Notes on Kamuf P. (Ed.) (1991). A Derrida Reader.
Between the Lines. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf
Dave Harris
[Could be a long slog, but this is about the only
way I could even approach Derrida, through
extracts chosen by an expert commentator. I
begin with my own plain persons's gloss. Skip if
you want:
Logocentrism —
a plain person's guide
I think the essence of it
is that human beings make a lot of judgements
in an instant kind of way, imagining that
events or concepts somehow present themselves
to consciousness directly, or are immediately
present. This tendency is enhanced by speech
which means that we can immediately
utter a name for what it is we have
perceived, and that seems to be direct. Logo
might also imply that there is an argument
there which has directed our perceptions, that
we are predisposed to see something as
something because it will fit an argument that
we have developed already or are developing.
Phallogocentrism is a fairly easy extension of
this idea to fit those who will see the
phallus at work everywhere, immediately,
without qualification — it will seem obvious.
Now this describes an
activity that we all know and engage, when we
make instant judgements about people or
things. We see someone as untrustworthy, or we
see a situation is dangerous, without much
thought, almost unconsciously, although it has
to be present in our consciousness. What
Derrida does though, is to identify this
process at the heart of a great deal of
powerful philosophy, quite often at crucial
stages, when the philosophy is to be
'applied'. Thus Hegel pursues extremely clever
rigourous and logical analysis of the workings
of the dialectic, based on his own
considerable philosophical grasp, his critical
evaluation of other philosophers and all the
rest of it, but he gets logo centric when he
is applying the analysis to actual social
situations, which have to be seen as
embodiments of Spirit. Derrida points to his
work on the family [in Glas], where the family
is posited conceptually as a site of social
reconciliation between opposites, a crucial
stage in the development of full social
morality. Unfortunately, Hegel also takes as
essential characteristics that must have
seemed to him to be immediately and apparently
obvious — that men were outward facing, while
women were domestic, men did reason, and women
did emotions, in the struggle between them,
they use different weapons and so on. Derrida
says Kant was even worse in explaining the
dreadful tensions between men and women in the
bourgeois family as some kind of eternal
struggle between concepts. Colletti once
argued, long ago, that Marx saw Hegel as
making the same mistake in developing the
conceptual notion of the state as the
embodiment of Reason, and then identifying it
uncritically with the existing Prussian state.
Marcuse was to make a similar argument with
Heidegger's existentialism, that it generated
a state of anxiety that was chronically likely
to be relieved by a strong authoritarian
leader, and there just happened to be one in
the person of Hitler.
it is relatively easy to extend the reach of
this critique by covering phallogocentrism, a
tendency to see the phallus at work in
everything, somehow always present, and
uncriticlly recognisable -- in Lacan, say
There are several
implications that follow for me. One is that
reading Derrida and other commentaries of
Hegel, like Taylor, it struck me as more or
less like functionalist sociology, especially
of the family, where there are complementary
roles, a focus on pattern variables that
prepare for life in wider societies and so on.
If you take functionalism as a kind of default
setting for social analysis by sectors of the
middle classes, you have opened the door
nicely to Bourdieu as below. And as many
people have argued actual empirical families
have all sorts of other aspects, of course,
not just accidentally dysfunctional ones, but
built-in oppressive ones, connected to and
reflected in wider social struggles.
Secondly, I am not at all
sure that the same charge can be levelled
against science. I don't think Derrida
includes science, and I think that's because
he hints that science is at least corrigible
[I think the best bit for this is the section
in Of Grammatology where he recommends
developing an adequate grammatology by
examining empirical cases, certainly not by
attempting to find some abstract concept of a
language, which is what a philosopher might
do. Although scientists are as likely as
anyone else to make these intuitive direct
judgements — I suppose they might even be
Popper's basic statements, where astronomers
are dragged out of doors look up into the sky
and agree that there is a moon actually there
— they can proceed to correct these by more
rigorous observation and experiment, although
still within limits of course. The limits in
this case are provided by positivism, for
example, that rules out anything like the kind
of clever textual conceptual analysis that
Derrida indulges in. Nevertheless, I think
this raises all sorts of implications for
statements like the one in Barad where she
says, notoriously, that quantum erasure
experiments provide some sort of empirical
proof for Derrida's ontology. It is not at all
clear what sort of claim that is, whether it
is a recognition forced by wanting to apply
Derrida, or a measured observation, grounded
in scientific judgements having ruled out all
the other possibilities, or indeed just an
intuitive or polemical, with a hidden
component of 'as if'.
Thirdly, I am reminded of
Bourdieu's rebuke of Derrida in Distinction
. It leads to Bourdieu's own critique of Kant.
I quote from my own notes:
Derrida's real purpose is
still to formalise, and he cannot break
with the notion of a 'philosophical text',
which sits in opposition to all other
'vulgar' discourses (495). Derrida agrees
to play the game of trying to pin down
some pure pleasure, while remaining
indifferent to the conditions of existence
of such pleasure. As usual, the more
unreal and indifferent the text, the more
likely it is to be accepted as philosophy.
As a result, Derrida can only arrive at
philosophical truths, and he supports the
overall game of philosophy, even while
performing the occasional transgression
--'the philosophical way of talking about
philosophy de-realises everything that can
be said about philosophy' (495).
For Bourdieu, this logocentrism is not an
additional process requiring examination, but
a mundane result of the unconscious or
habitual exercise of cultural capital. The
habitus also generates spontaneous judgements
of all kinds of objects and events, and these
just seem natural and obvious to those who
share it, not even worth discussing,
challenged only where there is some social
infraction when someone external intrudes —
and then they can be dismissed quite easily as
not the right sort of chap. In the critique of
Kant on judgement, Bourdieu is arguing that
Kant is faithfully expressing the habitus of
men of his class and occupation in reproducing
distinctions between, say, immediate bodily
enjoyments, and more rational discriminating
intellectualised aesthetic judgement. No doubt
sociological critics of Kant would say the
same about his conventional views about the
family, or his view that autonomous
individuals are the proper sources of morality
— a must read some one-day. This is much
clearer in my view than Derrida's rather odd,
and so far rather vague argument that
individual named philosophers seem to be
capable of these errors, even though he knows
it is not individuals who do this but
linguistic formations or cultural formations,
but these are never identified anywhere except
in metaphysical tradition. Of course there are
the usual back-covering bits about connections
with relations of power. The Bourdieu dig (in
the section in Distinction on Kant) says that
Derrida hesitates exactly at the moment where
philosophy would have to give way to
sociology.
While I am here, if logocentrism represents a
kind of continual presupposition in Western
metaphysics, it's not the only one,or perhaps
there are more forms than one. I don't know
enough about metaphysics to extend this very
far, but I have noticed another key
presupposition in a lot of 'deconstructionist'
argument, suggested, perhaps by Bourdieu's
attack on philosophy in Distinction
(see below). I think it might be
philogocentrism,a series of ways in
which philosophers specifically convince
themselves they are at the Truth,using not
just intuition but other more specialist
sources -- consonance with other philosophers,
logical entailment from earlier concepts, an
underlying Whiggish sense of progress towards
complete philosophy. organizational or
publishing success etc
In essence [!] what happens is that all the
existing naïvely empirical or idealist
categories, oppositions, and especially
binaries are rebuked, and shown to be limited,
even to be implying something beyond the
distinctions themselves. There is a magic
substance which transcends or is immanent to
normal reality. In Derrida it might be Spirit,
in Heidegger it is Being seems to be in
Deleuze it is the immanent and Aion (or
indeed, Being). Even in Althusser it seems to
be some Spinoza notion of structural
causality, some cause that causes itself and
constitutes all the normal causes. In Barad,
it is the phenomenon, where relations
constitute the relata and vice versa.
Everything else can be deconstructed and shown
to be inadequate, but not this Magic Substance
because it contains all critical terms within
it and appears just in time to rescue the
whole system and prevent it being just
entirely negative.
Here is a cracking early example, showing the
ways in which the Magic Substance can appear
to rescue an immediate crisis say in a direct
argument with somebody else. This is a
discussion between Hyppolite and Derrida at a
conference, cited in Kirby, V (2011), ch. 1,
p19. (summarised on the Kirby page) .
They were discussing the differences between
science and philosophy, and whether the
characteristics that interest Derrida could be
understood in developments such as information
theory, and whether Derrida sees the emergence
of human beings as a kind of accident or
malformation arising from nature.
Specifically, they discuss whether or not
Einstein's constants are relevant for grasping
social life or not:
JD:
'… The Einsteinian constant is not a
constant, is not a centre. It is the
very concept of variability — it is,
finally, the concept of the game. In
other words it is not the concept of
some thing — of a centre
starting from which an observer could
master the field — but the very concept
of the game which, after all, I was
trying to elaborate'
JH: 'Is it a constant
in the game?'
JD: It is the
constant of the game…
JH It is the rule of
the game.
JD 'It is a rule of
the game which does not govern the game;
it is a rule of the game that does not
dominate the game. Now, when the rule of
the game is displaced by the game itself
we must find something other than the
word rule'
Instant judgement,
immediate conviction, inspiration and
recognition. It just MUST be there or else
Hyppolite will be able to unpack Derrida into
conventional understandings of his own.
The obvious consequences are apparent,
formulated, perhaps, best by Badiou on the
problems of the univocity of Being in Deleuze.
Being is a magic substance that constitutes
everything that we normally perceive and
grasp, providing a unified origin for things
that seem to be opposed, a common source for
what seems to be empirically separate. The
same might be said for all the other magic
substances.
There are several problems. There is a danger
of infinite regress, or the rediscovery of
God, if we apply the same transcendental or
immanent arguments to the magic substance
itself. Being with a B constitutes ordinary
being, but what constitutes Being? Who
constructed the plane of immanence? Where did
the tremendous signifying power of human
language come from? Who designed Nature? The
chosen magic substance has to be just at the
right level of transcendence or immanence,
like Goldilocks's porridge. On what grounds do
we exclude some even more fundamental magic
substance? Recent commentary covers this
problem by deconstructing the philosophy of
others, while, in some cases, denying the
anything positive like this might replace it
There is another problem, especially for the
politically committed, because there have to
be exemptions to cover things that we don't
necessarily approve of politically.
Technically, if everything is traceable to the
unfolding of Being, that would include Nazi
politics [which is maybe the path that
Heidegger followed], patriarchy and
positivism, Lacanian theory, neoliberal
accounts of capital, all the nasty aspects of
Nature including aggression and competition,
colonialism as well as post-colonialism.
Exemptions have to be found, and the most
common way to do this is to pursue some bolt-
on politics or ethical commitments. These do
not necessarily come from Being,although they
might be supported by trends detectable in
Being. They are used to enable skilled
interpretations of univocity, the best of
which argue that these nasty things are
earlier forms of manifestation and that we now
can and should progress beyond them, perhaps
in a utopian way. There is also skilled
interpretation of the kind that Derrida
specialises in, but which I have also found in
Deleuze, where particular texts which seem to
lead to uncomfortable conclusions have to be
read in a particular way, allegedly a more
authentic skilled or complete way. We have to
look not only at the published texts of
Nietszche, but to his letters, not just
Heidegger's main text, but a set of lectures
he gave at Marburg, not just Marx's main
texts, but the copious marginalia which help
us put those in context. Other contexts might
include specific struggles or issues which the
Chosen One happens to be addressing or which
have provided an unfortunate focus — Böhr's
residual humanism, Marx's particular struggles
with other socialists, Deleuze's attempt to
restore neglected philosophical works to the
canon, Heidegger keen to address particular
critics in his section on the ontic origins of
sexuality. Rival interpretations can be
dismissed on the same grounds — and my
favourite example, Adorno's conclusions arise
from the terrible pessimism he experienced
during the Nazi era, or Nietszche's from his
physical health [in a biography I have just
read, his preference for aphorism arose from
the fact that his eyes were so bad that he
could not really write anything lengthier].
In the last resort, tremendous technical
problems with interpretation itself can be
identified, which is probably Derrida's
speciality. We have translation problems, so
we need to grasp the full context of German or
Greek words, although there can only ever be
hints of other possibilities and/or never
enough time to do the required close reading.
There is considerable deferral and hesitation
surrounding his own interpretations, which
covers his back, and also produces the effect
of 'prime knowledge' – if a man of his
tremendous intellectual power, fluent in
German, Greek and English, fully realising all
the problems, can still conclude that
Heidegger's notion of sexuality was not
negative, all we can do is take our hats off
and agree. The deferral and hesitation also
prevents the difficult issue of what might be
positively said. I suppose, at the end of a
life criticising and deconstructing the
philosophy of others, Derrida might be
forgiven for arguing that we cannot know, but
that there just might be something at the end
of it, for the future, some actual adequate
grammatology, for example.
But this runs the risk of being an argument of
residues, which haunts [sic] all the
transcendental immanent stuff anyway. The
discovery of transcendental Being obviously
helps close some theoretical issues.It can be
defended by philosophical argument, extension
or unfolding implications, but is it 'really
'there, if you will pardon a ridiculously
naive question? Can we have access to it
except through philosophical deduction, which
might involve generalising from social science
work in some cases. If not,the whole scheme
runs the risk of looking circular, as Deleuze
once said about arguments based on 'essences'
-- we can examine actual cases to get to
underlying essences, but there comes a stage,
maybe a very early one, where our
understanding of essence guides our
examination of actual cases in return. That
can still be corrigible, if we think of it as
a form of abduction, but far too often, the
Magic Substance is never questioned again once
it has done its work and enabled
systematisation -- it attains a status that is
beyond any normal test (except, maybe
consistency) or process of corrigibility, and
there are always ad hoc additions to cover any
emerging contradictions.
Naturally, my own account is subject precisely
to the same sort of objections, there are
considerable translation problems, and I have
no time for the necessary detailed reading.
Part one différance at the origin.
Intro: Derrida found it difficult to write a
thesis which would be acceptable to the French
University at the time, so he gradually reworked
it in eventual publications. It turned on 'his
preoccupation with philosophy and literature, in
all the conjugations of this similarity and
difference' (3). He began using the techniques of
transcendental phenomenology to examine literature
and ask what writing is, and how inscription works
as a '"literary ruse"'. He translated Husserl on
the origin of geometry and wrote essays on a
number of contemporary thinkers, collected as Writing
and Difference, Speech and Phenomena,
and Of Grammatology. There is one
persistent feature — 'the privileging of voice as
the medium of meaning' (4). The problems
philosophers identified with writing pointed to
another issue — that writing is inconsistent with
a fundamental notion of philosophy 'truth or
meaning as a presence without difference from
itself' [that is those moments of intuition where
philosophers just identify something that's
obvious or common sense, often acting as a basic
statement?]. Writing 'always supposes and
indicates an absence'. Husserl offered the most
systematic account of meaning as self presence and
also provided some deconstructive tools. So his
critique began within the tradition: as
self–presence was further analysed, the
distinction between inside and outside which it
implies was also challenged. The early work was
more conventional, but subsequent writings are
more experimental, attempting new relations
between theme and form. The first works reveal the
key concepts ['semi-– or quasi-– concepts'] that
persist — 'trace, différance, archi-writing',
designed to illustrate the gaps in classic
theories of signification, those gaps which
indicate an opening to an outside or other,
including absence.
From Speech and Phenomena
This analyses signification in Husserl, focusing
on expressions in particular, which are intended
to show meaning. This in turn involves a
relationship to consciousness and '"solitary
mental life"'. In the phenomenological reduction,
external support for consciousness is also
stripped away. Derrida wants to say that the
attempt to exclude external traces involves the
logic of presence, both in the sense of 'a
non-differentiated present moment, and in a more
spatial sense' (7) [self-sufficient, needing no
outside support] Derrida says this is an
effacement of the sign, removing anything that
might interrupt the living present. The indicative
functions of language which Husserl downgrades,
and which implies an other, can never be avoided,
but it indicates a '"process of death at work in
signs"', something that is a problem for
signification, an impurity, which has to be
suspended. This leads to the notion of 'the logic
of presence as a logic of pure auto-affection' and
also a necessary relation between expression and
indication — the trace, 'the logic of repeated
inscription without simple origin', which cannot
be explained by the logic of presence.
Chapter 4 Meaning and representation
Husserl is arguing that communication is not
primarily intended to indicate, but to conduct
some internal mental understanding in 'inward
speech'. This indicates nothing to oneself and
involves only representation and imagination.
There is no need for indication — mental activity
is 'immediately present to the subject in the
present moment' (8) [quote from Husserl follows].
However, representation also means
re-representation, repetition or reproduction
[traced to German terms] and one representation
can occupy the place of another. If we are going
to argue that internal monologues are the most
important, reality is represented in the usual
way, but this presupposes effective communication
and thus indication. So Husserl has to
operate with a particular kind of representation,
'a certain fiction… the imaginary representation'.
The issue of effective representation is not
explored, especially its relationship with reality
[not just a reflection model]: connections between
language and reality just is language.
[One of those assertions?].
A sign can never be an event even for Husserl, 'an
irreplaceable and irreversible empirical
particular' (10). There must be some repetition,
something which persists despite diverse empirical
characteristics and other deformations, some or
ideal formal identity. Representation does this
too, but each signifying event substitutes for the
signifier and signified in all signification [I'm
not sure I agree with this -- only if the event is
unmanageably unique?] . Any effective
communication therefore involves 'unlimited
representation'.
Can the 'communicative and indicative shell'of
language be simply dropped? Husserl wants to
distinguish expression and signification in
general, but Derrida says the two are always
implied together in any sign. Effective speech
also becomes more problematic — 'there is every
likelihood that [it] is just as imaginary as
imaginary speech' (11) and vice versa [breaking
any simple reflective relation]. The insistence
that there is a difference between reality and
language is the key to metaphysics but it really
arises from 'the obstinate desire to save presence
and to reduce or derive the sign'. The sign itself
offers no difference between reality and
representation, but this characteristic has to be
effaced: one way to do this is to make signs
derivative [cf no referent etc] , from the
repetitions of a simple presence, and this is such
a dominant tendency that it affects the very
concept of sign that has developed, which makes
criticism difficult. It's easier if we stay within
the system, and its interior.
The difference between real and representational
presence produces a whole range of other
differences — signified and signifier,
presentation and re-presentation and so on.
However, the two are actually involved — presence
is derived from repetition and not the other way
about, presentation involves representation. There
is also the issue of the 'ideality'of the sign
[where it gets its consistency from being an
idea], which assumes perfect transparency and
univocity of language, but that does not exist in
the world [confident!] and is produced only by
acts of repetition – indefinite repetition
increases the generality of the sign. To call it
ideality is to necessarily involve 'a valuation'
(13), deriving from Plato. Such ideality is
connected to being as presence — it is the
ideality that is always present, and the notion of
temporality involved assumes that it is the same
that is being repeated [all this is quite
important for feminist materialists as well], as
some pure source, originary presence. That is what
is available to intuition, but this installs the
present as the universal form of all experience,
the only thing that is always there, being itself.
Ideality means we can transgress empirical
existence as well, our own especially — before and
after ourselves 'the present is'. All the
empirical content of the world can be kept away,
even when I die — [hence all the stuff about the
relationship to death, a dissimulation, Derrida
says, but one central to the whole understanding
of signification]. Even the possibility of death
does not change the centrality of the present — I
live in the present myself, but my mortality
cannot be doubted except by moving to the idea of
living involving being a thinking being, and thus
immortal. [Is the implication this desire for
immortality is what drags all this other stuff
about an ideal present?]. This also limits the
imagination, which Husserl relies on in other
parts of his work, but he still sees this as a
kind of representation, reproduction of a presence
even if a purely fictitious one, different from
memory only in the sense that it does not have the
immediate emotional baggage [which might be what
is meant by 'neutrality – modification']. This
keeps imagination and its ideality grounded,
connected to primordial reality.
Expressive phenomena must be imaginative
representations. Inner dialogue about these
representations, wanting to correct them, is
fictitious, however [but still effective?]. Where
we are communicating with the same words, implying
the same idealisations we can still talk about a
distinction between the ideal and the real, as
long as we see effectiveness as 'an empirical and
exterior cloak to expression, like a body to a
soul' (16). Inner speech can be effectively
representative or purely fictitious, although this
is not a stable distinction, because fiction also
applies to the sign in its origin — the
implication seems to be that there is no hard and
fast distinction between exterior and interior
language, despite Husserl's attempt to relegate
indication.
Husserl suggest that genuine communication need
not involve speech at all, but merely a
supposition [a role?] that one is a speaking
communicating subject. Again this gives the
representation of the self a secondary status, and
it also implies repetition in [nonsubjective]
language — the subject has to represent his own
speaking. Derrida concludes that despite all the
manoeuvrings 'speech represents itself; it is its
representation' (17). For Husserl, there can be no
real distinction between the subject as he is and
the subject as he represents himself — the subject
as he is is a fiction as we saw, and only
consciousness can be the 'self presence of the
living' the guarantee of experience. Experience is
therefore simple and free evolution, but as soon
as we think about speaking to ourselves, we are
developing an illusion, some 'secondary
consciousness'. Therefore the presence we are
given in language is necessarily secondary — for
Husserl, experience could ideally even 'reflect
its own presence in silence'.
[At this point, I realised I'll never get
through this if I stay at this level of detail,
so I'm going to cheerfully summarise/vulgarise
leaving out the exquisite details of the actual
arguments, which move from tentative detailed
examination of selected texts towards open
assertions or claims of the authority of
tradition, and feature claims that philosophical
positions have problems; the philosophers
acknowledge those themselves, however
indirectly, sometimes involving detours into
alternative translations; there are no pure
concepts since everything has been produced by
différance and there are always
traces or suppressed archiwriting. Apologies]
This reliance on the self as the source and origin
of knowledge of the empirical world is called
'auto- affection', and Derrida wants to extend it
by looking at the privilege granted to voice and
speech, especially its apparent spontaneity.
Speech presents the illusion of 'speaking to
oneself' somehow before language and
representation are engaged, where there is a
primary '"being present"' [its a bit like
Descartes on the immediacy and primacy of
consciousness?]. Signs are impure, foreign to self
presence, and will never fully express this in
speech [which is why indicative speech is
secondary, and even arbitrary]. Inner speech just
seems to appear without prior cause, representing
some immediate presence. [Apparently Husserl did
modify this when discussing scientific truths
which do require separate transcription to fix
utterances — although Husserl insists that writing
is really an expression of phonemes or original
sounds, and this kind of preserves the primacy of
voice]
We should develop this instead of using metaphors
based on the movements of apparently empirical
objects, especially when accounting for time. It
might not be possible in fact, says Derrida, to
operate with pure self presence, because there is
always a nonidentical present retained in the form
of a trace. We have to see that trace is still
linked to the sense of the living present,
however, and this is the basis for Husserl's
understanding of the origin of sense [Derrida says
this is Husserl's archewriting].
[Making] sense itself is a temporal dimension, a
movement, where traces enter lived experience.
Husserl prefers to see this as a form of spacing
or interval [cf Deleuze on subjectivity as an
interval]. We have connected interval and
difference. The interval doesn't seem to have
anything to do with time initially, but as
something outside it. How does this experience
square with the notion of 'the pure inwardness of
speech, or of the "hearing oneself speak", which
has been so important?
In this way, voice is crucial to grasp
objective being by conferring an ideality on it,
its 'being – for nonempirical consciousness'. The
voice is only heard, and has no other worldly
form. The voice can affect the subject himself,
appearing to be at our disposition. [The argument
can be extended to non-vocal signifiers as well,
which also possess a derivative 'inner spatial
reference' to experience, including appearing to
be outside us]. Voice and monologue remain
interior, even when we hear ourselves speak. One
implication is that there is a necessary relation
between phonics and expressions including those
that involve written signifiers.
The appearance of an autonomous immediate
transcendent voice is obviously linked to the
whole idea of consciousness, subjectivity and
sense of self, and that in turn affects
philosophical ideas of truth as opposed to
appearance. Signifiers are immediately present in
expression — names look like an immediate
phenomenological reduction, managing bodies and
exteriority. There is no gap between speaking and
hearing one's own voice, providing a sense of
'self presence', no need to consider meanings from
further developments of signifiers but remaining
with the ideal object. Non-verbal expressions are
easily managed as aspects of voice. Any
interruptions of this simultaneous speaking and
hearing also just seen as accidents, such as
deafness. Hearing oneself speak is the classic
originary auto affectation. It appears both
universal and singular. Nothing else matches its
apparent universality — even the other senses are
indirect and involve something external. Nothing
else is so much available to us to signify. An
active [world-constructing] consciousness depends
on it.
It can even lead to a particular grasp of
otherness. When we speak to someone, we assume
that the other can repeat our speech immediately
himself, repeating auto affection. Overall, this
gives us the illusion of complete power over
signifiers since there is nothing external to them
in origin. It gives us a form of intuition if the
signifier is adjacent to the signified. Distance
between them, however is drastically increased
with writing.
This seems to manage empirical differences by
reducing them to pure differences in the voice and
auto affection, but difference of course is still
at work even in our self presence. We can get to
the issues by thinking of the Derrida concept
différance. This is not internal. 'It produces the
subject'(24) and sameness and self relation. It
manages the nonidentical. The priority of the
voice can never be possible. Sense has a
temporality of its own, even in Husserl's work.
The 'absolute novelty of each now' must be
generated by something else, and remaining with
pure spontaneity will not lead to a grasp of
novelty, or an understanding of how it came to be
produced. Husserl has to argue that somehow nows
go into the past, only through auto affection, but
he cannot avoid 'ontic metaphor' (26), when using
terms like time and this must also be originary.
[Then there is an odd piece that says that Western
metaphysics always knew this, even though it tried
to cover it up — time actually revealed both the
movement of consciousness but also
'dissimulates'].
So any notion of living present must be impure,
containing traces of something other. It can
therefore not be originary. The trace is
originary. Sense always preserves archewriting. It
is not that some inner expression is then
subsequently contaminated by an outside
indication— their intertwining is also originary
we cannot disentangle this subsequent
contamination by some clever phenomenological
reduction because there is 'an absolute limit'
(28). Derrida uses the term 'supplement' to
describe the addition of indication and
expression, and that is of course originary for
him too. Apparently autonomous inner expressions
are deficient and must be supplemented: speech
'had already from the start fallen short of
itself'.
From Of Grammatology (bits of ch 6)
Kamuf says: This is a critique of logocentrism as
the basis of metaphysics [for the reasons given
just above]. Writing is seen as derivative, 'as
purely phonetic transcription' (31). Speech is
better to restore the thing itself via pure
intelligibility. Logocentrism has appeared in a
number of philosophical positions, especially
Heidegger and modern semiotics — that still
retains a distinction between signifier and
signified, despite them both being combined in the
sign, and this is ultimately rooted to 'a pure
intelligibility tied to an absolute logos' (32).
If we are to grasp writing differently, we might
reawaken a paradox in metaphysics, where God or
nature writes on the soul, and Derrida wants to
determine the literal meaning of this metaphorical
writing — '"metaphoricity itself"' as inherent in
writing. Writers think they can control meaning,
for example in a self-contained book, but this
always implies an attempt to control difference.
Apparently, the more extended critiques of
specific philosophers end with 'undecidability',
managed with supplementarity, as with most of his
deconstructive readings.
NB Cracking summary from Wikipedia
here:
.... in his book Of Grammatology.
Derrida aimed to show that writing is not simply
a reproduction of speech, but that the way in
which thoughts are recorded in writing strongly
affects the nature of knowledge. Deconstruction
from a grammatological perspective places the
history of philosophy in general, and
metaphysics in particular, in the context of
writing as such. In this perspective metaphysics
is understood as a category or classification
system relative to the invention of alphabetic
writing and its institutionalization in School.
Plato's Academy, and Aristotle's Lyceum, are as
much a part of the invention of literacy as is
the introduction of the vowel to create the
Classical Greek alphabet. Gregory Ulmer took
up this trajectory, from historical to
philosophical grammatology, to add applied
grammatology (Applied Grammatology:
Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys,
Johns Hopkins, 1985). Ulmer coined the term "electracy" to call
attention to the fact that digital technologies
and their elaboration in new media forms are
part of an apparatus that is to these inventions
what literacy is to alphabetic and print
technologies. Grammatology studies the invention
of an apparatus across the spectrum of its
manifestations—technology, institutional
practices, and identity behaviors
Western metaphysics takes the
signified as something parallel to signifiers,
while the sign unites them. This assumes that
signified and signifier are pure categories, not
related, say by trace. The essence of the
signified is given by presence, and it is
privileged by proximity to speech [=logocentrism
in a nutshell] . Concepts like' interpretation,
perspective, evaluation, difference' (35) and
other empiricist motifs are weak but are
reproduced in philosophy, with the possible
exception of Nietzsche who wanted to liberate the
signifier from the logos and from the notion of
something primary being signified, since reading
and writing texts were originary operations,
having nothing to transcribe or discover, no truth
to signify. Some people have interpreted this to
mean that there is some intuitive ontology
instead, but Derrida says this was an attempt to
get out of metaphysics, using some of its own
terms. Nietzsche really thinks that writing is not
subordinate to logos or truth, although it has
been made subordinate in this way. His critique
remains dogmatic, and, 'like all reversals, a
captive of that metaphysical edifice which it
professes to overthrow' [a key passage for Kirby
and Schrader].
Heidegger wants to reinstate the old hierarchy,
with logos and the truth as the primary thought
'implied by all categories or all determined
significations' (36), something universal not
affected by specific epochs — 'being nothing
before the logos and outside of it'. It was a
'logos of being' itself — '"Thought obeying the
Voice of Being"'. There is a transcendental
signified linking signifier and signified.
Again, this transcendental signified is
demonstrated in the voice which is heard and
understood, represented in conscience, pure auto
affection [as before], otherworldly and thus
idealised. Any other characteristics of the
signifier are effaced. This is how we experience
being, as an originary word, understood in all
language. This is the only way we can get to being
in general, which Heidegger finds addressed in the
whole history of metaphysics. He insists that
we're not just talking about a word nor even a
concept, although language must express it or at
least its possibility. It is something irreducibly
simple. It follows that any modern linguistics
attempting to analyse the components of signs
would not really be studying language for
Heidegger, while his notion of linguistics means
language must 'share the presuppositions of
metaphysics' (37). If modern linguistics
'deconstructs the unity of the word' or uses it
naïvely, it cannot be helpful in addressing the
question of being, if that stands for some
pre-constituted understanding of the unity of word
and being [!] [We have to assume that Heidegger's
unity is correct, of course]. The same goes for
any rejection of Heidegger's 'founding
concept–words of ontology' (38), which could be
extended to psychoanalysis [I think Derrida is
saying that we have to abandon an awful lot of
rival attempts to grasp being]: these sciences
have [succesfully] abandoned transcendental
phenomenology and fundamental ontology — which
makes Heidegger's philosophy nonscientific [I
think].
Heidegger's constant thinking about the question
of being undermines his own attempt to answer it
[I think because if he is suggesting something
primordial before all determinate being, he will
find it difficult to restore a sense of unity to
actual being and the word — primordial being seems
to be 'silent, mute, insonorous, wordless,
originarily aphonic', something quite different
from being revealed by the voice, something that
distinguishes some deeper '"call of being"' from
actual sounds. [I think he is saying that it is
difficult to rigorously separate actual and
transcendental being, except in a provisional way,
and so Heidegger is forced to confuse being and
presence]. With a transcendental concept,
everything becomes signified, and even the
difference between signifier and signified 'is
nothing'.
Heidegger's 'onto theology' will not cope with
this. On the one hand, being must be fixed 'in its
general syntactic and lexicological forms within
linguistics and Western philosophy' [so it might
not be primordial after all?]. It is privileged
however, by citing this tradition of Western
metaphysics. We should really be asking how that
history produced transcendental concepts in the
first place [I think it goes on to argue that
Heidegger is very ambivalent about this — but who
knows? It could be the familiar double whammy of
philosophical argument --asserting something as
self-evidently a prime fact and then appealing to
authority?].
We should not try to run all these terms together
[being and being as something transcendental?].
What is really underneath is différance, 'the
production of differing/deferring' (40); this has
a better claim to be originary, although it does
not constitute a simple origin, a term which
belongs to the old onto-theology designed to
manage difference. Instead we must see it as
determinate only to destroy the old onto theology
as a necessary 'trick of writing'. [He promises to
disentangle the relation between différance and
writing subsequently].
The problems raised by Nietzsche and Heidegger
does not reveal incoherence as such, more
'trembling'(41) which followed Hegel's
system. This makes a more general point that we
don't destroy structures from the outside when we
deconstruct, but rather we inhabit them, intending
to subvert them — although 'the enterprise of
deconstruction always in a certain way falls prey
to its own work' [infinite regress beckons if we
then deconstruct deconstruction etc].
The unity of the signifier and signified might be
described fruitfully as a hinge [and a note
acknowledges the help of a colleague suggesting
this word as a way to express 'difference and
articulation' (54)]. It can never be exhausted by
presence: there can be no 'full speech', even in
psychoanalysis. We have to examine the trace.
Words and concepts 'receive meaning only in
sequences of differences', and can be justified
only by referring to a topic and a strategy. There
is no absolute justification, but rather a
particular coalition of forces. Particular
discourses impose a choice upon one. The trace
refers to these influencing discourses, without
accepting them 'totally' (42). The concept can be
seen in the work of Levinas which argues that
there is no originary presence and therefore no
simple distinction between sameness and otherness
in any past state. This must undermine an ontology
claiming being is presence and language is full
speech and question words like 'proximity,
immediacy, presence… the proper' which is his
'final intention in this book'. The trace has
become irreducible, in philosophy and science.
The trace is an 'arche-phenomenon of "memory"',
existing before the opposition of nature and
culture, in the actual movement of significations
itself. It must imply an exterior element. The
possibility of the spoken word — arche- writing —
is a first opening to exteriority and otherness,
to space and objectivity, even in their familiar
senses. None of these would appear to us without
différance, revealing nonpresence in the sense of
the present, death [here meaning the limits to
subjective operations?] as a structure for life.
We would not be able to pursue metaphor. Rather
than seeing this is an ambiguity, which 'requires
the logic of presence' (43), the trace plays
and reveals all the problems of signification.
There is a whole history of metaphysics attempting
to reduce the trace, and this has led to dualisms
and binaries, and monisms, e.g. spiritualist or
materialist or dialectic. The trace has to be
subordinated to full presence, 'summed up in the
logos', speech has to be prioritised over writing.
In onto theology we get associated terms such as
eschatology, parousia, life without différance
'another name for death' only resisted by God's
name. The movement ends with a concept of infinite
being capable of reducing or differences in
presence [like nature?]. Ironically, then, God
becomes a name for indifference, unless we propose
some positive powers such as sublimation. This is
the basis of theology. Such theologies 'are always
logocentrisms, whether they are creationisms or
not'. For example Spinoza said that the logos was
the immediate mode of the divine, Hegel thought
this immediacy would reach completion in the
absolute concept, and Saussure uses it to
characterise the internal systemic nature of
language.
Writing was excluded in favour of images or
representations, splits between nature and culture
or technics, and above all 'a naturalist,
objectivist, and derivative determination of the
difference between outside and inside' (44). The
same can be said of the vulgar concept of time in
Heidegger's terms — 'thought in terms of spatial
movement or of the now, and dominating all
philosophy'. This conception is intrinsic, at the
heart of the unity of metaphysics and technics in
the West. It is also associated with linear
conceptions of writing and speech [ultimately
traced to the priority given to speech]. We see
this with Saussure on the linearity of the
signifier [a quote talks about unidirectional
chains of signifiers]. Jakobson apparently wanted
to replace this line with the musical staff so we
could also recognise chords.
Apparently Saussure saw linearity of the word as
guiding the very notion of truth and reflection,
and this is preserved in modern concepts of the
sign. The argument first appeared to make coherent
scholarly theology. It is no accident that it
persists. Originally, the sign always referred to
a thing which had been thought and spoken in the
divine logos, and a specific sign linked that to
human speech. Modern linguistics sees the
signifier as a trace, and so does without full
intuitive divine consciousness — but the signified
is still not seen as a trace, but is seen as
self-sufficient, almost having no need of
signifiers. Nevertheless, it is impossible to
grasp its separateness from signifiers without
lapsing into onto theology. We can only do this by
thinking about writing which will undermine
onto-theology, by arguing that the trace affects
the sign in both its aspects, including the
signified. The implication is that signifieds and
signifiers are always related, 'always already',
but this has serious consequences for metaphysics
and logocentrism.
This is awful The bloody thing has lost my work.
Okay, never trust it again
How can we actually do grammatolgy? If we abandon
logocentrism, we have to abandon linguistic
sciences too, and develop grammatological
knowledge to be developed by these other
'exorbitant' [excessive? additional?] disciplines.
We need to investigate where writing begins, where
the trace becomes writing in the normal sense, and
how we can develop discourse.
However, there can be no simple origin unless we
embrace the metaphysics of presence. Instead
questions like where and when should be seen as
'empirical questions' (47), where and when writing
first appeared, and we must pursue this by 'the
investigation and research of facts' that
is, history in the usual sense. We must not
confuse the question of origin with the question
of essence. It is true that we must know what
writing is and how we can identify it, but only as
a guide in principle: once we get started
'empirical investigation quickly activates
reflection upon essence' [I think this is
where Barad gets it wrong confusing physics with
Western metaphysics, rebuking physics for not
being philosophical and all the rest of it.
Unlike philosophy, this empirical reflection
adds a kind of external corrigibility]. We
must study examples rather than assume some
straight line as suggested by transcendental
philosophy, or at the very least, operate with
this notion of origins 'under erasure' when we
think of the trace as originary. Actually the
trace is nothing in essence, and it cannot be
grasped by basic philosophical procedures like the
opposition of fact and principle.
One history of writing looks at it's development
in terms of a relationship between face and hand,
and how the hand was slowly transformed in such a
way as to allow the development of audio phonic
speech and manual writing. We need to avoid any
mechanism here, but this is generally impossible
anyway. Instead of looking for which one comes
first, we have to work with 'the unity of gesture
and speech… Body and language' (48) and not in
ways which confirm existing systems — we have to
exceed them [be 'exorbitant' again].
[Then a a strange bit about our future
development into something 'toothless', with
vestigial limbs pressing buttons — the first
showing of someone who turns up quite a lot later
a certain A Leroi-Gourhan or ALG]
The problem arises because the development of the
symbol is seen as linear, just as in the
traditional concept of time which it embraces.
However, there is a non-linear past for writing,
although this has to be constantly managed in the
interests of technical success and the growth of
'capitalisation' (49) [that is the development of
capital?]. But first, we had multiple dimensions
in a unified '"mythogram"' [says ALG]. These were
reduced by imposing linear thought in a series of
struggles. Conventional [European,not British]
history is so bound up with straight lines or
circles, that it is hard to grasp this. Even the
notion of simultaneity 'coordinates two absolute
presents' and remains linear.
The growth of linear models is a better way to
classify scripts, such as the transition between
pictogram and ideogram. In the original unity, all
these elements were present, and it was perfectly
possible to write about arts, religion, technics
and the economy. However, linear models could
never be imposed absolutely, and were constantly
threatened by 'discreteness, différance, spacing'.
Attempting linearity only emphasises these
problems. Linear models were imposed on a 'vast
historical scale', but were only ever a particular
model. They are so accepted that it is difficult
to access their characteristics. Linear language
entails and is entailed by the basic 'determining
concept of all ontology', the 'vulgar and mundane
concept' of homogeneous temporality, dominated by
the now, and by the ideal of continuous movement.
[This is really the concept at work in
positivism, not the peculiar notion of a series
of identical presents found in Derrida's
critique of Husserl's idealism, and wrongly
generalised by feminist materialists].
We could not see the effects of this model even
when considering the history of philosophy, at
least not until the repression of multi
dimensional symbolic thought was relaxed. It is
far too likely to 'sterilise [justify? tidy
up?] the technical and scientific economy
that it has long favoured', and which give it its
very possibility. We can see this in the
development of linguistic processes in the
formation of ideology — 'thesaurisation,
capitalisation, sedentarisation hierarchisation' —
introduced 'by the class that writes or rather
commands the scribes [still ALG, but also noted by
people like Rousseau and Engels says Derrida in a
note]. If we reject linear models, we must abandon
the book form, at least if we can. Instead, we
should reread books looking 'between the lines'.
The clash between new and old ways of writing and
reading is now common in science, philosophy, and
literature, all of which are moving to destroy the
linear model, the 'epic model' (51). To use the
old linear forms today is just like 'teaching
modern mathematics with an abacus' (51). Problems
have been realised before, but they are exposed
better today. Again we are not advocating going
back to some simpler multi dimensional model in
the mythogram. Instead, we can now see that the
linear model and its associated rationality is
just 'another form and another age of
mythography'. We are heading towards
'meta-scientificity' through this meditation upon
writing, something which leaves behind the old
disciplines.
This is 'decentring', not the same as operations
within conventional philosophy or science but more
one of 'dislocating' existing categories of
language and writing, by thinking of another
system. We are challenging even the 'grammar of
the episteme', unlike conventional theory which
tends to repair gaps in it. The breakthrough
probably came best in literature and poetry, or in
the work of Nietszche. We can see other poets as
drawing inspiration from non-Western traditions.
The separation of the different sciences from
those of language has only happened via
abstraction. We can still use it, but only 'with
vigilance' (52). The original complicity 'may be
called arche-writing'. It reminds us there is no
simple origin, and in particular that speech did
not proceed writing.
Writing keeps the notion of the trace alive and
thus, 'knowing the general structure of the
universe' [!]. It reminds us of the [always –
already?] connections between writing and power,
whether through clergies or political agents. We
can see that the history of the written sign
always includes 'strategy, ballistics, diplomacy,
agriculture, fiscality, and penal law'. This
arises in the most diverse cultures, and appears
in complex political and family regulations. For
example scribes had already 'laid down the terms
of many wars' and constructed other regulations —
so writing was never just a means of
communication, but linked to power in the very
process of idealising meaning and developing
symbolic power. 'Economy, monetary or
pre-monetary, and graphic calculation were
co-originary', but no currently developed abstract
science can grasp this.
To combat this incompetence and closure, we do not
need to return to something prescientific or
pre-philosophical, some suggested common root
which is yet another concealment of origin.
Instead we have to examine 'this unnameable
movement of difference–itself' (53), and use terms
that have been 'strategically nicknamed trace,
reserve, or différance'. Even if we cannot specify
them fully, we can still see something beyond the
episteme. Thought itself would become 'a perfectly
neutral name… the necessarily indeterminate index…
of différance', in a whole new epoch. It would not
carry its current contents — 'this thought has no
weight' but gets its power from a system. We have
not yet even begun to develop this kind of
thinking, and even grammatology is still confined
within the metaphysics of presence. {so endless
deferral of anything positive]
From Différance in Margins
of Philosophy
Kamuf's intro says the development of the
neologism arises from the context of modern
French, which has not developed two separate verbs
for differ and defer, unlike English, and there is
no 'sense of deferral or deferment' (59). The
-ance ending operates in the middle between 'the
active and passive voices' thereby implying an '
operation that is not that of the subject or an
object'. Derrida thinks he's avoided a major error
in philosophy as a result, and that by using the
usual word différance, this distinction has been
repressed, at least in speech — in writing, we can
spell it differently. So différance 'is, therefore
another name for writing' (60). The lecture
actually makes this point playfully. The piece
then goes on to explain how temporalisation and
spacing are 'conjoined' and how other philosophers
have nearly grasped this and therefore
criticisedyo some extent the ontology of presence.
Signs are put in place of things, meanings or
referents, absences, so signs offer 'deferred
presence' (61), preventing immediate consumption.
So temporalisation is implied, especially a moving
towards a presence. So attaching a sign involves
something that is secondary, but also provisional,
necessarily mediating something absent. It's
tempting to see this as originary différance, but
we have problems with originary and should think
instead of the way in which a conventional origin
is implied in the present [as in 'appearing' or '
reappearing', representing some telos.
Instead of an origin, différance is in the actual
concept of the sign, something which must
constantly question its authority. Apart from
anything else, this will question any philosophy
of Being as a matter of presence or absence.
[Derrida speculates about the relation with
Heidegger who still possesses traditional
metaphysical notions of the present].
There is temporalisation in semiology and also
spacing, especially in Saussure. He begins with
the arbitrary character of the sign, but adds a
differential characteristic — signs are arbitrary
and are constituted only by the differences in
terms, and network of oppositions that
distinguishes and relates them. This affects both
faces of the sign, both the ideal meaning
(signified) and the image or '" psychical imprint"
(signifier) ', to use Saussure's terms. For him,
difference 'generally implies positive terms' (63)
except in language — there are only 'conceptual
and phonic differences', and the actual substance
of both faces is less important.
In this way, a signified concept can never be
present in and of itself, and must always refer to
something else, some other link in a chain or
system. This type of deferral implied in
différance is now 'the possibility of
conceptuality' itself. Derrida insists that
différance is not a concept yet, but not just an
innocent word either, not like the usual word ,
including 'difference', which implies some
'present and self-referential unity' between
concept and (phonic) utterance. [The implication
is that Saussure has never been able to quite
conceptualise the way différance works, and tends
to elide it with the normal word]
Taxonomies can classify the linguistic system, but
differences still play. They are still effects,
not 'fallen from the sky fully formed' (64), but
historical [not in that typical sense as above].
Différance is that play that produces effects, but
again we should not see this is a simple origin,
and, because the contamination of that word, not
really as an origin at all. Nor do the differences
in language systems have a cause 'in a subject or
a substance'. For Derrida, we need something like
the trace, not an effect or a cause, unable
to operate itself to produce a transgression [I
think the argument here really is about an account
of change in closed systems]. Saussure thought
that language was necessary for intelligibility,
but that speech came first. Instead, we will
define différance as a process which constitutes
language 'as a weave of differences' remembering
that even still remains in metaphysics. Derrida
says he uses concepts like produce or constitute
'only for their strategic convenience and in order
to undertake their deconstruction [at the right
moment]'. Différance is not a static state, nor
genetic, neither structural or historical – none
of these classic distinctions are relevant.
Instead, différance operates with 'a certain
number of non-synonymous substitutions', and this
is connected with terms such as reserve,
archi-writing, spacing, hymen or supplement
— [even pharmakon, which, as note 5 explains is
'Plato's word for writing… Meaning both remedy and
poison' (77). While we are here, the supplement
refers to 'Rousseau's word to describe writing… It
means both the missing piece and the extra piece',
and there is the concept hymen which Derrida found
in Mallarmé's reflections on writing, 'referring
both to virginity and to consummation ']
Only différance makes the movement of
signification possible, because each element has
to be 'related to something other than itself',
retaining a mark of the past and already
suggesting a relation to a future element. The
trace is related to the future as well as the
past, and both constitute the present [what we
mean by the present] there must be an interval
separating the present from other times, but this
interval also means the present is divided
[reminds me a bit of Bergson saying that
anticipating the future and remembering the past
are both inseparable from the present, and that is
what led him to doubt the usual notions of
consciousness as well], and so is everything that
somewhat on the basis of it, in metaphysics, in
being and in 'singularly substance [as opposed to
singularities?] or the subject'. What is involved
is a process spacing 'the becoming space of time'
and temporisation 'the becoming time of space'
(66). This constitution of the present is
originary, and non-simple [so not really originary
in the strict sense, he says]. It demonstrates a
synthesis of marks, 'traces of retentions and
protentions' that will be called 'archi-writing or
différance', which involves simultaneous spacing
and temporisation.Actual differences are produced
and deferred by différance.
It might be tempting to ask who or what actually
differs, but again we have to be careful not to
fall back into conventional metaphysics, and think
that différance itself has been derived from a
state of being, or some subject, acting in the
familiar way of operating with conventional
consciousness, of presence. Saussure himself has
argued that language requires no speaking subject,
but operates with its own functions, and that
people become subjects only by making this speech
conform to a system of rules or principles. We
might develop this to argue that différance arises
from the play of differences in language and also
the way in which speech relates to language, how
this scheme art and codes work, although
elsewhere, he thinks even this is not enough of a
break with conventional notions of speech and
language. We have to see the practice of language
and the way it plays as not having 'a determined
and invariable substance' (67, but rather a
development of differences, spacing and
temporisation, a play of traces, archi-writing, or
perhaps something even before archi–writing,
something that heads towards grammatology even
before general semiology. Grammatology would offer
a central critique of semiology, including its
concept of the sign and all the metaphysical
presuppositions that are 'incompatible with the
motif of différance' (68).
It is true that subjects can only become speaking
subjects once they relate to linguistic systems,
and that speaking subject would not be present
otherwise — but is there an even earlier presence
of the subjects, 'before speech or signs'? This
would involve 'something like consciousness', but
this is a problematic concept. Usually this just
means 'the perception of self in presence'.
But whether we are talking about consciousness or
for that matter 'so-called subjective existence in
general', it has the same problems as the category
of the subject – it privileges presence, even when
heavily modified by people like Husserl. Only the
'"living present"' can synthesise and reassemble
traces. This is the very 'ether of metaphysics',
although Heidegger offers only the possibility of
'ontotheological determination of Being' by means
of a special approach.
Heidegger saw consciousness as an effect of Being,
produced by a system of différance not presence,
not a matter of opposing activity and passivity,
or cause and effect [a stranger side seems to
admit that this is a strategic effort, but one
that can be 'more or less lucidly deliberated and
systematically calculated' (69). Nietzsche and
Freud also question consciousness and its apparent
self certainty, and both 'did so on the basis of
the motif of différance'. They almost name it in
their texts.
Nietszche stressed the main role of the
unconscious in activity, and saw consciousness as
an effect of forces which are not internal to it [
I read this as a weak sociology of knowledge] .
These forces work by preserving differences in
quantity, rather than through any specific
content, and there always were differences, never
an equality of forces. This led Nietszche to
rebuke philosophy as being indifferent to this
difference, a repression of it, even while
developing it 'thereby blinding itself to the
same' (70). We need to see that the same here is
not the identical, but as [an effect of?]
différance, 'the displaced and equivocal passage
of one different thing to another, from one term
of an opposition to the other'. This provides us
with a new way to think of the links between the
pairs of opposites found in conventional
philosophy, especially how 'each of the terms must
appear as the difference of the other, as the
other different and deferred in the economy of the
same'. As examples, we can see 'culture as nature
different and deferred', the body as differing and
deferring in producing 'all the others'. In
Nietszche's terms, 'the sameness of différance and
repetition' appears in the notion of the Eternal
Return. Agencies are always disguised in their
différance, active interpretation to unveil the
truth becomes 'the presentation of the thing
itself', truth becomes less significant as an
independent principal, and more as 'an included,
inscribed, circumscribed function'. Différance
becomes 'the discord of different forces' beneath
apparent metaphysical systems and their grammar
This is also a motive of Freud's thought, covering
the figure '(or...' the trace)' and its
energetics, again compared to the apparent
authority of the conscious. There is differing as
'discernibility, distinction, separation, diastema
[wiki gives that as the space between teeth of
different functions -- cutting, grinding etc.
Presumably the distance separating the
functions of ego, id and superego?] , spacing' and
deferment as 'detour, relay, reserve,
temporisation'(71). We also find the concept of
trace breaching explained in terms of difference,
where description of memory and the psyche works
by tracing these breaches. 'Freud says so overtly.
There is no breach without difference and no
difference without trace'. The whole production of
the unconscious and the management of its
differences through inscription can also be seen
as 'moments of différance, in the sense of putting
into reserve'. Life makes an effort to protect
itself by deferring dangerous investment,
constituting a reserve. All of Freud's oppositions
relate through 'the economy of différance',
deferring, differing as relations to the other.
Any other kind of relation is openly discussed as
'a "theoretical fiction"' — for example the
difference between pleasure principle and reality
principle is really 'only différance as detour':
Freud explains [in a quote] that the pleasure
principle is replaced by the reality principle
which in effect involves the postponement of
satisfaction not its abandonment, with moments of
unpleasure as steps on an indirect road to
pleasure.
This is the central enigma of différance. It is,
'simultaneously'(72) an economic detour
aiming to always come back to pleasure in this
case or some other state of deferred presence in
consciousness, and some 'relation to an impossible
presence', acknowledging a loss of presence, and
'irreversible usage of energy' in the death
instinct. How can both be thought together? We
have to change our notion of evidence, even in
'the philosophical element of evidentiality'.
Apparently, he has address this in his commentary
on Bataille — how a restricted economy, operating
with reserves relates to a more general notion of
economy that does not actually operate with these
actualities but which 'keeps in reserve the
non-reserve'. This is a link between a 'différance
that can make a profit on its investment and a
différance that misses its profit' [perhaps to
explain the irrational excesses that characterise
human activity for Bataille?].
[Somehow this leads us to rethink 'the very
project of {Hegelian} philosophy, especially of aufhebung
and how this is 'constrained into writing itself
{as something} otherwise'. More or less
incomprehensible, and referred to an earlier
reading of Hegel, where Derrida sees Hegel as a
speculator, which the translator says explains all
the stuff about economy. The idea is that
conventional metaphysics offers a kind of
restricted speculative philosophical economy 'in
which there is nothing that cannot be made to make
sense, in which there is nothing other than
meaning', and we need to move instead to a general
economy where there is 'an excess of meaning where
there can be no speculative profit' (78). Aufhebung
apparently literally means lifting up, but implies
conservation and negation, and in Hegel, this
lifts concepts up to a higher sphere as a way of
conserving them, so everything can be put to
philosophical profit. For Derrida, however there
is 'always an effect of différance', because the
same word can have different meanings, sometimes
even contradictory ones, and this excess can never
be conserved or negated. Derrida apparently uses
this to address the ways in which Hegel actually
produces writing to cover these possibilities, but
says H fails to address the importance of writing
in producing double meanings in the first place.
Generally, translating words with double meanings
shows 'the entire problematics of writing and
différance, and aufhebung is generally
left untranslated, but sometimes annotated.
Derrida wants the term to 'write itself otherwise'
(79) and thus offers a new translation —la
relève, meaning lifting up, but also
relaying or relieving as when soldiers relieve
each other on watch. This fully accounts for the
'effect of substitution and difference' in Hegel's
term]
[More mystifying stuff]. Deferred presence cannot
always be found again. It will not always add
value to the original term [maybe]. It 'maintains
our relationship with that which we necessarily
misconstrue' (73). [Which seems to mean]
particular kinds of alterity, like the Freudian
unconscious, can never be called upon to show
themselves in the present, but remain as a
'hidden, virtual or potential self presence'. So
manifestations, 'delegates, representatives,
proxies' might never become present or conscious.
The Freudian unconscious is radically other.
It always produces delayed after-effects We can
never examine its effects in terms of the old
metaphysics of presence and absence or by
phenomenology [which focuses on consciousness].
This notion of delay also means that there is no
'dialectical complication of the living present',
something originary which constantly generates
synthesis. Any synthesis still accumulates
'retentional traces and protentional openings'. In
this sense, the unconscious represents a past that
can never be fully made present ['a past that has
never been present and which will never be']. The
future is not just reproduction of forms given to
presence. Trace is not the same as something
retained, something which is now past but which is
once present. In general, thinking in terms of the
present will never grasp différance.
Apparently this links with Levinas on the absolute
Other, so he can be seen to use difference in his
general critique of classical ontology. So the
concept of trace and differerance appears in all
these philosophers, 'the "names of authors" here
being only indices' of trends which have
characterised the whole current era.
The whole thing can be seen as contributing to the
ontology of being. Différance makes the concept
'tremble in entirety', interrogating the idea of
Being as presence, and suggesting an irreducible
difference between Being and beings [which seems
to contradict Deleuze on actuality]. This means
that différance is not in present being, and has
no authority or control over it. It subverts all
the current classifications of being, which is
what makes it threatening. It is tempting to try
to manage it and see it as a rival
system. [It is difficult to decide if it is
compatible with Heidegger or not, but he is
intending to have a go].
In some ways, différance can be seeing as the
unfolding of Being, stressing process and
movement, but this risks staying within the
metaphysics of Being. There is something else, an
'unheard-of thought', silent tracing (75)
[apparently this is of some significance in terms
of whether we accept Heidegger's division of
different epochs]. Being only dissimulates itself
in beings, implying that différance is actually
older than the ontology of Being — its play
'transports and encloses the meaning of Being',
while having no meaning in itself. There is a
'bottomless chessboard on which Being is put into
play'.
It is difficult to conceive of différance except
as a metaphysical name, as a matter of absence and
presence, or as the relation between Being and
beings [as actualisation]. Something older than
Being is unnameable 'because there is no name for
it at all', not essence, not Being, not even
empirical processes of différance, 'a chain of
differing and deferring substitution' (76). It is
not unnameable in the sense that God might be. It
is the play that produces nominal effects, names,
the substitution of names, but must be itself a
nominal effect, a 'function of the system', like '
a false entry or a false exit' in a game.
There is nothing else implied, not a prophecy of a
new name [there is only endless deconstruction and
deferral]. We should welcome this, affirm it as
Nietszche does.
On the other side of nostalgia is 'Heideggerian
hope', that drove the quest for the unique name,
the first word of Being. The hope and 'daring' is
found in every attempt to name Being, but
Heidegger also thinks that '"Being speaks always
and everywhere throughout language"'. Derrida
finds that a 'simulated affirmation of
différance'.
"Signature Event Context" in Margins of
Philosophy
[This is fairly straightforward, unless I'm
getting used to it. It is about Austin, and
apparently it sparked a whole feud between Derrida
and John Searle about Austin in general and 'the
performative' in particular].
Kamuf: the key thing is the iterability or
citationality of the sign and how this is going to
raise questions about context and intentionality
in communication, especially in Austin's work. As
usual, Austin is going to be accused of
logocentrism, especially in the way in which he
defines serious and nonserious language. The
iterability or repeatability of signs occupies a
major place in his work, and we saw it emerging in
the critique of Husserl. Derrida's attack on
Austin has been seen as a much more general
rejection of performativity, but this can turn
into 'gross caricatures of deconstructive thought'
(81), which suggests that Derrida completely
rejected the idea of intentionality [even I know
that he never completely rejects anything].
Communication seems to be a simple matter, and
usually implies 'a determined content, and
identifiable meaning, a describable value' (82),
but that is already confining the term. It is a
'polysemic word', and if we treat it just within
the field of conventional semantics, we miss that
there are other aspects to it, including
'non-semantic movements', and these are apparent
even in ordinary language. Clearly, conventional
linguistics is also questioned by this. Nor can we
say that there are primary or primitive functions
of communication. In general, it is hard to say
what counts as meaning as such; it is impossible
to avoid metaphor when we move to
semio-linguistics, and how it manages polysemy.
It might be possible to reduce the complexity by
referring to the notion of context — we know that
the sort of language deployed in scholarly
colloquia will represent all kinds of conventions
which attract wide agreement, and of course any
natural language has these too. In that case, the
possibility of [academic] discourse privileges
particular kinds of communication. However,
context is not easy to define in a 'rigorous and
scientific concept' (84) [so we can see with this
is going]: in particular it is not possible to
show how it totally 'saturates' communication —
[naturally, this is a 'structural
non-saturation']. Among the implications that
follow are some for writing and how it relates to
theories of communication — where it is
classically seen as something secondary.
Writing is indeed a means of communication,
however which extends beyond oral and gestural
forms. This notion of extension itself presupposes
'a kind of homogeneous space of communication'
(85) It might still be but an extension of a space
established by speech. However, there are clearly
different means of communication as well different
'more powerful mediations'; seeing it as an
extension of speech offers more confined
possibilities for communication and implies '
[that] all affection [would be] is accidental'.
Nevertheless this is the notion that appears in
most of philosophy, to such an extent that it
might be 'the properly philosophical
interpretation of writing'.
Derrida at this point discusses Condillac as
typical, explicitly treating all 'orders' (86)
[all literal or imperative forms, themselves
assumed to be basic?] as simple in origin,
continuous and homogeneous. Writing appears as a
kind of analogy to some more fundamental category
of communication. Ideas or thoughts are expressed
in communication, initially in oral forms and
then, by secondary invention, written forms.
Condillac particularly emphasises writing as a
mode of communication with absent persons, and
Derrida says this already seems quite a serious
modification to homogeneous. In this way,
articulated language is a 'secondary stage, a...
"supplement"' of some primitive gestural or
pictorial language, and there is a whole
evolutionary line leading to writing.
Writing in particular is driven by 'the law of
mechanical economy: to gain the most space and
time by means of the most convenient
abbreviation', and has no effects of its own on
meaning or ideas. The notion of writing as
representation persists although the forms
vary.
Let's focus on the idea of absence in particular.
It is only the absence of an addressee, although
the addressor is also commonly absent from the
marks in writing. It is an absence that can be
defined best by thinking of presence as a
continuous modification, as the key term.
Representation is also a supplement of presence,
not a break with it, but a 'reparation' (88).
There is also a connection with the idea of
tracing. For C, tracing means to make something
present to represent it, to link to memory and
imagination: signs do this through analogy, and
present needs structure it. When we retrace, we
analyse and decompose to get back to simple
sensations and present perceptions, 'original
presence' (89).
We can easily see that this analysis is
'"ideological"', but not in Althusser's sense as
something opposed to science. Instead it relates
to the whole background and philosophical
tradition which is idealist, and which appeared
with the French ideologues, who themselves saw the
sign as a representation of the idea, which
represents the perceived thing. Communication is
but a vehicle to convey this representation of
ideal content, including writing. If we return to
absence, however, we can see that every sign
supposes a particular kind of absence, but the
absence found originally in writing, is special ,
as central to the specific meaning of the sign
[seems to be contradicted by the wish to
generalise it to all marks, below, but not so --
all communication involving marks is really
writing], It does not extend to every other kind
of sign or communication [for C] or at least
not without contradicting concepts as representing
meaning and idea — they would be 'non-critical,
ill informed' (90).
Written signs compensate for the absence of the
addressee, but some absences like this are only
'distant, delayed or… idealised'. Any absolute
notion of absence would bring in different kinds
of distance and delay — différance — and this
makes writing ontologically distinct. Written
communications must remain legible despite
absolute absence of any addressee, even after the
death of the writer. It is iterable [Derrida
explains that the word comes from the Sanskrit for
'other', so iterability is logically linked to
alterity. Some original presence in that
argument?] . There are objections to this common
view, however which involves writing as an
expression of a code, known only to two persons —
Derrida thinks this does not weaken his case
because even such a code would imply writing is
legible even when the other is not present, marks
that could be repeated, potentially decipherable.
Writing 'is a break in presence, "death," or the
possibility of the "death" of the addressee' (91),
shown by the characteristic of the mark [ a
particular concrete sign]. This is assumed in any
transcendental analysis. More important, it has
implications for the notion of context as 'a
protocol of a code'.
The marks used in writing are 'a kind of machine'
to produce something, to function, even after the
writers disappeared, or is non-present. This
[looks like] the result of 'my
intention–to–signify', but writers themselves
might not actually support what is produced
subsequently. Writers have the same relation to
writing as readers do. Writing displays 'essential
drifting' (92) because it is iterable but
separated from consciousness and its authority
[which apparently is one reason why Plato didn't
trust writing]. It does something else than
transmit consciousness or meaning, which is why
semantic analysis alone, or hermeneutic, is
inadequate to grasp this polysemy. Nor can we see
written language as somehow empirically saturated
by any '"real" or "linguistic" context'. Derrida
thinks that this will escalate into a whole
critique of the usual notions of experience,
presence.
The marks in writing remain and are not exhausted.
They are iterable without requiring an empirical
subject or context. Breaking with persons and
contexts is 'the very structure of the written'
(93). Take real contexts, the environment and the
writers experience and intentions — the problem
here is that we don't know what authors actually
mean at the moment that they do their writing
because of this 'essential drifting' [even while
they are in the context] . Nor are there semiotic
or linguistic contexts because pieces of writing
can always be detached 'from the interlocking
chain in which it is caught… Without making it
lose every possibility of functioning'. Sometimes
we might even want to graft deliberately to add
meanings to other chains.
It is the spacing inherent in writing which
separates it from context and from present
referents. This is a positive spacing, not a limit
[immediate face to face communication is still
seen as privileged, as we distance educators
know]. Nor is is it just a negative in some
dialectical aufhebung. These points extend not
just writing in the narrow sense, but are found
'in all language' and experience: we find the same
'grid of erasure and of difference, of unities of
iterability, of unity separated from their
internal and external context, and separable from
themselves' (93 – 4).
A code guides function, but Derrida is not happy
with this concept. There does need to be 'a
certain self-identity' (94) other mark for it to
be recognised and repeated, despite various other
empirical variations, such as tone, voice or
accent. In this way, a phonic actually becomes a
grapheme — for it to work, it also needs to be
repeatable, iterable, detached both from referent
and from intention. This applies even to oral
marks. They have something 'remaining', left over
from their circumstances of production. Given that
experience also requires presents to be mediated
through 'chains of differential marks', it must
show the same characteristics.
It is perhaps easiest to see how the referent can
be absent, and not just as an empirical
possibility. Signs can communicate without
referents, as we see with Husserl. Statements can
have objects which are impossible, or which do not
rely on empirical validation [as in empty
signifiers]. Signs can even lack a signified,
detectable where there is a 'crisis of meaning' —
Husserl had in mind the tendency of mathematical
symbols to relate just to themselves in a 'vacuity
of mathematical meaning', which is still
technically very useful [which implies the
importance of writing even for Husserl. This also
describes Bohr's approach to quantum theory?].
There are also there are statements which are
meaningful but have no objective signification
['"the circle is square"' (95)]: they are
meaningful enough to be judged true or false.
There are also agrammatical possibilities: Husserl
talked about phrases like '"green is or"' (96),
and tended to dismiss them as so illogical that
they could not even attract judgements about their
truth — but if we remove Husserl's teleology and
metaphysics, we can disagree with this to come to
an even more rigorous notion of how signs detach
themselves from signifying, removing themselves
'from all phenomena of communication'.
Husserl thought that universal grammar would be
based on logic, how significations based on
knowledge are related to objects, driven by 'a
will to know'. Even his examples, however can
still function as signifying marks — if we
translate 'green is or' to French, for example
then 'le vert est ou' might be interpreted as
something grammatical after all, since the same
sounding 'où' can lead to this question referring
to where the green has gone, as in where has the
green (of the grass) gone. This shows the
possibility 'of extraction and of citational
grafting'(97), found in every mark, spoken or
written [making his point that writing is
fundamental to any form of signification]. Every
sign can be cited, 'put between quotation marks'
and therefore break with its context and relate to
new ones. The mark might not always be valid
outside of its context, but this does not mean
that contexts are absolute in anchoring its
meaning. All marks lose their origin and show
'citation, duplication, or duplicity', and this is
fully part of 'so-called normal functioning', as
every day writing shows [a bit of logocentric
generalisation here?].
Let us get onto Austin and the performative, which
begins with his emphasis on perlocution
[apparently aimed at initiating an action,
persuasion] and illocution [a statement which is
also an action — ordering or promising] [I must
say not what I thought at all]. This means Austin
sees discourse as primarily a matter of
communication, subdivided into constative
utterances [assertions, which might be true or
false] with performative utterance ['which allows
us to do something by means of speech itself']
(97) No other utterance is destined to
communicate, for Austin. The implication is that
every communication is a 'speech act' produced by
the social context [actually 'total situation'] in
which speakers are located. More generally,
communication of this kind seems to be based on a
theory of action and how effects are produced by
language. The performative 'produces or transforms
a situation'. Constative utterances also can do
this, but this is not their 'manifest function'.
There is no classic referent with performatives,
and no connection with judgements of truth,
although there may be a need to refer to
difference of forces [a possible link with
Nietszche says Derrida]. In any event, we have
moved beyond purely semiotic or linguistic
understandings towards communication rather than
simple transmission of meaning.
However, the graphematic system affecting
locutions needs more emphasis [the source of
effective oppositions, say between pertinence and
purity]. This is because of the emphasis on
context, and the need to relate to it effectively
to avoid '"infelicities"'. Consciousness is
clearly apart of this, especially the intention of
the subject. In effect, the intentional meaning is
the referent rather than anything external. Other
conscious persons have to participate. There may
be no remainder in Austin's 'totalisation' (99),
especially no irreducible polysemy, no unintended
'dissemination' [an implication of spreading or
inducing new meanings?] . Instead there is a
preference for appropriate communication and
consensus or reciprocity.
'"Conventionality", "correctness", and
"completeness"' are required (100). A graspable
context and free consciousness are implied in this
production of 'an absolutely full meaning that is
master of itself', with intentions central.
Failures are possible, but are deemed accidental
or exterior to the operation of language
['dysfunctional'] [Derrida calls this
{functionalism} 'historically sedimented' (101).
Thus conventionality might fail, even in ritual or
ceremonial, but that implies that convention only
affects the actual production of the statement,
not deeper conventions like those regulating the
arbitrary sign, which are not like social rituals,
but better understood as iterability. If so,
failure is always possible, maybe even ' a
necessary possibility', which questions the
functionalist notion that privileges success.
Instead, there is 'the endless alternation of
essence and accident' in any general theory of
language, although Austin declines to explore this
possibility. It might be that he just wished to
clarify the performative, but there is a more
general issue — whether every performative
utterance,even, 'may be "cited"' (102). [As in
drift or grafting above] Austin sees this to as
abnormal or 'parasitical' compared with '"ordinary
language"'. Thus there might be a particular form
of citation in an actors speech, or in other
special circumstances, but these can be excluded
and we need to focus on '"ordinary circumstances"'
[even I can spot the lurking logocentrism in that
--another absurd and naive sociology as well]:
there is no need for general theory to include
special circumstances as well. Derrida says this
parasitical notion is the classic way in which
'writing is always been treated by the
philosophical tradition'.
So do these possible failures surround language at
all times, and is there a defence mechanism for
conventional locution? For Derrida, risk is the
'internal and positive condition of possibility'
(103) of locution, the very reason for its
emergence. Austin's ordinary language is a
restriction based on teleology and and 'ethical
determination', his personal ideal of 'the
univocality of the statement'. It implies the
usual self presence, transparent intentions, the
immediate presence of meaning.
If we examine citation, we can see that it is a
form of iterability essential to successful
performatives (unless we are to see such speech as
an impure form) [Apparently, Austin acknowledges
that successful performatives are impure and that
there are no pure performatives]. For a positive
performative, there must be 'citational doubling',
separate from the pure singularity of the
utterance. This is a positive reason for his
notion of the graphematic, not just that Austin's
has problems. Performatives do succeed,
'"perhaps"' (104), but not from pure communication
but from a process involving iterability.
There must be some coded or iterable statement,
recognisable as indicating some 'iterable model'.
This follows from the very recognition of
citation. Theatrical citation is not the only
type, however, and there may be others such as
philosophical references [or the repetition of
'common sense' in popular opinions etc] .
But citation follows as one effect 'within a
general iterability' we should examine this not
against some ideal or against non-iteration,
but against different types of iteration.
Intention would still remain, but it would no
longer be the central factor defining the whole
system.
An examination of types of iteration would lead to
a classification of different types of marks or
chains, but without always contrasting citational
statements only with 'singular and original
statement–events' (105). We would have to see that
intentions will never actually be completely
present, however, that there is a number of
possibilities ['an essential dehiscence'] in
iteration, not just a split between ordinary
language and other forms like nonserious. We
should be able to avoid 'the teleological lure
of consciousness' which is unanalysed in
Austin. It follows that we will not see contexts
as completely saturating the communication either.
For Austin's scheme to work, it would first be
necessary for conscious intentions to be 'totally
present and actually transparent', deducible
exhaustively from the context, a clearly
metaphysical notion.
Instead, there is a 'general graphematic structure
of every "communication"', arising from
différance, even in the most plain and descriptive
statements. Consciousness may have a specific
effect,performative intentions may have a specific
effect but these 'do not exclude what is generally
opposed to them. Instead they occupy 'the general
space of their possibility'.
Writing must produce 'the disruption of presence
in the mark', a spacing (106). Austin's problems
otherwise are insuperable — the 'floundering' and
'impasse' he cites in his attempt to apply single
criteria to distinguish performative from
constative statements [Derrida says he is right
here in opposing purely linguistic models of
language involving codes, which do not survive
encounters with actual language]. However, Austin
turns to non-linguistic reasons to justify his
'preference... for first person present
indicative' forms. He does this by suggesting a
privileged source, oral statements. He argues this
by discussing the signature — which shows a way of
a guaranteed reference to a speaking subject, an
origin for utterance. There may be other ways to
indicate this presence including expressions in
official protocols [apparently the example is the
term '" hereby"'].
Derrida thinks he can apply the same critical
problems as he would for notions of a subjective
origin for utterance or authorship. Signatures
imply nonpresence, or at best having been present.
They have an effect in the now because of the
assumption of some transcendental quality of time,
attached to 'present punctuality', 'always evident
and always singular'. (107). This gives the
signature its 'enigmatic originality' [especially
if it includes the 'paraph', which, I learnt, is
the flourish attached to signatures to prevent
forgery]. It seems to be an example of 'the pure
reproducibility of a pure event'.
Signatures do have these effects, but only by
granting 'the impossibility of their rigorous
purity' [because if they really were original,
they would not be legible and have no effect: they
must have 'a repeatable, iterable, immutable
form']. Signatures must escape their pure
singularity and take on a certain 'sameness', just
as did the old wax seals.
Overall, writing [which means all communication]
does not just transport sense intentions or
meanings, transparently. Nor does it just
represent a set of immediate social relations. It
has a history, with the effect of producing
'system of speech, consciousness, meaning,
presence, truth, et cetera', (108) which is
misrecognised in logocentrism. Writing offers
excessive semantics, dissemination, more than
polysemy. It needs to be read and cannot be simply
deciphered or decoded. Nevertheless, we can still
keep it as a term, and see how it is used in 'an
opposition of metaphysical concepts (for example,
speech – writing…)' to produce a hierarchy, 'an
order of subordination' [so deconstructionist
philosophy is going to be politically liberating].
[Sure enough] deconstruction does not just
neutralise these oppositions but overturns them,
generally displaces the whole system in a 'double
gesture, a double science, a double writing' [more
inspiration for feminist materialism]. Only then
can it effectively intervene in the field, which
consists of both discursive and nondiscursive
'forces'. Individual critique of concepts would
not work, without taking on the whole 'systematic
chain ...[and]... system of predicates'.
Deconstruction does not just substitute concepts
but attempts to overturn 'a conceptual order, as
well as the non-conceptual order with which the
conceptual order is articulated'. It is the
underlying predicates of classical notions of
writing which have to be addressed and liberated.
A new form of writing can emerge as a graft,
building on what has been seen as resistances to
conventional forms of organisation, dismissed as a
remainder. Such grafting would provide 'an
effective intervention in the constituted historic
field' (109) and lead deconstruction back to
positive communication.
[Then Derrida seems to admit that all this might
be utopian, as his fellow philosophers in the
colloquium would quickly argue. It can only be a
disseminating operation. His {full graphematic}
writing might communicate 'but does not exist,
surely. Or barely, hereby in the form of the most
improbable signature'. Then he appends his own
signature next to a comment explaining, as a joke
his own context and intention, to address the
colloquium and follow its conventions. The actual
signature is still a 'counterfeit', of course,
especially in a printed form]
From Plato's Pharmacy in Dissemination
Kamuf says this is an important work showing how
philosophy condemned writing in a 'self
inaugurating gesture' (112, that is in Plato. The
focus is on the example of pharmacy, the
pharmakon, which is a drug, either good or bad.
This is not only a problem to translate from
Greek, but it is difficult to understand it in
Greek, because it offers 'the "violent difficulty
of the transference of a non-philosopheme into a
philosopheme"' [must be a real problem for Barad.
In particular, there is a tension between
determining writing as pharmakon while maintaining
the necessary ambiguity to permit it to engage in
dialectical reasoning — the philosopheme in
question [again applies particularly well to
scientific terms]. It is like a translation
problem more generally — passing into philosophy
'requires the reduction of the signed to its
signified truth', and its original ambiguity
cannot be retained 'except by supplanting it with
another sign' [that is a supplement]. This is
always a writing, managing difference. A further
difficulty is that the origin of writing is
described in mythical terms which again offers a
problem of translating it as philosophy [moving
from mythos to logos] The blessed Kamuf has
selected a section from the original.
Plato's philosophy is underpinned by morality,
bound up with issues of 'truth, memory, and
dialectics' (114). We see this in the debate about
writing. There are political considerations as
well [Deleuze explains that this involved
separating true citizens from those who just claim
to be citizens]. There was some disquiet about the
activity of sophists and speechwriters. Thus the
question of 'propriety and impropriety in writing'
is central.
Socrates begins his discussion by referring to
rumours or fables, necessary to clarify the
confusion that we experience. There is a
connection with myth, and an assumed opposition to
knowledge. Writing is in error without knowing it.
Socrates has himself repeated without knowing [the
actual origins] however. The cited myth produces
'a fabulous genealogy of writing', which once
established can be criticised from the point of
view of logos.
In the Phaedrus, there is a clear argument that
the responsibility for logos is given to those who
are present, who attend to it. As it is seen as
paternal in origin, it is the father who can be
blamed. Logos here means '"discourse'… argument,
line of reasoning, guiding thread animating the
spoken discussion'. It offers an ' organic unity
of signification'. The terms of logos are, like
children, able to question and respond to their
father. Moving beyond the family metaphor, the
argument is that logos develops from 'a domain
foreign to it, the transmission of life' (119).
This makes it not just an effect of an external
cause, because we get the necessary [relative
autonomy]. Logos occupies in effect a household,
which always affects us, whatever the status of us
as participant. When we deploy metaphors to
explore allied fields, we know what logos is all
about [Derrida seems to be implying that we impose
family relations on concepts there, dividing them
into father's sons or other living creatures].
Again this is not a simple metaphor though because
we have components that both speak a language and
those that don't, [which lends a strange
conditional quality] — 'that what the father
claims to be the father of cannot go without the
essential possibility of logos' [which I've
understood as a condition of relative autonomy,
where things are determined in the last instance,
but we have to discover that underneath their
apparent independence].
Socrates
argues that an old Egyptian God, Theuth [T]
had already invented numbers and astronomy,
but now invented writing. He went off to the
king of Egypt to get support, but the King
was dubious. T argued that writing would
improve the memories of Egyptians, become a
recipe or pharmakon for memory and wisdom.
Derrida says that this has writing as an
accomplished art with some power and value,
but the King still has to confirm its
general value [he is the origin of value].
The King sees the pharmakon as an external
product, and cannot write himself — which
accounts for his view there is no need to:
he speaks and people act, and any
transcription is only a supplement,
secondary.
So the King is hostile, watchful and
suspicious [and Derrida wants to connect
this figure to the father — origin in
speech, logos, belongs to the father, a
residual gift from Platonism for Western
philosophy]. The paternal relation to logos
is actually a bit indirect. Logos originates
in paternal speech, which is necessarily
present, able to comment and answer. The
problem with writing therefore turns on the
absence of this father, in various ways:
Socrates insisted that was always
detrimental. The father constantly attends
to the needs of logos, gives it power,
refreshes it, but thereby denies it
any independence or emancipation. To insist
on writing therefore is 'a desire for
orphanhood and patricidal subversion' (118).
The same might be said for the graphein
[apparently meaning an ongoing scratching
carving or writing, a mark], which leaves
behind its origins, both legally and
morally.
The figure of the father represents goodness, and
also the definitive 'chief, capital' (120) [same
term for each in Greek, apparently], and all these
implications should be recognised in adequate
translation. We see the benefits when looking at
what Socrates says about 'the good in
itself'[which is to be understood best by
examining the offspring of the good, things that
appear in the likeness of the good, the secondary
qualities of the good]: the good somehow produces
these good things, in 'agriculture... kinship
relations.. fiduciary operations'. The same sort
of argument then applies to the origins of logos.
There is even a use in terms of describing the
revenue or return to financial capital [Socrates
appears to disapprove of this conception in
condemning ruthless '"moneymakers"' (121)].
However, it is not apparently possible to describe
this father [and Derrida recommends that we go
back and reread Plato's Republic — in the
original Greek no doubt].
In an aside, Kamuf
says that the myth of Theuth is further
developed to describe other mythic origins of
gods who construct writing, to show that Plato's
account was not just a one-off. Indeed, it might
be the result of '"rigorous necessities"… or
structural laws', where a fundamental opposition
between speech and writing is connected to a
whole series of other oppositions like
life-and-death, soul and body, inside and
outside [see below]. This is justified by
referring to the Egyptian God Thoth as a
secondary God, son of the Sun God, but also able
to act as a supplement, 'both added to and
substituted for the father'. This is a challenge
to the supremacy of the Sun God, but his actual
speech still draws from his father it is 'never
absolutely original' and indeed 'introduces
difference into languages' including explaining
plural languages. Thoth also has powers over
life-and-death and time. Together these indicate
'"the general problematic of the relations
between the mythemes and the philosophemes"' at
the very origin of logos in Western philosophy.
The Greek account of Theuth is thus 'a figure of
pure repetition' of this general problematic.
We have an underlying and original logic as well,
where a figure that opposes or supplants its other
also supplements it, where repetition also means
replacement, extension, opposition. Where this
works through taking some of the characteristics
of what is opposed, causing it to pass into its
other, it is a model for the [dialectical]
'absolute passage between opposites' (122). Any
distinction from opposites [slot-rattling] also
implies an imitation of them, and replacement is
always a bit arbitrary, sometimes requiring
violence. Even then, what supplants the original
becomes a representative of it. We should see 'the
God of writing [as] at once his father, his son,
and himself'. It has no definite identity but is
rather 'a floating signifier, a wildcard, one who
puts play into play'. We see this in the way in
which the God of writing also creates numbers —
which again can be repeated but also added or
supplemented, doubled, containing a certain
'floating indetermination that allows for
substitution and play' (123). Plato says that T
also invents games like dice. His function is to
mediate the dialectic, preserving its openness.
Unsurprisingly, the same God presides over the
'occult sciences, astrology and alchemy… magic
formulas… hidden texts… cryptography no less than
any other –graphy'. And, as a mediation between
life and death, he also presides over medicine,
both ending life, and healing the sick or even the
dead. [So, at the end of all this witty stuff]
'the God of writing is thus also a god of
medicine… of the remedy and the poison… The God of
the pharmakon', and it is all this that is being
presented to the king by T. The logos by contrast is alive,
with a father standing near it and sustaining
it. It cannot commit patricide[ although
apparently Plato has to modify that
later]
To develop
this context a bit more: back to Plato proper.
We now see that 'the word pharmakon is caught in
a chain of significations' (124), but this is
not just the result of Plato's intentions, more
'the play of language… diverse strata or regions
of culture', sometimes recognised by Plato
explicitly. It is not so much a voluntary
activity by Plato, however as more 'a mode of
"submission" to the necessities of a given
"language"'. Plato doesn't see all the links but
they still 'go on working'. Where this working
actually takes place [= how writing actually
works in this context?] cannot be answered at
present. It might have been that Plato perceived
some possibilities but just saw them as
impracticable. This is more productive and less
'crude' than working with notions of the
unconscious or the involuntary. We can see the
relation between speech or writing and language
in general in the same way.
The entire chain of significations may never be
reconstituted — there is no privileged viewpoint
-- but we can produce some effects detectable in
Plato. There is already a correspondence between
Thoth and Theuth, with its accompanying
metaphors and mythemes. One translation says
that T specifically argues that wisdom and
improved memory will result from writing, as a
remedy [hence pharmakon], but we have already
seen that that term also implies harm, and this
needs to be preserved as well [despite a
particular translation which he doesn't like] :
'remedy' also implies some 'transparent
rationality' almost scientific technique, thus
something that opposes magic and makes it more
manipulable.
Plato wants to preserve the occult aspects of
writing. He mistrusts magic and recommends the
ostracism of magicians [but suggests instead
improving memory and dialectical speech]. In the
speech, the King worries about the ill effects
of the pharmakon, and suspects T of minimising
them — a ready-made example of the dangers of
writing for reduction of meaning, implying that
T is a simpleton or 'flimflam artist', and
restoring the full ambiguity. Although the King
differs from T, they both 'remain within the
unity of the same signifier', though (127),
'whether or not they choose'. This is lost in
too literal a translation, where dynamic
references to other uses are sometimes missed,
especially the '"citational"' relations at work.
It is the 'other sense of the same word' which
is being cited. Translators can unwittingly
neutralise 'anagrammatic writing' [guilty], and
miss out on textuality and its effects.
Ironically, this will become an effect of
'"Platonism"'. However, such reduction of
meaning is also perfectly understandable.
Textuality operates with 'differences and by
differences from differences, it is by nature
absolutely heterogeneous' and so it requires
composition by the very forces that suppress
this.{well yes --otherwise we will be left with
endless expositions]
Such composition is the main theme here. Plato
wants to manage difference and replace it with
notions of 'simple confusion, alternation, or
the dialectic of opposites' yet the text itself
still 'constitutes the original medium',
something that precedes this effort and cannot
be reduced to it. This passes into Western
metaphysics as 'an effective analysis that
violently destroys [full ambiguous meaning]', by
reducing it to simple elements. The
possibilities are actually provided by
textuality itself, though, and these remain, so
any interpretive translation is 'as violent as
it is impotent' (128), since there can never be
complete management.
Plato actually argues that writing is no more
valuable as a remedy than as a poison, so that
it can never be simply beneficial. In the words
of the actual King, T is accused of suppressing
the opposite of the real power of writing -- it
will also produce forgetfulness, stop people
exercising their memories, insist on them using
'"external marks that are alien to themselves"'
(128 – 9) rather than relying on their own
powers. It provides a semblance of wisdom
divorced from truth. The full force of
[teacherish] instruction will be lost producing
an illusory sense of knowledge in readers:
readers will be conceited rather than truly
wise. Thus has paternal authority defeated the
subversive potential of writing. This still
implies that the potential is ambiguous, hence
Plato's attempt to continue to dominate it,
force it into simple oppositions like good and
evil, essence and appearance [and 'inside and
outside']. Thus writing seems to be a way to
improve memory but it is external, and requires
belief in appearances. It is almost as if Plato
is describing writing as deceitful not just
ambiguous.
Writing represents 'opposition as such', where
contrary values are not only opposite but
'external to the other'(130) [you can organise
any sort of opposition in writing just by
contrasting the signs?]. The opposition between
inside and outside becomes 'accredited' as the
basis of all possible opposition, while only one
element permits systematic serial development.
[And then a strange speculative bit implying
that this will lead to thinking that writing is
the source of these oppositions, and cannot be
placed under any of them, and thus escapes
logic] [one of the terms here is that writing
has a 'ghost', some half hidden quality which
cannot simply be opposed to reality, but which
cannot be ignored either].
This makes Plato's work ungraspable by
normal commentary, structural reconstitution,
genealogical analysis, as he argues himself [we
are invited to go back and read it for
ourselves]. It displays an excess, and it is not
enough to think of a quality such as excess as a
break with a series. It is a 'folding back' or a
're-mark' (131), preserving opposition, not
captured by the opposing simple concept [and
Derrida seems to say that this therefore is a
hint at the importance of difference].
Writing produces the opposite effect from what
is expected. It is external or alien, detached
from living logos. People who use writing tend
to rely upon it rather than addressing the links
with internal thoughts, and can go away and
forget them. It even survives death [which seems
to lead to an argument that writing has always
been involved, perhaps as a way of thinking out
questions of life and death]. Written marks are
not just surrogates for thought — they are not
life, they do not grow, they detach thought from
life. The meaning of writing shelters in its
crypt [hence cryptogram is a good representative
of it, actually a condensed pleonasm, pithy
one-word summary of pleonasm, for Derrida].
Writing makes memory fall asleep, fascinated by
its own signs, sinking eventually into
forgetfulness. Memory loses its connection with
truth. Eventually it will lead to
'non-knowledge' (132). It does this because it
plays with simulacra, merely miming memory and
knowledge, letting people pose as wise. [Then
there is an aside about whether or not this
continues Plato's struggle with sophists].
The 'alert exercise of memory' is required
(133), live memory, not replacing say something
'mechanical, "by heart"' for active knowledge.
Writing is separate not only from speech but
from memory, especially 're-memoration'. It
replaces truth with signs. The external archive
supplants the memory. It encourages hypomnesis
[the substitution of external devices, including
images, for memory]. As a proper resource,
memory already relates to the outside, but
writing provides a new relation, organises
memory differently. Plato knows that memory has
limits, in particular that it is finite, and
thus requires signs to recall what is not
present, but he works with a pure notion of
memory with no supplement [which he refers to as
a dream in a special way, page 134, leading to a
witty aside on Freud below].
Surrogates or supplements are dangerous, by
appearing as things. They show 'slidings',
somehow neither clearly present nor absent, so
they easily pose as the original. This also
permits further supplementation [somehow
connected to Plato's notion of types]. It offers
a kind of vulgar version of the power of
ideality to govern repetition. Writing
reproduces this unfortunate redoubling
[remembering that there is no original to begin
with]. Phonetic writing begins this process of
producing signs for signs, symbols for phonics —
necessarily a further step away from life as
active psychic process. Writing encourages this
substitution, enlivening external signs or
symptoms rather than living processes [and
Derrida tells us that 'symptom' in Greek also
mean something contingent, superficial]. It
encourages us to just address the symptoms, the
exterior signs. It's this internal effect that
causes the problem — otherwise writing would be
very useful. Plato admits that it is very good
at 'maleficent penetration' [something like
deconstruction?] but sees this as infecting deep
lying consciousness, and opening the possibility
of still more perversions and replacements
[there is some link with Rousseau and Saussure].
There have been attempts to develop a kind of
reasoning, to explore the contradictions between
inner and outer [this is the link with R and
S] but Derrida thinks that will resemble
Freudian '"kettle logic"', the logic of dreams
[the kettle arises in the example in which
people defend their actions, say in returning a
damaged kettle — it was really brand-new, it
already had holes, it never belonged to you in
the first place]. Defenders of writing have
similar arguments — writing does not damage
memory and speech because it is too exterior,
writing only infected life because it's
susceptible [maybe — 136], living memory is
already limited, and has holes.
Nevertheless the opposition between memory and
hypomnesis is the basis for all the 'great
structural oppositions of Platonism' (136). It
is an opposition that informs many subsequent
philosophical decisions, those which Institute
philosophy itself. However, this opposition is
overdrawn. In both cases we are interested in
repetition — repetition of the idea, repetition
of the truth through recall, discovery of the
underlying reality which can be repeated because
it has an identity. Truth also displays
anamnesia [according to Wikipedia 'The idea is
that humans possess innate knowledge (perhaps
acquired before birth) and that learning
consists of rediscovering that knowledge from
within. '], another kind of repetition, apparent
in [proper] representation, where the original
idea is immediately (re)present, not represented
in a sign.
Plato's dialectics and sophistics alike
presuppose repetition, although sophists keep to
significations and the repetition of the
signifier, not of the thing itself, which
requires the animation of memory. Writing can
repeat itself mechanically by repeating its
signifiers, without truth having to be presented
anywhere. Nevertheless, the difference
between writing and adequate thinking and
speaking is still 'invisible, almost
non-existent' (136), no more than the 'leaf
between the signifier and the signified' (137).
Derrida is aware that choosing the leaf as a
metaphor might support writing [on its surface],
but he also argues that Plato and his sophist
enemies were really inseparable, and Plato's
difference between signifier and signified was
not to persist [except as a sort of artificial
distinction, I think the implication is, to
preserve philosophical dialectics].
I then skipped to the bit that is allegedly about
sexual difference
Part 4 Sexual Difference in
Philosophy
From Glas, Chapter 14
Kamuf's intro says this was originally printed in
two columns and three fonts, with the third font
interrupting the columns at various stages. 'There
are no notes, no chapter headings, no table of
contents. Each column begins in what appears to be
the middle of a sentence and ends, 283 pages
further on, without any final punctuation' (315).
Thank God it is rendered much more conventionally
in this extract. The idea is to demonstrate 'the
borderless condition of texts and their
susceptibility to the most unexpected encounters'.
Hegel is the subject of a particular column, with
Genet sometimes in the other column as a
kind of counterpoint.
This bit appears to be about the moment in Hegel,
and briefly in Kant, where nature becomes culture
for humans. It is allegedly about sexual
difference, love, marriage and the social
functions of the family [it looks a bit like
Parsons charting the transition from personal and
intimate to impersonal and abstractly moral or
ethical values]. Apparently, Hegel on the family
is a guide to the whole Hegelian system, and
appears in several of his major works on the
development of Sittlichkeit, which Derrida
says means ethical life or objective morality, but
which I think crucially operates at the social
level, and involves concepts like right or
politics. [So I tend to render it as social
morality]. You can trace the passage of the
dialectic, the movement towards Spirit especially
Aufhebung. On p333 Derrida specifies it as 'positioning:
objectification, contradiction, interiorisation,
subjectification, idealisation, setting free,
relief'— luckily, I read the note in the
section above that says that Derrida often renders
Akufhebung as a matter of 'relief', which brings
all sorts of ironies when discussing sex.
Kamuf says that for Derrida Hegel on the family
represents a crucial stage in the move from local
to more general morality. In particular sexual
difference and its oppositions is transcended
[relieved] in the family in such a way as to
prepare for the development of full social
morality. As a consequence, Kamuf says that the
whole argument is 'sexualised', despite its
origins in a state of innocence and its
termination in Absolute Spirit. Apparently,
Derrida can detect unconscious motivations in
Hegel here, a classic outside residue or remainder
[not dealt with with the metaphysics of presence],
and an unacknowledged definition of sexual
difference. Derrida proceeds to follow extremely
careful and detailed discussion [which is way out
of my field].
So....For Hegel, the development of social
morality goes through the family as part of the
progress of Spirit. Social morality ideally
represents the spirit of a whole people. This
spirit is manifested variously in memory and
language, tools, possessions and families. The
family seems to be the 'most immediate and most
natural moment' (319) and it retains its
importance in Hegel's later work.
The family transitions to 'the people', through
marriage, possession and education, in a moment of
relief [Aufhebung], and is thus both relieved and
preserved. It is a necessary stage in the
development of consciousness, defined as the
'absolute being's return to self'. [a bit clearer
below] Absolute spirit re-assumes and reassembles
itself, after losing itself in nature and
exteriority. The task of philosophy is to see how
it is relieved. There is already a series of
stages to nature, the mechanical chemical and
physical leading to the organic. We see a series
of stages of self-destruction and passage to the
opposite, relief leading to spiritual life, and
these stages include disease and death. Hegel
discusses disease as the dissolution of natural
life which leads towards the spirit. The life of
the spirit is the essence and truth of natural
death. We see this with the death of animals — the
only way in which they can become spirit and free
themselves from natural limits. The spirit returns
home, breaking out of its limits in natural forms.
We can see this in the sexual behaviour of animals
as well as the disease and death, but it appears
in animals not as consciousness but more as
instinct.
We can see the same relation at work between a
genus and a solitary singular subject. Genus is a
simple unity appearing in each subject, but it
needs to realise its higher state. One aspect of
its appearance among species is that it 'provokes
war' (321), violent struggle and death [some kind
of drive to generic or racial purity?] Early
biologists realised this in the importance assumed
by the various weapons which animals possess, like
their teeth and claws, and how this could be used
to differentiate them.
Humans are also engaged in this war of species as
the generic qualities are divided in specific
individuals. Ultimately, as before, this
singularity will reunify 'within the genus'. It is
expressed in human affairs as an experience of
lack, representing a gap between individual
understandings and generic spirit. This takes the
form of a drive to reduce the gap. The most
obvious way of the drive is through copulation,
both 'generic and generative' (322). So sexual
relationships are also designating the
relationships of whole species and genuses, as
well as of genders.
Hegel discusses sexual difference trying to grasp
how sexual separation can still lead to a
totality. Because both individuals belong to the
genus, they have a potential union which effaces
sexual difference, expressed when they copulate,
'at once a part and a whole'. A kind of
bisexuality thus appears in human beings, where
each recognises the other sex in reproduction,
both grasp that there is a male and female couple
as well as themselves. Animals can get that far
too, but no further.
Human individuals now grasp themselves as a
singularity connected to a unity. Sexual
difference opposes unity to singularity, in the
form of a necessary [empirical] contradiction.
Copulation resolves the contradiction while
preserving sexual difference. In this way, sexual
difference becomes a manifestation of the whole
process of [transcendent] relief. We have to
remember that it is the lack exposed by the
difference that drives this process, and that this
really is 'the inadequation between the individual
and the genus'. Each individual is looking for
'"self feeling" in the other'
Hegel even draws upon anatomical science of the
time, which argued that the sexual parts of male
and female were of the same type, and there was an
underlying bisexual morphology, but that different
characteristics were emphasised, becoming
essential or dominant. However, this leads to
another complexity. In females, the essence
'consists of indifference', and in the male to
difference or opposition. In order to overcome
these differences, they have to appear as
[sexual?] opposition. Anatomical types continually
differentiate themselves like this. Animals do not
always have such marked distinctions as humans do,
however.
Early anatomists looked for some sort of common
origin to human sexual parts — seeing the uterus
in the scrotum, ovaries in the testicles. When
this did not work very well, the uterus was seen
as equivalent to the prostate gland, a 'lower'
form. The female equivalent was the way in which
the testicle remained as an ovary within the body.
This teleology [apparently developed by an
anatomist called Ackermann] leads to a particular
'speculative conclusion' in Hegel — that the
female sexual parts are somehow undeveloped,
failing to turn into proper oppositions. In
particular, '"the clitoris is inactive feeling in
general"'. Males do not have an equal and opposite
falling into a lower state.
This inactivity explains sexual hierarchy, with
its implications of female passivity. Hegel
connects activity to Reason as well, so we have
'the most traditional phallocentrism' connected to
the whole system of Hegelianism
'onto–theo–teleology'. It is active
differentiation and opposition that drives
progress, and that is 'the system of virility'.
The clitoral might resemble the penis, but it is
passive [and the penis demonstrates all sorts of
wonderful activity in the bloodflow of erection,
while women only leak blood].
Women are passive and must let themselves be
worked, although this is not experienced as
negativity. It is not understood in the same way
as with men who commonly distinguish between
passive and active parts in themselves [for
example 'productive brain and...external heart']
(326). Women possess some sort of 'undeveloped
unity' and thus seem closer to the origins of
nature, while men pursue active opposition, but
thereby become secondary. As a further [somehow
linked?] paradox, males gain mastery only by
'subjugating [themselves] to the feminine slave'.
Generalising as Hegel does, this means that 'man
submits dialectically to Femininity and Truth',
thus eventually making man 'the subject of woman'.
We can consider copulation as a relation between
feminine material and male subjective elements.
Insemination reduces this to a single point, in a
kind of physical demonstration of the abstract
notion of 'a single one'.
So Hegel's stuff on sexual difference addresses
the whole philosophy of nature, although it
excludes lower animals and plants, which have only
formal differences between male and female, not
dynamic ones which will produce first separate
individuals and then totalities. There is still an
implication that human females also do not develop
individual difference which turns into [internal]
opposition as males do, so 'the human female…
remains closer to the plant' (327).
Derrida notes that we have still not encountered
actual empirical human families but only
idealisations, but we might be able to begin an
analysis, since any materialisation of spirit can
be grasped as an object by consciousness. Hegel
begins to do this by talking about various levels
of (potential) power and mediating middle terms.
The family becomes the third level of power [the
third stage on the great project to regain spirit]
connecting both to 'people spirit' [coming to
think of yourself as members of a people] and
social morality.
When consciousness develops after materialisation,
it sees itself first in relation to spirit — both
an opposition to it yet contained within it as an
essential part of the bigger unity. It mediates
the relations between material and spirit [and is
itself a middle stage]. The different forms of
power that it takes reflects an idealised version
of this middling status. It has the same
form as ether, offering no resistance, but
something still material not entirely spiritual.
The first step in idealising nature is to deny
[its self-sufficiency]. This appears in memory and
language, and takes more earthly forms in the
development of labour and the tool. The family
itself is neither ethereal nor earthly, however,
but an extra or supplementary complication [able
to relate to both forms]. Consciousness can
develop a notion of theoretical existence, and
retain this notion in memory, 'that is, without
solid assistance' (328). This might be some
completely self-sufficient memory, operating
without language at first, but it can persist only
by passing into its opposite, becoming earthly or
practical, leading to linguistic products of
memory, and eventually labour and tool use. The
last two give a certain permanence to practical
activity [language does the same with conscious
theoretical activity]
The family bridges or 'presupposes' these two
forms. It is also organic [based on biology and
sexual desire], and this produces permanent
products like 'the child and family goods'(329).
This has the consequence that 'inorganic nature',
both earthly and ethereal, are seen as of 'a
universal proprietorship guaranteed by juridical
rationality' [they enter into human relations].
The process is not over, however and further
stages appear which will eventually make the
family disappear, as 'the ether again becomes
absolute' and the notion of 'the people – spirit'
appears.
Derrida wants to unpack this a bit. Language
displaces purely theoretical consciousness
[although it doesn't disappear altogether, but
persists in 'the punctual instant']. Language
seems to become fully free and universal, although
it becomes its opposite, 'pure singularity', and
lofty freedom becomes 'caprice or hardheadedness'.
That actually implies death as 'its proper sense',
and theoretical consciousness tries to escape by
remaining ethereal and pure — encountering another
kind of death. Practical consciousness both
negates and relates to theoretical consciousness,
as we see in the 'passage from desire to labour'.
Desire is also theoretical but becomes practical
through a contradiction. Theoretical consciousness
takes as its opposite not practical consciousness
but dead things, and this is technically a
contradiction 'a relation that relates itself to
something that is not related' (330). Desire
however relates to living things as a negation of
this contradiction, but this implies
consciousness, memory and language.
Is desire confined to humans? Hegel does not do
so, but talks of moving from animal desire to
human desire requiring developed consciousness and
language, especially speech. There is a
theoretical attitude in the animal, but still
relating to dead things, even in an encounter that
will inhibit its desire, 'but neither the animal
nor the [nonhuman] theoretical can posit itself as
such', and thus animals can never move to language
and labour. They do possess the capacity to manage
the things or others they desire, to not
immediately consume them, but to produce a kind of
potential consumption. This produces a kind of
transcendental quality of consuming and preserving
in desire, and that persists among animals.
However, it is purely an external matter for
animals, where consuming and preserving are
separated in time, because there is no
present-acting aufhebung, by definition, Derrida
says. There is dialectic but only in 'the mode of
the not–yet' (331).
Human beings also have this form of animality, but
their unique form of desire performs a relief
[aufhebung, remember], which goes through a number
of simultaneous stages in the present, so
annihilation and preservation are present at the
same time, part of human enjoyment, part of human
desire itself. Clearly this is to be extended to
the whole process of idealisation.
Aufhebung is not a single process nor a formal
structure. It has a history. It is subject to the
law. It gives itself as immediate then as
mediated: 'it is subject to the law, to the same
law as what it is the law of'. [When it takes
material form, it will encounter pressure to
develop?] This is what gives Hegelianism
philosophy 'a very twisted form'.
Desire becomes labour in human beings, who can
control the whole process of ideality, which
Derrida says means that ideality or consciousness
could be seen as just a supplementary to animal
desire. Desire becomes practical in humans
[because it does not just attach itself to the
contraints exercised by dead objects?]. There are
implications which suggest that inhibition of
desire, or repression, is central to the whole
business of aufhebung. [Derrida thinks that is not
yet decidable].
We do see that labour must be a relation of
consciousness, following from the movements of
desire and necessary inhibition. This means labour
is never complete, 'desire is never satisfied'
(332), practical consciousness always displays
this. It is a kind of mourning for idealised
consummation. This is the relation of labour,
which elaborates [geddit?] practical
consciousness, and mediates between desire and
inhibition. It takes on a permanent form, by
passing into its opposite, the tool. Tools become
a material way to express the practical processes.
Tools become universal in the sense that the
labour invested in them is not depleted in
subjective use. The tool 'guards {see below}
labour from self-destruction' (333). It provides
material that will enter into traditions or
practical history, and thus the 'history of
desire'. Actual desires and labours or deeds are
merely 'empiric individuals' and they will
disappear over time, but tradition necessarily
props up ideality, in the form of the general
tool, which is reproducible and perfectible, can
lead to accumulating characteristics and so.
In Hegel, this potential power is succeeded by the
family as a power. We see the general processes at
work again, 'positioning: objectification,
contradiction, interiorisation, subjectification,
idealisation, setting free, relief'. Somehow,
marriage relieves the tool. The solid object
serves as an outer constraint. Desire is no longer
invested in it, [inhibited by it]. Marriage
represents, 'the labour of desire without
instrument' (334). The relation with exteriority
and enjoyment turns into relations between the two
sexes 'in such a way that in the being– for– self
of the other, each is itself' [unique to humans?].
We have already dealt with biological sexuality
[through the discussion of the animal?] and talked
about desire in general, not sexual desire
specifically, but we saw there is both
preservation and consumption in the operation of
that desire, which forbids outright destruction.
This leads to Hegel's notion of sexual desire,
pleasure in aufhebung itself, a restraint on
excess desire in order not to destroy itself or
its object, a necessary 'unenjoyment and impotence
— that is what Hegel calls love' ,and the unity
that results is an idealisation. It is love that
limits desire, while sexual relations involve
being 'one with the other, in the being of the
consciousness of each one'. Desire can free itself
from mere enjoyment, and deliver a higher kind of
enjoyment in intuiting this sort of self and other
form of being. It is mere concubinage that just
satisfies the natural impulses. There is more to
marriage than mere contract, although there can be
factors which affect marriages, even which destroy
them, but these are 'inessential'.
[Hegel is just generalising from the bourgeois
family here? He takes monogamy and female
jealousy as universal? Cf Colleti noting the
premature identification of Reason in the actual
Prussian State. But this is not a simple
ideological flaw for Derrida --these intuitive
leaps follow from the privilege given to
'presence' and speaking immediately --from
logocentrism found in all Western metaphysics?]
Love does not remain fixed, but there are further
twists in the development relating to children,
and these will involve 'the struggle to the death
of recognition and possession' (335) [sounds very
much like Lacan]. This leads Hegel to a much more
general and idealistic approach, compared with say
Kant who saw marriage as 'the [routine] struggle
for mastery between husband and wife'. Sexual
differences are never mentioned again, so the
relationships formed are in effect 'bisexual or
asexual' (336) as a result of marital aufhebung.
However,
Kant has to be dealt with [and I'm going to
be really brief. It can be seen as like a
simple functionalist sociology of the
family]. For Kant, there is always
inequality of the sexes and the need for a
more pragmatic union. Full equality could
not be tolerated by either sex, and nature
has to achieve its goals, reproduction,
indirectly. Men have to be superior because
of their physical force encourage, but women
'have a natural talent for mastering' men,
although this depends on certain trends in
culture. Kant proposes an 'anthropology' to
examine the way in which culture privileges
femininity. Femininity borrows from
masculinity in the sense that a graft of an
apple tree discloses complex inheritance
['multiplicity']. This produces the rather
paradoxical power for women in 'only knowing
how to submit to man's inclination' (337).
More specifically, in this anthropology,
women like domestic war but men like
domestic peace and will willingly submit to
female government of the home. This is
contingent, cultural rather than essential,
a matter of female secrets, especially in
speech — 'the feminine weapon is the
tongue', and she triumphs especially in
'chitchat, loquaciousness, verbosity,
volubility'. Thus culture reverses primitive
hierarchies, although nature still persists
'through ruses and detours'. Both sexes
become reconciled to the design of nature,
without either of them understanding it. In
particular, there is no point trying to
analyse feminine sexuality [outside of
culture?], any more than ordinary language
can grasp the essence of God. The
preservation of the species and the
improvement of society continues.
However, childbirth adds
a complication, because it makes women
'fearful and timid in the face of danger'
and requires male protection. This is not
cultural, but rather 'nature's or life's
fear for itself' [so again you can just
decide something is natural or cultural on
the basis of some immediate intuition?]. The
result is enshrining the equality if not the
domination of women in social morality, or
at least in custom first. Things like
'modesty, decency, reserve' fetter and
enslave males, as the face of some
'invisible morality'. However, there is a
chiasm to come.
In nature, for Kant,
polygamy is 'nearly natural' for men, who
wants to relate to all women without love.
Women do the converse, restricting pleasure
outside marriage, while still desiring all
men. So women are either members of the
harem or whores.
As usual, everything
depends on the place of the man. Women are
never naturally polygamous, but are
restrained one way or the other by monogamy
or polygamy. The situation might be
different 'in truth' [for Derrida rather
than Kant?] — for example members of the
harem will attempt to impose a monogamous
relationship, together with an necessary
control over the man. So polygamy is seen as
transitional, barbarous, a perversion. There
is no marriage in nature, but in 'true
culture, it's monogamy'. Derrida thinks he
should have investigated polygamy a bit
further, and this might challenge the views
he has of men and women which remain
abstract.
Women establish mastery
in the harem, compete with each other, and
so never give men the peace that they want.
In our bourgeois society, the partners can
punish each other for any transgressions,
although the emergence of '"gallantry" (the
fact for a married woman of having lovers)'
(340) permits feminine dominance again, a
reversion to her true nature, 'her profound
design' to manage men but also be free of
them. In all this 'the complex system of
phallogocentrism can be read'. However, this
formulation is unstable, and Kant apparently
can never decide if love in the tongue of
women is a cultural ruse or feminine
perversion. If the former, there is no moral
condemnation. However, for Kant's, nature
must always be good, indeed 'a good woman'
(341), rising above feminine chatter,
engaging in the necessary education of men —
in effect 'the good woman is a father'. Men
never wish to be women.
There are some natural
impulses to explain female reservations
about bourgeois monogamy, because men often
die young, leaving their wives vulnerable.
So her interest in sex is really 'the
maternal advice of nature', a way of
remaining available for future suitors.
Women also constantly wish to be a man, to
gain more freedom. Kant never explores what
it might mean for a man to be a woman,
probably because a woman is herself wanting
to be a man. Kant actually says that women
want to acquire the attributes of the man in
order to 'realise her womanly designs' but
paradoxically, man have to be 'a woman in
order to remain what [they are]' (342
All this happens quickly
and in the shadows, as desire works. Women
can only ever be fake men, of course, and
never own the essential masculine attributes
of 'science, culture, the book'. They can
own books, but only for the purposes of
display. [Somehow, this ties in with the
notion of the unconscious and its role in
producing genius].
We see the asymmetry when
we consider virginity — infinitely important
for men, a relevant for women. For men, the
stances ambiguous, 'played out in the gap of
a sign that is almost nothing and
necessarily describes itself in the subtlety
of nuances and of word plays'. While men
wish to acquire, women wish to save, men are
patient, women tolerant, men sensible, women
irritable and sensitive, and permanently
jealous.
None of this would suit Hegel, who has no need to
operate with unconscious natural drives [maybe
this is where unconsciousness comes in?]. The war
of the sexes takes place 'in fact' (343), but is
resolved in marriage and in the social morality
that also emerges. Kant seems to describe a number
of accidents, not a structure, and so cannot think
the concept of [pure] marriage. He is left with
just a number of descriptive traits. He sees
marriage only as a formal contract, not an
essential unity. The proper dialectics of marriage
needs to be restored, as a relief or medium to
transcend sexual opposition [by domesticating or
regulating it — acknowledging it, but somehow
introducing something higher?].
It is the child that is the manifestation of what
is higher, what belongs to one consciousness, how
the parental differences have been relieved.
[Again there is odd language: 'they
{parents} "produce" thus "their own death"'
(344) and in some strange way, this is going to
have a major influence on the child's
consciousness, in ways which you do not find in
nature — just a fancy philosophical way of
describing socialisation?]. This happens through
education, which must be seen as a necessary
parental death in the child, not an empirical one,
of course. Some reactions among children to their
parents could still be seen pragmatically [as in
Kant] as a reaction to possible widowhood,
including the love of mothers for sons, and
parental love might really be based on an
expectation of supporting old age. This is
'derisively empiric' and covers over the real
process that is going on — 'mourning' — that
continues to relate parents to children. It is
most obvious with mother's loving sons after the
father's death and the obverse with fathers and
their daughters. At least these might provide some
more detail for the abstract notions in Hegel,
producing 'a chiasmus' [I am not at all sure why].
Education, 'the formation of the child's
consciousness' is also the relief of its
unconsciousness into ideality. This is not a
simple matter of repressing the unconscious, but
both education and culture offer violence to it,
in an ideal form, developing out from language and
labour, and, 'like every formation… It is on the
male's side' [again weird stuff, but it seems to
amount to the death of the father leading to his
idealisation rather than complete annihilation,
which helps the child interiorise him], but
[proper] education also helps parents see a
transcendence in their child's becoming, and this
helps them manage ['guard'] their own
disappearance. This helps them deal with their own
mortality [Derrida likes to play with different
emphases in the phrase 'to be dead', emphasising
'to be' and then 'dead', demonstrating the
'oscillation between the presence of being as
death and the death of being as presence']. This
is the way to retain enjoyment of what is, even if
it is what is dead — death is nothing if there is
being continuing after it. One may have a 'proper
death' [the death of a proper name?] but be able
to deny it when thinking of the child [and this
may be more powerful because it is somehow more
present?]. Derrida extends this cleverly to argue
that for Hegel philosophy is only a way of
positing death [acknowledging it in thought but
resisting it is a reality?] In order to manage it.
Loss is managed in 'child-relief'. The same can be
said of labour, the role of the unconscious, the
whole process of the economy. it all
'amortises' [writes off the losses of] death. In
economic action and in law for example, in the
notion of private property, everything is made
familiar/familial and proper, personal. The
economic is always linked to the family as a kind
of model. Economic laws are fundamentally 'a
family concept' (346). The same goes for politics,
which seems different from the familial, but
really accomplishes it. The economic and the
political are just regions of the whole system, so
ideality is really an 'onto–economic "concept"'.
The general form of philosophy is fundamentally
familial, and provides us with notions like 'home,
habitation... room... assets'. People are
aware that they need to guard a sense of propriety
as well as their property [smart!], and this is
the running common unit of meaning ['seme'].
Guarding prevents absolute loss, even in death,
returning something to itself. 'Spirit is
the other name of this repetition'.
Then a bit about how the unconsciousness of the
child is articulated from the consciousness of
parents after a certain forming or culturing.
Parents become 'a presentiment' of the child and
can relieve its being. They give it their own
consciousness but they die in it. However, this is
not a loss without return, because there is an
exchange in that parents also partake of the
child's consciousness, in a kind of positive
opposition which permits 'speculative circulation
of the proper' (346). It is like property which is
[alienated]. The child is a mirror for the parents
to think about their own lives and eventual
disappearance — children relieve parents.
However, children also encounter an exterior
world, already elaborated, a culture already
formed by parental knowledge or inherited
knowledge. Children have to somehow overcome any
contradiction between the real world and this
ideal world, and again education does this.
However it involves relieving the family and
moving to the 'people- spirit' (347 [it is
Parsons!]. However, in the exterior world children
are involved in a 'death for recognition',
apparently a substantial theme in Hegel. Again
this is not personalised but a struggle between
consciousnesses. Hegel is apparently specifically
guided by the development of Roman law and
morality, which apparently explains the particular
sequence between family and public morality in one
particular text.
The war for recognition involves a combination of
individual and family consciousness. It must
involve 'the onto-economic labour of the family'
(348): there can be no pure consciousness or
Husserlian transcendental ego. The family cannot
be reduced to some additional appearance of
transcendental intersubjectivity. So Hegel's
notion of consciousness is grounded in specific
social structures with all that that involves,
including 'memory, language, desire, labour'.
Consciousness has no independent existence and
cannot act on itself except through the detour of
family or other consciousness. Again this leaves
us with two singularities that are also a unity,
'absolute, insoluble contradiction, impossible to
live with' which can only end in violence and the
abolition of the singularity of one party,
abolition of the other. Universal knowledge plays
a part in abolishing limited
'being–in–family' (349) [now we are into clashes
between different ends of pattern variables in
Parsons].
This is a struggle to the death, but it is
regulated. Death here means the annihilation of
singularity and concreteness. It is self-defeating
because 'nothing' remains when singularity is
abolished, Derrida thinks that this is Hegel's
intention to leaders here, although he thinks that
normal human discourse disguises this nothingness.
Nevertheless, desire leads to death, is the desire
for death. Luckily, actual concrete families and
individuals are not to be seen as pure
singularity, nor pure ideality. Secondly, the
struggle to death always involves relief —
aufhebung is not just abolition or cancellation,
not simple death, but more a recognition of a
larger totality in which singularities appear.
Indeed, this is a necessary recognition [it is
necessary when you've struggled against your
family for a while, but then you realise that
their way of doing things is perfectly feasible,
just not the only way to do things and not your
way. If you've done sociology, you might use terms
like functional to describe family patterns that
you don't particularly like? This takes the
immediate sting out of rejecting the family you
grew up with].
This sort of transition must take place to get
full recognition of individual consciousness.
Other people must be persuaded to see
consciousness like this. A narrow 'empiric
singularity'(350) might have died, but the
dialectic goes on. Empiric singularity must be
completely destroyed, and this can be wounding for
others [family members who are not philosophers].
This outrage and offence lasts infinitely, so even
the rebellious philosophising offspring must
realise that they cannot totally dominate
relations with their others. Desire to do so
remains, but at the risk of [real social] death.
The war is not just fought at the level of
language, but 'played out between bodies' and also
'economic forces, goods, real possessions, first
of all the family's'. Language comes along
afterwards to idealise what has happened, as an
effect of the struggle. There must be 'actual
expropriations' (351) over bodies and possessions,
and language alone will not do this with
sufficient power. Linguistic idealism always
appears again to try and sweeten the injury, but
words can never provide sufficient resolution or
assurance — it is 'only the ideal existence of
consciousness', whereas struggle is actual and
practical. The parties 'must injure one another',
and struggle until real singularity becomes
actual: 'the violation… is necessary'. So violent
actual struggle is essential to the development of
consciousness and desire.
However, there are still contradictions, the main
one being 'in the thing itself'. The notion of
private property leads to contradiction, because
exterior things can never be totally grasped as
personal property. This contradiction again has to
be resolved, but just transferring or
redistributing rights to property is not enough
and would only transfer the contradiction. In the
end, the very concept of singularity has to be
'put to death' (352), but again not in a
simple way but relieved, the contradiction must be
contradicted and unified with non-contradiction
[sounds suspiciously philosophical and neat]. In
effect, what this means is that people must end
the singularity of others only by risking
[accepting] their own, as a result of engagement
with others. Ending the singularity of others
means it is no longer possible to claim
singularity for yourself. Hegel sees it as a kind
of investment necessary to produce a profit.
Immediate mastery over the other has to be
postponed, and death actually risked, although
success can never be guaranteed, life can never be
secure with the 'incessant imminence of death' and
it is possible to 'lose every time' [that is, it
must be a genuine risk. It reminds me of Guattari
arguing that a genuine politics must also always
risk being wrong or redundant. In this case, it
makes heroes out of entrepreneurs including
radical philosophers?]
Spurs: Nietszche's styles
Kamuf says that it addresses the 'woman subject',
especially in Nietszche, where women appear 'in
many guises' (353), coming to opposite
conclusions. It is connected to a broader issue
about the history of an idea as it moves from
original platonic to take on extra meanings such
as Christian ones, and, somehow, this suggests
becoming-woman [I see clear parallels with the
discussion in D and G, although Derrida does not
use terms like virtual and actual to distinguish
concrete women from 'woman']. There is also
commentary about castration. The more affirmative
remarks about women are more rare, and Derrida
links these to the ambiguities of terms like
pharmakon or hymen [which means both something
that separates out virgins and something that
unites married couples when they consummate, the
latter being an archaic meaning, of course].
Finally, the irreducible 'plurality of Nietszche's
styles' (354) leads our man to doubt the
possibility of any simple interpretation of plural
texts, with their never-ending differences:
apparently even Nietszche did not realise the full
horrors, and so it would be quite wrong to see him
as some anchoring point. [For me, there is such an
acute attention to ambiguity, difference and
deferred meanings, that any interpretation becomes
impossible, which means that Derrida himself
fizzles out in silence]
A style may be described as a feather, or a
dagger, leaving its mark on some text, while
guarding against more 'menacing' (355)
possibilities. Derrida's explored this in his work
on the veils and sails [same word, voiles,
different genders in French"]. The same might be
said of the spur which can also mean the ram of a
sailing ship, used in attack and also to cleave
the resisting surface. Style can protect against
something which obstinately appears — 'presence,
the content, the thing itself, meaning, truth',
which itself leaves a mark and must be taken into
account. Other ambiguities for the term spur
include a connection to 'spurn' in English, again
emphasising the ability to ward off or parry,
connected to the concept of an umbrella [one of
Nietszche's own metaphors, apparently].
If we look at how women are discussed, we can see
the same play, including 'apotropaic [designed to
ward off evil] anxiety' (356) Thus one section in
Joyful Wisdom has the think are threatened
by a labyrinth, a howling storm, a great ship
passing over a dark sea of existence. Nietszche
thinks he can stay calm in the middle of all this
'"hubbub"' (357) and introduces '"calm enchanting
beings… Women"', as if women offer some better
self or refuge. The same section warns that loving
women also carries a risk of death, sublimation,
and these effects work at a necessary distance.
This distance is partly indicated by Nietszche
imitating conventional philosophical style.
So seduction operates at a distance and we must
keep our distance, not only to protect ourselves
but to experience this in the first place. The
implication is that '"woman" is not [a]
determinable identity' (358), that her distance
implies a deeper notion of distance, spacing
itself [a particularly pseudy and witty section
links this to Heidegger, 358 –9]. Somehow, this
spacing also 'gives rise to truth' (359). However,
'there is no essence of woman'[possibly because
women keep a distance from themselves as well] and
philosophical discourse fails. Paradoxically [what
else?] 'This non-truth is the "truth"', and
'woman' is its name.
Nietszche argues this in several ways [and there
is some close textual analysis]. One extract says
that there is some kind of veil to be found in
life over '"lovely potentialities… Yes, life is a
woman"'. We failed to grasp this if we stick with
notions of essential truth. The whole point about
a woman is that they do 'not believe in truth,
thus in what she is, in what she is believed to
be, which therefore she is not' (360) [women are
aware that they do not conform to the classic
stereotyped identities on offer. Generalised a
bit, this is like Irigaray saying that women are
not just 'not – man', not a single thing].
Philosophical dilemmas ensue — Nietszche thinks
that philosophers of never understood women,
especially if they are dogmatists, that their
clumsy approaches to truth have been inept [this
is actually put in a rather sexualised way about
'winning a wench', even one of easy virtue].
Women are not taken in by these notions of truth,
especially by the underlying category of
'feminine' which tends to be essentialised and
used to explain women, their sexuality and other
characteristics, in some 'feminine "operation"'
(361).. Philosophers as well as 'the inexperienced
seducer' failed to grasp this. Nietszche indicates
his doubts towards this kind of accepted truth by
sticking it in quotation marks. Derrida, women
offer 'writing' as opposed to fixed symbolism such
as when the penis becomes the prototype of the
fetish. This kind of conception of women is
perfectly congruent with feminism, despite some of
Nietszche's specific phrases, [a make sense if we
attend to Nietszche's more general approach — this
seems to be an argument that becoming woman is
some kind of demonstration of virtuality, to put
it in D and G terms, even though actual women
might not themselves be able to do this
demonstration because they have accepted all sorts
of limitations and external definitions]. Derrida
says there might even be a tactical shifting
between these definitions in the struggle between
the sexes [maybe].
We see the connection in Nietszche's discussing
scepticism, especially that practised by women,
which includes 'veiling dissimulation'. This
scepticism leads them to see that existence,
including virtue, is on the whole pretty
superficial, a way to disguise sexual activity,
cover it in decency and modesty. [Normally
accepted notions of] truth is only a surface,
attractive only because it is veiled. Women can
see through it.
Why does it generate such fear, and generate such
practices as insisting on modesty? Fear of
castration is at work. This sort of superficiality
[and the interest of women in it] helps suspend
it, or make it indecisive. The usual account of
castration and its consequences belongs to one of
those superficial truths. Men have to deal with
it. Women are more sceptical. Men are so credulous
that they castrate themselves [this account of
castration as superficial credulity has
implications for Lacan and his phallocentrism,
says Derrida, 362].
Women do not operate with simple binaries between
castration and phallicism. If they were to accept
the mail solution, they would be deprived 'of any
possible recourse to simulacra', and leave her in
phallogocentrism. [This is the first of several
examples where binary reversals leave the system
intact, where phallogocentrism has a crony which
is self castration, where pupils are only seen as
undisciplined forms of masters]. Women need
castration anxiety and it helps people seduce or
desire them, but they do not believe in it, they
laugh at it, they know that actually castration
never takes place, despite male anxieties.
Unpacking this a bit, it means that we cannot
assign such a determinate place to castration,
that it remains undecidable and with incalculable
consequences, including binaries relating
affirmation and negation of castration. Apparently
there is a link to Freud on 'the argument of the
girdle' which appears in his work on fetishism —
note 15 says this is developed in Glas and
'concerns a certain structure of restriction that
reverses opposites' (376)]. [We have to remember
that the castration complex is central to the
development of human culture for some Freudians].
If it is now undecidable, we no longer have any
kind of standard against which to judge
discourses, and it loses its social functions,
becoming 'the throw for nothing, the waste of
time'. This is the main effect of 'women's
scepticism' in Nietzsche [which seems to have a
particular emphasis].
Men believe that their discourse applies to women.
Those who do believe it are in effect men, and it
is their feminism that attracted scorn from
Nietszche [demanding equality?]. Those feminists
wanted to resemble dogmatic philosophers with
their notions of science and objectivity —
'demanding the whole virile illusion' together
with castration anxiety. This criticism takes the
place of a lack of style, that it's distasteful
when women try to be scientific or to philosophise
in the place of men. Men of science are often
'mediocre' themselves, just going through the
motions, actually creating nothing: these are
likened to 'an old maid' (364). For Nietszche, the
point was to be pregnant [with ideas], whether you
are man or woman [note 16, 376, cites a chunk
where Nietszche talks about pregnancy making
females gentler, and expecting the same effects
with 'intellectual pregnancy'. He has little
support for maternal love. He says that the
conventional characteristics of women 'are
determined by the mother's image']. Women pursuing
enlightenment is little more than women going for
'"self adornment"', domination, anything but truth
because that is alien to women — '"her great art
is the lie, her supreme concern is appearance… And
beauty"' [still about ordinary women then, or
those who want to be like men]
It looks like women are both praised and condemned
for this stance. Responses by them can assume the
shape of the logic of the kettle [again]. Women
are able to maintain themselves as objects of the
search for truth, but they themselves do 'not
believe in truth' (365). Women can therefore play
at adornment or dissimulation. If we condemn them
for this, this is to adopt a male viewpoint and
fail to see it as affirmative [affirming the
deeper idea of truth].
We come to Jews [I thought we must, because this
defensive Nietszche is similar to those defending
him from anti-Semitism or German supremacy. He
does criticise actual Jews and actual Germans, but
sees a great power in a kind of virtual Jewishness
or in virtual Aryanism, and sees anti-Semites as
too stupid to perceive this contradictory
dualism]. Jews are also good at dissimulation, at
histrionics[melodramatic attention seeking]. The
clot sites '"doctors who have hypnotised women"',
all men who have loved them enough to realise that
they give themselves airs, even when they give
themselves [to men]. The nature, the artist is
always divided, however, displaying both
histrionics, 'the affirmative dissimulation' and
hysterics 'the reactive dissimulation' found in
modern art. So criticising modern artists again
misses the contradiction. Apparently, Nietszche
also offers a parody of Aristotle to abuse small
women in particular.
So art and style and truth are clearly implicated
in any attempt to understand women, but at the
same time, the feminine remains ungraspable 'by
any known mode of thought or learning'(366).
Both Nietzsche and Heidegger refer to 'the
becoming – woman of the idea', although Heidegger
has not developed this argument in Nietszche,
hence he has been able to 'see without reading or
to read without seeing' (367). It is not a case of
picking up something mythological to pursue, but
rather to look at the 'inscription of woman'. In
practice, this is neither a matter of metaphor,
nor showing how some pure concept is being
embodied.
What becomes woman is the idea, or the process of
the idea, a form of the self presentation of
truth. Women are not just identified with the
truth by this stage, there is a history for this
process. Philosophy emerges in the same process
and so it can never really understand. In platonic
philosophy, the idea was seen as just inscribed in
the person of Plato himself. But philosophers
became separated from the truth, no longer
directly manifesting it, studying only its traces
— hence the concrete history of philosophy begins.
The idea becomes 'transcendent, inaccessible,
seductive'— in other words feminine ['it is woman'
is how Nietszche puts it] (367). This account
actually is in error, but produces the whole
apparatus of seductive distance, veiled promise,
and transcendence linked to desire.
Nietszche also sees a connection with
Christianity. Women submit to Christian notions,
castrate themselves, or at least pretend to, in
order to manage desire and sexuality ['master the
master from afar, to produce desire, and with the
same stroke... To kill him'], a necessary
circumlocution [periphrasis] for what normally
counts as the history of both truth and women.
Christianity is the same as castration for
Nietszche, seen best in the old formulae like 'if
thine eye offend thee pluck it out'. No one takes
this literally these days — it just seems stupid
[to remedy causes with tackling symptoms]. Derrida
says the same argument could be made about the way
in which passion become spiritual, although
Nietszche does not pursue the castration theme.
Nevertheless, the early church, 'truth of the
woman – idea' (369) proceeds to discipline and
excise, castrate this original passion, in the
form of disciplining sensuality, pride or avarice
etc. This only takes away its roots in life,
turning the church against life and against women,
a form of castrating women as well as regulating
men. Castration is the answer for those who cannot
regulate themselves. Ascetics have always attacked
the senses. They replace love with spiritualised
sensuality, and develops spiritualised hostility
towards useful enemies [hinting that the church
actually needs anti-Christians].
The text remains heterogeneous. There is no
solution, but rather analysis of a delusion. It is
not enough to just oppose doctrines of castration
[for the same reason that a reversal of the binary
does not break the system]. Instead, Nietszche's
solution is to develop 'discreet parody' and other
subversions — 'the grand style' (370).
We can nevertheless codify the different
propositions concerning women into three types,
three positions: (1) women are debased and
despised, rebuked on the basis of 'dogmatic
metaphysics' based on the possession of truth and
the phallus — hence the numerous phallogocentric
texts; (2) women are seen as expressing the truth,
but in a playful or manipulative way, still within
phallogocentrism, still a mere inversion [of male
sincerity in seeking the truth]; (3) women are
seen as a power of affirmation, as artists,
requiring no affirmation by men, but therefore
appearing as [not a proper woman? Or maybe the
argument is that she can still be functionally
integrated as somehow completing men?].
Nietszche weaves these three types together in a
style that displays 'parodic heterogeneity' (371).
No more progress towards decide ability is
possible, because we would need a binary contrast
to these values. Instead, Nietszche operates with
notions like the pharmakon or the hymen, resisting
final reduction of meaning to a code.
It is tricky because if we value the heterogeneous
and the parodic, we are in danger of reducing them
once again. Nor should we see in Nietszche some
implicit total mastery, a godlike manipulation of
'infinite calculus' (372), a full understanding of
the undecidable. This would still imply an
underlying intention to master in the service of
truth or castration, it would be a new religion,
'the cult of Nietszche' and produce a new
priesthood of interpreters. Instead, Nietszche's
parody always supposes some naivete [some limit to
knowledge], possibly traced to the notion of an
unconscious, or some deliberate pursuit of the
lack of consciousness.
What this means is that we cannot reconcile all
the aphorisms on women, partly because Nietszche
'did not see his way too clearly there' nor could
he grasp it all at once. There is a 'regular,
rhythmic blindness', a loss inevitable with using
contradictory or ambiguous concepts. Nietszche
himself gets lost in the text, as have
others.Probably, he dreaded the castrated woman,
dreaded the castrating woman, and loved the
affirming woman, 'simultaneously or successively',
according to the places in which he found himself
and the actual women with whom he dealt [of whom
there were many].
He certainly thought that there was no single
'woman' and no single truth about women, hence his
'highly diverse typology:… Mothers, daughters,
sisters, old maids , wives, governesses,
prostitutes, virgins, grandmothers, big and little
girls' (373 [all a bit phallogocentric for me]. He
was open that the revelations in his work were
'"only — my truths"', which occurs prominently in
a paragraph on women. They may be truths, but
these are multiple and contradictory, there is no
one truth [which is a claimed truth, of course].
This is argued in a particular paragraph about
Oedipus [! — apparently he had no time for
metaphysical certainties or fixed identities] and
in a section on '"the eternal feminine," of "woman
as such"', which covered all sorts of famous women
and deplored their bad taste [note 24 explains
that he also said that women were a higher type of
humanity, but this is not a contradiction, but
rather a confirmation of Derrida's reading].
There can be no underlying truth of sexual
difference, despite all the efforts to solidify
sexual identity. There remains only
undecidability. Nietszche's work can be read as
'irreducibly plural'. Partly this is a result of
'biographical desire', his understanding of his
own spiritual fate, as predetermined responses to
predetermined questions — a double sense of the
remarks about 'only my truths', [not implying mere
subjectivity at all, but the dictates of Fate,
almost of Providence]. Nietszche argues that you
need a number of styles in order to display what
he knows about women or femininity, almost the
claim that he can penetrate to the eternal
feminine, that he was admired by women, apart from
a few resentful ones.
By this serious attempt to question the stability
of the concept woman, Nietszche calls into
question the whole series of concepts connected to
philosophical decidability. He undermines the
whole conventional hermeneutic search for the
eternal truth of the text, with reading as an
attempt to discover this meaning, irrespective of
'the values of production of the product or the
values of presence of the present' (374). The
issue of style become central to writing, as a
spurring operation, with style used to traverse
the veil, tear it and oppose all the conventional
oppositions. This will 'see or produce the thing
itself', no longer see it as constrained or veiled
in some eternal opposition. Nietszche style
'neither raises nor lets fall the veil'. The
operation is akin to destroying the fetish, and it
risks complete and failing. The tension between
these intentions, between logos and the
theoretical impulse 'remains,
interminably'(375)..;
In
another useful section for feminist materialism,
note 22, 376 –7, starts by saying 'as soon as
sexual differences determined as an opposition,
the image of each term is inverted into the
other', encouraged by the notion of formal logical
contradiction. Nietszche's account of traditional
divisions between men and women is ambivalent
about this simple reversion. For example in Human,Too
Human, understanding and mastery is
originally attributed to women, and sensitivity
and passion to men. The reversal is explained in
terms of how love involves taking the other as a
model based on an ideal self: 'desire is
narcissistic, passivity loves itself as passivity
in the other, projects it as "ideal"'. The active/
passive opposition might actually be based on some
original homosexual attraction, but this is
reversed into an idealised version which is then
subject to desire. Specifically, Nietszche remarks
that women are often rather surprised at being
pursued by men for their character, 'intelligence,
brilliance or presence of mind', but this is
really because 'men seek for the ideal man, and
women for the ideal woman', that sexual difference
is really seeking completion rather than
complementary pairing.
Geslescht: Sexual Difference,
Ontological Difference
[This one is going to defend Heidegger against the
charge that he is not interested in sexual
difference or sexual politics. The defence takes a
general form, that I've come across elsewhere —
basically, he doesn't rate sexual difference at
the actual concrete or ontic level of everyday
reality, and thinks it does not reflect anything
essential. Human sexuality can be traced back to
the virtual level, of course, but there we find
positive multiplicity and plurality. {Thus
Heidegger is propelled from being an unrepentant
patriarch to a place in the forward thinking of
sexual difference!] This two-level trick has also
led to him being able to explain Nazi concrete
reality as somehow related to Being as well,
Marcuse has argued, no doubt also a perfectly
viable option. It also reminds me of Deleuze discussing
with Parnet the embarrassing persistence of binary
divisions in his work, like tree/rhizome: again it
is not so much as Deleuze being inconsistent, as
him operating really at two levels. At the
concrete level of course there are binaries, but
at the virtual level there is a multiplicity of
options, and, unfortunately, binary ones seem to
have condensed out, although we never quite know
why].
Kamuf says that Heidegger played a major part for
Derrida, especially the way he developed the
philosophical legacy [the old two-level trick?],
But of course, he wants to criticise aspects of
Heidegger, and to pursue deconstruction, which
might actually have been suggested by Heidegger
himself. Of course it is not complete, and we see
this best with the discussion of sexual
difference. Heidegger has already ignored relevant
bits in Nietszche, as we saw. Luckily there is a
great deal of ambiguity in the actual German terms
in the discussion, including multiple meanings for
Geslescht, which can mean differences between
masculine and feminine, implying differences
between ontological and ontic [I had to look up
that term in Wikipedia to get the particular
meaning that in Heidegger it describes ordinary
mundane reality]. Heidegger does talk about
neutralising sexual difference, however, but
luckily this does not carry exclusively negative
implications, and is indeed an essential first
step in deconstructing existing binary
distinctions. Heidegger's discussion of dispersion
and multiplication supports Derrida's reading.
[On to the actual text]. Heidegger does indeed
speak little about sexuality, nothing about sexual
politics, despite it concerning so many modern
commentators. Does this imply that he is not
interested in sexual difference at all, or that
there's nothing wrong with patriarchy? Sexual
difference clearly has no ontological status, and
occupies the same space as lots of other mundane
differences, so it can clearly be left to lesser
disciplines such as anthropology or sociology, or
morality.
Derrida insists there is no value judgement here,
luckily, because of course lots of modern thinkers
think that sexuality is at the heart of modern
knowledge and politics. He doesn't think Heidegger
is simply distancing himself from popular
discussions either. He does seem to ignore the
topic in other philosophers. Of course it is still
possible that he might have discussed it
somewhere, [maybe not literally, as we shall see]
but that still leaves the problem of how to define
it exactly. It's not just his problem — too
many of us are just nonchalant about sexual
difference, and we define it far too glibly. It
would be far too easy to accuse him of 'omission,
repression, denial, foreclosure, even the
unthought' (382). Yet the very silence is worth
exploring, especially since we think these days
that sexual identity is so central.
One problem is that in Being and Time,
Dasein can look like it is describing just
ordinary anthropological reality, despite the
differences between being in the world and being
with others. The characteristic of Dasein that it
does care also adds to this confusion. As a
result, the absence of sexuality explicitly in the
discussion of Dasein and its 'existential
structure' looks like a serious omission. Dasein
is presented as 'exemplary being', which implies
all sorts of social relations and patterns,
including care.
Heidegger himself felt the need to explain this
apparent omission, in a course of lectures given
at the University of Marburg in 1928. [Isn't
Derrida using a supplement here though?] Dasein
does require a fundamental ontology, and is not
just anthropology, even though we might use
anthropology as something '"preparatory"' to
philosophy (383). Can we investigate Dasein to get
to sexual difference?
By specifying 'exemplary being', Heidegger says we
can leave out various other modes of being which
are empirically determined [at the concrete
level], but this seems a matter of decree [we
might even suspect logocentrism?] . Dasein is the
being which we are ourselves, which involves
possibilities arising from 'being – there'
[located in the actual world?] . But this division
still implies a declaration that omits sexuality.
The lectures at Marburg are apparently designed to
explain this a bit more. For example, apparently
he chose the term Dasein because the term 'man'
was not neutral enough.
This notion of neutrality is designed to exclude
anything anthropological or ethical, keeping only
'a relation to itself, bare relation to the Being
of its being' (384). We do not reproduce normal
notions of an ego or self or individual [it looks
like Dasein also implies an original questioning
of Being]. Yet neutrality is specifically applied
to sexual difference, and the emphasis 'is
surprising', because lots of other empirical
characteristics could have been chosen to be
neutralised. Sexual difference is privileged here,
the very thing that the concept of Dasein should
start by neutralising, before anything else.
Luckily that, there is some [exploitable]
'polysemic richness' in the actual term Geslescht,
so we can follow implications for things like
family, genre, lineage. We only really see these
'path openings' in the original German, though
[H's own metaphor, of course]. The same might be
said of the term neutrality, which is introduced
first, although followed immediately by the
application to sexuality [maybe directly after he
has explained why he dropped the term 'man'], so
at first there is an exclusion of the term 'man'
[so that's good for we moderns]. But there is a
clear intention to neutralise first of all sexual
difference among all the other possibilities
relating to humanity. It is not just that we
passed from a masculine noun Mann to a
neutral one Dasein. We have also moved to the
transcendental level [Heidegger apparently does
use the term transcendental], and at that level,
Being does not have the usual human
characteristics. Nevertheless, the omission of
sexual difference is a part of the very
'existential structure of Dasein' (386),
explicitly connected [in the lectures?] to the
neutrality of the term Dasein itself.
Luckily again, the German term for neutrality
'induces a reference to binarity' (386) that is
does not permit any binary partitions, in this
case, in sexual difference. 'Being there' does not
mean support for the ordinary divisions between
men and women, but even so, why stress it so hard
[so there must be a positive reason]? Perhaps
there is an implication that mundane sexual
difference is more than just as it is defined in
anthropology or earlier metaphysics, or any 'ontic
knowledge' including biology or zoology. Dasein
cannot be reduced to normal humans, egos,
consciousness, even unconsciousness, and certainly
not 'to an animal rationale'. Yet nor can other
things — why is sexual difference so privileged?
Why did Heidegger proceed straight away to take
sexual difference as the example? Perhaps it was
because he was really addressing at the time
particular people operating 'within
anthropological space' (387)?
However, it is the negativity of Heidegger's
remarks that cause problems [again detectable in
the original German], and it will be hard work to
find positivity or richness, or even power in
asexuality or non-sexuality [although that's what
Derrida tries to do]. However, at least sexual
difference is so tied up with the ontic, that the
ontological negativity discussed in the general
philosophy does not apply. The argument is really
directed against mundane sexuality, sexual
duality, the conventional binary, and the absence
of ontological negativity implies that there will
be some '"originary positivity… and power of
essence"' in 'sexuality itself' (387).
Dasein transcends sexual difference, but it might
still imply 'a pre-differential' sexuality, not at
all unitary or homogenous, but positive and
powerful. Heidegger did not call that sexual
because that would risk the binary again, but it
is no more negative than 'alatheia' [the pursuit
of truth, philosophical disclosure] [So sexuality
appears as an early version of unfocused desire?]
Then there is a bit that requires special
interpretation [sic], involving a 'strange and
quite necessary displacement' (388). Somehow,
sexual division itself leads to negativity, so
neutralisation [here meaning political
neutralisation as well,making it seem obvious and
uncontroversial?] is an effect of it, but this is
effaced, and thus a proper object of philosophical
analysis, promising some original positivity. It
is binarity itself that provides discrimination
and negativity, and even 'a certain "impotence"'.
We can overcome this if we go back to the level of
Dasein, where binaries dissolve even though there
is still sexual difference [of a non-binary kind].
[Derrida then worries that 'this interpretation be
too violent', and so he has to justify it with
close textual references]. Heidegger talks about
positivity and power without referring to sexual
difference. In fact he never 'directly
associate[s] the predicate "sexual" with the word
"power,"' (389). However, if we switch from
adjectives to nouns, as Heidegger does, we can
'more easily radiate towards other semantic zones.
Later we will follow there some other parts of
thought'. At least the passages in question remove
any negativity from neutrality, and use neutrality
to point to the origin. 'Dasein, in its
neutrality, must not be confused with the existent
[and its silly claims of self-sufficiency] '. It
has 'an originary source' and some internal
possibilities, which can be analysed without any
reference to the existent. There is thus no
practical philosophy of existence based on
metaphysics or some privileged worldview, no
'"philosophy of life"'. Discussing concrete forms
of sexuality would fall short, because all current
ones belong to the existent.
We can interpret other sections to suggest that
sexuality is cited in connection to a particularly
isolated notion of Dasein, implying that
'sexuality must be neutralised a fortiori' (390).
Heidegger emphasises this to stress the particular
'ipseity of Dasein', the way in which it becomes
being with a self. Again this is not the normal
human notions of self as consciousness or egoism,
but something that can even bridge egoism and
altruism, '"being – I" and "being – you"'. This
self is therefore neutral compared to the usual
human distinctions and divisions, and this must
obviously include sexuality. There might still be
a problem in that we can see the connection
between sexuality and Dasein [a formal derivation
of sexuality from Dasein — something that is
assured or made possible by the definition]. Yet
there is still a suspicion that sexuality is not
derivative, that actually the origin, 'an
ontological structure of ipseity itself', is
already there, in which case neutralisation would
indeed be a violent operation. Derrida thinks it's
significant that Heidegger often puts the term in
speech marks, as a citation rather than an
unproblematic use, and there his general concern
was to separate analysis of Dasein from
anthropology or any other sciences. There may be
some genuinely fundamental notion of sexuality to
be detected nonetheless, but Derrida will 'leave
this question suspended' (391).
Dasein appearing in human beings need not take an
egoistic or isolated individual form. There may be
some original isolation of a metaphysical kind,
however, and again this will lead to sexual
difference and sexual duality. As usual, there is
a translation problem, including 'the very subtle
differentiation of a certain lexicon', a 'lexical
hive' linking together terms like '"dissociation,"
"distraction," "dissemination," "division,"
"dispersion"'. Some of these have a negative
sense, some a more neutral one.
If we attempt to pin this down, Dasein is clearly
connected to the possibility of 'a factual
dispersion or dissemination' shown in its own body
and therefore in sexuality. So every proper body
is sexed, and there is no Dasein without a body.
But the implication is that the multiplicity that
is dispersed is not derivative from the sexuality
of the body but 'is its own body itself, the
flesh' (392), [a kind of inherent tendency toward
dispersion in Dasein], implying that sexualised
bodies are to some extent contingent, and
certainly secondary.
We have to remember that dispersion is not
necessarily negative. Neutrality at the
metaphysical level is not drawn from the ontic
either, not just an abstraction from it. It
belongs not to a fundamental binary, but the
notion of 'the "not yet"'. The being that results
is not some kind of fall or decline, but produced
by an 'originary structure of Dasein'. That
produces a body and 'hence sexual difference', but
multiplicity and lack of strict determination are
still implied in the analysis of dissemination.
When it manifests in a body, Dasein become
separated, subject to further dispersion and
parcelling out, including being divided by
sexuality, taking on a determinate sex. Again
these might have a negative resonance, but only
from their association with the ontic.
The real emphasis lies with the suggestion of a
'fold of a mani-fold "multiplication"'. This is
still recognisable even in factual and isolated
forms of Dasein. It is not a simple multiplicity,
a diversity, nor does it emanate from 'a grand
original being' (393) producing various
singularities [so what's left?]. Multiplicity is
an internal possibility, belonging to Being, and
thus to Dasein [so a bit of interlocking
definition here?] . There is an 'originary
dissemination', subtly different in the original
from a determined dispersion. The latter
demonstrates [in skilled hands] a structure
of originary dissemination, the potential for it,
'disseminality' in Derrida's neologism. Heidegger
still risks being contaminated by negativity and
with various associations, like religious notions
of the fall, and he needs to address the
possibility of such contamination. [His
explanation consists of entirely abstract
processes of masking etc. Never political, of
course, another reason for his naivety with
Hitler?]
To elaborate the discussion though, dispersion
never refers to Dasein as a single object, except
as an abstraction or generalisation ['abstention',
almost implying transcendence?]. But the presence
of other beings which 'always co-appear at the
same time' indicates this underlying 'originary
disseminal structure'[that is it is not the result
of induction from plural cases]. This argument is
supported by further adventures in translation
suggesting that Heidegger saw the originary
structure as coextensive with historicity itself.
Dasein appears in extension [in material space],
but this is not an independent dimension as it
might be for some philosophers [such as
Descartes]. It implies instead a spacing or
stretching of Being, leaving some 'between', some
'intervallic movement' (394). Dasein 'affects
itself with this movement', and that is the
ontological structure of historicity. The between
is not just a temporal interval or spatial one,
but 'a kind of distension', a relation [he even
calls it a '"between – two"'!], Something already
intertwined between stages, something which both
disperses and and unbinds. It constitutes the
links between stages, which 'could not take place'
otherwise. It is clear that these are not be seen
just as negative forces, unless one wishes to
impose some prior interpretation, say in the name
of a commitment to dialectic.
A further implication is that this betweenness is
a necessary component of dispersion, impossible
without it, and yet not the sole factor involved.
There is also temporality and historicity. Dasein
possesses an 'originary spatiality' (395), as we
see, 'for instance, in language' and its
fundamental spatial significations. It is not
secondary, but essential and irreducibly part of
Dasein, and this notion affects all the words that
Heidegger actually uses to explain concrete
manifestations of Dasein, including terms like
dispersion or dissemination.
There is some '"transcendental dispersion" (as
Heidegger still names it)', something belonging to
Dasein and its neutrality [indifference to
content], and this was to emerge as a
'metaphysical ontology of Dasein' following its
analysis. Every concrete dissociation and
splitting in factual existence is seen as a
'possibility' of transcendental dispersion, rooted
in Dasein. Again, there are translation
difficulties with Heidegger's term for this
transcendental component of the originary
character of Dasein, which also implies other
usages like 'dereliction, being thrown'. The
analysis of sexual difference which follows this
discussion in the text should therefore be seen as
preserving some of these meanings. Dissemination
always supposes a throw, the da of Dasein,
something projected, implicit in more concrete
modes of throwing associated with 'project,
subject, object, abject, trajectory, dejection'.
Dasein is throwing itself, a 'being-thrown'
which precedes concrete activity or passivity, and
the split into subjects and objects. If we
interpret it as simply passivity, we will get back
to the problem of subjectivity. Instead, being
thrown appears before appearances themselves
before a thought of throwing or any activity. It
is not a throw in space, but rather 'the originary
speciality of Dasein depends on the throw' (396) [almost
a performative notion here — again lots of
parallels with Barad on relations constituting
phenomena].
At last we get to sexual difference. First we have
to remember that 'Dasein is Mitsein [being – with]
with Dasein'. Implications for sexuality follow,
and Heidegger pursues them as his main
philosophical task [having to deduce it somehow
from this performative-ish characteristic of
Dasein which he has specified]. Being-with is not
just ontic either, nor does it have some origin in
a generic being which has later been partitioned.
It is the other way around for Heidegger, that
there is 'a certain generic drive of gathering
together', also implied in Dasein as a
'"metaphysical presupposition"'. It produces the
existential or empirical relations of being with
others, but does not derive from it.
Having rejected any empirical scientific account
of sexuality, and turned instead to metaphysics,
sexuality has to be explained. It is not
originary, it cannot be derived only by using
existing 'traditional philosophemes' [what did he
have in mind — some naturalism or Christian
theology?]. At the same time, negative
implications of derivation have to be avoided, and
that includes those attached to the notions of
dissemination and dispersion cited earlier, even
if it is a transcendental dispersion.
The mystery remains, and we have to acknowledge
that Heidegger has argued, in the Marburg
lectures, that we need to consider neutralisation,
negativity, and dispersion, but there are also
sections in Being and Time relating to
these terms, even if sexuality is not discussed
explicitly. Being and Time
connects neutralisation to something called
'"privative interpretation"' (397) which is almost
a methodological procedure leading to an ontology.
Somehow it leads to the necessary a prioris of
ontology. However, psychology and biology also
seem to be implicated because they study 'an
ontology of being – there', in order to get to
life as a mode of being.
Here, Heidegger sees life as requiring privative
interpretation [still no clearer -- Wiki gives
privative as meaning depriving or negating the
term that comes after it like 'in-excusable'. Is
'interpretation' privated,or the object, life? Can
also mean indicating something which is not,
something which only seems to be, which might
imply stripping off misleading appearances,
uncovering what is not apparent -- see below] , a
special form because life is neither ontic nor a
matter of Dasein — which remains puzzling [why is
it not another of these originary structures in
Dasein?] and never elaborated or linked into the
other categories. It seems to follow the argument
that positive forms of knowledge are linked to
'regional ontologies, and these to fundamental
ontology' which we get to by analysing Dasein in
its existential forms. The particular being of the
living or the animated raises a general problem
with the whole scheme. Derrida says that 'sexual
difference cannot be dissociated from it' but 'we
cannot go into this matter here' (398).
Heidegger seems to discuss privativation as some
way of gaining 'a priori access to the ontological
structure of the living'. It will help us
understand why negative determinations are so
common. Not by chance, but because something has
dissembled or disfigured the original phenomena
-- Verstellung [can mean both
translation and masquerading] and Verdeckungen
[masking effects eg of types of vision] [both
universal human limitations, nothing ideological
etc?]. So no wonder things look incomplete
or unclear. We have to be negative about those
processes in turn, but methodically so, because
both Vs are necessary [ah!] in the unfolding and
interpretation of Being. They can't be avoided.
There are not some original sin any more than
inauthenticity is. Yet Heidegger could be even
more negative about these processes, but he wants
to avoid claiming some superior scheme, a
dialectic or a religious or ethical program. Any
road up, the neutral is not inherently
ontologically negative, but that can appear in
dispersion, and in ontic neutrality.
Dispersion is a general characteristic of Dasein.
It's factitious, that means it is 'always already
dispersed', all parcelled out into determinate
modes. At the same time, these modes reveal
'irreducible multiplicity'. There is also a kind
of inauthentic dispersion and distraction, and
inauthentic selfness of Dasein [which might
involve attributing these dispersions and
distractions to human activity alone?]. [Derrida
says the actual analysis is too well-known to be
repeated].
Heidegger talks about various 'modes of falling'
of Dasein to become every day being, and uses
terms like downfall or alienation. Again these are
not meant to be moralising, however nor to imply
some original condition for human kind which has
been corrupted. He goes on in another section to
discuss sexuality as conventionally understood as
a kind of 'inscription, stamp, and imprint'. We
see at work two stages of dispersion — one
inherent in Dasein, and one as a process of
inauthenticity [and for Derrida, Heidegger doesn't
always distinguish the two?].
It is all a matter of a sequence of implications
for Heidegger, and that might account for the
actual 'predicates used by all discourse on
sexuality'. There is no 'properly sexual
predicate', none traceable to the general
discussion of Dasein, so we have to explain it in
terms of the general analytic of Dasein [how it
manifests itself in concrete forms of being, via
neutralisation, dispersion, the two Vs etc?]. At
least we can argue that it is not as simple as
seeing sexual connotations at the heart of all
discourse, common to all discourses. Instead they
all really show [general characteroitics of being]
'farness… the inside and the outside, dispersion
and proximity, the here and that there, birth and
death, the between–birth–and–death, being–with and
discourse' (401).
We can come finally to see sexuality is not
exhausted by a dualistic difference. It is this
[ontic] mark which has been neutralised. We have
traced it back to dispersion and multiplication,
and this might help us 'begin to think a sexual
difference (without negativity, let us clarify)
not sealed by a two', but open to 'the control and
inspection of reason' [perhaps the way in which it
manifests itself in dualism?]. Instead of some
primary dualism, we may have to ask questions such
as 'how did difference get deposited in the two…
How does multiplication get arrested in
difference? And in sexual difference
[specifically]?'. Derrida thinks that eventually
the current connection between sexuality and
opposition or duality will change and be seen
instead as 'decomposition'.
From 'At This Very Moment in This Work Here I
Am'', in Psyché: inventions de
l' autre
Kamuf says this is a critical reaction to Levinas.
Derrida had already compared Levinas on the trace
as some 'past that has never been present, an
absolute alterity' (403), but he also sees some ,
and in this piece, he is focusing on sexual
difference. This is a polyvocal essay and includes
a 'feminine interlocutor' [a real one or just
Derrida ventriloquising?] There seems to be
several themes: Levinas on the absolute other
which contradicts his own 'language of presence'
and essence, and his claims to be a single author:
there are still traces of the other. The feminine
interlocutor represents some other that 'overflows
the present writing' by being able to dictate what
the main speaker addresses. This leads to Levinas
on the trace, especially on the pronoun 'il' which
means both he and it, and which apparently marks
any sort of name. It is this masculine/neuter
pronoun which is being addressed by the feminine
interlocutor, and it leads her to ask what the
relation is between people of other sexes and
people as altogether others, beyond sexual
difference. Perhaps it is that Levinas sees the
former as secondary to the latter — if so, a
certain masculinity is preserved even when trying
to discuss the difference between masculine and
feminine [ie neutrality and objectivity is a
masculine concept] . Somehow, this is linked to
the idea of some perfect or sacred pronoun ('the
pro-noun of God') which claims to be neutral and
to guard 'jealously' [which confirms Kamuf's
argument for the centrality of this concept] its
neutrality against any contaminating determined
being or [empirical] sexual difference.
[So we are into full-blown Derrida at last, with
all its ridiculous wordplay, puns, allusions to
words in other languages, and eternal deferral
while he thinks about what thinking is. I can only
offer a plain man's fillet]
Let's consider the statement [found in Levinas?]
'He will have obligated'. I think the weird
discussion that follows suggests that people can
hear and understand events referred to, even if
they are not aware of the context. People hear and
understand, by repeating the words for themselves,
but there is always an unknown surrounding for
this phrase, no definite limits. But something has
happened. It's just that we have 'distanced… from
all context' (406). This implies not complete
separation or absence, but some relation to
context which should be negotiated. [As usual,
this is far too simple a rendition. Derrida says
things like 'distanced, which does not forbid, on
the contrary proximity' and 'One must even
negotiate what is nonnegotiable and which
overflows all context']. The phrase might just
seem indeterminate, but there is still a certain
intelligible 'inside of what is said' which
'overflows at a stroke all possible context'.
Somehow this has to do with how we grasp something
that is 'wholly other', perhaps by looking at how
the other attaches a context? 'You must find me
enigmatic' [dick!].
Certainly the phrase can be repeated, which is
interesting. It should not be seen as purely
formal, because there is some event implied, and
there is some sort of implied affection, some
necessary reception. There is a risk in that the
other may 'ill receive what is thus otherwise
said', and the risk is inherent.
There is a context, evident from using it in this
particular work, which is somehow connected
specifically to the work of Levinas. Indeed, the
'he' might be Levinas. This leads us to the
question of how individuals acquire proper names
[maybe] while ordinary pronouns can be
substituted. The point seems to be 'to renounce
the anonymous neutrality of the discourse' (408)
which seems to be addressed to anyone, to an
anonymous reader. Readers are not anonymous, but
are anticipated in an address.
Is it possible to address and genuinely give
something to Levinas, especially when he seems to
suggest that any movement towards the Other
requires 'ingratitude' [which might be connected
to the symbolic violence of the gift in Mauss,
which does sort of appear later on]. Certainly to
give something to someone implies some conformity
to what they want and thus a 'circle of debt and
restitution' which somehow has to be negotiated.
It might be that debts are always 'anachronic' and
show 'dissymetry' (409). [This might be linked to
the notion of obligation?] [I think Derrida then
overdoes it and says that some sort of complete
conformity is necessary if we wish to give
something to a {person's} work]. Faults are
endemic.
There may even be an injunction not to return a
gift, but merely receive one, and this involves
the receiver in a gift of compliance,
paradoxically enough. This sort of paradox
apparently is '"anterior" to all logic', and there
is no way to escape. 'Nothing is more difficult
than to accept a gift' (410) because it means a
necessary conformity to receive and reaffirm it.
Generalising, 'the gift of the other' has the same
characteristics, implying some prior conformity.
The term gift itself embodies this paradox
[implying something freely given as well as
something carrying an obligation?]. It is possible
to conceive of 'radical ingratitude' that rejects
the whole system. We have to be clear what we mean
when we say that we want to give something back to
Levinas — does that mean a gift within the normal
system of exchange and commerce, or a radical kind
of giving, something that necessarily breaks with
the normal notion of presence because that is
dominated by economic logic, and not something
merely impersonal, implied by using infinitives.
Radical giving must imply a genuine other. In this
argument we see how language contains an
overflowing excess if it is to work, although that
still implies linearity.
What if the other evokes the desire for the gift
in the first place, but without implying an
obligation [this might happen if it is a gift
given to 'anyone', or to someone so unique that
obligation does not apply to them]. This might be
at stake in Levinas's notion of sincerity
[implying someone unique and therefore detached
from social obligation?]. There might still be a
fault implied in such giving. [Somehow we ramble
on to people dictating to others what to give, and
how this would also severely affect social
obligations, not least by confusing who would
count as the actual giver and whether this is a
proper kind of gift].
[Turning to the problem of criticising Levinas --
giving him something] How are works created? How
do people write in the present while alluding to
things that are not present, something that is
produced by an excess, something anachronous [in
other words how can we write about something that
is wholly other?]. What is not present always
leaves a trace, but the problem is to indicate
something which must be absolutely foreign [this
is what I once tried to say about the
impossibility of Absolute Otherness?]. Can
language be open to the wholly other? Can
otherness be negotiated without compromising
otherness , rendering it as the same after all?
This is Levinas's major theme, and he seems to
recommend that we try to respond 'to the Other',
prioritise otherness not the conventions of the
situation. This would be a responsible response,
but this can also be interrogated.
[The speaker then reads a long section from
Levinas about responsibility which involves
exposure of self to the other '"prior to every
decision"' (413). This will alienate the subject
from his own identity. At the moment, people seem
to act as a me not an ego, which implies an
assigned identity, requiring continual
confirmation — even in phrases like "here I am",
the I is actually still an accusative. This is a
passive subjectivity, more passive than just an
effect of a cause, because it is incorporated into
the very notion of 'I think'. Subjects only
achieve identities by '"restlessness that drives
me outside of the nucleus of my substantiality"'.
This sounds a bit like Lacan and the deadly
permanent and never satisfied entanglement with
the other].
Even so, Levinas seems to exempt himself –
[Derrida seems to argue that anyone who claims a
proper name, a signature, is making this claim]. L
quotes people saying 'here I am', cites them. [NB
Levinas is addessed from now on as E.L, permitting
a clever pun, said someone I read -- sounds like
'elle'] The implication is that the self presence
of subject [for everybody else?] is illusory, that
there is this prior passivity [just like Althusser
and hailing?].
Does it matter if the subject in this case is male
or female?. Levinas is noting the ambiguities and
paradoxes suggests that these haunt [sic, 414]
ordinary language. He likes to imply the presence
of the other without ever actually letting it
appear, in the form of a response, which can even
be rhetorical,[token acceptance of others,but
still only if they are in our image?]
intended to be communicated, implying an
accusative [illustrated with a chunk of Song
of Songs where someone realises that love is
also necessary loss?]. But that is spoken by a
woman — why is this not developed?
Sexual difference must be secondary [to the
philosophical interest in abstract formal
implications of forms of address, with all its
anachronistic and paradoxical tendencies, and
'normative constraints' (415)]. [Very easy
charge to make of anyone not putting sexual
difference at the very centre of their work ie not
a feminist]. Levinas recognises the necessity of
contact with the stranger, but promptly
incorporates that, manages it. Implications are
lost when the 'agrammaticality of the gift' (416)
is expressed in traditional grammar, as when I is
not nominative but actually accusative. Language
carries on as before, even if it is interrupted
and disconcerted now and then. Sometimes this
disruption is managed by incorporating quotations
as a kind of witness but also as an accused,
[something which cannot act on its own but is
spoken or written about?]. These gifts are
indispensable to logos and vice versa [maybe].
Levinas constantly talks about 'this book' or
'this work', and for that matter, 'this moment',
but also refers to himself in a series of '"one
musts"', a constant slide between active and
passive, constant reversion to quotations
[this is then illustrated with reference to one of
Levinas's books — it seems to be describing the
strange moment at which academics speak in the
first person, and then pretend that they are
describing something objective, something which
controls them?] Derrida notes that this always
implies some outside context for a book. He also
refers to the 'code of the University
community' (417) as responsible for these
manoeuvres, lending a necessary presence to
'"present work"'.
Levinas apparently sees subjectivity as a form of
hostage-taking or substitution. Somehow, this is
open to being called utopian [which seems to
involve claiming to be a simple subject, even
though modern man's 'modernity explodes as an
impossibility of staying at home']. Levinas tries
to cover himself by saying that humanity has never
been able to stay in its place. This somehow leads
to responsibility for the other [because even
claiming to be a self-sufficient subject in the
here and now still does not shut out the other?].
This works only by accepting a certain level of
equivocation and contamination as necessary, and
by thinking of the outside as ungraspable, even by
dialectic.[Probably citing Levinas again]
Individuality means a state of election, being
called forth from the self, from the people, and
involves responding to responsibility, in effect
saying 'here I am for the others'. Necessarily
involves a certain hypocrisy, contamination by
equivocation. This is a necessary part of being
[also seems to imply violence]. Preserving
humanity means deregulating the essence of being,
leading to concepts like the just war, military
honour, a certain 'relaxing virility without
cowardice' (419), as a compensation for everyday
cruelty, and for never being able to fully
'consummate' the union with the other.
Derrida comments that this conveys upon 'this
book' a certain singularity, seriality and rigour,
even virility. It provides a radical critique of
philosophical items [philosophemes], undermining
all the existing 'formulas', as Levinas calls
them, and he includes those he has used. In his
own work, he says he is not out to restore any
concepts, including the subject, now held hostage
[to others?], including the subject of this book:
no proper names are adequate, only pronouns,
implied names, the possibility of any actual
signatures. This explains the ambiguity of the
opening phrase about he is obligated, and the
difficulty of simply replacing 'he' with the name,
Levinas. [Very heavy weather to make of this
ambiguity where the pronouns mean specific people
on the one hand, but also any people on the
other?]
The interlocutor points out that this leaves them
with a problem of how to read any work, and asks
whether pronouns can be substituted for any other
name. Does it hint at absolute otherness?. The
problem is to know what to do with 'the network of
quotation marks' (421) inevitably involved in
reading: a particular work in effect quotes the
whole language which is is written in, and
signatures only fix the problem temporarily. If
the claim is that there is something indicated by
a pronoun outside quotation, it would be
impossible to say anything about him. The very
process of seriality turns things into
conventional languages.
We need to address the whole operation producing
specific works, how some technical and productive
operation is alluded to by the specific arguments
of work. There can be no hermeneutic circling,
because Levinas denies any circularity, and refers
instead to dislocation as language opens itself to
otherness. Yet, by stressing the infinite
operation of quotation, how can anything outside
be referenced?
There must be some particular obligation involved
here, something without constraint, something
'anterior to any engagement' (422). We have ended
the relations of contract and gift and are left
only with 'dissymmetrical responsibility', which
might have implications for sexual difference.
It is clearly difficult, perhaps impossible to
write like this, however, explaining Levinas's
work [without buying absolute otherness]. How do
we perform [sic] such a writing that would respond
adequately, without reintroducing all the stuff
about presence and essence. We might accept that
our writing is specific, a specific calling forth,
in the most banal way, 'the condition of the least
virtuoso writing'. The may be problems with seeing
this as performative as a result, so Derrida
proposes that we abandon the classic definitions.
He is really talking about the performative as a
prior structure, presupposed in every proposition,
acknowledging the inevitable traces of speaking in
the present.
Technically, every written word in a series could
be replaced and rethought, establishing an
absolute difference with conventional meanings.
But some attachment must also remain to the actual
words and expressions, at least in the sense that
not all replacements would be acceptable [very
confused, I think].Not all replacements can be
seen as equivalent, and none absolute. Instead,
they might be thought of as faulty. Syntax comes
to the rescue here, because it can help pronouns
appear to be active subjects and authors, agents.
This is not the responsibility of individuals,
however, merely that possibilities might appear or
disappear, at least in language, but not in the
sense of a real border. Nevertheless, the absolute
other 'he' appears only 'by means of a series of
words that are all faulty, and that I have, as it
were, erased in passing… While leaving to them the
force of their tracing' (424). It is this trace
that opens the possibility of the other.
This is a gripping process, involving a series as
'a stringed sequence of enlaced erasures [and]
interruptions… Hiatuses [which open to normal
social relations with others]'. This is what D
means by seriasure. This process ends with the
other, who is not granted the status of subject or
signer of the work, but rather 'a "he" without
authority', a pronoun, something which precedes a
signature. Such pronouns might then be given a
personal name, although still not claiming full
authority as a subject or agent, not so much a
creator of the work rather someone who 'lets the
work work', not as a simple passivity, but as
something more profound. It moves beyond essence
[as well as beyond normal understandings of
authorship?], But not not just as a [gestural]
transgression. It arises from the provocation of
the absolute Other.
As the syntax indicates [in skilled hands] there
is also an implied future, a further step in the
seriasure, some notion that this work 'will have
obligated'. There might be a hint of Hegelian
teleology here, which is also echoed in the usual
interpretation of the phrase [that this revelation
will be produced as some kind of historical
necessity?]. However, again, something novel
is being implied, something without philosophical
teleology, something that [denies the conventional
links between past present and future, and thus
moves beyond conventional ontology {and may be
presupposed by it}].
This implied future does not depend on the action
of a subject in the present. Obligation of this
kind can perform within the seriasure, following
on from an originally a anonymous subject, which
remains as a trace. Levinas here talks about
superimposition, where even effacing traces leaves
'a traced wake' (426), form of contamination.
[There are also lots of gripping implications,
apparently for signs as traces, 426].
One contamination, between the anonymous 'he' and
the specific one is not entirely negative. It is a
positive trace, it makes possible our
producing work and also examining its actual
performance, and the operation of saying something
in the first place [maybe]. [Anonymity, implying
an outside, always leaves a trace in personal
subjectivity expressed in personal language?].
This is an forced, but appears in any reading,
distinguishing an argument as a work, but also
attending to what it specifically says and what it
could have said otherwise. That is the fundamental
'dislocation' (427), and it provides a kind of
constant opening of meaning, which we can
understand as 'a performance [of the] wholly
other'. We cannot just read a work as subjective
expression. That's why we must read it and respond
to it, and when we do, we will encounter
otherness, or in Levinas's terms '"the Other can
dispossess me of my work… I am not fully aware
what I want to do"'.
Works like this, [with the W, as in Barthes?] are
not reducible to the same, nor are they just an
exercise within an agreed game. Instead, they show
'"ethics itself", beyond even thinking and the
thinkable'. They offer a 'liturgy' [a paticularly
public eg religioius form of speaking or
writing?], something which is not purely
instrumental, and is thus beyond normal thinking
and calculation. This is what Levinas obligates us
to consider, this fundamental dissymetry, and we
cannot refuse it unless we wish to resort to
ordinary thought again [I think in the specific
context of sexual difference].
[The female interlocutor says] — does this work
comprehend me? Is it not already sexed by
referring to 'he' which is then glossed to refer
to anybody's? The work apparently comes from the
other not the same, but returns to the same
nonetheless. This unique seriasure returns to
conventionality, even though Levinas might have
refused to acknowledge the usual notions of
subjectivity. This leads to further criticisms,
like whether Works are not contaminated by normal
works. In one of Levinas's pieces, he refers to
the son as work, for example, but also implies
that it is Work. Abandoning conventional sense and
reference seems to be justified by claiming there
is some other link to sense and reference, but
this stuff about sons and paternity [in Totality
and Infinity] looks really conventional. Did he
mean to refer to a child of either sex? Is he
suggesting that daughters can't play a similar
role? Even if really meaning child of either sex
,why did he choose the term son? Is he indifferent
to sexual difference?
What is the relation between the Other and the
other sex?, Is the Other beyond sexual difference?
Why does Levinas still refer to himself with
masculine pronouns, especially if he really means
all others [another commentator has noticed this
too, apparently, so note 6 says — Derrida himself
in another essay on Levinas!]. Other bits of
Levinas do seem to separate the feminine from the
Other, and surrender sexual difference secondary
and derivative compared to the 'sexually
non-marked wholly other' (430). This always
delivers the mark of masculinity as something
before all other distinctions: the Other is
masculine. Elsewhere, Levinas seems to imply that
the feminine fits nicely into his schema as a
category of [empirical] being, while feminists
occasionally want to ask whether this is
domesticating them.
In a passage on Judaism, Levinas says that
femininity is an attribute, fully conformable with
its '"human essence"' (431), as in Hebrew where
the word woman implies that she comes from man,
and thus grammatical expression reflects
ontological expression. Man and woman are both
natural and equal but sexual life, because it is
personal, is a subordination of that equality.
This is an ancient truth regardless of current
fights the female emancipation. Men are the
prototype of human being. And more recently,
Levinas argues that human being was dichotomised,
but that femininity is '"a secondary matter"', not
women themselves, but associated only with
relationships with a man, as a '"primordial human
plan"'. Man accomplishes that plan. Levinas
acknowledges that this displaces feminine
specificity from the '"height of the oppositions
constitutive of Spirit"' and argues that the
further problem is to show how a demand for
equality of the sexes could proceed from masculine
dominance. His own solution is to say that women
and femininity have come after men, and that this
constitutes their sameness, although women are
still only '"an appendix to the human"'.
The female interlocutors says that each step in
this argument can be questioned, especially the
way in which the masculine becomes the dominant
term in each statement of difference, why it is
the prior form while sexual difference only
appears secondarily. Of course, it might be that
Levinas is commenting upon others 'at this very
moment' as he says, without taking sides. However,
neutrality will not do because it is still
consistent with 'a whole network of affirmations'
associated with masculinity. Further, neutral
commentary is a political choice, not to contest
what is written in the text being commented upon.
[Then there is a little play on the way in which
E.L alludes to 'elle']. Sexual alterity is
secondary and not addressed in the great Work, and
this is a way of mastering sexual difference, 'the
very thing that ought not to have been mastered'
(433).Sexual difference is the very thing that
should not have been traced to some original
neutral state, which will inevitably be a
masculine one. Sexual difference of sexual
difference is the thing that cannot be
domesticated within communities, or economies.
Levinas's omission makes the wholly other in his
schema other itself, and other for Levinas's
otherness. The otherness of femininity is not
accounted for but remains as 'a secret or as a
symptomatic mutism' (433). As it is, remains in
the same, just in a particular region of it, not
even one with potential, or immanence like the
crypt. Not only is sexual difference itself
secondary, but femininity specifically, as an
affirmation, is secondary. Levinas can be put in
the same campus psychoanalysis here, a 'complicity
more profound than the abyss he wishes to put'
between the two.
Female sexuality is somehow outside the series,
and can only be understood as He. This desire to
exclude would be the inspiration behind the Work,
and readers would have to try to understand it
from their place as dependent or hostage, not able
to actually dominate or sign the Work for
themselves. We can see female heteronomy as in
effect writing the text 'from its other side'
(434). While she is here, she objects to the
metaphor of weaving a text because she says this
is always been connected to 'feminine
specificity', in Freud, for example.
This seems to threaten violence to Levinas's text,
by reopening a 'non-symbolisable wound' always
implied by the other ['from the past anterior of
the other']. A proper notion of femininity cannot
be found by modifying his seriasure. At least
Levinas offers a rare example in philosophy of not
simply effacing sexual marks, and perhaps would
not be surprised by feminist critique suggesting,
say, that the other is female. This critique might
also be guilty of just reversing perspectives
'while leaving the schema intact' (435).
Language is inevitably contaminated and
ungrateful, and this always has to be negotiated.
That extends to the language of the female
interlocutor as well. She does insist that she is
not criticising him, but rather Him. She is almost
inviting someone to find the faults in her own
arguments.
The problems with Levinas can be also detected in
his discussion, intended to be neutral, of the
characteristics of the name of God. For believers,
it is forbidden to efface the names of God, and
even if a mistake occurs, the thing has to be
completely destroyed. Levinas's manoeuvres around
proper names have not completely destroyed the
implications of the male pronoun or proper name,
and it will return, appearing perhaps as
introjection or some other pathology, something
that wounds, something that it is impossible to
utter.
What Levinas says about the names of God could be
said 'analogically for every proper name' (436),
implying all proper names are analogous among
themselves. We see the problems if we transfer the
proper name of man or woman into this discussion.
Levinas himself does not imply a simple analogy
'between the face of God and the face of man' [in
other work], however, and insists that the proper
name of God means something which is not reducible
to ordinary knowledge and understanding, but
implies something immanent. Yet the discussion of
epiphany refreshes the analogy. Believers trace
their lives to a past that is 'absolutely anterior
to any memory', inaccessible, and argue that
language itself can never get to the revealed
Name, because it is so open to human error and
development. Yet for Levinas, only man can manage
this fundamental uncertainty, producing his
'"unparalleled straightforwardness"' (437). At the
same time, all human language risks contamination
and abuse of the Name.
So back to a discourse which applies empirical
differences to absolute otherness [maybe]. The
course are problems or faults, 'always, already'.
As a critic, she has thematised something which is
beyond Levinas's own themes, and enclosed his work
in a different seriasure. It is clear that he
could not sign this himself. Therefore it is a
contamination, not only an inevitable one, a
general necessity, but one specifically traceable
to her status as a woman. This is being unfaithful
to Levinas, but in a way, this ingratitude helps
her 'give myself up to what is work says of the
Work'.
It is also true that 'in everything I'm talking
about, jealousy is at stake' [a big plus for
Kamuf's own theme]. In Levinas, there is a
specific discussion of the relation between God
and jealousy. He is exempt from any jealousy, for
any desire any need to guard, and when we relate
to him we must also purify ourselves of jealousy.
But this stance itself 'cannot not guard itself
jealously' (438). As some eternal past of
humanity, 'is the very possibility of all
jealousy' Seriasuare is thus a jalousie [Venetian
blind] which guards or preserves the state of
being without jealousy, something which partly
conceals itself, with jealousy appearing and then
retreating.
Overall, if she has succeeded in limiting
Levinas's notion of the other after all, then she
herself has obligated with the same force as him.
Derrida returns to say that he is not sure about
all this, whether her interpretation is what he is
actually saying or something contrary to it,
probably because he has 'the difficulty
distinguishing [your voice] from mine', so he
can't grasp the specific feminine obligation and
fault after all.
Kamuf's Preface and Intro
develops this theme of the centrality of jealousy
as a way of finding a thread through Derrida's
work without particularly distorting or imposing
themes of her own. We are to read it through the
blinds, fully acknowledging that Derrida resists
easy translation, And resisting herself tendencies
to speak of a single theory or method of
deconstruction. The trick is not to betray the
text, while making it accessible, but without
turning into a manual. She comes to think of
jealousy as a term pointing to some way out of
inevitable betrayal of either kind. She means 'a
web of relations that all pass through jealousy'
(xxi). She remembers the phrase in the section
above that jealousy is at stake in everything. It
is worth addressing what Derrida meant by
jealousy, thematisng it.
Jealousy invokes movement both for and against,
something which provokes movement of this kind
[when encountering others?], and this is why it is
at stake in everything. The fact that it appears
as a feminine voice in the above implies that it
'took shape through a kind of silent dictation',
that the interlocutor put it on the agenda. She
thinks there is a jealous movement detectable in
this [ventriloquism]. It might even be that
Derrida jealously guards his absence of a full
discussion of jealousy.
So what is at stake? Jealousy is always doubled,
and can become jealous of itself. It is not just a
simple attribute attached to a subject, but is
always 'jealousy of the other'. It will be too
simple to ask whose jealousy is at stake. We know
that at one level it is the jealousy of God, which
Derrida cites a few times, where God demands
devotion but refuses to manifest himself, or offer
any kind of substitute — he 'cannot tolerate a
double, a replacement, a representative' (xxiii).
This seems to stand outside divine reason, being
contrary to reason — Moses sees the burning bush
as a metaphor for jealousy, as an appearance
actually produced by the movement of jealousy,
jealousy appearing but without a specific name and
face.
Derrida follows this theme through in several
places, such as where God displays jealousy
towards the Tower of Babel [because Babel is also
one of his names in the language of the Shemites].
God's jealousy is reacting to the jealousy of the
people who built the Tower, who wanted to
appropriate the name of God. However, God had to
in some way manifest himself, whatever the risk
'in order to reach men's ears and constrain them
to hear His name above all others', an original
example of 'difference from itself' (xxv). While
we are here, jealousy and zealotry have the same
route, and both implies some excess. [but above
all, some attempt to regulate the other and their
use of what is ours?]
It is all very fanciful and literary and
wonderful, and also appears in the discussion of
the signature [Derrida refers to a 'seign', an
archaism, which sounds like the word for breast,
which implies the jealousy that God might feel for
the mythical originating mother, linking to
Freud's discussion saying that the mother's milk
was the source of all jealousy, especially
feminine jealousy, misnamed as penis envy. By a
marvellously contorted argument, Kamuf links the
French term deja as a way of routinising jealousy
[maybe]. Derrida even talks about 'dejalouser',
meaning to de-jealousise, which further means
opening yourself to the other.
All sorts of other clever reading shows the
increasing theme of jealousy in all the selections
that she is chosen. For example the commentary on
Freud 'is all about jealousy', seeing Freud
speculations as constantly marked or pushed along
by 'a jealous devil who keeps interrupting the
representation whenever it has the audacity to
replace him with a counterfeit'. Derrida
speculates about what the devil might be that
keeps Freud writing, the drive behind the
speculation, whether it is or not a death drive,
or something combining desire and a death drive, a
kind of 'deferred suicide'.
Generally, wherever otherness is involved 'there
is force, drive, movement — jealousy' (xxviii). It
informs writing and its movement, and is shown in
the contradiction between wanting to extend a
particular 'logic of the proper'[conventional
attempts to theorise and to keep consistent
concepts?] with a more powerful 'hetero logic',
resisting enclosure. Jealousy here is 'the drive
of the proper', and it must always be defeated,
hence maintained, because the other can never be
fully appropriated, nor left beyond reach.
This might lead to political irresponsibility,
especially if connected to sexual relations, or
seen as some natural component of all social
relations. This might itself be a reaction 'on the
part of jealous watchdogs of "right thinking"'
(xxix), or might itself be produced by jealousy.
Feminist politics might just be a response to male
attempts to possess their own women, a real cause
for resentment, a matter of real sexual and
economic oppression, but, in danger of appearing
therefore as merely contingent, not structural as,
say, penis envy is, implying in turn that women
are or could be without jealousy.
There is as usual a problem of linking Derrida's
wonderfully abstract notion of jealousy with the
real actual jealousies. But there is no single
solution. It might be simply down to an excess of
zeal for notions of individuality, as in the
signature, one which is shared in a pathological
way.
[Then there is an extended commentary on the
discussion of jealousy in the extract above].
Jealousy should be seen as a positive force,
'remarking a difference' (xxxvi). It might be
inherent in any difference, even in, say,
philosophical debate. There will be 'multiple
motifs of jealousy', probably which can never be
exhaustively pinned down. It is not just that
philosophers are influenced by mundane jealousies,
more that jealousy produces [all?] desire and is
found in every difference, quite often veiled or
curtained, even covered by a Venetian blind. Veils
and curtains are big themes in Derrida.
Perhaps, [in the middle of a lengthy discussion of
parts of the body] the discussion of the hymen
illustrates motifs of jealousy particularly well.
It is inherently ambiguous, and the source of many
metaphors, and differences, and thus a
particularly good location defining jealousy
between people. It is both a way of separating out
the virginal, but also an old term for marriage
which consummates itself by rupturing the hymen —
it is something between, something dividing,
something that marks sexual difference, and also
something between people. In that way, it takes on
a much more general meaning, and can become 'a
more general name for all these jealous
partitionings' (xxxvix). It's another way in which
sexual differences marked by jealousy, but not
that produced by straightforward appropriation
[perhaps more a frustration when subjective
categories and certainties are challenged by
otherness?].
That possessive jealousy still persists, although
it is often veiled or held in reserve. The
frequent mention of veiling implies that sexual
jealousy is an important stage in showing the
complications of straightforward mimetic models of
reality [in drama in this case], because it
harbours some opening to an outside, even to
absolute otherness. Derrida thinks that jealousy
mostly has to do with traces, rather than
something actually present [phrased as usual in
terms of pasts and futures not absolutely
separated from the present etc], some way of
managing others, even if it means killing them. It
is thus something that emerges between pasts and
futures again. It is a wonderful topic for
illustrating that there can be no philosophical
appeal to underlying truth behind the veils, and
that philosophers who aim for that are behaving
'like a jealous husband', trying to fix the
characteristics of what they want to possess.
In this way, we've connected jealousy to the
metaphysics of presence, and why metaphysics can
never account for jealousy. We can deconstruct
jealousy as a result, although there is no claim
that we can destroy it. We can abstract jealousy
from the 'all too human incarnations' in which it
appears [and most of the empirically available
alternatives offer simple inversions as before].
There might well be some beyond jealousy,
but we would have to go beyond these mundane
jealousies.
It is possible that philosophers and writers want
to stick with their web of jealousies not open
them up, but they can be presented as [genuine]
gifts, open discussion of the jealousies of other
writers or disputants. Writing can openly offer a
Venetian blind structure and invite people to read
between them. There is always the problem of
translation, and that can also include jealousy as
a filtering device, but the possibility of
openness remains, perhaps even as a matter of play
and laughter.
That's enough Derrida for now. Back to social theory
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