Food for Thought

284 Pages·1989·14.731 MB·English

by  Louis Marin

Food for Thought
Parallax• •R e-visions of Culture and Society
Stephen G. Nichols, Gerald Prince, and Wendy Steiner,
SERIES EDITORS
Louis Marin
Translated,
with an Afterword,
by Mette Hjort
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore and London
This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance
of the French Ministry of Culture.
Originally published as La parole mangee et autres ~ssais theologico
politiques. © Librairie des Meridiens, Klincksieck & c1e, 1986. This Eng
lish language edition © 1989 The Johns Hopkins University Press
Chapter 10, "Recipes of Power ('Puss-in-Boots')" was previously published
as "Puss-in-Boots: Power of Signs-Signs of Power" in Diacritics (June
1977): 54-63.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 701 West 4oth Street, Baltimore,
Maryland 21211
The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marin, Louis, 1931-
[Parole mangee et autres essais theologico-politiques. English]
Food for thought I Louis Marin; translated, with an afterword, by
Mette Hjort.
p. cm. - (Parallax : re-visions of culture and society)
Translation of: La parole mangee et autres essais theologico-
politiques.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8018-3476-7 (alk. paper).
1. Body, Human, in literature. 2. Human figure in art. 3~ Body,
Human (Philosophy) 4. Power (Philosophy) I. Title. II. Series:
Parallax (Baltimore, Md.)
PN56.B62M3713 1989
844:914-dc19 88-29342
CIP
For fudith
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction to the English-Language Edition xi
Part I: Food for Thought
The Body of the Divinity Captured by Signs 3
Part II: Eat, Speak, and Write
2 "Donkey-Skin," or Orality 29
3 Little Butterpot, or the Spell of the Voice 39
4 The Fabulous Animal 44
5 "The Reason of the Strongest Is Always the Best" 55
6 Utopic Rabelaisian Bodies 85
Part III: The Culinary Sign in the Land of Fairies and
Ogres
7 Theoretical Aperitif II?
8 Roast Blood Sausage, or the Gush of Performatives 126
9 Robert Sauce 133
IO Recipes of Power 148
II Stew and Roast, or the Mastery of Discourse
and the Illusions of Eros 162
12 Butcher's Meat and Game, or the Culinary Sign
within Generalized Communication 175
viii Contents
Part IV: The King's Body
13 The Portrait of the King's Glorious Body
14 The Pathetic Body and Its Doctor:
The "Medical Diary of Louis x 1 v" 218
Afterword: Portrait of the Translator 243
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Ilustration of La Fontaine's "The Lamb and the Wolf," by M.
Oudry (Photograph courtesy of Giraudon/Art Resource, New
York.) 62
Reconstruction of the Abbey of Theleme, by Charles Lenor
mant (Photograph courtesy of Giraudon/Art Resource, New
York.) 88
Illustration of Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty in the Forest,"
by G. Dore (Photograph courtesy of the Bibliotheque
Nationale.) 138
Illustration of Perrault's "Puss-in-Boots," by G. Dore (Photograph
courtesy of the Bibliotheque Nationale.) 157
Illustration of Perrault's "Ricky with the Tuft," by G. Dore
(Photograph courtesy of the Bibliotheque Nationale.) 171
Illustration of Perrault's "Tom Thumb," by G. Dore (Photograph
courtesy of Collection Viollet.) 182
Louis xiv by Hyacinthe Rigaud (Louvre) (Photograph courtesy
of Giraudon/Art Resource, New York.) 201
Caricature by Thackeray of Rigaud's portrait of Louis x 1 v in
The Paris Sketch by Titmarsh (In Works of Thackeray. Vol. XVI.
London: Charter House Edition, 1901: 313bis.) 210
Introduction to the
English-Language Edition
In bringing the Augustinian tradition to its cul
mination within the Cartesian episteme, the Logic of Port-Royal
(1662-83) sums up a long chapter in the history of Western semi
otics. In this crucial text, the logicians define the very structure
of signification as representation. Following such a conception,
ideas represent things to the mind, and signs are the representa
tions of these ideas for other minds. This representation of a rep
resentation is the meaning of a sign, and this meaning is true to
the extent that it corresponds to the idea and, thereby, to the
thing signified. The ideal of the sign, if not its ideality as well,
involves a process of self-effacement that leaves it transparent
before the thing, an effacement that is all the more easily
achieved and justified by the conventional nature of the sign
when no mimetic relation obtains between the sign and its
signified.
If, then, the whole structure of signification consists of a doub
ling, we may note that this duplication is accompanied by a sub
stitution of the thing for the sign or, alternately, by a reduction of
the sign to the thing. Indeed, it is precisely this reduction that is,
ipso facto, constitutive of objectivity: here is the object's true
foundation. We may well question the coherence of this reduc
tive process because it appears to annul the first moment (the
doubling or duplication). It is the purpose or function of the sign
and of representation to guarantee that individual minds may
xii Introduction to the English-Language Edition
communicate being and truth to one another. Indeed, the sign as
representation is functional, and this characteristic of the sign
defines its objective structure. The converse is true in the case of
the object, which manifests its structure in the sign's representa
tion, that is, in its function; this very function constitutes the
pragmatic dimension of the sign.
By the same token, a community of minds wholly transparent
to one another and embodying a kind of rational sociability estab
lishes itself within the reversibility that lies at the basis of their
intercommunication. Such, then, would be the essential struc
ture and function of the linguistic sign. Thus, we understand that
this representational theory of the sign finds (thesei) its author
ity and justification in the particular de jure or conventional rela
tion that it bears to an absent entity or thing. If representation
means the substitution of an x for an absent y, then it is the juri
dical conformity of what is present to what is absent-in other
words, the isomorphism-that justifies the substitution. Opti
mally, the transparency of the representation affords the sign its
transitive dimension. To represent is to represent something.
The operative character of this formal relation between what is
present and what is absent ensures that the former functions in
the place of and assumes the function of the latter. Representa
tion carries the effect of an object.
Yet this substitution between things and signs, a substitution
generally characteristic of all representations or signs, is itself an
oriented process. Replacing the sign with the thing can achieve
an effect of objectivity within the rational universality of a dis
course of knowledge.
The process may also be inverted. Then signs take the place of
things, representation substitutes for being, and the world of
signs achieves an autonomy that allows it to deploy itself as a
screen displaying the entire universe of things. This world is all
the more deceptive or seductive precisely because it betrays its
imitative nature {phusei). In it, the universal objectivity of true
knowledge, systematically elaborated and enhanced within a
rational discourse, comes to be replaced by the subjective infinity
of individual desires. These desires find a bond or connection in
an ever-deferred and differing satisfaction realized in the various
pleasures of the imagination and sensibility. A different society
develops as a result, a society that no longer espouses the funda
mental value of what Augustine calls uti. As opposed to valoriz
ing the use of signs, this society prefers the frui or intense thrill