The Birth of Counter Theory
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Some works seem to lend themselves to a contextual analysis rather than to
a textual one, while on the contrary, some others tend to call for a structural,
semiotic reading: any of Emile Zola’s novels from the Rougon-Macquart series,
which tell of the social hardship caused by the industrial revolution, would
indeed offer a wealth of possibilities for contextual analysis; on the other hand,
the novel A Rebours {Against the Grain), written by one of his contemporaries
and former disciples, Joris-Karl Huysmans, appears to be entirely devoid of
social considerations but presents a very unique use of the language, hence
allowing for a revealing textual/semiotic analysis. However, relative synthesis
will benefit overall interpretation by including a binary movement between
context to text and text to context. For example, Spike Lee’s film, Malcolm X ,
openly calls for a rigorous historical and sociological contextualization, which
would undeniably prove fruitful for it is first of all a historical narration.
However, a close analysis of its structure will reveal different sides of the
message which would not necessarily be shown by a straight historicosociological approach, such as the inter-narrative relationship between the final
images, which show many shots of different children exclaiming “I am Malcolm
X,” and the well-known sequence from the film Spartacus, when the hero’s
companions prefer to accuse themselves rather than to denounce him by stating
one after the other: “I am Spartacus.” Beyond Malcolm A^s historically defined
struggle, we perceive the traces of a more ancient and universal war between
freedom and oppression, suggested by the narrative syntagm itself and which
could elude a purely contextually based approach.
The practice of Counter Theory naturally opposes post-modern textual
habits, which create polysemia through over-conceptualization and imply a loss
of contact with empirical reality. A concept is already a type of generalization;
generalizations of generalizations through over-conceptualization sooner or later
asphyxiate meaning. In this, post-modern critics do practice what they preach
and their lack of faith in meaning is faithfully restituted in their writings. The
necessary deconceptivist stand of Counter Theory consists of rejecting any
concept which does not have a clear, monosemic value and empirical reference,
in a constant effort to distinguish the language of Criticism from that of
Literature. Although some play between the words and their meaning is
unavoidable, and this notion in itself is certainly not a novel idea,16 the language
of criticism must remain essentially referential and avoid what we could call the
temptation of “conceptual poetics,” which complicate rather than elucidate
matters by cluttering discourse with polysemic signs; one simply cannot
interpret a metaphor with another metaphor. Of course, this implies that the
critic has a definite message to express about one given text or narration, other
than that of his or her discourse in itself, and that he or she is not simply trying
to advance through the academic gauntlet by producing yet another
“provocative” essay written in a more or less incomprehensible conceptual
jargon. The pressure put on faculty to publish at all costs is indeed not
conducive to an honest, sincere evaluation of one’s contribution to the field, and