A Distant Mirror: Engaging with Realism from the Sidelines

Abstract

This article revisits the critique of realism by Marxist and structuralist critics of the 1960s, particularly Althusser and Barthes. It expounds Althusser’s theory that, rather than providing knowledge of society or history, the text makes ideology visible. It distinguishes the different currents that converged to form Barthes’s structuralism (as mobilized in his study of Racine): the nouvelle critique; a certain reading of Saussure’s theory of language; and Lévi-Strauss’s anthropology. It describes Barthes’s critique of the circular procedures involved in the belief in psychological realism. It explains why Barthes was not on the whole disposed to tolerate realism among the variety of acceptable theories. It casts doubt, however, on the validity of Barthes’s appropriation of Saussure, in the light of Benveniste’s distinction between semantic and semiological functions of language. Barthes’s rejection of realism finally depends on his notion of écriture, as a set of writing conventions conditioning representation. Barthes’s later critique of realism in S/Z is then described. He sees realism as an essentially oppressive conception: Prendergast’s rehabilitation of mimesis, however, allows its critical potential to reappear, and this is shown with reference to the novels of Marivaux and Rousseau, where apparent infractions of vraisemblance are used to challenge reader’s social and ethical assumptions. In conclusion, the emancipatory potential of the critique of realism is acknowledged, as are its limitations.