Le Récit impossible by Uri Eisenzweig (review)

L ’E sprit C réateur Uri Eisenzweig. L e R é c it im po ssib l e . Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1986. Pp. 357. The traditional roman policier, which emphasizes the reasoned inquiry into the mystery surrounding a crime, more than the crime itself, often presents its own critical gloss, as in the case of A. Conan Doyle’s Watson whose faulty judgment serves to reenforce the functioning and credibility of the text, “puisque le mystère qui fonde celui-ci exige, non pas que l’on se taise, mais bien que l’on parle tout en ne disant précisément pas ce qui est à savoir” (p. 6). Uri Eisenzweig views the confrontation of literary criticism with the roman policier as operating similarly, because by the very fact that it fails to assimilate what it treats, fails to “intégrer le récit de détection aux normes littéraires et sociales dominantes,” it constitutes it as a separate genre. At the heart of the récitpolicier lies the fact that it is the account of an inquiry justified solely by the absence of the account of a crime. Eisenzweig points out that, in effect, the principle underlying the genre exists largely in the textual production which puts into ques­ tion what is presupposed, that is, “la capacité de représenter, d’expliquer, de montrer un monde en le racontant” (p. 7). Eisenzweig’s study is comprised Of three parts, the first of which, entitled “L’invention du genre,” examines the roman policier as concept, as part of a historically determined social discourse that is by its very nature impossible. The second part, “Le pouvoir narratif en question,” picks up on the nature of what this generic impossibility implies to treat the formal or rhetorical functioning of the roman policier as text and its efforts to fabricate a coherent image of itself that has recourse to specific themes and narrative strategies. The third and final part, “L’imaginaire géopolitique,” considers the modalities of its social and historical presence and the ideological-political implications that inhere in it. More specific­ ally, he shows the “occultation de la réalité industrielle moderne [qui] est à la source d’une vision du monde redondante, où toute altérité est théoriquement suspecte parce que for­ mellement exclue” (p. 189). Emerging in the last years of the 19th century, the police narrative arose at a time when a “crise du roman” was occurring. By using the roman policier as an example of bad or inferior literature, because it violated the notion of la vérité comme récit (remindful of what Lyotard calls the truth-functional discourse), and thereby attempting to reaffirm the integrity of conventional novelistic prose, the critical establishment constituted the roman policier as genre. Behind this judgment, Eisenzweig perceives a shift in literary criticism from theme to narrative technique, that allowed critics to view the roman policier as a nonserious work based on deviant related concepts of code and contract, which established the condition of possibility of the roman policier asjeu (p. 44). Its contractual form constitutes “une véritable composante [. . .] de son univers imaginaire” (pp. 47-48), the result being that, in representing the genre policier, “l’univers narratif est en grande partie régie par cette représentation elle-même.” Thus, owing to thisjeu, critical discourse, undergoing an epistemological crisis, is thematically interiorized in the work which it scrutinizes. In this sense the contract is an anti-literary one. The narrative structure of the roman policier is a radical inversion of traditional narra­ tive. The absence of traditional characters of psychological substance as well as the dis­ appearance of the linearity of narrative events become the forms for the impossibility of the police narrative (“de tout mystère véritable”). This derives from a profound cleavage between enigma (the story to be told) and narration (the story told). In other words, the enigma in the récit exists as the impossibility of telling another récit—what happened (the crime). Thus, the roman policier is a récit in search of a récit (p. 53). All efforts of the narrative concur in concealing the narrative proper...