Jonathan Culler

Philosophy and Literature: The Fortunes of the Performative

The notion of the performativeÑan utterance that accomplishes the act that it designates&Ñwas proposed by the philosopher J. L. Austin to describe a type of utterance neglected by philosophers. This article follows the vicissitudes of the concept in literary and cultural theory to show (1) why it appeared useful for literary theory and what happens when literature is construed as fundamentally performative; (2) how it functions in theory and criticism associated with deconstruction, and (3) what role it plays in recent work in gender studies and queer theory, where Judith Butler has developed a performative theory of gender. The shifts in this concept pose questions about how to think about the constitutive force of language, the nature of discursive events, and literature as an act.

Fabula and Sjuzhet in the Analysis of Narrative: Some American Discussions

When I first began writing really just began writing, I was tremendously impressed by anything by everything having a beginning a middle and an ending. I think one naturally is impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything. So paragraphing is a thing then any one is enjoying and sentences are less fascinating, but then gradually well if you are an American gradually you find that really it is not necessary not really necessary that anything that everything has a beginning and a middle and an ending and so you struggling with anything as anything has begun and begun and began does not mean that thing does not really mean beginning or begun. Gertrude Stein (1969: 23)

Communicative Competence and Normative Force

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: German Literature, Department of,Womens Studies Program., Lecture, March 16, 1985.

The MosT InTeresTIng ThIng In The World

The topic of the relation between literature and democracy in Derridas thinking is introduced, focusing especially on the problem of the secret, which has loomed large in Derridas late discussions of both literature and democracy.

The Realism of Madame Bovary

Flauberts realism is a topic that has been somewhat neglected of late-for a variety of reasons that at least deserve some reflection. First, though Madame Bovary remains the most widely read and studied of his novels, it would be fair to say, I think, that for critics of the last thirty years Bouvard et Pecuchet has become paradigmatic for Flaubert-as of course it is-and that stripped-down model of writerly activity, which centers the novel on the circulation of anonymous discourses, can lead one to neglect the extensive descriptions, analyses, and reflections that make up so much of Madame Bovary. Consider this passage.

French Theory Revisited

Abstract “French Theory” may be an American construction but it was reasonable to group together heterogeneous thinkers whose work was related to structuralism and filled a void left by American analytical philosophy. Local conditions—the hermeneutical orientation of literary studies and the assumed opposition between literature and science—affected the reception of French thought and led to the reconceiving it as “post-structuralist.” Though influenced by French theorists, American work in Gender Studies took new forms and can influence French thought in turn, as French Theory carries on in America, China, and elsewhere.

Derrida and Democracy

This special issue began as a 2004 conference in honor of Jacques Derrida at Cornell University, organized by Philip E. Lewis. The topic selected for the conference was “Literature and Democracy,” and a citation from Derridas “Passions: An Oblique Offering” served as point of departure: “No democracy without literature; no literature without democracy” [28]. This issue is a logical extension of that conference, offering a range of papers on various aspects of Derridas thinking of democracy, some of which deal also with literature.

“Feminism in Time”: A Response

A collection of essays on feminism in time promises an account of the evolution of feminist movements, as movements with a history that have responded to historical conditions while influencing them in turn. It also promises an account of how feminism today might relate to the whole historical, cultural, and political tradition, to which the concerns of present-day feminism have been marginal. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, when feminism is neither a conspicuous force in national politics nor a vanguard movement in universities, I welcome the opportunity to hear from this learned and engaged group of contributors their thoughts on these matters. This set of essays does indeed deal with feminism both as a historical movement and as an approach to historical traditions. If it deals more fully with the latter than with the former, this is only fitting in a journal of literary history. Our collection has, in addition, the distinction of raising from various angles the important but neglected question of the relationship between the lyric and historical temporality. It is easy—and it has been productive—to treat novels as social and political documents that record the travails of women and perhaps, as Nancy Armstrong’s still provocative thesis about the role of domestic conduct literature has it, even ensure that “the modern individual was first and foremost a woman.”1 But lyric poetry has been less amenable to such

GRIP's Grasp: A Comment

For the past half-dozen years, the GRIP group has pursued problems that are increasingly recognized as central to thinking about literary studies: how questions about the nature of literature and the methods of literary criticism are tied in with questions about institutional arrangements for the teaching and studying of literature, structures of authority, and professional procedures. Instead of introducing institutional considerations only in polemical acts of debunking, GRIP has from the beginning promoted the serious, comprehensive study of the formation rules of disciplines. Theirs has been the most sustained attempt in literary studies to carry out the sort of program Michel Foucaults work has encouraged: to situate intellectual activities in a history of knowledge that is also a history of relations of power. Another novel feature of GRIPs work has been the emphasis on collective investigation. They have sought not only to experiment with the usual conditions of research and writing in the humanities but also to give a practical immediacy to their claim that knowledge depends upon shared assumptions. The essays gathered here show a grasp of varied institutional and ideological realities, from Ann Michelinis description of the conceptions of literary form that have generated and constrained debates about Euripides to Henry Schmidts discussion of the failure of classical German humanism to oppose Nazism. An important contribution to the genealogy of criticism in the United States is Elizabeth Wilsons argument that the conceptions of literary studies in twentieth-

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