Diderot: Threshold of Representation by James Creech (review)

L ’ E s p r it C r é a t e u r be most capable of describing nature and scientific experiments. This relation between language and nature, between representation and natural object, is perceived as the prob­ lem put forth by Diderot’s text, as its essential epistemological preoccupation, its poetics (pp. x-xi). Here the critic’s endeavor emerges clearly: “ reestablishing the importance of language to Diderot’s scientific, philosophical project, the problematic aspect of the dis­ covering, writing, experimenting subject becomes apparent” (p. 27). Pucci then proceeds to deploy all available means to grasp this organizational principle of Diderot’s text. The intervention of the narrator-experimenter transforms the object about which he is writing. Indeed, Diderot constantly voids the perspective of scientific objectivity. What is dramatized by his Pensées is the inadequacy of language with respect to the object it purports to describe, and the effort the writer-scientist must make to appropriate the exteriority of this object. To bring nature inside language requires a veritable conversion on the part of the writer-experimenter: more precisely, “ the conversion of scientist as subject to scientist as receiver of nature” (p. 69). The necessity of the subject is thus established, but his posi­ tion is precarious from the start. The putative scientific subject is never, for Diderot, absolute or authoritarian (p. 88). in this context, the most important chapter of Pucci’s book deals with inversion. This is where the author most successfully enlarges the epistemological perspective of the Pensées. Diderot’s wholesale rejection of metaphysics is most apparent here. The natural representation must be able to distance itself from any order or any hierarchy that does not correspond to it. Hence the deductive order is not appropriate to the discourse on nature. For natural irregularities, corresponding discursive irregularities must be found. With its textual fragmentation and its questionings, the Interprétation de la nature embodies this new form of elaboration (p. 118). S. Pucci shows with brio not only how Diderot ushers empiricism into the eighteenth century, but, even more, how he condemns the metaphysical presuppositions that form the basis for scientific discourses claiming to be objective, because these presuppositions fail to acknowledge their subjective dimension, which is also their discursive existence. Suzanne Pucci reveals a Diderot who is faithful to himself, even in the most unshakeable realm of knowledge, that of science. In any case, her adroit analysis confirms the irrevocability of the rhetorical approach and, if it may be said, the decisive “ philosophical” advantage of literary criticism. P ie r r e S a in t -A m a n d Brown University James Creech. D id e r o t : T h r e s h o l d o f R e p r e s e n t a t io n . Columbus: Ohio State Univer­ sity Press, 1986. Pp. 213. $25.00. The question of representation in Diderot’s writings, its nature, function, and effect on the reader, has been a focus of interest for James Creech for a number of years. In several articles, each dealing with a different work of the eighteenth-century philosophe, Creech has presented a very perceptive analysis of the crucial importance of that concept in “ open­ ing up” texts to others within Diderot’s own oeuvre, to that of his contemporaries, and to posterity. These articles have been incorporated in the book under review and take their rightful place in the elaboration of the argument. The volume is divided into two sections: the first concerns aesthetics and literary texts, and deals specifically with Les Bijoux indiscrets, the article “ Beau” of the Encyclopédie, the “ Essais sur la peinture,” “ De la poésie dramatique,” and Le Fils naturel. The second section, entitled “ Philosophy: An Excellent Go-Between,” concentrates on texts usually called philosophical, such as “ La Lettre sur les aveugles,” “ La Lettre sur les sourds et muets,” the Encyclopédie, and con124 W inter 1988 B o o k R e v ie w s eludes with the Neveu de Rameau, which is offered as the perfect example of the argument developed in the book. The two parts are closely interconnected and the approach...