...Playing with one's own name, putting it in play, is, in effect, what is always going on and what I have tried to do in a somewhat more explicit or systematic manner for some time now in certain texts. But obviously this is not something one can decide: one doesn't disseminate or play with one's name. The very structure of the proper name sets this process in motion. That's what the proper name is for. At work, naturally, in the desire--the apparent desire--to lose one's name by disarticulating it, disseminating it, is the inverse movement...-In the roundtable on autobiography in The Ear of the Other, 76
This might be a good quote to back up what I am trying to say about reading Derrida as a reading machine. What the notion of reading like a machine does is try to make sure you don't think you have a choice about reading. Reading happens--it doesn't become more likely to occur and occur rigorously if you pay any more attention to a text, to its phenomenality. For too long we've proceeded in the US as if Derrida were saying this: we say he plays on language--as in the case above when someone asks him about how he plays with his name in Glas (the now famous phrase "derrière la rideau," behind the curtain)--when this play is precisely not something he chooses. Or rather, it is not something Derrida as himself chooses: this is what he means when he says "one doesn't play with one's name." This means: play doesn't occur to any one--play is precisely what disrupts the constitution of any one, any self, any proper name, like Derrida, or any determining force like that of some one who plays, and thus is in control while he or she plays. He continues in phrases that, for me, hit all this home the best:
Thus the proper name is at play and it's meant to play all by itself, to with or lose the match without me. This is to say that, at the furthest limit, I no longer need to pull the strings myself, to write one way or another. It is written like that by itself.
-The Ear of the Other, 77
The paradox is of course that at this limit is the only thing one can call a choice to begin with. So saying Derrida plays doesn't mean he plays; nor does it mean he plays, if by "play" we mean some completely out of control unloosening of language into indeterminacy, refusing to grant this event the name of a choice. The unloosening is the choice--that means that it itself is not indeterminate but always strategic. Sarah Kofman calls what Derrida effects "a formal, syntactic practice of undecidability"--that's all I'm trying to get across. It's simply that moment, that limit, that is impossible to experience and yet which we must flesh out if we're going to direct our understanding of Derrida on the right path, where I no longer need to pull the strings. Meaning fleshing out that moment where we precisely understand reading as pulling strings, operating a mechanism. This, however, requires completely changing how we think of operating a mechanism, and what the mechanical is in the first place.
2 comments:
Maybe I have missed the point but are you saying that Derrida has not actually done anything to the text but rather he has brought to light play in the text. The text was always playing.
This is close--you're on the right track. And I'm sorry if I'm too vague about all this: it's really really hard to write about correctly and I've been moving around for a while, which hasn't let me have time to work it over. I am doing another post, above ("Work that gives great pleasure"), which will bring things out more clearly precisely on this level of what is done to the text.
Simply put, take what you've said--that Derrida hasn't done anything to the text--and now try and think that the text doesn't exist by itself. That means: 1) as you say, the text was always playing and 2) there is no text that "was" or existed always.
Which means there is no "bringing to light" of the play, because there is nothing prior to the act of "bringing it out." The upshot being that play is not "brought out" or made phenomenally clear, but that it simply gets reinscribed.
Basically, then, "interpretation" (and it can't really be called that) is not the bringing to light of anything in a text that would exist prior to the bringing-to-light. Rather, it is the rewriting of the text--though in a different way than originally (though there is no original, nothing prior, as we said).
This is more like what I mean when I say that reading just happens. You read a text, say, but what this means now is that you basically write your own text. However, it's not your own text, because it's an attempt to read another text. However (again), this text that you are reading doesn't exist prior to your reading it. So you're reading your own text, but its precisely not your own text. It is a text without essence--that's the key. Think of a phenomenon without essence--which might be more thinkable for Husserl (since he separates existence from phenomenality per se) but would precisely be that which is not a phenomenon for Heidegger (for Heidegger, the phenomenon only comes out of the essence--such that it is the essence). Text without essence--which means its not prior to reading or, following my reading of it, purely my own reading. It's pure description--but without any claim to truth. That doesn't mean, however, that it is divorced from truth having a claim on this description.
So, say I interpret a philosophical text--Kant, for example. I am writing something that is not bringing out anything essential in Kant--as Heidegger would--or, on the other hand, merely stating a certain view of my own that seems, at certain points, just to link up with Kant's. My interpretation--and it probably shouldn't be called this, i.e. it should be called a deconstruction or a deconstituting--lies in between both me bringing something out of Kant (being totally faithful to what is Kantian in him) and imposing my own view (to the extent that I think I can ignore Kant completely). But it is not a compromise between the two approaches. It is, rather, a rewriting of Kant that is not Kant's (it is different from Kant's explication of his thought) nor mine (it is different than mine, because it opens itself to what Kant says). It is merely a rewriting of Kant, which means it is a repetition of Kant, in the most pure, reproductive sense. But a rewriting that comes from a different angle, such that it isn't Kant's discourse that I am writing. You see, one can't call this interpretation. It doesn't seek to mean (though it might) and it doesn't seek to bring out meaning (though it might). It tries to describe what is going on as Kant's text plays--that is, releases itself from Kant's authorship or ownership--it describes this play. It is the description of this play. But this means that it--the description--precisely isn't something that can just exist. It is a tracing, this description, of what is going on in Kant and what is going on in me, Derrida, as I read Kant. But it itself is a tracing--which means that it simply is a pure description: since it simply describes without intending to mean, the ability for this description to actually mean, or--since existence is meaningful--exist, is a chance affair. It only perhaps exists, this level of the description where what I say is a repetition of what Kant in his sentences releases towards me. This is why reading just happens, as I said: it can only remain possible given the sort of the act of rewriting--it is what is not determined by the possibility of a linkage between what I say and what Kant says, or even the non-possibility of this linkage. So, Derrida has done something to the text, to answer your question: but what he does is not simply his contribution. The text contributes too. And in such a way that Derrida isn't just allowing the text to be alone by itself--that is, not in any act of total contribution on its own part. The text only contributes when Derrida contributes (it needs a reader), but the contribution is not reducible totally to either Derrida or the text by itself. And--here is the last part--the resulting contribution precisely is (or, as we now know, "performs" might be better, or "represents") another version of the text: this result is the pure description, and it is the description of what is irreducible about the text--not totally able to be attributed to either the interpreter or the text itself.
As you can see, this is really complicated to describe, and can be attacked at any particular point. But once one somewhat comprehends the whole of it, you see that this level of pure description (which, we can see, can't even really be called that) is very interesting, because it makes the description of disruptions in phenomenality possible--one doesn't have to try and call them derivative phenomena, as Heidegger so often does. Writing is one of these, and so is sexual difference--for Heidegger in particular these both are things that have to be reinserted back into phenomena--that is, they have to have their origin in an essence. But escaping from this doesn't mean totally trying to think without essences--this is why Derrida doesn't dump the idea of truth, as someone like Rorty would. these things like sex or writing only are what they are insofar as they are these derivative and disrupting phenomena--they only are what they are because they disrupt phenomenality (which means precisely that they do not exist--they neither simply "are" or "not are"). This is a long and complicated response--but hopefully my post above will try and bring this out in a clearer way. Here is a hint, perhaps. "Play" means a disruption, not in being, but in Ereignis. If we think of Ereignis as a sort of direction ontological difference must tend towards--this is roughly what Heidegger means when he calls it a destining--one can say, well, why not the other direction? Not towards essence but away from essence? Well, Heidegger himself says this is possible too--it would be the whole history of the west insofar as it has fallen away from its essence. What Derrida does is ask: why not these two directions at the same time? You see how crucial this is: it disrupts the idea of Ereignis altogether, because it means thinking of what we mean by "direction" totally differently: we gave primacy in the direction that went towards essence. Inverting this would make no difference, really--though we would have to flip all the terms. The real thing is what happens when one thinks destining as dispersion: which means one is moving in the direction of essence precisely when one is moving away from it, and vice versa, all the time, whenever there is history or there is anything generally.
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