Boccaccio focuses on the Decameron. The introduction to Charles Osgood’s B occaccio on Poetry is an indis­ pensable guide to B occaccio’s literary criticism. Erich Auerbach’s chapter on Boccaccio in Mimesis (1953) offers a fundamental discussion of realism in his writing. Herbert G. Wright traces Boccac­ cio’s considerable influence on English poets in

Boccaccio in England: From C haucer to Tennyson (1957). Filippo Andrei’s Roccaccio the Philosopher (2017) explores the relationship between literary pro­ duction and epistemology in Decameron, document­ ing his engagement with contemporary thinkers like Dante, Petrarch, and Thom as Aquinas. For a general introduction to Boccaccio and his work, see Judith Powers Serafini-Sauli, Giovanni Boccaccio (1982), and The Cambridge Companion to Boccac­ cio, edited by Guyda Armstrong, Rhiannon Daniels, and Stephen J. M ilner (2015). Thomas Hyde’s essay “Boccaccio and the Genealogies of Myth,” PMLA 100 (1985), offers a close analysis of the Genealogy o f the Gentile Gods. Gregory Stone provides an ad­ vanced study of Boccaccio’s literary criticism in The

Ethics o f Nature in the Middle Ages: On Boccaccio’s Poetaphysics (1998), as does Lina Insana in “Rede­ fining Dulce et utile: Boccaccio’s Organization of Literature on Economic Terms,” Heliotropia 2.1 (2004). For a study of the Genealogy o f the Gentile Gods, see Jon Solomon’s “Historian and Humanist: Gods, Greeks, and Poetry (Genealogia deorum gentilium),” in Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the C om ­ plete Works (ed. Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr, 2013). For a bibliography, consult Joseph P. Consoli, Giovanni Boccaccio: An Annotated Bibliography (1992), and “Giovanni Boccaccio Bibliography” by Jason Hous­ ton, in the online Oxford Bibliographies (2014).

Ia n B o go st In addition to creating video games and authoring scholarly and popular articles, Ian Bogost has

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written a broad array of academ ic books. Unit

O perations: An A pproach to V ideogam e Criticism (2 006) is a pioneering work that integrates liter­ ary theory with inform ation technology in order to generate new interpretive modes for under­ standing both video games and older forms of art and literature. Persuasive Games: T he Expressive

Power o f Videogames (2007) offers an extended ac­ count of the argument— introduced in our se­ lection, “The Rhetoric of Video Games” (2 007)— that games employ “procedural rhetoric.” Co-authored with Nick Montfort, Bogost’s Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (2009) makes a contribution to scholarly understanding o f the history o f video games by offering a tech n i­ cal and cultural analysis o f the pioneering Atari system. A second co-authored book, Newsgames: Journalism at Play (2010)— written with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schw eizer— argues that games can provide new possibilities for journalism by creating interactive models that enable people to encounter and interpret the news for themselves in ways that are not possible in traditional media. Bogost’s How to Do Things with Videogames (2011) seeks to move beyond denouncing games as mindless entertainm ent or defending them as serious aesthetic objects in order to show how games have already begun to perm eate every as­ pect of culture and how they will continue to do so with culturally transformative effects. A Slow Year: G am e Poems (2010) contains four poeticvideo games plus two essays on the relationship between games and poetry, and Alien Phenom enology, or, W hat It's Like to Be a Thing (2012) de­ velops an object-oriented ontology while drawing on Bogost’s creative experiences as a game design­ er for illustrative material. Bogost teamed up with nine other authors to collaborate on the highly in­ novative (and esoterically titled) 10 PRINT CHR $(205.5+RND(l)); : GOTO 10 (2012), which offers diverse analyses of programming language (espe­ cially that of the landmark BASIC program for the Commodore 64) as a kind of cultural text with lin­ guistic, aesthetic, and social implications. In The G eek’s Chihuahua: Living with Apple (2015), Bo­ gost perceptively explores the dark side of wide­ spread addiction to contemporary technologies such as the iPhone, which he argues have complex effects on human existence, such as burdening consumers with stress and anxiety. Bogost’s How to Talk about Videogames (2015) is a probing analy­ sis both of how video games (which he describes as inhabiting a space between “art” and “appliance”) continue to shape human lives in ever-evolving ways and of the danger that academic “game criti­ cism ” runs by cutting itself off from the dynamic phenomena of play it seeks to understand. A related philosophical inquiry, Play Anything: T he Pleasure o f Limits, the Uses o f Boredom, and the Secret o f Games (2016), draws on his theory of play to sug­ gest how playfulness can help contemporary people live with creativity and joy in the midst of the sys­

tems and constraints that define our social exis­ tence. Bogost maintains an up-to-date bibliography as well as a gallery of his games and other creative projects on his personal website, bogost.com. T heorists have offered critical analyses o f the concept of procedural rhetoric that Ian Bogost develops in our selection and in his book Persua­ sive G ames. For example, Jen n ifer deWinter, in a review of Persuasive G am es in Kairos: A Jou rn al fo r R hetoric, Technology, an d Pedagogy 14.1 (2009), praises Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric but argues that he overemphasizes the purposes and intentions o f authors to the exclu­ sion of considering how players actively partici­ pate in the process of determ ining the meaning of games. Consequently, deW inter suggests that many who play the video games that Bogost ana­ lyzes may understand the games as carrying m es­ sages very d ifferent than those suggested in his own sophisticated ideological analyses. Sim ilar­ ly, in “P rocedural R hetoric and E xpression,” JA C: A Jou rn al o f C om position Theory 30 (2010), A nnette Vee favorably assesses Bogost’s theory of procedural rhetoric but implies that his san ­ guine faith in the ability of players to critically evaluate how games represent the world may be disconnected from the actual experiences and in terp retatio n s o f many who play games.

S u s a n B o rd o Bordo is the author of T he Flight to Objectivity: Essays on C artesianism and Culture (1987), Un­ bearable Weight: Fem inism , Western Culture, and the Body (1993), Twilight Zones: T h e H idden Life o f Cultural Images fro m Plato to O.J. (1997), T he M ale Body: A New L ook at Men in Public and in Private (1999), The Creation o f Anne Boleyn: A New L ook at England’s Most Notorious Queen (2013), and T he Destruction o f Hillary Clinton (2017). She is co-editor of two collections— with Alison M. Jaggar, Gender/Body/Knowledge: Fem i­ nist Reconstructions o f Being and Knowing (1989), and with Cristina Alcalde and Ellen Rosenman,

Provocations: A Transnational Reader in the History o f Feminist Thought (2015)— as well as the sole edi­ tor of Feminist Interpretations o f Rene Descartes (1999). Representative reviews of Unbearable Weight can be found in the New York Times Book Review, September 26, 1993 (by Maud Ellmann); the London Review o f Books, March 10, 1994 (by Carol Gilligan); Hypatia 10 (1995) (by Susan Hekman); and Ethics 105 (1995) (by Rosemarie Tong). Ellen Rooney, “W hat Can the Matter Be?,’’ Ameri­ can Literary History 8 (1996), and Susan Hekman, “Material Bodies,” in Body and Flesh: A Philosophi­ cal Reader (ed. Donn Welton, 1998), offer fuller engagements with Bordo’s work. See also the chap­ ter on Bordo in Michael P. Spikes, Understanding Contemporary American Literary Theory (rev. ed., 2003). Reviews of Bordo’s work after Unbearable Weight include the New York Times, September 12, 1999 (of T he M ale Body, by Jesse Green), and

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April 14, 2013 (all of The Creation o f Anne Boleyn,

as Manet: A Symbolic Revolution (2017). T he most

by Jennifer Schuessler); the Daily Beast , April 25, 2013 (by Lauren Elkin); and the Telegraph, Janu­ ary 6, 2014 (by Anna W hitelock). Margo DeMello’s excellent Body Studies: An Introduction (2014) dis­ cusses Bordo’s work in the context of this new field.

detailed biography is Pierre Bourdieu: Vers une econ om ie du bonheur (2 0 0 8 , Toward an Economy o f Happiness) by Marie-Anne Lescourret. T he E n­

P ie r r e B o u r d ie u Bourdieu’s published works (almost all of which are available in English; the date of the original French is given first) fall into three groups: his work in sociological and anthropological theory; his work on art, intellectuals, and the school sys­ tem; and his directly political works. In the first group, the major texts are Outline o f a Theory o f Practice (1972; 1977); T he Logic o f Practice (1980; 1990); Sociology in Question (1980; 1993); In Oth­ er Words: Essays towards a R eflexive Sociology (1987; 1990); An Invitation to R eflexive Sociology, with Loic W acquant (1992); Practical Reason: On the Theory o f Action (1994; 1998); Pascalian M edi­ tations (1997; 2 0 0 0 ); The Social Structures o f the Economy (2 0 0 0 ; 2 0 05); and Scien ce o f Science and Reflexivity (2001; 2004). On intellectuals, art, and schooling the major books are Photography: A M iddle-brow Art, with Luc Boltanski et al. (1965; 1990); A cadem ic Discourse: Linguistic Misunder­ standing and Professorial Power, with Jean-Claude Passeron and Monique de Saint M artin (1965; 1994); Reproduction in Education, Society, and

Culture, with Jean-Claude Passeron (1970; 1977); Distinction: A Social Critique o f the Judgem ent o f Taste (1979; 1984); Language and Symbolic Power (1982; 1991); Homo Academ icus (1984; 1988); The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field o f Power (1989; 1996); T he Rules o f Art: Genesis and Struc­ ture o f the Literary Field (1992; 1995); Free Ex­ change, with the artist Hans Haacke (1993; 1995); and On Television (1996; 1998). His political writ­ ings include The Political Ontology o f Martin Heidegger (1988; 1991); The Weight o f the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, with Alain Accardo et al. (1993; 1999); Acts o f Resis­ tance: Against the New Myths o f Our Time (1998; 1998); M asculine Domination (1998; 2001); Firing Back: Against the Tyranny o f the M arket 2 (2001; 2 003); and Political Interventions: Social Scien ce and Political Action (2 0 0 2 ; 2 0 0 8 ). An important selection o f translated essays has been collected in

The Field o f Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, edited by Randal Johnson (1993). Four posthumous collections gather essays and in­ terviews: Sketch fo r a Self-Analysis (2004; 2 0 07) comes close to an autobiography, while Picturing Algeria (2 0 0 3 ; 2012), Algerian Sketches (2013), and The Sociologist and the Historian (2010; 2015) cover a variety of topics and Bourdieu’s whole career. Transcripts of some of Bourdieu’s lectures have been published in French as Sur letat: Cours

au College de France, 18 9 8 - 1992 (2012, On the State: Lectures from the College du France ). An­ other set o f lectures has been published in English

glish reader will find a succinct biography in the very useful reference book Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts, edited by M ichael Grenfell (2012). Richard Je n k in s’s Pierre Bourdieu (rev. ed., 2 0 0 2 ) is an excellen t general intro d u ctio n . Joh n G u illo ry ’s in flu en tial C ultural C ap ital: T he P roblem o f Literary C anon F orm ation (1 993) ad­ dresses the changing shape of literary studies in ways that creatively employ and expand Bour­ d ieu’s work. T h ree noteworthy full-length mono­ graphs are John R. W. Sp eller’s B ourdieu and Literature (2011), David G artm an’s Culture, Class,

an d C ritical Theory: Betw een Bourdieu an d the Frankfurt S chool (2013), and David Sw artz’s su­ perb Symbolic Power, Politics, and Intellectuals: T he Political Sociology o f Pierre Bourdieu (2013). Several collections of essays provide good over­ views of various responses and approaches to Bourdieu’s work: Pierre Bourdieu 2, edited by Derek Robbins (4 vols., 2 0 0 5 ); T he Legacy o f Pierre Bourdieu: C ritical Essays, edited by Sim on Susen and Bryan S. Turner (2011); T h e Rout­ ledge C om panion to B ourdieu’s "D istinction," ed­ ited by Philippe Coulangeon and Ju lien Duval (2014); B ou rdieu ’s Theory o f S ocial Fields: C on ­ cepts and A pplications, edited by M athieu Hilgers and E ric M angez (2015); and the essays col­ lected in Beyond Bourdieu and O ther Essays, a special issue of New Literary History (46.3 [2015]). A good, although not exhaustive, bibli­ ography of primary and secondary works can be found in G ren fell’s Key C oncepts.

M arc B o u s q u e t M arc Bousquet’s dissertation was on nineteenthcentury American literature, and several of his initial scholarly articles dealt with canonical au­ thors such as Henry Jam es, but since the late 1990s he has focused on academ ic labor. He published several groundbreaking essays on the plight of graduate students, the m anagerial turn of professors (particularly in service fields like English composition), and the corporatization of higher education, culm inating in his book How

the University Works: Higher E ducation an d the Low-W age Nation (2008). In conjunction with his focus on labor, he co-founded W orkplace: A Jo u r­ nal fo r A cadem ic Labor, whose first issue ap­ peared in February 1998. In addition, he has co ­ edited, with Katherine W ills, T h e Politics o f

Inform ation: T he Electronic M ediation o f Social Change (2003) and, with Tony S cott and Leo Parascondola, Tenured Bosses and D isposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in the M anaged University (2 0 0 4 ). For a discussion of his back­ ground and work, see “Higher Exploitation: An Interview with M arc Bousquet,” by Jeffrey J. W il­ liam s, M innesota Review, nos. 7 1 -7 2 (2 0 0 9 ).

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Bousquet’s writing has received a great deal o f

Religion and the Public Sphere: Postsecular Publics

response. His initial arguments about graduate education and labor almost immediately drew' re­ buttals, notably in a special issue of Jou rn al o f Advanced Composition (22.4 [2002]), which in­ cludes responses from those in the composition community, some questioning his credentials to talk about the field. A more considered, wideranging assessment of his work appears in Informa­

(2014), with Bolette Blaagaard, Tobijn de Graauw, and Eva Midden; and Conflicting Humanities (2016), with Paul Gilroy. Braidotti is perhaps better known in Europe than in the United States. For an introduction to her work, see two interviews: “Nomadic Philoso­ pher: A Conversation with Rosi Braidotti,” by Kathleen O ’Grady, W om en’s E du cation des fem m es 12.1 (1996); and “Nomadism, the Euro­ pean Union, and Embedding Identities: An Inter­ view with Rosi Braidotti,” by Thea Arnold, Mina Karavanta, and Robert P. M arzec, Crossings: A C ounter-D isciplinary Jou rn al, no. 2 (1998). In the 1990s several articles exam ined Braidotti’s fem inism , including Irene Gedalof, “Can Nomads Learn to Count to Four? Rosi Braidotti and the Space for D ifference in Fem inist Theory,” W omen: A Cultural Review 7 (1996); Inge E. Boer, “The World beyond Our Window: Nomads, Travelling Theories and the Function of Bound­ aries,” Parallax 2 .2 (1996); and Pelagia Goulim ari, “A M inoritarian Fem inism? Things to Do with Deleuze and G u attari,” Hypatia: A Jou rn al o f Feminist Philosophy 14.2 (1999). (Post)Human Lives, edited by G illian W hitlock, a special issue of Biography (35.1 [2012]), explores work on the posthum an, including Braidotti’s, that challenges the very notion of biography— a genre dependent on the ideas of the human that posthumanism

tion University: Rise o f the Education M anagem ent O rganization, edited by Teresa Derrickson, a lengthy special issue of Works and Days (21.1—2 [2003]) that gathers fourteen essays, as well as reprinting five of his previous essays, among them “T he W aste Product of Graduate Education.” Several subsequent evaluations place his work in the tradition of criticism and theory: see Vincent B. Leitch, “Work Theory,” Critical Inquiry 31 (2005), and Jeffrey J. W illiam s, “The PostW elfare State University,” American Literary His­ tory 18 (2006). In addition, W illiam s’s “The Academic Devolution,” Dissent (fall 2 0 0 9 ), exam ­ ines How the University Works, comparing it favor­ ably to accounts of higher education that display more resignation, and W illiam s’s “The Need for Critical University Studies,” in A New Deal fo r the

Humanities: Liberal Arts and the Future o f Public Higher Education (ed. Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed, 2016), inducts Bousquet into this new critical movement. See also Graduate Education in English Studies, edited by Leonard Cassuto, a special issue of Pedagogy (15.1 [2015]) that includes essays responding to Bousquet as well as an essay by him.

R o si B r a id o t t i Braidotti has written widely in several languages. Her most important early books in English are Pat­

terns o f Dissonance: A Study o f Women in C on­ temporary Philosophy (1991), Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in C on­ temporary Feminist Theory (1994; 2d ed., 2011), Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory o f Becoming (2002), Transpositions: On Nomadic Eth­ ics (2006), and The Posthuman (2013). Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti (2011) collects th irteen o f her essays. Braidotti co-authored

Women, the Environment and Sustainable Develop­ ment: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis (1994) with Ewa Charkiewicz, Sabine Hausler, and Saskia Wieringa, and she has co-edited many collections of essays: Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs:

Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace (1996), with Nina Lykke; Thinking Differently: A Reader in European W omen’s Studies (2002), with Gabriele G riffin; Deleuze and Law: Forensic Futures (2009), with Claire Colebrook and Patrick Hanafin; Revisiting Normativity with De­ leuze (2012), with Patricia Pisters; After Cosmopoli­ tanism (2013), with Patrick Hanafin and Bolette Blaagaard; This Deleuzian Century: Art, Activism, Life (2014), with Rick Dolphijn; Transformations o f

challenges. In a substantive review o f T h e Posthu­ man published in the open access jou rnal Culture M achine (2013), Stefan H erbrechter situates B raidotti’s work within the broad landscape of posthumanism. T h e Subject o f Rosi Braidotti: Politics and C oncepts, edited by Bolette Blaagaard and Iris van der Tuin (2014), offers a com prehen­ sive evaluation of Braidotti’s work in tw'enty-eight essays; among the contributors are Judith Butler, Catherine Stim pson, and Genevieve Lloyd, as well as several of her collaborators and Braidotti herself. It includes a section on B raid otti’s work on the posthuman and also an extensive bibliog­ raphy.

C le a n t h B ro o k s Brooks’s most noteworthy books are M odern Poet­ ry and the Tradition (1939), The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure o f Poetry (1947), and the textbook on poetry he co-edited with Robert Penn W arren, Understanding Poetry (1938). See also his William Faulkner: T he Yoknapatawpha Country (1963) and William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond (1978). He also coau­ thored, with William K. Wimsatt Jr., Literary Criti­ cism: A Short History (1957); with W arren and R. W. B. Lewis, he co-edited American Literature: The Makers and the Making (1973), a two-volume, 3,000-page anthology. Collections of his essays in­ clude The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren (1963), A Shaping Joy: Studies in the Writer's Craft (1971), Historical

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Evidence and the Reading o f Seventeenth-Century Poetry (1991), and Community, Religion, and Litera­ ture: Essays (1995). Another important source is Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence, edited by Jam es A. Grimshaw (1998). See also Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate: Collected Letters, 1933-1976, edited by Alphonse Vinh (1998). For an excellent biography, consult Mark Royden W inchell, Cleanth Brooks and the Rise o f Modern Criticism (1996).

The Possibilities o f Order: Cleanth Brooks and His Work, edited by Lewis P. Simpson (1976), is a valu­ able collection of critical essays that includes an interview with Brooks conducted by Robert Penn W arren. For cogent discussions of Brooks in the context of Anglo-American New Criticism, see Grant Webster, T he Republic o f Letters: A History o f Postwar American Literary Opinion (1979), and Jam es J. Sosnoski, Token Professionals and Master

Critics: A Critique o f Orthodoxy in Literary Studies (1994). See also Thom as W. Cutrer, Parnassus on the Mississippi: "T he Southern Review ” and the B a­ ton Rouge Literary Community, 1935-1942 (1984); Mark Jancovich, T he Cultural Politics o f the New Criticism (1993), which considers Brooks in relation to John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn W arren, and Allen Tate; and John M ichael Walsh, Cleanth Brooks: An Annotated Bibliography (1990). Another good resource is Rereading the New Criti­ cism, edited by Miranda B. Hickman and John D. M cIntyre (2012), a collection of essays on the New Critics, their influences (e.g., T. S. Eliot), their relation to some of their contemporaries (e.g., Theodor Adorno), and the theory and practice of “close reading.”

E dm u n d B u rk e For com plete editions of Burke, see Writings and S peeches o f Edm und B urke, edited by Paul Lang­ ford (9 vols., 1 9 8 0 -2 0 1 5 ); W orks (9 vols., 1839); and Works (8 vols., 1 8 6 8 -8 0 ). An important source is the C orresponden ce (10 vols., 1958-78). A selection of the letters has been edited by Har­ vey C. M ansfield (1984). There are two annotated editions o f A P hilosophical Enquiry into the O ri­ gin o f Our Ideas o f the Sublim e an d B eautiful, the first by Jam es T. Boulton (1958), the second by Adam Phillips (1990). For Burke’s biography, con­ sult Alice P. Miller, Edm und Burke and His World (1979), and Stanley Ayling, Edmund Burke: His Life and O pinions (1988). For a de­ tailed, measured assessm ent, see F. P. L ock ’s study Edm und B urke (2 vols., 1 9 9 8 -2 0 0 6 ). David Bromwich, T he Intellectu al Life o f Edmund

Burke: From the S ublim e and Beautiful to A m eri­ can In d ep en d en ce (2014), the first part of a twovolume intellectual biography, is essential. So too is Richard Bourke’s Em pire and Revolution: T he Political Life o f Edm und B urke (2015), which de­ picts Burke as a philosopher-in-action who evalu­ ated the political realities of the day through the lens of Enlightenm ent thought.

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Contemporary literary critics have paid much attention to Burke as a thinker and writer. Good discussions can be found in David Brom wich, A

C h oice o f Inheritance: S elf and Comm unity from Edmund B urke to Robert Frost (1989); Terry E a­ gleton, T he Ideology o f the Aesthetic (1990); Fran­ ces Ferguson, Solitude and the Sublim e: Rom an­ ticism and the Aesthetics o f Individuation (1992), a study o f Burke, Kant, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aesthetic theory; and Tom Furniss, Edm und B u rke’s A esthetic Ideology:

Language, Gender, and Political Economy in Revo­ lution (1993). Luke Gibbons, in Edmund Burke and Ireland: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Colonial Sublime (2003), treats Burke’s contribution to aes­ thetic theory, in the context of the role of sensibil­ ity within Enlightenment thought and the politics of the eighteenth century. For background, see T he Sublim e: A R eader in British Eighteenth-Century A esthetic Theory, ed­ ited by Andrew Ashfield and Peter de Bolla (1996). T he Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, edited by Tim othy M. Costelloe (2012), includes a challenging essay on Burke by Rodolphe Gasche. Also recom m ended are M ark C anuel, Ju stice, Dissent, and the S ublim e (2012); Cian Duffy, T he

L andscapes o f the Sublim e, 1700—1830: Classic G round (2013), a fascinating study o f the “natural sublim e” encountered by British and European travelers and explorers (the Alps; the Italian vol­ canoes, Vesuvius and Etna; the Arctic and the Ant­ arctic; the deserts of central and southern Africa; and the universe being revealed by the new astron­ omy); and Emily Brady, T he Sublim e in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature (2014). For a detailed, rigorous survey, consult Robert Doran, The Theory o f the Sublime from Longinus to Kant (2015); he examines how theories of sub­ limity are united by a common structure— the paradoxical experience o f being at once over­ whelmed and exalted— and a common concern: the preservation of a notion of transcendence in the midst o f the secularization of modern culture. Recent studies of Burke are diverse and intellec­ tually rich. Clearly written, balanced, and stimulat­ ing is Yuval Levin, T he Great Debate: Edmund

Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth o f Right and Left (2014). T he Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke, edited by David Dwan and Christopher J. Insole (2012), is a valuable resource that contains an excellent essay on Burke’s “aesthetic psychology” by Paddy Bullard. Ian Crowe, Patriotism and

Public Spirit: Edmund Burke and the Role o f the Critic in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain (2012), is informative on the political and cultural contexts of the 1750s and on early philosophical and literary influences on Burke’s thought. Bibliographical re­ sources on Burke include W illiam B. Todd, A Bibli­ ography o f Edmund Burke (1964); Clara I. Gandy,

Edmund Burke: A Bibliography o f Secondary Stud­ ies to 1982 (1983); and Leonard W. Cowie, Edmund Burke, 1729-1797: A Bibliography (1994).

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J u d it h B u t le r Butler’s first book, Subjects o f Desire: Hegelian R eflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), traces French theories of subject formation as in­ fluenced by the nineteenth-century German phi­ losopher G. F. W. Hegel. Her first three books af­ ter G ender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion o f Identity (1990)— Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits o f “S ex” (1993), Excitable Speech: A Politics o f the Performative (1996), and T he Psychic Life o f Power (1997)— address various objections to her work and further develop her per­ formative model of subject formation. Her subse­ quent works— Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (2000), Precarious Life: T he Powers o f M ourning and V iolence (2 0 0 4 ), Giving an

Account o f Oneself: A Critique o f Ethical Violence (2005), Frames o f War: W hen Is Life Grievable? (2009), Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique o f Zionism (2012), and Dispossession: T he Perfor­ mative in the Political (2013)— turn to questions of mourning, violence, and responsibility, often in response to events in the Middle East since 2001. O f the later works, Undoing G ender (2004) and Senses o f the Subject (2015) are more directly tied to the themes explored in G ender Trouble, while

Notes Toward a Performative Theory o f Assembly (2015) deploys her interest in the performative to consider contemporary political movements. Butler has participated in a number of pub­ lished interchanges with other theorists: Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange, by Seyla Benhabib et al. (1995); Contingency, Hegemony,

and Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, by Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Zizek (2 0 0 0 ); W ho Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging, by Butler and Gayatri C hakra­ vorty Spivak (2 0 0 7 ); Is Critique Secular? Blas­ phemy, Injury, and Free Speech, by Talal Asad et al. (2009); T he Power o f Religion in the Public Sphere, by Butler et al. (2011); and W hat Is a People?, by Alain Badiou et al. (2013; trans. 2016). She has also co-edited a number of collections of essays, including, with Joan Scott, Feminists T h e­ orize the Political (1992); with Elizabeth Weed,

T he Question o f G ender: Joa n W. Scott’s Critical Feminism (2011); and, with Zeynep Gam betti and Leticia Sabsay, Vulnerability in Resistance (2016). T he Ju dith Butler R eader (2004), edited by Sara Salih with Butler’s assistance, provides selections from the first five books, along with other essays and an illum inating interview. For other useful interviews, see Butler, Lynne Segal, and Peter O s­ borne, “Gender as Perform ance,” Radical Philoso­ phy 67 (1994), and Vicki Kirby, Judith Butler: Live Theory (2006). For two autobiographical accounts o f Butler’s intellectual form ation, see her new preface to the tenth anniversary edition of G ender Trouble (1999) and the chapter “Can the ‘O ther’ of Philosophy Speak?” in Undoing Gender. The best single-volume introduction is Moya Lloyd’s Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics

(2007). Kirby's book and Anita Brady’s Understand­ ing Judith Butler (2011) are also useful. Annika Thiem ’s Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Moral Philosophy, and Critical Responsibility (2008), Ar­ thur Kroker’s Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway (2012), and Birgit Schippers’s The Political Philoso­ phy o f Judith Butler (2014) offer more focused dis­ cussions of her work. Two collections of essays at­ tend to the whole of Butler’s career: Judith Butler’s Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters, edited by Terrell Carver and Samuel A. Chambers (2008), and Butler and Ethics, edited by Moya Lloyd (2015), while Butler Matters: Judith Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies, edited by Margaret Sonser Breen and W arren J. Blumenfeld (2016), focuses more on issues raised by G en der Trouble.

R ey C how Rey Chow is the author of nine books and the edi­ tor of one collection of essays. Woman and Chinese

Modernity: T he Politics o f Reading between West and East (1991) explores gender and sexuality, popular literature and film. Writing Diaspora: Tac­ tics o f Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Stud­ ies (1993) examines the W est’s attitude toward China from a “diasporic consciousness”— that is, from the perspective of those Chinese who live outside of China. With Primitive Passions: Visuali-

ty, Sexuality, Ethnography, and C ontem porary Chinese Cinem a (1995), Chow brings a postcolonial lens to cinema and contemporary visual technolo­ gies. Ethics after Idealism: Theory—Culture— Ethnicity-Reading (1998) argues for a critique of the idealism that underwrites identity politics. Chow’s edited collection. Modern Chinese Literary

and Cultural Studies in the Age o f Theory: Reimagining a Field (2000), continues to illuminate eth­ nicity, as does her T he Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit o f Capitalism (2002). In T he Age o f the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work (2006), she reflects on area studies, poststructuralism, and comparative litera­ ture, historicizing these influential fields within the U.S. academy. Sentimental Fabulations, C on­

temporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age o f G lobal Visibility (2007) examines the sentimental in twelve contemporary Chinese films from the 1990s. Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture (2012) highlights the crucial impor­ tance of the mediatized image in transnational modes of connection. In Not L ike a Native Speaker:

On Languaging as a

Postcolonial Experience

(2014), Chow investigates the experiences of intel­ lectuals for whom racialization has followed from the experience of learning the colonists’ language. A generous selection o f Chow’s work is available in T he Rey C how R eader (2010), edited by Paul Bow­ man. For an account o f Chow’s life, see her essay “The Postcolonial Difference: Lessons in Cultural Legitim ation,” Postcolonial Studies 1 (1998). Paul Bowman’s introduction to the Rey C how R ead er is the best introd uction to Chow ’s

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theoretical writing. Bowman has also edited spe­ cial issues on Chow in two journals: Rey C how

and Postcolonial Social Semiotics (Social Semiotics 2 0 .4 [2010]), a selection of eight articles by prom­ inent scholars assessing the significance of Chow’s work in postcolonialism , fem inism , and visual culture, and Postcoloniality and Interdisciplinar­ ity (P ostcolonial Studies 13.3 [2010]), which fo­ cuses on Chow’s contributions to interdisciplin­ arity in postcolonial studies. For a book-length critical study, see Bowm an’s R eading Rey C how :

Visuality,

Postcoloniality,

Ethnicity,

Sexuality

(2013), which contains a bibliography.

C h r is t in e d e P iz a n Perhaps the surest sign of the critical neglect of Christine de Pizan is the lack of any editions or translations of her collected works. M aurice Roy edited Oeuvres poetiques de Christine de Pisan (1886—89), but it excludes the prose works for which Christine is best known. Charity Canon Willard edited a selection of Christine’s works in translation, T he Writings o f Christine de Pizan (1992), which better captures the diversity of her writing. Generally, it is easier to find translations than editions of individual works. Eric Hicks edit­ ed the “Quarrel of the Rose ” as Le Dehat sur le Ro­ man de la Rose (1977). All of the letters in the de­ bate were finally made available in English in Debating the “Roman de la rose,” edited by C hris­ tine McWebb and translated by McWebb and Earl Jeffrey Richards (2007); the volume includes both the original texts and their English translations. In 2010, David F. Hult also published a dual-language edition of these letters in The Debate o f the “Ro­ m ance o f the Rose." The only edition of The Book o f the City o f Ladies in the original Old French is Maureen Curnow’s 1975 Ph.D. dissertation, “The Livre de la Cite des Dames: A Critical Edition,” which Earl Jeffrey Richards translated as The Book o f the City o f Ladies in 1982. A new transla­ tion by Rosalind Brown-Grant appeared in 1999. The earliest English translation of City o f Ladies, Brian Anslay’s sixteenth-century The B oke o f the Cyte o f Ladyes, has been edited by Hope Johnston (2015). Much of what we know about C hristine’s life comes to us from her own autobiographical writing, especially Christine's Vision, translated by Glenda K. M cLeod (1993). Charity Canon Willard offers the best modern biography in Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works (1984). Nadia Margolis’s An Introduction to Christine de Pizan (2011) is the first comprehensive introduc­ tion to C hristine’s works. Critical interest in Chris­ tine and her writing increased exponentially in the 1980s and 1990s, largely because of the influence of feminist criticism . Sandra Hindman’s Christine

de Pizan’s “Epistre d ’O thea”: Painting and Politics at the Court o f Charles VI (1986) offers a richly de­ tailed description of the social context of Chris­ tine’s writing. Sheila Delany’s controversial essay “Mothers to Think Back Through: W ho Are They?

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The Ambiguous Example of Christine de Pizan,” in Medieval Texts, Contemporary Readers (ed. Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtm an, 1987), was in­ strumental in raising questions about feminist ap­ propriations of Christine. Maureen Quilligan’s Al­

legory o f Fem ale Authority: Christine de Pizan's “Cite des Dames” (1991) offers a sophisticated theo­ retical analysis of The City o f Ladies. Two studies shed light on the relationship between Christine’s participation in the debate over the Roman de la Rose and her defense of women in The City o f La­ dies. In Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defense o f Women: Reading beyond G ender (1999), Rosalind Brown-Grant considers the evolution of Christine’s attack on misogyny and her defense of women throughout her career, while Douglas Kelly, in

Christine de Pizan's Changing Opinion: A Quest fo r Certainty in the Midst o f Chaos (2007), positions Christine’s writing within a medieval philosophical tradition of opinion at a time of great political and intellectual upheaval. The variety of contemporary critical responses to C hristine’s writing is usefully represented by collections o f essays; the best in­ clude Christine de Pizan and the Categories o f Dif­ feren ce, edited by Marilynn Desmond (1998), and Christine de Pizan: A C asebook, edited by Barbara K. A ltm ann and D eborah L. M cG rady (2 0 0 3 ). Sarah Kay’s “Allegory and M elancholy in Luce Iri­ garay, Julia Kristeva, and C hristine de Pizan,” which appeared in Provocation and Negotiation: Essays in Comparative Criticism (ed. Gesclie Ipsen, Timothy Mathews, and Dragana Obradovic, 2013), uses City o f Ladies to elucidate the psychoanalytic work of Irigaray and Kristeva. Finally, Tracy Ad­ ams’s Christine de Pizan and the Fight fo r France (2014) exam ines Christine’s literary engagement with the French politics of her time. The most upto-date bibliography is Angus J. Kennedy, Christine de Pizan: A Bibliographical G uide (1984; supple­ ments 1994, 2004).

H e le n e C ix o u s In 1969 Cixous won the prestigious Medici Prize for her first novel, Dedans (trans. 1986, Inside), and she has published many writings since, first called novels, then called fictions, then often not characterized ; among those available in English are Angst (1977; trans. 1985), T h e B ook o f Prom eth ea (1983; trans. 1991), M anna, fo r the M an­ delstam s fo r the M andelas (1 9 8 8 ; trans. 1993), M anhattan: Letters fro m Prehistory (2 0 0 2 ; trans. 2 0 0 7 ), So C lose (2 0 0 7 ; trans. 2 0 0 9 ), P hilippines (2 0 0 9 ; trans. 2011), H em lock: Old W omen in Bloom (2 0 0 8 ; trans. 2011), and Eve Escapes: Ruins and Life (2 0 0 9 ; trans. 2012). These are part mythic autobiography, part meditation, part philosophy, and part poetry, and the mobility of her style gives pronouns and structures of address a range far be­ yond any person or character. She has written a number of plays as well, including Portrait o f Dora (1976; trans. 1979) and two historical dramas, one on Cambodia and one on India, which she wrote

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in collaboration with Ariane M nouchkine’s cele­ brated T heatre du Soleil. Eric Prenowitz’s S elect­ ed Plays o f H elene Cixous (2 004) is a collection of four plays, three of which had never before been translated into English. Cixous is the author of more than fifty books, including the bilingual edi­ tion of The Writing Notebooks o f Hel&ne Cixous, edited and translated by Susan Sellers (2004); it contains a very informative interview with Cixous. O ther interviews from three decades are collected in her W hite Ink: Interviews on Sex, Text, and Politics, edited by Susan Sellers (2008). “The Laugh of the Medusa” forms part of a larger project Cixous was working on in 1975, another part of which (“Sorties”) she published in collabo­ ration with the more historicist fem inist C athe­ rine Clement as La Jeu n e n ee (trans. 1986, The Newly Born Woman). These are the texts in which Cixous speaks most explicitly about ecriture fe m i­ nine, and they are the best-know n works by her in English. In addition to T h e E xile o f Jam es Jo y ce (1969; trans. 1976), she has also written a book on the contemporary Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, translated as Reading with C larice Lispector (1989; trans. 1990). Two volumes of her other liter­ ary criticism and theory have been published as Coming to Writing and Other Essays, edited by Deb­ orah Jenson (1991), and Readings: The Poetics o f

Blanchot, Joyce, Kleist, Kafka, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva , edited by Verena Andermatt Conley (1991). Her essay in The Future o f Literary Theory (ed. Ralph Cohen, 1989), titled “From the Scene of the Unconscious to the Scene of History,” gives a good overview' of Cixous’s own poetics. A collection, The Helene Cixous Reader, with a preface by Cixous and a foreword by Derrida, was edited in 1994 by Susan Sellers. It consists of short extracts from a large number of works, mainly “fictional.” The Portable Cixous, edited by M arta Segarra (2010), brings to­ gether a mix of Cixous’s theoretical, autobiographi­ cal, theatrical, and fictional writings. The fifteen essays in Volleys o f Humanity: Essays 1972—2009, edited by Eric Prenowitz (2011), which include six previously unpublished and five newly published in English, also provide insight into Cixous’s oeuvre. Although there is no full-length biography, Cixous has written a partly autobiographical text, com ­ plete with family histories and photographs, with Mireille Calle-Gruber called H elene Cixous, Photos de racines (1994; trans. 1997, H elene Cixous, Root-

prints: Memory and Life Writing). There are many critical studies devoted to the work of Cixous. For a good introduction and bibli­ ography for students, see H elene Cixous: Live T h e­ ory (2004), by Ian Blyth with Susan Sellers. Two books by Verena Andermatt Conley, Helene Cix­ ous: Writing the Fem inine (1984) and H elene Cix­ ous (1992), also provide excellent introductions. Helene Cixous: A Politics o f Writing (1991) by Morag Shiach presents a somew'hat critical assessment but discusses aspects of Cixous’s w'ork not often mentioned in Anglo-American theory, while Susan

Sellers’s H elene Cixous: Authorship, Autobiogra­ phy, and Love (1996) presents a more admiring view. Discussions of Cixous in the context of other “French fem inists” (a designation that exists only in English) began with the 1981 anthology called New French Feminisms, painstakingly and farreachingly edited by Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron. Alice Jardine’s Gynesis: Configurations o f Women and Modernity (1985) analyzes how post­ structuralist male theorists in France made use of the figure of woman in their attempts to articulate what had been marginalized from traditional philo­ sophical discourse. Susan Sellers, in her Language

and Sexual Difference: Feminist Writing in France (1991), sees Cixous as the central theorist of femi­ nine writing. And in a larger study of French thought around 1968, Logics o f Failed Revolt: French Theory after May ’68 (1995), Peter Starr sees Cixous as the theorist of a “hysteria” that might be politically enabling. For bibliographies, see the entry on Cix­ ous by Verena Andermatt Conley in French Wom­ en Writers: A Bio-Bibliographic Source Book (ed. Eva M artin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmer­ man, 1991); French Feminist Theory (III): Luce Irigaray and H elene Cixous: A Bibliography (1996), by Joan Nordquist; Blyth and Sellers, H elene Cix­ ous; and Segarra’s selected bibliography in The

Portable Cixous. S a m u el Taylor C o leridge Primary sources include T he C ollected Works o f Sam uel Taylor C oleridge, general editor Kathleen Coburn (23 vols., 1 9 6 9 -2 0 0 2 ), published by the Bollingen Foundation and Princeton University Press, superbly edited and with comprehensive in­ troductions; T he C ollected Letters, edited by Earl Leslie Griggs (6 vols., 1956-71); and Selected Let­ ters, edited by H. J. Jackson (1987). Also illuminat­ ing are The Notebooks, edited primarily by Kath­ leen Coburn (5 vols., 1957—2002). Collections of Coleridge’s criticism include Shakespearean Criti­ cism (2 vols., 1930) and M iscellaneous Criticism (1936), both edited by T. M. Raysor. See also Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, edited by Roberta Florence Brinkley (1955), and Writings on

Shakespeare: A Selection o f the Essays, Notes, and Lectures, edited by Terence Hawkes (1959). A com­ pilation of Coleridge’s prose, organized by theme, is Coleridge’s Responses: Selected Writings on Liter­ ary Criticism , the B ible, and Nature, edited by John Beer et al. (3 vols., 2008). A good collection of primary and secondary sources is Coleridge’s Poet­ ry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, edited by Nicholas Halmi, Paul Magnuson, and Raimonda Modiano (2003). Walter Jackson Bate, Coleridge (1968), is a fine introduction to the life and works; two volumes by Richard Holmes, Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772— 1804 (1989) and Coleridge: D arker R eflection s, 1804-1834 (1999), constitute the best biography. Rosem ary A shton, T h e Life o f Sam uel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Biography (1996), is astute.

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Adam Sism an’s The Friendship: Wordsworth and

Coleridge (2006) is an engaging biographical and intellectual overview. Norman Fruman, Coleridge: T he Damaged Archangel (1971), assembles the evi­ dence of Coleridge’s plagiarisms. Additional re­ sources include The Oxford Handbook o f Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Frederick Burwick (2009), and John Worthen, T he Cambridge Intro­ duction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010), a con­ cise survey o f the life, poetry, and literary criticism. The best point of departure for studying Coleridge’s criticism is the Biographia Literaria. See especially the editions by Jam es Engell and W alter Jackson Bate, vol. 7 of the Bollingen Sam ­ uel Taylor Coleridge (1983), and by John Shawcross (2 vols., 1907). Scholarly studies of Biographia Lit­ eraria include Kathleen M. W heeler, Sources,

Processes, and M ethods in C oleridge’s “Biographia Literaria" (1 9 8 0 ); C ath erin e M iles W allace, T he Design o f “B iographia Literaria" (1983); and Coleridge's “Biographia Literaria": Text and M eaning, edited by Frederick Burwick (1989), which presents fourteen essays on major themes of the text and on its style, sources, significance for the history of Rom anticism , and connections to contemporary literary theory. For critical re­ sponses to Coleridge to the year 1900, consult C oleridge: T h e C ritical H eritage, edited by J. R. d e j. Jackson (2 vols., 1970-91). T here are many fine books on Coleridge’s liter­ ary theory: J . A. Appleyard, C olerid g e’s Philoso­

phy o f Literature: T he D evelopm ent o f a C oncept o f Poetry, 1791-1819 (1965); Thom as M cFarland, Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition (1969), which includes cogent chapters on C oleridge’s plagia­ risms and pantheist beliefs; J. R. de J. Jackson ,

Method and Imagination in C oleridge’s Criticism (1969); J. Robert Barth, T he Symbolic Im agina­ tion: Coleridge and the Romantic Tradition (1977); and Jerome C. Christensen, C oleridge’s Blessed Ma­ chine o f Language (1981). On Coleridge’s theories o f literary language and poetic diction, see Em er­ son R. M arks, C oleridge on the Language o f Verse (1981), a treatm ent of Coleridge’s interest in lan­ guage “as an artistic medium”; Tim othy Corrigan, C oleridge, Language, and Criticism (1982); Paul Hamilton, C olerid g e’s Poetics (1983), an insight­ ful study of Coleridge’s significant influence on post-Rom antic literary criticism ; Jam es C. McKusick, C oleridge’s Philosophy o f Language (1986); and A. C. Goodson, Verbal Im agination: C oleridge and the Language o f M odern Criticism (1988), which relates Coleridge’s theory of poetry to the development of modern literary criticism . T he fol­ lowing are also recommended: John B. Beer, C oleridge’s Play o f Mind (2010), a stim ulating ex­ ploration of the relationship between the life and the work, with pertinent chapters on the literary criticism and lectures on Shakespeare; Gregory

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and philosophy; J. C. C. Mays, Coleridge's Ex­ p erim en tal Poetics (2013); and David Ward, C oleridge and the Nature o f Im agination: E volu­ tion, Engagem ent w ith the World, and Poetry (2013). On Coleridge and the sublim e, a major topic in the Rom antic period, see C h ristop her S to kes, C oleridge, Language an d the S u blim e: From Transcendence to Finitude (2010), and Mur­ ray J . Evans, Sublim e C oleridge: T he Opus M axi­ mum (2012). For bibliographies, see Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

An Annotated Bibliography o f Criticism and Schol­ arship, edited by Richard and Josephine Haven and M aurianne Adams (2 vols., 19 7 6 -8 3 ), which cov­ ers work to 1939. See also Jefferson D. Caskey and M elinda M. Capper, Sam uel Taylor C oleridge: A

Selective Bibliography o f Criticism , 1935—1977 (1978). A guide to further reading can be found in T he Cambridge Companion to Coleridge, edited by Lucy Newlyn (2002), as well as cogent essays on Coleridge’s criticism , philosophy, and political and religious thought. Suggestions for further reading are also included in W orthen’s Cambridge Intro­ duction (see above).

P ie r r e C o r n e ille Corneille’s third Discours is the one most often re­ printed, in part because its title, “O f the Three Unities of Tim e, Place, and Action,” is so closely associated with the theory of classical drama. The three Discours do not exist in a single English edi­ tion. The first, “On the Uses and Elements o f Dra­ matic Poetry,” is translated by Beatrice Stewart M acC lintock in European Theories o f the Drama (ed. Barrett H. Clark, 1965). T he second, “Dis­ course on Tragedy and of the Methods of Treating It, according to Probability and Necessity,” can be found in Dramatic Essays o f the Neoclassic Age (ed. Henry Hitch Adams and Baxter Hathaway, 1950). T he third, our selection, is found in The C ontinen­ tal Model (ed. Scott Elledge and Donald Schier, 1960). The three essays are published together in French, with a helpful introduction and notes in English, in Pierre Corneille: Writings on the T h e­ atre, edited by H. T. Barnwell (1965). Two notable introductory works are P. J . Yar­ row, C orneille (1963), and Claire L. Carlin, Pierre C orn eille Revisited (1998); the latter offers a bio­ graphical chapter. M itchell Greenberg’s Corneille, Classicism, and the Ruses o f Symmetry (1986) is an invaluable study of Corneille’s tragic universe. Da­ vid R. Clarke, Pierre Corneille: Poetics and Political Drama under Louis XIII (1992), and John Lyons,

T he Tragedy o f Origins: Pierre C orneille and Histori­ cal Perspective (1996), provide two different inter­

Leadbetter, C oleridge and the D aem onic Im agi­ nation (2011), which explores the them es of exal­

pretations of the nature of “history” in Corneille’s plays. T h re e com parative studies— B en edetto Croce’s classic Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille (1920), A. Donald Sellstrom’s more speculative Cor­ neille, Tasso, and Modern Poetics (1986), and Rich­ ard E. Goodkin’s provocative Birth Marks: T he Trag­

tation and transgression in C oleridge’s poetry

edy o f Primogeniture in Pierre Corneille, Thomas

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Corneille, and Jean Racine (2000)— are of interest.

of Palestinian films; his introduction and essay fo­

Timothy Hampton's Fictions o f Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (2009) ex­ plores the fluidity between politics and aesthetics in the author’s oeuvre, with particular attention to Corneille as dramatist of geopolitics, while John D. Lyons revisits Corneille’s poetics of tragedy, en ­ gaging T he Three Discourses and the concepts of fortune, randomness, and chance in chapter 1 of

cus on Palestinian cinema as the most important artistic expression of “a much-maligned people.” In

T he Phantom o f Chance: From Fortune to Random ­ ness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (2012). The best bibliography of Corneille studies is the Corneille chapter in A Critical Bibliography o f French Literature , vol. 3A, The Seventeenth Century (ed. Mare Fumaroli and Gwyneth Castor, 1983).

H a m id D a b a sh i Hamid Dabashi has published two dozen books, four edited volumes, and numerous articles and chapters. T he World Is My H om e: A Hamid D a­ bashi R eader (2010), edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, conveniently brings to ­ geth er some of his main ideas. In Theology o f

D iscontent: T he Ideological Foundations o f the Islam ic Revolution in Iran (1993), which displays his intim ate fam iliarity with Islam and with poststructural and postmodern concepts, Dabashi ar­ gues that the global rise of Islamism is a form of liberation theology. He presses here to see beyond the standard viewpoints of W estern scholars, which he often depicts as having only some of the truth at hand. In Truth and Narrative: T h e

Untimely Thoughts o f cAyn al-Q udat al-H am adhan l (1999), Dabashi deconstructs the essentialist conceptions of Islam propounded by O rientalists as well as by Islam ists, proposing instead a “polyfo ca l” conception of Islam in which three narra­ tives, readings, and institutions of authority com pete simultaneously. He believes that these three readings of “Islam ” encompass the vast m a­ jo rity of M uslim s’ moral, political, and in tellectu ­ al history. In Staging a Revolution: T he Art o f Persuasion in the Islam ic R eptiblic o f Iran (1999), Dabashi and Peter Chelkowski exam ine the pub­ lic myths and collective symbols that contributed to the making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1 9 7 8 -7 9 , com m enting on the effects of its war with Iraq ( 1 9 8 0 -8 8 ) on the evolution of the cou n­ try’s postrevolutionary politics. In his polemical article “For the Last Time: Civilizations,” In ter­ national Sociology 16 (2001), Dabashi postulates a dichotomy between “Islam and the W est” and casts European modernity as a constructed c en ­ ter in relation to the rest of the world. At the start of the twenty-first century, D a­ bashi’s interests expanded into Iranian cinem a; in

Masters and

M asterpieces o f Iranian

Cinema

(2007), Dabashi guides the reader on an explora­ tion of twelve Iranian films, each subjected to combined formal, historical, and textual analyses. In more recent years, Dabashi has published sev­ eral major books. Iran: A People Interrupted (2007) traces the country’s history, cultural trends, and political developments over two hundred years, up to the collapse of the Green Movement of 2 009. In it, Dabashi contends that “Iran needs to be under­ stood as the site of an ongoing contest between two contrasting visions of modernity, one colonial, the other anticolonial.” Dabashi’s Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in a Time o f Terror (2009) extends Edward W. Said’s critical portrait of O ri­ entalism by focusing less on colonial misrepresen­ tation and domination and more on postcolonial agency and resistance. His Shi'ism: A Religion o f Protest (2011) provides Western readers with an understanding of Islam and its Shiite branch as a religion of protest, offering critical analyses and extended discussions of Shia Islam's doctrine, his­ torical development, visual and performing arts, and three largest areas of concentration (Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon). The World o f Persian Literary Humanism (2012) surveys the multinational histo­ ry of Persian literature from the seventh to the twenty-first centuries, taking into unsparing c r iti­ cal account both Arab imperialism and European Orientalism and colonialism, plus much modern literary criticism and cultural theory. T he Arab Spring: The End o f Postcolonialism (2012) explains the movements in a number of countries that to­ gether came to be labeled the Arab Spring, which has led to a rethinking of the Middle East from within as well as without. Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings that have consumed sever­ al countries in the Middle East were driven by a “delayed defiance,” a rebellion against local tyran­ ny and globalized disempowerment. Corpus Anar-

chicum: Political Protest, Suicidal Violence, and the Making o f the Posthuman Body (2012) exam­

(2001), he presents Iranian national cinem a as a form of cultural modernity. A few years later he

ines suicidal violence in the decade between 2001 and 2011, highlighting the attacks o f 9/11, led by Muhammad Atta, and the suicide in 2010 of the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, which sparked the Arab Spring. Dabashi contends that though suicidal violence is specific neither to Is­ lam nor to the contemporary era, it is today entire­ ly different because it is perpetrated on what he calls the contour of a posthuman body. In Being a Muslim in the World (2013), Dabashi addresses the question of what it means to be a Muslim in what he calls the “post-Western world,” where Is­ lam and the West no longer constitute a binary op­ position and the West no longer holds “the same

edited Dreams o f a Nation: On Palestinian C in e­ ma (20 0 6 ), whose essays and interviews reflect on the challenges of film production and the impact

normative hegemony.” He argues that today the task facing Muslims is to gain self-consciousness and not self-alienation.

C lose Up: Iranian C inem a, Past, Present, Future

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In Can Non-Europeans Think? (2015), a collec­ tion of philosophical explorations, Dabashi returns to his earliest concerns, especially the sociology of culture, discussing important thinkers whom he sees as regularly m arginalized, patronized, and misrepresented, because they lack the pedi­ gree of European philosophy, and offering a new perspective in “postcolonial theory” by exam ining how' intellectual debate reinforces a “hidden colo­ nial system of knowledge.” D abashi’s Persophilia: Persian Culture on the G lobal S cen e (2015) ar­ gues that Persian culture has been integral to Eu­ ropean history since the biblical period and clas­ sical antiquity through the Renaissance and the Enlightenm ent. T hat is, European artists, poets, and thinkers have looked to Persian culture and history for inspiration and ideas that have helped shape both W estern views of Iran and Iranian’s views of themselves. In his argum ent, Dabashi draws on Jurgen H aberm as’s theory of “the public sphere” to trace the formation of a civil discourse in Iran that led to the creation of a modern nation-state out of an ancient civilization. As al­ ways, Dabashi connects his argum ents to the his­ tory of European colonialism , even though Iran was never formally colonized. T he wide-ranging and provocative book refers to such seminal works as Xenophon’s C yropaedia, N ietzsche’s Thus S poke Zarathustra, H andel’s Xerxes , and P uccini’s Turandot, as well as analyzing G auguin’s

that powered much of Persian adab (court poets and philosophers and members of the aristocracy were more likely than not to be its central figures) and fumbles when he talks about the ‘creative consciousness’ that makes up the subject o f Per­ sian literary hum anism .” And, like others, Na­ varatnam faults D abashi’s tendency to at times “pontificate from within the confines of an insu­ lar, self-absorbed language of high theory.” Nev­ ertheless, she acknowledges that “Persian Liter­ ary Humanism not only maps out the production and formation of Persian ad ab from within the spaces and regions from which it grew, but is also in conversation with European and A m eri­ can cultu ral critics like Theodor Adorno and Fredric Jam eson.” Dabashi’s books and articles have been translat­ ed into more than a dozen other languages, from Catalan to Urdu. A select bibliography is available in The World Is My Home (cited above).

and M atisse’s fascination with Persian art. In

text, edited and with English translation by Paget Toynbee, is the standard edition of Dante’s letters. The best translation of the “Letter to Can Grande” can be found in Robert S. Haller’s Literary Criti­ cism o f Dante Alighieri (1973), which also contains Eloquence in the Vernacular Tongue and other critical statements. Barbara Reynolds’s Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man (2006) offers a reassessment of the poet’s life and times. For an introduction, see Dante: A Very Short Introduction (2015), by Peter H ainsworth and David Robey. Dante has been the subject o f com ­ mentaries by important poet-critics, the most prominent among them T. S. Eliot’s Dante (1928). M ajor statements about Dante by modern poets have been collected in The Poet's Dante: TwentiethCentury Responses, edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Ja co ff (2001). Erich Auerbach, in D ante : Poet o f the Secidar World (1929) and Mimesis: The

Iran w ithout Borders: Towards a C ritique o f the Postcolonial N ation (2016), Dabashi depicts Iran from the eighteenth century onward as a modern cosmopolitan nation, while in Iran: T he Rebirth o f a Nation (2016), he reflects on the contemporary history of Iran, emphasizing the profound differ­ ence between the nation and the state. D abashi’s critics raise a number of points. In a review, “Iran: A People Interrupted,” Com parative

Studies o f South Asia, A frica and the M iddle East 28 (20 0 8 ), Kouross Esm aeli notes that Dabashi fails to define some key concepts, including cos­ m opolitanism , resulting in a conflation of “the consciously internationalist nature o f the pre1979 political life of Iran with the cosm opolitan­ ism of his own early-twenty-first-century New York m ilieu.” In her review' of D abashi’s Shi'ism: A Religion o f Protest in Jou rn al o f Shi'a Islamic Studies 6 (2013), Amina Inloes highlights “the unspoken assumption that Shi'ism is Iranian, and, hence, anything Iranian is relevant to Shi'ism .” Some critics note that in T h e World o f Persian Literary Humanism, Dabashi does not en­ gage with a number of important prior works on classical Persian literature. In “Alternative Versions o f Being Human: ‘The World of Persian Literary Humanism,”’ PopMatters (2013; www.popmatters .com/), Subashini Navaratnam addresses many concerns at once: “But Persian literature was also in service of its own empires, and here Dabashi tends to gloss over the factors of class and elitism

D a n te A lig h ie r i Dante’s literary criticism can be found in the Ital­ ian Opere minori di Dante Alighieri (1986). The standard Italian edition of II Convivio was edited by Maria Simonelli (1966). Two recent English trans­ lations of II Convivio, by Christopher Ryan (1989) and by Richard H. Lansing (1990), both based on the Simonelli edition, are superior to earlier trans­ lations. The Letters o f Dante (1920), with Latin

Representation o f Reality in Western Literature (1953), argues that Dante’s comments on allegori­ cal reading are central to an interpretation of The Divine Comedy. For important introductions to Dantean poetics, see Robert Hollander’s Dante: A Life in Works (2001) and T he Cambridge C om pan­ ion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jaco ff (2d ed., 2007). Peter Dronke, in Dante and the M edieval Latin Tra­ dition (1986), and Henry Ansgar Kelly, in Tragedy and Comedy from Dante to Pseudo-Dante (1989), have both questioned the authenticity of the letter to Can Grande, arguing that Auerbach’s insistence on a figural reading of The Divine Comedy based

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on that letter is mistaken. J. F. Took’s Dante, Lyric

Poet and Philosopher: An Introduction to the Minor Works (1990) contains an important chapter on II Convivio. In Dante’s Epistle to Cangrande (1993), Robert Hollander summarizes the debate over the letter to Can Grande, while defending Dante’s au­ thorship and its relevance to the allegorical read­ ing of The Divine Comedy. Dante in Context, edit­ ed by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Lino Pertile (2015), collects essays that locate the poet in his historical, cultural, and intellectual context, in­ cluding literary culture and literary theory and criticism . Essays by the translator and Dante scholar John Freccero on Dante and his influence on later poets have been collected in Dante’s Wake:

Reading from Medieval to M odem in the Augustinian Tradition (2015), edited by Danielle Callegari and Melissa Swain. For a bibliography on Dante, consult “American Dante Bibliography,” published annually in Dante Studies (1953—).

Act o f W omen Writers in the M arketplace, 1679— 1820 (1994). On disability, Rachel Adams's “Enabling D ifferen ces: New W ork in D isability Stu d ies,” M ichigan Q uarterly R eview 37 (1998), praises Davis’s critique of norm alcy but faults his failure to take into account the “differences be­ tween deafness and other forms o f physical im­ pairm ent.” Brenda Jo Brueggeman draws on Da­ vis’s work in L en d Me Your Ear: R hetorical Constructions o f Deafness (1999). In “W hat a Dif­ ference a Decade Makes: R eflections on Doing ‘Em ancipatory’ Disability R esearch ,” Disability and Society 18 (2003), Colin Barnes assesses Da­ vis’s political position. David Bolt, in “Social E n ­ counters, Cultural Representation and Critical Avoidance,” in Routledge H an dbook o f Disability Studies (ed. Nick W atson, Alan Roulstone, and Carol Thom as, 2012), surveys Davis’s formative work in the field; see also Dan Goodley, Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (2011). In T he B iopolitics o f Disability: N eoliberalism ,

L e n n a r d J . D a v is

A blenationalism , and Peripheral

Lennard Davis’s first two books, Factual Fictions: T he Origins o f the Novel (1983; rpt. 1997) and Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction (1987), fo­ cus on the history of the novel. W ith M. Bella Mirabella, he also co-edited L eft Politics and the Literary Profession (1990). He turned to disability studies in his pathbreaking book Enforcing Nor­ m alcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (1995)

(2015), David T. M itchell and Sharon L. Snyder draw on Davis’s concept of dismodernism but find that it tends to level social difference.

and his anthology, T h e Disability Studies R eader (1997; 5th ed., 2016), which has defined the field. In addition, Davis edited his parents’ correspon­ dence, published as Shall I Say a Kiss?: Courtship Letters o f a D eaf Couple, 1936-1938 (1999), which conveys the experience of two deaf people in England ju st before World War II. He has expand­ ed his analysis of disability in several books: Bend­

ing Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions (2002), The End o f Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era (2013), and Enabling Acts: T he H idden Story o f How the A m erican w ith D isabilities Act Gave the Largest VS M inor­ ity Its Rights (2015), a book for a general audi­ ence. He also elaborated his view of psychoanaly­ sis in Obsession: A History (2 0 0 8 ) and co-edited, with Dan Goodley and Bill Hughes, the collection

Disability and S ocial Theory: New D evelopm ents and Directions (2012). Alongside his academic work, he has tried his hand at fiction in The Sonnets: A Novel (2001) and has published articles in mainstream magazines and new'spapers, including the Nation, the New York Times, McCall's, and Redbook. The best bio­ graphical source about Davis is his autobiography,

My Sense o f Silence: Memoirs o f a C hildhood with Deafness (2000), as well as his memoir Go Ask Your Father: One Man’s Obsession with Finding His Ori­ gins through DNA Testing (2009). Davis’s investigation of the origin of the novel has received significant attention, notably in C ath­ erine G allagh er’s N obody’s Story: T h e Vanishing

E m bodim ent

G ill e s D e le u z e a n d F e l ix G u a t t a r i Deleuze and Guattari are best known for their

Anti-Oedipus (1972; trans. 1983, 2 0 0 9 ), Kafka: To­ ward a Minor Literature (1975; trans. 1986), A Thousand Plateaus (1980; trans. 1987), and What Is Philosophy? (1991; trans. 1994). In addition to the books mentioned above, Gilles Deleuze’s writings, most of which are available in English, include Proust and Signs (1964; trans. 1972); Masochism: An Interpretation o f Coldness and Cruelty (1967; trans. 1971); Kant's Critical Philosophy (1971; trans. 1984); Dialogues, with Claire Parnet (1977; trans. 1987), on the relation between culture and politics; Foucault (1986; trans. 1988); Essays Critical and Clinical (1993; trans. 1997), with chapters on Al­ fred Jarry, Herman Melville, and W alt W hitman; T h e A b eced aire o f G illes D eleuze (19 9 7 ), a set of taped television interview s; Desert Islands and O ther Texts, 1953-1974 (2004); and Two Regimes o f Madness, 1975—1995 (2006). The Deleuze Reader, edited and introduced by Constantin V. Boundas, was published in 1993. Felix G uattari’s works in­ clude, in addition to the titles mentioned in the headnote, M olecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics (1977; trans. 1984); “A Liberation of De­ sire,” in Homosexualities and French Literature (ed. George Stam bolian and Elaine M arks, 1979); Chaosmosis (1992; trans. 1995); and The Anti-Oedipus Papers (2 0 0 4 ; trans. 2006). The Guattari Reader, edited and introduced by Gary Genosko, was pub­ lished in 1996. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives (2007; trans. 2010), by F r a n c is Dosse, devotes more than 6 0 0 pages to chronicling the intellectual and personal lives of the two, while Frida B eckm an’s G illes D eleuze (2017) traces Deleuze’s life and intellectual journey.

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Brian M assum i’s User’s G uide to C apitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations fro m Deleuze and G uattari (1992) is a sprightly, provocative read­ ing that both explains a revolutionary Deleuze and G u attari and deviates from them . E leanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon Heller’s Deleuze and

Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture (1998) contains a variety of articles, including Bruno Bosteel’s detailed account of G uattari’s relation to language and Aden Evens et al.’s cogent discussion of difference and creativity. Charles J. Stivale’s The Two-Fold Thought o f De­ leuze and Guattari (1998) is also useful. A threevolume collection of criticism titled Critical Assess­ ments: Deleuze and Guattari, edited by Gary Genosko (20 0 0 ), gives a wide range of responses. Ian Buchanan’s Deleuze and Guattari's "AntiOedipus”: A R eader’s Guide (2008), with its sugges­ tions for further reading and bibliography, is a very useful introd u ction for students, as is Eugene W. H olland’s Deleuze and Guattari: 'A Thousand

Plateaus’: A R eaders G uide (2013). Criticism on Deleuze includes M ichael Hardt,

Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (1993), which presents a concrete and existential Deleuze, and Gilles D eleuze and the T heater o f Philosophy, edited by Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (1994), which is a good sam­ pler of readings of Deleuze’s work; it includes a terse analysis by the French philosopher Alain Badiou, who has since published Deleuze: The C lam or o f Being (1997; trans. 2 0 0 0 ). O ther col­ lections of criticism are Deleuze: A Critical R ead­ er, edited by Paul Patton (1996), and G illes De­ leuze: Im age and Text, edited by Eugene W. Holland, D aniel W. Sm ith, and Charles J. Stivale (2009). A good overview of Deleuze’s involve­ ment with film is provided by David Rodowick in T he Tim e-M achine (1997). See also Gregory Flaxm an’s collection The Brain Is the Screen: De­ leuze and the Philosophy o f Cinem a (2000) and Richard Rushton’s comprehensive study, C inem a A fter D eleuze (2012). Fem inists, who initially re­ jected Deleuze and Guattari for robbing women of

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published later in his life or posthumously. His first book, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the R hetoric o f Contem porary Criticism (1971; 2d ed., 1983), surveys a range of im portant critics and argues that criticism is frequently predicated on a blindness to its own rhetoric, which paradoxi­ cally also enables its insight; it includes a famous critique of Derrida, “The Rhetoric of Blindness” (1971). His most unified book, Allegories o f R ead­

ing: Figural Language in Rousseau, N ietzsche, R ilke, and Proust (1979), best exem plifies his deconstructive reading methods and has been extremely influential. The remainder of de M an’s books, gathering numerous essays, were published after his death; they include The Rhetoric o f Ro­ manticism (1984); T he Resistance to Theory (1986); Critical Writings, 1953-1978, edited by Lindsay Waters (1989); Romanticism and Contemporary

Criticism: The Gauss Seminars and Other Papers, edited by E. S. Burt, Kevin Newmark, and Andrzej Warminski (1992); Aesthetic Ideology, edited by Andrzej Warminski (1996); and several volumes of miscellaneous writings, such as The Post-Romantic Predicament, edited by Martin M cQuillan (2012), and The Paul de Man Notebooks, edited by M c­ Quillan (2014). His controversial journalism dat­ ing from World War II is included in Wartime Jou r­ nalism, 1939—1943, edited by W erner Hamacher, Neil Hertz, and Thomas Keenan (1988). De Man’s work has drawn a large body of com­ mentary. Ortwin de G raef’s Serenity in Crisis: A Preface to Paul de Man, 1939—1960 (1993) and Ti­ tanic Light: Paul de Man's Post-Romanticism, 1960— 1969 (1995) review de Man’s intellectual career, though the best biographical recounting is Lindsay Waters’s lengthy introduction to Critical Writings, “Paul de Man: Life and Works.” Evelyn Barish, The Double Life o f Paul de Man (2014), attacks de M an’s character while admitting little knowledge of his work. A useful factual chronology of de M an’s early life is offered in Responses: On Paul de M an’s War­ time Journalism, edited by Hamacher, Hertz, and Keenan (1989), their companion volume to War­ time Journalism. Robert Moynihan, “Interview

being with their insistence on becoming, are now revising earlier views. An entire volume, Deleuze and Feminism, edited by Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (2 0 0 0 ), includes a fresh look at Deleuze by a dozen fem inists. See also Buchanan’s collec­ tion Gilles Deleuze: A Philosopher fo r Our Century? (2000). T he best bibliographies are Timothy S. Murphy’s “Bibliography of the Works of Gilles De­ leuze” in Patton’s Deleuze, cited above; T he G uat­ tari E ffect, edited by Eric Alliez and Andrew Goffey (2011); and Gary Genosko’s bibliography in Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction (2002). Eugene B. Young’s T he Deleuze and Guattari D ic­ tionary (2013) also has an updated bibliography.

with Paul de M an,” Yale Review 73 (1984), is acces­ sible and illuminating. Important early critical responses include Frank L entricchia’s critique of de M an’s “rhetoric of au­ thority” in After the New Criticism (1980); Rodolphe G asche’s Setzung ’ and ‘Ubersetzung ’: Notes on Paul de M an,” Diacritics 11 (1981), which com ­ pares de M an’s use of deconstruction unfavorably with that of Derrida; and Barbara Johnson’s “G en­ der Theory and the Yale School" (1984), collected in her World o f Difference (1987), which notes the lack of consideration of gender among Yale critics. Immediately after de M an’s death, there was a spate of publications largely sympathetic to his work. See The Lesson o f Paid de Man, a special issue

P a u l d e M an

of Yale French Studies, no. 69 (1985); Jacques Der­ rida’s Memoires: For Paul de Man (1986), a moving meditation on de Man’s project that distinguishes

De M an’s early reputation derived primarily from his essays, which were collected in books

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his focus on literature and allegory from Derrida's version of deconstruction; and Reading de Man Reading, edited by Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich (1989). Following the publication of his wartime writings, the criticism on de Man changed markedly. Responses (cited above) records the range of debate, from condemnations to defenses. A new' wave of reconsiderations of de Man’s work began in the 1990s. In his Cultural Capital: T he Problem o f Literary Canon Formation (1993), John Guillory devotes a chapter to de M an’s influence as a teacher. Rodolphe G asche’s The Wild Card o f Reading: On Paul de Man (1998) focuses, often critically, on de Man’s use of philosophy (it also re­ prints the 1981 essay noted above). Gathering con­ tributions by Derrida, Judith Butler, Johnson, and others, Material Ei^ents: Paul de Man and the After­ life o f Theory, edited by Tom Cohen, Barbara C o­ hen, J. Hillis Miller, and Andrzej Warminski (2000), proposes new directions for the study of de Man. Martin M cQuillan’s Paid de Man (2001) is an accessible introduction. Legacies o f Paul de Man, edited by Marc Redfield (2007), gathers eight es­ says reassessing de Man. See also The Political

Archive o f Paid de Man: Property, Sovereignty, and the Theotropic, edited by McQuillan (2012), which collects essays by leading critics. Redfield’s Theory at Yale: The Strange Case o f Deconstruction in America (2016) is a major reassessment of the cen­ tral role of theory in the institution of American literary study, and particularly of de M an’s influ­ ence in establishing his version of theory. The 1985 special issue of Yale French Studies cited above and de M an’s posthumous Resistance to Theory provide complete bibliographical lists of his work up to 1985; de Graef (see above) lists de M an’s publica­ tions up to 1983, as well as more recent secondary sources. In addition, M cQ uillan’s Paul de Man in ­ cludes a selective annotated bibliography.

J a c q u e s D e r rid a Derrida’s analysis of the nontransparency of writ­ ing did not slow1 publication by him or by those inspired (or incensed) by his writing. Derrida’s first published book was a translation with a lengthy introduction, Edmund Husserl’s “Origin o f Geometry": An Introduction (1962; trans. 1978). In 1967 Derrida published three books: La Voix et le phen om en e (trans. 1973, Speech and Phenom ena), De la gram matologie (trans. 1976, O f G ram m atol­ ogy; rev. trans. 2016), and L’fccriture et la difference (trans. 1978, Writing and Difference). In 1972 he published three more books: La Dissemination (trans. 1981, Dissemination), Positions (trans. 1981, Positions), and Marges— de la philosophie (trans. 1982, Margins o f Philosophy). Glas (1974; trans. 1986, Glas), a huge book writ­ ten in two colum ns broken up in various ways on the page, discusses the works of the G erm an philosopher Hegel and the transgressive French playwright and novelist Je a n G en et; one of the translators, Joh n P. Leavey Jr., published an

accompanying volume, Glassary (1986). Eperons: Les Styles de N ietzsche (1976, 1978; trans. 1979, Spurs: N ietzsche’s Styles), in which Derrida ana­ lyzes how certain philosophers have used con­ cepts of sexual difference, has had an impact on fem inist criticism . In La Verite en peinture (1978; trans. 1987, T he Truth in Painting), he discusses Heidegger, Kant, van Gogh, and art criticism . La C arte postale de Socrate a Freud et au -dela (1980; trans. 1987, The Post Card) continues the discus­ sions of Plato and Socrates, speech and writing, that Derrida began in “Plato’s Pharmacy” and includes a groundbreaking reading of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle; it also contains “Le facteur de la verite" (“T he Purveyor of T ru th ”; fa c teu r means “m ailm an” as well as “factor”), D errid as famous critical reading of Jacques L acan’s sem inar on “T he Purloined L etter” by Edgar Allan Poe. D errida’s next publication, Signeponge/Signsponge (1983), was a bilingual study o f the work of Francis Ponge in w'hich he unpacked the French poet’s signature (“anagram m atically”) from the poet’s works. Memoires: For Paul de Man, a collec­ tion of lectures that appeared in English in 1986, was revised in 1989 to comment on de M an’s war­ time journalism . To simplify the increasingly complex publication history of the later writings only the English titles of Derrida’s important works are given hereafter, unless they appeared in French under a different title. In 1988 Gerald G raff edited Limited, Inc., in which appeared an exchange between Derrida and the philosopher John Searle (first collected in the journal Glyph in 1977) about the nature of perfor­ mative language, with additional texts by Derrida. “Declarations of Independence,” New Political Sci­ en ce 15 (1986), an influential reading of the Amer­ ican Declaration of Independence, first appeared in French in Otobiographies: L'enseignement de N ietzsche et la politiqu e du nom propre (1984). Many essays on Heidegger, Roland B arthes, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul de Man and on such topics as racism, translation, and metaphor were published in Psyche: Inventions o f the Other (2 vols., 198 7 -2 0 0 3 ; trans., 2 0 0 7 -0 8 ). Derrida’s thesis de­ fense, “The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations,” in Phi­ losophy in France Today (ed. Alan Montefiore, 1983), was published among other texts addressing the institutions of philosophy in Eyes o f the Univer­ sity: Right to Philosophy 2 (1990; trans. 2004); the companion volume is W ho’s Afraid o f Philosophy? Right to Philosophy I (1990; trans. 2002). The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe (1991; trans. 1992) took up political issues, as did Derrida’s longawaited engagement with the texts o f Karl Marx,

Specters o f Marx: The State o f the Debt, the Work o f Mourning, and the New International (1993; trans. 1994). Advances (1995; trans. 2018), a slim volume, offers reflections on temporality, religion, and ecopolitics. Derrida responded to 9/11 in Philosophy in

a Time o f Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, interviewed by Giovanna Bor-

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radori (2 0 0 3 ), and investigated dem ocracy in Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (2003; trans. 2005). His meditations on the gift and givenness can be found in his Given Time: I, C ounterfeit Money (1991; trans. 1992), which focuses on Baudelaire and Heidegger, and The Gift o f Death (1992; trans. 1995), one of Derrida’s most explicit discussions of religion; on that subject, see also the collection Acts o f Religion, edited by Gil Anidjar (2002). In 1995 three short works (Passions, S au fle nom, and Khora) were translated under the title On the Name. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1995; trans. 1996), on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, was followed by The Politics o f Friendship (1994; trans. 1997). And two translations appeared in 1998: Monolingualism o f the Other, or, The Prosthesis o f Origin (1996) and Resistances o f Psychoanalysis (1996). Between 2 0 0 0 and his death in 2 0 0 4 , Derrida continued lecturing and publishing prodigiously. Many seminars and volumes were published and translated, some posthumously. O f Hospitality (1997; trans. 2000), a compilation of two seminar lectures given in Paris in January 1996, examines the concept of hospitality as it relates to political and ethical dilemmas. A Taste fo r the Secret, with Maurizio Ferraris (1997; trans. 2001), a set of con­ versations, provides both an autobiographical and a theoretical overview of Derridean thought. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (1997; trans. 2001) is a lean but penetrating exegesis on forgive­ ness, healing, truth and reconciliation, and world events; Without Alibi (2002) is collection of long pieces, a number of which focus on sovereignty. In On Touching: Jean-Luc Nancy (2 0 0 0 ; trans. 2005), Derrida engages in a philosophical investigation of touching, grounded in the work of the philoso­ pher Nancy. The Work o f Mourning, edited by Pascale-A nne Brault and M ichael Naas (2001), is a m editation on friendship and the passing of French intellectual lum inaries such as Louis Al­ thusser and Roland Barthes, among others. For What Tom orrow . . . : A D ialogue (2001; trans. 2 0 0 4 ), with his friend the historian Elisabeth Roudinesco, offers accessible and wide-ranging insights into Derrida’s intellectual and political evolution. Paper Machine (2001; trans. 2005) in­ vestigates the archive, writing, and media. Negoti­

ations: Interventions and Interviews, 1971—2001, edited by Elizabeth Rottenberg (2002), a disparate collection of many essays and some interviews, provides biographical as well as intellectual in­ sights often on political topics. Derrida published two late volumes on his friend the writer H£l£ne Cixous: H .C .for Life, That Is to Say — (2002; trans. 2 0 0 6 ) and G eneses, G en ealogies, G enres, an d Genius: T he Secrets o f the Archive (2003; trans. 2006). In the literary treatise Demeure: Fiction and 'Testimony (1998), published together in E n­ glish (2000) with the essay by M aurice Blanchot to which it responds, T he Instant o f My Death (1994), Derrida discusses literature, witnessing, and mem­ ory as it relates to truth. W ith the essays collected

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in Sovereignties in Question: T he Poetics o f Paid Celan (2005), another foray into literature, Derrida explores the poetics of the twentieth-century poet Paul Celan, a Romanian-French Jew who wrote in German. In Learning to Live Finally: T he Last In­ terview (2005; trans. 2007), Derrida reflects on death, dying, and living in an interview with the Le Monde journalist Jean Birnbaum. And in The Ani­ mal That Therefore I Am, edited by M arie-Louise Mallet (2 0 0 6 ; trans. 2008), a seminar, Derrida con­ siders the roles played by animals throughout his corpus, delving into animal life and rights. Derrida’s annual seminars are being published in France and rapidly issued in English by the Univer­ sity o f Chicago Press. The series started with T he Beast and the Sovereign (2 vols., 2 0 0 8 —10; trans. 2 0 0 9 -1 1 ), followed by T he Death Penalty (2 vols., 2 0 1 2 -1 5 ; trans. 2 0 1 4 -1 7 ) and Heidegger: T he Question o f Being and History (2013; trans. 2016); several dozen more volumes are projected. As the selection above suggests, Derrida partici­ pated in many interviews and dialogues, which of­ ten clarified his work and his positions. The first interviews were collected in Positions, which was followed by Points— : Interviews, 1974—1994, edited by Elisabeth Weber (1992; trans. 1995 [with two added articles]), and Negotiations. Among the most revealing and inform ative dialogues, all cited above, are A Taste fo r the Secret, For W hat Tomor­ row, and Philosophy in a Time o f Terror. Five readers in English provide useful starting points: A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, edited by Peggy Kamuf (1991), gives a good overall sample of his writing; Acts o f Literature, edited by Derek Attridge (1992), and T he Derrida R eader: Writing Perform ances, edited by Julian Wolfreys (1998), are more explicitly geared toward literature; and Jacqu es Derrida: Basic Writings, edited by Barry Stocker (20 0 7 ), addresses topics in philosophy, while John W. P. Phillips’s D errida Now: Current Perspectives in Derrida Studies offers a sweeping introductory look into the major them es in his work (2016). A good source of biographical information is Jacqu es Derrida, coauthored by Geoffrey Benning­ ton and Jacques Derrida (1991; trans. 1993, rev. 1999). Bennington’s exposition of Derrida’s work, titled “Derridabase,” is at the top of each page; Derrida’s autobiographical commentary, “Circumfession,” is at the bottom. T he book also provides photographs, a chronology, and a good bibliogra­ phy. Jacqu es Derrida: A Biography (2006) by Jason Powell is an introduction more to his philosophy than to his life. Benoit Peeters’s D errida: A B iog­ raphy (2010; trans. 2013) covers Derrida’s life and work in great depth, as well as providing an excel­ lent bibliography. Several documentary films take the philosopher as their subject; Derrida (2002), directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, offers a very personal view. Christopher Norris’s Derrida (1987) rem ains a fine introduction to Derrida’s early work. T he

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Cambridge Introduction to Jacqu es Derrida, edited by Leslie Hill (2007), and Nicholas Royle’s Jacques D errida (2 0 0 3 ) are also very a ccessib le. Sim on Glendinning’s Derrida: A Very Short Introduction (2011) unpacks and relates the difficulties and sig­ nificance of Derrida’s philosophical contributions. Working through Derrida, edited by Gary B. Madi­ son (1993), presents very well the divisions around Derrida in Anglo-American philosophy, from John Searle’s critique to explications and extensions of Derrida by the leading philosophers Barry Allen, John D. Caputo, and Drucilla Cornell, with Nancy Fraser and Richard Rorty falling somewhere in be­ tween. The four-volume Jacqu es Derrida, edited by Christopher Norris and David Roden (2003), re­ prints sixty-five pieces of critical reaction span­ ning three decades, with a focus on philosophers and philosophy. Another collection, Deconstruc­ tion and the Possibility o f Justice, edited by Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carl­ son (1992), considers his work’s political implica­ tions; it begins with an essay by Derrida. Sam ir Haddad’s Derrida and the Inheritance o f Democra­ cy (2013) also explores Derrida’s political writings, with particular attention to the nature o f democ­ racy and democratic traditions in conversation with issues of violence and ju stice, while Derrida

and Our Animal Others: D errida’s Final Seminar, “The Beast and the Sovereign” (2013) by David Far­ rell Krell engages Derrida’s ideas on animals, humans, and political sovereignty. Allison W einer and Simon Morgan W ertham have put together an interesting collection of essays on the future of de­ construction, Encountering Derrida: Legacies and Futures o f Deconstruction (2007). Exceptional monographs on Derrida include Rodolphe Gasche, Inventions o f Difference: On Jacques Derrida (1994), which takes seriously Der­ rida’s philosophical critique of reflexivity and specularity and distinguishes between Derrida’s deconstruction and Am erican deconstructive lit­ erary criticism ; M arion H obson, Ja cq u es D erri­ da: Opening Lines (1998), a d ifficu lt but worth­ while reading of the inseparability of Derrida’s writing strategies from his arguments; and Christi­ na Howells, Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenom ­ enology to Ethics (1999), a readable introduction to Derrida, but with particular attention to the paral­ lel writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. For a substantial sympathetic scholarly account of the late Derrida, s e e j. Hillis Miller, For Derrida (2009). Two constant critical engagements with decon­ struction have com e from fem inism and M arx­ ism. See, in particular, D iane Elam , Fem inism and D econstruction: Ms. en A bym e (1994); F em i­ nist Interpretations o f Ja cq u es D errida, edited by Nancy J. Holland (1997); and D errida and F em i­ nism: Recasting the Q uestion o f W om an, edited by Ellen K. Feder, Mary C. Rawlinson, and Emily Zakin (1997). M ore recent turns in fem inist en­ gagements with Derrida revolve around pornog­ raphy, reproductive freedom , and transgender

rights. See, for instance, C hristopher M orris, “D errida on Pornography: P utting (It) Up for Sale,” Derrida Today 6 (2013), and Shannon Hoff, “Translating Principle into P ractice: On Derrida and the Terms of Fem inism ,” Jou rn a l o f S p ecu la ­ tive Philosophy 29 (2015). T h e response from M arxism has been divided: in Marxism and D e­ construction: A Critical Articulation (1982), M i­ chael Ryan discusses analytical strategies common to Marx and Derrida as inheritors of Hegel; Terry Eagleton, in contrast, attacks deconstruction in his Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983; 2d ed., 1996) for not being political. Bill M artin, in Hu­

manism and Its Aftermath: T he Shared Fate o f De­ construction and Politics (1995), argues that de­ construction is political but doesn’t go as far as it could. And after Derrida published Specters o f Marx, Michael Sprinkler organized a symposium around the work, “Ghostly Dem arcations,” whose proceedings were published under the same title (1999). For critiques of deconstruction from more traditional standpoints, see John Ellis, Against De­ construction (1989); David H. Hirsch, T he D econ­

struction o f Literature: Criticism after Auschwitz (1991); and M. C. Dillon, Sem iological Reductionism: A Critique o f the Deconstructionist Movement in Postmodern Thought (1995). Studies that extend Derrida’s writings in various directions include Jasper Neel, Plato, Derrida, and Writing (1988), which investigates the relevance of Derrida’s reading of Plato to composition theory; Writing the Politics o f D ifference, edited by Hugh J. Silverman (1991); Jonathan Loesberg, Aestheticism

and Deconstruction: Pater, Derrida, and de Man (1991); Simon Critchley, The Ethics o f Deconstruc­ tion: Derrida and Levinas (1992; 2d ed., 1999); Morag Patrick, Derrida, Responsibility, and Politics (1997); Joseph G. Kronick, Derrida and the Future o f Literature (1999); Christine van Boheemen-Saaf, Joyce, Derrida, Lacan, and the Trauma o f History: Reading, Narrative, and Postcolonialism (1999); and Peter Pericles Trifonas, The Ethics o f Writing: Der­ rida, Deconstruction, and Pedagogy (2000). Both Joanna Hodge, D errida on Tim e (2 0 0 7 ), and Da­ vid Wood, Tim e after Tim e (2 0 0 7 ), contrast Der­ rida’s use of temporality with that of Heidegger, Levinas, and others. William Schultz’s Jacques Derrida: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1992) is useful up to 1992. Jacqu es Derrida (II): A Bibliography, compiled by Joan Nordquist (1995), goes up to 1995. For more recent bibliographies, see Bennington and Derrida, Jacques Derrida ; Royle, Jacques Derrida; The Cambridge Introduction to Jacqu es Derrida; and Peeter’s Derrida: A Biography, as well as Glendin­ ning’s Derrida: A Very Short Introduction.

J o h n D ry d e n For many years the standard edition of Dryden was the eighteen-volume collection first published in 1808 and revised in 1882—93. It has been re­ placed by the University of C alifornia Press edi­

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tion, edited E. N. Hooker, H. T. Swedenberg Jr., et al. (2 0 vols., 1 9 5 6 -2 0 0 2 ). T h ere are two wellannotated collections of Dryden’s criticism , the first edited by W. P. Ker (2 vols., 1900), the second by George Watson (2 vols., 1962). O ther helpful collections include John Aden, Critical Opinions o f John Dryden (1963); Literary Criticism o f John Dryden, edited by Arthur C. Kirsch (1966); H. Jam es Jensen, A Glossary o f Joh n Dryden’s Critical Terms (1969); and John Dryden: Selected Criticism, edited by Jam es Kinsley and George Parfitt (1970). The best biography is Jam es Anderson W inn, Jo h n Dryden and His World (1987). Also valuable are Jam es M arshall O sborn, Jo h n Dryden: Som e B iographical Facts an d Problem s (rev. ed., 1965), and W inn, “W hen Beauty Fires the Blood": Love and the Arts in the Age o f Dryden (1992). A good survey of the life and works is Paul Hammond, Jo h n Dryden: A Literary Life (1991). Important modern studies of Dryden include T. S. Eliot, Homage to John Dryden (1924) and John Dryden: T he Poet, the Dramatist, the Critic (1932); and Louis I. Bredvold, T he Intellectual Milieu o f Joh n Dryden (1934). The best books on the criti­ cism are Edward Pechter, Dryden’s Classical T heo­ ry o f Literature (1975), and Jam es Engell, Forming the Critical Mind: Dryden to Coleridge (1989). Philip H arth, Contexts o f Dryden’s Thought (1968), is the standard work on Dryden’s philosophical and religious views; H arth’s Pen fo r a Party: Dryden’s Tory Propaganda in Its Contexts (1993) is also valu­ able. M ichael Werth Gelber, The Just and the Live­ ly: T he Literary Criticism o f John Dryden (1999), analyzes the criticism as a full and coherent body of literary theory. The essays included in T he C am bridge C om panion to Jo h n Dryden, edited by Steven N. Zwicker (20 0 4 ), exam ine Dryden’s work as a poet, playwright, and literary critic in its political and cultural contexts. Dryden, Pope, John son , M alone, edited by Claude Kawson (2010), in the Great Shakespeareans series, in­ cludes a cogent essay by Harold Love on Shake­ speare’s impact on Dryden’s contribution to the interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare’s work. Philip Smallwood, in C ritical Occasions:

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and secondary sources, consult Zwicker’s Cam ­ bridge Com panion (see above).

J o a c h i m d u B e lla y Little o f du Bellay’s work has been translated into English: the Defense is available in an English translation by Gladys M. Turquet (1939), as is Re­ grets, translated by C. H. Sisson (1984). Richard Helgerson has put together a bilingual edition of du Bellay’s work that includes Regrets, A ntiqui­ ties, and the Defense (2006). O ur selection is tak­ en from Helgerson’s volume. Joa ch im du Bellay (1971) by L. Clark Keating includes a biography as well as a general introduction. There are relatively few book-length studies of du Bellay in English; however, many books on Renais­ sance poetics contain chapters on him. W alter Pater’s chapter on du Bellay in T he Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1877) and Arthur T il­ ley’s The Literature o f the French Renaissance (2 vols., 1904) represent some of the earliest studies on du Bellay’s poetry. Especially useful are the chapters in W. F. Patterson’s Three Centuries o f

French Poetic Theory: A C ritical History o f the C h ie f Arts o f Poetry in France (1328-1630) (1935) and in S. J. Holyoake’s concise study, An Introduc­ tion to French Sixteenth Century Poetic Theory (1972). T h e chapter on du Bellay in M argaret Fer­ guson’s Trials o f Desire: Renaissance Defenses o f Poetry (1983) examines the political and historical context of the Defense, as well as the implications o f du Bellay’s own “borrowing” from Italian trea­ tises. Hassan Melehy’s T he Poetics o f Literary

Transfer in Early Modern France and England (2010), a critical comparative study, has a chapter on du Bellay’s Defense, exam ining the literary in­ terplay and interrelationship between early mod­ ern and medieval writers and their attention to classical poetics. For a theoretical discussion of the Pl6iade poets as a whole, see Graham e C as­ tor’s P leiade Poetics: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Thought and Terminology (1964). O ther good gen­ eral studies include Dorothy Coleman, The Chaste Muse: A Study o f Joachim Du Bellay’s Poetry (1980), and David Hartley, Patriotism in the Work o f

Dryden, Pope, John son, an d the History o f C riti­ cism (2011), situates Dryden’s criticism in rela­

Joachim Du Bellay: A Study o f the Relationship be­ tween the Poet and France (1993). Margaret Brady

tion both to the critics he read (e.g., Thom as Rymer, Nicolas Boileau) and to modern critics, theorists, and historians (e.g., R. G. Collingwood, H ans-George Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur). For bibliographic works, see Hugh Macdonald,

Wells has compiled an extensive unannotated bibli­ ography: Du Bellay, a Bibliography (1974). Helger­ son’s bilingual edition, mentioned above, has a ro­ bust bibliography related to the Defense.

Joh n Dryden: A Bibliography o f Early Editions and Drydeniana (1939); John Dryden: T he Critical Her­ itage, edited by Jam es Kinsley and Helen Kinsley (1971); An Annotated Bibliography o f Joh n Dryden: Texts and Studies, 1949-1973, edited by John A. Zamonski (1975 )\John Dryden: A Survey and Bibli­ ography o f Critical Studies, 1895—1974, edited by David J. Latt and Samuel Holt Monk (1976); and Jam es M. Hall, John Dryden: A R eference G uide (1984). For more recent bibliography of primary

W. E. B. Du B ois The C om plete Published W orks o f W. E. B. Du Bois has been edited by H erbert Aptheker (36 vols., 1 9 7 3 -8 6 ). It is supplemented by two other works edited by Aptheker: T h e C orrespon den ce o f W. E. B. Du Bois (3 vols., 1973—78) and Against

Racism : U npublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961 (1985). T h e Du Bois volume in the L i­ brary of America series, edited by N athan Irvin Huggins (1986), includes T h e Suppression o f the

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A frican Slave Trade, T he Souls o f B lack Folk, and Dusk o f Dawn, as well as a number of essays. A range of selections is also available in IV. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis (1995), and T he Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois R eader , edited by Eric J. Sundquist (1996). There are several excellent biographies: M an­ ning Marable, W. E. B. Du Bois, B lack Radical Democrat (1986), a cogently written survey by an author fully familiar with Du Bois’s writings and the major issues in African American social and political history; Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W.

E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (1986), a detailed ac­ count of the final phase of Du Bois’s career; and David L. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, a comprehensive two-volume biography: Biography o f a Race, 1868— 1919 (1993) and The Fight fo r Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (2000). The best study of Du Bois as a writer is Arnold Rampersad’s Art and Im agination o fW . E. B. Du Bois (1976), which explores all of Du Bois’s major books. See also the extensive chapter on Du Bois in Eric J. Sundquist, To W ake the Nations: R ace in the Making o f A m erican Literature (1993); Keith Eldon Byerman, Seizing the Word: History,

Art, and S elf in the W ork o f W. E. B. Du Bois (1994); Shamoon Zamir, Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888—1903 (1995); Adolph Reed Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the C olor Line (1997); and Raymond Wolters, Du Bois and His Ri­ vals (2002), which examines Du Bois’s ideological disputes with Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey. Other helpful resources include two col­ lections: Critical Essays on W. E. B. Du Bois, edited by W illiam L. Andrews (1985), and W. E. B. Du Bois on Race and Culture, edited by Bernard W. Bell, Emily R. Grosholz, and Jam es B. Stewart (1996), which sheds light on Du Bois’s attitudes toward race, gender equality, and Pan-Africanism. For primary sources leading up to T he Souls o f B lack Folk, see T h e Problem o f the C olor L ine at

the Turn o f the Twentieth Century: T he Essential Early Essays, edited by Nahum Dimitri Chandler (2015). Also valuable for context and interpreta­ tion is Stephanie J. Shaw, W. E. B. Du Bois and “T he Souls o f B lack Folk" (2013); she contends that Du Bois appropriates Hegelian idealism in order to include the United States, the nineteenth century, and A frican Am ericans in the historical narrative of H egel’s philosophy of history. Recent studies of Du Bois have situated him in relation to modern and contem porary issues of world history and democracy. See E ric Porter,

T he Problem o f the Future World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the R ace C oncept at M idcentury (2010), which brings forward and reassesses Du Bois’s w ritings of the 1940s and 1950s; K atharine Law rence Balfour, D em ocracy’s Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois (2011), a cogent treatm ent o f Du Bois as a political

th eo rist; Terrence L. Johnson, Tragic Soul-Life:

W. E. B. Du Bois and the Moral Crisis Facing A m erican D em ocracy (2012), which locates Du Bois in the midst of ongoing debates about race, politics, and religion; Kwame Anthony Appiah, Lines

o f Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Em ergence o f Identity (2014), a keen consideration o f Du Bois’s educational experiences at Harvard and at the University of Berlin; and Bill V. M ullen, Un-

A m erican: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Century o f World Revolution (2015), on Du Bois's revolution­ ary vision and com m itm ent to human liberation. For other dim ensions o f Du Bois’s career, see

Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, “T he Crisis," and A m erican History, edited by Amy He­ lene Kirschke and Phillip Luke Sinitiere (2014), exam ining how the essays, colum ns, and visuals in T he Crisis, a magazine published by the NAACP and edited by Du Bois from 1910 to 1934, changed perceptions and even laws in the United States; see also Aldon D. M orris, T he

Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth o f M odern Sociology (2015), a major study of Du Bois’s role in the development of scientific sociol­ ogy and his relationships with Booker T. W ash­ ington, Robert Park, and other members of the Chicago school, and with the preem inent social scientist Max W eber. Key bibliographic sources include Herbert Aptheker, A nnotated B ibliogra­

phy o f the Published Writings o fW . E. B. Du Bois (1973), and Paul G. Partington, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Bibliography o f His Published Writings (1979). For additional bibliography, reference, and con­ text, see W. E. B. Du Bois: An E n cyclopedia, ed­ ited by Gerald Horne and Mary Young (2001), and T he C am bridge C om panion to W. E. B. Du Bois, edited by Shamoon Zamir (2 0 0 8 ), which includes excellent essays on T he Souls o f B lack Folk and on Du Bois’s place in American and European in­ tellectual history.

T e rry E a g le to n Eagleton has been prolific, w riting more than forty critical books, scores of pieces of literary journalism , several plays, and a novel. In this he follows the model of his teach er Raymond W il­ liam s, though he has focused prim arily on liter­ ary criticism and theory rather than cultural and media studies. E agleton’s early books include

S hakespeare and Society: C ritical Studies in S hakespearean Drama (1967), Exiles and E m i­ gres: Studies in M odern Literature (1970), and T he Body as Language: O utline o f a “New Left" Theology (1970). He also edited collections that reflect his involvement in the Catholic Left, in­ cluding Directions: Pointers fo r the Post-Conciliar Church (1968) and, with Brian Wicker, From Cul­

ture to Revolution: The “Slant" Symposium, 1967 (1968). In the 1970s and early 1980s he published three works of Marxist theory: Marxism and Liter­ ary Criticism (1976), a superb short survey of major Marxist critics and debates; Criticism and Ideology:

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A Study in Marxist Literary T heory (1976); and

Walter Benjamin; or, Towards a Revolutionary Crit­ icism (1981). He also published two works of liter­ ary criticism , Myths o f Power: A Marxist Study o f the Brontes (1975; 2d ed., 1988) and The Rape o f Clarissa: Writing, Sexuality, and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson (1982), which is notable for its engagement with feminism. In the m id-1980s Eagleton published the popular overview Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983; 3d ed., 2008) and a short history, The Function o f Crit­

icism: From the “Spectator" to Post-Structuralism (1984), which is perhaps the best place to start reading his work. He also published W illiam Shakespeare (1986); a collection of his essays, Against the Grain: Essays, 1975—1985 (1986); and a fine edited collection assessing the influence of his teacher, Raymond Williams: A Critical Reader (1989). In the 1990s, Eagleton published The Ideology o f the Aesthetic (1990), an engaging survey of aesthetic theory from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and several guides to Marxist theory, including Ideology: An Introduction (1991), the brief Marx (1999), and the anthology Marxist Liter­ ary Theory: A Reader, co-edited with Drew Milne (1996). O f Irish ancestry, he also explored Irish culture in three works, H eathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (1995), Crazy John

and the Bishop and Other Essays on Irish Culture (1998), and Scholars and Rebels in NineteenthCentury Ireland (1999). His creative work includes the novel Saints and Scholars (1987); a script, Witt­ genstein: T he Terry Eagleton Script, the Derek Ja r ­ m an Film (1993); and plays, Saint Oscar and Other Plays (1997). At the century’s end, Eagleton complained about much contemporary theory, in T he Illu­ sions o f Postmodernism (1996), T he Idea o f C ul­ ture (2 0 0 0 ), and After Theory (2003), and collect­ ed his pithy reviews in Figures o f Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, 'Zizek and Others (2003). Through the 2 0 0 0 s he concentrated on tradition­ al literary topics in Sweet V iolence: T he Idea o f the Tragic (2003), T he English Novel: An Intro­ duction (2004), How to R ead a Poem (20 0 7 ), T he Event o f Literature (2012), and How to Read Lit­ erature (2013). He also returned to his early con­ cern with religion, in Holy Terror (2005), The Meaning o f Life (2 0 0 7 ), his substantial introduc­ tion to Jesus Christ: The Gospels (20 0 7 ), Reason,

Faith, and Revolution: R eflection s on the G od D ebate (20 0 9 ), Trouble with Strangers: A Study o f Ethics (20 0 9 ), On Evil (2010), Culture and the Death o f G od (2014), and H ope w ithout Optimism (2015). In addition, he continued to write on Marxism in Why Marx Was Right (2 0 1 1) and on the confused definitions of culture in Culture (2016), and he wryly com mented on the United States in

Across the Pond: An Englishm an’s View o f A m eri­ ca (2013). T he G atekeeper: A M em oir (2001) of­ fers some inform ation on Eagleton’s early biogra­ phy but is otherwise unrevealing; much more

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informative is the substantial series of interviews with M atthew Beaum ont, T h e Task o f the Critic: Terry Eagleton in D ialogue (2009). The Eagleton Reader, edited by Stephen Regan (1998), provides an excellent sampler of Eagleton’s work, as well as a complete bibliography of both his writing and commentary on him up to 1996. A spe­ cial issue of The Year’s Work in Critical and Cidtural Theory 1 (1994) includes nine essays and shorter pieces reflecting on Eagleton’s style and career. Two volumes titled Terry Eagleton, by David Alderson (2 0 0 4 ) and Jam es Sm ith (2 0 0 8 ), provide useful overviews; Smith includes a composite bibliography. See also Ola Sigurdson, Theology and Marxism in Eagleton and 2 izek: A C onspiracy o f H ope (2012), for a study of Eagleton’s view of religion, as well as John E. O ’Brien, C ritical P ractice from Vol­

taire to F ou caidt, Eagleton, and Beyond: C on ­ tested Perspectives (2014), which surveys the span of Eagleton’s work. Beaum ont’s The Task o f the Critic includes a comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Eagleton. T. S. E lio t Among Eliot’s books of criticism, the key texts are The Sacred Wood (1920), Selected Essays (3d ed., 1972), and On Poetry and Poets (1957). Other impor­ tant publications include Homage to John Dryden (1924), in which appear the brilliant essays “John Dryden,” “The Metaphysical Poets,” and “Andrew Marvell.” A good selection is Selected Prose o f T. S. Eliot, edited by Frank Kermode (1975). There are hundreds of reviews, introductions to books, essays, and other critical pieces that have not yet been col­ lected in book form. For further insight into Eliot’s development as a critic, one should also consult the posthumous book The Varieties o f Metaphysical Po­ etry, edited by Ronald Schuchard (1993). Eliot did not want to be made the subject o f a biography, and much source m aterial is either sealed or is unavailable for citation. Despite these lim itations, Peter Ackroyd’s T. S. Eliot (1984) is a valuable, crisply written book. Also useful are Lyndall Gordon, E liot’s Early Years (1977) and E l­ io t’s New Life (1988); she presents E lio t’s life as a spiritual journey and is perceptive on the poetry, but pays little attention to the criticism . Tony Sharpe, T. S. Eliot: A Literary Life (1991), is also recommended. Recent scholarship on Eliot in­ cludes important primary sources: T h e Letters o f T. S. Eliot, edited by Valerie Eliot, Hugh Haughton, and John Haffenden (7 vols. to date, 2 0 1 1 -); T he C om plete Prose o f T. S. Eliot: T he C ritical Edition, general editor Ronald Schuchard (6 vols. to date, 2 0 1 4 —), a tremendous online resource; and The Poems ofT . S. Eliot, edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim M cCue (2 vols., 2015). Robert Crawford’s Young Eliot: From St. Louis to “The Waste Land" (2015) is the first volume of a new bi­ ography, comprehensive and lucidly written. An excellent complement to it is T. S. Eliot in Context, edited by Jason Harding (2011), a wide-ranging

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survey of E lio t’s life and tim es, which includes helpful essays on his literary journalism and on his social, political, and cultural writings. Steven M atthews, T. S. Eliot and Early M odern Litera­ ture (2013), is helpful on the relationship between E lio t’s early poetry and his literary criticism . T he New C am bridge C om pan ion to T. S. Eliot, edited by Jason Harding (2017), offers separate chapters on Eliot as a literary critic and as a social critic, as well as on the roles of gender and sexuality in his work. A good place to begin study of Eliot is T. S. Eliot: Critical Assessments, edited by Graham Clarke (4 vols., 1990). The fourth volume includes commen­ taries on Eliot’s critical writings. A number of older studies, which include discussion of E lio t’s criti­ cism , rem ain useful: F. O. M atthiessen, T he

Achievement ofT . S. Eliot: An Essay on the Nature o f Poetry (1935; 3d ed., 1958); Hugh Kenner, The Invis­ ible Poet: T. S. Eliot (1959); Northrop Frye, T. S. Eliot (1967); and Bernard Bergonzi, T. S. Eliot (1972). On Eliot and the modernist movement in litera­ ture, see John D. M argolis, T. S. E liot’s In tellec­ tual D evelopm ent, 1922—1939 (1972); Piers Gray, T. S. E liot’s Intellectual and Poetic D evelopm ent, 1909-1922 (1982); Sanford Schw artz, T he Matrix

o f Modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Early TwentiethCentury Thought (1985); Louis M enand, Discov­ ering Modernism: T. S. Eliot and His Context (1987; 2d ed., 2 0 0 7 ); T. S. Eliot: T he M odernist in History, edited by Ronald Bush (1991), which in­ cludes a good essay by M ichael North on Eliot and Gyorgy Lukacs; G ail M cD onald, Learning to

Be M odern: Pound, Eliot, and the A m erican Uni­ versity (1993); and Jewel Spears Brooker, Mastery and E scape: T. S. Eliot and the D ialectic o f M od­ ernism (1994). Though somewhat dated in ap­ proach, C. K. Stead ’s New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot (rev. ed., 1987) and Pound, Yeats, Eliot, and the M odernist M ovem ent (1986) are informative and acute in judgm ent. O f the many collections o f es­ says on Eliot, the best is the special issue of the Southern R eview 21.4 (autumn 1985). The studies of Eliot’s criticism are disappoint­ ing, but some good work can be found in T he L it­ erary Criticism o f T. S. Eliot: New Essays, edited by David Newton-Molina (1977). In T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy o f C riticism (1988), Richard Shusterman describes Eliot as a postmodernist and re­ lates his work to that of Theodor Adorno, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, and other philosophers and theorists. The social, cultural, and economic contexts for Eliot’s poetry and criticism and the modernist movement are described in Lawrence Rainey, Institutions o f M odernism : Literary Elites and Public Culture (1998). T. S. Eliot and the C on­ cept o f Tradition, edited by Giovanni Cianci and Jason Harding (2007), includes a number of essays on “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” O ther resources include T h e C am bridge C om ­ pan ion to T. S. Eliot, edited by A. D. Moody (1994); C aroline Behr, T. S. Eliot: A C hronology

o f His Life and Works (1983); and T. S. Eliot: The Critical Heritage, edited by M ichael Grant (1982). For bibliography, see Donald Gallup, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography (rev. ed., 1969); Mildred M artin, A Half-Century o f Eliot Criticism: An Annotated B ib­ liography o f Books and Articles in English, 19161965 (1972); and Beatrice Ricks, T. S. Eliot: A B ib­ liography o f Secondary Works (1980). For further reading, consult the bibliography in Harding’s T. S. Eliot in Context (see above).

R alp h W aldo Em erson The standard editions are T he Collected Works o f Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Robert Spiller et al. (10 vols., 1971-2013); The Early Lectures, edited by Stephen W hicher, Robert Spiller, and W allace E. Williams (3 vols., 1959-72); Journals and Miscel­ laneous Notebooks, edited by William H. Gilman et al. (16 vols., 1 9 6 0 -8 4 ); and Letters, edited by Ralph L. Rusk (6 vols., 1939). For excellent single-volume collections (which include annotations), consult Emerson’s Literary Criticism, edited by Eric W. Carlson (1979), and Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Richard Poirier, in the Oxford Authors series (1990). Also recommended are The Annotated Em ­ erson, edited by David M ikics (2012), which in­ cludes both prose and poetry, and Ralph Waldo Emerson: T he Major Prose, edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson (2015), with selections from sermons, lectures, addresses, and essays. For more wide-ranging selections, see the Emerson vol­ umes in the Library of America series, especially Essays and Lectures (1983). For selections from the journals, refer to Emerson in His Journals, edited by Joel Porte (1982). Selected Journals, edited by Lawrence Rosenwald (2 vols., 2010), offers a fuller sampling. Ralph L. Rusk’s Life o f R alph Waldo Em erson (1949) rem ains a basic starting point. Biographies have also been w ritten by Gay W ilson Allen, W aldo Em erson: A Biography (1981), and John M cAleer, R alph W aldo Em erson: Days o f E n­ cou n ter (1984). Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: T h e Mind on Fire (1995), explores Emerson’s ca ­ reer as an Am erican scholar, reader, and writer. Another keen study that com bines biography and literary analysis, and that explores Em erson’s work as a poet, essayist, literary critic and theo­ rist, religious thinker, and philosopher, is Law­ rence Buell, Em erson (2003). For an account of Emerson’s friends and contemporaries, see Carlos Baker, Em erson am ong the E ccentrics: A Group Portrait (1996). For incisive commentaries on Em­ erson’s style and strategies as a writer, turn to War­ ner Berthoff, introduction to his edition of Nature (1968); Alfred Kazin, An A m erican Procession (1984); Richard Poirier, T he R enew al o f L itera­ ture: Em ersonian R eflection s (1984); and Poirier, Poetry and Pragmatism (1992). Many books have been written on Emerson; particularly worthy of attention are Barbara L. Packer, E m erson’s Fall: A New Interpretation o f

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the M ajor Essays (1982), an analysis o f Emerson’s uses of language; Julie Ellison, E m erson ’s R om an ­ tic Style (1984); Irving Howe, T he A m erican Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age o f E m er­ son (1986), a suggestive book that relates Em er­ son to his contem poraries; David Van Leer, Em ­ erson ’s Epistemology: T h e Argument o f the Essays (1986), a cogent investigation of Em erson’s th eo ­ ry o f knowledge; Richard A. Grusin, Transcen-

dentalist H erm eneutics: Institutional Authority and the Higher Criticism o f the B ible (1991), which is helpful on religious contexts; Merton M. Sealts, Em erson on the S ch olar (1992); George J. Stack, N ietzsche and Em erson: An Elective A ffin ­ ity (1992), an argument for the German philoso­ pher’s deep indebtedness to Em erson’s ideas; C hristina Zwarg, Fem inist Conversations: Fuller, Em erson, and the Play o f Reading (1995); Stanley Cavell, P hilosophical Passages: W ittgenstein, E m ­ erson, Austin, D errida (1995), a rewarding medi­ tation on Emerson’s significance for twentiethcentury philosophy; and Pamela Schirm eister,

Less Legible Meanings: B etw een Poetry and Phi­ losophy in the Work o f Em erson (1999), which scrutinizes Em erson’s conception of the act of reading and his literary and cultural project for American letters. Recent studies include Jam es M. A lbrecht, R econstructing Individual­

ism: A Pragmatic Tradition fro m Em erson to Elli­ son (2012), on selfhood and social reform in Em er­ son, W illiam Jam es, Joh n Dewey, and Ralph Ellison; David G reenham , E m erson’s Transatlan­ tic Romanticism (2012), on Emerson’s creative debts to British and European writers, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thom as Carlyle; and Samantha C. Harvey, Transatlantic Transcendental­ ism: Coleridge, Emerson, and Nature (2013), which exam ines Coleridge’s literary, philosophical, and theological influences on Emerson. For a richly detailed, vivid study o f the period, see David Reynolds, B en eath the A m erican R enaissance:

T he Subversive Im agination in the Age o f E m er­ son and M elville (1988; rpt. with new foreword, 2011). Also valuable are Em erson and Thoreau: T he Contem porary R eview s, edited by Joel Myerson (1992), and C ritical Essays on R alph W aldo Em erson, edited by Robert E. Burkholder and Joel Myerson (1983). Joel Myerson has prepared a bibliography of Em­ erson’s writings, Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Descrip­ tive Bibliography (1982), and, with Robert E. Burk­ holder, two bibliographies of secondary sources: A

Secondary Bibliography o f Ralph Waldo Emerson (1985) and Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Annotated Bibliography o f Criticism, 1980—1991 (1994). Albert J. Von Frank, An Em erson C hronology (1994), is an indispensable reference. Also helpful are T iffa­ ny K. Wayne, Critical Com panion to Ralph Waldo

Emerson: A Literary R eference to His Life and Work (2010), and Ralph W aldo Em erson in C ontext, edited by W esley T. M ott (2014), which includes a detailed chronology and a wide range of essays on

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Emerson’s travels, intellectual influences, interests in many fields, and other topics.

F r a n tz F a n o n Fanon’s major works are B lack Skin, White Masks (1952; trans. 1967), A Dying Colonialism (1959; trans. 1965), T he W retched o f the Earth (1961; trans. 1963), and Toward the African Revolution (1964; trans. 1976). For a good, brief introduction to Fanon’s life and ideas, see David Caute’s Frantz Fanon (1970). For more detailed biographies, see Peter Geismar’s Fanon (1971) and David Macey’s Frantz Fanon: A Life (2000). Fanon’s life is also the subject of the documentary film Frantz Fanon: B lack Skin, White Mask (1995), directed by Isaac Julien. For studies that combine biographical detail with critical analysis of Fanon’s thought, see Rich­ ard C. Onwuanibe, A Critique o f Revolutionary Hu­ manism: Frantz Fanon (1983); Hussein Abadilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology o f Op­ pression (1985); Frantz Fanon’s “B lack Skin, Whites Masks": New Interdisciplinary Essays, edited by Max Silverman (2005); and Lewis R. Gordon’s W hat

Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought (2015). Other useful critical studies include Irene Gendzier, Frantz Fanon: A Critical Study (1973); Renate Zahar, Frantz Fanon: Colonialism and Alienation (1969; trans. 1974); Lewis Gordon, Frantz Fanon and the Crisis o f European Man (1995); and Ato Sekyi-Otu, Fanon’s Dialectic o f Experience (1996). For a feminist engagement with Fanon’s work, see “Dark Continents: Epistemologies o f Racial and Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and the C ine­ ma,” a chapter in Mary Ann Doane’s Femmes Fa­ tales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (1991) that critiques Fanon’s psychoanalytic reading of miscegenation and the repressed desire for interra­ cial sex as rape, and, more sympathetically, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting’s Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (1998) and Ashley Bohrer’s “Fanon and Feminism: The Discourse of Colonization in Italian Feminism,” Interventions: International Journal o f Postcolonial Studies 17 (2015). Several essay collections o f the 1990s marked a resurgence of interest in Fanon’s thought: see Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives, edited by Anthony Alessandrini (1999); Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue, edited by Nigel Gibson (1999); and Fanon: A Critical Reader, edited by Lewis Gordon, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Renee W hite (1996). The last of these also includes a particularly extensive bibliography; see also the primary and secondary bibliographies in Nigel Gibson’s Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (2003) and Silver­ man’s Frantz Fanon’s “B lack Skin, Whites Masks” (cited above).

S t a n le y E . F is h Grounded in the study o f seventeenth-century lit­ erature, Fish’s early books are Jo h n Skelton’s Poetry (1965), Surprised by Sin: T he R eader in “Paradise

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Lost’’ (1967; 2d ed., 1999), Self-Consuming Arti­ facts: The E xperience o f Seventeenth-Century Lit­ erature (1972), and T he Living Temple: George Her­ bert and Catechizing (1978). Is There a Text in This Class? T he Authority o f Interpretive Communities (1980) expands his early consideration of the read­ er to more general discussions of interpretation and theory. Thereafter Fish broadened his field of inquiry to encompass law, pragmatism, and profes­ sionalism, as well as literature and literary theory, in three collections of essays: Doing What Comes

Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice o f Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989), T here’s No Such Thing as Free Speech . . . and It's a Good Thing, Too (1994), and T he Trouble with Principle (1999). Fish’s Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995) and subse­ quent Save the World on Your Own Time (2008) chastise contemporary critics, holding that politics are not a part of literary criticism . How Milton Works (2001) culm inates Fish’s thinking on the writer, and Versions o f Antihumanism: Milton and Others (2012) collects essays from several decades. Fish has increasingly reached out beyond an aca­ demic audience in How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One (2011), T he Fugitive in Flight:

Faith, Liberalism, and Law in a Classic TV Show (2011), Versions o f A cadem ic Freedom: From Profes­ sionalism to Revolution (2014), and Think Again: Contrarian R eflections on Life, Culture, Politics, Religion, Law, and Education (2015), a collection drawn from his columns in the New York Times (1 9 9 5-2013). T he Stanley Fish Reader, edited by H. Aram Veeser (1999), offers a diverse selection of his work. Gary A. Olson’s Stanley Fish, America's Enfant Terrible: T he Authorized Biography (2016) is merely a celebrity profile, lacking notes or bibliog­ raphy. For an account of some aspects of his career, see “Stanley Agonistes: An Interview with Stanley Fish,” conducted by Jeffrey J. W illiam s, in Critics at Work: Interviews 1993—2003 (ed. W il­ liams, 2004). The first wave of commentary on Fish deals with reader-response theory. A famous debate between Fish and W olfgang Iser appeared in D iacritics 11 (1981). T h e best discussion of F ish ’s concept of interpretive com m unities is Steven M ailloux’s

Interpretive Competitions: T he R eader in the Study o f American Fiction (1982). A leftist assessment of Fish is M ary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strate­ gies/Strategic Interpretation: On Anglo-American Reader Response C riticism ,” B oundary 2 2.11 (1982/83). Important early critiques also include Gerald G raff’s “Interpretation on TIon: A Re­ sponse to Stanley Fish,” New Literary History 17 (1985), and a chapter in Ellen Rooney’s Seductive

Reasoning: Pluralism as the Problematic o f Contem ­ porary Literary Theory (1989). The later commentary on Fish primarily deals with his antifoundationalism. Christopher Norris’s

What s Wrong with Postmodernism: Critical Theory and the Ends o f Philosophy (1990) includes a repre­

sentative critique of the circularity of Fish’s argu­ ment that theory has “no consequences.” In “The Estate Agent,” London Review o f Books, March 2, 2 0 0 0 , the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton calls Fish “a brash, noisy entrepreneur o f the in tellect” and criticizes the apolitical outcome of Fish’s “no con­ sequences” argument. Gary A. Olson’s Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Work o f Rhetoric (2002) is a good account of Fish’s nonliterary work, and concludes with two interviews and a chronological bibliography of Fish’s writing. See also Postmodern

Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise, edited by Olson and Lynn Worsham (2004), which collects fifteen essays on F ish ’s work, including reassessments by G raff and Maillouxand Eagleton’s “Estate Agent.” Stanley Fish on Philosophy, Politics, and Law: How Fish Works (2014), by Michael Rob­ ertson, studies Fish’s influence in legal theory.

M ic h e l F o u c a u lt Foucault’s books published during his lifetim e in­ clude Madness and Civilization (1961; trans. 1965); T he Birth o f the C linic (1963; trans. 1973);

Death and the Labyrinth: T he World o f Raymond Roussel (1963; trans. 1986); T he Order o f Things (1966; trans. 1970); T he Archaeology o f Knowl­ edge (1969; trans. 1972); This Is Not a Pipe (1973; trans. 1981); Discipline and Punish: T he Birth o f the Prison (1975; trans. 1977); and the three vol­ umes of T he History o f Sexuality: An Introduction (1976; trans. 1978), T he Use o f Pleasure (1984; trans. 1985), and T he Care o f the S elf (1984; trans. 1986). Essays and interviews are collected in Language, Counter-M emory, and Practice: S e­ lected Essays and Interviews, edited by Daniel Bouchard (1977); Power/Knowledge, edited by Colin Gordon (1980); Technologies o f the Self: A Sem inar with M ichel Foucault, edited by Luther H. M artin, Huck Gutm an, and Patrick H. Hutton (1988); Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984, edited by Law­ rence Kritzman (1988); Foucault Live: Interviews, 1966-1984, edited by Sylvere Lotringer (1989; 2d ed., 1996); The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gor­ don, and Peter M iller (1991); T he Politics o f Truth, edited by Sylvere Lotringer (1997); a three-volume collection of essays and interviews, The Essential Works o f M ichel Foucault, 1954—1984, edited by Paul Rabinow (1 9 9 7 -2 0 0 0 ); Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology (2 0 0 8 ; trans. 2 0 08); Speech Begins after Death (2011; trans. 2013); and Language, Madness, and Desire: On Literature (2013; trans. 2015). Foucault’s annual course lectures at the College de France have been translated and pub­ lished in English: Abnormal, 1974-1975 (20 03), “Society Must Be Defended," 1975—1976 (2003),

T he H erm eneutics o f the Subject, 1981-1982 (2005), Security, Territory, Population, 1977—1978 (2007), Psychiatric Power, 1973-1974 (2008), The Birth o f Biopolitics, 1978-1979 (2008), T he Gov­ ernment o f S elf and Others, 1982-1983 (2011), The

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Courage o f Truth, 1983-1984 (2011), Lectures on the Will to Know, 1970-1971 (2013), On the Gov­ ernment o f the Living, 1979-1980 (2014), and On the Punitive Society, 1972—1973 (2015). Foucault also edited three books: I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother . . . : A Case o f Parricide in the 19th Century (1973; trans. 1975), Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently D iscolored Memoirs o f a NineteenthCentury French Hermaphrodite (1978; trans. 1980), and Disorderly Families: Infamous Letters from the Bastille Archive (1982; trans. 2017). Didier Eribon’s sober and reliable biography M ichel Foucault (1989, trans. 1991; 2d French ed., 2011) can be supplemented with Stuart Elden’s more de­ tailed intellectual biographies Foucault's Last De­ cade (2016) and Foucault: The Birth o f Power (2017). The critical com m entary on Foucault is exten­ sive. Lisa Downing, C am bridge Introduction to Foucault (20 0 8 ); M ichel Foucault: Key C oncepts, edited by Dianna Taylor (2011); A C om pan ion to Foucault, edited by Christopher Falzon, Timothy O ’Leary, and Jan a Sawicki (2013); C am bridge Foucault L exicon , edited by Leonard Lawler and John Nale (2014); and T h e Routledge G u id ebook to Fou cau lt’s the History o f Sexuality, edited by Chloe Taylor (2017) are all reliable places to start. David M. H alperin’s Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (1995) exam ines Foucault’s gay activism and the impact of his work on queer th e­ ory. Beatrice Flan’s Fou cau lt’s C ritical Project:

B etw een the T ranscendental and the H istorical (1998; trans. 2 0 0 2 ) addresses Foucault’s method­ ology by tracing his debts to and differences from Kant, N ietzsche, and Heidegger. Jeffrey T. Nealon’s Foucault beyond Foucault: Power and Its Intensifications since 1984 (20 0 8 ) offers a revi­ sionist reading o f Foucault’s work on power. Four highly influential works that engage Foucault’s College de France lectures are Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995; trans. 1998), Roberto Esposito’s Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy (2 0 0 4 ; trans. 20 0 8 ), Nikolas Rose’s The Politics o f Life Itself: B iom edicine, Pow­

er and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (2007), and Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (2015). A good way to start studying Foucault is to read through the many collections of essays on his work, which include Foucault Now: Current Perspectives in Foucault Studies, edited by Jam es D. Faubion (2014); The Government o f Life: Foucault, B iopoli­ tics, and Neoliberalism, edited by Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter (2014); Biopow er: Foucault and Beyond, edited by Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar (2016); and Foucault and Neoliberalism , ed­ ited by Daniel Zamora and M ichael C. Behrent (2016). Taylor’s Key Concepts volume has a superb bibliography of Foucault’s work, while both it and Falzon’s Com panion to Foucault have good biblio­ graphies of secondary work.

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Sigm u nd F reu d The English translation o f Freu d ’s collected works, carried out under the direction of Jam es Strach ey for Leonard and V irginia W o o lf’s Hogarth P ress, has becom e in many ways more authoritative than any collected works in German. This Standard Edition o f the C om plete Psycho­ logical Works o f Sigm und Freud (24 vols., 1953— 74) is thus the edition most often cited. A handy collection of Freud’s literary and artistic essays was edited by Neil Hertz in 1997 under the title Writings on Art and Literature. For more general purposes, see Peter Gay’s Freud R ead er (1989) and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s Freud on W omen (1990). Many volumes of Freud’s copious corre­ spondence (he never left a letter unanswered) have also been published. A monumental threevolume biography, The Life and Work o f Sigmund Freud, was published by Ernest Jones, who knew Freud well (1 9 5 3 -5 7 ; abridged into one volume, 1961). Freud: A Life fo r Our Tim e (1988) by Peter Gay is excellent; his invaluable bibliographical es­ says appended to each chapter delineate all the ma­ jor debates. In Freud: Darkness in the Midst o f Vi­ sion (2000), the psychoanalyst Louis Breger engages with Freud and his work in unexpected and new ways. For an intriguing study of Freud’s final years in London and how he was affected by the rise of totalitarian figures like Hitler, see Mark Edm undson’s T he Death o f Sigmund Freud: The Legacy o f His Last Days (2004). Philip R ie ff’s Freud: T he M ind o f the Moralist (1959) and Peter G ay’s Reading Freud (1990) are good introductions, the latter more literary. See also Paul R icoeu r’s Freud and Philosophy: An Es­ say on Interpretation (1970) and Steven M arcus’s

Freud and the Culture o f Psychoanalysis: Studies in the Transition fro m Victorian Humanism to M odernity (1984). For a collection o f essays c riti­ cal of Freud, see U nauthorized Freud: Doubters C onfront a Legend, edited by Frederick C. Crews (1998). On the centrality of Freud to contemporary critical theory, see the works of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. Related developments can be found in T h e Literary Freud: M echanism s o f Defense and the Poetic W ill, edited by Joseph H. Smith (1980); Malcolm Bowie, Psychoanalysis and the Future o f T heory (1993), speculates about Freud’s continuing impact on discussions of art; while Freud and F orbidden K now ledge, edited by Peter L. Rudnytsky and Ellen Handler Spitz (1994), investigates the literary and religious sources of Freud’s concepts. See also Graham Frankland’s F reu d’s Literary Culture (2000). For a good general approach to early feminist responses to Freud, see Ju liet M itch ell’s Psycho­ analysis and Fem inism (1974). A related work by Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester, Freu d’s Women (1992), analyzes both the historical and the theoretical importance of femininity and of the many women who surrounded Freud as analysts

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and patients. Luce Irigaray, in Speculum o f the O ther W oman (1974; trans. 1985), and Sarah Kofman, in T he Enigm a o f W oman (1980; trans. 1985), revisit Freud’s writings on fem ininity from a French poststructuralist perspective. For a good overview of the intersection of Freud, feminism, and literary studies, see In D ora’s Case: Freud — Hysteria — Fem inism , edited by Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane (2d ed., 1990). A fasci­ nating com pilation by Susan Stanford Friedman,

Analyzing Freud: Letters o f H.D., Bryher, and T h eir C ircle (20 0 2 ), provides insight into Freud’s mind as well as the minds of the modernist wom­ an writer H.D. and her correspondents. In Scenes

o f Projection: Recasting the E nlightenm ent Sub­ ject (2015), Jill H. Casid engages Freudian psycho­ analysis and fem inist and queer theories to ex­ plore modernity, the modern subject, colonialism , and the history of projection. On Freud’s Interpretation o f Dreams, see Law­ rence M. Porter, T he Interpretation o f Dreams: Freud’s Theories Revisited (1987); Alexander Welsh, Freud’s Wishful Dream Book (1994); Harvie Ferguson, The Lure o f Dreams: Sigmund Freud and the Construction o f Modernity (1996); and the col­ lection of interdisciplinary essays edited by Laura Marcus, Sigmund Freud’s “T he Interpretation o f Dreams": New Interdisciplinary Essays (1999). Mary Bergstein’s Mirrors o f Memory: Freud, Photography, and the History o f Art (2010) is a sweeping study of how Freud’s photograph-filled library affected the psychoanalyst’s unconscious, his interpretation of dreams, and the field itself. Two essays on Freud’s “U ncanny” deserve spe­ cial note: Helene Cixous, “Fiction and Its Phan­ tom s,” New Literary History 7 (1976), and “Freud and the Sandm an” by Neil Hertz, published in his study of the sublim e, T he End o f the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublim e (1985). Con­ temporary literary studies have been greatly af­ fected by Freud ’s notion o f the uncanny, from those focusing on the R enaissance (M arjorie Garber, S h akesp eare’s Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality, 1984) to the E nlighten­ m ent (Terry C astle, T he F em ale T herm om eter:

Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention o f the Uncanny, 1995) to the posthum an G othic (Ju­ dith H alberstam , Skin Shows: G othic Horror and the Technology o f Monsters, 1995). Ju lia Kristeva, in Strangers to Ourselves (1988; trans. 1991), ap­ plies the notion to political science, while Antho­ ny Vidler, in T he A rchitectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (1994), explores it in archi­ tecture. E. L. M cC allu m ’s O bject Lessons: How to Do Things w ith Fetishism (1999) offers a full-scale analysis of Freud’s notion. Two books attempt to combine the Freudian and the M arxian versions of fetishism : Slavoj Zizek’s T h e S u blim e O bject o f Ideology (1989) and Rachel Bowlby’s Shopping w ith Freud (1993). A listair Rolls’s Paris and the Fetish: Prim al C rim e Scenes (2014) uses Freud to

explore fetishism in the French crim e scenes, the novel, and poetics of Charles Baudelaire. Much research deals with Freud’s Jew ishness: M arthe R obert’s From Oedipus to Moses: Freud's Jew ish Identity (1974; trans. 1976) and Susan Handelm an’s Slayers o f Moses: T h e E m ergence o f

R abbinic Interpretation in M odern Literary T h e­ ory (1982) give two early versions of this analysis, later taken in other directions by Sander Gilm an in both Freud, R ace, and G en der (1993) and T he

C ase o f Sigm und Freud: M edicine and Identity at the Fin de S iecle (1993). Jay G eller’s On F reu d’s Jew ish Body: Mitigating C ircum cisions (20 0 7 ) and Adam Phillips’s Becom ing Freud: T h e M aking o f a Psychoanalyst (2014) continue this trend. Diana Fuss’s Id en tification Papers (1995) reads Freud through the lenses o f queer and postcolonial theory. Fuss also has w ritten a superior com ­ parative study of Freud’s interior life in T h e Sense

o f an Interior: Four Writers and the Rooms That S haped T hem (2 0 0 4 ). Stefan Bird-Pollan’s Hegel, Freud, Fanon: T h e D ialectic o f E m an cipation (2015) brings Freudian theories in conversation with Hegelian and Fanonian dialectics of recog­ nition and liberation.

T h e C am bridge C om pan ion to Freud, edited by Jerom e Neu (1991), is a useful resource. Among the bibliographies available in English, by far the best for the period up to 1988 is the bibliographical survey in Peter Gay’s biography. An excellent syn­ thesis of subsequent bibliographic materials and resources is provided by Breger’s biography cited above, Freud. Breger’s follow-up to Freud, A Dream o f Undying Fam e: How Freud Betrayed His M en­ tor and Invented Psychoanalysis (2009), provides an updated bibliography on Freud and the history o f psychoanalysis.

N o r th ro p F ry e Frye’s major books include Fearful Symmetry (1947), Anatomy o f Criticism (1957), T. S. Eliot (1963), The Return o f Eden: Five Essays on Milton’s Epics (1965), and A Study o f English Romanticism (1968). He also wrote a number of books on Shake­ speare, including Fools o f Time: Studies in S hake­ spearean Tragedy (1967) and Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986). Among his collections of essays on diverse topics are Fables o f Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology (1963), The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society (1970), and Spiritus

Mundi: Essays on Literature, Myth, and Society (1976). See also Reading the World: Selected Writ­ ings, 1935-1976, edited by Robert D. Denham (1990). In addition, Frye has been a significant force in turning the attention of literary scholars to the narratives and structural patterns of the Bible; his books on this subject include The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982) and Words with

Power: Being a Second Study o f the Bible and Litera­ ture (1990). The University of Toronto Press has published the Collected Works of Northrop Frye in thirty vol­

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umes (19 9 6 -2 0 1 2 ), under the general editorship of Alvin A. Lee; volume 30 is an index to the collec­ tion. See also Northrop Frye’s Uncollected Prose, edited by Robert D. Denham (2015). Frye gave many interviews about his life, work, and career; see, for example, the collection Northrop Frye in Conversation, edited by David Cayley (1996). Also valuable is John Ayre’s Northrop Frye: A Biography (1989). For further biographical contexts, see Re­

constructs in his considerations o f literature, poli­ tics, and society; and Educating the Imagination: Northrop Frye Past, Present, and Future, edited by Alan Bewell, Neil ten Kortenaar, and Germaine Warkentin (2015), which includes essays on Frye’s symbolism; utopianism; similarities to and differ­ ences from Fredric Jameson, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida; and other topics. See also Robert D. Denham, Northrop Frye: An

membering Northrop Frye: Recollections by His Stu­ dents and Others in the 1940s and 1950s, edited by

Annotated Bibliography o f Primary and Secondary Sources (1987), and the essays and bibliographies in the Northrop Frye Newsletter. T he Northrop Frye

Robert D. Denham (2010); and Robert D. Denham,

Northrop Frye and Others: Twelve Writers W ho Helped Shape His Thinking (2015), on the impact of Aristotle, Longinus, and other writers, philoso­ phers, and theologians on Frye’s work. Another good resource is The Northrop Frye Quote Book, compiled by John Robert Colombo (2014). Good brief overviews include Robert D. Den­ ham, Northrop Frye and Critical Method (1974); David Cook, Northrop Frye: A Vision o f the New World (1986); Ian Balfour, Northrop Frye (1988); and Joseph Adamson, Northrop Frye: A Visionary Life (1993). The most comprehensive studies are A. C. Hamilton, Northrop Frye: An Anatomy o f His Criticism (1990), and Jonathan Locke Hart, Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination (1994). There are a number of helpful collections: Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism, edited by Mur­ ray Krieger (1966), which includes essays by Krieger, Angus Fletcher, William K. W imsatt Jr., and Geoffrey H. Hartman, comments by Frye, and a checklist of his writings; Centre and Labyrinth: Es­ says in H onour o f Northrop Frye, edited by E lea­ nor Cook et al. (1983); N orthrop Frye and Eighteenth-Century Studies, edited by Howard D. Weinbrot— a special issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies 24 (winter 1990—91); Visionary Poetics: Es­ says on Northrop Frye’s Criticism, edited by Robert D. Denham and Thomas W illard (1991); The Lega­ cy o f Northrop Frye, edited by Alvin A. Lee and Robert D. Denham (1994), which is especially use­ ful in describing Frye’s contributions to Canadian culture and his work on Romanticism, modernism, and religion; and Caterina Nella Cotrupi, Northrop Frye and the Poetics o f Process (2000). Another ex­ cellent collection is Rereading Frye, edited by David Boyd and Imre Salusinsky (1999). In The Twentieth-

Centre was established in 1988 at the University of Toronto. Also helpful is the bibliography in Bewell, ten Kortenaar, and Warkentin’s Educating the Imagination (see above).

H en ry L o u is G a te s J r . Gates first had an impact on literary studies through his editorial work: he rediscovered the earliest novel by an African American, Harriet E. W ilson’s Our Nig: Or, Sketches fro m the Life o f a

Free Black, in a Two Story W hite House, North (1983), which had been privately printed in 1859. He also edited three important anthologies of con­ temporary criticism : B lack Literature and Literary Theory (1984), “R ace,” Writing, and Difference (1986), and Reading B lack, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology (1990). G ates’s first two books of his own, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the “R acial” S elf (1987), a collection o f essays, and

T he Signifying Monkey: A Theory o f AfricanAmerican Literary Criticism (1988), which won the

Body o f Vision: Northrop Frye and the Poetics o f Mind (2014), which connects Frye’s studies of the

1989 American Book Award, innovatively combine poststructuralist literary theory and indigenous African literary sources. His next book, Loose C an­ ons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992), which in­ cludes “Talking Black,” collects G ates’s essays from the late 1980s through the early 1990s on the canon, race, and criticism . Though focused on scholarly debates, it shows Gates’s move from poststructural theory toward broader cultural issues, and from a dense, academic style toward a more lively one, accessible to a wider public. Through the 1990s Gates shifted to address mainstream, popular audiences. His Colored Peo­ ple: A M emoir (1994) is an interesting account of his childhood in a small town in West Virginia. The Future o f the Race (1996) is a dialogue be­ tween Gates and the philosopher Cornel West on the social possibilities for African Americans. Sub­ sequently, Gates published a series of books com ­ posed o f vignettes of notable A frican Americans, including Thirteen Ways o f Looking at a Black Man (1997); T he African-American Century: How B lack Americans Have Shaped Our Country, with Cornel West (2 0 0 0 ); and the brief and fascinating T he Tri­

imagination to cognitive poetics and cultural my­ thology; Brian Russell Graham, The Necessary

als o f Phillis W heatley: America's First B lack Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers

Unity o f Opposites: The D ialectical Thinking o f Northrop Frye (2011), on Frye’s dialectical ap­

(2003). In addition, he has looked at the wide legacy of the A frican diaspora in Tradition and

proach to thought and effort to transcend binary

the B lack A tlantic: C ritical T heory in the A frican

Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye (2007), William Calin examines Frye, Leo Spitzer, Erich Auerbach, C. S. Lewis, and others in the con­ texts of canon formation, humanism, and modern­ ism. Recent scholarship includes Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence, edit­ ed by Branko Gorjup (2009); Michael Sinding,

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Diaspora (2010), B lack in Latin A m erica (2011), and Life upon T hese Shores: Looking at African A m erican History, 1513—2008 (2011). T h e Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader, edited by Abby W olf (2012), collects primarily shorter essays, several reflecting on his family and career, and also in­ cludes five interviews. A number o f his projects since the late 1990s derive from television specials; in 1999 he wrote and narrated the six-part series Wonders o f the Af­ rican World, which was published as a book of the same title (1999). Among other projects, he has explored the often surprising genealogies of Afri­ can Americans, resulting in Finding Oprah’s Roots: Finding Your Own (2007), F aces o f A m erica: How 12 Extraordinary P eople D iscovered T h eir Pasts (2010), and Finding Your Roots: T he O fficial C om panion to the PBS Series (2014). He also wrote, with Donald Yacovone, T h e A frican Amer­ icans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), the com pan­ ion to his six-part P B S documentary. One of G ates’s major goals is to increase the in­ stitutional presence of A frican American writers; thus he and Nellie Y. McKay were general editors o f The Norton Anthology o f African Am erican Lit­ erature (1997; 3d ed., 2014). He is the editor of the Schomburg Library o f N ineteenth-Century Black Women W riters, the Amistad C ritical Studies in A frican American Literature (with K. Anthony Appiah), and the Black Periodical Literature Proj­ ect, and he has edited or co-edited more than sixty volumes of A frican American writing and criti­ cism on A frican American literature and culture. O ne of his most important editorial achievements has been producing, with Kwame Anthony Appi­ ah, Encarta A fricana (2 0 0 0 )— an encyclopedia in electronic form at, on the model of the Encyclo­ paedia Britannica, o f A frican Am erican experi­ en ce. It was published as A frican a (1999) and subsequently expanded to the five-volume Afri­

cana: T he Encyclopedia o f the African and AfricanA m erican E x p erien ce (2d ed., 2 0 0 5 ). He also co-edited, with Evelyn Brooks-H igginbotham , the eight-volume T h e A frican A m erican National Biography (2 0 0 8 ), and, with David Bindman, the five-volume T he Image o f the B lack in Western Art (20 1 0 -1 4 ). Meg G reene’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: A Biogra­ phy (2012) provides a sketch of his life and career. In addition, G ates has also been the subject of two biographies for young adults. Joyce A. Joyce’s “‘W ho the Cap F it’: Uncon­ sciousness and U nconscionableness in the C riti­ cism of Houston A. Baker, Jr. and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,” New Literary History 18 (1987), charg­ es Gates with elitism ; it drew a sharp answer from Gates, distinguishing the different voices he uses in academic and public forums. In “Henry Louis G ates, Jr., and A frican Am erican Literary Dis­ course,” New England Quarterly 62 (1989), W ahneem a Lubiano offers a balanced assessment o f G ates’s theory, which she defines as “precisely

a theory o f literary history,” and argues against the chargc that it is apolitical. Kenneth W. War­ ren’s “Delim iting America: The Legacy of Du Bois,” A m erican Literary History 1 (1989), criti­ cizes G ates’s reliance on the image of professionalistic pluralism “to establish some non-political notion o f black unity.” Sandra Adell, in Double-

C onsciousness/D ouble Bind: T heoretical Issues in Twentieth-Century B lack Literature (1994), rele­ vantly compares Gates and Baker. Adolph L. Reed, in W. E. B. Du Bois and Am erican Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (1997), castigates Gates, especially in his later work, as a center-right apologist. Phillip M. Richards, B lack

Heart: T he Moral Life o f Recent African A m erican Letters (2 0 0 6 ), discusses G ates’s influence and criticizes his separation of A frican American cu l­ ture from the broader hum anistic tradition. The prominent critic Houston A. Baker Jr., in Betray­

al: How B lack Intellectuals Have A bandoned the Ideals o f the Civil Rights Era (2008), attacks G ates’s centrism . Charles J . O gletree Jr., in T he Presumption o f Guilt: T he Arrest o f Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and R ace, Class, and Crim e in A m erica (2010), gives a detailed account of a controversial case when Gates was arrested for disorderly con ­ duct after forcing open a door of his own home in Cambridge, M assachusetts. G reene’s biography includes a selective bibliography of G ates’s work.

S a n d r a M. G i l b e r t a n d S u s a n G u b a r Gilbert and Gubar have co-edited Shakespeare’s Sis­ ters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets (1979), The Norton Anthology o f Literature by Women: The Tra­ ditions in English (1985; 3d ed., 2007), The Female Imagination and the Modernist Aesthetic (1986), Mothersongs: Poems for, by, and about Mothers (1995), and Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Reader (2007). They also coauthored a threevolume sequel to their Madwoman in the Attic (1979) on women and modernism titled No Man’s Land: The Place o f the Woman Writer in the Twenti­ eth Century, containing T he War o f the Words (1988), Sexchanges (1989), and Letters fro m the Front (1994). Paying more attention than Madwom­ an in the Attic did to the historical and ideological context of literary works and focusing less on m as­ te rp ie ce s by great w riters, No M an’s L an d re­ flects the changes in feminism and prevailing c riti­ cal models during the 1980s. G ilbert and Gubar’s satire of contemporary academic critical schools and movements, Masterpiece Theatre: An Academic Melodrama, was published in 1995. A sec­ ond edition of Madwoman in the Attic was pub­ lished in 2 0 0 0 and features an indispensable intro­ duction that traces the origins and reception of the book. Sandra M. G ilb ert’s works are Acts o f Attention: T he Poems o f D. H. Law rence (1973); the nonfic­ tion account of the death of her husband, Wrong­ fu l Death: A M edical Tragedy (1995), and Death’s

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(20 0 6 ); Rereading Women; Thirty Years o f Explor­ ing Our Literary Traditions (2011); The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity (2014); and nine books of poetry: In the Fourth World (1978), Summ er K itchen (1983), Emily’s Bread (1984), Blood Pressure (1988), Ghost Volcano (1995), Kiss­ ing the Bread (2 0 0 0 ), The Italian Collection: Poems o f Heritage (2003), Belongings (2005), and Aftermath (2011). Biographical information can be found in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Se­ ries 106 (2002). Susan Gubar has co-edited For Adult Users Only: T he Dilemmas o f Violent Pornography ( 1989), with Joan Hoff; and English Inside and Out: The Places o f Literary Criticism (1992), with Jonathan Kamholtz. She is the author of Racechanges: W hite Skin, Black F ace in American Culture (1997), Crit­ ical Condition: Fem inism at the Turn o f the C en ­ tury (2000), Poetry after Auschwitz: Remembering W hat O ne N ever Knew (2 0 0 3 ), Rooms o f Our Own (2 0 0 6 ), Ju d as: A Biography (2 0 0 8 ), M em oir o f a D ebulked W om en: Enduring Ovarian C an cer (2012), and Reading and Writing C ancer: How Words Heal (2016). Biographical inform ation can be found in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series 70 (1999) and in Robin W ilson’s “A Feminist Professor’s Closing Chapters,” C hronicle o f Higher Education, April 2 2 , 2012. Toril M oi’s famous critique of Madwoman in the Attic in her Sexual/Textual Politics (1985) encap­ sulates the “French fem inist” objections to Gilbert and Gubar’s work. Elizabeth Rosdeitcher’s “Inter­ view with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar,” Critical Texts 6.1 (1989), is a good place to start in studying their work. A range of critical responses can be traced in Laura E. Donaldson, “The Miran­ da Complex: Colonialism and the Question of Fem inist Reading,” Diacritics 18.3 (1988); Jane Marcus, “The Asylums of Antaeus: Women, War, and Madness,” in The New Historicism (ed. H. Aram Veeser, 1989); and Making Feminist History:

The Literary Scholarship o f Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, edited by William E. Cain (1994). Annette R. Federico’s edited collection Gilbert and G ubars “T he Madwoman in the Attic” after Thirty Years (2009) provides valuable reflections on that work’s legacy and an important introduction by Gilbert. Also useful are Jacqueline Vaught Bro­ gan’s interview with Gilbert in W omen’s Studies 38 (2009) and Janet G ezari’s “Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s T he Madwoman in the Attic,” Essays in Criticism 56 (2006).

P a u l G ilr o y To date Paul Gilroy has written eight books. There

Ain't No Black in the Union Ja ck : T he Cultural Politics o f R ace and Nation (1987; new intro.,

2002),

his first, examines a twenty-year evolution in postwar British racial politics. Emphasizing the interrelations among discourses of race, class, and nation, he argues that British politicians and scholars on both sides of the political divide fail to

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take account o f insidious racial dynamics. In

Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics o f Black Cidtures (1993), published in the same year as T he B lack A tlantic , discussed above in the headnote, Gilroy com bines photos, art reviews, speeches, and interviews with bell hooks, Toni M orrison, and others to highlight differences between black British culture and the diverse black community in the United States. In Between Camps: Race,

Identity and Nationalism at the End o f the Colour Line (20 0 0 ), he claim s that individuals currently live in “camps”— defined in terms of race, nation­ ality, culture, and religion— and looks to the con­ cept of diaspora, which decouples territory and identity, to heal the rifts between them. Against

R ace: Imagining Political Culture beyond the C ol­ or Line (2 0 0 0 ), a revised version of Between Camps for an A m erican audience, continues to argue against race as an organizing principle in col­ lective human experience. In his After Empire: Mel­ ancholia or Convivial Culture? (2004), published in the United States with the subtitle Multiculture o f Postcolonial M elancholia, Gilroy examines race hi­ erarchies and their consequences, notably involve­ ments in colonialism and fascism. Black Britain — A Photographic History (2007), with a preface by Stuart Hall, uses photography to trace the cultural role of African and Caribbean descendents living in Great Britain. Originally delivered as the W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard University, Darker

Than Blue: On the Moral Econom ies o f Black At­ lantic Culture (2010) examines at once the global influence of black A m erican cu lture, p articular­ ly music, and the acquisitive nature of A m erican consumer capitalism , which has done harm to black political cultures as the right to acquire things, lauded in the music, has replaced the de­ mands for black rights and social and restorative ju stice in the music of the civil rights and black power generation. W hile Gilroy’s calls for cosmopolitan and uto­ pian conceptions of race, culture, and identity have been widely influential, they have also gen­ erated a great deal of controversy among aca­ demics and activists. Among articles and book chapters focusing on T he B lack A tlantic are Nadi Edwards’s “Roots, and Some Routes Not Taken,” Found O bject 4 (1994), which faults Gilroy for equating “black com m unity” with “oppressed”; Louis Chude-sokei’s “The Black A tlantic Para­ digm: Paul Gilroy and the Fractured Landscape of ‘R ace,’ ” A m erican Quarterly 48 (1996), a book review that finds Gilroy’s view of Black A tlantic identities too narrow; J. Blaine Hudson’s “The Af­ rican Diaspora and the ‘Black A tlantic’: An A fri­ can American Perspective,” Negro History B ulle­ tin 60 (1997), which m aintains that Gilroy’s construct is not valid for exploring the historical dimensions of A frican diaspora before 1800; and Colin Palm er’s “Defining and Studying the Mod­ ern A frican Diaspora,” Perspectives: A Newsletter o f the A m erican Historical Association 36 .6

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(1998), which contends that Gilroy pays insuffi­ cient attention to the A frican continent and to A frican diasporic movement outside the A tlantic. In Monsters and Revolutionaries: C olonial Family Rom ance and Metissage (1999), Frangoise Verges raises the same criticism s as Chude-sokei and Hudson, adding that an exclusive focus on the At­ lantic slave trade hinders the explorations of oth­ er areas, such as forced migrations across the In­ dian O cean and the interactions of diasporic Africans with the Islamic world. Houston Baker, in Turning South Again: Re-thinking M odernism/ Re-reading B ooker T. (2001), takes issue with G il­ roy’s neglect of American blackness and also as­ serts that his discussion of modernity is limiting. O ther critiques of Paul Gilroy’s approach, such as Cheryl Johnson-O d im ’s “From Both Sides Now: Gendering the Black A tlantic,” in W omen in A fri­ can Studies: Scholarly Publishing (ed. Cassandra Rachel Veney and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, 2001), take up the issue of race and gender. Edited an­ thologies that critically examine Gilroy’s theoreti­ cal frameworks and his condem nations of eth n ic­ ity and nationality include Beyond the B lack

Atlantic: Relocating M odernization and T echnolo­ gy, edited by W alter Goebel and Saskia Schabio (2006), and Recharting the B lack Atlantic: M od­ ern Cultures, L ocal Communities, G lobal C on n ec­ tions, edited by Annalisa Oboe and Anna Scacch i (2008). Criticism of Gilroy’s Anglophone-centered Black A tlantic can be found in Com parative Per­ spectives on the B lack Atlantic, edited by Jossianna Arroyo and Elizabeth M archant, a special issue of Com parative Literature Studies (49.2 [2012]); its articles expand G ilroy’s concept of the Black A tlantic world and the A frican diaspo­ ra to include Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Luso-A frica and the Cape Verde Is­ lands, while Retrieving the Human: Reading Paul

T he Sophists by W. K. C. G uthrie; the volume, published separately in 1971, was originally part of volume 3 of his History o f G reek Philosophy

(6 vols., 1 9 6 2 -8 1 ). George Kerferd offers a com ­ prehensive interpretation of the whole movement in T he Sophistic M ovement (1981). Susan C. Jarratt’s Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured (1991) reads the sophists with and against contemporary literary theories, including feminism and deconstruction. In T he Birth o f Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and T heir Successors (1996), Robert Wardy sets Gorgias’s radical epis­ temological relativism against Plato’s defense of philosophy in his dialogue Gorgias, arguing that sophist and philosopher set the terms of later de­ bates about the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. Bruce McComiskey’s Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric (2002) places Gorgias’s antifoundationalism, his refusal to ground philoso­ phy in a preexisting truth or reality, in the context of fifth- and fourth-century b . c . e . Athenian poli­ tics, arguing that Plato’s advocacy of philosophical truth served the interests of oligarchic government, while Gorgias’s antifoundationalism promoted de­ mocracy. C . J. Classen’s Sophistik (1976) includes a thorough and useful bibliography. More recently, in her book on Helen of Troy, H elen o f Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation (2013), Ruby Blondell situates Gorgias’s encomium within a Greek tra­ dition of writing about Helen. Her chapter on Gorgias proffers a reading that explores his fail­ ure to challenge the gender dynamics of the Greek culture in which he wrote while engaging with serious philosophical debates about human agency, moral responsibility, and the power of persuasive discourse.

G e r a ld G r a f f Stem m ing from his doctoral dissertation, G ra ff’s

Gilroy, edited by Rebecka Rutledge Fisher and Jay G arcia (2014), moves beyond The B lack Atlan­ tic to examine a range of Gilroy’s interrogations of

first book, Poetic Statement and C ritical Dogma (1970), attacks the lack of social concern evinced by the New Criticism and other approaches. Liter­

neoliberal politics, identity politics, empire, Frantz Fan o n ’s th eo ries o f oppression, am ong other matters. As part o f the Routledge C ritical Thinkers se­ ries, Paul W illiam s’s Paul Gilroy (2013) engages Gilroy’s work in its totality as well as the various influences on his thought. T h e volume provides a useful annotated bibliography o f his work.

ature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society

G o r g ia s o f L e o n t in i D. M. Mac Dowell has published the Greek text of the Encom ium on H elen with a parallel English translation (1989). M ichael Gagarin and Paul W oodruff include all the extant fragm ents attrib­ uted to Gorgias in Early G reek Political Thought from H om er to the Sophists (1995), T heir transla­ tions are based on the Greek text established by Thom as Buchheim in his edition with German translation, Reden, Fragmente, und Testimonien (1989). T h e standard account of the sophists is

(1979) extends his polemic to contem porary th e ­ ory. Through the 1980s G raff turned his atten ­ tion more concertedly to the university, in 1985 co-ed iting (with Reginald Gibbons) a collection, Criticism in the University; publishing Professing Literature: An Institutional History (1987; 20th anniv. ed., 2007), regarded as the standard history of the discipline; and compiling (with Michael Warner) a collection, T he Origins o f Literary Stud­ ies in America: A Documentary History (1988). B e­

yond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize Higher Education (1992) presents his program for “teaching the con flicts.” His pro­ gram inspired two casebooks co-edited with Jam es Phelan, Adventures o f H uckleberry Finn: A Case Study in C ritical Controversy (1995) and T he Tempest: A C ase Study in C ritical Controversy (2 0 0 0 ). Through the 1990s, G raff focused more on the accessibility of academ ic work, publishing

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Clueless in A cadem e: How Schooling Obscures the Life o f the M ind (2003) and a slim textbook, “They Say/I Say": T h e Moves T hat M atter in A ca­ dem ic Writing (2 0 0 6 ; 3d ed., 2014), co-w ritten with his spouse, C athy B irken stein , w hich pro­ vides easily understood “tem plates” to help people write. G ra ff’s views have been widely discussed. A special issue of the journal C ritical Exchange (23 [1987]) responds to his early work. T h e collection

Teaching the C onflicts: G erald Graff, Curricular Reform, and the Culture Wars, edited by W illiam E. Cain (1994), gathers eleven essays assessing G ra ff’s con flictu al method; C ain ’s introduction provides an excellent survey. In University in Ru­ ins (1996), Bill Readings assim ilates G ra ff’s con­ flictual model in recom m ending that the univer­ sity be a com m unity of “dissensus,” but he argues that G ra ff’s model itself becom es “a unified ob­ je c t of professional discourse.” Don Bialostosky, in “Is Gerald G ra ff M achiavellian?” Style 33 (1999), provocatively com pares G ra ff’s notion of the productive uses of con flict with M achiavelli’s prescriptions for power. See also the symposium “Teaching the C o n flicts at Twenty Years,” P eda­ gogy 3 (2 0 0 3 ), and a roundtable on his book C lu e­ less in A cadem e in Pedagogy 5 (20 0 5 ). Amanda Anderson sym pathetically considers G ra ff’s fo­ cus on how we argue, but finds that we need a stronger sense o f disciplinary com m itm ents in “T h e Way We Talk About the Way We Teach Now,” Profession (2 0 0 9 ). “Only C onnect: An In­ terview with G erald G raff,” conducted by Jeffrey J. W illiam s, reviews G ra ff’s career; it is collected in Critics at Work: Interviews 1993-2003 (ed. W illiam s, 2 0 0 4 ).

A n ton io G ram sci T h e com plete Prison N otebooks, edited by Jo ­ seph A. Buttigieg (3 vols., 1 9 9 2 -2 0 0 7 ), with an indispensable introduction and superb scholarly apparatus, is the scholarly edition. But Selections fro m the Prison N otebooks, edited by Q uentin H oare and G eo ffrey Newell Sm ith (1971), re ­ m ains the most accessible text for the general reader. T he G ram sci R eader: S elected Writings, 1916-1935, edited by David Forgacs (2 0 0 0 ), is also a good place to start. Letters fro m Prison, edited by Frank Rosengarten (2 vols., 1994), is an informative supplement to the Prison Notebooks. Parts o f G ram sci’s work before the prison years have been translated, including Selections from Political Writings, edited by Q uintin Hoare (2 vols., 1977—78); Selections fro m Cultural Writ­ ings, edited by David Forgacs and G eoffrey Now­ ell Smith (1991); and Pre-Prison Writings, edited by Richard Bellam y (1994). T here are two biogra­ phies: Arnold Davidson’s Antonio Gramsci: To­ ward an Intellectual Biography (1977) focuses on G ram sci’s intellectual development, while G i­ useppe Fiori’s A ntonio Gramsci: Life o f a Revolu­ tionary (1966; trans., rev. ed. 1990) uses new

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sources to offer the most comprehensive account of G ram sci’s life. T hree excellent general introductions are Steve Jo n es’s A ntonio Gram sci (2 0 0 6 ), John Schwarzm antel’s T he Routledge G u id ebook to Gramsci's “Prison N otebooks" (2015), and George Hoare and Nathan Sperber’s An Introduction to A ntonio Gramsci (2016). Broader engagements with G ram sci’s work can be found in W alter L. Adam­ son’s Hegemony an d Revolution: A Study o f A n­

tonio Gramsci's P olitical and Cultural Theory (1980), A nne Show stack S assoon’s Gram sci and Contem porary Politics: Beyond Pessimism o f the In tellect (2 0 0 0 ), and Peter D. T h o m as’s T he G ram scian M om ent: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (2009). T he four volumes of essays col­ lected in Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments o f Leading Political Philosophers, edited by Jam es M artin (2002), contain many important and illu­ m inating responses to and expansions on G ram ­ s c i’s ideas. Perry A nderson’s C on sideration s on

W estern M arxism (1976), a key place to begin looking into W estern Marxism, discusses Gramsci at some length. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal M ouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) joins Gramsci with poststructuralist thought to provide a fundam ental rethink in g o f M arxist theory. T h e selectio n s by S tu art Hall and Dick Hebdige in this anthology record the influence of Gram sci on cultural studies; David H arris’s From Class Struggle to the Politics o f Pleasure: T he Ef­ fects o f Gramscianism on Cultural Studies (1993) and Stuart H all: C ritical D ialogues in Cultural Studies, edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (1996), explore this con n ection further. A good, although incom plete, bibliography can be found in Schw arzm antel’s Routledge G uide (see above).

S t e p h e n J . G r e e n b la t t Stephen G reen blatt’s first interest was the mod­ ern novel, and his undergraduate thesis, Three

Modern Satirists: Waugh, Orwell, and Huxley (1965), was published in the Yale College Series. During graduate school he turned to Renaissance literature, resulting in his second book, Sir Wal­

ter Ralegh: T he Renaissance Man and His Roles (1973), which derived from his dissertation and discussed what would prove a recurrent theme: how authors fashion their personas. W ith his next book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980), Greenblatt captured wide at­ tention in literary studies. During the 1980s he was involved in developing the New Historicism, notably through the journal Representations, which he founded with colleagues at Berkeley in 1982. Greenblatt also had a hand in editing several collections, including Allegory and Representation (1981), with a lead essay by Paul de M an; The Pow­ er o f Forms in the English Renaissance (1982), which introduced the phrase “the new histori­ cism ”; and two collections of essays selected from

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Representations, Representing the English Renais­ sance (1988) and New World Encounters (1993). His own Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circula­ tion o f Social Energy in Renaissance England (1988) provides models of New Historical reading in five influential and often-reprinted chapters on different Shakespeare plays. Learning to Curse: Es­ says in Early Modern Culture (1990) gathers essays practicing and reflecting on the New Historicism, including “Resonance and Wonder.” Marvelous Possessions: The W onder o f the New World (1991) develops G reenblatt’s concept of wonder in litera­ ture focusing on the New World. Through the 1990s Greenblatt becam e a promi­ nent public figure representing literary studies. He served as president of the Modern Language As­ sociation, co-editing (with Giles Gunn) Redrawing

the Boundaries: The Transformation o f English and American Literary Studies (1992), and became gen­ eral editor of T he Norton Shakespeare (1997; 3d ed., 2015) and general editor of The Norton An­ thology o f English Literature (9th ed., 2012). In 2 0 0 0 Greenblatt wrote, with Catherine Gallagher (a Berkeley colleague on the board of Representa­ tions), a book defining his mode of criticism , Prac­ ticing New Historicism. His international standing as today’s leading scholar of Shakespeare has been cemented by Hamlet in Purgatory (2001); the popu­ lar book Will in the World: How Shakespeare B e­ cam e Shakespeare (2004), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Shakespeare’s Freedom (2010). He also tried his hand at drama, co-writing Cardenio (performed 2008), and has since focused on cultural transmission, in the co-written volume Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto (2010) and in two trade books, The Swerve: How the World Becam e Modern (2011) and T he Rise and Fall o f Adam and Eve (2017). T he Greenblatt Reader, edited by M i­ chael Payne (2005), provides a good sampling of his writing. For an account of his background and early career in his own words, see “Critical SelfFashioning: An Interview with Stephen J. Green­ blatt,” conducted by Jeffrey J. W illiam s, Minnesota Review , n.s. 7 1 -7 2 (2009). There is a large body of com m entary on G reen­ b latt’s work. Many responses have followed his model, especially in early modern scholarship, though some (especially M arxist critics) question his political stance. Donald Pease, “Toward a S o ­ ciology of Literary Knowledge: G reenblatt, C olo­ nialism , and the New H istoricism ,” in C onse­ quences o f Theory (ed. Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson, 1991), is a careful exposition of G reenblatt that criticizes him for perpetuating a linguistic colonialism , despite his disclaim ers. Chapters o f S co tt W ilson’s Cultural M aterialism: Theory an d Practice (1995) and C laire Colebrook’s New Literary Histories: New Historicism and C ontem porary Criticism (1997) provide use­ ful overviews. C ritical Self-Fashioning: Stephen G reenblatt and the New Historicism, edited by Jurgen Pieters (1999), gathers several essays from

European scholars assessing G reenblatt; see also Pieters’s ow n M oments o f Negotiation: T he New Historicism o f Stephen G reenblatt (2001), which puts G reenblatt's work in a vast theoretical fram e. T h e Touch o f the Real: Essays in Early Modern Culture, edited by Philippa Kelly (2 0 0 2 ), presents essays in honor o f G reenblatt from Aus­ tralian scholars, though it focuses more broadly on extending historicist work. For an intriguing account of G reenblatt’s method, see Ivo Kamps, “New H istoricizing the New Historicism ; or, Did Stephen Greenblatt Watch the Evening News in Early 1968?” in Historicizing Theory (ed. Peter C. Herman, 20 0 4 ); in the same volume, see also Jo n ­ athan Gil Harris, “Stephen G reenblatt’s ‘X ’-Files: The Rhetoric o f Containm ent and Invasive Dis­ ease in ‘Invisible Bullets’ and ‘T he Sources of S o ­ viet Conduct.’” Mark Robson’s Stephen Greenblatt (2008) offers a short overview. See also Neema Parvini, S hakespeare and C ontem porary Theory:

New

Historicism

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(2012).

T he G reenblatt R eader provides a complete list of G reen blatt’s publications up to 2 0 0 3 , and Rob­ son’s Stephen G reenblatt includes a selected, an­ notated bibliography of G reenblatt’s work and com m entary on him. J u r g e n H a b e rm a s Almost all of Habermas’s major works have been translated into English (below', the Germ an publi­ cation date is followed by the date of the transla­ tion). For those com ing to Habermas for the first time, the interviews with him collected in A utono­ my and Solidarity, edited by Peter Dew's (1986), offer an accessible overview'; in T he Philosophical Discourse o f Modernity (1985; 1987), Habermas articulates his basic position vis-a-vis the attacks on reason by Nietzsche, Adorno, Derrida, and Foucault. His other works include T he Structural Transformation o f the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category o f Bourgeois Society (1962; 1989); On the Logic o f the Social Sciences (1967; 1988); Knowledge and Human Interests (1968; 1971); L e­ gitim ation Crisis (1973; 1975); C om m unication and the Evolution o f Society (1976; 1979); The Theory o f Comm unicative Action (2 vols., 1981; 1984—87); Moral Consciousness and C om m unica­ tive Action (1983; 1990); T he New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate (1985, 1987; 1989); Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory o f Law and Democracy (1992; 1996); The Inclusion o f the Oth­ er: Studies in Political Theory (1996; 1998); The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (1998; 2001); Truth and Justification (1999; 2003); The Future o f Human Nature (2001; 2003); Time o f Transitions (2001; 20 0 6 ); T he Divided West (2 0 0 4 ; 2 0 0 6 ); D ialectics o f Secularization: On Reason and R eligion, with Pope Benedict XVI (2 0 0 5 ; 2 0 0 6 ); Europe: T he Faltering Project (2 0 0 9 ); An Awareness o f W hat Is Missing: Faith an d Reason

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in a Post-Secular Age (2 0 0 8 ; 2010); T he Lure o f Technocracy (2015); Postmetaphysical Thinking II (2017); and P hilosophical Introductions (2017).

Discourse o f Modernity," edited by M aurizio Passerin d’Entreves and Seyla Benhabib (1997); Haberm as: A C ritical R eader, edited by Peter

Eight volumes gather English translations of H abermas’s essays written at various times: Philosophical-Political Profiles (1983), Postmeta­ physical Thinking: Philosophical Essays (1994), Ju s­

Dews (1999); and a very com prehensive fourvolume co lle ctio n , Ju rgen H aberm as, edited by David M. Rasmussen and Jam es Swindal (2002). The Bernstein and Calhoun collections have

tification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics (1993), A Berlin R epublic: Writings on G er­ many (1997), On the Pragmatics o f C om m unica­ tion (1998), T he Liberating Power o f Symbols: Philosophical Essays (2001), Religion and Rational­ ity: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity (2002), and Betw een Naturalism and R eligion: P hilosoph­ ical Essays (2 0 0 5 ; 2 0 0 8 ). Two books both collect

proved particularly influential in shaping the re­ ception of H aberm as’s work. Ju rgen Haberm as: Key C oncepts, edited by Barbara Fultner (2011), provides an excellent overview of H aberm as’s work along with a com plete bibliography o f his work and a substantial bibliography of secondary

and contextualize discussions between Habermas and Derrida: Philosophy in a Tim e o f Terror: D ia­

logues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacqu es Derrida, interviewed by Giovanna Borradori (2003), and

T he Derrida-Habermas Reader, edited by Lasse Thom assen (2006). Biographical inform ation can be found in Egbert K lautk’s entry on Habermas in E ncyclopedia o f M odern P olitical Thought (ed. Gregory Claeys, 2013). Stefan M uller-Doohm ’s Haberm as: A Biography (2014; trans. 2016) is the first full-length biography. There are several superb overviews of Haber­ mas’s work, whose different emphases are indi­ cated by their titles: Andrew Edgar’s T he Philoso­ phy o f H aberm as (2005), Luke G oode’s Jurgen

Habermas: D emocracy and the Public Sphere (2 0 0 5 ), Pauline Joh n so n ’s Haberm as: Rescuing the Public Sphere (20 0 6 ), Uwe S te in h o ff’s T he Philosophy o f Jurgen H aberm as (2 0 0 9 , an abridged trans. of a 2 0 0 6 work), and the most comprehensive o f the lot, T h e H aberm as H and­ book, edited by Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide, and Cristina Lafont (2018). O f the in-depth stud­ ies of Habermas, two of particular interest to lit­ erary studies are J. M. B ernstein’s Recovering

E thical Life: Jurgen Haberm as and the Future o f C ritical Theory (1995) and Pieter Duvenage’s H aberm as and Aesthetics: T he Limits o f C om m u­ nicative Reason (2003). O f special value is David Couzens Hoy and Thom as A. M cC arthy’s C ritical Theory (1994), which lays out the case for each side in the Habermas/poststructuralist debate. T he best place to encounter the debates sparked by H aberm as’s work is in the large number of col­ lections of responses to it. Noteworthy are H aber­ mas and Modernity, edited by Richard J. B ern­ stein (1985); H aberm as and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun (1992), which contains the highly influential essay “Rethinking the Pub­ lic Sphere: A C on tribu tion to the C ritique of Actually E xisting D em ocracy,” by the fem inist philosopher Nancy Fraser; T he Cambridge C om ­ panion to Habermas, edited by Stephen K. W hite (1995); Feminists Read Haberm as: Gendering the Subject o f Discourse, edited by Johanna M eehan (1995); Haberm as and the Unfinished Project o f

Modernity: Critical Essays on “T he Philosophical

works.

J u d it h J a c k H a lb e rsta m Halberstam’s first book, Skin Shows: Gothic Hor­ ror and the Technology o f Monsters (1995), traces the cultural object of the monster from nineteenthcentury Gothic novels like Mary Shelley’s Fran­ kenstein up to contemporary Hollywood movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Using this broad range of texts, she argues both that the monster is rewritten over time to reflect “historically and cul­ turally conditioned fears” which emerge from ideas about otherness and difference and that graphic violence empowers readers. Her second book— and her most influential— is F em ale Mas­ culinity (1998), which explores butch/femme les­ bian roles, transsexual and “transgender dyke” com m unities, and contem porary drag king per­ formances, as she articulates her larger project of examining gender construction and pursuing a concept of masculinity without men. The Drag King Book (1999), which Halberstam coauthored with Del LaGrace Volcano under the name “Judith J a c k ’ H alberstam,” investigates drag king commu­ nities and perform ances for a broad audience. Her next book, In a Q ueer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005), considers the transgendered body’s representation in the media and in queer art, while T he Q ueer Art o f Failure (2011) critiques the logic of failure and success in our culture and argues that failing offers creative possibilities, freedom, and other rewards through its resistance, subversion, and unmaking of pun­ ishing norms. H alberstam ’s sixth book, Gaga Fem i­ nism: Sex, G ender and the End o f Normal (2012), analyzes the pop feminist icon Lady Gaga as a way to explore gender identity and sexuality in twentyfirst-century feminism. O ne im portant critical response to Halberstam is Pat C alifia’s “Dildo Envy and O ther Phallic Ad­ ventures,” in A D ick fo r a Day: W hat Would You Do If You Had One? (ed. Fiona G iles, 1997). Tak­ ing issue with H alberstam ’s classification “b u tch ” (which straddles the line between lesbian and transgendered), C alifia claim s that it blocks the flow of desire and reflects self-hate rather than self-definition and understanding. Halberstam responds to C alifia’s criticism s in F em ale M ascu­ linity, in a chapter titled “Lesbian M asculinity:

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Even Stone Butches G et the Blues.” Chris Beas­ ley’s G ender and Sexuality: Critical Theory, Criti­ cal Thinkers (2 0 0 5 ) argues that H alberstam ’s work on m asculinity “stands at an interesting re­ move from Q ueer”: because her work enables and includes transgender desire and all its physical m anifestations, her position is distinct from that of other queer theorists, who set “queer" and “transgender" in opposition to one another. Hal­ berstam addresses some of these issues in “W ith­ in the New M om ent,” an interview by Vicki Crow­ ley in Discourse 25 (2004). In Beauty and

Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West (2005), Sheila Jeffreys asserts that H alberstam ’s notion of female m asculinity is both apolitical, in that it fails to grapple with m asculinity as “the product o f male dom inance,” and antifem inist, in that liberation for women is identified with per­ forming m asculinity and disavowing feminity. Several interviews helpfully introduce and sup­ plement H alberstam ’s written work; see Annmarie Jagose’s detailed “M asculinity without M en,” Gen­ ders, no. 29 (1999); M athias Danbolt’s “The Eccen­ tric Archive,” Trikster— Nordic Q ueer Journal, no. 1 (2008), in which Halberstam discusses the ratio­ nale behind her choice of texts; and Jeffrey J. W il­ liam s’s “The Drag of M asculinity: An Interview with Judith ‘Ja ck ’ Halberstam,” symploke 19 (2011), which offers a wide-ranging back-and-forth con­ versation about H alberstam’s biography, concepts, and writings, plus feminist politics.

S tu a r t H a ll Stuart H all’s work (scattered in numerous jour­ nals and edited volumes) is slowly being collected in book form in a series titled Stuart Hall: Select­ ed W ritings, to be published by Duke University Press under the general editorship of Bill Schwarz and C atherine Hall; already in print (with more promised) are T he Hard R oad to R enew al (1988); Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History, edited by Jennifer Darryl Slack and Lawrence Grossberg (2016); Selected Political Writings: The Great Mov­ ing Right Show and Other Essays, edited by Sally Davison, David Featherstone, M ichael Rustin, and Bill Schwarz (2017); and T he P opular Arts (2018).

T he Fateful Triangle: R ace, Ethnicity, Nation, edited by Kobena M ercer (2017), is drawn from lectures delivered at Harvard in 1994. Fam iliar Stranger: A Life B etw een Two Islands (2017) col­ lects his autobiographical reflections. The most influential collaborative texts done by various Brit­ ish cultural studies groups working with Hall (vol­ umes that usually contain essays by Hall) are The Popular Arts, edited by Stuart Hall and Paddy W hannel (1964); Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (1976); Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, edited by Stuart Hall et al. (1978); Culture, Media, Lan­ guage: Working Pa-pers in Cidtural Studies, edited by Stuart Hall et al. (1980); New Times: The

Changing Face o f Politics in the 1990s, edited by Stuart Hall and M artin Jacques (1990); Questions o f Cultural Identity, edited by Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (1996); M odernity: An Introduction to M odern Societies, edited by Stuart Hall et al. (1996); and Representation: Cultural R epresenta­ tions and Signifying Practices, edited by Stu art Hall (1997). D ifferent (2001) is a collection of contem porary photographs by people o f color selected by Hall along with explanatory text by him. Women Take Issue: Aspects o f W omen’s Sub­ ordination, edited by the W omen’s Studies Group, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (1978), and The Empire Strikes Back: R ace and Racism in 70s Britain, edited by the C entre for Contem po­ rary Cultural Studies (1982), are important early collections that extend cultural studies into stud­ ies of gender, race, and postcolonialism . T he best biographical source is H all’s own Fam iliar Stranger (2017), which can be supplemented with Caryl Philip’s “Interview with Stuart H all,” Bom b, no. 58 (1997). Also of biographical interest is the film T he Stuart Hall Project (2013, dir. John Akomfrah). Chris Rojek’s Stuart Hall (2003) is by far the best overview o f H all’s life and work, although Helen Davis’s Understanding Stuart Hall (2 0 0 4 ) is also worth consulting. Stuart Hall: C ritical D ialogues in Cultural Studies, edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (1996), collects several key es­ says by Hall along with responses to his work; it can be supplemented by W ithout Guarantees: In Honour o f Stuart Hall, edited by Paul Gilroy, Law­ rence Grossberg, and Angela M cRobbie (20 0 0 ), a collection of essays that includes responses to H all’s work by Judith Butler and Gayatri C hakra­ vorty Spivak among many others. Fredric Jam eson, “On Cultural Studies” (1993), in The Identity in Question (ed. John Rajchm an, 1995), provides a sophisticated short introduction to cultural stud­ ies. Dennis Dw'orkin’s Cultural Marxism in Post­

war Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins o f Cultural Studies (1997) and Lawrence Grossberg’s Cidtural Studies in the Future Tense (2010) usefully locate H all’s work in the context of cul­ tural studies more generally. M ichael B erube’s The Left at War (2009) mobilizes Hall’s work as a guide for thinking about the L eft’s responses to neoconservatism. The essays published after H all’s death in the online journal Open Democracy (www. o p e n d e m o c ra cy .n et/ o u rk in g d o m / co lle ctio n s /stuart-hall-cultural-theorist-1932-2014; accessed July 12, 2017) offer a valuable overview of his career and in flu en ce; the obituaries by Robin Blackburn (in New Left Review, no. 86 [2014]) and G eo ff Eley (in History W orkshop Journal, no. 79 [2015]) along with the collection of responses to his work in South Atlantic Quarterly, no. 115 (O c­ tober 2016), and Hua Hsu’s essay, “Stuart Hall and the Rise o f C u ltu ral S tu d ies,” New Yorker, July 17, 2017, offer further reflections on his work and its impact. W hile waiting for the Duke Uni­

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versity Press series to be completed, an assiduous reader can compile a fairly complete list of H all’s scattered writings by consulting the bibliographies in the books of Morley and Chen, Rojek, and Da­ vis, cited above.

D u n n a H a ra w a y Haraway’s dissertation appeared as Crystals, Fab­ rics, and Fields: Metaphors o f Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (1976). Her “M anifesto for Cyborgs” (1985), first pub­ lished in the journal Socialist Review, has been re­ printed many times. Primate Visions: Gender,

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which introduces Haraway’s foundational ideas about technoscience in relation to such cybercul­ ture theorists as Sherry Turkle and Sean Cubitt. Arthur Kroker’s Body Drift: Butler, Hayes, H ar­ away (2012) maps out a posthuman future for the body in the works of these three fem inist think­ ers. In Beyond the Cyborg: Adventures with D on­ na Haraway (2013), M argret Grebowicz and Hel­ en M errick resituate “M anifesto for Cyborgs” within a more nuanced reading of the body of Haraway’s scholarship, including her recent work on companion species.

Race, and Nature in the World o f Modern Science

M ic h a e l H a r d t a n d A n t o n io N e g ri

(1989), Haraway’s second book, examines the cul­ tural and ideological ram ifications of twentiethcentury primatology. In addition, she has pub­ lished two collections of her early essays: Simians,

M ichael Hardt and Antonio Negri have collabo­ rated on six books: L abor o f Dionysus: A C ritique o f the State-Form (1994), which collects four pre­ viously published essays by Negri as well as three co-authored essays; Empire (2000), their first sys­ tem atic articulation of their theory of global capi­ talism ; M ultitude: War and D em ocracy in the Age o f Em pire (2004), which elaborates on the multi­ tude, Hardt and Negri’s contemporary model of revolutionary subjectivity; Comm onwealth (2009), an extended analysis of “the common” that pro­ vides the conceptual and material basis for their understanding of communism; Declaration (2012), w'hich extends earlier analyses of the multitude and the common to exam ine contemporary forms of resistance such as the Arab Spring and the O ccupy M ovement (which both began in 2011); and Assembly (2017), which proposes the con ­ cept o f “assem bly” as a m eans for inventing mod­ els of social organization necessary for the longevity and e ffic a c y o f so-called leaderless movements in an age of resurgent right-wing po­ litical regim es and the continued dom inance of neoliberal capitalism . Michael Hardt has also written Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (1993), which ex­ amines Deleuze’s “philosophical apprenticeship” undertaken in his early works on Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Baruch Spinoza. In addi­ tion to this book on Deleuze and his work with Ne­ gri, Hardt is the author of many articles on politi­ cal theory and on globalization, including most importantly “The W ithering of Civil Society,” So­ cial Text, no. 45 (1995), reprinted in Deleuze and

Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention o f Nature (1991) and Modest_Witness@Second_M illennium. FemaleM an©M eets OncoM ouse ™ (1997). Har­ away's most celebrated essays have been collected in T he Haraway Reader (2004). Her more recent work includes The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003) and W hen Species Meet (2008). How Like a L ea f (2000) is a book-length interview of Haraway by a former student, Thyrza Goodeve, that explores the rela­ tionships between Haraway’s life, her teaching, and her scholarship. Manifestly Haraway (2016) bun­ dles “Cyborg M anifesto” with “Companion Spe­ cies M anifesto,” together with a conversation be­ tween Haraway and Cary Wolfe that explores the manifesto as a theoretical genre. During the 1990s most critical engagement with Haraway’s writing came in the form of a rti­ cles. Among the earliest evaluations is Allison Fraiberg’s “O f A ID S, Cyborgs, and O ther Indis­ cretions: Resurfacing the Body in the Postmod­ ern” (1991), published in the online journal Post­ modern Culture (vol. 1), together with a response by David Porush. A 1993 special issue of the jou r­ nal Genders, titled Cyberpunk: Technologies o f Cultural Identity, exam ines the ways in which Haraway’s analysis of the cyborg figures in sever­ al cyberpunk texts. For a more advanced evalua­ tion of Haraway’s manifesto, see Chela Sandoval, “Re-Entering Cyberspace: Sciences of Resis­ tance,” Dispositio/n: Am erican Jou rn al o f Cultural Histories and T heories 19 (1994). Rosi Braidotti’s “Cyberfeminism with a D ifference,” New Form a­ tions 29 (1996), uses Haraway’s notion of the “in­ form atics of domination” to investigate the poli­ tics of cyberfem inism . Jonathan Crewe exam ines Haraway’s handling of postmodern theory in “Transcoding the World: Haraway’s Postmodern­ ism,” Signs 22 (1997). After 2 0 0 0 , several booklength studies appeared. Useful introductions in­ clude Joseph Schneider’s Donna Haraway: Live Theory (2005), which contains the most complete bibliography, and David B ell’s Cybercidture T h eo­ rists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway (2007),

Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture (ed. Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Jon Heller, 1998); “T he Global Society of Control,”

Discourse 20.3 (1998); “Affective Labor,” boundary 2 26.2 (1999); “Jefferson and Democracy,” Ameri­ can Quarterly 59 (2007); and “The Power to Be Af­ fected,” International Journal o f Politics, Culture, and Society 28 (2015). Hardt co-edited both R adi­ cal Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (with Paolo Virno, 1996)— which includes N egri’s essay “Con­ stituent Republic” as well as “Do You Remember Revolution?,” coauthored by Negri and ten other figures from the Italian Left— and The Jam eson R eader (with Kathi Weeks, 2 000).

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Antonio Negri has produced a large body of written work, much of it translated into English. He is particularly known in the Anglophone world for three things: his role as a leading contemporary com mentator on Spinoza; his political and theo­ retical writings within the Italian Left, especially the Autonomia movement; and his revolutionary theories of contemporary oppositional subjectivi­ ties under global capital. On Spinoza, the most important books are T he Savage Anomaly: The Power o f Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics (1981; trans. 1991) and Subversive Spinoza: (Un)contemporary Variations, edited by Timothy S. Murphy (1992; trans. 2 004). Negri’s writings in the context of the Italian Left of the 1960s to the 1980s include

Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects, 1967—1983 (1988) and Books fo r Burning: War and Democracy in 1970s Italy (1997; trans. 2005), which consists of five political pamphlets written from 1971 to 1977. Quotations from these pam­ phlets were used by the prosecutor in Negri’s trial following his April 1979 arrest. Negri’s Pipeline: Letters from Prison (1983; trans. 2014) collects twenty letters written by Negri from O ctober 1981 to April 1982, while he was incarcerated at Rebibbia prison in Rome; in these letters Negri reflects on his own development as a radical theorist and activist and recounts the events leading to his ac­ cusation, trial, and imprisonment. For Negri’s most important theorizations of resistance and revolution, see especially Marx beyond Marx: Les­ sons on the “Grundrisse" (1979; trans. 1984), which views not Capital but the Grundrisse of Marx as the fundam ental revolutionary text of classical Marxism, identifying M arx’s concept of the real subsumption of capital as the key to understanding contemporary capitalism; The Politics o f Subver­ sion: A Manifesto fo r the Twenty-First Century (1988; trans. 1989; 2d ed., 2005), a precursor to Negri and Hardt’s theoretical work in their collab­ orative books; Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the M odern State (1992; trans. 1999), which ana­ lyzes the canceling out of revolutionary constitu­ ent power by the constituted power of the state in the English, American, French, and Russian revo­ lutions; Time fo r Revolution (1997; trans. 2003), a phenomenological account of the temporality of antagonism, resistance, and revolt; and Marx and Foucault (2017), a collection of essays analyzing the influence and role of Foucault and other post­ structuralists in Marxian and leftist theory and praxis from May 1968 to the Obama administra­ tion in the United States. Negri has also written a number of books that further elaborate and devel­ op the arguments made with Hardt, including Re­ flection s on Empire (2003; trans. 2 0 0 8 ) and The

Porcelain Workshop: For a New Grammar o f Poli­ tics (2008). In addition, Negri has made forays into both literature and literary criticism : his Trilogy o f Resistance (2 0 0 9 ; trans. 2011) collects three of his plays (Swarm: Didactics o f the Multitude, The

Bent Man: Didactics o f the Rebel, and Cithaeron: Didactics o f Exodus ) that symbolically enact the form ation o f the multitude and the com mon, while Flow er o f the Desert: G iacom o L eop ard i’s Poetic Ontology (1987; trans. 2015) mounts a ma­ terialist rereading of the nineteenth-century Ital­ ian poet. Although there are no book-length biographies of Negri in English, the film Antonio Negri: A Re­ volt That Never Ends, directed by Alexandra Weltz and Andreas Pichler (2005), follows Negri’s career as an activist and theorist from his early involve­ ment in Potere Operaio to his April 200 3 release from prison. Biographical information can also be found in the translators’ prefaces to Marx beyond Marx as well as in two encyclopedia articles on Ne­ gri by Timothy S. Murphy: one in the Edinburgh Dictionary o f Continental Philosophy (ed. John Protevi, 2005) and the other in the Encyclopedia o f

Literature and Politics: Censorship, Revolution, and Writing (ed. M. Keith Booker, 2005). In connection with Negri’s arrest, trial, and imprisonment, see Murphy’s editor’s introduction to Books fo r Burn­ ing; Rowan Wilson, “Inside the Radiant City,” The Philosophers’ Magazine (autumn 1999) and several of the essays included in Autonomia: Post-Political Politics, edited by Sylvfere Lotringer and Chris­ tian Marazzi (2d ed., 2007). Interview collections include Negri on Negri, with Anne Dufourmantelle (2004; trans. 2004), and Goodbye Mr. Socialism, edited by R af Valvola Scelsi (2 0 0 6 ; trails. 2008). There is currently little biographical information available on Hardt, although in an interview with Caleb Smith and Enrico Minardi published in the Minnesota Review, nos. 6 1 -6 2 (2004), he describes his entry into political thought via his work on al­ ternative energy as an engineering student. The 2 0 0 0 publication of Empire prompted nu­ merous critical responses. A “dossier” on Em pire that constitutes a special issue of Rethinking Marxism, edited by Abdul-Karim Mustapha and Biilent Eken ( 1 3 .3 - 4 [2001]); Debating Empire, edited by Gopal Balakrishnan (2003); and Em pire’s New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri, edited by Paul A. Passavant and Jodi Dean (2004), offer col­ lections of responses to Empire, ranging from Saskia Sassen’s sympathetic interpretation in Em ­ pire’s New Clothes to Malcolm Bull’s hostile rebut­ tals in all volumes. Atilio A. Boron’s Empire and

Imperialism: A Critical Reading o f M ichael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2005) mounts an “empirical refutation” of Hardt and Negri’s postnationalist ac­ count of globalization, citing as counterexamples the actions undertaken during the administra­ tion of George W. Bush, including the U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Timothy S. Murphy’s Antonio Negri: Modernity and the Multitude (2012) provides a com prehen­ sive overview of N egri’s theoretical and political work. Another excellent secondary source on Ne­ gri is the two-volume T he Philosophy o f Antonio Negri, edited by Timothy S. Murphy and Abdul-

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Karim M ustapha (2 0 0 5 - 0 7 ) , which also contains a very useful, but not exhaustive, bibliography of

Eagleton observes Harvey’s tendency toward largescale abstractions. John Paul Jones’s David Harvey:

N egri’s work. T he bibliography in N egri’s Time fo r Revolution is more scant, but still useful.

Live Theory (2004) is a cursory overview. For the

There are no detailed bibliographies of Hardt’s work in print.

D a v id H a rv e y A fter his first book, E xplanation in Geography (1969), which deals with methodological debates among geographers, David Harvey more directly confronted social issues and engaged with M arx­ ism, particularly in relation to the city, in S ocial Ju stice and the City (1973; rev. ed., 2 0 0 9 ), Limits to C apital (1 9 8 2 ; new ed., 2 0 0 6 ), and the paired volumes T he Urbanization o f C apital: Studies in

the History an d T heory o f Capitalist Urbanization (1985) and C onsciousness and the Urban E xperi­ en ce: Studies in the History and Theory o f Urban­ ization (1985), which were together abridged as T he Urban E xperien ce (1989). Through the 1990s he addressed postmodernism and cultural difference, while continuing his revision of M arx­ ism, in T he C ondition o f Postmodernity: An E n­ quiry into the Origins o f Cultural C hange (1989),

Ju stice, Nature, and the Geography o f D ifference (1996), S paces o f H ope (2 0 0 0 ), Spaces o f C apital: Towards a C ritical Geography (2001), and Paris: C apital o f M odernity (2003). Beginning in the 2 0 0 0 s , Harvey turned toward analyzing contemporary imperialism and neolib­ eralism rather than postmodernism in T he New Imperialism (2003), A B rief History o f N eoliberal­ ism (2 0 0 5 ), Spaces o f G lobal Capitalism : Towards

a Theory o f Uneven G eographical D evelopm ent (20 0 6 ), C osm opolitanism and the G eographies o f Freedom (2 0 0 9 ), T he Enigma o f C apital: And the Crises o f Capitalism (2010), R ebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (2012), and The Ways o f the World (2016). He also pub­ lished a sequence of exegeses of Marx: A C om pan­ ion to Marx's “C apital” (2010), A C om panion to Marx’s “C apital,” Volume 2 (2013), and Seventeen Contradictions and the End o f Capitalism (2014). For an overview of his career in his own words, see “Reinventing Geography,” an interview con ­ ducted by the editors of New L eft Review, n.s. 4 (2 0 0 0 ), and “T h e Geography o f A ccum ulation: An Interview with David Harvey,” conducted by Jeffrey J. W illiam s, M innesota Review, n.s. 69 (2007). John L. Paterson’s David Harvey’s Geography (1984) is an early account of Harvey’s adoption of M arxist m ethods. T h e cultural studies scholar M eaghan M orris analyzes Harvey’s assum ptions about cu ltu re’s reflection of m aterial conditions in “T he M an in the M irror: David Harvey’s ‘C on­ dition’ of Postm odernity,” Theory, Culture and Society 9.1 (1992). Derek Gregory’s G eographical

best overview of Harvey’s work, provided by thir­ teen contributors, see David Harvey: A Critical Reader, edited by Noel Castree and Derek Gregory (2006). Loi'c W acquant offers a pointed criticism of Harvey, noting that his account of neoliberalism focuses on economic factors but misses the huge neoliberal expansion of prisons, in “C rafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity,” Sociological Forum 25 (2010). Jam ie Peck, Constructions o f Neoliberal Reason (2010), draws on Harvey in surveying neoliberalism. C as­ tree and Gregory’s David Harvey includes a com ­ plete list of Harvey’s publications up to 2 0 0 6 .

F r i e d r i c h A. H a y e k Hayek’s major works are Prices and Production (1931; 2d ed., 1935), Profits, Interest, and Invest­

ment, and Other Essays on the Theory o f Industrial Fluctuations (1939), The Pure Theory o f Capital (1941), The Road to Serfdom (1944), Individualism and Econom ic Order (1948), Joh n Stuart Mill and H arriet Taylor: T h eir C orrespon den ce and Su bse­ quent Marriage (1951), The Sensory Order: An In­ quiry into the Foundations o f Theoretical Psychology (1952), T h e C ounter-R evolution o f S cien ce: Stud­ ies on the Abuse o f Reason (1952; 2d ed., 1979), The Constitution o f Liberty (1960), Studies in Philoso­ phy, Politics, and Economics (1967), The Mirage o f Social Justice (1976), New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History o f Ideas (1978), T he Political Order o f a Free People (1979), and Knowledge, Evolution and Society (1983). T he Col­ lected Works o f F. A. Hayek, being published by the University of Chicago Press in nineteen volumes (1988—), will contain all the major works as well as occasional essays, reviews, and interviews, and stands as the definitive scholarly edition. Edited transcripts of a series of interviews with Hayek about his life and work are published under the title Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue, ed­ ited by Stephen Kresge and L eif W enar (1994). Bruce Caldwell’s Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual

Biography ofF . A. Hayek (2004) is not only the best

Harvey’s project to that point. In “Spaced O u t,”

biography but also the best overall account of his ideas. Two excellent shorter introductions are G. R. Steele’s T he Economics o f Friedrich Hayek (1993; 2d ed., 2 007) and A. J. Tebble’s F. A. Hayek (2010). Andrew Gamble’s Hayek: The Iron Cage o f Liberty (1996) and John Gray’s Hayek on Liberty (1984; 3d ed., 1998)— the first c ritica l, the second sympathetic— evaluate Hayek’s arguments about the conditions required to secure liberty in any po­ litical and economic order. M ichel Foucault’s dis­ cussion of Hayek in The Birth o f Biopolitics: L ec­ tures at the College de France, 1978—1979 (2008) has greatly influenced literary theorists’ understanding o f neoliberalism . F riedrich A. Hayek: C ritical As­

London R eview o f B ooks, April 24, 1997, Terry

sessments o f C ontem porary Econom ists, S econ d

Im aginations (1994) offers a good synopsis of

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Series, edited by John C. Wood and Robert D. Wood (4 vols., 2004), offers a comprehensive over­ view of responses to Hayek’s work. The Road fro m Mont Pelerin: The Making o f the Neoliberal Thought Collective, edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (2009), is an indispensable (albeit hostile) history of the development of neoliberal thought and its rise to political influence. The Cambridge Companion to Hayek, edited by Edward Feser (2006), provides superb introductory essays on all facets of Hayek’s work and influence as well as a good working bibliography.

N. K a t h e r i n e H a y les In her first book, The Cosm ic Web: S cien tific F ield M odels and Literary Strategies in the Twen­ tieth Century (1984), Hayles argues that early tw entieth-century “field theory” introduces a dy­ nam ic and integrated perspective on reality that con stitutes a paradigm shift in science, philoso­ phy, and literature. A sequel and com plem ent to her first book, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contem porary Literature and S cien ce (1990) shows how contem porary scien tific chaos theory offers a cultural m atrix that can be shared by sci­ ence and literature, treating chaos not as simply m eaningless disorder but as a productive m eans o f generating higher orders of inform ation and complexity. How We B ecam e Posthuman: Virtual

Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Inform atics (1999) exam ines the fate of human em bodim ent in a world increasingly dominated by inform ation technology. Hayles here investigates three relat­ ed aspects o f the inform ation age: the story of how inform ation lost its body, the development of the cultural icon o f the cyborg, and the em er­ gence o f posthum an identities. In Writing M a­ ch in es (2 0 0 2 ), whose page layouts som etim es resem ble com puter screens and ab stract infor­ mation patterns, Hayles playfully and creatively illustrates her notion of “flickering signifiers.” Focusing on the complex ways in which various form s o f media interpenetrate, she insists on the m ateriality of different kinds of literary artifacts such as hyperfiction, the a rtist’s book, and the traditional novel. My M other Was a C om puter: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (20 0 5 ) offers new ways of understanding the relationships b e ­ tween language and code. It investigates pro­ cesses o f interm ediation through which tradi­ tional cultural practices interact with digital media. Hayles’s E lectronic Literature: New H ori­ zons fo r the Literary (2 0 0 8 ) provides a system atic survey of the field of electronic literature, isolat­ ing m ajor genres and central theoretical issues pertaining to networked and programmable m e­ dia. It is accom panied by a CD featuring volume 1 o f the E lectron ic Literature C ollection , c o ­ edited by Hayles with Nick M ontfort, Sco tt Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland; the collection of sixty works is intended for courses on contem po­ rary electronic literature. In How We T hin k:

Digital M edia and C on tem porary T ech n og en e­ sis (2012), Hayles argues that contem porary technogenesis— the idea that hum ans and tech ­ nics are coevolving— is changing the ways we think about academ ic research, teaching, and publication. Tracing the neurological implica­ tions of working in digital media, she investigates the lim itations and possibilities o f new forms of analysis such as “hyperreading” and reading through m achine algorithm s. M indful that the vast amount of digital material she had developed far exceeds the scope of her printed books, Hayles has made this voluminous m aterial available on her website (http://nkhayles.com) and in How We T hink: A Digital C om panion (http://howwethink .nkhayles.com, 2013), which enables readers to put into p ractice new forms o f reading and draw their own conclusions. In her Unthought: T he Power o f the Cognitive N onconscious (2017), Hayles redefines cognition to include not only processes inaccessible to consciousness but also m echanisms governing other forms of life such as unicellular organisms and plants, in addition to human tech nical assemblages: for example, ur­ ban traffic control systems and the trading algo­ rithms of financial markets. W orking at the inter­ sections of neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive biology, and literature, Hayles traces the dynamics of what she calls a “planetary cogni­ tive ecology,” while arguing for a broader and more thorough understanding of the role humans might play in making the environm ent more sus­ tainable for all forms of life. In addition to her own books, Hayles has edited the essay collec­ tion Chaos and Order: C om plex Dynam ics in Lit­ erature and S cien ce (1991); guest edited Techno­ criticism and Hypernarrative (1997), a special issue of M odern Fiction Studies (43.3); and edited both Nanoculture: Im plications o f the New T ech­ n oscien ce (2 0 0 4 ) and C om parative Textual Me­

dia: Transforming the Hum anities in the Postprint Era (2013). She has also published numerous ar­ ticles in books and journals on literatu re, com ­ puter culture, cyborg theory, and the history of technology. Notable assessments of Hayles’s work have come, for example, from literary critics concen­ trating on science fiction and on fem inist theory. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.’s “Till W e Have Inter­ faces,” Science Fiction Studies 26 (1999), offers a pointed review of How We B ecam e Posthuman . W hile praising Hayles as a sharp diagnostician of the social and cultural implications o f information technologies, Csicsery-Ronay observes that her theory of the posthuman ends in anxiety and un­ certainty, failing to indicate what comes after the demise of the liberal humanist subject. In “How We Think W hen We T hink about Science Fic­ tion,” S cien ce Fiction Studies 4 0 (2013), Pawel Prelik notes that Hayles’s How We T h in k does not offer a definitive conclusion about the complex effects or the future of technogenesis; he also

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points out that this very open-endedness may prove to be especially promising for the rethink­ ing of the relationship within science fiction studies between human and m achine. In “How We T hink about Technology (W ithout Thinking about Politics),” the b20 review, November 4, 2015, R. Joshua Scannell faults Hayles for failing to fully engage with the social and political ram i­ fications of her theory, including the hidden mo­ tivations of hyper and m achine reading in strengthening the corporate university and the large-scale troubling transform ation o f labor in

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Lectures on the Philosophy o f World History, edited by H. B. Nisbet (1975); Phenom enology o f Spirit, translated by A. V. M iller (1977); and Lectures on the History o f Philosophy, edited by Robert Brown (3 vols., 1990). T he Hegel Reader, edited by S te­ phen Houlgate (1998), offers selections covering the breadth of Hegel’s interests. The best biogra­ phy is Terry Pinkard’s Hegel: A Biography (2000). T he secondary literature on Hegel is immense; thus the following bibliography is extremely selec­ tive. Jean Hyppolite’s G enesis and Structure o f H egel’s “P henom enology o f S p irit” (1946; trans.

postindustrial capitalism .

1974) and Alexandre Kojeve’s Introduction to the Reading o f Hegel (1947; trans. 1969) are two

D ic k H e b d ig e

French works that shaped the existentialist and poststructuralist understandings of Hegel. T he single best, and most influential, overview rem ains Charles Taylor’s Hegel (1975), which also comes in a slimmer, more reader-friendly version titled Hegel and M odern Society (1979). G. W. F. Hegel: Key Concepts, edited by M ichael Baur (2015), and Stephen Houlgate, H egel’s “P hen om e­ nology o f Spirit”: A R eader’s G uide (2013), along with T he Cam bridge C om panion to Hegel and N ineteenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Freder­ ick C. Beiser (20 0 8 ), are recommended for those com ing to Hegel for the first tim e. Jacques D erri­ da’s Glas (1981; trans. 1986) is the most impor­ tant of many poststructuralist encounters with Hegel. Judith Butler’s Subjects o f Desire: Hegelian R eflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987), Slavoj Z iie k ’s Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow o f D ialectical M aterialism (2012), and Andrew C ole’s T he Birth o f Theory (2014) all dis­ play H egel’s presence in contemporary theory. T h e theme of “recognition” has been the subject o f much debate; major contributions to the dis­ cussion include Patchen P. M arkell’s Bound by

Hebdige’s books are Subculture: The Meaning o f Style (1979), Cut ’« ’ Mix: Culture, Identity, and C a­ ribbean Music (1987), and Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things (1988). In a series of essays responding to and growing out of Hebdige’s work, Angela McRobbie, a leading figure of British cultural studies, has questioned the male focus of the subcultures Hebdige de­ scribes and has pondered the political effectiveness of subcultural resistance. See her “Settling Ac­ counts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique,” Screen Education 34 (1980); “Postmodernism and Popular Culture,” Journal o f Comm unication In­ quiry 10 (1986); and “New Times in Cultural Stud­ ies,” New Formations 13 (1991). Further reactions to Hebdige’s work can be found in Anne Beezer’s “Dick Hebdige, Subculture: T he Meaning o f Style,” in Reading into Cultural Studies (ed. Martin Barker and Anne Beezer, 1992); Vincent B. Leitch, Cul­

tural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism (1992); and Neil Nehring, Flowers in the Dustbin: Culture, Anarchy, and Postwar England (1993). Two excellent overviews of the history and theoretical outlook of cultural studies that discuss Hebdige’s work are Simon During’s Cultural Studies: A Criti­ cal Introduction (2005) and Chris Rojek’s Cidtural Studies (2007). Hebdige offers his reflections on Subculture and its impact in an interview, “Dick Hebdige: Unplugged and Greased Back,” by Tim o­ thy Dugdale, Post Identity 4.1 (2004), and an arti­ cle, “Contemporizing ‘Subculture’: 30 Years to Life,” European Journal o f Cultural Studies 15 (2012). Hebdige also contributed the essay “The W orldliness of Cultural Studies” to the im portant symposium on cultural studies published in the journal Cultural Studies 29 (2015).

G eorg W ilh elm F r ie d r ic h H egel Edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus M i­ chel, Hegel’s W erke (22 vols., 1969—72) is a com ­ plete German edition of his writings. Most of his work has been translated into English, though there is no standard scholarly edition of the com ­ plete works. O f special relevance to students of lit­ erature are P hilosophy o f Right, translated by T. M. Knox (1942); H egel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, translated by T. M. Knox (2 vols., 1975);

R ecognition: T he Politics o f Identity after Hegel (2003), Paul Ricoeur’s The Course o f Recognition (2005), and Axel H onneth’s T he I in We: Studies in the Theory o f Recognition (2012). T hree excel­ lent books that address H egel’s aesthetics are Alan Speight’s Hegel, Literature, and the Problem o f Agency (2001), Theodore D. George’s Tragedies

o f Spirit: Tracing Finitude in Hegel's “P hen om e­ nology” (2 0 0 6 ), and Hegel and the Arts, edited by Stephen Houlgate (2007). Kurt Steinh auser’s massive German/English

Hegel B ibliographie (1980, 1998) covers almost all the secondary literature from 1802 to the end o f the twentieth century. A more manageable and recent bibliography, arranged by topic, can be found in T h e C am bridge C om pan ion to Hegel

and N ineteenth-C entury Philosophy. M a r tin H e id e g g e r The standard edition of Heidegger’s collected w'orks in Germ an is the Gesamtausgabe (1976—), which is projected to reach 102 volumes. About a dozen remain unpublished. An introductory col­ lection of texts in English is available in Basic

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Writings: Front “Being and T im e” (1927) to “T he Task o f T hin kin g” (1964), translated by various hands and edited by David Farrell Krell (rev. and expanded, 2 0 0 8 ). English versions of Heidegger’s writings bearing directly on his understanding of poetry and language are available in Existence and Being, edited by W erner Brock and translated by Douglas S co tt (1949); Poetry, Language, Thought, edited and translated by Albert Hofstadter (1971); and On the Way to Language, translated by Peter D. Hertz and Joan Stambaugh (1971). Philosophical texts translated into E n ­ glish (with the date of Germ an publication given first) include W hat Is Philosophy? (1956; 1956); An Introduction to M etaphysics, translated first by Ralph M anheim (1953; 1959), and then (as Introduction to M etaphysics) by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (2 0 0 0 ); Being an d Tim e, trans­ lated first by John M acquarrie and Edward Rob­ inson (1927; 1962), and then by Jo a n Stam baugh (1996); W hat Is a Thing? (1962; 1967); Identity and D ifference (1957; 1969); On T im e and Being (1969; 1972); T he Q uestion C oncerning T echn ol­ ogy and O ther Essays, translated by W illiam Lovitt (1977); N ietzsche (2 vols., 1961; 4 vols., 1 9 7 9 -8 7 ); History o f the C on cept o f Tim e: P role­ gom en a (1979; 1985); H egel’s P hen om en ology o f Spirit (1 9 8 0 ; 1988); Kant an d th e Problem o f M etaphysics (1929; 1990); T h e C on cep t o f Tim e (1992; 1992); B asic C on cepts (1981; 1993); T he

Fundam ental C oncepts o f M etaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (1983; 1995); Pathmarks (1967; 1998); Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning [a term that translates Ereignis, “appropria­ tion ”] (1 9 8 9 ; 1999); Towards the D efinition o f Philosophy (1987; 2 0 0 0 ); Supplem ents: From the Earliest Essays to “Being and Tim e” and Beyond, ed­ ited by John van Buren (2002); Four Seminars (1977; 2003); Mindfulness (1997; 2006); Hegel (2015), which collects an array of Heidegger’s inter­ pretations of Hegel’s writings; and Heidegger’s longrunning intellectual diary Schwarze H efte, edited by Peter Tawny (2014, Black Notebooks), which has been translated as Ponderings II—VI: 1931—38 (2016), Ponderings VII-XI: 1938-39 (2017), and Ponderings XII—XV: 1939-41 (2017). A translation of Heidegger’s interview on his Nazi past, “Only a God Can Save Us Now,” can be found in the journal

Philosophy Today 20 (winter 1976). For biographical sources, see Hugo O tt’s Martin Heidegger: A Politi­ cal Life (1993); Rudiger Safranski’s Martin Hei­ degger: Between Good and Evil (1994; trans. 1998); and Jam es K. Lyon’s Paul Celan and Martin Hei­ degger: An Unresolved Conversation, 1951—1970 (2006), which draws on documentary material to offer the first systematic analysis of the troubled and unfinished relationship between the two. For general introductions, see George Steiner’s Martin Heidegger (2d ed., 1991); M ichael Inwood’s Heidegger (1997); Heidegger Reexam ined, edited by Hubert Dreyfus and Mark W rathall (4 vols., 2002); The Cambridge Com panion to Heidegger,

edited by Charles B. Guignon (2d ed., 2006); and John Richardson’s H eidegger (2012). Among the important studies and applications of Heidegger’s views on language and poetry are On H eidegger and Language, edited by Joseph J. Kockelmans (1972); David A. W hite, H eidegger an d the L an ­ guage o f Poetry (1978); M artin H eidegger and the

Question o f Literature: Toward a Postm odern L it­ erary H erm eneutics, edited by W illiam V. Spanos (1979); Paul A. Bove, Destructive Poetics: Heidegger and M odern A m erican Poetry (1980); Da­ vid H alliburton, Poetic Thinking: An A pproach to H eidegger (1981); Joseph Kockelm ans, H eidegger on Art and Art Works (1985); Gerald L. Bruns, H eidegger’s Estrangements: Language, Truth, and Poetry in the L ater Writings (1989); H ans-G eorg Gadam er, H eidegger’s Ways (1983; trans. 1994); M arc From ent-M eurice, T hat Is to Say: H ei­ degger’s Poetics (1996; trans. 1998); Philippe L aco u e-L ab arth e, H eidegger and the Politics o f Poetry (2 0 0 2 ; trans. 2 0 0 7 ); Je n n ife r Anna G o setti-F eren cei, Heidegger, H olderin, and the Subject o f Poetic Language: Toward a New Poetics ofD asein (2004); Mark A. W rathall, Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History (2010); and Richard Capobianco, Heidegger’s Way o f Being (2015), which develops a well-informed rebuttal of antirealist interpretations of Hei­ degger’s thought that reduce his concept o f “being” to “human meaning-making.” On Heidegger and the Nazi question, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Politi­ cal Ontology o f Martin Heidegger (1975; trans. 1991); Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism (1987; trans. 1990); Jacques Derrida, O f Spirit: Heidegger and the Question (1987; trans. 1990); Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction o f the Political (1987; trans. 1990); JeanFran£ois Lyotard, Heidegger and “the Jews" (1988; trans. 1990); The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, edited by Richard Wolin (1992); Fred Dallmayr, T he Other Heidegger (1993); Hans D. Sluga,

Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (1993); Julian Young, Heidegger, Philoso­ phy, Nazism (1997); Miguel de B eisteg u i, Heidegger & the Political: Dystopias (1998); Jam es Phillips, Heidegger’s Volk: Between National So­ cialism and Poetry (2005); Peter Trawny, Heidegger and the Myth o f A Jew ish World Conspiracy (2014; trans. 2015), which draws on Heidegger’s B lack Notebooks to argue that anti-Sem itism plays an in­ tegral role in Heidegger’s philosophy of history; and Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Banality o f Heidegger (2015; trans. 2017), which criticizes Heidegger and broadly argues anti-Sem itism is Western selfhatred. For bibliographies, see H ans-M artin Sass,

Martin

Heidegger:

Bibliography

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Glossary

(1982); Joan Nordquist, Martin Heidegger: A Bibli­ ography (1990) and Martin Heidegger (II): A Bibli­ ography (1996); Miles Groth, The Voice That

Thinks: Heidegger Studies with a Bibliography o f English Translations, 1949—1996 (1997); and The Cambridge Com panion to Heidegger, cited above.

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D a v id H e rm a n David Herman has published numerous articles, chapters, review essays, and reviews, as well as five books and nine edited volumes in the areas of narrative theory, modern and postmodern fiction, and storytelling across media. His books are Uni­ versal G ram m ar and Narrative Form (1995); Story

Logic: Problem s and Possibilities o f Narrative (2002); Basic E lem ents o f Narrative (20 0 9 ); with Jam es Phelan, Peter J. Rabinow itz, Brian R ich ­ ardson, and Robyn W arhol, Narrative Theory: C ore C on cepts and D ebate (2010); and S torytell­ ing and the S cien ces o f M ind (2013). He has ed­ ited or co-ed ited N arratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis (1999); N arrative T heory and Cognitive S cien ces (2 0 0 3 ); with M anfred Jah n and M arie-Laure Ryan, Routledge E ncyclo­ pedia o f Narrative Theory (2 0 0 5 ); T h e C am bridge C om panion to Narrative (2 0 0 7 ); M uriel Spark: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives (2010); with Brian M cH ale and Jam es Phelan, Teaching Nar­ rative T heory (2010); T he E m ergence o f Mind:

R epresentations o f Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English (2011); Creatural Fictions: H um an-Anim al Relationships in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature (2016); and A ni­ m al C om ics: M ultispecies Storyworlds in G raphic Narratives (2017). For particularly inform ative interview s with H erm an, see Shang Biw u’s, http://cf.hum/uva.nl/narratology/all_an_interview _with_david_hcrm an.htm (2005), in which Her­ man discusses his use of postclassical narratology and storyworlds, and Barry M azur’s, http://thales andfriends.org/2007/07/22/interview-with-david -herman/ (20 0 7 ), which exam ines Herman’s “pan­ optic view of the field o f narratology” and analyzes the experimental mathematical approach that Her­ man uses in one o f his essays to create an interdis­ ciplinary discourse betw een m athem atics and narrative theory. While reviewers of Herman’s work sometimes complain about his use of technical vocabulary and his preference for theory, most critics praise his in­ terdisciplinary efforts, especially in bringing cogni­ tive theory to literary narratology. See, for example, Jan Baetens, who in his review of Herman’s Story­ telling and the Sciences o f Mind in Leonardo 47.5 (2014), deems the book an “important attempt to bridge the gap between several subdisciplinary ap­ proaches.” Along the way Baetens points out some key issues unaddressed by Herman, such as the role in narratives of implied readers and implied au­ thors as well as authorial intentions.

b e ll h o o k s hooks’s early critical writing, mainly essay collec­ tions, include, on feminist theory, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), Feminist T h e­ ory: From Margin to Center (1984; 2d ed., 2 000),

Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking B lack (1989), and Sisters o f the Yam: B lack W omen and Self-Recovery (1993); on race, Breaking Bread:

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Insurgent B lack Intellectual Life (with Cornel W est, 1991), B lack Looks: Race and Representation (1992), Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995), and Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice (2012); on teaching, Teaching to Transgress: Educa­ tion as the Practice o f Freedom (1994) and Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2010); on film, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Mov­ ies (1996); and on cultural studies, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990), Outlaw Cul­ ture: Resisting Representation (1994), Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995), and Belonging: A Culture o f P lace (2009). Her memoirs— Bone Black: M emories o f Girlhood (1996), Wounds o f Passion: A Writing Life (1997), and Remembering Rapture: The Writer at Work (1999)— are good sources of information on her life, hooks’s most re­ cent works include Feminism Is fo r Everybody: Pas­ sionate Politics (2000), Where We Stand: Class Mat­ ters (2000), All About Love: New Versions (2001), Salvation: B lack People and Love (2001), Commu­ nion: The Fem ale Search fo r Love (2002), Teaching Community: A Pedagogy o f H ope (2003), Rock My Soul: B lack People and Self-esteem (2003), The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), We Real Cool: B lack Men and Masculinity (2004), Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism, with Amalia M esa-Bains (2006), and Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue (2017), with Stuart Hall. She has also written three books of poetry, And There We Wept: Poems (1978), W hen Angels Speak o f Love: Poems (2007), and Appalachian Elegy: Po­ etry and Place (2012), plus five children’s books. For a biographical sketch, see the entry by O ndine E. Le Blanc and Margaret L. Moser in Contemporary B lack Biography, vol. 90 (2011). A number of critical articles on hooks have ap­ peared. O f most interest to students of literary criticism are Cassie Premo, “W hen the Difference Becomes Too Great: Images of the S e lf and Sur­ vival in a Postmodern World,” Genre 28 (1995); Clive Thom son, “Culture, Identity, and Dialogue: bell hooks and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,” in Dialogism and Cultural Criticism (ed. Thomson and Hans Raj Dau, 1995); and Marilyn Edelstein, “Resisting Postmodernism; or, ‘A Postmodernism of R esistance’: bell hooks and the Theory Debates,” in Other Sisterhoods: Literary Theory and U.S.

Women o f Color (ed. Sandra Kumamoto Stanley, 1998). hooks’s essays about teaching have also been of interest to critics, including Gary Olson and Elizabeth Hirsh, “Feminist Praxis and the Politics of Literacy: A Conversation with bell hooks,” in W omen Writing Culture (ed. Olson and Hirsch, 1995); Namulundah Florence, bell hooks’

Engaged Pedagogy: A Transgressive Education fo r Critical Consciousness (1998); and Linda StrongLeek, “bell hooks, Carter G. Woodson, and African American Education,” Journal o f B lack Studies 38 (2008). Recent books on hooks’s cultural criti­ cism include C ritical Perspectives on bell hooks, edited by M aria del Guadalupe Davidson and

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George Yancy (20 0 9 ), and C atherine R. Squires,

bell hooks: A C ritical Introduction to M edia and C om m unication Theory (2013). Sut Jhally features hooks in his docum entary film bell hooks: C ul­ tural C riticism and Transform ation (1997). Bibli­ ographical information on hooks may be found in Genevieve Fabre’s “Selected Bibliography of Essays on Black Women and Black Feminist Criticism ,” Revue Frangaise d ’Etudes Americaines 24 (1986), as well as in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Studies’ Bibliographic G uide to B lack Studies (2003).

H o ra c e T he complete Latin works of Horace are collected in Q. Horati Flacci Opera, edited by D. R. Shackleton Bailey (4th ed., 2001). The standard Latin edi­ tion of the Ars Poetica with English commentary can be found in Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones, edited by Niall Rudd (1989). This text also includes the important “Epistle to Augustus” and the “Epistle to Florus.” T he C om plete Works o f Horace, edited by Charles E. Passage (1983), offers an English translation of Horace’s collected poet­ ry, including the Ars Poetica. There are a number of very accessible prose translations of Ars Poetica : D. A. Russell’s in Ancient Literary Criticism (1972); Leon Golden’s in O. B. Hardison and Leon Gold­ en’s Horace fo r Students o f Literature: T he "Ars Po­ etica’’ and Its Tradition (1995), which also includes a series of documents that demonstrate the influ­ ence of Horace’s epistle throughout the history of Western literary criticism ; and Ross S. Kilpatrick’s eminently readable translation in The Poetry o f

Criticism: Horace, Epistles II and the Ars Poetica (1990), which we use here. A Latin Life o f Horace exists; it is attributed to the Roman historian Sue­ tonius (ca. 6 9 —140 C .E .) . For an English biography, see Peter Levi’s Horace: A Life (1997). D. A. Russell’s essay on the Ars Poetica in H or­ ace (ed. C. D. N. Costa, 1973) provides a useful and brief introduction to the poem. It is reprinted in A ncient Literary Criticism (ed. Andrew Laird, 2 0 0 6 ). S. J. H arrison’s H orace (2014) is also indis­ pensable for the beginning student of Horace. C harles O. B rin k ’s m onum ental three-volum e study, Horace on Poetry (1 9 6 3 -8 2 ), is the standard text for advanced study of Horace’s critical princi­ ples; it includes texts and com mentaries on the Ars Poetica, the “Epistle to Augustus,” and the “Epistle to Florus.” Ross Kilpatrick, in T he Poetry o f Criti­ cism (see above), examines the relationships be­ tween Horace’s epistles on poetry, providing an account of the major themes of the Ars Poetica. Bernard Frischer, in Shifting Paradigms: New Ap­ proaches to H orace’s ‘Ars Poetica" (1991), presents a detailed statistical analysis of the epistle’s many controversies. Several collections of essays on Hor­ ace offer introductions to the life and works of Horace, as well as specific chapters on Ars Poetica-, these include essays by Andrew Laird in The C am ­ bridge Com panion to Horace, edited by S. J. H arri­

son (2007); by Ellen Oliensis in Horace, Satires and Epistles, edited by Kirk Freudenburg (2009); by W. R. Johnson and Leon Golden in A Companion to Horace, edited by Gregson Davis (2010); and by To­ bias Reinhardt in Brill’s Companion to Horace, ed­ ited by Hans-Christian Gunther (2013). Ellen Oliensis’s Horace and the Rhetoric o f Authority (1998) includes a chapter on self-fashioning in the Ars Po­ etica, which is reprinted in Freudenburg’s collec­ tion. In H orace’s Iam bic Criticism: Casting Blame (Iam bike Poiesis) (2012), Timothy S. Johnson offers a more advanced examination of Horace’s use and criticism of iambic meter in his literary practice. Volume 3 of B rin k’s H orace on Poetry (cited above) contains an extensive bibliography of pri­ mary and secondary sources on H orace’s literary criticism . H orace by S. J. Harrison (cited above) offers a com plete survey of the scholarly litera­ ture on Horace since 1957.

M ax H o r k h e it n e r a n d T h e o d o r W. A d o r n o T he authoritative German edition of Adorno’s col­ lected works is the twenty-one-volume Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Rolf Tiedemann with Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-M orss, and Klaus Schultz (1 9 7 0 -8 6 ). English translations of Adorno’s writ­ ings on music theory, history, and criticism (with their original publication date given first) include Philosophy o f M odern Music (1949; 1973 and 2 0 0 6 [two trans.]), Introduction to the Sociology o f Music (1962; 1976), In Search o f Wagner (1952; 1981), Alban Berg: M aster o f the Smallest Link (1968; 1991), M ahler: A M usical Physiognomy (1960; 1992), Quasi Una Fantasia: Essays on M od­ ern M usic (1963; 1992), Com posing fo r the Films (1994), Sound Figures (1959; 1998), B eethoven: T h e Philosophy o f Music (1993; 1998), Towards a

Theory o f Musical Reproduction: Notes, a Draft and Two Schem ata (2001; 2006), and Current o f Music: Elem ents o f a Radio Theory (2 0 0 6 ; 2 0 0 9 ). A sub­ stantial number of English translations o f Ador­ no’s sociological writings are readily available, including Prisms (1955; 1967), Dialectic o f Enlight­ enm ent (1947; 1972 and 2002), Aspects o f Sociology (1956; 1972), Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (1951; 1974), The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (1976), Culture Industry: Se­ lected Essays on Mass Culture (1991), Stars C om e

Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational (1994), and Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (1 9 6 3 -6 9 ; 1998). Translations into English of works focusing on philosophy, aesthet­ ics, and literature include The Jargon o f Authentic­ ity (1964; 1973), Negative D ialectics (1966; 1973), Against Epistem ology (1956; 1982), K ierkegaard: Construction o f the A esthetic (1933; 1989), Notes to Literature (4 vols., 1958-74; 2 vols., 1991), Hegel: Three Studies (1963; 1993), Aesthetic Theory (1970; 1984 and 1997), Problems o f Moral Philosophy (1963; 2000), Kant’s “Critique o f Pure Reason” ( 1959; 2001), Metaphysics: Concept and Problems (1965; 2000),

Can One Live A fter Auschwitz? A Philosophical

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R eader (1997; 2 0 0 3 ), and A esthetics: 19 58/59 (2017). S ee also T he A uthoritarian Personality (1950), by Adorno and others. For a selection, see

T he A dorno Reader, edited by Brian O ’Connor (2000). English translations of Adorno’s letters in­ clude Adorno and Alban Berg, Correspondence, 1925-1935 (2006), and Letters to His Parents, 19391951 (2006). A selection of Adorno’s writings on his dreams, spanning the last twenty-five years of his life, appears in Dream Notes (2 0 0 5 ; 20 0 7 ). For the best introductory biography, see Martin Jay’s Ador­ no (1984). More recent ones include Stefan MiillerDoohm’s Adorno: A Biography (2 0 0 3 ; trans. 20 0 5 ), the most comprehensive account of Adorno’s life and work; Lorenz Jager’s Adorno: A Political Biogra­ phy (2003; trans. 2004), which is the first attempt to evaluate Adorno’s philosophical and literary work in its political contexts; and Detlev Claussen’s Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius (2 0 0 3 ; trans. 2 0 0 8 ), providing the best biographical account of primary texts written by Adorno. The nineteen-volume Gesammelte Schriften of Horkheimer, edited by Alfred Schm idt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (19 8 5 -9 6 ), is the definitive Ger­ man edition of his work. The major English transla­ tions of his writings are Eclipse o f Reason (1947), Critical Theory: Selected Essays (1972), Critique o f

Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays Since the End o f World War II (1974), Dawn and Decline: Notes 1926-1931 and 1950-1969 (1974), and B e­ tween Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings (1993). For an English translation of Horkheimer’s letters, see A Life in Letters: Selected Cor­ respondence, edited and translated by Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson (2007). The most comprehensive intellectual biography of Hork­ heimer is John Abromeit’s Max H orkheim er and the Foundations o f the Frankfurt School (2011), which includes a thorough survey of relevant secondary literary as well as interpretive analyses of Horkheimer’s major works that are supplemented by in­ sights from Abromeit’s extensive archival research. For a discussion o f Adorno and H orkheim er’s early involvement with the Frankfurt School, see M artin Jay ’s D ialectical Im agination: A History o f

the Frankfurt School and the Institute o f Social Research, 1923-1950 (1973). Susan Buck-M orss’s Origin o f Negative Dialectics: T heodor W. Adorno, W alter B enjam in, and the Frankfurt Institute (1977) provides a historical account of the begin­ nings o f C ritical Theory. For useful studies of Adorno, H orkheim er, C ritical Theory, and the work o f the F ran k fu rt Sch ool as a whole, see David H eld’s Introduction to C ritical Theory: H orkheim er to H aberm as (1980); Foundations o f the Frankfurt S ch ool o f S ocial R esearch, edited by Judith M arcus and Zoltan Tar (1984); and S tu ­ art Je ffrie s ’s Grand H otel Abyss: T h e Lives o f the Frankfurt S chool (2016). Zoltan T ar’s critical analysis, T he Frankfurt S chool: T he C ritical T h e­

ories o f Max H orkheim er and T h eod or W. A dorno (1977; rev. ed., 2011), attem pts to understand

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Horkheimer and Adorno’s theories in light of their experience as Jew ish em igre in tellectu als co n ­ fronting fascism . Gillian Rose’s M elancholy S cien ce: An Introduc­ tion to the Thought o f T h eod or W. A dorno (1978) offers a wide-ranging study o f Adorno’s work. Fredric Jam eso n ’s controversial L ate Marxism: Adorno, or, the Persistence o f the D ialectic (1990) dem onstrates the relevance o f Adorno to post­ modern tim es. Peter Uwe H ohendahl’s Prismatic Thought: T h eo d o r W. A dorno (1995) provides a general overview, while D eborah C o o k ’s T he

Culture Industry Revisited: T heodor W. A dorno on Mass Culture (1996) gives a comprehensive study o f Adorno’s writings on the culture industry. More recent studies include Adorno: A Critical Reader, edited by Nigel Gibson and Andrew Rubin (2001); Robert W. W itkin, A dorno on P opu lar Culture (2 0 0 3 ); T h e C am bridge C om p an ion to A dorno, edited by Thom as Huhn (2 0 0 4 ); Adorno and Lit­ erature, edited by David Cunningham and Nigel Mapp (2006); Feminist Interpretations o f T heodor A dorno, edited by R enee H eberle (2 0 0 6 ); Berthold H oeckner, A pparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music (2006);

A dorno an d H eidegger: P hilosophical Q uestions, edited by Iain M acdonald and Krzysztof Ziarek (2008); and Brian O ’Connor’s highly accessible Adorno (2013). For a bibliography o f Horkheim er’s work, along with a critical overview, see On Max Horkheimer, edited by Seyla Benhabib et al. (1993). Bibliographical inform ation on Adorno is avail­ able in M uller-D oohm ’s biography and the C am ­ bridge C om panion, mentioned above.

L a n g s to n H u gh es Hughes published ten books of poetry, eight of fic­ tion, and twenty of nonfiction prose (several coau­ thored). His social and literary criticism appeared in A New Song (1938), Freedom's Plow (1943), Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), Laughing to Keep from Crying (1952), Black Misery (1969), and Good

Morning Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes, edited by Faith Berry (1973). His correspondence with the influential black writer and editor Arna Bontemps has been published in Arna Bontem ps-Langston Hughes Let­ ters, 1925-1967, edited by Charles H. Nichols (1980). A selection from all his work is available in T he Langston Hughes Reader (1958), and The Se­ lected Letters o f Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel (2015), covers his whole life, while Letters from Langston: From the

Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond, edited by Evelyn Louise Crawford and MaryLouise Patterson (2016), documents his political opinions and affiliations. Hughes also edited many works, among them the important literary anthologies The Poetry o f the Negro (1949), with Arna Bontemps; T he Book o f Negro Folklore (1958), with Arna Bon­ temps; New Negro Poets: USA (1964); and The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers (1967).

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Hughes wrote two autobiographies, T he Big Sea (1940) and I W onder as I Wander (1956). Two biog­ raphies are Faith Berry’s Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem (1983) and Arnold Rampersad’s authoritative two-volume Life o f Langston Hughes (1 9 8 6 -8 8 ). Critical studies that attend to Hughes’s nonpoetical works include W. Jason M ill­ er’s Langston Hughes and American Lynching Cul­ ture (2011), Vera M. Kutzinski’s The Worlds o f

and A. J. Ayer, Hume (1980). For more detailed discussions, see Norman Kemp Sm ith, T he Phi­

Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas (2012), and David E. Chinitz’s W hich Sin to Bear? Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes (2013). Three collections of essays are use­

(1986). On the em piricist tradition, see Jonathan Francis Bennett, L ocke, B erkeley, Hume: Central T hem es (1971). Recent studies include David Hume: H istorical T hinker, H istorical Writer, ed­ ited by M ark G. Spencer (2013), a very good col­ lection on Hume’s historical writings and their intersections with his work on philosophy and lit­ erature; Dennis C. Rasmussen, T he Pragmatic

ful for giving a sense of Hughes’s place in American letters and the range of responses to his w'ork: M on­

tage o f a Dream: T he Art and Life o f Langston Hughes, edited by John Edgar Tidwell and Cher­ yl R. Ragan (2007); Langston Hughes, edited by Harold Bloom (new ed., 2008); and Langston Hughes, edited by R. Baxter M iller (2013). This last volume is a particularly good place to start, and also has an excellent bibliography covering Hughes’s own works and the secondary literature on him.

D avid H um e For Hume’s writings, see T he Essays, M oral, Po­ litical, and Literary, edited by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (4 vols., 18 7 4 -7 5 ), and T he P hilosophi­ cal Works o f David Hum e, edited by T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (4 vols., 1 8 8 2 -8 6 ; rpt. 1964). Eu­ gene F. M iller has prepared a good modern edi­ tion of Hum e’s essays (rev. ed., 1987). For a onevolume collection, see T he Essential David H um e, edited by Robert Paul W olff (1969). Essays and Treatises on P hilosophical Subjects, edited by Lorne Falkenstein and Neil M cA rthur (2013), with detailed notes and contextual m aterials, is the first edition in over a century to present Hume’s Enquiry C oncerning Hum an Under­

standing, D issertation on the Passions, Enquiry C oncerning the Principles o f Morals, and Natural History o f Religion in the format he intended— collected together in a single volume. The corre­ spondence is available in T h e Letters o f David H um e, edited by J . Y. T. Greig (2 vols., 1932), and New Letters o f David Hume, edited by Raymond Klibansky and Ernest C. M ossner (1954). The standard biography is Ernest C. Mossner, T he Life o f David Hum e (2d ed., 1980). In Hume: An Intellectual Biography (2015), Jam es A. Harris fo­ cuses on Hum e’s intentions as a philosophical analyst of human nature, politics, com m erce, E n­ glish history, and religion; he also exam ines Hume’s intellectual relations with his contem po­ raries. Don G arrett’s H um e (2015) is a full ac­ count of the life and work, with an excellent chapter on the influence and legacy of Hume’s thought today. Introductions to Hume’s work include D. G. C. M acN abb, David Hume: His T heory o f K now l­ edge and Morality (2d ed., 1966); Terence Penelhum, Hume (1975); Barry Stroud, H um e (1977);

losophy o f David Hume: A C ritical Study o f Its Origins and Central D octrines (1966); Jam es Noxon, H um e’s P hilosophical D evelopm ent (1973); John Passmore, Hume's Intentions (3d ed., 1980); Donald W. Livingston, Hume's Phi­ losophy o f C om m on Life (1984); and Anthony Flew, David Hume, P hilosopher o f Moral S cien ce

Enlightenment: Recovering the Liberalism o f Hume, Smith, Montesquieu, and Voltaire (2014), on morality, reason, and eighteenth-century po­ litical theory; Thom as W. M errill, Hume and the Politics o f E nlightenm ent (2015); and Jacqueline Anne Taylor, R eflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympa­ thy, and Society in H um e’s Philosophy (2015), which deals with Hume’s social theory, focusing on the passions and imagination in relation to in­ stitutions such as government and the economy. On Hume as a literary critic and theorist, see Teddy Brunius, David Hume on Criticism (1952), and Jan W ilbanks, H u m e’s T heory o f Im agination (1968). Chapter 2 in Terry Eagleton, T he Ideology o f the A esthetic (1990), exam ining Hume, Shaft­ esbury, and Burke, is provocative. Hume has also received much attention as a literary artist in his own right; see Leo Braudy, Narrative Form in

History and Fiction: Hume, Fielding, and G ibbon (1970); John J. R ich etti, Philosophical Writing: L ocke, Berkeley, Hume (1983); Jerom e C h ris­ tensen, Practicing Enlightenm ent: Hume and the F orm ation o f a Literary C areer (1987); Leopold D am rosch, Fictions o f Reality in the Age o f Hume and Joh n son (1989); M. A. Box, T he Suasive Art o f David Hum e (1990); Adam Potkay, T he Fate o f E loqu en ce in the Age o f H ume (1994); and Adela P inch, Strange Fits o f Passion: E pistem ologies o f Em otion, Hum e to Austen (1996). On Hume’s work and the em piricist background of aesthetics in the eighteenth century, Dabney Townsend’s

H um e’s A esthetic Theory: Taste and Sentim ent (2001) is illuminating. The Continuum Companion to Hume, edited by Alan Bailey and Dan O ’Brien (2012), offers wide-ranging coverage and includes an essay by M. W. Rowe on “O f the Standard of T aste.” An excellent resource is T he C am bridge C om ­ pan ion to H um e, edited by David Norton and J a c ­ queline Taylor (2d ed., 20 0 8 ), which includes an essay by Peter Jones on Hume’s account of the arts and taste, plus a selected bibliography. See also T. E. Jessop, A Bibliography o f David Hume

and o f Scottish Philosophy fro m Frances H utcheson to Lord B alfou r (1938); Roland H all,

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A Hum e Bibliography, fro m 1930 liographical essay in Hum e and ment, edited by W illiam B. Todd land Hall, Fifty Years o f Hum e B ibliographical G u ide (1978).

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the Enlighten­ (1974); and Ro­

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Appell-struktur der Text (1970, The Affective Structure o f the Text), T he Im plied Reader: Pat­ terns o f C om m unication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to B eckett (1972; trans. 1974), and T he Act o f Reading: A Theory< o f Aesthetic Response (1976; trans. 1978). T hereafter, lser published two liter­

'Lora N e a le H u rsto n Hurston’s novels, stories, folklore, memoirs, and o ther writings are available from the Library of A m erica in two volumes edited by Cheryl A. W all, Novels and Stories and Folklore, Memoirs, and O ther Writings (1995). See also I Love Myself: A Zora N eale Hurston R eader, edited by A lice W alker (1979). Robert Hemenway’s Zora N eale Hurston (1977) is an indispensable biography that has done much to spark interest in H urston’s work. Lillie P. How­ ard’s Zora Neale Hurston (1980) is a concise sur­ vey of Hurston’s life and writings. In addition, Zora N eale Hurston: A Life in Letters, edited by C arla Kaplan (2 0 0 2 ), includes more than 6 0 0 letters that span nearly forty years of H urston’s life. Virginia Lynn Moylan’s Z ora N eale Hurston's Final D ecade (2011) recounts the w riter’s turbu­ lent last years. The best studies o f Hurston are Karla F. C. Holloway, The C haracter o f the Word: T he Texts o f Zora N eale Hurston (1987); Lynda M arion H ill, Social Rituals and the Verbal Art o f Zora N eale Hurston (1996); Susan Edwards M eisenhelder, Hitting a Straight L ick with a

C rooked Stick: R ace and G en d er in the Work o f Zora N eale Hurston (19 99); and T iffan y Ruby P atterson, Zora N eale Hurston and a History o f Southern Life (2005). Cheryl A. W all’s W omen o f the Harlem Renais­ sance (1995) places Hurston within a wider cul­ tural and literary context. On the relation of Hur­ ston’s work to contemporary literary theory and A frican American cultural and literary studies, see Barbara Johnson, A World o f D ifference (1987), and Henry Louis Gates Jr., T he Signifying

M onkey: A T heory o f A fro-A m erican Literary Criticism (1988). A helpful collection of essays is Zora N eale Hurston: Perspectives Past and Pres­ ent, edited by H enry Louis G ates Jr. and K. A. Appiah (1993). T h e docum entary Z ora N eale Hurston: Ju m p at the Sun (2 0 0 8 ), produced and w ritten by Kristy A ndersen, is inform ative and moving. For bibliography, see Adele S. Newson, Z ora N eale Hurston: A R eferen ce G u ide (1987); Rose Parkm an Davis, Z ora N eale Hurston: An

A nnotated Bibliography and R eferen ce G u ide (1997); and C ynthia Davis and Verner D. M itch ­ e ll’s Z ora N eale Hurston: An A nnotated B ibliogra­ phy o f Works and Criticism (2013).

W olfgan g ls e r Iser’s early works, Die W eltanschauung Henry Fieldings (1952, Henry Fielding’s Worldview) and Walter Pater: T he A esthetic M oment (1960; trans. 1987), are traditional scholarly studies. He first developed his views of reader response in Die

ary studies, Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy (1987; trans. 1988) and Staging Politics: T he Last­ ing Im pact o f S hakespeare’s Histories (1988; trans. 1993). In Prospecting: From R eader Response to Literary Anthropology (1989), T he Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (1991; trans. 1993), and T he Range o f Interpretation (2000), lser moved to develop “literary anthropol­ ogy,” exam ining why (rather than how) people read and exploring how fiction is a necessary hu­ man activity. lser also published an introductory guide, How to Do Theory (2 0 0 6 ); his brief S tep­

ping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews (2008) collects several previously unpublished pieces. An early, notable response by Stanley Fish, “Why No O ne Is Afraid of Wolfgang lser,” ap­ peared in Diacritics 11 (1981). Steven M ailloux’s

Interpretive Conventions: T he R eader in the Study o f A m erican Fiction (1982) includes a good dis­ cussion of Iser’s relation to the New' Criticism and a pointed com parison between lser and Fish. Robert H olub’s “Reception Theory: School of C onstance,” in T h e C am bridge History o f Literary C riticism , vol. 8, From Form alism to Poststructur­ alism (ed. Ram an Selden, 1995), provides an ex­ cellent overview of Iser’s work and the Constance School, noting its influence on a second genera­ tion of reception theorists. M ichael B erube’s “There Is Nothing Inside the Text, or, Why No O ne’s Heard of W olfgang lser,” in Postmodern

Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the C ritical Enter­ prise (ed. Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham, 2 004), speculates that Fish’s takedown turned at­ tention away from lser. S till, there has been a good deal of criticism reassessing his work since 2 0 0 0 . A special issue of New Literary History 31 (2 0 0 0 )— On the Writings o f Wolfgang lser, edited by John Paul Riquelm e— gathers ten substantial essays on aspects of Iser’s work and career; it in­ cludes Brook T hom as’s “Restaging the Reception of Iser’s Early Work, or Sides Not Taken in Dis­ cussions of the A esthetic,” which usefully contextualizes Iser’s entrance on the Am erican critical scene, and W infried Flu ck’s dense but inform a­ tive “The Search for D istance: Negation and Neg­ ativity in Wolfgang Iser’s Literary Theory,” which com ments on Iser’s interest in aesthetics as a gen­ erational response to the situation in Germany after World W ar II. Craig Hamilton and R alf Schneider, “From lser to Turner and Beyond: Re­ ception Theory M eets Cognitive C riticism ,” Style 36 (2002), includes a substantial review' of Iser’s work and looks at how contemporary cognitive theory has developed from reception theory. Rob­ ert

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Century,” Poetics Today 27 (2006), exam ines the way that eighteenth-century British novels, one of Iser’s specialties, influenced his views. See also Brook Thom as, “The Fictive and the Imaginary: C harting Literary Anthropology, or, W hat’s Liter­ ature Have to Do with It7” A m erican Literary His­ tory 20 (2 0 0 8 ), which rebuts Berube and surveys recent work on Iser. On Iser’s theory in pedagogy, see Olga M. Hubard, “T he Act o f Looking: Wolfgang Iser’s Liter­ ary Theory and M eaning M aking in the Visual Arts," International Jou rn al o f Art and Design Ed­ ucation 27 (2 0 0 8 ), and Lisa Schade Eckert, “Bridging the Pedagogical Gap: Intersections be­ tween Literary and Reading Theories in Second­ ary and Postsecondary Literacy Instruction,” Jou rnal o f A dolescent and Adult Literacy 52 (2008). Two articles amend Iser’s concept of “the implied reader,” showing its relevance to queer theory and cognitive theory: H anna Kubowitz, “T he Default Reader and a Model of Q ueer Read­ ing and W riting Strategies Or: O bituary for the Implied Reader,” Style 4 6 (2012), and Karin Kukkonen, “Presence and Prediction: T he Embodied Reader’s Cascades o f Cognition,” Style 48 (2014). Ben De Bruyn, Wolfgang Iser: A C om panion (2012), surveys Iser’s work and includes a selected bibliography.

Stephen Rudy, Roman Jakobson: A Com plete Bibli­ ography o f His Writings, 1912-1982 (1985); for critical writings about Jakobson, see the annotated overview in Bradford’s book along with bibliogra­ phies in the book by Holenstein and in Language, Poetry, and Poetics: T he Generation o f the 1890s— Jakobson, Trubetszkoy, Majakovskij, edited by Krystyna Pomorska, Elzbieta Chodakowska, Hugh M cLean, and Brent Vine (1987).

H enry Ja m es Jam es’s literary criticism has been collected by the Library of Am erica in two volumes, titled Es­ says, A m erican an d English Writers and European Writers and the P refaces (1984). This is an essen­ tial collection for the student o f Jam es’s work. Selectio n s can be found in Literary Reviews and

Essays on American, English, and French Literature, edited by Albert Mordell (1957); Henry Jam es: S e­ lected Literary Criticism, edited by Morris Shapira (1963); T heory o f Fiction: Henry Jam es, edited by Jam es E. M iller Jr. (1972), arranged according to topics and categories; T h e House o f Fiction: Es­ says on the Novel, edited by Leon Edel (1973); The

Art o f C riticism : Henry Jam es on the T heory and the P ractice o f Fiction , edited by W illiam Veeder

T h e best single collection of Jakobson’s writings on literature is Language in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (1987). A more com plete selection is available in Selected Writings (7 vols., 1971—84), each volume of which is introduced with a “retrospective” by Jakobson himself. Biographical inform ation is both plenti­ ful and scant. T h e closest thing to a biography is a volume o f conversations betw een Jakobson and Krystyna Pomorska, his third wife, titled Dia­ logues (1983); it perfectly illu strates Jakob son’s “mythic” concept o f autobiography: both partici­ pants are focused on displaying the charism a of Jakobson’s intellectu al, not personal, life. Good introductions to Jakobson’s work are El­ mar Holenstein’s Roman Jakob son ’s A pproach to Language: Phenom enological Structuralism (1974; trans. 1976) and Richard Bradford’s Roman Ja k o b ­ son: Life, Language, Art (1994). For two excellent and different accounts of Russian formalism in context, see Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History— Doctrine (1955; 3d ed., 1981) and Fredric Jam eson, T he Prison-House o f Language: A Critical

and Susan M. G riffin (1986), which includes ex­ cellent discussion of and detailed notes for each selection; and T he Critical Muse: Selected Literary Criticism o f Henry Jam es, edited by Roger Gard (1988), which is the best selection for an over­ view o f Jam es’s achievement in criticism and theo­ ry. Also important is The Art o f the Novel: Critical Prefaces by Henry Jam es, with an introduction by R. P. Blackm ur (new ed., 1984), which gathers the prefaces that Jam es wrote for the New York Edi­ tion. Additional primary sources include Henry Jam es: Autobiography, edited by F. W. Dupee (1956), written in Jam es’s late labyrinthine, evoca­ tive manner; T he C om plete Notebooks o f Henry Jam es, edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers (1987); and Letters, edited by Leon Edel (4 vols., 1 9 7 4 -8 4 ). W illiam and Henry Jam es: S elected Letters, edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Eliza­ beth M. Berkeley (1997), is a fascinating collec­ tion. A new, com plete edition o f Jam es’s letters, edited by Pierre A. W alker and Greg W. Z acharias, is now in progress (11 vols. to date, 2 0 0 6 —). A nother valuable resource is Edgar F. H arden, A Henry Ja m es C hronology (2005). T he definitive biography is Henry Jam es, vari­ ously subtitled, in five volumes by Leon Edel (1953—72); it is condensed and updated in the

Account o f Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972). Roman Jakobson: Echoes o f His Scholarship,

single volume Henry Jam es: A Life (1985). O ther excellent biographies include Fred Kaplan, Henry

edited by Daniel Armstrong and C. H. Van Schooneveld (1977), gives a good general sense of the many directions those pursuing Jakobson’s inter­ ests have taken. Svetlana Boym’s Death in Quota­

Jam es: T he Im agination o f Genius: A Biography (1992), and Kenneth Graham , Henry Jam es: A Literary L ife (1995). Lyndall Gordon, A Private Life o f Henry Jam es: Two W omen and His Art

tion Murks: Cultural Myths o f the M odem Poet

(1999), probes the impact on Jam es’s writing of two im portant relationships: one with his cousin M innie Temple, the other with the author C on­

R o m a n Ja k o b s o n

(1991) furthers Jakobson’s analysis of mythic biog­ raphy. For a bibliography of works by Jakobson, see

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stance Fenim ore Woolson. Sheldon M. Novick, in

Henry Jam es: T he Young M aster (1996) and H en­ ry Jam es: T he Mature Master (2007), examines the work and the life, including a speculative, and con­ troversial, account of Jam es’s homosexuality. In

House o f Wits: An Intim ate Portrait o f the Jam es Family (2 0 0 8 ), Paul Fisher provides a keen study o f the entire Jam es family in the context of nine­ teenth- and tw entieth-century society and cu l­ ture. See also A H istorical G uide to Henry Jam es, edited by John Carlos Rowe and E ric Haralson (2012), which includes essays on race and empire, sexuality, gender, and other topics. The best scholarly writings on Jam es as a critic and theorist are Sarah B. Daugherty, The Literary Criticism o f Henry Jam es (1981), and Vivien Jones, Jam es the Critic (1984). Also helpful are Adeline Tintner, The B ook World o f Henry Jam es: Appropri­ ating the Classics (1987); Jonathan Freedman, Pro­

fessions o f Taste: Henry Jam es, British Aestheticism, and Commodity Culture (1990), which makes co­ gent connections among Jam es, W alter Pater, and O scar W ilde; Edwin S. Fussell, T he French Side o f Henry Jam es (1990); Tony Tanner, Henry Jam es and the Art o f Nonfiction (1995), which includes a chapter on the criticism ; and Pierre A. Walker,

Reading Henry Jam es in French Cultural Contexts (1995). Among the many books on Jam es’s fiction, the most pertinent to his critical writings and context are Laurence Bedwell Holland, T h e Expense o f Vision: Essays on the Craft o f Henry Ja m es (1964), a brilliant analysis of the novels that relates them to the criticism , especially to the prefaces; John Carlos Rowe, T he T heoretical Dim ensions o f Henry Jam es (1984); M ichael Anesko, “Friction

with the M arket”: Henry Jam es and the Profession o f A uthorship (1986), on the pressures that Jam es faced in struggling to meet but not sur­ render to the demands of the literary market­ place; Sharon Cam eron, Thinking in Henry Jam es (1989); Ross Posnock, T he Trial o f C urios­

ity: Henry Jam es, W illiam Jam es, an d the C h al­ lenge o f M odernity (1991), a wide-ranging com ­ parison of the Jam es brothers’ attitudes toward the challenges of modernity; Garry Hagberg,

M eaning and Interpretation: W ittgenstein, Henry Jam es, and Literary K now ledge (1994); and Eric Haralson, Henry Jam es and Q ueer M odernity (2003), rewarding for its analysis o f sexual politics and aesthetic theory and practice in Jam es, W illa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. For comparisons of Jam es and other significant critics, see Rob Davidson, T he M aster and the

Dean: T he Literary C riticism o f Henry Ja m es and W illiam Dean H owells (2005), and M ichele M en­ delssohn, Henry Jam es, Oscar W ilde and A esthet­ ic Culture (2007). Recent scholarly work includes Kevin O hi, Henry Jam es an d the Q ueerness o f Style (2011), which gives subtle consideration to Jam es’s later writings in the context o f queer th e­ ory; Lisi Schoenbach, Pragmatic M odernism

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(2012), a stim ulating exploration of pragmatist philosophy and its keywords (habit, institution, etc.), with interpretations of Jam es, Gertrude Stein, M arcel Proust, and other writers; and Michael Anesko, M onopolizing the Master: Henry Jam es and the Politics o f M odern Literary Scholarship (2012), an excellent examination of Jam es and the literary marketplace and the critical reception o f his writ­ ings, especially the groundbreaking biographical and critical interpretations by Percy Lubbock, Leon Edel, and others. See also A Bibliography o f Henry Jam es, by Leon Edel and Dan H. Laurence, revised with the assistan ce o f Jam es Ram beau (3d ed., 1982). Second ary sources are listed in Linda J . Taylor,

Henry Jam es, 1866—1916: A R eferen ce G uide (1982); K ristin P ru itt M cC olgan, Henry Jam es, 1917-1959: A R eferen ce G u ide (1979); D orothy M clnn is Scu ra, Henry Jam es, 1960-1974: A R ef­ eren ce G uide (1979); and Judith E. Funston, H en­ ry Jam es: A R eferen ce G uide, 1975—1987 (1991). Consult also the excellent bibliographical essay in Rowe and H aralson’s H istorical G uide (see above).

F r e d r ic Ja m e s o n Largely focused on stylistics rather than Jean-Paul Sartre’s Marxist politics, Jam eson’s first book, Sar­ tre: The Origins o f a Style (1961), a revision of his doctoral dissertation, offered scant indication of his subsequent work. The two major studies of the early 1970s, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century D ialectical T heories o f Literature (1971) and T he

Prison-House o f Language: A C ritical A ccount o f Structuralism and Russian Form alism (1972), re­ spectively introduced the work of the Frankfurt School and other European Marxists and the work of the Russian form alists and early French struc­ turalists to the English-speaking world before much of it was available in translation. After writ­ ing a short book on the English modernist Wyndham Lewis, Fables o f Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the M odernist as Fascist (1979), Jam eson captured the attention o f Anglophone intellectual circles with T he Political Unconscious: Narrative as a So­ cially Symbolic Act (1981), which solidified his po­ sition as the leading representative o f Marxist theory. It was followed by a two-volume collection o f previously published pieces, T he Ideologies o f Theory: Essays, 1971—1986 (1988), which in ­ cludes his su ccin ct “M etacom m entary” (1971) and his programmatic reflections on historical method, “Marxism and H istoricism ” (1980). Late

Marxism: Adorno, or, the Persistence o f the D ialec­ tic (1990) extends his survey of M arxist figures begun in Marxism and Form. In the 1990s Jameson turned increasingly to film and popular culture. Signatures o f the Visible (1990) collects writings on film, concluding with an impor­ tant essay theorizing its development from the silent era onward. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic o f Late Capitalism (1991) has had wide influence in

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defining the postmodern era and its art. There fol­ lowed a collection of essays on contemporary cine­ ma, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (1992). Jameson also published two books assembled from lectures: T he Seeds o f Time (Wellek Library Lectures, 1994) and Theory o f Culture: Lectures at Rikkyo (1994). The useful collection T he Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983—98 (1998), which includes “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” records his developing views on postmodernism. Brecht and Method (1998) takes the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht (rather than Adorno) as an exemplary figure for reviving Marxism in the era of late capitalism, and A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology o f the Present (2002) is a short reconsideration of the idea of the modern. Two hefty collections, The Modernist Papers (2007) and Archaeologies o f the

Future: T he Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005), gather Jameson’s essays from three decades on modern literature and on science fiction. Since then, Jam eson has readdressed major the­ oretical issues in Valences o f the D ialectic (2009) and two studies focused on particular works, The

Hegel Variations: On the “Phenomenology o f Spirit" (2010) and Representing "Capital": A Reading o f Volume One (2011). In addition, The Antinomies o f Realism (2013) revisits the question of realism and the historical novel, The Ancients and the Postmod­ erns: On the Historicity o f Forms (2015) looks at art and the question of the classic and the modern, and Raymond Chandler: T he Detections o f Totality (2016) is a short study of the detective genre. The Jam eson Reader, edited by M ichael Hardt and Kathi Weeks (2 0 0 0 ), provides an excellent selec­ tion of Jam eson’s work, and Jam eson on Jam eson: Conversations on Cidtural Marxism, edited by Ian Buchanan (20 0 7 ), gathers interviews from three decades. Jam eson’s writings have drawn a substantial though uneven body of criticism . Perhaps the best early accounts are by Terry Eagleton, “The Idealism of American Criticism” (1981) and “Frederic Jam es­ on: The Politics of Style” (1982), both collected in his Against the Grain: Selected Essays (1986). Two c ritica l jo u rn als devoted special issues to T he Political Unconscious: Diacritics 12 (1982), which includes essays by the historian Hayden White, Ea­ gleton (cited above), and others, and New Orleans Review 11 (1984), which includes a response by Jean-Fran9ois Lyotard. Mike Davis offers a cele­ brated challenge to Jam eson’s account of postmod­ ern architecture in “Urban Renaissance and the Spirit o f Postmodernism,” New Left Review, no. 151 (1985). Postmodemism/Jameson/Critique, edited by Douglas Kellner (1989), gathers diverse essays as well as Jam eson’s response to his critics. A famous riposte, Aijaz Ahmad’s “Jam eson’s Rhetoric of O th­ erness and the ‘National Allegory’” (1987), polem­ ically critiques Jam eson’s notion o f third world lit­ erature; it has been reprinted in Ahmad’s In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992). Perry Anderson’s

Origins o f Postmodernity (1998) is a short overview by a leading British Marxist; in addition, Sean Hom­ er, Fredric Jam eson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Post­ modernism (1998); Adam Roberts, Fredric Jam eson (2000); and Ian Buchanan, Fredric Jameson: Live Theory (2006), provide useful introductions. The collections Fredric Jam eson: A Critical Reader, edit­ ed by Sean Homer and Douglas Kellner (2004), and On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Glohalism, ed­ ited by Caren Irr and Ian Buchanan (2006), investi­ gate, respectively, the range of Jameson’s work and his more recent attention to globalism. Looking to his earlier work rather than to his analysis of post­ modernism, The Political Unconscious o f A rchitec­ ture: R e-opening Ja m eso n ’s "Narrative," edited by Nadir L ahiji (2011), collects fourteen essays on architecture. Two studies by former students, Rob­ ert T. Tally Jr.’s Fredric Jam eson: The Project o f Dia­ lectical Criticism (2014) and Phillip E. Wegner’s

Periodizing Jam eson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire fo r Narrative (2014), offer good surveys of his work over his career. An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, edited by Slavoj Zifcek (2016), includes the title essay by Jameson and responses by Zizek and eight other critics. Homer, Fredric Jam eson, contains a bibliography of primary and selected secondary texts. The Ja m e­ son Reader and Jam eson on Jam eson include com ­ prehensive bibliographies of Jam eson’s writings.

S a m u el Jo h n so n The standard edition has been T he Works o f Sam ­ uel John son (11 vols., 1825; reprinted in 1970 as Dr. Jo h n so n ’s Works). It is being superseded by

T he Yale Edition o f the Works o f Sam uel John son (22 vols. to date, 1 9 5 8 -). O ther valuable editions o f Johnson’s works include T he Lives o f the En­ glish Poets, edited by George Birkbeck Hill (3 vols., 1905); Jo h n s o n ’s “Lives o f the Poets": A S e le c ­ tion, edited b y j. P. Hardy (1971); and T he Life o f Richard Savage, edited by C larence Tracy (1971). An important recent work in Johnson studies is Roger Lonsdale’s superb four-volume edition of T he Lives o f the English Poets (2 0 0 6 ), which pre­ sents the prim ary texts; describes the origins, com position, and textual history o f the Lives; and assesses Jo h n so n ’s assum ptions and aim as biographer and critic. Also valuable is the excel­ lent set of the Lives edited by John H. Middendorf (2010), volumes 2 1 -2 3 of the Yale edition. T he Letters o f Sam uel Joh n son , edited by Bruce Redford (5 vols., 1 9 9 2 -9 4 ), known as the Hyde Edition, is an indispensable resource. T he C om ­ p lete English Poems, edited by J. D. Fleem an (1971), is a w ell-edited collection. T h e best onevolume selection of Johnson’s poetry and prose is Sam uel Johnson, edited by Donald J. Greene (1984). A good single volume of the prose is Se­ lected Writings, edited by Peter M artin (2009). On Johnson’s critical outlook, see T he Critical O pin­ ions o f Sam uel Johnson, a topical anthology com ­ piled by Joseph Epes Brown (1926), and Johnson

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on the English Language, edited by Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeM aria Jr. (2005), volume 18 of the Yale edition. T he points of departure for biography are Jam es Boswell, T he Jou rn al o f a Tour to the H ebrides (1785) and T he Life o f Sam uel John son , LL.D. (1791). O f the many editions of these works— often published together— the best, with detailed notes, is by George Birkbeck Hill, revised and enlarged by L. F. Powell (6 vols., 1 9 3 4 -5 0 , 1964). A paperback edition, with a cogent introduction and notes, has been prepared by David Womersley (2008). There are a number of excellent modern biographies: Jam es L. Clifford, Young Sam [or S am u el ] Jo h n ­ son (1955), and his D ictionary John son : Sam uel Johnson's M iddle Years (1979); W alter Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson (1977), which includes ex­ pert commentary on Johnson’s writings; Ihomas Kaminski, The Early Career o f Samuel Johnson (1987); John Wain, Samuel Johnson (rev. ed., 1988), a vivid portrait of Johnson as a literary professional; Robert DeM aria Jr., T he Life o f Sam uel John son : A C ritical Biography (1993), a first-rate survey of Johnson’s literary career; Richard Holmes, Dr. John son and Mr. Savage (1993); and Lawrence I. Lipking, Sam uel John son: T he Life o f an Author (1998). Donald Greene, Sam uel Joh n son (rev. ed., 1989), offers a fine briefer treatment. Also useful are Norman Page, A Dr. John son Chronology (1990), and Pat Rogers, The Sam uel John son En­

cyclopedia (1996). Recent biographies by Peter M artin, Sam uel Johnson: A Biography (2008), and by Jeffrey Meyers, Sam uel John son : T he Struggle (2008), are enlightening; M artin is especially good on historical context and social background, while Meyers, taking a more literary point of view, deals expertly with Johnson as a writer. David Nokes, Sam uel John son : A Life (20 0 9 ), is solid on the facts and gives a good account of the Dictionary, the edition of Shakespeare, and the Lives o f the Poets. See also John B. Radner, John son and B o ­ swell: A Biography o f F riendship (2012), and Nicholas Hudson, A Political Biography o f Sam u­ el John son (2013), which surveys Johnson’s moral and political views during an era of revolutionary transition in the eighteenth century. For a range of critical opinion, see W alter Ja ck ­ son Bate, T he A chievem ent o f Sam uel John son (1958); Paul Fussell, Sam uel John son and the Life o f Writing (1971), filled with sharp perceptions about Johnson’s rhetoric and relation to his read­ ers; and Thom as Reinert, Regulating Confusion: Sam uel John son and the Crowd (1996), which ex­ plores Johnson’s attitudes toward the crowd, the city, and urban culture. N icholas Hudson, Sam u ­

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Essays, edited by Isobel Grundy (1984); John son and His Age, edited by Jam es Engell (1984); and John son a fter Two Hundred Years, edited by Paul J. Korshin (1986). On Johnson’s literary criticism , see Jean H. Hagstrum, Sam uel Johnson's Literary C riticism (1952), a good overview of Johnson’s attitudes to­ ward nature, the sublime, wit, and other key top­ ics; Leopold Damrosch Jr., T he Uses o f Jo h n s o n ’s Criticism (1976); Morris R. Brownell, Sam uel Jo h n so n ’s Attitude to the Arts (1989), which as­ tutely examines Johnson’s positions on music, art, and architecture; Steven Lynn, Sam uel Joh n son

after D econstruction: R hetoric and “T he R am ­ bler" (1992), with interesting comparisons be­ tween Johnson and Harold Bloom, Jacques Derri­ da, and other contemporary theorists; Charles Hinnant, “Steel fo r the Mind": Sam uel Joh n son and C ritical Discourse (1994), which relates Joh n ­ son’s work to recent debates in literary theory; and Robert DeM aria Jr., Sam uel Joh n son and the Life o f Reading (1997). Examinations of Johnson’s crit­ ical work on Shakespeare include G. F. Parker, Jo h n so n ’s S hakespeare (1989), which includes co­ gent analysis of responses to Johnson by Romantic poets and critics, and Edward Tomarken, Sam uel

John son on S hakespeare: T he D iscipline o f C riti­ cism (1991). On Johnson as biographer of poets, consult Robert Folkenflik, Sam uel John son , B iog­ rapher (1978); M artin Maner, T he P hilosophical Biographer: Doubt and D ialectic in Johnson's “Lives o f the Poets” (1988); and Catherine Neal Parke, Sam uel Joh n son and B iographical T h in k ­ ing (1991). Also recommended are the following collections of essays: The Interpretation o f S am u ­ el Joh n son , edited by Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-H ill (2012), noteworthy for ErskineH ill’s essay on the Lives o f the Poets-, Sam uel John son : T he Arc o f the Pendulum , edited by Freya Johnston and Lynda Mugglestone (2012); Sam uel John son in C ontext, edited by Jack Lynch (2012), valuable on a wide range of topics, includ­ ing a fine essay by Philip Smallwood on Jo hnson’s literary criticism ; and Sam uel John son : New C on ­ texts fo r a New Century, edited by Howard D. Weinbrot (2014), illum inating in its coverage of Johnson’s writings, life, and relationships. The standard bibliography is W illiam P. Court­ ney and David Nichol Smith, A Bibliography o f Sam uel John son (1915). It is supplemented by R. W. Chapman and Allen I. Hazen, "Johnsonian Bibliography: A Supplement to Courtney,” in Ox­

el John son and the Making o f M odern England

ford B ibliographical Society, Proceedings and Pa­ pers, vol. 5, pt. 3 (1938). Jam es L. Clifford and Donald J. Greene, Sam uel John son : A Survey and Bibliography o f C ritical Studies (1970), contains

(2 0 0 3 ), exam ines the impact of Johnso n’s literary criticism and other writings on the creation of modern English identity. Early critical reception is collected in John son : T he C ritical H eritage, ed­ ited by Jam es T. Boulton (1971). C ollections of criticism include Sam uel John son : New C ritical

4 ,0 0 0 items. See also Donald J. Greene and John A. Vance, A Bibliography o f Joh n son ian Studies, 1970-1985 (1987). T h e C am bridge C om pan ion to Sam uel Joh n son , edited by Greg Clingham (1997), offers a selective guide to further reading. Com ­ piled by J. D. Fleem an, A Bibliography o f the

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Works o f Sam uel John son (2 vols., 2 0 0 0 ) treats the published items up to 1984. Johnson’s The Major Works, edited by Donald J. Greene (rev. ed., 2008), provides a concise list of further reading. Im m an uel K ant The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant (1992—) offers the first complete scholarly edition in English of all of K ant’s writing (in the list below, all translations published after 1991 be­ long to this edition). T h eoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770, edited by David Walford (1992), con­ tains much of Kant’s early work (although not his 1764 book on aesthetics), while P ractical Philoso­ phy, edited by Mary J. Gregor (1996), collects the major works on morality (including Groundwork o f the M etaphysics o f Morals, 1785; C ritique o f Practical R eason, 1788; and T he M etaphysics o f Morals, 1797, along with the important essays “W hat Is Enlightenment?,” 1784, and “Toward Perpetual Peace,” 1795). K ant’s major individual works are Observations on the Feeling o f the Beautiful and Sublim e (1764; trans. 1960); C ri­ tique o f Pure Reason (1781; trans. 1998); P role­ gom ena to Any Future M etaphysics (1783; trans. 1997); M etaphysical Foundations o f Natural S ci­ en ce (1786; trans. 2 004); C ritique o f Ju dgm en t (1790; trans. 1987 and 2 0 0 0 ); Religion within the B oundaries o f Mere Reason (1793; trans. 1998); T he C on flict o f Faculties (1798; trans. 1992); and

Anthropology fro m a Pragmatic Point o f View (1798; trans. 2006). K ant’s essays, lectures, and letters can be found in Kant: On History, edited by Louis W hite Beck (1963); S elected Pre-Critical Writings and C orrespon den ce with B eck, edited by G. B. Kerferd and D. E. Walford (1968); K an t’s Political Writings, edited by Hans Reiss (1970); Lectures on P hilosophical Theology, edited by Al­ len W. Wood and Gertrude M. Clark (1978); Per­

petual P eace and O ther Essays on Politics, H isto­ ry, and Morals, edited by Ted Humphrey (1983); Lectures on Logic, edited by J. M ichael Young (1992); Lectures on Ethics, edited by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind (1997); Lectures on M eta­ physics, edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon (1997); and C orrespon den ce, edited by A rnulf Zweig (1999). Ernst Cassirer’s Kant's Life and Thought (1921; trans. 1981) remains of interest, but the standard biography is now M anfred Kuehn’s Kant (2001). The secondary literature on Kant is immense. Paul Guyer’s Kant (2d ed., 2014) is a superb onevolume overview of Kant’s entire work. Douglas Burnham ’s An Introduction to K an t’s “C ritique o f Judgem ent" (2000), Christian Helmut W enzel’s

An Introduction to K an t’s Aesthetics: Core C on ­ cepts and Problem s (2005), and Fiona Hughes’s K an t’s “C ritique o f A esthetic Ju d g em en t’’: A R ead ­ e r ’s G uide (2010) offer accessible guides to K ant’s views on beauty, taste, the sublime, and art. K an t’s “C ritique o f the Power o f Ju d g m en t”: C ritical Es­ says, edited by Paul Guyer (2003), gathers a variety

of responses to Kant’s aesthetics, while T he C am ­ bridge C om pan ion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer (1992), offers essays that cover K ant’s whole ca­ reer. See also T he S ublim e and Its Teleology: Kant, G erm an Idealism , and Phenom enology, ed­ ited by Donald Loose (2012). O f the many en­ counters with Kant’s work in contemporary theory, the following have been especially influential: Jacques Derrida, T he Truth in Painting (1978; trans. 1987); Pierre Bourdieu, D istinction: A S o­ cial C ritique o f the Ju dgem en t o f Taste (1979; trans. 1984); Hannah Arendt, Lectures on K an t’s P olitical Philosophy (1982); Barbara Herrnstein Sm ith, C ontingencies o f Value (1988); Terry Ea­ gleton, T he Ideology o f the A esthetic (1990); JeanFran9ois Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic o f the Sublim e (1991; trans. 1994); J. M. Bernstein, T he

Fate o f Art: A esthetic A lienation fro m Kant to Derrida and Adorno (1992); and Rodolphe Gasche, The Idea o f Form: Rethinking K an t’s Aesthetics (2003). W ithin the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, the best treatm ents of K ant’s aesthetics are Paul Guyer’s Kant and the C laim s o f Taste (2d ed., 1997), Henry E. A llison’s K an t’s T heory o f

Taste: A Reading o f the “C ritique o f A esthetic Ju d g m en t” (2001), Eli Friedlander’s Expressions o f Judgm ent: An Essay on K an t’s Aesthetics (2015), and H annah Ginsborg’s T h e Normativity o f Nature: Essays on K an t’s “C ritiqu e o f Ju d g e­ ment" (2015). K ant’s “C ritique o f the Power o f Judgm ent": C ritical Essays offers an annotated bibliography of commentaries on K ant’s aesthetics; Christian W enzet’s “K ant’s A esthetics: Overview and Recent Literature,” Philosophy Com pass 4 (2009), provides another listing o f secondary sources, as does Guyer’s Kant (2014).

E . A n n K a p la n E. Ann Kaplan began her career with studies of film , notably its relation to fem inism , in Talking about the Cinem a (1966; 2d ed., 1974), co-authored (as Ann Mercer) with Jim Kitses; Fritz Lang: A Guide to References and Resources (1981); and W omen and Film: Both Sides o f the Cam era (1983). She took a broader view of popular culture in

Rocking around the C lock: Music Television, Post­ modernism, and Consumer Culture (1987), the first academic study of the new form of MTV, and

M otherhood and R epresentation: T h e M other in Popular Culture and M elodram a (1992; rpt. 2013), while continuing her research on film in

Looking fo r the Other: Fem inism , Film , and the Im perial G aze (1997). In a turn linked with her interest in psychoanalysis, she exam ines trauma in Trauma Culture: T he Politics o f Terror and Loss in M edia and Literature (2 0 0 5 ), her most important and influential work, where she ana­ lyzes the artistic, literary, and cin em atic forms through which individuals and collectives un­ dergo, represent, and describe the experience of traum a. Also significant is C lim ate Trauma:

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tion (2016), which explores expressions of “pre-

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traum atic stress disorder” in depictions of envi­ ronmental and other crises in such film s as Soylent G reen (1973), T he Road (2 0 0 9 ), and T he B ook o f Eli (2010) and in docum entaries on c li­

Karatani Kojin has written more than twenty books that cross disciplinary boundaries as a matter of principle; more than half a dozen are available in English. Origins o f Modern Japan ese Literature (1980; trans. 1993) is his most influential work as a literary critic self-consciously operating in New H istoricist and deconstructionist modes. Architec­ ture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money (1983; trans. 1995) moves away from literary analysis to take on the problems o f form and form alization in a broad array of domains, arguing that “the will to architectu re” is the foundation of all m anifesta­ tions of W estern thought. Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2001; trans. 2003), a rereading of Kant via Marx and Marx via Kant, seeks to establish a theoretical basis for collective resistance against global capital, nation, and state. Nation and Aes­ thetics: On Kant and Freud (2 0 0 4 ; trans. 2017), a collection of essays, extends K aratani’s analysis on nationalism explored in Transcritique. History and Repetition (2 0 0 4 ; trans. 2012) encompasses econom ic, historical, and literary analysis across the E ast-W est divide; essays on M arx’s The Eigh­ teenth Brumaire o f Louis Bonaparte and on the thorny issue of periodicity in modern Japan lay the foundation for penetrating insights into the works of the Nobel Prize—winning novelist Kenzaburo Oe and the best-selling novelist Haruki Muraka­ mi. T he Structure o f World History: From M odes o f Production to Modes o f Exchange (2010; trans. with revisions, 2014) marks K aratani’s shift from densely layered textual analysis o f literary and philosophical forebears to a boldly independent assertion that the key to understanding move­ ments in social history, and the best chance we have for future progress, is to replace M arx’s analy­ sis of modes of production with analysis o f modes of exchange. A follow-up to The Structure o f World History, K aratani’s Isonomia and the Origins o f Phi­ losophy (2012; trans. 2017) resituates the birth of W estern philosophy and dem ocracy in the ancient Greek colonies of Ionia (present-day Turkey) against the standard idealized narrative about Ath­ ens. As opposed to Athenian elitist democracy and its philosophical idealism, Isonomia embodies an earlier materialist egalitarian social vision. Many works rem ain unavailable in English.

mate change. Kaplan has also edited or co-edited twelve books, including Women in Film Noir (1978; rev. and ex­ panded ed., 1998); Regarding Television: Critical Approaches—An Anthology (1983); Postmodernism and Its Discontents: Theories, Practices (1988); Psy­ choanalysis and Cinem a (1990); Generations: Aca­

dem ic Feminists in Dialogue (1997), with Devoney L ooser; Fem inism an d Film (2 0 0 0 ); and Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations (2008), with Ban Wang. Biographical information is avail­ able in several interviews with Kaplan. See “Insti­ tuting Cultural Studies,” in Critics at Work: Inter­ views, 1 9 9 3 -2 0 0 3 , edited by Je ffre y J. W illiam s (2004), where Kaplan talks about her relations with British cultural studies, and an interview in A m eri­

cana: The Journal o f American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present 4.1 (2005) in which Kaplan dis­ cusses her family in the context of her book M oth­ erhood and Representation and addresses more broadly the roles in her work of feminism, psycho­ analysis, and postmodernism. Trauma studies reaches into many disciplines and fields; for contemporary literary theory and criticism , important points of departure noted in Kaplan’s book include Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises o f Witnessing in L itera­ ture, Psychoanalysis, and History (1991); Dom i­ nick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: H isto­ ry, Theory, Trauma (1994); Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth (1995); Caruth, U nclaimed E xperience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (1996); and Shoshana Felm an, T he

Ju ridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (2002). See also Kali Tal, Worlds o f Hurt: Reading the Literatures o f Trauma (1996); M arianne H irsch, Family Frames: Photog­ raphy Narrative and Postmemory (1997); and Anne W hitehead, Trauma Fiction (2004). Also for stu­ dents of literature, see Postcolonial Trauma Nov­ els, edited by S te f Craps and G ert Buelens, a spe­ cial issue of Studies in the Novel (40.1—2 [2008]). For further discussion, see Ethics and Trauma in Contemporary British Fiction (2011) and Trauma and Rom ance in Contemporary British Literature (2013), both edited by Jean -M ich el Ganteau and Susana Onega. See also T he Future o f Trauma

Theory: Contem porary Literary and Cultural Criticism , edited by G ert Buelens, Sam D urrant, and Robert Eaglestone (2013); Alan G ibbs’s C on ­ tem porary A m erican Trauma Narratives (2014); and M ichael Richardson’s Gestures o f Testimony: Torture, Trauma, and A ffect in Literature (2016). Another good resource is Contemporary A pproach­ es in Literary Trauma Theory, edited by M ich elle Balaev (2014); the introductory chapter surveys the field and includes a bibliography.

K aratani’s m ajor texts o f literary criticism are //«

suru ningen (1972, Man in Awe), Imi to iu yamai (1975, The Sickness Called Meaning), Han-bungaku ron (1979, Against Literature), Hihyo to posutomodan (1985, Criticism and the Postmodern), Kotoba to higeki (1989, Language and Tragedy), Sakaguchi Ango to Nakagami Kenji (1996, Sakaguchi Ango and Nakagam i Kenji), Zoho Soseki ron shiisei (2001, Writings on Soseki, expanded ed.), and Kindai bungaku no owari (2 0 0 5 , T he End o f M odern L it­ erature). His main philosophical books include M arukusu sono kanosei no chushin (1978, Marx: The Center o f His Possibilities), a pivotal attempt to read M arx’s Capital on its own terms; Naisei to soko

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(1985, Introspection and Retrospection ); and Tankyu (2 vols., 1986—89, Philosophical Inquiries), the latter two works being sustained philosophical inquiries into the problems and possibilities o f alterity, dif­ ference, and the other. The essays collected in Hyumoa to shite no yuibutsuron (1993, M aterialism as Humor) integrate inquiry into W estern philosophi­ cal questions with analyses of modern Japanese history, politics, and literature. The essays collected in Senzen no shiko (1994, Thinking before the War) focus on overtly political issues such as imperialism, nationalism, democratic representation, the Japa­ nese constitution, and the Gulf War. Sekxti kyowakoku e: Shihon neshon kokka o koete (2 0 0 6 , Toward a World Republic: Bey ond the Trinity o f Capital, Na­ tion, and State) marks a late development in Karatani’s theory of capital, nation, and state as an interlocking system of mutually reinforcing entities. Yudoron: Yanagida Kunio to Yamabito (2014, On

Nomadism: Yanagida Kunio and Mountain People) and Teikoku no kozo: chushin, shuhen, ashuhen (2014, The Structure o f Empire: Center, Periphery, A-Periphery) form a trilogy with T he Structure o f World History to elaborate Karatani’s later theories of capital, nation, and state and the central impor­ tance of modes of exchange. K aratani has also published num erous articles and interviews in jo u rn als and books on issues related to Japan and to W estern philosophy. In English, see especially “One Sp irit, Two N ine­ teenth C en tu ries,” in Postm odernism and Jap an (ed. Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, 1989); “The Discursive Space of Modern Japan,” in Japan in the World (ed. Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Haroo­ tunian, 1993), originally a special issue of boundary 2 (18.3 [1991]); “Non-Cartesian Cogito, or Cogito as D ifference,” Discours Social/Social Discourse 6.1 (1994); “Nationalism and E criture,” Surfaces 5 (1995); “The Uses of Aesthetics: After Orientalism,” in Edward Said and the Work o f the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power (ed. Paul A. Bove, 2 0 0 0 ), origi­ nally a special issue of boundary 2 (2 5 .2 [1998]); “Edo Exegesis and the P resent,” in M odern J a p a ­ nese Aesthetics: A R eader (ed. M ichele M arra, 1999); “Japan as Art Museum: O kakura Tenshin and E rnest Fen ellosa,” in A History o f M odern Japan ese Aesthetics (ed. M ichael F. M arra, 2001); “Soseki’s Diversity: On K okoro” and “Overcoming M odernity,” in Contem porary Ja p a n ese Thought (ed. Richard F. C alich m an, 2 0 0 5 ); “Rethinking So sek i’s Theory,” Ja p a n Forum 2 0 (2 0 0 8 ); “T h e Irrational W ill to Reason: The Praxis o f Sakaguchi Ango,” in Literary M ischief: Sakaguchi Ango, Culture, and the War (ed. Jam es Dorsey and Doug Slaymaker, 2010); “How Catastrophe Heralds a New Jap an ,” in C ounterpunch, M arch 24, 2011 (w w w .c o u n te rp u n c h .o r g / 2 0 1 1 / 03/ 24/ how catastrophe-heralds-a-new -japan/); “ ‘C ritique Is Impossible w ithout M oves’: An Interview of Ko­ jin Karatani by Joel W'ainright,” Dialogues in Human G eography 2 (2012); and “R ethinking City Planning and U topianism ,” in T h e Political

Unconscious o f A rchitecture: R e-opening Ja m es­ o n ’s Narrative (ed. Nadir L ah iji, 2011). Fredric Jam eson’s foreword to the English trans­ lation of Origins o f Modern Japan ese Literature, “In the M irror of Alternate Modernities,” is an impor­ tant introduction to the work within the Western critical context (first published in South Atlantic Quarterly 92 [1993]); Brett de B ary’s “Karatani K ojin’s Origins o f M odern Ja p an ese Literature,” in Postmodernism and Japan (ed. Miyoshi and Haroo­ tunian, 1989), is an excellent analysis of the criti­ cal context, rhetorical strategies, and broader significance of the work. In “Exteriority and Trans­ critique: Karatani Kojin and the Impact of the 1990s " Jap an ese Studies 27 (2 0 0 7 ), Carl Cassegard provides a very useful account o f K aratani’s shift from deconstruction to social activism; and in “From Withdrawal to Resistance: The Rhetoric of Exit in Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin,” Japan Focus, M arch 4, 2 0 0 8 , he analyzes the role of 1960s social movements in Japan for K aratani’s thought. Hosea H irata’s Discourses o f Seduction:

History, Evil, Desire, and Modern Japan ese Litera­ ture (2005) contains a provocative comparison of K aratani’s work to that of the contemporary Japa­ nese novelist Murakami Haruki. Slavoj Zizek’s “The Parallax View,” New Left Review, ser. 2, no. 25 (2004), remains the most influential reading of Transcritique: On Kant and Marx; Giuseppe Tassone’s “Antinom ies of Transcritique and Virtue E thics: An Adornian C ritique,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 34 (2008), pits Karatani’s Transcri­ tique against Adorno’s critique of moral philosophy.

J u l i a K r is te v a Kristeva’s writings first became widely available in English through the publication of the 1980 collec­ tion Desire in Language, edited by Leon S. Roudiez (who was also responsible for inviting Kristeva to be a regular visitor at Columbia University) and trans­ lated by Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Roudiez. This collection, which does not correspond to any book in French, contains essays from her Semeiotike (1969) and from her Polylogue (1977). Margaret W aller’s English translation of Revolution in Poetic Language (1984) reproduces the first half of the original 1974 French text. The best-known transla­ tion of “W omen’s Tim e” is by Alice Jardine and Harry Blake, and was originally published in the journal Signs 7 (1981). Another translation, slight­ ly updated by Kristeva, was produced by Ross Mitchell Guberman for the English translation of New Maladies o f the Soul (1995). All of the work that derives from Kristeva’s “psychoanalytic” period is deeply literary as well, grappling with such authors as Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894— 1961), Gerard de Nerval (1 8 0 8 -1 8 5 5 ), Plotinus (ca. 204/ 5-ca. 270), and Charles Baudelaire (1821— 1867). Powers o f Horror (1980; trans. 1982), Tales o f Love (1983; trans. 1987), and B lack Sun (1987; tran s. 1989) have been influential in literary studies. Among her other writings are Language:

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The Unknown (1981; trans. 1989) and Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience o f Literature (1994; trans. 1996). More recently she has turned her psy­ choanalytic lens on issues of religion and belief; on hatred, love, and forgiveness; and on the severed human head in art as an avenue to understand vio­ lence and desire in, respectively, This Incredible Need to Believe (2006; trans. 2009), Hatred as For­ giveness (2005; trans. 2010), and The Severed Head: Capital Visions (1998; trans. 2012). Kristeva has written what can be described as a series of studies of great female intellectuals: Hannah Arendt (1999; trans. 2001), on the philosopher; Melanie Klein (2 000; trans. 2001), on the psychoanalyst; and C o­ lette (2002; trans. 2004), on the novelist. The latest is a sizable book, Therese mon amour: Sainte Therese dAvila (2008; trans. 2014 as Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life o f the Saint o f Avila). In addi­ tion, she has engaged Simone de Beauvoir and femi­ nism in a series of recent essays: “Beauvoir and the Risks of Freedom,” PMLA 124 (2009); “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and . . . Vulnerability,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 38.1/2 (2010); and “Reading The Second Sex Sixty Years Later,” PhiloSOPHIA 1.2 (2011). Passions o f the Times (2018), a collection of essays by Kristeva, meditates on time and a range of issues or passions of our times— disability, Islam, French culture and diversity, and humanism. Kristeva has also written a number of novels and a series of reflections on the limits of psychoanalysis. Toril Moi’s Kristeva Reader (1986) and Kelly Oliver’s Portable Kristeva (1997) present good selections and substantial introductions to Kristeva’s writings. Two books contain biographical information: Julia Kristeva: Interviews, edited by Ross Mitchell Guberman (1996), and, with a grain of salt, The Samurai (1990; trans. 1992). There exist a number of helpful explications of Kristeva’s work. John Lechte and M aria Margaroni , Ju lia Kristeva: Live Theory (2004), provides a nice introduction to Kristeva, as does The Kristeva Critical Reader, edited by Lechte and Mary Zournazi (2003). Elizabeth Grosz’s Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists (1989) places Kristeva in the context of French philosophy and feminism, w'hile Birgit Schipper’s Julia Kristeva and Feminist Thought (2011) explores Kristeva’s relationship more broadly to fem inist thought. M ichael Payne’s

Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derri­ da, and Kristeva (1993) has a chapter devoted to Revolution in Poetic Language. John Lechte, Ju lia Kristeva (1990); Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva: Un­ raveling the Double-Bind (1993); Anna Sm ith, Jid ia Kristeva: Readings o f Exile and Estrangement (1996); and A nne-M arie Sm ith, Ju lia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable (1998), all provide over­ views of Kristeva’s main arguments and concepts. The critical literature on Kristeva is represented in numerous collections of essays, the most notable of which include Abjection, M elancholia, and Love: The Work o f Ju lia Kristeva, edited by John Fletcher and Andrew Benjamin (1990); Body / Text

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in Ju lia Kristeva: Religion, W omen, and Psycho­ analysis, edited by David Crownfield (1992); Eth­ ics, Politics, and D ifference in Ju lia Kristeva’s Writ­ ing, edited by Kelly Oliver (1993); After the Revolution: On Kristeva, edited by John Lechte and Mary Zournazi (1998); and Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work o f Ju lia Kriste­ va, edited by Oliver and S. K. Keltner (2009). French Feminist Criticism: Women, Language, and Literature, by Elissa D. Gelfand and Virginia Thorndike Hules (1985), contains a dated but wellannotated bibliography of the early Kristeva. Joan Nordquist’s Jid ia Kristeva: A Bibliography (1995) provides a comprehensive list of Kristeva’s books and essays as well as of relevant critical literature published in English. See also the generous and more recent bibliography in the book by Lechte and Margaroni, as well as in the collection edited by Lechte and Zournazi, both cited above. Head Cases:

Jid ia Kristeva in Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times (2014), by Elaine P. Miller, also has an upto-date Kristeva bibliography.

Ja c q u e s L acan The literature on Lacan illustrates the axiom that the more difficult the text, the more extensive the bibliography. In addition to his thesis, De la psy-

chose parano'iaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalite (1932, On Paranoiac Psychosis in Its Relations with the Personality, not yet translated), Lacan pub­ lished Merits (1966), a small selection of which ap­ peared in English as Ecrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan (1977). Bruce Fink offers a judi­ cious translation of Merits in the aptly titled Ecrits:

The First Com plete Edition in English (2006), as well as translating The Triumph o f Religion (2016) and two lectures collectively titled On the Names-ofthe-Father (2013). A series of lectures given at the Chapel at Sainte—Anne Hospital has been translat­ ed by Adrian Price as Talking to Brick Walls (2017). The “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’” as it ap­ pears in the French Ecrits can be found, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman, in The Purloined Poe, edited by John Muller and William Richardson (1988), an ex­ cellent casebook containing essays by Jacques Der­ rida, Barbara Johnson, and many others. Another notable early translation of and commentary on one of Lacan’s essays is Anthony Wilden, The Language o f the S elf ( 1968), which treats Lacan’s “Rome dis­ course,” “Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse” (1953, “The Function of Lan­ guage in Psychoanalysis”). A selection of Lacan’s writings on female sexuality with two substantial introductions was published as Feminine Sexuality, edited by Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (1982). To date, the annual seminars of Lacan that have been translated into English are book 1, Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953-54 (1988); book 2, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique o f Psychoanalysis, 1954—55 (1988); book 3, The Psycho­ ses (1993); book 5, Formations o f the Unconscious (2017); book 7, The Ethics o f Psychoanalysis, 1959-60

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(1992); book 8, Transference (2015); book 10, Anxi­ ety (2014); book 11, The Four Fundamental Con­ cepts o f Psycho-Analysis (1977), a series of lectures given in 1964; book 17, The Other Side o f Psycho­ analysis (2007); book 19, ... or Worse (2017); book 20, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits o f Love and Knowledge (1998); and book 23, The Sinthome (2016). Several others have appeared in French. Lacans My Teaching, translated by David Macey (2008), contains three lectures directed at those who are not psychoanalysts. For an information-packed, fascinating biogra­ phy, see the work of Elisabeth Roudinesco; volume

2 of her tw'o-volume history of psychoanalysis in France (La Bataille de cent ans, 1982—86), devoted to Lacan, has been translated as Jacq u es Lacan & Co. (1990), and a separate work, Jacqu es Lacan, has also been translated (1993; trans. 1997). For a shorter but equally zesty account of psychoanalysis in France centered on Lacan’s life and w'orks, see Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics (1978; rev. ed., 1992). T he pithy biobibliography offered by Lacan’s son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller, in On the Nam es-of-the-Father (see above) provides some in­ teresting insights into the psychoanalyst’s life and work processes. M iller has also published in French Vie de Lacan (2011, Life o f Lacan), w hich examines previously unexplored aspects of Lacan’s life in relation to his w'orking through his psycho­ analytic theories. There are many introductions to Lacan’s thought. The most useful for the nonspecialist are Elizabeth Grosz , Jacq u es L acan : A Fem inist Intro­ duction (1990); Malcolm Bowie, L acan (1991), a book that focuses particularly on Lacan’s style;

L acan and the Subject o f Language, edited by Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher (1991); Madan Sarup, Jacq u es Lacan (1992), an introduc­ tion to Lacan in cultural context; Michael Payne,

Reading Theory: An Introduction to L acan, D er­ rida, and Kristeva (1993); and Bruce Fink, The Lacanian S ubject (1995), Lacan to the Letter: Reading “Merits" Closely (2004), and Lacan on Love: An Exploration o f Lacan’s Sem inar VIII, Transfer­ en ce (2016), for a Lacanian understanding of love and the key concept of transference. Students should also consult Sean Homer’s Ja cq u es Lacan (2005), which engages key Lacanian concepts and suggests useful further readings. For advanced en­ gagements with the process of reading Lacan, see Jane Gallop’s Reading Lacan (1985) and Shoshana Felman’s Ja cq u es Lacan and the Adventure o f In­ sight (1987). For a good explanation of the differ­ ences between Lacanian and American psycho­ analysis, see T he Subject and the Self: L acan and A m erican Psychoanalysis, edited by Judith Feher Gurewich and Michel Tort (1996). On Lacan’s im­ portance for cultural and historical studies, see Ju ­ liet Flower M acC annell’s Figuring L acan (1986) and Teresa Brennan’s History a fter L acan (1993). There are many critical and polemical books about Lacan. Some of the most interesting are

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy,

T h e Title o f the L etter (1973; trans. 1992), which continues the famous critique Jacques Derrida had begun in his reading of Lacan’s seminar on “The Purloined Letter” (see “The Purveyor of Truth” in T h e Purloined Poe); Francois Roustang, Dire Mastery (1976; trans. 1982), which considers the combination of the religionlike nature of psycho­ analysis and the tyrannical power of Jacques Lacan; and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, L acan : The Absolute Master (1990; trans. 1991), a more restrained but still thoroughgoing critique of the effects of power in Lacan’s theory. A theorist whose work is an ongo­ ing reinterpretation of the work of Lacan is Slavoj Ziiek; see his 1992 Everything You’ve Ever Wanted

to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitch­ cock), How to Read Lacan (2007), and other works. Culture/Clinic I: “We’re All Mad Here," edited by Jacques-Alain Miller and Maire Jaanus (2013), is a collective thematic volume that inaugurates the book series Culture/Clinic: Applied Lacanian Psy­ choanalysis; the collection explores Lacan’s theories and concepts at the intersections of cultural studies and clinical practice. For a dated but annotated bibliography, see M i­ chael Clark, Ja cq u es L acan : An A nnotated B ib li­ ography (1988). Dylan Evans has published An In ­

troductory D ictionary o f L acan ian Psychoanalysis (1996), which is extremely useful and contains a good bibliography. Also worth consulting are the suggested readings in Homer’s Ja cq u es L acan ; in addition, T he C am bridge C om panion to L acan , edited by Jean-M ichel Rabate (2003), has a solid bibliography, as does Bruce Fink’s Against Under­ standing, vol. 1, Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key (2014).

B ru n o L a to u r Latour has written more than a dozen books in both English and French (for books translated into English, the date o f the original French pub­ lication is given first), catalogues for two exhibits, and countless articles and reviews. His first an­ thropological investigation of scientists in action,

Laboratory Life: T h e Construction o f S cien tific Facts, which he co-authored with Steve Woolgar in English, was published in 1979. It was followed by a study of Louis Pasteur and m icrobes, T he Pasteurization o f France (1984; 1988), and S ci­

en ce in A ction: How to Follow Scientists and E n­ gineers through Society (1987). Conversations on S cien ce, Culture, and Tim e (1992; 1995), records his discussions with the French philosopher M ichel Serres; Aramis, or the Love o f Technology (1992; 1996) exam ines a failed transit initiative; and We Have Never B een M odern (1993) extends his exploration o f the sciences to include political theory. Politics o f Nature: How to Bring the S ci­ en ces into D em ocracy (1999; 2 0 0 5 ) offers a radi­ cal rethinking o f environm entalism and “political ecology.” P andora’s H ope: Essays on the Reality o f S cien ce Studies (1999) is a collection o f essays

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that articulates Latour’s ideas about reality. In re­ sponse to the attacks o f 9/11, he published a small pamphlet, War o f the Worlds: W hat about Peace? (2002). T hat same year, he co-edited, with Peter W eibel, a collection of essays on the so-called im­ age wars, Iconoclash: Beyond the Im age Wars in S cien ce, Religion, and Art (20 0 2 ); he also re­ turned to more traditional areas of anthropologi­ cal study with books on religion and on law, R e­

joicin g: Or the Torments o f Religious S peech (2 0 0 2 ; 2013) and T he Making o f Law: An E thnog­ raphy o f the C onseil d ’Etat (2 0 0 2 ; 2010). The lat­ ter is a three-year study of the French Conseil d’Etat (a body that provides legal advice to the executive branch of the French government and serves as the final court of appeal for adm inistra­ tive law courts) that also marks his return to the methodology of ethnography. In 2 0 0 5 , Latour’s English introduction to his Actor Network T h e o ­ ry appeared with the title Reassem bling the S o­

cial: An Introduction to A ctor-Network-Theory. In that same year he co-edited a second collection o f essays with Peter W eibel, based on an exhibit they curated: M aking Things Public: Atmospheres o f Democracy, which attempts to redefine politics as not ju st a profession or a system of institutions, but as a concern for “things” brought to the atten­ tion of a public. T he S cien ce o f Passionate Inter­

ests: An Introduction to G abriel T arde’s E con om ic A nthropology (2 0 0 8 ; 2 0 0 9 ) was written with Vin­ cent Antonin Lepinay. On the M odern Cult o f the Factish Gods (2010), An Inquiry into M odes o f Existence: An Anthropology o f the M oderns (2012; 2013), and Reset Modernity!, edited by La­ tour, with Christophe Leclerq (2016), all continue and elaborate on ideas articulated in We Have

Never B een M odern. Facing G aia: Eight Lectures on the N ew C lim atic R egim e (2017), co lle cts L atou r’s 2013 Gifford lectures delivered at Edin­ burgh University. For a biography, see Bruno L a ­ tour in Pieces: An Intellectu al Biography (2011; trans. 2015) by Henning Schmidgen. T. Hugh Crawford’s extensive interview with Latour, published in Configurations 1.2 (1993), a journal dedicated to the cultural studies of science, explores his life, his intellectual influences, and his shifting focus from empirical research to phi­ losophy to theory in the late 1980s. Ian Hacking, a philosopher of science who has written exten­ sively on realism , offers an insightful reading of Laboratory Life in “The Participant Irrealist at Large in the Laboratory,” British Jou rn al o f the Philosophy o f S cien ce 39 (1988). For substantive critical analyses that connect Latour’s work in technoscience with literary theory, see Ronald Sch leifer’s “Disciplinarity and Collaboration in the Science and H um anities,” C ollege English 59 (1997). Criticism of Latour’s position has been most forcefully articulated by essays in T he Flight front S cien ce and Reason, edited by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, and M artin W. Lewis (1997). For a response to their argum ents, see

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Robert Markley, “A fter the Science Wars: From Old Battles to New D irections in the Cultural Studies of S cien ce,” in After the Disciplines: The Emergence o f Cultural Studies (ed. M ichael Pe­ ters, 1999). Essays in a collection edited by John Law and John Hassard, Actor Netw ork T heory and A fter (1999), provide elaborations of Latour’s theoretical model o f the sciences. For a fem inist perspective, see Vicki Kirby, “Natural C o n v e rs a t­ ions: Or, W hat If Culture Was Really Nature All Along?,” in M aterial Feminisms (ed. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, 2 0 0 8 ). In Prince o f N et­ works: Bruno Latou r and Metaphysics (2009), Graham Harman provides a philosophical ac­ count of Latour’s metaphysics, while in Bruno Latour: Reassem bling the Political (2014), he ex­ plores L atour’s political philosophy. On Latour’s legal thinking, see Kyle M cG ee, Bruno Latour: T h e Normativity o f Networks (2014), and Latour and the Passage o f Law, edited by M cG ee (2015). Gerard de Vries’s Bruno Latour (2016) provides a comprehensive overview of Latour’s writing, from the early ethnographies to the more recent philo­ sophical works. Schmidgen’s Bruno Latour in Pieces (see above) contains a bibliography.

F. R . L e a v is Leavis’s published work focuses on English poet­ ry and fiction from 1800 to 1930, along with re­ flections on university education. He never fin ­ ished a proposed survey of critical practices. His books are New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study o f the C ontem porary Situation (1932); with Denys Thom pson, Culture and Environ­ m ent: T he Training o f C ritical Awareness (1933);

R evaluation: Tradition and D evelopm ent in En­ glish Poetry (1936); E du cation an d the University: A S ketch fo r an “English School" (1943; 2d ed., 1979); T h e G reat Tradition: G eorge Eliot, Henry Jam es, Josep h C onrad (1948); D. H. L aw rence, Novelist (1955); Two Cultures? T he S ign ifican ce o f C. P. Snow (1962); English Literature in Our T im e and the University (1969); with Q. D. Leavis, Dickens: T he Novelist (1970); T he Living Principle: English as a Discipline o f Thought (1975); and Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Law rence (1976). There are many collections of Leavis’s essays: For Continuity (1933); the influen­ tial The Comm on Pursuit (1952); Anna Karenina and Other Essays (1967); with Q. D. Leavis, L ec­ tures in America (1969); Nor Shall My Sword: Dis­ courses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope (1972); Letters in Criticism, edited by John Tasker (1974); T he Critic as Anti-Philosopher: Essays and Papers, edited by G. Singh (1982); Valuation in Criticism and Other Essays, edited by G. Singh (1986); and F. R. Leavis: Essays and Documents, ed­ ited by Ian MacKillop and Richard Storer (1995). The standard biography is Ian M acKillop’s F. R. Leavis: A Life in Criticism (1995). The beginning reader will find Ronald Hayman’s briefer treat­ ment, Leavis (1976), more useful.

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Francis M ulhern’s T he M oment o f ‘Scrutiny’ (1979) is far and away the best in-depth study of Leavis’s cultural significance. Ted Striphas’s es­ say, “Known-Unknowns: M atthew Arnold, F. R. Leavis, and the Government of C ulture,” Cultur­ al Studies 31 (spring 2017), considers Leavis’s in­ fluence on cultural studies. Michael B ell’s F. R. Leavis (1988) and Richard Storer’s F. R. Leavis (2009) provide good short overviews. Gary Day’s

Re-reading Leavis: Culture and Literary Criticism (1996) is an ambitious attempt to evaluate Leavis in relation to developments in literary theory after 1970. Stefan C o llin i’s Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (2006), Guy Ortolano’s The Two Cul­

tures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain (2009), Christopher Hill­ iard’s English as a Vocation: T he "Scrutiny" M ove­ m ent (2012), and David E llis’s M emoirs o f a Leavisite: T he D ecline and Fall o f C am bridge En­ glish (2013) all attest to the ongoing interest in Leavis’s central place in British letters and educa­ tion in the m id-tw entieth century. F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis: An A nnotated Bibliography, edited by M. B. Kinch, W illiam Baker, and John Kimber (1989), lists and com m ents on everything written by the Leavises and all that was written about them up to 1988. The bibliography in H ill­ iard’s English as a Vocation covers more recent work on Leavis and his legacy.

Gotthold E p h raim Lessing Lessing’s L aokoon (1766) has been translated into English many times. The most easily accessible edition was published in 1962 as L aocoon : An Essay on the Limits o f Painting and Poetry, trans­ lated with an introduction and useful notes by Ed­ ward Allen M cCorm ick. Many of Lessing’s other theoretical works, however, are available only in Germ an. T he best selection of Lessing’s works, heavily oriented toward theater, is Nathan the

Wise, Minna von Barnhelm , and O ther Plays and Writings, edited by Peter Demetz (1991). For Less­ ing’s drama theory, see Hamburg Dramaturgy, ed­ ited by Victor Lange (1962). See also Lessing’s T heological Writings, edited by Henry Chadwick (1956). A more complete English translation was undertaken by E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern, under the editorship o f Edward Bell, more than a century ago: S elected Prose Works o f G. E. Less­ ing (1890). H. B. N isbet’s Lessing: P hilosophical and T heological Writings (2005) includes some newly translated materials as well as overviews that provide useful context. Also see N isbet’s G ott­

hold Ephraim Lessing: His Life, Works, and Thought (2013). Good general studies devoted to Lessing’s life and works are H. B. Garland, Less­ ing: T he F ounder o f M odern G erm an Literature (1962), and Edward M. Batley, Catalyst o f Enlight­ enm ent: G otthold Ephraim Lessing (1990). Stud­ ies situating Lessing in a larger context include a very useful collected volume edited by Alexej Ugrinsky called Lessing and the Enlightenm ent

(1986), Robert S. Leventhal’s Disciplines o f Inter­ pretation: Lessing, Herder, Schlegel, and Herme­ neutics in Germany, 1750-1800 (1994), the anthol­ ogy edited by Barbara Fischer and Thom as C. Fox titled A C om pan ion to the Works o f G otthold Ephraim Lessing (2 0 0 5 ), and Avi L ifsch itz and M ichael Squ ire’s co-edited, Rethinking Lessing’s

Laocoon: Antiquity, Enlightenment, and the “Limits” o f Painting and Poetry (2017). Early in the twentieth century, Irving Babbitt’s New Laokoon: An Essay on the Confusion o f the Arts (1910) attempted to restore Lessing’s sense of distinction to a world led astray by Rom anticism’s tendency to cross or blur boundaries. E. H. Gom brich’s short Lessing (1957) paints a brilliant portrait of a man w hose dialecti­ cal mind had no real use for visual art. T h e publication in 1984 o f David W ellbery’s

Lessing’s “L a o co on ”: Sem iotics and Aesthetics in the Age o f Reason brought Lessing into postSaussurian discussions of sign theory. Simon Richter’s Laocodn’s Body and the Aesthetics o f Pain:

W inckehnann, Lessing, Herder, Moritz, G oethe (1992) provides an interesting analysis of the re­ lation between pain and beauty. Carol Jacobs of­ fers a good analysis of the rhetoric of Lessing’s polemics in “Fictional Histories: Lessing’s L a o ­ coon ,” in her Telling Tim e (1993). Susan G us­ tafson’s Absent M others and O rphaned Fathers:

Narcissism and A bjection in Lessing’s A esthetic and Dramatic Production (1995) com bines a dis­ cussion o f Lessing’s plays with a reading of the L aocoon that uses Ju lia Kristeva’s theory o f ma­ ternal erasure, or “abjection ,” in a daring fem i­ nist psychoanalysis. A special issue o f Poetics Today on Lessing (2 0 .2 [1999]) offers a very in­ teresting collection of essays, particularly strik­ ing for the debates about gender as a category of analysis. The volume concludes with a long, en­ ergetic, polem ical review of the literature on Lessing by M eir Sternberg. For debates about ecphrasis, see Murray K rieger’s 1967 essay “Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry; or, L aokoon Revisited,” later collected in Krieger’s

Ekphrasis: T he Illusion o f the Natural Sign (1992); W. J. T. M itch ell’s 1984 essay “Space and Tim e: Lessing’s L aocoon and the Politics of G en re,” later collected in his Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986); and Jam es H effernan’s M u­ seum o f Words (1993). There is a bibliography in Germ an on Lessing by Doris K uhles, LessingB ibliographie 1971—1985 (1988). See also the up­ dated bibliography in Rethinking Lessing’s L a o ­

coon , A C om panion to the W orks o f G otthold Ephraim Lessing, and N isbet’s G otthold Ephraim Lessing: His Life, His Works, and Thought. C la u d e L e v i- S t r a u s s In addition to the works discussed in the headnote, Levi-Strauss’s notable publications include The Savage Mind (1962; trans. 1966); Totemism (1962; trans. 1963); “The Scope of Anthropology” (his 1960 inaugural lecture at the College de France;

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trans. 1967); Mythologiques (4 vols., 1 9 6 4 -7 1 ; trans. 1969—81 as Introduction to the Science o f Mythology, with the individual volumes titled The

Raw and the Cooked, Front Honey to Ashes, The Origin o f Table Manners, and The Naked Man); Myth and Meaning (1978), a short and very accessi­ ble introduction to the structural analysis of myth; Anthropology and Myth (1984; trans. 1986); and several additional volumes on myth. Anthropology Confronts the Problems o f the Modern World (2013) is an English translation of a collection of lectures delivered in 1986 in Tokyo on structural anthropol­ ogy. In honor of Levi-Strauss’s turning 100 in 2 0 0 8 , Gallimard published a 2,000-page collection of his w'ork, Oeuvres, while Penguin issued an En­ glish edition of Tristes Tropiques (2012) with a new introduction. An assembled collection of LeviStrauss’s essays, We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays (2013; trans. 2016), comparatively explores customs, myths, and rituals. Besides the autobio­ graphical Tristes Tropiques (1955), the best sources of biographical information available in English are two books of interviews, the first set with Georges Charbonnier (1961; trans. 1969), the second with Didier Eribon (1988; trans. 1991), each published under the title Conversations with Claude LeviStrauss. See also Christopher Johnson, Claude Levi-Strauss: The Formative Years (2003). Good introductions to Levi-Strauss’s work in­ clude Edmund L each’s respectfully critical C laude Levi-Strauss (1970), which is particularly useful for situating Levi-Strauss in relation to the discipline o f anthropology; David Pace, C laude Levi-Strauss: T he Bearer o f Ashes (1983); Roland Champagne, Claude Levi-Strauss (1987); and Marcel Henaff,

C laude Levi-Strauss and the Making o f Structural Anthropology (1991; trans. 1998). In 2 0 0 8 U N E S ­ CO devoted a special issue of its flagship journal, T he Courier, to the man and his work. Theoretically crucial readings of Levi-Strauss’s structuralism in general and Tristes Tropiques in particular have been published by Jacques Derrida in O f Grammatology (1967; trans. 1976) and Writ­ ing and Difference (1967; trans. 1978) and by Clif­ ford Geertz in The Interpretation o f Cultures (1973) and Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (1988). Also noteworthy are several highly influen­ tial essays analyzing the sexual politics of LeviStrauss’s kinship theory: Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” in Toward an Anthropology o f Women (ed. Rayna Reiter, 1975); Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement, The Newly Born Woman (1975; trans. 1986); and Luce Irigaray, This Sex W hich Is Not One (1977; trans. 1985). Cleo M cNelly’s “Natives, Women, and Claude Levi-Strauss,” Massachusetts Review 16 (1975), addresses questions of race and gender in Tristes Tropiques, drawing comparisons with Charles Baudelaire and Joseph Conrad; other aspects of Levi-Strauss’s participation in literary trends are explored by James Boon’s From Symbol­

ism to Structuralism: Levi-Strauss in a Literary

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Tradition (1972), and by Rethinking C lau d e LeviStrauss (1908-2009), edited by Robert Doran, a special issue of Yale French Studies, no. 123 (2013). The interdisciplinary essays in The Cambridge Companion to Levi-Strauss, edited by Boris W ise­ man (2009), examine his body of ideas in relation­ ship to aesthetics, anthropology, language, and lit­ erature. In “The Ethnic Ethnographer: Judaism in Tristes Tropiques,’’ Representations, no. 15 (1995), David Damrosch discusses the specter of Nazi ter­ ror and Levi-Strauss’s ambivalent treatment of his own ethnicity in Tristes Tropiques. In “Levi-Strauss: The Writing Lesson Revisited,” Modern Language Review 92 (1997), Christopher Johnson reexamines Levi-Strauss’s framing of the writing lesson episode and proposes a recontextualized interpretation of it. For bibliographies, see Joan Nordquist’s Claude L&vi-Strauss: A Bibliography (1987), which covers publications in English, and Marcel H enaff’s book (cited above), which provides a selective but never­ theless extensive bibliography. See also the impres­ sive bibliography in Johnson, Claude Levi-Strauss and the Cambridge Companion.

L i Zeh o u Li Zehou has w'ritten two dozen books in Chinese, and several of his major works have been translated into Japanese, Korean, English, German, and other languages. The first to become available in English was his most popular study of Chinese history and theory of art, Mei de licheng (1981; trans. 1988, 2d ed., 1994, The Path o f Beauty). The English version of Meixue sijing (1989, Four Lectures on Aesthetics), published in 2 0 0 6 with the title Four Essays on Aes­ thetics: Toward a Global View, is a joint rendering by Li and Jane Cauvel. It differs significantly from the Chinese text, omitting many sections of the original. A third book translated into English is Huaxia Meixue (1989; trans. 2010, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition). Translations of several other books are in process. A dozen of Li Zehou’s essays are avail­ able in English, including “The Philosophy of Kant and a Theory of Subjectivity,” Analecta Husserliana 21 (1986); “A Discourse on Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhism,” Social Sciences in China 1 (1987); “Hu­ man Nature and Human Future: A Combination of Marx and Confucius,” in Chinese Thought in a

Global Context: A Dialogue between China and Western Philosophical Approaches (ed. Karl-Heinz Pohl, 1999); and “Subjectivity and ‘Subjectality’: A Response,” Philosophy East and West 49.2 (1999), which succinctly summarizes his major philosophi­ cal and aesthetic ideas. In addition, a selection of his writings were published as a special issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought (32.2 [2000]) titled

Li Zehou. Li Zehou’s writings fall into three categories: phi­ losophy and aesthetics, studies of Chinese intellec­ tual and art history, and studies of Chinese culture and society. Major works in the first group (titles given in English) are Critique o f Critical Philosophy (1979), Collection o f Essays on Aesthetics (1979), The

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Path o f Beauty (1981), Selected Writings on Philoso­ phy and Aesthetics by Li Zehou (1985), The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (1989), Four Lectures on Aesthet­ ics (1989), An Outline o f My Philosophy (1990), The Anthropo-historical Ontology (2008), Ethics (2010), A Response to M ichael Sandel and O ther Matters (2014), and W hat Is Morality ? (2015). In the second group are A Study o f the Thought o f Kang Youwei and Tan Sitong (1958); On the History o f M odem Chinese Intellectual Thought (1979); On the History o f Ancient Chinese Intellectual Thought (1985); On the History o f Contemporary Chinese Intellectual Thought (1987); History o f Chinese Aesthetics, with Liu Gangji (2 vols., 1 9 8 4 -8 7 ); and From Sham an­ ism to Ritual Regulation and Humaneness (2015). The third group includes Walk My Own Path (1986), M arxism in C hina (1993), New D reams o f the Century (1998), Reading Confucian Analects Today (1998), Five Essays fro m 1999 (1999), Pragmatic Reason and the Culture o f Optim ism (2 0 0 5 ), Should C hin ese Philosophy Go on Stage} (2011), How Can Chinese Philosophy Go on Stage ? (2012), and C ollected Dialogues o f Li Zehou (7 vols., 2014). He has also published many miscellaneous essays in Chinese journals and newspapers. Because of Li Zehou’s prominence in China as a contemporary thinker, his works have been sub­ jected to numerous studies and critiques in Chi­ nese. In English, see the special section devoted to his ideas about philosophy and aesthetics in Phi­ losophy East and West 49.2 (1999). A general intro­ duction to L i’s ideas and works is offered by Woei Lien Chong, “History as the Realization of Beauty: Li Zehou’s Aesthetic Marxism,” Contemporary C hi­ nese Thought 32.2 (2000), and John Zijiang Ding, “Li Zehou: Chinese Aesthetics from a Post-Marxist and Confucian Perspective,” in Contemporary C hi­ nese Philosophy (ed. Chung-Ying Cheng and Nicho­ las Bunnin, 2002). For a critical assessment, see the lengthy article by Gu Xin, “Subjectivity, Moder­ nity, and Chinese Hegelian Marxism: A Study of Li Zehou’s Philosophical Ideas from a Comparative Perspective,” Philosophy East and West 4 6 .2 (1996). W hile acknowledging L i’s contributions to philoso­ phy and aesthetics through his efforts to transform Kant’s idealistic doctrine of subjectivity into a ma­ terialistic one that denies the duality o f matter and mind, Gu argues that L i’s system o f thought— despite his declared aim— remains within a Hegelian-Lukacsian Marxist framework. Ding’s es­ say contains a useful bibliography o f Li Zehou’s complete works up to 200 2 .

L o n g in u s The original Greek text with valuable critical com ­ mentary can be found in “Longinus" on the Sublime (1964), edited by the leading Longinus scholar D. A. Russell. English translations include W. R. Rob­ erts’s Longinus on the Sublime (1899); W. H. Fyfe’s Loeb Classical Library edition (vol. 199, 1927); and, most notably, D. A. Russell’s version in An­

cient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New

Translations (1972) and in Classical Literary Criti­ cism (1989), both edited by Russell and M. Winterbottom. Fyfe’s translation has also been revised by Russell in the more recent Loeb edition (1995). Both of Russell’s translations offer useful and au­ thoritative introductions and annotations. A more recent version, also with notes, appears in the new edition of Classical Literary Criticism (2000), edit­ ed by Penelope Murray and T. S. Dorsch. Works of criticism focusing on the English re­ ception of Longinus include T. R. H enn’s Longinus and English Criticism (1934) and S. H. M onk’s The

Sublime: A Study o f Critical Theories in EighteenthCentury England (1935). J. W. H. Atkins’s Literary Criticism in Antiquity, A Sketch o f Its Development, volume 2, Graeco-Rom an (1934), and G. M. A. G rube’s G reek and Roman Critics (1965) offer comprehensive discussions of the text o f On Sub­ limity, covering important social and historical contexts. M. H. Abrams’s T he Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953) and Thom as W eiskel’s T he Romantic Sub­ lime: Studies in T he Structure and Psychology o f Transcendence (1976) include insightful com ­ ments on Longinus’s relationship to the emergence of Romanticism, while Jules Brody’s Boileau and Longinus (1958) concentrates on the poet-critic who with his late seventeenth-centu ry French translation contributed the most to Longinus’s great reputation in Europe. Classical Criticism, volume 1 of The Cambridge History o f Literary Criticism, includes an inform ative short piece on Longinus by D. A. Russell (ed. George A. Ken­ nedy, 1989). Yun Lee Too’s T he Idea o f A ncient Literary Criticism (1998) places Longinus’s theory o f the sublim e w ithin the context of ancient c rit­ icism from its origins in archaic Greek poetry to the early Christian era. Adnan K. Abdulla’s A

Comparative Study o f Longinus and Al-Jurjani: The Interrelationships between M edieval Arabic Literary Criticism and G raeco-Rom an Poetics (2004) inves­ tigates the sim ilarities and differences in how two major critics with different cultural backgrounds describe at disparate times the origin and the re­ ception of sublime art. Ancient Literary Criticism, edited by Andrew Laird (2005), is a useful com­ panion to the Russell and W interbottom antholo­ gy, offering a collection of important scholarship on canonical texts of ancient rhetoric and poetics, including Longinus’s On Sublimity. Emma Gilby’s

Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature (2006) provides close readings of Longinus’s theory of the sublime, tracing his influence on three major French authors: Pierre Corneille, Blaise Pascal, and Nicolas Boileau. Karl Axelsson’s The Sublime:

Precursors and British Eighteenth-Century C oncep­ tions (2007) explores the ways in which Longinus’s Greek treatise shaped much of late seventeenthand eighteenth-century British criticism . For an overview of theories of the sublime, see The Sub­ lime: A Reader, edited by Andrew Ashfield and Pe­ ter De Bolla (1993), and Philip Shaw’s The Sublime

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(2006). The wide-ranging essays in The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present, edited by Timothy l\l. Costelloe (2012), demonstrate the array of impor­ tant cultural and philosophical issues connected with the concept of sublimity. Robert Doran pro­ vides a well-informed and carefully nuanced analy­ sis of Longinus and his eighteenth-century recep­ tion in The Theory o f the Sublime from Longinus to Kant (2015). For bibliographic information, see Demetrio St. M arin’s Bibliography o f the Essay on the Sublime (1967) and Thomas Gwinup and Fidelia Dickinson’s Greek and Roman Authors: A Checklist o f Criticism (1982), as well as the bibliographies in­ cluded in Castelloe’s The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present and D oran’s T he T heory o f the

Sublime from Longinus to Kant. Gydrgy Lukacs The standard edition of Lukacs’s writings is the German Georg Lukacs Werke (18 vols., 1 9 2 6 -8 6 ). A number of scholarly edited texts are also avail­ able in H ungarian. A substantial collection of his letters, taped interviews, photos, unpublished works, and m iscellan eou s m aterials, plus his 10,000-volum e personal library, is housed in the Lukacs Archive in Budapest. English translations are Soul and Form (1910; trans. 1974), The Theory o f the Novel (1916; trans. 1971), History and Class Consciousness (1923; trans. 1971), Lenin: A Study on the Unity o f His Thought (1924; trans. 1971), The Historical Novel (1937; trans. 1962), Studies in

European Realism: A Sociological Survey o f the Writings o f Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, Tolstoy, Gorki, and Others (1945; trans. 1950), G oethe and His Age (1947; trans. 1978), Essays on Thom as Mann (1947; trans. 1965), The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations betw een D ialectics and E conom ics (1948; trans. 1976), Essays on Realism (1948; trans. 1981), German Realists in the Nineteenth Century (1951; trans. 1993), The Destruction o f Rea­ son (1954; trans. 1981), The Meaning o f Contempo­ rary Realism (1958; trans. 1963), Conversations with Lukacs (1967; trans. 1975), Tactics and Ethics: Po­ litical Writings, 1919-1929 (1968; trans. 1972), Solzhenitsyn (1969; trans. 1971), Writer and Critic and O ther Essays (trans. 1970), T he Ontology o f Social Being (2 vols., 1976; trans. 1978), Record o f a Life: An Autobiographical Sketch (1981; trans. 1983), T he Process o f Democratization (1985; trans. 1991), and A D efence o f History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the D ialectic (1996; trans. 2 0 0 0 ). A sampling o f essays is available in T he Lukacs Reader, edited by Arpad Kadarkay (1995). Lukacs’s essays on democracy from the post-W orld W ar II period, including those in his influ ential volume Literature and D em ocracy (1947), are available in The Culture o f P eople’s De­

mocracy: Hungarian Essays on Literature, Art, and D em ocratic Transition, 1 945-1948, edited and translated by Tyrus M iller (2013). For a detailed biography, see K adarkay’s Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought, and Politics (1991).

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On Lukacs’s theory of the novel, see Lucien Goldmann, Towards a Sociology o f the Novel (1964; trans. 1975), and J. M. Bernstein, The Philosophy o f the

Novel: Lukacs, Marxism, and the Dialectic o f Form (1984). For critical responses to Lukacs’s involve­ ment in the realism debate, see the essays by T h e­ odor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, and Ernst Bloch in the often-cited Aesthetics and Poli­ tics, edited by the New Left Review (1977). Also helpful in this regard is Eugene Lunn’s Marxism and

Modernism: An Historical Study o f Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin, and Adorno (1982). Fredric Jam eson’s most developed account of Lukacs’s work appears in his Marxism and Form (1971). Bela Kiralyfalvi’s Aes­ thetics o f Gydrgy Lukacs (1975) offers a systematic examination of Lukacs’s aesthetic theories, while Terry Eagleton’s introductory Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976) and his Ideology o f the Aesthetic (1990) present some suggestive critical remarks on Lukacs. Andrew Arato and Paul Breines’s The

Young Lukacs and the Origins o f Western Marxism (1979) and M artin Jay’s Marxism and Totality: The Adventures o f a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas (1984) situate Lukacs’s work within the tradition of Western Marxism. Galin Tihanov’s T he Master and

the Slave: Lukacs, Bakhtin, and the Ideas o f Their Time (2000) offers a comparative study focusing on intellectual background and historical context, while also introducing unknown archival material and overlooked texts by Lukacs and Bakhtin. Janos Kelemen’s The Rationalism o f Georg Lukacs (2014) explores the central motif of the defense of reason in Lukacs’s oeuvre by drawing on a number of his untranslated, lesser-known writings. For a survey of contemporary Marxist critics’ assessments of Lukacs, see the interviews gathered in Lukacs After Communism, edited by Eva L. Corredor (1997). Bib­ liographies of Lukacs’s writing and criticism of it can be found in Peter Murphy’s Writings by and

about Georg Lukacs: A Bibliography (1976), Francois Lapointe’s Georg Lukacs and His Critics (1910— 1982) (1983), and Kadarkay’s reader and biography mentioned above.

Je a n - F r a n g o is L y o ta rd Much, but not all, o f Lyotard’s work has been translated into English (the date of French publi­ cation is given first, where appropriate): P henom ­ enology (1954; 1991); Discourse, Figure (1971; 2011); Libidinal Economy (1974; 1993); Ducham ps’s Trans/Formers (1977; 1990); The Pacific Wall (1975; 1990); The Postmodern Condition (1979; 1984); Ju st Gaming, with Jean-L oup Thebaud (1979; 1985); The Differend (1983; 1988); The Postmodern Explained (1986; 1992); Enthusi­ asm: The Kantian Critique o f History (1986; 2009); The Inhuman: R eflections on Tim e (1988; 1991);

Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (1988); Heidegger and "the jews" (1988; 1990); Lessons on the Analytic o f the Sublime (1991; 1994); Postmodern Fables (1993; 1997); Signed, M alraux (1996; 1999); S ou n d p roof R oom : M alraux’s Anti-Aesthetics

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(1998; 2001); T he Confession o f Augustine (1998; 2 0 0 0 ); T he Hyphen: Betw een Judaism and Chris­ tianity (1999); and Why Philosophize (2012; 2013). T here are five collections of work spanning Lyotard’s career: Driftworks, edited by Roger M cKeon (1984); T he Lyotard R eader, edited by Andrew Benjam in (1989); Political Writings, edit­ ed by Bill Readings (1993); Toward the Postmod­ ern, edited by Robert Harvey and Mark S. Rob­ erts (1993); and M usic/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic, edited by Adam Krims (1998). The un­ translated works are Derive a partir de Marx et Freud (1973, Starting from Marx and Freud); Des dispositifs pulsionnels (1973, Driving Impulses); In­ structions paiennes (1977, Pagan Instructions); Recits tremblants (1977, Trembling Stories); La Guerre des Algeriens: Ecrits 19 5 6 - 6 3 (1988, T he Algerian War: Writings, 1956-63); and Misere de la philosophic (2 0 0 0 , Poverty o f Philosophy). Stu ­ art Sim ’s Jean-Franqois Lyotard (1996) places Lyotard’s work in historical and intellectual con­ text. T he most comprehensive biography is K iff Bamford's Jean-F ran qois Lyotard (2017). The best short introduction is Simon Malpas’s Jean Franqois Lyotard (2003). David C arroll’s Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, D errida (1987) de­ tails Lyotard’s connections with poststructural­ ism. T h ree excellent collections of essays on Lyotard’s work are Judging Lyotard, edited by An­ drew Benjam in (1992); T he Politics o f Jean Franqois Lyotard, edited by Chris Rojek and Bry­ an S. Turner (1998); and M inima M em oria: In the W ake o f Jean -F ran qois Lyotard, edited by Claire Novel, Zrinka Stahuljak, and Kent Still (2007). T he Lyotard Dictionary, edited by Stuart Sim (2011), offers succinct accounts of the major themes in Lyotard’s work, while Dylan Sawyer’s

Lyotard, Literature and the Trauma o f the “differe n d ” (2014) exam ines Lyotard’s relevance to liter­ ary criticism . T he Lyotard D ictionary has a com ­ plete bibliography o f Lyotard’s work, along with a good, although not fully comprehensive, bibliog­ raphy of secondary works in English.

M oses M a in to n id e s The modern Arabic edition of The Guide o f the Per­ plexed (Dalalat al-Ha’irin) was compiled in 1929 by S. Munk and translated into English by Shlomo Pines (1963); Joseph Kafih’s three-volume edition (1972) offers parallel Arabic and Hebrew versions. Large sections of the Mishneh Torah as well as other writings by M aimonides are available in English translation in The Maimonides Reader, edited by Isadore Tvversky (1972). Ilil Arbel’s Maimonides: A Spir­ itual Biography (2001) is an excellent popular intro­ duction to Maimonides’ life, while Joel L. Kraemer’s

Maimonides: The Life and World o f One o f Civiliza­ tion’s Greatest Minds (2008) is a more scholarly biog­ raphy. Moshe H albertal’s M aimonides: Life and Thought (2 0 0 9 ; trans. 2014), originally published in Hebrew, is an accessible introduction to both the philosopher’s life and his work.

For beginners as well as scholars, Alfred L. Ivry’s

M aim onides G uide o f the Perplexed: A Philosophi­ cal G u ide (2016) provides a new introduction to G uide o f the Perplexed that includes an explication o f each chapter o f the Pines translation, as well as paraphrases that clarify key terms and concepts, and analyses of the philosophical issues raised by the text. Leo Strauss’s essay “The Literary Charac­ ter of T he G uide fo r the Perplexed,” originally in­ cluded in Essays on Maimonides: An Octocentennial Volume (ed. Salo W. Baron, 1941) and later reprinted in M aimonides: A Collection o f Critical Essays (ed. Joseph A. Buijs, 1988), is an indispensable intro­ duction to M aim onides’ method in T he G uide. Several recent volumes document the significance o f the political philosopher Leo Strauss, whose work on Maimonides was instrumental in restoring the medieval philosopher’s reputation in the twen­ tieth century. Kenneth Hart G reen, in L eo Strauss on M aim onides: T he C om plete Writing (2013), brings together in an annotated collectio n all Strau ss’s w riting on M aim onides— a total o f six­ teen essays, three published in English for the first time. Aryeh Tepper’s Progressive Minds, Conservative

Politics: L eo Strauss’s Later Writings on M aimonides (2013) identifies in Strau ss’s later writing a new focus on Maimonides’ esoteric teaching on progress as a means to go beyond conflicts not only between reason and revelation but also between progressiv­ ism and conservatism in contemporary politics. Joshua Parens, in L eo Strauss and the Recovery o f M edieval P olitical Philosophy (2016), focuses on Strauss’s engagement with medieval political phi­ losophy to offer a new interpretation o f Strauss’s understanding of G uide o f the Perplexed. Susan A. Handelm an, in The Slayers o f Moses: T he E m er­

gence o f Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (1982), exam ines the relationship between early Jew ish biblical herm eneutics and contem po­ rary deconstructive literary theory. The collection of essays edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick, Midrash and Literature (1986), also exam­ ines the relationships between Jewish hermeneutics and literary theory. For an advanced introduction, see The C am bridge Com panion to M aim onides, edited by Kenneth Seeskin (2005). Sin ce the octacentennial of M aimonides’ death there has been a virtual explosion of scholarship on the Jewish thinker. M enachem Kellner explores M aimonides’ critique o f Jew ish mysticism in M aim onides’ C on ­ fron ta tion with Mysticism (2 0 0 6 ). Donald M cC allum ’s M aim on ides’ G uide fo r the P erplexed: S ilence an d Salvation (2007) provides an overview o f M aimonides scholarship. M aimonides after 800

Years: Essays on M aim onides and His In flu en ce, edited by Jay M. Harris (2007), contains essays by leading scholars in the field. Recent volumes focus on the im portance of herm eneutics and biblical exegesis in T he G uide o f the Perplexed, including M aim onides as B iblical Interpreter (2011), by Sara Klein-Braslavy, and M ethod and Metaphysics in M aim onides’ "Guide fo r the Perplexed” (2011), by

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D aniel Davies. T he M atter an d Form o f M ai­ m onides’ "Guide" (2013), by Jo se f Stern, attempts to provide a unified interpretation o f the G uide through the philosophies of m atter and form. In

P hilo’s Heirs: Moses M aim onides and T hom as Aquinas (2017), Luis C ortest exam ines the influ­ ence of Philo of Alexandria, the first century Jewish philosopher on the philosophical works of M ai­ monides and Thomas Aquinas, and in doing so high­ lights the relationships between the two medieval philosophers. Volumes on the reception of M ai­ monides include Jam es A rthur Diam ond’s M ai­

m onides and the Shaping o f the Jew ish Canon (2014), which describes the philosopher’s recep­ tion in Jew ish in tellectu al history, and Howard K riesel’s Judaism as Philosophy: Studies in M ai­

m onides and the M edieval Jew ish Philosophers o f Provence (2015), which exam ines his reception among medieval Jewish philosophers. Micah Good­ m an’s M aim onides and the B ook That C hanged

Judaism : Secrets o f “T he G uide fo r the P erplexed’’ (2010; trans. 2015), a best-selling book in Israel, offers an interpretation of the G uide that puts it into dialogue with contemporary religious thought, dem onstrating the relevance of Maimonides not only to Jewish culture and identity but to W estern philosophy as well. Jam es T. Robinson, “Moses M aimonides,” in the online Oxford Bibliographies (2015), is the most up-to-date bibliography.

K a rl M arx a n d F r ie d r ic h E n gels The English translation of the collected works of Marx and Engels fills fifty volumes, Karl Marx, F rederick Engels: C ollected Works (1 9 7 5 -2 0 0 5 ). T he best single-volume editions are David M cLellan’s Karl Marx: S elected Writings (1977) and Robert C. Tucker’s Marx-Engels R ead er (2d ed., 1978). For M arx’s letters, see C orrespon den ce, ed­ ited by Saul K. Padover (1979). Helpful introduc­ tions to Marx’s life and writings include David M cLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (1973); Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and E n­ vironm ent (4th ed., 1978); Francis W heen, Karl Marx (1999); and Jo n ath an Sperber, Karl Marx: A N ineteenth-C entury Life (2013). On Engels, see Steven M arcus, Engels, M anchester, and the Working Class (1974), an excellent work of cultur­ al history; W. O. Henderson, T h e L ife o f Friedrich Engels (1976); Terrell Carver, Engels (1981), a good overview; and Carver, Marx and Engels: T he Intel­ lectual R elationship (1983). An excellent recent biography is Tristram Hunt, M arx’s G eneral: T he

Revolutionary Life o f Friedrich Engels (2009). There is a vast secondary literature on Marx and Engels’s views on literature and criticism and on the long line o f theorists and critics who belong to the Marxist tradition. Essay collections provide a good starting point: see R adical Perspectives in the Arts, edited by Lee Baxandall (1972); Marxism and Art: Writings in Aesthetics and Criticism, edit­ ed by Berel Lang and Forrest W illiam s (1972);

Marxism and Art: Essays C lassic and C on tem p o­

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rary, edited by Maynard Solomon (1973); Karl Marx and F red erick Engels on Literature and Art: A S election o f Writings, edited by Lee Bax­ andall and Stefan Morawski (1974); and Marxists on Literature: An Anthology, edited by David Craig (1975). More up-to-date are C ontem porary Marxist Literary Criticism , edited by Francis Mulhern (1992), and Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne (1996). See also A esthetics and Politics, edited by Ernst Bloch (1977), and M arxism and the In ter­ pretation o f Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (1988). Also stim ulating are the essays included in Marxist Shakespeares, ed­ ited by Jean E. Howard and S co tt C u tler Shershow (2001). Robert Paul W olff, Understanding Marx: A R econstruction and C ritiqu e o f “C a p i­ tal” (1984); A D ictionary o f Marxist Thought, ed­ ited by Tom Bottom ore (2d ed., 1991); and Peter Singer, Marx: A Very Short Introduction (rev. ed., 2 0 0 0 ), are all insightful. On M arx’s relevance for the twenty-first century, see Jonathan W olff, Why Read Marx Today? (2002), and Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (2011), which seeks to re­ fute common objections to Marxism (that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the econom ic and historical determ inism , etc.). Cogent studies o f M arx’s social, p olitical, and econom ic thought include V incent Barnett, Marx (2 0 0 9 ); Amy E. W endling, Karl Marx on Technology and A lienation (2 0 0 9 ); and David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s “C apital ” (2010). On the history of M arx and Engels’s interest in and response to literature, Peter Dem etz’s Marx,

Engels, and the Poets: Origins o f Marxist Literary Criticism (1967) and S. S. Prawer’s Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) are informative. A con ­ cise and popular survey o f M arxist literary c riti­ cism is Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976). Tony B en nett, Form alism and Marxism (1979), deals well with Russian form al­ ism and Marxist theory and criticism ; and Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form : Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories o f Literature (1971), examines several leading tw entieth-cen tu ry in tellectu als influenced by M arx’s w ritings. In T he Ideology o f the A esthetic (1990) and Ideology: An Introduction (1991), Eagleton studies the meanings and implica­ tions of two key terms in Marxist criticism , ideology and aesthetics. M arxism, M odernity and Postcolo­ nial Studies, edited by Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (2002), also merits attention. For studies o f literatu re and culture that bear witness to M arx’s in flu en ce, see Kevin Floyd,

T he Reification o f Desire: Toward a Q ueer Marxism (20 0 9 ), with provocative discussions o f Gyorgy Lukacs, M ichel Fo u cau lt, Ju d ith Butler, Her­ bert M arcuse, and other w riters and theorists; O rrin N. C. Wang, Rom antic Sobriety: Sensation, Revolution, C om m odification, History (2011), ex­ ploring the relationship among Romanticism, de­ construction, and Marxism through the themes of

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sensation and sobriety in Romantic literature and contemporary literary theory; John F. Lavelle, Blue

Collar, Theoretically: A Post-Marxist Approach to Working Class Literature (2012), drawing on sociology, cognitive science, anthropology, and psychol­ ogy, and supported by interpretations of literary texts by Stephen Crane and F. Scott Fitzgerald; and Marx at the Movies: Revisiting History, Theory and Practice, edited by Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen (2014), which includes essays on Sergei Eisenstein, Orson W elles, and other American and European filmmakers and their films. On the relationships between Marxism and re­ cent theories of literature and criticism , consult M ichael Ryan, Marxism and D econstruction: A C ritical A rticulation (1982); John Frow, Marxism and Literary History (1986); and S co tt W ilson, Cultural M aterialism: Theory and Practice (1995). Dated but worth consulting are Lee Baxandall,

Marxism and A esthetics: A S elective A nnotated Bibliography (1968), and Chris Bullock and David Peck, G uide to Marxist Literary Criticism (1980). There is a helpful, concise bibliography in Rich­ ard S ch m itt’s Introduction to Marx and Engels: A C ritical R econstruction (2d ed., 1997). See also Cecil L. Eubanks, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: An Analytical Bibliography (2d ed., 1984), and the bibliography included in David M cLellan, Karl Marx: A Biography (4th ed., 2 006).

G ia c o p o M a z z o n i There is no complete English translation of On the Defense o f the “Comedy" o f Dante. A book-length English rendering of its “Introduction and Summa­ ry” can be found in On the Defense o f the “Comedy” o f Dante: Introduction and Summary, translated by Robert L. Montgomery (1983), who also provides detailed scholarly annotations plus a superb pref­ ace covering textual, historical, biographical, and critical matters. The standard modern Italian edi­ tion is Introduzione della Difesa della “C om m edia" di Dante, edited by Enrico M usacchio and Gigino Pellegrini (1982). A generous selection of excerpted passages from other parts of On the Defense o f the “Comedy" o f Dante appears in I iterary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (ed. and trans. Allan IT. Gilbert, 1940). A dated biography in Italian exists, Pierantonio Serassi’s La Vita di Ja co p o Mazzoni, Patrizio Cesenate (1790). Illuminating biographical details can be found in Montgomery’s preface. A comprehensive and authoritative critical over­ view' of Mazzoni’s work appears in Bernard Wein­ berg’s magisterial History o f Literary’ Criticism in the Italian R enaissance (2 vols., 1961). Also useful are Baxter Hathaway’s Age o f Criticism: T he Late Re­ naissance in Italy (1962) and his Marvels and Com­ m onplaces: R enaissance Literary Criticism (1968). The former contextualizes M azzoni’s work in rela­ tionship to five leading issues of his time, while the latter narrows its context to the debates surround­ ing imitation. A formalist critique of how' Mazzoni evades defining poetry can be found in Robin Louis

M cA llister’s “M eaning, Language, and C oncep­ tualization: Alternatives in Mazzoni and D ante,” Language and Style 5 (1971). Frederick P urn ell’s dissertation “Jacopo Mazzoni and His Comparison of Plato and Aristotle” (1971) offers a detailed study of Mazzoni in the context of Renaissance debates about classical philosophy. For a New Critical per­ spective on Mazzoni that accentuates the novelty of his treatment of the image, see Murray Krieger’s “Jacopo M azzoni, Repository of Diverse Critical Traditions or Source of a New O ne?” in his Poetic

Presence and Illusion: Essays in Critical History and Theory (1979). A limited bibliography o f criticism can be found in M ontgomery’s book; for a bibliog­ raphy of primary texts, see W einberg’s history.

M a rk M c G u r l M cG url’s first book, T he Novel Art: Elevations o f American Fiction a fter Henry Jam es (2001), exam ­ ines American fiction from the late nineteenth century through World War II, showing how in that period the novel aspired to be high art. Draw­ ing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, it points to the ways in which modernist works dis­ tinguished themselves from mainstream fiction. His next book, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise o f Creative Writing (2009), starts where his previous account left off, taking up the second h alf of the century. Rather than exam ining the small, elite networks of modernism, it looks at the mass institution of creative writing and adopts systems theory to explain its operation. For an ac­ count of M cG url’s career and thinking in his own words, see Jeffrey J. W illiam s, “W ith the Program: An Interview with Mark M cG url,” Contemporary Literature 57 (2016). T h e Program Era was immediately hailed as a major interpretation of contemporary American fiction. It received substantial treatm ent from in­ fluential critics such as Louis Menand, in “Show or Tell,” New Yorker, June 8, 2 0 0 9 , and Fredric Jam eson, in “Dirty Little Secret: The Programme Era,” London Review o f Books, November 22, 2012. It was also attacked by the writer E lif Batuman in “G et a Real Degree: Down with Creative W riting,” L ondon R eview o f Books, Septem ­ ber 23, 201 0 ; in “MFA vs. NYC,” n + 1, no. 10 (2010), Chad Harbach (identified as “the editors”) pointed out that it left out a significant group of writers who responded to the popular rather than academ ic market. His essay is the anchor of MFA vs. NYC: T h e Two Cultures o f A m erican F iction, edited by H arbach (2014), which also collects Batum an’s essay, Jam eson’s review, and sixteen oth­ er pieces. See also E ric B en nett, W orkshops o f

Em pire: Stegner, Engle, and A m erican Creative Writing during the C old War (2015), which takes a less positive view than M cG url’s, arguing that the workshop flattened fiction and served post­ war U.S. politics. In addition, Chris Findeisen, “Injuries of Class: Mass Education and the Amer­ ican Cam pus N ovel,” PMLA 130 (2015), c riti­

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cizes M cG url’s overly positive view of higher edu­ cation’s ability to level classes.

F ra n c o M o re tti Franco M oretti’s first book— a collection of essays translated from Italian, Signs Taken fo r Wonders:

Essays

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(1983)— offers an analysis of the relations between high and mass culture, ranging across genres from horror and tragedy to detective fiction and classic realism. In his next book, T he Way o f the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (1986; trans. 1987, new ed. 2 0 0 0 ), he argues that the bil­ dungsroman is the exemplary aesthetic form of modernity, a product of Europe’s shifting socioeco­ nomic conditions. In Modern Epic: T he World Sys­ tem from G oethe to Garcia Marquez (1994; trans. 1996), M oretti proposes a new genre, “modern epic,” which includes canonical works that stretch from G o e th e ’s Faust (1 8 0 8 —32) to G arcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years o f Solitude (1967). To account for the continuity o f this genre, Moretti uses a Darwinian-style evolutionary paradigm. His project to construct a scientific materialist history of literary genres is elaborated in his next two books: Atlas o f the European Novel, 1800—1900 (1997; trans. 1998) and Graphs, Maps, Trees: Ab­ stract Models fo r a Literary History (2005). During this period, M oretti served as ch ief editor of 11 Ro­ manzo (5 vols., 2 0 0 1 -0 3 ), a collection of more than one hundred essays by leading contemporary crit­ ics that provide an international reassessment of the novel. Selections have been translated into En­ glish as The No\>el (2 vols., 2006), which provides a detailed argument for understanding the genre as a “planetary form.” M oretti’s T he Bourgeois: B e­ tween History and Literature (2013) explores the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture in modern Euro­ pean literature by analyzing both particular key­ words (such as “useful,” “earnest,” “efficiency,” and “in fluence”) and specific formal mutations of prose. In the ten essays collected in Distant R ead­ ing (2013), M oretti reconstructs the intellectual trajectory of his theory of “distant reading” and his d ata-centric study of literature, summarizing two decades of critical work. In its regular section on “Theories and M ethodologies” PMLA 132.3 (May 2017), M oretti responds to ten assessm ents of Distant Reading. W hile reiterating his “fasci­ nation with (nonliterary) conceptual models,” he highlights the creative potential for literary study of the shifts from proximity to distance; from actual history to sim ulations of theoretical mod­ els; from the concrete reader to conventions and abstract institutions; and from close reading to “quantitative formalism.” In addition to his books, M oretti has w ritten numerous articles and is a frequent contributor to the New Left Review. Critical evaluations of M oretti’s work come from scholars working in literary history, the novel, and genre theory. In “How the Mule Got Its Tale: M oretti’s Darwinian Bricolage,” Diacritics 29.2

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(1999), a review of Atlas o f the European Novel, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young praises M oretti but also points out methodological lim itations, arguing that M oretti’s recourse to biological and cultural evolutionary models is arbitrary and tenuous. In “Anglo-Globalism?” New Left Review, 2d ser., no. 16 (2002), Jonathan Arac commends M oretti’s global reach; he notes, however, that M oretti’s theory of the novel as a “planetary form” risks strengthening the cultural hegemony of the E n­ glish language as a deceptively transparent medi­ um for analyzing diverse national literatures. In “Evolution and Literary History: A Response to Franco M oretti,” New Left Review, 2d ser., no. 34 (2005), Christopher Prendergast discusses in detail the strengths of M oretti’s theory of graphs, maps, and trees, while also indicating potential logical flaws and argum entative ellipses. In particular, Prendergast questions the causal links between form, tim e, and space that sustain M oretti’s mor­ phology of literary genres. In “The Dangers of D is­ tant Reading: Reassessing M oretti’s Approach to Literary G en res,” Genre: Forms o f Discourse and Culture 47 (2014), M aurizio A scari con tests the purported scientific objectivity of M oretti’s method of inquiry, arguing that distant reading might in fact lead to biased interpretations of a pseudosci­ entific nature. In “Plotting Devices: Literary Dar­ winism in the Laboratory,” in Evolutionary Aes­ thetics, a special issue of Philosophy and Literature ( 3 8 .1A [2014]), Jo h n Hay argues that M o retti’s quantitative analysis of the history of literary form might provide the missing link enabling literary Darwinism to realize its full scientific potential as “a more consilient literary criticism .”

T o n i M o r r is o n Toni M orrison’s books of cultural and literary criticism include T he B lack B ook (1974; reprint­ ed 2 0 0 9 ), a scrapbook on A frican A m erican expe­ riences that includes photographs, slave auction posters, newspaper clippings, and related m ateri­ als, co-edited by Toni M orrison, Middleton A. Harris, and others; Playing in the Dark: W hite­ ness and the Literary Im agination (1992); W hat Moves at the Margin: S elected N onfiction, edited by Carolyn C. Denard (2 0 0 8 ), containing several dozen essays and reviews; and T he Origin o f Others (2017). Two of M orrison’s award speeches have been published as pamphlets: Lecture and S peech

o f A cceptan ce, upon the Award o f the N obel Prize fo r Literature, Delivered in Stockholm on the Sev­ enth o f D ecem ber, N ineteen Hundred and Ninetythree (1994) and T he Dancing Mind: Speech upon A cceptance o f the National B ook Foundation Medal fo r Distinguished C ontribution to A m erican L et­ ters on the Sixth o f November, N ineteen Hundred and Ninety-six (1996). She has edited three col­ lections: R ace-ing Ju stice, E n -G endering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, C laren ce Thom as, an d the C onstruction o f S ocial Reality (1992); with C lau­ dia Brodsky Lacour, Birth o f a N ation h ood : Gaze,

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Script, and S p ectacle in the O.J. Simpson C ase (1997); and Burn This B ook: PEN Writers S peak Out on the Power o f the Word (2009), a collection addressing literature and censorship. Morrison has written eleven novels: T he Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song o f Solom on (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Para­ dise (1997), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), Home (2012), and God Help the Child (2015). Her only short story, “Recitatif,” was published in C onfirm a­

tion: An Anthology o f African American W omen (1983), a collection co-edited by Black Arts move­ ment poet and playwright Amiri Baraka and Ami­ na Baraka, his wife. Morrison has also written two plays: Dreaming Emmett (1986), about the teenag­ er (Emmett Till) whose 1955 murder helped cata­ lyze the civil rights movement, and Desdemona (2012), which features Shakespeare’s Desdemona and her A frican nursemaid. Morrison has written the libretto for the opera Margaret Garner (2005) as well as eleven children’s books— all, except R e­ member: T he Journey to School Integration (2004), co-written with her late son, Slade Morrison: The Big Box (1999); The B ook o f Mean People (2002); a number of adaptations of Aesop’s fables under the series title W ho’s Got Gam e, The Ant or the Grasshopper? (2003), Poppy or the Snake (2003), The Lion or the Mouse (2003), and T he Mirror or the Glass (2007); Peeny Butter Fudge (2009); Little Cloud and Lady Wind (2010); The Tortoise or the Hare (2010); and Please, Louise (2014). M orrison’s fiction and criticism have engen­ dered numerous scholarly articles, monographs, and collections, and not all responses have been positive. T he grounds for objections to her fiction range from liberties taken with the h isto rical record— a charge aimed mostly at her use of M ar­ garet G arner’s story in B eloved — to her depictions of black male characters to her use o f violence as part of her novels’ narrative structures. Similarly, her criticism has been faulted for not accounting for gender and sexuality ( Playing in the Dark), for skewering C larence Thom as (R ace-ing Ju stice, En-G endering Power), and for erasing the body of Nicole Brown-Simpson (Birth o f a N ation h ood ). A number of works provide good general intro­ ductions to Toni M orrison’s life and work: Linda W agner-M artin’s Toni M orrison: A Literary Life (2015) is a good starting point. Toni Morrison: M emory and M eaning, edited by Adrienne Lanier Seward and Ju stine Tally (2014), has a foreword by Carolyn C. Denard, founder o f the Toni Mor­ rison Society, and essays that take up all manner of them es in M orrison’s body o f ideas; biographi­ cal insights are provided by Dana A. W illiam s’s “To M ake a Hum anist Black: Toni W offord’s Howard Years.” Tessa Roynon’s T he C am bridge Introduction to Toni M orrison (2013) is part biog­ raphy, part close textual analysis of M orrison’s fiction and engagement with her critical recep­ tion. Morrison’s W hat Moves at the Margin: S elect­ ed N onfiction, edited and with an introduction

by Carolyn C. Denard (20 0 8 ), a com pilation of M orrison’s com m entaries, musings on her family history, and speeches, includes “The Nobel L ec­ ture in L iterature” (1994) and “T h e Dancing M ind” (1996), both of which have been published separately as well (see above). O ther solid re­ sources are T he C am bridge C om pan ion to Toni M orrison, edited by Ju stine Tally (2 0 0 7 ), which is divided into sections that treat M orrison’s fiction and nonfiction (particularly insightful is Cheryl A. W all’s essay on M orrison’s legacy as an editor who nurtured the careers of A frican Am erican writers, “Toni M orrison, Editor and Teacher”), and the classic Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, edited by Nellie Y. McKay (1988). See also Toni Morrison: Conversations, edited by Carolyn C. Denard (2008), which relies on interviews and conversations over a span of years to offer insights into Morrison’s life, work, motivations, and literary inspirations; and Elizabeth A. B eau lieu ’s T he Toni M orrison Ency­ clopedia, edited by Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu (2003), which helps identify and define key them es and trends in her oeuvre. For com pelling exam inations of M orrison’s Playing in the Dark, see N athaniel F. M ills, “Playing in the Dark, on the L eft, and Out of Bounds: Nelson Algren, World War II, and the Cross-Racial Imagination of Blackness,” MELUS 38.4 (2013); C atherine Hall, “Playing in the Dark . . . and Racing Englishness,” European Jou rn al o f W om en’s Studies 18 (2011); Sanyat Sattar, “Playing in the Dark and the Quest of Identi­ ty: M orrison Painting the True Colours of Americanness,” Shiron, no. 45 (2010); and Roynon’s close reading in T he C am bridge Introduction to Toni M orrison (see above). Harold Bloom, one of the leading partisans in the culture and canon wars, engages with debates on Am erican litera­ ture, the canon, and M orrison’s own mastery of the Am erican novel as form in “Two A fricanAm erican M asters of the Am erican Novel,” Jo u r­ nal o f B lacks in H igher E ducation, no. 28 (20 0 0 ). Over the years, M orrison’s edited collection on the C larence Thom as—Anita Hill controversy, R ace-ing Ju stice, En-G endering Power, has elic­ ited scholarship across a variety o f disciplines. Luke Charles H arris’s “Lessons Still Unlearned: T h e Continuing Sounds o f Silen ce,” Du Bois R e­ view 10 (2013), provides a retrospective overview of the issues relating to black women, silence, ju s ­ tice, power, and intersectionality that its essays sought to engage. The anthology on the O.J. Simpson saga edited by M orrison and Lacour, Birth o f a N ation h ood , whose title plays on that of the American film ­ maker D. W. G riffith ’s racially charged silent epic, T he Birth o f a N ation (1915)— itse lf inspired by Thomas F. Dixon Jr.’s novel The Clansman (1905)— led to two noteworthy articles on interracial sex, spectacle, black masculinity, and violence: Riche Richardson’s ‘“The Birth o f Nation’hood’: Lessons from Thomas Dixon and D. W. Griffith to William

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Bradford Huie and T he Klansman, O .J. Simpson’s First Movie,” Mississippi Quarterly 56 (2002/2003), and Rinaldo W alcott’s “Deceived: The Unreadabil­ ity of the O.J. Simpson C ase,” C anadian Review o f A m erican Studies/Revue C an ad ien n e d ’Etudes A m ericaines 28.2 (1998). “Toni M orrison Rem em bers” (2015, dir. Jill N ichols), an episode in the B BC series Im agine featuring M orrison herself, provides intim ate in­ sights into her life and work. For further reading, the bibliographies in W agner-M artin’s Toni M or­ rison: A Literary L ife and Roynon’s C am bridge Introduction to Toni Morrison are quite exten­ sive. In addition to hosting a biennial conference, the Toni M orrison Society publishes an annual bibliography.

T im o th y M o rto n Tim othy Morton is the author o f eight books, co­ author o f two, editor o f four, and co-editor of one. His Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: T he Body and the Natural World (1994), described by the critic Charles J. Rzepka as a “magical mystery tour o f a gargantuan subject largely unexamined in re­ lation to its important role in shaping the modern W estern world and English literature,” discusses the topics of food and drink in the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary W ollstonecraft Shelley, offering new perspectives on recent theories of medicine and diet while treating food as a cultural construct. The Poetics o f Spice: Romantic C on­ sumerism and the Exotic (2 0 0 0 ) studies the impor­ tance of spice and the spice trade, extending scholarship on the impact of consumerism and capitalism to Rom antic writers. Defining spice as a “discourse, not an object, naively transparent to itself,” the book makes use of Jacques Derrida’s pharm akon in its reading of spice as a m ultifacet­ ed “sign” and in its description o f the ideological relationships dominating the spice trade. It also employs Slavoj Zizek’s political philosophy. Mor­ ton edited Radical Food: T he Culture and Politics o f Eating and Drinking, 1 7 80-1830 (3 vols., 2 0 0 0 ), Mary S helley’s “Fran ken stein ’’: A S ou rce­ book (20 0 2 ), Cultures o f T aste/Theories o f A ppe­ tite: Eating Romanticism (2 0 0 4 ), and T he C am ­ bridge C om panion to Shelley (2 0 0 6 ). W ith Nigel S m ith , M orton co-ed ited R adicalism in British

Literary Culture, 1650—1830: From R evolution to Revolution (2 0 0 2 ). M orton’s T h e E cological Thought (2010) represents an extension of his Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environm en­ tal Aesthetics (2 0 0 7 ); the earlier work explores possible “political and social thinking, making, and doing” for our interaction with the environ­ ment. H yperobjects: Philosophy an d Ecology a fter the End o f the World (2013) discusses the m ean­ ing of hyperobjects, such as global warming, ra­ dioactive plutonium, and clim ate change, and ex­ plores an elhicupolitics that acknowledges human weakness, lam eness, and hypocrisy. His Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013) offers

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innovative ways to perceive causality. W ith Mar­ cus Boon and Eric Cazdyn, Morton wrote Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (2015); his emails with Bjork Gudmundsdottir make up Bjork, vol. 4,

This Huge Sunlit Abyss from the Future Right There Next to You (2015). His Dark Ecology: For a Logic o f Future C oexisten ce (2016) questions the purity of nature, encouraging readers to quit looking for the “origin point” at which nature has stopped be­ ing natural and, instead, inviting them to think ecologically: “we must think each state of affairs as entwined with one another and as consisting of nested loops of other states entwined with one an­ other: humans within ecosystems, thoughts with­ in brains.” Here he defines “ecological aw areness” as “a loop because human in terference has a loop form, because ecological and biological sys­ tems are loops.” M orton’s Hum ankind: Solidarity with N onhum an People (2017) mounts a radical call for solidarity and kindness between humans and nonhum ans and for overcoming the ironclad notion of species in the interest of symbiosis and ecological coexistence. In addition, it aims to lib­ erate current academ ic discourse on ecology from dominant cultural conservatism and hostility to theory, both of which should include humans and nonhumans alike. M orton’s “Guest Colum n: Q ueer Ecology,” PMLA 125 (2010), imagines a field of study in which ecological and queer theories coexist and lays out some hypotheses regarding the interrelat­ edness o f the two existing fields: “Ecology and queer theory are intim ate. It’s not that ecological thinking would benefit from an injection of queer theory from the outside. It’s that, fully and prop­ erly, ecology is queer theory and queer theory is ecology: queer ecology.” M orton has done several dozen interviews; for insight into his intellectual biography, see the February 2011 interview on the blog “New A PPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, S ci­ ence” (www.newappsblog.com/2011/02/new-apps -interview-timothy-morton.htm l). Timothy M orton’s work has received much at­ tention, both appreciative and critical. Eric Gidal’s review o f T he E colog ical T hought in Studies in Rom anticism 50 (2011) acknowledges M orton’s view o f shared responsibility regarding ecological problems such as global warming but disagrees with the ways in which M orton applies his theory. M orton, not unlike other hum anists, Gidal ar­ gues, prefers thinking to acting, rendering his work inaccessible to a general audience. In his review o f T h e E cological Thought in Christianity and Literature 61 (2012), Jeffrey Bilbro takes issue with the book’s lack o f “close textual analysis” and its “high-level theory,” finding deficiencies in M orton’s handling o f choice and identity. Gregers Andersen’s “G reening the Sphere: Towards an Eco-Ethics for the Local and Artificial,” symploke 21 (2013), sets M orton’s global “eco -eth ics” against Heidegger’s “local eco -eth ics.” He recommends a middle ground between these two positions: “it is

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in the abyss between the old Heideggerian im­ perative to save authentic local nature, and the abstract recognition of the strange strangers of an artificial world, suggested by M orton, that eco­ criticism should seek its futu re place for action .” Morton m aintains a personal blog, “Ecology with­ out Nature” (http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot .com/), which contains an up-to-date resume plus lists of interviews and talks.

T h e A coustic Mirror: T he F em ale Voice in Psy­ choanalysis and C in em a (1988); Psychoanalysis and C in em a, edited by E. Ann Kaplan (1990); and F em m es Fatales: Fem inism , Film Theory, Psycho­ analysis, edited by Mary Ann Doane (1991). View­ ing Positions: Ways o f Seeing Films, edited by

L a u r a M u lv ey

by Shohini Chaudhuri (2006), explores con nec­ tions between Mulvey’s work and that of other fem inist film theorists. Interviews that illum inate Mulvey’s cinem atic and critical practices include Jacquelyn Suter and Sandy Flitterm an, “Textual Riddles: Women as Enigma or Site of Social Meanings? An Interview with Laura Mulvey,” Discourse 1 (1979); Juan Suarez and M illicent M anglis, “Cinem a, Gender, and the Topography of Enigmas: A Conversation with Laura Mulvey,” C inefocus 3 (1995); and Roberta Sassatelli, “In­ terview' with Laura Mulvey: Gender, Gaze and Technology in Film C ulture,” Theory, Culture and Society 28.5 (2011).

Although “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) is her most frequently anthologized essay, Mulvey has written widely on film theory and criti­ cism and media studies. She has published four books: Visual and Other Pleasures (1989; 2d ed., 2009) collects her essays on a wide range of topics; Citizen Kane (1992) explores what is perhaps the most celebrated American film; Fetishism and Cu­ riosity (1996) examines how the concept of fetish­ ism as it has been developed by Karl M arx and Freud relates to artistic texts; and Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006) dis­ cusses new forms of spectatorship created by new media technologies, such as the DVD. She has also contributed, with Michael Rush and Philippe-Alain M ichaud, to a volume on the film m aker Mark Lewis, Mark Lew is (2006). She has co-edited four collections o f essays: Experim ental British Televi­ sion (2007), with Jam ie Sexon; a critical reappraisal of the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, Godard's

Contempt: Essays fro m the London Consortium (2012), with Colin M acCabe; Feminisms: Diversity, D ifference and Multiplicity in Contem porary Film Cultures (2015), with Anna Backm an Rogers; and Other Cinem as: Politics, Culture and Experim en­ tal Film in the 1970s (2017), with Sue Clayton. For biographical information on Mulvey, see her entry in Movies in A m erican History: An Encyclopedia (ed. Philip C. D iM are, 2011). David Sorfa’s “Laura Mulvey," in Film, Theory and Philosophy: T he Key Thinkers (ed. Felicity Colman, 2 009), provides an introductory account of Mulvey’s work. A great deal of feminist film criti­ cism since 1975 has been written in response to Mulvey’s essay. Among the most notable analyses are E. Ann Kaplan, W omen and Film: Both Sides o f the C am era (1983); Re-vision: Essays in Fem i­ nist Film Criticism, edited by M ary Ann Doane, Patricia M ellencam p, and Linda W illiam s (1984); Kaplan, R ocking around the C lock: Music T ele­

vision, Postm odernism , an d C onsum er Culture (1987), which exam ines M T V and the popular music video, in another extension and critique of Mulvey’s argum ent; and Mary Ann Doane, The

Desire to Desire: T h e W om an’s Film o f the 1940s (1987). An anthology that dem onstrates Mulvey’s considerable influence on fem inist film criticism is F em ale Spectators: Looking at Film and Televi­ sion, edited by E. Deidre Pribram (1988). Several major psychoanalytic books on film assess Mul­ vey’s contributions, including Kaja Silverman,

Linda W illiam s (1995), offers a major reassess­ ment of Mulvey’s theories of film spectatorship.

Fem inist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja S il­ verm an, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara C reed, edited

C . D . N a r a s im h a ia h C. D. N arasim haiah’s main interest, beginning with his seminal collection of essays The Swan and the Eagle (1969; 3d ed., 1999), w'as com paring Indian and contemporary W estern theories of crit­ icism . Among his other books on literary criticism in India are T h e Function o f Criticism in India: Essays on Indian Response to Literature (1987), The Indian C ritical Scene: Controversial Essays (1990),

English Studies in India: W idening Horizons (2 0 0 2 ), and An Inquiry into the Indianness o f In­ dian English (2003), and he edited or co-edited numerous collections, including A Comm on Poetic fo r Indian Literatures (with C. N. Srinath, 1984), East-West Poetics at Work (1991), and M akers o f Indian English Literature (2 0 0 0 ). He published extensively on literature of other Commonwealth nations, including An Introduction to Australian Literatures (ed., 1965), A w akened C on scien ce: Studies in C om m onw ealth Literature (1978), and

Essays in C om m onw ealth Literature: H eirloom o f Multiple Heritage (1995). Narasimhaiah wrote and edited books on single authors, including Better Literary History and Bet­

ter Literary Criticism: The Work o f F. R. Leavis and How It Strikes an Indian (1963), Raja Rao (1973), Ananda Coomaraswamy: Centenary Essays (ed., 1982), and T. S. Eliot and the Indian Literary Scene (edited with C. N. Srinath, 1990). He also did much work on India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru: he collected a selection o f N ehru’s speeches in 1963, abridged Nehru’s The Discovery o f India (1946) in 1975, and wrote a biography, Jaw aharlal Nehru: The Statesman as Writer (2001). N arasim haiah titled his life story "N” fo r N o­

body: An A utobiography o f an English T eacher (1991). He was honored by several festsch rifts,

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notably Theory in Practice: Essays in H onour o fC . D. N arasim haiah, edited by D. A. Shankar, V. K. N atraj, and iM. Sathyanarayana Rao (2001), and

C ritical Spectrum : Essays in Literary Culture (in Honour o f C. D. Narasim haiah), edited by Satish C. Aikant (2004). N arasim haiah’s work has drawn both approval and condem nation from Indian critics. Feroza Jussaw alla’s Family Quarrels: Towards a Criticism o f Indian Writing in English (1985) assesses both his handling of Indian w riters and his use of Eu­ ropean critics (especially F. R. Leavis and I. A. Richards). In the popular T he Em pire Writes

B ack: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Litera­ ture (1989; 2d ed., 2 0 0 2 ), the A ustralian critics Bill A shcroft, G areth G riffith s, and Helen T iffen fault the Sanskrit-based aesth etic for trying to recover “the illusory essence o f Indianness.” C riticism o f N arasim haiah and other postcolonial and postmodern theorists for perpetuating colonialist discourse is widespread, especially on Internet blogs. In his conference paper “Decolo­ nizing the Indian Mind” (2001), available online, Kapil Kapoor very broadly criticizes Anglicized and Americanized Indian critics for internalizing W est­ ern critical practices and defends Sanskritist theo­ ries. In “Indigenous Education and Brahm inical Hegemony in Bengal,” in The Transmission o f

Knowledge o f South Asia: Essays on Education, Reli­ gion, History, and Politics (ed. Nigel Crook, 1996), Poromesh Acharya claims that Sanskritist theories lend support to the ancient Indian caste system. Much work is being done, both in India and overseas, on the Sanskritist concepts of criticism that Narasimhaiah helped resurrect. At the Dhvanyaloka Centre, which he helped found, scholars engage at the same time with Indian critical theo­ ries and Western theories. Ragini Ram achandra’s article “Rasa-Dhvani and British Formalism: Some Random Thoughts,” Dialogue 7.1 (June 2011), and Uma Alladi’s collection T he Study o f Aesthetics: An Indian Perspectwe (2007), which includes Mohan Ram anan’s “C. D. Narasim haiah’s Contribution to Literary Criticism and A esthetics,” illustrate the continuing interest in bridging the two different critical traditions. In “From Downing to Dhvanyaloka: Leavis, Nationalism and Sanskrit Poetics,” Literary Criterion (Diamond Jubilee Year Special Issue, 2012), T. J. Cribb continues the conversation between F. R. Leavis and Sanskritist poetics. Nara­ sim haiah’s work is also the subject of a book co­ authored by Bandana and L. R. Sharm a, The Twain

Shall Meet— West East: Indian Criticism and C. D. Narasimhaiah (1998). N arasim haiah’s ideas have influenced some leading works of postcolonial criticism , such as

Reworlding: T he Literature o f the Indian D iaspo­ ra, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson (1992); Priya Jo sh i’s In A nother Country: C olonialism , C ul­ ture, and the English Novel in India (2002); and Srinivas Aravamudan’s Guru English: South Asian Religion in a C osm opolitan Language (2006). An­

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other fruitful line of influence brings postcolonial studies to bear on the idea o f Commonwealth lit­ erature, as in Postcolonizing the C om m onw ealth: Studies in Literature and Culture, edited by Row­ land Smith (2000), a project pioneered by Narasim­ haiah in his co llectio n A w aken ed C on scien ce. Significantly, in his recent work the prom inent postcolonial critic Ashish Nandy has revived and applied rasa-dhvani. O ther works that develop these concepts include G. N. Devy’s Indian Lit­ erary Criticism : Theory and Interpretation (2 0 0 2 ) and Revathi Krishnaswamy’s “Toward World Lit­ erary Knowledges: Theory in the Age o f G lobal­ ization,” Com parative Literature 62 (2010). For more on N arasim haiah’s work and the concepts of rasa and dhvani, see John C. Hawley, E n cyclo­ pedia o f Postcolonial Studies (2001), and T he John s

H opkins G uide to Literary T heory and Criticism , edited by Michael Groden, M artin Kreiswirth, and Im re Szeman (2d ed., 20 0 5 ). A Comm on Poetic fo r Indian Literatures contains a bibliography o f Nara­ sim haiah’s work up to 1984.

A lo n d r a N e lso n Alondra N elson’s books are Body and Soul: T he

B lack Panther Party and the Fight against M edi­ cal D iscrim ination (2011) and T h e S ocial L ife o f DNA: R ace, R eparations, and R econ ciliation a fter the G en om e (2016), which exam ines genetic genealogy as a new tool for addressing old and en­ during issues around race, including grappling with the unfinished business of slavery, establish­ ing ties with African ancestral homelands, and making legal claim s for slavery reparations. Nel­ son edited T echnicolor: R ace, Technology, and Everyday Life (2001), which looks at the cultural impact of new information and com m unication technologies and how they have been constant topics of debate while questions of race and eth ­ nicity fail to be raised; Afrofuturism, a special is­ sue of Social Text (no. 71 [2002]); and, with the sociologist C atherine Lee and the historian Keith W ailoo, G enetics and the Unsettled Past: T he C ol­ lision o f DNA, R ace, and History (2012), which explores how our genetic markers have com e to be regarded as portals to the past. There is to date little secondary literature on Nelson’s work. Jalondra Davis Brown highlights the A frican A m erican -cen tric dimensions of A frofuturism as proposed by Nelson and others in “Im agining Af­ rica,” S cien ce Fiction Studies 41 (2014). In his review of G enetics and the Unsettled Past in C on ­ tem porary Sociology 4 4 (2015), B. Ricardo Brown notes that N elson’s contribution to that collec­ tion, “Reconciliation Projects: From Kinship to Ju stice ” (which formed the basis of her book T he S ocial L ife o f DNA), suggests that the “genomic era” of heightened knowledge about DNA and ge­ nealogy may make possible “recognition and rec­ onciliation in locations of intense social co n flict.” The most up-to-date bibliography of N elson’s wait­ ings can be found on her departmental website.

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S ia n n e N g ai Ngai is the author of two books. Ugly Feelings (2005) exam ines in art and popular culture the relatively small emotions of irritation, envy, anxi­ ety, paranoia, and disgust, as well as two “feelings” to which Ngai gives the names “animatedness” and “stuplimity.” Our A esthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (2012) continues her exploration of less exalted art forms, investigating the ways in which the zany, cute, and interesting saturate con­ temporary commodity culture, including its art. Her articles have appeared in PMLA, Critical In­ quiry, American Literature, and other prestigious journals. See, for example, “T he Cuteness o f the Avant-Garde,” C ritical Inquiry 31 (2 0 0 5 ); “Merely Interesting,” C ritical Inquiry 34 (2 0 0 8 ); and “Vis­ ceral Abstractions,” GLQ: A Journal o f Lesbian and Gay Studies 21.1 (2015). She discusses her work in “Our A esthetic Categories: An Interview with Sianne Ngai,” by Adam Jasper, in C abinet, no. 43 (fall 2011). For a brief introduction to affect theory, see M arta Figlerowicz’s introduction to A ffect Theory Dossier, a special issue of Qui Parle (2 0 .2 [2012]). T he A ffect T heory R eader, edited by M elissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (2010), collects m ajor statem ents on a ffe ct by contem porary th eorists. Ruth Leys critiqu es the scientism of affe ct theory in “T h e Turn to A ffect: A Critique,” C ritical Inquiry 37 (2011). In “Ugly Feelings, Powerful Sensibilities,” C ontem porary Literature 27 (2006), Charles Altieri calls Ngai’s first book “stunning in its depth and range, exemplary in its learning, and alm ost continually surprising in its inventiveness,” although he criticizes as a “doomed strategy” Ngai’s focus “on a rt’s powerlessness in the political sphere as her means o f locating its possible power.” Jen n ifer Fleissner, reviewing the book for M odernism /m odernity 13 (2 0 0 6 ), ex­ presses irritation at its occasional inaccessibility, while at the same tim e calling it “one of the most in tellectu ally dazzling and wide-ranging critical studies to appear in years.” Ngai’s influential work has been used by other scholars to illum inate top­ ics as diverse as th e W est Indian novelist Jean Rhys in Anne Cunningham ’s “‘Get On or Get O ut’: Failure and Negative Fem ininity in Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the D ark,” M odern Fiction Studies 59 (2013); Asian cin em a in Jo n ath an B elle r’s “T he M artial Art of ‘C inem a’: Modes o f Virtuosity a la Hong Kong and the Philippines,” Positions: East Asia Cultures C ritique 19 (2011); and festivity in Naomi M ilthorpe’s “ ‘Heavy Jokes’: Festive Unplea­ sure in the Interw ar Novel,” Jou rn al o f M odern Literature 38.3 (2015).

N g u g i w a T h i o n g ’o , T a b a n L o L iy o n g , a n d H e n ry O w u o r -A n y u m b a Ngugi wa T hio ng’o has published numerous c rit­ ical essays on A frican literatu re, education, and politics, collected in H om ecom ing: Essays on Af­

rican and C aribbean Literature, Culture and Pol­

itics (1973), which includes “On the Abolition of the English D ep artm ent”; Writers in Politics: Es­ says (1981; rev. ed., 1997); E d u cation fo r a N a­ tion al Culture (1981); Barrel o f a Pen: R esistance to Repression in N eo-C olon ial Kenya (1983); Decolonising the M ind: T he Politics o f Language in A frican Literature (1986); M oving the Centre: T he Struggle fo r Cultural Freedom (1993); Pen­ Points, Gunpoints, and Dreams: Towards a C riti­ cal Theory o f the Arts and the State o f A frica (1998); Som ething Torn and New: An A frican Re­ naissance (2 0 0 9 ); and G lobalectics: Theory and the Politics o f Knowing (2012), which reflects on the context of “On the Abolition o f the English D epartm ent,” written after British atrocities. He has also written several memoirs, including D e­ tained: A W riter’s Prison Diary (1981), Dreams in a Tim e o f War: A C hildhood M em oir (2010), and In the House o f the Interpreter: A M em oir (2012). See also Ngugi wa Thiong’o Speaks: Interviews with the Kenyan Writer, edited by Reinhard Sander and Bernth Lindfors (2005). Ngugi also has an interna­ tional reputation as a novelist depicting twentiethcentury Kenya; his best-known novels are Weep Not, C hild (1964), A Grain o f W heat (1967), Petals o f Blood (1977), and Wizard o f the Crow (2006). Published primarily in Africa, Taban lo Liyong is a prolific writer o f poetry, short stories, and criti­ cism. His most notable books in English are The Last Word: Cultural Synthesism (1969), the first book of literary criticism specifically focused on African lit­ erature, and Fixions (1968), a collection of short sto­ ries that contain elements of African oral tradition. O ther works include Eating C hiefs: Lwo Culture from Lolwe to M alkal (1970), T hirteen Offensives: Against Our E nem ies (1973), and Carrying Knowl­ edge up a Palm Tree (1997), a collection of poems. Henry Owuor-Anyumba’s publications in English include a collection, Kikuyu Folktales, co-edited with Rose N. G ecau (1970), and the monograph A M usical Profile o f Som e K alenjin Songs (1973). Carol Sicherm an’s “Revolutionizing the Litera­ ture Curriculum at the University o f East A frica: Literature and the Soul of the N ation,” Research in A frican Literatures 29.3 (1998), details the context out of w'hich “O n the Abolition of the E n­ glish D epartm ent” arose and its subsequent im­ pact on A frican literary study. S e e also Apollo Obonyo Amoko, P ostcolonialism in the W ake o f

the N airobi Revolution: Ngugi Wa T h ion g ’o and the Idea o f A frican Literature (2010). T here is a great deal of scholarship on Ngugi’s work, espe­ cially his fiction. Ngugi wa T h ion g ’o: T h e Making

o f a Rebel: A Source B ook in Kenyan Literature and R esistance, edited by Carol Sicherm an (1989), is a helpful reference work. Sim on Gikandi, Ngugi wa T hion g’o (2 0 0 0 ), is a useful study, as is Oliver Lovesey, Ngugt wa T h ion g ’o (2 0 0 0 ), which provides biographical inform ation as well as a good bibliography. Ngugi wa T h ion g ’o : A B ib­

liography o f Primary and S econ dary Works, 1957—1987, compiled by Carol Sicherm an (1991),

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is comprehensive but needs updating. There is to date little criticism and bibliography in English on Liyong or Owuor-Anyumba.

F rie d ric h N ietzsche T he standard G erm an edition of N ietzsche’s work is W erke: K ritische G esam tausgabe, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzo M ontinari (5 0 + vols., 1967—present). It is available online at www .nietzschesource.org/ (accessed Nov. 22, 2015). All of N ietzsche’s major works and much o f his occasional unpublished works and notebooks have been translated, but the history of English editions o f his works is vexed. A fter World War II, Random House published most of his major works in translations by W alter Kaufm ann and R. J. Hollingdale, but Kaufm ann especially has been criticized for heavy-handed editing. Since the 1990s, both Stanford University Press and Cambridge University Press have been engaged in issuing new translations that are based on the texts in the standard Germ an edition. Here we list the Cambridge University edition where one exists and the Random House version where it still rem ains the most readily available (the origi­ nal date of publication is given first, followed by the date of the English translation): T he Birth o f Tragedy (1872; 1999), On the Advantages and Dis­ advantages o f History fo r Life (1877; 1980), Day­

break: Thoughts on the Prejudices o f Morality (1881; 1997), T he Gay S cien ce (1882; 2001), Thus S poke Zarathustra (1885; 2 0 0 6 ), Beyond G ood and Evil (1886; 2001), Genealogy o f Morals (1887; 2 0 0 7 ), and T he Case o f W agner (1888; 1966). Three short late works, all written in 1888, are translated in the Cambridge University Press vol­ ume T he Anti-Christ, E cce Homo, Twilight o f the Idols, and O ther Writings (2005). T he Will to Pow­ er, edited by W alter Kaufm ann and R. J. Holling­ dale (1967), is an important collection of entries from N ietzsche’s notebooks, but the work is con­ troversial because it was collated by N ietzsche’s sister. T h e more recent Writings fro m the Late N otebooks, edited by Rudiger B ittner (2003), ex­ plains the controversy in its introduction and at­ tempts to provide a less tendentious selection of work that N ietzsche left unpublished. Nietzsche on R hetoric and Language, edited by Sandor G il­ man, Carole Blair, and David J. Parent (1989), collects work of particular interest to literary crit­ ics. T he N ietzsche Reader, edited by Keith Ansell Pearson and D uncan Large (2 0 0 6 ), offers gener­ ous selections from the whole range of Nietz­ sche’s career. Selected Letters o f Friedrich Nietz­ sche, edited by C hristopher Middleton (1969), is the most useful collection of letters. E cce Homo (1888) is N ietzsche’s half-mad and fascinating autobiography; the most su ccinct biography is Ronald Hayman’s Nietzsche: A Critical Life (1980), but Rudiger Safranski’s more comprehensive intel­ lectual biography, Nietzsche: A P hilosophical B io ­ graphy (2 0 0 0 ; trans. 2 0 0 2 ), is essential for a full

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engagement with N ietzsche’s life and thought. Also worth consulting are Thom as H. Brobjer,

N ietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography (2 0 0 8 ), and Ju lian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A P hilosophical Biography (2010). The secondary literature is immense and we can touch here only on works likely to interest those com ing to N ietzsche through an engagement with literary theory. G ianni V attim o’s N ietzsche: An Introduction (1985; trans. 2001) and Alexander Nehamas’s influential Nietzsche: Life as Literature (1985) are good places to start. M artin Heidegger’s four-volume N ietzsche (1961; trans. 1 9 7 9 -8 6 ) is a major document of tw entieth-century philosophy as well as a powerful, if idiosyncratic, interpreta­ tion of N ietzsche. Many poststructuralists have w ritten extensively on N ietzsche. A partial list includes G illes Deleuze, N ietzsche and P hiloso­ phy (1962; trans. 1983); Sarah K ofm an, Nietz­ sche and M etaphor (1972; trans. 1993); M ichel Fou cau lt, Language, Counter-M em ory, P ractice (1977); Jacques Derrida, Spurs: N ietzsche’s Styles (1978; trans. 1979); and Paul de M an, A llegories o f Reading (1979). Five works that particularly address N ietzsche’s aesthetics are Jam es I. Por­ ter’s T he Invention o f Dionysus: An Essay on “T he Birth o f Tragedy’’ (2 0 0 0 ), M atthew Ram pley’s N ietzsche, A esthetics and M odernity (2 0 0 0 ), Pe­ ter Sloterdijk’s Nietzsche Apostle (2 0 0 0 ; trans. 2013), Douglas Burnham and Martin Jesinghausen’s Nietzsche’s “The Birth o f T ra g ed y A R eader’s Guide (2010), Robert R. William’s Tragedy, Recogni­

tion, and the Death o f God: Studies in Hegel and Nietzsche (2012), and Nietzsche on Art and Life, ed­ ited by Daniel Came (2014). Malcolm Bull’s AntiNietzsche (2011) has been widely read and discussed, while Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s American Nietzsche: A History o f an Icon and His Ideas (2012) is a fascinating history of Nietzsche’s reception in the United States. Peter R. Sedgwick, Nietzsche: The Key Concepts (2009); Introductions U) Nietz­ sche, edited by Robert B. Pippin (2012); The Oxford Handbook o f Nietzsche, edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson (2013); and Douglas Burnham, The Nietzsche Dictionary (2015), are all useful ref­ erence works. Nietzsche: Godfather o f Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses o f a Philosophy, edited by Jacob Golomb and Robert S. W istrich (2002), offers es­ says that explore Nietzsche’s relation to National Socialism, including an important reassessment by Robert C. Holub of the notion that N ietzsche’s sister is to blame for the Nazis’ appropriation of Nietzsche’s work. William H. Schaberg’s T he Nietz­

sche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (1995) carefully traces the history of all N ietzsche’s texts. Useful bibliographies of secondary works can be found in Pearson and Large’s Nietzsche R eader and Pippin’s Introductions to Nietzsche.

R o b N ix o n In addition to numerous articles and reviews in academic and popular journals, Rob Nixon has

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published four books. London Calling: V. S. Naipaul, Postcolonial M andarin (1992) is a scathing reas­ sessment of the works of the Nobel Prize—winning author Naipaul, who has been celebrated for bridging cross-cultural divides between the West and postcolonial nations, but whom Nixon casti­ gates for upholding an imperialistic representation of the “third world” as existing in parasitic depen­ dence on the creative and productive cultures of the West. In Hom elands, Harlem and Hollywood:

South A frican Culture and the World Beyond (1994), Nixon exam ines the an tico lo n ialist and anti-apartheid struggles of South A frica while ex­ ploring the ways in which South A frica and the United States have mutually influenced one an­ other. Dreambirds: T he Strange History o f the Os­ trich in Fashion, Food, and Fortune (2 0 0 0 ) is a partially autobiographical work of creative non­ fiction in which Nixon raises probing personal, historical, and ethical questions while analyzing the strange obsessions w'ith the ostrich that he encountered in both South A frica and the United S tates. N ixon’s in terests in environm ental and postcolonial theory in tersect in Slow V iolen ce an d the E nvironm entalism o f the Poor (2011), w hich analyzes both the slow environm ental devastations caused by capitalist and im perialist forces and the movements o f ecological ju stice in the global South that have emerged to resist these forces. An extended interview with Nixon by Robert P. M arzec and Allison C arruth in Public Culture 26 (2014) includes discussions of the con ­ cept of slow violence as well as of the intersections between environm entalism and postcolonialism . Several reviews of Slow Violence and the Envi­ ronmentalism o f the Poor help demonstrate its sig­ nificance and offer constructive criticism s. In a favorable review published in the Times Higher Education Supplem ent, September 15, 2011, Jules Pretty praises Nixon’s analysis of the intersections between imperialism, war, and environmental deg­ radation, but argues that the concept of slow vio­ lence may hide the fast impacts of environmental degradation while reductively implying that such degradations are always caused by the violent in­ tentions of malevolent persons. In Research in Afri­ can Literatures 43.1 (2012), Byron CamineroSantangelo celebrates Nixon as a member of a vanguard movement that attunes ecocriticism to the realities of imperialism. Cam inero-Santangelo also claims that Nixon fills a gap in the work of Edward W. Said by demonstrating the environ­ mental aspects of colonialism. In “The Varieties of Environmental Violence,” Los Angeles Review o f Books, November 22, 2013, Subhankar Banerjee praises Nixon’s work for its fresh reframing of important theoretical concepts and its lucid prose while suggesting that his analysis should be ex­ tended both to address writer-activists outside of the global South and to situate the works of indi­ vidual activists within the broader communities from which their activism emerges.

M a r th a C . N u ssb a u tn M artha Nussbaum is one of the most prolific schol­ ars of her generation; she has w'ritten or edited more than forty books; published more than 300 articles, as well as over fifty reviews in prominent magazines such as the New Republic and the New York Rei’iew o f Books-, and given scores of public lectures. Her first book, Aristotle’s De Motu Anima-

lium: Text with Translation, Com m entary, and Interpretive Essays (1978), was a revision of her dis­ sertation. It was with her next book, T he Fragility o f Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986; rev. ed., 2001) that she gained wide attention. It inaugurated a cluster of works that deal with classical philosophy, ethics, emotion, and literature, including Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (1990), T he Therapy o f

Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (1994), Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (1995), and Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense o f Reform in Liberal Education (1997), from which we draw our selection. While continuing her focus on ethics, her next wave of books more explicitly address politics and human rights; they include Sex and Social Justice (1999),

Women and Human Development: T he Capabilities Approach (2000), Upheavals o f Thought: The Intel­ ligence o f Emotions (2001), Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (2004), and Frontiers o f Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Member­ ship (2006). She also examined religion and its ef­ fect on politics, in The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future (2007), Lib­ erty o f Conscience: In Defense o f A m erica’s Tradition o f Religious Equality (2008), and The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics o f Fear in an Anxious Age (2012). She followed Cultivating Hu­ manity with a polemic against the corporate univer­ sity in Not fo r Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), and continued her reflections on social ju stice and emotions in a succession of short books: From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual O rientation and C onstitutional Law (2010), Cre­

ating C apabilities: T he H um an D evelopm ent Ap­ proach (2 0 1 1), Political Emotions: Why Love Matters fo r Ju stice (2013), and Anger and Forgive­ ness: Resentment, Generosity, Ju stice (2016). In addition, she collected essays in Philosophical In­ terventions: Reviews 1986—2011 (2012). Nussbaum has co-edited more than a dozen col­ lections, among them several on ancient philoso­ phy; several deriving from her work with the Unit­ ed Nations University, such as The Quality o f Life (w'ith Amartya Sen, 1993), and Women, Culture,

and Development: A Study o f Human Capabilities (with Jonathan Glover, 1995); several on topical is­ sues, including Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse (with Saul Olyan, 1998) and Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (with Cass R. Sunstein, 2004); and several on literature, including Subversion

and Sympathy: Gender, Law, and the British Novel

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(with Alison LaCroix, 2013). For an account of her work in her own words, see “The Capability of Phi­ losophy: An Interview with Martha C. Nussbaum,”

Making o f Myth (1962), two coauthored textbooks on rhetoric and composition, and several influen­ tial essays employing speech act theory to analyze

conducted by Jeffrey J. Williams, Minnesota R e­

the style of literary works. A fter the late 1960s, he turned to focus on the politics of the profession and the socioinstitutional context of literature, publishing English in America: A Radical View o f the Profession (1976; reissued in 1996 with a fore­ word by Gerald G raff and a new introduction by Ohmann) and a series of essays collected in Politics o f Letters (1987), which includes “The Shaping of a Canon.” Expanding his research to more general issues of literary culture, O hm ann’s Selling C ul­

view, n.s. 7 1 -7 2 (2009). The critical commentary on Nussbaum is siz­ able, ranging from scholarly disputations on classi­ cal philosophy to engagement in public debates on politics and religion; she has appeared in television interviews and been the subject of a New York Times Magazine feature article by Robert S. Boynton, “Who Needs Philosophy?” November 21, 1999. A special issue of New Literary History 15 (1983), ti­ tled Literature and/as Moral Philosophy, focused on Nussbaum’s reading of Henry Jam es; it includes essays by the philosophers Richard Wollheim and Hilary Putnam. For Love o f Country? (1996; new ed., 2002), edited by Joshua Cohen, contains six­ teen responses to Nussbaum’s essay “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” by leading philosophers and critics, among them Judith Butler; the issue of Boston Review 19 (1994) where it was originally published contained twenty-nine responses. A re­ view attacking the multicultural leanings of Culti­ vating Humanity by the prominent conservative critic David Frum appears in Public Interest, spring 1998. A substantial section of Ronald L. H all’s The

Human Em brace: The Love o f Philosophy and the Philosophy o f Love: Kierkegaard, Cavell, Nussbaum (2000) considers Nussbaum’s focus on emotion. A special issue of Ethics 111 (20 0 0 ) features “Sympo­ sium on M artha Nussbaum’s Political Philosophy.” For studies of her philosophical positions, see Pe­ ter Johnson, M oral Philosophers and the Novel: A Study o f W inch, Nussbaum, and Rorty (2 0 0 4 ), and John M. Alexander, C apabilities and Social

Justice: T he P olitical Philosophy o f Am arty a Sen and M artha Nussbaum (2 0 0 8 ). G eoffrey Galt H arpham ’s “C riticism as Therapy: T h e Hunger o f M artha N ussbaum ,” in his T he C haracter o f Criticism (2 0 0 6 ), offers a good synthetic account o f N ussbaum’s career. An exchange in C alifornia Law Review 98 (2010) on gay m arriage features an essay by Nussbaum and an in terestin g re­ sponse by the queer theorist M ich ael W arner. See also H onoring the C ontributions o f Professor

M artha Nussbaum to the Scholarship and Prac­ tice o f G en der an d Sexuality Law, a symposium volume of C olu m bia Jou rn al o f G en der and Law 19 (2010). S p ecifically addressing her theories o f education, see Jon Nixon, Interpretive Pedago­

gies fo r Higher Education: Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and T h eir L eg acies (2012). See also C apabilities, G en der, Equality: Towards F u n da­ m ental Entitlem ents, edited by Flavio Comim and Nussbaum (2014), which includes a number of responses to Nussbaum’s positions on social ju stice.

R ic h a r d O h m a n n Richard O hm ann’s early work includes Shaw: The Style and the Man (1962), the edited collection The

ture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn o f the Century (1996), a prominent work of American cultural studies, examines the correlated rise of popular literary magazines and advertising in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. In a related effort, Ohmann edited the collection Making and Selling Culture (1996), which includes essays by publishers and filmmak­ ers as well as academ ics. He gathered his later essays in Politics o f Knowledge: T he Com m ercial­

ization o f the University, the Professions, and Print Culture (2003), a sequel to Politics o f Letters. From 1966 through 1978, Ohmann also edited the influ­ ential journal College English, sponsoring innova­ tive issues on feminism, gay studies, and other top­ ics. His collection co-edited with W. B. Coley,

Ideas fo r English 101: Teaching Writing in College (1975), derives from College English. “English in America Updated: An Interview with Richard Ohm ann,” conducted by Jeffrey W illiams, recounts Ohm ann’s career and his embrace of radical poli­ tics; it is collected in Critics at Work: Interviews, 1993-2003 (ed. W illiams, 2004), as well as in Ohm ann’s Politics o f Knowledge. N otable responses to O hm ann include Gerald G r a ff’s criticism o f the radical assum ptions of English in A m erica in Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society (1979). In Doing

W hat C om es Naturally: C hange, R hetoric, and the Practice o f T heory in Literary and Legal Stud­ ies (1989), Stanley Fish finds a self-contradictory antiprofessional strand in Ohm ann’s critique of the profession. “The Shaping of a Canon” has pro­ vided a model for subsequent reception studies of the contemporary American canon and the “book market.” In “Courses and Canons: The Post-1945 U.S. Novel,” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 31 (1990), Raymond Mazurek expands on Ohm ann’s account to survey the recent canon taught in university courses, while noting the limi­ tations of the category of “illness stories.” A special issue of Works an d Days 23 (2005) gathers four­ teen essays assessing O hm ann’s work, testifying to his influ ence in composition studies, Ameri­ can cultural studies, and the politics of literary studies. Jam es F. English, “Everywhere and No­ where: The Sociology of Literature after ‘the S o ci­ ology of Literature,”’ New Literary History 41.2 (2010), notes O hm ann’s central work in developing

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a sociological approach. Jeffrey J. W illiams, “The Rise of the Academic Novel,” American Literary History 2 4 (2012), extends Ohm ann’s focus on fic­

Dem ocracy (2001) critically engages Oliver’s theo­

tion that dwells on the anxiety of the professionalmanagerial class.

argues that Oliver’s Witnessing would have been strengthened and challenged by engagements with Sim one de Beauvoir and M artin Buber, par­ ticularly with regard to her wholesale rejection of subject-object relationships. For a representative list of Oliver’s journal publications, see her faculty page at Vanderbilt University’s Philosophy Departm ent.

K e lly O liv e r During the first two decades of her career, Oliver wrote ten books: Reading Kristeva: Unraveling the D ouble-bind (1993); W omanizing N ietzsche: P hilosophy’s R elation to the “F em in in e ” (1995);

Family Values: Subjects betw een Nature and C u l­ ture (1997); Subjectivity w ithout Subjects: From A bject Fathers to Desiring Mothers (1998); W it­ nessing: B eyond R ecognition (2001); with Benigno Trigo, N oir Anxiety (2 0 0 2 ); T he C olonization o f Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic S ocial Theory o f O ppression (2 0 0 4 ); W omen as W eapons o f War: Iraq, Sex, and the M edia (2 0 0 7 ); Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human (2 0 0 9 ); and K nock Me Up, K nock Me Down: Images o f Preg­ nancy in Hollywood Films (2012). More recently, Technologies o f Life and Death: From C loning to C apital Punishm ent (2013) analyzes the extremes of birth and death in their mediation by technolo­ gies of life and death. Earth and World: Philoso­ phy after the A pollo Missions (2015) takes up dis­ cussions occurring within C ontinental philosophy about hum anity’s complex relationship to the earth and the environment. Hunting Girls: Sexu­

al V iolence from "T he Hunger Games" to Campus R ape (2016) exam ines sexual violence and rape culture on-screen and offscreen. In C arceral Humanitarianism: Logics o f Refugee Detention (2017), Oliver argues that hum anitarian aid and rights rhetoric is never neutral and often betrays partisan politics. Books edited or co-edited by Oliver are

Ethics, Politics, and D ifference in Ju lia Kristeva's Writing (1993); T he Portable Kristeva (1997; up­ dated ed., 2 0 0 2 ); with M arilyn Pearsall, Feminist Interpretations o f Nietzsche (1998); with Christina H endricks, Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy, and Language (1999); with Penelope D eutsche, Enigmas: T he Writing o f Sarah Kofman (1999); French Feminism Reader (2000); with Steve Edwin, Betw een the Psyche and the Social: Psycho­ analytic S ocial Theory (2 0 0 2 ); with Lisa W alsh, Contemporary French Feminism (2004); with Alice A. Jard in e and Shannon Lundeen, Living At­ tention: On Teresa B rennan (2 0 0 7 ); and, with S. K. Keltner, Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Poli­ tics in the W ork o f Ju lia Kristeva (2 0 0 9 ). A range of secondary scholarship responds to Oliver’s work, especially on N ietzsche and femi­ nism, Kristeva, and her theory o f witnessing and testimony. Mae H enderson’s Speaking in Tongues

and Dancing Diaspora: B lack W omen Writing and Performing (2014) favorably extends O liver’s body of ideas on witnessing, recognition, and “response-ability” and “address-ability.” Ewa Plonowska Ziarek’s An Ethics o f Dissensus: Post­

modernity, Feminism and the Politics o f Radical

rizing on traum a, fem inism , and Kristeva. In her review in Hypatia 2 0 .2 (20 0 5 ), Debra Bergoffen

W alter P ater Primary sources include T he W orks o f W alter Pa­ ter (10 vols., 1910; rpt. 1967) and Letters, edited by Lawrence Evans (1970). See also W alter Pater: Three M ajor Texts, edited by W illiam E. Buckler (1986), w hich includes Studies in the History o f the R enaissance, A ppreciations, and Imaginary Portraits. For a good selection , see T he S elected Writings o f W alter Pater, edited by Harold Bloom (1974). Thom as W right’s biography, T he Life o f W alter P ater (2 vols., 1907), is informative but not always reliable. Overviews of the life and work are provided by Ian Fletcher, W alter Pater (rev. ed., 1972), and Gerald Monsman, W alter Pater (1977). For background and annotations for Studies in the History o f the R enaissance, consult the edi­ tions by Adam Phillips (1986) and Donald L. Hill (1980). Context and analysis are offered by Paul Barolsky, W alter P ater’s R enaissance (1987). An­ other useful resource is Billie Andrew Inman,

W alter Pater and His Reading, 1874-1877, with a Bibliography o f His Library Borrowings, 1878— 1894 (1990). On Pater’s criticism , see David J. D eLaura, He­ brew and H ellen e in Victorian England: N ew ­ man, Arnold, an d Pater (1969); W illiam E. Buck­ ler, W alter Pater: T he C ritic as Artist o f Ideas (1987); and Jo n ath an Loesberg, A estheticism an d D econstruction: Pater, D errida, and d e Man (1991), which argues for the philosophical and po­ litical force of Pater’s aestheticist views in Studies in the History o f the R enaissance and other works. C ritical studies include W olfgang Iser, W alter Pater: T he A esthetic M om ent (1 9 6 0 ; trans. 1987); R obert K eefe, W alter Pater and the Gods o f D isorder (19 8 8 ), on P ater’s in terest in G reek cu ltu re and mythology; Carolyn W il­ liam s, Transfigured World: W alter P ater’s Aes­ thetic H istoricism (1989), illum inating on Pater’s narrative and rhetorical strategies in his criticism and fiction; Jay Fellow's, Tombs, D espoiled and

Haunted: “Under-Textures" and “A fter-Thoughts” in W alter Pater (1991); Denis Donoghue, W alter Pater: L over o f Strange Souls (1995), a suggestive study o f Pater as a writer who sees criticism as “an opportunity for the exercise o f selfco n scio u sn ess”; and W illiam Shuter, Rereading W aller Pater (1997), especially cogent on the in­ fluence of Heraclitus, Plato, and Hegel on Pater’s thought. Kenneth Daley, in T he Rescue o f Rom an­

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ticism: Walter Pater and John Ruskin (2001), offers a stimulating account of Pater’s response to and interpretation of the Romantic movement. Recent studies include Victorian Aesthetic Conditions: Pa­ ter across the Arts, edited by Elicia Clements and Lesley J. Higgins (2010), which provides interdisci­ plinary essays on Pater and art, music, theater, and literature; and Kate Hext, Walter Pater: Individual­ ism and Aesthetic Philosophy (2013), on Pater’s conception of the individual and self-identity and its relation to his aesthetic philosophy.

W alter Pater: An Im aginative Sense o f Fact, edited by Philip Dodd (1981), co llects papers presented at the First International Pater Confer­ ence, held in Oxford in 1980. Another good collec­ tion is Pater in the 1990s, edited by Laurel Brake and Ian Small (1991). Comparative Criticism, vol. 17, edited by E. S. Shaffer (1995), includes excel­ lent essays on Pater by Denis Donoghue, Richard Wollheim, and others. For his contem poraries’ re­ sponses to Pater’s writings, see Walter Pater: The Critical Heritage, edited by R. M. Seiler (1980). See also W alter Pater: An A nnotated Bibliography o f Writings about Him, edited by Franklin Court (1979).

P la to T he standard Greek edition of the entire works of Plato, including those o f dubious authorship, is Platonis Opera, edited by John Burnet (5 vols., 1 900—1907). T his edition is being updated by a team of scholars led by E. A. Duke (2 vols. to date, 1995—). For a handy one-volume English transla­ tion of selected dialogues by various translators, see The C ollected Dialogues o f Plato, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (1961; rpt. 1989). Plato: C om plete Works, edited by John M. Cooper (1997), is the most complete one-volume collection, with the best translations available (done by various hands). The best translation of Re­ public is Robin W aterfield’s (1993). A. E. Taylor’s Plato, the Man an d His W ork (1926; 7th ed., 1969) contains a com plete transla­ tion of Diogenes L aertius’s third-century c.E . life of Plato, which has served as the basis for modern reconstructions of the philosopher’s life. For a general introduction, see P lato : A Very Short In­ troduction (2003), by Julia Annas. Several books provide good introductions to Plato’s aesthetic theory, including Iris Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (1977), which attempts to defend Plato’s view of the arts; and M orriss Henry Partee, Plato’s Poetics: T he Au­ thority o f Beauty (1981). Gerald F. Else, Plato and Aristotle on Poetry (1986), is a comparative study o f the aesthetic theory of G reece’s two greatest philosophers. In Postmodern Platos (1985), C ath ­ erine H. Zuckert exam ines the centrality of Pla­ tonic thought to theorists from Friedrich Nietz­ sche to Jacques Derrida. O ther books dealing with Plato’s im portance to poststructuralist criti­ cism include Jasp er Neel, Plato, Derrida, and

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Writing (1988), and Plato and Postmodernism, ed­ ited by Steven Shankm an (1994). For feminist readings of Plato, see Feminist Interpretations o f Plato, edited by Nancy Tuala (1994). T he C am ­ bridge C om panion to Plato, edited by Richard Kraut (1992), contains essays on several aspects of Plato’s thought, including aesth etics. Andrea W ilson N ightingale’s Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct o f Philosophy (1996) examines Plato’s integration o f Greek poetry and rhetoric into his dialogues. In T he Play o f C haracter in Plato’s Dialogues (2002), Ruby Blondell explores the literary and philosophical questions raised by Plato’s use of the dialogue form. T he Cambridge C om panion to P lato’s R epublic, edited by G. R. F. Ferrari (2 0 0 7 ), offers a more advanced introduc­ tion to Plato’s central work. C harles Griswold’s article “Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia o f Philosophy (2008), pro­ vides a useful summary of the “quarrel betw'een philosophy and poetry” in Plato’s dialogues, while recent studies challenge the traditional argu­ ments about P lato’s role in the split between poetry and philosophy in the W estern tradition, offering new readings o f R epu blic’s critique o f po­ etry. See also Susan Levin, The A ncient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry Revisited: Plato and the Greek Literary Tradition (2001); Ramona Naddaff, Exiling the Poets: The Production o f Censor­ ship in Plato’s Republic (2002); and David Wolfsdorf, Trials o f Reason: Plato and the Crafting o f Philosophy (2008). In Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations o f G reek Poetics fro m Homer to Longinus (2011), Stephen Halliwell contextualizes Plato’s seemingly contradictory pronouncements about poetry in Ion and Republic as a dialectic that runs throughout Greek poetics: it focuses on the tension between ecstasy— emotional, imaginative responses— and truth, which emphasizes poetry’s cognitive and ethical value. On Phaedrus and Pla­ to’s discussions of rhetoric and writing, see Ronna Burger, Plato’s “Phaedrus”: A Defense o f a Philo­ sophic Art o f Writing (1980), and David A. W hite, Rhetoric and Reality in Plato’s “Phaedrus” (1993). For an advanced, close reading of this dialogue, see Seth Benardete’s Rhetoric o f Morality and Phi­ losophy: Plato’s “Gorgias" and "Phaedrus" (1994). The most complete and up-to-date bibliography can be found in The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic (cited above).

E dgar A lla n Poe Poe wrote in a surprising variety of literary genres: poems, fantastic tales designed to explore what Freud would call “the uncanny,” detective stories (a genre he seems to have invented), novels, re­ views, and literary theory. For a good collection of Poe’s literary theory and criticism , see the interest­ ing short collection edited by Leonard Cassuto,

Edgar A llan Poe: Literary T heory and Criticism (1999). For more extensive collections, see the L i­ brary o f America volume titled Edgar Allan Poe:

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Essays and Reviews (1984), with selections, notes, and a useful chronology by G. R. Thompson. Liter­ ary Criticism o f Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Robert L. Hough (1965), and Selections from the Critical Writings o f Edgar Allan Poe, edited by F. C. Prescott (1981), are also useful. Kenneth Silverman’s Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Rem em ­ brance (1991) and Arthur Hobson Q uinn’s Edgar Allan Poe (1941; reprint, 1997) are towering fulllength biographies. For a more recent brief life, see Peter Ackroyd’s Poe: A Life Cut Short (2008). For an appreciation of broader biographical issues, the two essays on the history of Poe biography in A Com panion to Poe Studies, edited by Eric W. Carl­ son (1996), are indispensable, as is A Poe Log: A D ocum entary Life o f Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Dwight Thom as and David K. Jackson (1987). For a book-length study of Poe’s criticism , see Robert D. Jacobs’s Poe: Journalist and Critic (1969). For good general collections of essays, see C ritical Essays on Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Eric W. Carl­ son (1987), and The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes (2002), as well as Hayes’s anthology Edgar Allan Poe in Context (2013); Poe and the R em apping o f A ntebellum Print Culture, edited by J. Gerald Kennedy and Jerom e M cG ann (2012) is also a useful source. Recent American work on poetic theory, race, gen­ der, and historical context is found in T h e A m eri­ can F ace o f Edgar A llan Poe, edited by Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman (1995), which alludes to the earlier T h e French F ace o f Edgar Allan Poe, by Patrick Quinn (1954). T he texts gen­ erated around Jacques Lacan’s “Sem inar on ‘The Purloined L etter’”— authored by Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Barbara Johnson, and others— are col­ lected in T he Purloined Poe (ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, 1988). And Roman Jakob­ son’s essay on “The Raven” is in his Language and Literature (1987). For bibliographies, see J. Lasley Dameron and Irby B. Cauthen Jr., Edgar Allan Poe: A Bibliography o f Criticism , 1827—1967 (1974); Esther Hyneman, Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated

Bibliography o f Books and A rticles in English (1974); Leona Rasmussen, Edgar A llan Poe: An Annotated Bibliography (1978); and the Cambridge Com panion. A le x a n d e r P o p e

good edition, and one more up-to-date, is A lexan­ d er Pope: T he R ape o f the L ock and O ther M ajor Writings, edited by Leo Damrosch (2011). O ther important primary sources include T he C orre­ spon den ce o f A lexander Pope, edited by George Sherburn (5 vols., 1956); and two volumes of prose works, the first edited by Norman Ault, T h e Prose Works o f A lexander Pope (1936), and the second by Rosemary Cowler, T he Prose Works o f A lexan­ d er Pope, vol. 2, T h e M ajor Works, 1725—1744 (1986). For selections from Pope’s critical writ­ ings, see Literary Criticism o f A lexander Pope, edited by Bertrand A. Goldgar (1965). There are two superb biographical treatments: George Sherburn, T h e Early C areer o f A lexander Pope (1934), which covers the period to 1727; and Maynard Mack, A lexander Pope: A Life (1985), which exam ines the life and the writings in depth and detail. Also recommended: Howard ErskineH ill, T he S ocial M ilieu o f A lexander Pope: Lives, Exam ple, and the Poetic Response (1975); May­ nard M ack, T he G arden and the City: Retirem ent

and Politics in the L ater Poetry o f Pope, 1731— 1743 (1969); and Reginald Berry, A Pope C hron ol­ ogy (1988). Two older studies of Pope’s verse rem ain valu­ able: G eoffrey T illotso n , O n T he Poetry o f Pope (2d ed., 1950), and Reuben A. Brower, A lexander Pope: T he Poetry o f Allusion (1959). T h ese should be supplemented by Laura Brown, A lex­ an d er Pope (1985), a M arxist study that relates Pope to the cu lture o f empire and capitalism ; E l­ len Poliak, T he Poetics o f Sexual Myth: G en der

and Ideology in the Verse o f Swift and Pope (1985), a fem inist analysis; G. Douglas Atkins,

Quests o f D ifferen ce:

Reading

Pope's Poems

(1986), which draws on Jacques Derrida’s and Paul de M an’s deconstructive theories and practices; Leopold Dam rosch Jr., T he Im aginative World o f A lexander Pope (1987), an exploration of Pope’s literary career as the product of his feelings of iso­ lation and sexual, artistic, political, and financial marginality; Valerie Rumbold, Women's P lace in P op e’s World (1989), a cogent treatment of Pope’s relationships with women and his poetry about them ; and Helen Deutsch, R esem blance and Dis­

grace: A lexander Pope and the D eform ation o f Culture (1996). For a stimulating account of “phil­

The standard source for studying Pope is the

osophical skepticism” in Pope’s poetic theory and practice, see Jam es Noggle, T he Skeptical Sub­

T w ickenham Edition o f the Works o f A lexander Pope (11 vols., 1 9 3 9 -6 9 ). Volume 1 (1961), edited

lime: Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory Sati­ rists (2001). In Swift and Pope: Satirists in Dialogue

by E. Audra and Aubrey W illiam s, includes a care­ fully annotated text of An Essay on Criticism . Also recommended is Robert M. Schm itz’s “Essay on

(2010), Dustin H. G riffin compares and contrasts the work of these lifelong friends and fellow' sati­ rists, studying their letters, poems, and satires as stages in an ongoing literary dialogue. Much of the best critical work on Pope has been collected in Essential Articles fo r the Study o f Pope, edited by Maynard M ack (1968); A lexander Pope: A C ritical Anthology, edited by F. W. Bates­ on and N. A. Joukovsky (1971); A lexander Pope: Writers and T h eir B ackgrounds, edited by Peter

Criticism," 1709; A Study o f the B odleian M anu­ script Text with Facsim iles, Transcripts, and Vari­ ants (1962), which examines the manuscript ver­ sion of the Essay. A good one-volume selection is Poetry and Prose o f A lexander P ope, edited by Aubrey W illiam s (1969), which uses the text es­ tablished for the Twickenham edition. Another

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Dixon (1972); and Pope: T he C ritical Heritage, edited by Jam es Barnard (1973). More recent col­ lections include T he Enduring Legacy: A lexander Pope T ercentenary Essays, edited by G. S. Rous­ seau and Pat Rogers (1988), and Pope: New C on ­ texts, edited by David Fairer (1990). See also the special issue of T he New O rleans Review, vol. 15 (1980), edited by Ronald Schleifer and titled T he Poststructuralist Pope. H elpful bibliographical works are Reginald H. G riffith , A lexander Pope: A B ibliography (2 vols., 1 9 2 2 -2 7 ), and Wolfgang Kowalk, A lexander Pope: An Annotated Bibliogra­

Essay (2007), and A Human Eye: Essays on Art and Society (2009). Her book on motherhood, O f W oman Born: M otherhood as E xperience and In­ stitution, was published in 1976. Adrienne R ich’s Poetry and Prose, edited by Barbara Charlesworth

phy o f Twentieth-Century Criticism, 1900-1979 (1981). Also helpful is Paul Baines, T he C om plete C ritical G uide to A lexander Pope (2 0 0 0 ). A good

Writers, Retrospective Supplem ent II: A C ollection o f Literary Biographies (ed. Jay Parini, 2003). Reading A drienne Rich: Reviews and ReVisions 1951-1981, edited by Jan e Roberta Cooper (1984),

recent bibliography is included, along with a wide range of biographical, interpretive, and them atic essays, in T he Cambridge Com panion to Alexander Pope, edited by Pat Rogers (2007).

J o h n C ro w e R a n so m Ransom ’s books include T he W orld’s Body (1938), T he New Criticism (1941), Poems and Essays (1955), and Beating the Bushes (1971). See also Ransom ’s Selected Essays, edited by Thom as Dan­ iel Young and John Hindle (1984), and Selected Letters, edited by Young and George Core (1985). He also edited T he Kenyon Critics: Studies in Modern Literature from “T he Kenyon Review ’’ (1951). Thom as Daniel Young has written an ex­ cellent biography: G entlem an in a Dustcoat: A Biography o f Joh n Crowe Ransom (1976). See also

Joh n Crowe Ransom: C ritical Essays and a Bibliog­ raphy, edited by Young (1968). On the Agrarian movement and its relationship to the New Criticism , see John Lincoln Stewart,

T he Burden o f Tim e: T he Fugitives an d Agrarians (1965); Alexander K aranikas, Tillers o f a Myth: Southern Agrarians as S ocial an d Literary Critics (1966); Mark Jancovich, T h e Cultural Politics o f the New C riticism (1993); and C harlotte H. Beck, T he Fugitive Legacy: A C ritical History (2001). Detailed inform ation about Ransom and the New Critics can also be found in M arian Janssen, T he

Kenyon Review, 1939-1970: A C ritical History (1990). T he New Criticism and Contemporary Liter­ ary Theory: Connections and Continuities, edited by W illiam J. Spurlin and M ichael Fischer (1995), exam ines the history of modern criticism from the New C ritics to later p o ststru ctu ralist th eo ­ rists. For bibliography of prim ary and secondary sources, con su lt Thom as D aniel Young, Jo h n Crowe Ransom: An Annotated Bibliography (1982).

A d r ie n n e R ic h R ich published nearly two dozen books of poet­ ry. Her prose is collected in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966—1978 (1979), Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979—198 5 (1986), W hat Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993), Arts o f the Possible: Essays and Conversations (2001), Poetry and Commitment: An

Gelpi and Albert Gelpi (1993), offers selections from the span of R ich ’s career, along with critical essays on her work. The best biographical sources are the entry on Rich in Contem porary Authors, New Revision Series 53 (ed. J e f f Chapman, John D. Jorgenson, and Pamela S. Dear, 1997), and Philip Hobsbaum, “Adrienne R ich ,” in Am erican

is a collection o f critical responses to Rich, while Jean n ette R iley’s Understanding A drienne Rich (2016) is the best overview o f R ich ’s entire career. A book-Iength treatm ent of R ich ’s fem inist work is Liz Yorke’s Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics and the Body (1997). A lice Tem pleton’s T he Dream

and the Dialogue: Adrienne R ich’s Fem inist Poet­ ics (1994) focuses primarily on the poetry. Two broader studies that consider R ich ’s contribution to feminism are noteworthy: Krista R a tc liff’s

A nglo-American Feminist Challenges to the R he­ torical Tradition: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adri­ en n e Rich (1996) and Sabine Sielke’s Fashioning the F em ale Subject: T he Intertextual Networking o f D ickinson, Moore, and Rich (1997). From M otherhood to Mothering: T he Legacy o f Adrienne Rich's “O f W oman Born,” edited by Andrea O ’Reilly (2 0 0 4 ), collects fem inist responses to and expansions on that work, while Cheri Colby Langdell’s Adrienne Rich: T he M oment o f Change (2004) and Amy Sickels’s Adrienne Rich (2005) of­ fer two comprehensive looks at R ich ’s whole c a ­ reer. Essays that attend to R ich ’s fem inist work include D. Lynn O ’Brien H allstein, “The Intrigu­ ing History and Silences o f O f W oman Born: Re­ reading Adrienne Rich Rhetorically to B etter Un­ derstand the Contemporary C ontext,” Fem inist Form ations 2 2 .2 (2010); Judith Taylor, “Enduring Friendship: W om en’s Intim acies and the Erotics o f Survival,” Frontiers 34.1 (2013); and Candace Johnson, “Negotiating M aternal Identity: Adri­ enne R ich ’s Legacy for Inquiry into the Political Philosophical Dimensions of Pregnancy and Childbirth,” PhiloSOPHIA 4 (2014). T h e obituar­ ies for Rich in the C hicago Tribune and New York Tim es (both May 29, 2012) and the longer memo­ rial essay by Alice Frim an in Southern R eview 49 (2013) are good places to start to get a sense of R ich ’s im portance and influence. Langdell’s book (cited above) provides a good bibliography of R ich ’s own writings and of critical responses to her work.

A n d r e w Ross The first book by Ross, a prolific writer, is a psy­ choanalytic account of modern poetry, T he Failure

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o f Modernism: Symptoms o f American Poetry (1986). Thereafter, he left literary studies behind, writing on the New' York Intellectuals and their fraught relation to popular culture in No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (1989), which gained him wide attention. He also was an active member for more than a decade (1 9 8 6 -2 0 0 0 ) of the editorial collective of the journal Social Text, from which he drew several edited collections, the first of which was Universal Abandon? The Politics o f Postmodernism (1988). His next group of books deals with science and technology; they include

Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age o f Limits (1991), T he Chicago Gangster Theory o f Life: Nature’s Debt to Society (1994), and the edited collections Technoculture (co-edited with Constance Penley, 1991) and Science Wars (1996). On other cultural trends, he collected his essays in Real Love: In Pursuit o f Cidtural Justice (1998) and, with Tricia Rose, co-edited M icro­

in the “Science W ars” of the 1990s, see the vari­ ous charges and defenses in T he Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy, edited by the edi­ tors of Lingua Franca (2000). Susan Fraim an, “Andrew Ross, Cultural Studies, and Fem inism ,” Minnesota Review, nos. 52—54 (2001), analyzes his relative lack of attention to gender. Melissa Gregg, “Justice and Accountability: Andrew Ross, Intel­ lectual Labour and the New' Academic Activism,” in her Cultural Studies' Affective Voices (2006), surveys his later writing and its connection to ac­ tivism; on mental labor, see also Gregg’s W ork’s Intimacy (2011). Jeffrey J. W illiam s, “How to Be an Intellectual: The Cases of Richard Rorty and An­ drew Ross,” Dissent (winter 2011), reassesses an attack on Ross’s cultural politics and surveys his career. Probably because of the range of his top­ ics, there has been to date no general account of his work, nor a bibliography.

phone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture

G a y le R u b in

(1994). His writing shifted in the late 1990s, as he began conducting ethnographic research on how people work and live, in T he Celebration Chroni­

Rubin is a writer of essays, not books. Her land­ mark essay “T he T raffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Econom y’ o f Sex” first appeared in To­ ward an Anthropology o f W omen (ed. Rayna Re­ iter, 1975); it has been frequently anthologized. Rubin’s early writings on sexuality include “Sexu­ al Politics, the New Right, and the Sexual Fringe,” in T he Age Taboo: Gay M ale Sexuality, Power, and C onsent (ed. Daniel Tseng, 1981), and “The Leather M enace,” Body Politic 82 (1981). “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory o f the Politics o f Sexuality” w'as published in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Fem ale Sexuality (ed. Car­ ole Vance, 1984), and has subsequently been re­ printed in several anthologies. “O f Catam ites and Kings: Reflections on Butch, Gender, and Bound­ aries” was published in T he Persistent Desire: A Fem me-Butch Reader (ed. Joan Nestle, 1992). “Misguided, Dangerous, and Wrong: An Analysis of Anti-pornography Politics” appeared initially in

cles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit o f Property Value in Disney’s New Town (1999), an account of a year spent living in Celebration, Florida, the town built by the Disney Company; N o-Collar: T he Humane W orkplace and Its Hidden Costs (2003), an account o f his time observing high-tech companies in New York; Low Pay, High Profile: T he Global Push fo r Fair Labor (2004), which includes “The Mental Labor Problem” (a shorter version was first pub­ lished in Social Text 18.2 [2000]); Fast Boat to

China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences o f Free Trade— Lessons from Shanghai (2006), his re­ port on the new economy in China; Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times (2009), on the global exploitation of workers; Bird on Fire: Lessons fro m the W orld’s Least Sustain­ able City (2011), reporting on Phoenix; and Creditocracy: And the C ase fo r Debt Refusal (2014). He also edited or co-edited No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights o f Garment Workers (1997), Anti-Americanism (with Kristin Ross, 2005), The University against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future o f the A cadem ic W orkplace (with Monika Krause et al., 20 0 8 ), and T he G ulf: High Culture/ Hard Labor (2015). For an account of his shift in method, see “Scholarly Reporter: An Interview with Andrew Ross,” conducted by Jeffrey J. W il­ liams, Minnesota Review, nos. 7 3 -7 4 (2 0 0 9 -1 0 ). Ross has been subject to a considerable amount of public attention, including profiles in the New York Tim es M agazine, GQ, and New York maga­ zine. He was criticized by the philosopher R ich­ ard Rorty in “Intellectuals in Politics,” Dissent (fall 1991); a response by Ross and reply by Rorty appear in Dissent (spring 1992). Mark M cGurl, “Green Ideas Sleep Furiously: Andrew Ross on Ecocriticism ,” Lingua Franca, November—Decem ber 1994, recounts his work on ecology. On Ross’s role

Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures: The Challenge to Re­ claim Feminism (ed. Alison Assiter and Avedon Carol, 1993) and was reprinted in Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader (ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez, 1995). Rubin’s later works have focused on the subject of her 1994 disserta­ tion on leather culture among gay men. They in­ clude “The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole,” in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice (ed. Mark Thompson, 1991; 2d ed., 2001); “Elegy for the Valley of the Kings: AIDS and the Leather Community in San Francisco,” in In

Changing Times: Gay Men and Lesbians Encounter HIV/AIDS (ed. Martin P. Levine, Peter M. Nardi, and John H. Gagnon, 1997); “The M iracle Mile: South of Market and Gay M ale Leather in San Francisco, 1 9 6 2 -1 9 9 6 ,” in Reclaiming San Francis­ co: History, Politics, Culture (ed. James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy J. Peters, 1998); “Sites, S ettle­ ments, and Urban Sex: Archaeology and the Study of Gay Leathermen in San Francisco, 195 5 -1 9 9 5 ,”

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in A rchaeologies o f Sexuality (ed. Robert A. Schmidt and Barbara L. Voss, 2 0 0 0 ); and “Study­ ing Sexual Subcultures: The Ethnography o f Gay Communities in Urban North America,” in Out in

Theory: The Emergence o f Lesbian and Gay An­ thropology (ed. Ellen Lewin and W illiam L. Leap, 2002). “A Little Humility,” in Gay Sham e (ed. Da­ vid M. Halperin and Valerie Traub, 2009), repre­ sents a departure from her engagement with gay male culture, as she examines the invention of the silicone dildo, used by lesbian women, by a dis­ abled straight man. Here Rubin discusses female pleasure and the need for humility on the part of queer thinkers and activists w'ith respect to who may contribute to political and sexual progress. ‘“Anthropologists Are Talking’ about Fem inist An­ thropology,” Ethnos 72 (2007), an interview of im­ portant feminist anthropologists including Rubin, Rayna Rapp, and Louise Lamphere, sketches the genesis of “Traffic in Women” in the early days of feminist activism at the University of Michigan and offers biographical information, as does the collection Gay & Lesbian Biography (ed. M ichael J. Tyrkus, 1997). Rubin’s Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (2011) is a collection of previously published canonical and lesser-known works. Its introduction, “Sex, Gender, Politics,” which tackles more than forty years of material, makes for a particularly en­ grossing autobiographical and intellectual read. M ariane Valverde’s “Beyond Gender Dangers and Private Pleasures: Theory and Ethics in the Sex D ebates,” Feminist Studies 15 (1989), con­ trasts “Thinking Sex” with the work of C atharine M acKinnon, offering critiques of both anti- and pro-sex perspectives. Elizabeth Weed and Naomi S ch or’s anthology Fem inism Meets Q ueer T heory (1997) collects a number of valuable essays pub­ lished in the journal differen ces in 1994 that ex­ pand on the aims of “Thinking Sex” and articu ­ late its relation to queer theory. T hese pieces include an interview of Rubin by Judith Butler, titled “Sexual Traffic,” as well as Butler’s essay “Against Proper O bjects,” Biddy M artin’s “Extraor­ dinary Homosexuals and the Fear of Being Ordi­ nary,” and Elizabeth W eed’s “The More Things Change.” Two recent reevaluations of Rubin’s first essay— Laura Kipnis, “Response to T h e Traffic in Women’” and Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Feminism as a Way of Life”— appeared in W omens Studies Quarterly 34 (20 0 6 ). Brooke M eredith B eloso’s “Sex, Work, and the Fem inist Erasure of C lass,” Signs 38 (2012), rethinks both “Thinking S ex” and “T he T raffic in W om en” with respect to women, gender, class, capitalism , labor, and sex work.

E d w a r d W. S a id Said’s first book, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction o f Autobiography (1966), an outgrowth of his doctoral dissertation, is a literary study of Conrad’s life and fiction. The groundbreaking Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975) established Said as a central figure in the leftist poststructuralist literary theory

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then em erging. O rientalism (1978), his most fa­ mous book, extended Said’s influence to other dis­ ciplines and established him as a major contempo­ rary public intellectual. See also his retrospective comments, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” in Litera­ ture, Politics and Theory (ed. Francis Barker et al., 1986), and the afterword to the 1995 edition of Orientalism. Said next published three books more directly addressing politics and the Middle East:

Reaction and Counterrevolution in the C ontem po­ rary Arab World (1978), a brief expose; T he Ques­ tion o f Palestine (1979), a history of the status of Palestine; and Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest o f the World (1981), an analysis of popular media repre­ sentations. The latter two, directed at nonacadem­ ic audiences, form a trilogy w'ith Orientalism. Re­ turning to the field of contemporary theory, The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983) gathers many important essays and provides perhaps the best in­ troduction to Said’s views on criticism . After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986) offers his per­ sonal, poetic reflections on Palestine alongside photographs (by Jean Mohr). Said also co-edited (with Christopher Hitchens) and contributed three essays to the collection Blaming the Victims: Spuri­

ous Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (1988), which attacks stereotypes of Arabs (as ter­ rorists, for instance). Said performed as a concert pianist and wrote an occasional column on music for the Nation; Musical Elaborations (1991) gathers his writings in this area. Culture and Imperialism (1993) is a cap­ stone of his investigation into literary and cultural representations of imperialism. Representations o f the Intellectual: T he 1993 Reith Lectures (1994), a succinct and accessible survey of the role of the intellectual, culm inates in Said ’s call for an inde­ pendent intellectual who “speaks truth to power.” Several later collections gather his diverse com ­ mentary on politics in the Middle East: The Poli­

tics o f Dispossession: The Struggle fo r Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969—1994 (1994), The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian (1994), Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the M iddle East Peace Process (1998), and End o f the Peace: Oslo and A fter (2000). The Edward Said Reader, edited by M oustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (2000), presents a range of se­ lections covering his career. R eflections on Exile and Other Essays (2001), a companion to The World, the Text, and the Critic, gathers his later critical essays, and Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004) brings together his final consid­ erations of humanism. Power, Politics, and Cul­ ture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, edited by Gauri Viswanathan (2001), collects twenty-nine informative interviews about his writing, politics, and life. Out o f Place: A M em oir (1999) is an illu­ minating biographical account, covering Said’s early life in Palestine and Cairo through his col­ lege years at Princeton University.

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From early in his career, Said attracted a large body of criticism. A special issue of the theory jour­ nal Diacritics (6.3 [1976]) is devoted to Beginnings; it also contains an illuminating interview with Said. In Intellectuals in Power: A G enealogy o f Critical Humanism (1986), Paul A. Bove analyzes Said ’s relation to the humanistic tradition. Jim Merod, in The Political Responsibility o f the Critic (1987), sees Said rather than more academically oriented figures like Fredric Jameson as an exem­ plary politically engaged critic. The Predicament o f

Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Litera­ ture, and Art (1988), by the anthropologist James Clifford, contains a noted critique of Orientalism. In White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (1990), Robert Young assigns Said a central role in establishing postcolonial studies. John McGowan, in Postmodernism and Its Critics (1991), explores the problem of freedom in Said’s concept of exile. Edward Said: A Critical Reader, edited by Michael Sprinker (1992), contains an excellent selection of essays examining the range of Said’s work, as well as an informative interview with Said. The Marxist critic Aijaz Ahmad, in his In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992), criticizes Said’s relation to postcolonial studies, taking him to task for his focus on the humanistic W estern tradition and for his liberal politics. That attack was fol­ lowed by a special issue of Public Culture 12 (1993) debating Ahmad’s and Said’s merits. Bruce Robbins, in Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture (1993), analyzes Said ’s ambivalent views toward professionalism. In “Jan e Austen and Ed­ ward Said: Gender, Culture, and Im perialism ,” Critical Inquiry 21 (1995), Susan Fraiman criticizes Said’s lack of attention to gender and to texts by women. Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahlumwalia’s Edward Said: The Paradox o f Identity (1999) is a useful over­ view, as is Valerie Kennedy’s Edward Said: A Criti­ cal Introduction (2000). Edward Said and the Work o f the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power, edited by Paul A. Bove (2000), gathers a range of essays on Said. Timothy Brennan, “T he Illusion of a Future: Orientalism as Traveling Theory,” Critical Inquiry 26 (2000), provides a retrospective account of the influence of Orientalism, arguing that it critiques rather than follows Foucault. Abdirahman A. Hus­ sein, Edward Said: Criticism and Society (2002), argues that Beginnings is more im portant than Orientalism in understanding Said’s work. Since his death, the stream o f books on Said ’s work and influence has only grown. Among mono­ graphs, see M ustapha M arrouchi, Edward Said at the Limits (2 0 0 4 ); Conor M cC arthy, T he C am ­ bridge Introduction to Edward Said (2 0 0 8 ); and a critical account from a former student, H. Aram Veeser, Edward Said: T he C harism a o f Criticism (2010). Testifying to its influence, several books have devoted themselves to attacking Orientalism; see Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Oriental­ ism and Its Discontents (2006). Many collections of essays assessing Said, in special issues of jour­

nals and in books, have appeared; see Edward Said: Continuing the Conversation, edited by Homi K. Bhabha and W. J. T. M itchell (2005); C ounter­ points: Edward Said’s Legacy, edited by May Telmissany and Stephanie Tara Schwartz (2010); Edward Said: A Legacy o f Emancipation and Representa­ tion, edited by Adel Iskandar and Hakem Rustom (2010); and Edward Said’s Translocations: Essays in Secular Criticism, edited by Tobias Doring and Mark Stein (2012). For a comprehensive bibliogra­ phy, see “A Bibliographical Guide to Edward Said,” by Yasmine Ramadan, A lif 25 (2005).

F erd in a n d de Saussure There are two existing English translations of the Course in G eneral Linguistics, first edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in 1916. The one that has become canonical is by Wade Baskin (1959). Roy H arris’s more recent version (1983) solves certain problems but creates as many new ones. A critical edition comparing six different sources was published in French by Rudolf Engler (1967). Saussure’s anagram project, edited by Jean Starobinski, has been translated as Words upon Words (1979). T he leading Saussure schol­ ars Simon Bouquet, Rudolf Engler, Carol Sanders, M atthew Pires, and Peter Figueroa have edited and translated a newly discovered work by Saus­ sure on language, the sign, and perform ance, Writings in G eneral Linguistics (2006). John E. Jo sep h ’s Saussure (2012) is the first exhaustive biography of the linguist. Several introductions to Saussure’s work are excellent: Jonathan Culler’s Ferdinand de Saus­ sure (rev. ed., 1986) and David H oldcroft’s Saus­ sure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness (1991) are accessible and clear. For an excellent exposition o f the theories and lim its of Saussure and the Russian form alists, see Fredric Jam eson, T he

Prison-House o f Language: A C ritical A ccount o f Structuralism and Russian Form alism (1972). Roy H arris’s Reading Saussure: A C ritical C om m en ­ tary o f the "Cours de linguistique generate" (1987) and Fran^oise G adet’s Saussure and C on tem p o­ rary Culture (1987; trans. 1989) o ffer more in­ form ation about Saussure in the con text of lin ­ g u istics. T h e even more detailed R e-R eading

Saussure: T h e Dynamics o f Signs in S ocial Life (1997) by Paul J. Thibault updates the discussion o f many of the key concepts. For a confusing but detailed history of linguistics leading up to Sau­ ssure, see E. F. K. Koerner’s Ferdinand de Sau­

ssure: Origin and D evelopm ent o f His Linguistic Thought in Western Studies o f Language (1973). Beata Stawarska’s Saussure’s Philosophy o f Lan­ guage as Phenomenology: Undoing the Doctrine o f the "Course in General Linguistics" (2015) offers a phenomenological interpretation of Saussure’s conception of language. For a more theoretical discussion of Saussure’s place in the history o f lin­ guistics, see Hans A arsleff’s insightful but not chronological From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the

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Study o f Language and Intellectual History (1982). A bibliography, Bibliographia Saussureana, was compiled by E. F. K. Koerner (1972); more recent items can be found in the bibliographies of the Harris and Thibault volumes cited above. Writings in General Linguistics includes a comprehensive bibliography on Saussure from 1970 to 20 0 4 . Carol Sanders has also put together a useful collection of scholarly writings and an equally impressive bib­ liography on Saussure in T he C am bridge C om ­ panion to Saussure (2004). Joseph’s biography (see above) also has an updated bibliography. F rie d ric h von S c h ille r Germ an editions of S ch iller’s writings include the Sakular-Ausgabe, edited by Eduard von der Hellen (16 vols., 1904—05), and the Horenausgabe, edited by C. Schiiddekopf and C. Hofer (22 vols., 1910— 26), which includes many o f his letters. German scholars have noted that many English translations o f S ch iller’s texts are unreliable. Coleridge’s translation of W allenstein (1800) is im portant. T h e translation and edition of On the Aesthetic Education o f Man by E. M. W ilkinson and L. A. W illoughby (1967) is outstanding. A single­ volume edition is Friedrich Schiller: An A ntholo­ gy fo r Our Times (trans. Jan e Bannard Greene et al., 1959). For a selection of S ch iller’s writings on criticism and aesth etics, see Essays, edited by W alter Hinderer and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (1993).

S chiller’s Literary Prose Works: New Translations and C ritical Essays, edited by Jeffrey L. High (2 0 0 8 ), includes seven tales and novel fragm ents. A good biographical point of departure is W il­ liam W itte, S chiller (1949). See also Jo h n Sim on, Friedrich S chiller (1981), and T. J . Reed, Schiller (1991). For critical analysis, consult S. S. Kerry, S chiller’s Writings on Aesthetics (1961); Charles E. Passage, Friedrich S chiller (1975); Juliet Sychrava, S chiller to D errida: Idealism in Aesthetics (1989); and Lesley Sharpe, F riedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought, and Politics (1991), a wellcontextualized treatm ent of S ch iller’s work as a dram atist, poet, and literary theorist. Patrick T. Murray, T he D evelopm ent o f G erm an A esthetic

T heory fro m Kant to Schiller: A P hilosophical C om m entary on S ch iller’s ‘A esthetic Education o f M an,” 1795 (1994), places S ch iller’s aesthetics in their literary and national contexts. See also Linda M arie Brooks, T he M enace o f the Sublim e

to the Individual Self. Kant, Schiller, C oleridge, and the Disintegration o f Rom antic Identity (1996), and R. D. M iller, S ch iller and the Ideal o f Freedom (1970). For a study of S ch iller’s writings on aesth etics and their impact on Coleridge, see M ichael John Kooy, C oleridge, Schiller, and Aes­ thetic Education (2002). W ho Is This S chiller

Now? Essays on His R eception and Sign ifican ce, edited by Jeffrey L. High, Nicholas M artin, and Norbert Oellers (2011), is a wide-ranging collection o f essays, some in G erm an but most in English; two (in English) examine Schiller’s aesthetic views.

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D. C. Schindler, The Perfection o f Freedom: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel between the Ancients an d the Moderns (2012), interprets freedom in terms of aes­ thetic form (Schiller), organic form (Schelling), and social form (Hegel). For a concise study of the critical w ritings, see Rene W ellek, “Kant and Sch iller,” in A History o f M odern Criticism, 1750-1950, vol. 1, T he Later Eighteenth Century (1955). A more detailed, ch al­ lenging assessm ent can be found in Anthony Savile, A esthetic Reconstructions: T he Sem inal Writ­ ings o f Lessing, Kant, and S chiller (1987). T. J. Reed, T he Classical Centre: G oethe and Weimar, 1775-1832 (1980), is stim ulating on the relation­ ship between G oethe and Schiller. For bibliogra­ phy, see W olfgang Vulpius, Schiller-Bibliographie, 1893—19 58 (1959) and Schiller-Bibliographie, 1959-63 (1967); and R. Pick, “Schiller in England, 1787-1960: A Bibliography,” Publications o f the English G oethe Society 30 (1961). T he C am bridge C om panion to G erm an Idealism , edited by Karl Ameriks (2 0 0 0 ), provides a more recent bibliogra­ phy of primary and secondary sources in both E n ­ glish and G erm an, as well as essays on Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Marx, and other writers and phi­ losophers in this tradition of theory and criticism .

F rie d ric h S c h leierm a ch e r Schleierm acher’s collected works, Samtliche Werke (1 8 3 5 -6 4 ), mainly lecture notes, were published after his death in thirty-one volumes, including theological writings, sermons, and philosophical and m iscellaneous texts, plus four volumes of letters (1858—63). Starting in the early 1980s his collected writings and correspondence began to appear in a multivolume German edition, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, with forty-eight volumes reaching print in the first three and a half decades. His man­ uscripts on interpretation theory were published posthumously and first translated into English by Jam es Duke and Jack Forstman as Hermeneutics: T he Handwritten Manuscripts (1977), based on the German edition by Heinz Kimmerle (1959; 2d ed., 1974), and then more fully in a new translation,

Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, edited and translated by Andrew Bowie (1998). Several dozen texts by Schleierm acher covering an array of topics aside from hermeneutics are avail­ able in English translation. Biographical information is available in T he Life

o f S ch leierm ach er as U nfolded in His A utobiogra­ phy and Letters (2 vols., 1860), translated by Fred­ erica Rowan; W ilhelm Dilthey’s monumental but unfinished Das Leben S ch leierm ach ers (1870); Friedrich Wilhelm Kantzenbach’s Friedrich Daniel

Ernst Schleierm acher in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokum enten (1967); and M artin Redeker’s spiritu­ ally sympathetic intellectual biography, S ch leierm ­ acher: Life an d Thought (1968; trans. 1973). Informative texts about Sch leierm acher’s work include Richard B. Brandt’s Philosophy o f S ch lei­

erm acher: T he D evelopm ent o f His T heory o f

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Scientific and Religious Knowledge (1941); Richard E. Palmer’s valuable introduction, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleierm acher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and G adam er (1969), M anfred Fran k’s landm ark reassessm ent o f S ch le ie rm a ch e r’s hermeneutics in Das individuelle Allgemeine: Text-

strukturierung und -interpretation nach Schleier­ macher (1977), Tilottama Rajan’s contemporary contextualizing in The Supplement o f Reading: Figures o f Understanding in Romantic Theory and Practice (1990), Ju lie E lliso n ’s innovative fem inist exe­ gesis and critiq u e o f S ch le ie rm a ch e r’s herm e­ neu tics in D elicate Subjects: R om anticism , G ender, and the Ethics o f U nderstanding (1990), the cogent introduction in Jean Grondin’s Intro­ duction to P hilosophical H erm eneutics (1994), Andrew Bowie’s chapter factoring in the ground­ breaking recent work of M anfred Frank in From

Rom anticism to C ritical Theory: T h e Philosophy o f G erm an Literary T heory (1997), and Richard Crouter’s engaging and historically nuanced es­ says in Friedrich S chleierm acher: Between En­ lightenm ent and Romanticism (2 0 0 5 ). An updat­ ed bibliography as well as a collection of scholarly studies on Schleierm acher’s contributions to phi­ losophy, Plato scholarship, and theology appears in T he C am bridge C om pan ion to Friedrich Schleierm acher, edited by Jacqueline M arina (2005). Significant critical essays on the wide range of contemporary Schleierm acher scholar­ ship, including his hermeneutical theory, can be found in The State o f S chleierm acher Scholarship Today: Selected Essays, edited by Edwina G. Lawl­ er, Jeffrey Kinlaw, and Ruth Richardson (2006). Terrence T ice ’s S ch leierm ach er Bibliography (1966) contains almost 2 ,0 0 0 items with annota­ tions, and another 1,250 were added to his

S ch leierm ach er Bibliography (1784-1984): Up­ dating and C om m entary (1985). E ve K o so fsk y S e d g w ic k Sedgwick’s books of criticism and theory are The C oherence o f Gothic Conventions (1980), Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial De­ sire (1985), Epistemology o f the Closet (1990), Ten­ dencies (1993), A Dialogue on Love (1999), and Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003). She also published a volume of poetry, Fat Art, Thin Art (1994). She edited Performativity and Performances (1994), with Andrew Parker; Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (1995); Gary in Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks by Gary Fisher (1996); and Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction (1997), the first collection of queer criti­ cism of the novel. In T he W eather in Proust (2011), Jonathan Goldberg collected a series of essays written by Sedgwick in the last decade of her life as she worked toward a book on Proust. One of the earliest critiques of Between Men was David Van Leer’s “Beast of the Closet: Homosocial­ ity and the Pathology of Manhood,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1989). A number of interviews with Sedgwick

appeared in print, including Sarah Chinn, Mario DiGangi, and Patrick Horrigan, “A Talk with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,” PreText: A Jou rn al o f Rhetoric and Theory 13 (1992), and Jeffrey W illiam s, “Sedg­ wick Unplugged (An Interview with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick),” Minnesota Review 40, n.s. (1993). After her death, several journals published special issues in her honor, including PMLA 125.2 (2010);

Criticism: A Quarterly fo r Literature and the Arts 52.2 (2010), an issue edited by Erin Murphy and Keith Vincent; and GLQ: A Journal o f Lesbian and Gay Studies 17.4 (2011), edited by Ann Cvetkovich and Annamarie Jagose. Robyn W iegman’s “Eve’s Triangles, or Queer Studies beside Itself,” differ­ ences 26.1 (2015), provides a significant retrospec­ tive that explores the power of incoherence and contradiction in Sedgw'ick’s model for queer read­ ing. Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Q ueer Culture and Critical Theory, edited by Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark (2002), collects essays about Sedgwick by prominent literary theorists; it in­ cludes a bibliography of her works. See also the in­ troductory guide by Jason Edwards, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (2009), which offers an extensive section of further reading on Sedgwick.

P ercy Bysshe S h elle y For Shelley’s prose, primary sources include T he Prose Works, edited by E. B. Murray (1 vol. to date, 1993—), and T he Letters, edited by Freder­ ick L. Jones (2 vols., 1964). For a single-volume collection that includes critical essays, see S h el­

ley’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, C riti­ cism , edited by Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (1977; 2d ed., 20 0 2 ). O ther resources in­ clude Shelley and His C ircle, 1773—1822, edited by Kenneth Neill Cam eron (10 vols., 1 9 6 1 -2 0 0 2 ), which presents the m anuscripts by Shelley, his family, friends, and literary acquaintances held in the New York Public Library; it contains impor­ tant critical and contextual com mentary. The standard biographical work has long been New­ man Ivey W hite, S helley (2 vols., 1940), but a re­ cent contender to replace it is Jam es Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography (2 0 0 8 ). Kenneth Neill Cam eron, in T he Young S helley (1950) and Shelley: T he G olden Years (1974), is informative on the poet’s radical political view's. Richard Holmes, Shelley: T he Pursuit (1974), gives a good sense of the person behind the poetry and prose. See also T he Oxford H andbook o f Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by M ichael O ’Neill and Anthony Howe (2013), which provides detailed coverage of the life, work, reputation, and influence. On Shelley’s relationship to another great revolution­ ary poet, see Ian Gilmour, T he M aking o f the Po­ ets: Byron and Shelley in T heir Tim e (2002). On Shelley’s literary theory, consult Fanny Del­ isle, A Study o f S h elley ’s "A D efen ce o f Poetry": A Textual and C ritical Evaluation (2 vols., 1974). Among the many studies of Shelley’s poetic theory and practice are Harold Bloom, S h elley ’s Myth­

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m aking (1959); Earl W asserm an, Shelley: A C riti­ cal Reading (1971); W illiam Keach, Shelley's Style (1984), which deals well with Shelley’s complex and contradictory attitudes toward language; and Jerrold E. Hogle, S helley’s Process: R adical Trans­

fe ren ce and the D evelopm ent o f His M ajor W orks (1988). On the relationships between literature and politics in Shelley’s life and works, see T im o­ thy Clark, Embodying Revolution: T he Figure o f the Poet in Shelley (1989); M ichael O ’Neill, T he

Human M ind’s Imaginings: C on flict and A ch iev e­ m ent in S helley’s Poetry (1989); David D uff, R o­ m an ce and Revolution: S helley and the Politics o f a G enre (1994); and Timothy M orton, S helley and the Revolution in Taste: T h e Body and the N atu­ ral World (1994). Stuart Peterfreund, Shelley am ong Others: T he Play o f the Intertext an d the Idea o f Language (2002), explicates Shelley’s phi­ losophy o f language; and Cian Duffy, S helley and the Revolutionary Sublim e (2005), exam ines Shelley’s engagement with British and French dis­ course on the sublime in an era of radical political change. Among recent studies is Ross W ilson, Shelley and the A pprehension o f Life (2013), which explores Shelley’s fundam ental beliefs about life and the significance o f poetry. Helpful on trends in Shelley scholarship are Shelley: The Critical Heritage, edited by Jam es E. Barcus (1975); Deconstruction and Criticism, by Harold Bloom et al. (1979), which offers a series of exemplary deconstructive readings o f “T h e Tri­ umph of Life”; Essays on Shelley, edited by M iriam Allott (1982); T he New Shelley: Later TwentiethCentury Views, edited by G. Kim Blank (1991); and Shelley: Poet and Legislator o f the World, edited by Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran (1996). For bibliography, look to Clement Dunbar, Bibliogra­ phy o f Shelley Studies: 1823—1950 (1976) and Shel­

ley Studies, 1950—1984: An Annotated Bibliography (1986). T he Cambridge Companion to Shelley, ed­ ited by Timothy Morton (2006), provides a good bibliography on philosophy and politics, poems and poetics, and other important topics in Shel­ ley’s life and work.

S i r P h ilip S id n e y The complete works of Sir Philip Sidney are avail­ able in C om plete Works, edited by Albert Feuillerat (4 vols., 19 2 2 -2 6 ). The standard edition o f An Apology fo r Poetry with copious endnotes may be found in T he M iscellaneous Prose o f Sir Philip Sid­ ney, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan Van Dorsten (1973). There are several other edi­ tions of the text, including Gavin Alexander’s new­ er edition in Sidney’s “T he Defence o f Poesy” and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism (2004), from which our text is taken. For a seventeenthcentury biography, consult Sir Fulke G reville’s Life o f Sir Philip Sidney (1652), available in T he Prose o f Fulke Greville, edited by Mark Caldwell (1987). For a biography, see Katherine D uncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (1991).

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Forrest G. Robinson, T he Shape o f Things Known: Sidney’s Apology in Its Philosophical Tradi­ tion (1972), is an important book-length study of Sidney’s famous essay. For an introduction to Sid­ ney, see Katherine Duncan-Jones’s excellent con­ tribution to the Oxford Authors series, Sir Philip Sidney (1989). T he Ashgate Research Com panion to the Sidneys, 1500—1700, edited by Margaret P. Hannay, M ichael G. B rennan , and M ary Ellen Lamb (2015), assesses the current state of scholar­ ship on Sidney family members and their impact as historical and literary figures between 1500 and 1700. Richard Hillyer’s Sir Philip Sidney, Cultural Icon (2010) is a valuable study of Sidney’s reputa­ tion from his day to the present. Critical interest in Sidney’s “self-fashioning,” his creation of images of him self in both his poetry and criticism , is evi­ denced by such books as Alan Hager’s Dazzling Im ­ ages: The Masks o f Sir Philip Sidney (1991) and Edward Berry’s Making o f Sir Philip Sidney (1998). Peter C. Herman’s Squitter-wits and Muse-haters:

Sidney, Spenser, Milton, and Renaissance Antipoetic Sentiments (1996) examines the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debates about poetry with which Sidney’s D efence engages. For a full-length study of Sidney’s aesthetic theory in T he Defence o f Poesy, see R. W. M aslen’s introduction to his edi­ tion of An Apology fo r Poetry (or T he Defence o f Poesy) (2002) and M ichael Mack, Sidney’s Poetics: Imitating Creation (2005). Gavin Alexander’s Writ­

ing After Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney, 1586—1640 (2006) exam ines Sidney’s lit­ erary reputation in the years immediately follow­ ing his death. Kent R. Lehnhof, in “Profeminism in Philip Sidney’s Apologie fo r Poetrie ,” Studies in English Literature 48 (2008), argues that Sidney’s essay is less a defense of the theater against Stephen Gosson’s attack than a critique of his misogyny. In “Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Prophesying,” Stud­ ies in English Literature 50 (2010), Roger E. Moore argues that Sidney’s references to the relationship between poetry and prophecy in the D efence point to Sidney’s engagement with controversies about inspiration, suggesting that he sees prophecy as a form of moral instruction. William Junker’s “‘W on­ derfully Ravished’: Platonic Erotics and the Heroic Genre in Sir Philip Sidney’s D efence o f Poesy,” Ben Jonson Jou rn al 18 (2011), explores the relationship between the erotic and the eth ical in Sidney’s

D efence. Corey M cEleney and Jacqueline W ernimont, in “Re-Reading for Forms in Sir Philip Sid­ ney’s D efen ce o f Poesy,” in New Form alisms and Literary Theory (ed. Verena T heile and Linda Tredennick, 2013), focus less on what Sidney says in his D efence than on how he says it, arguing that the form of the D efence has been undertheorized. In “Sidney’s Greek P oetics,” Studies in Philology 112 (2015), M icha Lazarus argues that Sidney’s knowledge of Aristotle’s Poetics was deeper than previously supposed. C atherine Bates, in On Not

D efending Poetry: D efen ce and Indefensibility in Sidney's Defence of Poesy (2017), drawing on the

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new economic criticism , challenges received views o f Sidney as an idealist. Against idealist models of poetry as profitable, she argues that Sidney cham ­ pions poetry as pure expenditure, as gift. Robert E. Stillm an, in Philip Sidney and the Poetics o f Renaissance Cosmopolitanism (2 0 0 8 ), argues for placing Sidney’s poetics and his defense of fiction in a broader cultural context that includes Conti­ nental debates about religion and politics. For a bibliography, consult Sir Philip Sidney: An Anno­

tated Bibliography o f Texts and Criticism (15541984), edited by Donald V. Stump (1994). Stump updated the bibliography online in the Sir Philip Sidney World Bibliography (2 0 0 1 -0 9 ). S u s a n S o n ta g A Susan Sontag R eader (1982), though dated, re ­ mains a good point o f departure. Arranged chronologically, it includes short stories and se­ lections from two novels, T he B enefactor (1963) and Death Kit (1967); essays from Against Interpre­ tation: And Other Essays (1966), Styles o f Radical Will (1969), and Under the Sign o f Saturn (1980); and an excerpt from On Photography (1977). For a fuller selection of Sontag’s critical writings, see Susan Sontag: Essays o f the 1960s and 70s, edited by David R ieff (2013), which includes the full texts of Against Interpretation, Styles o f R adical Will, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and six previously uncollected essays. T he selections are annotated, and there is a detailed chronology. S e e also the companion volume, Susan Sontag: Later Essays, also edited by R ieff (2017). For interviews, see Conver­ sations with Susan Sontag, edited by Leland Poague (1995). Also im portant is Jo n ath an C ott, Susan

Sontag: T he C om plete Rolling S ton e Interview (2013); in 1978, he had interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York, but only a third of their conversation was published (for that version, see Poague’s volume). This book gives the complete transcript, along with C o tt’s preface and recol­ lections. Also significant is D ebriefing: C ollected Stories, edited by Benjam in Taylor (2017). Biographies have been w ritten by Jerom e Boyd M aunsell, Susan Sontag (2014), in the Reaktion C ritical Lives series, and by D aniel Sch reiber, Susan Sontag: A Biography (2 0 0 7 ; tran s. 2014). An enlightening film , which includes interviews with Sontag, her sister, her son, and others, is the H BO docum entary Regarding Susan Sontag (2014), produced and d irected by N ancy K ates. Also valuable is A lice Kaplan, D ream ing in

French: T h e Paris Years o f Ja c q u e lin e B ouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (2012). Sontag’s son, David Rieff, has published a percep­ tive, poignant recollection, Sw im m ing in a Sea o f Death: A S on ’s M em oir (2 008), which focuses on her final months. He also edited and published excerpts from Sontag’s journals: R eborn: Jou rn als and N otebooks, 1947—1963 (2 0 0 8 ) and As C on ­

sciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Jou rn als and N otebooks, 1 9 6 4-1 9 8 0 (2012).

Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock, in Susan Son­ tag: T he Making o f an Icon (2 0 0 0 ; rev. ed., 2016), examine Sontag’s life and work in the context of celebrity culture and the mass media. See also Sohnya Sayres, Susan Sontag: T he Elegiac Mod­ ernist (1990), and Liam Kennedy, Susan Sontag: Mind as Passion (1995). In Reading Susan Sontag: A Critical Introduction to Her Work (2001), Carl Rollyson devotes a chapter to each o f Sontag’s books and includes a glossary o f key terms, refer­ ences, and allusions. Philip Lopate’s Notes on Son­ tag (2009) is shrew'd and sympathetic, but also pointed and skeptical in places about Sontag as a personality and as a writer. T h e S can dal o f Susan Sontag, edited by Barba­ ra C hing and Je n n ife r A. W agner-Law lor (2 0 0 9 ), includes essays on Sontag’s fiction and nonfiction, reputation, and status as a cultural icon. Carl Rollyson has written Understanding Susan S on ­ tag (2016), an introduction to her essays, novels, plays, film s, diaries, and uncollected work. Mena M itrano, in In the Archive o f Longing: Susan Son­ tag’s Critical M odernism (2016), is insightful about Sontag’s intellectual debts to the Frankfurt School of critical theory, to deconstruction, and in partic­ ular to W alter Benjam in. For bibliography, see Sherry Lee Linkon, “Susan Sontag,” in Jew ish A m erican W omen Writers: A B io-B ibliographical and C ritical S ou rcebook (ed. Ann R. Shapiro et al., 1994), and the 672-page

Susan Sontag: An Annotated Bibliography, 1948— 199 2, compiled by Leland Poague and Kathy A. Parsons (2000).

B a ru ch Spinoza The standard edition o f Spinoza’s work in Latin is Spinoza O pera, edited by Carl Gebhardt (4 vols., 1925; rpt. 1972 [supplementary vol. 5, 1987]). The best English edition is C om plete W orks, ed­ ited by M ichael L. Morgan (2 002). The most ex­ haustive biography is Steven Nadler’s Spinoza: A Life (1999), but the newcomer to Spinoza should start with Richard H. Popkin’s Spinoza (2004), a superb introduction to his life and work. The secondary literature is vast; we emphasize here works relevant to Tractatus T heologicoPoliticus (T heological-P olitical Treatise) and to the engagement with Spinoza’s work by literary theorists. Gilles Deleuze’s two books specifically on Spinoza are Expressionism in Philosophy: S p i­ noza (1968; trans. 1990) and Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1981; trans. 1988). The best introduc­ tory volume on Spinoza for literary theorists is Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd’s C ollective Imaginings: Spinoza Past and Present (1999). It can be supplemented by Rebecca G oldstein’s idio­ syncratic but engaging Betraying Spinoza: T he R enegade Je w W ho Gave Us M odernity (2006) and M ichael Della R occa’s Spinoza (2008). T he New Spinoza, edited by W arren M ontag and Ted Stolze (1997), includes essays by Louis Althusser, Deleuze, and Antonio Negri among others. O ther

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useful collections o f essays are Interpreting S p i­ noza: C ritical Essays, edited by C harlie Huenemann (2 0 0 8 ); Spinoza’s “T heological-P olitical Treatise": A C ritical G uide, edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed and M ichael A. Rosenthal (2010); S pi­ noza Now, edited by Dimitris Vardoulakis (2011); Spinoza beyond Philosophy, edited by Beth Lord (2012); Spinoza: Basic Concepts, edited by Andre Santos Campos (2015); and T he Oxford H andbook o f Spinoza, edited by Michael Della Rocca (2017). Monographs devoted to the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus include J. Samuel Preus’s Spinoza and the Irrelevance o f Biblical Authority (2001), Steven Nadler’s A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandal­ ous Treatise and the Birth o f the Secular Age (2011), and Susan Jam es’s Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: T he T h eolog ical-P olitical Treatise (2012). More general treatments of interest include Jonathan I. Israel’s very influential Radical Enlight­

enment: Philosophy and the Making o f Modernity, 7650-/750 (2001), which places Spinoza at the cen­ ter of radical thought in the period; Antonio Damasio’s Looking fo r Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, an d the Feeling Brain (2 0 0 3 ), which con n ects Spinoza to contemporary neuroscience; Antonio Negris Sub­

versive Spinoza: (U n)contem porary Variations (2004), which links Spinoza’s democratic politics to his metaphysics; and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007), which discusses Spinoza in relation to secu­ larization. The Melamed and Rosenthal volume has a good bibliography of secondary literature relevant to the Tractatus, while Spinoza: Basic Concepts has an excellent bibliography both of the primary texts and of secondary works.

G a y a tr i C h a k r a v o r t y S p iv a k Spivak’s first book was Myself Must I Rem ake: The Life and Poetry o f W. B. Yeats (1974). Her later theoretical works include In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987), Outside in the Teaching M achine (1993), A Critique o f Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History o f the Vanishing Present (1999), Death o f a Discipline (2003), Other Asias (2008), Nationalism and the Imagination (2010), Harlem (2012), An Aesthetic Education in the Era o f G lo­ balization (2012), and, with Judith Butler, W ho Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belong­ ing (2007). The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, edited by Sarah Harasym (1990), and Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, edited by Swapan Chakravorty, Suzana Milevska, and Tani E. Barlow (2006), both provide useful collections of interviews with Spivak. T he Spivak Reader, edited by Donna Landry and Ger­ ald M acLean (1995), is a one-volume collection of some of Spivak’s most influential essays. Spivak is the translator (with substantial introductions) of Jacques Derrida’s O f G ram m atology (1967, trans. 1976; 40th anniversary ed., trans. 2016), and. of several novels and short story collections by the contemporary Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi. She is the co-editor, with Ranajit Guha, of S e­

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lected Subaltern Studies (1988). The various pub­ lished interviews with Spivak are a good source of biographical information. An Aesthetic Education in the Era o f Globalization also includes autobio­ graphical reflections. The best introduction to Spivak’s work is S te­ phen M orton’s Gayatri Spivak: Ethics, Subalternity and the Critique o f Postcolonial Reason (2 0 0 7 ), while Mark Sanders’s Gayatri Spivak: Live Theory (2006) and Sangeeta Ray’s Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Words (2009) provide more intri­ cately theoretical engagements with her work. Three reviews o f A Critique o f Postcolonial Reason are worth consulting: Terry Eagleton’s “In the Gaudy Superm arket,” L on don R eview o f Books, May 13, 1999; M ieke B a l’s “T h ree Ways o f M is­ reading,” Diacritics 30 (2 0 0 0 ); and Isabelle V. Barker’s (untitled) in Signs 27 (2001). A forum on Spivak’s work in PM LA 123 (2008) provides an excellent overview of her widespread influence. For responses specific to A Critique o f Postcolo­ nial Reason, see Can the Subaltern Speak? R eflec­ tions on the History o f an Idea, edited by Rosa­ lind C. M orris (2010), and Postcolonial Reason

and Its Critique: Deliberations on Gayatri C hakra­ vorty Spivak’s Thoughts, edited by Purushottam a Bilimoria and Dina Al-Kassim (2014). Both vol­ umes include responses by Spivak, and M orris’s invaluably prints the two separate versions of her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?.” Ola Abdalkafor’s Gayatri Spivak: Deconstruction and the Ethics o f Postcolonial Literary Interpretation (2015) offers a more general reflection on the ways that Spivak deploys poststructuralist theory in service o f her critique of the W est. M orris’s volume has a superb bibliography of Spivak’s own work and a useful bibliography o f secondary sources.

G erm a in e N e c k e r d e S ta e l In addition to the literary and cultural works men­ tioned in the headnote, Mme de S ta e l’s writings include many stories and plays, a tribute to Rous­ seau (Letters on Rousseau, 1788), R eflection s on the Trial o f the Q ueen (1793), R eflection s on P eace (1794), T h e In flu en ce o f the Passions (1796), R eflection s on S u icide (1813), and “The Spirit o f Translation” (1816). Posthumously pub­ lished were Considerations on the P rincipal Events o f the French Revolution (1818), Ten Years o f E xile (1820), the C om plete Works (1820), and many volumes of correspondence, some o f which is still being discovered. Mme de Stael’s work is not all easy to obtain in English translation. A wide range o f selections can be found in Madante

de Stael on Politics, Literature, and N ational C har­ acter, edited and translated by M onroe Berger (1964), and in An Extraordinary W om an , edited and translated by Vivian Folkenflik (1987). The biography by J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age (1958; rpt. 2 0 0 2 ), is, while somewhat dated, informative and well written. M aria Fairw eather’s M adam e d e Stael (2005) and A njelica Goodden’s

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M adame de Stael: The Dangerous Exile (2008) are equally w ell-researched and more recent bio­ graphies. In France there is a very active de Stael indus­ try, which publishes a journal, C ahiers staeliens (Stael Notebooks), and holds many conferences. The most important figure in this enterprise is Simone Ballaye, whose work has not been much translated into English, but who has contributed an essay to the excellent anthology G erm ain e de Stael: Crossing the Borders, edited by Madelyn Gutwirth, Avriel Goldberger, and Karyna Szmurlo (1991). Madelyn G utw irth’s own M adam e de

Stael, Novelist: T he E m ergence o f the Artist as Woman (1978) is also good, especially in its ac­ count of the shift in de Stael studies opened up by feminist criticism . Two fine general studies of Mme de S tae l’s life and works are Charlotte Hogsett, T he Literary E xistence o f G erm ain e de Stael (1987), and G retchen Rous Besser, G erm aine de Stael Revisited (1994). For an analysis of the place of On Germ any in the rise o f Rom anticism , see John Claiborne Isbell, T he Birth o f European

Rom anticism : Truth and Propaganda in Stael's "De VAllemagne," 1810-1813 (1994). And for a study of the complexity o f gender roles and mod­ els in Rousseau and de Stael, see Lori Jo M arso’s excellent (Un)Manly Citizens (1999). There is an extensive annotated bibliography of criticism on de Stael in French by Pierre H. Dube, Bibliogra­

phic de la C ritique sur M adam e de Stael, 1789— 1994 (1998). Goodden’s M adam e d e Stael also contains a wide-ranging selected bibliography.

L e o S tra u ss Leo Strauss published three books in German and twelve in English, and more than 100 essays and reviews. For his contributions to political thought, especially significant are Natural Right and History (1953) and What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (1959), which in its first three essays outlines Strauss’s conception of and approach to political philosophy, history, and classical philosophy. See also his The Political Philosophy o f Hobbes, Its Basis and Its Genesis (1936) and Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958; rpt. 1978). Strauss wrote extensively on writers of the ancient world, too. The City and Man (1964) includes essays on Aristotle’s Politics, Plato’s Republic, and Thucydides’ History o f the Pelopon­ nesian War. Also noteworthy is Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (1983), with essays on Plato, Thucydides, and Xenophon, supplem ented by essays on Maimonides, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche. Persecution and the Art o f Writing (1952; rpt. 1988) features the title essay and other studies. See also Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921-1932), translated and edited by Michael Zank (2002), and Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s, edited by Martin D. Yaffe and Richard S. Ruderman (2014), which contains scholarly commentaries on Strauss and seven texts by him, including “Exoteric Teach­ ing” (1939) and “Lecture Notes for ‘Persecution and

the Art of W riting’ ” (1939). On Tyranny, first pub­ lished in 1948, revised and expanded in 1963, was further expanded in 1991, in a version (edited by Victor G ourevitch and M ichael S. Roth) that in­ cludes an exchange between Strau ss and the Hegelian philosopher Alexandre Kojeve as well as their letters to each other. T he Rebirth o f Classi­

cal Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought o f Leo Strauss: Essays and Lectures, edited by Thom as L. Pangle (1989), includes an intro ­ duction, five of Strau ss’s previously unpublished lectures, and five published writings that display his major interests. Very important for the study of work by Strauss and other scholars influenced by him is his History o f Political Philosophy, first published in 1963, re­ vised in 1972, and now in a third edition (1987), edited by Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. The Leo Strauss Center at the University of Chicago is in­ dispensable, with audio, video, and transcripts of materials by and about Strauss. It offers, for exam­ ple, a near-complete audio recording and transcript of a course (1971—72) on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil that Strauss taught at St. Jo h n ’s College (Annapolis, Maryland). On Strauss as a teacher, see Allan Bloom, “Leo Strauss: September 20, 1899-O cto b er 18, 1973,” in his Giants and Dwarfs: Essays, 1960-1990 (1990), and Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis o f the Strauss Di­

vided: Essays on Leo Strauss and Straussianism, East and West (2012). For Strauss’s life, work, and legacy, see The C am ­ bridge Companion to Leo Strauss, edited by Ste­ ven B. Smith (2009). Also helpful is Thomas L. Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (2006), which is very good on Strauss’s opposition to “liberal relativism,” and Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Phi­ losophy, Judaism (2006), which examines Jewish influences and topics and provides a cogent treat­ ment of Strauss’s view of liberal democracy. Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography (2 0 0 3 ; trans. 2 0 0 7 ), is illum inating on the first phase of Strauss’s career, 1 9 2 0 -3 8 (before his im­ migration to the United States), medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, the art of esoteric writing, and Strauss’s critique of modernity. On exoteric/esoteric writing and interpretation, see Laurence Lampert, The Enduring Importance o f Leo Strauss (2013), and Arthur M. Melzer, Phi­

losophy between the Lines: The Lost History o f Eso­ teric Writing (2014), a deeply researched explora­ tion of Strauss and the tradition of philosophic esotericism.

Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the Study o f the American Regime, edited by Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley (1999), containing essays by both supporters and detractors, is illuminating on the implications of Strauss’s thought for the inter­ pretation of the U.S. founders and the Revolution­ ary period and for the study of contemporary poli­ tics. Anne Norton, in Leo Strauss and the Politics o f

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Am erican Empire (2 0 0 4 ), scrutinizes Straussinfluenced neoconservatives who argued for the invasion of Iraq. In The Truth about Leo Strauss:

Political Philosophy and A m erican Democracy (2006), Catherine H. and Michael P. Zuckert chal­ lenge misleading and inaccurate views of Strauss’s ideas common in both the academy and the media, and survey his work in general. See also Paul Ed­ ward Gottfried, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Reappraisal (2012). Also valuable are Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche (1996); David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in GermanJew ish Thought (2003), which includes an excellent chapter on Strauss’s critique of historicism; and Michael R. and Catherine H. Zuckert, Leo Strauss and the Problem o f Political Philosophy (2014), which examines Strauss in the context of twentiethcentury philosophy (e.g., Carl Schm itt, Edmund Husserl, M artin Heidegger). Liisi Keedus, The Cri­

sis o f German Historicism: The Early Political Thought o f Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss (2015), considers these thinkers’ intellectual formation in Weimar Germany and their attitudes toward mo­ dernity, freedom, and the political fate of European Jewry. A related study is Jeffrey A. Bernstein, Leo

Strauss on the Borders o f Judaism, Philosophy, and History (2015): making use of published texts, cor­ respondence, archival materials, and seminar tran­ scripts, Bernstein examines the impact of Jew’ish thought on Strauss’s studies in political philosophy and religion. Shadia B. Drury, T he Political Ideas o f L eo Strauss (1 9 8 8 ; rev. ed., 2 0 0 5 ), is a stim u­ lating, though highly critical, study that includes a good bibliography. Also recom m ended is the bibliography in S m ith ’s C am bridge C om panion (see above).

T h o m a s A q u in a s Not all of Aquinas’s works exist in critical edi­ tions, but the many volumes of the still-unfinished Opera Omnia (1882, C om plete Works), edited by the Leonine Commission (commissioned by Pope Leo X III), provide the best available Latin text. The M arietta editions, in several volumes that appeared throughout the tw entieth century, re­ produce the Leonine Latin text in a more conve­ nient form at with useful research aids. Nor have all Aquinas’s works been translated into English. The Summa T heologica (also known as the Summa Theologiae) is available in a twenty-twovolume English edition by the Fathers o f the E n ­ glish D om inican Province (1 9 2 0 —31). More recently, the A quinas In stitu te has issued an eight-volume edition of the Sum m a T heologiae with Latin and English in parallel columns (2012). T h e Sum m a Contra G entiles was trans­ lated by the English Dom inican Fathers (1923— 29). A selection of translations by various hands of Aquinas’s biblical com m entaries can be found in the Aquinas Scripture S eries (1 9 6 6 —). Thom as Aquinas: S elected P hilosophical Writings, edited

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by Timothy M cD erm ott (1993; rpt. 2 0 0 8 ), offers selections from Aquinas’s writings in translation. Denys Turner’s Thom as Aquinas: A Portrait (2014) is a highly readable biography of the saint. F. C. Copleston’s Aquinas (1955) is a useful in­ troduction to both Aquinas’s philosophy and its historical background, as is T hom as Aquinas fo r

Beginners: A B rie f Introduction to His Philoso­ phy, edited by Jeffrey Colem an (2012). M. D. Chenu’s Toward Understanding St. Thomas (1964) of­ fers a classic interpretation of Aquinas’s thought. Umberto E co’s Aesthetics o f Thomas Aquinas (1988) examines the difficulty of deriving an aesthetics from Aquinas’s thought, making connections with issues in contemporary aesthetics. Norman Kretzmann and Eleanore Stum p’s Cambridge C om ­ pan ion to Aquinas (1993) provides ten studies designed to introduce all aspects of Aquinas’s thought, including his work on biblical commen­ tary. Jean-Pierre Torrell’s two-volume study, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1 9 9 3 -9 6 ; trans. 1996—2003), of­ fers an indispensable guide to the life and works of the saint by a member of the Leonine Commission; his Aquinas's Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception (1998; trans. 2005) provides a more ad­ vanced historical background for Aquinas, covering his C h ristian, Greek, Jew ish, and Arabic sources and surveying the Summ a’s influence up to the tw entieth century. In P hilo’s Heirs: Moses Maimonides and Thom as Aquinas (2017), Luis Cortest exam ines the influence of Philo of Alexandria, the first century Jew'ish philosopher on the philo­ sophical works of Maimonides and Thom as Aqui­ nas, and in doing so highlights the relationships between the two medieval philosophers. In On Aquinas (2 0 0 8 ), the prom inent British theologian H erbert M cC abe elucidates the in flu en ce of Aquinas on contemporary thought. Bernard M c­ G inn’s Thom as A quinas’s “Summa T h eolog iae”: A Biography (2014) tells the story o f the Summ a from the medieval world that shaped it to its sub­ sequent influ ence over the past seven hundred years, while Brian D avies’s T hom as A quinas’s

“Summa T h eolog iae”: A G uide and Comm entary (2014) presents a system atic exposition of the work. The Oxford H andbook o f Aquinas, edited by Brian Davies and Eleanore Stump (2012), includes a section on Aquinas’s theory o f language, and Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP, exam ines the central role Aquinas afforded to language in his philoso­ phy in “Religious Imagination and Poetic Audacity in Thom as A quinas,” in Poetry and the Religious Imagination: T he Power o f the Word (ed. Francesca Bugliani Knox and David Lonsdale, 2015). Pasquale Porro examines Aquinas’s complete works in chron­ ological order, attending to Aquinas’s philosophi­ cal development, influences, manuscript evidence, and historical context, in Thom as Aquinas: A His­ torical and Philosophical Profile (2012; trans. 2016). “Thom as A quinas” by M. V. Dougherty, in the online Oxford Bibliographies (2014), is an up-todate bibliography.

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tologies: New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis (ed.

Todorov’s work falls into three periods. T h e first and best-known to English-speaking critics is his structuralist phase; books include Gram m ar o f the D ecam eron (1969); T he Fantastic: A Struc­ tural A pproach to a Literary G enre (1970; trans. 1973); T h e Poetics o f Prose (1971; trans. 1977), w hich gathers many important essays on narra­ tive; the E ncyclop ed ic D ictionary o f the S cien ces o f Language, coauthored with the philosopher of language Oswald D ucrot (1972; trans. 1979); and Introduction to Poetics (1973; trans. 1981), a good starting point in reading Todorov. In addi­ tion, he translated into French and edited an in­ fluential collection, T h eorie de la litterature: Textes des form alistes russes (1965, Theory o f Lit­ erature: Texts o f the Russian Formalists), which introduced central writings of important Russian form alists to the French scene. In his second phase, Todorov turned from ques­ tions of structure to those of interpretation, pub­ lishing T heories o f the Symbol (1977; trans. 1982), Symbolism and Interpretation (1978; trans. 1982), Genres in Discourse (1978; abridged trans., 1990), and M ikhail B akhtin: T h e D ialogical Principle (1981; trans. 1984). He also edited the anthology French Literary Theory Today: A Reader (1982) and published the overview Literature and Its Theorists:

David Herman, 1999). Todorov’s seminal work in narrative theory receives comment throughout

A Personal View o f Twentieth-Century Criticism (1984; trans. 1987). Subsequently, Todorov took up broader issues o f culture, history, and politics in more than twenty books, including On Human Di­

versity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought (1989; trans. 1993), The Morals o f History (1991; trans. 1995), Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps (1991; trans. 1996), Im perfect Garden: T he Legacy o f Hum an­ ism (1998; trans. 2 0 0 2 ), H ope and Memory: Les­ sons from the Twentieth Century (2 0 0 2 ; trans. 2 0 0 3 ), T he New World Disorder: R eflections o f a European (2 0 0 3 ; trans. 2 0 0 5 ), T he Fear o f B ar­ barians: Beyond the C lash o f Civilizations (2 0 0 8 ; trans. 20 1 0 ), and T h e Inner Enem ies o f D em oc­ racy (2012; trans. 2014). He also edited two books about Bulgaria during the H olocaust and during Com m unist rule. The autobiography L'Homme depaysd (1996, Man without a Country) gives an account of his life and travels, and Duties and D e­ lights: T he Life o f a G o-Betw een (2 0 0 2 ; trans. 2 0 0 8 ) collects interviews with C atherine Portevin about his cross-cultural role. Todorov’s “gram m ar” of plot remains a touch­ stone for narrative theory. Gerald P rince’s N arra­

tology: T he Form an d Functioning o f Narrative (1982) is indebted to Todorov, though it notes the limitations of the grammatical approach. Todorov is a sig nificant actor in Francois D osse’s History o f Structuralism (1992; trans. 1997), an excellent accoun t o f the m ajor figures and events o f the movement. Em m a K afalenos expands on the Propp-Todorov definition o f narrative as a disrup­ tion of equilibrium; see her contribution to Narra-

W hat Is Narratology? Questions and Answers Re­ garding the Status o f a Theory, edited by Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Muller (2003), and his early con­ cept of literariness was the topic of W hat Is Litera­ ture Now}, a special issue of New Literary History (38.1 [2007]). For a comprehensive bibliography of Todorov’s work, see David Gorman, “Tzvetan Todorov: An Anglo-French C hecklist to 1995,” Style 31 (1997).

L io n e l T r illin g For the complete writings, see the Uniform Edition of the Works of Lionel Trilling, edited by Diana Trilling (12 vols., 1977-80). The best place to begin reading Trilling is the excellent 600-page collection

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Es­ says, edited by Leon W ieseltier (2000). The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950) is Trilling’s most influential book. A superb guide to Trilling’s life, work, critical reception, and legacy is Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (1999). An essential biographical source is Diana Tril­ ling, The Beginning o f the Journey: The Marriage o f Diana and Lionel Trilling (1993). Another impor­ tant related source is Natalie Robins, T he Untold Journey: The Life o f Diana Trilling (2017). Also noteworthy is Geraldine Murphy’s introduction to

The Journey Abandoned: T he Unfinished Novel (2009), one-third of a draft for a novel that Trilling did not complete. Important too are “From the Notebooks of Lionel Trilling, part 1,” selected by Christopher Zinn, Partisan Review 51.4/52.1 (fall 1984—winter 1985); “From the Notebooks of Lionel Trilling, part 2,” selected by Christopher Zinn, Par­ tisan Review 54.1 (winter 1987); and Jeffrey Mey­ ers, “Lionel Trilling and the Crisis at Columbia,” New Criterion 21.5 (January 2003), which exam­ ines a 75-page interview with Trilling that took place in May 1968. Significant but controversial is Jam es Trilling, “My Father and the Weak-Eyed Devils,” American Scholar 68 .2 (spring 1999), in which the author says that his father suffered from attention deficit disorder (ADD). It is important to situate Trilling biographically and intellectually within a larger school or move­ ment, the New York Intellectuals. The New York Intellectuals Reader, edited by Neil Jumonville (2007), includes major essays by Trilling, Hannah Arendt, Clement Greenberg, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, and others. Also illuminating is Joseph Dor­ man’s work of oral history, Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words (2000), which focuses on Howe, the political essayist Ir­ ving Kristol, and the sociologists Daniel Bell and Nathan Glazer. Prodigal Sons: The New York Intel­ lectuals and T heir World (1986), by Alexander Bloom, is a fascinating account of the New York Intellectuals’ careers and literary and cultural com­

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munities. See also Terry A. Cooney, The Rise o f the New York Intellectuals: “Partisan Review” and Its Circle (1986); Alan M. Wald, T he New York Intel­ lectuals: The Rise and Decline o f the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (1987); and Neil Jumonville, Critical Crossings: The New York Intel­ lectuals in Postwar America (1991). Useful surveys of Trilling’s life and career are Edward Joseph Shoben Jr., Lionel Trilling: Mind and Character (1981); Stephen L. Tanner, Lionel Trilling (1988); and, especially, Adam Kirsch, Why Trilling Matters (2011), which presents Trilling as an inspiring writer and thinker who is relevant for literature and criticism today. See also Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor o f Lionel Trilling , edited by Quentin Anderson, Stephen Donadio, and Ste­ ven Marcus (1977), which includes essays on Tril­ ling by Quentin Anderson and Daniel Bell (on his novel The Middle o f the Journey, 1947). For more depth and detail, see William M. Chace, Lionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics (1980); Mark Krupnick, Lionel Trilling and the Fate o f Cultural Criticism (1986); and Daniel T. O ’Hara, Lionel Trilling: The Work o f Liberation (1988), which describes Trilling as a “magnanimous” critic capable of “imaginative sympathy” with minds rad­ ically different from his own. Somewhat dated but still stimulating is a chapter in Nathan A. Scott Jr.,

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling (1973). Michael Kimmage, The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, W hitaker Chambers, and the Les­ sons o f Anti-Communism (2009), studies the emer­ gence o f neoconservatism by focusing on the re­ lationship between Trilling and the writer and editor W hittaker Chambers, a Communist Party member and Soviet spy who later renounced com ­ munism and became an outspoken opponent of Stalinism and the Soviet Union. Trilling used Chambers as the basis for the character Gifford Maxim in T he Middle o f the Journey. Also recommended are Philip French, Three

Honest Men: Edmund Wilson, F. R. Leavis, and L io­ nel Trilling: A Critical Mosaic (1980), the tran­ scripts of BBC programs on these three critics, with commentaries and rem iniscences by others; and Carolyn G. Heilbrun, W hen Men Were the

Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling (2002), recollections of and re­ flections on three intellectuals and teachers— Trilling, Jacques Barzun, and Clifton Fadiman— by a leading feminist critic and theorist. For additional primary and secondary sources, consult Thomas M. Leitch, Lionel Trilling: An An­ notated Bibliography (1993). Also helpful for fur­ ther reading are the extensive notes in Kimmage’s The Conservative Turn (see above).

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trans. 1990); On the Most A ncient W isdom o f the Italians (1710; trans. 1988); Statecraft: T h e Deeds o f A ntonio Carafa (1716; trans. 2 0 0 4 ); Universal Right (1 7 2 0 -2 2 ; trans. 2 0 0 0 ); T h e First N ew S ci­ en ce (1725; trans. 2 0 0 2 ); T h e A utobiography o f G iam battista Vico (1725—2 8 ; trans. 1944); the third edition o f T he New S cien ce o f G iam battista Vico (1744; trans. 1968, 2001), to which has been added Vico’s “Practic of the New S cie n ce ”; and O n H um anistic E ducation (trans. 1993) and T he Art o f R hetoric (trans. 1996), both translated and edited by Giorgio A. Pinton and A rthur W. Shippee. Vico: S elected Writings, edited and translat­ ed by Leon Pompa (1982), includes selections from On the Most A ncient W isdom o f the Ital­ ians, the 1725 version of the New S cien ce, and Vico’s orations. For inform ation on Vico’s life, see his autobiography cited above; Robert Flint’s Vico (1901; rpt. 1979); and H. P. Adam’s Life an d Writ­ ings o f G iam battista Vico (1935). A valuable brief introduction to the life and work is Peter Burke’s Vico (1985). Benedetto C roce’s Philosophy o f G iam battista Vico (1911; trans. 1913) is an important critical study that put Vico’s work on the map in the early twentieth century. For a sense o f the wide range and multidisciplinary nature o f Vico studies, see the following three collections: G iam battista Vico: An In ternational Symposium, edited by Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Hayden W hite (1969);

G iam battista Vico's S cien ce o f Humanity, edited by Tagliacozzo and Donald Phillip Verene (1976); and Vico: Past and Present, edited by Tagliacozzo (1981). Also helpful in this regard are Max Harold Fisch and Thom as Goddard Bergin’s introduction to Vico’s autobiography cited above and the an­ nual volumes of New Vico Studies, published by the Institute for Vico Studies. Illum inating stud­ ies of the New S cien ce include Verene’s V ico’s S cien ce o f the Im agination (1981), Leon Pompa’s Vico: A Study o f the New S cien ce (2d ed., 1990), Ernesto G rassi’s Vico and Humanism: Essays on Vico, Heidegger, and R hetoric (1990), Joseph M ali’s R ehabilitation o f Myth: V ico’s “New S ci­ e n c e ” (1992), Giuseppe M azzotta’s New M ap o f the World: T h e Poetic Philosophy o f G iam battista Vico (1999), Robert C. M iner’s Vico: G enealogist o f M odernity (20 0 2 ), Sandra Rudnick L u ft’s Vi­ c o ’s Uncanny Humanism: R eading the “New S ci­ e n c e ” betw een M odern and Postm odern (2003), Donald Phillip Verene’s K now ledge o f Things Hu­ m an and Divine: Vico’s “New S c ie n c e ” and “Finnegans W ake” (2003), Jurgen T rabant’s V ico’s New S cien ce o f A ncient Signs: A Study o f Sem atology (1994; trans. 2 0 0 4 ), G iam battista Vico: Keys to the “New S cien ce”: Translations, C om ­ m entaries, and Essays, edited by Thora Ilin Bayer

G ia m b a t tis t a V ico

and Donald Phillip Verene (20 0 9 ), and V erene’s

The standard Italian edition of Vico’s works is ed­ ited by Benedetto Croce and Fausto Nicolini (8 vols. in 11, 1914—42). English translations in­ clude On the Study M ethods o f Our Tim e (1709;

V ico’s “New S c ien c e”: A P hilosophical C om m en ­ tary (2015). A philosophical and historically in­ formed study of Vico is available in Isaiah B erlin ’s

Vico and H erder: Two Studies in the History o f

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Ideas (1976). On the subject of Marx and Vico, see Vico and Marx: A ffinities and Contrasts, edited by Giorgio Tagliacozzo (1983). For discussions of Vico in relationship to rhetoric, see M ichael M ooney’s Vico in the Tradition o f R hetoric (1985), John D. S ch aeffer’s Sensus Comm unis:

Vico, R hetoric, and the Limits o f Relativism (1990), and David L. M arshall’s Vico and the Transform ation o f R hetoric in Early M odern E u­ rope (2010). For an account of Vico’s axioms, of­ ten mentioned in New S cien ce, refer to Jam es G o etsch ’s V ico’s Axioms: T he G eom etry o f the Human World (1995). Bibliographies of criticism and primary texts appear in Robert C rease’s Vico in English: A Bibliography o f Writings by and about G iam battista Vico (1978), Molly Black Verene’s Vico: A Bibliography o f Works in English from 1884 to 1994 (1994), and the annual vol­ umes of New Vico Studies (1 9 8 3 -2 0 0 9 ), as well as Tim othy Costelloe’s “G iam battista V ico,” in the online Stanford Encyclopedia o f Philosophy (2014).

K e n n e th W. W arren W arren’s books are B lack and W hite Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism (1993), So

B lack and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion o f Criticism (2003), and W hat Was African American Literature? (2011). Fie is co-editor, with Adolph Reed Jr., of Renewing B lack Intellectual History: T he Ideological and Material Foundations o f Afri­ can American Thought (2010) and, with Tess Chakkalakal, of Jim Crow, Literature, and the Leg­ acy o f Sutton E. Griggs (2013). An in-depth inter­ view with Warren by Jeffrey W illiams can be found in symploke 2 5 .1 -2 (2017). An extensive bibliogra­ phy of W arren’s works can be found at his homep­ age at the University of Chicago. Kenneth War­ ren’s What Was African American Literature? is his most widely reviewed and cited work of scholar­ ship. It generated a symposium in the Los Angeles Review o f Books (2011) that engages his work from three different perspectives. The Modern Lan­ guage Association hosted a roundtable featuring W arren and five critics, published as “Assessing W hat Was African American Literature?; or, The State of the Field in the New M illennium ,” Afri­ can American Review 4 4 (2011). Marlon B. Ross’s review essay in C allaloo 35 (2012) attacks War­ ren’s thesis for, among other things, arguing that the distinctness of black people producing a par­ ticular kind of literature disappeared with the end of Jim Crow in the 1960s. Essays in Contemporary

African American Literature: T he Living Canon, edited by Lovalerie King and Shirley MoodyTurner (2013), provide a nuanced critique of War­ ren’s thesis, while simultaneously recognizing the intentions of his historical methods. The contri­ butions to “W hat Was A frican American Litera­ ture?,” PMLA 128 (2013), a forum of seven critics with W arren’s response, range from criticizing W arren’s periodization to appreciating his call for and praise of certain literary texts that move be­

yond the past. Avram Alpert’s “Epochs, Elephants, and Parts: On the Concept of History in Literary Studies,” Diacritics 42.4 (2014), uses W arren’s work as a starting point for exploring the pitfalls and possible benefits of using history in the study of literature.

H a y d en W h ite W hite served as the author, editor, or tran sla­ tor o f a dozen books on a wide range o f topics in history and literature. He was the coauthor, with W ilson H. Coates and J. Selwyn Schapiro, of the two-volume E m ergence o f Liberal Humanism: An Intellectual History o f Western Europe (1 966—70). He edited T he Uses o f History: Essays in Intellec­ tual and Social History (1968); with Giorgio Ta­ gliacozzo, G iambattista Vico: An International Symposium (1969); and with W ilson H. C oates, T he Ordeal o f Liberal Humanism (1970). He next published T he G reco-Rom an Tradition (1973).

M etahistory: T h e H istorical Im agination in N ineteenth-C entury Europe (1973) was the groundbreaking study that first brought him to the attention o f literary critics. His interest in historiography led him to translate from the Ital­ ian Carlo A ntoni’s From History to Sociology: The Tradition in Germ an Historical Thinking (1976) and to collect his own 1976 Clark Library lectures into a volume titled Theories o f History (1978). Af­ ter the late 1970s, W h ite’s work becam e more lit­ erary in its focus, including Tropics o f Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (1978); Representing K enneth Burke (1982), which he edited with Mar­ garet Brose; T he C ontent o f Form: Narrative Dis­ course and Historical Representation (1987); and

Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (1999). In T he Fiction o f Narrative: Essays on His­ tory, Literature, and Theory, 1957—20 0 7 (2010), Robert Doran has collected twenty-three of W h ite’s most important essays, many hard to find, written between 1957 and 2 0 0 7 . In T he Practical Past (2014), W hite reaffirm ed his com ­ m itment to understanding history as narrative about the past, calling on historians to explore the pasts created by artistic works and literary theorists to engage with history. For a biography, see the entry on W hite in Twentieth-Century, A m erican Cidtural Theorists (ed. Paul Hansom, 2001). For an introduction to W hite’s work, see his en­ try in Fifty Key T hinkers on History (3d ed., ed. M am ie Hughes-W arrington, 2015). Herman Paul’s Hayden W hite: T he H istorical Im agination (2011) is an accessible account of the develop­ ment of W hite’s thought. Two lengthy, thoughtprovoking reviews of Metahistory, Fredric Jam es­ on’s “Figural Relativism: or the Poetics of H istoriography” and David C arroll’s “On Tropol­ ogy: The Forms of History,” appeared in the jou r­ nal Diacritics 6 (1976). The jo u rn al History and Theory devoted a special issue, M etahistory: Six Critiques (19 [1980]), to W hite’s book. Dominick

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LaCapra, another historian who has written on the linguistic turn in history, offers a sympathetic evaluation in “A Poetics o f Historiography: Hayden W hite’s Tropics o f Discourse,” in his R e­

thinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (1983). Jam es M. M ellard’s Doing Tro­ pology: Analysis o f Narrative Discourse (1989) and Hans Kellner’s Language and H istorical Represen­ tation: Getting the Story C rooked (1989) exam ine, critiq u e, and extend W h ite ’s approach. Russell Jacoby presents a critique of W hite’s work in his article “A New Intellectual History,” American H istorical Review 97 (1992). By the late 1990s much o f the writing on W hite was dominated by debate over the truth claim s o f history; for in­ stance, Nancy Partner, “Hayden W hite (and the content and the form and everyone else) at AHA,” History and Theory 36 (1997); C hris Lorenz, “Can Histories Be Truth? Narrativism, Positivism, and the ‘M etaphorical T urn,’ ” History and T heory 37 (1998); and the clu ster o f essays published in History and T heory in 1998. Tropes fo r the Past:

Hayden W hite an d the H istory/Literature D e­ bate, edited by Kuisma Korhonen (2 0 0 6 ), offers a renewed exploration o f postm odern debates between literature and historiography, while a 2 0 0 8 special issue of the journal Rethinking His­ tory (12.1) is devoted to Hayden W hite’s work. Produced in honor of W hite’s eightieth birthday, Re-Figuring Hayden White, edited by Frank Ankersmit, Ewa Domanska, and Hans Kellner (2009), reconsiders the historian’s intellectual contribu­ tions to history, poststructuralism, and narrative theory, addressing key concepts such as tropes, narrative, figuralism, and the historical sublime. In addition, it contains a bibliography o f W hite’s works. Paul’s book (cited above) contains a biblio­ graphy that includes English works by and about W hite.

O scar W ilde W ilde’s C om plete Works were published in twelve volumes in 1923. T he C om plete W orks o f Oscar W ilde, edited by Bobby Fong and Karl B eckson, is being published by O xford U niversity Press (7 vols, to date, 2001—); volume 4 is Criticism: His­

torical Criticism , "Intentions," “T he Soul o f Man," edited by Josephine M. Guy (2007). There are a number of one-volume collections, including Oscar Wilde: Selected Writings, edited by Richard Ellmann (1961), and Selected Writings o f Oscar Wilde, edited by Russell Fraser (1969). The best, because it is annotated, is Oscar W ilde, edited by Isobel Murray (1989). For the correspondence, see the volumes edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, Letters (1962) and More Letters (1985), and T he Com plete Letters o f Oscar Wilde, edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (2000). For his literary crit­ icism, consult Literary Criticism o f Oscar Wilde, edited by Stanley Weintraub (1968), and The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings o f Oscar Wilde, edited by Richard Ellmann (1969).

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Biographies include Hesketh Pearson, The Life o f Oscar W ilde (1946), a good overview o f W ilde’s career that deals well with his shift from poetry to fiction and drama, and Richard Ellm ann, Oscar W ilde (1988), a major study, especially in its ac­ count of W ilde’s early life and his response to John Ruskin, W alter Pater, Henry Jam es, and contem ­ porary French writers. Neil M cKenna, T he Secret Life o f Oscar Wilde (2005), exam ines Wilde’s life as a gay man and shows the centrality of his ho­ mosexuality to his identity, literary work, and politics. Vyvyan Holland, Oscar W ilde: A Pictorial Biography (1960), is also valuable. H. Montgomery Hyde has edited T he Trials o f Oscar W ilde (1948); see also Hyde’s T he T hree Trials o f Oscar W ilde (1956) and Oscar W ilde in Prison (1956). Other resources include Oscar W ilde: Interviews and R ecollections, edited by E. H. M ikhail (2 vols., 1979); Oscar W ild e’s Oxford N otebooks, edited by Philip E. Smith II and Michael S. Helfand (1989); and Norman Page, An Oscar W ilde Chronology (1991). A very good resource is Oscar Wilde in C on­ text, edited by Kerry Powell and Peter Raby (2013), with a wide range of essays on many topics, includ­ ing W ilde’s influence and reputation. On the twenty-seven-year-old W ilde’s eleven-month speak­ ing tour o f the United States, which began in New York City in January 1882, see Roy Morris Jr., De­

claring His Genius: Oscar W ilde in North America (2013); David M. Friedman, Wilde in America: Os­ car W ilde and the Invention o f M odern Celebrity (2014); and Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews, edited by Matthew Hofer and Gary Scharnhorst (2010). See also T he R eception o f Oscar Wilde in Europe, edited by Stefano Evangelista (2010). Collections surveying the critical and scholarly response to Wilde include Oscar W ilde: A C ollec­ tion o f C ritical Essays, edited by Richard Ellmann (1969); Oscar W ilde: T he C ritical Heritage, edited by Karl Beckson (1970); C ritical Essays on Oscar W ilde, edited by Regenia Gagnier (1991); and Os­ car W ilde: A C ollection o f C ritical Essays, edited by Jonathan Freedman (1996). Law rence D anson, W ild e’s Intentions: T he Artist in Ilis Criticism (1997), is an excellent treatment of W ilde’s views on literature and criti­ cism. A num ber o f studies in the 1990s focused on the social, sexual, and cultural issues that W ilde’s life and, especially, his trial and im pris­ onm ent dram atize. Among these are Eve Kosof­ sky Sedgwick, E pistem ology o f the C loset (1990); Patricia Flanagan Behrendt, Oscar W ilde: Eros and Aesthetics (1991); Ed Cohen, Talk on the W il­

de Side: Toward a G enealogy o f a Discourse on M ale Sexualities (1993); Melissa Knox, Oscar W ilde: A Long and Lovely S u icide (1994); Gary Schm idgall, T he Stranger W ilde: Interpreting Os­ car (1994); Alan Sinfield, T he W ilde Century: E f­ fem in acy, Oscar W ilde, and the Q ueer M oment (1994); and John Stokes, Oscar W ilde: Myths, Miracles, and Im itations (1996). Julia Prewitt Brown, C osm opolitan C riticism : Oscar W ild e’s

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Philosophy o f Art (1997), deals succinctly with

D eviance, Morality, and Late-V ictorian Society

literary criticism with The English Novel from D ick­ ens to Lawrence (1970), George Orwell (1971), and The Country and the City (1973). His Marxism and Literature (1977) is a good in­

(1998), describes the range of threats (including, but not limited to, deviant sexuality) that English society associated with Wilde. W ilde the Irishman, edited by Jeru sh a M cCorm ack (1998), deals with the Irish dimension of W ilde’s work and with the responses to Wilde by poets, playwrights, sculp­ tors, and others. See also Bruce Bashford, Oscar W ilde: T he C ritic as Humanist (1999). Recent work includes Kerry Powell, Acting W ilde: Victo­ rian Sexuality, T heatre, and Oscar W ilde (2009), which contends that W ilde’s plays, fiction, and critical theory are centered on the idea that real­ ity is a mode of perform ance; S. I. Salamensky,

troduction to W illiam s’s more theoretical consider­ ations of culture and society. Problems in Material­ ism and Culture: Selected Essays (1980) elaborates his theory of “cultural materialism,” and Culture (1981; retitled The Sociology o f Culture, 1982) is a sequel to Marxism and Literature. A lengthy collec­ tion of interviews, Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review (1979; reprint with new in­ tro., 2015), provides an accessible overview of his life and thought. His collections of occasional writ­ ings include Writing in Society (1984); the posthu­ mous The Politics o f Modernism: Against the New Conformists, edited by Tony Pinkney (1989); and

T he Modern Art o f Influence and the S pectacle o f Oscar W ilde (2012), on W ilde as “the first mod­ ern man”; and Em er O ’Sullivan, T h e Fall o f the House o f W ilde: Oscar W ilde an d His Family

Resources o f Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism, edited by Robin Gable (1989). W hat I Cam e to Say (1990) offers a short political summation. T he Ray­ m ond W illiams Reader, edited by John Higgins (2001), and Raym ond W illiams on Culture and Society: Essential Writings, edited by Jim Mc-

Wilde’s aesthetic theory and its influence on later writers. M ichael S. Foldy, Trials o f Oscar W ilde:

(2016), which presents a fascinating, detailed ac­ count o f W ilde’s parents and older brother and their impact on his life and career; Dominic Janes, Visions o f Q u eer M artyrdom fro m Joh n Henry N ewm an to D erek Jarm an (2015), has an excellent chapter on W ilde. Reference works in­ clude Stuart Mason, Bibliography o f Oscar Wilde (1914); Thom as A. Mikolyzk, Oscar W ilde: An An­ notated Bibliography (1993); Ian Small, Oscar

Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods o f Research (1993); and Karl Beckson, T he Oscar W ilde E ncyclopedia (1998). A good bibliography is included in Powell and Raby’s Os­ car W ilde in C ontext (see above).

R a y m o n d W illia m s Raymond W illiam s published more than thirty books and approximately six hundred articles during his lifetime, spanning a wide range, from drama, poetry, and novel criticism to cultural history and media studies to literary theory and political com­ mentary. Williams’s early books include Reading and Criticism (1950), Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952; rev. as Drama fro m Ibsen to Brecht, 1968); and Drama in Performance (1954; rev. ed., 1968). He also published a textbook, Preface to Film, coauthored with M ichael Orrom (1954). Culture and Society, 1780-1950 (1958), a key text for British cultural studies, is a good place to enter his work. Its sequels include Keywords: A Vocabulary o f Culture and So­ ciety (1976; new [3d] ed., 2015), originally planned as an appendix, and T he Long Revolution (1961). Williams helped pioneer media studies and the emerging discipline of communications with Com­ munications (1962; 3d ed., 1976); Television: Tech­ nology and Cultural Form (1974) is one of the first significant studies of that medium. Modern Tragedy (1966; rev. ed., 1979) continued his work in drama. He co-edited May Day Manifesto, a response to the political events o f the 1960s (1967; 2d ed., 1968), with his student Stuart Hall. W illiams returned to

Guigan (2014), present good selections from the range of W illiam s’s work, and the former includes a good bibliography. W illiams edited a number of anthologies on lit­ erary figures, drama, and communications, and he regularly published fiction throughout his career, including a trilogy of working-class life in Wales, Border Country (1960), Second Generation (1964), and The Fight fo r Manod (1979). He also wrote short stories, plays, and television scripts. The secondary literature on W illiam s’s life and work is considerable. A comprehensive biography, Fred Inglis’s Raym ond W illiams (1995) presents a detailed picture of W illiam s’s life. John and Lizzie Eldridge’s Raymond W illiams: Making C on n ec­ tions (1994) is a useful introduction to the many aspects o f W illiam s’s work; see also Alan O ’Connor, Raymond Williams (2006). There are a num ber o f collectio n s: notably, Raymond W illiams: C ritical Perspectives, edited by his stu­ dent Terry Eagleton (1989), which gathers essays by Stuart Hall, Said, Eagleton, and others, as well as an interview Eagleton conducted with Williams;

C ultural M aterialism : On R aym ond W illiam s, edited by Christopher Prendergast (1995), which presents examinations by contemporary critics; and About Raymond Williams, edited by Monika Seidl, Roman Horak, and Lawrence Grossberg (2010). The best single-authored account, John Higgins’s Raym ond W illiams: Literature, M arx­ ism and Cultural M aterialism (1999), covers all W illiam s’s work, from his early interest in drama to his political interventions. Stephen W oodhams’s

History in the M aking: Raym ond W illiams, E d­ ward T hom pson an d R adical Intellectuals, 193 6 — 1956 (2001) describes his generation’s political formation. Raymond W illiams: A W arrior’s Tale (2008), by Dai Sm ith, draws on new information to recount W illiam s’s biography up to 1962.

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Raymond Williams, edited by Eagleton, appends a chronological bibliography of all o f W illiam s’s writing, as well as a selected secondary bibliogra­ phy. Higgins’s Raymond Williams also includes a chronological bibliography of his writings and a good listing of secondary sources. W illia m K . W im satt J r . a n d M o n ro e C . B e a r d s le y W im satt’s books on eighteenth-century literature include T he Prose Style o f Samuel Johnson (1941) and Philosophic Words: A Study o f Style and Mean­ ing in the "Ram bler ” and “Dictionary " o f Samuel Johnson (1948). He is best known for his literary theory and criticism , notably The Verbal Icon: Stiidies in the Meaning o f Poetry (1954), Hateful C on­ traries: Studies in Literature and Criticism (1965),

Day o f the Leopards: Essays in Defense o f the Poem (1976), and, with Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criti­ cism: A Short History (1957). Beardsley’s books in­ clude Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy o f Criticism (1958) and Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (1966). Secondary sources on Wimsatt include Eliseo Vivas, “Mr. Wimsatt on the Theory of Literature,” in The Artistic Transaction and Essays on Theory o f Literature (1963); Literary

Theory and Structure: Essays in Honor o f W. K. Wimsatt, edited by Frank Brady, John Palmer, and M artin Price (1973); and Rene Wellek, “The Liter­ ary Theory of W illiam K. Wimsatt,” Yale Review 66 (1977). See also the overview by Robert Moynihan, in Dictionary o f Literary Biography, vol. 63, M odem American Critics, 1920-1 955 (ed. Gregory S. Jay, 1988), which contains biographical and biblio­ graphical information. In Literary Intention, Liter­ ary Interpretation, and R eaders (2 0 0 9 ), John Maynard explores the concepts and theories at the center o f debates about intentionality and interpre­ tation, practical criticism, reception theory, and critique of ideology. Other than the two classic es­ says he coauthored with Wimsatt, Beardsley’s work in philosophical aesthetics has had little impact in the field of literary criticism.

M o n iq u e W ittig W ittig is the author of four novels that have been influential for feminist theorists: T he O poponax (1964; trans. 1966); The Guerilleres (1969; trans. 1971); T he Lesbian Body (1973; trans. 1975); and Across the A cheron (1985; trans. 1987). She also published with Sande Zeig L esbian Peoples: M a­ terial fo r a D ictionary (1976; trans. 1987). T he Straight Mind and O ther Essays, a collectio n of essays (mostly written in English for Feminist Is­ sues), was published in 1992. Excerpts of W ittig’s early works are included in T he New French Fem i­ nisms (ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, 1980). On M onique Wittig: T heoretical, Political, and Literary Essays, edited by N am ascar Shaktini (2005), includes previously unpublished work by Wittig, as well as several new' critical and theoretical essays by French, Francophone, and U .S. writers.

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For biographical information on Wittig, see the useful entry by Jeannelle Laillou Savona in Fem i­ nist Writers (ed. Pamela Kester-Shelton, 1996). Most critical writing on Wittig has focused on her fiction. Alice Jardine’s “Pre-Texts for the Transat­ lantic Fem inist,” Yale French Studies 62 (1981), and Hel£ne Vivienne W enzel’s “The Text as Body/Poli­ tics: An Appreciation of Monique W ittig’s Writings in C ontext,” Feminist Studies 7 (1981), are two of the earliest theoretical considerations of W ittig’s work to appear in English. Teresa de Lauretis ex­ am ines W ittig’s lesbian materialism in “Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988). Diana Fuss’s chapter on Monique Wittig in Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference (1989) and Judith Butler’s in Gender

Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion o f Identity (1990) include important discussions of W ittig’s contribution to the essentialism debate. Erika Ostrovsky’s Constant Journey: T he Fiction o f M o­ nique Wittig (1991) charts the relationship be­ tween fiction and theory in W ittig’s writing. For an analysis of W ittig as a lesbian theorist, see D ianne Chisholm ’s “Lesbianizing Love’s Body: Interventions and Im aginings o f M onique W ittig ,” in R eim agining W om en: R epresenta­ tions o f W om en in Culture (ed. Shirley Neuman and Glennis Stephenson, 1993), and Renate G un­ ther, “Are Lesbians Women? The Relationship between Lesbianism and Fem inism in the Works o f Luce Irigaray and M onique W ittig ,” in Gay

Signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory, Fiction, and Film in France, 1945-1995 (ed. Owen Heathcote, Alex Hughes, and Jam es S. W illiam s, 1998). GLQ: A Jou rn al o f Lesbian and Gay Studies published a special issue, M onique Wittig: At the Crossroads o f Criticism, edited by Brad Epps and Jonathan Katz (13.4 [2007]); it includes essays by Alice Jardine, Diane G riffin Crowder, Robyn W iegman, Judith Butler, and W ittig herself. For a bibliography of works by and about W ittig, see French Feminist

Thought: M ichele Le Doeuff, M onique Wittig, C atherine Clem ent: A Bibliography, edited by Joan Nordquist (1993). An updated biography and biblio­ graphy can be found in Shaktini’s On M onique

Wittig. M ary W ollstonecraft Mary W ollstonecraft has been well served by mod­ ern editors. Her complete works have been edited in seven volumes by Jan et Todd and Marilyn But­ ler (1989), and A Vindication o f the Rights o f W oman is available in several accessible editions. Her two novels Mary and M aria (along with M atil­ d a, an early novel by Mary W ollstonecraft Shelley, her daughter) have been published in a single vol­ ume edited by Jan et Todd (1991). An excellent edi­ tion of the two V indications, with helpful notes and appendixes, has been prepared by D. L. M ac­ donald and Kathleen Sch erf (1997). Following the first modern scholarly biography, Ralph Wardle’s Mary W ollstonecraft (1951), numerous others

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have appeared; particularly noteworthy are Claire Tom alin’s Life and Death o f Mary W ollstonecraft (1974), Gary Kelly’s Revolutionary Fem inism: T he Mind and C areer o f Mary W ollstonecraft (1992), Janet Todd’s Mary W ollstonecraft: A R evolution­ ary Life (2 0 0 0 ), Lyndall Gordon’s V indication: A L ife o f Mary W ollstonecraft (2005), and C harlotte Gordon’s biography of mother and daughter, R o­

m antic Outlaws: T he Extraordinary Lives o f Mary W ollstonecraft and H er D aughter Mary Shelley (2015). Many general studies of W ollstonecraft devote substantial space to the intertwining of her life and work: good basic introductions include Moira Ferguson and Janet Todd’s Mary W ollstone­ craft (1984), Jennifer L orch’s Mary W ollstone­ craft: T he M aking o f a R adical Fem inist (1990), and H arriet Jum p’s Mary W ollstonecraft: Writer (1994). For a good selection of essays, see F em i­ nist Interpretations o f Mary W ollstonecraft, edit­ ed by M aria Falco (1996), and T he C am bridge C om panion to Mary W ollstonecraft, edited by Claudia L. Johnson (2002). To contextualize Woll­ stonecraft within the aesthetics and politics of her day, see Mary Poovey, T he Proper Lady and the

Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works o f Mary W ollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Ja n e Aus­ ten (1984); the debate about Enlightenment “rea­ son” between Timothy Reiss and Frances Ferguson in G ender and Theory (ed. Linda Kauffman, 1989); Syndy Conger, Mary W ollstonecraft and the Language o f Sensibility (1994); and Claudia John­ son’s discussion of politics, gender, and sentim en­ tality in E quivocal Beings: Politics, G ender, and Sentim entality in the 1790s (1995). Susan Gubar’s examination of current feminist criticism , C ritical

C ondition: Feminism at the Turn o f the Century (2000), contains an analysis of W ollstonecraft’s own misogyny. Janet Todd’s Mary W ollstonecraft: An A nnotated Bibliography (1976) is helpful for the period before the flowering o f contemporary feminist criticism , but it needs updating. The C am bridge C om panion contains a useful bibliog­ raphy, as does Gordon’s R om antic Outlaws.

V irginia W oolf Most of W oolf’s works are available in easily ac­ cessible editions. A R oom o f O n e’s Own and T hree G uineas, edited by Hermione Lee, were published together in 1984. W oolf’s other essays on women’s writing, edited by M ichele Barrett, were published as W omen and Fiction (1979). In addition to her novels and her fem inist essays, W oolf collected some of her articles in two vol­ umes called T he Com m on R eader (1925, 1932). Before he died in 1969, Leonard W oolf edited her C ollected Essays (4 vols., 1967); he also edited A W riter’s Diary (1953), now superseded by T he Diary o f Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Olivier Bell (5 vols., 1 9 7 7 -8 4 ), and A Passionate A ppren­ tice: T h e Early Jou rn als, 1897—1909, edited by M itchell Leaska (1990). See also T he Letters o f Virginia Woolf, edited by Nigel Nicolson and

Joanne Trautm ann (6 vols., 1975—80). T he Plat­ fo rm o f Tim e: M emoirs o f Family and Friends, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (2 0 0 7 ), gives the read­ er insight into her inner life and writings. There are more than a dozen biographies of Woolf. The first, Virginia W oolf, was written by her nephew, Quentin Bell, in 1973. The most evenhanded and well-researched recent biography is Hermione Lee’s monumental Virginia W oolf (1996). Julia Brigg’s Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (2005) is in many respects a biography of W oolf and her pro­ cess of writing, as is Alexandra Harris’s Virginia W oolf (2011). Viviane Forrester’s Virginia Woolf: A Portrait (2009; trans. 2015) introduces new mate­ rial about W oolf’s life and writing from personal interviews and source docum ents. The flavor of the many “diagnostic” biographical studies can be gleaned from Alma Halbert Bond’s W ho Killed Vir­ ginia Woolf? A Psychobiography (1989), the kind of Freudian reading that has given Freudian readings a bad name; Louise de Salvo’s Virginia Woolf: The

Impact o f Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (1989); and M itchell L easka’s Granite and Rainbow (1998), which attributes all W oolf’s cre­ ativity to her repressed relationship with her father. The history o f W oolf criticism mirrors the larger changes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century criticism . An invaluable collection of contempo­ rary reviews was published as Virginia W oolf: T he C ritical H eritage, edited by Robin Majumdar and Allen M cLaurin (1975), which includes acerbic re­ views in the journal Scrutiny (the most memorable may be Q. D. Leavis’s review of Three G uineas). W oolf’s canonization as a modernist is perhaps best illustrated by her inclusion in Erich Auer­ bach’s monumental Mimesis: T he Representation o f Reality in W estern Literature (1946). Early fem inist criticism was often critical o f Woolf: Elaine Show alter’s A Literature o f T h eir Own (1977), despite its title, dismisses W oolf’s experi­ ence of fem ininity. But Ja n e M arcus’s edited collections— New Fem inist Essays on Virginia W oolf ( 1981) and Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant (1983)— began revising that picture; and when, in her groundbreaking Textual/Sexual Politics (1985), Toril Moi contrasted Anglo-American fem inism ’s desire for realism with French fem inism ’s interest in textuality, she called for a rereading of W oolf’s style that has continued to this day. See, particu­ larly, Virginia W oolf: A C ollection o f C ritical Es­ says, edited by Margaret Homans (1993); Ellen Bayuk Rosenman, A Room o f O n e’s Own: W omen Writers and the Politics o f Creativity (1995); and Jane Goldman, T he Feminist Aesthetics o f Virginia

Woolf: M odernism, Post-Impressionism, and the Politics o f the Visual (1998). T h e emergence of gay and lesbian studies has focused new atten ­ tion on the relationship between Virginia W oolf and Vita Sackville-W est. Suzanne Raitt’s Vita and Virginia (1993) gives a good overview of the rela­ tionship of the two writers, whose letters were dramatized in 1994 by Eileen Atkins in her play

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Vita and Virginia (starring Atkins and Vanessa Redgrave). O ther valuable studies include Eliza­ beth Abel, Virginia W oolf and the Fictions o f Psy­ choanalysis (1989); Pamela Caughie, Virginia W oolf and Postmodernism (1991); Gillian Beer, Vir­ ginia Woolf: T he Com m on Ground (1996); and Ra­ chel Bowlby, Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia W oolf (1997). In Virginia W oolf and the Victorians (2007), Steve Ellis breaks with the traditional reading of W oolf as the consum­ mate modernist to argue that her oeuvre is postVictorian. Finally, Justyna Kostkowska’s Ecocriti-

cism and Women Writers: Environmentalist Poetics o f Virginia Woolf, Jean ette Winterson, and Ali Smith (2013) represents growing interests in ecocriticism , while Alice Wood’s Virginia W oolfs Late Cultural Criticism: The Genesis o f “T he Years,” “Three G uineas” and “Between the Acts” (2013) ex­ amines W oolf’s social and political com mentaries in her later writings. There are also two useful resources for W oolf studies: Edward Bishop’s day-to-day chronicle of W oolf’s activities, A Virginia W oolf Chronology (1989), and Mark Hussey’s dictionary of W oolf in­ formation, Virginia W oolf A to Z (1995). The pro­ ceedings of the annual Virginia W oolf conference are published by Pace University Press (1 9 9 2 -). B. J. Kirkpatrick and Stuart N. Clarke compiled A Bibliography o f Virginia W oolf (1997); an online bibliographic update, T he Virginia W oolf Miscella­ ny, initially published by Sonoma State University (1 9 7 3 -2 0 0 2 ), is now issued by Southern C onnecti­ cut State University. The Cambridge Com panion to Virginia Woolf, edited by Susan Sellers (2d ed., 2010), offers a useful selective bibliography, as does Alice W ood’s Late Cultural Criticism (2013) and Forrester’s Virginia Wolf: A Portrait (2015).

W illiam W ordsworth A new complete edition, under the general editor­ ship of Stephen Parrish, has been published in 21 volumes by Cornell University Press (1 9 7 5 -2 0 0 7 ). For the criticism and related prose writings, see Prose Works, edited by W. J. B. Owen and J. M. Smyser (3 vols., 1974). Collections of Wordsworth’s critical prose include T he Critical Opinions o f W illiam Wordsworth, edited by Markham L. Pea­ cock (1950), which presents 4 50 pages of primary source quotations divided into three categories— subjects, authors, and works, plus Wordsworth on his own works; Literary Criticism o f W illiam Wordsworth, edited by Paul M. Zall (1966); and Wordsworth’s Literary Criticism, edited by W. J. B. Owen (1974). A good single-volume edition of the poetry and prose is W illiam W ordsworth, in the Oxford Authors S eries, edited by Stephen Gill (1984). Wordsworth’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, edited by Nicholas Halmi (2014), is an excellent collection of primary and secondary sources and has a very good bibliography. The standard biography, W illiam Wordsworth: A Biography, is by Mary M oorman (2 vols., 1957—

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65), but Stephen G ill’s W illiam Wordsworth: A Life (1989) and Ju lie t B arker’s W ordsworth: A L ife (2 0 0 0 ) are also valuable. On the p o et’s early adulthood, see Kenneth R. Johnston, T he Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy (1998). John W orthen, T he Life o f William Wordsworth: A Crit­ ical Biography (2014), is especially good on the poet’s early years. See also Mark L. Reed, Words­

worth: T he Chronology o f the Early Years, 17701799 (1967) and Wordsworth: T he Chronology o f the M iddle Years, 18 0 0 -1 8 1 5 (1975). For in tellec­ tual and literary contexts, consult D uncan W u, Wordsworth's Reading, 1770—1799 (1993) and W ordsworth’s Reading, 1800—1815 (1995). T he C am bridge C om pan ion to W ordsworth, edited by Stephen G ill (2 0 0 3 ), includes essays on W ords­ w orth’s life and career and a stim ulating piece by Seam us Perry on the Wordsworth—Coleridge re­ lationship. For an excellent study o f Wordsw'orth’s Preface as well as an edition o f the text, see W ordsworth’s P reface to “Lyrical Ballads," edited by W. J. B. Owen (1957). Also insightful is Owen’s Words­ worth as C ritic (1969). T here is an extensive body of scholarship on the relationship between Words­ worth and Coleridge and its im portance for liter­ ary theory and criticism. Among the best books on this topic are Lucy Newlyn, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Language o f Allusion (1986); Theresa M. Kelley, Wordsworth’s Revisionary Aesthetics (1988); Paul M agnuson, C oleridge an d W ordsworth: A Lyrical D ialogue (1 9 8 8 ); N icholas Roe, W ord­ sworth and C oleridge: T he R ad ical Years (1988); and Susan Eilenberg, Strange Power o f S p eech :

W ordsworth, C oleridge, an d Literary Possession (1992). For com m entary on W ordsworth’s theory o f poetry, epistem ology, and philosophy, see the essays in Wordsworth's Poetic Theory: Knowledge, Language, Experience, edited by Alexander Regier and Stefan H. Uhlig (2010). Recent books include Stephen Gill, Wordsworth's Revisitings (2011), an il­ luminating study of Wordsworth’s revisions of his poems, especially The Prelude ; Scott Hess, William

Wordsworth and the Ecology o f Authorship: T he Roots o f Environmentalism in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2012), an account (and critique) of Wordsw'orth’s motives and com m itm ents as laureate, resident, guide, and defender o f E ngland ’s Lake Country; Mary Jacobus, Romantic Things: A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud (2012), which examines Wordsworth’s lyric poetry through modern and contem porary philosophy and literary theory; and Adam Potkay, W ordsw orth’s E thics (2 0 1 3 ), w hich argues that Wordsworth rejects the utilitarianism espoused by his contemporaries Jam es M ill and Jeremy Ben­ tham in favor of a view of ethics founded in rela­ tionships with particular persons and things. David Rosen, Power, Plain English, and the Rise o f Modern Poetry (2006), offers a stimulating account of the influence of W ordsworth’s poetic theory and prac­ tice on the work of W illiam Butler Yeats, T. S. El­ iot, and W. H. Auden.

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See also three collections of essays: T he Age o f W illiam W ordsworth, edited by Kenneth R. Jo h n ­ ston and G ene W. R uoff (1987); R om antic R evo­ lutions: Criticism and Theory, edited by Kenneth R. Johnston (1990); and W ordsworth in Context, edited by Pauline Fletcher and John Murphy (1992). For further background and bibliography, see the relevant entries in T he English R om antic Poets: A Review o f Research and Criticism (ed. Frank Jordan, 1985), and British Rom antic Poets, 1789— 1832, first and second series (ed. John R. Green­ field, 1990). Literature o f the Romantic Period: A Bibliographical G uide, edited by M ichael O ’Neill (1998), is valuable for the study of Wordsworth and his contemporaries. See also An Annotated Criti­ cal Bibliography o f W illiam Wordsworth by Keith Hanley and David Barron (1995). The list of pri­ mary and secondary sources included in W illiam Wordsworth, T he M ajor Works, edited by Stephen Gill (rev. ed., 2 0 0 0 ) is also helpful. There is a good bibliography in T h e C am bridge C om panion to Wordsworth, as well as cogent essays on Words­ w orth’s views on language, philosophy, politics, and history and his central place in the Romantic movement.

S la v o j Z iz e k Perhaps the best way into 2ize k ’s writing is through T he li z e k Reader, edited by Elizabeth and Edmond W right (1999), which offers a selec­ tion of key essays written before 1999. Rex Butler and S cott Stephens collected important essays of 2izek’s in two volumes, Interrogating the Real (2005) and T he Universal Exception (2006). £izek first emerged in the W est with the publica­ tion of T he S ublim e O bject o f Ideology (1989). Sin ce then, he has written or edited at least one and sometimes two or more books almost every year. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacq u es L acan through Popular Culture (1991) and For

They Know Not W hat They Do: Enjoym ent as a Political Factor (1991; 2d ed., 2 0 0 8 ), which ex­ plores the place of L acan’s jou issan ce in political theory, was followed by Everything You Always W anted to Know abou t L acan (But Were A fraid to Ask H itchcock) (1992), a collection of essays on H itchcock that includes the work of his Slovenian colleagues Mladen Dolar, Renata Salecl, and Alenka Zupan£i£, and Enjoy Your Symptom! L acan in Hollywood and Out (1992; rev. ed., 2001), an exploration of the Lacanian symptom in popular culture. Zi2ek returned to the subject of ideology in Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the C ritique o f Ideology (1993). He then published M etastases o f Enjoym ent: Six Es­ says on W omen and Causality (1994); M apping Ideology, edited by 2izek (1994); T he Indivisible

R em ainder: An Essay on Schelling and R elated Matters (1996); Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, edited by Renata Salecl and Zizek (1996); T he Plague o f Fantasies (1997); T he Abyss o f Freedom : Ages o f the World (1997), which pairs an essay by

the philosopher Schelling with his commentary; The Spectre Is Still Roaming Around! (1998), a com­ mentary on Marx’s Communist Manifesto; and C o­ gito and the U nconscious, edited by Z iie k (1998). Zizek then becam e more focused on politics and religion, publishing T he T icklish S u bject: T he Absent Centre o f P olitical Ontology (1999), NATO as the L eft Hand o f God? (1999), and T he Fragile

Absolute, or Why Is the C hristian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (2 0 0 0 ). He also gave a series o f lec­ tures at the University of W ashington that were published as T he Art o f the R idiculous Sublim e: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway (2 0 0 0 ) and joined Judith Butler and the Argentinean political theorist Ernesto Laclau in a dialogue on contem ­ porary philosophy and politics in Contingency,

Hegemony, Universality: Contem porary Dialogues on the Left (2000). In 2001, an extraordinarily pro­ ductive year even by his standards, Zizek published O pera’s Second Death, with Mladen Dolar; The

Fright o f Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and Post-Theory, a book on film theory; Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Essays in the (Mis)Use o f a Notion; On B elief; and Repeating Lenin. There followed W elcome to the Desert o f the Real (2002), on the attacks of 9/11; T he Puppet and the Dwarf: T he Perverse Core o f Christianity (2 0 0 3 ); Organs w ithout Bodies: On D eleuze and C onsequences (2 0 0 4 ); and fu rth er reflections on contem porary events, Iraq: T he Borrow ed Kettle (2004). He collaborated with the literary scholars Eric L. Santner and Kenneth Reinhard on T he

Neighbor: T hree Inquiries in P olitical Theology (2005), exploring the meaning o f the biblical in­ ju nction to “love thy neighbor,” and then pub­ lished the book he considers his most significant work to date, T he Parallax View (2 0 0 6 ), which argues for his revision of the Hegelian dialectic. In 2007, Zizek published How to Read Lacan in the Norton “How to Read” series. 2 0 0 8 saw the publi­ cations of In Defense o f Lost Causes (2008). Zizek explored the post-9/11 world in Violence: Six S ide­ ways Reflections (2008), First as Tragedy, T hen as F arce (2 0 0 9 ), T he Year o f Dreaming Dangerously (2012), and Trouble in Paradise: From the End o f History to the End o f Capitalism (2014). Religion and politics came together in Living in the End Times (2010). Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow o f Dialectical Materialism (2012), Event (2014), Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation o f Dialectical Materialism (2014), and The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan (2014) all in­ vestigate challenging problems in contemporary philosophy. W ith Srecko Horvat, Zizek published

What Does Europe Want? The Union and Its Discon­ tents (2015). Against the D ouble B lackm ail: R efu­ gees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors and Disparities were published in 2016, along with an audacious revision of Sophocles’s Antigone. In 2017, the centennial of the Russian Revolution, he published Lenin 2017: R em em bering, Repeating, and Working Through, a monograph reevaluating

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the political significance of the writing produced by its major arch itect, Vladimir Lenin, and Incon­

In Zizek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (2 0 0 8 ), Adrian Johnston

tinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels (2017), which brings together philoso­

offers an account o f Zizek’s engagement with Germ an idealist philosophy. Zizek: Beyond Fou­ cault (2 0 0 7 ) by Fabio Vighi and Heiko Feldner stages an encounter between the two contempo­ rary thinkers. Several critical books examine Zizek in relation to other philosophers, including Thom as P. Brockelm an, Zizek and Heidegger:

phy, psychoanalysis, and the critique of political economy. Tony Myers includes a brief but useful biography in his introduction to the theorist, Slavoj Zizek (2003). 2iie k publishes so quickly that his critics and admirers are hard-pressed to keep up with him. There are several introductory volumes, the most useful o f which are Sarah Kay, Zizek: A Critical Introduction (2003), and, more recently, Kelsey Wood, Ziiek: A Reader’s Guide (2012). C h risto­ pher Kul-Want and Piero’s Introducing Slavoj Zizek: A Graphic Guide (2011) offers an introduc­ tion through cartoons. Ian Parker, Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction (2004), contains a helpful discussion of Slovenia’s complex history between World W ar II and the present. Slavoj Zizek: Live Theory (20 0 5 ), by Rex Butler, and Zizek and Poli­ tics: A Critical Introduction (2010), by Matthew Sharpe and G eo ff Boucher, offer more advanced introductions. Glyn Daly collects his talks with Zizek in a volume titled Conversations with Zizek (2004). M atthew Sharpe’s Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real (2004) and Jodi D ean’s Zizek’s Politics (20 0 6 ) exam ine his political thinking. Terry Eagleton has a lucid chapter on Zizek in

Figures o f Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, Zizek and Others (2003), as does G eoffrey Galt Harpham in The Character of Criticism (2006).

The Question Concerning Techno-capitalism (2 0 0 8 ); Adrian Johnston, Badiou, Ziiek, and Po­ litical Transformations: The Cadence o f Change (2 0 0 9 ); and G e o ff Boucher, The Charmed Circle o f Ideology: A Critique of Laclau and Mouffe, Butler and Zizek (2 0 0 9 ). Fabio V ighi’s On Zizek’s Dialectics: Surplus, Subtraction, Sublimation (2010) attempts to politicize iZizek’s critical meth­ od. Zizek Now: Current Perspectives in Zizek Studies, edited by Jam il Khader and Molly Anne Rothenberg (2012), explores Z iie k ’s contributions to several disciplines. Zizek and His Contempo­

raries: On the Emergence o f the Slovenian Lacan, edited by Jones Irwin and Helena M otah (2014), places Zizek’s writing within the context of Slove­ nian politics and intellectual life, tracking the Slovenian interventions in Lacanian psychoanal­ ysis. The Zizek Dictionary, edited by Rex Butler (2014), contains a series o f brief essays illum inat­ ing keywords in the philosopher’s work. It also contains a fairly detailed bibliography; the most up-to-date bibliography can be found on the web­ site of the journal Lacanian Ink.

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Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic o f Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, tran s. by Edm und Je p h c o tt. C opyright © 1 9 4 4 by S o cia l S tu d ies A sso ciation , NY. New edition cop yright © 1969 S . F isch e r V erlag G m bH , F ra n k fu rt a. M . E nglish tra n sla tio n © 2 0 0 2 Board o f T ru ste e s o f L elan d Stan fo rd Jr. U niversity. All rights reserved. Used w ith th e p erm ission o f Stan fo rd U niversity P ress, www .sup.org. Langston Hughes: “T h e N egro A rtist and the R acial M o u n tain ” was first published in The Nation, Ju n e 2 3 , 1 9 2 6 . C opyright 19 2 6 by L angston H ughes. By perm ission o f H arold O b e r A sso ciates Incorp o rated .

Zora Neale Hurston: “C h a ra cte ris tic s o f N egro E xp ressio n ” from The Sanctified Church. Copy­ right © 1981 by T u rtle Island Fo u nd ation. R eprinted by p erm ission o f T h e Jo y H arris L iterary Agency, Inc. “W h at W h ite P ublishers W on’t P rin t” first published in The Negro Digest (April 1950) is rep rinted by perm ission o f T h e Zora N eale H urston T ru st. Wolfgang Iser: “In teractio n betw een Text and R ead er” from The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audi­ ence and Interpretation, ed. by S u san R u bin S u leim an and Inge C rosm an . C opyright © 1980 by P rin ce to n U niversity P ress. Reproduced w'ith p erm ission o f P rin ce to n U niversity P ress via the C opyright C le a ra n c e C en ter. Roman Jakobson: “L in g u is tic s and P o e tic s ” and “Two A sp e cts o f L an gu age and Two Types o f A phasic D istu rb a n c e s” from Language in Literature, ed. by K. Pom orska and S . Rudy (B elk n ap P ress, 1988). C opyright © 1987 by T h e Jak o b so n T ru st. R ep rinted by p erm ission o f T h e R om an Jak o b so n T ru st. Fredric Jameson: The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. C opyright © 1981 by C o rn ell U niversity. Used by perm ission o f the pu blish ers, C o rn ell U niversity P ress and Taylor & F ran cis Books U K . Published in G reat B ritain by Routledge. “P ostm od ernism and C o n ­ sum er S o c ie ty ” from Postmodernism and Its Discontents, ed. by E . A nn K ap lan, pp. 13—29. C opyright © 1988 by Verso. R eprinted by perm ission o f V erso, th e im print o f N ew L eft Books Ltd. Samuel Johnson: “T h e R am bler, No. 4 ” from Selected Essays from “The Rambler ,” “Adventurer," and “Idler,” ed. by W. J . B ate (1 9 6 8 ). C opyright © 1968 by Yale U niversity. R ep rin ted by p erm is­ sion o f Yale U niversity P ress. Immanuel Kant: Critique o f Judgment, tran s. by W e rn e r S. Plu har. R ep rinted by perm ission o f H ack ett P u b lish in g C om pany, In c. All rights reserved. E. Ann Kaplan: Trauma Culture: The Politics o f Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. Copy­ right © 2 0 0 5 by E . A nn K aplan. R ep rinted by perm ission o f R utgers U niversity P ress. Karatani Kdjin: “T h e D iscovery o f L an d scap e” from Origins o f Modern Japanese Literature, trans. by B re tt de Bary, pp. 11—45. C opyright © 1993 by D u ke U niversity P ress. All righ ts reserved. R epublished by perm ission o f th e copyright holder, w w w .dukeupress.edu. Julia Kristeva: Revolution in Poetic Language, tran s. by M arg aret W aller. C o p y right © 1984 by C olu m bia U niversity P ress. R ep rinted w ith p erm ission o f the publisher. Jacques Lacan: “T h e A gency o f th e L e tte r in th e U n co n scio u s,” “T h e M irro r S tag e as Form ative o f th e F u n ctio n o f the I as Revealed in P sy ch oan aly tic E x p e rie n c e ,” and “T h e S ig n ifica tio n o f th e P h allu s” from Ecrits: A S electio n by Ja c q u e s L a ca n , tran s. by A lan S h e rid an . C opyright © 1966 by E dition s du S eu il. E nglish translation copyright © 1977 by T av istock P u b licatio n s. Used by p erm ission o f W . W. N orton & Com pany, In c. and Taylor & F ra n cis B ook s U K . P ublished in G reat B rita in by R outled ge. C opyright © 1977 by Tavistock/Routledge. Bruno Latour: “W hy H as C ritiq u e Run O u t o f Steam ? From M atters o f F act to M atte rs o f C o n ­ c e r n ” from Critical Inquiry 3 0 :2 (W in te r 2 0 0 4 ) . C o p y righ t © 2 0 0 5 by th e U n iv ersity o f C h i­ cago. R ep rinted by p erm ission o f the U niversity o f C h icag o P ress via the C op yright C le a ra n ce C en ter. F. R. Leavis: The Great Tradition (1 9 5 0 ). R eprinted by perm ission o f th e publisher, F a b e r & F ab er Ltd. Vincent B. Leitch: W ord M ap e n title d “T w en ty -F irst C e n tu ry L ite ra ry and C u ltu ra l T h e o ry R e n a issa n c e ” designed by V in ce n t B. L eitch for th e flyleaf to Literary Criticism in the TwentyFirst Century: Theory Renaissance by V in cen t B . L eitch (2 0 1 4 ), reprinted by p erm ission o f the p ublisher, B loom sbury A cad em ic, an im print o f Bloom sbury P u blish in g P ic. C o p y righ t © 2 0 1 4 by V in cen t B . L eitch . Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits o f Painting and Poetry, pp. 3 - 7 , 18, 1 1 -1 5 , 17, 19—21, 5 5 - 5 6 , 6 7 - 6 9 , 7 6 - 7 9 , 8 5 , 9 1 - 9 5 , 111, tran slated , w ith an in tro d u ctio n and n o te s, by Edw ard A llen M cC o rm ic k . C o p y righ t © 1 9 8 4 by Jo h n s H opkins U n iv ersity P re ss. R ep rinted w ith p erm ission o f Jo h n s H opkins U niversity P ress. Claude Levi-Strauss: “A W ritin g L e s s o n ” from Tristes Tropiques, tra n s. by J o h n and D o reen W eigh tm an . O rig in ally published in Fren ch as Tristes Tropiques. Copyright © 1955 by L ibrairie Plon. R eprinted by perm ission o f G eorges B o rch ard t, In c., for L ibrairie Plon and T h e Random

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H ouse Group Lim ited. T h is E nglish translation © 1993 by Jo n a th a n C ap e Lim ited . Published in G reat B ritain by Jo n a th a n C ap e. Li Zehou: Four Essays on A esthetics: Toward a G lob al View by Li Zehou and Ja n e C auvel. R epro­ duced w ith perm ission o f L exin gto n B ooks via th e C opyright C le a ra n c e C en ter. Longinus: “O n S u b lim ity ” from A n cien t Literary ' C riticism : T h e P rin cip al Literary Texts in N ew Translations, trans. by D. A. Russell, ed. by D. A. Russell and M . W interbottom (1972), pp. 4 6 2 - 6 3 , 4 6 4 - 6 8 , 4 7 2 —74, 4 7 5 —77, 4 7 9 - 8 0 , 4 8 1 - 8 2 . By perm ission o f O xford U niversity P ress. G yorgy Lukacs: T h e H istorical N ovel, tran s. by H annah M itch ell and S tan ley M itch e ll. C opyright © 1962 by M erlin P ress L im ited . R ep rinted by perm ission o f M erlin P ress Ltd. Je a n -F r a n ^ o is Lyotard: “D efin in g th e P ostm od ern” from P ostm odernism , ICA D ocu m en ts 4, 1986, ed. by L isa A ppignanesi. R ep rinted by perm ission o f th e E sta te o f Je a n -F ra n ^ o is Lyotard. Moses Maimonides: T h e G u id e o f th e P erplexed, Vol. 1, trans. by Shlom o P in es. C opyright © 1963 by T h e U niversity o f C h icag o . R eprinted by perm ission o f th e U niversity o f C h icag o Press. Karl Marx: “G ru n d risse” from G rundrisse: F ou n dation s o f th e C ritiqu e o f P olitical E con om y, trans. by M artin N icolau s (P en gu in C la ssics, 1993). Reprinted by perm ission o f New' L e ft Review. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: S e le c tio n s from T h e M arx-Engels R eader, 2nd ed., ed. by R o b ­ ert C . Tucker. C opyright © 1978, 1972 by W . W . N orton & Com pany, Inc. Giacopo Mazzoni: “In tro d u ctio n ” and “S u m m ary ” from On th e D efen se o f th e C om ed y o f D ante, tran s. by R obert M ontgom ery (G ain esv ille: U niversity P ress o f F lo rid a, 1983). R ep rinted w ith perm ission o f th e U niversity P ress o f Florid a. Mark McGurl: “T h e P rogram E ra: P lu ralism s o f Postw ar A m erican F ic tio n ” from C ritical Inquiry 32 (A utum n 2 0 0 5 ). C opyright © 2 0 0 5 by th e U niversity o f C h icag o . R ep rinted by perm ission o f the pu blisher th e U niversity o f C h icag o P ress via the C opyright C le a ra n c e C en ter. Franco Moretti: “G rap h s” from G raphs, M aps, Trees: A bstract M odels f o r a Literary History. Copy­ right © 2 0 0 5 by F ran co M o re tti. R eprinted by perm ission o f V erso, the im p rint o f New L eft B ooks Ltd.

Toni Morrison: “U n sp eakable T h in g s U nspoken: T h e A fro -A m erican P re se n ce in A m erican L it­ e ra tu re ” from M ichigan Q uarterly R eview , vol. 2 8 , no. 1. C opyright © 1988 by Toni M orrison . Used by perm ission. A ll righ ts reserved. Timothy Morton: T h e E co lo g ica l T hou ght. C am bridge, M ass.: H arvard U niversity P ress. Copy­ right © 2 0 1 0 by T h e P resid en t and Fellow s o f H arvard C olleg e. Laura Mulvey: “V isual P leasu re and N arrative C in em a” published in S creen 16.3 (A utum n 1975), pp. 6 —18. By perm ission o f O xford U niversity Press via the C opyright C le a ra n c e C en ter. C . D. Narasimhaiah: “Towards the Form ulation o f a Com m on P oetic for Indian L iteratu res Today” from A C om m on P oetic f o r In d ian L iteratu re (1984) by C . D. N arasim h aiah and C . N. S rin ath . R eprinted by p erm ission o f C . N. S rin a th . Alondra Nelson: “A froFu tu rism : P ast-Fu tu re V isions” originally published by C o lo rlin es.co m , C olorlin es M agazine, April 3 0 , 2 0 0 0 . R ep rinted by perm ission o f th e publisher, R ace Forw ard. Sianne Ngai: Ugly Feelings. C am bridge, M ass.: Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2 0 0 5 by T h e President and Fellows o f Harvard College. Reprinted by perm ission o f Harvard University Press. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Taban Lo Liyong, and Henry Ow uor-Anyumba: “O n th e A bolition o f the E nglish D e p artm e n t” from H om ecom in g : Essays on A frican A m erican an d C a rib b ea n L iterature, C ulture an d P olitics by Ngugi wa T h io n g ’o. C opyright © 1972 by Ngugi wa T h io n g ’o. R eprinted by perm ission o f P earso n E d u cation Ltd. Friedrich Nietzsche: “O n T ru th and Lying in a M oral S e n s e ” and “T h e B irth o f T rag ed y” from T h e B irth o f Tragedy an d O th er W ritings, tran s. by Ronald S p e irs, ed. by Raym ond G eu ss. Copy­ right © 1999 by C am brid ge U niversity P ress. R eprinted by p erm ission o f C am brid g e U niversity P ress. Rob Nixon: “T h e A n th ro p ocen e: T h e P rom ise and P itfa lls o f an E p o ch al Id ea” published in E dge E ffects, N ovem ber 6, 2 0 1 4 . R ep rinted by perm ission o f Edge E ffe c ts c/o th e C e n te r for C u ltu re, H istory, and E n v iron m en t. From S low V iolen ce an d th e E n viron m en talism o f th e Poor. C a m ­ bridge, M ass.: H arvard U niversity P ress. Copyright © 2011 by T h e P resid en t and Fellow s o f H arvard C olleg e. R eprinted by p erm ission o f H arvard U niversity P ress. M a r th a C . Nussbaum: C ultivating H um anity: A C lassical D efen se o f R eform in L ib eral E d u cation . C am bridge, M ass.: H arvard U niversity P ress. C opyright © 1997 by T h e P resid en t and Fellow s o f H arvard C o lleg e. R ep rin ted by p erm ission o f H arvard U niversity P ress. Richard Ohmann: “T h e S h ap in g o f a C an o n : U .S . F ic tio n , 1 9 6 0 - 1 9 7 5 ” from P olitics o f Letters. C opyright © 1987 by R ich ard O h m an n . P ublished by W esleyan U niversity P ress. Used by per­ m ission. Kelly Oliver: “W itn e ssin g and T estim o n y ” from Parallax, vol. 10, no. 1 (2 0 0 4 ). R ep rinted by per­ m ission o f th e p u b lish er T aylor & F ra n c is Ltd. via th e C o p y rig h t C le a ra n c e C e n te r, www .tan d fo n lin e.co m .

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Walter Pater: “P re fa c e ” and “C o n clu sio n ” from T h e R en aissan ce: S tu dies in Art an d Poetry. Copy­ right © 1 9 8 0 by the R egen ts o f th e U niversity o f C a lifo rn ia . R ep rin ted by perm ission o f the publisher, th e U niversity o f C a lifo rn ia Press. P la to : P lato: Ion an d H ip p ias M ajor , tran s. by Paul W o od ru ff. C opyright © 1983 by H ack ett P u b ­ lish in g Com pany. A lso published in C o m p lete W orks, ed. by Jo h n C ooper. R eprinted by p erm is­ sion o f H ack e tt P u b lish in g C om pany, In c. A ll rights reserved. From P haedru s (2 0 0 2 ), tran s. by Robin W aterfield , pp. 6 7 —75, w ith no tes pp. 102—5. By p erm ission o f O xford U niversity P ress. From T h e R ep u b lic, tran s. by R ich ard W. S te rlin g and W illia m C . S c o tt. C opyright © 1985 by R ichard W. S terlin g and W illiam C . S co tt. Used by perm ission o f W . W . N orton & Com pany, In c. John Crowe Ransom: “C riticism , In c .” from T h e World's Body is rep rinted w ith the p erm ission o f S crib n er, a division o f Sim on & S ch u ster, In c. C opyright © 1938 by C h arles S c rib n e r’s Son s. C opyright renew ed 1966 by Jo h n Crow e R an som . A ll righ ts reserved. Adrienne Rich: “C o m p u lsory H e tero se x u ality and L esb ia n E x is te n c e ” from B lo o d , B rea d , an d Poetry: S elected Prose 1979—1985. C opyright © 1986 by A drienn e R ich . Used by p erm ission o f W. W . N orton & Com pany, Inc. Andrew Ross: “T h e M en tal L abor P ro blem ” from L ow Pay, High P rofile: T h e G lob al Push f o r F air Labor. C opyright © 2 0 0 4 by A ndrew Ross. R ep rin ted by p erm issio n o f T h e New P ress, www .th en ew p ress.com . G ayle Rubin: “T h in k in g Sex: Notes for a Radical T heory o f the Politics o f Sexuality” from D eviations, text excerpts and two figures (pp. 137—81). Copyright © 20 1 2 by Gayle S. Rubin. All rights reserved. Republished by perm ission o f the publisher, Duke University Press, w'ww.dukeupress.edu. Edward W . Said: “Ja n e A usten and E m p ire” and “C on so lid ated V isio n ” from C ulture an d Im p eri­ alism . C opyright © 1993 by Edward W. Said. Used by p erm issio n o f A lfred A. K nopf, an im print o f the K nop f Doubleday P u blish in g Group, a division o f Penguin Random H ouse L L C . All rights reserved. Any third party use o f th is m aterial, outside o f th is p u blicatio n , is prohibited. In ter­ ested p arties m ust apply d irectly to Penguin Random H ouse L L C for p erm ission. R igh ts in the B ritish C om m onw ealth, exclu d ing C an ad a, by perm ission o f T h e W ylie A gency L L C . From O ri­ en talism . C opyright © 1978 by Edward W. Said . Used by p erm ission o f P antheon B o ok s, an im print o f th e K n o p f D oubleday P u blish in g G roup, a division o f P en gu in Random H ouse L L C . All righ ts reserved. Any third party use of th is m aterial, outsid e o f th is p u blication , is p ro h ib ­ ited. In te re ste d p arties m ust apply d irectly to P en gu in Random H ouse L L C for perm ission. Ferdinand de Saussure: C ou rse in G en eral Linguistics, tran s. by W ade B ask in . C opyright © 1966 by T h e P h ilo so p h ical L ibrary, In c. Reprinted by p erm ission o f T h e P h ilo sop h ical Library, In c., New York. Friedrich von Schiller: On th e A esthetic E d u cation o f M an in a S eries o f L etters (1967), tran s. and ed. by E . M . W ilk in so n and L . A. W illoughby, pp. 6 - 9 , 3 1 - 4 3 , 5 4 - 6 1 . By perm ission o f O xford U niversity P ress.

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Liberalism Ancient and Modern. C opyright © 1968 by L eo Strau ss. R eproduced with

perm ission o f B asic B ooks In c ., a m em ber o f the P erseu s B ooks G roup, via the C opyright C le a r­ an ce C en ter. T z v e ta n T o d o ro v : “S tru c tu ra l A nalysis o f N arrativ e” in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 3, no. 3 (A utum n 1969), pp. 7 0 - 7 6 , tran s. by A rnold W e in ste in . C opyright © 1969 by N ovel, In c . All rights reserved . R epublished by perm ission o f the copyright holder and th e presen t pu blish er, D uke U niversity P ress, w w w .dukeupress.edu. L io n e l T r illin g : “O n the T e a ch in g o f M odern L ite ra tu re ” from Beyond Culture: Essays on Litera­ ture and Learning (V iking P en gu in , 1965). C opyright © 1955, 1957, 1961, 1 9 6 2 , 1965, 1 9 6 8 by L ionel T rillin g . Used by perm ission o f T h e W ylie A gency L L C . G ia m b a ttis ta V ic o : New Science, tran s. by David M arsh , In trod u ctio n by A nthony G rafto n (P e n ­ guin C la ssics, 1999). C opyright © 1999 by David M arsh. Introd u ction © 1999 by A nthony G ra f­ ton. R eproduced by p erm ission o f P engu in Books Ltd. K e n n e th W . W a rr e n : “D oes A frican -A m erican L ite ra tu re E x ist? ” from The Chronicle o f Higher Education, Febru ary 2 4 , 2 0 1 1 . Used w ith perm ission o f T h e C h ro n icle o f H igher E d u catio n . C opyright © 2017. All righ ts reserved. H ayden W h ite : “T h e H istorical Text as L iterary A rtifa c t” from Tropics o f Discourse: Essays in Cul­ tural Criticism (Jo h n s H opkins U niversity P ress, 1978). R ep rinted by perm ission o f th e auth or. R ay m o n d W illia m s : “B a se and S u p e rs tru ctu re in M arx ist C u ltu ra l T h e o ry ” from Problems in Materialism and Culture, pp. 3 1 - 4 9 . Copyright © 19 8 0 by Raymond W illiam s. R eprinted by per­ m ission o f V erso, the im print o f New L eft B ook s L td. W illia m K . W im s a tt J r . an d M o n ro e C . B e a r d s le y : “T h e In ten tio n al F a lla cy ” first published in The Sewanee Review, vol. 54, no. 4 (W in te r 1946). C opyright © 1946 by the U niversity o f th e S o u th . R ep rin ted with th e perm ission o f th e editor. M o n iq u e W it t ig : “O n e Is Not B o rn a W o m an ” fro m The Straight Mind. C op y righ t © 1 9 9 2 by M onique W ittig . R eprinted by perm ission o f B e a c o n P ress, B oston. M a ry W o lls to n e c r a f t: “V in d ication o f th e R ights o f W om en” from The Vindications, ed. by D. L. M acd onald and K ath leen S ch e rf. C opyright © 1997, 2001 by D. L . M acd onald and K ath le en S ch e rf. R ep rin ted with th e perm ission o f Broadview P ress. V irg in ia W o o lf: A Room o f One’s Own. C opyright 1929 by H oughton M ifflin H arco u rt P u b lish ­ ing Com pany. Copyright © renewed 1957 by L eon ard W oolf. R eprinted by perm ission o f H ough­ ton M ifflin H arco u rt P u b lish in g Com pany. All righ ts reserved. S la v o j Z iz e k : “T h e H itc h c o ck ia n B lo t” from Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, pp. 8 8 —196 w ith related n otes. C opyright © 1991 by M a ssa ch u se tts In stitu te o f Technology. Used by perm ission o f M IT P ress. Text excerpt and diagram from “M ontre a P re m o n tre ,” Analytica 37 (1 9 8 4 ), by Ja cq u e s-A la in M iller. R eprinted by p erm issio n o f Ja cq u e s-A la in M iller.

A u th o r/T itle I ndex Achebe, Chinua, 1534 Addison, Joseph, 358 Adorno, Theodor W., 1030 Adunis, 1547 “Afro-Futurism: Past-Future Visions, 2633 “Against Interpretation,” 1722 Agamben, Giorgio, 1966 “Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, The,” 1117 A llegories o f Reading, 1314 Althusser, Louis, 1282 “American Scholar, The,” 622 Anderson, B enedict, 1830 Animal That T herefore I Am, T he, 1645 “Anthropocene, The: The Promise and Pit­ falls of an Epochal Idea,” 2369 Anxiety o f Influence, T he, 1574 Anzaldua, G loria, 1983 “Archetypes of Literature, The,” 1250 Arendt, Hannah, 1166 A ristotle, 95 Arnold, Matthew, 681 Ars Poetica, 133 “Art of Fiction, The,” 721 Auerbach, E rich , 954 Augustine o f Hippo, 164 Austin, J . L., 1234 B akhtin, M ikhail M., 997 Barth es, Roland, 1262 “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cul­ tural Theory,” 1337 Baudrillard, Je a n , 1480 Beardsley, M onroe C., 1195 Beauvoir, Sim one de, 1211 Behn, Aphra, 326 Benjam in, W alter, 973 B en n ett, Ja n e, 2431 B erlant, Lauren, 2450 B est, Stephen, 2603 Betw een Men: English Literature and M ale H om osocial Desire, 2279 Bhabha, Homi K., 2150 Biographia Literaria, 590 Birth o f Tragedy, T he, 740 B lack Atlantic, T he: M odernity and D ouble Consciousness, 2391 B lack Skin, W hite Masks, 1353 Bloom, Harold, 1572 B occaccio, Giovanni, 200 Bogost, Ian, 2650 B ook o f the City o f Ladies, T he, 218 Borderlands / La Frontera: T he New Mestiza, 1986 Bordo, Susan, 2094

Bourdieu, P ierre, 1583 Bousquet, M arc, 2569 Braidotti, Rosi, 2325 B rief History o f N eoliberalism , A, 1774 Brooks, C leanth, 1179 Burke, Edmund, 464 Butler, Judith, 2372 Capital, Volume 1, 667 “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” 938 Chow, Rey, 2468 C hristine de Pizan, 209 “Christine’s Reaction to Jean de Montreuil’s Treatise on the Rom an de la Rose,” 211 Cixous, Helene, 1865 Coleridge, Sam uel Taylor, 587 “Commitment to Theory, The,” 2152 Communist Manifesto, T he, 661 C om panion Species M anifesto, T he: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, 2065 “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” 1515 Constitution o f Liberty, The, 1081 Convivio, II, 196 C orneille, P ierre, 291 Course in G eneral Linguistics, 824 “Criteria of Negro Art,” 847 “Critic as Artist, The,” 770 “Criticism, Inc.,” 901 Critique o f Judgm ent, 429 Critique o f Postcolonial Reason, A, 2001 Cultivating Humanity: A C lassical Defense o f Reform in Liberal Education, 2138 “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Lega­ cies,” 1705 Culture and Anarchy, 703 Culture and Im perialism , 1805 Culture and the Death o f G od, 2021 Dabashi, Hamid, 2290 Dante A lighieri, 194 Davis, Lennard J ., 2171 “Death of the Author, The,” 1268 “Decay of Lying, The: An Observation,” 766 D efence o f Poesy, T he, 262 D efence o f Poetry, A, 601 Defense and Enrichm ent o f the French L an ­ guage, T he, 227 “Defining the Postmodern,” 1385 Deleuze, G illes, 1367 de M an, Paul, 1311 D errida, Jacq u es, 1602 D ialectic o f Enlightenm ent, 1033 D iscipline and Punish: T he Birth o f the Prison, 1409

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“Discourse in the Novel,” 999 D issemination, 1608 Distinction: A Social Critique o f the Ju d g e­ ment o f Taste, 1586 “Does African-American Literature Exist?,” 2488 Dryden, Jo h n , 307 du Bellay, Joach im , 224 Du Bois, W. E . B., 841 Dutch Lover, T he, 329 Eagleton, Terry, 2013 Ecological Thought, T he, 2621 E conom ic and Philosophic Manuscripts o f 1844 , 655 Eliot, T. S., 881 Em erson, Ralph Waldo, 619 Em pire, 2510 “Encomium of Helen,” 40 Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, 2173 Engels, Friedrich, 652 Epistemology o f the Closet, 2283 Essay o f Dram atic Poesy, An, 308 Essay on Criticism, An, 370 “Essay on Fictions,” 517

Haraway, Donna, 2040 Hardt, M ichael, 2506 Harvey, David, 1772 Hayek, Friedrich A., 1079 Hayles, N. K atherine, 2071 Hebdige, D ick, 2305 Hegel, Georg W ilhelm Friedrich, 545 Heidegger, M artin, 912 Herman, David, 2549 H erm eneutics, 533 Historical Novel, T he, 869 History o f Rasselas, Prince o f Abyssinia, The, 390 History o f Sexuality, The, Volume 1, An Introduction, 1421 Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 1972 hooks, bell, 2316 H orace, 131 Horkheimer, Max, 1030 “How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine,” 2073 Hughes, Langston, 1138 Human Condition, T h e, 1169 Hume, David, 408 Hurston, Zora Neale, 936

Fanon, Frantz, 1351 Fem ale Masculinity, 2527 “Fetishism,” 816 Fish, Stanley E ., 1896 “Formation of the Intellectuals, The,” 929 Foucault, M ichel, 1388 Four Essays on Aesthetics: Toward a Global View, 1658 Freud, Sigmund, 783 “From Work to Text,” 1277 Frye, Northrop, 1248 “Function of Criticism at the Present Time, The,” 684

“Ideology and Ideological State Appara­ tuses,” 1285 “Image of Africa, An: Racism in Conrad’s Heart o f Darkness,” 1536 Im agined Com m unities, 1832 “Intentional Fallacy, The,” 1198 “Interaction between Text and Reader,” 1452 Interpretation o f Dreams, T he, 789 Introduction to Arab Poetics, An, 1552 Ion, 46 Iser, Wolfgang, 1450 Is T here a Text in This Class? The Authority o f Interpretive Com m unities, 1898

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 2242 G ender Trouble, 2375 G enealogy o f the G entile Gods, 202 Germ an Ideology, T he, 659 G ilbert, Sandra M ., 1839 Gilroy, Paul, 2389 Gorgias o f L eontini, 39 Graff, Gerald, 1886 Gram sci, Antonio, 927 Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract M odels fo r a Literary History, 2255 Great Tradition, T he, 1052 Greenblatt, Stephen J ., 2027 Grundrisse, 665 Guattari, Felix, 1367 Gubar, Susan, 1839 G uide o f the Perplexed, T he, 180

Jakobson, Roman, 1064 Jam es, Henry, 719 Jam eson, Fredric, 1731 Johnson, Sam uel, 383

Haberm as, Jurgen, 1492 Halberstam , Jud ith Ja c k , 2525 H all, Stu art, 1702

K afka: Toward a M inor Literature, 1371 Kant, Immanuel, 425 Kaplan, E. Ann, 1853 Karatani Kojin, 1925 Kristeva, Ju lia , 1939 Lacan , Jacq u es, 1105 “Language,” 914 Laocoon, 476 Latour, Bruno, 2111 “Laugh of the Medusa, The,” 1869 Leavis, F. R., 1050 Lectures on Fine Art, 555 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim , 473 “Letter from Friedrich Engels to Joseph Bloch,” 679

A u th o r/ T itle

“Letter to Can Grande, The,” 198 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1222 “Linguistics and Poetics,” 1067 Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2015 Lives o f the English Poets, 405 Liyong, Taban lo, 1909 Li Zehou, 1655 Longinus, 144 Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacqu es Lacan through P opidar Culture, 2225 Lukacs, Gyorgy, 866 Lyotard, Je a n -F ra n 9 ois, 1383 M adwom an in the Attic, T he: T he W oman Writer and the N ineteenth-C entury Liter­ ary Im agination, 1841 M aimonides, Moses, 177 “Manifesto for Cyborgs, A: Science, Tech­ nology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” 2043 M arcus, Sharon, 2603 Marx, Karl, 652 Mazzoni, Giacopo, 236 M cGurl, M ark, 2586 M eans W ithout End: Notes on Politics, 1968 “Mental Labor Problem, The,” 2412 “Metaphysical Poets, The,” 891 Mimesis: T he Representation o f Reality in Western Literature, 956 “Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, The,” 1111 “Modernity— An Incomplete Project,” 1502 M oretti, Franco, 2252 M orrison, Toni, 1670 M orton, Timothy, 2619 Mulvey, Laura, 1952 Mythologies, 1266 N arasim haiah, C. D., 1327 “Narrative Theory after the Second Cogni­ tive Revolution,” 2552 Negri, Antonio, 2506 “Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, The,” 1140 Nelson, Alondra, 2631 New S cien ce, 340 Ngai, Sianne, 2638 Ngugi wS Thiong’o, 1909 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 737 Nixon, Rob, 2353 Nussbaum, M artha C., 2136 “O f the Standard of Taste,” 410 “O f the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place,” 295 Ohmann, Richard, 1684 Oliver, Kelly, 2494 On Christian Teaching, 166 “One Is Not Born a Woman,” 1823

Index

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On Literature C onsidered in Its R elation­ ship to Social Institutions, 525 On Rhetoric, 127 On Sublimity, 146 “On the Abolition of the English Depart­ ment,” 1912 On the Aesthetic Education o f Man, 494 On the Defense o f the “Com edy” o f Dante, 238 “On the Teaching of Modern Literature,” 1149 “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” 752 Orientalism, 1783 Origins o f M odern Japan ese Literature, 1929 Owuor-Anyumba, Henry, 1909 Pater, W alter, 711 “Performative Utterances,” 1236 Phaedrus, 89 Phenom enology o f Spirit, 549 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin o f Our Ideas o f the Sublim e and B eautiful, A, 467 “Philosophy of Composition, The,” 643 Plato, 43 Poe, Edgar Allan, 641 “Poet, The,” 625 Poetics, 99 Political Unconscious, The: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, 1734 Pope, Alexander, 367 Posthuman, The, 2329 “Postmodern Blackness,” 2318 “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” 1758 “Precession of Simulacra, The,” 1483 “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique o f Political Econom y,” 666 “Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and O ther Poems (1802),” 566 “Preface to S hakespeare,” 392 “Preface to T he Lucky C h an ce,” 334 “Preface to T he Picture o f Dorian Gray,” 765 “Program Era, The: Pluralisms of Postwar American Fiction,” 2588 “Public Sphere, The: An Encyclopedia Article,” 1496 Rambler, The, No. 4 [On Fiction], 387 Ransom, Joh n Crowe, 899 “Reality Effect, The,” 1272 Republic, The, 58 “Resonance and Wonder,” 2029 Revolution in Poetic Language, 1942 “Rhetoric of Video Games, The,” 2653 Rich, Adrienne, 1513 Room o f O n e’s Own, A, 857 Ross, Andrew, 2410 Rubin, Gayle, 2192 Rules o f Art, The: Genesis and Structure o f the Literary Field, 1592

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Said, Edward W ., 1780 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 820 Sch iller, Friedrich von, 492 Schleierm acher, Friedrich, 531 Second Sex, T he, 1214 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 2277 Sentim ental Fabulations, Contem porary Chinese Films: A ttachm ent in the Age o f G lobal Visibility, 2471 “Sex in Public,” 2452 “Shaping of a Canon, The: U.S. Fiction, 1960-1975,” 1686 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 598 Sidney, S ir Philip, 260 “Signification of the Phallus, The,” 1129 Slow V iolence and the Environm entalism o f the Poor, 2355 “Society Must Be Defended,” 1440 Sontag, Susan, 1717 Souls o f B lack Folk, T he, 845 Spectator, The, No. 62 [True and False Wit], 360 Spectator, The, No. 412 [On the Sublim e], 365 Specters o f Marx, 1636 Spinoza, Baruch, 311 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 1997 Stael, Germ aine Necker de, 515 Strauss, Leo, 1095 “Structural Analysis of Narrative,” 1918

Studies in the History o f the Renaissance, 713 Subculture: T he M eaning o f Style, 2309 Sum m a T heologica, 191 “Surface Reading: An Introduction,” 2606 “Taking Cover in Coverage,” 1888 “Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times,” 2244 T heological-P olitical Treatise, 314 “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” 2195 Thom as Aquinas, 188 Thousand Plateaus, A: C apitalism and Schizophrenia, 1374 Todorov, Tzvetan, 1916 “Towards the Formulation of a Common Poetic for Indian Literatures Today,” 1330 “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” 885

Trauma Culture: T he Politics o f Terror and Loss in M edia and Literature, 1856 Trilling, Lionel, 1144 Tristes Tropiques, 1225 “Truth and Politics,” 1176 “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,” 1074 Ugly Feelings, 2641 Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, 2096 “‘Uncanny’, The,” 799 “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The AfroAmerican Presence in American Litera­ ture,” 1673 Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology o f Things, 2434 Vico, G iam battista, 337 Vindication o f the Rights o f W oman, A, 507 “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 1954 W arner, M ichael, 2450 W arren, Kenneth W., 2487 “Waste Product of Graduate Education, The: Toward a Dictatorship of the Flexi­ ble,” 2572 Well Wrought Urn, The, 1183 “What Is an Author?,” 1394 “What Is Liberal Education?,” 1100 “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” 950 W hite, Hayden, 1461 “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Con­ cern,” 2115 W ilde, O scar, 762 W illiam s, Raymond, 1335 W im satt, W illiam K., Jr., 1195 “Witnessing and Testimony,” 2496 W ittig, Monique, 1821 W ollstonecraft, Mary, 504 Woolf, Virginia, 854 Wordsworth, W illiam , 563 “Work of Art in the Age of Its Technologi­ cal Reproducibility, The,” 976 World o f Persian Literary Humanism, The, 2292 W retched o f the Earth, T he, 1361 Zizek, Slavoj, 2221