THE STATE OF CRITICISM
419
and even fewer who know what Lacan is doing. Maybe English majors
are better than sociology majors. Yet,
I
doubt that many of them are up
to the subject; therefore, the democratic pretensions of structuralism
remain only pretension. The translation into linguistic categories and
relationships of social and cultural phenomena, in its very nature,
must create its own jargon.
I
am reminded of Dwight McDonald's
attack on sociological jargon-probably one of the clearest statements
not only of some differences between sociology and literary criticism.
but of the importance of clarity. The French, previously known for
their attachment to
clarte
forgot it when they succumbed
to
structural–
ism, as did some American literary critics. Sometimes, it seems as if the
common jarg<;m-of the various disciplines-is the element that will
reunite our intellectual universe. Still, behind the jargon is a new
method, one that is bound to appeal to critics looking for an underly–
ing principle not only of literary texts but of all knowledge. But when
we cannot seem to agree about ends, the means, themselves, become the
end.
RUDI CARDONA: We have exactly thirty-five minutes for a reply from
Denis Donoghue and for discussion from the participants.
DENIS DONOGHUE: I'd like to take up just one point which is clearly the
main subject of tension between Peter Brooks and myself, and that is
the question of whether
I
wasn ' t unnecessarily moralizing the
landscape of the entire subject.
If
I've done that, it's because it's
temperamentally congenial to me to do so.
I
tend to be a pretty
moralistic type of person, and certainly a pretty moralistic kind of
critic. So
I
wouldn't regard such criticism as terribly damaging. I'm
surprised, though, by way of rebuttal , by Peter Brooks, who says on
the one hand that there is indeed an ideology of structuralism and yet
that somehow this ideology is not to be discussed. But what else does
moralizing the subject mean, except picking it up on the level at
which it indeed is ideological, and teasing out the ideological
implications?
It
seems to me that that is exactly what moralizing the
subject means.
It
was also,
I
thought, significant, that he picked out my
otherwise harmless phrase, that the structuralists resent something
or other.
I
would now pick out his not at all harmless phrase that
structuralism is best understood as a set of actions and gestures. Well,
now,
I
would vary.
I
would rush to meet that terminology because it
