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Review

Author(s): Dean Vasil


Review by: Dean Vasil
Source: SubStance, Vol. 12, No. 4, Issue 41 (1983), pp. 103-106
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684628
Accessed: 31-12-2015 11:41 UTC

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Reviews 103

Marxist writers? Perhaps Jameson would not be surprised that his procedure would
allow me to prove thatthe explicitpronouncementsof, say, Frisch, Baraka, and particu-
larly Brecht, only slightlycover a wildly Dionysian, anti-social and nihilistic vision.

Alice N. Benston
University of Rochester

and Since: FromLivi-Straussto Derrida. Galaxy Books,


Sturrock, John, ed. Structuralism
661. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981. 190 pp.

and Its Aftermath:


Structuralism Thereis no Third, butNihilism
It is thepresuppositions whichthethinker bears
withhimas a person,oftenat a levelofwhichhe
is unawareor which,whenhe is aware of it, he
is unable to specify,thatprovidetheframework
withinwhichand accordingtowhichhe interprets
whathe observes.
- PhilipSherrard
In whatever elementitmoves,thethought ofman
alwaysencounterstheexhaustingtaskofreturn-
ingthought tothethinker;whateveris saidofman,
it is a man who says it.
- Mikel Dufrenne,quoted in Mark Poster,
ExistentialMarxismin PostwarFrance,p. 315.
This importantvolume, whose "aim," says its editorJohn Sturrock,"is to elucidate,
withoutfearor favour,the work of fiveFrench thinkerscommonlyassociated with'struc-
turalism' " (p. 3), is a collection of essays in the thought of Levi-Strauss, Barthes,
Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida by the anthropologist Dan Sperber, the editor who is
himselfa literarycritic, the historian of ideas Hayden White, and the literarycritics
Malcolm Bowie and Jonathan Culler respectively.The particular aim of his Introduc-
tion to these thinkers,Sturrock informsus, is "to determine what the common ground
is between the five of them" (p. 3), or to approach a definitionof that "structuralism"
with which they are all associated. Based on Saussurian linguistics and the arbitrary
nature of the conjunctionbetween signifierand signified,structuralismassumes, accord-
ing to Sturrock,that "language is a systemnot of fixed,unalterable essences but oflabile
forms"(p. 10), and so is not the "medium of man's thought"but the very "thought"of
man itself."It is not something we each bring with us into the world at birth," writes
Sturrock, "but an institutioninto which we are gradually initiated in childhood as the
most fundamental element of all in our socialization. Language can thus be described
as impersonal, it exceeds us as individuals" (p. 12). Hence it is not the instrumentof
man, but that of which man is the instrument,a system of which he is but one of the
forms, or the mere medium through which all of the others and the system itselffind
expression (p. 13). And so we may add, as we paraphrase Sturrock,that afterthe death
of God and against "all philosophies of individualism" that remain, structuralismpro-
claims "thedisappearance of the subject"(p. 13), and the death of man. "Si Dieu n'existe
pas," Sartre could stillwrite,"il y a au moins un &trechez qui l'existenceprecede l'essence"
(L'Existentialismeest un humanisme,p. 21). "Or si Dieu n'existe pas," would retortthe

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104 Reviews

present thinkers,"il n'y a meme plus cet tre." "Structuralism,"as Sturrock says, "has
carried its strong bias against essentialism so far as somehow to deny the existence of
human beings altogether"(p. 13). But what then, we may ask, is the origin of language?
Sturrockwould seem to answer this question with as "theological"a notion as that "self"
ofwhichFoucault is so critical(p. 15): "in the beginning,"we may assume, "was the word."
Indeed, but given that this "common ideology" is clearly one "of dissolution, of dis-
belief in the ego" (p. 15), and of nihilism, in the name of what does it speak in "chal-
lenging," with Foucault at its head, "the power thathas been exercised by those in intel-
lectual authority in every society and at all times, to lay down what may or may not
be said" (p. 14), if not of anything more than power itself? Like Barthes and Derrida,
remarks Sturrock, Foucault "is another who wishes not to occupy a determinate posi-
tion along the ideological or intellectualspectrum,but to remain freelymobile, turning
up now in this part of the landscape, now in that, in order to question various of the
historical and contemporaryformsof knowledge and power without being himself sub-
mittedto questioning"(p. 4; my italics). But Lacan, too, we are told,"is a man offamously
arrogant independence who prefersothers to follow and be influenced by him, rather
than to appear himselfto be followingor even associating with others"(p. 4). At least
four of the reigning pentarchy, then, would seem not to have subscribed to its collec-
tive definitionof man as "an unstable, replaceable formwithina soulless system"(p. 13),
doubtless as exceptions confirmingthe proverbial rule. But some of them, in any case,
may well suspect that power is never "blind," that the very notionof power can only
be conceived by a rational being, not an "unstable form"; and that when this rational
being (or the one we call man) is its victim, he knows that he sees it in the face, not
of what is notrational, but of what is irrational: in the face, that is, of the historythat
denies him. But it would seem that they, in their own denial of man, have themselves
become a part of the historythey claim to oppose. If not, then of this, in all, we may
be certain: they are flatlyillogical in saying that he is a mere form, for in saying so
of him they say it of themselves, and therebyundermine the "authority"of their own
statement. But as Sturrockwould agree, it is the authorityof every other that they seek
to undermine, and not of their own, and this in the nameof their own, in the name,
we may add, of power.
My initial critique, therefore,one of what is otherwise an admirably lucid exposi-
tion of a major movement in the historyof ideas, as well as one, implicitly,of thatmove-
ment itself,is twofold, and as follows: they fail to answer the question of the origin
of language in the absence of the human person, and to justifytheir own will, in that
absence, "to reject the authoritarian or unequivocal interpretationof signs" (p. 15).
But Levi-Strauss would appear to be more consistentthan his colleagues, forgiven
the premise that "the configurationof our semantic space is never stable," he "presents
his own interpretationsof Amerindian mythsas possibleinterpretationsand leaves the
way open foralternativeones to follow. . . . Meanings may and should coexist,"affirms
Sturrock,"thereis no call forone to be exalted at the expense of others. The more mean-
ing there is in our world the better"(p. 15). And yet ifall meanings are thus equivalent,
how is it that there can be any meaning, or anything but the mutual meaninglessness
of meanings? In an essay hardly uncritical of L6vi-Strauss, but in which he here finds
himselfto be in complete agreement with the latter, Sperber openly declares that there
is no meaning, only a "meaningful"meaninglessness. "There areno signifieds,"he writes.
"Everything is meaningful, nothing is meant" (p. 28; his italics). But if it is true, as
Sturrock says in a far less critical essay on Barthes, that the latter "would like us to
understand how texts mean before we start worryingabout what they mean" (p. 58),

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Reviews 105

we may suggest that we cannot begin to understand "how" they mean but by asking
precisely"what it is" that they mean. For Barthes as forall of his colleagues, however,
"what" they mean is precisely nothing.But this answer is logically consistent with the
central tenet of structuralism,a tenet revealing it to be but another form of modern
materialism and so not quite as philosophically original as it would seem to have us
signifyby the words of a currentcatch phrase: namely, that "man is dead." To say so
of him is to say it of his "mind," and of what Sturrocktermsthat "mental aspect of lan-
guage" we call the signified (Introduction, p. 6).
But again, if it is true that "man is dead," as Foucault, the author of this phrase,
has said thathe is, then the same is true of Foucault himself,so that in seekingto under-
mine the authorityof what "man" says, he undermines the authorityof what he says
as well. "But the authorityof his own discourse remains unspecified," observes White
in his carefullycritical and most illuminating essay on Foucault. "What, we may still
ask, is its modality, its 'right',and its relationship to the order of discourse of the time
and place in which it arises" (p. 91)? This question, indeed, is central, but we may also
ask the key and related one posed by Bowie in his more openly critical, if far more
supportive essay on Lacan: "Why set in motion such an elaborate machineryof persua-
sion"- for such are the discourses of both Lacan and Foucault - "when there is strictly
no one to persuade?" Bowie then answers, with referenceto Lacan, that "we can feel
his arguments being traversed by . . . personalpredilections" (p. 148; my italics).
Derrida feels the same way, not only as he reads Lacan, but as he reads all of his
colleagues, and to the extentthatwe now give his workthe name of"post-structuralism,"
or the effort,as Sturrock defines it, "to read carefullythe theoreticalwork of his con-
temporariesand expose certain of theirunexamined assumptions"(Introduction, p. 4).
This critique, says Culler in his highly informative,if somewhat uncritical essay on
Derrida, "bears on their failure to scrutinize with sufficientrigour the status of their
own discourse, as Derrida himself,"Culler assures us, "is continually doing. He is not
asking foran 'awareness' of the problematical nature of theirenterprise,forthat,"says
Culler, "theyhave in abundance. . . . This awareness, Derrida suggests, should issue
in a rigorous questioning of theirown categories which will serve to displace those cate-
gories" (p. 175). But by what will it displace, or by what will it replace them, if not
by othercategories, born, like those theyreplace, of "personal predilections,"and these
of human presuppositions? Derrida does not yet seem to have answered this question,
doubtless because presuppositions are all "too" human, or too "properly"human.
Both he and his colleagues, however, have desperately tried to be more consistent
than Sartre. "Nous voulons dire seulement que Dieu n'existe pas," wrote the latter,"et
qu'il fauten tirerjusqu'au bout les consequences" (op. cit., pp. 33-34). Yet unlike them,
and for all his own stricturesagainst "human nature," Sartre did affirmthe existence
of human consciousness and even of its categories, be they, as he said, "de purs n6ants
substantialis6s"(L'Etreetle Niant, p. 269). But the battle cry of structuralismand, and in
its aftermath,namely, that "man is dead," would seem to recall that of Feuerbach, of
whom Camus wrote as follows:"Contre Hegel lui-meme, Feuerbach affirmera,en effet,
que l'homme n'est que ce qu'il mange et il resumera ainsi sa pensee et I'avenir: 'La
v6ritable philosophie est la n6gation de la philosophie. . . . Nulle philosophie est ma
philosophie' " (Essais, 554). But the name of this philosophy is nihilism, not so new,
and as old as any. And yet, it is the reappearance in our own time, the reappearance,
that is, within the structuralistmovement of our time, of an almost willfulnegation
of philosophy, of man as philosopher, and, as philosopher, of man as himself,to which
the presentvolume, howeverwell, thoughwithfarmore favorthan any fear,it elucidates

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106 Books Received

thethoughtofthatmovement,conspicuouslyfailsto addressitself;and thisit failsto


do, perhaps,withfarmore fearthanany favor.

Dean Vasil
of
University Wisconsin-Madison

BOOKS RECEIVED

Abel, Elizabeth,ed. WritingandSexualDifference.Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1982.


Bell, Michael. The WorldfromBrown's Lounge:An Ethnography ofBlackMiddle-ClassPlay.Urbana:
Universityof IllinoisPress, 1982.
Bell, Vereen M. Robert Lowell:Nihilistas Hero.Cambridge:Harvard UniversityPress, 1983.
Blanchot,Maurice. TheSpaceofLiterature. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln:University of Nebraska
Press, 1983.
Blau, Herbert.BloodedThought: Occasions
ofTheatre.New York: Performing ArtsJournalPublica-
tions,1982.
Clark, Michael. MichelFoucault:An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1983.
Derrida,Jacques.Margins ofPhilosophy.Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University ofChicagoPress,
1983.
Ducrot,Oswald and Todorov,Tzvetan. Encyclopedic Dictionary oftheSciences
ofLanguage.Trans.
CatherinePorter.Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress, 1983.
Eagleton,Terry. TheRapeofClarissa:Writing, SexualityandtheClassStrugglein SamuelRichardson.
Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1982.
Grace,Sherrill.TheVoyage Never
that Ends:Malcolm Lowry's Fiction.
Vancouver:University ofBritish
Columbia Press, 1982.
Green,Geoffrey. Criticism
Literary andtheStructures
ofHistory: ErichAuerbachandLeoSpitzer.Lincoln:
Universityof NebraskaPress, 1982.
Greimas,A. J. and Courtes,J. Semiotics andLanguage:An Analytical Trans. L. Crist,
Dictionary.
D. Patte and others.Bloomington:Indiana UniversityPress, 1983.
Hanning,Robertand Rosand, David, eds. Castiglione: TheIdealandtheRealinRenaissance Culture.
New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1983.
Huet, Marie-H6lkne. theRevolution:
Rehearsing TheStaging ofMarat'sDeath,1793-1797.Trans.Robert
Hurley. Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1983.
Kuhn, Reinhard.Corruption inParadise:TheChildin Western Literature.
Hanover:University ofNew
England/Brown UniversityPress, 1982.
McCarthy,Mary Susan. BalzacandhisReader.Columbia: Universityof MissouriPress, 1982.
Milosz, Czeslaw. The Witness ofPoetry.Cambridge:Harvard UniversityPress, 1983.
Nichols,StephenG., Jr. Romanesque Signs:EarlyMedievalNarrative andIconography.New Haven:
Yale UniversityPress, 1983.
Price,Martin.FormsofLife:Character andMoralImagination intheNovel.New Haven: Yale Univer-
sityPress, 1983.
Schneiderman,Stuart.JacquesLacan: TheDeathofan Intellectual Hero.Cambridge:HarvardUni-
versityPress, 1983.
Shaffer,E. S., ed. Comparative A Yearbook,
Criticism: vol. 4. New York:CambridgeUniversity Press,
1982.
Sussman,Henry.TheHegelian
Aftermath:
ReadingsinHegel,Kierkegaard,
Freud, andJames.Balti-
Proust,
more:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress, 1982.

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