Poststructuralism and the "Paraliterary"

Abstract

Last fall Partisan Review conducted a two-day symposium under the general title The State of Criticism. Although various sessions were designed to treat a variety of topics, most presentations were dominated by one continuing theme: structuralist and poststructuralist critical theory and the threat that it somehow poses for literature. My own role in these proceedings was limited to that of discussant; I was to comment on the main paper, written by Morris Dickstein and delivered as the substance of a session dedicated to the influence of recent critical theory on the vehicles of mass culture. As will become obvious, Dickstein's paper was yet another statement of the general sense that literary criticism (understood as an academic discipline) had fallen hostage to an invading force, that this force was undermining critical practice (understood as close reading) and, through that corrosive effect, was eating away at our concept of literature itself. My comments had, then, a very particular point of origin. But the views against which those comments were directed are extremely widespread within the literary establishment-both inside and outside the academy-where a sense of the pernicious nature of poststructuralism has led to more recent projects devoted to How to Rescue Literature.' Thus, despite the specific occasion that gave rise to my discussion of the paraliterary, I believe this is of much wider conceptual interest. I therefore reproduce in full my remarks.