David F. Bell

A Moratorium on Suspicion

ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES STOPPED ME IN THE HALL RECENTLY to explain how happy she was to have reached a moment in her academic career when she no longer had to teach literature. Another colleague buttonholed me at about the same time to tell me he could no longer imagine teaching literature in any context other than cultural studies-that is, in a setting in which the literary text was at most an illustration of an ideological, historical, or theoretical theme, no different from any other cultural manifestation. No wonder undergraduates demonstrate dwindling interest in taking a major in literature. For a host of reasons, they come to the university less interested in studying literature than previous generations of students were, only to encounter on their arrival professors who are more than occasionally apathetic toward or suspicious of literary texts. Student disenchantment can only grow in such circumstances.

Writing, Movement/Space, Democracy: On Jacques Ranciere's Literary History

At a certain moment in his argument in Vitesse et politique, Paul Virilio describes the French Revolution in a particularly idiosyncratic way as a circulatory flow of traffic, thus suggesting that one way of representing the events of the Revolution is to see them as a series of trafficjams and roadway accidents. The general conscription to which the Revolution gave rise in 1793, for example, did not simply enroll a large number of the new citizens of the republic into its military activities, it effectively sent those republican soldiers out onto the roads in defense of the principles of the Revolution:

Genealogies and Simulacra in Zola's Son Excellence Eugene Rougon

Although Napoleon III does not appear in person extensively in Emile Zolas Les Rougon-Macquart, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that his presence and that of the political practices he represents permeate the series of novels that make up the cycle. It is therefore somewhat surprising that despite the fact that much has been written concerning political questions in the RougonMacquart, little has been said of the emperor.1 One reason for such an oversight may be that those concerned with politics in the Rougon-Macquart are generally more interested in problems related to socialism and to the working class than in Zolas depiction of the political structures of the Second Empire per se. In any case, the absence of any coherent analysis of Napoleon III in the series of novels warrants correction for several reasons. First, the RougonMacquart represents in many ways a laying to rest of the Napoleonic myth by a member of the post-Romantic generation of writers in France. For Zola, it is no longer possible to appeal to the glory of the First Empire in order to condemn the Second. But perhaps more importantly, the depiction of Napoleon III allows Zola to expose some of the mechanisms of political power that possess validity in a more general context that exceeds the boundaries of

Introduction: The Editors of SubStance

This issue of SubStance is the first since 2010 not dedicated to a specific theme or author; it features ten eclectic essays submitted from different disciplines and countries by well-established as well as emerging scholars. We wish to take this opportunity to emphasize the importance of these varia, which illustrate the range of our speculative and critical interests, and to signal directions we anticipate the journal moving in the near future. Beyond its interest in French literature and theory, SubStance has always promoted a dialogue between contemporary theory and a multifaceted outside, an outside where contemporary theory may be used to investigate literary, philosophical, and artistic traditions, movements or historical periods; an outside where theory may be used to conceptualize contemporary cultural issues; an outside, finally, where contemporary theory may venture into hybrid and innovative writing. Exploring hybrid writing with theoretical impact is at the center of our current preoccupations. “Hybrid” writing refers to both media (multimedia and non-linear writing on internet platforms; more below concerning our ongoing reflections about a fourth hybrid print-digital issue and an e-book series) and genre-mixing critical and creative prose, exploring the potential for using fiction within theoretical speculation: not simply writing on fiction but with fiction. In fact, these projects include all possible (or not yet possible) literary modes—a poem, for instance (see below)—as long as this genre-bending writing authentically generates stimulating conceptual frameworks, and is something more than a style, or, rather, truly a style: a creative way to actually address and express ideas or concepts, to push literary thought and thought about literature into new territories.

Statistical Thinking in Balzac: Le Cousin Pons

Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderers orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action. --George Eliot, Daniel Deronda