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PARTISAN REVIEW
intention ,
IS
not a practi cal basis for criti cism as an intell ectual
di scipline.
The boldest and most systemati c skepti cs from Ni etzsche to
Derrida have apparentl y been prepared to ques ti on whether know ledge
is indeed what we want from criti cism and the sciences or whether it
might be better to think of all such structures aes theticall y, as mytholo–
gies. The word science can be retained (as in the structurali sts'
les
sciences humaines)
but onl y if it becomes indistingui shabl e in mean–
ing from myth. For any use of language enta iling a referenti al as well
as refl exive fun ction is the p roduct of an artifi cial (Cartes ian ) dualism.
The " theory" of structurali sm is thus understood to be on a different
scal e from theori es capable of being replaced and corrected . As one of
Barthes' s apologists, Yves Velan, complacentl y rema rked : " In order to
di scuss structuralism, one has to adopt its point of vi ew"!
Yet it is not so easy to leap cl ear of a "Cartes ian " uni verse, and the
dependence of these philosophicall y radi ca l criti cs on terms like
distortion , repression, and mi sreading belies their deni al of the possi–
bility of correct interpreta ti on . Hirsch comments wryly, " I was once
told by someone who denied the possibility of a correct inter preta ti on
that I had not interpreted his writings correctl y." I think th a t Den-ida
ingeniousl y anticipates this o bj ection when he implies tha t, because
the notion of correctness is meaningless to the enli ghtened but not
to
the rest of hi s readers, he will use it and other such no ti ons,
saLlS rature,
under eras ure-while waiting, presumabl y, for the new era in whi ch
equivocati on will no longer be necessary.
An enterprise that attempts a whol esa le revisi on of the very
concept of science might be di smi ssed as absurd if it did no t engage so
much intell ectual energy. But it is diffi cult to be impressed by argu–
ments that seek support by di storting such scientific ideas as Heisen–
berg's Uncertainty Principl e and Freud 's repression. The Uncertainty
Principle actuall y works against them, for it protects the idea of
obj ective knowl edge by specifying the margin of error in our percep–
tions and should really be call ed, therefore, according to
J.
Bronowski ,
the principle of tol erance. As for Freudi an theory, the revisionary effort
directed toward it has been so sustained and complex tha t I cannot do
justice to the subj ect here, but a brief considerati on of two criti cal
theorists who represent this effort , Jacques Derrida and Haro ld Bl oom,
will round out the indeterminacy debate as I have presented it.
In
order to des troy a vi ew of writing tha t permits us to think of an
author or sovereign self behind it, Derrida adopts the dubi o us stra tegy
of making writing (ecriture) mean both less and more than it is ta ken to
