Typography MIMESIS, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS PHILIPPE LACOUE-LABARTHE With an Introduction by Jacques Derrida EDITED BY LINDA M. BROO! R FYNSK CONSULTANT 1989,Printed in the United States of America wokrosasat ofthis hook has been aided bya grant fom the Andrew W, Mellon Foundation. Note on Sources” This book is printed om acifee paper and have been chosen for stength rile Pubiation Data Philippe Selections) with an introduction by Jacques Derrida CCristopher Fynsk 3. Devonstrustion. ideo, Deny 114-78 194—dow In memory of EuGENIO U. Donato 1937-1983Editor’s Preface Eugenio Donato ing most appropri hat “Typography” should provide sement” to Le sujet de la philesophie (subtitled Typagraphies 1 and anticipating in this way Tspayraphies IT, which was published in 2» Lesujee dela phileophie 3. Lette dela ltEditor's Preface lysis, techne, and aletheia. It wo ‘one would have to take the measure > 10 is preoccupied 4+ Wlmivaton des mde Editor's Preface ix ic gesture of thought. But I would emphasize Lacoue-Labarthe’s work is not that ‘upon itself at some point in its exposit seeking the limits of the philosophical as such, and ff reading and writing that is powerfully coherent, but that iplicity to which the essays that they suggest something of the coherence th Labarthe’s persistent effort to follow the fil canducteur of the questi of mimesis In order to respect this dimer bring forth the extreme attentic (his own first of a he gives to have sought to bri lelity and to assure a continuity ile respecting as much as pos- ch translator. I want to thank fh my efforts in this prop- approval of my additions and minor changes. ‘MeVicker tracking down a large quan- Lockhart for his very gener- h language is not always receptiv c-Labarthe undertakes in relation t0 hx Editor's Preface syntasier in the trad allows movemet ply hope is that the occasional forcing in k sentence constructions proposed in the the direction of what these of the rhythms and the unfailing precision that charac Labarthe’s writing. I would even hope that it the singular strangeness that signature. Contents duction: Desistan Jacques Derrida 1 Typography 43 2 The Echo of the Subject Bo 3 The Cacsura of the Speculative 208 4 Hé lin and the Greeks 236 5 Diderot: Paradox and Mimesis 248 6 Transcendence Ends in Politics 267 Memorial Note 301 ANote on Sources 304. Index 305Introduction: Desistance by Jacques Derrida Parentheses (Parenthetically I wonder: How are they going to translate désister? Th We to consider the place this word occupies in Philippe barthe’s work. It seems discreet, and yet so many paths cross atin language, 's that in our tra- dition bear a strong philosophical ster, inser, résister, assister—and undoubtedly others I'm ing, verbs: substance, » canstanc, instance, instant, dance Désister, which is much rarer, announces perhay than an additional term in this sgative. Pethaps the dé doe see, the et: Perhaps the dé distoges i ad . which seemed merely something other mark anything, to formalize things a this has to happen—il faut que cela on mowwhat precede and anticipate in this way the advent of what happens to me, which c upon me or to which I come. Iam then like the (free) subject or the to have already happen: always in a pa ‘one who undergoes the expe ‘maining the subject of this experience. the ineluctable that constitutes 1 and that this subject cannot appro vn, We farther on: a certain constitutive desistance on rather than a destitution. But how ve or essential [It puts off (from itse (any constitution and any essence. The imprint of the in of the imprint or of “my ineluctable might be conceived of asa genetic program or a historical predestination; rather the latter are supplemental and late determi- . Let us not be too quick to draw a conclusion from this Being I ethical, poetic, Introduction: Desistance 3 5. would seem to prompt s Fits epochs} As uch in the w: shat, then? Well learn to read Lacoue- voice, I would almost say cai which is not cerrupted when it multiplies caesuras, asides, parenthetical re~ . cautions, signs of prux parentheses, quotation marks, italies—dashes above 3 example, he writes “I” and “me” in quotation epting his own name at the end of “Typography,” at the moment when he exposes himself the most on the subject of the subject and exposition—or presentation [Darstellung]. One must learn y of a scansion that comes to hing other than the necessity of a rhythm—rhyt in parenthes+ Introduction: Desistance not do some= for nor eluding ppears to be part of the same series, but it names negation or de-neg: Ip us, perhaps, in stepping back from a Hegelian, Marxist, or Freudian interpretation of Xt be one of its names, In the pre \—to carry on with my story — was troubled even before beginning: How are they going to translate jurisprudence gen- But the term does not allow a French: se désister, What is more, ce,” at od it, repatriated it to meaning of “cessation,” would be want to mark with désiste- ‘one domesti jint that it lost its comm loser to what Lacoue-Labarthe seems ‘ment. But the diffi and ‘exist, could prove useful. On the condi transcribed h, without further precau the task, I admit— désistement already Introduction: Desistance 5 marks a departure from the French idiom: the word can barely be translated in current Fi henceforth I will speak of ‘desistance” of the ridical sense that ly imposes itself in normal usage, even though one can deci- ¢ deter such a desistance? No, the impossibil something en- in the way y us already recognize the following: the great task of the translator—his madness, the aporias he confronts—proceeds always from some ini-6 Introduction: Desistance where the experience examples: Gael of which appear in this bx ) that bear c ophocles by Hélderlin (a madness Lacoue-Labarthe’s other texts (written sometimes in other modes, both poetic and pl which the English-speaking reader This coherence does not take the form reasons that all lead bac! ck to desis- organic configuration. ‘So I have just rercad these texts. A joy to rediscover, to discover in had wanted me to Labarthe, we also Introduction: Desistance 7 0 reiterate that despite so many common pat be veen the two of them and between the tion: these are what L Labarthe constantly puts us on against. He uncovers their fatal character, the political trap they hold, even in Heidegger's “unacknowledged” and “fundament - in an interpretation of originary mimesis as i laying bare the irred ble necessity of these moments has been assumed, the way an onto-mimetology. An equi nd troubling repetition. Lacoue- dideggcrs constant refusal... to take seriously the concepe of mimesis soley a wo ug inthe Address and oken impossible to count fiom the Address, p. 292),8 Introduction: Desistance Labarthe does not oppose it and does not cr sure that he is deconstructing it, or that “deconstruct” is the best word for describing what he does with it by reinscribing it ture: abime, Unheimlichkeit, double bind, byperbolagy. He opens upon an entirely different thought of mimesis, of rypas and of riuthmes, a thon zschean-Heideggerian de- peats as repetition). The signature interrupts, or rather marks with an incision, mimetology is destined t ogy that runs from P also a desistance of the too quickly © pos French as explication) and the ughts that it overtaxes with constantly renewed Exemplary probity, both prudent and adventurous—a st ho greatei ‘or post-modern, n which ar Introduction: Desistance 9 sis, except by the question epoch is also have to do, with madness? The besieged cause it has no figurable site, a single site, a single figure; it has no properly proper. Unstable and destat ethos, the “character” (and here I refer to the problematic that be- gins and compli Ids in Chapter 2, in the sect titled “The Novel Is a Mirror”), the rhythm of the warnings. Lacoue- Labarthe multiplies parentheses in order to caution us at every instant i fications: from all sides, over- might miss a twist or a yuble d, traps are everywhere, the hyperbologic—one has And the warning is not finally meant so that one will not fa10 have masked a proper noun, thus pret to replace the most irte- placeabe proper noun, by another: figure, fson, simulacrum of sym - )), one encounters the legger never avoids anything). about somec Ler’s not rus! thing: never pass by a a truth, and a truth about id. But one can also, in a stakes, weak- jons, omissions, compromises—also Compulsively. As is said in common 1e pas en manguer une). WI ‘he never avoids anything,” stands up to things, never 2 Introduction: Desistance " Concerned with thinking, and the neces ight in general, its quasi-negativi un-thought is un-thought, he reminds us), which, whatever Heidegger says, I'm not sure gathers each time in the unity of site, as if there were only one unthought in which cach great ic its very greatness—would find its se- this shortly. What are we to understand by “avoid” or “deny” when this un- thought of unthinking itself (Pimpenser], that of Heidegger, involves it which philosophy would have difficulty defin-2 Introduction: Desistance the risks to whicl oration marks ger never eliminates anything —n in parentheses. For the word. might seem ic context (the But a necessary point of passage is leads back to the question of the to be borrowed from a Freudian aporetics of subl p. 62) in such a way that Heidegger pass right by it—or even pretend to wretend to not pay at- I reading or a medita- is easier. As always, credit to the thought he examines, or ? the greatest stre the most lucid knomledge—one which can never be taken ger never avoids anythin, support,” and taken from ography,” p. 62; my emphasis—[.D.) alize power and thus a avoid seeing or kro Introduction: Desistance B The essential question here bears less se chosen: “But why cgger’s maneuver here go by w: jestalt? Why docs search of Ge-stell? Once again, what happens if one may say s or the di essential reasons. ir. But this “content,” as CM significations with -stellen, an entire hive that it disorganizes perhaps by putting as it might appear to. Heidegge , ing full well [pertinemment]’ that he was thus circumventing, at least provisionally, the ineluctable. the tracking, the fol ser “cannot avoid falling.” Can “Typography” Lacoue-Labarthe proposes a translation: “to track or be after; to avenge.” Wh eager cannot avoid falling? Itis still a matter of Darstellung laronic paradigm of the mirror. This latter, You saw them ‘marks in parentheexception or of a Heidegger, or with y to give it a name? Lacou egy: “turning movement,” “cut “maneuver.” But also the fal he preat lapse of a thought. What must Lacoue-Labarthe’s out hostilities for tracking down traces, lly with the entire onto concepts of onto-theology, the history of meta and within these latter, the determination, thot These are, in short, some of the came up against this short parenthesis, vhy, spontaneously, this was a resistance on my myself, And of anyor ide, never avoid anything, even while knowit Introduction: Desistance 15 When Paul de Man dared say that Rousse the same impatience. Impati time and to subm ing it. Hence 1 what is piece at the point at reading and rereading these difficult texts (with their inc dena phrases, quot themselves and those th examine; work at ge cunning, and prudence, and with the intractabl strains them, with their rhythm, above all, their breath: d the deep respiration of thought. Their time is that of a long- run during which you follow someone who continually ad- cribes the ups and downs of terrain he have to take, of the stretch you can’t see yet, sity of a detour and of marking a different pace, inventing another str cross the finish line or open a new path. If sometimes you have the are dealing with a thinker who is panting or harried, someone who on the contrary maneuver, the hand or the rhythm of his s ry. And because I cannot do more in an introduction. Accepting the Ks of this limitation, and hoping above all that the reader will tun to Lacoue-Labarthe himse! tothe language to which ‘of madness in trans! n and schiz, ira, double reappropriation, hyperbology, in-16 Introduction: Desistance Lacoue-Labarthe sharpens f y testing it against sf, thu the rsche, Heidegger, most resista Freud, Lacan). so-called positive forms accorded to madness the 3” opens upon this predest The examples (they are only examples) are Rousseau ( «and this is how we become mad,” from the preface to La no f Madness in the History isolate the thread that links madness Lacoue-Labarthe takes it up, taking up again even the title, and sends it off again in sump manner. He has been doing this now for .,and rigor, in a kind of demagogic,"psychagoie’ pha o great a risk —to speak in Introduction: Desistance " 1s reading of Heidegger, an effective y, has been carefully different. He does not subject”; rather, he of a Heideggerian type and that about which he thinks legger maintained a silence. ‘What “silence”? The word appeats atleast twice. What it designates is not without some relation to the ineluctable. Even if he “never avoids anything,” Heidegger remains silent on something about Darstellung is not easily domesticated, ordered, classed in the great family of pacing in parentheses ofthe “de” in “(de)eonstitution” signifies that one must Me asa negativity affecting an: the “subject.” as18 Introduction: Desistance Ge-stell (bestellen, vorstellen, herstllen, nachstllen order to does not attend, oF, as is said somewhere, to which he pretends not to pay at of Darstellung can be decipher P* (this word also appears twice—pp. relation between, on the one hand, work and suffering (a propos of the other, repre 4 question of folding ne, Because Introduction: Desistance 19 pp. 61-62) “Typography,” and what is now coming together under this title,'* c the impressive articulation in “a ity. He removes it by showing how Heidegger removes and, most important, he leads back into its unicity Iso a center of gravity, a great number of questions. Among them, ing apart of the ‘text—the Nietzschean one in this regard to which T wonder (actually this is only a certain hhether Lacoue-Labarthe does not himself risk a reduc- fe does this with the best justification in the world, since this20 Introduction: Desistance re-claborative gathering is the best possi er—but it is not witho according, fh the vs single, always unique," constituting in a certain and that of “wri is even what he cal ‘gic moment I ha The strategy of his unthought was be- thought? | won't make a disinstallation. General, first of ey are redoubled. This lieve that this gesture redoubling has to do with the essence, without essence, of mimesis, productive, and pilose fact that iti not, that it does not exist, but desiss, and that this logic” of critique out of my wi is avoidable. It is al continue to wonder whether yntinue to follow it, should not necessary. But I desistance, as we wi ing wh cems the Heideggerian project of “tan unique, never to be repeated, inexhat tunthought in his though. What i unthought ‘ent in his thought Typoerapt the indispensable correlate ofthe very ‘thang of thought “e can be marked sit nd the word "22 Introduction: Desistance > “originary"—while making it clear that compatible with that of mimesis, and so on. The fold or abyssal redoubling of which we are trying to speak does, not, therefore, come to destabilize a truth that would already be (serait din; or esternt, as one sometimes renders it in French). Desistance is first of all thar of truth. This latter never resembles itself. He semblance to mimesis. But how is it possible to resemble mimes out already being contaminated by it? And how can one think this original contamination in a non-negative and non-originary fashion, in order to keep from letting one’s statements be dictated by the domi- nant mimetologism? Etcetera. Truth, then, never resembles itself. Tt withdraws, masks itself, and never ceases, says Lacoue-Labarthe, who this time uses the reflexive construction, to desist [se désister] (p. 118) Before we focus on this result, let us note what in the lexicon justifies the privilege given to this word, désister; and above all what it is that, in relating, it to the quasi-radical ist, or rather stare, in French ester, uuproots it, removes desist, desistance, from the series of “stances” to which they seem to belong (subsistence, substance, resistance, con- stancy, consistency, i instance, assistance, persistence, tence, etc.). As it is put to work by Lacoue-Labarthe, “desistance” is not a modification, above all not a negative one, of ester. The dé would super-mark precisely this: its non-belonging to 1 y of ester. 1 have already suggested this, and I return to the point now in order to complicate a bit more what will be at stake in the translation. Or should know that ester is not only a kind of root. The word exists French, even if tis rare. It has a meaning that is above all juridical, like se désster, and signifies “to present oneself,” to appear [apparaitre, com- paraitre| in a court of justice. Ester en jugement (to appear in court, to plead), ester en justice (Ko go to law), isto present oneself before the law as plaintiff or defendant. Now, it happens that as a result of this seman- tics of presentation or appearance, this act of presence, if you wi hhas sometimes been thought that one might translate Wesem, as it a Heideggerian sense (normally translated in English as by ester or estance."* Let me then risk this suggestion: if beyond its place in a juridical code, and in the way it is pur to work “ty- pographicaly,” désistance does not modify estance, and does not belong Metaplsik Introduction: Desistance 23 to it as one of its determina s, but rather marks a rupture, a de- parture, or a heterogeneity with respect to estance or Wesen; if it says neither absence nor disorder or inessentiality, neither Abwesen nor Un uvesen, nor even some Entwesen (this latter removed from its trivial con oration); then it would be quite difficult to retranslate it into the ng or truth of is does not ‘mean that nothing more would pass, or happ. two lan guages; but the passage would be offered by another abyss, the one of which Heidegger speaks and also another. I don’t know whether Lacoue-Labarthe will accept my hypothesis, or even whether it w' terest him. Perhaps he will refuse it straight off; perhaps on the y it will appear to him to go without saying—he who once wrote: have a lot of trouble not seeing in Hei Being and if itis Heidegger’s Being, the san possibility of) Levinas’s ng as (if not the very otherwise than Being.” Perhaps. Perhaps ris the opening I'm working at, perhaps in vain) desistance, as king translation. Estance, the meaning “estance,” would thus find itself destabilized in itself, without this appearing as a negativity. De-sistance, that of truth first of all, would condition all the positions and all the stances that it effect, and sets spinning from within. A question ation, again, and a passage between the Greek (aletheia, trans- lated or interpreted by Heidegger as Unrertelltheit), the German (Ge- tell and the words formed with stellen, whose resources are laid out i the section titled “The Stele”), and the Latin (sta, stare, and so on). W. for some time around this point of passage, the pr 0 write mor I, exelut toute référence 3 la ation des madres, p2724 Introduction: Desistance in a note." Lacoue-Labarthe does not scck in this note (nor will 1) to dissimulate the abyss opened beneath what is here named a Wits. Abyss, hiatus, or chaos: + (iF not the Heidegger in fact plays constantly on the drawing togett pure and simple “ass n°) of stehen and stellen, ning oti diference betwee hes otal the middle voice, to send but also Latin, sto, stare) —thus proces finally more by philological Wits than by though ina text very close to the one that concerns ts Heidegger notes, in passing, thatthe Greek word thesis (0 from the_-simple—Indo-European root die) can in German be trans lated at dhe same tiie by Setsung, Stellan, and Lage ight of day, gives birth to, the Desistance perhaps brings into the insanity or unreason, the anoia against which Platonic onto-ideology, or even Hei cerpretation of it (pp. to1ff.), is established, in- + as it is not reducible to a negative mode of stalled, stabilized. Bu the stance, itis not to be confused with madness—though in doubling it can resemble insanity. or disinstalling everything that secures reasor Madness against madness. The double bind oscillates between two rmadnesses, for there can also be a madness of reason, of the defensive stiffening in assistance, imitation, identification. Double bind between the double bind and its other. I jump here, of Hélderlin and “The Caesura of the Speculative back to this poit [For now! the historical scheme and the mimetology it presupposes be- gin slowly, vertiginously, re, to distort, and to hollow out in an Styyasal manner. And if you also consider that the structure of supple ‘mentation, defining in sum the mimetic r Holderin’s eyes oof mssizance [emphasis added), that itis necessary if man is to be pre= que Pomme) “aking fame in contact with the nderstand what the stakes were for .> but 1 modern epoch—v |, the Greek relat 18, See note 3, pp. 66-67 Introduction: Desistance 25 id engulfs, aleheia, Immediate! ls for another experience of truth, Another tof Heideggerian deconstruction: one that involves playing plays, there is some play in it, it allows some play and forces ), playing (at) the return of a truth determined as bomoiass, ation, similitude, or resemblance, but that is also removed, through this return that is played at and played out, from the Heideg- exactitude, e-vidence) which finds it- through a movement of destabilization, but through this movement of desistance that dis- lodges it from any relation to a possible stance. ced be necessary to take a detour and a return path—or, to follow the trajectory of a supplementary loop. Both inside and outside the path of epochality. I would be tempted to call such a loop a ing, or even a band. A certain circulation, as we will see, takes on the bond [alliance]. Mimesis on of criticism, in other words, of deci sion: one cannot avoid missing mimesis as soon as one identifies it and wants to decide on its truth value, One would not find it if one had not ready missed it in looking for it; that is, ifone did not have faith in its identity, its existence, or its consistency. This is what Plato, Heidegger, and Girard do in very different, but finally analogous ways, In the extraordinary bidding scene that he stages between them, Lacou ids off the latter two, so to speak, back to back, though not laying (to keep to this code of games and strategics) one other. Girard would like to “appropriate” or “identify” mi- bly.” says Lacoue- A critical question—the qui ‘ing upon it an essence or a property, a truth to be revealed Here the ineluctable comes down to missing the lack, or—still moreIntroduction: Desistance 27 ae Desistance paradoxical it is to approy the im-proy truth as homoiass, a adequation, similitude, or re- ), bur that would in its earn be displace exactitude Jongs to Heidegger's epochal is to the subject of desire, nd thus finally as a general hope of a revelation of mimesis. Ls set Heidegger against28 Introduction: Desistance 1 secondary. abarthe dislocates the epochal N as it stands, the truth makes an abyss appear simply derived from an othe it now plays a much m¢ tary 0 the epochal ge signed by Lacoue-Labartl o longer bear any without pursuing a yet, what bi Bur aside tary link, to the “uw logy th pended at a Introduction: Desistance 29 of a judgment and a justice. And y c the il faut I have just cited; there is philosophy and its law. night of de-sistance is one of the most demanding thoughts of sibility. The fact that the traditional categories of responsibility 5 ity rather on the side of the ives desistance the the word appears. 24, These las thre essays appt30 Introduction: Desistance Introduction: Desistance 3 ness [retard] (impossible to overcom seem pertinent, and we are giv ‘own’ birth” that kind of pre-maturatic nesis has always wanted to efface. But Bildung and paideia coul upplemental birth,” the irreducibility a “character’ eady in order that always precedes it, But de-sistance—madness, feminization, n the onder wit Lacan defines this situatior Rhuthmos the beginning, rhythm, says von Bihlow. Another way of mark- ing the fact that there is no simple beginning; no rhythm without repe- spacing, caesura, the “repeated difference-from-itself of the Same,” says Lacoue-Labarthe*—and thus repercussion, resonance, presence (between abscnc ho, reverberation. We are constituted by this rhythm, in other dor dis words (de-)constituted by the marks of this “cacsuracd” stamp, by this rhythmo-typy which is nothing other than the divided idiom in us of scription of a ‘Traversed from the very beginning by a multiple and an by the discourse of the jor necessarily by that of am “subject” isn simple Spaltung—that opposition between the negative prion, or even between death and identity persed according to the disquieting instabi ‘obsession with appro entire analysis of m before a conee well 1m would also be the condi --Labarthe says in “The Echo of the yythmed” (pp. 202. and 206) in such a way that rhythm no32 Introduction: Desistance Heidegger, of co te neeemy eral Freud and Lacan, for the d more specific with regard t LLabarthe to respect ev ralling one to another, both for wand against. A n against the cory and th ‘and rhythm in Reik against specul Freud's verbocentrism on between the imaginary and the symbo heoretical Because it ties together several possibilities. It makes it possil ject (of its “character,” of what pre: ctaphysics of subject n by the notions of the sel 35 they are coordinated in the Introduction: Desistance 33 gible sense or me: cl laterally: “to mistake the thythm of a sei meaning of the se the haunting return of music, musical obsession, or rather the rever- beration, the return of rhythm. ories of repression. ‘The pressure upon it, form a compression, a compulsion, one 5 ‘marked or scanned regularly by traces: all of them signaling that rhyth~ designate a graphic configuration. Heideg- iades had translated rhuthmes by Gepriige doubt true, butEr Introduction: Desistance double binds, transgres and retriangulations: Mal Mann and Leucippus. And Wallace Stevens. out more than one. And Lacoue-Labarthe. ind —of which he speaks more and more always figure that is at east double)” ing the Lacanian distine- ‘even a practi se tradition—a tre Introduction: Desistance 35 bind with a gap or a fiatus—and n. This ne- c threads of the who represent the gun to measu 4 Freud: he admits to not having “experience” with music and musi- sges the text to the detriment of music, he pru- ‘musicians. figuration (Darstellbarkeit,figurabil and visual forms. Lacan: the least 0 ay is that he does not break with this theo- retical structure. Lacoue- t propose a “critique” of his text. As always, he proceeds “with and against Lacan” (p. 174). This that what appears theoretically accurate n theoreticism. The latter is inscribed of the figure (a figural and ficti is constantly cal, to the specular, imetological36 Introduction: Desistance Introduction: Desistance 37 1 want to interrupt this citation for a moment in order to emphasize the coherence of these words in the latter is less marked in “The Echo of more recent texts devoted t0 would the proble problem of the pol sion of “Transcendence Ends in Politics” (p. 300), and the analysis leading uy paths analogous to the one I have been rence (not desistance) defined by Heidegger in a sti onto-typological fashion in the “Rectoral Address,” an “unavowed mimetology” that would be “overdetermi thought,” a certa and refusal of iat should be noted here, with and against Lacan, and is that there is a constant though he imaginary, of the resources of the imaginary. ‘The imaginary destroys at least as much as it helps to construct. More think” [ce quengage ti penser Reik} cady beyond Lacan, nd38 Introduction: Desistance thinks and what Reik could deliver on! gress thought has been delivered, has conclude, except yond the closure “Perhaps it is e shaking its specular not necessarily occupied by something like the rea even if t be I nor be without its consequences—even fi sce thatthe subject Retk ends by subi uf to which Lacan sudmits (this is what in of the same subs *[Evenything} iat makes it more than a simple repeti retical failure’... Rek's theoretical fare, or rather, genera failure ofthe theoretical” (p. ists in reflecting Freud in the repeated reflection” (wiederbalte Signing), 2 fine a kind of i fact that t0 hance of reaching his goal. Ths is why’ the theoretical failure’ is ako a ‘succes’ and the inhibition will never be truly lifted” (p67). ible inition at work here: both theoreti the subject, Neverthel also carried in the Matern 1 also emphasized this word because it belongs 10 Introduction: Desistance 39. He recognizes in ts daring moves, the “suspicions” about Freud, the intimations of c us to think” without thinking it himself—namely the 1a psychoanalysis still too ink. And above all, what produces impotent, of the founder- ing i, the “inital and repeated smasate™ “L must o myself thar [have fled again because T Tacoue-Labarthe: “Ii, infact, to submit purely and ming. Nonetheless,+0 Introduction: Desistance thinking and in which he engages the subject in the experience of the (de)constitution. He cannot not avoid the istance, consolidates jectity in this subjecti ‘which, as several signs manifest clearly, he was with which he engages our thar seemed incumbent pen him: to a, unique, and tation marks, h . of madness, of style, of autobiography or allobiography or of an other, for he who is named Introduction: Desistance 41 ify this—Lacoue- and as far from Reik as he could possibly be. And he tells you everything you need in order to think the law of this paradox. He even has a name for the law of the paradox: itis the hyperbolagic.** ferot: Paradox and Mimesis™ fo (for example, p. 233). It pro- recive context, where the everything If “The gift of appropria: (cf. "The Caesura oftherey Introduction: Desistance “antirhythmic” (p. 234), even arrythmic. This have the dialectical cadence of a relation between rhythm exe, I interrupts a mom the prophe wo (Te Casa ofthe Specula Jacques Derrida Typography ich prepared the way forthe new idea, ted usage and superstition. Do you under- stand why it had to be madness which did this? Something in voice and froth of the epileptic, which seemed to mark the madman as the mask and speaking-trumpet of a divinity? Something that awoke in the bearer of a new ita himself reverence fr and dread of himself and no longer pangs o stantly suggested to us today that, instead of a gr the spice of madness i wisdom — something “divine,” as one whispet aloud forcefully enough. “It is through madness that the greatest good. cece,” Plato said, in concert with all ancient mankind, if continued from youth far into life settle ‘the body, the specch, and the thought? the oppeste of the ter, speaking foul against themselves and+4 Typearaply others in word and decd after the fasion of such men. Anal I take it they must not abit of likening themselves to madmen ether in words nor yeti deeds. ‘must have both of mad and bad men and women, they must do and imitave nothing of ‘Most truc, he sad. Well, then, neighing horses and lowing the sea and the thunder and everything of that kind — ‘Nay, they ave been forbidden, be said, to be mad or to liken themselves t0 goa step furthe ow off the yoke were not actually mad, can one make ones Nietasche, Daybreak, and Plato, Republie* 1g, run, the question posed here is that of “philosophical hour Roussea’s, madness —or Typearaphy a To begin to form uur question, then, provisionally, and still from a distance, we ask: What can be said about madness when it touches (om) philosophy osopher lets himself be taken fall into it—go under? Is this a osophy itself? 2 The same thing, the same concept it, evhausted, unsettled, exasperated, was these questions (from the presupposed, for example, of some asking, in short (Indeed, its hard to see he “last” Schopen- writings from the for example, with Ecce Homo? or even with just46 Typenraphy mony.” But the disproportion between the greatness of my task and the ‘gnallness of my contemporaries has founel expression in the faet that one hhas neither heard nor even se iis perhaps a mere prejudice that I ‘ner these circumstances I have a duty against which my habits, even more the pride of my instnets, revolt at bbortom—namely to say: Hen me! For I ann such ad such a person. Above al, do not mistake me for someone es ‘Tam, for example, by no means a bogey, of a moralistic monster—T the very opposite of the type of man who so far has been ‘seems to me that precisely this sus; I should revered as virtuous, Between oursel is part of my pride. Tama disciple of prefer to be even a satyr to. Among my writings my Zaerathustma stands to 1. With that [have given mankind the greatest present that has ever been made to iso far. This book, with a voice bridging centuries, is not only the high- test book there is, the book that is truly characterized by of the hole fact of man lies beneath i at a tremendous distance— the dest, born outof the innermost wealth oftruth. . .Hereno is speaking, none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and. will fo power sthom people call founders of religions. Above all, one must bear aright the tone that comes from this mouth .. . Such things reach only the most sclect. Ie is a privilege without equal ro bea listener here. Nobody is fe to have ears for Zarathustra... . Not or speak differently, he also is lilferent wv, alone. Thus I want Now I go alone, my disciples. You, to0, ge ‘One repaysa teacher badly ifone always remains nothing but a pupil [And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath? You revere me; but what if your reverence rumbles one day? Beware ose me and find yourselves; and only when you hare all: return to you! ‘What should we do with this? What are we to make of it if we refuse to t insanity in thes —of course—that not “psychagogic,” phraseology with which too great a risk—to speak in the are we to make of it if, for example, (Fascinated) fear and incompr Typasrnplry 7 We are proposing a task that is obviously immense—even sho attempt, no doubt in vain, to reduce it to a “reading” of Nietzsche and, ikclihood, inexhaustible. We will be content, therefore, t0 explore the terrain. Not in order to mark it out, to circumscribe or scribe it, to survey it, or to go around it in advance—in the now dom nant style of the proprietor (whose desire to “construct,” as we know, can hardly be dissimulated); for there is nothing “here” that can be de- limited or can serve as ground(s)—a fortiori that one could appropri- Instead, we will explore the terrain merely to go into it a bit, to clear approaches, to begin, at most, to break a path: to see what it leads to, what happens F we find where we're vhere we find ourselves, if we ‘much, without forgetting that we w a different way, (atleast) another time, ’s, and so on—it shou again, in y ing dif- become evident that this goes without saying Onto-typo-legy ‘Wanting to be what we are not, we come start from a precise point, aps since we have just had a sample of it, a certain “dou- incommens . and so on) with “Zarathustra” —the text so en- arathustra himself, as type” (if not simply story,” he (the author) makes it his dury therefore, and the construction, and the encoun- m he is bent on distinguishing from any other figure we might think of as analogous (here again, it should not be a matter of48 I been understood? designate the entire book, all its teac said “a word” that he had not already said mouth of Zarathustra. (On this strange ship, much more complex tl pear, and than it appears in Eece Homo—much more than certain e to foresee: such “youthful” sketches as Enphorion (or even Empedodles), ot the prologu Wanderer and his Shadow—on this (more ot less) fal constantly played at (simulated) a é in which Nietzsche “himself” posits this relationshi . quite a ‘double”) remark. Zarathustra, a “The Persian sage is and you your Zarath 49 neither altogether in- prob: that he had a chanceso Typography ‘The odds are that Rohde didn’t recognize t By reintroducing Pla are not expected, Rohde's remark, however “formal” it may be, thought” at its very center, oF at least what east if we draw out a sequences, enough to ch: tzsche himself of hisrelation 0 Platonism and, phy as a whole: that is, the w the Urea der Paton. Liste that in these ays remains caught ng it back again, Typaaraphy st “twisting” dlearly does stra represents—and if there is a search for an “antecedent,” it is Parmenides (and not Plato) who is °s Zaratiustra? The q leidegger here takes Zarathustra as the spokesman sus and the Lebrer of the the history of West c thinkers actually2 ‘Typography Te happens a se ‘one must push irecly (and perhaps, here, eager attempts to distinguish ‘The text has been xemes. Moreov (although enigmatic Nietzsche—a c interpret Nietzsche, as one would any great f the withdrawal strongest sen " necessity that commits metaphy'i csenting (a cenddence ‘as €0 representing (vorstllen) transcen\ : the “subjective” determination of Being, as the form, fig etzsche’s Zarathustra, Jiinger’s it is also true that such “figuration” is lity here)—and in the same way, on the contrary, Soc- as he is frce of precisely any compromise with writing and literature, isnot a figure, and consequently could not ever be confused, as such, with, for example, the (re)presentation that Plato has given him: that is, could never Being, there is no common measure between Socrates himself and the rest (including Plato's Socrates). Which does not mean that a common measure would not exist in general between the Greeks and the Moderns. On the contrary. In whatever way the exact moment is strictly homagen then, why not recognize,se Typography that alarms him? render it questionable or supe respect t level of seriousness at which the problematic the figure cing —that is called into ques- staphys oes The Plironic determination of Being as eideidn. reidegger explains this quite thoroughly to Jinger. Not (as some have rumored, imagining that such rumors could serve gument) in order to wrest Jnger, in a vaguel ; but, on the contrary sies—pre- the real.” y because he mobilizes, if we may say so, the con- cepts of work, figure (or form), and mastery (ox domination) — The Worker (Der Avbeiter), one-ofthe two books by Jiinger that Heideg= ger points to her titled Mastery and the Figure (or Domination sand Form|Die Hervschaft und die Gena) that Jiinger remains caught opposes it to the representation by a subject), retains within it seeing (a Sehen| wabaee the Grecks eal i 1 Queton of Bin Typepraply ss last word designating Being that is to say, transe fhat product the Her-vor-bringen ‘ence (Ames 1g meaning”—the Gestalt is the bestowal of meaning. This is \¢ metaphysical representation belonging to The Worker distin- gushes itself from the Platonic and even from the modern, with the For the figure, as the bestowal of meaning— order to be the bestowal of meaning—must be the figure of a hu “the preformed figural of atype of man [Mensch56 rontlt and is present again in the imprint of it jomination of the Nietzschean or post: from nothing—or from jthe subject as humanity. Especially when the Gestalt is that | worker and destined to account for, or provide a reason for, nothing less | than the appearance of technology itself. Tr is necessary that some- where Gastalt and work should have been thought together. And, here again, whatever the difference separatin Gestalt from the “figure of the worker,” itis still in Hegel that Jiinger’ typo-logy originates in the final instance. The proof of this is given to us by the title of the second book by Jiinger that Heidegger refers to here— About Pain (Uber den Schmers)—inasmuch as it is necessary to grasp it in its most profound unity with The Worker, ‘Trpograply As far as possible, we might suspect, from Rohde’s suspi the origin or mode 16, The Question of Being, pp. 69 and 7.Typearaphy so ord for the fngrten/ wid concealed sence of Being —o ele Ge n, on the figuring and any possibili : What governs here—is what dominates? In which does the derivation go? Te goes without saying tha this sa false question, ret words, would not the important that the site (for it isa place, a topos) both Plato and Nietzsche—or Plato and Jiinger—are supposed to be thinkable (situatable, localizable) might be a word, and that this word ght be a word for Being? One could say that itis hard to see the differ- that here or there the same “etymologism” (the same “ontoloj cal” overdetermination of etymology) in this word here, in the “ex! on” and circulation of this at there is decided the refusal to consider, as regards the Nie- tusche/Plato relation, a différent type of filiation—of the iat caught Rohde’s attention? How does it legel—a certai ht also exist, in Nietzsche as in60 Typagraphy ondary. The real question her stell works, how it function: ‘What happens, then, Inthe frst pla idea and Gestalt can be thot ing how the word Ge- ves. talt can be derived, and Gestalt is ith the idea, le to the sense, Let us say that figure in the Latin sense. Neither figura nor fictio. “The consequence is that Zarathustra, essentially neither Poesie nor Dichtung), even if it proceeds, as we wil what Heidegger calls the “poetifying” or “poctizin, a son,” das dichtende Wesen der Vernunft. Or, if you prefer, Zarathustra is not a figura. To ask, “Why and how within modern metaphysics does a that we “translate” Zarathustra, which is to say, in fact, st word) to an allegorical treatment. book (or almost). And what we Typearaphy 6 and “concept,” but in such a ‘scapes this sapping, te process of wear and compared with anything philesopical, itis no doubt to Schelling’s rax- tegorism that such a movement should be related. But to a negative ver- sion of such a tautegorism—a little like when we speak of “negative theology”—which for this reason, would be nothing othe1 more obvious way than in Schelling), and at the most extreme limit of hermeneutics as such, than an absolute allegorism.* here to the way in which Heidegger, in a elf would organize ine vth the essential “ar- of a few fundamental words), and, finally, the question of02 ‘Typography \st, it was a bit obvious—that these three quest gravitate around a single, yand always thrust aside (constantly proposed, moreov metaphysically marked, and there! form whatsoever. In fact, Rohde’s suspicion, as we can casily understand, finally refers precisely to such a question. And we understand ju that Heidegger could fail to attend to (0 notice it. For beyond the yward any problematic of st the way through to f Ausiqge; a problematic w! sponsi introduction to Being and Time—paragraph 7, section B—for the covering over or “homoioti theia), itis no doubt possible to track down, in the whole of the proce: dure Heidegger follows when dealing with Zarathustra, and already in the very positing of the question that governs it (“Who is Nietzsche's nd of vast movement turning around a question logget never avoids anythi off from its support,” and taken from behind, (the word) Ge-stll? en (but we are not changing. places that with respect to the “first place, Typegraply 63 can be derived together from Ge-stell, among other Heidegger never, unless I am mistaken, ex} ip, and to sce it we must link together, and in the same turn make Because in effect Mimesis is at play here. And because in Mim affct, there is something trou! Act 2, then: the same characters, Enter Mimesis.. ‘The set represents ‘The Stele Spiegel: noch nie hat man wissend beschricben, cid. (Mirrors: no one has ever knowingly described you in your essen —Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 3 Dichtung: das kann cine Atemwende bedeuten. Wer wei Dichrung den Weg—auch den Weg der Kunst—um ‘wende willen Zurick? Villeicht geingt es ihr, da das Fremde, also der [Abygrund sad clas Medusenhaupt, der Abrund und die Automaten, jain ich gelinge es the hie, zwischen nt schrumpft gerade hier das ht versagen gerade hier die Automaten—fur diesen cinmaligen kurzen Augenblick? Vielleicht wird hier, mit dem Ich—mit dem drier nd salcherarfreigeserzten befres cin Anderes frei?4 Typonraphy Medlusa’s head, the abyss ad automatons, seem an Other is freed? Expand art? No. strangeness—art lives —Paul Celan, Der Meridian never sounded, or ever general use physics, in any metaphysical lace (discourse, text Ie isa very long chain, and it would be fu back over all of it: there is stellen (1 stop someone in the street in order force him to rationem reddere”), there is bestellen (to cultivate ot ap- verstellen (to dissimulate), darstelen wih proliferating this semantic lacey ofthe lecture on technology, in Bsa conference (Da 126, Se also The Esence of Remon, espe cially ch. 3, Typography 65 texts, in the area of (the question of Darstellung; and to keep hold of the thread that we have low, in the area where In the beginning, however, everything goes rather well. And in fact, when it appears, Ge-stell comprises or carries Darstellung along with ll not only means provocation [das “Hermusfordern), Ac the same time it should preserve the suggestion of an- other Steen from which it stems, namely, that producing and ing [Her- und Dar stellen] which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences ‘This Herstelln that brings forth [or produces: hervobringend) —for cxample, the erecting [das Aufirelen] ofa statue in the temple precinet— and the provoking order [das heraufordernde Bestellen] now under consid~ ration are indeed fundamentally different, and yet they remain related in their essence, Both are ways of dis-covering [Entbergen], of aleteia. In Gestalt, that unconcealment comes to pass [sich eeignet] in confor- mity with which the work of modem technology reveals the real [das Wirklche) as standing-reserve [Bestand]." order to catch a glimpse of what such a text seeks to posit (or does is necessary to recall, at least briefly, what it it comes in. In the preceding pages it has been natter of “questioning” the essence of technology, inasmuch as, as, through a deconstruction of its etiology. Indeed, Heiceg- crossed through the entire infrastructure prehistory of the principium mationis in order to arrive at both theTypegraphy 67 In effect, through a ger tation affecting the “causal” domain (the domain of “responsil tunconcealment, this metamorpho: Heidegger here insists, this is the oldest meaning of the word. For appropriating and appropriated work of the peasant who the sense of “to take care of” and “to m: we say in French—or in Latin—*t to construct a “stable,” etc.), an -stalling, let us say"—is subst This latter is essentially a Stel- itting, a summoning, a chal- se, this time, of both provoking and extracting (ausfordern, ausfordern). this sense, “bringt aus der Verborgenheit her in ‘he Un Perhaps this mutation is to be thought of as the passage from the pure and simple stal [éal] or display [éalement|—which, after all, would render fairly vor” (“Bringing-forth brings hither out o stained it and which it perhaps no | pethaps no longer disposes), namely of a being “set upright,” of the of the place in which to stand up p24os Typearaphy it will undoubtedly stance, stature, station—as, in “Greek,” has always been, in the West, the sense of Be been written ester) means 40 technology, is therefore both provocation and ¢ least, that one must understand les the Ge- of besides even the that Ge-stell en- reason (and that gives us “reason” to tertains with the pr translate Ge-stell by a is supposed to “account for” ‘man to order [datellen] the 4: On this poin, see also Am Intraduction ro Metaphsioy ch. 2, “On the Grammar tans, Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale Univer: 69 thought [impensé Being. Gestells more appropri word for presence—with presence is always necessary to conjugat aletheia, unconceaiment interpreted as et Whence we can understand that poiesis should be translated by Her! Darstellung ot that Ge-stell should also be a word for poiess. L will re- tum to this later. But what becomes clear now, above everything else, is the way in which Heidegger, from the vantage point of Ge-stell, can consider iden and Gestalt together—the idea and what we should perhaps now trans- late as statue rather than figure. ‘There are two motifs here. In the first place, the essence of the idea is static. The idea is always posited (gesett); or at least each time he evokes it, Heidegger never fils to recall that idem designates the aci on, the “perduring,” stability itself. it in the second place, and this is the most important, the idea, as Gestalt, is the product of what Heidegger calls “the poetizing essence is not the “poetic” essence of reason~ given the way that “Nietzscheanand fictioning of the same. The schematizing essence of reas consticution of the same as the thingness of the thing, on the ‘of which the thing, whatever its mode of appearance may be cach time, “That which is fictioned in such a fiction is categories. That which properly appears to us and shows itself under its aspect: this same thingness of the thing —what in Greek would be referred to as Idea’ ths created, is originally ftoned.”” Mea category, and schema are consequently owing to the same fictioning power of reason, that is to say, to what Kant (“who for the first time had properly discerned the fictioning character of reason” called precisely the “forming force” (die bildende Kraft) of reason or transcendental imagination (Linbi kraft). And just as in the analysis of Gestalt, wha purely and simply transcendence itself. That is expect) the analagical as such, than that whose matrical form Platonic metaphysics in fact produced: involved here is What reason perceives, finding it. In Platonic terms, being is that which is present Nietzsche, vo. 1, pp. stl (German edition) 10. Tid, pst. | and the mutation of onto: stalling That is to say, as and of Gestalt (but also, thot stabilization corresponds to logy sustains, stays o shores up (tanconni Metaphysics —and delimits this metaphysics as would nearly pass today for a “novelty” general, (Metaphysical) thought, theory, “thought by values,” prog stake here is always the same th, however, somed ou prefer, a certain “realization” of Ge-stell sil absent in Pat (ths is why we can- not properly speak of a Platonic Gi than the [madera] interpretation of the Zarathustra descending from-his mountain-and the soul descending from the dyperouramias topes are, at bottom, the same thing: the same transcendence (or, alre modem version, reseendence). In both cases, fctioning sigitis7 Typearmphy sranscendental installation, the production (Herstelung) and erection (Aubtellung) Same), without which nothing can with Darstellung, exposit of the “Phaedrus” contains, according to He lyme 01 cated in the very thing of tion” (nam eager, its own mise-en- it isthe “interpreta- is does the “gestaltist” Jung of this “song,” “poem,” “dithyramb,” tioning docs not lead into its own abyss (ne s'abyme pas}. y cas nowhere in Heidegger is there ever the least question of such a thing, Nevertheless, something is lost, paradoxic: this very lack of from the structure of the abyss “itself.” inasmu there (though if not by “figure,” imperceptibly) is fi whereby the fictioning essence of reason or of thought Ie is surpr is Darstellung that 2 ‘means provocation. At the same time it preserve the suggestion of another Stellen from whietritstems, namely, ellen which, in the sense of poiess_ lets what pres- }o_unconeealment. This Herstellen that brings the erecting of a statue in the temple precinct. . a general interpretation of art as understood by Plato (and consequently by Nietzsche). We find, there- ime coupled with, or followed © are two texts on the program: the Republic and the Phae- is obviously the commentary on the Republic that we must