PLATO AND POSTMODERNISM

M iller (P.A.) Postmodern Spiritual Practices. The Construction ofthe Subject and the Reception of Plato in Lacan, Derrida and Foucault.Pp. x + 270. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2007. Cased,US$59.95. ISBN: 978-0-8142-1070-3.doi:10.1017/S0009840X08001832

One e¶ective way to sum up the intellectual motivations behind this book on theappropriation of Plato in the work of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and MichelFoucault, is expressed on p. 5: ‘The problem in a nutshell is that theory per se does notexist. It is a disciplinary μction’. That is to say, it exists within (a) history. The radicalinsights of Lacan, Derrida and Foucault are all too often extracted from theirrespective contexts and repeated and applied ad inμnitum and sometimes ad absurdum.(And the list could easily include other cardinal twentieth-century francophoneintellectuals whose work is plundered willy-nilly: Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille,Maurice Blanchot, Aimé Césaire, Hélène Cixous, Franz Fanon, Luce Irigaray, SarahKofman, Julia Kristeva, Paul de Man, Jean-Luc Nancy, to name but a few.) Derridaonce famously said that all this ‘applying Derrida to’ whatever analytic endeavourmade him feel as if he were already dead! He was of course making a wry commentabout the always present possibility of one’s language being appropriated againstone’s intentions as if one were not alive; one’s own proper name signiμes one’simpending death, since the very possibility of being named is conditional on beingnamed and known as such after one’s death. Attaching a ‘real’ and ‘absolute’ meaningto postmodern theory will always be a di¸cult exercise, then, since these thinkers wereacutely aware that their words and ideas were not superglued to, and completelydependent upon, the historical context in which they were said and written. If theywere happy to appropriate the words of Plato to make Plato’s work mean and thinkotherwise, then they were certainly self-aware enough to realise that their own workscould be re-used and applied in intellectual contexts that would never have occurredto them. This is an important point that Miriam Leonard makes in her recent Athensin Paris, a superb critique of conventional intellectual history that is very wary ofuncovering the meaning behind the work of, say, Derrida, by situating him within thecanvas of his historical and political contexts: one way not to read Derrida is tosuggest that ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ unproblematically re·ects Derrida’s thoughts aboutMay 1968. Historicising French literary theory, then, requires careful consideration.So what makes M.’s book important for both classicists and literary theorists ingeneral is his sophisticated and nuanced comparison between modernist andpostmodernist engagements with antiquity. M., heeding Leonard’s warning (p. 1, n.2), concerns himself with questioning why French modernism was so interested inGreek tragedy, whereas postmodern thinkers became more preoccupied with thePlatonic œuvre. Even when the postmoderns do turn to Greek drama, as Lacan doeswith Antigone, M. notes ‘they no not present a modernized recreation of the dramaticexperience [as, say, Anouilh did], but a careful and methodical reading of the textfrom a deμned perspective’ (p. 22). M.’s opening and fascinating chapter looks atSartre’s, Camus’ and Anouilh’s stagings of Greek tragedy and Roman history underthe Nazi occupation of France. M. explores a dynamic set of appropriations thatmeditates deeply upon the meaning of freedom and responsibility. These plays areread as allegories for the choices and constraints imposed upon the populations ofNazi-occupied territory. Anouilh’s Antigone, in particular, presages the ‘di¸culty of

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 © The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

the classical review 59

separating the earlier fascist pursuit of an absolute beyond the bounds of bourgeoissubjectivity from the later postmodernist pursuit of a “pensée du dehors” ’ (p. 23).This ‘pensée du dehors’ is ‘[t]he postmodern turn to a thought from outside, to arefusal to accept the categories of the given even in the guise of the antique’ (p. 21).Just as Plato once reacted to the dangerous messages broadcast at Athenian dramaticfestivals, so postmodern thinkers have responded to the French modernist re-stagingof antiquity. Moving from Anouilh’s Antigone to Lacan’s reading of Sophocles’version of the tale, we interrogate the possibility of an ethical theory of pure desire.Lacan’s ethical re-reading of Antigone that seems to occlude a political understandingof the play is an issue that is addressed by M. when he turns to discuss Lacan’s readingof Plato’s Symposium. Lacan’s Plato, as M. shows, has a great deal to teach us aboutthe seductive and alluring relationship between psychoanalyst and patient. In his nextchapter M. discusses the place of Plato in the œuvre of Jacques Derrida with especialattention drawn to ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ and The Post Card. M. re-presents the nowclassic arguments of the μrst essay and then discusses the importance of the Philebusin the latter for thinking through the intellectual relationships between Plato andFreud, Freud and Lacan, and Lacan and Derrida himself. The μnal chapter considersFoucault’s care of the self. As well as considering Foucault’s relationships to Deleuze,Derrida and Lacan, this chapter, as the Appendix clariμes, examines how the politicalsigniμcances of Foucault’s discussions of Plato and his ancient heirs have beenunderplayed and mystiμed. Postmodern theory is often accused of being ‘all aboutdiscourse’, detached from the real world and all its urgent concerns. M.’s bookpowerfully shows that postmoderns like Lacan, Derrida and Foucault wereprofoundly preoccupied with making sense of the legacy of world events between1939 and 1945 (to periodise crudely) in the post-1945 period. And it was Plato (interalios) that o¶ered a way of thinking through the ancient and modern tragediesin·icted during the μrst half of the twentieth century.

University of Warwick DANIEL ORRELLSd.orrells@warwick.ac.uk

THE MENO

Ionescu (C.) Plato’s Meno. An Interpretation. Pp. xx + 194.Lanham, MD and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007. Cased, US$65.ISBN: 978-0-7391-2025-5.doi:10.1017/S0009840X08001844

I. has presented an intelligent, thoughtful and thorough consideration of thisfascinating Platonic dialogue. She argues that its unifying theme is that virtue isknowledge or wisdom, but that this theme is occluded by Socrates’ need to addressrather ‘shallow’ interlocutors (p. xiii), whose notions of virtue, teaching and learningre·ect the non-philosophical views of the many. The dialogue, she argues, proceeds ontwo levels: (1) a superμcial level at which Socrates accommodates the views of Menoand, later, Anytus and (2) a deeper level at which Plato engages the reader.

The book contains a brief introductory chapter followed by three chapters thattrack the Meno sequentially. It concludes with two appendices that deal, respectively,with the lines that go through the centre of the μrst square drawn by Socrates in hisexchange with the slave, and with the initial hypothesis in the argument concerning

The Classical Review vol. 59 no. 1 © The Classical Association 2009; all rights reserved

60 the classical review