From what I've read, Chapter 5 is the most important. It also seems to me to contain the decisive point at which Derrida has to choose a reading of Husserl, and is the only time in the work where Derrida does not take Husserl's text at its word, and makes an argument that crucially relies on a claim that he can't possibly have meant what he said. From what I have read, the crux of the whole work seems to be here, on this decision. I think the whole thing would have been easier to understand and maybe more effective if he began with time-consciousness rather than expression. But that is with an incomplete understanding of the work. I don't know why the language stuff is arranged in quite this way.

Time-consciousness has always been the most intriguing part of Husserl for me, but, though I own it, I've yet to read his work on the subject. I only know of it through the sketches of others. I've been reluctant to read it out of both intimidation and fear of being let down (everyone speaks so highly of Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, but Proust has so far exceeded any philosopher I've ever read on the topic (utterly on another level) that I'm a bit worried it won't live up to the hype. ) Anyway, Proust-signalling aside, I'll bracket my broader criticisms of Derrida's approach until the end of the book. I'm going to reread ch.4, as well, because there's still some things I'd like to say about the whole reality/imagination/sign thing.

I'm not sure what to think about Husserl on the subject anymore. The absolute flow is a mind-boggling concept, very deep and very hard to fathom, as is the notion of horizontal intentionality. But I've become more skeptical over time of the notions of protention and retention. I think they might be remnants of the natural attitude which linearizes time, and they may not be real. If they aren't, that takes some wind out of Derrida's sails.

If I see food missing from the pantry, it might indicate the local rat has been about again; but to everyone else, not knowing about the existence of this rat, this is no such indication at all. — The Great Whatever

I think that what is meant by repetition in relation to the sign, is that if the missing food, in your example, is a sign of the rat, then this is a repeated occurrence. You would not say this unless you had already drawn that association from a prior occurrence. Repetition is of a temporal nature, it occurred in the past that the food was missing, and you associated this with the rat, so only upon repetition is it seen as a sign.

So if, when the rat takes the food the fist time, you are to make, within your mind, the missing food into a "sign" of the rat, you are anticipating a possible future occurrence, a possible repetition. Without anticipating a possible repetition, you would not create the sign. And if you create the sign only after the second occurrence, you remember back to the first, and say "that rat's been here again", then this is an actual repetition. Either way, the sign is based in repetition, whether it is possible repetition, actual repetition, or most likely both.

In this way, "missing food" becomes an ideal. It is the way that you signify to yourself, the presence of the rat. There is no longer any particularity about it, the particulars, or accidentals of this instance, or that instance, of missing food are irrelevant, there is just the sign of the rat which transcends individual instances. This sign is an ideal object which transcends any particular instance of you perceiving missing food, as each instance of perceiving missing food is apprehended by you as "the rat has been here".

I'll put together a more thorough response later this evening, but, I don't understand how the possibility of indefinite repetition occludes my death. — csalisbury

I think that the realization of death is brought about by the transcendence of the ideal. Notice the difference between "presence" and "the present", on p46. Presence refers to my empirical existence, while "the present" is the ideal which transcends my empirical existence. Because my empirical existence, my presence, is transcended, by "the present", death is necessitated.

I'm just trying to understand how the first 3 chapters bring us to the themes of chapter 4. If, in chapter 4, the tight - tho oft-interrupted - analysis gives way totally to a freewheeling impressionistic meditation on various phenomenological themes, well, I feel a little disappointed. — csalisbury

I think something to keep in mind is that this is par for the course for Derrida's writing -- he will often place chapters in a non-linear fashion, as if they came from two different books or as if he cut his original essay in half and flipped around the ends.

Also, I don't think his writing hinges as much on argument -- in the sense that we have an assertion supported or refuted. While it has some academic prose -- such as the distinctions you mention -- I think he reads more like Nietzsche, in the sense that you have to think along with the writing. So when we read the first three chapters it's sort of like reading LI1 as Derrida.

Something that's been helping me in reading along is the thought that the act of deconstruction isn't set out, but is implied by the reading on offer. So while there is the text, there's also how the text upon which a reading is "parasitic" to, the text is being re-arranged in a way to attempt to show us the metaphysical thinking within the text.



Not that people aren't familiar with any of this. But it's worth noting, I think -- at the very least, to prepare ourselves for disappointment ;). (I haven't finished the book yet so not sure if you will be, but it's possible)

I'm not really comfortable with the appeal to counterfactuality, because I think it will explode the thesis into triviality: talk of what could be repeated obscures important points about what it takes, empirically, for a sign to be part of a sign-system, and we could say for instance that a cloud could be a letter, and so on. — The Great Whatever

I think I'd be careful in framing this talk of possibility in terms of counterfactuality. At issue is not the choice between two different possibilities, x and y, but simply the possibility or not of repetition. As such, the possibility at stake is transcendental, in the Kantian usage of the term: is it a matter of the "conditions of the possibility of the sign": to be repeatable (qua capacity) is the condition of possibility of a sign. Although Derrida at this point will not phrase things this way he will soon begin to in later works, and it's worth putting things in these terms even here, because they clarify things quite nicely (I think anyway).

So - what is crucial to note (and this is Derrida's modification of, and contribution to, the transcendental tradition of thought), is that this condition of possibility (repetition) also doubles as what Derrida will later also refer to as the condition of impossibility of the sign. That is: if a sign is to be a sign, it must be open to the possibility of repetition. This is it's condition of possibility. However, because no one instance of the sign will 'exhaust' the ideality of the sign, because the presence of the sign will always be infinitely deferred, this condition (repetition) simultaneously functions as it's condition of impossibility (impossibility of 'full instantiation' at any one 'moment').

None of this is covered in VP, but again, I think it helps to frame things in this way as it shows how the moves made in VP can be articulated in a wider context regarding the transcendental. In fact, if one could summarize the thrust of all of Derrida's work, it's this: that these conditions of (im)possibility, once thought specific to the sign, are the conditions of (im)possibility of anything whatsoever.

Re: Saussure, this is how he will read Saussure's work too: because Saussure conceived of language as a differential system, where the value of each term was only ever determined by it's position in a system of language, the immediate question is: what defines the limit of this system? Saussure never quite got around to answering this question (or rather, he struggled with it his entire life), and Derrida more or less grasps the nettle and says something like: the limit is the world in it's entirety (although Derrida will probably have no tuck with the notion of 'world' or the notion of 'entirety'). This is why I highlighted, in my summary, the strange remark about how the impossibility of distinguishing between representation and reality just is language.

So - what is crucial to note (and this is Derrida's modification of, and contribution to, the transcendental tradition of thought), is that this condition of possibility (repetition) also doubles as what Derrida will later also refer to as the condition of impossibility of the sign. That is: if a sign is to be a sign, it must be open to the possibility of repetition. This is it's condition of possibility. However, because no one instance of the sign will 'exhaust' the ideality of the sign, because the presence of the sign will always be infinitely deferred, this condition (repetition) simultaneously functions as it's condition of impossibility (impossibility of 'full instantiation' at any one 'moment').

Which is the same as saying that a 'full instantiation' would be be irretrievable and unrepeatable, no? It strikes me that, if one wants to shift things to an existential-psychoanalytic register, in the same way Derrida might say Husserl is evading death ( by insisting on a presence that always underlies signification), one could also say that Derrida is evading trauma (by insisting that signification is always co-originary - so there's always something mediating, making sure the traumatic scene is never fully present.)

But then it gets confusing because birth, death & trauma all sort of bleed into one another. At the limit, man, I don't even see what the difference between full presence and total absence is. A sign that exhausts itself fully in a single instantiation and an experience totally free of signification are equally unthinkable. Maybe that's the point. But then you could even make the case that the interlacing of possibility and impossibility, in a kind of mobius strip, is itself a defense against death - preventing the two terms from collapsing into one another by fucking with the topology a bit. A flickering candle neither goes out nor illuminates too brightly an unbearable scene.

Though, also, at this level, I think you could say just about anything tbh.

Yeah, exactly. Full presence and total absence are basically the same thing for Derrida, and the whole point of Derrida is to conceive of the space (and time!) 'in between' both as it were. In Of Grammatology, he's very clear about this: "pure presence itself, if such a thing were possible, would be only another name for death." In contrast, Derrida will attempt to think a 'time of survival', of 'living on'. If you're interested, check out Derrida's last interview he ever gave before his death, were he's asked whether or not he has 'learnt how to live'. It's a beautiful, moving discussion, and his answer is worth quoting:

"So to answer your question, without further delay: no, I never learned-to-live. Absolutely not! Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome, or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die. I believe in this truth without giving myself over to it. Less and less in fact. I have not learned to accept death. We are all survivors on deferral ...

The question of survival or deferral ... has always haunted me, literally, every moment of my life, tangibly, unrelentingly ... I have always been interested in the subject of survival, the meaning of which is not supplemental to life or death. It is originary: life is survival. Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. All the ideas that have helped me in my work, notably those regarding the trace or the spectral, were related to the idea of "survival" as a basic dimension. It does not derive from either to live or to die. No more than what I call "originary mourning." It is something that does not wait for so-called "actual" death."

You can find the interview here: http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~dclark/documents/rememberingJD/Derrida.I%20am%20at%20war%20with%20myself2.pdf . There's also Derrida's article, Living On (which can be found with a google search), but that's no where near as fun to read.

Will have post something else about trauma.

This goes beyond the scope of this thread, but I don't much sympathize with this way of looking at things. It's only if one takes on a Husserlian view of consciousness, even if only to oppose it, that this idea of the entanglement of absence and presence seems powerful. The whole Husserlian thing is to stand stock-still in order to closely attend to some intuition, the way a lepidopterist analyzes a butterfly at his desk. The derridean thing is to look at the intuition, or butterfly, and feel that one can never really understand it just by looking at it, that one will always be separated from it, that one can only look at it because one's separated from it. And but then where do you go from there? It seems to me like it would be good, at that point, to leave the whole Husserl thing behind, to realize that honing-in on something is precisely to forfeit understanding, and so to leave the absence and presence of isolated objects and intuitions in order to be in the world. But Derrida seems kinda neurotically obsessed with the play between absence and presence or the play between high or low or x and y - it's always the same thing - the opposition is turned into a play-between. It's always the same compulsive operation.* And it's as much a shield against death as anything in Husserl.

That interview doesn't feel beautiful or moving to me - it feels profoundly sad. Even near death he's still playing the same compulsive game, for an interviewer. It's like he doesn't understand he's actually going to die, that it's not a rhetorical game anymore.

*Claude Levi Strauss, in Tristes Tropiques on how philosophy was taught in Paris while he was at university: "I began to learn that every problem, whether serious or trifling, may be solved by application of an always identical method, which consists in contrasting two traditional views of the question; the first is introduced by means of a justification on common-sense grounds, then the justification is destroyed with the help of the second view; finally, both are dismissed as being equally inadequate, thanks to a third view which reveals the incomplete character of the first two. These are now reduced by verbal artifice to complementary aspects of one and the same reality: form and subject-matter, container and content, being and appearance, continuity and discontinuity, essence and existence etc. Such an exercise soon becomes purely verbal, depending,as it does, on a certain skill in punning..."

Yeah, I can see that. There's definitely a kind of repetitious formalism that's at work everywhere in Derrida, and part of his stylistic and thematic extravagance always struck me as a kind of hysteric reaction to a deadlock in the Real, in the psychoanalytic sense, a proliferation in the face of what would otherwise be a kind of theoretical monotony. On the other hand, it's one of those things - for me at least - that, 'once you see it, you can't unsee it'. Once you understand the limits that deconstuction places on philosophy, you have to be very careful to work within those limits, or at least, address them head on to explain why they don't apply to you. It's kind of Copernican for me: once you pass though that ring, there's no going back; you can no longer think in terms of pure presence without being either profoundly naive, willfully insincere, OR, you rethink entirely what it would mean to think in terms of presence.

Derrida always functions as a kind of bulwark for me: if you're going to 'do' philosohpy, how do you do it in the face of deconstruction? What kind of vigilance will you need to exercise? Derrida always insists that there's no going beyond the 'closure of metaphysics', but I think that's exactly the challenge that needs to be met, without, for all that, simply falling back into the positions that Derrida everywhere (rightly) critiques. There's no going 'beyond' Derrida, imo, but there are side-steps or side-shuffles that one can make that that escape the very problematic he poses. In truth I hardly read Derrida these days because I feel I've 'absorbed' what I need from him - there are more interesting things to read. But the question always haunts: would Derrida's general critique apply to this, and if not, why not?

-

Heh, yeah, I'm familiar with that Levi-Strauss quote, and given the time period I think he would have been referring too, I always think he's referring to Bergson and Merleau-Ponty, who both pretty much write all their books exactly in that manner.

I may be mistaken in this, so correct me if I'm wrong -- but isn't phenomenology supposed to side step metaphysics by focusing in on lived experience?

I thought that to be one goal of phenomenology. Hence, if one could show that the same dichotomies which (purportedly) dominate the history of metaphysics also dominate phenomenology, then something would be gained by that critique -- that these dichotomies are not so easily escaped as it would seem (that metaphysical thinking re-introduces itself everywhere -- "always already" as the phrase has it).

That, I think in part, is the reason for the elliptical stylistic choice too -- there's a sense in which the text we're reading, the works of Derrida that is, would become dominated by the same categories that have always dominated metaphysics.

In some way I think you have to agree with Heidegger -- at least to a certain degree -- about the history of metaphysics to make sense of Derrida. I remember reading Heidegger was the sort of "lynch pin" that helped me to begin to see what was going on years ago (or, at least, gave my mind handholds)

In some way I think you have to agree with Heidegger -- at least to a certain degree -- about the history of metaphysics to make sense of Derrida. I remember reading Heidegger was the sort of "lynch pin" that helped me to begin to see what was going on years ago (or, at least, gave my mind handholds) — Moliere

Ya the usual story goes that Derrida took a Heidegger's conception of the history of metaphysics ('ontotheology' in Heidgger) and transformed it into the 'metaphysics of presence', and similarly took Heidegger's notion of the 'Destruktion' of metaphysics and transformed it into the 'deconstruction' of metaphysics. And Derrida, ever the radical, ends up locating Heidegger in that tradition as well, even though he notes that Heidegger was exemplary in trying to escape it.

Interestingly, Derrida never claims to escape what he calls the 'closure of metaphysics' either. As with the double bind of (im)possibility, his reading of that history aims to show the points in it by which it renders itself both possible and impossible. This is why Derrida is always at pains to specify his own position of enunciation, the 'place' from which he makes his judgements. He is neither inside nor outside the tradition but in some indiscernible place on it's edge (or 'margin' - as he would title one of his more well known books 'Margins of Philosophy'): he always says "we", he includes himself in the tradition even as he deconstructs it, and generally never from a point 'outside' of it.

if one wants to shift things to an existential-psychoanalytic register, in the same way Derrida might say Husserl is evading death ( by insisting on a presence that always underlies signification), one could also say that Derrida is evading trauma (by insisting that signification is always co-originary - so there's always something mediating, making sure the traumatic scene is never fully present.) — csalisbury

Yeah, I've always thought this regarding secondary presentations of Derrida. There's comfort in knowing something can be infinitely deferred.

So to answer your question, without further delay: no, I never learned-to-live. Absolutely not! Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome, or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die. I believe in this truth without giving myself over to it. Less and less in fact. I have not learned to accept death. We are all survivors on deferral ...

The question of survival or deferral ... has always haunted me, literally, every moment of my life, tangibly, unrelentingly ... I have always been interested in the subject of survival, the meaning of which is not supplemental to life or death. It is originary: life is survival. Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. All the ideas that have helped me in my work, notably those regarding the trace or the spectral, were related to the idea of "survival" as a basic dimension. It does not derive from either to live or to die. No more than what I call "originary mourning." It is something that does not wait for so-called "actual" death." — StreetlightX

Wow, that's...frank. I mean, I don't find it moving. But it's frank. It reminds me of a lot of old epigrams about being too afraid to live or die.

Yes and no, and Derrida talks a little bit about this. On the one hand, phenomenology is opposed to traditional metaphysics (and some phenomenologists oppose it to 'ontology,' which they take themselves to be doing), because of methodological inadequacy. But on the other hand, Husserl took himself to be doing genuine metaphysics, and so only opposed to metaphysics in the true sense insofar as the old metaphysics was false metaphysics.

And yeah, showing that phenomenology at its core is part of the same tradition it's trying to disavow is one of Derrida's main goals.

So - what is crucial to note (and this is Derrida's modification of, and contribution to, the transcendental tradition of thought), is that this condition of possibility (repetition) also doubles as what Derrida will later also refer to as the condition of impossibility of the sign. That is: if a sign is to be a sign, it must be open to the possibility of repetition. This is it's condition of possibility. However, because no one instance of the sign will 'exhaust' the ideality of the sign, because the presence of the sign will always be infinitely deferred, this condition (repetition) simultaneously functions as it's condition of impossibility (impossibility of 'full instantiation' at any one 'moment'). — StreetlightX

I don't see how impossibility can be derived from possibility, because I believe that they belong to distinct categories. Impossibility is a necessity, and this is categorically different from possibility. Things which are not a possibility are impossible, but we cannot proceed from things which are possible, to make a determination as to what is impossible. So I don't see how Derrida intends to support impossibility by referring to possibility.

In the quoted paragraph, you say that a sign "must be" open to the possibility of repetition, this is an assertion of necessity. It is impossible to be otherwise. But the problem is, that the possibility of repetition, to have the capacity to be repeated, does not necessitate that the thing (the sign) must be this way. It is still possible that the thing (the sign) could exist without the possibility of repetition. It is only by definition that this principle is created, "sign" is defined as this necessity, this impossibility. But we cannot constrain real possibilities simply by defining them out of existence, therefore this thing, this ideality, which is called "the sign", could exist as something other than what Derrida defines as "sign", and this negates that impossibility.

That's a bit convoluted, but the problem is very evident at p46 of VP. In the final paragraph he speaks of "the possibility of my disappearance". At the end of the page, this leads to the necessity "I am mortal". But of course the possibility of my disappearance does not necessitate my actual disappearance. Then further, "I am immortal" is said to be "impossible". But this does not follow logically from "the possibility of my disappearance", because unless it is demonstrated that I will, of necessity disappear, my immortality remains a possibility, along with my disappearance.

In your second para here I think you've hit upon one of the most telling presumptions implicit in the much vaunted notion of finitude of some modernist and postmodernist philosophers. (Y)

Edit: actually made a mistake here: was referring to your third paragraph.

But that whole critique is muddled! Necessity qualifies possibility - that is, for a sign to be a sign, the possibility of it's repetition is necessary; it is necessarily repeatable, on pain of no longer being a sign. A sign for which it would not be necessary to be repeat would be something like God's Word: it would im-mediate and durationless, not unlike the manner in which Augustine writes of it in the Confessions:

"But how didst Thou [God -SX] speak? In the way that the voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son? For that voice passed by and passed away, began and ended; the syllables sounded and passed away, the second after the first, the third after the second, and so forth in order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last. Whence it is abundantly clear and plain that the motion of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, serving Thy eternal will. ... Thou callest us then to understand the Word, God, with Thee God, Which is spoken eternally, and by It are all things spoken eternally. For what was spoken was not spoken successively, one thing concluded that the next might be spoken, but all things together and eternally. Else have we time and change; and not a true eternity nor true immortality." (Confessions, Book XI).

Basically, Derrida will affirm, against Augustine, upon the necessity of this 'passing away of syllables', of what he will refer to as 'spacing' and 'periodicity', of the necessity of spatialization and temporalization against the eternal: "temporization is also temporalization and spacing, the becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time" ("Differance", in Margins); In VP itself, although time will be taken up as an explicit theme (especially in the next chapter), space makes quite a few, albeit understated appearances, some of which we've come across already, in the chapter 3 especially: "indication alone takes place in nature and in space ... [while presence]... has still not exited from itself into the world, into space, into nature." (p. 34). And: "Visibility as such and spatiality as such could only lose the self-presence of the will and of the spiritual animation which opens up discourse. They are literally the death of that self presence." (p.29).

With respect to the question of 'finitude' then, Derrida is perhaps more properly spoken of as a philosopher of mortality: if the possibility of death is a necessity (Again: necessity qualifies possibility), then immortality is impossible; the immortal is always haunted by the possibility of His death, necessarily - rendering Him mortal. 'Time and change' (spacing and timing) against 'eternity and immortality', in Augustine's terms.

I think that Signature, Event, Context might be of some use here. He's engaging with Austin and the concept of communication there, but he also lays out his arguments for repeatability there, and ties it into the concepts of death (once again, much later).

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/inc.pdf

Beginning on Page 7:

A written sign is proffered in the absence of the receiver. How to style this
absence? One could say that at the moment when I am writing, the receiver may
be absent from my field of present perception. But is not this absence merely a
distant presence, one which is delayed or which, in one form or another, is idealized
in its representation? This does not seem to be the case, or at least this
distance, divergence, delay, this deferral [differ-ance] must be capable of being
carried to a certain absoluteness of absence if the structure of writing, assuming
that writing exists, is to constitute itself. It is at that point that the differ-ance [difference
and deferral, trans. ] as writing could no longer (be) an (ontological)
modification of presence. In order for my "written communication" to retain its
function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute
disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication
must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any
empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability-(iter, again,
probably comes from itara, other in Sanskrit, and everything that follows can be
read as the working out of the logic that ties repetition to alterity) structures the
mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved
(whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetiC, alphabetiC, to cite
the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable-iterable-beyond
the death of the addressee would not be writing. Although this would seem to be
obvious, I do not want it accepted as such, and I shall examine the final objection
that could be made to this proposition. Imagine a writing whose code would be
so idiomatic as to be established and known, as secret cipher, by only two "subjects."
Could we maintain that, following the death of the receiver, or even of
both partners, the mark left by one of them is still writing? Yes, to the extent that,
organized by a code, even an unknown and nonlinguistic one, it is constituted in
its identity as mark by its iterability, in the absence of such and such a person, and
hence ultimately of every empirically determined "subject." This implies that
there is no such thing as a code-Drganon of iterability-which could be structurally
secret. The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is
implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable,
transmittable, deCipherable, iterable for a third, and hence for every possible
user in general. To be what it is, all writing must, therefore, be capable of functioning
in the radical absence of every empirically determined receiver in general.
And this absence is not a continuous modification of presence, it is a rupture
in presence, the "death" or the possibility of the "death" of the receiver inscribed
in the structure of the mark (I note in passing that this is the point where the
value or the "effect" of transcendentality is linked necessarily to the possibility of
writing and of "death" as analyzed). The perhaps paradoxical consequence of my
here having recourse to iteration and to code: the disruption, in the last analysis,
of the authority of the code as a finite system of rules; at the same time, the radical
destruction of any context as the protocol of code. We will come to this in a
moment.

What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or
the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine
which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle,
hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be
rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise,
trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I
ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in
general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful
[mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate,
from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a
writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the
author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he
seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead
or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present
intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in
order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this
point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The
situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory,
trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader.
This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off
from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority,
orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is preCisely what
Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical
movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.

And starting on page 16:

Austin thus excludes, along with what he calls a "sea-change," the "non-serious,"
"parasitism," "etiolation," "the non-ordinary" (along with the whole general theory
which, if it succeeded in accounting for them, would no longer be governed
by those oppositions), all of which he nevertheless recognizes as the possibility
available to every act of utterance. It is as just such a "parasite" that writing has
always been treated by the philosophical tradition, and the connection in this
case is by no means coincidental.

I would therefore pose the following question: is this general possibility
necessarily one of a failure or trap into which language may fall or lose itself as in
an abyss situated outside of or in front of itself? What is the status of this parasitism?
In other words, does the quality of risk admitted by Austin surround language
like a kind of ditch or external place of perdition which speech [la locution]
could never hope to leave, but which it can escape by remaining "at home,"
by and in itself, in the shelter of its essence or telos? Or, on the contrary, is this
risk rather its internal and positive condition of possibility? Is that outside its
inside, the very force and law of its emergence? In this last case, what would be
meant by an "ordinary" language defined by the exclusion of the very law of
language? In excluding the general theory of this structural parasitism, does not
Austin, who nevertheless claims to describe the facts and events of ordinary language,
pass off as ordinary an ethical and teleological determination (the univocity
of the utterance [enonel?}--that he acknowledges elsewhere [pp. 72-73] remains
a philosophical "ideal"-the presence to self of a total context, the
transparency of intentions, the presence of meaning [vouloir-dire] to the absolutely
singular uniqueness of a speech act, etc.)?

For, ultimately, isn't it true that what Austin excludes as anomaly, exception,
"non-serious,"9 citation (on stage, in a poem, or a soliloquy) is the determined
modification of a general citationality-Dr rather, a general iterability-without
which there would not even be a "successful" performative? So that-a paradoxical
but unavoidable conclusion-a successful performative is necessarily an "impure"
performative, to adopt the word advanced later on by Austin when he
acknowledges that there is no "pure" performative.

I take things up here from the perspective of positive possibility and not simply
as instances of failure or infelicity: would a performative utterance be possible
if a citational doubling [doublure] did not come to split and dissociate from
itself the pure singularity of the event? I pose the question in this form in order to
prevent an objection. For it might be said: you cannot claim to account for the socalled
graphematic structure of locution merely on the basis of the occurrence of
failures of the performative, however real those failures may be and however
effective or general their possibility. You cannot deny that there are also
performatives that succeed, and one has to account for them: meetings are called
to order (Paul Ricoeur did as much yesterday); people say: "I pose a question";
they bet, challenge, christen ships, and sometimes even marry. It would seem
that such events have occurred. And even if only one had taken place only once,
we would still be obliged to account for it.

I'll answer: "Perhaps." We should first be clear on what constitutes the status
of "occurrence" or the eventhood of an event that entails in its allegedly present
and Singular emergence the intervention of an utterance [enonel?] that in itself
can be only repetitive or citational in its structure, or rather, since those two
words may lead to confusion: iterable. I return then to a point that strikes me as
fundamental and that now concerns the status of events in general, of events of
speech or by speech, of the strange logic they entail and that often passes unseen.
Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a
"coded" or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in
order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as
conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way
as a "citation"? Not that citationality in this case is of the same sort as in a theatrical
play, a philosophical reference, or the recitation of a poem. That is why there
is a relative specificity, as Austin says, a "relative purity" of performatives. But this
relative purity does not emerge in opposition to citationality or iterability, but in
opposition to other kinds of iteration within a general iterability which constitutes
a violation of the allegedly rigorous purity of every event of discourse or
every speech act. Rather than oppose citation or iteration to the noniteration of an
event, one ought to construct a differential typology of forms of iteration, assuming
that such a project is tenable and can result in an exhaustive program, a
question I hold in abeyance here. In such a typology, the category of intention
will not disappear; it will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be
able to govern the entire scene and system of utterance [l'enonciation]. Above
all, at that point, we will be dealing with different kinds of marks or chains of
iterable marks and not with an opposition between citational utterances, on the
one hand, and singular and original event-utterances, on the other. The first consequence
of this will be the following: given that structure of iteration, the intention
animating the utterance will never be through and through present to itself
and to its content. The iteration structuring it a priori introduces into it a dehiscence
and a cleft [brisure] which are essential. The "non-serious ," the oratio obliqua
will no longer be able to be excluded, as Austin wished, from "ordinary"
language. And if one maintains that such ordinary language, or the ordinary circumstances
of language, excludes a general citationality or iterability, does that
not mean that the "ordinariness" in question-the thing and the notion-shelter
a lure, the teleological lure of consciousness (whose motivations, indestructible
necessity, and systematic effects would be subject to analysis)? Above all, this
essential absence of intending the actuality of utterance, this structural unconsciousness,
if you like, prohibits any saturation of the context. In order for a
context to be exhaustively determinable, in the sense required by Austin, conscious
intention would at the very least have to be totally present and immediately
transparent to itself and to others, since it is a determining center [foyer] of
context. The concept of -Dr the search for-the context thus seems to suffer at
this point from the same theoretical and "interested" uncertainty as the concept
of the "ordinary," from the same metaphysical origins: the ethical and teleological
discourse of consciousness. A reading of the connotations, this time, of Austin's
text, would confirm the reading of the descriptions; I have just indicated its
principle.

Probably easier to read it in the pdf, but I wanted to highlight areas in that essay where he talks about repetition -- and he touches on some of the same themes which VP is talking about now with respect to consciousness, death, meaning, and communication.

But that whole critique is muddled! Necessity qualifies possibility - that is, for a sign to be a sign, the possibility of it's repetition is necessary; it is necessarily repeatable, on pain of no longer being a sign. — StreetlightX

But the issue goes deeper than the sign, which is the possibility of repetition, to the possibility of ideality itself. Expression, for Husserl seems to be an absolute ideality, an indefinite possibility. When Derrida defines this absolute ideality as "the sign", or "the possibility of repetition", he thereby limits possibility, by means of this definition, such that we are no longer referring to an indefinite possibility.

Now we have an inconsistency. I believe Derrida's criticism of Husserl is based in this inconsistency. By defining absolute ideality with "the sign", a qualified possibility, the possibility of repetition, this is no longer the same absolute ideality which Husserl refers to as indefinite possibility. So Derrida has simply replaced pure expression with a form of indication, the sign, and wants to claim that this form of indication, the sign, is the same thing which Husserl intended as pure expression. It is not, because it is not indefinite possibility, it is qualified possibility.

There's definitely a reversal at work in VP -- but I don't think the claim is that Husserl intended this reversal. Chapter 1 makes this pretty clear -- I think the last sentence of that chapter is really important to the remainder of this text:

We have chosen to be interested in this relation in which phenomenology belongs to classical ontology

(emphasis mine)

Derrida's reading of Husserl isn't exclusive of the second reading he proposes at the end of chapter 1. Rather, he has chosen to hone in on this possible reading which, if he is correct at least, the text affords or allows. Not that his reading is fixed by Husserl's intent, but that the text allows this as a possible reading.

Also, the notion of choice here being important because it means you could also choose to read the text in a different way from the one presented here -- one governed by authorial intent, for instance.

But the issue goes deeper than the sign, which is the possibility of repetition, to the possibility of ideality itself. Expression, for Husserl seems to be an absolute ideality, an indefinite possibility. When Derrida defines this absolute ideality as "the sign", or "the possibility of repetition", he thereby limits possibility, by means of this definition, such that we are no longer referring to an indefinite possibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sorry Meta but this is a total garble. Not only is there no textual evidence for any of this (can you cite, exactly - page number and quote - where 1) Derrida 'defines absolute ideality as the sign', and 2) where Husserl defines expression in terms of "indefinite possibility"?), but you're not going to find any because you're completely confusing categories that simply have nothing to do with each other.

First of all, it literally would make no sense to "define ideality as the sign". At best, one can say that Derrida claims that ideality partakes of the structure of sign, but to say that ideality = sign is simply to utter an absurdity, a meaningless string.

Second, it similarly makes zero sense (it is literally non-sense) to refer to expression as "indefinite possibility". Neither Husserl nor Derrida ever make this claim. Insofar as the phrase is employed, it is with respect to the sign and its "indefinite possibility" of repetition, but to speak of "indefinite possibility" simpliciter, especially in relation to expression (which is in no way some kind of modal category), is just word-salad. Please try to at least get the vocabulary right if you're going to try and advance a critique.

Sorry, can you cite, exactly, where Derrida 'defines absolute ideality with the sign'? Page number and quote. — StreetlightX

p44: "In this way, against Husserl's express intention - we come to make Vorstellung in general and, as such, depend on the possibility of repetition..."

p45: "But this ideality, which is only the name of the permanence of the same, and the possibility of repetition, does not exist in the world, and does not come from another world"

p45: "Absolute ideality is the correlate of a possibility of indefinite repetition. We can therefore say that being is determined by Husserl as ideality, that is, as repetition".

Clearly, on p45, the ideality referred to is absolute ideality, and this ideality is taken to be the possibility of repetition, and the name of that ideality is "the sign", The mistake here is that there is no necessity to assign to absolute ideality, any particular possibility, which is done with "the possibility of repetition". To maintain pureness in absolute ideality, we must maintain an absolutely indefinite possibility.

Can you also provide citational evidence for the claim that "Expression, for Husserl seems to be... an indefinite possibility"? - especially the notion of 'indefiniteness'. — StreetlightX

I do not have access to Husserl's material right now, only what Derrida gives me to support his argument, so I cannot provide direct citations. But the difference between real, and imaginative should indicate to you, that the imaginative is not limited by the real. This means that the imaginative is not limited to representation as Derrida claims at p42: "I must operate (in) a structure of repetition whose element can only be representative." It may be true that Husserl uses "representation" to refer to imaginations, but I am not completely familiar with how he uses that term.

Imagination creates new things which need not be representative. That is how the word "imagination" is commonly used, the imagination creates new things which are not representative. So this claim of a necessity of representation is unfounded. It is only produced by restricting imagination to representation. Such a move negates, or denies the creative power of imagination, assuming that imagination can only be representative. If we maintain that imagination consists of indefinite possibilities we are not restricted by this claim of representation.

The relationship between imagination, memory, and representation, is further described by Derrida at p47. This is somewhat obscure: "...Husserl constantly emphasizes that, in contrast to memory, the image is a 'neutralizing' and non-'positing' representation..." Then Derrida proceeds on p48 to describe what is meant by "purely fictional". We must question whether "purely fictional" can refer to anything representational, and this has bearing on the originality of the sign.

What I suggest, is that "pure ideality", or the "ideal ob-ject", as described at the end of p45, into 46, is to be understood as an absolute indefiniteness, the possibility to imagine anything, not as Derrida characterizes this, as the possibility of infinite repetition.

Literally none of the quotes you

p44: "In this way, against Husserl's express intention - we come to make Vorstellung in general and, as such, depend on the possibility of repetition..."

p45: "But this ideality, which is only the name of the permanence of the same, and the possibility of repetition, does not exist in the world, and does not come from another world"

p45: "Absolute ideality is the correlate of a possibility of indefinite repetition. We can therefore say that being is determined by Husserl as ideality, that is, as repetition".

Clearly, on p45, the ideality referred to is absolute ideality, and this ideality is taken to be the possibility of repetition, and the name of that ideality is "the sign", — Metaphysician Undercover

Literally none of these quotes even use the word 'sign', and your quip about 'the name of that ideality is sign' simply begs the question. Again, there's zero textual support for your line of reasoning.

As for your discussion of imagination, as you said, you simply don't understand the vocabulary here, and very little of what you say makes any sense whatsoever within the context of either Derrida nor Husserl's discussions.

Here's the point StreetlightX. If absolute ideality is characterized as imagination (pure fiction) on the one hand, and the possibility of indefinite repetition on the other hand, there is a huge gap or difference, between these two. This difference is representation. Representation is not a condition of imagination (pure fiction), it is a condition of repetition. Therefore these two conceptions of "absolute ideality" are distinct.

Please come back when you're done mixing up categories.

MU, imagination is representative not in the sense that it has to depict some real thing, but in the sense that for Husserl it's derivative of perception, which is presentation proper. Imagination and fiction aren't just ideal: when fantasizing, there's a concrete act going on as well, and a particular fantasied object. We can perceive idealities by extracting them both from perception and from fantasy.

I want to recap my understanding of chs. 1-4 very simply to see if others agree with this interpretation. Husserl sets out to determine what a "sign" is. He distinguishes between indication and expression. He explicitly defines indication but not expression. In fact, every time he discusses expression it's bound up with indication (as in the "intimation" of interpersonal communication). This leads to a very strange section on soliloquy where the use of expressive sign occurs in solitude. Here indication, it's true, is absent, but the idea of an imaginary sign that communicates nothing (and the idea that this is where one would find the non-indicative essence of expression) is so bizarre and contradictory that its worth looking at in detail - what's going on here, why's Husserl getting all weird? And when we look at the weirdness in depth, it's clear that he's trying to resolve all sorts of inherent paradoxes of the sign (prsence/absence, reality/representation) by focusing on an instance where a sign supposedly coincides immediately with what it expresses. In other words, he's trying to understand the sign by totally glossing over what a sign is and how it works. And it's this strange, confused knot in Husserl's text that Derrida uses as a springboard to jump into *all* the contradictions and hidden assumptions of phenomenology.

Sounds about right to me.