THE STATE OF CRITICISM
421
morning's session with this afternoon 's first session, we should
invite both Lawrence Graver and William Phillips to begin the
discussion or commentary from the participants.
LAWRENCE GRAVER: I have a naive question; it may be a forced naIvete,
but the question is, what is the critical edge of structuralism? What is
the weight of the word "critical" or "criticism," when we speak of a
structuralist criticism? That is, in listening to the presentations, I
recognize in structuralism, as presented by Denis Donoghue, a lot of
philosophical ideas. For example, the denaturalism is clearly con–
nected to Husserl 's idea of ontological reduction. It seems to me
there's a hidden dialectical methodology operating in the dualistic
conception, and so forth. I accept all that, but what is the critical
cutting edge of locating the text, say, entirely in a world of language?
Language strikes me as funny, and it strikes me that a lot of text has
the same relation to this thing called reality which we 're not
supposed to ontologize as the expression
Arbeit macht jrei
has to
Auschwitz in some sense. In other words, we have this text,
Arbeit
macht jrei,
work makes us free, and then we have the reality of the
concentration camp. We have all these literary texts, and then we
have this thing called the reality of the world. Now it may be very
hard to say what the reality of that world is, but, on the other hand,
in some gross ways, we can say what the reality of that world is. I
would like to know what the value of a structuralist analysis of a text
would be for helping me to understand the referencing power of a
text. Does structuralism accept the referencing power of a text? How
would structuralism deal with the text
Arbeit macht jrei,
for exam–
ple, in the Auschwitz situation?
DENIS DONOGHUE: Well, structuralists, I think, would accept the
referentiality, but would not be very much interested in it. They
would say, that is not our concern; we take that for granted. They
would say, that is not part of the kind of criticism which our
structuralism makes possible. I t seems to me that structuralism
would be, if you like, an opening or a way in. It would be a chosen
way into a text or a way of taking possession of a text under certain
auspices or a certain spirit. You could describe these auspices in
various ways, and you could certainly describe the structuralist spirit
in various ways. But for me, one of the perennial problems-putting
aside the structuralist question-is affecting an exit with as much
agility as one had affected entry. It's also, I think, correspondingly
the point at which one would have difficulty establishing not so
much what the procedure is, but its seriousness. How do you make a
