Geopoetics: The Politics of Mimesis in Poststructuralist French Poetry and Theory (review)

Book Reviews a Montaignian approach in his work by attempting to find a place where representation is certain. Yet, Descartes describes himself as on a journey, as in motion, instead of at a stable place of certainty . In a similar framework, Melehy treats the question of metaphor and representation, and of why Descartes' literal language is grounded in metaphor. Melehy's judicious combination of theory and close reading makes the book a welcome addition both to critical theory and to early modern French studies. Todd W. Reeser Roanoke College Joan Brandt. Geopoetics: The Politics of Mimesis in Poststructuralist French Poetry and Theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997. Pp. ix + 288. $49.50 (hb). Although Jacques Derrida was for a significant moment closely involved with the review Tel Quel (which published may of his early articles and books in the "Collection Tel Quel") and with the extended group around it, after La Dissémination in 1972 there was a divergence between the highly politicized, Maoist concerns of the journal and the apparently apolitical tenor of deconstruction . This divergence may exemplify a more general view of deconstruction as abdicating political responsibility in its effacement of the historical dimension through exclusive focus on textuality. Geopoetics is an intervention in this debate, arguing against the perspective which sees deconstruction as excluding or disabling the political dimension. The book combines analysis of the revolutionary political project of Tel Quel, both in theory and practice (specifically, as regards the latter, of the relatively neglected poetry of Marcelin Pleynet and Denis Roche), with discussion of more recent work on the relation between mimesis and politics in deconstructive criticism (by Derrida, and Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe). An effective counterpoint to the focus on Pleynet and Roche is provided by work on the poetry of Edmond Jabès. The thesis of the book is that a politicized theory is only possible on the basis of a critical analysis of mimesis, which promotes a disjunction at the heart of linguistic referentiality, and that this disjunction is essentially obscured in Tel Quel's Utopian politics. This explains the confrontation of Tel Quel with the work of Derrida, Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe. If Tel Quel's revolutionary politics is eventually "renounced," it is because of the lack of such an analysis. Geopoetics is thus at once a history of theory, an analysis of key literary texts in the hugely under-researched field of the 60s and 70s, and a contribution to a current and crucial effort to "rethink the political." The different parts of the book are skillfully welded together, while emphasizing the distinctions between moments in the history of poststructuralist theory and practice that are often erroneously lumped together. It is, however, unclear whether Brandt aims to reconstrue deconstruction as a response to contemporary political issues or, a less ambitious task, to shed light on the issues that condition a possible reintegration of deconstruction and the political. If the politics of deconstruction are those, as Brandt seems to argue, of a promise of "hospitality without reserve," a recognition of internal difference oriented towards what is "to come," the question of how this "political" dimension may be related to the punctual issues of "politics" remains problematic. This aporia is, it should be ackowledged, constitutive of any attempt to rethink, to think differently, about the political and about politics. To this extent, one might ask if the deconstructive promise of a democracy to come does not sound rather similar to the Utopian revolutionary politics of Tel Quel, projected onto the opacity of "China." The difference lies, perhaps, in the disjunction between "China" and China, the illusion of Tel Quel that its utopia was real, and that its rhetoric was referential . Patrick Ffrench King's College London Vol. XXXIX, No. 3 93 ...