My Hatred of Chiasmus and My Chiasmus of Hatred

[Now spectacularly X-posted to The Valve]

Spring Quarter's Critical Theory Emphasis mini-seminar will be led by Nancy Fraser and is entitled "Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World."  I speak not to the content of the CTE event (about which I know nothing) but the rhetoric of its presentation.  Passing over for the moment the importance of the seminar indicated by continuing activity its title implies—"Fear not!  You're part of a movement of reframers.  You are not now nor will you ever be reframing alone!"—I focus instead on the title of the third session: "From the Framing of Politics to the Politics of Framing." 

That's a classic chiasmus . . . even if it lacks the poetry of Yeats' "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death."  Yeats plays with the tension produced by chiasmus in "An Irish Airman."  Observe the final four lines:

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Note the imperfection of the outer the chiasmus.  The element of "balance" occupies the initial position in both.  The idea behind a chiasmus is to create the impression of order.  Yeats exploits this by inverting the already inverted terms.  The logic of chiasmus demands the second and third lines above read

The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years to come . . .

Instead Yeats layers the inversions.  The airman's past and future—inversive figures from the present moment—occupy the same position in the chiasmus.  Both refer to breaths wasted when compared to the heroic death he anticipates.  The airman refers to balance while his words undermine the balance of his rhetorical gesture.  Yeats strains against the strictures of chiasmus in order to demonstrate the manner in which life does.  The failed establishment of poetic order emphasizes the struggle against what Beckett infamously christens "the mess."  The airmen strives "to find a form that accommodates the mess."  Only the mess always wins.  The contest to create the order one fails to discern in the world will turn tragic in the end.  (On this Beckett insists.)

A certain breed of literary scholars failed to learn from this.  I admit that my initial infatuation with Deleuzian philosophy stemmed from its opposition to all things hierarchical.  Its rhizomes embraced the messiness of the world and I liked that.  You know: "To every chiasmus inheres a line-of-flight."  But then there's the other trend in literary scholarship: that of the unacknowledged or crypto-hierarchy which often sails under the flag of Theory.  Certainly the perfectly chiasmatic and orderly theoretical works of literature should not condemn the entire enterprise . . . but in panel and session titles like the ones above I see the creep of the worst infecting the best.  Fraser's chiasmus is a clever implement designed to channel the conversation in a sorely limited direction.  As Brook Thomas explains of another such chiasmus:

There is a tendency to transform the chiasmatic relationship from one of difference into one of identity.  This tendency is neatly illustrated in Warner's transformation of Montrose's formulation, "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history," into the assertion that "the text is historical; and history is textual."  This replacement of difference by identity leads to another tendency—that of disciplinary imperialism, masquerading as interdisciplinary work.  The chiasmatic coupling of two disciplines has the appearance of interdisciplinarity.  But, if, as in the case of Warner, the other discipline can be reduced to textuality, the most perceptive cultural critics turn out to be—lo and behold—readers of texts.  Since everything is a text and since literary critics are trained to read texts, some feel quite comfortable moving to texts produced in disciplines outside their field and telling the naive (but professionally trained) practioners of those fields how those texts should be read. (10)

Thomas refers to this tendency as "disciplinary arrogance."  I'd stress that it's abetted by the convenience of a philosophical position which reduces everything to "the text" via declarations that il n'y a pas de hors-text.  If one assumes Derrida's correct isn't what necessarily follows from it a kind of disciplinary imperialism?  (This obviously wouldn't stem from Derrida's work so much as chiasmatic appropriations and elaborations of his thought.)

All of which is only to implore you to distrust unmessy chiasmus.  I think.  But it's been a "the option" day today . . . which means I may only be cranky.

Comments

[Jon]

I remember Fred Jameson saying that chiasmus was "the Marxist trope." I remember that clearly. What I remember less clearly was why.

[Dr. Virago]

Is Nancy Fraser a political theorist? If so, then framing is a term of art.* And since political theorists are the only political scientists who actually talk about politics (and they're considered shocking enfants terrible for doing so)* the her chiasmic subtitle is less an imperialism of discipline than a self-reflexive folding in of it.

*I'm just parrotting my political theorist boyfriend/partner/sig-o so I can neither defend nor explain these statements from on high.

[Kevin M.]

Frankly, I just think that the chiasm that triggered your distaste is just a case of unimaginative uncreative banality. It probably has nothing whatever to do with the content of the session.

[Jonathan]

The French's a bit mixed up, unless it's a pun I don't get.

[Dr. Virago]

just a case of unimaginative uncreative banality

Oh yeah, that too, Kevin M.

And Scott, I was simply thrilled to see a post on chiasmus! I love a fun rhetorical trope on a sunny Saturday morning, even a frequently misused and abused one. And nice analysis of Yeats' brilliant use of it.

[Chance]

My problem with chiasmus is it often suggest an aburd reading. "Each throat was parched, and glazed each eye," for example, to me says that the throats were parched and also that the throats glazed people's eyes somehow.

[Jim Harrison]

Tropes don't work very well if you use 'em without a twist. No verve without swerve. You end up sounding like Brutus in Julius Caesar or even the Duc d'Escargot in Start the Revolution Without Me, i.e. like an American president. (Ask not what you can do for your country, etc.)

We can eschew the marasmus that is chiasmus
And even the more comprehensive banality of mimesis
In favor of what's really far-fucking-out, tmisis;
But we'll probably just wind up with anacaluthon.

[T. Scrivener]

The use of the chiasmus among Theorists ( capital T intended) is especially surprising and ironic because as Scott indicates the chiasmus is a result of an overly structured and symmetrical mind.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Jon, that rung a bell, so I googled it. My first reaction upon seeing that was horror; my second, curiousity; my third, relief. Unfortunately, I didn't find the reference you and I are both thinking of.

Dr. V., she is a political scientist, and that does invalidate my specific point (and substantiate my claims of grumpiness); but I think the general point still holds, no? (That chiasmus is often deployed in such disciplinarily imperialistic manners.)

Kevin and Jim, I think you've nailed one aspect of my complaint: had it been a clever chiasmus instead of one whose cleverness I noted dismissively, I wouldn't have minded (hence the comparison to Yeats).

Chance, damn fine point, that is. Connects with something Amardeep mentioned the other day. It invites violation of logic, and thus if it ain't used perfectly or willfully imperfectly, it fails.

Jonathan, it was. Now it isn't.

Tim, I'm not sure it's surprising that people with a penchant for systemization love overly structured literary tropes. As a friend of mine once said, "weak minds love systems," to which I'll add, "as do strong ones when tired or annoyed." (And I'm still working on getting John to cough up that analytic list. So far the best I've gotten from him is the new two volume Soames tome.)

[Jon]

Scott, I googled too. But I heard him saying it in a class (on Brecht), so that particular aperçu may not have made it into print.

He also told a joke about an elephant on a restaurant menu. But I can't remember how it went.

So much for what I learned from that class.

[Adam Kotsko]

Now you should do a post about the overuse of "(in both senses of the genitive)."

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Jon, I think I actually heard him say that in a mini-seminar on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (which, for those who haven't read it, is quite concerned with theories of governance); maybe it's a stock phrase he says but never writes. Lord knows I have a few of those.

Adam, I think I'll leave that one to you. I've never been quite able to understand what it's supposed to mean. I mean, I've read the manual, and know that it follows any verb of creation ("invention," "interpretation," &c.) + fuzzy noun of great import ("the subject," "modernity," &c.) . . . but I'm not sure why. (Other than it being a necessary part of professionalization.)

[Susan]

I was in that class too (hi Jon!). I think the connection between chiasmus and Marxism was reversal: the Zizek-like desire to stand conventional thinking on its head. (I don't know if he mentioned Zizek, though). My only memories from that class are a similar fog of anecdotage. Do you remember the joke/anecdote about Lacan, Bataille's wife, and . . . ? Or was it Lacan's wife and Bataille?

[Dr. Virago]

I think the general point still holds, no? (That chiasmus is often deployed in such disciplinarily imperialistic manners.)

Oh, totally. But my love and affection for a particular political theorist (who wouldn't, btw, write such a terribly banal chiasmus!) made me want to defend political theorists in general. They're very put upon in their own fields -- no wonder they (or at least my boyfriend) hang out with us lit. folks.

And I totally think you should do a post on "of." I love of. To wit, The Book of Margery Kempe is: about Kempe, belonging to Kempe, by Kempe, constituting Kempe, divisible into the many parts of Kempe, and so on and so on. I actually like teaching the partitive genitive in Old English. And when I wrote my diss and it had an "of" in its title that signified twenty ways 'til sundown I couldn't be more pleased with myself. Now that's it's a book it still has an "of" in it, but it's not nearly as colorful, alas. Publishers are starting to crack down on our abuses in titles.

[Adam Kotsko]

Now that I think about it, they're always talking about the subjective and objective forms of the genitive, but not the partitive -- perhaps this is a new frontier to keep Theory going for another five years?

[ben wolfson]

There are even more senses of the genitive than that, too. For instance, valuation (as in the infamous "flocci non facio"). And I think Greek has a genitive absolute that's analogous to Latin's ablative absolute? Fortunately we have a list!

I just encountered a "both senses of the genitive" use in a class on the first critique, with reference to its title.

[Adam Stephanides]

"He also told a joke about an elephant on a restaurant menu. But I can't remember how it went."

Would that be the one whose punchline is "I'm sorry, but for only one steak, we can't cut up our elephant"?

[Adam Kotsko]

I propose that we start a new department of genitive studies.

[Jon]

Adam, yes, I think that's the one.

And I believe the point had something to do with totality.