(the) American (Novel of)

Impolitics
Remember that there is a local propriety to be observed in
all companies; and that what is extremely proper in one company,
may be, and often is, highly improper in another. 7
Lord Chesterfield’s prescriptions suggest the possibility that the
imperative force of etiquette is a form of panoptic power reproduced
through the continuous observation of the rules that constitute a given
company. 8 The appropriate rules of behavior are those that one observes
in a company in order to appropriate them for oneself. One then
observes those rules in one’s own practice in order that one’s comportment
be observed and judged favorably by the company. The objective
is to belong to, or be appropriated by, the group through a process
wherein each individual is both observer and observed in relation to
every other individual. In this sense etiquette operates more like a
language, a semiotics, or a code. 9 What each code conveys in its specifics
will vary from context to context; however, Lord Chesterfield implies
that this is of secondary concern if indeed it is of any concern at all.
What this semiotics of propriety signifies in general is nothing but a
purely formal, one might even say “categorical,” willingness to be appropriated,
a will to belong within the exclusionary borders defined by
the group. 10 As the sociologist Jorge Arditi has put it, “Manners becomes
a language, a formal property through which a group takes
shape.” 11 Because they are ostensibly autonomous and defined internally,
the codes or regimens of any given genre of comportment resist
being held accountable to anything or anyone outside their proper
domain. Consequently, one can never properly demand such accountability.
To have a recognizable voice, to speak the proper behavioral
language within a given genre of comportment, one must already belong
to it, in which case one would probably not make the inappropriate
demand that it legitimate itself in the first place.
Of course, one can certainly traverse multiple genres of propriety,
but the various regimens that produce the specific activities that distinguish
one genre from another prevent particular behaviors from being
properly transferred or translated across genres. I have adopted Lyotard’s
terminology here because it proves helpful for understanding particular
behaviors or manners in terms of relations of power. As to the impossibility
of properly translating specific behaviors across genres of comportment,
he has explained in his book The Differend: Phrases In Dispute,
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