Hassan 1988

Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Quest for the Subject: The Self in Literature

Author(s): Ihab Hassan
Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 29, No. 3, Contemporary Literature and Contemporary
Theory (Autumn, 1988), pp. 420-437
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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QUEST FOR THE SUBJECT:
THE SELF IN LITERATURE
Ihab Hassan
The news is now stale:theoryand ideologyhave becomethe rage on

the Americanacademicscene- "rage"and"scene"in everysense.Ideas
clash; slogans fill the air; heresiesfollow heresies,become dogmas
withina decade.Thecriticallaityis in disarray.Sometimes,the smoke
clears, the alarumssubside, revealingthe abstractbody of a critic
signalingto us through the flames. Some spectatorscry, "Chaos,
anarchy, nihilism!"Others rejoice bravelyin the fray, or whisper
seductivelywith Barthes,"HappyBabel."Othersstilltruculentlypro-
claim, "Everythingis ideology, everythingpolitics!"How, then, see
a subject,the self in literature,"plain"?Thereis, of course, no way
but to commencewith some plausiblehypothesisor belief and reason
our way into the possibilitiesof that subject.
Literature,I believewith classic Americanwriters,is literature
of the self, a self in the world, self and worldmadeinto words. This
is notably the case in autobiographicalnarratives:autobiographies
proper,memoirs,travelor adventurestories,and- my particularin-
terest-the literatureof personalquest. I will not have occasion to
say muchabout questhere, exceptby indirection.My discoursecon-
cerns, rather,the self as moot constructand as function in literary
narratives.
The self, we know, is now in diredifficulty, declareda "fiction"
by a varietyof theories.A fiction?Perhapsan effectivefiction, more
durablethan all the theoriesthat proclaimit so. Call it an eidolon,
blooded, sweaty, and rank with the rage of history. And the other,
everythingthatthe self is not? Is it fictiontoo, thoughof anotherkind?
Above all, how will the attenuationsof the writtenself affect the life,
and our reading, of literature?The path through these queries is
tortuous, and may yield no decisiveanswer, yet must be taken.
Contemporary Literature XXIX, 3 0010-7484/88/0003-0420 $1.50/0
?1988 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Considerfirst the writtenself. The issues, thoughlegion, center
on the textualizationof the autobiographicalself, its dispersalinto
language,deprivingit of any ontologicalstatuswithinor withoutthe
text. Autobiographyis thus "de-faced";and deathitself becomes, as
Paul de Man says, "a displacedname for a linguisticpredicament,"
that of personificationor "prosopopeiaof the voice ahd the name."
For de Man, then, autobiography"is not a genre or a mode, but a
figure of readingor of understandingthat occurs, to some degree,
in all texts."Hence, de Man avers,all texts areautobiographicaland,
by the same token, "none of them is or can be."'
The argumentis somewhatprecious,and pragmaticallyuntrue.
If prosopopeia"isthe tropeof an autobiography,by whichone'sname
0 . . is made intelligible and memorable as a face," all figures of proso-
popeia are not identical.2Nor can autobiographybe explainedby a
single figurative feature-a displacement of death-which purports
to disfigurethe self and dissolve the genre. Most readers,in fact,
continue to read certain texts as autobiographies,welcoming an
encounterwith an imaginedlife, a subjectivity,otherthan theirown.
Theymay readrhetorically,as de Man invariablydoes; but they may
also read passionally,experientially,respondingto a felt reality, a
realityneither"present"nor "absent,"neitherimmediatenor intru-
sivelymediated.In brief,theyread,as the bestreadersread,withtheir
own senseof death(or self), aliveto them, and in doing so experience
new possibilitiesfor both self and otherness.3
Advocatesof "thedeathof autobiography," however,maydemur,
adducing the discourseof psychoanalysis, "talkingcure."In that
the
discourse-here we cross from the writtento the writing, from the
textualto the dying self- the patient'sautobiographyis a narrative,
enmeshedin dream, wish, memory,in fact and fantasy, rumorand
reflection.Exhaustiveanalysis,as Freudadmits,may not leadto "real
'Paul de Man, "Autobiography as De-Facement," in The Rhetoric of Romanti-
cism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 81, 70. Other recent works that
affirm, deny, or simply review the textualization of the self include Paul Jay, Being
in the Text:Self-Representationsfrom Wordsworthto Roland Barthes (Ithaca: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1984); Janet VarnerGunn, Autobiography: Towarda Poetics of Experi-
ence (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); Paul John Eakin, Fictions
in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1985); Elizabeth W. Bruss, Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation
of a Literary Genre (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976); and James Olney,
ed., Autobiography: Essays Theoreticaland Critical(Princeton:Princeton Univ. Press,
1980).
2De Man, p. 76.
3See Gunn on the reading self as "interpretive activity," p. 19.
HASSAN I 421
occurrences"but ratherreveal "productsof the imagination . . which
are intendedto serveas some kind of symbolicrepresentationof real
wishesandintents,"the ineluctable"truthof phantasies."4
Who, then,
reallyspeaks?Whatremainsof the sovereignsubjectamongthis con-
scious and unconsciousdebris?What becomes of autobiography?
GregoryS. Jay wittily answers:"AfterFreud, autobiographyis not
the tale of things done, but of meaningsmade and unmade:every
actionis a symptom,everystatementa symbol,everynarrativea dream
of desire,"and "deathyieldsthe profitof the autobiographicalspecu-
lation, as la mort propre becomes l'amour-propre.'"5
Good enough.But we shouldnot dazzleby a deconstructionthat
explodesall "essentialist" notions,leavingeveryurgentquestionhang-
ing sullenlyin the air. The self may rest on no ontologicalrock; yet
as a functionalconcept, as a historicalconstruct,as a habit of exist-
ence, above all, as an experiencedor existentialreality, it servesus
all even as we deny it theoretically.The self representssomethingto
us, even when we select some aspect of it to act. We do the same in
readingor writingtexts. "Toseek the personalfocus of an autobio-
graphicaltruth,"FrancisR. Hart observes,"is to inquirewhat kind
of 'I' is selected,how far the selected'I' is an inductiveinventionand
how far an intentionalcreation,andwhetherone singleor one multiple
'I' persiststhroughoutthe work."6Even RolandBarthes,towardthe
end of his life, saddenedby some obscuresenseof failure,soughtto
"escapefrom the prisonhouse of criticalmetalanguage"and to write
in a simpler,morecompassionate idiom,testifyingto his privateexperi-
ence in the limpid space of La Chambre claire.7
Thisintimatesan ethical,perhapsspiritualelementin the question
of the self. The elementis pertinentto the literatureof quest, particu-
larlyAmericanquests,whichassumea voluntarist,sometimesvisionary
stance,pertinentas wellto autobiography,especiallyAmericanauto-
biographieswhereinthe dreamof self-creationbecomesmoralimpera-
tive no less thanhistoricalfact. ThusAlbertE. Stone,in his capacious
studyof Americanautobiography,remarks:"Tostressthe self as the
4Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works

of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey(London: Hogarth Press, 1955), 17, pp. 49f.
5Gregory S. Jay, "Freud: the Death of Autobiography," Genre, 19 (1986), 105,
124. See also Paul Jay, pp. 23-26, and Michael Sprinker, "Fictions of the Self: The
End of Autobiography," in Olney, ed., Autobiography, pp. 321-42.
6Francis R. Hart, "Notes for an Anatomy of Modern Autobiography," New
Literary History, 1 (1970), 492.
7See J. Gerald Kennedy, "Roland Barthes, Autobiography, and the End of
Writing," Georgia Review, 35 (1981), 383, 391-98.
422 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
creator of history- even, at times, as the fabricatorof fantasies- maxi-
mizesone'sfreedomfromcircumstancesand socialstereotype.In this
way, an ideal self always coexists with an actual-that is, a deter-
mined - historical reality.'"8
The statusof this ideal self may be only fiduciaryor metaphoric,
contingenton sometrust.Buttrustmakesthe foundationsof ourlives,
in history, religion, or art. Withouta confidentsense of (well)being
in the world, without a sense of self, we risk to lose the world and
mutilatethe lives we touch, lives both in literatureand in the flesh.
Trust,however,mustbe adequateto its occasion.Any fiduciary

groundingof the self must reckonwith shadows,ambiguities,cling-
ing to it throughoutthe ages. I mean the Westernself, not only in
autobiographyor writingof any kind, but also in that larger,terrible
perspectivewe call history.
From the start, it seems, men have indulged their "frenzyof
renown":extremeandtranscendentgesturesof self-affirmationmeant
to conquermortality.This "dreamof fame in Westernsociety,"Leo
Braudy says, was ever "inseparablefrom the ideal of personal
freedom";it also occupied"thatstrangeand vitally importantarea
wheremattersof the spiritand mattersof the flesh meet."9In such
extremegestures,of Achillesor Alexander,say, the humancondition
findsa blazing,if momentary,focus. Most often, the gesturesareper-
formed on foreign ground; the hero must forth, as in the case of
Achillesor Alexander,andof Odysseusevenmore.Greatdeedsrequire
risk and displacement,even if they require,in the end, a prodigal
return.
But the heroic self has alwayselicitedour ambivalence,shades
of envy, admiration,resentment,doubt. DiogenesorderedAlexander
out of his sun, and Plato placedthe self in metaphysicalchains. The
Judeo-Christiantradition- witnessthe Book of Job, the Epistlesof
Paul, the Confessionsof Augustine- castsblacksuspicionon the self.
Buddhism,we know, went furtherstill, denyingthe individualself
any reality.Indeed,the task of all mysticism,East or West,has been
8Albert E. Stone, Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of

American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw (Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn-
sylvania Press, 1982), p. 13. James Olney also defends the metaphoric qualities of
such an ideal self in his signal Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972).
9Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 7, 9.
HASSAN J 423
to emptyout the self, void it utterly,in an expectancyboth fierceand
tranquil.
This stubbornambivalencetowardheroicself-assertionreflects
itself,withsoftershades,in our attitudetowardnarcissism,whichPaul
Zweig engaginglytracesin TheHeresy of Self-Love. Zweig focuses
on "theWest'smillennia-longfascinationwith Narcissus:deploring
his inhumansolitude,admiringhimas a figureof fulfillmentandtran-
scendence."Surprisingly,Narcissusproves to be a figure of serene
resistance, of meditative renitence, opposing everything current,
common, collective,a mirror,so to speak, of the "ambivalentwar-
fare - call it a dialectic - between subversive individuals and the large,
moralized embrace of society. . ..'"
I do not mean, of course, to convey in a few pages the history
of the Westernself- sucha historyis fartoo various,cunning,volumi-
nous." I mean simply to elicit a few implicationsof the written
self in autobiographical narratives,includingadventureandquest,and
to link theseimplicationswith a historicequivocationtowardthe idea
of self. In the last century,that idea enduredmore powerful, more
resonantprovocationsfrom Kierkegaard,Marx, and Nietzsche.
Kierkegaard,we know, proposeda subjectivityso inward,soli-
tary,andradicalas to be nearlyindefinable,exceptperhapswithrespect
to God; the crowdwas ever Kierkegaard's untruth.This subjectivity
could dissolveitself in masks:the "pseudonymityof anonymity"of
Johannesde Silentio, JohannesClimacus,FraterTaciturnus,Victor
Eremita,NicholasNotabene,ConstantineConstantius,Interet Inter,
a chorusof ventriloquistscastingdoubton everyutteredsound,every
writtenword.12 For Kierkegaard himself,the "real"Kierkegaard,true
'0Paul Zweig, The Heresy of Self-Love: A Study of Subversive Individualism
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968), pp. vii, 268.
"Useful works on this subject include Georges Gusdorf, La Decouverte de soi
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948); Colin Morris, The Discovery of the
Individual: 1050-1200 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Sacvan Bercovitch, The
Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975); Karl
Joachim Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Auto-
biography (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1978); and Stanley Corngold, The Fate
of the Self: German Writersand French Theory (New York: Columbia Univ. Press,
1986). See also Paul Jay and Eakin for historical discussions of the self as applied
to autobiography.
12See Sprinker, pp. 329-33, for a discussion of Kierkegaard, autobiography,
masks, and repetition, in which Sprinker concludes: "Kierkegaard ... refuses to
assume the traditional responsibility of an author for his text, and in so doing he
undermines the conventional notions of author and text, self and discourse"(p. 332).
See also Mark C. Taylor, Kirkegaard'sPseudonymous Authorship: A Study of Time
and the Self (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975).
despairwas alwaysdespairof self, the universalsicknessunto death.
Nonetheless,the self remainedfor him a zone of dialecticalfreedom.
"Forthe self is a synthesisin which the finite is the limiting factor,
and the infinite is the expanding factor ... ," he wrote. "The self is
in sound healthand free from despaironly when, preciselyby having
been in despair,it is groundedtransparentlyin God."•3This revokes
the Enlightenment,or moreprecisely,drasticallyrevokesits secular,
bourgeoisidea of the self, which permittedthe identity of thought
and being, a "chimeraof abstraction."
Marx assaultedthat idea in the name of anothergod, History,
thoughit failed him. Proclaimingthe dictatorshipof the proletariat,
the dissolutionof class, and the abolition of property,he chose to
define the individualas an "ensembleof social relations."•4Unlike
VitruvianMan, this "ensemble"could not hold the center; society
obeyedimpersonal,materialforces;classconflictsdeterminedhistory;
the collectivewas destiny. Otherwisethe fate of the self was illusory
freedom or inevitablealienation. Individualistictheories seemedto
him "Robinsonades" (fromRobinsonCrusoe).And thoughhe valued
in principlepersonaldevelopment,opposingreificationsof everykind,
he also diminishedthe self to itself, shrinkingits domainin boththeory
and practice.The self becamesimply a "product"ratherthan, say,
accident, invention, pattern, process, or mutation, more plausible
metaphorsof the self thanthe mechanisticidiomof "production" that
dismallyprevails in critical discourse today.
No two thinkerscould havebeen moredissimilarthan Nietzsche
andMarx,yet bothconcurin the deprecationof the self. "The'subject'
is only a fiction,"Nietzschefamouslywrote, "theego does not exist
at all";and again: "Theassumptionof one singlesubjectis perhaps
unnecessary;perhapsit is just as permissibleto assumea multiplicity
of subjects. .". ."•5Nietzsche, we note, negates the self as an ontologi-
cal fact or originarycause; he does not deny it conative, affective,
or functionalpowers. Indeed,the self appearsas an expression,one
'3Seren Kierkegaard, Fear and Tremblingand The Sickness Unto Death, trans.
Walter Lowrie (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954), p. 163.
14Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach," in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Basic
Writingson Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, N.Y.: Double-
day, 1959), p. 244. See also the critique of this doctrine in Robert L. Heilbroner,
Marxism: For and Against (New York: Norton, 1980), pp. 162-66; and Joel White-
book, who acknowledges a certain "awkwardness"of Marxism "toward the autono-
mous individual," in "Saving the Subject: Modernity and the Problem of the
Autonomous Individual," Telos, No. 50 (Winter 1981-82), pp. 80f, 84f.
'5Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollindale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 200, 270.
HASSAN N 425
of many, of the "willto power,"a self scatteredamongthe multitudi-
nous languagesthat constituteit, and that it constitutes.Invented,
projected,discursive- here are premonitionsof Freudand Lacan-
the self must be construedlike any discourse.Yet, for all that, the
self remainsa creatureof the primary"willto power,"corruptedand
pervertedby the asceticidealsof the Judeo-Christiantraditionwhich
turned man into a "torturechamber,"a "pining and desperate
prisoner,"sick of himself.'6
Nietzschelooks back to Kierkegaard,forwardto Freud. Like
manythinkersof our own century,he perceivesthe self as a "fiction,"
or ratheras a linguisticphenomenon.Unlikethem, he endowsit with
a dynamism,a conatus,that they, recallingthe "blood-dimmedtide"
(Yeats)of two worldwars,hesitateto concede.Tothesebelatedthinkers
we mustnow look for the most currentchallengesto the questingself.
Who is Oedipus?Or what does Freud want? We have already

referredto his "truthof phantasies"in the talkingcure. This "truth,"
trulyan enigma,reposeson Freud'sown conceptionof the individual
(ego, id, superego)as a largelyunconsciousentity,in the gripof instinc-
tual drives.Freudstruggledheroicallyto win a largerdomainfor the
conscious ego, a strugglehe believed himself to have finally lost.
Dream, myth, art, slips of the tongue could disclose flickersof the
unconscious;sublimationcould,in somemeasure,relievethe instincts;
but the self- a term he largely avoided- remainedat best a tragic
battlegroundbetweenEros and Thanatos, eternal "giantsthat our
nurse-maidstry to appease with their lullaby about Heaven."17
Autonomy, coherence,self-mastery,even simple happiness,proved
to be dubious fictions, the past of an illusion. And was not the ego
itselfthe silentabodeof the deathinstinct?i'How thengivethe Adamic
self any credence,let alone sovereignty?
Presumably,the self was alwayslargelyunconscious- or did it
become so only after Freud?The questionis not entirelyfrivolous.
Ourperceptionsof the self, the modelswe makeof it, affect our self-
apprehension,self-presentation.In the last hundredyears,as we have
'6FriedrichNietzsche, The Birth of Tragedyand The Genealogy of Morals, trans.
Francis Golffing (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), p. 218.
'7SigmundFreud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. and ed. James Strachey
(New York: Norton, 1962), p. 69.
"'Freud, Civilization, p. 66. The hypothesis of the death instinct was first pre-
sented in Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. James Strachey (New
York: Liveright, 1950), originally published in 1920.
426 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
seen, the self took a linguisticturn. This turn was nowheresharper
than in Freud'smost arcanedisciple, JacquesLacan,who construed
the grammarof the self and read its "letteredunconscious"in the
"patient'sWord."Born in a mirror,as the infant first recognizesits
specularimage, "theI is precipitatedin a primordialform, before it
is objectifiedin the dialecticof identificationwiththe other,andbefore
languagerestoresto it, in the universal,its functionas subject."'9This
Lacanian self, first specularthen textual, remains heterogeneous,
multiple,indeterminate, quitelike a signifierjostlingamongthe infinite
signifiers of the SymbolicOrder.Hencethe phenomenonof aphanisis,
the subject's"fading,"its alienation or "fundamentaldivision."20
Aphanisis rumorsthe end of reflexivecertainty,the quietus of the
Cartesiancogito.
The rumoris widespreadamong linguists,ethnologists,literary
critics, among philosopherswho welcomethe "deathof the subject"
with a certainpersonalglee. Arguingthat self and languageare coex-
tensive, coeval, EmileBenvenistesimplyprefersto situatethe former
in the latterratherthanto denysubjectivity."Itis in andthroughlan-
guagethatmanconstituteshimselfas a subject,becauselanguagealone
establishesthe concept of 'ego' in reality,"Benvenistesays in a for-
mulation that has become nearly apophantic since Ferdinandde
Saussuredistinguishedbetweenlangue(impersonalcodes) andparole
(personalutterance).21 Claude Levi-Straussmakes his point more
grandly:"Ifthereis one convictionthathasbeenintimatelyborneupon
the author . . during twenty years devoted to the study of myths ...
it is that the solidityof the self, the majorpreoccupationof the whole
of Westernphilosophy,does not withstandpersistentapplicationto
the sameobject, whichcomesto pervadeit throughand throughand
to imbueit withan experientialawarenessof its own unreality."22 And
'9Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton,
1977), p. 2.
20Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, ed.
Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 221. See
also pp. 218, 222-29.
21EmileBenveniste, Problems in GeneralLinguistics, trans. Mary E. Meek (Coral
Gables, Fla.: Univ. of Miami Press, 1971), p. 224. See also the excellent discussion
in David Carroll, The Subject in Question: The Languages of Theoryand the Strategies
of Fiction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 14-26.
22ClaudeLevi-Strauss, The Naked Man, Introduction to a Science of Mythology,
4, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), p. 625.
Elsewhere, L6vi-Strausssays: "Not merely is the first person singular detestable: there
is no room for it between 'ourselves' and 'nothing.' " In TristesTropiques,trans. John
Russell (New York: Criterion Books, 1961), p. 398.
HASSAN J 427
Barthesbanishesthe authorialself, the authoras semioticagent. "In
France,"he remarks,"Mallarm6was doubtlessthe firstto see and to
foreseein its full extentthe necessityto substitutelanguageitself for
the person who until then had been supposedto be its owner. ....
the text is henceforthmade and read in such a way that at all levels
the author is absent."23
The consensus - or is it conformity? - of opinion on this subject
seems preternatural;the Demiurgeof Language,unleashedin Gaul,
reignsoverthe Westernmind.In no smallmeasureis thisdueto Jacques
Derrida.If humanrealitycan be conceivedand readas a text without
boundaries,so can the self. This de-bordementof textuality,Derrida
says, "forcesus to extendthe accreditedconcept,the dominantnotion
of a 'text' [to] . . . everything that was to be set up in opposition to
writing(speech,life, the world,the real, history,and whatnot, every
field of reference- to body or mind, consciousor unconscious,poli-
tics, economics, and so forth)."24But this de-bordementmust also
efface names, signatures.For as signsdispersein the greatsystemof
diffirancewhichis the (Universal)Text,so mustdiscreteidentitiescir-
culate:that is, find and lose themselves,"repeat"themselves,against
the backgroundof death,oblivion.As Derridasaysin La Cartepostale,
"The proper name . . returns to efface itself. It arrives only through
its own effacement."25 This, of course,is a hypotheticaleffacement,
which never preventedanyone from answeringto his or her name.
The self, we see, suffers disgraceabounding.It has become an
essentiallycontestedcategory,continuallyrevised,devised,supervised,
or denied.The denialseemsmost persuasiveregardingan ontological,
originary,coherentself. After puttingeverythingin doubt,conscious-
ness ends, reflexively,by turningthat doubt upon itself. "WhenGod
and the creationbecome objects of consciousness,man becomes a
nihilist,"J. HillisMillersays."Nihilismis the nothingnessof conscious-
ness when consciousnessbecomesthe foundationof everything."26
23RolandBarthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text, trans. and

ed. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), pp. 143, 145.
24JacquesDerrida, "Living On: Border Lines," in Deconstruction and Criticism,
ed. Geoffrey Hartman (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), pp. 83f.
25JacquesDerrida, La Cartepostale: de Socrate a Freud et au-deld (Paris: Flam-
marion, 1980), p. 382. My translation.
26J. Hillis Miller, Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers(Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965), p. 3. Mark C. Taylor gives a theological twist
to the argument when he says: "God, self, history, and book are, thus, bound in
an intricate relationship in which each mirrorsthe other. .... The echoes of the death
of God can be heard in the disappearance of the self, the end of history, and the
In fact, our straitsarenot quiteso desperate.Miller,likethe gifted
Frenchsophistsof our day, is not sufficientlypragmatic,historical.
His fallacy, like theirs, is an intellectualisticfallacy in thinkingthat
logic invariablygroundspractice.Thoughthe self may find no basis
in theoreticalanalysis,it is verywell able to dispensewith such basis.
The self, as I argue, finds justificationin lived and effective reality.
In our lived reality, no power seems more menacingthan the

power of the other, everythingthe self perceivesas alien to itself. I
come now to this other becauseit confirmsthe functionalself; and
also becauseit marks, in the literatureof quest, a crucialencounter
betweenAmericanand non-Westerncultures.
Theidea of the self may be moot, its historylong, convoluted,
dappled.Butjust as the pronounI seemsto occurin nearlyeverylan-
guage, as MarcelMauss maintains-"there has neverbeen a human
being,"he says further,"withoutthe sense not only of his body, but
also of his simultaneouslymentaland physicalindividuality"-so also
is the idea of othernessubiquitous.27 The self lives in its pronounor
name, which may invoke totems or ancestors;the other may bear a
name or remainunnamable.The self, a persona,may weara mask,
be a mask;the otherwearsa mask of a differentkind or assumesthe
selfsamemask. Throughall its evasiveor sinisterrepresentations,the
other endures - in us.
We transactthese representationscontinually,and in doing so
mold our lives, both privateand public. We also writewhat Clifford
Geertzcalls "thesocial historyof the moralimagination."Suchwrit-
ing, though,is not alwaysbenign;we lose muchin translationbetween
texts, more even between selves or cultures. Yet the imperativeto
transactothernessremainsa moralimperative."Tosee othersas shar-
ing a naturewith ourselvesis the merestdecency,"Geertzsays. "But
it is from the far more difficult achievementof seeing ourselves
amongstothers,as a local exampleof the formshumanlife has locally
taken . . that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-
congratulationand tolerancea sham, comes."28
closure of the book." In Erring: A Postmodern A /theology (Chicago: Univ. of Chi-

cago Press, 1984), pp. 7f.; on the "disappearance of the self," see pp. 34-51.
27MarcelMauss, Sociology and Psychology, trans. Ben Brewster(London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 61.
28CliffordGeertz, Local Knowledge:FurtherEssays in InterpretiveAnthropology
(New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 16; see also pp. 8f, 45, 50-54.
HASSAN J 429
But what really is this other? Freud might answer, a Mother's
Breast; Sartre, the Gaze of Another; Lacan, the No/Name of the
Father; a physicist, Nature; a tribesman, Manna; a theologian, the
Numinous; a romantic, "all things counter, original, spare, strange"
(Hopkins); everyone, Death. And "the man in the street"? We know
his retort: Blacks, Indians, Gays, Women, Jews, Nazis, Communists,
Khomeinis, finally Satan-usually within. The other? Its aspect is
always Difference, perhapsnot quite so fugitive as Derrida'sdiffirance,
yet still dialogical, shuttling between terms. In human discourse, we
know, every I implies a Thou; the language animal is not monologous.
But this duality is shifty. Benveniste says:
It is a duality which it is illegitimateand erroneousto reduceto a single

primordialterm, whetherthis uniquetermbe the "I,"whichmust be estab-
lished in the individual'sown consciousnessin orderto become accessible
to that of the fellowhumanbeing,or whetherit be, on the contrary,society,
whichas a totalitywould pre-existthe individualand from whichthe indi-
vidualcould only be disengagedgradually,in proportionto his acquisition
of self-consciousness.It is in a dialecticrealitythat will incorporatethe two
termsanddefinethemby mutualrelationshipthatthe linguisticbasisof sub-
jectivityis discovered.29
Self and other, then, cannot be simply merged; nor can their
antinomy be simply reified. Do they "exist"?In fact, they often con-
flict and even war. This is difference in action, difference perceived,
imagined, believed, difference realized ratherthan theorized. Such dif-
ferences structure societies, generate ideologies, and make for the
horrors of history. Such differences also impel the counterideologies
of liberation, which sometimes yield to formulaic outrage.30 The
exigencies of morality and politics, which these ideologies assume in
their own case to be the same, transform difference into an instru-
ment of power and concern. Thus, for instance, Trinh T. Minh-ha
writes about "Third World" woman:
After all, she is this Inappropriate/dOther [on the cover of the journal,
"Other"is undererasure]who moves about with alwaysat least two/four
gestures:that of affirming"I am like you"while pointinginsistentlyto the
29Benveniste,p. 225. See also Carroll, pp. 22-25, and Levi-Strauss, The Naked
Man, p. 630.
30Seesome of the contributions in two issues of Critical Inquiry: Vol. 12, No.
1 (Autumn 1985), "'Race,' Writing, and Difference" and Vol. 13, No. 1 (Autumn
1986), "More on 'Race.'" See also Tzvetan Todorov's critique of these essays, in
"'Race,' Writing, and Culture," Critical Inquiry, 13 (1986), 171-81.
andthatof reminding
difference; "Iamdifferent"
whileunsettling
everydefi-
nitionof othernessarrivedat.31
Thisclaimmaynot preciselyconformto Benveniste's "dialecticreality,"
but it enactseveryone'sadultfantasy,renderedherewith a particular
historicalaccent. This is differenceas self-assertion,playedout as a
no-loss game (hence the fantasy).
Even in reading,the conceptof differenceshifts from grammar
to rhetoric,from logic to interest.Takingher cue from Derridaand
de Man, BarbaraJohnsonarguesthatat the heartof differenceresides
an uncertaintywhich only power can resolve. "Whatis often most
fundamentallydisagreedupon," she observesin The CriticalDiffer-
ence, "iswhethera disagreementarisesout of the complexitiesof fact
or out of the impulseof power."32The impulseof powerin language,
the transitionfromits cognitiveto its performativefunctions,becomes
the overridingthemeof her laterworkA Worldof Difference,which
admits, like its openingepigraphfrom Alice Jardine,that difference
cannotbe thought,let alone maintained,withoutviolence,aggressive
or defensive.
Here is the point I have wantedto make:neitherthe conceptof
differencenor the sense of alteritycan wholly diffuse or empty the
self. That task may devolveonly upon love, ecstasy,mysticalunion.
Yetin currenttheoryas in everydaypractice,some differenceswe do
honor, some forms of alteritywe do respect.These, as I have said,
manifestthemselvesin liberationor anticolonialmovementsbefore
they appropriateTruth,Justice,Freedom,appropriatea UniversalSig-
nifierand so becomeoppressivethemselves.Deferencefor difference
or alterityalso manifestsitself in certainthinkers- MartinBuber,for
instance, EmmanuelL6vinas, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida-
andin certainrecentworks- Michelde Certeau'sHeterologies,Tzvetan
Todorov'sTheConquestof America,Jean-FranCois Lyotard'sLe Dif-
firend. Still, their philosophicaltact with regardto difference,their
willingnessto preserveit, cannot finally obviatethe tenacityof pur-
pose, will, interest,the durdesirde durerof the self.33Ourown desires,
31TrinhT. Minh-ha, "Introduction,"Discourse, No. 8, "She, The Inappropriate/d

Other" (Fall-Winter 1986-87), p. 9. Some essays in this volume also combine insight
with tendentiousness.
32BarbaraJohnson, The CriticalDifference: Essays in the ContemporaryRhetoric
of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980), p. x.
33Lyotard, for instance, admits, perhaps in an excess of scruple, "I must be a
bad reader, not sufficiently sensitive or 'passive' in the greater sense of the word,
too willful, 'aggressive,' not sufficiently espousing the supposed organic development
HASSAN J 431
it seems,alwayscontaminatethe othernessof others,the senseof our
difference,even as we name its unnamability.
Let me recapture,once more, the centralthreadsof this essay.

The self has enduredmanychallenges,both in historyand, crescively,
in writing.Such challenges,however,serveonly to redefinethe self,
as it has been redefinedbefore in diversemomentsand cultures.In
the twentiethcentury,the challenges,proposinga purelytextualself,
becamemoresubtleand persistent.Yettheseprovocationsfail, on the
whole,to reckonwiththe conativepowersof the self, its effectivefunc-
tion and experiencedidentity.34
Such an identityneed not presumeunityor coherence;nor does
ego integrityprecludethe linguisticqualitiesof the self. Paul de Man
counts "at least four possibleand distincttypes of self: the self that
judges, the self that reads,the self that writes,and the self that reads
itself."" But the acute "methodologicaldifficulties"he discernsare,
in practice,mediateddaily by everyschoolchild,playingor reading.
For humanidentityno more dependson singlenessor homogeneity
of psychicstates than corporalidentitydependson homogeneityin
the body'scells. Life worksin wholesthough seeminglyriddledwith
holes.
Theorists,psychologistsof identitymayoffer us, therefore,more
serviceablemodelsof the self than deconstructionistscan afford. Re-
fining the conceptsof ErikErikson,D. W.Winnicott,and especially
HeinzLichtenstein,NormanHollandlimnsa modelof humanidentity
composedof themeandvariations,muchlike a sonata,muchlike any
work of art. The self maintainsan intense, if unnamed,awareness
of itself throughgreatchanges,from infancyto death;it createsfor
of the other (?), in a rush to place it in the light of my own concerns." Jean-FranCois
Lyotard, "Interview," trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele, Diacritics, 14, No. 3 (Fall
1984), 17. But isn't this more than most of us find the grace to admit?
34Foucaultpartiallyrecognizesthis. In discussingthe disappearanceof the author,
he concludes that the "subjectshould not be entirelyabandoned"but ratherconsidered
"stripped of its creative role and analysed as a complex and variable function of dis-
course." See Michel Foucault, "Whatis an Author?", in Language, Counter-Memory,
Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald
F. Bouchard and SherrySimon (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 137f. Foucault
goes further in exploring "new kinds of subjectivity" in "The Subject and Power,"
Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), 777-96.
35Paulde Man, "The Sublimation of the Self," in Blindness and Insight: Essays
in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971),
p. 39.
itself a unique "style."Defining identityas a compoundof agency,
consequence,and representation,Holland perceivesin each person
a dynamicpattern, biological, psychological,social, semiotic. The
patternstubbornlyperdures,governedby an instinctfor self-preser-
vation, by "an identity principle . .. stronger than desire or the drive
for pleasure";the patterncontinuesevenin the styleof an individual's
death. 36
Studiesof aging confirmthat same variablepersistenceof self.
Thus, for instance,SharonR. Kaufmanspeaksof "cognitivethemes,"
areasof meaningderivedfrom experience,that "explain,unify, and
give substanceto perceptions" evenin extremeage. Drawingon George
HerbertMead's"symbolicinteractionism"as well as on her extensive
interviewswith the elderly, she concludes:"How does one maintain
a senseof self that integratesseventyyearsor moreof diverseexperi-
ence . . . ? I have found that in the expression of the ageless self, indi-
vidualsnot only symbolicallypreserveand integratemeaningfulcom-
ponentsof theirpasts, but they also use thesesymbolsas frameworks
for understandingand being in the present."" In short, meaning,
integrity,evenhealthderivefrom the abilityto continuebeingoneself
throughlongevity.
The insightmay seem too simple, too "nostalgic"or "naive,"as
some criticswould no doubt claim. Yet it also invokes the sense of
an inhabitedself, constitutedwithoutthe manneredaporias,paradoxes,
paralogiesthat poststructuralists"deploy"whenthey "demystify"the
"fictionof selfhood."38The insightenvisagesas well the heightened
senseof a self at risk,evenwhenthe self seeksto writethatrisk,writing
36Norman Holland, The I (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985), pp. x-xii, 23,
75f. Holland, I might note, sees psychoanalysis evolving in three stages: first as
psychology of the unconscious, then of the ego, and most recently of the self, each
larger, more inclusive in its frame. See the excellent appendix, pp. 331-63.
37Sharon R. Kaufman, The Ageless Self.- Sources of Meaning in Late Life
(Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1986), pp. 25, 19.
38J. Hillis Miller observes: "The aporia of Nietzsche's strategy of deconstruction
is a version of the universal aporia of deconstruction. It lies in the fact that Nietzsche
must use as the indispensable lever of his act of disarticulation a positing of the entity
he intends to demolish. He must affirm the thing he means to deconstruct in order
to deconstruct it. The deconstruction therefore deconstructs itself. It is built over
the abyss of its own impossibility. ... This reversal, whereby deconstruction decon-
structs itself, and at the same time creates another labyrinthinefiction whose authority
is undermined by its own creation, is characteristic of all deconstructive discourse.
The way in which the fiction of selfhood survives its dismantling, or is even a necessary
presupposition of its own dismantling, is a striking example of this." See "The
Disarticulation of the Self in Nietzsche," Monist, 64 (1981), pp. 260f.
S
HASSAN 433
in the "shadowof the bull'shorn";for in "mortaldanger,"in those
bounded momentsradicallydiscontinuouswith the "regularcourse
of a humandestiny,"the trueartistand the adventurerdiscovertheir
"profoundaffinity.""9
But the survivorself finds alliesin otherquarters.As the editors
of a recentanthologycalledReconstructingIndividualismput it, "re-
constructiondoes not imply a returnto a lost state [the summum
malumof contemporarycriticism]but ratheran alternativeconcep-
tualization . . of subjectivity, enriched by the chastening experience
of the last century."Thus, despite deprivationsin contemporary
"regimesof knowledgeand power,"despitefacticitiesin the adminis-
tered life of consumersocieties, complexefforts still aim to recover
"individualexperience,choice, and initiative,"leadingthe editorsto
averthat "thefigureof the individualhas not been discreditedor dis-
solved so much as displacedand transposed."40
EvenMarxists,rarelyin the vanguardof Westernthoughtnowa-
days, havebegunto showsomeinterestin a reconstitutedself. Fredric
Jameson, for instance, deplores "the militant anti-humanism"of
variousstructuralismsandtheir"humiliation of the old-fashionedsub-
ject";"forthe deathof the subject,"he continues,"ifit mightbe sup-
posed to characterizethe collectivestructureof some futuresocialist
world,is fullyas characteristic
of the intellectual,cultural,andpsychic
of
decay post-industrialmonopolycapitalismas well."41Inelegantly,
Jamesonacknowledgesthat "thelived experienceof individualcon-
sciousnessas a monadicand autonomouscenterof activityis not some
mere conceptualerror"but partakesof reified bourgeoishistory, a
history we have long waited for Marxismto terminate.42
39Michel Leiris, Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order
of Virility, trans. Richard Howard (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984), p. 157;
Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. Donald
N. Levine (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 189, 197.
40Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery, eds., Reconstruct-
ing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in WesternThought (Stan-
ford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 2, 10, 15. One of the more striking transposi-
tions of the individual is by Niklas Luhmann, a systems philosopher, who defines
the self as an autopoeitic, self-referential system. He concludes: "Autopoeitic systems
reproduce themselves; they continue their reproduction or not. This makes them indi-
viduals. And there is nothing more to say" (p. 325).
41Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A CriticalAccount of Struc-
turalismand Russian Formalism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 139-41.
42FredricJameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic
Act (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 153f. Nevertheless, Jameson would base
his "'positive hermeneutic'" on social class, distinguishing it from those "'negative
WalterBenjaminmay have been right:"Inthe world'sstructure,
dreamloosens individualitylike a bad tooth";and this "looseningof
the self by intoxication,"he continuesin a mixedtrope, inspiredmany
modernartists,especiallysurrealists.43The dissolutionof the self in
dreams-always dialectic, a process of loss and recovery-may per-
tain to seekersand adventurersas well. It makes,GeorgSimmelsays,
for a senseof dreamlikedisplacement,as if life were"experiencedby
anotherperson,"as if the organizingself wereactingon behalfof some-
thingelse:"wecouldappropriatelyassignto adventurea subjectother
than the ego," he writes. This points to a vital paradoxof the self:
its inexhaustiblecapacityfor both self-assertionand self-abnegation.
Hence the adventurer'smysticgenius, which Simmelthus describes:
"If it is the natureof geniusto possessan immediaterelationto these
secretunitieswhichin experienceand rationalanalysisfall apartinto
completelyseparatephenomena,the adventurerof geniuslives, as if
by mysticinstinct,at the point wherethe courseof the worldand the
individualfate have, so to speak,not yet beendifferentiatedfrom one
another.For this reason,he is saidto havea 'touchof genius.'"44 Here
we verge on Freud's"oceanicfeeling,"which radicallyredefinesthe
relationof self to other,self to itself.45Weno longerknowwherecenter
and circumferenceof self maylie, unless,like GiordanoBruno'sGod,
they lie everywhere,nowhere. Yet we do know, with some of the
ferocityvouchsafedto spiritualtempers,that the self is neitherthe
garrulouschimeranor the Chirico-like,rubble-strewnlot that certain
theories, vulgarized,now propose.
Thatthe self'sfinalhosannadrawspowerfromits denialEmerson
bestshows;the singerof self-reliancesangof a supraindividual reality,
sometimesraucously.Strainsof contradictionand discordaboundin
his chant.He couldwail:"Iam not united,I am not friendlyto myself,
I bite &tearmyself. I am ashamedof myself."46He couldask: "What
is the aboriginalSelf, on whicha universalreliancemaybe grounded?
What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star ... ?" He
couldgrowl:"Theindividualis alwaysmistaken."And he couldexult:
"Standingon the bareground- my head bathedby the blitheair and
hermeneutics' . . . still limited by anarchist categories of the individual subject and
individual experience" (p. 286).
43WalterBenjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings,
trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 179.
44Simmel, pp. 188, 195.
45Freud, Civilization, pp. 14f.
46Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1982), p. 285.
HASSAN J 435
uplifted into infinite space- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a
transparenteyeball;I am nothing;I see all; the currentsof Universal
Being circulatethroughme; I am part or parcel of God.'"47
Somehow, any commentaryon the self- ascribingmore than
absenceor presence,differenceor identity,ascribingmoreeven than
contaminationsbetweenself and other- mustconsiderthis sequence
of Emerson'sreflections,considerit not as a sequence,sinceEmerson
himselfunsequencesit at everyturn, but as emblemsin the Book of
Self, a book madeof our body and the worldand no one knowswhat
more. For they are emblemsof a "power"Emersonhimself names
manytimes, grimlyor ecstatically,withoutbeing able finallyto give
it a name.
We may not know what self is, but the body knows. The body
showswhenthe self is false, when, for instance,we put a foolishsmile
on our face "in companywherewe do not feel at ease, in answerto
conversationwhich does not interestus." Then, Emersonsays, the
"muscles,not spontaneouslymoved but moved by a low usurping
wilfullness,grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most
disagreeablesensation."Thisis not behaviorism,a mechanismof the
heart,but a pragmaticsenseof how thingsact on the eye, on all five
organs of the mind. For as Emersonasserts,the self is act-life "is
not intellectualor critical, but sturdy";the self is human power in
transienceor transference- "all things glitter and swim";the self is
agonism,antagonism,acquiescence,transcendence-butfinally,that
very singularhumaneffort, whateverrisksof failure,perpetuallyto
substitutebeing for seeming.48
This looks to WilliamJames, with whom I shall presentlycon-
clude.But firstandlast, wheredo we standnow regardingthe subject?
No doubt, the questionwill remainmoot, a provocationor mystery,
like Language, the Unconscious, God. Sartre and Levi-Strauss
quarreledaboutthe subject,Derridaquarreledwithboth, then Lacan
. . . How can these polemics, spite and glory of the Western mind,
end? How can logic resolveus here?All these "attacks"on the self,
all these theories, unproven and unprovable, what cognitive or
epistemicauthoritydo they claim?Whatevidenceof veritycan they
offer?On whatdo theyrestbut warrantless reductions,contestedargu-
ments,faddishconsensus,historicizedbeliefs?Canan intellectualfic-
tion (a theoryof the subject)void a livedfiction(theexperiencedself)
47Ralph Waldo Emerson, Complete Essays and Other Writings, ed. Brooks
Atkinson (New York: Random House, 1940), pp. 155, 355, 6.
48Emerson, Complete Essays, pp. 151, 342, 350, 206.
in the face of death? Where do deconstructions stop? Certainly not
where "the buck stops" (the White House), but as certainly where tact,
need, purpose, commitment, where desire and history demand decon-
structions to cease-if only to commence again.
Froma meremasquerade to the mask,froma roleto a person,to a name,
to an individual,from the last to a being with a metaphysicaland ethical
value, from a moral consciousnessto a sacredbeing, from the latter to a
fundamentalform of thought and action-that is the route we have now
covered [in tracingthe self]. ...
Who knows even if this "category,"whichall of us heretoday believe
to be well founded, will alwaysbe recognizedas such? It was formedonly
for us [in the West],amongus. ... Wehave a greatwealthto defend;with
us the Idea may disappear.Let us not moralize.49
Thus Marcel Mauss about the self, in 1938. Much has changed since
then, notably that confident "we" (the West) entrusted, entitled, to
defend the self. But the energies that self organizes -organizes well
or ill, with genius, waste, or malice - abide. So does the self as prag-
matic act, less fiction than function, a felt agency, personal memory,
fiducial force, positing value in the world and immanent in its own
effects. The self simply interests us, whether in life or in literature.
It interests us, especially, in autobiographical narratives of quest or
adventure wherein an individual at risk enacts our life in myth. Thus,
in the end, the genius of the self derives its practical powers from an
inexpugnable will to be and to believe which, as William James elo-
quently shows, is pivot and fulcrum to all human actions; for "truths
cannot become true till our faith has made them so."'5 As an organiza-
tional function, if not entity, "the Self," James thought, may remain
"incidental to the most intimate of all relations," those of nature and
"thecausal order generally";yet that same gratuitousself, neitherobject
nor subject only but both at once, could continually find its "pragmatic
equivalent in realities of experience.""
No, the self is no mysticism: it empowers this discourse, any
counter discourse, and all the vastations of history.
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

49Mauss, p. 90.
50WilliamJames, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
and Human Immortality (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 96. Of all modern thinkers,
James best understood how teleological the self is, setting, serving, and evaluating
ends at the behest of biological imperatives and personal "over-beliefs."
51WilliamJames, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, 1912),
pp. 3, 4, 44, 45.
S
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Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Quest for the Subject: The Self in Literature

The news is now stale:theoryand ideologyhave becomethe rage on

4Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works

422 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Trust,however,mustbe adequateto its occasion.Any fiduciary

8Albert E. Stone, Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of

424 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Who is Oedipus?Or what does Freud want? We have already

426 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

23RolandBarthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-Music-Text, trans. and

428 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

In our lived reality, no power seems more menacingthan the

closure of the book." In Erring: A Postmodern A /theology (Chicago: Univ. of Chi-

It is a duality which it is illegitimateand erroneousto reduceto a single

430 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

31TrinhT. Minh-ha, "Introduction,"Discourse, No. 8, "She, The Inappropriate/d

Let me recapture,once more, the centralthreadsof this essay.

432 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

434 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

436 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

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