The Moment of The American in l'Écriture Judéo-Chrétienne

The Henry James Review Spring, 1984 the Spoken: Interpreting What Maisie Knew." The Henry James Review 2ÎÕ 981):204-212. Hertz, Neil. "Dora's Secrets, Freud's Techniques ." Diacritics 13(1983):65-76. Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. -----------------. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1981. Marotta, Kenny. "What Maisie Knew: The Question of Our Speech." ELH 46(1979):495-508. MitcheU, Juliet. "What Maisie Knew: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl." In The Air of Reality: New Essays on Henry James. Ed. John Goode. London : Methuen, 1972. The Moment of The American in VEcriture JudéoChr étienne by William A. Johnsen, Michigan State University There are two fortunes the gods reserve for the unwary children of Hermes. From the one jar comes the interminable application of a single unmodifiable theory, impervious to the resistance of any text. The other jar, to be sure, dispenses a more elegant fortune: to deconstruct this dominant theory by a superior, rival theory discerned in the resistance of the text to it. These two fates offer us two versions of a common misfortune for critical theory: for the psychoanalytic, to argue for the greater health of either René Girard or Henry James. But if we faithfully foUow the bond of positive reciprocity between James and critical theory our working title suggests, we should advance our reading of these two authors so eloquently committed to the superior value of novelistic truth. James's practice draws out more of the potential for realizing a particular historical moment in relation to the structure of desire in Girard's general theory of the démythification of sacrificial violence. Girard helps us better understand the specific social and political force of the virtuous attachments aspired to by James's characters. Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque (1961) supports a meditation on the specific historical moment of postrevolutionary France, adjacent to the "structural " and "phenomenological" observations of desire in romanesque and romantique characterizations, which appears mainly in the distinction between external and internal mediation of desire. Internal mediation is more likely in a social system of fixed hierarchical order; disciples in pre-revolutionary France live on a lower social plane than their aristocratic models. Internal mediation begins in a climate like postrevolutionary France, when the model descends to the same plane as the disciple and becomes a rival as weU. Thus, in external mediation, the difference between model and disciple is ontological; but in internal mediation, the differences between rivals are contested in the bourgeois marketplace by the acquisition of prestige-bearing commodities . But if the Revolution makes the Restoration of superior being to the French nobility impossible, thus condemning the nobility to earn esteem from the bourgeoisie , thus inciting the desire of the bourgeoisie to earn nobility for themselves, whence came the desire for Revolution? Where is the relation between the potential for the transformations of the structure of desire and the socio-political structure represented? FinaUy, what potential transformations of these structures are implied for the future? The short answer (they are represented in James's revision of The American) requires a somewhat longef proof. Volume V 216 Number 3 The Henry James Review Spring, 1984 Girard's novelistic truth reformulates the plotting of desire from a Unear to a triangular pattern. Desire is never the unmediated instinct to possess an attractive object. AU desire is triangular; objects are designated desirable by the example of a model's desire. The more advanced stages of mimetic desire represent the internalization of the mediator, initiaUy on the same social plane, but finally in the same being. When the disciple begins to locate his aspirations directly in the model, rather than in the object that the model prizes, desire becomes alternately masochistic or narcissistic-coquettish. A masochist does not desire punishment in itself, but he recognizes in punishment and failure the hand of the superior being whose disciple he would become. The model's superiority can only be confirmed by rejection, and his rejection can only be confirmed through repetition. In turn, those who mask their sense of diminished being with an appearance of self-sufficiency no...