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Dr. Louis N. Sandowsky
“Café Différance”
(ex. “Café
Phenomenologicum” or “De-con-structive Evening”)
Semester 1 – Evening No. 1*
*
Transcript of a recording by Anna Shmerling (Fall – 2000)
Louis: Good
evening everyone. Sorry about the cramped conditions. I’m still negotiating
with the powers-that-be over a more suitable venue. But, as this is the very first
meeting, I hope that you’ll cut me some slack and have a good time anyway...
…Although
a beginning is a sensitive time, I’m just going to launch into it. That is
because it is something to which one must inevitably return anyway – so let’s
just celebrate the arbitrariness of the initial point and direction of the
movement and see where it takes us on the way back to the beginning.
Edmund Husserl, the father of modern phenomenology, defined his enterprise as
an “eternal return to beginnings,” and it is the spiraling pattern of this
dynamic with its deconstructive (and thus transvaluative power) that interests
me. So, please allow me to begin with a contemporary lens-piece on
phenomenology by way of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive gaze.
Jacques Derrida’s first published
book (1962) is actually a translation of Edmund Husserl’s essay, "The
Origin of Geometry." His Translator’s Introduction is a considerable work
in its own right and, in terms of its number of pages, it dwarfs the essay that
it translates. It is a radicalization of Husserlian thinking, which contributes
to the formative development of deconstructive strategy. The book's orientation
is also very much influenced by Merleau-Ponty. However, Derrida omits any
substantial references to his work. I meant to speak to him about this
surprising omission when I met him in 1992, but I didn’t find a suitable moment
to bring it up. However, I did say to him that I didn’t like his writing. I
couldn't resist mentioning this in the endnotes of my Doctoral Thesis.
Introducing myself in such a way was a purely strategic manoeuvre, which was
geared toward catching his attention at a time when he was being mobbed by the
usual sycophants and bombarded with inane questions while everyone in the room
hung on to his every utterance. The trouble is – Derrida can’t open his mouth
without someone shoving a microphone into his face….
There is a point in the Afterword
to my book, After Derrida, Before
Husserl: the Spacing Between Phenomenology and Deconstruction, where I talk
about the strategy of the text. Basically, my thesis played with a number of
Derridian techniques, which performed a kind of mirroring of Derrida’s
strategies in his readings of Husserl. He wrote two books that are really
pivotal. I’ve already mentioned the first text – a fascinating book, called, An Introduction to Husserl’s "Origin of
Geometry." It is basically a translation of an appendix to Husserl’s
last, unfinished text, called The Crisis
of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Derrida’s
introductory essay is a massive thesis in its own right – and it is enormously
important as a seminal work on phenomenological deconstruction. In 1967, he
published three books simultaneously, one of which was Speech and Phenomena. In this book, he seems to take up a
diametrically opposed orientation to his earlier text, which celebrates the
radicality of the Husserlian enterprise. It is a very weird turnaround and it
makes it very difficult to figure out what Derrida’s position is in relation to
Husserl’s phenomenology. He refers to this double-sidedness in an interview
entitled Positions. The later text, Speech and Phenomena, is the dark side –
the shadow of the former.
What I did in my thesis was mirror this
double-sided strategy, with respect to Derrida’s own discourse on
phenomenology, by taking up his invitation to re-read those in whose wake he
had written. Rather than simply talking
about the different kinds of deconstructive analyses at work in Derrida’s
writing (which I do to a certain extent), in effect, I did them. And so, this thesis is heavy on strategy. The reason for
this hard-core strategic play lay in the need to cover the ‘middle-ground’ of
what deconstruction is doing – without merely echoing its sensational (and more
popular) claims. I shall read the endnote to you.
"2. My
inspiration came from Derrida himself when I met him a few years ago during his
visit to
Basically, Speech and Phenomena is supposed to be a critique of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. This is a
pivotal text for phenomenology. It was published in 1901, it is in two volumes,
it took Husserl about ten years to write it, and it was the culmination of a
massive re-evaluation of the direction he was taking after Frege’s damaging
critique of his earlier work – The
Philosophy of Arithmetic. The Logical Investigations occupies a
static phenomenological position, whereas in the earlier Philosophy of Arithmetic Husserl tried to take constitution and
time into account – which brought him very close to a kind of Humean
psychologistic perspective. The point is that all the texts, all the
commentaries, which are focused on Derrida’s engagement with Husserl in Speech and Phenomena, look purely at his
analysis of the limits of the Logical
Investigations. But, actually it is just a ruse. What Derrida is really
interested in is Husserl’s Phenomenology
of Internal Time Consciousness – a
text that is based on lectures that were presented in 1905 (with appendices
from 1910), but were not published until 1928. Derrida’s re-reading of
Husserl’s lectures on time consciousness actually provides the basic
theoretical matrix that is at work in his discourse on ‘différance’ and
‘trace’. The logics of this will come out over the next few weeks.
Derrida’s writing is full of
misappropriations and misdirections. He is an artist. Hitchcock is another
favourite of mine who liked to use a form of sleight of hand in his work. He
had a wonderful trait of throwing in clues to misdirect the audience. This
forces us to work a little harder. In my text, After Derrida, Before Husserl, I didn’t want to take the same route
as other commentators have done. I actually wanted to do something that was
quite Derridian in style, which is why I told him that I hated his writing –
just a little bit of misdirection to get his attention.
A student: Playing
his own game.
Louis: Absolutely!
By the way, Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations was Martin Heidegger’s
principal text on phenomenology with respect to its treatment of categorial
intuition (parts and wholes), and it is basically ‘The Bible’ for most
phenomenologists. In this text, Husserl also talks about a variety of different
forms of signification that are at work in discourse – including discourse with
oneself. His meticulous descriptions of these forms disclose a complex manifold
of different intentional structures of experience. When we express ourselves,
there is a different self-relation to what is said than that of the one who is
listening. This is also expressed in the analytical linguistic school – e.g.,
Derrida comes along and says that
this is not quite right. Basically, if there is to be meaning, then, first of
all, the condition of the possibility of meaning lies in a certain structure of
repeatability. And, its repeatability
relies on the structure of difference and deferral, which are borne out of
indication. It turns the whole argument on its head. What he is doing is
drawing from classical material – from Plato, and specifically the Phaedrus, where Socrates talks about the
purity of live speech, live discourse, and how a written text is a lifeless
representation, and therefore is not to be trusted. Derrida effectively
deconstructs this ancient prejudice, which, he maintains, has repeated itself
throughout the history of Western metaphysics. For instance, when one considers
Chapter Ten of Plato’s Republic,
entitled, “On Art”, we are introduced to the thought of the work of the artisan
as being more noble than that of the artist. For Plato’s Socrates of The
Republic, the ‘real world’ is a world of ideal forms – those that are
originally intuited by the artisan in the construction of a table, a
construction that, in a sense, always refers to the pure form as its material
representation. Plato’s limited idea of the notion of art introduces an
impoverished interpretation of its function – where it is reduced to the mere
representation of material forms, which are already merely representations of
transcendent forms. In other words, Plato maintains that art is nothing more
than a representation of a representation. The work of the artisan is
considered to be nobler because, as a first-order representation, it is meant
to represent something original – it refers to a true originary source.
Derrida turns this whole structure
on its head. His principal thesis is that if we are to talk about ‘presence’,
it is only possible, because of the structure of ‘re-presentation’. Usually,
the particle ‘re’ is added after the
event. We normally begin by thinking about something that is ‘present’, which
is then repeated. Derrida reverses the order – it is only through the ‘structure of iterability’
/ ‘repeatability’ that things can stand-out as ‘present’. We find this
logic concerning the primacy of the ‘possibility’ of repeatability in
Kant and many other philosophers too: that ‘cognition is primarily a matter of
re-cognition’. So, what Derrida is saying is that, basically, the principal
motivation that has traced itself throughout the history of Occidental
philosophy, is the desire for ‘immanence’ / pure unmediated ‘presence’ – which
includes such senses as ‘to be in close proximity to’, ‘knowing oneself,’
‘being at one with what one is saying’ – without the value of the sign. In a
sense, the whole tradition since Plato (Derrida maintains that this includes
Husserl’s phenomenology) has cast the ‘sign’ into a secondary position. He
wants to put the whole question of the ‘sign’ right back into the foreground of
philosophical thinking (or writing). So, basically, he inaugurates a critique
of this distinction between ‘expression’ and ‘indication’ – which carries with
it an implicit ethical and metaphysical hierarchy.
However, if we loop this back onto
Husserl’s discourse on the differences between indication and expression, the
logic appears to go awry. We express ourselves through words that we utter, and
we don’t have to first indicate what we are saying to ourselves in order to say
it. Husserl maintains that this would be absurd. Why should expression be
riddled through and through with indication? That would mean that I first have
to indicate what I want to say, before I can actually say it, or that I have to
indicate to myself what I am saying after I have said it, in order to
understand what I already wanted to say. So, we get caught up in kind of an
infinite regress. Here, absurdity equals redundancy, and if we take into
account the actual context of Husserl’s distinction between indication and
expression we find a perfectly legitimate argument against Derrida’s reversal
of the hierarchy. Husserl argued against psychologism and representation (or
phenomenalistic) theories of perception, which basically say that any
intuition, any representation must first be represented. This is a circular
logic, which suggests that representation requires representation of the
representation, and so on. This leads to an infinite regress. Husserl cut out
the whole infinite regress with the development of his discourse on
intentionality.
A
Student: So,
Husserl is saying that we are always transparent to ourselves?
Louis: Not
exactly. Living in one’s speech is not equal to having a ‘total grasp’ of the
meaningful resonances that are in play. What Husserl means when he says that we
are living in the act of speech is
that we don’t represent it to ourselves. It is not as if there is some kind of
‘intermediary’ between myself and meaning, myself and world, or myself and
myself – or a gap between
consciousness and world that needs to be bridged by signs. That would be a
Cartesian view. To understand consciousness properly means that I am living in the gap – where ‘gap’ is to be
valued only as a metaphor since it is just as correct to say that we are living
in the ‘intertwining.’ This is the meaning of intentionality – where living in
one’s speech is to live through an intentional directedness toward
something. One is already living ‘in’ the relation.
For instance, if I am to speak to
you, you first have to make sense of what I am saying. You have to refer to
your own life experience, to your own understanding of the language, of the terminology
that I am using – and you make inferences, you try to figure out the meaning.
Because I am the speaker, I don’t have to do that. This would be Husserl’s
argument regarding the redundancy of indication in this sphere. However,
Derrida wants to raise the issue of the ‘sign’ to a kind of transcendental
level by looking at the fundamental structure of signification, e.g.,
‘repetition’, ‘iterability,’ ‘representation.’ This dimension actually precedes
meaning as the condition of the possibility of its presence. It is only by the
play of difference and association through repetition that there can be such a
thing as the presence of meaning, since all meaning is constructed, maintained,
and dissolved in time. The word ‘maintenance’ is important here. Not only does
it make reference to the ‘now’ (maintenant in French), but it also means
‘to hold in one’s hand.’ Derrida is a Neo-Heideggerian – it is very much a case
of the ‘ready to hand' and 'presence at hand.’ We also think of ‘maintenance’
in the sense of ‘that which is maintained through time’ – it has duration.
Derrida is bringing out the temporalizing structures of signification that must
always already be at work in the heart of expression. So, from that point of
view – he is right. But, it is far from being clear that it is an appropriate
criticism of what Husserl is doing. In any attempt to engage in the logics of
what Derrida is doing in his Speech and
Phenomena – you get caught up in a labyrinth.
Josef: What
you said just now, if I understood you correctly, is that in order to
understand what you say to me, I have to deconstruct it. In the same way – in
order to say it, I need to take something, which lies in me, deconstruct it,
and construct it a priori.
Louis: That
would certainly be Kierkegaard’s way of explaining it. Yes, very much so. And,
what’s more, he would also say that this is at work in a self-relation that
strives toward authenticity. He speaks of the movement as ‘double reflection.’
Through this discourse, particularly in his book, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard effectively lays
down a very plausible ‘speech act’ theory. However, the crucial point in his
discourse on the function of double-reflection has to do with authenticity or
emancipation, and operates on a different level to Husserl’s discourse in the Logical Investigations.
A
Student: Could
you please explain in a few words: what is deconstruction?
Louis: All right…if you like
labyrinths then that is a good place to start – deconstruction.
With that you are probably
wondering why I called this meeting “Cafe
Phenomenologicum.” Because, Derrida repeatedly says that he is a
phenomenologist. He is a phenomenologist indeed.
The word, deconstruction is to be
related to two elements in phenomenology. One can be found in the work of
Edmund Husserl, and the other, in the work of Martin Heidegger. In Husserl, we
have a method known as ‘reduction’ or ‘bracketing’: the epoché. It is a method
that is central to phenomenological praxis and yet it represents something of a
conundrum in itself. Throughout Husserl’s career, its various forms of
implementation became more and more sophisticated.
In the later genetic analyses,
where he is interested in what constitutes consciousness over time (bottom-up,
so to speak), he required a particular form of reflective orientation on the
formation of the many sedimentations (memory traces) that are in play.
Husserl’s discourse on the ‘Ego as substrate of habitualities’ in the text of
the Cartesian Meditations is one mode
of access to this dimension of activity in passivity and passivity in activity.
Whenever you make a decision, you
don’t have to keep repeating that decision at a conscious level again and
again. In a sense, it sinks down into the sedimented depths of consciousness,
where it continues to trace itself as an ‘abiding style,’ a characteristic way
of engaging with situations as they crop up. These layers of sedimentations
form the genetic constitution of consciousness – our development, our
maturation, and our distinctive style.
In order to arrive at this genetic
orientation, he instituted a particular form of reflective shift within the
horizon of the ‘epoché.’ This is the method of Abbau – which literally means
‘to un-build.’ It is a method of de-construction whose inverse correlate is Aufbau, which marks the possibility of a
re-construction. This is not to be confused with Heidegger’s project regarding
‘the destruction of Western metaphysics or onto-theology.’ To provide some
background to this, it is important to understand that Heidegger was very much
aware that when we engage in discourse on the meaning of Being, we have to do
so, using the very language that we wish to examine critically. This is why
Heidegger is unable to disentangle his inquiry on Being from the detour through
that being which asks the question of the meaning of Being. So, there is a
problem. However, there is something very violent about the notion of
‘destruction.’ And, it harbours a naïve hope of completion and a clean
beginning.
Language cannot be cleansed from
the manifold ways in which it clings to metaphysics. In a sense, all that one
can really do is use that language with a careful degree of irony. When Derrida
comes along, he re-inserts the ‘con’
back into de-struction, thereby putting
the eschatological moment into suspense with de-con-struction. Here, the ‘con’ is the ‘against’ which
simultaneously implies ‘concatenation:’ – inter-wovenness – the bringing
together of differences precisely as they stand out against one another as differences.
There is a re-constructive element that can not be ignored. It announces a
procedure that has the capacity for endlessly creative work through the play of
difference or différance. In that respect, Derrida is closer to the
Husserlian orientation, in which ‘Abbau’ and ‘Aufbau’ are intertwined.
Re-construction remains a highly problematic notion in Heidegger’s writing. It
is true that rather than wanting to forge ahead, he only desired to get to
where he already was, but the text of Being and Time demonstrates that
it was not possible to recuperate the ground that had been lost through the
detour that originally defined the twists and turns of its rigorous
interrogation of the meaning of Being. Of course, there are most definitely
re-constructive elements in Heideggerian phenomenology, which Derrida brings
out through the operation of the ‘con’ in de-con-struction. I think that
Derrida re-reads Heidegger through Husserlian eyes, and when he re-reads
Husserl, he does so through Heidegger. So, whenever Derrida is engaged with
phenomenology, there is a whole pluri-vocal dimension – there are many voices
occurring.
Deconstruction, here, picks up on
Heidegger’s attitude with respect to the language that is used in the process
of destruction or deconstruction. The very language that is supposed to be
available for critique is the very same language that is unfolding that
critique. So, basically, deconstruction is not a philosophy; it is not a system
– it is u-topic /‘no place’ /
non-lieu – it does not take up a position. Derrida’s deconstruction is a kind
of ‘quasi-parasitical’ praxis. It insinuates itself within the philosophy that
opens itself up to critical analysis – deconstruction. It does not do so from an outside. If it did engage from
outside – there would be nothing more than an argument. There is no argument.
The language of philosophy, indeed, all language must ultimately deconstruct
itself – the reason being that there is no other language. There is no other
great meta-language beyond to which we can appeal. We have this language – that
is all.
Josef: I
have a question. You presented us with a certain aspect of language – you said
that speaking with a language is like picking yourself up by your own
bootstraps.
Louis: Yes, I like that metaphor.
Josef: When
you say one thing, you get at least a double meaning, if not a lot of meanings.
Now, deconstruction – if I understood well what you said now – means that you
try to look beyond the straight meaning of the thing, into the meanings within
the meanings of the language itself,
which the language carries in itself…
Louis: That’s right.
Josef: And
– well, what are you trying to do?
Louis: Very good point, and I
hope that we will begin to discuss this at length over the next few weeks.
It seems, at first glance, that
Derrida is just playing games. He has had to answer to many accusations –
ranging from the criticism that his writing is philosophically frivolous to the
view that it is basically nihilistic and destructive. However, the true power
and subtlety of his arguments elude such labelling. For instance, Derrida has
always maintained that he is not simply indulging in negative theology.
Josef: You
take apart a watch, and then you have all these things in front of you. I don’t
even know if you want to put them together, but they have no meaning as a
watch. Now they are just screws, pieces, springs, etc. I see them, but I still
want the watch. If the whole process is just to see the screws, it is not
interesting…
Louis: That
is not what Derrida is doing.
Josef: (I
am sure it is not.) But, this means that we want to see the meaning behind the
meaning, which means – what brought us to thinking that.
Louis: What you are doing now
is giving us a hermeneutic, which is Heidegger’s programme. That is where
Derrida diverges from what Heidegger is doing.
Basically, a hermeneutical program
looks at linguistic traditions, etymologies, the contextual usage of words, lexical
associations, semantical relations of significance, structural rules and
orthographic changes, etc. and tries to get back to some kind of original
meaning. Derrida would say that there is no original meaning to uncover.
A Student: I
have read about this kind of analysis of signs in language, which are
everywhere when we think about Derrida. When we unfold the language we unfold
the signs, and then we get the deconstruction of the thought and we see the
language in different perspectives.
Louis: Right. This is a very
interesting point.
A
Student: I
also think about différance in connection
with Lacan and psychological criticism.
Louis: All right. Yes, indeed.
And, Lacan’s discourse on the unconscious
as a field that is structured rather like a language is very much influenced by
Ferdinand de Saussure, who was mentioned earlier. He is a pivotal figure here.
In his Course in General Linguistics
he spoke of language not as a system of finite meanings, but as a system of
differences. It is only through difference that meaning can be constituted. So,
in a sense, we are looking at the space between. This is very important for
Derrida.
I have always liked to see
deconstruction as a kind of textual analogue to psychoanalysis. If we look at
the structures of language, the symbolic performances at work, we are often
unaware of these mechanisms. In a way, Derrida is a contemporary Socrates. He
is getting us to question, at the deepest level, what we mean by meaning. It is
a classic philosophical question – what is the meaning of meaning? Now, the
questioning must inevitably turn toward the non-present condition of the
possibility of meaning – in a sense, to go beneath the meaning. There are a few different ways of engaging
with this…. To go beneath the meaning in these terms is to turn to the
structurality of meaning, e.g., relations of difference and similarity,
symbolic associations, a network of signs and structures – which is actually an
a semic space. But, is this not still an attempt to unearth ‘the’
source, the ‘foundation’? The telos of such an interrogation would be pure and
immediate disclosure of origins. However, although Derrida takes this route to
a certain extent, he actually puts the telos into suspense. The discourse on
the ‘trace’ is a prime example of this deferment of the issue of a primordial
source or starting point. It actually signifies the erasure of an origin.
Furthermore, although he constantly plays with metaphysical constructions, he
does so through a constant process of substitution that permits certain
transvaluative shifts in orientation.
Derrida substitutes metaphysical
names like time, space, consciousness, with a variety of neologisms and
familiar terms made strange, e.g., spacing, temporizing, disseminating,
tracing, writing…. Actually, he substitutes ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ and
everything else with ‘textuality.’ He is often being misrepresented in
reference to his saying that there is
nothing outside the text. This is the famous Derridian declaration. A
number of very pedestrian philosophers came along protesting that he was just
promoting a new textual form of idealism. No. When Derrida very keenly gets rid
of the author, one might think – “What’s going on? Texts don’t write
themselves, do they? Authors write them.” But, the point is that when an author
is engaged in writing (yet another footnote to Plato), he is engaging in a
tradition. The linguistic limits, narrative forms, content, goals, etc. – are,
in a sense, pre-established, because each writer is writing within a community,
and that community is, in a sense, ‘a text’. We are articulations of texts
grafted upon one another.
Mor: Then
we are not saying anything new, we are just repeating.
Louis: Although
there is still the crucial issue of style, which involves a transformational
element to repetition…. Basically, yes.
We are just using the language,
which is the outside of our inside. We cannot advance beyond the limits of the
language. If we do try to push it to its utmost limits, the language collapses
– it reaches the moment of aporia. This is where the logics fundamentally
collapse in on themselves. And, for Derrida, Gödel’s discourse on
undecidability is very important in this regard.
With all of this, we have the
disappearance of the writer. There is no source-point. All we have is endless
reiteration. No beginning and no end. In other words, there is no fundamental /
primordial meaning that we can return to – or, most importantly, there is no
arrival at a pure foundation to which we can look forward.
Derrida is basically re-situating
discourse on the role of the writer. Whenever we think of a writer, we think of
an agent, we think of an Ego – we think of a particular and
independent person. But, we are all operating within a linguistic community
that has a history, which is played out through us, and which is being
continuously re-written. The history behind us is not static. And, this is also
true of the relation between the writer and the writer – who is just as
equally, reader. We cannot actually find any kind of monolithic Ego here.
One of the things about Heidegger’s
hermeneutic is that the movement involves deconstructing the language we use so
that we can prepare the path for our arrival at the primordial meaning of
Being. But, in taking a detour through that being which asks the question of
the meaning of Being – which is Dasein
– he finds that he cannot return to the original question. He cannot articulate
it. The language won’t let him. Propositional statements always miss the target
(Heidegger’s memorable comments at the end of his essay “Time and Being” make
this abundantly clear). The thing is, that with the first half of Being and Time (which has remained the
unfinished ‘whole’ of Being and Time)
– there is still the working assumption that the project can be fulfilled. So,
even though Heidegger actually uses a number of deconstructive strategies, his analyses are still ruled by a telos.
This is Derrida’s point of view –
that Heidegger’s orientation in Being and
Time has a goal, an aim; that Heidegger thinks that he is going to get to
the end of it. There is no end to it. Take it far enough and you end up losing
all meaning, and find yourself left merely with all the nuts and bolts. And,
then you just see how it fits together. A dis-assembling of a horizontal order
doesn’t reveal very much in the way of meaning. The understanding of the ways
in which the pieces fit together has to do with grasping the ‘vertical’
dimensions of such structurality. It opens up the space for further critique
actually, rather than endless reiterations and thus merely reinventing the
wheel countless times.
So, Derrida will look at any
particular epoch in history, any particular moment, and say – here we have a
dyad, two poles, e.g. res extensa and res cogitans in Descartes, Being and
beings in Heidegger, or the opposition of the authentic and inauthentic, and so
on. Let’s go back to Plato – we’ve got a dyad there too – the world of becoming
and the world of pure forms. And, actually, here we have just a reiteration of
the old plenum / flux opposition between Parmenides and Heraclitus. So, all
this is reiteration – again and again. What Derrida does is – he takes these
arguments and pushes them to their very limits, to see what traces itself out
at the moment of collapse. And, the most fascinating Derridian directive, for
me anyway, is that there should not be any pre-established agenda at work;
deconstruction never quite knows where it is going, it must (and this is
thematized in the essay, “Différance”)
embrace both ‘chance and necessity.’
Heidegger did not know where he was
going, either – he only thought he did, but the method informed him otherwise.
Josef: We
all know, when we start writing a paper, that we don’t know it until we finish.
This is not something that springs out of your head, like Athena out of the
head of Zeus. You write what you write, and then you change what you have
written…
Louis: And, the narrative form itself
largely determines what the outcome is going to be…
Josef: Yes,
and you can be influenced also by the reaction of those who read it – that is
all true. But, saying that what you are writing or saying does not have a
certain unitas (unity) – something,
which keeps it together – is utterly untrue. We cannot accept it as said,
unless there are meanings behind this meaning, but the straight meaning is
quite impossible. We know what we say. We know that we don’t know it exactly.
Also Heidegger, when he sat down to write his book…
Louis: …he wrote the first half and didn’t
write the second half – exactly.
Josef: He
forgot about time in the meantime.
Louis: But,
actually, you will find a lot of the issues that he had intended to raise in
the second half in his Grundprobleme…(The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology).
Josef: The
big point is – everybody who has written a paper in philosophy knows that he
really does not know exactly where he is going, but he knows it very well when
he gets there. When you finish the paper, you look at it. Then – either you say
it is shit, or you say – maybe it has something. Excuse me.
Louis: That’s alright – we are all friends
here. Although the language of phenomenology is full of powerfully expressive
polysyllabic terms that allow one to grasp a vast range of different nuances of
meaning, sometimes there is nothing like the most basic monosyllable to get the
point across. So, you might hear me dropping a few as well. You’ve set the
precedent. So, our critique of eschatology becomes full blown scatology.
Josef: I
like the approach.
Louis: Hang
on…are we talking about Heidegger or Derrida?
Josef: Derrida.
But, I adore Heidegger. He wrote the most important things that I have ever
read.
Louis: It’s a shame that he was such a bastard
(oops, two syllables).
Josef: But,
he is very important. One insight of Heidegger is worth any book of philosophy.
For instance, his approach to the problem of conscience – what is it? Is it in
you? Is it outside of you? Is it how you judge yourself? Do you listen to
yourself or don’t you listen to yourself? It opens a lot of new ways to see
yourself.
Louis: I just have a real problem with the
inconsistency between Heidegger’s life of writing and the way in which his
lifestyle wrote itself. What about his own conscience? Given the focal position
of his discourse on authenticity and inauthenticity in his philosophy, it is
impossible to understand how he lived with himself with any degree of
equanimity.
Perhaps I’ll make some photocopies
of a piece I wrote a number of years ago, called “The Dialectics of
Emancipation and Authenticity in the Works of Kierkegaard and Heidegger.” As
well as looking at the relations between Kierkegaard and Heidegger, this paper
also looks at certain relations between Heidegger and Freud. This particular
direction of my paper was inspired by a paper that David Farrel-Krell presented
when he appeared as a guest lecturer at Middlesex during my period as an
undergraduate. At that time, he was looking at the close relations, both
phenomenological and theoretical, between Heidegger’s discourse on Dasein and its sense of un-homeliness (unheimlich) and the way in which Freud
writes about the ‘uncanny’ (also from unheimlich).
When this discourse is brought into relation to Freud’s discussion of the
death-drive in the essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” we find ourselves at
the entrance to a very intriguing area. Not many people have explored it, and
yet it is rich in possibilities. Freud is a thinker whose ideas will pop out of
my mouth at these meetings again and again – and from Derrida’s too (in a
virtual sense), his writing is very much influenced by Freud.
A Student: I
would like to add something about Derrida, Freud, and Lacan – something like
reason of being…. You know the phenomenon of falling into the story and then
losing your tracks and the tracks of the author and, next, you find out
different sides of the author of the novel. And, also the uncanny – all these
feelings come out. In Derrida, on the surface, you can see, you can tell…
Louis: The ‘uncanny’ has a multitude of
different meanings. The one which has most resonance for me is where ‘the
familiar’ has its ‘strangeness’ restored to it. This is very disconcerting, and
when Derrida and Heidegger write about it, it becomes very interesting indeed.
And, of course, this goes all the way through Freud’s writing.
One of the reasons that I see it as
something that is really fascinating from a philosophical point of view has to
do with the way in which I sometimes like to sum up Husserl’s phenomenology as
‘the philosophy of the mundane.’ It sounds kind of weird to say that – as if I meant that it was a philosophy
of the obvious. What I really mean is that Husserl invites us to turn to that
which is most familiar to us in such a way as to restore its strangeness. It is
a question of restoring our wonder in the face of that which we most take for
granted. He had this great insight that that with which we are most familiar is
actually the most invisible. Precisely for that reason, we can see that
phenomenology is basically deconstructive. The Eidetic reduction hints at this.
You deconstruct the familiar to the point at which it becomes strange to you.
This kind of revelation is often the most penetrating. You think – “My God!
I’ve walked past here every day of my life, and I have never really noticed it
before.”
A Student: You
see the signs, but you cannot recognize them.
Louis: That’s right. When one is
‘living-in’ or, better, ‘through’ the sign / signification one is not
automatically ‘reflecting’ upon it. So, in a way, I like to think of Husserl as
starting this whole re-orientation. He is certainly the first one who really
made it thematic at a methodological level.
Mor: Hegel
makes the distinction between ‘the familiar’ and ‘what is known’.
Louis: Is it in his Phenomenology of Spirit? It would be interesting to find out.
The key word for Derrida is,
actually, ‘presence’. He takes this
from Heidegger – the German expression is Anwesenheit.
In Speech and Phenomena, where
Derrida is pretty tough with Husserl, he maintains that the whole of the
philosophy of the Occident has been obsessed with the idea of presence – to
break down all the intermediaries, in order to get to the ‘thing’ in itself.
Husserl, of course, initiated phenomenology under the banner ‘to return the
things themselves,’ so one can easily think that he must be just another
metaphysician. What he says, in contradistinction to psychologistic
phenomenalism, is that when we engage with the world, we do not make doubles of
things in our heads, as the representative, or sign theory, or image theory
suggests. We are engaging ‘with the world’. But, we don’t primarily engage with
just ‘things’ – we engage in ‘states of affairs’ (the German expression is Saschverhalte), relations of
significance, which actually constitute their meaningful contours. They are not
to be found in a pure world as it is in itself. As Heidegger said, we live in
an equipmental world – things are ready-to-hand and not just present-at-hand.
When we say that everything has an intrinsic meaning, we are not just talking
about utilities, artifacts, things that we have created – we also refer to
natural formations. In my classes on phenomenology and existentialism, I
sometimes use the example of a great block of rock on a little island where the
residents live in awe of its presence and worship it. Then they die out for
some strange reason. A hundred years later some explorers turn up and say –
“Oh! What a nice block of granite!” But, where is the divine, where is the
sublime? Here, we have a bunch of geologists and they don’t encounter the
object in the same way. The point is that we live in the world that is familiar to us, that has meaning, and it
is our engagement that brings meaning into the world. We don’t simply do that
individually, because we ourselves are brought into a world where this meaning
is bestowed upon us; it lives in us, through us, and we, ourselves, are
transported by it. We are not just simply language users – we are used by
language, we are born into language and borne by it. And language, when it
writes itself, is also none other than thinking itself, where style and content
take the articulation of language into different dimensions.
Josef: When
you say ‘language’, you mean ‘society’?
Louis: In
this context, yes.
So, Husserl says: “back to the
things themselves” – that is, to their significance, to how they stand out, to
what they mean to us. He does this by exploring the notion of intentionality –
the directedness of consciousness towards things. Consciousness is always
consciousness of something – the
preposition ‘of’ is vital, because consciousness can be nothing in itself. And,
rather than being imprisoned in a box, consciousness is always already out
amongst the things.
Husserl comes up with something
called ‘the Noetic-Noematic relation.’ The Noesis is like the thesis – the way,
in which you look. The Noema is, in a sense, the product or fulfilment
of that. The classic example of this structure is the one about Napoleon: where we have two
propositions – ‘the victor at
At the level of discourse, the Noema
is really what is meant by saying
something – the meaning of the meant. So, when Husserl talks about Noeses and
Noemata, the object Napoleon is somewhere outside of all of that. He does not
really matter, we are not talking about him except as the signature of a
multiplicity of different narrative types. What counts is the narrative form of
the address. The story is empty without the narrative. Narrative establishes
significance.
So, when Husserl’s phenomenology
directs itself ‘to the things themselves,’ he does not mean this in a Kantian
sense. In fact, if anything, he is parodying the Kantian discourse on a ‘thing
in itself.’ It is very easy for a philosopher, who is not familiar with the
phenomenological tradition, to come along and say: “To return to the things
themselves? – Husserl is a metaphysician!” No. The call: ‘to return to the
things themselves’ is to be understood according to the phenomenological
concept of intentionality.
When you begin to look at the
structures of intentionality, you begin to understand that it is riddled
through and through with multiple forms of signification, with signs. But,
these are not the objective signs or symbols that we normally talk about. This
transitivity, this transcendence that gives difference and similarity is none
other than the opening up of the structurality by which we understand the
functioning of signs. In a way, Husserl is Derrida’s greatest ally, but
Derrida, for some strange reason, willfully misreads Husserl on certain
occasions. If you have read the earlier text – Derrida’s Introduction to Husserl’s “Origin of Geometry,” it is
very hard to understand what he is doing in the later Speech and Phenomena,
because in the former text he captured the radicality of Husserl’s enterprise
only to go on and eventually undermine it. He has certainly taken Husserl’s own
invitation to go with Husserl beyond him but, for some reason, Derrida does
this strange turn around. This is the problem that I was faced with in my Ph.D.
Thesis. It will be made available later on, when you are more familiar with
deconstruction and you want to understand something about the development of
its methods. I have noticed that in Israeli Academia you can learn a little bit
about Derrida in Art Departments, Architecture Departments, or Literature
Departments, but it is very difficult to find opportunities to learn anything
about Derrida ‘the philosopher’ in a Department of Philosophy. I find him a
very rigorous thinker, and I think it’s time to redress the balance. So, this
is one of the things that we are going to be looking at. That is what my Ph.D.
Thesis is about, so when some of you are a little bit more familiar with this sphere
of issues, I’ll make it available to you, if you are interested.
Sergei: I
have a question. The reason why I laughed, when you talked about the difference
between Noetic and Noematic is because it was exactly the question I asked Dr.
Navon just today. He gave me one answer and here I hear something a bit
different.
Louis: What was the answer he gave you?
Sergei: He
says that most of history explains the meaning of the word in Latin, or Greek
probably. Noematic is the meaning of thought object, and Noetic is the meaning
of the process of thought.
Josef: No
– the contrary, as far as I know. Noesis is how you get the object. Noema is
how the object is in you.
Louis: The language is rather tricky here.
Husserl is very clear to say that the Noema is not ‘in’ consciousness, like
some mental object. It is actually transcendent to consciousness. It is an intentional object. The parallelism of
noesis and noema is a theme that comes out clearly by means of the
phenomenological reduction and the eidetic reduction of experience to the
fundamental structurality or essence of how consciousness encounters
phenomena meaningfully.
What Husserl makes thematic is that
a Noesis is a kind of thetic directedness – it is a certain manner of interest,
a certain tone or kind of illumination. The Noema is the fulfillment of that,
but it is not out there in the thing. Neither is it inherent in consciousness.
We are not dealing with a simple Cartesian dyad of res cogitans and res extensa.
Sartre has a lovely metaphor for
intentionality – rays of light shining out of our eyes. Plotinus’ universe is a
nice analogue, where there is blackness, and only that which is made visible by
the light truly exists. The light touches things, and as it does so it makes
them stand out / speak out. When the light moves on, those objects cannot be
seen any more. Of course, the Berkeleyans among you are bound to say: “There!
You see? – ‘Esse est percipi’ – ‘To be is to be perceived!’ Those things that
are no longer illuminated no longer exist.” Someone else will come along and
say – “That’s rubbish: it’s just that we can’t see them, but they are still there.” When you are working within
the phenomenological dimension, you can’t actually take that step. You have to
adhere to what Berkeley is saying, but only from a ‘methodological’ point of
view – because we are working within the field
of perception, and we cannot step outside of that. If you are to look for
evidence of something (and the rules for prescribing what actually constitutes
it), you have to look for that ‘within’ experience. You cannot look for some
kind of independent, extra-experiential criterion. To do so would be to fall
back resolutely into a naive metaphysic.
If we return to the thought of
illumination, we know that many different-colours / tones are possible and, in
each case, an object that is illuminated will appear differently. The Noema is
the meant precisely as it is meant.
You have a way of looking at something (illuminating it), and the Noema is the
fulfillment of that way of looking.
Sergei: Suppose,
I am looking at that piece of granite like a geologist, and thinking: that is
twenty million dollars!
Louis: So,
that is your Noema – ‘a twenty million dollar piece of granite.’
Sergei: And
what is Noesis?
Louis: Noesis
is the desire for it. It is the way of looking that will, basically, reduce
this piece of granite to nothing more, than the symbol of twenty million
dollars.
Sergei: So,
I don’t understand what is the difference between those two.
Louis: It
is a difference that must be understood in intentional terms. It is a
difference that is borne of an essential intertwining. Every ‘desiring’ has a
‘desired’ – that is what is most significant here.
I can look at a house, and it can
fill me with fear, because of a particular kind of symbolic association that it
sets up in my mind. The Noema is the house that I fear. But, someone else will
come along with an entirely different Noema, and say that it is a good
investment.
Sergei: So,
what is the Noesis?
Louis: Noesis
is the manner of engaging with it. Together with its noema, it is like a bubble
that appears above the head of a cartoon character, containing a bright
light-bulb surrounded by lots of dollar signs.
Josef: Does
the Noesis have to do with ‘Abschattungen’ – different ways of seeing the same
thing?
Louis: Yes,
it does – very well observed!
‘Abschattungen’ means perspective variation[s].
Here, we are talking about the
profiling of a thing in space. It is a good point, but it depends on which text
you refer to. It is implicit in his Phenomenology
of Internal Time Consciousness
where Husserl talks about the way in which hyletic data (‘stuff’ of sensation)
are constituted as a continuous flow of different aspects of the same
spatio-temporal object. The object as-a-meaninfgul-state-of-affairs-as-a-whole
would be its noematic sense, though Husserl does not use the term noema in this
text. One can also say that each Noema is never actually quite present
as a whole either, because it is always already participating in other noematic
configurations (as in a reference to a larger gestalt). It is always a matter
of profiling. One is inevitably brought back to the issue of the essential
interpenetration of the noesis and noema in this regard because one also has to
take the continuity of experiencing itself into account. Abschattung has a distinctly spatial characteristic to it, since
the expression refers to the different orientations of an object that may be
seen from one angle to the next. The consciousness of duration itself – that is
consciousness as a continuum of living-experience is simultaneously
implied. In Husserl’s discourse on the self-constitution of consciousness as
a continuum, he speaks of ‘Ablaufsphänomene’
(‘running of phenomena’).
Now, ‘Ablaufsphänomene’ and ‘Abschattungen’
are enmeshed with one another – they are necessarily bound up. They have to be,
because when you look at an object it never gives itself wholly in one
perspective. And yet, in a sense, it does. According to an aural perspective,
the relation between the immanence and transcendence of a melody in relation to
its constituent notes that run off successively is an exemplary instance of what
I’m talking about. If we return to the visual perspective, when I am looking at
a die (singular dice), and I see one of its faces, I don’t stop there – I know
it’s a die. I know that there are other faces that I don’t see, that they are
transcendent to my vision at this particular moment. So, you can say that the
Noema is the die as-a-meaningful-whole, but there is also a sense, in which a
Noema is never complete either, because it refers to a greater project of which
it is a part. However, you get caught up in rather abstract temporal analyses,
and it gets very complicated – I don’t think we need to go that far at the
moment. Let’s just say that the horizontal relation to an object that is
extended spatio-temporally coincides with consciousness’s own vertical relation
to itself as a continuum. Without the givenness of the temporal
continuity of consciousness, there could be no continuity of the givenness of
the profiles of an object that articulate its extension as the self-same
spatio-temporal thing.
What is particularly important here
is how Derrida has studied Husserl’s Phenomenology
of Internal Time Consciousness with great care. I shall make photocopies of
Derrida’s essay, “Différance” and another text about his work, entitled, Derrida for Beginners. We’re going to
have great fun reading this latter text! It is very funny. As for the former
essay by Derrida…well, all I can say is that I shall do my best to make it as
painless as possible. However, some pain will remain attached – and this is a
very necessary part of acquainting oneself with Derrida’s deconstruction. So,
all the pain-freaks among you are in for a good time.
Différance – Wow! This is a concept and a
half! Well, it is, actually, half a concept. As Derrida says, it is a quasi-concept – it is not a real
concept, it is more of a stratagem.
Différance with an ‘a’ – this is
very interesting, because in French it does not sound any different to différence with an ‘e’, and this is part
of the strategy. Remember what I was saying earlier on about Plato’s Phaedrus and how, according to Socrates,
the live word was what actually
counted, and that writing was merely
a kind of a representation of a representation – a dead discourse. So, purity of meaning is very much associated with
the voice, the sound. Again, this is related to what Heidegger writes about phonocentrism – where primacy is given
to the voice, the sound, hearing – a good old Platonic tradition.
Derrida
inaugurates a re-situation of discourse on meaning by provisionally looking at
the graphic sign, rather than the
phonetic sign (the phoneme). Basically, what he does by introducing différance is to say – when différance is announced, you are not
going to be able to determine the difference in meaning by listening. You can
only see it, because of the insertion
of the graphic sign. This is just one of the components of his strategy and it
is brilliant. He also speaks of différance as the ‘archi-trace’, and he speaks of the ‘A’ like the tomb.
A Student: Like an Egyptian one?
Louis: That’s it – exactly.
Différance is also derived from the
Latin verb differre, which comprises
both ‘difference’ of a spatial order and ‘deferral’ of a temporal order. So,
space and time here in differre,
which again comes up in ‘différance,’
are intimately intertwined, as distinct from the Greek diapherein, which is purely ‘difference’ of a spatial order.
Derrida wants
to play with this condensation. The intertwining of spatiality and temporality comes
up very much in Husserl’s writing, followed by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. It
also comes up in modern relativistic physics. It is an important theme for
twentieth century Western philosophy and science. However, this theme actually
goes back several thousand years. Especially, if you care to turn to the East
to take a look at certain Buddhist texts. There, we find the ancient concept of
‘Pratitiya Samutpada’, which means ‘Interdependent Origination / Dependent
Arising’ – which basically says that there are no distinct objects in
themselves, that they are all already caught up in a fabric. Space and time are
woven into this fabric – they are the
fabric, in a way.
Derrida talks
about the trace / tracing. If we deconstruct meaning to the point at which we begin to understand something
about its constitution (and he says
that here we are actually following a long tradition, especially if we want to
look for the fundament, the ground zero, on which we can re-build the world),
we are turning to the question of its origin. But, this is not to speak of an original
‘meaning.’ The deconstructive turn unearths a structurality that
actually undermines the possibility of arriving at such an origin and bringing
it to presence. The structurality of difference and deferral
refers to a trace structure that always already erases itself. A rigorous
deconstructive approach to constitution constantly postpones arrival at any
kind of telos, for telos here would be nothing other than the realization of an
Absolute origin. The realization of both origin and telos in terms of presence
would only ever be an obfuscation of the essential non-presence that originally
constitutes meaningful presence.
With respect
to the issue of the interdependency of difference and deferral, which smudges
the apparent line that separates space from time, we find that they are not
independent properties of space and time. They are, rather, the spacing and
temporizing through which they unfold. In other words, deferral is a temporal
determination that is also spatial in that it is form of extension. It is ‘to
postpone’, ‘to put off until later’ – to ‘delay.’ There is always a delay in
the givenness of meaning – there is no completeness – and this is one of the
conditions of its being-given. This is because – primordially – it is always
fluid; it is going through the process of change precisely because it is in time. It is the delay by which the
same can register as the same without being identical (i.e., stretched out in
time) – thus announcing its extendedness. It is spaced out through time.
So, here we have an intertwining of space and time, where ‘spacing’ also means
‘duration’. Derrida’s analyses are always shifting from one side to the other,
demonstrating that the metaphors that
we use for space are also the same metaphors that we use for time – and that this is no coincidence.
Josef: It is even necessary, because we
cannot understand time. So, we just translate it into spatial terms.
Louis: That’s right.
One thing that I really like about
Husserl’s writing on time, though, is that he was the first to really talk
about time in a manner that did not just simply spatialize it. In an important
sense, his discourse temporalized spatiality in a way that no other philosopher
had done before.
So, basically, Derrida plays with
the idea of différance as the origin, while signing the point of the
absolute impossibility of any origin. It is the very erasure of the origin. This is really difficult to understand.
Derrida talks
about the archi-trace. To understand
this you have to look at a number of different metaphors. One of Derrida’s
favourites is to be found in “Freud and the Scene of Writing”
(Writing and Difference). Freud was
fascinated and delighted by a special type of (mystical) writing pad that we
have all played with as children. It has a clear surface and a simple
implement, which you impress upon it. Because it has black wax underneath a
middle sheet of something like rice paper, you can see the image that stands
out from the impression. Then, you pull out the middle sheet that both
separates and binds the transparent surface and the wax tablet beneath, and you
can’t see the image any more. Nevertheless, the engraving is still there in the
wax. That is the trace, but we can no longer see it. In a way, what Derrida is
bringing out are different kinds of unconscious traces, but not traces of anything that was prior to them – they are just traces. We
normally think about traces ‘of’ something, but this view does not apply in
this case. And, when Derrida says that différance or the archi-trace signs the
erasure of the origin – that is because there was nothing that preceded the
trace. When using the expression ‘trace’, you can get completely confused,
because its meaning radically diverges from the tradition in which it always
implies that it is a trace ‘of’ some thing,
a text, a meaning. One is required to entertain the idea that there is nothing
behind that trace. It is the very possibility of tracing, the writing of
meaning, the coming to presence of some thing
– the very possibility of ‘iteration.’ And, it is the very possibility of
temporal spacing – temporizing (as in ‘deferral’) and spacing. So, we cannot
escape the ’always already’ with différance. ‘Always already’ preceded
meaning, and this nature of the ‘always already’ is also the erasure of itself
as an origin in the traditional sense. So, you have no beginning point and no
original meaning that you can uncover. There is just simply this structuration,
the structurality.
A Student: How far back?
Josef: This
is the problem. We can very well imagine that the traces have been invented –
that they came out of nothing…
Louis: There
are often points in Derrida’s writing where he leaves us with nothing to say since,
according to his discourse on différance, nothing precedes the trace.
Josef: They
were even invented before writing. They were invented for themselves as
different traces, or maybe they were created by throwing heavy objects, or whatever.
I mean, the traces really appear as traces of nothing at the beginning of this.
But, with time they became something. Now, how do you give them back their
original nothingness, and why should you?
Louis: Derrida at that point leaves us with
very little to say. I’m not sure whether one is entitled to say that ‘the
traces really appear as traces of nothing at the beginning.’ The trace can be
set at odds with appearance and there never was an original beginning.
However, I am reminded of the way,
in which Husserl speaks of the primordial
flux in his Phenomenology of Internal
Time Consciousness. He says that it is an Ur-region (primordial horizon),
for which names are lacking. As you [Josef] said to me many times (and you are
absolutely right), you can’t bracket this dimension, because you literally have
nowhere else to go. In a way, what Derrida has done is come along and tried to
bracket it. He leaves us with différance. And, there really is nothing to say, but he has proved one thing – you
can still keep inventing names. And, that is actually very important. In a way,
there is hope in that.
Josef: Because
you create different names.
Louis: Yes.
But even when we utilize the same name. For instance, he still uses ‘trace’
interchangeably with its common form, but it takes on a radically different
meaning in his usage. He still speaks of ‘time’ to a certain extent, but he
substitutes this word with others, like temporization, writing, etc.
What is happening is that we undergo
a radical re-orientation with respect to the way these words are used, through
exploring their different resonances on their own terms – without trying to
reconcile these differences within a common or vulgar concept. There is an
important sense in which language is engrossed in itself. By making this
thematic, we begin to see how language is actually always already exteriorizing
itself, multiplying itself, differentiating itself. So, in a way – there is a
kind of hope in this.
A Student: I
have a problem with grasping the connection between this board with the wax and
the traces – where do they go?
Louis: They
are still there in the wax.
A Student: Then,
I see the meaning of the word as now, but I have a problem concerning the
present, the board that has the signs, and the meaning…
Louis: All right. First of all, I have
mentioned Anwesenheit before, which
is usually translated as ‘Presence’,
certainly by Heidegger and Derrida. There is also Presence in the sense of the temporal present – the ‘now’ (in
German it would be Jetzt), but the
most important expression is Gegenwart…
Josef: Which
means ‘against you’, ‘looking at you’…
Louis: The full expression for Husserl is Lebendige Gegenwart: the Living Present
– which is formally translated as waiting-towards.
If you think about the ‘present’ as
something that stands out, something that is manifest, it is very closely
linked to the ‘present.’ But, ‘that-which-is-manifest’ is given ‘in’ the
present in the temporal sense. This whole discourse on presence is, in many respects, ‘the’ Western obsession. What
Derrida is doing is displacing it, by saying that we have to look for the
structurality of this (which is also to take into account the temporality /
temporalizing of such structurality). And, looking at the structurality, we are
often trying to unearth that which is not actually manifested. So it is with
the trace in the wax – it is there, but it is not manifested. So, he wants to
talk about a constellation of different senses of presence, the present and
non-presence: the presence of the present, the temporality of the present, the
occultation of that which was once present, and, most significantly for
Derrida, the trace as a non-presence which has never actually been present. He
also shows how the present itself cannot be a discrete moment.
Classically, the present is used as
the criterion for the assessment of whether something is real or not – because
that which lies in the past is no longer real, and that which is in the future,
does not actually exist yet. The present itself is always going beyond itself –
a ‘waiting-towards’ in Husserl. And, the present itself in Derrida’s writing
means all these things. He wants to deconstruct the philosophical hegemony of
presence. He is basically saying that it is precisely because we are so
fascinated by presence that we
actually miss what is going on. He wants to restore rights to difference, and, in a sense, to nothing (as in the absence of meaning) –
to the trace, to that which is not visible, to that which extends itself
beyond the present by never actually
having been present, and to that which is actually responsible for the deferral of the present in the present
actualization of something.
Josef: This
sounds very metaphysical.
Louis: It does sound very metaphysical,
yes. Derrida is using the language of metaphysics and having a great time
playing with it, but he is not giving us a metaphysical system.
In a way, he is doing what Nietzsche
did with his introduction of the principle of Eternal Recurrence. When he employs
this multi-faceted stratagem of his own, he actually provides a perfectly good
substitution for any other popular cosmological theory of his time, which has
its own limits that cannot be refuted. Actually, if you read Stephen Hawking’s
writing on the Big Bang and what has come to be known as the Big Crunch, you
can see that Nietzsche would not be disappointed. So, again, what you have is a
recursive folding – where the unfolding of time is, simultaneously, a helical
folding back on itself.
What we are doing now is chatting,
giving an overall picture of some of the strategies employed in some of the
themes. Basically, I don’t want to give too much away. I want you to read the
material that I have provided over the next week, and then get back together,
and I want to hear what you think. I have been reading this stuff for years, so
it is very familiar to me. In a way, I have forgotten how to ask questions
about it again, and I am hoping that you are going to do that.
In a way, Derrida is the philosopher’s
philosopher. The reason I like his writing is because, not only is he
considered to be the bad boy of philosophy, he has ‘rigorous’ fun with what he
is doing…
Josef: …
and most philosophers can never forgive him for it.
Louis: And, most ‘academic’ philosophers
dislike Derrida, because of the strategies of misdirection that he likes to
employ. The whole reason for this is his intention to unsettle the relation
between reader and text.
Many writers in the deconstructive
tradition, that have come along in Derrida’s wake, treat his texts as being
somehow canonical. It seems that there isn’t any urgency in re-reading the
texts with which Derrida himself has engaged – as if they have somehow been
exhausted by his deconstructions. The chief epigram and quote for Chapter Three
of my doctoral thesis is Derrida’s comment: “One must, above all, re-read those, in whose wake I write”. He invites us to
avoid simply taking his word for it, and to re-read for ourselves. Many
contemporary writers in the deconstructive milieu have not done this. The
reason that I respect Derrida so much is because he fuels my compulsion to
re-read Husserl again, and again, and again…. I took up his invitation – this
is very important. I think that we should do this as well – not just read
Derrida, but also read some of the original texts that he talks about. The
thing is that he is always giving us a different narrative style to bring about
reiteration in a helical (spiral) format. It means that you don’t go back to
that text in the same way – you have a different manner of approach to it. By
unsettling the relation between reader and text, this means to open up a new
space of engagement with that text, where it is possible to set up another form
of dialogue. So, although it is the same text, you have an entirely different
dialogue with it. This is marvelous! He is waking us all up from our dogmatic
slumber, in this respect. So, if we can kind of introject that, I think that we
can also have a bit of fun.
Josef: I
can give an example of what you are saying, not touching Derrida. Years ago I
was at the meeting of the society of philosophers – the real one. In the last
discussion they spoke about openness in society. I had been sitting and
listening, but in the end I couldn’t stand it, so I got up and asked:
“Everybody here has been speaking about openness and about allowing
everybody to do whatever, but do you really think that one of you can influence
another person to think like he does?”
They smiled and looked at one another, and then the older fellow of the
Israeli philosophical group told me:
“Look. We are too old to change our ways.”
Really, these were his words. For me, this was fun, because then I knew
why I came.
Louis: But, why didn’t you present them
with a rejoinder to that? What has age got to do with it? Such an attitude
really has no place today. And, at your own grand old age, you have one of the
most open minds that I have ever come across…
Josef: Really,
this was very interesting…. It is a considerable problem. Since then I have
been walking the halls of Academia and listening, and listening – and I have a
very good idea that he was absolutely right…
Louis: Do you really think that it is
applicable to you?
Josef: Not
really, because I have fun. That is, when I find an idea, which I did not have
before, I am glad. And, then I inflict it on one of the people, for whom I
write these papers. Some of them like it. Some of them tell me – well, it is a
very nice paper, you get your 95, but I don’t understand the last part. It is
also possible that my idea wasn’t so wonderful, but anyway…this is what happens
when people are inside some sort of routine that they have to keep…
Mor: Maybe
that is what happens with professional philosophizing.
Louis: It is also one of the reasons why
academic philosophy is generally so esoteric.
It is like – ‘I am the only one who knows this – which helps me to feel secure
in my job.’
Sergei: Then
I have to tell you this – this is the most esoteric course I have ever
attended.
Louis: Perhaps, for now…but the point of these meetings is to
unpack it all.
Sergei: I
don’t remember ever sitting in any other class and listening to a sentence that
I haven’t comprehended.
Louis: Patience…wait
until you actually start reading.
I said that I did not want to do
what I’ve actually ended up doing this evening. I tried to give you a crash
course on some of the strategies and principal motives in deconstruction. It is
a massive field, because it is a quasi-parasitical form of writing. You can’t
really engage with Derrida’s writing, unless you know something about the
tradition that he is subjecting to deconstruction. In order to talk about différance
in relation to deferral and difference, you’ve got to understand something
about contemporary discourse on space and time; otherwise you are going to be
completely mystified. Derrida knows all this stuff and plays with it.
Humour will be of considerable help.
Please check out Derrida for Beginners.
Have you read any of Woody Allen’s books? One of his texts – I believe that
it’s called Getting Even – has got a short section called “My Philosophy,” and it is the funniest
thing I’ve ever read. It is quite clear that he knows his philosophy, but he
manages to take the piss out of it as well. I wish I could write something like
that – teach a little bit of philosophy and make people laugh at the same time
– brilliant!
Josef: He
writes from outside – he can say whatever he wants.
Mor: He
doesn’t need a tenure…
Louis: That’s
right.
[To Sergei] Why do you hate Deconstructing Harry so much?
Sergei: I
don’t like Woody Allen at all. This is the only Woody Allen movie that I like;
I hate all the others.
Louis: Oh,
surely you’ve seen Love and Death
though – his parody of great Russian literature?
Sergei: Yes.
Louis: And,
you didn’t like it?!
Sergei: It’s
stupid!
Louis: The
sassy black sergeant in a Russian uniform of the Napoleonic period, but with a
stereotypical American drill-sergeant’s voice, leaning over him saying: “You
love the Russian army, don’t you?”
Sergei: What’s
so funny about that?
Louis: It’s funny! Your comment was even
funnier…
And,
when the great concubine of the Russian aristocracy sits in an opposite booth
to Woody in a theatre, stylishly waving her fan and fluttering her eyelashes at
him, while he responds by rolling out his tongue and panting…that’s not funny?!
All right, never mind…
...I also think that the screening
of a Monty Python Double Bill would
be rather informative as well as being great fun. The Life of Brian and The
Meaning of Life have some very existential and deconstructive motifs.
Mor: That’s
British humour.
Louis: Yes,
indeed. Nothing but the best! As Derrida would say, “embrace chance and
necessity” – we don’t know where we are going. Believe me, I have no idea where
we are going.
As a provisional plan, though, we should
take a look at the shorter essays, and when it comes to the earlier stuff – I
will at least help you with the history of the critique. For instance, we will
look at “Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenology of Language.” I’ll help
you with the phenomenological background in order to demonstrate what Derrida
is getting at. “Freud and the Scene of Writing” – we’ll take a look at that
too.
I believe that if you come to
Derrida without having much of a philosophical background he is not going to
make much sense. Once you do understand something of the background, you will
get to grasp the techniques that he is using – since he repeats them in a
number of different contexts. It is not a case of a brand new strategy in each
essay. Once you begin to get used to what he is doing, through repetition it
will start to make sense. But, don’t expect to grasp everything immediately. Do
not forget the temporality of learning. Sometimes, I am a bit rough on my
students – I throw a lot of polysyllabic expressions at them, and they don’t
understand any of it. As an undergraduate, I used to look at my own philosophy
classes that way, saying that I didn’t understand any of it. But, six months
later it would just click into place – while shopping in a supermarket, eating
breakfast, or watching television. I would notice some kind of sign and find
myself shouting – “Oh! Yeah, now I understand what that means!” And, that’s how
it works. No one can predict when that is going to happen, but I can guarantee
that if – even at a subliminal level – you notice these referential structures
then the sense will dawn on you. So, stick with it.
Anna: This
is what happened to me with Hamlet and the epoché.
Louis: Well, there you go. “Time out for a
joint.” Actually, do you think that Gregg’s is still open? Why don’t we
all go down there and have some coffee?
* * *