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The Meeting Place ofzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Autobiography and Censorship: Rousseau's Lettres a Malesherb es E. S. B U R T Je remarquerai seulement, avant d’entrer en matiere, que M. de Malesherbes, motivant tous ces retranchements sur les idees des catholiques, ou meme des reformes, et moi raisonnant uniquement sur les miennes, ce n’est pas merveille si nous nous rencontrons peu. Rousseau. To Malesherbes, March 10, 1761. On some changes proposed in Julie. All writing involves a selection of material from the undifferentiated mass of experiences, as well as the molding of that material into a finite form. An active operation like a censoring—a practical selecting, register­ ing, and discarding of material —goes on in any literary work. But the selection process is particularly important for autobiography, for knowledge of the principles according to which some material is routed toward expression and other material toward oblivion is more revelatory with respect to the seifs foundations and limits than the material selected itself. The autobiographer’s search for self-knowledge invariably demands the investigation of what might be called a system of censorship, in which the paths regularly described in expressing and repressing are laid down and remain for study. Censor, from censeo, means to register, to write down; and, to assess, to give an opinion. Both meanings are at work here. The self-knowledge expressed is itself subject to a kind of secondary cen­ soring, a self-conscious reassessment, that makes it an unreliable source for any positive action on the part of the autobiographer. But the secon289 2 9 0 / B U R T zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA dary process is inventive as well, and provides autobiographer and reader alike with new material for analysis. What is not clear is what relationship the inventive system operating to produce autobiography might have with the institution of book cen­ sorship which arrogates the right, in eighteenth-century France at least, to make pronouncements on a book’s suitability for transmission and cir­ culation in the public domain. In the letter quoted above, written in reply to some changes proposed by a French censor to fedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Julie, Rousseau suggests that the two are very different. The institution, as personified by ChretienGuillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, Directeur de la Librairie from 1750 to 1763, and consequently head of the censorship system, motivates its cuts in a manner opposed to his own reasoning process. It is evident from the context and the tone of his comment that Rousseau does not think that the difference between his editorial decisions and the excisions to Julie1 proposed by way of Malesherbes can be ascribed to ill will or to insufficient understanding on either side. Rather, he appears to suggest that it is of the very nature of the institution to be doctrinal to its cuts, to reason according to an already-determined set of ideas whose trans­ mission is in part its object. Received ideas concerning the kind of material to be censored, unanalyzed opinions or unacknowledged models shape the institution’s choices. An author, on the other hand, reasons and repress­ es according to his own rules, which only occasionally, and as it were, coincidentally, conform with those of the censor. In the case of the author is considered publishable whatever comes out of the reasoning process, whereas in the case of the institution, only what is deemed publishable makes it past the censor’s scissors. Now while the distinction posited by Rousseau between inventive and synthetic reasoning processes makes it seem easy to differentiate between institutional critics and authors, that distinction in fact very quickly breaks down. The institution tends to transgress its own rule and to excise not only what doctrine deems dangerous, but to make arbitrary inroads into the author’s invention as well. One can easily understand how the distinc­ tion gets lost by thinking about the institution’s representative, the cen­ sor. He cannot simply read a text as it presents itself to a given group of readers. His function is to determine whether to demand that certain statements be cut or replaced, in order to bring the work into line with orthodox doctrine. To do so, he must read suspiciously, imagining the...

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