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study of structuralism in literary cntlClsm to be published in any
language"; Mehlman's book, more modestly, "presents the first full–
length analysis of Leiris's 'essays' and an initial effort in English to
delineate the interpretive difference for literary studies implicit in
Lacan's reading of Freud"). Almost everything concerning structural–
ism seems to be always a "first," as if structuralism were a messiah
whose imminent arrival continued to be "first" announced over an
extraordinarily long period of time.
Mehlman, the one who writes from the position most solidly
within structuralism, outlines some of the hazards of "introducing"
structuralism in all its firstness. "On the eve of structuralism's arrival
in intellectual America," Mehlman turns "briefly to those last seekers
of prestige in
Tristes tropiques,
the ambassadors of French culture in
America. " Although Levi-Strauss resisted the expectation that he be an
ambassador of French culture in his anthropological ventures, Mehl–
man is less confident that other explicators of Levi-Strauss and other
structuralists will decline-or even recognize-their temptation, which
is to appoint themselves as spokesmen for an aggrandized exoticism
and, simultaneously, to domesticate and garble that exoticism. 'The
risks that 'structuralism' will be one more object of private consump–
tion are substantial, their realization the greatest disservice to the spirit
of Levi-Strauss' thought". The transmission of "information" can
never be a totally innocent undertaking, whether one wants to think of
the transmitter as an intellectual broker, as Mehlman does , or whether
one wants to associate him with the sexual mediation of Henry James's
most
prominen~mbassador,
Lambert Strether.
It is in the latter form that Robert Scholes presents himself in
Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction.
In a remarkable passage
at the end of the book, Scholes embroiders a new language of courtly
love for structuralism:
And here a word needs to be said on the relationship between
structuralism and love . .. it i precisely the ideology
oJ
structural–
ism that we need most desperately today. And this is where love
comes in.
It
is in the differentiation of the sexes that we learn our
earliest and deepest lessons about sameness and difference. Sexual
differentiation is the basis, not only of our social systems, but of our
logic as well.
If
there were three sexes, our computers would not have
begun to think in terms of binary oppositions.
. . . In fiction, as in life, the coming together of two human beings in
the sexual embrace of love represents the reconciliation of all
opposites, the peaceful resolution of all disputes, the melting of all
swords into plowshares. In such an embrace. the cyclical dominates
the temporal, the lovers are united with all lovers, and we partake of
the universal. Marriage is a sacrament of structuralism.
