The Fall of Literary Theory. Liana Vrajitoru Andreasen
people in one strike. Something persists; we are very eager to forget the lessons of history, and the same mistakes are repeated over and over. This is due to the fact that there is always a territory that we want to define and defend.
To clarify my use of the term “territory,” I need to explain first why it is connected to “identity.” Animals tend to approximate the borders of their (spatial) territory and defend it against others of the same species, or against another species. Humans, too, continue to mark and defend something that is still called territory, although for us the notion of territory has become increasingly more complex. If we consider its etymology (derived from Latin terra = land), a narrow definition is that of a space enclosed within boundaries. Gradually, the definition has included any conceivable object within the notion of territory. Defending the territory has also gradually become more and more connected to the notion of owning (it is defended because it is possessed), which has led to an identification of territory with property. Property is a word that is more abstract and encompasses more than the initial territory (land), and derives from Latin proprietatem, signifying “characteristic” but also acquiring the meaning “possession.” The convergence of “territory” and “property” has inscribed the notion of territory under a much broader spectrum of meanings, so that much more than land can be owned and therefore defended.
We have seen throughout history an array of troubling eras when women, slaves, or other marginalized groups were considered possessions (and let’s not forget that human trafficking is still massively taking place even now). In this day and age, animals are still not considered independent and sentient enough for us to abandon the horrible ways in which we “own” them (and exploit them); there are many other outrageous items we lay claim on: even human genes can become both individual property and capital (as in disputes between some American scientists),11 and today people can buy Moon property and stars, as well as virtual property. In a country such as Romania, the state includes rainwater as taxable property.12 Indeed, the notion of territory has long been more than land and has increasingly included elements without physicality, even the most abstract elements imaginable, such as freedom. Sometimes a number of these elements, or even one only, are what defines the territory. These elements give rise to the stake to be defended, often to the death. The stake, therefore, can be the territory occupied by an individual, group or community defined either by language, system of beliefs, lifestyle, or any other factors that confer identity through possession.
In a Lacanian sense, in the example of post-9/11 wars, freedom is the ultimate signifier for the identity that is necessary in order to justify the “desire” for war against the cultural Other. In the discourse of power (in the quote I used before from George W. Bush), freedom is the signifier that Americans are expected to identify with, in order to cope with the threat of the Other. The abstract concept “freedom” is spatialized and reified, since back in 2003, the most captivating metaphor that legitimized the US attacks on other nations was that of the Twin Towers representing freedom under attack. In President Bush’s first address about September 11th, 2001, he established this metaphor that would later guide and justify all subsequent acts of destruction: “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”13 Being American is equated with being free, which has constituted American identity since its inception (and there is always a claim that freedom is under attack). This identity gave momentum to expanding the “American” territory first westward, within spatial boundaries, and then toward any spatial or abstract territory that could be “Westernized.”
One of the explanations for what territory constitutes, which still affects the way we perceive our identity within a territory and allows for such wars to occur, is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s separation between territory (what he calls property) and “natural” rights. All that needs to happen, according to Rousseau, is the reconciliation of social laws with the natural needs of “free” individuals. For the purpose of “eternal concord” and mutual protection, Rousseau suggests that the law is an addition over nature, or natural identity, which prevents conflict.14 Unfortunately, he observes, the law has not been efficient in preventing oppression because it forgets, in the process of distributing property, the natural rights of some to the detriment of others, so that the social structure “irretrievably destroyed natural liberty.”15 What seems to happen is that, somehow, territory becomes secondary to something that is supposed to exist prior to it and outside of it (a natural, free identity), which allows people to envision a redistribution of physical territory according to something that would define this natural identity (in my example, “freedom”). What Rousseau overlooked (perhaps not informed, as thinkers today, by an awareness of language determinacy) is the close connectedness that exists between the territory whose origins he traces back to a time when people started working the land and living together, and the concepts that he sees as part of identity. For him, this identity is independent of and overrules the physicality of territory. In the name of pure identity, everybody has the right to seize a territory and make it part of that identity. For instance, the United States is already a territory secured for freedom, but other parts of the world need to be appropriated for the sake of this freedom.
It is important to recognize that both territory and identity are part of the same process: the subjection to language. A discussion of language is therefore crucial to the understanding of identity and territory: it is through language that “characteristics,” or properties that belong to the world (even abstract ones), are perceived as organically part of the process of acquiring an identity. Identity is, in a way, the ability of a human being to maintain the same characteristics (i.e. territories, ideologies, social and historic attributes, and so on). The problem at hand comes from the fact that territory, even in its most abstract embodiment, is closely related to identity, to the point that it becomes identity. In order to elaborate on the survival of the destructive nature of territory and identity, the next chapters are organized as follows:
Chapter Two will offer an explanation of the reason why the concept of the fall is extremely important in understanding not only the processes of identity formation, but also the violence of identity. Chapter Two also explains why I am referring to three “falls” as related to identity and to language. After this clarification, I will pursue three main avenues (related to the three “falls”) in the chapters focused on literary analysis (Chapters Three, Four, and Five) and used for the purpose of exemplification. In attempting to demonstrate how language creates subjects devoted to their identity (often to the death, of themselves or others), I offer three ways to study fall and identity, to show how each of them is in its own way destructive. There may be other kinds of fall, but history tends to revolve around three main perspectives: 1) The emphasis on social identity, to which the individual has to sacrifice either an object (which can be abstract), or other individuals, to acquire identity; this sacrifice will be explained as the mythical fall from—and toward—innocence; 2) The emphasis on individual identity, to which something from the social system, or the connection to the community as a whole, is sacrificed for the sake of “authentic,” personalized, identity; this sacrifice will be explained as the fall from—and toward—authenticity; 3) the emphasis on non-identity, to which social and individual meaning are sacrificed for the sake of the negative of identity, explained as the fall from—and toward a different kind of—meaning.
The first “fall,” or mode that determines the formation of identity, is what I will refer to as the mythical fall, or the fall from innocence. More traditionally present in different societies and particularly in the history of the West, the mythical or social identity relies on a notion that there is a perfect social structure that needs to be recreated on earth (shaped after its initial lost model, which is mythical or religious, and