By devoting a collection of articles accompanied by a conference to the critical practice of Jean Starobinski, the editions of La Dogana show a combative intellectual committed to a defense of the human sciences that could not be more current.
After having given three voluminous collections on melancholy, Rousseau and Diderot to read in 2012, the tireless Jean Starobinski published a new one with the Swiss editions La Dogana: Approaches to meaning. This concerns criticism, which Starobinski has been thinking about and masterfully implementing for seventy years. Approaches to meaning associates with around twenty articles, hitherto scattered in books and journals in various languages, the proceedings of an international conference, “ Remote from lodge », organized in Bern and Geneva for its ninetieth anniversary. The whole illustrates one of Starobinski’s singularities: an undeniable international influence that does not hinder its faithful Geneva roots.
It is a large part of the history of criticism in XXe century that these two parts reveal: in the first, Michaël Comte and Stéphanie Cudré-Mauroux – one a curator at the Swiss Literary Archives, which houses the Jean Starobinski collection, the other a doctoral student at the University of Lausanne – return first on the theoretical effervescence of the 1960s-1980s before delivering texts which shed light on Starobinski’s relationship to critical proposals closer to him. The editors here wanted to preserve the link of each text with a specific time and place, by annotating it and clarifying it with a notice. Because Starobinski has the habit of substantially retouching his articles when they are to be republished. The second part, entitled “ Remote from lodge », in reference to an article from 1945 where he used this image to qualify the critical approach of Paul Valéry, makes room for current interpretations of his critical gesture by world specialists in literature, history, painting , opera or science.
These two massifs make it possible to reconstruct Starobinski’s positioning in the face of structuralism, deconstruction, psychocriticism, literary sociology, etc. through allusions, parentheses, footnotes, even a few openly sharp lines. In the proceedings of the conference, Carmelo Colangelo begins to undertake this work of reconstruction on the precise point of the relationships between the history of ideas, as Starobinski practices it, and the Foucauldian archeology of knowledge. This volume therefore encourages us to nuance Starobinski’s customary insertion within the Geneva School and to take the full measure of his relations with the French Theory.
Critical vigilance
Approaches to meaning finally makes accessible “ Criticism and authority » published in 1977 in the American magazine Daedalus, and until now unpublished in French. As Michaël Comte notes, this is one of the only two articles collected here which does not depend on editorial or institutional circumstances. His words, always extremely topical, give voice to a Starobinski who does not hesitate to engage in the defense of the human sciences.
He praises a discipline that flourishes in XVIe century with humanist erudition and historical criticism, and which is still frequently presented as gratuitous, uninteresting, boring, tedious or pedantic: philology – etymologically “ love of language “. Never mind, Starobinski traces the genealogy of this seemingly thankless task which consists of establishing texts – meaning which survives in the expression “ critical edition “. Originally, the philologist restored the correct lesson of the sacred texts, freed from errors linked to copyists or interpolations of the Roman Church (hence his fundamental role during the Reformation) ; then, his activity was gradually applied to secular texts to compensate for readers’ incomprehension which grew over time (Homer was thus reread in the Middle Ages as prefiguring Christianity), to end up paying attention only to his only inner voice » (p. 194) parasitized by “ prejudices » (p. 195) which he then plans to fight. The source of authority thus gradually shifted from the exteriority of transmitted traditions to the interiority of thinking man.
By controlling the textual, material and historical foundations that political and religious institutions claim, the humble philologist shakes these same institutions. Through a cunning dialectic between “ restitution ” And “ impeachment » (p. 200), it gradually aroused an awareness of individual reason as a free exercise of judgment against received authorities. Philology, restitution of ancient literature “, therefore made possible, historically and logically, the criticism in the broad sense of “ enlightened examination & (…) fair judgment of human productions » (Marmontel, cited p. 191). Philology therefore did not only help with the formatting of texts.
Reason itself was then attempted to replace the old dogma — The Future of Science (1890) by Ernest Renan, an important figure in academic philology, would mark this shift: “ As soon as it is liberated, subjective activity tends to forget that its immunity (…) (is due) to the work of criticism which put an end to the reign of extrinsic authorities (…) » (p. 202). Authority is transferred from the past to the future, from religion to utopia, with this additional notch that the future, unverifiable by nature, escapes the philological examination that revealed and bookish religions performed, even if it was to their defending body, at least possible. This is how the derogatory image of the needy and useless philologist is formed.
It was therefore necessary to recall that philology by nature exercises a “ polemical function » (p. 209), that she “ stands guard to deny spiritual and temporal powers (churches and police) any right to look at what poets, philosophers and physicists claim to be their truth “, that it was in short “ the victorious vanguard who first silenced the power of dogmatism » (pp. 202-203). But the philologist also warns reason when it cuts all links with the patient empirical attendance of documents.
Situated in this combative lineage, Starobinski’s critical activity therefore carries political and theological questioning. Starobinski thus returns back to back what he calls “ the new dogmatisms (whether they appeal to individual or collective faith) » (p. 210). In the 1970s, it was liberalism and communism. Likewise, he firmly circumscribes the theological in the private sphere by taking up the distinction of the humanists of the Renaissance between “ truths of fact ” And “ objects of belief ”, which according to him announces the demarcation between “ the domain subject to the authority of the State (neutral and secular) and the region of private conviction » (p. 201). He sees criticism as inseparable from a secular society, but without going as far as atheism. The citizen, the spiritual conscience and the critic thus weave within themselves links of reciprocal vigilance.
As a model, Starobinski chose Pierre Bayle, a Protestant with an eventful life, author of the monumental Historical and critical dictionary (1697). Elsewhere, he recalled his debt to Erich Auerbach, put into early retirement by the Nazis and taking refuge in Istanbul where he wrote Mimesis, and to Leo Spitzer, exiled in the same city where he founded stylistics: two great philologists whom Starobinski made recognized in the French-speaking world. In another context, when the label “ reactionary » was used to designate everything and its opposite, the Genevan critic himself had published Action and Reaction (1999). This is the role of philologists: to exercise their vigilance in the face of the disturbances instilled by the dominant ideology in language.
“ Remote from lodge » ?
By giving the title of their conference “ Remote from lodge », Stéphanie Cudré-Mauroux and Juan Rigoli draw attention to the problem of the right relationship between the critic, the work and the world. Fernando Vidal attempts to show to what extent the “ overview » constitutes for Starobinski a “ theme “, A “ element of thought and style “, A “ instrument » and a “ purpose of his approach » (pp. 395-409). Michel Jeanneret, for his part, qualifies the importance given to “ concept of distance » to define his critical attitude. He identifies in Starobinski a historical concern always guided by an interpretation linked to the present and the intimacy of the questioning subject. The Genevan does not lock himself into a specialized historicism, and practices a philology which watches for the potential return of obscurantisms within the contemporary world.
“ Remote from lodge » introduces a theatrical metaphor. Starobinski often likes to take a metaphor directly from the author he comments on: “ Criticism resembles, according to Marmontel’s image, the underground search for gold, unless we compare it to the crucible where gold is stripped of its slag. » (p. 194). Resuming here is equivalent to rectifying to give a fairer image of the philological activity which attempts to restore the authenticity of corrupted texts. Through darning work on an image, an imperceptible shift occurs from commentary to writing.
Starobinski is a true critic-writer. Fernando Vidal and Michel Jeanneret note that in his own texts he favors the figures of chiasm — crossing of elements in a sequence —, of narrative epanadiplosis — resumption at the end of the sequence of a motif which inaugurated it — and of the antithesis — pair of opposite terms. Starobinski makes the image intelligible and the intelligence of the texts is tactful. It achieves a sensitive abstraction. This delicate symbiosis between the concrete images and the abstract analyzes partly explains why it reached a wide audience. The writers themselves were his first readers: Pierre Jean Jouve, to whom Stéphanie Cudré-Mauroux was attached, but also Yves Bonnefoy and Gérard Macé. As erudite as Starobinski is, he writes neither boring treatises nor articles of intimidating scientificity.
In a hollow self-portrait, he finds this sensitivity in three literary critics of his friends: Gaëtan Picon, who “ liked to develop intellectual intuition in palpable images » (p. 244), Georges Poulet, with whom “ an imagined force (…) animates and vivifies abstract thought » (p. 255), and Marcel Raymond, with his “ both meditative and pictorial way of talking about the works » (p. 318). Reflecting on the term “ critical », he specifies: “ In reality, the historian quickly noted that, in the semantic evolution of the word, it is the “restricted” meaning which precedes and produces, by extension (…) the “broad” meaning. ; it constitutes, so to speak, its underground root. » (p. 192) From “ In reality ”, which marks scientific language, “ so to speak “, which introduces a literary image that is both vegetal and phreatic, we clearly see that there is not an approach to meaning in him but to “ approaches to meaning “.
He clarified it in 1977: “ I regret neither the concern for the scrupulous establishment of “facts”, nor the theoretical speculation. I limit myself to noting the relative sterility of their separate exercise » (p. 216). At a time of quantitative evaluations, disciplinary tightening and reproaches of uselessness, this pluralist position offers a real breath of fresh air in the field of the human sciences.