Federman's Fictions: Innovation, Theory, and the Holocaust

ELEVEN: RAYMOND FEDERMAN AND CRITICAL THEORY

ELEVEN RAYMOND FEDERMAN AND CRITICAL THEORY Jan Baetens YES OR NO? Raymond Federman and Critical Theory? If we start from this question, there are at least three problems here. The first is “Critical Theory”: What are we talking about when we use this term in a context of literary criticism ? The second is “Raymond Federman”: Are we talking of the novelist, the theoretician, the man, the character, the performer, the jazz musician, the Holocaust survivor, the French Federman, the American Federman, the author writing in French, the one writing in English, the author as he is being read in the United States, the author as he is being read in France or Germany, the real Federman, his body double, or still another one of his doubles? The third problem, the major one of course, is that of the conjunctive word “and”: Is there really any relevant relationship between Raymond Federman, whoever he may be, and Critical Theory, which can be about anything, as its definition generally implies, or are we just playing some postmodern version of “anything goes”? And since the three musketeers were four, why not add a fourth reason to avoid any uncritical acceptance of the relationship between Raymond Federman and Critical Theory: there is no item “critical theory” in the famous book Federman, A to X-X-X-X—A Recyclopedic Narrative (McCaffery, Hartl, and Rice 1998), although it is clear that the spirit of this work is clearly that of . . . Critical Theory. As one of the editors, Doug Rice, explains in a kind of “warning”: 191 192 FEDERMAN’S FICTIONS This Recyclopedia is viral and has, on different occasions in different ways, infected its editors. . . . Because this RF virus could not be contained in any sort of normal fashion, the three of us set out to discover the kind of pages that might be capable of holding RF inside the margin and on the line. At first, this task seemed rather impossible. RF kept slipping outside the margins into textual duplicity. A nomadic place populated by singing pirates. Footnotes exploded. RF himself became a mirror site of double speech. . . . (McCaffery, Hartl, and Rice 1998, 31) Seen from the library of a university campus, the question is obviously less absurd, for there are many good reasons that may encourage us to bridge the gap between the being “Raymond Federman” and the item “Critical Theory.” Let’s just quickly enumerate. 1) Raymond Federman is a French avant-garde writer, and hence automatically, so the syllogistic cliché would have us say, a good representative of Critical Theory (which as we all know is close to both French Theory and avant-garde writing). 2) Raymond Federman is a longtime friend of Samuel Beckett, the influence of the latter on the former is undeniable, and since Samuel Beckett is still an icon of what critics quote a canonical example of writing that illustrates in one sense or another the ideas of Critical Theory, there is no reason whatsoever to exclude the work by Raymond Federman of this cultural framework. And 3) Raymond Federman is the author of an important essay on “surfiction,” a term he coined himself and whose meaning is close to what some might consider a form of Critical Theory: And so, for me, the only fiction that still means something today is the kind of fiction that tries to explore the possibilities of fiction beyond its own limitations; the kind of fiction that challenges the tradition that governs it; the kind of fiction that constantly renews our faith in man’s intelligence and imagination rather than man’s distorted view of reality; the kind of fiction that reveals man’s playful irrationality rather than his righteous rationality. This I call SURFICTION. However, not because it imitates reality, but because it exposes the fictionality of reality. Just as the Surrealists called that level of man’s experience that functions in the subconscious SURREALITY, I call that level of man’s activity that reveals life as a fiction SURFICTION. (Federman 1993, 37) If we continue this line of argumentation, the relevance of several Critical Theory aspects or parameters, on which we will come back immediately , can hardly be underestimated. If we want to find solid ground for a reflection on the literary impact or status of Critical Theory, a good start- 193 RAYMOND FEDERMAN AND CRITICAL THEORY ing point here can be the seminal book by George Landow...