Reading Unruly: Interpretation and Its Ethical Demands

1. Montaigne

21 I Montaigne The Accidental Theorist Theory . . . has no vested interests inasmuch as it never lays claim to an absolute system, a non-ideological formulation of itself and its “truths”; indeed, always itself complicit in the being of current language, it has only the never-finished task and vocation of undermining philosophy as such, of unraveling affirmative statements and propositions of all kinds. Fredric Jameson After reflecting on the limits of man’s cognitive powers in a key passage from the “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” Michel de Montaigne turns his attention to himself, taking stock of his own practice and its potential effects on future generations: Having found by experience that where one man had failed, another has succeeded , and that what was unknown to one century the following century has made clear, and that the sciences and arts are not cast in a mold, but are formed and shaped little by little, by repeated handling and polishing, as the bears lick their cubs into shape at leisure, I do not leave off sounding and testing what my powers cannot discover; and by handling again and kneading this new matter, stirring it and heating it, I open up to whoever follows me some facility to enjoy it more at his ease, and make it more supple and manageable for him. 22 Montaigne Ayant essayé par experience que ce à quoy l’un s’estoit failly, l’autre y est arrivé, et ce qui estoit incogneu à un siecle, le siecle suyvant l’a esclaircy, et que les sciences et les arts ne se jettent pas en moule, ains se forment et figurent peu à peu en les maniant et pollissant à plusieurs fois, comme les ours façonnent leurs petits en les lechant à loisir: ce que ma force ne peut descouvrir, je ne laisse pas de le sonder et essayer; et, en retastant et pétrissant cette nouvelle matiere, la remuant et l’eschaufant, j’ouvre à celuy qui me suit quelque facilité pour en jouir plus à son ayse, et le luy rends plus souple et plus maniable.1 As the product of “experience” and “essaying,” Montaigne’s “new matter” denotes at once his self and his book. It represents his contribution to the existing and ever expanding body of human knowledge, his own response to the Delphic injunction to “know thyself,” as well as the material product of his intellectual labor. Montaigne’s “new matter”—which reminds us of his address to the reader (“I am the matter of my book” [“je suis moy-mesme la matiere de mon livre”])—will then be passed on to his readers to come, “whoever follows [him].” This process is not absent of authorial anxieties, however. Not unlike a child who leaves home to go out into the world, the printed book of the Essays attains a degree of autonomy and eventually comes to lie outside the hermeneutic control of its father. Montaigne already hints at an uncanny dissymmetry between himself and his book (his child of the mind): Even in my own writings I do not always find again the sense of my first thought; I do not know what I meant to say. (II, 12, 425–26b) [My book] may know a good many things that I no longer know and hold from me what I have not retained and what, just like a stranger, I should have to borrow from it if I came to need it. If I am wiser than it, it is richer than I. (II, 8, 293c, emphasis added) En mes escris memes, je ne retrouve pas tousjours l’air de ma premiere imagination: je ne scay ce que j’ay voulu dire. (566) [Mon livre] peut sçavoir assez de choses que je ne sçay plus, et tenir de moy ce que je n’ay point retenu et qu’il faudroit que, tout ainsi qu’un estranger, j’empruntasse de luy, si besoin m’en venoit. Il est plus riche que moy, si je suis plus sage que luy. (401–2) Montaigne’s book is his, yet it is also like a stranger to him: it is him and not him. 23 Montaigne It is not surprising, then, that Montaigne expressed concern about his reception. This chapter considers several questions first posed by the essayist himself. Would the Essays be read as an “inventive work,” as a work that elicits creative responses from its readers? Would the...