Decorum and Insolence in Robert Walser’s Dialectic of MannersTools McAuliffe, Sam. 2017. 'Decorum and Insolence in Robert Walser’s Dialectic of Manners'. In: Play, Recreation, and Experimentation: Literature and the Arts since the Early Modern Times. University of Kent, United Kingdom. [Conference or Workshop Item]
Abstract or DescriptionAny show of civility, so Jacques Derrida suggests, is subject to an “internal contradiction”: to comport oneself towards the other with decorum “involves both rules and invention without rule. Its rule is that one knows the rule but is never bound by it. It is impolite to be merely polite, to be polite out of politeness” (‘Passions: An Oblique Offering’). Paradoxical as it may be, to act in conformity with the codes of conduct prescribed by politeness is to render these codes inoperative; their rule is upheld only by an action that surpasses, and thus in a certain sense contests, whatever it is that this rule otherwise stipulates. This means that an instance of play – “invention without rule” – is intrinsic to the principle of civility at stake here. Without it politeness remains ineffective. And yet, if this is so, what is there to stop the necessary transgression of the rule from converging with civility’s contrary: impoliteness, insolence, if not outright maleficence?
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