Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Review
Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1986), pp. 177-179
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772107
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 NEW BOOKS AT A GLANCE 177

infinite play. Merrell further claims that western texts, found by deconstruc-
tionists to be inherently undecidable, show that the deconstructive game has
been played by scientists, metaphysicists and artists all along: "science has
always been somewhat of a self deconstructing enterprise. Deconstruction itself,
like science, is the product of the Western World mind" (p. 137). In short,
whereas the sciences have long accepted the openness and centerlessness of all
systems, deconstructors are still trapped in the very logic they attempt to
deconstruct.

Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer (eds.), Rhetoric and Form: Deconstruction
at Yale. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1985. x + 255 pp.

The key theme of this collection is Temporality. It is the ambiguous temporality

inscribed in discourse and identified with the infinite play of presence/absence
and with iterability. Yale critics and critics of Yale deconstruction attempt in
this collection to "challenge deconstruction and demand its answerability to the
concerns of time, to the responsibilities and freedom of the local discourse
deconstruction has initiated," to define, in short, the ends and aims of
deconstruction. The authors relate in their introduction to the global applicability
of deconstruction which empties it, as a theoretical system, of any useful force.
As a non-falsifiable system deconstruction is chimerical, "a theory that never
was." It is crucial that deconstruction is seen as a practice capable of error, and
as such it must move erringly towards an end. The book opens with "The Search
for Grounds in Literary Study" by Hillis Miller, exploring the bases of
contemporary criticism. Geoffrey Hartman's reading of Wordsworth and a
portrait of de Man by Juliet F. MacCannell follow. The first section ends with a
symposium about Marxism and Deconstruction. The second part includes
rereadings of the Yale critics. Barbara Johnson analyzes the practice of the Yale
School as a Male School with a patent gender bias. Barbara Foley writes a
Marxist-Leninist critique of deconstruction questioning its function as a political
praxis and the affinity between Marx and Derrida. Robert Con Davis studies the
response of deconstruction to psychoanalysis, through Hartman's "Psycho-
analysis; The French Connection"; he sees in it a propensity for error typical of
this moment in American criticism. The third part of the book, dedicated to
theory and practice, opens with Herman Rapaport's discussion of the decon-
structive concern with the materiality of language, which traps it in what he calls
the "labyrinth of the ear." Robert Markley analyzes Hillis Miller's deconstructive
style concluding that Miller does not altogether reject the interpretative act but
only subjects it to a rhetoric of delay. Christopher Norris finds some surprising
similarities in the rhetorical positions of Empson and de Man. Ronald Schleifer
addresses the problem of referentiality in de Man and Greimas. The collection
ends with a comprehensive bibliography of works of Hartman, de Man and Hillis
Miller and with a list of essays dealing with their works.

Mario J. Valdes and Owen Miller (eds.), Identity of the Literary Text. Toronto
Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press. 1985. xxi + 330 pp.

In his concluding remarks to this collection of essays, M. Valdes explains the

importance of the concept of identity for literary criticism, claiming that a
particular definition of literary identity underlies the arguments of each school,
system or approach in literary theory. The editors of this volume (in the spirit of

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178 NEW BOOKS AT A GLANCE

their previously coedited collection, Interpretation in Narrative) have indeed

succeeded not only in providing a forum for a dialogue between conflicting
schools of thought about literature but also in provoking the participants to lay
bare their metacritical presuppositions. Contributions to the current topic are
classified under five subheadings. Under the category "Textuality and Inter-
textuality" the identity of the literary text coincides with formal aspects and
features of the text. Thus P. Nesselroth argues that indifferent utterances
(possessing no immanent literary features) are framed in a literary context (with
such formal markers as a signature, a title etc.) by virtue of which they gain a
cjtational (and hence poetical) value, liberating them from a referential link to
the objective world. M. Riffaterre also grounds his notion of literary identity on
specific textual features which control the way readers assign meaning to the
text. 0. Miller, contemplating intertextual relations among texts, arrives at a
more dynamic concept of identity. Miller mainly concentrates on two aspects of
intertextuality: on the degree of necessity of intertextual relations and on the
question of spatial or temporal priority of one text over another.
In the second section, on "Textual Deconstruction," Hillis Miller and P.
Parker offer deconstructive readings of specific literary texts. In Miller's
treatment the Thomas Hardy of "In Front of the Landscape" becomes a
forerunner of deconstructive doctrine since, for him, "the identity of the literary
text is this proliferating act of translation" (p. 88). Parker presents a reading of
Wuthering Heights claiming that in this quintessential Enlightment narrative
both moral concepts and novelistic properties which, in principle, confer
identity on the text, are being subverted. Within the framework of hermeneutics,
the literary identity of texts leans radically towards the end of the reader's
response to the text. C. Hamlin voices a fundamental skepticism with regard to
notions of identity as being "anti-hermeneutical." H.R. Jauss approaches the
problem of identity through his notion of the reader's horizons of understanding
(the level of understanding to be achieved in order to bridge the historical
distance between the otherness of the text and the interpreter's own horizon);
the identity of the literary text is that moment where the two horizons intersect.
P. Ricoeur suggests that a narrative text can only be identified with a concrete
(surface) level of poetic composition on which a theme or a topic is mixed with
low order universals in a configurational act. Ricoeur also brings into play the
dynamic identity of the narrative text which emerges where the world of the
text and the world of the reader meet. The fourth section, on "Analytical
Construction," includes a paper by L. Dolozel who defines identity as the
semantico-pragmatic individuality of texts (a restricted, circumscribed fictional
world and an idiosyncratic literary style). W. Iser proposes a definition of
identity in terms of a fictionalizing act where reality, being transposed into the
text refers to and yet transgresses reality. The act of fictionalizing thus produces
a new and distinct category of the imaginary endowed with a reality-like
determinacy. The last section in this volume is dedicated to ideological
perspectives on literary identity. One may wonder why Marxism, for instance, is
presented here as more of a pregiven ideology than is the Derridean dogma
which equally dictates modes of reading texts. M. Bonati defines literary identity
in terms of the basic hermeneutical operation of decoding texts. Granted that
meaning is universal and objective, readers can produce the appropriate decoding
by following the appropriate codes involved. G. Waite sees the issue of the
specificity of the literary text as "theoretically moot and politically irrelevant."
Waite broaches the question of textual identity through Nietzsche's concept of
style, while challenging the shattering of textual identity both by Nietzsche and
by his poststructuralist misreaders. R. Weimann overviews the cultural and
critical situation in which the question of identity has become problematic. He
proposes to see textual identity as a point of historical intersection where "the

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 NEW BOOKS AT A GLANCE 179

variegated energies and restraints of all the in-forming relationships are made to
clash and as far as that is possible, interact with one another" (p. 276).

Edward Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and

Subjectivity in Classical Film. Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Mouton
Publishers. 1984. xv + 246 pp.

In this exhaustive study of point of view in the classical film (the type of film
committed to the assumptions of subjective narration), the author explores the
set of conventions and codes by which cinematic texts are being "read." Point of
view and especially subjectivity (the production of space attributed to a
character) in cinematic representation are defined as textual constructions with
specific markers. Branigan departs from the distinction between narration
(inonciation) and narrative (inonce) but underscores their mutual interdepen-
dence. Representation is then divided into six elements: Origin - the source
from which representation is initiated; Vision - an activating force (a gaze)
which transforms an origin into representation; Time - the measure and logic of
a sequence or succession linking the units of representation; Frame - the
epistemological and perceptual boundary delineating what is actually represented
as conditioned by an origin; Mind - the principle of coherence underlying the
representation, the mental logic which motivates the appearance of objects
(dream, memory, etc.); Object - the narrative, the object of vision. These six
elements constitute the reading competence by which films are decoded. The
cinematic text is arranged in levels of narration, movements among which dictate
a changing distance between narration and narrative and help to distinguish
between types of camera shots. The author also describes cases of embedding in
the cinema; these are considered parallel to linguistic shifters, in that they
indicate the time, place and person relevant to the utterance. Every level of
narration/narrative is framed by a higher level narration, and only the boundary
of the artwork halts this play of signifiers (there is always a higher, and
ultimately unidentified act of seeing the object). In his forwarding words David
Bordwell tries to sort out Branigan's theoretical and methodological position by
enumerating various qualities of his study (it combines, according to him,
mimetic, functional, generative and cognitive approaches). An appendix surveys
orthodox theories of narration in literary and cinematic studies.

David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood
Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. London, Melbourne and
Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1985. xv + 506 pp.

With an apologetic tone, the authors of this thick volume defend in the preface
their choice of object, arguing that research into the Hollywood cinema as a
distinct mode of film practice (including both artistic and economic aspects of
production) is an indispensable part of grasping the cinematic art in its specific
cultural manifestations. Rather than compiling information about Hollywood
film making, the authors aim at a critical analysis of historical conditions which
generated and later standardized conventions of style and industrial production.
This analysis is grounded in the concept of "mode of film practice" which "can
historicize textual analysis and connect the history of film style to the history of
the motion picture industry" (p. xiv). Hollywood film making of 1917-1960,
manifests a unified mode of practice despite changes of norms and technology

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