Jacques Derrida Visits Cicely
49
on the validity, and thus the worth, of Chris’s thesis and, by extension, the
appropriateness of awarding him a degree.
Martin, wlio prefers Chris call him Aaron, is “blown away” by Chris’s
thesis and warns him about Professor Schuster, who, he confides to Chris, thinks
little of it. Chris offers Aaron a beer and proposes an unintentionally ironic toast
that had to tickle the fimny bones of at least half the college professors in the
country who heard it: “To academia. In a world of ever more compromise and
pettiness, the last refuge of ideas and idealism for their own sake.” Shortly
thereafter. Professor Schuster, who prefers Chris call him Professor Schuster,
arrives, and he soon expresses his disapproval of wliat Chris has written. Writing
in 1888, says Schuster, Thayer could hardly have predicted the fall of the Soviet
Union and the rise of terrorism. “I know,” replies Chris, indicating just how
thoroughly he has accepted the tenets of modem critical theory, “It’s just a
metaphor.”
“The scalpel of wfiich,” replies Schuster, “irrevocably cleaves the work
from the artist’s intent. God forbid we should pay homage to a poem as a poem
and not just a code.” He has standards to uphold, he tells Chris, so he has no
intention of awarding a diploma for glibness, or even emdition.
Conflicting opinions over the status of “the author” surface in questions
the two ask at Chris’s orals. The traditional Schuster, posing the first question,
asks Chris to define “objective correlative,” identify the source of the concept,
and provide an example. The concept of the objective correlative was
formulated by the American poet T. S. Eliot, vAio is also credited with being one
of the earliest and most influential proponents of New Criticism, the
“traditional” view of literature that privileges authorial intent to which Schuster
owes his allegiance.
Martin’s lack of concern for authorial intent shows up in his question.
“In vAiat way,” he asks when it is his turn, “does the relativism embedded in
[Herman] Melville’s duality of evil presage the moral ambiguities of twentiethcentury colonialism?” Chris answers both questions satisfactorily, and, it is
suggested, passes his orals with no difficulty.
The professorial conflict over literary theory empts into comic violence
during a dinner at the home of town patriarch, Maurice Minnifield. An argument
begins when Chris annoimces that he has been re-reading essays “on the
Deconstmction thing” written by Jacques Dareeda and Roland Bairt [his
pronunciations]. He finds himself “whacked out” by the contradictions he’s
found in their theories. “Whatever happened to beauty is tmth, tmth beauty?” he
asks.
“The very multiplicity of interpretations is at the heart of
Deconstmction,” answers Martin. “It is only when you remove the author as the
final arbiter that all the suppressed meanings are allowed to proliferate.”
“Ergo,” intermpts an exasperated Schuster, “misinterpretation and
plagiarism are no longer literary crimes.”