Structuralist theology
‘HAD I WRITTEN THIS
article in the approved style of semiology, you would not have read this
far. For semiology is an impenetrable language practised in the realms of
Higher Education in Film.’ So began Kevin Brownlow’s searing attack on the
jargon of film criticism which he made in an article in the New
Statesman earlier this year [1980]. Those who have waited for the
tidal wave of correspondence produced by Brownlow’s article to give rise
to even a ripple of reference or resentment in the calm lagoons of the
literary press, have waited so far in vain. Perhaps that is because the
real situation is even more embarrassing than Kevin Brownlow suggested.
For the terrible truth is that a good deal of structuralist writing is not
only impenetrable to the layman, it is also impenetrable to the
specialist. Try your hand at this for example, an extract from a seminar
conducted by the French structuralist psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, now
published in book form by Penguin under the title The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis:
That by which the subject finds the return way of the
vel of alienation is the operation I called, the other day,
separation. By separation, the subject finds, one might say, the weak
point of the primal dyad of the signifying articulation, in so far as it
is alienating in essence. It is in the interval between these two
signifiers that resides the desire offered to the mapping of the subject
in the experience of the discourse of the Other, of the first Other he has
to deal with, let us say, by way of illustration, the mother.
If you found that a little opaque then you are in
the good and honourable company of countless learned men and women. The
situation was summed up in an advertisement for a French psychoanalytic
magazine: ‘January 1980. There are thousands of people who do not
understand Lacan. In 1950 there were only twenty or thirty.’ Anthony Clare
was given the task of reviewing The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis in New Society. Clare scarcely understood a word
of it and was not afraid to say so. As it happened his copy of the book
had two chapter fives, one of them placed before chapter six and the other
ingeniously placed after chapter seven. In his review Clare confessed that
he had got half-way through the second chapter five before anything struck
him as familiar. But then, as he said, ‘it’s that sort of book’.
The uninitiated might well think that ‘that sort
of book’ couldn’t possibly be taken seriously by the academic community.
But they would be wrong. For, as the initiated know, Jacques Lacan is
taken very seriously indeed by a large number of psychoanalysts,
psychologists, literary critics and sociologists not only in England,
France and the USA but also in Spain, Italy, South America, Japan and
probably every other country where people like to keep abreast of the
latest intellectual fashions. Lacan is one of the two or three leading
figures in what has been described as ‘the most significant intellectual
movement of our time’ – structuralism.
Writing in The
Observer David Lodge has lamented the fact that structuralism has been
ignored by the ‘posh papers’ and that the BBC, while I they have seen fit
to explain relativity to the viewing millions, have never mounted a
programme on structuralism. He seems to forget that newspaper editors have
their circulation figures to worry about and that the BBC has no charter
alternately to bore and irritate its viewers to death. At the same time it
must be said that things are very different in France. At a the beginning
of the year the papers were full of the latest episode in what is called
‘le phénomène Lacan’. A banner headline was splashed across the front page
of Le Monde and full-page features on Lacan appeared on all sides.
Strangely, however, in all the sheaf of French press cuttings I have
beside me there is no article which makes any attempt to explain Lacan’s
ideas. The French press is not wholly unaware of its predicament, for one
of the articles published by Le Monde is headed ‘Who will dare to
say that the emperor is naked?’.
In his New Statesman article Kevin Brownlow
related his tireless but ultimately vain search for somebody who could
explain the significance of semiology to him. I have conducted a similar
search in order to find somebody who could illuminate Lacan’s ideas –
which are themselves partly based on semiology. I have read books,
articles and commentaries. I have spoken to lecturers, professors and
psychoanalysts. I have spoken to Lacan’s English translator and to an
academic who is writing a book about him. All without success. As Lacan’s
translator told me, ‘Lacan doesn’t intend to be easily understood … He
designs his seminars so that you can’t, in fact, grasp them.’ I am by no
means alone in coming to the conclusion that – to quote one psychoanalytic
writer , ‘behind the smoke-screen …there is nothing of substance’.
It seems necessary to go further than that,
however. In his brave attempt to bring structuralism to the masses through
the medium of The Observer David Lodge started to try and explain
in simple language what structuralism was. After a couple of faltering
sentences a tone of distinct embarrassment crept in. He began to apologise
and soon gave up altogether. This is by no means unusual. For if you ask
any structuralist to explain the fundamental; significance of the ideas
behind the movement you will find very few who are able to do so. Lacan,
in other words, is only the most extreme example of a much wider problem.
Take away the convoluted vocabulary and the impenetrable syntax and you
are left with little or nothing – except what is perhaps the most
extraordinary religious movement which history has known.
Though structuralism once claimed to be only a
method of analysis, what it now offers is nothing less than a philosophy
of life – a key by which the mysteries of human nature may be unlocked.
There are two ways of defining structuralism. One is to explain what it is
about, the other isto explain what it is not about. Any philosophy of
human nature will inevitably leave some parts of life out of account
because it considers them trivial or insignificant and one of the best
tests of a philosophy is to see what these are. Since Lévi-Strauss is
generally agreed to be the ‘purest’ structuralist thinker we might
consider his intellectual system.
Lévi-Strauss describes himself as an
anthropologist – a student of the nature of man. In Levi-Strauss’s
anthropology, however, there is no place for any consideration of joy or
grief, of love or !lust. Indeed the mere miracle of man on two legs
is one for which Lévi-Strauss appears to have an infinite contempt. In his
universe men and women are neither kind nor cruel, violent nor tender;
they feel no religious fervour nor have they ever done so. Delivered from
all contact with animality and emotions, they are passionless and pure.
When so much has been subtracted from human nature there is, of course,
very little left. What is left is composed mainly of language. But
not language as any common language-user knows it. It is language reduced
to a pure system, a system of binary oppositions and phonemic pairs, of
abstract codes and symbolic logic. And when Lévi-Strauss has surveyed the
whole rich realm of mythology, with its tales of passion and of pride, of
children and parents, incest and worship, then all myths are reduced to
this:
Fx (a) : Fy (b) : : Fx (b) :
Fa1 (y)
This is the formula by which Lévi-Strauss says he
has ‘never ceased to be guided’ in his study of myth. Don’t ask me what it
means. I don’t know. And please, whatever you do, don’t ask a
structuralist. For that would be like asking a believer whether they have
touched God.
Those unversed in the inner secretsof
structuralism may well ask how, if this is the kind of thing it is, it can
possibly be applied both to psychoanalysis and literature. Answering that
mystery there come, over the university campuses in their long white coats
and with their long white faces, the Ph.D.s, bearing in their hands the
bound copies of their unreadable structuralist theses. Forthe most part,
however, it has already been decided. It’s true that for structuralist
psychoanalysts or structuralist literary critics there are certain words
which cannot easily be avoided, words to which humanity has a habit of
sticking – like ‘love’ or ‘desire’, or even ‘body’. But when you encounter
such gross and impure words as these in structuralist writing you should
by no means idly assume that they mean to the structuralist what they mean
to you.
Take the word ‘phallus’ for instance. Now that may
not strike you as the most homely of words. But I can guarantee that if
you came across it tucked away at the end of a paragraph of Lacanian
jargon, it would seem to you as familiar and reassuring as a cup of hot
Horlicks. You would soon find out the error of your ways though. For as we
read in Anika Lemaire’s introduction to the thought of Lacan: ‘The term
“Phallus”, as used by Lacan, is not to be confused with the real,
biological sex, with what is called the penis. It is an abstract
signifier, which, like any symbol, goes beyond its materiality and beyond
what it represents. Adopting a phrase from S. Leclaire’s “Les éléments en
jeu dans une psychanalyse” we can say that: “It is a copula, a hyphen – in
the evanescence of its erection – the signifier par excellence of the
impossible identity.”’
It would seem reasonable to assume that people who
have any regard for writing like this can have no regard for literature.
The situation, however, is quite the reverse of this and structuralist
critics positively worship literature. When ordinary mortals read
literature they do so with the help of their head and their heart and
their five senses, and the literature they read never seems any the worse
for that. When structuralists read literature it would seem that they do
so with what Roland Barthes calls the ‘sixth purely literary sense, the
private property of producers and consumers of literature’. For the inner
mysteries of literature are not vouchsafed to you or to me. They are
vouchsafed only to the Elect. And if you wish to become a member of that
Elect you must first show that you too are gifted with unintelligible
tongues. Then in literature you will find redemption, a redemption which
is unutterably good and pure, purer even than water which has itself been
washed.
The fact that this has nothing to do with
literature is regrettable but it cannot be avoided. For gods are not there
to be savoured; they are there to be worshipped. Of course it may be true
that some literature does offer a kind of redemption. But it is a
redemption deeper and darker than any structuralist could imagine. When
Melville had finished writing Moby Dick he wrote to Nathaniel
Hawthorne, ‘I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as a lamb’.
Literature is full of wicked books. They were written by writers like
Shakespeare and Milton, Pope and Swift, Hardy and Lawrence. Their
wickedness is nothing more or less than our humanity. Yet this is
something towards which many feel more than a little distaste. Literature
has sometimes offended by telling the truth and there have always been
some who, rather than face their nature, have preferred to cut parts of it
out.
Those who lived before Victorian times called it
castration. When Walter Scott was asked to expurgate Dryden, he sent back
his answer: ‘I will not castrate John Dryden, I would as soon castrate my
own father, as I believe Jupiter did of yore.’ After some months Scott
relented: ‘I fear, that without absolutely gelding the bard, it will be
indispensable to circumcise him a little by leaving out some of the most
obnoxious lines.’ The Victorians themselves called it bowdlerisation. They
bowdlerised Shakespeare, they bowdlerised Swift and they even bowdlerised
the Bible. We have lost the Victorian capacity for honestly expressing our
disgust. We no longer bowdlerise our literature because that would seem
barbarous. Instead we have invented a philosophy which does it for us. We
become structuralists and we learn the latest critical technique. And it’s
called (would you believe it?) ‘deconstruction’.
Edwyn Bevan once wrote that there was a stage in
the life of St Augustine when all ‘the many colours of life seemed to him
only an undesirable stain on the white radiance of eternity’. As a
description of extreme Christian asceticism, that’s reasonable. As a
description of structuralism it could scarcely be bettered. And indeed,
although some people would say that you should not now talk of
structuralism but of ‘post-structuralism’, we would, if we had any sense
of our religious tradition, talk not of structuralism at all but of
‘post-Christianity’. For if anyone should ask why learned men and women
believe in structuralism, there is one very simple answer. For centuries
educated people believed in heaven. Now they believe in structuralism. Of
course there are no angels or demons in structuralism. There is no
hellfire or brimstone. But neither for that matter are these things to be
found in ordinary Christianity these days. John Updike has seen fit to
lament the loss: ‘Alas, we have become, in our Protestantism, more
virtuous than the myths that taught us virtue; we judge them barbaric.’
Religion has indeed become a purer, more rational thing. And if your
theology is even more advanced than that of Bishop Robinson, then
structuralism – or post-Christianity – is the church for you; it is the
church for those who are too pure to entertain the idea of God.
Although there are no
supernatural beings in the church of post-Christianity there are, of
course, many prophets and messiahs who tend to hand down from on high
doctrines, which, as has been noted, are sometimes ineffably mysterious.
If you look carefully you will find that post-Christianity also has
Antichrists. And if you do not wish to renounce your vitality, or if you
cling obstinately to your belief in the value of intuition or common sense
or empiricism, or worst of all if you listen to the voice of your body
rather than the voice of your mind, then perhaps you should tremble now.
For you may be among them.
David Lodge has suggested
that we all need the intellectual ‘refreshment’ that structuralism can
provide. Of all the curious notions associated with structuralism, this
must be the most curious. When the oasis stands up and walks into the
barren desert in order to seek moisture, then on that day will the great
mass of the educated public find refreshment in the philosophy of
structuralism.
But now that
structuralism has decided that we need it, what should you do if a
structuralist from the local university comes knocking at your door
offering to refresh you with his doctrine, or rescue you from the
flesh-pots of empiricism and common sense, or simply sell you a copy of
the latest structuralist magazine? Whatever you do, do not send him away.
Invite him in and make him a pot of tea. Sit him down by the fireside. But
not too close to the fire. For the real reason the structuralist has come
knocking at your door is that his parched, dried soul is craving for the
moisture of a little ordinary humanity. When he has moistened down a
little, take him to the garden and let him do a good honest bit of digging
and get his hands thoroughly grimed over with good honest dirt. And then –
if this seems to be in order – take him in your arms and embrace
him, and let him go unwashed back to the clean campus of the university he
came from.
What confusion will
ensue! With what horror will his clean structuralist colleagues regard the
real dirt on his hands and hear of the real honest work he has done! With
what shame and embarrassment will he be covered! But, looking at his
unwashed hands and feeling his body begin to ache, he may realise for the
first time something of the depth of self-loathing on which his philosophy
of life is founded. He may begin to see something of the fierceness of the
contempt in which structuralism holds us all. Of course that is only a
beginning. We cannot expect him to be redeemed overnight from sainthood
into a state of reasonable sinfulness. But it is a beginning.
Ah, but, you say, what of
your own fierce contempt for structuralism? Why is it that you rant and
rail so against structuralism with such lack of love and lack of charity
as a Papist has for a Protestant or a Protestant for a Papist? That is a
question I have asked myself and I fear you may already have guessed the
answer. If not then it is a terrible confession I have to make. I too am a
structuralist, a secret structuralist.
And if you look around at
the society in which we live and see its immense poverty, and see how we
have locked away deep within us our own wealth and the wealth of our
family and community relations, so that we begin to forget that such
wealth even exists, then you might reasonably come to the conclusion that
we are all structuralists now. For if joy and grief, cooperation and
community count for nothing in the intellectual system of structuralism,
then just how much do they count for in our system and the policy
decisions by which we perpetuate and extend it? We have built a system of
production which treats men and women with no less contempt than the
philosophers of structuralism. In Jacques Lacan and Claude Lévi-Strauss we
have perhaps simply got the messiahs we deserve.
Having got most of the
wealth of life safely out of the way, which we managed to do even without
the help of our structuralist philosophers, we are now no longer
distracted from our true purpose, which is, with each economy of scale we
make, to squander a little more real wealth and accumulate a little more
material wealth, and thus pursue economic growth successfully until we are
impoverished quite beyond all rescue.
Long before that though,
if we continue in our structuralist and post-Christian world to pursue
relentlessly the religious drive towards purity, we will soon reach the
stage when compassion itself is a defilement and all life is in danger of
being regarded as a contamination. If that should ever happen then not all
the prayers offered up by the church of post-Christianity will help us.
Perhaps it is time to stop and turn around before it is too late.
Literary Review, September 1980
