L'ecriture et le Non-Dit

Author(s): Ann Banfield

Source: Diacritics, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 21-31
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465374
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Diacritics.
http://www.jstor.org
L'ECRITURE ET
LE NON-DIT
ANN BANFIELD
Some
twenty years ago,
a
linguistics
formal and
unyielding
in
confronting
the
evidence of a
language
that its
analysis
could distance from the individual
speaker
was a continuous
point
of reference for
any discipline
whose
object
could not be so
rigorously
defined. As
such,
it functioned above all for a
literary theory
that had itself
already
drawn
many
of its
categories
from an
older
grammatical
tradition.
Consequently,
the central tenets of a
contempo-
rary
critical
theory,
one whose foremost
representatives
have been French-
Blanchot, Barthes, Foucault,
and Deleuze-were
grounded
on a modem
linguistic
notion of
language
as a
body
of rules and
principles
held
together
by something
other than a
speaker's
intentions.
The
radically
new
conception
of
language
that
emerged
from a
literary
theory
thus
acknowledging
modem
linguistics
in one of its three forms-
comparative grammar, structuralism,
and
generative grammar1
-was then
one in which the
speaking subject
ceased to
occupy
a
place
at the center of
language
and to
provide
the
key
to its structure. What has characterized
modem
linguistics
in
any
of its three forms is the irrelevance of the
speaking
subject
to the formulation of the rules
predicting
this
structure,
whether
they
are the laws of sound
change, phonological derivations,
or
syntactic
rules.
None of the features of these rule
systems
can be deduced from
any
conception
of the
speaking subject,
or of his function or
intentions,
nor are
any
of the structural
properties
of
grammar plausibly
attributable to
properties
of
the
speaker.
This is not to
say
that the notions
"speaker"
and
"subject"
have
no
place
in
grammatical theory,
but that it is
they
who are defined
by
the
properties
of
language
and not vice versa.
So the notions of "the death of the author" and of a
linguistic performance
with a mode of existence
independent
of its
producer (ecriture)
arose
naturally
in a
literary theory recognizing
the
language
defined
by linguistics.
For it is modem
linguistics
that-as Jean-Claude Milner has
put
it,
with an
allusion to Freud's statement about the blow to man's narcissism dealt
by
psychoanalysis-has dislodged
man from the center of his own
language by
demonstrating
that no
speaker
creates his own
language
but instead confronts
one that was
already
there before he came to
speak
it,
setting
limits on what
1. See Michel
Foucault, The Order of
Things,
in
particular,
the section entitled
"Labour,
Life
and
Language,"
and Jean-Claude
Milner,
For the Love of
Language,
for
two accounts
of
modern
linguistics
that restore to
comparative grammar
its
important
role. See also "What
DoLinguists
Want?,"
my
introduction to Milner
[28].
For Foucault,
it was
already
"at the
beginning of
the nineteenth
century"
that
"language
was
burying
itself
within its own
density
as an
object
and
allowing itself
to be
traversed,
through
and
through, by knowledge" [300]. Cf.
also Ducrot: "la
linguistique
moderne,
terme
qui
recouvre a
lafois
le
comparatisme,
le structuralism
et la
grammaire generative" [171].
It
isperhaps only
in Britain and the United States
that
comparative philology
has
fallen
from
memory.
diacritics 21.4: 21-31 21 diacritics / winter 1991
]i
O
0
-3=: r
r-;
could be said
[For
the Love
of Language 137].
These limits do not
simply
set restrictions
on a
speaker's
or a writer's
freedom;
they
rather define a
non-ego-centered freedom,
one
not conceivable as a
breaking
down of boundaries or a violation of
rules,
but as the
creation,
in accordance with certain
laws,2
of an area of choice.
All of this has been reiterated in
many
different
ways.
But the
consequences
of this
conception
of
language
and literature have not
provided
the
premises
for a
continuing
research. On the
contrary,
the radical
challenge
to certain orthodoxies a
non-speaker-
centered
conception
of
language
contained has been
imperceptibly
revised,
and the old
has returned under the
guise
of the new. As the
fitting accompaniment
to this
revisionism,
another
linguistics
is
currently appealed
to,
one Milner has labeled an
"antilinguistics,"
which renounces the difficult task of
providing
a formal account of the often recalcitrant
data of
language
and of
submitting
this account to the standards of
logical economy.
This
is a
linguistics that,
unwilling
to or
incapable
of
looking directly
at the
impersonal
laws
of
language
itself and
analyzing
its forms and
systems,
turns instead to the "human voice
divine" within
linguistic performance, substituting
communication for
language.
Such a
substitute
linguistics goes by
various names: discourse
analysis, pragmatics, speech
act
theory,
communications
theory.3
It
provides
the
justification
for the return of a unified
authorial
voice,
in the
guise
of the
speaker,
to literature.
That return has been
disguised:
it
poses
as a
challenge
to the
egocentric theory
of
language,
which it
submerges
in the notion of the "unicite" or oneness of the
subject,
and
yet
reintroduces this
egocentricity
under the form of a
multiplication
of
speakers
in certain
configurations.
These are the various theories of "dual
voice,"
of
"dialogism"
and
"heteroglossia,"
of
"polyphony," enjoying currency
at this moment. Their
appeal
explains
in
part
the
discovery
and
republication
of
Bakhtin;
it likewise
explains
the
following
Oswald Ducrot has in France. In the face of the declaration of the death of the
author in
writing,
these theories
perform
the function of a kind of
animism,
repeopling
the
text with the sound of
personal
voices.
Moreover,
the
"carnivalesque," "heteroglossia,"
"polyphony"-all
are
proffered
as
figures
of an
imaginary
freedom whose
model,
whose
utopia,
is a
crowd,
overflowing
boundaries,
breaking
rules and
mingling many
voices,
and
whose ultimate
weapon against power
is an
irony
conceived either as the
interpenetration
of voices or as a
preordained intentionality
which intervenes deus ex voce to
provide
an
ultimate
harmony
and
meaning
that are
personal.
What is Ducrot's
theory
of
polyphony
and how does it reintroduce a
speaker-centered
linguistics
at the
very
moment it denies it? To answer this
question,
I will
counterpose
Ducrot's "sketch" of this
theory
to what he
rejects
as that
theory's
contrary-the
most
recent defense of the
"dogme
intouchable"
[172]
that
"chaque
enonce
possede
un et un
seul auteur"
[171], namely,
the
theory
of the
language
of narrative fiction as a
system
of
unspeakable sentences,
in order to
argue
that Ducrot's
very conception
of the actual and
2. The
question ofthefreedom possible
within a
language
conceived as a
system of
rules
might
be
pursued
with
respect
to
Chomsky's
insistence on
linguistic creativity
and
thefact
that he is
often
misunderstood to mean
by
this the
ability ofthegrammar togenerate
an
infinite
number
ofsentences
from
a
finite
number
of
rules and the
speaker's ability
to
produce
and
interpret
sentences he has
never encountered
before.
It is the latter which
defines
the
parameters of
this
creativity
but does
not
explain
or
predict
it.
3. See For theLoveof
Language[138].
The
qualificationofthesedisciplines
as
"antilinguistics"
should not be taken to mean that the
questions
they
treat are
illegitimate
or without interest but
only
that
they fall
outside the
range of
a
formal linguistics.
Just as the limits
of
a
formal
linguistics
are
not an
argument against
the
validity of
its
claims,
so the
informal
nature
of
such
disciplines
is in
direct relation to the issues
they
address. What renders them "substitutes" is the claim
of
certain
of
their
practitioners
that the
inability of formal linguistics
to account
for
this or that
aspect of
language
demonstrates the
superiority
of
an
nonformalpragmatics.
It is in this
way
that those who
take this
position deprive
themselves
of
the discoveries
of
a
formal linguistics.
22
possible
alternatives shows how the issues have been obscured. He assumes that the
relevant
dichotomy
exists between the
hypothesis
that
every
utterance has one and
only
one
speaker,
"ancre dans la tradition
linguistique" [172],
and a
"polyphonic" theory
of the
utterance that aims to "mettre en doute le
postulat
selon
lequel
un enonce fait entendre une
seule voix"
[172].
Ducrot's
implicit reasoning
assumes that the
only challenge
to the
traditional
egocentric
view of
language
is one that
counterposes
a multitude of
voices,
assuming
various functions of the
speaker,
to the "unicite" of a
single speaking
voice.
But the issues can be
posed
otherwise and indeed have been. Another alternative
exists,
one that renders the
polyphonic theory
as
only
a variation of the
existing one,
because the crucial issue does not turn on whether an utterance is restricted to one or more
than one "voice" but on whether
every
utterance must have a "voice." This
question
is
central to the
theory
of narrative I have
presented
in
Unspeakable
Sentences. Yet it has
gone
so
universally
unremarked that the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences is
grounded
on
the claimed existence of
speakerless
sentences that it is difficult not to
suspect
that it is
here the
attempt,
whether deliberate or
unconscious,
appears
to "ward off the menace" to
the traditional
egocentric conception
of
language,
to echo Ducrot
[172].
But the
empirical
consequences
of this claim and the
challenge
it
poses
to traditional
assumptions
cannot
be
grasped
until the notions
"author," "voice," "speaker,"
and
"subject"
have been
rigorously
defined in terms of the data. This neither Ducrot nor other defenders of dual
voice
do,
contenting
themselves with what Ducrot calls a "sketch." It is in this
way
that
the hard and inalterable
givens
of
language
and the laws
they yield
can be avoided and
more
reassuring
notions
smuggled
in.
For what if there existed utterances unmarked
by
the
person
of even a
single speaker?
Then such instances of
language
would have lost the
authority
and intentional coherence
attributable to that
person
called
by grammatical
tradition the "first." What would then
be the
consequence
for the "unicite" of the
speaking subject,
for the
possibility
of a
plurality
of voices? To answer these
questions
we must turn to a more detailed account
of the evidence of narrative as well as to the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences.
This
theory requires
several notions. Some are
already
a
part
of
generative linguistic
theory
and hence not introduced
solely
to account for the
particular
data relevant to
narrative
style,
and a restricted number of others are
justified by
the sole evidence of
narrative. Their
meaning
is thus
specific
to the
theory,
even
when,
like
subject
or
SELF,
they
also have a
meaning
in
ordinary language,
and it is the
theory-specific meaning
which
must be understood when
interpreting
the
theory
and
weighing
its claims
against any
alternative. The first notion to be
singled
out is that of an
E,
or
Expression,
which rewrites
Chomsky's
S"
(S
=
Sentence),
with the further
stipulation
that this
"highest
S" cannot be
embedded,
that
is,
may
not
appear
subordinated to
any
other E. I have
provided
justification
for this revision of
Chomsky's
S"
[see
"Conditions on Transformations"
(1973)]
in "Narrative
Style
and the Grammar of Direct and Indirect
Speech"
and
Unspeakable
Sentences. Once
introduced,
further
consequences
follow from
it,
permit-
ting
a unified account of what can be referred to as
linguistic subjectivity [see Unspeak-
able
Sentences].
It is thus for
purely syntactic
reasons that the two
principles
I formulated
in these two
works,
and whose function Ducrot sees as
warding
off the threat of
a"plurality
of
subjects" [
172]-namely
those summarized as
"1E/1
SELF"
and"Priority
of
Speaker"4-
4. 1 Ell SELF is a revision
of
Ell I or
Speaker
to
accountfor
the data
of represented thought.
The
formulation of Unspeakable
Sentences is the
following:
a. 1
E/1
SELF. For
every
node
E,
there is at most one
referent,
called the
"subject of
consciousness,"
or
SELF,
to whom all
expressive
elements are attributed. That
is,
all realizations
of
SELF in an E are
coreferential.
b.
Priority of
SPEAKER.
If
there is an
I,
I is
coreferential
with the SELF. In the absence
of
an
I,
a
third-person pronoun may
be
interpreted
as SELF
[93].
diacritics / winter 1991 23
are
principles
whose domain is the E or entire sentence.
(Moreover,
it should be recalled
that the notion Sentence in transformational
grammar
is an initial idealization of the
notion "utterance." Such a
grammar, accounting
for
"competence"
and not
"perfor-
mance,"
is a
grammar
not of
utterances,
which
belong
to
performance,
but of
Sentences,
or in the
terminology
used in "Narrative
Style,"
of
Es.)5
Every
E
may
have at most one
subject
of consciousness or
SELF,
a second notion the
theory
defines. The SELF is the
point
of reference for a set of
subjective
elements and
constructions-deictics,
nouns and
adjectives
of
quality
[see Milner,
De la
syntaxe
d
l'interprdtation],
exclamations,
and so forth-which share features of distribution and
syntactic
behavior. The
generalization expressed
in 1
E/1
SELF thus relates these two
notions-E and SELF-in a
precise way.
Note,
for
instance,
that the
generalization
applies
to the
unique
reference of a
speaker
in an E
only by
virtue of the
obligatory
coreference of
speaker
and
SELF,
that
is,
by
virtue of
Priority
of
Speaker.
Moreover,
no
comparable
claim as to the
uniqueness
of the referent of the SELF is made about
any
unit
larger
than an
E;
in
particular,
the claim is not extended to the notion
TEXT, which,
in the
special meaning
attributed to it in
Unspeakable
Sentences,
is the unit constituted
by
a
series of Es related
by
the rules of
anaphora
and of "concordance of
person
and tense."
On the
contrary,
it is
explicitly
stated in
Unspeakable
Sentences that the evidence
supports
no such extension of 1
E/1
SELF to the
TEXT,
held
together, then, only by
the rules of
anaphora
and Concordance of Person and Tense. Concordance of Person
requires
that all
instances of the first
person
remain coreferential
throughout
all Es of a
TEXT,
but it makes
no such
requirement
for the referents of SELF. As a
result,
the
subject
or SELF
may
change
from E to
E,
giving
rise to the famous "shift in
point
of view" of the
moder novel,
what Blanchot refers to in "The Narrative Voice" as the
multiplication
of little
egos [136].
In the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences,
the novelistic text
may
consist of a
plurality
of
different
third-person subjects,
each one unable to
penetrate,
so to
speak,
the E or sentence
occupied by
another,
what Sartre once called "la solitude de
chaque
unit6
phrastique"
[117].
The result is a kind of
monadology
of the sentence whose
logical consequence
is
a
plurality
of
subjective
worlds. Insofar as an intuitive
response
to the novelistic form has
been the
acknowledgement
of this
plurality
of
perspectives,
the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences
provides
one model of this atomism of
points
of
view,
one in which the
perspective,
that
is,
the
SELF,
is a center to which
linguistically subjective
elements and
constructions are referred and in which
only
a
single
such center is
permitted
in an E. But
it is not a model that does not account for
multiple points
of view.
To
point
out the
possible plurality
of
perspectives
which is deducible from a
theory
in which
1E/1
SELF and
Priority
of
Speaker (or I) apply
to Es and not to TEXTS is
not,
however,
to
say
that the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences is a notational variant of a
"polyphonic theory
of the utterance." Both Ducrot's
"polyphonic theory"
and that of
unspeakable
sentences
confront,
in
part,
the same set of
facts,
which
may
be described-
an initial
description depending
on a
terminology
that further
analysis may
reveal to be
misleading-as
texts
containing
a
plurality
of
perspectives,
in some sense
yet
to be
defined. But the
relegation
of each
single
SELF
(as
one
theory's concept
of a
perspective,
counterposed
to the other's notion of
"voice")
to the confines of one or more E and the
Ducrot does not seem to be
familiar
either with the
fuller presentation of
these
principles
in
Unspeakable
Sentences or with the criticism
of
the dual voice
theory
in that context or in "The
Formal Coherence
ofRepresented Speech
and
Thought,"
but
only
with
my
1973 article
[
"Narrative
Style"].
5. Ducrot also insists on "une distinction
rigoureuse
entre l'enonce" et 'la
phrase"' [174].
But
if
the distinction is
appropriately
invoked at the
start,
he
unfortunately
does not establish an
equally rigorous system relating
these notions. This undermines his attack on 1 Ell SELF, since
hecanpresent
claims about "I' enonce" without
specifying
inwhat
way
this constitutes an
argument
against
a
theory of
Es,
which have the theoretical status
of
sentences.
24
impossibility
of more than one SELF
appearing
in a
single
E
yield
a
quite
different
picture
of the novelistic text than the one in the
position
Ducrot outlines.
(It
should be
pointed
out here that the
precision required
and made
possible by linguistic methodology
and the
formally representable
evidence of
language
allow one to
go beyond variously interpret-
able nonformal
accounts,
such as that of Bakhtin. It
may
not be
entirely possible
to decide
whether Bakhtin's
position
is closer to that of Ducrot or that of
Unspeakable
Sentences-
at times his
phrasing
seems to
permit
the
possibility
of two
points
of view in a
single
sentence,
and at other times it does not-because Bakhtin never
posed
the
question
in
these
terms.)6
What is decisive is that the
possibility
of shifts in
perspective
arises in the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences under
quite specific
circumstances. For Concordance of
Person,
the
principle defining
the
larger
unit of the
TEXT,
among
other
things,
as a
sequence
of
Es in which all referents of the first
person
remain
coreferential,
together
with
Priority
of
Speaker,
a
principle affecting
Es,
means that a TEXT
may
shift
perspectives only
when
it has no first
person.
The crucial condition for the
appearance
of a
style displaying
a
plurality
of
perspectives
thus
emerges
as the
possibility
of sentences
(technically,
of
Es)
with no
speaker,
that
is,
sentences in which the first
person
is
excluded,
in which that
central
authority
of the
personal
voice of the
speaker, interpreting, evaluating, expressing
and
bestowing
coherence and
unity
on a
discourse,7
is absent. In the
linguistic analysis
of that narrative
style
known in French as
style
indirect libre and which I call
"represented
speech
and
thought"
can be found the
syntactic arguments
that Es with a
third-person
SELF cannot also contain a first
person,
or otherwise
they
could not receive the
interpretation
in which
they represent
a
third-person point
of view. To account for such
sentences,
a
subjective perspective
must be isolated
independent
of the first
person
and
thus not be assumed
by
the authoritative
speaking
voice of
any
narrator. In this
way,
a
novel
may "represent" many
such
subjectivities,
each one
equal
from a
linguistic point
of
view,
without
giving
one
point
of view
priority
over the other (as would be the case if a
speaker's
voice were allowed to
occupy
the same E as a
third-person perspective),
and
"unity"
and
"meaning"
come to reside elsewhere than in the
continuous,
personal
voice
of a narrator
commenting
on and
guiding
the
reading.
Each
single perspective
remains
uninterpreted,
however,
at
any higher
level in the
language
of the text.
6. See
Reboulfor
a discussion
of
Bakhtin with
respect
to Ducrot's
polypony
and the
theory
of unspeakable
sentences. For another discussion
ofBakhtin
and Ducrot, see Moeschler. Ducrot' s
characterization
of
the
theory of unspeakable
sentences and the
logical
relations
holding among
its various claims
is,
at
any
rate,
inaccurate:
arrivee... au moment ou une
pluralit6
de
sujets pourraient
etre introduits dans
1'enonce,
Banfield formule deux
principes qui
ecartent la menace. Elle
pose
d'abord
qu'il
ne
peut
y avoir,
pour
un enonce donne,
qu'un
seul
sujet
de
conscience,
repoussant
d'emblee dans
le domaine de l'anormal les
exemples qui
feraient
apparaitre
une
pluralit6
de
points
de
vue
juxtaposes
ou
imbriques.
Et
ensuite,
afin de traiter les cas ou le
sujet
de conscience
n'est
pas
l'auteur
empirique
de
l'enonce,
elle
pose qu'il n'y
a
pas,
dans ces
enonces,
de
locuteur.
Certes,
je
ne
reprocherai pas
a Banfield-bien au contraire-de
distinguer
le
locuteur,
c'est a dire l'etre
designe
dans l'enonce comme son auteur
(au moyen, par
exemple,
de
marques
de la
premiere personne),
et le
producteur empirique,
etre
qui
n'a
pas
a etre
pris
en
compte par
une
description linguistique pr6occupee
seulement des
indications
semantiques
contenues dans l'enonce. Ce
queje reprocherai
a Banfield, c'est
la motivation
qui
1'amene a cette
distinction,
a savoir le souci de maintenir coute
que
cofte
l'unicit6 du
sujet parlant. [172]
7. Here I am
using
"discourse" in its
ordinary
sense. In
Unspeakable
Sentences the term is
reserved
for
that kind
of sequence of
Es,
that
is,
that kind
of
TEXT-a unit that is not
necessarily
written-which is marked
linguistically by
the
presence of
a
speaker
and an addresseelhearer.
diacritics / winter 1991 25
It is in a
quite
different fashion that a
multiplicity
of
points
of view are accounted for
in Ducrot.
Indeed,"polyphony"
for Ducrot does not refer to an unlimited number (in terms
of
any
limits
imposed by
the
grammar)
of
equal points
of
view-equal
because each has
as its domain an
equivalent grammatical
unit,
the
E,
in which each
plays
an
equivalent
role. For Ducrot
every
sentence is divided between several different
functions,
in a
way
reminiscent of the division between
speaker
and self in the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences
[see
"The Formal Coherence of
Represented Speech
and
Thought"].
But the
similarity only goes
so far. For the division between
speaker
and SELF does not endow
the
speaker
with the
independent
status of a full
speaking subject grammatically
incarnated in the first
person
and
separate
from the
third-person
SELF,
whose
perspective
is subordinated to it. The
speaker may appear only
when it is coreferential with the
unique
SELF. As
long
as a third
person subjectivity
is
represented,
no
speaking
voice can be
realized. In Ducrot's
account,
on the
contrary,
as well as in other versions of a "dual voice
theory,"
the text in which a
third-person subjectivity
is
represented
retains a
higher
authority
that
places
this
represented subjectivity
within a
system
of values-those
"spoken" by
the
"narrating voice"-higher
than itself.
I will not enter into a detailed refutation of Ducrot's
position, restricting myself
to the
more
important
task of
correcting
certain recurrent
misconceptions
about the differences
between the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences and what seems to me
yet
another version
of the
position
I have dealt with elsewhere under the name of "dual voice
theory."
There
I have answered the
objections
of
proponents
of this
theory
in detail.8
Moreover,
for these
objections
to
carry,
the
citing
of a few
purported counterexamples
does not
suffice,
as
any
version of scientific
methodology
will
point
out. A
countertheory
is
required,
one
accounting
for all the data the first
theory
accounts
for,
as well as for the
counterexamples.
Until
then,
the burden of
proof
is on
any counterproposal.
Ducrot, however,
more than
anyone, cavalierly
dismisses the detailed edifice of
rules,
arguments,
and
data-"je
signalerai rapidement
une recherche americaine"
[172]-he
wishes to
replace
with a
hastily
constructed "sketch." His
methodology
does not
rely
on
logical argumentation
or
the
marshaling
of a rich
body
of evidence.
Rather,
each
example
is
just
another in a
long
list of
examples
of
different,
supposedly subjective aspects
of the
text,
each different
example calling
for a new theoretical
construct,
invented ad hoc.
Indeed,
the distinctions
Ducrot makes seem
ultimately
to be undone
by
a
methodology sorely
in need of that tool
of
logical economy,
Occam's razor. A finite number of theoretical constructs and
principles
are not the means for Ducrot of
accounting
for a
great variety
of different
donndes,
which in turn
justify
these constructs and
rules; instead,
a number of isolated
examples
or
cases-quite
different notions than those of data and evidence-are the
excuse for the
proliferation
of
loosely
defined notions. Where is the Ducrot of the
elegantly argued
"Peu et un
peu"?
The Ducrot of the "sketch of
polyphony"
is not
really
elaborating
a
systematic theory argued
on the basis of
linguistic
evidence but is
making
a
loosely classificatory inventory
of
examples supposedly
inserted with
difficulty
in a
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences.
The issue of method and
argumentation
is not unconnected to that of the
unquestioned
assumptions
and
misconceptions
of Ducrot's attack on a
theory
of
language
centered on
a
single subject.
For his whole
countertheory
of
polyphony depends
on a series of
distinctions-between
"l'nonciateur,"
"le
locuteur,"
and "l'auteur
empirique,"
for
example-that,
if he is to make
good
the claim to have
replaced
a
speaker-centered
linguistics,
he must demonstrate are
empirically distinct,
that
is,
that
they
account for
quite
different and
clearly
defined
linguistic phenomena
in a consistent and
systematic way,
as
8.
Indeed, Ducrot's
critique
of
"Narrative
Style"
seems to
rely
on two
secondary sources;
it
is not
upon
his own
careful analysis of
the
theory of unspeakable
sentences that he bases his
objections,
but
upon
these two
essays [see
Ducrot 173].
26
well as
theoretically
distinct from the
single, unitary subject.
But the
gestures
he makes
toward a
theory
in which the
authority
of a dominant
speaking
voice is
challenged
never
transcend the idea of a
hierarchy
of
speaking subjects, reduplicated
at different levels. In
insisting,
for
instance,
on the distinction between "le
locuteur,
c'est-a-dire l'etre
designe
dans
l'6nonce
comme son auteur
(au moyen, par exemple,
de
marques
de la
premiere
personne),
et le
producteur empirique" [172]-an important
distinction-he cannot
conceive of the
latter,
the
"empirical producer
of the
text,"
except
on the model of another
speaker.
That the author's role in
writing,
in
composing,
need
not, cannot,
receive a
linguistic representation
unified around the notion of a voice does
not, however,
seem to
have occurred to
Ducrot,
and he can conceive of him
only
as in some
way "speaking"
in
the
text,
even if he never
says
"I,"
unless it is to
represent
a fictional
persona:
The author sets
before
us characters who in what I
call,following
Anne
Reboul,
a
'first speech"
exert a
linguistic
and
extralinguistic
action,
an action the
author
himself
does not take
responsibilityfor.
But the author
may,
in a "second
speech,"
address the
public through
the
characters,
either
by assimilating
himself
to such and such a one who he seems to make his
representative
... or
by thefact
that it seems
significant
that the characters
speak
and behave in such
and such
afashion. [205;
ed.
trans.]
When
discussing
Benveniste's notion of
histoire, Ducrot seems to allow an "enonce"
which "n'exhibe aucun auteur de la
parole."
But the
consequences
of this
possibility
are
never
pursued,
nor is it
explicitly integrated
into the
larger "polyphonic" system.
Thus,
the
author,
at one level
seemingly
silenced and banished from the text
by receiving
no
linguistic representation,
nevertheless returns to address an audience via a
"secondary
speech."
For this is
ultimately
a
metaphoric way
of
describing
certain
phenomena
for which
it is the task of
linguistics
and a
literary theory
aided
by linguistics
to find a more accurate
account. This includes an
analysis
of what it
might
mean to
represent
a
subjectivity
other
than
by expressing
it as a
speaker
would to a listener. The notion SELF is meant to
capture
such an
"unspoken"
notion of
subjectivity.
What follows from this
unspeakability
is that
subjectivity
is unmediated
by
another
interpreting
voice. The
inability
to conceive of the
subject
as other than a
speaking
voice
prevents
Ducrot from
grasping
the notion of
SELF,
that
is,
of a
subject
which is not also a
speaker,
crucial to the statement of 1
E/1
SELF:
It is this "1 Ell SELF"
theory
that
permits
the use
of
the
expression
"subject"
while
presupposing
as
self-evident
that there is a
being
who is the
unique
author
of
the statement
[enonce]
and
responsible for
what is said in the statement.
If
one has no
scruples
or reticence in
using
this
expression,
then,
it is because one
never even dreams
of calling
into
question
the
uniqueness of
the statement's
origins.
[189;
ed.
trans.]
But the
subject
is not
"responsible
for what is said" in the
Expression, according
to 1
E/
1
SELF;
he is the
point
of reference for a
specific
set of
linguistically subjective
elements
in the
E,
which is
thereby
taken to
represent
his
perspective.
Yet
nothing
is "said" in such
a
sentence;
an author who is not
directly
embodied in a first
person,
as a
speaker
is in his
speech, may manipulate language
in accordance with the
possibilities
inherent in it-and
at the same time
respecting
the limits it
imposes,
in order to
represent
a fictional
subjectivity-but
he does not
speak
in it. He
writes,rather,
and in
writing disappears.
This
inability
of Ducrot's to
get beyond
the
concept
of a
speaking
voice is tied to the
inability
to see revealed in the evidence of
language-in particular,
the evidence of narrative-a
vision of
language
other than the
egocentric
one,
a vision in which a
territory
is
opened
diacritics / winter 1991 27
up
within man no
longer governed by
man,
in which forms and constructions
appear
emptied
of all human
presence. Contrary
to Ducrot's
explicit
claim to have
destroyed
the
oneness of the
speaking subject,
it is
preserved
at
every
level. What seems to be the
unstated
conceptualization
behind this claim is one in which a certain unified
subject-
namely
the author-is divided into a number of
separate subjects,
each unified and
entire,
but each nevertheless
hierarchically
subordinated to the author in some undefined
semantic fashion. In this
manner,
phenomena
such as
irony
are
brought
back to and
contained within the familiar form of a
voice,
whereas no such
"explanation"
is available
to the
theory
of
unspeakable
sentences.
Indeed,
in this latter
theory irony
receives no
explanation.
But far from
being
a
deficiency
of this
theory,
this lack of
explanation
reflects the fact that
irony
is not a
linguistic phenomenon,
in the strict sense of that which
is
formally representable
within
linguistic theory,
and can be
represented
in it
only
in an
imaginary
and nonfalsifiable
way.9
For this
reason,
a formal
linguistic theory,
unlike
Ducrot's,
concedes that there are
aspects
of
linguistic performance
that
escape explana-
tion within its framework and
acknowledges
the existence of another
discipline
with a
long
and rich
history analyzing
those
aspects
of literature about which
linguistics
has
nothing
to
say-literary
criticism.
The
alternatives, therefore,
counterpose
not a
theory
centered on a
single unitary
subject
and a
polyphonic theory
but rather one in which a
plurality
of isolated and
noncommunicating points
of view or centers coexist in a narrative
style
in which there is
no
first-person, single
omniscient
voice,
imposing
a
personal unity,
and one in which
polyphony
consists in a
hierarchy
of
voices,
each conceived on the model of the
other, yet
one
providing
a
single, overarching
center.
Ultimately,
of
course,
the choice between the
two
competing
models will
depend
on
argumentation appealing
to the evidence. But
currently
the issues have taken on an
ideological coloring,
and it suffices to name one
position "unitary"
and the other
"polyphonic"
for it to
appear
that the sides are chosen. I
have tried to
suggest,
however,
that either side
might
choose to call itself
"polyphonic,"
so
long
as this term remains evocative rather than
clearly
defined. I have also tried to show
that the
position roughly
sketched
by
Ducrot is far from
being
the one
presenting
the
greatest challenge
to the traditional
egocentric
view of
language,
far from
being
the
counterpart
in
linguistics
of a
contemporary literary theory.
Instead,
it is
just
one of the
current
ways
in which the return to the traditional formulation is
negotiated.
On the other
hand,
a
theory
of the
language
of narrative in which a
configuration
of
sentences
possessing
no
subjective
center whatsoever
(sentences
of Narration
per se)
alternating
with sentences
possessing
different
third-person
centers of
subjectivity
but in
which there is no
single
center of
subjectivity holding together
the whole text is
by
no
means a
unique
and isolated one. I have
argued
elsewhere
[see "Ecriture,Narration
and
the Grammar of
French"]
that it is such a view of the novel taken as the
paradigmatic
case
of literature that
emerges
in the fifties and sixties in France and that
lays
the
empirical
groundwork
for the new
theory
of literature that came to mark those decades. Its central
tenet,
as we have
seen,
took various forms: the death of the author or the notion of an
6criture which was not the
personal
voice of a writer conceived of as a
speaker.
Its
principles
were to be
sought
in the
language
of the novel. Each in a
strikingly
similar
fashion, Barthes, Blanchot, Butor, Foucault,
and Deleuze saw a radical division between
9. In other
words, the
formula for irony
is
"saying
one
thing
and
meaning
another." But,
of
course, that
"meaning"
is other than the semantic
meaning assigned
to the sentences
by
the
grammar.
It is
for
this reason that ironic intent is
difficult
to
prove
in libel suits and also
for
this
reason that
irony
can be a tool
ofpolitical opposition
when the
consequences of
direct
opposition
seem too severe. For a
different position
on the
possibility
of
aformal
account
of irony,
see
Sperber
and Wilson, Relevance,
esp. 237ff. WhileSperber
and Wilson treat
ironyformally, they
nonetheless
place
it outside
formal
linguistics.
28
two
possibilities
of novelistic
style
that set the
language
of narrative off from that of the
epic,
that
is,
a narrative tied to the
spoken language.
Blanchot
spoke
of it as a division of
the il into an il/it and an
il/(s)he.
The first becomes "the
impersonal
coherence of a
story"
[135],
"the indifferent-difference that alters the
personal
voice" and "does not
speak
from
a centre"
[142];
the second "marks the intrusion of character: the novelist is the
person
who refuses to
say
'I' but
delegates
that
power
to other
people;
the novel is filled with little
'egos'" [135-36].
Blanchot's distinction
corresponds
to the division of labor
Barthes,
in
the
chapter "Writing
and the Novel" in
Writing Degree
Zero,
sees
performed by
the
narrative
past
(in French the
pass6 simple)
and what he calls the "third
person
of the
novel,"
that
is,
represented thought.
It is clear that for both Blanchot and Barthes these
divisions are
ultimately grammatical,
based
upon
differences of
person
and tense. In the
development
of the novel out of the
epic,
what are
essentially
two new forms of narrative
sentence are
accompanied by
the
gradual silencing
of the
storyteller
and the
development
of a form in which that
"experience
one does not recount but that is involved when one
recounts" creates a distance that "decentres the work"
[Blanchot 139].
The condition then of
"polyphony"
in this view-of a
plurality
of
subjectively
centered
worlds,
to use a
terminology
that avoids
suggesting
a
speaker-is
the
silencing
of the central
person
of an author as
narrator, who,
if he continues to
exist,
exists
somewhere outside the
language
of the
text,
"in another
dark,"
as Beckett
puts
it in
Company.
The result is the creation of
linguistic
units-nonembeddable
sentences,
or Es-that
owe their structure to some
otherprinciple,
some other center than the
speaker
and the time
and
place
of his
speech
act. In the case of sentences of
Narration,
those
appearing
in
French in
thepass6 simple,10
there is no
subjective temporal
and
spatial
center whatsoever.
Such sentences recount the
past by placing
discrete entities that are
past
events in a linear
order. But there is no
privileged
moment to which the others are
referred;
the order of time
is that of
history,
outside of
any experience.
One
recognizes
in this account the
conception
of time that
Bergson,
in L'essai sur les donn6es immn diates de la
conscience,
defines
by
contrast to la dur6e; it is "le
temps que
l'astronome introduit dans ses formules, le
temps
que
nos
horloges
divisent en
parcelles egales" [80].
This
explains why
the French
narrative
past,
as Benveniste has
pointed
out,
tolerates no deictics.
In the case of sentences of
represented thought,
the result is even
stranger
and more
counterintuitive. Such sentences are
organized,
so to
speak,
around
subjectivecenters
that
are not
egos
but
third-person
centers of
subjectivity,
each
representing spatially
and
temporally
a here and a now which does not
designate any speech
act.
Stranger still,
there
is evidence that versions of such sentences exist that are not
occupied by any third-person
SELF,
but nonetheless contain
spatial
and
temporal
centers.
They present "unoccupied
perspectives," linguistic representations
of a theoretical construct
belonging
to Bertrand
Russell's
theory
of
knowledge,
of
"possible worlds,"
in a Russellian
reading
of Leibniz.
Such sentences describe the sensibilia of the
physical
world as events
grouped
around an
empty
center." It
might
be said that this model "divides" or factors out the
subject
into
various
linguistically
defined
aspects
of
subjectivity,
some of which
may
occur in
isolation-the here/now of the
unoccupied perspective-and
others
obligatorily
in
conjunction
with this
spatial-temporal
center.12 There is no a
priori
reason for
deciding
that this account of
linguistic subjectivity
is less a "threat" to the oneness of the
subject
than
another,
since the
unity
of the
subject
is a notion that itself needs definition within
a
precise
and
empirically
testable
theory.
10. Such sentences
correspond
in crucial
ways
to Benveniste's notion
ofhistoire.
11. The notion
of
an
"unoccupied perspective"
as a
linguistic concept
is the
subject of
my
"Describing
the Unobserved: Events
Grouped
around an
Empty
Center."
12. See, in
particular, Unspeakable Sentences,
chapter
5,
for
a discussion
of reflective
and
nonreflective
consciousness.
diacritics / winter 1991 29
The world delineated in this
theory
is one created
by
a written
language
associated
historically
with
realism,
thatrealism
which,
carried to its
logical
conclusions,
became the
modernism of
Joyce
and
Woolf,
Proust and Beckett. It is a world-the one that sensation
yields-that
is
"fragmentary,
absurd, lawless,
but not
self-contradictory" [Russell 199].13
That world
presents
another
figure
of freedom than the Bakhtinian one. This is the
freedom of a
writing
in which the
writer,
poised
between two determinisms-a
personal
style,
an individual and blind
necessity,
on the one
hand,
and a
rule-governed language
on the other-discovers an arena of choice where he can
create,
liberated from the
orthodoxies of the
past only
at that
point
where he
relinquishes personal expression
and
ceases to inhabit and use his
language
as a
speaker.
Then,
at a certain remove from his
style
and his
language-"that
distance that distances even
him,
removing
him from the
centre,
since it
constantly
decentres the work"
[Blanchot 139]-he
discovers in it and with
a certain terror laws and truths whose mode of existence is
impersonal
and which it is no
longer appropriate
to
qualify
with the
possessive pronoun.
That
discovery
is of a
possibility
inherent in
language,
but it is the written
language
of narrative that reveals it.
"A
language
and a
style
are blind
forces;
a mode of
writing
is an act of historical
solidarity"
[Barthesl4].
We
recognize
here Barthes's ecriture-that existential freedom Barthes
claimed,
in
the face of Sartre's action and
personal engagement,
for an
engaged impersonal writing
rather than for an
engaged
writer. "Thus the choice
of,
and afterwards the
responsibility
for,
a mode of
writing point
to the
presence
of Freedom"
[16].
It is a freedom that must
engage
in an
untiring struggle against
that "doxa" which it itself creates.
"Writing
as
Freedom is therefore a mere moment. But this moment is one of the most
explicit
in
History,
since
History
is
always
and above all a choice and the limits of this choice"
[17].
Nor does this
conception
of freedom
reject
a
priori
the
figure
of the
carnivalesque
crowd
of voices
disrespectful
of laws and limits. It rather
recognizes
that the
nostalgia
for such
a freedom is a
longing
for
something imaginary,
for a freedom seized once and for
all,
a
freedom in which no choices are
required
because no real
consequences
would follow
from them. The freedom of
writing
is haunted
by
a
past
far from
prelapsarian-that past
of its own
creation,
its own
history,
which
continually
returns to remind it of the
unintended
consequences
of its own former
freedom,
to
deprive
its
present
of the old
possibilities.
Such
aconception
of
language
and literature offers no
imaginary
consolations. In this
period desperate
for
consolation,
a
period
that identifies itself with no more decisive label
than a
"post-"
which
only rejects
its own
past,
the hard vision of
literary theory
that was
inaugurated
in the
years
of the cold war and that lived
through
1968 is
pushed
back into
a
past
now
pronounced
irrelevant. But this does not
change
the fact that all the
possibilities
inherent in it have not
yet
been
exhausted,
despite
their
having
fallen out of fashion.
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diacritics / winter 1991 31