The Neutral 0231134045

Citation preview

ROLAND

BARTHES

Lecture Course at the at the College de France (1977-1978)

Translated by Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier Text established, annotated, and presented by Thomas Clerc under the direction of Eric Marty

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK

� Columbia University Press

Publishers Since I 893 New York

Chichester, West Sussex

Translation copyright © 2005 Columbia University Press Copyright © Editions du Seuil, 2002 All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barthes, Roland. [Neurre. English] The neutral ; lecture course at the College de France ( 1 9 7 7 - 1 9 7 8 ) / Roland Barthes ; text established, annotated, and presented by Thomas Clertc under the direction of Eric Marty ; translated by Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier. p. cm.-{European perspectives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-23 1 - I 3 404-5 (alk. paper) 1.

Difference (philosophy).

III. Title.

1. Clerc, Thomas.

II. Marty, Eric, 1 9 5 5-

IV. Series.

B809·0.B3 7 1 3

2005

1 9 4-dc22

2004065 673

@ Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

I

CONTE NTS

xiii

Translators' Preface

xix

Notice

xxi

Preface

xxix

Preli minaries

SESSION OF F EBRUARY

1

1 8, 1 978

Preliminaries

Intertext I.

In Guise of Epigraphs

4

a. Joseph de Maistre b. Tolstoy

3

5 5

c. Rousseau

d. Portrait of Lao-tzu by Himself

6

2.

Argument 6 3. Processes of Preparation, of Exposition b. Figures

4.

--;>

"The Neutral in Thirty Figures "

The Desire for Neutral a. Pathos

8

8

a. The Library

12

12

b. The Wirelike Sharpness of Mourning 14

13

Benevolence r.

Benevolentia

14

2.

Dry and Damp 15 3. Emotion and Distance 16

Weariness r.

Placeless

2.

What Wearies

16 18

SESSION OF F EBRUARY 20

15

25, 1 978

Weariness (Continued)

3. Rightness of Weariness 4.

20

Weariness as Work, as Game, as Creation a. Weariness as Work

20

b. Weariness as Game

20

20

10

\\eariness 21

as Creation

20

Silence

and Taceo 2 I Ourplar Speech 2 3 a. To Keep Silent a s Worldly Tactic 23 b. Keeping Silent as the Obligation of an Inner "Morality " : The Silence of the Skeptic 2 5 3 . Silence a s Sign 26 4 . To Outplay Silence 27 29

� .

�. . �

�.

To

Tact

1 . Principle of Tact 29 2 . Twinklings of Tact 3 0 a. Minutia 3 0 b . Discretion 3 I S E S S IO N O F MARCH 4, 1 978

32

Supplement I

32

Tact (Continued)

c. Supplement and Not Redundancy 3 2 d. Politeness as Thought of the Other, Consideration of and for Otherness 3 3 e. Metaphorization 3 4 3 . Tact and Sociability 3 4 a. Tact as the Social Obscene 3 4 b . The Sabi, the Amorous 3 5 c . Sweetness. Last (Provisional) Word on Tact 3 6 37

Sleep 1 . The Neutral Awakening 37 2 . The Utopia of Sleep 3 7 3 . Sleep, Love, Benevolence 40

41

Affirmation

1. 2. 3. 4.

Language and Discourse 4 1 Affirmation and Language 4 2 Affirmation and Discourse 4 3 Drags, Dodges, Hollow Corrections

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 1 , 1 978 47

Supplement II Color

1. The Colorless: Two References 2. Interpretations 49 a. Richness/Poverty vi

CONTENTS

49

49

44

b. Back/Front c. Origin

50

50

d. Shimmer

5I

e. Indistinction S2

51

The Adjective

1 . Adjective and Neutral 2 . Quality a s Energy

52

53

a. Foundation of the Thing, of the Name b . Quality a s Desire

53

54

3. Aggression Through the Adjective a. The Deprecating Adjective

55

56

b . The Laudatory Adjective: The Compliment c . The Refusal of the Adjective

4 . To Dismiss Adjectives

58

a. The Lover's Discourse b . The Sophists

58

c. Negative Theology d. East

58

59

59

5 . The Time o f the Adjective SESSION OF MARCH 18, 1978 62

Supplement III

69

Images of the Neutral I.

Depreciative Images a. Thankless b. Shirking

70

c. Muffled

70

d. Limp

70

e. Indifferent f. Vile

69

69

71

72

2 . The Neutral a s Scandal 73

72

Anger

1. States

74

a. Anger

74

b. Suffering/Queasiness c . Minimal Existence 2 . "Patho-logy"

75 76

77

SESSION OF MARCH 2S, 1978 78

Supplement IV

81

The Active of the Neutral

1 . Active vii

CO N T E N T S

81

60

57

56

2.

Features 8 2 a. A-correction

=

Abstention from Correcting

82

b. Contamination Indifference t o Being Contaminated c. N o Ranking 8 2 d. Relation t o the Present 8 3 e . Banality 8 3 f . Weakness 8 3 g . Strength 8 4 h . Restraint 8 4 i. Stupidity 8 5 3 . The Chinese Portrait 8 5 =

86

Ideospheres

1 . Features 8 7 a. Consistency

87

b. The Lever 8 8 c . Mania 8 8 2 . Ideosphere and Power (to sacrifice t o fashion) 3. Sincerity 9 I 4. Perpetuity 9 2

89

S E S S I O N OF A P R I L 1, 1 9 7 8

94

Su pplement V

95

Consciousness

1 . Consciousness as Drug: Monsieur Teste a. M . Teste 9 6 b . H.B. 9 7

96

c. Differences and Identities 99 2. The Valerian Self as Imaginary 100 a. The Paradox 1 0 1 b. " Sensibility" 1 0 2 c . The Imaginary a s Crisis 103 S E S S I O N OF A P R I L 2 9 , 1 9 7 8

1 07

Answer

1 . Answer as Form

107

2. Beside-the-Point Answers 109 a. Departures, Flights, Silences, Forgettings b. Deviations I I 2 c. Incongruities I I 3 3 . Another Logic, Another Dialogue

viii

CONTENTS

1 14

1 09

82

SESSION OF MAY 6, 1978

Rites

122

Public Rites

1 22 2. Private Rites 1 23 3. A Little Bit of Symbolic 4. The Letter 1 24 I.

124

Conflict

125

I. Banality of the Notion 125 2. Coded Conflict 1 26 3. Dodges 127 4. Conflict as Meaning I28

129

Supplement

130

Oscillation

VI

I. Image and Etymologies 2. Vibratory Time

13°

133

136

S ESSION 0 F MAY 1 3, 1 978

136

Supplement VII

137

Retreat

The Gesture

13 7 138 b. Swedenborg 140 c. Proust 142 2. Organization 143 3· Sitio 1 44 4. Vita Nuova (Dante: Nova) I.

a. Rousseau

147

a. Fantasy: Its Constituting Feature: Radicality b. Old Age

148 c. Destitution 1 5 0 152

SESSION OF MAY 20, 1978

152

Arrogance I. Anorexia 1 52 2. Western Frenzy 1 54 3 . Obviousness, Interpretation 4. The Concept 1 56 5 . MemorylForgetting 1 5 7 6 . Unity-Tolerance 1 5 8 7 . Writing 162

155

Panorama

163

I.

ix

Suppression of Time: Dreams

CO N TE N TS

163

1 47

2. Suppression of Suffering: Halcyonian Calm

1 64

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

1 66

S u pplement VIII

1 66

Panorama (Continued)

3 . Sovereign Memory 4. Ubiquiplace 1 68 1 69

1 66

Kairos

1 . Sophist Kairos and Skeptical Kairos 1 69 a. Sophists 1 69 b. Skeptics 1 69 c. The Two Kairos 1 70 2. Validity and Truth 1 70 3 . Ambivalence of the Kairos 1 7 1 4 . The Satori 1 7 2 a. In the Field o f Rationality, o f Empereia b. Outside the Field o f Rationality 173 c. "Ah, This ! " 174 5. The Perishable 175 175

173

Wou-wei

1 . The Will-to-Live 1 7 5 2 . Wou-wei 176 3. Figures of the West 1 77 a. Leonardo da Vinci According to Freud b. Prince Andrew 1 7 8 c. John Cage 1 7 8 4 . The Sacred 1 7 8 5 . To Abstain from 1 79 a. Dietary Self-denial 179 b. Pathetic Abstinence 1 80 c. Pyrrhonian Abstinence 1 8 0 SESSION OF J U N E 3, 1 978

1 82

Wou-wei (Continued)

6. Apathy 1 8 2 a . Tao: Image of the Mirror b . Pyrrho 1 8 2 c . Political Apathy 1 8 3 7 . To Be Sitting 1 84 a. Tao b. Zen

x

CONTE NTS

1 84 185

182

1 77

The Androgyne

186

I.

The Gender of Words

186

a . The Grammarians' Neuter

1 87

b. From Language to Discourse 2. The Androgyne

1 89

191

ANNEX

Intensities

196

1 . Neutral, Structure, Intensity 2. Apophasis and Apheresis 3. Name Changes 4.

Minimalism

196

197

198

199

To Give Leave

201

1.

Epoche, Balance 201 a. Epoche (Epichein) 201 b. Balance

202

2. Leave, Drift

203

Fright

206

1 . Fright 2. Anxiety 3. Prayer

207 208 208

211

Su m m a ry: Literary Semiology (M. Rola n d Barthes, Professor)

213

Notes

261

Bibl iography

269

Na me Index

273

Subject Index

xi

CONTE NTS

TR

NSlATORS' PREf

E

As Barthes had promised in the lecture with which he inaugurated his assumption of the chair of literary semiology at the College de France, he would pursue a "phantasmic teaching, " one based on the "comings and goings of desire, which [the teacher] endlessly presents and represents. I sincerely believe, " he continued, "that at the origins of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy, which can vary from year to year. " 1 But the fantasy on which Barthes's penultimate course " Le Neu­ tre" is based did not "vary from year to year"; it held steady, rather, over the trajectory that took him from Writing Degree Zero, with the zero degree an early version of " Ie neutre, " through all the rest of his books. Perhaps its most touching statement is to be found in Roland

Barthes By Roland Barthes, where he traces his mature commit­ ment to this domain back to the impulses of his early childhood, so that even while playing a version of tag in the Luxembourg Gar­ dens, his inclination was to neutralize the exercise of power that rules an opponent out: When I used to play prisoner's base in the Luxembourg, what I liked best was not provoking the other team and boldly ex­ posing myself to their right to take me prisoner; what I liked best was to free the prisoners-the effect of which was to put both teams back into circulation: the game started over again at zero. In the great game of the powers of speech, we also play prisoner's base: one language has only temporary rights over another; all it takes is for a third language to appear from the ranks for the assailant to be forced to retreat: in the con­ flict of rhetorics, the victory never goes to any but the Third Language. The task of this language is to release the prison­ ers: to scatter the signified, the catechisms.2 Indeed, Barthes was obsessed by "the great game of the pow­ ers of speech," a cathexis that impelled his interest in semiology's analysis of these same powers. His image of the prisoners highlights his sense of language's coerciveness, something his lecture went so far as to call "the fascism of language."3 For language always dexiii

mands a choice, an identification of gender, of person, of desire for one or the other of two opposed values: the oppositions structural linguistics terms binaries, and semiology calls "paradigms. " It was the position of Ferdinand de Saussure, founder of structural linguis­ tics, that meaning itself is generated by the friction of one binary el­ ement against the other, which forms the fundamental oppositions that leave the unchosen pole implicit within any speech act. Such oppositions could be white versus black (the versus abbreviated by "/" ) , high/low, hot/cold, or, in a later study by Barthes himself, S/Z. Barthes suffered at the hands of this demand for choice, lamenting, " by its very structure my language implies an inevitable relation of alienation. "4 Alienating or not, however, Barthes recounts his com­ mitment-indeed, his "j oy"-over binaries in Roland Barthes: For a certain time, he went into raptures over binarism; bina­ rism became for him a kind of erotic object. This idea seemed to him inexhaustible, he could never exploit it enough. That one might say everything with only one difference produced a kind of joy in him, a continuous astonishment. Since intellectual things resemble erotic ones, in binarism what delighted him was a figure. Later on he would find this (identical) figure again, in the opposition of values. What (in him) would deflect semiology was from the first the pleasure principle: a semiology which has renounced binarism no lon­ ger concerns him at all. 5 The major binary Male/Female points up the problem of how to translate Barthes's title: should it be "The Neuter " (the third term between the genders) or "The Neutral" (which is how Barthes's most effective translator, Richard Howard, renders it in Roland

Barthes)?6 What Barthes himself designates as the sexual basis of the third term in the various disciplines to which he refers in his pre­ liminary presentation (for example, the drones among bees) would lead one to "The Neuter. " But Barthes also uses the domain of in­ ternational law (and Switzerland) as a basis, in relation to which only "The Neutral " makes sense. Furthermore, the structural lin­ guistics of Barthes's generation, that of the Prague School, and Hjelmslev, and Greimas, in particular, was fascinated by the pho­ netic fact of neutralization, which is the annihilation of opposition between sounds within certain languages: for example, the differ­ ence between d and t at the ends of words in German (with "hund" pronounced " hunt " ) or the difference between d and t in English after s (as in the case of " still," which is pronounced " sdill " ) . Since

xiv

T R A N S L AT O R S ' P R E FA C E

"The Neuter" is more transgressive, I was tempted to choose it; but since "The Neutral" has the broadest implication within structural linguistics and relates to Barthes's contempt for what he calls "The Critique ni-ni" and, in Le Neutre, "ninisme" (neither-norism)-in reference to the neutrality assumed by j ournalists committed to tell­ ing both sides of any story-it seemed far more apt.? Additionally, for structural linguistics, neutralization explains the action of sub­ lation or the transcendence of difference. In this course, Barthes calls the constancy of his commitment to a "third language, " his "desire for neutral, " and in Roland Barthes, he presents it as his dream of an "exemption from meaning" : Evidently h e dreams of a world which would b e exempt from meaning (as one is from military service) . This began with Writing Degree Zero, in which is imagined "the absence of every sign"; subsequently, a thousand affirmations incidental to this dream (apropos of the avant-garde text, of Japan, of music, of the alexandrine, etc. ) . Curious that in public opinion, precisely, there should be a version of this dream; Doxa, too, has no love for meaning, which in its eyes makes the mistake of conferring upon life a kind of infinite intelligibility (which cannot be determined, arrested): it counters the invasion of meaning by the concrete; the concrete is what is supposed to resist meaning. Yet for him, it is not a question of recovering a pre-mean­ ing, an origin of the world, of life, of facts, anterior to mean­ ing, but rather to imagine a post-meaning: one must traverse, as though the length of an initiatic way, the whole meaning, in order to be able to extenuate it, to exempt it. Whence a dou­ ble tactic: against Doxa, one must come out in favor of mean­ ing, for meaning is the product of History, not of Nature; but against Science (paranoiac discourse) one must maintain the utopia of suppressed meaning. In his lecture, Barthes returns to literature from semiology to speak of it as the practice that has access to a kind of outwitting of language's power play: For the text is the very outcropping of speech, and it is within speech that speech must be fought, led astray-not by the mes­ sage of which it is the instrument, but by the play of words of which it is the theater. . . . The forces of freedom which are in literature depend not on the writer's civil person, nor on his political commitment-for he is, after all, only a man among

xv

TRA N S LATOR'S PRE F ACE

others-nor do they even depend on the doctrinal content of his work, but rather on the labor of displacement he brings to bear upon the language.8 (p. 6) This raises one more knot within the flow of translation, for Barthes's idea of leading language "astray" is consistently expressed by the verb dejouer, which in its literal rendering as " outplay, " or " outsmart, " stays within the idea of language itself as a play of power; Barthes first takes up dejouer as a figure in his analysis of Georges Bataille's essay on the Big Toe, where Richard Howard translates it as " baffle," which I find both precise and economical and have adopted for the most part here.9 Since the word relates to the field of play, Howard also uses "fake," as in "fake out. " " Out­ wit" or "thwart" could also serve. Barthes's argument is that the Big Toe baffles the paradigm noble/ignoble and is thus a foretaste of his idea of the Neutral. The elegant and scrupulous edition of Barthes's course published by Seuil has been retained here with the addition of only a few translators' notes to explain some technical terms and to guide the reader to pertinent literature (our interpolations appear in curly brackets) . In translating the notes, we tried whenever possible to translate its quotations and references from a French library to an English one. Hence, in addition to the list Barthes himself circulated during the first session (see "Intertext," in the February I 8 session), there are two bibliographies at the end of the volume: one for the works quoted in the text or in the notes that were originally written or translated in English; another for those for which we were un­ able to locate an existing English version.lO The marginalia are mostly a remnant of Barthes's scriptorium. Even though he used them in the page setting of his late books (such as A Lover's Discourse), they were also, in the case of these lecture notes, a mnemotechnic tool Barthes found useful while delivering his lectures. We have stuck as close as possible to Barthes's own ab­ breviated references: "Boehme" refers to Alexandre Koyre's book, " Gide " to Maria Van Rysselberghe's Cahiers de la petite dame, " Swedenborg" to Matter's biography, " de Maistre" and "Maistre" to Cioran's anthology of the writer, "Joly" to Joly's anthology on tolerance, " Sceptiques" and " Sophistes" to Dumont's anthologies of those ancient Greek philosophical schools, "Baudelaire" to his Artificial Paradise. Thus, for example, the same quotation from de Maistre's can be referenced twice: once, by Barthes himself, in the xvi

T R A N S L AT O R S ' P R E FA C E

margin with the page number of Cioran's anthology and time in the editorial note where it is referred to in the Engli! lation (when available) of the specific book by de Maistre i from; or the same page by Voltaire will be referred to in the �ddrgfii by the indication "Joly" followed by a page number and in the notes by the edition of an English translation of Voltaire's Treatise on Tolerance.l1

Notes I. Roland Barthes, "Lecture," trans. Richard Howard, October, no. 8 (spring 1979 ) : 5 · 2. Roland Barthes, Roland Bartheslby Roland Barthes, trans. Richard How­ ard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), p. 50. 3 . Barthes, "Lecture," p. 5. Reacting to a remark by Ernest Renan on the French language's inoculation against reaction, Barthes said, "But language­ the performance of a language system-is neither reactionary nor progressive; it is quite simply fascist; for fascism does not prevent speech, it compels speech." 4. Ibid. 5. Barthes, Roland Bartheslby Roland Barthes, p. 5 1 . 6. Ibid., p . 1 3 2. 7. "La Critique Ni-ni" appears as "Neither-Nor Criticism" in Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1 977), pp. 8 1- 8 3 . 8 . " Lecture," p. 6. 9. Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1 9 86), p. 242. 10. Our thanks to David Macklowitch, graduate student at Columbia Uni­ versity, for his perseverance in finding the English translations of Barthes's wide range of references. II. See Bernard Comment, "Politique: Dejouer Tout Pouvoir," in Roland Barthes, vers Ie neutre (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1 9 9 1 ) , pp. 2 19-254.

xvii

T RA N S LAT O R'S PR E F ACE

__

NOTICE

This "Notice " is a shortened version of the genera l foreword that introduces the publ ication of Barthes's courses. For more deta i ls, one should consult Comment vivre ensemble.

The organizing principle of the three volumes of Barthes's courses at the College de France is the class session, since such was the true rhythm of the reading, 1 a rhythm that Barthes inscribed on his manuscript, after the fact, by marking a date at the place where he had stopped on that day at a given hour and where he had to take up again the following week. Within this chronological sequence are inserted the structures specific to the writing of the course: the title of the "trait, " or the figure, that constitutes the unity articulating the ensemble of the topos (topic) and the various titles, subtitles, columns, and so forth that, for their part, constitute the second-level articulations interior to each figure, or "trait. " As for the "text" o f the course itself, we chose to intervene as little as possible. We have retained the symbols Barthes uses-for example, to condense a logical construction [�,,,, ]-but we gave ourselves permission to complete abbreviations when these arise from a common shorthand (for instance, Robinson

Crusoe

for

R. C) and to correct punctuation where it was too muddled. When Barthes's written argument was too obscure, we also gave ourselves permission to paraphrase the general intention of the passage in a footnote to spare the reader an unnecessary enigma. We have used the wide margins of the collection "Traces ecrites" to inscribe the bibliographic references for the citations that in his manuscript Barthes placed at the very same place on the page. We should add that we have kept the few passages Barthes crossed out but identified them as such in notes that indicates their extent. When Barthes, as an introduction to a course session, comments on letters he received or on his argument from the preceding week, these pas­ sages (or "Supplements " ) appear in italics. Finally, the editors' inter­ ventions in the text of the course are marked by square brackets ( [ ] );

xix

Barthes's own interventions in the course of a citation are indicated by angle brackets ( < » . The footnotes are of a classical philological style, necessary for a text that is at times so allusive. Citations, proper names, expressions in foreign languages (particularly in Ancient Greek, which we have chosen to transliterate in Latin characters), place-names, historical events are to the extent possible identified by these notes, which a complete bibliographic index saves from being too repetitive. To this index of names and works, we have added an uncommented index of concepts. When Barthes refers to a rare or unlocatable edi­ tion, our footnotes indicate a more accessible one.2 A short preface contextualizes the course and emphasizes its most salient features. -Eric Marty

N otes 1. 1977: Roland Barthes, Comment vivre ensemble: Simulations roman­ esques de quelques espaces quotidiens, ed. Claude Coste (Paris: SeuilJIMEC, 2002); 1977-1978 : Le Neutre: Cours et seminaires au College de France, 1977-1978, ed. Thomas Clerc and E ric Marty (Paris: Seuil, 2002); 1978-1980: La Preparation du roman I et II: Cours et seminaires au College de France 1978 et 1979-1980, ed. Nathalie Leger (Paris: Seuil, 2003). 2. (Most of Barthes's original references are to the items listed in "Intertext," all in French; for English readers, we have changed subsequent citations to refer to the volumes listed in the bibliography. For the texts written in English, we quote from the original. For those originally in French or another non-Eng­ lish language (German, Italian), we quote, whenever possible, from an English translation. Even for French works, for reasons of availability, we were occa­ sionally compelled to cite editions that do not correspond to those in Barthes's "Intertext." For these reasons, we didn't always keep the page references that Barthes noted in the text or in the margins of his notes.}

xx

N OT I C E

PRE FACE

The course on "The Neutral" that Roland Barthes gave at the Col­ lege de France extended over thirteen weeks, from February 1 8 to June 3, 1978. After "How to Live Together, " it was the second se­ ries of courses since his election to the College on March 1 4 , 1 976, and the inaugural lecture of January 7, 1 977. Th� course, which took place on Saturdays, lasted two hours, broken by a short pause. After the "preliminaries" that occupy the largest part of the first session and in which he presented his research, Barthes would ex­ plore, during these several months, some twenty "figures" (about two per class), twenty-three to be exact, which he also calls " traits" or " twinklings. " These figures, which correspond to the possible embodiments of the Neutral (and of the anti-Neutral), ranging from " Sleep " to " Silence, " from " Rage" to "Arrogance, " are pre­ sented in a happenstance order, as Barthes says during the opening session, so as not to submit the course to a preestablished meaning that would be in contradiction with the concept of Neutral. After the alphabetical order he had adopted the year before, he turned to a new mode of arbitrariness, the figures being now distributed according to the randomness of numbers and letters he found in a journal of statistics. This playful dimension, even though it didn't encounter, as Barthes humorously admits, "any echo," allows him to desacralize somewhat the ritual of the course. Variable in their length, the figures are not always integrally treated in one session, in which case they are completed in the following one. The short­ est, " Benevolence" (which is also the first) , extends two pages in the manuscript; the longest, " Retreat," nine. The slicing of the book ac­ cording to sessions rather than to traits thus reflects the diachronic dimension that is part of the structure of a course. At the head of the preliminaries is a list of the traits, with the exception of three Barthes didn't treat, which are reproduced as an appendix in the present edition: " Intensities, " "To Give Leave," "Fright." The documents related to the course, preserved at the Institut de la Memoire de l'Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) , comprise four bundles of around eight hundred little notecards altogether, con­ taining the bibliographic indications, some summaries, notes, and xxi

projects on abandoned figures, the whole accompanied by several commentaries; a series of cassettes and computer disks (around twenty) on which are recorded the quasi-totality of the twenty-six hours of oral presentation; and finally, of course, the manuscript of the course properly speaking, which takes up 1 80 pages written in blue ink on sheets of 2 1 x 29.7 cm. The writing, regular and legible, is dense. It takes up almost all the page, which nevertheless includes a larger left-hand margin that Barthes uses to indicate the refer­ ences to the texts he cites (name of the author, page of the book), to underscore the key term of the page or paragraph or to indicate in one word the point of his argument. These marginalia, like those he used in A Lover's Discourse, guide the reading of the main text, in an exercise of clarity and orientation, but they attest as well to Barthes's involvement in an aesthetic use of the layout of the page. The manuscript consists of notes that are fully developed, even if marked by a relative ellipsis at the syntactical level. The core of it, however, is written in a clear manner: Barthes used to follow his notes closely when he delivered his course. If the logical articula­ tions are often replaced by signs of punctuation, with colons and arrows taking over the lion's share, the general structure is suffi­ ciently clear to allow for an accessible reading. Barthes in fact devi­ ates very little from the manuscript, in accordance with his view that written discourse should take precedence over the oral form. In this regard, the oral digressions, rare and precisely framed, produce a contrast: we have reproduced some of them in the notes. Being neither an achieved piece of writing nor the dry outline that would have suited a speaker perfectly at ease with improvisation, this text offers itself to a reading that thus belongs to the specific regime of the ne-uter, of the "neither/nor. " A bibliographic intertext is included with the opening session, during which it was distributed to the audience. This book list will be enriched, as the research goes along, by several titles. Quite var­ ied, it comprises works of Eastern and Antique mysticism, philo­ sophical texts, and literary works in which the fictional dimension is rather reduced: Tolstoy and Proust are present (the latter being cited only through George Duncan Painter's biography), but Pascal, Baudelaire, Michelet, and the Rousseau of the Reveries du prome­ neur solitaire are more thoroughly exploited. The list's unpredict­ able character distances it from a bibliography that could claim to "cover" a subject. It offers itself less as a summa on the neu­ tral-inexistent, moreover-than as a set of directions, promoting the model of an interdisciplinary semiotic to which Barthes was alxxii

P R E FA C E

ways alert: linguistics, theology, philosophy, science, and literature testify, together with the polynymy of the references, to the richness of the Neutral. Thanks to the figure, Maurice Blanchot and John Cage, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, Pascal and Baudelaire, Pyrrho and Joseph de Maistre are joined. Admitting that his is often a secondhand erudition, Barthes relies on anthologies (especially for Greek and Eastern philosophies) or monographs: he cites Jacob Boehme, Spinoza, or Vico by means of Alexandre Koyre, Sylvain Zac, or Michelet. Since the art of the course consists in making the Neutral twin­ kle, a certain joyous dilettantism-if we agree to take the word at its original meaning-appears in the paths Barthes followed to pursue his research: "The material must be racy, " he announces at the start, in reference to the texts and the authors he plans to privi­ lege but also to the library from which they are drawn, which is at least in part that of his vacation home in Drt, in the southwest of France. The chosen references are thus obsessive references, texts he has loved and practiced for a long time or has recently discovered, like the works of the Eastern philosophies, but to which he feels an affinity. Often remarking to the audience on the beauty of his texts, Barthes gives his course an aesthetic dimension that is enhanced by the connections he never misses an opportunity to establish be­ tween the books and the authors, different as they may be. Those textual cross-references have no motor other than desire: which brings us back to the vow he took during his inaugural lecture of "always placing a fantasy" at the origin of his teaching. As well, far from pretending to hand over the keys of a concept about which the Western sphere knows little, Barthes proposes a research that pays its debt to his precursors, of course, but is first and foremost personal. Even if he often cites Blanchot, Barthes's perspective is very different; similarly, he admits to having bracketed the phenom­ enological approach, or "Husserlian neutralization" ; finally, even if he takes off from an old linguistic intuition (the theory of the zero degree, taken from Vigo Bmndal), this is not a course on language. Barthes rather sees the Neutral as the occasion for a " divagation" that would turn the course into a work and, to use the Nietzschean typology, the professor into an artist-"without 'mission accom­ plished' certificate," as he says in passing. He therefore insists in the abstract he wrote after the course (p. 2II ) that the Neutral was approached " not in language but in discourse. " What interests him most, in fact, is to track down who speaks the Neutral and how the Neutral speaks and to extend the list of its utterers through the xxiii

PRE F ACE

course, conceived thus as the place of a brief but intense media­ tion. Accompanying the traits are what Barthes calls "supplements. " There are seven of them, each delivered at the beginning o f a ses­ sion. To the extent to which they come to recall the moves of the preceding session, they constitute a link between one Saturday and the next; they also give Barthes the possibility of sharpening points that he couldn't develop as much as he wanted by allowing him to return to certain figures; moreover, they sketch a kind of dialogue with the audience, since these points often arise from written or oral remarks made by the participants that Barthes had reviewed over the course of the week: one listener gives him the reference to an episode of the Gospels he didn't have, another writes him a letter he reads to the class. As for the anonymous note he receives, it offers the occasion for him to present a brief analysis of linguis­ tic pragmatics, which leads him to defend a conception of writing where the subject takes responsibility for his signature. Finally, the supplements work to aerate an often dense course, giving it the phatic dimension that the inevitably magisterial aspect of the pro­ ceedings was doomed to dampen in part. These supplements vary in form and length. The first (March 4) occurs during the third session: a short one, it allows for the reading of a poem by Pasolini that Barthes had mentioned dur­ ing the preceding session. The second (March I I ) , a return to the figures "Tact" and "Affirmation," triggers a commentary on the very meaning of the course. The third (March I S ) is the longest: in addition to corrections to the already treated figures, it is a re­ sponse to some written remarks by students that gives Barthes the opportunity to sharpen the stakes of the Neutral as a research for aporia, or atopia. The same goes for the fourth supplement (March 2 5 ) , in which these metadiscursive commentaries, working like pre­ cious auxiliaries to the exploration of the stakes of the Neutral, lead Barthes to prolong his reflections on an evasive concept, resistant to capture by meaning. Indissociable from the course, the supplements undergo a kind of depletion, however: as the research progresses, their necessity becomes less evident, since the drift across the fan­ tasy of the Neutral, however eventful it might be, is nonetheless strongly pursued. Readings during the sessions are frequent. During the prelimi­ naries, Barthes reads four "epigraphs" : one by Joseph de Maistre, another by Rousseau, a passage by Tolstoy, and Lao-tzu's portrait of himself. These extracts, on which he doesn't comment and which xxiv

P R E FA C E

are sometimes revisited later, signal from the first the directions taken by the Neutral: Joseph de Maistre, whose writing seduces Barthes, refers explicitly to what could be called the anti-Neutral; Rousseau is evoked, as is Tolstoy, to testify to the interest attached to modifications of states of consciousness (fainting, spatial confu­ sion) . The portrait of Lao-tzu, a kind of paradoxical apology for stupidity, announces the central role Eastern mystics will play in the elaboration of the Neutral. Other readings intervene later, when Barthes judges it necessary, to make the resonances of the concept better heard: a long passage from Voltaire on tolerance; many from Rousseau (in connection with the figure " Retreat" ); the Pasolini poem titled "Una disperata vitalita" ; a letter by Jean-Michel Ribet­ tes on anorexia; passages by Walter Benjamin relative to the experi­ ence of using drugs; and a scene from Pelieas et Melisande illumi­ nating the notion of reply by evasion. In Barthes's intellectual itinerary, the course on the Neutral is located between the publication of A Lover's Discourse ( 1 977) , the "Pretexte-Roland Barthes" colloquium devoted to him at Cerisy ( 1977) , and the publication of Lecture ( 1 978 ) , his inaugural lecture on assuming the chair of literary semiology at the College de France. In the sequence of his courses there, The Neutral comes after How

to Live Together, that of the first year, and before The Preparation of the Novel, the third and last, cut short by Barthes's death on March 26, 1980. Thus, through the happenstances of existence, "The Neutral " henceforth assumes today the median place in this triptych, not without a touch of tragic irony that aptly reflects the spirit of the course. Simultaneously marked by difficult biographical circumstances (the death of his mother, the effects of which, from the preliminaries on, he doesn't conceal) and by an ironic-which is to say indirect, if we believe in etymology-manner of interrogating the concepts, the quest for the Neutral takes place during a period of intense creativity for Barthes. From Writing Degree Zero to Em­ pire of Signs, from Camera Lucida to Incidents, the Neutral already twinkled in places in a work whose whole has henceforth become available to us: with the publication of the course, it finally finds the occasion (the kairos, the opportune moment, to repeat the title of one of the figures) to shine in producing another image of Roland Barthes, unique in our literature: that of the artist-professor. -Thomas Clerc

xxv

P RE F A C E

PRE LIMINARIE S

1.

Benevolence

2.

Weariness

3.

Silence

4.

Tact

5.

Sleep

6.

Affirmation

7.

Color

8.

The Adjective

9.

Images of the Neutral

10.

Anger

11.

The Active of the Neutral

12.

Ideospheres

13.

Consciousness

14.

Answer

15.

Rites

16.

Conflict

17.

Oscillation

18.

Retreat

19.

Arrogance

20.

Panorama

21.

Kairos

22.

Wou-wei

23.

The Androgy ne

xxix

SESSIO N OF FEBRUARY 18, 1978

Preliminaries This year, no seminar:! only a lecture course, conducted by myself, for two hours, over thirteen weeks. Between each hour, a pause of a dozen minutes. The sequence of the weeks will be interrupted for the Easter holiday, which is to say that there will be no class on the Saturdays 8, 1 5 , and 22 of April. This course: The Neutral or, better: "The Desire for Neutral. "

Intertext What follows is not a bibliography on the "Neutral," even if such a bibliography were conceivable, considering the fact that the no­ tion crosses many disciplines (grammar, logic, philosophy, painting, international law, etc. ) . It is nothing more than a list of the texts whose reading, in various ways, has punctuated the preparation of this course.2

ANG ELUS SILESIUS

-L'Errant cherubinique, preface by Roger Laporte, Paris, Planete, 1 970. BACHELARD

-La Dialectique de la duree, Presses Universitaires de France, 195°· BACON (Francis)

-Novum Organon, Paris, Hachette, 1 8 57. -De la dignite et de l'accroissement des sciences et Essais de morale et de politique, in Oeuvres completes, 2 vols., Paris, Charpentier, 1 843. BAUDELAIRE

-Les Paradis artificiels, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1966. B E NJAMI N (Walter)

-Mythe et violence, Paris, Denoel, colI. " Lettres nouvelles, " 1 97 1 .

B LANC HOT

-L'Entretien infini, Paris, Gallimard, 1969 . -Le Livre a venir, Paris, Gallimard, colI. "Idees," 1 9 5 9 . BOEHME

-Koyre (Alexandre) , La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1 9 7 I . CAGE (John)

-Pour les oiseaux, Paris, Belfond, 1 9 76. D E NYS L'AREOPAGITE {DIONYS I U S TH E AREOPAGITE}

-Oeuvres completes, trans. Maurice de Gandillac, Paris, Au­ bier-Montaigne, 1 94 3 . DIOG E N E LAERC E {DIOG ENES LAERTI US}

-Vie, doctrines et sentences des philosophes illustres, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1 9 6 5 .

2

vols. ,

EC KHART (Master)

-Lossky (Vladimir), Theologie negative et connaissance de dieu chez MaItre Eckhart, Paris, Vrin, 1 9 60. FIC HTE

-Methode pour arriver a la vie bienheureuse, Paris, Ladrange, 1845. FREUD

-Un souvenir d'enfance de Leonard de Vinci, Paris, Gallimard, colI. "Les Essais," 1927. GIDE

-{Maria Van Rysselberghe} , Cahiers Andre Gide, Cahiers de la Petite Dame, vol. 4 , 1945-19 5 1 , Paris, Gallimard, 1977. HEGEL

-Ler;;ons sur l'histoire de la philosophie, vol. grecque, Paris, Vrin, 1 9 7 5 .

4,

La Philosophie

LESSING

-Dramaturgie de Hambourg, Paris, Didier, 1 8 69 . MAISTRE (Joseph de)

-Textes choisis et presentes par E. M. Cioran, Monaco, Ed. du Rocher, 1 9 5 7 . MARTIAL

-Oeuvres completes, vol.

I,

Epigrammes, Paris, Garnier, 1 8 8 5 .

M I C H ELET

-La Sorciere, Paris, Hetzel-Dentu, 1 8 62 . PASCAL

-Pensees,

2

2

vols., Paris, Gallimard, colI. "Folio," 1977.

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 1 8, 1 9 7 8

QUINCEY (Thomas de)

-Confessions d'un mangeur d'opium, Paris, Stock, 1921 . ROUSSEAU

-Les Reveries du promeneur solitaire, Paris, Garnier, n.d. SKEPTIC S

-Brochard (Victor), Les Sceptiques grecs, Paris, Vrin, 19 59 ( 1 st ed., 1 8 87). -Kojeve (Alexandre), Essai d'une histoire raisonnee de la phi­

losophie pai'enne, vol. 3, Paris, Gallimard, 1 973. -Les Sceptiques grecs, ed. Jean-Paul Dumont, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1 966. SOPHISTS

-Les Sophistes: Fragments et temoignages, ed. Jean-Paul Du­ mont, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1969. SPI NOZA

-Zac (Sylvain) , La Morale de Spinoza, Paris, Presses Universi­ taires de France, 1 9 72. SWE DENBORG

-Matter (M. ) , Emmanuel de Swedenborg: Sa vie, ses ecrits et

sa doctrine, Paris, Didier, 1863. TAO

-Maspero (Henri) , Melanges posthumes sur les religions et

l'histoire de la Chine, vol. 2, Le Taoisme, Paris, SAEP, Publica­ tions du musee Guimet, 19 50. TOLSTOY

-La Guerre et la paix, Paris, Gallimard, colI. " Bibliotheque de la Pleiade," 1947. VALERY

-Monsieur Teste, Paris, Gallimard, 1929. VICO

-Michelet (Jules), Oeuvres choisies de Vico, Paris, Flammari­ on. -Chaix-Ruy (Jules) , La Formation de la pensee philosophique

de G. B. Vico, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, n.d. 1 . In Guise of E pigra phs For the whole course -;. reading of four texts: a. Joseph de Maistre: The Inquisition b. Tolstoy: The Night of Austerlitz c. Rousseau: Tuesday

24

October 1776

d. Tao: Portrait of Lao-tzu 3

SE S S I O N O F FEB R U A R Y 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

a . Joseph de M aistre

" Considerable noise has been made in Europe concerning the rack of the Inquisition, and the fiery ordeal with which crimes against religion have been punished. The infidels of France wasted much of their crocodile sympathy and philosophic pathos on the occasion; but their flimsy assertions are not proof against the powerful artil­ lery of logic and facts. "The civil inquisitors resorted to the rack, in compliance with the national laws, and because it was adopted by all the Spanish tribunals. The Grecian and Roman laws had sanctioned it. Athens herself, who was universally believed to be somewhat acquainted with liberty, subj ected even freemen to it. All modern nations have employed this terrible means to obtain the truth. I shall not, how­ ever, on the present occasion inquire whether all those who prattle about the Inquisition exactly understand, or sufficiently reflect upon, what they assert; and whether there were not as strong motives in those times for its employment as there are now for its suppres­ sion. However, since the rack is applicable to every other tribunal as well as to the Inquisition, I see no reason why the reproach of the entire should be visited upon the latter. < . . > Amidst the frightful display of the inquisitorial apparatus, it is merciful and mild; and the circumstance of the priesthood of the true Church being in any way concerned with this tribunal renders it unique. It wears on its standard a motto necessarily unknown to every tribunal upon earth,-- "MISERICORDIA ET JUSTITIA" (Mercy and Justice.) Justice alone characterizes the others, and mercy belongs only to the sovereign. Were j udges to lean towards mercy, they might be .

considered rebels, who thus usurp the rights of sovereignty. But when the ecclesiastical power is called in, it requests, as a sine qua non, the free exercise of the sovereign prerogative. Mercy accord­ ingly takes her seat with Justice, and even in allowed precedence. The accused, who is brought before this tribunal, is at liberty to plead guilty, to sue for pardon, and submit to a religious expiation. The crime then bears the character of sin, and punishment is com­ muted into penance. The culprit prays, fasts, and mortifies his body. Instead of going to the place of execution, he recites the penitential psalms, hears mass, duly examines the state of his conscience, be­ comes contrite, confesses his sins, and finally is restored to his fam­ ily and to society. If the crime be enormous, if the culprit obstinately refuse to retract, if he will die sooner than to have it said that he

4

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 1 8, 1 9 78

recanted his errors, or felt sorrow for his transgressions, the priest then retires; and when he reappears, it is for the special purpose of consoling the unfortunate victim on his way to the scaffold. " 3

b . Tolstoy

"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way, " thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky-the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peace­ ful, and solemn; not at all as I ran, " thought Prince Andrew-"not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across the lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before ? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes ! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God! "4

c . Rousseau

"After lunch on Thursday, the 24th of October, 1 77 6, I followed the boulevards as far as the Rue du Chemin-Vert which I took up to the heights of Menilmontant and from there, taking paths across the vineyards and meadows as far as Charonne, I crossed over the cheerful countryside which separates these two villages; then I made a detour in order to come back across the same meadows by taking a different route.

I was on the road down from Menilmontant

almost opposite the Gallant Jardinier at about six o'clock when some people walking ahead of me suddenly swerved aside and I saw a huge Great Dane rushing down upon me. Racing before a carriage, the dog had no time to check its pace or to turn aside when it noticed me. I judged that the only means I had to avoid being knocked to the ground was to make a great leap, so well-timed that the dog would pass under me while I was still in the air. This idea, quicker than a flash and which I had the time neither to think through nor carry out, was my last before my accident. I did not feel the blow, nor the fall, nor anything of what followed until the moment I came to.

SES S I O N O F FEBRUARY 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

"It was almost night when I regained consciousness. I found my­ self in the arms of three or four young people who told me what had just happened to me. The Great Dane, unable to check its bound < . . . >5 "Night was coming on. I perceived the sky, some stars, and a little greenery. This first sensation was a delicious moment. I still had no feeling of myself except as being 'over there. ' I was born into life at the instant, and it seemed to me that I filled all the objects I perceived with my frail existence. Entirely absorbed in the present moment, I remembered nothing; I had no distinct notion of my person nor the least idea of what had just happened to me; I knew neither who I was nor where I was; I felt neither injury, fear, nor worry. I watched my blood flow as I would have watched a brook flow, without even suspecting that this blood belonged to me in any way. I felt a rapturous calm in my whole being; and each time I remember it, I find nothing comparable to it in all the activity of known pleasures. " 6

d . Portrait of Lao-tzu by H i mself

"The others are as happy as if they were attending a banquet or were climbing a tower in springtime. I alone am quiet, my wishes are not apparent; I am like the child who has not yet smiled; I am sad and beaten as if I hadn't a secure place. The others have all the superfluity; I alone seem to have lost everything; my mind is that of a fool; what chaos! The others seem intelligent; I alone seem a naive. The others seem totally discerning; I alone am stupid. I seem tossed by the currents, as though I hadn't a place of rest. The others all have their labors; I alone am limited like a savage. I alone, I dif­ fer from the others in that I respect the Nourishing Mother. "7

2 . Arg ument

I am going to post the object of this course, its argument, from the outset.

A. I define the Neutral as that which outplays {dejoue} the paradigm, or rather I call Neutral everything that baffles the paradigm.8 For I am not trying to define a word; I am trying to name a thing: I gather under a name, which here is the Neutral. 6

S E S S I O N O F F E B R UARY 1 8. 1 978

The paradigm, what is that? It's the opposition of two virtual terms from which, in speaking, I actualize one to produce meaning. Examples:

1. In Japanese: no opposition between I and r, simply an indeci­ sion of pronunciation, thus no paradigm '" in French Ilr, since "je lis" {I read} '" "je ris " {I laugh}: creation of meaning. Similarly (I have often given this example)9 slz, for it is not the same thing to eat pois­ son {fish} or poison {poison}. This is phonological, but there are also semantic oppositions: white versus black. Put another way, accord­ ing to the perspective of Saussure, to which, on this matter, I remain faithful, the paradigm is the wellspring of meaning; where there is meaning, there is paradigm, and where there is paradigm (opposi­ tion), there is meaning --;. elliptically put: meaning rests on conflict (the choice of one term against another), and all conflict is generative of meaning: to choose one and refuse the other is always a sacrifice made to meaning, to produce meaning, to offer it to be consumed. 2.

Whence the idea of a structural creation that would defeat, an­

nul, or contradict the implacable binarism of the paradigm by means of a third term

the tertium: (a) In structural linguistics, Hjelmslev, Brendal, and phoneticians:10 AlB --;. A + B (complex)l1 and neither -;>

A nor B: amorphous, neutral term (phonological neutralization),12 or zero degree. (b) Transposed to the "ethical" level: injunctions addressed by the world to "choose, " to produce meaning, to enter conflicts, to "take responsibility, " etc. -;> temptation to suspend, to thwart, to elude the paradigm, its menacing pressure, its arrogance -;>

to exempt meaning

conflict avoidance

=

-;>

this polymorphous field of paradigm, of

the Neutral. We are going to grant ourselves the

right to treat all conditions, conducts, affects, discourses (with no in­ tention or even possibility of exhaustiveness) as far as they deal with conflict or its release, its parrying, its suspension.

3. My definition of the Neutral remains structural. By which I mean that, for me, the Neutral doesn't refer to " impressions" of grayness, of " neutrality, " of indifference. The Neutral-my Neu­ tral-can refer to intense, strong, unprecedented states. " To out­ play the paradigm" is an ardent, burning activity.

B. Field

Lexically, the Neuter refers to the following fields: (I ) Grammar: gender, neither masculine nor feminine, and verbs (Latin), neither active nor passive, or action without regime:13 to walk, to die (al7

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

ways grammar's favorite example: good subject for a linguistic the­ sis: the grammar of "to die " ! or of blows) . 14 ( 2 ) Politics: those who don't take sides between contenders15 (Neutral states) . ( 3 ) Botany: neuter flower, flower in which the sexual organs constantly abort (not a pleasant image) . (4) Zoology: the drones: which have no sexual organs, which can't mate. ( 5 ) Physics: neutral bodies, which don't have any electrical charge, conductors that aren't the seat of any current. ( 6 ) Chemistry: neutral salts, neither acidic nor basic. We will return to these canonical (in the Littre, in language) images of the Neuter, the basis of which is clearly gender related.1 6

Littre

Our project is obviously not disciplinary: what we are in search of is the category of the Neutral insofar as it crosses language, dis­ course, gesture, action, the body, etc. However, to the extent that our Neutral defines itself in relation to the paradigm, to conflict, to choice, the general field of our reflections will be: ethics, that is, the discourse of the "good choice" (no political pun intended! ) ,17 or of the "nonchoice," or of the " lateral choice " : discourse of the other of choice, the other of conflict, of paradigm. Ethics: word that might very well become fashionable (to be on guard! ) , if only because of the structural law of the turnover of the repressed: in

Ethics

Marx, in Freud, there is no ethical discourse: they did not give themselves (or didn't want to give themselves) the means to have one; or, rather, perhaps with them ethics as such is repressed. But in fact ethics is here, always, everywhere; simply, it is grounded, accepted, or repressed under different guises: crosses all discourses. Besides, if the word frightens: praxis (rests on proairesis) . 1 8 I add: a reflection on the Neutral, for me: a manner-a free man­ ner-to be looking for my own style of being present to the strug­ gles of my time. 19

3. Processes of Preparation, of Exposition

a. The Library 1. Topic. To prepare this course, I took the word "Neutral, " insofar as its referent inside me i s a stubborn affect (in fact, ever since Writing Degree Zero),20 for a series of walks along a certain number of readings = the procedure of the topic: a grid over the surface of which one moves a "subject. " Notice that the topical method is not as archaic an approach as it would seem: all the current "committed" discourses uses it: just take one of today's mana words,21 "power, " pair it with any other word and advertise:

Topic

8

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 1 8 , 1 9 78

"Power and Unconscious " (Verdiglione), " Power and Sexuality, "22 " Power and Still Life, " etc. However, 1 hope (I dare to believe) that my topic is not so manic, for 1 took the Neutral for a walk not along the grid of words but along a network of readings, which is to say, of a library. This library, neither analytical (I didn't follow a bibliographic program: d. the intertext that is handed to yoU)23 nor exhaustive: infinite library: even now, 1 can read a new book in which certain passages will crystallize around the notion of Neutral as a whimsical sourcery: 1 read, the water-divining rod rises: there is Neutral underneath, and, for this very reason, the notion of the Neutral expands, inflects itself, modifies itself: 1 persist, and 1 trans­ form myself at the same time. 2.

Then, what library? That of my vacation home, which is to

say, a place-time where the loss in methodological rigor is com­ pensated for by the intensity and the pleasure of free reading. To

Urt

describe this library, to explain its origin, would mean to enter into biography, familial history: library of a subject

=

a strong, complete

identity, a " portrait" (d. medicine chest) .24 1 would only say, glob­ ally: classical (literary and philosophical) nity that stops at WWII

+

+

a "humanistic" moder­

an annex that comes from the touristic

happenstances of my life. Two remarks: ( I ) The given of the references is arbitrary (egotistic library: d.

Egotistic Concert):25 library that comes to me from an elsewhere (familial) : huge, "typical " deficiencies, for example: nothing on Husserlian neutralization (I leave this deficiency as is ); moreover, in this library, 1 made some very arbitrary choices of reading, 1 de­ cided not to go against what 1 will call an aesthetic of work (a value ruled out by science) : books whose inspiration and form are " un­ aesthetic" ; 1 always want the material to be "racy, " for example: in psychoanalysis, I continue to read some Freud or some Lacan, but Karen Horney or Reich, that falls outside my reading and thus out­ side my working sensibility: 1 don't " crystallize" (lover's word).

(2) This library of dead authors

-;>

That could toll the funer­

ary, retrograde bell ( ;c doxa: to interest oneself in the present, to let the dead bury the dead, etc.). I don't take it that way: (a) Critical, creative distance: to get myself vividly interested in what is contem­ poraneous to me, 1 might need the detour through death (History); Michelet's example: absolutely present to his century but working on the " life" of the Dead: 1 make the dead think in myself: the living surround me, penetrate me, lock me up precisely in an echo cham­ ber-of which I am more or less conscious-but only the Dead are creative obj ects 9

=

we all are caught up in " fashions," and they are

S E S S I O N O F F E BR U A R Y 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

useful; but only death is creative. Cf. the wisdom of that capitalist (I forget his name) who is said to be sponsoring the Communist Party:26 being asked how he was dealing with the reading of 501zhenitsyn, he answered: I read Marx, Lenin, "I only read the dead." (b) To read the dead author is, for me, to be alive, for I am shattered, torn by the awareness of the contradiction between the intense life of his text and the sadness of knowing he is dead: I am always sad­ dened by the death of an author, moved by the story of the deaths of authors (Tolstoy, Gide).27 -;. To mourn is to be alive.

b. Figures

�

"The Neutra l in Thirty Fig u res "

As I did last year: series (sequence) of fragments, each of which is given a title the figures of the Neutral. Figure: rhetorical allusion ( a circled piece of discourse, identifiable since titleable) + face that has an "air," an "expression" : fragment not on the Neu­ tral but in which, more vaguely, there is some Neutral, a little like those rebus drawings in which one must look for the silhouette of the hunter, of the rabbit, etc. A dictionary not of definitions but of twinklings {scintillations}. 2. Why? Why this discontinuous exposition ? Perhaps inability on my part to " construct" a development, a course? Inability or dis­ gust? (Who can distinguish between inability and the lack of taste ? ) Perhaps my reasons, just alibis ? ( 1 ) The sequence of fragments : it would put "something" (the subject, the Neutral? ) in a state of continuous flux (instead of artic­ ulating it with a view to a final meaning) : relation to contemporary music, where the "contents" of forms matter less than their circula­ tion, and also perhaps to the current research of Deleuze.28 ( 2 ) Each figure: as if one were establishing a bridgehead: after that everybody is free to scatter in the countryside: his own coun­ tryside. Accepted principle of nonexhaustivity: to create a projec­ 1.

The Fragment

=

=

Continuous variation

tive space, ignoring the law of the syntagm. ( 3 ) The Neutral as such requires that the sequence of figures be unstructured, inasmuch as it embodies the refusal to dogmatize: the exposition of the nondogmatic cannot itself be dogmatic. Inorgani­ zation inconclusion. (4) Institution, course -- they prepare a site of mastery. Now, always my problem: to outsmart mastery (the "parry " ) . Juxtaposi­ tion of figures: experiments with a "paradox" formulated by the Tao. For the Tao i s "simultaneously the path t o travel and the end

Projective space Nondogmatic

=

Mastery Tao, Grenier, 1 4

10

S E S S I O N O F F E B R UARY 1 8, 1 97 8

of the travel, the method and the achievement. There is no distinc­ tion between the means and the aim


scarcely has one started

on the path, than one has traversed it entirely" 29

---'>'

each figure is

at the same time search for the Neutral and performance of the Neutral (." demonstration) . Paradoxical category of discourses with no outcome: or, better, that do not censure effects but do not care about results. This discredited by the law of Western discourse. Ba­ . . . > ingeniously but hurtfully derides the Sophists

llilmn, Advancement of

con: "Aristotle

ll!aming, book 5, 148

of his time, saying. 'They acted like a professed shoe-maker, who


'

chair of literary se­

(2 ) Semiology: listen­

ing to or watching for nuances. 4.

Chance. In what order to put the figures, since the meaning

must not gel? Ancient question, emerging on the occasion of each new work, in particular here last year, all the more vivid this year as the Neutral is the shedding of meaning: all " planning" (thematic grouping) on the Neutral would fatally lead to an opposition be­ tween the Neutral and arrogance, that is, to reconstituting the very paradigm that the Neutral wants to baffle: the Neutral would be11

S E S S I O N O F F E BR U A RY 1 8, 1 9 7 8

come discursively the term of an antithesis: in displaying itself, it would consolidate the meaning it wanted to dissolve. Thus arbitrary process of sequencing. Last year: the alphabet. This year, reinforcement of chance: Title Alphabetical Order -;> Numbering Lottery draw: table of random numbers: table no. 9 of the Statistics Institute of the University of Paris ( Revue de statis­ tique appliquee 7, no. 4 [ 1 9 5 9 ] ) . Series of two-digit numbers in ten columns: I followed the numbers horizontally, according to the direction of reading: pure and simple chance.34 I would like to call attention to the fact that my repeated efforts to use and to justify an aleatory exposition (breaking from the "dis­ sertation" form) have never had any echo. It's fine to comment, to discuss the concept of fragment, it's fine to have a theory of the frag­ ment-I am regularly interviewed about it-but no one realizes what a problem it is to decide in what order to put them. There is the real problem of the fragment: just think about the importance of this problem for Pascal's Pensees or for the dialectic of the plan and of the no-plan in Nietzsche's writing (notably The Will to Power). For me, still in the stage of infancy: "electronic" chance = solution. -;>

-;>

4. The Desire for Neutral

a. Pathos

All that: dispassionate apparatus of intellectual nature: the argument of the course + principles of exposition. It remains to bring out the truth of the course: the desire that is its origin and that it stages. The course exists because there is a desire for Neutral: a pathos (a patho-logy? ) 1 . Recall the inaugural lecture:35 the promise that each year the course, the research, would overtly spring from a personal fantasy. In short: I desire the Neutral, therefore I postulate the Neutral. He who desires, postulates (hallucinates) . 2 . The topical, exhaustive, final description o f this desire for Desire

Neutral doesn't belong to me: it is my enigma, which is to say, what of me can only be seen by the others. I can only make out, in the undergrowth of myself, the cave where it opens and deepens. Thus I propose that the desire for Neutral is desire for:

Suspensions

-first: suspension (epoche) of orders, laws, summons, arroganc­ es, terrorisms, puttings on notice, the will-to-possess. -then, by way of deepening, refusal of pure discourse of op­ position. Suspension of narcissism: no longer to be afraid of images 12

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 1 8, 1 9 7 8

(imago ) :36 to dissolve one's own image (a wish that borders on the negative mystical discourse, or Zen or Tao).

3. The desire for the Neutral continually stages a paradox: as

�ox

an object, the Neutral means suspension of violence; as a desire, it means violence. Throughout the length of the course, it will be nec­ essary to understand that there is a violence of the Neutral but that this violence is inexpressible; that there is a passion of the Neutral

nee

but that this passion is not that of a will-to-possess

�

I sometimes

recognize this passion in myself through the calm with which I wit­ ness the display of "wills-to-possess, " of dogmatisms. But this is discontinuous, erratic, as desire always is: this is not about a wis­ dom but about a desire. As a general rule, desire is always marketable: we don't do any­ thing but sell, buy, exchange desires. The paradox of the desire for the Neutral, its absolute singularity, is that it is nonmarketable

Monmarketable

�

People tell me: " You'll make a book with this course on the

Neutral ? " All other problems put aside (particularly problems of performance), my answer: No, the Neutral is the unmarketable. And I think of Bloy's words: "there is nothing perfectly beautiful except what is invisible and above all unbuyable. "37

�

"Invisible " ?

I would say: " unsustainable" ---';> We'll have to hold on to the unsus­ tainable for thirteen weeks: after that, it will fade.

b. The Wirelike Sharpness of Mourning

To conclude these preliminaries, and before letting the figures of the Neutral roam, it seems to me that I should say something about the situation of the Neutral, of the desire for Neutral in my current life-for there is no truth that is not tied to the moment. Between the moment I chose the subject of this course (last May) and the moment I had to prepare it, there entered my life, some of you know it, a serious event, a mourning:3 8 the subject who will speak of the Neutral is no longer the same as the one who had de­ cided to speak of it

�

Initially, it was a matter of speaking of the

suspension of conflicts, and that's still what we are going to speak of since one doesn't alter a posting of the College; but, underneath this discourse whose argument and whose approach I j ust present­ ed, it seems to me that today I myself hear, in fleeting moments, an­ other music. Which one: I would locate it, its elsewhereness, in the following way: as a second question that separates itself from a first one, as a second Neutral that is glimpsed behind a first Neutral: 13

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

The first question, the first Neutral, announced subject of the course, is the difference that separates the will-to-live from the will-to-possess: the will-to-live being then recognized as what tran­ scends the will-to-possess, as the drifting far from arrogance: I leave the will-to-possess, I move in the will-to-live.39 2 . The second question, the second Neutral, implicit subject of the course, is the difference that separates this already decanted will-to-live from vitality. Pasolini, in a poem, says that the last thing that remains to him is "a desperate vitality"40 -';> desperate vi­ tality is the hatred of death. What is it then that sets retreat from ar­ rogance apart from hated death? It's this difficult, incredibly strong, and almost unthinkable distance that I call the Neutral, the second Neutral. In the end, its essential form is a protestation; it consists of saying: it matters little to me to know if God exists or not; but what I know and will know to the end is that He shouldn't have simulta­ neously created love and death. The Neutral is this irreducible No: a No so to speak suspended in front of the hardenings of both faith and certitude and incorruptible by either one. I.

-';>

Benevolence 1 . Benevolentia

Start with voluntas. This word: an ideologically interesting slip­ page. Voluntas goodwill, benevolence -- "will," only once a philosophical vocabulary had been created (Cicero) . In short, origi­ nally: voluntas studium: to have the taste, the attachment, the zeal for something or for someone. Therefore: presence of desire; then, =

Etymology

=

"aseptic" evolution, either toward the hardness of the concept (vol­ untas), since the concept is without desire, or toward sublimation (taste, desire for things) . Trace of desire in Italian: Ti voglio bene: familiar, romantic, adolescent: hesitant passage from tender affec­ tion into love: desire for the other's strong presence (d. Stammi bene: porte-toi bien pour moi {take care of yourself for my sake}) -;. Ti voglio bene can't be translated by je veux bien {I don't mind} (aller avec toi {going with you} ) , which implies a kind of passive ac­ ceptance, an indifference that eventually consents to a prior request from the other. Would be better translated by je voudrais bien {I would love} (aller avec toi {to go with you} ) : note the cunning of language that makes the conditional a stronger mode of desire than the indicative: je voudrais bien ;c je veux bien I am the one who =

14

S E S S I O N O F FEBRUARY 1 8 , 1 978

demands

�

Benevolentia doesn't go as far a s Ti voglio bene yet

paradoxically corresponds to its word-for-word translation: I ac­ cept not to be blocked by your request, your person: I don't refuse, without necessarily wanting to: exactly the position of the Neutral, which is not absence, refusal of desire, but possible wavering of desire outside of will-to-possess. Perhaps two benevolences (depending on the readings): the damp and the dry.

2. Dry and Damp 1.

" Damp " : on the side of demand: " kindness" (gentillesse} so as

to be loved; diffuse aura of amiability. Walter Benjamin: experience �jamin, 1 38

of H in Marseilles: feeling of benevolence: "Only a certain benevo­

Baudelaire, 47-48, 72

feature of H, at least literarily: Baudelaire: " benevolence holds a

lence, the expectation of being received kindly by people. "41 Typical rather large place


a slow, lazy, inarticulate benevolence that

derives from a tendering of the nerves. "42 and elsewhere: "a most singular benevolence and goodwill, a kind of philanthropy, that ex­ tends even to strangers, and is made more of pity than of love




that goes even to the point of fear of hurting anyone at all"43

�

Image: the body's emotivity ( " the nerves " ) transformed into feeling: visibly on the side of the affect of being in love: desire sublimated by diffusion, wavering

�

Agape.44

2. " Dry. " This tenderness ;c benevolence according to the Tao. A

Tao, Grenier, 1 1 0

stiff benevolence, because rooted in indifference. For the sage, ev­ erything is equal. Refrains from exerting a function. If he is obliged to do it, treats the "good" and the " bad" evenly, as if they both were children

�

His "goodness" : nothing of Agape and nothing of

the tender benevolence (under H): a kind of condescending and soft benevolence, a "transcendent" goodness. (I feel this " benevolence" for people who are such strangers to me that I have no occasion for internal conflict with them = total and peaceable incommunication. )

3. Emotion and Distance Subject prey to benevolence: strongly aware of this double postula­ tion, the first of which he doesn't trust, while he doesn't like the second45

�

finds himself confronted with an aporia: wishing for a

logical "monster, " the right mix of emotion and distance: emotion,

Distance

mark of Agape, acknowledgment of desire, (unsuppressed) anchor15

S E S S I O N O F FEBR U A RY 1 8 . 1 9 7 8

age in the body, and distance, guarantee that one doesn't crush the other under the stickiness of a demand, that one in no way black­ mails him into tenderness --;. in short, a well-behaved Eros, "re­ strained," "reserved" (in the sense of coitus reservatus) . Let's recall that withholding is an erotic principle of the Tao (more sensual here than in its conception of dry benevolence) . Put another way: Benevolence Agape imbued with Eros. Now, strangely, one of the initiators of negative theology, Dionysius the Areopagite, persists, while speaking of sublime, divine love, in using the word Eros (de­ siring love), which he prefers to Agape (charitable love); because

Agape

=

Eros

Eros implies ekstasis:46 carries lovers out of themselves, pushes God to produce the universe. And Gregory of Nyssa (another negative mystic) : Eros is the ecstatic apex of Agape ---'.> In short, benevolence = an Agape tightened by Eros and restrained by a Tao principle.

Denys. 38. 1 04

Weariness Let's look at the knot, the etymological spectrum. Weariness:47 three words in Latin: Labor, Lassitudo, Fatigatio (or Defatigatio) . At the crossroads of two images: a. Labor (painful work, mostly rural word, engages the whole body) ---'.> probably, labo: to slip so as to fall (d. lapsus); burden under which one totters. Labor: animated genre, active force. Las­ situ do, d. lassus: the one who bends, who falls forward ---'.> perhaps laedo, to wound, to harm, to wear out. --;. General image of sag­

Etymology

ging, of one's being squashed. b. Fatigo: to wear out {faire crever} (horses ) . Cf. French: etre creve {to be exhausted}. We easily reconstruct the image: " burst, " by blow or pressure, following which a slow, progressive deflation; fullness that empties; walls whose tension slackens. The topical im­ age that of the flat tire that deflates. Cf. the older Gide: I am a tire that flattens.48 In the very image, an idea of duration: what doesn't

Gide

=

Tire

stop leaning, emptying itself. It's the paradoxical infinity of weari­ ness: the endless process of ending.

1 . Placeless

Social (linguistico-social) value of weariness (but, alas, linguistic science doesn't attend, any more than sociology, to these decisive

16

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U ARY 1 8, 1 9 78

nuances

�

thus nothing more than a kind of intuitive, empirical

exploration) : Tied t o work (labor) . But it seems that, i n the current social field, it is hard to connect "weariness" with the worker's, the farmer's, the employee's manual or assimilated type of work. Class condi­ tion? In any case, caste condition: mythically associated with the work of the head, which is exposed to deflation, exhaustion. This raises the problem of the place of weariness in society. What is the place of a lesion of the (total) body in the (socially) recognized table of illnesses ? Is weariness an illness or not? Is it a nosological reality? Lacking a good study of medical language ( an idea in the air, seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales two years ago, seminar of Clavreul,49 but to my knowledge no lexico­ graphically usable outcome) , let us listen intuitively to language: a. Depression is increasingly recognized as a nosological reality (perhaps through the creation of a-supposedly-relevant phar­ macopeia) : one can have sick leaves for "depression" (exemptions from military service, etc . ) . b. But weariness? Try this experiment: draw up a table o f received (credible) excuses: you want to cancel a lecture, an intellectual task: what excuses will be beyond suspicion, beyond reply? Weariness ? Surely not. Flu? Bad, banal. A surgical operation? Better, but watch out for the vengeance of fate! Cf. the way society codifies mourn­ ing in order to assimilate it: after a few weeks, society will reclaim

Mourning

its rights, will no longer accept mourning as a state of exception: requests will begin again as if it were incomprehensible that one could refuse them: too bad if mourning disorganizes you longer than stated by the code. Society has always coded the duration of mourning: "Manners, " in the Memento Larousse (end of the nine­ teenth century): father or mother: eighteen months; at least it was a generous large-scale framework. Today, the right to mourning very reduced

�

right to mourning: to be inscribed in the social claims

( utopias ? ) : sick leave for pregnancy, for mourning . . . Thus weariness is not coded, is not received

=

always functions

in language as a mere metaphor, a sign without referent (d. Chi­ mera)50 that is part of the domain of the artist (of the intellectual as artist) � unclassified, therefore unclassifiable: without premises, without place, socially untenable � whence Blanchot's (weary ! ) cry: "I don't ask that weariness be done away with. I ask to be

Blanchot, Conversation, xx

led back to a region where it might be possible to be weary. "51

17

S E S S I O N O F F E BR U A RY 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

�

Weariness = exhausting claim of the individual body that demands the right to social repose (that sociality in me rest a moment = topi­ cal theme of the Neutral) . In fact, weariness doesn't recognize intensities.

Individual

=

an intensity: society

2. What Wearies

Everyone should try to make a chart of his weariness: at what mo­ ments, under what circumstances, am I "a tire that deflates," with on top of it the feeling that, if this is the case, I will deflate indefi­ nitely? I will signal-among many-one (subjective) weariness: Conversation. I will read a text written in the "I" mode, a little diary fragment (summer 77 ) (My excuse: we have to choose between egotistic discourse and terroristic discourse) : " Visit from X; in the room next door, he speaks interminably to my mother. I don't dare close the door. What wearies me is not the noise; it's the banality of the conversation (ah, if he could speak a language un­ known to me and which would be musical!). I am always surprised (stunned) by the tireless character of others. The energy-and above all the linguistic energy-stuns me: for me, it's like a mark of mad­ I.

Conversation

'

.

ness. The other, is the indefatigable. " 52 Indeed, it seems to me, conversation embodies what is perpetual about language (perpetual adoration) :53 strength of a form raised to the scale of the species: monstrous strength from which I feel ex­ cluded as an individual (unless I make myself another chatterbox! ) . However, when confronted with a conversation, a means for me to regain control, to retake a grip on myself: no longer to hear it but to listen to it: at another level, to receive it as a novelistic object, a linguistic spectacle, with an artistic self-distancing. It's why conver­ sations with strangers (in the train, for instance) less fatiguing (for me) than conversations with friends: I am able to take control of my exclusion by looking at the picture. 2. What is at stake in conversation is finding my place in relation to language when it is performed by others: it wearies me to have to look for (and not to find) my place (conversations with strangers) , but this weariness i s converted (language o f rugby) if I'm asked not to take up a place (in a game) but only to float in a space ---;. place '" space. ---;. Also, another form of weariness: that of the "position, " of the " relation to " : " How do you situate yourself with regard to Marxism, Freudianism, to x, to y ? " "What is your position in this

Perpetuity Exclusion

Sitio

Space

18

S E S S I O N O F F E BR UARY 1 8, 1 97 8

debate? " Weariness: the demand for a position. The present-day

·n

world is full of it (statements, manifestos, petitions, etc.), and it's

g

why it is so wearisome: hard to float, to shift places. (However, to float, i.e., to live in a space without tying oneself to a place most relaxing position of the body: bath, boat. )

19

SESSION O F FEBRUARY 1 8, 1 978

=

the

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

Weari n ess (Conti n u ed) 3 . Rightness of Weariness

Just a quotation from Blanchot (The Infinite Conversation): "Weari­ ness is the most modest of misfortunes, the most neutral of neutrals; an experience that, if one could choose, no one would choose out of vanity. 0 neutral, free me from my weariness, lead me to that which, though preoccupying me to the point of occupying everything, does not concern me.-But this is what weariness is, a state that is not possessive, that absorbs without putting into question. " ! That i s very well put, nothing t o add besides weariness: the price

Blanchot Neutral

one has to pay in order not to be arrogant? 4. Weariness as Work, as Game, as Creation

I said: social basis. Weariness: a fact of caste. Faced with weariness, or coping with it-among others-three possible ways of using it. a. Weariness as Work

Paradox noted by Blanchot ( The Infinite Conversation): " It seems that, however weary you may be, you still accomplish your task,

Blanchot Work

quite properly. One might say that not only does weariness not impede the work, but the work demands this being weary without measure. " 2 ---;. This is why one could say that weariness does not constitute an empirical time, a crisis, an organic event, a muscular episode-but a quasi-metaphysical dimension, a sort of bodily (and not conceptual) idea, a mental kinesthesia: the tactile experience, the very touch of endlessness: I use its infiniteness as an accompani­ ment of my work. Here, one grasps this: fatigue: in one sense, the opposite of death, since death-the unthinkable definitive ;c fatigue, the infinitude but livable in the body.

b . Weariness as Game

I said that weariness was deprived of the socially recognized power of excusing. Which means that I often, that we often think of weariness 20

as a possible excuse: we would like to use it as a piece in the social game of dodges, of protections. This is well put with regard to Gide

(Cahiers de fa Petite Dame, 170). (I950: Gide is eighty-one, he is going to die a year later) : "A very subtle game takes place between the deep and real fatigue that he often feels and the way in which he sometimes plays with it, unconsciously sheltering behind it when the moment of necessary and disagreeable explanations comes .3 Then, he gets out of it by

llUsition

declaring: 'But basically all that doesn't matter to me (which is only half true); I only ask for one thing, that they leave me in peace. "'4 Right: just remember that this is the time when Gide declares that he feels like "a tire that deflates. " What could a flat tire ask for, if not to be left alone! --.,. The game is not only social: one can, in addition to "playing with one's weariness," "play one's weariness" by turning it into discourse. It's what Gide does: invincible form of speech: the metaphor (of the tire) , and it's what Blanchot does. Perhaps it's what I do myself in devoting a figure of the course to it.

c. Weariness as C reation

Pyrrh o

Pyrrho. A figure whom we will often reencounter, a figure of choice

Sophists

for me (fourth-third century), is Pyrrho,5 that's to say the Pyrrhonian (and not the founder of Pyrrhonism, since his attitude was precisely

Ciao

asystematic, adogmatic) , out of weariness: he was worn out by all the words of the Sophists and, a little like Gide, asked to be left in peace. In so doing, in assuming his weariness-the speech of others as ex­ cessive, as oppressive-he created something: I won't specify what because as a matter of fact it was neither a philosophy nor a system; I could say: he created the Neutral-as if he had read Blanchot! Wea­ riness is thus creative, from the moment, perhaps, when one agrees to submit to its orders. The right to weariness (but what is as stake here is not a problem of health coverage) thus shares in the new: new things are born out of lassitude-from being fed up {ras-le-bol}.

Exit weariness.

Silence 1 . Sileo and Taceo In classical Latin, same meaning: to keep quiet, to be silent. But earlier, interesting nuance: tacere 21

SESSION O F FEBRUARY 2 5 , 1 978

=

verbal silence ", silere: stillness,

absence of movement and of noise. Is used for objects, night, the sea, winds. ---'.> Hence a series of very beautiful ordinary metaphors: the moon turned invisible at its waning, the bud or the tendril that hasn't yet opened up, the egg that is not yet hatched: silet, sileunt. In short, silere would refer to a sort of timeless virginity of things, before they are born or after they have disappeared (silentes the dead). This " silence" of nature draws near Boehme's mystical vision of God. For Boehme, God " in himself" : goodness, purity, liberty, si­ lence, eternal light without shadows or oppositions, homogeneous, " calm and voiceless eternity. " However, the silere of Boehme's God makes him unknowable, since silere in short = preparadigmatic condition, without sign. God, deprived of paradigm, cannot mani­ fest himself, cannot reveal himself even to himself: "a pure will is as thin as a nothing" : 6 ---'.> God provides himself with a paradigm, he gives himself a contrarium: a sevenfold "nature" (symbolism of the 7, Apocalypse [7 angels, 7 luminaries], Kabbala [the 7 Sephiroth] ),7 itself articulated around two dynamic centers (and later into para­ digm): the devouring fire, the wrath of the Father, orge, ira,8 mortal anguish/clarifying light, the Son: the enparadigmization {mise en paradigme} (of God by Himself and in Himself) obviously coincides with the apparition of the Word: there begins language, the act of speaking, the production of speech (locutio: always this insupport­ able slippage of language-particularly in French: essentializing, substantivizing, which transforms production into product, utter­ ance into statement, the speech-act into speech-sentence) . Tacere (here I mix, unduly it goes without saying, the Latin etymological series and the Boehmian mystical series) , tacere thus, as silence of speech, is opposed to silere, as silence of nature or of divinity; then, last avatar, the two equalize, become synonyms, but to the benefit of tacere: nature is so to speak sacrificed to speech: there is no lon­ ger silence outside speech, if not poetically, archaically: " Everything was silent." =

Boehme, 260, 245

Locutio

We can return from the remoteness of etymology or redescend from the heights of mysticism without losing the paradigm sileo/

taceo; as everyone knows, speech, the exercise of speech, is tied to the problem of power: it's the theme of the right to speech. There was in Greek ( because there was in the institutions) a word for this legal right: isegoria:9 the right for everyone to speak in the assembly. The problem still occupies the front stage: the claim for speech, the suppressions of speech. But backstage, or downstage, on the side,

Power

Isegoria, Finley, 1 9

another demand tries to make itself heard (but how ? ) : the right to silence (d. American jukeboxes, records of silence) . The right to 22

S E SSION O F F E B RUARY 25, 1 978

be quiet, the right not to listen: that rings paradoxical today. And here, a reversal: what is taking the shape of a collective, almost po­ litical-in any case, threatened by politics-demand is the right to nature's peacefulness, the right to silere, not the right to tacere: here llalution

we find ecology, the ecological movement; but the hunting down

EmIogy

of pollutions (I dislike the word because, since in Sade pollution means ejaculation, masturbation, to complain about it takes on a moral connotation) never addresses, or at least not yet, or at least not to my knowledge, pollution by speech, the polluting words

-­

therefore tacere, as a right, still remains in the margin of the mar­ gins (which is where the true combat should be fought, infinitely) . -- Neutral

=

postulates a right t o b e silent-a possibility of keep­

ing silent.

2. To O utplay Speech

Silence (i.e., after my precisions

=

keeping quiet, not speaking) : tac­

tic to outplay oppressions, intimidations, the dangers of speaking, of the locutio. 1 will mention two modes of the tacere:

a . To Keep Silent as Worldly Tactic

There is of course a whole worldly "morality" that recommends silence as � way of avoiding the traps of speech theme of classical =

ethics, dissimulation: Bacon (Francis) , Essays Civil and Moral. Art of veiling and of

Bacon

hiding oneself -i> three modes or degrees: (I ) reserved man, discreet and silent, who doesn't give any purchase on himself and doesn't let himself be found out; (2) "negative" dissimulation (it would be bet­

Dissimulation

ter to say " denializing" {denegatrice}): misleading signs -- to look other than one really is; (3) " positive" or " affirmative" dissimula­ tion

Subterfuge

=

to pretend expressly, to claim formally to be other than one

is -- Bacon recommends a tactical use of these three degrees: " The best composition and temperature is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy. " lo -i> This is of course about an external silence, either general (a taciturn, " discreet" man) or topical (being silent about something,

if needed by saying something else) . O n these premises, a whole complex of worldly morality devel­ ops-one might say a microideology (as we talk about microcli­ mate)-that can be subsumed under the vague concept of "Jesuit 23

S E S S I O N O F F E BR U A R Y 2 S , 1 9 7 8

morality" : the " inner reservation" : "to make use of linguistic ambi­ guities and inner reservations is permitted without sin . " l l Interest­ ing from the semiological point of view: silence is not a sign, prop­ erly speaking; it doesn't refer to a signified: it is there like the tacet in a score (violin) ;12 syntagmatic value: in discourse, I insert blanks, not for their own sake but in relation to what I am thinking: there­ fore, syntagmatic value in a polyphony of at least three voices: what I think + what I do or do not say + what the other receives ( because my " silence" is not necessarily received as "silence " ! ) .

Jesuits Vico, Chaix-Ruy, 1 3

In such a "semiology" o f worldly morality, silence has in fact a "speakerly" or "speechly" substance: it is always at the level of the implicit. When in the field of worldliness, of strong sociality (and what else is it but an excessively social, worldly language ?), the im­ plicit (and the silence that works as its "index")13 takes part in the worldly combat: It is a polyvalent weapon: ( 1 ) the Jesuits accept it as the weapon that permits one to be both worldly and Christian; (2) the Inquisition, to the contrary, saw in the implicit a weapon directed against true faith. Torquemada ( 1 4 20-1 4 9 8 ) extends the competence of the Holy Office to crimes and misdemeanors such as "implicit heresy, " which refers not to a language that is outspokenly against the church (silent on this topic) but to a subject who is silent­ ly heretical through his conduct (bigamy, stealing from the church, blasphemers, married priests, etc.): obvious goal: to extend the ju­ risdiction of the church to nonverbal offenses that would normally be addressed in part in civil suits14 ---'" formidable: in fact, in every "totalitarian" or "totalizing" society, the implicit is a crime, because the implicit is a thought that escapes power; thus it's the zero degree,

Implicit heresy; Inquisition, p. 74

the signifying place, the joker of all crimes: "imprisoned by reason of implicitness"-or, better, "condemned by reason of silence. " Church: "hard" tradition of "saying everything conformingly" : Augustine and the obligation always t o say the whole truth, what­ ever the consequences (let's recall: Augustine: a sort of "exemplary" intolerance with regard to the Donatists)15 ---'" Jansenism, Protestant­ ism: moral "rigor" expulsion of the implicit, of inner reservation. ---'" Secularization of the rejection of the implicit, morality of frank­ ness (Scouts, of Protestant origin) . We now have a political resur­ gence of it. Political unsaid ---'" Therefore one ceaselessly says that one says everything. Raymond Barre bragging about being lucid and frank + Marchais's book: " Let's speak frankly. " 1 6 For me, the

Tolerance

=

Frankness

=

only acceptable form of the "frank" : overheard in a cafe (in relation to a trick to make a car run better) : "Frankly, I don't know. "

24

S E S S I O N O F F E B R UARY 2S, 1 978

....,.. How many times, in our lives, do we have to deal with "frank" people (that's to say, who show off being so) : in general, that pre­ cedes a small " attack " : one clears oneself (in a tactless way) of one's own tactlessness; but the worst about frankness is that in general it is an open door, and wide open, onto stupidity. To me, it seems

·dity

difficult to have the proposition "I will be frank" followed by any­ thing else but a stupid statement1? ....,.. There is a certain complicity between tact and the Implicit, the silence of the tacere.

b. Keeping S ilent as the Obligation of an Inner " Morality " : The Silence of the Skeptic

Hegelian interpretation (Hegel, Kojeve) of Skepticism (we will have 5tepticism

many occasions to return to this) : the basis of Skepticism is psycho­

Psychology

logical (it's not a "philosophy," it is not in search of the concept) : wit­

Concept

ness the coexistence of a mass of contradictory "myths," axioms, and un demonstrable theories, which contradict each other: philosophical

I[ojeve, 25

systems (Plato, Aristotle) 1 8

=

mere opinions: the sayings of a philoso­

pher don't differ in any essential way from those of the man on the street. (Even if we were to adhere to Skepticism, at least one differ­ ence between Plato and the man on the street: the artist. ) Philosopher or not, man speaks by contradicting what others say and there is no way of deciding between them . ....,.. It's a "nihilism. " Now, from the fact that the reasons are "equivalent" (isosthenia,

antilogia),19 the Skeptics (Timon)2° infer silence (aphasia:21 science of the tacere) . This silence: nihilistic appearance of the " empty" (of

Sceptiques, 48

reasons, of implications) mystical silence. All that, picked up again (with a moral emphasis) by the later doctrinaire of Skepticism, Sextus Empiricus (Sextus the Physician: middle of the third century after Christ) : "When a Skeptic choos­ es to remain silent, he isn't searching for a comfortable refuge in the midst of doubt or for a means of avoiding error. To the con­ trary, he is only reflecting the state of balance of his soul when confronted with uncertain representations and submitted to equal contrary forces" :22

�

this silence thus is psychological (concern­

ing the "soul " ) , logical (inferred from the contradiction between "truths " ), and ethical (aimed at providing rest, ataraxia) . Notice, it's important, that the Skeptical silence is a silence not of the mouth (the Skeptics speak like anyone else) but of "thought, " of "reason, " of the implicit system that underlies and articulates all philosophy, all declaration, all noncontingent discourse

Kairos

�

speech: accepted in

its superficial, contingent forms. What's objected to is systematic 25

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

( dogmatic) speech; in the end, we could say that " chatter, " being a discourse of pure contingency, is a form of silence insofar as it outplays words (this should be said carefully, because chatterboxes are bores) .

Chatter

Dogmatism

3 . S i lence a s Sign

As we know, in music, silence is as important as sound: it is a sound, or, again, it is a sign. Here, we reencounter a process that struck me as early as Writing Degree Zero23 and has obsessed me ever since: what is produced against signs, outside of signs, what is expressly produced so as not to be a sign is very quickly recuperated as a sign. That's what happens to silence: one would like to reply to dogmatism (heavy system of signs) with something that outplays

Dogmatism

signs: silence. But silence itself takes on the form of an image, of a "wise, " heroic, or Sibylline, more or less Stoic posture: it's a drape � fatality of the sign: it is stronger than the individual. � File to be opened, to be constituted (if it isn't done already): silence as sign. 1 think of this file (I offer it to whomever wants it).24 For now, three index cards that might open in two "methodologi­ cal" directions: Silence is the signifier of a full signified: the alms bowl of the Buddhist monks (Percheron) : " On receiving the alms, for which he has not begged in words, the monk expresses no thanks. "25� Silence refers to a two-pronged signified: (a) "request" (ah, all the silences-requests ! what a file ! ) + b) --l> " sovereignty " : nonhumiliat­ ing request; free, sovereign request. 2. Silence caught in an " extended" paradigm, which is to say, both paradigmatic and syntagmatic: the one who is taciturn '" those who speak � anecdote (Bacon, Advancement of Learning, book 8, chap. I ) : "There goes an old tradition < . . . > that many Gre­ I.

Buddhism

=

=

Bacon

cian philosophers had a solemn meeting before the ambassador of a foreign prince, where each endeavored to show his parts, that the ambassador might have somewhat to relate of the Grecian wisdom; but one among the number kept silence , so that the ambassador, turning to him asked: 'But what have you to say, that 1 may report it? ' He answered: 'Tell your king that you have found one among the Greeks who knew how to be silent. "'26 Notice the paradox: silence only becomes sign if one makes it speak, if one doubles it with a caption that gives it a mean­ ing; we could say that, less stupid, the ambassador of the prince

26

S E S S I O N O F F E B R UA R Y 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

would have been able to find the meaning by himself, a polysemic meaning moreover ( " There are also silent Greeks" is a philosophical discourse" all chatterboxes"

+

+

+

"This silence

"The others [my competitors] are

"You don't impress me, " etc.); but, of course,

the story is meant for us; it's a "narrateme, " and, as such, it matters little whether it is about silence.

4. To Outplay Silence Silence: initially, weapon assumed to outplay the paradigms (the conflicts) of speech; then congeals itself into a sign (which is to say, is caught up in a paradigm) : thus the Neutral, meant to parry paradigms, will-paradoxically-end up trying to outplay silence (as sign, as system) . 1.

Problem of behavior, modestly but very well framed by Kafka

(Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation): "Kafka wondered at what

.... chot

moment and how many times, when eight people are seated within

Kafka

the horizon of a conversation, it is appropriate to speak if one does not wish to be considered silent" :27 a familiar anxiety, 1 believe, for most of us: 1 have to say something, no matter what, etc., other­ wise they'll think I'm bored (which is, in any case, the truth, etc . ) . Here, the cost o f the sign i s quantified: how many repetitions are required for a sign either to be constituted-or to outplay the op­ posing sign ("I am not silent" ) ? -- the Neutral would be defined not by permanent silence-which, being systematic, dogmatic, would become the signifier of an affirmation ( " I am systematically taci­ turn" )28-but by the minimal expenditure of a speech act meant to neutralize silence as a sign? 2. This fully understood by Pyrrho. Pyrrho, not to be confused with dogmatic Skepticism. We have seen paragraph

2,

b: silence as

the systematic element of Skepticism, as the logical conclusion of

antilogia. But Pyrrho's own position is pragmatic, antisystematic -­ a kind of signpost: Duden mallon:29 "neither this nor that," "neither

Pyrrho Kojeve, 26

yes nor no." For us, that would come down to saying nothing at all, if not "maybe yes, maybe no, " because for us the yes differs absolutely from the no. Pyrrho's reasoning more radical (more sov­ ereign) : if it is equal to say yes or no, why not say one or the other or even both rather than keeping quiet by saying neither the one nor the other (to say one and the other --;. case of " scatterbrained" discourses or replies, useful for outplaying the speech/silence paradigm; see " Beside-the-point replies " ) -- absolutely equal to keep

Beside-the-point reply

27

S E S S I O N O F F E BR U A R Y 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

quiet or to speak, to say one thing or its contrary ""'" the Pyrrhonian doesn't contradict himself when he speaks or keeps quiet according to the occasion, which is to say, like everyone else does: what's important for him (the Neutral isn't far) = that the game of speech and silence not be systematic: that, to oppose dogmatic speech, one not produce an equally dogmatic silence. 3 . This: a pragmatic of silence problems of intraworldly be­ havior, from the Jesuits to Pyrrho (who obsessed Pascal at least as much as the Jesuits did) . However, of course, language isn't limited to books,30 worldliness. There is that which speaks in me. There is therefore the problem of inner silence. The subject being nothing but language (speech), thoroughly from end to end, the ultimate silence of inner speech can be found, be looked for, be evoked, only in a limit zone of human experience, there where the subject puts his death into play (as subject): ( r ) Christian mysticism: burning issue, because the church (as theology and as institution) is essentially speakerly: speech is what it demands again and again, it is insatiable for language ", the mys­ tic: the one who tries to stop language, to suspend its perpetuity; and there he can only encounter the hostility, the suspicion of the

Kairos

=

Christian mystics

church: Mme. Guyon (a substitute, largely, for John of the CrosS )3! finds herself admonished by Bossuet because she wanted to pray without language, while, says Bossuet, one must pray with words: orthodox faith passes through language; d. also Kierkegaard:32 Abraham someone who doesn't verbalize sacrifice, who doesn't go through the generality of language = hero of faith. =

( 2 ) The Pyrrhonians-but here it's no longer in relation to prag­ matism but following Hegel's (Kojeve's) interpretation: call to a

pyrrho Kojeve. 64

moral (authentic, since rigorously " interior" or "personal " ) con­ science that no longer speaks at all, even softly, whatever they hap­ pen to do and even if they do nothing. More taciturn even than the moral conscience of the Stoic moralists: One can no longer say what it is, since it no longer says anything at all. 33 ( 3 ) Zen: Zen's suspicion with regard to theoretical verbalization.

Zen. Suzuki. 1 :3 0

(a) In a monastery, out of five hundred disciples who fully under­ stood Buddhism, a thoroughly unique layman: he didn't under­ stand anything about Buddhism; he understood only the way and nothing else. (b) Why did the sixth patriarch succeed the fifth: " It's because," he says, "I don't understand Buddhism. " 34 (4) Tao: ( r ) Lao-tzu: "He who knows the Tao speaks not, he

Tao

who speaks knows not. "35 (It's really my case! Notice once more the same aporia for the Neutral: to make known, to state the not

Suzuki. 1 :31 Aporia of the Neutral 28

S E S S I O N O F F E B R U A RY 2 5 . 1 9 7 8

to speak, however lightly, there needs to be speech at a certain mo­ ment. Neutral

=

impossible: to speak it is to defeat it, but not to

speak it is to miss its " setting up. " ) (2 ) Integral silence (inner-in­ ·

tegral) : borderline act, therefore linked to an initiation. Initiation

ion

to the Tao: "first stop judging and speaking; then stop judging and

5lenier, 1 1 0

speaking mentally . . . " 36 �

�

"exterior" speech

�

" interior" speech

integral silence; speech: a kind of springboard for silence.

This integral silence is no longer simply the tacere but joins the silere: silence of all nature, scattering of the fact-of-man throughout nature: as if man were some kind of noise of nature (in the cyber­ netic sense) , a caco-phony. But always the same aporia: to speak this cacophony, I need a course.

Tact 1 . Principle of Tact I must return-so as to start from it one more time-to a citation from Sade that I quoted during last year's class, on the principle of tact: The Marquise de Sade, having asked the imprisoned Marquis to have his dirty linen sent out to her (knowing the Marquise, for what reason other than to have it washed? ) Sade pretends to see in her request another, properly Sadian, motive: "Charm­ ing creature, you want my dirty linen, my oId linen? Do you know, that is complete tact? you see how I sense the value of things. Listen, my angel, I have every wish in the world to sat­ isfy you in this matter, because you know the respect I have for tastes, for fantasies: however baroque they may be, I find them all respectable, and because one is not the master of them, and because the most singular and bizarre of them, when well ana­ lyzed, always depends on a principle of tact.

Sade

(SadeIFourieriLoyola, p. 1 70)37 Never separate a behavior from the account the subject gives of it, for the word penetrates the act throughout. Sade's very utter­ ance exposes what the principle of tact is: a pleasure (jouissance) in analysis, a verbal operation that frustrates expectation (the laundry is dirty in order to be washed) and intimates that tact is a perversion that plays with the useless (nonfunctional) detail: the analysis gen­ erates minutiae (a possible meaning for "delicate " though dubious etymology), and it's this cutting and rerouting that is the source of 29

S E S S I O N OF F E B R U A R Y 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

pleasure ----;. one could say: pleasure in the "futile " « (undo-which flows, that nothing withholds) . In short, tact: analysis ( /u838 � to untie) when aimless. Such is the background, the semantic web. ----;. Thus, we as well, let's analyze:

Etymology

2. Twi nklings of Tact

Not "traits," " elements, " "constituents, " but what shines by bursts, in disorder, fugitively, successively, in the "anecdotal" discourse: the weave of anecdotes of the book and of life.

Anecdote

a. M in utia

Tea ceremony (Japan) ----;. Aesthetic religion, fifteenth century: tea-ism Taoism in disguise (Tea. Era of the schools of tea. I: boiled tea (tea cake to be boiled); II: whipped tea; III: steeped tea).39

Tea, Kakuzo, 20

=

Boiled tea: observe the minutia of the analysis, of the classi­ fications. Water: the best: mountain spring water, then river water, then spring water. Bringing to the boil: ( I ) little bubbles like the eyes of fishes; ( 2 ) bubbles like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; ( 3 ) billows surge wildly in the kettle ( � roast the tea cake before the fire until it becomes " soft like a baby's arm."40 Shred it to pow­ der between pieces of fine paper ----;. put the salt in the first boil, the tea in the second; and, in the third, a dipperful of cold water to settle the tea and "revive 'the youth of the water"' ) . 2 . Whipped tea: Grind the leaves t o fine powder i n a small stone mill (Song)41 � beat the mixture in hot water with a fine wand of 1.

Kakuzo, 27

cut bamboo. Verging on the useless or enigmatically useful detail: minu­ tia: at the edge of eccentricity. In short: art of the useless sup­ plement. ( Cf. a way of approaching the question of cleanliness. In para-hippie ideology, protest against cleanliness because, it is true, society increasingly turns it into a (a) functional (hygiene) , ( b ) moral ( by metonymy: purity, uprightness, honesty, etc . ) value.

Eccentric

But cleanliness can also be established and defended as art: not that it makes one beautiful automatically, but because it can be­

Cleanliness

come the medium of an art, like Kakuzo: don't attack an antique with the zeal of a Dutch housewife, d. the bleached Grecos pro­ duced by today's restorations. Art = refined practice of difference: don't treat all objects the same way: treat what appears to be the same as though different.

30

S E S S I O N O F F E B R UARY 25, 1 978

b. Discretion

Etymology: to separate, discernare. Discretion indeed connotes an implicit view of the subject as made up of airtight compartments; accepts heterogeneity ¢ massive, arrogant image of a subject " all of a piece, " "frank," etc. 1.

-l>

Separation of action and manifestation: Tao produced a kind

of political utopia that took the form of a golden age dating from the ancient princes: "In the early times, . . . the subjects barely knew

Grenier, 1 44

that they had a prince (so discreet was his action) < . . . > " ; "How

delicate was the touch of the ancient sovereigns< . . . . > "42 2.

Separation of Signifier and Signified: distance internal to the

sign: Tao: difficulty of the Way.43 The disciple informs the master of his progresses (which are in fact regressions) , and the master gives very discreet but more and more flattering marks of approval: a glance, a smile, an invitation to sit down.

-l>

Utopian delights of

a world where smiling would be the manifestation of a doctrinal, political, etc., solidarity, for example: a gesture of militancy or of mastery (in juries, exams) .

-l>

Field of the rules that measure the

act of love (not to weigh on the other) . For example: compare the investitures in the Western world (kings, bishops, congresses, elec­ tions, inheritances, etc.) and this Eastern gesture: Zen transmitted

511zu ki, 1 :49

by Buddha to his disciple Mahakasyapa: before the congregation, Buddha presents a bunch of flowers to the disciple: gesture whose meaning is at once grasped by the disciple who responds to his master with a quiet smile.44 3. Delirious separation of functions: art of flowers (Japan ) . A

special attendant was detailed to each flower: to wash its leaves with soft brushes made of rabbit hair. As written in the Pingtse: the peony should be bathed by a handsome maiden in full costume, a

Kakuzo, 96

winter plum should be watered by a pale, slender monk.45

31

S E S S I O N O F F EB R U A RY 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

Supplement I Mention of a letter from a listener about the figure "Silence" seem­ ing to ask what should actually be done to break out of the apo­ ria "silence-sign. "1 My perspective, throughout the whole of this course, is that of desire, not of law: not a silence that one should reach but only the desire for silence, fugitive but insistent figure of the desire for the Neutral. I describe rather lacks, fantasies, "im­ possibilities " (aporias), concerning which there is only one positive thing, i.e., the tension (the intensity) I am trying to bring to recogni­ tion (by myself). Myself: desiring, and not a guru.2 It's a matter, I believe, of an utterly ir-realistic (and, in this, im-moral) discourse.

Tact (Contin ued) c. Supplement a n d Not Red unda ncy

According to the Eastern model, tact requires the punctilious elimination of all repetition: tact is scared, it's hurt by repetitions. Example, Japan: in the tea room: no color or design shall be repeat­ ed: if you have a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allow­ I.

Tea, KakuzQ, 7 1 , 1 02

able. If the kettle is round, the water pitcher should be angular; a cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea caddy of black lacquer; white plum blossoms should not be used when snow lies in the garden. Even space must not repeat itself, thus becoming symmetrical: in the tea room, never put anything in the exact center, lest it divide the space into equal halves.3 � 2. The rejection of redundancy goes together, if one can say so, with the search for the "supplement," for what elsewhere I have called the overdetermination of pleasures4 (or, to be more modest, given the examples chosen: of pleasances) . The principle is that the same substance (flower, color, etc.) shouldn't be repeated but that, conversely, one should try to superimpose the features of different substances ( by appealing, for example, to different sensory tracks) . For example, pleasure o f the tea: should b e doubled, b e exalted by the song of the kettle: music of the boiling water in the iron kettle:

Tea, KakuzQ, 63

32

the kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so arranged in the bot­ tom as to produce a peculiar melody. Or again (always problems of beverages ) : Critias (Sophist) had a sense of the quotidian and of practical invention: he invented the kothon (a kind of cup, or plate, for the Lacedaemonian soldiers) : " its colour concealed the

SlJphistes. 2 1 5

disagreeable appearance of the water which they were often com­ pelled to drink, and its curving lips caught the muddy sediment and held it inside, so that only the purer part reached the mouth of the drinker"5 --;. Problem for an aesthetic of behaviors: can pleasures be indefinitely overdetermined? Very quickly we get to a "comfort" that is overdetermined by an accumulation of gadgets: saturation

�etic of �rtments

of eases that becomes ridiculous or laughable: Chaplin in his prison

Daplin

cell, Modern Times

--;.

a kind of exponential rule for pleasure: rule

of limitation: two pleasures, two senses mobilized: beyond that, it becomes perhaps more obsessional than perverse, more baroque than delicate.

d. Politeness as Thought of the Other, Consideration of and for Otherness

Politeness (a file to open one day): "interesting" (for us, in rela­ tion to the principle of tact) only in its excessive features (since otherwise prisoner of a conformist straitjacket of habits: can'ts and musts) ; politeness is tactful only if, through excess, it recovers an in­ ventiveness that can border on the eccentric. Two examples among others: (a) Walter Benjamin, in Marseilles, experiments with H; he goes to the Basso restaurant and hesitates over several dishes: "not from greed, but from an extreme politeness towards the dishes that

.....amin. 141

I did not wish to offend by a refusal. " 6 (b) This, where an admi­ rable reversal is an effect of tact

=

since doctrinal tact: Tao doctrine

on immortality of the body (soul ", body: Western dichotomy) : it's the body that must be immortal. Immortality: conservation of the live body.7 In the course of life, one must little by little replace the

....ortality ..

mortal body by an immortal body and give birth in oneself to im­ mortal organs that are substituted for the mortal ones. However, immediate rebuttal by the facts: it's obvious that everyone dies. "In

Jao. �aspero. 297

order not to bring trouble into human society, where death is a nor­ mal event, he who became immortal pretended to die and was buried normally: what was placed in the coffin was a sword or a cane to which he gave the look of a corpse; the real body had gone to live among the Immortals " "the Liberation of the Corpse. " 8 Admirable concern for others,

Corpse

=

33

S E S S I O N O F M A RC H 4, 1 9 7 8

pure tact: to take on the appearance of being dead so as not to shock, hurt, disconcert those who die.

e. Meta p horization

Principle of tact principle (in the sense of movement, force) of val­ ue-distinction (to distinguish by valorizing): possible only through the practice of language. Tact is consubstantially tied to the power of metaphorizing, that is, of isolating a feature and letting it pro­ liferate as language, in a movement of exaltation. Example: in the Chaking, the Holy Scripture of tea, the code of tea, written by Luwuh (eighth century)9-tea, as we have seen, generator of tact equal to a superior drug-tea leaves, submitted to the principle of tact as soon as they are drunkenly metaphorized: they must have "creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the =

Tea, Kakuzo, 24

dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ra­ vine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft . like fine earth newly swept by rain. "lo " Everything passes through language" means = language creates everything: metaphor creates tact; in humanist discourse, one would have said: metaphor cre­ ates civilization (the latter not being necessarily " humanist, " clas­ sical) .-... I would go as far as saying: language creates reality; in choosing one's language, one chooses one's real: it's not the same

Civilization

real, the same contact (since the example is going to be about love) if one says to the desired being: my tongue on your skin or my lips on your hand;]] or, rather, I would say that the desired being re­ ceives the same gesture under two different verbal species. For Sade, founder of the principle or eponymous author of the category, this principle would not have been possible without the marquise, the letter, the interlocution, language.

3. Tact and Sociabil ity

a . Tact as the Social Obscene

Tied to language, founded by it, tact: falls under the prohibition of preciosity.

Preciosity

I . The bottom of this prohibition: the protestation of virility: Delicatus effeminate: virile condemnation of the delicate, of the precious one, of the " deliquescent, " of the " decadent"; this com­ bined with a virile representation of empiricity: the useless, the futile =

34

5 E 55 I O N 0F MARC H 4, 1 9 7 8

_

- =:" +

are feminine: well perceived by Valery prefacing Japanese haikus:

Valery

" Some people are not moved by this exquisite quality. There are even some who condemn it and claim that it saps courage. Narrow minds fantasize that taste pushed to the extreme isn't compatible

with energy. " 1 2 2.

Principle of tact: contiguous with a kind of social errancy,

takes upon itself excessive marginality

=

that which in mass culture

cannot become the object of any fashion: true, "margins" are the objects of fashion: fashion

=

a conformism, an imitation of the mar­

gins (for instance, today, skinny necktie, short hair, raised collar, scarf): but there are margins within the margin, marginalities that can't be recuperated by any fashion. Principle of tact: absolute in­ terstice of conformism and fashion

--;>

a kind of social obscene (the

unclassifiable), d. amorous feeling. Here a quote from Baudelaire.

laire, 1 2 1

De Quincey: in order to make it actual, just replace "moralist" with a more modern form of doctrinaire arrogance, and you will have the quintessential obscene: "An inhuman moralist I can no more endure in my nervous state than opium that has not been boiled"13 (A "political" discourse on television, etc . )

b . The Sabi, t h e Amorous

Principle of tact: supported (and its behaviors: determined, orient­ ed) by something that resembles an amorous state. We have seen, in ancient Eastern civilization, tea: privileged field for the principle. Lotung, a TangI4 poet (eighth century after Christ) , describes the six (successive) cups of tea in a metaphorical-or affective-mode that is that of falling in love. First (cup of tea) : moistens my lip and my

Amorous

throat; second: breaks my solitude; third: penetrates my guts and there waves thousands of strange ideograms; fourth: causes a slight

lrakuzo. 26

sweat, all the badness of my life departs; fifth: I am purified; sixth: in the realm of the immortals. IS This amorous state "unhooked" from the desire-to-possess (a [male or female] partner) can gener­ ate a whole complex of feelings-values that Japanese (notably with regard to haiku and Zen) call sabi: " simplicity, naturalness, uncon­

Suzuki, 3:1328 1 336

ventionality, refinement, freedom, familiarity singularly tinged with aloofness, and everyday commonness which is veiled exquisitely with the mist of transcendental inwardness. " 16 This in my view is a relatively good definition of the principle of tact-which of course leads to preciosity only when society abusively forces it into the

Preciosity

35

S E S S I O N OF M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

preciosity/vulgarity paradigm: it is only from an " uncouth" point of view that one can speak of preciosity.

c. Sweetness. Last (Provisional) Word on Tact 1 . In all, or almost all, our examples, a constant: the behaviors marked by the principle of tact: kinds of active protests or unex­ pected parrying against reduction, not of the individual (it is not a matter of a philosophy of individualism) but of individuation ( =

Individuation Invincible

the fragile moment of the individual, ef. Deleuze IRCAM)17 --'>- each time that in my pleasure, my desire, or my distress, the other's dis­ course (often well meaning, innocent) reduces me to a case that fits an all-purpose explanation or classification in the most normal way, I feel that there is a breach of the principle of tact. 2. I would suggest calling the nonviolent refusal of reduction, the parrying of generality by inventive, unexpected, nonparadig­ matizable behavior, the elegant and discreet flight in the face of dogmatism, in short, the principle of tact, I would call it, all being said: sweetness. Thus, as far as I am concerned, I do not find it the least surprising that one of the philosophical "orientations " that presents the most affinity with the Neutral, to wit, Pyrrhonism, was at some point defined by gentleness: "Sweetness is the final word of Skepticism, " 1 8 and Diogenes Laertius: " According to some authori­ ties the end proposed by the Sceptics is insensibility [apatheia] ; ac­ cording to others, gentleness [praotes] . " 19 3 . One can foresee the following aporia: I "analyzed" a "prin­ ciple" that in fact aims to outplay analysis (not as metaphor [ef. tea] but as "generality " ) . I did it because there is a residue: residue nothing more to say than the fact itself: that which one can posit,

Pyrrho Brochard. 73

=

state, say, tell: we enter the discourse of the anecdote. I will thus end the figure of tact (or of sweetness) with an anecdote, the meaning of which is: " impossible to put it better" : Diogenes Laertius: Bias (one of the seven wise men): "This was the manner of his death. He was pleading in defense of some client in spite of his great

Diogenes Laertius

age. When he had finished speaking, he reclined his head on his grandson's neck. The opposing counsel made a speech, the judges voted and gave their verdict in favor of the client of Bias, who, when the court rose, was found dead in his grandson'S arms. " 20 � "Dead in the child's arms, " such is the title that I would wish to give to this figure, because such is, perhaps, the death one would wish for oneself.

Neck of the child

36

S E SSION O F

M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

Sleep 1 . The Neutral Awakening I already wrote about my interest in a certain type of awakening: the white, neutral awakening:21 for a few seconds, whatever Care {Souci}22 one felt when one went to sleep, pure moment of Careless­ ness, forgetfulness of evil, vice in its purest state, kind of clear joy in C major; then the earlier Care falls upon you like a great black bird: the day begins. This suspended-time ( = a definition of the Neutral as such ) : like an airlock, not perhaps between two worlds (dream ;-' awake) but between two bodies. -;. Time that borders on "nature, " a kind of groping between the immortal ( or close to death) body and the anx­ ious (involved in " life," in the activist sense of the term, which is perhaps life-dream, as so many poets have said) body -;. Gide dying: "I am always asleep; I need time to wake up, to understand "; and

, 242 (in 1 950)

his witness (the Petite Dame): "Most often he understands with a great delay. "23 The belatedness in understanding: not to be blamed disdainfully on physical decay, as if it were "good" and "normal" to understand quickly, immediately -;. perhaps: time to understand, a kind of divine time: just (delicate, slow, benevolent) passage from one logic to another, from one body to another. If I had to create a god , I would lend him a " slow understanding" : a kind of drip-by­ drip understanding of problems.24 People who understand quickly frighten me. In reality, this neutral awakening-precious, rare, fragile, brief­ relates back to the substance of sleep: it is like a readable (percep­ tible, verbalizable) version of utopian sleep. Indeed, the aporia of sleep = anticipated, fantasized as a happy state, but one we can only report about in a nonsleeping state: implies a divided consciousness cut off from speech. In that, we will call it utopian sleep, or utopia of sleep, since we can't speak of it except as a fantasy: sleep that can only be inferred from some privileged awakenings, so fragile that they are heart-rending.

2. The Utopia of Sleep A.

Dream is not part of this sleep. The equation sleep = dream is some­ thing else. The utopia of sleep is dreamless.

37

S E S S I O N OF M A R C H 4. 1 9 7 8

1. Am I allowed to mention my personal experience? I don't like to dream (or to recall that I've dreamt); if it was a bad dream, it darkens my awakening; if it was sweet, it tears me to pieces when it

stops: I could never imagine a sleep utopia filled with dreams, with sweet dreams. 2. Incompetent in etymology, and no desire to glue myself to researching it, but perhaps 1 should: Latin: sleep = somnus (mas­ culine, because agent, god, son of Erebus and the Night) , cE. hup­ nos < Indo-European root: svap � sapia: causative (sopor, -oris, force that puts to sleep, falling asleep) ;e dormio (no substantive) < >'drem. True, 1 would have liked that >'drem > dream,25 which would allow us to oppose somnus, dreamless sleep, to dream, as well as (prophetic) dream {songe} < somnium to reve (dream) < esver, to wander, exvagus; too bad it's pure etymological fantasy.

Etymology

Sopioldormio

But what is possible and significant for me is to underscore the difference between sapia (somnus), causative, and dormio, dura­ tive ( because of the m), as if there were two sleeps: one associated with falling asleep, the other with losing consciousness ( pioneer {turn into a " pawn " } , r 8 2 8 , slang < piausser (contaminated by ronfler (snore} ) < piau, peau {pad, skin}--blanket, bed, "pieu " { " sack " } ) . 26 =

3 . "Utopian" sleep is indeed dreamless, but it is not, however, a fall into nothingness (I am still talking about a utopian sleep in­ ferred from a neutral awakening) : one could even project into it the fantasy of a hyperconsciousness ( ;e oneirism); distinction known to the Greeks (cE. A Lover's Discourse): onar: vulgar dream ;e hupar:27

Onarlhupar

the grand clear (prophetic) vision; the utopian sleep, the falling asleep would be aligned with hupar: what the neutral awakening allows me to retain from it is a kind of slack time (between the tides of worry and of excitement), where I see (I sip) life, aliveness, in its purity, which is to say outside of the will-to-live.

B.

Division

A notation that rings true in relation to the dying Gide: "Since yes­ terday, Gide has been in a kind of torpor, as if he inhabited only certain parts of himself. "28 Sleep divides the subject, not because of antagonisms but because of selections: his components, his fea­ tures, his "wavelengths" obey another staging.

Gide, 233

38

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

c.

The idea of sleep-as-dream

=

caught up in a mythology of pro­

ductivity, of work: "dream-work" : sleep is useful for something; not only does it restore, "regain, " "recuperate, " it also transforms, labors: it is productive, rescued from the disgrace of the "good for nothing. " (Psychoanalysis instituted the idea of the producing dream, material for analysis. Ideology of work: one doesn't dream "for nothing" )

analysis

;c

utopian sleep (dreamless) , falling asleep: unpro­

ductive: is even defined by the fact that it is a kind of unconditional expenditure ( = the very essence of "perversion " : all in all, it would be a perverse sleep) : I.

Affinity with drugs, since, in both cases (AIda Rescio on Wal­

ter Benj amin and H), it is a matter of "immersing one's important

aJIogue, 1 1 7

thoughts into a long sleep,"29 into a "no-place," into the "father­ less" ( but obviously not the "motherless " : (worn out! ) theme of the fetal sleep ) . 2.

Affinity with the theme o f immortality, through the figure of

suspended time. Recall a frequent theme of the iconography of Greek vases or reliefs: night distributes its poppies, which are like the plant of im­ mortality.30 Diogenes Laertius tells a very beautiful story about Epimenides (one of the seven wise men): "He was a native of Knossos in Crete,

.mgenes Laertius, 1 : 1 1 5

though from wearing his hair long he did not look like a Cretan. One day he was sent into the country by his father to look for a stray sheep, and at noon he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven hours. After this he got up and went in search of the sheep, thinking he had been asleep only a short time.


So he became famous throughout Greece,

and was believed to be a special favorite of heaven.


He lived

one hundred and fifty-seven years. "31 To take note of (at least in my view): a. Selective suspension of time: his body ages, but his memory does not: he looks for his sheep; interestingly enough, I believe, since memory is not an act of pure recollection of the past, as if it were external to time the better to grasp it: memory is itself sub­

Memory

mitted to time, to its injustices � d. process of writing that I have called anamnesis:32 erratic, chaotic recall: the anamnesis, it is the

Anamnesis

39

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

sheep of the Cretan, "as if it were yesterday, " but in an aged body. '" Myth of Sleeping Beauty: cruder since it's the whole setting of life that is frozen and then restarts: immortality by means of ice: freezing of the past as a whole (d. cryothanatology: present-day sect that freezes corpses, because they believe that in several years science will have found new means of bodily survival) . Greek myth more beautiful: sleep somehow more alive, more "warm," because it separates (d. above) : lets the body (hair and face) age but sus­ pends the time of memory. b. A certain thought of immorality, since the Greeks think that a sleep of this kind is a gift of the gods: longevity as a stretching out of life; not the mathematical, " stupid" immortality (never to die, without taking the trouble to fantasize about what such an infinite life would be, what of our real life it would prolong, at what age it would lock us) but idea of the subject as set of traces (waves) recast according to different wavelengths. c. Finally, notice that even for the Greeks the idea of an unpro­ ductive time triggers a resistance. True: Diogenes Laertius, Greek of the third century after Christ. Laertius: Cilicia, Anatolia. " Some are found to maintain that he did not go to sleep but withdrew himself for a while, engaged in gathering simples" :33 he didn't sleep, he did something that, by the way, can relate to immortality, drugs.

3. Sleep, Love, Benevolence

As a utopia, to finish, sleep has to be linked not to one but to two: there can be no solipsistic utopia. Form of this sleep utopia: to sleep together {a deux}. That's to say: recall of dreamless sleep: one doesn't dream as a twosome {a deux} '" the dream separates, solipsizes: it's the archetype of the soliloquy. To sleep as a couple: in an essential way-if not in its contingent occurrence-dreamless sleep (since dream is narcissistic) 1.

--'.> utopia of sleeping as a couple could be desired as absolute act of love and, whatever its realization, as a golden fantasy. Why: sleep thoroughly woven of trust. To sleep: mobilization of trust. Cf. to sleep on both ears {dormir sur ses deux oreilles}: on the ear of the other and one's own ", to sleep with one ear open. To sleep togeth­ er-utopically-implies that the fear of one's image being surprised is abolished: little matter that I be seen while sleeping --'.> Albertine's

sleep observed by the Narrator:34 act of falling in love (of love-pas­ sion), not of love, because the gaze sets oneself apart. 40

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

2.

In a more general way, sleep: the very act of trust:

sleep to someone

=

--7

to grant

to give him the power to be utterly confident

=

the very act of benevolence. Epitaph of Hipponax: "Here lies the

-'IeOCritus, 377

bard Hipponax. If you are a rascal, go not nigh his tomb; but if you

a.aiptions

are a true man of good stock, sit you down and welcome, and if you

L1 36}

choose to drop off to sleep you shall"35

--3>

Beautiful notation, quite

paradoxical: in general the (moral) law wants us to keep watch over the dead; here, it's the deceased who conveys the gift of sleep: sum­

mum of benevolence.

Affirmation I list here (to list '" to treat: to indicate blanks to be filled in) an essentially philosophical file: that of the consequences arising from the assertive nature of language.

1 . Language and Discourse Perhaps there are still people who recall it (since he definitely fell out of fashion): Saussure sharply marked the language/speech op­ position: clear and subtle dialectic of the speaking subject and the speaking mass. Since then, Saussure has been, if not attacked, at least "evacuated" by different waves of research: Chomsky (com­ petence/performance) ,36 Derrida, Lacan (the lalangue) Y For my part, I believe that, in this opposition, something remains unshak­ able: the need for two places, two spaces in dialectical relation to each other: ( I ) a reservoir, where the linguistic laws of a community are guarded (a kind of tabernacle); ( 2 ) a moment of actualization, choice of the subject, withdrawals from the reservoir ( unimportant for us what the modalities of determination of this choice are) . --3>

(I ) Language. ( 2 ) Discourse ( > Speech) . Therefore: I.

Language: "this by means of what, wanting, not wanting, I

am spoken," strict rules of combination: syntax. These rules are laws, they permit communication (d. safety, or driving rules for the citizen) but in exchange (or on the other hand) impose a way of being, a subjecthood, a subjectivity on one: under the weight of the syntax, one must be this very subject and not another ( for example: one must by necessity determine oneself, as soon as one speaks, in relation to masculine/feminine, to vous (you}/tu (you} ): the catego41

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

ries of language are coercive laws, which force one to speak -;. in this sense, I could speak of a "fascism" of language.38 2 . Discourse: "what, within certain social, ideological, neurotic limits, I speak" (what I am "free " to speak) . Rules of combination: "worldly" rules (logic, conventions, dialectic, but under the ear of the other, play of images, etc. ) .

2 . Affirmation and Language

If there is a universal model for the very idea of paradigm (let's re­ call that the subject of our course, the Neutral, is what baffles the paradigm: the paradigm is the law against which the Neutral rebels ), it is the yes/no (+/-) modef.39 The paradox, the "limping" ( the " scandal" ) the yes (the affirmation) is implicitly inscribed in all of =

=

language, while the no requires a special mark at each occurrence. Put otherwise (old problem well known to philosophy), language is naturally assertive:40 to utter a word is immediately to affirm its ref­ erent; if I say "the table, " the table exists by right; to unmake its ex­ istence, a supplement, a mark is needed. As well, every proposition is assertive (constative), and the modes of doubt, of negation, must be signaled by special marks-while none is needed for affirmation. In borrowing the expression from theology (saint Thomas, Eckhart) , we could say that language i s collatio esse, conferment o f being.41 To go back to yes/no: the "limping" that follows from the col­ latio esse can be found in the "history" of the words oui {yes}/ non {no} (Latin, French) :our language42 (inquiry to be made, of course, with regard to other languages) right away had a simple and seem­

Collatio esse

Lossky. 44

Yes/no Etymology

ingly primitive word for the non: a kind of mark arisen fully armed from the linguistic ungrund43 .. but a kind of resistance against lin­ guistic formulation of the yes, since it is already de facto inherent in the whole field of language as such. In fact, non: unique and clearly limited form: ne-unum: non ( .. ne): negation of the reality mode, of the indicative, and of the principal proposition ( .. ne dubitatives, =

conditionals, imperatives, etc.), which clearly shows the collusion among indicative, principal proposition, and "reality, " a collusion that to be unmade requires a brutal particle: non .. oui. In Latin, no specific word: an open series of approximative expressions, as if the yes were in search of itself, trying out with­ 1.

out ever having found the adequate form: ita, etiam, verum, vera, scilicet, admodum, maxime, sic. Many possible forms but no single topical one. 42

SESSION

0 F M A R C H 4, 1 9 7 8

2.

Even more flagrant in French: oui {yes} < oil/oc (the two lan­

guages) hoc (> 0) ille (> ill (fecit) (fecit: all-purpose verb that replac­ es every verb in the question: "Did he come {Est-ce qu'il est venu} ? " "He did {II a fait cela} "

--7

oui). This, in Old French: o-je. Qui had

become unanalyzable as early as the sixteenth century. Notice that being in reality a proposition by itself, the oui is redundant with regard to the antecedent proposition that it takes up, confirms, re­ doubles ;c non: is not redundant: it's another (pro )-position.

3. Affi rmation and Discou rse The assertive constraint moves from language to discourse, since discourse is made of propositions that are naturally assertive.

speech to discourse

Which implies that, in order to withdraw, to preserve the discourse from affirmation, in order to nuance it (toward negation, doubt, in­ terrogation, suspension) , one must ceaselessly fight against speech, raw material, " law" of discourse. This leads to permanent, insistent consequences for us who speak and who, by and in language, have to assume responsibility for our imago in front of others (language: the problem is not to make oneself understood but to make oneself recognized); our im­ age (provided by language) is " naturally" arrogant. This appears clearly when discourse is set up on a negative intention and when, nevertheless, it ends up being recuperated by affirmation

--7

squar­

ing of the circle, aporia, despair of language: its impotence to allow the subject the perfection (the respite) of the negative. It's how I in­ •

terpret the following quotation from Pascal: "Discourses of humil­

Pensees. frag. 377

ity are a source of pride in the vain, and of humility in the humble. So those on skepticism 0

apparent

lack of conviction, luke-warmth, noncredihility.30 We thus understand the damage an excessive compliment can cause. The nature of this compliment: it compromises (which is what all adjectives do) . A grandiose example of this assassination through compliments (the dithyramb, the unconditional apologia) : Joseph d e Maistre and the pope: the pope panicked by the ava­ lanche of dithyrambic arguments. Cioran ( excellent introduction):

'stre, 1 1

"de Maistre, as skilled at compromising what he loves as what he detests"31

---,>0

ultimately: to inspire fear in the one you extol.

c. The Refusal of the Adjective

Do not confuse the refusal of the adjective with the suspension of adjectives (see below). Refusal of the adj ective

=

moral practice,

suppression of the adjective that we call de rigueur for more than a question of " attitude" : in general, "scientific" attitude, which sup­

50ence

presses the adjective, not because it wounds but because it is hardly compatible with objectivity, truth. Someone even went so far as Jleasure

to connect this refusal on the part of science to the question of

lsrael, 87

pleasure: Lucien Israel on hysteria: "pleasure difficult to describe 57

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 1 , 1 978

scientifically, because only adjectives can describe pleasure. "32 To tell the truth, I don't believe this: thousands of adjectives applied to pleasure won't describe it: the only linguistic approach to plea­ sure is, I believe, metaphor or more precisely catachresis: " limping" metaphor in which the denotated term doesn't exist in language (the arms of a chair) ; but metaphor has none of the " dangers" of the adjective: it is not apposition, epithet, complement, but slippage (which is what its name means).33

Metaphor Catachresis

4. To Dismiss Adjectives

Refusal, suppression, censorship of adjectives ;" abolition, lapse, obsolescence, erasure: preparation for experiments in linguistic abolition: they are to be found in the borderline languages (and not in the endoxaP4 language) . I will flag four of these experiments that share the attempt at this superhuman project: to put into question + to exhaust predication ( = adjectives) :

a . The Lover's Discourse

On the one hand, the loving subject covers the other with laudatory adj ectives (a polynymy well known to theology or to religious prac­ tice; for example: litanies to the Virgin); but also, or finally, unsatis­ fied by this rosary of adjectives, feeling the rending lack from which predication suffers, he comes to seek a linguistic way of addressing this: that the totality of imaginable predicates will never reach or exhaust the absolute specificity of the object of his desire: he moves from polynymy to anonymy - to the invention of words that are the zero degree of predication, of the adj ective. The "Adorable! " the "je ne sais quoi, " the " it, " the " something, "35 etc. (In linguistic culture, two objects seen as beyond predication either in horror or in desire: the corpse [BossuetJ36 and the desired body).

b . The Soph ists Sophistes, 25

Here is an intellectual (nonmystical) treatment of predication: Anti­ sthenes' argument used by Protagoras to demonstrate that it is not possible to contradict: nothing can be attributed to a being, if not its own denomination: only the individual exists: I see the horse, not horsiness - predication becomes impossible, because the subject is irreducible to the predicate - therefore two contradictory discourses

58

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 1 , 1 978

don't contradict each other; they simply bear on different objects: there can never be anything false because one cannot say of a given subject anything other than the subject.3? Notice the social strength of this paradox (in relation to society, to social practices of discourse) : if the paradox were to be retained, generalized subversion. I.

Contradiction would no longer be a weapon that defeats the

enemy; the true and the false would no longer settle the disputes of language. 2.

This would be the reign of the irreducible: on the one hand, no

individual would be reducible to another --;. absolute individuation; on the other hand, every individual being incomparable (for the adjective, the predicate is the middle term that allows for the com­ parison) , no generality would be possible, and, notably, no science; and if we recall that, according to Kierkegaard, language is general (and hence moral), to block, to evacuate all generality, is truly to carry oneself to the limit of language, to the edge of its impossible.

c. Neg ative Theology

This is the exemplary field of the suspension of the adjective, since the whole mystical experience consists precisely in not predicating God. But, as in the lover's discourse (and we know the affinities between the lover's discourse and mystical discourse), this "suspen­ sion" occurs in two phases; or by two degrees: 1.

Affirmative method, or cataphasis: affirmation through po­

lynymy: divine names, numerous and voluminous: God considered as universal cause; names correspond to the various effects of this cause, the determination, the operations of God aimed ad extra38--;. 2 . Then, negative method

or apophasis:39 anonymy: brief method:

aims at the divine essence by denying it, first its furthest names, then its most proximate names; thus goes beyond the plane of causal­ ity.40 (Notice again that the abolition of predication upsets, erodes all scientific and endoxal logic: " outmodes " contradiction and pro­ poses a world [a language] that does without causality, without determination --;. "mad" attitude. )

d . East

For the sake of speed, I'll talk at the same time about Hinduism and about the Tao while, of course, they are not identical at all:

59

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 1 1 , 1 978

a. In India, way followed by Shankara and his school. Universal being defined in a negative manner: neti . . . neti: it is neither this nor that 41 .. visible things: in fact "you are that" :42 what the mirror says (Lacan) ,43 inauguration of the image. (It's pure negative theology. ) b. The Tao is unknowable because, were we to know it, we would enter the domain of the relative and it would lose its quality of absoluteness. -"> " One cannot say anything about it, because, if one said something about it, it would be subjected to affirmation and to negation. "44 We know this, the Tao is not a religion (it's more a magic and/or an ethics): no God. -"> The "without-God " of the Tao and the "God" of mysticism (above all, the negative) merge on the way to apophasis, to the rejection of predication, which is captured so well in this verse of Angelus Silesius:

Grenier, 1 1 8

14

"If you love something, you love nothing. God is neither this nor that. Give leave to the something. "45

Angelus Silesius, p . 47

5. The Time

of the Adjective

Suppress the adjective? First of all, this is not "easy" (to say the least ! ) , and then, in the end, it would suppose an ethics of "purity" ( "truth "/ " absoluteness " ) to which should be opposed a more dia­ lectic ethics of language (that's what's at stake in this course: an ethics of language) : A friend points out to me: "to say o f someone that he's hand­ some is to imprison him in his beauty " ! I say: yes, it's true, but all the same: not too fast! let's not go too fast! It's beautiful, it's free, it's human. It might end up being necessary to let go {faire son deuil} of

Ethics of language

desire (that's what psychoanalysis tells us), but let's not do it right away: pleasure of desire, of the adjective: so that "truth" (if there is any) not be immediate: pleasure of the lure: the sculptor Sarrasine died from truth (Zambinella was nothing but a castrato), but he got pleasure from the lure (Zambinella was an adorable woman):46 without the lure, without the adjective, nothing would happen. Of course, an adjective always imprisons (the other, myself), that's even the definition of the adjective: to predicate is to affirm, thus to confine {af{irmer, done enfermer}. But at the same time to evacu­ ate adj ectives from language would be to pasteurize to the point of destruction, it's funereal, d. this Australian tribe that suppressed a word, as a sign of mourning, each time a member of the tribe died.

60

5E55ION 0F MARCH 1 1. 1 978

Don't bleach language, savor it instead. Stroke it gently or even groom it, but don't "purify" it. We can prefer lure to mourning, or at least we can recognize that there is a time for the lure, a time for the adjective. Perhaps the Neutral is that: to accept the predicate as nothing more than a moment: a time.

61

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 1 , 1 978

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 8, 1 9 7 8

Supplement III In this course, there are too many listeners (split up into different rooms, some of which are "blind") for it to be possible for one or another among you to have a dialogue with me in public:1 on the one hand, it would introduce a theatrical (psychodramatic) practice of jousting within the course (a form essentially antipathetic to the Neutral); on the other hand, most of the time, I am unable to re­ spond to a question, to a comment, on the spot, and it's precisely because I claim the right of not knowing how to answer, because I hope to put the very idea of reply in question, that I utter with such insistence a desire for Neutral --;. the echo needs time to develop: to what is said to me, I can only give an echo, not an "answer, " and the richer, the more pertinent the stimulus, the more this echo needs a silence before being returned. Thus I thank those of you who are nice enough to write to me, to share observations with me either by means of letters or by com­ ing to see me: I thank them for helping me, in so doing, to maintain alive in myself (and perhaps for all) a course that feeds on the pres­ ent without falling into the immediacy (of the reply). I think that such a practice is homogeneous with the very object of the course, and I want to thank everyone for understanding it. That being said, I will, therefore not "answer" but give an echo, a drift, to certain things that were said or written to me since last Saturday. I give them in the order in which I received them: 1.

Color. I have been reminded that the opposition very colorfullNeu­ tral, dull, faded is to be found in nature: in certain animal species, the male is brilliantly colored, the female is of neutral color. I have neither the competence nor the desire to open this very rich etholog­ ical file for the moment. But the suggestion turns on an anthropo­ morphic impulse (a metaphor) in me, which is very bad but which I will indulge all the same, the time of two short "reveries": a. In nature, the roles of display are inverted in relation to our society: it's the male who makes himself the object of seduction, the 62

female being there, in the position of the Neutral, to look at him: it's as if, with us, the man were to primp, dress up, deck himself with colors, jewels, perfumes, feathers, as the women of the nineteenth century did to seduce, to capture the man: the Neutral and the female some kind of place of power, of decision (this is a "reverie, " since of course I know nothing of the "psychology, " of the motivations of animals) --;,. an American sociologist remarked,2 which is obvious, that, in the capitalist bourgeois West (nineteenth century), the dis­ tribution of vestimentary roles followed ideological-economic con­ straints: the man wears a severe suit, undifferentiated, dull, derived by way of Anglophilia from the Quaker model (we are all dressed like Quakers): by means of this piece of clothing, he signifies, on the one hand, work-value (the man works and wears a work uniform): simple (without ornamentation that would restrict movement), hard to dirty (because spots can't be seen on the Neutral-but the Neu­ tral, as you have seen, can stain); on the other hand, it signifies a democratic decision: there is no social difference between citizens: at least at the level of clothing: workers and others, all classes united, from the little clerk to the mighty banker: class difference is only reintroduced at the level of the "detail, " of the fashion detail, of the fads3 (tie, scarf, style of wearing them, etc.) --;,. production of the "distinguished" (well put) man --;,. man thus can no longer advertise his status through his clothing, he has sacrificed display (which he still had in the eighteenth century) --;,. the woman is thus made (in the nineteenth and still today) to advertise the status (money) of the man: furs, jewels, colors, expensive dresses, haute couture --;,. display has changed sides; but this is a strictly historical stage. Basically, we could sketch it with the following rough chart (just a springboard for the hypothesis). This chart has at least the interest (alibi) of reintro­ ducing a little bit of semiology into the subject! =

Women

Men Adorned

Neutral

Adorned

Neutral

+

0

0

+

+

0

+

0

Bourgeois democratic societies

0

+

+

0

Revolutionary democratic societies

0

+

0 (except at the theater and opera)

+

Animals Ethnographic societies

(festivals)

Aristocratic societies

63

5E55ION

0 F M A R C H 1 8. 1 9 7 8

b. Another, briefer remark: the (ethological and probably eth­ nographic) assimilation of the female, of the woman to the Neu­ tral4 --7 one should look among the various myths of femininity: femininity as matrix, mother, origin, original undifferentiated state: materia prima out of which the finite will arise (woman and water): Asian myths and in a certain way romantic myth, notably in Michelet.5

2.

Second, altogether different observation: a female listener, having reservations about the seemingly uninformed way 1 spoke about mysticism, brought to my attention, in reference to the matter of .the figure "Tact, " that when Buddha silently gives a flower to his disciple to signal to him that he is transmitting his heritage to him, it is in no way a matter of tact: the flower is the flower of knowl­ edge. 1 didn't know it, 1 learned it, and for that 1 thank her, but this observation reveals a misunderstanding about the way 1 proceed when 1 "cite" (1 call)6 a knowledge (here the knowledge of Bud­ dhism) --7 four quick observations: a. It's obvious that knowledge enters the course by means of very fragmented bits, which can seem offhand: this knowledge is never cohesive. It is never mobilized as a doctrinal knowledge: 1 know nothing and do not pretend to know anything about Buddhism, about Taoism, about negative theology, about Skepticism: these objects, insofar as they are doctrinal, systematic, historical bodies, such as one might find in histories of thought, of religions-these objects are altogether absent from my discourse --7 pushed to the limit: when 1 cite from Buddhism or from Skepticism, you must not believe me: 1 am outside mastery, I have no mastery whatsoever, and, to make it clear, 1 have no other choice than (Nietzsche) to "lose respect for the whole'? for the master is the one who teaches the whole (the whole according to himself): and I don't teach the whole (about Buddhism, about Skepticism). My aim to be neither master nor disciple but, in the Nietzschean sense (thus with no need for a good grade), "artist. " b. According to the same listener, there is a primacy of the refer­ ent, and the referent of the Buddha's gesture is the coded mean­ ing of the flower, knowledge not tact --7 of course, I never thought that the historical meaning of the Buddha's gesture, what it really meant, was tact. I even think that Buddha was naturally too tactful =

64

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 8, 1 9 78

to have the slightest idea that tact needed to be signified: ultimately, I am deeply convinced that it is tactless to speak of tact (unfortu­ nately, it is what I am doing). c. I would say, paradoxically but firmly-and it is the same for all the historical facts that I cite, for example, the death of Bias in the arms of the child8-I never interpret. If I interpreted, my inter­ pretation would be false and my listener would be right to object to it � I try to create, to invent a meaning from independent ma­ terials, which I liberate from their historical, doctrinal "truth " � I take the referential bits (in fact, bits of reading), and I submit them to an anamorphosis: a process known to all mannerist artists. d. In the episode of the flower, it wasn't a question of Buddha: Buddha is only a name, like the name of a character from a novel. It could have been myself, I could have said: when I decide to trans­ mit my legacy (although I don't have any), I'll take a rose and offer it publicly to a friend (for example, during my last course in I9 851) � if I chose Buddha, it's, if I dare say so, to do him a favor {faire une £leur}! Because I like Buddha. But is the best way of loving Buddha to speak him according to History or according to my pres­ ent? According to his life or according to my life?

3.

Third observation: concerning the adjective. A female listener sug­ gests that there is a category of "active " adjectives that do not im­ prison the subject-the present participles-and that this category could very well have a privileged relation to the Neutral. I would love things to be so and for there to exist liberated adjectival forms, which would allow one to speak about a subject without "I.D.-ing" it {Ie " ficher" }, imprisoning it within the passivity of a thing. But in reality our present participles used adjectivally, even if they origi­ nate in the verb, are pure and simple adjectives: "shining, " "stimu­ lating, " "overwhelming": in the lived and immediate experience of speech, nothing in them recalls the verb. (Perhaps different in Eng­ lish: like a vibration of the "in the course of doing, of being done"?) As for the relation between present participle and the Neutral, it is indeed striking in Greek philosophy, wholly based since Aristotle on the concept of the essence of the thing (the thing in itself), to on: Neutral + present participle; unfortunately, here the verb is the very verb of the passive: the Neutral reinforces the desexualized, passive inertia of the thing � that's not at all the Neutral that (in 65

S E S S I O N OF M A R C H 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

my desire for Neutral) I am trying to reconfigure. Nothing to do, despite the generosity of our listener who wanted to give us a peace­ ful grammatical category (and once again I must thank her for it): nothing to do: in language, nothing realizes the Neutral, our Neu­ tral, and above all not the Neuter: nothing in language but perhaps in the "discourse, " in the "text, " in the "writing, " whose function perhaps is to make up for the injustices, to soften the fatalities of language? --'.> The writing of the Neutral, I think it exists, I have encountered it. Where? I will say it at the end (June 3), this will be the little bit of suspense of the course.

4.

Final observation: a listener writes (I only quote a part of his letterp Herve Dubourjal It is not easy to speak; every kind of speech, even the most serene, is recuperated, used for aims that were not its own. However, that's indeed where the essential is at stake: all theo­ retical elaboration implies, as a corollary, practical require­ ments. As for your own speech, it is articulated in another sphere despite the insurmountable problem: speech as act, locus of a choice, "of an ethics, " as if to say, speech-prac­ tice. The desire for neutral is thus caught off guard, perhaps against its will; its sphere of elsewhere remains nonetheless a fixed sphere, that of speech that, in transforming itself into writing and despite the extreme richness of meanings to be found there, allows itself several minutes of pause. Unbear­ able pause that freezes it for capture. Faced with this, two questions that have bothered me from the start of your course at the College; don't be mistaken about them, it's not a matter of asking you to take a stand, as much for fear of wearying you as for the great respect that your discourse arouses in the listener. You can't be unaware that the positions of Jacques Lacan are in conflict with those of Deleuze. Your discourse, despite that, explicitly refers to the two of them. How can that be understood, or, rather, how do you deal with such a contradiction? It is clear that the question itself is aware of its own ridiculousness, your refer­ ences to Eastern culture as well as to ours clearly show that the choice (the good one) is not bearable. Here the question cancels itself as if beheaded by the evidence of your unstable project, evidence of play (in the Nietzschean sense, "the child-

66

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M A R C H 1 8, 1 9 7 8

player"} that perhaps constitutes the essence (an improper word, needless to say) of your past research on forms and signs, to have the meanings climax against each other, to ex­ tract their substance out of them (we know that it hides, con­ fines itself in an impossible place, and that the words hardly signify, here I am thinking of the Tao), and, from that, to give consistency to a discourse that is hard to pin down (which explains the awkwardness of this letter) because it is unclas­ sifiable. The other "question, " as difficult to avoid as the first. During your inaugural lecture, you argued that all speech was fascist, a place of power, and that the strength of literature was to baffle this place of mastery. It's where the shoe pinches the most. I believe that even your desire for Neutral, being despite itself perhaps a stance taken in front of a lack (the neutral), flirts with the game of power. Of course, no slogan has called for it until now, but, in calmly claiming this desire, you generate a watchword. To be Roland Barthes and to say "I desire the Neutral" may not impose anything except that a large part of the audience will say: "One must desire the neutral. " As if a fatal flaw subjected the neutral to discussion, to opposition, and, despite everything, fully reinserted it into an inescapable paradigm. Desire doesn't escape recognition; it is desire that the Other recognize my own desire for neutral, and such necessity of communicating this desire cheats the game: "In order for it to be true, you should have kept it to yourself, " so to speak. Here's how I take this observation: I feel (and it's also the opinion of the listener) that I don't have to "respond, " to "reply, " which is to say, to "protest" ("But not at all, I don't impose anything, " etc.): that would be useless and of no interest. I receive what is said to me here as something that is said on my behalf, that I tell myself, but on the basis of which, since it is said to me by an other, I can more easily drift: the other's speech {benevolent: and this is decisive} helps me to decenter myself, to open up onto an elsewhere of my discourse that I had not thought through: "the other thinks in my brain, That's true dialogue, which doesn't need actual theater. In what is addressed to me here, two things affect me: "IO

I, Desire. That by stating my desire {for Neutral}, I inflect the other's desire. "Show me who, what to desire " is how we all pro­ ceed {cf A Lover's Discourse} . Nothing to do: one can't speak with-

67

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 1 8. 1 9 7 8

out desire ---i> no course without desire (decision of the inaugural lecture}l1 and thus without that desire becoming law. Thus it's not a question of the topic of the course. No other solution but to stop speaking of one's desire, which means to renounce the course ---i> imaginable? Why not? But that raises other problems than of de­ sire, problems of reality (I already spoke of "Renouncing writing"). Thus for the time being, we continue and, on this point, here is how I drift: in making the Neutral into the topic of a course, I make it into an explicit center: what is listened to. But by the same stroke, I imply something off center, lateral, indirect: what's heard: don't listen, just hear, and understand by way of hearing ---i> if central, the Neutral is no longer the essential of the course ---i> the essential is in the indirect. The indirect of desire, of the Neutral, what is it? a. Desire is nothing but a passage. I pass through the Neutral. Perhaps tomorrow another desire. This passage of the Neutral could be uttered otherwise: for the moment, in me, the desire for the Neutral is purely reactive: it's a reactive desire (in the Nietzs­ chean sense): a desire of the feeble, of the slave? Eight days ago I received a book by someone whom I don't know (very normal); yesterday, this someone called me to ask me what I think of his book. At that very moment, there arises in me the desire for Neu­ tral: the desire not to read the book, to think nothing of it, to be un­ able to say what I think ofit: the right not to desire: is there a power of exemplarity (of law) in the desire for nondesire? The Neutral is not an objective, a target: it's a passage. In a famous apologue, Zen makes fun of people who mistake the pointing finger for the moon it points to12 ---i> I am interested in the finger, not in the moon. b. Being in central (and thus inessential) position, the Neutral is perhaps a figure, a mask, a painted screen (a symptom?) that takes the place of something else. Of what? Perhaps, for example, of a po­ litical anxiety or a relational anxiety? It's not for me to tell, since, in giving an interpretation, I would do nothing but give a new interpre­ tandum. But we can meditate on it, without drawing a conclusion. A second thing that moves me and helps me clarify. In a be­ nevolent way, the listener creates an aporia in me ("logical difficulty with no resolution"): either I speak of the Neutral and I make it into a law; or I don't construct a law from it, but then I don't speak of it (and the whole course falls apart). This aporia is real: the lis­ tener's intervention allows me to polish it, to sharpen it. But at the same time, it turns the course upside down: perhaps what I'm indi­ rectly and obstinately speaking about, is aporia; one could notice (if 2.

68

S E S SI O N 0 F MARCH 1 8. 1 9 7 8

1 were to make myself into my own commentator} that almost all

the figures (up to this point) stage an aporia: Benevolence: humid or dry, never "right"; Weariness: endless process of ending; Silence: becomes, willing or not, its own sign; Sleep: unable to feel its own emptiness; Affirmation: language forces me to assert, even if 1 don't want to; Color: the Neutral is colorful (and it stains!); Adjective: creator of images, it can't be eliminated from language. To these aporias, we could add (1 am speeding) a rhetoric of the thing cease­ lessly posited, asked for; and ceaselessly eluded. The files, for ex­ ample, the types of discourse: never exploited, never inventoried. Then, perhaps, the active would appear next to the reactive: the course: step by step: how to recognize the world as a tissue of aporias, how to live until death by going (painfully, pleasurably) through the aporias, without undoing them by a logical, dogmatic blow of force? Which is to say: how to live aporias as creation, which is to say, by the practice of a text-discourse that doesn't break the aporia but floats it as a speech that tangles itself in the other (the public) lovingly (to borrow again a word from Nietzsche) ? 1 said it (inaugural lecture} in another way: literature or writing (in which 1 locate myself, without any presumption of value) the representation of the world as apo­ retic, woven of aporia 13 + the practice that induces a catharsis of the aporia, without undoing it, which is to say, without arrogance. (1 realize that if 1 drift too complacently, soon there will no longer be a course, nothing but supplements. Supplements to nothing: that's the ideal Neutral! Nevertheless, we will return to these figures of the Neutral. which we still have to traverse for eight more weeks.) =

Images of the Neutral 1 . Depreciative I mages Except for certain philosophers and for Blanchot, which is to say everywhere in the doxa, the Neutral has a bad press: the images of the Neutral are depreciative. Each bad image is locked into a bad adjective (once again the negative role of the adjective) . Here are some of these bad adjectives:

a. Thankless .......rlnnt

Blanchot: "The neutral does not seduce, does not attract."14 Being

Conversation,

in no way seductive 69

SE55ION

=

unrewarding; an unengaging child: a child

0F M A RC H 1 8. 1 978

who doesn't seduce, contrary t o all the rules o f childhood; awk­ ward {ingrat} age between childhood's seduction and that of ado­ lescence = not lovable and seems not to love. =

b. Shirking

Subject in the Neutral: said to flee one's responsibilities, to flee con­ flict, in a word, most defamatory: to flee. Indeed, doxa lives com­ =

fortably within the paradigm (the conflictual opposition): only way to respond (to correspond to a term): to contest it. Does not imagine that there could be another response: to slip, to drift, to escape: de­ famatory mark that rests on a logical sophism: not to oppose, means to be complicit. The escape: third term, unthinkable for the doxa. I don't like accounts of dreams (and I don't like dreams) , but this one interested me because it stages a logical scandal: scenery of the supermarket type; ordinarily escape (in dreams) : anguishing night­ mare. Here, exceptionally: escapes, parryings, shifts in direction: successful, light, jubilant, triumphant (ef. Marx Brothers or Chaplin in a department store) , as if that came to me from a reversal of the (overwhelmed, discredited, astray) Neutral into sovereign Neutral. =

c.

M uffled

The Neutral: affinity for the muffled. Applied to a person: contemp­ tuous notion: mixture of dullness, of hypocrisy, of the taste for nar­ row convenience. And here we could bring the signifier into play: the closed ce is rare in French: as an ending: bleu (blue}; before a pronounced consonant: euse, etc. + a few isolated words: meule

Charles Bruneau, Manuel de phonetique pratique

(Berger-Levrault), p. 109

(haystack}, veule (spineless} , meute (pack}, feutre (felt}, and neutre {neuter, neutrallY The rhyme neutrelfeutre (is it the only one ? ) : exemplary: truth (here mythical) o f rhyme.

d. Limp

Fichte (seventh lesson): disdainful description of the Skeptic who doesn't want true knowledge:

Fichte, 2 1 8

In this fake being, limp, distended, multiple, there are a crowd of antitheses, of contradictions that live peaceably side by side. Nothing in him is either distinct or separated, but everything is mixed, everything is interlaced. The men in question hold nothing for true and nothing for false, they love nothing, they hate nothing. They neither love nor hate because for grati70

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 1 8, 1 97 8

tude, for love, for hatred, for each feeling, there must be this energetic concentration of which they are incapable, because it requires that one distinguish and separate within the diver­ sity, and that one choose the single object of one's gratitude and one's affection.1 6 Very endoxal idea that to love is to choose, to eliminate, and thus to destroy "the remainder"

+

assimilation of the multiplicity of desires

to indecision and, from there, to softness, to the "limp" = vitalist idea: what lives is only alive if it destroys what is around itself. (To which we could object that, to the contrary, to assume the Neutral would represent an extreme concentration of energy, if only the energy one needs to take responsibility for the image [false but in­ evitable] of the limp ! )

e . Ind iffere nt 1.

According to Fichte,17 five great eras in the history of man­

kind. I: state of innocence; II: beginning of sin, transformation of the instinct of reason into an authority that constrains from the outside; III: state of perfect sin, constituted by indifference to all truth, by contempt for the instinct of reason and for all author­ ity

=

the present-day world: life in and for the Philosophy, which is the (specifically philosophical) Question of the Concept. "21 --;> Also, Skepticism, "philosophically noble" only if Parmenidean or Heraclitean; otherwise banal doubt, fault,

Concept Kojeve, 24

non dignus intrare (into philosophy through the narrow door of the concept) . The Neutral would only be saved if it is philosophical; otherwise, bad image: the Skeptical Neutral refuses to recognize the throne of the concept, to kiss the feet of the concept, to let itself be had by it.

2. The Neutral as Scandal

It is not hard to see what the common ground of these bad images is. Let's recall: historically, the "official" space of the neutral is Skep­ ticism, i.e., Pyrrho's disciples: Zetetics (always looking),22 Skeptics

Brochard, 56

(examining without finding) , Ephectics (suspending their judgment), Aporetics (always looking);23 thus, always images of failure or impo­ tence. --;> the Neutral suffers the weight (the shadow) of grammar: = 72

SESSION O F MARCH

1 8. 1 97 8

what is neither masculine nor feminine, or (verbs) neither active nor

em.

passive (

=

deponents)

=

what is subtracted from genitality, what is

neither virile nor attractive (feminine); we know it, mythically, en­ doxally, indelible infamy. -;. We don't need to take sides against this image (or, then, it's the course as such that is this opposition in its en­ tirety; one doesn't protest against an image, that is useless) . What can be done is to drift by displacing the paradigm. -;. For "virility," or for the lack of virility, I would be tempted to substitute vitality. There is a vitality of the Neutral: the Neutral plays on the razor's edge: in the will-to-live but outside of the will-to-possess -;. I am thinking of the end of the already cited poem by Pasolini (Poesia in forma di rosa [Garzanti, I 9 64], chapter

5,

stanza 9 ) :

"My god, but then what can b e said i, "Vitality"

in your favor? . . . "

poetique, no. 71

"Me ? "-(nefarious stammering I didn't take the aspirin, my trembling voice

1 977])

that of a sick boy.)"Me ? A desperate vitality. "24 [Dio mia, rna allora, cos'ha lei all'attivo ? Io?-(un balbettio, nefando, non ho preso l'optalidon, mi trema la voce di ragazzo malato. )Io? Una disperata vitalita.]

Anger To speak of this figure, we need words that don't exist or that exist badly in French: state (which we will nevertheless use willy-nilly) is too abstract: a way of being? That refers to something more ex­ terior (style, silhouette) : habitus. Affects? That's a bit strong, a bit devastating, a bit "primitive" -;. the most interesting word, if we give it back its Greek (and not French) being, is to pathos

word Pathos

=

what

one feels, as opposed to what one does, and also as opposed to he pathe: passive state. -;. to pathos: in the neutral: both active and affected: withdrawn from the will-to-act but not from "passion" -;. I don't believe I am forcing the word; in philosophy: ta pathe events, the changes that occur in things

-+

=

the

to pathos: shimmering

field of the body, insofar as it changes, goes through changes. What wouldn't be too bad: kinesthesia.2s (Thus reversal that pleases us: 73

S E S S I O N OF M A R C H 1 8 , 1 9 7 8

the opposite of the connotation by the signifier: clumsy {pataud}, or by the signified: sentimental heaviness. )

1 . States

a. Anger

Mythologically, the Neutral is associated with a weak, unmarked " state" (pathos). It breaks away from, is distanced by every strong, marked, emphatic state (which is, by the same token, allied with "virility" ) ...,. anger is an example of a strong state of marked pa­ thos: it functions perfectly as an anti-Neutral. I know three "ver­ sions" of anger:

Anger

I . Anger as escape. I refer here to Sartre's Theory of Emotions.26 Cf. fainting. Anger is in fact a type of fainting, a loss of conscious­ ness, thus of responsibility, through excess. Moreover, it would be

p. 36, Anger, Flight

Sartre

interesting to draw the map of our angers: anger as "patheme " (to pathema: event that moves one) : what are our "pathemes " ? (As for myself, whose angers are rare, probably from fear of the effects of reprisal, of the guilt that follows, a probable "patheme " : waiting ...,. angers in the cafe, in the restaurant. Why? Probably: humiliation, "royal" fantasy: "Make me wait? Me ! " : refusal of the transferen­ tial situation: to wait = to turn oneself over passively to a power, to a mastery: " at the discretion of" : doctors, dentists, banks, airports, professors ? ) 2. Anger as hygiene. Utterly commonplace idea, endoxal: the fit

Anger-hygiene

of anger as a bleeding that does one good ...,. ineluctable, natural release of humor (physical word) . Bacon: "To seek to extinguish Anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics"27 ...,. whence an ethics

Bacon, Essays Civil and Moral, 1 42

of temperance: to control one's anger, and above all its duration, its ending. Bacon: to abstain from any extreme bitterness of words, from any too excessive and too personal "aculeate " ; to restrain oneself from revealing a secret in a fit of anger ...,. concept of use­ ful anger: to be in control of a show of noncontrol, to theatricalize one's anger, to manipulate it as one piece in a test of force. And, above all, to know how to end it: wisdom, formulated by Scriptures ( quoted by Bacon): "Be angry, but sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. "28 3 . Anger as fire. Here I think of Boehme's very beautiful concep­ tion, mystical and cosmogonical. Boehme, with regard to the world

Boehme, 94

and even to God (as jealous father), often uses the words: bose, grimmig; now this doesn't mean, properly speaking, ill, evil, bad ...,. 74

SESSION O F MARCH

1 8, 1 978

it refers to an energy (to a desire)

=

an irritated and anxious ardor;

something close to anger, fury, wrath

=

ira, orge29

=

devouring fire

(whence the wrath of God, like a fire that falls over men): it's the paradox of the ignited water, of the water-fire: the fire running in the veins: quality of the regal water30 or vitriol (vitriol: Alchemy =

arcanum, mysterium: liquid fire; vitriolum function of the Neutral: to remain indifferent in front of the "trap ": to accept to contradict oneself without flinching: in order, (I) silently to refuse the mache,6 the Law of verbal combat, of jousting instituted centu­ ries ago in the West; (2) to allow the possibility of another logic to resonate, another world of discourse. b. I could, and it is, by the way, what I am doing, recognize that in me there are "petit-bourgeois" elements: in my tastes, in my dis­ course are petit-bourgeois features (without going into the discus­ sion of this cursed denomination here). (I) These features are not clandestine (even if I don't myself know all of them): the Roland Barthes exposes them knowingly on many occasions7 (2) In my discourse, there probably are "neither-norish " {niniques} features: 79

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 2 5 , 1 978

sometimes, collapse of the Neutral into an even-handed refusal, an easy refuge in the context of a certain liberal discourse such as ours, and that is often due to weariness (truly to assume the I don't know position requires energy, freshness). However, that's not the direction I will take to answer. I will say: the Neutral is connected with neither-norism and nevertheless is absolutely different from it. I will try to be brief in explaining how this dialectic operates: resembling (making one think of) and differ­ ent, even contrary: I. neither-norism: nothing radical in it, a mere social (even, in our context, professional) tactic: self-serving expression of a politi­ cal position rhetoric (persuasion) of this position ---'" rhetoric of the neither-nor wavering: (myth of the scale, instrument of mea­ sure (j ustesse)): but the neither-norish wavering leaves a remainder: underneath the neither-nor rhetoric, there ends up being a choice ---'" great media provider of the neither-nor rhetoric: Le Monde: perpetually weighing pros and cons; but what Le Monde keeps swinging is not the monstrance, it's the ruler: a blow to the right side requires a blow to the left and vice versa = rhetoric of the Sadian schoolmaster: to punish the two sides and thus to double the pleasure ---'" a remainder pleasure; in Le Monde as well there is a remainder: an impression of center left (see Fauvet's op-eds)8 ---'" small research conducted with American students (long ago): article on the university: features for/features against ---'" in the end, there was one more feature on one side ---'" one sees the mythology: great "impartial" newspaper but nevertheless great moral figure of the judge: the judge in the service of a cause: it's the very status of the judge: impartial and partisan (what I am indicting here is not a specific option but a rhetoric) ;" the Neutral (I will be more brief) is not "social" but lyrical, existential: it is good for nothing, and certainly not for advocating a position, an identity: it has no rheto­ ric; the neither-nor speaks the discourse of the master: it knows, it judges ;" the Neutral doesn't know (all this moreover should be put in the conditional, since we don't know if the Neutral can be used in a subject position}---'" one could say, to take up the Nietzschean categories once more: neither-norism is reactive-affirmative ;" the Neutral is active-negative. 2. And now the resemblance: in one sense, it's an awesome re­ semblance, simultaneously hideous and ridiculous: neither-norism as the farcical copy of the Neutral: (a) Struck long ago and still obsessed by Marx's idea (I believe in the r 8th Brumaire): in His=

=

80

SESSION OF MARCH 25,

1 978

tory, the great things come back in the form of a "farce ":9 French Revolution and Louis-Napoleon. � The Neutral would appear here under the farcical mask (grandiloquent, nobly liberal) of nei­ ther-norism. (b) Alas, one must go further: what we love with the choicest, the most rare, the most delicate, the most tender love, what in us asks to be put beyond comparison, we would discover it at one point, abruptly, by chance, under the ostentatious form of a public farce; it's the most painful turn the amorous path can take; the discovery, even fleeting, quickly erased, in the beloved one of something that belongs to the order of the grimace: neither-nor: the grimace of the Neutral. A memory: I who loved Brecht and especially Mother Courage, a play that has endlessly nourished melD-perhaps because it was the first one I saw-how wounded I felt by Vitez's Mother Courage: true farce, truly farcical copy of the Mother Courage I loved.

The Active of the Neutral 1 . Active Let's recall the fragment of Pasolini's poem already cited twice: "'What can be said in your favor {a votre actifl? . . . ' . . . 'Me ? A des­ perate vitality.' " It's in that sense that one must understand " active"

{actifl: what does the Neutral have in its favor {a son actifl ? Or: what is this desperate vitality that the Neutral has in its favor {a son

actifl ? With, resonating in the word: the Nietzschean music. One could say also: the virtues of the Neutral. "Virtus "? Refer­ ence to vir, not so much as male (no machismo of the Neutral! ) but i n order to baffle the too easy image of the Neutral a s space of indifferent sterility � this would be: the active, productive features of the Neutral: that which, being outside glory (outside good repu­ tation), is nonetheless thought-out, deliberate, assumed. We saw "Images of the Neutral" (March 1 8 ) : depreciative im­ ages coming from opinion, bad images

�

here, we would have:

good images, coming not from the world but from some isolated "thoughts" (Tao-Blanchot) and above all from images in myself: my own imaginary of the Neutral

�

I add: having often admit­

ted it already, I leave aside the aporia implied in not advertising the Neutral, in depriving it of images, in not qualifying it {ne pas

l'adjectiver}, not dogmatizing about it, and nonetheless recognizing a good image, some virtues in it, and making it desired. 81

S E S S I O N O F M A R C H 2 5 , 1 978

2. Features

As always, within the figure, method of the "features " : brief im­ ages, glimmerings, the list of which is neither logically conducted nor exhaustive, thus: glimmerings, "negative-active" flashes (par­ ticipating in the desire for Neutral) :

a . A-correction

=

Abstention from Correcting

I mean: the Neutral, the subject in the Neutral, abstains from tak­ ing on the task of "correcting" the work of others; for example: he doesn't want or doesn't know how to make others work, how to have one "rework" a manuscript --;. "I spent my life not making others rework " --;. it's " selfish" ? No doubt, for the Neutral doesn't care to fit our image of altruism, of duty. However, think: ( I ) the density of dogmatism inherent in all correction; the amount of ap­ propriation (substituting myself for the other) : under the cover of " correcting," I turn the other, who did the work, into a mere proxy for my own values; ( 2 ) East, calligraphy: the master doesn't correct, he achieves silently in front of the student what the student must little by little achieve alone.

b. Contamination

=

Ind ifference to Being Contaminated

Intellectual world: seems to be ruled by a very strong fear of ideo­ logical contamination. For example: the New Philosophers {Nou­ veaux philosophes} --;. myself: too Pyrrhonian to know if my posi­ tion is one of adherence or of refusal. But what is hard to bear: at the height of their fashion (spring '77 ) : feeling of pack of hounds, of quarry, of the kill among intellectuals against the New Philoso­ phers: l 1 manic protests in order to dissociate oneself from them, to stay uncontaminated. --;. "As for myself, I am not one of them" --;. "to be one of, " homosexual taboo (Proust). Subject in the Neutral: would not fear contaminations.

c. No Ranking

The Neutral challenges the principle-or even simply the verbal reflex (since it might be nothing more than that)-of hierarchical ranking, of the honor roll: verbal mania, off-handed, that makes one affirm by a slight of syntax (it's easy to speak) (here again we are dealing with the arrogance of language) that such or such ob-

82

5 E 5 5 1 0 N 0 F M A R C H 2 5,

1 978

ject, such or such person is the first among all (d. Cortot: " first, or greatest pianist of the century" ) 12-and, even worse, the infla­ tion that consists of turning "the first" into "the only" -;. thus, I am told, Lacan, quoting someone else, said in a seminar: "Today in France, the Ecole Freudienne is the only place of research"13 -;. my mental " body" recoils in the face of such " affirmations" (even if I myself can let slip similar ones) -;. but I take advantage of this "movement" to reflect: in fact, the Neutral might reside in this nuance (this shimmer): it denies uniqueness but recognizes the in­ comparable: the unique is shocking precisely in that it implies a comparison, a crushing under quantity; it implies singularity, even originality, which is to say competitiveness, agonistic values "" In­ comparable

=

difference, diaphorology.

d . Relation to the Present

Neutral: would look for a right relation to the present, attentive and not arrogant. Recall that Taoism

=

art of being in the world:

deals with the present.14 Perhaps it would settle within the nuance (the shimmer) that separates the "present" from the " modern" (in the sloganeering sense of the phrase: "let us be modern" { "sayans

madernes" } ) ; without forgetting Vico's remark that the present, "the indivisible point of the present, " 15 is difficult to grasp even for a philosopher.

e. Banal ity

The Neutral would consist in entrusting ourselves to the banality that is within us -;. or even more simply in recognizing this banal­ ity. This banality (I already suggested it when I said that the great sufferings (i.e., mournings) are bound to be processed through the stereotypes of mankind)-this banality is experienced and assumed in the contact with death: one never thinks anything about death but banal thoughts. -;. The Neutral would be the very movement, not doctrinal, not made explicit, and above all not theological that veers toward a certain thought of death as banal, because in death, what is exorbitant, is its banal quality. f. Weakness

The word is improper. I choose it out of a certain affinity between the notion I am trying to express and the saying from the Gospel 83

S E S S I O N 0 F M A RC H 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

"my strength is in my weakness," but I understand it, however, more in the Taoist sense, which is to say outside all kind of tran­ scendence: the Tao man, in fact, tones down his personal state in order to immerse himself in the obscurity of others: " He is 'reluc­ tant, as one crosses a stream in winter; hesitating, as one who fears the neighborhood; respectful, like a guest; trembling, like ice that is about to melt; unassuming, like a piece of wood not yet carved; vacant, like a valley; formless, like troubled waters."' 1 6 � The ex­ traordinary audacity of this Neutral ('" arrogance) comes perhaps from the unexpected beauty of the metaphors? Would the Neutral

Kakuzo, 46-47

depend on the metaphor?

g. Strength

Obviously it's not a matter of a strength of the first power (arro­ gant). An example of it would be that Zen-inspired art, j iujitsu ( art of flexibility)Y art of defending oneself without weapons: rules

Kakuzo, 46

=

much less strict than those of j udo. Principle: "to draw out and exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum < . . . > " 18 � banal theme. I don't mean to say that the Neutral is a tactical way of pursuing advantage, victory, but that the neutral subject might be able to be the witness of the effects of his strength.

h . Restraint

That goes without saying, if I may say so. As well, I primarily want to underscore the Zen rule of bodily restraint. Rule laid down by an actor (and that is important, because it articulates the issue =

with the problem of hysterical behaviors) : Zeami (beginning fif­ teenth century), actor and author of No and of a marvelous treatise of theatrical doctrine ---;. Zeami's rule: "When you feel ten in your heart, express seven in your movements. " 19 For example: the actor should restrain a gesture (extending or withdrawing the hand) "to a lesser extent than his own emotions suggest";20 the body is made to

Zeami, p. 75

work with more reserve than the mind21 � absolute paradox for us, where actors often work, at least traditionally, in the more rather than the less � the Neutral would be the generalized dwelling of the less, of reserve, of the mind's advance over the body. ---;. Perhaps that is what it means to be in tune {la justesse}: cf. Casals's word, profound and technically so true: rhythm is all in the delay22 � to oppose here, as Indian drug users do: datura: acquisition of a power '" peyote, knowledge of the "right way of living" (wisdom) .23

Castaneda, 7

84

SESSION OF MARCH 25, 1 978

i . Stupid ity �:-e n ier,

It's obviously a Tao "virtue " : "The sage whose virtue is accom­

30

plished loves to display in his face and on his exterior the appear­ ance of stupidity"24

�

in Tao ethics, in order not to attract atten­

tion, avoid noticeability, refrain from clinging to a good image (or, more trivially, avoid being considered by others) . 1.

One evening i n Cannes, on the Croisette, a t night, I was walk­

ing probably in a heavy way (very valorized or devalorized theme: heavy/light gait: gait of the gods: " Even when she walks she seems to dance ! " ) ;25 two young women in the distance made fun of me and between themselves parodied my gait laughingly

�

far from

being humiliated by it, I experienced a sharp feeling of j ubilation, for I knew something they didn't: my internal lightness: I was in relation to them in the not-so-much mode, therefore in a " stronger" position than they. 2.

One could imagine a rule ('" law) of the Neutral: it would

consist in finding a way to disseminate intelligent stuff, as though between the lines (d. the monochrome) of a flat, dumb (verbal) fabric.

3. The Chinese Portrait We will sketch the following: to subject this party game on the Neu­ tral. You know the rule: to guess who has been chosen by the group by means of the obj ects to which he is compared: " If he were . . . what would he be ? " Notice: 1.

Logically: play on the relation of genus to species: if this were

a novel, a country, a color ---;. thus a process of inclusion, of normal­ ization, of comparison, and of slight difference. ---;. Besides, interest­ ing game to analyze: since, in general, one doesn't find the answer by perceiving a similarity, an affinity, but through an association of ideas. If Napoleon: a literary character?-" Scapin" (Michelet) :26 you won't find it; but if a country: "Corsica " : you will ---;. That means: the decoding occurs along the metonymic path, not along the paradigmatic one: the story is more " easy" than the metaphor. 2.

Similarly, for the Neutral, it would be easy to find metonymic

answers: if it were a country?-Switzerland (this would be false, by the way, because it isn't certain that Switzerland is neutral and be­ cause, moreover, it has nothing to do with the Neutral we're speak­ ing of) . However, the most interesting answers would be metaphor85

SESSION OF MARCH 25, 1 978

for, while it is difficult to speak of the Neutral definitionally (that would mean to conceptualize, to dogmatize), it is possible, admissible, to speak of it metaphorically. 1C:

Thus, let start the game: -A car part? -"a tire that deflates," GideY -A sportsman?-Gide: "I am like someone who skates on an ice that cracks. "28 -A type of food ?-I would say ( but it is personal ) : rice: neither

Gide, 141, 1 07

bland nor savory, neither tight nor diluted, neither colored nor col­ orless. -An animal?-I would say: a donkey (the Nietzschean ani­ mal) , such as it is described by Leon Bloy when he describes his daughter Veronique ( by means of an implicit Chinese portrait) (L'Invendable): "It's the splendor of the spider web in the country dew, when the sun rises, it's the far-off moaning of the goat that is being slaughtered on a peaceful farm in the middle of apple trees in bloom, next to an Eastertime meadow, it's the infinitely sad and sweet velvet of donkey eyes. "29 -Now: a fabric?-Velvet. -A type of writing ?-Suspense: 1 will disclose it on June 3 , unless you yourselves have already answered. Of course, the further one goes, the less one is satisfied by the crude categories represented by the "genuses." Therefore one needs, to close the figure, the almost unassailable subtlety of Blanchot's suggestion: "The Neutral: that which carries difference even to the

Blanchot, Conversation,

point of indifference. More precisely, that which does not leave in­ difference to its definitive equalization. "30

305

Ideospheres Ideosphere: word 1 forge out of ideology: the linguistic system of an ideology, with this caveat from the outset that makes the definition already inexact: in my view, ideology, no matter which, is and is only language: it's a discourse, a type of discourse. One could imagine other neologisms: doxosphere: linguis­ tic sphere of the doxa. Or again, since it concerns discourses of faith: pisteosphere;31 or again sociolect ( "writing" in Writing De­ gree Zero) . Or even, more simply: logosphere: which would recall that for man language is a true biological ambience, the one within which and through which he lives, the one that surrounds him.

The Word

86

5 E 5 5I O N 0 F MARCH 25,

1 978

One should be able, in fact, to define "ideologies" through their language, itself structurally defined, when possible, by typical fea­ tures of discursivity, and it's only later that one would look for cor­ respondences between these types of discourse and specific socio­ political determinations

--7

in a given world, one would unfailingly

discover several coexisting ideo spheres, each one intelligible to the other but not communicating. Thus (provisionally, since these are nothing more than research notes): ideosphere: strong discursive, nonidiolectal system (able to be imitated, to be spoken by a large number of individuals without their knowing it), " sociolect" that stems from cultural root languages (for example: Marx, Freud) : at the same time, gregarious and nonanony­ mous (rather: eponymous).

--7

Problem of the "logothetes. "32

1 . Features I indicate several, general (in my opinion) features present in any ideosphere:

a . Consistency

To explain the consistency of the ideosphere, we will use a concept and a metaphor borrowed, via Bachelard, from Dupreel, Theorie de

93

la consolidation (Brussels,

of Duration

1 9 3 I)

-7

Whenever something is made,

two successive steps: example of the crate: ( I ) At first, it is the hands of the maker that hold against each other the pieces of wood that he is going to nail. ( 2 ) Once the nails are hammered in, the crate holds together all by itself (d. the mold and the molded object)

-7

cohe­

sion of the elements secured first by an external cause; then they succeed in consisting, in sustaining themselves by a cause become interior

--7

whence the formula: " inside constructed from outside"

(;>< expansion of a substance) .33

In fact, this is the way the ideosphere functions. Moment I: the pieces are placed and held together by the language of the logothete (Marx, Freud) : that already resembles a system (the way the crate held by the worker's hands already resembles a crate) the illusion of system

=

=

moment of

maya:34 magnificent, savory, consumable

moment: the pleasure of producing a system without the dogma­ tism of the inherited, implemented system, of the ready-made crate, which is a product

-7

self-evident that the subject in the Neutral

( ;>< neutral subject) intensely consumes the moment I (he loves " to

read" Marx, Freud) 87

;>


the ideosphere (perceived as such) rejoins in fact what Bacon

calls the idols or phantoms ( for him, sources of error, causes that =

hinder the reception of truth into the mind; for us, to the contrary, they would be "consistencies of truth " or, if one prefers: "convic­ tions " ) . Bacon

Organum, book 7

=

four types of idols (or phantoms) : ( I ) Idols of the

tribe (of the race)

=

errors shared by all men. (2) Idols of the grot­

to (of the den): errors particular to each intelligence (derive from tastes) ( --7 idiolects) . (3) Idols of the market (errors coming from the use of language) . (4) Idols of the theater false systems of the philosophers (

=

=

errors coming from the

fables, plays) : these would be

our ideospheres.4o

2. Ideosphere and Power (to sacrifice to fashion) 1.

Relation between the ideosphere (between language) and

power (singular: political, stately, national) � one or two hasty remarks (because so vast a theme that in reality it would require dealing with the whole category of politics): a. The ideosphere tends to establish itself as a doxa, which is to say as a "discourse" (a particular system of language), which is experienced by its users as a universal, natural discourse, one that goes without saying, whose typicality remains unperceived, whose every "exterior" is demoted to the status of marginality, of devi­ ance: discourse-law that isn't perceived as law. This, which I pres­ ent in a negative, critical, disapproving way, can to the contrary be presented in a triumphant manner: Joseph de Maistre: "All known

1 52

nations have been happy and powerful to the degree that they have faithfully obeyed this national mind, which is nothing other than the destruction of individual dogmas and the absolute and general rule of national dogmas, that is to say, useful prejudices. "41

=

One

can't say it better: fits perfectly, in particular, with Soviet ideosphere, 89

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M A R C H 2 5, 1 9 7 8

lived (from within) as "national mind," " destruction of individual dogmas, " "rule of national dogmas, " " sum of useful prejudices" : outside the ideosphere = "criminal" or "crazy" languages: sued. This suits "strong" States well; but in the "liberal" States, there is a more diffuse ideosphere, on which the power feeds and behind which it protects itself: but outside which it is not, even itself, al­ lowed to " wander " : Maistre (once again): "Rulers can exact effec­ tive and durable obedience only when supported by opinion, which

Maistre. 60

they cannot themselves determine. "42 Example: a nation with a false calendar that no one dares to change. "You see that there are some subjects, much less essential than war , on which authority feels that it must not let itself be compromised. "43 .-" Well seen, and in fact deserving more study, since political science has not (yet) taken charge of linguistic questions (relations between discourse and power: politics fancies itself free of language; of all the " disciplines," it is even, probably, the one that denies, that represses the object-language the most): ideosphere (discourse of the doxa) : a kind of regulatory, homeostat­ ic device, which keeps power between optimal poles: power can't cross the boundaries, the norms of the public ideosphere, without danger (to itself) . b. The ideosphere of a power (accepted, assimilated, integrated the expression of its ideology) has an effect of gearing up, of relay­ ing: it's like a wheel that transmits and maintains power .-" Maistre: "One can claim, as a general thesis, that no ruler is strong enough to govern several million men, unless he is helped by religion or by slavery, or by one and the other."44 For Maistre, partisan of a strong power, that means that power should feel free to use religion =

Maistre. 209

and slavery for its own sake. We no longer use such categories, at least such words, but if religion counts as an ideo sphere, Maistre's remark is right: no power will ever be strong enough unless it is nurtured by a strong language, a linguistic system that in some way takes over for it. Ideosphere: Glucksmann (perhaps following Solzhenitsyn) : gearing-down function of ideology, of ideosphere: Stalin: by himself nothing much, "the evilness of a petty police of­ ficer "45 + gift for mobilizing an ideosphere, Marxism .-" "idea," as a frozen form of language, "formula, " multiplies the crimes of power: crime is vulgarized, multiplied -;. Michelet spoke (Sorciere) of " Satan multiplied and vulgarised. "46 2.

One should confront the concept of ideosphere, the reality of

such or such an ideosphere, with violence. Unfortunately, there are

90

S E S S I O N 0 F MARCH 2 5 ,

1 978

many types of violence: violence of the law, of rights, of the State; violence of the organizations that respond to it insofar as they are themselves organized; violence of unionized strikes; organized vio­ lence but whose organization remains clandestine, illegal; so-called wild violence (the general strike according to Walter Benjamin}.47 To be j ust noticed here, it seems to me: the explicit presence of an " ideosphere" dampens the effect (the image) of violence: violence of the State: doesn't stand out because heavily verbalized, surround­ ed by a vast, uninterrupted ideology; violence of terrorism: strikes deeply because very sparsely verbalized: the terrorist ideosphere is barely explicit: one doesn't really know in which ideosphere the act of violence is articulated. Terrorism doesn't talk -;. impression of madness, of horror.

3. Si ncerity Ideosphere: circle, system of sentences-ideas, of phrased ideas, of formulaic arguments, of formulae -;. therefore, it's an essentially reproducible and/or repeatable linguistic object -;. hence some very important phenomena of mimicry: Mimicry (of a given ideosphere) can be conscious, deliberate, either by Machiavellianism at the level of the State or by careful conformism at the level of individuals when an ideosphere is associ­ ated with power. But there is also an unconscious mimicry: the ideo sphere being inextricably tied to a faith ---;. very formula of intolerances: Catholic ideosphere during the Middle Ages, Lutheran ideosphere (Luther intolerant: he believed in the devil, etc.) (I am sticking to the past) -;. ideosphere thus has a link (to be studied) with faith (language of gregarious faith ", idiolectal faith of the mystic) and even with good faith: it is possible that on the basis of their ideosphere Soviet people believe in good faith, sincerely, what seems monstrous to us, that to oppose the regime is a mental illness, the symptom of a pathological anomaly, thus belonging to psychiatric hospitals -;. it's perhaps one of the dramas of the contemporary world, where strong ideospheres coexist (or less powerful, less strong) : that it ul­ timately runs on good faith, on sincerity (therefore on intolerance); the contemporary world as the exact opposite of Machiavellian­ ism: whence the current forms of violence -;. Machiavellianism as progress? ---;. In any case, in this mosaic of ideo spheres, there is no place for a realm of neutral language that socially could only be the 91

S E S S I O N O F MARCH 25, 1 978

field of a pluralistic dust of idiolects, of singular languages. (See for yourself, among your relations, your interlocutors, where you live: do you live in an ideosphere or in a kind of complex symphony of incomparable languages ? )

4 . Perpetu ity

Ideosphere = a system of language that is functioning, i.e�, that has the power to last: the duration of a system doesn't prove its "truth" but precisely its "endurance, " which is to say, the quality of its functioning, the performance of its language as engine --;. one must pay attention to the power of the durable or (I'd rather say) of the indefatigable. Within the ideosphere, the indefatigable language, the inde­ fatigability of language, its infinite perpetuation somehow stands for the very hardness of power: it's the inexorable: the language that "runs," that one can't "pray. " Don't forget that in Latin (even if it is just an etymological coincidence that I overinterpret): dicta: repetitive = to repeat, to say in insisting, and to prescribe, to order dictator beautiful citation of Blanchot on the terrifying per­ petuation of language as a properly fascist ordeal: " Someone who speaks without pause. (Let us recall Hitler's terrible monologu es. ) And every head o f State participates in the same violence o f this dic­ tare, the repetition of an imperious monologue, when he enjoys the r.

--;.

Blanchot, Conversation, 75

--;.

power of being the only one to speak and, rejoicing in possession of his high solitary word, imposes it without restraint as a superior and supreme speech upon others. "48 2. Extending the concept of ideosphere, one could say that each subject has his own idiosphere: the linguistic system never stops speaking inside his head. This inexhaustible aspect of language impresses me: it is, coming from man, something like a perpetual adoration of language. --;. Two notations, one serious, the other comical: =

Tao, Grenier, 23

a. Tao: "Why do we have to distinguish entities by means of words that express nothing but subjective and imaginary views? If you start naming and counting, you will never stop, the series of subjective views being infinite, "49 a view that within myself I find profoundly true: there is a weariness of the language, and, like all weariness, it is endless: language as a kind of hard labor. b. Funny Greek expression: there was egcheirogast6r: who feeds himself with his own arms --;. Aristophanes (Birds, v. r 69 4 ) : "there

Sophistes, 59

92

S ESSIO N OF MARCH 25,

1 978

is in Phanes

< . . > a busy nation of workers of the tongue: egglot­ togastor"50 (it is about the sycophants, those who uncover the figs, .

who denounce the thieves of figs ) . Dantesque feeling that we are all language workers and that even our inner language ceaselessly feeds off a permanent state of denunciation of the others, of the other, of ourselves, in short: of error ---;. the human subject as im­ placable record keeper ---;. the perpetuation of language would thus coincide with what the German romantics called the demonic char­ acter of life (Nachtseite der Natur).51 Boehmian theme of the hid­ den, obscure life, perpetual movement with neither brake nor goal, life that runs after itself, eats away at itself, devours and flees itself; upset life, life of endless, unenlightened despair

200

=

quaal: " atrocious

torment that is at the bottom of being and of life."52 3.

Out of quaal comes the deliverance through Nirvana ( Scho­

penhauer)53 ---;. this feeling of a driven langage is infallibly coupled with that of a suspension of language. Such a suspension (if seri­ ously fantasized) is suicidal (d. Nirvana): Blanchot:

xxiii

How had he come to will the interruption of discourse ? And not the legitimate pause, the one permitting the give and take of conversation, the benevolent, intelligent pause, not that beautifully poised waiting with which two interlocutors, from one shore to another, measure their right to communicate. No, not that, and no more so the austere silence, the tacit speech of visible things, the reserve of those invisible. What he had wanted was entirely different, a cold interruption, the rupture of the circle. And at once this had happened: the heart ceasing to beat, the eternal speaking drive stopping.54 �

The interruption of language: big theme, big mystical request:

mysticism oscillating between "positing" language (naming): cata­

phasis, and lifting it, suspending it: apophasis.55 (All my life long, I've been living this back-and-forth: caught up between the exalta­ tion of language [pleasure taken in its drive] [---;. whence: my writ­ ing, my speaking are glued to my social being, since I publish and I teach] and the desire, the great desire for a respite from language, for a suspension, an exemption.)

93

S E S S I O N OF M A R C H 2 5 , 1 9 7 8

S ESSION OF APRI L 1 , 1 978

Supplement V Two kinds of supplements: (I) external ones: following incitements that come from listeners (letters, remarks); (2) internal ones: reflec­ tions that come to me once the figure has been presented: after­ thoughts ---0> today: a lone "internal" supplement. Yesterday evening I received a letter, too late to be able to admit it as a supplement. I ask the one who wrote to me and whose first name is the metathesis of mine, 1 or vice versa, to be nice enough to come talk to me. Figure "Ideospheres " about ideology: linguistic system of tropes, of figures (the way ideology according to Marx = system of representations inverted with relation to reality: metaphor of the photographic imageJ. 2 ---0> Problem: is a total absence of ideology conceivable and, if so, how? Is there a degree zero of ideology? ---0> Conceptions: (I) There would be one ideology by class: "Dominant ideology" logically implies that there is a dominated ideology. The world conflicts of ideologies ---0> overthrows of dominances. (2) (Myself): There is no dominated ideology. Ideology 0;=' only idea insofar as it dominates. Ideology: pure linguistic (representative) attribute of a power, whatever it be ---0> consequently the aim, either revolutionary or utopian, is to achieve a world without ideology: defined by the "transparency of social relations, " without discur­ sive mediation. ---0> It's the way I used to see things: the absence of ideology, the degree zero, the ideological Neutral as idyllic. An observation by a sociologist friend suddenly shook this idyllic vision and gave me a stab of fear, drawing a picture of the absence of ideology as bar­ barism: according to an ongoing study, it appears that most young white-collar workers are rigorously without ideology: they only speak of their needs (for dwelling, vacations, lifestyle), which is to say: they have no discourse to transform, upset, uplift, justify, natu­ ralize the statement3 of their needs (among workers, the expression of needs is taken charge of, is relayed by a political discourse) obviously terrifying vision, at least for me: pure discourse of the re­ frigerator, of the automobile, of the country house, of the vacation ---0> we should look at what's happening with Americans. =

=

=

---0>

94

--;. Thus, there would be a twofold, self-contradictory postula­ tion of absence of ideology (and of ideosphere), two ideological "blanks, " one horrible, the other idyllic. Perhaps, as a brutal slogan to launch a reflection, provided we correct it if necessary, one might say: I.

Transparency of discourse in relation to needs all the forms of barbarism: hot savagery of the states of nature and cold, frozen, "civilized" barbarism of pure technocracies. 2. Transparency of discourse in relation to desires: utopia, mi­ raculous exemption from all interhuman opacity: marvelous state of two beings who love each other, absolutely transparent and as though primitive discourse (in the sense of primitive language) of two beings who reciprocally and simultaneously desire each other --;. discourse of the I love you-I love you too. Once more, we witness, we learn that in each of its aspects the Neutral has its farcical, its horrifying side -> perhaps one should distinguish the (barbaric) null from the (utopian) Neutral -> cf. opposition suggested by Blanchot (Infinite Conversation) in con­ nection with the Neutral between "nihilating operation " and "in­ operative operation. "4 =

Consciousness Here I take "consciousness" {conscience} not at all in the moral sense but in the "classic-psychological" sense. Littre: "Feeling of oneself or mode of the general sensibility that allows us to be aware of our own existence. " 5 (Very eighteenth-century definition. Rousseau.) Recall that conscientia -

Teste: description of an extreme marginality all the

more marginal today in that fashion can no longer understand such an intellectualist delirium9

->-

absolutely anticonformist book. One

can say that, in the consciousness I want to speak about, there is, as well as in M. Teste, an absolutely fascinated relation to the self,lo there is a capture by the very self from which analytic work gives itself the task of freeing us: Lacan (Seminar, II) : "The intuition of the ego retains, in so far as it is centered on the experience of con­ sciousness, a captivating character, which one must rid oneself of in order to accede to our conception of the subject"ll

->-

it is known

that, personally, I always cling to, I favor ( as the pleasure of the trap, of the maya) what psychoanalysis aims to detach us from, to shake loose. " Hallucinations" generated by this hypertrophied self: ideas (d.

Poesies): they are monsters:12 "ideas don't hold out for long under the light of reflexivity" : now what lives a little less long than normal is a monster ->- duration of reflexivity: Bachelard made it the central problem of a psychology of rest ( exponential psychology: I think

.......nlti"'l psy

that I think that I think, etc.) We will speak of it later. For Valery: experience not of rest but of tension threatened by breakage. This is all about a borderline experience: borderline of knowl­ edge, of being, of language: spaces verging toward the negative,13 occupied in general by mysticisms. Thus Madame Emilie Teste: "A mystic without God. " 14 For me, M. Teste reproduces, duplicates Baudelaire's Artificial Paradise. The same protocols of initiation to a mental experiment: enclosure within a room, opera, observation by a friend

+

an incen­

tive substance: here H, there consciousness (the consciential). For the rest, Baudelaire himself, talking about Balzac, calls the free-willed, conscious psyche: a substance (the word denotes drugs) . Balzac inter­ ested by H: "But the idea of having to think in spite of himself was

ire. 78-79

extremely offensive to him.

.

It is indeed difficult to imagine the

theorist of the Will, Louis Lambert's spiritual double, consenting to be deprived of that precious 'substance. "' 15 And Baudelaire's drug, like consciousness, is "dry" (we will see it). Claim (it's all one can do with an etymology) that: dtug


0

d. AIda Rescio, " Benjamin et Haschisch, " in

Drogue: "For Benjamin, the hashish experiment provided a glimpse, even though only foreshortened, of a way of living unproductively: based either on waste or on invention, which in any case is very similar to love."24 In the same way, M. Teste sets up (as one sets a stage setting) thought trying to think itself as a pure squandering of its objects. 3. Experiment with limits. Banal: in both cases, feeling of a ten­

sion, that's to say, of an exploration of limits. To be noticed: there is a specific place for the experiment: one very distant/one not too dis­ tant. Cf. this word from a painter (Cezanne? Bazaine ? ) :25 "It is not 99

5E55ION

0F APRIL 1 , 1 978

a question of crossing our limits but of filling them to the point of making them burst" --;> Importance of the to the point of: it's there that one stops: brushing with psychosis --;> the consciousness-drug: apt or conducive to this subtlety: it doesn't transgress its own prem­ ises but to the contrary exasperates them, which is what makes it a drug: subtle drug since associated with intensity, not with alteration (creation of other) . 4 . Same/other. Concerning the classical drug (H), common idea: it disappropriates, it renders other: Baudelaire about Balzac: "the idea of having to think in spite of himself was extremely offensive to him. "26 And Benjamin, "H in Marseilles " : "a dull feeling of fore­ boding; something strange, ineluctable is approaching. < . . > His laughter, all his utterances happen to him like outward events. "27 Perhaps this idea of dispossession, of alteration (I is another lie est

Baudelaire Benjamin. 1 38

.

Baudelaire

Blanchot. 303

un autre}): facile and suspect idea. In any case, the consciousness­ drug follows an entirely different path: = a tireless deepening of the same that I am, but from being so treated the same becomes some­ thing like an other, insofar as it is inconceivable: to become other by dint of being the same. Well put by Baudelaire: "Dread union of man with himself! "28 5. Opacity in transparency. Blanchot is right in emphasizing the paradox of what he calls the Neutral and which, one has already understood, I call here the consciousness-drug: "Neutral, then, re­ markably, would send us back to the transparency whose ambigu­ ous and non-innocent status would be marked in this manner: there would be an opacity of transparency. "29 I would transcribe the par­ adox in this way: the subj ect (who I am) : like a score (large surface of staves ) : each part (each wave) is independent, clear, vivid, sung and heard vividly; but in me, underneath me, there is no me to read the whole, vertically, harmoniously --;> hyperconsciousness, Neu­ tral: I am clear to myself but without truth: a very clear language ( nothing hermetic, abstruse), but without referent; for everything I believe about myself is false and I am without truth nevertheless --;> my sharpness is useless. or again: there is no orchestra conductor in me who could read the score in its verticality.

2. The Valerian Self as Imaginary

To the description of consciousness as drug, born from M. Teste and from Baudelaire, a new element (a field? ) will now be added, absent from M. Teste, present in Baudelaire and, if I dare this detail, 1 00

S ESSION 0 F APRI L 1 . 1 978

in the personal experience I am trying to communicate here. With Baudelaire, this element: sensitivity; for me: affectivity, emotivity �

the combination of consciential hyperesthesia and emotivity,

the sharp consciousness of the pathos seems to me to constitute an imaginary type (a formant): the self as imaginary, the unfailing coalescence of an affect and the awareness of it

�

in short, all that

is not about an anti-M. Teste but a counter-M. Teste.

a. The Paradox

Conjunction of intellect and affect: appears as a para-dox to opin­ ion (the doxa): A whole classical, rationalistic tradition distrusts the "heart" and requires that it be controlled by the head: imagination (even if this is no longer our imaginary) : "teacher of errors and falsities, " con­

Chaix-Ruy, 62

demned by Descartes, Pascal, Bossuet, Malebranche, etc.

'*

the "par­

adoxical" man, on this topic, is Vico: constructs a general theory of imagination, faculty born before the others: imaginative knowledge or poetic wisdom first form of all knowledge30 � poetic language

Michelet, 423

=

preceded that of prose: the fables, "universals of imagination. "3! An emotive hyperconsciousness thus seems to be a contradic­ tion in terms: a paradox. I feel this paradox in myself, I have to live, to debate with it: with it and with the others insofar as they return my own image to me as something impossible: either, they say, you are moved and that's obvious; or your calm proves that you control yourself: whether my "calm" reassures or annoys, it is never questioned, nobody cares to know what it is made of. Well, it is made of this: an immediate and precise consciousness of the smallest shifts of affect that attack my body (jealousies, urges to get rid of, fears, desires, etc.)

�

hyperconsciousness of the affective

minimal, of the microscopic fragment of emotion �

=

filings of affects

which implies an extreme changeability of affective moments, a

rapid modification, into shimmer. Such is the paradox, the imaginary of the self as paradox, that gives me a permanent feeling of enigma; ceaselessly within me: emotivity ( "turmoil" ua'lx-�tUV,

+

"presence of mind" : my mind is present to

what agitates me. I could use Vico's words as a motto (deforming

68

it a bit ) : Corpus sentit quia viget animus32

�

my body suffers, de­

sires, is wounded, stirs itself, and, concurrently: my mind is awake �

vigilance not moral but either existential (Husserl's waking con­

sciousness)33 or aesthetic (novelistic, fictional)

�

perhaps the types

of subjects for whom sleep is, by contrast, the object of a utopian 101

S E S S I O N OF APRIL 1, 1 978

desire: the epoche of vigilance is desired as something impossible: theme of sleep in Valery.

b. " Sensibi lity"

Baudelaire

The paradox of "emotive lucidity" : well undertaken by Baudelaire in his description of the effects of H; for Baudelaire, a type: the sensitive man: "a soul of my own choosing-something similar to what the eighteenth century called l'homme sensible, what the Ro­ mantic school termed /'homme incompris, and to what the great houses and the bourgeoisie alike generally brand with the epithet of 'unusual."'34 The " sensibility" revealed by the drug-Baudelaire (I almost would like to call it H.B. in the manner of a pharmacist's label) consists of: I . Tenderness-tenderliness to an excess. For example: sensitive men in the grip of H: "So one may well imagine that a light touch, the most innocent conceivable-a handshake, for example-is ca­ pable of bearing one hundred times its ordinary weight because of the condition of the person's mind and sense; and such may even

Tenderness

convey him, very rapidly, to that momentary lapse that vulgar mor­ tals consider as the summum bonum of happiness. " 35 ---i> The ten­ derness swoon. Such tenderness swoons can be caused by ideas: Baudelaire on the subject of Rousseau: "The zeal with which he [Rousseau] admired virtue, the keen compassion that filled his eyes with tears at the very sight of any noble action, or even the thought of some noble action that he would like to perform, were quite enough to give him a superlative idea of his moral worth. Jean­ Good humor

Jacques had become intoxicated without hashish"36 2 . Excessive, jubilant "good humor " : it is the strong, exultant sensibility, Baudelaire again: "There are days when a man will awaken with a young and vigorous spirit < . . . > the outside world will present itself to him in striking relief, all clean contour and wonderful rich color. " Elsewhere, Baudelaire sees an attribute of

Dodds, 8

paradise in this good humor in relief (* "oppressive gloom of ordi­ nary day-to-day existence " } .3? This hyperpower of the consciential sensibility recalls a mental state the ancient Greeks identified under the name of menos (d. Sanskrit manah) : which is not a permanent organ (thumos, noos); it is close to ate: mysterious burst of energy, a kind of "courage " 38 ---i> comes from the gods: everything is pos­ sible: one can, one believes that one can easily accomplish the most difficult trials.

1 02

S ESSION 0F APRI L 1, 1 978

3.

.....:: :. : i ntoxications

Subtle intoxications. Roughly, that's what I call the light, deli­

cate intoxications, the swoons: all the intoxications, perhaps, that don't come from alcohol (for Baudelaire, wine) . Baudelaire: three

laire

anecdotes of subtle intoxication: a. "Herodotus tells us that the Scythians used to pile up hemp seeds, over which they would toss red-hot stones. For them, this was like a vapour bath, but far more fragrant than that of any Gre­ cian steam room; they so delighted in it that they could not restrain their cries of joy. "39 b . " Children who frequently experience strange dizzy spells after playing and rolling about in piles of alfalfa-mowings, we know that when the hemp is harvested, the male and female workers alike sustain similar effects; it would seem as if a miasma were arising maliciously from the harvest to trouble their minds. "40 c. "Who is unaware of the wild behavior of chickens who have eaten hemp seeds, or the fiery transports of horses who have been prepared for the steeple-chase, at weddings or on patron saints' days, by peasants who have given them a ration of hemp seeds, possibly sprinkled with wine ? "41 To clover and to hemp, I would add another medium of subtle intoxication: cigars (from Havana, of course), which act sensorially, not on the mouth: nothing oral nor phallic, of course, but on the internal carpeting of the nose: thus toward the head, not toward the entrails. (All that, if one remembers the strengths, the intensities already listed: acuity, memory, heightening, sensibility: define the field of hyperesthesia � a complete art is one that delivers this hyperes­ thesia: music, model of subtle intoxication for me. I will recall: (I ) Theophrastes' remark: hearing is the most emotive (pathetikotaten) of all the senses. Cf. Plato and the moral effect of music.42 ( 2 ) To hysterical (selective) deafness responds a (hysterical) hyperacous­ tics: companions constrained to whispering, to silence (Israel) .43 Music

=

a drug-consciousness.

c. The Imaginary as C risis

Galloping (inflamed) imagination of the affect

--;>

the most tenu­

ous event, the least notable, I immediately read it as the sign of the worst calamity

--;>

the imaginary of the self thus has a rhythmic

structure, it follows a temporal organization: time as the field of the flammable: fire is a particular mode of time: the time of the crisis.

1 03

S E S S I O N O F APRIL 1 , 1 978

1. Crisis. Here, we must leave Baudelaire and H because H (or opium) doesn't have a critical temporality. It is wine that generates a critical temporality:

Quincey. 382

387

"The pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: < . . . > : the one is a flickering flame, the other a steady and equable glow. " The same thing repeated (still by De Quincey ) : "the drinker rises through continual ascents to a summit o r apex, from which he descends through corresponding steps of declen­ sion. < . . . > After reaching this acme of genial pleasure, it is a mere necessity of the case to sink through corresponding stages of col­ lapse. "44 Thus wine: model of all the critical intoxications: ascent, apex, collapse. Nicely noted by De Quincey: it is not the substance, it's the structure that defines drunkenness. Recalls humorously intoxi­ cations from green tea and above all: "a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on a beef-steak. "45 Here we should take up again the whole file of crisis as structure, as form, Hippocratic model: crisis is part of our language, which means that we naturalize it -!o could be used as a criterion to define (second-degree) languages of civilizations: civilizations with/with­ out crisis (I mean: where crisis isn't a part of the language: eth­ nographic societies and today Soviet society: never acknowledges a crisis * Maoist society: acknowledges internal crises-Cultural Revolution). 2 . Calming down. Idea of crisis calls for that of calming down: the phase of the collapse. De Quincey insists on the fact that his

Toothache Quincey. 226

first usage of opium (laudanum) was as analgesic: for calming a toothache: toothache, model of crisis, De Quincey had such a hor­ ror of it that he was incensed that no one addressed it in a more dramatic way: "Two things blunt the general sense of horror which would else connect itself with toothache " : ( I ) extreme frequency: " hardly a household in Europe being clear of it, each in turn hav­ ing some one chamber intermittingly echoing the groans extorted by this cruel torture. There-viz. in its ubiquity-lies one cause of its slight valuation " ; (2) is never fatal. Sir Philip Sidney: "supposing toothache liable in ever so small a proportion of its cases to a fatal issue, it would be generally ranked as the most dreadful amongst

1 04

S E S S I O N O F A PR I L 1 , 1 978

human maladies. " Toothache and cancer: "In both, there are at

times what surgeons call 'lancinating' pangs-keen, glancing, ar­ rowy radiations of anguish. "46 Sentence that perfectly describes the crises of the imaginary, the imaginary as crisis: the (moral ) pain it causes is dazzling: lu­ minous ( light) and sharp. The imaginary is this representational energy that impels by gusts, by whiplashes � in particular, the

....II-....'hiplash

word-whiplash (Aeschylus ) :47 it is already there in M. Teste: "in­ tellectual" " < . . . > that prodigious activity called intellectual . . . -

--"" 53

INTELLECTUAL? . . . That extraordinary word, coming vaguely into my mind, stopped dead the whole train of my visionary no­ tions. The shock of a word in a head is an odd thing! The whole mass of the false, at top speed, suddenly j umps out of line with the true. " 48 (Notice how under the influence of the imaginary, of the crisis, the text itself needs to play with typographical marks [dots, capitals, italics, etc.] : emotive hyperconsciousness: a typog­ raphy. ) From crisis arises the demand for calming down: a. For De Quincey and toothache, opium: autumn 1 8 04; habit

380

of bathing his head in cold water once a day. Forgets once to do so

� toothache ( ! ) Jumps out of bed, plunges his head in cold water and goes back to bed, his hair wet. � The next day, horrible neu­ ralgia of head and face, suffers for twenty days. The 2 1 st day, a Sunday, goes out; in the street, meets someone who suggests opium to him. Damp and melancholy Sunday evening ("A duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London" ) . Walks along Oxford Street; pharmacy; ridiculous and stupid figure: "When I asked for the tincture of opium daudanum>, he gave it to me as any other man might do. "49 b. From the imaginary crisis arises the demand for peace: the Neutral, the demand for Neutral. 3.

Conduct. The Neutral, being the phantasmatic object of a de­

mand, answers to the question: How to behave with my imaginary? Notice that it's not a practical, "proalretic" question; one can very well, all things being equal, behave more or less reasonably, with an imaginary that shakes one brusquely (the imaginary "type" isn't "crazy " ) . But how to bring peace to the imaginary qua demonic, how to cajole it, discipline it, tell it what it is supposed to do or say? The painful problem isn't social, ideological, moral responsi­ bility; it's the responsibility of one's own imaginary, which one has

1 05

SESSION OF APRIL 1 , 1 978

to carry: on which depends the vital thing we used to call happiness: which makes it a specifically ethical problem. Vigny, Journal: " Let's find comfort for everything in the thought that we gain pleasure from our very thoughts and that nothing could rob us of this pleasure. "50

1 06

S ESS ION 0F APRI L

l,

1 978

SESSIO N OF A P R i l 2 9 , 1 9 78

Answer 1 . Answer as Form A part of the discourse one doesn't ordinarily care about except for its contents. However, it's obvious that what follows a question (an­ swer) or a proposal (reply) constitutes a discursive form, a structural element ( "logeme " ) , commentable independently from all contents and, like all forms, mortgages to an "ideology, " submits the subject to social conformities, and thus to anticonformisms. A file to be set up, a Ph.D. (troisieme cycle) to be written! To prime this file, two observations: on the answer, on the reply. I.

The answer: part of discourse that is commanded by the

form " question. " Now, what I want to point out is that there is always a terrorism of the question; a power is implied in every question. The question denies the right not to know or the right to the indeterminacy of desire � With certain subjects-I am one of them-every question sets off a certain panic; even more so if the question is, or claims to be, precise (precision as power, as intimidation: science's trickiest power play) � constant desire to

precise question

give imprecise answers to precise questions: this imprecision of the answer, even if it is perceived as a weakness, is an indirect way of demystifying the question: for every question comes from a subj ect who intends something other than a plain, first-degree answer � every question can be read as a situation of question, of

r

power, of inquisition (the State, the bureaucracy: very questioning characters). � Same situation of power in interviews: (a) implies that one knows how to reply to big dissertation questions (what is writing? nature ? health? etc. ) , that one should be interested in the question, that one should accept the way the question is asked; (b) The multiplication of interviews, the arrogance, the intimida­

interview

tion of the demand: index of the current ascension of j ournalism as power.l Interview (questions on everything) : kingly right of the j ournalist over the interviewee. Interview: tends to replace criti­ cism. Twenty years ago, Writing Degree Zero: a file of reviews. ;c A Lover's Discourse: a file of interviews. No need to comment on a book: j ust ask the author; but the right, the grip of the journalist (with his sort of distant tone of voice) comes back under the guise 1 07

of what's presupposed by the questioning, of the terrorism of the question: journalist: a kind of cop who likes you, who wants the best for you, since he gives you the floor and opens up celebrity for you. (Why answer? A sense of professional duty {deontologie}, social game. To give work ;c moral.)2 As for the form: the ques­ tion entraps one in an alternative: to answer ---;. well/badly//not to answer: because of refusal/because of ignorance, etc. ---;. Entrap­ ment that in fact very quickly leads the one who doesn't answer to death, erasure, or madness � model: the Sphinx's question and a thousand mythical works (of the type of Turandot)3 + in every Double-bind

question, there is the germ of a double-bind situation ( School of Palo Alto ) :4 the question to which one cannot answer yes or no without a fatal rending ---;. trap, psychosis: whatever I do, I am done for like a rat. Every question transforms me into a trapped rat: tests, police, affective choices, doctrinal choices, etc. What we must do (at least here: a space, if not free, at least utopian) is to learn how to denaturalize questioning: it is not a natural mode of discourse (if such a thing existed, we already said, it would be the assertion) but a highly cultural one: remem­ ber that ancient rhetoricS-wise among the wise-considered that interrogation was a trope. Indeed: question = affective gesture, not mode of communication ---;. disguised, hypocritical assertion. Questioning: perhaps the worst violence. Remember Freud's claim: every question: will for sexual knowledge (interrogation about the primal scene) . In this sense, every question is indiscreet, it is-however sublime its contents-inquiry about the sexuality of the other � = what is your sexuality � voyeurism, coerced exhibitionism. 2 . The reply: the moment in a discourse of two (or of many) where I must intervene � exemplary field: conversation. a. In remaining silent in a conversation, I immediately commit myself to an image: Kafka (cited in " Silence " ) , Blanchot: "Kafka wondered at what moment and how many times, when eight people

Cf. "Silence"

are seated within the horizon of a conversation, it is appropriate to speak if one does not wish to be considered silent. " 6 b. Prompted by the other, my reply is commanded by a confor­ mity (conformism) , by rules, rules of conversation � beginning of a "scientific" analysis by Grice but ultimately normative rules based on Kantian categories, which, however, precisely because they are

G rice

normative, naively disclose what a good conversation is supposed to be, the path wise replies should follow:

1 08

5E55ION 0F APRI

L

29, 1 978

General principle: " Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted pur­ pose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. " 7 -;. Four rules o r maxims: I.

Maxim of quantity: " Make your contribution as informative

and not more informative than is required. " 2.

Maxim of quality: "Do not say what you believe to be false"

or "that about which you lack adequate evidence. " 3.

Maxim of relation: " Be relevant. "

4.

Maxim o f modality or o f manner: " Be perspicuous. "

=

-;. Conformity o f the replies (of the "implicatures " ) t o these

rules: complete achievement of conversational conformism. It's enough to take the opposite stand to produce a subversive, pro­ vocative, unsettling text (reply): the enigmatically unexpected: to be manically, ironically informative, to be obscure, exaggeratedly el­ liptical, to place oneself outside the truelfalse, to utter irrelevancies (in relation to what has j ust been said), harebrainers. -;. We are now going to look in the direction of these beside-the-point answers, a subfield of the Neutral since they baffle the arrogant request for a good reply.

2. Beside-the-Point Answers I'll sketch a rough classification of them on the basis of the hasty or rather happenstance collection I made on the occasion of a few readings. I'll start by giving examples. We will interpret later.

a . Departures, F l ig hts, Silences, Forgettings

(We will find these gestures again with the figure "Leave" {Conge}.)8 All these verbal reactions must b e understood i n connection with the syntagm that precedes them: a question or a statement (proposi­ tion) insofar as that normally would call for an answer or a reply: I.

Silence, nonreply. To whatever " precedes, " to turn a deaf ear

by keeping silent or engaging in an occupation so irrelevant that it counts as silence. Sweden borg, " the extraordinary child of the

enborg. 2 and 344

North" ( 1 68 8-1778), huge success: he never read what was written against him. Writing ceaselessly himself, he didn't even read all the letters that were sent to him. Refused to exchange letters with Wolf, the successor to Leibniz, as well as with Kant, who both wrote to

1 09

SESSION O F APRIL 29, 1 978

him without getting any answer.9 (This: great strength because it means accepting to let one's image be changed.) Galileo

Gide, 39

Think also about Brecht's Calileo.10 Galileo fought: once con­ demned, he withdrew; his books will shine forth for him. Last scene. The disciple, active and excited, prepares the clandestine printing of the books, but at the back of the stage, indifferent, deaf, silent, Galileo gorges on goose and lentils. It's his "answer" to the militantism he himself had unleashed: Master = counterdisciple. A-disciple. Nonanswer: continue to do what one was doing, in an obtuse manner: this, when it isn't a provocation for a "scene" (many "scenes" begin like this ), can be very subversive: the difficulty, if one can say so, is that it is hardly, if at all, noticeable: persistence should not look like stubbornness. 2 . Forgetting. To forget what one has said, that one said it, with­ out being surprised about it, act as if each time, on a given subject, one began again at zero: exhausting for the others. Example: Gide ( 1946): " 'What do you think of committed literature ? (Gide asks his witness)- But you know very well! In any case, exactly the same as you, why this question?-I am trying to have an opinion.' And that, after all he had already said and written on the subject! " 1 1 3 . Departure. Gide again: I cite the whole episode because it is such a parodistic premonition of what happens on a daily basis to the intellectual today, and involving almost the same names (this happens in August 1 9 5 0 ) : Gide Cahiers de la Petite Dame:

Gide

In the morning of August 8, he received a letter from Brisson of which he pretended to understand nothing at all; in it, there was a reference to a manifesto issued by Daniel Guerin that he supposedly had signed, thus taking a stand Brisson finds se­ rious; fearing that someone might have misused Gide's signa­ ture, he delayed the publication of the manifesto as much as he could, but Mauriac intending to reply in Le Figaro of the 8th, he had been forced to go ahead. Gide tells me he had signed nothing, Brisson's letter doesn't ring a bell; he has absolutely no idea what it could be about-and goes back to work. But soon he comes back: "You know, suddenly, I see the beginning of a gleam of light. Yes, yes, I remember: the evening before my de­ parture, I got a telephone call . . . " I interrupt: "From whom ? " -I am quite certain that it was from the Guerin person Brisson is speaking about, it was just before dinner, he said he was hop­ ing that I would sign a petition. -About what? I say. -I no longer remember precisely, I think it was about the massacres 1 10

SESSION OF APRIL 29, 1 978

in Indochina, but the text he read sounded fine and agreeable to me so I gave my support. -Oh well! Now things are clear, but I am surprised that you remember the details and not the essential! -He told me also that he already had the signatures of Sartre, Bourdet, Cassou . . . and of Camus, I believe. -Be­ fore answering Brisson that there is no misunderstanding and that you indeed signed the manifesto, get the Figaro right away, Mauriac's answer will remind you of what it was about. -Yes, of course, but also: I count on Pierre to explain it to me. " (The Herbarts were to lunch with us.) In no time, Gide finds the Figaro and begins to read Mau­ riac's (very unpleasant) article titled "An Unfortunate Call. " 12 I watch him read the article, more and more visibly at a loss: "I understand absolutely nothing, I still don't get what it is about. -But then, how did you manage to understand the text that was read to you over the telephone? -Well! That's it, it did seem clear, but now Mauriac is bringing the conse­ quences on the table, and I no longer follow! -But yet, dear, it's essential to realize, to know to what an action commits! -Moreover, I am not sure of being wrong, and I feel closer to Sartre than to Mauriac. -Possible, but when one is you, one doesn't sign because others have done so, and even less something one doesn't understand well or not at all. -Yeees, you are probably right. " But I don't enjoy cornering him like this, and, besides, one so wishes not to let him get tangled up. This little story is typical of his increasingly vague, unjustifi­ able, changeable, illogical behavior: if he is already like this in the little things of life, then, when it is a matter of the future of Europe! He is utterly drowned. At 4 o'clock, telegram from Daniel Guerin: "Mauriac strongly attacks our call in Figaro today, you should make a public statement. " "Ah! they are a real pain, says Gide. -No doubt, but their call is nonetheless natural. They can't know that you are incapable of defending a position you've taken, and your voice being the most important of theirs, you are the one they ring. -I answer nothing, I let it drop, I am away.13 Lesson in the neutral (not flattened, impertinent, and even funny compared to all those serious committed bores ) : ( r ) "They are a real pain ! " ( 2 ) "I am away. " 4.

Flight. Departure: can be fictive, false excuse

-;>

real flight. Eu­

rylochus, disciple of Pyrrho: " Once in Elis he was so hard pressed

enes laertius. 2:481

by his pupils' questions that he stripped and swam across the Al­ pheus ." 14 We will return to this gesture, the most j uicy of the " beside-the-point answers. "

ard, 79 111

SESSION O F APRIL 29. 1 978

b.

Deviations

More subtle than all these forms of silence, reply-answers that, even though verbalized, don't run on the same tracks. Therefore: derail­ ment, bifurcation, rerouting � very strong impression of the un­ canny, of mooniness, of the off-the-mark enigmatic: an opening in the direction of an undefined something else. I.

Pelleas, act

4.

Golaud questions the dying Melisande. The

jealous (paranoid) = man of the precise question (Have you slept with Pelleas ? ) and of the power that weighs on the precise answer (YeslNo) . Now Melisande answers neither yes nor no, without that seeming like an intentional refusal to answer; there lies the deep cunning of this dialogue: it is tangential, dizzying: a real Neutral, which baffles the YesiNo, without withdrawing. Staging of the sex­ Pelleas

ual question. Pelleas: M E LISANDE: Is that you, Golaud? I can scarcely recognise you. The

evening sun is shining in my eyes . . . . Why are you looking at the walls? You look thinner and older. Has it been a long time since we last saw each other ? GOLAUD (to Arkel and the Doctor): Would you kindly leave us now for a while, my poor friends . . . . But I will leave the chamber door wide open . . . only for a moment . . . I have something that I wish to say to her; otherwise I could not die in peace. Will you go? Go to the end of the passage. You may come back again in a moment. Do not refuse me this request. You see my misfor­ tune. (Arkel and the Doctor go out.) Melisande, do you pity me, as I pity you? Melisande? Do you forgive me, Melisande? M E LISANDE: Yes, yes, I forgive you . . . . What is there to forgive? GOLAUD I've wronged you so, Melisande . . . . I cannot tell you what wrong I have done . . . . But today I can see it all so clearly. . . . From the very first day . . . Everything I have not known before is obvious to me this evening. And it is all my fault, everything that has happened. Everything that will happen, too. oh, if I could only tell you, you would see how I see it now. . . . I see it all, I see it all! But I loved you so! I loved you so ! But now someone will die . . . . It is I that will die . . . . And I would like to know . . . I would like to ask you . . . You will not mind my asking ? I would like . . . One must always tell the truth to someone who's going to die . . . . In his last hour he must know the truth, otherwise he could never sleep in peace. Will you swear to tell me the truth? M E LISANDE: Yes GOLAUD Did you love Pelleas ? M E LISANDE: Why yes; yes, I loved him. Where is he?

112

S E S S I O N O F A P R I L 29. 1 9 7 8

Do you not understand me? Don't you want to understand me ? I feel . . . What I feel is . . . It's this, tell me this: I ask you whether you loved him with a forbidden love. Did you ? Tell me, were you guilty? Tell me, tell me ! Yes, yes, yes? MELISA N D E : No, no, no, we were not guilty. . . . Why do you ask me that? G O LA U D : Melisande! Tell me the truth, for the love of God! M E LISAN D E : Why? Wasn't that the truth I told you ? G O LA U D : Do not go on lying at the moment of death! M E LISAN D E : Who is going to die? Is it me? G O LA U D : Yes, you, and me, me as well, after you ! And we need the truth, we now need the truth! Do you hear? Tell me all, tell me everything ! I forgive you everything! M E LISAN D E : Why am I going to die! I did not know . . . G O LAU D : But you now understand, now you know. . . . Quickly! Quickly! Tell me the truth! Tell me the truth! The truth . . . the truth . . . the truth . . . Where are you, Melisande! Where are you? It's not natural. Melisande! Where are you? (catching sight of Arkel and the Doctor at the door) Yes, Yes, you may come in . . . . I know nothing, it's useless, it's too late, she is already too far from us . . . . I shall never know. I shall die here like a blind man. IS G O LA U D :

2.

A light, prosaic, ordinary deviation, foreign to all forms of

cultural competence --l> Urt (summer of 77): to the young girl who manages the grocery store: "The weather was nice yesterday" one --l>

might expect yeslno (and rather more yes, since the subject is not con­ flictual! ) . In fact, the grocer answers: "It was hot": which neither af­ firms nor denies the nice weather, displaces the paradigm toward an­ other paradigm, indeed another value. For it would be wrong to think that nice weather is synonymous with heat. In this countryside where people don't like heat, hot weather: depreciating connotation.16 c. Incongru ities

Deviation: gentle, nonprovocative driftings: exhaustion, do not traumatize ", in the Zen, technique of shattering aimed at the pro­ duction of satori (d. below): maximum incongruity in the reply­ answer to each proposition-question: story of Koho and his old master: Suzuki, I. A Zen Lesson

(relation master/disciple) Koho and his old master

Suzuki

1 13

SESSION O F APRIL 29, 1 978

THE MASTER: "Who is it that carries this lifeless corpse of yours ? " Koho burst out " Kwats ! " Thereupon the master took up a stick ready to give him a blow. But the disciple held it back, saying, "You cannot give me a blow today. " "Why can't I ? " Instead of replying to him Koho left the room briskly. The follow­ ing day, the master asked him: "All things return to the One, and where does the One return to ? " "The dog is lapping the boiling water in the cauldron. " "Where have you gotten this nonsense ? " "You had better ask yourself. " The master rested well satisfiedY Observations on this Zen lesson: one can say that all of Grice's rules of conformism are subverted without second thought, with a kind of radical, fiery flippancy (no information, no enlightenment, no relevance, outside the true and the false) , and that all the variet­ ies of beside-the-point answers are staged there: silence, departure, diversion, the strongest incongruity being the final satisfaction of the master: it is pure Marx Brothers.

3. Another Logic, Another D i a logue

Let's reflect in a more general way on the experience (since it is a question of borderline activity, radically asocial) of the beside-the­ point answer: dangerous ? In any case, very hard to practice socially. The false beside-the-point answer. Let's read Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, chapter 1 9 : I.

Joly, 1 07

In the first years of the great Emperor Cam Hi's reign, a man­ darin of Canton one day heard from within his house a huge racket coming from the house next door, and was so alarmed that he enquired whether somebody was not being killed there. He was told that a Danish almoner, a Dutch chaplain and a Jesuit were engaged in argument. Thereupon, the Mandarin invited them into his home, gave them tea and sweetmeats, and asked them why they were quarrelling. The Jesuit explained that it was painful for him, since he was always right, to have to deal with people who were al­ ways wrong. He had begun by making his points with the greatest restraint, but in the end his patience was exhausted. The Mandarin made them all understand, in the gentlest possible way, that good manners were of paramount impor­ tance in any difference of opinion, and that in China nobody

1 14

S ESSION OF APRIL 29, 1 978

grew angry in dispute. He asked them what was the subject of their discussion. "My lord, " said the Jesuit, "you shall j udge of this matter. These two gentlemen refuse to submit to the decisions of the Council of Trent. " "I a m surprised, " said the Mandarin, and turning to the others, told them, "It seems to me, my good sirs, that you should respect the opinions expressed by a great assembly. I do not know what the Council of Trent is, but it is obvious that several persons thinking together are likely to be better informed than one person reflecting alone. No one must be­ lieve that he knows better than anyone else, or that the power of understanding resides in his head alone. So teaches our great Confucius. If you take my advice, you will do well to reconcile yourselves with the Council of Trent. " Then it was the Dane's turn to have a word. "His lordship speaks with the greatest wisdom, " he said. "We respect great assemblies as we should. Indeed, we are entirely in agree­ ment with several assemblies which took place before that of Trent. " "Ah," said the Mandarin, "if that's the case, then I do beg your pardon. You may well be right. In other words, you and the Dutchman are in complete agreement against this poor Jesuit ? " "Not a t ail," interjected the Dutchman. "This Dane en­ tertains opinions almost as extravagant as those of the Jesuit who played so sweet and reasonable with you. I cannot con­ tain myself any longer! " " I can't make you out," said the Mandarin. "Are you not all three Christians ? Haven't all three of you come into our empire to preach Christianity? Shouldn't you therefore have identical doctrines ? " "You see, my lord, " said the Jesuit, "these two people are mortal enemies to each other, and both are in dispute with me. It is therefore obvious that they must both be wrong, and that only I am right. " "It is not obvious at all," replied the Mandarin. "It i s equal­ ly possible that all three of you are wrong. I should be curious to hear you expound your arguments one after the other. " So the Jesuit delivered quite a long speech, during which the Dane and the Dutchman shrugged their shoulders, and the Mandarin understood not a word. Then the Dane took the floor, while his two adversaries looked upon him with con­ tempt, and the Mandarin was none the wiser. The Dutchman did not fare any better in his turn. Finally, they all spoke at 115

S E S S I O N O F APRIL 2 9 , 1 978

the same time and hurled gross insults at one another. The good Mandarin had the greatest difficulty in silencing them, upon which he said, "If you want us to tolerate your teaching in this country, you must start by being neither intolerant nor intolerable yourselves. " When h e left the house the Jesuit encountered a Dominican missionary, and told him that he had carried his argument, be­ cause truth always triumphs. "If 1 had been there, you would not have prevailed, " replied the Dominican. "I would have shown you to be a liar and idolater. " The quarrel then grew hot; the Dominican and the Jesuit fell to fighting and seized each other by the hair. When the Mandarin heard of this scan­ dalous conduct he sent them both to prison. A deputy Man­ darin asked the judge: "How long does Your Excellency require that they should remain incarcerated ? " "Until they come to agreement," said the judge. "Ah, " said the deputy, "in that case they will be in prison for the rest of their lives . " "All right, " said the judge. " Let's say until they forgive each other. " "They well never forgive, " said the other. "I know them." "Well, then, " said the judge, "until they pretend to forgive each other. " 1 8 1 read the whole thing, first for the repose that a reading provides,

then for the punch line, or at least for the way it connects the theme of the prison and that of escaping debate, controversy. A flight, a "transcendence " away from the intellectual polemic in which one could be tempted to see an expression of the Neutral's beside-the­ point answer. But it is nothing like it. Why? Simply, because a flight that would consist of putting people in jail cannot have anything to do with the Neutral. It's just an act of power of the Pontius Pilate type. And no Neutral is possible in the field of power.19 2 . Possible to sketch a kind of vague structural analysis of the problem ->- more an awareness of the figure than its analysis. As is the case with all linguistic manifestation-all discourse-it's funda­ Structural figure

mentally a problem of linearity, of linkages, of sequencing. For our problem (dialogues, conversations, replies, answers) : the sequences are by status divided between two or more partners ->- structural problem: two on a single line. This line of speech (the famous spo­ ken chain) is a double thread: phonetic material (the substance) and contents. The line of the signified is formed (fashioned, molded) by a certain logical model of the successivity of contents: implic116

S E S S I O N O F A P R I L 29, 1 978

1tly following a norm issued by the crude, approximative logic of Opinion, of the doxa (d. Aristotle and the enthymematic logic): "to speak ofthe same thing even if there is no agreement about it" : this coherence o f point o f view (coherence o f the line at the level of both partners)

=

relevance

�

on which basis there will be various

tropes of Linearity: Flat conformity (Grice). Continuous relevance: Silence, dodges, etc. Interrupted Relevance: Detours. Relevance disturbed either by ambivalences or by ir­ relevances: Golaud /

____

'\.

Melisande20

3. Zen ruies of antirelevance. Shattering of the logic of the social self, shatter·irtg of relevance: pursued, systematized, practiced by the Zen, with the aim of inducing the kind of empty flash within con­ sciousness that is the satori ( "illumination " : improper word: one sees nothing if not perhaps that there is nothing to see).21 This tech­ nique: that,of·the -koan:22 question or theme given to the disciple to "solve" (the wrong word: it is not about logic) as a test. Kouang-an

1 :239, 3 1 9, 2:80

"complications," vines and wisteria, entangled branches (the im­ age echoes our lines of relevance) .23 A type of koan is the mondo, =

case or dialogue ( our example of incongruity was a mondo). Classical -example of koan: "All things return to the One, but where does the One return ? " -When I was in the province of Seijou, I nad a monkish garment made which weighed seven kin . "24 This is a good example of the violent action of the koan: to a "serious," "noble," philosophically pompous question, calling for a dissertational treatment, it answers with a pirouette that cuts off any possibility of disserting. Imagine for an instant that to the large, pompous, arrogant, pedantic questions, of which our social, politi­ cal life is excessively woven, the stuff of interviews, of round tables, etc. ( "Is there a writing specific to women and a writing specific to men ? " "Do you think that the writer seeks truth? " "Do you think that writing is life ? " etc.), imagine that someone answers: "I have bought myself a shirt at Lanvin's, " "The sky is blue like an orange, " o r that, if this question i s put t o you i n public, you stand up, take off a shoe, put it on your head, and leave the room

�

absolute

acts25 because baffling all possibilities for a complicitous reply, all

117

S E S S I O N O F A P R I L 29. 1 978

possibility of interpretation; except of course: he is crazy, but this specific "relevance" had no currency among the Zen fellowship. To produce a beside-the-point answer, which might (it's not sure) be identified with the satori (ureserved logical shattering), there are some tricks, essentially of a negative type: the main point being to resist logical, rational habits, inveterate habits of relevance ---;> these rules constitute the anti-Grice; if observed, they would make all conversation impossible. Here they are: Suzuki: Advice for the Zen and the koan:26 Do not calculate according to your imagination. Let not your attention be drawn when the master raises his eyebrows or twinkles. 3 . Do not try to extract meaning from the way the koan is 1.

2.

worded. 4. Do not try to demonstrate on the words. 5 . Do not think that the sense of the koan is to be grasped where it is held out as an object of thought. 6. Do not take Zen for a state of mere passivity. 7 . Do not judge the koan with the dualistic standard of yu (Sanskrit asti: "it is " ) and wu ( Sanskrit nasti: " it isn't" ) . 8 . D o not take the koan as pointing t o absolute emptiness. 9. Do not ratiocinate with the koan. 10. Do not keep your mind in the attitude of waiting for satori to turn up. The " gesture" of the epoche.27 Let's return to the Western habi­ tus of the beside-the-point answer: less violent, less radical acts than the Zen koan; closer to mere flight: "to slip away when confronted by the logical arrogance of the adversary-partner" ---;> the point is to suspend the logical routine into which the partner (socius, he who embodies society, social constraints) tries to drag you: true epoche of the logical line of the spoken chain; we have seen examples of it, from Gide to Eurylochus; in these examples, what I now want to 4.

emphasize is a gesture (of flight and of flippancy) : which means that the no which refuses the " discussion" needs to be accompanied by a connotation, by a theater (it's a "gesture" ) that will transform it into something active (putting an end to the image of the coward­ passive) and unexpected (leaving the contender speechless, and a bit ridiculous ? ) . I will characterize the epoche with three types of gestures: 118

SESSION O F APRIL 29. 1 978

a. " Ciao." Again: Eurylochus, undressing and diving into the AI­ pheus to escape the questions he was harassed with. We really must see the answer ( beside-the-point) in the guise of a bodily movement, and one could say that the whole of Pyrrhonian skepticism (that is, "empirical," nondogmatic) is born out of this movement: Pyrrho

"�leS Laertius, 2:487,

and Timo (and Eurylochus): to escape from the subtleties of the Sophists: obsessed and exhausted by these endless discussions: they

38

decide no longer to answer anyone � whence: "I know nothing, I define nothing. "28 � That (at least at the beginning, with Pyr­ rho, since later it becomes dogmatic) doesn't imply a theory of not­ knowing, of the nondefinition, but only the extension of a bodily gesture: Eurylochus's gesture, whose only spoken expression would be the trivial, flippant word: " Ciao," " Bye-bye," "I am your ser­ vant " : by way of denial: I am free, don't bug me, I don't have to account to you: in fact (that hits the spot! ) ciao: Venetian < schiavo, I am your slave ( off-handedness: Venetians

=

meridional people of

the north) or, better: fed up with sophistic battles, with sophistic haughtiness: think this, don't think that, it's good/it's bad, etc. Cf. Gide's "They are a real pain. I'm traveling, " d. also Sweden borg traveling in order not to enter into polemics: the divagamento.29 b. " Time-out" {Pouce}.30 The example of the Sophists accounts for this: at a certain moment, a sudden deflation occurs in one of the participants in the debate, in the conversation: suddenly, he feels the general situation of interlocution as a game (a Sophist joust), with its own rules, like every game: now, nothing more unbear­ able than a game, if it bores. The subject wants to withdraw, that's to say, to withdraw from the winning/losing alternative. In certain games, there is the possibility of resorting to a gesture for suspend­ ing the game: "Time-out! " at the same time a gesture and a wordY " Quits"

=

grant me the right, even temporary, of knowing nothing,

of thinking nothing, of saying nothing ('" positive censure)

�

How­

ever, of course, difficult gesture: since nothing more tricky than to oppose a game as game, to oppose a body of rules, because to con­ tain everything that may look like rules of suspension ( "I pass " ) i s part o f the slyness o f every game, o f every system; in discourse, too, there exist oratorical moves: "I am not competent, " " that's not my problem," etc. Oratorical versions (purely verbal) of the child's "Time-out ! " : tame and ineffective suspensions. -.. The doxa perceives every request for a suspension of the game ( "time-out" ) as a capitulation: etymology: "mettre les pouces" {literally, "thumbs out " } : to surrender, to give up; in the thirteenth century: conceding defeat in a duel: pointed their thumbs toward the ground. All this: 119

S E S S I O N O F A P R I L 29, 1 978

nothing to do with the radical gesture of the body that strips it­ self nude, such as Eurylochus wanting to subtract himself violently from pursuing the discussion.

Grenier, 29-30

c. Among the subtlest gestures of all (linguistic gesture) : to mix up Names: more or less the gist of deaf people stories. Do you want to know what was Lao-tzu's (the eponym of Tao) true name? You will know it, since such is your desire: " His family name was Li, his nickname Eul, his honorific title Pe-Yang, and his posthumous name Tan. "32 And on top of that he called himself Lao-tzu! Silly patronymy that puzzles the heavy modern machinery (analytic, logic, nobiliary, police) of the proper name � the problem of the neutral in fact is not that it is nameless but that it has many names, none of which is the right one! The best Neutral is not the null, it's the plural. � Here, one should raise the problem of pseudonymity, when it reaches some playful (systematic) breadth: Kierkegaard and the late Nietzsche.33 All these gestures of leave answers that go astray, which is to say, that go off the four ways of the structure: yes/no/neither yes nor no/yes and no = answers of the fifth type � this would be a new form of the dialectic of the getting beyond. For example: psy­ choanalysis, Marxism: one can have " quit" them but nevertheless resent the discourse of those who refuse them: quitting and refusing are not the same thing: to quit = to be through: it's Eurylochus's =

Deafness

gesture. 5 . Another knowledge.34 The Beside-the-point answer = " dia­ logue of the deaf" a certain experience, a certain tactic of deaf­ ness. Because it can be hysterical (selective deafness or hyperacou­ =

sial , there is a power, a violence of the deaf: the assimilation of deafness (le sourd) with suffocation (l'etouffii) rests on a mythologi­ cal denial: in a hypersonorous world like ours, where the "pollu­ tion" of sounds (discourses) is intense, deafness is a right-a right that is not recognized. a. Selective deafness: as soon as a discourse becomes collective, endoxal (or if a voice claims to speak for a mass of others), I stop hearing it; selective in the beside-the-point answer, the other is not ignored, I strongly address him, but outside the code of competi­ tion, of the mache ( dear to the Sophists) . b. What the beside-the-point answer baffles is, in a certain way, =

Madness Satanism and Witchcraft,

satanism. Michelet: "The great satanic principle that everything

84

should be done backwards, precisely the reverse way to that em-

1 20

SESSION OF APRI L 29, 1 978

ployed b y the world o f religion. "35 Ordinary regime of the discourse: contestation, the against-the-grain of the replies. Beside-the-point answer: baffles both blessing and contestation. Whence the figure of the madman: while not the least in the service of power, doesn't stay permanently in the service of contestation

=

to be crazy: well

put by Diogenes Laertius: "On being asked by somebody, 'What

es Laertius, 1 :5 5

sort of a man do you consider Diogenes to be?' 'A Socrates gone mad,' said he [PlatoJ . " 36 Socrates minus mache

=

crazy. Reversal: the madness of the dispute

is the norm of wisdom; to escape this nonsense is to be crazy. c. The Zen koan: aiming at this shattering of knowledge: the satori -'" Beside-the-point answer -'" a satori of interlocutive knowl­ edge, a satori of the relation between the two speaking/listening subjects -'" a verbal ( or gestural) act of decontextualizing: -'" "I =

=

am not there when they wait for me " : I break the essence-the com­ plexity-of the message according to which messages about places ( about where I see the other, where he sees me, etc.) are always part of the message: I create a linguistic atopia37 ( but let's not be triumphant: this atopia will be recuperated under the rubric of the " silly " );

121

S E S S I O N O F A P R I L 2 9 , 1 978

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

Rites 1 . P u b l i c Rites

In China PilinlPikong

Confucius/Lao-tzu

My stay in China (May 1974): in the midst of the PilinlPikong cam­ paign.! Rhythmic outburst (I prefer that to the word "orchestration" ) against Confucianism and the "rites " : the coded symbolism of col­ lective life, which connotes ( 1 ) the static, the unchangeable, the non­ revolutionary; ( 2) nondialectical formalism; ( 3 ) hierarchy. Against the order of the rites, the principle of Cultural Revolution (recurrent shaking of what is in the process of freezing) . Ancestral opposition between Confucius and Lao-tzu. Confu­ cianism and Taoism: two great archetypes, two postulations, an eternal paradigm to be studied: mythical paradigms; Plato/Aristo­ tle, Voltaire/Rousseau; DostoyevskylTolstoy. To summarize:2

Grenier, 32, 88

Lao-tzu

C onfucius

Predication Legislation Social Man Harmony Convention "To do for nothing"

---,;0. ---,;0. ---,;0. ---,;0. ---,;0. ---,;0.

Retreat Nature Individual Rest Relaxation "To do nothing"

It goes without saying that the PilinlPikong campaign didn't lend itself to this paradigm. Confucius and the rites were implicitly op­ posed not to Taoism (retreat, individual, relaxation, to do nothing! ) but to dialectic. Popular China: censorship by silence against the Tao (more a magic than a philosophy). As for what was happening in the heart of people, another question. Without naming Confucianism, the Tao (in its textual form: Lao­ tzu) presents the rites in a deprecating way: in the debasement of na­ ture into artifice, on the lowest rung of. the ladder, then of artifice the very contrary of Confucianism ---,;0. the following degressive march: =

Grenier, 1 7

1 . If the Tao (universal Principle of " nature," the wrong word by the way) is lost, the To (the nature of each thing in particular) remams. 2. If the To is lost, if this particular nature stops being percep­ tible, there still remains infused morality, goodness. 1 22

3. If goodness disappears, there is still j ustice. 4.

If j ustice disappears, there remain the rites and the ceremonies

(optimal state for Confucianism).3 One might say (just a game, not to be taken too seriously) that stage

I:

absolute individuation, dissociation of sociality; stage

ideal Christianity; stages 3 and 4:

4:

2:

modern societies articulate 3 and

claim for j ustice and recourse to rites and ceremonies (none is

exempt from them): bureaucracy, cult of the State as "ceremony. "

2. Private Rites We will quickly draw their type from De Quincey-Baudelaire: cer­ emonious preparation for the taking of H: H dissolved in black coffee

+

empty stomach

+

one hour afterward, light soup

+

to feel

neither worry nor pain. This last point introduces a rather strange dialectic: relation between rite and freedom. Baudelaire insisted (talking about De Quincey): " Any perfect debauch requires perfect leisure 0

4. The Letter

This "little bit of symbolic" that is asked for or suggested here would perhaps more or less correspond to the difficult (and subtle) thing one could call: the instability of the letter8 --;. one could look for it in the direction of a typology of the symbolic (in the com­ mon sense, not in the strictly Lacanian sense) , not according to the structural relation signifier/signified but (once more) according to a scale of intensities, of "purities" ....... roughly, one would have two domains: 1.

Fixity, monism of the letter: pure affirmation of the letter:

a. Stiffness of the letter --;. "formalism" in its noxious aspect: --;. terrorism + monster: China: "a sort of machine in the hand of the emperor whose power is such that, still in our time, we have seen a whole family condemned to death because its chief wrote the name 1 24

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

o f the sovereign in lowercase letters. "9 (It's not insignificant that the story is about letters). b. In contrast ( but still respecting the integrity of the letter), beneficial stubbornness of the letter, reminder that it can not be skipped, sophisticated, " disrobed " : Lenin: "Facts are stubborn," and this word of the Calvinist anti-Calvinist Castellion (opposed to the crime against Servet, Contra libellum Calvini, the publica­ tion of which Calvin prevented) : "Killing a man is not defending a doctrine, it is killing a man." 1 0

2. Dialectic (of the letter in the Kierkegaardian sense

=

what trig­

gers a break, a qualitative leap, a structural change) . The letter fol­ lows a path, it is part of a method

1:12

�

Zen dialectics: ( I ) mountains

are mountains and waters are waters � then (2 ) (following a good Zen teaching) : mountains are no longer mountains, waters are no longer waters

->

( 3 ) (abode of rest),l1 once again mountains are

mountains and waters waters, etc. To note: historically, we are today, it seems, in the middle of phase 2: every object is converted by some analysis, interpretation, into the contrary of its name, of its appearance: Marxist analysis (the image inverted in the ideological camera),12 Freudian analy­ sis, etc.: we live in a world where mountains are truly no longer mountains, etc. � That, clearly, doesn't result from a Zen teaching! That results from the secular path of science (eighteenth century) � Remains to be known if the dissatisfaction linked to this stage

2,

apparent to many, and the utopias that follow along would not call for the dialectical state of the letter13 (ecology, nature, religiosity, vague spirituality, success of theosophies, etc. ) : " a letter of the third type" seems to be awkwardly in search of itself. Or better: I.

Stupidity, tautology, narrow scientism

2.

Intelligence, paranoia

3. Innocence (mystic) , wisdom, " method" ( = Tao)

Conflict 1 . Banality of the Notion That everything in the universe, in the world, in society, in the sub­ ject, in reality is formatted by conflict: no proposition more widely accepted: Western philosophies, doctrines, metaphysics, material­ isms, "sensibilities," ordinary languages, everything talks about con1 25

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6, 1 9 7 8

flict (about the conflictual) as if it were nature itself. By the way, the ethnohistory of the idea of conflict remains to be written; for basically it's always the "eternal, " the "natural" that most needs a historical treatment (like death: fecund historical studies). It could be called agonistic: science, ideology, practice, value of conflict. In any case, one should reframe the Western tradition within such a perspective: study of the Greek mache14 (Sophists, Socrates, Nietzs­ chean theory of the joust) . Mache: logical and psychological aspect: psychological jubilation and logical assumption: to corner the other in a situation of self-contradiction to reduce him to silence: abso­ lute triumph � mortal narcissistic wound � elimination. It seems that at the end of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries amplification and deepening of the philosophies of conflict: Marx, Freud (not to forget, on another plane, Darwin) : conflict is not an evil, it's a motor, a functioning. Something to note: the theory of =

conflict often seems to run "metonymically" on the "character" of the philosophers of conflict: example: Henri Lefebvre: 15 constantly reminding one of the conflicted engine of the world but also him­ self the theater of pugnaciousness: as often happens with Marxists. Warning: be careful: refrain from joining to these two figures the usual inevitable third: Nietzsche: he is not a straightforward "phi­ losopher" of conflict. Deleuze: "The notions of struggle, war, rival­ ry or even comparison are foreign to Nietzsche and his conception of the will to power. It is not that he denies the existence of struggle: but he does not see it as in any way creative of values " : 1 6 struggle = only means by which the weak triumph over the strong. =

In short, Western tradition is problematic for me in this: not be­ cause it decides that conflict exists, that the world is conflictual, but: because it transforms conflict into a nature and a value (or, another version of the same refusal: making a value out of nature) .

2 . Coded Conflict

The two representations of the conflictual (nature, value) can be

Joust

defused according to the coding imposed on conflict � immense file of coded conflicts-or of codes of conflict: Greeks: one should reexamine here Nietzsche's remarks on joust (Ag8n), on the spirit of joust: pre-Socratic times; then "psychologi­ zation," "naturalization, " " dramatization" with the Socratic (and Euripidian) face. Middle Ages: a file that has attracted me for a long time, but have not yet been able to go there to look at it seriously: that of 1 26

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

_ __

the scholastic disputatio: it would include a reconstitution of the

tatio

protocols of verbal conflict: that would be an excellent historical introduction to the analysis of naturalized conflicts (conflicts of speech) in our time: they surely obey an implicit coding (see politi­ cal debates on television) . Ethnology: here as well a whole file to constitute. Example: the practice of hain-tenys (see Paulhan, Oeuvres completes, volume 2, 1 9 66}. 1 7 I don't know the literal meaning and origin of the expres­

- tenys

sion: Merina tribe (Madagascar) . Game: two opponents: agonis­ tic emulation of quotations and counterquotations; victor: the one who knows the most of them and the most relevant; the one who has the last word (borrowed word). One should also look at the situation in France today (I speak of conflicts of speech) : visible taste of French people for the (ver­ bal) agon: heirs of the Greeks, without their genius: rugby, football, antagonistic sports

�

one-to-one debates, confrontations, debates

between adversaries, etc. Equivocal regime: it's coded (in fact) , but one pretends to be natural, spontaneous, truthful, to oppose refer­ ents as if speech were purely transparent, instrumental

--'.>

always

this great naturalizing drive, this refusal to take responsibility for the codes, for the games.

3. Dodges Ways of dodging the conflictual, of "taking something on the bias " (which is more or less what the whole course is about) . Just to be noted on this point: 1 . The avoidance of conflict is fundamentally annulled, reduced to nothing, by Western ideology. Well expressed by Francis Bacon's n, Essays Civil and

rationalist pragmatism: " There be also two false peaces or unities:

I,

the one, when the peace is grounded but upon an implicit ignorance;

chap. 2, 1 3

for all colours will agree in the dark: the other, when it is pieced upon a direct admission of contraries in fundamental points. " 1 8 --'.> This condemnation-annulment draws the negative imprint of the areas that are beyond conflict, which, to tell the truth, are to be found only in an Eastern space (Buddhist or Tao) : to accept " ig­ norance, " the night of knowledge, or to accept without guilt the contradiction between choices. 2.

Gregory Bateson, American psychologist and anthropologist

(Steps to an Ecology of Mind),19 worked on the existential basis of the conflictual, what he calls the schismogenesis (schisma: slit, 1 27

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

separation, dissension) . Exceptional fact: didn't find " schismogenic sequences" in Bali --;0. a fact that, under certain conditions (to be nuanced), seems to contradict the theories of social conflict (Marx­ ian determinism) --;0. in Bali (is it still the case ? ) : annulment of the conflictual: tactics that allow the "settling" of quarrels and of dif­ ferentiations of status; sequences to diminish the child's tenden­ cies toward competitive and rivalrous behavior + lack of climax in music, art, theater non-paroxysm-oriented structure + technics for deflating quarrels "avoidances " : pwik;20 for example: wars in the past, of course, but with numerous elements of mutual avoid­ ance (for example: numerous no-man's-lands) .21 Notice: avoidance (pwik) '" " arbitration," the " noble," gallant method, coded by Western agonistic.22 =

=

4. Conflict as Meaning

What are conflicts useful for? Obviously, one might say: to vanquish, to dominate, to possess, to transform, etc . : it would be the immedi­ ate form taken by the libido dominandi (always this aftertaste of the anthropological, d. vis dormitiva) .23 As for myself, tempted to interpret conflict (I have no choice but to give it a meaning, if 1 re­ ally want to dominate it) otherwise. How? 1 am going to make use of the Boehmian theory of evil to try to glimpse it: Key problem for Boehme: to absolve God from all responsibil­ ity for the existence of evil --;0. Lucifer's fall: totally irrational, pure accident: act of absolute liberty of the angel: God was not able to prevent it ---.. God didn't know that Lucifer would revolt: act of totally unforeseeable liberty, since Lucifer, like all the angels, was

Boehme, 1 58

created free ---;. his fall was not necessary: Michael and Uriel re­ mained loyal ---;. Boehme still prefers to renounce the idea of God's omnipotence rather than to accept that he be responsible for evil. --;0. angelic world ( before Lucifer's fall) : world without opposition, without conflict, without meaning --;0. Lucifer's rebellion creates op­ position, conflict, meaning ---.. God becomes able to signify himself (to manifest himself) .24 Perhaps it's how some contemporary conflicts should be under­ stood: minor, marginal, obviously accepted, sparked off, not to "win," "to triumph over, " but to " demonstrate" { "manifester"} ( exact term): July 3 I , '77: antinuclear demonstration (against Su­ perphenix) at Creys -Malville:25 one dead, one hundred wounded --;o. =

the press is unleashed, etc.: violence advertises, reveals, manifests

1 28

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

the ecological cause in an irreversible way

�

violence: profitable

(circuit of exchange) from the point of view of expression flict is the sign that I exist

--- =

�

con­

exactly Boehme's God: he wants to

manifest himself, to reveal himself (and first of all to himself), and he does it by means of division, conflict, evil

=

God is a "demo "

{manif}.

Supplement VI The writer in the Neutral: reading of Kafka (Janouch):26 In May I 9 2 I, I wrote a sonnet which was published by Lud­ wig Winder in the Sunday supplement of Bohemia. Kafka said on this occasion: "You describe the poet as a great and wonderful man whose feet are on the ground, while his head disappears in the clouds. Of course, that is a perfectly ordinary image drawn within the intellectual framework of lower-middle-class convention. It is an illusion based on wish fulfilment, which has nothing in common with reality. In fact, the poet is always much smaller and weaker than the social average. Therefore he feels the burden of earthly existence much more intensely and strongly than other men. For him personally his song is only a scream. Art for the artist is only suffering, through which he releases himself for further suffer­ ing. He is not a giant, but only a more or less brightly plum­ aged bird in the cage of his existence. " "You too?" I asked. "I am a quite impossible bird, " says Franz Kafka. "I am a jackdaw-a kavka. The coal merchant in the close of the Tein cathedral has one. Have you seen it? " "Yes, it flies about outside his shop . " "Yes, m y relative is better o ff than I am. It is true, of course, that his wings have been clipped. As for me, this was not in any case necessary, as my wings are atrophied. For this reason there are no heights and distances for me. I hop about bewildered among my fellow men. They regard me with deep suspicion. And indeed I am a dangerous bird, a thief, a jackdaw. But that is only an illusion. In fact, I lack all feeling for shining objects. For that reason I do not even have glossy black plumage. I am gray, like ash. A jackdaw who longs to disappear between the stones. But this is only joking, so that you will not notice how badly things are go­ ing with me today. "27 1 29

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

Osci I lation28 1 . Image and Etymologies

A.

Network of closely related words: it's by confronting related words that one refines meanings, differences, nuances � wish for a great "pedagogy" of nuance in the classroom: nuance is one of the linguistic tools of nonarrogance, of nonintolerance: civic impera­ tive to teach nuances ( but I suppose great resistance from kids), to make up nuance exercises; one of these exercises: inventory of mi­ cronetworks of words that are very similar but a tiny bit different: ---'.> " discourse on the bit of difference" : wouldn't deny difference but would recognize the price of the " bit. " Justness: just between

Words

1.

Networks of words

being and " bit. " 2 . Greek-Latin: three words, s o to speak, " in mirror relation" : a . The grammatical Neutral: to oudCteron (neither one nor the other) . b . The political Neutral: leans o n n o side: mesos (middle) .29 No­ tice that Greek clearly distinguishes the " formal" neutral, without value j udgment, from the ethical Neutral (related to an option): but

Oudeteros Mesos

still allows for a questionable "crushing" between the " Neutral" and the "middle," the "mean" (tendency to " quantify" the Neutral, to "unqualify" it, to reduce it to a cancellation of forces, a balance; d. figure "To Give Leave " ) . Heteroklitos

3 . A third, more interesting word: heteroklitos: (a) he who leans on one side and the other;30 (b) grammar: words whose declension proceeds from different themes, "irregular" words (for example, in French: alier {to goL vais {I go}, irons (we will go} ) " Heteroclite" -;. we could say that the Neutral that is at stake for us here is not on the side of mesos (of the mean, of the neither-nor) but on the side of the he­ teroklitos, of the irregular, the unforeseeable, of the one following the other without order ---'.> if Neutral force devoted to baffling the para­ digm (first session) ---'.> two postulations: ( I ) exemption, cancellation ---'.> "degree zero" ( 2 ) revolving sequence both disturbed and disturbing, -i>

=

irregularity ---'.> in short: Neutral

=

to cancel and/or to scramble.

B.

Images: The heteroclite prompts two images on the ethical plane (system of behaviors) , each of them deprecated: hesitation, oscilla­ tion ---'.> to be studied, but I give two "literary" examples of it. 1 30

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

1 . Gide. His biographer (the Petite Dame) makes him into a spe­ cialist of hesitation: '' 'Coffee or Nescafe (decaffeinated) ? But say it,

Gide, 98

so that we make more of it! " He looks at me with a disconsolate face: " But you strip me of all my possibilities of hesitation. "'31 Hesi­ tations about traveling (in particular toward the end of his life ) : his last project to travel, Morocco (which he didn't do) 34

---';>

contradic­

tory telegrams ( 1 946): "So that there he is totally hesitant as al­ ways and all entangled in the middle of too many temptations . . . " ( 19 4 6) .32 And this, which perfectly summarizes the theme of Gidian hesitation such as it was perceived by people around him (in other words, his legend) : "Before letting him go, there is always the pain­ ful moment when I ask him the indispensable question: 'Will you lunch and will you have dinner with me?' which he is not far from considering as an attack on his freedom.

The difficulty he has

making a decision is truly incredible. It's not so much the choice that seems difficult to him, but it's that the choice risks depriving him of the more agreeable, the unexpected that could occur. "33 ( 1 946)

---';>

somehow the hedonist's anxiety: a logic of the "pickup" {drague}, of the adventure (adventure: the agreeable: " tellable" unexpected): to study: waiting for the new. One word of commentary (or rather two ) : a . The " Petite Dame" (which is normal, given her background) presents Gidian hesitation as a psychological, personality-related trait; but this trait in fact has a "mythological" or "hagiograph­ ical" aim: it is a way (role of the friend-witness) of making the private-the private, daily, "real, " " biographical" Gide-coincide with the public Gide, the public, legendary image of the literary Gide, founder of an ethics, the Gidian ethic: therefore

---';>

elabora­

tion or confirmation of a signature image: the Nathanaelian elusive­ ness, self-positioning by dint of small displacements of the "most irreplaceable of beings "34

---';>

hesitation here thus ends up function­

ing as an objective device, not like a " disorder, " an anomie, a dif­ ficult margin, but, all being said, like a reconquest, a stabilization, a working on one's image. b. Hesitation (indecision) can be a discourse (the discourse of the "I hesitate" ) and as such a "screen" or rather a "noise," through which something is being said by the subject, unknowingly or know­ ingly but unacknowledgedly, little matter

=

a music, a symphony:

it allows for all the themes of the possible to resonate in a vast and long exposition, but in fact there is already a chosen theme (a decision toward which the subject secretly leans) , which after a cer-

1 31

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

Janouch, 1 3

tain period of entanglement, goes tilt, rings like the truth of desire: the subject deceptively undecided (is there any other kind ? ) bears a great responsibility toward himself: he must ceaselessly lend his ear, listen, guess the decisive theme � there is a difficult management of hesitation that is not (only) a pathos (object for a pathology) but (also) an economy, a "praxeology. " Because the writer: at the same time nothing definitive (Kafka: "I have no definite post" ) and from the start something definitive.35

Sollers

2 . This concerned "hesitation." But oscillation should perhaps be set apart. Even though this is a case I do not really want to treat in depth, because it is about a close friend, about someone whom, personally, I like, esteem, and admire,3 6 and moreover about a "hot" item, about an "image in action. " I want to suggest that one should perhaps interpret, which is to say "understand" Sollers according to the model (not simply "incomprehensible," "disap­

pointing," " devalorizing" ) of a serious thought of oscillation � spectacular recantations, comings and goings, scramblings that dis­ concert � three remarks : a. It implies an obvious challenge to the role of the intellectual as the noble, just attorney for a cause: "the carnavalesque" can be a dimension of the writing of one's life: don't forget that today we are in the midst of an active phase of "healthy" deconstruction of the "mission" of the intellectual: this deconstruction can take the form of a withdrawal but also of a jamming, of a series of decentered affirmations. b. The jolt given to the unity of intellectual discourse (fidel­ ity) can be understood as a series of "happenings "3? meant to upset the very superegoistic ethic of the intellectual as figurehead of noble causes, at the price, obviously, of an extreme solitude (first novel: Une Curieuse Solitude {A curious solitude ) ) . 3 8 Notice that happenings are not " welcomed" by this intellectual practice I would like one day to see described finally Intellectuals.

�

ethology of the

c. In fact, emerging from the wide range of this wild, fearless music of oscillation, I am convinced that there is one stable theme: Writing, devotion to Writing � the Sollersian "new" is that this de­ votion to Writing (some pages of Paradis every morning)39 is chan­ neled not through the ordinary attitude art for art's sake, or of art + commitment of the " citizen" -writer who always votes or signs on the same side, but through a kind of radical turmoil of the subj ect, of his multiplied and incessant, almost tireless compromise: strug1 32

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6, 1 9 7 8

gling between the open-endedness of the posturing and the tenden­ cy for the image to settle down, to hold: immobility is the fate of the image --7 d. annihilation of the image in the mystic EI-Hadj,40 d.

God

perhaps the Lacanian incomprehensible, destroyer of vulgate. 3.

Resistances: very strong resistance, coming notably from the

intelligentsia, to admit, to recognize variation, oscillation: emblem­ atized by the Gide/Sollers opposition: Gidian hesitation salvageable because the image is stable. Gide builds the stable image of the moving '" Sollers prevents the image from taking. In short, every­ thing is truly decided not on the level of the contents but of the im­ ages: communities are always willing to save an image (no matter which one) because they feed on images: the Sollersian "scandal" : his target is the image, h e seems intent o n preventing the formation, the stabilization of all images ahead of time: even that of the writer who tries different directions, explores contradictions before find­ ing his definitive way (myth of the itinerary: noble) . But even this image doesn't seem to hold, so grinding is the blurring of the ges­ tures or, as it has often been said to me (typically collective word): so "indefensible . "

2. Vibratory Time From the endoxal field (social imaginary), let's go back to the ex­ istential field (effort, intentionality, interior of the subject): subj ect being prey to an activity (as I said) of hesitation, of oscillation: --7 This subject: one might feel that oscillation is some kind of tactic, a tool that the subject uses: to achieve what? Not a sublimation (d. below with regard to Sollers) but, according to a less transcendent ethic, a " perfect pitch" {justesse}, what once upon a time one would have called an " authenticity" : Sartre, about Nathalie Sarraute: " au­ The Emotions

thenticity, that is, the real relation with others, with oneself and

lleginning

with death"41

=

I uphold the word and the sentence, unusual to my

linguistic habits, because of the last part: " real relation with death"

--7 perhaps that's the point that could define a " perfect pitch" of life

(d. " desperate vitality" ) and that would allow one to understand oscillation, alternation, as a " desperate" tactic of the subject. One could say here, in the manner of Bachelard: oscillation, hesi­

Bachelard, 1 38

tation, alternation accomplish (on the existential plane of the sub­ ject, of his life as existence) a time that vibrates (energy of existence =

a vibratory energy) .42 The relation between vibration and perfect

pitch {justesse}, the right efficiency {l' efficience juste}, is illustrated 1 33

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

by the example of the billiard player, whose gesture looks hesitant and yet is characteristically skillful ---!> fundamental dualism in the perfecting of certain skillful movements: dialectic of more and less ---!> billiard player: ( I ) impelled by the desire to make his stroke but too much tension in his muscles ---'" fear of failure ---'" ( 2 ) antagonis­ tic activity: the muscles relax ---'" opposite fear of failure from too weak a stroke ---!> more or less ample oscillations of the arm = swift succession of conflicting feelings produced one after the other ---!>

84

Teleufe, Askesis

intelligent use of strength: needs two contradictory reference points in the more and in the less.43 Perfect pitch of the vibrating time:44 once again, leaving the ex­ istential, one can go back to collectivity and even (and above all) to the species. Ancient Greeks (ef. so-called archaic people) : the rhythm of year­ ly life structured according to a succession of paroxystic and oppo­ site states (pathe): many collective celebrations, but between each of these festivals a period of retention, abstention, sobriety: teleute, askesis45 festival (in the sense of: "accomplishment, " conclusion, achievement, ending ;" training) ---'" rhythm: flagrant in all antique societies, notably in diet (ancien regime: " belt-tightening," " feast," meat) (in a "grammar" of "life," the sign would refer to all the in­ stances of alternation). Mark of the poetic: paradigm stretched into syntagm ---!> notice that the problem has a present-day pertinence: even though modern societies tend toward the disappearance of rhythm and the standardization of "states" ( Sunday boredom tak­ ing over for the boredom of the workweek) , it looks as if French =

people (they in particular, it seems) are nostalgic for alternation (attachment to a survival) ---'" sociological survey on time (French people and time): people prefer to group together the interruptions of work (rather than spreading them over the course of the week) in order to have, at the week's end, another life (to go away): survival of the teleute askesis. At the level of species, frequent and spectacular phenomena: hi­ bernating, winter sleeps with mad awakenings at springtime, and this very impressive (Dr. H. M. Shelton, Le Jeiine: Une Technique

millenaire, Laffont, 1 9 7 8 ) : The Alaskan fur seal bull i s the best known example o f fast­ ing by a mammal during the mating season. All through the summer he neither eats nor sleeps. It is just one long debauch of fighting and love-making and guarding his harem against unscrupulous invaders. As a result of all this activity, by Sep-

1 34

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 6, 1 9 7 8

tember he is a wreck of his former self. All his fat has disap­ peared, for that is what he has been living on by absorption all summer. His bones protrude, his side is torn and scarred, he is weary unto death. Blessed sleep is what he needs. Forsaking his harem, he waddles back into the long grass far away from the beach, there to stretch out in the warm sun. He will sleep for three weeks on end without waking, if undisturbed.46 Here we would drift toward a completely different figure: Love as oxymoron, alliance of words, " dark light of the stars "47 = food and exhaustion (love and fresh water) : whence the metaphor of the fire, which devours and exhausts.

1 35

S E S S I O N O F M AY 6 , 1 9 7 8

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

Supplement VII News of the week: I . Two clarifications that were given to me, coming to clear up some fog: the Course a process of collective memory: this might be the correct line for the Course insofar as this type of dialogue equally excludes praise and aggression but achieves an activity. =

El-Hallaj (ninth century? 2 . Hain-tenys: Malagasy phrase (it refers to a verbal "game " of a Merina tribe). Paulhan says (translatorJ: 2 "science of language, " "science of words, " or "wise words. " Hay: science, power (of words), but also: heat, burn (of words): love, justice -;> close to teny: blames, reproaches -;> what gives life to language3 --i> (I have often thought about a course on the wounds caused by language). I.

Mirese Akar

Received a letter, an anonymous note, that seems to relate to the course, because addressed to the College and a vague connec­ tion with the course: written with a green ballpoint pen and mailed from the Montparnasse train station on April 3 a (the day after the session on Answer): this lone sentence: " . . . and 4 well, if that's how it is, why don't you retire and 'stop bugging us' {nous "foutre la paix " } you too ? " I relay this "love letter" {poulet} for the following reason: What is starting to be explored scientifically: in all speech, even more important than the "message ": the address, the destinatory game, the allocution, the allocutionary tactic, i.e., finally the imagi­ nary (affective) workings of request and answer, the tactic of im­ ages -;> in this sense, everyone can confirm it, the aggression of the anonymous letter rests secondarily in its message and primarily in its anonymity the note to which I can't reply;5 in whatever way I twist my mind, I don't know to whom to answer (except by having recourse to a police service machine, in any case inefficient): noth­ ing to do: definitively impotent, had, foreclosed: it's the low blow in the mache, in the war of words. There, we see that to answer is not so much to oppose a content, that is, to reply,6 as to be able or to want to speak after: quite clear in the parentslchildren relation. The verb "to reply" was always used intransitively, and the reply was understood as an act of insolence. -;> The anonymous in fact 2.

=

1 36

acts like an old-fashioned father or like a despot who locks me in the condition of a kid: (the anonymous letter means): and please do not reply. I can't answer, but I can comment (what kids often do for them­ selves): to comment to intensify the consciousness of the gesture, of the incident to the highest possible pitch: to speak the message in another language (discourse) than the one in which it was sent, i.e., to translate, to interpret; to change the key (in the musical sense) of the code, in order to alter the music (the cacophony) � because one must always go all the way to the end of a desire (RibettesF or of a wound: the Neutral doesn't necessarily mean canceling (taking the beating without flinching) but rather displacing, displacing oneself 8 (Subsiding is not out of the question, as long as I speak the language of subsiding to myself) From this, one can understand perhaps this, more general: com­ mentary, criticism, writing might in fact be the way to answer him who wants me not to answer: the work unwinds itself outside all answers like a huge, continuous assertion: such is the first degree (pessimistic or realistic) view I have of it; but in commenting (i.e., in actively reading, I answer it, I exorcise the relation of power that it imposes on me (as such, all work, all speech is imposing). Oh well {Eh bien),9 since this anonymous person enjoins me to retire, I am going to deal right now with the figure R etreat.10 =

Retreat I.

Movement of retreating (from the world, from the worldly) , but

should rather be called: retirement; (2 ) place to which one retires.

1 . The Gesture With the exception of one example, which I will give soon, I will skip the huge file on religious retreat, on the act of retiring: essential part in the organization of every type of religious life (d. course "To Live Together" { Vivre ensemble))l1 There is no lack of literary ex­ amples of retreat of this kind: Chateaubriand, Life of Rance. 12 The wished-for but discouraged retreat of Alyosha Karamazov, etc. Prompted as always by recent readings (thus nothing exhaustive, far from it), three gestures of retreat. By gestures, I mean acts of separation, of secession that imply not necessarily a theatricality

1 37

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

(which is the classical definition of gesture ;" act) but a quantum of phantasmatic brilliance, of desire, or of pleasure: whether the ges­ ture obviously fulfills, comforts the subject, or whether the gesture of retreat performed by another makes us feel envious, phantas­ matically, that's to say by projecting us into its scenario:

a. Rousseau

Walk. V. p. 62

After the stoning of Motiers, takes refuge on the island of Saint­ Pierre, a little island in the Lake of Bienne (north of the Lake of Neuchatel) : little known, even in Switzerland (says Rousseau): "very pleasant and singularly placed for the happiness of a man who likes to cut himself off {se circonscrire} " ( "to circumscribe one­ self" : fine expression for the retreat}.13 There: great pleasure from isolation: "this isolated spot where I have ensnared myself on my own, which was impossible for me to leave without help and surely without being noticed"14 � Rousseau: transported there abruptly, alone and naked . . . has his governess, his books, and his little pos­ sessions brought but takes pleasure in unpacking nothing, in leav­ ing the books in their crates . . . and no writing desk. Underscore several characteristics of this Biennoise retreat, real retreat because there is another Rousseau, "phantasmatic retreat" (see below): 1 . The island fantasy (well known: childhood fantasy, cf. boat

Island

fantasy) here realized (and what greater pleasure than an actualized fantasy ? ) : break with the terra firma, which means: autarchy, plea­ sure of autarchy: fulfillment (definition of paradise ) : Rousseau, Fifth Walk. On the island there is only a single house, but a large, pleasant, and comfortable one which, like the island, belongs to Berne Hospital and in which a tax collector lives with his family and servants. He maintains a large farmyard, a pigeon house, and fishponds. Despite its smallness, the island is so varied in its terrain and vistas that it offers all kinds of landscapes and permits all kinds of cultivation. You can find fields, vineyards, woods, orchards, and rich pastures shaded by thickets and bordered by every species of shrubbery, whose freshness is preserved by the adjacent water. A high terrace planted with two rows of trees runs the length of the island, and in the middle of this terrace a pretty reception hall has been built where the inhabitants of the neighboring banks gather and come to dance on Sundays during harvest. 1 38

S E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 . 1 9 7 8

This is the island on which I sought refuge after the stoning at Motiers. I found the sojourn on it so charming, I led a life there so suitable to my temper that, resolved to end my days there, I had no worry other than their not letting me execute this project which did not fit in with the one of transporting me to England-a project whose first effects I was already feeling. Because of the forebodings that troubled me, I wanted them to make this refuge a perpetual prison for me, to confine me to it for life, and-removing every possibility and hope of getting off it-to forbid me any kind of communication with the mainland so that being unaware of all that went on in the world I might forget its existence and that it might also forget mine.1s 2.

Eternal prison

Abolition of time, under the guise of a dream of eternity: to

be eternally there, in this state

�

audacious metaphor: "I wanted

them to make this refuge a perpetual prison for me, to confine me to it for life, and-removing every possibility and hope of getting off it-to forbid me any kind of communication with the mainland so that being unaware of all that went on in the world I might forget its existence and that it might also forget mine . " (In fact, eternity for Rousseau

=

two months. ) Eternity, prison?

=

exemption from

(social) responsibility.

Company

3 . Company, retreat this is not solitude: there is the tax collec­ tor (Berne hospital), his family, his servants + on Sundays, visitors =

from the neighboring shores. ---;. The intrusion of the exterior is limited and above all coded (on Sundays) , thus absolutely under control: not overwhelmed by the social

+

the collector: curious and

subtle notation . . . " the tax collector, his wife, and his servants who in truth were all very worthy people but nothing more."1 6 Which means what? bearable, not infringing on the retreat, because "in­ significant" : they weren't "intellectuals," writers, politicians: their " ideosphere, " their "ideo-logy" did not interfere with that of Rous­ seau ---;. retreat implies the right dose of otherness: the light and thus if needed flat otherness (here we are truly as close to the Neutral as can be) . 4.

Idleness. Finally, typical feature (in relation t o other retreats)

of the Bienne retreat: its finality: to do nothing: "the precious far

niente was the first and principal enjoyment I wanted to savor in all its sweetness, and all I did during my sojourn was in effect only the delicious and necessary pursuit of a man who has devoted him­ self to idleness. " 1? Therefore, let's underscore: no books, no writing desk: suspension of writing: replaced by a pacifying because bear1 39

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

ing no responsibility activity: to collect plants: undertakes the flora petrinsularis: to describe all the plants on the island; focuses above all on the sexuality of the plants. --.. Roughly: idleness in relation to the "specialization" of the intellectual: pleasure in substituting an irenic knowledge (perhaps obsessional: reification, inventory) for a battle of ideas + "ecological" postulation: agricultural work, exer­ cise, appetite, etc., and above all: marginal, type of violon d'!ngres (d. myself and painting) . 1 8

b . Swedenborg

Swedenborg. 65

( Swede, roughly contemporary with Voltaire. Man of science, chem­ ist, naturalist, engineer, covered with honors; at fifty-eight: mystical vision, radical transformation --.. series of revelations that will ex­ tend over twenty-seven years --.. new glory: all of Europe becomes interested in him, writes to him, but he doesn't answer. ) Circumstances o f the first vision: Swedenborg traveled a lot: he stayed in different countries to have books published there (a book a country! ) -;> in London, 1 74 6 . His custom was to rent a room for meditation, in an inn different from his living place: I will come back to it, because it's this second place that interests me. One night in this room: is hungry, eats a lot; at the end of the meal, fog before his eyes, reptiles on the floor;19 d. vision of Peter, Acts of the Apostles: tent dropping from the sky, containing some animals, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat, " 20 repeated three times '" Swedenborg: sees a man seated in full light in a corner of the room; the reptiles have disappeared. The man says: "Don't eat so much . " Then dark­ ness, alone. The following night, the shining man reappears. " I a m God . . . I have elected you t o interpret the inner meaning of the Holy Scriptures to men: I will dictate to you what you will write. " Divine mission and dictation. ( I would like to reflect on the inversion of the order: kill and eat/don't eat; but that would re­ quire going back to the anagogical meaning of Peter's vision (that

-;>

of Swedenborg being basely digestive or rather " indigestive " ) and that would take us too far away) � let's return to the room he rents in an inn, separately from the one where he lives, in order to meditate, because this place, or this gesture of double rental, fascinates me: some thoughts

-;>

1 . Double rental --.. here: to "meditate " ; but the most current version: to make love: "one-night stand" { baise-en-ville} -;> " one­ night meditation" {medite en ville} . A substitution not to be taken 1 40

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 . 1 9 7 8

too lightly -;. conduct of pleasure, of secrecy, perhaps of anonymity. To meditate: what belongs most properly to me, what requires a space of dispossession that will allow for the act and my relation to this act (love or meditation) to be isolated and essentialized. 2.

It would be necessary to know more about a certain fantasy of

clandestinity, which as we see here might intersect with a fantasy of split personality: fantasy of the inner depths. (Let's play on the am­ biguity: for/fort {innermost corelfortress}: my interior as a fortress

Innermost core

(title of Bruno Bettelheim, referring to psychosis);21 as for, which has a complex etymological trajectory: forum � market, opera­ tions carried out at the market -- conventions

--

j urisdictions, law,

prices (au fur de: at the rate of

=

along}); Spanish: fuero (law)

court, temporal j urisdiction of the

church (

=

outer for)

-- ...

--

au fur et a mesure {as one goes

judgment of one's conscience (inner for. )

The second room: like the inner for, the impregnable fort: (his­ torical) myth of two men in one subject: the exterior man, social, worldly, alienated by the constraints of worldliness (hypocrisy, etc.) ... interior man, true and free man (or of pleasure

=

--

man of words/man of silence

of the beyond or of the before language ) . Cf. the

public/private myth, to be explained, by the way; it has been said:

Public/ private

ideologically capitalist: but it's the use of the " public" that is alien­ ated in a market society (photos, interviews, gossip, etc. ) : the " pri­ vate" is a natural defense against the commodification of the public --

logical identification of the clandestine (or the anonymous) with

the free. In any case the fantasy of split personality might be the more important one. I would infer that from a double postulation I can witness in myself: (a) my resistance to having more than one place (city/country), my desire for one single permanent dwelling for both rest and productive work, the way I compulsively reproduce the same spatial structure, the same "proxemy" everywhere22 (I ex­ plained this several times); (b) my desire, sometimes, to have a sec­ ond place, almost secret, familiar and unfamiliar: in a completely

One/two places

different neighborhood ( Canal St-Martin, decrepit hotel, on my way back from Nanterre)

--

two fantasies: (a) that of the painter,

who has an independent studio; ( b ) the miracle-idea (true fantasy) that in leaving to barricade myself for several weeks in a place (ho­ tel room at the seaside, little beach during winter) I would be able to work intensely: write a book, a novel, etc. Less subjective because attested by crime and adventure liter­ ature: the fantasy of places with two entrances, one of which of

Two entrances

course is secret: Arsene Lupin23 1 41

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

--

mythical solution that trium-

phantly solves the double bind: a retreat that protects without being a trap.

c.

Painter, 1 58

Proust

Is there a Proustian retreat? I have always believed it, strongly, and I am nurtured by this image ( Castex and Surer, twentieth century) .24 Charms of the myth: ( 1 ) Flood of the Seine 19 10: Proust on an island: half of Paris under water, subway submerged, trams immo­ bilized, lake extending from the St-Lazare Station to the Boulevard Haussmann, up to Proust's apartment.2S ( 2 ) Bedroom lined in cork, nightly work, only a few friends, etc.

Swann 1913 1871 Worldly youth

Fertile retreat 1922

1 909 Beginning Recherche

Meaning of the myth (or, precisely, that which impresses me): ( 1 ) entry " into work," as into a convent; ( 2 ) the price one must pay for the work -;. certainty that it will be completed and important; ( 3 ) enjoyment of both a phantasmatic and "practical" sovereignty; (4) credibility of the myth because of its internal articulation: to amass materials (observations, experiences) = worldly life, then to close oneself off so as to compose them: artisanal and agricultural myth -;. gathering � immanence (of the elaboration) � transcen­ dence (of the result). Is the myth realizable? In any case, if it is, on this condition: not to " shut oneself away" (even if this is in a more modest way than Proust) at a random stage of the production of the work: not too soon. In point 4 of the myth, something correct: an overcompression of the materials is required (as shown clearly in the many illuminations (fuseesp6 that preceded the Recherche): the shutting-away-the " schizoidism"-only seems tenable during the writing, in the phase of writing. That being said: perhaps atopi­ cal problem: depends on the subject and on the type of work? Very mysterious alchemy of the work. I said: myth. In fact, I am realizing that my image of the Proust­ ian retreat comes uniquely from the Castex-Surer schema I men1 42

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

tionedY In Painter, things are infinitely less clear-cut: true, there was a retreat to a nursing home (Dr. Solier's clinic in Billancourt) , for six weeks, after the death o f his mother; but i n fact, also, t o cure asthma

-7

true, a retreat later, but less drastic than the myth would

have it, and also an effect of the deterioration of his health. Above all, it's hard to locate a real break. Now, mythically, the break is what makes the retreat; here: day and night. (Life of Proust: has al­ ways fascinated me [review of Painter] :28 I believe: very new: a new way of staging the relation of life and work: -;. perhaps a course on that. I put a hold on the subject.)

2. Organization

Retreat is "signified" (becomes signifying: becomes a noun) through its contents-which is identical to the way it is organized: sched­ ules, rituals, quirks = the way the body in retreat weaves the work. -7 Proust's quirks: we'll return to the topic, if one day we deal with Proust. 1.

A less well known example of organization: Swedenborg's

style of life in his house in Stockholm:

Swedenborg, 358

House + garden = a square. Actual apartment: exiguous, without re­ finement; would not have seemed comfortable to anyone else. Hebrew and Greek bibles + concordance for the quotations. Worked night and day. Slept "when he felt himself open to sleep "29 (no fixed times). His old servant (the wife of the gardener) : her only duties: to make his bed and refill a large pitcher in his antechamber. From autumn to spring, a fire in his study (for his coffee) . In the bedroom, never any fire, but good English blankets. Would replenish the fire (live coals and dry wood) and begin to write. Made his coffee in the fireplace of his study: would drink it day and night with a lot of sugar but neither milk nor cream. Food: only boiled semolina and milk (ef. Spinoza) . 2.

This routine shares many features with that o f Proust and thus

possibility of a typology of spaces of retreat ( "space " : structurable .. "place " : different problem): (a) Absolute appropriation of space:

Proust and Sweden borg

" uncomfortable for anybody else" : for oneself, without concession. (b) Abolition of the "natural" day/night rhythm. Proust: the rhythmic unity is the nycthemeron;3o for Swedenborg, not even: sleeps when he needs to. Proust: problem of noise. (c) Comfort: the writing retreat is not ascetic: heat. (d) Importance of being served (ties writing to income) : Swedenborg, modestly but no physical effort, no errands;

Painter, 1 59

Proust, lavishly: Nicolas Cottin serves Proust at night, Celine takes

1 43

5 E 5 5 I O N O F M AY 1 3. 1 9 7 8

over for the coffee toward four o'clock in the morning. (e) repetitive diet: Swedenborg: semolina and milk. Proust dines at nine o'clock in the evening: three croissants from the Saint-Lazare Station, boiling

Ownership

cafe au lait in a wadded coffeepot, eggs in cream sauce, fried pota­ toes served in a little silver vegetable dish (that's what surprises me most), and stewed fruit: curious: the alliance between luxury and rep­ etition:31 d. king of Spain32 giving a large pension to Farinelli so he would sing the same song to him every evening for fourteen years: as if monotony (repetition) by itself were enough to create the retreat. 3 . Organization of the retreat: problem of ownership unavoidable. There are two types of ownership: ( I ) Bad: that of the will-to-grasp, of the will-to-keep, of appropriation, of the will-to-hold-much: the ad-rogantia *- ( 2 ) Good, or at least acceptable: minor ownership, that which signals retreat, aloofness, individual, anonymity: what doesn't show, colorless: what Cage calls "the utilities"33 (what doesn't con­ cern others) : perhaps bizarre idea: the Neutral would be related to this minor ownership, or this small ownership (d. small change) : ownership o f a private space, whose signification is nonconsequen­ tial: ownership of the objects we call "personal " : it's more an indi­ viduation of materials (vase for flowers, black marble of the clock, =

old frame of a romantic print): material that has a mnemonic charge � a kind of proxemy:34 the object is almost a gesture of my body. Quite possible that this attachment to minor belongings is either neurotic (on the side of a slight obsessionality: my nail scissors, my fountain pen, etc.) or socially, historically, and class constructed: one often feels like connecting it with a petit-bourgeois attitude: being the miniaturized replica of bourgeois property (the way the single house miniaturizes the estate); which, to be sure, would go against an an­

Maistre, 221

cient aristocratic posture: indifference to the private (Versailles ) : the Russian aristocrats: the old Prince Bolkonski in War and Peace, the Count Strogonov Joseph de Maistre speaks of: He had no bedroom in his huge mansion, not even a solid bed. He slept in the manner of the old Russians, on a couch or on a little camp bed that he had set up here or there, according to his fancy. "35 Cf. also the rule of disap­ propriation of proxemy in modern communities � radicality, but with an ultimate resistance: communal defecation.

3. Sitio36

All this: organization of the interior space. But another problem or at least another theme: the choice of the place where it feels good to stay, to lock oneself up, where one "feels good": 1 44

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

1.

Decision concerning place: left completely to chance. Prob­

ably, many literary examples of travelers stopping in a place, feeling good there and staying + quantity of myths concerning abode, re­ treat, foundation ( of town) designated, assigned by God. Example:

Navigatio Brendani:37 Celtic monasticism: Patrick ( fifth century),

Navigatio Brendani

Colomban (sixth century; Ireland) : to break away from the world completely, to place oneself in God's hands

+

observance of virtue

by means of sea errancies that lead to some deserted islet where one establishes a new monastery: example: Brendan (+ 5 80 ) : with four­ teen disciples, flees the world and for seven years consigns himself to the sea currents between Ireland and Scotland

=

famous peregri­

nation --;. legend ( eleventh century) of the Navigatio Brendani. 2.

Chance (or God)

=

a marker. What if there were no marker?

If the subject had to accommodate himself to a space, to a land­ scape, to an absolutely undifferentiated horizon, with no possibility of marking? It is, quite simply, anxiety, at least as demonstrated by experiments on mice: emotional reactions of the white mouse mus

musculus: (micturition, body care)

=

anxious reactions in a circular

arena, enclosure stripped of topographical landmarks

Open -field, 34

=

=

open-field38

maximum of anxiety --;. diminution of anxiety --;. square enclosure

--;. labyrinth with four corridors (labyrinths

=

"devices stripped of all

hidden mechanism, constructed in such a way that to master them it is enough to discover and to choose the shortest path toward a goal whose position doesn't vary"-Introduction II l'etude du comporte­

ment animal {Introduction to the study of animal behavior), Nathan, I977, pp. I 8 3-8 8 )39 --;. enclosure in T shape --;. labyrinth in Y shape. Notice this: at least for the animal, anxiety doesn't arise from having to choose between two paths (labyrinth in Y shape, Buridan's ass,

double bind), but from having all the paths and thus no "path" open before one: virgin space of the open field --;. all that remains to be seen: but, in any case, as a place to rest, the open field seems the most anxiety producing: Tolstoy (M. Hofmann and A. Pierre, La Vie de Tolstoi· {Life of Tolstoy), Gallimard, I934, p. no). I 8 69 : he finishes War and Peace. August 3 I, accompanied by a servant, he leaves for the district of Penza, where he plans to buy a piece of property. On the road, he stops for the night at Arzamas. "The room he was given was completely white. He felt an inexplicable fright in noticing that it was quadrangular. " Two o'clock in the morning: terrible anxiety, fear of death --;. it was an open field (reinforced by the whiteness). 3. Sitio --;. therefore: search for the topical place (it's the right adjective)

=

absolutely specific, where I feel good: which can depend

on infinitesimal variations: 1 45

S E S S I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

Animals: cats looking for a place to sleep: meticulously, it is a question of a few centimeters ethological concept of the prefera­ ndum:40 in a biotope, stereotype of spatial localization: an animal preferring one place (for example, temperature) and avoiding others --7 men: homey idea of "corner" "the point of comfort" (tem­ perature 20°C but including the temperature of the walls ) . Magic: research taken over b y forms o f magic associated with drugs: Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. The Benefactor (old Indian) of the young white neo­ phyte, Don Juan, emphasizes that the first thing to do is to discover a place (sitio) where one can rest without lassitude --7 stroll around the porch until one discovers such a place:41 to experiment with each position until one finds the good one. Walter Benjamin, too: H in Marseilles (first experience) : he goes out, walks to the Basso Restaurant. Looks carefully for a place, changes several times, ac­ cording to different concerns42 (our daily experience: to choose a spot in the restaurant) . That has t o d o with the sense, always described a s mysterious, of orientation --7 one would need to make an inventory of magi­ cal, parapsychological, ethological myths inspired by it. Countless anecdotes: orientation: like a search for the true place for the "good" place --7 = an extremely general form, a movement with various contents: can go from geography to sociology (politics) . Example: Bali (Bateson), example of very rigid society = markedly dependent on spatial orientation. To do no matter what, first situate the cardinal points; if a Balinese is taken by motorcar over twisting roads, loses his sense of direction = is severely disoriented, becomes unable to act: a dancer may become unable to dance. Now (this is what is interesting) , same necessity for vertical orientation, social hierarchy, and he might even be paralyzed if it is disturbed: the Ba­ linese needs to locate his caste ranking in relation to the other: if he loses this orientation (if he doesn't know where the other is located on the vertical axis), cannot speak, cannot address the other (d. the linguistic strategy of places, of orientation) .43 4. Spacing. As we saw: a livable space (and such is the eidos, the purpose of retreat) = a space with landmarks (,., the little white mouse's arena) --7 the Neutral would be a subtle art of keeping the good distance between landmarks (including human landmarks of emotional space. Cf. last year's course on the critical distance in shoals of fish:44 Neutral spacing (production of space) and not distanciation, distancing.45 Very important concept in Japanese, the =

Compo animal, 8

=

=

=

Eric

1 46

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

ma:46 spacing of time, of space: rules both temporality and spatial­ ity: neither crowding nor "desertification. " Let us extend the Japanese approach that ( ;0' Kantianism) con­ ceptualizes neither time nor space but only intervals, only the rela­ tion between two moments, two spaces or obj ects � let's try to conceive (this is tied to retreat) the spacing between subj ects -;. Blanchot expressly ties such a spacing to the Neutral: "What is now

Blanchot, Conversation, 77

in play, and demands relation, is everything that separates me from the other, that is to say the other insofar as I am infinitely separated from him-a separation, fissure, or interval that leaves him infi­ nitely outside me, but also requires that I found my relation with him upon this very interruption that is an interruption of being. This alterity, it must be repeated, makes him neither another self for me, nor another existence, neither a modality or a moment of universal existence, nor a superexistence, a god or a non-god, but rather the unknown in its infinite distance.


An alterity that

holds in the name of the neutral. " "Through the presence of the other understood in the neutral there is in the field of relations a distortion preventing any direct communication and any relation of unity. "47 Here arises the idea (we will do no more than allege it) of curved spacing. The Neutral, on the side of the curved? Insistent theory of the indirect; Levinas, q uoted by Blanchot: "The curvature of space

441

expresses the relation between human beings. "48 And this lovely proverb, little known I believe: " God writes straight with curves. "49

4. Vita Nuova (Dante: Nova)5° As a fantasy, retreat obviously tied to the idea of a radical, total change of life: very active fantasy, especially when one is getting old (the problem not being how not to age but how to enter alive into old age ) . On this Vita Nuova, three observations:

a. Fantasy: Its Constituting Feature: Radicality =

a decision-desire without concession � Vita Nuova (retreat) grips

everything: place, worldly relationships, clothing, etc. Example: Rousseau (the fantasy here is completely different from the real re­

Rousseau, Tao

treat on the island of the Lake of Bienne I analyzed earlier) : Walk III.

1 47

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

From the time of my youth, I had set this age of forty as the terminal point for my efforts to succeed and as the one for all of my vain ambitions. I was fully resolved once this age was reached that whatever situation I might be in, I would struggle no longer to get out of it and would spend the remainder of my days living from day to day without ever again concerning myself about the future. The moment having come, I executed this plan without difficulty; and even though my fortune then seemed to want to take a turn for the better, I renounced it not only without regret but with actual pleasure. In releasing myself from all those lures and vain hopes, I fully gave myself up to carelessness and to the reach of mind which always con­ stituted my most dominant pleasure and most lasting propen­ sity. I forsook the world and its pomp; I renounced all finery: no more sword, no more watch, no more white stockings, gilding, or headdress; a very simple wig, a good coarse cloth garment; and better than all that, I eradicated from my heart the cupidity and covetousness which give value to everything I was forsaking. I resigned the post I then held, for which I was in no way suited, and began to copy music at so much a page, an occupation which had always greatly appealed to me.51 This seems a typical pattern: pleasure in the world (sensual and narcissistic) ---'» agitation ---'» torment ---'» desire for Neutral. -;,. In fact, refusing the world is the last trap of the imaginary: to escape the trap supreme trap, but why not permit oneself this new trap; the subject is not relieved . . . . Whence a wisdom: the Tao "wisdom" that consists, as always, in not being systematic:52 behavior that is the exact contrary of fantasy: the Tao man does everything in order not to exercise an authority, =

Tao, Grenier, 1 1 0

not to fill a function; if he cannot escape, does it with distance: "soft benevolence. " (d. "dry benevolence" ) . This, translated in modern empereia: a series of temporary retreats not even cyclically organized. But this nonorganization, the lack of a foreseeable rhythm that would, that indeed will ensue, will deliver an incomprehensible, "scandal­ ous" image of the subject to the world surrounding him ---'» theme of the "dive . " (Thus, to respond to the anonymous: I will retire [includ­ ing from the College] at my own rhythm and not to orderl )

b . O l d Age

Among the many signs of debility of our time, one of the most ir­ ritating for me is the way it speaks about old age: a turbulent (it doesn't stop speaking about it) and narrow (it only speaks about 1 48

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

it institutionally:53 "mandatory retirement," " adult communities " } way -.. the same way there are two Neutrals, an active and a reac­ tive (neither-nor, a " noble " Neutral and a farcical Neutral, there are two old ages, two retirements: 1.

" Flat, " airbrushed, clean old age, the one that represses itself,

that represses its name, its being, the one that doesn't dare speak its name:54 "the third age " : society no longer dares to name death, the proximity-or rather the fatality of death

�

institutionalization of

"older persons" ( " retreat" in the administrative sense

---;>

" retired" ) .

Right to c omfort and organization of small leisure-time activities. True, a progress compared to archaic societies: it is said that a law

istes, 1 1 3

of Keos prescribed the drinking of hemlock to men having reached sixty:55 but that is not enough to vitalize old age, to make it mean­ ingful in and of itself, since today there is no symbolic compensa­ tion for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, percep­ tiveness, experience, vision. Strong existentiality of old age: to recognize, speak, sing its fate, its tragedy, its "desperate vitality" � Michelet on the right 2.

track when he says: "that long torment, old age. "56

---;>

I want to

quote a text, terrible, but with so beautiful an energy in the way it describes the disaster, a Saturnine text by Michelangelo (one of his last sonnets)

=

late Renaissance: the universe is no longer a har­

monious cosmos: it is a terribilita (word applied to the works of Michelangelo, Hocke) . 57 Michelangelo in one of his last sonnets: I am shut in like a marrow by its skin, poor and alone here, like a genie trapped in a bottle, this would be the construction not of a void (we shouldn't abuse the word) but of a tenuousness, a gentle slope toward the moment of "becoming mute" like a vowel. One could almost call that: the dream of the tea room (Sukiya): simple peasant house --;> ideograms: abode of fancy, then abode of the void, abode of the unsymmetrical: in which one always leaves 1 50

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 1 3 . 1 9 7 8

something incomplete so that imagination completes it

�

refined

poverty. 59 Naturally, this movement has affinities with monastic destitution: Dogen (Zen master) : "Besides your monk's robe and your begging bowl, don't put the smallest thing in reserve. "60

�

prescriptions of

this type are always read somehow in reverse-or rather one tends to forget the reverse: for it means: I am attached to the robe, to the bowl, they are mine, I go back to them, each day they allow me to refound destitution as a tenuous but possibly savory identity.

�

Never forget to read twice what is permitted/forbidden: read the permitted as the reverse of the forbidden, or reciprocally: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth " : it's horrible, cruel, cynical ? But that also means: no more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And we aren't there yet!

1 51

S E S S I O N O F M AY 1 3 , 1 9 7 8

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8 1

Arrogance Sophistes, 43

At a certain point, Bataille speaks of the " scientific arrogances. " 2 A t a completely different site o f Western discourse, there i s a trea­ tise by the Sophist Protagoras entitled "The Down-Throwers, " kataballontes logoi.3 � Under the word " arrogance, " 1 gather all the (linguistic) " gestures" that work as discourses of intimidation, of subjection, of domination, of assertion, of haughtiness: that claim the authority, the guarantee of a dogmatic truth or of a demand that doesn't think, that doesn't conceive of the other's desire. One is assaulted by the arrogance of discourse everywhere there is faith, certitude, will-to-possess, to dominate, be it by means of an insistent demand: the inventory of arrogant discourses would be endless, from the political discourse to the advertising discourse, from the discourse of science to that of the " scene."4 We will not draw up this inventory, this typology; it would be more useful to ask under what difficult conditions a discourse manages not to be arrogant (d. in fine, on writing ) . 1 will confine myself t o picking u p a few disconnected fragments, mostly relative to some lateral aspects of arrogance.

1 . Anorexia

I will say where arrogance begins: when one forces someone who is not hungry to eat. (Vivid representation, painful memory of the suffering, of the nightmare of my mother,S during her illness, who had to force herself to eat when she was not at all hungry. )

Gide, 1 36

Mankind having spent millennia (and still now) being hungry, what is "mythified, " spoken, " discursivized" is hunger, not its op­ posite � (in a general way, positive passions [the "appetites " ] are "spoken" much more than the " negative" ones, the inappetences) -;. Gide himself discovers with astonishment (in I949), in the Littce dictionary, that there is a word for loss of appetite: "I have become without real appetite in front of life; 1 discovered in Littre a word I didn't know: anorexia, which means that; oh well, that's the way I am. "6 1 52

5 E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

Anorexia and psychoanalysis: letter by Ribettes about what I said in one of the supplements, when I wondered about what could be the desire for nothing7

�

which is exactly the condition of the

anorexic: the anorexic desires nothing. Ribettes's letter: That the anorexic finds in nothing the object of his desire, which is to say that he finds enough to fulfill desire's require­ ments of metonymy in the refusal of what the other gives him, might have as a cause, the cause of his desire as distinct from its obj ect, the fact that the Other does not lack anything. The Other of the desire, here the Mother, unable to give anything but all that she has, stuffs by a suffocating love the child's demand as if his demand were a need that could be fully satis­ fied. In confusing need and demand, the Mother force- feeds, stuffs {comble} the child and plugs up, obstructs the demand, leaving no place, no remain­ der for desire. In other words, the Mother of the anorexic might be such that she doesn't leave anything to be desired. Desire would be precisely what happens when something is left to be desired and the height {Ie comble} of love: a desire satis - fied. In this desert of desire, the anorexic thus saves his skin by putting himself in the position of desiring: nothing. "I have no other object to desire," the fulfilled child could utter, "except the one you cannot give me: nothing. " To play with these terms one more time, one could say that the following two formulas echo each other: ( r ) The mother: I wish to leave nothing to be desired; (2 ) The anorexic: in this plenitude you leave me nothing else than nothing to desire. Without entering the game of substitution, one should recognize that " society, " doxa, puts itself in the position of the mother: it is accused of forbidding desires, but I find that mostly it dictates them, imposes them, forces their satisfaction. Cataloged by a whole repressive tradition: the torture by starv­ ing. But also, for me, atrocious torture: force-feeding (there is even an instrument for this torture) : to force-feed the geese in order to produce hypertrophied livers: gaver < pre-Latin, Gaul: gaba, gosier {throat}, goitre {goiter}

+

{oie {liver} < (icatum, fattened with figs.

Arrogance: all the positive obligations (;e the prohibitions, men­ tioned again and again) : to force one to eat, to speak, to think, to answer, etc. The elementary form would be the demand: it may happen that I feel no hunger for the world, but the world will force me to love it, to eat it, to enter into intercourse with it. 8

1 53

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

2. Western Frenzy

West: at a macroideological scale: the specialist of arrogance, sort of: valorization of will; showering praise for efforts to destroy, change, conserve, etc.; dogmatic intervention everywhere. Blanchot. 66

Recognized by Blanchot about Claudel: " He's a man almost ex­ aggeratedly modern. All modern thought, from Descartes to Hegel and Nietzsche, is an exaltation of will, an effort to make the world, to complete it and dominate it. "9 (1 believe that for Nietzsche one should introduce a nuance: will < will-to-power? But it's rather: feeling, pathos, instead of will in the intellectual, rational sense.) Arrogance. This calling of the West as a whole for "will" (for arrogance, as will-to-language) flagrant in this: all our history, our historical narration = always a history of wars and politics; we only conceive History as a diachrony of battles, of dominations, of arrogances, and this well before Marx: from the Greeks to the nineteenth century, no History (in the sense of historical science) of myth, of the imaginal ( Corbin), of the clandestine. (Example: a his­ tory of the quest, through the theme of the Grail. ) lO Only Michelet, perhaps . . . : 1 1 but disdainfully rejected by generations of positivist, then Marxist historians. ( Contribution of the Annales School inso­ far as, following Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, it has been inter­ ested in structures and sensibilities. ) 1 don't know why, a mere "impression, " it seems t o me that the " ordinary" world, the way " everyone" speaks, is sinking into a minor form of arrogance, of linguistic self-confidence: the lack of timidity: it seems to me that there is a recession of timidity: radio, improvised roundtables, conversations: it seems that people are less and less prey to stage fright -7 stage fright, a form of the relation to language that has become history ? (Student at the Sorbonne: first time 1 spoke in public. At the time, no seminars, no reports: a stu­ dent could very well say nothing for four years, except at the orals, which wasn't so bad! Jean Schlumberger on Corneille: I had memo­ rized the speech of presentation -7 blank -7 Schlumberger blushes

Fichte. Lesson 2. 82

for me � the consolation book from Yette ].) 1 2 Superbly voiced by Fichte: " superior knowledge " : not a "philo­ sophical, " " scientific" knowledge, but one that results from "the

natural spirit of truth." "This knowledge pretends to be true, and to be the only one to be true, but true only under the determined expression by means of which it produces itself under all its aspects, claiming also that everything that contradicts it is false without exception, without alleviation. It

1 54

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

wants to impose itself on every will unrestrictedly and to suppress the right to error; in an absolute manner; it rejects every type of compromise with what is not itself. . . . " (For certain minds) "what harms such a form, is the way it forces them to take sides and to de­ cide on the spot between the yes and the no : they'd like to hold their votes in reserve, in case things once more, one day, turn another way. Moreover it is easy to cover the lack of intelligence with the lofty name of skepticism . . . "13 Tao East: many inflections to oppose to this intellectual "ma­ chismo " of the West. Two of them at random: Lao-tzu: meditated for eighty years in the uterus of his mother: he was born an old man of eighty. Lao: old

+

-tzu: child14 --;. What

is rhythmically bracketed here is adulthood .. Western frenzy to become adult quickly and for a very long time. West: will, effort

=:

prestige linked to challenge, "macho" valori­

zation of what is difficult .. Lao-tzu: (the Taoist sage): "He confronts

Grenier, 1 27

difficult complications only in their easy details and addresses great problems only in their faint beginnings. " 15

3. Obviousness, Interpretation >Pure form of arrogance ( "elementary, " "primary" form): the exploita­ tion of obviousness: to present as obvious what one wants to vanquish --;. Joseph de Maistre: "To know that the Anglican religion is false,

• re, 1 1 5

there is no need either of research or of argument. It is judged by intu­ ition; it is false as the sun is luminous"!6

=:

well put and badly thought.

Badly thought here means thought-or not thought-against the grain of the method of critical thought worked out by the eighteenth century and later by the scientific mind of the nineteenth century --;. to be stud­ ied (but this would be vertiginous): the link between the well-expressed and the badly thought, the relation between the well-expressed and the obvious ( --;. in reality: the whole problem of writing). Obviousness ( as conceived by Joseph de Maistre) might seem to need to be relativized, tempered, humanized, "disarroganced" by means of an analytic operation: interpretation: to admit inter­ pretation would lessen the arrogance --;. this is a liberal view of interpretation .. Nietzschean view: "All subjugation, all domination

ze, Nietzsche, 4

amounts to a new interpretation" !? --;. as we know, Nietzsche linked meaning and power: meaning (fruit of, called by interpretation) al­ ways a blow of force. --;. In radical terms: no solution to arrogance other than the suspension of interpretation, of meaning.!S

1 55

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

4. The Concept

Let's start out from a "philosophy" (with scare quotes, since what

Hegel, 328 ff.

Kojeve, 8

is at issue is precisely that this be a philosophy) that has obvious af­ finities with the Neutral: Greek Skepticism; and in particular Hegel's analysis (and Kojeve's after him) of it.19 Skepticism: completion of the subjectiveness of all knowledge; to assert only the negative: its result: "negation, dissolution of the determined, of the true, of every content" � In this regard, Skepticism invincible, but it's a strictly subjective invincibility: "If anyone actually desires to be a Skeptic, he cannot be convinced, or be brought to a positive philosophy, any more than he who is paralyzed in all his limbs can be made to stand. Skepticism is, in fact, such paralysis-an incapacity for truth which can only reach certainty of self, and not the universal, remaining merely in the negative, and in individual self-consciousness. To keep oneself in individuality depends on the will of the individual; no one can prevent a man from doing this, because no one can possibly drive another out of nothing. "20 That means that Skepticism (to extrapolate: in one sense: the Neutral) is expelled from philosophy, to the extent that it doesn't retain the philosophical "imprint " : the concept. Kojeve: philosophy pro-poses itself (hypothesis) as intention-to-speak-of-the-concept: which is the question "Thales" was the first to ask. And philoso­ phy im-poses itself (synthesis) as discursive (correct and complete) development of the meaning of the concept of concept: which is the answer Hegel was the first to give to Thales's question (in the system of knowledge) . 21 This "im-position" (at least as seen from the Neutral) phi­ losophy's arrogance � one can't thus (one couldn't) stay-waft in the space of the Neutral except by staying outside philosophy: but this is something banal: many people, and more and more, refuse philosophy, out of anti-intellectualism, of implicit poujadism.22 But this is not the Neutral's "view" of philosophy: the Neutral cuts itself off from philosophy and from its legitimate victory: it doesn't =

oppose it but distances itself from it: the "singularity" that Hegel, respectfully, denounces is not the individual struggling against all, it is only the suspension, the exemption of the universal as arrogance, of the arrogance of the concept. Notice that it is possible to question the concept in a dialectical fashion, starting from philosophy or within philosophy itself (with­ out speaking of Nietzsche, who is not in philosophy) : a philosophy of Marxist inspiration: Henri Lefebvre, De I'E tat, IV: "The refer-

1 56

5 E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

ence to the concept is the only thing that allows for consistency of thought, thus for comprehension and communication. To expose its insufficiency, to bring to light what is before it and beyond it, one must start out from it" !23 Tyranny of the concept? Yes, and it cor­ responds to that of the State. No, because using the concept implies self-criticism, which doesn't happen with tyrants. But Nietzsche is obviously the one who best dismantled { a de­ monte} (in both senses of the term)24 the concept ( " On Truth and Falsity " ) : " Every idea originates through equating the unequal "25 ---,lo

thus concept: a force that reduces the diverse, the becoming that

is the sensible, the aisthesis26

---,lo

therefore, if one wants to refuse

this reduction, one must say no to the concept, not make use of it. But, then, how to speak, all of us, intellectuals? By metaphors. To substitute metaphor for the concept: to write.

5. Memory/Forgetting

Memory and forgetting are equally arrogant. Let's make peace with this contradiction; or at least let's sharpen it, that's to say, let's see which kind of memory, let's see if there is a certain kind of memory that is able to suspend the arrogance of discourse: Arrogant memory: all memory that gives itself authority to put a corpse on trial

faphistes, 1 94

->-

literally: Critias's decree: that the corpse of Phry­

nicus (murdered in 4 I I ) be condemned for treason and that his re­ mains be dug up and removed from AtticaY Identically: Inquisitors ->-

."uisition, 24

posthumous trials against corpses that were disinterred, thrown

on a grill, and burned28

->-

arrogant mania to judge and devalue the

posthumous (inquiry among youth: Gide: "this old 'Precieuse"' ) . Arrogant forgetting: I cite this, by Michelet, beautiful and strange

iltanism and Witchcraft,

as always: "Who indeed has any memory for such things? Who rec­

n

ognizes the time-honoured obligations men owe to innocent nature ? The Asclepias Acida, or Sarcostemma (flesh-plant), which for five thousand years was the consecrated host of Asia, the palpable god­ made flesh of all that continent, which gave five hundred millions of the human race the blessedness of eating their god, the same plant that the Middle Ages knew as the Poison-killer (Vincevenenum), has never a word of recognition in our books of botany. Who knows but two thousand years hence mankind will have forgotten the virtues of wheat. "29 (Very beautiful and not so extravagant: the candle, all but forgotten except in restaurants; as well as: pain de campagne {rustic bread} )

1 57

---,lo

History (recent idea)

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

=

arrogant discourse because of its

way of selecting and forgetting � Michelet's ambition: to give mem­ ory back to everything: a mad ambition, since paradisiacal � trans­ parent and total time, quasi-mystical vision: Neutral, not through forgetting but through "panic" memory. Perhaps the one space where such a nonarrogant memory is postulated: one more time: literature. I have said ( "Preliminaries, " February 1 8 ) : o f every historical person (who has really lived), I see, I recall that he is dead, he has been touched by real death ;c to the contrary, a fictional character, I "consume " him (I think of him, absorb him in my memory) with euphoria, precisely because, not having lived for real, he can't be dead for real: not about say­ ing that such a character (Hans Castorp, Alyosha, Bernard of the Counterfeiters,3o etc.) is immortal: he is untouched by death exte­ rior to the paradigm. Example: Theocritus is dead ( = " Everything =

Benjamin, 1 :80

passes " ), but about a character of his Idylls, I can never tell myself that he is dead � there is in fiction something radiant (radiant ;c arrogant) � Walter Benjamin described this specific memory of the novelistic character very well: "The life of Prince Myshkin is laid before us as an episode only in order to make its immortality visible symbolically. In fact his life can no more be extinguished than can the life of nature. < . . . > Immortal life d say: life external to para­ digm> is unforgettable; that is the sign by which we recognize it. It is the life that is not to be forgotten, even though it has no monu­ ment or memorial, or perhaps even any testimony. It simply cannot be forgotten. "31 ->- I add: the life of someone who has been loved � memory of love, the only one that escapes arrogance.

6. Unity-Tolerance

Unity as arrogance? Yes, the unity of power whole, centralized (arrogance of Jacobinism) . Adrogantia: presumption � adfirmandi adrogantia ( Cicero ) : the presumption that consists of affirming < Adrogo: to make some­ thing come to oneself, to appropriate, to arrogate to oneself ->­ strength of the ad: toward oneself: always relates things to oneself in order to be just one, starting with oneself � various procedures of forced unity, of integralizing expansion (in religious language of olden times: = pride, denounced by saint Thomas as the worst sin [worse than fornication] : what leads straight to hell) . Before giving three examples o f the connection between arro­ gance and unity, all three borrowed from the Inquisition, a brief =

1 58

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

summary of the intoleranceltolerance problem:32 problem born

Tolerance

typically from the heart of Christian civilization. Disparity of the terminological couple. Intolerance: pej orative; but tolerance, em­ barrassing, too restrictive: Mirabeau (August

Joly, 1 3

22,

I 7 8 9 ) : "I do not

come to preach tolerance. The most unrestricted freedom of reli­ gion is in my eyes so sacred a right that the word 'tolerance' that should express it seems to me almost tyrannical itself, since the very existence of an authority that has the power to tolerate restricts the freedom to think by the very fact that it tolerates, which means that it could not tolerate. "33 (an utterly gauchiste declaration) ....... notice a sign of the difficulty. Intolerance: doesn't let itself be caught in the act; it's only History that sees it/tolerance: hardly visible, because negative, concessive: a. Inquisition, absolute reign of intolerance; however, levels: very few allusions to torture because the confessions extorted this way were registered only if they were freely ratified (thus supposedly obtained in a spontaneous fashion) .34 b . Recently, book published by UNESCO on tolerance (Morsy) :35

Joly, 41

Anthology of all the beautiful discourses produced by civilization on the necessity and beauty of tolerance ....... but it is ineffective, merely soothing. An anthology of intolerance more useful; but ob­ viously UNESCO can't sponsor it; and furthermore how does intol­ erance inscribe itself? How does it reach the "textual" ? De Maistre? but

=

a pure writer with no influence, and furthermore out of synch,

taking responsibility for past intolerance but not for the intolerance of the future (difficult to make out: that of our day) . The words "intolerance " /"tolerance" linked to Voltaire's strug­ gle: thus notions molded within the frame of Christianity (witness the fact that the activists of tolerance [Pierre Bayle] made an excep­ tion for atheists) ....... thus problem redoubled by a paradox: religion of sweetness, of charity ....... institution of dogmatism, of terrorism, of intolerance, of cruelty, of murderous arrogance. Necessary to recall, so as to understand Christian intolerance (and perhaps all �uisition. 39

dogmatic intolerance: d. brainwashings, camps of civic, ideological

Joly, 59, 55, 20

reeducation), the great axiom of an inquisitor ( Bernard Gui) : Vexa­

tio dat intellectum: to impose pain on someone opens his mind, gives him intelligence, helps him think in the right direction.36 And Augustine: "What do you do with free will?-'No one is indeed to be compelled to embrace the faith against his will; but by the sever­ ity, or one might rather say, by the mercy of God, it is common for treachery to be chastised with the scourge of tribulation. "'37 (Au1 59

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

gustine: one of the founding fathers of intolerance: against the too tolerant Donatists [Christians from Africa, poor and less latinized peasants from the highlands] . Augustine threw himself against them [¢ Optatus of Milevisj3 8 because first imperative: avoid hell for the other, hence persuasion at first, then coercion: the Catholic State must intervene against heresy: fines, flagellations, forced labor, con­ fiscation, invalidations of wills, but not death, which would throw into hell. ) Christian intolerance is based on the interpretation o f a parable

Joly, 1 05 and 41

from the Gospels (which one ? surely a listener will be nice enough to tell me) : realm of the Heavens is like a king who invites guests to the wedding of his son, or (I don't know) an individual who in­ vites his friends to a grand banquet; everyone declines the invitation with poor excuses -.. " Go down the highways and the length of the hedgerows, and force people to enter. "39 -.. Pierre Bayle protest­ ed: 1 68 6, Amsterdam (anonymous) : "Philosophical commentary on these words of Jesus Christ: 'Force them to enter': where it is proven by many demonstrative reasons that there is nothing more abominable than to force conversions and where all the sophisms of the converters as well as the arguments that Augustine made in favor of persecutions are refuted. "40 --;. Faced with intolerance: limit of tolerance: in order for tol­ erance to exist, it has to be part of a system of discourse, of the ideosphere (linguistic sphere): it's the system itself that posits and limits tolerance: Christian ideosphere: it fatally becomes intolerant from the mo­ ment it is linked to a power: Catholic intolerance is well known (In­ quisition: against Cathars), but recall that intolerance appears as soon as the Reformed assume responsibilities of power: Luther doomed all men possessed by the devil (believed in the devil, frenetic hatred of the devil) to execution (stoning and stake);41 Calvin, in Geneva: fights irreligion, freedom of thought. 1 54 1-1546: fifty-eight capital punish­ ments. Michel Servet (Spaniard) burned alive ( 1 5 5 3 ) for having re­ pudiated the dogma of the Trinity; also, while first edition of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: "It is criminal to kill heretics"; "To make them die by fire or by the sword is to deny all principles of humanity, " later, in Geneva, he erases the sentence.42 2. The great tolerant figures, still part of the Christian ideo­ sphere, were such within limits: Pierre Bayle and others did not ex­ 1.

tend tolerance to atheists. A rare absolute tolerant: Jacob Boehme: suppresses all dogma --;. religious individualism --;. universal toler-

1 60

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

ance: he was a mystic. Mysticism: perhaps the only true antidote to dogmatism.

3. Pagan world, polytheism: therefore religious tolerance in­ grained in the very system: Athens: true, some trials of some phi­ losophers for impieties: we know of only nine trials and of a sin­ gle death (Socrates) : which is said not to have been deliberately planned by his accusers, who simply wanted to have him banished: condemnation because of his impertinence. Rome: motley of cults; the Jews: the only ones who could not admit any other cult than theirs; nonetheless benefited from tolerance: could keep their in­ transigence, their way of life, but not proselytize --->- some emperors suppressed Jewish propaganda. Whatever it be, tolerance/intolerance: logical trap: should toler­ ance be extended to the intolerant ones ? No solution if not a mac­ rosolution: society that would make the paradigm obsolete. We can now return to the link between the dogmatism of unity

(ad-rogantia) and intolerance by means of three brief examples: -Example

6tquisition. 74

I:

Torquemada (fifteenth century) extends the at­

tributions of the Holy Office {the Inquisition} to crimes and mis­ demeanors such as "implicit heresies" ( bigamy, those who rob churches, blasphemers, married priests, etc.)43--->- d. "objective trea­ son," "trial of intention." To frame all difference within the indivis­ ibility of the crime. -Example

2:

Optatus of Milevis, bishop of Numidia, 366:

against the Donatists: the State must intervene against the schismat­ ics: if the measures are cruel, it's the schismatics' fault: crime against unity {lese-unite} ( "Massacre does not always displease God" )44

July. 57

--->­

the whole: fill the world with oneself, hunt down the different, the opposed to the furthest borders. -Example 3: The assertion of unity (the arrogance of unity) does not exclude recantings, as long as they are whole (because it's the whole that makes for arrogance) . Still from the Inquisition:

arquisition. 1 5. 23. 67

(a) 1235: the pope appoints as inquisitor-general of the kingdom (Languedoc not included) Robert Ie Bougre (because he had been a Cathar) : Robert had been one of the Perfects and one of the doctors of the sect; he could identify heretics from the slightest clue; pitiless in repression: burning and burying alive; (b) Nicola Remi or Remig­ ius, inquisitor for the Nancy region: pitiless man, unbridled hunt, had more than eight hundred magicians or sorceresses burned;45 but then confessed that he himself had served the devil from the time of his adolescence.

1 61

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

7. Writing

Can writing be arrogant? My immediate (partial) answer is: Writ­ ing is the very discourse that unfailingly baffles the arrogance of discourse. ---'i> I have not (or not yet) the conceptual means to theo­ rize this position (that would suppose a "what is writing? " ) . I only indicate the limits between which the question moves: Always go back to (or start off from) the assertive nature of language (there is one nature of language: assertion ) : ad-sera, to attach to, to annex to, to pull toward oneself (d. adrago) : in its primal state, that is, without corrective operators, language af­ firms (d. " Affirmation " ) -- this assertion is indelible: the verbal means to attenuate, to efface it, are pitiful ---'i> well put, but upside down, by Fichte . . . " Often and in every manner, I have been told to be more modest; I have been advised always to say: that's my opinion; that's the point of view I have on the subject. < . . . > I see 1.

Fichte, 323

Assertion

this so-called modesty as the greatest impudence; it's a horrible arrogance pathetic attempt to cheat: arrogance is ingrained in language and "liberal" measures (opera­ tors, precautions, attenuations, etc.) are not going to suffice to free language of its arrogance. 2. The only dialectical way to counter arrogance, and here, pre­ cisely, passage from discourse to Writing, birth of Writing, it's to take on the arrogance of language as a specific lure: neither an indi­ vidual lure (that of the subject who says " in my humble opinion" ), nor a referential lure (science-truth) , but the lure of writing insofar as it is the origin of its own violence instead of receiving it by proxy from another power ---'i> to write = to practice a violence of speech (speech as violence, no matter what happens) instead of a violence

Provocation

Cioran, 47

of thought: violence of the sentence as long as it knows that it is a sentence -;. it's the reason I can say, paradoxically, that there are provocative writings (Maistre) or vociferous ones (Bloy) but that there aren't arrogant ones: arrogance is stuck in the "natural," the " self-righteous " , the "we are right" '" assertive, excessive theater of a mad hypothesis (de Maistre): this is Writing. The writer: a

Draufganger {daredevil}, someone carried away, a breakneck,47 but not arrogant -;. a drive48 that generates a stubbornness in practice, not in conviction, in idea: to believe in the importance of what one 1 62

5E5510N

0 F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

writes, not of what one thinks but persistence of a practice

=

-'>

therefore: not loyalty to the idea,

what the writer calls "working" (in

his intransitive use of the verb): word of every writer

Chaix-Ruy, 6

=

the last word

of Michelet at Hyeres before dying: Laboremus49 (no mystique of work ", lucid submission to the persistence of language) .

Panorama Panorama:50 Greek: to see everything, through the intermediation of English.51 But in order to exploit the word, at least in our fash­

Panorama

ion, we must (as always) set it into a paradigm: panorama/pan­

Panopticon

opticon (building constructed in a way that allows one to take in the whole interior with a single glance) -;. panopticon: endoscopic device: presupposes the existence of an interior to be discovered, of an envelope (the walls) to be pierced: vital metaphor

=

the shell that

needs to be cracked in order to access the core '" panorama: opens onto a world without interior: says that the world is nothing but surfaces, volumes, planes, and not depth: nothing but an extension, an epiphany (epiphaneia52

=

surface) ('" apical vision of the devil,

from an airplane: to raise the roofs, to dive into the bedrooms, to see what people inside are doing: Asmodeus, Lesage:53 from the standpoint of the vital metaphor, it's the exact opposite of the pan­ orama) . Starting with this distinction, we'll isolate a few facets of the panoramic position insofar as it is on the side of the Neutral ( = insofar as it is a position that baffles paradigms and that exerts a power of appeasement).54

1 . Suppression of Time: Dreams One thing known about dreams is that they contract time. Quincey, xii

De Quincey's remark: very brief outer shock55

-'>

a whole scene

lodges in it. Example of the sleeper: the curtain rod of his bed falls on him and wakes him. Now, however brief, the contact between this cold bar and his neck supplies an entire dream: the whole un­ folding of the French Revolution from the Estates General up to the Terror: condemned by the revolutionary court, guillotine, head locked in, blade. Cf. episode from the Mahabharata based on the same type of dream: during the time of a flash of lightning, a whole metaphysical system unfolds in the mind of Arjuna56 panorama of time 1 63

-'>

-'>

It's like a

panorama: contraction of time down to its

S E S S I O N 0 F M AY 2 0 . 1 9 7 8

erasure: one minute of panorama powerful meditation on a de­ tailed time -- transposition or exchange between space and time. =

2. Suppression of Suffering: H alcyonian Calm

394

De Quincey: vision under opium (Everton hill, between Liverpool and the sea) : . . . o n a summer night-when I have been seated at an open window, from which I could overlook the sea at a mile below me, and could at the same time command a view of some great town standing on a different radius of my circular prospect, but at nearly the same distance-that from sunset to sunrise, all through the hours of night, I have continued motionless, as if frozen without consciousness of myself as of an object anywise distinct from the multiform scene which I contemplated from above. < . . . > The town of Liverpool rep­ resented the earth, with its sorrows and its graves left behind, yet not out of sight, nor wholly forgotten. The ocean, in ev­ erlasting but gentle agitation, yet brooded over by dove-like calm {Descreux, the French translator, renders "dove-like calm" as "calme alcyonien" (halcyonian calm)}, might not unfitly typify the mind, and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite were granted from the secret burdens of the heart,-some sabbath of repose, some resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm; tranquillity that seemed not product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.57

Drug

Panorama (a) of course, here, under the influence of opium, but all the same, generates an exemplary drug effect; it fascinates, anes­ thetizes suffering, suppresses contradictions, induces a feeling of supreme understanding, a kind of supernatural state of awareness (perhaps two opposed myths of intelligence: [r] analytical intelli­ gence, which doesn't see the whole but " scratches out" the details, the difficulties little by little: the intelligence of the mole ;" [2] pan­ oramic intelligence, which resolves, overcomes the details/whole contradiction: it sees all the details, but in one single movement, one single time (see above) -- sharp (lucid) ;" sovereign, generous.

1 64

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

(b) De Quincey 1 7 8 5-1 8 59 . Confessions of an Opium Eater, 1 8 2 1 . Romantic sensibility at its fullest

�

panorama: romantic theme or

even reality: to be studied from this angle; for example: importance

Romantic

of the historical tableau for Michelet: intellective panorama: stasis of History that freezes under the fascinated gaze of the historian (panorama

=

drug of consciousness, consciousness as drug) '" here:

northern romanticism (Germany, England): themes or rather (be­ cause theme: unsatisfactory, banal, inactive word) generators, trig­ gers of romantic vision: night, sea (

=

in Hugo) . But above all what

seems important to me in this text ( pleases me: perhaps the single =

and secret reason I cited it and commented on it) the halcyonian calm (twice in the text) :58 Halcyon, legendary bird builds its nest =

only on a calm sea (happy forecast); halcyonian days

=

the seven

days that precede and the seven days that follow the winter solstice, during which it is said that the halcyon builds its nest and the sea is calm

->-

very beautiful image (penetrating, which stays with you ) :

birth o n sea, from sea (mythical theme) , conflation o f origin and water ( Thalassa, by Ferenczi),59 and above all less mythic and more synesthetic: the rocking calm, the panorama-rhythm-rumor � we could speak of a kind of halcyonian function of the panorama (view +

1 65

rhythm) .

S E S S I O N 0 F M AY 2 0 , 1 9 7 8

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

Supplement VIII The parable from the Gospel is in Luke, chapter XlV I Three supplements for the figure "Panorama ": I contrasted two types of vision: the panoramic (wide, deep: everything in front of oneself) and the apical (plunging, asmodian view). Someone rightly brought to my attention that a third vision, different, and contrasted, could be added: that of perspective. Huge file, true pie, or maybe cream pie of which art historians all claim a piece. From our point of view, which is that of a synesthesia of visions, only this: perspective vision, vision of ratio, of a mimetic protocol (historical and local protocol) : under the pressure of mi­ mesis, not of eros (light body). 2. I spoke in passing of two intelligences: the analytic and the panoramic. Now, this week, read by chance another classification: Gilbert Durand:2 anthropological field of the imaginary: (a) Schizo­ morphic structures (heterogenizing): principles of exclusion, of contradiction, of identity --;> "to distinguish ": clear-cut straightness. (b) Mystical structures (homogenizing): principles of analogies, of similitudes --;> "to confuse. " (c) Synthetic structures: antagonisms that dialectize each other, contradictions disappear: "connect": oxymoronic mode of the coincidentia oppositorum: probably the panoramic vision. 3 . Why a figure "Panorama"? Bayonne.3 Panoramic setting: Ter­ race with banquet in bird's-eye view, ditches, gardens, woman wash­ ing her feet. Amazingly euphoric feeling of levitation, ascensional hap­ piness (very BachelardianJ4 --;> quest for the painting. Impossible to refind it, to situate it (incompetence) --;> then one day, in Munich, at the museum, fall on it: Suzannah and the Elders by Aldorfer (sixteenth century), pupil of DiirerS --;> idea for a novel: search for a painting. I.

Brulotte, p. 8

Panorama (Conti n u ed) 3 . Sovere i g n Memory

I am going to tie up the themes (the threads ) : memory/death. 1 66

I.

De Quincey still. (It's halcyonian that unleashed the figure) : a

child, a relative of De Quincey, fell into a river; saved in extremis: "saw in a moment her whole life, clothed in its forgotten incidents,

435

arrayed before her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultane­

Memory of the dying

ously; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for compre­ hending the whole and every part"; and: "the solemn apocalypse of the entire past life " 6 � well-known legend: vision, total memory of the dying 2.

=

last and solemn panorama.

Probably Christian theme. Very pure version (if not literal)

in Boehme: last memory: time when consciousness recaptures the

Boehme, 235

whole life and judges it

=

Purgatory for Boehme: when soul sepa­

rates from the physical body, it encounters an image of its whole life in the ether, surrounded by the image of all its acts.7 If such a view does not incite him to contrition, the individual is good for hell

Purgatory

�

role of Purgatory: to give man time for a pause; because in

earthly life, he is swept by time.

�

Oh well, too bad, I am afraid I

will go to hell; for it seems to me that, in this solemn moment of the last memory, I would try to wrap myself, as though with a warmth, with everything good of my life: that's to say, all the good others will have woven into my life: enwrapping myself with the memory of all the things for which one has been loved and which one didn't even know about: as if, at that very moment, I would be aware of all the good about me instead of all the bad. ( � Perhaps-why not?-a secular and pathetic substitute for such a memory: the ju­ bilees, the honors

�

to be indulgent, in light of this, to those who

don't refuse them.) 3.

This total memory is final (legendary) : that which finally re­

veals to the human subject his unity, or a unity

�

Baudelairean

Baudelaire, 1 59

theme: Baudelaire takes up De Quincey: "However uncoordinated

Unity

a life may be, the beneficent unity will not be any the worse for it. If it were possible simultaneously to reawaken all the echoes of the memory, they would form a concert-perhaps pleasant, perhaps painful, but in any case logical, and without dissonance. Often, people who have been caught in an unexpected accident, and find themselves in danger of death by drowning, have seen the whole drama of their past lives light up within their brains.




In grave circumstances, perhaps at the time of death, and generally in the course of the intense excitement brought on by opium, the whole immense and complicated palimpsest of the memory unrolls in a single SWOOp" 8

�

image of the palimpsest: interesting, because

it's an image of complexity but not of depth strictly speaking: the multiple remains a question of surfaces: the image of the palimpsest 1 67

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

Palimpsest Baudelaire, 1 60

is thus superior to that of the ( secret) " bedrooms "-perhaps too bad that it wasn't the root image that was first used to speak about the unconscious. Well put by Baudelaire in this beautiful (wrench­ ing) notation: " But the deep, deep tragedies of infancy, as when the child's hands were unlinked forever from his mother's neck, or his lips forever from his sister's kisses, these remain forever hidden, underneath the other legends of the palimpsest. " 9 � " deep, " " hid­ den," shouldn't be misleading: the palimpsest reads from a single surface like a panorama whose planes are stacked up: without sub­ stitutes, without masks, and, one could say: without symptoms. 4. Personal notation: "extremely tenuous bits from memories of first childhood (in Marrac) come back to me from time to time, but vivid, scarcely nameable. " 10 � It's as if, nearing old age, the memory of bygone things, not of recent ones (known law of am­ nesia) , were extending its reach -.. d. assumption of the whole of a life into the panoramic vision of the dying -.. Memento mori = I remember � remember to die remember that you have lived (not: that you have finished living, but: that it is absolutely real that you did live) . =

4 . U bi q u i place

It would be plausible to show the link that probably connects pan­ orama and levitation: sovereignty, euphoria, powerful lightness � levitation: classic file. Alchemy: philosopher's stone: held in the palm, it makes one invisible. "If one sews it into a fine linen and if one wears this linen wrapped tight around the body, so as to heat the Stone well, one can rise up into the air as high as one wants. To

Levitation

H utin, 88

Freud. 76

descend, it's enough to unwrap the linen slightly" l l (a truly private airplane, with my body working as fuselage) -;. Klossowski: Ba­ phomet,12 and above all Freud: Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood: "The wish to be able to fly is to be understood as nothing else than a longing to be capable of sexual performance. This is an early infantile wish. " 13 (Leonardo, the flying machines.) Important file: but I give up this digression, to say the following (which is more " structural " ) : Maistre: "There is nothing but violence in the universe; but we are spoiled by modern philosophy, which says that everything is good, even though evil has dirtied everything, and though in a deeply true

12

sense everything is evil, since nothing is in its place . " 14 � Dysphoria: feeling that things are not in their place: contrary feeling: everything

Ubiquiplace 1 68

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 . 1 9 7 8

is in place: even a panorama of disorder (of chaos) is not dysphoric (since it is a spectacle seized by an external subject)

�

or rather pan­

orama: the "right place" (Sitio, preferandum) is everywhere: the very contrary of the anxiety-producing arena of the little white mouse.

Sitio: becomes a something like a joker-place that works as the "right place" at no matter what point of the panorama. IS

Kairos Ho kairos

=

right, appropriate measure. Appropriate, timely mo­

ment, opportunity

-';>

"It is time, it's the moment." Timeliness, op­

portunity, convenience; season; vital point of the body, essential organ. Ho kairos: the occasion (adjective: kairios) . The idea is useful to signal the asystematic character o f the Neutral: �

its relation to occasion, contingency, conjuncture, extemporizing.

1 . Sophist Kairos and Skeptical Kairos Sophists and Skeptics: rather incompatible. We have seen Eurylo­ chus swimming across the Alpheus to escape the " boredom" of Sophists' discourses. However, both: a certain idea of kairos. We must nuance it:

a. Sophists

Sophistes. 57. 1 82. 249.

Sophistic word. Kairos: opportunity

251

skill: instinct, subtle sense of touch, psychological sense for seiz­

=

bottom line of Sophistic

ing which words and which attitudes are called for by the moment -';>

mobilistic conception that transforms the man of science into a

man of art. Thus: Protagoras demonstrated the power of timeliness:

dunamis kairou. He claimed that he possessed total knowledge and was able to speak relevantly of anything whateverl6 (to kairo) -';> an art of the Opportune Instant: kairou chronou tichneY Told about someone trying to describe the " virtues" of the man who has gone through psychoanalysis: "His speech falls at the right moment. " b. Skeptics

Totally different is Skeptic's kairos.

-';>

The Skeptic is free to renounce

his Skepticism at every moment, without his doing so contradicting Kojeve. 27

what he used to say when he was speaking "Skeptically": "He would 1 69

S E S S I O N 0 F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

contradict himself, however, if he argued that something must be said < . . . > by necessity, that is, everywhere and always, even if this were limited to things said by himself in the course of his (discursive) life. This is the reason why authentic Skepticism appears only in certain places and at certain times but can't triumph everywhere and always. < . . > Skepticism can only become a permanent and universal dis­ cursive attitude at the cost of turning itself into Dogmatism. " 1 8 � Curiously, d. Pascal, fascinated by Pyrrhonism. Pensees, fragment 1 5 9 : "We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. " 19 ( " where to" points toward the kairos). .

c. The Two Kairos

Both cases are about a modification of the temporality of discourse: normal, rhetorical temporality: heavy, coated, compacted temporal­ ity, logical consistency of the " development" : conflation of conse­ cution and consequence: d. story, narration, history '" light, mobile, inflectional, fragmental, hole-filled temporality. However: a. Temporality of the Sophist discourse by jolts, zigzags, catches: hunting for the "right moment. " The tension thus is continuous, lengthy lookout ...... discourse of mastery: the "right moment" weapon of power: today we would say: political swell. b. Temporality of the Skeptic discourse ( behavior) : there are times to mark time: times of the tacet,20 of the blank � it is all about undoing the time of the system, about putting moments of flight in it, about preventing the system from taking. The virtual =

system of Skepticism, if it could manage never to stop uttering con­ tingency (conjuncture), would be the device for undoing mastery, for a-power.

2 . Val i d ity and Truth

Either Sophist or Skeptic, kairos promoted, exalted, recognized­ implies a philosophy for which Truth is not the ultimate instance � Hegel correctly located the stakes of contingency, in that sense his description is good; we can endorse it; the difference, however, comes at the following step, when we give a positive value precisely -

to what has a negative one in Hegel: Hegel's description of the Skeptic in his relation to kairos (contingency) : "If to Skepticism existence was only a manifestation or

Hegel. 342

1 70

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 . 1 9 7 8

conception, it was yet esteemed by it as that in respect to which the Skeptics directed their conduct, both in what they did, and what they left undone. < . . . > The Skeptics themselves said on the subject: 'We undoubtedly direct our conduct in accordance with a reason which, in conformity with sensuous phenomena, teaches us to live conform­ ably to the customs and laws of our country , and in consonance with recognized institutions and personal affections. ' But for them this has only the significance of a subjective certainty and conviction, and not the value of an absolute truth. "22 Skeptic: acts according to laws that don't have truth value to his eyes: his consciousness is a completely empirical existence; his reality self-identity

371

=

=

total contingency; his

something completely empty: "As this simplicity, and

at the same time pure confusion, Skepticism is in fact the wholly self-abrogating contradiction. "23 And this as well, which is quite clear: "To the Skeptics sensuous existence undoubtedly holds good {a

336

certes validite} as phenomenal in so far as the regulation of ordinary conduct is concerned, but not in as far as it is held to be the truth {ve­

rite} "24 -> (There would thus be a sensitivity to validity rather than truth; we owe structuralism to this sensitivity: analysis of the rules of

Structuralism

validity of meaning, of discourse (for example, of narrative), not of their truth metadiscourse of validity: logic, linguistics.) =

Important distinction if we want to understand how the Skeptic (and thus, in a certain way, the Neutral)-but of course the em­ pirical, nondogmatic Skeptic-contrary to the doxa that commonly assimilates Skepticism and death, ends up being uninterruptedly ute as a guid e

on the side of life, through the kairos. Pyrrho: "He took life as a

Sceptiques, 25

guide: akolouthos den kai to bio, going out of his way for nothing, taking no precaution < . . . > "25

-;>

" Life," thus, flowering of the phe­

nomenal, of the kairos, vouches for the system-d. Tao ( Grenier) :

lao, Gre ni e r, 1 5

"The phenomenal exists. Lao-tzu doesn't put the world in doubt (as Indian philosophers do) . Here, no doctrine of illusion, or of ig­ norance, neither Maya nor Avidya. Phenomena exist, at least in so far as phenomena < . . . > however, the phenomenal being, which is a true being, flows from nonbeing" !26

3. Ambivalence of the Kairos Contingency, as a realm, is ambivalent: I . Kairos: a kind of hunger for contingency, from kairos to kai­ ros: can be the expression of a "void," in its desolation, idleness,

171

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

cowardice, worldliness, all colored with a nuance of self-derision. Text to read, to reread within this perspective: Gide's Marshlands ( r 89 5 ) kind of Treatise on contingency;27 it has, moreover, been connected to eleatism (Zeno of Elea) . I mention " derision" as an endoxal image, without judging, because "worldliness," which is a total submission to the sweep of kairos, can also take on a val­ ue of radicality: to connect with what Baudelaire says about H: it causes "an intensification of one's personality, as well as a very keen awareness of events and settings " :28 worldliness has the effect of a drug. ---0> Radical, too, because it can have the value of: "Nothing to

Marshlands

=

Baudelaire, 1 7

say (to write) " meaning of Marshlands. Now, nothing says (that's, I believe, one of the stands of the Neutral) that writing is a supreme good-not to mention the fact that some types of worldliness can take the form of writing:29 in Proust, a whole work (Things past { Temps perdu } ) is needed for worldliness to be outstripped and out­ classed by writing: it's a revelation that is only brought about at the very end: writing drives out worldliness (the kairos), but over the course of a long initiation, of a drama complete with episodes. 2. On the other side ( but it is not strictly speaking the opposite) : kairos, contingency, a n exalted image o f the Neutral a s nonsystem, as nonlaw, or art of the nonlaw, of the nonsystem ---0> the neutral stage of the kairos is what prevents systematization from reaching =

the contingent, what prevents the becoming system, the becoming arrogant of worldliness ---0> one could say: the Neutral listens to con­ tingency, it doesn't submit to it30 ---0> thus there can be an ultimate reversal of the kairos: the "It's time" turning into "It's no longer time" ---0> Thales (one of the seven wise men): "The story is told that, when his mother tried to force him to marry, he replied it was too soon, and when she pressed him again later in life, he replied that

Diogenes Laertius, 1 :27

it was too late. "31 ---0> Perfect dodge of the system: the kairos itself doesn't found a system (as it does with the Sophists ) . Even more so with the object it blurs: no system of marriage or celibacy, even personal (very difficult to reach that point, and especially to make it understood).

4 . T h e Satori

The kairos = an energetic element, an energetic time: the moment as such insofar as it produces something, a changeover: it's a force ---0> nontactical kairos (not meant to trap the other but rather inte­ riorized) . 1 72

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

a . I n the Field of Rationality, of Empereia

Compo animal. 232

Sudden discovery of the answer to a problem ( intelligence): insight32 (

=

=

characteristic of

" intuition" ) . Classic example of insight­

minor of course!-puzzle of the nine points: to use four straight lines to link them without raising the pen from the paper:33 4_*-_--.,-3

o 2

Insight to extend outside the square: insight it's allowed. Lack of insight to miss the kairos: would come from an inter­ nal prohibition. To be intelligent ethical audacity? Insight (ratio­ =

=

=

=

nal)

=

what one doesn't think of (important for what will follow

concerning the satori, and perhaps the Neutral)

=

what is not part

of an expected logical continuity, of an endoxal image of causal­ ity. Well recalled by Bacon: idea that great inventions don't result from an improvement of known things but from a mutation, from an unheard-of, heterogeneous thing. Example: silk (I quote Bacon because the text is beautiful) : " So, if before the discovery of silk

Organum. I. par. 1 09

thread any one had observed, 'that a species of thread had been discovered fit for dresses and furniture, far surpassing the thread of worsted or flax in fineness,' men would have begun to imagine something about Chinese plants, or the fine hair of some animals, or the feathers or down of birds, but certainly would never have had an idea of its being spun by a small worm, in so copious a man­ ner, and renewed annually. "34 b . Outside the Field

of Rationality

A burst of brilliance of the kairos, of the moment in its pure status of exception, its absolute power of mutation

=

the satori (Zen word) .

Perhaps something like a Western example o f satori: Proust's madeleine or, rather, the paving stones, the clinking, and the nap­ kin: "Just as, at the moment when 1 tasted the madeleine, all anxi­

Blanchot. 1 4

ety about the future, all intellectual doubts had disappeared. "35 The Zen satori escapes the competence of language, thus of definition, and almost that of description; thus, literally, untranslatable, since 1 73

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 . 1 9 7 8

otherwise we would encounter Christian language: conversion, illu­ mination, whereas the satori is not the descent in oneself of a truth, of a god, but rather a sudden opening into the void: " illumination" doesn't work because satori doesn't enlighten anything ---.. contra­ diction: clears up doubt but not to the benefit of a certainty. Satori: a kind of mental catastrophe that occurs in a single blow -i> experi­ enced by Buddha under the Bodhi tree = nirvana brought about in the course of earthly life.36

Suzuki, 1 :21 5, 2 1 7

Accounts of satori: extremely rare (which is something frustrat­ ing, by the way). Here, however, Hakouin's satori (modern Zen, eighteenth-century Japan): Suddenly, tremendous intellectual focus: "I felt as if freezing in an ice-field extending thousand of miles, and within myself there was a sense of utmost transparency" 37-that re­ minds me of Friedrich's painting The Wreck of the Hope, Prisoner of Ice, 1 8 2 1 , Hamburg38 ---.. the intense desolation of this painting produces a kind of catastrophe, of agony (primitive agony)39 in me (absolute, eternal abandonment, the loss of the Mother); but per­ haps the satori is nothing but the reverse (or the right side) of this catastrophe. In any case, among us, satori: at most brief glimmers

1 :238

from the side of romanticism.40 In an obviously degraded fashion, it is possible to conceive of some kind of aesthetic satori (one producing an aesthetic effect) . Skeptics: aim of skepsis ( "intense observation" ) :41 ataraxia (d. apathy, Wou-wei) :42 "they found that quietude {ataraxie}, as if by chance, followed upon the suspension of judgment as the shadow follows the body"43 -i> Sextus Empiricus compares such an ataraxia

Hegel, 342

(satori) to the kairos of the painter Apelles: painting a horse and unable to render the lather perfectly, he finally in a rage flung at the picture the sponge on which he wiped the paints off his brush, thus succeeding in producing a faithful image of the lather.44

c. "Ah, This ! "

The key word of satori

=

the exclamation: Ah, this! Suzuki: "The

time will come when your mind will suddenly come to a stop like an old rat who finds himself in a cul-de-sac. Then there will be a plunging into the unknown with the cry: 'Ah, this ! ">45 -i> The sa­ tori breaks with the common view that acclimates, tames the event by making it enter into a causality, a generality, which reduces the incomparable to the comparable: Discourse of popular wisdom (proverbs) and of science: what happens to you is not unique, it has always been like that: blatant in the case of mourning (because a 1 74

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

well-intentioned wisdom): "You will see, it's always like that: your mourning will follow the classic itinerary" (d. Freud)

-7

To con­

trast two formulae however close, but to contrast them fiercely:

" That's how it is ! " /

"Ah, this !

Gregariousness

"Tat"

Laws of species Fatality

Such

=

thus46

Absolute of contingency

Causality Generality of

Kairos

language Science

Satori

Proverbs etc.

5.

The Perishable

One can displace the notion of kairos a bit, keeping its meaning as "right moment" but letting its perishable character appear within this "right moment" : moment that passes and the perishable qual­ ity of which is accepted, wanted

-7

Neutral: not only recognizes

the perishable but gives it an active value: it's not "resignation" but rather "consecration. " In this way, supposing that this course is a kairos (something timely), it would imply that one accept its "fragility, " its "perishability, " its contingency, its " one time only and it's finished . " Pushed to the limit, the course is " extemporized" (prepared and delivered on the spot): it's not a "monument" -;. the microphones, the notes, even a possible publication are ines­ sential outgrowths, that's to say: there is no reason to censure them, but they are not part of the time of the course:47 d. the clock that they stop in the Chamber of Representatives48 that which is neither affirmed nor prohibited

-7

-7 =

parentheses:

on the order of the

"why?/why not?"

Wou-wei 1 . The Will-to-Live At the faraway origin of this course ( or at least one of its origins, because origins are unsortable: stability of the matter of writing: 1 75

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

Will-to-live

awesome. I n one sense, the course: a remake o f Writing Degree Zero )-again, at one of its origins: struck by the will-to-live of cer­ tain fictional characters: first Charlus (will-to-live, will-to-desire, implacable will-to-possess, all the way to madness, all the way to death) , then strong women: Mme Verdurin, Mme Josserand (Pot­

Bouille)Y ---.. I used t o think, thinking o f other people, those around me: basically, all "psychology, " description, knowledge, evaluation of the other comes down to: what of his will-to-live ? What of its style, its quality? How come I can stand the other's will-to-live ? Would I have been able to live with Charlus? with Mme Verdurin? This: differential, because obvious that everyone has a will-to-live and that therefore, since we have friends, we put up with certain wills­ to-live, and conversely they put up with ours.

2. Wou-wei

Maspero, 314

Paradigm

Not to direct

Hence we encounter the fundamental idea of the Tao: the nonac­ tion, the Wou-wei. The Wou-wei: obviously, it's not the opposite of the will-to­ live: it's not a will-to-die: it's what baffles, dodges, disorients the will of life. It's therefore, structurally, a Neutral: what baffles the paradigm. In the Tao, Wou-wei: sometimes people say: what privileges the "spontaneous" to the detriment of the "voluntary. " True: exemp­ tion of the will. But " spontaneous" is not good: for us, wild, anti­ intellectualist, driven connotation. Wou-wei: not to direct, not to aim one's strength, to leave it marking time in place. For example: the Melting of Breath (iianqi) is superior to the Control of Breath

(xingqui).50 Or: not to use one's strength: for example, not to use one's intelligence, one's wisdom, one's knowledge, or to use it to the minimum, within the limits of a pure concern for protection, for Diogenes Laertius, 2:5 1 9

prudence. Cf. Pyrrho: " [the Skeptic] will be able so to live as to sus­ pend his judgment in cases where it is a question of arriving at the truth, but not in matters of life and the taking of precautions. "51 The profound attitude of Tao Wou-wei not to choose. Now there are two " not to chooses " : a panicked, rattled, ashamed, scolded " don't choose" .. a calm, I would say, self-assured " don't choose. " That one: extremely difficult, because it bucks opinion, harms the imago ---.. one must therefore willfully take responsibil­ ity for it ---.. Tao aware of the difficulty: a poem (Tao + Zen) says: =

Not to choose

Watts, 88

I "The perfect Tao is without difficulty. / Save that it avoids picking 1 76

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

and choosing. "52 This nonchoice i s not a sublimating abstinence, an askesis, a spirituality: "Don't be antagonistic to the world of the senses . " The paradox ( for us Westerners) of the Wou-wei shouldn't be missed: powerful subversion of all our moral values, and notably of the "progressive" ones, in a saying such as: "The wise person does not strive" ( always recall that it is about a pagan thought: the absence of struggle does not set itself down as a gain of heaven), or another form, a socialized one, of the paradox. Leang Li ( Grenier) : "He was ready to follow everything.


For

him everything was in destruction, everything was in construc­ tion. That's what one calls tranquility in disorder. Tranquility in disorder means perfection. "53

3. Figu res of the West Our whole West: moral ideology of the will, of willing (to pos­ sess, to dominate, to live, to impose one's truth, etc. ) . West: land of proselytism

---

therefore, obvious that the figures of the Wou-wei

are rare and above all partial in the West (but were there a Tao wise man, one wouldn't know of him by definition): only moments, ten­ dencies, aspects of some individuals. I will cite, at random from my readings, three figures of the Wou-wei (of the Neutral) , not accord­ ing to the individual himself but according to what he says or what one says of him: his "moment, " his individuation, his kairos.

a. Leonardo da Vinci Accord ing to Freud

"A certain inactivity and indifference seemed obvious in him. At

lieud, Leonardo, 1 8

a time when everyone was trying to gain the widest scope for his activity-a goal unattainable without the development of energetic aggressiveness towards other people-Leonardo was notable for his quiet peaceableness and his avoidance of all antagonism and controversy. He was gentle and kindly to everyone. " 54 Notice (this is important, to nuance the Wou-wei with regard to sublimation): Leonardo liked to follow condemned men brought to death so as to study their features racked by anguish and to reproduce these in his notebook; invented as well cruel offensive weapons for Cesare Borgia (he served Cesare as chief military engineer)

=

what Freud

called Leonardo's " feminine sensibility. " Let's say that, according to the Tao, Leonardo, although participant in the Wou-wei, did not abstain from the sensory world! 1 77

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

b. Prince Andrei

Figure coming from War and Peace. Andrei travels, at springtime: View of an oak: "A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but

Tolstoy, 459

mournfully pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything anew-but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desir­ ing anything. " 55 Notice, which is normal in the Tolstoyan, Western universe, saturated by Christianity: Wou-wei, tied to " disenchant­ ment, " to melancholy: slightly masochistic tonality. c. J o h n Cage

We know of the relation between Cage and the Orient, especially Zen (more than Tao), the influence of Suzuki.56 Whence this dialogue with his interviewer, Daniel Charles: "Your attitude is always one of acceptance. -1 try never to refuse anything. -What you refuse to do is to be exclusive, that is to want something. -1 can want something,

Cage, 54

but only if 1 find myself in a set of circumstances where nothing 1 decide seems to me to concern others . . . . When 1 eat in a restaurant, 1 can choose chicken instead of steak, without really bothering any­ one! "57 (1 fully agree: however, one has to understand that Cage's declaration, his "statement" is only possible, in its exemplary matte­ ness, out of a certain empiricism-which we would qualify, perhaps too easily, as American) � in fact: empiricism what doesn't let itself be burdened with meanings, interpretations = ideally non-neurotic, or even nonparanoid field .. for the chicken or the steak of the other

ct. Ownership?

=

could very well induce me to interpret him, to judge him, to grasp him in the vertigo (for want of a brake) of the I like/I don't like: 1 am forced to tolerate the other's taste, insofar as it returns me to what's unshareable in his body-who could say that we really tolerate the other's diet? For example: I'm annoyed by the way this young wom­ an, at the Flore, eats her potatoes by pushing her mouthful onto her fork with her knife, with a gourme ( o' gourmand) gesture of phony delicacy, keeping her little mouth firmly closed. --';> 1 am then con­ strained to liberalism, which is a cheap, not very sturdy Wou-wei. 4. The Sacred

Tao is always surprising: it abruptly connects the Wou-wei to an unexpected notion: the sacred-but in a rather disrespectful man1 78

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F M AY 2 7 . 1 9 7 8

nero One very individualist and pessimistic Taoist, Yang-tzu, advises i er, 1 08

rules of conduct (according to the Wou-wei): "Do nothing evil, for fear of being punished; do nothing good, for fear, having acquired a good reputation, of being charged with time-consuming and dan­ gerous functions.


Act as if you were good at nothing."58 . . .

Cf. archaic Greek mentality: phthonos, jealousy of the gods. A too obvious success, especially if one shows it off � causes a supernatu­ ral danger (Dodds).59 (And here very paradoxically the theme of the sacred appears: ) "The sacred oak was felled by the ax, because it wasn't good for anything; it succeeded in being useless, which for it was the greatest usefulness. " 60 Grenier, Tao: "In producing forests, the mountain attracts those who will level them. In letting its grease drip, the roast activates the fire that grills it. The cinnamon tree is felled because its bark is a prized spice. One cuts the varnish tree to steal its precious sap. Almost all men imagine that to be judged good at something is a good thing. In reality, it's to be judged untalented at everything that is an advantage. " 6 1 Wonderful ! The founding stage of the sacred: to be good for noth­ ing! The only danger is that the sacred is not eternal: there can be so­ cieties where it becomes immoral to do nothing and where the useless and sacred oaks are cut down. The Tao ideal would be to be sacred without it being shown: contradiction in terms: an invisible Wou­

wei, which is to say one cheated from the very moment it is uttered. 5.

To Abstain from

Wou-wei: encounters abstinence, which is somehow its founding act (if one can say so about a privative act). But (perhaps) one shouldn't reduce the "to abstain from" to a banal image of the banal Neutral. It's a zero degree available to many signifieds. For example, three abstinences:

a. Dietary Self-denial

I have already spoken many times, and as early as last year, of the era, 298

Tao mode of "to abstain from. " You recall the Tao body:62 within, the Three Worms (or the Three Corpses)

�:

the Old-Blue (head),

the White-Maiden (chest), the Bloody-Corpse (lower body) are the causes of decay and death, because want to be freed, and for that it's necessary for their host to die first. The adept must therefore rid himself of them as fast as possible: for that, he must cut out cereals 1 79

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

(on which the three worms feed) abstinence from cereals (the five cereals: rice, millet, wheat, oats, beans) 6 3 � file on dietary absti­ nence: religious (and sometimes magical) practice of the fast: whole books wouldn't be enough to exhaust it! Only one suggestion: that, in the secular modern world, a practice has taken over the place of fasting: no longer claiming religious alibi (purification, penitence) but scientistic, rational, medical, hygienic ones: the slimming diet (I already emphasized, in a long-ago seminar, the close connection between cures and religion)64 ---;. the three worms = fat: to get rid of it, one "cuts off grain" : one abstains precisely from "cereals, " that's to say, from carbohydrates, rich in calories + even the idea (it's my own) that those who live long are thin: fat people die young. All that sketches a mythical field: to live thin (in an abstinence of calo­ ries) to live the Neutral (merrily) . =

=

b . Pathetic Abstinence

Abstinence: can be swept up in an imaginary flagration: the radical, total decision to abstain (from the world) inflames the subject (par­ anoid outburst) : Rousseau (First Walk) : he decides to "abstain," to practice the Wou-wei, to do the do-nothing, in order to "cancel himself" : "My heart has been purified in the forge of adversity. < . . . > 1 have no more reason to praise than to blame myself: 1 am

Rousseau, 6

henceforth nothing among men, and that is all 1 can be, no lon­ ger having any real relations or true society with them. No longer able to do any good which does not turn to evil, no longer able to act without harming another or myself, to abstain has become my sole duty and 1 fulfill it as much as it is in me to do SO" 6 5 � The "to abstain " : minimal response to the trap, to being cornered, to the double bind:66 like the animal that shrinks, that " blends" itself into (operation of the Neutral) to escape predators ---;. imaginary? Yes, because what Rousseau wants, is to escape from images (of himself) that make him suffer so much (at least he thinks so) , is to cancel himself as a source of images: what he is looking for is some respite from the imaginary (which can be the very metaphor of the Neutral) .

c. Pyrrhoni a n Abstinence

To abstain from choosing an idea, a "position, " a " belief" : phil­ osophical abstinence: away from the dogmatic. � Montaigne, in I 5 76 (forty-two years old) had a medal struck, with a scale on 1 80

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 . 1 9 7 8

one side and a Pyrrhonian motto on the other: "I abstain."

�

I

have often underscored not the affinity but the relation of recipro­ cal temptation that ties Pyrrhonism and the Neutral

--7

here, one

should carefully consult Montaigne: his life and his work, to spot from what or where he did not abstain (because he was a man very engaged with his time and publicly engaged): that is to say, not to revise but to refine the Sartrean doctrine of commitment, handled for twenty years by intellectuals, a bit brutally.

1 81

S E S S I O N O F M AY 2 7 , 1 9 7 8

SESSION OF JUNE 3, 1 9781

Wou- wei (Contin ued) 6. Apathy

Another notion, or projected attitude, close to the Wou-wei: apa­ thy. If we consult the social imago, the doxa: apathy = very bad image: counterimage ? Acting up of paradoxical scandal? Always on the side of the Tao and of Pyrrhonism:

a. Tao : I m age of the M i rror

The thematic there is not the same as among us, where mirror, above all a symbol of the ego, of Narcissus. Chang-tzu: "The Perfect uses his mind as a mirror; he doesn't accompany things back when they leave nor does he go toward them when they arrive (as politeness would demand) ; he replies to them without retaining them. It's what makes him able to carry all things without them damaging him. < . . . > To the one who stays within himself without things remaining .in him, things show themselves such as they are; his movement is apa­ thetic as is that of water, his immobility is that of the mirror, his reply is that of the echo. "2 --;> Notice: (a) The Tao mirror doesn't have the passive and mechanical aspect of the Western mirror (mirror that speaks: only in fairytale magic) : it replies (without holding back), it

Grenier, 1 1 2

has the beauty, the mysterious activity of a "calm and clear water. "3 (b) There is action (reply) but not appropriation (will-to-possess) : "He replies t o them without retaining them. "

b. Pyrrho

With the Pyrrhonians, terminology fluctuating between ataraxia and apathy: total respite, complete inertia as possible in an absolute void: the "Pyrrhonian" (and, one more time, the word doesn't refer to the follower of a system, of a dogma, but only to someone who

Kojeve, 64, 1 2

lives like Pyrrho) doesn't do or say anything at all-but it's hard, and harder than ever in the current world!-or rather (more subtle and more provocative) " lets himself be tossed by any waves what­ ever. "4 Indeed, subtle (and interesting) image because the metaphor evokes a contradictory immobility in movement (once more, seren1 82

ity in the midst of disorder) : it's quite literally what's called drift

{derive}, a very current image. c.

Political Apathy

I cite this problem: first because a burning one ( "depoliticization" on the prowl) and further and above all because antique ( Greek) version interesting: see Moses I. Finley, Democracy Ancient and

Modern.5 In ancient Greece (". Pyrrhonism) : apathy condemned by

7, 36

all those who thought the "social " : 1.

Solon: "When there i s civil war in the city, anyone who does

not take up arms on one side or the other shall be deprived of civil rights (atimia) and of all share in the affairs of governement"6

--->0

Pure expression of the anti-Neutral: obligation to choose, no matter what side: the Neutral is more enemy than the enemy: it's the beast to kill, to exclude: tyranny of the paradigm in all its purity. 2.

Pericles (Thucydides,

2,

40,

) "A man may at the same time

2 :

look after his own affairs and those of the state . . . . We consider anyone who does not share in the life of the citizen not as minding his own business but as useless"7 --->o Is the obligation to be political ultimately a Greek legacy? 3.

As always, Aristotle is the one who introduces a measure into

"apathy"/"politicization" : the best democracy: the one in which

itics, VI ( 1 3 1 9 a 1 9-38), 4

the citizen is neither too apathetic nor too participatory; it "will be in a state with a large rural hinterland and a relatively numerous population of farmers and herdsmen, who 'are scattered over the country, do not meet together so often or feel the need of assem­ bling",g

--->0

" the need of assembling" ! What would Aristotle say of

us, who seem so eager to " assemble" (unions, politics, committees, colloquia, councils, etc . ) . In short: antiparticipatory and anti-get­ ting-together. 4.

I think that the theme of tact {discretion} should be part of the

" apathy" file. I quoted the Tao description of the discreet prince:9

nier, 1 44

democracy was defined then by a discretion ( by a lightness) of ad­ ministration, of participation, of responsibility, of collectivity. 5.

Finally, when one speaks of democracy, one must never forget

Spinoza's position, paradoxical enough to be noted ( because of the nauseating banality from which we must awaken the word " de­ mocracy " ) . A commentator says: "The two treatises by Spinoza,

be, 1 1 4

devoted to religious and political problems, are lifted by a demo­ cratic spirit, but deep down the idea of Spinoza is that the demo-

1 83

S E SSI O N 0 F J U N E 3, 1 978

F. Richard, p. 322

eratic ideal best favors the coming of an aristocratic wisdom, based on true knowledge, and accessible only to a few. "10 � The bottom line is that apathy would basically be on the side of "aristocracy " : while (Nietzschean theme) the " gregarious," the "reactive" (weak­ lings, priests, the resentful) would be " activist" ("" active) , partici­ pationist. 6. Finally, a word about "theoretical" apathy, prompted by a slightly terrifying citation. For Lyotard rejects the concept of cri­ tique in the name of "theoretical apathy" ( very close to the Neu­ tral: moreover, I share with Lyotard a taste for the word " drift" {derive}).11 Lyotard receives a nasty rebuttal from the Trotskyist Scalabrino (Marx ou creve, no. 2, pp. 66-67): "For us there is never enough terror in theory, never enough terror to shake it free of its fatuousness, certitudes, apathy. . . . We defend terror in theory because the space subjectivity carves in it for itself could never be large enough . " 12 Interesting (even though terrifying) because of the bell curve it draws.13 =

Theoretical Scientific Fake Neutral Irenic

Burning

su bjectivity

subjectivity

Neutral

Terror

7. To Be Sitting

Vrai Zen, 57

The Wou-wei has its posture, at once symbolic and effective (ef­ ficient): to be sitting. We know that it's the very etymology of Zen: zazen: 14 to be sitting, posture shared by the Zen and the Tao:

a . Tao

In one of the practices recommended by the Tao for making the body immortal: ( 1 ) cut off cereals; ( 2 ) feed oneself on breath (em­ bryonic respiration: retain one's breath and make it pass through the whole body: by way of the esophagus) ; ( 3 ) feed the spirit (not in the spiritualist sense: dominate the spirits that are within the body) through Tso Wang meditation; but this meditation is identical to (is exhausted by) a posture: sitting (and losing consciousness) : in fact: "to meditate " "to be sitting" = to keep one's spirit free, with no subject of meditation ('" centered meditation of religious and =

Western philosophical tradition) 15 � to be sitting =

1 84

=

(to meditate)

to meditate nothing. Or more precisely to lose the consciousness 5ESSION 0F JU NE 3, 1 978

of the name: Wang Ming, i.e., to lose consciousness of vainglory (I translate it into my language: of images) and ultimately, in a certain way, to lose consciousness of the very name of the Tao (not taking pride in it, as if it were a doctrine one could be the owner or the representative of) : "To know the Tao is easy: not to speak of it is difficult. "16 (Always the same aporia: to know the Neutral is easy: to know it and speak of it is difficult-to say the least. ) b. Zen

The to be sitting is linked with an idea of nonprofit: Mushotoku: nonprofit, nondesire to possess (mu

Shikantaza

=

=

no

+

shotoku

=

profit) --;.

to be sitting without aim, without profit.1? Despite its

"strong" negativity, the gesture (the posture) shouldn't be flattened: to be sitting is active

=

an act, antonymic to "letting oneself fall

down " : Beckett (All That Fall): " Oh let me j ust flop down flat on the road like a big fat jelly out of a bowl and never move again ! " 1 8 Because the sitter thinks, is awake (viget animus --;. corpus sentit), thrives in laziness. --;. Dream of a whole day, j ust once, sitting unin­ terruptedly: with no demand, no task, no responsibility. Sentence that 1 always wanted to place as an epigram for texts, books: Zenrin poem: "Sitting quietly, doing nothing, / Spring comes,

Watts, 1 34

and the grass grows by itself. " 19 --;. ( I ) Personal memory: dazzle associated with this simple phrase comes from this: while driving through a " lost" Moroccan village ( off the Rabat-Casablanca main road), 1 saw a child "sitting quietly, doing nothing" on a wall --;. kind of satori: evidence of pure life, deprived of linguistic vibrations ---'.>

child here: a kind of guru, of mediator. (2 ) Notice the syntax

of the French translator:2o anacoluthon: between the description of the posture and the cosmic evidence, the subject disappears: there is no self, there is a posture and nature (this might be true ecology, perhaps: but it would put us very far from the electoral slates of ecological parties and from the collective marches) . ( 3 ) That means not sleeping but putting oneself in a process (more or less accom­ plished, it matters little) of progressive degradation, of extenuation: "to will" --;. "to think" --;. "to dream"

---'.>

"to daydream"

---'.>

to be

sitting doing nothing. Cf. the elder Gide ( 1 94 8 ) : " only feels well

Gide, 86

when he is willing to do nothing at all. He claims to feel slowed down all the way to his thinking. "21 (4) "Sitting quietly, doing noth­ ing"

=

really means putting oneself completely outside the universe

of sin: perhaps impossible for a Westerner: to do nothing, without being wrong, without being in debt: tenacious idea that one owes 1 85

SESSION O F J U N E 3, 1 978

one's time to something, to someone. Christian posture: kneeling. Fascist posture: standing. Asiatic posture: sitting -- therefore: a posture, as 1 said, completely symbolic and completely efficient, one that outstrips and exhausts the symbolic, without relying on any type of empiricism (it's the case of saying it) . It is possible to make the " sitting" even more concrete and cur­ rent. 1 am sitting here, and here is the way I live it: if I don't like the "magisterial , " if it anguishes and wounds me (in spite of it, there is always someone to sock me on the j aw with it as if 1 were respon­ sible for it) , this is not because of the "monologue" (I am convinced that in fact 1 dialogue with those who are here, especially those who agree to come back regularly), it's because of a perversion of the " sitting" : the "sitting-in face of" ; it's the chair/room setting that defines the magisterial ( E cole: better).22 In Zen, one is not sitting facing anything; it's even the very definition of Zen. To be sitting facing nothing: squaring of the circle: in restaurants, in trains, in life, there is always someone who comes to sit facing us.

The And rogyne Last but not final figure. Its value is not conclusive, nevertheless significative. Indeed: androgyny, like every breach of the division of the sexes: an extremely and continuously sensitive point in the doxa --+ criterion for the perfect split, a kind of test for the opening! closing to the Neuter --+ (a recent Tribune des critiques de disques:23 Purcell. Countertenors, Golea: that bothered him, he couldn't re­ linquish it: "Women must be women, etc . " Even though Fernandez argued that androgyny is a great mythical force, a rich, vast, "natu­ ral " sign of civilization: nothing doing: that men sing with women's voices, that disgusted him, etc.)24 1 am going, nevertheless, to deal with the androgyne, because " originarily"-at the level of language, under its endoxal form, grammar-the neutral is a question of gender. It is in fact time, in finishing, to say a word about what we should have begun with ( but we have chosen happenstance, not logic): the grammatical Neuter, the Neuter gender.2s

1 . The Gender of Words

(I am going to simplify to the extreme a huge linguistic file. )

1 86

5 E S5 I O N 0 F J U N E 3. 1 9 78

a. The G rammarians' Neuter

Gender

=

grammatical category; in principle is not restricted to

Adam, 29

the sexual:

Damourette and Pichon, I,

guage translates the primitive ontological division into classes

par. 306

of the mass of nouns representing the various beings "26

=

" ensemble of the phenomena through which lan­ ---i>

The

distribution may differ from one language to another. Example:

animate/inanimate; android (men, gods)/metandroid (women, animals, things ); Iroquois/Caribbean: masculine/feminine/neuter (genderless) . Peul: anthropic (men and women)/metanthropic (an­ imals and things) .

---i>

Two remarks:

a. Sometimes no genders: Papuans, Negritos, Chinese cannot make the notion of gender enter their system: Hungarian (Finno­ Ugric) : no difference between he and she (novel She and He {Elle et

lui} "untranslatable" ) .27 b. Concepts such as animate are imbued with religious beliefs: Algonquin: animate

=

animals, trees, stones, sun, moon, stars, thun­

der, snow, ice, wheat, tobacco, sleigh, lighter. Languages with neuter: Indo-European

---i>

Sanskrit, Zend,

Greek, Latin, Slavic, Germanic, old Celtic ", languages where the Neuter has disappeared: Hindustani, Portuguese, Italian, French, Neo-Celtic Indo-European: sexist because the Neuter can designate

Adam, 55

indifferently the inanimate and the neuter. Neuter ---i>

Adam, 54

=

without gender

Hindu grammarians: the Neuter: "gender proper to beings that

neither engender nor conceive. "28 What makes the problem of the Neuter more complicated: at the

Vendryes, 74

beginning, coincidence between the morphological series (a gram­ matical category needs morphemes to express itself: in order for the Neuter to exist, there has to be a morpheme of the Neuter)29 and the semantic series (Neuter

=

inanimate and/or nongendered) . But,

in the history of language, distorsions, confusions, disorders often occur in the parallelism of the two series: some neuter morphemes fade away, victims of their resemblance to either the masculine or the feminine, some semantic blurrings occur between animate and gendered: there are some ungendered animates: small animals, for example (and even: child, to nepion, to paidion, baby, bebe).3D Semantically, the Neuter essentially refers to the inanimate, i.e., to the thing: bonum, and to what is assimilated to the thing: we have seen paidion; there is also mancipium, slave. Hypothesis on the origin of the morpheme (interesting point where the morphe­ matic series merges with the semantic series, where language be-

1 87

S E S S I O N O F J U N E 3, 1 9 7 8

comes motivated}: i n Latin: Neuter = nominative vocative = ac­ cusative: the Neuter would be a former accusative words that were not initially used in the nominative, i.e., as subject � Neuter = the nonsubject, the one to which subjectivity is prohibited, which =

=

Grde Encyc/.

is excluded from it (mancipium). A " debacle of the Neuter" occurred in the Indo-European lan­ guages (already begun with Latin) : proximity of the masculine and neuter morphemes: the neuter is absorbed into the masculine, but neuters in the plural (folia) � feminine. The reasons thus are mor­ phological. But, as always, form comes with dreams, with images of contents, form (here, language) shapes latent ideology, the imaginal of a language --;. vanishing of the neuter in French --» two contra­ dictory consequences, each of them however complementing each other dialectically in a way that gives French language the figure of a language in the grip of the division of the sexes: Massive shift of the neuters to the masculine form: contributes to a certain indifferentiation, a blurring of the sexual markers; the Neuter used to work as repoussoir, allowing gender to be marked in relation to nongender --;. indifferentiated empire under the mold of the masculine --.. the feminine becomes marked. Cf. Roman Empire, when the quality of civis was extended to everyone. 2. At the same time, the masculine, although "ecumenical, " re­ 1.

Durand, 27

tains dominance. Words always noted under their masculine form. In our mind, masculine and feminine are not symmetrical. We think the word in the masculine, the feminine being felt as a derivative form.31 Rule taught in school: the feminine is generated by adding a silent e, etc. The feminine derivative. Imagine a reverse grammar that would teach how to form the masculine from the feminine: what devastations! --;. The "linguistic feeling " resexualizes language in favor of the masculine, but in a sort of hypocritical way.32 Damourette and Pichon: very paradoxically and "courageously," =

but off kilter ( .. positivist grammarians of antimotivation), have tried, as good Cratylians, to resexualize the interpretation of French.33

Damourette and Pichon, I, par. 3 1 0

Naturalist and analogical thesis: in every French word, there is a vague idea of the gender of its referent: the " sexuisemblance. " At first glance, this makes us laugh, so much is the nonmotivation of genders obvious in French: it's crazy to be looking for why "tea­ pot" {theiere} would be not only "in the feminine" but "feminine " ! But, after all, once our fit o f scientific irony has passed, the problem of the subconscious associations of the word at the level of gender remains: there are metonymies of sexuisemblance. The problem is

1 88

S E S S I O N O F J U N E 3, 1 978

that if Damourette and Pichon revalorize the feminine mark, they do it according to a conformist ideology of woman as submissive, passive.34 For example: machines in French are in the feminine when an exterior power is required to fecundate their passivity: couveuse {hatcher}, balayeuse {street sweeper} , tondeuse {mower}, and in the masculine when independent: curseur {slide rule}, viseur {theodolite} ,

remorqueur {tugboat} . Damourette and Pichon admit their embar­ rassment faced with " teapot" (after all "she " makes the tea ! ) : " One hopes that this question will be taken up later by scholars. "35 Yes, undoubtedly: and (happily) that will always depend on the ideology of the moment, since gender is an "idea " !

b . From Language to D iscourse

Thus in French (as a structure of morphemes ) : no Neuter. This ab­ sence can be felt as a lack, and that's where we need to start from: 1.

Absence recognized and admirably " exploited" by Blanchot

(Infinite Conversation ) . About Heraclites' " the-one-the-wise­

�anchot

thing" {l'un-Ia-chose-sage} : "Through this neuter nomination, which French translations cannot directly render, something is given to us to say for which our modes of abstracting and general­ izing are incapable of advancing any sign"; and " By a simplifica­ tion that is clearly abusive, one can recognize in the entire history of philosophy an effort either to acclimatize or to domesticate the neuter by substituting for it the law of the impersonal and the reign of the universal, or an effort to challenge it by affirming the ethical primacy of the Self-Subject, the mystical aspiration to a singular Unique. The neuter is thus constantly expelled from our languages and our truths. " 36 2.

Discourse makes up for language: always recall this, spelled

out on the front wall of the literary S,37 the offspring of linguis­ tics, but substituting for it (frolicking in its Supplement) : Mallarme,

j1Ialiarme

Variations on a Subject. "-Only, we must realize, poetry would not exist: philosophically, verse makes up for what languages lack, completely superior as it is. "38 Recall that for Mallarme ( " Quant au livre " { "As for the Book " } } : " {poetry might be} hidden away-you could call it Prose, but nevertheless it is still verse, if there remains some secret pursuit of music in the storeroom of Speech. "39

--7

I

recall one more time (since people made a fuss about it) that it is in this sense that I've let myself speak of a fascism of language:

1 89

S E S S I O N O F J U N E 3, 1 978

Vico, Michelet, 1 :296

language transforms its lack into Law, it abusively subjects us to its lacks: Twelve Tables, Uti lingua nuncupassit (named, instituted, pronounced, proclaimed) ita jus esto;40 language is law and dura lex. Now, discourse (literature) "turns" the sed lex, it derails it; it's the supplement, as act of making up: ---?> literature freedom ---?> faced with the ruling lack of the Neuter (of language) , discourse (in the broadest sense of the term: statement: literary, ethical, pa­ thetic, mythical) opens up an infinite, shimmering field of nuances, of myths, that could allow the Neuter, fading within language, to =

be alive elsewhere. Which way? I would say, using a vague word: the way of the affect: discourse comes to the Neuter by means of the affect. 3 . This drift, I will have it start in a tiny nook, a recess of lan­ guage: the small lexicon of the hypocoristics or the caritatives: affec­ tionate interpellation at the level of the lexicon, not of discourse. Hypocoristics in effect rest on an oscillation of genders: nine­ teenth-century popular refrain: Dauzat, 57

Look! There is Mathieu, How are you, old lady? Look! There is Mathieu How are you, old man?41 Hypocoristics shift genders: use the turnstile of the genders to express the affect: my darling, my honey bunch {man chou} to a girl; my oId lass {ma vieille} ---?> to a boy. One could say: ( 1 ) Hypocoristic and neuter: the overlapping is already visible in the lexicon for small animals (pigeonlet, bear cub, kitten, kid, etc.): no sexuisemblance; Damourette and Pichon: pul­ lisemblanceY ( 2 ) To the extent that the Neuter pulls the subject toward the status of thing: it is all the more fetishizable, desirable, possessable. Here, it would be good to reopen the Freudian file of the little child phallus: das Kleine.43 4. Thus the Neuter mixes both genders; also, in European mor­ phology, affinity between the Neuter and the collective: in some cor­ ner of morphology, the Neuter is globalizing, totalizing ---?> whence for us, perhaps, here, a transformation scene. We often relied on the Bmndalian structure: NB/neither A nor B and A and B ---?> But we must-and in spite of everything this will be more or less the last word of our " cruise"-overturn the structural model: the Neuter, the Neuter about which we have spoken, the Neuter ---?>

Damourette and Pichon, I, par. 3 1 7

extended to discourse (to texts, to behaviors, to "motions " ) is not that of the Neither . . . Nor, it's " both at once," "at the same time, " 1 90

5 E 5 5 I O N 0 F J U N E 3, 1 9 7 8

or "that alternates with" : ---;. The Neuter (structural U-turn: our dramatic turn of events {coup de theatre} )44 would be the complex: moreover a complex that cannot be disentangled, the nonsimplifi­ able complex: "the loving entanglement" (Nietzsche) of nuances, contraries, oscillations: unbearable for the doxa, delightful for the subject. ---;. And thus the Neuter is not what cancels the genders but what combines them, keeps them both present in the subject, at the same time, after each other, etc. ---;. Here, we open up into a great myth: the androgyne.

2. The Androgyne 1.

As always, things, when they are important (we have already

seen it), have a farcical version.45 The androgyne has its farcical

'arce

version: the hermaphrodite ---;. universally discredited. A monster: not terrifying, but worse: uncanny (recall the shot of the hermaph­ rodite in his baby carriage, in the sun, Fellini Satyricon ) .46 Monster -

because anatomical, surgical: medical reports: see Herculine Barbin

dite Alexina B, presented by Foucault ( Gallimard), and the volume to come of the History of Sexuality on hermaphrodites.47 I said: farce. Bizarrely, heavily marked as he is on the anatomical plane ( both sexes, both genital attributes at the same time), the hermaph­ rodite is linked to the theme of the dull, of the aborted. Thus the same disgust ties together the man-woman, the aborted, the deca­ dent: see effeminacy according to Zola: Paris: dualistic, Manichae­ an world: on one side, bourgeois rot (government, police, money, j ustice, press)

¢

on the other side, the idealist purity of future so­

ciety (the anarchistic engineer Guillaume Froment and his family: science

+

humanity

+

naturalness, loyalty, etc . ) ---;. (a) on the side of

the good (revolutionary): the readjustment of idealism (i.e., when it needs to be corrected, rectified) will occur in a noble way: idealists can be mistaken. Example: the anarchist: he has found the secret of an explosive and thinks at first to make bombs (in particular to blow up the Sacre-Coeur); but then his terrorist view is corrected: the explosive will be used for a new motor;

¢

(b) on the side of evil

( bourgeois) : evil is fixed as an unmovable, uncorrectable essence, and this essence is monstrous: it's that of the decadent effeminate, which Zola calls androgyne: the summum of rot: Hyacinthe, the son of Baron Duvillard, lives with a snobbish and decadent princess (in spite of everything, he remains a man), but everything else is feminine in him: 191

SESSION OF J U N E 3, 1 978

[Hyacinthe] was twenty, and had inherited his mother's pale blond hair, and her long face full of oriental languor; while from his father he had derived his grey eyes and thick lips, expressive of unscrupulous appetites. A wretched scholar, regarding every profession with the same contempt, he had decided to do nothing. Spoilt by his father, he took some little interest in poetry and music, and lived in an extraordinary circle of artists, low women, madmen and bandits; boasting himself of all sorts of crimes and vices, professing the very worst philosophical and social ideas, invariably going to ex­ tremes-becoming in turn a Collectivist, an Individualist, an Anarchist, a Pessimist, a Symbolist, and what not besides; without, however, ceasing to be a Catholic, as this conjunc­ tion of Catholicity with something else seemed to him the su­ preme bon ton. In reality he was simply empty and rather a fool. In four generations the vigorous hungry blood of the Duvillards < . . . > had, as if exhausted by the contentment of every passion, ended in this sorry, emasculated creature, who was incapable alike of great knavery or great debauchery. "48 2. As opposed to the hermaphrodite, the androgyne is not under the direct relevance of genitality: = merger of virility and femininity insofar as it connotes union of contraries, ideal completeness, per­ fection. What distinguishes the hermaphrodite from the androgyne: ultimately, a value decision, an evaluation: a passage to metaphor. Genitality diffused in the secondary attributes: in this process, it becomes "human," no longer animal; for example: Boehme's tinc­ tura.49 ---? Whence androgyny as hyperhumanity: In hermeticism in general (continued by the kabbala, alchemy, and a mystic such as Boehme-I leave the androgyny of the Ban­ quet aside) , original androgyny and future androgyny. a. Original androgyny. ( I ) God: before creation, God An­ drogyne.5o Then split into two opposed beings, the intercourse

Hutin, 63

of which produced the world: sun masculine/earth = feminine (moon: virgin mother) ; d. Hermes Trismegistus (the moon god of the Egyptians) : hermaphrodite; the German god Tuisto, the Roman Janus, masculine face and feminine face.51 ( 2 ) Angels: androgynes.52 ( 3 ) Adam. First androgynous man: very old idea: East, West, Egypt, China; origin in the Iranian world? Adam: the first Adam, the ce­ lestial Adam androgyne. Genesis I, 2 5-26: "Male and female cre­ ated he them < . . . > and called their name Adam. "53 Adam, accord­ =

Hocke, 254 [Dante, In­ ferno, III, 34-64]

=

ing to Boehme = androgyne: that's to say, not asexual (pure spirit), but he reunited in his celestial body the two " tincturae, " masculine

Boehme, 225, 230

1 92

S E S S I O N O F J U N E 3, 1 978

and feminine. Audacious word of Boehme's: Adam body"

" a masculine

-->-

Christ: second Adam; he also: a masculine virgin.54

b. The future or initiatory androgyny, staged by two tightly con­ nected traditions: kabbala and alchemy.

(I ) Kabbala ( "tradition " ) : spiritual science introduced into Ju­ =

daism by Moses the Egyptian

lataf, 202

�17

=

virgin" (mannliche Jungfrau): can procreate "without tearing the

-->-

Zohar, or " book of splendor"

(twelfth or thirteenth century) :55 commentary on the Pentateuch, influenced by Platonism.

-->-

Between God and the world: ten moth­

er ideas or Sephiroth: God created the cosmos by means of these ten powers ( Word) and of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet =

he gave the Hebrews; each sephira contains the letter Aleph, root of the other letters, sigh of God

-->-

totality of the Sephiroth

=

"celestial

man, " emanation of God, under the form of Adam Kadmon.56 The ten Sephiroth: complementary and indissociable, feminine and mas­ culine

->

Idea of perfection and balance: two beings intertwined:

reciprocal fecundation of masculine (spirit) and feminine (matter) principles. Abolition of dualisms: Adam Kadmon! ( 2 ) Alchemists. Same thing: abolition of dualisms, search for the crowned androgyne.

-->-

The great work: realization of the man­

woman, inseparable. ( Cf. Tao, union of the yin and the yang.)

-->­

Sexualization of the cosmic drama: the "conjunctio" or coitus of the male principle with the female principle, of the sulfur with the mercury

�11

-->-

realization of the unique being, the new Adam, sym­

bolized by the crowned androgyne (the most elevated sephira) : the crown: worn by male [the father: intelligence, force, glory] and fe­ male [the mother: wisdom, grace, victory] sephirots -->- the one who reaches it abolishes the contraries: "shining like living gold. "57 (For

21

alchemists, metals are alive. ) 3.

The androgyne thus is the Neuter, but a Neuter conceived as

the complex degree:58 a mixture, a dose, a dialectic, not of man and woman (genitality) but of masculine and feminine. Or better yet: the man in whom there is feminine, the woman in whom there is masculine. That's why, from the man's point of view, since it is a man who speaks: Bachelard, reported by Guitton and by a listener (Thierry Gesset): the neuter man who speaks) :

=

=

"a veiled femininity. " Neuter (if it's a

man dipped, bathed in femininity (like a blade

dipped in certain waters) . Wonderfully put by Baudelaire:

laudelaire, 1 50-1 5 1

[De Quincey] more than once thanked Providence, not only for the incomparable advantage of having been raised in the solitude of the country but for the additional blessing that his

1 93

5E S S I O N O F J U N E 3, 1 978

" infant feelings were molded by the gentlest of sisters, not by horrid pugilistic brothers. " Indeed, men who have been raised by and among women are not quite like other men. < . . . > The lullabies of nurse-maids, the maternal caresses, the dainty ways of sisters-especially older sisters, who are a sort of diminutive mother-serve to transform the dough of the masculine character by kneading it. A man who, from birth, has long been bathed in the softness of Woman, in the odor of her hands, her breasts, her knees, her hair, her softly billowing clothes < . . . > ends by contracting a certain tenderness of skin, a certain refinement of speech, a sort of androgyny, without which the most ruggedly virile talent would remain unfulfilled in respect to artistic perfection. In the end, what I really want to say is that an early taste for the world of Women, for mun­ di muliebris, < . . > makes for superior intellects.59 .

Freud. 43

Neuter: "man in whom there is feminine. " But perhaps not j ust any feminine (perhaps there are many of them) . Let's remember Freud, on the subject of Leonardo da Vinci: analysis of the dream of the vulture: it placed its tail in the child's mouth = nursing + homosexual situation -.. the maternal vulture: d. Mout, the Egyp­ tian goddess with the head of a vulture = maternal goddess with a phallus, that is to say: breast + penis in erection (d. many di­ vinities, following Dionysus) --.. androgynous nature of the mother. And Freud explains (which justifies the distinction that I made be­ tween hermaphrodite and androgyne) : "It is in fact only due to a misunderstanding that we describe these representations of gods as hermaphrodites in the medical sense of the word. In none of them is there a combination of the true genitals of both sexes < . . . >; all that has happened is that the male organ has been added to the breasts which are the mark of a mother, j ust as it was present in the child's first idea of his mother's body. " 60 Perhaps one should end up with this ( badly explored, I believe) : no longer automatically confusing mother and woman. In which case, the androgyne would be any subject within whom there is something materna1. 6 1 -.. One can specify more, derive, dream, arouse the figure of the father-mother, of the maternal father, of the father with breasts: of the tender father: figure absent from our Western mythology, significant lack. I remember in Japan, on the train, a father's tenderness for his four-year-old son. And War and Peace: death of the old Bolkonski, his farewell to his daughter Ma­ rie: -.. very vivid scenes, shattering for me. 62

1 94

5E55ION 0F JUNE

3, 1 978

4.

�reud. 58

From that (I will stop here), going back to Freud and Leonardo,

we might perhaps say that the Neutral find its feature, its gesture, its inflection embodied in what is inimitable about it: the smile, the Leonardian smile analyzed by Freud: Mona Lisa, St. Anne, Leda, St. John, Bacchus: smiles at the same time of men and women: smiles­ figures in which the mark of exclusion, of separation cancels itself, smiles that circulate from one sex to the other: "the smile of bliss and rapture which had once played on his mother's (Caterina's) lips as she fondled him. "63 Even if the biographical reference seems to me too specific, too anecdotal, there is this truth: the idea that the genital paradigm is baffled (transcended, displaced) not in a figure of indifference, of unfeeling, of matteness but in that of ecstasy, of enigma, of gentle radiance, of the sovereign good. To the gesture of the paradigm, of the conflict, of the arrogant meaning, represented by the castrating laugh, the gesture of the Neutral would reply: smile.

Exit the Neutral.

195

S E S S I O N OF J U N E 3, 1 97 8

ANN EX

I ntensities 1 1 . Neutral, Structure, I ntensity F. Bacon, Organum, book

2, par. 1 1 ft.

1 . Bacon. Classification: search for eternal and immobile forms: "A nature being given, we must first present to the understanding all the known instances which agree in the same nature "2 (example: search for the form of heat) naturally, privilege of the structural, paradigmatic trigger {declic}: (a) Tables of being and of presence (example: sun rays, thunderbolts) . (b) Tables of disappearance or of absence among analogues ( analogues: because negative facts echo positive facts) = moon rays-heuristic value of the present/absent, marked/unmarked paradigm: it's already Hjemslev's principle of commutation, itself heuristic, too. But Bacon adds: (c) Table of de­ grees (comparison of degree) which requires postulating outside the bound of the (present/absent) paradigm a third term, which is neither the zero degree nor the complex degree: it's the intensive degree, the plus or minus, intensity. 2. Relation between structure and gradient (gradient = "progres­ sive accentuation, spatial or temporal, in the intensive dimensions [concentration, speed] of a stimulus [gradient of odor, gradient of luminosity] or of a comportment [gradient of goal] , " Comporte­ ---;>

---;>

Gradient Intensity and structure

ment animal)3 ---;> Up to now, the gradient has not been taken into account as a structural (structuralist) parameter. Structuralism = yes/no (+ neither yes nor no + yes and no), marked/unmarked. But no methodological conceptualization of the plus/minus the classical ( " heroic " ) structural analysis would thus be foreclosed if confronted with a Daltonian world: a total Daltonian subject, even ---;>

Daltonism

though completely color-blind, would nonetheless be able to distin­ guish a blue object from a red one: both objects appear gray to him but with different lightnesses: the red one: seems very dark, almost black, and the blue one: a very light gray. (Important, because ani­ mals don't perceive all our colors: bees perceive blue, blind to red: the paradigms change totally. ) ( Comportement animal. )4 3 . Gradient and Neutral are in a similar position in relation to Neutral and intensity

the paradigmatic structure: they both baffle the paradigm-how­ ever, to tell the truth, intensity even more radically than the classi­ cal Neutral that has been absorbed by the Hjelmslev-Bmndal com1 96

plexization. But you have understood that our Neutral (77-7 8 ! ) is not the classical one and that it subsumes everything that baffles the paradigmatization of antagonisms, the strict structure: and thus the structural Neutral. As for intensities: intensity matters for the Neutral because it's a concept that is allergic to the paradigm -;. we therefore call Neutral the field of nonparadigmatic intensities (those introducing a trick into the paradigm) , and in consequence we ask that the Neutral not be conceived, connoted as a flattening of intensities but to the contrary as a bubbling up {emoustillement}

« champagne foam). 4.

A case, an example to mention since: (a) it indexes the ex­

istence of structurally atopic forms, (b) shows how the notion of

Stretching

gradient can be transposed into the ethical field (relevance), i.e., the conduct of the discourse under the gaze of the other: Gide ( Cahiers de la Petite Dame): "His yes can always shift to the no, stretch itself up to the yes and that without any logic, justification, simply fol­

Gide. 1 69

lowing the sudden perspectives that his imagination opens in front of him and that are unpredictable. "5 Let's drop " psychology" and register here a form that is rarely taken into account by analyses: the stretching-an important form nevertheless, if one acknowl­ edges that there are subjects who don't know or don't acknowledge their desire (at least not immediately: I know my fantasies "im­ mediately, " but my desires ? I am myself stretching the reply to the incident, to the question that addresses them) .

2 . Apophasis a n d Apheresis We are going to grasp: Neutral-intensity-structure (paradigm) in a very subtle field, that of negative theology. Language of Dionysius the Areopagite (member of the Areopage, converted by saint Paul: thus first century) : Two lexicons: ( A ) words with arche (

thearchy)

=

=

principle of; example:

words of affirmation, of positivity

=

cataphasis; they re­

fer to God as cause (one can therefore "speak" him) (saint Thomas) ¢

(B) words with huper or words with a privative alpha

of negativity

Denys

=

=

words

apophasis. They refer to the inaccessible In-itself of

godhead. For example: hyperineffable-hyperessential; or: the divine

Gandillac. 34

integer, the more-than-good, the more-than-god, the more-than­ alive, the more-than-wise.6 Makes one think of Genet's "More­ than-More {la Toute-Toute} "7 � interesting for us: in apophasis,

1 97

A N N EX

the superlative (huper) and the privative merge: the beyond and the before of the word = one and the same region: absolute super­

365

lative = a kind of Neutral, because exceeds, baffles the paradigm by means of extra-vagance -;. the highest intensity j oins with the nonparadigmatic negativity. For if, in negative theology, in a first phase, negativity ( apopha­ sis) is taken into a paradigm ('" cataphasis), there is a second phase that undoes the yes/no paradigm: following Dionysius, one must distinguish negation on the mystical plane (apophasis) from nega­ tion on the logical plane (aphairesis}:8 this last: division, shaving, ablation (ablatio): what enters the paradigm is foreclosed from in­ tensity: from the intensity of the privative, the intensity of the apo­ phasis whose mark is the absolute superlative.

3. Name Changes

For the file on intensities (we don't do anything more than open files) : name changes that follow increases or reductions of intensity -;. curious linguistic, lexical process, since ordinarily the organiza­ tion of the lexicon of a language doesn't follow the principle of intensity but the principle of structure, according to presence/ab­ sence, marked/unmarked: seat + arm = armchair: seat - arm chair, etc. It is rare (to be checked) that language registers at the level of lexicon the fact that variations in intensity can create semanti­ cally individuated beings (lexicographical inquiry to pursue ) . The alteration through intensity is perceived as a notable "paradox" -;. examples noted essentially by " curious" minds, Baudelaire, Bacon, the Sophists: =

I.

Baudelaire, 43 Cf. Queasiness (anger)

Baudelaire: "a bit of green j elly, equal in bulk to a walnut,

strange-smelling, to the point that it arouses a certain repulsion and a faint hint of nausea , as, moreover, would any subtle-even agreeable-odor, brought to its maximum force and density, as it were. Let me remark, in passing, that this proposition may be reversed, such that the most repugnant, the most revolting odor might become a pleasure, were it reduced to the slightest possible amount and expansiveness. "9 (-;. Subtle Baudelairean aesthetic: intensities and their reversals. )

Bacon, Organum, book 2, par. 46

Bacon: " In an infusion o f rhubarb the purgative property is first extracted, and then the astringent; we have experienced some­ thing of the same kind in steeping violets in vinegar, which first 2.

extracts the sweet and delicate odor of the flower, and then the

1 98

ANNEX

more earthy parts, which disturbs the perfume; so that if the violets be steeped a whole day, a much fainter perfume is extracted than if they were steeped for a quarter of an hour only, and then taken out . . . and . . . let other and fresh violets be steeped in the vinegar every quarter of an hour, as many as six times, when the infusion becomes strengthened, that although the violets have not altogether remained there for more than one hour and a half, there remains a most pleasing perfume, not inferior to the flower itself, for a whole year. "lO (Here: important: gradient of time, time [duration] as in­ tensity ---0> all music, and especially the experiments of contempo­ rary music: under the invocation of Francis Bacon's violets) . 3.

Finally, Prodicos, Sophist, strives t o distinguish the names re­

ferring to a same object (pleasure): j oy (reasonable thrill) , delight

iophistes, 1 20

( unreasonable thrill) , merriment ( delight produced by the ear), sat­ isfaction (pleasure produced by discourse) Y Which simply attests to a lexical subtlety; but here come changes of name resulting from changes of intensity: "Double the desire and you have passion.

129

Double the passion and you have delirium. " 12

4. Minimalism On the scale of intensities, the Neutral, in its mythical represen­ tation, is associated with restriction, erasure, minimum: Neutral would be a kind of minimal shine. ---0> It's partly right, it's largely false. False image of Neutral as minimalist: "Minimal Art," New York,

Minimal Art"

I 9 60s: artists opposed to the overflow of the abstract expression­

'ncyc/. Univ.

ism of action painting; shaving off all extravisual connotations (lit­ erature, symbolism) : the object must be presented in a plain obvi­ ousness, with the clarity of an irrefutable reality ---0> depersonalized and even mechanized facture ---0> "To neutralize " form and color: to banish all emotion, all anecdote. 13 ---0> From my point of view, the assimilation of the Neutral with the minimal is a misinterpretation ( I ) because the Neutral doesn't erase the affect but only processes it, formats its "manifestations" (2 ) because the minimalist neutral has nothing to do with aesthetics, but only with ethics. In fact there could be a minimalist thought of the Neutral; such a minimalism would be as follows: a style of behavior that tends to minimize the subject's interface with the world's arrogance (see above, "Arrogance" ) but not with the world, not with affects, with

:f. Arrogance

love, etc.: in that sense, there could be an ethical minimalism, but

1 99

ANNEX

in no way an aesthetic or affective one: (among many others possible):

--7

three points of reflection

1. The general problem: confrontation between my intensity and external intensities (of others, of the other) :

Baudelaire, 48

a . Problem raised-it's logical-by Baudelaire i n connection with H: subject who has taken some H and those who have not taken any --7 "difference of pitch and level"14 --7 even without H: many social, worldly experiences, where suddenly the subject feels him­ self desynchronized, "thrown off level, " " disharmonized" (level, range) , derealized in relation to the others who seem to him exces­ sive, emphatic, excited, false --7 reflex of retreating, of shrinking: not letting oneself be seen and not letting it be seen that one does not want to let oneself be seen pure minimalism. b. In Spinozist terms: active aspect of our being = conatus (will, =

Spinoza, Zac, 27

appetite, indefinite exigency of existence, effort to persevere in one's being); now, as we are dependent on all the other beings of the world: the conatus can be increased or reduced: a certain amount of plasticity of the conatus.15

Tao Cf. Consciousness Grenier, 5 1

The H e n a n d the Chicken Tao, Grenier, 1 24

2. The right minimalist ethic would help bring harmony between the maximum internal intensity (d. hyperconsciousness) and the minimum external --7 Tao minimalism. Indeed, while, in Hegel, the treatment of negation is dialectical, a process leading toward flowering and absolute knowledge, celebration of the more-with Lao-tzu, the treatment of negation (in each and everything thing its negative) is mystical: return to the non distinct, celebration of the less --..,. Lao-tzu tends to the apologia of the minimum, i.e., of the minimal image.16 Whence the story, shocking for our Western sensitivity to imago, of the hen's cluckY it's the reason I stayed a while on the Skeptic epoche-for there are other epoche that are not ethical but strictly philosophical: Cartesian epoche and above all Husserlian epoche, phenomenological bracketing (see Husserl:

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, paragraph 3 2, in par­ ticular p. 62).18 3 . A political minimalism? This obviously would go against the grain of our current political ideology --..,. in fact, we are in an era of political maximalism: (a) politics invades all phenomena, economic, cultural, ethical; (b) political behaviors are radicalized: arrogance of the languages, violence of the acts: political totalism all over (with­ out necessarily speaking of totalitarianism) . --..,. This maximalism is to be found in capitalism (shaping demands through the logic of

200

ANNEX

the market: the whole subject imprisoned in his very own desire) and in State socialism (gregariousness, repression of individualisms, of dissidences)

--7

to this maximalism, one can utopically oppose

the dream of a minimal sociality: naively formulated by Cage: "If the object is to reach a society where you can do anything at all, the role of organization must be concentrated on the utilities. Well, we can achieve this even now with our technology . First of all, everyone must have access to what he needs to live, and the others mustn't try to deprive him of anything whatsoever. "19

To Give leave Etymology: donner conge {to give leave}/congedier {to dismiss} . In­ teresting in that the differentiating semantic feature-what divides and opposes the two meanings: violence. Liberation ", end of a duty.

Conge {leave} < commeatus: action of reporting to a place, of going on leave --7 military language: authorization to go on leave. ( But for us: to go elsewhere, to send or to be sent elsewhere ", to dismiss < Ital. congedare < congedo > French, conge {leave} . )

1 . Epoche, Bala nce a.

£poche (£pechein)

Conceptual origin of this figure: epoche:20 key concept for Greek Skepticism

ceptiques, 1 0, 47, 86, 206

=

suspension ( of judgment): "The term 'suspension' is

derived from the fact of the mind being held up or 'suspended' so that it neither affirms nor denies anything " ( Sextus Empiricus) and Sceptiques P . 47.21 Notice: The epoche is the outcome of the ten modes or tropes of Aenesidemus22 (roughly: acknowledgment of the contradictory diversity of the impressions, opinions, customs, judgments) .

--7

The

epoche brings ataraxia, rest. Les Sceptiques p . 206.23 Notice: ( I ) Epoche: suspension of judgment, not of impression; it's not an irrealism: the Skeptic stays in touch with what he feels, with what he believes he feels: he doesn't put sensation, perception, in doubt but only the judgment that ordinarily accompanies the feeling: "most important of all, in his enunciation of these formulae

2

he states what appears to himself and announces his own impres­ sion in an undogmatic way, without making any positive assertion

201

ANNEX

regarding the external realities "24 -?> therefore the pathos (the state of the sensibility) is kept. -?> Skepticism: not an "abdication" from intensities: he keeps " life as a guide" (beautiful formula) Y (2) Epo­

ch(: has an ethical dimension (aims at a " happiness," at a "right­ ness " , etc.). b . Balance

However, not to miss (since here we might diverge from the Skepti­ cal project) the fact that the Skeptical epoche is defined as a quasi­ physical operation: the balance between opposite forces results in immobility: Sextus: " Speaking generally, one may say that [suspen­ sion of j udgment] is the result of setting things in opposition. "26 Balance: banal word, used by all kinds of disciplines and dis­ courses: a word with the status of a myth to the extent that it is " spontaneously" affected with a positive value: mental, physical balance, to be well balanced, etc. -?> one should spot the cases where a claim to balance is connoted negatively; "political forces balancing each other" ;" revolutionary project? Relation between balance and immobility, and security? Balance as antonym of crisis, another mythical word? Equilibrium and risk: equilibrist? Need also to nuance, to move toward a typology of balances: look for the thoughts (the philosophers) where an original, nonba­ nal, sense of balance can be found: to explore in particular (a) in Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy: active type: isn't constituted exclusively by active forces but normal ratio between a reaction that slows the action and an action that speeds the reaction: the master re-acts acts his reactions;27 ( b ) Freud (Jean Laplanche, "Faire deriver la sublimation" { "Make sublimation drift"}, Psych­ analyse Ii l'universite, vol. 2, no. 8, September 77, p. 5 79 ):28 what one could call Freud's phantasmatic physiology: psychological en­ ergy compared to biological energy -?> internal balance = the con­ stancy at the level of a biological norm can be threatened either by =

the internal process itself (example: hunger, which sets needs into motion) or by untimely waves of external energies: regulation of temperature -?> both examples biological -?> two cases of (psychic) "unbalance " : ( I ) drive, ( 2 ) trauma. To the mythical image of balance, we can oppose another image: that of the drift: an opposition (conflict/paradigm) can be "neu­ tralized" by a balanced blockage of the forces (of the terms of the paradigm) but also by parrying, drifting away from the antagonistic

202

ANNEX

binarism. Between balance and drift, what makes the difference, what is at stake, is obviously security.

2 . leave, Drift Drift

=

to dismiss opposition-or gently to take leave of . . .

What prevents (me) from living the epoche as " balance" is the fact that it is bound to be dramatized since the world absolutely doesn't tolerate it, radically refuses it ( "radically" means: doesn't

usal of the epoche

understand it) : object, I believe, of a ferocious repression. What "society" doesn't tolerate:

A.

Invasion by the world, by relational life, under the cover of the myth of "communication," by means of "questions, " questionnaires, in­ quiries, etc.: not so much asking for opinions as summoning one to state one's identity in public (computer: to register everyone --;> intel­ lectual IDs: the left, too, falls into the trap)

--;>

tion, precisely of the yes/no, of the paradigm

question --;> commina­

-l>

opprobrium heaped

on the unthinkable answer: "I don't know":always perceived as a

don't know"

deceptive "sidestepping," never as a precise and responsible (full, doctrinal, literal) answer: because after all, what if it were true that "I don't know": for example if nuclear energy is dangerous, if gen­ eralized civil disobedience is desirable no matter what, etc. (I inten­ tionally cite "leftist" themes toward which I feel both sympathy and doubt and about which people spend their time summoning me to " know. " )

--

There is the need here for a large, serious reflection, at

the level of a "philosophy" of History, of a theory of contemporary civilization, devoted to the new relations (of power) between infor­ mation (knowledge) and decision (judgment) . Once upon a time: hu­ man knowledge, largely masterable by a single individual (obviously elitist) : Leibniz last " honnete homme" (gentleman}; then there had to be a few, but it remained masterable: the Encyclopedie. Today, information: pulverized, nonhierarchized, dealing with everything: nothing is protected from information and at the same time noth­ ing is open to reflection

-l>

Encyclopedias are impossible

--

I would

say: the more information grows, the more knowledge retreats and therefore the more decision is partial (terroristic, dogmatic)

--

"I

don't know, " "I refuse to judge" : as scandalous as an agrammatical sentence: doesn't belong to the language of the discourse. Variations

203

ANNEX

on the "I don't know. " The obligation to " be interested" in every­ thing that is imposed on you by the world: prohibition of noninter­ est, even if provisional � An intellectual (since all this is obviously about him) is required, summoned to have an opinion on every­ thing, which is to say to be interested in everything: so-and-so wants my opinion about what he wrote on science fiction, as if it simply followed that one always and everywhere be interested in science fic­ tion: impossible to have any kind of leave-taking accepted (whence the title of the figure), even if only for a limited time, from interests, judgments. How to say unprovocatively: "Provisionally, I am not in­ terested in science fiction, in children's books, in punctuation, etc." (I cite some of the " solicitations" I've received). It's the perhaps, the provisionally, that sounds silly. How could I post a sign on my premises or on my intellectual project: "Judgment closed for annual leave " ? Who would dare to say: "I don't claim responsibility" -or

Sceptiques. 45

Bacon. Organum. 1

(more provokingly), parodying M. Teste: "Responsibility is not my strong point. "29 "I don't know" generates a devalued and as if devirilized image: you are demoted to the contemptible mass of the undecided, of those who don't know whom to vote for: old, lost ladies whom they brutalize: vote however you want, but vote; little matter what you know, but know � ;c philosophically: here we are back at the Skep­ tic provocation: one of the Skeptics' formulae (Sextus Empiricus) : "I apprehend not " : akatalepto ( I don't get it) : it's acatalepsia.3 0

B.

Another aspect o f the same scandal (that o f the epoche): the world's inability to accept the suspension of one's answer to a demand, to demand as such: Phenomenon of the hyperdemand: well described by Gide's witness ( Cahiers de la Petite Dame, I 9 4 8 ) : " It's in this touching way I.

that he keeps talking to me about everything at length: about the requests for money that come from all sides, about the imprudent promises he makes, then withdraws, literally not knowing where he goes, incapable of making a reckoning, shifting from recklessness to the fear of not being able to face everything, and never having the feeling that his position commits him, but eaten by remorse if he has disappointed and afraid of losing, through lassitude, this spontaneous gesture of welcome which is truly his own. "31 And: "My dear friend, I am overwhelmed, they request too much from

204

ANNEX

me, and too much at the same time, I end up by saying yes, almost randomly, so that they leave me in peace . . . . Exhausted, 1 end up thinking about everything: why not ? " 32 (We will see that there is another why not than that of lassitude. ) The hyperdemand leads into a kind o f psychosis, because typi­ cal trap situation

+

enormous expenditure of energy in order to

say no. Hyperdemand: defined by the point when more energy is required to say no than to do the thing requested

+

hallucination

of being targeted. 1 feel myself like a target aimed at by balls of energy that want to grab me, to seize me: letters, telephone calls, re­ quests, offers. Cf. Schreber and the divine rays:33 it's how paranoia

itiless

begins! The difference is that 1 know that to speak about balls is a metaphor

--->0

everyone is convinced that he is the only one to ask ( ..

absolute realism: to convince oneself that one is never the only one, in whatever might be) . 2.

Now, 1 am never allowed "not t o reply " : to refuse, yes: it i s in

the code; not to reply, no: it's outside the code. 1 can't " suspend" my presence to the world (except by making a total, definitive de­ cision: the monastery, the desert-eremitism); I can't suspend my presence to the world temporarily; because the world doesn't stop requesting me, requiring me: the world is pitiless, tireless

--;>

(deep

into mourning, so-and-so continues to ask me imperiously what 1 think of his text, etc.: the world goes on). 3 . Timid sketches of suspension (of leave): a. For the record, the gesture of the nonreply (d. figure " Re­ ply " ) . Eurylochus crossing the river: " Ciao. " 34 b. One could also suggest: stammering (yes . . . no . . . uh) : a cari­ cature of ignorance in exam situation:

=

"I don't know" :

=

to seem

to answer (there is plenty of signifier) but without message. To evade not the reply but the nonreply. c. Delaying the answer: the dilatory (dilatus: from differe) with the

The dilatory

hope (often satisfied) that the question will be lost, that the demand will shift, and that there will no longer be any reason to reply. Neu­ rotic aspect: Janet (cited by Bachelard): " behaviors relative to noth­ ingness," the "deferred behavior" :35 interruption of an action with postponement of its resumption. Motto: "tomorrow" ; here however it would be a non-neurotic but tactical differance (dilation) ( besides, new file: neurosis as tactic, the various comedies of neurosis)

--->0

di­

gression: when the nonanswer, or the delayed answer, is framed by a terrorist system ( .. Neutral): the dilatory on parole: Inquisition's tactic: inquisitor arriving in a village, public lecture: the heretics have

Inquisition, 35

205

ANNEX

fifteen days to a month to present themselves grace period (if they denounce themselves, no penalty or light and unpublicized penalty)36 -;. what institutions refuse is the infinitely dilatory, for the essence of the dilatory is its desire to be infinite; what the subject in the Neutral secretly hopes is that the Inquisition will perish in the fifteen days, that the pain in the neck will break his own neck! =

4. To play with why/why not? An example: the hesitation to enter psychoanalysis: one can say: why not? (why would I shy away from it? ) But an imponderable on the scale can also prompt one to say: why? However, this why can only come in second place (after the first). The true movement of the Neutral would be that of the Zen dialectic (see the letter in "Rites " : [ r ] the mountains are . . . [2] are not . . . [ 3 ] are ):37 there is a crossover from the opposite position: the first position doesn't return to the same place: why? why not? -;.

. . .

-;.

---;>

-;. why? The back-and-forth makes one pass through an experience of wising-up; important, particularly in the case of psychoanalysis, since to refuse it always runs the risk of repressing it: people closed to psychoanalysis in a simplistic way: unbearable arrogance (arro­ gance of reason); but there is an arrogance of psychoanalysis itself one tacks between the two arrogances: it's the very formula of the Skeptics: ouden mallon:38 no more this than that, here than there -;. why/why not? 5 . Another form of " leave " : resigning. ---;> In general disparag­ ing image, either weak image: "dignity" of certain resignations: it's dignified but all the same "less good" than to keep fighting-or very negative, devirilized image: "the abdicant attitude . " -;. How­ ever, an adjective might be enough, perhaps, to stir things up: just imagine a violent (general, radical, obstinate) resignation. Notice: the neutral can be violent, can invest the adjective instead of the substantive. What would the doxa think of a violent resignation? Could it even conceive of it? -;. It's an oxymoron, therefore at the limit of language. And the mystical relief appears right away: An­ gelus Silesius: ---;>

The totally abandoned is free and one forever; From it to God, can there be a difference ?39

Fright Brief figure: necessary nevertheless ( r ) because the notion-or the pathos, since we aren't making philosophy here or at best a pathetic 206

ANNEX

philosophy-the notion is well framed; (2 ) because it's a pathos out

Consciousness

of which naturally surges, which makes the desire for Ne�tral shine. Fright < ex{ridare (gaul Latin)


The adept should rid himself of them as quickly as possible. And, in order to do so, he must "Cut off Cereals," because it is from the Essence of Cereal that the Three Worms are born and are nourished. ) . .

.

64. The title o f Barthes's seminar when h e started teaching a t the Ecole Pra­ tique des Hautes Etudes in 19 62-1963 was "Inventory of Contemporary Sys­ tems of Signification: Systems of Objects (Clothes, Food, Living Space) " ( "In­ ventaire des systemes de signification contemporains" [1963]; O C, I : I I 5 3 ). The following year, the second part of the seminar (same general title) was devoted to "collective research concerning one specific system, food" ( [ 1 9 64]; OC, 1 : 1 449). See also Barthes's interview with Laurent Dispot for the "Health" page of Playboy ( 1 9 80; OC, 3 : 1 24 1 ) and " Encore Ie corps" ( Once more, the body), interview by Teri Wehn-Damisch ( 1 9 8 2; O C, 3 :9 17). 65. Rousseau, "First Walk," The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (New York: NYU Press, 1979), p. 6. 66. Barthes's English. In A Lover's Discourse, Barthes quotes Bruno Bet­ telheim's definition of the concept of "double bind " : " situation in which the subject cannot win, whatever he may do: heads, I win, tails you lose" (p. 1 4 3 ; Oc, 3 : 594)·

Session of June 3, 1 978 I. This is the last session of Barthes's 1 977-1978 course. 2. Chang-tzu, quoted by Jean Grenier, L'Esprit du Tao (Paris: Flammarion, 1 9 7 3 ) , pp. I I 2 and I I 3 , after Paul Demieville, "Le Miroir spirituel," Sino­ iogica, no. 2 ( 1947). 3. Ibid., p. I I I.

251

N OT E S

4. Alexandre Kojeve, Essai d'une histoire raisonnee de la philosophie pa­ i·enne (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 64· 5. [Oral: Barthes indicates that his knowledge is "at second-, third-, fourth­ hand." ] 6. Following Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, VIII, 5 , cited in Moses 1. Fin­ ley, Democracy Antique and Modern (New Brunswick, N.].: Rutgers University Press, 1973), p. 30. 7. Thucydides, Peloponnesian War (2, 40, 2), cited in ibid. 8. Aristotle, Politics, IV, cited in ibid., p. 4. 9. Lao-tzu, quoted in Grenier, J.:Esprit du Tao, p. 144· See above, p. 3 I. 10. Sylvain Zac, La Morale de Spinoza (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 1 14· II. Jean-Fran