Deconstruction and Criticism 020389538X

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Contents PREFACE

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THE BREAKING OF FORM

Harold Bloom

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2 SHELLEY DISFIGURED Fine publishtd in Great Briwn in 1979 by Routledge &: Krgan Paul lid

39 Score

Paul de Man

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London WC1E 700 and Brwdway HOUM:, N_fown ROlld.

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LIVING ON • BORDER LINES

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Jacques Derrida

ＮｮｭｵｉｔＭｮｯ ｹｾｮ･ｈ

vd the past s[R.Iggk of ｧ ｾ ｴ mC'n that led him and ｖｯｨＺ｡ｩｾ to abandon their rd"orming zeal and succumb [0 life. Thus rhe poet's conrempcuou5 allusion to \'(I'ords1II,urh [UtllS against him as Rousseau endeavors to show [he Pon how the ｭｩｓｦ｡ｫｾ of ｴ ｨ ｾ who have preceded him, especially idffiisrs like himself, cln serve as a warning to him; Rousseau and Voltaire fell because rhey adopted the comcmpfUOUS attitude toward history that the poet now displays; the child iJ Fonher of the man, and Shelley's generarion, representing the full mastery of the age that dawned in the French Revolution, can learn from rhe mistakes of that age's earlier gener:,uions Ｈｴｾ of Rousseau and Voltaire and of Wordsworth).

Although this is certainly not presented as an interpretation of the emire text, but only of this discarded passage, it remains typicaJ of the readings generally given of Tht TriNmph of Lift, even when they are a great deal more complicated than this straightforward statement. It is a clear example of the recuperation of a failing energy by means of an increased awareness: Rousseau lacked power, but because he can consciously articulate the causes of his weakness in words, the energy is preserved and recovered in the following generation. And this reconversion extends back to its originatOrs, since the elders, at first condemned, are now reinstated in the name of their negative but exemplary knowledge. The child i; father of the man, juSt as Wordswonh lucidly said, both humbling and saving himself in the eyes of his followers. This simple motion can take on considerable dialectical intricacy withour altering irs fundamental scheme. The entire debate as to whether Tht TriNmph of Lift represents or heralds a movement of growth or of degradation is part of this same genetic and historical metaphor. 3 The unquestioned authority of this metaphor is much more important than the positive or negative valorization of the movement it generates. The initial situation of ROllsseau-allied with Voltaire and WordSWOrth in a shared failure, as opposed to PlatO, Aristotle and Bacon, and as opposed, by implication, fO Shelley himselfchanges in later versions. In the last available text, itself frozen

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inro place by Shelley's accidental death, the hierarchy is quite different: ｵｾｯｒ is now set apart quite sharply frem the representatives of the Enlightenment (which include Voltaire next to Kant and Frederick the Great) who are condemned with some of the original severity, without Rousseau reproving him for it. No allusion to Wordsworth is included at this point, though Wordsworth is certainly prt.'Sent in other regions of the poem. Rousseau is now classified with Plato and AristOtle, but whereas these philosophers were held up as untarnished images of Truth in the earlier version, they are now fallen and, in the imagery of the poem, chained fO the chariot of Life, rogether with "the great bards of old" (I. 247). The reasons for their f.a..l1, as well as rhe elemenrs in their works and in their li,'cs that both unite and distinguish them from Rousseau, are developed in passages that are nOt difficult fO interpret from a thematic point of view. The resulting hierarchies have become mOte complex: we first have a class of entirely condemned historical personages, which includes representatives of the Enlightenment as well as the emperors and popes of Christianity (11. 281 If.); on a distinctly higher level, bur nevertheless defeated, we find Rousseau, PlatO, Aristotle and Homer. As possibly exonerated from this defeat, the poem mentions only Bacon, a remnant from the earlier passage who now has lost much of his function, as well as "rhe sacred few" (1. 128) who, unlike Adonais in the earlier poem, had no earthly destiny wharsoever, either because, by choice or destiny, they died tOO early or because, like Christ or Socrates, they are mete fictions in the writings of others. As for Shelley himself. his close proximity [Q Rousseau is now more strongly marked than in the earlier passage; the possibility of his escape from Rousseau's destiny has now become problematic and depends on one's reading of Rousseau's own Story, which constitures the main narrative sequence of the ｰｯ･ｭＮｾ lengthy and complex as it is, Rousseau's self. narrated history provides no answer to his true identity, although he is himself shown in quest of such an answer. Questions of origin, of direction and of idemity punctuate the text without ever receiving a

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clear answer. They always lead back co a new scene of questioning which merely repeats the qucS{ and recedes in infinite regress: the narrator asks himself" 'And what is this? .. " (I. 177) and receives an enigmatic answer C' 'Life!' ") from an enigmatic shape; once identified as Rousseau, the shape can indeed reveal some other names in the pageant of biswry but is soon asked, by the poet, to identify itself in a deeper sense than by a mere name: .. 'How did thy course begin. . and why?' " Complying with this request, Rousseau narrates the history of his existence, also culminating in an encounter with a mysterious entity, " 'A shape alllighr . .' " (I. 352) to whom, in his turn, he putS the question " 'whence I came, and where I am, and why-.' .. As an an· swer, he is granted a vision of the same spedore her on rhe dusky grass.

Iris hcr many-coloured scarf had drawn. (II. 352-57, tlllphaJil MdtdJ II

with palms so tender Their tread broke nOf [he mirror of its billow {II.

The water of the origina.l river here fulfills a double and nOt necessarily complementary action, as it ｾｩ｢ｭｯ｣ with the light to form. on the one hand. Iris's scarf or rainbow and, on the Other hand, the "silver music" of oblivion. A traditional symbol of the integration of the phenomenal with the uanscendemal world, the natural symhesis of water and light in the rainbow is, in Shelley. the familiar "dome of many- when a voice says, "Oh, I ｾ oh God." h is nor the narrator's ｶｯｩ｣ｴｾ but a feminine one (i.e., ｾｦ･ｲ ､ (Q by the pronoun elu] that discreetly seu free (by means of a sorr of game that tires the narra[Qf, he says) all the IX'wers of a language by making it apparenrly untranslatable: "Suddenly, she {tilt] would cry out, 'Oh, I see the daylight, oh God,' etc. I would protest that this game was tiring me out enormously, but she was insatiable for my glory. ,. The game did not consist solely or surely (look at the paragraph) in wordplay. But language is involved from the first. The feminine voice that says "I see the daylight"-insatiable for the "glory" of the "I" of the story, for his triumph-this voice is spoken, is translated by language: "1 am bom" (VOff It jollr abo means "to be born" in French), bU( also "I see" (things) and, what's more, ") see" light, glory, the element of visibility, the visibility of that which is visible, the phenomenality of the phenomeoon; thus I see vision. both eyesight and what it can see, the stage (.uiwtl and the possibility of ｲ･ｰｾｮｲ｡ ｩｯｮ {,rri-Wt), the scene of visibility, a primal Ietnt, I might say, quoting the tirle of a "ery shorr text (i.e., "Une scene ｰｲｩｭ ｴ ｾＢＩＬ a "broken window" by Blanchot, a text ｷ ｾ powerful enigma I do not wish to tOuch on here. Visibility should-not be visible. According ro an old, omnipotent logic that has reigned since Plato, that which enables us to see- should remain

m,t",

present rhese: problems {Ie in Illnt] , but the ｳｲ｡ｾ on which they appear, as will be seen, is one where the unrepresentable is in full force. Thus I have sought to present them practirally, and in a sense ptrfonnarivt!y, in accordance with a nOrlon of the performative that I feel must be dissociated, by an aCt of deconstruction, from the notion of presence " with which it is generally linked. The maximal translarability of this band: impove,ishment by univocaJity. Economy and formalization, bur

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invisible: black, blinding. La /oUt dll jollr is a story of madness {hiltor;t tk la /ol;t}, of that madness that consists in seeing the light, vision or visibility, from an experience of blindness. If from "life" we appeal to "light," from lfU to ｾＧ［ｉｩｯｷＬ we can speak ht're of IlIr-tlY, of living on in a Iife-after-life or a Iife-afrer-dearh, as IIiNJuion, "seeing on" in a vision-beyond-vision. To see sight or vision or visibility, to see beyond what is visible, is nOt merely "w have a vision" in the usual sense of the word, but to seebeyond-sight, ro see-sighr-beyond-sight. As in Ponge's "u soleil place en abime," the story of glory engulfs or clouds over a sort of paternal figure, placing it in an abyss-structure, in visionbeyond-\'ision. The story obscures the sun ("the sun their father ," says The Tr;umph of Lift) with a blinding light. (Thus perhaps the mother lives on, and on, as a ghost-phantom or revenant-an absolute figuranr, a walk-on who walks on and on, in accordance with the "obsequenr logic" to which I referred in GlnJ, ) am my father who is dead and my mother who is alive, anounces Nietzsche at the midpoint of his life, in Eat Homo, after passing through blindness,) To see vision, to see on beyond sight: this abyss-like madness of an utterly primal scene, the scene of scenes, stages, representation, is simulated and dissimulated in the nanarive in the reassuring form (for those who want to be reassured) of spectacles {.rpt't1adtI] within oounds. determinate "visions" or "scenes" that serve in a way to allegorize the abyss and contain the madness. 1ne word "vision" itself is ambiguous enough to make this economy possible. The feminine voice that says, "Oh, I see the daylight, oh God," is, as we have said, insatiable for the "glory" of the speaker who tht' opposite sense to that of what rakes place in the upper band: Ihere, tOO, are economy and formalization, but by semantic accumulation and overloading, until the point when the logic of the undecidable en to stress Ihe rranslation-effect here> I. Effecrs of transference, of superimposing, of textual superimprinting between the rwo "triumphs" or the twO "11,."/U" a"d wilhin In

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says ")" in u, folie dll JONr. This speaker has supposedly triumphed over blindness. I do nor know whether it is possible to consider the "glories" of The Triumph 0/ Life and those of La jolie dll jour as translating one another, and if so, which translating which, and in what ways. If we are not restricted to literal recurrences of rhe word "glory," then that translarion can go every which way. Irs detours become both endless and inevitable. Let us say that I interrupt them here. I Stop Ve m'arrett}. Thus I shall nOt quote "Outdoors, I saw something briefly {j'tIIJ Nnt CONrlt v;;;,;n; also "I had a brief vision"}" from La folie dll jOllY, at the hinge of rhe text, to give it rhe resonance of an echo translating "And rhen a Vision on my brain was rolled," which is at once rhe linking point and the opening of the narrative in The TriNmph of Lift. After the "brief vision," before the traumatic accident in which "I nearly lost my sight, because someone crushed glass in my eyes," the accident that left him at first wirh his eyes bandaged (to be translated, I suppose, by "eyes banded" or by "banded eyes" as in lines 100 and 103 of The Triumph of Liji), the beginning of the end is there for us to read. The beginning of the end describes in an abyss-structure {i.e., in an inserted miniature representing the whole} the structure of the "narrative," the ",reil" (?) entitled La folie du JONr. This "narrative" Jet"1J indeed to begin with a certain sentence that will subsequently be quoted towards the end as part of the narrative, unless the first sentence quotes in advance the one that comes at the end and that relates the first words of a narrative. I shall return to this structure, which deprives the text of any beginning and of any decidable each of them. Borh arc written in a certain (arrested V1rritt)) relationship of translation. 2. The h,'/fun (alliance, .....edding-band, reaffirmation, "Yes, yes," "Comc, come" and so forth) is related. in L'an-it de mort, thematically related, to wru.t commits us "in the language of the other." 3. Above all. by making manifest the limits of the prevalent concept of translation (I do not say of translatability in genera!), we .. tOuch on multiple problems said to be of "l'lcthod," of reading and

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edge or border, of any heading or letterhead {ro-Itle}. (Entete is the word with which Chouraqui translates the beginning of Genesis: ENTETE [in-head] Elohim created heaven and earth. The earth was in shambles, darkness upon the face of the abyss, the breath of Elohim moving upon the face of the warers. Elohim says: "There will be lighL" And there is light. light: Oh, the good. Elohim sees the Elohim separates the light from the darkness. light: "Day." Elohim cries to the To the datkness, he cries: "Night." And it is evening and it is morning: day, unique. After the "brief vision," before the injury from which "I nearly lost my sight," he tells himself that this brief vision, in midstOry, marks the beginning of the end: This btief scene roused me to the point of delirium. I don't suppose I could fully explain it to myself and yet I was sure of it, that I had seized the momellt when the day, having come face to face with a real evellt, ....,ould now hasten to its end. Here it comes, I said to myself, the end is coming; something is happening, the end is beginning. I was overcome with joy. teaching. 1lte line that I 5C('k to recognize within translatability, be· tween twO translations, Ol\c governed by the classical model of transportable univocality Ot of tOrmalizable polysemia, and the other, which goc-s ovet into dissemination-this line also passes between the critical and the dcconstructive. A politico-institutional problem of rhe University: it, like all teaching in its traditional form, and perhaps all teaching ....·hatever, ru.s as its ideal, with exru.ust ive translatabiliry, the effacement

LIVING ON:

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(There are writings entitled, for example. Emelt (Genesis}. the Gospels, Revelation (Apocalypse}, and so forth. I would like to speak of them hete, to attempt to tead them, to move to them from, for example. Tbt Triumph of Lift, La fotit du joNr. Carret dt mQrt . . . and the Story. the narrative, of "Living On" as differance. with an a. between archeology and eschatology, as dif· ferance in apocalypse. That will be a while in coming.)

What is judiciously called the question-of-narrative covers, with a certain modesry, a demand for narrative, a violent putting-to-the-question, an instrument of torture working to wring the narrative OUt of one as if it were a terrible secret. in ways that can go from the most archaic p.)lice methods to refinements for making (and even letting) one talk that are unsurpassed in neutrality and p.)liteness, that are most respectfully medical, psychiatric, and ｾ ｮ psychoanalytic. For reasons that should be obvious by now, I shall not say that B1andlOt offers a rtprtsmtatirm, a milt m lant, of this demand for narrative, in LA folit du jOllY: it would be better to say that it is there to be read. "to the point of delirtium," as it throws the reader off the track. For rhe same reasons, I do nOt know whether the text can be classified as being of the genre (Geneue: the motk (mode; mood of a verb}) "ri(it, " a word that Blanchor' ha.i repe:uedly insisted up.)n and contesred, reclaimed and rejected, Set down and (then) erased, and so forth. In addition to these general reasons there is a singular characteristic. involving precisely the (internal and external) boH'ldarin or tdgtl of of language Va langue}. The deconstronion of a pedagogical institution and all that it implies. What this institution cannOl bear. is for anyone ro tamper with VOII(htr a,' also "touch," ··change." "concern himself with"} language, meaning both the naliana' language a,Id , paradoxically, an ideal of translatability that neutralizes this national language. Nationalism and universalism. What this institution cannOl bear is a transformation that leaves intact neither of these two complementary poles.

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this text. The boundary from which we believe we approach La folit du jOllr, irs "first word" ("I"). opens with a paragraph that affirt1U a SOrt of triumph of life at the edge of death. The triumph must be excessive (in accordance with the "boundlessness" of hubris) and very close to what it ttiumphs over. This paragraph begins a narrative. it seems. but does not yet recount anything. The narrator imroduces himself in that simplest of performances, an ") am," or more precisely an "I am neither . . . nor . . . :' which immediately removes the perfOt"mance from presence. The end of this paragraph notes especially the double excess of every triumph of life: i.e., the excessive double affirmation, of triumphant life, of death which triumphs fII-'tr life. I am ｲｾｴｩ･ｮ learned nor ignor:.ant. I ha\'e known joys. 11lat is saying tOO little: I am alive. and this life gives me the greatest pleasure. And what about ＿ｨｾ､ ｮｾｗ I die (perhaps any minute now), I will ｉｾ immense pleasure. I am nor talking about dle forewte of death, ......hich is stale and often disagr«able. Suffering dulls the Ｎｾ But this is ｾｴ remarbble tNth .......hich I am cerrain of: I feel boondless pleasure in living, and I will take boundless satisfaction in dying. A number of signs make it possible to recognize a man in the firstperson speaker. But in the dOllblt affirmation seen (remarked upon) in the syntax of triumph as triompht-dt, triumph of and triumph ovtr, the narrator comes close ro seeing a trait that is particularly feminine. a trait of feminine beauty, even. II can bear more readily the most appartntly revolutionary ideological SOrts of "content," if only that content docs not touch the borders of language Va langut] and of all the juridico-political contracts that it guarantees. It is this "intolerable" something that concerns me here. It is relawd in an essential way to that which. as it is wrincn above, brings ou[ the limits of the concept of translation on which the university is built, particularly when it makes the teaching of language, even

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Men wam to escape death, strange animals that they are. And some of them cry om "Die. die" because they want to t'SCape life. "What a life. I'll kill myself. I'll give in." Tnat is pitiful and strange; it is a mistake. Yet I have met people who have nevet told life to be quiet or told death to gO away--almost always women, beautiful creatures.

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I had been asked, "Tell us exactly what happened." A stOry {Un rid/]? I began: J am neither learned nor ignorant. I ha\'e known joys. That is saying roo linle. I fOld them the whole stOry [hiJtoirt}, and they listened with interest. it seems to me, at [east in the beginning. But the end was a surprise to all of us. 'That was the beginning," they said. "Now get down ro the facts." How so? The srory {ridt] was finished! I was forced to realize that I was not capable of forming a Story out of rhese evcots. I had lost the thread of the narrative lj'hiJto;rt}: that happen