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    Foucault Michel 1967 1998 Nietzsche Freud Marx PDF

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    nosoyninja

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    Micn#y rovcaunr AESTHETICS, METHOD, AND EPISTEMOLOGY ‘ranaated eee ee Seana eae aeeeeanceae as roe Soa oer eer nope mente oemr a eet couuecemaensermesces See ieeaeeeae ree areas ET rename taesad Secetee a cay cael “rst ofa, Use suspicion that language does not mean exactly ‘what it says. The meaning that one grasps, and that i immedi ely manifest, is perhaps in reality only a lesser meaning that protects, confines, and yetin spite of everything transmits another ‘meaning, the later being at once the stronger meaning and the “underlying” meaning. This is what the Greeks ced allgoria and huponoia, “Fae enyoigily apes eile de Rapaument Pai Win, 7 ‘ata sens ote Fi eye calbgta.TH he Itty en ereon snd Gay Het ase sy rend 270 Aesthetics, Method, and Bpistemalogy + On the other Han, language gives birth to this other suspieion: I ‘excoeds ils merely verbal form in some way, and there are indeed ‘other things In the world which speak and which are not lan- ‘guage, Aer all it could be that nature the sea, the rusting of trees, animals, faces, masks, ressed swords, all ofthese speak; pertiaps theres language that articulates sein maamner that is not verbal This would be, if you like, very roughly the Greek’ semainon, ‘These tvo suspicions, which one sees already appearing with the Greeks, have not disappeared, and Uhey are sll with us, since we have once agin begun to believe, specifically since the nineteenth ‘century, that mute gestures, that nesses, tha all he tumult around us cam also speak; and more than ever we ae listening én om all this ossble language, trying to intercept, beneath the words, a discourse ‘that would be more estentl 1 believe that each culture-I mean to say each caltueal form i Western cilzationhas hed its syste of faterpretation, its tech- niques, ts method its own ways of suspecting that language means something other than whet it says, and of suspecting that there is Janguage otter than in language. Itseems, then, that one could ina ‘surat the enterprise of making the system, oF the “table, as they used to say inthe seventoent century, ofall these aystems of iter- pretation. In order to understand what system of interpretation the nine= teenth century founded, and soin tm what ssstem of interpretation We, 09, even nov are involved in, seems to me necessary to take @ remote reference polnt, a type of technigue that could exis for ex ‘ample inthe sixteenth century. In tht perlod, what provided a place {or Interpretation, both iis general site and the minimal unity that interpretation had to maintain, was resemblance. Whenever things resembled eneh other, wherever that Was similay, something wanted to be said an could be deciphered; the important role that resem- ‘lance, and all he notions that revolve around i ike eatelites, played in the cosmology, inthe botany, in the zoology, inthe philosophy of the sisteenth century is well Known, Actually to twenteth-century eyes, this whole netyork of similitudes i rather confused and tangled. In fay, the corpus of resemblance in the sixteenth century ietesohe, Freud, Mare on vas perfectly organized, There were atleast five perfectly defined. notions: +The notion of conformabiliy,convenientia, which is adjustment (lorexample, ofthe sul tothe body, oF ofthe animal series to the ‘vegetable series). + The notion of ympathicia, sympathy, whieh isthe identity af ack- dents in dstinet substances. +The notion of emulatio, whieh isthe very eurtons parallelism of tributes in distinct substances or beings, sch thatthe atuibutes of one are Ike the reflections of those of another. (Thus Porta explains thatthe human face i, with ts seven distinguishable ars the emulation ofthe sky With its even planets) +The notion of signature, signature, which is, among the visible Properties ofan individual, the Image of an invisible and iden roperty. + And thea, of course, the notion of anafogy, which isthe identity of| relations between two or more distinct substances. In this period, then, the theory of the sign and the techniques of| {nerpretation were based on aperoctly ear definition ofall the pos- sible types ofesemblatcs td they formed te bass of two perfectly “distinct types of knowledge: cognitio, which vas the transition, in ‘some lateral fashion, from one resemblance to anole, and divinatio, ‘hich was knovsedge in depth, going rom a superficial resemblance toadecper resemblance. Al hese resemblances manifest the onsen: sus ofthe world that grounds thems; they are opposed to the sine lacrum, the false resemblance, Which is based on the dissension, between God and the Devil, If these siateenth-century techniques of interpretation were let in suspension by the evolution of Western thought in the seventeenth ‘and eighteenth centuries, if the Baconian ertgue, the Cartesian cri- tique of resemblance certainly played a major role in bracketing ‘hem, the nineteenth century-and pardculaly Marx, Nictsche, and Freudhave put us beck into the presence of a new possibilty of ara Aestetes, Method, and Bpstemologs interpretation; they have founded once again the possibility of a hermeneutic. "The rst volume of Capita texts ke The Birth af Tage and The Genealogy af Moras, and The Interpretation of Dreams, put us back Into the presence of interpretive techmiques. And the shock effect, the kind of wound cause in Wester thought by these works, probably comes from what they reconsitted before our eyes, something, ‘moreover, that Mars himself called “hieroglyph” This has puts Ino an uncomfortable postion, sine these techniques of interpreta” tion eoneern us ourselves, since we, the interpreters have begun to Interpret ourselves by these techniques. Wit ese techniques of in- ‘orpretation, in turn, we must interrogate those interpreters who were Freud, Nietzsche, and Mars, so taet we are perpetually sen! back ina ‘perpetual play of mirrors. Freud says somewhere that there are three great narcissistic wounds in Western cultares the wound inficted by Coperains; the ‘One made by Darwin, sthen he discovered that man descended from ‘the ape; and the wound made ky Freud himself, when he in turn Aiscovered that consciousness rests on the unconscious. T wonder ‘whether one could not say that Froud, Nietzsche, and Marx, by iavols= fing usin a task of interproation that always reflects back om ie, hhave not constituted around us end forus these mirrors in which we are given buck images whose perennial wounds form our narcissist today. In any case—and Ist this end that I would like to make some stuggestions~it seems to me that Marr, Nietzsche, and Frend have not Insome way multiplied the signsin the Wester world. They have not ilven a nevr meaning to things that had no meaning. They have in realty changed the nature ofthe sign and modified the fashion in ‘whieh she sgn can in general be interpreted ‘The frat question that T wanted to pose le this: Have not Marx, ‘reud and Nietsche profoundly mouified the space of distribution ‘whieh sins can be suns? nthe period that Ihave taken as 8 point of reference, im the six- teenth century, signs were disposed in'n homogeneous fashion in & space that was iself homogeneous in all direetions. The signs ofthe ‘earth refered tothe sy, but they refereed tothe subterranean world ‘swell they referred rom mitn to animal, from enim to plan and ‘reciprocally. Beginning inthe ninetoenth century, with Freud, Marx, and Nietsche, signs were ranged in a much more aiferentited space, according ta dimension that could be called that of depth ietssohe, Freud, Marz 275 lnrondeur aslongas tis snot ken to mean imtriority ton the ‘contrary exterioiy. think in parca of the Tong debate that Nietzsche never ceased to eazy on with depth There i in Nietzache a ertique of teal depth, ‘of depth of conscience, which he denounces a8 an invention of Pht losophers this depth Would be the pure and interior sear fr truth, [ietsche shows how itimplies resignation, hypocrisy, the ask; 30 {hat the interpreter must, when he examines signs In order to do- ounce them, descend along the Vertical line and show tha his depth of interiority is In reality something other than what it says. Conso- ‘quel, tis necessary tha the Interpreter descend, that he be, a8 [Nietwsche says, “the good excavator ofthe lower dept”™ But, in realty, when one interprets ane can trace this descending line only to restore the glittering exterority that was covered up and Duried. For ifthe interpreter must go othe bottom hist Lk ‘excavator, the movement of interpretation is, on the contrary, that of projection [surplomd}, of moreand more elevated projection, which always leaves depth above itt be displayed in # more and more sible fashion; and depths now restored as an absolutely supetill secretin such a way thatthe Might of te eagle, the esoension ofthe ‘mova, all the verticality that isso important in Zarathustra isin the suet sense the reversal of depth, the discovery that dep was ‘only a game anda surface fol. To the extent thatthe world becomes ‘deeper under our grze, we perceive that everything Which elicited ‘mas depth was only elds play, wonder whether this spatality, this game wlth depts of Nic ‘euzsche’s spatialty cannot be compared to the apparently diferent ‘game that Marx carried on with plattude. The ooncept of patitude in ‘Max i very important; atthe beginning of Capa, he explains how, ‘unlike Perseus, he mus plunge into the foto show that, fac there fare no monsters or profound enigmas, because everything profound ‘nthe conception that the bourgeoisie has of mone’, capital, valve, ‘and soon, isin reality nothing but patitude And, ofcourse, twould be necessary to recall the space of iterpre- tation that Freud constituted, not onty in the famous topology af con ‘sclousness aud the unconscious, but equally in the rules that he formulated for psychoanalytic treatment, and the analysts decipher ‘ng of what is sad in the course of the spoken “chain” It would be ‘necessary to recall the spatial, very material afterall, to sehich, 274 Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology ‘rend attached such importance and which ays out the patent under the overhanging gaze [regard surplomband ofthe psychoanalyst "The second theme-whleh I ould like to propose to yous, moreover, somewhat related to th fst=is to pont out hat, beginning with the three men of whom we are now speaking, interpretation fas at Ist become an infinite task ‘In ruth, it already was in te sisteenth century, bu signs refered {se renvoyaieng to each other quite simply because resemblance ean only be Inited. Begining in the ninetenth century, sans te linked together in an inesheustibie network, itself sso infnite not beens they are based on a resemblance without borders but berause there is lnredueible gaping and openness. "The incompletoness of interpretation, the fact that is always lac- ‘erated and that itremans suspended on its own brink, is found once ‘again, [believe in a somewhat analogous fashion ia Marx, Nietzsche, ‘nd Freud in the form ofthe refusal of beginning. Refusal othe "Rob Insonade," sald Marx; a distinction, so important in Nietsche, be- tween the beginning and the origin; and the always-ineomplete character ofthe regressive and analyte proces Fret. Is above all. Netsche and Freud, moreover, and to a lesser degree it Mars, that one sees delineated this experience, which Iheieve so important ‘to modem hermeneutics: the farther oe goes in interpretation, the ‘loser one comes at the same time to an abeolutely dangerous region ‘where interpretation not only wil nd its point of return but where i vill disappear as interpretation, perhaps involving the disappearance ofthe interpreter himselL Te existonce that always approche! the absolute point of interpretion would be at che sime time that of ‘point of rupture. is well known how, in Freud, the discovery of tis structurally ‘open, structurally gaping character of interpretation was progres- sively made, It as made frst ina very alusive manner, que veled by itsel, in The Interpretation af Dreams, when Freud analyyes his town dreams an invokes reasons of madeaty or of nondisclosure of & personal secretin order to interrupt himselt ‘In the analysis of Dora the ides appears that interpretation must Indeed be halted not be allowed to go through othe end in consider- ‘ton of something that wil be called “ransferenes” some years Iter, Furthermore, the inexhaustibiity of analysis asserts self across the entre study of transference inthe infinite and infinitely problematic _Metesche, Preud, Marz 5 ‘character of the relationship of analysand t» anelys,& relationship ‘tht Is clearly constitutive for psychoanalysis, which opens the space ‘in which psychoanalysis never ceases to deploy itself without ever being able to complete ise In Nietsche, too, itis clear that interpretation is always fncom- plete. Whats philosophy for him ifnot kind of philology continually {in suspension, a philology without end, always farther unrolled, a pllology that would never be absolutely fixed? Why? As he sa in ‘Beyond Good and Boil, itis because "io pera fom absolute knowl- ‘edge could well form part of the basis of being” And yet he has ‘shown in Boe homa how near he was o this absolate knowledge that Forms part of the bass of Being, Likewise, in the coarse of te atumn of a8 at Tari, f'n Freud’ correspondence one deciphers his perpetual worries from the moment thathe dscavered psychoanalysis, oe can wonder hiether Freud's experience isnot, after al rather similar to that of [Nietsche. What sin question inthe point of rupture of interpretation, Im this convergence of interpretation on point that render impos” sible, could well be something ike the experience of madness, ‘An experience against which Nietache fought aad by which he ‘as fascinated; an experience against whlch Freud himselt struggled, ‘not without anguish al of his life. This experienoe of madness would be the sanction af « movement of interpretation that approaches ts center at infinity and that collapses, charred, ‘This essential incompleteness of interpretation fs, 1 believe inked to {sro other principles, also fundamental, which would constitute, wth the frst two of whieh I have just spoken, the postulates of modern hermeneutics, Fist ofall If terpretation can never be completed, this is quite simply because there is nating to fnterpret. There is ‘nothing absolutely primary to interpret, for afterall everything is al- ‘realy interpretation, etch sign isin self no the thing that offers seit to interpretation but an interpretation of other signs. ‘There Is never, you like, an inerpreandum that isnot already Jnterpretans 50 that tis es mc a relationship of rolence as ofeluei- dation thats established in interpretation. Indeed, interpretation does ‘not clarify mater tobe interpreted, which offers itself passively i ‘can only seize, and vielen an alread present interpretation, wich itmust overthrow, upset, shatter with the blows of hanumer, 276 Aesthaie, Method, and Epistemology. ‘One sees this already in Mars, who interpre not he history ofthe relations of production bt a relation already offering itself as an in \expretation, since it appears as nature. Likewise, Freud interprets not signs bat interpretations. Indeed, what does Freud ditcover beneath symptoms? He does not discover a is said, “waumas he brings 10 light phantagns with their burden of anguish, tha is, kernel thats Itself already in its own being an interpretation, Anorexia, for ex: ample, does wot refer to weaning as the signifier refers to Ue sign\- ‘ed rather, anorexia sgn, a symptom tobe interpreted, refers to phantasms of the bad materual breast, which i itself an Interpret tion, which is already in itself a speaking bods. This is why Freud has ‘nothing to interpret other than what in the langage of his patients is ‘offered to him as symptoms; is interpretation is the interpretation of an interpretation, in the terms in which this interpretation is ven. I. is well known that Freud invented the “superego [surmot] the day that a patient said o im: “I foal a dog over me” [sens un chien sur mol". Inthe same manner, Nietsche seizes interpretations that have a ready seizod each other. For Nietzsche, there is no orignal signified ‘Words themselves are nothing but interpretations, throughout their history they interpret before being signs, and ulimately they signi ‘only because they are essentially nothing but interpretations. Witnest the famous etymology of agathox® This i also whit Nietzsche means ‘when he says that words have always been invented by the ruling ‘asses; they donot denote a signified, they impose an interpretation Consequently, tis not because there are primary and enigmatic sans at we are now dedicated to the task of fnterpreing but because there are interpretations, because there is always the great tissue of, ‘violent interpretations beneath everything hat speoks. Ii for tis ‘eazon that there are sian, sings that preseribe to us the interpreta ‘don of theieinterpreiation, that enjoin w to overtrn ther assigns. {his sense one can say that allegovia and uponoia area the bottom of Janguage and before i, not just what slipped after the fet fom b= neath swords in order to displace them and make them vibrate but ‘what gave bin to words, what makes them iter witha ster that is ‘over fxed. This is also why the interpreter, for Nietrsche is the “at enticone"; he is the “true one” not just because he seize seeping truth in order to proclaim it hut Because he pronounces te interpre= tation that all tut functions to coverup. Perhaps this primacy of ete, Freud, Mare 277 {interpretation with espectto sens is What ie most decisive in moder hermeneutic, ‘The dea that interpretation precedes the sign implies that the sgn 's not a simple and benevolent being, as was sill the case in the ‘sixteenth centus, when the plethora of signs, the fact that things re ‘serbled each oer, simply proved the benevolence of God and sepa ted the sign from the sinifier by only a anspareat veil. On the ‘onary, beginning with the nineteenth century, beginning with Fred, Marx, and Nietsche, it seems to me thatthe sign becomes ‘malevolent; mean that theres in the sign an ambiguous and some ‘what suspicious fren oll wll and “malice” [°mateie” And thsi to the extent thatthe sign is already an interpretation that does not appear as such. Signs ae interpretations that ry to justify themselves, And not the reverse. "Thus money functions in the way Ua one sees it defined in the Critique of Potuicat Beonomy and above all in the frst volume of Capital. Yous symptoms function in Freud. And in Nietzsche, words, justice, binary classifications of Good and vil, and consequently sgns, are masks, In aoqulsing this new function of covering up iner- pretton, the sign loses its simple signifying being, which is sil pos- sessed. in the Reosissancs; is own density comes as though to open Itself up, and all the negative concepts that had until then remained foreign tothe theory of the sgn ean hur Uiemselves into the opening. "The theory ofthe sign knew only the transparent and scarcely nega tivo moment of the veil. Now a whole play of negative concepts, of contradictions, of oppositions, in short, the whole play of reactive forces that Deleuze has analyzed so well n his book on Nietsche will ‘bo ale o organize itself inthe interior ofthe sign “Tp stand the dialectic Deck on its fee”: if this expression must hhave a meaning, would it not be precisely to have put back into the density othe sgn, nto this open spe, without end, gaping, into this pane without real content o recitation, al this ply of negativity that the dialectic atlas, had unleashed by giving ia positive mean ing? Finally the last characteristic of hermenentis: interpretation finds [self with the obligation to Interpret sel o infinity, aways to re- sume. From which, two important consequences. The fests that in- ‘erpretaion will henceforth always be interpretation by “whom?” 218 Aesthetic, Method, and Epistemology One does no interpret what sin the signified, but one interprets afer ls who posed the interpretation. The basis of interpretation is noth- but th interpreter, and this s perhaps the meaniag tat Nietsche fave the word “psychology.” The second consequences that inter ‘pretation must always interpret ise and cannot fal to tr back om itsell. In opposition to the time of signs, which is ime of definite ‘terms [!8ehéaned, and in opposition to the time of dialect, whch i linear inspite of everything, there ia time of interpretation, which i

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