Hello all,
In this mail I want to raise some problems I came across in my study.
Mainly I draw upon Foucaults The Order of Things and his shorter essays
on literature (The Thought of the Outside; A Preface to Transgression;
Language to Infinity; Madness - The Absence of Work; The Functions of
Literature (Interview) and the book on Roussel).
The first problem I have is, Can we talk of a literary discourse, of
literature as a discourse? And what does it imply to call literature a
discourse?
In The Order of Things, Foucault talks about the empirical sciences
(biology, economy, and philology) or rather about the three empiricities
(?) or empirical strata, that are, man as a living, working and speaking
being. Here, an experience which is problematized grounds a discourse.
In this view, literature would be a special way of speech or writing,
belonging to the last discourse. And yet not belonging" to it, since
literature parts from philology (last pages of chapter VIII; sorry I
only have a German edition - here, p. 365).
Literature according to The Order of Things is a counter-discourse like
psychoanalysis, ethnology, and structural linguistics (ch. X, part 5 and
6). Literature is a product of the modern episteme. Language as such
didnt exist in the classical episteme, that is, it didnt had a vital
force. It was there only to represent thoughts. For that purpose it has
to be transparent.
But what about classical literature? What about Dante or Diderot...? Do
we have to say that these works are as literature are on the edge of
there episteme as Cervantes Don Quixote for example? Can we generalize
the things Foucault said about Don Quixote and apply it to Dante,
Diderot and even more to realist novels (Hugo, Balzac, Scott, or even
Richardson, Austen...)?
Language reappears" or returns in modern thinking. It traverses the
modern episteme and its disposition or premises. In literature, language
borders to that, which no longer includes man. (Man as the
transcendental-empirical double, as subject and object of the same
knowledge, as the epistemological construct, that underlies modern
thinking.) And here, we see F.s exclusive understanding of literature
(or a stricter notion of lit.). Literature in the strict sense is not
that which represents action, an inner state, or a will, although
language reappears in the modern episteme exactly in this way (see the
Chapter about Bopp, VIII, 4). Language is bound to an active subject.
One speaks, because one acts. And speech expresses a will, a feeling.
Yet literature has to depart from this notion of language. Modern
thinking does not only produce literature as a certain relation between
language and things, it produces two different kinds of literature. One
that lies within the episteme, so to speak, literature as a expression
of an inner self. Literature as a part of the sciences of man, bound to
the dispositions of the modern episteme (double, Cogito and Unthought,
retreat and return of the origin). Literature as a science like
philology and grammar, that raises questions of identity (genre),
rhetorical strategies, objectivity and subjectivity... And another
notion of literature which criticizes the modern episteme, or episteme
in general. See the comments on Don Quixote (ch. III, 1). He describes
it as the first modern literary text.
Language is freed from the representative function and gives to it a
kind of raw Being. Which sounds a bit messianistic. And it holds to a
metaphysics of suspicion, that is, the real" being of literature is
disguised not only by classical thinking (or Renaissance thinking), but
also by Foucaults notion of this thinking and then juxtaposed by a
real" and raw being.
In modern Literature language destroys the old" relation with things
and enters in a solitude sovereignty". Autonomy and sovereignty is
difficult to grasp in this relation. I think it points to the ontology
of literature, which F. elaborates in the essay Language to Infinity".
When the (historical-)epistemological relation between language and
things ins destroyed (no matter whether similtude, representation or
thinking man), two different experiences can constitute itself - madness
and poetry / literature.
Thus, literature has to destroy this relation, which is presupposed by
the episteme. It has to traverse the epistemological disposition.
Instead of life, work, and language the counter-sciences or
counter-discourses deal with death, pleasure, and language-as-law or
language-as-rule (ch. X, 5).
In Archaeology of Knowledge, F. shifts to discursive formations and
elaborates the conditions of these formations, the conditions of
statements. Statements were seen as the existential functions for
discursive formations. However, what does it mean to talk about
literature as such kind of discursive formation?
I think, that would not be in correspondence with the statements of The
Order of Things. Therefore we must distinguish the concept of literature
used by Foucault in three or (including the change of perspective in the
last years of F.s life) four different ways to think literature.
Im using some hints given in an interview about The Functions of
Literature (in: Michel Foucault. Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Ed. by
L. Kritzman. Routledge 1988). (Maybe someone knows other sources,
interviews, essays or articles where Foucault talks about literature,
except his famous essays in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice? I have
heard about an round table discussion, published in Tel Quel, yet its
in French.)
The first notion sees literature as a discursive formation. Here,
literature functions as a literary discourse. This notion refers to all
text which we call literature". It refers to the canon literature.
This institution of literature, Foucault observes, is profoundly linked
with the institution of university. Today both institutions tend to
merge completely. Nowadays a writer is surrounded by students writing
their theses on his work; on the other side writers live mainly by
teaching and lecturing (mainly on poetics).
And we also know that avant-garde lit. Is read only by university
teachers and students.
This has odd results. On the one side lit. is linked to pedagogy
(everyone in school has to read classical lit., which is more than
hundred or two hundred years old and involves a forgotten" episteme,
which f.e. subscribes to lit. A educational and moral function (read
Schiller, Goethe: lit. as a way to educate people); on the other side,
university - the place of pedagogy - is the almost only place where
avant-garde literature is been read. And we all know that modern or
avant-garde literature breaks from classical concepts of education and
moral.
Thus, in order to analyse the function of literature, we have to
concentrate 1) on the interplay of selection (what are the criteria to
call some text literary and other not?), 2) sacralization (how, by whom,
under what circumstances literary texts get a special status - absolute
speech, the idea that you cannot say it in other words, that you cannot
paraphrase literature, the claim of totality and universal konwledge,
that is, literature as a field of knowledge that cuts across all other
discourses, binds them together, select certain knowledge; and 3)
institutional validation, of which the university is both the operator
and the receiver, as F. said.
The second notion involves literature as a counter-discourse or
counter-practice. It refers to the notion of lit. F. develops in The
Order Of Things. It involves that literature that departs from philology
and the interiority of the modern episteme. Here, we have to mention
Mallarmi, Nietzsche, Artaud, de Sade, Kafka, Hvlderlin...
Literature is language that says nothing but is never silent.
It is a kind of literature that demands another criticism as that of
commentary or structural categorization. It breaks with the old"
notions of literature as an absolute speech with includes universal
knowledge (see Encyclopedia), literature as expressivity and literature
as an expression of interiority.
The third notion thinks literature as the thought of the outside". This
relates to F.s essays on Blanchot and Bataille. F. thinks literature as
a transgression of social practices. This notion, I think, even
transgresses the term literature. It rather relates to thinking".
In The Functions of Literature, F. says that Nietzsche, Bataille,
Blanchot, Klossowski were ways of escaping philosophy... there was
something that, while setting out from philosophy, brought it into play
and into question, emerged from it, then went back to it..."
However, I wonder what does philosophy mean in this context? Does it
rather relate to discurive formations (the discursive formation of
literature which is enclosed within the modern episteme, even within
representation?
Does philosophy points to the modern doubles?
The fourth notion involves literary texts as self-practices. It deals
with literature in connection with ways of self-techniques like
confession, self-presentation and so on (here, it would be helpful to
apply Foucaults later thoughts to autobiography, yet I havent
elaborate on that until now) and raises ethical questions as F. does at
the end of his life.
At the end, I want to pose some questions in relation to F.s essays.
Is it possible to distinguish a literature of representation (as
reflection of an inner self), a literature according to principles of
realism or naturalism as a specific discursive formation from a notion
of modern literature as an outside of such a formation, that is,
literature as a thinking the exteriority, as a transgression, even of
the very discursive formation? Or can we analyse modern literature as a
discursive formations as well?
When the twentieth century has discovered categories of exhaustion (or
rather expenditure), excess, and transgression, is it possible to think
those texts within discursive formations or would they even transgress
those formations?
Wouldnt it be better to distinguish a discursive formation of modern
lit. and a gesture of transgression, that is a thinking of/the outside?
How we have to read the term exteriority?
I suggest, to read it in relation to the subject and its interiority.
Thus, literature is no longer an expression of an inner self, of a dead,
a will, or a thought. It leaves the words for their own (a kind of
objective literature as in Robbe-Grillets work), it develops
homonymical plays (as in Roussel and Leiris), it stresses the absence of
Work" (as madness does, or as in texts of Mallarmi and Blanchot).
Does someone has more ideas in relation to that?
If there is a new critique (in reference to the French Nouvelle
Critique", Barthes, Blanchot, Tel Quel-Group) which reads literary texts
as a transgression of literary discoursivity and of the modern episteme
described in The Order of Things, thus which reads literary texts as
going to the end (or border, condition) of representation, and as
bringing into play death (in opposite to life and the
empirico-transcendental double), pleasure (which remains the Unthought)
and language-as-law (or language-as-rule or as la rhgle du jeu), where
every meanings starts and from where it is set into play, if there is
such a new critique, shouldnt it read all texts like this? If we can
think death, pleasure and language-as-rule, we ought to be able to read
every text according to that conditions? Thus can we still talk of
classical literature (or realism", naturalism") and of modern
literature?
Wouldnt a reading, that couldnt apply this criteria mentioned above to
any text, exclusive and normative?
Ill stop here. I hope these reflections will start a little discussion
or dissemination".
Ill looking forward hearing from you,
all the best
Arne
In this mail I want to raise some problems I came across in my study.
Mainly I draw upon Foucaults The Order of Things and his shorter essays
on literature (The Thought of the Outside; A Preface to Transgression;
Language to Infinity; Madness - The Absence of Work; The Functions of
Literature (Interview) and the book on Roussel).
The first problem I have is, Can we talk of a literary discourse, of
literature as a discourse? And what does it imply to call literature a
discourse?
In The Order of Things, Foucault talks about the empirical sciences
(biology, economy, and philology) or rather about the three empiricities
(?) or empirical strata, that are, man as a living, working and speaking
being. Here, an experience which is problematized grounds a discourse.
In this view, literature would be a special way of speech or writing,
belonging to the last discourse. And yet not belonging" to it, since
literature parts from philology (last pages of chapter VIII; sorry I
only have a German edition - here, p. 365).
Literature according to The Order of Things is a counter-discourse like
psychoanalysis, ethnology, and structural linguistics (ch. X, part 5 and
6). Literature is a product of the modern episteme. Language as such
didnt exist in the classical episteme, that is, it didnt had a vital
force. It was there only to represent thoughts. For that purpose it has
to be transparent.
But what about classical literature? What about Dante or Diderot...? Do
we have to say that these works are as literature are on the edge of
there episteme as Cervantes Don Quixote for example? Can we generalize
the things Foucault said about Don Quixote and apply it to Dante,
Diderot and even more to realist novels (Hugo, Balzac, Scott, or even
Richardson, Austen...)?
Language reappears" or returns in modern thinking. It traverses the
modern episteme and its disposition or premises. In literature, language
borders to that, which no longer includes man. (Man as the
transcendental-empirical double, as subject and object of the same
knowledge, as the epistemological construct, that underlies modern
thinking.) And here, we see F.s exclusive understanding of literature
(or a stricter notion of lit.). Literature in the strict sense is not
that which represents action, an inner state, or a will, although
language reappears in the modern episteme exactly in this way (see the
Chapter about Bopp, VIII, 4). Language is bound to an active subject.
One speaks, because one acts. And speech expresses a will, a feeling.
Yet literature has to depart from this notion of language. Modern
thinking does not only produce literature as a certain relation between
language and things, it produces two different kinds of literature. One
that lies within the episteme, so to speak, literature as a expression
of an inner self. Literature as a part of the sciences of man, bound to
the dispositions of the modern episteme (double, Cogito and Unthought,
retreat and return of the origin). Literature as a science like
philology and grammar, that raises questions of identity (genre),
rhetorical strategies, objectivity and subjectivity... And another
notion of literature which criticizes the modern episteme, or episteme
in general. See the comments on Don Quixote (ch. III, 1). He describes
it as the first modern literary text.
Language is freed from the representative function and gives to it a
kind of raw Being. Which sounds a bit messianistic. And it holds to a
metaphysics of suspicion, that is, the real" being of literature is
disguised not only by classical thinking (or Renaissance thinking), but
also by Foucaults notion of this thinking and then juxtaposed by a
real" and raw being.
In modern Literature language destroys the old" relation with things
and enters in a solitude sovereignty". Autonomy and sovereignty is
difficult to grasp in this relation. I think it points to the ontology
of literature, which F. elaborates in the essay Language to Infinity".
When the (historical-)epistemological relation between language and
things ins destroyed (no matter whether similtude, representation or
thinking man), two different experiences can constitute itself - madness
and poetry / literature.
Thus, literature has to destroy this relation, which is presupposed by
the episteme. It has to traverse the epistemological disposition.
Instead of life, work, and language the counter-sciences or
counter-discourses deal with death, pleasure, and language-as-law or
language-as-rule (ch. X, 5).
In Archaeology of Knowledge, F. shifts to discursive formations and
elaborates the conditions of these formations, the conditions of
statements. Statements were seen as the existential functions for
discursive formations. However, what does it mean to talk about
literature as such kind of discursive formation?
I think, that would not be in correspondence with the statements of The
Order of Things. Therefore we must distinguish the concept of literature
used by Foucault in three or (including the change of perspective in the
last years of F.s life) four different ways to think literature.
Im using some hints given in an interview about The Functions of
Literature (in: Michel Foucault. Politics, Philosophy, Culture. Ed. by
L. Kritzman. Routledge 1988). (Maybe someone knows other sources,
interviews, essays or articles where Foucault talks about literature,
except his famous essays in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice? I have
heard about an round table discussion, published in Tel Quel, yet its
in French.)
The first notion sees literature as a discursive formation. Here,
literature functions as a literary discourse. This notion refers to all
text which we call literature". It refers to the canon literature.
This institution of literature, Foucault observes, is profoundly linked
with the institution of university. Today both institutions tend to
merge completely. Nowadays a writer is surrounded by students writing
their theses on his work; on the other side writers live mainly by
teaching and lecturing (mainly on poetics).
And we also know that avant-garde lit. Is read only by university
teachers and students.
This has odd results. On the one side lit. is linked to pedagogy
(everyone in school has to read classical lit., which is more than
hundred or two hundred years old and involves a forgotten" episteme,
which f.e. subscribes to lit. A educational and moral function (read
Schiller, Goethe: lit. as a way to educate people); on the other side,
university - the place of pedagogy - is the almost only place where
avant-garde literature is been read. And we all know that modern or
avant-garde literature breaks from classical concepts of education and
moral.
Thus, in order to analyse the function of literature, we have to
concentrate 1) on the interplay of selection (what are the criteria to
call some text literary and other not?), 2) sacralization (how, by whom,
under what circumstances literary texts get a special status - absolute
speech, the idea that you cannot say it in other words, that you cannot
paraphrase literature, the claim of totality and universal konwledge,
that is, literature as a field of knowledge that cuts across all other
discourses, binds them together, select certain knowledge; and 3)
institutional validation, of which the university is both the operator
and the receiver, as F. said.
The second notion involves literature as a counter-discourse or
counter-practice. It refers to the notion of lit. F. develops in The
Order Of Things. It involves that literature that departs from philology
and the interiority of the modern episteme. Here, we have to mention
Mallarmi, Nietzsche, Artaud, de Sade, Kafka, Hvlderlin...
Literature is language that says nothing but is never silent.
It is a kind of literature that demands another criticism as that of
commentary or structural categorization. It breaks with the old"
notions of literature as an absolute speech with includes universal
knowledge (see Encyclopedia), literature as expressivity and literature
as an expression of interiority.
The third notion thinks literature as the thought of the outside". This
relates to F.s essays on Blanchot and Bataille. F. thinks literature as
a transgression of social practices. This notion, I think, even
transgresses the term literature. It rather relates to thinking".
In The Functions of Literature, F. says that Nietzsche, Bataille,
Blanchot, Klossowski were ways of escaping philosophy... there was
something that, while setting out from philosophy, brought it into play
and into question, emerged from it, then went back to it..."
However, I wonder what does philosophy mean in this context? Does it
rather relate to discurive formations (the discursive formation of
literature which is enclosed within the modern episteme, even within
representation?
Does philosophy points to the modern doubles?
The fourth notion involves literary texts as self-practices. It deals
with literature in connection with ways of self-techniques like
confession, self-presentation and so on (here, it would be helpful to
apply Foucaults later thoughts to autobiography, yet I havent
elaborate on that until now) and raises ethical questions as F. does at
the end of his life.
At the end, I want to pose some questions in relation to F.s essays.
Is it possible to distinguish a literature of representation (as
reflection of an inner self), a literature according to principles of
realism or naturalism as a specific discursive formation from a notion
of modern literature as an outside of such a formation, that is,
literature as a thinking the exteriority, as a transgression, even of
the very discursive formation? Or can we analyse modern literature as a
discursive formations as well?
When the twentieth century has discovered categories of exhaustion (or
rather expenditure), excess, and transgression, is it possible to think
those texts within discursive formations or would they even transgress
those formations?
Wouldnt it be better to distinguish a discursive formation of modern
lit. and a gesture of transgression, that is a thinking of/the outside?
How we have to read the term exteriority?
I suggest, to read it in relation to the subject and its interiority.
Thus, literature is no longer an expression of an inner self, of a dead,
a will, or a thought. It leaves the words for their own (a kind of
objective literature as in Robbe-Grillets work), it develops
homonymical plays (as in Roussel and Leiris), it stresses the absence of
Work" (as madness does, or as in texts of Mallarmi and Blanchot).
Does someone has more ideas in relation to that?
If there is a new critique (in reference to the French Nouvelle
Critique", Barthes, Blanchot, Tel Quel-Group) which reads literary texts
as a transgression of literary discoursivity and of the modern episteme
described in The Order of Things, thus which reads literary texts as
going to the end (or border, condition) of representation, and as
bringing into play death (in opposite to life and the
empirico-transcendental double), pleasure (which remains the Unthought)
and language-as-law (or language-as-rule or as la rhgle du jeu), where
every meanings starts and from where it is set into play, if there is
such a new critique, shouldnt it read all texts like this? If we can
think death, pleasure and language-as-rule, we ought to be able to read
every text according to that conditions? Thus can we still talk of
classical literature (or realism", naturalism") and of modern
literature?
Wouldnt a reading, that couldnt apply this criteria mentioned above to
any text, exclusive and normative?
Ill stop here. I hope these reflections will start a little discussion
or dissemination".
Ill looking forward hearing from you,
all the best
Arne