JFernando Reading Blindly PDF

Literature, Otherness,
and the Possibility

of an Ethical Reading
JEREMY FERNANDO
Raading
Blindly
Literature, Otherness,
and the Possibility
of an Ethical Reading
JEREMY FERNANIO
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PRESS
AMHERST, NEW YORK
Copyright 2009 Jeremy Fernando

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Cover concept by Michelle Andrea Wan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fernando, Jeremy.
Reading blindly: literature, otherness, and the possibility of an ethi
cal reading / Jeremy Fernando.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60497-633-5 (alk. paper)
I. Reader response criticism. 2. Hermeneutics. 3. Literature- Explication.
4. Literature-Philosophy. I. Title.
PN98.R38F47 2009
801'.95-dc22
2009028207
For Brendan Quigley, who taught me how to write

(even as I remain completely blind to it);
Neil Murphy, who unveiled my blindness to reading,
in reading, and when reading;
and Werner Hamacher, who once told me to
"trust no one-not even me-and just read for yourself"
Thankyou for being my teachers, my mentors,
and most of all, my dear friends
If the serpents had written History they would have

proudly related how their ancestor had belonged to woman.
And it was during love dispute between woman and her
companion, a dispute god had every interest in no one ever
knowing he had been the adulterous cause, as for any
oriental god, that the jealous companion violently seized
her serpent. But serpents are a people with no writing and
it is god who has the word.
-Helene Cixous, La
Who could well say: "I fear we cannot rid ourselves of God,
because we still believe in grammar " A believer, still
...
a friend of men!
But if you still believe in grammar, it is because the idea
of being able to rid yourself of god fills you with terror. Fear
of no-life , fear of life.
-Helene Cixous, La
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Stumbling Around in the Dark
Introduction: On Reading: A Pact With the Devil
xi
Part I:
Blindness
15
Chapter 1: Blindness, or What Is This

No-Thing We See?
19
The Book as a (Death) Sentence
25
Blind Ethics , or Close Your Eyes

(to) See the Third
Literary Theory and the Erasure of Texts
31
41
Chapter 2: The Contr act: Venus in Furs,

or How to Read the Other
A Question of Violence; A Statement of Terror
51
52
A Question of Reading , or "Art Lies

in the Gap Between the Painting
and the Viewer"
56
"What Is To Be Done?" or How to Read

While Maintaining Radical Otherness
62
The Reader Before the Law,

or What Is My Right of Inspection
67
READING BLINDLY
Part II:
Reading(s)
83
Chapter 3: Rereading Miller:
J Stands Before the Law
85
Forever Undecided, or "Who Is the Who

That Is Reading?"
89
Reading and Testing: Reading as Testing
92
Putting J Back Before the Law
95
Chapter 4: Reading
Roland Bartlres,
Rereading Roland Bartlres
(Writing Roland Bartlres)
101
Reading (Writing): How, What, and a Secret
III
Do This in Memory of Me
113
Chapter 5: Only Fiction Is Stranger

Than Fiction
Part Ill:
Tlte Reader
Chapter 6: Reading. Or Just Gaming.
Spinning, Mixing, Scratching, Cutting, Stabs...
121
129
133
139
Bibliography
155
Index
161
About the Author
167
STUMBLING AROUND
IN THE DARK
I was on that journey and nearly at Damascus when about

midday a bright light from heaven suddenly shone round
me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying, "Saul,
Saul, why are you persecuting me?" I answered: Who are
you, Lord? and he said to me, "I am Jesus the Nazarene,
and you are persecuting me." The people with me saw
the light but did not hear his voice as he spoke to me. I
said: What am I to do Lord? The Lord answered, "Stand
up and go into Damascus, and there you will be told what
you have been appointed to do." The light had been so
dazzling that I was blind and my companions had to take
me by the hand; and so I came to Damascus.'
After the crucifixion, this is arguably the most important scene
in Christianity. In fact, one can argue that in the context of
xii
READING BLINDLY
Christianity as a concept, this scene is more important than the

death of Jesus. For it is only with Paul that the term Christian
comes into being:2 the birth of Jesus itself would have fulfilled
the condition of his coming; in this sense, his death is superflu
ous.3 The movement from a title ("Jesus the Christ" or "Jesus
the Savior") to a name ("Jesus Christ," where "Jesus" and "Sav
ior" become one and the same) required not so much his death,
but rather a betrayal, much the same way as the movement from
name ("Julius Caesar") to a title ("Caesar") also required one. In
this sense, the two key figures in the formation of Christianity are
Judas and Paul; Jesus being the medium through and in which
it was created. Judas' betrayal moved the name into a singular;
Paul's writings transformed the singular into the universal.
But for Saul to be created, Saul had to first move through a period
of blindness, and it is this that we must look at for the moment.
The first question that arises from the above passage from the
Acts of the Apostles is, if "the people with me saw the light,"
then why did they not go blind, as Saul did? After all, he claims
that "the light had been so dazzling that I was blind." Either he
had been seeing a "light from heaven" that was different from
the light his companions saw, or he was lying (Saul didn't have
the best of reputations), or he was mistaken about the cause of
his blindness. For if it was not the first two possibilities, then
would the case be that Saul's blindness was not caused by the
light, but rather by the "voice [that] spoke to me" that his com
panions "did not hear"?4 In this sense, does Saul need to be blind
to the Word in order that he can truly discover what the Word is?
In order for Saul to fulfill his role of being the "chosen [one] to
know [God's] will, to see the Just One and hear his own voice
speaking,"5 he would first have to be blind to all that was being
written (and perhaps even said) about God. This was the only
xiii
way in which he could transubstantiate himself from a Pharisee

into the first Christian: the movement from Saul to Paul required
a momentary blindness.
There is already a hint of the manner in which the blind
ness would affect Saul earlier in the passage, when he answers
a question ("Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?") with
another question ("Who are you Lord?"). It is not so much that
he did not hear the question but that he was able to discern what
the "voice" was really asking: the "voice" was not looking for a
reason for Saul's persecution (after all, as God, wouldn't (S)he
already know why?) but for an acknowledgment that (S)he was
God. It was this that Saul recognized in his response; even while
he was asking who the voice that was speaking was, he had
already acknowledged it as "Lord." It was through his blindness
that Saul could truly see the "will" of "the Just One."
What draws both Judas and Saul together is the motivation
in their actions. One can never really ask what their personal
intention is-that is never knowable-but one can posit (or at
least hypothesize) the traces that can be found in their actions.
Both Judas and Saul betray their existing situations, the result
of which is a creation of something new: without their betray
als, the names "Jesus Christ" and "Christian" would not exist.
But it is not that their betrayals are in opposition to their situa
tions. What Judas and Saul have done is to be blind to the overt
reading of what their situations demand (obey Jesus unques
tioningly and be a good Pharisee, respectively) to listen to the
secret message that no one else wanted, or perhaps was able, to
see, to hear ("Jesus had to die in order to fulfill the prophecy"
and "the coming of God was precisely the coming of the Chris
tian," respectively). When Jesus asks Judas, "Are you betraying
the Son of Man with a kiss?"6 it wasn't a question ing of the
xiv
READING BLINDLY
appropriateness of the gesture: after all, one cannot betray in the

absence of love.7 In order for Judas to act in fidelity to the work
and life of Jesus, he had to betray him-he had to be blind to the
overt teachings, all the laws, and also all the other disciples. In
the same way, Saul had to betray the laws of the Sanhedrin, the
Jewish laws, and his training and life as a Pharisee in fidelity to
this "voice" that no one else could hear.
A similarity can be found in the case of Bq..ltus and Julius Cae
sar: the betrayal and murder of Caesar had to happen in order to

preserve the state; it was Brutus' love for what Caesar worked
and stood for that resulted in his having to kill Caesar to pre
vent him from destroying his own creation. In this sense, both
Judas and Brutus betrayed the ones they loved in fidelity to what
both Jesus and Caesar, respectively, stood for: Brutus and Judas
betrayed Caesar and Jesus for the persons they were becoming,
for becoming persons who were other to what they had stood
for. Since both betrayals were a response to what the other now
stood for, they were a response in fidelity to the other-perhaps
an imagined other, a perfected other, a deified other, even, but
nonetheless an other-which suggests that the acts were initiated
by Jesus and Caesar themselves, almost as if Judas and Brutus
were called by Jesus and Caesar to betray the Jesus and Caesar
they had become. In Jesus' case, this seems obvious enough:
someone had to betray the Son of Man in order that he could be
crucified and resurrected. His transfiguration from man to deity
required the betrayal; Judas' role was to respond to this call. One
could argue that Judas' betrayal of Jesus had to occur; other
wise, Jesus would have become God on earth (after all, he was
building a following). In order to prevent that from happening
(which would have been Jesus' usurpation of God the father),
Judas had to respond to Jesus by betraying him, murdering him.s
In Brutus' case, one can argue that his murder of Caesar was
xv
a response to Caesar's name itself, as Avital Ronell elegantly

argues in The Test Drive:
The very thing meant to do away with Caesar reasserts
his name. If Brutus was able to cut Caesar down, his act
could not amount to a cut initiated by him, one might say,
because the cut is Caesar in his defiant totality; from his
birth Caesar bears the naming name of the cut. The act of
independence was prescribed by the name of the other.9
Brutus' role was precisely to bring the caesura to its full poten
tial. If one considers Paul's role from this angle (the bringing to
the fullness of potentiality the name of Jesus Christ), then per
haps Saul's betrayal of the Pharisees was only the first moment:
in order to complete the movement from Jesus the man to Jesus
the universal God (which Judas begins), Paul had to betray
Jesus the deity himself. Since only Paul had heard the "voice,"
in effect he is now not only Pythia but the Oracle itself (at least
in the case of Pythia, there were priests that were translating her
words, there were others privy to understanding, interpreting the
divine words; in Paul's case, he was both receiver and transla
tor, legislator and executioner).10 In order to catholicize Jesus,
Paul had to become God himself: in order to create the universal
Jesus, what Paul had to first do was totalize the Word, to cement
a particular version of the Word, to write out all other versions.
Since Paul is the only one who heard the "voice," whatever he
claimed is true, or, more precisely, all of Paul's statements are
truth-claims, constative statements: by staking a claim to the
"voice" (which no one can dispute, no one else having heard the
"voice"), Paul is, in effect, the "voice." W hether Paul's action
was driven by a self-centred motive, a selfish motive (to become
an apostle, a specially chosen one, to become the undisputed
leader of the Christians, etc.), or whether it was a response to a
xvi
READING BLINDLY
call of the divine, a response to the "voice" of God, a response to

the other, will never be known: we will always remain blind to
Paul's intent. All that we can discern is that this betrayal of God
by becoming the voice of God himself was necessary in order to
universalize the Christian. Hence, in our reading of Paul, Paul
himself will always remain blind-opaque, invisible-to us. All
that we can ever know is about Paul: we will never know the
character of Paul, but instead, all we know is th,e character Paul.
One might also consider the fact that Paul did not author the
Acts of the Apostles; the only potential author ever suggested

has been Luke," as he is considered a close companion of Paul
(being from Antioch, there is a chance that he might even have
been present at the first use of the term
the Saul-and later Paul-of the Acts
Christian). In this sense,

of the Apostles is a char
acter in the narrative of the author. Interestingly, nowhere in

his own writings does Paul mention the fact of his blindness.
In fact, the closest he comes to doing so is when he states that
after being chosen by God, he "went off to Arabia ... [for] three
years ... and later straight from there back to Damascus";12 in this
case, there is yet another blindness, a blind spot of three years
about which nothing is known. Could it be that Paul had to sup
press the fact that his "vision" was one of blindness, that his
vision of God was precisely one of nothing? Instead of being
enlightened, all he had was momentary darkness.
Assuming that the author of the Acts ofthe Apostles is consis
tent, why is there, then, an inconsistency between the narratives
in Acts 9:3-9 and the passage which we have been reading? For
Acts 9:7 states that "the men traveling with Saul stood there
speechless for though they heard the voice they could see no
one," which contradicts Acts 22:9, which states, "the people
with me saw the light but did not hear his voice as he spoke to
me." This reopens the possibility of Saul's non-truth-telling, but
xvii
a more interesting consideration is why such an obvious incon

sistency was left in place. Is it simply an indirect way of sug
gesting that there are different "voices" that can be heard, or is
this another blind spot in the text? If we read both Acts 9 and
Acts 22 as being true, then the reason for Saul's blindness is
ultimately unknown; Saul and all his companions see the light
and hear the "voice," but only Saul is blinded as a result. In this
sense, even the reason for his blindness is now unknown to us.
And it is in this situation of absolute blindness-Saul was
blind, whilst blind to the cause of his own blindness, as we are
too-that the Christian is born. It is in this blindness that the
third-the Christian-that ruptures the binary opposition of
Jew-Gentile is born. It is in this blindness that a new term (the
Christian) was born with in the existing system of thinking (Juda

ism); in Alain Badiou's terms, this would be an instance of a true
event, where there is a new potentiality that opens up within an
existing conception, an existing space, an existing world. For it
is not as if with the coming of the Christian that Judaism was
overthrown: the fact that they are similar for the most part sug
gests that Christianity is a new conception of Judaism, one in
which the Jew-Gentile opposition no longer is crucial. The key
moment would be the gesture of imagination-where something
is done without any a priori knowledge of the consequences.
After all, Saul had no idea that his moment of blindness, of not
seeing, of not-knowing-his illegitimate leap of faith-would
lead to the birth of a new term, a new possibility. Only in this
way might something new occur.J3
xviii
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ENDNOTES
I. Acts 22:6-11. All references to the Bible are taken from the Jeru
salem Bible.
2. The first known use of the term Christian can be found in Acts 11:26"It was at Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians."
3. It is Islam that recognizes the pointlessness of the death on the

cross (and even the resurrection): Isa goes straight to heaven (his
movement from human to divine did not require death). The dif
ference between Islam and Christianity is precisely the movement
of his name: in Islam, Isa does not move from a singular into a
universal, but from an individual name to a universal title.
4. There have also been interpretations that Saul was in the centre of
the light-it "shone around" him (Acts 22:6). Even if this were so,
it does not change the fact that the cause of his blindness was not
so much the light but something other than that.
5. Acts 22:14-15.
6. Luke 22:48-49.
7. If there was no love, then it would merely be an act of complic
ity to murder. It is only with love that it is a betrayal, for in every
betrayal, there is the break of a previous commonality, singular
plurality (where two singular persons were linked by a common
idea, goal, belief). In this sense, the betrayal is always a double
betrayal, of the other person and also of the idea, and in this dou
ble betrayal, love itself is shattered.
8. In a way, this was the logic that was explored in Jesus Christ Super
star (music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice): in
the musical, it was Judas who realized that Jesus was becoming too
much of a superstar, and hence had to betray him in order to save
Jerusalem (which was Jesus' intention in the first place).
9. Avital Ronell, The Test Drive (Chicago: University of Illinois

Press, 2005), 310. An excellent meditation on loyalty, betrayal,
and love in Brutus and Cordelia from Julius C aesar and King
Lear, respectively, can be found in The Test Drive, 307-310.
xix
10. Paul is constantly referring to himself as one who is "called to

be an apostle, and specially chosen to preach the Good News"
(Rom.: 1-2), ignoring the fact that he wasn't actually one of the
twelve "appointed by God [ no less] to be an apostle" (I Corinthi
ans: I); "an apostle who does not owe his authority to men . .. but
who has been appointed by Jesus Christ and by God the Father
who raised Jesus from the dead" (Gal.: I). In other words, Paul
laid claim to the appointment of interpreter of the Word of God:
since he was the one who heard the "voice," one can construe that
he has appointed himself as the interpreter of the Word.
II. "The only identification of the author ever suggested by the
church writers is St Luke, and no critics ancient or modem have
ever seriously suggested anyone else. This identification was
already known to the churches about the year 175 AD as shown
by the Roman canon known as the Muratorian Fragment.. .and
is supported by internal evidence: the author must have been a
Christian of the apostolic age, either a thoroughly hellenised Jew
or, more probably, a well educated Greek with some knowledge
of medicine and extremely well acquainted with the LXX and
Jewish things in general. Lastly, and more significantly, he had
accompanied Paul on his journeys judging from his use of the first
person plural in Part 2 of the Acts, and of all Paul's companions
none is more strongly indicated than Luke." Introduction to The
Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament, 195.
12. Gal. 1:15-19.
13. This will be explored in greater detail in the chapter "Blind Ethics,
or Close Your Eyes (to) See the Third." Badiou discusses the "true
event," amongst other places, in Being and Event (2006).
Raading
Blindly
INTRODUCTION
ON READING
A PACT WITH THE DEVIL
How does one read properly, that is, ethically?

In an examination of this question, a questioning of the ques
tion, there is an obvious link between the terms how and ethi
cally; both involve choice, and choosing. Whenever a "how" is
invoked, the subject has to choose between one or more options.
However, for a situation to involve ethics, there must be a choice
made in which the singularity making the choice is responsible
to and for all the other(s) in that situation: it is this singularity,
this particularity, which makes the choice a proper one. There is a
crucial difference between the choice in the situation of a "how"
and the choice in an "ethical situation." The choice in "how"
involves alternatives which are already laid out before us: hence,
the decision made is calculated, calculable, part of a system. In a
true ethical situation, the choice is always made in a moment of
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blindness: the outcome (and even the situation leading up to it) is

unknowable.'
So is "how to read properly, ethically," and then, more pre
cisely, "how to read as if each reading is a singular situation,"
an impossible question? Or, if not an impossible question-after
all, we did ask it-then perhaps a question that can only remain
a question, one that cannot be closed off, be completed, and,
by extension, be theorized (in the ense of forming a complete
theory about it)?
Ethical reading is a conception of reading as a space of (and
for) negotiation. The moment of reading is the moment when
the "how" and "ethics" collide; one can never read in a vacuum
(both the text and the reader have their respective historicities),
but in order to read, the reader must be free to respond fully to
the text. In this way, we face two contradictory demands: one
must read as if for the first time, that is, without any precon
ceived notions of reading or of the text, but at the same time, it
is impossible to read without any prior knowledge of reading
and this makes the situation aporetic. After all, we are born into
reading; reading precedes us, and much of reading relies on con
ventions. But it is precisely in this space that the negotiation and
choosing take place. Each decision, and each choice, is tempo
ral, and each instance of reading is a new one-no two read
ings will be the same. It is within this space, this temporal-and
singular-space, that reading can occur as a singularity, and in
which a potentially new reading can occur.
If each reading is temporal and hence potentially new, it opens
up this question: Is a virginal reading possible? Can one read as
if reading for the first time?2 This brings into question the sta
tus of memory and forgetting with respect to reading. Clearly,
memory is part of the process of reading: one must remember
the rules of language, and one must also remember what one
On Reading
has read prior to reading what is in front of one. One must also
always keep in mind what is ahead of one. This is especially
true when one is reading to unearth the movement of thought in
a text, when one is attempting to unveil the different registers
in the text: one must speculate what is not-yet-read, one must
remember the future, for otherwise, one cannot project how
what one is currently reading fits in with respect to the entire
text.3 However, in order to open these registers, to allow these
different readings to potentially surface, one must also forget
what one has read, what one is reading; otherwise, one is merely
reiterating what one already knows. At every point of reading
that responds to the potentiality of the text, there must be a for
getting that occurs prior to the reading: each time one reads, no
reading takes place if one does not forget.
It is precisely the double function of forgetting and memory
that results in language being both general and specific simulta
neously (and the two never being able to be reconciled). It is only
because forgetting is the very basis of language4 that there is the
possibility that at each reading, a unique reading, a new reading
(a reading as if reading had never before occurred) might occur.
It is forgetting that allows for the single instance of a new read
ing, but at the same time, it is memory (of language and, more
precisely, grammar and its rules) that allows for reading to take
place at all. Hence, every act of reading is when memory and
forgetting collide: every act of reading is aporetic, as one has to
both remember and forget at the same time. Each time reading
occurs, one is not just reading the text for the first time, but also
reading for the first time.
It is forgetting that ensures that each reading is potentially a
virginal reading: not a first reading in the sense of an original
reading, but a first reading in the sense of there never being a
second reading, there never being a repeated reading. After all,
READING BLINDLY
is not the hymen another shield, another veil, another blind, one
that only appears to be broken, split, ruptured, only to reveal that
one is within folds, layers, all of which reveal and unveil and
hide at the same time? Like the splitting of the veil in the temple,
all that is revealed is that the secret of God remains, an unknown,
an unknowable, which can only be sometimes glimpsed.
Of course, the problem with forgetting is that it cannot be willed,
determined, decided; it happens to one. In oter words, one cannot
count on forgetting, call on forgetting; not only does it happen to
one, one might not even know, ever know, that forgetting has taken
place. And once it has, there is no object to forgetting: the moment
one can designate an object that is forgotten, one is back in the
structure of memory. In other words, there is no referentiality to
forgetting. Hence, one can never actually know of forgetting; it is
always beyond the realm of knowledge. And since reading that is
not merely a preconditioned hermeneutical decoding is premised
on the possibility of forgetting, this suggests that we can never
quite know when, or even whether, reading itself occurs.
This suggests that reading can no longer be constituted in
the classical tradition of hermeneutics, as an act of deciphering
meaning according to a determined set of rules, laws: this would
be reading as an act where the reader comes into a convergence,
at best, with the text. In fact, reading can no longer be under
stood as an act, since an act by necessity is governed by the
rules of reading. Reading must be thought of as the event of an
encounter with an other-an other who is not the other as identi
fied by the reader, but rather an other that remains beyond the
cognition of the self. Hence, reading is a prerelational relational
ity, an encounter with the other without any claims to knowing
who or what this other is in the first place; an unconditional rela
tion, and a relation to no fixed object of relation. As such, it is
the ethical moment par excellence.s
On Reading
Since reading is an event of ethicity, it interdicts any precon

ditioned detennination of the encounter. As such, it cannot be
conceived as a phenomenal event. This is due to the fact that
a phenomenal event is what appears to the senses-a theory
of appearances-and is determined by its correspondence to
an existing conception; the event is subsumed under the self's
"knowledge." What the reader encounters may only be encoun
tered before any phenomenon--or at least, the point of encoun
tering is always already beyond the reader's knowing. Hence,
reading occurs as a nonphenomenal event, or, more precisely,
as the event that undoes any possible theory of phenomenal
ity. The scene of Saul's blinding demonstrates this, as it is not
a blinding by a phenomenon but rather by the very source of
phenomenality itself, which remains invisible, undecipherable,
and ultimately unknowable, irreducible to any concept of under
standing or reason. Hence, it is the blinding not only of the sub
ject of cognition-Saul-but also of the object of cognition; it is
the event of a double blinding, an encounter that is completely
beyond cognition, that is unknowable, that is in exception of
everything that is known. As such, at every encounter, each
reading is an event of full potentiality, where nothing can be
known except the fact that it is the event of an encounter.
It is this potentiality that Saul saw when he was blind; it is this
potentiality that was embodied in the new name of Paul. How
ever, in order for the movement from Saul to Paul-in order for
Saul to become Paul-there is a necessary gap, a space, a blind
spot (whether it is three days or three years is irrelevant) in the
narrative; it is this gap, this unknown, that opens up the space for
the becoming, for the Christian. It is not possible to say what this
site of negotiation, this third that lies between the Pharisee Saul
and Paul, is. The gesture of imagination, this leap that is required
to move from Saul to Paul-a transubstantiated Saul, exactly the
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same and slightly different at the same time-is not one that can
be defined; it can only be described, narrated (and only after the
event). After all, the first time we are made aware of his new
name is in Acts 13:9-"Then Saul, whose other name is Paul." It
is not as if Saul had suddenly shed his old self and is now a new
being: Paul is his other within his old self, Paul is the becoming
Christian of Saul. In other words, Paul is the gap, the space within
Saul himself, the site of becoming that is th Christian. All that
can be said is, perhaps, what this site of negotiation is not; in this
sense, at best, all that can be said is proscriptive. This is precisely
because the space of imagination is not an object, but rather, the
space itself is what is being imagined: it is the imagination of
the possibility of the third, the third that is always in a state of
becoming, that allows this transubstantiation to take place.
This space of imagination, this imagination of a space, is
what allows for reading to take place. After all, reading is never
done, it is constantly becoming.6
It was Saul's positing of the possibility of a space between
the Jew and the non-Jew that gives rise to the term Christian. It
was Saul's blindness to the fact that one cannot know the will of
God-he had to act according to the "voice" that he heard, that
only he had heard, and act according to this event, this singularity
that cannot be explained-that allowed for the Christian. In order
to act, Saul had to read the "voice" in blindness-posit a reading
that is ultimately illegitimate and unverifiable. Hence, the ques
tion that continues to haunt the work of Paul, the question that
cannot be answered, will always be, what did the voice say?
There is an echo of this in the eternal question that haunts the
Bible itself: "Did God really say you were not to eat from any of
the trees in the garden?"? This is the question that is unanswered,
and never answerable: after all, no one will know what God said
to the woman. Even if we accept the validity of her words, "But
On Reading
of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, 'You must not eat
it, nor touch it, under pain of death"'8-and there is no reason to
do otherwise-the question of whether this was really what God
said remains. After all, a prohibition almost always gives rise to
a temptation to defY. In this sense, one can question whether it is
the serpent that tempted, or whether it was really God who set the
scene in the first place. In fact, the serpent is telling the truth when
it utters, "No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day
you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods know
ing good and evil,'''' which is precisely what happened. 10 After eat
ing the fruit, "the eyes of both of them were opened,"" the result
of which is that Yahweh God acknowledges that "man has become
like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil."'2 In order
for woman and man to become like God(s), they had to first tum a
blind eye to Yahweh's order to not eat from that tree.
One might also consider the exchange that is needed in order
to obtain the knowledge of good and evil. Yahweh God's admo
nition to man is, "You may eat indeed of all the trees in the gar
den. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most
surely die."'3 In this sense, one can take it that both woman
and man consume the fruit in the full knowledge that they are
sacrificing their lives in exchange for the "knowledge of good
and evil": it is their gift of death that was required in order for
them to become "like one of
US."14
More than just the fact that
they had to ignore Yahweh God's command, in order to become

like the God(s), they had to listen to the question and decide for
themselves: to gain the knowledge of good and evil, they first
had to choose. This is a choice that is made in blindness, for
they knew not what they were choosing: after all, one can hardly
claim that they, before knowing what good and evil were, were
making a cognitive choice about good and evil.'s
READING BLINDLY
It is this pact with the serpent-the pact that God and the ser
pent have in secret-that sets the scene for the woman to know of
the fruit: after all, if God created everything and has full knowl
edge of everything that is to happen, then both the serpent and the
question are also of Yahweh's creation.16l t is this secret pact (even
though the serpent is a creation of Yahweh, Yahweh still needs
its complicity in this matter: full knowledge does not necessarily
equate to full control) that opens the possibility o!he woman eat
ing the fruit in the first place. One must not forget that it is she who
first ate of the tree; it is she who made the blind choice by positing
the possibility that perhaps God didn't really mean not to eat from
the tree. It is this pact that maintains the possibility of questioning
and, more importantly, the possibility that humankind can choose
for itself, can have access to the "knowledge of good and evil." It
is also the question that ensures that we can continue reading-as
knowledge can never totalize-that reading itself can continue.
What this suggests is that a prescriptive answer to the ques
tions (how to read properly, that is, ethically; did (s)he really say
that?) is impossible, for every statement would only hold true in
a particular moment, a particular situation, a singular moment.
After all, at her moment of choosing to eat of the tree, all the
woman could do is to posit whether God really said that or not;
there is no certainly, only a possibility or a momentary potential
ity for it to be true. It is these moments, these singular particu
larities, that we will listen for (we cannot always see them, for
they are hidden somewhere in the text, within the text, with the
text). All we can hope to do is to listen out for these moments,
these details, for as Jean Baudrillard reminds us, there is no finer
parallel universe than that of the detail or the fragment.
Freed from the whole and its transcendent ventriloquism,
the detail inevitably becomes mysterious.
On Reading
Every particle wrested from the natural world is in itself an

immediate subversion of the real and its wholeness.
Like the fragment, it only has to be elliptical.
It only has to be an exception.
Every singular image can be reckoned exceptional.
And it puts an end to all the others.17
It is only in blindness that we can see exceptions; it is only in
exceptions that we can see when we are blind. Only through think
ing in terms of the peculiar, the particular, the absurd, even, can we
perhaps puncture the flattened book, rescue the text, the unread,
the unreadable, such that the book can never be read, such that
reading can continue.ls Perhaps to do so, we must first attempt
to wrest the real from the reality principle
To wrest the image from the representation principle.
To rediscover the image as point of convergence between
the light from the object and the light from the gaze.19
The fragment is precisely where we can find reading as the event
of an encounter. For it is only when each encounter is taken as
an exception (and, by extension, that exception is the norm) that
reading as an ethical event can be begun to be thought. If each
encounter with the text is an encounter with a fragment, then no
unity can be established; by extension, there cannot be an over
arching whole which can establish itself as a rule and hence pre
condition the event of reading. Hence, each event of reading is a
reading of a fragment, each reading is itself a fragment, each event
of reading is also an event where reading itself is constituted.
There is much to learn from the proverb, "The devil is in the
details": it is the small things, the fragment, the particular, that
prevents any totalizing logic from taking place, from unifying
itself, from solidifying itself. Perhaps in this light, or darkness,
READING BLINDLY
10
there must be an attention to, a reading of, the small, the unno
ticed, the little, and a blindness to a large, the whole. In this
way, there is a potential for the mysterious and the wonderful
to appear, and perhaps we can catch a glimpse of the phantoms
that haunt the text. After all, one can only see ghosts with the
third eye.
But first, perhaps we must begin to think of what this blindness
that we are thinking of is in the first place. Ad, perhaps more
accurately, what this blindness that we are thinking of is not. Is
it when we do not see that we are blind, or is it that we are blind
when we do not see: is blindness what we do not see, or does
blindness shape what we see in the first place? In order to exam
ine the question, how does one read properly, that is, ethically?
one is faced with the issue of blindness and what it is one does
not see, cannot see. Hence, we have to first examine blindness
itself and its relation to reading. Since there is a link between see
ing and knowledge (captured perfectly in the phrase "Seeing is
believing"), we have to reflect on the relationship between what
we can and cannot see, and, more specifically, if what we cannot
see is always already part of what we see. This would open the
consideration of the possibility of knowing and the very limits of
knowledge itself, after which we will read texts that attempt to
think reading itself, that attempt to think the possibility of read
ing. For if we only attempt to speak of-write about-reading
without reading anything, we might then just be speak-writing
of everything but reading. By attempting to read, perhaps we can
begin to meditate on what the text is as such, what the object that
we are reading is (if it even is an object), and how we can start
to approach it. And since reading is the relationship between the
reader and the text, we must then turn our attention to how read
ing affects the reader; the effects of the text, and reading, on the
body, in the body, of the reader. In this way, we might be able
On Reading
11
to begin thinking of how both the reader and the text read each
other, write onto each other, into each other.
However, we must begin at the beginning, by taking a detour
through blindness-and what blindness entails in the first place.
After all, if we refuse to acknowledge what we cannot see, refuse
to see that we cannot always see, we might remain stumbling
around in the dark.
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12
ENDNOTES
I. Of course, to deny that an ethical situation is also historical-it
has its ghosts that continue to haunt it-would be silly. However,

at the moment of decision, of choosing, one has little choice but
to be blind to both the historicities (leading to the choice) and the
potentialities (of the choice), and acknowledge the double blind
ness of choosing.
2. Is this even a question for the introduction, one that must be asked
from the very beginning, or must it be left to the very end-an

invitation to begin again, to start again, to read again-a question
that can only be uttered when the reading is over, when the text is
finished, a question that can only be known at the very end? Can
you really ask a question about beginnings, about origins, without
an idea of the end in mind? Or, another way to put the question:
is there a possibility of a beginning without the notion of an end?
In this sense, the question of origins is not just an archeological
project but always a teleological one as well.
3. Reading in this form is always a reading of the specific with rela
tion to the general-reading the particular text in relation to the

universal book. The assumption here, of course, is that there is a
totality which is the book to be referenced against, to be compared
with, to be kept in mind. This suggests, then, that reading can only
occur the second time one looks at a text, or, even more radically,
that each reading is always a second reading.
4. The only time one has to utter something is in its absence: if the
object that was referred to were present, then there would be no

necessity to utter the signifier. The very recollection of the signi
fied to one's mind is premised on the fact that it was momentarily
forgotten; otherwise, there would not be a remembering that was
taking place. If the signified were already in one's mind, it would
be purely knowledge. Hence, the very condition of language
itself-the fact that one has to refer to something, and communi
cate this to someone else by language-is, precisely, forgetting: if
one never forgot, there would be no need for language at all.
On Reading
13
An excellent instance of the thinking of the status of memory

and forgetting can be found, among other places,in the writings of
Werner Hamacher, including "Hermeneutic Ellipses: Writing the
Hermeneutic Circle in Schleiermacher" in Premises: Essays on
Philosophy and Literature from Kant to Celan, trans. Peter Fenves
(Stanford, CA: Meridian, 1999),44-80.
5. l owe much of this analysis to a conversation with Werner
Hamacher.
6. It is perfectly apt that the term read both signifies the past and the
present tense of the same process. In reading, there is the collision
of both the past and the present, memory and forgetting; perhaps
reading is always a future possibility, a potentiality.
7. Gen.3:1 (italics added).
8. Gen. 3:3. The only recorded words are what God said to man; we
only hear of what God said to the woman from her representation
and, perhaps, interpretation--of the admonition not to eat from the
tree.
9. Gen.3:4-5.
10. It was not the eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge that
caused man and woman to lose eternal life, it was the fact that
after eating from the tree, they were banished from the garden
and so were unable to eat from the tree of life: "See, the man has
become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He
must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the
tree of life also, and eat some and live for ever" (Gen. 3:22).
II. Gen. 3:7.
12. Gen.3:22.
13. Gen.2:16-17.
14. Gen. 3:22.
15. It is this choosing that is blind to both the law and what it
chooses-this choice that was made in double blindness-that we
will examine, that we will attempt to see. And in trying to think
the question,how to read properly, that is,ethically? we will allow
the other question, did (s)he really say that? to haunt us, to ques
tion us, to question the question itself.
16. In effect, the serpent is the autoimmunity of Yahweh in order to
ensure that Yahweh's law would not be fully obeyed, would not
C HAPTER 1
BLINDNESS,
OR
WHAT IS THIS
No-THING WE SEE?
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception

due to physiological or psychological factors ...Total
blindness is the complete lack of form and light percep
tion and is clinically recorded as "NLP," an abbreviation
for "no light perception."1
When something is written onto a page, there is an inscription
made and the page is marked, there is a mark left behind. The
only way which we can read that mark is when light reflects
from it and forms an image that goes through the pupil and is
focused on the retina. Sensory cells from the retina relate the
image via neurons onto the visual cortex, which is the part of the
14
READING BLINDLY
be a totalizing law: the serpent's question opened the possibility
that the woman consumed the fruit, and as a result, humankind
became "one of us" and received the knowledge of the God(s)
themselves.
17. Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact,

trans. Chris Turner (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005), 103.
18. To rediscover reading as the point of emergence-negotiation,

space-between the text and the reader. To think the punctum
a point, stop, break, puncture, prick-of the flattened page, the
punctum that lets the text be a text, that allows reading to continue.
It is Roland Barthes who never lets us forget that it is punctuation
that allows the sentence to stop, pause, but never to settle, as it is
punctuation that also breaks, punctures; at best, it is a momentary
rest. Barthes' meditation on punctuation and the punctum can be
found in many places, one of which is Camera Lucida {I 980).
19. Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil, \04.
PART I
BLINDNESS
I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the

world with his eyes open all the time.
-Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
It is like a ruin that does not come after the work but
remains produced, always already from the origin, by the
advent and structure of the work. In the beginning, at the
origin, there was ruin. At the origin comes ruin; ruin comes
to the origin, it is what first comes and happens to the
origin, in the beginning. With no promise of restoration.
This dimension of the ruinous simulacrum has never
threatened-quite to the contrary-the emergence of a
work. It's just that one must know [savoir], and so one just
has to see (it) [voir ca]-Le., that the performative fiction
that engages the spectator in the signature of the work is
given to be seen only through the blindness that it produces
as its truth. As if glimpsed through a blind.
-Jacques Derrida, Memoirs o/the Blind:
The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins
20
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brain that processes the information. But the only way in which
the image is formed is for some of the light to be absorbed by
the image itself (otherwise, all we would see is pure light, an
imageless brightness). This means that there is always some part
of the object-the letter, the word, or the series of words-that
remains unseen, that remains in the dark.
What we are interested in is this residue, this that is left behind
the ghost of the word that remains unseen: perhaps the only way
which we can see the dark is to be blind in the first place.
Just because something does not appear to be there does not
mean that it isn't there, does not mean that it isn't experienced as
being there. In many cases, something that is absent--or, more
precisely, that appears to be absent--can affect us just as much
as something that is present:
I placed a coffee cup in front of John and asked him to
grab it [with his phantom limb]. Just as he said he was
reaching out, I yanked the cup away.
"Ow!" he yelled. "Don't do that!"
"What's the matter?"
"Don't do that," he repeated. "I had just got my fingers
around the cup handle when you pulled it. That really
hurts!"
Hold on a minute. I wrench a real cup from phantom fin
gers and the person yells, ouch! The fingers were illusory,
but the pain was real-indeed, so intense that I dared not
repeat the experiment.2
If an absent limb can affect one, can it really be all that absent? Is
it not the trace of the limb-be it via psychological effects, or even
physiological ones3-that continues to haunt the body: the spectre
of John's fingers that continue to be with him, inscribing them
selves into his body, but this time not necessarily within his con
trol? John's spectral fingers are absent in a cognitive sense-he no
Blindness, or What is This No-Thing We See?
21
longer can control them with his brain-but are very much present,
slipping in and out of his presence and disappearing the moment he
attempts to directly confront them.
Here one must consider if a phantom limb has effects only
because one has a memory of its sensation, a memory of the sensa
tion that was caused by stimuli to the limb before its absence. In
other words, is the sensation felt by the patient merely that of a
psychological effect? Or, more precisely, is the sensation felt by the
patient the result of both the memory of the limb and also the for
getting of the fact that the limb itself is missing? For if the missing
limb remains in the consciousness of the patient, then would it not
be unlikely that (s)he feels a sensation in it? If the sensation is trig
gered by an affect of memory, this suggests that it must be beyond
merely physiological stimuli; since all external stimuli are absent,
it is almost as if the patient feels the sensation because there is an
anticipation of what is to be felt. This is perhaps a similar sensation
to that one feels just before one is tickled: the only way in which
one can feel ticklish even before actual physical stimuli is experi
enced is because one knows what feeling ticklish is. In effect, the
ticklishness is anticipated and then is felt by the person.4
This might be why the most successful attempts to treat patients
with phantom-limb pain have involved the imagination. One such
instance is the "mirror box" that was created by Vilayanur S. Ram
achandran and colleagues. A "mirror box" is a box with two mirrors
in the center, one facing each way. A patient inserts her or his hand
into one hole and her or his "phantom hand" into the other. When
viewed from an angle, the brain is tricked into seeing two com
plete hands. The "mirror box" treatment is based on an observation
that phantom-limb patients were more likely to report paralyzed
and painful phantoms if the limb was paralyzed prior to amputa
tion. The hypothesis is that every time the patient attempts to move
her or his limb, (s)he receives sensory feedback that the limb is
22
READING BLINDLY
paralyzed. Over time, this feedback stamps itself into the brain such
that even when the limb is absent, the brain has learnt that the limb
(and its subsequent phantom) is paralyzed. Hence, the patient feels
discomfort or even pain because the phantom limb is in an uncom
fortable position or is paralyzed. If the brain is tricked into seeing
two complete hands when the hand that is present moves, the brain
thinks that the phantom limb is also moving; in this way, the per
son can "move" her or his phantom limb, and so the brain no lon
ger recognizes it as a paralyzed limb.s More recently, virtual reality
has been used to treat sufferers of phantom-limb pain; by attaching
the present limb to an interface that shows two limbs moving, the
somatosensory cortex is tricked again.6 Both the "mirror box" and
the virtual-reality interface (developed by the University of Man
chester) work on the same principle of visual-kinesthetic synesthe
sia, except that the illusion is stronger in the latter.
It is through the use of imaginatioll-not accepting the absence
as a lack but rather as a spectre that is present but cannot be encoun
tered directly-that the symptoms suffered by phantom limb
patients can be treated. This is not merely the creation of a "substi
tute formation" in the sense that Freud himself asserted, which is
"the manufacturing of a [formation] which recompenses the subject
for his loss of reality."7 In Freud's case, the "substitute formation"
allows one to ignore the cause and simulate one in order to treat
the symptom(s); as long as the patient believes that one is treating
the "cause," the symptom(s) will go away. This use of the imagina
tion is more radical as the concept of the cause--<>rigin-is done
away with: it matters not if the limb in question is present or absent
(phantom); both are treated as if they are one and the same. The
line between the real and the virtual is erased. In fact,
all amputees, and all who work with them, know that a
phantom limb is essential if an artificial limb is to be used.
23
Dr Michael Kramer writes: "Its value to the amputee is

enormous. I am quite certain that no amputee with an
artificial lower limb can walk on it satisfactorily until the
body-image, in other words the phantom, is incorporated
into it."
Thus the disappearance of a phantom may be disastrous,
and its recovery, its reanimation, a matter of urgency....
One such patient, under my care, describes how he must
"wake up" his phantom in the mornings ...Only then can
he put on his prosthesis and walk. g
It is thus the imagination that allows for the birth of the third term,
the phantom-real limb, the limb that is virtual but which treats the
symptoms of not only the real (absent) limb, but also the virtual
(phantom) limb. It is the imagination that not only bridges the gap
between the real and the phantom but more radically allows for the
real-virtual, the virtual-real, to exist. In this manner, what cannot
be seen can potentially be experienced, be momentarily glimpsed.
However, even though the imagination is the space in which
treatment of phantom-limb pain takes place, one can never deny
that there is physiological aspect. Even as there must be a for
getting of the fact that the limb is absent, one cannot completely
forget the limb as well; if that were so, there would be no mem
ory of its sensation at all. Hence the phantom-limb sensation is
neither purely psychological nor physiological. Here, we have
to tum to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and consider his claim that
what has to be understood, then, is how the psychic deter
mining factors and the physiological conditions gear into
each other: it is not clear how the imaginary limb, if de
pendent on physiological conditions and therefore the
result of a third person causality, can in another context
arise Ollt of the personal history of the patient, his memo
ries. emotions and volitions.')
24
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This suggests that sensations are neither purely from external stim
uli nor purely from internal cognition: there is rather an interplay
between the two, where the body discovers itself via the world and
also discovers the world through itself. Hence, the phantom limb "is
not the mere outcome of objective causality; no more is it a cogita
tio. "10 Lying in the indistinct space between cognition and external
stimuli, the sensation felt by the patient is similar to a reflex-an

action that is neither merely a reaction to stimuli nor fully cogni
tive. In fact, "reflex movements, whether adumbrated or executed,
are still only objective processes whose course and results con
sciousness can observe, but in which it is not involved."11
The reflex does not arise from objective stimuli, but
moves back towards them, and invests them with a mean
ing which they do not possess taken singly
as
psycho
logical agents, but only when taken as a situation ...The

reflex, in so far as it open itself to the meaning of a situ
ation, and perception; in so far as it does not first of all
posit an object of knowledge and is an intention of our
whole being, are modalities of a pre-objective view ...12
Hence all cognition--evel)' act of knowing-<:an only happen ret
rospectively: the meaning of the reflex can only be inferred after
the fact. In other words, the phantom-limb sensation can only be
known at the vel)' moment in which it is felt, where the "experi
ence does not survive as a representation in the mode of objective
consciousness and as a 'dated' moment; it is of essence to survive
only as a matter of being and with a certain degree of general
ity."13 It is a "personal existence ...without, in other words, being
able either to reduce the organism to its existential self, or itself to
the organism."14 Hence the phantom limb "is not a recollection, it
is a quasi-present and the patient feels it now ...with no hint of it
belonging to the past."15
Blindness, or W hat is This No-Thing We See?
25
Every time there is a sensation in the phantom limb, it is an

event, unknowable until the moment in which it is felt; it is both
preobjective and presubjective, preceding both the cognitive sub
ject and also the very object of cognition itself. So, even as the
phantom-limb pain is treatable in the realm of the imagination, this
is a treatment of its symptoms; the cause, and the very status of the
sensation itself, remains unknown and ultimately unknowable.
Just because something is not written on a page does not
mean that it is not there. Perhaps in order to read properly, one
must always respond to both what is and what is not--or at least
seems not to be-there.16 Perhaps, then, reading is the effect
the sensation-that lies beyond both the reader and the text; it is
something that can only be experienced in its singular situation
and known, at best, only retrospectively. Or, more radically still,
one must always treat the absent as a (potential) present; it is, after
all, the ghosts-the phantoms that haunt the text-that maintain
the unknowability of the text, that keep it from becoming a book.
THE
BOOK
AS A (DEATH) SENTENCE
For this is the way in which religions are wont to die out:
under the stern, intelligent eyes of an orthodox dogma
tism, the mythical premises of a religion are systematized
as a sum total of historical events; one begins appre
hensively to defend the credibility of the myths, while
at the same time one opposes any continuation of their
natural vitality and growth; the feeling for myth perishes,
and its place is taken by the claim of religion to historical
foundations. 17
The moment a religion shifts from a movement, a constantly
changing, morphing, and becoming, into stagnancy-being, a
doctrine, a book (and, more precisely, a prescriptive book}-all
26
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"vitality and growth" are drained from it: it is the systematization

of the movement into a linear series, "a sum total of historical
events," into a logical sequence, a Socratic "knowledge by rea
son," which drains the movement and settles it into a structure,
where it becomes lifeless, dead. By attempting to fully under
stand the religion-to move it from myths which are dynamic,
ever-changing, constantly retold, altered, alive, becoming, to a
set story, a history, linear, predictable, retraceable, uncontami
nated by variation-what happens is the death of the religion
itself into mere dogma and orthodoxy.
In the same way, it is the attempt to fully grasp the meaning
of the text-in order that words contain a totality of meaning,
under a particular category of understanding-that ultimately
destroys the text, that destroys the potentiality of a text. Consid
ering that there is no logic which can sustain itself-"no proof
can possibly exist determining the truth or falsity of the unde
cidable statement in the language of the system within which the
statement was formulated"'8-in order for there to be any total
ity (in the form of a consistent logic that can prove itself within
its own logical system), some form of exclusion, by way of the
suppression of the axiom that does not conform to the internal
logic of the system, must take place.
In order for a text to transubstantiate itself into a book, some
part(s) of it must be left out; in order that a text (which is a ver
sion, a single reading, a potential reading) is transformed into,
becomes, a book (a complete reading, a consistent reading, or
even the only reading), some parts of the text must always be
either subsumed or suppressed.'9 In order for the "vitality and
growth" of the text to remain, there must always be a measure of
the unknown, of the unknowable, of the to-be-known.
The only manner in which a book can be sustained (in its total
ity) is through the effacement of the text itself, or, more precisely,
27
through the effacement of the potentiality of the text-for in its

full potentiality, the text is always fragmented and never allows
for a single reading, for just one reading. This is because every
text relies on language as its medium, and since language is first
and foremost figurative, it can never be a fully consistent logical
system: the trope is what allows language to be, but at the same
time is its failing point. The trope is the "undecidable statement"
within the system, which is that grammar as
tropes are not to be understood aesthetically, as orna
ment, nor are they understood semantically as a figurative
meaning that derives from literal, proper denomination.
Rather, the reverse is the case. The trope is not a derived,
marginal , or aberrant form of language but the linguis
tic paradigm par excellence. The figurative structure is
not one linguistic mode among others but it characterizes
language as such.20
The trope is what allows a statement to be made-all statements
require comparisons (even something as basic as naming some
thing is a transference between the object as such and the object
that is named as such, as if the property of one is the property of
the other), and it is the trope that allows for these transferences
of properties across terms-but is also the failing point of the
same statement, as all transferences are appearances. A II state
ments are hinged on the appearance of sameness between the
term and the object as such, or, more precisely, on the appearance
of a link between language and an external referent, and as such,
all that the statement actually refers to is the fact that it is refer
ring. Since all of language is an appearance and an illusion, there
is then no meta-grounding for any interpretation of a text; each
reading of a text unveils an opinion (or a potentiality) of the text
and never its truth. In this way, each reading of the text is always
haunted by the ghost of other readings-other possibilitiesach
READING BLINDLY
28
of which is potentially as true as the first; the absent readings are

the spectres-the phantoms-that continue to disturb the presence
of the first reading. It is language that allows for the positing of
a particular reading of a text, but it is also language that prevents
the text from coming to a unitary interpretation, from being a
totalizing book.
It is this tension between grammar and the figure that ensures
that reading is a continuous process. For, even as grammar attempts
to suppress figurative language (in order that it can become a com
plete system), it is always unable to do so, as it is precisely the
trope that allows language to exist in the first place.
The system of relationships that generates the text and
that functions independently of its referential meaning is
its grammar. To the extent that a text is grammatical, it is
a logical code or a machine. And there can be no agram
matical text, as the most nongrammatical of poets, Mal
larme, was the first to acknowledge. Any nongrammatical
text will always be read as a deviation from an assumed
grammatical norm. But just as no text is conceivable
without grammar, no grammar is conceivable without
the suspension of referential meaning. Just as no law can
ever be written unless one suspends any consideration of
applicability to a particular entity including, of course,
oneself, grammatical logic can function only if its refer
ential consequences are disregarded.
On the other hand, no law is a law unless it also applies
to particular individuals. It cannot be left hanging in the
air, in the abstraction of its generality. Only by thus refer
ring back to particular praxis can thejustice of the law be
tested, exactly as thejustesse of any statement can only be
tested by its referential verifiability, or by deviation from
its verification.... There can be no text without grammar:
the logic of grammar generates texts only in the absence
of referential meaning, but every text generates a referent
Blindne ss, or W hat is This No -Thing We See?
29
that subverts the grammatical principle to which it owed

its constitution.21
In other words, we can call
text
any entity that can be considered from such a double
perspective: as a generative, open minded, non-referential

grammatical system and as a figural system closed off by a
transcendental signification that subverts the grammatical
code to which the text owes its existence. The "definition"
of the text also states the impossibility of its existence and
prefigures the allegorical narratives of this impossibility.
A text is defined by the necessity of considering a state
ment, at the same time, as performative and constative,

and the logical tension between figure and grammar is
repeated in the impossibility of distinguishing two lin
guistic functions which are not necessarily compatible. It
seems that as soon as a text knows what it states, it can
only act deceptively ... and if a text does not act, it cannot
state what it knows.22
It is this inability to close off the text that ensures the reader is
always reading, and continually reading; one can never claim
to have already read. It is also this same inability to read a text
and make a claim for having read it that will not allow anyone to
stake a legitimate claim to the assuredness of having understood
the text or to the assuredness that they have understood the text.
This suggests that not only is every reading illegitimate, but that
it is precisely this illegitimacy that allows for reading itself: the
impossibility of a total reading, a complete reading, is itself the
reason-the very condition of the possibility-that there is a
space of reading, a space for reading.
Since reading ultimately escapes the cognitive knowledge of
the reader, it is always a reading that is beyond, outside, the self.
30
READING BLINDLY
And if we are attempting to think the possibility of a reading

that is not centred on the self-if we are trying to explore "liter
ature is otherness"23 in its fullest sense-then the radical other
ness of literature, of the text, must be maintained. The text must
be approached, and continually be approached, but can never
be reached. In order to respond fully to the text, one must be
able to respond to the text as other, without subsuming the other
under one's conception. In other words, the text must not merely
become a reflection of one's self, as that would be merely the
construction of the text in order to react to it, a simulated other
to which the self responds to; that would result in a literal cir
cle: the self creating an(other) self-the reader writing another
text-to which (s)he responds. Instead of a simulated other, the
otherness of the other must be maintained whilst the reader is
reading, responding to, and with the text: this means that the
text always remains fully other to the self. One reads whilst
never claiming to fully comprehend what one is reading. At the
moment of reading, the reader does not merely process the text
in the sense of obtaining information from the text; reading is
responding, a negotiation and not an exchange, with the text.
Reading: not a prescribed act-a one-way projection of the
reader onto the text-but a response, two-way and in full com
munion between the reader and the text (s)he is reading. Each
time a text is read, there is a response not only to what one can
see-what one knows-but also to the unknown, the unknow
able, the phantom(s) in the text. For like phantom limbs, just
because they are not so obviously seen does not mean that they
are absent, does not mean they have no effects, does not mean
they do not affect. Not only do these phantoms, the unknown
potentialities, allow reading to occur in the first place-it is
precisely the impreciseness of the figure, the trope, the hidden
potentialities of language itself that allow for the general rule to
Blindnes s, or W hat is This No-Thing We See?
31
work in each particular, singular, unique situation-it is also the

phantoms that ensure that reading itself can never be legitimate,
total, concrete, complete, final; the phantoms are what allow
reading to begin and also ensure that it continually continues.
However, in order to explore the ability of the reader to respond
to and with the text, the responsibility of the reader to the text,
we must take another slight detour, one that goes through what it
even means to respond to the other in the first place.
BLIND Enlles, OR CLOSE YOUR EVES

(TO) SEE THE THIRD
In order to be responsible, one must be able to respond to the
needs of the other without subsuming the other under one's con
ception; in other words, the other must not merely become a
reflection of one's self. That would be merely the construction
of the other in order to react to her or him: the result is a literal
circle, a masturbatory circle, the self responding to itself.
In order to have true responsibility, one must maintain the
otherness of the other whilst responding. This means that the
other always remains fully other to the self: one responds to
the needs of the other whilst not fully understanding what these
very needs are. At the moment of response, in the terms of Wer
ner Hamacher's elegant and deceptively simple formulation,
"understanding is in want of understanding":24 the self does not
merely act towards the other, it is responding, communicating,
negotiating. Responsibility is not a prescribed act-a one-way
projection of the self onto the other-but a response: two-way
and in full communion between the self and the other.
The problem with a responsibility that is known a priori (in the
form of an ethics that is predetermined) is that there is no consid
eration of the singularity of the situation. This is the problem that
32
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Jacques Lacan points out in Kant avec Sade-in such a case,

there is no other that is responded to, as no matter what the situ
ation is, the method is always the same; whilst this doesn't nec
essarily mean that the resulting response is exactly the same, it
does subsume the situation under the same conception, the same
categoryY In this manner, the will of the other is not taken into
account; in effect, the will of the other-and the other her- or
himself-is effaced. A true response to the needs of the other has
to take into account the unique situation that both the self and the
other are in at any moment.
The Levinasian approach to ethics addresses the issue of the
other, but ultimately is lacking in response as well, not in the
sense of effacing the other, but, ironically, in its attempt to fully
understand the other's needs. By claiming to privilege the "vis
age of the Other" and emptying the self up to the point of becom
ing "hostage for the Other," what occurs is
an inverted arrogance: as if I am the centre whose exis
tence threatens all others ... confer[ing] on [it] a central
position: this very prohibition to assert [the self] makes
[it] into the neutral medium, the place from which the
truth about the [other] is accessible.26
What happens in this situation is, the self absorbs the other
under its own categories: there is a total consumption of the
other. More precisely, the self simulates the other-the response
is not to the other but rather to the simulacra of the other. Hence,
the self is actually responding to its own projected needs; the
other exists, but as an imaginary other. Anytime the claim is
made that the other is centered, to the extent that, in Levina
sian terms, "subjectivity is being hostage"27-taking the place
of and being a sacrifice for the other--even if the intention is to
fully understand the other in order to respond to her or his needs,
33
what occurs is the disappearance of the other via simulation:

another other is created, there is no longer an other. In order for
a true response, a full understanding of the other must never be
assumed, or even attempted; in this sense, the "visage" of the
other must always be (at least partially) hidden.
This hidden "visage" of the other is not merely what Slavoj
Zizek claims when he says, "The true ethical step is one beyond
the face of the other, the one of suspending the hold of the face: the
choice against the face, for the third."28 Zizek's claim is that in priv
ileging the third over the "visage," one is able to have an ethics that
isjust (in the legal sense), for then one can "abstract [the face of the
Other] and refocus onto the faceless Thirds in the background."29
Whilst the Zizekian gesture allows one to perform ajustice (which,
in his conception, has to be blind to specifics, as in every instance,
one can alwaysjustif)t whatever her or his actions are; for instance,
personal shortcomings such as the failing nature of man), this is an
ethics which privileges the material situation ("the faceless Thirds")
whilst effacing the other completely. In the selfs act of "indiffer
ence," what one does is indeed "suspend one's power of imagina
tion"JO with respect to the other, but what occurs instead is that this
imagination is transposed to the "faceless Thirds." In this manner,
what is occurring is a simulation of the "faceless Thirds" and their
needs. So whilst escaping the Levinasian trap of simulating the
other, the Zizekian gesture merely simulates the "faceless others."
Indeed, this is not "simply the Derridian-Kierkegaardian point that
I always betray the Other because tout autre est un autre, because I
have to make a choice to select who my neighbour is from the mass
of the Thirds,"JI but is rather a mere reversal of that statement-an
"I betray the other because I refuse to select from the thirds" or,
even more radically, "I betray both the other and all others because
I am merely subsuming all of you under my conception-I have
made ALL of you my absolute other(s)."J2
34
READING BLINDLY
The site of responsibility is indeed the third, but not as Zizek

posits it, for the third exists not as an externality to the other
(in the form of the faceless others), but rather in the other her
or himself. In responding to and with the needs of the other,
the self has to communicate with the other in order to uncover
these needs. Communication takes place in the third itself, for
true communication is not merely the exchange of information
(which requires a flattening-out of differences-which we see in
the Zizekian gesture-in order for this exchangeability to take
place), but rather is a process where the two parties connect and
touch each other. Communication, as Lucretius posits, takes
place in the skin (the simulacrum) between the two parties, and
it is in that space that the two parties negotiate.33 In this sense,
there is no direct transfer of meaning (as posited, for instance,
in the Shannon-Weaver model, where every miscommunication
is due to interference and misinterpretation of codes), but rather,
meaning itself is an emergent property of the process of com
munication. There is no such thing as miscommunication: com
munication itself is an event, and by definition, its result cannot
be predetermined. Responding to the other takes place in the
third-between the self and the other-and it is at this site that
the needs of the other potentially emerge.
There is no doubt that there is an exchange that takes place in
communication--otherwise, one will emerge from any process
of communication completely unchanged (which is not true).
But the exchange that takes place is not one of a direct infor
mation exchange; this would be the realm of a general exchange,
an exchange of one unit of information for another. This is commu
nication conceived as an economic exchange, where all differences
have to be flattened (or abstracted from a use-value to an exchange
value), and perhaps the sense of meaning that is derived from the
act is, then, its surplus value. This fits in perfectly with the logic
35
of capital: communication as a process that is calculable, pre

dictable, and which produces surplus value that guarantees its
continual cycle. An analogy of this would be one of furniture
in the modern context: each piece of furniture no longer has a
meaning in itself(the last of this is perhaps "Dad's chair," which
on Iy he can sit in), except for the fact that it is part of the over
all design of that particular room. In this manner, each piece
is perfectly substitutable with any other piece; take any chair
out and replace it with another chair-as long as it fits in with
the overall design, it will work: functionality is the key here.
The "ambience" of the room is the concept that determines the
individual pieces of furniture, which only have meaning insofar
as being part of the network that is the room itself: each piece
is individual, but not singular.34 In a concept of communication
in which there is a direct exchange of information, each word
functions like a piece of furniture: nothing has meaning in itself,
and there is no singularity; individual words have meaning only
as part of a network of other words, constructions, sentences,
other sentences, and so on. Communication itself would be sub
sumed under functionality (that is, the purpose of communica
tion would be predetermined-exchange a particular piece of
information). This is the only way in which one can deem that
miscommunication took place: only with an aim that is set can
any failure be determined and calculated. With such a concept
of communication, the importance of each person is determined
by her position in the network, and, by extension, each person is
completely and utterly replaceable, exchangeable. Each person
is individual, but not singular.
A process of communication in which there is no a priori aim
(and, by extension, no result) rests on an impossible exchange: an
exchange that occurs in spite of the fact that there is no flatten
ing of differences.35 An impossible exchange is one that realizes
36
READING BLINDLY
that there can be no exchange because all logical systems rest

on an exclusion, one that realizes that there is no logical system
that can sustain itself within itself; without the possibility of a
totalizing logical system, there can never be a natural equiva
lence. Therefore, there can never be any direct exchange except
if the exchange is simulated. This brings us back to Lucretius'
conception of communication: the exchange takes place in the
simulacra, an exchange that is impossible but which happens
nonetheless. This exchange, in the form of the act of commu
nication, is precisely the emergent property of the process of
communication: communication occurs for the sake of commu
nication and not for some teleological goal. There is no overall
"design" or "ambience" to govern the process of communica
tion; an emergent property, by strict definition, is unknowable a
priori. Hence, each act of communication is unique. Since there
is no overall structure under which the act of communication is
subsumed, there is a potential for a unique and new response in
each act of communication.36
It is this incalculability that resides in every pure decision,
where there is, as Jacques Derrida posits, "the sacrifice of econ
omy, that without which there is no free responsibility or deci
sion."37 It is this incalculability that saves a decision from being
a mere prelude to an act. The moment of decision is one in which
there is the potential for responding to the other, where the other
remains unknowable (if not totally, at least partially), and in
which one responds with a degree of blindness. The blindness
occurs in two realms: one with regards to the other which the self
is responding to (in the sense of not subsuming the other under
the self); the second to the act that is to be done in response
to the other (in the sense of not knowing a priori what is to be
done). It is this double blindness that allows the self to respond,
in the fullest sense, to the other: not only does "every other (one)
Blindness,
or What is This No-Thing We See?
37
[remain] every (bit) other"38 in the acknowledgement that every

decision privileges one over all the remaining others, toward
whom we alway s remain accountable, but also the other that is
privileged does not become merely an extension of the self.
This is why Kierkegaard proclaims, "The instant of decision is
madness":39 one chooses in spite of the fact that there is no ratio
nal decision to choose one course over the other(s). If one were to
rely solely on logic or rationality, there would always be an apo
retic situation, but one has to choose in spite of this. Otherwise,
there is a situation of inaction (which is a decision in itself): this
would be the decision of nonresponsibility, the refusal to respond
to the other and all the other others. This is the problem with
Zitek's position: by refusing to choose, he ultimately chooses a
position that responds to none, that abandons all the others. How
ever, if one chooses to respond, then one must respond whilst
being blind (to all other possibilities). It is this double blindness
that allows for the potentiality of a response that is
an absolute responsibility [that] could not be derived from
a concept of responsibility and therefore, in order for it to
be what it must be it must remain inconceivable, indeed
unthinkable: it must therefore be irresponsible in order to
be absolutely responsible.40
This is why Zitek claims that the authentic moment, the real
moment of decision, has to be one which is "harshness ...sus
tained by love,"41 which in his conception is a moment of justice
that is guided by love, a blindness in fidelity to the other. This is
akin to Derrida's claim that true responsibility is one
that doesn't keep account or give an account, neither to
man, to humans, to society, to one's fellows, or to one's
own. Such a responsibility keeps its secret, it cannot and
need not present itself...It refuses to present itself before
38
READING BLINDLY
the violence that consists of asking for accounts and
justifications ...42
This is a responsibility that is blind in and to itself, in fidel
ity to responding to the needs of the other. Whilst responding

to the needs of the other, the self and the other remain abso
lute singularities-this is why there is no economy of exchange
that takes place. The exchange is an impossible exchange: it
is an aeconomical exchange that takes place. This is secret of
the exchange: there is nothing in the exchange except for the
exchange itself. This is the secret of the gift: there is nothing in
the giving but the giving itself. In a blind responsibility, one is
responsible to no one except to the ability to respond; this is
the paradoxical condition of every decision: it cannot be
deduced from a form of knowledge of which it would
simply be the effect, conclusion or explication. It struc
turally breaches knowledge and is thus destined to non
manifestation; a decision is, in the end, always secret.43
But in spite of this destiny, in order to respond to the other,
one must respond-this is precisely where the element of blind
ness lies. To fully respond to the needs of the other, one must be
blind to everything else, including the other: it is this that allows
the other to remain fully other whilst one responds to her or him.
There is no object to responsibility.
Of course, once the instant of decision has occurred, there
is a consequence which takes the form of the act, after which
there is an accountability to the other and to the other others as
well-this is when everything is reinscribed into an economy
and one can calculate whether the response was "good" or "bad"
and so on. However, this is an economy that is "in simulacrum,
an economy that is ambiguous enough to seem to integrate non
economy."44 For in every true response to the other, there is the
Blindness, or W h at is This No-Thing We See?
39
element of the unknowable-the secret-that is brought into the

act itself: there is no preknowledge of the consequences, there
is a potentiality for a previously unknown consequence. Ulti
mately, "the response and hence responsibility always risk what
they cannot avoid appealing to in reply, namely, recompense
and retribution. They risk the exchange that they might expect
but are at the same time unable to count on."45
It is impossible to speak of a true responsibility in prescriptive
terms, for that would be merely another categorical imperative
that attempts to subsume every situation under its logic. The dou
ble blindness that is in every decision (as opposed to mere option
or alternative), in fidelity to responsibility, is not an exception or
an aberrant that can be done away with-it is an essential part of
responsibility itself. This blindness ensures that the self responds
to the other without doing away with the otherness of the other,
the radical otherness of the other. True responsibility is not an
answer but a question: it opens up a space in which one can be
responsible to the other by being a true question (for which there
is no known answer, at least to the one asking the question), and
"as often happens, the call of or for the question, and the request
that echoes through it, takes us further than the response."46
It is this question, irresponsible to everything except respon
sibility itself, blind to everything-even the other-except the
possibility of responding to the (unknown) other, that allows both
the other and the self to preserve their singularity. In respond
ing to each other, there is a coming together that is akin to a
marriage, the precise ending of the vow being "what God has
joined, man must not divide." The joining is always imperfect
and fragile--otherwise, the vow would have read, "man cannot
divide." This suggests that man is fully capable of dividing the
union, and it is this fragility that ensures that marriage is not a
mere constitutive merger; the two remain fully singular and the
40
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union depends on the two recognizing its fragility and becoming

one in spite of the impossibility of doing so. Hence, it is only
though this agreement, this contract, that the union is formed,
that the union has a potentiality of occurring; in no way does
the contract guarantee that the union will last, or even that the
union will take place: the function of the contract is only to open
up the space for the potentiality of this vel)' union (perhaps in
complete futility, as it may never even occur in the first place).
In the same vein, the self and the other respond to each other in
spite of the potential futility of any act to change or improve the
situation; the self and the other respond with each other in spite
of the impossibility of doing so.
This is a responsibility which is inherently blind, in which blind
ness is a part of its vel)' structure, a responsibility that closes its
eyes to everything-is blind to everything-except the ability to
respond.
afo
Since the response of the self with the other occurs within a
material reality-that of the situation-we must think about
the vel)' situation itself. More precisely, what must be thought
about are the rules that govern the situation. In the case of read
ing, we must, then, first look at the contract that lies between
the reader and the text and exactly what this entails. For it is
not as if anyone reads in a vacuum or is the vel)' first to come
to reading; hence, there are rules to reading. Just as we are born
into language, we are also born into reading. And it is these
rules that precede us-both written (grammar) and by social
conventions (interpretation)--that influence us and govern how
we read.
However, in order to think these rules, we must take yet another
detour, for how is it possible to speak of the rules of reading
41
directly? That would be akin to describing oneself without ever

having looked into a mirror: all one ends up doing is talking about
a simulated self. In the same vein, attempting to read the rules of
reading without reading can only take place if one simulates the
text into existence. This is the problem with literary theory-all it
is is a prescription of how to read what you are reading; in effect,
what it does is everything except reading itself.
LITERARY THEORY AND THE ERASlJRE OF TEXTS

Any discourse meant to account for prescriptions, trans
forms them into conclusions of reasonings, into proposi
tions derived from other propositions, in which the latter
are metaphysical propositions on being and history, or on
the soul, or on society.47
Despite its claim of trying to understand texts, prescriptive liter
ary theory ends up subsuming every text under a metatext, flat
tening any differences between texts. In this manner, any text
can be read as Marxist, Lacanian, postcolonial, or any other the
ory that one desires. This is due to the fact that every text is sub
sumed under an a priori concept(ion): either there is a complete
consumption of the text, or the text that is looked at, gazed upon,
is simulated. In either case, the result is the same: everything is
read as if it is the same thing. All understanding texts does is to
places texts under its stance.
Just as all furniture in a room is part of a network of design
(the overall ambience), literary theories construct a network
within which texts revolve: each text ceases to have any mean
ing except for its position within the theory. In order that a total
ity (which is the consistency of the theory itself) is created, the
theory which purports to enable the reader to think about the
text ends up completely effacing that very text. Not only does
READING BLINDLY
42
it not matter that each text is no longer singular, it is so much

the better that they are completely exchangeable-in that way,
one can switch them around without any substantial cost (to the
theory). Prescriptive theories are teleological propositions: their
end points are determined a priori. However, their consistency
can only be maintained via exclusion(s), for there is no consis
tent logical premise that can sustain its own consistency with
out a nonnegotiable assumption, without a presumption. In this
way, one must either read a text whilst leaving out particulari
ties (for if one considers such particularities, the totality always
comes asunder), or one must subsume such particularities under
one's conception. This in effect flattens every text into a mirror
of every other: not exactly the same, but a mere reflection of
the same idea, thought, premise. This is precisely the logic that
is captured in the saying "Never let facts [of the text] get in the
way of a good theory."48
Hence, prescriptive literary theory is a totality that can only
occur with a willful, deliberate blindness, a refusal to see: in order
that the theory can remain consistent, total, the fragment, the detail,
the particularity has to be ignored, be cast aside, suppressed, kept
in the dark.
Once again, it is Friedrich Nietzsche who resurrects to remind
us that it is a yearning for "metaphysical comfort," of certainty,
which brings about this theorizing-as opposed to true think
ing, which is always uncomfortable, discomforting, unsettling
in order to give the "theorist" the false assurance that he knows,
that he understands, that he grasps the world in his hands; the
ego of the "theoretical man" is satisfied when he can fully
explain the world he lives in.49 In other words, his vanity is sati
ated when he can subsume the world under his own conception
of it. In the same manner, it is the ego of the reader, the desire to
be not just the centre from which the text is read, but to be the
43
centre of the text itself, that allows for the exclusionary mea
sures that allow the text to become a book. In effect, the reader
adopts the gesture of the sadist-the total effacement of the text
by her or his will.50
In the attempt to totalize the text into a book, there has to be
an erasure, a destruction of the life of the text, a sentencing of
the text, a capital sentence on the text; in order to maintain the
totality of the book, the "I ife and vitality" of the text has to be
drained, a death sentence has to be passed on the text itself. The
movement from a text to a book is precisely the movement of
the reader from one of negotiation with the text to one where the
reader displaces the text and becomes the centre of her or his
own reading, where (s)he reads nothing but her- or himself.
In order to try and avoid this gesture of effacement, we have
to allow language to be the mirror into which we look: in this
manner, we can look into the text at the same time as the text
looks into us. This is reading not as a prescription but as an act,
a negotiation, a relationship; in this conception, language is then
the third, the gap between the reader and the text, the site of
the communication between the text and the reader. What this
suggests is that the blindness that is involved in ethical read
ing, in proper reading, is not one that is of the self, not one that
is willed solely by the self. It is a blindness that is a part of the
process of reading, as opposed to a blindness that precedes the
reading, a "there are certain moments in which one is blind to
what comes before and after, as this is the process of reading, the
nature of reading itself," as opposed to an "I will not see some
thing because I don't want to." This is because language itself
is constantly slipping. One cannot legitimately claim to have a
full knowledge of language, understand language: we speak lan
guage as much as it speaks us, we read language as much as it
reads us. Hence, the blindness of proper reading is precisely the
44
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blindness that is encountered in making an ethical decision: that

of the double blindness. To read properly, one must be blind to
both the text that one is reading and also to oneself, the self that
precedes the reading of the text. It is in this impossible situation,
this impossible exchange between the reader and the text, that
reading occurs, that reading can potentially occur.
Since we are trying to think of reading as a relationship-the
negotiated third-between the reader and the text, we shall look
into a text that attempts to read a relationship between two persons.
Whilst reading this text about reading persons, perhaps we might
uncover a spectre of reading; perhaps we might catch a glimpse of
how this act of reading might take place, see reading occur while
reading, see reading while not trying to look for it at all.
Blindness. or What is This No-Thing We See?
45
ENDNOTES
I. International Council of Ophthalmology, "International Standards:
Visual Standards-Aspects and Ranges of Vision Loss with Empha

sis on Population Surveys," (April 2002).
2. V. S. Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain:
Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New York: William
Morrow and Co.,
1998),43.
3. One such possibility is the "remapping" of the somatosensory cor
tex, which then allows another cortical region to take over from
the region that no longer has input. For instance, if someone's
right hand is amputated, the cortical region for that hand no lon
ger receives direct input. However, the somatosensory system
can reorganize such that a neighboring cortical region can now
"take over" this cortical region that has no input. Ramachandran
and colleagues first demonstrated this remapping by showing that
stroking different parts of the face led to perceptions of being
touched on different parts of the missing limb. Through magne
toencephalography (MEG), which permits visualization of activ
ity in the human brain, Ramachandran verified the reorganization
in the somatosensory cortex. V. S. Ramachandran, D. C. Rogers
Ramachandran, and M. Stewart, "Perceptual Correlates of Mas
258, no. 5085 (1992):

1159-1160. See also T. T. Yang, C. C. Gallen, V. S. Ramachan
sive Cortical Reorganization," Science
dran, et al., "Noninvasive Detection of Cerebral Plasticity in Adult

Human Somatosensory Cortex," Neuroreport: An International
Journal for the Rapid Communication of Research in Neurosci
ence
5, no. 6 (/994): 701-704.
4. This is what Maurice Merleau-Ponty terms "interoceptivity," as
opposed to "exteroceptivity." In this conception, "the 'psycho

physical event' is therefore no longer of the type of 'wordly' cau
sality ... the excitation is seized and reorganized by transversal
functions which make it resemble the perception which it is about
to arouse ... anticipating the stimuli and itself tracing out the form
which I am about to perceive. I cannot understand the function of
46
READING BLINDLY
the living body except by enacting it myself, and except in so far
as I am a body which rises towards the world." Maurice Merleau
Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London:
Routledge,2006),87.
5. V. S. Ramachandran and D. C. Rogers-Ramachandran, "Synaes

thesia in Phantom Limbs Induced with Mirrors," Proceedings of
the Royal Society of London 263, no. 1369 (1996): 377-386.
6. http://news.bbc.co.uklllhilhealth/6I46I36.stm.
7. As read in Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre
of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 2000), 35.
8. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (London:
Picador,1985), 64.
9. Merleau-Ponty,Phenomenology of Perception, 89.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 91.
12. Ibid., 91-92.
13. Ibid., 96.
14. Ibid.,97.
15. Ibid., 98.
16. J. Hillis Miller calls this the "latent law" of the text in his book
The Ethics of Reading (1987). This will be discussed more later
in this text,particularly in the chapter "Rereading Miller: J Stands
Before the Law."
17. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Vintage Books, 1967),75.
18. Avital Ronell, The Test Drive, 57.
19. The change in state from a text to a book is exactly like the
transubstantiation that happens at communion: it is a change, in
essence, that can never be experienced-it is metaphysical. In the
same way, the totalizing of a text into a book is completely super
sensory: there is nothing in the text itself that suggests that this is
even possible-it is on pure faith (in the possibility of a totality,
in the possibility of a book) that the book is simulated into exis
tence. In this sense, in order to be a priest-or to believe in the
totality of a book-one has to be a Platonian whilst forgetting the
fact that strictly speaking,the Idea can never be reached,or even
known.
47
20. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rous

seau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven, CT: Yale Univer
sity Press, 1979), 105. The issue of the tension between rhetoric
and grammar and, more precisely, the fact that tropes are a part of
language and not merely an aberrant use of language is meditated
on in Allegories of Reading. See especially pp. 105-118 on the
centrality of tropes in language and argument.
21. Ibid., 268-269. Since one can never escape from grammar, as any
text, even a "nongrammatical text[,] will always be read as a devia
tion from an assumed grammatical form," this suggests that gram
mar itself is a base assumption of language. This is why de Man
has to ultimately rely on Mallarme's acknowledgment: one cannot
prove the existence of grammar; it is an assumption, a doxa.
22. Ibid., 270.

23. Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why (New York: Scribner,
2001),19.
24. Hamacher, "Premises," in Premises, I.
25. Even if one considers Kant as teleological rather than ontologi
cal-as Jean-Franr;ois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud do in
Just Gaming-it still holds that the end point becomes the lens
to which one then contextualizes the entire situation. Whilst it is
true that the end result is undetermined in this manner, the end
is always already known: this does not allow the situation to be
responded to as such. For a more comprehensive discussion on
Kant as teleological, see Jean-Franr;ois Lyotard and Jean- Loup
Thebaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: Uni
versity of Minnesota Press, 1985), 84-93.
26. Slavoj Zizek, "Smashing the Neighbor's Face," http://www.lacan.

comlzizsmash.htm, 8-9, (additions in parentheses are mine). All
references to Zizek in this chapter are from this source.
27. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being (Pittsburgh, PA:

Duquesne University Press, 1988), 127.
28. Zizek, "Smashing," 10 (see n. 58).

29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., II.
31. Ibid., 9.
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32. In a conversation, Werner Hamacher pointed out that at no point

does Levinas suggest that the "visage" of the other can even be
seen. In this case, one can then say that Zifek's gesture-effacing
Levinas in order to simulate a "Levinas" in order to efface him yet
again-is precisely a manifestation of his ethical conception.
33. Lucretius, Sensation and Sex, trans. R. E. Latham (London: Pen

guin, 2005), 39-60.
34. This analysis of furniture and "ambience" is taken from Jean Bau
drillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London:
Verso, 2005), 30-74.
35. The concept of an "impossible exchange" is taken from Jean
Baudrillard, Impossible Exchange, trans. Chris Turner (London:
Verso, 200 I).
36. There is also a chance that this does not occur-in fact, the chance
of a new and unique response is probably lower than the chance of
one that has already occurred. In most occasions, the lack of time
dictates that conventions (which are predetermined) govern the
"emergent property" of communication such that the "meaning"
produced is not a unique one. This potential "not to be" is part
of a full potentiality, without which there would be no difference
between potentiality and actuality except for different stages in
a progression. True potentiality is thus the potential "to be" and
the potential "not to be." This is meditated on in detail in Giorgio
Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans.
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Meridian, 1999).
37. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996),95.
38. Ibid., 82.
39. Ibid., 65. This is probably a reference to Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
Ibid.,
61 (italics original).
12 (see n. 58).
Derrida, The Gift of Death, 62.
Ibid., 77.
Ibid., 109.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 115.
Zifek, "Smashing,"
49
47. Lyotard and Thebaud, "Third Day: A General Literature," in Just

Gaming, 45.
48. This is akin to the Borges tale where the map which covers the ter
ritories becomes more important (and more real) than the territo
ries themselves: the model now precedes reality. This is explored
in Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila F.
Glazer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), espe
cially pp. 1-3.
49. Nietzsche, The Birth a/Tragedy, especially sections 15-18 on pp.
93-109.
50. The sadistic and the masochistic modes of reading will be explored
in detail in the next chapter, "The Contract: Venus in Furs, or How
to Read the Other."
CHAPTER 2
THE CONTRACT
VENUS IN FURS, OR
How TO READ THE OTHER

"Not yet," said Wanda,
"I shall first add the conditions and then you can sign in
all due form."1
W hen someone sits before a text, (s)he enters into a contract
with the text, and there is a negotiation between her or him and
the text. It is a unique situation, where the reader both creates
the contract and responds to and with the text at the same time
as the binds (in the forms of rules of reading) are set and obeyed
by the same person. This is unlike the situation in the social con
tract, where one is born into an agreement that precedes the self
entering the agreement; the only time this is not true is if one is
at the very time and space where this agreement is negotiated.
READING BLINDLY
52
However, when one takes into consideration the fact that one is
born into language, it reopens the question of how much subjec
tivity is present in the creation of the contract with the text: if we
are already bound by the existing rules (of grammar), how much
space is there for any negotiation?
In order to think about reading--or, to be more exact, to think
about the possibility of proper reading as such--one must first
consider what happens at the juncture when the reader reads the
text, the moment of decision when the reader encounters the
text. Only if the moment of reading is considered as an encoun
ter is reading in its fullest sense possible, for every encounter
is potentially new and hence, so is every reading: only then is
reading not a prescribed and predetermined outcome, but rather
a negotiation between the reader and the text.
But in order to do that, we have to first think about the con
tract, that is, the site of this negotiation. That would require us
to enter the "form" of the contract, for what is a contract but a
ritual, a particular relationship between the signatories?
A QUESTION OF VIOLENCE; A STATEMENT OF TERROR

My slave,
The conditions under which I accept you as my slave
and tolerate you at my side are as follows:
You shall renounce your identity completely.
You shall submit totally to my wil1.2
These are the opening lines of the "Contract between Wanda and
Sacher-Masoch." At first glance, it seems as if Sacher-Masoch's
will is effaced here, but this is not the case, as the contract only
holds due to the fact that Sacher-Masoch submits willingly to
this clause: "I undertake, on my word of honor, to be the slave of
The Contract
53
Mrs. Wanda von Dunajew, in the exact way she demands, and to
submit myself without resistance to everything she will impose
on me."3 The key point of Sacher-Masoch's statement is that he
"submit[s]" himself to the will of Wanda-in this manner, the sin
gularity of both the masochist and his master are preserved. Both
Wanda and Sacher-Masoch remain wholly alterior to each other.
This same echo, that of a negotiation between two parties that
remain wholly other to the other, is found in Venus in Furs in the
"Agreement between Mrs. Wanda von Dunajew and Mr. Severin
von Kuziemski."4 In fact, if it were anything other than a negotia
tion, there would be no need for an "agreement" between the two
parties in the first place; it would merely have been Wanda enforc
ing her will on Severin or vice versa. Even the manner in which
the contract can be ended-"Having been for many years weary
of existence and the disappointments it brings, I have willfully
ended my useless life"5-is agreed upon, and this is shown when
Severin "quickly copied out the note confinning [his] suicide and
handed it over to Wanda.''6 The question of whether death is a
plausible, or even fair, means of ending a contract is a moot one--:
the fact remains that Severin agrees to it of his own will.
In the masochistic contract, there is a precise laying-out of
what can and cannot be done: in other words, the boundaries are
stated such that the alterity of both parties can be maintained.
W hile the limits might not be concretely defined (after all, many
particulars do occur according to the master's "will")--they
work more on the level of boundaries which can constantly shift,
rather than of fixed borders-they set in place the arena in which
the contest of wills takes place. It is the contract that ensures that
even though the relationship between the masochist and the other
is one of master and slave, there is still a contest of wills: both
the master and the slave maintain their wills in this relationship.
54
READING BLINDLY
This is in direct contrast to the relationship of the sadist
and her or his victim, where the will of the other is completely
negated. When the sadist approaches her or his other, (s)he does
whatever (s)he wants to the other. In this manner, it is not what
(s)he does to the other that matters, it is the fact that (s)he does
it-{s)he does to the other precisely because (s)he can do it. This
is the very nature of the power relation between the sadist and
her or his other: the other is merely a victim to the will of the
sadist. Hence, it matters little exactly what is done-whether the
sadist beats her or his victim, whether the victim beats her or
him-as it is a mere manifestation of the fact that it is the sadist
who determines what happens. In this relationship, there is no
negotiation: the will of the victim is not considered at all, the
will of the victim is completely and utterly effaced.7
This is not to say that there are no similarities between the
sadist and the masochist; the aims of both are the same: plea
sure. Even if on the surface, pain seems to be inherent in the
masochistic contract, this is but a by-product as "in sadism no
less than in masochism, there is no direct relation to pain; pain
should be regarded as an
effect only."g The aim of both the sadist
and the masochist is pleasure; the difference is the manner in

which the other is conceived.
In the masochistic contract, the other remains wholly other,
whereas in sadism, there is no other.
One way of looking at it is that the sadist effaces the other
completely-there is a complete and utter imposition of her or
his will over that of her or his victim. Hence, one could consider
that the decision-making process of the sadist is based on her
or his whims. Whether these whims are calculated, strategic, or
merely random, off the cuff, is irrelevant; what remains crucial is
that there is no consideration whatsoever of either the other or the
particularity of the situation that (s)he is in. Another possibility
The Contract
55
is that the sadist is subsuming her or his victim under her or his
conception-this would be an a priori concept to which the sadist
applies in any and every situation. In either case, the other (as
victim) is wholly and completely made self. In effect, the other
is effaced precisely through the simulation of the other as self
the other is completely objectivised, the other is made victim by
making her into whatever91 want her or him to be.
In a comparison between the structures of relationship of the
sadist and the masochist, we are left with this difference: that
between terror and violence. This leads us to the question of
the third, and whether the third-the space of communication
remains free and open to negotiation between the parties.
In a relationship of violence, there is a power play, a contest
of wills, between the parties: the power relation is the result of a
negotiation, and contestation. This suggests that the space of the
third remains open-there is no effacement-where communi
cation can take place; the negotiation of power relations is one
of the potential manifestations of this process of communica
tion, undetermined and always situational. So, even if one of the
wills eventually overpowers the other, both wills remain alterior
to the other, both wills remain singular.
Terror occurs when this space is denied-terrorism is precisely
when the third is taken hostage. For instance, the event when
planes crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, is
an act of terrorism not because it was the people within the towers
who were taken hostage, but because it was the public--or, more
precisely, public opinion-that was. The public had no negotia
tion power in this event; there was an imposition of a particular
view on them by both the perpetrators of the plane attacks and
the state. The people in the building themselves hardly mattered;
in this case, they were completely effaced as singularities and
were just considered as a group that perished-they were literally
56
READING BLINDLY
"victims of terror," as their effacement was the act of terror. This

is why the actual number of people who perish in terror attacks
rarely matters.1O The space of the third is taken away from the
public; even if one contends that they can choose to accept or
not accept the versions of the event that they are told, these are
merely options.11 In the case of September 11, the fact that the
date itself has been hijacked by the event--or, to be more precise,
by the interpretation of that particular event, which amounts to a
recreation or a simulation of the event-shows the full profun
dity of the "Stockholm syndrome": not only is the public (who
are the hostages) complicit with the hostage takers, the public is
part of the terror itself, as it cannot exist without them.12
This is why violence resides in a question as opposed to a
statement: for only when there is a question is there a space for
potentiality, a space for negotiation. If the answers are already
known-in the sense of an a priori position without any space
for change, without any potentiality for differences, otherness
there is no negotiation. Instead, there is an imposition of one
over all the other possibilities: this is the realm of a statement,
the site of terror. This is precisely why a statement always is in
the form of a sentence-there is no more negotiation, the trial is
over, and this is the final judgment.
A QUESTION OF READING, OR "ART LIES IN THE GAP

BETWEEN THE PAINTING AND THE VIEWER"13
What happens when one reads? Or, more precisely, what hap
pens during the process of reading: does one impose a reading
onto a text, or does one read from the text? This is a question
of whether meaning arises from the text (even if one takes into
consideration that there is a process of interpretation that takes
place) or whether meaning is read into--imposed upon-a text.
The Contract
57
A sadistic mode of reading is one in which the text itself is

effaced, where there is absolutely no response to and with the
text. This happens when there is an a priori conception that
is imposed onto the text. In other words, there is the imposi
tion of a theory-which is nothing more than a framework, a
preconceived notion, through which one reads--onto a text.14
The result is a "text" that is simulated, as there is no theory
that can sustain itself in totality-in consistency with itself-if
one allows the text to remain open, to remain a text. This is an
attempt to close the text-in other words, to transform the text
into a book, to sentence upon a text a totality, a finality. This is
what any theory attempts to do: impose a closed system upon
the text and, by extension, push any other possibility into the
margins. In order for the theory to hold, parts of the text have to
be effaced, ignored, left out; this is precisely the exception, the
exclusionary gesture, that has to occur for any logic to sustain
itself, to close itself, as a totality. In order to maintain this total
ity, there either has to be a willful blindness to the exception(s)
within the text or a presupposition that there is a meaning that
lies beyond the text. The idea of a meaning that lies beyond the
text is much like the Platonian concept of the Idea-an Idea that
comes from above, a transcendental Idea that becomes an over
arching conception that binds any text, that imposes itself onto
every textY The Platonian Idea effaces the reader's element of
response: there is no longer any reading, negotiating with the
text, taking place. More radically, there no longer is a reader:
by attempting to possess the text within a totality, the reader
is swallowed by the text, or, more accurately, by attempting to
make the text whatever the reader wants the text to be, the simu
lated text swallows the reader. This is done precisely through
the function of the perfect seductress: by being "whatever you
want me to be," the text has seduced the reader into its void,
58
READING BLINDLY
into its abyss. More than just an "I try to consume you such that
you become me," it is a "by consuming you, I become you." Or,
even more radically, "I consume you and then I become what I
think you should be." Hence, the self-in the form of the reader
is held hostage by the simulated text, or the text that the reader
simulates to match her or his desires. In an attempt at making the
text hostage to the reader, the reverse also happens-both text and
reader are bound by the Idea. The simulation of the text in order
to match the Idea-which is, by definition, simulated as well, as
there is no way of knowing this Idea; it is transcendental-is what
effaces any possibility of reading. And, by extension, if there is no
reading that is taking place, there is no longer a reader (perhaps a
viewer only): ultimately, the simulation effaces the self as reader.
By attempting to efface the other, the self is sucked in by the void
and becomes nothing as well. Instead of reading, the self only
sees, views, gazes at the text, and in return, the text gazes back at
the reader, looks back at the reader: both are drawn into a realm of
simulation, the differences between both are flattened, equalized,
wiped out. And in the end, there is neither text nor reader.
In order to respond to, and with, the text as such, the reader
needs to maintain the otherness of the text whilst responding.
For this to happen, the text must always be approached but never
subsumed. It is this ga(r-this space between the reader and the
text, the space which is created and bound by the contract
in which negotiation takes place. The ga(r-the skin between
the parties on which communication takes place-is the place
where there is the potentiality for reading. Only within the gap
can the reader potentially respond to and with (for one must
never forget that one is in a subjective position) the text whilst
maintaining the radical otherness of the text. The centrality of
the reader's position must be maintained, as it is only this posi
tion that allows one to take full accountability for and to the text.
The Contract
59
If one adopts the false modesty of a decentralised position, one

is actually saying that one is the absolute centre-I am afraid to
take up a central position because I really believe that I affect
everything, as everything actually revolves around me-which
is the problem of the Levinasian position discussed earlier. In
order to have a true response, a full understanding of the other
must never be assumed, even as much as it is attempted.
The text that is being read maintains its otherness from the
reader (who is central) when the reader maintains a certain blind
ness to it. In other words, it is only when the reader does not claim
full knowledge over the text but is in continual negotiation with it
that the text remains fully other. It is the space, the gap, between
the reader and the text that is the site of reading, for it is this gap
that ensures that "understanding is [always] in want of understand
ing": the reader is responding to the text whilst acknowledging that
it is impossible to fully understand the text, all the while realizing
that understanding itself brings with it a non-understandability}6
It is this gap, between understanding and non-understandabil
ity, this gap within understanding itself, that ensures that reading
can even begin to take place.
To explore this, we have to take a detour back to Venus in
Furs. For, even as much as the contract between Wanda and
Severin was negotiated, we must always remember that each
and every time the issue of the contract was brought up, Severin
was "burning with fever."17 The signing of the contract requires
a "blind passion,"18 and this removal from the cognitive realm is
exemplified by the way in which Severin conceives of his state
of affairs: "The comic side of my situation is that I can escape
but do not want to; I am ready to endure anything as soon as she
threatens to set me free."19 This aporetic situation that Severin
finds himself in-of choosing enslavement-results in him hav
ing to lead parallel existences of Severin (the one who chose)
60
READING BLINDLY
and one that is "no longer Severin, but Gregor"20 (the one with
out will), as the two forces cannot be embodied in the same
name. In some way, "Gregor" is the manifestation of Severin's
fantasy, as "with [him], everything takes root in the imagina
tion,"21 as is the "mistress" (as opposed to Wanda), as this is the
role that she has put on "merely to be agreeable to [Severin],
to fulfill [his] dreams."22 But it is not as if the "mistress" is
a role that is completely foreign to Wanda, one that is forced
upon her. In fact, the role of the "mistress" is supplementary to
her in its fullest sense-other to her, in the sense of a persona
added on, yet at the same time "something that was already in
[her] ... [that] might never have seen the light of day had [he] not
aroused and cultivated these tendencies."23 However, whenever
these two collide-the cognitive world of Severin and the fan
tasy of Gregor-at the point when fantasy (and imagination)
becomes real, there is a nightmare situation: at the point when
Severin declares, "Here indeed was the despotic woman of my
dreams,"24 instead of rapture, Severin finds himself in a night
mare situation, something which Wanda anticipated when she
asked, "What will happen when I fully satisfy your wishes ...
when I fulfill your ideal and kick and whip yoU?"25
The nightmare of a fulfilled fantasy is caused not by what
Severin cannot see-after all, Wanda only does to him what
the contract between them allows-but rather by seeing all too
clearly what the contract spells out: it is precisely the latent ten
dencies in Wanda that now have "seen the light of day," made
visible by the terms of the contract, that are the source of Sever
in's nightmare. Severin's fantasy is to be the "slave" to an ideal
ized Wanda (in the form of the "mistress"); his nightmare begins
when this fantasy is realized through his transubstantiation into
Gregor. It is the distance that is created by the form, the ritual,
The Contract
61
of the contract that allows Severin pleasure; the moment it is

actualized, there is a nightmare situation. It is for this reason that
there has to be an escape clause in their contract--even if that
clause is death-in order to allow Severin (and Wanda) to retain
a level of subjectivity and choice. It is when the fantasy of being
completely effaced is fulfilled, when Severin is completely
objectivised (as Gregor), that the "comic side of [his] situation . ..
that [he] can escape but [does] not want to"26 disappears. After
all, one must remember that at the point of signing the contract,
Severin was blind to what he was agreeing to, not just because
he was "carried away by a madness of passion,"27 but because
he could not see what he was signing: "she gently took hold of
my hand and my name appeared at the bottom of the contract."28
It is this blindness at the signing of the contract that allows him
his momentary "sweet rapture,"29 and it is this nonseeing which
also sustains his fantasy. In fact, the moments in which Sever
in's fantasy is ruptured-his moments of suffering-are caused
precisely by seeing too clearly; the moments when Gregor is not
blind to the fact that he is also Severin.
Severin's fantasy requires a double blindness: to the fact
that Gregor is also Severin; and to the fact that Wanda and the
mistress are one and the same. It is only when Gregor is blind
to Severin and there is a veil between Wanda and the mistress
that this fantasy is sustained. To be more precise, the fantasy is
sustained in this double blindness because there is a gap-the
space for imagination-where Wanda can become "the despotic
woman of [his] dreams": the key here is that in order for Sev
erin's fantasy to continue, the mistress has to be his mistress;
the moment the gap between the mistress and Wanda is bridged,
when Severin's "fantasies [are taken] too seriously,"30 when they
become too visible, it is ruptured, destroyed.
READING BLINDLY
62
"WHAT Is To BE DONE?" OR How TO READ

WHILE MAINTAINING RADICAL OTHERNESS
"What is to be done?" is Lenin's question that continues to haunt
us and must never be answered, for this is a question that calls for
a prescription-a method that can be applied-which in effect
effaces all situations, effaces all texts. The moment Lenin set out
to answer the question, he set in place a revolution-a continual
circle which ends up exactly where it begins-which ensured the
end to any possibilities. That is, unless one posits that perhaps the
possibility of anything new occurring lies within the repetition of
something old: this is akin to Alain Badiou's conception of an
Event, in which he claims that anything new is never completely
different-it is a "new world within an old world," an opening up
of a radical space within the existing world. In Badiou's concep
tion of possibilities, one does not attempt to recreate an entirely
new entity-this would be akin to creating another whole, which
is a totalitarian gesture, as all one has done is replace the old
with another one, substituting one logic for another-but instead
maintains the gap between the "old world" and the new way of
seeing this world (the "new world" is precisely this gap), such
that there is no finalization to this possibility itself.3l
If "What is to be done?" is not seen
as
a question seeking an
answer, seeking a prescription, but instead is seen as a proscription

a negation of itself-then instead of a totalitarian gesture, it becomes
a question that contains nothing but a pure question.J2 When his ques
tion is seen in that light, Lenin then becomes the great proscriber, he
who opens up the eternal question-the continual revolution-in the
full knowledge that
in a proper revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future
is neither simply fully realized, present, nor simply evoked
as a distant promise that justifies present violence. It is
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63
rather as if, in a unique suspension of temporality, in

the short circuit between the present and the future, we
are-as if by Grace-for a brief time allowed to act as if
the utopian future were (not yet fully here, but) already
at hand, just there to be grabbed. Revolution is not expe
rienced as a present hardship we have to endure for the
happiness and freedom of the future generations but as
the present hardship over which this future happiness and
freedom already cast their shadow-in it, we already are
free while fighting for freedom, we already are happy
while fighting for happiness, no matter how difficult
the circumstances. Revolution is not a Merleau-Pontyan
wager, an act suspended in the futur anterieur, to be legit
imized or delegitimized by the long term outcome of the
present acts; it is as it were its own ontological proof, an
immediate index of its own truth.33
In exactly the same vein, reading is an act that is its own "onto
logical proof'-there is nothing to compare with (in order to
legitimize or delegitimize itselt}-as it is its own validation, in
and through itself. Just like Nietzsche's gay scientist, Lenin's rev
olution "offers a model for cognition that cannot simply account
for itself or maintain its results within the assumed certitudes of
a controlled system of knowledge."34 Simply put, "What is to be
done is what is to be done."
In order to maintain this gap, must the reader, then, not remain
distant-maintain a proper distance35-towards the text? This is
not unlike the coldness that Gilles Deleuze speaks of in Coldness
and Cruelty when he says, "Coldness is the essential feature of
the structure of perversion; it is present both in the apathy of the
Sadist, where it figures as theory, and in the ideal of the Masoch
ist, where it figures as fantasy."36 In both cases, although with
radically differing end results, coldness and distance play the
same role-a space between the self and the other such that the
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gap that is required for jouissance can be maintained. After all,

what other reason to be a sadist or masochist if not enjoyment,
if not pleasure: "Pain ...has no sexual significance at all; on the
contrary it represents a desexualization which makes repetition
autonomous and gives it instantaneous sway over the pleasures of
resexualization."37 And it is not as if there is a direct link between
repetition and pleasure-in the sense of "since I like this particu
lar act, I shall do it over and over again"-but, more radically,
instead of repetition being experienced as a form of behav
ior related to pleasure already obtained or anticipated,
instead of repetition being governed by the idea of expe
riencing or reexperiencing pleasure, repetition runs wild
and becomes independent of all previous pleasure. It has
itself become an idea or ideaP8
Since the book can never be completed, as an uncontestable sin
gle reading can never be reached, reading itself is an act of rep
etition, one that brings pleasure not because it is a repetition of
a pleasurable act, but because it is a futile attempt at completing
the book. It is the very repetition of this process (in the realiza
tion that it is never completable) that brings the reader pleasure,
as it is precisely the gap-in the form of the fact that the reader
will never be able to totalize the text into a book-that ensures
that the pleasure principle is never ruptured. There is nothing
beyond the pleasure principle; pleasure is the principle.39 How
ever, as we have already noted, the pleasure that Severin experi
ences is one that is only obtained in blindness. In this sense, it
is a pleasure that precedes the contract itself; it is precontractual
and, in fact, prerelational: it is a pleasure that lies beyond the
phenomenon that is the relation between Severin and Wanda.
This is the precise reason why Severin has to be blind at the
moment of its inception: he was blind to everything except the
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65
possibility of its relationality. Hence, it is a pleasure that is both

desubjectivised and deobjectivised; one cannot say anything of
either the subjects in pleasure or the pleasure itself. In this sense,
the pleasure principle is ultimately a principle that is unknow
able, a principle that we are blind to. At best, it is an assumed
relationality, a positing: pleasure is no longer a principle but
rather a desire to be (and to be a desire).
Reading: an eternal return of the same-the same process,
the same rules, the same laws, a continual repetition, always the
same, but just slightly different. It is the ritual, the rite of read
ing, that brings about pleasure: reading as if reading were pos
sible, as if knowing the text were possible, as if
in a unique suspension of temporality, in the short cir
cuit between the present and the future, we are-as if
by Grace-for a brief time allowed to act as if the uto
pian future [where we fully understand the text] were
(not yet fully here, but) already at hand, just there to be
grabbed.40
What is crucial is that the reader recognizes the "as if' aspect:
the pleasure comes from the fact that (s)he reads "as if' this is
possible, while realizing that it is an impossibility. In this man
ner, the reading always goes on, the reader is always reading.
The moment the reader thinks (s)he has read the text, has fully
understood it, and can put away the book, the rite is over, the
reading is over, and with it, all the pleasure of the ritual.
In the unwillingness to totalize the text (into a book), what
occurs is not only the hesitation of the reader to impose a par
ticular frame onto the text, but, more radically, the reader is
reading her or himself while reading the text. The reader is the
mirror onto which both the text and the reader project them
selves. Language is the way in which the reader approaches both
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the text and her- or himself; however, the reader also approaches
language through her- or himself. What this suggests is that the
reader reads the text and her- or himself through her- or himself:
(s)he becomes the medium through which reading occurs and
also the mirror through which (s)he is read. In order to do so,
the reader must be other to her- or himself while reading; (s)he
must maintain an otherness or an awareness of otherness to her
or himself. Reading then becomes the process in which both the
reader and the text are read.
It is this hesitation that becomes crucial in the face of the
attempted seduction by the text, when, for a brief moment, it
allows the reader to imagine that (s)he has mastered it, conquered
it, and subsumed it under her or his conceptions, fully tamed it.
Or, more precisely, it is the moment when the reader allows her
or himself to imagine that the text has been conquered that (s)he
is seduced, and it is through this imagined taming of the text that
the illusion of the book is formed. This is the spectre of Socratic
thinking that continues to haunt us-the trace of optimism that
we can know it all whilst forgetting the fact that the Idea is
always an ideal, unattainable-and it is this that draws us in,
traps us, and ensnares us in our own vanity. For language both
ensures that the text will continually live (as the rhetorical ele
ment can never be fully disciplined by grammar) and is also the
trap that ensnares the reader (it is also the rhetorical element that
allows the reader to imagine that (s)he can read anything into the
text); at certain moments, the text whispers the words of the per
fect seductress: "I can be whatever you want me to be." It is the
hesitation of the reader-the Dionysian gesture of pessimism
that one will never be able to fully understand anything or know
anything for sure-that can save the reader from subsuming the
text.41 This is because the Dionysian gesture-the abandonment
of the individual self-allows the reader to read her- or himself
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67
while reading the text; only when the reader doesn't posit her- or
himself as the centre of everything, only when there is a moment
of reading from the self (this is inevitable) whilst acknowledg
ing that the self is not the centre of everything, is there a chance
of reading oneself, of catching a glimpse of oneself, of reading
in its fullest sense of the in between, the becoming of the text
and the reader. In effect, what is being read is the negotiation
between the reader and the text-they are an inseparable entity.
Therefore, it is not so much that the reader has to maintain a
form of radical otherness (in the sense of maintaining a distance,
a coldness) towards the text, but more that reading itself is a
form of radical otherness, as what is being read (through the pro
cess of reading) is other to both the reader and the text. It is in
the simulated other, the imagined other-the site of communica
tion that lies between the reader and the text-that everything is
negotiated: it is in the gap between the reader and the text-the
third-that reading is imagined, that the possibility of reading
itself can begin to be imagined.
However, just because this space is imagined does not mean
it is devoid of rules-after all, reading occurs in and through
language. Hence, to think of the possibility of reading, one must
also consider the very rules that reading operates on, in, within.
TilE READER BEFORE THE LAW,

OR WHAT Is My RIGHT OF INSPECTION
You have the authority to tell yourself these stories but
you cannot gain access to the squares of that other one.
You are free but there are rules.42
Citation is the voice of the other and it highlights the
double playing of the narrative authority. We constantly
hear the footsteps of the other, the footsteps of others in
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language, others speaking in Stephen's language or in

Ulysses', I mean the book's language ...It reminds us that
we have been caught up in citation ever since we said the
first words mama or papa.43
To deny that there are rules to reading is just not possible: after
all, we are born into language, and its rules bind us from the very
beginning. What has to be thought about is the space in which this
negotiation between the reader and the text takes place, and the
laws of engagement governing this space, as these laws determine
(or at least set the boundaries for) what can potentially occur.
However, even with the laws of engagement, there is nothing to
prevent one seeing whatever one chooses to see; by extension,
one can interpret in whatever manner one desires. But it is not
as if one is interpreting in a vacuum: one is bound not only by
language, or, to be more precise, by the rules of the particular lan
guage that one is reading in, but also by the rules of the genre. The
genre always brings with it its baggage of historicity and along
with it, its rules and laws that continue to haunt the pages of the
text. The page is never completely alone but is always alone-it is
singular within a universality-as any reading, and, by extension,
interpretation, of the page brings along with it all the potential
readings that are absent; the "footsteps of the other [readings]" are
always walking with us. In this sense, reading is akin to playing
checkers: the number of moves is almost infinite, and each and
every move one makes is haunted by the (absent) potentiality of
all the other moves. Even more than that, even though the move
that is made is the one which directly affects the game, the strat
egy of the game is always also haunted by the moves that were
not made; in effect, there are always multiple games of checkers
played at the same time, some are just not as obviously seen. But
it is not as if one can make any move one chooses to; the moves
are always bound by the rules of the game, and the fact that one
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69
has to move (even if it puts one in a worse-off situation) is also

determined by the rules. This is the contract that one signs with
one's opponent, who is also one's partner (without the other, one
cannot even begin to play the game); these are also the same rules
that one signs with the game. More precisely, it is these rules that
allow both players to engage and negotiate with each other within
the game, to have the game as a negotiation, to negotiate as a
game. In the same way, when one reads, there is a contract that
one signs with the text, and also with oneself: these are the laws of
seeing when you read; these are your rules of engagement.
The text attempts to bind the reader-this is when narrative,
characters, and grammar come in-to a particular reading, as
discourse lays down the law, it dictates one's rights, its
jurisdiction extends to a form of control. ..as soon as the
author, narrator, or character speaks, the visible reduces to
a single meaning, or at least a single focus of meaning.44
This is the violence of the context that attempts to bind the
reader, and it is this that Caliban noted when he cursed, "The red
plague rid you for learning me your language":4s he realized that
this was the moment he was fettered to Prospero, for he could no
longer utter the words that short-circuit any attempt to subsume,
the truly transgressive "I don't know."46 Ironically, it is also lan
guage that allows the reader some measure of freedom, as it
is the inability of grammar to subsume figural language under
its rules that ensures the continual slippage of meaning. It is in
that space, that gap between grammar and trope, that the reader
has space.47 It is in this space that the reader makes choices and
interpretations; in this space, the infinite moves within the finite
rules are made. It is for this reason that "anybody at all, pro
vided he is skilled at looking, has a right of inspection, which
also means the right to interpret whatever is taken into view.,,48
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It is a site of power, a contestation of power, between the reader

and the text: each choice that is made by the reader is a moment
when (s)he is "appropriating this right with an unpardonable
violence"49 to the text, at the same moment when the text is
attempting to bind the reader (one has to be "skilled at look
ing"; there is a particular skill that one has to acquire before one
looks) to its will, to its law.
Since each moment of reading is a new contestation, a new
situation, with the potentiality for a new outcome, one will never
know what will occur in advance (if anything occurs at all). There
fore, each act of reading is a true event where "we can no longer
discern the limit, no more than we can determine the equiva
lence ... we are bewitched by the image of an open circle."50 The
circle remains open as there is never completeness, there is never
a totality; the text never becomes a book.
It is the Dionysian gesture of abandoning the individuality
of the subject and entering into the spirit of the text that allows
the reader to be free, to be a singularity. This is because one is
only truly singular when one realizes that this singularity exists
within a universality. This is exactly the same notion that applies
to reading: the reader exists not as a separate entity from the
text, but rather as part of the text itself. Hence, there is abso
lutely no possibility of a prescription on how to read; it is only
while reading that the reader can discover what it is to read, in
the same way as Aristotle's judge in the Nicomachean Ethics
has to discover what it is to be ajustjudge whilstjudging. There
is no a priori knowledge of what it is to be just: each judgment
is unique, each judgment a singular case. Hence, each time the
judge judges, there is a judging of how just (s)he is. And since
each time the notion of what isjust is different, and the situation
is different, the judge is, in effect, different as well. In the same
manner, not only is the reader reading the text into existence
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71
(in the sense of responding to and with the singularity of the

text), the reader is reading her- or himself into existence.
Reading is not only the reconstruction of the text, but also the
deconstruction of the reader; the negotiated space between the
reader and the text is the scene where the constructions occur.
Hence, the process of reading is the impossible exchange in
which both reader and text are objects for each other: nothing
is exchanged except for the fact that the reader and the text read
each other. In the space between the reader and the text-with the
reader as other, and the text as other-where both seduce each
other in their radical otherness, nothing happens except reading.
In Harold Bloom's line, "Imaginative literature is otherness,"51
the key word is not "otherness" but "imaginative," for if read
ing is the negotiation between the radical otherness of both the
reader and the text, then surely it is the act of creativity-the act
of imagination-which allows a momentary third to be formed
between the two, that is, the cypher. As Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari have taught us, imagination is not random: in order to
be truly radical, imagination takes skill and craft. In other words,
to be truly transgressive, one does not go directly against the
law but rather takes the law itself to its extremes-the imagina
tive moment comes when the law is pushed to its limits. This is
why the fragment, the detail, is what is always most subversive:
whenever a single detail is taken into consideration, the totality
of a concept falls apart; the singularity is always an exception to
the rule. This is because
judgment [like language] engenders the same possibility
of reference that it also excises. Its error can therefore
not be localized or identified in any way; one could not,
for example, say that the error stems from language, as
if language were an entity that existed independently of
judgment or judgment a faculty that could exercise its
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activity in a nonlinguistic mode. To the extent that judg
ment is a structure of relationships capable of error, it
is also language. As such, it is bound to consist of the
very figural structures that can only be put in question by
means of the language that produces themY
This is why in a court of law, one can only prove beyond reason
able doubt: one must hark back to reasor, more precisely, to
the figure of reason-in order to suppress the fact that one can
never prove beyond doubt. In every sentence, there is always doubt,
an unknown, an unknowable, that will unravel the very basis on
which the decision is made. In reading the "letter of the law," the
law itself is unraveled: eachjudgment is singular, each judgment is
specific and cannot be universalized, totalized. Hence, each time a
judgment takes place, it is ajudgment that is an exceptional judg
ment, ajudgment in exception to the law in general. Perhaps, then,
it is time to alter the proverb from "The devil is in the details" to a
more succinct "The devil is the detail."
In other words, each time an act of reading takes place, there
is an act of imagination: one must be "skilled at looking" in that
one must have a certain set of skills and know the laws of look
ing, the laws of reading, but at the same time, it is the law that
also allows one to read, to read in a way that is in exception
to the law, is subversive to the law. This is not a reading that
refuses to respond to the text but is, more radically, a reading
that reads whilst not fully knowing what it reads nor even what
it is, a reading that allows reading to continue becoming by not
claiming to understand, subsume, a reading that is a continual
discovery, an unveiling, of both the text and the reader her- or
himself. It is the realization, the remembering, of the contract
that lies between the reader and the text that allows for the
potentiality of reading that does not efface the other, that does
not efface the text. The remembering of the contract is also a
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73
remembering that reading is a result of that contract and not a

preordained right, not a naturally occurring phenomenon, that
the possibility of reading is due to this agreement with the text
itself. This suggests that reading can never be extrapolated, uni
versalized, totalized, as referentiality that is both the result and
the basis of reading-and language itself-refers ultimately to
nothing except itself: "the innumerable writings that dominate
our lives are made intelligible by a preordained agreement as
to their referential authority; this agreement however is merely
contractual, never constitutive."53 Furthennore,
it is impossible to say where quotation ends and "truth"
begins, if by truth we understand the possibility of refer
ential verification. The very statement by which we assert
that the narrative is rooted in reality can be an unreliable
quotation; the very document, the manuscript, produced
in evidence may point back not to an actual event, but to
an endless chain of quotations reaching as far back as the
ultimate transcendental signified God, none of which can
lay claim to referential authority.54
Hence, each time there is reading, each time we read something,
what is being imagined is reading itself.
Even though reading is self-referential, this does not mean
that it is an exercise in self-centredness, of privileging the self, of
having the self as the locus, as the focus of everything. Even as
the only honest position of reading is through the self, this does
not mean that when one reads, the only thing that one reads is the
self; otherwise, we are back to a sadistic mode of reading where
everything else is effaced. In order to avoid that, perhaps, then,
we have to think of the possibility of an event (since reading is an
event, always potentially new) that is not solely of the self.
Usually, one would conceive of the movement towards an
event in the following manner: something is unknown, then it
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is known, and then there is an occurrence (the event). This is a

conceptualization of an event that privileges the self: we don't
know something, we discover something, and then it occurs.
But for a moment, let us consider this possibility: what if the
movement is not from impossibility to possibility, then actuality
(something is unknown, we figure it out, and then we do it), but
rather from impossibility to actuality and then to possibility (we
cannot conceive of it, it happens, and then we think of how it did
so after the fact)? In this way, even though imagination requires
a "skill in looking," it is not a purely cognitive gesture that is
located in the self. For if the possibility (which is captured in
the imagination) is only known after, or at best, during, the actu
alization of an event, it is then a gesture that cannot be known
before the event. In effect, it is a gesture that is hidden from the
knowledge of the self: it is a gesture that the self is blind to. As
Jean Baudrillard never lets us forget,
we must retain for the event its radical definition and its
impact in the imagination. It is characterized entirely,
in a paradoxical way, by its uncanniness, its troubling
strangeness-it is the irruption of something improbable
and impossible-and by its troubling familiarity : from
the outset it seems totally self-explanatory, as though pre
destined, as though it could not but take place.55
In this manner, an event is the moment in which possibility and
actuality coincide: the moment of its actualization is also the
moment when its possibility is conceived; the possibility of
the event could only be conceived of during its actualization. It
was only at the moment Hannibal actually led his Carthaginian
army across the Alps that the possibility of an army marching
inland and actually attacking Rome itself could be conceived:
at that moment, a previously impossible action occurred and
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75
was conceived of at the same time. More importantly, it was only

through Hannibal's imagination (not of the possible, but rather of
the impossible) that this event occurred. It was only in the con
ceiving of the unknowable, a conceiving of something which the
results of, or even the possibility of, Hannibal was blind to, that
the event could take place. At the same time, the event could only
become a possibility because Hannibal responded to a call that he
was "predestined" to respond to. Legend has it that he swore that
he would always be an enemy of Rome; when he took the vow,
there was no way that he could have known that he would lead an
attack on Rome, but once he had chosen to do so, the necessity
of having to reach Roman soil before encountering the enemy
almost forced him to go over the Alps, "as though [the march
over the mountains] could not but have taken place." Hence, Han
nibal's choice to lead his army over the mountains was (n)either
a sole result of his cognitive imagination (n)or just a fulfillment
of a vow. Perhaps if we consider reading from this light, or from
this position of semidarkness, it is then a process of both "skilled
looking" and a blindness at the same time. In stumbling around,
the skilled reader begins to read; the skilled reader only can read
by stumbling around. What is actually read is unknown till the
moment it is read; what is read then becomes glaringly obvious to
the person who has read it, but only because (s)he has read it.
Just as the justness of each judgment can only be decided at
the moment of judging, the truth of each reading lies in the singu
larity of the reading itself. Each reading is then a possible read
ing, a contingent reading, and also a true reading, as truth itself
is contingent. This means that each reading is hence a positing, a
hypothesis, a test site for both what is read and reading itself.
This then leaves me with a situation that is impossible. I have
attempted to lay out a process of what happens whenever one
reads; by showing that it is an interplay between the reader and
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the text in the negotiated third, in which every instance of read

ing is a different instance and every meaning or interpretation
chosen is a pure choice (based on nothing but madness, chosen
in blindness), I am left with a situation in which all that can
be said is that every time one reads, what happens is reading
itself, a reading of both the text and the reader her- or himself. In
this sense, all that is left for me to do is to demonstrate reading
itself, and for that, I have chosen to read J. Hillis Miller's The
Ethics of Reading, Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, and the
fi 1m Stranger Than Fiction: the chosen texts are test sites for
reading. In science, what is being tested is both the object of
inquiry and the method of inquiry itself: the method tested being
science itself, what is being tested is the test itself. In the same
way, if these texts are texts about reading, what is being tested is
both the text (through reading it) and also reading itself. In some
way, they might be arbitrary choices-there is no good reason
to choose these particular texts over all the others; how good a
decision it is can only be evaluated after its choosing-but then
again, is there any decision that is not hinged on some form of
madness, some form of blindness?
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77
ENDNOTES
I. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, trans. Jean McNeil

(New York: Zone Books, 1999), 197.
2. "Two Contracts of von Sacher-Masoch" in von Sacher-Masoch,
Venus in Furs, 278.
3. Ibid., 279.
4. Ibid., 220 (italics original).
5.
Ibid., 221.
6.
Ibid.
7. In the case of Eugenie, it is not so much that she is liberated but

the fact that Dolmance, Madame de Saint-Ange, and Le Chevalier
de Mirvel choose to train her into a libertine and, more precisely,
to mold her, transform her, into the libertine of their desires. See
Marquis de Sade, Philosophy of the Boudoir, trans. Meredith X
(New York: Creation Books, 2000).
8. Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, trans. Jean McNeil (New
York: Zone Books, 1999), 121 (italics original).
9. T here is no longer a "who" in the relationship of the sadist and her
or his victim, for if the other is conceived of as a "who," then her
or his will still is part of the consideration-and this would not
allow the structure of sadism (where "it is not what I do to my vic
tim but that I do precisely because I am able to do so") to function.
Only if the victim is conceived of as a "what"-an object-can
the sadist impose her or his will completely.
I o. In many cases, there can be no person who perishes at all. For
instance, a bomb hoax can hold the public hostage whilst being
technically victimless (in the sense of not having phy sically
harmed anyone). Perhaps this is the perfection of terror, for a
bomb hoax holds the public hostage indefinitely, infinitely. If
there were a bomb and it went off, the damage would have taken
place; if it were found, it could be diffused. In the case of a hoax,
the bomb can never be found, and hence the terror remains-the
bomb is always waiting to explode, or, more radically, the bomb
has already exploded and the damage is just waiting to happen.
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78
II. The underlying assumption, that the event and its representation are
connected, are related, remains. In fact, critique of the representation

often strengthens the assumption itself: to claim that a representa
tion is inaccurate merely reinforces the presupposition that it can
be accurate-that there is a correlation between the two-in the
fi rst place.
12. As Lyotard so elegantly stated, "As soon as one makes a determi
nant use of the Idea, then it is necessarily the Terror. And then the
content of the Idea matters little." Lyotard and Thebaud, "Sixth
Day: The Faculty of Political Ideas," in Just Gaming, 92.
13. This was uttered by Slavoj Zizek at a summer seminar of the
European Graduate School, August 2004. He was speaking of the
space where art resides in reference to the painting, the painter,
and the viewer at a gallery. In many ways, he was responding to
the thoughts of Yves Klein with regards to art and the process,
rather then focusing on the product, the final outcome: the artist as
a craftsman, without necessarily producing the final object, with
out producing what is usually called the "work of art."
The same thought can be found in James L ord's A Giacomelli
Portrait (1980). In this novel, the painter Alberto Giacometti is
unable to produce a portrait for a friend despite painting one every
day. It is only at the end that the friend realizes that a portrait was
precisely being painted every day: Giacometti's portrait of him
lay not in the final product (which was always destroyed), but in
the act of painting, and communication, between the two of them.
14. In a conversation about theorists who do not respond to a text but
rather read it in order to gain "evidence" for their theories, Neil Mur
phy responded with the statement that they seem to be "reading by
recipe" and merely flipping through a text with a checklist.
15. This is precisely the manner in which Kant's categorical impera
tive works: even though the categorical imperative does not mean
that every result is exactly the same, the imposition of the same
framework (or concept) does suggest that the particularities of the
situation are not fully taken into consideration-every situation is
effaced by the a priori conception.
16. Hamacher, Premises, 1-43.
17. von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, 237.
The Contract
79
18. Ibid., 269.

19. Ibid., 202.
20. Ibid., 205. In fact, there are two distinct relationships in Venus
in Furs: one between Severin and Wanda, and the other between
Gregor and his mistress. The only time that the distinction is
blurred is when the mistress, in a moment of fright and startled
from her cognitive state, cries, '" Severin' . . . more frightened than
angry" (252).
21. Ibid., 178.
22. Ibid., 230.
23. Ibid., 200.
24. Ibid., 20 I .
25. Ibid., 200.
26. Ibid., 202.
27. Ibid., 221.
28. Ibid., 222.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 200.
31. A comprehensive meditation on this conception of the Event can
be found in Alain Badiou, Being and Event (2006).
32. The function of a true prescriber as a proscriber is explored in
Samuel Weber. "Afterword" in Lyotard and Thebaud, Just Gam
ing, 102-113. This is also addressed later, in the chapter "Read
ing. Or Just Gaming."
33. This was in reference to the utopian ideal of the Leninist revolu
tion and can be found in Slavoj Ziek, "A Plea for Leninist Intol
erance," Critical Inquiry 28, no. 2 (Winter 2002), http://www.
uchicago .edu/research/jn I-crit-inq/v28/v28n2.1.iek.htm I.
34. Ronell, The Test Drive, 156. Ronell was meditating on Nietzsche
and in particular the manner in which his scientificity was both a
basis of and the breaking point of science itself-a continual test
which both tested for and within itself. All that is ensured is that
science is a continual test. In this sense, all that remains is a ques
tion: "at some level, the correlated acts of discovery and invention
exceed the limits of what is knowable or even, as Jacques Derrida
has argued, strictly recognizable" (ibid.).
READING BLINDLY
80
35. A "proper distance" in the sense used by Jacques Lacan is when

one doesn't try to directly immerse oneself in the appearance and
thus attempt to bridge the gap between appearance and reality (as
if this were even possible). In maintaining a "proper distance," one
allows the fantasy of the appearance (that there is a correspond
ing reality) to play itself out; otherwise, in attempting to approach
too closely, it is not reality that collapses (there is no reality per
se) but rather the appearance itself, and with it the fantasy. This
is why "the Church as Institution always perceived zealots as its
ultimate enemies: because of their direct identification and belief,
they threaten the distance through which the religious institution
maintains itself' (Zizek, The Ticklish Subject, 267).
An attempt to bridge the distance between appearance and real
ity is a failure at understanding the role of symbolic structures
in maintaining normalcy. For instance, rules-and laws-func
tion not so much by their explicit statements (of what is allowed
and disallowed) but rather by the symbolic understanding of when
they apply and when they must be ignored. It is when one fails to
comply with the symbolic network, and not when one goes against
the explicit statements, that one has transgressed the rules.
In the context of reading, failure to maintain a "proper distance"
from the text would be an attempt to find the origin, the truth, of
the text by way of a "real reading," the result of which is that
the fantasy of reading itself-or the possibility of reading-would
collapse.
36. Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, 117.

37. Ibid., 120.
38. Ibid.
39. Of course, one cannot deny that there is something that is learned,
gleaned, from reading as well: to say that one is completely unchanged
after reading is just untrue. However, what is learnt-or what is
achieved from reading-which is really a question of what the
surplus is that comes about from the process of reading, is really
a moot question. This is always unknowable (at least in advance)
if the text is a text (as opposed to a book, which is knowable after
the first reading, which might as well be the last or only reading).
In this sense, the learning-or meaning-that comes from reading
81
The Contract
a text is akin to an emergent property that springs from a connec

tion-a communion-between two properties, strictly speaking,
not known in advance (at best, one can posit a guess from pre
vious situations that are similar). Each communion is an event,
where something potentially new might occur.
40. Slavoj Zitek, "A Plea for Leninist Intolerance," Critical Inquiry
(Winter 2002).
41. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche posits Apollonian (and later
Socratic) optimism as the totalitarian gestures that attempt to fully
comprehend-though the centering of all existence in the indi
vidual-life itself, and by doing so, drain life of all its vitality.
It is only the Dionysian gesture of pessimism that refuses com
plete knowledge-and, in fact, realizes that the individual is a
illusionary concept that merely brings "metaphysical comfort" to
the masses-that truly understands life itself. In The Test Drive,
Ronell posits that it is this same Dionysian spirit that refuses to
allow the stability (and hence "metaphysical comfort") of knowl
edge and continually tests any claim (and by virtue of this posi
tion, tests itself as well).
42. Jacques Derrida, Right of Inspection, trans. David Wills (New

York: Monacelli Press, (998), 1.
43. Helene Cixous, Stigmata (London: Routledge, 2005), 135.
44. Ibid,7.
45. William Shakespeare, The Tempest, I :2. Oxford: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1987.
46. When one doesn't know, one cannot be bound to anything, as a bind
always needs a consent of sorts (or, at the very least, the acknowl
edgment and recognition of it). This is why the utterance "I don't
know" can short-circuit any attempt at violence (in the form of
power through the strategy of negotiation): there is an immediate
break and refusal to negotiate. After that utterance, the only tactic
left is to resort to terror. It is for this reason that the idiot has been
such an figure of resistance in both literature and philosophy. An
excellent meditation on this figure can be found in Avital Ronell,
Stupidity (Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2003).
47. It is Paul de Man who continually reminds us of the tension between

grammar and the figure in language and grammar's inability to
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READING BLINDLY
subsume rhetoric under its logic. This can be found, amongst
other places, in Allegories of Reading.
48. Derrida, Right of Inspection, 30.

49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 36. A thinking of the impossibility of a closed hermeneutic
circle can be found in Hamacher, "Hermeneutical Ellipses: Writing
the Hermeneutic Circle in Schleimacher," in Premises, 44-80.
51. Harold Bloom, How to Read and Why (New York: Scribner,
2001), 19.
52. de Man, Allegories of Reading, 234 (additions are mine).
53. Ibid., 204.
54. Ibid.
55. Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil, 129-130.
PART II
READING(S)
Not that the act of reading is innocent, far from it. It is the
starting point of all evil.
-Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading
C HAPTER 3
REREADING MILLER
J STANDS BEFORE THE LAW
Before the Law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes

a man from the country, J, who asks to gain entry into the
Law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him
entry at the moment. J thinks about it and asks if he will
be allowed to come in later on. "It is possible," says the
doorkeeper, "but not now."1
In order for The Ethics of Reading to function as a prescription
on how to read, the Law to which both reading and the reader
must subscribe must be absolute. The Law-beyond both the
reader and the text itself-is what Miller relies on while con
tinually deferring the definition of precisely what this Law is.
In this manner, the Law-which comes before the reader and
which the reader and the text must stand before-is the fig
ure which Miller must rely on, but which he also cannot, as
READING BLINDLY
86
it continually slips away from him. Each time he attempts to

approach the Law, J begins to catch a glimpse of it, but each
attempt at definition promises to deliver something sometime,
"but not now."
For Miller, reading is only proper when it is faithful, not to
the text (what is written or claimed) but to the Law that lies
beyond the text itself, as true reading "is a far more fundamental
'I must' responding to the language of literature in itself."2 In
other words (to use a figure of speech, which is inevitable; one
cannot speak of it directly), in order to read ethically, the reader
must be faithful to the spirit of the text.3
Ethical reading: reading in fidelity to nothing but reading
itself.
Even as Miller claims that the Absolute Law that he is speak
ing of is contingent-"[the expressions of the law are] subject
to revision and re-vision, always 'idiomatic' in the sense that
they are good only for one time and place,
"4
in that they are
completely situational, and as such are "never a final and defin

itive expression. . . of the law as such"5-there is still a reliance
on the Law to exist above and beyond the text and the reader.
In this manner, the "law that is Absolute, empty air or an undif
ferentiated expanse of shining snow"6 must remain a transcen
dental Law.
It is for this reason that Miller has to approach-or attempt
to approach-the Law using examples: Kant, de Man, Eliot,
Trollope, James, and Benjamin. Not only is it that "no choice
of examples is innocent"7-Miller does nothing less than "take
responsibility"8 for that-but, more radically, each example is
part of a narrative, for "without storytelling, there is no theory
of ethics."9In this manner, The Ethics ofReading is not so much
a prescription of how to read ethically, but a demonstration by
way of telling a tale. And in exactly the same way that, as Miller
Rereading Miller
87
points out, "realism is catachresis, and it can be named only in

catachresis,"10 all of Miller's examples are catachrestic in the
precise sense that they are "genuinely performative. [The exam
ples] bring something altogether new into the world, something
not explicable by its causes."11 For it is not Kant, de Man, Eliot,
Trollope, James, and Benjamin whom Miller invokes, but rather
his reading (and hence a revision) of "Kant," "de Man," "Eliot,"
"Trollope," "James," and "Benjamin." Following Miller's own
premise that ethical reading or "genuine reading is a kind of
misreading ...as the re-reader or the 'second reader' must subject
himself or herself to a higher law than that ascertainable in the
text, namely the law to which the text itself was first subject,"'2
what is being read is not what Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope,
James, and Benjamin themselves claim within their own texts
(if that can even be known), but rather "something latent and
gather[ed] within it as a force to determine in me a re-vision of
what has been the latent law of the text I read."1J In other words,
what is being read is something other to the text itself.
In order to perform this task of genuine reading, Miller must
be able to (even if only momentarily) gain access to the Abso
lute Law, the primordial law to which the text was first subject.
The only way for Miller to have access to this Absolute Law
that governs both the reader and the text is to either simulate
the Law or to apply his own imperative to the text. Hence, this
is not so much an "I must," as Miller claims, but is rather the
Kantian imperative itself taken to the extreme, an "I will it to
be such." For in either simulating the Law or creating his own
imperative, what occurs is an effacement of both the text and
the reader. A "radical negation"'4 of both the text and the reader
occurs when this Absolute Law, which comes above and beyond
what is written on the page, takes precedence over everything
else: not just that "the text in this specific sense [of knowing
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READING BLINDLY
what the words on the page mean] is unreadable"15 but, more

radically, that in order for there to be any genuine reading,
the text in this specific sense must not be read. When the Law
precedes reading itself-when it is an ontological Law-both
the reader and the text are irrelevant. But since the imperative
cannot be made universal as "the text is idiomatic, a particular
case, subject to what James calls 'a beautiful law of its own, '''16
then every response to this Absolute Law is a result of the will
of the reader (in this case, Miller). Hence, it is not so much an
"I must" in the form of a calling (which Miller claims), for an
"I must" can only occur if there is a certain knowing, even if
not a complete understanding, of that Law-which is some
thing that Miller claims is not so-and if it is knowable, there is
no response and hence, no ethical element to it. However, if it is
completely unknowable, then the Law that is being responded
to is either a void or is simulated into existence, willed into
being. In effect, the reader would then be creating her or his
own Law and then reacting to it.
Miller has to simulate this Law into existence, as he is in an
aporetic situation. On one hand, he has pointed out that read
ing is something other to the text itself. On the other hand, he
is faced with an Absolute Law that he is compelled to respond
to, a Law that he can have no knowledge of. In both situations,
Miller can have no knowledge of either: both the Law which he
is responding to and the text that he is attempting to read properly
are, strictly speaking, unknowable. Hence, in order to even begin
reading, Miller has to then adopt a position of otherness to himself.
In Miller's conception of reading, the reader is always other to
her- or himself. This is reading as radical otherness: an interplay
between the otherness of the text and the Law latent to both text
and reader. However, this is another impossible situation-another
aporetic situation-how can one be both self and other at the
Rereading Miller
89
same time(unless it is a position of false decentredness)?'7 It is

for this reason that Miller has no recourse but to rely on a cata
chrestic gesture, reading himself as other, simulating himself;
there is a double simulation here-of himself as other, and also
of the Law itself.
The gesture of reading "as if' reading is even possible.
FOREVER UNDECIDED, OR
"WHO Is HIE WHO THAT Is READING?"
Though language contains within itself the evidence of its
own limitation, the knowledge of that limitation can never
be formulated in a way that is wholly reasonable or clear,
since any formulation contains the limitation again. IS
One might say that unreadability ...is to be defined as the
impossibility of distinguishing clearly between a linguis
tic reading and an ontological one.19
I am unable, finally, to know whether in this experience
I am subject to a linguistic necessity or to an ontological

one.20
Since the Law is the basis of all true reading, but does not con
form to the usual rules of reading-"reading is not of the text
as such but of the thing that is latent and gathered within it as a
force to determine in me a re-vision of what has been the latent
law of the text I read"21-it functions as the null set of read
ing. In order for Miller's argument to function, the Law has to
work just like the "0" does in arithmetic-allowing arithmetic
itself to function while not being bound by its rules. The Law
is not only the "radical negation of sign as value"22 but is the
negation of sign as sign-it is a pure negation, a void which is
completely unknowable, a "zero base"23 which allows reading
to occur yet at the same time undermines reading itself(one can
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READING BLINDLY
never verify whether a proper reading, a correct reading, or even

a true reading, has taken place). And it is for this reason that
Miller has to approach it allegorically.
The most apparent way in which this is done in The Ethics
of Reading is through the use of "Kant," "de Man," "Eliot,"
"Trollope," "James," and "Benjamin," not to mention "KafKa"

and "Yeats," not only as allegories of reading (since Miller can
not speak of an unknowable Law, he can only "speak" of read
ing through demonstrating reading of something else; he must
speak of "reading" through speaking of Kant), but as allegories
of themselves (Miller's "Kant" as an allegory of Kant, as the
actual Kant is always unknowable; to even begin speaking of
Kant, he must speak of "Kant"). In order to approach the Law,
Miller has to rely on allegories of allegories to speak of the
Law. In the same way as "the words on the page in a realistic
novel are the product of a double translation...[as] the truth of
correspondence in realism is not to objective things, or only
indirectly to objective things [but] rather to things as they have
already made a detour into necessarily distorted subjective
reflections,"24 Miller can only speak of the Law in terms of a
"subjective reflection": he must make a detour into his versions
of "Kant," "de Man," "Eliot," "Trollope," "James," and "Ben
jamin" and show how he reads them in order to demonstrate the
Law, as there is no way to speak of it directly. The Law-the
null set or the zero base-can only be simulated into reality;
there is no other way to approach it, as it does not conform to
the rules of its own system: one is only privy to the effects of
the Law, but never to the Law as such, which means that the
Law is outside itself-exterior to itself-as Law. The Law of
reading allows reading, but does not allow itself to be read
directly, which is precisely why Miller has to first re-vision
"Kant," "de Man," "Eliot," "Trollope," "James," and "Benjamin."
Rereading Miller
91
Hence, the null set must always be simply assumed: in Eliot's

words, Miller's account of the Law is one that is "mirrored ... in
[his] mind."25
It is Miller's unwillingness to universalize that prevents the
Law from becoming a totalitarian gesture; it makes the impera
tive "Kant ian" rather than Kantian.26 While this prevents the
gesture from becoming one that effaces both the reader and the
text, this opens another question: is Miller reading Kant in a
manner which fits his narrative? As "the function of such char
acters, once they are produced and put in circulation, is ethi
cal,"27 the question is whether Miller is re-visioning Kant as a
character, "Kant," in order to posit the ethical in his tale, The
Ethics of Reading. This fulfils the first part of Miller's "double
definition of an ethical act. .. it is a response to an irresistible
demand,"28 one that is "latent and gathered within [the text],"29
which compels this re-vision. But it is only through my act of
reading that the second half of this double definition-"an act
which is productive"30-is fulfilled. In my reading of Miller, the
"Kant" which I read is yet another from the "Kant" of Miller,
for I am now using "Kant" as a character in order to construct
my own narrative of ethical reading. The "productive act" is an
interplay of the two "Kants"-Miller's and mine-and the ethi
cal moment is the emergent property of this intercourse.
What this shows, then, is the presence of three (potential)
unknowns: the text, the outcome, and the reader. Since the
text can only be approached allegorically, it is, strictly speak
ing, unknown; if the outcome of reading is only an emergent
property of this interplay, then it is also unknown. The question
that arises from this is, if the entire process of reading is a true
event, must the reader then be an unknown entity as well? And,
by extension, in any instance of genuine reading, is the reader
reading her- or himself? If the reader is known in advance, then
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READING BLINDLY
the relative positions of both the text and the outcome can be
posited, even if the entire process is unknowable (in an absolute
sense). Hence, in each instance of true reading, whilst the reader
is not completely unknown (everyone has a vague idea of "who"
they are), the reader must be prepared to reread, or revise, her
self in order for this to take place.J' In this sense, the title of
Miller's text is incomplete; it should have read The Ethics of
Reading: "Kant, " "de Man," "Eliot," "Trol/ope, " "James, "and
"Benjamin" and "Miller. "
READING AND TESTING: READING AS TESTING

I f the text, the outcome of reading, and the reader are unknown,
how is any reading possible to begin with? If everything is
unknown, can anything happen? Reading, in the sense of a
"productive act," can only occur if the reader begins by posit
ing something-a positing that has absolutely no ground, and
no reason, and hence is an act of faith-and then tests it through
the act of reading. Reading as a test site, where all three entities
are being tested: the text, the reader, and reading itself. It is in
this context of testing-without any a priori knowledge of the
outcome-that the inscription on the side of the Sorbonne in
May '68, which proclaimed, "All power to the imagination,"J2
holds true. For it is only through imagination that one is able to
posit something before testing; before a true scientist begins to
test an unknown, (s)he has to first posit a hypothesis, and only
then can the testing begin. Like all true hypotheses, it is merely
a beginning, an attempt to enter into conversation with the test
site, without any truth claims made, as "a conviction may obtain
admission to science only when it ceases to be a conviction."33
This is imagination in the precise sense of the approach to sci
ence that Nietzsche speaks of-a "scientificity that is linked to
Rereading Miller
93
art and play "34-which opens up the potential for new discover
ies, new thoughts, and true events. In this way,
experimentation supplants the Goal, the collapse of telos
and history, without escaping the precariousness that used
to be associated with goals of action. Thought would no
longer be bound to truth or falsity but turned into the
interpretations and evaluations of nonfinite experiments,
summoned by interpretations of forces and evaluations
of power.35
When true reading occurs, it is a case of an experiment in read
ing reading reading: what occurs is communication in the sense
that Lucretius posits-a negotiation between unknowns where
the outcome is an event. In a true reading, one can only adopt the
position of the
infans:
one that is prelanguage, preknowing, and
preunderstanding. Everything that emerges from the process of

reading-any "meaning" that is formed about the text, the reader,
and the interplay of the two-is from the process itself.36
[Of course, the moment that the figure of the infans is uttered,
we are in a problematic position: once it is uttered, we are
already in language, and as such, there is no figure of the
in/am
that is possible, yet without this possibility, we are resigned to

the fact that one is forever constrained, bound, by the rules of
language that precede us. Thus, we have no choice but to speak
of this figure as if it were even possible to do so: we have to
speak of a prelanguage within language; this is where imagina
tion is crucial to proper reading. In order to test the possibility
of proper reading, in order to even begin to posit its potentiality,
we have to first imagine that it is possible, we have to read as if
we have never read before and yet can read.]
The imagination that is a fundamental part of reading requires
craft and skill; it is not a random process: "acts of imagination
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READING BLINDLY
[are] rule bound, made to submit to laws of internal consistency,

continuity, probability, and moderation."37 And even if we fol
low Miller's claim that "the pen . .. seems to do the thinking for
Trollope,"38 as if the creation of characters were a "spontaneous
and uncalculated 'conception,"'39 an "auto-insemination"40 that
is divorced from rational thought and authorial control, this still
does not refute the fact that in order for the characters to be born,
impregnated into the novel, if you will, there has to be craft on
the part of Trollope. This is the kind of imagination-that which
involves skill and craft-that Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
proclaim as the key to moving from the "real to the virtual,"
a strategy that is truly radical not because it is oppositional in
logic to the dispositif, but because it takes the dispositif itself
to its extremes.41 Transposed to the context of reading, the act
of imagination is precisely the gesture that is required for an
ethical reading, a "genuine reading [which] is a kind of mis
reading. [Its] value ... against all reason, lies in its difference
and deviation from the text it purports to read."42 The transgres
sion of Trollope-through the imaginative gesture-was not so
much in the fact that "he has perpetuated a kind of fraud, that
he has secretly undermined the values of his society"43 while
he attempted to gain legitimate entry into that very society, but
precisely because he demonstrated that society itself is a fraud:
the "counterfeit production [that] is then passed off as legitimate
coin,"44 the "simulacra of the others in his novels"45 is the very
reflection of society-no one can tell the difference. Miller can
only make his point about Trollope's self-contradictory claim by
pretending to be able to distinguish Trollope from "Trollope,"
even though both are but readings of "Trollope." Ironically, it
is this performance of the ability to distinguish "Trollope" from
"Trollope" which demonstrates "Trollope's" radicalness-the
inability to distinguish the two is precisely what allows Trollope
Rereading Miller
95
back into his society; the simulated separation is what allows

Miller his narrative. But at the same time, it is this act of imagi
nation by Miller-this positing of the difference between the
"Trollope" of An Autobiography and the "Trollope" who signs
off below the title of Orley Farm-that allows him to test his
hypothesis, that allows him to read.
PUTTING J BACK BEFORE THE LAW

"What do you still want to know, then?" asks the gate
keeper. "You are insatiable." "Everyone strives after the
law," says the man, "so how is it that in these many years
no one except me has requested entry?" The gatekeeper
sees that J is already dying and, in order to reach his
diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, "Here no
one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned
only to you. I'm going now to close it."46
Each act of reading is unique, as J finds out: "this entrance was
assigned only to you." It is for this reason that it is not only
the writer who must "take responsibility and continue to take
responsibility"47 for her or his work but also the reader. In read
ing the work, the reader is also responding to the text-and
to the latent law that lies beyond and before the text (and the
reader)-and as such, this is an act of responsibility. In every act
of reading, since the text "was assigned only to [the reader]," all
responsibility to and for the text lies with the reader-it is (s)he
who stands before the law, and it is (s)he who must answer to
the law.
Perhaps it is an attempt to get an answer that is ultimately
futile, for even as one "makes many attempts to be let in, and...
wears the gatekeeper out with his requests ...at the end [the gate
keeper] tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet."48
READING BLINDLY
96
In this case, the only possible answer is "no": this is the answer
that precedes any question that J can pose. However, it is this
"yet" that is crucial: it points to the forever-deferred Law which
the reader can approach but never reach. The Absolute Law is
that which governs both the reader and the text but can never be
known by either the text or the reader. It is precisely the unknow
ability of the Law that calls for the full responsibility of and by
the reader. After all, of the three potential unknowns-the text,
the reader, and the outcome of the process of reading itself-the
reader is the only one that (s)he has a chance of knowing (at
least in a relative sense). It is only through the full response of
the reader to and with the Law, through her- or himself, that any
hope of glimpsing this Law and, by extension, any hope of true
reading, can occur.
This is why the only way in which J can hope to approach the
Law is by positing what the Law is in the first place. For every
attempt to request his way in brings forth the same answer: "it is
possible .. . but not now."49 And more than that, since the Law is
specifically for him, or at least this particular Law is "assigned
only to [him]," then J must first begin by positing who he is.
After that, he can begin to test himself and, by extension, the
Law which is applied to him, or, if you prefer, imposed upon
him. In this way, there is a potentiality that he may one day pass
through the gates.
In exactly the same way, when Miller begins to attempt to read
ethically, what he first does is imagine the possibility of doing
so, while acknowledging that the Law is beyond and before both
him and the text. In this sense, what Miller has to do first is to
imagine himself: this act of reading is Miller reading "Miller."
Even if this is not possible (can one imagine oneself reading
as if one can really distinguish the reading self from the actual
self?), this is the necessary gesture to begin any true reading.
Re re ading Miller
97
Otherwise, if the reader is always the same, we are back to the

Kantian situation of applying the same method-the universal
gesture-to everything: then there is no response and, hence,
no responsibility to the text or to the process of reading itself.
Miller hints at this imaginative gesture right from the beginning,
in his epigraph, when he cites Kafka's The Trial: "'No,' said
the priest, 'it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one
must only accept it as necessary. '" In this sense, every imagined
reader-in this case, when Miller imagines "Miller"-is merely
a hypothesis in order to allow for reading to take place: a read
ing that has no ground, but must act as if there were one, if only
for reading to take place.
In writing The Ethics of Reading, Miller attempts to demon
strate the manner in which "an author reads himself,"50 but what
he actually does is show how a reader reads himself. Perhaps,
then, the actual hidden title of the text is The Ethics ofReading:
"Miller" Rereading "Miller. "
READING BLINDLY
98
ENDNOTES
I . Franz Kafka, Before the Law, trans. Ian Johnston, http://www.

mala.bc.cal-johnstoi/ kafkalbeforethelaw.htm (italics added).
2. 1. Hillis Miller, The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trol
lope, James, and Benjamin (New York: Columbia University Press,
1987),9.
3. And like the Platonian Idea, this spirit that governs the text and
runs in and through the text, is, strictly speaking, unknowable.

At the very most, one can experience the effect of the Idea (or
the spirit), but as it is transcendental,there can be no direct expe
rience of it. This is, unless one is positing that it is a simulated
experience.
4. Miller, The Ethics of Reading, 121.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.,2.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.,3.
10. Ibid., 74.
II . Ibid.
12. Ibid.,118.
13. Ibid., 120.
14. "Representation stems from the principle of the equivalence of

the sign and of the real (even if this equivalence is utopian, it is
a fundamental axiom). Simulation, on the contrary, stems from
the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical nega
tion of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death
sentence of every reference." Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simula
tions,6.

16. Ibid.
17. This is the position that Slavoj Zizek has termed "Western
Buddhism"-"I am apart from all the material realities of the
world; nothing can affect me, as I am centred in my own being
Rereading Miller
99
and away from everything else, as the world is an illusion." This

is a position of extreme arrogance, as if to say that "I am above
everything else." This is another way of saying, "I am in such an
extreme position of power that if I were to get involved in the
world, it would fall apart, as I have such a massive influence on
everything. I have to save you all by remaining decentred, for I am
really the centre of the world."

19. Ibid., 122.
20. Ibid., 127.
21. Ibid., 120.
22. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 6.
24. Ibid., 65.
25. As quoted in Miller, The Ethics of Reading, 65.
26. For the Kantian (or, to be fair, the "Kantian," as it is my version
of Kant) imperative is totalitarian in the sense that it effaces the
singularity of any situation through the application of the same
method to all situations.
27. Miller, The Ethics ofReading, 87.

28. Ibid., 120.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. If there are three variables in an equation, X, Y, and Z, and they
are only known in relation to and with each other (in other words,
there is no transcendental point of reference), and if we posit that
the outcome of any combination of the three in an equation is
unknown, by definition, all three variables must remain unknow
able at all times. If any of the variables is known, then the other
two variables will be known, at least in relation to the first: they
will be relatively known and no longer absolutely unknowable.
Part of the mathematical leaning of this argument comes from a
discussion about variables and equations with Jason Ng in Singa
pore, 16 November 2006.
32. This phrase is usually attributed to Paul Virilio.

33. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage Books,
1974),344.
100
READING BLINDLY
34. Ronell, The Test Drive, 211. Ronell was meditating on the approach
to science that Nietzsche was attempting in order to think through
the figure of the gay scientist in The Gay Science. See especially
pp.151-245.
35. Ibid., 217.
36. The figure of the in/ans is explored in Christopher Fynsk, Infant
Figures: The Death of the Infans and Other Scenes of Origin
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000).
38. Ibid., 92.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., 95.
41. This strategy of resistance is explored, amongst other places, in
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capital
ism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Uni
versity of Minnesota Press, 1987).
43. Ibid., 96.
44. Ibid., 95.
45. Ibid.
46. Kafka, Before the Law (see n. I on p. 98).
47. Miller, The Ethics of Reading, lOJ.
48. Kafka, Before the Law (see n. I on p. 98; italics added).
49. Ibid.
CHAPTER
READING ROLAND BARTHES,

REREADING ROLAND BARTHES
(WRITING ROLAND BARTHES)
It must all be considered as if spoken by a character in

a noveL I
This is the epigraph in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, a
statement that exists only in the beginning-not actually in the
text itself but on its fringe-and which continues to haunt us
throughout the text. It is an insistence-"it must"--of ambigu
ity: not just that a "character in a novel" is more ambiguous than
a real person (whatever that means), but that even the status of
character itself is unsure. After all, it must only be considered
"as if' the person is a character; otherwise, the statement would
102
READING BLINDLY
have read, "This is spoken by a character in a novel." Since this

is a memoir of sorts--or at least a rereading of Roland Barthes
by himself-the uncertainty of the status of the character opens
up a question: which Roland Barthes is the character in the
novel? Is it Roland Barthes the writer remembering the events in
his life in which he is a character; is Roland Barthes a character
who is narrating his own life in the course of the novel called
Roland Barlhes; is a character Roland Barthes writing about--or
even writing into existence--another character Roland Barthes
in a novel (with the title Roland Barthes)?
(This kind of embarrassment started, for him, very early;
he strives to master it-for otherwise he would have to
stop writing-by reminding himself that it is language
that is assertive, not he. An absurd remedy, everyone
would surely agree, to add to each sentence some little
phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of lan
guage could make language tremble.)2
The parentheses that appear everywhere, as if the writer (we
are no longer sure if it is Roland Barthes or "Roland Barthes"
or even Roland Barthes who is writing, so let's just call her RB)
is attempting to hide away parts of her writing throughout the
text.3 Perhaps in this hiding away lies a kind of embarrassment,
an insecurity about language itself: even though RB proclaims,
"As if anything that came out of language could make language
tremble," she has to "remind himself that it is language that is
assertive"; it is clearly not a truth to her, merely an opinion, a
doxa, which is why she has to rely on "everyone agree[ing]."4
If the "novel" Roland Barthes is being told by language alone
and can only remain stable because "everyone .. . agree[s]," is it
not that in the end, it is the reader who determines what (or who)
Roland Barthes (and, by extension, Roland Barthes) is? After
Reading Roland Barthes
103
all, if the "task ... of language is to give to one and the same
phrase inflections which will be forever new, thereby creating
an unheard of speech in which the sign's form is repeated but
never is signified,"5 this suggests that each assertion of language
is a different one; each reading of
Roland Barthes, then, would
be a different one. It is this repeated difference that allows RB

to proclaim, "Precisely what I regard as the very meaning of the
word: the connotation."6 The Roland Barthes that is read and the
Roland Barthes that RB is narrating are potentially very differ
ent: the difference lies not in the signifier, or even in the image
of the sign, but in the fact that the "connotation" continually
shifts. It is due to the impossibility for the signified (of Roland
Barthes) to remain constant that RB continually shifts between
"I" and "he": not only can RB not decide whether she is refer
ring to herself or maintaining a distance from the character that
she is narrating, but, more radically, the "I" is already distant,
the "I" is already a "he," a "'he' [that] can refer without warning
to many other referents than me."7
In
Roland Barthes, there is no doubt that there is a form of
remembering that is taking place, where RB takes you through

her life. But it is never she who says anything, for after all,
"it is language that is assertive, not he," and furthermore, a
language that is unstable, where
"in the field of the subject,
there is no referent,,,g where "the fact, (biological or textual)

is abolished in the signifier, because it immediately coincides
with [the fact that there is no referent): [where I am] writing
myselj,"9 where
I myself am my own symbol, I am the story which happens
to me: freewheeling in language, I have nothing to compare
myself to; and in this movement, the pronoun of the imagi
nary, "I', is im-pertinent: the symbol becomes literally
immediate: essential danger for the life of the subject. 10
104
READING BLINDLY
In this remembering, in this memory of the character Roland

Barthes, in this writing of the novel, the referent is absent.
I n effect, what RB is doing is rewriting Roland Barthes into
existence, not just Roland Barthes by RB, but narrating how
Roland Barthes writes Roland Barthes into existence: Roland
Barthes by Roland Barthes (as told by RB). It is this that allows
her to claim she "had no solution than to rewrite myself-at a
distance, a great distance-here and now: ...without my ever
knowing whether it is about my past or my present that I am
speaking."!! This remembering of RB holds "essential danger
for the life of the subject,"!2 as the character in the novel no
longer has a link to the person: in fact, the person might as well
have never existed.
The question that arises from this is, what, then, is being
remembered here? Who or what is this member that RB (or
even the reader) is recalling in this text? What can be found
within this "patchwork, a kind of rhapsodic quilt consisting
of stitched squares [where,] far from reaching the core of
the matter, 1 remain on the surface ... [and where,] reaching
the core, depth, profundity, belongs to others"?!3 Whilst this
looks like a disavowal of responsibility by RB-in the sense
of "I wash my hands of Roland Barthes, and so 1 can tell th is
tale, this novel, in any way 1 desire"-this is not the case:
even if the narration is not accurate, in the sense of an exact
correspondence with the life of the subject in question, this
does not mean that it is not true. After all, "denotation would
be here a scientific myth: that of a 'true' state of language, as
if every sentence had inside it an etymon (origin and truth).''i4
And since there is no origin of and truth to language-where
the very meaning of the word is in its denotation-all we have
is located in the surface, the skin, between the word and the
reader. It is precisely in this way that language gives the same
105
phrase inflections that are forever new, that RB never knows

whether it is her past or present that she is speaking about (in
fact, it may be her future that she is remembering), that each
reading brings about a new communion, and each new com
munion a new reading.
Perhaps we can look again to the epigraph, where we might
find another clue: one must never forget the photograph-an
image of "the narrator's mother."'5 However, nothing is said
of her, of the image; it is just there. Whether the photograph
remains meaningless or has a particular significance is left com
pletely up to you: all that we can know for sure is that RB's
mother has an image. Not an image that has a link to a particular
subject-for that would be a link between the subject and its
representation, a link that can only be sustained by the imaginary,
by simulation-but rather a pure image, a pure signifier, one that
resists "the coalescence of the sign, the similitude of signifier
and signified, the homeomorphism of images, the Mirror, the
captivating bait."'6In this image of the narrator's mother, uncap
tioned, unnamed, there lies an image that is in full potentiality: a
photograph with an absent object. 17
If a narrator begins at the start of the text and ends with the
last page, then who utters the phrase(s) in the epigraph and the
afterword? Perhaps it is the same person-there is no reason
why it cannot be RB as well-but whether the RB of the epi
graph and afterword is the same as the RB in the text is another
question; whether RB remains consistent, or is even the same,
throughout the text is yet another consideration. There is enough
consistency throughout the text to suggest at least a similar
narrator, but oftentimes it is in similarity that true differences
appear. Perhaps it is even in repetition that the greatest differ
ences are to be found: after all, in each invocation of "he" or "I"
when RB is referring to Roland Barthes, one can never be sure
READING BLINDLY
106
which Roland Barthes (if it is even Roland Barthes) she is refer

ring to; the signifier eternally returns, but one never can be sure
which connotation does.
An echo of the epigraph can be found within the text in the
statement, "All this must be considered as if spoken by a charac
ter in a novel-or rather by several characters."18 It is the "dash"
that connects the sentence from the epigraph to this supplemen
tary line, but like all supplements, it is both an addition to and
already from the original, never apart, joined by the dash, but
never completely joined, always held apart by the dash, joined
together by a violent or rapid blow, stroke. The RB of the epi
graph or the RB of the text? "In general the context forces us to
choose one of the two meanings and to forget the other," but in
the spirit of the text, we shall not, as
each time he encounters one of these double words, R.B.,
on the contrary insists on keeping both meanings, as if
one were winking at the other and as if the word's mean
ing were in that wink, so that one and the same word, in
one and the same sentence, means at one at the same time
two different things, and so that one delights, semanti
cally, in the one by the other,,9
The two (or more) RBs, side by side, as "several characters" and
"a character" at the same time: where "a character" is "several
characters." Perhaps this is why the RB of the epigraph can be
an image of the RB in the text and "the narrator's mother" at the
same time: both a mirror image of an image (an image of a char
acter, an image and a character), and a pure image (an image
without a referent, or at least, a referent that is just another
image) at the same time.
Roland Barthes: (n)either person (n)or character; (n)either
real (n)or imaginary.
107
In narrating Roland Barthes in Roland Barthes, what RB

does, or what the numerous RBs do, is perhaps "present, not the
best pretense, but simply an un-decidable pretense,"20 as
the book does not choose, it functions by alternation, it
proceeds by impulses of the image-system pure and sim
ple and by critical approaches, but these very approaches
are never anything but effects of resonance: nothing is
more a matter of the image system, of the imaginary, than
(self-)criticism. The substance of this book, ultimately, is
therefore totally fictive. The intrusion, into the discourse
of the essay, of a third person who nonetheless refers to
no fictive creature, marks the necessity of remodeling the
genres: let the essay avow itself almost a novel: a novel
without proper names.21
A double fiction is working here: not only is "the substance of the

book ... fictive," but so is the narration of this fictive substance
a fictive RB using both the "I" and the "he" in speaking of her
self, a self that is already a "character in a novel." Not quite a
novel, but "almost a novel," as "without proper names"-names
that have a referent, that define, that exclude-the novel remains
constantly "freewheeling in language,"22 the freewheeling of the
"I" that refers to nothing but itself, that refers to nothing but the
fact that it is referring.
The instance of a double fiction is also one of a double blind
ness: since the "I" (and even the "he") of RB refers to nothing
but the fact that it is referring, this suggests that the "self' that is
being referred to is unknown, or even absent. It is for this reason
that it remains in parentheses: "(self-)criticism" is "of the image
system, of the imaginary" precisely because both the "self' and
the criticism of this "(self)"-"a matter of the image system, of
the imaginary," and hence absent-would have to be simulated.
Hence, in narrating this fiction, this "almost novel," RB is blind to
108
READING BLINDLY
this character that she is narrating, as the character does not exist
outside of her narration. If RB can only see what she is narrat
ing, this means that she is blind not only to what was before, in
the sense of each narration being only "another utterance, with
out my ever knowing whether it is about my past or my present
that I am now speaking,"23 but she is blind also to all the other
possibilities. In this way, RB is blind to both the Roland Barthes
that precedes what she is narrating and also all the other pos
sible Roland Barthes that she did not narrate. Since RB sees-or
potentially sees-only at the moment of narration, of utterance,
this suggests that at every moment, she is making a decision, a
choice, of both what to include, and also what to exclude.24
Every instance of narration in Roland Barthes can be consid
ered an "anamneses"25-a recollection, a listing-and more than
just that, "anamneses [that] are more or less matte, (insignificant:
exempt of meaning) [as] the more one succeeds in making them
matte, the better they escape the image-system."26 The fact that
the section is titled "Pause: anamneses," though, suggests that this
recollection, this listing of collections, is not merely a random
process; there is a moment of thought, reflection, inaction before
every utterance. One must also not forget that in every anamnesis,
there is an amnesia echoing in the background; in every act
0'
remembering, there is also the phantom of forgetting: in order t.

remember anything, one has to first forget. In this case, since RI
has no prior knowledge of the character in her novel, the gestur
of remembering and rewriting are one and the very same-whm
remains unwritten, then, is in the realm of the forgotten, the always
waiting to be remembered, the memory whose remembrance is
momentarily (and sometimes eternally) deferred.
In the section "Pause: anamneses," the moment of the "Etc. "27
is where remembering and forgetting collide: the invocation of
"the rest," "and the others," all the ones that are absent, recalling,
109
remembering, potentially admits all the others, all the other

possibilities, all the things that are forgotten.28 Hence, not only
does "every utterance of a writer (even the fiercest, the wild
est) include a secret operator, an unexpressed word, something
like the silent morpheme of a category as primitive as negation
or interrogation, whose meaning is: A nd let that be known!"'29
'
but, more radically, every utterance also is a secret operator:

RB's insistence on "keeping both meanings, as if one were
winking at the other and as if the word's meaning were in that
wink,"30 even in the face of its impossibility (she has to choose
at every juncture), ensures that every utterance is always made
in complete blindness, as every utterance is blind to everything
but the utterance itself. This is precisely why the only meaning
that can emanate is that of another utterance-"And let that be
known!"-an utterance that refers to nothing but the fact that it

is uttered. This is why "the meaning transferred matters little or
nothing, the terms of the trajectory matter little or nothing: the
only thing that counts-and establishes metaphor-is the trans
ference itself."31
It is for this reason that the answer to the question "how to
write, given all the snares set up by the collective image of the
work"32 could only have been "why, blindly":33 in order to avoid
the snares of the image system, of the imaginary-in order to
avoid either simulating Roland Barthes into existence or effac
ing Roland Barthes completely-RB has no choice but to write
blindly, write "as if...a character in a novel," refusing all refer
ences such that all that is written is "totally fictive."34
I have the illusion to suppose that by breaking up my
discourse I cease to discourse in terms of the imaginary
about myself, attenuating the risk of transcendence;
but since the fragment ...is finally a rhetorical gesture
and since rhetoric is that layer of language which best
READING BLINDLY
110
presents itself to interpretation, by supposing I disperse

myself I merely return, quite docilely, to the bed of the
imaginary. 35
In order to avoid the snares of the imaginary, RB has to rely
on a rhetorical gesture, an imaginary gesture, the anamneses,
the fragment, "not on Iy ...cut off from its neighbours, but even
within each of these fragments parataxis reigns."36 As such, even
as the anamneses are fragments--each separate from the other,
and each fragmentary within itself; it is their arrangement that
gives them meaning, as
the index of a text, then, is not only an instrument of ref
erence; it is itself a text, a second text which is the relief
(remainder and asperity) of the first: what is wandering
(interrupted) in the rationality of the sentences.37
Since it is the order in which one reads them that then gives
them meaning, RB can legitimately proclaim that "my text is in
fact readerlY,"38 not that this is a disavowal of the responsibility
of RB as a narrator, but rather in acknowledgment of the fact
that in narrating this text, what RB is doing is a rereading of
Roland Barthes in order to write the character Roland Barthes.
After all, the same blindness that is in RB's writing is found in
her reading, for
when I read, I accommodate: ...in order to reach the right
level of signification (the one that suits me). A responsible
linguistics must no longer be concerned with "messages"
(to hell with "messages"!) but with these accommoda
tions ...: each of us curbs his mind, or curves it, like an
eye, in order to grasp in the mass of the text that certain
intelligibility he needs in order to know, to take plea
sure, etc.39
READING (WRITING):
How,
111
WHAT, AND A SECRET
How does it go, when I write?-Doubtless by move

ments of language sufficiently formal and repeated for
me to be able to call them "figures": I divine that there
are figures
ofproduction, text operators .... here is another
of such figures: forgery ...My discourse contains many

coupled notions
erly).
(denotation/ connotation, readerly/ wril
Such oppositions are artifacts: one borrows from
science certain conceptual procedures, an energy of clas

sification, one steals a language, though wishing to apply
it to the end: impossible to say: this is denotation, this
connotation, or: this passage is readerly, this writerly,
etc .... Then what good is it? Quite simply, it serves to say
something: it is necessary to posit a paradigm in order
to produce a meaning and then to be able to divert, to
alter it.40
In this sense, RB's writing is, then, the temporalisation-a freez
ing of a moment in time--o f her reading of Roland Barthes;
perhaps this was the clue left behind at the beginning: a photo
graph, an attempt to capture a moment in time. At the moment in
which she writes, she "posit[s] a paradigm" through the arrange
ment of the fragment "in order to produce a meaning," but a
meaning that is always temporal, for not only does she "divert
[and] alter it" but language itself does so for her. After all, every
writer "steals a language," a language whose task is to "give to
one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new,
thereby creating an unheard of speech in which the sign's form
is repeated but never is signified."41
Perhaps, then, the "academic exercise"42 that is included by
RB begins to make a bit of sense-at first glance, it is merely a
list that has nothing to do with the other fragments; it is a frag
ment that is totally cut otT from its neighbours, without reference
112
READING BLINDLY
to anything but itself. The first question that arises when one
reads this fragment is, to whom is RB addressing the "academic
exercise"? The obvious answer would be the reader-who else
can see this besides a reader? But if so, why would RB write
this fragment differently from all the other fragments in the text?
This is, after all, the only fragment in the text which completely
does away with the pronoun; it is also the only fragment which
refers to "the author" in an objective sense. (One could construe
this fragment as the most fragmentary of the fragments). Perhaps
it is its fragmentariness that gives us a clue as to its function. The
fragment refers to nothing but itself: each sentence stands alone
and refers to no other sentence but itself. In fact, the only parts
of the fragment that give it a form of continuity (or cohesion) are
the numbers, both the "index of a text" and its "second text."43
Perhaps it is this "remainder"44 that is also the "secret opera
tor... whose meaning is: 'And let that be known!"'45 And what is
known here is precisely that the meaning of the fragment lies in
the numbers; it is its arrangement that gives it meaning, but not a
meaning that is stable, for one can read the sentences in any order
and they would still work as an "exercise." Another possibility
is that the reader that RB is referring to is herself, for instead
of using her usual pronouns "I" and "he," she uses "the author"
instead. It is in this self-reflexive moment-when RB refers to
herself-that reading and writing collide: the only time that RB
can see her self-reflexive moment is when she is reading it. It is
in this moment that the "character in the novel" is the same one
that is writing and being read at the same time. This is the very
reason why RB admits within the text that the actual title of the
text is neither Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, nor Roland
Barthes by Roland Barthes (as both titles rely on the presence of
an external referent), but "Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes."46

Do Tms
IN
113
MEMORY OF ME
To write the body.47
Provided one was willing to read the body in the cOrpUS.48

Reading and writing: the double that haunts RB throughout
the text and one that she cannot choose between. For at every
moment of writing, she is always also reading the body. And it
is this inability to maintain the duality, the binary, which causes
the fear (of the monster of totality), for now there is no longer a
deliberate act; RB has no choice but to do both simultaneously.
It is at this same moment that laughter liberates RB, for it is
"laughter [that] by a last reversal, releases demonstration from
its demonstrative attribute,"49 releases the signifier from a single
signified, frees connotation within denotation.
What liberates metaphor, symbol, emblem from poetic
mania, what manifests its power of subversion, is the
preposterous, that "bewilderment" that Fourier was so
good at getting into his examples, to the scorn of any rhe

torical responsibility.50
It is this excess-the inexplicability of laughter-that escapes
comprehension, that slips through all attempts at knowing, at
labeling, that refuses the tyranny of being named. [One does
wonder why, at the moment when RB lets slip that the real title
of the novel is Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, she also hides
"(Nietzsche)," "(Gide)," and "(desire to write)" away in paren
theses; both were thinkers of excess, and the desire to write is,
in her own words- one writes with one s desire, and I am not
"
through desiring"51-an unending and insuppressible one.]52 It
is in this "bewilderment" that imagination-as opposed to the

imaginary (that is, of the image system}-lies.53
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READING BLINDLY
Perhaps, then, the gesture that is most subversive to the "mon

ster of totality" is the one that RB has left out. It is the absent
gesture, the gesture that we cannot read, cannot see, are blind
to, that is the gap in the text that allows her to continue rewrit
ing, that ends the text proper by beginning again: she writes
in what would be usually regarded as the last entry-logically
dated September 3, 1974-if we take into consideration the
order, the index, of the text, "this August 6"54 (the opening date
of the text). It is the gesture of the open parentheses, the reactive
text that remains open and allows RB to continually react with
it and continue responding with and to it, infinitely.55 It is this
absent gesture that allows us to imagine, and in this imagination,
there perhaps appears fleetingly the apparition of ambiguity that
haunts the text from the very beginning:
A third vision then appears: that of infinitely spread out
languages, of parentheses never to be closed: a utopian
vision in that it supposes a mobile, plural reader, who
nimbly inserts and removes the quotation marks: who
begins to write with me.56
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes with
of Roland Barthes).
____
(in memory
115
ENDNOTES
1. Roland Barthes,
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, trans. Rich
ard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).

2. Ibid., 48.
3. "In what he writes, there are two texts. Text I is reactive, moved
by indignations, fears, unspoken rejoinders, minor paranoias,
defenses, scenes. Text II is active, moved by pleasure. But as it
is written, corrected, accommodated to the fiction of Style, Text
I becomes active too, whereupon it loses its reactive skin, which
subsists only in patches
(mere parentheses)." Ibid., 43 (italics
added).
4. Ibid., 48.
5. Ibid., 114.
6. Ibid.,II5.
7. Ibid., 169.
9. Ibid. (italics original).
II. Ibid., 142 (italics original).
12. Ibid., 56.
13. Ibid., 142.
15. Ibid., as cited on p. 185.
16. Ibid., 44.
17. Unlike a painting, a photograph must have an object. The image
that comes about as a result of photography is the outcome
of the writing by light. In this manner, the photograph is usu
ally taken to be a representation of the object-there is a link
between what is seen on the fi 1m and what was before the lens.
However, this Iink is usually defined by the caption, the title,
the name that is given to the photograph: without a description,
the image is left to float endlessly; so, yes, there is no doubt that
the photograph in the epigraph is of a woman, the "narrator's
mother," even, but beyond that, nothing can be known. It is a
READING BLINDLY
116
link to a subject, or an object; since this image is not within any

system and has no referent but itself, a link that is unknown and
can never be known.
The irony of the mirror image is that one usually attempts to
change the person standing in front of the mirror in order to match
the idealized image which appears before them. In this way, it is
the image that is more important than the person. It is this that RB
realizes when she attempts to resist the "captivating bait" that is
the mirror: in giving the photograph that appears in the epigraph
a name that signifies nothing-"the narrator's mother"-since the
narrator herself is unknown, RB allows the image to be an image
that has no link to any referent. In this manner, instead of chang
ing the referent (which is impossible, as it is absent), what RB
does is paint on the mirror itself: by continually rewriting Roland
Barthes, RB allows the signifier to escape a constant signified.
Hence, it is not the signified that has to change, but the signifier
that is doing so (through a repetition that is never the same): "the
sign's form is repeated, but is never signified," and hence is con
tinually slipping fixed signification.
18. Ibid., 119.

22. Ibid., 56.
23. Ibid., 142.
24. Even though the exclusion might not be a conscious gesture
after all, she is blind to what precedes; she is not choosing from
an existing pool of information or knowledge-the fact that she
can only narrate one thing at a time suggests that all the other
possibilities are already excluded.
25. The section titled "Pause: anamneses" is found on pp. 107-110.

26. Ibid., 109-110.
27. Ibid., 109: "(not being of the order of Nature, anamnesis admits of
an 'etc.')" (italics original).
28. At the moment when RB remembers, she also forgets: she remem
bers that she might have forgotten, she remembers that every act
of remembering not only forgets something else, but is in itself
117
also a moment of forgetting, a moment when one forgets the for

getting of the moment.

30. Ibid., 72.
32. Ibid., 136.
34. Ibid., 120.
36. Ibid., 93.
40. Ibid., 91-92 (italics original).
41. Ibid., 114.
42. Ibid., 158.
I.
Why does the author mention the date of this episode?
2.
How does the site justify "daydreaming" and "diversion"?
3.
How might the philosophy the author describes be "guilty"?
4.
Explain the metaphor "fabric."
5.
Cite the philosophies to which "preferentialism" might be

opposed.
6.
Meanings of the words "revolution," "system," "image-reper

toire," "inclination."
7.
Why does the author put certain words or expressions In

italics?
8.
Characterize the author's style.
43. Ibid., 93.

44. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 145 (italics original). If a character writes about her
self-while she is reading about herself-then is this a total
izing gesture: since RB reads and writes herself into existence
(simultaneously), is the outcome of this writing one that is with
out blindness, without any gaps, without anything that is unsaid?
Even as RB claims that there is an element of the text that is
READING BLINDLY
118
never subsumed by the active text (that of RB rewriting herself

as she is reading herself), as a part of it remains reactive, "moved
by indignations, fears, unspoken rejoinders, minor paranoias,
defenses, scenes" (ibid., 43)-scenes that "lay bare the cancer of
language ... [that] language is impotent to close language," (159)
as language continues endlessly without possibility of an end,
a conclusion-there is still an attempt to hide it away; after all,
this residual reactive text "subsists only in patches (mere paren
theses)" (43). However, it is also totality that RB fears, and she
"(secretly) aims at denouncing the monster of totality (Totality as
monster)" (180). [Why must she do this in secret, though? And
why must the secret be hidden away in a parenthesis? Almost
as though it is a double secret, a hidden secret, the secret that
is found in the reversal: "monster of totality," "totality as mon
ster." It is in the realization that the secret lies in reversals that
RB's "discourse contains many coupled notions ... [if only] as
artifacts," as not only does the paradigm "produce a meaning"
but, more importantly, it also allows RB to "be able to divert, to
alter it" (42).] It is this subversion-that of the reversal (within
coupled notions)-that RB finds in Totality as well; it "at one and
the same time inspires laughter and fear" (180). It is this structure
of the double that affords RB the freedom-"structure at least
affords me two terms, one of which I can deliberately choose
and the other dismiss" (117)-to make an active decision, and
it is this deliberate act of choosing (along with the acknowledg
ment that she is being blind to the other) that prevents this act of
self-reading-writing from becoming a totalitarian gesture: in the
blindness to the other lies a momentary unseen, an unknown, and,
from that point on, unknowable element; there is always a gap, a
darkness, at every moment of choosing.
49. Ibid., 81.
51. Ibid., afterword (italics original).
52. Ibid., 145.
119
53. The imaginary is a simulation (fitting into an overall scheme, pat
tern, theory), which ultimately effaces its object; the imagination

is of the realm of possibilities, an image without a name, a name
less image.
54. Ibid., 180.
55. Ibid., 140.
C HAPTER 5
ONLY FICTION Is
STRANGER THAN FICTION
Little did he know that events have been set in motion

that would lead to his imminent death.
This is the moment that the film Stranger Than Fiction I hinges
upon: before this utterance by Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson),
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) was only annoyed by her voice in his
head (which seemed to be accurately narrating his life); upon
hearing this, Crick immediately begins to actively seek out the
source of this narration, the narrative of his life.
As the Dustin Hoffman character, literature professor Jules
Hilbert, points out, this is an odd sentence because there is a slip
in the standard third-person narrative that Eiffel usually uses: in
this case, instead of being a narrator who merely reports what
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READING BLINDLY
Harold has done (which suggests that the character dictates what
occurs next), "little did he know ..." suggests that there is some
thing that the narrator knows that the character does not. This
suggests that it is the narrator who is determining Harold Crick's
destiny: Eiffel is the writer and Crick a character in her tale.
However, considering that Crick eventually manages to influ
ence Eiffel to the extent that she changes the ending of her tale
(in the original, unfinished version, Crick is hit by a bus and
dies), there is a possibility that Crick does have some form of
control over his destiny. Even the scene where Crick tests the
hypothesis of whether he has any control over the plot-he sit
in his house and does nothing to see if the plot advances inde
pendently of him; it does, which then prompts Professor Hilbel
to conclude that the plot is narrative and not character-driven
does not completely refute the possibility of Crick's influencl
over the narrative. It is possible that both Crick and the narra
tor influence the tale: Crick influences the narrative as much as
the narrative changes Crick. This opens the question of whether
there is an omnipotent narrator, or whether the narrator is as
much part of the narrative. Is the narrator as much a character
as her characters; is Karen Eiffel being as much a character as
Harold Crick?
One must also not forget that the eventual version that we
are watching in the film is actually the rewritten version; we
are reminded of this in the final shot, when we see a script fin
ished on a typewriter ("And so it was: a wristwatch saved Har
old Crick" is the line that we see). This opens up the possibility
that everything that we have seen prior to that final shot is part
of a narrative and not a report on one. Without this, the opening
line-"This is a story about a man named Harold Crick. And his
wristwatch"-would not be possible; it is only with the revised
ending, in which Crick does not die, that the opening line makes
Only Fiction Is Stranger Than Fiction
123
sense. In this manner, all the people in this film are part of a
narrative; this is the only way in which a character in a novel
(Crick) can meet the narrator of that same novel (Eiffel): both
are characters in yet another novel.
In this light-or perhaps lack of light-about the status of
both the narrator and her characters (one cannot be sure who is
narrating; in some way, both Eiffel and Crick are narrating their
own versions of their tales, which affect the other), it is com
pletely appropriate that
The Meaning of Life2
is shown as part
of the narrative: the meaning of life is a narrative. In this way,

there is no life that is prescriptive, no life that can be prescribed:
this is precisely why Jules Hilbert tells Crick, "You have to die,
it's a masterpiece," rather than, "You will die." Perhaps without
realizing it, Hilbert points out the fact that "little did he know"
refers not merely to Crick but also to Eiffel herself: this is exem
plified in the fact that Crick actually chooses to die after reading
Eiffel's scribbled ending to the tale. However, in response to
Crick's willingness to give up his life for the tale, Eiffel changes
her mind and alters the ending; both responses are unplanned,
illogical even (Crick willingly choosing death for a tale, Eiffel
willingly choosing to weaken her tale to save a character), a
response to the needs of the other (whether this other is real or
imagined is irrelevant here).3 These responses, even though cog
nitive choices on the part of Crick and Eiffel, are also choices
that are made in situations that are beyond their control (Crick is
put in that situation; Eiffel had no way of knowing what Crick
would choose). This is why they cannot be prescribed, as there
is no way to sustain these actions consistently: their responses
are in complete contradiction to their usual meanings of life
(Eiffel knowingly lets Crick live, ruining her writing form,
which is the tragedy; Crick, who has just found meaning in his
life outside of routine, willingly ends it to fulfill a narrative-the
124
READING BLINDLY
tragedy-that he has been trying to avoid). Since both Harold

Crick's and Karen Eiffel's meanings of life are not consistent
within themselves, they would not be sustainable as prescriptive
statements, as truth claims-they have no repeatability and can
only be truths in themselves, in the singularity of the situation;
one cannot extrapolate from this situation-hence, the only way
that they can be told is through a fictional account, through a
narrative.
[The standard proverb that comes to mind when one looks at
the title of the film is "Fact is stranger than fiction." Perhaps this
is an indication (perhaps more an indication of me than of any
one else) of the inclination to complete, finish, end a sentence,
to sentence an open phrase to completeness rather than allowing
it to remain open, inclusive. However, when one considers that
the only way that one can approach "fact" is via fiction (this is
shown especially in the oft-used saying "the story of my life"),
what it is really suggesting is (if one still feels the need to com
plete the phrase) that "fiction is stranger than fiction." However,
if the claim now is that "fiction" is "stranger than fiction," it
is then a circular claim. At the same time, it is a contradictory
claim. What this suggests is that either the statement is absurd or
that it can never be completed: "fiction is stranger than fiction is
stranger than
"]
If Karen Eiffel is as much a part of the narrative as Harold

Crick is, then the statement upon which the tale hinges cannot
be a statement of fact, of truth; "little did he know ... " cannot
be a constative statement. For in order to determine the truth
or falsity of the statement, it would have to be outside the nar
rative. Since the utterance is part of the same narrative, it is a
performative statement; at best, it is a prediction by Eiffel as to
the knowledge-status of Crick, a promise that she knows some
thing that he doesn't. And, as promises pertain to something that
125
hasn't yet occurred-when Eiffel utters that statement, she has

no idea of what the future holds for Crick-it is an utterance that
cannot be verified in the present moment (there is no correlation
between the statement and its phenomenological manifestation).
In this sense, the film plot, or the narrative, hinges on a state
ment, an utterance, that cannot be sure of itself, cannot verify
itself. Moreover, it is a promise that ultimately fails to deliver
as well: Harold Crick does not die at the end of the tale. This
failed promise is more evident with the knowledge of the fact
that what we are watching is the rewrite of the novel: Eiffel says
as much when she meets Professor Hilbert and tells him that she
has to rewrite the story to fit the new ending. What this means is
that the utterance of the promise was made in full knowledge of
the fact that Harold Crick does not die by the end of the tale.
The first temptation is to then accuse Karen Eiffel of uttering
an untrue statement. However, for this accusation to hold, we
must once again take "little did he know ..." to be a constative
utterance. For the utterance to be constative, we must take it that
the tale ends when the film closes; otherwise, there is no basis
on which to judge. By doing so, a time frame would have to be
set on the utterance, on the promise that was made. However, as
a promise is an utterance that refers to a future (perhaps a hypo
thetical future), is it possible to legitimately set a time frame on
it? Since one cannot make a legitimate judgment on the status
of the utterance, this suggests that the tale still goes on: perhaps,
then, the promise of Harold Crick's death still can come true.
However, this suggestion is absurd in the light that Karen Eiffel
ends the rewritten novel: we see it end in the final shot of the
film. This then suggests that either her utterance has carried over
from the world of the novel into the "real" world in which she
lives (which doesn't make sense), or that her world is another
narration that the utterance has transferred into.
READING BLINDLY
126
Perhaps then, the utterance "little did he know... " plunges

us into darkness, blindness, when it comes to Harold Crick
indeed, "little does he know"-but at the same time opens us
to the question of the status of Karen Eiffel. Due to the ambigu
ity of the promise-we can never tell whether it is fulfilled or
broken-we can also never determine whether Karen Eiffel is
a narrator or a character. What is thus "stranger than fiction" is
perhaps not fact (in the sense of an objective observation), but
the fact that Karen Eiffel is (n)either fact (n)or fiction.
The only thing that we can be sure of in the end is, "little do
we know...
"
127
ENDNOTES
I. Stranger Than Fiction, DVD, directed by Marc Forster (Chicago:
Crick Pictures, 2006).

2. There is a scene in the film where Crick is in a cinema watching
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (directed by Terry Jones and
1983).
3. One could also construe that the gestures of both Crick (willingly
Terry Gillian,
giving up his life) and Eitfel (giving up her masterpiece) were gifts,
or, more precisely, aeconomical gifts: neither had anything to gain
from his or her decision. In fact, the only beneficiary of the gift
was the other; the only impetus for the gift was a response to the
needs of the other. T his is why neither decision can be rational
ized, explained away logically, or subsumed under reason: they are
illogical decisions, made in madness, in blindness to themselves.
The potentiality of the gestures of Harold Crick and Karen Eitfel to
be read as pure gifts was brought to my attention in a conversation
with Esther Tan.
PART III
THE READER
Taking a dish that is well known and transforming all its

ingredients, or part of them; then modifying the dish's
texture, form and/or its temperature. Deconstructed, such
a dish will preserve its essence ...but its appearance will be
radically different from the original's.
-Ferran Adria, EI Bulli 1994-1997
Text: my body-shot through with streams of song; ...what

touches you, the equivoice that affects you, fills your breast
with an urge to come to language and launches your force;
the rhythm that laughs you; the intimate recipient who
makes all metaphors possible and desirable; body (body?
bodies?), no more describable than god, the soul, or the
Other; that part of you that leaves a space between yourself
and urges you to inscribe in language your woman's style.
-Helene Cixous, Laugh o/the Medusa
CHAPTER
READING. OR JUST GAMING.
You take the five cards in your left hand and with your
right hand very very gradually you shuffle them around,
you fold them, you twist them one behind the other,
slide, gradually-gradually I say-so you can identify
them by the first fraction of a millimeter ... you make
them appear-this maneuver takes time-as if you were

unveiling, creating an absolutely extraordinary tension as
you do.1
One opens to a page, scans the words, fixes, affixes one's gaze
on one, then the next, then the next, slowly (or quickly) flips a
page-losing the site of the previous page, caught in the gap
between the first and second pages, momentarily losing the sight
of all the pages, of all words-and then begins to scan the words
again. And as the reader follows the words that flow across the
page, the flow of the words itself, the flow of the page, sometimes
134
READING BLINDLY
seeing, sometimes not seeing, one must not forget her body, her
body that traces the words, and the words that trace onto her
body.
[Yet clearly, at the point of reading, one forgets her body-is
it possible to read whilst being acutely aware of one's body at
the same time? The fact that one immerses herself into a text
seems to suggest that the body of the reader enters into---enters
within-the text itself: the text and her body become one. Read
ing as an act, and a process, of transubstantiation: when the
body of the reader remains the same, but is altered, changed,
different, but not with a difference that is perceivable, seeable,
or even knowable. Each time you pick up a text, the ghost of the
writer whispers, "Do this in memory of me," and you read a text
that is the same-the letters do not change, the words remain the
same, the sentence that is passed is never overruled, overturned,
reversed, quashed-but is just slightly different.]
But does reading forget her body? That is a slightly differ
ent question. For when she immerses herself into the text, when
she enters the text, the text enters her as well, immerses into
her being, inscribes it(-self) into her. Insofar as she is reading
the text, the text is reading her; the text is reading her body,
written on her body. If one is affected by words, if one can be
wounded by words, it might just be because "words are missiles
that explode in your somatic being."2
Where do these missiles come from? Surely, they must have
a source. Perhaps the spectre of the author has not been fully
exorcised and is hell-bent on one last haunting of the text, or
its reader. Or maybe the ghost only appears in the reading-in
the exercise of reading, in the exorcism that is attempted in the
reading. After all, each time one reads, one pays attention to the
inscriptions and not the inscriber, and slowly, the scribe herself
is forgotten, left behind, abandoned. In the space that is reading,
Reading. Or Just Gaming.
135
in the negotiation that occurs between the reader and the text, in
the ritual that is reading (after all, one goes back again and again
to the same words, the same page, the same book, but never to
the same text), in the offering of time that is made to the text
(perhaps by both the writer and the reader), is there a spectre
that is called up, a spirit that is raised? But if from a space, a site
of negotiation, then surely we cannot have a sight of it-after
all, a space by definition cannot be seen; it only exists in the
moment of negotiation itself, it is temporal. The source of the
missiles that are words is, then, always nonpresent (as opposed
to being actively absent): a potentiality rather than an actual
ity. We are then wounded, scarred, written upon, within, from
a nothingness, an abyss. Perhaps, then, it is more of a stigmata
than a scar, as it comes from without and then leaves a mark, a
trace on your body.
[It is surely no accident that we call the oeuvre of an author
her "body of work." One should note that there is no mention of
the body specifically in the term oeuvre-it traces itself back to
opus: work. In this sense, when we refer to the "body of work"

of an author, the "body" that we are referring to is the body of the
author herself, the work that is written on her self. Perhaps, then,
it is for this reason that reading might have a visceral effect: it is
potentially a process where two bodies collide. Of course, one
can never say what is written on the bodies themselves; one can
never say what the result of the collision will be: reading is both
this collision and also the moment the bodies themselves come
into existence. For only when she has read what she has written
does the work come into being; reading is its becoming.]
As one fans through the pages of the text, plays with the
potential combinations that are present, and negotiates with the
possibilities that are infinite within finiteness (there are fifty-two
in each deck; there are twenty-six in our pile), one very, very
136
READING BLINDLY
gradually shuffles the words, folding and twisting them around

and with each other, being very careful to never fold one's hand
(after all, there are limits, boundaries, rules to this game). Slowly,
she makes the words appear-this maneuver takes time-and
a reading takes place, a meaning (if I dare use that term) is
unveiled, but like every unveiling, there is a veiling that takes
place at the same time: when one possibility appears, all the oth
ers disappear (if only temporarily). In order to pursue a possible
combination, she has temporarily to ignore the other ones, be
blind to the other combinations (even if she might be aware of
them); she has to shut her eye-temporal blindness-to all the
other potentialities. This is the stake that she plays with-her
time, and her body. Time is sacrificed to the text, and her body is
the site on and in which this game is played.
[In exchange for reading-whatever that begins to even mean
the reader has to offer a sacrifice to the text, and a sacrifice that
has no guarantee; after all, even if you posit that she receives
knowledge from the text, this is often forgotten over time,
passed into memory, and then altered by time itself (the very
offering she makes). And each time she picks up the text, it only
allows her to glimpse what is directly in front of her-the pages,
the words, the writings of the text that come before and after are
only memories of what has passed, and memories of the future.
She only can see what is in front of her; the rest of the text she is
blind to. In this sense, her sacrifice is one that is aeconomical
there is no necessary exchange for her sacrifice of time-it is a
pure sacrifice: all she gives is her gift of time. In the realm of
exchange, reading is an impossible exchange.]
Even as there are rules, there are limits, there are possibilities
that can be calculated, predicted, and staked upon accordingly,
one can never subsume the game under one's knowledge.) This
is when the unknown comes into play; this is the realm of the
137
bluff Poker is not just a game that is played by people around

the table, poker is a game of people; the people are part of the
game itself. When the cards are unveiled, what remains veiled
is the player: the cards are fanned out precisely to provide the
screen, her screen. Even as her cards are shown, her strategy
secreted, what remains secret is her. It is this same bluffthat pre
vents her from being sucked into the abyss that is the text, from
her body being completely sacrificed to it: each reading that she
undertakes is a positing, a position, a bluff, one that allows the
text to call, to raise, or to stay. Any reading, any "avowal[,] only
vouches for its own blindness":4 it is a leap of faith, a leap that
does not see, a leap that does not know-not only is the bluff
on the text, but also on her (she has to bluff herself to adopt
one position, one reading, if only for a moment, and refuse to
see the other ones). In avowing, she makes a vow, and a vow is
always blind to all other possibilities; at the moment of vowing,
she must also remain blind to its possible failure. For after all,
what is the point of bluffing but to ensure that the game goes on?
The reader bluffs both herself and the text in order to ensure that
reading itself can go on.
However, the bluffis also the moment of another potentiality
the end of the game. After all, there is always a chance that the
bluff is called: that would be the moment in which she has no
choice but to fold, unless, of course, the others are bluffing as
well-that would be the moment when all of them are on the
boundaries of the game, winning not by the hierarchy, according
to the rules of the game, but by simulation. What is simulated
is precisely the fact that they are playing to win by the stipu
lation of the rules (trying to build a higher hand than the oth
ers); she remains within the boundaries because it is these same
rules that dictate that she wins. It is for this reason that the one
who loses the final call folds, and never reveals her cards; all
138
READING BLINDLY
the players know that there is an element of bluffing involved in

the game, but one must never openly admit to it, otherwise the
game is over. In this sense, the game relies on bluffing (other
wise it would be over the moment the cards are dealt), but must
suppress it: the moment the bluffcomes to the fore, the game is
over, the players can no longer play.
A reader must posit, take a position, for that is the only way in
which she can continue reading: in other words, she must choose
a possibility. Not only must she bluff the text (she posits one
reading only to be able to continue reading), but she must also
bluff herself (if she does this with full self-reflexivity, there is no
way to continue reading; in this sense, she must read
as
if there
were only one possibility) in order that the reading-this nego

tiated game-can continue. [If she refuses to take a position,
to posit as if she can legitimately do so, then she is no longer
negotiating with the text-if that happens, then reading (which
is this site of negotiation) ends.] The moment the fact that she
is only positing-or hypothesizing a possibility--comes to the
fore, reading itself also collapses: one cannot go on reading if
one is continually reflecting on the fact that one is only posit
ing, one is only bluffing. In the same way as a scientist can only
test her hypothesis if she denies the other possibilities temporar
ily in order to fully extend and explore this one, the reader has
no choice but to allow a possibility to be the possibility for a
moment. Only after the testing is done can she return to the site
of the choice and perhaps test the other possibilities, one of the
other possibilities.
In this way, the bluffis a hinge on which the game is played:
it is the bluffthat both allows the game to continue and is also
its end point. The bluff is (n)either part of the game (n)or out
side the game. The point at which the reader most engages the
text-the point where the reader chooses (a particular position;
139
Read ing. Or Just Gaming.
a particular direction)-is (n)either part of reading (n)or outside

reading: it is the point where the reader (as part of the reading)
both continues and ends reading at the same time. In order to
say something, one must make a point, but as Roland Barthes
reminds us, one must also never forget that it is the point that
pricks, ruptures, breaks.
[The potentiality of playing is also the potentiality of break
ing; a chance for creating, imagining, reading, is also the possi
bility of rupture, destruction, and death ...This is the absolutely
extraordinary tension of unveiling, of playing, of reading: one
must never forget the stakes, one must never forget that it is her
body that this game is played on, played in.]
SPINNING, MIXING, SCRATCHING, ClITTING, STABS
"The rule of the undetermined is itself undetermined."6

If the claim made is that reading is an event-an indetermin
able space which can only be experienced as such-then can
one even begin to write about it, can one begin to enter it into
the realm of representation legitimately? I f reading is a space
a site-of negotiation, then by writing (or speaking) of it, there
is already an attempt (an illegitimate attempt) at the impossible.
Or even worse, in doing so, is there then not a possibility that
reading as such is ignored, effaced: by speaking (and writing) of
reading, do we speak-write of everything but reading? In writ
ing-speaking of reading, is it not that reading as such is eternally
deferred?
[If we are speaking of reading without actually speaking of it,
is it not, then, that we are speaking of it by turning away from
it, by looking away, metaphorically, blindly? Perhaps by turning
away from it, by not looking at it, we might see something that
we otherwise would not; how else can one see ghosts but by
140
READING BLINDLY
not looking, or by looking through one's third eye, an eye that

sees what others cannot see but cannot see what others see at
the same time, an eye that is blind to everything else but what
it sees?]
Perhaps this is the bluff that I must play. Caught in an aporia
to write about blindness, one has to be able to see (name) it; the
moment one can name (see) it, it is no longer a blindness--one
has to posit, take a position, stake on a hand. One has to attempt
to read the other players, read the game, and not be read at the
same time; one has to remain blind from all the others, and per
haps by virtue of that, to all the others as well. In writing about
reading, I have to write as if I am reading, I have to stake as
if I have a winning hand-I have to write about reading as if
you are not reading. [I have to remain blind to you. And in doing
so, I must hope that you remain blind to the fact that I have to
take a position on blindness whilst claiming that all positions are
positionless, cannot be posited, cannot be seenT After all, "the
avowal always vouches for its blindness."g
A confession of bluffing: almost like showing one's hand after
the other has folded, or, conversely, after you have folded when
the other called your hand.
Here I should recall why we confess to God who knows,
cur confitemur Deo scienti, why we only truly confess
ourselves to God-who-knows because He knows it is not

a question of knowing; and on condition: on condition
there is no other witness than God-who-knows, on condi
tion we make our confession to no one other than God,
therefore to No One, to God-who-knows-as-Iikewise
He-does-not-know, to God the Ear for my word, God as
my very own Ear into which, out my silence, I thrust my
avowal, aloud, in order to hear myself and (not) be heard
by anyone else (other than God).9
141
I confess to the reader that already knows, that already can read
my bluff because I have failed to hide behind the fan; instead of
unveiling the cards to myself, I have revealed, removed the veil that
stands between us, shown the cards to the reader, allowed myself
to be read. But it is irrelevant whether or not the reader-you
already long ago realized the bluff that is blindness, the writing of
the reading that is done
as
if blind, for it is in the confession of this,
the unveiling of this secret, that lies the power of the confession.
Consider the tale of Ra. When poisoned by Isis to extract the
ultimate secret (his true name), he reveals to her-in order to
obtain the antidote-that his full name, his real name, is Amen
Ra. The secret of his name: the secret that is his name. It is not so
much what was concealed that is the secret, for everyone knew his
name already, but that his name itself is secret. After all, Amen-Ra
is the affirmation of his name: in effect, the secret of Ra's name is
"I am Ra." This shows that the power of a secret lies not so much in
its content but in the fact that it is a secret. In the same vein, whether
or not you have realized that I had to posit blindness-to take a
position on something that has no position, cannot be posited-is
irrelevant; it is in the telling and the unveiling that the supreme
secret is revealed. In the confession of bluffing, of stating, of tak
ing up a position as regards to blindness (as opposed to knowing
what this blindness is), in the lie that is needed, lies some truth:'o
in reading, all we are doing is taking positions, positing, bluffing,
all without the possibility of knowing until the game is over, until
the reading is over, when the text is closed, when the space that
is created and negotiated by the reading is closed, when the space
between the reader and the text is closed.
In confessing to a reader who obviously knows, there lies a
similarity to-an "as if'onfession to a god who already knows:
it is a ritualized confession (aren't all confessions ritualized?), as
READING BLINDLY
142
would we confess something to someone who doesn't know or

will never know what we are confessing? If the other person
doesn't already know, then it is a telling, an unveiling, a revela
tion, and not a confession. The object of the confession-"what
is being told"-is scarcely important: after all, we all know that
the end point of a confession is absolution. This is the only rea
son why it can be called a rite of confession. Moreover, it is usu
ally followed by an act of contrition-not that a few utterances
can actually make a difference or change the fact that a deed has
been committed, but rather that it is a ritualized pardon, much
like the scapegoat onto which the sins of the community are
passed. In any act of confession, there is a aeconomical gift that
is uttered, and whether the person is genuine or not is unknow
able to the other (except to, perhaps, the Absolute Other, that is,
God, and She does nothing but hear: She is the Ear to this con
fession; She has already seen the act, now She hears the confes
sion and must be blind to all that has happened or will happen.
After all, you will fall again).
In reading lies a similar ritual: one can only read and then
read again. There lies no metaphysical comfort to allay a read
er's fears, your fears, that there is a correct reading: there is no
reading but in the reading itself, in the same way as there is
"no knowledge in the matters of ethics,"11 and "no knowledge of
practice,"12 as "one only speaks within the realm of the verisimi
lar and one can never speak in the realm of the true."\3 So even
as we write-speak of reading (as an Idea, even) and we attempt
to think of how one can read ethically, and even as we admit the
problems of this (that we have to posit blindness whilst claiming
that it is unknowable),
we must not lose sight of the essential: even if we
admit that the paradoxes ...imply a use of the Idea, that
143
is, of time, and the localization of a horizon of things

to be done in order to judge things already done, the
problem of knowing how this horizon is to be defined
remains whole, since there is no possible knowledge
of it. 14
In our act of double blindness-now you are being made com
plicit to this as well-what remains indefinable, where the
"problem of knowing how this horizon is to be defined remains
whole," is the text itself: not the text in the sense of the words,
marks, on the page (that remains constant), but rather the text
that is being read, the text that is active, the text that is con
stantly being created in the act of reading.
If what is being read-the text-is constantly shifting, chang
ing, being redefined, then is it even possible to answer the ques
tion "how is one to read?" at all?
(I) The moment the "how"
is answered, one ends up with a sadistic effacement of the text,

a totalitarian gesture: in order to maintain the (possibility of)
multiplicity, one has to refrain from any certainty, any absolute
singularity.15
(2) However, without a singularity, one is unable
to think of anything at all: one is either left with nothingness

(which would be absurd), or an anything-goes reading, the
standard postmodern position (a guise for total transparency
and complete exchangeability-a position that allows for no
secrets, rituals), which is merely effacement in another form.
(3) Hence, one has to make a hypothesis, take a position, in
order to test it: this is the figure of blindness in relation to read
ing. The result is, one is left with an aporetic situation: in order
to think the question "how to read," one has to posit that "one
has to read blindly," but to write-speak of reading blindly, one
has to be blind to the fact that one cannot legitimately speak
write of it, one can only speak-write of it metaphorically,
figuratively.
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READING BLINDLY
In this case, is it, then, ever possible to prescribe a manner,

method, or even theory, of read ing? Or does it then follow that
the true function of [a] prescriber is not so much to pre
scribe, but rather to proscribe. For if[a] prescriber is indis
pensable, it is primarily in order to proscribe, while at the
same time obscuring the necessity for proscription.16
It is this "obscuring the necessity for proscription" that allows,

almost compels, me to speak of reading blindly (even while it is
not possible to do so legitimately) in order to maintain the pos
sibility of a multiplicity that lies in reading: in order to maintain
the multiplicity that is reading, I have to make an exclusion, an
exception, and determine that reading itself is mUltiple, that the
text is multiple, and that the singularity of the moment of read
ing is premised on this multiplicity.
By prescribing that no [single form of reading], espe
cially that of prescription, should dominate the others,
one is doing exactly what is simultaneously claimed is
being avoided: one is dominating the other [readings, and
claims that there is a true text, an essential text] in order
to protect them from domination.17
In this manner, each utterance of blindness, each attempt to
think proper reading through and with the figure of blindness,
"each determination, each definition...can only be accomplished
as a more or less provisory, more or less violent arresting of a
dynamic that is interminable, but never simply indeterminate or
infinite."18
This is not a blindness that is negative in the sense of a
deliberate refusal to see certain readings, certain possibilities, a
blindness that is opposed to sight, but is rather a blindness that
is inevitable, a blindness that is structural, beyond subjective
145
choice. Not an "I do not want to see," but an "I cannot see":
after all, "a totally enlightened language , regardless of whether
it conceives of itself as a consciousness or not, is unable to con
trol the recurrence, in its readers as well as in itself, of the errors
it exposes."19 This suggests that regardless of the amount of self
reflexivity, it is futile: the problem of self-reflexivity is not the
fact that there is a self that is doing the reading (in the form of
the self as centre of everything) but, more radically, that this
self is impossible to locate in the first place; there is no self that
is separate from what (s)he is reading. In this sense, the space
of reading, "the other [to both the text and the reader] becomes
the intimate condition of possibility of the game [reading itself],
remaining all the while out of bounds, like the gods."20
Ultimately, it is for this reason-the inability to see the face
of God, the unknowability of God-that Paul goes blind: he has
no recourse but to be blind in order to "see" God, in order to
hear Her voice and Her word. Perhaps this is why we do not see
the Word, but rather hear Her. Instead of "seeing is believing,"
what we have here is "seeing as reading"-which translates to
"seeing as questioning"; did the text really say that?-each and
every time you look at the text, attempt to read the text. It is only
when you close your eyes and listen that you might hear Her.
However, this means that there can be no prescribed Word: you
have to hear Her for yourself, which also means that you will be
the only one that heard Her, and no one will believe you, as you
have nothing and no one to verify with; you are destined to be
alone after that point. Not only can it not be prescribed, one can
never after the event prescribe it to anyone else: Her word was
meant for you and you alone. This is why, when Paul faced the
problem of how to speak of the unspeakable, show the unshow
able, interpret the word, he had no recourse but to tum away, to
address indirectly, to narrate the story. He had to speak of God
146
READING BLINDLY
figuratively; this is precisely why there are logical inconsisten

cies in his story: it was never meant to be factual, true (in a logi
cal sense), but was a narration, a telling, a relaying. And as we
have learnt from Ra, J. Hillis Miller, Roland Barthes, and Karen
Eiffel, the secret lies not in the content, but in the telling; the
secret of reading lies not in what is being read, an interpretation,
a hermeneutics, but in the reading itself.
[As with21 all figures, tropes, there is always a turning away.
Perhaps in that lies the secret of reading--one must tum away,
not look directly at the object, be blind to the object. And in that
way, perhaps one might actually see something.]
147
ENDNOTES
1. Helene Cixous, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish

Saint, trans. Beverly Bie Brahic (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004), 41 (italics original).
2. In a lunchtime discussion about Jacques Lacan, Avital Ronell
responded to my comment that despite the fact that we are born
into language, we never get used to it, never use it, and that
all we are is the medium for language, but not a neutral, unin
volved medium (for language and words have an ability to wound
us), with the utterance, "Words are missiles that explode in our
somatic beings"; they are written into us, become us, as much as
we become words, feel words, and launch words into others
which has inscribed itself into my being.
3. Even when you stake a vampire, you never really know whether it
is a vampire or not; all you know is that the one you staked is now
dead. This is precisely why it is called a stake: when you drive the
piece of wood into the being, you are wagering that it is a vampire
that you are killing, and not just another mortal-what is at stake
is your judgment, your call, your self.
4. Cixous, Portrait ofJacques Derrida, 48 (addition is mine).

5. Perhaps this would have been the moment to explore sound: how
a word sounds to us, how the sounds speak to us, how the sounds
that are left out continue to speak to us, how our prayers are always
preying on us; do we need to come here in order to hear?
This is where an exploration of a DJ and the way her body reads
the music, how the tracks record themselves into her, how she lay
ers the sound into her own score, might give us another aspect of
reading and playing.
During a conversation with DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller) in Saas
Fee, Switzerland, he likened spinning to conducting an orchestra:
the score is laid out by the fact that you have a limited number of
tracks available at any one time; the instruments are also in front
of you; instead of players, you have a player; and the moment of
creation is your intervention with all of these, governed, limited
READING BLINDLY
148
by a set of rules, laws, ways of hearing, by music, by musicality.

According to Miller, it is the imagination of the OJ-the move
ment into virtuality-that opens up this space for creation, an
intervention by the OJ, such that a moment of negotiation, of com
munication, between the OJ, her music, the people in the crowd
listening to her tracks, and music itself, can take place.
Singapore-based Lady Lue (Quek Sue-Shan) opened up my
thoughts in terms of feeling the music, a bodily experience of the
beats that are present and also those that are about to be present,
feeling for the tracks, feeling the tracks that are on the stylus, and
layering them with her fingers, her touch. In this manner, spinning
is a bodily experience where she reads the tracks, the music, not
just with her ears and her thoughts, but allows the beats to hit her,
to record, track, trace themselves into her. Like a reader reading a
text, the OJ is always in a process of spinning, of making music
the music is always becom ing-playing music.
6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1137b29-30, as cited in Lyotard
and Thebaud, Just Gaming, epigraph, 2.

7. In fact, I have to hide the parentheses within a paragraph in the
hope that they will remain unseen, unsighted, a spectre. But one
must never forget that "what is secondary is the most powerful.
What counts is not the main action, it is what is secondary: it is
the running, the pursuit, the interminable desire, the metonymic
machine, and not the action ...The accessories, or props, without
which there would be no story, drama, no literature, are the secret
geniuses of the soul's Theatre, from Othello's handkerchief, to
Rousseau's ribbon, the accessories are the occult masters of our
tragedies" (Cixous, Portrait of Jacques Derrida, 108-109). After
all, it is the prop that holds up, becomes the support, structure,
base almost-without it, nothing would be propped up.
8. Ibid., 48.
9. Ibid.
10. There has always been much truth in the oft-used cliche "where
the truth lies"-after all, it is not as if we are looking for some
metaphysical, transcendent truth (as if this were possible); all that
is available is what lies-are lies-and perhaps, like the hysteric,
in some of these lies, lies some truth.
149
II. Lyotard and Thebaud, Just Gaming, 73.

12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 75.
14. Ibid., 83.
15. Even when we speak of an ethical reading as one that adopts a sin
gular response, a singular reading that cannot be extrapolated and
brought beyond a particular context, this singularity is one that
takes into consideration mUltiplicity: it is a singular-plural posi
tion. The moment a position of absolute singularity is adopted, we
are back to the situation of effacement.
16. Sam Weber, "Afterword: Literature-Just Making It," in Lyotard
and Thebaud, Just Gaming, 104 (italics original).
17. Ibid., 105.
18. Ibid., 109.
19. de Man, Allegories of Reading, 219n.
20. Weber, "Afterword," 109 (additions are mine).
21. W hen you claim that something is like something else, when you
establish a similarity, is there also a trace of preference-a liking
that is inscribed into it? Perhaps this suggests that the likeness
of one object to the other bears in it an influence of subjective
bias; the correlation of one with the other is hinged on a subjec
tive intervention: communication-and even language-which is
based on the possibility of referentiality is only made possible by
a SUbjective will. Hence, even if the subject, the reader, is not the
centre of reading, the intervention of the reader, the willingness to
read, the openness to the possibility of reading itself is a crucial
step, an irreplaceable gesture.* *
READING BLINDLY
150
**
is like
When we make a statement"
----
what are we actually saying; what does it mean when we make

a statement of relation between one thing and another?
Perhaps there is always a trace of preference-a liking
that is inscribed into this statement: when one says that
----
is like
," there is a likeness between one
and the other because you like it to be so; there is a subjective

bias-or at least, a subjective involvement-in the statement
of relationality between the two. This suggests that without this
subjectivity, without the will of the subject, there can
be no
similarity between things, that subjectivity is the precondition

of relationality itself. Moreover, the object that is referred to in
the utterance is no longer objective: it is a subjectivised object,
it is an object only because it has been called into a relation
with another object by a sUbjective moment, a sUbjective will
(only when named as an objectalled into being as an object
by the subject-does it attain its objective status; otherwise, it
remains unnamed, unknown, uncalled,
sans papiers). In this
sense, its status as an object is only as such due to its rela

tionality with the other object, and since this relationality itself
cannot exist without a subjective moment, the very status of
the object is no longer stable: it is a relationality between two
objects that are only objects because of this relationality itself.
Since the statement"
is like
" is a state-
ment of relationality, would it not be that in order to make the

statement, the possibility of relationality between the two things
would have to first be in place? In other words, the possibility
of the relationality between the two things in question would
have to be assumed before one could even make a statement
about their relation. So, even if there is a subjective moment to
this relationality-in the sense that it requires a subject to utter
the statement-the possibility of this relationality precedes the
subjective moment, precedes the subject itself.
If the possibility of relationality precedes the subject, then
it follows that this is a relationality that is precognitive, for
cognition can only take place in and through the subject. Since
this relationality is one that is precognitive, there is always a
151

notion of unknowability in it: in the statement "
like
is
," there is a relationality that is unknowable, that
precedes both the similarity between the objects and the subject
that is uttering the very similarity itself; there is an unknowable
relationality within the relationality.
One of the possibilities that is opened, then, is if this rela
tionality is one that is preceded by an unknowable relational
ity, then is it a call to the subject from the unknown, in the
sense of the subject responding (by uttering the relationality)
to something that it does not fully comprehend? This would
suggest that the subject is responding to a transcendental rela
tionality between the objects, one that somehow the subject has
been made privy to. However, considering that this relation
ality is a result of language-it only exists at the moment in
which the statement"
is like
" is uttered
this suggests that the prerelationality that calls the subject to

making the utterance cannot precede, be outside, language.
In this sense, the prerelationality is part of language, part of
the language that calls forth the relationality: language itself
must encompass a prerelationality within the relationality that
it establishes. Not only is prerelationality part of the language
that establishes relationality, it is within relationality itself: pre
relationality is not something that precedes relationality (in the
sense of coming before, to be replaced by relationality), but is
rather a condition of relationality itself. All relationality brings
with it, is a result of, a prerelationality.
[It is etymologically possible to trace the term like to the
corpse-this would be through lich (or liche), which literally
means "a dead body." This opens up the consideration that
this prerelationality is written on the body, is part of the body,
and not just that of the subjective body, the cognitive body,
but a body that precedes the very subject in question. This
opens again the consideration that the body of the subject must
already be open to the possibility of a relationality before the
relationality itself is even possible: the body is the site in which
this prerelationality is written, is situated; the body is where
the potentiality for relationality occurs in the first place.]
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READING BLINDLY
If there is a prerelationality that is a part of every relational
ity, this means that there is a part of every relationality that
does not lie within the boundaries of relationality itself: it is
not a nonrelationality in the sense of an antonym of relational
ity (for that would be just a phase before relationality) but a
relationality that is unknown to the relation itself, a relation
ality that is unknowable within the boundaries of the rela
tionality between the two objects in relation. Not only is this
unknowable relationality part of the relationality between the
two objects in the statement "
is like
," it
is a condition of this very relationality itself. Hence, whenever

there is a statement of relationality, one can never fully legiti
mize this relationality, not because there is a subjective bias in
making the statement but rather as there is always already an
unknowability which allows for this very relationality: this is
precisely because the possibility of the relationality between
the two objects must be assumed before this relationality can
be made. This is not an assumption that rests on subjective
bias ("I want there to be a relationality, so there will be one")
but is a structural assumption, a structural condition. And it is
this assumption of relationality that both allows for the state
ment of relationality to be made, and which also never allows
the statement to be fully legitimate. It is for this reason that
____
is like
" is a descriptive statement, and
never one that reaches the status of a definition; it can never be

a definitive statement: "
is like
" is always
a claim. [One can no longer even discern whether the claim

made is true or false as such-this is the point in which one
can no longer differentiate between a performative and a con
stative statement-as there is no external referent: referential
ity is precisely the assumed relationality of language itself.]
It is for this precise reason that this project-Reading
Blindly-which is a claim of the relationality between the
reader and the text (s)he is reading, is forever plagued by the
illegitimacy of the "like": in order to explore the relationality
between the reader and the text, the possibiIity of this relation
ality has to be assumed, has to precede the very project itself.
Reading. Or
Just Gaming.
153
In order for the project of reading to take place, there has to be

a moment that is beyond reading itself, that is blind to the read
ing that is about to take place. In this very precise sense, blind
ness is both what allows reading to occur (as demonstrated in
the project) and also the very condition that allows the project
to come into existence: one has to assume blindness in reading
even before speaking of blindness in reading, before protecting
the space of blindness in reading.
It is the illegitimacy of this reading, the illegitimacy of this
blindness in reading, that opens reading itself out to the oth
erness that we have been speaking of-the gap between the
reader and the text in which reading potentially takes place.
Only because this blindness is ultimately indefinable, illegiti
mate, unreadable, does it expose us to its absolute otherness:
the absolute otherness of the reader and the text (s)he is read
ing. And because this absolute otherness is unknowable, and
never knowable, reading-or, more precisely, a thinking of
"what reading is," which can only ultimately come down to
"what reading is like"--can never close itself, can never com
plete itself, can never enclose itself.
Like the "like," reading can only expose itself-to reading.
The connection to the other is a reading-not an

interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic
understanding, but a reading.
-Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book
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--- . Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. Translated by Anne

Boyman. New York: Zone Books, 2002.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. Translated by Helen Lane, Mark Seem,

and Robert Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1977.
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---
157
. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1987.
Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in

Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven, CT: Yale
de Man, Paul.
University Press, 1979.

Derrida, Jacques.
The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wills.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
. Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other

Ruins. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas.
---
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

---
. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri C. Spivak.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

---
. Right of Inspection. Translated by David Wills. New
York: The Monacelli Press, 1998.
---. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Translated by Pas

cale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford, CA: Meridian,
2005.
de Saussure, Ferdinand.
Course in General Linguistics. Trans
lated by Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library,

1959.
Fernando, Jeremy.
Reflections on (TJerror. SaarbrUcken: Verlag
Dr MUlier, 2008.
Flaubert, Gustave.
Madame Bovary. London: Penguin Classics,
1995.
Infant Figures: The Death of the Infans and

Other Scenes of Origin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Fynsk, Christopher.
Press, 2000.
158
READING BLINDLY
Hamacher, Werner. Premises: Essays on Philosophy and Litera
ture from Kant to Celano Translated by Peter Fenves. Stanford,

CA: Meridian, 1999.
---
. Uncalled: A Note on Kafka s 'Test. Open lecture at the

'
European Graduate School, Saas Fee, Switzerland, 2007.

Jarry, Alfred. The Ubu Plays: Ubu Roi, Ubu Cocu, Ubu Enchaine
& Ubu sur fa Butte. Translated by Kenneth McLeish. London:
Nick Hern Books, 1997.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by Breon Mitchell. New
York: Schocken Books, 1998.
Kierkegaard, Sereno The Seducer s Diary. Translated by Howard
V. Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Latour, Bruno. Pandora s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science
Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Humanism of the Other. Translated by
Nidra Poller. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Lucretius. Sensation and Sex. Translated by R. E. Latham. London:
Penguin, 2005.
Lumsden,
Robert. Reading Literature after Deconstruction.
Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2009.

Lyotard, Jean-Frans;ois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Mas

sumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Lyotard, Jean-Frans;ois, and Jean-Loup Thebaud. Just Gam
ing. Translated by W lad Godzich. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1985.
Marquis de Sade. Philosophy in the Boudoir. Translated by Mer
edith Bodroghy. New York: Creation Books, 2000.
Bibliography
159
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans

lated by Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 2006.
Miller, J. Hillis. The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man. Eliot.
Trol/ope, James, and Benjamin. New York: Columbia Univer
sity Press, 1987.
Murphy, Neil. Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt: An Analysis
of the Epistemological Crisis in Modern Irish Fiction. Lew
iston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Walter
Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
. The Case of Wagner. Translated by Walter Kaufmann.
---
New York: Vintage Books, 1967.

--- . On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter
Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books,
1989.
Quigley, Brendan. "The Distant Hero of Samson A gonistes."
ELH 72, no. 3 (Fall 2005): 529-551.
Ramachandran, V. S., and S. Blakeslee. Phantoms in the Brain:
Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind New York: William
Morrow and Co., 1998.
Ronell, Avital. Crack Wars: Literature Addiction Mania. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2004.
---. Dictations: On Haunted W riting. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1993.
. Finitude s Score: Essays for the End of the Millennium.
---
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

---
. Stupidity. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
READING BLINDLY
160
---
. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Elec
tric Speech. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

---
. The Test Drive. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2005.
Sacks, Oliver. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Lon
don: Picador, 1985.
Shah, Idries. Reflections: Fables in the Sufi Tradition. New York:
Penguin Books, 1974.
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar. London: Hutchinson, 1984.
Stranger Than Fiction, DVD. Directed by Marc Foster. Chi
cago: Crick Pictures, 2006.
The Jerusalem Bible. Edited by Alexander Jones. Manila: The
Philippine Bible Society, 1966.
von Sacher-Masoch, Leopold. Venus in Furs. Translated by Jean
McNeil. New York: Zone Books, 1999.
Winterson, Jeanette. Written on the Body. New York: Random
House, 1994.
Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan
through Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
--- . Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences.
London: Routledge, 2004.
---
. The Puppet and the Dwarf The Perverse Core of Chris
tianity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

---
. The Ticklish Subject: T he Absent Centre of Political
Ontology. London: Verso, 2000.
INDEX
a priori,xvii,31, 36,41-42,
55-57,70,78nI5,92
aporia, 140
aporetic,2-3,37,60,89, 143
book,9,12n3,25-26,28,43,
46nI9,57,64-66,68,70,
80n39,107, 135
Brutus, xiv-xvi
Acts of the Apostles, xii, xvi,

xixn l l
Adria, Ferran, 130
Agamben,Giorgio,48n36
Aristotle,70,148n6
Caesar, Julius,xii,xiv, xvi

calculate, 1,35,38,54, 136
incalculability,36
uncalculated,94
checkers,68
Badiou,Alain,xvii,62
Being and Event, xixn 13,

79n31
Barthes, Roland, 14n 18, 116n 17,
139,146
Roland Barthes by Roland

Barthes, 76, \0 1-114
Baudrillard,Jean,8,74
Impossible Exchange, 48n35
choice, 1-2,7-8,12nl, 13n15,

33,61,69-70,75-76,86,93,
108-109,113, 123, 137-138,
145
choose,1,7-8, 13n15, 37,
56,59,68,77n7,106-107,
109,113,118n46, 123,
138
Christian,xi-xiii,xv-xvii,
The Intelligence of Evil,
xviiin2,xixn l l,5-6
14nI7,14nI9,82n55
Cixous, Helene,81n43
Simulacra and Simulation,

49n48,98nI4,99n22
The System of Objects, 48n34

Bloom, Harold
"Literature is otherness," 30,
71
bluff,137-138, 140-141
body,10,20,23-24,46n4, 113,
134-137,139,147n5
"written on her body," 134
"written on the body," 151
Portrait ofJacques Derrida

as a Young Jewish Saint,
147nl,147n4,148n7
communion,30-31,46n 19,
81n39,105
communication,34-36,43,
48n36,55,58,67,78nI3,93,
148n5,149n21
concept,5, 22,37,7 1
conception,xvii,2 ,5,30-33,
41-43,66,III
READING BLINDLY
162
contract,40,52-54,58-61,69,
event,xvii,4-6, 9,25-26,28,
72-73,75
34,55-56,62,70,73-74,
precontractua1,64
78n11,91,93,139,145
correspondence, 5,90,104
exchange,7,30,39,143
direct exchange,35-36
dark,xvi,9,20,42,118,126
semidarkness,75
"stumbling around in the
dark," 11
Deleuze,Gilles,71,94,100n41
Coldness and Cruelty, 63,
77n8,80n36
de Man, Paul,81n 47
Allegories of Reading, 47n20,
82n47,82n52,149nI9
Derrida,Jacques,36-37,79n34
The Gift of Death, 48n37,
48nn42-46
Right of Inspection, 81 n42,
82n48
detail,8,42,71
"devil is in the details," 9,72
double blindness,12n1,13n15,
36-37,39,44,61,107,143
efface,32,48n32,52,54-58,
61-62,72-73,78n15,87,91,
99n26,119n53,139
effacement,26-27,43,143,
149n l 5
elliptical,9
emergent property,34, 36,
48n36,8In39,91
ethics,1-2,4-5,31-33,142
ethical,8-10,12n l ,13nI5,
43-44,86-88,91,94,96
ethicity,5
impossible exchange,35-36,
38,44,71 ,136
faith,xvii,46n19,86,92,137
forget,3,8, 14n18, 58,74,
105-106, 108,122,134,139,
148n7
forgetting,2-4,12n4,13n6,
21,23,46n19,66
fragment,8-9,27,42,79,
109-112
Fynsk, Christopher,100n36
infans,93
gap,5-6, 23,43, 58-59,61-64,
67,69,80n35,114,I18n46,
132,153
Genesis, 13nn7-14
ghosts,12nI,20,25,27,34,39
phantom,10,28,30-31,108
spectre,20,22,28,44,66,
134-135,148n7
third eye,10,140
grammar,3,27-29,40,
47nn20-21,52,66,69,81n47
Guattari,Felix,71,94,100n41
Hamacher,Werner,13nn4-5,
31,48n32
Premises, 13n4,47n24,
78n16,82n50
Hannibal,74-75
hermeneutics, 4,146
163
Index
illegitimate,xvii,6, 29, 139, 153
law,xiv,4, 13n 15,28,46n16,
illusion,22,27,66,81n41,99n17
65,68-72,80n35,86-91,
image,9,19-20,23,70,103,
94-96, 148n5
105-109,113,115nI7,
unknowable law,90
117n42,119n53
laughter, 113,I18n46
imagination,xvii,5,
Lenin, Vladimir,63, 79n33
21-23,25,33,61,
"what is to be done?",62
71-72,74-75,92-95,
Levinas, Emmanuel,32-33,
113-114, 119n53, 148n5

imaginary,23,32,103,
105-107,109-110,113,
119n53
painting,78n 13,115n17
photograph,105, 111,115n17
Iscariot,Judas,xii-xv,xviiin8
47n27,48n32,59
like,4,7,9,30,35,46n19,57,
63,71,89,92,98n3,104,
106, 109-110, 136,140, 142,
145, 147n5, 148n10,149n21,
150-153
literature,86,121,148n7
love,xiv,xviiin7,xviiin9,37
Jesus of Nazareth,xi-xv,
xviiin8,xixn 10
Julius Caesar, xviiin9
Lucretius,34,36,48n33,93
Luke, St.,xvi,xviiin6,xixn 11
Lyotard,Jean-Franois,47n25,
78n l 2
Kafka, Franz,97
Just Gaming, 47n25
Before the Law, 85,95,98n 1,

100n46
know,xii-xiii,xvi,3,29,56,
66,87-89,105,113,115nI7,
134,138,141-143
Marquis de Sade,32
Philosophy of the Boudoir,

77n7
sadist,43,54-55,63, 77
"I don't know," 69,81n46
sadistic,49n50,57,73,143
knowledge,xvii,2,5,7, 10,
sadism,54
24,38,43,59,62
preknowledge,39
unknowable,xvii,2,4,
The Meaning of Life, 123, 127n2

memory,2-4,13n4,21,23, 104,
108,114, 136
25-26,30,36,39,65,
"do this in memory of me," 134
72-75,80n39,88-93,96,
remember,12n4,59,61,72-73,
98n3,99n31,118, 142,
151-153
Kierkegaard, Soren, 33, 37,
48n39
102-104, 108-109,116n28
metaphor, 109,113,117n42,
139,143
catachrestic,87,89
164
READING BLINDLY
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice,23,
45n4,63
Phenomenology qf
Perception, 46n4
Miller, Paul. D (aka DJ
Spooky),147n5
Miller,J. Hillis,46n16,76, 146
The Ethics 0/ Reading,

85-97,98n2, 98nn4-13,
98nnI5-16,99nnI8-21,
99nn23-25,99nn27-30,
100nn37-40,100nn42-45,
100n47,100n50
Murphy,Neil,78n14
negotiate,34,44,51,59,67,71,
76,8In46,135,138,141
negotiation,2,5--6,14n18,
30,43,51-58,67,69,71,
81n46,139,148
Nietzsche, Friedrich,42,63,79,
92,99n33
The Birth o/Tragedy, 46n17,

49n49,81n41
The Gay Science, 99n33

"metaphysical comfort," 42,
81n41,142
particular,1,8-9,12n3,26,28,
31,35,42,52-55,64--65,
68-70,76,78n15,88,96,
105, 138-139,149n l 5
Paul, St., xii-xvii,xixnnIO-II,
5--6, 145
phantom limb,20-25,30
somatosensory cortex,20,45n3
virtual reality interface, 22
visual-kinesthetic
sy nesthesia,22
phenomenon,5,64,73
non phenomenal, 5
phenomenality,5
poker,137
posit, xiii,6,8,24,28,34-37,
62,65,75,91
imposition,54-55,57,78n15
position,32,56,58-59,73,
88,92-93,99n17, 111,
136-143
possible, 40,52,65,93, 96,106,
122,136,151
impossible, 2,18,39,59,73,
75,88,111,116n17,139,
145
impossibility,29,40,65,74,
82n50,89,103,109
potential,xv,2-10,23,25,93-96
otherness,31,56,59,66,153
potentiality,xvii, 12nl,
alterior,53,55
13n6,26-28,30,34-44,
radical otherness,30,39,58,
52-56,103-109, 135-139,
67,71,88
151-153
prescribe,xv,30-3\,52,79n32,
parenthesis,118n46
parentheses,102,107,113-114,
115n3,118n46,148n7
123,144-145
prescriptive,8,25,39,
41-42,123-124
165
Index
prescribe (continued)
prescription,41,43,62,70,
85,144
proscribe, 62, 79n32, 144
proscription,62,144
Ronell,Avital (continued)
The Telephone Book, 154
The Test Drive, xv,xviiin9,
46nI8,79n34,8In41,
100n34
rule(s), 2-4,9,30, 40-41,
Quek,Sue-Shan (aka Lady

Lue),148n5
question,xii-xiii, 1-2,6-10,
12n2, 13n15, 14n16, 22,39,
52-56,62,72, 79n34, 80n39,
91,96,102, 104-105, 109,
112,122, 126,134, 140,143,
145,150-151
Ra,141
Isis,141
Ramachandran,V. S.,21,
45nn2-3,46n5
"mirror box," 21-22
referentiality, 4,73, 149n21,
152
relationality, 4,65, 150-153
prerelational relationality,4,
64,151-153
respond,xiv,2-3,25,51,72,75,
88, 147n2
nonresponsibility,37
responding, 58-59, 78n14,
86,95, 114,151
responsibility, 30-40,86,
96-97,104, 110,113
resurrect,xiv,42
resurrection,xviiin3
51-52,65-69,71,80,89-90,
93-94, 136-137, 139, 148n5
Rushdie,Salman,16
Sacks, Oliver, 46n8
Saul. See Paul, St.
secret, xiii, 4,8,37-39,94, 109,
112, 118n46, 137, 141,143,
146,148n7
self-referential,73
sentence, 14nI8,35,56-57,
72, 102,104, 106, 110, 112,
124,134
death sentence,43,98n 14
simulate,22,30,32-33,36,
41,46n 19,48n32,57-58,
67,87-88,90,95,98n3,
107,137
double simulation,89
simulation,33,55-56,58,
98n14, 105,I19n53, 137
simulacra,32,36,94
single,3,26-27,64,71, 113,
144
singular,xii,xviiin3,xviiin7,
2,8-9,25,35,42,55,68,
72, 149nl 5
singularities,38
singularity,1,6,31,39,53,
right(s),69-70,73, 110
70-71, 75,99n26, 124,
Ronell,Avital,xv, 147n2
143-144
READING BLINDLY
166
speak,10,39,43,63,69,86,90,
von Sacher-Masoch,Leopold,
93,142-145,147n5,149nl5
52-53
speaking,xii-xiii,68,88,
masochism,49n50,53-55,
104-108,139,153
unspeakable,145
statement,8,28,33,53, 56,
73,80,101,106,124-125,
150-153
constative statement,xv,29
performative statement,29
undecidable statement,26-27
stake,29,136,139-140
63-64
Severin,53,59-64,79n20
Venus in Furs, 77nl-6,

78n17,79n20
Wanda von Dunajew,51-53,
59-64,79n20
vow,39,75
avow,107,137,140
disavow,104,110
vampire,147n3
Stranger than Fiction, 121-126
Weber,Samuel,79n32,149n 16
write,xv,10-11, I10-114,
terror,55-56,77n I 0,78n 12,
115n3,117n46,125,
81n46
139-140, 142-143
terrorism,55
unwritten,108
Thebaud,Jean-Loup,47n25
The Tempest, 81n45

theory,2,5,41-42, 57,63,86,
119n53,144
theorize,2
writer,10,95,102,104,109,
122,135
writerly, III
written,28,40,86-87,109,
115n3
third,xvii,5-6,10,23,33-34,
43-44,55-56,67,71,76,
107,114
trope,27-28,30,47n20,69,146
Ziek,Slavoj,33-34,37,48n32,
78n13,98n17
"A plea for Leninist
Intolerance," 79n33,
veil,4,61,136-137,141
unveil,3-4,27,72,133,
136-137,139,141-142
virginal reading,2-3
violence,38,55-56,62,69-70,
81n46
81n40
"Smashing the Neighbour'S
Face," 47nn26-31,
48n41
The Ticklish Subject, 46n7,

80n35
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at the Euro

pean Graduate School, where he received his PhD. He works in
the intersections of literature, philosophy, and the media, and is
the author of Reflections of (T)error and The Suicide Bomber;
and her gift of death. Exploring his thinking through different
media has led him to both film and art, and his works have been
exhibited in Seoul, Hong Kong, Vienna, and Singapore. He is
the editor of the thematic magazine
One Imperative, and is also
a Research Fellow at the School of Humanities and Social Sci

ences, Nanyang Technological University.
It is a book where each phrase is a moment. Each one

complete and necessary. Each one self-reliant: completes
its work without leaving it up to the following phrase.
As if nobody knew whether another would follow.
So each one of them at once modest, urgent, respectful,
unreserved. Extremely simple, the most difficult thing: a
phrase that doesn't resemble a phrase.
Getting to the essential, there are times when one can't get
there without going through the non-essential which hides
it.
But often obstacles barring the way are fallacious: afraid
simple words will displease?
So difficult to unadorn. Habit. Have to unlearn. Learn to
say necessarily: mathematically, which is to say "elegant
solution." God is "elegant:' First nature elegance.
Ultimate-book would be unadorned, which doesn't mean
ungraceful.
Each phrase full and slender: belle demoiselle.
Will be called: Esperance. (Elegance of words ending in
ance: unexplainable? Because open sound, continues,
accords: which is why the word "silence" is so disturbing ...)
Free book, not subject to judgment. Absolutely non
subjugated, neither insubordinate, nor provocative. Alluring
as the mystery of a child's enjoyment: internal. Wild book.
Initiate of life.
Written in a safe place. Before love.
Room book, at the same time unlimited.
So would be unbound and free. Even from being a book.
-Hemme Cixous
Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite
Breinigsville. PA USA
10 December 2009
228990BV00002BI I IP
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 111 111 11
9 781604 976335
"This work is responsible for initiating a new generation of reflections

that make our philosophical certitudes tremble. Grappling with the
implications of non-phenomenal reading, Jeremy Fernando scans the
works of outstanding thinkers whose insight weighs heavily on our
relation to language and world. Fernando locates the constitutive
blindness that stalls the ethical imperative while giving it new meaning."
- Avital Ronell,
Professor of German, English, French, and Comparative Literature, New York University;
and author of The Telephone Book, Stupidity, Crack Wars, and The Test Drive
"There are no encounters in theory, it is said-for theory, whatever its

claims, cannot open to the event. As Jeremy Fernando demonstrates
masterfully in Reading Blindly, theory must become reading to give
the encounter to thought. Here, in a rich and always-challenging
meditation, reading is understood from an ethical turn that prompts
us to rethink ethics itself."
- Christopher Fynsk,
Director of the Centre for Modern Thought, The University of Aberdeen;
and author of Infant Figures, Language and Relation, and The Claim of Language
ISBN
978-1-60497-633-5
9 781604 976335
90000
;dfK
----::c-
CAMBRIA
PRESS
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Literature, Otherness,

and the Possibility

Copyright 2009 Jeremy Fernando

For Brendan Quigley, who taught me how to write

If the serpents had written History they would have

Stumbling Around in the Dark

Introduction: On Reading: A Pact With the Devil

Chapter 1: Blindness, or What Is This

The Book as a (Death) Sentence

Blind Ethics , or Close Your Eyes

Chapter 2: The Contr act: Venus in Furs,

A Question of Reading , or "Art Lies

"What Is To Be Done?" or How to Read

The Reader Before the Law,

Chapter 3: Rereading Miller:

J Stands Before the Law

Forever Undecided, or "Who Is the Who

Reading and Testing: Reading as Testing

Putting J Back Before the Law

Reading (Writing): How, What, and a Secret

Chapter 5: Only Fiction Is Stranger

About the Author

I was on that journey and nearly at Damascus when about

Christianity as a concept, this scene is more important than the

Stumbling Around in the Dark

way in which he could transubstantiate himself from a Pharisee

appropriateness of the gesture: after all, one cannot betray in the

sar: the betrayal and murder of Caesar had to happen in order to

Stumbling Around in the Dark

a response to Caesar's name itself, as Avital Ronell elegantly

call of the divine, a response to the "voice" of God, a response to

Acts of the Apostles; the only potential author ever suggested

Christian). In this sense,

acter in the narrative of the author. Interestingly, nowhere in

Stumbling Around in the Dark

a more interesting consideration is why such an obvious incon

Christian) was born with in the existing system of thinking (Juda

3. It is Islam that recognizes the pointlessness of the death on the

9. Avital Ronell, The Test Drive (Chicago: University of Illinois

Lear, respectively, can be found in The Test Drive, 307-310.

Stumbling Around in the Dark

10. Paul is constantly referring to himself as one who is "called to

How does one read properly, that is, ethically?

blindness: the outcome (and even the situation leading up to it) is

Since reading is an event of ethicity, it interdicts any precon

More than just the fact that

they had to ignore Yahweh God's command, in order to become

Every particle wrested from the natural world is in itself an

I. Of course, to deny that an ethical situation is also historical-it

has its ghosts that continue to haunt it-would be silly. However,

from the very beginning, or must it be left to the very end-an

tion to the general-reading the particular text in relation to the

object that was referred to were present, then there would be no

An excellent instance of the thinking of the status of memory

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception

17. Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact,

18. To rediscover reading as the point of emergence-negotiation,

19. Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil, \04.

I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the

The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins

Blindness, or What is This No-Thing We See?

Blindness, or What is This No-Thing We See?

Dr Michael Kramer writes: "Its value to the amputee is