Abstract dissertation Antitheses French
Appendix: English abstract
Antitheses
th stFrench Writers’ Theses in the 20 and 21 Centuries
In November 1901, Victor Segalen is fully focused on his dissertation. After having thought about his research on the split personality, on ancient Egyptian medicine, a topic on hysteria and hypnotism in the work of Wagner, then about a general examination of neurosis in literature, he chooses to study medical observation in the naturalist novel. He is very enthusiastic and confident that he has found a new intellectual way to reconcile art and science. The young medical student has literary ambitions and the thesis gives him the opportunity to write and to deliver a text to the writers he admires. Saint-Pol-Roux, Joris-Karl Huysmans and Remy de Gourmont appreciate his text. The committee of the dissertation is also satisfied. But a few years later, Segalen disavows this thesis. The Cliniciens ès lettres would have become dishonorable:
They testify of a period of my mental life when I dreamt of an alliance of scientific research and literature; I reject it now, being at a point where I no longer accept any compromise in the artwork - the only existing thing. Letter of Victor Segalen to Émile Magne, the 6th of November1907, quoted by Jean Starobinski in
1
One could think that Segalen affects a writer’s posture in his opposition of pure art to a literature corrupted by science. I would rather say that he indicates a tension that will mark the
th
whole 20 century: a tension between the university–considered as a simple frame for scientific research–and the idea of a “real” literature devoid of institutional constraints.
For more than a century, writers’ dissertations have become more and more numerous. If it is well known that Céline’s Semmelweis derives from a thesis on medicine, it is often ignored that The Myth of Sisyphus of Camus and The Imaginary of Sartre could have been presented in front of doctoral committees, that Bardèche has defended a brilliant work on Balzac in 1941, or that Jacques Roubaud holds two doctoral degrees (in mathematics and literature). Segalen was an exception in 1900, but today there are numerous writer-professors that hold a doctoral degree or have at least attempted to write a dissertation. Until now, critics have always read writers’ dissertations in a biographical perspective, as secondary texts. In this dissertation, I would like to compare these conventionally isolated texts, because they belong to a common genre and derive from a common institutional experience. Writers’ dissertations are heteroclite texts, on very different topics, but they all share the same difficulty: to make individual writing compatible with the institutional norms of the genre. Therefore I will not only present a very little known corpus, a collection of scattered documents–sometimes as arduous as disconcerting–but I will also try to understand how, all along a century, literary and academic writings have met, crossed and challenged each other in writers’ dissertations.
General Approach: History and Reflexivity
To qualify the relationship of professors and writers, Pierre Macherey speaks of a
“respectful repulsiAt a time when the writer and the professor are more and more often the same person, interrogating the historicity of the opposition of academic and literary writings may contribute to an attenuation of the mistrust between the two milieus. The long-term perspective allows us to gaze serenely on the structures that constitute and regulate academic practices– starting with the norms and forms of the dissertation genre.
th
To respond to this worry, one cannot go back in time further than the beginning of the 20 century. Indeed, the attraction of the institution to writers only begins when the second profession of professor becomes a viable option for them–that is to say after the Reform of the Humanities in 1902. Besides, it is easy to understand that this study will be limited to French writers:
institutional histories are difficult to compare, since they differ extensively from country to country . Therefore this thesis follows disciplinary and methodological evolutions particular to
French history.
Should this dissertation be inscribed in what has been called “the return of literary history?” The general structure of the thesis–a century divided into four moments–could be interpreted as a positive answer. But it would be false to say that the dissertations respond to each other like novels or poems that are influenced by preceding works within their genres. To mention the three writers who will be studied closely, it would be absurd to say that Péguy’s dissertation influenced Paulhan’s, which influenced Barthes’. Facing different academic norms (depending on the period of writing), each author tries to avoid what he perceives as institutional uniformity and builds a singular response in his own forms. Therefore the transformations of
Pierre Macherey, La Parole universitaire, Paris, La Fabrique, 2012, p. 272. thesis norms in literary studies will serve as a guideline. The literary discourse on the academic world will be examined though the close reading of the dissertations will be privileged in order to evaluate whether they accompany this history or, on the contrary, constitute ruptures. This dissertation neither exclusively uses the methods of literary history in the sense of Lanson, nor
the ones of social history in the sense of Jacques Verge a crossing of these two trends that forces us to follow chronological axes whose intersections are nothing more than surprising moments. These moments do not result from a clear determination and they can only be linked artificially. In this sense, I would not claim to write the “history of writers’ dissertations” but I would like to contribute to a history that remains to be written–the one of the relation of writers to the university. I will follow the points of encounter between the university and literature through a privileged object–writers’ dissertations–and will accept the arbitrary aspect of such a method.
The inscription in the historical program previously described is accompanied by a mise
en abyme: the genre studied is nothing else than the genre practiced. What are the advantages and
the inconveniences of a dissertation about dissertations? First of all, it is a way to avoid a reproach that is often done to academic works: that is, to use an obscure language of specialists.
Nietzsche blames academic philologists for their indifference to their topic:
If we assume there is a concern with Democritus, then the question always on my lips is this: Why then just Democritus? Why not Heraclitus? Or Philo? Or Bacon? Or Descartes? and so on to one's heart's content. And in that case, why then just a philosopher? Why not a poet, an orator? And why Jacques Verger prefers social history to the history of the idea of university, « paradigm lost on the
3
horizon of every reform ». Jacques Verger, (ed.), Histoire des universités en France, Paris, Privat, 1986, particularly a Greek? Why not an Englishman, a Turk? Is the past then not large enough to find
The arbitrary aspect is reduced by the mise en abyme: to take one’s activity as an object of study is a way–quoting Nietzsche again–to maintain “a congruence between a man and his historical time.” The tendency of positivist literary history to function in pre-established and immutable frames can be avoided by establishing a constant dialogue between the analyzed object and the produced object, since it is precisely one of the means of the historical analysis that is observed.
This dissertation is to be inscribed in the continuity of Jacques Derrida’s work, when he writes that: “The institution is not merely a few walls or some outer structures surrounding, protecting, guaranteeing, or restricting the freedom of our work; it is also and already the
structure of our interpretatience, the reflexive perspective is not gratuitous: it permits the entrance into a double movement–both introspective and prospective, auto-critical and critical.
The research is reflected upon while it takes place. In this sense this dissertation should be an apprenticeship, attentive to the ideas and doubts of great names of literature with whom I hope to dialogue. In other words, the analyses of the writers’ dissertations will take on their full meaning only if they can teach practical pieces of advice for this very dissertation. Similarly, the project of historical analysis should help to approach the contemporary norms of the thesis with serenity. Being the result of slow modifications that will be described, they cannot be obeyed passively or transgressed gratuitously. Indeed, there are two opposite pitfalls. The first one would consist in boldly adopting an anti-academic tone–in denouncing the rigidity of academic habits in order to praise the freedom of literature. The second pitfall would consist in an academic contrivance
Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, edition by Daniel Breazeale and translation by R. J.
Jacques Derrida, Du Droit à la philosophie, Paris, Galilée, p. 423-424. celebrating the union of the scholar and the writer, considered as indispensable to each other; it would also imply the belief that erudition is consubstantial with creation or that theses can become canonical works of French literature. In order to avoid these two pitfalls–in order neither to reject nor to accept too brutally the norms of the thesis and at the risk of falling into another abyss or becoming caught in a specular whirlwind–I will try not to lose sight of a fundamental question: after all, what is a dissertation?
The Anti-academic Dynamic
Writers have the tendency to oppose the freedom they have in their literary creation to the rigidity of the university’s expectations. More generally, one can easily observe an anti-academic
th dynamic in 20 century French literature. How could it be characterized more precisely? What
are its consequences? Where should writers’ dissertations be situated in this movement? Writers and academics occupy antithetical positions. To this extent, the very expression
“writer’s dissertation” can be taken as a figure of rhetoric named antithesis. Indeed, the word “thesis” usually refers to a genre that is not literary at all: the thesis is opposed to the book, the doctoral student to the writer. Moreover, my title implies that the writer adopts immediately an anti-academic perspective and that he always tries to write an anti-thesis. In fact, it can be said right away that writers’ attempts to write dissertations step aside from traditional models of the genre and play disruptively with the usual codes of the thesis.
In this direction, writers’ dissertations highlight the confusion that can exist between literary and academic writings. Literary penchants are translated into the academic work in one dissertation changes a writer. It modifies his relationship to the institutions–opening him up to new work themes - but most of all, the experience of academic writing impacts the literary work.
The two worlds intertwine; they are not clearly distinguished from each other. In L’Adieu au
voyage, Vincent Debaene has rightly remarked that literature and science move simultaneously
and not separately as the metaphor of “respective domains” or the common quarrels for property would imply. To read the dissertations, it is imperative to proceed like Debaene: the university should not be understood as a stable structure with intangible rules but as an institution like others, built on a system of beliefs, of written and oral traditions, and of specific cultural
practiceshis sense, instead of postulating a clear-cut opposition between academic and literary writings, one should–without forgetting to take into account the representations associated to this categories–look at what writers do in practice. It is not sufficient to study the anti-academic dynamic that expresses itself throughout the century: the reciprocal movements of influence between literature and academic writings should also be observed.
The rejection of academia uses different modalities that will be described, reaching diverse goals that will be evaluated, but I would like to assert the following proposition: even as he writes against the thesis, he remains dependent on it. The frustration sincerely felt or affected during the academic work forces him to radicalize his literary work; nonetheless, he looks for the right relation to knowledge. In this double bind, the borders between the genres become blurred and the writer seeks new forms of writing that exceed the classical opposition between academic and literary domains. Ultimately, the norms stimulate creation. In this regard, the anti-academic
In Institution and Interpretation, Samuel Weber insists on the fact the university is not an
6
institutionalized structure but an entity that is permanently institutionalizing (expanded edition, Palo Alto, th
dynamic can be held as one of the literary drives of the 20 century. This study of a few writers’ dissertations will confirm this.
Structure of the Dissertation th
As already mentioned, gradually along the 20 century, more and more writers start writing dissertations. This study does not intend to give an exhaustive account of these attempts.
Three monographic studies constitute the body of this dissertation. Why focus on the theses of Péguy, Paulhan and Barthes? First of all, because of the exceptional character of each of these texts, because Péguy’s dissertation is nothing else than a direct insult to the Sorbonne, because Paulhan’s drafts pile up for more than thirty-five years, and because Roland Barthes started half a dozen theses (all are unfinished) and directed more than a hundred throughout very different disciplines. But this choice is also guided by the fact that these dissertations, as singular as they may be, intervene at specific moments of the literary and institutional history. If the word “representativeness” may be too strong, they incarnate more than the efforts of isolated individuals; they testify to various modes of conflict between literary and academic worlds.
In the first part of this dissertation, it is indispensable to start by identifying the constraints inherent to the thesis genre in order to outline the obligations of the doctoral student, and in order to evaluate the margin in which literary experimentation is permissible. This task is complicated by the important gap existing between an exercise whose reputation is to be strictly framed and the absence of explicit rules. The constraints come partly from the weight of a tradition of exams
“doctoral discourse” will be deduced from Jacques Lacan’s notion of “academic discourse.” The norms of the thesis genre only apply to small groups and it is not always easy to determine a structure that would apply to every doctoral candidate. For this reason, it is impossible to define the characteristics of a supposed “academic style:” thanks to stylistic and rhetorical tools, various concrete conceptions of academic writing can be opposed to an imaginary “perfect scientific style.” By means of a preliminarily interpretation of Mallarmé’s unfinished thesis on language (subsequently leading to the writing of Igitur), the reader will discover an obscure dissertation, whose language liberates itself from the previously mentioned constraints. However, all along the century, academic writing is more and more codified; it can be more easily identified; writers have to take into account various obligations. A certain individual restraint becomes required.
th
At the turn of the 20 century, only a few writers think that a doctoral degree could help them in earning a living as a professor. This moment corresponds to a profound change in the organization of French higher education. History has become the most important discipline and the reformers insist on the “objective” knowledge that every dissertation should carry . Stylistic or
rhetorical seductions are severely condemned. As a reaction, Péguy’s dissertation is nothing else
than a long attack against the Sorbonne and its methods: in De la situation faite à l’histoire dans
la philosophie générale du monde moderne, the author resists both the injunctions to historicism
thand to the rhetorical forms of the 19 century. This episode is undeniably a peak in anti-academic practices, since every single thematic and stylistic choice of Péguy is made against what he identified as the doxa of higher education. Contrary to Mallarmé who had only a vague idea of the norms, Péguy transgresses voluntarily the habits of a system that is very familiar to him.
Thanks to innumerable occurrences of the word “thesis,” he radically questions the double meaning of the word (of proposition and of object) and destabilizes the reader–who becomes a member of the imaginary committee. I will try to describe as precisely as possible this absolutely unique text: it is unique because of its formal proposition (it is the purest anti-thesis) and because of its political implications (I will try to imagine what a “péguyst university” could be).
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, literary history imposed itself in academia and the majority of writers became repulsed by this discipline. Therefore, the will to associate knowledge and literature will be expressed in other disciplines aside from literary studies: for example, philosophy for Jean Grenier, ethnology for Michel Leiris and semantics for Jean Paulhan. The third part will be mainly dedicated to Paulhan. His Sémantique des proverbes is an experiment with various forms of writings that should be read together (essays, travel stories, linguistic analyses, philosophical digressions and reflexive comments on his own work). Thirty-five years have passed between his first dissertation project and its definitive abandonment before World War II. How can this sluggishness and this persistence be explained? Maybe by this observation: Paulhan’s ways of thinking and writing are non thetical. The fundamental characteristic of the dissertation genre is at stake here: a thesis should propose a thesis. Nevertheless Paulhan always circumvents this imperative. By doing so, he prevents himself from concluding, yet this manner allows him to commit to formal research and avoid renouncing to a “scientific structure.” Jean Paulhan’s position of publisher at La NRF will also be discussed in order to evaluate the relationship of the journal to academia.
For postwar writers, the dissertation is less of a shameful form: it began to gain legitimacy in literary milieus. Roland Barthes has worked on many dissertation topics whose only common feature is to be unfinished: he goes from a very narrow study of « Sociolinguistique et lexicologie sur le vocabulaire de la politique économique et sociale de 1825 à 1835 environ » to more free research on « Les Signes et les Symboles Sociaux dans les Relations Humaines »; the structuralist methodology that will later lead him to Système de la Mode alternates with more impressionistic sociological works. Barthes has supervised a great number of dissertations later in his career. He has participated in many defenses. He has given many pieces of advice to his students in his seminar of 1972-1973. As a consequence, I will have to change my approach in this fourth part: instead of describing one precise dissertation, with the help of the project drafts and the theoretical considerations on this exercise, I will try to identify what a Barthesian thesis could be
- – and I will describe the characteristics of this fictive text. Far from the commonplace that Barthes’s critique would be a clear-cut rupture with history of literature, I will analyze the tension between the writing desire and the will to remain respectful of the institution.
More recently, universities have grown in size and have become more welcoming to writers. As a result it is less important to see how singular writers have accommodated to an a
priori hostile system than to understand how academic and literary writings are reconciled in this
environment, which no longer postulates that the two activities are mutually exclusive. In this direction, it seems more appropriate to propose a typology of different relations of contemporary writers to the dissertation than to study only one author. I will approach this typology from the perspective of the work of writers as different as Jean-Benoît Puech, Pierre Pachet, Yves Bonnefoy, Jean-Michel Maulpoix or Michel Houellebecq. If Péguy, Paulhan and Barthes’s theses are all unfinished, the more recent dissertations are successfully defended. It is certainly the sign of a softening: contemporary writers are less anti-academic than their elders and they adapt more easily to institutional constraints.
May they be profoundly “anti-” or more moderated in their critiques, writers invent new uses of academic language–and teach us its subtleties.