Beyond Deconstruction From Hermeneutics t - Alberto Martinengo

8/17/2019 Beyond Deconstruction From Hermeneutics t - Alberto Martinengo

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Beyond Deconstruction


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Beyond Deconstruction

From Hermeneutics to Reconstruction

Edited by

Alberto Martinengo

De Gruyter


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Contents

Alberto MartinengoDeconstruction at its End? Preliminary Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Section IDeconstruction and/or Reconstruction:

A Philosophical ApproachEmmanuel CattinLeaving Philosophy? Heidegger, Bauen, Lassen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Jorge Prez de Tudela Velasco Waiting: The Impossible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Jean RobelinDoes It Make Sense to Speak about Deconstructing the Subject? 39

Graziano Lingua Beyond the Eclipse of Reason: On the Reconstruction of Rationality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Jean-Marc Ferry Towards a Reconstructive Critique of Historical Reason . . . . . . 69

Evelyne GrossmanCreative Delinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Section IIThe Limits of Deconstruction:The Case of Art and Literature

Timo KaitaroReality under Construction: Deconstruction and Reconstructionin Surrealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Clive Cazeaux Deconstructing and Reconstructing Artists with PhDs . . . . . . . . 107


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Franca Bruera Towards a Dramaturgy of Suspicion: Theatre and Myths in20th-century France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Giulia Boggio Marzet Tremoloso A Methodological Comparison between a Mythocentric Approach and a Deconstructive Reading in the Interpretation of Rewritings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Maria SpiridopoulouTranslation: Theory and Praxis. Deconstruction andReconstruction in Giacomo Leopardi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Antonella Emina Deconstructing and Reconstructing Built-up Landscape inPost-Colonial Literature: Damas’s Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Section IIIThe Genealogy and Legacy of Deconstruction:The Politico-Social and Juridical Point of View

Jordi Maiso

Remembrance of Nature within the Subject: Critical Theory,Psychoanalysis and the Limits of Subjection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Herman W. SiemensThe Rise of Political Agonism and its Relation toDeconstruction: The Case of Chantal Mouffe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Flavia Monceri‘Just Tell Me Who You Are !’: Do We Need Identity in Philosophy and the Social Sciences? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Alberto AndronicoDaydreaming: Derrida’s Contribution to the Theory of Law . . 239

Jnos Frivaldszky Law as Practical Knowledge: Deconstruction, Pragmatism, andthe Promise of Classical Practical Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Index Rerum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Contents VI


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Deconstruction at its End? Preliminary Remarks Alberto Martinengo

The cultural phenomenon that Friedrich Nietzsche characterised as a ‘malady of history’ is perhaps one of the most glaring manifestations of his lasting actuality. It is not difficult to point out its nether presencetoday, far beyond the bounds of philosophy, in the infinite variationsof one unique commonplace reference: that of the crisis or the decline of modernity. Its pervasiveness is a matter of fact and, as is wellknown, produces a crucial shift in the self-comprehension of a broadspectrum of disciplines, which concerns the Humanities as a whole.

The premises connected to this phenomenon are evident from multi-ple points of view. As has been convincingly highlighted, they primarily address the possibility of isolating a compact cluster of events qualified by the category modern age , wherein the present seeks to distinguish itself more or less definitively. This is a presupposition that accrues all the ad-

vantages (as well as the enormous disadvantages) of succinct formulae –and 20th-century philosophy bears ample witness to such ambiguous im-plications. But along with this sort of toponomastic hindrance, the jargonof crisis poses another kind of question, one having to do with the ‘rhet-orical power’ of such a rupture. To invoke a series of categories that havefallen into disfavour, but which nonetheless partially retain their signifi-cance, the fortunes of notions such as crisis and decline are marked by a crucial oscillation between purported statements of fact and explicitly performative valuations. In short, the claims of a discontinuity with re-

spect to the category of modernity play at double cross: on the oneside, the objective recognition of a breakdown, for example in terms of an epochal shift with which it would by now be impossible not to goalong; and, on the other, the need to make this declaration once moreso that it can be truly realised.

If this rhetorical indecision is one of the most effective (although ul-timately also debilitating) engines driving the jargon of crisis, it is nothard to locate its most notable precedent. Of course, this would be thecase for Nietzsche’s claim that ‘God is dead’, in aphorism 125 of The Gay Science. The madman’s rant provides the most striking example of the intertwining of constative and performative utterance which has so


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powerfully defined the epochal analyses in the 20th-century debates. Un-deniably, this was a potent and portentous development, but one which,as critics were quick to point out, also contains another element, that ex-

tends far beyond Nietzsche. This is the tendency on the part of such anal-yses to generate a range of prophecies that, in the most extreme versions,present the objective risk of transforming philosophical reflection into anentirely self-referential discussion. Together with the jargon of crisis, thistendency toward self-fulfilling prophecy is the other topos (or, better, theother vexata quaestio) of the contemporary debate. But this is not all.These two cultural features are so deeply entrenched that they havecome to produce their own overturning. We can thus say that, through

a vertiginous acceleration of the malady of history, the epitaphs of the20th century have rapidly passed to a second-order obituary: from secu-larisation to theories of the post-secular, from the death of the subjectto the retrieval of the self, from anti-metaphysics to a new metaphysics,from the end of modernity to the return of the modern.

The case for deconstruction

Undoubtedly, deconstruction plays an important – perhaps crucial – rolein this context. The more this role is evident, the closer we look at the‘essential’ characteristic of Jacques Derrida’s approach: deconstructionis systematically a style of thinking rather than logically coordinated prem-ises and conclusions. A series of important consequences follows fromthis initial determination. First and foremost is the impossibility of speak-ing of a truth of deconstruction, except in contradictory, and thus rhetor-ical, terms. Deconstruction cannot be ‘true’ in the way that a philosoph-

ical theory might be, because its validity depends entirely on its imple-mentation as a ‘resource’ implicit in philosophical discourse. That is, de-construction works if, and only if, a text yields to the deconstructive ap-proach, while at the same time one could hardly imagine a text which re-sists or holds out against it. In other words, one could say that the decon-structive purpose is dissatisfying, spurious, or, even more, inconclusive,and yet it is difficult to find a way to decisively refute it. If this is thecase, it is clear why deconstruction is one of the most powerful resourcesof the 20th-century debate, far beyond the boundaries of philosophy. Theinsistence on aspects of style is precisely the most evident factor (thoughnot the only one) which has rendered deconstruction applicable over a

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wide range of fields, rather than encompassing a collection of shared as-sumptions.1

These two essential characteristics (i.e. an overriding emphasis on

style , combined with the impossibility of determining its truth) legiti-mately situate deconstruction within the categories which we are examin-ing here. Yet, its success as a critical instrument also provides a specificmeasure of the third element that should be highlighted, that is, the ap-parent redundancy that troubles the jargon of crisis. Seen in this light, theapproach seems now to consider such categories as a kind of culturalmode that has become outdated, and as such, requires a definitive over-haul of its methodological features. A real conflict of interpretations ap-pears to be at stake here, which paradoxically combines two different in-stances of self-fulfilling prophecy, with a peculiar effect of dissonance:along with positions which basically reaffirm the central premises of de-construction, one also finds positions which significantly modify thosepremises, and other positions which reject them altogether. This highly contentious scenario seems inescapable if one attempts to enter intothe recent discussions on Derrida’s legacy. While this approach might as-sume different forms, it will always draw more or less explicitly on pre-suppositions of this kind. For the particular case of deconstruction, the

difficulties become complicated after the fact because of its characteristicinter-disciplinarity. But there is at least one point that seems perfectly simple and straightforward. If one looks at the diverse camps involvedin those debates, it is not difficult to recognise (albeit in an approximatemanner) one of the sources common to these criticisms. Although deliv-ered differently, the critical reference is directly or indirectly made to theethical and political irresponsibility of deconstruction.

1 It is not among the aims of the present volume to draw a map of Derrida’s re-ception in the 20th century, neither from a disciplinary point of view, nor in geo-graphical terms. In this regard, the classical point of reference (even if by now somewhat outdated) continues to be Schultz/Fried 1992. Nonetheless, it is usefulto draw attention to texts which stand out for their relevance to the specific ques-tions addressed in this book, leaving aside those of strictly philosophical import.

With regard to literary studies, it is worth mentioning, among others: Norris1982; Arac/Godzich/Martin 1983; Culler 1985; Royle 1995; Kronick 1999;Kates 2008. For political issues, useful references include: Beardsworth 1996;

Norris 2000; Resta 2003; Regazzoni 2006; Cheah/Guerlac 2009. Finally, forlaw: Cornell/Rosenfeld/Carlson 1992; Andronico 2002; Goodrich/Hoffmann/Rosenfeld/Vismann 2008; Legrand 2009.

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At least for philosophy, we are dealing with a reprimand that proba-bly finds its most significant voice in Hilary Putnam. In fact, it is to Put-nam and the reading of deconstruction in his book Renewing Philosophy

(1992) that we owe perhaps the most unequivocal formulation of theproblem. As is well known, the core of his analysis is the charge of a strong link between the Derridean problematisation of the notion of truth and the collapse of any objective criteria to which we might entrustthe burden of a socio-political critique. According to Putnam, it is thethreat that deconstruction poses, and the theoretical programmes whichshare its premises, that is, those which ‘“problematize” the notions of rea-son and truth themselves’, downgrading as ‘primarily repressive gestures’the concepts of ‘“justification”, “good reason”, “warrant”, and the like’.2

This is the real core of his critique. Deconstruction is a sophisticatedre-edition of the ancient forms of scepticism – and all the suspicions ap-plicable to the latter are equally applicable to the former. Hence the thesisaccording to which the equivalence between truth and repression is, inshort, a ‘dangerous view’, because it ‘provides aid and comfort for extrem-ists […] of all kinds’.3 And, for Putnam, it is only a short step from thisargument to its conclusions, conclusions which sound almost like a man-ifesto: ‘The philosophical irresponsibility of one decade can become the

real-world political tragedy of a few decades later. And deconstructionwithout reconstruction is irresponsibility.’4

2 Putnam 1992, 132.3 Putnam 1992, 132.4 Putnam 1992, 133 (my emphasis). Of course, along with Hilary Putnam, one

cannot omit mentioning Jrgen Habermas and his Philosophical Discourse of

Modernity , especially the ‘Lecture VII, Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Jacques Derrida’s Critique of Phonocentrism’ (see in particular Haber-mas 1990b, 181 f.), as well as the ‘Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinctionbetween Philosophy and Literature’ (Habermas 1990b, 185–210). As is wellknown, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity opens an important page inthe relationship between Habermas and Derrida. For a recapitulation of this de-bate, which lasted about two decades, the most useful reference is still undoubt-edly Thomassen 2006. Nonetheless, what follows will clarify why a reference toPutnam (or better, the Putnam of Renewing Philosophy ) might be more immedi-ately functional for the argument here. And this is a major reason for the partic-

ular connotation that, in fact, Putnam gives to the concept of reconstruction incontrast to Habermas’s use of the term, which moves along a very different ho-rizon.

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Beyond deconstruction

Thus, in that text dating back to the beginning of the 1990s (and within

a reflection that might have led to very different conclusions), Hilary Put-nam explicitly indicates an impasse, while at the same time designating anexit from deconstruction. However, today, Putnam’s critical manifestoalso offers another advantage, one which might be considered uninten-tional. His analysis furnishes us with a very realistic image of the redun-dancy of which we spoke, that is, of the reciprocity – through increasing-ly refined specularity – between two conflicting epochal predictions: onthe one hand, the exhaustion (already accomplished) of logocentrism,and on the other hand, the end (imminently anticipated) of deconstruc-tion. Yet, it is easy to see that this astounding effect is not only a matterregarding the reception of Derrida, but touches the development of de-construction itself. In short, if Putnam’s charge deals mainly with theethico-political dimension of deconstruction, we cannot ignore the cen-trality that such a dimension would have gradually assumed in the laterphases of Derrida’s thought. Without going too much into controversialperiodisations, undoubtedly the development of Derrida’s positionemerges from the steady increase in the multiplicity of themes it encom-

passes, starting from a nucleus which remains relatively stable. And theethico-political questions do establish part of this evolution.5 In thiscase, we can definitely affirm that it is the same Derridean thought am-plifying the tension between opposite motives, which deal above all withthe impact of philosophical discourse upon the public domain.

In other words, Putnam’s critical manifesto seems to portend a ten-sion within Derrida’s thought itself. For these and other reasons, itmight be a valuable undertaking to decontextualise Putnam’s reading from the specific theoretical intentions that sustain it and to use hisclaim as a sort of heuristic tool to rethink the current debates on decon-struction. This kind of decontextualisation would intentionally leaveaside Putnam’s philosophical outcomes in order to focus exclusively onthe conceptual dyad of deconstruction and reconstruction. This shift iseven more conceivable in the context of the years following the 1990s,during which Derrida’s appeal – along with the hermeneutic and post-modernist camps of contemporary thought – undeniably suffered a sig-nificant decline of influence. For the reasons cited above, this does not

5 Of course, this is the case for Derrida 1994c and Derrida 1997e, which are truedetonators that animate the last ten years of his production.



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signal the assertion of any causal nexus between Putnam’s criticism andthe reorientation of that discussion. On the contrary, it deals with a pos-sible shift in the cultural milieu, whose consequences are diverse: they

range from those which mainly deny the reality of a crisis in deconstruc-tion, to those which, on the other hand, emphasise the scope of this crisisand suggest radical alternatives to the Derridean project. Obviously, be-tween these two extremes, there is a great number of intermediate solu-tions, difficult to classify within historiographically definite categories,but deriving their specificity from the diverse disciplines in which they are situated.

This hindrance is part and parcel of Derrida’s legacy today. The va-riety of contesting positions is so wide that it calls for a critical assessmentto achieve a unified theoretical schema. The dyad of deconstruction andreconstruction might be a useful starting point to address this need. Of course, any enterprise of this kind must provisionally discount an initialdifficulty, one that is perhaps unexpected. Each of the disciplinary fieldsinfluenced by the Derridean project is in fact cultivating specific antibod-ies in response to the shifting conditions of the ongoing debate. This hasproduced a secondary effect that can be measured on the macro-scale of its consequences. If the deconstructive koin generated a certain lexical

homogeneity in fields of study connected to it, the current evolutionseems to have provoked a rupture in this transdisciplinary commoncoin. This rupture has occurred to the degree in which the Derridean cri-tique entered diverse fields with a determinate effect: the temporary en-counter among different outlooks and methodologies (to which, in fact,Derrida had contributed) seems to belong to a recent past, but one that isnow closed.

The essays contained in this volume respond to this cluster of de-mands. The contributors belong to diverse fields of study and have

very different backgrounds, including: philosophy, literary studies andlaw. These varied starting points allow the authors to remark upon decon-struction from their own perspective, thereby demonstrating the spread-ing influence of the deconstructive lexicon. However, this kind of testi-mony also allows each contributor to take a stand, either explicitly or im-plicitly, with respect to the history of Derrida’s reception, even in its pres-ent state of disintegration. Thus, the volume seeks to compose a kind of map, or, better still, a mosaic , of the current (post-)deconstructive Babel:essays that investigate specific aspects of Derrida’s reception have beenplaced alongside contributions that study the implications of deconstruc-tion beyond its original scope. However, this is not in order to articulate a

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common theoretical position, as the reader will see. This aim has been setaside from the outset. Instead, the sheer variety of the chapters indicates a variety of perspectives that faithfully draws upon the actual complexity of

the problem, whether this is taken to be historiographical or, more likely,theoretical. But this is not all: the methodological approaches adopted by the authors are also multiple. Thus, the section entitled ‘Deconstructionand/or Reconstruction: A Philosophical Approach’ brings together essaysclosely related to a specific philosophical tradition, as with the contribu-tion of Emmanuel Cattin on Martin Heidegger, the essay by Jorge Prezde Tudela Velasco on Derrida, and, lastly, Jean Robelin’s intervention onthe notion of the subject as conceived in debates around deconstruction.

Alongside these essays are contributions that cover questions transversally related to different ‘schools’. Advances in this category come aboutthrough Graziano Lingua’s study of the genealogy of reconstruction,

Jean-Marc Ferry’s investigation of historical reason, and EvelyneGrossman’s work on creative delinking in literary and philosophical prac-tice. This overlap of different disciplinary perspectives is still more evi-dent in the second section, ‘The Limits of Deconstruction: The Caseof Art and Literature’. Here we include essays dealing with the impactof deconstruction on issues in aesthetics along with others that examine

its contribution to art theory and literary studies. These investigationsrange from Timo Kaitaro’s exploration of surrealism to Clive Cazeaux’sessay on contemporary art; from the contributions by Franca Bruera and Giulia Boggio Marzet Tremoloso on the rewriting of myths to theinterventions of Maria Spiridopoulou on the problem of translationand Antonella Emina on the construction of identity in post-colonial lit-erature. The volume concludes with the section entitled ‘The Genealogy and Legacy of Deconstruction: The Politico-Social and Juridical Point of

View’. It includes essays that take as their theme the politico-philosoph-

ical implications of deconstructive motifs, even outside a strictly Derri-dean context: the contribution by Jordi Maiso on Theodor W. Adorno,the essay by Herman W. Siemens on Chantal Mouffe, and the interven-tion by Flavia Monceri on the concept of identity in the social sciences.Finally, the relevant (and ambiguous) impact of deconstruction on legaltheory is investigated in the essays by Alberto Andronico and JnosFrivaldszky.

As the reader will see, considerable space is given to contributions which deepen the (sometimes unexpected) connections between decon-struction and themes that are not directly implied in Derrida’s reflection.This choice is all the more crucial in light of the inevitable polemical im-



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plication that the decision to take stock of deconstruction might be takento carry today. In fact, the charge of (ir)responsibility is based on the hy-pothesis that we have indicated above, that is, on the existence of a causal

connection between two key notions implicit in Putnam’s critique: theabandonment of logocentrism and the extra-philosophical consequencesof Derridean thought. Clearly we are dealing with a potent theoreticalpremise, but one that carries with it a series of presuppositions that can-not easily be dismissed. To what degree is it possible to eliminate the risk of producing a radical short-circuit between the two terms in question,thereby transforming a serious problem into mere rhetorical posturing?In other words, is Putnam’s (and many others’) equation between decon-struction and irresponsibility a faithful reading of Derrida? Or does it be-come an accusation that would charge the Derridean legacy with a com-plicity, the evidence for which cannot be found at the scene of the crime?

To obviate this risk, the course chosen by this volume is to acceptcompletely the argument that there has been a change of the cultural am-bience compared with the years during which deconstruction justifiably celebrated its great early triumphs. However, at the same time, we willsystematically avoid the mistake of once again falling into the typicalschema of those predominant cultural trends which either uncritically

support or merely seek to demolish an intellectual hegemony. To achievethis aim, the contributors in this volume – and this project as a whole –have chosen a particular method. They intentionally keep alive the poly-semy embedded in the notion of reconstruction, inserting this complexity into formulations that differ greatly, sometimes taking a more polemicalstance, sometimes more conciliatory toward the deconstructive tradition.Such an array of diverse contributions has one consequence which seemsboth relevant and desirable: that of deemphasising the contrast betweendeconstruction and reconstruction, thereby allowing the volume to escape

any reductive conclusions. On the one side, this dualistic schema seemsable to provide a paradigm that usefully clarifies some issues in the debatearound deconstruction. Yet, on the other side it risks appearing unfaithfulto current cultural debates as a whole, which are richer (and more ambig-uous) than such a binary might suggest. The emphasis on the polysemicdimension of reconstruction is perhaps a salutary antidote to this out-come and allows for a better understanding of the questions that areon the table.

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In sum, to paraphrase Aristotle, one could say that today reconstruc-tion is said in many ways.6 In the contributions which follow, its prevailing connotation is undoubtedly a heightened sensibility to multiple frame-

works of meaning, far from the deconstructionist mistrust toward catego-ries traditionally employed for such aims. And yet it is impossible to re-turn its semantic field to a single theoretical reference, because this wouldmean reducing its multiple inflections to a univocal genealogy. Converse-ly, it is necessary to recognise (to use another Derridean category) that re-construction is a bastardised notion, a word with too many fathers, thattends to complicate itself as one gradually registers its extension, more orless explicitly, in the contemporary debate. It is a bastardised notion, butalso, and perhaps for the same reason, it seems fruitful, judging by theyield of its outcomes.

Translated by Wilson Kaiser

6 As a matter of fact, the polysemy of the notion of reconstruction is clearly wit-nessed in the current debate, at least in the field of philosophy. Habermas’s andPutnam’s contribution has already been discussed here. Yet, one cannot omit re-calling other authors who refer to the lexicon of reconstruction, from diverse and

sometimes opposite perspectives. To mention but a few of them, it is the case with Gianni Vattimo, who emphasises the question in an essay, symptomatically entitled ‘The Reconstruction of Rationality’ (see Vattimo 1997). Not by chance,his purpose is to undertake a critical dialogue with Derrida, in order to advancephilosophical hermeneutics’ claims on rationality. More recently, on a very differ-ent front, the reference returns in an admittedly realist and anti-hermeneuticalperspective: see Ferraris 2010, the starting point of which is exactly Putnam’sreading discussed above. The question also returns to the spotlight in the currentFrankfurt School debate, where the notion of reconstruction becomes the core of an entire purpose (a sort of philosophical manifesto) focusing its role in public

discourse. This is typically the case for Jean-Marc Ferry. Among his writings,the most relevant in this sense are Ferry 1991b; Ferry 1996; Ferry 2004. For fur-ther references to Ferry’s reconstructive purpose, see also Lingua 2012.



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Acknowledgments

This volume had its origin in a research project (EW09-217: Public Rea-

son between Deconstruction and Reconstruction) financed by the Euro-pean Science Foundation, the Centro Studi sul Pensiero Contemporaneo(Italy), and the Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea of the Consi-glio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy). The results gathered in these pagesare indebted to their generous support. The activities connected to theresearch and the publication of this book would not have come to fru-ition without the contributions of Giulia Boggio Marzet Tremolosoand Shelley Campbell. The project also owed much to discussions withGraziano Lingua and debates with Franca Bruera, Antonella Emina,Paolo Heritier, Federico Vercellone. The development of specific aspectsof the volume was greatly enriched by the advice and suggestions of Gae-tano Chiurazzi, Sebastian Hsch, Dan Lazea, Federico Luisetti, Christo-pher Norris, and Teresa OÇate y Zuba.

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Section IDeconstruction and/or Reconstruction:

A Philosophical Approach


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Leaving Philosophy? Heidegger, Bauen, Lassen1

Emmanuel Cattin

Let us begin with a few German words, a verb and its complements, which, during the 1960s, gave to the thinker who had thoughtfully medi-tated and chosen them the direction of a task, the indication of an in-creasingly apparent necessity. Whether a twilight task or a necessity,they are from a time when, maybe imperceptibly, light was changing,though unbeknownst to those already engulfed in the shift. In the Dm-merung that had enveloped those times, these words indicated the task of a departure, the need to move on. Today we can read these difficult

words, which above all we should never neutralise, at the end of the‘Zeit und Sein’ lecture, delivered by Heidegger on January 31, 1962 atFreiburg-im-Brisgau, and collected in 1969 in Zur Sache des Denkens.The verb by that point had become the most decisive and the most im-portant in his thought. The verb was: lassen. A prefix was added, ber :

berlassen. But in this case, its complements in the passage renderedthe verb even more difficult to understand. The first of these comple-ments was: die Metaphysik. The second one, no less enigmatic, was sim-ply: sich selbst. The passage in question reads: ‘Therefore, our task is toleave all overcoming, and leave metaphysics to itself.’2 For those whoare wondering what the task of thought is today (if, indeed, such a task remains), or in other words which necessity grips us, these words

with their enigmatic simplicity might once more transmit the essential

orientation of something unfinished. It is easy to see that such an unfin-ished task becomes apparent only through leaving all we have accom-plished up to the present, even if we do not measure the meaning or un-derstand the sacrifice that such an abandonment would require. But con-cerning the question that we can make here our own, of ‘destruction’ or‘deconstruction’, it might be today radically overcome. With the rising of

1 I am grateful to Tom Jones, who helped me to translate the original French ver-sion of the present text. This essay will appear in my forthcoming book, Cattin

2012.2 ‘Darum gilt es, vom berwinden abzulassen und die Metaphysik sich selbst zuberlassen.’ Heidegger 1993, 25.


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this final necessity, it is as though the question revealed itself, throughsuch an overcoming, already inaccessible to us. Whether we accepted itor not, we were somehow apart from every ‘construction’ or ‘deconstruc-

tion’ and all they might still reach, as though ‘deconstruction’ were al-ready no more commensurable with this epoch. But we are moving tooquickly. Heidegger above all has not only meditated the meaning of Bauen and Abbauen. For him the latter, Abbauen, was primarily a path,before he returned to the former, Bauen, in order to think it and, together

with it, the process by which its essential meaning was forgotten. In a dif-ficult conjunction, this forgetting joined with the absence of thought

which our present illustrates at every turn. Let us begin by recalling what kind of path ‘destruction’ and ‘deconstruction’ f irst were. In the un-finished book to which the 1962 lecture relates, Destruktion was a title of a task stemming from the Geschichtlichkeit of Dasein, that is, from a mode of being pertaining to Dasein. Such a mode of being turns Daseintoward what is called ‘tradition’. Tradition does not belong to the past orrather the past as tradition does not follow behind, but precedes Dasein,

geht ihm je schon vorweg.3 Tradition is the way which opens up at every moment before us, and which Dasein follows. It precedes us, pushes itself further than us. But if tradition itself can be hidden, and therefore is call-

ing for a discovery (Entdeckung ), however, insofar as it is dominant, it isalso always covering and hiding. It covers, not what it would block in itsdominant, oppressive transmission, but rather what would be historically defeated and would then implore from the past to be saved (Walter Ben-

jamin was the thinker of such an imploring call emanating out toward usfrom an unresolved past, which aims at us because of its distress). No, butit covers precisely what it transmits. In its transmission tradition distancesitself from the necessity of returning to its inaugural meaning, to its prov-

enance, to its rising. Tradition in its own essence is uprooting.

4

Forgetting isnot incidental in tradition, it belongs to it essentially: transmission meanscovering. In the language of Sein und Zeit , tradition is a feature of thedecay (Verfallen) of Dasein. From this perspective the meaning and thesignificance of Destruktion as a task perhaps become clearer. Destruktionis oriented toward the ‘originary experiences’ (auf die ursprnglichen Er-

fahrungen).5 It is the destruction of tradition, or rather of the ‘back-

3 Heidegger 1984, §6, 20.

4 ‘Die Tradition entwurzelt die Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins.’ Heidegger 1984,21.5 Heidegger 1984, 22.

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ground transmitted by tradition’ (des berlieferten Bestandes ). In 1927, Be-stand certainly does not yet mean the being which is exclusively dominat-ed by the phenomenon of enframing (Gestell ), but it already points out

the process by which the initial meaning is obscured through its transmis-sion. However, Heidegger first of all will part from this unilaterally neg-ative meaning of ‘destructive’ in order to gain the range of significance,necessarily ambiguous, of an insight that will attempt ‘to trace’, ‘to delim-it’, ‘to measure’, abstecken, tradition by marking ‘its positive possibilities’,that is, ‘its limits’. The ‘destructive’ insight establishes a limit in a pastthat, while it was once a source, now appears as a resource. Heideggerdoes not claim that destruction is without negation. But the negative de-struction is not carried out upon the past. Rather, it is upon the presentthat destruction performs the work of negation that its name involves. Inother words, destruction is negative at one remove, obliquely, destroying the present which covers the originally directive experiences of the past. Itis not a matter of having done with the past once and for all. Instead, thenegation will be accomplished quietly upon the present: ‘Die Destruk-tion will aber nicht die Vergangenheit in Nichtigkeit begraben, sie hatpositive Absicht; ihre negative Funktion bleibt unausdrcklich und indi-rekt.’6 Though quietly negative, destruction will be no less radical and

sudden, for its vocation is the manifestation of the necessity (Unumgn- glichkeit ) of a task, our task in 1927, namely the ‘repetition’ of the ques-tion about the meaning of Being.7 For Heidegger destruction was essen-tially the clearing of a place or a field: ein Feld kontrollierbarer Auseinan-dersetzungen, a field of controllable explanations.8 But was this field truly the field of control? Even if it was a matter of repeating originary expe-riences and retrieving the phenomenon, as emphasised in §7 when itclarified the rigour and necessity of the phenomenological way, in1927 it was as yet unforeseen what sort of opening (Erschließung )might occur. Destruction took its necessity from the question to come,not the opposite, and the question itself, still unapparent, remained en-tirely uncontrollable. Destruction is not the task itself, but the path,the unique one, even if it is not the path in isolation, leading to thepoint at which it begins to open up. It is only at this moment that itmakes itself a task. If Heidegger wrote Destruktion here, elsewhere hehad chosen Abbau, or even used both words indifferently, to name the

6 Heidegger 1984, 23.7 Heidegger 1984, 26.8 Heidegger 1984, 27.

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task, in an almost military tone, to ‘progress’ (vordringen) ‘by way of a deconstructive return [im abbauenden Rckgang ] toward the original mo-tive sources of the explication’ which today is dominant and covering.9

But is all this now not too far, maybe even out of reach? If Heideg-gerian phenomenology as early as the 1920s could already think of itself as the necessity of a construction which required destruction,10 the decon-structive return both traversing and destroying tradition (or rather thepresent in which the covering is accomplished) also leads Heideggermuch further to (or at least will not divert him from) the meditationupon Bauen in its strange proximity to Denken, at the point wherethey become two modes of Wohnen. This constellation radically changed

when, on August 6, 1951, Heidegger delivered in Darmstadt the lecture‘Bauen Wohnen Denken’, and such a leap would necessarily be disorient-ing. There, the question concerned every kind of Bauen, and not only thetask of thought. However, that which was already referred to as ‘forget-ting’ in 1927, though measured neither in its profundity nor in its con-sequences, nonetheless continued to appear under this name. After the

war, every form of Bauen together with Denken engulfed by it, appearsin front of us, as if they issue from the same workshop (Werkstatt ) astwo traits of Wohnen, which itself is a trait, and even the Grundzug of

the being of mortals insofar as they are mortals.11

Let us follow the nec-essary disorienting effect of this new constellation, before we move on toconsider Lassen. At the Darmstadt lecture, printed in the 1954 book justafter the broadcast lecture Was heißt Denken (Munich, 1952) and beforethe lecture Das Ding (Munich, 1950, the second version of the Bremenlecture in 1949), Heidegger shows from language itself, the silence of thelanguage that does not speak, das Schweigen (for language is essentially si-lent in its Sprechen), or its not yet meditated secret, in which languageitself withdraws its own originary dimension,12 how Bauen belongs toWohnen. Here Bauen is a trait of habitation, is itself Wohnen, andBauen is the meaning of being mortal as earthbound. ‘We are insofar

9 Heidegger 2007, 168.10 Destruction as deconstruction, Abbau, was in 1927 implicated in the ‘construc-

tion’ (Konstruktion), in which Heidegger aimed to reduce the being to Being, in-sofar as this reduction was not and could not be exclusively negative, but envi-sioned Being from the already given project of the being. See Heidegger 1989,29–30.

11 Heidegger 1959, 162.12 Exactly: ‘das Ursprngliche dieser Bedeutungen’. And further: ‘Die Sprache ent-zieht dem Menschen ihr einfaches und hohes Sprechen.’ Heidegger 1959, 148.

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as we dwell’, Heidegger writes.13 Or we might say: insofar as we build.For such a being-dwelling, such a being-mortal – nothing else is in ques-tion but the meaning of their being – is deployed by Heidegger in accord-

ance with the dimensions of Geviert. Its ‘fundamental trait’ appears asSchonen, ‘to treat gently’, fulfilled in the simplicity of the Aufenthalt bei den Dingen. This stay is itself a Lassen, a letting-things-be-themselves.Thus the accurate double sense of Bauen, as Pflegen and as Errichten, willappear.14 But we have forgotten what language says by silence, what it

withdraws, for example, forgetting the meaning of being-mortal, of dwelling, and through it of taking care as well as of building, of thingsthemselves. Now, if we have lost the essential being of Bauen, this forget-

ting is even more profound than what could be historically understoodand was already overwhelmingly apparent by 1951. This distress isolder and more radical than what we witnessed in die Weltkriege und die Zerstçrungen, which nonetheless belongs to this distress, the distress,die Not , which has yet to be meditated.

In the 1951 lecture, what is Bauen, the necessity of which surroundsand situates mortals? What is the ‘building’ and the ‘dwelling’ to which itbelongs and the loss of which means distress? What is Bauen, in this

Abendland that earth has now entirely become, where mortals stay or

can no longer stay, either East or West?Is the secret and far-off, perhaps even ungraspable kinship between

the deconstructive return into tradition and the distress that calls us, pro-vided it is gathered in a Bedenken, such a distress that we can name it Hei-matlosigkeit , even if we cannot think it yet, and is such a call to a Bauen,

which would be aus dem Wohnen and fr das Wohnen,15 not the same asthe one which the 1951 lecture made out between Bauen and Denken?Denken stood in the proximity of Bauen, both of them referring to the

same focal ‘dwelling’. And, though it is seen from the end, was not decon-struction already, even if the access to it is difficult, when it was in theservice of the question of Being and the phenomenological repetitionof an originary experience, on the way (indivisibly positive and negative)to a Wohnen, at least to a meaning of Being, which indeed understooditself differently, but still in the Dasein as its most proper trait? But the

13 ‘[…] als die Wohnenden sind’. Heidegger 1959, 149.14 Heidegger 1959, 152. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm translated immediately colere ,

aedificare. They later established themselves the connection with Ich bin fromsein, as with wohnen.15 Heidegger 1959, 162.



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Rckgang , the ‘return’, as it becomes clearer, has to radicalise in departure.Deconstruction might still remain under the sign of the glance back (zu-rck ), and even of a coming and going through tradition, until it reached

what was called das Ursprngliche. However, such a return to the Greek experience of the question was itself no simple matter, but took its neces-sity from the question to come which we must find a way to ask. But thenshould it not be still possible to be, to become Greek? Were we not thenthese Greeks who had in front of them the task (not a simple one) of be-coming and becoming over again Greek? We were not yet those who havenow in front of them the attempt at being no more Greek. There was noHeideggerian ‘reconstruction’, stemming from a Destruktion, but the finalradicality of this abandonment of metaphysics, the irreversible nature of such a Lassen (even though it might be accessible but only makes itself available to us for the first time through a backward glance), does notleave us today with any possibility of remaining the same, of becoming the same. We must now consider the radicality of such a Lassen, of such an berlassen. What does it mean to speak of ‘leaving’ or ‘abandon-ing metaphysics’? This is the most difficult and the furthest point fromany deconstruction and any reconstruction, this last one inaccessible, if at least the prefix should indicate the restoration of that which had

been irreversibly undermined and ruined – such a reconstruction wasnever and never will be within our power – though it is again for us a matter of Bauen and Denken. Let us now take a closer look at the endof the 1962 lecture.

Lassen as a task is not destined merely to open a new path. This glanceinto what is becoming will not delineate the contours of a new ‘epoch’,nor the strange, uncomfortable no-man’s land that separated epochsinto a singular ‘history’. We do not live anything ‘new’ in that sense.Reiner Schrmann with his pellucid insight never ceased to insist on

it: if the present carries within itself the mark of an end, it is the abso-lutely final end of ‘epochal figures of Being’, as the Protokoll which fol-lowed ‘Zeit und Sein’ recorded it.16 We are standing in an interval, zwi-schen, but that which finishes and that which begins, whose beginning an-nounces itself with signs that are still far away, do not belong to the samehistory, if we have to understand in history the range of every epochaleconomy to a singular unfolding, changing, turning constellation. Thetwo sides of the Zwischen where we are standing do not go together,

and in this measure they do not join in a singular ‘history’. The name16 Heidegger 1993, 56. See Schrmann 1986; Schrmann 2003.

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that Heidegger gave to such a Zwischen is Ge-stell. As an enframing whichmarks times in its double face, the Ge-stell requires a double glance: Die-ses , the Protokoll reads, ist gleichsam eine Zwischenstation, bietet einen dop-

pelten Anblick, ist – so kçnnte man sagen – ein Januskopf.17

That which iscoming remains incalculable, the Incalculable itself. But the Ge-stell is theaccomplishment of that which comes to an end, its heightened intensifi-cation, such is its first face: Es kann nmlich noch gleichsam als eine Fort -

fhrung des Willens zum Willen, mithin als eine ußerste Ausprgung des Seins verstanden werden. In this measure, we are still standing under thesign of Being, under its mark: that is, in the field of philosophy itself,belonging to it, to that which it thought, or under the will that wills noth-ing other than itself. As a ‘prolongation’ of the will which wills itself, theepoch is a terminal one, but such an endpoint is also ‘station’ that en-dures. The enframing in this sense, in its fury and its ‘ravages’, as Schr-mann once translated Entrckungen,18 already contains the immobility of this endpoint. But this endpoint is itself ambiguous. The more this end-point’s exclusive hold on being is reinforced, the more its darkening em-braces and removes any other possibility of unveiling, as the uniquemasked face of !k^heia, the more fate is fulfilled – the more another pos-sibility begins, or the closer it comes to such a beginning. This other An-

blick can just be glimpsed: Zugleich ist es (das Ge-stell) aber eine Vorformdes Ereignisses selbst.19 According to this other measure, which is so diffi-cult to glimpse, we stand already far off from this endpoint, but we didnot leave it completely. This distance can just be indicated, and its fore-shadowing and signs remain enigmatic. Its name itself, Ereignis , was notchosen without hesitation (Besinnen or Bedenken now always means: Zç-

gern,20 and it is up to us now to ‘hesitate’, the most difficult is not to fore-go such a hesitation). The ‘Zeit und Sein’ lecture provided at least an in-dication of that which should not be thought by the name of Ereignis.21

The end of the epochal dimension was above all the end of the facesor names of Sein : Ereignis is not a new name for Sein. ûEpow^, Heidegger

17 Heidegger 1993, 57.18 Schrmann 2003, 588. But the ‘ravages’ or ‘clearing out’ of the Beitrge have a

different meaning here. They are to be thought from the instant, from the tem-poralisation and the ‘No’ which Heidegger sought to rejoin through them. In Ge-stell death with all its ‘ravages’ is essentially inaccessible, withdrawing itself asdeath.

19 Heidegger 1993, 57.20 Heidegger 1959, 113.21 Heidegger 1959, 21.



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noted in the course of the lecture, means: an sich halten. Through theircoherence, the ‘epochs’ form at every instance a halt in what is a history only insofar as it is a fate which is sent to us, Heidegger redirects the Ge-

schichte to what has to be called more properly Geschick.22

Such a redirec-tion is still, in 1962, a ‘destruction’ or ‘deconstruction’. This latter is in-deed the only path. ‘History’ effectively remains in 1962, a continual‘covering’, Verdeckungen, and nothing is achieved in history but thesame berdecken. That which is covered, mehr und mehr , is the initial,as fate and sending, Schickung : die anfngliche Schickung von Sein als An-wesenheit. We thereby discover a reference back to our original question.The only path through all that covers the beginning is still a path of de-construction, Abbau, and Heidegger translates it once more: dies meint die ‘Destruktion’ , a translation where the negative is no longer nuancedin any way, except perhaps by the quotation marks between which Hei-degger puts the word. What, then, is the scope of such a destruction? De-struction is that which allows for an insight, an ‘insight into’ that whichadvances upon us, but only advances insofar as destruction will have ac-complished such a letting-come, a letting-appear of that which is fate (Ge-schick ). ‘Destruction’ is nothing less than destruction of history (Ge-schichte ), and if necessary it will also be the destroyer of the historicity

(Geschichtlichkeit ) of Dasein : if necessary , that is, if the 1927 book couldnot be read from the end, destruction will be fulfilled over Sein und Zeit itself. But, in 1962, it remains the ‘only possible path’, der einzig mçgliche Weg.23 Destruction is the path which turns fate into sending, Ge-schichte into Geschick , when this one is thought from the Es gibt , Es gibt Sein. In this manner, to answer our initial difficulty, destruction is notsurpassed, but remains the unique exit from history, perhaps even fromthe end of history, the final site where we stand. But as regards berwin-den and berlassen, do they still belong to destruction? And what does

remain in Denken from Bauen? Now let us turn to the second face of Ge-stell. Two traits – Zug was

the name for what was until now a category of Sein – can be discerned atthe end of the 1962 lecture, traits that we must keep in mind to begin tograsp the meaning of berlassen. The meditation about Zeit and Seinshows in Ereignis a ‘proper’, following which it shelters in its depths,that is, its most proper, a ‘No’, the refusal or the reserve according to

which it does not move forward itself, in its heart, in !k^heia. In other

22 Heidegger 1959, 9.23 Heidegger 1959, 9.

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words, as Reiner Schrmann had understood it since the Beitrge of the1930s, in order to elect and to elevate its duality to the level of the trait of the tragic essence of mortality, indicating Being turned against itself: no

Ereignis without Enteignis. Zum Ereignis als solchem gehçrt die Enteignis.24

Ereignis does not give itself, it is rather that which withdraws itself. Such a refusal since the Beitrge has its proper name: der Tod , which each timebears witness. Every ‘giving’, every ‘There is’, Es gibt , shelters a retreat or a refusal, a ‘No’, or shelters itself, and its innermost heart, in this negation.Such a ‘No’ is ‘guarding’, ‘preserving’, ‘protecting’: Bewahren. Death ap-pears as a secret which is kept closed. The other trait, the other ‘proper’ of Ereignen is a second Gehçren, a second belonging. It appears in Ereignis asman belongs to it, or rather: belongs in it. But what is exactly shown hereby Heidegger? The most decisive is certainly this in : in das Ereignis.25 Invirtue of this belonging, of this ‘engagement’ within Ereignis – durch sie (die Vereignung) ist der Mensch in das Ereignis eingelassen – through

which man receives the being-man, his most intimate trait, in other words, his sense of being and sense in Being (als den, der Sein vernimmt ),‘man’ is no longer he who can see Ereignis , nor is he capable either of con-sidering or representing it. ‘We’ cannot think Ereignis metaphysically or

philosophically , ‘we’ cannot think Ereignis in Greek. When such belonging

begins to open up, that which deployed itself until now as Vorstellen, Be- grnden, and even: das nur aussagende Sagen, is no more accessible.26 We can no longer speak the same language; we can no longer speak Greek. ‘We’can no longer be or even become Greek.27 Our language could never beable to say Ereignis , to say what it is, as we cannot put it in front of us , einGegenber , nor even around us, as ‘that which includes everything’ (nochals das alles Umfassende ). The engagement within Ereignis renders meta-physics impracticable, or rather, the path of metaphysical experiences,

only today, the impracticable. We cannot say what Ereignis is or that‘there is’ Ereignis , nor even that Ereignis ‘is’. It would be, as Heidegger

24 Heidegger 1959, 2425 Heidegger 1959, 23. I am grateful to Didier Franck and Alexandre Lowit for hav-

ing indicated the significance of this point.26 Heidegger 1959, 24.27 One of the most important and difficult texts on this point is the Gesprch (see

Heidegger 1959, 127), in which our ‘task’ is laconically described thus: das grie-chisch Gedachte noch griechischer zu denken. Our insight remains Greek, will even

have to become ‘more Greek’, considering more originally what was thought inGreek, but it perceives that which ‘is, nevertheless, no more Greek, never moreGreek’.



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writes with great precision in the metaphor, gleich als wollten wir denQuell aus dem Strom herleiten.28 Ereignis is the source to which languagecannot return without ceasing to be the language of the river which

comes from it, the language of Being, that is, Greek language. Such isthe attempt of Unterwegs zur Sprache in 1959. Through the destructionof the Greek language, going beyond k|cor, the task is to listen to thesource, and thus, in the silence of Sprache – for example in the strangereduplication, in k|cor, of the subject by its verb, when the verb becomesits own subject (das Ereignis ereignet , das Ding dingt , die Welt weltet ) – togo no further than the same (vom Selben her auf das Selbe zu das Selbe , as‘Zeit und Sein’ reads). Bedenken or Besinnen in this sense can be charac-terised as an attempt to think the Same, and its hesitation does not pro-ceed without the radically disconcerting slowness of thought. Responding over the years to the 1927 book, the insight into Ereignis , the non-Greek insight (or is it still Greek?), which will speak or at least seek to under-stand a language which is no longer Greek, or says itself that which is nomore Greek, will thus lead up to such a Lassen, an Ablassen and an ber-lassen. What does it mean, then, to leave the overcoming itself? It is pos-sible to translate it exactly, however unfathomable it sounds: to think Seinaus dem Ereignis ; or: ohne Rcksicht auf die Beziehung des Seins zum Seien-

den ; or simply, as Heidegger immediatly clarifies: Sein ohne das Seiende denken. To think ‘Being’ (Sein) beyond ontological difference itself, with-out a backward glance, without the least regard for being (das Seiende ),and it means: for metaphysics, which takes its law from being, ohne Rck-sicht auf die Metaphysik.29 This means (since it is necessary to bring mat-ters to this point): thinking Being in a way other than philosophically, or

without regard for philosophy. Thus it is no longer a matter of overcom-ing. In this sense, the difference between berwinden and berlassen issignificant. In the overcoming or surpassing, the Rcksicht toward meta-physics still dominates. As long as such an insight is turned backward, itcan never overcome without regarding what it passes. But, leaving is anentirely different departure. To leave is already entering into the separa-tion, a separation that does not look backward, a departure with no re-turn and no glance back. But it is possible that, with that kind of depar-ture, ‘deconstruction’ or ‘destruction’ have themselves been left. Destruc-tion perhaps has not finished with the Rcksicht , giving all its prodigalregard to that which it destroys. Maybe it is itself the infinite leave-taking

28 Heidegger 1993, 24.29 Heidegger 1993, 25.

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as a leading word in the service of thought’.32 As Heidegger indicates,‘translating’ or ‘transposing’ it, bersetzen, is as impossible as translating the Greek k|cor or the Chinese Tao. Ge-stell only presents itself as a ‘prel-

ude’ (Vorspiel ) to Ereignis as it is thought as Er-eignis , thought from thisproper and this appropriation of the one to the other. But the ‘prelude’might already bring us to the heart of our task, which we received atthe same time, or rather to the heart of that which presents itself as a pos-sibility of a ‘turning’ or a ‘torsion’, which now in Heidegger’s language isno longer berwindung , but Verwindung. Turning, or torsion, or shifting from the control of enframing, which comes aus dem Ereignis in dieses.33

Then a new domain, Bereich, opens, or might open, or will open. Inmarks the entry into a new domain. But what does ‘domain’ meanhere? What are its traits? This is the most difficult point. Heidegger’smarginal notes constantly attempt to say it in another way. But herealso begins the task of a new Bauen. Such a domain is der in sich schwin-

gende Bereich, the domain oscillating in itself. One note gives an indica-tion: schwingen und schweben – noch ungemß. This domain is strange,oscillating or floating, it does not open anywhere as though it were wait-ing for us, but rather it ceaselessly opens and recloses. It does not open

without the closure of the domain of metaphysics, so that ‘Being’ and

‘man’ in this domain ‘lose’ the delimitations that metaphysics establishedfor them. How is such a loss, such a bareness accomplished? To lose, here,is to quit, to leave metaphysics each time toward a new sense of ‘Being’and ‘man’, if these names can still speak from their deep silence. Freefrom metaphysics, ‘Being’ and ‘man’ take on another aspect in this do-main. Now, this domain still means in 1957 ‘to build’ or ‘to construct’(Bauen): am Bau dieses in sich schwingenden Bereiches bauen.34 Whatdoes it mean, Bauen, or am Bau bauen, ‘to work at building’ the domain?

‘Building’ is no longer metaphysical, it can no longer receive its meaning from any presupposed ‘foundation’. Without doubt, this oscillation orfloating is the sign of the new fragility of the domain, which is no longerestablished on a secure basis. ‘To build’ in that last sense is now out of ourreach. Heidegger describes the Bauen which appears for the first time, theBauen of the oscillating, floating domain: Das Bauzeug zu diesem in sichschwebenden Bau empfngt das Denken aus der Sprache. 35 Language is the

32 Heidegger 2006, 45.

33 Heidegger 2006, 46.34 Heidegger 2006, 46.35 Heidegger 2006, 46 – 47.

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source and provides what will make building possible, while thought willtrust its silence to receive it from language. From now, building will begin

with language and deploy itself within language. But in what sense is lan-

guage a source? Heidegger is going to provide a clarification: ‘For lan-guage is the most delicate oscillation, but also the most fragile, retaining everything in the floating building of Ereignis.’36 Nothing refers such a construction to what it was under metaphysics. Nothing continues totie it to what was the ‘philosophical’ building, except perhaps destruction,the unique path that will have led to it without itself inaugurating thenew domain, leading to something beyond itself. Such a Bauen, still soindefinite, so fragile, just like language in its own silence, joins the Woh-nen. ‘Building’ or ‘working to build’ is already an ‘inhabiting’ within lan-guage for a man who no longer belongs to metaphysics, who is no longerGreek, or perhaps who remains Greek in a ‘no more’, ‘never more’ Greek domain: ‘To the degree that our essence is appropriated in language, weinhabit Ereignis.’ But have we already entered this floating domain? Are

we already standing in this oscillating domain? Yes, undoubtedly we are,but the question remains: who is this ‘we’, who is standing there, and in

what mode exactly, Greek or non-Greek? Are we already, and in whatsense, the ‘inhabitants’?

Does the 1957 question remain in suspense? Are we already, are westill in a position to perceive the floating domain? And are we still able toattend to the vibration, the oscillation of language? Has the path towardthe floating domain already opened to us?

36 ‘Denn die Sprache ist die zarteste, aber auch die anflligste, alles verhaltendeSchwingung im schwebenden Bau des Ereignisses.’ Heidegger 2006, 47.



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Waiting: The Impossible Jorge Prez de Tudela Velasco

‘I can’t believe that !’ said Alice.‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath,and shut your eyes.’ Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying’,she said, ‘one can’t believe impossiblethings.’‘I daresay you haven’t had much prac-tice’, said the Queen. ‘When I was yourage, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed asmany as six impossible things beforebreakfast.’(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass , chap. V)

Quomodo cantabimus canticum Do-mini in terra aliena?(Psalm 136)

1± m l µ 5 kpgtai ! m´kpistom oj 1neuq¶sei,! meneqe ¼ mgtom 1¹ m ja· %poqom.(Heraclitus, DK B 18)

Let us suppose, for a moment, something impossible: that deconstruction‘is’ (in a fixed and unmovable way) something. Were that the case, and

were we forced to risk and put forward something like a common feature,a style or a radical ‘essence’ of the deconstructive practice, we should say this, in my opinion: that deconstruction is, above all, a purposeful bet onimpossibility. However, that this same bet acknowledges at the same timethe urgency and even the need to enable these same things declared un-feasible, and as we will see, is not the other face of a complex movementthat successfully avoids any over-simplification. The goal of this article isto back up and develop this double assertion.

Let us start with impossibility. Throughout history at any point intime in one way or another, deconstruction has been using its critical scal-


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pel on many of the concepts that philosophy has regarded as fundamen-tal. A constant result of its analysis has been to ascertain, in its opinion

without doubt, that these concepts are a group of fictions ; fictions sup-

posedly rooted in conditions of possibility that, as soon as they are set,become incapable of achieving the perfection implicit in their definitions.To be sure, deconstruction has not critically tested each and every intel-lectual construct offered by philosophy. Nevertheless, the power of itstools is so great, and its work so meticulous (or apparently monotonous),that in principle it could well be said that these operations of ‘reductionto impossibility’ have no limit; they can be regarded as extending to every concept of the tradition, whether it is put to the test or not. As it isknown for deconstruction, a list of such concepts rightfully and strictly

would be endless. Since I do not have enough scope for such a dispropor-tionate task, I will just cite, without limitation, some – if few – significantexamples of this theorem.

First example, first foray: it is asserted that philosophy has alwayslooked at an ideal like justice. Wishes so praiseworthy, such as achieving a correct economic and social order, drawing up an adequate penal code,attaining a serene conscience – both personal and collective – when ana-lysing one’s own actions, depend upon a full definition and organisation

of the concept of justice. Deconstruction does not dream of discussing the importance of such a project, there is absolutely no doubt aboutthat. Neither is deconstruction shy when it comes to assert the urgentneed for defending, promoting, or making demands upon that project,or actively fighting for its success. And the fact that it is interested in jus-tice is not at all casual: when fighting for justice, deconstruction fights foritself; because justice and deconstruction are in fact the same, as Derrida states.1 However, this same deconstruction asserts that it can prove justiceas such, is impossible. As any other ideal, it is impossible because in order

to materialise perfectly, exactly and absolutely, it needs to conform torules that are equally and simultaneously valid, but contradictory intheir requirements. They are contradictory because justice orders: (a) totake into account only the particular case, the specific person being

judged; but also requires that the decision be fair; and, (b) that thesaid decision conforms to what is envisaged in a previous, universal, ab-stract, and homogenous law.2 No decision tensely suspended as it is be-tween this double bind that at the same time creates and breaks it,

1 Derrida 1994a, 35.2 Derrida 1994a, 51.

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could then be said to be fully, wholly, presentably fair: because either itdoes not conform to a previous rule (and then it is a decision, yes, butnot a fair decision); or, it conforms to the rule (and then it is fair, yes,

but not properly a decision). A fair decision, therefore, will only be a de-cision that obeying a rule retains in itself the memory of an always pre-vious injustice, that its necessarily violent foundation is not only the firstrule, but also the decision – incalculable – of making a decision. It will besaid that this analysis deconstructs any wish that justice, as such, ever be-comes reality. And, certainly, it is so. Except that, if it is so, it is – as wehave seen and as Derrida warns – because deconstruction operates fromthe irreducible basis of an ‘idea of justice’ that in its infinity, alien to any

rule, calculation or domination (by virtue, let us say, of its madness) putsforward a requirement so unavoidable, so impossible to postpone, as itacknowledges our infinite duty, our infinite responsibility toward theother.3 We will come back to that.

Second analysis, second foray: throughout its history (a history that,for the sake of convenience, can be regarded as spanning ‘from Plato toHeidegger’), philosophy has kept the closest bonds of familiarity withthe idea, the problem, the experience of death. Since Phaedo assignedas the main goal of philosophy to deal with death, both philosophy

and death walk together along a road whose last and most resounding stretch perhaps has been, so far, to regard death as the ‘ownmost’ possi-bility (or can-be) of the Dasein (Heidegger 1984, §§50–53). Now, pre-cisely in the work of the Heideggerian formulae – wherein a whole tra-dition of reflection appears to culminate – Derrida believes he listensto the echo of an internal implosion that shakes the foundations,maybe from the beginning, of that thousand-year-old conceptual struc-ture. Because Heidegger, for whom possibility is determined (§50) by

the pure and simple impossibility of the Dasein, would be the first to pro-claim that with this risky and ambiguous formulation any progress in un-derstanding that possibility will increase the freedom of insight into thatsame possibility, now understood as impossibility, that is: as the very im-possibility of existence in general (§53). Considered as such, death, pos-sibility of the impossible, appears then as an exemplary manifestation of a strange possibility/impossibility ‘logic’ that allows the possible to appearas impossible. And that this analysis – not many analyses are so violent– leads purposefully to consider whether death so understood constitutes

3 Derrida 1994a, 55.

Waiting: The Impossible 29


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a figure which can well be a substitute, by metonymy, for all that possi-bility which, if exists , can only be conceived as being impossible.4

Third analysis, third foray: philosophy, together with the ‘common

sense’ that usually supports it, has always accepted the necessary possibil-ity of translating between languages: is there not – it argues – an omni-present separation between the ‘content’ of a text, its ‘meaning’, and thecoded signifiers that transmit it? Now, as the biblical story of Babel shows(or the Derridean lecture of the same), the essential translatability of every language, in fact of every signification event, bars, forbids throughitself, from the very beginning, the rational dream of achieving a perfect,final version, of the original text, which closes forever its continuousopening to other translations, all of which are imperfect.5

Let us go on (it will be our fourth example). It is said that philosophy has come into the world as a political theory. Furthermore: it is said (by a philosopher like Cornelius Castoriadis, to take a case in point) that notby chance was it born at the same time as democracy. And it is saidthat its wish to found is extended, of course, to the founding of a com-mon human life, between brothers: a p|kir. Nobody would doubt the ac-curacy of this opinion. However, for deconstruction that originating foundation cannot be anything but the (necessary) founding of some-

thing impossible. Impossible because the p|kir is founded on friendship,on vik_a. If there is anything decisive about the issue of vik_a, it is pre-cisely that maxim attributed to Aristotle (‘Oh friends, there are nofriends!’), which declares the ideal of a perfect friendship to be unrealis-able: because in that ideal, the friend cannot but wish for the friend somuch good and perfection that, finally, he turns into a god – i.e. intosomeone that has no need to surround himself or herself with friends.6

We will talk, then (as one would have expected), of democracy, and of the ‘autonomous’ founding of a political system or of a society that, ap-parently, establishes its own rules, starting with its constitution and in anentirely free and autonomous way develops a social contract. Now nosooner read, this same theoretical approach of an ‘original’ contract im-mediately shows its own constitutive contradiction, because: how canthis contract have the power to legitimate its signatories as new holdersof rights if, strictly speaking, said signatories can only acquire that condi-tion precisely according to the contract, its signing and its coming into

4 Derrida 1986; Derrida 1996a.5 Derrida 1987a.6 Derrida 1994b, 250.



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effect? A celebrated analysis by Derrida has applied this same ‘logic’ to a famous case of ‘autoconstitution’: the United States Declaration of Inde-pendence. A canonical text, almost sacred, in which Derrida highlights

not only the impossibility of distinguishing its declarative and perform-ative aspects, but above all, the unavoidability and darkness of the mutualcontamination and involvement of the signatories and its declaration;paradoxically, without this impossibility of clear separation, the very actof emancipation would not have been possible.7

And what could we say (fifth example, fifth consideration) about thisgift, around which so many anthropological, economic, psychologicaland religious explanations have gathered and woven together? We will

say this: that the only way for this gift to really occur is in a way thatin fact would cancel it. In other words, as a gift devoid of any sort of ex-change, acknowledgment, credit or gratitude, yet necessarily circular,

which amounts to the same thing as saying that it is only possible inits perhaps exemplary impossibility: because the gift is not, notes Derri-da, simply impossible, but perhaps the impossible in itself, the impossibleas such.8 However, we will not stop the analysis at this point. Because thatanalysis, as we are seeing, could well be repeated differently each time, ad infinitum; so for example, its force can be applied to a concept so appa-

rently understandable as that of forgiveness. We will then say that forgive-ness is never forgiveness when it adjusts itself to what is reasonable or to

what is expected: when what is forgiven is the forgivable. And that on theother hand, it is only when it adjusts itself to madness, to the unexpected(the rationality that is subject to analysis as in that most singular experi-ence of Abraham): when one forgives by virtue of that strange and un-avoidable law that exclusively demands to forgive only the unforgivable;an unforgivable that is always that, both before and after the forgiveness.9

I have put forward, with a savage brevity, no doubt, but with enoughforce – I expect – a few samples of the deconstructive practice. Now, ac-cording to deconstruction the instances being analysed here are, as per-haps at first might have been thought, not sophistic constructions of a capricious thinker, maybe anxious for fame. Quite the opposite. Aboveall for deconstruction they are proofs. Proofs: with a rigour comparableto that of a formal deduction, wherein the repeated deconstruction can

7 Derrida 1984a.8 Derrida 1991, 17 f.9 Derrida 1999b, 161 f.



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bring to light the conditions of possibility that support the entire philo-sophical project. I will try to prove this assertion.

For deconstruction, if all the aforementioned is accurate, if those in-

stances mentioned above are not the only examples of possibilities whosepossibility rests on its impossibility, and that list of examples could poten-tially be increased to include each and every one of the great – or small –categories used in Western thought, then from its beginning, philosophy has been built upon a supposedly unassailable foundation, which in ac-tual fact has never been other than a trembling, blurred, unstable foun-dation. Thus from the beginning, philosophy has asserted the possibility of identifying an Archimedean point from which, on which, or simply inrelation to which the rest of the building could be derived, ordered orgiven sense (the building of the world, the building of knowledge orthe building of language). For philosophy, this nuclear, original concepthas not always been the same; even when it has been the same (becauseperhaps sometimes it has been) it has not received the same names. Yetfor deconstruction the face of this last foundation or final point of refer-ence is very clear: in principle, it is the face of the simple, of the one, of the pure identity that is complex, plural, the multiple – and illusory –game of differences, which is intended to be reducible. According to de-

construction, the big metaphysical tradition makes itself responsible forsetting the features of this face: according to this tradition, it is theface of the presence. This presence is one that philosophy acknowledgesas fundamental in its multiple sense: presence before a subject, of course,but also presence of this subject to himself, as well as temporal presentand/or donation or gift; together with these the presence as origin andbeginning – from which what is absent comes to be regarded as productand derivation – must also be distinguished. According to this schema,the ideal of an order that refers everything to the presence pervades

and seals our conceptual apparatus, any conceptual apparatus adjustedto that model and the experience of the world based on it. The ruin of that order, the proof that it is unfeasible (or the proof, as we have beenseeing, that only unfeasible becomes feasible), would bring with it theruin of any concept – of all the concepts – that depends on that order.

However, such ruin, proclaims deconstruction, is inevitable for vari-ous reasons: first and foremost, because according to Derrida ‘presence isnever present. The possibility – or the potency – of the present is but its



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own limit, its inner fold, its impossibility – or its impotence.’10 The sec-ond reason but not least is that this structure of binary opposition estab-lished in philosophy is unable to stand the test of its own criterion.

Therefore, philosophy establishes, for instance, as we have seen before,that the opposition between what is primary and derivative is irreducibleand complete in nature. Notwithstanding, this very action of absolutedistribution is the action that prevents it from thinking of its own oppo-sition, as it only has for this purpose the concepts it has separated. By def-inition, the problem is that none of the opposites thinks of itself as being a constituent part of the opposition that in itself exceeds them. In this

way, the theoretical opposition between simple and complex, originaland derivative, present and absent, etc., by definition, can be neither sim-ple nor complex, neither original nor derivative, neither present nor ab-sent, etc. (however, it would not make sense at all if it were different fromthese concepts – that would be unconceivable). Accepting this argumentnecessarily means that deconstructive work can no longer unconditionally comprise the programme – philosophical in nature – that establishes theprecise delimitations of the conceptual field. Deconstruction replaces thisprogramme by the double affirmation (‘yes, yes’) of a necessary contam-ination, displacement, invasion, parasitisation, etc., of original for deriv-

ative, present for absent, simple for complex, equal for different. There will never be any clear-cut, delimitated oppositions, but a mutual andcomplex implication, which, even in principle, obviously means thatthe dream of achieving the purity of a presence, the goal – and ending – of a transcendental meaning, the perfect identification of one self,that dream cancels itself in the very moment that it has been formulated.There is not, and never will be (and never has been), anything similar to a principle. There is not, and never will be, anything like an indivisible

point. There is not, and never will be, anything like a splendid isolated,autonomous, and immutable present, to which we associate the past andfuture with complete clarity. All these ancient objects of metaphysical de-sire will have to give way to the absence of primarity, to the displacementof positions, to the constitutive disturbance of the identical.11 The entireseries of known Derridean provocations can be inferred from this deci-sion, which is not strictly initial, as it had always been established that:

10 Derrida 1981, 333. ‘La prsence n’est jamais prsente. La possibilit – ou la puis-

sance – du prsent n’est que sa propre limite, son pli intrieur, son impossibilit –ou son impuissance.’ Derrida 1972a, 336.11 Derrida 1996b.



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if there is no principle (start, origin, but also power of command, of domination), only the secondary will be primary. Nothing ‘proper’ canescape from the work of ‘the improper’. The experience must be under-

stood in terms of an infinite text of footprints in eternal referral to otherfootprints, and so the indivisible and unitary finally becomes divided anddifferential, like a buzzing tension that severs itself continually of its ownaccord. In sufficiently technical terminology used for deconstruction, thispeculiar distribution programme of classic opposition in philosophy 12

takes shelter under the constant referral to certain concepts of difficult de-limitation, such as the concept of ‘maybe’ ( peut-Þtre ) or the call for a cer-tain ‘quasi-transcendentality’. In other instances, this is due to their ac-knowledged affinity (but not identity) with the concept of ‘undecidabil-ity’, at least according to Gçdel, used to describe a large variety of meta-mathematical discoveries.

In light of such clarifications, it seems that it is now easier to compre-hend the previous characterisation of certain classic referents of the act of thinking as possible/impossible, as possible only in and due to its ownimpossibility. Thus, ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’ is a pair of concepts, asis the case of any other main conceptual pair in Western philosophy,

whose separation only seems feasible because of their inseparability. Fur-

thermore, and following from what has already been said, it seems thatdeconstruction is not entirely wrong when, during one of its few effortsof (relative) ‘self-definition’, it acknowledges that it deals only with im-possibility. This is just what can be read in Psych. Inventions de l’autre :‘The interest of deconstruction, of such force and desire as it may have, is a certain experience of the impossible.’13 A rather cautious state-ment (‘a certain…’) in its ambiguity, however, any reserve completely dis-appears in this one found in Force de loi : ‘It [deconstruction] is possible asan experience of the impossible.’14 The author of both statements has not

limited himself by presenting his programme in such a generic manner.On the contrary, in a reflective paragraph, he has actually made a count – an unfinished and open count, of course – of all the times

when for whatever given reason deconstruction has issued a report of im-

12 Derrida 1972a, 367 – 368.13 Derrida 2007, 15. ‘L’intrÞt de la dconstruction, de sa force et de son dsir si elle

en a, c’est une certaine exprience de l’impossible.’ Derrida 1987b, 27.14 ‘Elle [la dconstruction] est possible comme une exprience de l’impossible.’ Der-rida 1994a, 35.



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possibility for each of its objects of interest. Here is the text where hementions this ‘aporetology or aporetography’,

in which I have not ceased to struggle ever since; the paradoxical limitrophy

of Tympan and of the margins, the levels, or the marks of undecidability –and the never-ending list of all the so-called undecidable quasi-concepts thatare so many aporetic places or dislocations – that it is a double bind or all thedouble bands of Glas , the work of impossible mourning, the impossible op-position between incorporation and introjection according to Fors in M -moires pour Paul de Man and Psych. Inventions de l’autre […], that it isthe step and paralysis of Parages , the ‘nondialectizable contradiction’, the an-niversary date that ‘only occurs vanishing itself’ according to Schibboleth, theiterability, namely the conditions of possibility as conditions of impossibility scattered all over, and in particular in Signature vnement contexte et dans

Limited Inc , the invention of the other as the impossible in Psych , theseven antinomies of philosophical discipline in Du droit la philosophie ,the gift as the impossible (Donner le temps…) and especially, near these places where questions regarding legal, ethical and political responsibility also in-volve geographical, national and linguistic borders, I would have been tempt-ed to insist upon the most recent formalization of this aporetic present inL’autre cap (dated from the Gulf War).15

This is from the text of Aporie , which as we can see, breaks down a long list of impossibilities that c

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Beyond Deconstruction From Hermeneutics t - Alberto Martinengo