Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion by Julie Candler Hayes (review)

Abstract

Revzews 822 LsMort duroi. Une thanatographie deLouis XIV.ByFRANCIS ASSAF. (Collection Biblio I7, II2).TUbingeIl:GUnterNarr. I999. 247pp. After a reign ofseventy-two years, LouisXIV,king ofFrance, diedonI September I 7I 5amidst much rejoicing anda widespread sense ofrelief inthe population. The once-revered monarch hadbecome a figure ofhatred, andwhile the general tone of official commemorations wastriumphalist, hundreds ofpieces derided himandhis actions. InLaMort duroi, Francis Assaf investigates thefabrication ofthis twofold publicimageofthekingin thetexts published in thewakeofhisdeath.He conscientiously reviews funeral orations (there were over fifty), encomia, andpoems, butalsosatiric songs andepigrams, which emphasized subjects that were tabooin official discourse, and constructed an alternative imagein whichparodyand inversion dominate. Whereas theformer celebrated thetriple grandeur ofthe monarch (inwar,peaceandreligion), thelatter described and condemned his ambition, hisgreed andtheruin ofthecountry's finances, ordrew attention tothe baneful influence ofMmedeMaintenon, hismorganatic wife, andhiscruel and . * * * r unJust persecutlon otrelglOUS mlnorltles. Whatsetsthisbookapartfrom other works concerned withtheimageof LouisXIV,isAssaf's purpose inanalysing hisabundant material inthelight ofthe notion oftheking's twobodies aspropounded byErnst Hartwig Kantorowicz, in Ehe King's Ewo Bodies: AStudy inMedinval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univesity Press, I957),albeit implicitly redefined heretorefer tothemore banal opposition ofLouis-Dieudonne deBourbon, theman, andLouis XIV,theking. Thusthe physical bodyofthekingas bothsubject to passions and mortal is no longer contrasted with thecortus mysticum regni, theimmortal body politic ofwhich the king isthehead, butwith the political body oftheking asruler. Assaf shows how, onthe onehand,official presentations concentrated almost exclusively on thepolitical body ofthe king whose achievements were exalted, while, onthe other hand, hostile image-makers onlyconsidered hisphysical bodyto whichtheyascribed the exactions andiniquities committed during thereign. The approach adopted by Assaf, whichoweslittle in factto Kantorowicz and political theology, leads, nevertheless, toinsights which usefully complement studies suchasNicoleFerrierCaverivieres I7Image deLouis XIVdans la litteraturefranfaise deI660 a I7I5 (Paris: PUF,I98I) anditssequelLeGrand roi a l'aube des Lumieres I 7I5-I 75I (Paris: PUF, I985),orPeter Burke's Whe Fabrzcation of Louis XIV(NewHavenandLondon: Yale University Press, I992).Assuch, itisa welcome contribution tothehistory ofthe production, circulation andreception ofsymbolic forms inthe early modern period. GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE, LONDON MARIE-CLAUDE CANOVA-GREEN Reading the French Enlightenment. System andSubversion. ByJULIE CANDLER HAYES. (Cambridge Studies inFrench, 60) Cambridge, NewYork, andMelbourne: Cambridge University Press.I999. 243pp. I2eading the French Enlightenment is a work ofconsiderable density andcomplexity, sustained bya tempoofintellectual energy and curiosity. Cross-sectioning an impressively diverse rangeoftextual genres, JulieCandlerHayespursues her reinterpretation oftheEnlightenment's 'estrit tystematique' withconsistency and focus. Theguiding thesis isthat thesystem-building impulse, theepistemological needfor rationalizing andclassifying the world, contained within itself the potential for itsownsubversion. Opening a dialogue with theearly modern andEnlightenment periods through twentieth-century critiques ofsystematic reason (Horkheimer, MLRn 96.3,200 I 823 Adorno, lioucault, Lyotard), Hayesthen elaborates a studied examination ofthe discursive history oftheterm andconcept oftysteme from theRenaissance tothe Revolution. Originally a musical term, to describe a constituted organization, tysteme wasenlisted intheattempt byphilosophical discourse toimpose orderliness upona disorderly world.The notion ofsysteme wouldseemto exemplify the problematic legacyof theEnlightenment thatis at once emancipatory and oppressive. Thetensions present inthe systematizing project aretraced through the correspondences ofElizabeth ofBohemia andDescartes, Desjardins andVilledieu andGraffigny andDevauxn through the physics ofDu Chatelet, through the reading strategies ofCondillac's 7FraiM des tystemes, andthrough selected writings ofDiderotS including theLettre surlesovseugles theLettre surlessourds etmuets entries forthe Encyclopedie andtheSupplement auvoyage deBougainville. Hayesdescribes Diderot's texts, with their insistence upon'inconsequence', as 'dissipatory structures', which she explains asa kind ofde-territorialization where categories areneither attacked nor supported, butaresimply allowed either todisintegrate ortoremain absurdly in place.ForHayes, Diderot istheleastsystematic ofthethinkers studied, onewho resists theimpulse to'fixer lalangue'. Diderot, shewrites, possesses 'anintuition of the radical contingency oftheconnections that wemaponthe world' (p. I42).This important bookisofinterest, notonly toscholars oftheFrench Enlightenment but alsotomoregeneral readers inthehistory ofEuropean thought, andwouldbe 'enlightening' forstudents ofccxntemporary culture seeking a counter-discursive scepticism towards ourability toknow andcontrol. Reading the FrenJ Enlightenment courses a topographical trajectory from twentieth-century dystopias ofEnlightenment gone wrong, through the criss-crossing textual networks ofeighteenth-century Europe, toDiderot's fictionalized Tahiti, andconcludes with a pauseinLe Notre's designforthelabyrinth in thegardens at Versailles, ofwhichtheirregular, asymmetrical layout results from simultaneous systematizing andchaotic impulses. Theprocess ofre-interpreting the apparently familiar territory ofthe Enlightenment isthrown into interesting anecdotal relief through theauthor's relation ofherown curiously asymmetrical bilingual upbringing, writing French butspeaking English. Herexperience oftwo-way linguistic otherness accords with Diderot's realization in theLettre...