The Fall of Literary Theory. Liana Vrajitoru Andreasen
in the world, not to the world, and most of all what it has to tell us about ourselves.
Lacan, before Derrida, already warned about seeing transference as an end or a “termination of analysis.”8 He, too, vehemently opposed seeing analysis as an end goal (he meant, in the psychoanalyst’s cabinet, but we can also say the same about the classroom). In a 1974 interview, he saw his brand of psychoanalysis (which later became foundational to poststructuralism) as “the symptom that reveals the malaise of the society in which we live.” In trying to conceive of it as a practice, he admitted that using it that way “is a terrible difficulty because it claims to introduce the impossible, the imaginary, into everyday life.”9 Psychoanalysis can remain useful as a teaching “method” if it is seen as the event that continues to happen. Lacanian psychoanalysis is, of course, not to be confused with Lacan’s own clinical purposes for creating it. It is, for our purposes, strictly a “theory” that can be given much larger purposes, especially since the field of mental health has already rejected it following the rise of chemical psychotherapy.
The fact that Lacan and Derrida are dead, and that “theory is dead,” is irrelevant, as long as the events they triggered in the realm of thought are still taking place, spilling over into real life. I suggest, therefore, that it is precisely thought that we need to continue deconstructing. Literature is, of course, a constructed reality, but one derivative of the constructed self, or selves, of an author, an age, and of humans by and large. Identity is at the core of what one seeks when one signs up to get an education, and there are many ways in which one confronts identity while sifting through and trying to internalize various “knowledges” that quantify and explicate the layers of reality. But how can literary studies continue to be event-ful and not a depository of static toolboxes at a time when we are told we should return to meaning and stop bothering students with signifying chains with no origin? In truth, there is no reassurance in a toolbox, since most of the time it is shut as soon as class is over. Then we are back to the question: is there any value in teaching literature itself, if there’s nothing to be taken at the end into the real world? One may think that “identity” that has been built upon (with added knowledge) is the purpose of education, and whatever field has the least to offer that is quantifiable and accountable for, that is the field no student in his or her right mind would aspire to major in, or even tangentially have anything to do with.
We have to persist, and we have to insist: as one “builds” this educated identity with skills and tools to show at a job interview, one also needs a way to rearrange, renegotiate this coveted new identity in order to make sense of its place in the world, not to mention its usefulness in the world. We are not computers, to place chips and wiring in the right spot and turn on the engine of thought. Thought and its processes have to be continuously at stake as a dynamic space, and the more information is internalized, the bigger the need for stepping back and, yes, deconstructing identity and reassessing its history and its relationality, as well as its impact on self and Other.
Literary studies is a field with the privilege of direct access to identities, selves, from near and far, from the beginning of time, or rather from the time when the very quest for an origin and for signification allowed itself to be traced, and all the way forward, to the end of signification and the death desire of culture, in apocalyptic imaginings. Literature gives access to a database of questions that have been asked before. Identity is not an understanding, a satisfied closure, but it can only be seen in a continuum, which is why one has to be immersed into this questioning, not simply expect the vision to be embodied by the ideal professor who has never even claimed to exist.
Postructuralist analysis has been endlessly criticized for not being a shortcut to knowledge, but this is not its purpose. In analyzing a literary text this way, deconstructing it, digging for the spaces where identity is and is not, that is what can still be done, whether “theory” is out of fashion or not. A narrow definition of “theory” may be out of fashion, but its symptomatic, rather than axiomatic engine of questioning keeps running past the words chosen to name it, words that, of course, sooner or later lose their adherents.
The task of this book is to offer one way to revive (or return to) the engine of questioning, and it is precisely at the level of identity that the book seeks to produce a new demonstration of practice, without being practical. I have selected one concept to work with in this book, for the purpose of interrogating identity. In fact, I examine the lacks in the concept of identity, rather than its fullness, and I explain why it is impossible to isolate it as an untouched, incorruptible and fully meaningful entity. In order to make sense of why there are so many issues with identity as soon as we attempt to understand it, I will use fallenness as my concept of choice, to shed new light on identity formation. Befitting to the “fall of theory,” my revival of theory starts from the place of falling, from the fall that traces signification through various contortions of mythological proportion, and through it I make the claim that, ultimately, the violence of the fall (whether it is seen as origin or as corruption of origin) cannot be reversed unless we acknowledge why we insist in seeing ourselves and others as fallen.
The event of the fall, if we may call it that—a fall that, naturally, is still taking place—has never not been part of identity, especially in Western thought. After all, one still popular metaphor for our origin is that of Adam and Eve, conceived of as fallen (dragging us into the fall along with them). In the Application in Part Two of this study, I use five American literary books (and a few others tangentially) to scrutinize this concept, along with a host of “theorists.” Through a poststructuralist analysis I show not only how distinct literary periods have placed identity in that space of fallenness, but also how, through deconstructing this concept (with the help of those texts) we can begin to glimpse at how destructive it truly is. As I set this task for myself, I also acknowledge that poststructuralism/deconstruction are not quite sufficient in such an analysis, so in the end they, too, can be seen as “fallen” or inadequate in some ways, but nonetheless I continue to see them as enormously useful.
These are literary texts I have taught in class, and which I have taught with precisely this purpose: to teach students about themselves and how and why the texts expose them to their fallenness. I am not planning to change the world by teaching this way, and I don’t even use the full extent of theory in the way that this book may make it seem, but I do hope this questioning of individual and collective fallenness is one way to understand, and maybe care about, the various forms of violence that the concept brings with it in the real world.
We have already witnessed a lot of violence in the 21st century, in the United States or elsewhere: from September 11 to the wars it spurred, from racial violence to school shootings, and from suicide bombings to new, technologically slick proponents (and practitioners) of terrorizing ideologies, such as ISIS. Discussing fallenness and its connection to violence is only one way, of many, to challenge our identities, which, in turn, could be one way in which literary studies can contribute to the discussion. I could have chosen other concepts that are deeply rooted in our Western (and Westernized) minds: it could have been race; it could have been gender; it could have been capital; it could have been empire. The reason why fallenness appeals to me as a challenge—as a way to seek to understand “the symptom that reveals the malaise of the society in which we live,” to use a Lacanian phrase, is that it is so specific, so personal that it can resonate on many levels with any reader, and it is so unspecific that it can expand the conversation to the most abstract proportions, while (it is my hope) keeping it comprehensible.
One of the main tasks of this book is to elaborate on a complex network of factors contributing to a problematic understanding of identity that has always been at work in Western societies (though other cultures are not exempt). Specifically, I narrow down the use of literature to significant moments in American literature, so that much of the discussion will focus on how these factors that ground the search for identity affect American identity and account for the violence that is part of an American engagement with identity. This does not mean I will focus solely on an American brand of violence. Still, the theoretical discussion of these issues will lead into and will be supported by a poststructuralist/deconstructivist analysis of literary works that are retroactively and strongly associated with different ages and trends in American literature.