Macherey - The Literary Thing (2007)

8/11/2019 Macherey - The Literary Thing (2007)

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21diacritics / winter 2007

THE LITERARY THING

PIERRE MACHEREY

Though deprived of the honor of appearing in Le grand Robert, the expression the liter-ary thing, no doubt formed on the basis of the well-known precedent res publica, or thepublic thing, has come into use today, perhaps decorated with quotation marks, which,not without a certain dose of irony, crown the meaning of the phrase with a halo of mys-tery, in perfect accord with the fuzzy semanticism of the word thing, in view, perhaps,of emphasizing its incongruity. Recently, the expression has served as the title for one ofthose works that libraries classify under the heading of comic book, a richly illustratedvolume presenting a rather cruel satire of the current mors of the tribe of literary folk (J.P. Delhomme, La chose littraire ), and whose images recall the shock felt by a certainLucien de Rubempr, discovering some time ago, upon arriving in Paris, the reality of

just this literary thing, and suffering the loss of a great number of illusions. 1 It wouldbe interesting to reconstitute the complete history of this formula, of which the followingare but a few key moments. It serves as the title of one of the last of Rmy de Gourmontswartime texts, written at a time when an interest in the thing was not self-evident, andcollected in 1916 in the book entitled Dans la tourmente. In 1929, Bernard Grasset tookit up again for the title of a work in which he presented lessons from his experience as apublisher, treating the literary thing in the manner of a professional well informed of itsinner workings and hidden undersides. In 1933, Paul Valry responded to an inquiry intothe literary thing and the practical thing [Valry 273], which he interpreted as an inter-rogation of the relation between literature and politics, referring the former to a plane of

pure ideas and the latter to a plane of action. In these few instances we see sketched theconstitutive polysemy of this formulas use, a polysemy that marks something in litera-ture that is not self-evident, something problematic. In this sense, to speak of the literarything is to pose the question of literature, which is also to put literature in question, orrather to put it to the question, submitting it to an interrogation that both comes to it fromoutside and issues from its proper depths, a duality that, while tending to take the form ofan antinomy, ultimately appears as what might well constitute the heart of the matter. To sp ak of th lit rary thing is, at rst glanc , a profanation. Do s it not riskmaking literature into a thing, into some thing, by exposing it to the funereal ritual ofr i cation, stripping it of its inn r b ing, of what irr plac ably constitut s its pr s nt,personal identity? Alphonse Daudet will at least have had the stroke of genius to titlehis novel Le petit chose 2a name that, with striking economy, indicates that capacityof capture proper to a collective institution such as a school to plunge into anonymitythose it interpellates as its subjects by calling out to them, Hey you! Little thing! [ Eh!,vous!, le petit chose! ] And as a discipline of instruction or subject matter, itself readyto be transformed from instrument of inculcation into a kind of merchandise, literature

This text was rst presented in Lyon at a conference organized by the UMR Lire of the CRNS(Centre National de la Recherche Scienti que), May 1416, 2003, on the theme of ImmaterialProduction.

I am indebted to Stphane Legrand, Robert Lehman, and Pierre Macherey for their help in preparing this translation. Trans. 1. Lucien de Rubempr is the main character of Honor de BalzacsLes illusions perdues(Lost Illusions ) (183643). Trans. 2. Translated in 1899 by W. P. Trent asLittle Whats-His-Name. Trans.

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could well be no more than this peculiar and in fact increasingly less consumable thingintended for those little things [ petits choses ] with th vi w of xing th m, in turn,in their common lot as things to be educated, raised, disciplined, even to be kept busy ordistracted, by means of or at the expense of literary things that have been relegated to thestatus of discounted luxury products. L t us formulat this dif culty in mor abstract t rms: to sp ak of th lit rary thingwould be to raise the apparently intelligent question of what kind of thing literature is,

that is, to interrogate it as to its essence or quiddity, and by that very gesture, in view ofappropriating it all the better, to give up apprehending it in its being, which is not alto-gether reducible to its essence. On second thought, this might amount to relinquishing theprey for its shadow, and to giving up the actual and full reality of what is in question for amere substitute, a partial perspective extracted summarily from its reality and supposed tocount for it in its entirety, while in fact it is the product of this realitys disappearance andnegation. Assuming the status of a thing, and more precisely of the particular thing that itis, lit ratur , mad to conform to th sp ci c contours of this summation of its id ntity,seems deprived of what stirs most intimately within it, of what resonates with us, touchesus, and truly interests us: metamorphosed into an object of consumption and instrument

of inculcation, valuat d in t rms of f cacy or pr stig , lit ratur s ms to b without alife of its own, and to have lost its place in the current of our lives, which stimulates thecourse of its transformations. A literary theory that would content itself with respondingto the question of what kind of thing literature is would at the same time cast aside thevery pleasure of reading in which literature is more than a simple thing: in which it is anactually living and motion-provoking r ality, a fr , moving pr s nc and not a x dimage drawn up in conformity with this or that pregiven use. Such suspicions are legitimate. But they must not blind us to the fact that, strictlyspeaking, the reference to what would be a thing or of the order of a thing in literature,to what would lead us to view literature as the literary thing, might be interpreted oth-erwise. To present literature as a thing is at the same time to shroud it with the veil ofind cision that b longs to this t rm, and to ood it with th n bulous vagary on whichsacred realties are founded, those realities that precisely only appear as veiled, shelteringunnamed and unnamable mysteries that one approaches tremblingly. They dont realizewere bringing them the plague, Freud declared to Jung when they were about to conveywhat Lacan called the Freudian thing to the frontiers of the New World [Lacan 116]this horrible thing, das Ding, whose delayed revelation inspired fear and trembling. Thething: is it not, in th rst plac , Kants unknowabl thing-in-its lf, or th Thing its lf,die Sache selbst,of which Hegel writes, things whose indisputable existence only ap-pears, or is only imposed, against a background of reservation and ignorance, whichs ms to doom th m to sil nc and r nd r th m d nitiv ly unsp akabl ? In li u of hav -ing anything else to say about it, to speak of the literary thing [ chose ], of this funny stuff[truc ] or impossible what-do-you-call-it [ machin ] that we no longer really even knowhow to teach, but of which we cannot quite rid ourselves either, would perhaps be the bestway to invest it with another dimension, one inaccessible by direct means, and to placethe thing in a space that would lend it a volume, a thickness, that is, an ability to carveout reliefs, giving it a height and depth, and to cast shadows, projecting it before and be-hind itself. This would reproduce the procedure characteristic of negative theologies that,having stepped back from what is immediately given to the senses, reveal the presenceof an absence that is also the absence of a presence, one both available and distant, nearand far, whose very distance works through an inner experience set radically against a

background of r nding and sacri c . Bataill and Blanchot, w know, hav not s n ththing in any other way. It is clear, then, that to speak of literature as a thing, and as athing in its own right, thus unlike any other sort of thing, is at the same time to grant it


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Stendhal, of whom he was unaware because he had eyes only for Beyle, whom he knewpersonally, 3 we could pardon him for it if we had to; but we know that he also passed overBalzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, and Flaubert, not to mention Hugo, whom he knew only alltoo well through Adle, 4 which is quite a lot for someone who thought himself a greatconnoisseur of literature, an infallible expert of living works grasped at the very time oftheir writing. Following this apparently devastating diagnosis, we would be inclined to pose the

following question: is the literary thing the sum total of Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, Baude-laire, Flaubert, Hugoall those greats that Sainte-Beuve was unable to distinguish andthat he drowned instead in the mass of lesser writers who captured his attention and his

journalistic kindness, writers he had the weakness to shower with praise because theygave him fodder for his gossip column, he who was listening at the doors of literatureand taking away nothing but scraps? Or rather, is it not, or is it not also, this umbrous orminor literature that makes up the ordinary and continuous weft of literary production, aconfused din of background noise that is covered over by the high-sounding worship ofliterary heroes, once these are recognized, following a complex process that is no doubtmore than just a matter of journalism? And what allows us to ratify this recognition as

d nitiv , th r by cond mning to obscurity a whol s t of forgott n, n gl ct d, littl -known names and inferior hacks, without which there would perhaps be no literatureat all? It is not out of the question to think that the great names today might become thelesser ones of tomorrow, and vice versa, at least as far as some are concerned; and thisreversal, if it is not solely a question of fashion, might be a matter of justice, deliveredwith th passing of tim that r con gur s r putations by submitting fam to th t st of akind of desert crossing, where it risks being lost forever, and by submitting disregardedwriters, who have sometimes had the misfortune of being ahead of their time and misun-derstood by their contemporaries, to an unanticipated and unforeseeable resurrection. To listen to Proust, and to listen to nothing but what he says, the literary thing is thespirit of the thing that renders it like no other, and whose radicality is crystallized in therar and dif cult cr ativ act, that which, onc v rything ls has b n sacri c d to it,and only on Sundays and holidays, lets something be understood, something suddenlycome knocking as if at the window, at whose stature we have to place ourselves if wewant to retain its message. To follow Sainte-Beuve and the ordinary avenues of criticism,which electively prize common mediocrity, the literary thing is what is inseparable fromthe labor carried out at ground level, whose disparate truths meted out from the course ofworking days ar ultimat ly anonymous b caus th y ar rst and for most mad fromint rs cting traj ctori s, ach in its lf p rhaps app aring insigni cant or int rrupt d, butwhose tangle feeds the humus, the nourishing earth from which the fecund pressure ofinvention must emerge, which in any case cannot come from nothing, or spring miracu-lously out of the air. This is why Sainte-Beuve meant to be attentive, moreover, not onlyto the great masters of literature, toward whom he perhaps harbored a sentiment, or rathera r s ntm nt, of rivalry and unsatis d d sir , which ultimat ly do s not conc rn us, butto those he calls writers who do not dream of being so, those who are only authors byaccident [30], and who are not, from his point of view, any less actively part of literarylife: Chateaubriand, yes, but not without his group, that is, the Guinguens, the Fon-tanes, the Chnedolls, whom we no longer read today, while, in a manner that is perhapsnot what he himself expected or would have wished for, we still read Chateaubriand; yetwithout that now-indistinct mass he would not have existed or been able to carry on hisown work as a writer of genius. Thus a hidden, but certainly not unimportant, aspect of

3. Stendhal was the pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle. Trans. 4. Macherey alludes to Sainte-Beuves affair with Hugos spouse Adle. Trans.


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determine whether the problem is well posed in these terms, and whether the set of alter-natives it proposes can really not be got beyond. Resolutely iconoclastic, and conducted with the aggressiveness of a pugilist whowants to shower his adversary with a maximum number of blows, Bourdieus enter-prisewhich attempts above all to demystify the literary thing, yet not to banalize it,since it proposes to the contrary to make its originality all the more apparentexposesthe literary to a radical test, by which the latter does not gain its autonomy except by

delivering itself over body and soul to the risks and ravages of heteronomy. By refusingliterature the privileges of exceptionality and autoreferentiality, to which it ordinarilyhas recourse in order to evade all efforts of genuine explication and to preserve its secretwhich, in th nal analysis, is th condition of its distinction, Bourdi us proj ct thusraises the following question: can we know literary labor through something that is reallysp ci c to it? Or rath r, what is th r to know in this labor; what would b knowabl init, or liable to enter into the order of the known and thereby the order of the objectivereal, determinable by precise historical markers? To respond to this question, we must,according to Bourdieu, return to the factual relation between this labor and its environ-m nt, thus proc d to its participation in th social lif from which it was only arti cially

extracted. What distinguishes the sociology of literature initiated by Bourdieu is thatit successfully avoids a reductionist perspective of the thing which, in systematicallyignoring the mediations through which it comes to be instituted as the particular thingthat it is, tends to refer it mechanically back to a global social determinism from whichth form r would issu dir ctly as its ff ct, or, as on says, its r ction: for Bourdi u,literatures participation in social life takes place, in effect, through the institution of adistinct ld, wh r th various possibl ways of appropriating th truth of th lit rarything, of making something out of the thing by objectivizing it in a recognized work,in a form that might be postponed following a logic proper to this system, confront andcompete with one another. This constitutes the genuine contribution by which Bourdieuhas continued to stimulate the study of literature by furnishing it with a new object, onerarely glimpsed before him, revealing the very particular procedures by means of whichthe writer achieves a kind of social integration through exception, that is, through compe-tition at onc with sp cialists from oth r social lds, such as thos of r ligion or politics,and with sp cialists of his own ld, with whom h cont nds for th privil g of b str pr s nting th valu s d n d th r in, valu s that can claim th absolut and xclusivright of being obtained through great struggle, in a climate of insecurity that guaranteesth lds mobility and plasticity. We may recognize this contribution, but the limits inscribing it remain to be seen. A

ld is what giv s plac to situations, to positions d ning on anoth r in mutual opposi -tion within a system of perpetually reorganizable relations. Here Bourdieu advances thenotion of a point of view, around which is articulated all of his proposed analysis ofliterature: the point of view is thus understood as occupying a place within a set of rela-tions rath r than b ing af rm d sol ly in r f r nc to its lf as if it d p nd d on nothingbut an irrepressible internal inspiration, impossible to channel or localize, and which inthe end is no more than a pious wish, inserted into the unfolding of an incantatory ritualwhose motivations are actually completely prosaic and self-interested. Now this point ofvi w, which is abov all a point in a ld co xisting in t nsion with oth r points of vi w,sinc w do not s how it could b d n d in isolation, constitut s a plac for th writ rslabor; with his completed work [ oeuvre ], and by means of the preferences he displays inorder to draw attention to himself, the writer objectivizes his ostensible right to possess

th plac h occupi s within this ld. Und rstood in this way, what do s th work inquestion say? Above all, it announces the position that, with more or less felicity, thewrit r claims within his ld, and for which th work s rv s as a sort of mark or symbol,


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in th form of a sign of b longing, lik a stamp that guarant s d lity to an original. Thisis why, in the end, the truth of the literary thing is what refers to the proper mode of the

lds structuration, it r maining und rstood that th r is nothing static or x d aboutthis ld, sinc it is in a proc ss of constant r con guration, and v ry signi cant n wwork announc s a r distribution of positions tak n up by th pow rs in con ict and a r -n gotiation of th conditions of s ttling such con icts, a r distribution and r n gotiationthat in vitably ng nd r oth r forms of con ict, giving th history of this ld its prop r

matter, and marking it with disputes between generations, schools, genres, styles, andso forth. What is ultimately at stake in the literary thing is thus the dispute: a perpetualpol mic among writ rs, sp cialists, and prof ssionals of th thing, within this ld wh raccounts are settled with blows of talent and creativity, since the capacity of inventing then w is th condition of making and k ping a plac within a ld thus constitut d, or inthe course of being constituted. Now, understood in this way, the sociology of literature is ultimately a sociology ofwriters, of their group habitus, and of the more or less symbolic values to which thesehabituses are bound: within the limits it sets for itself and does not cease putting underconstruction, th lit rary ld is that v ry profan t rritory wh r , following a dif cult

process of confrontation, the writer comes to be crowned and consecrated. This way ofseeing the literary thing ends up favoring the author, even if the latter has ceased to beseen in terms of his subjective creativity, and as a very particular type of social agentis id nti d with an authorial strat gy that do s not function ntir ly on th plan ofconsciousness, and in any case supposes a collective background that exceeds the scopeof such a plan , but against which th writ r absolut ly must d n hims lf if h is tohave some chance of being recognized as autonomous. Of Flaubert, Bourdieu writes ofthe work by which he creates himself as a creator [93]: and we understand that herepresents literary activity as being entirely on the side of the production of the writer,a production that supposes a complex process leading up to the writers achievement ofhis artistic identity, which he obtains by isolating a certain number of choices within then twork of possibl choic s that, at a giv n mom nt, constitut th lit rary ld in whichhe is positioned. On the subject of this network of possible choices, Bourdieu writes, ina phrase that captures the spirit of his entire enterprise fairly well: in the manner of alanguag or a musical instrum nt, [it] is off r d to ach writ r, lik an in nit univ rs ofpossibl combinations lock d in a pot ntial stat within th nit syst m of constraints[100]. The writer distinguishes himself by selectively cultivating one of these possibili-ties, making it pass into the real by incorporating it into the form of his work. The literarything is nothing other than this quest for distinction, for which the realization of the workis a privileged means, but in no way an end in itself. Now, by assigning to the literary thing a place that he calls the space of literature,Blanchot lib rat s lit ratur from th limits within which th closur of a ld in thBourdi uian s ns would con n it, and op ns it wid to th horizon, r storing a pr -eminent role to the work, and at the same time devalorizing the position of the author,who ceases to dominate the foreground. As Blanchot never tires of repeating, it is thepoem that makes the poet, and not the other way around. And by highlighting the valuesparticular to the poem, that is, particular to the work, Blanchots approach re-equips theliterary thing with a consistency of which sociological assaults had partly deprived it: itbecomes possible, once again, to take the work truly seriously for itself. Of course, one might deplore the ceremonial tone, laden with religiosity, that ac-companies this sort of declaration, it is the poem that makes the poet, tenable only on

condition of selecting out, within the muddled array that the literary thing constitutes,that which maintains l ctiv af niti s with lif s tragic l m nts, that is, v rything thatunderscores its exceptional and vertiginous dangerousness: Mallarm, his dice throw, his


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desperately empty rooms, his nocturnal shipwrecks, 5 but purged of his modish affecta-tions, of his fan- apping 6 and his postal addresses; 7 Hld rlin, Rilk , Kafka, possiblyBreton, but not Heine, Gautier, nor Queneau, with their bittersweet moods, their negligentways, their calculated abandon, their clever winks of the eye. The space of literature,continuously confronted with the morbid values of anxiety, bows to no law but that ofsublimity, and tolerates no casualness in this regardand above all no talk of a joie devivre, with its vulgar temptations, its fantastic lures! In this way the space of literature is

rendered practically inaccessible, all the while being deployed on a plane of total imma-nence, as if it belonged to this world, if not somewhere in the world, at least not to anotherworld. By linking the literary thing to the extreme pole of excellence, where the highprice of coming in contact with it involves putting ones life at stake, we submit it to aprinciple of rarefaction that cuts to the heart of its disorderly and spontaneous productionsand keeps only what is supposed to be the very best, in a continuous atmosphere of pricedistribution, which, even while adorning it with the most noble of disguises, reproducesin its own way, even caricatures, the competition among writers eager to establish theircareers that Bourdieu describes. And a Literary war being declared in the absence of pos-sibl cons nsus ov r lit ratur s nal nds, w will pr f r, as long as w ar at it, to k p

abreast of such a war from day to day in its advances and retreats, mistrusting the echo ef-fects of a propaganda that dresses it up in grandiose, trenchant declarations that, whetherthey predict victory or announce catastrophe, veil and distort the reality of events. Let us dare to say it: Blanchot is tiring, exhausting even, and almost wearisome,characteristics he fully assumes, moreover, as he has never pretended to please or reas-sur . And at th sam tim h is in scapabl , for his af rmation of th primordial valu ofthe work is the condition under which reading, in an essentially active dimension and notonly a receptive and consequently passive one, is integrated into the reality of the literarything, instead of constituting its incidental and precarious accompaniment. For Bourdieu,who angrily pursues and condemns those who pretend to interpret works of literaturewithout taking the trouble to reconstitute the point of view their authors assumed inord r to produc th m, all th ff cts of signi cation that would normally b attribut dto the work must be related to this point of view of which the former is, as he says, theexpression, expression strategically devised by the author in accordance with the battleplan he has adopted, being driven by motivations that are nevertheless not entirely underhis control. By taking up this perspective, Bourdieu makes it impossible to understand inwhat way the work, with a view to its actually being read and not merely consulted in themanner of a document, must, at least in part, escape its author, and be prone to reinvest-ment in another perspective, which is that of its reader: for the one and only rule Bourdieuprescribes for reading, denying it all right to free inventiveness, is that of being faithful,faithful to th spirit of th work as it is d n d, onc and for all, by th factual point ofview of its author, this latter being resituated in the conditions in which he really labored,and all other approaches rejected as recurrent projections that distort reality. Blanchot, to the contrary, permits us to re-pose the problem of reading in a newperspective, one whose radicality is surprising and incontestably shocking. Of the work,

5. Igitur and Un coup de ds jamais nabolira le hasard (Dice Thrown Never Will An-nul Chance), for example, are major touchstones for Blanchot, especially inThe Space of Litera-ture, The Book to Come, and Th In nit Conv rsation. Trans. 6. Mallarm wrote a number of poems about ladys fans, some of which he inscribed on actual fans. Trans. 7. In his personal correspondence, Mallarm addressed (and mailed) a number of envelopesin verse, noting a similarity between the format of the envelope and the shape of the quatrain.These verses are collected in Vers de circonstance (Occasional Verses ) as Les loisirs de la poste(Leisures of the Post). Trans.


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Blanchot declares that it must [be], and nothing more [220], from which he immedi-ately derives the consequence that the work of art does not refer immediately back to theperson who presumably made it [221], which is a way of rehearsing Mallarms thesis:Imp rsoni d, th volum , to th d gr that on parts with it as author, solicits thapproach of no reader. As such, be it known, between human accessories it takes placeall alone: done, being [qtd. in Blanchot 222]. This gives leave in advance to theories ofreception and to their horizons of waiting: the work, megalith at the edge of an abyss,

thing without name, uninhabited monument, is virgin to all address; it is not a usefulmessage addressed to a chosen addressee, a message that carries with it the key to its de-ciphering. This is why it goes back to the reader to invest it with his unruly and untimelypresence, and to commit himself therein body and soul, at his own risk and at his owncost, assuming full responsibility for his engagement, and hastening or precipitating thework, which is the only possible way of dragging it out of its profound reserve: thereader is he by whom the work is spoken anew. Not respoken in an interminable repeti-tion, but maintained in its decisiveness as a new, an initial word [226], which at the sametime opens up the possibility to speak it each time as new [227]. And there, in the end,w nd th ultimat truth of th thing: its capacity to b r cogniz d as n w, in th g -

ure of a resolutely primary literature that so much lichen accumulated from the thousandand one secondary literatureseven tertiary, and why not quaternary literaturesseeksin vain to cover over and drain of its inalterable substance. To read, really read, is torediscover, by fashioning oneself as its creator, the primordial savor of the work in itsinalterable newness, as if, surging instantaneously from nothingness, the work were to becompletely reinvented every time someone came to be interested in it. And this is why, asBorges declares in the course of an interview, every time a book is read or reread, thensomething happens to the book [qtd. in Burgin 22]. Taken in this sense, reading is of theorder of the event. The literary thing is also all of this, at least it would have to be, however much thesociologists analysis might argue otherwise. This latter will not fail to accuse the thesesadvanc d abov of b ing arbitrary: if th lit rary thing is hand d ov r to an ind nit lyopen apprehension that, under the pretext of preserving the effect of surprise by meansof which the works primordial quality is validated, brushes aside all consideration offactual data, which it sees only as useless constraint, does this not expose it to abusiverecuperations promulgated under the sole authority of the right to say absolutely anythingwith impunity? To which a true reader, conscious of the necessities of his task, will re-spond that a reading free from constraint is also, in its dizzying extremes, the most, andnot the least, demanding: it is accomplished only under close watch, in an atmosphere ofenthusiasm and concern, and refuses all facility; only at this price does it gain the kind oflegitimacy that really belongs to it.

To conclud this pap r, which, it go s without saying, do s not pr t nd to hav th nalword on the thing but at the very most to stammer out some initial words, I will proposesom v ry bri f consid rations surrounding th notion of lit rary production. Uponr ction, and with hindsight, w will b mor s nsitiv than w w r at rst to thdiversity of meanings encompassed by this expression, which evokes the production ofliterature while playing on the duality of the genitive construction that can be taken inth obj ctiv or subj ctiv s ns . Lit rary production is c rtainly, in th rst plac , whatobjectively explains how such a thing as literature can or could have been produced,

which requires that the ensemble of the material, historical, and social conditions of thisproduction of literature be taken into account. But it is also, indissociably, what literatureitself produces, that is, the ensemble of effects and productions, and above all of produc-


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tions of meaning that, as such, it is potentially bearing, and which cannot be mechani-cally d duc d from caus s to which on must r f r its productions in th rst s ns of thexpression. Not only is the literary thing produced, but we must also say that it produces,that it is productive, that is, that it has a fecundity proper to it that is ultimately inexhaust-ible, to which the interminable cycle of its reproductions bears witness, a cycle to whichno xplication, no x g sis, can com to put a nal stop: b caus without this, it wouldnot be worth one hour of trouble. That is why we have to work both at discovering it, as

a terrain that preexists its exploration, and at inventing it, as a problem that must be re-posed each time at new costs, without assurances and without guarantees. We thus come back to the idea that had been advanced earlier: the literary thing isthat multifaced reality, a material and immaterial production, both sides of which we haveto embrace, even if this occasionally obliges us to acrobatic contortions. Perfect oxymo-ron, po try and pros , it provok s th sam int rrogation, nally, as th Thyrsus fromBaudelaires Prose Poems, which Baudelaire recognized was just as much a mere stickas a pri stly mbl m: Straight lin and arab squ , int ntion and xpr ssion, rmn ssof the will, sinuosity of the word, unity of the aim, variety in the means, an all-powerfuland indivisible amalgam of genius, what analyst would have the odious courage to divide

and separate you? [8485]. We might say as much of the literary thing.

Translated by Audrey Wasser

WORKS CITeDBaudelaire, Charles. The Thyrsus. The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo.Trans. Rose-

mary Lloyd. N w York: Oxford UP, 1991.Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature.Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: U of N braska

P, 1982.Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field.Trans.

Susan emanu l. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.Burgin, Richard. Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges.New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1969.Delhomme, J. P. La chose littraire. Paris: Denol, 2002.Lacan, Jacques. The Freudian Thing. crits: A Selection.Trans. Alan Sheridan. New

York: Norton, 1977.Proust, Marcel. Against Sainte-Beuve and Other Essays.Trans. John Sturrock. New York:

Penguin, 1988.Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin. Chateaubriand et son groupe littraire sous lEmpire.

Nouvelle dition. Vol. 1. Paris: Michel Lvy, 1872.Valry, Paul. La chose littraire et la chose pratique. Translated as Literature and Poli-

tics: Answer to an Inquiry. Collected Works.Ed. Jackson Matthews. Trans. DeniseFolliot and Jackson Matth ws. Vol. 10. Princ ton: Princ ton UP, 1975.


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Coral Ridge Towers (Mom Dyeing Eyebrows), 1969Black-and-white photograph

Courtesy of Salon 94, New York

Documents

Macherey - The Literary Thing (2007)