Paul de Man: Resistance and Collaboration

Abstract

PAUL DE MAN'S WIDELY INFLUENTIAL 1982 essay Resistance to Theory begins by noting resistance essay originally encountered: commissioned by Committee on Research Activities of Modern Language Association for its volume Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, piece was nevertheless judged inappropriate by editors, who declined to print it. De Man himself characterizes this decision, in version of paper now published in volume that shares its name, as altogether as well as interesting in its implications for teaching of literature.' The latter point seems to me plausible; in a rather oblique fashion, I shall address some of those implications here. I am not convinced, however, that de Man was convinced that decision was justified, although rejection was paradoxically fortunate for future life and influence of essay. In one sense, I thoroughly approve of de Man's decision to begin with anecdote of committee's decision. It is not possible to be sufficiently suspicious of what Ezra Pound calls the value / Of approbation / Of literary effort, and of this committee's decision is an exemplary reminder. In another sense, however, I find de Man's decision to begin with anecdote disingenuous, although interesting in its implications, in barely disguised pride it takes in evidence of well-gowned institutional disapprobation. It is evidence that de Man would have had some difficulty multiplying: in 1982, he was clearly considered state of art, and few committees or journals would have so obligingly provided him with examples of institutional form of resistance to theory on which his essay, at least in part, depends. Recourse to anecdotal or personal is not, of course, characteristic of de Man generally, and he certainly can be forgiven for making good rhetorical and polemical use of an opportunity so happily provided. Yet as de Man himself notes in his essay, anecdotal is significant only if it is systematic (RT, 7), which committee's decision manifestly was not. De Man, however, treats it as if it were, for simple reason that it allows him to exaggerate extent of resistance to theory as he practices it (and by theory he means what must be broadly characterized as poststructuralism; rival theoretical positions are implicitly denigrated as either literary history or literary criticism), which he can then explain in terms of its threatening or subversive (5, 8) power. The argument