The Unionization of Failure

R.G.: Yet even in literary criticism there is nothing more banal and mystifying, finally, than the obsessive emphasis on the infinite diversity of literary works, on their ineffable and inexhaustible character, on the impossibility of repeating the same interpretation—on the negation of any definite statement, in other words. I cannot see in this anything more than a huge unionization of failure. We must perpetuate at any cost the interminable discourse that earns us a living.

G. L.: A harsh judgment.

R. G.: It is certainly too harsh, but we live in an intellectual universe that is all the more conformist for its belief in possessing a monopoly on nonconformist views and methods. That much obviates any genuine self-criticism. Time is spent breaking down doors that have been wide open for centuries. This is still the modern war on prohibitions that rages on all fronts, whereas it was already ridiculous during the surrealist period. As in the Greek Buphonia, we keep stuffing the old and dried sacrificial skins with straw and standing them up in order to beat them down for the thousandth time.

—René Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978)