Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Future of the Subject

1992; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/esc.1992.0027

1913-4835

Len Findlay,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

THE FUTURE OF THE SUBJECT L.M . F IN D L A Y University of Saskatchewan ]V ty theme is enormous and daunting, but I have taken the rubric Workin -Progress to heart,* structuring my remarks in a progressively unpolished way, and concluding with a series of tendentious claims about the discipline in Canada at this particular historical moment. I offer not so much a com­ pleted argument, then, as a series of manifestations and a closing manifesto. Trying to think society, and by so doing to change it, trying to imag­ ine community (Anderson), to understand relations between language and labour and to identify the labour inscribed in language: these are difficult but timely tasks, but they help indicate what I hope the future of the subject holds, and not only for me. I could have defined my task here more in line with prudence or even with beauty. But what would have been the point in clanking around clad in complete steel? What would have been the point of acting like some postmodern choreographer, sending discursive fragments out together dancing chic to chic? My efforts proceed rather under the aegis of LINKAGE, by which I mean for instance the coherence of Marc Lepine’s ac­ tions, which culminated in massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, and all the ensuing discussions with students, colleagues, friends, about the links between violence and the culture that produces (and reproduces) it. By LINKAGE, I mean equally the question of whether Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait was connected deeply or adventitiously to the Palestinian question and the objectives of the Intifada. Such basic and pressing questions, whether discovered or contrived or both, lie behind one of my current projects, something of which I will share with you here. I am endeavouring to re-write relations that govern my sense of connection to discipline, institution, culture, nation, and to re-write them as simply and straightforwardly as I can. This is proving exasperating and exhilarating in roughly equal measure, and here I will convey to you some of the reasons for both these feelings. This work in progress is at present a mix of detail and discursiveness, controlled analysis and strategic allegation. What I propose is to convey some sense of how I currently read, and what I read or am planning on reading, before laying out a few stark positions *This paper was first delivered as an ACCUTE Plenary Work-in-Progress talk at the Learned Societies meeting held at Queen’s University in May 1991. E n g l i s h S t u d i e s i n C a n a d a , x v i i i , 2, June 1992 grounded in language: questions of autonomy, essence, figurality, narrativity, what to privilege in the immediate future, and why. In some ways I am reluctant to subject you to my sense of our disciplinary future, but I will surely learn a great deal from your responses, as I have on other occasions, and, anyway, circumspection is not all it is cracked up to be! The pun in my title — on the term “subject” — is deliberate. It is there as an early indicator of the convergence of intention (on the punster’s part) and opportunity (afforded by the language[s] in which the pun will be made), a convergence that leads more or less predictably to one rather than another outcome, whether of a speech act, act of writing, or any other action ascribable in whole or in part to a particular person. Puns have recently been recognized as very important, most notably perhaps by Derrida, Redfern, and Culler. Just how important they are will, I hope, become a little clearer by the end of this paper. In the meantime, let me try to re-assure anyone already groaning inwardly in anticipation of yet more pissing down the well of English undefiled, or yet another polysemic flight from commitment and value, that an interest in and self-conscious resort to puns is not necessarily at odds with contact, communication, and accountable action, with a politics or an ethics of intelligible exchange. What kind of punning do I intend...