(the) American (Novel of)

64 Trent H. Hamann
that “a universal rule of judgment between heterogeneous genres is
lacking in general.” 12 But the problem I wish to address is not that of
the incongruity between different genres of comportment, an incongruity
that, after all, most of us manage to embody quite nicely every
day. Rather, I wish to address the differend that occurs between propriety
and impropriety. Lyotard writes in his preface, “As distinguished
from a litigation, a differend [différend] would be a case of conflict,
between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack
of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments. One side’s legitimacy
does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy. However, applying
a single rule of judgment to both in order to settle their differend as
though it were merely a litigation would wrong (at least) one of them
(and both of them if neither side admits this rule).” 13
Here the two parties are propriety on the one hand, and that
which hopes to question, to challenge, and perhaps refuse it on the
other. Of course, in this case, one side’s legitimacy certainly does imply
the other’s lack of legitimacy. As I’ve already proposed, even to question
propriety is to consign oneself to the realm of the inappropriate precisely
because propriety applies “a single rule of judgment” to all behaviors
it recognizes as proper to its genre. That which is deemed
inappropriate must either become appropriate(d) or be rendered silent.
Impropriety is by its very nature impolitic, illegitimate, and ill begotten
under the hyperpanoptic gaze of propriety and thereby has no authority
to make proper judgments of its own. 14
Chuck D., former member of the rap group Public Enemy, may
perhaps have been right when he claimed that “there’s a difference
between a thug and a rebel,” but there has never been a rebel who
wasn’t summarily judged to be a thug by the regime against which he
or she rebelled. The 1969 housewife who might have refused to be the
designated unpaid domestic laborer within the marriage partnership
would likely have been perceived by her husband, her family, her friends,
her neighbors, and perhaps even herself as an improper wife. In fact she
would have been improper insofar as her refusal would have been
impolitic, that is, inexpedient, imprudent, and injudicious in relation to
the functional partnership she had contractually agreed to with her
husband (who we may assume was performing his own proper roles as
laborer and wage earner in the public realm, and minor sovereign in the
private domicile). However, we should recognize that perhaps it isn’t