INTERSTITIAL JOURNAL MACLEOD MUTE SPEECH (REVIEW)

Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics

Jacques Rancire (translated by James Swenson)
New York City: Columbia University ress! "#$$! %%& "#'! (")&## %a%erback
*S+N: ),'-#".$$/$#.#
Reviewed by 0ou1las 2ac3eod! SUNY Cobleskill
Have you ever started to watch a television show like Lost or Homeland or
Boardwalk Empire after it has been on for over a year or so? How frustrating is it to sit
there and not know what is going on? You dont know any of the characters; you dont
know any of the settings; you dont know any of the conflicts; you dont have any frame of
reference. Sure, you have the time and drive to get through the rest of the season, and you
may be interested in watching the show until it is cancelled. But unless you rent it from
et!li", buy the #$#, or have %n #emand ca&abilities that show the first season'and'a'
half, you may never have a full understanding of what you are viewing. (hat is how ) felt
reading Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics by *ac+ues ,anci-re,
translated by *ames Swenson and introduced by .abriel ,ockhill. ,anci-re, using such
&olitical/ideological/social/cultural critics as 0lthusser and !oucault as a foundation, has a
three'fold agenda1 23 he &laces realism and naturalism 4firmly at the center of the silent
revolution of the e"&ressive regime5; 63 he uses the works of Hugo, Bal7ac, and 8ola as
e"am&les of the 4e"&ression of society,5 as o&&osed to writings that se&arate society; and
93 he believes that 4literature favored the emergence of the historical, sociological, and
&olitical sciences5 because literature itself is a form of 4social e"&ression.5
2
How does he do
all of this? (hat +uestion is not an easy one to answer.
!irst, one must define the terms &resented to us in ,anci-res title; these definitions
are found in ,ockhills glossary of terms in his translation of ,anci-res The Politics of
esthetics, and in various other resources concerning ,anci-re. ,ockhill states that :silent
s&eech: ;which e+uates to :mute s&eech:3 is a com&onent of the :aesthetic regime of art:
;which is one of three regimes, the other two being the :ethical regime of images: and :the
re&resentative regime of art:3.
6
0s So&hie Berrebi adds1
)n the ethical regime, e"em&lified by <latos re&ublic, a scul&ture is gauged against
the +uestion of truthfulness and co&y. )n the re&resentational regime the scul&ture
1
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INTERSTITIAL JOURNAL MACLEOD MUTE SPEECH (REVIEW)
will be considered within the system of the hierarchy of genres and in relation to
+ualities such as skill and ade+uacy between sub=ect matter and re&resentation. )n
the re&resentational regime the arts occu&y a &articular &lace in what ,anci-re has
elsewhere called the >distribution of the sensible, a notion that can be understood as
the division of activities in a society. (he aesthetic regime differs from the other two
in that it no longer assigns to art a &articular &lace in society, nor is art any longer
defined by skill and &ractice1 for this reason, the term art in the singular re&laces
the &lurali7ed form of the ;fine3 arts.
9
(hus, the aesthetic regime 4re=ects the distribution of the sensible5 and 4is constantly
caught in a tension between being s&ecifically art and merging with other forms of activity
and being,5
?
which, then leads to a fundamental contradiction1 all things end u& having
meaning and a voice, while, at the same time, they are unable to use that voice and will
forever be silent ;unless someone gives us a better understanding of what that meaning
is3.
@
)t is here that literature gets defined and Mute Speech becomes a bit clearer.
0ccording to ,anci-re, in an interview with Solange .uenoun and *ames H. Aavanagh,
literature is 4an established system of the art of writing, which became consolidated in the
nineteenth century.5
B
(his system of writing goes against ,anci-res Belles Cettres
system, which is &art of the re&resentational regime of art, an art that had conformed to
set rules and regulations. (his e+uates to fiction/genre and is one of the foci of Mute
Speechs first cha&ter, 4!rom ,e&resentation to D"&ression.5 ,anci-re believes that there
are four &rinci&les to re&resentation1 the telling of the story, the conforming to the genre,
decorum and verisimilitude ;sim&ly &ut, the relationshi& between the author and the
reader3, and &resence ;the &erformance3. (he argument stemming from this assessment is
that with the change from re&resentation to the e"&ression/aesthetic ;from the
4intellectual &ower of ideas5 to 4the material &ower of words53 came 4the ruin of the
generic &rinci&le.5
E
He continues by stating that style 4is no longer what it was u& to that
&oint1 the choice of modes of e"&ression a&&ro&riate to the different characters in a given
situation and of ornaments &ro&er to the genre. Style now becomes the very &rinci&le of
art.5
F
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So36ie <errebi+ $Jac=(e# Ra%ci>re- Ae#&6e&ic# i# Poli&ic#+) Art and Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods+
Vol4 1+ No4 1+ S(..er 122?+ a/ailable a&- !!!4ar&a%'re#earc64or74(@/1%1@berrebire/46&.l4
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Roc!ell"# $I%&ro'(c&io%) *or Mute Speec6+ 34 519514
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De.ocra&ic Di#a7ree.e%&+) Substance: A Reie! of Theory " Literary Criticis#+ Vol4 15+ I##4 1+ 1222+ 34E4
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Ra%ci>re+ Mute Speech+ 34 B24
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INTERSTITIAL JOURNAL MACLEOD MUTE SPEECH (REVIEW)
Hugo falls into this category, as e"&lained in ,anci-res second cha&ter, 4!rom the
Book of Stone to the Book of Cife,5 and as e"&lained !etter in his interview with .uenon
and Aavanagh1 for Hugo, the Belle Cettres &aradigms were 4summari7ed in the
systemi7ation given by eighteenth'century !rench theoreticians, as a culmination of the
system originating in 0ritstotles <oetics.5
G
%ne element of Mute Speech that needs to be
addressed is that ,anci-re thinks that it was not fully the authors or the artists that
destroyed the re&resentation of the art regime, but 4literary critics5 that did the most
damage. ,anci-re, in the same interview, goes on to say that he is not really delving into
literary theory when he &roduces te"t. ,ather, he is more interested in 4the distribution of
words, time, s&ace.5
2H
He believes that, 4Citerature and investigations into literature
belong to everyone.5
22
(his &oint gets established in Iha&ter (hree, 4(he Book of Cife and
the D"&ression of Society,5 when ,anci-re sim&ly says, 40 &eo&le make a &oem, a &oem
makes a &eo&le.5
26
Mute Speech, therefore, is &artially a condemnation of critical theory and critical
theorists. 0s Hal !oster writes, since the 2GFHs and 2GGHs, there has been a shift from
&rofound res&ect for this form of criticism to it now being somewhat of a 4straight'=acket5
for writers.
29
!oster continues by saying it is believed that 4criti+ue is driven by a &ower of
will to &ower, and it is not refle"ive about its own claims to truth.5
2?
) su&&ose this is
where my issue lies with ,anci-re; he is a teacher and a &hiloso&her who can easily say
that critical theorists silence the freedoms of literature, and yet he seemingly asserts his
&ower as a critical theorist. !or e"am&le, in his fourth cha&ter, 4!rom .enerali7ed <oetics
to the Jute Cetter,5 ,anci-re writes1
(he e&ic world is &oeticKanti'&rosaicKbecause it is the e"act ade+uation between a
collective ethos and individual characters. (he individuality of the Homeric book of
the &eo&le is in the image of this unity. Homer writes his &oem as 0treus scul&ted
his sce&ter and %dysseus his matrimonial bed. (hat is why this &oem can be
simultaneously a book of life, scul&ted from the tissue of collective life, and the
necessarily individual work of a uni+ue artist.
2@
(o me, this is very much a 4straight'=acket5 or constraining, not only in content but in
language. ,anci-re becomes a &art of the democracy he critici7es, a term that means 4less
a state of being than an act of contention that im&lements various forms of dissensus.5
2B
5
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INTERSTITIAL JOURNAL MACLEOD MUTE SPEECH (REVIEW)
He becomes one of the &olice and &art of the &olitical system he is somewhat against, a
system that is 4characteri7ed in terms of division, conflict and &olemic.5
2E
0dmittedly, ) used a great deal of sources to hel& me with Mute Speech, and, ) am
+uite sure that ) have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is both a com&le" and
cerebral te"t. (he work, in fact, goes on for several cha&ters ;4!rom the <oetry of the
!uture to the <oetry of the <ast,5 4(he !able of the Cetter,5 and 4(he Lriting of the )dea,5
to name =ust a few3, where ,anci-re attem&ts to &rove ;among other claims31
(he novel no longer merely sets the necessity of writing in o&&osition to the
indifference of a sub=ect. )t sets two visions of writing in o&&osition to another. )n
one, writing is the Lord that bears witness to the &ower of incarnation &resent in
&oetry, the &eo&le, and stone; in the other, writing is a letter without a body that
could vouch for its truth and is thus available for any use and any s&eaker. Behind
the o&&osition between the two master &rinci&les that s&lit ,omantic aesthetics is a
conflict between two writings that turns out to be the hidden truth of the new
literature.
2F
0gain, the language that ,anci-re uses, on to& of creating of his own definitions of terms
and his analysis of te"t, is contradictory to his overall ideological/&hiloso&hical/social
beliefs. Jy thoughts on ,anci-res work, though, may be somewhat 4&olitical.5 ), more
than likely, am considered an officer of the &olice state that ,anci-re detests; a member of
the democracy that has so terribly silenced the freedom of s&eech and literature because of
my own &olitically'skewed &erce&tions of what literature is. 0t the same time, ) am not
any different than &eo&le not involved in critical theory, those who are outside of the
critical theoretical circle that casually read to be entertained or a&&eased. 0s ,anci-re
claims in his conclusion, 40 Ske&tical 0rt,5 like with all writing, his &rose,
Mis itself riven between two &oles1 on the one hand, the book of the symbols of the
&oeticity of the world, of the s&iritual life or the sensuous inner world; on the other,
naked writing, the mute and lo+uacious s&eech that rolls around left and right,
de&endent u&on the wavering attention un+ualified readers &ay to the &rinted &age,
at the mercy of what that attention draws from the &age and the chain of words and
images in which it is translated.
2G

Nnfortunately, ) may be one of these 4un+ualified readers5 ,anci-re writes about in Mute
Speech" )t is my firm belief, however, that even 4un+ualified readers5 with 4wavering
attentionOsP5 have a distinct right to at least try to &rovide a voice to those works they are
reading. Dven if one is &art of the democracy or the &olitical system, one should be allowed
1E
Jere.0 Vale%&i%e+ $Ra%ci>re a%' Co%&e.3orar0 Poli&ical Proble.#+) Para%raph+ Vol4 1?+ I##4 1+ Marc6 122B+ 34 A84
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INTERSTITIAL JOURNAL MACLEOD MUTE SPEECH (REVIEW)
to inter&ret a te"t as one wishes, without being =udged by those who claim to be on the
outskirts of that system.
0ou1las 2ac3eod is a $isiting )nstructor of Ciberal 0rts at SNY Iobleskill. Since
graduating with a #octorate of 0rts from SNY at 0lbany in 6HHF, he has written book
and film reviews for such =ournals as #ilm and History, Scope: n $nline %ournal of #ilm
and T& Studies, Southwest %ournal of Cultures, 'arscapes, and %ournal of merican
Studies of Turkey. Cater this year, he will have two entries &ublished in the Encyclopedia
of 'omen and merican Popular Culture. He lives in ew York with his wife, <atty, and
two dogs.
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