Essai sur l'origine de la mystification (review)

The study of the endogenous vocabulary of a given period remains a rewarding methodological approach in literary critical research. The word persiflage first appeared in the 1730s and was the subject of Élisabeth Bourguinat's Le Siècle du persiflage (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998); this line of enquiry is now expanded in Reginald McGinnis's thought-provoking essay devoted to the closely related mystification, a term newly minted around the middle of the eighteenth century. Voltaire was reported as disapproving of the neologism, while Diderot promptly embraced the word mystification, making it the title of one of his stories. The term is first used specifically in connection with a series of cruel practical jokes, burlesque initiations allegedly played on the gullible playwright Antoine-Henri Poinsinet. The first half of this essay focuses on the now forgotten figure of Poinsinet, author of some fifteen stage works, whose career extended from 1753 to 1769, precisely the period when the party of the philosophes was in the ascendant. Given that the central thrust of the Enlightenment was to demystify the world, it could seem paradoxical that the term mystification should have gained ground precisely at the moment when the philosophes were triumphant. In a close study of some of Poinsinet's works, McGinnis shows how they in fact address the theme of mystification and the associated concepts of ritual and initiation, and he argues that Poinsinet cannot, therefore, simply be dismissed as an anti-philosophe. This leads into the second half of the essay, which examines mystification in the works of some of the philosophes themselves. Diderot is, predictably, the example of choice here, and McGinnis provides original readings of La Religieuse and Le Neveu de Rameau, linking ideas of mystification to notions of persecution. A critique of mystification implies a critique of superstition and sacrifice, so the discourse of demystification leads naturally to consideration of d'Holbach's anti-religious works. The essay concludes, rightly but surprisingly, with Voltaire, in whose polemical writings a critique of ritual is central. Voltaire may have disapproved of the term mystification, but as McGinnis shows, its ethos informs much of his writing, for example in his extensive and provocative use of pseudonyms. How to attack ritual without oneself falling into another form of ritual? This fascinating essay combines history of ideas with sensitive close readings. Its discussion of originality has much to say about eighteenth-century notions of authorship. And it makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of Enlightenment literary aesthetics by showing that the processes of mystification, far from being inimical to the Enlightenment project, are in fact an integral part of it.