Would You Publish This Book? Material Production, Canadian Criticism, and "The Theatre of Form"

• Published in: Studies in Canadian literature 2000-01, Vol.25 (1), p.15
• Main Author: Lecker, Robert
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Apologies; Book industry; Canadian content; Canadian literature; Culture; English; Finance; French language; History & criticism; Knowles, Ric; Literary criticism; Literature; Metaphor; Noise; Polls & surveys; Semiotics
• ISSN: 0380-6995

Drawing on the work of French philosopher Regis Debray, Szeman notes that materialist criticism focuses on "the structures that form the conditions of possibility of literature and culture in any given historical moment" (6) in order to show that particular cultural moments and values are the result of "a change in the system of manufacture/circulation/storage of signs" (Debray 19). For Debray, materialist criticism involves a process of "mediology" through which we see "the skeletal structure beneath the flesh... the material bases of systems of inscription" (20). Debray explains this discipline of mediology another way when he argues that in order to understand the opus one must "look toward its operation," and that in order to understand the operation, one must "look toward the equipment or apparatus" that allow the operation and the opus to function and gain or lose cultural value (26). To look strictly at the end-product of scholarly dissemination -- in this case, books of English-Canadian literary criticism -- is to miss the fact that the product itself is formed through material turmoil and is in many ways a metaphor of this turmoil: "There is conflict, sound and fury, not around or after, in the circumstances, but in the very process, informing it from the inside... Every transmission is a combat, against noise, against inertia, against the other transmitters, and even -- especially -- against the addressees" (45). Meanwhile, we had to pay our bills, even though we had not seen any money from sales or any funding from the ASPP, who received their six required copies on 3 February 2000. They acknowledged receipt of the book on 14 February and wrote that "editors have been generally pleased with ASPP's new procedure of processing payment of books every two months compared to three times a year in the past." Since it was early February, this led me to assume that we might actually see the funding by the end of April 2000. But there was also a caution in the ASPP letter: "New fiscal year funds are never made available by SSHRCC, to us, before the month of May. Please be assured that your file will be forwarded to our committee in the first batch of approvals for the fiscal year 2000." Because we had been told that payments were made every two months, I didn't think about this warning much; I just assumed that payment would reach us some time in April. When that didn't happen by the end of April, we wrote to the ASPP to inquire about the status of the p