Dom Juan: The Subject of Modernity

Dom Juan: The Subject of Modernity Larry W. Riggs MODERNITY IS WRITING, according to Michel de Certeau.1 Sganarelle says of his master, Dom Juan, "vous parlez tout comme un livre" (I, 2). Modernity is the regime of increasingly powerful language production, the period during which text and, more generally, notational representations of the world have become dominant . Dom Juan is a consummate symbol-manipulator; he is a member of the elite defined by the era of text. By "modernity," I mean the period beginning with Gutenberg's establishment of the first printing shop, in roughly 1456, to the present. It is during the early part of this period that truth, knowledge, and valid thought begin to be associated with accurately reproducible text; that folkloric, oral culture is devalued, while literate culture is institutionalized and professionalized; and that literate skills and products come to be regarded as property. Standardized monetary wealth is of increasing importance in this time of more centralized printing, stamping, and coining. The advent of cheaper and more easily transportable printed matter detaches information from concrete contexts and, thus, devalues local, oral, folkloric cultural forms. De Certeau speaks of the modern State's will to inscribe the central discourse on the mind and geography of the nation. Erasure of old barriers to such a generalized discourse is an important modern process. Indeed, Raymond Williams contends that the essence of modern expansionist capitalism is the fast flow of information and commodities across frontiers. In his Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford gives a complementary definition: for him, capitalism is based on abstract symbols of wealth and movement.2 Williams also makes the important point that modernizing cultures prefer legalistic abstractions over existential contexts or relationships as objects of loyalty.3 It is also important to note that, in addition to making books smaller and more easily portable, mechanical print separates writing from the mark of a body. Thus, "knowledge" is detached from context in both theory and practice. Writing, mobility, and homogenization are important components of the conception of wealth that was becoming dominant in the seventeenth century. I will attempt to show that these aspects of modernity are all exemplified by Dom Juan. Vol. XXXVI, No. 1 7 L'Esprit Créateur Molière's theater contains a number of examples of the new culture's hostility to orality and folklore, and Dom Juan's contempt for tradition is obvious. Interestingly, his father, Dom Louis, chides him for treating his nobility as a form of property rather than a debt (IV, 6). Like Molière's other types, Dom Juan is an individualist who wants to escape from the network of obligations that would limit his freedom and mobility. Dom Juan also illuminates the advent of a comprehensively competitive society wherein minimally differentiated individuals battle for the exchangeable wealth that defines status. Often, this "wealth" is entirely abstract, consisting of mere signs signifying status. Max Vernet, in his excellent 1991 study of Molière, emphasizes the importance of this competition for the signs of more and more marginal distinction in seventeenth -century France and in Molière's plays.4 Vernet argues, as I did in my own 1989 book on Molière, that the comedian sees the modern culture emerging in his time as tending to substitute a system of twodimensional abstractions for the given world of concrete relationships. As Vernet puts it, Molière's types always make the mistake of inventing an abstract nature in order to be able to control it. They try to live in a world defined by knowledge or power which they can regard as their property and which will permit them to control others. In other words, they want to function as what Descartes called "masters and proprietors " of the world. The seventeenth-century absolutist State is a creation of and a boon to this growing system of exchanges. The modern State's institutionalization as a vast machine for engineering social and physical reality depends critically on standardizing language and culture. Homogenizing internal national spaces and linking new national States with commerce and technology are keys to the consolidation of power and knowledge sufficient to engineer society and the environment...