Prolegomenon to Derrida

7/23/2019 Prolegomenon to Derrida

1/7

Prolegomenon to Derrida

Author(s): Richard KleinSource: Diacritics, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Winter, 1972), pp. 29-34Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464503.

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2/7

PROL OM FNON

D I t R R I

Richard lein

...

and instead

of

only asking oneself

about the

content

of thoughts,

one

has to

analyze

the

way

texts

are

made.

( posi-

tions )

Anyone

who has

wrestled with the monstrous

difficulties

of

reading

Derrida

will

probably

feel

a

shiver of anticipation at the prospect of having him

interviewed.

Unfortunately,

the text

that

follows,

en-

titled

positions,

is not

simply

the

transcription

of

an oral

exchange

--even

assuming

that

we knew

what a

transcription

was and that it

could be

simple.

In

fact,

the text

only

pretends

to be the

record of

an

interview,

just

as

positions

feigns

being

its title.

For,

even

if

we

choose to

believe

the

preliminary

note and allow that the

exchanges

transcribed

here

were

spoken

on

the

17th of

June,

1971

(we

have

no

reason

not

to believe

it,

only

the

possibility

-

opened

by

the text

-

to

doubt),

we are

not

allowed

to

forget

that

they

have been

transcribed--that

means,

at

the

very

least,

spaced,

punctuated,

and

corrected,

per-

haps

edited and

recast,

that

they

have been

com-

plemented by a title, by a preliminary note justify-

ing

the form

of

the

text,

by

editors'

notes,

by

exten-

sive notes written

by

Derrida,

in

many ways

the

most

interesting

sections,

and

by

fragments

of an

exchange

of

letters that

followed the

discussion

and

which

are

appended

in

the

guise

of an

ending.

As

a

result,

the

text is bound

to

disappoint

our

hopes,

even as its

feint or fiction

-

its

pretense

to be an interview

-

Richard

Klein teaches

French literature

at Johns

Hopkins

and

is

at

present

finishing

a book on Baudelaire.

invites the intrusion of our

eager curiosity.

And it is

precisely

the status

of our

curiosity

-

its

misery

or

authenticity,

its

vulgarity

or

validity

-

no less than

the

position(s)

of

the

text that

are

put

into

question

by

its

form,

this simulacrum of

an

interview. To

put

our

curiosity

into

question

is not at all to

dismiss

it,

not even

to bracket

it

within a

fallen,

intra-mondain

realm,

concomitant with

gossip

and

bavardage,

where

its

inauthenticity

can be determined if not

escaped.

Playing,

as

Derrida

is

doing,

with the

form

of

the

interview,

in

an

avant-garde

journal incongruously

entitled

Promesses,

is another

way

of

repeating

-

a

way

very

different

from

Heidegger's

-

the

decisive

question

of the relation of

philosophy

(and

the

phi-

losopher)

to the

word

(figured

here

by

the inter-

viewers/readers).

Eager

spectators

to

the drama

of

a

philosopher put

in

a

spotlight,

we

find our own

im-

pulses,

ourselves,

unaccountably

put

on

stage.

The

operation

of

the text

has

as

much

to

do

with

Mallarme's

editing

and

writing

the

review he

called La

Dernidre

Mode

under the

transparent

pseu-

donym,

Marasquin,

as it does with

philosophical

argument. Or as much to do with the cunning little

prose-poem

Perte d'aureole

in

which

Baudelaire

narrates the

loss

of the

poet's

halo

-

the

index

of

his

dignity

and

sublimity

-

in

the

moving

chaos

of

a

muddy

Paris street.

In

each

case,

the fiction serves

to

situate

and

to

demystify

the halo as well as

its

ap-

parent

loss,

the

pretension

of a

certain

language

to

some

more

originary,

transcendental condition as

well as its

reduction

to

some

aggressively empirical,

reassuring banality.

In

the

process,

the

fiction

works

against

and,

in

a

sense,

outside the

polarity,

even

as

it

moves

ceaselessly

between

its terms.

diacritics

Winter

1972

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3/7

No

doubt

our

curiosity

arises

out

of

the

desire

to tame

the

monstrosities of Derrida's text. In De la

grammatologie,

Derrida

himself inscribes

his

new

science

within

the horizon of

some

prospective

teratology

whose

objects

would

certainly

include

creatures such as those we are

again

about to en-

counter:

Supplement,

Dissemination,

Differance,

Hy-

men, Trace,

etc.

The interview

holds

out

the

hope

that in the spontaneity of question and answer, un-

der the

pressure

of

improvisation,

his

thought

can be

seized before it

has suffered

perversions,

the

vitiating

metamorphoses,

of

his

exasperating,

brilliant

style.

Aside from all the reasons

why

this text

is not the

same

as

a

spoken

exchange,

our

hope

is

disappointed

by

the additional

fact

-

and we

might

well consider

the

conditions of

its

being

a fact

-

that

Derrida,

like

many

French

intellectuals,

is

perfectly capable

of

speaking

the

way

he

writes

(if,

indeed,

he does

not

already

write

the

way

he

speaks),

so

that

virtually

any

passage

in the interview

could have been ex-

tracted from one of

his

published

texts.

Those

facts,

which

tend to

blur the distinction

between

written

and

spoken

language,

serve the broader

strategy

of

the feigned interview, which aims to reveal as it at-

tacks

the

very premises

of our

hope.

It

attacks the

assumption

that

Derrida's

style

-

or

that

of

any

writer

-

is exterior

to the truth

he wants

to

convey,

as well

as

the notion

that the

truth of his texts is his

truth,

accessible

in

proportion

to

its

proximity

to

the

speaking subject.

Those

assumptions

lie at the

very

heart

of

the

historical,

ideological

system

that

Der-

rida

in all

his work has tried

to situate and

decon-

struct

under

the

name

logocentrism,

the

system

in

which is included

the era

of

what we

call Western

metaphysics

and

whose

very

element

is the

privilege

accorded to

the

value of

presence,

the

determination

of

Being,

of

what

is,

either as

the

presence

of an

entity-in-itself

or as

the

presence

of consciousness-

to-itself.

The interview

promises

to

give

us the

origin

of

the

philosophy

in the

person

of the

philosopher

him-

self,

in the flesh.

And it

promises

to

betray

him,

to

traduce

as it translates the

ideality

of his

production

into

the

simplicity

of a

psychology.

We want to

have

him

there,

in front

of

us,

harried

by

his

questioners,

parrying

their

blows,

reduced to instinctual

gestures,

to

habits,

tics,

committing lapsus, revealing

what we

suspect

at

bottom,

in the last

recourse,

fathers

his

whole

elaborate

system

--a

repressed,

or

anyway

unavowed,

desire.

Yet it is the

whole

thrust

of

Der-

rida's

enterprise,

here

as

everywhere

in his

work,

not

to

deny

the existence of the

father,

but

to

situate and

analyze the necessity in every production of an ir-

reducible

remnant,

what he

designates

as that which

does

not

return

[revenir]

to the

father.

It does

not

mean,

in a

Kierkegaardian

sense,

some elemental ir-

reducible

individuality,

but

rather,

and the stress is

on

the

negative,

that which cannot be resumed in

a

point

of

origin,

cannot be

reflexively

returned to the

presence-to-itself

of a source.

But

if

the text

obliges

us to

suspect

the

eager-

ness with which we seek out the

presence

of the

philosopher

in

person,

the

fact that Derrida chooses

to

play

the interview

game

should make us

suspect

our

suspicion.

Our

own

experience

as readers of

Anglo-American

criticism

should alert us to the

pos-

sibility

that the

repression

of

biographical questions

--like

that

of all

questions

of

origin,

sources,

in-

tention,

or

the

unconscious

-

may

entail a

greater

reduction of the

literary

or

philosophical

text than

the reductions

to

which

naive

biographical

criticism

can lead. In

America,

we have

had the

experience

-

if we still do not

possess

the

theory

-

of

the ab-

stractness

and

sterility

in

the service

of an

entrenched

academic establishment which a new critical for-

malism can

foster.

The

impulse

that wants to make us ask the

most

vulgarly

psychoanalytic

questions

is,

of

course,

not

necessarily

more radical than the formalist

ges-

tures of our

fathers.

Since

Hegel,

the

absolute

com-

plicity

of

formal and

thematic

analysis,

even

when

the theme

is

latent

or

preconscious,

has

been

well

known. Both

modes

proceed

on the

basis

of

some

presumed unity

of the

object

in

question,

either in

a

point

of

origin

at the

center,

or in

the enclosure of

a

circumference,

at the

surface, and, indeed,

within

that

presupposition any analysis

can be

-

as

Derrida

here characterizes Lacan's

reading

of

Poe

-

simul-

taneously

thematic

and formal. Both modes of dis-

course within that presumed unity seek to represent

the

presence

(or

absence,

for

the two

terms are

per-

manently implicated)

of

a

central,

centered

unit.

Hence

there

is

no reason to assume that our

curiosity

about the instinctual

bases

of a

particular

work

is

in

itself

the

ground

of

a

very

advanced critical

position.

Yet

a

certain

style

of

philosophical

naivet6

-

in

the

guise

of

vulgar empiricism

or what

Derrida

here oc-

casionally

refers

to

as mechanical materialism

-

may

come to

serve

the

polemical

purposes

of a text

that seeks to

subvert and

disrupt

the foundations of

philosophy.

It is in

that sense

that the

form

of

the

interview

may

invite

us to

practice

something

like

Nietzsche's

psychology

of

philosophers

which

out-

rageously

insists

that their most

alienated

calcula-

tions and their

'spirituality'

are still

only

the last

pallid

impression

of

a

physiological

fact;

the

volun-

tary

is

absolutely

lacking,

everything

is

instinct,

everything

has

been directed

along

certain lines from

the

beginning

(The

Will

to

Power,

#458,

Mar.-

June

1888).

To

possess

that

vulgar curiosity

about

the

physiological

facts,

the instincts

underlying

a

phi-

losopher's

discourse

can

be

a

way

of

confronting

philosophy

with

what

it

tends in its

very

form

sys-

tematically

to

repress.

Nietzsche attacks

what he

calls

the

spirituality

of

philosophy,

and

spirituality--

what

Derrida here calls idealism or

sublimation

-

belongs

to the

very

nature

of

philosophy,

to the

pos-

sibility

of

something

like

onto-logy

that discourses

on, that re-presents what is - the being of entities

-

in

the

secondary

mode

of reflection. Nietzsche at-

tacks

spirituality

from the

standpoint

of

the

instincts,

of the

body,

of

physiological

facts

-

from

positions

that

provide

an

indispensable staging

area from

which

to launch his

strategic forays.

Those

positions

should

not, however,

be taken as the

ground

he

wants

to hold. He is

perfectly prepared

to abandon

them,

to

attack them if

necessary

from the

opposing

stand-

point

of

spirituality

if

they

threaten to

entrap

him at

one of the

terms of the

polarity

which it is his whole

aim to

subvert.

Indeed,

the

biographical-biological

question

is

a

way

of

posing

the

more

general

issue of

the

rela-



4/7

tion of

philosophy

to

the

world,

of mind to

body,

of

situating

what

Nietzsche,

at the

beginning

of

the

pas-

sage quoted

above,

terms

the

dangerous

distinction

between 'theoretical'

and

'practical.'

It

is

that

ques-

tion

and that

distinction which is

implicity

in

the

very

form

of

the

interview,

in

the

very

gesture

by

which

the

philosopher

allows himself

to

be inter-

rogated.

That

is the

question

-

the

only

question

--

the world wants to ask the

philosopher

the

moment

he accedes to their

request,

the one that

in various

forms and with great insistence Houdebine and

Scarpetta keep putting

to Derrida and

that

he in-

vited

by

his

participation.

Houdebine and

Scarpetta

and,

through

them,

others on

the

Paris

scene,

re-

peatedly

raise the

question

of

History,

of Dialectical

Materialism,

of Marx.

And

after

years

of

appearing

to finesse the

question

-

although

the

appearance

as

he

says

is

deceptive

-

Derrida

now

chooses to

nego-

tiate

openly

in

the

Paris

marketplace,

where

nearly

everyone

has

got

a

newly

packaged

brand

of dialec-

tical materialism to

sell

(and

it is

by

no means

the

worst

of

the available

commodities)

and where

every-

one

is

out to

prove

in the shrillest tones

that he has

a

product

so

far

to

the left

of

everything

else that

it

makes

everything

else look like Fascism. What

the

best of them have, they have bought at one time or

another

in

some

form or another from

Derrida,

but

of

late

they

have tended

to

forget

their debt

and

have

been

crowding

him

very

hard

wanting

to

know what

has he

done for

them

lately.

The

situation

can

be seen

very

clearly

in

what

develops

as the essential

disagreement

between Der-

rida and his interviewers.

Houdebine

keeps

pressing

Derrida to

accept

the

notion

of

heterogeneity

as

a

more

inclusive

term than

the

indissociable

terms

alterity

and

spacing

by

which

Derrida

designates

features

of

what at other times

he

calls

dissemination

or

diflerance,

the irreductible

space

constituted be-

tween

two

-

as

well

as the

movement of differen-

tiation

which

interrupts any identity

of

a

term

to

itself,

any homogeneity

or

interiority

of a term

within itself.

According

to

Houdebine,

the

concept

of

heterogeneity comprehends

the other

two,

alterity

and

spacing,

and

thereby implicitly

transcends

them.

(Read:

Houdebine

comprehends

Derrida.)

The con-

cept

transcends

them

to the

degree

that

it claims to

be

the

position

of that

alterity

as such

[en

tant

que

telle],

and insofar as

it is sustained

in

its

possibility

by

the

negation

of the

categories,

other,

body,

matter;

it

negates

them as entities

being

present

[presences],

but

preserves

them

in

the

form

of

a

non-presence.

Whether

this move

is

ultimately intelligible,

and in

its

actual form

I find it

very

murky,

its

urgency

is

quite

understandable and its

potential

weakness can

be formulated. The political motive of its detour, to

encompass

categories

like

body

and

matter,

is clear

enough;

its

weakness,

as Derrida

suggests,

is that it

seems to be menaced

by

the

specter

of

Hegelian

dia-

lectics in the movement

by

which one

term

is sus-

tained

by

the

negation

of other terms. It is

just

that

synthesizing,

reconciling

movement of

negation

which

it is

the

explicit

aim of

Houdebine,

and of

Derrida,

to

conjure.

It

goes

without

saying

that the

very premises

of Houdebine's

argument

owe

every-

thing

to Derrida

and one

strongly suspects,

as Der-

rida

hints,

that where

Houdebine claims

to

exceed

Derrida,

he

has,

in

fact,

fallen behind

the

radicality

of his

positions.

Throughout

the interview Derrida

largely

ac-

cepts

the

materialist

standpoint

that Houdebine

and

Scarpetta

are

eager

to

impress

on

him,

but he does so

cautiously

and with

repeated

reservations. His

reserve

should not be

construed

as an

attachment to

some

last

gasp

idealism;

it

is

prompted

by

his

uneasiness

with the

category

of

materialism,

a

category,

as

he

says

repeatedly,

which

is

not

at all

incompatible per

se - quite the contrary - with a dialectical, idealist

philosophy.

Indeed,

Houdebine's bold

leap

into

mate-

rialism

may

serve

to illustrate the vast

web of com-

plicity

that

links

the term to

its

opposite

and

the

endless resources which idealism

possesses

to en-

snare even its

most subtle

opponents.

Derrida is

at

one with Nietzsche

in

wanting

to

use materialism as

a

lever

for

intervening

in

that

metaphysical

polarity,

for

reversing

the

hierarchy

and

displacing

idealism

from its

accustomed

position

of

superiority.

At the

same time his use of the term materialism con-

stitutes a

new

concept

but one

which

is

never

al-

lowed

to

become a new

foundation,

a new

principle

commanding

the text from some

exterior,

eminent

position.

The name remains in

place,

according

to

Derrida's poleonymic strategy, but it is transformed

by

its

function within

the

deconstructing

text.

It

be-

comes

one of those

undecidable

terms,

a simula-

crum,

a false

verbal,

nominal,

semantic

property,

which

no

longer

allows itself

to be

comprehended

within the

(binary)

philosophical

opposition

and

which,

however,

inhabits

it,

resists

it,

disorganizes

it

but without

ever

constituting

a

third

term,

without

ever

giving way

to

a

solution

in

the form of a

specu-

lative

dialectic.

Derrida has

mostly

kept

himself

removed

from

the bitter

ideological

and

political

struggles

that

have

swept

France

with

hysterical

fury

since 1968.

He has

from time

to

time seen

fit to

mark his

solidarity

with

the

group

around Tel

Quel.

Every

now and

then

he

makes a discreet

political

gesture.

Mostly

he remains

silent,

listening.

His

unwillingness

to

engage

more

freely

and

more

frequently

in

public

dialogue

or

public

polemics

seems to

reflect

the

same

reserve he

has

shown

in

confronting

Marxist

texts

-

a

reserve

born of his

strategic

sense that

he could

engage

them

only

at

his

peril.

The

polemical

style

of Parisian

intellectual

life,

whose

themes are almost

always

marxisants,

represents

an

immense

trap

in which

the

careful

distinctions,

the

micrology

he

practices,

could

be

swiftly

swallowed

up.

It

is

much easier to

make

a

Parisian

audience understand the

necessity

of

a

stra-

tified

reading

of Rousseau than to

make them see

that the texts of Marx or

Lenin,

like

any

text,

have

their strengths and weaknesses, their blandness and

insight.

So he has tended to

avoid

public

interven-

tions and Marxist

themes in order

to

mitigate

the

kinds

of

inevitable

misreading

which his

texts invite.

They

invite

misreading

even

as

they

take elab-

orate

precautions against

it,

loudly

and

tirelessly

ex-

posing

the

principles

of its

inevitability.

For Derrida's

project,

like

Heidegger's

or

Nietzsche's or even

Hegel's,

is to

escape

the

systematic

constraints of

Western

metaphysics,

to

disrupt

it and

disorganize

it,

while

acknowledging

the

necessity

of

staying

within

it,

inhabiting

it,

mobilizing

the

resources of

its

lan-

diacritics

Winter1972



5/7

guage

against

itself.

(The

architectural

metaphor

per-

sists

throughout

Derrida's

work.)

It

is,

therefore,

an

illusion to

think

that

we can

merely

step

outside

the

house of

metaphysics

and dance

freely

in

the

sun-

light.

Those who

imagine

that

they

can

simply

leap

beyond

it soon discover that the stones

are

ready

to

spring

up again

around

them.

The

only

possible

strategy

is

the

much

more

patient

and

laborious

one

(but one free of the romantic pathos attached to the

work

of the

negative,

thus

a

gay

science)

by

which

the

foundations of the structure

may

be

carefully

but

decisively

deconstructed,

displaced,

disorganized--

giving

rise,

not to

a new

space

outside

the

old

en-

closure,

but

to new

angles,

new

possibilities

of

or-

ganization

within

it.

The

process

requires

that one

use the

elements of the structure

against

the struc-

ture

in order to insure that no stone is left

unturned,

ready

to

rise

up

behind

our

backs.

The

price

of

using

those

old stones

in new

ways

is the

miscomprehen-

sion of those

who

will miss the

novelty

of

their

textual

transformation

and see in the

paleonyms

only

their familiar

meanings

and functions.

Derrida's

texts

invite

misreading.

To

respond

to those

misreadings

in the context of a

public,

polemical

discussion

would be

to submit his

positions

to the

massive

risks of

simplification

and

schematiza-

tion.

But

the

risks of

silence can be even

greater.

To

remain

unremittingly

silent

in the face

of the

mis-

interpretations

that

have

begun

to

proliferate

is

to

seem,

after

a

while,

to

flatter

them,

to concede to

them.

Silence

speaks,

often

ambiguously.

Derrida's

solution

is

to

grant

an interview.

But

if we

obey

his

injunction

to

observe the

way

a text

is

made as

closely

as

we examine

its

content,

it

be-

comes

clear,

as

I have

tried

to

show,

that he

has

given

us

the

simulacrum

of

an

interview,

an unde-

cidable

text,

a false

form,

one that

allows him

to

play

between

conflicting

determinations.

To

grant

an

interview

is to concede

certain

strategic

possibilities

as well

as

certain

philosophical

premises;

to

refuse

one is to

concede

others.

Derrida's

solution is

to

elaborate

this

inter-interview,

curiously

fragmented,

partly written/partly

spoken,

faithfully

transcribed/

meticulously

corrected,

journalism/theatre,

philos-

ophy/bavardage,

performed

at

various

places

(Paris/

the

country)

strangely unspecified.

One

would

like to

situate this text.

Philosophy,

at

least

since

Phaedrus,

has

always

had to choose

be-

tween the

city

and

the

country,

a choice that

in-

evitably

entailed

a

whole

series of

binary

oppositions

(see

Derrida,

La Pharmacie

de

Platon,

La Dis-

smination.

Paris: Le

Seuil, 1971).

In our

time,

it

is

tempting, for example, to compare the locus of Hei-

degger's

wandering

the

Holzwege

in the Schwarz-

wald to Sartre's

writing

L'Etre

et

le

ndant

on a table

at the

Flore,

to take

them as emblems

of the

diver-

gent

ways

that

philosophy

can

be

in the

world,

that

the theoretical

can intersect

the

practical.

In those

terms,

Derrida

must be

considered a

sub-urban

phi-

losopher,

traveling

in and out of the

city,

dwelling

in

a

place

neither

city

nor

country,

in the

anonymous

fiction of

a

community

structured

by

the false

ur-

banism

of

shopping

centers and

by

the false

ruralism

of

well-kept

lawns. But the

suburbs

- we need

hardly

be reminded

-

are

spreading.

What

began by

being

a

mere

supplement

to

the

city,

an

ungainly

graft

on

the

countryside,

has

come

increasingly

to

displace

those

poles

so

that we

begin

to

wonder

how

we

are

ever

going

to decide

whether the

city

has

be-

come

a mere

adjunct,

a

suburb

to

the

suburb,

or

when

spreading

suburbs

begin

to

touch,

whether we

should consider the

suburbs

of

Lyons

as

the

coun-

tryside

outside

the

suburbs

of

Paris,

or

vice versa.

There are

many

who

deplore

the

withering

of

the

city, the disappearance of the countryside. But there

are

many

more

who have come to love

the

suburbs,

have

renounced

nostalgia

and find

freedom

in

the

newly

won

realization

that both

the

city

and

country

have

always

been

structured

by

the suburbs. Cities

have

always

been

only

denser

suburbs,

a series

of

paths,

landmarks,

and

dwellings

articulated

by open

spaces;

their center

is

a

fiction. The

countryside

has

always

been

a

sparser

suburb,

a

landscape punctuated

by dwellings,

landmarks

and

paths;

its

naturalness

is

a

fiction.

It should

be

clear

that

what

we are in

fact

describing

in

this

extended

notion

of

suburb

is

what

we

might

be

tempted

to

call

the

textuality,

or

ecriture,

of

geo-graphy;

the

space

between elements

as well

as

the

differentiating

movement of

spacing

by

which what we call

city,

country,

or

suburb,

comes

to be

articulated,

to be constituted.

The

purpose

of the

detour

through

the

suburb

was to lead

us back

to

the

question

of

the

interview,

to

the

textuality

of the

text,

which,

in

fact,

we

have

never left. For

the

notion

of suburb at which we

finally

arrived bears

the same

relation to

the

ordinary

sense

of

the

word

as

this

interview does

to a

real

interview,

as

the

title

positions

bears

to a real

title,

as

Derrida's

philosophy

bears to

philosophy.

In

every

case

we

are

dealing

with

what Derrida

calls

the

unity

of

a

simulacrum. Like

the

motif of

dif-

ferance

with which

the

interview

begins, they

are

neither

concepts

nor

simple

words,

although they

may produce conceptual

effects and

verbal concre-

tions,

although

they

are linked

paleonymically

to

some

word or

concept

within

the

binary

philosophical

oppositions they

deconstruct.

They

escape

the

duality.

They

are

third

terms,

but

not

in

a

Hegelian

sense;

they

are

not dialectical

terms

that come

to

resolve

contradictions,

to

negate

them as

they

sublimate or

idealize differences in a

presence-to-itself.

In the

same

way,

the

concept,

dis-

semination,

cannot be

defined,

as

Derrida

explains

here in

several

dense

pages.

The

very

force

and

form

of its

disruption

bursts the semantic

horizon. Dis-

semination fractures the

unity

of the

text,

whether it

is

given

in

the

form of a

simple

origin

to which

the

text could be seen to

return,

in

which its

meaning

could be resumed, or in the form of a distant horizon

of

meaning

whose

unity

is

teleologically

determined

by

a

totalizing

dialectic

that

structures

the

multiple

meanings

of the text. As an

example

of

the

last,

Der-

rida cites the

dialectically organized

structure of

Jean-Pierre Richard's

L'Univers

imaginaire

de

Mal-

larmi.

By disrupting

the

unity

of the

text,

its

origin

or its

horizon,

the movement of

dissemination--

the

principle

of the text

-

makes

impossible any

exhaustive

formalization of the work or

any

saturat-

ing

account

of

its

meanings

or

intentions.

The simulacrum cannot be defined.

Whenever

Derrida

tries to

conceptualize

it,

we find

him

pro-

ceeding

largely by

negation.

He

repeatedly

refers

us



6/7

to

other

texts where

we

can observe

the simulacrum

in

operation.

It

functions,

as we have been

trying

to

suggest,

at

every

level

of

this text.

We

need

only

examine

the

positions

of

the title

positions

to

dis-

cover it

lustrously

at work.

The

title

is

proposed

in

the

last line

of

the

letter

appended

to the

interview,

purportedly

written

by

Derrida

after the fact.

Thus,

what

pretends

to en-

title the

text,

to head

it,

precede

it and dominate

it,

is

in

fact

its

product,

comes from

its

end-although

not

even from its end but from a supplement which has

the

position

of

an

end.

Derrida's

interest

in

every-

thing

that follows or

supplements

or

interrupts

what

passes

for the text

itself

is well-attested. Most re-

cently

it

is the

focus of

a

text

entitled

Hors

livre

which

pretends

to

be the

preface

to

La

Dissemina-

tion,

and

whose theme

is

prefaces

-

their

curious

status,

written after the

fact,

in

a

position

to

resume

or

determine what follows

them,

even

though

they

are

only

prefaces,

texts

designed

to efface themselves

before

the text

itself,

which

they

seem to dominate.

But Derrida

has

also

written,

in

La

Double

Seance,

of

titles,

in

particular

of

Mallarm6's

injuction

to

suspend

the

title,

which like a

head,

a

capital,

the

oracular,

stands

too

high

[porte

trop

haut],

speaks

too loudly [parle

trop

haut], both because it raises

its

voice,

deafens

the text

that

follows,

and because

it

occupies

the

top

of the

page,

an

authority,

a

chief,

an

archont

( La

Double

Seance,

in

La

Dissemina-

tion,

p.

204).

On the one

hand,

Mallarm6

urges

that the

title

be

suspended,

silenced,

canceled

in

its

function

as

title.

At the same

time,

the title should be

suspended,

hung

above the

text;

in

suspense

like

a chandelier

[lustre]

or

the

dot

over an

i,

it

marks

the

suspense

which constitutes the

text,

the

empty space,

the

blank,

a kind of frame or

border,

above the

text,

around

it,

out of

which

it

is

generated.

Thus,

for

Mallarm6,

as

for

Derrida,

to

suspend

the

title

marks the

necessity

of

displacing

it,

effacing

its

pre-

tention

to

dominate

and command

the

text from

above,

but

not

eliminating

it. Both

of

them

denounce

the

illusion that

one

can

destroy

its

authority merely

by

overthrowing

it.

By eliminating

it

entirely,

one

merely

assures

that

it

will

re-emerge

to

do

its

work

in

another,

less

visible fashion.

By

the

ellipsis

of the

title,

one creates the

illusion,

for

example,

that the

text has no

exterior,

no

dominating

principle

from

above

which

determines it. But that can be another

way

of

affirming

the

presence

of the

text

to

itself,

its

autonomous,

self-generated

unity

--a

view

of

the

text,

as

Derrida

has

shown in La Double

ance,

that

is in

perfect complicity

with the notion of a text

subordinated to some external tutor

or

principal

who

gives the law.

Against

the double risk of

allowing

the title to

remain in

place

and dominate the

text,

or

excising

it

and

permitting

its

work to continue in some more

subterranean

way,

Derrida

-

following

Mallarm6 --

proposes

to

suspend

it

above,

but

to

re-inscribe its

position

in

such

a

way

that it

constantly disrupts

its

own

appearance.

In other

words,

Derrida

fashions a

title--as

he

gives

an

interview;

he

creates

a

fiction.

Let us assume that

positions

is

the title of

the

interview.

In

fact,

it

appears

on

the title

page

-

what is

the

function

of a title

page?

-

suspended

in

second

place.

Jacques

DERRIDA

positions

Entretien avec

Jean-Louis

HOUDEBINE

et

Guy

SCARPETTA

The title

is

poised

between Derrida and his

inter-

viewers, positioned between them, separating them,

binding

them. In a

sense,

more than

one,

Derrida

is

the

chief

here,

the archon. But

if Derrida is

the

eminent

center,

he is

sustained,

thereby

undercut,

by

a second

title,

positions,

the real

one.

In the

letter

appended

to the

interview,

Derrida

insists

on

pluralizing

the

title.

The

plural positions

both echoes

the dominant

theme of his

argument

with

Houdebine and

signals

his resistance

to

Houde-

bine's

attempt

to find a term which would be

the

position

of

otherness

as

such.

Derrida

argues

that

the

singular

form,

Setzung

in

Hegel,

is an

indis-

pensable

element of

dialectics.

It

is

always

the

posi-

tion-of-the-other in

the dialectical movement

by

which the

Idea

poses

itself to itself

as

other,

as

other

(than)

itself in its finite

determination,

in view

of

repatriating

itself,

returning

back to itself

in

the

infinite richness

of

its

determinations,

etc. The no-

tion of

position

always implies,

however

distantly,

however

teleologically,

a

dialectical

re-appropriation

of

a

presence

to itself.

Against

that

Hegelian

notion,

he

proposes

the

plural,

a term whose

proximity

to

the other is

the difference of

a

letter,

whose

function

within

a

process

of differentiation

is

hardly

dis-

tinguishable

from

the

singular's

dialectical movement.

It

is

different

enough,

however,

to be decisive.

positions

is

a

title,

out of

position,

in second

place, uncapitalized,

without

its

head,

its

majesty.

It

is

active,

multiple,

additional. I will

add,

Derrida

writes, concerning positions: scenes, acts, figures of

dissemination.

Unlike

placement,

site,

place,

situation,

position

insists

on the

manner

with

which a

thing

in

question

is

placed,

or

on

the relative

place

of

several

objects.

(Robert)

Positions

of

players

on

a

football field

or

of

pieces

on

a

chess

board.

Technology: positions

in

the

setting

of

a

piece,

in

a

mechanism.

Heraldry:

the

positions

(or

points)

on

a

coat

of arms.

Music:

positions,

the

relative

place

of

sounds

that

form

a

chord.

Linguistics:

the

positions

of

phonemes,

their

relation

to

one

another.

Military: positions,

the

placement

of

troops,

installations,

or constructions.

The

plural

implies

not

merely

the

placing

of an

entity

in its

proper place

-

in its determined fini-

tude,

but

it

insists on

the relative

difference

among

elements,

their manner

of

standing

to one

another,

the

movement of their

differentiation,

what Derrida

calls their

differance.

positions

is a

title,

a

beginning,

an

authority,

a

chief.

It assumes

those titles

and

privileges,

that

authority,

but as a

fetish,

as a

substitute

title,

a

false

one,

an

actor,

with all

the

power

of

illusion. But also

an

author,

a

genetrix,

a

disseminator,

a

phallus.

It is

diocritics

/Winter

1972



7/7

disseminating,

multiple, exploded,

cut-off,

castrated.

It is

present

but

absent,

absent

when

it

is

present,

the movement

of self and

other,

the

purloined

letter,

what Lacan calls the

sign

of

the

symbolic

order,

the

movement of

signifying

itself. For Lacan it is

the

sign

of

an

absence,

the absence

which allows what

appears

to

appear, Being,

the

absence,

or the

forget-

fulness,

that

allows

what

is

to

appear,

which

gen-

erates the appearance of appearances. Like the theat-

rical

mask

that

stands

for

the

theatre,

which

reveals

as

much as

it

hides,

it

is

a

fiction

whose

meaning

is

fiction,

whose

signifie

is

Signifying.

But the

title

is

not a mere fiction. It

is also

something

other

than

that,

a simulacrum. In a

cryptic

sentence

Derrida

insists on the

necessity

of

distin-

guishing

a fiction from a

simulacrum, which,

he

says,

is

a

structure

of

duplicity

which mimes and

doubles

the dual

relation. The

simulacrum

belongs

to the

order

of

four;

it doubles a

double. The

phallus

as

mask or

fiction,

the

sign

of

the

movement

of

signify-

ing,

is a

three,

the

unity

of

1

and

2,

of

what is

and

is

not,

of

presence

and

absence,

of

image

and

thing,

of what

is

and what veils what

is,

truth and

fiction,

reality

and

appearance.

The simulacrum contains the

1

and

2,

just

as

the three

does,

but it also doubles

them,

is

other than

they.

La dissemination

is

a text

on

quarters,

squares,

and

fours.

To

put

it

simply

-

and

Derrida

takes

ninety

pages

to

put

it

as

densely

as

one could

imagine

-

the

simulacrum

is

the other

of

fiction,

not

in

the sense

of its

truth,

but as the other

of

self-and-other,

of

repetition-and-difference,

of fic-

tion

and

non-fiction;

what,

in

a

sense,

stands outside

them,

is

their

exteriority,

their

opening

out of them-

selves. At the

same

time,

it

is

not exterior

to

them,

outside

them;

for

it

is

also the

condition of their

pos-

sibility,

the

differance

which

structures

them,

which

determines the

poles

of

the

sign

as

poles,

determines

their

determinability

as well as the

possibility

of their

movement.

Derrida at

the interview was

particularly

re-

luctant to define

dissemination,

for reasons

we

re-

sumed

above. The

only thing

of which one can be

sure,

therefore,

is

that

my

attempt

to define it is

inevitably

and in

principle wrong.

What

may

be

clear,

however,

is

that

one

should

look into La Dis-

s6mination

to find

what seems to me to be

the

fundamental and

radical difference between Lacan

and

Derrida. For

many,

those

sections

where

Derrida

sketches his

reservations

towards

the Lacanian

sys-

tem will

constitute

the

greatest

interest

of

this

text.

Derrida

has

left

their

elaboration for another time.

On

the surface

--or

rather

just

beneath what we

might consider the surface difference of style and

themes

-

their

work seems

to share a funda-

mental

identity

of

interest and an essential

continuity

of

function.

Derrida

suggests

at one

point

in the

interview

that his own

work could well

be

organized

around

the notions

of mimesis and

castration. The

same could be said

of

Lacan.

The

way

of

gauging

their

divergence

would be

to examine the

way they

inscribe the

phallus.

And

as I have tried

to

suggest,

the

difference is the

cryptic

difference between a fic-

tion,

which

becomes in

Lacan the

Sign

of

Signifying,

an

ultimate

Referent,

the

Phallus as an

emblem of

the

symbolic

order,

and a

simulacrum

which

.

(Cf.

La

dissemination,

in

La

Dissimination).


Documents

Prolegomenon to Derrida