Wolosky Derrida Jabes

Derrida, Jabs, Levinas: Sign-Theory as Ethical Discourse
Author(s): SHIRA WOLOSKY

Source: Prooftexts, Vol. 2, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 1982), pp. 283-302
Published by: Indiana University Press
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SHIRA WOLOSKY
Derrida,
Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
as
Ethical Discourse
The
spirit
is free in the letter.
Writing
and
Difference, p.
102
AS THE WRITINGS OF
JACQUES
DERRIDA have become central to
our
thinking
about
language
and
literature,
the
question
of Derrida's
relation to
Judaism
has been
repeatedly
raised. Certain facts
prompt
the
question:
Derrida is an
Algerian Jew
by origin
and
passages
in his works
recall
Jewish images
from his
upbringing.
Also,
Derrida has written
admiringly
about two French
Jewish
writers,
Edmond
Jabes
and Emman
uel
Levinas,
in whose works the
Judaic component
and
Judaic
sources
are
paramount.
The more substantive reason is less
explicit.
Derrida's
work is a
defense of
writing against
its
subjugation
to the
spoken
word.
The
disparagement
of
writing
and
books,
according
to
Derrida,
is fun
damental to Western culture. Derrida seeks to liberate the
word,
the
written
sign,
from this
dependence,
to demonstrate that
writing pro
vides the structure of
reality,
and,
programatically,
to establish
a
"science of
writing
before and in
speech,"
that
is,
a
grammatology.
Because
Judaism
has endowed
writing
and books with immense author
ity
and has at times viewed the written word as
possessed
of almost
magical powers,
the issue of
Judaism
and
specifically
the Kabbalah
as a
source for Derrida's
thought
has
naturally
arisen.
The relation is not an
easy
one to define. What Derrida writes
concerning
Levinas and Feuerbach
applies
no less to his own
relationship
to
Judaism:
"We are
speaking
of
convergences
and not of influences."1
PROOFTEXTS vol. 2
pp.
283-302
0272-9601/82/0023-0283 $01.00 ? 1982
by
The
Johns Hopkins University
Press
284 SHIRA WOLOSKY
Derrida's
grammatological system
seems to have been
initially
deve
loped
out of an
independent
desire to undertake
a
critique
of certain
metaphysical assumptions.
When
a
consciously
Hebraic element does
enter Derrida's work it is
through
hints in Glas and the
Grammatology
and more
expressly
in the
essays
on
Jabes
and Levinas in
Writing
and
Difference.
But even Derrida's
appeal
to these authors comes,
in a
sense,
after the fact. He turns to
explicitly
Jewish
authors to confirm
concep
tions towards which he
was
himself
already working.
The
convergence,
therefore,
only goes
so far. Both Levinas and Derrida are drawn to
Judaism
as a
system
that
posits
the
ultimacy
of
writing,
the
letter,
the
book. For
Derrida,
this is a
point
of
departure
for
developing
a
position
that views
writing
as
liberated from its
theological moorings.
For Levi
nas,
writing,
as it is modelled on
Torah,
becomes the basis for
generating
an ethics which orders the relations between the self and the other.
Where Levinas adheres to rabbinical and kabbalistic
traditions,
Derrida
diverges,
and what Derrida
thereby
leaves behind can
usefully
serve to
help identify
some
of the claims and limitations of the Derridean
system.
In this
paper
I shall first review the substance of Derrida's indictment of
the Christian
metaphysics
of Western
philosophy
and his counterthesis
of the
trace,
and then discuss the
Judaic
elements in
Jabes
and Levinas
that
were
sought
out
by
Derrida, and,
finally, attempt
a
characterization
of the true attitude of Derrida's work to a
Judaic
worldview.
Derrida's
attempt
to construct a
model for
signification
different
from the conventional one?which leads him towards
Hebraism?begins
with
a
critique
of Saussure. Saussure had
proposed
the
sign
as a
relation
between
a
"signified"
and a
signifier,"
a
meaning
or
idea,
and the form
which
signifies
it. This
structure,
Derrida
asserts,
not
only
is derived
from,
but
reproduces, onto-theological assumptions,
i.e.,
the
metaphys
ical
assumptions
of Greek
ontology
and Christian
theology.
Derrida
describes this
metaphysical system
as a
philosophy
of
being
and of
presence.
An
ontological
realm is
posited
as
the locus of
truth,
with
meaning
determined as
participation
in this realm. Such
participation
is
made
possible through,
and is
expressed
as,
logos.
In terms of
sign
theory,
Derrida demonstrates that the
"signified"
face of the
sign
cor
responds
to
thoughts
in the
mind,
which have access to a "transcenden
tal
signified,"
the realm of
being
and of
truth,
through
and
as
logos.
The
logos
then mediates the
signified
to its
"signifying"
face,
which
gives
to
it concrete
shape,
and remains
joined
to it as the structure of the
sign.
In this
structure,
voice is
given
a
privileged
status. The voice has
a
special proximity
to the
logos:
"Within the
logos,
the
original
and essen
tial link to the
phone
has never been broken."2 The
logos
itself is con
ceived
as
ontological,
and voice has
a
direct relation to it.
Logocentrism
assumes "an absolute
proximity
between voice and
being"
(OG, 12).
Derrida, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
as Ethical Discourse 285
Thus,
the
phonic signifier
is considered to be
immediately
related to the
signified through
the
logos,
which in turn
opens participation
in the
realm of truth.
Writing,
in this
system,
is redundant and
secondary
to
speech.
With
regard
to the "immediate and
privileged unity
of sound and sense,
it is
always
accidental and derivative"
(OG, 29).
The
unity
between sound
and sense,
voice and
signified,
can exist
theoretically
without
writing.
Writing
here is a "mere translation of a
signified
which would remain
spoken
in its
integrity"
(OG, 10).
The
integrity
of the
signified
as
spoken
not
only
can
dispense
with
writing; writing represents
a
breach of this
integrity.
It
represents
a "fall of the
signified
into the
exteriority
of
meaning." Writing
thus becomes
a
signifier
of
speech,
while
speech
remains identified with the
signified
"sense" or
idea,
and thus with the
logos.
Such a distinction between
speech
and
writing
is
based,
Derrida
asserts,
on
metaphysical assumptions.
It is derived from the distinction
between the sensible and the
intelligible
which
onto-theology posits.
The
signified participates
in the
intelligible
realm of
being,
while the
signifier
remains confined to the mundane and sensible realm. These
distinctions are reflected in
sign-theory,
where the
sign
is conceived
as
"bipartite
and involves both
aspects?one
sensible and the other intel
ligible,
or in other
words,
the
signifier
and the
signified"
(OG, 13).
Derrida cites this
Jakobsonian
definition of the
sign,
and
explicates:
The difference between
signified
and
signifier?the very
idea of the
sign?
cannot be retained without the difference between the sensible and the
intelligible,
but also not without
retaining
. . .
the reference to a
signified
able to "take
place"
in its
intelligibility,
before its
"fall,"
before
any expulsion
into the
exteriority
of the sensible here below.
(OG, 13)
Thus,
the
very
structure of the
sign
is derived from
metaphysics,
which
posits
the
intelligible
realm
as
logos
and
as
being.
Once such
a
realm is
posited,
the
possibility
of
participation
in it or
exclusion from it is
opened.
The
signified represents
the former
possibility.
The
phonic
signifier,
too,
participates
with the
signified through
the
logos.
The
logos
itself retains a
mediating position:
"The
signified
has
an
immediate
relation with the
logos,
and
a
mediated one with the
signifier"
(OG, 15).
But if the
phonic signifier
remains within this mediated
structure,
the
written
signifier
is excluded from it as
separate
and external.
Derrida further relates the structure of the
sign,
and its
underlying
metaphysical assumptions,
to Greek
philosophy
and to Christian theol
ogy
as
rooted in classical
ontology:
The difference between the
signified
and the
signifier
is rooted in the
history
of
metaphysics,
and in a more
explicit
and more
systematically
articulated
way
to the narrower
epoch
of Christian creationism and infinit
ism when these
appropriate
the resources of Greek
conceptuality.
(OG, 13)
286 SHIRA WOLOSKY
The
logos,
within this
structure,
has a
decided
similarity
to the
Johan
nine Word made flesh. In the
Grammatology,
Derrida describes it as
the
"logos
of
a creator God where it
began
as
the
spoken/thought
sense"
(OG, 15).
In
Glas,
the relation of
logos
to Christ is more
fully developed:
"God is the contents in the form of the
logos."3
In this
form,
God is
made
present
to man.
The
logos,
as the son
of
God,
serves as a
"passage
of the infinite to the
finite,
the finite to the infinite"
(Glas, 39).
The
whole structure of filiation is one in which the finite is
joined
to the
infinite,
making
the infinite accessible and
opening
the
possibility
of
union with it. The sacrament of communion celebrates this
possibility.
In
sharing
the
body
and blood of
Christ,
man
participates
in
divinity
as
presence
and
as
being,
"To think
being
as life in the
mouth,
this is the
logos"
(Glas, 84).
This is an
ontological
relation,
for in it different enti
ties are
joined.
Indeed,
Derrida asserts that it is the
very
form of the
ontological
relation:
The Father
is
the
Son,
the Son is the
Father,
and the Wesen, the essence, the
essential
energy
of this
copulation,
its
unity.
. . .
This is the essence of the
Christian communion. The
spirit
of
Christianity
is, moreover, the revela
tion of the
essentiality
of the essence which
permits
in
general
the
possibil
ity
of
copulating
in the is.
(Glas, 67)
The Father
as
presence
and as
being
becomes manifested to man in
Christ. And
Christ,
as
logos,
allows
man access to the
"spoken/thought
sense" of a "creator God."
This
is,
as Derrida
demonstrates,
the
very
structure of
sign-theory.
The
signified thought
in the mind is identified with the
"signified
con
cept
in the element of
ideality,"
that
is,
with the "transcendental
signi
fied"
(OG, 20).
The transcendental
signified
itself is manifested in the
logos-as-voice:
"The
thought
of
being,
as the
thought
of the transcen
dental
signified
is manifested above all in
voice,"
in the
logos
as
the
"voice of
being"
(OG, 20). Thus,
the
signified thought
is identified with
the
logos;
the
logos,
with the transcendental
signified.
In the
same
way,
man as an
entity participates
in the
logos-as-Christ;
the
logos-as-Christ
manifests God the Father. The
logos
serves as the
copula
or link
uniting
these
separate
entities.
It, moreover,
corresponds
on the one hand to
Christ,
and on the other
hand,
to the
sign
itself. Derrida makes this
correspondence explicit
in Glas:
That which man discovers in his own
proper
name,
in his most
appropriat
ing
relation,
is God
as his father. Truth thus comes into the world in this
designation
of the filial
rapport.
. . .
The
sign
which this
designation
of
truth
as
filiation
. . .
which the
spirit constantly repeats,
this is the
sign.
(Glas, 92)
The
"sign"
here mediates between
God-as-entity
and
man-as-entity,
making
truth accessible to man. In the
same
way,
the
sign
mediates
between the
signified
(transcendental
and
finite)
and the
signifier,
as
Derrida, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
as Ethical Discourse
287
the avenue of
meaning.
And
just
as
the
logos
is identified with
voice,
so
the
sign
is
preeminently
the
phonic sign.
The
phonic sign
is
joined
with
the
signified,
the
intelligible
face of the
sign,
and in turn refers to the
logos
(Son)
of the transcendental
signified
(Father):
As the face of
pure intelligibility,
it refers to an absolute
logos
to which it is
immediately
united. This absolute
logos
was an infinite creative
subjectivity
in medieval
theology.
The
intelligible
face of the
sign
remains turned toward
the word and the face of God.
(OG, 13)
This
sign-as-logos only finally
has a relation to the written
signifier,
the
sensible and
concrete,
which remains after and outside its
spoken unity.
The structure of the
sign
is, then,
theological,
and
specifically,
Christological.
The union of the mind and the transcendental
signified
through
the
logos
as
phonic sign reproduces
the structure of filiation
and of communion. The transcendental
signified
is made
present
as
being
in the
logos,
the
voice,
which is then "wed
indissolubly
to the
mind"
(OG, 11).
This
wedding
of the mind to the voice
corresponds
to
the
wedding
of the soul in Christ. It
is,
in each case,
an
ontological
marriage,
derived from
a
philosophy
of
being
and of
presence.
Within
this
philosophy, speech
is
privileged
as
belonging
to the
intelligible
realm,
itself an
ontological category.
The
phonic sign
is the "non
mundane, non-exterior,
non-empirical signifier"
(OG, 8),
in which the
transcendent realm is made
present.
As
such,
the
phonic sign represents
the world of
spirit. Writing,
on the other
hand,
remains excluded from
this union with the
intelligible
realm. It is the
sensible,
mundane
signi
fier. In
short,
it is the flesh. The letter is then more than
redundant,
the
sign
of
a
sign.
It
represents
the world of the
flesh,
of sin:
As the
eruption
of the outside within the
inside,
breaching
into the inte
riority
of the
soul,
the
living self-presence
of the soul within the true
logos,
writing
is a sort of stain and sin
. . .
Writing,
the
letter,
the sensible
inscription,
has
always
been considered
by
Western tradition as the
body
and matter external to
spirit,
to
breath,
to
speech,
and to
logos.
(OG, 34)
The
disparagement
of
writing
in modern
linguistics
thus reflects
what,
in a
theological sphere,
is
designated
as the
fallen,
material world.
The
ontological
relation between soul and
logos
in turn has ethical
implications.
Derrida,
in the
Grammatology, gives particular
attention to
the idea of the voice in the mind as
conscience,
as the "full and truthful
presence
of the divine voice to our inner sense." This inner voice which
is identified with the voice of God "carries in itself the
inscription
of
divine law"
(OG, 17). Here,
inscription
is a
metaphor
for that which is
not
physical,
sensible
inscription,
but rather for the voice of conscience
as divine law. Derrida
explicates
further:
288 SHIRA WOLOSKY
There is a
good
and a bad
writing:
the
good
and natural is the divine
inscription
in the heart and the
soul;
the
perverse
and artful is
technique,
exiled in the
exteriority
of the
body.
(OG, 17)
The
"good" writing
is the voice of God
which,
speaking through
the
logos,
enters into the hearts of
men.
Medieval
theology
referred to it as
a
"system
of
signified
truth"
(OG, 15).
It is not
inscription
in a literal
sense, but in a
spiritual
sense. The "bad" literal
writing
is excluded from
this
spiritual
relation. It is the letter which
killeth,
rather than the
spirit
which
giveth
life. The distinction is
essentially
Pauline. The letter
represents
the written
law,
while
speech represents
the
spiritual
"writ
ing"
of
grace:
Therefore we conclude that a man is
justified by
faith without the deeds of
law. (Romans
3:
27)
For
ye
are not under the
law,
but under
grace. (Romans
6:
14)
Foreasmuch
as
ye
are
manifestly
declared to be the
epistle
of Christ minis
tered
by
us, written not with
ink,
but with the
Spirit
of the
living
God;
not
in tables of stone, but in the
fleshly
tables of the heart. And such trust have
we
through
Christ to God-ward
. . .
who also hath made us
able ministers
of the new
testament;
not of the
letter,
but of the
spirit;
for the letter
killeth,
but the
spirit giveth
life.
(2
Corinthians 3:
3-6)
In
Paul,
the
spirit
of God inscribed in the heart is elevated above the
objective
law,
faith above
deeds,
soul above
body, spirit
above letter.
Writing
remains a
metaphor
for all the unredeemed second
terms;
spirit,
a
metaphor
for all the redeemed first
terms,
identified with the voice
as
logos.
Derrida's assertion that the
"problem
of soul and
body
is no
doubt derived from the
problem
of
writing
from which it seems?
conversely?to
borrow its
metaphors"
(OG, 35),
strongly suggests
a
Pauline context. The
relationship
between
speech
and
writing accepted
by
modern
linguistics finally
reiterates an
onto-theological hierarchy
in
which the concrete is excluded from and
secondary
to a
meaning
determined in the transmundane.
As
against
conventional
sign-theory,
Derrida
proposes
a
theory
of
the trace. In this
theory,
not
speech,
but
writing,
becomes the
pre
eminent
linguistic sign.
And this in turn
implies
a
process
of
signification
radically
different from that
posited
in terms of the
phone
of oral
speech.
The
theory
of the trace does not
deny
a
relation between
signi
fied and
signifier, seemingly freeing
the
sign
from its
"meaning"
into
limitless
ambiguity.
Rather,
it denies that there is a
"signified" separable
from
a
"signifier."
The
"signifier"
becomes instead
an
inscribed trace or
written
sign,
which does not
merely convey
a
meaning
in
any way
existing
as an
"idea" outside its "form."
Meaning
is
generated through
the interaction of
concrete,
inscribed
"signifiers"
or
traces, each of which
means
only
within this concrete
system
of
interplay.
Each means what
it
does,
in
fact,
through
its difference from all the concrete
"signifiers"
Derrida, Jabes,
Levinas;
Sign-Theory
around it. The
identity
of each
sign
is determined
by
its distinction from
all other
signs?an identity
which can never be
separated
from the
system
which the
signs together
constitute. These
interlocking
identi
ties
together generate signification:
X is X because it is not
Y;
but X and
Y
together
constitute an
articulated order.
Insistence on the
preeminence
of
writing
entails an insistence on
the
impossibility
of
separating any
supposed "meaning"
from the con
crete
system
of inscribed
signs
themselves. And the whole world of
meaning
can thence be described
as a written
text,
constituted of such
concrete
signs:
If
writing signifies inscription
and
especially
the durable institution of a
sign
. . .
writing
in
general
covers the entire field of
linguistic signs.
In that
field a certain sort of instituted
signifiers may
then
appear
. . .
ordered
by
a
certain
relationship
with other instituted?hence "written" even if
they
are
"phonic"?signifiers.
The
very
idea of institution?is unthinkable before
the
possibility
of
writing
and outside of its horizon.
Quite
simply,
that
is,
outside
. . .
the world
as a
space
of
inscription,
as the
opening
to the emis
sion and to the
spatial
distribution of
signs,
to the
regulated play
of their
differences,
even if
they
are
"phonic."
(OG, 44)
The world is a
"space
of
inscription:" any
and all
"signs"
which
signify
in
any way
take their
place
in this
space?and
hence are
"written,"
inscribed,
even if
they
are uttered. Their
meaning
as
signs depends
not
on
any "spiritual" significance
or "idea" which the breath of
speech
could
embody.
Rather,
their
meaning
as
signs depends
on
their interre
lation with all other
signs?"the regulated play
of their differences"?in
a
"spatial
distribution." There is then no
"signified"
realm,
but
only
"signifiers."
These are
significant,
not in terms of
any meaning beyond
the
system
of
inscription,
but in terms of each other within it. Each
"signifier"
articulates itself
as
different from the other
signifiers
dis
tributed in its
spatial
field,
and is defined as distinct from all other
inscribed
signs. Meaning proceeds
from the mutual
positing
of each
such
signifier by every other,
unfolding
in an articulate
system.
Retention of the term
"signifier,"
however,
is
problematic
in that
"signifier"
assumes a
distinction between itself and a
"signified"
which
no
longer
has
a
place
in this
system.
The term "trace"
dispels
this
confusion. The trace
suggests inscription.
It
suggests
the
identity
of
what is inscribed as a
relation to what it is "not"?to all the other
inscribed traces
surrounding
it,
and to the whole
system
as one in
which it is inscribed. The trace further
suggests
the source or derivation
of this inscribed
system,
which,
in this
theory,
is no
longer posited
as an
ontological
realm.
Indeed,
the derivation of this
system
cannot be con
ceived
as
ontological,
as a
realm of
"being"
in which
meanings
as
"ideas"
reside
separable
from the
signs
which trace
them,
which themselves
articulate
meaning.
Rather,
that source is an ultimate
Other,
an
Other
290 SHIR A WOLOSKY
than-all-being, standing
in ultimate difference from the traces which
similarly
stand in otherness from each other. This Other is never itself
signified.
But from it all
signification proceeds:
The
concept
of the
graphe implies
the framework of the instituted trace,
as
the
possibility
common to all
systems
of
signification.
The
trace,
where the
relationship
with the other is
marked,
articulates its
possibility
on the field
of the
entity,
which
metaphysics
has defined as the
being-present starting
from the occulted movement of the trace. The trace must be
thought
before the
entity.
But the movement of the trace
necessarily
is
occulted,
it
produces
itself as self-occultation. When the other announces itself as
such,
it
presents
itself as the dissimulation of itself.
(OG, 46)
The trace is the framework in which all
meaning
takes
place.
This
framework is instituted "on the field of the
entity,"
in the world of
beings,
of
presence.
But it marks a
relationship
with "the
other,"
which
remains
beyond
the world of
beings
and which is not an
entity
itself,
not a
being
or a
presence.
This
other, indeed,
remains
hidden,
occulted.
But it is not
merely
absent,
for it is felt
through
its trace. Nor is it
entirely present.
The trace indicates the
other,
but never reveals it
fully.
This relation of other to trace defies the
logic
of traditional meta
physics,
which cannot conceive of
a
non-ontological
other. It strains the
limits of
philosophical language,
which is rooted in
metaphysics,
as
Derrida insists and as this
passage
demonstrates. But the
passage
attempts
to describe
a
dialectic in which revelation and concealment
mutually posit
each other. The movement of the trace
"produces
itself
as
self-occultation,"
"presents
itself as the dissimulation of itself." It
remains
concealed,
but reveals itself as a
trace,
as a movement which
institutes
meaning-as-inscription.
The other remains distinct from the
inscription
it traces. But the
other,
although
itself not
present,
is
attested
by
its traces.
Although
Derrida's
system
cannot be said to derive in Hebraism as
conventional
sign-theory
derives in
onto-theology,
the resemblance
between his thematics of the trace and certain Hebraic structures is
startling.
From his
preoccupation
with
writing, through
his notion of
inscription
as the trace left
by
the occultation of the
other,
Derrida's
constructions evoke
Judaic
echoes and kabbalistic meditations. That
this should be so has its own inner
logic.
"Hebraism and Hellenism?
between these two
points
of influence moves our
world,"
states the
epigraph opening
"Violence and
Metaphysics,"
Derrida's
essay
on
Emmanuel Levinas.
Hebraism,
in its difference from
onto-theology,
provides
a stance for
a
radical re-vision of Hellenic
assumptions.
And
to
this stance Derrida has
an access not
entirely
coincidental:
Derrick, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
In
Algeria,
in the middle of a
mosque
that the colonists had
changed
into a
synagogue,
the
Torah,
once taken out from behind the
curtains,
is carried
in the arms
of
a man or child
. . .
The children who have watched the
pomp
of this
celebration,
perhaps
dream of it
long
after,
of
arranging
there all the
bits of their life
. . .
What am I
doing
here? Let us
say
that I work at the
origin
of literature
by miming
it.
(Glas, pp. 268-69)
In this Glas
text,
Derrida hints at the sources of his own
enterprise.
The
typographical similarity
between Glas,
in which
multiple
discussions
appear simultaneously
on each
page
in different
scripts,
and the
Talmud,
is clear. And the
mimicry
goes
further. The
origin
of
literature,
and
literature
as
originary,
remain Derrida's concern. Here he
suggests
that
Torah
serves as his model.
Indeed,
there is much in common between
his own notions of the text and traditional notions of Torah.
Writing,
he
asserts,
precedes speech, language,
and
even
reality.
Jewish
folklore
is
replete
with
parables
that ascribe such
precedence
to Torah. In one
Talmudic
legend,
two thousand
years
before the heaven and the
earth,
the Torah
was
created,
"written with black fire on white
fire;" God,
when he resolved to create the
world,
first "took counsel with Torah."4
Such lore is far from esoteric. The
Sayings of
the
Fathers, too,
declares: "The
Lord
possessed
Torah as the
beginning
of his
way,
before his
works,
from of old."
Scripture,
in its
preeminence,
is not
only
named the first of crea
tions. It is also
infinite, inexhaustible,
immeasurable. This
concept
is
cited in the
Grammatology
itself:
Rabbi Eliezer said: If all the seas were of
ink,
and all
ponds planted
with
reeds,
if the
sky
and the earth were
parchments,
and if all human
beings
practised
the art of
writing?they
would not exhaust the Torah I have
learned,
just
as the Torah itself would not be diminished
any
more than is
the sea
by
the water removed
by
a
paint
brush
dipped
in it.
(OG, 16)
In this
parable,
the Torah is
presented
not
only
as
inexhaustible,
but as
of such
importance
that the world is subordinated to it. Derrida
emphasizes
the difference between the status of the book as
presented
here and its more common status as the "book of nature." The
image
of
nature as
God's book
typically presents
the book as a
figure
for nature,
which remains the
subject
of the
metaphor.
The book is the
secondary
and
modifying
term.
Here, however,
it is nature which modifies
Torah,
the
subject
and focus of the
parable.
The book does not describe
nature,
nature describes the book.
Within the
parable,
nevertheless,
the
precedence
remains
figurative.
Derrida,
on the other
hand,
seems to
grant
to
writing
a literal
prece
dence. This is
given
a
particularly
radical
expression
in
Writing
and
Differ
ence, where he asserts
292 SHIRA WOLOSKY
that
Being
is a
Grammar;
and that the world is in all its
parts
a
cryptogram
to be constituted or reconstituted
through poetic inscription
or
deciphering;
that the book is
original,
that
everything belongs
to the book before
being
and in order to come into the world.
(WD, 76)
This assertion of the text as
world
(rather
than the world
as
text)
appears
in Derrida's
essay
on the Book
of Questions
of Edmond
Jabes.
The
context is instructive. The work of
Jabes,
like that of
Derrida,
is con
cerned above all with the written text.
Jabes,
too,
makes of the text the
universe: "The book is
my
universe, my country, my
roof and
my
enigma."5
To live is to take one's
place
in a
book;
existence is "an inter
rogation
of
signs,"
for
Jabes
as for Derrida. But for
Jabes
this world of
and
as
the book is
explicitly
the world of
Judaism,
of "a race
born of the
book in which the
past
and
continuity
are
merged
with that of
writing."
Jabes'
The Book
of Questions
is,
in
great
measure,
a
dialogue among Rabbis,
a reenactment of sacred texts?texts which
are described as the
Judaic
patrimony:
"The native land of
Jews
is a
sacred text in the midst of the
commentaries which it has
inspired."6
Derrida
accepts
that for
Jabes
this
"literality"
situates the
Jew.
"In
question
is a certain
Judaism
as
the birth and
passion
of
writing"
(WD,
64).
But
Jabes'
concern does not
stop
with
writing
as
primary.
It moves
into further themes which Derrida
designates
as
"negativity
in
God,
exile as
writing,
the life of the
letter,"
and which he
pronounces
to be
"already
in the Cabala."
"Jabes
is conscious of the Cabalistic
resonances
of his book"
(WD, 74),
writes Derrida?a consciousness which Derrida
shares,
and which
can
be
applied
to his own work
as well.
Jabes' path,
which Derrida also
follows,
leads into the kabbalistic world of
linguistic
mysticism,
where claims for
grammatological primacy open
into an
extensive and radical
system.
Even within rabbinic
Judaism
the extreme
centrality
of Torah had
found
expression
in its assertion as the foremost creation and the ulti
mate source of wisdom. In rabbinic
Judaism,
as
well,
there
appear
certain
mystical conceptions
of the divine Name as a creative force.
According
to the
Midrash,
"it is this
name
which
brought
about the
creation,
or
rather the creation is
closely
affixed to the
Name?i.e.,
the creation is
contained within its limits
by
the name."7 This Name
came in turn to be
associated with Torah
as
the letters of the
text,
and
finally,
as the
"letters" of creation. The Talmud states: "Bezalel
(the
builder of the
Tabernacle)
knew how to
put together
the
letters,
from which heaven
and earth
were created."8 With
Nahmanides,
this lettristic
conception
received
a
prominent place
in
Judaism.9
In his introduction to his com
mentary
on
Torah,
Nahmanides reiterates that Torah
"preceded
the
creation of the world." He continues: "We have
yet
another
mystic
tradition that the whole Torah is
comprised
of Names of the
Holy
One,
and that the letters of the words
separate
themselves into Divine Names
when divided in a different manner." The
mystics
whom Nahmanides
Derrida, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
as
Ethical Discourse 293
here cites had in fact elaborated the
early
traditions,
to become
preoc
cupied
with letters as not
only comprising
Torah as/and Divine Names
but also as
constituting reality
itself. The act of creation came to be
described
as a
process
of
writing,
and the created
world,
an
inscription.
In such terms,
the biblical
verse
"And the earth was void and without
form" is
explicated
in the Zohar:10
This describes the
original
state?as it were the
dregs
of ink
clinging
to the
point
of the
pen?in
which there was no
subsistence,
until the world was
graven
with
forty
two
letters,
all of which
are the ornamentation of the
Holy
Name. When
they
are
joined,
letters ascend and descend and form
crowns for themselves in all four
quarters
of the
world,
so that the world is
established
through
them,
and
they through
it.
Through
such
expressions,
a certain
analogy
between creation and
revelation is established. As Gershom Scholem
explains,
"the
process
of
creation is not different from the
process
that finds its
expression
in
divine words and in the documents of
Revelation,
in which the divine
language
is
thought
to have been reflected."11
Jabes'
Book
of Questions similarly
asserts a certain
equivalence
between
the divine name, the
book,
and the world. "If God
is," Jabes
writes,
"it is
because He is in the book. If the
sages,
the
saints,
. . .
man
and insects
exist,
it is because their names are found in the book. The world exists
because the book
exists,
because existence is
growing
with its name."12
The
equation
between book and
world,
with its
clearly
kabbalistic over
tones,
is
adopted
in turn
by
Derrida,
both in
Writing
and
Difference,
and in
the
Grammatology.
"The book is not in the
world,
but the world in the
book"
(WD, 76),
he writes in the former. In the
latter,
he asserts "There
has never been
anything
but
writing"
(OG, 159).
In
Writing
and
Difference,
however,
the
religious
echoes
are more overt.
Thus,
while Derrida
distinguishes
in both works between his own
book of nature and its
more
typical
usage,
in
Writing
and
Difference
he names its
theological
context: "To be is
to-be-in-the-book,
even if
Being
is not the created
nature often called the Book of God
during
the Middle
Ages.
'If God
is,
it is because He is in the book'"
(WD, 76).
And within a
kabbalistic
context,
many
Derridean statements seem less
enigmatic.
In terms of
the letters of the divine Name as
constituting
both
Scripture
and crea
tion,
it can
indeed be said:
"Everything
enters
into,
transpires
in the
book. This is
why
the book is never
finite"
(WD, 75).
Language,
and
especially writing, acquires
an
ontological
status,
such that
"every
act of
speaking
is
...
at once an act of
writing."
For the letters are the
"signs
of the divine in all
spheres
and
stages
which the
process
of creation
passes through."13
The
conception
of creation as lettristic in turn comes to
imply
a
particular conception
of the relation between creation and its
Creator,
and
finally,
of the Creator Himself. This involves
a notion of divine
294 SHIRA WOLOSKY
negativity, separation,
occultation. In The Book
of Questions, Jabes projects
an
image
of God
as
letters
encircling
a
hidden or
absent center: "At the
sources, there is
language.
God is a
round of luminous letters. He is
each of the letters of His Name. He is
equally
the middle which is the
void of the circle."14
Jabes
here
undoubtedly
invokes the Lurianic
myth
of
creation,
in which the
projection
of
language
as
world is
preceded by
a
withdrawal of God into
himself,
so that the divine essence becomes
contracted and occulted. Without this contraction or
self-limitation
there "would be no cosmic
process,
for it is God's withdrawal into
Himself that first creates a
primordial space
. . .
and makes
possible
the
existence of
something
other than God."15 This
process
was further
described
through
lettristic
imagery.
The movement in the infinite and
unnameable Godhead is
the
original
source of all
linguistic
movement.
...
It is the actual
original
Torah,
in
which,
in an
extremely
remarkable
way,
the
writing?the
hidden
signature
of
God?precedes
the act of
speaking.
With the result
that,
in the
final
analysis, speech
comes into
being
from the sound-evolution of
writing,
and not vice versa.
. . .
The combination of letters was issued in a deter
mined
sequence
from this
original
movement/716
Derrida,
like
Jabes, suggests
this Lurianic framework in which creation
is inscribed in the
space
opened by
divine
withdrawal,
while the God
head itself remains hidden
beyond
this
space.
He declares "a
rupture
within God
as
the
origin
of
history,"
and continues:
God
separated
himself from himself in order to let us
speak,
in order to
astonish and to
interrogate
us. He did so not
by speaking,
but
by keeping
still,
by letting
silence
interrupt
his voice and his
signs
. . .
Our
writing,
certainly,
but
already
His,
. . .
starts with the
stifling
of his voice and the
dissimulation of his Face."
(WD, 67)
The withdrawal of the Godhead into itself
as
the
original
movement of
creation,
and the
positing
of
an
unnameable and still center from which
proceeds writing
as
world,
concurs in
Derrida,
in
Jabes,
and in the
Lurianic Kabbalah. When
Jabes adds,
in words which recall the Zohar
(which opens:
"At the outset the decision of the
King
made a
tracing
in
the
supernal effulgence")
that the letters
leading
to an
empty
center
constitute the
"pathway
of God" and the "trace of
steps,"
Derrida's final
term falls into
place.
The trace invokes the Godhead and asserts its
hidden nature. The
pathway
of letters attests to the divine
activity,
but
also
distinguishes
the Godhead from the work it created and
posits
it as
beyond
that work.
Derrida's
essay
on
Jabes clearly projects
a
relation between Derrida's
grammatological
scheme and those found in kabbalistic
writings.
There
remains, however,
the
problem
of
specifically defining
Derrida's the
Derrida, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
matics of the trace as
against
the conventional
sign-theory
he
criticizes,
and
finally
of
defining
it as
against
the kabbalistic structures it
suggests.
Both of these
problems
are illuminated
by
Derrida's relation to Emma
nuel Levinas.
Levinas,
like
Derrida,
concerns himself with the meta
physical presuppositions underlying linguisitic
structures and articulates
these
as
they
function within Hebraism
as distinct from
Christianity.
Derrida's
critique
of
Levinas,
in
turn,
suggests
distinctions between his
system
and those of a more traditional
Judaism.
Derrida himself refers his
"concept
of the trace to what is at the
center of the latest work of Emmanuel Levinas and his
critique
of
ontology"
(OG, 70).
"The Trace of the
Other,"
the work then
cited,
develops
the notion of God
as an
other which is
"absolutely
other,
and
not
by
relation to some relative term."17 This other
is,
according
to
Levinas,
never
directly
knowable,
since it is
totally
other from all that
can be known. It is
experienced only indirectly, by
its
passage
or trace.
He derives the term "trace" from
Exodus,
where
Moses,
in
beholding
God's
glory,
could not sustain the
sight
of the divine face but
only
its
back
as the divine
glory passed by.
Of the biblical
text,
Levinas writes:
"The revealed God
. . .
conserves all of the
infinity
of his absence. He
does not show himself
except by
his
trace,
as in Exodus 33."18
Levinas further
distinguishes
between this notion of
God,
which he
describes
as
Judaic,
and
philosophies
which base
a
relation to the abso
lute on its resemblance to the self:19
As
opposed
to the
philosophy
which makes of the self the entrance into the
realm of the absolute and which announces,
according
to the word of
Plotinus,
that "the soul will not
go
towards
anything
other than
itself,
but
rather towards
itself,"
. . .
Judaism
teaches us a true
transcendence,
a
rela
tion with Him Whom the soul can never contain and without Whom it
could not itself exist."
The relation to the other is not based on
identity,
but on difference. It
demands the
recognition
that the self and the other are unlike. Levinas
emphasizes
that the
concept
of the other is not
ontological.
The other is
not an
entity,
and is
"totally beyond being, totally
other than
being."20
The realm of
being
is instead the trace of the other which remains
beyond being.
Derrida
similarly
insists that the thematics of the trace is not onto
logical,
is not
posited
in
being
or
presence.
It
is, rather,
founded on a
movement of erasure, occultation,
and
absence,
which he
carefully
dis
tinguishes
from classical
ontology:
The
concept
of the arch-trace
...
is
contradictory
and not
acceptable
within
the
logic
of
identity.
The trace is not
only
the
disappearance
of
origin,
but
means that the
origin
did not even
disappear,
that it was never
constituted
except by non-origin,
the trace, which thus becomes the
origin
of the
origin.
From then on, to wrench the
concept
of the trace from the classical
296 SHIRA WOLOSKY
scheme,
which would derive it from
a
presence
or
from an
originary
non
trace
. . .
one must indeed
speak
of
an
originary
trace or arch-trace. Yet we
know that that
concept destroys
its name and that if all
begins
with the
trace there is above all no
originary
trace.
(OG, 61)
Whereas in the classical
scheme,
origin
is seen as
proceeding
from
pres
ence, from
being, origin
here is seen as a
disappearance.
This contradicts
the
"logic
of
identity."
But the
origin
of the trace cannot be
expressed
as
an
identity.
The trace refers not to a
being,
but to an
other,
not to a
presence,
but to what can
only
be described as an
absence,
since to
name it at all would be to
"destroy
its name." It is the unnameable.
Derrida admits the resemblance between his "other" and the
Judaic
conception
of a
transcendent God
beyond categories
in his
essay
on
Levinas:
We are in "the Trace of God." A
proposition
which risks
incompatability
with
every
allusion to the
"very presence
of God."
. . .
The face of God
disappears
forever in
showing
itself
. . .
The face of Yahweh is the total
person
and the total
presence
of "the Eternal
speaking
face to face with
Moses,"
but
saying
to him also: "Thou canst not see
my
face."
(WD, 108)
This
conception
of the transcendent
as
other,
as
"absent" rather
than
present,
as
hidden rather than
directly
revealed,
differs
signifi
cantly
from the
conceptions
which,
beginning
with classical
ontology,
constitute the central Western and
especially
Christian
assumptions.
Christianity posits
a
God who is an
entity,
a
spiritual being,
made
manifest in the Son and
present through
the Son. In
Glas, Derrida
makes
explict
the distinction between the
Judaic conception
of God and
the Christian one. In the
former,
"The infinite remains
abstract,
it is
not
incarnated,
does not unite
concretely
to the forms of the under
standing,
of the
imagination,
or of the
sensibility"
(Glas, 57).
In
contrast,
"The Christian God manifests
a concrete
spirit
which remains veiled
and abstract in
Judaism.
As the Son is infinite?Son of God?he is not
other than God. He
gives
to God his
image"
(Glas, 39).
Whereas in
Judaism,
as stated
by
Mendelssohn and
quoted by
Derrida,
"God does
not manifest
Himself,
He is not
truth,
total
presence
or
parousia"
(Glas,
62),
Christian
theology
conceives of the filiation between Father and
Son
as one of
being,
of essence, and as
image: "Jesus
calls himself thus
the Son of God
. . .
and this
filiation,
which constitutes his
Sein, his
Wesen,
cannot be
revealed,
attested
to,
declared
except by
the Father"
(Glas, 85).
If,
in terms of
sign-theory,
this structure of filiation became
one in
which
the
signatum always
referred,
as its
referent,
to a
res, to an
entity
created
...
in the eternal
present
of the divine
logos
and
specifically
in its
breath,
such that if it came to relate to the
speech
of a finite
being through
the
intermediary
of
a
signans,
the
signatum
had an immediate
relationship
Derrick, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
with the divine
logos
which
thought
it within
presence,
and for which it is
not a
trace,
the thematics of the trace
posits,
in
contrast,
that
the
signified
is
originally
and
essentially
. . .
trace, that it is
always already
in the
position
of the
signifier.
(OG, 73)
The
sign
is the trace of
an
other that is neither
being
nor
presence,
but
is
beyond
all
ontological categories:
"The trace does not establish
a
relation with that which is less than
being,
but rather binds with
regard
to the
infinite,
to the
absolutely
Other,"
writes Levinas. The
sign,
rather
than
manifesting
the other
as
being, registers
its
passage: "Every sign
is
a trace. Even
more than the
sign signifies,
it is the
passage
of he who
has delivered the
sign."21
The
sign-as-trace
and the other thus remain
distinct from each other. Their relation is never one of
identity,
but
occurs across difference. As Derrida asserts,
the form of their relation
is not one of communion: "Without
intermediary
and without commun
ion,
absolute
proximity
and absolute distance
. . .
within the
proximity
with the other distance is
integrally
maintained"
(WD, 90).
The
sign-as-trace
and the other remain external to each
other,
and
represent
the structure of discourse between
separate
interlocutors.
No
logos
mediates between the two. Across
a difference which is ever
respected,
there is a
dialogue
and
a
trajectory:
"If the other is other and
if
every
word is for the
other,
no
logos
as absolute
knowledge
can
comprehend
the
dialogue
and the
trajectory
towards the other"
(WD,
98).
This
is,
for
Derrida,
the model for all
discourse,
but is itself modeled
on discourse with God. "The word of
man can rise
up
toward
God,"
and
this,
by analogy, represents
the model for discourse in
general: "Analogy
as
dialogue
with God: Discourse is discourse with God." The interlocu
tors do not
participate
in each
other,
but
rather,
address each other:
"Discourse with God and not in God
as
participation"
(WD, 108).
The
sign-as-trace,
then,
describes
a
relation between the transcendent and
the human in which each remains
separate,
but linked
through
dis
course.
Derrida focuses on
writing
in
particular
as the form of discourse
best
representing
the thematics of the trace:
The thematics of the trace
. . .
should lead to a certain rehabilitation of
writing.
Isn't the "He" whom transcendence and
generous
absence
uniquely
announces in the trace more
readily
the author of
writing
than of
speech?
. . .
The writer absents himself
better,
that is
expresses
himself
better
as
other,
addresses himself to the other
more
effectively
than the
man of
speech.
(WD, 102)
The written
sign
serves to describe the external relation which the
thematics of the trace
posits.
This is not a
discourse which
"imprudently
considers the idea of the
relationship
between God and creation in
298 SHIRA WOLOSKY
ontological
terms"
(WD, 108).
The
sign,
therefore,
does not act as a
copula uniting
entities.
It, rather,
"describes relations and not
apella
tions. The noun and the
word,
those unities of breath and
concept,
are
effaced within
pure writing"
(OG, 26).
The trace marks
a
relation to the
other which it neither
designates
nor
joins.
All that is not the other is
its
inscription, beyond
which the other remains
intangibly
and
invisibly
in its difference.
The other is not a
metaphysical concept
and does not
represent
an
intelligible
realm. Its
sign-as-trace, therefore,
cannot be said to have a
"signified"
face which
participates
in this
realm;
nor has it a
"signifying"
face,
exiled from this union into the sensible realm.
Indeed,
the
very
distinction between
participation
and
exclusion,
intelligible
and
sensible,
which is the
"unique
theme of
metaphysics"
(OG, 71),
does not
operate
in the thematics of the trace. The trace abolishes this distinction. It is
"not more ideal than
real,
not more
intelligible
than sensible"
(OG, 65).
The
significance
of the
sign-as-trace, then,
is not derived from
partici
pation
in a numinous realm of
being
or of truth. In
marking
the relation
to the
other, however,
the written
sign
has
a
significance integral
to it.
It is a
signifier
as
its
signified.
The
signifier
is itself
significant.
This radical assertion of
meaning
as
integral
to the concrete
"signi
fier" or trace
finally
denies distinctions between internal and
external,
spirit
and
flesh,
which conventional
sign-theory reproduces.
The world
becomes
a
system
of
signs
whose
meaning
does not inhere in a
"spirit
ual" realm
separate
from
phenomena,
but rather inheres in the
system
of
inscription
itself.
Signification proceeds
from the relation of each
sign
to the whole order of
signs
inscribed
by
the other. It is the interre
lation between concrete
signs
in this inscribed order which
generates
meaning. Significance
is not
separable
from the concrete
signs
them
selves,
but is a
function of their order.
The thematics of the trace therefore overcomes the Nietzschean
criticisms to which conventional
sign-theory
leaves itself
open
by
situating meaning
in an
ontological
realm which is
uncertain,
and
which,
Nietzsche
insists,
gives
rise to the devaluation of the world of
pheno
mena. It further abolishes the Pauline distinction between
spirit
and
letter. An
internal,
"spiritual,"
and therefore
significant
communion
from which
a
fallen
materiality
is excluded
gives way
to discourse
between interlocutors who remain distinct from each
other,
and for
whom
materiality
is
significant
as
the
interchange
that extends from
faith to
deed,
from
metaphysics
to ethics. Derrida
quotes
Levinas: "The
spirit
is free in the letter"
(WD, 102).
And Derrida himself states: "It
would no
longer
be the letter of the law if it were outside
difference,
or
if it left its
solitude,
or
put
an
end to
interruption,
to
distance,
to
respect,
and to its relation to the other"
(WD, 72).
Derrida, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
Yet,
it is with
regard
to the
question
of ethics that Derrida's the
matics of the trace can be
seen to
diverge
from
Levinas's,
and from the
Judaic
tradition whether rabbinic or kabbalistic. Levinas is
explicit
about
his ethical concern:22
The consciousness of self
inevitably
arises in the heart of a moral con
sciousness
. . .
But the fact that I do not
question myself
on the
rights
of
the other indicates
paradoxically
that the other is not a
replica
of
myself.
In
his
quality
as
other,
he is situated in a
dimension of
height,
of the
ideal,
of
the
divine, and,
by my
relation with
others,
I am in relation with God.
For
Levinas,
the
recognition
of the other as outside the self and as
different from the self
guarantees respect
and
prohibits
violence. Such
respect
is founded on
God
as
other,
and is
represented
above all
by
the
exteriority
of discourse and of ethical action: "The true
paradox
of the
perfect being
consisted in his
desiring equals
outside himself
. . .
and
consequently
action outside of himself. This is
why
God transcended
creation
...
He created someone to talk to."23 Derrida
acknowledges
Levinas's concern: "Face to face with the other within a
glance
and a
speech
which both maintain distance and
interrupt
all
totalities,
this
being-together
as
separation
. . .
Levinas calls it
religion.
It
opens
ethics"
(WD, 95).
And Derrida admits that for
Levinas,
this external discourse
ultimately suggests
"a commandment: the
only possible
ethical
impera
tive,
the
only
incarnated nonviolence in that it is
respect
for the other"
(WD, 96).
Derrida's stance toward the
other, however,
is much less clear than
is Levinas's.
Derrida, too,
can assert: "There is no ethics without the
presence
of the
other,
but
also,
consequently,
without
absence,
dissimu
lation, detour, difference,
writing"
(OG, 139).
He can
say
with
Jabes
that
writing
is more than
self-reflexive,
that it is a
"tearing
of the self
toward the other within a
confession of infinite
separation"
(WD, 75).
But Derrida hesitates
regarding
the status and role of this other. For
Levinas,
discourse is
finally significant
and ethical because it issues
from
a
Godhead
who,
as
beyond categories,
can
only
be addressed as
other. In this he
approaches
certain
mystical
writers,
for whom "in the
continuous act of the
language
of the creation the Godhead is the
. . .
original archetypal
writer,
who
impresses
his word
deep
into his created
works."24 For
Judaism,
the created
world,
whether or not conceived
lettristically,
is
orderly
and coherent because it
proceeds
from its Crea
tor and reflects Him. The Godhead remains a "trace"
which,
even if
addressed in
negative
terms as
Nameless,
retains a
positive
transcend
ence and force.
Derrida, however,
questions
this
positive
transcendence. "Can
one
respect
the Other
as
Other,
and
expel negativity
. . .
from transcend
ence,
as Levinas seeks to do?" he asks
(WD, 114).
Derrida
adopts
a
notion of the other which
resembles,
in its
negative designation,
an idea
300 SHIRA WOLOSKY
of the Godhead
as the
infinitely
transcendent and therefore in some
sense unnameable
divinity
of rabbinic
Judaism,
and even
more,
its idea
as radicalized in the Kabbalah
as a
mystical "Nothing/'
But this
"Unnameable" and this
"Nothing"
is
always
felt,
in
Judaism
or the Kab
balah,
as
positive. Although
it shows itself in
concealment,
it remains
an active and directive Godhead.
Derrida, however,
criticizes Levinas
for
rejecting
an
"indefinite, negative
form of
infinity"
(WD, 119).
For
himself,
he considers the "trace of God
...
a
proposition readily
con
verted into atheism"
(WD, 108).
In this
way,
Derrida
opens
the
possibil
ity
that the
non-ontological
character of the other in fact
approximates
a true
non-being,
a
"negative" nothing
which can then no
longer guar
antee the inscribed trace as
having
a definite and
positive
order. This
distinction between the Derridean
system
and the kabbalistic one is
remarked
by
Harold
Bloom,
who
points
out that
Derrida,
like the Kab
balists,
posits
a
writing
before
speech
in
ways
which
defy
Western
metaphysics,
since in the Kabbalah "God is at once
Ein-Sof and
Ayin,
total
presence
and total
absence,
all its interiors contain exteriors."
But,
Bloom
continues,
"Kabbalah
stops
the movement of Derrida's
'trace',
since it has
a
point
of the
primordial,
where
presence
and absence
co-exist
by
continuous
interplay."25
While in the
Kabbalah,
inscription
of or as
world traces the movement of a
positive
Godhead and reflects
his hidden
divinity,
Derrida's trace of
"nothing" may
indeed constitute
no more than
signs propagating
over an
irreducible void. Such a
position
would
no
longer
be
Hebraistic,
but nihilistic.
Yet,
before such
nihilism,
Derrida hesitates.
Having suggested
that
God is
"nothing,"
Derrida at times hastens to add that this is so "because
he is
everything
. . .
and therefore is at once All and
Nothing.
Which
means that God
appears,
is
named,
within the difference between All
and
Nothing
. . .
This difference is what is called
History.
God is
inscribed in it"
(WD, 115).
Derrida thus retreats from the
nihilistic,
a
retreat which is
repeatedly
enacted. Of the
Jabesean book-as-world,
Derrida can write: "The book
can
only
be threatened
by nothing,
non
Being, nonmeaning" (WD, 76).
He can assure that "the radical
illegibility
of which we are
speaking
is not
irrationality,
is not
despair provoking
non-sense"
(WD, 77).
These assurances, however,
again
recede into
seeming
retractions: "Kafka said: 'we are nihilist
thoughts
in the brain
of God.' If God
opens
the
question
in God
. . .
There can
be
no
simplicity
of God
. . .
Proceeding
within the
duplicity
of his own
questionability,
God does not act in the
simplest ways;
He is not
truthful,
he is not
sincere"
(WD, 68).
In
rejecting
God as
unitary totality
and
simplicity,
Derrida
posits
Him as
duplicitous
and untruthful. Such assertions
may
finally, perhaps,
be best described not as
nihilistic,
but
as
blasphemous.
Derrida seems
endlessly
to move between affirmation and
negation,
such that his
position
falls between the
two,
where
blasphemy
resides.
Derrick, Jabes,
Levinas:
Sign-Theory
as
Ethical Discourse 301
Derrick's
critique
of
sign-theory
as an
onto-theological
structure
thus leads him into the "movement within the difference between the
Socratic and the
Hebraic,
the
poverty
and the wealth of the
letter,
the
pneumatic
and the
grammatical,"
(WD, 73)
in which he
places Jabes
and
Levinas.
Nonetheless,
Derrida remains more
Heideggerean
than kab
balistic. That a
post-Nietzschean
revolt
against metaphysics
should
approach
Hebraism and the Kabbalah in its structures and terms affirms
these in their difference from Western
ontology.
The modern need to
redefine the relation between transcendence and immanence so that
significance
no
longer
is
relegated
to the
transmundane,
but
rather,
is
asserted
as
integral
to and felt within the concrete
world,
can therefore
be illuminated
by
Hebraism,
as
Derrida's work
dramatically
shows. But
Derrida,
in his hesitation betwen atheism and
faith,
never
finally
enters
"this
experience
of the
infinitely
other"
which,
he
writes,
can
be called
"Judaism" (WD, 152).
From the
viewpoint
of
Judaism,
his own stance
remains
tenuous,
suggesting
a
blasphemy
which both
rejects
and
accepts
this
experience.
Still,
if Derrida's
system finally
hovers between nihilism
and affirmed
meaning,
his work also reminds us that
a
non-ontological
model for
signification
need not be nihilistic.
Department
of
English
Yale
University
NOTES
1.
Jacques
Derrida, Of Grammaiology,
G. C.
Spivak,
trans.
(Baltimore, 1976), p.
20. Here
after cited as
OG,
followed
by
the
page
number.
2.
Jacques
Derrida,
Writing
and
Difference,
A.
Bass,
trans.
(Chicago,
1978), p.
111.
Hereafter cited as
WD,
followed
by
the
page
number.
3.
Jacques
Derrida,
Glas.
(Paris, 1974), p.
90.
English
translations within this
essay
are
mine. Hereafter cited as
Glas,
followed
by
the
page
number.
4. Louis
Ginzberg,
The
Legends of
the
Jews. (Philadelphia,
1968),
Vol.
I, p.
3.
5. Edmond
Jabes,
Le livre des
questions, (Paris, 1963), p.
32.
English
translations within
this
essay
are mine.
6.
Jabes,
Livre des
questions, pp.
148, 26,
109.
7. Gershom
Scholem,
"The Name of God and the
Linguistic Theory
of the
Kabbala,"
Diogenes
79/80 (1972):
69.
8.
Scholem,
"The Name of
God," p.
71.
(Berakhoth 55a).
9.
Scholem,
"The Name of
God," p.
77.
10. The
Zohar,
H.
Speeding
and M.
Simon,
trans.
(London, 1949),
Vol.
I, p.
9.
11. Gershom
Scholem,
On the Kabbalah and its
Symbolism,
(New York, 1965), p.
39.
12.
Jabes,
Livre des
questions, p.
32-33.
13.
Scholem,
"The Name of
God," pp. 167,
166.
14.
Jabes,
Livre des
questions, p.
85.
15.
Scholem,
On the
Kabbalah,
p.
111.
16.
Scholem,
"The Name of
God," p.
181.
302 SHIRA WOLOSKY
17. Emmanuel
Levinas,
"La Trace de
Lautre/' Tijdschrift
voor
Filsosfie
25
(3) (1963):
608.
English
translations within this
essay
are mine.
18.
Levinas,
"La Trace de
Lautre," p.
623.
19. Emmanuel
Levinas, Difficile
Liberte.
(Paris, 1963), p.
32.
English
translations within
this
essay
are mine.
20.
Levinas,
"La Trace de Lautre."
p.
608.
21.
Levinas,
"La Trace de Lautre."
p.
621.
22.
Levinas, Difficile
Liberte.

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Derrida, Jabs, Levinas: Sign-Theory as Ethical Discourse

Author(s): SHIRA WOLOSKY

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