227William Irwin

Philosophy and Literature, © 2004, 28: 227–242

William Irwin

AGAINST INTERTEXTUALITY

I

An allusion is an intended indirect reference that calls forassociations that go beyond mere substitution of a referent.1 It is

surprising how little has been published by philosophers of literatureon allusion, given its prominence as a literary device and key toappreciation throughout literary history.2 From a theoretical stand-point, allusion is closely linked with, and must be accounted for by,theory of interpretation, and is particularly crucial to any discussion ofintentionalist and anti-intentionalist theories.3 Why such neglect of thistopic? Could it be that allusion is dead, dépassé? If so, what killedallusion? And “what festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall wehave to invent” to replace it? As some would tell the story, allusion diedalong with the author.4 It is now naïve and reactionary to speak ofallusion, as it has been displaced by intertextuality.

But what is intertextuality? While there has been little published onallusion by philosophers of literature there has not been a single articlepublished by this group of latecomers that directly addresses the topicof intertextuality. Before criticizing this notion as articulated by JuliaKristeva and Roland Barthes, we must look at the Weltanschaung of late1960s Paris to understand what motivates intertextuality. Having unrav-eled intertextuality as it was “intended” by its “auctors,” we willconclude by reconsidering the viability of the term intertextuality.

II

The term intertextuality was coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966, and sincethat time has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from

228 Philosophy and Literature

those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as astylish way of talking about allusion and influence.5 Let us begin,however, by spelling out what the term originally meant for Kristeva andher mentor/colleague, Roland Barthes. Kristeva developed the notionof intertextuality as a synthesis of what she found useful in the alreadyinfluential structuralist linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and therelatively unknown (to Western Europe) literary theory of MikaelBakhtin.

From Saussure, Kristeva takes the theory of the sign, with its twocomponents, the signifier and the signified. From Bakhtin, Kristevatakes the idea that language is dialogical; it always, despite the inten-tions of speakers and authors, expresses a plurality of meanings, as it ischaracterized by heteroglossia, a plurality of voices behind each word.Kristeva’s synthesis of Saussure’s structuralism and Bakhtin’s dialogism,then, points to the post-structuralist position that there is no “transcen-dental signified,” no signified behind the signifier. Signifiers do notrefer to anything beyond, to anything outside the system of signifiers.Signs are merely signifiers individuated by their differences from oneanother, referring only to other signifiers. When we attempt to commu-nicate through speech or writing we produce an instance of language,a parole, which is part of the greater system of language, a langue, whichwe cannot escape. The parole only points to other parole within thelangue, never to anything outside the langue. We are left, as Kristeva seesit, with the free play of signifiers, their meaning grounded nowhere,except temporarily in the reader, unleashing the signifiers to berelationally combined in infinite ways.

Kristeva is first and primarily concerned with giving a descriptive,ontological account of the composition of texts. As she says, “any text isconstructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption andtransformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that ofintersubjectivity, and poetic language is read as at least double.”6

Saussure argued that all instances of parole are constructed out of thealready existing langue ; any possible parole is already implicitly presentwithin the system that is the langue, to be actualized through a processof differentiation. As Kristeva notes, though, there is more than just thelangue. In literature there are character types, themes, plot lines, andearlier stories. All of these come into play in the system that weaves thetext, the mosaic of quotations. In fact, it is not just langue and literature,but the social world—the social text—that provides fabric for thetextual tapestry. As for her Tel Quel colleague Derrida, so too for

229William Irwin

Kristeva, there is nothing outside the text.7 Society and history are notelements external to textuality, to be brought to bear in interpretation.Rather, society and history are themselves texts, and so are already andunavoidably inside the textual system.

Perhaps the notion that social and historical phenomena are texts isnot such a difficult pill to swallow. Historians and lay people alike speakof such things as their interpretations of the French Revolution or theClinton presidency. If a text is just an object of interpretation, suchthings can and should be recognized as texts. It is not just eminent andlofty socio-historical matters that Kristeva would have us take as part ofthe textual system, however. Rather, as Manfred Pfister says, for Kristeva,“everything—or, at least, every cultural formation—counts as a textwithin this general semiotics of culture.”8 Everything is a text; not justrevolutions and administrations, but professional wrestling and deter-gent are texts to be interpreted—as, in fact, they are by Barthes. Still,even this is not too disconcerting when taken in the proper spirit.Certainly an adept interpreter can garner interesting insights about thedrama and symbolism of professional wrestling and the marketing ploysthat determine the color of our detergent. This is not all that Kristevahas in mind, however. There is no separation of the social text and theliterary text, but rather the two must be woven together to produce thetapestry. As Graham Allen captures Kristeva’s point, “we must give upthe notion that texts present a unified meaning and begin to view themas the combination and compilation of sections of the social text. Assuch, texts have no unity or unified meaning on their own, they arethoroughly connected to on-going cultural and social processes” (p. 37).

Is intertextuality an ontological description or a mode of interpreta-tion? Kristeva believes she has given a universal ontological account ofthe relations between and among texts. It is not a matter of whim orwill, but a metaphysical fact that all texts derive their meaning onlythrough their relations to other texts. As Pfister says, “Kristeva’s conceptof intertextuality is descriptive rather than programmatic. . . . Accord-ing to her theory all texts are intertextual, not only modernist orpostmodernist texts, and her concept, therefore, aims at characterizingthe ontological status of texts in general” (p. 210). Naturally, thisontological account of intertextuality gives birth to a mode of interpre-tation, sanctioned by Kristeva, known also as intertextuality. At its best,intertextual interpretation is a liberating, empowering tool for socialchange. At its worst, intertextuality becomes fashionable jargon fortraditional notions such as allusion and source study. So disgruntled by

230 Philosophy and Literature

such misuse of the term intertextuality was Kristeva, that she laterabandoned it in favor of “transposition.”9

Roland Barthes, rather than Julia Kristeva, provides us with the mostimportant speculations on the mode of intertextual interpretation.10 In1968 Barthes proclaimed “the death of the author”11 based on theintertextual insight that texts derive their meanings, not from someauthor creating de novo and ex nihilo, but only through their relations toother texts. Meaning results from the play of texts, as they aregenerated by the langue and the culture. The death of the author resultsin the liberation of the reader, as Barthes’s theory of the text “insistsstrongly on the (productive) equivalence of writing and reading.”12

Barthes replaces the notion of the author with what he calls the scriptor(scripteur). The scriptor is much like a scribe, taking dictation on whatshe may or may not understand and which she certainly does notauthorize with meaning. The intertextual reader/interpreter then isfree and unfettered in tracing the relations between texts; there is noauthorial intention to defer to, since the will of the author is notcapable of fixing meaning. Once the scriptor has made the marks onthe page, the text flies off on wings of its own to become the playthingof readers.

The freedom of the reader is concomitant with a certain pleasure, aplasir du texte, and this pleasure is seemingly unlimited given that, asBarthes says, “by degrees, a text can come into contact with any othersystem: the inter-text is subject to no law but the infinitude of itsreprises.”13 The pleasure of intertextual play is not even held in checkby the laws of logic. Indeed, Kristeva believes her ontology ofintertextuality shows that non-contradiction is not the bedrock univer-sal law the West has taken it to be. As Allen makes clear, against the lawof non-contradiction, Kristeva asserts, “the dialogic word or utterance isdouble-voiced, heteroglot, and possesses a meaning (A) at the samemoment that it possesses an alternative meaning or meanings (not-A)”(p. 43).

III

Why did Barthes and Kristeva make such radical claims? In termsthey would abhor, what were the intentions and motivations of theintertextualists? Four major elements motivated them: the oppressionof the French Academy, post holocaust pessimism, mistrust of commu-nication, and Marxist principles.

231William Irwin

In “The Death of the Author,” Barthes gives us a curious locution,“Author God.” As Clara Claiborne Park says, “To be able to associateauthors with God, let alone with his institutional hypostases, you have tobe French.”14 Cardinal Richelieu was motivated by a desire to ensurethe purity of the French language in his founding of the AcadémieFrancaise; the language was to remain pure and uniform to facilitatecommunication within France and its colonies. While history has notlooked kindly upon colonization, one apparently favorable effect of theFrench Academy is the clarity of the French language. Traditionally thehumanities prized clarity in writing, but, remarkably, nontraditionalFrench humanists such as Barthes, Kristeva, Foucault, and Derridaresented and attacked clarity in writing.

In post-holocaust Europe the value of the humanities had come intoquestion by those who taught them. It seemed the dream of theEnlightenment, social progress through education, was dead. Scientificand technological progress marched on, and so humanists began tolook for a scientific foundation for their discipline. Many found thatfoundation in the burgeoning field of linguistics, first in the rediscoveryof the work of Saussure and later with the introduction of Bakhtin viaKristeva (see Mai, p. 33).

The dream of social progress and change was not to remain dead forlong. Change for the better had not been effected by clarity andcommunication, but rather had been subverted by them. Suspicion ofthose in power fueled the fire of change, and communication aided byclarity in speech and writing was declared a weapon wielded by thepower elite for the purpose of building consensus. Clear and appar-ently straightforward communication was misrepresentative of complexideas and in the hands of the wrong people was only used to furtherconceal the truth and pull the wool over the collective eyes of thepeople. Here Kristeva’s intertextuality becomes a politically chargedtheory. As Allen says, “notions of a stable relationship between signifierand signified [were seen] as the principal way in which dominantideology maintains its power and represses revolutionary, or at leastunorthodox, thought” (p. 32). For Kristeva signifiers and signifieds areunavoidably unstable because there is no transcendental signified. Thepower establishment acted and spoke as if signifiers such as “justice,”“truth,” and “equality” were backed by transcendental signifieds ofwhich they had knowledge (see Allen, p. 33). To subvert nefariouslyclear communication, Kristeva and Barthes present intertextual inter-pretation with its free play of signifiers. But how does a theory of textual

232 Philosophy and Literature

interpretation bear on social change? The answer is found in the newconception of the text, which includes the social text. As Hans-PeterMai says, “This ‘text’ is no longer the object with which textual criticismused to deal. Actually it is no object at all; it is, as a way of writing(écriture), a productive (and subversive) process” (p. 37).

The text of economic reality was among the most important targetsof attack on the revolutionary agenda of the intertextualists. Capitalismwas justified by precisely the kind of false and misleading clearcommunication that the intertextualists opposed. Marxist principles inpart justified intertextual criticism and the death of the author, as thedenial of stable meaning was an attack on the commodification ofthought and writing (Allen, p. 33). The author is a modern notion, theproduct of capitalism, a figure who illegitimately controls meaning asthe capitalist controls the means of production. As Allen says, “commu-nication and meaning, in other words, present knowledge and intellec-tual work as a product, a commodifiable and exchangeable object ofvalue. Most people . . . believe that knowledge, if it exists, can be clearlycommunicated, and because of this it can be bought and sold in books,in educational courses, and so on” (p. 33). Intertextuality defies thecapitalist paradigm by presenting the text not as a product ready forconsumption, but as a growing, evolving, never-ending process.

IV

Among the first things one notices in reading the texts of Kristevaand Barthes is the obscurity of their jargon-filled writing. Unfortunatelythroughout the twentieth century, jargon, so necessary to the sciences,so unnecessarily infected the humanities. It would be unfair to simplycite passages in translation and out of context to make the point, butBarthes’s and Kristeva’s lack of clarity is not a bone of contention but abadge of honor to them. They compose their texts with the intention ofmaking communication difficult. They do not write in a confusing waybecause they are themselves confused. Rather, they see communicationitself as an evil, used by the power elite to forge consensus for itsconservative capitalist agenda. In late 1960s Paris, and in some timesand places since, there may well have been a kernel of truth in thiscynical view. Still, while communication may be the tool of the powerelite, it is not theirs exclusively. Communication through clear lan-guage is an instrumental, not an intrinsic, good or evil. As MarkBauerlein notes in discussing the abolitionists’ use of clear writing in

233William Irwin

effectively opposing slavery, any successful anti-establishment move-ment must ultimately depend on clear communication to spread itsmessage.15 While works of literature, such as Ulyses and The Sound and theFury, may require unclear writing to effectively convey complex emo-tions and states of mind, works of literary criticism require rigorousargument in clear prose to effectively convey complex thoughts andideas. Literary art has some license that other writing does not. Outsidethe realm of literature, resorting to unclear language to subvertcommunication could at best be a temporary and short-lived way todraw attention to a flawed or evil, but clearly communicated, messageof the power elite.

Despite its noble aims, problems result from the use of unclear prose.In perpetuating the use of unclear language and practices designed tosubvert communication one excludes the vast majority of people. Eventhose who do attempt to enter and engage the discourse are likely tomisunderstand what they read. And just as we can argue that there is anethics operative in interpreting (such that we do not misrepresent theauthor), so too we can argue there is an ethics in writing, such that wedo not write in a way that is easily misunderstood, without good reasonfor writing in such a way.

The intertextuality of Kristeva and Barthes is unapologetically politi-cal in its motivations and implications, seeking to redistribute power.The method of reading that intertextuality provides is meant as amodel for political and social action and change. Based on Kristeva’sintertextual insight that texts derive their meaning only throughrelations to other texts, Barthes declares the death of the author andthe birth of the reader. What the author intended matters not at all,since not an author, but only other texts, can supply meaning. Thereader, then, can and should revel in the “pleasure of the text,” makingassociations and noting relations with other literary and social texts.Power shifts from the author, who becomes a scriptor, to the reader,who is given hedonistic sanction for unfettered freedom in reading.

There is a logical inconsistency, though, in the transfer of power.Agency in meaning is not really eliminated, as the ontology ofintertextuality would demand. Rather, agency is preserved and dis-placed. The reader now becomes as powerful as the author was. To beconsistent with the theory of intertextuality, in declaring the author ascriptor, Barthes should declare the reader a lector.16 Intertextualitylooks for the system or matrix of language to speak through the text ina way similar to that in which the ancients looked for muses to speak

234 Philosophy and Literature

through the poet. The reader can no more create meaning than theauthor can; the reader is just a vessel or empty space in which languagespeaks. All the reader can do is discover relations among texts, sincethat is all meaning really is according to intertextuality.

The intertextual severing of the text from its author is motivated byreader liberation and is backed by an ontology that suggests that textsin no way belong to their authors. The author cannot create a text exnihilo, but must draw on the langue to offer a parole that is alreadyimplicitly there. As Donald Keefer notes, this is analogous to a personplanting a tree. The person is, in some sense, just an instrument puttingthe seed in the ground. Our planter no more invented the seed heplants than an author invented the language she writes. In a sense,then, the tree that grows from the seed is not his. But is this really thecase? While it makes eminently good sense to take stock in our smallplace and role in creation, the tree I plant on the land I own is my tree.As Keefer says, “Apple trees predate the planting of an apple orchard,but that does not mean that the trees I plant are not my trees. I mayimpose rules regarding the picking of those apples or not.”17 The pointis that authors may or may not impose rules on how their texts are to beread. Actually, the right of an author is more limited than this. Theauthor may not dictate how her text is to be read, but only whatintended meaning may be attributed to her. As it is unethical to stealfrom a person’s apple tree, so too it is unethical to misrepresent aperson’s intended meaning, whether it is the meaning of a conversa-tional utterance or the meaning of a literary text.18

One criticism Barthes and Kristeva would surely raise against thisanalogy is that it is a product of capitalism. Justice dictates that theapple tree and the text can belong to no one; they are there for all.Barthes and Kristeva, in accord with Marxist principles, oppose theauthor as acting as the capitalist, supplying meaning to the consumers–readers. Theirs is a strained analogy, however. It is equivalent to sayingyou don’t have to use Coca-Cola for its intended purpose, imbibing it.You can take a bath in it. Here it is helpful to recall the distinctionbetween meaning and significance, introduced by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.19

Hirsch argues there is an important distinction to be noted betweenwhat an author intends, a text’s meaning, and that intended meaningas it relates to the interests of readers, a text’s significance. According toHirsch’s intentionalism, the author does indeed supply meaning, butthis does not really restrict the reader, who can read the text howevershe likes as long as she does not represent her idiosyncratic reading as

235William Irwin

the author’s intention. Of course, the Coca-Cola Company sells its softdrink with the intention that consumers will drink it. This we mightloosely say is the “meaning” of the soft drink. Still, there is no obligationon the part of the consumer to actually drink it. One can bathe in thesoda if one chooses, or perhaps even use it as an ingredient in ahomemade bomb. These we might loosely say are potential “signifi-cances” of the soft drink. Further, one does no ethical wrong to theCoca-Cola Company with such bathing or bomb making, unless oneattributes to the company the intention that their product be used insuch ways. We should further notice that the distinction betweenmeaning and significance shows that, malgré Kristeva, textual meaningdoes not violate the law of non-contradiction. A text cannot havemeaning x and meaning �x at the same time, though it can havemeaning x and significance �x at the same time.

The ontology of intertextuality claims that there is no transcendentalsignified, that the signifier points only to other signifiers, that textsrefer only to other texts. Arthur Danto aptly calls this intertextualapproach to literature the “Referential Fallacy.”20 While it is not clear onwhat basis this intertextual claim is made, except perhaps the anti-logocentric assertion that language can never capture reality, let usgrant the point for the sake of argument. If there is no transcendentalsignified behind the signifier, does this imply that signifiers refer only toother signifiers? No, for if this were truly the case we would never beable to put down our dictionaries. But successful communication isindeed possible both in ordinary discourse and literature. When I makethe request, “please bring me that blue pen” and my friend brings it tome, I can be sure that communication has succeeded.21 The referent ofany given signifier can be fixed through ordinary/conventional use orutterer’s intention. The nonexistence of a transcendental signified doesnot logically imply that signifiers refer only to other signifiers.

With its political agenda, the theory of intertextuality is servant topraxis. The motivation in claiming that texts refer only to other texts, isto take the power of determining meaning away from the author andgive it to the reader. As we saw above, this move is not logically justified,given the ontology of intertextuality. The reader can no more be anagent of producing meaning than can the author. Leaving this importantcriticism aside, however, let us see what the practice of intertextualreading/interpreting amounts to. The central element of intertextualinterpretation is to note and make connections between and amongtexts. Every text is potentially the intertext of every other text, and so

236 Philosophy and Literature

reading becomes an infinite process. Whereas the traditional notions ofallusion and source study direct us to the intentions of the authorsunder consideration, intertextual theory declares those intentionsunnecessary, unavailable, and irrelevant. There is a wonderfully demo-cratic spirit to this mode of interpretation in which the average readeris under no obligation to defer to the canonical writer. Still, the theoryand practice go too far when, for some, they assume the relationsbetween and among texts actually change canonical texts. Whereas it isenlightening, perhaps even necessary, to make connections to Hamletwhen reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the relations betweenthe two texts do nothing to change the text of Hamlet. Even if Borges’sfictional Pierre Menard were to successfully rewrite Don Quixote, thisrelation would do nothing to essentially change Cervantes’s Don Quixote.Still less can a reader, in noting relations among and between texts,essentially change texts. Historical events can, perhaps, change essen-tially with the passing of time, as when a shooting at noon becomes akilling at midnight, or when the Russian Revolution becomes thebeginning of a failed experiment.22 But texts generally do not changeessentially through the writing of new texts, and still less through theinterpretation of readers. When the reader takes the place of theauthor the text potentially becomes “a tale told by an idiot, full ofsound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Even if we were to grant some legitimacy to this mode of interpreta-tion, what value would there be in it? There does not seem to be anycriterion by which to judge such intertextual readings, except thehedonistic “pleasure of the text.” This actually is not a terribly unfamil-iar criterion, but rather is akin to what analytic philosophers of the NewCritical stripe referred to as the reading’s ability to produce an“aesthetic experience.” Still, such pleasure of the text is notoriouslysubjective, and I am likely to find more pleasure in my own readingthan that offered by someone else. What we are left with, then, arerather banal and idiosyncratic interpretations. As Clayton and Rothsteinsay, “This theory makes for a criticism more stimulating than informa-tive, providing of course that the critic has a stimulating mind.”23

Intertextual speculations quickly degenerate into the déjà lu, pseudo-intellectual cocktail talk of the type, “This reminds me of that and soon.” We can hear the voices as “in the room women come and gotalking of Michelangelo.”24

Intertextual interpretation might be worthy of attention because ofits novelty, but even this is not clear. Perhaps it is, as Heinrich F. Plett

237William Irwin

considers, just “old wine in new bottles.”25 While we cannot settle theissue of intertextuality’s novelty here, we can note the history of whichit is a part. Since the dawn of literature authors have referred andalluded to other texts. There may be more such intertextuality in latetwentieth century literature, but this is partly because authors aresensitive to the notion of intertextuality and deliberately and intention-ally build such references into their texts. Practice has largely followedtheory. Umberto Eco, in particular comes to mind, with, for example,his legion of intertextual connections to the libraries and labyrinths ofBorges in The Name of the Rose. Readers are right to make suchconnections, not just because an ideal reader would, but because theyare intentionally placed there by Eco.

One element of intertextuality that would be a good candidate fornovelty is the social text, but this element is dubious. With intertextuality,the recognition that the genius captures the spirit of the age, character-istic of Romanticism, is replaced by a shallow and naïve democracy inthe plurality of voices expressed through the author. The author is notspecial, but one among many voices—all of which share credit for whatthe author/scriptor/scribe has recorded. The excess of this position isnowhere so clear as in the social text. In reading American literature wecould take baseball and its supreme icon, Babe Ruth, as a social text.Babe Ruth in some way captured the spirit of the age, but Ruth’s creditfor hitting those homeruns and winning those World Series is dimin-ished. The precursors, whose batting stances Ruth may have imitatedshare credit for them, as do Ruth’s teammates, manager, owner,opponents, fans, the stock market, newspapers, radio, etc.

Perhaps, though, the main point is that Ruth and company can andshould be taken as texts to be interpreted and related to other texts,literary and non-literary. The problem, though, is that the importanceof baseball in general, and Babe Ruth in particular, is marginal at bestto the interpretation of American literature. Drawing relations betweenbaseball and literature may generate a plasir du texte for some, but thereis no necessary or essential connection between the phenomena.

V

Given the illogic and distinctly French motivation of intertextuality,why has it found such a welcome reception in America? Part of theattraction for students is that theorists such as Barthes and Kristeva putforward ideas in a rebellious tone and with exotic French terminology

238 Philosophy and Literature

and personae. Ambiguity has long been a celebrated quality in thestudy of English and American literature, and interpretive pluralismhas reigned supreme since the rise of the New Criticism. By contrast,such ambiguity and pluralism were revolutionary prizes to be won inFrench literature and criticism. As Park so aptly says, “the transatlanticbreezes started blowing just as the New began to seem old hat. Bartheswas affirming, with supremely French intelligence, the pieties ofEnglish 101” (pp. 389–90). Ironically it was the quite different post warexperience of Americans that made them receptive to imported Frenchtheory. Americans experienced euphoria and a renewed sense ofindividualism in the post war era, making the reader liberation es-poused by French theory all the more attractive to them, particularly bythe time of its arrival on American shores in the turbulent late 1960s.26

But professors of English and other modern languages shouldcertainly have been more astute than the students to whom they taughtFrench theory. Whereas naivete explains student enthusiasm forintertextuality, a more self-serving, if unwitting, motivation may explainthe professorial French embrace. English and American literature (andother modern language literature) has had to justify its place in thecollege curriculum since the time of its relatively recent arrival. Study ofGreek and Latin literature demanded the rigor of translation and theknowledge of classical culture in addition to the appreciation ofliterature. What could the study of literature in English offer bycomparison? Not much, just the study of an arguably lesser literature ina familiar language and culture. Was this, then, a subject deserving of aplace in the college curriculum? And what would motivate students tostudy English and American literature rather than classical literature,except that the former was less demanding? Valerie Ross answers that“Modern literature faculty also began to realize that if their pedagogicalaim—‘mental discipline’—was no different from that of classicists, theprimary incentive for students to enroll in modern courses was thatthese were notably easier.”27

Ironically, modern languages have long since won the battle, anddepartments of classics have been diminished, if not deleted. Whatcould professors offer in teaching the literature of students’ ownculture and native tongue? Why couldn’t students just as well read thisliterature on their own? In the early decades of the academic study ofEnglish, what professors could offer was greater knowledge of thelanguage and culture, but most importantly far greater knowledge ofauthors’ biographies and intentions. To a certain extent this is still true

239William Irwin

today, and with less literate students it is needed all the more. With theproliferation of biographies of literary figures easily accessible to all,including students, and with an excessive tendency on the part ofprofessors that can only be described as “biographicalism,” as exempli-fied by John Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu, what modernlanguage professors offered was at the same time too readily availableand too esoteric. Any student could learn relevant literary biographythrough reading rather than lecture, and at the same time professorswere losing sight of the text itself in the chase for obscure biographicalinformation that may or may not elucidate the intention behind thepoem, play, or novel in question.

The stage was set for the New Criticism with its emphasis oninterpretive pluralism and the text itself. And just as the New Criticismwas beginning to look hackneyed it was re-suited in fine French garbcourtesy of Foucault, Barthes, Kristeva, Derrida, and company. While afreshman can see that the emperor has no clothes, professors ofmodern languages re-confronted by the question of justification thatgreeted the birth of their discipline, gladly donned Parisian apparel.The need, and even requirement, for professors of literature to saysomething new and unique has led to the proliferation of readings andmeanings, called for and justified by intertextuality.28 The result is thatthe critic and professor of literature takes his work as seriously, andthinks it as important as, literature itself, often conceiving criticism ason par with, and being a type of, literature.29 This self-importance mayactually betray an underlying insecurity regarding the importance andjustification of the study of literature. From a feminist perspective Rossasserts, “Feelings of discomfort may, for the male subject, be indigenousto the study of literature in a patriarchal culture; the work is by itsnature ‘derivative,’ its ‘origins’ always elsewhere and its concerns andconventions—affect, sociodomestic existence and relations, conduct—historically more ‘feminine’ than ‘masculine’” (p. 156).

VI

Intertextuality is not a univocal term and concept, but rather is aucourant for describing practices and approaches that bear greater andlesser resemblance to the original. Can the theory and practice bejustified? Is the term warranted? The problem faced by even the moresober and moderate theories and practices of intertextuality, such asthose of Bloom and Riffaterre, is the same problem faced by the New

240 Philosophy and Literature

Critics and all others who attempt to focus on the “text itself” apartfrom the author, namely, treating the text as if it were not a text. As Ihave argued elsewhere, to treat a text as if its meaning were essentiallyindependent of authorial intent is to treat the text as if it were not a textat all, but merely an entity like a monkey’s randomly and accidentallytyped Hamlet. The truth is that we could not make use of such a text atall without making certain basic assumptions about the author andwhat he or she intended, for example that she was presenting a work offiction in English (see II, pp. 31–32). Authorial intention is unavoid-able; intertextual connections are not somehow magically made be-tween inanimate texts but are the products of authorial design.30 Tothink otherwise is to commit the Referential Fallacy.

VII

Just as reports of the death of the author have been greatly exagger-ated, so the death of allusion is not warranted. Given the problems withtheories of intertextuality, the use of the term intertextuality is dubious,as it implies that language and texts operate independently of humanagency. While, in a sense, allusions are inter-textual phenomena, theyare more properly and precisely described as authorial-textual phenom-ena. Unintended connections between texts are, as I have arguedelsewhere, better called “accidental associations” (WA, pp. 294–96).The term intertextuality is at best a rhetorical flourish intended toimpress, at worst it is the signifier of an illogical position. And sointertextuality is a term that should be shaved off by “Dutton’s Razor,” theprinciple that jargon that does not illuminate or elucidate but rathermystifies and obscures should be stricken from the lexicon of sincereand intelligent humanists.

King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

For helpful comments and criticisms I wish to thank Gregory Bassham, Jorge J. E. Gracia, JasonHolt, Megan Lloyd, and audiences at the University of Manitoba and a meeting of the AmericanSociety for Aesthetics.

1. This definition is argued for in my “What Is an Allusion?” Journal of Aesthetics and ArtCriticism 59 (2001): 287–97; hereafter abbreviated WA.

241William Irwin

2. Oddly, the ancient Greeks and Romans had no equivalent term. See Joseph Pucci,The Full-Knowing Reader: Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. xvi–xvii.

3. See Göran Hermerén, “Allusions and Intentions,” in Intention and Interpretation, ed.Gary Iseminger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), pp. 203–20. MichaelLeddy, “The Limits of Allusion,” British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (1992): 110–22; StephanieRoss, “Art and Allusion,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1981): 59–70.

4. By contrast, Mary Orr attempts to rehabilitate “allusion” and other “shadowlandterms,” in Intertextuality: Debates and Practices (Cambridge: Polity, 2003), pp. 139–40.

5. Orr is at pains to make clear that intertextuality is not a univocal term, indicating asingle concept and practice, pp. 6–19.

6. Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York:Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 66. See Graham Allen, Intertextuality (London:Routledge, 2000), p. 39 (italics in the original).

7. See Hans-Peter Mai, “Bypassing Intertextuality: Hermeneutics, Textual Practice,Hypertext,” in Intertextuality, ed. Heinrich F. Plett (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), p. 40.

8. Manfred Pfister, “How Postmodern is Intertextuality?” in Intertextuality, ed. HeinrichF. Plett (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), p. 212.

9. Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press,1984), pp. 59–60. See Allen, p. 53.

10. Orr disagrees and argues that Kristeva’s intertextuality was both purloined andsuppressed by male canonical intertextualists, see pp. 21–24.

11. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in The Death and Resurrection of theAuthor?, ed. William Irwin (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002), pp. 3–7; “La mortde l’auteur,” Manteia 5 (1968): 12–17.

12. Roland Barthes, “Theory of the Text,” in Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader,ed. Robert Young (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 42. See Mai, p. 42.

13. Roland Barthes, S/Z (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), p. 211.

14. Clara Claiborne Park, “Author! Author! Reconstructing Roland Barthes,” TheHudson Review 43 (1990): 378.

15. Mark Bauerlein, “Bad Writing’s Back,” Philosophy and Literature 28 (2004):190.

16. I owe this point and this use of the term lector to Tilottama Rajan, “Intertextualityand the Subject of Reading/Writing,” in Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History,eds. Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991),p. 70.

17. Donald Keefer, “Reports of the Death of the Author,” Philosophy and Litera-ture 19 (1995): 81.

18. William Irwin, Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation and Defense(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 50–54, 117–18; hereafter abbreviated II.

242 Philosophy and Literature

19. See E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press,1967), pp. 6–8, 23, 218, and The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1976), pp. 4–8, 79–80; II, pp. 46–50.

20. “Philosophy as/and/of Literature,” in Literature and the Question of Philosophy, ed.Anthony J. Cascardi (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 10–11.

21. For a similar discussion on breaking the Hermeneutic circle see Jorge J. E. Gracia,A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), pp. 189–93.

22. See David Weberman, “The Nonfixity of the Historical Past,” The Review ofMetaphysics 50 (1997): 749–68. On the shooting and murder example see Judith JarvisThomson, “The Time of a Killing,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 115–32, and JonathanBennett, “Shooting, Killing, and Dying,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1973): 315–23.

23. Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein, “Figures in the Corpus: Theories of Influence andIntertextuality,” in Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History, eds. Jay Clayton and EricRothstein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 23.

24. In contrast see William Irwin, “The Aesthetics of Allusion,” The Journal of ValueInquiry 36 (2002): 521–32.

25. Heinrich F. Plett, “Intertextualities,” in Intertextuality, ed. Heinrich F. Plett (Berlin:Walter de Gruyter, 1991), p. 5.

26. See Susan Stanford Friedman, “Weavings: Intertextuality and the (Re)Birth of theAuthor,” in Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History, eds. Jay Clayton and EricRothstein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 157.

27. Valerie Ross, “Too Close to Home: Repressing Biography, Instituting Authority,” inContesting the Subject, ed. William Epstein (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press,1991), p. 144.

28. See John M. Ellis, Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 208–10.

29. See Ellis, pp. 214–15.

30. Some marginal structuralist intertextualists maintain that the references must beintended by the author. See Pfister, p. 210.