CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 423
critique. Sedgwick is here even speaking of a "consensual hermeneutic
ofsuspicion"("ParanoidReading"3),^119 consensualbecause,asshesays
elsewhere, suspicion has become "nearly synonymous with criticism
itself" (TouchingFeeling130). She sees this hermeneutics at work in a
veritable laundry list of contemporary critical "schools" such as
feminism, psychoanalytic theory, deconstruction, Marxism, or New
Historicism (TouchingFeeling7). Setting aside for a moment my own
disquiet with this rather indiscriminate jumbling together of otherwise
widely divergent theories, I follow up Sedgwick's argument that the
defining feature of this kind of literary and cultural critique has in her
words become "a tracing-and-exposure project" (Touching Feeling4).
Suchaprojectusuallyjustifiesitselfbyclaimingtopossessaprivileged
insightintothesecretoperationsofpower.This,Ithink,isafair-enough
assessment, even a valuable one, not only in the context of
contemporary cultural critique^120 but also in the present context when
(^119) Cf. Ricoeur: "For Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, the fundamental category of
consciousness is the relation hidden-shown or, if you prefer, simulated-
manifested.... [T]he man of suspicion carries out in reverse the work of
falsificationofthemanofguile"(FreudandPhilosophy32-34).
(^120) Sedgwick's re-reading of Ricoeur reminds us of the sometimes self-
aggrandizing posture of some contemporary critical protocols, especially those
inspiredbypost-structuralismanddeconstruction,as,forexample,whenPaulde
Manwrites:"Adeconstructionalwayshasforitstargettorevealtheexistenceof
hidden articulations and fragmentations within assumedly monadic totalities"
(249).Thiswaswrittenin1979;andin2011,MichaelHardtstilldefinescritique
asabodyof"techniquestorevealthefiguresofpowerthatoperateindominant
discoursesorideologies..."(19).AndLawrenceGrossberg's2010blueprintfor
a Cultural Studies of the future sees criticism as committed to tracing the
operationsofpower[hidden]indiscourse:"Culturalstudiesisalwaysinterested
in how power infiltrates, contaminates, limits, and empowers the possibilities
that people have to live their lives.. ." (29). The prestige granted by the
hermeneuticsofsuspiciontothisdemystifyinggestureis,Ithink,aleftoverfrom
our Christian heritage in which the dealings of the devil were always seen as
going on in the dark. In its modern, ideological-critical version, the idea reads
thus: "The assumption [is] that domination can only do its work when veiled"
(Best and Marcus 2). I am aware of the limited documentary value of such
excerpts, especially when taken out of context, but at least they make plausible
the idea of an elective affinity between the hermeneutics of suspicion and