Barbara Johnson Anthromorphism in Lyric and Law
Barbara Johnson Anthromorphism in Lyric and Law
Barbara Johnson Anthromorphism in Lyric and Law
Recent discussions of the relations between law and literature have tended
to focus on prose—novels, short stories, autobiographies, even plays—rather
than on lyric poetry.1 Literature has been seen as a locus of plots and situ-
ations that parallel legal cases or problems, either to shed light on complexi-
ties not always acknowledged by the ordinary practice of legal discourse or
to shed light on cultural crises and debates that historically underlie and
inform literary texts. But in a sense, this focus on prose is surprising, since
lyric poetry has, at least historically, been the more law-abiding or rule-
bound of the genres. Indeed, the sonnet form has been compared to a prison
(Wordsworth2) or at least to a bound woman (Keats3), and Baudelaire’s por-
traits of lyric depression (“Spleen”4) are often written as if from behind bars.
What are the relations between the laws of genre5 and the laws of the state? The
present essay might be seen as asking this question through the juxtaposition,
as it happens, of two sonnets and a prisoners’ association.
More profoundly, though, lyric and law might be seen as two very different
ways of instating what a “person” is. There appears to be the greatest possible
discrepancy between a lyric “person”—emotive, subjective, individual—and
a legal “person”—rational, rights-bearing, institutional. In this essay I will try
to show, through the question of anthropomorphism, how these two “per-
sons” can illuminate each other.
I
I will begin by discussing the article by Paul de Man, which is one of the
most difficult, even outrageous, of his essays. Both hyperbolic and elliptical,
it makes a number of very strong claims about literary history, lyric peda-
gogy, and the materiality of “historical modes of language power.” 7 Toward
the end of his text, de Man somewhat unexpectedly reveals that the essay
originated in an invitation to speak on the nature of lyric. But it begins with
some general remarks about the relation between epistemology and rhetoric
(which can stand as a common contemporary way of framing the relations
between law and literature). The transition between the question of the lyric
and the question of epistemology and rhetoric is made through the Keatsian
chiasmus, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”8 which de Man quotes on his way
to Nietzsche’s short and “better known than understood”9 essay, “Truth and
Falsity in an Ultramoral Sense.”10 “What is truth?” Nietzsche asks in that
essay’s most often-quoted moment: “a mobile army of metaphors, metony-
mies, and anthropomorphisms.”11 Thus it would seem that Nietzsche has
answered, “Truth is trope, trope truth” or “epistemology is rhetoric, rhetoric
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epistemology.” But de Man wants to show in what ways Nietzsche is not saying
simply this. First, the list of tropes is, he says, “odd.”12 While metaphor and
metonymy are the names of tropes that designate a pure structure of relation
(metaphor is a relation of similarity between two entities, while metonymy
is a relation of contiguity), de Man claims that anthropomorphism, while
structured similarly, is not a trope. It is not the name of a pure rhetorical
Why does he call this a proper name? Shouldn’t the essence that is taken as
given be a concept? If “man” is what is assumed as a given, why call it a proper
name? (This question is particularly vexed when the theorist’s proper name
is “de Man.”) The answer, I think, is that “man” as concept would imply the
possibility of a proposition. “Man” would be subject to definition, and thus
transformation or trope. But proper names are not subjects of definition:
They are what they are. If “man” is taken as a given, then, it can only be
because it is out of the loop of qualification. It is presupposed, not defined.
Yet the examples of proper names de Man gives are surprising: Narcissus
and Daphne.14 Nietzsche’s triumvirate of metaphor, metonymy, and anthro-
pomorphism then functions like the plot of an Ovidian metamorphosis:
from a mythological world in which man and nature appear to be in meta-
phorical and metonymic harmony, there occurs a crisis wherein, by a pro-
cess of seamless transformation, a break nevertheless occurs in the system
of correspondences, leaving a residue that escapes and remains—the proper
name. De Man’s discussion of Baudelaire’s sonnets will in fact be haunted by
Ovidian presences: Echo is lurking behind every mention of Narcissus,
while one of the recurring cruxes is whether there is a human substance in
a tree. It is perhaps not an accident that the figures that occupy the margins
of de Man’s discussion are female. If de Man’s enduring question is whether
linguistic structures and epistemological claims can be presumed to be com-
patible, the question of gender cannot be located exclusively either in language
Anthropomorphism in Lyric and Law | 237
(where the gender of pronouns, and often of nouns, is inherent in each lan-
guage) or in the world. By extension, the present discussion of the nature of
“man” cannot fail to be haunted by the question of gender.
The term anthropomorphism in Nietzsche’s list thus indicates that a given
is being forced into what otherwise would function as a pure structure of
relation. In addition, Nietzsche calls truth an army of tropes, thus introducing
Correspondances
La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.
Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
—Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,
Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies,
Comme l’ambre, le muse, le benjoin et l’encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens.16
Correspondences
Nature is a temple, where the living pillars
Sometimes utter indistinguishable words;
Man passes through these forests of symbols
Which regard him with familiar looks.
Like long echoes that blend in the distance
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Into a unity obscure and profound,
Vast as the night and as the light,
The perfumes, colors, and sounds correspond.
There are some perfumes fresh as a baby’s skin,
Mellow as oboes, verdant as prairies,
—And others, corrupt, rich, and triumphant,
Obsession
Grands bois, vous m’effrayez comme des cathédrales;
Vous hurlez comme l’orgue; et dans nos coeurs maudits,
Chambres d’éternel deuil où vibrent de vieux râles,
Répondent les échos de vos De Profundis.
Je te hais, Océan! tes bonds et tes tumultes,
Mon esprit les retrouve en lui; ce rire amer
De l’homme vaincu, plein de sanglots et d’insultes,
Je l’entends dans le rire énorme de la mer.
Comme tu me plairais, ô nuit! sans ces étoiles
Dont la lumière parle un langage connu!
Car je cherche le vide, et le noir, et le nu!
Mais les ténèbres sont elles-mêmes des toiles
Où vivent, jaillissant de mon oeil par milliers,
Des êtres disparus aux regards familiers.17
Obsession
You terrify me, forests, like cathedrals;
You roar like organs; and in our cursed hearts,
Chambers of mourning that quiver with our dying,
Your De Profundis echoes in response.
How I hate you, Ocean! your tumultuous tide
Is flowing in my spirit; this bitter laughter
Of vanquished man, strangled with sobs and insults,
I hear it in the heaving laughter of the sea.
O night, how I would love you without stars,
Whose light can only speak the words I know!
For I seek the void, and the black, and the bare!
But the shadows are themselves a screen
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then the anthropomorphism of nature is lost. Man is surrounded by tree-
like men, not man-like trees. It is not “man” whose attributes are taken on by
all of nature, but merely a crowd of men being compared to trees and pillars.
De Man notes that everyone resists this reading—as do I—but the intensity
with which it is rejected does make visible the seduction of the system that
puts nature, god, and man into a perfect unity through the symbol, which is
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ing” is less deluded. The most it can do is to allow for non-comprehension
and enumerate non-anthropomorphic, non-elegiac, non-celebratory,
non-lyrical, non-poetic, that is to say, prosaic, or, better, historical modes
of language power.31
Earlier in the essay, de Man had said of Nietzsche’s general analysis of truth
II
That which henceforth is to be “truth” is now fixed; that is to say, a
uniformly valid and binding designation of things is invented and the
legislature of language also gives the first laws of truth: since here, for the
first time, originates the contrast between truth and falsity. The liar uses
the valid designations, the words, in order to make the unreal appear as
real, e.g., he says, “I am rich,” whereas the right designation of his state
would be “poor.”—Nietzsche, “Truth and Falsity in an Ultramoral Sense”
Souter has glossed the word poor as though speakers of English could use it only
literally. Thomas responds by including the figurative use of poor as included
within normal usage. The boundaries between natural persons and artificial
persons cannot be determined by usage because those boundaries have always
already been blurred. In treating Congress as an entity with natural inten-
tions, indeed, Souter has already shown how “natural” the artificial can be.
At another point, Thomas takes issue with Souter’s discussion of a case in
which an association or corporation is considered a person despite strong
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contextual indicators to the contrary. In the case of Wilson v. Omaha Indian
Tribe,41 it was decided that “white person” could include corporations because
the “larger context” and “purpose” of the law was to protect Native Americans
against non–Native American squatters, and that purpose would be frus-
trated if a “white person” could simply incorporate in order to escape the
provision of the law.42 Souter admits that “because a wholly legal creature
Thus Thomas’s two conservative instincts are at war with each other: he
would like the government not to spend its money, but he would also like to
stick to the letter of the law.
The question of what counts as a juridical person has, in fact, been modified
over time in the legal code. It was in 1871 (significantly, perhaps, at the beginning
Anthropomorphism in Lyric and Law | 247
of the end of post–Civil War Reconstruction) that Congress first passed the
so-called Dictionary Act, in which it stated that the word person “may
extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate.”43 More recently, the
question of fetal personhood has been debated, not only in the Roe v. Wade
decision, in which it was decided that a fetus was not a legal person,44 but
also in Weaks v. Mounter, in which it was decided that a fetus was a person
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Scott, 404). Many of the same issues of legal rights and protections, as well
as legal interpretation, arise. Dred Scott, whose original legal status was that
of a slave, was taken by his master to free territory. Upon his return to Mis-
souri, he sued for his freedom, arguing that his stay in free territory made
him free. Taney ruled not only that Scott was not free, but that he was not a
citizen with the right to sue, and indeed that persons of African descent had
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
that among them is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed. (410)
Then Taney goes on to say, “The general words above quoted would seem
to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar in-
strument at this day would be so understood” (410). In other words, he sees
as his task only to interpret the meaning of the law, not to bring it up to date,
which would, in a sense, be a policy decision. He goes on to explain why the
Declaration of Independence could not have meant what it says:
It is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not in-
tended to be included and formed no part of the people who framed
and adopted this Declaration; for if the language, as understood in that
day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who
framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and
flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted. . . . Yet the men
who framed this Declaration were great men—high in literary acquire-
ments, high in their sense of honor and incapable of asserting principles
inconsistent with those on which they were acting. (410)
Thus, enslaved African Americans could not have been included among the
people, because the framers were great men and could not have been incon-
sistent. Notice how literature is brought in to confirm their greatness: they
were high in literary attainments; they did not use words lightly. The great-
ness of white men requires that they not be inconsistent. In order for the
founding fathers to maintain their greatness, the African American has to
have no rights. If the United States has reached a crisis over the rights of
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III
The “inhuman” is not some kind of mystery, or some kind of secret; the
inhuman is: linguistic structures, the play of linguistic tensions, linguistic
events that occur, possibilities which are inherent in language—
independently of any intent or any drive or any wish or any desire we
The case of Rowland v. California Men’s Colony was ostensibly about whether
a council of inmates could sue prison officials in forma pauperis to get their
cigarettes back. The details of the case seemed irrelevant to the question of
whether an artificial person has the right to sue in forma pauperis. Yet per-
haps some of those details deserve note. Is it relevant that the suit to decide
this question was brought by a council of inmates? The phenomenon of the
inmate civil suit has grown to the point where the case law may very well be
transformed by it. In a 1995 study of inmate suits in California, it was reported
that “for the last fourteen years at least, the federal courts have faced a grow-
ing caseload and workload challenge posed by inmate cases. . . . By 1992, these
filings numbered nearly 30,000, and constituted 13% of the courts’ total civil
case filings nationwide.”54 The majority of these suits are filed in forma pau-
peris.55 The Supreme Court’s decision may well have been affected by what
Thomas calls “policy considerations” (Rowland, 217).
If prisoners are affecting the nature of civil proceedings, they are also, at
least figuratively, affecting theoretical discussions about the nature of ratio-
nal choice and the evolution of cooperation. The celebrated “Prisoner’s di-
lemma” has been central to questions of self-interest and social goods since
it was introduced by Albert Tucker in 1950.56 Max Black has even entitled
his discussion of these issues “The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ and the Limits of
Rationality.”57 Why is it that the theoretical study of rational choice has re-
course to “man” conceived as a prisoner? Does this have anything to do with
the poets’ tendency to see the sonnet form as a prison?
And is it by chance that Rowland is about cigarettes? On the one hand, it
seems paradoxical that the council has to demonstrate its indigence in order
to pursue its suit against the prison directors for depriving them of cigarettes;
Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men
may also want to have (or not to have) certain desires and motives.
They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and
purposes, from what they are.64
Mark takes seriously the role of language in the evolving history of the cor-
poration. Philosophers and legislators have gone to great lengths to mini-
mize the rhetorical damage, to eliminate personification as far as possible,
but he asserts that it is not just a figure of speech to speak of a corporation’s
“mind,” or even its “life.” “Practical experience, not just anthropomorphism,
fixed the corporate mind in the management hierarchy.”70 The corporation
resembles a human being in its capacity to “take resolves in the midst of con-
flicting motives,” to “will change.”71 Yet the analogy is not perfect. The cor-
poration, for example, unlike its corporators, is potentially immortal. The
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effect of personification appears to derive its rhetorical force from the ways
in which the corporation resembles a natural person, yet the corporation’s
immortality in no way diminishes its personification. When Mark says that
it is “not just anthropomorphism” that underpins the agency of the corpora-
tion,72 he still implies that we can know what anthropomorphism is. But his
final sentence stands this presupposition on its head. Far from claiming that
notes
“Anthropomorphism in Lyric and Law.” Reprinted by permission of the Yale
Journal of Law & the Humanities 10, no. 2 (2013): 549–74.
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36. See California Men’s Colony v. Rowland, 939 F.2d 854 (9th Cir. 1991), rev., 506
U.S. 194 (1993).
37. See FDM Mfg. Co. v. Scottsdale Ins. Co., 855 F.2d 213 (5th Cir. 1988).
38. Webster’s New International College Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Springfield, MA:
Merriam-Webster, 1942), 576, quoted in Rowland, 199.
39. In a response to the present essay when it was delivered at the Yale Law School,
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66. Rivard, “Toward a General Theory,” 1501–2.
67. See Gregory A. Mark, “The Personification of the Business Corporation in
American Law,” University of Chicago Law Review 54 (1987): 1441.
68. The history of theories of corporate personhood is summarized in Mark, “The
Personification of the Business Corporation in American Law,” 1441–83, and in
Rivard, “Toward a General Theory,” 1450–65. The term veil used to refer to the