Here are two points to grasp about time as Derrida sees it. Perhaps the best way to think of them is phenomenologically, despite the impossibility of this thought from this (or any) perspective. What would the phenomenon of temporality and temporalizing be if we understood time this way? How does one have an intention (let alone a self) in such a time? Or, perhaps taking an less phenomenological approach, we can ask whether there can be any coherence of representations or signifiers (in terms of the self, can there be a self as the faking of an interiority, as mere exteriority, as performance understood without citation, as enacting a self that is simultaneously coherent and stable as an identity over time)? It is obvious that the answer is, for Derrida, no. But let's get to the two incredible, impossible points: 1) Time can "flow" backwards as well as forwards: time for Derrida ceases to be unidirectional. This already is an unbelievably profound, absolutely impossible thought. For it does not mean that time can be "rewound" or that we can re-enact the past. We see the immense differences with Lacan asserting themselves already. For Derrida, time isn't haunted by trauma in a typically Freudian sense. If we are not in the present, it is not because we are repeating some past unexperienced/traumatic moment (or lack thereof--i.e. repeating a lack or what is not there) or that (to put it another way, and, again, quite crudely) that moment has come to usurp our experience of the present, making it (again) a non-present or something. The Lacanian move backward in time here still presupposes the unidirectionality or forward-flowing of time. Or a unidirectionality in general. For Derrida, we don't jump into the past (or have the past return); time flows backwards. The "stream" is simply reversed. Or rather, it is reversed while still moving forward--and of course this makes it less simple. Time flows forwards just as much as backwards, and never "returns" upon itself in the sense that it rewinds and undoes itself, going back to the moment that is not yet. The return indeed is completely different, if you conceive it this way: one has to rethink what "repetition" means (essentially, it cannot be "caused" even by a non-cause, the Real, as Lacan holds: cf. "Tuche and Automaton" in Four Fundamental Concepts). And with respect to Heidegger, this means that time does not temporalize out of the future, or does not do so any more than it according to Hegel temporalizes out of the past (cf. Phenomenology of Spirit, §801-2: "In the Notion that knows itself as Notion, the moments … appear earlier than the filled [or fulfilled] whole whose coming-to-be is the movement of those moments..." etc. etc.). If this is grasped, the second point will need less comprehension:
2) There is no "proper" (eigentlich, "authentic") or primordial (ursprunglich) temporality, or rather this primordial temporality of which Heidegger speaks in Being and Time is precisely only also the everyday calculable time or clock-time that Heidegger says this primordial time alone makes possible. Being and Time, then, is shocked by this fundamental upheaval of one of its most basic theses (William Blattner has much to say about this thesis): in short, authentic time would be, according to Derrida, calculable. This also means, however, that calculable, everyday time is authentic, and not derivatively or in a "falling" (verfallen) way. In other words, the time of mere representation (or the signifier), of mere counting-off of instants (one second, two, three), of a whole life composed perhaps of mere passing the time, of bare life or mere sur-vival, is authentic or proper, is Dasein's ownmost. Indeed, in the later writings of Heidegger, the temporalizing gets thought on the level of the history of being out of the opening up of the different ecstases to begin with (and this thought is indeed right there in Being and Time, just less explicitly thought in this particular way), which is closer to Derrida because (even though priority is still given to it) the future itself is less important as such (cf. On Time and Being)
7 comments:
I think for Lacan, trauma does indeed correspond to the Freudian primal scene. He incorporates it into the structure of the fundamental fantasy. However, the terms 'primal' and 'fundamental' can be misleading, in that temporal precedence and the imply conceptual priority. These terms are obfuscating to the extent that they are vestigial. In his later seminars, he develops topologies which operate in the absence of a developmental trajectory. These topologies are architecturally minimal, conceptually concise expressions of logical forms which articulate the silences of experience. for example, if we think of trauma topologically, we could imagine that the metaphorically constructed symptomatology which supports the fantasy, can be interrupted by a traumatic event which ruptures that which is supposed to be known, which punches holes and causes the metaphor to break apart into signifying pieces which then furrow and embed themselves in the signified body. In this way, it is sort of like a diachronic experience that is not teleologically determined. And there is also has potential for a new signification to occur and inscribe itself in the moment of the rupture. This is where I think Lacan differs from Derrida, his temporality is a temporality of interruptions, rather than a weaving. And I a think Lacan is more aware of the impact thought has on the body. Derrida seems to be suspended inside of an imaginary architecture which is a space of dissemination - a spaciousness is preserved that is minimally temporal - articulation becomes diffusive and labyrinthine. The space which is at once everywhere and nowhere gives rise to interminable rebirthings of a multiple hybrid anythings. Derrida also has a tendency to erase his hand from his gesture. he defers his responses by hyper-analytically interrogating the frame and the weaving inwardly toward its absent center. Following Derrida's sinuous traversals and reversals, crossing and recrossing the ininitely arid desert of his expansive aporias, what I find I am left with is a rather wimpy hybrid of the question mark and the exclamation point, the trace of a man both overwhelmed by uncertainty and screaming in opposition. I would love to hear further thoughts from you and others. Comment sent by Cecilia Wu, ceciliajwu@gmail.com.
I totally sympathize with your extremely apt description of Derrida--that is, the feeling of leaving him with only exclamation points and question marks. However, it is precisely where you seem to be most dismissive of Derrida that I would prompt you to look more deeply: where you see Lacan being more aware than Derrida on the impact thought has on the body. It becomes a question as to whether you can think this impact only in terms of "punches" and "holes,"--that is, the words you use. Perhaps there are more diffuse points of impact--Foucault would probably be best in thinking these out for you. But I still say that you might need to return to Derrida with this question in mind--a good way in is actually through an essay of Jean-Luc Nancy's, "The Heart of Things," in The Birth to Presence. This thinks about thought and things, the thinghood of thought, in precisely the ways that Derrida does (or, at least, it comes close enough so you can see better where Derrida is going).
For the trick is thinking of interruptions, gaps, etc. precisely in the limits of their space--Deleuze is good also (with Foucault) in trying to think this space rigorously as a "pure difference." Lacan is great in giving you different levels or layers of difference, but one lacks something when one starts asserting that these differences are the same thing as pure difference--not so much in the fact that they aren't pure, but that simply asserting that they are jumps over a huge huge amount of thought about the limits of difference, the space of the gap, which is so very interesting to Derrida and in fact also very interesting for Lacan.
"If we are not in the present, it is not because we are repeating some past unexperienced/traumatic moment..."
Should that not read, “If we are not in the presence of the present, it is not...”, or “If we are not at the present etc...”.
“And with respect to Heidegger, this means that time does not temporalize out of the future, or does not do so any more than it according to Hegel temporalizes out of the past”
My knowledge of Heidegger on time is poor, but the difference between H and Derrida is that the latter time co-originates with space which prohibits a “pure”, ”authentic” time. A “present” is a distribution of “things”, a spacing of space.
Also have you come across Nancy’s “The Technique of the Present”? -
http://www.usc.edu/dept/comp-lit/tympanum/4/nancy.html
Will.
Re: The first point. Yes, that's more accurate, I think. I think. But its also wordy.
Re: The second point. Heidegger would hold the same thing, I think, as you are saying here. Dasein, as well as the world, is a dispersal for Heidegger, a spacing. Indeed, space interrupts the Heideggerian temporizing, but Heidegger himself interrupts this process, as it were. It is just Derrida draws different conclusions from this, conclusions that indeed "prohibit" as you say, certain things, while for Heidegger there's extreme permissibility, let's say.
In other words, you're right: space co-originates with time. But I'd like to stress that what you say after that doesn't exactly follow: "A 'present' is a distribution of 'things,' a spacing of space." This puts too much emphasis on space, and not enough on "spacing" itself as temporal. In other words, in a sort of Nancyian fashion, this abstracts what for Derrida is still all muddled together. I have indeed read Nancy on this, but not this particular piece. If you want a very interesting take on how, for Derrida, there is another sort of prohibition that for Nancy is precisely a permissibility, which moves along what I am calling more abstract lines, you should pick up _On Touching_.
To be clearer: you can't just specify any present *as* a spacing. That'd be too *exact* for Derrida. You can turn your sentence another way, though, and emphasize spacing as temporal, reintroducing the tension, and then that'd be closer to what Derrida says--maybe you are precisely doing this, but its a fine point that I'd just like to bring out, because it constitutes the key difference between Nancy and Derrida.
Thank you for the clarification regarding Heidegger.
“To be clearer: you can't just specify any present *as* a spacing. That'd be too *exact* for Derrida. You can turn your sentence another way, though, and emphasize spacing as temporal, reintroducing the tension, and then that'd be closer to what Derrida says--maybe you are precisely doing this, but its a fine point that I'd just like to bring out, because it constitutes the key difference between Nancy and Derrida.”
Yes I was being brash and chucked it out there without qualification or making the link between space/time more explicit. On the point you raised between Derrida and Nancy I think you are right on the button, as I was reading Nancy in order try to clarify Derrida when he picks up the theme of time in “The politics of friendship”. I will try to be more aware of reading Nancy into Derrida. I will also try and make room for “on touching” like you suggest (despite re-reading PoF I’ve been focussing on Deleuze recently). Nancy allowed the consideration of “present” from the perspective of both in the “flow” and from “presence” (dead time), perhaps this is the abstraction you speak of, as I do not recognize such a clear demarcation in Derrida.
Will.
Yeah, there isn't that demarcation--that's the problem with Derrida. But that keeps him closer to something like an "experience" of deconstruction that Nancy, helpfully, abstracts from. One can reverse all these distinctions, in the end, but there's something like that underlying relationship between them which will always make Nancy unique with respect to Derrida, and often 1) more philosophical and 2) more self-consciously political/radical.
I'm curious about Derrida's thesis on calculable time in relation to Heidegger. (I'm not sure where to look for Derrida's thinking on time) I guess I have two questions:
1) Between these two temporalities in Heidegger there seems to be a temporality that corresponds to the ready-to-hand. From what I understand, primordial time is an abstraction of the basic concepts proper to every type of ready-to-hand temporality (as various ways of thrown-fallen-projecting through the world). Does Derrida argue clock time is another mode of ready-to-hand time? Or is calculation part of the primordial structure itself?
2)For Heidegger it seems like calculable time is best represented as mathematical points. Is Derrida proposing a duration to proper the thinking of points; or to the being of points; or a non-duration proper to being?
Anyways, hope you still check this post.
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