Law Text Culture

Volume 4 Issue 2 Article 18

1998

Political identi�cation and the di�erendP. BankiUniversity of Sydney

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Recommended CitationBanki, P., Political identi?cation and the di=erend, Law Text Culture, 4, 1998, 263-287.Available at:h@p://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol4/iss2/18

Political identi�cation and the di�erend

Abstract

At the end of a long and scrupulous essay addressing the question of Martin Heidegger's politics, PhilippeLacoue-Labarthe asks:

Why would the problem of identi?cation not be, in general, the essential problem of the political(Lacoue~Labarthe 1989:300)?

>is journal article is available in Law Text Culture: h@p://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol4/iss2/18

Politicalldentific·ation and the DifferendPeter Banki

At the end ofa long and scrupulous essay addressing the questionofMartin Heidegger's politics, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe asks:

Why would the problem of identification not be, in general,the essential problem of the political 1989:300)?

Rather than end with a statement, a thesis, Lacoue-Labartheconcludes his essay with a question - an interesting question,posed in an unusual way. This question arises out of a readingthat carefully situates the difficulty of analysing Heidegger'spolitics in the wake of the radicality of his philosophy. To theextent that Heidegger grounds his understanding ofthe politicalin the ontico-ontological difference, that is to say, in a differencethat he claims to have been forgotten from the very beginningofWestern thought, Heidegger's particular determination of thepolitical- of 'the essence ofthe political' - would impose itselfasmore fundamental (and thus more powerful) than any inheritedconcept ofpolitics that one might try to oppose to it. ThlJs, forLacoue-Labarthe, an external reading is disqualified in advance- unable to grasp either the political implications ofHeidegger'sthought, or what in this thought made possible his politicalcommitments.

Now the problem ofidentification (inseparable from thatof mimesis) appears in the course of Lacoue-Labarthe's essay asone that would not be disqualified by the radical character of

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Heidegger's questions. Rather, it would seem to he implied(although in a manner as yet uninterrogated) _at the point wherehis thought and his politics are in closest proximity:

An unacknowledged mimetology seems to overdetermine thethought ofHeidegger politically. This remains to be shown. Itleaves us, today at any rate, with a question: Why would theproblem ofidentification not be, in general, the essential problemof the political? (Lacoue-Labarthe 1989: 300)

Although this marks the end ofthe essay, Lacoue-Labarthe deferssigning off. He adds a footnote, which situates the question ifnot 'beyond' the horizon of the problems posed by Heidegger(in every sense), then in juxtaposition to them, at a certainthreshold or limit.

This footnote is a self-citation - ormore precisely,- a citationof self-and-other - in which Lacoue-Labarthe sets the question'against the background' of work on Freud carried out incollaboration with Jean-Luc Nancy. He cites two texts, ofwhichonly one (to my knowledge) is translated into English (Nancy &Lacoue-Labarthe 1981) 1997). These texts interrogate the psycho-analytic concept ofidentification in terms ofthe Freudian analysisof culture. The analysis ofculture (undertaken towards the endof Freud's life) is interpreted- as a limit ofpsycho..analysis, wherequestions concerning the institution of authority and the-emergence ofthe subject are left unrecondled (Nancy& Lacoue-Labarthe 1997: 1-8).

Situated in this manner then, at the end ofone paperwhiledirecting the reader to two others, Lacoue-Labarthe's question -

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that proposing the problem of identification -as the "essentialproblem ofthe political (Iepolitique) - marks a point oftransitionbetween the analyses of two heterogeneous discourses. In theterms of Lyotard, one might say that it testifies toa difftrend.

A diffrrend is a limit ofdiscourse which occurs when thereis an untranslatability between different kinds ofargumentation- at the most elementary level, between different ways oflinkingsentences, according to specific rules. From this untranslatabilitythere results a conflict, a dispute, which is the consequence ofthe lack of a single rule (or 'phrasal regime' (regime- de phrases»having a universal authority to judge between them (Lyotard1983: 9-10). To consider, for example, the diffirend in questionhere: Heidegger's 'ontology' - at least the Fundamental Ontologyof Being and Time - wQuld identify psycho-analysis as apsychology, that is to a 'regional ontology', inasmuch as itinvestigates the character of a particular entity (the mind orpsyche) without having first clarified the meaning of Being ingeneral (Heidegger 1962: 1-33). With regard to the priority ofHeidegger's investigation, therefore, the concerns of psycho-analysis would remain secondary and derived. And yet, while

does indeed present itselfas an empirical science(although ofa very special kind, as the science ofthe unconscious,it distinguishes itselffrom psychology), there is nevertheless apotent resemblance between certain ofits topics of investigationand those found, for example, in Being and Time (notably, the,Unheimlich' and original 'being-guilty' (Schuldigsein) (Heidegger1962: 1390. While Freud claimed to have 'carefully avoided anycontactwith philosophy proper' - an avoidance 'greatly facilitatedby my constitutional incapacity' he wrote in

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Study - in the same text he nevertheless .avowed a tendency to(speculation', which, as a genre of discourse, can stricto sensu beunderstood neither as philosophy not as scientific or clinicalexperimentation (Derrida 1987a: 264-272).

If it is plausible to speak ofa difftrend between Heideggerand Freud (a single one, between two discourses presumed to beunified and consistent in their argumentation), this diffrrendwould also have a political resonance. This is most unmistakablein relation to the rise of in Europe during the 19305.Although these two thinkers lived and wrote at the same timeand in the same language, to all appearances they never read oneanother or corresponded. If in general a relation between themdoes take place, it would be in a kind of interval where eachremains "'out of date' with regard to the other - a 'singularanachrony' which allies them perhaps onlymore deeply and morepowerfully (Derrida 1987a: 191). However, with the rise ofNazism) each is forced to respond (albeit from radically differentpositions) to the same historico-political given. If they are notcontempories ofone another, they are nevertheless contemporiesof totalitarianism, that is to say, in Lyotard's terms, ofa discoursewhich posits a universal idea as the absolute rule for the judgementof reality (Lyotard 1983: 18).

For Heidegger, as is well known) the response takes theofa 'yes'. At once resolute and unambiguous, it is announced

publicly by his acceptance ofthe post ofRector of the Universityof Freiburg in 1933. In his inaugural speech, 'The Self-Affirmation of the German University', Heidegger identifieshimself as an intellectual and spiritual leader ofthe movement -one who would play a role in the historical refoundation of

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Germany, promised byNational Socialism. l In opposition to thebiologistk and racist doctrines of the movement, as well as tothe technical organisation ofknowledges in the modern universit}T,Heidegger determines the 'self-affirmation' of the Germanuniversity as the will to its own essence, which is equally the willto the historial spiritual mission of the German people (Volk):'Science and German fate must come to power at the same timein the will to essence' (Heidegger 1993: 30).Ntcr 1934, followinghis resignation from the Rectorship, this 'yes' is attenuated, butit is never denied (Lacoue-Labarthe 1987: 32). He is mistakenabout the reality of Nazism, but not its 'internal truth andgreatness'.2

In 1945, after the end of Second World War and theliberation of the camps, he will continue to speak of the historialself-affirmation (Selbstbehauptung) ofGermany (Lacoue-Labarthe1987: 85-86). In question is still the possibility of the se1f-identification ofthe German people, oftheir accession to history;to the greatness of their historical destiny, but with a certaininflection: this will not be by means of science or knowledge(Wissen) but through art, most particularl}', through listening tothe voice of HoJderlin. The historial mission of the poet is togrant his language (Sprache) to a people - a language thoughtmost essentially as myth (Sage) - a myth which will permit thepeople to accede to their own language, and situate itselfas suchin Histor}'. This turn to poetry (Dichtung), which apparentlydepoliticises Heidegger's thought (inasmuch as it involves awithdrawal from direct participation in the regime) is only aninflection in his long-standing interpretation ofthe Greek techne,that is to say, of the essence of modern technology. Not onlydoes this motif traverse all of Heidegger's discourses from 1933

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onwards, it will also determine in 1953 the manner in which hoexplains the expression 'the inner truth and greatness'Socialism, ie 'the _encounter of global technology and modernman' (Heidegger 1959: 199).

For Freud, the rise of Nazism also involves a politicaldecision or choice concerning his fate, although to employ theterms of Heideggerian existentialism in this regard cannot bewithout,irony. Freud's 'decision' to flee Vienna at the age ofeighty-two is a scenewhose eventuality is unthought - in fact cannot bethought - in the terms ofHeidegger's appeal to the self-willingof the historial spiritual inission of the German Volk. Becausethe Nazis do not recognize Freud as a member of the lfJlk, hecannot accede to the possibility ofsuch a decision. The Nazi callto self-identification has the paradoxical effect of stripping himofhis national identity, which is to say also, ofcivil and juridicalrights and protection. From the time of the Anschluss onwards(1938), Freud is publicly identified (in a way that he doesn'tchoose) by his religious origin, as is his science which becomesits decadent and perverted expression.

All ofwhich is to say that if the strategy of the RektoratsRedewas precisely to oppose (or at least to correct) the naturalist,biologistic and racist tendencies of the movement, if in joiningthe movement Heidegger attempted to 'spiritualize' NationalSocialism, he nevertheless did so in committing himself to asiaed voluntarism, grounded in a metaphysics of subjectivit¥(Paradoxically, this is just what in Beingand Time the thought ofDasein as ek-static, as 'originally outside of itself, should Haveforbidden (Lacoue-Labarthe 1987: 115).) The political effect ofsuch a philosophical commitment (or rather compromise) is that

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in seeking to oppose the appeal ofthe Nazi ideologues to natural,biological, racial forces, Heidegger reinscribes spirit in anoppositional determination, which by the very complicity ofopposites comes back to haunt him. If the program of the textseems diabolical, it's because it capitalizes in'a non-fortuitousmanner on two evils at once: the sanctioning ofNazism and thegesture which is still 'metaphysical', ie the mobilization of aconcept ofthe people (volk) which restitutes a subject ofhistory,that is to say, a stable identifiable entity or communal substancewhich also belies the concepts ofDasein andMitsein developedin Being and Time (Derrida 1989: 39f).

Following this lawofthe complicity ofopposites, one mightsuspect that if the rise of Nazism finds Freud and Heideggeroccupying polar opposite positions of the dyad Nazi/Jew, theremay also be a number of hidden similarities which complicateand refine the difflrend that I am pursuing here. Freud's 'decision'to exile himself from his home in Vienna, and in so doing todisplace the centre of the psycho-analytic movement, is alsoaccompanied by the writing of a text. This text, an 'historicalnovel' says Freud, written between 1934-1938 and published inLondon in 1939, addresses the enigmatic question ofthe hiddenorigin of the Jewish people. Highly unorthodox, even eccentric,in its formal construction and the manner in which it defends itsarguments, Moses and Monotheism pursues also a kind ofintellectual exile, where Freud quite consciously transgresses theboundaries of his expertise as a psycho-analyst, as well as therequirements of the academic disciplines from which he drawshis material (anthropology, history and archaeology). This is inorder to produce an investigation that 'can give no certainty thatwe shall arrive at the truth', but 'will perhaps throw-light on

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problems which have always deserved attention' andwhich 'recentevents have forced on our observation anew' (Freud 1985: 351).Without simply identifying himse1fwith the people ofIsrael (dasMJlk Israel) (although, as is well known, he never simply eschewsthis identity), Freud will claim the authority (which amounts tosaying the possibility) ofthinking the conditions oftheir existence,the reasons for their survival and the causes of anti-semitism.

In a manner similar to Heidegger then, Freud alsoresponded to Nazism by assuming the role ofan intellectual leader,which is to say not only a leader of intellectuals, but a leaderinasmuch as an intellectual - responsible not only for his ownfate) but also for that of 'his' people in general. Although henever joined a party or political group (throughout his life heresisted appeals to support Jewish nationalism) ie. Zionism)) nordid he authorize himselfwith a concept such as the 'philosopherking' (as did Heidegger)) as leader of the psycho-analyticmovement, Freud nevertheless saw himselfas responsible for thequestion of the existence of the Jews as a whole - precisely at amoment of imminent crisis or disaster. To this question, hesacrifices the disciplinary requirements which guarantee scientificauthority and protection) as he himselfwrites opening the prefaceto the third section, 'with the audacity of one who has little ornothing to lose' (Freud 1985: 295) - a gesture which recaUs whatBataille labels 'the practise ofjoy hefore death') or Blanchot 'therisk of the inessential'. By the circumstances of its publicationand the manner in which it breaks with convention (carefullyarchived in the prefaces to each section, the author being 'unableto wipe out the traces of the worKs origin' (Freud 1985: 349)),certain commentators have suggested a hidden identification onthe part of the author with the hero of his text, Moses, who, as

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lead.er of the Jews, gives birth to them as a people by deliveringthem from bondage in Egypt (Nancy & Lacoue-Labarthe 1997:25f, Yerushalmi 1991: 60, 74-76, 79, de Certeau 1992).

this Moses, Moses, is a stranger to the Jewishpeople inasmuch as he is not Jewish, but Egyptian - this is thetext's starting point and central thesis. In other words, Freudgrounds the Jewish tradition in the name of the other, or as onecommentator calls it, a 'blasphemouswitticism' (de Certeau 1992:314) in which the originary gesture ofseparation is expropriated.Of this double origin, Freud will then multiply the figures (heproposes two Moses, as well as two Gods, in fact also two differentpeoples who came together in Kadesh to receive a new religion(Freud 1985: 310), all ofwhich rests on a hidden murder, whosetraces Freud reads in the biblical narrative. Now, ifFreud identifieswith Moses, or rather identifies himself in the writing of thisMoses - the double, blasphemous, murdered, perhaps inexistentMoses ofMoses and Monotheism - then this gesture (which isalso a signature) has the paradoxical character ofa return to brokentablets. It is the return to a religion that is at once inalienably hisown and yet from which he is estranged as a man ofscience - ofa certain science, that of the unconscious. This novel return tothe religion of the fathers is also at the same time the re-inauguration of an exodus - not only ofFreud and the psycho-analytic movement, but in some sense also ofJudaism itself, of aJudaism without God.

In the famous preface to the Hebrew edition of 10tem andTaboo written eight years earlier (1930), Freud imagines aninterlocutor who asks the author, having abandoned the religionofhis countrymen, and also unable to share in nationalist ideals:

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'what remains to you that is Jewish?' (tWas ist an dir jiidisch?).+Speaking in the third person (itself a significant gesture), Freudwrites: 'he would reply: very great deal and probably its veryessence)} (I{Noch sehr viel wahrsheinlich die Hauptsache'j' (Freud1985: 51). The enigmatic character of this reply opens - from avery particular angle - the question ofpsycho-analysis as a 'Jewishscience'.3 On the one hand, when Freud testifies to the proximitybetween his commitment to science and the peculiar importanceof his Jewish identit)r, he reapproprlates a certain anti-semiticcaricature of psycho-analysis. If psycho-analysis is a 'Jewishscience', this could not mean (at least for Freud) that it speaks-only about Jewish people, or adopts a specifically Jewishpoint (judischen Standpunkt). Rather, it gives to read a relationthat is more enigmatic, more difficult to grasp - perhaps ofrichness and import - yet also unstable and potentially deceptive.(Notably, in this preface, Freud doesn't tell the complete truthabout himself Yerushalmi shows convincingly thefor example ofhis avowed ignorance ofHebrew, the language ofthe holy writ (die heilige Sprache) (Yerushalmi 1991: 64-79).) .:.

At another level, however, one might say that the deceptionbelongs to the very character of the self-disclosure. By adoptingthe third person, Freud gives to read that he at once is and is notthe author ofhis text, the 'Godless Jew', whose scientific analysisof the origin of religion and morality has now been translatedinto the language of the holy writ (die heilige Sprache) - with, allof this implies. In a manner comparable then to the way inwhich he describes his relation to Judaism and to the Hebrewlanguage, Freud betrays here also a relation to himselfand tQAlfown text that is posthumous.

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No reader of this book will find it easy to put himself in theemotional position (GefUlslage) ofan author who is ignorant ofthe language of the holywrit (die heilige Sprache nicht versteht) ,who is completely estranged (entfremdt) from the religion ofhisfathers...but who has yet never renounced his people (doch dieZugehorigkeit zu seinem Volk nit verleugnet hat), who feels thathe is in his essential nature a Jew and has no desire to alter thatnature...Thus it is an experience of a quite special kind when abook ofhis is translated into the Hebrew language and put intothe hands of readers for whom that historic idiom is a livingtongue (cine lebende Zunge). (Freud 1985: 51)

The proclaimed solitude of this author who remains a figure ofidentification - a prophetic voice of the 'new Jewry' - yetdissimulates another solitude, which appears precisely as thedifference between Freud and the author he describes. Thissolitude is 'withoutwitness': the relation to an exterioritywithoutidentity, without name, neither that of the scientist, nor the Jew.

Like Heidegger, Freud will also ground the historicalexistence ofa people (volk) in myth, and he will also identify asone of its distinguishing features an advance in spirituality/intellectuality (Geistigkeit). (Freud traces the etymology of theword Geist to the Hebrew ruah, meaning breath (Freud 1985:361).) In a more general sense, both Heidegger and Freud struggleto delimit the political from the position of knowledge,encountering a limit in which the task is unaccomplished. To besure, with Freud, it does not take the striking form ofthe Rectorat,where a thinker in adopting the public role of administratorsought to take an active part inwhat he believed to be the spiritual

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reawakening of his nation, indeed of the West in general. Yet, ina manner at least comparable to the texts following Heidegger'sresignation, yet with a resonance infinitely more tragic, MosesandMonotheismwitnesses the powerlessness ofa thought to effectthe actual poJitical conditions of those about whom, or in thename of whom, it feels compelled irresistibly to respond.Paradoxically enough, however, in this respect the text reconfirms,in a manner that remains powerful and also moving, the traditionwhose origin and durability it seeks to analyse. In the sectionentitled (TheAdvance ofIntellectualitylSpirituality' CFortschrittin der Geistigkeit), Freud writes: 'The natiods political misfortunetaught it to value as its true worth the one possession thatremained to it - its literature.... From the [time ofthe destructionof the second temple] onwards, the Holy Writ and intellectualconcern with it were what held the scattered people t9gether'(Freud 1985: 362).4

When Lyotard comes to address in his own way thequestion of Heidegger's politics, it is significant that he does sobysitlJating a diffrrendbetween Heidegger and 'the jews' (Lyotard1989a, 1990). In the attempt to find the 'internal logic' whichmaintains the double assertion - at once of the greatness ofHeidegger's thought and the objectionable nature ofhis 'politics',there is a silence that demands the recognition ofanother phrasalregime. This other phrasal regime will be that of the Jewish Law,which, according to Lyotard, disputes the Greek thinking of

Provoking the diffirend between them is Heidegger'sinfamous silence on the holocaust. The holocaust for Lyotard(and notably also for Levinas) is an event that cannot be thoughtin the language ofBeirig. To do so is to deprive the victims of thelanguage to articulate the wrong done to them.

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Now, it is important to underline that the existence of adifftrend for Lyotard does not have a simply negative sense.Inasmuch as it testifies to a certain limit of discourse - where'what there is to be put into sentences (phraser) exceeds whathumans presently can put into sentences' (Lyotard 1983: 30) -the diffirenddemands the institution ofidioms which do not yetexist. In the most general sense) the diffirend is an invitation tothe event - or more precisely to the question ofthe event (54rrive-t-iN). To this question, Lyotard addresses his text - a gesture in asense exemplary of all texts, all acts of communication anddiscourse: (To do justice (faire droit) to the diffirend is to institutenew addressees, new senders, new significations, new referents,so that the wrong manages to express itself, and the plaintiffceasesto be a victim' (Lyotard 1983: 29). In this respect, Lyotard'sconcept is very close to that of a certain deconstruction whichunderstands itself in similar terms. As Derrida says, in a mottothat can be read in at least two ways: 'Deconstruction is whathappens (ce qui arrive)'.

Despite the distance taken by Lyotard from the approachesofboth Derrida and Lacoue-Labarthe to Heideggees politics (dueto what he considers to be their overly dutiful, filial relation toHeidegger and the Greek heritage (Lyotard 1990: 75-77, 83-94)), he nevertheless shares their refusal of a simply internalreading, that is to say, one that analyses only the coherence of atext's concepts without posing the questions of its margin: of itsdate, hs context, its addressee(s), etc - all ofwhich overdeterminea text historically and politically. Of course, a simply 'external'reading is equally problematic (a history or sociology, forexample), inasmuch as it is generally powerless to measure itselfto the philosophemes it would claim to explain. Hazarding a

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discourse which is 'unstable, divided ... with no status properlydefined or prescribed in advance' (Lacoue-Labarthe 1989: 271),these three thinkers distinguish their approaches from that ofcoundessothers. But what is more important, particularly forthe few steps that I've taken here, is that in attempting to identifYthe limit between the philosophical and the political in Heidegger,each make a critical reference to psycho-analysis. Each employpsycho-analytic concepts (be it sometimes with a certainhesitation and reserve) to situate the closure of a corpus andtrajectory that each recognize to be among the most powerfuland important - the 'greatese (Lacoue.Labarthe 1987: 22) or'equal to the greatest' (Lyotard 1990: 52)) in any caseuncircumventable (incontournable) (Derrida 1982: 22) for ourtime.5 As noted above, Lacoue·Labarthe employs the psycho-analytic concept of identification ('because it is the only one wedispose ofto designate the enjeu ofthe mimetic process' (Lyotard1987: 122-3», Derrida employsCthose of 'Foreclosure' andsymptom (see below), while Lyotard's very concept of 'the jews'vitally depends on an appropriation of the Freudian concept ofprimary repression (Urverdrangung) (Lyotard 1990: 15-17).

'The jews' for Lyotard are not a subject of history, but arepressed event ofWestern civilisation in generaL On the firstpage ofHeidegger and 'the jews', in a gesture which measures hisdistance from the strategy of the Rectorats Rede, Lyotard avertsconfusion betweenwhat he calls 'the jews' and real Jews, drawingattention to his use of quotation marks and the lower case. (Butcan. one really trust this distinction? Who after all is a real Jew?Even if'the jews' not a people in the Heideggerian sense) theynevertheless resemble a people, inasmuch as they are still a meansof identification.) For Lyotard, we are all potentially 'jews'

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inasmuch as we seek to rememher and to bear witness tosomething constitutively forgotten in the thought of WesternCivilisation (Lyotard 1990; 3-5). As inheritors or children, ifyoulike, of the Jewish Y01k ofMoses andMonotheism (Lyorardciresthis text authoritatively (1990: 21-23)), 'the jews' are an historicalfiction - distinguished from others by the obligation before theLaw which is apriori unrepresentable.6

No doubt, the concept of the difflrend itself is also on theside of the Law, inasmuch as it is constructed in terms of a legaldiscourse and a scene of litigation. In the most general sense,Lyotard constructs this concept in order to make possible anethical response to silence, most particularly, to that ofthe 'victim'deprived of the means to articulate the wrong that is done tohim or her. For Lyotard, a silence is always a 'sentence' (unephrase).A 'sentence forms for Lyorard the basic indivisible unit ofphilosophical analysis (Lyotard 1983: 9). Inasmuch as a silencecan only articulate itse1fwirhin a network ofsentences) or rather,within a network where the linking (enchainement) of sentencesis necessary, a silence always appeals to sentenceswhich are possiblein principle. Somewhat enigmatically, Lyotard calls thisimpersonal necessity of linking: 'time. 'Time) is the name ofthat necessity by virtue ofwhich there is no end to language. Itis, as onewriter testifies, the conditionwhich renders 'the murmurinexhaustible' .7

A sentence 'takes place' (arrive). How to link onto it (enchainersur elle).... Now it is necessary to link 'now', another sentencecannot not arrive, it's necessity, that is to say, time, there is nonon-sentence1 a silence is a sentence. (Lyotard 1983: 10)

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At this level, Lyotard is as close to and as far as possible from acertain deconstruction, which also upholds in its own way thiselementary necessity oflinking {enchainement}. Derrida does notcall it 'time', but the 'promise', which in general opens thetemporal relation to the other:

There is in the simple fact that I speak a sort ofcommitment togo to the end of the phrase, to link (enchatner), to affirm inmaking a promise.... Before even deciding what I'm going tosay, I promise to speak to you, I respond to the promise to speak.I respond ... I respond to you from the moment that I speakand consequently I commit myself (Derrida 1992: 397-398)8

However, silence, which for Derrida cannot not be an affirmativeresponse, a confirmation of this elementary promise of speech,nevertheless does not have the self-evident character of a'sentence), as it does for Lyotard. (Lyotard defines silence as a'negative' sentence (une phrase negative) (Lyotard 1983: 29).)Because for Derrida language: and speech is grounded in a p.-o-missive structure, that is to say in the most general terms in_astructural commitment to the future and the other, the event ofsilence itself is divided. Inseparable from language and speech,silence does not take place in the present as a simple identity, butonly in addressing itself apriori to the future and to the other.Like speech, silence is a 'trace': erasure belongs to its veryconstitution, its identity is never assured. Citing Bataille in anearly Derridawrites: 'Ifthe word silence is, 'among all words',the 'most perverse or the most poetic'; it's because feigning tosilence _(taire) sense, it says non-sense (ie non-sens), it slides andeffaces itself: doesn't-maintain itself, silences itselfnot as silence,but as speech (parole). This sliding (glissement) betrays at once

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discourse and non-discourse' (Derrida 1978: 262, translationmodified).

Now this subtle difference between Derrida and Lyotardplays itselfout in the manner iiJ. which each approach Heidegger'srelation to the Jewish tradition and the holocaust. At issue forboth is, among other things, an ethical response to a 'silence'that they each at a certain moment caB a foreclosure (Verleugnung)(Derrida 1989: 100, Lyotard 1990: 29). (Notably, Derrida willput the term 'foreclosure' in quotation marks (Derrida 1989:100).) Now, whereas Lyotard polarizes the relation betweenHeidegger and 'the jews', for Derrida the limit between the twois divided precisely at those moments in Heidegger's discoursewhen he is closest to the tradition he 'forecloses' (Derrida 1989:100-102).

Limiting myself to only the simplest indications of thecomplex, subtle, differentiated interweaving of motifs thatcharacterizes Derrida's reading in OfSpirit, I recall that it is atthe nexus of the word Geist and its cognates that Heidegger atonce calls to the self-affirmation of the German University in1933, and also, twenty years later, lets his thought be broughtinto the closest proximity to the Jewish tradition and the ghostsof the holocaust. In the Discussion ofGeorg Trakls Poetic WOrk(1953), Heidegger determines the originary meaning ofGeist asfire (die Flamme), flame, burning (das Flammende), which in turndetermines the provenance ofevil. For Heidegger, evil is essentiallyspiritual (geistlich) (Heidegger cited in Derrida 1989: 103). Now,Derrida points out that this later determination ofGeist (and inparticular ofi ts cognate geistliche) , on the one hand, deconstructsHeidegger's earlier thinking ofthe term, but, on the other hand,

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also marks the closure of his brutal triangulation of its meaningaround the Greek, Latin and German languages: 'D.oes [thistriangle] not remain open from its very origin and by its verystructure onto what Greek and then Latin had to translate bypneuma and spiritus, that is, the Hebrew ruah?' (Derrida 1989;100). Derrida then recalls that it is 'possible to read a wholetradition ofJewish thought as an inexhaustible thinking aboutfire' (Derrida 1989: 101, 137). (Notably, Rosenzweig is here citedas exemplary.) By making manifest in this manner the folds ofHeidegger's avoidance or 'foreclosure', Derrida gives to read thecomplicity, in the name ofSpirit, between the fire of the hearthand the fire of the holocaust. Such complicity, of course, bringsto mind the concept of the Unheimlich. In Being and Time,Heidegger characterises Dasein's most primordial affective Being-in-the-worJd as this 'uncanniness', this original being 'not-at-home' (nicht-zu-hause sein) which lurks behind the tranquillityofour everyday (historical) existence (Heidegger 1962: 234).

-

In comparison with Lyotard then, Derrida's readinginvolves a suspension ofjudgement - ifnot ofHeidegger's politicalcommitments - then of the evasions and erasures of his text.Without Lyotard's conviction that a silence appeals to sentenceswhich are in principle possible (Lyotard 1983: 29), Derrida isable to read the performative richness, the duplicity, the abyssalresources of Heidegger's avoidances. (An investigation of themeaning, for Heidegger, ofthe very term 'avoidance' is announcedat the beginning ofOfSpirit as a major fil conducteur.) In the

ofan interview, while responding to a question concerningHeidegger's a,bout the Nazi concentration camps, Derridamakes the point: 'If we admit ... that the thing remainsunthinkable, that we do not yet have a discourse that can measure

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up to it ... then let us stop diagnosing the so-called silences andmaking the 'resistances' and 'nonthoughts' ofjust about everyonebe confessed' (Derrida 1992: 301). From what position is itpossible to judge Heidegger's 'silence', if we admit that we donot have a discourse to the measure of the event?

In the light ofthis question, one might be tempted to judgeLyotard for inadequately addressing the issue, for over-hastilycondemning Heidegger (and also Derrida, see above). YetLyotard's 'avoidance' - at once of this question, ,as well aseverything that might complicate his bi-polar characterisationofWestern'civilisation - is itselfinteresting and may be interpretedas symptomatic. As is the case for Heidegger, Adorno, Derrida,Blanchot and so many others, Lyotard's thought is acutelysensitive to the spectres of the Second World War. Whatdifferentiates him, however, (particularly from Heidegger andDerrida) is the unambiguous character ofhis pre-occupation andconcern. It is expressed openly and directly through thephilosophical problems that motivate him, as well as the texts hechooses and the events that he comments upon and analyses.9

In Heidegger and the jews', Lyotard is impatient andsometimes harsh. He condemns Heidegger's 'leaden silence'(silence de plomb) and in general everything in his philosophythat sanctions a geopolitics or a geolinguistics, whether it beGreco-Germanic or Eurocentric in form. Further, he readsHeidegger's thought as symptomatic ofthe complicity ofWesternphilosophy in general with the advent of Nazism. It should benoted in this regard that Heidegger and (thejews' first appeared asa contribution to the debate in France that followed thepublication ofVictor Farius' Heidegger et Ie nazisme (see Lyotard

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1990: xvi). While Lyotard repudiates Farius' reduction ofentirety ofHeidegger's thought-to Nazi ideology, he neverthelessmaintains the fundamental complicity of the thought of theforgetting ofBeingwith a unable to acknowledge anunpayable debt to 'the jews'.

Now, ifLyotard's irritation and impatience - as well as hisgeneral inability tp forgive -limits his capacity to read Heidegger,blinding him for exarpple to the sophistication ofa reading suchas Derrida's, this might not be understood as a simple lapsus onthe part of the philosopher's sagacity and prudence. Or if it issuch a lapsus, it might be interpreted as symptomatic ofa traumaunresolved for European thought in general. In psycho-analyticterms, one could understand Lyotard's reading in general as areturn to this trauma, a certain experience of it, which polarizesthe relation between the Occident (responsible for the emergenceof the Nazis) and 'the jews' (for Lyotard, the custodians of theForgotten, at once the victims and the site ofultimate resistance).All ofwhich would confirm the view that the war is not yet over,but continues for example in the spectral domains ofphilosophyand literature - as the battle for the means of appropriation ofWestern thought. 10

'The war's over.! Are you sure?1 Are you sure the war's over?'(Reich 1988)

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Notes

z

3

4

5

6

Concerning the term 'historial' (Geschichtlich) as distinguishedfrom historical (historisch), see Heidegger 1962: 30,444-449.

This statement is left unchanged in the 1953 publication inGerman of the 1935 lecture course, Introduction to Metaphysics(Heidegger 1959: 199).

This expression to my knowledge was never used by Freud. Itappears, however, strikingly at the conclusion ofAnna Freud'sopening speech to the International Association of Psycho-analysis held in Jerusalem (for the first time) in 1977. Speakingofthe various criticisms and rejections ofpsycho-analysis madeby academic institutions throughout its history, she mentionsfinally the label 'Jewish science': 'However the other derogatorycomments maybe evaluated, it is, I believe, the last-mentionedconnotation which, under present circumstances, can serve as atitle of honour' (Anna Freud cited in Yerushalmi 1991: 100).The question ofpsycho-analysis as a (Jewish science' has formedthe topic of at least two recent studies (see Yerushalmi 199 I I

Derrida 1995).

By this, I wish to suggest that the writing of Moses andMonotheism is a response to an irrecuperable loss (at once ofthe author, ofhis people and his religion), but as such it is alsoa testament to the future (through a novel return to the past).This double character of 'the nation's literature' seems to meessential not only for'the understanding of Freud, but moregenerally (de Certeau 1988, notably 316-328).

These inflections of judgement are the 'index of a silentconversation between three thinkers who share alanguage arid milieu - and who read one another;Of course, the claim that 'the jews' are a repressed event ofWestern civilisation is (perhaps justly) never made by Freud.

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7

8

9

10

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However, the use of psycho-analysis to think the originsj;ofcivilisation and the diagnosis of cultural malaise neverthelessbelongs to the Freudian legacy:

'Fiez-vQus au caracrere inepuisable du murmure', 'trust in themurmur's inexhaustibility', Andre Breton cited in MauriceBlanchot (1955: 238-239).

'I believe one must be able to say) heyond these determinedpromises, that all acts of language carry a certain promisestructure (structure de promesse) , even if they do something elseat the same time. All language is addressed to the other in orderto promise to speak to him/her. Even if I do it to menace, toinjure, to hold a scientific discourse, to do anything but promise,there is in the simple fact that I speak to the other a sort ofcommitment to go to the end of the phrase, to link (enchatner),to affirm in making a commitment (engagement), This generalstructure is such that one cannot imagine a language which isnot in a certain way caught In the space ofthe promise' (Derrida1992: 397), Significantly, Derrida will also find this thought ofthe promise in Heidegger (Derrida "1989: 92..;94, 129-136).

Besides the text on Auschwitz given at Cerisy-la-salle (Lyotard1989b: 360-392)) consider the countless examples fromrevisionist historians in Le diffrrend (Lyotard 1983: 2, 26-27,33, 48-9). Even among the earliest political essays, one finds forexample that Lyotard addresses the question of German guiltand responsibility (Lyotard 1989: 125-131).

From this perspective, one might consider the strength ofLyotard's intellectual identifications with Jewish thinkers suchas Freud, Levinas and Wittgenstein, who he understands ascontesting the traditions borne from the thought ofHegel andHeidegger. Consider also Lyotard's accusation in Heidegger andthe jews' that Derridean deconstruction is not Jewish enough,'still too pious, too respectfully nihilist', unablein anyway either

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to address or to identify with the question called(Lyorard 1990: 75-76). It might be said that Derrida alsooccasionally expresses a similar disquiet about himself! For heidentifies himself as a Converted Jew, for example as Judas inGlas (Derrida 1986: 240b-242b), or more persistently as aMarrano (Derrida 1995: 69-70).

Dedication

For Nicholas Strobbe

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