THE STATE OF CRITICISM
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James Bond to illu stra te the ir theories- an a pproach I can describe
o nl y as the fall acy o f the mi splaced subj ec t. For it exemplifies the
fa ilure to see the difference be tween enterta il.ment and imag ina tive
writing, which , in the case o f Ba rthes, is especia ll y surpri sing, in view
o f hi s own distinction between the "writerly" a nd the " readerl y" text,
the former being complex, the la tter more popula r.
T he main cha rge tha t has been made against literary structura l–
ism is tha t it is unhi storical. T hi s is true. But it oversimp lifies the
q ues tion o f the uses to which hi story can be put, bo th in theory a nd
in prac tice . For the structura lists are able to answer quite cleverly tha t
far from being unhistor ica l they regard a ll events, all texts, as
histor ica l obj ects, emerg ing in a give n time and place, subj ec t
LO
change, and certa inl y no t representing any eterna l order. From this
rela ti vist view o f history, they are a ble to trea t texts as tho ugh they
have no permanent na ture or va lue. But they seem to forge t tha t the
idea o f histo ricity is charac terized more by continuity and causa lity
than by the principle of discontinuity tha t Fo ucault and others
attribute to history- which by the way, appears to be an accommoda–
tion to the Ma rxists' belief in revoluti on. The struc turalists and the
lingui sts claim tha t they ta ke the historica l context of a work to be
part o f its meaning, but they rarely connect it explicitl y with the
configura tio ns o f the culture.
Aside from methodo logica l considera tions, structura list and pos t–
structura list criticism, on the whol e, strikes me as lacking in those
qua lities tha t sugges t a fee ling for the medium o f li tera ture. It is
rarely di scursive, mos tl y dea ling in theories of criticism ra ther than in
literary discuss ion ; it is dry, a bstrac t, and (excep t maybe for some of
Barthes, and Fo ucault, who now say they a re no t struc turalists),
almos t entirely devo id o f w it, irony, sensibility, eloquence, or the
language o f litera ry perceptio n . It is the lang uage of technica l
discourse, o ften jargon, combined with occasiona l flurries of human–
ist rhetoric, very French in fl avor, and exhibiting traces of Marxist
influence. As All en Ta te sa id long ago: "The more sys tema tic and
methodica l, the ' purer ' criticism becomes, the less one is liable to fee l
in it the p resence o f its immedi a te occasion . It tends more and more to
sound like philosophical di scourse." Discourse, I should add, tha t in
the case of much o f the new French criticism and its American
disc ip les, is very ha rd , sometimes imposs ibl e, to unders tand. Who is
Lacan's or Derrida's normal reader?
One no table exception to the turgid writing o f the structuralist
criti cs and those influenced by structuralism tha t I have read is Peter
