Demystifying literature: de Man and the singular

You all know I'm skeptical of de Man: I think that through equivocation on crucial issues he mislead theorists so much they are only now beginning to realize the extent of the damage. But this doesn't mean he wasn't also brilliant, or that his works aren't extremely useful. In other words de Man's power to mislead only came with a certain type of earned authority. It's just that his words require you to never let your guard down.

This is even more important to remember when these words are strung together in the witty remark, the teachable fragment, the slogan, the aphorism--I'm not sure what exactly to call these particular segments in de Man's corpus. These remarks--like "the resistance to theory is itself theoretical," or "scholarship has, in principle, to be eminently teachable," or "it is better to fail in teaching what should not be taught than to succeed in teaching what is not true" (all three taken only from "The Resistance to Theory")--remain influential even today: though it is important to keep in mind the limits of de Man's influence (as is only appropriate when such an uncritical notion as influence is used), which to this day has not been sufficiently mapped out, such phrases still guide our attempts to articulate what, at bottom, we're doing.

Such a delicate, yet dangerous string of words I want to look at right now:

When modern critics think they are demystifying literature, they are in fact being demystified by it.
-"Criticism and Crisis" (1967, updated in 1970), in Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 3-19, 18

As you can see, this is not only highly polemical, but is also conveniently short, pithy, repeatable. One can imagine many theorists picking it up and using it in all sorts of situations. But it would be a mistake to see it merely as a general statement just about anyone. Like most de Manian formulations, it is very precise. The task, then, is not to pull apart what is actually being said here from the sweeping, polemical force of the statement. Instead, it is to see that specificity alone gives such theoretical statements power. The trick of de Man's aphoristic formulation (and it is indeed a dirty one) is to let you think that theory must become less polemical as it gets more specific. Or (and this is oddly more likely), if it does allow you think otherwise, if it allows you to see polemic and precision's incompatability as superficial, it becomes your responsibility to assert this (which makes the trick even dirtier). But we'll try and get specific while also not taking over all the responsibility: we will remain critical of de Man insofar as he engages in a ruse that turns us all into his interpreters--or, better, his "demystifiers."

But, as we were saying, it isn't enough to see de Man's statement as just applying to anyone: we have to ask, first, who these "modern critics" that "demystify" actually are. Ironically, after all we just said, de Man isn't as specific as he should be about this: his answer is, the New Criticism and structuralism, or, rather, the New Critical tendency in American criticism (we can call it by its much misunderstood name: "practical criticism") as it is affected by structuralism coming from France. That's a lot of criticism, enough to seem like the most significant criticism in America and abroad (in other words, another trick involving sweeping generalizations). But it isn't enough to exhaust the totality of the field--not nearly enough, if we have the right view of things.

Why, then, this general practical criticism/structuralist poetics nexus, and not something else? Here de Man is most precise. Both, he says,

consist of showing that certain claims to authenticity attributed to literature are in fact expressions of a desire that, like all desires, falls prey to the duplicities of expression.
-"Criticism and Crisis," 12

This is what he calls "demystifying" literature. Let's be clear about what this process of demystification entails, according to de Man, for the above definition remains only a sliver of what he has to say about it. De Man goes on to say that the authenticity attributed to literature is in fact reducible to the notion--popular before the New Critics and before the advent of structural linguistics--that literary language was of a different nature than the system of language we normally use. (This, by the way, leads to the notion that the experience of this language is of a different order than everyday experience, or what I.A. Richards called, quite accurately, "the phantom aesthetic state:" the two notions imply each other and Richards, in the opening of his Principles of Literary Criticism, moved from this phantom state to this phantom literary language.) The process of demystification then would involve showing that a normal language system could serve as an adaquate basis for interpreting literature. One can see the task that the structuralist poeticians and practical critics, then, oddly have in common--and why de Man rightly groups them together: in the case of practical criticism, the task is to show that normal usage, or in fact everyday usage, provides us with enough meanings that we can outline possible interpretations of what the poem or prose work may be saying; in the case of structuralist poetics (which has a bit more complications I might get into below), the task is to outline how the system of signifiers that linguistics has studied can account for the work in question. Everyday language and the linguists' language both rid us of the need for any priveliged sort of literary language, which would be different in essence.

The larger meaning of de Man's statement becomes more and more obvious: both of these modes, in trying to undo the privilege accorded to literature, fall prey to its privilege. The implications are clear too: de Man is arguing for the restoration of a notion that literary language is different than the system of language we use everyday.

But before we outline what this really means, I would like to return to de Man's quote above regarding demystification. For while demystification involves a certain notion of literary language, it also proceeds in a certain manner which the quote makes clear: armed with her notion that the privelige accorded to literature can be accounted for by everyday language or the structure of language, the demystifying critic shows that the privelige is merely the expression of a desire. This shall remain even more important for us, for it means that demystification involves, prior to the critic's having any very clear notion about the proper sphere of literary language, a certain operation, a method, a "strategy" as de Man indeed calls it (13). Demystification is first and foremost the process of asserting that what is there can be the expression of something the critic, but not you, can see: a desire that is not fully apparent, that is duplicitous, and that needs the critic in order to make its full manifestation. Literature for the demystifier would then lack its "priveliged" or "authentic" status for another reason: literature could not be something impenetrable to the critic's process of making the work fully manifest, and in this respect could not be of a different nature than the critic's language. This, I claim, is the deeper reason behind de Man's notion that demystification involves dissolving literary language into everyday language: it is what in other essays he calls the critic's belief in the phenomenality of literature, the notion that it is something that can be made manifest and, moreover, can, eventually, be made fully manifest. One can also see that it involves a certain notion of the literary object requiring a consciousness that can judge it: in this respect the belief in the phenomenality of the literary work is also a belief in its fundamentally aesthetic nature--the work is there to produce judgments (Kant, of course, gave this view its most concentrated expression). We can also emphasize that it is aestheticism in a different, more perjorative sense: the critic, in this view, is the only one who can complete the artwork by mastering its duplicities, which makes her of the same nature as the artist, and their criticism, in turn, something participating in the art.

But, back to the point: if demystification involves asserting that there is more to the work, in the sense that there is something about it which is not as it seems and can eventually be made clear, when modern critics think they are demystifying literature, they are demystified by it means that they are only making more explicit their inability to see that literature may perhaps not be something that manifests itself.

Now, there are two ways to justify this particular assertion. De Man's way, in the essay in question, is by stressing the fictionality of literature. What he says prior to his little aphorism makes this clear enough:

It [fiction] is demystified from the start.
-"Criticism and Crisis," 18

That is, demystifying a literary text makes nothing in it manifest. This is not because criticism is powerless when confronted by it, but rather because the text's nature qua fictional is to disturb manifestation itself. This is a point not stressed enough--we overlook it constantly in talking about characters, say--but it perhaps lays too much stress on fictionality: de Man could be challenged by bringing up testimony, for example (Derrida, for one, does not evade this: his reading of Blanchot's "The Instant of My Death" in the slim but profound Demeure precisely investigates the possible weave between these two).

I will take the other route and justify the notion that literature does not manifest itself by talking more about what the demystifier supposes literature actually does. The easiest case would be a practical critic, who tries ultimately to establish a meaning for the text. Jonathan Culler shows why this is questionable. Instead, a better case for now would be the structuralist poetician. I'll take Roland Barthes, with his powerful notion of codes in S/Z.

The five codes Barthes considers are extremely useful. They aren't ultimately very rigorous tools to use, but they are so handy and so intuitive: Barthes constructs them in such a way that to an experienced critic they fit like a glove--only allowing actual reflection on the manipulation ultimately produced. In short, in the codes Barthes makes explicit something the critic has for a long, long time engaged in, but never reflected on at such length (this is why they are not to be unreflectively used like any old tools, as Kaja Silverman does in The Subject of Semiotics). This is pointing out the saturation of the text with a certain type of non-literal language which is, unless we want to stretch the word, nevertheless not figurative. He opens up a domain in which a certain understanding of the message is brought about which nevertheless does not have to deal with meaning (that is, literal or figurative, strictly speaking). The code remains the way that parts of the text (and remember this remains pertinent only for a classic text, which is not stressed enough) try to be received in a certain way: as such it is like innuendo, except with the final meaning subtracted, as it were, or made unncessary to grasp.

The cultural codes are, in particular, the most intuitive to the critic (they are also the most boring of the codes: the proairetic and hermeneutic are much more interesting and indeed useful). One understands, in other words, a character has a certain status by the mention of what he wears. Or one understands a fragment of a sentence about abstruse academics, say, not because of the meaning but because of the cultural doxa, which states that academics have no connection to the real world.

The critic then goes through the text and points out these codes: it is what we do especially when watching TV, say, and noting how a certain type of character is stereotypically treated. What is one doing in such an instance? What de Man would say is, precisely, that one is trying to manifest something in the work. Even though the code isn't dealing with meaning, it is nevertheless there to bring something to the fore. It is, in fact doing something even more than that: it is allowing a secure transit between the work, on the one hand, and culture on the other. By pointing out doxa in literature or other, similar artforms, what we are doing is supposing an almost immediate link between the forces which construct the code and the code itself as we find it in a particular message. In pointing it out, we believe we are directly in connection with those societal forces, on some level, and transform them in the act. Why? Because we suppose that the message is not already demystified--to use the quote above--or in other words we overlook the fact that there there may be nothing to manifest in the message except the cultural forces which produce it.

To be clearer, manifestation may not be necessary because the literary work is singular. That means it does not express or represent those cultural and societal forces, but merely is a product of them--indeed, uniquely, irreducibly so (the reduction, in other words, would be to representation). Or, to put it another way, manifestation may not be necessary because the link between a the coded literature and culture is never immediate: it is always and only a set of productive relays which may indeed make manifestation possible, but never necessary for the work to be both extant and also (this is the tough part) able to be criticized.

With this made clear, we now understand how de Man proposes to restore the difference between literary language and ordinary language: it is not by giving literary language an essence, but rather by subtracting it. Literary language is singular, irreducible. And this does not mean the literary work is thereby shut off in any way from ordinary language, culture, or society, but is indeed precisely produced by them--since the connection is not presumed to be simply, unproblematically, indeed naively immediate. It is, in other words, produced in a way that cannot be reduced to the production of something destined to be manifest, and therefore demystified. I'll stop here, but it now should be somewhat clearer why modern critics are being demystified by such a singular literature in demystifying it.

Coleridge and theory

I know it is common for the literary theorist to look for precursors to literary theory. And I usually am one to hesitate before doing so: I don't like to call Plato a literary theorist, because, quite frankly, I'm still not sure whether we can even call him a philosopher of art. Nevertheless, I think it is important that we recognize how what Coleridge does--particularly in the Biographia Literaria--resembles literary theory. Not because this shows theory as such has been around for a while, but only because it shows that what Coleridge expressly does not do might have some affinity with what theory opposes.

For what Coleridge does not do is what he says Wordsworth does in the "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads and in his remarks on literature generally.

Recall that the Biographia begins with an account of Coleridge's life, and how his literary opinions are generally shaped, with a view to making some remarks about the proper place of meter in poetry and poetic diction in specific passages of poetry--remarks that indeed challenge, and attempt to correct, Wordsworth's views, through a distinction between fancy and imagination. But in order to do this, Coleridge must take a detour into the history of philosophy, looking particularly at 17th and 18th century theories of associationism, and overthrowing them using the idealism of Kant. Why? Because,

it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and from the different effects to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then from the kind to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness.
-Biographia Literaria, IV.

In other words, the general task is to come to similar conclusions to Wordsworth's about the role of art in general, conclusions which rely upon and effectively bring about a distinction between something like fancy and something like imagination. Coleridge will do this, though by searching for principles and making this distinction explicit.

For Wordsworth, it is sufficient to look at poetic effects, and "conclude their diversity in kind:" that is, it is enough to categorize poetic activity based on his immediate perception of poetic effects into two general spheres. The result of this is that he makes a distinction but does not bring it to the fore. In other words, Wordsworth can be talking about something like fancy and something like imagination, but no one would really know: the opinions are grounded in the particular standpoint he has towards the poems and poetry, which is ultimately individual, subjective. Thus the source for what he has to say about the nature of poetry in general does not come from any argument: very much like Shelley in his Defense, statements like "The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure" are not based on any logic which can be reasoned out by another reader--we have to either accept them or reject them.

Coleridge, on the other hand, will talk about these poetic effects as resulting from various principles or reasons. The fancy and the imagination are these reasons, roughly put--this is why the distinction is so crucial. Like Edward Young's "originality," they are concepts that do not merely gather together poetic effects, or express a view upon poetry, but try to reveal poetry's origin in something we can all reason out. To this extent, they are not in any particular poem or prose work--this is why people (especially not schooled in the 18th century, which develops, step by step until German Romanticism, precisely this sort of critical concept) have such a tough time with them. Fancy, then, remains something more like an explanatory hypothesis than even a category of poetic effect (one can see that what Coleridge then is criticizing in Wordworth is precisely what ties him to an increasingly antiquated notion of rhetoric--that is, the notion of figural language as the production of effects).

So here is the first similarity between Coleridge and literary theorists: they both make the manifestation of some critical concept in a particular text unnecessary. Or, to put it the other way around, they do not look at poetry, say, for what is manifested in it--they don't make their points by grouping together certain aspects of the text which manifest themselves.

We just said that fancy and imagination are more explanatory hypotheses than terms used to point to what the text manifests. At the same time, they still more than merely hypotheses: they are derived from general philosophical principles--Coleridge eventually grounds it in metaphysics. Thus we can't say that the principles try to explain an aesthetic object, say. In other words, we might expect that outlining principles about an artistic object (poetry) would confine the principles themselves to the sphere delimited by the scope of their object, which here would be art--this is what it means for Coleridge's principles to be considered as explanatory hypotheses. But we must reject even this: Coleridge is not doing aesthetics, but is bringing metaphysics to bear upon texts.

This is the second similarity: theory resists confining itself to aesthetics, or a philosophical discourse upon art. It might seem like an obvious point, but it frustrates people constantly. For now the theoretical notion, like the Coleridgian notion of fancy or imagination, has no where to go: barred from resting in the realm of notions that group together textual effects or the manifestation of art, it also cannot become a general statement about the nature of art, which would account for the manifestations in another direction.

Thus Coleridge, like theorists, engages in philosophical activity but does not turn this activity into a set of statements about art. The extended passages on associationism and the grounding of the imagination and fancy in metaphysics indeed try to get at the "seminal principle," but the principle is ultimately a metaphysical notion with theological and ethical implications.

It may sound like there is also a problem emerging: by what right do philosophical (or semi-philosophical) statements come to bear directly upon poetry? It seems as if there is a shortcut here from one discourse to another, while the discourse proper to the consideration of literature (looking at what the text manifests) is done away with or at least set aside. Coleridge and theorists would reply--this is exactly the point. For what both oppose is stability we grant to the way poetry manifests itself, and on the other hand the stability we grant to the nature of art: the instability on the one side undoes the stability of the other.

...has perhaps always had...

The last sentence is excellently put:

Discourses on painting are perhaps destined to reproduce the limit which constitutes them, whatever they do and whatever they say: there is for them an inside and an outside of the work as soon as there is work. A series of oppositions comes in the train of this one, which, incidentally, is not necessarily primary (for it belongs to a system whose edging itself reintroduces the problem). And there the trait is always determined as an opposition-slash.

But what happens before the difference becomes opposition in the trait, or without its doing so? And what if there were not even a becoming here? For becoming has perhaps always had as its concept this determination of difference as opposition.
-The Truth in Painting, 11